by Walker, Lucy
At that moment a wiry, thin woman came into the store through the door in the rear.
`Oh, there you are, Jason,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I left the store for so long. A dingo got in amongst the chickens last night. I’ve been wiring up the fence. Not too much damage done, thank Ranger. He didn’t bark much, but of all things he’d been trying to round up the dingo. Did you ever hear of such a thing?’
The dog had heard his name. He lifted his head and pricked his ears. His tail thumped busily on the floor.
`Good boy, Ranger,’ Jason said, looking down. ‘If you have no sheep to round up, then any old wild dog will do, eh?’
The kelpie’s tail thumped again.
`Of course he understands every word?’ Jeckie said doubtfully.
‘Oh, absolutely. You’d be surprised! But I haven’t introduced you to Mrs Stringer. This is Jeckie, one of the Ashendens, Maria,’ he said. `Jeckie, may I introduce to you the doyen of storekeepers — Mrs Maria Stringer.’
`Pleased to meet you, I’m sure,’ Mrs Stringer said.
`How do you do,’ Jeckie replied. ‘I think I must have my geography all wrong. I thought this was your store, Jason.’
`I own the ground, but don’t run the store. The store is Mrs Stringer’s province,’ he said.
`You’re staying out at Mallibee? Miss … er …’ Mrs Stringer wore an expression of acute curiosity.
Jeckie Bennett, but please call me Jeckie. Everybody does. My mother was one of the Ashendens. I don’t claim the Ashenden name, except in theory.’
`Not like Miss Isobel then? She claims it all right! Oh well, each to his own!’
Jeckie did not know how to answer this, so she said nothing.
Mrs Stringer’s name exactly suited her very thin figure. She moved behind the counter at the back of the store and began tidying paper sheets lying loose on the counter top.
`Bennett … Yes, that’s right,’ she went on, not looking up but watching her hands at work. ‘You must be the daughter of Frances. Frances’s mother was the first Andrew Ashenden’s fifth child. But she was his first daughter ..
Jeckie made a faint moaning sound. ‘Oh, please … not here too ! Does everybody have to relate everything and -everybody back to Andrew?’
`Andrew the First, that was,’ Mrs Stringer went on in a flat, expressionless voice. ‘He was the first surveyor —after the explorer Gregory—to map this part of Australia. From here the plateau eventually runs eastward into the Gibson Desert, you know. So he could hardly have gone any further, could he? He was given the Mallibee acreage as a reward. Isn’t that so, Jason?’
Jason bent down to rub the dog’s ears.
`That is so,’ he said with mock seriousness. ‘Mrs Stringer is invariably right in a matter of local history, Jeckie.’
`You seem to know all about it, too,’ Jeckie said doubtfully. She didn’t know whether these two people — and the dog — were having a small joke at her expense.
‘Of course I do,’ Jason said quietly. ‘People round here wouldn’t let me forget. Take Mrs Stringer, for instance — ‘
Jeckie was still curious to know why Jason had claimed her, Jeckie, as a cousin, but she didn’t like to interrupt Mrs Stringer.
`Why shouldn’t we know all about the first Andrew?’ that lady was saying drily. She shifted her attention from the neatly stacked papers to the business of dusting the shelves behind her with a giant-sized turkey-feather duster. `You’re the Shire President, Jason. So you’ve a right to know — being related too. Through your mother, of course.’
`You’re the Justice of the Peace, too, Jason,’ Jeckie said, poking the ‘cousin riddle’ temporarily to the back of her mind. ‘Warden of the Wardens’ Court, and owner of the petrol station and this store — ‘
`The ground upon which the store stands,’ Jason corrected her, mischief in his smile.
`The ground on which the store stands,’ Jeckie amended. `And — well, what else is there? Barton had a whole list of things you are in this district.’
`Barton?’ Jason raised his eyebrows. `I’m flattered he
shows such an interest. I thought nobody from Mallibee ever mentioned my name. Penalty rate, I understand, is expulsion from the firm.’
Jeckie sat on a sack of sugar standing by the near wall.
