Escape to Koolonga

by Amanda Doyle

  ‘Oh, sure, Ridd. Sorry.’ Kevin chucked her under the chin in a triumphantly playful way. 4 ’Night, Emm. Sleep well.’ He was whistling softly as he followed that other taller figure that was already taking the new gravel pathway in crunching strides.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Emmie did not sleep well, in spite of Kevin’s good wishes that she might. She checked that the children were sound, reassured

  herself that Mrs. Bexley’s even breathing came from the stretcher which she had rigged up beside Daisy’s, and then tiptoed quietly to her own room.

  She could not have said what it was that kept her awake. A vague sense of loss, an elusive regret for something she couldn’t even name or recognise. She tossed irritably, and then, when morning came, sank into a deep sleep, and it was almost ten o’clock before she woke.

  She had just showered and eaten a meagre and unenthusiastic breakfast when Ridd turned up to collect Mrs. Bexley again. Emmie could see her with the children on the grass outside the kitchen window.

  ‘I’ll be with you presently, Mrs. B.,’ she heard Ridd call, and then his brisk steps came nearer, up the side of the house. An instant later he was there beside her, flinging his hat on the dresser and saying without preamble,

  ‘Where can we be alone? I want to speak to you.’

  Emmie blinked.

  ‘We are alone,’ she pointed out feebly, wondering what could have caused that thunderous calm in Ridd’s level grey eyes, a lull-before-the-storm sort of calm that might have made her quake with apprehension if he’d given her time. He didn’t.

  ‘In here will do.’ He pushed her into the store-room, shut the door, and came across to her with a certain measure of deliberation. ‘Now, Emily. Perhaps you’ll be good enough to tell me just what you think you’re playing at?’

  He sounded—well, fierce. His brows were coming together into one of those brooding scowls, and his mouth was taut and forbidding.

  Emmie blinked again, this time with genuine puzzlement.

  ‘Playing at? Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘You know perfectly well what I mean!’

  ‘I don’t, I’m sorry to say, Ridd. If I had the least notion of what you’re getting at, I’d answer, but I haven’t. Would you mind explaining what’s behind that extraordinary question?’ ‘The explanation is for you to make. And I’ve no intention of spelling out the whole unsavoury business in words of one syllable for your edification. We both know what I’m talking about when I simply say it’s your attitude to Kevin Condor that

  concerns me.’

  ‘I still don’t understand.’

  ‘I’m sure you do.’

  ‘I don’t, Ridd. Honestly. I mean-----’ She hesitated, fumbling for the right words. ‘I like Kevin very much.’

  ‘Are you in love with him?’ How strangely he was conducting this surprising conversation! How oddly and intently he was watching her! ‘Enough to marry him?’ insisted Ridd quietly.

  ‘No, of course not. I’ve just said I liked him, haven’t I? There’s no question of my ever wanting to marry Kevin.’ She hesitated, added frostily, ‘It seems to me an odd thing for you to come here at ten in the morning to find out, but I hope you’re satisfied. And now, Ridd, may I go?’

  He blocked her path effectively by the simplest of means. His fingers were biting into her arms as they stopped her progress past him to the door. His khaki-shirted chest was as effective a barrier as any brick wall.

  ‘No, you may not,’ he said in clipped accents, and Emmie could see that there was a dangerous glitter in his eyes, a pallor about his mouth that told her the lull was almost over. The storm could break at any time, by the look of things, and for the life of her she couldn’t see what it was she had said or done to provoke it.

  ‘Is that all you have to say on the matter?’ he persisted, and there was a twist almost of disgust to his lips now.

  ‘Only that I wish you would mind your own business, and let me mind mine,’ she retorted, with cold dignity and a meaning glance at the brown, square-tipped fingers still clamping her arms.

  ‘My God, but you’re a cool one!’ A savage shake jerked her head back, brought her wide, astonished eyes to his grim face. ‘You’d better get this straight, Emily. Lay off Kevin, do you hear?’

