Wife to Order: An Australian Outback Romance

by Lucy Walker

  ‘Please pour it for me,’ he said. ‘I’m very interested in what you say.’

  ‘Go on with you now! You like it as it comes outa the pot? We always make it fresh and medium strong. Well, as I was saying, since Carey’s come home old Mr. Tam’s gone back to the homestead. So he’d have to if he wanted to see anything of Carey. The way that place got untidy when she was gone! And no one in the town’s seen anything of her since she come back because she had to set to with cap on her head and an apron that would swallow two of her and clean it. Awful shame I’d call it only Carey always was a one for work. How’s that for your tea, sir?’

  Oliver lifted the cup and drank some.

  ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘So you know Carey Fraser?’

  ‘That’s not her name now. She got married. Don’t ask me who. Some fellow down south. Rich, they say. But Carey wouldn’t marry him for that. Not Carey. Everyone in town knows her, and out at the big stations, too. Real smiler, she is, with a way of her own. Look, sir. See through that window? That’s the hospital. Carey raised all the money for that. Two little wood and iron shanties we used to have and when they discovered uranium and oil out at Cartheroo they knew this town’d boom and they’d have to have a decent hospital. Harry Martin … he’s the boss cocky in this town … got Carey Fraser to collect the money because he knew everyone’d give to her. So they did. And so they ought to. What she did helping up at that hospital when they were short staffed is just nobody’s business. Awful good with children, is Carey. She could keep ’em laughing while the nurse was busy some place else.’

  ‘At the hospital?’ said Oliver, putting down his cup.

  ‘Too right, sir. All the children in this town know Carey. How she bothers with them I don’t know. My dad reckons children are the best judge of human beings. They can always tell the dinkum from the phoney. Anyhow they liked Carey all right. Do anything for her. Like the stockmen down at The Rest. Well, as I was saying … Oh, excuse me, sir. There’s another customer in. At this hour, too!’

  She sped away to lighten another’s tea hour with her news of the day.

  Oliver drank his tea and ate one sandwich. Then as he went to the counter to pay his bill the waitress hastened to speed him on his way.

  ‘Right down the street, sir, if you’re looking for Mr. Tam. Keep going till you come to the end of the town.’

  Oliver thanked her politely and went out. He walked about four hundred yards until he came to a tobacconist’s shop. He went in and asked for some cigarettes.

  ‘Am I going in the right direction for Mr. Tam Fraser’s house?’ he asked a dark sleek-haired man serving him.

  ‘Right on to the end, sir. You looking for Mr. Tam? You’ll find him at his old homestead. Now Carey’s home …’

  Oliver flicked an eyebrow.

  ‘You know Carey?’ he said curiously. ‘Everyone in this town knows Carey.’

  The man grinned.

  ‘Of course we do. Best-liked girl in Wybong. And prettiest, too. When they opened the Olympic pool she won the bathing beauty competition hands down.’

  ‘She won the what?’ said Oliver. ‘Do you mean to tell me she got up in a swimsuit with the whole town looking at her …’

  ‘Now look, mister … don’t you get that wrong. This is a very respectable town and Carey Fraser might look a bobby-dazzler in a swim-suit but there’s nobody north of the border would say a word about her except she’s the nicest girl in town. The station owner’s daughters were in that competition too. It was to raise money for the hospital.’

  Oliver noticed that the sleek-haired young man in the white barber’s coat and with the thin delicate white hands looked as if he might wax a little belligerent on the subject of Carey Fraser being a nice girl.

  ‘That’s all right with me,’ said Oliver. ‘I just happen to be related to her.’

  Fire died in the young man.

  ‘Well, sorry sir, if you got me wrong.’

  ‘I didn’t. I got you very right.’

  Oliver went to the door. He turned and grinned at the man.

  ‘I’ll tell Carey your high opinion of her.’ He went out, turned left and came face to face with Harry Martin.

