The Ten-pound Ticket Read online

  ‘Yes,’ Susie stammered. ‘That’s him, Jim. Jim from Somerset.’

  ‘Well I never!’ He placed his hands on his hips. ‘What a small world!’ he had been delighted at the connection.

  Now, clutching her baby to her chest and surveying the vast expanse of land in front of her, Susie fought the overwhelming desire to cry. One night on board she had actually dreamt of this fictitious husband; he was standing on the dock when she arrived, waving furiously and holding flowers. And however silly it was, she felt his absence keenly as she looked around. There were no buildings on the horizon, no clutch of tourists or local shops around the dock and certainly no Jim from Somerset waiting with his floral gift.

  Everything was barren. The soil was so dry that it would be a miracle to get anything to grow here. Susie swallowed the tears that threatened to form, as the image of her vegetable garden withered in the heat. She scrunched her eyes shut and tried to focus on something that might lift her spirits, a friendly sign, a wave, a café anything. But, with the exception of the odd spiky tree, nothing sprung from this barren landscape. To think that she had thought Tilbury grimy! What wouldn’t she give for a cup of tea in The Anchor right now, with a view of the war memorial and the easy banter and laughter of the public bar.

  Two rough-looking men, unshaven and wearing leather trousers despite the heat, stood with arms folded across grubby vests and patched shirts. They looked like tatty cowboys. They watched, smirking, at the procession of sickly, pale men with shirt sleeves rolled high – some, even, wearing ties – which wobbled down the jetty towards the quay side. Wives in wide-brimmed hats fought to keep their smiles in place as their children, lips quivering and eyes wide, trailed behind.

  As Susie stepped onto the wood, Nicholas wriggled inside her grip. She moved to grab him but her sweat-covered hands were ineffective against his shiny skin, and he lurched backwards, falling out of her hands towards the water. She screamed, and, on impulse, dropped her suitcase and coat and grabbed at his fat little leg, squeezing it as tightly as she could. Nicholas howled as she gathered him roughly back into her arms, her belongings tumbling into the slimy water around the pontoon. She sank down on the jetty and cradled her baby into her neck, this time unable to stop the tears. She could not erase the thought of his head making contact with the splintery planks of the dock, of him bouncing up and sinking down into the murky water.

  ‘Oh my God, Nicky, I am so sorry! I am so sorry, sweetheart.’ She whispered it over and over again, apologising for so much more than the pain in his leg, hoping he might one day understand, terrified that he might not. She cooed and kissed until his crying calmed to a whimper, until his tears had stopped, and both of their bodies had stopped shaking.

  One of the smirking unshaven men sauntered over. ‘You’re lucky, crocs’d’ve had him in one bite. A tasty little snack like that.’

  She caught the smallest of winks through her drying tears. The man jumped down into the water and retrieved her sodden case, leaving her coat to sink in the filth. Susie imagined a snapping crocodile taking a bite, and tears pricked her eyes. She shook her head and swallowed. She would not cry again. She had to be strong for Nicky.

  ‘I’m Slade Williams. Mitch sent me to fetch you. Christ the fuss he made about sending someone to pick you up! You’d think he didn’t even want the extra labour.’ Slade was tall, with a long body, wide shoulders and a small, bald head. Susie thought his face looked like a weasel. ‘Anyway, it’s not as if you coulda made it on yer own, could you. Only been here five minutes and you can barely stand up!’

  It was true. All those weeks at sea meant that every step Susie took was hindered by an extra bounce as if bobbing on water. Her legs couldn’t work out how to stop accommodating for movement beneath her, even though there wasn’t any. Susie smiled weakly, and followed Slade to a huge red truck with over-sized chrome bumpers. In the back, an open flatbed was littered with packs of food pellets, a couple of pitchforks and bales of twine. Slade hurled Susie’s luggage onto the planks, and Susie winced as she considered the sodden contents: her precious baby clothes, nappies, underwear, her school copy of Pride and Prejudice and miniscule amounts of shampoo and soap.

  Slade, clearly unused to the company of women and babies made no effort to help Susie climb up into the cab, but when he saw her struggling to reach out for the creaking door, he went bright red, and ran round to close it for her, muttering under his breath something about ‘bloody women’s lib, always trying to do everything themselves.’

