‘I think it probably could be. It might be catching,’ she said gaily and with no presentiment at all of the kind of prediction she had made. And she accepted the piece of paper after he had written on it with a grave thank you and a murmured, ‘Like General MacArthur, I shall return, later.’
Nor did she even stop to query, as she let herself back into her room, why she should be feeling curiously lighthearted and unburdened, let alone not even daunted by the task she had undertaken. In fact it took quite a few days for the implications to sink in…
Over the next couple of days, Evonne worked exactly as she’d said she would. It was slow work at first until she became accustomed to Rick’s impossible writing, but gradually she got used to it, and several things happened.
She became both enchanted and puzzled. She became conversant with some unusual statistics—for example, that the population of Papua New Guinea, which represented point ten per cent of the world’s population, spoke fifteen per cent of the world’s languages—hundreds of them, and some spoken only by a few hundred people. She learnt about upland basins in the highlands, the great river systems such as the Fly and the Sepik, the Bulolo region where gold had first been discovered. She learnt about the Ok-Tedi mine on the headwaters of the Fly, but it was when she started on the third chapter of Rick Emerson’s book—it was divided into chapters, although it was in journal form—that the enchantment came through loud and clear—also the puzzlement. The third chapter was entitled, ‘Bilong wonem yu faitim dispela plisboi?’—with two translations below. ‘Belong what name you fight ’im dis fellow police boy?’ and ‘Why did you hit this policeman?’
The entries that followed were all about Rick’s often hilarious encounters with Pidgin before he felt he had mastered it—only to discover time and time again that he never might.
Evonne voiced her puzzlement that night over dinner.
It was extremely hot, and she had put her hair up and put on a simple white cotton halter-neck dress.
‘Rick, what exactly are you?’ she asked as she broke a roll and reached for the butter.
He looked wary. ‘What do you mean?’
‘What do you actually do? I mean—well, your book seems to be about a rather accident-prone statistician of some kind. I’m not knocking it,’ she went on hastily. ‘It’s very funny and it has a curious charm that’s quite… makes it quite compulsive reading, but…’ She stopped and frowned. ‘What science are you actually pursuing?’
‘Oh, that,’ he said with a grin. ‘The mother of ’em all.’
‘The…? I still don’t understand.’
‘Not surprising,’ he commented. ‘It’s an enormous subject. I’m a geographer.’
Her surprise was clearly evident now.
He said with a wry twist of his lips, ‘Did you think they’d become extinct?’
‘No,’ she said slowly, ‘well…’ And she made a helpless little gesture.
Rick sat forward with a gleam in his green eyes. ‘This obviously calls for an explanation. Geography is the science that describes the earth’s surface and, in consequence, everything on it and immediately above and below it that affects it. And because that’s such a vast area it’s become a science subject to a lot of fission.’
Evonne looked confused.
‘How can I explain that?’ he murmured to himself. ‘Geography is the science that brings into a broad, overall picture what meteorologists, geologists, biologists, economists, demographers, political scientists, sociologists, historians—even psychologists, philosophers and theologians study separately. I’m out of breath!’
‘I’m not surprised,’ she said with a slight smile. ‘It sounds exhausting. Wouldn’t it be simpler to be say—just one or two of those others?’
‘I’ve thought of that, but it’s really the overall picture that intrigues me, although I do have a pet sort of specialisation of my own.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Social and cultural geography. Which is,’ he forestalled her, ‘studying things like age-sex differences in populations, the changing patterns of language and religion in rural groups—that kind of thing.’
‘Ah, now I’m beginning to see! But,’ Evonne frowned, ‘your observations don’t seem to be terribly scientific, if you don’t mind me saying so. You seemed to have had a lot of trouble keeping track of anybody, let alone of your possessions.’
‘I always have that trouble with my possessions,’ he said gravely, then looked at her with the light of sudden inspiration in his eyes. ‘I obviously need someone like you to organise me, Patterson!’
‘I suspect it could be an impossible task—you might need a wife.’
