Seventeen #2
Rowena followed him out, stopping just prior to the gate as a gravestone off in the corner caught her eye. Or rather, a clump of unkempt grass and a glimpse of stone caught her eye.
She crossed to it and peered down at the grave, which, compared to the others, was very poorly kept.
The squat stone had a slanted face, was only ankle-high and almost buried in leaves.
Also, and most notably, it faced away from the other graves.
Unlike the others that sat side by side in family unity, it was facing out, only its back side visible to the rest of the cemetery.
Interesting.
Rowena had to brush away the grass and leaves to read the inscription, which was just a name and two dates.
‘That’s my grandfather,’ Lachlan said, on the other side of the fence.
Rowena squinted at the lettering. Francis McCabe. ‘Reggie’s husband?’
‘The one and only.’
‘I take it there wasn’t a lot of love there?’
He shook his head. ‘Apparently he was a mean drunk when she met him, which morphed quickly into just plain old mean during a bad drought and, after three daughters, Reggie’s inability to give him a son.’
A spike of anger pulsed into Rowena’s system. ‘I guess it wasn’t known back then about the man being the one who determines the baby’s gender.’
‘I don’t know if it would have mattered if it was. My mother didn’t talk about him much from what I remember. She was six when he died. But from what I know about him from Reggie and people in the district, nothing was ever his fault.’
It was hard to believe someone as strong and opinionated as Reggie would ever have tolerated an abusive husband. But, as a nurse, she knew domestic violence could and did occur in all types of relationships, to all types of people.
‘How bad was it?’
‘Regular black eyes. Cracked ribs. A broken arm, once.’
Feeling ill at the litany of horrors, Rowena looked all around her.
The quiet in the glade and the vastness of the surrounding landscape might be breathtakingly beautiful, but they would have been a double-edged sword in Reggie’s situation.
Where could a woman living in the middle of nowhere, wholly dependent on her husband in a time when people looked the other way, run to with three kids?
There was nothing and nobody around for miles and miles. She must have felt completely isolated.
‘She has a burn on her back where he ran after her with a poker another time. That was when Albert intervened.’
Jesus. Reggie had been lucky to have him around. ‘How did Albert come to be on Blairgowrie? Is he from around here originally?’
Rowena had often wondered about the origin of Reggie and Albert’s relationship, especially since living at the homestead and marvelling at the way they seemed to be able to read each other’s mind.
She hadn’t asked because it really wasn’t any of her business, but this seemed like the perfect opening.
‘No. He doesn’t know where his Country is. He was taken at birth from his mother and raised by a white family in Melbourne.’
‘Oh.’ Involuntarily, Rowena pressed a protective hand to her belly. ‘That’s awful.’
She couldn’t even begin to imagine the trauma of having a baby taken from you. Losing babies from her body had been hard enough, but having one stolen from your arms? It beggared belief, and Rowena’s heart ached for a woman she didn’t know and for Albert.
‘He came to Blairgowrie as part of a shearing crew but stayed on after the team left as a general hand because he knew Reggie was being abused. He looked out for her, ran interference. But he was just returning from mustering the day he intervened, got back in the middle of it. Apparently, one of my mother’s sisters had jumped on a horse and ridden to meet him, crying that their father was trying to kill their mother, and he could hear Reggie screaming and he just ran.
He found them quickly, grabbed the poker off my grandfather and threatened him with it. ’
Rowena blinked. ‘Whoa.’
Lachlan nodded. ‘Yep. Told him if he ever lay a hand on Reggie again, it’d be his last time, and he’d better leave and not come back until he was ready to be a good husband.’
Rowena’s admiration for Albert was multiplying at a rate of knots. He seemed such a gentle man. One who definitely preferred to listen than speak.
Still waters really did run deep.
‘My grandfather sped off in one of the vehicles and didn’t come home. The cops came three days later to say he’d been found dead in his car a few hundred kilometres away, slumped over the wheel. Heart attack.’
Rowena wasn’t sure if it was polite to speak ill of the dead when standing at their graveside, even if the person in question was an abusive son of a bitch. So instead of saying good, she settled for, ‘Karma’s a bitch.’
Lachlan grinned. ‘He wasn’t missed.’
‘And then Reggie and Albert fell in love?’
‘Yes. But neither did anything about it for many, many years. There were children to raise and a drought-stricken farm to wrangle. Something Reggie had no clue how to do because my grandfather hadn’t ever involved her in the day-today running.
So, Albert helped her. Taught her. Stood by her side.
They ran it together from then on. He was her champion in every way—it just took both of them a long time to admit their feelings for each other. ’
A soft sigh slid from Rowena’s lips. She was far from a romantic, but Albert and Reggie’s story warmed her heart.
Glancing down at the grave, she said, ‘I’m surprised Reggie wanted him here.’ There was a cemetery in Acacia Junction—Rowena passed the sign to it on the way into town.
‘His will stated he was to be buried in this cemetery and, as much as she loathed him, Reggie respected that wish. But—’ Lachlan grinned. ‘It didn’t state where so …’
Rowena laughed. ‘Good for her.’
‘I also think that, for a long time, having him here reminded her that he was really dead. That she didn’t have to be afraid anymore. And that no matter what pain and suffering he’d brought her, she was still standing. Having him here reminds her that she’s a survivor.’
‘Yeah. I get that.’
They stared in silence at the grave for long moments before Lachlan stirred. ‘You ready to continue the tour?’
Rowena nodded. ‘Lead the way.’