They turned and walked up the hill again; Luke led her into the exquisitely cool cavern under the house, between the piles. Anne had made a conservatory out of it, stood pieces of terra-cotta pipe of differing lengths and girths upright, then filled them with soil and planted trailing, dangling things in them; orchids of every kind and color, ferns, exotic creepers and bushes. The ground was soft and redolent of wood chips; great wire baskets hung from the joists overhead, full of ferns or orchids or tuberoses; staghorns in bark nests grew on the piles; magnificent begonias in dozens of brilliant colors had been planted around the bases of the pipes. It was Meggie's favorite retreat, the one thing of Himmelhoch's she preferred to anything of Drogheda's. For Drogheda could never hope to grow so much on one small spot; there just wasn't enough moisture in the air.
"Isn't this lovely, Luke? Do you think perhaps after a couple of years up here we might be able to rent a house for me to live in? I'm dying to try something like this for myself."
"What on earth do you want to live alone in a house for? This isn't Gilly, Meg; it's the sort of place where a woman on her own isn't safe. You're much better off here, believe me. Aren't you happy here?" "I'm as happy as one can be in someone else's home."
"Look, Meg, you've just got to be content with what you have now until we move out west. We can't spend money renting houses and having you live a life of leisure and still save. Do you hear me?"
"Yes, Luke."
He was so upset he didn't do what he had intended to do when he led her under the house, namely kiss her. Instead he gave her a casual smack on the bottomwhich hurt a little too much to be casual, and set off down the road to the spot where he had left his bike propped against a tree. He had pedaled twenty miles to see her rather than spend money on a rail motor and a bus, which meant he had to pedal twenty miles back.
"The poor little soul!" said Anne to Luddie. "I could kill him!"
January came and went, the slackest month of the year for cane cutters, but there was no sign of Luke. He had murmured about taking Meggie to Sydney, but instead he went to Sydney with Arne and without her. Arne was a bachelor and had an aunt with a house in Rozelle, within walking distance (no tram fares; save money) of the CSR, the Colonial Sugar Refineries. Within those gargantuan concrete walls like a fortress on a hill, a cutter with connections could get work. Luke and Arne kept in trim stacking sugar bags, and swimming or surfing in their spare time.
Left in Dungloe with the Muellers, Meggie sweated her way through The Wet, as the monsoon season was called. The Dry lasted from March to November and in this part of the continent wasn't exactly dry, but compared to The Wet it was heavenly. During The Wet the skies just opened and vomited water, not all day but in fits and starts; in between deluges the land steamed, great clouds of white vapor rising from the cane, the soil, the jungle, the mountains.
And as time went on Meggie longed for home more and more. North Queensland, she knew now, could never become home to her. For one thing, the climate didn't suit her, perhaps because she had spent most of her life in dryness. And, she hated the loneliness, the unfriendliness, the feeling of remorseless lethargy. She hated the prolific insect and reptile life which made each night an ordeal of giant toads, tarantulas, cockroaches, rats; nothing seemed to keep them out of the house, and she was terrified of them. They were so huge, so aggressive, so hungry. Most of all she hated the dunny, which was not only the local patois for toilet but the diminutive for Dungloe, much to the delight of the local populace, who punned on it perpetually. But a Dunny dunny left one's stomach churning in revolt, for in this seething climate holes in the ground were out of the question because of typhoid and other enteric fevers. Instead of being a hole in the ground, a Dunny dunny was a tarred tin can which stank, and as it filled came alive with noisome maggots and worms. Once a week the can was removed and replaced with an empty one, but once a week wasn't soon enough.
Meggie's whole spirit rebelled against the casual local acceptance of such things as normal; a lifetime in North Queensland couldn't reconcile her to them. Yet dismally she reflected that it probably would be a whole lifetime, or at least until Luke was too old to cut the sugar. Much as she longed for and dreamed of Drogheda, she was far too proud to admit to her family that her husband neglected her; sooner than admit that, she'd take the lifetime sentence, she told herself fiercely.
