by Lucy Walker
Jim Richie cocked his head, listening. ‘That’s Hunter’s ute coming back,’ he said, pushing back his chair. ‘Not like him to forget anything. Never knew him muff a thing. A terror for thoroughness is Jard Hunter.’
Mardie lifted her head, listening. Then she caught Mr Lawson’s eyes watching her.
‘Well … you never can tell,’ she said lamely, caught out with that sudden jerk of the head. ‘Mr Richie can’t always be right. I mean one utility sounds like another, doesn’t it? It could be our next customer passing through.’
‘Not to my husband,’ Mrs Richie said emphatically. ‘He can almost pick one cockatoo from another when those flocks come overhead. Very acute hearing, Mr Richie has.’
‘In that case,’ Mr Lawson said easily, ‘we’d better accept the fact that Mr Hunter is not infallible, and for once has forgotten something.’
Jim Richie had gone to the door.
The utility had swung into the gravel pass on the far side of the building and spluttered, scattering stones, to a stop. A car door slammed. A heavy tread crossed the gravel towards the cement path under the trellis way.
‘Hunter all right!’ Jim Richie said again. ‘Excuse me, Mr Lawson, I’ll just go see what he wants.’
Mardie had all but to pin herself to her chair. After all, he … whoever it was anyway … was her customer too. She had a vested interest in customers. Why shouldn’t she go and do business with this one, as with others?
Yet she stayed where she was, quite still, except that she moved her glass one inch forward on the table with one small sun-browned hand, while she brushed invisible crumbs from her lap with the other. Funny, she thought, if it were anyone else I’d just go out automatically. Why not this one? Why all the mystery? Is it because, being a geologist, he’s more interesting than station owners or drill riggers?
She did not lift her eyes for fear Mr Lawson would be looking at her again. That particular quizzical expression he’d been wearing on his face disturbed her.
Two men’s voices could be heard outside. Jim Richie’s muted nutcracker followed by a quieter, steady voice with faint undertones of determination about it.
That hint of drawl again! Mardie thought. Funny how men who live in the outback come to speak slowly. Yet they can put the flick of a whip in it when they like. He must be a real outbacker, after all.
Mr Lawson was watching the door. Mardie was sure there was something knowledgeable in the expression in his eyes.
‘Will you excuse me, please?’ Mrs Richie said, getting up ‒ very agilely, considering her weight and age. ‘Jard might like some lunch now. He wouldn’t wait before.’
‘Of course.’ Mr Lawson was also standing. ‘What about you, Mardie? Have you something important to do which I mustn’t interrupt? It is mid-day.’
‘No, nothing.’ She was surprised. ‘You’re my most important occasion.’ She laughed, and this lit up her face. Her eyes and even her hair seemed to take on an extra sheen.
Mr Lawson reached in his pocket for his cigarettes.
‘I have a feeling you might prefer other company … that is, at this moment.’ He was looking at her quizzically again.
Mardie beetled … just that little bit.
‘Ever since you came in, we’ve been haunted by that beastly man, Jard Hunter. That is, because I said he was a “strange one” when he was going off earlier. You’ve been looking at me at every mention of his name, haven’t you? As if I have some kind of interest ‒’ She broke off. ‘It’s only that he’s a puzzle,’ she finished lamely. ‘I’ve never even seen him properly. Let alone spoken to him.’
Mr Lawson lit his cigarette. He looked over the still flaring match at the girl. Mardie was now standing.
‘Haven’t you?’ he asked amiably. ‘I mean, an interest in him? Most people do, I understand.’
‘Well …’ she protested. ‘Everyone here is interesting. Even a funny old prospector who walks miles and miles in here with string hanging round the brim of his weatherbeaten hat to keep off the bush flies is interesting. He’s so brown he’s nearly black. And he’s old and can hardly speak because he’s forgotten how … I mean, living out there alone.’
Mr Lawson’s smile became a grin, and the match’s flame burned his fingers. He flicked it out and said, ‘Damn.’
He came round the table and slipped his arm along Mardie’s shoulder just as he had done when they had crossed the landing ground. ‘Shall I let you into a confidence? I’m interested in the man myself …’
He broke off because Mr Richie had appeared in the doorway. At his side, just a little behind him, was that tallish, wiry-slim man in the act of removing his cotton hat.