‘Do you think so? I’ve got the feeling the last thing I could cope with is a wife, I’m sure I’d be very poor husband material.’
Evonne glanced at him through her lashes. ‘Might you not just object to being pinned down in any way?’
‘How wise you are, Patterson,’ he said softly.
‘Yes, well, to get back to your book…’
‘Yes, well, perhaps we should shift to safer ground,’ he drawled, and before she could take issue added, ‘My book is actually only a sideline of the whole experience, a sort of tongue-in-cheek tilt at scientists who take themselves too seriously and a not too serious armchair guide for people who are vaguely interested in that kind of thing. My real studies, which are to be part of my thesis for a Doctorate, are much more scientific.’
‘A Doctorate?’ Evonne repeated, her eyes wide.
‘You don’t approve?’
‘I…of course! I’m just trying to…your uncle,’ she said disjointedly, ‘didn’t…’
Rick smiled affectionately. ‘Uncle Amos, like so many people, has never been able to grasp what I do, never particularly wanted to either, but I understand that, he has his own axe to grind—what kind of disinformation did he pass on to you about my career?’
‘He said he wasn’t sure whether you were a budding anthropologist or archaeologist but that you seemed to be fascinated with the… er… intimate practices of the Kukukukus.’
Rick threw back his golden head and laughed delightedly. ‘No wonder you were in a bit of a state when you arrived, Patterson! You were obviously expecting to be confronted by a sex-mad teenager!’
Evonne had to laugh a little herself. ‘But I mean, what do you actually do for a living? Or don’t you have to worry about that?’
For an instant his green eyes sparked, but almost immediately the spark was gone. ‘I teach for a living,’ he said mildly. ‘At present at a Sydney university. And that’s where I hope to complete my thesis.’
‘Oh!’
‘Now I’ve really floored you, by the sound of it.’
She looked rueful. ‘Sorry. I’m just wondering if anything your uncle told me about you is true.’
‘What else did he tell you?’
‘That you father was a… an English diplomat and that you’d lived all over the world while you were growing up.’
‘Now that is true. And probably why I regard the world as my oyster and have this fascination for it.’
‘So,’ Evonne said slowly, ‘that’s how you see yourself spending the rest of your life—as an academic and, really, an explorer of a kind.’
‘I guess so,’ he replied thoughtfully. ‘Although it’s probably foolish to make cast-iron predictions about those things, but I really can’t see myself stepping into my uncle’s shoes.’
‘Why, then, does he persist in thinking you might?’
‘I—actually, I rather thought he had accepted it lately, which just goes to show how wrong one can be.’
Evonne finished her meal in silence. Then she told him she was going back to work. He protested that she’d worked all afternoon, but she was unshakeable about it and he didn’t persist.
In fact, she thought as she made her way back to her room, keeping a wary eye out for the emu, he’s been very co-operative since I started to work on his book. He’s been quit
e different. No more innuendoes, no more subtle or not so subtle looks, and pleasant company when we’re together.
She thought about the time they had spent together that morning. The tide had been right for a very early sail, and when Rick had knocked on her door at what seemed like the crack of dawn to point this out to her, she’d blinked sleepily, then looked out of her windows, and immediately fallen prey to the vista of sea like pale blue shot silk.
‘I don’t know how to sail,’ she’d said, though.
‘I do. I’ll teach you.’
‘I don’t know if I’m teachable, I’ll be too scared…’
‘Not with me, you won’t,’ he had assured her.
And later, on the beach, as one of the obliging beach boys had rigged up the sail for them, she had worried about the lack of wind. ‘How can you sail without a breeze?’
‘Patterson,’ Rick had said patiently, ‘trust me, will you? Once we get out a bit we’ll pick a breeze.’
‘But how do we get out?’
He had exchanged a wry look with the beach boy. ‘We paddle if necessary. Will you just jump on and quit worrying!’
