Cane Music

by Joyce Dingwell

“Not even Kings Cross to tell Umberto to stick to his ravioli because you can top him on the cane by one hundred?”

  “We have a good memory, haven’t we? We also have our lancets out.”

  “I’m a nurse, not a doctor,” she pointed out.

  “Sister,” he reminded her. He paused. “Why didn’t you try the child on that, Sister?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing ... nothing at all.” He borrowed her previous reply. “Except it seems a shame to demote yourself even when it’s only demotion in front of a minor.”

  “Sister doesn’t come easily,” Roslyn said weakly, and, feeling a guilty warmth in her cheeks, she turned away.

  “No,” he agreed smoothly, “not as easy as Nurse.”

  “Ness,” acclaimed Belinda, and she came and put her little hand in Roslyn’s.

  “On that note we’ll leave.” The man took up the bags and went down the path to the car. They all waved out to Mrs. Maddison, and within minutes they had left the meandering river behind them, and joined the road that would lead eventually to latitude twenty ... or less.

  Roslyn had supposed they would take the smooth Olympic Highway if the driver did not wish to travel the busier Sydney-bound Hume, but almost at once they began veering west as well as north, shooting off into gravelled sidetracks that were bare even of minor traffic since they mostly catered only for peppercorn towns. That was Roslyn’s tag, peppercorn towns, for unlike the large country centres with their gardens and parks, these small one-street settlements never offered more than a row of peppercorn trees.

  “A sturdy old standby,” he nodded as she said this, “but you’ll lose the peppers as you get up top and find palms and jacarandas instead.” He glanced at Belinda. “The baby seems to be taking the bumps in her stride. Good for her digestion.”

  “She doesn’t have a problem.”

  He snatched a quick glance from the road, the same as he had earlier today, so brief a glance she could have imagined it. “How would you know?” he demanded.

  “Children of three don’t, unless they have digestive troubles, and I think Mrs. Maddison would have told me.”

  “The kid’s head is nodding. I think we’ll pull up for a spell.”

  “I’m sure she’ll sleep regardless.”

  “Perhaps, but I like a break myself.” He drew the car into a truck bay, emptied the back seat, then took Belinda from Roslyn’s arms and laid her prone lengthwise, her head on a cushion. He went to the boot and withdrew a picnic hamper. “Do the honours,” he said.

  A little nettled at having Belinda’s care taken away from her, Roslyn snapped back the hamper catch and took out flask and cups.

  “Black to keep me awake,” he advised.

  “I can drive if you get sleepy.”

  “I’ll take you up on that.” He shook his head at her offer of sugar.

  “I thought cane people would take sugar,” Roslyn said idly.

  “We do, but the real stuff, not this oh-so-refined white. Our raw sugar is an experience just by itself, or on bread if you wish. You know at once you’re eating paradise, for by heaven, it tastes it.”

  “All the same I won’t encourage Belinda, her teeth are perfect and I want them to remain that way.”

  “Raw sugar will give her courage, not cavities, but I must commend you on the thorough way you’re going about things—you only encounter the child this morning and can already pronounce judgement on her teeth.”

  “That’s expected of a nurse,” Roslyn said a little uneasily. Heavens, how she would have to watch herself with this man!

  “But more expected of a dental nurse,” he yawned, “not a certified Sister. You are certificated, I suppose?”

  “Certainly. How otherwise would Chr—would Doctor Willings have recommended me?”

  “Doctor Willings is in love with you,” he came back, “you’re not just a veil and a cape to him, even though I spoke to the contrary. Love makes you do some damn silly things.”

  “You sound experienced.” Roslyn said it with barely concealed dislike; how could this man have read anything in Chris’s attitude to her? Chris had been most careful.

  She waited for his sharp answer—he seemed to have a never-ending supply of sharp answers—but none came, and she saw he had gone to sleep.

