by Amanda Doyle
Lunch was cold meat and green salad, bottled apricots and a tin of cream. They gave her a long, cool drink of squeezed lemon juice with real ice cubes floating in it, and Kerry thought she had never tasted anything so welcome. Her throat felt dry and sort of dusty, with a gritty sensation that even constant swallowing did not relieve. That lemon juice just did the trick! Silently—because she could not bring herself to ask—she found that she was hoping there would be a lemon tree at Gillgong.
They ate at one corner of the verandah, with the cool green vines behind them. The wooden boards on the verandah floor were littered with string and wrappings from the parcels Kell had brought. There had been shouts and shrieks of ‘Look what I’ve got,’ ‘Look what Dad brought me? and ‘What did you get, Mum?’
It was all very exciting, that homecoming, and Kerry found herself a part of it, touched to be included. What great big warm hearts these country people had! And they opened up those hearts and took you right in, even when you were a complete stranger, and they’d never even seen you before. By the time lunch was over, the washing-up done, and the paper wrappings and bits of string collected, the lids put on the right boxes and stacked away, and the new clothes admired and hung up, Kerry felt quite one of the family.
The children had adopted her without any questions and took her to see the place where they did their lessons. She looked at their books, their drawings, and Lyn played some simple pieces on a rather jangling piano to show how advanced she was. After that, they all accompanied Gerald out to the back fence, where he had a string of rabbit skins hanging on the wire netting to cure. Kerry had never seen a rabbit that wasn’t a plain grey colour, but Gerald had furs of brown and sandy red and rusty yellow, and was more than gratified by her amazement at the variety of his collection.
He had just hung the wire frames back on the fence when his mother called to them from the verandah.
Kell was waiting, too, by the time they regained the shady trellis.
‘You ready for your next hop, eh, Kerry?’ That funny, half-anxious look was back in Kell’s eye. ‘Looks like Tad’s arranged a lift for you with Bob Merrit.’
‘A lift? Isn’t that lucky!’ Kerry made herself sound enthusiastic. She had been having such fun with the Hunter children that she had almost forgotten that she had not finished her journey. Kell’s place had been so homely, so friendly that she had already ceased to think of it as just a stopping-off place and nothing more.
Now she was reminded that it wasn’t her real destination—that was Gillgong, and Tad Brewster would be needing her, must be looking forward to her arrival, because he had gone to the bother of arranging a lift for her. That was kind of him. He must be a nice, considerate sort of person to do that, and indeed, to have asked someone like Kell to bring her this far. He would know, of course, what a good pilot Kell was, and what a pleasantly reassuring companion on the first lap of such a long journey. And now he had sent a car to collect her.
Kerry smiled into Kell’s nice, kind, uncertain face.
‘I’ll just get my hat,’ she said eagerly, and darted into the house.
There she combed out her honey-fair hair, set the biscuit-straw boater carefully back at exactly the right angle, and renewed the rose-coloured glow to her lips. Then she picked up her handbag and returned to the verandah.
It was a side verandah, not the main one they had used when they arrived, but it seemed to run continuously right around the house, because Mary took her hand and led her round the corner of it, and there was her shabby blue suitcase at the top of the steps where she had left it.
There, too, was the narrow dirt path with the drooping oleanders on either side, and there, beyond it, was something she hadn’t seen before, because it certainly hadn’t been there when she and Kell and the dogs and the children had walked up from the plane.
It was—well, a vehicle—a sort of truck. The colour was not easily discernible under its covering of thick brown dust, but it could have been black or maybe even bottle-green. It had an open back with ledges at each side, probably for sitting on, and a tail-board that was at present extended flat, to allow various bits of its load to protrude. Kerry kept staring at it all the way down the path. She didn’t look at Kell, because she didn’t want him to see the astonished roundness of her eyes any more than she wanted to see that sorry, worried look in his. She just kept staring hard at that battered old tin truck as if every second vehicle that went up William Street had been much the same sort of thing.
