by Amanda Doyle
‘I think I will, if you don’t mind. There’s cologne in my cosmetic case there, Lindsay. Perhaps you would be kind enough to fix me a nice cold pad—you do have iced water, I’m sure?—and I shall put it on my forehead and close my eyes for a while.’
‘Yes, do that. I’ll leave you to Lindsay’s ministrations, then, Carleen. Just remember that you’re very welcome here, and make yourself at home.’
‘You are sweet, Rod. So considerate. And I don’t wonder that Matt immediately thought of Gundooee as the very place for my convalescence. What a charming and delightfully modern homestead it is! I’ve always adored the country, and I know already that I’m going to love it here. You’ve given me such a warm welcome already.’
He had, too! thought Lindsay grimly to herself, as Rod’s heavy step faded away through the hall. No salt tablets thrown carelessly at her with a kitchen mug half full of water—not for Carleen! Oh no! For Carleen there had been a kind concern, a gentle indulgence, a lingeringly warm regard, tinged with admiration and considerateness—a very male, protective sort of look, it had been.
When the sound of those heeled stockman’s boots had quite gone, Carleen opened her eyes again and looked straight at Lindsay.
‘You can get the iced water if you like. Some in a bowl, and a jug for drinking would be nice. I wasn’t pretending when I said just now that my head is aching. They gave me a whale of a send-off party at the Club last night. You’d have thought I was going to the Never-Never, the way they went on.’ She looked about her. ‘It almost is, actually, isn’t it?’
‘Is what?’
‘The Never-Never. What a ghastly stretch of country to fly over! All that peculiar tufty desert, and those stones thrown around all over the place. I must say it’s a relief to find such an attractively civilised human being at the end of it. He’s even more handsome than I’d remembered from his photos.’ She gazed at Lindsay’s flushed, indignant expression with malicious curiosity. ‘Do you find him handsome, I wonder, Lindsay?’
‘Who?’
‘Rod, of course—who else?’
‘I haven’t really thought about it,’ Lindsay replied coldly.
‘Then don’t begin to, darling, will you, and it will be much much pleasanter all round. Tell me, are there many other women on the scene at the moment? Any since you’ve been here? Ones of consequence, I mean.’
‘I really couldn’t say.’
‘Come, darling, you must know. You’re only human, after all, and you can’t fool me, either. I can see that you’re alive to Rod Bennett’s attractions as a man. I saw the way you looked at him just now—a sort of awareness that you never had in Sydney—and in certain aspects I can also see that you’ve matured quite surprisingly since I saw you last. However, it’s not you I’m talking about at the moment. Has he had any other members of the fair sex coasting around lately?’
Lindsay gave her cousin a look of unconcealed disdain.
‘What a ruthless, calculating creature you are, aren’t you, Carleen, to even ask such a thing when you’ve only just arrived.’
The other shrugged, laughed huskily and without shame.
‘Well, one does like to know the military strength of one’s opponents, darling, after all. If you want to be cagey and uncooperative, go ahead by all means. It won’t worry me! I shall ask that old governess or whatever she is. What’s her name? Mannie? I shall ask Mannie, and she’ll tell me all I want to know without even guessing she’s been catechised. I can be quite subtle when necessary, you know, Lindsay.’
‘Carleen, if you expect me to stand by while you coldbloodedly—’
‘Wait!’ Carleen interrupted, waving an imperious hand for silence. Then she leaned up on one elbow off the pillow and looked Lindsay over with eyes that glittered oddly. There was something a little bit frightening in the pale, menacing measure of that look. ‘Let’s just be clear on one point, Lindsay, shall we—although I thought I’d made the position clear in my letter, actually. The only thing I expect of you is silence, do you understand? I’m not asking you to do anything, or say anything. Your role is simply one of abstention, and that should be right up your negative little street, shouldn’t it? But don’t you dare presume to moralise, or to judge, will you, Lindsay? That would be presumptuous of you, my dear, and I should make you very, very sorry if you did. Do you understand?’
‘I’ve always understood you, Carleen.’