`Does everyone right across the tableland from the coast to the Gibson Desert always talk in conundrums?’ she asked. She looked from Jason’s wryly smiling face to Mrs Stringer’s straight back and quite unsmiling expression.
‘Well, what you don’t know is best not learned,’ Mrs Stringer remarked with a touch of acid. ‘Best you go and see if Barton’s ready to start up again, miss. He’s an impatient one — I know that.’
‘Yes, thank you. I think I’d better do just that. Goodbye, Mrs Stringer. Goodbye — ‘
‘Jason — as a name — will find me anywhere, Jeckie. Most people have heard of me.’
Now was clearly not the moment to ask for more about the ‘cousin’ relationship. It could be embarrassing.
‘Thank you. Then it’s goodbye … Jason,’ Jeckie said, her blue eyes very blue, as she tried to reflect absolute composure while she hoisted herself upright from the sugar bag, then turned to go outside again. Jason, she thought, was not so much regretting her going as being busy watching her feet. Maybe he was standing by to catch a shoe should she chance to kick one off.
Actually, she very nearly did just that … as a way of scoring one up on him — just for fun.
‘Barton,’ Jeckie said when they were aboard the re-plugged Rover and a mile out across the spinifex plain from the store, ‘Why is everyone in our family against Jason? He said we are related — in a very distant way. Something about being cousins —’
‘We don’t recognize him as a member of the family,’ Barton said bluntly. ‘He let us down. For money, of course.’
Jeckie’s eyes widened as she stared at Barton’s profile. ‘Please do tell me more,’ she begged.
‘He is about as much your cousin as Andrew and I are your cousins. Third cousins, I think it is. I gave up counting years ago. He is descended from — ‘
‘Oh no, Barton. I couldn’t bear it. Don’t tell me how
far removed he is from Andrew the First or I’ll scream. Is everybody in the district related?’
‘Not all — but some. Jason — was. Till we cut him off.’ ‘But why?’
‘Never mind why, Jeckie. It’s best not talked about. He was a let-down for everyone at Mallibee. If you mention the subject anywhere near Andrew, well — it’s likely Andrew could go looking up his rifle, then take himself off on a hunting trip. Aunt Isobel, Jane — the lot of us — we don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Please, Barton! Don’t say anything so silly as Andrew looking up his rifle. People haven’t gone shooting their kith and kin — out of vengeance — since the Middle Ages. It really does seem to me that you’re all a bit out of time — the way you go in for ancestor worship. And — ‘
‘And nothing,’ Barton interrupted abruptly, as he slewed the wheel round to miss a lump of ironstone at the side of the track. ‘Nobody goes in for ancestor worship, let alone worship of that old tycoon, Great-Grandfather Andrew. The family feud is all to do with money. M.O.N.E.Y. Nothing more glamorous than “filthy lucre”.’
‘Did Jason inherit a share of Mallibee, too?’
‘That he did. He is descended from one of the daughters’ sons. So a different surname. Now I’m not going to tell you anymore. The whole subject bores me — except when I think too much about it, then I just get hopping mad.’
‘But if I’m a family connection I have a right to know.’
‘Nuts to that, Jeckie love. Read your Book of Common Prayer and you’ll find we’re all so far apart we don’t even crack a mention as amongst relatives. The only connecting link is that raking share in Mallibee. So forget it, will you?’
‘You really mean you’re not going to tell me … ?’ ‘I do.’
‘Then I�
�ll find out from someone else,’ Jeckie said flatly. ‘Because I like Jason. I don’t want to think badly of him. Not without evidence.’
She faced forvvard again and presented a haughty profile to Barton.
He grinned. ‘Atta girl,’ he said. His right hand came off the steering wheel and he patted her knee. ‘That’s the fighting spirit of the Ashendens.’
‘My surname is Bennett with a double “n” in the middle. And the Book of Common Prayer — you mentioned it first — doesn’t give me any claim to Ashenden anything. Much less spirit.’
‘No claim to anything Ashenden? Tut, tut, Jeckie. You are your mother’s only child, aren’t you? And she still holds a one-sixth share in Mallibee.’
`Who’s talking about money or property now? Jason Bassett doesn’t seem to me to be the only sinner in that respect.’
