by Amanda Doyle
In the evenings, when the child had gone to bed, Kerry sewed away at the toy-tidy she had decided upon for Hilary. It, too, was made of cheap cotton from Andy’s collection down at the store. It was a doll-figure, with a pink cotton face and arms, and coathanger shoulders, from which hung a voluminous checked skirt, with a cleverly concealed envelope-front into which Hilary could put all her smaller possessions. The pink face had been embroidered with eyes, button nose and a gay mouth, and woollen plaits completed the doll, which was now safely wrapped and ready for tomorrow’s excitement, as was Bluebell’s shift and the cigarettes for Andy, who preferred tailor-made ones. These Kerry had been obliged to order from the mail-plane pilot, and she had been first out on the strip the next day the plane came in, so that Andy would not witness the silent exchange between herself and the mailman. With an air of suppressed triumph she had smuggled her prize into the house undetected, and wrapped it up. Returning from her room, she had been waylaid by Tad himself.
He was wearing what Kerry secretly termed his ‘mail-day clothes’—pale drill trousers and a blue casual shirt which accentuated the mahogany darkness of his tan. On the day when the plane called, Tad and his men did not go far out on the run to work, as they did on other days, but found things to do nearer the homestead, and Tad himself always spent a large part of that particular day at his big walnut desk, preparing his ‘away’ mail, ready to perform the ceremonial opening of the ‘in’ mail-bag when it arrived.
Kerry had begun to look forward to mail days, not because she ever received, or even expected to receive, anything through the post, but because these were the days when Tad was around the place all day. Even though she did not see much more of him than if he had been out on the property, Hilary knew her daddy was there, and Kerry, listening to his occasional heavy tread from library to verandah and back again, thought the sound had a nice, homely ring—it added a sort of complete, ‘family’ feeling to Gillgong homestead.
When Tad was discovered carrying a parcel addressed to none other than herself, Kerry extended her hand for it, hesitantly, so surprised was she.
‘For me?’ she breathed incredulously. ‘I don’t think it can be!’
Tad had smiled faintly, amused.
‘It is for you, Kerry, I assure you. See—Miss Kerry Peyton—right there.’
Kerry’s eyes rounded in wonder as she saw that he was indeed right.
‘Aren’t you expecting one?’
She shook her head, turning it over in her hands, staring at a shiny, round label on the other side of the package.
‘Don’t open till Christmas,’ she read aloud.
‘I wasn’t going to give it to you. I shall take it back into custody.’ Tad was still amused. ‘You shall have it on Christmas Day, Kerry, and meanwhile I shall keep it safely for you.’
So Kerry had rather reluctantly handed back the parcel, and Tad had taken it with him into the library. She had wondered several times since then from whom it could possibly be. Recalling his teasing grey-green eyes as he watched her own perplexity, Kerry even found herself hoping wistfully that it might be from Tad himself. She could not remember if it had had a stamp on it, but she had assumed that the parcel had arrived in the post. Maybe it was something which Tad had sent for, something which had come a little earlier than he had thought, and which he was going to hide. She did not suppose that was likely, but you never knew, did you? Kerry asked herself optimistically. There was no harm in hoping, was there? Tomorrow she would know for sure, anyway!
She sealed the ends of the red tissue that covered Tad’s own pokerwork box, and went off to bed, smiling to herself.
All through the next morning, in suffocating heat, Kerry worked in the kitchen with Bluebell.
Hilary, exempt for once from lessons, leaned her thin arms on the big wooden table, watching absorbedly as they prepared the traditional Christmas dinner. Only the vegetables were to be served hot. Already the cooked turkey reposed in state on one of the pretty willow-patterned meat plates, waiting for the moment when Tad’s carving-knife would slice delicately into its crisp brown skin. The pudding sat on another plate close by, and Kerry reflected, as she stuck a bunch of tattered artificial holly into its top centre, that there was a peculiar dearth of anticipation about Gillgong Station on Christmas morning. Used as she had been to the riotous celebrations at the orphanage, she found it difficult to understand the lack of enthusiasm which was evident now, in spite of Tad’s traditional Christmas tree, brought in on the plane, and the big glazed turkey, and the rich round pudding. Even the greetings of ‘Merry Christmas’ exchanged by all in the morning had seemed wooden and rather dutiful—except for Hilary’s. It had been disappointing, and Kerry, firmly taking hold of her own morale, was determined that the day should not continue the way it had begun.