‘Good. Then there’s no need to underline the situation any further, is there? Go and get that iced water for me now, will you, Lindsay? Oh, and by the way—’
‘Yes?’ Lindsay paused woodenly in the doorway.
‘Now that we’ve discussed things’—Carleen smiled sweetly and appeasingly—‘there’s no need to refer to them again. There’s always the possibility that we might be overheard, and in any case, I don’t intend to fraternise with the employees at Gundooee to the extent of long, intimate discussions closeted in my bedroom. From now on, just remember your own position here, and the fact that I’m a guest in your employer’s household, and I’m sure we shall get along perfectly, Lindsay.’
‘Yes, Carleen.’ Lindsay felt the words clotting in her throat. In fact, it was all she could do to speak at all just then, so overwhelmed was she by disgust and misery.
At tea that night it was almost worse! To have to sit there, watching it all, and saying nothing, took all the strength of will that Lindsay could muster. She had left it too late now, in any case, to do a thing about it. Carleen was here, an everpresent threat to Lindsay’s own security, and Carleen was enjoying the situation enormously. She had spent the afternoon resting on her bed with the veranda-blinds pulled down outside to screen off the glare and heat. Lindsay had heard the shower running in the bathroom she shared with Carleen at just about the same time as she heard Rod turning on the spray in his own private shower-recess off his own room. After Carleen came out, the whole hall was pervaded by the tantalising scent of her expensive eau de toilette. If Rod had by any chance forgotten that they now had a new, and very feminine, addition to the household, he must most certainly have been reminded of the fact by that enchanting, pervasive perfume.
Tonight Carleen was wearing a filmy dress of printed chiffon, with long transparent sleeves and a softly pleated skirt that did wonderful things for her beautiful legs. Encased in clover-pink nylons, they seemed incredibly long and shapely. Her shoes were of a deeper, toning shade, with delicate silvered heels and matching silver buckles. She had swept her long golden tresses into an elaborate coil on top of her head, to reveal the pretty set of her small, neat ears and the gentle curve of her neck above the frilled throat of her frock. The effect was at once as tender as a petunia, as dramatic as an orchid.
Lindsay was very much aware of the contrast they must make. She had put on the skirt of her linen suit, and her ‘other’ white blouse, and was even now regretting her bare brown legs and the old-fashioned shoes which she had successfully renovated with an application of honey-toned colour before she came to Gundooee. Up till this moment, she had been satisfied enough with these things, but tonight, her few possessions seemed duller, more inadequate, than ever before. In her bedroom she had taken extra care with her make-up, feathering her brows into pretty arches, adding a touch of mascara to her long, curling lashes, brushing her hair until it shone in a nut-brown obedient curtain.
Lindsay had then gazed at herself in the mirror, staring critically back at the wide green innocence of those eyes in the glass with a feeling of self-reproach. Why was she going to this extra trouble tonight? Because of Carleen? Because of Rod? Or just because she felt so miserably overburdened by the present untenable situation into which she had been precipitated?
Lindsay couldn’t answer any of those questions honestly. Not tonight. Her mind was a welter of confused ideas, chaotic thinking and muddled emotions. All she did know, as she surveyed her girlishly simple reflection in the mirror, was that fine feathers did make fine birds—or, at any rate, they certainly helped! An
d Lindsay didn’t possess any feathers at all, only a white ‘other blouse’, just slightly better than her everyday cotton shirt, and a skirt that was admittedly an improvement on her faded denim one, and a pair of shoes which looked just a little nicer in their present sand colour than they had in their previous scuffed white shabbiness.
Carleen was being put into her chair, quite tenderly, by Rod. As he bent a little to push the chair into place, his head, behind the girl’s own fair one, appeared darkly swarthy, almost saturnine. In his crisply laundered shirt and narrow trousers, he looked carelessly, urbanely handsome.
When Carleen put her head back and smiled her acknowledgement of his thoughtful gesture, his white teeth glinted momentarily, and his eyes darkened inexplicably. Like that, they were almost black, unfathomable, tantalisingly unreadable.
‘You’re feeling better, Carleen? You certainly look very decorative and charming, I can assure you, but outward appearances can be misleading, and of course you did have an unpleasantly tiring trip to get here, I’m afraid.’
