The Post at Gundoee

by Amanda Doyle

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if those two have come to some sort of private understanding,’ she observed when she and Lindsay were alone one day. ‘I’ve never known Rod to be quite like he is just now, not even with Margie. He’s more relaxed and happy, somehow, than ever before. As for Carleen—well, I must admit I’ve been quite wrong about her. I didn’t take to her at first, but she’s been so different lately, thoughtful and kind, I can only think that perhaps the poor child’s recent illness made her narky, and that she’s feeling better now. I know what it can be like, trying to appear normal, and be pleasant, when you aren’t feeling too well. It’s all a bit of a bother, but one has to pretend, to save a fuss.’

  A knife had twisted in Lindsay’s heart, a knife that caused a pain of bitterness to flood through her whole being.

  Carleen, who had come with blatant calculation to annex Rod Bennett for herself, looked like succeeding, if Mannie’s observations were accurate. And as for Rod, he had never seemed happier, as if he had suddenly found something for which he had been searching for a very long time. Lindsay had herself sensed the very thing that Mannie had put into words!

  You were supposed to be glad when a person you loved found happiness, Lindsay reminded herself fiercely. You were supposed to be glad in an unselfish, basic sort of way. Easier said than done, that, but she’d have to try! And she’d have to be glad for Carleen too. It really did appear that Carleen had fallen properly in love with Rod—with Rod as a person, and not just as a wealthy, athletic, eligible symbol whom she had come intentionally to pursue. What else but love could account for such a devastating change in someone’s nature, could bring about that amiability and softness which had previously not existed?

  Lindsay put these thoughts firmly to the back of her mind, and concentrated on Mannie’s last sentence. It was, to Lindsay, a revealing one, although she was certain that Mannie was totally unaware of that fact. It confirmed something of what Lindsay had actually suspected for some time now, and that was that the old lady was far from well. Just lately, Lindsay couldn’t help noticing that Mannie spent much more time resting in her room, and when she reappeared, she did not seem refreshed. Often, too, when she rose from her chair on the veranda, she would stand quite still for a while, as if the effort of getting up had been almost too much for her, as if she had to give herself a minute or two to readjust.

  Observing these signs, Lindsay had taken over some of Mannie’s tasks in the house as unobtrusively as possible—so unobtrusively, indeed, that the old woman seemed hardly aware of it—and lately she had made a point of coming up from the book-keeper’s cottage or the store in plenty of time to help Mannie prepare the evening meal. In the mornings, too, it was as often as not Lindsay herself who cut thick hunks of cold meat and sandwiched them with pickles and butter between bread-slices for Rod’s saddle-bag, and who turned out a tray of puffy golden scones to cool in time to accompany those sandwiches.

  Mannie had perhaps noticed, but if she did, she made no comment. Maybe she was too weary and languid to bother remarking on the fact, but more than likely she refrained because, as she had said just now, one did not welcome a fuss.

  On that realisation, Lindsay closed her lips upon what she had been about to say. She would respect Mannie’s wish for privacy, but the sight of those tiredly circled eyes and the lines of suffering about the old lady’s mouth did nothing to make her decision to keep silence an easier one.

  It was the one discordant note in a presently idyllic world, that secret which Lindsay was convinced that she shared without Mannie’s knowledge.

  Before dinner-time came round that evening, Lindsay was able to display the lemon pie she had made while Mannie was having her rest, and the casserole already cooking slowly in the oven. Sibbie and Bella had peeled and prepared all manner of vegetables for her to put in it, and it smelt unbelievably appetising as Lindsay lifted the lid and showed Mannie what she had done. Her reward, if she had sought one at all, was in the gentle glow of appreciation in Mannie’s tired eyes as she had thanked her.

  After dinner, she and Mannie drew up their deck-chairs and talked desultorily. Further along the veranda, from Rod’s study, came the soft buzz of voices in conversation—Carleen’s light, fluted tone, and Rod’s own deep one. Lindsay steeled herself not to listen to the muffled sounds of that intimate, after-dinner chat.

