Wife to Order: An Australian Outback Romance

by Lucy Walker

  Oliver came to a stop at the foot of Carey’s bed.

  ‘I suppose you’ll grow up some day, Carey,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you didn’t have any money?’

  ‘There are a lot of things I don’t tell you, Oliver,’ Carey said quietly. ‘You don’t seem to want to know anything very much about me.’

  ‘I don’t …’ He broke off abruptly. He took two steps and sat down on the bed opposite Carey again. He leaned forward. ‘What makes you think that?’ he said slowly.

  ‘You go away early in the morning. We haven’t time to talk together.’

  ‘I’m here now. Let’s talk together now.’

  ‘It’s nearly dinner-time, Oliver. We have guests …’

  ‘Oh, yes … we have guests,’ Oliver said.

  Carey heard the odd note in his voice and her own heart seemed to squeeze up in a ball again. Jane would somehow bring him pain with her presence. Jane was, of course, very grown up. And he had had lunch with her.

  Carey stood up and tightened the sash of her dressing-gown. Under its pink padded silk her body seemed very small and slender. Her bare feet felt a sudden warming comfort from the thick piled carpet.

  Carey’s eyes went to Oliver’s clothes neatly folded on the chair against the wall.

  ‘You ‒ you left your clothes in here, Oliver …’ she said.

  He stood up. He put one hand on one silk clad shoulder and then suddenly put the other hand on the other shoulder. He stood looking down at Carey’s upturned face. It was shining from her bath and one lock of hair had fallen across her forehead. His hands tightened on her shoulders. His hands slipped down to her waist. Carey, looking up at him, wondered why his eyes were dark, for another minute she thought he might really take her in his arms.

  ‘You didn’t think with a house full of people I was going to have any one of them think I didn’t have a right to come into my wife’s room, did you? That I am not master in my own home?’ he said between half-closed lips.

  Carey expelled her breath. To her it was like a long soundless wail.

  ‘Oh, is that all?’ she said. It had only been for the look of it. She drew back so that her body was no longer touching his. ‘Please take them away, Oliver. I don’t ‒ I don’t want them there.’

  His eyes did not leave her eyes.

  ‘You are still afraid of me, Carey, aren’t you?’

  ‘You are very strange to me, Oliver. I do not understand you.’

  He dropped his hands and walked abruptly away from her. On the other side of the room he ran his fingers through his hair, and leaned his shoulder against the wall and looked at her. He looked as if he was going to say something, then instead he jerked himself upright again.

  ‘As you say, Carey … we have guests. I trust you will look after Mr. Martin’s well-being. I’ve no doubt Millicent will attend to Jane.’ He walked to the door and opened it. ‘I will see you later downstairs.’

  He nodded his head towards the chair and its contents.

  ‘Tell Hannah to get rid of that junk,’ he said, and went out.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The next morning only Carey, Oliver and Harry Martin presented themselves for breakfast. Jane and Millicent were both having a tray sent up to their rooms. Millicent had now accepted this as a right and not a privilege and she had persuaded Jane it was a more restful and far more chic thing to be waited on on a country property than get up with those who had the problems of hard work on their hands.

  Carey was amazed at how easy this victory had been over Millicent. The latter would never dream it was a means of keeping her out of the way. She interpreted it as a gesture to her position in the house.

  Oliver and Harry were still carefully and politely addressing one another as ‘Mr. Reddin’ and ‘Mr. Martin’. Carey could see that Oliver’s manner, of one business man to another, was impeccable; and she could also see that in some oblique way Harry was impressed by Oliver. This gave her a great sense of relief and she felt grateful to them both.

  If things kept on going this way perhaps the affairs of her farm would not be so very long in being put in order. How disastrous it would have been if Oliver and Harry had not been prepared to co-operate!

  ‘I suggest you get Carey to take you over the property at once, Mr. Martin,’ Oliver said over the steak and eggs. ‘I’m sure your time is valuable.’

  Harry smiled across the table at Carey.

  ‘That’s why we’re up with the birds, Mr. Reddin. However, as you’re the executor of the estate I might need your advice. And, of course, I can’t make any decisions or offer a tender without your okay. Are you pressed for time yourself this morning? The sooner the three of us get together on the place the better.’

