An Outback Chance

By Chris Versace

Sally Bailey wishes her mother's ghost would quit trying to be helpful.

It’s bad enough she’s had to leave London and move to the Australian outback.

Why should she have to deal with over-enthusiastic ghosts wanting her to make friends with the man she dumped at the altar 20 years ago?

And just what is her ex-fiancé Connor Land going to do when he finds out Sally's back in town?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris Versace
• Release date: Jul 15, 2010
• ISBN: 9781458004482

Chris Versace

Chris grew up on a cattle, wheat and sheep property in the Australian Outback, providing plenty of inspiration for An Outback Chance.Time away at university was followed by a number of years working as a journalist and photographer on regional and rural newspapers - covering stories on everything from rogue crocodiles to military aircraft.A two year stint living and working in London was followed by a return to Australia, where Chris now lives while working on her next novel.

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AN OUTBACK CHANCE

Chris Versace

Published by Christine Versace at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Chris Versace

Discover other titles by Chris Versace at Smashwords.com.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

There are whispers in your ear at night, trying to comfort you, save you, or guide you. But you don’t notice them.

Not until you have reached the end. When you look up and suddenly see what you’ve missed all that time.

It is only then we realise we are never really alone at all.

I remember being really young here – at the edge of this dam. I can still feel the cool, slick mud between my toes, the sun stinging my back and the calls of the crows as I stood in the brown water beside my brother Jeff.

The dog would wait for us on the earth embankment; he didn’t like the way the crayfish made interested nibbles on his paws.

Our clothes hung on an old fence whose posts walked down into the centre of the dam. My brother and I were strictly forbidden to jump from the splintered timber uprights into the water. Our parents had a legion of stories about children who got stuck in the thick mud with no-one to rescue them. It didn’t stop us from swimming but it made us careful about keeping our clothes dry and never venturing too far from the edge.

I liked to walk into the water until my eyes were level with its surface, where the wind rippled the brown liquid like a small ocean, the waves breaking across my face.

Once underwater my eardrums hummed with the noises of the dam -- the buzzing of small creatures, echoing gong of the deep water and click of small claws hurrying through the mud. Getting out I tried to avoid the boggy holes created by the cattle when they came down to drink, but was still sucked into the mud right up to my ankles. A small vessel in the deep thrumming heart, which kept people and animals alive in the middle of its dry body of Queensland countryside. Every element of the water and mud teemed with life and I felt like part of it.

I wonder now was my childhood really that idyllic? I’m always reading some expert who says small children have worries, concerns and stresses which dominate their days and nights. But I can’t recall my stresses. Instead all I can remember is Jeff and me roaming the farm, in charge of our domain. I had even decided our leadership roles in this kingdom. It was a simple political process, I was older than Jeff, so in charge of him. He was bigger than the cattle dogs, so he was in charge of them.

Jeff used to fight the process sometimes, but mostly we just wandered together, adventurers taking on the great unknown, running barefoot on the hot red dirt until it got too much and we had to stand on a clump of grass to relieve our feet. Building up speed in our downhill races through the wheat stubble near the house, then spending the next half an hour digging the fine golden splinters out of our skin.

Yes, I remember being young here. For me the dam’s edge marks the beginning. So, I’m back where I started, back on the farm, on the water’s edge. You see, odd things are happening lately and I need some answers. I think the people who can help are back here. What sort of things? Well, for example, exactly one month and one week ago I woke up with my heart hammering.

Waking suddenly from a deep sleep, my subconscious kicked me. Not alone anymore it warned. So I stayed desperately still, trying to peer into the darkness of my London flat, wondering who is there with me?

Panic subsiding, I can finally hear over the thudding of my heart and realise what’s woken me, but it isn’t footsteps or someone breathing. It’s music and I know the tune, it is familiar as my childhood. My grandmother’s music box is slowly picking out Auld Lang Syne. This usually is a comforting noise, but lying here in the dark I know that the music box won’t play without winding, its heavy wooden lid propped up, and an encouraging thump. And I’m wondering just who did that for me?

Two days later I follow a rattling noise to the top of the cupboard in the lounge room and find a mini earthquake erupting underneath the books. Then a photo I’d hidden from my past drops off the shelf and lands at my feet. Picking it up I recognise the young girl with the long dark hair, I knew her once and I’m sure I knew the man beside her. Idly I wonder what ever happened to them both?