Barton grinned. ‘Well, you would come up to see us all. Who put you up to it, Jeckie? Aunt Isobel from afar or your own most respected maternal relative?’
Jeckie felt the only way to harden herself against these half-jesting innuendoes was in the old adage: ‘If you can’t beat them, join them.’ That way she didn’t have to have a conscience, let alone distaste for the thought that seemed uppermost in every Ashenden’s mind — the value and ownership of property. They all seemed to talk only of how soon could other branches of the family get hold of one more scrap of property scrip that would make up the composite Mallibee.
Something inside Jeckie rebelled against the way the distant relatives gossiped. Even those, in distant parts, who had no claims whatever ! The only way to hide her rebellion, since she was a guest of the Ashendens, was to put a hard cover over it. She must — for the duration —at least pretend to be one of the Ashendens.
‘I wanted to come myself,’ she said at last, not quite truthfully. She could not admit she had run away. This was the only place she had thought of — in her state of wounded pride — to which she could come.
‘Neither Aunt Isobel nor my mother persuaded me.’ She was looking straight in front and holding her head high. ‘I knew they occasionally wrote to one another, and that is all. I came because I needed a holiday and because I knew Mallibee was a family property, and I might just as well see for myself —’
‘See the property, or see the Ashendens?’ Barton asked, still teasing.
‘You and Andrew are the only ones with the actual name of Ashenden so I suppose you mean yourselves,’
Jeckie said coldly. `I don’t have to answer those questions, Barton. I’m not in school any more. Suppose I looked at the scenery instead?’
`Yes, you do that, sweetheart, but not for the next few minutes. I’m going up that long, low rise to the left and I’m going up full belt. The top is steeper than you’d think from the plain. Shut your eyes and hang on like a good girl. When you get to the top you’ll see a mountain — on
its way to the sea.’
Jeckie did as she was told. The rise was boulder-strewn and the Land-Rover zigzagged about as Barton drove. They raised a dust pall in a brown cloud that puffed and lifted, then hovered over everything, including themselves and the Rover.
Barton pulled his hat low over his brow and looked ahead through slitted eyes.
`How you going?’ he asked after five minutes.
`I’m going fine,’ Jeckie said. ‘But I can’t see a thing for the dust.’ It burned her eyeballs when she tried to open her eyes, so she screwed them shut tight.
Suddenly they stopped ricocheting from side to side and from boulder to dip. They ran along a short, straight, dust-shrouded strip, then stopped.
There was quite a silence. Barton leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek.
`Don’t look so up-tight, Jeckie,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing but a most remarkable sight before you —’
Jeckie opened her eyes. They were not so much blinded with dust now as unexpectedly filled with tears.
She had cracked hardy all through that ghastly week after Edgerton had written to her, all the way up in the plane, then all the way out from the airport to Mallibee. She had cracked hardy through supper, through her sleep on her first night and through breakfast and her first visit to Cassie in the kitchen. She had met Jason Bassett all over again, and all over again something kind and easy in him had touched her. She had wanted to put out her hand … maybe ask him for the loan of a shoulder!
Yet dust had all but broken her spirit. It was dust that was too much for her. It was the dust, too, that made her eyes water, not a sudden and belated reaction to the fretted feelings she had so lately suffered. It was the little
things of life that got one down, she acknowledged. The straw that breaks the camel’s back. Or was it a kind smile from a dear man? Cousin Jason.
Tor crying out loud!’ Barton said. ‘What goes? Jeckie, you’re not really crying? I thought you were enjoying yourself !’
`It’s the dust. So gritty—’
`Well, here’s my handkerchief. Get it out with the rolled corner. Or shall I try for you?’
‘No, thank you. It’s all out now . .. I think …’ She looked at him, and blinked to pretend to prove her statement.
`You know what, Jeckie? You’ve got the most bee-oo-tiful eyes, specially when someone like me looks at ‘em through a veil of … well, call it “mist” if that sounds better than dusty tears.’
`Thank you,’ Jeckie said — just cold enough not to be encouraging.
