Wife to Order: An Australian Outback Romance

by Lucy Walker

  ‘I don’t think I should leave this room …’

  ‘You have just left it. With Jane. I’m sure your sister is less dangerous, and it is only natural we should have a last glass of goodwill together.’

  She turned and led the way into the drawing-room.

  Oliver pulled the cork of a bottle with its usual ‘plop’. He filled the two glasses with the pale yellow bubbly.

  He lifted his glass and looked at Millicent with a strained smile.

  ‘Thank you for arranging the wedding reception,’ he said. ‘It was a big job and you’ve done it magnificently.’

  ‘That is what I wanted to speak to you about, Oliver. I did it because I would not have the family let down on a big occasion like this. One had to put the best possible front on your marriage.’

  Oliver’s eyes went cold.

  ‘A great many things have been deferred to you in my life, Millicent, but not whom I should marry.’

  Millicent put her glass down on the table and took a cigarette from the silver box standing there.

  ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘If I had arranged whom you would marry it would have been Jane, of course. With her … and good looks it would have been the wedding of the generation.’ She lifted her eyes to her brother. ‘If you had managed Jane properly … she would have been standing there in a wedding dress, not … Carey.’ She had been going to say something else but finished with the ‘Carey’ somewhat lamely.

  ‘And you think that Carey does not strike quite the same echoing note that Jane would have done?’

  Millicent ignored the ominous note in Oliver’s voice.

  ‘To marry Carey was a quixotic thing to do, Oliver, and you know it. A gesture at defying convention. However, you’ve done it and I on my part have done my best to put on the best possible front for you. What I wanted to say is this … Now that the ceremony is over you have to face up to the fact you are stuck with the results of that same quixotic gesture. You will have to be very careful how you handle Carey. She has a long way to go to learn to take the place of the first lady in the Reddin family. But apart from that …’

  ‘Yes? Apart from that?’

  ‘You know very well what I mean, Oliver. She is a child. People will say you have married a child. They will watch to see the demeanour of the master of Two Creeks with his “little wife”. For dignity’s sake, Oliver … watch yourself, and Carey, when in public. And …’

  Oliver poured more champagne into his own glass and into Millicent’s as she held it out.

  ‘You were always a very managing person, Millicent,’ Oliver said quietly. ‘There is one place where you can’t manage other people’s lives, and that is in the privacy of their own bedroom.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Millicent dryly. ‘And in the privacy of that bedroom just don’t forget you have married a child. Be prepared for tantrums or childish aspirations. And as a last word …’

  ‘Yes? As a last word?’

  ‘You should have sent Carey packing back to her uncle, and have married Jane. Now I have said it and I promise I will never bring it up or mention it again. But I had to say it once … and get it off my chest. I also have to say I honestly don’t think it will last, but I’ll do nothing but maintain a silence on that aspect.’

  ‘Very obliging of you,’ said Oliver. ‘Now if you have finished your champagne we will go back to the wedding guests.’

  ‘To the guests? Not to the bride?’

  ‘Millicent,’ said Oliver, looking at his sister with cold controlled anger. ‘If I were a police magistrate I’d lock you up. You are a menace to other people’s happiness.’

  He turned and walked to the door and held it open for Millicent to precede him. As they went through he saw Jane entering the reception room from the french window on the far side. Jane’s eyes met first Millicent’s, then Oliver’s across the width of the room. She laughed, then shrugged. A minute later she was lost in the guests crowding round the buffet table.

  For a painful moment Oliver realised that the only important person in the room who had not noticed that something had happened between the three of them was Carey, smiling serenely in her wedding dress. He went to her side.

  ‘Carey, I think you should go and change now.’

  She looked up quickly into his face. There was a look of fleeting inquiry in her blue eyes and then one of assent.

  ‘Dear God,’ he said to himself. ‘She is only a child. What have I done?’ Tired shadows were in his eyes and he went to find his mother.

