The river is Down

by Walker, Lucy

  `Jim!’ Cindie cried. ‘Oh, my hair! And my face!’

  `Go and fix them. Off with you

  Cindie flung the tea-towel over the rack and sped through the door to her room.

  Mary, always pernickety, straightened the tea-towel, then glanced at herself in the wall-mirror hanging in the living-room. She brushed her fingers through the loosened wisps of hair; then gave up with a sad gesture.

  `What’s the good,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Too late to do anything with my poor sun-baked face! And this hair of mine? That wretched grey streak! Why don’t I buy a bottle of colour-rinse? The men would all laugh, of course

  The footsteps came to the screen door.

  Mary looked at the man standing in the glow from the living-room light. It was Nick Brent:

  `Oh, come in, Nick,’ she said with so much relief that the remnants of her ill-humour disappeared altogether. She gestured to one of the easy-chairs. ‘I’m glad to see it’s you. We … that is, Cindie and I … were half-expecting someone else.’

  Nick’s eyebrows moved imperceptibly. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint. Do you mind if I smoke, Mary? I’ve had quite a day of it.’ He leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs as if relaxing for the first time perhaps in hours.

  `Of course not. The ashtray is by you on the table, Nick. Will you have some coffee? We’ve been busy clearing up and haven’t had ours yet.’

  She put the kettle on as she spoke, taking Nick’s assent

  for granted. She reached for the cups and saucers in the overhead cupboard.

  Cindie is beautifying herself for Jim Vernon,’ she went on, her back turned. ‘If her face falls when she comes in, Nick, you’ll know why. Don’t take it as anything personal. She seems really to have fallen for that man. Oh, well! Love’s the main preoccupation of the young, I suppose. From what I hear, Baanya’s overseer is quite a man. I don’t really blame her.’

  As Cindie came in, Nick was holding a light to his cigarette. He looked over the flame at the girl. As usual his eyes were expressionless. Cindie realised who their visitor was, and seemed to fold up, as if on guard, as he rose to his feet.

  Nick felt a touch of compunction. Did he really have this effect on people? The girl looked as if she was afraid of him. Her eyes were suddenly deeper : a protective covering. Like hovea, he thought—the darker kind: certainly not welcoming.

  There was quite a silence in the room, except for Mary rattling coffee cups and lifting the lid of the kettle, wishing it to boiling-point.

  Nick flicked out the match, then put it carefully in the ashtray.

  He has fire on his mind, Cindie thought angrily. She was not ready to forgive him his injustice.

  `Were the wild flowers out as you came through the sand-plain country, Cindie?’ he asked unexpectedly. ‘It may have been too late in the season for them.’

  Cindie was startled. ‘There were everlastings all over,’ she said politely. ‘Carpets of them everywhere, as far as the eye could see. Leschenaultia too; south of the Greenough Flats

  He was still on his feet waiting for her to sit down.

  `Please, Nick, don’t stand. I’ll help Mary,’ she said, turning away. Again there was silence, and this time it was Mary’s turn to be amused. The effect Nick had on some people! Why did they have to be scared of him? Why couldn’t they take him at face value?

  `All right, Cindie,’ she said aloud. The coffee’s in the pot if you’ll pour the water on it. The kettle’s just come to the boil.’ She turned to their guest. ‘It’s instant coffee, Nick. I’m afraid we don’t have time to percolate when we come in late.’

  `Everyone was late to-night, I understand. The mail, Mary?’ `That, and the organising committee for the party. Not I hovea—a wild flower.

  to mention the fire in the spinifex. The children have told me—’

  Cindie poured water into the coffee-pot, and Nick held a chair for Mary to sit down.

  `That’s what I came about,’ he said.

  Cindie pressed her lips together. Another lecture? She brought the tray to the table and began to pour the coffee. She did not look up.

  ‘I thought you were talking about wild flowers a minute ago,’ Mary said blandly.

  Nick sat down and picked up his cigarette again. ‘So I was.’ He was determined to make Cindie lift her head as she brought the coffee cup to him. He believed in shock treatment when he had to handle some people. ‘The mulla mulla, a beautiful mauve flower, is out all over the plain to the north,’ he said, not taking his eyes off the girl’s face. ‘There’s a sea of them round the Hammersley Ranges and across the Pilbarra at this time of the year. I must take you up some time to look at them, Cindie. Would you like to go? It’s a long trek—several hundred miles!’

