"Don't bother trying to justify yourself to me. I know all the answers. I thought as you do myself, at the time. Divorce was out of the question for him. He was one of the first people of his race to attain political greatness; he had to choose between me and his people. What man could resist a chance like that to be noble? Just as your Ralph chose the Church, didn't he? So I thought,I don't care. I'll take what I can get of him, I'll have his child to love at least."
But suddenly Meggie was too busy hating her mother to be able to pity her, too busy resenting the inference that she herself had made just as big a mess of things. So she said, "Except that I far outdid you in subtlety, Mum. My son has a name no one can take from him, even including Luke." Fee's breath hissed between her teeth. "Nasty! Oh, you're deceptive, Meggie! Butter wouldn't melt in your mouth, would it? Well, my father bought my husband to give Frank a name and get rid of me: I'll bet you never knew that! How did you know?"
"That's my business."
"You're going to pay, Meggie. Believe me, you're going to pay. You won't get away with it any more than I did. I lost Frank in the worst way a mother could; I can't even see him and I long to .... You wait! You'll lose Dane, too."
"Not if I can help it. You lost Frank because he couldn't pull in tandem with Daddy. I made sure Dane had no daddy to harness him. I'll harness him instead, to Drogheda. Why do you think I'm making a stockman out of him already? He'll be safe on Drogheda."
"Was Daddy? Was Stuart? Nowhere is safe. And you won't keep Dane here if he wants to go. Daddy didn't harness Frank. That was it. Frank couldn't be harnessed. And if you think you, a woman, can harness Ralph de Bricassart's son, you've got another think coming. It stands to reason, doesn't it? If neither of us could hold the father, how can we hope to hold the son?" "The only way I can lose Dane is if you open your mouth, Mum. And I'm warning you, I'd kill you first."
"Don't bother, I'm not worth swinging for. Your secret's safe with me; I'm just an interested onlooker. Yes indeed, that's all I am. An onlooker." "Oh, Mum! What could possibly have made you like this? Why like this, so unwilling to give?"
Fee sighed. "Events which took place years before you were even born," she said pathetically.
But Meggie shook her fist vehemently. "Oh, no, you don't! After what you've just told me? You're not going to get away with flogging that dead horse to me ever again! Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish! Do you hear me, Mum? You've wallowed in it for most of your life, like a fly in syrup!" Fee smiled broadly, genuinely pleased. "I used to think having a daughter wasn't nearly as important as having sons, but I was wrong. I enjoy you, Meggie, in a way I can never enjoy my sons. A daughter's an equal. Sons aren't, you know. They're just defenseless dolls we set up to knock down at our leisure."
Meggie stared. "You're remorseless. Tell me, then, where do we go wrong?" "In being born," said Fee.
Men were returning home in thousands upon thousands, shedding their khaki uniforms and slouch hats for civvies. And the Labor government, still in office, took a long, hard look at the great properties of the western plains, some of the bigger stations closer in. It wasn't right that so much land should belong to one family, when men who had done their bit for Australia needed room for their belongings and the country needed more intensive working of its land. Six million people to fill an area as big as the United States of America, but a mere handful of those six million holding vast tracts in a handful of names. The biggest properties would have to be subdivided, yield up some of their acreages to the war veterans. Bugela went from 150,000 acres to 70,000; two returned soldiers got 40,000 acres each off Martin King. Rudna Hunish had 120,000 acres, therefore Ross MacQueen lost 60,000 acres and two more returned soldiers were endowed. So it went. Of course the government compensated the graziers, though at lower figures than the open market would have given. And it hurt. Oh, it hurt. No amount of argument prevailed with Canberra; properties as large as Bugela and Rudna Hunish would be partitioned. It was self-evident no man needed so much, since the Gilly district had many thriving stations of less than 50,000 acres. What hurt the most was the knowledge that this time it seemed the returned soldiers would persevere. After the First World War most of the big stations had gone through the same partial resumption, but it had been poorly done, the fledgling graziers without training or experience; gradually the squatters bought their filched acres back at rock-bottom prices from discouraged veterans. This time the government was prepared to train and educate the new settlers at its own expense.
Almost all the squatters were avid members of the Country Party, and on principle loathed a Labor government, identifying it with blue-collar workers in industrial cities, trade unions and feckless Marxist intellectuals. The unkindest cut of all was to find that the Clearys, who were known Labor voters, were not to see a single acre pared from the formidable bulk of Drogheda. Since the Catholic Church owned it, naturally it was subdivision-exempt. The howl was heard in Canberra, but ignored. It came very hard to the squatters, who always thought of themselves as the most powerful lobby group in the nation, to find that he who wields the Canberra whip does pretty much as he likes. Australia was heavily federal, its state governments virtually powerless.
Thus, like a giant in a Lilliputian world, Drogheda carried on, all quarter of a million acres of it.
The rain came and went, sometimes adequate, sometimes too much, sometimes too little, but not, thank God, ever another drought like the great one. Gradually the number of sheep built up and the quality of the wool improved over pre-drought times, no mean feat.