Tiring? Huh! And what about poor Lindsay’s own unpleasantly tiring trip? There had been no sympathetic enquiries for her, no tender, darkening glances. Just a brief injunction not to miss Mac’s plane, and when she got here, a reproving glare when she dared to comment on the heat, a couple of salt tablets, and a scarifying lecture on the importance of stating one’s sex when one applied for the post of book-keeper on Gundooee Station.
‘Oh, so much better, thank you. Rod! In fact, I’m feeling quite refreshed—my old self, almost. I’m longing to take part in all your country activities again.’ She leaned towards him. ‘I’ve brought my riding clothes, of course,’ she confided eagerly. ‘I suppose you have some good horses here—hacks, I mean—as well as those funny nondescript stock-horses. I really appreciate good horseflesh, you know!’
‘Do you, indeed? I’m sure we can supply you with a suitable mount, in that case. I’ve a very sweet little mare, part Arab, that should be the very thing, I think. In fact’—a flattering appraisal of Carleen’s deliciously appealing profile—‘I should think that you and Chalita will make a very well-matched pair.’
‘May I ride with you? What I mean is’—Carleen hesitated delicately—‘all those men—’
‘Yes, of course. I shall take you whenever I can, if you really like that sort of thing—whenever it is suitable, that is,’ Rod promised agreeably.
‘Such a pity that you won’t be able to accompany us, too, Lindsay. You did tell me you couldn’t ride, I think?’
Lindsay hadn’t told her anything of the sort! She hadn’t needed to, because Carleen already knew it. She knew perfectly well that the functional boarding-school to which her younger relation had been sent had not provided extra frills in the form of expensive riding lessons, as her own school had done.
‘We gotter do somethink about it,’ muttered Artie indignantly, some two weeks later. ‘Ain’t we, Mick? We gotter do somethink. She’s in fer the knockout stakes, that dame is, Lindsay—any mutt can see that. She’s makin’ rings around yer, that’s what! She’s been out with Rod on them perishin’ ’orses every day this week, givin’ ’erself airs, preenin’ them fine feathers, and never missin’ a single trick in the knockout stakes.’
‘What are they, Art? The—er—knockout stakes?’ Lindsay felt moved to enquire. Artie’s indignation was of a quite ferocious nature.
‘Never you mind what they are, Lindsay. You don’t know dames like we know dames,’ he told her darkly. ‘That’s not surprisin’, either, ’cos you ain’t a dame yourself—not like ’er. You’re just a decent little slip of a dinkum little sheila, that’s what you are, and that’s what she’s not. She ain’t on the level, she’s just a dame, and me and the other blokes ain’t goin’ ter let a dame run rings around our Lindsay, are we, see? We ain’t goin’ ter stand by and let a spoofer like ’er get one-up on you in the knockout stakes. What’ll we do, though, Mick, eh?’
Mickie grinned. ‘We could teach her to ride, for a start.’
‘Stone the blinkin’ crows, so we could! Why didn’t I think of that before? We teach ’er ter ride, and then she can go out with ’em, too. And that makes three of ’em, don’t it, instead of just them two.’ Artie chuckled exultantly. ‘By crikey, that’ll shift the odds a bit, eh!’
Lindsay smiled innocently from one man to the other, touched at their concern. It was nice to be a dinkum little sheila, and not just a dame! It made you feel warm and soft inside, and it made you not mind quite so much about the handsome couple Rod and Carleen made, riding off together on those lovely horses.
It was true, what Artie had said. They had been out together every single day this week, at one end of the day or the other. Carleen looked superb in her tailored riding pants, polished boots and open-necked shirt of deepest blue silk. The part-Arab mare, Chalita, was a delicate-stepping creature, the prettiest dappled grey, and, as Rod had predicted, the horse and rider were perfectly matched in elegance, style, and beauty of movement His own mount was the bay stallion he always used, an intelligent, rather mettlesome animal that he rode on a curb and martingale. Looking after them enviously as they went off across the plain, Lindsay could not stop herself thinking how wonderful it must be to ride at Rod’s side like that, in close companionship—just you and Rod and the horses and the plain.