  His tactics, Mary saw, were right. Cindie’s lashes lifted, her eyes stared into his, startled, as if she wasn’t quite sure she had heard him right.

  Nick take her several hundred miles up north?,

  The girl who, so he thought, carelessly lit fires in the spinifex?

  She felt grave suspicion—that is, if her ears had heard right.

  ‘Yes,’ he repeated, taking the cup from her, no longer holding her gaze. He helped himself to sugar from the little tray, and stirred his coffee vigorously.

  ‘Thank you,’ he finished. ‘What an aromatic smell coffee always has! It’s a peacemaking drink, don’t you think?’

  Cindie, puzzled, offered the coffee to Mary, and made no reply. This time it was her turn to be wary. She couldn’t afford to let Nick get at her this way. Perhaps, underneath this studied manner, he meant to keep Jim Vernon to himself and Erica. This could be his gentle-cruel way of showing his authority. He was softening her up for the blow.

  ‘You don’t take sugar, Mary,’ was all she said as she lifted her own cup from the tray and sat down—as far from Nick as the table and the small room would permit.

  Mary glanced from one to the other with curiosity. She knew Nick, and his methods, but was not so certain yet of Cindie’s reaction to them.

  Nick broke the silence. ‘I came to make an apology. This was a stone dropping in a pool. More shock tactics.

  ‘An apology?’ Mary’s eyebrows went up. ‘Not like you, Nick. You’re not often wrong.’

  `More often than you think—or than I let on,’ he said with a grin. ‘This time I’m anxious to make amends.’

  Cindie watched the little white bubble on the surface of her coffee.

  That’s good fortune, she told herself. Mother always liked a white bubble on her tea.

  She was determined not to take any unnecessary part in this conversation between the boss and Mary.

  ‘Cindie!’ Nick said peremptorily, equally determined to make her look up. ‘I’ve come to apologise to you. Do you mind listening? Then I can go to bed with a clear conscience.’

  His conscience! So that was it, was it? All the same she did as he commanded and looked up. He could perhaps see now it had been lack of interest, not shyness, that had kept her looking down!

  She had no idea of the wonderful opalescent glow in her eyes as the light shone on them now.

  ‘I assumed you were in charge of the children, Cindie, when the fire started in the spinifex. I now know I was wrong, and that you were not there until later. Flan told me about it. I am sorry I was so short with you out by the rocks. Will you accept my apology when I tell you a fire in the spinifex is always a worry because it takes the men off the job to deal with it. That means loss of time, and we all get a little quick-tempered about it.’

  Cindie blinked her eyelids. With great self-control she mastered the flush that wanted to steal over her face.

  ‘Quite a speech, Nick,’ Mary said, as she guessed Cindie was searching for the right words. It wasn’t easy to accept an apology graciously, she knew. Specially when one hadn’t quite swallowed anger.

  ‘I should apologise to you, perhaps, Nick,’ Cindie said at length, regaining her poise. ‘I should not have been so upset. It was childish<
br />
  ‘I hardly gave you the chance to be anything else.’ His smile was truly contrite. Its unexpected charm touched Cindie’s heart like a tender finger on a receptive nerve.

  She blinked her eyes again. Was this really Nick? Mary saw her puzzlement and gave a short laugh.

  ‘I suppose you’ve got Jim Vernon pinned down talking

  muster and shearing with Erica and Flan,’ she said to Nick to change the subject, and clear the air.

  `With Erica, yes. Not Flan, I’m afraid. Jim is a lone talker, and Erica is a good listener when she wants to learn something. Flan’s only interest is road-making. Besides, he likes his own word in edgeways, now and again

  ‘You mean Jim’s quite a talker?’

  ‘Quite—when he has a good listener like Erica.’

  Cindie’s heart dropped again. She hated being a meanie—but why did Erica have to have everything? Even the capacity to be a good listener—a quality so precious to men’s ego?

  After Nick had gone, Cindie seemed still to hear his footsteps, strong, yet so alone in all that universe of silence in which the camp slept. Her heart seemed to follow them as they faded into the distance.

  His, she knew, was a lonely job. The man at the top was always solitary. She should have been more gracious.