‘From now on I’m not teasing,’ Barton said firmly. ‘You’re in my charge — for the time being. You’ll have to settle for that. No questions allowed. Now turn your head to the left and look down into the valley. We’re bang-on the right place in the right hour of the day. There goes Mallibee’s mountain.’
Jeckie scrambled out of the Land-Rover as Barton eased from his own seat. She stood still, blinking her eyes, and looked down into the valley.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was another world. High at the top of the opposite hills the mesa rock surfaces were a brutal wounded red. They were old, these hills, as if hewn in blocks and set
on one another millenniums ago. Along the slopes were banded swathes of black lustreless rock. Lower still came flat-faced coloured slabs, red here, green and aquamarine there. The hills to the east rolled and folded away, striated with yellow dried-out spinifex. Veils of water trickling down from horizontal crack in some places made surfaces
glisten like mirror walls. Below, nearer the valley bottom, twisted whitetrunked trees — clinging by roots embedded in rock cracks — reached desperate leafy arms to the sky above. At the foot of all was a long narrow still pool in which were reflected the peacock colours of the bared rock face all over again. A double take — too true to be uru-eal. Nature at her cruellest, most magnificent, best.
From valleys beyond the rounded humps of low hills — then through the valley below — ran a silver streak. of a track.
It was a railway line.
Technology in the midst of the primitive! Jeckie thought. The railway line was a thread cutting through an ancient range of hills — impinging modern man and his works on relics of lost millenniums.
‘Listen! It’s coming!’ Barton said. timed it well, all
right. Here comes the Iron King.’
Round the curve of the valley came the train.
The two coupled diesel engines were bigger than Jeckie’s imagination. After them came a long long snake of open-topped waggons, each carrying its dark lifeless load of iron ore.
Truck after truck after truck. A train — three quarters to a mile long! It took an age to pass them.
Jeckie blinked her eyes, to make sure that what she was seeing was real. The diesels had disappeared round other curves of land, out of sight. But the trucks still came on. And on, and on — each filled to capacity.
The train went neither slower nor faster. It just went — clickety clack: truck after truck after truck after truck.
Mallibee mountain — in bits and pieces — going to the sea!
The longest train in the world, they say. That’s what it is,’ Barton said between half-closed lips. He was not taken in by wonder. He was smouldering with a kind of anger. `It’s two hundred and fifty miles from Westerly-Ann Mine to the coast, with not a single stopping place in all that stretch of land. From engine to tail-end — all but a mile of train. That’s what it is!’
`I don’t believe it!’ said Jeckie. `I’m having a dream.’
`More like a nightmare — if you’re one of the family,’ Barton said. ‘That stuff in those waggon-trucks is iron ore—Mallibee Mountain. It’s been broken into pieces, shovelled aboard, now being taken away to the coast. They’ve built a new port so the world’s biggest ore-carriers — sixty thousand tons — can get in to take the ore away. The next carrier off the line from the shipyards will be a hundred-thousand tonner.’
‘Our mountain?’ Jeckie asked, incredulous. ‘You mean the iron-ore mountain belonged to Mallibee Station?’
`To Mallibee property — originally.’
`But how could they take it? I mean, if it belonged to us?’
She was unconscious of using the word ‘us’, and unconscious of the fact that she had for the first time identified herself with Mallibee. As she stared at the incredible snake of glistening track, and the monster plying along it, Jeckie had seen the ore being carried away as ‘our mountain’.
‘Pillage,’ Barton said explosively. ‘Robbery. In broad daylight too!’
‘But how can they?’ Jeckie persisted. `Mallibee is a freehold property given to Great-Grandfather Ashenden because of his exploration services to the State. I mean they can take back a leasehold station but they can’t take freehold property. Or can they, Barton?’
`They didn’t take it. They bought it. At least one descendant of the Ashendens sold out a birthright. His birthright, granted. But still part of Mallibee.’
‘Oh no!’
‘You wouldn’t do a thing like that, now would you Jeckie?’ He was suddenly looking at her closely.
‘Of course not. Wait a minute, Barton. You wouldn’t be wishing my mother dead, and me in the position of deciding about her share in Mallibee? If so —’