Trust Me

  Dulcie was exhausted. Since Betty became ill she’d never got to bed much before eleven-thirty, and then got up again in the night. Yet even though it was good to know she could sleep through uninterrupted till morning, she felt so empty. Why hadn’t Ross spoken to her? Did he think she was to blame in some way? Maybe Betty had been right about him after all?

  She cried then, long and hard, feeling even more alone than she had while she was at the Masters’. She had thought Betty’s illness was the only obstacle in the way of getting married, now it seemed that Ross didn’t even want her.

  ‘You stinking dingo,’ John hissed at Ross as he slung out a right hook and landed him squarely on the jaw, knocking him clean off his feet so he fell back into a puddle outside the pub. ‘Call yourself a man! You’re nothing but a heap of shit.’

  ‘That’s it, leave him,’ Bob said, urgently trying to haul John away. ‘Bruce won’t like to hear you’ve been fighting.’

  John had been seething with anger at Ross all day. He’d noticed how he’d ignored Dulcie and how he’d said not one word of condolence to Bruce. But he’d controlled himself, expecting the kid was waiting for the right moment to speak to both of them. Then when Ross followed him and Bob out of the house John’s anger had risen again. By the time he’d had a couple of schooners of beer, he wanted to knock his block off.

  Yet he suppressed the desire and tried to speak to the lad. He pointed out it was ignorant not to express sorrow when someone died, even if they weren’t well known to you, but when it was someone like Betty, a woman who’d taken him in and cared for him, it was just plain insulting, callous and inhuman.

  To his astonishment, Ross had belted him in the guts, right there in the bar, and told him to mind his own business. As John was well known and well liked, a couple of blokes had grabbed Ross and hurled him outside. John and Bob had quickly followed and that was when John hit him.

  ‘I won’t hit him again,’ John snarled. ‘Let him slither off into the bush like the snake he is.’ He glowered at Ross lying there on the ground. ‘You aren’t normal. You’re like a block of bloody ice, you’ve got that lovely young Dulcie wanting to marry you, but you couldn’t even give her a bit of comfort.’

  Ross got to his feet, swaying from the blow and clutching at his jaw. ‘It ain’t your business what goes on between me and Dulcie,’ he protested.

  Bob held John back.

  ‘That kid’s been nursing Betty for well over a year,’ John yelled at him. ‘She’s been getting up in the night to care for her, she does everything in the house, and I expect she’s tired out. Are you so fucking dense you can’t see that? Asking a girl to marry you means you love her, want to look after her. Or are you a poofter and you only want to get married so she’ll cook for you?’

  ‘Leave it, mate,’ Bob said.

  ‘I can’t,’ John said, turning to push Bob away. He took a couple of steps nearer Ross and stood legs astride, ready to hit him again if necessary. ‘Dulcie’s the best-looking sheila for miles around, God only knows why she chose you. You don’t deserve a sweet thing like her, but if you don’t start treating her proper, so help me, I’ll kill you.’

  With that he turned and made his way back to the truck, Bob running after him. ‘We can’t leave him here,’ Bob said, realizing John intended to go.

  ‘Oh yes we bloody can,’ John said. ‘By the time he’s walked home maybe he’ll have worked out what I mean.’

  John drove in silence for a couple of miles, then suddenly slammed his fist down on the steering-wheel. ‘I’ve done things to sheilas I’m not proud of,’ he exclaimed. ‘But I’ve never treated one as coldly as that. How can he be like that?’

  ‘He never had anyone to care for him, that’s why,’ Bob said quietly. ‘He don’t know lots of things, wherever it was he was brought up, he had it tough.’

  ‘You had it tough as a kid, so did I, so did Bruce and Betty,’ John said angrily. ‘As for Dulcie she had it even worse, shipped off over here like she was a side of beef. It hasn’t turned us into chunks of ice!’

  ‘I thought of killing my pa once when I was a kid,’ Bob said. ‘He came home from the pub and beat me black and blue for forgetting to get the wood in for the fire. I planned to whack him over the head with something and push him into the fire in the forge. I never tried it, he was too big and quick. I felt a failure because I didn’t.’

