The River is Down

by Lucy Walker

  The woman’s eyebrows went up. ‘That could be when the thousand-miler’s finished, boss. Prospectors back of the breakaway country sent in air-flash that it’s raining emus and wallabies up in the ranges. The creeks at the head of the river are flooding for miles around. We’re near marooned already.’

  ‘Rain everywhere, and not a drop round here,’ Nick said dryly. ‘Meantime, Mary, will you look after Miss Cindie …?’ He hesitated.

  ‘Brown!’ Mary, this time, finished for him. Then she laughed. ‘What kind of a name is that, Nick? Is she running from the tax department, or what?’

  ‘You ask Cindie. You have her from now to the dry-out ‒ whenever that will be. Take care of her, please.’

  He opened his own door, then walked round to open the one on Cindie’s side.

  ‘Have you a change of clothes in your bag, Cindie?’ he asked. Suddenly he was less hostile. Or did she imagine it? ‘Flan will bring your other things along when he turns up.’ His eyes met hers as she dropped to the ground. ‘Your car too,’ he added. ‘Thank you for the use of it. The company will replace all petrol and oil used. Any punctures caused by rough ground will be mended. Meantime can you manage with what’s in that carry-bag of yours?’

  ‘Yes thank you. It was good of you to rescue me. I’m grateful. I’m sorry to have put you to trouble.’ Cindie walked towards the doorway in which Mary stood, without looking at Nick again. She wondered if her manners, her perfunctory thanks, sounded inexcusable. It was something to do with the way they had talked over, past and beyond her, as if she were indeed a brumby, or twin foals: not a human being with a mind and a will and a heart of her own.

  ‘Come on,’ Mary said jerking her head sideways. Her apron was a fixture in her hands now. She glanced at Nick with raised eyebrows, then back to her guest. She was curious about Cindie but not really unkindly. ‘Guess you’ll be about ready for dinner: and you’re tired too. I can see that.’ She turned back to the outer world.

  ‘Good night, Nick,’ she called as, in his seat again, he started up the Land-Rover. ‘Eat well, sleep well, and see what the willi-willi whirls in to-morrow.’

  Cindie, from inside the door, did not hear Nick’s reply, but only the revving-up of the engine.

  What an awful noise a Land-Rover makes! The thought passed through her head in a sudden unexpected moment of desolation. The anticlimax at the end of a journey?

  Mary Deacon followed her guest into the room, looking at her curiously. The girl’s stillness and silence puzzled her. Cindie thought this examination was because she herself rated no different from that brumby and those foals. She was just something brought in, and her hostess was looking the new subject over.

  ‘I’m tired,’ she said apologetically, breaking the silence. ‘Dreadfully tired. I feel awful … I’m so sorry ‒’

  ‘Of course you’re tired.’ Mary wiped her hands on her apron all over again. ‘You’ve come a long way, I guess. From the other side of the river? The coast? Well, never mind, you don’t have to answer now, if you don’t want. Come and sit over here in this chair. It was just made for you, by the size of it. It has a nice long straight back. Sit there while I dish up the dinner. The children ought to be in, except they’re waiting to see what the cook up at the canteen’ll give them for sweets. Dessert I guess you call it where you come from. I always get the dessert from the left-overs at the men’s canteen. They have refrigeration up there. I’ve only fixed a canvas cooler here, for the time being. Keeps things cool, but not cold.’

  She went on talking as she rattled saucepans on the stove, then plates in the small oven.

  ‘Not much of a place, this, by your standards, I guess,’ she continued. ‘But it’s comfortable. What’s more ‒’ she turned and looked at Cindie again ‒ ‘it’s clean. I’m the cleanest camp care-all from here to the Nullabor, then back across the Gibson Desert and on to the Territory. I haven’t met anyone who’s said different yet.’

  Cindie, sitting in the chair now, came out of her daze.

  ‘Why, it’s wonderful!’ she agreed. ‘It’s so compact, and modern. You even have butane gas for your stove. I saw the cylinders outside ‒’

  She looked around her, aware now of all the contents of this strange little house. The corners of the walls were hinged, and so was the roof to the inner walls.