  There was a moment’s silence and then both men put out their hands. Harry grinned as he shook hands with Oliver. ‘Had a feeling you wouldn’t spare Carey too long,’ he said. ‘I was looking for you. I saw your car outside the hotel and Bill Brown at the desk told me you’d gone out and that you had Miss Reddin with you. She was in her room but I didn’t visit her. I thought I’d come and find you first.’

  ‘That’s good of you, but I’m sure she would have been pleased to see you. I hear you’re something called “the boss cocky of this town”.’

  ‘Well, Shire President … and I guess you know what that means,’ Harry said, with a grin. ‘I believe you’re all set to be Shire President down there at Preston yourself.’

  He took out his tobacco and began to roll a cigarette. The two men moved to the side of the pavement to let a woman and a pram go by.

  ‘Well, that’s what I wanted to see you about,’ Harry went on, watching his own fingers deftly roll the tobacco in its paper shell. ‘And I wanted your permission to pay my respects to Miss Millicent.’

  Oliver looked at Harry in astonishment.

  ‘Do they do things as properly as that in Wybong?’ he asked. He took out a cigarette and proceeded to light it.

  ‘Well, not altogether. I just happen to like Miss … Millicent. You know what, Mr. Reddin, she’s a bit old-fashioned herself, and I rather kinda like it.’ He looked up. ‘Let’s put it this way.’ He suddenly grinned. ‘She reminds me of my mother … and I was very fond of my mother. I guess she was like Millicent when she was young. Very good at running committees in the Shire … that sort of thing.’

  Oliver noticed the ‘Miss’ had been dropped altogether now.

  ‘Well look, Mr. Martin,’ he said. ‘I think you’d better go along and tell her so yourself …’

  ‘As long as I’ve got your okay. And my name’s Harry, by the way.’ He looked up from lighting his cigarette. ‘What do you think … Oliver?’ he asked, looking straight into Oliver’s eyes.

  Oliver hesitated, then suddenly his face relaxed into a smile.

  ‘Where can I find Carey, Harry?’ he asked.

  ‘Right on to the end of the town. She’s there. Bossing those stockmen about like nobody’s business. Well, I’ll be seeing you later, Oliver. Maybe we can have dinner together. All of us.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Oliver.

  Perplexed, he watched Harry Martin walking composedly away towards the hotel. He turned and went on down to the main street.

  At the Stockmen’s Rest Oliver saw two wizened horny-handed stockmen talking over the fence by the pepper tree that guarded the path leading to an old sprawling homestead.

  ‘Good day, mate,’ they both said as Oliver entered the gate.

  ‘Good day,’ Oliver replied and nodded his head. They went on with their conversation and paid no further attention to him.

  On Oliver’s right was an overgrown shrubless yard and beyond that a wire fence around a large paddock. Behind the homestead, on the rising ground, he could see further small paddocks. There were horses in all of them. If there was a front to the homestead it was probably on the side looking up the hill. It was quite clear this well-trodden path led along the side of the house and past a wide veranda.

  As he reached the corner of the house, he could see on his right hand the open doors leading off the veranda and at the end, at right angles, the kitchen. Sounds of activity came from it as well as the pleasant smell of Irish stew. As he reached the corner of the homestead where he could see into the kitchen he could see a figure, very much enveloped in a white apron and with a scarf tied round her head, busying herself at a big table in the centre of the room. He knew it was Carey.

  He stopped and turned and looked down to the paddock, beyond the yard, that lay on his left. There were several s
heds sprouting out like disconnected wings from the house on that side and in the shadow of them were a number of stockmen, sitting on a wooden bench, polishing harness. Across the path from them was a very big, very old gum tree. Down by the paddock fence a man was raking dried grass out from around the fence posts towards a smoking mound where he was obviously burning off. The air was clouded with smoke and heavy with the sweet pungent odour of burning grass and gum leaves.

  Oliver turned away from the homestead and walked down the path to the gum tree. He stopped under it and took out a cigarette.

  ‘You lookin’ for someone, mate?’ one of the stockmen on the bench asked.

  ‘Not particularly,’ Oliver said.