‘What’re you doing that for?’ Hilary asked, watching idly as Kerry wiped the beads of perspiration from her brow and set about beating butter and sugar in a small bowl.
‘It’s going to be brandy butter,’ explained Kerry, recklessly tilting Tad’s cognac bottle, and mixing furiously again.
‘It smells awful, Kerry,’ opined Hilary, leaning closer and sniffing disgustedly. ‘I don’t know why you bother.’
Ah! thought Kerry. That was it! Unwittingly, the child had pinpointed the very root of the prevailing tepid atmosphere. Nobody was bothering, that was the trouble, so she, Kerry, would just have to bother enough for everyone!
‘You can’t have a proper Christmas without some bother, Hilary,’ she reasoned a little desperately, wiping her forehead again. ‘See, I’m going to colour this in three different colours, and we’ll put it in a glass bowl, and it’ll look pretty.’
Hilary looked dubious, wrinkled her nose once more, and sauntered away.
‘It will look pretty, anyway,’ Kerry murmured to herself defiantly. ‘That’s if I don’t collapse before it’s done!’
Oh, how hot it was in that station kitchen! Maybe it was the heat that made everyone here so curiously languid, on what should have been the most exciting day of the year, or maybe they had just never discovered what Christmas Day was all about.
At the dinner-table, nobody remarked on the pink, green and chocolate-coloured butter in its crystal dish, but Kerry noticed that each of the men helped themselves to it twice when they ate their pudding, and Hilary’s earnest little face lit with surprise when she found two sixpences in her own portion.
‘Ooh, look what I’ve got!’ she told her father, holding the coins on her palm for his inspection.
Tad was suitably impressed.
‘Lucky girl! I haven’t found even one. There seems to have been unfair discrimination somewhere,’ he murmured to Kerry, in a smiling aside which told her that he knew she had engineered the whole thing, and that he was grateful.
Kerry flushed with pleasure, as she always did when confronted with praise from Tad, however unexpected or oblique such praise might be. Her spirits rose. The day was improving, just as she had hoped it would!
After the meal was over, they all went to the verandah, where the tree stood clothed in the few baubles which Kerry had discovered in a drawer along with the holly for the pudding. She and Hilary had placed their few gaily-wrapped parcels around its foot.
Bluebell was summoned, and at last a little true merriment crept in.
With exclamations of delight, she held Kerry’s bright cotton shift against her body, grinning her wide, infectious grin.
‘Reckon that’s real dinkum pretty, missus! Reckon thatfella Beaver not knowun’ Bluebell belonga him when he see this ’un! Reckon Beaver think him bin get ’isself a blinkin’ parakeet with all them colours, plurry certain!’
Emitting shrieks of mirth, she darted off to the kitchen, and the same controlled enthusiasm, which Kerry found so disheartening, settled once more upon those who were left.
When Hilary had gathered up her presents and departed, laden, to inspect them further in solitude, Andy reached for his hat.
> ‘Got to be going, too,’ he stated, scrambling out of the deck-chair in which he had been sprawling. He turned to Kerry, adding a little awkwardly, ‘Thanks again for the smokes, Kerry girl. I reckon they’re just what I need.’
‘And the stockings, Andy,’ she rejoined. ‘Just what I need, too. Thank you, Andy.’
On a sudden impulse, Kerry leaned forward and placed a soft kiss on Andy’s freckled cheek.
‘It’s O.K., kid.’ Beneath Tad’s cool appraisal, colour flooded up the older man’s neck. Clapping his hat unceremoniously on to his head, he muttered, ‘Reckon I’ve gotter go,’ and clattered away, through the gauzed door and down the outer steps, leaving Tad and Kerry facing each other.
The silence, like the heat, seemed too still and oppressive for comfort.
Kerry bent to pick up the remaining scatter of wrappings, and as casually as she could, reached beneath the tree and handed Tad the red package which still lay there.
‘You didn’t open your present, Tad.’
His surprise was genuine.
