Wife to Order: An Australian Outback Romance

by Lucy Walker

  ‘Quite a fleet,’ said Harry, looking at them. ‘Lot of money in those big cars. You must have married a rich man, young Carey?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t really know. It’s not the sort of thing we discuss. It’s all taken for granted, Harry. But I do think that Two Creeks as a property is awfully wealthy. Doesn’t it look like it to you?’

  ‘I’ve been whistling under my breath ever since we turned off the track into the main gates,’ he said. ‘That blue car is the one the very glamorous lady with the red hair was driving, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, the one beside Oliver’s car. She’s staying with us, Harry, for a few days. I do hope you’ll get on. And with Millicent, too.’ She looked up at him pleadingly.

  ‘You mean I’m not to give them any outback back-chat if they put on too many airs … hey?’ He was laughing down at her but behind the lazy good humour in his eyes there was an inquiring gleam.

  ‘Please, Harry. Everyone here is different. But nicely different when you get to know them. One just has to get to know them …’

  ‘And how am I to greet that husband of yours? Tell him he pinched my girl? Offer to knock him down if he’s a wife beater?’ He was really laughing now.

  ‘He’s not the sort of person anyone talks to that way,’ Carey explained. ‘You’ll see for yourself. And you’ll like him. I know you’ll like him. He’s an awfully good pastoralist, and, Harry, you always admired a man who was a good pastoralist, didn’t you?’

  Harry put his arm around Carey’s shoulder again.

  ‘So that’s it, is it? I’ve got to admire him professionally. Okay … okay. I’m admiring him already, on your recommendation.’

  They went through the garden and up the veranda steps. Oliver, Millicent and Jane were sitting in an arm-chair group behind the trellis of creepers. As Carey and Harry came up the steps Oliver rose from his chair. He put his glass down on the table, his cigarette in the ash-tray, and came forward to meet them. His smile was polite and formal but when he shook Harry Martin’s hand his grip was firm.

  ‘I’m very glad you’ve arrived safely,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t know you’d be here to-day until I was in Preston myself this morning. Have you had a good trip?’

  ‘I’m very glad to meet you, Mr. Reddin,’ said Harry. His grip was equally firm.

  Both men appraised one another but did not show they were doing it. Harry Martin was a shrewd man behind his slow manner and his drawling voice; and Oliver knew it at once.

  Oliver was a hard man, possibly an austere man, but just. Harry knew that at once. He also knew that Oliver was not a man one could call by his Christian name at short notice.

  ‘Will you come and sit down,’ Oliver said. ‘We’re just having a sundowner. You must meet my sister. Millicent, this is Mr. Harry Martin. Miss Newbold.’

  Carey was so anxious that these two men should like one another, that the first moments should be the best moments, that she did not notice that Oliver had neither looked at her nor addressed her. She stood a little back from the group, her eager face turned first to one then the other as Oliver performed the introductions. She saw that Millicent and Jane were looking at Harry curiously and that Millicent, the always perfect Reddin, stood up, shook hands with a kind of remote graciousness and said: ‘Please sit here, Mr. Martin.’

  It was an order as well as a request and Harry moved towards the chair on the far side of the one Oliver had been sitting in. But he did not sit down. He was waiting for Carey to sit down, too.

  Jane Newbold was leaning back in her chair, her knees crossed and one foot was swinging backwards and forwards in the air. Her head was on the side and her eyebrows were raised. Her expression was one of amusement.

  ‘How do you do, Mr. Martin? I think I saw you in Preston with Carey. How nice of you to bring her home safely.’

  Oliver moved behind another chair on the other side of the table from his own. He stood behind it and put one hand on its back rest.

  ‘Will you sit down, Carey? I will get Hannah to bring some drinks out.’

  The glance he gave her was fleeting and impersonal but he held the chair for her while she sat down. Carey was too used to that impersonal manner to notice that it was more marked to-day.

  She sat down in order that Harry might do so but she would rather have gone upstairs and had a bath and dressed. Jane and Millicent were both so very bathed, brushed, dressed and at ease.