‘I’ll just do up my life-jacket properly…’
Rick had glanced heavenwards but restrained himself. Half an hour later, though, when the little craft was skimming the water before a playful breeze, when the world was still caught in a rose and gold early morning radiance, he had said teasingly, ‘Should we take her in?’
‘Oh, no—do we have to?’
‘That’s quite a reversal of how you felt earlier!’
‘You’ve converted me,’ Evonne had said enthusiastically. ‘I had no idea it was so simple or such fun!’ And she had laughed as he’d gybed the little craft expertly and a spray of sea-water had drenched her, a laugh of pure exhilaration.
He had been watching her and she’d thought for a moment he was going to say something admiring, but he hadn’t, just offered to teach her more.
They’d come in and eaten an enormous breakfast, played a round of golf to work it off, then lazed on the beach until lunch. ‘I’ll be an all-rounder by the time I get back to Melbourne,’ Evonne had observed over lunch. ‘Sailing, golf— all the social skills I lack.’
‘I should have thought you have social skills in abundance,’ Rick had said lazily.
‘Oh, I can give a pretty good imitation of it,’ she had answered lightly, then added, to allay the slight frown of curiosity she saw in his eyes, ‘I’m only joking. What have you got on this afternoon?’
‘I’m going fishing off the Deepwater Jetty—I don’t suppose it’s any good inviting you along?’
‘No, thanks all the same.’
All the same, at five o’clock, when he hadn’t returned, she had decided a walk down to the jetty was just what she needed. The path followed the railway line and, if one timed one’s walk right, one could hitch a lift back on the train. She had been about half-way there, enjoying the smell of the thick, vine-festooned bush to one side as the ground rose quite steeply, and the beach and sea to her right with the water lapping gently amongst the rocks and coral, when she had heard the train coming towards her. It was more like a toy train, she had often thought, with its brightly coloured little engine and cars, but in fact it was a real workhorse—it was also extremely noisy, and she had jumped off the path, well out of its way, but turned to wave as was the custom on friendly Brampton.
Whereupon, with a screech of metal upon metal, it had pulled up and started to back towards her. Rick, she’d thought immediately, and had not been wrong. Rick had asked them to stop and pick her up, Rick had descended and handed her up, and she had become a part of the team of happy anglers and onlookers who made it something of a ritual to take a late afternoon walk to the Deepwater Jetty.
Rick, she thought, as she let herself into her room, who is so popular here with other guests and staff alike. He seems to draw people to him like a magnet. Does he always and has he always had that kind of happy personality that’s never on the defensive, never prickly or always on the lookout for being patronised or snubbed?
‘Like mine,’ she murmured to herself with a grimace. ‘I wonder what they think of me?’
It was obvious to her that there was some confusion, some speculation about their relationship. And because of the time she spent working, she realised, to some people her status was not quite fish, not quite fowl… or perhaps it’s just my own peculiar brand of aloofness that makes them not quite sure how to treat me, she reflected. Then again, the occasional dark looks I get from all the nubile young ladies with which the place seems to abound are perfectly readable! If only they knew!
She came out of her reverie and went back to typing up—Belong what name you fight ’im dis fellow police boy?
Two more days passed.
Days in which her mind and body responded like a flower opening to the sun, she thought, and had to smile at her fancifulness. But she also had to admit that, if there was such a thing as island fever, she might have caught it. She certainly felt relaxed yet alive to the beauty around her, soothed and sometimes almost sensually lazy but as if her very pores were drinking in the sea, the bush, the skies, the bird life, the incredibly beautiful tropical fish and the coral in the narrow channel between Brampton and Carlisle that made snorkelling there like visiting a wonderland. And of course there was always Rick Emerson’s book to come back to, to amuse and entertain her, even to find herself giggling like a schoolgirl sometimes at his way of recounting his experiences. If this doesn’t become a best-seller, she thought, I’ll eat my hat.
So relaxed was she, she didn’t even glimpse what was waiting to pounce on her and tear it all to shreds.