  ‘Are you by any chance suggesting --- ’

  ‘Not suggesting. It’s an ultimatum,’ he told her crushingly. ‘Leave him alone. If I ever catch you kissing Kevin Condor again after what you’ve just admitted, by heaven I’ll-- ’

  ‘Don’t you think that’s up to Kevin?’ She was becoming angry herself now. Her face was flaming with a sudden rush of pure annoyance at the nerve of him, interfering, dictating, commanding, when he couldn’t possibly know -‘It’s more up to you,’ he barked. ‘I don’t blame Kev at all. The man’s in a state of emotional shock, has been ever since he came back to Koolonga, and I dare say you’re a convincing little performer when you get started. I was nursing him along nicely until you arrived on the scene. For all I know you might be going through some particular form of hell yourself, Emily—rebounds can be damn painful things, as we once agreed—but don’t go involving Kevin. Don’t go relieving your frustrated emotions on him, do you hear? He’s in a confused state, and he’s not fit to cope with another let-down, which is what he’s obviously headed for if you don’t stop playing around with him!’

  ‘How dare you! I’ll play around with whom I please,’ she heard herself say loftily. His face was blurred in angry mists that swam before her eyes.

  ‘You won’t. Not with Kevin.’

  ‘I will! With whom I please!’ Her voice rose.

  ‘You’ll pick someone your own weight, Emily, do you hear? You’ll choose someone who’s got your measure, not an emotional wreck like Kev. You’ll pick someone who knows your intentions are nil, who knows that you’re merely salving your female pride after some scorching affair that obviously went stale on you, and—’

  ‘That’s unforgivable!’

  ‘And if it’s kisses you want’—Ridd’s voice was harsh— ‘you can get them any time, free, frivolous, no strings attached. In fact, here’s one to be going on with, you brazen little minx!’

  His arms went around her, bringing her against him. His lips came down with a possessive force that carried Emmie off on a tide of pain and humiliation.

  It was the cruellest of kisses. Emmie had had no idea that a kiss could be such a thing—dominating, seeking, penetrating, relentless. Her senses swam. Her head was hard against his encircling arm, her hands held fistfuls of his shirt to save herself from falling.

  Her frantic struggles became feeble, until she lay like a rag doll against him, praying that she could somehow manage to remain on her feet.

  And then it all stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Abruptly. One moment she was pushing with a final ineffectual futility, and the next Ridd was actually putting her away from him and just sort of standing there, the blaze in his eyes giving way to the oddest intermingling of perplexity, bafflement, compunction.

  Emmie put the back of her hand to her bruised mouth and regarded him with wide, terrified eyes. She was shaking all over. Even when Ridd stepped forward mechanically and helped her to a chair, she didn’t think her limbs might even make the short distance involved.

  ‘I’m sorry, Emily. Very sorry.’ The deep voice beside her was gruff. Formal. ‘Are you all right?’

  She nodded numbly. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Those few protesting words were all she could manage.

  ‘Neither do I.’ He sounded unbelievably grim. ‘Not nearly as well as I thought I did five minutes ago. Two and two don’t appear to make four this time.’ A pause. ‘Are you sure you’re O.K., Emily?’ Ridd asked again, and this time there was no doubting the solicitous regret in him that almost reached out and enfolded her. She couldn’t bear it.

  ‘Please go.’ Her lips were stiff.

  ‘Would you like me to get you something? A drink of water? Some tea?’
r />   ‘Please go.’ It was all she seemed able to say. ‘Please go.’

  She watched him dumbly as he walked across and opened the door, and when he went out she sat on for quite a long time without even moving, in just the same position as she had been when he put her there, her shoulders hunched, her arms folded about herself as if to protect herself against her own agony of mind.

  Emmie saw little of him after that.

  It was Kevin who came, still, to work the electric light plant, and Kevin who also came to collect any stores. Sometimes in the early mornings she still heard the thud of an axe as it bit into the logs in her woodshed, and there were the same neatly cut blocks piled up as usual, but if the woodcutter was Ridd, he was always gone before she herself got up to waken the children, and if he rode by on horseback or drove past in the jeep, she found herself automatically shrinking away from the windows, taking care to remain out of sight.

  It was a measure of compensation that her friendship with Sue Wensley blossomed into a comfortable companionship that was everything Emmie could have wished and longed for.