  Now, on the following night, Oliver sat in an easy-chair in his study and thought of that succession of scenes at the wedding, and of which Carey was ignorant. He brushed his hands across his eyes because it was an effort to banish the picture of Jane coming into the reception room from the veranda … and the memory of her earlier words. My shadow will always be there.

  And finally Millicent’s … She is a child.

  In the morning Oliver had already gone out on his horse when Carey arose. When she went into the breakfast room adjoining the kitchen Hannah was waiting for her.

  ‘Mr. Oliver said you would be very tired and to leave you to sleep. We didn’t think you would be up so early, Miss Carey.’

  ‘Seven o’clock?’ said Carey. ‘Goodness, that’s late for me really, and I’m dying for my breakfast. Do you think I could have at least two cups of tea to begin with, Hannah?’

  ‘You shall have a whole potful. And will you sit there at the side, Miss Carey. Mr. Oliver always has his breakfast here before he goes out, and he’s sat at the window end of the table as long as I can remember.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of sitting in his place, even in his absence, Hannah. Do you know why men always sit at the table with their backs to the window?’

  Hannah shook her head.

  ‘So they can read the morning paper while the steak and eggs get cold.’

  Carey had sat down and Hannah was pushing the butter, sugar and marmalade dishes within her reach.

  ‘Miss Carey, you never said truer words,’ said Hannah. ‘That morning paper …’

  ‘Does he spread it all over the table so you don’t know whether to put his food on top of it or under it? And are you terrified to say, “Please move that paper so I can put the breakfast on the table”?’

  ‘Miss Carey, where did you learn the ways of men with the early morning paper?’

  ‘At Wybong,’ said Carey. ‘My father, Uncle Tam … they all do it. Why do they think the world will cease revolving if they don’t find out how it is revolving in the middle of breakfast?’

  ‘The world seemed to go on all right in the days before the aeroplanes dropped the morning paper on Two Creeks. Those days the paper used to be two and three days old before we got it. Now …’

  She sighed, looking at the table to make sure everything was right.

  ‘And talking about early morning troubles, there’s a parcel of worry waiting for you out on the back veranda. We’ve had to keep it locked out like the two cats, the galah and the dog. Otherwise you’d have got no rest …’

  ‘Tony?’ cried Carey.

  Hannah nodded her head resignedly.

  ‘Thank goodness you’ve come home to look after that one,’ she said. ‘Drives me and Cook mad with his wandering in an’ out the house, in an’ out Mr. Oliver’s rooms.’

  ‘Hannah dear, just keep my breakfast one minute longer. I want to get Tony …’

  Carey ran down the side passage and out on to the veranda.

  ‘Tony!’ she called. ‘Tony!’

  There was only silence. Carey stood still and listened. There was no sound. ‘Tony!’

  Dan, one of Oliver’s kelpie dogs, pricked his ears. He got up and walked along the veranda to a wooden partition that cut off the corner part of the veranda to make a store house for veranda brooms, tools and odds and ends. He looked at the crack under the door, then back at Carey. He whined softly through his nose.

  ‘Tony!’

  Only Dan answered by
scratching at the door crack with his paw. Carey went down the veranda. She pushed the door open gently.

  Along the shelves of the storeroom stood empty plant pots. A bracket of brooms stood on one side and under the benches were bowls and buckets used for sluicing water over the veranda boards. A pile of old rugs were in one corner and from under this pile obtruded a small boy’s leg. It was barefooted.

  Carey, Dan beside her, stooped and lifted off the top pile of rugs.

  Tony was lying on his side, his face almost buried in his arm. The only part of his face that was not hidden was one eye. It was watching Carey.

  Carey knelt down beside him.

  ‘Tony … Tony, darling. Why didn’t you come when I called?’

  Dan licked the bare leg that had given the hiding-place away.

  ‘Oh, Tony,’ Carey said, suddenly gathering the small boy up in her arms. Squatting there on the floor she cradled him against her heart.

  ‘You’ve forgotten me,’ he mumbled against her shoulder.

  ‘I haven’t ‒ I haven’t.’

  There was the sound of heavy footsteps coming across the gravel, then the firm sound of a booted foot stepping up on to the veranda. A few more steps and Oliver Reddin stood in the doorway, looking down at the trio on the floor.

