by Amanda Doyle
‘How often does the mail-plane come?’ she asked presently, taking a piece of damper, now a good bit harder than it had been last night, and spreading it with tinned butter and home-made marmalade.
‘It don’t really call ’ere at all, as a rule. We’re the end of the line, see. We connect twice a week with the rail junction, so we don’t need a plane. It’s only for the folks outback.’
Outback! Lindsay tried not to look at the desolate landscape, concentrated instead on the red and white checks of the shabby gingham tablecloth.
‘You mean, it’s calling specially for me?’
Mrs. Meehan shrugged.
‘Reckon it is. They must ’ave arst ’im to, out at Gundooee, because they couldn’t get in for you themselves. Better be ready, eh? ’E don’t do it for everybody, but Gundooee’s different.’
Lindsay longed to ask in what way Gundooee differed, but she could not bring herself to the point of speech on that particular topic. She was inquisitive, but now too fearful of what the answer might reveal to ever put the question. She could not make up her mind between those two contradictory proverbs—‘Ignorance is bliss’ or ‘Better the Devil you know than the one you don’t’—and in the final event, cowardice prevailed. She settled for ignorance!
Harry Meehan took her case out for her and left her there to await the plane. She stood beneath the shade trees, in a world that was hot and bright and suddenly very lonely now that even Harry had deserted her. Perspiration oozed from her pores, even in the shadow. The birds rustled and cawed above her head, cocking their heads at her cheekily. They were hard blobs of jet against a sky that was blatantly blue and cloudless.
By the time the little silver plane came droning out of the blueness, the heat waves had set the whole landscape swimming with movement, and Lindsay was sagging against the mottled tree-trunk, wondering how she could bear to walk out into the direct rays of that relentless sun.
She was helped aboard, and they were off. The pilot, having bestowed upon her a surprised first glance and a laconic greeting, was obviously longing to be airborne again, and Lindsay, with a disembodied feeling of fatalism, was also anxious to be gone. Even though she had never flown before, it was something, at least, to be leaving Emmadanda!
The little plane rocked and bucked, plummeting every now and then with a suddenness that brought Lindsay’s heart into her mouth. The pilot seemed to sense her tautness. He turned and grinned reassuringly.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Air-pockets. The heat’s the trouble, flying this low. It’s hardly worth getting above them when we’ve only eighty to go. Not too uncomfortable, are you?’
‘No, no.’ She smiled, but it was a pretty sickly effort, she knew.
‘First time up?’ He sounded kind.
Lindsay nodded.
‘I see.’ He pointed a thumb downwards. ‘How’s that for a panorama, then? A real bird’s-eye view, eh!’
She peeped down, glad to take her mind off the bucking aircraft.
‘What are those marks? They look like—sort of—pools.’
‘Clay-pans,’ he told her, ‘not pools. We’re still on the rim of the artesian basin here. The water’s underneath, and you have to go down to get it. That’s why you see so many bores. They tap the water down below and pump it up into the tanks with windmills—or engines, if there’s no wind. There’s one down there, you see. The bore drains take the flow—you can see the pattern they make, fanning out from the bore. Without these man-made watering places, the stock would die out in these parts. The finding of artesian water has been a key to development out here.’
‘They look awfully thin—the sheep, I mean—coming out on the train,’ Lindsay offered diffidently.
‘Ah well, they would be. They’ve had a bad go back there at Emma. Didn’t get the rains that they got up this end. It’s a nasty feeling, watching the storms skirting the horizon and giving you a miss, when you know other places, quite near, are getting a decent fall.’
Lindsay pondered over what he had told her. She was appalled at her own ignorance, at the cruelty, the irrevocability, the challenge, of the sort of country that she was seeing. She had never dreamed such tracts as this existed. It wasn’t a bit like the ‘bush’ of her childhood dreams! This was a harsh reality that made her want to cry, because in its own way it was a moving experience just to see the enormity of it from above, like this. It was also humbling and frightening, because she didn’t understand it. There was not another bore for ages. Now that she knew what they were, she realised why, in the advertisement, the sheep and cattle on Gundooee had numbered thousands, and the sub-bores less than the fingers of her two hands.
