Dying by Cory Taylor Read Free Book Online Page B

of this arrangement. It meant the sun was barred entry, and inside
was kept dark and shadowy as a cave.
    There was no real logic to the design of Delta. Beyond the kitchen was a breakfast
room, really just a screened section of the verandah, and beyond that a warren of
rooms that had been added or partitioned over time to accommodate Jenny and Ranald
and their four sons. Jenny would lead us through the rooms, allocating beds as she
went, then serve us tea at the front of the house, where the verandah was at its
widest and overlooked a lawn and a swimming pool.
    It was here that the talk took place and all the stories were told. It was here that
I learned where my mother had come from and why she carried such a burden of sadness.
Not that this was much in evidence, for generally she was a person who liked to laugh
and enjoy life, but underneath her vibrancy there was another strain, a sort of indelible
grief that no amount of good cheer could dislodge. And this grief, it soon became
clear, had originated in her Queensland childhood, to which she felt compelled to
return periodically, with us in tow as her excuse.
    It is notable that our father rarely came with us on these trips. Often, in the early
days, he was away flying somewhere, but later he didn’t come because my mother preferred
to travel without him. There was a lot of talk on the verandah about Mum’s hasty
marriage to the handsome pilot she had met in a bar, and about how, in the intervening
years, things had gone so disastrouslywrong. I listened to these tales with extra
attention. My father had told me so little about himself, and it was rare to hear
from people like Jenny and Ranald who had known him since the start, so I took note,
my writer’s instincts already awakened, piecing together, guessing, inventing, trying
to figure out what it all meant. My brother and sister preferred to be out on the
horses with my cousins, but I was a reluctant rider and happier to sit astride a
squatter’s chair scoffing teacakes and soaking up the family legends.
    I liked Jenny and Ranald. They were kind and funny. Every morning the giant AGA stove
in the kitchen was fired up and spitting by daybreak. Ranald was the breakfast cook,
frying up huge quantities of lambs fry, bacon, onions, eggs, first for the working
men, who had to be away early, and then for us layabouts, who came to the table still
sleepy at eight.
    ‘Geez, did you ever see such a useless bunch?’ he’d say. ‘Have to get you out cutting
fence posts for a day or two. Then you’ll know you’re born.’
    We did go out with him some days, setting off in the truck to check a dam or repair
a pump somewhere. Jenny would load us up with smoko: lumps of fruit cake, tins full
of scones, tea for the billy. On the way, Ranald would talk about the weather or
the price of beef, and his fears about the state of the nation. He was a fierce conservative,
afraidof the communists, the unions, the Catholics, and he was convinced that the
Chinese were intent on sweeping down from the north when nobody was looking. But
he was not averse to a debate, and when my mother challenged his views he happily
sparred with her as if it was a sport. He was also a lover of poetry and would recite
Burns and Tennyson as he worked away sawing timber, or mending gates, his mellifluous
voice echoing in the emptiness all around him. It made my mother cry to listen, which
was why he did it, I was certain.
    ‘You should never have gone away,’ he told her. ‘You should have married a good solid
bloke from round here and been a plain country wife.’
    ‘And gone mad, just like Ril did,’ said my mother.
    Ril was my grandmother. Back on the verandah, Jenny and Mum talked as much about
her as they did about my father, often likening one to the other, as if they were
part of the same problem, the suggestion being that my mother had married a man who
reminded her of her own mother, and had paid the price. The image I formed of my
grandmother, as