Wife to Order: An Australian Outback Romance

by Lucy Walker

  Millicent was still puzzling in a slightly distraught way over Oliver’s dismissal of her on the subject of the curtains. Oliver had risen and gone across to the drinks table.

  ‘We’re a very good pair, Jane,’ Oliver said as he poured some iced-water into a glass. He never took two whiskies before the evening. He did not turn round as he continued:

  ‘As there are five of us I don’t think we’ll play bridge to-night. I suggest you three women watch the television. I’d like to spend an hour or two with Mr. Martin in my office. His time at Two Creeks is short, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh, too bad!’ said Jane, tilting her head backwards over the head-rest and looking at Oliver with a pretended pout. He turned round at that moment. ‘Get me another drink, Oliver, and lace it well. I need stimulation after that disappointment.’

  She really looked very beautiful lying back in the chair like that, the lines of her throat showing clear and smooth as she leaned her head back and half-turned it towards Oliver. Her red hair swept backwards and fell in a luxuriant mass over the back of the chair. Her blouse was stretched neatly over her figure exaggerating its very good lines.

  To take her glass from her hand Oliver had to lean over her.

  Millicent was looking straight ahead through the creepers towards the garden with a stiff annoyed expression on her face, pondering the matter of the curtains.

  Harry watched the scene through lazy eyes as if he was not really taking it in. Carey knew that far-away misleading look in Harry’s eyes, and her heart dropped. A fool would not be taken in by what Jane was doing, and Harry was no fool.

  ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ Carey said, getting up, ‘I’ll see if Tony has done his work and if he’s been any trouble to Cook. Lunch will be ready in a minute, I expect. I’ll ask Hannah …’

  She tried hard not to run as she moved towards the door into the house. Once in the hall she almost fled towards the nether regions.

  She spoke to Hannah first about lunch and to Cook next about whether Tony had been good or not. When she got to the back veranda Harry Martin was already there, sitting on Tony’s bed examining a sheet of crayon drawings.

  ‘Harry!’ Carey said. ‘You’re supposed to be at the second round of drinks. How did you get here?’

  ‘I walked the long way round the veranda. When you left I left, too.’ He smiled. ‘The only lady I came down south to see was you, Carey girl. If you run away I have to run after you.’

  He put Tony’s drawing down on the bed and stood up. Both of them had forgotten the small boy. He sat up on his pillows, a stick of yellow chalk twirling in his fingers and looked curiously from one face to the other.

  ‘I didn’t run away, Harry. I walked.’

  ‘You walked with your feet but you ran with your heart.’ He put his hands on her shoulders and faced her towards him. He shook his head slowly from side to side.

  ‘Anything that’s worth fighting for is worth staying for, love. I like your man, Carey. He’s got quality. Stick to him. He won’t let you down …’

  Suddenly Carey’s shoulders drooped and in another minute Harry had his arms around her and her forehead rested on his shoulder.

  ‘Oh, Harry! I didn’t want to let you know. I wanted you to think I was so happy.’

  His big hand patted the back of her head.

  ‘The way you flew into my arms down there on the railway line yesterday morning was like flying a red signal, love. The tears in your eyes and the tremble on your mouth were for someone who could give you a scrap of comfort.’ He put his hands on her shoulders and drew himself away from her. He looked down at her face. ‘I knew, Carey,’ he said. ‘You didn’t have to tell me, and you didn’t have to hide anything from me either.’

  ‘Harry … she is so beautiful. And she knows all the answers. They live a sort of clan life, and she understands it. She’s born in the clan, too. I don’t even know how to make a first entry. What shall I do?’

  Tony sat in utter stillness, his small freckled urchin face turned up watching Carey and Harry.

  Harry slipped his arm along Carey’s shoulder.

  ‘Let’s go down the garden and talk about it,’ he said. ‘Let’s think how we’d go about it way back in Wybong.’

  Together, Harry’s arm still around Carey’s shoulder, they walked down the steps, across the gravel path and into the garden.

  Tony, his small brow thunderous, watched until the shrubs hid them from view. He hadn’t understood the conversation; only that Harry had taken Carey in his arms and together they had walked away, his arm around her.

