Master of Ransome: An Australian Outback Romance

by Lucy Walker

  ‘I told you zat was Jack Brownrigg,’ Julia said. ‘And Sara? Why, Sara! What a clever girl you are! I don’t believe anybody knew you all ze night long. And you, Jack? Did you know who the girl in the zo pretty dress was?’

  Greg was utterly silent. His eyes slid over Sara’s satin dress and the smooth swathed skirt with the so sophisticated line.

  He didn’t recognise me … but he doesn’t like my dress, Sara thought. But that was a thought impinged in a shallow way on top of her pain. Julia was still leaning against Greg’s shoulder.

  He did not smile but quite gently he put his hands on Julia and released himself. He held out one hand to Sara.

  ‘Shall we go in?’ he said. ‘I think we must receive the guests together. In the hall. They will be expecting it.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sara wondered how much wiser she was after the events of the masked dance than she had been before. She was sure now that Julia had some irresistible appeal for Greg. She was equally sure that Greg was guided in his affairs more by his head than his heart. How much was this a good thing? His hard business head had told him that Julia was no good for Ransome. At least not as its mistress. She would not have bent herself to its responsibilities nor would she have bothered to get on with the other relatives or with the men in the homestead or down at the quarters.

  Therefore Greg had, when he married, decided for Ransome. He had married someone who would care for all those aspects. Yet he could not rid from his heart the mirage of Julia’s appeal and Julia’s beauty.

  The girl he had married, Sara, he would honour with the proper dignities of her position. She would receive his guests with him. She would ride the best mount on the station.

  Sara had no fear that Greg, in this respect, would let her dignity down. Perhaps he hoped that some day Julia would go away for good, would marry and have children somewhere the other side of the vast continent. Then perhaps he could forget her and settle down to a normal life with Sara, the Martha of Ransome.

  Never, felt Sara, was the story of Martha and Mary more truly enacted in real life than as at present on Ransome.

  However much Sara loved Greg, and she did, she could not and would not suffer the thought of him touching her while in his heart he was still conscious of Julia. The idea shrivelled the very roots of Sara’s being.

  Apart from the problem of Julia, Sara was angry with Greg.

  The day following the masked dance Sara had gone down to the horse yards with other members of the house-party.

  This time the horse-breaking was being done by a renowned stockman come out of the interior. His was the broncho-riding, break-in-a-day kind of work. It was fierce and spectacular and was carried on to a hullabaloo of cries, shouts and general barracking from the gallery.

  Sara thought it went without saying that Greg did not give this man one of his blood colts to break. At the moment the stockman was working on a wild mountain colt that would later be used for mustering cattle in the wild country.

  ‘He only understands the jungle law, that fella,’ Andy Patterson said of the colt. ‘He’ll be a better horse for it but he’ll always love the free rein and a battle with a dodger better than the home paddocks of Ransome. He’ll be a friend to no man but the man who’ll ride him for the rest of his life.’

  ‘But what if the stockman who rides him leaves the station?’

  ‘He’ll take that hoss with him. That’s the way of it with Greg. Man and hoss go together.’

  Yes, Sara thought, that was typical of Greg. There were two ways of bringing a horse into the discipline of Ransome. The one was the intellectual persuasion that this was a better life; the other was a destruction of will, and the giving in to bondage.

  For the life of her Sara could not help reading Greg’s own character into this attitude of his. It was consistent with the iron way he ruled the people in the homestead. To herself he had made the appeal to the intelligence. This was a good way of life. There was work to be done, and she, Sara, could do it.

  The other approach was that of his way with his mother and sister. The ruthless use of the veto or, alternatively, and to mix the metaphor, giving the green light when he thought fit, and no consulting them about it.

  Perhaps Greg has lived too many years of his life with animals, she thought. Then knew at once she was not altogether doing him justice. He also lived with his stockmen and rouseabouts and there was no question about their respect for him. Well, maybe the mountain brumbies respected their ultimate owners too!

