The One Who Kisses: A Heartwarming Australian Outback Romance

by Lucy Walker

  The One Who Kisses

  Lucy Walker

  Copyright © The Estate of Lucy Walker 2019

  This edition first published 2019 by Wyndham Books

  (Wyndham Media Ltd)

  27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX

  First published 1954

  www.wyndhambooks.com/lucy-walker

  The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Cover artwork images © Kiselev Andrey Valerevich / idiz (Shutterstock)

  Cover artwork design © Wyndham Media Ltd

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  Books by Lucy Walker

  from Wyndham Books

  The Call of the Pines

  Reaching for the Stars

  The River is Down

  Girl Alone

  The One Who Kisses

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  Contents

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  PART TWO

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  PART THREE

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  A Country Practice ebooks

  Books by Lucy Walker

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  The diesel train shot between the great stubble paddocks. The miles of wheat and oats had been harvested long since.

  The short staccato clatter of the train set up a thrumming in Kate’s ears. Six years since she had left England. Six days since she had left Sydney … that fabulous city of flowers, fine ladies and fortunes! Six hours since she had left Perth, the lovely garden city of the west.

  Go West, young Lady!

  The starkness of the great paddocks in this early morning light made her think of the English landscape, before the first snows. They were treeless, like the moors.

  Kate stood up and looked at herself in the mirror on the wall. She was sitting in the rearmost bracket of seats and she was alone. She wondered if she looked bleak, like the morning. She feared it. Then she looked at her watch.

  Another half an hour. She wished she had something of the early morning radiance one read about in books. She had never seen anyone look really lovely two hours before breakfast.

  She took out her make-up, dusted her nose with powder and ran the lipstick round her lips.

  ‘I’ve got to look good for Hal. After all, he met me looking that way. I kept it up all the time we were in Sydney. I’ve got to keep it up now. For ever and ever!’

  A little sardonically she added under her breath, ‘I hope.’

  The hands of her watch stole round. She felt an anxious welling of excitement.

  She was excited and happy. Deep inside her there was a prickle of anxiety. Whichever way she twisted or turned her thoughts, that tiny prickle pricked.

  ‘I suppose it’s all too good to be true,’ she had said to her mother.

  Her mother had said: ‘Kate, don’t marry in a hurry … wait and see!’

  Wait and see! Wait and see!

  One couldn’t wait and one definitely couldn’t see … mostly on account of the roses and scent and little letters and a glorious lavish time around the restaurants of Sydney. The city the Americans had called the greatest ‘leave’ city in the world. How could she see? She could only feel … and nothing, not even the long train journey across Australia ‒ as far as from London to Constantinople ‒ the two days of the Nullabor Desert, the lovely dreaming river of the west, could make her stop for consideration. The excitement, the pace that Hal had set in Sydney had kept something burgeoning in her that wouldn’t let her rest.

  ‘It’s love,’ she told her mother.

  ‘Love that comes so quickly has something brittle and unstable about it,’ her mother replied.

  ‘Oh Mama, do you have to spoil everything?’

  Her mother had looked saddened.

  ‘No, darling. You’re all I’ve got in the world. I want to be certain you marry the right man. If we are not going home to England … if we are to stay in Australia always … I want to be certain we’ll be happy. Specially you, dear.’

  ‘What can Mama know about happiness?’ Kate thought forlornly. She had married a naval officer who had gone down in his submarine in an experimental voyage seven years before England needed both him and his submarine in the second great war. Mama had worked keeping ‘top secrets’ in the Foreign Office. Six years ago she had come, with Kate, to Australia ‒ ‘to see what the brave new world’ had to offer to compensate the wounds of the old. Mama had only had two months of married life. Of happiness.

  The diesel shot rickety-rack on into the deep south. Kate didn’t know whether it was the early morning dullness or the memory of her mother’s anxiety that tinged her expectancy with anxiety now.

  What did she know of Hal anyway?

  She had gone down to Sydney from the Blue Mountains to meet an English friend, Benita Holmes, who had just arrived in Australia. Benita had come as the English representative of a renowned fashion magazine.

  She had been amazed at Sydney.

  ‘Everybody in the world told me about the wonders of Sydney,’ she said. ‘But they never told me the women were what they are. Beautiful, smart, sophisticated, well-dressed … and the flowers the girls wear! Why, lambkins … I see a fortune in exploiting this place on the fashion market.’

  She had looked at Kate critically.

  ‘You’re grown up and lovely, dear … but out of an English garden. We’ll have to make you into a Pacific belle. After all, that’s what these Australian girls are. And how!’

  So Kate got herself a new wardrobe and some sophisticated advice about make-up and hair styles.

  It made her feel wonderful and glamorous. She didn’t look very English any more … and she didn’t regret it. Yet ‒

  ‘Where does all the money come from, Benita? Why are all these people flowing in and out of the Australia Hotel … so fabulously well-dressed?’

