Jon Cleary - Back of Sunset

“He had to give it up. My mother couldn’t take it up there in the Kimberleys. It’s not woman’s country. We stayed only six months and she hated every day of it. She tried, Jack, I know that. But she just couldn’t take it.”

“Did you like it?”

“I can’t remember much of it. I was only seven then. It was the Wet season and I never got out of Winnemincka.”

“It hasn’t changed since you were there. Maybe got even a bit worse – the pearlers have all gone.” He looked sideways at Stephen, a little slyly. “You oughta come up some time for a holiday.”

Stephen shook his head, smiling at the old man’s naïve approach. “I’m off to England early next year. I’ve been going to go for five years, to do my F.R.C.S.”

“You a good doc, Steve?”

“I’m supposed to be. That’s why Charles chose me as his partner. I don’t think he took me in just because he knew Dad.”

“You gunna take over from him when you come back?”

“That was the idea originally.” Stephen changed gears carefully, turning the car into the main road from the parkway, keeping his eyes on the road as if he were still besieged by the battling traffic they had now left far behind. “I don’t know that I’m coming back.”

“Why not?” Tristram’s crackle had an edge to it. “Too many bloody people leave this country and never come back.”

“I’ve got other plans. Or rather, Charles’s daughter has. We’re sort of semi-engaged.”

“And she’s making the plans for you? Stone the crows, what’s happening to the bloody men of this country? Charlie’s wife running him, his daughter running you – and if it comes to that, your mum ran your dad’s life.”

Stephen felt a surge of anger. “You’re one-eyed about that. My mother tried – don’t you think Dad owed her something?”

“I’m shoving me neck out, not minding me own business.” Tristram’s teeth clicked savagely: the words were awkward in his mouth, too long held back. “Your old man was meant for more than being a good husband, being a father to you, looking after a lotta patients who never appreciated him. He was wasted, son. Christ, I never seen a man whose life was so wasted!”

“How do you know he was wasted?” said Stephen, defending his dead mother but knowing she would never have defended herself: she had loved his father and had tried, really tried, to live where Tom McCabe’s heart had driven him: but her body and her will had been weak, and Tom, loving her as much as she loved him, had given in. “How do you know he was wasted?”

“He knew it himself, son. When I said good-bye to him back in ‘38,I knew which one of us was already the dead one.” He handed back the aboriginal charm. “Here you are, Steve. You may need this yet.”

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