Mardie couldn’t see the colour of his eyes because, after the bright sunlight outside, he had to half-close them in an effort to identify Mr Lawson. He was burned brown, yet a living kind of brown because of his eyes. They were keen, steel-like eyes, though shuttered as if accustomed to give nothing of himself away. They were aloof, somewhat superior, yet oddly enough kind, as if they saw first and judged later. It was no fault of theirs if they saw too much.
His hair was a dark brown too, and his boots were the dusty, rusty yellow geologists’ boots that mining explorers wore. He was slim, but a very strong man altogether. And very impressive. Mardie didn’t know why he was this last, because he was so quiet. And sort of very still.
He wasn’t looking at her now, but at Mr Lawson. It seemed as if he knew him.
‘Your plane pilot,’ Mr Richie explained to Mr Lawson, ‘has been talking to Jard Hunter here. You know … their air-to-ground radio contacts. The pilot mentioned he’d dropped you here at The Breakaway, Mr Lawson. Jard’s come back because he wants to see you, you being a solicitor, I expect.’
‘Yes, I am that,’ Mr Lawson said. He held out his hand as Jard Hunter took a step forward. The two men shook hands. To Mardie it seemed as if they looked at one another straight in the eyes. Yet they did not exactly smile. It was almost as if they knew one another, yet did not say so, which was strange.
‘I wonder if you have a few minutes to spare, Mr Lawson,’ Jard Hunter said.
‘Of course. In the meantime you must meet Mardie Forrester.’ He paused, then added: ‘You haven’t met before, I understand?’
‘No, I think not.’ Jard Hunter turned and shook hands with Mardie. He looked right at her, almost in a discerning way as if he were seeing everything about her. Then knowing about her ‒ which was disconcerting.
She saw that his eyes were not steel, after all. They were a bluey-grey.
‘I had heard that you were here, Miss Forrester,’ he said. Her hand was still in his.
He doesn’t want to smile, Mardie thought. Not even out of politeness. Then for one split second he contradicted that thought. He did smile. It was an errant smile, quickly come and quickly gone. Yet it had something in it that flashed, like light on a shadowed pool.
Just for one moment Mardie had a strange feeling of regret, as of something found, then lost. Which was ridiculous because it was inexplicable.
She knew Mr Lawson had seen the flush she felt rising ‒ just that much.
Suddenly she did the last thing she really wanted to do. She exempted herself from ‘the presence’.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I have something that needs my attention. It’s important. You will excuse me, won’t you?’
She walked through the door, hoping it was with the dignity of a responsible person carrying some of the world’s problems on her youngish shoulders. And not just a scatter! The so-called problems were the intricacies of The Breakaway’s accounts system, of course.
Back in her office, Mardie examined herself in the mirror hanging by its gilt chain on the back of the door.
What did she really look like? She didn’t know. She saw a girl with dark hair, dark eyes and faintly flushed cheeks. She wished she could see something that would tell her she was beautiful, but she knew this would not be true. She was unable to read the kindness and
gentleness that was in her face because she did not understand they were there. She was twenty-one, which seemed an archaic age to her. Most of the friends she once had had were married long since. In their teens.
She felt very alone again ‒ with that face in the mirror looking at her so seriously ‒ and very unsure.
Actually she had beautiful, warm-coloured eyes, but she didn’t recognize this. Her mouth was well shaped, and when she smiled it, too, was beautiful. But just now she wasn’t smiling. Had she been, she would have seen white, even teeth that shone. She took care of them.
Her hair now …
Her thoughts kept sneaking back to Jard Hunter. Well, his hair was neat too, because outback even the very modern men couldn’t wear it longish. All that heat! But he did have a mention of side-burns. It was his eyes she had noticed most. Not exactly cold, but somehow communicating. He must have been thinking something.
Mardie went back to her table and sat down. You have to be thinking something, she repeated to herself. You can’t stop thinking. I’ve tried. Something goes on in your head all the time. Well, what went on in Jard Hunter’s head when he met a person for the first time? Especially someone new who had come to live in the area.
Perhaps he wouldn’t care a hoot, in which case he wouldn’t be thinking after all. Well, nothing in particular anyway!
She pulled the Day Book towards her impatiently.
What the heck, anyway? she asked herself. If anything, it would be about nickel sulphides and gossans, and costeans and claim-pegging, and other such things that fill the minds of geologists. In fact, geologists probably never thought of anything else much … except …
Why had he wanted to see a solicitor?
Mardie flicked over the page of the Day Book and wrote the date at the top of the new page.
Maybe he’s going to climb a mesa mountain out there, or slip-slide down one of the gorges. Therefore wants to make a will, she thought. Geologists did sometimes get lost, and one had been killed in an accident some few months ago. She supposed it was a sensible thing to make a will, specially if there was a wife, and children, to think about.
Did he have a wife and children?
Chapter Three
Mr Richie’s footsteps came in his odd-beat manner of walking, down the covered trellis way, then through the door.
‘You didn’t finish your lunch, Mardie,’ he began. ‘I’ve brought you some tea ‒ just to fill the gaps, you know. Save you boiling up that jug of yours.’
Mardie smiled. Though she didn’t know it, her smile came easily and lit up her face, like a rainbow lights up a sky.
‘Why didn’t you bring two cups, Mr Richie?’ she asked. ‘Then we could have had a little talk. That is, while Mr Lawson is so busy with Mr Hunter. Where is Mrs Richie?’
‘What’s wrong with our having a talk without my having to drink tea along with it?’ Mr Richie demanded as he set the small tray on the table. ‘I had mine in the kitchen the way I always do. My wife … she likes to get on with her work.’
‘I hope she gave our visitor … I mean both visitors, some tea too? Or maybe coffee? I should have gone outside to help her. I sort of was absent-minded.’
Mr Richie was already at home in the old cane chair beside Mardie’s table. He hadn’t admitted it yet, but he enjoyed sitting talking to this young girl. Something new and fresh and vital had come into The Breakaway with Mardie’s arrival. He and his wife had been very perturbed at first. What were they going to do with a young girl fresh out of a city? Then here had come Mardie! She might be twenty-one and capable, but she was younger-looking than that, and wore bright, fresh-looking clothes. They covered up her knees real decent, thank God. Just right for the outback. Good leather on her feet for working in the garden, too.
Mr Richie had not known that boots were all the fashion in the city now so he took Mardie’s ankle lace-ups as a sign of good sense. What’s more, she was a real goer in that garden. She really loved it. Well, who wouldn’t … out here in the middle of a desert?
‘Well, about that tea ‒ oh yes! They had a tray with everything on all right, Mardie. The big three-quarter pint cup for Jard Hunter like he always gets when he has time enough to spare, which isn’t often. My wife keeps it specially for him. She always calls it “Jard’s cup”. And let anyone else reach for it by accident!’
‘Why is he so special, Mr Richie? He’s just a customer like everyone else, isn’t he?’
‘Oh, no. Not on your life, Mardie. There’s customers and customers. All welcome and most of them decent enough. Haven’t struck a real baddie in years, though there’s a few of them about “claim-jumping” since they made that big nickel strike at Kambalda and started the nickel boom. There’s a real money-making racket in spying for information about who’s finding nickel, where, and how much, all right. They sell the information to townies, and up goes the share market! But Jard’s kind of a special because he’s a real nice fella when you get to know him. Good manners. Always speaks nicely to my wife. She’d do anything for him.’
Mardie looked down at her cup as she put it back on the saucer.
‘What exactly does he do?’ She looked up, hoping to seem and sound casual. Not all that really interested. ‘We do carry a separate account for him, don’t we? The Dig-in is not his real address, is it? His out-camp is somewhere miles out beyond …’
Mr Richie laughed. ‘Don’t you worry about his account, Mardie. He’s as straight as they come. Mind you … you’ve a right, being new here, to get acquainted with all the accounts. Specially those that carry them personally and not in a company name. You see, he’s a consultant for the company. On his own, that is. Not employed like those others at the Dig-in. Doing a job on contract, as it were.’
‘I wasn’t really questioning his account,’ Mardie put in quickly. ‘I suppose … well, it was just curiosity as to how these Mining Exploration Companies run their affairs. He seemed to be of importance to the Dig-in Company. Yet he doesn’t exactly belong. Being a consultant means he operates on his own, I suppose. He appears out of nowhere ‒ except for the Dig-in’s radio call on the closed circuit.’
‘Well, that’s the way he works.’
‘Then he disappears out into nowhere again ‒ without even wanting to get acquainted with a newcomer in the store,’ Mardie said, still puzzled. ‘I mean, all the regular through-travellers have come in and shaken hands with me. If it hadn’t been for Mr Lawson arriving, I don’t suppose I’d ever have met him face to face.’
‘Well, he’s what they call a “loner”, Mardie. He has a special job to do with water, and that has an important connection with the Dig-in. I couldn’t tell you how it all works out myself. One doesn’t ask questions about what they’re exploring. How, when or why. Elsewise they might think we’re feeding out news to those spying.’
‘Spying?’ Mardie exclaimed. ‘But why? At the Dig-in they’re only looking for nickel or silver, or something, aren’t they?’
‘Yes. But supposing they find something good? They have to let their Company in Sydney know first. And their “find” has to be tested, or whatever they call it, before it’s made public. If somebody lets the cat out of the bag too soon about their “find”, if any, then up goes the stock market sky-high. When the stuff is tested, and if it doesn’t turn out so good, then down goes the stock market with a thud. You could probably hear it across the Gibson Desert. If it’s good, the Company wants to get rich first, doesn’t it? I guess that’s how it works. We don’t ask questions. That way our customers trust us. The less we know the better. Everyone trusts us here at The Breakaway.’
‘I suppose so,’ Mardie said thoughtfully. She was still puzzled.
‘It’s a fact of life, young miss,’ Mr Richie said cheerfully. ‘Out there at the Dig-in, they have rifles to warn off intruders. And a plane and a ’copter of their own to go up and track down any strangers lurking about in the bush. Mr Lawson came in someone’s Company plane. Not the usual one. Maybe Jard has something to
do with that, for all we know, or ask. That wasn’t the usual Company’s plane brought him down on the landing ground. I saw that for myself.’
‘Wasn’t it?’ Mardie said. She was trying to piece things together. Puzzle one ‒ the plane that brought Mr Lawson wasn’t the ordinary service plane then. Its pilot had spoken on an air-to-ground circuit to Jard Hunter, which meant he was on the same wave-length as the Bickley’s Brandy-Red Wine code. Puzzle two ‒ Jard Hunter’s location was at some distant out-camp, yet the Dig-in knew where he was all the time. Kangaroos on the road, or an accident, they’d said.
Add the fact Jard Hunter himself was like a wraith that came … well, not in the night … but came. And went in silence. He didn’t meet people. Or talk to them unless he had to. Was he a ‘watcher in the bush’ too? For the Dig-in Exploration Company ‒ or for some other Company watching what Dig-in did? Meantime the people out at the Dig-in were watching him!
Well, so it all seemed!
Puzzle, puzzle! Yet she didn’t like to put such strange ideas to Mr Richie. The Richies had always been simple outback people. Storekeepers. Couldn’t someone clever enough put anything over them?
Oh dear! Why was she thinking such fearful things? It was just Jard Hunter’s mysterious manner. Someone ought to tell him to do something about it.
Or was she just sore because he hadn’t willingly come in to meet her? Wounded vanity?
The cup only had dregs of tea in it now, but Mardie lifted it to her lips to drain the last drop. Somehow the act was meant to hide her straying thoughts. He was so impressive and strong-minded ‒ that man. Yet his reserve and those shielded yet searching eyes held something unidentifiable about them.
Mardie put down the cup again. She shook her head, as she caught Mr Richie’s eyes. She smiled ruefully.
‘Somebody told me before I came up here that I’d either hate the outback or that the outback would get me in. If it did get me in I’d better stay here for keeps because I’d never be truly rational again,’ she said with a laugh. ‘I think the strangest things already. Too much imagination, I guess.’