Read Online Territory by Judy Nunn - Free Book Online

Fresh from battle, his son would circle the homestead. It was a triumphant tribute shared between father and son and, each time, Jock felt his chest would burst with pride. The boy was a chip off the old block, all right.
    â€˜At the double!’ he bellowed again. ‘Outside! He’s here!’ And, belying his sixty-one years, he bounded down the several steps from the verandah with the agility of a man half his age.
    His wife Margaret, and Charlotte his daughter, quickly joined him. But Terence’s young English wife reluctantly followed in their wake.
    It wasn’t that Terence’s antics particularly worried Henrietta, but she failed to see why Nellie and Pearl must be forced to endure something which so obviously terrified them.
    â€˜It’s all right,’ she assured them as she always did. And Nellie gave her customary tight smile and nod, grateful for the assurance, but the whites of her eyes shone nervously in her normally placid, brown face and she kept a tight hold on her twelve-year-old daughter’s hand.
    â€˜Could you not tell your father to let them stay inside?’ Henrietta had asked Terence in the early days of his aerobatics when his father had taken to demanding that the entire household stand in the baking heat to applaud his son. ‘Nellie and Pearl are absolutely terrified, every single time.’
    But Terence hadn’t appeared particularly concerned. ‘It’ll do them good,’ he’d shrugged. Then by way of explanation, ‘Teach them they can’t run away every time they’re frightened. Besides,’ he’d added, realising his answer had not satisfied her, ‘you try telling Dad to do anything.’
    She’d had to accept that. It was true, nobody told Jock Galloway to do anything. But she’d found it unsettling to later discover that, after buzzing the homestead, Terence took delight in dive-bombing the native camp several miles away. It was the start of the dry season and the Aboriginal stockmen and their families had moved into the tin huts and humpies there preparatory to the annual muster. ‘They ran like scared rabbits,’ she’d overheard Terence boast to his father one day, and it had chilled her to hear him say it. Had he changed, she was beginning to wonder, or had there always been a cruel streak in him which she had failed to recognise in London?
    Three months in the Northern Territory had opened Henrietta’s eyes to many things, not least of all the gradual metamorphosis in the man she had married.
    Now she stood with the others, fifty yards from the house as Jock always instructed, and, hand shielding her eyes from the blinding sun, she gazed up at the approaching aircraft.
    The Spitfire circled the homestead three times, as it always did, lower and lower each time. Then it ascended, turned and dive-bombed. Involuntarily, Henrietta wanted to duck, or to turn away, even to run, but she had learned to stand her ground and watch, just as Margaret and Charlotte did.
    Margaret Galloway, although subservient to her husband, was as strong as old Jock in her own way, her back as ramrod straight as his, her thin, weathered visage as stern. Charlotte too, Terence’s older sister, once handsome, was hardened by the living conditions and the harsh northern sun. Not yet thirty-one years of age, her thickhair, always pulled back in a practical ponytail, was iron grey, and her face was as rugged as a man’s. Both were outback women, tough and resilient like the landscape itself. They had adapted to the adversities of life in the Territory, and Henrietta supposed that it was her duty to mould herself the same way, although she couldn’t imagine how she was to go about it.
    The Spitfire dropped like lead from the sky and was coming straight for them. Was it her imagination, Henrietta thought for an instant, or was it flying lower than usual? She glanced briefly to her side. Old Jock’s arm was