A Curious Daughter by Jules Van Mil

Author:Jules Van Mil
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2023-07-05T01:06:33+00:00

Chapter 11

Mick could hear the outbursts of laughter drifting up from the front room where the game of charades was still in progress. Joy’s cousin Ben was a natural entertainer, choosing films and books with the most obscure titles and torturing the family and visiting friends with an impossibly difficult challenge.

‘Four words . . . first word,’ they called in unison.

From the white cane chair on the upstairs veranda, Mick stared at the row of gum trees that chaperoned the bend in the river around to the right. He reached out and patted the panting golden labrador at his side. This one, unlike his brother, had singled Mick out as a companion from the moment he and Joy had arrived, shadowing Mick wherever he was in the big house. However, the dog had drawn the line at the early-morning walks Joy insisted she and Mick take, refusing to leave the mat at the front door.

In five whirlwind months, Joy Meredith had pushed open the shutters of Mick Harris’s inner sanctum, blasting sunshine into corners where light had seldom resided. Even so, nothing could have prepared him for the beauty of Monaghan Station the afternoon he and Joy drove through the elaborate iron gates, past the stately jacaranda trees and along the gravel drive to the front of the homestead.

On Christmas Day, the genuine warmth and camaraderie between the members of Joy’s family had challenged Mick’s emotional repertoire. He tried, without success, not to visualise the limp Christmas trees of his childhood, usually devoid of presents while his father opened his first can of beer for the morning. And as Avril asked everyone to take their seats in the dining room for lunch, Mick could see Mrs McCready, standing at the grey flyscreen door in a floral dress and white sandals. ‘Now come on, Frank,’ she would say. ‘You pull yourself together and come over to our place. Murray’s got plenty of coldies in the fridge. You can’t sit here all day, the two of you on your own. I’ve gone all fancy this year and cooked a giant turkey. Never done one before. Mick, love, bring your swimmers. All the kids are in the pool.’

As far as Mick had been concerned, the McCreadys were rich. Carol McCready drove the kids everywhere in the station wagon but kept the red GM Murray had given her when they were first married for her own amusement. Carol did the books at McCready Auto & Repairs, where Murray supervised the six full-time mechanics who serviced everything from cars to motorbikes, trucks and horse floats. No customer was ever turned away. Their backyard was dominated by a rectangular pool with a springboard and inside the house were not one but two colour televisions, the main one in the lounge room and a smaller one in the bedroom that Carol used when the cricket was on.

Mr and Mrs McCready live just like the Queen does, Mick used to think to himself whenever he stayed over and Carol McCready would let all the kids have three helpings of ice-cream cake on a Saturday night.

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