by Lucy Walker
‘Get ready, Kate,’ Hal said.
He took her arm and propelled her round the tree, pinning her against it, one hand on either shoulder.
‘Where will you have it, Kate?’
She put one hand against his chest to ward him off.
‘Please Hal … No!’
His eyebrows shot up in two well-considered curves.
‘I don’t take “no” from ladies with fair hair and blue eyes. Specially ladies who come from England. I don’t even take “no” from Aussies.’
Her hand pressed against his chest.
‘I don’t want to kiss you, Hal. I just don’t want to.’
His eyes seemed to change colour. They became dark and hard and hooded. Almost malignant, like Mrs. Weston’s.
‘Since when this hauteur? This exclusiveness?’
‘Since I arrived in Blackwood, it’s been growing on me … like growing pains.’
‘And how long do you propose to keep this state of affairs up? First yesterday … then to-day. You’re getting out of hand, Kate. Something’ll have to be done about it.’
She looked steadily into his eyes.
She had a terrible urge to tell the whole truth and say that she had changed her mind about him. Yet if she did so now she knew she would jeopardise Annabel’s trip to Albany.
‘Oh, blow them!’ she thought angrily. ‘With that house full of people just imagine having to hang on to a situation like this just because I have to stay over the weekend with Mrs. Weston. It’s really Annabel’s fault. She should be more strong-minded.’
She could see that Hal was no longer going to press his intentions to kiss her, though he remained with one hand on either side of her, keeping her imprisoned against the tree. She dropped her hand and bent her head. She looked down at her riding boots and kicked at the loose bark lying in papery strips on the ground.
She had a sense of unreality. She was quite sure that Hal himself had not developed any strong desire to get married, after all. Had she pressed her claims for affection and attention on him he would have repulsed her to the point when pride would have either forced her to leave Blackwood or have reduced her to the ignominious status to which Peg Castillon had prior claim.
‘I’m not in the mood,’ she said lamely. Then, a sprite of impishness taking possession of her, she looked up quickly. ‘I’ll ring a bell when I want to be kissed, Hal. And the first there will have the honour.’
Why shouldn’t she let him wait for his dismissal anyway? At no time had he shown her chivalry. Let him be served in his own coin.
They looked into one another’s eyes, each resistant, neither smiling.
There was a crackle of bushes as two people came through the other end of the paper-bark grove. Over Hal’s shoulder Kate could see Peg and Rick. At that moment they too saw Hal and Kate.
Deliberately, for at least a minute, Hal kept Kate pinned against the tree. Her eyes pleaded with him. His face was flushed with anger. Then, taking his time about it, he released her and turned round.
Peg was standing quite still looking at them. Then she turned away and crashed rapidly with her ungainly walk through the scrub towards the camp. Rick was throwing gum nuts across the lake. His back was turned.
‘’Lo Rick!’ said Hal. He took out a cigarette and tapped it on his match box.
Rick turned round.
The colour had flooded Kate’s neck and face. She turned away from that look of shy embarrassment on Rick’s face.
‘Let’s go and get tea,’ she said huskily.
They walked back towards the camp, the two men a step behind her on either side.
‘Have a good walk?’ Hal enquired.
‘Beaut!’ Rick said.
There was a minute’s silence.
‘You want a cigarette, Kate?’ Rick asked. He had one rolled, licked down and lighted. He handed it to her.
Kate felt the tears smarting behind her eyes. As she came towards the group round the trestle tables she looked at Beatrix’s pretty face made cloudy by her sullen discontent. ‘How many unhappy hearts are there here to-day?’ Kate wondered. ‘Certainly it is not fun to be young when one has a heart too full!’
The Allandale men had gone off in the Benallen station waggon, so the afternoon tea party was smaller. Mrs. Weston insisted that her tea was too hot; then it didn’t have enough sugar; then it tasted of smoked gum leaves. She didn’t think she’d have one of those sandwiches, thank you but she did think she’d have one of those at the far end of the table.