The final straw is the bathroom. Coming home cold and tired from another sad, foggy day of job hunting I think a hot shower might be some form of cure for my misery. Turning on the taps, I let the water run to warm while I undress and it’s only swinging back the door to step in that I see the steam reveals something written on the glass shower door. Just the one word, home.

Of course I can’t tell anyone about all of this, because they’d think I’m completely crazy – that the stress of the past six months had finally gotten to me. In fact the only people who would have understood are dead – and I have my suspicions they are behind all of this anyway.

I didn’t want to go back to Australia, to my childhood home in the middle of the bush. Any dreams I had of returning involved triumphant short visits, me a wild success setting the world ablaze and people wanting to get my autograph. I also have a couple of fantasies about snubbing people who previously wronged me – but, you know, I think that’s everyone’s favourite revenge dream. I never expected to be this alone. To feel so separate from the rest of the world. To come back hurting the way I do, with my chest tight with sadness and loud noises bringing tears to my eyes. I wasn’t ever coming back such a failure at 40, full of resentment, betrayal and carrying an extra 15 kilos in misery quieted by chocolate. But there wasn’t really anywhere else to go. The past and the present worked in conspiracy, and between my lack of money, sudden lack of friends and the constant hints from the other plane, I figured I would just give in.

Because if there is one thing I am good at, it’s giving in, or giving up. My family, of course, are one part happy, two parts confused about my return. You see I made a fairly impressive exit when I left this small country town, our farm and the past behind. Then I spent a long time sending postcards bragging about exotic fabulous locations and fabulous adventures, spent ages choosing unique and interesting souvenirs for them (which I know they took one look at and then threw in the back of the cupboard). A hint – unless you want to question your taste forever, never go looking for spare blankets in your sibling’s cupboards because, believe me, hidden there is every gift you ever spent hours bartering for in a hot Thai marketplace.

Any return visits to home were always fleeting, a week or two and then gone. But now I’m back permanently and, frankly, I’m not sure it’s going to work out. It’s one thing to be the family’s exotic 20-year-old sister, who owns nothing which can’t fit in her backpack and changes jobs and countries at the blink of an eye, but when you come back, miserable and damaged at 40 it feels nothing but a failure.

So here I am. Sally Bailey, five foot six, dark brown hair, blue eyes, former London career girl, now living in outback Queensland, wearing a series of too-tight blue jeans, stained and stretched tee shirts and scuffed riding boots. My clothes alone are enough to make me weep, but there is no use in crying over lost clothes…or jobs…or relationships.

I’d done all the crying I ever want to do and it hasn’t changed the facts.

Fact one - the London me is gone, maybe forever.

Fact two – I am officially middle aged and single.

Fact three – I am broke.

And horrible as it is – fact four – I am no longer defined by my career, because I don’t have one.

Leading to fact five – I am now working as a badly qualified jillaroo (kind of like a cowgirl - minus the cool rope throwing tricks and yodeling) on the family farm…for my Dad.

I really should have planned better.

I’m looking out at the surface of the dam, pondering this lack of planning, when my father leans in the car door to get a look at my laptop.

Job application? He points at the screen as he throws a toolbag into the back of the farm utility – known as the Ute by one and all in our family – as in: Dad, can I borrow the Ute to go to movies? and Go get the feed in the Ute or Don’t drive the Ute so fast! and famously Which one of you kids drove the Ute into the petrol drums!!!. (That would have been me actually.)

Hmmm, is my succinct reply as I close the screen and hunt for the carry case.

Well, better get a move on and save it, or send it, or whatever you do because we need to fix that fence around the creek before the cattle get there, Dad says decisively, walking around to the driver’s side of the vehicle, swinging his lean frame into the car.

I sigh and put the laptop down on the seat between us, which Dad promptly covers with his hat.

Now there’s a metaphor for you, I think.

We’ll meet Jeff there, Dad finishes his sentence while starting the car.

My brother Jeff, after a few years at agricultural college, a couple more years working on the oil rigs (and a failed live-in relationship with some girl he met at the Gympie Country Music Muster) has spent the past ten years back home working the farm with Dad. He’s excited to have his sister home, but also rightly concerned that I may make the world’s worst farm hand. After all, I can’t drive a tractor, fix fences and – admitting it in a shamed manner now – I’m scared of sheep.

I mean it’s all that wool and the way they all run towards you at once. They don’t call it a mob for nothing you know. And the way people wear sheep patterns on their flannel pajamas – urgh! Makes my skin crawl.

