She looked at the two women, letting her raised eyebrows and lengthy pause speak. She’d been to the remote paddocks where sheep grazed in Western Queensland. She’d seen for herself the miles and miles and miles of red dirt. The endless repeat of spinifex tufts. Bony-looking stock dozing in the lee of scarecrow-thin gidgee trees. Horizons so hot they melted. Mountain ranges so absent a scientist could be persuaded, easily, that the Flat Earther nutters might be onto something.
Ethel turned pages in the dirt diary and squinted at a few of the badly faded photographs. ‘I might have written something in there about the location, but then again, maybe I didn’t. Maybe we just knew where to go.’
‘So … you’ll still know where to go when we head out tomorrow.’ Again with the firm statement.
Again with the lengthy silence.
Oh, boy. ‘Perhaps the site was near a landmark you’re familiar with?’ Jo prompted. ‘A bore pump, a creek bed, an abandoned plough from the last century?’ A bloody great signpost with an X on it would have been handy.
‘Yeeees,’ said Dot, looking into her empty wine glass like she was wondering how it got that way. ‘But remember, pet, we moved into Yindi Creek off the property a few years ago.’
Jo remembered nothing of the sort. The first she’d known of the Dirt Girls was when Jedda had told her about them. Were they confusing her with her mentor now? Were they even sound of mind? She closed her eyes and willed herself to remember what patience was.
‘Are you saying,’ she said, ‘youwon’tbe able to find the site?’
‘We’re saying it might take us a minute, that’s all,’ said Ethel. ‘Let’s not forget there’s been drought and flood and a fair whack of memory loss since. Dot and I may look like we’re still dancing, but neither of us are seeing seventy-five again, pet.’
‘We’ve had a nephew looking after the sheep since we don’t get out there as much as we’d like to,’ Dot added. ‘Robbie. He has his own property, but he reckons he has time enough to run a flock on Corley Station and keep the place ticking. Not the house—that’s a ruin now, I expect—but the land.’
Dot’s voice had grown thick as she said this.
‘You must miss the place,’ Jo said.
‘You’d think we’d miss it. We lived there our whole life, and our parents, too, their whole married life. But we don’t. At least, I don’t. To be honest … when Jedda came out to do the dig I was so sure it would unearth the greatest find and me and Ethel would haveournames in the paper and on the telly. So, when the dig turned up nothing? My spark of adventure snuffed out a little.’
Ethel’s hand was covering Dot’s again and giving it a squeeze and—Oh, heck. Now Jo could feel her own throat getting thick, and there were flippingtearsin her eyes. She grabbed for the old-fashioned metal box sitting on the table next to the salt and pepper, pulled a serviette out and turned her shoulder to the table so she could stem the flow.
‘Pet?’ The hand that was now patting her arm had the look of crepe paper spotted by the sun and age. ‘Are you sure you won’t tell us what’s the matter?’
Jo wanted to tell them nothing was the matter—she was totally okay and she was sorry for being such a cranky cow—but when Dot had said her spark of adventure had snuffed out it had cut so close to the bone that her shoulders and lungs had decided to seize up like she was the one who’d been turned by time and minerals and water into a rocky fossil.
‘It’s fine. Allergies. I’m not crying,’ she managed.
‘She looks like she’s crying to me,’ said Ethel to Dot.
‘Sounds like it, too,’ said Dot. ‘Pass her some more water.’
A fresh glass of water appeared in front of Jo and she took a sip.
‘Dip my hanky in,’ said Ethel, handing her a square of ironed linen with blue initials monogrammed in one corner. ‘It’s clean. Now, why don’t you mop your face, love, and tell me and Dot why you’re carrying on like a pork chop, as our mother used to say.’
The matter was that Jo had finally lost the plot a thousand-plus kilometres from home, at a table with two old dears who had done nothing but remind her of things she’d used to believe in: science; adventure; discovery.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. And then, despite being a person who never overshared, or let people in—or had friends she confided in, even—suddenly, there she was, blurting it all out. ‘My son doesn’t want to live with me and it’s all my fault. My ex-husband told me I’m a terrible mother and I think he might be right. And my contract at the museum where I work isn’t getting renewed unless a miracle happens.’ A miracle she had hoped to find on Corley Station. ‘It’s a lot.’
‘Hmm,’ said Dot. ‘No wonder Jedda sent you out here to us.’
Jo had the shoulder shudders under control now, even though her eyes were still streaming and she probably had mascara striping her face like numbat fur. ‘I thought she’d sent me out here to dig a hole.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Ethel’s tone was the indulgent, this-is-all-fun tone Jo had used back when she’d needed to persuade a three-year-old Luke that he really could try that scary-looking orange vegetable. ‘And that’s what we’re going to do. Together. Don’t you worry about a thing. And if us two old girls dish up some life advice to you while we’re fossicking? Well, that’ll be a bonus.’
Life advice. It did sound tempting.
‘Not that we have ex-husbands,’ said Dot.
‘Or sons,’ said Ethel.
‘But we’ve lived in a small town our whole lives where everyone knows everyone’s business, so there is not a family drama that’s been dreamt up yet that we haven’t heard of. We’ll help you figure something out, won’t we, Ethel?’
