Not wanting anyone to know of her return, Meggie rode out to Drogheda on the mail truck with old Bluey Williams, Justine in a basket on the seat beside her. Bluey was delighted to see her and eager to know what she had been doing for the last four years, but as they neared the homestead he fell silent, divining her wish to come home in peace.
Back to brown and silver, back to dust, back to that wonderful purity and spareness North Queensland so lacked. No profligate growth here, no hastening of decay to make room for more; only a slow, wheeling inevitability like the constellations. Kangaroos, more than ever. Lovely little symmetrical wilgas, round and matronly, almost coy. Galahs, soaring in pink waves of undersides above the truck. Emus at full run. Rabbits, hopping out of the road with white powder puffs lashing cheekily. Bleached skeletons of dead trees in the grass. Mirages of timber stands on the far curving horizon as they came across the Dibban-Dibban plain, only the unsteady blue lines across their bases to indicate that the trees weren't real. The sound she had so missed but never thought to miss, crows carking desolately. Misty brown veils of dust whipped along by the dry autumn wind like dirty rain. And the grass, the silver- beige grass of the Great Northwest, stretching to the sky like a benediction.
Drogheda, Drogheda! Ghost gums and sleepy giant pepper trees a-hum with bees. Stockyards and buttery yellow sandstone buildings, alien green lawn around the big house, autumn flowers in the garden, wallflowers and zinnias, asters and dahlias, marigolds and calendulas, chrysanthemums, roses, roses. The gravel of the backyard, Mrs. Smith standing gaping, then laughing, crying, Minnie and Cat running, old stringy arms like chains around her heart. For Drogheda was home, and here was her heart, for always. Fee came out to see what all the fuss was about. "Hello, Mum. I've come home."
The grey eyes didn't change, but in the new growth of her soul Meggie understood. Mum was glad; she just didn't know how to show it. "Have you left Luke?" Fee asked, taking it for granted that Mrs. Smith and the maids were as entitled to know as she was herself. "Yes. I shall never go back to him. He didn't want a home, or his children, or me."
"Children?"
"Yes. I'm going to have another baby."
Oohs and aahs from the servants, and Fee speaking her judgment in that measured voice, gladness underneath.
"If he doesn't want you, then you were right to come home. We can look after you here."
Her old room, looking out across the Home Paddock, the gardens. And a room next door for Justine, the new baby when it came. Oh, it was so good to be home!
Bob was glad to see her, too. More and more like Paddy, he was becoming a little bent and sinewy as the sun baked his skin and his bones to dryness. He had the same gentle strength of character, but perhaps because he had never been the progenitor of a large family, he lacked Paddy's fatherly mien. And he was like Fee, also. Quiet, self-contained, not one to air his feelings or opinions. He had to be into his middle thirties, Meggie thought in sudden surprise, and still he wasn't married. Then Jack and Hughie came in, two duplicate Bobs without his authority, their shy smiles welcoming her home. That must be it, she reflected; they are so shy, it is the land, for the land doesn't need articulateness or social graces. It needs only what they bring to it, voice- less love and wholehearted fealty.
The Cleary men were all home that night, to unload a truck of corn Jims and Patsy had picked up from the AMLANDF in Gilly.
"I've never seen it so dry, Meggie," Bob said. "No rain in two years, not a drop. And the bunnies are a bigger curse than the kangas; they're eating more grass than sheep and kangas combined. We're going to try to hand-feed, but you know what sheep are."
Only too well did Meggie know what sheep were. Idiots, incapable of understanding even the rudiments of survival. What little brain the original animal had ever possessed was entirely bred out of these woolly aristocrats. Sheep wouldn't eat anything but grass, or scrub cut from their natural environment. But there just weren't enough hands to cut scrub to satisfy over a hundred thousand sheep.
"I take it you can use me?" she asked.
"Can we! You'll free up a man's hands for scrubcutting, Meggie, if you'll ride the inside paddocks the way you used to."
True as their word, the twins were home for good. At fourteen they quit Riverview forever, couldn't head back to the black-oil plains quickly enough. Already they looked like juvenile Bobs, Jacks and Hughies, in what was gradually replacing the old-fashioned grey twill and flannel as the uniform of the Great Northwest grazier: white moleskin breeches, white shirt, a flat-crowned grey felt hat with a broad brim, and ankle-high elastic-sided riding boots with flat heels. Only the handful of half-caste aborigines who lived in Gilly's shanty section aped the cowboys of the American West, in high-heeled fancy boots and ten-gallon Stetsons. To a black-soil plainsman such gear was a useless affectation, a part of a different culture. A man couldn't walk through the scrub in high-heeled boots, and a man often had to walk through the scrub. And a ten-gallon Stetson was far too hot and heavy. The chestnut mare and the black gelding were both dead; the stables were empty. Meggie insisted she was happy with a stock horse, but Bob went over to Martin King's to buy her two of his part-thoroughbred hacks coma creamy mare with a black mane and tail, and a leggy chestnut gelding. For some reason the loss of the old chestnut mare hit Meggie harder than her actual parting from Ralph, a delayed reaction; as if in this the fact of his going was more clearly stated. But it was so good to be out in the paddocks again, to ride with the dogs, eat the dust of a bleating mob of sheep, watch the birds, the sky, the land.
