by Lucy Walker
‘Tony! Answer me at once. How did you get here?’
‘I walked, sir!’
‘You walked! Twenty miles! How? Across the paddocks by the look of things. Clear out of here, do you hear me? And when I’ve finished I’ll come outside and give you the kind of thrashing that will keep you walking for six months.’
Tony slid off the chair and stood up. He did not appear to be afraid of Oliver Reddin but Carey fairly quailed at the anger in his voice.
Tony glanced sideways at Carey. He looked very odd standing there by the tall man, quite unafraid of the storm that was thundering over his head. Then he looked up at Mr. Reddin.
‘Is she another orphan, too?’ he asked.
‘Certainly not.’ He stopped short on the words and suddenly looked at Carey intently. The anger seemed to drop from him quietly, like thunder fading away beyond a tall mountain. ‘At least, not exactly,’ he amended. He turned away towards Carey’s uncle. ‘You see what I mean?’ he said in exasperation. ‘I’ve enough trouble with that one on my hands …’ With a nod of his head he indicated Tony.
There was a tap at the door and the housemaid came in.
‘Excuse me, Mr. Oliver …’ she began, and then saw Tony. ‘Oh, there you are!’ She looked back at Oliver Reddin. ‘Cook told me she saw him sidling in by the west veranda. Then I found the mess in the bathroom. Sir … please … what are we to do with him?’
‘Take him out and drown him,’ Oliver Reddin said with exasperation. Then as he went back to the desk, he added, ‘For heaven’s sake clean him up and feed him first.’
He sat down and ran his fingers through his hair.
‘Look, Mr. Fraser …’ his voice came across the room to Carey, ‘that farm is valuable land. I’ve watched it running down and the bracken and blackberry and paspalum creeping back on the road paddocks. The out-paddock is almost back to bush again. If I sell it for your niece now she’ll get one-tenth its value. If I hold it someone has got to put it to rights for her. I’m a busy man …’
He looked across the room at Carey again. There was a long silence and Carey once again looked down at her hands in her lap.
‘Legally,’ Oliver Reddin went on, ‘I can sell it, wind up the estate and be shot of the whole business. But as executor I’m honour bound to make the best deal for her. That means jacking up that farm. It’s next door to me. It can be done. I’m asking myself how much trouble and expense it is going to be, and you tell me she hasn’t got a home. Meantime you’re in there at the Junee Hotel running up God knows what kind of an expense account.’
He looked at Uncle Tam.
‘You can’t be such a heck of an outback man as not to know you and that girl are in one big fix, and as executor I’m likely to find myself responsible.’
Carey turned her head and looked out the window and then back at her hands.
Did Uncle Tam really mean he wouldn’t give her a home any more? Or was he playing one of those cunning tricks that always got him into so much trouble at home?
‘Mr. Reddin …’ she said in her quiet gentle voice. ‘I could get myself a home …’
‘How?’ he shot across the room.
‘Well, I can cook, and make beds, and things. I could get a job on a farm somewhere. A sort of maid …’
‘Yes,’ said Uncle Tam heavily and sorrowfully. ‘I guess you could do that, Carey girl. And it might come to that. It will be mighty hard for someone as gently reared as you … And all your good clothes … You’d have to buy some plain cotton things, and hard-wearing shoes. And learn to do your hair straight without the hairdresser and the manicure person, and all those silk underclothes and things you’ve been used to. But I guess if it comes to that you could measure up like all the Frasers. Oliver here might be able to find you a job …’
Oliver Reddin’s fingers went through his hair again.
Now Carey knew that Uncle Tam was playing tricks. She knew for certain why he had taken her to Myers’s to have her hair cut and dressed, and her hands done, and all the pretty clothes bought for her.
She couldn’t give him away, of course, but apart from that she knew he meant that about not giving her a home any more. He wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble if he hadn’t meant to try and unload her on Oliver Reddin, her executor.
Before they had come to Two Creeks he had explained that years ago when her own father had lived on his farm down here in Western Victoria he had taught the young boy Oliver Reddin all he knew about dairy cattle and thoroughbred horses. Oliver Reddin, the boy, had followed Reg Fraser about like a shadow and from him had learned to tell a champion from a near champion.