  John grinned. He’d heard stories about Bob’s father, he was by repute the nastiest, most evil-tempered man that ever walked in Western Australia. ‘Don’t reckon you’d have lived to tell the tale if you had,’ he said. ‘But what’s that got to do with Iceman?’

  ‘Reckon he’s been where I’ve been, and worse,’ Bob said. ‘I never had the confidence to get a girl, Pa knocked it out of me. Ross is lucky Dulcie took a shine to him otherwise I reckon he’d never find one either.’

  ‘But he has got her, she’s crazy about him,’ John said in exasperation. ‘What you’ve said doesn’t explain why he’s so weird. Look at you this morning, you wrapped Dulcie up in a blanket. You knew what to say to her. Explain that?’

  ‘She looked like Ma did when Pa died,’ Bob said simply.

  John could say nothing more. He understood completely why Bob was timid, he was a weedy, bullied kid, and he’d grown into a man who saw himself as second-rate. But Ross was young and strong, decent-looking, a nice enough bloke most of the time. Dulcie with her looks and figure was enough to make any bloke’s heart race faster, so why wasn’t Ross with her tonight?

  *

  Ross got a lift part of the way home, but as he walked the last few miles he was sobbing. When John told him Betty had died this morning he felt his whole world had crumbled. He worshipped her, owed her so much, for he always knew it was her persuasion that had stopped Bruce calling the police when he found him in his barn.

  He had never had a woman touch him before that day, well, not since he was around five, and that was never tenderly. Betty washed him all over, dressed the wounds on his feet, fed him soup and all the time kept whispering, ‘My poor boy,’ and ‘You’re safe now, no one’s going to hurt you.’

  Yet as he got better he sensed he ought to tell her how much he appreciated it, but he just couldn’t – he felt the words in his heart, but they wouldn’t come out. It was easier to show it, by working hard, harder even than John and Bob. That’s all he knew, proving himself, just the way he used to with the Brothers, being harder, tougher than anyone else.

  He had to learn so much in that first year at the farm. The work outside was no problem, he’d done all that and more back at Bindoon. It was how to behave in the house and around people he had problems with. He would eat till he was almost bursting, hide bread, cheese and fruit in his pockets, because he couldn’t quite believe there would always be food for him. He didn’t understand compliments, they sounded the same as sarcasm to him, and he didn’t know how to make polite conversation. He tried to copy John in everything, but the teasing remarks John made to people came out like rudeness when he attempted them. John could down five or six schooners of beer and still be sober – when he tried to keep up with him he disgraced himself by being violently sick. He couldn’t take criticism either, one sharp word and he smarted silently for days. He couldn’t trust or show appreciation, and he thought he could do everything better than anyone else.

  When he looked back at that time he blushed with shame. Maybe if he’d told the men how Bindoon really was and asked for their help and guidance, he might not have made such a fool of himself. But asking for help was another thing unknown to him. At Bindoon you did what you were told, never questioned anything the Brothers said, they were all-powerful and the boys were nothing but their slaves.

  By the time Dulcie came to the farm, Ross believed he’d cracked it all and that he was the same as any other man. But Dulcie with her endless questioning had made everything resurface. She made him feel a whole lot better about himself on the one hand, but on the other he had blinding flashes of ina
dequacy that he hadn’t until then been aware of. He couldn’t say or show what he felt, physical contact was very hard for him. All his life he’d been told it was sinful, especially touching oneself, and however hard he tried to dismiss what he’d been taught, it remained. He was deeply ashamed whenever he succumbed to the temptation of masturbation, vowed he’d never do it again, and even blamed Dulcie for arousing all these perverted feelings inside him. He did truly love her, she had every quality any man would want in a wife, she was on his mind from morning till night, yet he sensed she wanted more from him than he could ever give.

