Read Online Heartland by Jenny Pattrick - Free Book Online Page B

bit of Mona’s problem, you know, the ups and downs, though it wasn’t so obvious in my missus until the boy shot through.’
    â€˜My dad?’
    â€˜Your dad, our Jimmy.’ Manny’s face clouded. ‘We only had the one. Mavis had her heart set on a girl but we never managed that. So she lavished all her great powers of loving on the boy. Then when he was seventeen he shot through: no note, no sign, no letter later. A big bloody hole in her heart that never healed.’ Manny spat. ‘Sorry, lad, but I don’t hold much of a candle for Jimmy, even though he is — or was — my son. After he left, the missus just wasted away, quieter and quieter day by day. Not interested in her job or food nor even me. None of us could drag her out of it. It was a sickness, I suppose, but Jimmy set her feet on the path. You might as well know, boy, that your gran hanged herself. Bull Howie found her at the railway station, hanging from a beam in the waiting room, cut her down, but she was long gone. A sad, sad day.’
    Young Donny moaned to hear it, clapped his hands over his ears and rocked.
    â€˜Yea lord,’ said Manny Mac, still inside his story, ‘a great talent Jimmy had for shooting through. Done it twice. Once to leave my Mavis in his wake, and then to leave you behind.’
    That was the only time Donny remembered his granddad speaking about Jimmy and shooting through. What stuck in Donny’s mind, in particular, was the way his granddad sighed and then changed tack completely. He grinned and draped a scrawny arm around Donny. ‘But here you are, boy, my greatgood luck in my old age. A fine lad to help me, and a willing ear. You’re a good listener, Donny Mac, and a strong boy. I am a blessed man.’
    No one had ever before even remotely suggested that Donny could be good luck or a blessing.

    â€˜Back in those days,’ said Manny Mac, one soft evening when he and Donny were sitting on the back porch watching the snow on the mountain change from white to pink to steely grey, ‘when I was a smart-arse lad and a pretty useful half-back, my best mates were Bert and Smiley Goodyear. Butcher’s sons, they were, and as such owned a couple of horses. Bert and Smiley did the deliveries to the outlying mills — the mill hands and their families mostly lived close to work in accommodation provided. Anyway, on days off, the three of us would take the nags into the bush with three or four dogs, and hunt pigs. Sometimes deer, but the wild boar were our favourite. I’ll show you how to hunt, Donny, and use a gun properly. You’re old enough now.
    â€˜Well, on one of those hunting trips I told those Goodyear boys about my dad. It was supposed to be a secret, how he had deserted, but I told them anyhow, and how Dad’s family had turned their backs on him. I was a hot-headed lad in those days and was pretty mad about it all, especially at how low it had brought my dad. So we hatched this plan, all bright and bushy tailed as lads are, that we’d charm our way into thestuffy old family up in Auckland and somehow bring about a reconciliation. So. Not a word to the ma and pa, off we head to the bright lights, all shaved and washed in our Sunday suits. The Goodyear boys were not bad lookers, taller than me, and fair, eyes a surprising blue — clear and happy-looking. I was pinning my hopes on my mates to do the charming, you see.
    â€˜Well, we get to Auckland and take the train out to St Heliers Bay. That’s where the family home used to be, according to Dad. It was a fair enough bet that the parents were dead, but we hoped that someone still lived there and the brothers and sisters might be overjoyed to find a long-lost brother. Desertion not to be mentioned.
    â€˜It was a big old bungalow, Donny, your ancestral home, long and low, looking out over the sea, on a sloping lawn shaded by a beautiful jacaranda tree. The three of us stood on the road