‘How dare you speak to me like that!’
‘Like what? You mean, not like the rest of your lackeys who bow and scrape at the feet of the famous Kitty Mercer, who suffered such a huge family tragedy, but against all odds rose to be the most powerful pearling mistress in Broome? Respected and revered by all, despite the fact that her success has stripped any form of love from her life?’
‘Enough!’ Kitty rose instinctively from her chair, not wishing to give Mrs Randall further gossip to spread about town and knowing she was about to explode. ‘I will say goodnight.’ She walked towards the door.
‘I’m impressed at your self-control. I was expecting a punch at any second.’
Kitty sighed deeply, too weary and confused to fight any longer. ‘Goodnight, Drummond.’ She walked up the stairs to her bedroom and closed the door behind her. Stripping off her cornflower-blue blouse, and berating herself for ever thinking to wear it in the first place, she climbed into bed. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she cried.
Just as she was calming down and thinking that she might actually doze off, there was a timid knock on her door. She sat up, fully awake.
‘Who is it?’
‘Me,’ a whisper came through the wood.
Kitty darted out of bed, not sure whether she had locked the door behind her when she had come in. The answer stood in front of her as Drummond entered, looking as wretched as she felt.
‘Forgive me, Kitty.’ He closed the door behind him and locked it firmly. ‘I came to apologise. I don’t behave like such a pig around anyone else. It was a shock to see you. I . . . didn’t – don’t,’ he corrected himself, ‘know how to handle this.’
‘That makes two of us. And you’re right, this is your patch. It is I that should leave. I shall go to Ayers Rock tomorrow, then make plans to return to Adelaide as soon as possible.’
‘Really, there is no need to do that.’
‘I’m afraid there is. Good Lord, if anyone recognises me, or us together . . . I just received Andrew’s death certificate before I left.’
‘So, you have finally killed me off. Well now, there’s a thing.’ Eventually he roused himself, looked at her and gave her a weak smile. ‘No matter, Kitty. Round here I’m simply known as Mr D: a drover who never stays in one place for longer than a few weeks. I’ve heard it whispered that I’m an ex-convict, escaped from Fremantle Jail.’
‘You could certainly be taken for one.’ Kitty eyed his still thick mass of dark hair, turned grey in parts, the rugged face lined more by the sun than age, and the broadness of his chest complemented by thick, muscled arms.
‘Now, now, let’s not start trading insults again.’ He gave her a half-smile. ‘I shall begin our new detente by telling you that you look hardly a day older than you did. You are still beautiful.’
Kitty touched her greying hair self-consciously. ‘I know you’re being kind, but I appreciate the gesture.’
A silence hung between them as a lifetime of memories flashed before their eyes.
‘So here we are,’ Drummond said eventually.
‘Yes, here we are,’ she echoed.
‘And I must tell you, in case I don’t get another chance, that there has not been a day in almost forty years when I have not thought about you.’
‘In anger, probably.’ Kitty gave him a wry smile.
‘Yes,’ he chuckled, ‘but only in connection with my own impetuous behaviour, which has rendered my life since nothing but a hollow sham.’
‘You look very well on it, I must say. I can hardly believe that you are over sixty.’
‘My body knows it,’ he sighed. ‘These days I am beset with the vagaries of age. My back aches like the dickens after a night out on the ground, and my knees creak every time I climb onto my nag. This is a life for a young man, Kitty, and I’m not that any longer.’
‘What will you do?’
‘I have absolutely no idea. What do clapped-out drovers do in their old age? Come to think of it, I hardly know a single one. We’ve normally all copped it by fifty. Been bitten by a snake, died of dysentery or ended up on the end of a black man’s spear. I’ve had the luck of the nine blind, in that regard anyway. Perhaps it’s because I gave up caring if I lived or died after I last saw you, so the old bugger upstairs has kept me alive to punish me. Well.’ He slapped his thighs. ‘There we go. How about you?’
‘I’m leaving Australia for good after I return to Adelaide.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Home, or at least, to Europe. I’ve bought an apartment in Italy. Like you, I feel Australia is a young man’s – or woman’s – game.’
‘Ah, Kitty, how did we grow so old?’ Drummond shook his head. ‘I still remember you at eighteen, singing at the top of your voice in The Edinburgh Castle Hotel, as drunk as you like.’
‘And whose fault was that?’ She eyed him.
‘Mine, of course. How is Charlie? I know a fellow from the mission at Hermannsburg who said he’d been to school with him and hoped he’d come to visit him one day.’
‘You must be talking about Ted Strehlow.’
‘I am. The fella is mad as a cobra with a migraine, but I meet him occasionally on his travels in the Outback. He’s a self-fashioned anthropologist, studying Aboriginal culture.’
‘Yes, I met him once in Adelaide. Sadly, you cannot have seen Mr Strehlow recently. Charlie died seven years ago in the Japanese attack on Roebuck Bay.’
‘Kitty, I didn’t know!’ Drummond walked towards her and sat down on the bed next to her. ‘Good God, I didn’t know. Forgive me for my insensitivity.’
‘So’ – Kitty was determined not to cry – ‘I have nothing to keep me here in Australia, which is why I’m going home.’ After a pause, she looked at him. ‘It’s so very wrong, isn’t it?’
‘What is?’
‘That you and I should still be sitting here on the earth, while my boy – and so many others we loved – are no longer with us.’
‘Yes.’ His hand reached to cover hers.
Kitty felt its warmth travelling through her skin and realised his was the last male hand that had touched her in such a gesture for almost forty years. She wound her own hand around it.
‘You never remarried?’ he probed.
‘No.’
‘Surely there were plenty of suitors?’
‘Some, yes, but as you can imagine, they were all fortune hunters. You?’
‘Good God, no! Who would have me?’
Another long silence hung between them as they sat there, hands clasped, each contemplating the secrets they kept from each other, but cherishing the moment they were sharing.
‘I really must retire, or I’ll be good for nothing in the morning,’ Kitty said eventually. Yet her body made no move to release his hand from hers. ‘Do you remember Alkina?’ she asked into the silence.
‘I do.’
‘She disappeared the night before Charlie’s twenty-first birthday. And then Camira did the same a few months later when I was away in Europe.’
‘Really?’