by Lucy Walker
As she lifted the small dog out of the utility she had one further thought: Well! He ought to be here. Those trees mean underground water, and he’s interested in water.
She turned with her bundle and saw a small speck high in the sky coming over a distant, thick, bushy area near the mesa mountains. She stood still, the dog in her arms like a cradled baby, and watched that speck grow larger, then become a clacking sound and finally turn out to be a small helicopter.
Perhaps it’s him …
It was, but Mardie was not sure of that until after the helicopter landed and the tall slim man ‒ cotton flopper still shading his face ‒ came in his slow but steady tread towards the Vet’s plane. He, too, was carrying a small brown animal in his arms, its head peering out from a sugar bag.
No one greeted him. Mardie wondered if it was because no one but herself knew who he was.
Then a man did speak up. ‘For crying out loud!’ he said in shocked tones. ‘He’s carrying a ruddy dingo pup.’
‘He’d better keep it in that sugar bag and sit on it before someone ups and shoots it,’ another man said. ‘They’re killers, those things. I’d like to see him let that one loose in my sheep pen. I’d be reaching for my gun. Darn quick at that!’
‘But you can train them in a way.’
‘I’ll believe that when I see it.’
They’d all said ‘hallo’ to Mardie and she had smiled back. Now she spoke for the first time.
‘Perhaps he intends to try. To train it, I mean. It is worth trying, isn’t it? It’s a lovely looking pup.’
‘So is the enemy’s eye in the sights of a bren gun,’ the first speaker said caustically. Obviously he did not like dingoes ‒ the wild dog of Australia.
Jard Hunter gave no sign that he knew either he or his bundle were matters of interest. He sat down under the shade of the plane’s wing and held the sugar bag, pup laden, in his arms. His eyes moved round the waiting group. One or two of the women essayed a tentative smile of welcome but his own mouth barely moved. Then he saw Mardie on the far side of the circle.
‘Hallo,’ she said brightly, making the best of her best smile.
He half-lifted his hat, smiled, but said nothing.
Was he shy? Or just plain unfriendly? she wondered. Well, she would put it to the test.
She stood up, walked round behind the group, and sat down beside him. ‘Remember me? I’m Mardie Forrester from The Breakaway.’
‘Yes. I remember you, Miss Forrester. We have something in common. We share a city solicitor, I believe.’
‘Mr Lawson. Actually he was my godfather’s solicitor, and still looks after the estate.’
He really smiled this time. It did something to Mardie’s heart, but she wanted to feel annoyed about that. And couldn’t.
She turned away and looked at the helicopter sitting on the ground like some large, extraordinary, top-heavy spider.
‘I’ve never been in a helicopter,’ she said. She had to say something to get rid of that strange feeling she had.
That thing called ‘falling in love’? Oh, please not!
Her father and his new wife. She had had to run away from it because it was something they had to pretend to hide. They had feared she wouldn’t understand. Or might resent, because she had lost her own mother. She had to give them a chance all on account of this thing called love.
Other people had it. But not herself.
She had had her boy-friends … the same as other girls. That was before her mother became ill. A little flirtation here and a little flirtation there. But her heart had not turned over. Sometimes in the loneliness of a lonely night she had wondered. What was it really like? Would it ever come her way? Would she miss out?
Now, here on the edge of a sheep station which was a million acres because it was so near semi-desert it took a whole acre to feed one sheep, her heart had turned, well … not quite over, but nearly. This, because of a man with a touch of mystery about his work and a veil of reserve, perhaps even mystery too, about his manner. Someone to whom she had spoken but once before. How silly could she get?
‘A helicopter …’ she said once again, vaguely. ‘Last time it was a utility.’
‘Next time it could be an aeroplane. I can manage all three …’ His smile was still there and he was watching Mardie’s face as if he, too, wondered a little about her.
But he belonged to Joanna, didn’t he? Or did he?
‘Do you ever take girl passengers?’ she asked, still not looking at him. ‘I mean people like Joanna Seddon from out at the Dig-in?’
