The man waited for her. At last Jane turned and said, `Thank you, I'll come now.'
He nodded and they returned to the taxi. They did not drive to Kingsford Smith where Jane had boarded a Jumbo back to England but to Bankstown where the private craft put down.
Waiting in a corner of the field was a light plane that William Bower claimed as his, a neat but capacious Cessna, custom-built, he told her. 'Made for my special needs, Miss Sidney. Climb in.'
Jane obeyed. They took off smoothly, circled the field, then set off in what he called out was a south-south-west direction. 'We don't cross the Divide,' he went on, 'only land on it when we reach Plateau on the plateau.'
They were passing over countryside now, their craft travelling in shadow on the green-gold fields beneath. Bush followed, olive-green terrain, but lit up here and there by warm yellow that the man beside her told Jane was wattle. To the right, he indicated the mountains of the Great Dividing Range, jutting pinnacles straining upwards, yet evidently not so lofty as many mountains rate, for every peak wore a crown of trees. Fascinated, Jane looked down, traced streams beneath that ended in silvery ribbons of waterfalls, traced clearings where some hardy soul had carved out a farm. Then, without any warning, a wide pasture, a golden summit that spread out lushly on four sides but was stopped by cliff edges on each of the sides, looked back at her, an oasis of neat paddocks, of perfectly symmetrical buildings imposed on the paddocks, everything as clear-cut and disciplined as in a child's farmyard set. `Urara Plateau,' the pilot called. Then he added with pride : 'Bowers.'
No wonder he was proud, Jane thought unwillingly but honestly as she got down on a field as neatly clipped as a suburban lawn. No old thistle here, tousled bramble, sloe, just immaculately shaven grass.
A jeep was coming out for them; on its side was in-
scribed 'Bowers', then a bower-bird, rather the shape of a Bird of Paradise, Jane thought, imposed.
'Is he like that?' she asked of the sign.
'Yes, he's a relative of the Paradise chap. You'll see him Hi there, Jake.' The jeep had pulled up. 'This is Jake, Miss Sidney.'
Jane smiled and the man grinned back. The bags were stowed and the jeep started the run to the model buildings she had looked down on from the Cessna.
Often, Jane thought a little spitefully, things look better from a distance, so perhaps the stud ...
No, it was perfect, quite perfect, Rusty should have seen it. She said it aloud.
`I'd have liked the old man to have come out, but he had different ideas.' A small pause. 'What was Little Down like?'
'Beautiful, but not in this way. We were small.' She saw him noticing that 'we' and tightening his lips.
... a slight emphasis ... 'am large, as you will soon see. The quarters, please, Jake. Miss Sidney will want to settle in, she can tour later.' The jeep came to a halt in front of a large red-brick building. 'It's laid out in motel style,' William Bower informed her, 'and is serviced, Miss Sidney, so don't waste any time on domestic chores. You'll find the women's quarters are to the right, the men's to the left. Separated,' the man added, 'by the canteen, an all-hours canteen, so no need to knock off to get in for a meal for fear it will go off. Jake will carry up your bags.'
Jake did carry them, and Jane followed Jake. She did not turn round to see what William Bower was doing, she knew he would still be sitting in the jeep watching her. But at the door curiosity overcame resolution, and she did turn to look.
The man looked back.
The motel, for it could have been that in layout, was two-storeyed. 'Twenty mod bedrooms,' Jake, carrying the bags and leading the way, told Jane, 'all singles, all with
built-ins, television, own bath recesses.
`Then there's two big rec rooms and two laundries, though the room linen, of course, is done for Bower's boys.'
`And girls?' Jane had been wondering if there would be female strappers as well as herself.
`Girls, too, even the married couples, though they're not in the motel but in flats across the way. If you don't feel like going down for a cuppa, Miss Sidney, there's always provision in your room.' They had reached the room by now, a generous sixteen by sixteen with all that Jake had boasted, as well as a snack corner providing milk, sugar, tea, a packet of biscuits, a few tinned easy meals.
doesn't appear to have forgotten anything,' said
Jane.
