Fire in Summer Read online

  About Fire in Summer

  A gripping tale of love and loss, intrigue and betrayal, and of the desire to possess the land that sets the Warren family at each other's throats…

  Kath, who loses her husband to war and seeks love in the arms of another man, only for her dreams to be swept away by tragedy.

  Hedley, whose passion for his land helps him survive the hell of World War II, but only after betraying the man who saved his life.

  Now, fifty years later, Hedley is dying.

  His grandchildren — Rebecca, Michael, Craig and Danielle — confront Hedley and each other, as they wait to see who will inherit.

  And then the fire strikes.

  Contents

  About Fire in Summer

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  WARREN FAMILY

  PRELUDE

  1 KATH 1999

  2 KATH AND HEDLEY 1930–1940

  3 KATH AND HEDLEY 1940–1942

  4 WILF 1941

  5 HEDLEY 1942

  6 KATH 1941–1942

  7 HEDLEY 1942

  8 KATH 1943

  9 HEDLEY 1943–1944

  10 KATH 1944

  11 HEDLEY 1944

  12 KATH 1944

  13 HEDLEY 1944

  14 KATH 1944–1945

  15 HEDLEY 1945

  16 KATH 1945

  17 HEDLEY 1945

  18 KATH 1945–1946

  19 KATH AND HEDLEY 1954

  20 KATH 1954

  21 WALTER 1954

  22 KATH 1955

  23 WILF 1955

  24 JETH 1955

  25 KATH 1956

  26 KATH 1956

  27 WILF 1956

  28 KATH 1956

  29 JULIA 1999

  30 GARTH 1957–1978

  31 KATH AND HEDLEY 1999

  32 DANIELLE 1999

  33 KATH 1957

  34 HEDLEY 1957

  35 KATH 1957

  36 WILF 1958–1959

  37 JULIA 1979–1998

  38 CRAIG 1987–1998

  39 KATH 1999

  40 CRAIG 1998–1999

  41 YUKIKO 1999

  42 HIDEO 1940–1945

  43 DANIELLE 1999

  44 KATH 1999–2000

  45 STEVE 1996–2000

  46 THE WARREN FAMILY 2000

  47 JULIA 2000

  48 HEDLEY 2000

  49 JULIA 2000

  50 YUKIKO 2000

  51 KATH AND JULIA 2000

  About JH Fletcher

  Also by JH Fletcher

  Copyright

  This one is for

  Donald, Margaret, Martin and Andrew

  Bush fire, wild fire

  Burning down the old church spire

  When I see your flames so bright

  I’ll know the devil is out tonight.

  — Children’s rhyme

  The land is all important. It doesn’t matter whether people know how to use it or not. Even if they ruin it they have to have it. It is an instinct as fundamental as breathing. The land, ultimately, governs all.

  — Anna Riordan, in Keepers of the House

  PRELUDE

  Kath speaking.

  I remember my grandmother telling me how in the old days, when she was a girl, the nobs used to ride out from Adelaide in their carriages, all laired up, in order to watch the fires. Riding out to watch a bushfire: imagine it.

  She said they would picnic on the slopes of the ranges and watch the flames eating up the distant pastures. Better than the theatre, they reckoned.

  Of course, they took care never to get too close and always to stay well upwind of the flames, so that the smoke and smuts didn’t spoil their elegant summer dresses. And none of them seemed to understand how it was for some poor bastard, seeing the fire eat up his livelihood. Even in those days the city didn’t have a clue about the bush.

  Of course fire can be more than smoke and sparks and flame, and more things get burnt than paddocks and a bit of scrub. Sometimes families get in on the act, too …

  1

  KATH

  1999

  Come on … Come on …

  Kath Warren clung to the phone. In the artificial light her hand looked scrawny and yellow. Like a chook’s foot, she thought, disgusted. How I hate being old!

  At the other end of the line, the phone rang and rang. Typical, thought Kath. When you want them you can never find them.

  Click. The receiver lifted.

  ‘Hullo?’

