by Amanda Doyle
A CHANGE FOR CLANCY
Amanda Doyle
Orphaned Clancy and her little sister, Tamara, were perfectly happy on their Australian sheep station home, and Clancy in particular was not pleased when their trustees decided to install a manager to run the place for them.
She was even less pleased when Jed Seaforth arrived...
CHAPTER 1
WHEN Clancy Minnow’s mother died, she almost wished she could die too. Only of course she couldn’t—she was only nineteen, and anyway, there was Tamara.
Tamara was her little sister, eleven years old, with spindly legs like a young foal, two sandy pigtails and freckles. Tamara was a bit wild—or “out of hand” as her Sydney godmother rather more strongly put it, with a wash-my-hands-of-you inflection in her voice. To be fair to her, she hadn’t asked to be Tamara’s godmother—she had been invited, which is a very different thing, and the invitation had been issued by her very best friend of schooldays, the gentle, sweet, unassuming Helen, Tamara’s mother. It was an understandable assumption on any prospective godmother’s part that the tiny babe, lying there blinking innocently with its quiff of fine coppery hair, would take after its mild mother, and render very little trouble to anyone in life, but such was not the case. Tamara probably took after their father, who had been a dynamic character indeed—adventurous, not to say reckless, a popular, gay young man with a devil-may-care approach to life. Helen’s school friend had never met him, for by the time Tamara’s christening came about, he had been dead for six weeks—he had lost his final courageous struggle against a sudden attack of broncho-pneumonia, and so Tamara never saw her father at all. Clancy was eight years old at the time, and she had therefore many and dear memories of her teasing, indulgent parent.
Their mother was never the same after that. Some people said her heart was broken—Clancy had heard them, when they didn’t know she was around. Whatever truth there was in that assertion, Mrs. Minnow had never been strong, and the struggle to carry on a vast sheep property, with all the attendant hazards of outback life thrown in, and two fatherless daughters to rear as well, had been too much for her, and after a prolonged illness, she had left them.
She couldn’t have managed, even for those eleven years, had it not been for Johnny Raustmann.
Johnny was the overseer, a sort of unofficial overseer. He had been at Bunda Downs ever since Clancy was a small child, and when Todd Minnow died, his frail young widow had turned more and more to Johnny for support. It had seemed the natural thing to do.
He was a reserved, dour man. Probably he would now be in his early thirties, and he had the sort of drive and energy that go with humble beginnings and strong ambitions. He was dark—good-looking, in most ways, if you liked the thick-set type. He was an excellent horseman, athletic and strong. He had pleasantly even features, and a well-shaped head which bespoke intelligence, and his claim to handsomeness was spoiled only by his eyes, which were disappointingly small and set just a little bit too close together. They were dark, too, almost black in fact, and uncommunicative. They were thoughtful eyes, the sort you would expect in a silent man like Johnny, but they seldom had much humour in them, and you never, ever, saw them soften—not for any reason at all.
Clancy often thought he took life very seriously.
Life was serious, of course. No one knew that better than Clancy.
But she couldn’t imagine Johnny ever having been lighthearted and young, and he had changed so little in appearance in his years on Bunda Downs that she couldn’t imagine him ever becoming old and a little more mellow, either. His manners, especially at the table, left something to be desired, but there was no question that he was experienced, clever and efficient, with an undoubted air of authority about him.
He didn’t fraternise much with the others, he wasn’t “one of the boys,” and they didn’t question his promotion when it came. Maybe they were even relieved when he moved his belongings from the huts where they slept, and took for his own the bookkeeper’s cottage, a few hundred yards from the main homestead. He’d told Helen Minnow not to bother getting a replacement for the book-keeper who left when Todd died, and she was glad, because things weren’t easy, and it certainly meant one man less to pay.
Even so, Clancy and Tamara hadn’t any particular love for Johnny Raustmann, but neither did they dislike him.
Their feelings were completely negative where he was concerned, at first. He didn’t inspire affection, even though they respected him. They soon found out that, so long as they were not “meddlesome kids” (which he couldn’t abide) and kept out of his path, and didn’t go near his bungalow, he really took very little notice of them, and life proceeded smoothly.
