The Post at Gundoee

by Amanda Doyle

  Lindsay wilted into the chair, hardly caring where she was, and not minding in the least if he never fired the opening volley, since she had a fair idea of what was coming. Her face felt pale and sticky, and her olive linen suit clung to her thighs and shoulder-blades, limply and unappealingly. She closed her eyes, and the pacing stopped immediately.

  ‘Aren’t you well?’ How abrupt, unsympathetic, he was! A brute of a man!

  ‘Of course I’m well,’ she defended herself indignantly, wishing he would stop peering at her like that. ‘But you must surely admit that it’s quite—quite warm.’

  As soon as she had uttered them, Lindsay wished the words unsaid. You could tell by the quick frown, the repressed line of his mouth, that book-keepers, whether male or female, were not expected to complain of the heat the moment they arrived.

  Rod Bennett, leaning over her with one hand on the tooled leather top of his office desk, opened his mouth to speak, apparently changed his mind, and left the room. Lindsay heard his heavy steps fading away along the veranda and closed her eyes thankfully again. Oh, for a cup of Mannie’s tea, whoever Mannie was!

  ‘Take these.’ A curt command. The manager was back. He passed her a couple of pills and a pannikin of water. ‘Go on, they won’t hint you, they’re only salt tablets.’

  Salt! Lindsay wasn’t feeling like salt just now. She could think of nothing more thirst-making than salt! She screwed up her nose.

  ‘Do I have to?’ she asked doubtfully—and that was her second mistake.

  The broad shoulders shrugged. ‘No, you don’t have to.’ The deep voice was uncaring. ‘I could leave you to die in your tracks, but I intend to get some answers first. Now, drink up!’ A whiplash command suddenly supplanted the man’s formerly lazy speech.

  Lindsay did—hastily.

  When she had finished the water, he took the empty mug and said, ‘Only an idiot, or someone completely inexperienced, would travel out in these parts without a hat.’

  Lindsay flushed, patted her perspiring brow with her handkerchief, and decided to let that remark pass.

  ‘You don’t look altogether an idiot, so that leaves us with inexperience, doesn’t it?’ He hitched his moleskins, took the swivel chair on the opposite side of the desk, and placed his hands, palms down, on the leather top, eyeing her intently.

  Lindsay quivered with nervousness. His eyes were unblinking. They were the most unswerving eyes she had ever come across, and they seemed to bore right into her, unwavering, relentless. His whole attitude was akin to the concentration of a tiger about to spring.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well.’ She licked her dry lips.

  ‘Let’s have the story,’ he said quietly. ‘Why did you do it?’

  ‘D-do what?’

  ‘You know perfectly well what. Why did you apply for the book-keeper post here?’

  Lindsay essayed a surprised smile.

  ‘Because the post was advertised, and I happen to be a book-keeper,’ she returned with commendable confidence. ‘N-needing a p-post,’ she added with something of a wobble, spoiling the whole effect. Oh, Lindsay, you ass!

  ‘You were aware that the position required a man.’ That wasn’t even a question. The way Rod Bennett said it, it was simply a statement of fact.

  It would take all her powers of persuasion to carry this off, Lindsay could see that ‘A—a man? Good gracious!’ Now, that sounded convincing! She wondered whether to beat her brow in the best theatrical tradition, decided against it.

  ‘You knew.’ Again the statement.

  ‘It—it didn’t say,’ she pointed out archly.

  ‘It implied.’

  ‘If it did, I’m afraid I wasn’t aware of the implications.’

  ‘And still aren’t aware of them, by all appearances,’ came the enigmatic murmur.

  ‘How do you mean?’ Lindsay gazed at him innocently.

  He shot her that quick, incredulous look—the one he had given her outside. Then he passed his hand over his tanned, clean-shaven jaw, and paused. The pause lengthened.

  Lindsay began to fidget. A pity that granite face was so unreadable. It would have helped, just then, to know what the man was thinking. As it was, she had no idea at all as to whether she was winning or losing.

