Wife to Order: An Australian Outback Romance

by Lucy Walker

  ‘His own what?’ said Oliver. ‘There’s not a four-legged animal on this place that’s not worth a fortune. Blood stock … even the cattle and sheep. Tony’s not touching any of it.’

  ‘No, I thought not,’ Carey said quietly. ‘You see, I’ve written to Harry Martin and asked him to bring a couple, or three, young brumby foals with him. Of course they’ll be partially broken in but they’ll still have enough of mountain memory to make them pretty lively.’

  ‘You’re having what brought to Two Creeks? Brumbies? Do you know, Carey, this station has the finest reputation in the country for its stock? One brumby on the place would put a question mark against our integrity as stud masters.’

  ‘We’ll keep them on my farm,’ Carey said gently.

  They were sitting at dinner and she shook the pepper over her plate so energetically that Oliver turned his head away, took out his handkerchief and sneezed.

  ‘Tony and I’ve mended the fences on the little stabling paddock by the cottage on my farm. I think that will keep them in. And as soon as Harry comes he can check over to make sure none of the fence posts is weak.’

  Oliver put down his knife and fork and stared at Carey.

  ‘You and Tony have been mending fences?’ he said, underlining every word as if he did not believe one of them.

  ‘Yes,’ said Carey, looking up in surprise. ‘I’ve mended fences before. Of course I’ve always had to get someone … Harry generally … to pull the wire from the straining posts. But Tony and I managed, until Harry goes over it for us.’

  Oliver’s eyes dropped to Carey’s hands. They were slim golden brown hands and showed no signs of hard manual work. Carey saw his look and smiled.

  ‘Oh, I wore gloves this time,’ she said.

  Oliver went on with his meal in silence.

  Carey knew that he was both surprised and angry, but she couldn’t do anything about it. She and Tony had to have some kind of life. They couldn’t spend all their days sitting in the homestead or taking picnic baskets up the creek. They had to have something to live for, and to work for.

  ‘You are my wife,’ Oliver said with a touch of anger, and after a long silence. ‘If my wife keeps brumbies on a property next to mine it will raise questions in some people’s minds. You had better wire Mr. Martin to lose those animals on the way down here.’

  Carey was silent and she went on with her meal.

  ‘Do you hear me, Carey?’ Oliver said. ‘You are my wife …’

  Carey lifted her eyes to meet his.

  ‘That side of it doesn’t matter very much, does it?’ she asked quietly. ‘The important thing is to educate Tony, fix up my farm, and give me a home meantime. I expect people will know about us, Oliver. It’s uncanny how people know things about one another. In Wybong …’

  ‘Will you please cease to refer to Wybong. If I wanted to emulate the manners and ways of Wybong I would go and live there. As it is, I own a station breeding, amongst other things, pedigreed horses. There will be no suspicion of poor stock being anywhere in my neighbourhood.’

  ‘People who have bought from you trust you, Oliver. They wouldn’t think you would be foolish enough to adulterate your blood stock.’

  Oliver had finished his meal. Hannah came in to serve the dessert but Oliver declined it.

  ‘Excuse me, Carey,’ he said, rising. ‘I’ll see you in the study later.’ He went out of the room, leaving Carey to do her best to avoid Hannah’s eyes.

  ‘Perhaps you had better bring the coffee to the study, Hannah,’ Carey said quietly. ‘I’m afraid Mr. Oliver does not like my brumbies.’

  ‘I thought not, miss. I thought not. It’s a pity since you’ve set your heart on it.’

  A little later Carey went to the study. Oliver stood up as she came in. Sitting alone in the dining-room, making pretence at eating the apricots and ice-cream, she had been having an inner struggle. She didn’t want to give in to Oliver. Why, she asked herself, did he have to have his own way about everything?

  On the other hand he had given her a home. He had given her security. He would see that her farm became again a valuable farm in its own right. She supposed she owed him that much. If only he wasn’t so cold. If only he didn’t treat her as if she were a child!

  When Hannah told her the coffee was in the study she folded her napkin, stood up, looked at herself in the mirror over the sideboard, sighed, and went out, down the passage to the study.