  He stabbed the drawing-book in front of him with his coloured chalk. He drew a yellow heart and underneath, badly and angrily, he printed:

  HARRY MARTIN LOVES CAREY

  CAREY LOVES HARRY

  I HATE THEM BOTH

  Then with even greater fury he drew a cross across the page from corner to corner. He tore out the sheet, screwed it up and threw it wildly across the floor.

  Then he yelled.

  ‘Hannah! Hannah! Hannah!’

  Before Hannah could come running to his side he had thrown back the clothes and got out of bed. When Hannah arrived he was standing holding on to the bed rail with one hand and pressing the knee of his bandaged leg with the other.

  ‘Heavens above!’ cried Hannah. ‘What’s the matter, Tony? I thought you were being killed.’

  ‘So I am, so I am, so I am,’ cried Tony in a rage, ‘I want to go back to Mrs. Wackett’s. I hate being here. I hate everybody up here …’

  There was the sound of quick heavy footsteps coming around the veranda. Oliver turned the corner.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ he demanded.

  ‘Tony, what’s the matter?’ asked Hannah in a fluster, wiping her hands on her clean white apron in her agitation.

  ‘I want to go home. I want to go to Mrs. Wackett’s,’ cried Tony.

  Carey came running through the shrubs in the garden and Jane and Millicent came around the corner of the veranda in Oliver’s wake. Oliver took Tony by the shoulder and shook him slightly.

  ‘What’s the matter, young man?’

  Jane stooped down and picked up the crumpled piece of paper from the floor. Tony made a dart at her, stumbled on his bad leg and would have fallen if Carey had not caught him.

  ‘Tony … Tony, darling.’

  He buried his face in her skirt.

  ‘It’s your fault,’ he said. ‘It’s all your fault.’

  He had snatched the paper from Jane and Oliver now took it out of his hand. Everyone, including Carey, was looking in bewilderment at Tony, as Oliver smoothed out the piece of paper. Harry Martin, coming up the veranda steps behind Oliver, glanced down at the printing on the paper and saw what it meant.

  ‘Hannah … did something happen to him?’ said Carey.

  Jane sat down on Tony’s bed, crossed her knees and leaned back on her hands.

  ‘I hate to say it, Carey, but I think he’s just having tantrums.’

  ‘Really, Oliver, that child does need disciplining …’ began Millicent.

  ‘No. No, he doesn’t,’ said Carey, looking down and caressing Tony’s head where he pressed it against her skirt. ‘Something has happened to upset him. Come on, Tony, you come up to my room with me. Do you think you could manage the staircase if I help you? If we wash your face and hands you’ll feel better, then you can tell me all about it.’

  She took Tony’s hand and turned away towards the door.

  ‘You take his other hand, Hannah,’ she said. ‘I think we’ll manage the stairs that way.’

  The three of them, Tony between, moved towards the door leading into the breakfast-room and thence to the cross passage and the hall.

  Jane had put her hand in the pocket of her jodhpurs and brought out a cigarette-case and a lighter. She lit a cigarette.

  ‘What is fascinating you about that piece of paper, Oliver?’ she asked. ‘Are you trying to interpret Tony’s character from his scribbling?’

/>   Harry moved back against the creepers; he leaned against the balustrade and watched Oliver’s face.

  With a sharp movement Oliver folded the paper across and then across again. He tore it into strips. His face was expressionless and his voice toneless.

  ‘Shall we go and finish our drinks? I think we can leave Tony to Carey’s ministrations.’

  ‘I’d better go and see Cook,’ said Millicent. ‘Now lunch will be at all hours.’ She hurried purposefully away.

  Jane stood up.

  ‘That’s a splendid idea,’ said Jane. ‘Let’s go and drown our sorrows if that little wretch of a Tony can’t …’

  Oliver turned to Harry, who had not said a word but who had watched each person out of his faded lazy eyes. He alone had noticed Oliver tear the paper into strips and put them in his inside pocket.

  ‘Will you join us, Mr. Martin?’ Oliver said carefully, quietly.

  The two men looked across the width of the veranda at one another. Oliver’s eyes clear, ice-cold but utterly impersonal; Harry’s eyes tired, lazy but missing nothing.

