by Lucy Walker
‘Do you obey orders?’
‘Yes, sir. That is, unless I forget ‒’
‘Don’t forget this one. If you do I’ll have to punish you.’ The habitual glazed expression in Andrew’s face changed to surprise.
‘You mean ‒?’
‘What I said. I’ll have to punish you. Have you registered that?’
Andrew, his head tip-tilted, was looking at the man with a mixture of surprise and interest.
‘Yes, sir. I’m not to go near the diggings.’
Bern’s eyes met Katie’s again over the small head.
‘Have you ever thought of reprimands instead of watchwords, Katie?’ he asked with an interest so mild it did not deceive her.
‘No. He hasn’t needed it. He’s a very quiet, amiable little boy. He doesn’t do things ‒’
‘Except wander away in pursuit of his own interests and to the inconvenience and unwise ‒ I repeat ‒ unwise anxiety of an invalid father and an indulgent sister.’
Katie was silent. She stared straight ahead. She could say nothing. But she was angry.
Now she knew the hidden blackmail he would hold over her head! He was making an upheaval of his private life to provide them with accommodation. She had to accept this ‒ so she couldn’t make a rejoinder when he criticised her.
The silence lasted a long time.
Now and again Bern glanced at her face but he too said nothing.
It was Andrew who spoke first.
‘It’s mullock,’ he said, as if he hadn’t heard this mentioned earlier. ‘The stuff thrown up out of the shafts as they dig down! The sprinkles of white stuff on top is quartz. It comes from a seam underneath the ground where they might find gold. If there is any.’
Bern looked at the boy, startled. Then he smiled.
‘Laugh, Katie,’ he said with mock gravity. ‘It’s worth it. The boy knew his lesson before we started giving him advice.’
‘We!’ thought Katie. Then the humour of the situation took the upper hand and she too smiled.
‘You have a beautiful smile, Katie. It lights up your eyes so they’re like sarsparilla in the bush when the spring comes.’
What made him say that ‒ like that? It brought a lump to her throat ‒ the very kindness of it.
She had to keep her chin up, though. She had her pride to think of, and Bern Malin must not be allowed to forget she had it.
The atmosphere round Malin’s Outpost was full of welcome; the blue smoke rising from the chimney. It went upwards, this smoke, very straight and then was lost in the pale heat-hazed heaven. It was like a signature that said ‒ ‘Welcome, I’m waiting!’ The trees standing around were outlines through this pencil mist of fire, and were softened by it: very beautiful.
Much, much better still, the air was filled with the beloved and all-pervading smell of gum leaves burning in the morning.
‘It’s like coming home,’ Katie said to herself ‒ not intending anyone to hear, suddenly loving the fact she had come back to Malin’s homestead.
The jeep swung around the crescent track and pulled up at the front of the timbered house.
Katie sat quite still, looking at it.
Why did she feel she was coming home?
This was the house that Gideon Dent had built. It was his house, even though it had come to be called Malin’s Outpost. It must be that that gave her the feeling she had been here before ‒ not only on the night Jill and Taciturn had brought her to it. It was a place to which she belonged; a strange feeling.
Maybe this was home because that was what she wanted it to be.
Bern swung himself down from the drive-seat and came round to open the door on Katie’s side.
He stood a moment looking at her. Her eyes were the eyes of a very young girl, lost in a dream. The austere expression in his own face eased away. He glanced from the girl to the boy and back to the girl again.
He had not been angry with ‘these children’ but with Time. They had come at the wrong time. That was all that was wrong with the dying of old, sick Mr. James ‒ the timing of it!
He heard every sound in the bush because the noon-day silence had fallen, except for the occasional crack of a dried stick, fall of a gum-nut, and the rustle of a bob-tailed goanna late home under the log for its midday nap.
Then his face closed again like a book. He held up his hand to help Katie down.
Andrew stared at the house. He made no effort to remember its detail, yet one day, when it came back to his mind, he would remember where the second step to the veranda was out of line; where the time-tempered old timbers ran parallel between the uprights; where the chimney, crooked to the sky, sprouted the shaft of blue-grey sweet-smelling smoke. One day, perhaps years hence, he would reproduce it exactly as he saw it now ‒ not one detail forgotten ‒ and never know that he had even remembered it at all.