  Sara let her thoughts flow along these bitter channels because she was hurt, and because her confidence was shaken. When she had left England to come to Australia with a Board of Trade Commission she had had plenty of confidence. She had had plenty of confidence about remaining in this country of sunlight and opportunity.

  It was only after she had seen Julia on Ransome and then looked in the mirror and seen that she herself was not very big, that her face was round except for the little pointed chin and her nose was not long and aristocratic, that her self-confidence had been shaken.

  Even then it would not have mattered except that she had fallen in love with her husband and he was a man of distinguished relatives and distinguished acquaintances.

  Out of her pain she saw Greg as a man who grazed cattle and reared horses, and sooner or later everyone, the human beings, came into that category. All except those women who were decorations. She was back to the division of people … the decorative and the chattel.

  So she was angry with him.

  The stockman had finished with the horse, now alternately sweating and shivering in its corner, and there was a general scattering from off the top of fences, the sheds and the branches of the coolibahs. It was tea-time and already the men’s tongues were loosed on reminiscence.

  ‘Remember that grey-haired stock-rider came out of Queensland in the thirties? Broke more horses between Alice Springs and Darwin than’s been broke in the whole country since.’

  Or:

  ‘There was a colt up there at Turra station there was bets on from one end of the north to the other. They reckoned there wouldn’t be a white stockman who’d ride him.’

  Greg came across to the group with whom Sara was standing. He had with him the stockman, covered in dust, and here and there the blood-tinted foam of the colt smudging his own sweat-damp clothes.

  ‘Jake,’ Greg said quietly. ‘I want you to meet my wife.’

  My wife!

  The words raced through Sara like a thrill of fire. She couldn’t help feeling a surge of belonging, almost of possession. She could not help feeling a rearing pride. She was his wife, in fact and name. Though they had exchanged no caress since the first twenty-four hours of their marriage, there had been that marriage and there had been that twenty-four hours. No one could take any of that away from her. She was his wife and neither the Camdens nor the law could alter it.

  After a few minutes’ polite conversation Sara left the group, and on the pretext that she had things to attend to in the homestead she mounted her own horse and rode back up the slope.

  Except for Mrs. Camden and a few of the older ladies and one or two still getting over the ‘night before’ the homestead was empty. It was unexpectedly quiet, and once inside it was cool in the rooms darkened against the fierce beat of the morning sun.

  Sara went into the hall. She could hear voices from the drawing-room where Mrs. Camden sat with her friends. Sara did not want to go in and join them. It might take time to get away from them and she wanted to be alone. So she hesitated in the hall, wondering if she should see if they had all they wanted. Fans, cool drinks and magazines.

  It was Mrs. Collins’s voice she heard. It was cool and clear yet with the hint of sympathetic understanding that the true social climber or parasite manages to introduce into her voice like some cloy.

  ‘Of course one had heard they didn’t really live together. Everyone seems to know about it. Must be the bush telegraph. Wonderful how everyt
hing gets around.’

  ‘I don’t see why you should all know about things I don’t know about,’ Mrs. Camden said fretfully. ‘If it wasn’t for Julia saying she was really in love with Jack Brownrigg I would have heard nothing. And in my very own home too. I always thought myself it was Clifford she liked. I must say Clifford doesn’t seem to mind. But then he’s got so many girls. Here, there and everywhere …’

  Sara had no doubt in her mind they were talking about her. She felt the affront like a blow to the heart.

  So! Instead of the dignified hostess and helpmate she had thought herself to be, she was, in fact, no more than the object of common and not very charitable gossip in the drawing-room. Gone like a bubble was that sense of security.

  Shaking with a mixture of confusion and agitation, Sara turned hurriedly away. Anything to escape them and their tarnishing words.

  She crossed the hall quickly and found herself in the dining-room. The blinds were drawn against the sun and it was cool and dark. A sanctuary.

  She walked round the table, touching the old-fashioned green baize cloth with fingers that didn’t know they were touching anything.