Reg Fraser must have figured it out that Oliver Reddin owed him something, and that Uncle Tam was too old to act as trustee for a young girl with nothing in the world but a lot of love from the people around her in the outback town, and a one-time beautiful farm that had been too long neglected.
That’s why he had made Oliver Reddin executor, and not Uncle Tam.
‘I could manage somehow …’ she said slowly, looking down at her hands again because she was ashamed for Uncle Tam and did not want this tall angry handsome man to see it: or to feel she wanted anything from him at all.
‘Don’t talk rot,’ Oliver Reddin said shortly.
There was another long silence in the room. Then Oliver Reddin stood up and came round the desk again.
‘Look, Miss Fraser,’ he said. Then amended it to ‘Carey.’
‘Look, Carey,’ he said in a quiet exasperated voice. ‘You go down and join Tony in afternoon tea while I talk to your uncle.’ He went to the door and held it open for her. ‘Go down that long passage across the hall and follow the smell of new-made ginger scones. If I know those two women in the kitchen they’ll have the biggest oven going to give Tony just what the little wretch likes best. I’ll talk to your uncle …’
‘Thank you,’ Carey said as she went through the door. She stole a fleeting glance at Oliver Reddin, meaning to make it one full of pride and independence, but somehow the cold look in his eyes intimidated her. She was through the door and it was closed behind her before she could muster up her courage to attempt to return it.
As the door closed, her pride did come to her assistance. Somehow its closing did something to her. It was like putting her out in the cold, along with Tony. It was like telling her she wasn’t wanted, the way he had made it quite clear he hadn’t wanted Tony.
‘I’ll never forgive you for that, Mr. Oliver Reddin,’ she said to the closed door. ‘But meantime I’ll have some ginger scones just because I happen to like them, too. Then I’ll go away and never darken your doorstep again.’
This sombre phrase about darkening doorsteps gave her the right kind of courage and she went down the passage in pursuit of the scent of baking ginger with a firm step.
Inside the study Oliver Reddin was back in his chair behind the desk. He lit a cigarette. Uncle Tam comfortably packed himself a pipeful of tobacco.
‘I kinda worked it out,’ Uncle Tam said. ‘What with this big homestead here, or maybe that Melbourne house with your mother and sister there to look after Carey, you could give her a home for a while. So as she could get some culture, and all that sort of thing.’
‘Mr. Fraser,’ Oliver Reddin said, choosing his words slowly as if to make each one ring with worth for the purpose of reaching this old outback farmer’s understanding, ‘if I presented my mother and sister with an eighteen-year-old girl they would think I had either gone mad or that I was thinking of marrying her.’
‘Well, a darned good idea that would be,’ Tam Fraser said affably. Then as if his very words had been sparkled with splendid ideas he looked up from the process of lighting his pipe, took his pipe out of his mouth and added, ‘What with her farm next to yours, and you having to do all the business of seeing it gets put in order, it would be the very answer to the problem.’
Oliver Reddin looked at Tam Fraser as if he had suddenly been presented with a boa constrictor.
His voice was heavy with sarcasm, but Uncle Tam did not elect to hear this.
‘Often. Often,’ he said. ‘Now take Carey. She’s as pretty a girl as ever you saw. Docile, too. Gets on with people.’ He drew on his pipe. He took it out of his mouth and pointed the stem at Oliver Reddin. ‘She’d even get on with you.’
‘Thank you.’
Tam Fraser still neglected the irony in Oliver Reddin’s thanks.
‘You’d be surprised,’ Uncle Tam said cheerfully. ‘She never lets anyone’s temper get her rattled. Calm as a billabong in high summer is Carey. She’s good round the house, too. Fond of children …’
‘Mr. Fraser!’ Oliver Reddin’s voice was hard. ‘I am not looking for a wife. I am concerned only with carrying out my duties as executor and seeing the girl has some kind of start in life. If you don’t provide her with a home I suppose I’ve got to find her one. Meantime …’
‘Yes, meantime,’ said Tam Fraser. ‘Meantime can I leave her here with you for a day or two? I’ve got to go up the country right away and the hotel in Melbourne’s no place to leave a young girl …’
‘Specially when you haven’t funds to pay your account there. Why can’t you take Carey up the country with you?’