  The other girl often rode over during the remainder of the holidays, and when school reopened she sometimes came at week-ends for a while, chatted amicably, played with the children, helped with whatever activity" happened to be on hand at the time. Their relationship had none of the hard edges and prickly moments that Emmie had formerly found so disconcerting, and Susan herself seemed to have acquired a new dimension of inner happiness that gave her an impulsive charm, a glow, a joie de vivre that had not been there before. She was like a sister to Emmie. More like a sister, indeed, than either Lissa or Sharon had ever been!

  The red paint arrived in due course, and Emmie got to work on the roof. Kevin left a ladder with her, and did a little in his spare time, and even Susan put on a dab or two, although she said it was much too hot and unpleasant up there for long. The heat went right through the soles of one’s sandshoes. The sun beat down ruthlessly, and the rays were thrown back on to one’s face from the corrugated iron sheets. The colour was a pretty one, though. A subtle, dull brick shade that contrasted well with the white weatherboard and the drab grey-green of the eucalypts in the background. The paint dried almost as rapidly as one applied it, and Emmie had given it the required two coats well before the rain began.

  For the last few days the clouds seemed to have been gathering and dispersing as if they couldn’t make up their minds.

  Emmie watched them grumbling around the horizon for a long time before they finally decided to pack together in a heavy grey column and roll slowly towards Koolonga. Then the day became dark and sombre, thunder growled in the distance, and suddenly the heavens seemed to part, and rain pelted down in heavy, impenetrable sheets. It rained steadily for the whole

  of the rest of the day, and when darkness fell the tattoo of it was still hammering incessantly on the roof.

  It was pleasant to be shut in, warm and comfortable and dry, with her little family tucked up cosily, while outside the wind got up to a howling force that lashed the gum trees into a wailing whine, and drove the raindrops harder, harder, until the din was deafening—pleasant, that is, until she was making her final routine peep before retiring, and saw that Daisy’s bed was empty.

  Emmie stared, disbelieving for a moment. Then she checked the bathroom; the veranda where the boys were sound on their cross-legged stretchers; the kitchen; the other room; everywhere. Even (stupidly) in wardrobes, under the beds themselves. Nowhere a sign of Daisy.

  Emmie bit her lip, took a grip on herself. Then she went out to the veranda, lifted the mosquito-nets, shook the boys gently. ‘Jim? Jim, have you seen Daisy?’

  ‘What? Daisy? No.’ He was impossibly sleepy. Emmie couldn’t get any sense out of him. She tugged at Morris instead.

  ‘Morrie? Do wake up! Do you know where Daisy is?’

  ‘Isn’t she in bed?’ Morris sat up, tousled, his eyes widening.

  ‘No, she doesn’t seem to be.’ Seeing his eyes grow even wider, she pushed him down on the pillow again, patted his sleepy head with a calmness she was far from feeling. ‘Never mind, Morrie. Go back to sleep, and don’t worry. I—I haven’t even looked around the house yet.’

  No sense in alarming them when they obviously couldn’t assist her.

  ‘The bathroom,’ mumbled Morris helpfully, his eyes closed again already.

  ‘Yes, of course. How silly of me! Goodnight, darling.’

  ‘ ’Night, Emmie.’

  Emmie went back and rechecked the child’s room. It stared at her reproachfully, empty of everything but the pretty pale walls, the chintz flower patterns on the curtains. The bedclothes were scarcely rumpled.

  The drumming from above her head was drumming panic into Emmie’s mind as well, although she tried to resist. She grabbed a torch and ran out into the downpour, shone the light into one shed after another, calling as she did so. Her cries were drowned in the deluge, snatched away on the wind. ‘Daisy? Daisy, where are you?’

  Emmie was running again. Her throat was hoarse with shouting.

  What was she to do? What if she couldn’t find her? What if she had run away? What if Emmie hadn’t made her happy here, after all? Just say she’d been secretly miserable all this time, miserable enough to want to leave—although one couldn’t believe it of the bubbling, mercurial, irrepressible little Daisy—where would she go, a small, dusky, black- frizzed orphan, with no home, no people?