  Dan thumped his tail furiously in appreciation of his master’s presence. Tony buried his face again in Carey’s shoulder, and Carey looked up with big eyes at Oliver.

  This man was her husband yet he stood there looking down at her as he might look at a troublesome stranger.

  ‘What are you three doing there?’ he asked. ‘Playing hide-and-seek on the storeroom floor?’

  Carey gently put Tony aside and scrambled up.

  ‘Don’t let me interrupt you,’ said Oliver shortly. ‘I’ve only come in for my water boots. I’ve got a couple of sheep bogged near the dam from last night’s rain.’

  He reached up and lifted the boots which hung from a nail on the wall high above the shelves.

  Tony disentangled himself from the rugs and scrambled up.

  ‘Gee … we could go down there,’ he said, looking at Carey, his sulking forgotten. ‘You ought to see ’em pulling sheep outa the bogs. Grab ’em by the horns and pull. Nine times outa ten you slip and down you go under the sheep …’

  ‘You stay where you are,’ said Oliver shortly. ‘I’ve too much to do to have a parcel of kids getting under foot in the damn’ mud.’

  He had the boots in his hand and he went to the door. He turned and looked at Carey. They had not uttered a word to one another. She put out one hand.

  ‘Oliver …’ she said. ‘Oliver …’ He looked at her for a long minute and a shadow seemed to pass over his face.

  ‘You and Tony take Dan and go and play up in the hills for the day,’ he said. ‘I won’t be in till nightfall …’

  He went out. After a frozen moment Carey followed him. He was sitting on the edge of the veranda pulling off his riding boots and then pulling on his water boots.

  ‘Oliver,’ Carey said, leaning towards him and bending over to look in his face. ‘I’d like to come with you, Oliver.’

  He did not look at her … only at his boots which took a considerable amount of effort to get on.

  ‘Tony and the homestead are your affairs, Carey,’ he said. ‘It’s better that way …’

  He had the boots on now and he stood up. He pushed his shirt well into his trousers and tightened his belt. His eyes met Carey’s.

  ‘That’s why we married, isn’t it? Now run along and do your share. I’ll go down to the dam and do mine.’

  Carey felt herself going cold all over.

  Run along, tiresome little girl! That is what he meant. Very well! That is what she would do, but not quite in the manner that Oliver Reddin, her husband, intended.

  ‘Come, Tony,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and have some breakfast. Dan, too. Come oh, Danny boy. Your master has given you to us.’

  As she went through the passage door she heard Oliver crunching away across the gravel down towards the home paddock. The coldness that was inside her, she thought, would be there for ever. She would have to get used to living with it.

  Oliver, as he crossed the square, brushed his hand over his eyes, then shook his head as if to throw off unwanted thoughts.

  Playing on the floor with a boy and a dog! A child!

  He’d never let Millicent get under his skin before, and he hadn’t intended it now. She had said he had married a child. And that terror-stricken white face when he had gone into Carey’s room on the night of their wedding? And Jane … standing there in the doorway from the veranda with that mocking look on her face! Beautiful Jane who had bent to no man!

  He’d sent Carey to Mrs. Cleaver to grow up. It hadn’t worked. Very well … he would get on with Two Creeks, and that farm of Carey’s.

  He swung himself up in the saddle of his horse and touching its flanks with his heel galloped across the paddock towards the big dam.

  Chapter Nine

  Carey, with her small round chin set more firmly than usual, went about the business for which, she thought, Oliver had married her.

  In the homestead she got on well with Hannah and Cook. She was too wise to interfere with them when she found that the meals prepared and served on Two Creeks had always been to Oliver’s liking.

  In Wybong she had learned that the children had their schooling through the Education Department’s correspondence courses. She wrote to see if she could get the same service for Tony in Victoria. Within a few days he was enrolled and every morning the small boy was put to work in an unused room at the back of the house and which Hannah helped Carey to prepare for Tony’s use.