‘Because I’m letting my place this very week and going to live in the Wybong pub myself. As you said … no place for a girl. Anyhow I can’t pay for us both. Haven’t enough money.’
‘Why can’t you let Carey look after you on the farm?’
‘Like this farm her father’s left her, it’s gone to wrack and ruin,’ said Tam Fraser cheerfully. ‘I’ve had my day. Now I’m going to live in the hotel where someone’ll get my meals and look after me, and no bothering about a young girl that’s bred up too gentle and ladylike to rough it in a country hotel.’
‘You’ve got an answer to everything, haven’t you, Mr. Fraser?’
‘Except where Carey’s to sleep from now on. You’re the one to answer that one, Oliver. You’re the executor, not me.’
‘You’re a black-hearted old devil, Mr. Fraser,’ Oliver said. ‘To be frank with you I don’t think you’re fit to have Carey in your charge.’
Tam Fraser nearly smiled but he quickly blew clouds of smoke from his mouth to hide that weakness.
‘That’s what they say up the country,’ he said sadly. ‘No place for a girl, living alone with old Tam Fraser.’
There was another long silence.
‘All right,’ Oliver Reddin said at length. ‘I’ll think it over.’ He looked sharply at the bent old man sitting at the side of his desk. ‘But don’t make any mistake about it. I’m not sending her to the Melbourne house to my mother. That sort of thing might have been done by bachelor trustees or guardians in the Victorian age but it’s not done now. The position would be regarded as ridiculous. She’ll have to stay here.’
Tam Fraser looked pained.
‘You mean stay here? With only a couple of maids to chaperon? Carey’s eighteen, I’ll remind you. She’s a young lady, not a young girl.’
‘I’ll be driven to getting a housekeeper, I suppose,’ Oliver Reddin said bitterly. ‘I don’t know what sort of a crazy place this is going to be. What with Tony … and now Carey.’
‘Oh yes, and by the way,’ said Tam Fraser with his voice full of meaning and his manner becoming an odd mixture of rectitude and solemn doubt. ‘Just who is this boy? This Tony?’
‘He happens to be the son of my horse-breaker. His father was killed two months ago breaking in one horse too many. His mother died some years ago.’
‘And you’re giving him a home? Well, I call that mighty fine of you …’
‘I’m doing nothing of the kind. I’ve tried him in several private homes and latterly in a good school for orphaned children. He’s run away from the lot of them.’
‘And always come back here?’
‘And always come back here.’
‘Hmm,’ said Uncle Tam thoughtfully. ‘What you intend to make of him? A horse-breaker like his father?’
‘That’s what the boy thinks. But I’ve no one here to look after him properly. See he gets his schooling …’
‘Ah,’ said Tam Fraser, pointing the stem of his pipe again at Oliver Reddin. ‘That’s where Carey comes in. See it? Someone to look after Tony.’
‘In a bachelor establishment?’ said Oliver Reddin with his eyebrows raised and his eyes cold. ‘You think of everything, don’t you, Mr. Fraser?’
‘Not me,’ said the old man, shaking his head and smiling guilelessly. ‘It was my brother Reg who thought of everything. He made you executor … not me.’
Oliver Reddin stood up.
‘I’ll see that you get some tea, Mr. Fraser, and then order the car in ten minutes. It will take you and Carey to the train. I’ll make arrangements to have her brought out here later to-morrow afternoon. The sooner you’re both out of that hotel the better.’ He looked closely at Tam Fraser. ‘I’ll pay that hotel bill out of Carey’s estate … up until five o’clock to-morrow afternoon. Understand me?’
‘I understand all right. Oh, and by the way. Carey’s run up something of an account at Myers’s … you’d better look into that.’
‘An account? What sort of an account?’
‘Clothes and things. You know what girls are. And she was brought up well-dressed and gentle like. Her father gave her everything. She wouldn’t know how to go without those things, Oliver.’
‘She’ll learn,’ Oliver said grimly as he went to the door.