  ‘Very well,’ Oliver said. ‘I’ll have the utility brought up in half an hour. As soon as we’ve finished breakfast you might come to my study and I’ll show you the plans of the estate and the ordnance office survey. The fences on the boundary road have been down so long they might need surveying with the Shire Council authority. We can get in a professional surveyor.’

  ‘I am a surveyor, Mr. Reddin.’

  Oliver looked up sharply.

  ‘You are a surveyor?’

  ‘That’s my profession.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Harry can do anything,’ Carey said by way of explanation. ‘He surveys roads and lays them, too. He locates the boundaries of the big stations for the State Government and he …’

  She broke off and her voice died away. Harry was looking at her with the old kindly grin but Oliver was paying attention to his toast. She was not sure he was listening to her at all. Suddenly she realised she had been speaking with a note of possessive pride, and perhaps it was embarrassing to Harry.

  ‘Do you want me to come to the study to go over those plans too, Oliver?’ she asked.

  ‘Not necessarily, Carey.’ He looked up at her. ‘You might put in that odd half-hour rebinding Tony’s leg.’

  Carey had already rebound Tony’s leg but she did not say so. She interpreted Oliver’s suggestion as an indirect way of telling her he wanted to confer with Harry alone.

  Oh, well, he was the executor, and the whole thing was his responsibility.

  ‘Yes, I’ll see to Tony,’ she said willingly. She was terribly anxious that Harry should not think Oliver was dismissing her. She wanted Harry to think she was happy, and that all was well in the best of possible worlds. ‘When I hear the utility come up I’ll go out to it,’ she said.

  After breakfast she sat on the edge of Tony’s bed and told him what school work she thought he was quite well enough to do.

  ‘But I’m sick to-day, Carey,’ Tony said, pulling a long face and trying to look sick.

  ‘Only in your leg and not in your head, darling. Besides, you have to hurry up if you want to be my manager. You’ve an awful lot to learn quickly. You’ll learn quickest and most from Harry Martin while he’s here so you had better hurry up mending that leg, too.’

  ‘Does he know more than Mr. Oliver?’

  Carey pursed up her lips, put her head on one side, and thought.

  ‘About some things,’ she said at length. ‘Then Oliver knows more about other things.’

  ‘If they both put their heads together they’d know an awful lot about most things?’

  Carey smiled.

  ‘That’s what I thought, Tony. That’s why I wanted Harry Martin to come and help me with my farm. But I was keeping it a secret.’

  ‘From Mr. Oliver?’

  ‘Yes, but you’ve guessed it. You won’t tell, will you, Tony?’

  ‘You’re an awful cunning one, Carey.’

  ‘I know. But then I had to be cunning to manage all those men back there in Wybong. My Uncle Tam took the most managing … but there were lots more …’

  ‘Why don’t you manage Mr. Oliver then?’

  Carey looked down at her hands in her lap and shook her head gently from side to side.

  ‘I don’t
really know, Tony,’ she said sadly. ‘Somehow with Oliver I seem to have lost my gift.’

  ‘He manages you, that’s why,’ Tony said sagaciously.

  Out of the mouths babes … Carey thought, but she smiled brightly at the boy.

  ‘I guess that’s the way women are made. I can hear the utility now. I’ll have to go, darling … be good and do your work. Maybe to-morrow we’ll take you with us.’

  ‘Mr. Oliver won’t, but Harry Martin might. I like him, Carey. Is everybody like him in Wybong?’

  Carey had stood up and she bent over Tony and kissed his forehead.

  ‘Nearly,’ she whispered, and she walked away along the veranda towards the steps.

  Carey had the happiest morning she had had since she had first come to Two Creeks.

  Harry said:

  ‘There’s room for Carey between us, isn’t there, Mr. Reddin? We can’t let the little lady reign it alone in the back and there’s certainly not room there for my long legs.’

  Oliver gave Carey that strange intent glance of his.

  ‘Is that all right with you, Carey? You will be comfortable enough?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Then I can hear what you are both talking about.’