Rick waited on her with a twinkle in his eye.
‘Good job you’ve got me, Mrs. Weston,’ he said. ‘Otherwise you’d die of starvation.’
‘If we were picnicking on Appleton they wouldn’t treat me like this,’ she said to him in a not-too-low voice. Then, very conspiratorially, ‘You know we all got dragooned into this thing to-day, Rick? We’ll have to watch out or the Arundel family will be thinking they can run the whole of Blackwood.’ Her eyes shot a malignant glance in the direction of young Ron and George de Berhans. ‘Those boys are growing up. You and I’ll have to watch out for what they’re up to in a year or two, Rick. You mark my words, Mrs. de Berhans is a very ambitious woman. She’ll stop at nothing to make those sons of hers cock of the walk.’
Rick grinned.
‘We’ll watch out,’ he said. ‘You and I together are more than a match for the rest of them, Mrs. Weston. Your brains and my height … a wonderful combination.’
Over by the tea-table Beatrix greeted him sourly.
‘What are you always pulling her leg for, Rick? You don’t care any more about Mother than anyone else does.’
He looked at her in genuine surprise.
‘But I do, Beatrix. I’m sorry for her.’
When the plane taxied crazily over the clay pan and rose noisily over the scrub Kate watched its departure.
Rick had gone, and somehow the party was over.
Dishevelled and tired now, two fretful children to be managed, Kate decided to go right through to Appleton in the station waggon with Mrs. Weston. The extra de Berhans horse had its saddle removed, its head turned homeward and a sharp smack given it across the rump.
‘It’ll get home before us!’
Peg sat silent beside Kate as Hal piled into the driver’s seat. Then, as the car jolted forward, their eyes met. Kate put her hand on Peg’s knee.
‘We weren’t doing anything really …’ she said. ‘We were only arguing.’
Peg put her hand on Kate’s but turned her head away.
‘The situation is grotesque,’ Kate thought. ‘After all, I’m the one who had the right to be doing things ‒ kissing ‒ or something.’
PART THREE
Chapter One
Kate could only do her thinking in bed. She always waited till bedtime when she was really worried. ‘When I’m in bed I’ll think about that,’ she would say to herself.
So on the night of the picnic she lay on the beautiful feather mattress, agreeably bathed and powdered. Agreeably tired.
The moon had come up early, a yellow apricot of unbelievable size. It spread, a path of gold, over the stubble paddock. Soon it would grow cold up there in the velvet sky and its reflected flame become a silver shilling. But now it lit the bedroom like firelight.
Kate lay on her back, her hands under her head, and stared up at the ceiling.
She would not let herself think about anything but what she had yet to say to Hal, and its consequences. She longed now for the time to come. She felt as if to-morrow and the week-end would never pass in order that she could be free of the bondage of this half-relationship with Hal. The invidiousness of her position in Appleton wounded her pride.
Yet she knew that when she went away from Blackwood she would have left behind something she might have prized above life itself if she had had the opportunity to possess it. The great stirless mass of the jarrah forest, the rich beauty of the pastures, the old stone and brick homestead with its air of well-being an
d its careful, studied comfort.
And Hal himself.
If only Hal had been what she had thought him. Tears of regret smarted behind Kate’s eyes. The blond wool-grower with a flair for fun and a charm that made all look to him when he turned it on! Yet it would be moral and spiritual death to be married to him as he really was … a capricious being of many moods.
Poor Peg!
And what was she to do about Peg after all? Time was so short. She could tell Peg the pleasures to be found in Rick Benallen’s company but she had no opportunity to plead these suggestive causes with Rick. It was not her part, or place, to go walking round salt lakes with Rick!
Kate had reached this stage in her thinking when she heard footsteps up the passage. Beatrix or Annabel coming for a last word? They would see her light was off and perhaps go away. Kate wanted whoever or whichever of them it was to go away. She was tired, and she had some more thinking to do.