The only other people about the homestead were the three station-hands who lived down in the men’s quarters, and a couple of aboriginal stockmen. The latter occupied the rough bark huts down near the creek, and their lubras sometimes used to help Clancy’s mother in the house, when they weren’t attending to their own babies—their “tarweenas”—or sluicing their gaudy washing in the stream. The present “boys” had been on Bunda Downs for quite some time, and their names were Snowball and Jackie. Sometimes, in summer, the creek ceased to flow, the holes became stagnant, or dried up altogether, and then the black “boys” and their wives and families were apt to “go walkabout.” They just quietly disappeared, sometimes for a few weeks, sometimes for longer, occasionally for ever. Maybe they followed the water; maybe they got a call to visit some tribal relatives; but wherever they went, one soon learned to accustom oneself to their sudden disappearances, and if they did not return, others soon filled their places.
Bunda Downs was what could be described as a “pretty big place.” That is, it stretched as far as the eye could see—and much, much farther. It was mostly flat plains country, with few fences, but the artesian bores which had been: sunk in numerous strategic spots controlled the grazings of the stock to a large extent. Some of the bore-water was slightly brackish and sour, but water was water once you got out into those parts, and fortunately the rambling, white-roofed homestead was blessed with an abundant supply, of top quality. There were also numerous galvanised rain-water tanks about the place, and another enormous “tank” excavated out of the ground at the back of the house. Except for the windmill at one end, it looked like an oblong, brown swimming-pool, and as such it had been used by the children ever since they were tiny. In fact, with the tank and the creek at their disposal, they could swim like eels from the time they were four years old, just as they could stick like burrs to even the most fractious horse.
Bunda Downs was separated from its neighbouring property by the Peacock Range, rising on its southwest boundary as a rugged mountain outcrop, whose picturesque blue shadows and vivid orange rocks were incredible to behold in the hot inland dawns and sunsets. The Peacock was a bare half-morning’s ride from the homestead, and relieved the otherwise monotonous view of plains from the windows.
Clancy’s neighbours were so far away that she didn’t see them very often, but they were there—that was what mattered—and she could always tune in to the morning sessions on the transceiver set and swop news with everyone. This was aptly called the “galah” session after the pink-and-grey Australian parrots of that name, and the chattering, yabbering and “ear-bashing” that went on might indeed have reminded one of a squawking flock of birds, except for the fact that only one person spoke at a time—everyone else listened!
Clancy had had the benefit of a boarding-school education in Adelaide, but she had never seen much of city life, and had proved a difficult subject to tame, although the headmistress had considered her promising “young lady” material. Perhaps she just hadn’t been there long enough to be “made over,” and poor Ta
mara wouldn’t be able to go at all. The last two years had been bad ones for Bunda Downs, and a raging drought and reduced wool-cheque had necessitated Clancy’s removal from the seminary for young ladies soon after her sixteenth birthday. She had taken over the household responsibilities from her ailing mother cheerfully, glad to be home in the vast open country where she belonged. Soon, though, she’d had to nurse her gentle parent through her last distressing illness. Clancy had done it with all the love and tender devotion of her generous heart, trying at the same time to prepare her freckle-faced little tomboy sister for the parting that was to come. It was no wonder that, once it was all over, Clancy was left a thin, pale shadow of her former cheery self.
Listlessly, she read the note of sympathy from Tammy’s godmother.
“I am shocked to read of Helen’s death,” it said. “I send to you and Tamara my deepest sympathy. I would come out there and see you, but I am getting married shortly. I suppose, at your age, Clancy, a late marriage such as mine must be difficult to understand. Your dear mother would have been so pleased for me, I know. He is a charming man, a widower, and no one knew better than poor Helen the loneliness when one loses one’s life’s partner. I shall be able to give Edward the companionship he has missed these last few years. My fond love to you and Tamara, and write to me sometimes, Clancy. I do worry about you two girls, left alone so young. Ever your affectionate Aunt Elizabeth.”
Afterwards, Johnny Raustmann had taken charge of things, and she found herself leaning on him as her mother had done before her.