`Not him,' admired Jake.
`Where will I find the work roster?'
`Reckon you'll be written down on it?' Jake doubted. `I'd rather gathered you weren't exactly the usual stablehand.'
`I'm in Mr. Bower's employ,' said Jane factually. What had the Baron said to her? 'That fifth say is more bonus than status ... it becomes because of your employment, not with it.' Then: 'Employment and not a directive capacity.'
`Reckon I'll be down.' Jane adopted Jake's manner of speech. They grinned at each other.
When he had gone she looked around her. The room was very tasteful, she found. Instead of the mannish tans she rather expected in a strapper's quarters, male or female, everything leaned to a soft woodsy green. It made for a more feminine touch as well as suited the pleateau setting.
She went to the window and looked out. The view was magnificent. No mountains, for they were on the mountains, but rolling pasture as far as the eye could see, and that, Jane knew from her Cessna lookout, was where the cliffs, four sides of them, dipped down to four surrounding valleys.
She noted the immaculate lawn verges between each row
of buildings, a garden with tended plots and a shrubbery. Further to the right was a large single-storeyed house enclosed from the rest of the estate. His house, she thought. A rotary clothes line was idling round in the warm breeze. She saw some smallish jeans hanging from it, two pairs of them, two pullovers. Children's. So the Baron was a family man. She wondered, idly like that idle wind, about his wife.
Though she was tempted to brew some tea in the privacy of her own room, she knew that this was never a way to settle in. She brushed her hair, rubbed in a suggestion of lipstick, all the make-up she had needed in the crisp air of Surrey, then went down to the canteen. A cook in full equipment greeted her genially and asked her to name it.
`Just a cuppa,' she said, laughing. 'I know I could have fixed it myself, but I thought I'd look around.'
Harry ... that was his name, he said ... was anxious to show her around his quarters. He was proud of his freezer room, wall ovens, dishwashing machine.
`We run the meals on the hatch system,' he said, 'since although Mr. Bower has run to everything else, he hasn't run to waitresses. It's better, anyway, for folk to see what they're getting.' As he talked, Harry made a large pot of tea and joined her at one of the tables. He put down a plate of raisin scones.
`You think this kitchen's good, you should see the other,' he told Jane.
The other ... oh, you mean the Baron's? I mean Mr. Bower's?'
`No, Boss mostly eats with us.'
`But there's children.' Perhaps they were his house-keeper's family, Jane thought.
`Yes. Their mother's away for a spell. But he likes them to eat over there. Better for kids, you know.'
Jane did not know, she believed children should eat en famille, she believed family men should remain with their family. But before she could continue on the subject, Harry continued on the 'other' kitchen he had mentioned.
`Strictly secret, not the kitchen itself but what they make there, though I can tell you some of the ingredients I sent over.' Harry tabulated them. 'Powdered milk, glucose, rolled oats—'
`You mean for the horses?'
`That's the reason this place functions,' Harry smiled. `All this' ... he waved his arm around ... 'is just to keep folk happy doing the function. More tea?'
Jane said it had been a large cup, took it to the machine, thanked Harry and went back to her room.
As soon as the girls came in, she would introduce herself—they probably would be younger than she was; most girl
strappers started in their teens and were married before they became seniors. She had been a little older than that herself when she had thought in such a way and maturity should have assured such a conclusion, but ... a shrug ... it hadn't come out as she had dreamed.
She went to the window again; the small clothes were off the line now. She was about to leave to place round some of her things when she glimpsed a figure rotating madly from the wire of the clothes-line, the idle wind being helped vigorously by a junior operator whirling it from the ground. Only two small people wearing identical basin crops that she knew of would do that, Jane thought eagerly, it was precisely the outrageous prank that a certain pair would embark on.