Six days after she came, they had their weekly seafood dinner—a smorgasbord, she was assured, of every seafood delicacy that flourished in those waters: oysters, prawns, crabs, coral trout—you name it, it would be there, plus lavish salads… a veritable feast!
In honour of this veritable feast, Evonne put on a chalk-blue shirred chiffon dress that clung to her body, leaving her shoulders and arms bare, and tucked some pink hibiscus blossoms into her hair. Her pale skin now resembled warm ivory.
Rick had also dressed up in deference to this dinner, in a cream denim battle jacket over his open-necked beige shirt and pants, and as they met outside their respective doors she’studied him critically, then said approvingly, ‘You look very nice.’
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ he replied with a wicked little grin. ‘You, on the other hand, look so sensational you defy description.’
Her lips twitched. ‘I think that’s the first time I’ve known you to be lost for words,’ she smiled.
‘It’s not that I am, really,’ he countered immediately. ‘I just don’t want to offend you by getting… er… personal. However…’
‘Rick, I believe you have to queue for this smorgasbord. We don’t want to be last, do we?’
He shot her an exasperated look. ‘All right, I can take a hint. Lead on, Patterson, but if I were you I’d really be on the lookout for wolves tonight. The kind that whistle at you, I mean.’ Such was her state of serenity, Evonne smiled an almost dreamy little smile and said innocently, ‘I believe you’ve even managed to set me straight on that issue. If it happens I’ll ignore it outwardly and be inwardly flattered. What do you say to that?’
They were standing at the top of the steps, facing each other, and Rick inspected her upturned face and sparkling dark eyes, her lips painted to match the hibiscus twined into the night-darkness of her hair, and said, barely audibly, ‘That’s better.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘What is?’
‘Nothing.’ He took her hand. ‘I’ve lost my stick. Care to help a recuperating cripple down these steps?’
‘Not again!’
‘It’ll turn up. Anyway, I don’t really think I need it any more.’
‘Then you don’t need my hand—there’s also a railing,’ she pointed out.
He lifted her hand to his lips and kiss
ed it briefly, then released it, saying ruefully, ‘That’s my essential Patterson. Lead on—I’m starving!’
The seafood dinner was well worthy of its accolades.
‘Mmm,’ said Evonne, ‘I doubt if I can even move after all that. It was superb.’
‘They cater for that feeling too, on Seafood night,’ Rick told her. ‘There’s a dance on downstairs—starts slow, then hots up as the night wears on. You are coming, aren’t you?’
She blinked. ‘I..
‘Yes, you are,’ he said determinedly. ‘I’m not having you scuttling back to your typewriter tonight.’
‘Well, I probably should…it’s not going quite as fast as I thought it would, but…’ She sat back with a sigh. ‘No, I won’t.’
Rick had opened his mouth, but he closed it, then said, ‘I quite thought I was going to have to have a fight with you.’
‘I don’t seem to be so fightable these days, do I?’ she observed, and stared into space until he asked her what she was thinking.
‘I… don’t know,’ she confessed. ‘Examining this new me, perhaps.’ And for some reason she shivered as the first faint premonition stirred in her mind, but it wasn’t even really decipherable at that stage, just an oddly elusive feeling of unease.
‘Evonne…’ He stopped as she smiled brilliantly at him.
‘Yes?’
He hesitated, then shrugged. ‘Let’s go to this dance before you change your mind.’
I could have danced all night…
The refrain kept running through Evonne’s mind as she danced a part of the night away— often with Rick until his ankle began to ache, then with anyone who happened to ask her, because it was one of those happy nights when everyone danced with everyone else and no one appeared to get jealous, and anyway, the staff handled it all very tactfully by running a small competition and making everyone change partners. A night when the music got into her soul and when her one social skill, as she thought of it, that seemed to have come to her naturally, outclassed nearly everyone else there.
‘You’re fantastic!’ ‘Do you dance for a living?’ ‘Where have you been hiding your light—don’t tell me, pounding away at Rick’s book, the slavedriver…’
One More Night Page 5