Carey would have warned him not to leave Uncle Tam alone too long. He would be up to something!
In the breakfast-room just off the kitchen Carey and Tony were sitting at the table eating ginger scones and sipping tea from large half-pint cups.
‘Yeah,’ Tony was saying with his mouth half full. ‘He keeps sending me away but I keep coming home.’
‘Don’t you want to go to school?’
‘No. Specially not an orphans’ school. I want to be home.’
‘Don’t you mind if Mr. Reddin gets angry with you?’
‘No,’ Tony said, swallowing hard and taking another scone. ‘I’m okay when I’m home … but he keeps sending me away.’
‘But you can’t get on in life unless you go to school.’
‘My father never went to school. He never read a book. But he was the best horse-breaker in the country.’
Carey nearly said, ‘But you want to be something more than that,’ but she bit back the words in time, remembering that Tony would think that an insult against his dead father.
‘If you stayed here it would be okay,’ Tony said unexpectedly, looking at her over the edge of the big cup which he had now lifted with both hands. ‘I like you.’
Carey smiled, showing her deep dimple in one cheek and her white teeth between her red lips. She had pulled off her hat and it now lay on a chair by the wall. The sun was filtering in through the window and it brought out red and gold lights in her hair. Her blue eyes looked with understanding at the scrappy self-contained little boy.
‘I like you too,’ she said.
They had been there half an hour when a shadow fell across the doorway and they both looked up. Oliver Reddin was standing there.
He looked first at the boy, then at Carey. He looked back again at Tony.
‘Well?’ he said severely. ‘What am I going to do with you?’
‘I can sleep down at the quarters with the other stablemen,’ said Tony complacently. ‘And I ain’t going back to any school. Or to Mrs. Potts’s or Mrs. Sewell’s. I’m going to run away and come home wherever you send me.’
‘You can’t possibly send him away,’ Carey said impetuously. ‘You haven’t been an orphan, Mr. Reddin. You couldn’t know …’ She stopped short. His eyes had met hers and were looking deep into them as if reading and diagnosing and dispensing.
‘I’m sorry,’ she faltered. ‘I suppose it is not my bus
iness.’
He did not answer her but turned again to Tony.
‘You can sleep to-night in the spare room by the big storeroom. I’ll see what I’ll do about you to-morrow. Miss Fraser … Carey … you’d better ask Hannah to fix a room for you in the long hall.’
Carey started up.
‘A room for me?’ she said. ‘But I’m going back with Uncle Tam.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Oliver Reddin said dryly. ‘I told him the car would be ready in ten minutes. However, your Uncle Tam thought otherwise. He’s just gone down the drive and across the home paddock … taking a short cut to the main road. He didn’t show any sign of waiting for you.’
‘You mean … he went without me? You mean he’s gone? And left me behind?’
‘I mean exactly that. He’s walked out on you, I’m afraid.’
Carey sat down again. Her blue eyes went dark with the shock of Oliver Reddin’s words.
‘But he wouldn’t do that to me?’
‘I’m afraid he has done that to you.’
Carey’s eyes clung without understanding to Oliver’s eyes. His showed no signs of relenting. One orphan left on his hands had been trouble enough. Now he had two.
Something was tugging at Carey’s arm. After what seemed a long time she turned her head and looked down at it. It was Tony’s hand.
‘That’s all right,’ Tony said. ‘That’s always happening to me. Mr. Oliver taking me to some person’s house, or a school or something. Then just walking out on me. You’ll be all right here though. It’s better than a school, or Mrs. Potts’s or Mrs. Sewell’s. There’s horses, and lots of cattle and some sheep. And there’s fish in the creek when the waters come down from the mountains …’
His voice went on and on. Unconsciously Carey had put her hand on top of Tony’s hand and held it there pressed against the flesh of her own young arm.
In a dazed kind of way she looked back at Mr. Oliver Reddin standing silent in the doorway.
‘As Tony said … you’ll be all right,’ Oliver said. ‘Only keep out of my way till I can think what to do with the pair of you.’
He turned and went away. Carey could hear his footsteps going quickly and purposefully down the long passage.