  ‘Of course you can,’ said Harry, as they got into the utility with Oliver at the steering-wheel. ‘After all, it’s your farm, Carey girl.’

  When Harry spoke to her in this joking tender way Carey could see a small muscle in Oliver’s cheek working. Perhaps he thought Harry was treating her like a child, too. Well, he wasn’t. That was Harry’s way. When she got the chance she would tell Oliver all about Harry. The trouble had been that neither Oliver nor any of the Reddin family had liked to hear about Wybong. She had felt so silenced about everything, and everybody, there.

  All the same, as soon as the utility passed through the section of the fence that had been let down between Two Creeks and her own farm Oliver and Harry both seemed to forget they had a troublesome though necessary female with them. Oliver was full of detailed explanations and he answered all of Harry’s questions easily and explicitly. Harry, too, when Oliver asked him what could be done about this and that, was very professional and explicit.

  Listening to them both talking across her and over her head she suddenly felt lucky to have two such men taking her property in hand.

  Quite unexpectedly she saw the wisdom of her father’s choice of executor in his will. He had done the best for her, his only child. And she saw, too, the intended wisdom of Uncle Tam’s trick in leaving her stranded on Oliver’s hands. He had meant it for her own good. He had left her without any money so she couldn’t run away. He had done it all for her sake, just as her father had done.

  As Oliver and Harry got out to walk along a fence line that had been broken down and over-ridden by bracken she watched them.

  She had always thought she had managed her father and Uncle Tam, but in the end they had outwitted her. She knew now that when Uncle Tam first whispered to her at her wedding that Harry Martin would come down from Wybong and fix her fences for her he had been sending down the one man in the world who would not only look over her farm but look over her life and see if everything went well with Carey.

  Watching Harry shading his eyes with one hand and pointing to something in the distance she felt her eyes misting over.

  ‘Oh, Uncle Tam!’ she said. ‘You do have a funny way of doing things, but you meant well. You meant it all for me.’

  When the two men came back to the utility they were talking earnestly and easily together. Oliver stood, his hand on the nearside door. Harry was standing, his thumbs stuck in his belt, looking over the paddock.

  ‘This is some of the best pasture land in the district,’ Oliver said. ‘It’s not big acreage but it’s good bottom creek land … when we can get rid of that paspalum and the bracken.’

  ‘What would you run here, Mr. Reddin? Dairy stock or horses? What’s in your mind?’ asked Harry.

  ‘Race-horses are my line. But it takes a lot of capital to set up stables. Highly trained staff.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harry thoughtfully. ‘Yes.’ His eyes met Carey’s. Hers pleaded with him not to mention the brumbies. He shook his head slightly as if to reassure her and then went round the car to get in on the far side.

  When they got back to the homestead Millicent and Jane had just got in from their ride. Millicent wore an old-fashioned black habit with a high white stock at her neck. Carey thought Millicent would always do things the way her grandparents did them. Jane was much more modern. She wore a beautiful pair of cream tailored jodhpurs with an open-necked white silk blouse into the neck of which was tucked a sky blue chiffon scarf. It was all a beautiful frame for her good figure and her pale smooth skin and gleaming red hair. They sat down in the cane chairs on the side veranda while Harry pulled up a chair for Carey and Oliver took the tray of drinks from Hannah.

  ‘Now then, you two men,’ said Jane gaily. ‘Account for yourselves. Just what have you been finding in that rackety place over the way. Not a gold mine surely?’

  ‘Potential,’ said Harry Martin easily. ‘Not the same kind of gold we have back home, eh, Carey?’

  ‘It’s not bedded in quartz and it’s not yellow,’ laughed Carey. She had had a lovely morning with her two men and even Jane’s magnificent appearance could not yet dampen her spirits.

  ‘Don’t tell me they have real gold in Wybong?’ said Jane derisively. ‘Oh, thank you, Oliver. You put the right amount of gin in for me? Of course you did. As if you didn’t know! Darling, just how many gin slings have you poured for me in this short life?’

  Carey avoided looking at Oliver’s face while he said:

  ‘I think that will suit you, Jane. Millicent, what will you have? Tonic water?’