  Yet something deep inside her still rebelled. It was, of course, because he held her destiny in the hollow of his hand. He was in partnership with Erica over that rumoured takeover of Bindaroo! He was her boss, and could take her job from her. Yes, she was at his mercy.

  ‘There won’t be anything left of those coffee cups by the time you’ve finished rattling them about in the sink,’ Mary said. ‘Here, give over and I’ll wash while you wipe. What’s worrying you, Cindie? That little duet up at Nick’s house while Nick’s down here?’

  Cindie shook her head. ‘For one minute I wasn’t thinking of Jim. I was wondering why footsteps in the night always sound so fateful.’

  ‘My, my!’ Mary laughed. ‘You do have an imagination, Cindie. To me Nick’s footsteps are just a pair of desert-boots thumping and banging about when the boss is in a hurry or a rage.’

  ‘Rage? But not to-night

  ‘It’s when Nick’s dead quiet you have to start worrying. Don’t I know—’ Mary said prophetically. ‘To-night he was okay. On a good-will mission, and all that!’

  ‘Jim seems to like him very much.’

  ‘Here we go again!’ Mary really sounded peevish this time. ‘Back to Jim.’

  ‘Why not?’ Cindie met Mary’s eyes. ‘I like him very much.’ ‘Like? Or love?’

  ‘Both,’ Cindie said soberly. ‘Very much. Now you know, Mary.’

  The older woman stood quite still, her hands on the edges of the cloth which she was spreading on the lower rack.

  `So?’ she said. ‘Well, how about going to bed and making the best of it in your dreams? Meanwhile if I don’t get some sleep myself, all hell’ll break out in that canteen tomorrow from sheer bad temper.’

  The next morning Jim Vernon came into the canteen while Cindie was hard at work with her typewriter.

  He leaned both his hands on her table as he bent over to talk to her. She had been so preoccupied she had not lifted her head when he came in.

  `On the pay-roll, I hear.’ His broad friendly grin captured her heart again. ‘Well done, Cindie Brown-all-over. I put my tuppence on you the first day we met. How about our taking a walk to-night and swapping troubles?’

  When she’d looked up so quickly at the sound of his voice, her face and eyes all smiles, he’d thought about rainbows again. Then changed his mind. This was the rising sun breaking with all its tender splendour over the eastern loop of the sky.

  `Anyone ever tell you all the world loves a smiler, Cindie?’ he asked cheerfully. ‘Sort of gladdens the heart!’

  `Oh, Jim! I’m so glad to see you. I had an awful fear that Nick might keep you to himself—’

  Jim’s brilliant blue eyes sparkled with real amusement now.

  `You sure do give yourself a lot of worries, sweetheart. Didn’t I tell you I came over the river to see one lass with a brace of violets for windows in her face, and a pack of troubles on her shoulders? Meet me—the wandering knight all clad in khakis and carrying a ten-bale hat under his arm—wanting a date with a pretty girl.’ He beamed down on her.

  Cindie laughed. ‘You probably think me a blockhead, Jim. I hope not. Of course I’ll walk, and talk with you too. I want to explain so much—’

  `Explain nothing now, Cindie. Later—’

  `Jim, you didn’t say anything to Nick, or to Erica, about … well, about what was written on my cheque?’

  `No, Blue Eyes, I didn’t. Are you afraid that raking cheque is going to bounce, or something?’

  She knew by his grin that he didn’t really think that. She shook her head.

  `It’s the name on it,’ she explained. ‘But there’s a reason

  `And a good one, I’ll bet. I never put my money on a wrong horse yet, Cindie. I know style a mile off. I heard it

  coming up the track in that old Holden before I even clapped eyes on who was in it.’

  ‘Jim, you are a dear. Thank you so much. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.’

  ‘Tell me to-night. Till then …’ He glanced round at Mary, who was sitting behind her table, head cocked on one side, looking at him with thoughtful interest. ‘I’ll just walk over and introduce myself to the dark lady with the jet eyes, and put myself at peace with her,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘My, how do you come to be working as assistant to someone as spry-looking as that?!