  Her glance went gratefully to Harry who had sat down, accepted a cigarette from Oliver and was perfectly at ease. Jane did not miss the glance they exchanged. She tried to exchange one with Millicent but at that moment Millicent was turning to speak to Hannah who had come out on the veranda.

  ‘Will you bring the tray with all the drinks on out here, Hannah? It’s so warm this evening I think we’ll stay here until dinner.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Millicent,’ Hannah said submissively and then as she seemed to hesitate Millicent asked:

  ‘What is it, Hannah? Is there something you want?’

  ‘Only a message for Miss Carey …’ She looked anxiously towards Carey. ‘It’s Tony. He’s had an accident. Oh, nothing much, but I put him to bed on the back veranda next to Cook’s room. He made such a fuss he wouldn’t go down to Wackett’s cottage.’

  Carey had risen from her chair.

  ‘He cut his leg, Miss Carey. Right down the shin bone. There was blood everywhere but Mr. Oliver said it didn’t need stitching.’

  ‘We don’t want all the details, thank you Hannah,’ Millicent said with slight distaste.

  Carey was saying, ‘Excuse me please, Harry,’ across the table and Jane Newbold laughed.

  ‘Oliver and his dependants,’ she said. ‘Really, how he does clutter himself up.’

  Carey had turned to go inside and as Jane spoke their eyes met. Carey knew without any shadow of doubt that that was exactly how Jane classed her, Carey. One of the cluttering dependants.

  ‘Excuse me please, everyone,’ said Carey. ‘I won’t be long.’

  As she hurried into the house she heard Oliver’s firm resonant voice asking Harry what he liked to drink … and Millicent saying to Jane, ‘That child is always under somebody’s feet. He ought to be sent to a home.’

  Carey went quickly through the hall, down the side passage and through the breakfast-room to the back veranda. Tony was sitting up in bed reading a comic. His bed cover was littered with other comics.

  ‘Tony!’ said Carey, both relieved and exasperated. Tony was so very much alive and enjoying himself … and for a moment she had panicked. ‘Tony, where did you get all those comics?’

  ‘Mrs. Wackett. Mrs. Byron from Hilldale was visiting her and she brought them for me. They were Don Byron’s and he’s finished with them.’

  ‘Does Mr. Oliver know you’ve got them?’

  ‘Yes. He told me to bury myself in them so as he won’t hear or see me again for the next twenty-four hours. He’s pretty mad, Carey.’

  Carey sat down on the end of the bed, picked up one of the comics and saw at a glance it was of a good type and put it down.

  ‘Tony, darling, why is he mad, and what did you do?’

  ‘Well, he came in from Preston just after Miss Newbold, and he was just sitting down to have a get-together with her on the veranda when I fell off the balustrade on the side veranda. He was black as thunder …’

  ‘I expect he was upset because you had fallen and hurt yourself.’

  ‘No he wasn’t. It was because I had dropped the binoculars too. He went really mad, Carey. He said they weren’t ever to be touched by anyone. He didn’t care how much I was bleeding because he had to see the binoculars were all right first.’

  ‘Darling, what were you doing standing on the balustrade with the binoculars?’

  ‘Watching for you to come. Did you bring me anything from Preston? Mrs. Wackett always brings me fruit balls from the store.’

  ‘No, Tony, I didn’t. I’m so sorry …’

  Carey leaned forward an
d brushed a lock of hair back from Tony’s forehead.

  ‘Didn’t you think about me?’ Tony asked accusingly.

  ‘I didn’t have any money with me. I didn’t even have any for Jem Anderson’s lunch.’

  ‘Who paid for your lunch then?’

  ‘Harry Martin. And Jem’s, too. Tony, you wait till you see him. You’ll love him, and he said it’s all right for you to work on the fences when the gang comes in. He’s going to tell them you’re to have a job …’

  ‘Why don’t you ever have any money, Carey? You didn’t have any the day we went into Ballarat. Don’t you ever have any?’

  ‘No,’ said Carey very quietly. She stood up and bent over Tony and kissed his forehead. Her voice brightened. ‘Nobody wants money on a station. Everything’s provided. If Oliver bandaged your leg I expect it’s done very efficiently.’

