Chapter 2.
The waiting begins.
When Pat woke the next morning it was to a soft knock on her bedroom door. Realising she was naked Pat scrambled to find the towelling bathrobe Alice had provided. All she could remember from the night before was that they had finished their meal, Angus had fetched her canvas holdall from her car, steered her towards her bedroom, given her a quick kiss on the cheek, said goodnight and opened the bedroom door for her. She didn’t remember undressing; getting into the big soft bed was the last thing she remembered.
There was another knock and as she pulled the robe around her Alice’s head appeared round the door. “Tea Pat, I took a guess and made it white with no sugar?”
“Thanks Alice. Have I slept in, what time is it?”
“Just after seven. No, you haven’t slept in. In case you’ve forgotten, today is Sunday so Angus is only just up. I think he was all tuckered out last night like you. He’s out on the veranda drinking tea; go and join him.”
“I need a shower first.”
“Go and join him. He’s just sitting there in shorts and tee-shirt. Drink your tea out there, then, have a shower while I get breakfast. Do you want something cooked? There’s plenty of fruit and cereals. I brought some fresh bread out from Carnarvon. Baking day is Tuesday after washday on Monday. Old habits you know, they never die.”
“Just fruit and cereals for me, Alice. I’m not vegetarian, that fillet last night was scrummy, but I don’t eat a lot of meat. I find it easier living on my own; buy it raw eat it raw, saves on the washing up.”
“Scrambled eggs? Guaranteed organic chooks.”
“What will Angus have?”
“Probably everything that you have plus scrambled eggs and bacon and piles of toast. I keep telling him that one day he’ll start putting weight on, but he doesn’t, like his father; thin as an old roo dog and eats enough for three.”
Alice motioned to the French windows leading out on to the veranda. “Go out that way. He’s just outside reading the papers I brought out from town. He doesn’t bother with papers much, only when I get them.”
Pat tied her robe, slipped the catch on the doors and stepped out on to the veranda. She could tell it was going to be a hot again, maybe more humid than the previous day. The evening thunderclouds were still there; now they were more active but silent in their mounting rage.
The west side of Bangalore was in the shade and the first thing Pat noticed was the scent from the hundreds of roses in the flower beds that, mixed with the scent from the biggest Frangipani she had ever seen, gave the morning a gentle and exotic freshness.
From a big high-backed cane armchair she heard, “Morning, Pat, lovely morning?”
Angus was lounging in the big chair. Faded blue tee-shirt and shorts, tousled uncombed hair, two days of black stubble flecked with grey. Arms and legs deeply tanned except for his feet, which, shaded from the sun by boots, were a creamy light tan. He looked rested and relaxed.
“Morning, Angus, this quiet, the smell of the roses, the gentle light is all a bit surreal; yesterday was so tumultuous.” She smiled as she sat in a chair opposite him, “Did I fall asleep at the table last night?”
“Nearly. I realised at one stage that I was talking to myself so I went and got your bag out of your car, showed you to your room pushed you inside, you mumbled goodnight and that was that. I then rang my father and to give him the news. He took it well and sent his best to you.”
Pat looked out on the lawns and the roses and then further out beyond the lawn to the carefully planted river red gums and white barked river gums, which provided a natural barrier between the garden and the wide expanse of the red dusty outback.
As she was looking, Angus started talking. “Somewhere in the office there are the original drawings of my great grandfather’s design, his vision of what he wanted the garden to look like. We’ve pretty much remained faithful to that vision, even the fountain was his idea but the best he could do was feed it from a cocky tank, you know, one up on a high stand. It worked all right but now I’ve put a little solar pump on it so it runs during the day and turns off at night. I can override it if we have guests and they want atmosphere here in this uninhabited land.” She looked at him and could see that he was smiling with eyebrows raised, almost mocking those who wanted to impose on his sanctuary.
“All these gardens, Angus, they must use a lot of water?” As she spoke sprinklers popped up on one section of the lawn and immediately attracted a few galahs and some little birds she didn’t recognise.
“Water is something that we have plenty of. How he did it, heaven knows. Imagine coming out here over a hundred years ago with nothing except a few horses, pack camels and camel carts and deciding, in mid-summer mind you, that this was the place. Some say there was a water diviner among the Afghans. Some say there was an old blackfella in the party as a guide and that he picked the spot. All I can find from the records, old Lachlan kept a detailed diary, is that they decided to dig a well right here on this spot not a hundred yards from where we are sitting; that was the first thing they did.
“It took three months to get through rock and shale. They felled and pit sawed timber to line the well as they went down and down. The diary says the first well, they dug two over the first five years, the first well was just over ten yards deep. Water started seeping into the hole and they worked all night to shore up as the water rose higher. By next morning it was just two yards from the top and it was perfectly pure crystal clear water.
“The next thing they did was build a bough-shed, which served as the first homestead. Then Lachlan went down to New Norcia and bought his first merinos. Put them on a sailing ship and brought them up to Carnarvon, and from there they walked two hundred ewes and a dozen rams all the way out here. It took them months and they didn’t lose a sheep. That was the start of Bangalore.” Standing up, he said, “Come on, I can smell breakfast. Time for a quick shower before Alice rings the bell.”
Standing in the shower letting the luxury of the hot water wash away some of the stiffness from her long drive Pat thought about Ewen and how like his father he was, certainly in looks anyway. The only difference she thought she could see was that Ewen had a hard driven streak that she hadn’t yet seen in Angus.
She’d never seen Ewen really relax. His idea of relaxation was a never-ending search for excellence, to be the best at everything he did, coming second was unacceptable. From what she’d seen of Angus, father and son were not the same. Then she thought of Ewen somewhere in hostile country, maybe dead, and her heart skipped a beat.
Angus was already in the breakfast room when she joined him. She’d changed into khaki shorts and dark blue tee-shirt and because all she had with her were her elastic-sided boots, she was barefoot.
Angus had showered and his normally curly black to grey hair was still wet and glistened, but he wore the same old tee-shirt and shorts he’d worn on the veranda and he hadn’t shaved. “Cereals, fruit, fresh bananas, mangoes all on the sideboard, help yourself, Pat. Toaster and bread there too; make your own in this house. Alice will be here in a minute with what you can smell cooking. Tea in the pot too, don’t drink coffee. There might be some old instant stuff around somewhere if you really want it.”
“No, tea is fine; do me good to get off the coffee for a while. I think I drink too much of it. It goes with the job is my only excuse.” She put a few cornflakes into a bowl, picked out a mango and turned to sit at the table and noticing it was set for three people, hesitated.
Without looking up from peeling another mango, Angus said, “Alice will claim that she is not a creature of habit but she always sits there,” pointing with his knife to the place on his left. “So you can sit anywhere you like so long as it is where you were last night.” He went on, “Pleased to see you have a mango, make the most of it. Alice is a closet mango eater. I bet there