She leaned out, called, 'Robert ... Roberta!' but they did not hear her. She saw them leave the line, climb over their enclosing fence to the stud side, then disappear, undoubtedly on more mischief, for they were an incorrigible
indirigible, they had said on the ship ... pair.
On the ship. He, the Baron, had been on the ship. So he was Father William, the voice they had obeyed so promptly. He was the parent of Robert and Roberta, yet she had never thought of placing them together. She doubted, though, if it would make things any easier for her—that man would be a disciplinarian with his staff as well as his
children—but she had taken to the imps, and hurrying to the door she ran down the steps to catch up with them, wherever they had gone, enjoy a reunion.
It was on the last step down that Jane heard the shrill scream. She looked around her, trying to trace the source of the scream—a child's scream, and not, Jane judged, even keeping in mind the naughty traits of the impish duo a cry-wolf scream. Whichever of the twins had cried out had really meant the alarm. Meant it urgently.
'Robert, Roberta!' she called, hoping that the scream would come again, since not yet knowing the layout of the place she had no idea which way to turn. Though surely, she thought frantically, someone else in this vast settlement, this—well, this small town you could almost say, had heard. She looked back to the quarters. No one in sight. Perhaps Harry in the kitchen ... But there was no time to check. She remembered from Little Down how completely far away a person can be at even a hundred yards. Once one of the fillies had fallen and But not to waste time on thoughts now, she had to find the source of that one urgent cry, and at once.
Jane ran forward, looking left and right as she hurried, hoping desperately for someone, anyone. A strapper returning, a hand sweeping out a stable, a gardener, a handy man, anyone who could direct her to the possible source of a child's scream Help her.
There was no one at all.
'Robert ... Roberta!' she shouted again. Surely they would reply, even if it was another scream. She listened for the scream, she waited for it. Prayed for it.
Now she was running between what seemed unending small buildings, machine rooms, fodder rooms, all the usual offices associated with a stud. Then there was a row of neat bungalows, the married quarters probably, she thought vaguely, surely someone, a wife, a resting hand, should be around
No one.
Jane could not have said afterwards how long she would have run, to the end of the plateau, perhaps, even to a cliff edge to peer desperately (and stupidly, since the cry could not have penetrated from that far) over, had she not glimpsed, between the tight buildings, a sparkling patch of blue.
She ran some yards before the fact of that blue hit her. Blue ! In a world of unrolling green ! Blue in that circumstance must mean water, pool water. There was a pool, and the children had gone to it. That scream had been when one of them had fallen in. But there had been no scream after it. Could it mean that the other one had gone to help, and had—
She did not know how well the children swam, for that matter she did not know whether they swam at all. They had looked jealously down on the Tourist pool on the Southern Princess, but that had been because there had been fun going on, not because they envied the swimming it offered them, for had they wanted to swim they could have done it in their own quite superior First-Class pool.
Jane had retraced her steps to the patch between the buildings where she had glimpsed the blue now. It was still there, so it hadn't been a trick of her imagination, she had not been seeing the sky in reverse, and, turning her direction, she raced towards the shining rectangle, wondering fearfully why she could glimpse no sign of life there.
Then as she got nearer she saw that it was not the usual pool, but a pool that had been built exclusively for horses. For a moment Jane knew a fierce anger that the man could have seen to a pool for his horses before he had seen to his children. And he had said of her 'pony high priestess !' She saw that the reason nothing or nobody had been in sight was that the pool, because of its purpose, was much deeper than usual, that its walls were twice the rise, that the eventual capacity of the pool twice the expected amount, but that just now it was only semi-filled.
Because of this, the walls, the depth, the water amount, all making for concealment, Jane had to run right up to the
edge before she could check.
Yes, there they were. One face downward, the other trying to manipulate Roberta ... or was it Roberta trying to manipulate Robert? ... to an upward position again. The first twin must have entered from the shallow end, the ramp end, but like pools for people, horse pools evidently deepened as well, what was worse unmistakably deepened much more abruptly. Even though the pool was not yet filled, at the end where they struggled it was far too deep for a child.