Away to the west, she could see what she thought were hills—or was it all a mirage? There were plenty of those around, because of the wavering heat reflections, and they created weird and incredibly realistic images of water-filled lakes and shimmering seas.
No, this time they really were hills, the pilot told her. They were rough hulks of red and buff, thrown crudely upwards millions of years ago, when beyond the sandhills on the other side had been a great inland sea. Now there were only dried-up salt lakes for most of the year, and fossilised remains that told of the prehistoric animal and fish life that had once inhabited the central vastness of the Australian continent before the gigantic upheaval which had altered its entire geological and physical nature.
The awesome, rearing shapes remained distant, and the next time Lindsay blinked, they had disappeared altogether, and the plain was back. The shimmer of saltbush and blue-bush, mulga and gibber, ever-changing in its effects, was behind them now, and below was a seemingly kinder landscape, grassed with coarse herbage, dotted with sturdier specimens of trees—ironbark, box and bloodwood.
The little plane banked low, circled over what looked like a small village, and descended gently towards an airstrip on the fringe. As they touched down, lifted, touched again, and ran smoothly along between the markers, Lindsay was aware of small knots of waiting people, and a variety of vehicles. There were jeeps, Blitzes, shabby utilities, all parked haphazardly around. Her heart fluttered nervously. A reception committee? Oh—no!
‘Mail-day,’ grinned the pilot. ‘There’s my mates, all waiting for me as usual. The most popular cove this side of the Alice, that’s me!’
Lindsay expelled her pent-up breath. Of course, that was it! They were waiting for the mail-plane, not for Lindsay herself. How stupid of her!
No doubt the arrival of mail-day must be quite an occasion out here—such an occasion, indeed, that it might even be possible for Lindsay Hallingham Dutten, newly engaged book-keeper at Gundooee Station, to slip into her new role almost incognito, without anyone even noticing that the ‘him, was after all a ‘her’. There were enough folk around, goodness knows! It should not be hard to become one of the crowd, to identify with the knots of expectant people lining the strip with eyes only for their mail and supplies. Afterwards, when they dispersed, she would seek out Mr. Manning, and announce herself with the minimum of fuss.
Afterwards, Lindsay was to ask herself despairingly many time, how could she have known? Who would have thought that all those people—yes, every last one of them, with their Blitzes and jeeps and old tin trucks—belonged to Gundooee Station itself—that the whole village that she had spied from the air and upon which she and the pilot had swooped in the little silver plane was Gundooee homestead, and not a town at all.
How could she have guessed that all had come to meet the mail-plane, from their outcamps and boundary-riders’ huts and well-sinkers’ sites and from the village that was Gundooee homestead itself—all had come to collect their mail and supplies, and all appeared to know that a book-keeper was expected along with the mail!
As Lindsay stepped out, she was first of all aware of the intense glare of light. She had to screw up her eyes to ward off the reflection of the sun on the galvanised roof of the hangar directly behind the waiting groups.
The next thing that struck her, quite forci
bly, was that, apart from three lubras standing there flaunting gaudy cotton dresses, there wasn’t a single other woman on that airstrip except Lindsay herself! They were all men, every one of them, save for Lindsay and the lubras. And what a collection they seemed to her astonished eyes!
They were as varied as a bag of liquorice allsorts.
A couple of young men, mid-twentyish, were scantily clad in khaki shorts, their bare brown chests glistening with sweat and rippling muscle. The older ones appeared to favour khaki trousers and yellowing singlets, while the dark-skinned members—the Aborigines—wore faded shirts of indeterminate colour, braces, and wide, sagging trousers, felted with grease, dust, and perspiration from themselves and their horses. The trousers, indeed, might well have stood up alone, without the aid of those tired braces! thought Lindsay fastidiously to herself.
The hats were much the same all round the group. They were wide-brimmed felts, depending for individuality upon the angle at which they were worn and the amount of battering they had suffered.
