Page 25 of Thursdays at Orange Blossom House
‘Annette’s busy today, Mum,’ she says, taking her arm. ‘But we’ll go for a drive anyway.’
She hands her mother off to her father, picks up her own handbag and the keys from the kitchen bench, and follows them out the door.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Grace Maud’s father liked to say that his children had never known a winter. While not technically true – there are seasons here in the far north just as there are in all other parts of the world – it wasn’t until Grace Maud went south to visit Ellie Maud in Melbourne one July that she truly understood what he meant. Atherton – the whole region, actually, once you draw the line at Townsville – can be hot and wet and close, turning through seasons that southerners have no idea about. Sometimes Grace Maud feels like the tropics make your cells change. You learn how to breathe in water, the air is so thick with it.
Her father used to say that the line from Townsville should run all the way to the west coast, and that should make a new state taking in parts of the Northern Territory and Western Australia. Only those who live in this climate can possibly understand each other, he believed. In his eyes, Brisbane was as far from their affairs as Canberra was.
‘It’s looking good, eh, Mum?’
As Tom comes up beside her, he takes off his hat and brushes his fringe forwards.
She nods. ‘Yes, a big year. Good rains.’
He grins down at her. ‘You can take the farmer off the land but not the land out of the farmer.’
‘I always know what’s going on with the weather and the crops, Tom.’
If it sounds like a warning it’s because she means it to. She still has an interest in this place – she gets an income from it, after all. Tom runs it but Grace Maud owns it. By the terms of their financial arrangement she doesn’t get to take a hundred per cent of the cream, but the paperwork still has her name on it.
‘I know you do, Mum.’ He glances behind her. ‘D’you want to come back to the house? I thought we could have a chat about …’ He pauses, doesn’t look at her. ‘Next season.’
Grace Maud feels a thud in her solar plexus – a sign that this is going to be a chat she won’t like.
Sandrine said something the other day about the body knowing what’s coming before the mind does and it made sense to Grace Maud. She hasn’t always heeded the thuds in her middle, the rumbles in her belly and constrictions of her chest, but has learnt that she should have. Each time she’s had that kind of feeling, something has occurred after it. She will always remember the day Ellie Maud called and told her that she had a cough she couldn’t shake and she was going to the doctor. Grace Maud’s heart seemed to pull everything in towards it; even the air around her felt like it was being sucked into her chest. She knew: Ellie Maud was going to die from this. And six months later, lung cancer claimed her.
So when Grace Maud walks into the house with Tom and sees Viv sitting with tea and cake on the table, smiling brightly, she knows it’s an ambush.
‘Take a seat, Mum.’
Tom gestures to the couch, but Grace Maud chooses the chair. He can’t make her get cosy with whatever’s coming.
‘Tea, Grace Maud?’ Viv’s smile now appears to be fixed.
‘Thank you.’
‘We wanted to talk to you, Mum.’
‘I can see that.’
Tom’s face drops a little but he recovers quickly. ‘We’re, uh …’ He waits while Viv hands Grace Maud her tea and a slice of cake. ‘We’ve been thinking about the future. And what we want to achieve.’
Grace Maud almost laughs. What they want toachieve? In her day you covered the bills and kept people fed. That was achievement. But she knows the past few years have changed how the younger generations view life and what it means. In this part of the world, she blames that Christopher Skase for opening the resort down the road in Port Douglas, letting everyone think they should be living like that all the time. Then there was that movieWall Streetand those wretched television shows – what were they?Dynasty.Dallas. Examples of people with too much money spending even more money than they had, and that was meant to be success. Greed is what Grace Maud calls it, but that isn’t the popular opinion. Tom is right in the age group that would look at all of that and think that success –achievement– means having more. So she knows what he’s about to say and she knows how she feels about it.
‘Oh, yes?’ she murmurs, folding her hands in her lap.
‘A few weeks ago we talked about putting cattle on here,’ he says, then he and Viv glance at each other. ‘We’ve decided we want to expand. Buy another property.’
‘With what money?’ Grace Maud says sharply.
‘We’d borrow,’ Viv says, almost gushing, like borrowing is a good thing.
‘Borrow? The interest rates are through the roof!’
‘And they may always be,’ Tom says. ‘Mum, we need to grow.’
His eyes are pleading with her, just like they used to when he was a little boy wanting to drive the truck and his legs were too short for him to reach the pedals.