It was too deep for these two. Even as Jane sized up the position, Roberta ... or Robert ... lost grasp of the other child, then went under as well.
CHAPTER THREE
AFTERWARDS Jane could not remember jumping in, she could not have said whether she ran to the ramp and waded out, or whether she leapt directly into the deeper end from the other side of the pool. All she remembered being aware of in retrospect was the sudden contact of water, then the feel of Robert's basin crop ... for it was Robert face downward and Roberta who had screamed ... as she turned the boy over. She did not remember pushing Roberta to the shallows, and, still holding tightly on to Robert, giving the girl a hearty breath-encouraging slap between her shoulders.
Then she had turned to the boy twin. She had wasted no time. Perhaps he had been under only briefly ... that, anyway, was her desperate hope ... perhaps Roberta's scream had resounded not on her brother's contact with the water but on his subsequent turning over into the water, but she still wasn't taking any chances. Bending across the child, she had begun breathing evenly into his mouth.
Vaguely she had heard Roberta sobbing beside her ... thank heaven it had been the girl on the pool side and not in the water, for though boys act quicker, are more resourceful, a female screams, and without that alerting and summoning scream
She had heard, still vaguely, Roberta's sobs turning to sniffly noises of apparent relief, heard her say : 'Father William, it's R-Robert.'
She had felt herself pushed aside, then, still knee-deep in the pool, she had watched William Bower cover Robert's entire face, not just his mouth but nose too, with his own large one. She had heard his deep breaths.
Within a minute, Robert said: 'Am I alive?'
`You don't deserve to be.'
`Why are you giving me the kiss of life?'
`There's many more things I'd sooner give you, young man!'
`Really—' Jane could not stand it any longer; this was no way to talk to a child who had just cheated death.
William Bower read the reason for her indignation. 'He was a long way off snuffing it,' he announced brutally. 'In fact he could have recovered quite nicely under your own much gentler administering.'
`I could, too,' regretted Robert, 'only I felt too tired, so I just stopped there. If I'd known you were taking over, Father William, I would have got better, though. Jane doesn't have bristly hairs on her lips like you.'
`I should hope not, it's not a female ambition. Can you get up now?'
`Yes.' Robert
rose a little unsteadily, but he made it to the edge. 'I was leaning over and I fell in.' He must have decided an explanation was called for.
A quick look at William Bower's face told Jane that this was not enough, and, though he had the sense not to question the boy in his soaked state, he did slip in a warning.
`Run back now and get Teresa to put you into a hot bath.' A pause. 'I'll have more to say later.'
`Was that necessary?' Jane asked as the twins ran off. `The hot bath?'
`You know what I mean.'
`You mean the reckoning. Yes, it is necessary.'
`But you could have waited till the shock wore off.'
`Never wait, drive the lesson home as soon as the thing happens. Shall I do that now with you?' He had narrowed his eyes on her.
`I have no lesson coming,' she retorted.
He considered this. 'No, you acted pretty slickly, Miss Sidney. My thanks for your resourcefulness.'
`Can I have any post-mortems afterwards,' she inserted
shortly, 'the same as Robert? I'm wet and uncomfortable.'
`Run in at once. Soak. Shoot out your clothes to be
laundered. Then
'Then?'
'Come to my office for a recuperative brandy.'
'Tea will do.'
'Have what you like,' he shrugged. `I'll be having brandy.'
'But still in the office?'
said so.'
'Where,' she asked, 'is the office?'
'In my house.'
'Where the children are?'
'Yes. Unfortunately.'
`Un ' Jane did not finish, she felt too disgusted.
She went back to her quarters, grateful that everyone still seemed out and that she did not have to explain her bedraggled appearance. She did not soak, but she did shower vigorously. When eventually she emerged, dressed, then crossed over to the house within the enclosure, she was rosy and scrubbed, her short hair had curls with damp-hanging ends.
The Mutual Look Page 4