Even worse, there is no word for a fear of sheep, because, after one particularly drunken family discussion, I looked up Wikipedia and found out that you can be scared of fish -- Ichthyophobiaif you must know – but no-one else is scared of sheep.

It’s a thought to ponder as I hang on to the handle above the car door (and the edge of my seat) as we speed along the dirt tracks which crisscross the farm.

For a quiet man, my father drives like a lunatic! I look out the window as the car bumps and squeaks and all I can see is the heat haze lying over the paddocks, disguising the grazing cattle and kangaroos in a shimmering veneer. As a kid I used to love that, it made me feel like I was in one of the Westerns Dad was so addicted to watching on TV every Saturday. Now it seems isolating, empty, and I have to wonder yet again, what am I doing coming back here?

Oh yeah, Dad says as he pulls the car up at the creek in a cloud of dust and I make a sudden grab for the dash. I might have forgotten to tell you, he turns off the engine and jumps out the car door, Connor will be here too. Seems like the boundary fence got washed down as well.

What? Dad? Connor? What? But it’s too late, my father makes a rapid exit from the scene, leaving me spluttering and blushing at the same time.

Damn it! Someone should have given me some warning. It’s not every day you get to go fencing with the man you haven’t seen since you dumped him three months before you were meant to marry him.

***

Ah, the wedding. They still talk about it in town, whispering as I go past. Even after 20 years it doesn’t change – people love a good scandal. Connor was literally the boy next door, a bit older than me, my best friend since childhood and, as he used to tell it, hopelessly in love with me since he first saw me (which I find hard to believe, after all we met when still traveling by pram, but anyway it was a lovely thing to say).

I always knew I was never staying here. Always knew I wanted something different, to travel, see the world. In fact I used to get a sick knot in my stomach whenever I thought of staying past high school – I felt like an animal trapped behind bars -- just filling in time pacing until I could leave.

Every school holiday – isolated from other kids by distance – Connor and I spent our time roaming each other’s properties. As the years went by, we were joined by Jeff and his best friend Chatty Davis (nicknamed for his lack of speed in conversation) and they made no allowances for me as the only girl. It was assumed I would be delighted to swim in dams, build forts, play soldiers, or sneak watermelons from the paddocks and usually I was, but sometimes I longed to have another girl to play with.

And you know, looking back, I think Connor knew how I felt. He would slow down if he thought I wasn’t keeping up, or pretend he was happy to have the afternoon pressing flowers in books, rather than making clay tanks or shooting cans with his slug gun. Especially important, Connor never, ever, laughed at me for being (and I quote Jeff and Chatty here) ‘such a girl!"

He was my best friend in the world.

So it made it so difficult when he kept on asking me to go out with him and I kept on having to turn him down.

The first time I was eight years old and Connor passed me a note in the school playground during our lunch break.

Then I had to tell him I couldn’t be his girlfriend again when I was 13-years-old and he asked me while we were crayfishing at the dam.

I said no again at 15-years-old when Connor came home from boarding school for Christmas holidays. In fact, from my 15th birthday onwards, Connor asked me to be his girlfriend at least once every six months. Each time I said no, he was genuinely shocked, like I had cut him. He was just so sure we were meant to be. But I knew better. Connor was my best friend and I didn’t want that to change.

All those memories, all the things which made Connor a wonderful friend, his honesty, loyalty, sincerity, were not enough to make me go out with him. Until my 17th birthday.

Enjoying the night? Connor and I making a very bad job of the waltz. My party was being held at the local hall and my parents had booked their favourite old time dance band – so instead of Cyndi Lauper, we had The Tennessee Waltz on organ, accompanied by accordion.

I looked up and Connor smiled sympathetically, Not quite what you had in mind, hey?

No, I said, laughing, But it doesn’t matter, because I’ll be leaving all this behind soon. I made a grand sweeping gesture with my hand.

Ouch. There was no mistaking the sharp look of pain which crossed Connor’s face.

We’ll stay in touch Connor, I swear. But we both knew it wasn’t enough, because Connor was staying put, working on his family’s farm and he wanted so much more than just the occasional letter from me.

Later that night, when the official birthday celebration finally ended, the unofficial one began. My friends and me, a bonfire by the dam, eskies full of beer and cheap cask wine and swimming.