  She looked out on the country around them, flat as far as the eye could see. It was sunny and very dry, but there must have been some rain recently, for the fields had a clear shining about them that only comes to the west after a good soak. There were no cars at all, these little offshoots were only used by locals going into town on market day, or perhaps to a cinema on Saturday, never for travellers flitting north as they themselves were. She watched the flight of a far-up eagle, she listened to the trill of a tollawong, then reluctantly, yet somehow drawn to it, she turned her glance to the sleeping man. In repose his face was not hard any more, but it was still firm and very certain of itself. It was also ... and for a moment Roslyn caught her breath in wonder ... somehow familiar. How could it be familiar? She knew no one in Queensland and she had never seen this person before.

  Almost at once he woke up; she barely had time to pull her glance away.

  “A giant refreshed,” he appreciated. “If you strap Belinda down in the baby seat we’ll get going again.”

  “I’ll nurse her as I did before,” Roslyn preferred.

  “I said strap her down,” he repeated. “The corrugations may get worse, so please do as you’re told.”

  Seeing his sense, but not appreciating the way he drove it home, Roslyn complied. “How far do you intend going?” she asked, settling back in her own seat.

  “Two fingers from sunset. That will give us time to find a hotel or motel, whatever offers out here, have our dinner, then go to bed early ready for another long trip tomorrow.”

  She nodded. Suddenly she was wondering about that “hotel or motel, whatever offers”, for travelling far west as they were, they could not expect the same variety of accommodation as along the Olympic or Hume Highways.

  A little uneasily she glanced round at Belinda. Moving the child had roused her, and she was regarding the passing scene from her high throne with obvious enjoyment.

  Wheatlands crept in, then petered out. Sheep began. When they veered more north than west again, they saw cattle. Precisely at five in the afternoon the car was stopped and the driver measured the sun by his two fingers held horizontally. “Used you do that?” he asked.

  “Yes,” nodded Roslyn. “Is it time to call it a day?” She hoped he did not hear a hollow note in her voice. “Hotel or motel, whatever offers,” he had said.

  “We’ll stop at the first available hostelry in case it’s the last for a long time. Baby all right?”

  Belinda, nose squashed to the window now, called: “Bird, Ness!”

  “Nurse, my sweet,” he told her, “n-ur-se.”

  “Ness,” said Belinda.

  “We’ll have to have some lessons on that.”

  “She’s only—”

  “Three. You’ve told me so. But the earlier the better. Ah, here’s civilization now.”

  Civilization proved another one street, peppercorn-lined town. It boasted a post office, a general store, a stock agent’s and the inevitable country hotel of two floors and encircling wide, iron-laced verandah, in shape very like the brim of a schoolgirl’s hat.

  “The Grand awaits us,” grinned the driver, “or is it the Royal?” He drew up, went inside the inn, then came back and nodded. “Plenty of space, Sister. A large room with a bed and a cot for you and Belinda, a single room for me. O.K.?” He laughed as he asked it, and she felt challenged to inquire why.

  “Your face. There was no need for that ‘O.K.?’ The utter relief you showed.”

  “I’m sure I didn’t.”

  “I’m sure you did. But this might wipe some of the confidence off—my single room is next door.”

  “I wouldn’t care where it was. Will you take the bags?”
/>   “I’ll take the bags and the baby—yes, I insist, you must be tired, it’s been a long hop.”

  “I can manage Belinda,” she insisted.

  “Nevertheless I shall take her.”

  “It will look ridiculous, it will look like—like a family arriving.”

  “Ordering two rooms!”

  “Please give her to me.”

  “If you keep nagging I’ll carry you in as well. I could, you know.”

  “Oh, I know, you can cut twelve tons of cane a day.”

  “And carry two females plus bags. This way, Sister Young.”

  When they reached the lobby, the hotelier’s wife came sympathetically forward to Roslyn. “A dusty trip, dear, hubby has just been telling me, and telling me, too, how tired baby is, and how it will be better for the two of you, you and baby, to have the front double to yourselves.” She busied herself up the, stairs, looking back now and then to see if they were following.

  “You fool!” whispered Roslyn. “Couldn’t you have just said two rooms and left it at that?”

