‘Sure.’
For the first time since Martin’s arrival, Snouch breaks eye contact, looking off into the gloom of the saloon instead. ‘As I told you before, my family settled Springfields in the 1840s,’ he begins, his voice low and resonant. ‘We owned it all, thousands of acres of scrub. The worst land in the district, no good for cropping, difficult to clear, no soil to speak of. That’s what all the other settlers thought, putting in their crops out on the plain; that’s what they thought right up until the first big drought. In practice, Springfields was the best land, because my forebears were smart enough not to impose English agriculture upon it. They got it for nothing, did next to nothing to it. Put on some cattle, used it for grazing, not farming. Didn’t even bother with fences; left that to the farmers with bordering properties. They were the ones who needed fences, to keep our cattle off. But there was no wood out on the plain. So we milled it, made fence posts, sold it to them. Mulga wood lasts forever, more durable than steel. So they paid us for the fences to keep our cattle off their land. How good is that? We got rich. And the dam by the house, even in this drought, it’s full. You notice that? Springfed. Hence the name: Springfields. We always had water.
‘By the time I came along, we were the last of the squattocracy, part of the town but not part of it. When I turned ten, I was packed off to Geelong, back sometimes on holidays to ride horses and, when I was older, to piss it up at the pub. It was home, a kind of base, but it wasn’t my world. My world was going to be out there, over the horizon, London and New York and running the family company from Melbourne. Springfields meant a lot to my father; he wanted it to mean a lot to me, but it didn’t. Riversend was just a way station, a footnote along the way. And then I met a girl. The most beautiful, wonderful girl I had ever met or could ever meet or would ever meet. Katie Blonde. You’ve met Mandalay. Well, her mum was even more beautiful. Inside and out. She was remarkable.
‘We hit it off straight away. I was at uni down in Melbourne. Dad had wanted me to go to Oxford, like he did, but I couldn’t see the point. Melbourne was good enough for me. I tell you, Martin, it’s a pretty good life being young, wealthy and on the ran-tan. I lived in a college—just like boarding school, except co-ed. No rules, lots of booze, lots of sex. You don’t realise how good it is until it’s in the past. But once I’d met Katie, I wanted to be with her, and Melbourne was the way station. I’d had girlfriends before, but this was different. Very different. This was love. A short word, a meaningless word, until you experience it. Then there are no other words. It was perfect. We were perfect. Made all the more exquisite by these long periods apart. I’d fly to Sydney, hire a car or borrow a car and drive to where Katie was studying at Bathurst for the weekend. We were in love, and then we were engaged, and then—well, then it all turned to shit.’
‘What happened?’
‘She got pregnant. At first I was excited. Until I did the maths. The timing was wrong. It couldn’t have been mine.’
‘You sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure. She’d been cheating on me.’ There is pain in Snouch’s voice. And anger.
Martin says nothing, waiting for Snouch to continue.
‘I still loved her, still wanted to marry her, but I wanted to know whose kid it was. She wouldn’t tell me. For a few days we were at an impasse. Then I got drunk, and then I got angry, and then I lost my temper. It escalated and I delivered her an ultimatum: she had to tell me who the father was or it was all off and I’d let the whole town know she’d been unfaithful. She shouted at me and I shouted back louder. In the end, I called her a slut. And that was that. As soon as I used that word, it was over. Next thing I knew she was accusing me of rape.’
‘I’m not sure I believe you,’ says Martin.
‘Why not?’
‘That’s an amazingly vindictive thing for her to do, to falsely accuse her fiancé of rape, especially if she was the one who wronged you.’
‘That’s what you’d think, isn’t it? My guess is she was so scared of being exposed, of being branded as promiscuous and unfaithful, that she panicked. I think she wanted me to back down, to marry her, to accept the child as our own and let bygones be bygones. But once she went to the police, that was no longer an option. They cleared me, of course. There was no evidence against me and the police could do their sums as well as anyone else.
‘I left town, went back to uni in Melbourne. Tried to put it behind me. I’d never thought much of Riversend to begin with and after that I couldn’t stand it. But Katherine stayed on, blackening my name to anyone who’d listen. In the end, my father intervened. He set her up in the bookstore, gave her an allowance, promised to support her and her baby, Mandalay, provided she stopped the allegations. And that was that. I never came back. It was all too much for Mum. Broke her heart. She died a year or two later. After that I only ever saw Dad in Melbourne, never back here.’
‘Did you ever marry?’
‘After that? No. I never had another relationship that lasted more than three months. I could never properly trust anyone again. You have no idea how much she hurt me, how much she undermined my faith in people. No, I never married, never had kids.’
‘So why come back here?’
‘Because I couldn’t get her out of my mind.’
Snouch sips some more wine. Staring off into the darkness, as if he might still catch a glimpse of her there, his bewitching young fiancée. Martin says nothing, and Snouch eventually speaks again.
‘It happens as you get older: the past bears down on you more and more until sometimes you spend more time living there than in the present. And in the night, she’d be in my dreams. Not all the time, but often enough. Every now and then, there she’d be, freed by my subconscious: the Katie I first knew, perfect and golden and glorious, and she’d take my heart once again, so that when I woke I’d know that I was still in love with her. They were the worst days. I’d go out and get ferociously wasted, drive the dreams from every waking thought. Like those poor old soldiers who used to come here to the wine saloon. The walking wounded. But it never worked. So in the end I came back here.