‘I didn’t know I had one—I don’t, generally, except of course from Hilary. Andy and I have always tried to keep things up a bit for her. Is it from you yourself, Kerry?’
Colour stained her cheeks as she nodded.
‘That was a very kind thought indeed.’ Tad sounded oddly formal. ‘As it happens, I, too, have something for you. Come into the library a moment.’
Kerry followed, glowing inside with hope and happiness. She hadn’t liked to remind Tad about the parcel he had confiscated—the one which said ‘Don’t open till Christmas.’ She thought he had forgotten, but he hadn’t after all. He had simply been waiting for the right moment, just as Kerry had herself.
She somehow had felt too shy to draw his attention to her gift under the tree in front of the others, just in case it turned out to be the wrong sort—in case she had caused him some embarrassment by giving him anything at all.
He certainly did not appear to be embarrassed, though.
At his desk he stopped, and carefully pulled the paper away, and then he just stood, perfectly still, for quite a little while, turning the little box in his big brown hands, inspecting it gravely inside and out.
Kerry began to feel anxious. Her eyes couldn’t drag themselves away from his face as she wondered what he could possibly be thinking beneath all that inscrutability.
‘Did you make it yourself, Kerry?’ he finally questioned softly.
‘Yes, Tad.’
He smiled, then, a crinkly green-eyed smile, the sort that made him look so suddenly young and carefree.
‘Then it’s just the nicest present I’ve ever had, Kerry, do you understand? The very nicest!’
‘I—I’m glad, Tad.’ Kerry looked away then—turned away, too, because she felt she might be going to drown in the green, tender depths of Tad’s eyes.
‘Come here, Kerry.’ She turned back. Tad was smiling still. ‘Aren’t I going to be allowed to thank you for it?’
‘You just have,’ Kerry pointed out reasonably.
‘Have I?’ with a single, swift movement, Tad pulled her close against him. ‘Dammit all,’ he muttered indistinctly into her hair, ‘why should Andy have all the luck?’ and then he put up his hand, steadied her chin, and kissed her.
Kerry felt his lips on her cheek with a touch as light as a butterfly’s. Then they travelled down, slowly, softly, to the very corner of her mouth. So close, so near. No mouth had ever been so close to Kerry’s before, and now it was Tad’s mouth, Tad’s lips—the warm firm lips of this man that she secretly loved.
Kerry’s slender body, willow-curved beneath the pressure of Tad’s arm, tensed with sheer fright at the enormity of the experience.
As if aware of the sudden resistance in her, Tad put her away from him gently.
‘No need to get alarmed, Kerry,’ he told her stiffly. ‘What’s a kiss between friends on Christmas Day, after all? I was forgetting that you probably have much more important things on your mind—this, for instance.’ He opened a cupboard at one side of his desk and took out her parcel. ‘Sorry I forgot to give it to you earlier, Kerry. You should have reminded me.’
‘Not—not at all.’ Her voice shook a little, though she did her best to make it sound as normal as his. Taut with ecstasy and longing only a moment ago, Kerry now felt weak with an odd despair, swamped by a sense of failure. Somehow, in some way that she had not the wisdom or experience to determine, she felt that she had failed both herself and Tad, and sheer disappointment brought a tremor to her voice.
Kerry sat down in a deep leather chair with her parcel.
Tad’s voice above her was kind.
‘You’re obviously hoping that’s from someone special,’ he observed.
‘Yes—yes, I am—someone special.’ Kerry hardly realized what she was saying. Her confused thoughts were running riot. Might it not be from Tad? Couldn’t it possibly be? After all, he did say he had something for her, and if it was, couldn’t it mean—it, and that kiss—that he felt about her, just the tiniest bit, the way she felt about him?
Her fingers fumbled at the wrapper, revealed a box. Inside lay a pretty lemon-coloured bed-wrap, quite the prettiest that Kerry had ever seen. It was light as thistledown, frilly, feminine, edged with a lacy ruffle the whole way round—a piece of delicate, gorgeous nonsense.