  ‘Yes, I think I will,’ he drawled. ‘Can’t let the whole party break up. You lead on, Mr. Reddin. I’ll follow.’

  Upstairs in Carey’s room some careful explanation was taking place.

  ‘You see, Tony …’ Carey was saying as she wiped the flannel over the small boy’s face. He was sitting on the edge of her bed, his bandaged leg resting on the cover, the other leg dangling to the floor. ‘There are all sorts of ways of loving people. About six different kinds … like six different colours. Love is like a box of colours, in fact. I love you for one thing, which would mean I love you better than any other boy. I love Hannah which means I love her better than the people who helped in Mrs. Cleaver’s house and at Cranston. I love Harry Martin because I never had a brother so I had him instead. And I never had a friend, a real friend that belonged to me, because I had to work so hard at Wybong I didn’t have time to go out with the other boys and girls and have fun with them. So I love Harry like a brother; and instead of a friend.’

  Carey put the flannel down on the chair and picked up a towel and tenderly wiped Tony’s face.

  ‘I love Uncle Tam and it’s quite different from the way I love you, or Hannah, or Harry Martin …’

  ‘Or Mr. Oliver?’

  ‘Or Oliver,’ said Carey quietly.

  ‘You love him?’

  ‘Of course I do …’ said Carey, folding the towel and walking to her dressing-table and taking a comb from the drawer. She came back to Tony and began to comb his hair. ‘One always loves one’s husband, and that is quite another kind of love, too. Like red’s different from blue, and yellow is different from white.’ Carey stood up straight. ‘Tony,’ she said severely, ‘do you love Mrs. Wackett?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Do you love me?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Is it the same as the way you love Mrs. Wackett?’

  ‘No, it’s not. You see, it’s different …’

  Carey smiled.

  ‘You see, don’t you, Tony? It is different. But you can’t quite say how, can you?’

  ‘Well, it’s different,’ said Tony. ‘Like white’s different from yellow.’

  ‘Now you know. You’ve explained it to yourself. Tell me, do you want to go back to Mrs. Wackett now?’

  ‘Not to-day, Carey, maybe I’ll go back to-morrow …’

  ‘Okay. Well, you get into my bed and I’ll have Hannah bring you up a tray. How’s that for some spoiling?’

  ‘Gee, Carey … I’d love that.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  The fact that lunch passed off well was due to the well-bred manners of the Reddins and the anxiety of Carey not to let the troubles of the late morning show herself at too great a disadvantage in Harry’s eyes as well as in Oliver’s and Millicent’s.

  Millicent was still cogitating the implications of Carey buying curtains unnecessarily and without consulting her and Harry was deftly paying Jane the kind of attention that allowed Jane to do most of the talking and appear to be making an amusing victim of Harry.

  Though there was something remote and icy about Oliver, Carey had seen him so often like this that she could not detect from his manner just how angry he was, or otherwise, with Tony’s hysterical performance.

  Jane, she thought with relief, was involved more in conversational passes with Harry than with Oliver. She knew it was Harry’s doing, and she was grateful to him.

  If only Jane would go away, she thought. She didn’t think she would mind Millicent so much. Millicent’s manners wouldn’t let her make too much fuss when she found she could no longer really run Two Creeks. Somehow she would never get nearer to Oliver while Jane was there.

  After lunch, Millicent, now well inoculated in the theory she had to rest while at Two Creeks, insisted that Jane, too, must have a siesta.

  They went up the staircase together and Carey was about to follow them as they all left the dining-room, when Harry called to her.

  ‘Carey,’ he said, ‘I want to talk to Mr. Reddin for half an hour about that farm. You’d better sit in.’ He turned to Oliver. ‘I’ve been thinking. I’ve got a pretty good idea of the set-up. What I need now is to get together a team of men, lay out some plans and offer you a tender for the contract. Right?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Oliver. ‘Shall we go into my study or do you prefer the veranda?’

  ‘The veranda, hey Carey? We can look at the scenery as well.’ He laughed his easy fresh laugh.

  ‘Very well,’ said Oliver. ‘I expect we can ask Hannah to make us some more coffee.’