When she got really near, she saw to her relief that there was a covered cab for the driver and passenger. Inside was a lumpy leather seat, ripped and torn in places. Some fibre filling oozed out of one or two of the larger holes, and an uncomfortable-looking spring had poked itself clean through a particularly bad one. Kerry noted with dismay that the side with the wire spring poking through was the side away from the steering wheel. Her side!
The bonnet was raised, and there was a man standing in front of it. He looked like the men who had been talking to Kell at the plane. He had the same khaki shirt and trousers, and a stubble of growth on a face as brown and wrinkled as a walnut shell. He wore a wide felt hat with a flat leather headband. That was about all Kerry could see of him—that hat, the grizzled chin, and the weathered neck—because he was leaning over the radiator, directing a stream of water into it from a kerosene tin with a wire handle. One corner of the kerosene tin had been fashioned into a rough spout, so that the water flowed in a narrow jet.
When it stopped flowing, and only a few drips came, the man put down the can, and said,
‘G’day, Kell. This the girl for Gillgong?’ Then he looked over to where Kerry stood, smiling tentatively in her crumpled blue suit and honey nylons, pretty white shoes and biscuit-coloured hat.
The man pushed his own hat right to the back of his head and said something else. It sounded as though it could have been ‘Strewth!’
Kerry smiled bravely then, and held out her hand politely, hoping that the ladder in her stocking didn’t show too much. The Matron at the orphanage had never minded mends, but she did not tolerate ladders.
‘Good afternoon,’ she said, not waiting for Kell to introduce her, because he and that rough-looking man were busy looking at each other in the oddest kind of way, and Kell seemed momentarily to have forgotten that they did not know each other’s names. ‘I’m Kerry Peyton—just Kerry, really—and yes, I’m on my way to Gillgong. You must be Bob Merrit? It’s very kind of you to be taking me there.’
The man took her hand in his own one, which had got a little bit greasy from screwing on the radiator-cap. He wore a mesmerized expression, as if he was hardly aware of his actions, and his hand, for all its great size and squareness, felt curiously limp in hers.
‘Pleased ter meet-cher,’ he assured her in an expressionless drawl, baring yellowed teeth in a sort of brief leer, which Kerry supposed must be the bushwhacker way of smiling. Then he swung round to Kell, jerking his thumb in her direction.
‘Stone the rakin’ crows!’ he uttered. ‘I ain’t seen the like since the race meetin’ over at Bindi-eye!’ He lowered his voice, but it was still sufficiently harsh and nasal to carry to where Kerry stood. ‘Does Tad know she’s comin’? You sure you’re passin’ on the right sheila?’
‘Certain sure,’ said Kell, but for some reason he sounded almost as doubtful as the other man. He turned to Kerry. ‘You’ll be all right with Bob here, Kerry, eh? He’s taking you to Brady’s Creek—that’s as far as he goes—and Tad’s plane will pick you up there. O.K.?’
‘O.K.,’ Kerry replied firmly—at least, she hoped it was firmly, and that neither of the men could hear the uncertain bumping of her heart, right up against her ribs.
She held out her hand, first to Mary, and then to Kell, and then she hugged the children one by one.
‘Good-bye,’ she said, ‘and thank you for the plane-ride and the lovely lunch and—and everything.’
She had been going to add that she hoped she wou
ld see them again, and then she remembered, just in time, that neighbours didn’t drop in at Gillgong on friendly visits, so she just smiled instead.
Then she got into the truck, sideways because of the rusty spring on the passenger seat, and Kell placed her suitcase next to her already cramped legs.
‘It’ll get less dusty there,’ he explained half-apologetically. ‘So long, Kerry.’
‘So long, Kell, Mary.’ Kerry didn’t mean to sound forlorn, but that’s how she was feeling, just the tiniest bit.
She waved until the little group by the oleander path were lost in a cloud of dust, as the old utility rattled and bumped its way out on to the open road. It wasn’t really so much a road as a track, running over the vast plain ahead of them. Low, lumpy bushes of blue-green vegetation dotted the flat landscape, and the wheel-tracks wended their way amongst them like a couple of sinuous dust-snakes. Sometimes the tracks petered out altogether, but the truck seemed to know its own way, like an old nag returning to a familiar stable. Every now and then it wandered through unruly scrub, and when it emerged, sure enough, there were the dust-snake tracks again.
