Master of Ransome: An Australian Outback Romance

by Lucy Walker

  Sara was dismissed in more senses than one and she closed the door quietly behind her.

  She met Marion on her way down the opposite passage leading to the billiard room and the bedrooms beyond.

  ‘Well, how did you get on with Greg?’ Marion asked. ‘Did he throw you out or did you walk out on your own steam?’

  ‘He didn’t throw me out,’ Sara said with a smile. ‘Why should he?’

  ‘He put up a first-class battle against you before you came. Poor old Greg. Sometimes the family takes the big stick out of his hand and waves it for him. He doesn’t like it.’

  ‘A secretary can be helpful,’ Sara said quietly.

  ‘That’s what Clifford says. But then one never knows with Clifford. He’s always got an ulterior motive.’

  Marion’s smile was nothing but amused irony now.

  Sara kept a firm control on her smile. At that moment Julia came out of the billiard room. As she walked towards the two girls down the carpeted passage-way Sara thought, again with reluctant admiration, that she had a superb figure. Julia moved soundlessly, like the shadow of a ballerina.

  ‘Where’s Greg?’ she asked. It was a pity that her voice was so arrogant, because it was a good voice.

  ‘In his office … if you want to help him burn the midnight oil?’ said Marion slyly. ‘But Witty’s with him right now.’

  ‘Mrs. Whittle does not alarm me,’ said Julia. ‘And I’ll soon get rid of her.’

  She moved on, silently, beautifully, except there was the faintest wriggle of her back contours.

  ‘I bet she will too,’ said Marion. ‘No work for Greg tonight.’ She turned to Sara. ‘You going to bed? Don’t blame you. It’s a long journey. Oh well … sweet dreams. I guess Clifford will write to you on the next mail. Anyhow he’ll be here in a fortnight, so don’t feel too homesick.’

  ‘I shan’t,’ said Sara. ‘Good night.’

  A letter from Clifford! So that’s what they thought!

  Chapter Four

  Sara woke on the following morning to the sound of horses galloping across the plain beyond the garden.

  Her veranda doors were wide open and already the heat was striking into the room. She raised herself on one elbow and looked out through the palms and paw-paws to the endless stretch of browned grasses and hummocky grey bush where she could see the riders now wheeling in towards the saddling paddock. Julia, hatless and her fair hair shining like gold in the early sunlight, was unmistakable. Greg might have been any of the several tall slim bronzed Australians on the station, but Sara knew that it was he. Unlike Julia, he wore a hat, pulled down on his brow. He wore an open-necked shirt and tight-fitting trousers.

  The riders wheeled at a canter around the corner of the house and Sara could see them no more. She wondered why the sight had given her a sense of sadness. Perhaps because it had been a fleet moving picture of the life people might live if they had leisure, money and wide-open spaces.

  That, she thought, was hardly fair to Greg Camden. He had wide-open spaces, a great deal of money, but Sara was fairly certain he had very little leisure.

  She hadn’t had time to think about her strange situation in the household before she went to bed. She had had a shower, brushed her teeth and hair, creamed her face and crawled into bed. She remembered slipping in between the cool linen sheets and that the pillow had been soft and inviting and that was all. She had slept the sleep of the just and the exhausted, and known no more until galloping horses had awakened her.

  Why hadn’t Julia been equally exhausted? She’d made the same day-long air trip, boarding the plane at three in the morning, just as Sara had done. Maybe it was something to do with being used to air travel and not being afraid of aeroplanes.

  Sara got out of bed, stretched herself and padded in her pyjamas in bare feet into the shower alcove that had been so recently built … a pill-box of concrete … leading off her room and jutting on to the veranda.

  By the time Sara was out of the shower Nellie was at her door with a small round tray holding a teapot, cup and saucer and a plate of the thinnest bread and butter Sara had ever seen.

  She looked at it and smiled at Nellie.

  ‘You make?’ she asked.

  ‘No me.’ The girl giggled as if it was the funniest joke she had ever heard. ‘Kitchen Mary make ’um, plenty,’ she said.