He could not tell Katie about this because Katie would not understand. Secretary had known.
He was sorry he couldn’t tell Katie. There wasn’t any way he could tell her ‒ because he was not gifted with words, only a seeing eye and a hand that could without effort translate what he saw to a piece of paper, or a patch of gravel dust in the sun at the back of Ryde’s Place.
The three, the man standing in the track by the jeep and the two sitting inside it, were caught in a moment like a jewel in the chain of all Time.
Mrs. Potts, coming to the door, saw it.
Mr. Bern’s brought himself a packet of trouble here, she thought, looking at Katie’s face. A young girl like that ‒ and Miss Stella over at Ryde’s Place
She shook her head.
It’s like a man bringing his bride home. He ought to carry her over the doorstep and be done with it, for what it looks like. Except for the young ’un, of course. It never works out proper without a gold ring on somebody’s finger, anyway. Men are too lonely out here without enough women to go round. Miss Stella won’t like it at all.
Then she had a second thought.
Knowing Miss Stella ‒ she’ll do something about it! She wouldn’t let Mr. Bern slip through her fingers. Not any day of the week, she wouldn’t.
It didn’t take the newcomers long to settle down in Malin’s Outpost. Mrs. Potts had made everything ready for them. Bern and Andrew were to sleep on the veranda sleep-out, one at each end, and Katie was to have the one spare room. Mrs. Potts preferred to retire to an old cabin adjacent to the homestead. She and her husband knew it well from former occupation.
‘He shouldn’t have brought that young girl here,’ Mr. Potts said to his wife gruffly on the first evening.
‘Mr. Bern hasn’t asked our permission,’ Mrs. Potts replied bluntly.
She was a tall, big-boned spare woman who had lived all her life in the outback. She was as remote from a town person in her outlook and appearance as a bush person could be. Her skin was burned and toughened by the sun till it was parchment. Her speech was forthright. Yet underneath all this her heart was in the place where most bush people kept their hearts ‒ where it would beat strongly and warmly when necessary. It could be as hard as flint when fortune and circumstances demanded it should be that way.
Just now it was flinty because, though she did not care for Stella Ryde anyway, she knew Stella Ryde and her claim on Mr. Bern were uppermost in her husband’s mind when he made this remark.
‘Artificial,’ she said, meaning Stella. ‘Like those plastic flowers they got on the shelf in the living-room over at Ryde’s. Why not real bush flowers? Come late summer the wandoos have white all over ’em. What would you want plastic flowers for, any more than you’d want Stella Ryde made up so she’s not as God fixed her anyway? Or Mr. Bern want it either ‒’
‘Look, Sara,’ Mr. Potts said. ‘I didn’t ask you about flowers, and whatever’s in the wandoos any time of the year. Nor did I mention Stella Ryde. I said he oughtn’t to have brought that young girl here. Mr. Bern’s an honourable gentleman, all right. I’m not saying anything but that. It’s what the Rydes�
�ll think ‒ people up country at Pandanning, or far afield as Malley’s Find too. They’ll think he’s brought a bride home. They might even say it. Then the fat ’ud be in the fire.’
Mrs. Potts was folding away the bush blankets they’d brought from the out-camp where she’d been the cook for the men on the diggings; and Mr. Potts had been the winch man on the bucket.
She didn’t mention she’d had thoughts like this herself.
‘You ever know Mr. Bern do anything silly? Or out of place for that matter?’ she asked succinctly. ‘And don’t the Rydes know it? Come to think of it ‒ you ever seen anything more full of character than that girl’s face over there? As for the young boy, well he just ain’t with us yet. It’ll take time to figure that feller out. Quiet as a mouse. Not natural, if you ask me. Wants a bit of bush-whacking to liven him up.’
‘I didn’t say Mr. Bern would do anything silly,’ Mr. Potts persisted argumentatively. He was filling several pipes with tobacco, one after the other. This was his night’s quota and had to be prepared with careful ceremony.