  He leaned against the trunk of the gum tree and watched the man raking another crop of grass to the smouldering fire. The sun was fading out beyond the paddock over the desert to the west. The horses had bunched together in the far corner to escape the smoke.

  At the side of him Oliver could hear the stockmen talking in their quaint tight-lipped fashion. Behind him farther back he could hear the sounds of the homestead … voices … a laugh … dishes in the kitchen … a man saying, ‘Right-ee-o, Car-eey. She’s right,’ and then the rattle bang of a tin can which Oliver, knowing the idiom, guessed was the ‘she’ that was right.

  There was something very peaceful, very calm about the place. It was old and shabby … yet it had an atmosphere. He wondered what it had been like when Carey had not been here. Echoing with loneliness and silence as Two Creeks had done when she left?

  He’d never thought about love since he was a callow youth. He had never thought any one person, let alone a woman, could get under his skin.

  He wasn’t prepared to say what love was now. He knew that he wanted Carey … and he wasn’t going home without her. He wanted her dear little face and her sweet, half-anxious smile. He wanted her young bright voice around the place at Two Creeks.

  And he didn’t want to make her afraid of him. Millicent had said he was an ‘academic judge’. How does a judge of any kind get out of his robes, come down off his bench and woo the counsel pleading in the court?

  Maybe he ought to behave just like any other man …

  A door behind him banged and Carey’s voice came from the veranda.

  ‘No, don’t put the bin there, Danvers darling. Over there … There by the tank-stand …’

  ‘Right-ee-o, Car-ee. How’s that? She’s right!’

  ‘Bill! Bill!’ It was Carey’s pure clear voice. The man with the rake down at the fence stopped raking and turned.

  ‘Me? You calling me, Car-ee?’

  ‘Yes, I am, Bill.’

  Light feet ran down the steps … down the path. Towards the tree against which Oliver leaned … abreast of it.

  Like any other man … he thought.

  Oliver put out his arm and caught Carey as she ran past. He swung her round, under the tree, and in another minute she was in his arms and he had kissed her hard on the lips. Carey thrust herself backwards in the prison of his arms. The scarf round her head fell off.

  ‘Oliver!’ she said. ‘You.’

  ‘Little deceiver,’ Oliver said, his voice coming roughly and strangely to his own ears. ‘So sweet and demure with those eyelashes resting on your cheeks and then looking up as if butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth …’

  ‘Oliver …’

  ‘And all the time being the Shire President’s off-sider for raising money … playing Pied Piper to the town children … winning bathing beauty competitions. Heaven knows what other sophistications …’

  ‘Oliver. Please …’

  There were heavy footsteps across the path and over Carey’s shoulder Oliver could see a whole row of stockmen rolling ominously towards them.

  ‘You’d better … drop your arms … mister,’ a cracked voice drawled.

  ‘No one round here touches Car-ee, mister,’ another said. There was some deadly purpose in his voice, too.

  ‘You must be a stranger round these parts, mister,’ said a third. ‘Else you’d know you’re likely to take a chip on the jaw from the whole gang, if you touch Car-ee.’ Oliver did not release Carey.

  ‘Well, chip away,’ he said. ‘She happens to be my wife and I’ll kiss her how, when, where I like.’

  Oliver’s voice had splinters of ice in it and he sounded as if he too could do a little of this chipping.

  ‘But Oliver …’ said Carey in a bewildered voice. ‘But you didn’t. I mean when you were supposed to kiss me. When we were married …’ She twisted a little in Oliver’s arms and turned her head towards the men.

  ‘Darlings,’ she said gently. ‘You can go away. It’s only my husband. And I love him. Though you mightn’t think it by the way we act.’

  ‘You sure it’s okay, Car-ee?’

  She nodded.

  ‘It’s okay. I like it.’

  The men shuffled uneasily with their feet, then turned round and went back to the bench and the business of polishing harness.

  Oliver shook Carey so that she turned her head back to him.