But there came a restrained knock on the door. The knob turned and the door pushed a little way open. The moonlight shone full on Hal’s face as his head appeared in the doorway.
Kate had turned her head so he knew she was awake.
‘Closed down for the night, Kate? Or can I come in for a minute?’
‘I … well …!’
Kate was nonplussed. It was a free and easy age and a free and easy country, but somehow those had not been the terms of her relationship with Hal. They had been strictly formal. They had been formal to the point of freezing here in Blackwood. There was something untoward and embarrassing about Hal’s visit after the light was out.
He did not wait for invitation. He came on into the room. He was in the tweed hacking coat he had changed into for the evening meal. His soft blue shirt sported a school tie. He leaned across the bed and turned on the bedside lamp. He sat down uninvited.
Kate followed his movements with astonished eyes.
‘Whatever would your mother say, Hal …?’ and then she felt silly and Victorian.
‘She’d probably say you were a loose woman.’ He took out a cigarette and offered Kate one. She shook her head. She’d cleaned her teeth once already to-night.
‘Is there no such thing as a loose man?’
‘Not to mothers of sons.’
Kate put her hands back under her head and looked steadily at Hal. She waited for him to say why he had come.
Her silence evidently embarrassed him. This, Kate had never seen before, and she made the reservation that silence always puts the other on the defensive.
Restlessly Hal crossed one leg over the other, then uncrossed them and altered his position on the end of the bed. He put one hand on the far side of the bed so that he leaned a little over Kate.
‘You weren’t in a very good mood to-day, were you?’ he said lamely. But Kate was not going to be put on the defensive herself.
‘It was a glorious day,’ she said.
‘You’re not giving me a very rich welcome, are you? Have I offended you in some way?’
‘No. Only frozen me cold.’
He bent right over her as if to kiss her.
‘Then I’d better go about unfreezing you, right now.’
Kate moved away from him.
‘When I’m frozen up, I’m frozen for good, Hal. And anyway I’m tired and want to go to sleep. Can’t I talk about it to-morrow?’
‘To-morrow’s too late. I’m leaving for Kattanup at sun-up. I’ve really come in to say good-bye.’
Kate had the extraordinary conviction that until this moment it had not occurred to him to leave for Kattanup at sun-up. These were the impulsive, capricious, childish things he said and did that were so hurtful to those who loved him.
It was too late to hurt her with such impulsive declarations now. She didn’t like Hal any more. She couldn’t say so clearly and with finality until Annabel came back from Albany. That had been borne in very sharply to-night when she had gone into Annabel’s room and seen the pathetic trousseau Annabel had sewn, laundered and piled up on the bed prior to packing. All this for a night or two in a hotel? The little pile told its own sad story of a wife who still had hope.
A trip to Albany to see the doctor, the dentist and the lawyer? Forsooth!
Meantime Hal was threatening her with his displeasure. He would go to Kattanup in the morning to punish her. But he was punishing himself!
Kate sighed wearily.
‘I wish you’d go away, Hal. I’m no good at bedroom scenes. I was brought up the wrong way for them.’
Somehow he did manage to lean across her and plant his mouth on her mouth. Kate held her breath. She didn’t like it any more. His lips were hard and cold. There was nothing there but pressure.
In a minute she’d blow up and bust. Her hands thrust him away.
‘Good-night, Hal.’
Her voice was sharp with anger. She meant it, and he knew it. He stood up, a little dishevelled.
‘Being kicked out, am I?’
Kate sat up. Annabel or no Annabel she had something to say to Hal after all.
‘Listen, Hal … if I had flung my arms round your neck and petitioned for kisses you would have been very lofty about how much you dispensed. That is what I’ve learned since I came to Appleton. You punished me before I offended, however. You haven’t met a girl before who did not continuously make the overtures. I did once … and I learned my lesson. And do you know what? It cured me of wanting to be kissed by you. Do you know what? I don’t like the way you kiss. It’s hard and feelingless. There are prickles on your face and your shaving cream smells vile. And when you come back from Kattanup I’ll tell you some more. Now … good-night.’
