Page 8 of A Home Among the Snow Gums
Graeme nodded, opened his mouth, shut it, cleared his throat, then said, ‘Coming right up. I think, um, maybe you’ll need a date scone with that newspaper.’
Weird. ‘No, really, I—’
‘I’ll snaffle theSnowy River Starwhen it’s free. You get yourself seated.’
Tom gave up trying to argue the point and while he waited for his coffee, he pulled a notebook and a pen out of his jacket pocket to keep himself occupied.
Start a project, the doctor had said.
Yeah, that was going to be tricky.
He had Buttercup, of course, the horse he’d bought (maybe rashly) when his career was destroyed, and caring for a former racehorse who was in foal was a project, wasn’t it?
He did the crossword every day, he drank a ton of coffee, he’d decluttered his dad’s office and put the property records into files. He’d played a lot of backgammon with Mrs L and … Oh, yes. Better not forget the happy day when he’d made Hannah Cody cry in his stables.
And he worried.
Alot.
All of that was doing something, wasn’t it?
He took a sip of the coffee that had materialised on his table and was still trying to figure out what special something he could do to prove to the doctor (and, okay, to himself) that he wasn’t totally losing it, when the local newspaper landed in front of him. Thankful for the distraction of a new crossword, he nodded up at the waitress who’d—
Crap. Not a waitress.
‘Hello, Tommy,’ said Marigold Jones in a honey tone that deceived him not one whit. A bigger operator he had yet to meet, and when he’d been seconded overseas he’d worked undercover with international criminals. Not that Marigold, Hanrahan’s busiest and most involved woman, was a criminal; she was much,muchmore than that. A florist (retired). A celebrant: weddings, funerals and anything. Self-appointed chairwoman of every committee in town. She’d been hovering in his peripheral vision since the minute he moved home and he hadn’t yet worked out what her deal was.
‘It’s Tom,’ he said. She was standing so close that the blue fabric of her dress, if that’s what such a vast, curtain-like garment was called, floated onto the table.
‘Graeme said to bring you the paper when I was done with it.’
‘Thanks,’ he said, snapping it open and hoping she’d take the hint.
She didn’t. Instead, she seemed to be taking an unseemly amount of interest in the notebook he had open on the table. He tucked it under the paper—although the page was blank, so he wasn’t sure why he’d bothered—and let his lack of chit-chat do the talking for him.
Marigold sighed and a cumulus of floaty fabric sighed with her. ‘Page sixteen,’ she murmured. ‘Look for the silver lining, my love, because there always is one. If you want my help, you know where to find me.’
And with a whoosh, she was gone.
Hmm. Ominous.
TheSnowy River Stardidn’t bother itself too much with world events: the front cover was a grainy image of a python found lurking in the tap section of a hardware store over in Adaminaby. He flicked through the pages. Weather more of the same: overcast but dry, with a colder-than-average, stiff breeze that’d have leaves skittering from the trees and the countryside about Ironbark turning hard as … well, as iron. Shops for lease, including an advert he’d placed himself for the ground floor of one of Bruno’s Federation buildings near the park; tour guides and housekeeping staff wanted for the upcoming snow season; a delay on the opening of the new section of highway …
He flicked past the remaining adverts for mattresses and big-screen televisions and there it was: page sixteen, the local gossip masquerading as a news column flagged under the misleadingly benign banner as the Hanrahan Chatter.
ISTHESUNSETTING ONIRONBARKSTATION?by Maureen Plover
Oh, crap.
A warm buttery scone, chunks of sticky date oozing from its sides, plonked down on the table in front of him and he felt the press of Graeme’s hand on his shoulder.
‘On the house,’ murmured the manager. ‘Sing out if one isn’t enough.’
Bracing himself, Tom read the article.
For twenty years, Hanrahan has played its trump card to keep the tourists coming in after the winter season, when the mountains above the town have too little snow to open the ski slopes, but are too cold for the hikers heading up to Dead Horse Gap. The town has welcomed horse floats and riders. Henderson’s Ag Store on Gorge Road has sold out of rope reins and girth strap; Deanna from Clancy’s Drapers has given the fibreglass horse in her front window a buff and polish and dressed up her mannequins in riding boots and chequered shirts and braided leather belts.
Why all this activity? What is the trump card? I’ll tell you: TheIronbark Station Campdraft.
