by Lucy Walker
She mightn’t be as quiet and malleable as he had first thought. She had some spirit. Well, that would be all to the good if Millicent tried to run her the way she persistently interfered and tried to run Two Creeks, its staff and even Oliver himself. A little spirit could be an asset.
On the other hand that habit of looking down while her head was high was an attractive sight. It was a pity it was old-fashioned because if she persisted in it, it might be thought by his family, and their more sophisticated friends, to be an affectation. Yes. He would have to break her of that. And those heavy flat-heeled shoes.
She could be made into a very, very pretty girl. A beaut in fact.
Through the window Oliver watched Tony running across the bottom of the garden.
‘That boy needs schooling,’ he said unexpectedly.
‘You mean Tony?’ Carey asked. ‘But he’s very homesick away from Two Creeks.’
Oliver turned towards her. He did not sit down. He seemed to look down at her under lowered eyelids.
‘If you married me would you be prepared to see that Tony goes to school regularly and learns to dress himself decently, and behave like a little gentleman?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Carey said eagerly, not thinking about marrying Oliver but about looking after Tony. ‘He’s a clever little boy, isn’t he?’
Oliver nodded his head.
‘Clever as they come,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to see him waste his life as an illiterate roustabout on Two Creeks. His father was a fine man and first class with horses. But Tony is something more …’
‘But he won’t go away to school, will he?’ said Carey.
‘The little reptile has got me beaten on that one. Wherever I send him he finds his way home.’
‘That’s why,’ said Carey. ‘It’s home.’
Talking about Tony, the difference and antagonism between them had fallen away. Carey was just a gentle soft-hearted girl talking to a hard-hearted man about an orphan boy who had as many brains as he had qualities of spirit.
Oliver sat down again and leaned forward towards Carey.
‘Could you run this homestead and keep Millicent at bay?’
Carey put her head on the side and thought. She was thinking about whether she could manage Millicent and not about marrying Oliver or running the homestead. When she came to think of it she had managed her father, who was very sick and very difficult. And she had managed Uncle Tam, who was a naughty tricky old man, always getting himself into difficulties with the people at Wybong. She had even managed some of those stockmen when they had come over to Uncle Tam’s veranda to sleep off the last of their leave. She had looked after their horses, had mended their clothes and even cut their hair.
Yes, if she could manage all those people, and she was only five feet two and a half inches in her bare feet, she could manage Millicent.
‘Yes,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Yes … I could manage Millicent.’
She looked up. Oliver was watching her face, his eyes intent.
Oh, how handsome he was now! Yes … he was terrific. When she got back to Wybong she would fill all the ears with tales about him …
‘Good,’ Oliver said. ‘Then we’ll get married as soon as it’s possible. You should go to Melbourne first and get some grooming. It will have to be a big St. Kilda Road wedding, I’m afraid. That’s something I can’t get out of …’
‘Oh, but I wasn’t thinking of marrying you.’
His eyebrows flexed.
‘You were thinking of staying here … looking after Tony, and managing Millicent … and keeping your reputation as being a harmless young lady living in a harmless bachelor’s household?’
‘No. I was thinking of going back to Wybong.’
‘Then you think again. You’re going to marry me, young lady. And soon.’
Carey’s mouth opened as if to say something, but the words died unuttered. Oliver was standing up, and he held out his hand to her. It was a commanding gesture more than a friendly one.
Mechanically she put her hand in his and he drew her up.
‘You add it up, Carey,’ Oliver said. ‘Six for you and half a dozen for me. And Tony can have the run of Two Creeks.’
‘But …’
‘There are no buts. Now this is what you are to do.’ He dropped her hand and went to his desk. ‘I’ll make arrangements for you to go to Melbourne to-morrow. I’m going to send you to a Mrs. Cleaver for a fortnight. In that time she’ll teach you how a big home like the Melbourne house is run: about the servants and how to handle them. She’ll equip you with clothes and arrange the wedding from your side.’ He looked up, ‘She’ll attempt to do something about your accent but on that score you have my permission to skip the homework. I like the slow soft drawl as learned in Wybong.’
