A Changing Land(92)
She looked at him suspiciously. Luke tied the reins of her horse to his own. ‘I needed you and you weren’t here. Nobody was. Not that I suppose it matters.’ She sniffed. ‘Anyway, we really don’t see you when you’re here.’ Claire began walking towards the homestead.
‘Is everything all right?’ Half-moons of darkness highlighted her eyes. ‘Claire?’ She gave a questioning look that made him sorry for his absence and pleased he was needed. ‘Is it Hamish?’
‘Your father,’ she politely corrected him, ‘has –’
‘Returned from his walkabout?’ He wondered if Crawford Corner was now part of the great rural monolith that belonged to Hamish Gordon. They walked on for some minutes, their slow pace enticing myriad small black flies to land on backs, faces and hands. Their horses shook their manes, swished their tails, causing the flies to rise in a mass and then resettle. Claire pulled the netting down across her face. ‘Two days he was away, with no word. Then he returns, almost a changed man.’ She recalled Hamish’s harsh words – they could not be repeated. She stepped slowly through the grass. ‘I’m worried.’
Luke laughed – the idea of someone being worried about Hamish Gordon was quite a novel thought and he was sure his father would feel the same way.
Claire cocked an eyebrow. ‘Not for him. For Angus.’
‘Angus?’
‘You wouldn’t understand.’ She walked on, her body stiffened by resolve. ‘Sometimes I wish you were more like the rest of us.’
Luke grabbed at her wrist, slowing her walk. ‘What is that meant to mean?’ Beneath her riding jacket was a high-necked white blouse with fine pleats running the length of it. The stark whiteness of the material contrasted vividly with the darkness of the jacket and Luke found himself holding Claire’s wrist for a moment longer than necessary.
‘You’ve always come and gone as you please.’ She stepped over some fallen branches, taking his arm for support. ‘The conventions of society – companionship, respectability, social acceptance – these are meaningless to you. While I on the other hand cultivate this family’s place in society for the benefit of –’
‘Angus,’ Luke finished for her. ‘And you’re wrong, Claire. If things had been different …’ But what could he say? That he too craved the comforting normality of family? Family was something that he’d only glimpsed and most of the time it seemed as if that life never existed at all. A sheen of moisture covered Claire’s fine features. He wondered at how different his life would have been if he’d been boss of Wangallon. ‘You’re wearing my comb.’
Claire glanced at him, her eyelashes fluttering as she looked away.
‘Are you feeling all right?’ Luke asked, slipping a supportive arm around her slim waist as she stumbled.
‘I will be fine once I reach the shade of the house.’ She felt her breath constrict and with renewed energy shook his arm free of her. It was the heat, Claire decided, berating the tightly laced whalebone corset that nipped in her waist and cupped her breasts. ‘I know your father is not what people suppose him to be.’ They reached the gateway and the gravel path leading through Wangallon’s garden to the homestead. ‘You know what he once did?’ Claire began tentatively. ‘The stealing of sheep, cattle, perhaps –’ she hesitated – ‘worse?’ She looked at him directly, searching for the truth.
‘Do you really want to know?’
Claire looked towards the house as if someone may hear them. ‘Yes.’
‘I expect he did what any man did fifty years ago to carve himself a place in this world.’ Except, Luke thought, he did it better and more ruthlessly.
Claire lifted her skirts to climb the stairs leading to the verandah. Luke was his father’s son and whatever she expected to discover she would not hear from this man. There was no one moment that led to her revelation that Hamish Gordon was not as he seemed. It was more an awakening to the attitudes they received when first they ventured out into society as man and wife. It fell to Claire to cultivate female companionship and, by extension, introductions to those members of society she believed her husband should be mixing with. It was a painstaking, lonely process, filled with small slights, whispered innuendoes and strangely missing invitations. Their ostracism coincided with a number of stillborn children, leaving her in such a state of melancholy that she’d condemned herself to being both childless and virtually friendless. Yet her perseverance eventually paid off some years later when a season in Sydney saw their Centennial Park terrace positively flooded with invitations. Suddenly they were in vogue.