  Oliver stood up when she came in and waited until she had seated herself by the table on which Hannah had put the coffee.

  As she lifted the coffee-pot and began to pour she knew she would give in to him. All the same it brought a lump of disappointment to her throat.

  It was the coming into the study that had done it. That … and seeing him sitting there behind his desk looking so exactly as he had looked the day Uncle Tam had brought her to Two Creeks. He was so fine looking it was hard not to keep looking at him often; hard not to feel the sudden welling of pride, not unmixed with a strange kind of hope, that she belonged to him, he was her husband, and some day he might relent and see her not as a tiresome protégée but as a young woman.

  Moreover, to-night there was something tired about his shoulders that had not been there when he came into dinner. Maybe it was a mental effort and a worry to him to have herself and Tony on his mind.

  He came round the desk and took his coffee from her hand.

  ‘Very well, Oliver,’ she said quietly. ‘I could wire Harry Martin at Albury. I’ll tell him to sell … or give away … the brumbies.’

  Oliver was stirring his coffee as he went back to his chair. She watched his back as he walked away. It was a broad back with powerful shoulders. His clothes always fitted him beautifully.

  ‘I’m glad you’ve got some sense about that, Carey,’ he said as he sat down. He sipped his coffee, frowning. Then he looked up. His eyes were that clear impersonal grey. Carey had never seen them warm with affection … or love. Perhaps if she saw him with the horses he loved they would be different. Perhaps he gave to them whatever was in his heart to give.

  ‘I will stock your farm myself,’ he said. ‘That is, I will give you and Tony two or three horses, and later when the fences round the boundary are in order I’ll put some young Jerseys in down on the creek flats. That is some of the best dairy stock land in the country.’

  Carey was silent a minute.

  ‘Thank you, Oliver,’ she said at length. ‘Of course that will be debited against my farm, won’t it?’

  ‘No,’ he said shortly. ‘I’m giving them to you.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘You are my wife, aren’t you? I may give my wife a present, may I not?’

  ‘Thank you, Oliver. You are very kind.’

  ‘I’ll see Tim Wackett in the morning. You may tell Tony he can come down and choose his own mount … from what Tim will agree to part with. I’ll choose a mount for you myself.’

  Carey did not know what to say. He was being kind, even generous, yet she would have loved to graze her own mountain brumbies.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said again and then went on sipping her coffee.

  ‘This man Harry Martin? You have known him a long time?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He is my oldest friend.’

  ‘You can trust him implicitly?’

  Carey flushed.

  ‘Absolutely,’ she said.

  ‘You understand there has to be some kind of guarantee about any man who works on or near Two Creeks. Potential racers are tried out on my tracks and I don’t want any early morning stop-watches on them.’

  Carey put down her cup. She could see her own hand trembling. She would have staked her life on Harry Martin’s integrity and Oliver’s cold business-like words were like sharp needles in her heart.

  ‘If you don’t mind, Oliver, I will leave you now,’ she said, rising. ‘I have one or two things I want to do before I go to bed.’

  She walked over to the desk and picked up Oliver’s empty
cup and saucer. She would not raise her eyes to meet his, he might see how angry and hurt she was. She took the cup and saucer and put them on the tray, then lifted the tray and walked towards the door. He stood up with the punctilious kind of automatic courtesy he always showed when she entered or left a room.

  ‘Good night, Carey,’ he said. She turned, the small coffee-tray balanced on her right hand.

  ‘Good night, Oliver.’

  They stood and looked at one another across the room in silence. Oliver made a small gesture with his hand and looked as if he was about to come round the desk towards her. But he didn’t do so.

  The light from the wall bracket was shining on Carey’s head, bringing out the red lights. It reminded him again of Jane … and Jane’s prophecy.

  ‘Good night,’ he said a second time, perfunctorily.

  Carey drew in a breath. For a moment she had thought he would come towards her.

  ‘Good night.’ She went out across the hall and down the passage to the kitchen.

  Some days later Tony was breathing hard as he copied out his spelling in good round script into his dictation book.