  The air tonight was laden with perfume. It came from the border of stocks just outside the gauze screen in front of the place where they sat, and from the bed of geraniums in the centre of the lawn. Beyond, the trees were ghostly shapes, lifting a tangle of silvered branches to the moon that floated timelessly above it in its sea of stars.

  Lindsay lay back, contemplating the peaceful scene, loth to disturb the soothing silence by speech or any other means, when it was rudely broken by the sound of running feet. They thudded over the hard, bare moon-bathed ground—nearer, nearer. Then the wicket-gate slammed at the bottom of the garden, and Jimmy pounded along the path, up the steps, through the swing-door.

  ‘Boss! Boss!’ he was yelling urgently. ‘You come quick-fella, Boss, allasame that cheekyfella water bum-up, bum-up, in bingie belonga Tommo!’ Rod was out of his study in a flash, flicking on the veranda light.

  ‘What did you say, Jimmy?’ he asked sternly. ‘Better you talk clear, eh—not gabble-gabble allasame nobody savvy. Clear, Jimmy. Slow, eh? Now, what is it?’

  Jimmy’s dark, glistening chest was heaving. All he had on was a pair of khaki trousers. His feet were bare, and it was the first time that Lindsay had ever seen him without the beloved pipe which was usually clenched in his strong white teeth.

  ‘That proper badfella water Tommo drink out of that bottle, Boss. Him get plurry mad, bin chase them lubras and piccaninnies—pokem! pokem!—alonga that big stick—’

  Jimmy’s wiry black arms jabbed out savagely in all directions to illustrate his point.

  ‘Where is he now?’ Rod asked abruptly.

  ‘Him bin lie on ground now, Boss. Them others hold ’im down while I get Boss, plenty quickfella, see.’

  The others had gathered around Rod and Jimmy. ‘Wh-what does he mean, Rod? What’s he saying?’ Carleen put an anxious hand on Rod’s arm.

  ‘It sounds as though he’s drunk,’ was the terse reply. ‘Drunk! But where could he get drink, away out here? And what could he possibly get drunk on?’

  ‘The only place he could get it’—Rod sought and held Lindsay’s eye—‘would be the store. As for what it is, that I intend to find out.’

  His eyes were dark with anger. Lindsay’s own were fastened on his face, as though mesmerised with foreboding. All the colour had left her cheeks, so that the bruised place around her eye stood out in liverish relief.

  ‘You come, Boss, eh? That proper cheekyfella water, make Tommo crawl oneside alonga that ground allasame him plurry carpet-snake with ’is back broke, see. That badfella stuff killum Tommo, Boss!’

  ‘Oh no!’ The words escaped Lindsay’s numbed lips in an agonised protest. She swayed on her feet Rod’s hand steadied her. In fact, his fingers bit brutally into her soft flesh as he shook her slightly and said with grim emphasis,

  ‘Not kill, you little idiot. He means hurt. By the sound of things, he’s a long way from dead!’

  Without another word he followed Jimmy through the gauze door and down the steps. Seconds later, the little gate clicked back into place, and the two figures disappeared in the night.

  ‘Goodness, what a thing to happen!’ Carleen sounded shocked.

  Lindsay sank down into the nearest chair. She dared: not think, could not let herself think, how such a thing could have come about. The only certainty was that it had!

  Down at the gunyahs came the shrill barking of dogs, the almost hysterical crying of children, and at one point a bloodcurdling yell.

  ‘I think I shall go to bed.’ Mannie got up stiffly, gave Lindsay’s arm a tiny, comforting squeeze, under cover of the semi-darkness, and tactfully withdrew.

&nb
sp; A match rasped as Carleen lit a cigarette and stretched her legs.

  ‘I’ll stay with you, if you like,’ she volunteered. ‘I doubt if I could get to sleep with all that racket going on, in any event.’

  Lindsay swallowed, unable to trust herself to speak. A strange fear had her in its grip, a sort of guilt that wasn’t guilt. How could it be, when she knew perfectly well that she had always been so careful of all those fluids and poisons at the store, ever since Artie had warned her on her very first day? Rod will have your hide, he’d said. Remembering, Lindsay shivered. It was a shiver of shock, of dread, of this guilt that wasn’t, of an odd, instinctive hopelessness.

