Wife to Order: An Australian Outback Romance

by Lucy Walker

  Harry was too shrewd a man to wait in anything but silence. He took his coffee from Carey and helped himself to sugar. In the tense silence Carey sipped her coffee and burnt her lip. She took out a handkerchief and dabbed her mouth.

  ‘I think your premises are absurd, Mr. Martin,’ Oliver said quietly. ‘But I’ll take your bet. If I think your horses are as good a quality in their class as mine are in the thoroughbred class I’m to admit it? Right?’

  ‘Right,’ said Harry.

  ‘And what then?’ said Oliver. ‘I accept them and run them on Carey’s farm? Is that what this is all about, Mr. Martin?’

  ‘No,’ said Harry. ‘If you want them you can have them. If you don’t I’ll take ’em home, whatever your decision.’

  ‘You realise that I only have to give my decision, and there is no court of appeal?’

  ‘Yes, I do. You’re too good a horse man, Mr. Reddin, to barter your immortal soul for a lie. If you think those horses are as good in their class as your horses are in their class … you’ll say so.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Oliver briefly. ‘And the stake?’

  ‘We’re coming to that,’ drawled Harry. He let a minute’s silence hang on the air. ‘I say my horses are as good as yours … in their class. And you make the decision. If I’m right I take Carey home to Wybong with me three days hence. I can do the initial planning of my business down here in three days, rising at cock crow.’

  There was a complete silence on the veranda. Nothing moved, not even the spirals of smoke that refused to waft away from the cigarettes on the still warm air. It was Carey who broke it.

  ‘But Harry …’ she said. ‘Two Creeks is my home now. I have to stay here. You didn’t ask me about your bet …’

  ‘I didn’t have to, Carey. I knew you’d come for another reason. I didn’t spoil the day for you yesterday by telling you the news from Wybong. Your old Uncle Tam’s not too good. He’s had a bad bout of ’flu and it’s knocked his heart.’

  ‘Harry!’ almost wailed Carey. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? How bad is he?’

  ‘Not too bad, Carey girl, else I’d have had to tell you. All the same I guess you’ll come back with me if I ask you.’

  ‘Oh yes …’ Then she stopped short and looked at Oliver.

  Oliver was looking straight ahead of him. His eyes clouded. She looked quickly back at Harry.

  ‘But that is an unfair bet,’ she said. ‘If Oliver doesn’t like the horses and says so it will look as if he is stopping me going …’

  ‘Not if I know Mr. Reddin,’ said Harry.

  Oliver glanced across at him.

  ‘You are quite right,’ he said. ‘I do not make misstatements on horses for ulterior motives. I think your bet is a slightly fantastic one, Mr. Martin, but as you are my guest and as you have requested it, I will accept the challenge. Since you have gone to the trouble, and the expense, of bringing those horses to Preston I will at least pay you the courtesy of looking at them.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Harry amiably. ‘Let’s drink to that in coffee.’

  ‘Harry …’ began Carey.

  ‘Stay out of this, love,’ he said. ‘This is something between Mr. Reddin and me. But you pack your bags … just in case.’

  Oliver stood up.

  ‘We can begin by your coming down and looking at my thoroughbreds,’ he said. ‘Maybe it will be you, Mr. Martin, who will change your mind.’

  ‘Maybe I will,’ said Harry affably. ‘And if that’s the case I’ll say so.’ He had risen as he spoke and the two men walked to the edge of the veranda.

  ‘I’ll get one of the men to bring the utility round,’ Oliver said and he went rapidly down the three steps and along the path by the side of the house that led to the homestead garages. He did not once look at Carey.

  She stood up and went to Harry’s side. ‘What can I do?’ she said, looking at him with anxiety. ‘I want to see how Uncle Tam is. But I don’t want to go away from Two Creeks just now. You see … I have visitors. There’s Jane here …’ She quickly added ‘and Millicent’ because she was ashamed of letting Harry know how much she hated to leave Jane alone in the homestead with Oliver. Jane would spend the whole time twisting her body in those strange audacious lines and throwing back her head so that her red hair would hang down in that beguiling way. But Uncle Tam was ill.