‘Oh yes. She can all but fly it herself, except she hasn’t yet got her licence. I’ve been teaching her.’
This time she did look at him.
‘But you are at the out-camp. I suppose with a helicopter and a Company aeroplane you can jump across to see anyone you like whenever you want to.’
‘Well, it’s not as easy as that. One has other things to do.’
‘Other things to do?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And not always to do with water.’
Mardie looked down at Digger and patted his head.
Not always to do with water could mean a lot to do with ‘courting’. That would take time too.
‘What’s wrong with your dog?’ he asked her. ‘He’s a newcomer to The Breakaway, isn’t he?’
‘Yes. Mister Falldown ‒ the bush hermit ‒ brought him in a week ago. He thinks the poor little thing must have fallen off a truck and been left behind. We’re not sure whether his leg is broken or not. It’s painful and it creaks when we’ve tried to examine it. Your patient is a dingo pup, isn’t it? Aren’t dingoes dreaded in sheep country?’
‘Some say yes. The conservationists say no. He has one thing in common with your dog. Mister Falldown had him in his camp. He’s had a foot caught in a trap.’
‘Mister Falldown?’ Mardie was surprised. ‘Why, that’s one friend we have in common. He loves animals, wild or tame, doesn’t he?’
‘Yes. He lives with them. You name the animal ‒ he has it. Not least a herd of self-reared goats, a wild donkey, and ‒ believe this one or not ‒ a baby camel, likewise rescued injured out in the scrub south of the mesas.’
‘He must have a positive zoo out there in the bush.’
‘That place he lives in, Miss Forrester, has to be seen to be believed. For all he can speak his variety of English when he wants to, he mostly speaks the language of the animals or that of his own people. He’s a descendant partly from the aborigines and partly from the old Afghan camel-drivers of the early days.’
‘We call this doggie “Digger”. When Mister brought him in he ‒ Mister Falldown ‒ didn’t seem to be able to speak English at all. Mrs Richie said it was because he hadn’t been in touch for ages, and sometimes he forgets how.’
Jard Hunter nodded his head. ‘Same with me when I dropped down the other day. By the time I left, his English was coming back good and strong. It all depends on his mood.’
‘Dropped down? You mean in the helicopter?’
‘Yes. I was above that way and dropped down to see if the old codger was all right. That’s when he gave me this pup to bring to the Vet.’
‘The police ask The Breakaway about him over the air,’ Mardie said. ‘I don’t suppose Mister Falldown knows, but it’s really for his own good. If he doesn’t come in for his stores they’d know he was ill … or that something had happened to him.’
Jard Hunter pulled his hat down, shadowing his face again as he looked out over the low scrub bush and mulga plains into the miles and miles of the Never country.
‘He’d know they put a call out about him, Mardie,’ he said slowly, his drawl much more pronounced. ‘You don’t mind me calling you Mardie?’
‘Oh no! Everyone, even the truckies, call me by my given name.’
‘Old Mister probably knows more about everything, in his own fashion, than all the rest of us put together,’ Jard went on after a small, thoughtful kind of silence.
/> ‘About helicopters, for instance?’
‘Certainly. If I’m heading that way he knows hours before I know myself that I’m going to land and see how he and his menagerie are getting on.’
Mardie laughed. ‘I almost believe you,’ she said.
Jard looked at her. ‘You’d better,’ he said quite seriously. ‘Nobody this side of heaven knows how Mister Falldown knows. He just does.’
Mardie shook her head as if in wonder. She had heard about people like old Mister Falldown ‒ lost memory and all ‒ but it was hard to understand, let alone accept that a lone bushman who had never been to school, never seen civilization other than a stop-over like The Breakaway, should know so much. He’d learned bush lore from his forbears, she supposed.
‘I went to school,’ she said, after quite a silence. ‘And afterwards I learned book-keeping and typing, yet I don’t know anything about a helicopter except what I see sitting over there.’
Jard glanced at her again. The slow smile touched his face unexpectedly, giving it an almost gentle look. It stirred Mardie’s heart again. She didn’t know whether it was with pain or delight. Oh, why did he have this effect on her? Actually she wanted not to like him. Or didn’t she?
