by Lucy Walker
‘Then stay here for keeps. What’s important about being rational if you like the place? Good-on the country if it gets you in. And what’s wrong with imagination? It’s an asset. There’s people out way back never seen a town in their lives. Don’t even want to …’
‘Oh, it has me in all right. And I’m not going to worry about being rational or not ‒ yet.’ Her laugh was the sound of angels’ wings again, but there was only Mr Richie ‒ not David Ashton ‒ to hear it. And be grateful for it.
Mr Lawson had come and gone. All the final papers had been signed, and Mardie was now in fact ‒ all the way to the last comma and dot ‒ the owner of The Breakaway. Mr and Mrs Richie had a home for life. In addition, the three of them ‒ James and Mabel Richie and Mardie Forrester ‒ held a three-part partnership in the store’s business and all its profits.
Mr Lawson had come ‒ apart from his legal duties ‒ to reassure himself that Mardie not only meant what she said about making her home here in the Never, but was happy and determined to make it work out financially. The expression on Mardie’s face, her ready smile, the look of good health about her, had put his mind at rest. Even the Richies seemed to have taken a new lease of life now there was a younger person to join their way of life.
Well, they do have someone to take care of them in their old age … when it comes, he had thought, mulling over the situation. On the other hand, some up-and-coming young fellow will brush in here one day and clap a wedding ring on Mardie’s finger. What then? She’s too pretty ‒ kind and gentle, yet basically strong-minded, to be passed over by every jackeroo round the station country. Someone’s bound to sweep her off her feet one day.
His thoughts broke off because when that word someone came into his mind, a picture of Mardie’s eyes following Jard Hunter as he had left The Breakaway the previous day had sprung up in place of thoughts. He shook his head.
Well, that would be a lost cause, he reflected. Jard Hunter is out of bounds for anyone unless it’s that possessive young woman geologist they have out at the Dig-in. She has brains and looks and an occasional predatory look in her eye. Joanna Seddon, they tell me, is her name. I must check up on her some day.
He had packed his briefcase with that last thought on the matter.
Mr Lawson was, amongst other legal activities, the solicitor for the Dig-in Company. This was a professional matter which he had kept to himself while at The Breakaway. Clients’ affairs were strictly confidential. He had been once only out to the camp but the head geologist, David Ashton, had seen him along with the Company’s manager from time to time in his city office. Next time they had a Company meeting he would mention that he would like to meet Joanna Seddon. There was more than one woman geologist working out in the field round Australia, he knew, but it would be interesting to meet one of them, specially someone near Mardie’s age. He felt she should have someone of her own generation to provide ‘young’ companionship.
‘Mr Lawson seems to know Jard Hunter all right,’ Mr Richie said later. ‘They shook hands the way people do when they know one another. But he didn’t say a word. Solicitors are very close people, aren’t they? I guess they have to be, looking after other people’s affairs the way they do.’
‘Jard Hunter went away again without saying goodbye,’ Mardie said, her chin up that little bit which showed she was in her strong-minded stance for the movement. ‘I think I shall decide not to like him. Everyone in the outback is friendly. They always stop at The Breakaway. It’s the law of the country to be friendly. Even if they only pretend ‒’
‘Well, I’m sorry, Mardie, but I guess you not liking him is not going to affect Jard Hunter one bit. He’s a “loner”. He has to be in a job like the one he has. That is, he’s a “loner” except for that girl out at the Dig-in. But then she’s professional, like he is. Same sort of job. Only he’s a different kind of geologist, they say. Some speciality or other. I forget the word. It’s so darn long. But it has something to do with water ‒ not nickel or copper or gold …’
‘Hydro-geologist,’ Mardie said promptly. ‘I saw something in the paper about hydro-geologists when the mining boom first started. The article said you can’t have mines without water. The geologists explore for rocks, then, if they find something important, they bring in the hydro-geologists to find water ‒ if any. They have a drilling rig just like the ones the geologists use for minerals or oil.’