“Things will just go on as before, Clancy,” he told her. “You attend to the house, and leave the outside to me.”
Clancy had noticed for some time now that Johnny resented her riding out on the run, even though she did it casually, but for the past months she had been bound to the house the whole time anyway.
Tamara, too, knew that he disliked her “poking around on horseback,” as he’d once accused her of doing. But, being Tamara, she didn’t care. She just went on “poking,” in all the places Johnny wasn’t, plaits swinging, trousered legs dangling carelessly, her hat pulled well down over her freckled brow, her water-bag thumping on her horse’s rump as she galloped him the last stretch home once the sun had gone down and it was cooler.
Tamara had recovered from her mother’s death much sooner than poor Clancy. That was understandable, for Mrs. Minnow had been ill for so long that, in Tamara’s eyes, she had virtually died long ago—the real mother, the one who laughed and joked and chased her round the veranda, had gone, and Tamara had never really got to know the fretful, bedridden stranger who took her place. Clancy had protected and cushioned little Tammy against the hurtful changes illness had wrought. She had borne the brunt of the anxiety herself, and Tamara constituted an additional worry for her elder sister, did she but know it. She was an irrepressible, lawless little scamp, and Clancy sometimes thought sadly that what she really missed was the curbing influence of paternal discipline.
Yes, it would take a man—and quite a man—to lick Tammy into shape, she admitted ruefully. The men on the place weren’t good for Tamara. They egged her on in every daring deed, encouraged every madcap exploit. They loved her dearly, of course— that was the trouble! They loved her snub-nosed, mischievous face, her wiry, athletic figure that could crouch patiently for hours on end coaxing yabbies into an old jam-tin in the creek, or cling meltingly to a horse that bucked its hardest. It didn’t matter to them that she couldn’t always remember what twelve elevens made, or that her attempts at long division were apt to go on for pages and pages without ever arriving at a conclusion at all. But it did to Clancy! And, Clancy never tired of pointing out, it would to Tamara, too, some day. Only Tamara wasn’t remotely interested in some day. She only cared about today, this day, now, the present.
Clancy spoke to Johnny Raustmann about it sometimes, but beyond assuring her that the place couldn’t stand any more fancy boarding-school fees, he didn’t really seem to care. Clancy had a feeling, sometimes, that he wasn’t even hearing what she was saying, although while she was speaking his too-small eyes roved over her face, her lips, her neck, down to where the soft rise and fall of her shabby shirt gave a hint of the shapely, girlish figure beneath. She could not have said why, but his avid gaze made her feel distinctly uncomfortable, and less and less did she ask his opinion about anything if it meant being alone with him. That meant that Tamara had to be there too, and as this particular problem concerned Tamara, and it was preferable not to discuss it in front of her, it was automatically and inevitably shelved.
Clancy just couldn’t bring herself, even for Tamara’s sake, to have any intimate tete-a-tete with Johnny Raustmann. It was a purely instinctive decision, for she knew pathetically little about men except from the platonic aspect. She had a natural, open manner with them all—the same manner precisely as with the schoolgirl companions she had known, with her mother and Tammy, and she counted the station-hands among her best friends, and didn’t feel the least bit self-conscious when she happened to find she was alone with any of them. That was why she couldn’t understand the nasty, premonitory shudder that ran through her slim body when she was with Johnny Raustmann, but she recognised the fact, and carefully avoided any situation that was likely to cause it.
Clancy would have liked to be outside working on the place much more, now that she was free to do it, but she bowed to Johnny’s wishes, and beyond a refreshing ride in the early morning, or a gallop with Tamara when the worst of the day’s heat was past, she mostly stayed near the house. Clad in her fitting, faded jeans and ancient shirt, she cooked and scrubbed, sewed, washed and ironed. Johnny Raustmann came to the main homestead for his meals, and after breakfast was over, and she had made her own and Tamara’s beds, dusted the rooms and swept the verandas, she would set her young sister to work at her correspondence lessons which came each month in the post, and go down to Johnny’s bungalow to tidy up.