  The voice blurred with sleep. Hardly surprising, at four o’clock in the morning. A woman, though, which Kath had not expected.

  ‘I was looking for Doctor Carlyle —’

  ‘Doctor Carlyle is away. This is Doctor Anderson, his partner. How can I help you?’

  Julia Anderson, Kath thought. My own grandniece. Of course. I knew she was back but hadn’t thought …

  ‘Wait a minute.’

  She covered the receiver with her hand while she considered. If Hedley knew who it was he would say no, which would get them nowhere. If Julia came, he might still refuse to see her, of course, but it was worth a chance.

  Again she spoke into the phone. ‘It’s Kath Warren, Julia …’

  The cool voice warmed. ‘Hello, Auntie. How are you?’

  ‘It’s not me I’m ringing about. It’s your Uncle Hedley.’

  ‘What’s the matter with him?’

  ‘It’s his heart. Doctor Carlyle told me to contact him at once if anything like this happened.’

  She could hear her own voice, resentful of the need to seek help at any time, never mind in the middle of the night. In the country, independence was more than instinct; it was a fundamental attitude to life. You survived, or did not, by your own devices.

  ‘And what has happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps nothing. But he woke up and complained of pain —’

  Kath hated being helpless even more than being old but it seemed the two things went together.

  Julia said, ‘I’ll come over. I’ll be as quick as I can,’ and put down the phone.

  Kath sat, receiver still clutched in her chook fist.

  Heart, she thought. That’d be right. Trust Hedley to have trouble with the one organ most people would say he’d never had.

  ‘Kath! Where are you?’

  The harsh voice called from the bedroom. Heart or no heart, he certainly didn’t sound as if he were dying.

  ‘Coming …’

  But for several minutes longer continued to sit, and remember.

  Julia, Wilf’s granddaughter. Hedley hadn’t spoken to any of his brother’s family for years. He’d be mad as a cut snake when he found out who she was: always assuming he was willing to see her at all. Don Carlyle or no-one: she could just hear that gall-harsh voice saying it.

  Julia had been keen on Craig at one time, she remembered. Her own grandson.

  He’d seemed fond of Julia, too. For a time Kath had even begun to hope that the two of them might somehow bring the warring sides of the family together again. No-one else was going to do it, that was for sure. Craig’s brother Michael cared as little about the family as he did about everything else in the world. As for his sisters … Rebecca and Danielle were like their grandfather, making a profession out of resentment, the remembrance of wrongs, real and imaginary. They certainly weren’t interested in mending fences; enmity was what they were good at.

  Kath sighed.

  Never mind what she’d hoped. There’d been a bust-up, the family vendetta too strong for either of them, maybe. Whatever the reason, the next thing anyone knew, Julia, her degree under her belt, had taken off for Melbourne. Did postgraduate work there, found a husband. At least she still had the degree.

  She would be — what? — twenty-
nine now, with a divorce behind her already. Of course, Kath thought, people don’t take that sort of thing as seriously as they did once.

  ‘Kath!’

  Fury in the voice, now. Hedley had always demanded instant attention.

  She supposed she’d better go to him. He’d be mad enough when he heard about Julia. No need to fire him up more than necessary, before the girl even got here.

  Yet, walking down the corridor towards the patch of light spilling through the open bedroom door, her thoughts ran on about Hedley and the family, and how Julia’s return might affect them all.

  Craig had moved to Adelaide, was doing very well there, but as far as she knew had no serious attachments. He still came home from time to time.

  You never know, Kath thought.

  She walked into the bedroom. Hedley Warren lay on his back in the bed, his face parchment-white and heavy with lines that looked in the dismal light as deep as any erosion gully. By comparison, chook hands or not, Kath felt as indestructible as the stone house itself.

  ‘Doctor’s coming …’

  Hedley was less than impressed. ‘Could take a while, knowing Don Carlyle.’

  ‘It’s not him. He’s away.’

  The tar-black eyes focused suspiciously on her. ‘Who is it, then?’