  No people? But she had, hadn’t she? Or at least, one half of her had people. Those nebulous dark people, who would recognise their kinship if she sought shelter from them in their close-knit society. The nomadic aborigines that wandered still in the innermost interior of this vast continent, living off the land as they went from place to place, digging for yams, scraping the soaks for water, following the seasons, spearing fish and kangaroos and lizards, prying the witchetty grubs from under the bark to cook and cool them before they ate the cold creamy-rich delicacies with a relish that maybe even Daisy might share if she had to.

  Had Daisy perhaps gone walkabout? Would some hidden sense urge her on, tell her where to go to find those people of hers? There had always been something a little bit fey about her, an ancient wisdom and a self-reliance quite startling in one so young. She could ‘frighten’ easily, too, though. Very easily. That, too, was part of the legacy of her imaginative, superstitious race. Surely she’d be frightened now, out here in this tearing wind, this lashing wet. Emmie certainly was! There were debil-debils aplenty let loose tonight!

  ‘Daisy? Daisy?’

  What wasshe to do?

  Emmie stood still, with the raindrops pounding on her bare, soaked head, and tried to collect herself.

  Ridd? No, she couldn’t tell him. He, of all people, mustn’t hear. ‘If you default with the children’—his words rattled the chains of hysteria that had already shackled her brain. She fled again down the track, stumbling into ruts and splashing through puddles, her mind made up.

  She’d have to go to the kiosk near the old Post Office. She could phone Susan from there. It was almost half-way to the school, but at least it would save her the extra couple of miles on a night such as this. Perhaps Daisy might even be with Susan right now. She liked her teacher, liked the school. Maybe she had forgotten something at the schoolhouse, and had slipped back stealthily in the dark, in spite of the rain. What could be so important to her, though? Or was she truly a child of the open, with her ancestors’ hardiness? Perhaps the weather hadn’t daunted her after all. Maybe the old superstitions had been laid by her environment, and devil-spirits no longer held sway for Daisy.

  When she reached the phone box, Emmie wrenched open the door, staggered in and slammed it again. Inside, she wound the handle, giving the code ring of shorts and longs that made up Susan’s number on the party line to which the instrument was connected.

  It was answered almost immediately.

  The other girl listened attentively as Emmie babbled out her message.

/>   ‘Hold on, Emmie, till I think. Are you quite certain you’ve looked everywhere?’

  ‘Everywhere.’ Emmie was despairing.

  ‘Well, don’t panic.’ Susan’s tone was comforting. ‘I want you to do something, Emmie. Stay right where you are, in the phone box, will you?’

  ‘Oh, Sue! You mean you’ll come?’

  ‘Of course I’ll come. We’ll organise something. You stay there.’

  ‘Sue, bless you for that! I do appreciate it. I knew I could count on you.’

  ‘Keep your chin up, Emmie. I'm sure she’ll be around somewhere, the little rascal.’

  The receiver went down, and the line went dead.

  Emmie stayed there in the box for what seemed an incalculable time. She leaned against the wall and recovered her breath while a pool of water gathered at her feet as it streamed off her person on to the floor.

  Finally impatience drove her out into the storm again.

  She’d keep to the track, and Sue could pick her up. If she called as she went, there was just a chance that Daisy might hear her, wherever she was. There was the faintest possibility of locating her before Sue turned up, in which case there would be laughter and tears and recriminations all round!

  She hadn’t even made a mile of it when she was picked out in the car’s headlights. Emmie stood at the side of the road and waited. If the rain hadn’t been coursing down her face and blurring her vision she might have known that it was Ridd and not Susan who was at the wheel of that car, but he had opened the passenger door, leaned over and dragged her in before she could utter a word.

  ‘Oh! It’s—you!’

  ‘As you see.’ He shot her a quick, comprehensive glance. ‘Take it easy, Emily. Just tell me where you’ve looked, and if you can think of any reason for Daisy to disappear like this?’ There was something steadying about his solid form beside her, and his formal, practical manner. She sat back against the cushioned upholstery, a small, sodden, distraught figure, shook her head miserably.

  ‘I’ve looked everywhere. Everywhere. And I can’t think