  ‘Silly words!’ he said aloud. ‘I can spell them all, anyway.’

  He turned round so that he could see Carey through the window. She was sitting on a chair, leaning her elbows on the veranda railings, looking through the binoculars.

  Carey was often sitting that way these days. It was all right for her to say, ‘Look out you don’t drop them, Tony!’ She liked looking through the binoculars just as much herself.

  He pushed up the window a few inches.

  ‘What are you looking at, Carey?’ he asked. ‘You don’t have to do lessons. Why don’t you go down to the track yourself?’

  Carey did not take her eye away from the glass.

  ‘Yes, I have to do lessons. I have to call your words to you, and show you the things you don’t understand. Besides, I’d feel mean going down there leaving you behind.’

  ‘Gee … you got a kind heart, haven’t you!’ said Tony derisively.

  ‘Mm. That’s just what I have got. There’s a big car coming up the main drive. You ought to see it, Tony. Must be a Jaguar or a Bentley by the way it’s shaped. Someone come to bid for a pony, I suppose.’

  Tony pushed the window wide open and scrambled over the ledge.

  ‘Gee … let’s have a look, Carey. Be a sport.’

  Carey moved over and let Tony take the binoculars and put his eye to the glass.

  ‘Wow … what a beauty! Say, I’ve seen that car before. I think it’s been here before. Maybe it’s one of the racing men who spells his horses on Two Creeks.’

  ‘My turn,’ said Carey.

  Tony handed the glass to her.

  ‘There aren’t any horses in the show paddock,’ she said. ‘But Tim Wackett’s just gone inside the saddling room. Ah … there’s Oliver come out now. He’s standing down by the gate. I think he’s going to open it for the big car.’

  ‘Half the time you look through those things you’re looking at what Mr. Oliver’s doing, aren’t you, Carey? Why don’t you go down there with him. If I was married to him, I wouldn’t be stuck up here all day. I’d go out with him every day. You ought to see him on a horse, Carey. He looks okay. He always wins the hunters in the Royal Show. Everyone … I mean all the girls … go mad about him. Hannah told me. And Tim Wackett, too.’

  ‘Be quiet, Tony, I’m busy. Go and do your work like a good boy. As soon as you’re finished we’ll go down.’

  ‘Let’s have one more look, Carey?’

  ‘When you’ve finished your work.’ Tony turned disconsolately to the window. As he climbed through he offered a parting shot.

  ‘You’re different now you’re married. You used to like playing and climbing up the creek gully. Now you just like sitting there watching Mr. Oliver. Don’t you see enough of him when he comes in at night?’

  ‘I’m not watching Oliver,’ said Carey. ‘I’m watching everything. There’s sheep all round the dam and over on Cone Hill I can see the cattle moving in a string. And the big car has stopped. Somebody’s getting out of it. Why … it’s a woman!’

  ‘Yes …’ said Tony. ‘Lots of women come to buy their horses off Mr. Oliver, too. My dad used to say his good looks sold as many horses as his pedigree book did.’

  ‘Get on with your work, Tony.’ Carey’s voice was quiet. Tony thought it was because she was getting mad at him now. Actually it was because the woman who got out of the big shining green and black car had red hair. And it was Jane Newbold.

  Tony had spoken the truth when he accused her of looking through the binoculars at Oliver … or at what Oliver was doing. That way she could really sit and watch him. When he was in the homestead she felt too shy for one thing; and for another he might any minute look up and catch her eyes on him.

  It was hard to explain why she always wanted to look at him. She didn’t know him very well … that was why. It was as if she had to learn all the little things about him that went up to make the whole. She could never learn enough about his face, his tall strong body, the way his hands handled things so firmly as if their very strength added strength to whatever it was he handled.

  He never looked at her except in a piercing critical way with those clear cold grey eyes taking in everything and committing themselves to nothing.

  Yes, what Tony said was true. She looked through those binoculars to be with Oliver because he would not be with her in person.

  At nightfall she listened for the sound of his horse cantering up the home paddock, and then his footsteps coming across the gravel square; to the sound of the shower in the bathroom and lastly his firm step as he went to the dining-room.