‘I said ‒ “What would the Rydes think of it, particularly Miss Stella?” Or words to that effect. Likewise the men outback! And the people up in Pandanning. They’ll talk. They’ll think about marrying, and the like.’
‘So what!’ said Mrs. Potts. The rugs were folded. She now turned to making the two bunk-beds along the adjacent walls of the old cabin.
‘It’ll make trouble.’
Mrs. Potts straightened up, put her hands on her hips, and regarded her husband.
‘I’ll tell you something,’ she said. ‘There’ll never be trouble where Mr. Bern’s around. He wouldn’t put up with it. It wouldn’t even start before he’d put it down. He’s that kind of a man, and well you know it.’
‘Well ‒ I guess you’re right. He’s his own master, and everyone else’s master for a hundred square miles or thereabouts ‒ except for the Rydes over at Ryde’s Place. I guess he could be their master too easy enough if he wanted. He just don’t want.’
‘That the way I look at it,’ his wife said. ‘Furthermore, Mr. Potts, we’re living in modern times these days, even if we are out in the bush. A man don’t have to marry a girl for the look of it, just because it happens she stays in his house for a while. Many a couple of lives have been ruined for that old custom,’ she finished sagely.
‘All right, old girl, I agree,’ Mr. Potts said amiably, wishing he’d said nothing to begin with. ‘I do like a bit of peace with my evening smoke. Now where’s those papers Mr. Bern brought back from Malley’s Find? I’ve a month’s reading to catch up. The world might be at war, or at least on fire, for all we know ‒ stuck way out here.’
‘There’s transistor radios, but you won’t listen.’
‘I don’t like the noise they make. It sort of breaks up the silence all around. Like human beings rackety-chatting about things that’s none of their business.’
‘You’re a one for the wilds, you are.’
‘That’s true,’ Mr. Potts said peaceably. ‘That’s why I live in ’em.’
Neither of them had seen Katie come to the cabin door to say good night. Nor did they see her walk quietly away ‒ back to the homestead. Her head was bent as she watched her footsteps on the broken path. Even the pale starlight could not betray how distressed her face had become. Trouble? Was that what her coming to Malin’s Outpost could mean?
Chapter Nine
The next morning Bern Malin invited Katie into his office. This was the room she had visited once before at Jill Ryde’s suggestion. That was when she had taken the old survey map. She had brought it back with her. It had burnt like a guilty conscience in the pocket of her trews; and still did.
Bern placed a chair for her.
‘Sit down, Katie. There’s something I want to tell you. Perhaps I should have told you before, but we were strangers, weren’t we?’
He was standing on the far side of the table looking across it and down at her. One hand was on the back of the chair and the other reached across the table to a box from which he took a cigarette. He lit it slowly.
‘Would you like a cigarette, Katie?’ he asked.
‘No, thank you.’ She shook her head firmly. ‘The one I had the other day ‒ when we were driving out from Malley’s Find ‒ was bravado, you know.’ Her head was a little on one side. She was studying his face to see how he took that slice of honesty.
‘I know.’ His eyes were amused.
Her chin was up again. ‘How did you know?’
‘I wouldn’t say your manner of inhaling was unprofessional, or that you allowed smoke to get in your eyes or choke your voice. It was perhaps the way you took the cigarette. So determined. Keeping face?’
Suddenly he was smiling. It was that shining smile.
She was undone again ‒ nearly but not quite! Looking at the way the grey eyes watched her through the wreath of cigarette smoke, she wondered if she had been misleading herself. Could he really be so hard on a small boy as she feared? Could he have cheated Gideon Dent? Was he really exposed to the botheration of ‘talk’ the way Mr. Potts feared?
Bern, standing upright, was watching thoughts fleeting across Katie’s face like alternate light and shadow.
‘What I wanted to tell you, Katie,’ he said gravely ‒ the smile gone, ‘is that in spite of some people thinking Gideon Dent is no more than a legend, he does in fact exist. And he cares very much for you.’ For a moment his voice sounded almost uneven. ‘He cares very much for your welfare, and that of Andrew too.’
