by Lucy Walker
‘We’re all British,’ Mrs. Powers said comfortingly. ‘But we’re Australian nationals, as well as British citizens ‒’
Kate answered questions like an automaton.
‘Have you your birth certificate, Miss James, or a copy of it?’ Mrs. Powers asked her, smiling kindly at the girl sitting so still on the other side of the table. ‘It takes such a time to get one all the way from England, and Mr. Barnes knows Mr. Malin is in quite a hurry ‒ He always is ‒’
She bestowed an understanding smile in Bern’s direction. He did not see it because he was looking at Katie across the papers.
‘Have you the family birth certificates, Katie?’ This seemed to be very important to Bern, too.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And passports. I’m afraid the passports would be out of date now. My father kept all our papers, mine and Andrew’s. I have them with me in a small satchel under some clothes I left at Malin’s Outpost.’
‘At Malin’s Outpost?’ Bern looked at her as if she was a very small child; incomprehensible.
‘Are they important?’
‘You can’t be married without them, Katie. You can’t become a member of a Company, as you are a minor, without them. That’s what all these documents are about.’
‘You see,’ Mrs. Powers explained gently, ‘Mr. Barnes is also a Justice of the Peace and he could give you permission to marry under State Law because you aren’t twenty-one, and you have no parents.’
‘That’s a good thing,’ Katie said, with quiet dignity. ‘About needing my birth certificate and it being at Malin’s Outpost, I mean. You see I want to go back there first. I want to see a relative of mine.’
Mrs. Powers and Bern Malin looked at one another.
‘Fill in all the other details, Mrs. Powers,’ Bern said at last. ‘Back to Malin’s Outpost we’ll have to go. It means skipping the visit to Pandanning.’
‘You’ll be able to have a Cessna all the way there and back, Mr. Malin.’ Mrs. Powers was very arch about this. ‘It makes such a difference, doesn’t it? Now that ‒’
‘Quite. If you, Katie, will give Mrs. Powers similar details about Andrew we can leave the papers here with Barnes. They’ll be made ready except for the birth certificates and signatures.’
‘Why Andrew?’ Katie asked quietly. ‘You aren’t marrying him too, are you, Bern? Does he need a birth certificate to go to school?’
‘Haven’t you told her, Mr. Malin?’ Mrs. Powers asked reprovingly. ‘I think she should know ‒’
‘I haven’t told her because I haven’t had the opportunity. I brought her up here from the lounge downstairs to do exactly that but ‒ well ‒ something intervened ‒’
Like kissing me ‒ Katie thought.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ Mrs. Powers looked quite downcast. ‘I should have waited upstairs. I came down too soon.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ Bern was clearly thinking of something else and being passing polite to Mrs. Powers from a habit of good manners. ‘I should have made myself more clear about which drawing-room. However, you could get those documents typed off and prepared in detail for me. Also see to the filing of those receipts from the Mines Department, and have them put in safe custody. We could take off the day after to-morrow, if I can book a Cessna. I’ll come straight back with the relevant certificates. To-morrow, I’m afraid, will have to be given up to Andrew’s wardrobe. He’ll need quite a one.’
Mrs. Powers had risen, gathering together her papers as she did so.
‘I’ll have these in order for Mr. Barnes to-morrow,’ she said beaming at Bern who had also risen. ‘He will see that you get a licence and he’ll have it ready for you. You will want to be here fourteen days hence, in any case, to receive the final word from the Mines Department, won’t you?’
‘Quite.’ He was seeing her to the door, opening it for her and ushering her out while she was still speaking. She put her head in for one last beaming smile at Katie.
‘Good night, Miss James. I’m so glad I met you. I’ll tell Mr. Barnes ‒’
‘He’ll be so glad to know ‒’ Bern said, nearly exasperated. ‘Thank you for coming so punctually.’ He closed the door behind Mrs. Powers, cutting short Katie’s attempt at saying good night too.
Bern pressed the service bell on the wall before he came back to the table.
‘We’ll have a drink, and a stiff one at that, before we go on,’ he said. ‘We need fortifying ‒’
‘I certainly need something, Bern, because I don’t understand what it is all about. I didn’t take our suggestion of marriage ‒ mine to you, it really was ‒ very seriously. Motels and moonlight don’t go very well together do they? Or is it they go too well together? Then you bring Mrs. Powers to fill in papers for me ‒’
She broke off.
‘I took it seriously,’ he said flatly. ‘What is more I want to marry you, Katie, if I have to bully you into it ‒’
‘To save me from Tom Ryde?’
He looked at her steadily. ‘Because I can look after you and Andrew, and safeguard you both.’ Then he added very quietly ‒ ‘And I need a wife.’
Yes, the way he had kissed her had told her that. Like every other lonely man in the Never ‒
There was a tap at the door and the steward came in.
‘Shall I get you something, sir?’
‘Yes, please. Two whiskies and some soda. Make mine a double and bring some ice with it. I wonder if you could put out a call for Master Andrew James. If he’s not in his room he’ll be exploring the hotel. His sister and I would like to see him here, now.’
‘Yes, sir. Certainly, sir.’ The steward was deft, silent and gone in a matter of seconds. Even the door made no sound as it was closed. He had caught the mood of Mr. Bern Malin with that extra sense endowed upon all good stewards.
‘What was I saying?’ Bern asked Katie; he looked puzzled, suddenly tired. He was a man used to handling a kibble in a shaft; and outback men who were as taciturn and rock-like as the bush and gullies themselves. Handling documents, typists, Katie and possibly Andrew, all in a few minutes, was something that for once bogged him down.
‘You were saying you needed a wife,’ Katie said quietly. She was still sitting at the table; frozen to the chair, she thought. ‘Why not Stella Ryde? She is beautiful, fond of you, a near neighbour. She has lovely eyes, Bern ‒’
‘Stella will marry the man with the most money on offer. If she seemed over friendly with me it was because I was, at the time, the only man around. She has a dozen better suitors in Pandanning. Ask Tom.’
So he had heard about Stella’s ‘shindigs’ in Pandanning, and did not know he was her only true love. Was there a note of rue in his voice?
‘I thought I was not to ask Tom anything. In fact I was to keep a distance from him. Don’t you think you could tell me why?’
The door had opened and Andrew came in. He had heard Katie’s last words.
‘I was only along the passage outside,’ he said. ‘The steward told me to come in here.’
He started to walk round the room, looking at the pictures, one by one, then at each piece of furniture. He tested the carpet with the toe of his shoe: stood back and looked at a steel engraving on the wall. There was quite a silence while this Andrew-performance went on.
‘If Bern said you had to keep a distance from Tom, it’s a good thing,’ Andrew said at length, not looking at Katie because in truth he was more interested in the new things he was seeing in this room, not seen in any other room in the hotel.
‘He speculates on the Stock Exchange,’ he went on, ‘though I don’t suppose you know what that means, Katie ‒ being a girl. He came up to Perth to buy shares in Gideon Dent because he guessed Gideon Dent was all set to open up the big mining leases. There’s ilmenite out there by the ton. You ought to know what that is, Katie. By this time, anyway. I read about it on the wall in the Mines Department when I went in there with Bern. From ilmenite you get titanium to fly space-ships ‒’
‘Andrew,’ Katie interrupted at last. ‘I don’t want a lecture on mineral-sands, please. I want to know why you said that about Tom. Then I want to know how you know. And I want to tell you it’s dreadfully wrong ‒’
She broke off. She had not once looked at Bern while Andrew had conducted his solo recital, meantime investigating everything he could see and touch in the room; not looking at his sister.
‘Because I saw him coming out of a place with “Share Brokers” written on it. While Bern was having a hair-cut in the barber’s two doors down, I went back and looked at the place again and I read the notices on the notice board outside. Then I went inside and read the notices on the board inside. I asked a man what it is all about and he laughed and said ‒ “This is where you speculate if you’re game, and invest if you’re wise. Remember that advice when you grow up, young feller”.’
Andrew stopped to test the quality of old leather in an early colonial arm-chair in the corner.
‘Go on,’ Katie said quietly.
‘Then Tom came back and he asked the girl at the counter to firm that order for five thousand Gideon Dents. He said to tell someone called Bill he’d seen Gideon Dent’s principal two doors down the street ‒ that was the barber’s ‒ and the word was out he’d been up to the Mines Department.’
Katie turned her head and looked at Bern across the table.
Once again they were interrupted by the arrival of the steward with the drinks.
‘Something for the young gentleman?’ he asked Bern.
‘I could suggest you take him out and drown him,’ Bern said flatly. ‘On second thoughts he’d better stay here. He is educating us. We might as well learn. Bring him lemonade, please.’
‘I prefer ginger ale, thank you,’ Andrew said coming to the table. He hoisted himself on to a chair and looked up at the steward thoughtfully.
‘Do you think I could have two straws and some ice-cream in it? Pink ice-cream, please.’
‘Yes, sir, certainly, sir.’ The steward bent to pick up the chit which Bern had signed, and added with mock relief ‒ ‘Thank goodness there’s something human about him, sir. Two straws and pink ice-cream makes him sound real normal.’
Katie had not said ‘when’ as the steward poured soda in her drink so she had a glassful. Bern took only ice with his whisky.
Katie’s eyes, so bright a blue because of the sparkle reflected from the soda-filled glass, gazed at him questioningly.
‘What does Andrew mean by all that?’
‘Exactly what he said,’ Bern replied. ‘The only thing I’m grateful for about our spy service is that it brings me the intelligence that I had already been to the Mines Department before Tom discovered it; then decided to firm his order for Gideon Dents.’
‘You and Andrew make Gideon sound plural.’
‘By Gideon Dents, I mean shares. So did Tom. Shares in the company.’
‘Is there anything wrong with that?’
‘No. It’s a public company and anyone is entitled to buy shares, if they can. That is, if there are any for sale. On that point I think Tom will be disappointed. Most shares are held by the company ‒ the men out in the Never working the diggings. Not many of us, but all of us. Of course, Tom doesn’t know that yet.’
‘Is that why he came to town, and you didn’t want ‒’
Katie broke off. She remembered Andrew was there, all ears and eyes. As he could so accurately remember, and report what had happened in that share broker’s office, so now he would remember, probably for ever, whatever it was Bern or she might say of Tom Ryde. It wouldn’t be fair.
‘I guess he was speculating then,’ Andrew said indifferently.
‘You heard the word, but how do you know what it means?’ Katie asked, mystified.
There weren’t any ways of looking up long words in the middle of St. George’s Terrace; or the hotel for that matter.
‘I looked it up in the dictionary on the headmaster’s table in the school Bern and I went to see ‒’
Katie drew in her breath.
‘So you went to the art school?’
‘Yes. And another one I’m going to next term ‒ to live in. You know, to be a boarder. The man at the art school said my paintings are very good because they have colour and movement in them but I don’t know anything about form and perspective. He told me what that was too ‒ perspective, I mean.’
‘He told you that you had to learn; so you said you would learn? History too, Andrew?’
‘Well, if I have to, I have to, I suppose. Calajira said ‒’
Katie put her drink down, her elbows on the table, and rested her forehead between her hands.
Calajira said ‒ The words cut her like a knife. ‘So you went to see Calajira too? All in one day.’ She dropped her hands and looked at her brother. ‘Do you know what I did, Andrew?’ she asked, near, bitterness.
‘You bought yourself a new dress and some shoes and had something done to your hair that’s nice. You look pretty, Katie.’
‘I did all that. Then I went to the cinema and cried. I cried a lot. Does that mean anything to you, Andrew? That I was left ‒’
She broke off, looking from one to the other.
‘Does that mean anything to either of you? At all?’
The door opened with the steward bringing Andrew’s drink. The open door was too much for Katie. She jumped to her feet.
‘Excuse me‒’ she said. She could say no more. She went out of the room as if the company in there, including the steward who seemed to do nothing but interrupt, was too much to be borne.
She wasn’t a child ‒ and naive ‒ whatever Bern thought. She was a grown woman, and bitterly hurt.
In her room, Katie lay on her bed because she didn’t know what else to do. It was too small a room to stride up and down. The chair was too hard. The mirror would only tell her that ‘something done to her hair’ might make Andrew think she looked pretty, but only the stars in heaven knew what Bern thought it did for her.
As if it mattered anyway!
What had they done to her? Andrew and Bern?
So they had been to see Calajira too! The art school, the Mines Department, and Calajira too!
She, Katie, had never made Andrew learn history. She had never made him sleep indoors ‒ anywhere but on a veranda where he could see the sky ‒ yet Calajira and the man from the art school had made him want to go to boarding school ‒ where he’d be closed in ‒
She lay there on her back, staring at the ceiling a long time. There was a knock on the door, but she didn’t answer. She didn’t want to see whoever was there ‒ probably Andrew. The key was in the outside keyhole and she wished she hadn’t left it there.
The door opened, but Katie did not bring her eyes from what they were staring at on the ceiling.
Yet, she knew it wasn’t a small boy coming in. It was Bern.
She closed her eyes tight, pressing her lips together to stop them saying bitterly ‒
‘Go away ‒ for ever. Go out of my life. Leave me something of my own.’
He sat on the side of the bed and for quite a long time said nothing. She supposed he was looking at her face. She supposed her lipstick was an awful mess.
‘He’s a very clever child, Katie,’ Bern said at length. ‘Now he needs the discipline of forcing himself ‒ not the same thing as being made by other people ‒ forcing himself to face up to the ardours of investigating all knowledge; not just what he was pleased to do. Calajira, even more than the art school man, gave him that incentive. Strangely enough ‒ something else also provided incentive. They were the rocks and minerals in the show cases at the Mines Department. He said ‒’ Bern paused. ‘Katie, are you listening?’
She nodded.
‘Andrew said he wanted to know about the rocks and what did one have to learn to know as much about them as ‒ well, as Gideon Dent knew.’
Katie’s eyes flew open.
‘Did he say that ‒ about Gideon Dent? What did you tell him?’
‘And Gideon Dent? Did he go there?’
‘Gideon Dent’s son did.’
‘What did Andrew say?’
‘He said he would go to a boarding school and the art school both: he asked how long it would take him to pass enough examinations to be admitted to the School of Mines. Nobody prodded him. He also wanted to know if a miner could be an artist too.’
‘What did they tell him?’
‘That Calajira had been a miner, in his own fashion. He used to pan for gold specks out of Wild Cat Find and Coolgardie in the old days before an itinerant artist happened on him and taught him to paint.’
Katie looked down the length of the bed at the old-fashioned brass ends.
‘I see ‒’ she said at last, slowly.
‘Yes, Katie. I think you do see.’
Her eyes came back to him. They were sad, sober eyes now, but resigned. Deep down in them Bern could see a light beginning to dawn. A hope. A dream of a future for Andrew ‒ found by Andrew himself because no one else could ever have visited it on him. Not Katie, nor Bern, nor anyone else. He was nearly eleven, and he had the will a very clever and unusual child could have ‒ a strong will. He had to discipline it himself. He had to find out for himself.
Bern sat looking down at her. They were so near, they touched.
‘That is what you brought Andrew all the way across Australia for, isn’t it, Katie? Haven’t you succeeded in your mission? You wanted Gideon Dent to tell you what to do with him. No one could tell a boy like Andrew. I simply brought him to Perth and showed him where he could see the things he wanted in life. He could also see what he had to do, and be, to get them. He had to make his own decisions.’
‘But he’s so young‒’
‘Not as young as you think. He has some of the aged wisdom and knowledge of the bush in him ‒ far beyond his years. I sensed it. Secretary knew it. He’s not an ordinary child.’