Kerry picked up the card from the tissue-lined bottom of the box, and read—
‘Dear Miss Peyton—Forgive the liberty of such a personal type of gift. It was chosen by my wife, who assures me that you will approve, and who joins with me in conveying best wishes for your happiness at this Christmas season of good will—Edmund and Laura Stenning.’ Edmund and Laura Stenning! The wool firm man! Oh, how infinitely kind of him, how thoughtful—and of Mrs. Stenning, too! It was such a pretty wrap, so soft, so misty-lemon, like captive sunshine. Kerry had never owned anything like it in her whole life. She felt touched beyond belief that he should have bothered, that he could still remember a simple orphan tucked away out in the country, when he was at the head of a big firm like that, so busy, with so many other people and things to think about.
Kerry’s eyes filled with tears.
‘What’s the matter, Kerry?’
She looked up at Tad.
‘N-nothing really.’ Kerry blew her nose. ‘It’s from Mr. Stenning, that’s all.’
‘Stenning?’ He sounded amazed.
‘Yes, Mrs. Stenning, too—the w-wool firm man, and his w-wife, too,’ she elaborated shakily, as she blew her nose again, and tucked her handkerchief away.
‘Why are you crying, Kerry?’ was Tad’s next, puzzled question.
‘I’m n-not!’ she defended herself. ‘It’s just—oh – it was so kind!’
‘But it wasn’t from the person you had thought, or hoped, it would be from?’ The green eyes were shrewd.
‘No, it—wasn’t,’ Kerry admitted, sniffing. ‘I shouldn’t have been so f-foolish, in any case. Forget it, Tad.’ She rose to her feet.
‘I’m sorry you were disappointed, Kerry,’ Tad said evenly. ‘Here, maybe this’ll help to cheer you up again.’
He handed her a white envelope with her name upon it. Kerry recognized that thick, slanting writing.
She broke the seal, withdrew a folded cheque, and gazed at it dazedly.
‘Well?’
‘It—it’s very generous, Tad,’ she declared feebly. ‘Are you sure—I mean—I’m not certain that I can accept it. What I mean to say is—is—’
‘I know quite well what you’re thinking, Kerry,’ Tad’s voice informed her dryly, ‘but it’s perfectly right and proper for you to accept it, I assure you. There are no strings attached—not even a Christmas kiss. It’s my custom at Christmas to give each member of the staff at Gillgong an extra bonus of two weeks’ salary. It’s a habit of long standing, and as you’re a member of the staff, you qualify, along with everyone else. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, Tad—perfectly clear.’ Kerry’s nu
mbed lips managed somehow to form a reply. ‘Thank you, Tad,’ she continued coolly. ‘As a member of the staff I’m very glad to benefit. You’re a generous employer—very generous.’
Somehow she got herself out of the room with dignity.
Her heart felt as though it had been ground to a fine pulp, her body as though it had been put through a veritable mangle of the emotions. Her feelings, her hopes, lay in a limp, cold heap—as drab as a pile of wet, wrung-out washing.
After that, it was somehow easier—imperative, indeed—to avoid Tad.
She eluded his presence altogether except on those occasions when her absence would have been remarked upon as odd. It made life more bearable for her, and for Tad, she didn’t believe he even noticed. There was a remoteness in his eyes, an impenetrability about his stern features, that made her wonder how she could ever have dreamed up that tenderness she thought she had seen there. The remoteness made him seem more unapproachable than ever he had before, and Kerry supposed that that was why she delayed so long in going to him about her finger—too long, as it turned out.
Who would ever have thought that a tiny little thorn could cause such an upheaval at Gillgong, after all? It wasn’t even as though it had remained embedded in the soft flesh of her forefinger for long. Kerry had been sensible at that point. She had got up from the sugar-bag by the shrubbery where she was weeding, and had gone into the house to wash the sore place.
When she saw the jagged splinter that was causing her pain, she had carefully sterilized a needle, and seconds later, the offending thorn—a mere black speck, it had appeared—was lying on her palm.
Perhaps she had not got it all out, although she could swear that she had. Be that as it may, as the days went by, the pain got worse and worse. Bluebell took over all the cooking again, because Kerry realized by now that there was something not quite right about her finger, although she told no one. Frequently she bathed it, but although she gained temporary relief, the swelling increased, and so did the accompanying throbbing pain. Yesterday the joint had felt as though it were on fire, and today her whole arm felt that way, and her head, too.