  ‘Too right. And he hurt. But I think he was kinda sorry afterwards though he wouldn’t say so. He didn’t say “No” when Cook said she’d bath me and put me to bed here. And when Mrs. Wackett brought up the comics he said I could have them.’

  ‘Of course he would be sorry. He’s really a kind man underneath.’ She moved away towards the door into the breakfast-room. ‘I have to bath and get dressed, Tony …’

  ‘Oh, yes, and look your best for Harry Martin,’ Tony said jealously.

  ‘And for you too, dear.’

  ‘Miss Newbold said Mr. Oliver’s kind,’ Tony said across the width of the veranda. ‘He puts up with me and you, and we’re both orphans. So I guess he is …’ Carey felt her heart shrinking into a little tight ball.

  ‘Yes, he loves us both,’ Carey said weakly, then under her breath offered a prayer to God that he would forgive her the lie. It was lies that had landed her at Two Creeks and she had made a vow she would neither act, nor let Uncle Tam tell, any more.

  Carey went down the hall towards the front entrance to explain to the others that she was going to dress for dinner, and suggest that Hannah be allowed to show Harry to his room. As she neared the open front door she heard a burst of Harry Martin’s laughter. Then Millicent’s voice, followed by Jane’s which sounded gay and animated. Then she heard Oliver asking Harry if he would have another drink.

  Carey hesitated before she reached the door. They sounded so happy, so self-contained. They were enjoying themselves. Yes, truly, the arrival of visitors to Two Creeks had brought vitality in its train. She was relieved that Harry was evidently a success, and she wondered why she couldn’t laugh and talk with Oliver the way Jane was now the centre of whatever the conversation was.

  She turned to meet Hannah who was carrying a plate of canapés towards the veranda.

  ‘Will you ask Mr. Oliver if you can show Mr. Martin his room when they’re ready, Hannah?’ she said. ‘I’m going up to change now.’

  ‘Yes, I will do that, Miss Carey. You do look tired. See if you can get a half-hour nap before you come down. I’ll hold the fort downstairs.’

  ‘Of course you will, Hannah,’ Carey said gratefully. ‘I might just rest a little while.’

  She went upstairs and along the long passage that ran from front to back of the big homestead. At the head of the staircase she could see into the open door of Jane’s room. Jane’s cases were there and Jane’s very frilly frothy blue nightgown was laid across the bed for all the world to see.

  ‘To contrast with red hair … and to match the carpets …’ Carey said, and the tears smarted behind her eyes because she was tired and she was being jealous and Harry’s arrival had reminded her of home and the place where she was really loved.

  Here they could all get on without her … and probably not even notice she had not returned to that circle on the veranda. The tears very nearly toppled over as she closed Jane’s door because she knew it was mean of her, and she knew she was being very childish … just the thing Oliver and Millicent accused her of being.

  Oliver’s door was closed so she wasn’t tempted to enter that room and put away his used things and set out fresh linen for him. Anyhow he had had his bath and changed.

  She had mental visions of Oliver and Jane passing one another to and from the bathroom in their dressing-gowns. Jane’s dressing-gown a colour that would contrast with her hair, of course, and with cut and trimmings to accentuate her figure.

  She opened her own bedroom door, and then stood still and gazed into it.

  Oliver’s discarded shirt lay across that other bed. His khaki trousers hung over the back of a chair. His dust-covered elastic-sided shoes he had worn into Preston were in the middle of the floor. On the dressing-table lay his tie … and his hair-brushes rested on their backs in front of the mirror.

  She went into the room, closed the door and leaned back against it.

  ‘What … whatever does that mean?’ she thought.

  She sat on the side of the bed and looked at Oliver’s clothes. Presently she got up, picked up the things one by one and put them in a neat pile on the chair. Oliver’s shoes she put side by side under the chair. She slipped off her own clothes and put on a gown, picked up her soap-box and towel and went down to the bathroom.

  She stayed a long time in the bath. It was warm and comforting, and she was tired. Somehow she was afraid to go back to that room. It frightened her because there was all the evening to go through and she couldn’t endure four hours of trying either to meet, or not to meet, Oliver’s eyes.