Kerry kept glancing anxiously at the driver, wondering if he was perhaps a little angry that Tad Brewster had landed him with a passenger. He hadn’t spoken since they had left Kell’s place back there, but it wasn’t because he had to pay particular attention to his driving. There wasn’t another car in sight that he could possibly bump into. In fact, there was only room for one width of tyres at a time in the places where the track was noticeably well-formed, and often there were such well-worn grooves that the ridge in between them scraped along the sump from time to time, but not even that caused a change in Bob Merrit’s expression. He had one of those deadpan, sleepy sort of faces— a careless sort of face, and the oily hand that guided the steering-wheel did that in the same casual, careless way. His shirt clung in damp patches over his shoulders and under his arms, and sweat ran in little rivulets down the sides of his temples, but he didn’t even bother to wipe it away.
Kerry, fastidiously, decided that he was a very careless person altogether. She was a little bit frightened of him, too, because she had never met such a rough individual in the whole of her life, let alone been cooped up with one in an ancient truck bumping over an endless plain of scorched, bare earth tracks and tussocky scrub.
Kerry’s legs began to ache. They were very cramped, pressed together sideways to avoid the jagged spring in the seat, with her suitcase rolling against her calves each time the truck lurched into a rut. Her ankles felt as though they had swollen to twice their normal size, and her shoes were hot and tight. They didn’t look white any more, because the cab was-filled with dust that circled and settled to make room for the next wave that came pouring in each time they slowed down to negotiate a rough patch.
Kerry looked over at Bob Merrit again apologetically as a bad bump threw her right against his side. His eyes were still on the plain in front of them, but soon after that he reached into his shirt pocket for the makings, and began to roll a cigarette. He did it with great dexterity—one-handed most of the time—and Kerry was surprised at the nimbleness of his stumpy fingers with their greasy, broken nails, as they fashioned a rough cylinder, which he tapped on the centre of the steering wheel, stuck between his lips, and finally lit.
Soon the cab was filled not only with thick clouds of dust but with a dense haze of strong-smelling smoke.
Not very long after that, Kerry began to feel sick. Of course I don’t, she kept telling herself, not really. But she did. Perhaps the heat was responsible, she thought weakly, as a wave of nausea assailed her. Or maybe it was this suffocating dust, she amended, swallowing miserably. Or it could be that evil-smelling tobacco—it was quite the strongest that she had ever come across! Or possibly the excitement of her first-ever plane ride? It couldn’t be that the road they were on was bendy, because it wasn’t! It stretched ahead, endless, relentless, miles and miles of it, never-ending. It was endless, and her present misery must therefore be endless, too. She couldn’t disclose her state of suffering. She couldn’t be sick—not in front of the silent, unhelpful man at her side—could she?
Kerry dabbed surreptitiously at the dew that had broken out on her forehead, hoping he wouldn’t notice. More miles crept by, and more. If only she could lie down, she might feel better. She couldn’t lean towards her own door, because of that rusty spring and her blue suitcase. Her body was angled in the other direction. It was leaning towards Bob Merrit in the driving seat, but one look at his sweat-stained shoulder was enough to decide her that she couldn’t lie against that, either.
Kerry’s head wobbled. Maybe she was going to die. She wouldn’t mind dying, really—not at all!—except that Gillgong wouldn’t get its girl, then, would it? How disappointed Tad Brewster would be, after putting the advertisement in, and asking the wool firm man to interview her, and getting Kell to take her from Bankstown in his little silver plane with the black and red striped fuselage, and arranging with Bob Merrit to pick her up and take her on to Brady’s Creek.
Brady’s Creek. There would be water there. Bound to be. Water with which she could bathe her aching forehead, and wash away this awful clamminess that made her hot and cold at one and the same time.