  Sara sat on the edge of her bed and enjoyed her tea and the wafers of bread and butter. She began to think now that the cold shower had cleared the cobwebs from her brain.

  Clearly Gregory Camden had not wanted her. She had been foisted on him. Secondly he had no way of knowing whether she was going to be worth the trouble or worthy of what Mr. Benson would doubtless have called her ‘bust-cheque’ … the money she would receive at the end of her labours and before she ‘shot through’.

  This did not disconcert Sara. She knew that in her secretarial capacity she could be of great use to Mr. Camden. The thing was to win his confidence in that respect. One could always do a great deal more for a boss who knew you could do the work and passed it over.

  The other thing … the business about Clifford Camden! That was more difficult because it was unpleasant. No girl likes the kind of suggestion that was in the air about herself and Clifford Camden if there was no truth in it. Not all the acres of Ransome could make her like Clifford as a man. He was all right as a director of a station property and he was a shrewd man with finance. But his sleek smile! His way of looking at a girl’s new dress! His assumption that his gallantries were flattering!

  Sara made a face at herself in the looking-glass.

  However did he come to be related to a man like Gregory Camden, she wondered? The other was hard, reserved, terse. Sara thought he might possibly be even a little ruthless. Well, she hoped he’d be ruthless about Julia’s dollar hunt. Sara knew enough about the Camden affairs to know just how unfair was the spending allocation of Ransome money. Every partner … even those who never set foot on Ransome except to see what was going on … got an equal amount. Gregory got an extra share in payment for his management and Clifford got a salary in addition for his management of the affairs at the city end. Yet these two appeared to be the only two of the nine family shareholders who did a thing about wringing the wealth out of the cattle run.

  The heat was already so great that Sara had no compunction about putting on a sleeveless cotton dress and a pair of white sandal-type shoes.

  She made her bed and tidied her room and then went down the long passage across the hall into the dining-room. Would the others have breakfasted? It was seven-thirty by her wrist-watch and the big clock on the dining-room mantelshelf, but there was no one in sight.

  The table was set at one end, and though there were no used dishes in sight there were evidences of others having been before her. There were two empty unused places and in the middle of the table a glass crock holding breakfast cereal.

  Sara’s footsteps had brought Nellie padding into the room.

  ‘What you like?’ Nellie asked, all smiles. She went to a small cupboard door let into the panelling in the walls and opened it. It was a refrigerator. On several glass dishes were cut grapefruits sprinkled with ginger and nuts. Nellie brought her one of these dishes and it was icy cold.

  ‘You eat ’um that fella,’ Nellie said. ‘I bring some more ’nother time.’

  Sara didn’t quite know what that meant but she was very pleased to engage on the lovely juicy tangy fruit.

  She had barely finished when Nellie came back with a dish of grilled tomatoes and bacon. Nellie pushed the crock of cereal towards Sara.

  ‘You have this one time?’ she asked. Then putting the hot dish on the table, ‘This fella ’nother time.’

  But Sara shook her head to the cereal. Grapefruit and grilled tomatoes and bacon were enough for a tropical breakfast for her. Nellie drew boiling water from a vacuum urn into a teapot.

  ‘You make this fella some time you want ’um,’ she said.

  Sara smiled
and nodded.

  ‘Any time of the day, I suppose?’

  ‘All-a same you have ’um any time. All-a same daytime, night.’

  Sara understood. There was a running fount of tea on Ransome for any time of the day or night.

  Sara finished her breakfast and in spite of the heat felt fit for anything. She walked out of the hall and down to the office.

  Greg had said he would be out on the run all day so she did not think to knock on the office door. She simply turned the handle and walked in. She felt confused when she came face to face with her new boss. He had evidently been about to leave the room and the thick carpeting of the passage had prevented his hearing her footsteps. She nearly bumped into him.

  Sara flushed with embarrassment.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ she said. ‘I should have knocked.’

  ‘There is no need to knock at the office door,’ he said politely. And then with a harder note in his voice, ‘It is your domain now.’