So were the boots alike. Pair after pair, all the same. Tanned leather stock boots, with elastic sides and defined heels, covered with fine yellow dust. All the same.
And so were the eyes, in one respect, at least They all carried a certain gleam, apart from unconcealed astonishment, that was indefinable to Lindsay, but which made her feel every bit as uncomfortable as did the sudden, complete silence which ensued the moment she stepped down into their midst.
Only one man’s eyes did not hold that peculiar gleam. Lindsay, registering the fact, found her own drawn back irresistibly to his. They were a clear, steady grey, this man’s eyes, well-set beneath beetling brows in a lean, tanned face that was saved from narrowness by the width and strength of its clean-cut jaw. A rocklike physique, too, that went with the jaw. A six-footer, at least, with powerful shoulders and narrow hips, long agile limbs.
Lindsay, peeping shyly, saw now that there were several other things that were different about this particular man, things she had not noticed at first. Not only were his eyes narrowed upon her without any significant expression at all, when all those other eyes carried that discomfiting gleam, but she was aware that his clothes, too, were subtly different in a minor sort of way—narrow-legged moleskins, a many-pocketed bush shirt, a kangaroo-hide belt at the hips. His hat was just like the rest, but he was alone in raising it.
He did this with an unselfconscious brevity, a purely reflex action. Then he stepped towards her and said politely,
‘May I be of any help? You look a bit lost.’
Lindsay was grateful. At last someone had spoken, breaking that sudden, oddly oppressive silence! She was so grateful that she summoned up courage to smile at the man who had taken the initiative, and her green eyes softened, reflecting the warm and friendly gratitude she was feeling.
‘Oh, thank you, I wonder if you could? Help, I mean. I’m looking for Mr. Manning, the manager of Gundooee Station. This is Gundooee, isn’t it?’ How silly that sounded, out here in the middle of nowhere!
The men were all grinning, as if they were enjoying themselves, all except the big man to whom Lindsay had addressed herself.
‘That’s right’—his quiet voice was deep, abrupt. Puzzlement had crept into the clear grey gaze. ‘But there’s no Mr. Manning here, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Lindsay fumbled, because she didn’t see at all. ‘I—I had a letter from—from Mrs. Manning, just last week, and I naturally thought—’
She tailed off, because the beetling brows were lower now, and they were drawing together in an irritable way. The man’s voice, however, was still carefully polite.
‘I am the manager, here at Gundooee. My name is Bennett, Rod Bennett. If I can help at all, Miss—er—’
‘Dutten,’ Lindsay supplied, rather breathlessly. ‘Lindsay Dutten.’
‘Dutten! You can’t mean—?’
Oh yes, I can, said Lindsay under her breath, crossing her fingers in their nice, clean, sand-coloured gloves. That’s just what I can, and do, mean.
‘I’m Lindsay Hallingham Dutten,’ she announced clearly and sweetly, with a confidence that belied the apprehension gathering within her, ‘and I’ve been engaged as a bookkeeper for Gundooee Station. And—and here I am,’ she concluded less certainly.
The effect of this rather obvious pronouncement upon the entire group was prodigious. Jaws dropped, mouths fell open, eyes protruded—flabbergasted!
‘Skin the rakin’ lizards! A sheila!’
A man somewhere to her left, a man in a shabby singlet with a hole near the shoulder, bared his yellow teeth and spoke, seemingly for all, while another let out a high-spirited sort of cowboy yodel of unmistakable enthusiasm. Out of the corner of her eye, Lindsay saw his elbow come jabbing sharply into the ribs of the man beside him,
‘Grey Eyes’, alias Mr. Rod Bennett, must have spotted the gesture too, although Lindsay could have sworn his gaze had not shifted for one second from her own face.
‘That’ll do, Art.’ The deep voice held a ring of authority. ‘Get your mail and tobacco, all of you, and anything else you want. I’ll take the homestead bag, Mac, and Mannie will give you tea up at the house as usual’—this to the pilot. ‘Now,’ he turned to Lindsay, ‘you come with me.’