‘That’s about it. I know when Jard Hunter came up this way first he was darn interested in The Breakaway because it sits on an underground lake, or something. Said he’d come back some time and map its extent. How deep under the ground ‒ or wide ‒ or something …’
‘Everyone’s interested in The Breakaway,’ Mardie said proudly. ‘As soon as they come over that rise along the bitumen and see the windmill and trees, then the garden, they say, “Good heavens! Out here! I don’t believe it!” ’
‘Jard Hunter believed it all right. He told me he knew about the big artesian wells under part of our outback when he did his studies to be a geologist.’
‘Hydro-geologist,’ Mardie corrected. ‘And not a very civil one, either. Do you suppose they taught him good manners when they taught him to be … well, what ever he really is?’
‘You’ve just said what he really is. A hydro-geologist.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. What a long word to have to remember.’ Mardie was thoughtful all over again. ‘I was thinking of something else he might be …’
She caught Mr Richie’s inquiring eye and laughed. ‘Just my imagination,’ she said. ‘It sometimes runs riot.’
‘You mean that girl, Miss Seddon, out at the Exploration Camp? Well, I’d be a bit guarded about attaching too much importance to that. These affairs come and go. But one never can tell. Every man, even a quiet one like Jard Hunter, has ’em, I guess. She’s one with a will of her own, I can tell you!’
Mardie’s chin lowered itself. A rather bleak look came into her eyes.
One’s will acts in funny ways, she thought. It sort of operates without one thinking about it first.
Mardie didn’t have to wait long to meet Joanna Seddon.
Several days later the big truck came in from the Dig-in. This time it was to load up a fortnight’s stores for the main camp.
High in the driver’s cabin, snug in the passenger’s seat, sat a handsome young woman.
Joanna Seddon wasn’t dusty, nor was she rigged out in tough workman-like khaki drills. She was downright pretty and wore the brightest cotton dress this side of the Gibson Desert.
‘Hallo!’ Joanna called gaily as she opened the cabin door. ‘You don’t mind my calling you Mardie, do you? I’ve heard them talking to you over the two-way from the Dig-in.’
‘Of course not.’ Mardie smiled a welcome as she hurried across the gravel driveway. ‘We were expecting the truck in from the Dig-in, so you have to be Joanna Seddon.’
‘None other.’ Joanna slipped down from the drop from the cabin as easily as a trained athlete. ‘Only one woman out there so if the truck’s coming in, plus a female, that’s me.’
She stood, taking Mardie in. She twirled a khaki cotton hat, almost identical with the one Jard Hunter wore, round and round her forefinger.
The hat doesn’t go with the dress, Mardie thought, then regretted that same thought. It wasn’t all that kind, but on the other hand Joanna was taking her in, and who knew whether the other girl’s thoughts were kind or otherwise? Her sun-tanned, attractive face was smiling in a way that Mardie felt rather than thought was more a smiling manner than something real from right inside her. But then they were strangers. They were two girls nicely somewhere under twenty-five ‒ the only ones in that age group for hundreds of miles around ‒ so they ought to be all but falling on one another’s shoulders. Yet there was a reticence. A funny sort of momentary silence.
‘Come on in!’ Mardie said quickly. ‘The sun is killing me, if not you. You won’t mind if I treat you as a visitor rather than a customer? It’s quite a
while since I’ve seen someone my own age, except for some of the roustabouts going through with the shearing teams.’
‘And a quaint lot they are,’ Joanna said. ‘Of course, I never ‒ but never ‒ treat myself as a customer unless I’m looking at a five-thousand-dollar emerald ‒ or some such. Thank you, I was just thinking of coming in myself.’
‘An emerald?’ Mardie asked, puzzled. They walked across the drive-in towards Mardie’s door. ‘I thought emeralds were only for the rich. We don’t stock any here at The Breakaway, I can promise you.’
Joanna laughed in a slightly condescending way. Mardie felt temporarily very inferior about such matters as to who was rich and who was not.
‘There is a mining boom on, you know,’ Joanna said. ‘Even the roustabouts get rich overnight provided they pick the right stock.’
‘And geologists too? I suppose they have what’s called “inside information”?’
‘Well, they find the stuff, you know. Nickel, copper, silver or whatever. Now, there’s this prospector at Cue who has found the second largest emerald in the world! I never see even a hint of sulphides that I don’t want to get down on my knees and kiss it ‒ let alone emeralds. That’s before we even find out the amount of mineralization ‒ if any.’