Something sang in her heart like the faraway music of the bell-bird calling over the range. He cared for them.
‘You mean that he’s near? Please ‒ why can’t we go to wherever he is?’
‘There is a reason, and a very good one why you must stay here. It will take me a few minutes to explain.’
He pulled the chair out and sat down. He expelled a long slow spiral of smoke in the air as he leaned forward, one hand flat on the table, the other tipping the ash from his cigarette into the tray.
‘The Gideon Dent your father spoke of,’ he said very slowly, ‘was a man of more than your father’s age. Were you expecting that? An elderly man? Or a younger man?’
‘I don’t know. Sometimes I thought he would be older, sometimes ‒ because I hoped, I think ‒ I thought he might be young enough to understand us; especially Andrew. My father simply didn’t know his age. He had forgotten. He forgot so much; the weeks and even the years. Things that had happened before I was born he sometimes thought happened only recently. He was time-out in his memory.’
‘Then you will have to prepare yourself for some shocks, Katie. Gideon Dent, of whom your father spoke, was older than your father. He died quite a long time ago.’
‘Oh, no! But ‒’
‘Please let me go on. The Gideon Dent of to-day is his son. That old prospector had married. He also had found, in his time, a fairly useful amount of gold round about here. He used it to give his son a good education.’
Katie’s face had been a study, first of anxiety, then of relief. Now she listened to Bern Malin with something of passionate concern in her blue eyes.
‘Then it was he, the first Gideon Dent, who made all those holes in the ground we saw on the track from Ryde’s Place?’
Bern Malin almost winced.
‘Don’t ever call them holes in the ground, Katie. That is blasphemy to prospectors or miners. They are diggings, shafts or mullock heaps ‒ whatever you like, but never holes. You could cause another Eureka Rebellion if you so misused miners’ terms.’
‘I’m sorry. I will remember, and tell Andrew too‒’
‘I have a certain feeling that Master Andrew would already be aware of the distinction.’
Katie would have been indignant at the rebuke to herself except that she was pleased to discover Bern Malin did think something of Andrew’s knowledge from books.
‘Please go on,’ she said. ‘I must know about Gideon Dent ‒
his son, I mean. Is he a prospector too? Why didn’t you tell me all this before?’
Bern Malin narrowed his eyes as if to protect them from the smoke curling up from the cigarette in his hand.
‘There are always reasons for patience,’ he said soberly. ‘That’s something one learns from the bush.’ He looked straight across the table at Katie. ‘I had to know you first before I knew what I could tell you. Fair enough?’
‘You mean ‒ to trust me?’
‘To know you,’ he repeated with some emphasis. ‘Whatever I had to tell you must necessarily be a surprise to you. Besides, it was necessary to get you as far away from Malley’s Find, and as quickly, as possible.’
Katie was frankly puzzled.
‘That will explain itself when I have finished telling you all that you ought to know. Are you listening to me, Katie, because what I have to say from now on is important!’
She nodded. Of course she was listening. Did he think she had brought Andrew all this way to let her mind drift away on cloud shadows and sunsets and whether shafts were holes in the ground or not?
‘Please go on. I won’t interrupt again.’
The expression in Bern’s eyes said he had just listened to the irresponsible promise of a child.
He drew on his cigarette again, then tapped its lighted end into the ash-tray.
‘Gideon Dent is a geologist,’ he said slowly, almost word by word. There was a hint of irony in his voice. ‘That means he has a scientific training to back up the fact he is a prospector for minerals and elements in the earth’s surface, just as his father was before him. More explicitly he works with geiger-counters, seismographs, rip and engine drills where his father worked with bushmanship, native cunning, a winch and bucket: and his own two hands.’
‘You sound as if you thought more of his father than you do of him,’ Katie said ready to defend her new found cousin, if only because he was a kinsman.
Something amused Bern Malin as he considered Katie’s question.
‘Don’t you like him?’ she persisted.
‘I bear with the fellow. Is that answer enough? He’s a wanderer like his father ‒ or has been in the past. I have a special feeling for him on that account.’