  Now for it, she thought. ‘Doctor Anderson.’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘It’s not a him. It’s a her. Julia Anderson.’

  Hedley frowned, affronted by the idea of not knowing.

  ‘Julia,’ Kath said. ‘Wilf’s granddaughter.’

  Understanding dawned, and fury. ‘Coming here?’

  He had favoured Julia, as a child, notwithstanding the fact that she was Wilf’s granddaughter, but all that had changed when she had gone off to Melbourne.

  ‘Of course she’s coming here.’ Kath was not willing to put up with Hedley’s nonsense. ‘How can she examine you over the phone?’

  ‘She’s not examining me! You tell her —’

  ‘Tell her yourself. She’s on her way, right now.’

  ‘Then she can just turn round and head straight —’ and stopped, in full throttle. His eyes jerked towards the door. Kath turned her head as Julia, blonde as ever, taller than Kath remembered, came into the room.

  ‘You normally walk into people’s houses?’ Hedley, invalid or not, was starting as he meant to go on.

  ‘The kitchen door was open. I came in.’ Julia not in the least intimidated, answering the question but barely looking at him, her attention focused on Kath. ‘How is he?’

  Hedley wasn’t ignored so easily. ‘What damn fool question is that? If I was right, we wouldn’t have called you out. What you doing here, anyway?’

  ‘Going to give you a once-over.’ Julia took out her stethoscope and put it around her neck. ‘Have you had any pain?’

  He ignored the question. ‘Where’s Doctor Carlyle?’

  ‘In Sydney. I asked whether you had any pain?’

  ‘Some.’ He spoke grudgingly, as though it were none of her business. ‘When’s he back?’

  ‘In three days.’

  She bent over him, unfastening buttons, pulling the pyjama jacket away from the wasted chest.

  ‘I’ll wait.’

  ‘No, you won’t.’

  She sounded him, taking her time. Eventually she straightened, turned again to Kath.

  ‘The heart sounds normal, but I don’t like the look of him. Sweating, clammy skin — textbook symptoms of a heart attack. Of course, it may be only a spasm of the oesophagus, but I don’t want to take a chance on that. We’d better get him into hospital straightaway.’

  Hedley said, ‘No.’

  Eyes like daggers, she stared down at him. ‘Yes. I shall ring for an ambulance.’

  ‘Do what you damn well like. I won’t go.’

  ‘You may have had a heart attack. We need to have you in for observation. You could die if you don’t get proper treatment.’

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘I’m your doctor.’

  ‘No, you’re not. Don Carlyle’s my doctor. If he hadn’t pissed off to Sydney, I wouldn’t let you touch me with a ten-foot pole.’

  ‘If Don Carlyle were here, I wouldn’t try.’ She turned to Kath. ‘Where’s the phone?’

  ‘It’s no use.’ Kath didn’t move. ‘He won’t go.’

  ‘Damn right,’ Hedley said from the bed.

  ‘If you don’t, the next attack may be fatal. I can almost guarantee it. Is that what you want?’

  Defiance was etched with pain upon Hedley’s face. ‘No-one’s carting me off to hospital,’ he told her. ‘Neither you nor anyone. If I’m going to die, I’ll do it here. On my land.’

  Kath watched the pair of them. It hadn’t taken long for the feud to re-ignite. On the one side, Julia’s affronted glare — not used to patients telling her where to get off, Kath thought — on the other, the man, unblinking, malevolent, whose determination had made him the richest farmer in the district.

  It was no contest. Good at her job Julia might be, but she was no match for a man who regularly boasted he had gone to the other side of hell and come back to talk about it. Not that he ever had talked, of course. Hedley had never been in the business of sharing, had nursed his knowledge within himself as he had everything else throughout his life.

  Julia saw she was getting nowhere. ‘Do me a favour,’ she said angrily. ‘Next time you’re under the weather, don’t drag me out in the middle of the night if you won’t let me help you.’

  The eyes stared back, grimly amused that even in this situation he was once again able to confront and confound another human being. ‘That’s your job. If Carlyle had been around like he should have been, I wouldn’t have come near you.’ And grinned: ragged teeth, implacable mouth. ‘You got my word for that.’