‘But how do the roustabouts know so quickly?’
They had reached the door and Mardie held the wire screen open for her guest to enter.
‘Roustabouts? Oh dear!’ Joanna laughed. ‘Well, even if they’re only baling-up the wool on the stations they still have two days a week ‒ Saturday and Sunday ‒ to snoop around. And snoop around is what they do.’ She flopped in the easy chair before Mardie had time to offer it. She examined the fingernails of her left hand. ‘Then there’s always the grapevine,’ she added. ‘We start drilling through the gossan at seven in the morning and by seven at night the two-ways to the stockbrokers in the city burn up the air. Sometimes spy-planes come overhead, flashing true or false news like moon rays all over.’
She looked up and gave Mardie a summing-up look. ‘You ought to get in on it like everyone else out here, Mardie. You might get rich, or you might get your fingers burned. But it’s good for the adrenalin while it lasts. Peps you up no end ‒ just to be in on it.’
That word ‘spy-plane’ had touched a prickly patch somewhere in Mardie.
‘Will you have a drink first, and tea later?’ she asked. ‘Or …’
‘Just tea, thank you. I’d love some. Your water here is a long way better than ours out at the Dig-in. We’ve a bore ‒ slightly saline. A limited amount of better stuff in plastic balloon tanks we import.’
Through the wire door Mr Richie could be seen taking the truck driver towards the store then probably through to the bar. It was a thirsty country and the store did a good business in any kind of cold drink ‒ be what it may.
Mardie had gone to a side table where she kept a hot water jug, a jar of instant tea, and a biscuit tin.
‘Mr Richie told me Mr Hunter was very interested in our water here,’ she said. ‘He’s a hydro-geologist, I understand?’ Her back was turned and her hands were busy with the tea things.
‘So you’ve met our Jard, have you?’ Joanna’s voice was very non-committal. Too much so. ‘I’ve always understood he’s not given to chatting by the wayside.’
‘He’s been in once or twice but I didn’t meet him till his last call. He came back to meet a visitor we had from the south.’
‘Who?’
Mardie turned round, surprised at the note in the other girl’s voice. Joanna was sitting in a sprawled yet somehow not ungraceful way in the chair. Her khaki-coloured cotton hat was twirling round on her forefinger again. Her head was fractionally lowered, but her eyes were bright and pinpointing like a laser beam directed straight across the room into Mardie’s eyes.
Chapter Four
There was a chilled silence.
‘Well,’ Mardie said at length, hesitating. ‘He was a personal friend of mine. I think they must have met before. I think he … well … just wanted to see him. I mean Mr Hunter just wanted …’
‘Call him Jard and be done with it, Mardie. Even the scrawniest prospectors who’ve never seen a town’s lights call him just that and nothing more. The “Mister Hunter” bit makes you sound a “townie” out here in the outback. Even the established station owners and their wives view the “townies” with disdain.’
‘Sorry. Mrs Richie warned me about that. When in the outback, look like it. And sound like it too, it seems.’
‘Wiser not to forget the customs of the country. It’s almost the same thing as legal if you want to get on with people.’
The water had reached boiling point and Mardie brought the jug to the table. Why, she wondered, had Joanna switched from questions about Jard Hunter and his meeting with Mr Lawson to giving advice about the customs of the country?
‘Milk?’ she asked. ‘Or do you like to pour your own?’
‘No milk, thank you. One learns to drink tea hot, black and strong, along with all the men out at the Dig-in. I’ve discovered it’s more thirst-quenching that way, too.’
The hint of tension in the air seemed to have evaporated. They were two girls back to being sociable. Friendly too, Mardie hoped, but she was still a little intimidated by Joanna’s air of authority.
‘I guess I’m scared of scientists,’ she said with a laugh as she passed the cup of tea, then the tin of biscuits, across the table to Joanna. ‘I’m afraid my expertise goes only as far as typing and a limited knowledge of book-keeping. What shall we talk about? It can’t possibly be the weather because it’s always the same …’
‘Yes, I know. Blistering hot. Drops forty degrees at night inland. But you get used to it, and I like it.’
‘You like working out there with an Exploration Company?’