  The cab of the battered truck bounced along, throwing up a plume of red dust in its wake. Susie held Nicholas tight; he had cried himself into an exhausted slumber, and she was fearful that he might go flying if she let go and equally fearful of his reaction when he eventually woke up. She waited until she felt slightly more composed before deciding to make conversation with her small-headed driver.

  ‘It’s very good of you to come and fetch us, I’m sure you have other things that you should be doing. Is it far?’

  ‘’Bout two hundred and seventy miles.’ He delivered this with a sideways smirk through his lipless mouth.

  ‘Two hundred and seventy miles?’ she stared at him in disbelief, she had thought that it would be a jaunt of twenty minutes or so, a bit like fetching a relative from the train station at home, giving you just enough time to pop the kettle on, flick a duster and flush the loo before they arrived.

  ‘Where do you think you are, love?’ Slade said, not unkindly.

  Susie gulped. ‘How long will it take to drive?’

  ‘Six or seven hours give or take.’

  ‘Gosh, really?’

  ‘Yes, gosh really!’ He attempted to imitate her voice.

  She laughed with embarrassment. He grimaced.

  ‘Don’t laugh too soon. Reckon you’re in for a bit of a surprise at Mulga Plains.’ He shook his head ruefully and muttered, ‘What the boss was doing employing a useless bloody pom girl is beyond me.’

  Susie felt the first flutter of fear. She held Nicholas a little tighter and looked out of the window at the open plains beyond. In the distance, a mountain range nudged the sky. She wanted to find it beautiful in the way that the new or exotic can often be beautiful. But try as she might, it only looked threatening, alien and vast. The odd house or farm building they passed looked untended, abandoned. Sheds, fences and gates were all shabby, peeling and dry as tinder. It looked as though it would take just one strike of a match for the whole country to go up in smoke. Susie closed her eyes and pictured the rolling green patchwork hills of home. She saw the fields dotted with hay ricks and swaying crops, the higgledy-piggledy Dorset villages, the horses cantering through the mist of the Downs. She heard the sea in a storm. She remembered the sound of the rain as it lashed against the window on the wildest of days, and the picture-postcard views of cliffs, beaches and dunes that framed each memory of her childhood. Picnics, bathing suits that became immodest when wet, her mother’s huge hats, the way she even wore orange lipstick on the beach as they tucked into pork pies, bottled pop and crust-less sandwiches before chasing a ball on the wet sand. She thought about the way her fingers stung in winter as she shaped snow into small balls of ice and threw them at a wall to watch the splat. The particular smell of bonfires in the autumn as damp leaves hissed and sizzled when forked onto the pyre. And Christmas morning, that single magic moment, when she walked into the sitting room, the fire was lit and the tree glowed, laden with gifts. What would Nicholas’s childhood look like? Susie opened her eyes and looked in the wing mirror. A rolling wave of red dust made it seem as if the car was being chased by fire; as though she had entered hell itself. Well, maybe she had.

  Susie felt the cold creep of realisation that she was entirely alone. Everywhere else she had ever travelled in her life, she had made a friend. At Lavender Hill Lodge, despite being in the depths of her misery, she had befriended her roommate Dot Simpson. Even in Tilbury, she only had to ask and Sandra was there with a willing ear and a cup of
tea. And on the boat to Darwin, though she had remained aloof, she was surrounded by English families who if the need had arisen would have come to her aid. But out here, she didn’t have a single friend. Anything could happen and no one would care. It was the first time in her life that not a single person was looking out for her.

  Nicholas shifted on her lap, reminding Susie that whatever she might think, she wasn’t quite alone. She stroked his little face, and resolved once more to be brave for him. This was their world now, and that was that. His face felt clammy; it was scorching inside the cab. The air vents on the dashboard and doors were open, but the air that rushed in was hot, like sitting under a hair dryer. She considered opening the window wider, but thought better of it. She didn’t want any more of the red dust inside the confined space, she could already feel the grit crunching between her teeth and irritating her skin.

  Slade pulled a soft packet of cigarettes from his top pocket and shook one into his mouth. Susie watched as his dirty black thumbnail rolled the flint of his lighter and his cigarette sparked to life, revealing it to be a foul-smelling concoction that made her eyes water. The baby spluttered and coughed as he wrinkled his nose, before finally waking and instantly crying.