  He closed his eyes as though dismissing her from his thoughts, his life.

  ‘You ought to be careful,’ she told the shut face. ‘Next time you may not get off so lightly.’

  Like talking to the wall. She picked up her bag, turned on her heel and walked angrily from the room.

  Kath followed, offering tea. ‘You know what he’s like …’

  Julia plonked herself down at the kitchen table. ‘Hasn’t changed much, has he?’

  Kath busied herself at the stove. ‘Death’s the only thing that’ll change him. I wouldn’t bet on that, even.’

  They drank the tea, facing each other across the table. They were silent for a while, sharing memories of wrongs done, resentments kept warm over the years.

  Eventually Julia said, ‘I promised myself I wouldn’t get involved again.’

  ‘Then you should have stayed away. Just by coming back, you’re involved.’

  Julia looked sad. ‘Perhaps, in time …?’

  ‘With Rebecca and Danielle? I doubt it.’

  ‘But why?’

  Kath thought, Because they enjoy hating. They don’t need a reason for it; they can always dream up an excuse. In any case, where Julia was concerned it was a habit they had formed over many years. But this she did not say. There was no need; Julia knew it as well as she did.

  Julia stood. ‘I must get moving.’

  Kath walked with her through the lobby to the still-open door. The mist had lifted with the coming of the sun. She could see across the valley to the line of distant hills. The paddocks lay golden in the morning light. The harvest was almost ready. Another week and the valley would be crawling with headers cutting swathes through the ripe grain, but for the moment all was still.

  Julia turned to her. ‘How many bags?’

  ‘Should go about twenty, I reckon. Prices are a bit crook, though.’

  ‘Good crop,’ Julia said.

  Kath patted the young woman’s shoulder. ‘At least you still speak the language.’

  Julia smiled faintly. ‘It’s like the land, isn’t it? It never leaves you.’

  Outside the lobby door there was an old mulberry tree. Kath
remembered how, as children in the days before the great falling out, she and Hedley and Wilf had played there, hiding from each other in its midday shade. She remembered, too, the gush of sweetness on the tongue as she had gorged the dark fruit. She looked at it now, its branches reaching almost to the ground, as though they, too, were obsessed with the desire to possess the earth.

  Beyond the mulberry were the other trees: fig and apricot, orange, quince and lemon, apple and walnut. The trees had been there almost as long as the house, while beyond them the distant ranges carved their ancient contours against a clear sky. All this abides unchanging, she thought, pouring scorn on our squabbles and schemes and resentments.

  ‘All the years I’ve been away,’ Julia said. ‘Now I’m back and know that, in truth, I’ve never been away at all.’

  She turned again to Kath and her voice changed. ‘He needs to be careful. Only a false alarm this time, but next time it may be for real. It doesn’t matter what he says — if it happens again, get him to hospital.’

  She walked to her car and drove away. Kath watched her.

  Of course you came back, she thought. You had no choice. The land called you, as it has called every member of the family for as long as anyone can remember. As it will go on doing, for good or ill, forever.

  She turned and walked back into the house. In the living room, one hand holding back the curtain, she watched the diminishing boil of dust as Julia Anderson drove away down the hill.

  Little Julia, she thought. Well, well. Not so little now. A tall girl. Fine-looking, too, which no-one who’d known her as a child would have expected. The only member of Wilf’s family to enter the house since the big bust-up, all those years ago. Even Garth, Julia’s Dad, had never come. When Julia was a kid, he would drop her off at the gate but took care never to set foot on Hedley Warren’s land himself. Kath had always been sorry about that. Of all Wilf’s scruffy crew, Garth was the one she would have welcomed, but reconciliation was a two-way trip and Garth had never been prepared to take the first step. You couldn’t blame him. He had probably been afraid that Hedley would boot him out. It might have happened, at that. Kath had been married for fifty-eight years and knew that, as far as her husband was concerned, anything was possible.