How grim he seemed, yet curiously urbane. Lindsay quailed'. There was something positively unnerving about Mr. Bennett’s patient politeness in the face of his very evident displeasure.
‘My—my things?’ she squeaked.
‘Bring them up to the side veranda, Mickie, will you?’
‘Sure thing, Rod.’ One of the young, brown-chested men stepped forward with alacrity.
As she turned to follow the manager, Lindsay heard whispering, quite distinctly, coming from the huddle of men who had immediately surrounded the one with her suitcase.
‘No jumpin’ the gun, now, Mickie, just ’cos you got a head start’—‘We all start the same, mind’—‘Odds or evens?’—‘A fiver in, an’ winner take all.’
‘Cut it, all of you!’ The big man ahead of her stopped so abruptly that Lindsay almost cannoned right into him. He thundered the words, and this time he really did seem very angry.
‘We wasn’t doin’ nothink, boss—not ’ere.’ Art sounded injured.
‘Not here, not anywhere. Understand?’
‘O.K., Rod.’ The chorus was resigned.
The little group made way for Mickie and the suitcase, and gave their attention instead to the mail-plane and its cargo, and Lindsay turned once more in the wake of the big, brown, square-jawed man who was already striding away ahead of her over the bare, hot ground.
She had to run to catch up, and for a moment she tried to match her step with his in order to keep alongside of him. It was no use. The powerful strides were taking him away again, and he didn’t even look around, or attempt to wait for her. He might at least have slowed down a little, she thought resentfully, finding herself almost running now to keep abreast of him.
‘Were they—were they doing something wrong, your—er—the men?’ she asked curiously, as she puffed along at his side.
He shot her a quick, incredulous look.
‘Didn’t you understand what they were doing?’ he countered, in a carefully expressionless voice.
Lindsay shook her head.
‘No,’ she panted. ‘Did you?’
‘My God!’
The man lengthened his stride, and Lindsay broke into a trot.
What an odd creature! she was thinking. That was no sort of an answer at all, and her question had been perfectly civil. Whatever had she said to annoy him so much? Or was it only those men who had angered him? There was no way of telling, really.
Soon he was slowing down, lifting the catch on the white wicket gate that was set in a pretty white paling fence, standing aside and indicating that she should precede him.
Lindsay did, and was instantly enchanted. It was like stepping into another world. Cool, green, buffalo lawns swept before her,
close-cropped, still damp from the sprinklers that had been rotating over them. Bougainvillea tumbled rampant along the fence, and unfamiliar but attractive shrubs lined the borders around the house—mimosas, acacias, oleander, several species of palm. The house itself—the ‘homestead’, he had called it as he led the way once again—was vast, a low, rambling building with gauzed verandas running right around it. It had a white roof that dipped away at different angles in all directions, indicating its extensive and wandering interior, and in several corners were big round rainwater tanks, set up on stands, with cone-shaped lids and a tap at the bottom.
Mr. Bennett took the steps to the veranda in a couple of bounds, and held open the fly-screen door. Lindsay, exhausted, stumbled inside.
Out of the sun it was cool and dim. Oh, this blessed shade! she thought, leaning against a veranda column and savouring it. She felt on the point of collapse. All that standing about in the heat, under the shade trees at Emmadanda, waiting for the mail-plane, seemed to have sapped her customary energy. And out here at the Gundooee airstrip there hadn’t even been a tree!
The man beckoned her to follow, and Lindsay dragged herself away from the support of the veranda-post and obeyed.
Perhaps he would offer her some tea, as he had done to the pilot. ‘Tea as usual,’ he had said, and, ‘Mannie will give it.’
Lindsay’s parched throat was crying out for moisture. She could think of nothing more acceptable, right now, than a good cup of tea. She could drink a whole pot full!
‘In here, please. Sit down there.’ He indicated a leather chair, placed his broad-brimmed hat on a wide, flat-topped desk, and began to pace about on the other side of the room, as if collecting his thoughts for some sort of verbal battle to come.