  Slade stared at the bundle on her lap, ‘Ah, little fella’s woken up has he?’ He spat into the foot well and grinned.

  ‘Um…’ said Susie. Nicholas’s wails were growing louder. ‘I don’t suppose you could – you know – I mean, I don’t think he likes it much’. She looked meaningfully at Slade’s cigarette, hoping she hadn’t just mortally offended someone she had to spend the next seven hours with. Slade frowned at the offending object, as though noticing it for the first time, and promptly threw it out the window. Susie exhaled, thanked him, and turned back to Nicholas, unbuttoning the top of her blouse and holding his little face to her breast. A slow blush crept up Slade’s neck. Susie fixed her eyes on a point in the distance and stared straight ahead, trying to look indifferent and calm, acutely aware of Slade’s sly glances to his left.

  Suddenly, Slade shifted in his seat, leant forward and reached out towards her breast and her baby. In his hand was a tin billycan, chipped, dented and grubby.

  ‘Here.’ He thrust the can towards her, his eyes averted.

  ‘Not for me, I’m okay, thank you.’ She raised her palm.

  ‘You may be okay now, Missy, but you won’t be soon if you don’t have some water. If you conk out, d’you think I’ll make a good substitute nursemaid?’

  Susie fumbled with the large can, trying to get a grip. She placed the spout on her lips and tried to ignore the smell of cigarettes that lingered around the opening. She swigged the water, which tasted vaguely metallic.

  ‘Thank you.’ She handed it back to her driver and watched as he took several large glugs.

  Several hours later, the truck pulled up inside the gates of Mulga Plains sheep station. If Susie was still holding on to any shred of hope that everything would be okay, she let go of it at that moment. Maybe she should have begged her parents for the money, maybe she should have told Nicholas’s father of the situation and asked him for help. Instead, the pride, stubbornness and scrambled brain that was the gift from Mother Nature for many pregnant women, had led her to this. Susie knew with a thudding certainty that her plan for a life in the sun with her baby had been a very grave mistake.

  3

  It might have been 1962 in England, but here in Willeroo it felt more like 1862. The sheep station was accessed through grand, ornate wrought-iron gates, each forged with the name Mulga Plains in their design. They were imposing, huge and gave the impression of a well-kept ranch and a happy farm, both of which were entirely false. In fact the gates were the only element of grandeur about the place and made the disappointment of her surroundings more acute, like removing the ribbon on a fancy box of chocolates and finding dirt.

  The main house looked like it had been added to in a haphazard fashion over the years. The original grey stone structure had been extended with the addition of large, timber-walled rooms with flat roofs and wire netting over the windows to try and stop the invasion of bugs. It was ugly and sprawling, grey, brown and uninspiring. A wide veranda wrapped around the front of the house, and was dotted with benches, upended chairs and card tables that held well-thumbed decks and empty beer bottles. It looked like the aftermath of a raucous boys’ party. Susie was soon to learn that this was a normal, nightly occurrence. Her eyes widened at the sight of two shotguns resting like weary warriors, propped against a table. She instinctively held her son tighter.

  She climbed down from the cab while Slade fetched her case, which had thankfully dried out in the hot sun, leaving only a residual tidemark where it had been submerged in the murky water. She pictured her dad’s hand on the same handle as they arrived in neat hotels on the English Riviera. She’d barely been patient enough to wait for her parents to unpack before running down to the beach with a bucket and a spade. That memory belonged to another girl, from another life.

  Slade marched around the back of house. She trotted in his wake, his boots kicking up a crimson cloud. Susie swatted her hand around the baby, trying to remove or at least distract the determined flies that buzzed around them. The things were everywhere, stamping on her arms with dirty little feet, settling wherever skin was revealed, collecting at eyes, mouth and nose: any place where they could nestle and feed. Susie opened her mouth to flick out a fly and several more landed on and around her tongue. She gagged and spat them onto the floor. Nicholas too was covered. She brushed his face and covered it with her palm. She wondered with a pang if she would ever get used to these filthy creatures. Clearly here, the profusion of bugs and flies were simply part of life.