‘Of course. Otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it. The few women geologists who have been produced by the universities have usually been condemned to an office job interpreting maps or recording assays and mining reports. Me? I’m all for Women’s Lib, you know.’
‘Me too. Well, only in a limited way. Some of it. But not all,’ said Mardie sipping her tea. ‘Specially about washing up three times a day, and scrubbing floors. All the same, I’d like to get married some day, which means I must like men. And I need my bras for sheer comfort’s sake so I’m not likely to burn them.’
‘Me too,’ Joanna said, sipping her tea. ‘About marrying, I mean. At least one man. I put up scare-off signs all round when I set my hat on any one in particular.’
Joanna’s words made Mardie think of Jard Hunter. She had no idea why. Maybe it was that curious look that had the killer instinct about it when Joanna had asked who Jard Hunter had come back to see at The Breakaway. Had it been something to do with grapevines and spy-planes? Or the possibility of another girl? Heavens! Her imagination must be running riot again. If so ‒ why?
‘How do you get on with all those men at the Dig-in?’ Mardie asked. ‘One woman and thirty men! However do you manage them?’
‘Easily. I do the managing. You see, they all like my cooking.’
Mardie threw back her head and laughed. ‘A scientist and a good cook all in one,’ she said. ‘I dips my lid, Joanna.’
‘Well you might. But it’s my way of life and I like it. Talking about clothes, where did you get that extra nice frock? Not put on for someone special who might drop in, by any chance?’
Mardie missed the point of that question because her own reaction to it was to think of Mr Lawson.
‘I was busy admiring your dress,’ she said innocently. ‘It’s a charmer.’
Joanna sipped more hot tea.
‘Oh, that was to impress the truck driver,’ she said over the rim of the cup. ‘He’s like your Mr Richie. He likes a woman to look womanly when driving with him.’ She imitated the driver’s voice: “Can’t stand women all got up like they’re men. Trousers! ’S all wrong …” ’
Mardie laughed. ‘Mr Richi
e doesn’t put it that way. He says ‒ at regular intervals: “Isn’t it nice to see a young girl in a pretty dress, Mum? Good thing you never took to wearing those trousers or those shorts!” ’
‘He’s not with it,’ Joanna said briefly. ‘It’s hot pants now. Anyway, imagine Mrs Richie’s figure in shorts ‒ let alone hot pants.’
‘For heaven’s sake, you don’t wear them out at the Dig-in, do you?’
‘I would if I wanted to but the sunshine’s all wrong. I’d have the skin blistered off me in five minutes. No. I wear shorts and shirt when I’m working. The same khaki drill as the men wear. Slacks when the day’s job is over.’
‘And the real working hat!’ Mardie added, looking at the brown cotton flopper now in pride of place at the end of the table.
‘Oh well …’ Joanna was nonchalant again. ‘We all wear them. The pastoralists wear the broad-brimmed sundowners. It’s a sort of trade mark. The customs of the country again.’
‘And the mining men wear the khaki floppers!’ Mardie started to laugh. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it? It’s the women who’re supposed to be fussy about wearing the right thing. Yet it’s the men who go into professional “uniform” ‒ if we can call it that. A mining man, I suppose, would drop dead before he wore a pastoralist’s hat, and vice versa.’
‘How right you are! That was good tea, Mardie. May I have another cup? And while you’re pouring it, how about answering my question? Who did Jard Hunter come to The Breakaway to see?’
The mood had suddenly changed. There was that note of command again in Joanna’s voice.
Mardie had her back turned while she set the hot water jug to boil again. She was trying to think quickly. Was there any reason why she shouldn’t tell Joanna that Jard Hunter had come back to see Mr Lawson? Probably because Mr Lawson was a solicitor? Why was there any mystery in the situation? All that talk about spy-planes and, later, about Mr Lawson being a legal man. What had the spies ‒ with or without planes ‒ to do with Jard Hunter anyway … except what she was dreaming up herself? Oh, if he only came and went the normal way instead of like a wraith! Then vanishing to talk on a closed circuit to a plane’s pilot way up in the sky. The plane that had brought Mr Lawson in had not been the usual service plane either! Whatever went on was not her business. Was it Joanna’s?