  ‘We’ve gold all right,’ Harry was answering Jane. ‘Gold, ilemite, magnesium and now uranium …’

  Jane was twirling the long silver stick in her drink.

  ‘Oh, really!’ she said. ‘How marvellous. Why aren’t they all millionaires back there?’

  Carey touched Harry’s foot with her own foot. He caught her eye and read in it that she did not wish him to dilate on Wybong. He rolled himself a cigarette and looked across the table at the beautiful supercilious creature on the other side.

  ‘One day you come and see, Miss Newbold,’ he said. ‘Meantime let’s talk about the weather. You ladies have a fine ride this morning?’

  ‘Wonderful, thank you,’ said Millicent in her short clipped tones. ‘Carey, there was a delivery van from Melbourne this morning. Addressed to you. I can’t imagine what’s in it.’

  ‘Curtains,’ said Carey, taking her drink from Oliver.

  Oliver looked at her, frowned as if trying to remember something and then the frown suddenly eased away and there was nearly a smile in his eyes. Carey, watching anxiously that change in his expression, forgot for a moment there were others present.

  Dear Oliver, she was thinking. Please be pleased with me. They’re my curtains, and I’ve had the courage to confront Millicent with them.

  Then she stopped thinking of Millicent and curtains and thought with a stab of realisation that she had … inside herself … addressed Oliver as dear Oliver. Why did it matter so very much to her?

  ‘Curtains!’ Millicent was saying. ‘What curtains? They weren’t from the dry cleaners.’

  ‘No, they were from a Melbourne store,’ Carey said absently. ‘They’re for the two end rooms. Mrs. Cleaver got them for me. Millicent, did Mrs. Cleaver ring up at all? I mean, I was half-expecting …’

  ‘No, she didn’t ring. At least, ask Hannah. I’m sure Hannah would have told me. I don’t understand about the curtains. Those in the end rooms were perfectly good …’

  Dear Oliver. Why had she called him dear Oliver? How sweet it sounded, ringing there in the passages of her mind. If she looked at him now? But she dare not!

  ‘I think curtains are a frightfully dull subject,’ said Jane. ‘I leave such deadly th
ings to my housekeeper. What I really want to know is what you two men have been doing all the morning. You tell me, Oliver. I’ve an awful feeling that Mr. Martin is only going to tell me about Wybong.’

  ‘He has other resources of conversation, I assure you,’ said Oliver. He looked at Harry. ‘Jane doesn’t like the subject of curtains, Mr. Martin. Shall we try her on water tables and land lifts and wind erosion?’

  ‘I do not understand about the curtains,’ said Millicent persistently.

  ‘Darling,’ said Jane, ‘we’ve got two perfectly good men between us. Let’s make the most of them. Don’t let us talk about things they couldn’t possibly care about.’

  Carey looked from one to the other. Vaguely she was aware that Jane was unconsciously fighting her battles for her. It was for her own ends but she was silencing Millicent on the subject of curtains. Millicent also looked vaguely from face to face as if she too, for once, was out of her depth.

  Oliver looked at Carey across the table.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Curtains are exclusively Carey’s subject. Don’t trespass, Millicent.’ And he smiled. Carey saw heaven in that smile.

  Millicent was so taken aback she was silent.

  ‘What would you like us to talk about, Miss Newbold?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Myself, of course,’ laughed Jane. ‘I always talk about myself. Now why don’t you ask us where we rode, what we rode, and what we’re going to do with ourselves this evening?’

  ‘Yes, please, Jane. Do tell us,’ said Carey.

  Her mind wasn’t on what was being said but her unconscious self was hurrying it on in whatever silly direction it was going. It gave respite from the curtains; gave Millicent silence in which to realise she had been ousted from battle by her friend and her brother; and herself, peace in which she could hear the voice of her own heart saying over and over again … Dear Oliver, and remembering, without looking at him, the smooth outline of his dark head, and that smile.

  ‘Do you play bridge, Mr. Martin?’ Jane asked. ‘If so that’s what we’ll do this evening. I’m a frightfully good player and so is Millicent. Oliver and I will take you and Millicent on … and I’ll make you a bet in advance. We’ll win. As a pair we’re superb, aren’t we, Oliver?’