  ‘You won’t have to make the choice, Carey girl,’ said Harry. ‘It all rests on a bet. The choice will be your husband’s.’

  ‘But what if I don’t agree?’

  ‘You’ll do as he tells you, Carey. You’ll come home to Wybong with me. Because that’s what I think his judgment will be.’

  ‘Oh, Harry … are you two making decisions about me or about horses?’

  ‘Both.’

  Carey looked out over the garden.

  If Oliver wants me, Carey thought, all he’s got to do is reject Harry’s horses. He’s only got to say so …

  Then in a sudden panic she thought she saw what Harry’s motives were. He was asking Oliver to make the decision as to whether he really valued this seemingly phoney marriage or was prepared to send Carey back from whence she came.

  Her heart smarted sorely at the humiliation of Harry knowing. Yet she knew Harry loved her. Whatever he was doing would be out of kindness.

  Carey found her destiny the matter of many people’s decisions. Even her marriage had not been wholly Oliver’s decision. Uncle Tam had had a hand. And hadn’t she had one herself? Hadn’t she thought Oliver was ‘terrific’ that day she sat in his study? Hadn’t she been prepared, even wanted, to be his real and true wife?

  Of course she had.

  Harry and Oliver drove into Preston and Harry sat on the step of the utility and rolled himself one cigarette after another while Oliver stood at the fence rail and looked over the brumbies. Harry looked up once. It was when Oliver entered the paddock and quietly and expertly cornered one of the horses, made it come to him by sheer force of will power, and then carefully and slowly looked over its points.

  After Oliver had done this with each animal and had spent a long time looking in their eyes, their mouths, and running his hands over them he came back to the fence and stood and watched them in silence.

  ‘What’s he doin’?’ Smithson, who was sitting in the utility, asked Harry.

  ‘I’d say, at this stage he’s lost a bet. He doesn’t want to lose it. A man like Mr. Reddin doesn’t want to admit anything but a thoroughbred is a first-class horse.’

  ‘They’re real beauties, those. If Mr. Reddin doesn’t want to admit it, he don’t have to. He runs thoroughbreds. He don’t have to be interested in anything else.’

  ‘He will admit it, though.’

  ‘You reckon? Why?’

  ‘He wouldn’t deny his own judgment. It would be like committing perjury on Judgment Day to a man like Mr. Reddin.’ Oliver walked back to the utility.

  ‘You win, Mr. Martin,’ he said without emotion. ‘I’ll take those three horses and run them on Carey’s farm. Smithson can take them out for me.’

  Smithson started up the engine of the utility with a roar.

  ‘And I take Carey home with me?’ Harry asked, rolling himself yet another cigarette but not looking up.

  Still Oliver showed no emotion.

  ‘Yes. I presume she wants to go.’

  ‘Her uncle’s a sick man. And an old one,’ Harry said smoothly, as he tucked the tobacco into the end of the paper roll with a match stick.

  ‘You can lay your plans for the farm inside three days? I presume you will collect your team of men elsewhere and send them down? When do you propose to be back?’

  ‘About three weeks’ time should be soon enough.’

  Harry was now smoking his cigarette and he looked at Oliver through lazy innocent eyes.

  ‘I’m not saying Carey will come back with me though. When she gets home to Wybong she might find she’s needed there. She might stay awhile. It’s up to her. That okay?’

  He
saw the line of Oliver’s mouth tighten but otherwise there was no expression in his face. His eyes were icy cold and impersonal.

  ‘Carey makes her own decisions,’ Oliver said.

  The two men got into the utility with Smithson and drove back to the agency.

  Carey, when she heard the verdict, was bewildered. All the joy she might have felt in having Oliver accept the brumbies was lost in her dismay that he showed no feeling at all about her proposed return to Wybong with Harry. He had gone about dealing with that matter in exactly the same manner as he had gone about arranging for her to go to Mrs. Cleaver and later marry himself. The only relief in what was now a sombre world for Carey was the fact that Jane had already announced she was going to Sydney for a long-booked bridge party.