  If it hadn’t been for the binoculars and her listening ears she would never know in any way what manner of man her husband was.

  She wished she knew why she cared; yet care she did. Perhaps it was just vanity; a personal brand of hurt pride.

  He treated her as a child yet how could a child have managed her father and Uncle Tam all those years? How could a child have watched over the horses in the grazing paddock and, more than that, watched over the stockmen so that when they had finished their leave they rode out back to their stations clean and mended and in good health?

  She couldn’t tell Oliver anything about that because he hated to hear her talk about Wybong. Wybong was to him the outback of the outback. So it was; but out there men were men and a young girl had to grow up pretty quick in order to cope with them. That’s what Oliver didn’t know about her Wybong life.

  There, down at the white-painted timber gate, was Jane Newbold leaning against the front mudguard of her car, looking up at Oliver, and talking to him.

  She was smoking a cigarette and Carey could see by her nonchalant attitude that she was enjoying it. Oliver had taken off his broad-brimmed hat and hung it on a fence post. He stood with arms folded, his feet set apart, and looked at Jane.

  With a sigh Carey put the binoculars back in their case and hung them on their peg on the veranda wall. She went inside to the kitchen.

  ‘There’s a big car down at the stables gate, Cook,’ Carey said. ‘We might be having a visitor for lunch, though I expect Mr. Oliver will ring through from the stables if we do. Have we got something extra special?’

  ‘How about some crayfish tails … done with a French salad? Mr. Oliver had some flown over from the West Australian coast and they’re still in the deep freeze.’

  ‘Couldn’t we have some southdown lamb and salad, Cook? I mean, if the visitor doesn’t come up we’d be wasting the crayfish, wouldn’t we?’

  ‘There’s something in that. Mr. Oliver gives lunch down at Tim Wackett’s lunch room to visitors that come on business.’

  Carey didn’t have the heart to confess to Cook that this particular visitor wouldn’t be coming on business. At least not the kind of business that interested Tim Wackett.

  ‘We’ll make some French, and pineapple salad … just in cas
e,’ said Carey.

  ‘And if I know the look in your eyes you’d like to make it yourself, Miss Carey. Well, make it you shall. Never let it be said Two Creeks couldn’t take two cooks in one kitchen.’

  Carey smiled.

  ‘I do like making salad,’ she said. ‘It’s the only thing that really makes my mouth water, before and while being eaten.’

  Chapter Ten

  Carey worked in the pantry, just off the big kitchen. Over Cook’s conversation she listened for the telephone. Perhaps he mightn’t ring. Perhaps he might just bring Jane up unannounced.

  How would she greet Jane?

  Would she have to take Jane up to her bedroom to do her hair and make-up?

  My goodness, how much would that room give away the life she and Oliver led in the homestead? No, that was one thing she couldn’t bear … Jane’s all-seeing eye and Jane’s mocking laugh.

  Carey put down the salad knife and went upstairs and along the passage to her bedroom. She stood inside the door and looked at it. Well, there were two beds even if Jane had to pull aside the covers of one to discover it was never slept in. And surely even Jane wouldn’t do that!

  Everything in the room was, of course, feminine and belonged to Carey. But then didn’t all the bedrooms of married people look like that? Maybe she ought to have just something of Oliver’s to give it the masculine touch.

  Carey crossed the hall to Oliver’s room. She hardly ever went there; only to put away Oliver’s laundry, in fact. Somehow it seemed very private and inviolate.

  It was so scrupulously tidy a room that it seemed to reflect Oliver’s remoteness. The bed under the window was a fairly big bed but its cover was a severe grey. The headboard was of dark wood and the lamp over it was a cold streamlined steel. The chest of drawers, the wardrobe, the dressing-table were all of heavy dark unadorned wood. The carpet on the floor was unpatterned.

  On top of the chest of drawers was a white cloth and on the cloth stood two square hand-carved boxes. In them Oliver kept things like obsolete studs, tie-pins, a variety of cigarette holders and lighters that he never used. Carey knew because once she had looked in them to find the jigger buttons missing from his dress shirt; the one he had worn at his wedding.