Oh, Brady’s Creek, where are you? Let’s reach you soon! Kerry’s lips barely moved in a silent prayer. Her eyes searched that endless horizon desperately, hopelessly. There was no sign of Brady’s Creek, no sign of anything but endless, clumpy, bumpy plains, and endless shimmering heat beating down from an empty, endless sky, and those endless dust-snake tracks stretching away—away—
‘Please! Please stop,’ Kerry begged. ‘Stop the car—the truck—please, Mr. Merrit!’
The urgency in her voice had an immediate effect on the careless Mr. Merrit of the deadpan visage. He jammed on the brakes with such suddenness that Kerry’s weary body left the seat and her head met up with the sun-visor in a resounding smack.
Bob Merrit turned to look at her, a frown wrinkling its way amongst the dust and bristles that helped to render his features so unrevealing.
‘What’s up, chick? You crook, or somethin’?’
Crook! What an understatement!
‘Excuse me!’ Kerry managed to sound sedate, even in her distress. ‘I must get out for a moment!’
Half stunned from the gathering bruise on her forehead, mindless of the pain it still caused her, she groped blindly for the door-handle, wrenched it open, swung her legs across her case, and lurched towards the open air, and privacy! As she tumbled, helter-skelter, out of the truck, her other stocking—the good one—caught on the spring, and tore into shreds. A bit of the soft flesh on Kerry’s calf went with it, but she didn’t mind that either, as she slithered to the ground and staggered over to a belt of scrub where she could not be seen.
Presently she came back, weak, relieved, to lean against a bundle of creosoted planks that protruded from the loaded rear of the truck.
An oily hand, not limp as it had been when she first shook it, but firm and oddly understanding, grasped her arm and drew her into the small patch of shade on the side of the truck away from the sun.
‘Sick as a starvin’ grasshopper, that’s what you are!’ announced the reticent Bob Merrit on a note of discovery. ‘Better sit down ’ere and get yer bearin’s again, eh?’
The ‘eh?’ sounded like Kell’s had done—not a question, but a full-stop, pronounced with a curious lift to the nasal twang. Did they all say that out in these parts? Kerry wondered vaguely.
She flopped down on the sugar-bag he had thoughtfully placed on the dusty track for her, and leaned back gratefully against the door. Her companion was fumbling amongst the jumbled goods in the back of his utility. Presently a canvas water-bag swung into view.
‘Drink?’ he asked laconically.
Kerry took the water-bag. The canvas felt damp and cool under her fingers. She could see the darker line where the water level ended. It was almost full.
; ‘A—a mug?’ she suggested, watching Bob. He stood in front of her, feet firmly planted in the dust, making no further move.
‘It’s got a spout, ain’t it?’ He reached down and unscrewed the stopper, indicating the short neck on the bag. ‘Take a good swig—best cure of the lot, eh?’
She obeyed. It was half warm, with a taste like wet sawdust. She thought longingly of the iced lemon drink at Kell’s place, then shrugged philosophically and drank again. Yes, it was good after all. She felt much better.
She handed the water-bag back to its owner, and wiped her lips. Bob Merrit drank too, then replaced the stopper and returned the bag to its former place.
Next he squatted down on his haunches beside her, pushing his wide hat to the back of his weathered forehead, watching her. His eyes were kind, slightly bashful. The deadpan expression had gone. He was half smiling now, gentle, awkwardly concerned.
Why, he’s nice! Kerry discovered, amazed. Under the dust and grease and stubble and inarticulateness, he was a nice, kind, bashful, awkward bushwhacker!
Bob’s half-smile had spread to the yellow-toothed leer—a really proper smile this time.
‘O.K., mate?’ he asked gruffly.
‘O.K.,’ Kerry assured him gratefully.
A large, rough, dirty hand reached down and helped her to her feet. They exchanged a look of new-found understanding.
‘I—um—I put yer lid on the seat in front.’
‘Lid?’
‘Yeah—that hat.’ He scratched an ear, reddening under his tan.
‘Oh, thank you.’ Kerry had forgotten her hat. She hurried around to her side of the truck, retrieved it, and placed it carefully on her head again.