‘I think I should catch up with some work,’ she said.
‘Oh, come on, it’s the weekend!’
‘It’ll be fun if you come too,’ said Emma and Mickey nodded.
‘Come on, Meredith!’
Flattered by their enthusiasm for her company, Meredith dithered. ‘I haven’t got a swimming costume,’ she remembered, but Hal dismissed that as irrelevant.
‘You don’t need a cossie.’
‘I’m not swimming naked!’
Hal allowed himself to picture that for a moment. ‘I wasn’t going to suggest that, although it’s an idea…Haven’t you got a T-shirt or something you could wear?’
‘I wasn’t expecting to be here long enough to go swimming,’ Meredith pointed out. ‘I haven’t really got anything that casual.’
‘Why don’t I lend you one, then? It won’t matter if you get it wet.’
‘I can’t keep raiding your wardrobe,’ Meredith protested, aware that she had somehow been led astray from the idea of staying at home and working to the practicalities of swimming. How had that happened?
‘Rubbish.’ Hal pushed back his chair. ‘I’ll find you something when I get back. We’ll all be back for lunch, but maybe you could pack some biscuits or something for afternoon smoko and we’ll take it with us.’
It seemed churlish to insist on working after that and, besides, she deserved a break, Meredith decided, although she was ready to change her mind when she discovered that she was expected to ride as well as swim.
‘You’re not serious?’ she said when Hal broke the news.
‘Of course I am. You were the one who said I should give Emma and Mickey a taste of what we used to do as kids,’ he said. ‘That means taking the horses.’
‘It would be much more sensible if we all went in the truck.’
‘But would it be as much fun?’ he asked, selecting a hat for her.
‘It would for me. I’m a city girl, and everyone knows city girls don’t ride.’ Meredith decided to take a stand. ‘There’s no way I’m getting on a horse!’ she declared, and he looked at her with one of those infuriating almost- smiles of his.
‘Scared?’
‘Of course I’m scared!’
‘I’ll put you on the oldest, slowest horse we’ve got,’ he promised, and handed her a hat to put an end to the discussion. ‘Put that on,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and saddle up.’
Meredith had been hoping that Emma and Mickey would lobby for the truck too, but perversely they decided they liked the idea of riding and went out to help Hal catch some suitable horses, while she wrapped some flapjacks she had made that morning and wondered how she could convince them to leave her to work after all.
But Hal was having none of it. ‘Come on, up you get,’ he said as Meredith hung back when faced with what looked to her an enormous horse.
‘I’m really not sure this is a good idea,’ she prevaricated. ‘What if I fall off?’
‘You won’t fall off. Duke here can’t do more than plod and, anyway, I won’t let you. Put your foot here,’ he ordered, pointing at a stirrup. ‘No, not that one unless you want to end up riding backwards!’
Meredith jumped around a bit while the horse stood placidly, then she felt Hal’s hard hands on her, lifting her bodily into the saddle. She flopped into it, grabbing for the pommel, and hoped he would put the fiery colour in her cheeks down to exertion.
Emma and Mickey were already on two ponies, laughing at her awkwardness, and looking more animated than she had ever seen them.
True to his word, Hal set off very slowly. He had Duke on a leading rein, so that Meredith just had to concentrate on not falling off.
And on not thinking about how strong his hands had been, or how warm the brush of his fingers as he’d handed her the reins.
For the first few minutes she was too nervous to do more than clutch on and stare straight ahead, but after a while the rhythmic sway of the horse began to soothe her and she let herself relax enough to look around.
The horses were ambling through the fractured shade of the silvery-barked gums that spread out on either side of the homestead creek bed. It was hot and still and beyond the trees the light was so diamond bright that even the smallest detail seemed etched with extraordinary clarity: the peeling bark, the dried leaves carpeting the red dust, the worn leather reins in her hand.
And Hal, of course, sitting so easily on his horse beside her. He was wearing jeans, boots and a checked shirt so faded it was impossible to guess what the original colours might have been. His hat was tipped forward to shade his face and Meredith could just see the firm line of his jaw and the set of his mouth. Just looking at it gave her a hollow feeling inside and she forced her gaze forwards once more to stare instead at Duke’s lazily flickering ears.
Emma and Mickey were enjoying themselves and, after a while, Meredith began to think that she might be enjoying herself as well. Being so high off the ground was alarming, but exhilarating too. When a flock of galahs took off from a tree with an explosion of sound, she watched the flash of silver to pink as they turned against the brassy blue sky and was conscious of a pang of awareness so sharp that it almost hurt.
‘Do you ever think,
‘I suppose this is all too familiar for me to think that,’ he said, thinking about it. ‘I just take it for granted. It’s funny to think that it isn’t normal for you.’
‘No, it’s not normal,’ she said with a smile. ‘Normal is pavements and people and traffic and buildings.’
‘Are you missing London?’
‘Funnily enough…I’m not,’ she realised slowly.
‘Well, you’re not here for long. You might as well enjoy it while you’re here.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed after a moment, but, oddly, the thought of not being there for much longer didn’t seem as reassuring as it once had.
The creek bed was so dry that Meredith was beginning to think the idea of swimming was some kind of joke, but at length it fed into a much wider, deeper river whose still green waters cut so unexpectedly through the parched land that she gasped with surprise when she saw it.
‘This is Whyman’s Creek,’ said Hal and nodded his head eastwards. ‘Follow it down from here and you’ll get to the town.’
‘Is this where we’re swimming?’
‘No, it’s just a little further down.’
He took them to the old water hole where he and Jack had swum so often when they had been small boys. The creek turned and dipped into some smooth red rocks at that point, and over the aeons had worn a deep green pool that stayed wet in the driest of seasons. Half hidden in the shade of gnarled old ghost gums, it was easy to miss unless you knew the way.
Hal checked his horse as it came into sight. He hadn’t been here for a very long time, he realised, and the memory of Jack was suddenly, painfully vivid. He could picture his brother so clearly-scrambling fearlessly up the rocks, whooping with delight if he ever managed to beat Hal to the top-that Jack’s high, boyish laugh seemed to be ringing still over the water hole.
‘Can we dive off those rocks?’ Mickey asked eagerly, and Hal started, brought abruptly back to the present. Clicking his teeth, he urged his horse on. Jack was gone, but there was another boy here now, other children to have fun here the way they had done.
‘You can,’ he told Mickey. ‘That’s what Jack and I used to do.’
He made himself say Jack’s name deliberately, and it wasn’t as hard as he’d thought it would be. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s swim.’
He swung off his horse in one fluid movement that Meredith could only envy, while the children scrambled less elegantly off their ponies.
Humiliatingly, Meredith was forced to sit there. ‘How do I get down?’ she asked, and Hal came over to take the reins from her and explain what she needed to do. He held up his hands to help her down and, burningly aware of