  It seemed an interminable time before things were quiet once more down at the settlement. One by one the noises abated, until, with the last plaintive whimper of the last dog, there was finally silence.

  Shortly after that, Rod came back. He came treading purposefully along the veranda with a curiously set face, hitched around a chair with the toe of his shoe, sat down, and commenced to roll himself a smoke. The fact that he hadn’t uttered a single word unnerved Lindsay completely. Anything would seem preferable to this ominous silence!

  Carleen spoke first. ‘Is he all right, Rod?’ she asked, half fearfully.

  ‘He’ll do,’ Rod replied shortly. He took a long pull on the cigarette between his fingers, and exhaled as though he were expelling a weary sigh at the same time.

  ‘Was it—was he drunk?’

  ‘Yes, Carleen, I’m afraid he was drunk. Very drunk. And what he was drunk on’—a significant pause—‘was methylated spirits.’

  ‘Did he tell you that that’s what it was?’

  ‘He didn’t have to tell me,’ Rod pointed out tersely. ‘The poor beggar was stinking with it.’

  ‘Oh.’ Carleen pursed her lips in concern. ‘How awful for you!’

  ‘But worse for him,’ he observed tritely. ‘He’ll have a blinder of a hangover in the morning, and probably won’t be fit for days.’ Another pause. ‘He got the meths from the store, by all accounts. I won’t say stole it—these people aren’t strong on the moral issues.’ Rod turned to Lindsay, addressed himself to her exclusively, holding her in a direct penetrating regard. ‘If you have an explanation, Lindsay, I’d certainly like to hear it,’ he said quietly, although he didn’t sound as if he’d really like to hear anything she might have to say, at all!

  Lindsay licked her lips.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, Rod, truly I am, but I honestly can’t see how I could be to blame. I mean, I’ve always been se careful, ever since you said. I—I always keep the store locked, and I just don’t see how he could have got it.’

  ‘Always? Without fail?’

  ‘Yes, always. Truly.’

  Carleen’s dress rustled as she uncrossed her legs, reached forward to stub out her cigarette.

  ‘Not quite always, Lindsay.’ She seemed reluctant to speak. ‘I mean, do forgive me, my dear, for pointing it out, but you didn’t the other day, for instance, did you? That day at lunch-time, remember? You said it wouldn’t matter for an hour or two.’ She waved a manicured hand apologetically. ‘I don’t want to interfere, of course. I’m not meaning anything, but just in the cause of accuracy—’ Her voice tailed off uncertainly.

  ‘Did you leave it unlocked one day over the lunch period, Lindsay?’ Rod’s voice had a depth of grimness that made her flinch.

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘And yet you’ve just told me that you always lock up, without fail?’

  ‘Yes, well, I do.’ She floundered unhappily. ‘I mean, there was a reason, that day. The men had staples to collect. I left them on the counter for them. But everything else was locked. I swear it was!’

  ‘You mean you think it was,’ he corrected her mercilessly.

  ‘No, truly. All the cupboards were locked, every one of them, although the main door was open.’

  ‘It was from the cupboard that he got the stuff, Lindsay. The second on the right.’ Rod’s voice was oddly bleak. ‘Far from being locked, that cupboard door wasn’t even shut. It was wide open, so he just took it.’

  ‘Rod, you must believe me. Please?’ Lindsay was begging him in her distress.

  ‘Why should I believe you, Lindsay—much as I would like to? You have already made one false statement. Why not another?’

  Lindsay could only gaze at him in nightmarish disbelief at what he was saying. Through a mist of horror she heard Carleen’s voice saying silkily,

  ‘Darling, you’re only human, I mean, aren’t we all? Anyone can make a mistake.’

  Rod Bennett got to his feet, looked down to where Lindsay sat, nursing her knees in hunched-up misery.

  ‘Some mistakes are redeemable, others are not,’ he said harshly. ‘I find it very difficult to forgive a mistake that is caused by arrant carelessness and not an error of judgement. I’m deeply disappointed in you, Lindsay. That’s all I’ll trust myself to say on the matter tonight.’

  Without waiting for a further reply, he went into his office and shut the door.