  She paused in front of the sideboard and put the decanters of wine in the cupboard without ever knowing she had done so. She stopped in front of the little table on which stood her wedding presents. She picked up the jug Clifford had given her and the entrée dish Jack Brownrigg had given her. She touched them gently, then crossed the room again and put them in the cupboard in which she had already put the wine decanters. She closed the door.

  Then she went into the darkened corner of the room by the western wall and sank down into the old leather-covered arm-chair.

  Then she wept.

  For a long time she sat there, huddled in the arm-chair. The tears exhausted her, and she had had a late night, so she buried her face in her arms and fell into a sad little sleep.

  Once she woke because she wasn’t very comfortable.

  ‘Do I stay? Or do I go?’ she asked herself. ‘What is the right thing to do? What am I? Just a cause for idle and unkind chatter. I have no other meaning.’

  She moved herself and now her head was resting back on the gentle roll of the headrest. Both hands lay listless along the cool surface of the leather arms. She closed her eyes and because the room was darkened by the drawn blinds, fell into a worn-out sleep again.

  It was someone moving in the room that aroused her. She had not heard him come because the door had been ajar and the floor was too thickly carpeted. She could hear him well enough now because he was opening one cupboard after another in an exasperated way.

  ‘Where the devil …?’

  It was Greg.

  Sara opened her eyes and looked at him. She did not move … just lay there in the chair, looking at him.

  ‘Oh, here they are! What in the name of fortune …’

  Greg had one decanter of wine out and on top of the sideboard. Now he brought out the silver jug Clifford had given as his wedding present. Greg bent down and peered into the cupboard. He brought out a decanter of whisky and then the entrée dish. He put them on top of the sideboard and stood looking at them.

  He shut the cupboard door with his knee and picked up the two decanters and walked to the door.

  ‘Nellie!’ he shouted. His voice was like the cracking of a stockwhip.

  ‘Yes’m, Greg. What you want?’ Nellie was padding up the passage from the nether regions. ‘What for you call like that, Greg? You plenty mad you sing-out all-a same stockman.’

  Greg pointed to the sideboard.

  ‘Polish those two things and put them on the table with the tea urn. And don’t take them off. Ever. My wife likes them there and you damn well leave them there.’

  ‘Ar right, Greg. Some other bad fella take ’urn off.’

  Then as Greg looked as if he would explode again, Nellie said placatingly, ‘Ar right. Ar right, Greg. You make ’um too much big fella noise. I fix ’em.’

  ‘See that you damn well do.’

  Greg was gone and Nellie chuckled gaily after him.

  ‘Him all-a same bad in the head, that fella. Too much grog las’ ni’, maybe.’

  She picked up the silver pieces and was rubbing them with her apron as she left the room.

  Mrs. Whittle was just outside the door as Nellie emerged.

  ‘What’s the trouble, Nellie?’

  ‘That fella Greg. Him plenty mad. Never mind. I fix ’um up proper. Him sing out plenty good tonight when him bin go sleep. Him plenty tired, that fella.’

  Nellie’s and Mrs. Whittle’s voices were lost to Sara as they went down the passage.

  Sara had not moved. Neither her arms nor her legs nor her head seemed capable of movement.

  What had Greg meant by restoring her favourite pieces of silver to their former places?

  There was a kindness in it, perhaps, and a certain justice. She, Sara, was to have her rights. But why had he been so angry?

  Sara thought gently of Nellie. Even Greg’s vitriolic anger had not taken the chuckle out of Nellie’s voice or the smile from her shining, good-natured face.

  How tolerant they were of Greg, even when he was in the wrong. They must like and respect him. Even love him.

  Sara straightened herself. What the maids could take with stoic good humour, surely she, Sara, could take. They didn’t give in so easily. She, Sara, wouldn’t give in either.

  She would have to think of a way of carrying on.

  But her heart dropped again when she thought of that clear, cool drawing-room voice. ‘Everyone seems to know about it. The bush telegraph, I suppose.’