  ‘You mean that, Carey?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I mean it,’ she said. ‘But you don’t have to hurt me, Oliver … and they are all looking at us …’

  ‘As if I care,’ he said. He crushed her to him and kissed her very soundly again. ‘Dear Heaven!’ he said when he lifted his head. ‘Why didn’t I do this before?’

  ‘Yes, why didn’t you?’ said Carey.

  ‘I don’t know, my darling. I was crazy. I thought you were so young … so untouched by the tough things of life. Millicent said you were only a child. It was like … well, like forcing myself on someone so young …’

  ‘And Jane? What did Jane say?’ Carey asked.

  ‘Why should Jane say anything? What has Jane got to do with me and you?’

  ‘She took you out on the veranda … at our wedding. And you were there so long. I was jealous, Oliver.’

  ‘You saw that, did you? My darling, I would give anything to have spared you that. Jane is just a too beautiful young woman who has got to have the admiration of every man she meets. If one appears to defect then her pride is hurt. She does something about it. But she’s really only waiting for another conquest. She has to have them … like Alexander … one after another. When I was young and silly I wanted to beat the other lads to winning her. But that was only to show off.’

  Carey nodded her head soberly. ‘I know now. She’s out at Cartheroo station. Harry said as soon as she found out how wealthy those station owners were and what fun they have out there on the station she wouldn’t have time to come into Wybong … even for you and me.’

  ‘Harry was right. As a matter of fact he’s the rightest man I’ve ever met, Carey. Do you mind if I kiss you again, my sweet child?’

  ‘On condition you don’t call me a child.’

  ‘No, young woman. I promise. With all your experience of life … hospitals, children, bathing belles and the like … no one could call you an inexperienced child again. And darling, why didn’t you tell me about Wybong? And your life here?’

  Carey leaned back in Oliver’s arms and laughed.

  ‘Oh, Oliver, have you forgotten? You wouldn’t let me tell you about Wybong.’ She sobered suddenly and then said very shyly, ‘I will tell you something, Oliver. I’ve never been kissed before.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Not ever.’

  He put his hand up and touched her lips.

  ‘Did I hurt you, dear?’

  Carey leaned her head against his shoulder and slipped her arms under his arms and round him.

  ‘It was wonderful,’ she said. She closed her eyes. It was still wonderful. It would go on being wonderful for ever.

  She lifted her head.

  ‘I think my stockmen have had quite enough of a free entertainment for one night, Oliver. We’d better go inside. And tell Uncle Tam.’

  They started to move away from under the shadow of the gum tree. Even in the appro
aching twilight they could see the white shine of the stockmen’s teeth as they grinned.

  ‘Millicent!’ said Carey, suddenly stopping. ‘What will Millicent say … about our really loving one another? I mean …’

  Oliver also stopped.

  ‘Carey, tell me one thing more about Wybong. When a man asks a brother’s permission to call on his sister, would he be courting?’

  Carey gave a little cry of delight.

  ‘Harry Martin would,’ she said. ‘He’s dreadfully old-fashioned. His mother was like that. Everything had to be done just so, if you know what I mean. And Harry is always the same. Was it Harry? Oh, Oliver, wouldn’t it be wonderful? Do you think Millicent would?’

  ‘She wanted to come to Wybong very badly, and I felt all along it was something more than worrying about you … unless it was that you had run away with Harry Martin. Carey, do you tell the truth?’

  ‘Absolutely always.’

  ‘Didn’t you kiss Harry Martin in the railway yards when he first came to Preston?’

  ‘Of course I did. Up here … like this …’

  Carey stood on tiptoe and putting her arms round Oliver kissed him on the brow.

  ‘Very sweet, very nice,’ said Oliver as he raised his head and their eyes met. ‘But that’s no kiss. Not like this.’ And he kissed her on the mouth again.

  ‘Carey, do you come and stay with me at the hotel or do I come and stay with you at the Stockmen’s Rest?’

  Carey hesitated, then she said shyly:

  ‘I suppose I had better answer as Ruth did in the Bible. Whither thou goest I will go …’