‘Would you like to try one from the inside?’ he asked, more curious, she thought, to see her reaction than really meaning it.
Her face lit up. ‘Oh yes. Please! Would you? I mean, would you really take me up?’
‘Certainly. That is, after the Vet has attended to our invalids. Would you like a run over the Dig-in, to see it from a heavenly angle?’
‘I’d love that. I’ve wanted to see it ever so badly. Ever since …’
His eyebrows were raised. ‘Ever since what?’
‘Since Joanna Seddon came in with the truck to The Breakaway. She told me a little about it.’
‘Ah, Joanna!’ he said, and looked away into the distance as if his thoughts had gone elsewhere. He was no longer with her. His face had that shadowed, tidied-away look again.
Joanna means a lot to him, Mardie thought, as she bent her head and patted the small dog on her lap.
The Vet’s assistant was beckoning to her.
‘Excuse me,’ Mardie said. ‘I think it must be my turn.’
He half stood as she left him. Just politeness, she admitted. She feared he wasn’t really noticing that she was leaving his side.
‘The dog’s name and address, please,’ the girl said professionally, getting ready to fill in a card. The card was just the same as a nurse uses in a doctor’s surgery, and there was a file standing waiting on the small camp table beside her. Presently the card would be neatly packed into it, just as for human patients in a hospital.
‘His name’s Digger.’
‘Oh really …’ the receptionist said, pulling in the corners of her mouth. ‘We have too many “Diggers”.’ She looked Mardie straight in the eyes as if to reprimand her. ‘This is one of Mister Falldown’s rescues, isn’t it? Actually that man needs a Vet to himself. Couldn’t you please give the dog another name?’
‘Well,’ Mardie said. ‘If I must. Um … let me think. “Mister-Digger”. Yes, I’ll call him that. If they call the runners out at the Dig-in Diggers there wouldn’t be one of them with a double-barrelled name, would there. It’s sort of aristocratic.’
The girl looked up quickly. ‘You mean the Exploration Company? Oh, you know them out there, do you?’ She began busily filling in the card. ‘What are they finding out there now, do you suppose? So interesting …’
‘I don’t know,’ Mardie said. ‘I haven’t asked. I thought it wasn’t done … to ask. That is …’
The girl gave a wry smile. ‘Well, if you haven’t asked you’re the only one this side of the black stump so incurious. All the same, if you do hear anything, you will let us know, won’t you?’
‘His … I mean the dog’s address is The Breakaway,’ Mardie said.
‘Oh dear. I wish you’d said so at first. Now I’m making a mess of this card. I’d better do another.’
Mardie stood in silence while the rest of the formalities took place. She watched as the new card was ceremoniously filled in.
Name: Mister-Digger.
Address: The Breakaway.
Owner: Mister Falldown.
Owner’s address: Somewhere in the bush.
Complaint: Suspected broken right hind leg.
‘That will do for the moment,’ the girl said briefly. ‘Now if you would sit down with the patient on the other side of that lady with the white cat, over there. It will be your turn after her.’
‘Thank you.’ Mardie spoke so meekly she didn’t recognize herself. It was exactly like registering in the Out-Patients at a city hospital. The ‘nurse’ ‒ if that was what the assistant was called ‒ was almost as impersonal and nearly as formidable as some officials in a hospital could be.
Mardie regretted having to sit by the woman with the white cat but only because she could not go back and sit by Jard Hunter. He might forget he had said he would take her up in the helicopter. He just could be the absent-minded kind from that quiet, faraway expression that seemed to spend most of its time shadowing his face.
Her regrets were later dispelled. The little group in which she found herself was suddenly and quite wonderfully in a world of its own. The conversation was full of chat and gossip. All kindly. Some of it laughter-making. It’s a wonderful thing to hear laughter, Mardie thought wistfully. And that led her to thinking of David Ashton, and his jokes over the air.