‘Mr. Reddin …’ began Carey.
‘Oliver, please. You are addressing your future husband. Unless you want to continue all your days as purely Victorian.’
Carey let her lashes droop on her cheeks as she looked sideways and down at her hands.
‘And if you do that again I’ll slap you,’ added Oliver.
He didn’t know that this time Carey had done it on purpose. Just to punish him for calling her Victorian. Little did he know how much a young girl could learn about life in Wybong!
All that day Carey lived in a daze. She did not see Mrs. Reddin or Millicent that morning because they were breakfasting in their respective beds and Tony was waiting for her outside the breakfast-room adjoining the kitchen.
‘Come on quick,’ he said. ‘We’re going to Ballarat.’
Carey only half heard him.
‘To Ballarat,’ repeated Tony. ‘Tim Wackett is taking us in the station wagon. He’s going to see about some horseflesh he’s bought from a pastoral agency there.’
‘Horse flesh or live horses, Tony?’
‘Live horses, of course. You know what I mean, Carey. Come on … Tim will be cross if we keep him waiting. Please do come, Carey.’
‘Don’t I need a coat or something?’
‘No. There’s always a rug in the wagon. Anyhow the back part is closed and heated. Say, Carey, what’s the matter with you? You aren’t listening.’
‘Yes I am. I’m …’
‘You aren’t worrying about anything Mr. Oliver says, are you? You don’t want to take no notice of him, Carey. If he gets up steam all you got to do is walk away and hide out down the creek or some place round the stables for a day or two. Then he cools down.’
‘That’s what you’ve been doing all your life, Tony, and that’s why you say “don’t take no notice of him”. If you stayed up at the homestead or went to school you would learn to speak properly.’
‘Or soft and drawling like you? Come on. Let’s run down here. You got those comfy shoes on?’
He looked at Carey’s feet and nodded approval at the stout warm shoes that had come with her own clothes from Wybong, and was too kind to shake his head at her fine silk dress. He thought Carey looked funny in a dress like that in the morning but he guessed she didn’t have another. As one orphan to another he understood her plight.
‘Let’s run,’ he said again. And run they did.
Carey sat in the back of the station wagon while Tony sat in front with Tim Wackett and discoursed on the condition of the properties they passed: on whether one herd had too many Frisians in it and another too many Jerseys. When they passed horses grazing near the paddock fences both he and Tim Wackett ceased paying attention to the road and nearly fell through the window taking in and discussing the points of this horse and that gelding.
At the speed they were going Carey hoped they would get to Ballarat in one piece.
All along the creek beds the willows were shooting. The blue gums stood around in silent clumps and the grass was so green Carey could have squeezed the green out of it in drops; if she could have gathered the grass in her hands.
They swung up Snake Hill that had a two-way traffic road up and a one-way road down
. They frightened the white cockatoos out of the shallow gullies, and they swept past the pine plantations along the crest of the hills.
Everywhere there were vistas of green paddock with horses and cattle grazing.
Carey had never dreamed of such splendid grazing.
Yet her mind was not on it. Nor was it on the conversation of the small Tony and the grown man at the steering-wheel beside him. The only thing she noticed was that Tim Wackett talked to Tony as if he were a man, an equal; not a truant orphan who always ran home to Two Creeks.
No wonder poor Tony wouldn’t stay where he was put … if all this freedom and all this glorious countryside was denied him.
As for herself!
What did marrying Mr. Reddin mean exactly? It was very strange how she found it almost an accomplished fact when she hadn’t really thought about it at all. It was as if her mind was already made up for her. As if she had no mind of her own at all. It was Oliver Reddin’s mind.
She was like the boy who couldn’t walk on the ground. She walked, or rather rode, at the moment, just two inches above the ground with the result she was very airborne in her feelings. And as a consequence was light-headed. Or empty-headed!
The real implications of being married to Oliver Reddin simply did not occur to her. She thought, when she was able to think, about living all her life in that beautiful old homestead and in the middle of all these vast green fields! Of always being able to run along the creek bed with Tony; and of scrambling to the lip of the gully in time to see the sun die over the western plain, of rambling over her own farm.
Except, of course, for going to Mrs. Cleaver for a fortnight. That, Carey visualised as being a continuous lesson lasting fourteen days on how to walk down a long room on a chalk line, like the stockmen did on the veranda back home when they were trying themselves out after a bust-up and waiting for the station owners coming into town to recruit mustering teams.
She would be dressed in beautiful clothes, of course, and at least she might learn to wear those high heels with confidence.
When Carey’s imagination had carried her down the path of those fourteen days she drew a veil over the rest of the journey.
She thought of Oliver as ‘Mr. Reddin’ and she still thought about telling the girls back in Wybong about him. Adding, of course … ‘And what do you think? I married him!’
Ballarat was a beautiful city. Great lines of trees made a garden of every main street even in the very centre of the business area.
Tim Wackett set Tony and Carey down by Lake Wendouree where the Duke of Edinburgh had watched the Olympic Water Sports only two years before. He left them in the gardens to their own resources while he went about his business.
Carey sat on a seat and gazed at the bronze images of the country’s prime ministers. Tony, bursting with the restlessness of a very young boy, lost patience with her.
‘You just sit and stare,’ he said. ‘Say, what’s the matter with you to-day, Carey?’
‘I was thinking of Harry Martin. He was a man I knew back in Wybong. I was wondering what he would think about my marrying Mr. Reddin.’
‘Cripes! You’re not going to marry Mr. Oliver, are you? I thought you were just another orphan like me?’
There was disillusionment in Tony’s voice. He had been cheated. Carey was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. She belonged to the class of people who sent him away and made him go to school.
‘I won’t ever let you down, Tony,’ she said, knowing instantly what he felt by the note of sorrow in Tony’s voice. ‘It will be just the same between you and me. It will mean I can stay at Two Creeks without Mrs. Reddin or Millicent thinking it isn’t proper.’
‘What do you mean “isn’t proper”?’
Carey shrugged.
‘People are like that in this part of the country. If I stayed in the house alone with Mr. Reddin they might think we were sweethearts.’
‘And won’t they think that if you’re married?’
‘People don’t think about married people at all,’ said Carey. ‘When you’re married you’re finished. I mean finished with people. They don’t bother about you any more. They just let you alone.’
‘Wouldn’t people think like that in Wybong if you stayed in a house with Harry Martin?’
‘Oh … I’ve stayed in a house with Harry Martin lots of times. When we used to go out to the boundary rider’s hut at Delmore station we would stay there for days. Of course that was years ago and I was only a child, but the boundary rider was most of the time up the line mending the fences.’
Tony thought about this.
‘But there was no Mrs. Reddin or Millicent?’ he said at length.
‘No, there was not,’ said Carey emphatically.
‘Good job, too,’ said Tony.
Carey put her hand up to her head.
‘Do you know, Tony, I feel funny,’ she said. ‘I wish I could think what to do. I wish I could think what to think …’
‘Marry Mr. Oliver,’ said Tony sagaciously. ‘Then we can go down the creek any day we like. Besides, Tim Wackett will have to give you a good mount. Millicent always gets the best on the place.’
‘Tony … would you get me a drink of water … or something?’
‘Are you really feeling bad, Carey? Look, I’ve nothing to carry the water from the tap to you. Have you got sixpence and I’ll go to that shop and buy a cool drink.’
‘No, Tony,’ said Carey sadly. ‘You see that’s the trouble. I haven’t even a penny, let alone a sixpence. That’s why I’d better marry Mr. Reddin. I was going to walk home to-day. But seven hundred miles is just a bit far, whichever dress I wear.’
‘Well, if you can walk over to the fountain I’ll help you, Carey.’
Carey stood up. Slowly she straightened herself. It was funny how much comfort there was in a little boy’s shoulders. He put his small arm around her and guided her as if she was an old blind woman.
‘Tony darling … you are a dear,’ she said. ‘I’m so grateful for you. It’s wonderful to have someone ‒ someone to help me.’ She had been going to say ‘Someone to love’ but remembered in time that that sort of thing was likely to embarrass a small boy who, being manly, was above sentiment.
She bent over the fountain and splashed the cold water on her face. Then she cupped her hands and took a drink.
Yes. She had better marry Mr. Reddin. It was the answer to such a lot of questions. And there would always be Tony at Two Creeks. It was one thing bravely to think of walking back to Wybong … and another thing to do it. It was a frightening thing to be in a strange world without even one penny in her purse.
Late that afternoon Carey’s new clothes, ordered by Oliver from Myers’s, came by express delivery.
There weren’t a great many clothes but there was a dress for every occasion: a bright-coloured morning dress of polished cotton, and a woollen jacket that matched it. There was another silk afternoon dress of a different colour from the one she had been wearing ever since Uncle Tam had brought her to Two Creeks. And there was a pearl-coloured lace dress with blue flower buttons and a taffeta underskirt that was too lovely for Carey to do anything with but finger and gaze upon. That was for the evening, if it was needed. There was a pair of black suede shoes with pointed toes and a bow and the heels, though delicate and moulded, were only of medium height. Carey thought she might love those shoes.
There were two pairs of shortie pyjamas and two slips … and three of everything else that went next to her skin. There were three pairs of stockings and three pairs of gloves … all different colours. There were some lace handkerchiefs and some plain handkerchiefs. There was a complete make-up kit.
‘How did they know what to send, and how many things?’ Carey asked Hannah.
‘That’s their Station Service,’ Hannah said airily. ‘Sometimes people right from the very centre of Australia or even the far north want what is called the “skeleton wardrobe” with which to come to Melbourne or Sydney. If the store has
the right measurements this is what they send. Then when people arrive in town they’ve got something to wear at once … so they don’t look too outback … if you know what I mean.’
Hannah had glanced at Carey’s brown dress hanging in the wardrobe as she said this. And her eyes swept down to the flat-heeled shoes lying askew in the middle of the room where Carey had kicked them off to try on her new black suede shoes.
‘Now, of course, I’m fit to go to Mrs. Cleaver’s,’ said Carey.
‘Mrs. Who?’ asked Hannah who was hanging the lace dress up alongside the brown dress.
‘Oh, just a lady who lives in Melbourne,’ Carey said cheerfully. ‘I’m going to stay with her for a fortnight.’
‘Well, that’ll be nice,’ said Hannah.
I hope it is, thought Carey and she allowed herself a little impish laugh that she had been able to toss her head at the idea of staying with Mrs. Cleaver. In actual fact she was very nervous about it. Mrs. Cleaver, she imagined, would be much more terrifying than Millicent.
Chapter Four
Carey made no more discoveries about the terrifying part of Millicent that night for Oliver drove her, Carey, with Tony up along the Hume Highway, then north through the mountains to the Log Cabin at Mount Macedon for dinner.
This sort of thing, Carey thought, was one of the things that made life down here in Victoria so wonderful. People like Mr. Reddin had huge powerful cars; the roads were wide and built to carry fast heavy traffic. One could go sixty miles in comfort for dinner and nobody think anything was strange about it.
Of course, outback, Carey had gone two hundred and fifty miles for a party … often. But that was different. A party outback lasted at least two days and often as long as a week. One took one’s night attire, and a dress and shoes for the daytime, as well as one’s party frock. One didn’t always know how or when one was going to get back to Wybong. But it never mattered.
Oliver Reddin did not tell Carey long beforehand he was taking her out to dinner because it prevented any embarrassment that might have arisen between Carey and his mother and sister. Carey, in her shrewd little head, knew that, and she was thankful to escape.