The Art of Being A McCartney

Mary Had A Little Lamb

The sheets were in disarray which was quite unusual.

Mary McCartney stood by the dresser clutching the letter from her brother. It didn't offer anything particularly different from the normal correspondence he mailed once in a blue moon. The weather was hot, the property in drought again. Cattle prices were at a premium but what good was it all if his malnourished drought riddled stock, which needed hand feeding daily, were too poor and thin to be sold.

....There were unmentioned things Mary glimpsed between the splodged and unevenly inked lines...Where some descriptions were so beautiful she wished to be stood by his side and others, giving Mary fleeting glimpses of her brother inside.

Wondrous descriptions he expertly expressed. Of the silence of an ever so starry endless blackened sky or of the crackle like whip of light that flashed across the sky in a bone-dry storm. Lightning that lit up the bedroom so bright. Describing the chaos of hundreds of the hoof-prints he saw in the slip of mud that formed after dozens of cattle hungrily and sloppily slurped precious water from the trough. Water, she noted worriedly, purged from their owner's own rainwater tanks meagre remains.

She read between the lines of missing moments also.

Of invisible footsteps of a exploring toddler, silent rooms which should be full of joyous laughter from a small child and of a tangled long lonely road yawning and stretching ahead and a visible abyss between husband and wife -an empty seat at the dinner table.

She heard that cavernous roar of silence as if she was there.

A child's sweet and innocent 'noise' was still missing, and it had been missing for many, many years.

Ever since Phillip had married Lorraine, the fetchingly pretty girl from the other side of the world, the sounds of a wee child was missed from their marriage.

Phil never mentioned it in his meagre few lines... To anyone looking over Mary's shoulder his words were blunt, all business-like. Of property and seasons, precious rain or no rain at all. Grass or dirt... His words lacking emotion for other more heartfelt things....

But Lorraine... She was a sensitive soul, creative and boundless in expression of her feelings. Yes Lorraine told Mary as much as she could in her two pages of airmail letter...Heartbreak and pain, multiple loss of flecks of life and doctors saying to forget all about babies and concentrate all her attentions on her husband....The doctor not even seeing the gnawing sadness that ate away at the woman that just wanted to be a complete woman. A mother.

Achieve a fulfilled life, gather a happy home, love her husband complete and give that same darling man, Mary's oldest brother, the offspring he and herself both desperately yearned for.

Lorraine's teardrops had created ink smudges on many airmail letters over the years and Mary's many yet hollow words of wisdom in return. Marys encouragement sent back was godsend to a lone female on a cattle property almost the size of England.

Lorraine read and reread Mary's carefully written scribe as a way to combat loneliness, and also her tears.

~~~

"What are you up to then luv? Need a hand with the bedding?" Jim had watched Mary clutching the thin sheets of her precious airmail letter from across the waves, her eyes unseeing. She was normally such an astute woman, so very smart and positive.

She was much smarter than he... her midwifery classes were finally concluded and the little graduation ceremony he attended recently had him wipe a few tears, that fell proudly, from his eyes.

She had done it.

She had got her letter of certification.

She could do what she loved now and he was not going to stop her... she was his muse in life. The way she loved, the way she tended to his happiness like a rose garden always in bloom and he would never make her step away from whatever she wanted because they were a team, they were in it for the long run and he was proud as punch that his wife was a working girl.

"Pardon...oh sorry James I was a thousand miles away..."

"A letter from the colonies as it were?"

Mary nodded a little sadly.

"Everything's alright isn't it? Nothing gone wrong apart from the fires and monsoons and droughts?" Jim teased gently. Arrrrr the life of a cattleman must be so very unpredictable.

"The letters aren't that bad James. I quite like the sounds of the furry animals and all of that space"

"One day luv" Jim stepped closer, gathering his beautiful young bride into his embrace.

She was something he didn't think he would get- love.

No, his advancing age had him battling a losing war with father time and the younger fitter men around the traps of Liverpool seemed to step out with all the available lasses that were in his circle.

Then one day she appeared like an angel tapping on his shoulder...That tender and gentle movement on his shoulder had him turning, staring, then finally approaching this gorgeous heavenly creation and never letting her go "We'll get there one day my luv, a magnificent holiday will surely come true"

"Jim....I want to give the baby to them"