  Even Greg would be, as Nellie had said, ‘plenty mad’ if he knew his wife was the talk of drawing-rooms, and maybe of stockmen’s quarters. Even Greg had wanted to invest his wife with dignity. Even Greg, with his blood tingling when Julia leaned so intimately against his shoulder, had remembered that it was Sara, his wife, who must stand beside him when he received the guests to Marion’s birthday feast!

  This thought gave Sara courage. After all, the bargain had been for Ransome. Neither more nor less. Greg was maintaining protocol where the young mistress of Ransome was concerned. Sara must forget everything but this.

  Sara went out into the hall, and Marion was just coming in, slightly dishevelled, in her jeans and wide straw hat. Sara thanked heaven for the cool darkness of the house so that Marion would not see the signs of tears and strain that must be still on Sara’s face.

  ‘Hallo,’ said Marion. ‘What happened to you? Too hot?’

  ‘There were things to do …’

  Nellie came into the hall with the silver jug and dish now highly polished. She was on her way to the dining-room.

  ‘Oh! They get an extra polish, do they?’ laughed Marion. ‘You like to keep us reminded of your gallery, Sara. How many broken hearts have you left behind elsewhere?’

  ‘I didn’t think I was the heart-breaking kind,’ said Sara quietly.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Marion, looking at her with her slightly quizzical smile. ‘A dash of aplomb and a pinch of sophistication and you probably could bring even Greg to heel. That’s how Julia does it, you know.’

  Sara felt her small hands clenching. Marion’s voice altered slightly as if she had an afterthought.

  ‘Not that Julia’s got what you’ve got, all the same.’

  ‘Meaning?’ asked Sara evenly.

  Marion was turning away.

  ‘Oh, the thing that beats and pumps blood all over the body.’

  In another minute she had gone down the long passage, swinging her hat in one hand.

  Sara gazed after her.

  Was Marion kind or unkind? Or was she plain indifferent, a disinterested onlooker?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sara felt the affairs of the morning were all just a little much for her to bear and maintain the cheerful calm that should be part of the hostess role.

  Lunch each day since the house-party had commenced had been served buff
et style both in the dining-room and in an open marquee just below the side veranda. It had been Sara’s wont to wander between the two, seeing to the well-being of all her guests but particularly to that of the Hunt family and the Sam Camden family.

  She had begun to see that already there was a change in their attitude. She thought they were beginning to show a pride in the unity of the family and the oneness of Ransome. Their doubts and fears had been allayed and they were now ready to concede that Greg was not working for himself but for the wellbeing of the whole.

  It made Sara a little cross with Greg that he had never bothered to justify himself as a person. There was a sort of stiff-necked pride in him and he thought the other members of the family ought to have been intelligent enough to see from the books and their various bank statements that all was well in the management of Ransome. This, Sara thought, was an attitude too rigid by far. Couldn’t Greg see for himself in his daily life that Mrs. Camden and Marion, for instance, did not use intelligence, no matter how much of it they had? They were the lilies of the field, the decorative women, and didn’t want to put forward the effort of intelligence. Greg, Sara thought, should have made an effort to win confidence in himself as well as in Ransome.

  This he would not do, so Sara did it for him. Already results were showing in the easier attitude of the Hunts and the Sam Camdens.

  I’m keeping my bargain by Ransome, Sara thought.

  Because she was still disturbed from her bout of tears in the dining-room and the odd behaviour of Greg in the matter of the wedding presents and the odder behaviour of Marion, who appeared to say something catty and something kind in the one breath, Sara decided she would leave the lunch party to fend for itself. No one would miss her. The inside group would think she was with the outside group, and vice versa.

  She would take her hat and escape them all. She would go and ask Sam Benson if she might lunch with him down at the main office.

  She took the precaution of carrying a large piece of iced melon and some sandwiches in a nest of lettuce leaves, just in case Sam didn’t have enough for two.