  Carleen stirred in her canvas chair.

  ‘Poor Lindsay,’ she said sympathetically into the darkness. ‘It does look as though you may have cooked your goose, doesn’t it?’

  CHAPTER 9

  For Lindsay, the days that followed were unbearably lonely. She could confide her thoughts and fears to no one, so she was forced to exist in this awful vacuum of solitariness, just Lindsay and her suspicions. They were uneasy thoughts to live with. It was bad enough to even think such things, but to be unable to unburden herself to anybody made the situation even more unpleasant.

  Whom, after all, could she tell? Not Rod, with this new barrier of reserve and aloofness between them. He was absolutely unapproachable these days!

  Mannie? Yes, perhaps, if she hadn’t known that Mannie already had enough with which to concern herself, in her fight against failing health.

  Carleen? No, most of all, not Carleen!

  Lindsay shied from the thought of a direct confrontation with anyone who could be capable of the dastardly deed of which she suspected her distant cousin. Carleen had demonstrated to Lindsay that she would stop at very little to gain her ends! She had shown that she could be completely and utterly ruthless—clever, too. She had somehow managed to unlock that cupboard at the store, had actually left the door ajar in order to tempt poor old Tommo beyond endurance, and—cleverest of all—had succeeded in locking it again and returning Lindsay’s keys to her room without coming under the slightest suspicion from anybody.

  When could she have done it?

  Lindsay, tossing and turning in sleepless torment, could only suppose that it must have been that day at lunch-time, when they had been together at the store. Carleen would have had time to run back with the keys and unlock the cupboard while Lindsay had been helping Mannie with the lunch. And? After lunch? Lindsay hated herself for thinking this way, but the whole thing added up, didn’t it?

  Carleen had prevailed upon her to do that hem before going back to the store. She had seen to it that Lindsay sat in her window-seat, from which the route to the store was invisible, and she had taken the keys from Lindsay’s own bedroom and relocked the cupboard. That peculiar serenity—smugness, Lindsay could call it now, in the light of what she knew!—had stemmed from the fact that Carleen realised, almost immediately, that her plan had half succeeded already. Doubtless she had inspected the contents of that cupboard to make sure there was nothing really lethal in it when she opened it, and when she returned, had noted the disappearance of the large purple flagon.

  It only remained to be patient, to wait. In time, her action was almost certain to rebound in the only possible quarter where blame could logically be laid—upon Lindsay herself!

  When morning came, Lindsay was thankful. She crawled out of bed, walked softly out on to the veranda—a wistful, unhappy figure in her thin cotton pyjamas.

  From the tank came a splash in the half light, and the birds rose screeching and chi
ttering from its banks and settled in the garden trees, shuffling their wings resentfully. Rod was having his morning bathe. Lindsay watched the dark head moving in the water through eyes that were suddenly misted over, so that the outline of the swimmer became blurred and wavy. They were out of sympathy now, she and that swimmer. They were poles apart in every way. Carleen had successfully seen to that!

  Lindsay returned to her room, pulled on her clothes, and went to breakfast, helped Mannie to clear the table, made her own and Carleen’s beds—Carleen refused to allow Sibbie and Bella into her room—and then took down her keys and started off for the cottage.

  Before she came around the corner near the blacksmith’s shop, Lindsay could hear the animated conversation that was taking place. As there was a certain amount of intermittent hammering and clanking going on as well, the talk almost amounted to a forthright exchange of shouts, so that Lindsay could not possibly have failed to hear it, even had she wished. And as she took in what was being said, she did wish—very much indeed! Artie and Mickie were the participants, and she didn’t like the gist of that conversation at all!

  ‘I’m tellin’ yer, Mick, it won’t do. She’s goin’ around like a cat wot’s got all the cream, and our little kitten ain’t even get scraps!’

  ‘You’re right, Artie, so help me, you are. But what can we do about it?’

  ‘Well, you ain’t done much ter shorten them odds, and that’s a dinkum fact. What in ruddy ’ell you was at, near doin’ ’er in altogether with a rakin’ tennis-ball in the eye, I can’t think. Why can’t yer play tennis more gentle, for Pete’s sake?’