  Finally, Rod Bennett sat back, opened a drawer and took out a letter. He placed it carefully on the desk in front of him.

  ‘As you can see, your own correspondence in the matter,’ he told her, eyeing her with judicial sternness, as though she were a prisoner at the bar. He read—‘ “I am accustomed to positions demanding trust and initiative.” How old are you, Miss—er—Dutten?’

  ‘I’m twenty-one. Why?’

  ‘An incredibly tender age to be so accustomed to positions of trust, don’t you think?’ he pointed out dryly.

  Lindsay blushed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she muttered lamely, looking down at her hands. ‘I’m completely trust-worthy,’ she added, almost inaudibly.

  ‘It’s a different thing,’ he asserted unkindly. Her adversary was giving no quarter. ‘Now, let’s see. Yes, here we are. “I have former experience of, and a marked preference for, country life.”’ He looked up. ‘And you came out here—without even a hat—to a position which anyone with one shred of prior experience would have known was intended for a man?’

  He eyed her sceptically, and Lindsay wriggled in her chair.

  ‘I—I was born in the bush,’ she told him. Torn between indignation and despair, the words came tumbling out. ‘I was born in it, I tell you, and I do have a preference for it I love it—I always have. I’ve been longing for ages and ages to get away from that horrid city. You can be so lonely there—lonely, lonely, even in all the crowds of people. I—I longed to escape, and that’s what the advertisement was, an escape. Oh, can’t you see? It was all because of Clancy, anyway.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Clancy. You know. “The bush has friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him”—that Clancy. I wanted the f-friends and the k-kindly voices.’

  She faltered to a halt, ashamed to find that her throat was suddenly choked with threatening tears. She gazed at him helplessly with huge, wet-lashed eyes that were misty with pleading.

  He appeared totally unmoved.

  ‘Where were you born?’

  ‘Near Batlow. It’s down—’

  ‘I know it. Orchard country.’ His tone was contemptuous. ‘How long were you there?’

  ‘Six years.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘My parents were killed, both of them.’

  ‘And after that?’

  ‘I went to the city, to a—a sort of aunt.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘How do you mean—and? I mean, I’ve told you. I hated the city. I’ve never liked it. I always longed for the bush again, for freedom. And then I saw—’

  ‘Are you telling me’—Rod Bennett interrupted in calculated tones of sheer, cold, forbidding, incredulous fury—‘that you remained in the city after you were six years old? That that was your sole encounter with the “bush”, as you are pleased to call it? That on the strength of a few childhood years in a fertile, climatically equable, civilised area like Batlow—Batlow!—you had the presumption to apply as a book-keeper for Gundooee Station, eighty miles out from Emmadanda, beyond the Black Stump, at the back of nowhere, where the crows fly backwards to keep the dust out of their eyes? That you have the temerity to say, in addition, that you were experienced in station life?’

  ‘C-country life, I said,’ she corrected him fearfully.

  He was standing now. He had left his chair and he had come right around the desk to tower over her. Colour had risen angrily beneath his heavy tan, and his grey eyes were dark, sparking with rage.

  Lindsay was terrified.

  ‘I’ve got all the qualifications, Mr. Bennett. Truly I have. If you’ll give me a trial. Mrs. Manning seemed to th-think that my qualifications were acceptable.’

  ‘Mannie can�
�t be blamed for this! You misled her! She’s in her seventies—an old family retainer. Unfortunately I had to visit another of our properties at short notice, and I instructed Mannie to choose an applicant on my behalf. She’s not accustomed to engaging staff, but she’d have made a better job of it if you’d been on the level.’

  ‘I was on the level, Mr. Bennett. My certificates are all in order. I can’t see that experience really matters all that much—what I mean—’ she qualified hastily, quailing at his deepening expression of grimness. ‘What I mean is, bookkeeping is book-keeping, and that’s all that’s to it. It’s the same anywhere.’

  ‘Is it?’ The words were jaded. So were the lines about his mouth—jaded and cynical, as he sought in one of the flap pockets of his khaki shirt for the makings, and began to roll a cigarette, with calm, experienced, square-tipped fingers. Lindsay found her eyes fastened upon those steady fingers, mesmerized, as they tipped tobacco deftly, fashioned a neat cylinder.