  Mary read her thoughts. She nodded assurance.

  ‘That’s right. The whole thing folds up and takes to pieces and gets loaded on the master-truck, all in half an hour. Cupboards and all. Have to see it to believe it, don’t you?’

  ‘Why do they call this place a construction camp?’ Cindie asked, still only halfway out of her trance. ‘It’s more like a town. A sort of white and silver town, mostly on wheels. Not many trees ‒’

  ‘Ah ha! I picked the one white-gum clump for me. They call those trees black hearts up hereabouts. Under that white bark the tree trunk is coal black.’ Mary, turned now, stirred a large pot with a great spoon. ‘One thing about being the care-all. There’s privileges. Nick Brent sees to that!’

  ‘The care-all?’

  ‘Someone to take care of the bits and pieces. You know ‒ strained muscles, sore throats, letters home from someone who’s broken his wrist. The mostest is letters and forms to the tax department. You know what? Up here the paymaster deducts a single man’s rate of tax for anyone who hasn’t proved he’s married and got a family, till he’s proved it. Does that take correspondence? And how! Some can take care of themselves and write a sensible letter, but you’d be surprised the number that don’t know they have to get Form LSLOD from the central tax headquarters before they come up here. Then fill it in for the camp paymaster to sign and send down again. Then it comes back again to be counter-signed by the applicant. That’s because north of Twenty-Six the tax is minimal only. Sick benefits is the next bother. There’s only one in two ever brings a sick-benefits form to begin with. Then half of them don’t know what sort of sickness to claim they’ve got when they have a pulled muscle or a twisted tendon. Yes, Cindie Brown. Hospital benefits is the nextest to tax to keep a care-all busy.’

  ‘Are you a nurse? Qualified, I mean?’ Cindie was asking questions out of a daze of tiredness.

  ‘No. You wouldn’t get any nurse to come up here on these construction camps. Too far. Too lonely. That’s why they have people like me. The care-all. Mind you, on most camps it’s a man, but on this one it’s me. I’m the best care-all on the thousand-miler, and the length and breadth of the border country. So they put up with the fact that I’m female, though in principle they don’t approve. Beside, I have two children to bring up. And educate. Single women aren’t any good. They go home to Mother, or get mixed up with six men instead of one. Many of these chaps up here are single or lonely.’

  She swung her eyes round and looked at the girl. ‘You know what I mean? Lonely! Then comes trouble ‒’

  ‘Nick Brent didn’t like bringing me here. Was that why?’

  ‘That’d be why.’

  Mary had begun spooning helpings of stew from the big pot on to plates which she had lifted from the oven.

  Suddenly the air was rent by a klaxon call.

  ‘There goes the “bell”,’ Mary said, amiable now. ‘In a minute or two the children might oblige by coming home. The cook up at the canteen will be giving them the sweets about now ‒’ She broke off, spoon poised in air as she looked at Cindie. ‘Or do you call it dessert?’

  ‘Sweets,’ said Cindie promptly. She had an awful feeling she would have been doomed to the classification of brumby, or a pair of foals, if she had presumed to such a word as dessert.

  ‘Good for you,’ said Mary, and went back to ladling out stew.

  There was a short silence.

  ‘It was kind of you ‒’ Cindie began diffidently. ‘I mean, to take me in. Nick Brent didn’t exactly ask you if you minded.’

  ‘Don’t take any notice of his manner to begin with,’ Mary advised, now putting the laden plates in the oven to keep warm.
‘He’s like that when he has worry on his mind. Goes sort of quiet. Makes snap decisions, and gives snap orders. Anyhow he knows it’s my job, as care-all, to take in the lost and the wandering.’

  She straightened her back and turned round.

  ‘Guess I’m putting it all wrong,’ she said, more gently. ‘Don’t be offended. I’m jolly glad to see another young person. I get that tired of men. Sometimes the men’s wives make a short visit. I don’t get tired of Nick Brent, of course. He’s different. He’s the boss, and a good one so long as you mind his orders.’

  ‘Thank you for giving me advice.’ Cindie smiled as she said this for she was beginning to feel better, and to understand Mary. The tall woman with the grey streak in her hair, and strong-featured face, was basically a kind person. More than with Nick Brent, the kindness was beginning to come through.