  Somehow it worried her more than if she had seen Oliver’s clothes hanging up in Jane Newbold’s room. If that had been the case she would have known. As it was … with them tossed around in her room … she didn’t know. She didn’t know anything. It meant everything, and it meant nothing.

  Oh, if only she had Mrs. Cleaver … somebody … anybody!

  How alone in the world was a girl who had a husband and yet did not have one; who had only a silly old uncle to advise her about the ways of a man with a maid.

  She knew what Uncle Tam’s advice would have been. Advice she couldn’t possibly take though the Jane Newbolds of the world would do so.

  At length Carey stepped out of the bath, dried herself slowly and took off the little cap she had put on to keep her hair dry. She ran the comb through her hair in front of the corner mirror, then cleaned her teeth. She put on her dressing-gown, picked up her slippers in her hand and padded barefooted down the long passage.

  Harry’s room at the far end had the light on and the door open now. She could hear him releasing the latches on his suitcase. There was a light under Millicent’s door but not under Jane’s door. There was a light under her own door. Had she left it on?

  She turned the handle slowly and pushed the door open. Oliver was sitting on the bed by the window, smoking a cigarette. Her crystal pin tray was on the pillow and he was tipping his ash into it.

  Carey stood uncertainly in the doorway.

  In her left hand she held her slippers and over her right arm was her towel.

  ‘I ‒ I forgot my soap-box,’ she said, turning. ‘I ‒ I left it in the bathroom …’

  ‘Come in, Carey, shut the door behind you. Damn your soap-box and stop looking as if you’re about to faint.’

  Carey came in and shut the door. She walked with a slightly uneven tread towards the cupboard against the far wall. She hung her towel over the rail inside its door.

  ‘I always look like that after I have a bath,’ she said. ‘People do when they wash their faces. Haven’t you noticed? They look kind of white … It’s the water, and the rubbing.’

  Oliver did not move. He sat, his knees crossed, the cigarette in one hand, and looked out of those hard clear eyes at Carey.

  ‘Sit down on that bed over there,’ he said very quietly. ‘I want to talk to you.’

  Carey carefully wrapped her dressing-gown closer about her and sat on her own bed and faced Oliver. She wished she had put on her slippers. Her toes looked curiously undressed resting there in their small nakedness on the carpet.

  ‘Tell me about going into Pre
ston in the horse-box. And those brumbies. When did you know Harry Martin was arriving this morning?’

  Oliver still had not moved. His eyes looked into hers and held them.

  ‘I didn’t know Harry was coming this morning until nine o’clock. I just didn’t want the brumbies to come to Two Creeks. Harry missed my telegram at Albury. I wanted to get rid of them before you got mad about them. I wanted to sell them, too. I wanted some money.’

  ‘What on earth did you want money for?’

  Carey looked gravely at Oliver.

  ‘What does anyone want money for, Oliver? Don’t you ever have any? Didn’t you have to pay for Jane’s lunch to-day?’

  ‘Good heavens. A pound, or thirty shillings …’ He stopped dead. ‘Carey,’ he said, ‘how much money have you got?’

  ‘Well … not very much. I never do have much … I mean money doesn’t matter very much …’ she said, unaware she was contradicting herself.

  ‘How much money have you got in your handbag this minute?’

  Carey was silent a moment.

  ‘Well … none just now,’ she said.

  ‘How much have you had in it since we were married?’

  There was another tiny silence.

  ‘Have you had any money in it at all, Carey?’

  She shook her head.

  There was an ominous note in Oliver’s voice when he spoke.

  ‘The day before we were married I opened a joint account in both our names in the Commonwealth Trading Bank. A cheque-book was issued for you and Millicent was to give it to you. Did you know that, Carey?’

  She shook her head.

  He stubbed out his cigarette in Carey’s crystal pin tray and stood up with a sudden angry movement. He walked up and down the floor as if he was trying to control his anger before he trusted himself with words. Carey’s eyes followed him. She tried to feel something but she couldn’t. If this was what the marriage guidance people called an embarrassing situation as between married people it was a flop with her. She hadn’t expected Oliver to give her money.

  He had given her a home, and that was charity in itself, wasn’t it? That was what Millicent thought and Jane Newbold, too.