  “Out here in the west? Don’t be naive. Short of telling the whole boring story it had to be as I said. I wasn’t inclined for tales, not at the end of a long day, but I’m too considerate to put off kind people with no explanation at all. So now please shut up.”

  “Here you are, dear,” called the hostess. “Bath along the corridor, “hubby’s room next door. Dinner’s in an hour. Will broth and then a little of what goes for you be all right for the wee girl?”

  “Yes,” said Roslyn. “Thank you.” She waited till the woman turned the corner of the stairs, then grabbed Belinda and the bags from the man’s arms, stepped into the room and closed the door on him. She was pleased to see there was a lock and key, and she promptly turned the key ... a foolish thing to do, as he told her at once as he entered by a door leading from his single room on the right of the large double.

  “It’s a suite,” he shrugged. “Now,” he went on, “you really have set a scene, Sister.” He crossed to the bed and selected his own overnight bag from the several carryalls. “I can hear the gossip in the kitchen already. Such a pretty young thing to have a baby of that age. All this about being tired ... Oh, well, when you’re young spats are sweet.”

  “Please leave,” said Roslyn frozenly.

  “Well, you started it, you little fool, you must have known I’d need my bag.”

  “I didn’t think.”

  “No, you didn’t. Start thinking tomorrow if you don’t like what comes of not thinking. For myself, I couldn’t care less. But out here in the mulga, with no television and only the real thing to watch, only life, you can’t expect them not to be interested. I’ll go and brush up now. Don’t forget, dinner in an hour.”

  “I don’t want dinner!”

  “I want dinner,” said Belinda, the first complete sentence she had deigned to say today.

  “Royal command,” the man grinned. “Queen Baby does the ordering.”

  “Dinner,” repeated Belinda, pleased with his attention. Then, probably sensing his co-operation if not Roslyn’s, she looked across at the big male stranger who had suddenly come into her little world, and awarded:

  “Nice man. Blinda likes.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The following evening Belinda could have found cause not to ‘like’. Belinda was spanked. Never in her life had a finger been held up at Belinda in admonishment; certainly never had the palm of a hand been applied to her small pink pants. Roslyn had stood disbelieving, and when the disbelief had stopped petrifying her, she had stepped forward only to be halted by a warning: “So you want some, too. I would, you know, young Young, so wipe that furious look off your face if you know what’s good for you.”

  “The child—” began Roslyn.

  The child had been put back on her feet again and was looking with respect but no enmity at the punisher. “Look, Belinda,” the punisher said, indicating the thing that had caused the spanking, “bad ... dirty ... never again, or—” He had clapped his hands in punitive reminder.

  It had taken place at the end of the second day. They had made good time and by noon had been only some fifty miles from Queensland. But instead of pushing on over the border by the western point, the car turned east.

  “You said you’d never been to Queensland?” the driver asked Roslyn.

  “No.”

  “Then you’re going to see its most beautiful corner.”

  “I should have thought that would have been cane to you.”

  “It is, but I’m not so one-eyed that I can’t give this little pocket an easy first when it comes to stunning loveliness, as you’ll very soon see for yourself.”

  The hotel had packed a hamper, and it was sitting under a tree and feeding Belinda that Roslyn first noticed that the tree was not the inevitable peppercorn, and that eastward rose a pansy-blue range of tall fluted hills.

  “Queensland’s Gold Coast’s famous hinterland,” said the man, “a handful of mountains, glens, cascades, waterfalls and sheer breathtaking beauty left over from a million years ago. Yes, that’s right. There are palms in those jungles that go back to the world’s beginnings. We’ll bed down in one of the lodges for the night for you --and for the baby—to drink it all in. Another advantage” ... drily ... “these lodges are cottage type and usually include a couple of rooms. No need for any fabrications.”

  Aware of reddened cheeks, Roslyn said: “I hardly think Belinda is up to drinking in beauty.”

  “Drink,” picked up Belinda, tucking into her bottle of milk.