  ‘I believe I’ll come back to Victoria via Wybong,’ she said to Harry Martin. ‘Who knows … I just might find it quite the heaven you two think it is.’

  She now referred to Harry and Carey as ‘you two’ and Carey had the sore misgiving that Jane’s sudden interest in Wybong was in order to see for herself if there was anything in this ‘relationship’ between Carey and Harry.

  At least she would be removing that glorious hair, that tantalising figure, from the Two Creeks dining-table for some part of Carey’s absence.

  How long would Jane stay away?

  For the remaining two days of Harry’s visit Carey stayed in the homestead. She wanted to give Tony and his studies all the attention she could; she had the new curtains to put up in the shadow of Millicent’s disapproval. She felt she had to leave all Oliver’s clothes in order. She still had the compulsion to look … to unfold and fold again.

  On the day Oliver drove them into Preston to catch the train to Albury she felt that the homestead of Two Creeks might never have known her.

  There was also the embarrassment of farewells. What would Oliver say? Do? With Harry standing there it could be doubly embarrassing.

  She felt as she had on her wedding night when she had waited alone in that bedroom for Oliver to join her. She wanted to do the right thing, and do it easily and naturally, without coyness on the one hand or clumsiness on the other. The very anxiety of it, in anticipation, made her as nervous as she had been on that wedding night.

  She was a little distressed at parting from Tony.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back.’ Then she wondered if she really would; if Oliver would want her back. At all events she would one day be back on her own farm. She and Tony would be together again.

  Millicent had frozen up at the news that Carey was going back to Wybong with Harry Martin. She had been silent to Carey, elaborately polite to Harry. The oddest thing about Millicent was that she had a hurt look in her eyes, as if someone had done her personal grievous harm. She had it there when she looked at Harry Martin. Carey thought it might be because Millicent considered it had all been Harry’s idea with that ‘bet’ of his. Of course it had far more to do with the fact that Uncle Tam was ill, as far as Carey was concerned.

  It puzzled Carey for she had quite expected Millicent’s only reaction to be: ‘What do you expect of a child like Carey? Of course she would give in to the temptation to go running home at the slightest provocation.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jane was to leave for Sydney in her own car two hours before Carey and Harry were to leave for Wybong. Earlier they were having afternoon tea on the veranda and Millicent had risen to carry Oliver’s tea to him in the study.

  ‘Oh, Carey,’ Jane laughed, ‘after five hours alone in the train with Harry, however will you fill in the five hours’ wait at Albury for the Western Mail? In the small hours of the morning, too! Oh, well, even on the border the stars shine. There’s nothing like counting the stars in good company to induce sleep.’

  ‘There is an excellent waiting-room and restaurant at Albury,’ Millicent said with some asperity, as she turned away, with the cup and saucer in her hand. ‘I had a long wait there once myself …’

  ‘And I suppose you can snatch an hour or two’s sleep before getting there,’ said Jane. ‘Harry! Have you got a soft shoulder as well as a good broad one?’

  ‘Carey can have a loan of my shoulder any time she likes,’ Harry said, with a lazy smile. ‘That goes for you, too, Miss Jane, when you come up Wybong way.’

  Millicent had reached the door and was about to go into the house. Harry’s eyes followed her.

  ‘And if Miss Millicent would come along, too, she could have both of ’em … she’d be that welcome,’ he said.

  By the drawling way Harry said those words Carey knew he meant them. Dear Harry … she thought. She hoped that Millicent, stiff and proper though she was, would understand that anyone in the world would find safety on Harry’s shoulder. He was not being brash. He was being his honest, utterly reliable, self.

  Millicent hesitated for the fraction of a minute.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. She did not turn round but went through the door. The ‘thank you’ was muffled and soft but Carey did not think that Millicent sounded offended. Her dignity had not been affronted by that kindly offer. The thing that had most surprised Carey was that Millicent had been visibly upset about her, Carey’s, return to Wybong. She had thought that Millicent would be pleased to have Two Creeks to herself again.