  ‘We’ll call it Tony’s office, Miss Carey,’ Hannah said. ‘He’ll like it better than “schoolroom”.’

  ‘How wise you are, Hannah,’ Carey said gratefully. ‘We can tell him that it’s in an office a man begins to learn so that finally he can become a station manager.’

  ‘Where’s he going to get his station from?’ Hannah asked. ‘Win the pools, or a lottery?’

  ‘I’ve got a farm,’ Carey said gravely. ‘Who knows … one day Tony will grow up and he may run that for me. It will be like his own home by then. And it’s home that Tony needs more than anything else.’

  ‘My, it was an awful pity watching that farm go to wrack and ruin the way it did …’ said Hannah.

  ‘Yes,’ said Carey. ‘But I’ve got a friend coming down from Wybong who is going to have the fences put in order. That’s the first thing to do. When the fences are in order we can begin to stock it. Do you know, Hannah, I’d just love to put some brumby foals there to graze. Do you suppose Tim Wackett would die of heart failure if he saw brumbies running next door to his stud mares?’

  ‘Well, I guess it’s what Mr. Oliver says that goes, and truth to tell I’ve never seen brumbies. Wild horses, aren’t they?’

  ‘Mine would be foals from wild horses. But you see, Hannah, there might be a lot of return in just breeding horses for hacks. Everyday hacks I mean, not race-course prima donnas.’

  Hannah shook her head because in the first place she didn’t know what a prima donna was and in the second place she knew that where Mr. Oliver and Tim Wackett were concerned blood, breeding, pedigree were the hallmarks of what was fit to be reared or grazed on Two Creeks.

  However, Miss Carey with her winning ways and that lovely smiling face might get even Mr. Oliver to agree to wild horses.

  When Hannah thought of all the training down on those tracks and all the care in the foal paddock, and the stables, she couldn’t see … she just couldn’t see … shaggy wild horses running with thoroughbreds cheek by jowl. Even though there was a fence between them. Wouldn’t look good.

  Miss Carey seemed to have her heart set on it, just as she had had her heart set on this Mr. Martin coming down from Wybong. And Mr. Oliver had given in to that without a word.

  Marriage seemed to have affected Mr. Oliver in a strange
way. He’d always been a silent man but if possible he was more silent than ever now.

  And he used his own room. That wasn’t good. That wasn’t good at all. When a man came in from the paddocks tired at night he needed, or he ought to need, a woman’s company.

  Hannah pushed Tony’s work table to a place where it could get the light from the window over his left shoulder.

  ‘There now,’ she said. ‘All we need is Tony to do some work.’

  ‘I’ll have to start by wrenching those binoculars from him,’ said Carey. ‘Ever since we’ve stopped him from going down to the stables before lunch he’s been joining in the fun down there through the binoculars.’

  ‘I’m that scared he’ll drop and break them,’ said Hannah. ‘Cost a fortune, that pair did. Mr. Oliver uses ’em to see what’s going on in the far paddocks. Where the horses are … how the sheep’s crowding round the dam. It saves him many a mile of horse riding, he says.’

  ‘Do you believe in bribery and corruption, Hannah?’ asked Carey as she slit the envelopes containing the first week’s work from the Correspondence Class.

  ‘Now just what do you mean by that, Miss Carey?’

  ‘We could begin our first lesson with the promise of a pair of binoculars of his own at the end of the term.’

  Hannah smiled.

  ‘I always did believe in a piece of barley sugar along with the medicine,’ she said.

  Oliver had been quite right when he said Tony had brains. Carey was astonished at how quickly the boy picked up the first principles of his work. In three days, working only in the mornings, Tony had completed the whole week’s work set for his class. Carey had to ask Oliver if she could send for books of all kinds to keep Tony occupied. She was determined that Tony would do three hours’ work a day.

  ‘Send for whatever you want,’ Oliver said. ‘I’m glad to see you’ve got the little tyke to work. What is the charm, Carey?’

  ‘His own horse to be ridden, and taken care of, every afternoon,’ Carey said. ‘And he’s going to break it in himself.’