She always waited to make sure that Johnny wasn’t around, and even then she didn’t dawdle. It was a nice little house and easy to keep neat, although Johnny didn’t try very , hard to keep it that way. Clancy was used by now to picking up dirty shirts and socks, rescuing a sodden towel from the floor near the shower, taking his shaving brush out of the mug of soapy water where he often left it, and restoring the rooms to some semblance of order. There was another spare bedroom as well as his own, and Clancy occasionally flicked over it to keep the dust down, but the office she never went into. Johnny had expressly asked her not to go dusting around in there—there were loose papers that he didn’t want muddled, and he knew exactly where everything was, and he wanted it to stay that way. When Johnny said that sort of thing, you knew by the abruptness of his voice and the rather menacing look that accompanied it, that he really meant what he said. So of course you obeyed.
The door wasn’t locked, but Clancy, although she had peeped in now and then, never actually entered. Surprisingly, it was the tidiest room in the bungalow. There were not, as she had imagined, untidy piles of papers littering the place, but a roll-top desk with its lid kept down, an assortment of files hanging on hooks and a green metal cabinet in one corner. Further than to note those few details, she didn’t linger.
Often, when Clancy returned, it was to find Tammy’s chair and table deserted—the bird had flown. Mostly, she didn’t come back until evening, ravenous for a cooked meal, because all she’d had with her was some fruit and a couple of carelessly slapped-together tomato sandwiches—and her water-bag, of course. No one ever went anywhere without that. Clancy’s reproaches seldom reached their target, so busy would Tamara be regaling her elder sister with her day’s exploits. Sometimes she returned with a trophy or two—a goanna’s egg or a piece of pretty rock, a gaily-coloured bird’s feather or a frond of desert shrub. Sometimes she just pottered down at the creek with the black gins and children, and now and then she made for the Peacock, to explore the thrilling clefts and crannies, the narrow gullies with their overhangin
g ledges, and the shaded stream that wound its way through. That was another world to Tammy—a cool, dark, secret world.
Clancy didn’t worry about her, because Tamara could look after herself. Her saddlebag was well equipped, she knew every foothold and path to her secret hideouts, and she was too good a bushman to ever get slewed, or lost. The only thing Clancy worried about was The Lessons! Every month she had to post back to the educational authorities the completed papers, and every month, when the time came to post them, they were nowhere near completion. Clancy would have to sit with Tamara then, hour by hour, while Tammy chewed violently on the end of her pencil, counted laboriously on her fingers, scribbled at some highly imaginative and improbable composition, or simply wrinkled her freckled nose and looked vaguely out over the sunburnt plains.
“Oh, come on, Tamara, I can’t wait here all day!” Clancy would be driven to pleading in exasperation, whereupon Tamara would say agreeably, “You go, then, Clan. I don’t really need you here, you know.” But Clancy forced herself to stay, because she knew that as soon as her back was turned, Tamara would disappear all over again.
When the reports came back, they nearly always said, “More time must be devoted...” or “Deeper thought necessary...” and poor, anxious Clancy would know they were getting nowhere. They were obviously going to go on and on like this until she was an old woman, and Tammy, middle-aged by then of course, would have her plaits done up in a middle-aged bun, and suck her pencils in a slightly more decorous fashion, and still not know the answers. Clancy giggled a little hysterically, and then sobered. After all, it was a sobering thought!
Clancy couldn’t know it then, but she was soon to have other things to think about, and they were to be just as sobering.
The first news came in a letter, brought by the small plane which delivered around the station properties every week. It was a brief letter, and it was headed, in fine, glossy, embossed print, “Parsins and Snell, Solicitors, Adelaide.” It began “Dear Miss Minnow,” and then it said, “I have been instructed by the trustees of your late mother’s estate to make contact with you, with a personal interview in mind, for the purpose of discussing the afore-mentioned trustees’ wishes. As I understand you have a small sister, who could possibly not readily be left alone should you yourself undertake the journey to Adelaide, I have arranged instead to come to Bunda Downs myself. I have taken the opportunity of a charter-flight on Friday next, 28th inst., and I trust it will not inconvenience you to give me accommodation for one night, after which I shall return to the city by the mail plane on Saturday. I am, Yours very truly, L. L. Parsins.”