  Slade stopped outside a low building with a sloping corrugated iron roof. The walls were sheets of plywood that had been tacked together, and the front door, transplanted from a more solidly built house and quite incongruent, didn’t fit or shut. Susie wished Slade would get a move on. What was the use in pausing outside this shed when she wanted to get to her room, to get the baby washed, changed, fed and settled? It had been a very long day and she was exhausted.

  ‘Here you go, love, home sweet home!’ Slade kicked the door with his heavy boot and watched as it swung and fell open at a strange angle.

  Susie laughed in disbelief.

  ‘Is this is where we’re staying?’ she couldn’t hide the edge of hysteria in her voice.

  ‘Yup.’ He looked abashed at her discomfort.

  ‘But, I… we…’ She felt breathless. Her head spun as she considered how she would live in the shed with her tiny baby, how would she wash his clothes, his nappies, keep him clean, cool and boil his water?

  ‘Are you sure this is where Mr Gunnerslake wants us to sleep? Is it a temporary measure?’ She tried to hide the quiver to her voice.

  ‘Temporary? Don’t think so,’ he shook his little head, ‘This not quite what you expected, love? It’s bound to be a bit different out here you know, and there’s a lot that live in worse. If you’d a come three days ago, there wasn’t even a door.’

  Susie clutched her son to her chest, ‘Why is it so horrible here? I haven’t done anything wrong and yet everything feels like a punishment!’ Susie didn’t know how she summoned the strength to find her voice.

  ‘Well, given your situation, I reckon you did do something wrong. What kind of girl comes half way around the world with her trouble? How bad is it that she can’t stay in her own country and with a little ‘un?’ he spoke fast, out of the side of his mouth, and avoided looking her in the eye.

  Susie’s bravery evaporated. Everyone knew what she had done, what she was. But she straightened her shoulders and gathered her last ounce of strength.

  ‘I want to see Mr Gunnerslake. I want to see him right now. I don’t think for one minute he can mean for us to sleep in here, surely to God. Are there no rooms in the house?’ As she pictured the state of the veranda and the guns carelessly abandoned on the porch, she wasn’
t sure that the house would be that much of an improvement.

  Slade frowned. ‘No love, no rooms in the house.’

  ‘He does know that I have a small baby?’ Susie refused to believe that anyone with this information would think this was acceptable.

  ‘Oh he knows all right, had one of the boys give it a bit of a sweep for you.’ He made as if to say something else, but he stopped himself. Instead, he nodded once in her direction and strode away.

  Susie took a deep breath and poked her head inside the cabin. She felt around the nearest wall for a light switch, but even before she felt the blank wall she knew that there would be no electricity in the shed. As her eyes adjusted to the dust-filled gloom, she spied a mattress on the floor. Judging by the assortment of unidentifiable stains and the wide indent where springs had collapsed and sagged in the middle, she wasn’t its first occupant. In the corner was a white, hand-painted cot with a vinyl covered sponge base. At least she would be able to scrub and bleach it. A square window, without glass, was covered with green netting. It was her only source of light.

  For the first time in many years, Susie prayed.

  That first night at Mulga Plains would remain indelibly etched in her mind. The cold creep of fear plucked at her muscles and shook her bones. She stripped Nicholas in the diminishing light, trying to keep her tone soothing and reassuring as she struggled to replace his soiled nappy in the darkness. She forced herself to ignore the scuttling sound in the corner of the room, the gnawing hunger in her stomach, and the flat, single note that reverberated inside her skull.

  Susie was too stunned to cry, so instead she tried to sleep. She wouldn’t have thought rest would be possible, but eventually anaesthesia gripped her and, six hours later, she awoke to Nicholas’s stuttered cries. Once she had fed him and rocked him back to sleep, she wiped down her crumpled shirt and trousers, tucked her hair behind her ears, and made her way around the path to the main house. Beyond the garden, the landscape was flat and vast. Acres of red dust and spiky trees stretched in every direction under a big sky that held the vaguest tinge of pink. It might have been beautiful, were she able to study it with different eyes. Slade was already up and sitting at one of the card tables on the terrace, forking fried eggs into his mouth. A cigarette smouldered on the table edge, which he drew on between mouthfuls.