  Rod Bennett licked the edges of his smoke carefully, neatened the ends.

  ‘Is it?’ he repeated tiredly, as if he had had enough of the whole question. ‘Have you ever stocked a station store, Miss Dutten, to cover the needs of a large and varied complement of men? All and every possible need, remember, since we have no shops around the corner out here! Have you ever been responsible for expensive and explosive fuels, and spirits that must be signed for? Handed out discretionary ‘finger money’ to black stockmen? Kept a check on the numbered drugs and replacements in a station medical chest? Relayed messages and orders over a transceiver? Helped men to write letters and fill in forms when they’ve forgotten what it’s like even to read? Acted as general factotum, adviser, confidante, counter-hand, peacemaker, court-of-appeal, ombudsman over gambling debts and personal difficulties—I could go on ad infinitum, Miss Dutten, and all that is before you even get out the cash book.’

  Lindsay swallowed. Her hands were clutching themselves together, and her assurance had slipped, right down to her pretty sand-coloured shoes. She was badly shaken.

  ‘I can try,’ she whispered persuasively, willing her hopelessness not to show. ‘I can try, if you’ll only give me a chance. I’m here, aren’t I, s-so you may as well. I’ll do my best, I really will.’

  He seemed not to have even heard her.

  ‘And added to that, you’re a woman,’ he intoned bitterly. ‘Not even a woman, a mere girl! That’s the biggest complication of the whole damn lot, and heaven knows what I’ve done to deserve to be saddled with it!’

  ‘But I can look after myself, I always have. I’ve done it for years,’ she assured him eagerly. ‘I won’t be at all a bother, I promise.’

  ‘A bother?’ He ground out his cigarette end impatiently. Lindsay took that as the signal to stand up. She felt positively frayed as a result of this unpleasant skirmish. All she prayed for now was that it would end quickly, whatever the outcome.

  When she stood up, her action somehow brought her closer to him. Lindsay felt dwarfed beside that powerful, masculine frame. Not daring to speak, she nevertheless found herself forced to look up, right into the stern grey eyes that were so near, above her. For a long moment their gazes held, locked in challenge.

  Impossible to tell what was going on behind that grim mask. Somewhere near the man’s jaw a small muscle flickered, the merest ripple in his sunseamed cheek. Lindsay watched it, fascinated—took in, too, the crisp dark hair that sprang away from his temple, the imperious aquilinity of the nose and fine chiselling of the lips. She gulped, audibly, in an effort to clear the sudden nervous constriction in her throat. The man appeared to come to a decision at last. ‘I’ll give you a trial, Miss Dutten, since you’ve come such a long way.’ The words were deeply gruff, grudging, one might have said. ‘You will receive the minimum rate, but on the other hand I shall not expect—or indeed encourage—you, a woman, to perform all the duties I listed a moment ago. Your tasks and the area of your authority will be strictly limited, and under my constant surveillance. Do I make myself perfectly clear?’

  Lindsay nodded.

  ‘Perfectly clear,’ she hastened to agree huskily.

  Rod Bennett turned, walked to the door and opened it, standing aside to let her pass.

  ‘Just one more thing.’ A hand came down on her shoulder, arresting her passage.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Just get one thing quite clear in your mind, Miss Dutten. If I thought for one moment that you had intentionally deceived me as to your sex’—the manager paused significantly—‘I would pack you out of here in my own aircraft before you could even say Ned Kelly. Do you understand that?’

  Once again, grey eyes locked with green. It was the green ones which wavered, slid down to stare instead at the man’s dusty stock-boots, planted there so near.

  Lindsay couldn’t trust herself to speak just then. She had the feeling that words—any words—might be the wrong ones, might alter the delicate balance of a danger-fraught situation and plunge her over the brink towards instant dismissal, back to the airstrip, back to Emmadanda, back to that railway junction whose name she couldn’t even remember, back to Sydney itself.