  ‘I’ll tell her now, Oliver,’ Carey said. ‘You go on, will you?’

  She didn’t feel in any hurry to join the men. So much had happened in the morning, ranging from happiness when she had been out with Oliver and Harry to the depths of unhappiness when Jane had staged her act on the veranda. Between the two extremes had been her breakdown with Harry when she had realised that his shrewd eyes had missed nothing of the hollowness of her marriage with Oliver Reddin; her real concern for Tony … and always the hankering, like a persistent relentless ache, to be alone with Oliver, to try to find some point at which he would unbend.

  Harry and Oliver had both taken chairs by the round table on the veranda. They sat at a slight angle to one another so they both could look out over the garden and the paddocks beyond. Oliver meticulously offered Harry a cigarette. Harry took it and was quick to take his matches from his pocket and light Oliver’s cigarette first, then his own.

  ‘He’s a handsome devil … used to his own way,’ Harry thought. ‘And a will of iron. A tough man to fight, but might make a good friend.’

  Oliver addressed his attention to the paddocks beyond the garden fence. As they had taken their places they had been talking about the Melbourne Cup which was in the not far distant future.

  ‘There are four Two Creeks horses running in one race or another on Cup Day,’ Oliver said. ‘You’d better come down and look at their dams before you leave us, Mr. Martin.’

  ‘I’d like to look at your stock altogether, Mr. Reddin. I know it’s pretty famous stuff, but I wouldn’t like you to catch me out on breeding. You’re the master on the race-horse class.’

  ‘It’s my business,’ said Oliver. ‘And it was my father’s business before me. Learned a great deal from Reg Fraser in my youth.’

  ‘You’ll outclass me there,’ said Harry in his slow drawl. ‘But you won’t outclass me on a good mountain breed. A horse that is man’s friend in the outback … that is, will carry any stockman anywhere any time of the year. I think I’d pick ’em better than you would.’

  Oliver stiffened imperceptibly. He would tell breeding and quality in a horse anywhere in the world, and he knew it. Harry Martin, a surveyor and road contractor, was challenging him on his own ground.

  ‘I think I could pick quality in a horse whether he was race-course or station bred,’ Oliver said quietly.

/>   ‘I’ll make you a bet,’ said Harry. ‘You a betting man, Mr. Reddin?’

  ‘I bet heavily on the Melbourne Cup,’ Oliver said dryly. ‘I don’t know an Australian who doesn’t.’

  ‘The stakes won’t be money for this one,’ said Harry. ‘It will be something else.’

  Oliver turned his head and looked at Harry Martin. Carey, coming to the veranda, could feel the electricity between the two men. They rose simultaneously as Carey took a chair on the other side of Oliver, across the table from Harry.

  ‘Hannah’s coming,’ she said.

  But Oliver and Harry were still standing looking straight and hard at one another.

  ‘Sit down, Mr. Martin,’ Oliver said almost peremptorily.

  ‘Yes thanks, I will,’ Harry said, and he sat down. He smiled across the table at Carey. Then he glanced back at Oliver.

  ‘I’m going to bet you, Mr. Reddin, that if you come in to Preston and look at those three horses I brought down from Wybong … now in Smithson’s grazing paddock … they’re as good a quality, in their class, as your horses down there on your track are in their class.’

  ‘Harry …’ said Carey.

  He made a gesture with his hand to silence her. Oliver did not move.

  ‘There can never be any comparison between an unpedigreed horse and a thoroughbred,’ he said.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Harry. ‘But first you got to make the mental leap that’ll take you into the class that isn’t thoroughbred. The class that’s just tough mountain bred. Then you look at those horses in their own right … not in any other horse’s right.’

  Hannah had brought out the coffee and Carey now took the tray from her and put it on the table. With slightly unsteady hands she began to pour it out. There was silence between the two men.

  Oliver was too level-headed and too just a man to reject Harry’s statement out of hand, she knew that. She glanced at him anxiously as she handed him his coffee. Oliver leaned forward, placed the cup and saucer on the table and helped himself to sugar. That muscle was working in his cheek. His eyes were narrowed as if he was deep in thought weighing up what Harry had said.