  Sara spoke quietly. ‘I haven’t proved myself yet, have I?’

  There might have been a plea in those words for Greg Camden’s manner changed. He looked at her closely but there was more of inquiry in his gaze than hostility now. Perhaps it occurred to him that if this girl was genuine he was giving her a rather tough reception.

  He turned now and walked back towards the table. Then he moved over to the window and stood gazing silently out of it. Sara waited. She knew that Greg Camden was making up his mind about something. When he turned round, his face seemed quite altered. The hard, stern quality had gone out of it. In fact, if Sara hadn’t thought it impossible for a man of his personality, she would have thought there was a hint of a plea in his words.

  ‘Well, there it all is …’ he gestured round the room. ‘Make what you can of it.’

  He walked thoughtfully back towards the door. He paused as he passed Sara.

  ‘Marion will help you, I think, if you are in difficulties. Of course she knows nothing of the office business. But in the house …’

  Sara smiled.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I rather thought she might be a port in a storm if I made any mistakes in navigation.’

  There was something in his eyes that was actually a fleeting grin but it was gone as quickly as it came.

  ‘I’m going out with the overseer,’ he said. ‘We should be at Number Two Bore at midday. I’ve told Dave James … he’ll be around the homestead most of the day. He’s helping Blue-Bag with the horses.’

  The next moment he had gone and the door closed quietly behind him.

  Sara sat down in Greg’s chair behind the table and surveyed the neatly stacked piles of circulars, letters and pamphlets that took up the greater part of its area.

  ‘He’s neat and methodical,’ she thought. ‘He just hasn’t time to clear it.’ She leafed through one pile of circulars. ‘Begging letters,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Things he doesn’t say “no” to or he would have thrown them in the basket as fast as they arrived.’

  Appeals for the blind, for the Red Cross, for Missions to Seamen, for Maimed and Limbless Soldiers.

  Sara had a flair for knowing ‘yes’ from ‘no’ and it was one of the qualities that made her a good secretary.

  She picked up a pencil and wrote on the page of each of a chosen batch, ‘How much?’ When she had completed the pile she clipped them together and added a memo: ‘Do I apply to Mr. Benson for cheques?’ and left enough space at the end of the line for Greg to write yes or no.

  ‘This,’ she said to herself, ‘is only tinkering. I think I’ll have to have a “think” before I really start work.’

  She got up, pushed the sash window higher, and walked out on to the veranda.

  On this side of the house the garden was more thickly planted, more tropical. The palms, the paw-paws and the pandanus on the outside fringe almost screened the violent harshness of the plain beyond the garden confines.

  Sara walked through the garden. It was cool and damp. At that moment Andy Patterson came round the corner of the house.

  ‘What-ho!’ he said, lifting his shabby, broad-brimmed hat high. ‘Come into the garden, Maud! Well, what do you think of the old camp?’

  ‘I think it’s very wonderful because I know it’s man-made.’

  ‘Oh, God was good too,’ said Andy, hands on hips, and surveying the garden. ‘When He dried out the desert He kindly overlooked a mighty deep water-hole right here. Goes right through to Brazil, so they say. Fact is there’s a race on with the other side of the world to see who can drain the flaming thing dry first.’

  Sara laughed.

  ‘Is that why you cut it off at eight-thirty in the morning? To give the Brazilians a chance?’

  ‘No … that’s so friend Sol doesn’t get more than his share. Greedy fellow that. Dries it off faster than we run it through. Seen the vegetables? They’re round the other side.’

  Sara shook her head.

  ‘Then don’t go near ’em till Hoh says you can … and conducts you personally. He’s got a fiercer blast than old Sol if he gets angry. Ever seen an angry Chinaman?’

  Sara shook her head again.

  ‘You will. You will.’ Andy turned his head towards the front of the homestead. ‘And look what the South Pole’s blown in just to gladden our hearts!’

  It was Julia, if not as cold as the South Pole at least as cool as a cucumber. Sara couldn’t help feeling that no one had any right to look as calm and immaculate at eight-thirty in the morning after she’d had a twenty-hour day the day before and an early morning ride this day.