And there was a moment, when I looked across the moonlit surface of the water and saw Connor there, shirtless, toned from his labors on the farm and looking at me with such intensity. I felt the heat of his gaze in the dark night, his love travelling across the water, the pull of his emotions, the weight of our shared history.

I still don’t remember why I didn’t move away when Connor approached me as I stood in chest deep water. Maybe because of the cheap wine, perhaps because he was older, had been working a couple of years and was suddenly more exotic? Who knows? But when he swam close I didn’t move away. Then when he moved closer still, I turned towards him. Finally his hands found my body under the surface of the water and he made his arms into an iron band around my waist. Leaning down, he gently sampled my lips with his and instead of turning my cheek, I kissed him back.

The kiss deepened and Connor’s tongue slipped between my lips, following the curve of my mouth, before he crushed me close and delved even deeper.

I’d been kissed before, chaste kisses stolen by schoolboys at the disco, but there had been nothing of the wild hunger which now enveloped me, swamped me, buckled my legs and heated my body from the inside.

The cat-calls and wolf whistles of our friends finally broke us apart. Connor still held me close, our gasps for air crushing my breasts hard against his chest as I buried my embarrassed face in his shoulder.

Come on, he whispered, pulling me to the other side of the dam, away from the light of the fire and the interested gazes of the party crowd.

It felt right as we disappeared into the dark. The right time for magic, that incredible mix of fear and excitement and exploration that marked life at the end of school. Finding out about ourselves. How hot Connor’s skin felt under my touch. How his breath hitched when I drifted my hand along the trail of hair which travelled down from his belly button and explored the hot core of his body. How I couldn’t control a moan of desire when he mirrored my actions and slipped his fingers under what little clothes I was wearing.

Together we finally answered years of unspoken questions, put voice to hidden yearnings.

We spent the night wrapped in each other, finally rejoining the others in time to sit by the fire and watch the sunrise.

My parents’ smiles of pleasure when they saw Connor and I arrive hand-in-hand for breakfast almost split their faces. They were wise enough not to say anything to us though, leaving us to joke and kid with our friends, who were supplying enough about time teasing for them both.

The magic Connor and I had started at the dam continued through the end-of-school celebrations, past Christmas and New Year.

I hadn’t forgotten my dreams, managing to leave home for university in Brisbane to begin my teaching course at the start of the next year. I only managed eight months before the loneliness got to me. It wasn’t what I had planned. I was meant to be on a grand adventure, not sitting on the back steps of the university dorm crying because I wanted to go home, to my family and to Connor.

So in what began a pattern of my life, I quit. Quit university, went home and took a job in an office in town near where I grew up.

I couldn’t have picked a worse time to return. The worst drought on record was hitting the whole state and every farmer I knew hard. So I felt guilty that I was almost floating with happiness. While worrying about when it was going to rain, I also buzzed with the small joys: having a job, renting a flat, celebrating my birthday at the local pub with all my friends, going to the rodeo with my boyfriend (rather than my parents and little brother) being treated like a grown-up by all the people I knew.

My feelings scattered all over the place; a helpless dizzy joy from being with Connor, the impotent guilt of watching my father sit up at night doing bookwork, desperately trying to make cents into dollars, the warm glow of sitting beside my mother, chatting as she whizzed up an outfit on her sewing machine.

It was an insular existence. Apart from work and meeting with friends (many of whom were in the same situation), most of my weekends were spent helping my parents, or Connor’s, on their farms. Connor and I drove around throwing bales of hay off the back of the Ute to feed cattle, carted tanks full of water to the house for washing or bathing and the garden. It was a fairly desperate time for us all, so while we’d play cards at night and go to the hotel or parties, at the back of our minds was the very real possibility that one, or both, our families could lose their farms. But it wasn’t something you talked about with anyone else, it was a family thing and you just dealt with it, while doing a whole lot of praying.

Looking back, I remember feeling as though we were in a small bubble. All my dreams of university, travelling the world and doing something different with my life seemed to belong to another person. A selfish one. There wasn’t room for dreams when reality hammered us so hard.

Perhaps that isolation, that reluctance to admit I might want something just for me, that intensity of emotion, is why it all happened. I still wonder about it when I can’t sleep at night.

The year I turned twenty, our friends all started getting engaged. Connor and I received invite after invite for engagement parties, shower teas, buck’s and hen’s nights, followed by invitations to wear rented suits and pastel bridesmaid gowns as part of the wedding party. And at every celebration there was some great aunt, or grandmother,