Each person sitting there related to the others the story of his or her animal. It was a good mouser, this one. It was kept in the storeroom. ‘And let any other cat dare stick its nose in her preserves!’ This one’s dog never barked, never bit, but it never let anyone or anything pass it either. ‘It has such a ferocious look, see. That’s why. But it’s as harmless as a baby. That lady over there, see? She can’t sit here with her cat ‒ not because any of these dogs take any notice. They’re used to cats. But that cat doesn’t like dogs … What a cheek! The silly striped hyena ‒ not to like dogs! A tabby. Has to sit apart as if it’s queen pin, or something.
‘And see that bloke with the sheep? You wouldn’t believe it but he runs thirty thousand sheep on his station, but that one has to be brought in to the Vet. It was reared as a pet lamb, that’s why. Even when it runs with the mob it always lags behind the others and remembers the boss. It gets wind-grass clogging up its knees, like most of the others at this time of the year. But it’s the one that has to be brought in to the Vet. Not the other twenty-nine and some thousand. That feller over there past the aeroplane ‒ he’s a horse-breaker. Cruel hard those horse-breakers can be sometimes, but let his own nag get a stake through its leg and boy, is he in a state! He’s in here to see the Vet like it’s the only animal in the world that counts.’
Mardie found it enthralling.
They talked of their animals much more than any row of worried mothers talked about their babies in a doctor’s waiting-room. With much more energy too. Everyone had a story to tell about his or her animal.
Before Mardie knew what she was doing, she, too, was telling them about her own protégé ‒ where it came from, what she feared was wrong with it, and what a darling little pet it was.
‘Ought to be shot ‒ those truck drivers,’ one man said. ‘The way they boom down that bitumen at top speed with a dog sitting out on the tailboard. Don’t know why the RSPCA doesn’t do something about it. One of these days I’ll write a letter to the paper about them.’
Each and all nodded heads and agreed.
‘It’s a good job Mister Falldown found the poor little fellow,’ the woman with the white cat confided to Mardie. ‘We all know about him ‒ meaning Mister Falldown. Quite a character in the district, he is. Miles out there in the bush on his own. Not that I’ve ever seen him myself. But we all know about him. One day every month the police come over the transceiver asking news of him. If any of the stockmen have seen him they report i
n. Just to tell he’s all right and not sick or dying, or something.’
Mardie nodded. She was brought right in by this serious conversation, and was one of them.
‘Yes, I know,’ she said. ‘They call The Breakaway because he comes in for stores, and they want to know if he’s been in at his usual time. They really care about him, don’t they?’
‘Oh-h-h! You’re the new girl at The Breakaway? We’ve all heard about you. You’re going to put up some motel-type sleep-overs they say. You look too young to be taking on something big like that.’
‘Perhaps I’m older than I look,’ Mardie said wryly.
‘Aren’t you lonely along there just with the Richies?’
‘No. I was lonely before I came. Now I have The Breakaway. And the Richies.’
‘And your doggie, of course. What did you say you’ve called him?’
‘Mister-Digger, hyphenated. That is … since ten minutes ago. The Vet’s assistant wouldn’t let me call him just Digger. But I’ll leave off the “Mister” when I get home.’
There was a general laugh all round.
‘Should think not ‒’ one man said firmly, but quite kindly. ‘There’s everything under the sun from emus, kangaroos to dingoes called something after that old bushwhacker. All because the old bushy won’t bring them in himself. Always finds someone else to do the job. The girl over there must have given up arguing with you if she let you leave the “Mister” in along with “Digger”.’
Mardie nodded her head in the plane’s direction where Jard Hunter was sitting under its wing-shade.
‘Jard Hunter sitting over there has brought the dingo pup in for Mister Falldown,’ she said.
Chapter Six
To her surprise a sudden silence fell on the group.
‘Hm …’ someone said at length. ‘So that’s Jard Hunter, is it? I’ve been wondering. Keeps to himself, doesn’t he? We’ve heard about him.’
‘Oh no. Not really ‒’ Mardie found herself leaping to Jard Hunter’s defence. ‘He’s really very nice. He’s come to The Breakaway several times. I think you have to get to know him. It’s just that he’s the strong silent kind, I think.’