  ‘Wool, my dear. It all comes from wool. The greatest wool-growing country in the world. That reminds me,
I’d better get my wool-grower to meet you. After all, I’m old enough to be his aunt … and he might give you a good time in Sydney.’

  ‘I’d love to meet a wool-grower,’ Kate said. ‘You know, Mama and I just meet English people all the time. That comes of working for the Oil Company. They’re only just beginning here … so all the executives are English.’

  ‘Don’t speak of the Oil Company disparagingly, lambkins. They’re soaking a mere forty million in the country.’

  ‘I know … but … well … they just don’t employ wool-growers.’

  So Benita packed Kate off to the Glamour Shop, where she had another hair-do and a face massage and make-up. All done by Madame René herself.

  ‘I ought to feel good,’ Kate thought. ‘It’s cost me an awful lot to get this way. Almost a month’s salary cheque.’

  She stood on tip-toe and looked into the wall mirror in the foyer of the Hotel Australia. She had to look over avalanches of banked azaleas. She was beautifully made-up. She liked herself so much she smiled at her reflection. Her teeth shone between her smooth, red, parted lips. Her hair was so beautifully done it looked as if a fairy godmother and not an expert hairdresser had arranged it all.

  ‘I’m too fair … to look really Australian,’ she thought. ‘If Mama could see me! She wouldn’t really approve.’ She patted the grey silk dress with its elegant sheath skirt. The georgette scarf of palest flamingo pink had been her own idea. That and the wide-brimmed black hat!

  ‘Kate! You really look like Sydney!’ Benita came across the foyer. She looked wonderful too. The banked flowers behind her were like a Hollywood film wedding.

  Kate smiled happily.

  ‘What a fabulous place it is!’

  ‘No other place like it in the Southern Hemisphere, including Rio.’

  This was the tall bronzed Australian smiling over the top of Benita’s head. Benita made the introductions.

  ‘Kate Osborne, late of Surrey, England. Hal Weston … late of the Air Force and sometime pastoralist of Appleton in the “deep south”.’

  She smiled at the Australian.

  ‘Have I got it right? You did say your property is called Appleton?’

  And so Kate had met Hal.

  The thing she had liked first about him had been his beautiful wide-brimmed hat … and when he sat down to order cocktails … the lovely soft leather in his shoes. She shook her head in sad reminiscence of the soggy shoes she had worn as a growing girl during the war years in England.

  She looked proudly at the shoes she wore now. They were very new and very lovely.

  ‘How much did yours cost?’ Hal said with a smile.

  She flushed. ‘I suppose you thought I was rude staring at your shoes …’

  ‘Nobody is ever rude who is openly admiring something someone else is wearing,’ Benita said reprovingly.

  ‘You couldn’t do anything more after my own heart than recognise good leather,’ Hal said. ‘I grow it.’

  ‘Grow it?’

  ‘I run a grazing property. A lot of sheep … at present. But I’m interested in cattle for hides. They’re softer, down in the south, but they bring high prices.’

  He looked around the lunch-room of the Australia Hotel.

  ‘They bring me here now and again,’ he said. ‘Sydney or the bush! Ever hear that in pommy-land?’

  Kate shook her head.

  ‘You’ve got to have an awful lot of money to have fun in Sydney. And if you have fun ‒ well, it’s fun in a big way. It’s worth putting in a year in the bush … growing leather and wool.’

  While he was talking he gazed with the kind of open admiration at Kate that came up to all Benita’s expectations. Kate might have thought she now looked like a sophisticated Sydneyite but Hal was fully aware of the English bloom beneath the dust of powder.

  He gave Kate a wonderful time.

  ‘Why worry?’ he demanded gaily. ‘Wool’s on the boom. It’s raining pound notes.’

  ‘You talk like a million dollars, Hal. Why do you do it?’

  ‘Because in our future life together I’ll be able to accuse you of marrying me for my money every time you burn the toast.’

  ‘Take a note, Miss Osborne! Never burn toast!’ But underneath her facetiousness she wasn’t joking.

  Marry Hal? Marry this debonair blond giant with his brash ways and sudden spurts of naive charm?

  She quite literally felt her heart leap in her bosom.

  A still small voice said: ‘Caution! People like Hal only happen in fairy tales!’

  ‘Sydney or the bush,’ she said gaily. ‘I’ve had Sydney, now let me sample the bush.’

  So she was shooting through on a diesel train to stay with Hal’s people on their property at Blackwood in the deep south of Western Australia.

  Kate looked in the mirror again.

  ‘I’m not really vain,’ she thought. ‘Only I wish I didn’t look so peaky. And I wish Blackwood wasn’t the first town where breakfast is served. I’d feel lots better with coffee inside me. Or tea. Heavens, how everyone drinks tea!’

  Another five minutes.

  They were running through forest now. At first it had been thin straggled wooded land with grey sand patches between the trees. The trees got bigger and closer together as the train moved farther south. The land looked better. Already the sun was climbing up the sky and warming everything.