  ‘You’ll be plenty useful,’ Mary said bluntly. ‘You wait till dinner’s over at the canteen, and see what comes up for help about this, and help about that.’ She paused. ‘Not for you to-night, though. You’re dead beat. When you came in I thought you just had a white face naturally. Now I can see you’re really what you said you were ‒ dog-tired.’ She stopped to listen. ‘Here come the children! We’ll get dinner over quickly, then I’ll put up the camp stretcher in the utility room, and you can tuck in for the night. To-morrow we’ll talk things over.’ She paused again, struck with remorse. ‘My goodness, right now I guess you’d like a shower. There’s towels and soap on the shelf in the shower-room at the back of the house. You go and find things for yourself, Cindie Brown. Then I can get on with feeding the kids.’

  Cindie found her way to the back of the house, and the tiny, compact, but efficient, shower-room. She stripped off and took a shower. She’d brought her overnight bag in with her so she was able to put on a fresh cotton dress and add a little make-up to her face, and do her hair smoothly. It did her morale good. When she came back into the living-room, the children were already at the table. They goggled at her.

  ‘She must be a princess, or something,’ the little girl said to her mother.

  ‘Well, since you’ve never seen a princess, Myrtle, Cindie Brown can pass for that meanwhile. Cindie, that’s Myrtle. This straw-haired fellow with the freckles is Malcolm. More often he’s called Jinx. You’ll find out why, soon enough. Say hullo to Cindie, you two children, then hop into that dinner.’

  The children, awed by the appearance of this new visitor, went on with their meal. Cindie, try as she would, could not get another word out of them.

  ‘Give up trying,’ their mother advised. ‘To-morrow, when the cork’s out, they won’t stop talking. You wait and see!’

  The next morning, when Cindie woke, she could remember very little of that evening meal, or of the children, or of what had followed afterwards.

  She had been so tired she had sat in that living-room as someone barely existing. It had been like driving through that dust with Nick Brent. She was somewhere, yet nowhere. He had been there in the seat beside her; yet not with her.

  The first morning when she woke there was such a silence all around, she knew that Mary Deacon and her children were not in the house. Probably there were few men, if any, left in the construction camp. From her window she could see the caravan-houses standing so still, shining hard in the hot sun. It might have been a dead town.

  Then, as she dried herself after her shower, came the sound of a heavy machine starting up over by the main square, followed by a fast hauler or bulldozer, thundering and grumbling away, growing quieter as distance intervened.

  When Cindie had finished dressing ‒ in slacks and blouse again ‒ she went into the living-room. She had never seen anything so clean and neat. Nothing was in sight on the stove and wall benches, or table. Cindie wondered if Mrs. Deacon and family had packed up, and like the mopokes of the night, flown noiselessly away. Then she saw the note left on the top of the stove.

  ‘Make yourself a cup of tea, love. You’ll find everything you want in the cupboards. Bread, jam, etc. Put all away as you find, or certain calamity will fall if the boss does his morning rounds.’

  So that was it! The camp was run on the ‘boat drill’ system and there could be morning inspections.

  It was not so much Mary’s note, as memory of that quiet penetrating glance of Nick Brent’s that made Cindie do exactly as instructed about the kitchen utensils and her plate, cup and saucer. She returned twice to her camp stretcher, and overnight bag now stowed under the bed, to make sure that the first was perfectly made ‒ not one wrinkle on the cover ‒ and the bag zippered up with all traces of cosmetics hidden inside it. She wiped the shower walls and floor. Then she rinsed out the cleaning cloths, yesterday’s shirt and slacks, and hung them neatly, in a perfectly straight line on the wire outside under the gum trees.

  She went right through the small compact house again as if its tidiness was her own responsibility.

  Only when she was certain that all was perfect, even to straightening the curtain over the one window in the living-room, did she venture through the doorway.

  There, neatly stacked side by side under the lean-to shelter, were her two cases, her rolled sleeping bag and picnic Esky, from the car.

  Nice to think my car is safely back again, she thought. At least, I suppose it is. It was nowhere in sight.