  Andy put her thoughts into words.

  ‘How … does … she … do … it?’ he drawled.

  Julia was fitting a cigarette into a long amber holder. She arrived in front of Andy in time to have him light it.

  ‘Not working, you two?’ she said as she exhaled the first puff of smoke.

  ‘Nobody ever works on Ransome, Julia,’ Andy said with a grin. ‘Remember? You said it last time they had a big muster and brought in six hundred stragglers from the range.’

  ‘Seems what I said two years ago holds good for today.’

  ‘How ’bout you getting a nice mountain brumby and doing a cattle hunt with the boys next week?’

  ‘That’s just what I intend to do. But not on a brumby. I’m having that roan I tried out this morning.’

  ‘Phew!’ Andy pushed his hat on the back of his head, stuck his thumbs in his snake belt and bent his head sideways to look searchingly at Julia.

  ‘There’s an awful lot to think about in what you just said, Julia. First, what’s come over Greg he’s letting that roan out to anyone but himself. Got round him already, hey? Second … and worse for the boys … women on a cattle camp’s going to be a terrible awful ordeal.’

  ‘You’ll survive it,’ Julia said coolly. She looked at Sara. ‘Don’t you bang a typewriter, or something?’

  ‘Marion called it a chaff-cutting machine. I’m just about to go and try it out.’

  ‘Sara,’ said Andy firmly, again removing his hat to a different position, this time wedged well down on his brows, ‘if women are going with the cattle, then by crikey you see you come too. No letting Julia get away with everything.’

  Sara smiled at him non-committally. How she would love to go out to a cattle camp! But that wasn’t what she’d come to Ransome for and in a minute Julia would say so. Sara didn’t wait for Julia’s views on the subject.

  ‘I think the chaff-cutting machine calls,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to excuse me.’

  She smiled politely at Julia and returned to the office by way of the veranda and the sash window.

  How she would like to go out to a cattle camp! She could hardly invite herself if the work in the office was heavy … and possibly she might not be wanted by anyone but Andy. She had a little private prayer that if Julia and perhaps Marion were to go, Andy would remember to mention Sara herself to Greg.

  By noon Sara had decided the chaff-cutting
machine was all but unusable for neat and orderly type. Sara had a pride in the appearance of her work and a pride in the appearance of work that went out over her boss’s signature. Any boss.

  She went down to her room, found a shady straw hat and made her way across the garden where the oleanders, the hibiscus and the magnolias were already drooping in the blast of midday heat. The ground looked as if it had never known the early morning water.

  Which of the medley of buildings constituting the station village was the book-keeper’s office? Some were obviously garages, machinery buildings, stables, saddleries. Down the line was a mud brick square building with a galvanised iron room. Its walls were covered with flaming bougainvillaea and hoisted on top of it was a sprinkler spraying water continuously over the roof. When she came up to it she perceived the next building, a little bigger, was similar and similarly kept cool by the flow of water over the roof.

  One will be the book-keeper’s office, Sara thought, and one will be the store.

  She was right about the first. The door stood wide open except for the fly-screen and Mr. Benson could be seen bending in front of a big Chubb safe.

  Sara tapped on the door.

  ‘Come in. Saw you coming down the line. What’s the trouble? Knew you’d be here before the day was out.’

  He turned round with an affable grin.

  Sara entered his office and looked round inquiringly. She saw at once what she wanted. On a long narrow table along the side wall were two typewriters. They were neatly covered and from the look of the covers were not of very ancient vintage.

  She smiled at Mr. Benson and the elf quality danced in her eyes.

  ‘One guess?’ she said.

  ‘You sit down and tell me.’

  Sara sat down on a heavy wooden chair that was meant to stand up to bushmen who never sat in this kind of chair without tilting it back.

  Sara looked towards the two typewriters. She could read their makes printed on the covers.

  ‘That one,’ she said, pointing to the Royal.

  ‘Ho ho! Got an eye for a good thing, hey? What makes you think I’m going to part with any typewriter? Much less my Royal?’