  At the mere thought, Lindsay’s head went up and down several times, very smartly, to let the man know that she understood.

  She understood very well indeed, and she was anything but sanguine about the outcome of her own incredible folly!

  CHAPTER 4

  Lindsay followed the Gundooee manager back along the veranda, through the gauze door, and down the steps into the grilling sun once more.

  Sitting on the white paling fence beside the wicket gate, swinging his legs idly against the rails, was Mickie, and planted in the dust beside the fence was her solitary suitcase. When Rod Bennett approached, the young man slid down nimbly and picked up the case, grinning openly at the flushed-faced girl who came panting back down the path in the manager’s wake.

  ‘Thanks, Mick,’ the older man said briefly, picked up the case himself, and turned to Lindsay. ‘Come with me. I’ll show you to your cottage.’

  ‘My cottage! Do you mean one of my very own?’ she asked, intrigued.

  ‘The book-keeper’s cottage, Miss Dutten,’ he elucidated repressively. ‘It’s down near the store, for convenience, you understand. The book-keeper sleeps and works there, but takes his meals at the homestead.’

  ‘Oh. I see.’

  He was walking briskly as he spoke, and again she found herself almost running in an effort to keep up.

  They were taking a different direction this time. The airstrip and hangar were now on the other side of the big sprawling homestead, and Lindsay and the manager were walking away from it, passing an assortment of sheds and buildings which from the air had made her think that this was a clustered village, but which were in reality spaced quite a distance apart from each other when you were actually walking among them. She saw engine sheds, a power-house, station-hands’ quarters with a row of opensided shower cubicles at one end, feed stores, a blacksmith’s shop, a harness room, a fowl-yard, and in the distance a long, low shearing-shed with yards and races surrounding it.

  ‘Just around this corner.’

  Rod Bennett rounded the corner of the station store and pulled up short in front of a neat pink weatherboard cottage with a small canvas awning over its cement porch.

  He stopped so abruptly that, this time, Lindsay did bump into him.

  A hard hand gripped her painfully above the elbow, restored her balance, and let go. He hadn’t even looked her way, because his eyes were already busy elsewhere. They were taking in the scene around the little weatherboard building.

  It seemed to Lindsay that there were almost as many people standing around it as there had been down at the airstrip to await that plane.

  The black stockmen weren’t there, it was true, and neither were the lubras in their bright cotton dresses—they had all gone back to their humpies over at the creek, and even from here, one could hear the yapping of their mangy dogs, the crying o
f the piccanins, and the laughter of the women, underneath the distant line of shade trees.

  The aboriginal members of Gundooee Station had apparently taken their supplies and gone, but most, or all, of the others now seemed to be gathered about the precincts of the book-keeper’s cottage, busying themselves in a number of ways. To her astonishment Lindsay registered the fact that even Mickie was present He must have taken an alternative route after he had handed over her suitcase—a quicker route, because he had reached the cottage before they did themselves, and Mr. Bennett had certainly set a spanking pace.

  Mickie was apparently absorbed in lowering the striped sun-blind to a more effective angle over the front steps. From the attention Mickie was devoting to his task, it appeared to be a tricky and absorbing operation.

  A couple of the men were realigning the whitewashed stones which flanked the path, while others made halfhearted attacks on the weeds inside the old motor-tyres which served to enclose small shrubs and saplings—the only gesture towards any sort of garden that the cottage possessed. Further off, a singleted figure stooped to pick up a tin that glinted with metallic viciousness in the harsh noon light. To the left, yet another began to kick at a burr with the heel of his boot One or two, unable to find some reasonable excuse for occupation, simply stood and scuffed at the dust.

  Rod Bennett surveyed these activities in silence for a moment. Then—

  ‘What’s going on here?’ he asked severely.

  All the men stopped what they were doing, and the ones who were not doing anything stopped that, too, and regarded him somewhat sheepishly. Then they looked at each other, at Lindsay, at Rod, at each other. No one seemed to know how to reply, and therefore no one spoke at all.