  As Jim moved across the canteen hall, Cindie watched Mary with a newly-awakened interest. Spry was hardly the word she herself would have used. Yet, now that she came to notice it, Mary did look nice this morning. Her hair was neatly swept back. She had on the nicest of her cotton frocks, one -with a soft collar round the neck. Her lipstick Wasn’t smeared, either, as it so often was after she had put the end of that pencil in and out of her mouth, on and off, as she worked.

  Cindie had forgotten, in the trouble course of her own thoughts, that visitors were so rare at the camp that the inmates were as interested in Jim as if he were an arrival from Mars. She remembered the side-looks and half-heard teasings she herself had received that first day.

  Of course Mary would want to see the new arrival—and look her best for the occasion, too!

  Cindie suspected Hazel, Evie and Betty up in D’D row would probably think the overseer from Baanya who had come across the river on a log was the Master-Martian. They’d probably give him a super afternoon tea-party.

  ‘Golly, you do look nice, Cindie,’ Jinx said, as the children, washed and spruced for dinner that night, came into the living-room.

  `Do you think I’m over-dressed, Jinx?’ she asked. ‘Every girl wants to wear a pretty frock sometimes. Besides, I bought it from Coles—in case you think I’m showing off. Very light and cool: not expensive at all.’

  `You don’t have to explain to them, Cindie,’ Mary said. ‘It’s a nice dress and you look nice. Thank goodness for

  CHAPTER X

  that. I like to see a young girl wear a pretty dress. If she doesn’t do that when she’s young, she won’t have much chance later. Too much hard work to bother about dressing up when you’ve two children, a house, and two hundred and seventeen men to look after.’

  There was a touch of heart-burning in those last words.

  `You look very nice yourself,’ Cindie said quickly, hiding a sudden compassion for Mary. ‘Your hair is so dark and thick. That little white streak makes it very distinguished. And you’ve wonderful eyes—when you don’t snap them. Jim said you were “spry”. I think he admired you—’

  Mary smiled more amiably. ‘Thanks for that lot,’ she replied. ‘Next I’ll be dressing ·up like Cleopatra. Couldn’t be those three talkative wives up there giving us a jolt, could it, Cindie? Or maybe it’s only the newcomer from Baanya.’

  Cindie’s blushing,’ Myr
tle said. ‘I guess it’s Jim Vernon. Are you wearing that dress anywhere special to-night?’

  `Yes—actually ‘Cindie was a little confused.

  `Not to see Nick or Miss Erica, of course,’ Jinx was supercilious about this. ‘They’re what Dicey George calls exclusive. I looked the word up in the dictionary. It means “shutting out” in one book; and “keeping to themselves” in another.’

  `It must be Jim Vernon, then,’ Myrtle insisted.

  `That’ll do, you two,’ Mary commanded flatly. `Get on with your dinner now, and let Cindie and me have ours in peace.’

  It was clear to Mary that Cindie and Jim Vernon had a date. `Those wives up in D’D?’ she wondered. ‘Let’s hope they aren’t out snooping around. Every man in the camp will think Cindie is an open-go for dating. Then we’ll have Nick taking action and shunting out my help-all as soon as the river is down. Of course, he does have to be careful with so many men!’

  Cindie was proving so very useful. Mary decidedly didn’t want to go back to the rat-race of looking after the needs of a lot of helpless men at the pace she’d gone before Cindie came.

  `Like living in a williwilli twenty-four hours a day,’ she said, thinking aloud.

  They all looked at her in surprise.

  `What is like living in a williwilli?’ Cindie asked.

  ‘A construction camp. As I said before—two children, one house, two hundred and seventeen men: and now you having to account for the fact you’re wearing a nice dress. Even if you did buy it in a chain store.’

  The meal was early over, for the children were hungry and made quick work of their food.

  ‘Off you go,’ Mary said to Cindie, as she pushed back her own chair. Tor once Myrtle and Jinx can clear away and wash up. The sooner they learn the better. What’s more, it’ll teach them to mind their manners and not make personal remarks.’

  Mary shook her head a little as she glanced again at Cindie’s party dress. It was hard to own up, but she was just a little envious of that youth and what could’ lie in front of Cindie if she had luck, as well as other gifts. She’d not had luck herself. Myrtle had been so young when her husband had been killed—falling from a rig over a hole being tested for water, when surveying had begun on the first stages of the road. That’s why Nick had, against custom, given her, a woman, a job on the site. She supposed that too was luck in a way—come to think of it!