  ‘If only I’d some coffee!’

  The train double-clattered as it crossed over lines and rattled over points. Empty rail trucks stood on the side lines. They passed a row of high water-tanks, the long canvas shoots flapping idly like elephants’ trunks ‒ deflated.

  The diesel was slowing down now. Kate stood up and pulled her big case from the rack. She felt unexpectedly nervous.

  The train stopped. She closed her eyes for a minute and took a deep breath. When she opened them she was staring through the window at Hal. He bent forward a little to see her. He wore tight-fitting khaki trousers, a leather short coat and a wide-brimmed slouch hat. He rocked forward on his toes, his thumbs stuck in a snake belt.

  He looked fine.

  Kate stood up and began propelling her case towards the door. Then Hal’s head appeared.

  ‘Howdy, mate!’

  He was glad to see her. Kate could see the flush in his face and the lighted look in his eyes she had grown to recognise as Hal’s only outward expression of love.

  ‘It’s going to be all right,’ she thought. Her spirits soared.

  When they were out on the platform she didn’t know whether to hold up her face to be kissed or not. Somehow they weren’t so casual and free as they had been in Sydney. Perhaps these people standing about weren’t Hal’s friends and acquaintances. There was a tight-rope of embarrassment between them. Instead of kissing him she held out her hand in a formal gesture.

  ‘I’m cold,’ she said lamely. ‘And hungry.’

  She could have cried for her own ineptness.

  Hal’s slouch hat went back on to his head. He shook hands.

  ‘How much luggage?’ he asked.

  Then she saw a tall man in tight-fitting khaki trousers and a leather jacket. His face was three quarters turned away. It was really only the line of his jaw she saw. That and his long lithe body. Kate’s glance fell on him casually. She wished he would turn around.

  Behind her eyes there were tears for the kiss she and Hal had not exchanged. She went on staring at the tall man. There was something easy-going yet authoritative about the way he stood.

  She looked away. Why hadn’t she flung herself into Hal’s arms? Now it might be ages before he kissed her. Why didn’t he do it anyway? He, after all, was the one on his home ground.

  Why didn’t the tall man turn round?

  Just then he did turn. He waved a hand to Hal.

  ‘How long, Rick?’ Hal shouted.

  ‘Give me five minutes, Hal,’ he called. He raised his hat to Kate and smiled in a friendly elfish way that constituted an introduction in itsel
f. Then he went back to the business he was doing with the railway official.

  ‘That’s Rick Benallen,’ Hal said. ‘I’m giving him a lift back as far as Appleton.’

  He was darker that Hal. His face was burned a deep brown and his eyes had the faded blue of most Australians. They were innocent eyes ‒ like everyone else had in the country. Innocent, happy-go-lucky, mischievous. And they utterly belied the character of the people. They never betrayed the tenacity which was the first character trait of every Australian. Kate knew this from past experience. They laughed and made a joke about things. They took their time. But they hung on … and they didn’t know when they were dead.

  Hal was getting the big luggage from the van in the middle of the diesel. Kate kept looking at the man called Rick from under her lashes. ‘He’s very nice,’ she thought. Then wondered how she knew it. ‘One always does know. It’s the way they stand, the way they carry their heads, the way they smile … these people who are universally nice and whom everybody likes. Personality plus, I suppose.’

  Rick Benallen turned again and glanced towards Kate. His eyes met hers and they smiled. His hand went up in a friendly salute.

  Somehow Kate felt better. She felt happy again.

  ‘He’s friendly, that man, Rick Benallen,’ Kate said. ‘I feel as if I know him already.’

  ‘He’s a nice bloke,’ Hal said. ‘Everyone feels that way about Rick. One in a million!’

  They walked outside the timbered railway station and Kate could see the small forest township of Blackwood. The street outside was as wide as a field. The surface was incredibly bad. During the night it had rained and there were puddles here and there, and car tracks imprinted in the mud. There were a few shops, low single-storeyed buildings with galvanised iron-roofed verandas in front. Some had steps up on to the wooden veranda or on to the entrance steps of the shop. Beyond the row of shops could be seen the iron roofs of houses or shops in a parallel street. Beyond that the forest stood like a dark wall encircling the town.

  All this Kate saw at a glance.

  But her eyes and interest actually stopped dead on what was right in front of her. In the wide muddy street outside the station were twenty or more huge motor cars. Limousines, Kate called them to herself. They were spectacular in size, horse-power and highly-polished splendour. One or two had women sitting idly at the wheel. One or two had young, very young, men. Mere youths. The people moving about between the little shops and the limousines were all dressed as Hal and Rick Benallen were dressed. The one or two women, if young enough, had loose slacks instead of the khakis; their hair was cut short and in vagabond style. They might all be sisters. In spite of the casual quality of their clothes they looked smart. The men all wore a wide-brimmed slouch hat and blue denim or leather jackets. They had thick heavy boots which Kate was later to discover were almost as indestructible as the earth.