‘Would yer like ter ride, Lindsay girl?’ asked Artie now. ‘Would yer like if we learned yer?’
‘I’d love it, Artie,’ she replied promptly, with enthusiasm. If she could ride, then perhaps Rod might ask her, some time, to ride with him over the plain, the way he was doing now with Carleen. She would leave the competition stuff to them, if they wished to enter for some races, which was what these stakes must be. She would not aspire to those heights, but if she could attain a certain proficiency, why then, some day he might ask Lindsay herself to go with him—perhaps when Carleen had gone back to Sydney.
‘I’d just love it!’ she repeated breathlessly, her eyes shining.
Shorty looked her over critically.
‘You can’t wear that skirt, though, Lindsay. That won’t do.’
‘I have my shorts.’
‘Shorts ain’t no use,’ Artie told her bluntly. The stirrup leathers’ll pinch yer legs, see. Ain’t yer got any strides?’
‘Strides?’
‘You know. Duds.’
‘No jeans, or anything?’ suggested Mickie.
Lindsay thought of Carleen’s beautifully cut jodhpurs. She had noticed two pairs in Carleen’s room when she had been making the bed one day.
‘No. No jeans,’ she admitted forlornly.
‘Why not use some of them khaki duds in the store?’ Herb said. ‘There’s ’eaps of ’em there, ain’t there, an’ if the bookkeeper can’t lay ’er ’ands on ’em, then I don’t know who can!’
Herb’s idea was unanimously adopted in lieu of any better one being proposed, and that was how Lindsay began her riding lessons—clad in a pair of khaki trousers which were the smallest size she could find in the pile. As they happened to have a thirty-two-inch waist measurement, it was necessary to wear a belt (happily the store could provide that, too!), beneath which the khaki cloth bulged in uneasy lumps and folds right down to the place where she had rolled the turn-ups over an extra couple of times to enable her shabby sandshoes to peep out the bottom.
They brought in a horse called Dusty on which to teach her. Dusty was an angular beast, all drooping limbs and bony protuberances. He had a large, deceptively unintelligent head, a sleepy eye, and a tendency to help his rider into the saddle by dint of a well-aimed nip. Lindsay was terrified of him.
‘He’s so—tall,’ she said dubiously, eyeing the distance between the saddle and the ground with some misgiving.
‘It ain’t ’im that’s tall, it’s you that’s small, see, Lindsay. It’s a different thing altogether, that.’
‘It amounts to the same thing, surely, Artie?’
‘No, it don’t! Where’s yer spirit, eh?
Come on, Lindsay, once we get you up there, yer’ll be O.K,’ he assured her bracingly. ‘Up yer go, now!’
Willing hands pushed and lifted, and Lindsay felt herself borne through the air, willy-nilly. Then she was somehow in the saddle, fumbling for the reins with nervous fingers.
‘Git yer feet in the stirrups first.’ Artie.
‘Don’t hold the reins and that monkey-grip, Lindsay. He’s not energetic enough to buck, anyway.’ Mickie.
‘Straighten out yer legs, Lindsay. The way you’re crouchin’ up there, yer’d think you was perchin’ on a flamin’ ant-hill.’ Herb.
‘Just relax, now, Lindsay, and give him a little kick.’ Shorty.
‘Gently does it!’
They all yelled advice. Dusty edged forward reluctantly. His limbs appeared to be quite rusty with disuse, and upon that encouraging supposition, she kicked a little harder and he walked gingerly around the saddling-yard. It was comforting to discover that Dusty was even less enthusiastic than she was herself!
The first lesson was pronounced a success by all who contributed, and after that, the procedure was repeated every evening just before sundown, when the men had ridden in, unsaddled, watered, and fed their own horses, with varying degrees of progress on the pupil’s part.
‘Yer better get good quick, Lindsay,’ Artie urged her one day, watching the two specks that were Carleen and Rod coming through the shade trees along the creek on their horses. ‘We want yer ter be real good, quick, Lindsay—quicker than wot you are, see.’