  Once she was outside in the brilliant hot sun she realised the silence was not so absolute after all. Somewhere over in the square another engine, a quiet one, was thrumming consistently. She guessed it would be a power engine and generator supplying power and electricity.

  Where did she go from now? And what do?

  She had to find the boss’s office, if there was such a thing. Somewhere over there amongst those rows and rows of neat white mobile houses, Mary and her children must be. They couldn’t just vanish into thin air.

  Cindie walked across the wide stretch of red earth, patched here and there with tussock grass and spinifex, towards the near end of the canteen. At least the cook would not have gone to wherever it was the men went with their business of building a thousand miles of road. Where was the road, anyway? Not in sight!

  She climbed the steps of the canteen and stood in the opening. The shutters were up all round, making this big place more like an open-air pavilion.

  The two children, Myrtle and Jinx, sat side by side at a table on one side of the canteen. They were writing in exercise books. By them were two stacks of books. In front of them, on the table, stood a lovely gleaming radio set ‒ now silent. They were obviously doing their lessons. Presently perhaps they would tune in to the School of the Air.

  They sneaked tiny quick glances at Cindy, then ducked their heads down again, even more quickly.

  Still shy? Cindie wondered. Then decided not to intrude on them yet. She might put them off her altogether.

  Mary Deacon was sitting at a long table on the other side; one man was beside her, and two others were on chairs nearby as if waiting for her attention.

  Only the men, all three quite young, really looked up. Mary was too busy with pen and paper and piles of forms. The men looked away quickly, shyly. Then back again with slow welcoming grins.

  Cindie thought of the effect she had had on the children and wondered just what was the effect on these men. They wouldn’t often see a young woman on the thousand-miler.

  The man to whom Mary Deacon had been attending took a form from her, and as he came down the long floor of the canteen, Cindie could see he was now busy pinning a cheque to the form.

  So this was one of those who had not known, before he came up north of Twenty-Six, what forms to bring; or how to fill them in if he did bring them.

  Then she recognised the cheque book in the man’s hand. She smiled. It was almost like seeing an old friend. That cheque book, pink and blue, was issued by the same bank as her own. She, and this man ‒ strangers to this moment ‒ were linked way back thousands of miles by one banking company.

  Funny how companion-li
ke it seemed!

  She smiled almost too readily, then blushed and looked away quickly. He wouldn’t understand what had brought that happy look of recognition to her face. Neither would the other two men waiting now for Mary Deacon to attend to their problems. They were all aware of her as she stood there by the opening, her face rosy with that blush. They were all staring at her; including Mary.

  Cindie could have wrung her hands. She had seemed too friendly too soon in a camp inhabited by more than a hundred single men.

  In a flash she understood, more than Mary’s words last night, why Nick Brent and Flan had not been so welcoming when they had picked her off the island between the billabong and the river.

  She bit her lip. She began to walk down the length of the canteen; it seemed like the distance of a vast ballroom floor.

  ‘I was only just ‒’ She wanted to explain to Mary but knew she couldn’t in front of the remaining two men.

  Then came another annihilating thought.

  That cheque book! The same as her own! She had paid for her petrol at Baanya Station with a cheque bearing the signature ‒ Cynthia Davenport. Worse, the cheque forms were over-stamped with her printed name, and her account file number. Jim Vernon couldn’t help but read her real name on that cheque.

  She had let Nick Brent, and Flan and Mary think her name was Brown. Even if she explained now, she was untruthful as a person from the word go!

  ‘I … I thought I would offer to help …’ She answered Mary’s surprised and doubtfully appraising stare with an over-anxious expression. ‘But first … that is … is there any way I could send a radio message? I mean, I know people talk over the air at certain scheduled times. Would I be allowed to do that?’ She was too hurried. She was making Mary suspicious, perhaps.

  ‘You’d better ask Nick Brent about that,’ Mary said. ‘He doesn’t allow a free-for-all. There’d be chaos if he did; and no work done back on the road. The men can take turns on the evening session, but only for urgent messages. They’re allowed one personal call a week.’

  She was staring at Cindie. Not quite so critically now, but curious.