  Roslyn herself could have quaffed potent wine, not tea, at that picnic lunch, for the afternoon that followed was heady from almost unbelievable magnificence. They passed wild lime groves, immense stands of cedar and mahogany, waterfalls that arced out at you in silver javelins, cascades that sang to you in millions of silver bells. Occasionally there were breaks in the intense forests when far to the east the exuberant blue of the Pacific Ocean showed raggedly through tatters of deep green leaves.

  “Nice,” said Belinda, surprising them for a just-three, and she clapped her hands at a tree full of coloured parrots.

  “I told you she’d drink it in,” nodded the driver.

  They found a mountain lodge, set out in the usual charming alpine fashion of dining room in the centre, chalets set casually around for the sleeping guests. The small units proved woodsy brown in colour, attractively raftered and generally very pleasant, awarded Roslyn, drawing Belinda’s bed closer to hers ... and noting with approval the third bed in the next room.

  She decided to put Belinda down for an hour before dinner, and went to the chalet door to collect her ... she had heard her playing around ... then she stopped. Belinda was certainly there. On the little step. But in Belinda’s lap was a snake.

  Roslyn had the sense to withdraw again, and not to call out until she reached the man now taking his things out of his bag and putting them on the third bed.

  “Belinda!” she cried harshly.

  “What about her? My God, girl, what is it?” She felt his big hands tight on her shoulders and the firm hold did her good.

  “Look—” she jerked.

  He went across, and she noted that he went quietly and she abstractedly commended him for it. He was back at once.

  “Warm milk?” she asked. “I’ve read that a snake will smell warm milk and come for it.”

  “Forget it, we haven’t that much time.”

  “Then—?”

  “Only time for this.” He went to the door again, and though she came close behind him it was all over before she could see properly what he did. All she heard was a sharp crack as he broke the thing’s back with a swift trick flick of his arm. One moment she saw the grey reptile held aloft, then the next moment the snake was being forced over by a wrist that must be iron hard by the exploding noise of the punitive crack. It died at once.

  Turning round, not wasting a moment, the man took Belinda and pointed to the reptile. Then he
sat down on the little step and spanked. After the spanking he said his “... bad ... dirty ... never again or—” piece.

  He added succinctly: “That goes for you, too, Young.”

  Roslyn felt sick. She knew she should have gone and comforted her charge, but her charge was obviously not needing comfort, she was inserting small flowers in the eyelets of the man’s boots. He let her do it until she grew tired of it and went inside for fresh diversion, then he removed the dead snake.

  “I’ll take a shower,” he called to Roslyn, “to get the feel of it away, and then we’ll go in for dinner.”

  “I don’t want—”

  “Oh, good lord, not that again. You’re having it, want it or not. For heaven’s sake don’t mark something as important when I’m doing my damnedest to mark it unimportant.”

  “By spanking her!”

  “Has she cried? Have you examined her for one mark?”

  “She’s never been punished like that.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Mrs. Maddison wouldn’t, I’m sure of it. Besides, children aren’t these days.”

  “No, very obviously you weren’t,” he snapped.

  “No thanks to you. You came pretty close to it yourself.”

  “Miss Young” ... he had crossed to her ... “I’m not all that far away from doing it now. Tidy the child, tidy yourself. Then we’ll go in for our meal.”

  Vexedly, Roslyn obeyed. It did not help her that he was right about Belinda. The baby had no tears, and, undressing her for a cool sponge, not even a pink glow. But she did have a wiser attitude to snakes.

  “Bad, dirty,” she repeated several times. “Blinda not like.” She inquired: “Ness like?”

  “No, Belinda.” Roslyn buttoned her up again.

  Roslyn did not want to bring his wrath down on her again by not eating her meal, which was excellent, but every mouthful choked her. At last the man said to Belinda: “There are some children over there, go and talk to them,” and Belinda went across. Then he turned his attention to Roslyn. “You’re eating chicken, not underbelly of—”

  “Please!” She pushed the plate she had been playing with right away.