Hal looked vaguely discomforted. Kate turned on her side and switched off the bedside lamp. She did not see his exit. She only heard his feet going away down the passage.
She wept then, not for the departure of Hal, but for the departure of love.
‘Even if I was in love with love,’ she thought bitterly. ‘It hurts as much to lose love as to lose a child.’
In the morning Hal and Beatrix were gone. How he had dragooned Beatrix to so early a departure Kate did not learn, but knowing how much Beatrix was wanting to see her fiancé again she guessed it had not taken too much trouble on Hal’s part.
The breakfast table seemed to have shrunk. Kate thought of the morning, not quite a fortnight ago, when she had first come in that wire door and seen the colourful table with the bowl of deep red plums set amongst the gay china on the snow-white cloth. There seemed so many people then. Everything so gay and happy! The air of comfort and security had thrilled her. Now there was only Uncle Harry and Mrs. Weston. Annabel was not even fussing between the table and the kitchen.
She was closeted in the children’s dayroom with Judity, giving last-minute instructions all over again.
Uncle Harry and Mrs. Weston were arguing irritably about the insurance on the wool burnt in Parsons and Sons’ sheds.
‘If the price of wool at the auctions goes down … and it will go down, mark my words … we’re all right,’ Mrs. Weston said. ‘Three weeks ago we knew the Korean war would end. Well, that ends the army requirements in Australia and in UK and the Continent. Stands to reason there’ll be a slump. We’ll do better than if we’d left the clip for the next wool sales.’
‘What about Russia coming in? And there’s sixteen wool-buyers up there in Darwin waiting for planes to the Sydney sales. And where’d you think they’d come from. Japs they are. Every man jack of ’em. And it was the Japs who were one of our best customers before the war. With the Jap and Russian wool buyers coming in, the prices’ll go up. I reckon we’ll have lost a good ten thousand on that clip.’
‘Ten thousand! What’s ten thousand when the Appleton clip is worth a hundred thousand in a year?’
And this was the Mrs. Weston who begrudged the over-charge of five pounds to the Roads Board for keeping the side roads in repair!
Uncle Harry, who only heard half of what Mrs. Weston said, slapped his hand
down on the table.
‘I don’t like Hal going into these things. He’s irresponsible. Who are these Parsons and Sons anyway? How come they had a fire in their place? It’s mighty hard to get a blaze in a wool store without smouldering and smell giving a warning. The insurance company is all right, but how do we know they’ll pay up? Can’t tell me they aren’t wanting to know how that fire got going. Nobody’s going to get any money till they’ve had that question answered for them. And good and proper too.’
‘Uncle Harry, you’re an old fool. You never had a business head at any time in your life. You stick to sheep and horses …’
He didn’t hear more than a word or two.
‘Horses …? You know that fool Hal took Chester out this morning? He’ll kill that horse! He’d no right to take a thoroughbred as nervous as Chester. What did he take Chester for?’
Mrs. Weston chewed her lips and looked angry. It was clear she didn’t know Hal had taken Chester, but she wasn’t going to give Uncle Harry any satisfaction.
Kate wondered wearily why Hal had to do everything in a manner calculated to hurt or annoy somebody. She would ask Annabel about Chester. Some special horse, she supposed. She had not heard it mentioned before.
After lunch Annabel made her departure. Mick drove them all into Blackwood in the ‘super-sonic’. Every now and again he would let the speed indicator creep up a little for the sheer joy of feeling the glorious car humming sweetly along the road. But Mrs. Weston wasn’t going to see any farm hand indulging in the luxury of speed in the Appleton ‘pride’. Nor was she going to put up with speed in any event.
‘Look, young fellow, you’re going over fifty.’
‘Ma’am, fifty’s nothing in this lovely. She was never built to do anything under sixty. She ain’t running properly till you hit seventy.’
‘You slow down, young man, or you’ll get paid off when we get into Blackwood.’