  Oliver drove the big car into the station yard at Preston a few minutes before the train was due in.

  He assisted Harry to unload the cases, went to the station master’s office to confirm the connection with the Western Mail at Albury, and to attend to Carey’s ticket. Because of the odd travelling hours there had been no need to book separate compartments. The train would reach the border junction at midnight, five hours hence, and then five hours later Carey and Harry would catch the Western Mail for the day long journey to Wybong.

  The train puffed in leisurely as if tired enough to be glad of the ten-minute wait while stock trucks were shunted off on to the side lines.

  Oliver bought some fruit and chocolates and stowed them on the rack in the compartment. He exchanged a few words of desultory conversation with Harry on the subject of the gang of men to come on to Carey’s farm for the fencing.

  With her heart dropping lower and lower Carey thought he would keep this up even after they got into the train and it began to pull out.

  It was Harry who tactfully broke away.

  ‘I’m going down to see what the dining-car is like, Carey girl, and what sort of a meal we’re likely to expect. I’ll get on board down there and see you later.’

  He shook hands with Oliver. Carey did not hear what they said in this brief farewell because she was watching Oliver’s face. She could do that now that he wasn’t looking at her.

  His jaw was set in that firm intractable way, his eyes were clear, hard, and baffling. He allowed no evidence of any feelings at all. Whatever Oliver thought would never be divulged by his expression or his actions.

  When Harry turned away Oliver turned to Carey.

  She knew then she need not have worried about last awkward farewells. There weren’t going to be any farewells. Oliver would shake hands with her in the same impersonal way as he had shaken hands with Harry.

  Like her wedding night she didn’t have to worry about what he would say and do … because he wasn’t going to say or do anything.

  Pain vied with disappointment and in some oblique way she wanted to punish Oliver who so hurt her.

  She let her eyes drop down to her hands in that old trick of hers and then she looked up again at Oliver. Unconsciously she hoped this would do something to dent the armour of his aloofness.

  His grey eyes … with the little black line around the iris … flashed a spark of anger. Carey thought he might really, actually, smack her, as once he had promised to do if she dropped her eyes like that again.

  She lifted her round chin and looked at him through a pair of steady blue eyes.

  ‘Good-bye, Oliver,’ she said, with a stiff little smile. ‘Do you know
what the stockmen outback say when they’re going away and might or might not come that way again? They say … “Cheerio! I’ll see you somehow, some place, some day”.’

  She held out her hand and Oliver, taking off his hat with his left hand, took her hand with his right hand.

  For a minute it seemed as if he was not going to release it. His eyes lost the distant impersonal expression and were looking at her as if he was really seeing her … seeing into her.

  Time was ticking on, and the guard put the whistle to his lips.

  Carey, with her head high, withdrew her hand. It was too late for Oliver to see her now … to look at her as if he wanted to know what kind of a person she was under that earnest smile. He should have done that on the 18th October, her wedding day. She hadn’t known until this minute how bitter disappointment could be.

  But her smile did not waver.

  ‘It was nice being married to you,’ she said. ‘And I loved Two Creeks.’ She turned and walked quickly towards the entrance to the compartment. She did not look back and once inside the doorway of the carriage she stood in the corridor, her back to the panelling of the compartments, and facing the window that looked out on the other side from that station over paddocks running over limitless distances towards the western horizon.

  Behind her, on the platform, Oliver would be standing ‒ or going ‒ she did not know which. She no longer wished to know. She leaned against the panelling and closed her eyes. She braced herself as the train shuddered into movement, and stayed there until it had slid out of the railway yards and out into the country. Then she went to her compartment and sat down.

  ‘No tears,’ she said. ‘No beastly, beastly tears!’ But in spite of her brave words they stung in her eyes and then one by one toppled over and ran down her cheeks.

  It was ten minutes before Harry Martin joined her.

  ‘Why so sombre?’ he asked as he settled her magazines and his own books beside their seats and then sat down in the corner seat facing her.

  ‘Why do you think, Harry?’

  He did not answer but looked at her quietly and gravely, so she went on: