Escape to Koolonga

by Amanda Doyle

  ‘No feeding there. Dry as tinder, and a fire risk into the bargain, I’m afraid that’s all that can be said for that lot.’ His lips twitched. ‘You don’t know much about the country, do you, Miss Montfort?’

  Again his eyes slid towards that hat-bag, with a hateful sardonic glint that even the darkness couldn’t hide. Emmie wished that she’d never shown him the contents, after all! She wished she hadn’t brought them, those hats! They were quite ridiculous affairs, anyway, and if she had known, had guessed the sort of place to which she was coming, of course she’d have left them back there for Sharon or Lissa to dispose of somehow.

  Not that they were the sort of things that were easy to dispose of, unfortunately. Much too distinctive.

  Models, actually—because there was a certain standard of dressing which Montforts were naturally expected to maintain, even ‘plain Jane’ Montforts such as Emmie.

  Just peeping into that bag brought certain recent occasions quite vividly to mind.

  The shantung-baku, for instance. It had graced the last Spring Meeting at Randwick, an affair to which she had been dragged somewhat unwillingly by Robert and his girlfriend. And then, after their apparent sincerity in wishing for her company, they had shortly disappeared into the crowd of race goers, and Emmie had been left to fend for herself. Not that they had actually meant to dump her, she was sure. It was just that it never occurred to either of them that Emmie might not know as many people as they did themselves. Might not know anyone, in fact. Because after all, how did you get to know anyone when you hadn’t got swept into the social swim when you were young, the way Lissa and Sharon had? How could you know people, when you simply hadn’t been where the people were? No, it hadn’t been enjoyable at all. In fact, far from being enjoyable, it had actually been an agonising outing for the shy Emmie, who knew no one. Everyone else appeared to know everyone. If they hadn’t come with friends, they soon appeared to spot some, greeting them with loud cries of delight which Emmie wished she could copy. Only she couldn’t see anyone to hail with whoops of joy as of long-lost friends well met. Not anyone. Ah, well. For Robert’s sake she’d tried to pretend to an excitement she hadn’t felt, but she’d arrived home wondering just where she fitted into the present scene when she hadn’t derived even a modicum of pleasure from such a hallowed date on the fashion calendar. For the hundredth time she had asked herself where she fitted in, and for the hundredth time she had had to admit, reluctantly, that she didn’t. She was as much a misfit in the gay, brittle social round as she was the odd one out in that clever, ambitious, good-looking family of hers.

  The Randwick hat was badly squashed. Its shantung straw crown was quite hopelessly dented, in fact. And Emmie didn’t mind a bit!

  The blue feathered thing she’d worn at young Peter’s christening was wrecked, as well—and, strangely, she didn’t mind that, either.

  Emmie’s memories of that christening were of rush and haste and muddle and a singular lack of assistance in all she’d had to do. She had been left to cope with three-year-old Lorna and the preparation of the large reception that was to follow the ceremony, while Melissa—who should have been doing at least one, if not both, of these things—posed graciously for the gossip-column photographers with her adorable new baby, handed him over to his nanny, and then moved languidly about amongst her guests in the pleasant certainty that someone else—(Emmie, of course)—was behind the scenes where she had been despatched, to deal single-handed with all the sordid necessities.

  Emmie peeped surreptitiously into the bag again, smiled in spite of herself.

  The bare patch amongst the feathery blue, the bit where the canvas backing showed, was the place where little Lorna had pulled out a whole handful of feathers while Emmie was busy cutting more sandwiches. It had seemed too silly for words to be standing at the kitchen table cutting crusts of loaves with that sort of a hat upon one’s head, and so she’d removed it— unadvisedly, as it turned out!—and left it on a chair. Shortly after she had been scolded for pulling out the feathers, Lorna had poured a mug of raspberry drink right down the front of her white organdie party dress, and then Melissa had scolded Emmie herself for not keeping a better eye on the child.

  No, the blue feather thing was no great loss.

  And there was the cream jersey turban, just beneath it in the bag. It had survived all right so far, and so had the velveteen beret she’d worn to the Sunday lunch at the Golf Club. But that white tulle which Mark had insisted upon her getting when he took silk—heavens!—what a mess! First, the trainman at the siding had grabbed the bag unceremoniously right on top of where the tulle hat must have been. And then she herself must have crumpled it further when she’d tucked all her trappings under her arm so despairingly to take them down to the store. She’d been proud of Mark that day, though. Proud, really, to be a Montfort. He’d looked so handsome—a handsome, austere creature on that occasion, yet unusually congenial to his middle sister in his moment of triumph, and afterwards he’d taken the whole family, including Emmie, for a meal at that new place down on the water-front at Milson’s Point, where the oysters had been quite superb, and---

  ‘Here we are, then. Koolonga.’

  The man’s deep voice, sounding briefly at her side, brought Emmie out of her trance.

  Koolonga.

  Well, if it wasn’t a town, it certainly gave the impression of one, or at the very least of a small village.

  The jeep rattled over a ramp, and in and out amongst the dark, squared shapes of buildings and sheds. Corrugated iron roofs gleamed faintly in the moonlight. Presently they turned through white-painted gates into the blackness of a tree-ranked avenue, swept up a gravel drive to a brick portcullis.

  It was impossible to see much of the surrounding precincts.

  Emmie allowed herself to be helped out, and followed Riddley Fenton up the steps. At the top he removed his hat with one hand, opened a gauze-meshed door with the other, and stood aside, motioning to her to enter. Then he led the way again. Through a long, wide hall with a waxed wooden floor, over which his dusty cowhide boots echoed crisply, to a door at the end.

  ‘The bathroom. I’ll give you five minutes to clean up, and then I’ll see to that hand.’

  The mirror told Emmie why he’d led her straight there. She had had no idea that her face was all streaked and smudged like that!

  Her eyes looked like smudges, too. Big, dark, round ones, in her unnaturally pale face. The pain in her hand was echoed in the large, hazel pools of her eyes. It was all she could do to allow the cold tap-water to play gently over the angry scarlet place where the flame from the kerosene cooker had licked. She examined it carefully after dabbing it with a small, clean towel. Superficial, as burns went, luckily. Nothing to worry about, though it was certainly going to blister, as the man had predicted.

  Emmie combed her hair back into its obedient, silken sheen, and then went back to the hall.

  The room they retired to was obviously Riddley Fenton’s study. A sort of office-cum-sitting-room. It had deep leather chairs, a large roll-topped desk, a couple of handsome rugs on the pine boards, and maps and rain-charts strung around the walls. There was a box strapped to the wall, too. A type of cupboard. When he opened it, Emmie saw that it was full of medical supplies, all neatly labelled or numbered.

  ‘Sit down, please.’ He sounded frighteningly businesslike.

  ‘I’d as soon stand.’

  ‘Just as you like.’ His shrug was patently indifferent.

  Emmie stood.

  It seemed to her that she stood for a very long time, while he dressed her seared palm.

  For such big, tough, sunburnt, scrub-cutting hands, this man’s were unexpectedly gentle. They worked carefully and economically, in an unhurried, capable manner. She kept her eyes fastened on them, because she had to look somewhere, and if she raised her eyes at all, his face got in the way. It was a slightly grim face, impersonal, absorbed, and it was very close to her own, which was why she felt more comfortable
looking down instead of up.

  Now the brown fingers were winding a bandage lightly over the soothing gauze pad they had put in place. Emmie watched them, mesmerised. Their movements were unhurried but constant. Continuous. They had quite a giddying monotony, the way the two things alternated. The brown hands. The white bandage. Brown, white. Brown, white. Round and round. Brown and white. All muddled up together in a strangely woolly way.

  ‘Damn!’

  The brown and white had gone. Now there was just an expanse of khaki instead. A khaki shirt? A shirt-front? And then even that disappeared, and there was simply nothing, nothing at all.

  ‘Lean forward. Put your head right down. That’s it.

  You’ll be all right in a minute.’

  From somewhere quite far away, the words reached Emmie.

  To her surprise, the voice that spoke them was behind, now, instead of in front.

  When her world stopped revolving, she found herself to be sitting in one of the great leather chairs. Emmie had no idea how she could have got there, but there she was, undoubtedly, and the pressure of someone’s fingers was keeping her head down near to her knees. The fingers must be Riddley Fenton’s, she supposed, for there was no one else around, was there? She could feel the roughness of his thumb caressing the nape of her neck, but when she took a sighing breath he removed it forthwith, and she was able to sit up, somewhat shakily.

  ‘Better?’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry. I mean, I’ve never --- ’

  ‘There’s always a first time for everything, isn’t there? I’d say you’re clocking up a record of them, this trip. Drink this. It might help.’

  ‘What is it?’ She eyed the small glass doubtfully.

  ‘A time-honoured bush remedy, but effective.’ He smiled faintly, and the mockery crept back into his eyes. ‘Come on, it won’t poison you. I thought you were the sort who’d be game for anything.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’ She wasn’t sure that she liked that observation. Not the way hesaid it. She didn’t much like this disgusting, milky-white concoction, either, but she drank it nevertheless with mute obedience.

  ‘Why do I think it? Those hats, maybe.’ He sounded amused. ‘It’s a pretty far cry from where you’d wear hats like those to a place like Koolonga, I reckon. I suspect you didn’t know, when you set out on this crazy, wild-goose chase of yours, that Koolonga actually means “out-of-the-way”? It’s aboriginal, for somewhere that’s remote.’

  ‘Not a wild-goose chase,’ Emmie corrected him, leaning back and pushing her hair away from her damp forehead. ‘I came to the shop, remember. The store.’

  ‘And now that you’ve seen it, you’ll agree it’s an impossible proposition for a girl like you.’ The broad back was towards her, as he started replacing the things in the medical chest once more. ‘I’ll take you back to the train again, but you’ll need to spend a couple of days here, I’m afraid. The next train’s not till Thursday. By the look of you, though, the delay won’t do you any harm. You can rest, and Mrs. Bexley will love nothing better than to cosset you in the meantime. She has a passion for spoiling the weak and helpless.’

  Emmie sat up, stung by that bland statement. Indignation brought angry spots of colour to her wan cheeks.

  ‘That’s quite unfair, to say that, just because of how I was a minute ago!’ she blazed angrily. ‘You don’t know the first thing about me, and I can assure you that I’m neither weak nor helpless. Just because you’re a man, and ten feet tall, you think --- ’ She broke off when she saw the beginning of the grin lifting the corner of his mouth, changed tack. ‘I—I had quite a—a time getting away, as it happens,’ she defended herself. ‘A lot to do before I left. And then there was the long day1 s journey on top of it. And the train was hot. What’s more, I hadn’t bargained for some complete and utter stranger to come barging into my very own shop at the end of it all to give

  me the mother and father of all frights.’

  ‘I apologise for that.’ There was an odd expression in his eye as he turned to look over at her. ‘But what would you have done in my place? That store’s been empty for over three months, and I happen to know that it was supposed to be locked. When I saw a light flickering at the back, I reckoned maybe a swaggie had taken roost, and naturally stopped to investigate.’ A pause. ‘There’s another reason for my interest, too, as it happens, Miss Montfort. A reason that gives me an additional right to investigate anything I might consider untoward. I happen to be the late owner’s—the late Miss Millicent’s—sole executor.’

  Emmie knew that her colour must be receding as rapidly as it had come. Well, of all the luck! Wasn’t it just typical of everything that came her way in life, that Millie had had to choose an interfering, overbearing tyrant such as this one to see her affairs to rights?

  ‘What does that—er—entail, exactly? Being sole executor?’ she asked cautiously.

  Maybe it didn’t amount to anything much. Just some of that impressive legal jargon that sounded a lot more important than it really was. Mark was forever coming across with terms like that, and she often had the feeling that he used them simply to impress the uninitiated. She had a sudden suspicion, right now, that this man was trying the selfsame trick!

  If he was, he was being extremely subtle about it. You could tell that by the way in which the broad shoulders lifted, carelessly, with a hint of resignation almost.

  ‘It entails comparatively little, I regret to say, so far as you are concerned. You saw the state of the store for yourself. A doubtful asset, Miss Montfort, but I shall do my best to dispose of it satisfactorily for you.’

  ‘But I don’t want you to dispose of it,’ she pointed out despairingly. (He really seemed to be bent on getting rid of her, didn’t he?) ‘I’m—I intend to run it.’

  ‘It isn’t a going concern.’ There was an instant shake, a very positive shake, of that dark, imperious head. He had finished with the medicine chest, and now he came across the room. There was a strange sense of purpose, of deliberation, about the way he put a hand upon either arm of her chair and leaned down, quite near, effectively making her a prisoner. Emmie could smell the dust on his clothing—an intermingling of leather and sweat and earth and the strange, unfamiliar, oily smell that was eucalypt, probably from the bushes he had been cutting all day. His nearness was disturbing, but he appeared quite unaware of the fact. Unaware that he was near. Unaware of her. His face was inscrutable as he looked down, his eyes calm and unreadable.

  ‘It’s not a going concern,’ he repeated, neither pleasantly nor unpleasantly.

  ‘I’ll make it a going concern again,’ she protested stubbornly.

  There was silence for a time. Then --‘I don’t think you quite understand, Miss Montfort. That store depended for its custom almost solely upon Koolonga Station and the Bruces over at Berroola. Give or take a few prospectors and railway fettlers, the odd well-sinker or drover or swaggie, our needs were its only source of steady revenue. When Miss Millicent died we transferred to the town, to the stores at the Junction. The will didn’t come to light for about six weeks—that’s why the place is in such an unholy mess. In the end Des Connolly, the mailman, found it in a boiled-sweet jar.’ His mouth lifted. ‘Miss Millicent had shown quite unusual resourcefulness and eccentricity in hiding the darned thing, as a matter of fact, and in the meantime—well, we had to keep our supplies coming. So the switch to Berroola Junction was the natural alternative. Admittedly, it’s further away, but there are certain advantages—more choice, better quality-- ’

  ‘I—I’d make sure there was a choice, that the quality was good.’ Emmie’s eyes were round with pleading. With bewilderment and shock, too. Her prospects of a livelihood depended upon the surrounding stations, depended on men like this one. It wasn’t good news. Anything but! ‘I’d see that you had plenty of choice, Mr. Fenton, truly I would. I—I’m— I’d-- ’

  ‘Look, young ’un’—the man stood up straight—‘right now I could do with a shower and som
e grub. I’ll show you to your room, and you can join me for dinner in forty minutes. Mrs. Bexley will make up a bed for you while we eat. O.K.?’ As if sensing her disappointment at being fobbed off, Riddley Fenton smiled. It was the first time he had allowed that faint lift of the mouth to turn into a proper smile, of calculated charm and persuasion.

  Emmie watched the wrinkles deepen at the corners of those slightly mocking grey eyes, noted the way his teeth contrasted so whitely with the deep tan of his lean, swarthy cheeks.

  ‘Yes, all right,’ She smiled bleakly in return.

  She felt helpless. It was obvious that the man didn’t take her seriously at all. What could she do, or say, she wondered as she followed him silently to the room she was to have, to convince him that she was to be taken seriously? There was no going back for Emmie now. She had burned her boats back there in Sydney, very thoroughly indeed! There was no going back, that much was certain. She was here, and here she meant to stay.

  Perhaps Riddley Fenton would be in a more amenable mood once he had showered and changed and got some food inside him. Maybe that would mellow him a little. She certainly hoped so!

  He was, as it turned out, a pleasant if offhand host.

  To tell the truth, Emmie scarcely recognised as that dusty, sweat-stained scrub-cutter the man who held her chair for her, and saw her seated with impersonal urbanity before taking his own place at the head of the long cedar table. His cheeks were no longer stubbled and begrimed, but freshly shaven, smooth. Emmie could catch the pleasant tang of the after-shave he had used. His hair was smooth, too, blacker than ever with the damp still lingering from his recent ablutions. He now wore a crisp white shirt, an unexpectedly rakish cravat knotted at his brown throat, and pale drill trousers supported by a narrow leather belt. The boots had been replaced by another, almost identical, pair—but these ones were buffed and shining. They had much the same polished gleam as the lovely cedar table at which they were at this moment sitting. The shining silverware was reflected tenderly against its mellow surface— tall candlesticks, elegant cutlery, the waxen petals of that somewhat wistful little floral bowl in the very centre, all had their images echoed in the patina of the beautiful wood upon which they had been placed.