  When Betty got sick and they had to put off the wedding, he was both relieved and disappointed at the same time, but he couldn’t pinpoint exactly why. Worse still, Betty’s illness brought back problems he thought he’d overcome. He knew he ought to go into Betty’s room and sit with her like John and Bob did so often, talk to her, try and make her laugh. He tried it once but he failed miserably He panicked when he saw how ill she was. He couldn’t take her hand or kiss her cheek because he thought that would alert her to how little time she had left. He sat there by her bedside squirming with embarrassment because he couldn’t think of anything to say to her. He hated John because he could charm so effortlessly – even Bob who said little most of the time would look at magazines with her, talk about his mother, his childhood in Esperance, and ask about Betty’s family in Perth.

  The more Ross stayed away, the worse it got. Almost every day he’d tell himself that tomorrow he would go in there, tell her outright what she meant to him, how she’d turned his life around and that he loved her. Yet every day he made an excuse to himself – she would be sleeping, he had an important job to do, she didn’t really want to see him or she would have asked for him. Sometimes he even felt angry that he wasn’t summoned because it showed he meant nothing to her.

  Finally he was too late. Betty had died without hearing how much he appreciated all she’d done for him.

  He’d wanted to tell Bruce that today, and maybe he could have if only Bruce had asked him to go to town with him to make the funeral arrangements instead of John. He was jealous about that, just as he was always jealous when John made Dulcie laugh, or said how lovely she looked.

  He knew when Bob wrapped Dulcie up in that blanket this morning that he should have thought of it, but he didn’t because he was wrapped up in his own misery, and so he shot out to milk the cows. It was easy to show animals his feelings, no words were necessary, they just felt it all and responded. He supposed he imagined Dulcie would be the same way, that she would just know how he felt.

  He had blown everything now. He had idolized John, seeing in him what he wanted to be, but John thought he was a worthless lump of shit just as the Brothers always had. A dingo he’d called him, and nothing came much lower than that.

  How would he face Bruce tomorrow, knowing he had failed him by not speaking out and saying how sorry he was that he’d lost his lovely wife who was so very special to him? Why couldn’t he see this morning that his own grief was no bigger than anyone else’s? Every single person who met Betty had loved her.

  And Dulcie. What could he say to her? Sorry that he didn’t think of her? Just admitting it proved his failure to act like a normal person.

  He felt just the way he had back at Bindoon, a wretch with no purpose except to toil for the benefit of the Brothers, a lump of shit who could be abused in every possible way because he had no feelings and belonged to no one. He had tried to be like normal people, to learn their ways, trust again, but he would never be that way, a part of him was missing. Maybe John was right and he should just slither off into the bush like the snake he was. But he couldn’t, he needed Dulcie.

  ‘Now, Bruce, just remember that you have a big family up in Perth, and you can come and stay with us whenever you need us.’

  Dulcie listened to Betty’s diminutive sister Rose offering Bruce comfort and hugging him before she got into the car, and it was like seeing and hearing Betty all over again. Rose and the other sister Joan were so like Betty in looks and personalities that for the five days they’d been here she’d felt safe and secure. With them she’d been able to express her grief, to laugh at the things Betty said, to listen to childhood stories and applaud her many talents from her fine needlework to her gift with people. But now they had to go. Their grown-up children had left yesterday, along with Betty’s brother Clive, his wife and daughter too. The house was going to be so empty and quiet again.

  Rose finally got into the car and it rolled out down the track. Dulcie moved closer to Bruce, feeling his deep sadness at the parting. She slipped one arm through his and waved with the other.

  People said it Was the best attended funeral they’d ever known. The shops had closed out of respect in Esperance, and the mourners had come from a 150-mile radius. Dulcie had worn Betty’s pert little black hat with a veil, and it was only much later that Rose had told her Betty hadn’t bought it for a funeral as she supposed, but to wear on her honeymoon on Rottnest Island off the coast of Perth. She’d scandalized her mother by choosing black instead of a pastel shade, because she said she wanted to look seductive, not pretty.

  ‘Her family are all so kind,’ Bruce said with a sigh as the car finally disappeared. ‘For two pins I’d sell up and go and join them in Perth.’

  ‘Why don’t you then?’ Dulcie asked as they walked back to the house.

  Bruce stopped and tweaked her cheek. ‘Because I’m a farmer, not a city boy. I’d like being near them for a while, but it’s too confining, too noisy.’

  ‘You could get a smaller farm somewhere near enough to visit whenever you felt like it,’ she said.

  ‘I could, but I won’t,’ he said with a smile. ‘I can feel Betty here. I’ve got long roots that won’t pull up easily. Just don’t you leave me until I’ve got settled again.’

  ‘I’m not planning on going anywhere,’ she said.

  For all the shock of Betty’s death, the sadness of the funeral and the knowledge that life wasn’t ever going to be quite the same again here, Dulcie felt optimistic. She knew there had been a bit of a fight between John and Ross on the night of Betty’s death, Ross had come in the next morning with a bruise on his jaw. But he’d apologized to her, cuddled and kissed her and explained that he was too upset to think straight. He’d gone off with Bruce for a walk and a chat later that morning, and though neither of them had told her what had been said, the air was cleared.

  While all the visitors were here, she hadn’t seen very much of Ross, but that was just through circumstances. She was up to her ears in preparing and cooking food. Ross, John and Bob came in for their usual meals, then scurried out to work again to make room for the guests. But Ross had been at her side throughout the funeral, and although his face was set like concrete and he didn’t allow himself the weakness of tears, she sensed that when he disappeared from the wake in the house later, it was because he wanted to cry in private.

  He had come in after the evening milking, and he’d made a great effort to be sociable. She was touched too how much he tried to help her, collecting up plates and cups, washing up and getting people drinks.

  ‘Would you like to go up to Perth for a holiday?’ Bruce said as they got to the house. ‘You haven’t had a day off in over a year, and you could stay with Rose or Joan. It would give you a chance to see May.’

  Dulcie was taken aback by the offer. ‘But you need me here!’ she said.

  Bruce smiled. ‘I didn’t mean for you to go right now. Maybe later, in the spring. We can manage okay, believe it or not I can cook and wash a few clothes. I’m not helpless.’

  ‘It would be great to see May,’ she said gratefully. May was seventeen now, she’d got her shorthand and typing diploma, and she’d hinted in both her last two letters that she wanted to go and work in Sydney. Once she was there Dulcie knew she’d never get to see her, it was just too far away.

  ‘Then you must go,’ Bruce said as they went indoors. ‘I don’t suppose Ross
will be too pleased, but it will do you two good to have some time apart to think things out.’

  Bruce stayed indoors that day. There were a hundred and one jobs outside to be done, but he felt drained, emotionally and physically. He pulled the armchair up close to the stove, put his feet on a stool and closed his eyes. He could hear Dulcie putting the bedrooms back to rights again, and it was a comforting, peaceful sound after all the noise and bustle of the last few days.

  It had been Betty’s idea that Dulcie should go to Perth for a while. She’d made the suggestion several months earlier, because she felt Dulcie should have a chance to compare life in a city with here in the bush. She hadn’t been entirely happy about her marrying Ross, and although back then Bruce had scoffed at her reasons, he had come to understand them a great deal better in the last week or so.

  When Ross came to him the day after Betty’s death and poured out how he’d felt about her, and how sorry he was he hadn’t told her himself, Bruce felt deeply for him. He guessed Ross had opened up as a result of John laying into him, and it saddened him even more to think that it took violence to goad him into expressing his feelings. Dulcie was quite the reverse, all it took to gain her confidence was affection.

  He’d watched the pair of them at the wake after the funeral and noted alarming differences in their manner. Dulcie liked people. She might be a little shy still, but she was interested, attentive and a natural diplomat. How she had managed to produce so much food in just a couple of days astounded him, and Rose and Joan both pronounced her a little wonder, yet she didn’t once overstep the mark into familiarity but retained her position as housekeeper, making sure everyone had enough to eat and drink, that their beds were made and clean towels laid out for them, and she cleaned and tidied around everyone without anyone really noticing.