by Amanda Doyle
‘Yes, darling, of course I’m coming,’ replied Rennie reassuringly. Somehow she even managed a stiff, awkward smile, and over the top of Magda’s small head her eyes sought Chad Sandasen’s. They were already fixed upon her with a look that was green and inscrutable.
‘Cheer up,’ he murmured sleekly, as Magda ran ahead. ‘Three months soon passes!’
In some inexplicable way, that remark had a curiously challenging and bracing effect, just when her resolution was threatening to wobble. As she walked by his side to the waiting taxi, Rennie felt her spine stiffening, her chin tilting, in response.
CHAPTER FOUR
Rennie had to move nearer to Magda to allow Chad Sandasen into the taxi beside her, since both the boot and the front seat beside the driver were taken up with luggage—their own, and a masculine-looking rawhide case which Enrico had brought out and placed beside the rest.
Her eyes slid sideways, took in the pale drill trousers, the many-pocketed khaki shirt of the man who was of necessity sitting much too near to her for Rennie’s liking.
The shirt was informal, short-sleeved, and she was acutely aware of the muscular strength of those impossibly brown, bare forearms as Chad Sandasen rested his hands forward on his knees in the confined space. Beside his, Rennie’s own slender limbs, of whose tan she had been justly proud back there in England, appeared ridiculously pale by comparison.
At the throat of his shirt was a cravat of fine cotton, brightly printed, carelessly tied.
‘At the risk of interrupting your inspection, Renata, may I point out the Harbour Bridge over there? And that odd-shaped building on the water-line is our new Opera House—both landmarks worthy of a tourist’s attention, I should say.’
‘I—oh, yes, I see them. Thank you.’ She had been caught, and the knowledge made her suddenly shy. ‘I can believe that you’re a countryman today, in—I—I mean—in those clothes,’ she muttered uncomfortably, reddening as she saw the way that eyebrow shot up, and the tiny lights of amusement began to leap in his narrowing green look.
He shrugged.
‘You had me labelled as a city slicker, had you? I’m sorry to have disappointed you, Renata.’ A grin. ‘You’re obviously at home with the type.’
She bit her lip, flushing angrily. If that was meant as a dig at Keith, she was going to do the dignified thing, and ignore it.
‘I can be forgiven for assuming that you were a city man, I think,’ she defended herself, ‘since the only communications I had from you were all from Sydney. And even when we arrived yesterday, Mr. Krantz told us that you were “out of town”. That, surely, implied that you were normally to be found in town?’
‘I spend a certain amount of time in cities, one way and another, so Krantz’s implication was not entirely unfounded. I regret the misunderstanding, however. I was actually down at the Cup for a few days.’
‘The Cup? What’s that?’
‘The Melbourne Cup. You must have heard of it, surely?’
‘A—a competition of some sort?’ she hazarded.
‘Good God, girl! A race!’
‘A horse race?’ Rennie glared at him with open disapproval. ‘Gambling? A lonely property at the back of beyond, no wife, no experience of children, and now a—a self-confessed gambler! And you have the nerve to think that you’re better qualified than I to—’
‘Sh!’ He frowned meaningfully in Magda’s direction, but his eyes were mocking her at the same time. ‘My dear Renata, the Melbourne Cup is one of the most famous races in the whole world. A two-mile handicap that has produced some legendary accomplishments in staying power. Haven’t you ever heard of the mighty Phar Lap? The magnificent Carbine? The indomitable Peter Pan? Rain Lover? Delta? Or that gallant, wonderful little mare, Light Fingers, who won the crowd even when she lost the race?’ He shook his head reproachfully. ‘It’s not a form of gambling. It’s an institution. It’s patriotism, nothing less!’
‘Patriotism! You can’t dismiss it as easily as that,’ Rennie told him scornfully, quelling her conscience as she recalled the number of times that she herself had attended fashionable Ascot in the company of one or another of her numerous male admirers.
A rather nasty gleam in his eye made her wonder if he could possibly have read her mind.
‘Your puritanical reactions interest me, Renata,’ he murmured silkily. ‘I’m tempted to confess to various of my other vices, just for the hell of watching your response, do you know that!’ And then, offhandedly—’What else did Krantz have to tell you?’
‘Oh, nothing, really,’ she replied airily. Just that everyone calls you ‘Chad’, she could have told him, but refrained. Just that you’re the Boss, in spite of them calling you that. At the top of the pyramid. Like a Pharaoh with his slaves, whatever Mr. Krantz might have said about ‘respect’ and ‘affection’.
‘You’ll see what I mean in time,’ Mr. Krantz had said. ‘You’ll be calling him Chad yourself.’
And she was calling him Chad, already, just like all those people from here to the Gulf, wherever that was. She could concede that particular point to Mr. Krantz willingly enough, but never the other, never that bit about respect and affection. You didn’t feel respect and affection for a man who had dragged you half around the world in that high-handed manner, who had deceived you, spied on you, teased you, thwarted you, and finally forced you to eat the breakfast you didn’t want so that you’d be fit enough to travel in his beastly little aeroplane to his horrid big property in the horrid, even bigger Outback.
The beastly little aeroplane turned out to be a silverwinged and graceful beauty.
Chad Sandasen pulled off his cravat, threw it on to a rack, unbuttoned his shirt to the waist, and stowed the gear. Then he saw his passengers strapped into their seats comfortably, and made the routine pre-flight checks with quiet efficiency.
And then they were airborne, ascending into the wide blue, cloudless skies of the Southern Cross, and Rennie could only suppose that they must seem to the ground-dweller like a mere distant silver speck in the bright azure dome overhead.
Certainly, from above, eternity itself appeared to be spread out below—the never-ending vastness of the great Australian hinterland in all its varying wonder. Towering, jungly ranges with plunging purple gullies and crumbling russet gorges; patchwork quilts of crop and orchard; quiet rivers and willow-fringed creeks; barren stretches of plain, the dotted saltbush, the steely blue-bush, the lonely gibber; thirsty channels that fossicked amongst parched mosaics of cracked mud; the claypan deserts; then the saltbush again, and stunted stands of mulga; in and out over belah and brigalow. For a time, the railway, with tiny sidings, infrequently spaced, and the isolated fettler’s hut; wells and windmills; bores and ground-tanks and turkey-nest dams; the mulga again.
And then—Barrindilloo.
Rennie could see the name quite clearly beneath them, painted in large black lettering on a long galvanized roof. They descended to the adjacent airstrip, bumped gently over the hard-baked ground, finally stopped, and as she and Magda were helped down from the plane, the heat waves seemed to rise up from the earth and beat at her face, with noiseless, relentless bufferings.
Rennie gasped. She felt hot and tired and wilted, and the defiance had momentarily gone out of her. She realized that her wool jersey outfit had been a mistake. It clung and prickled, and tiny rivulets of perspiration ran down her skin underneath it. Chad, on the other hand, appeared not to even notice the temperature. She looked away from his tanned, hair-covered barrel of chest, exposed by the opened safari-shirt, to the man who had walked out of the nearby hangar and over to the strip to meet them.
Another khaki figure, in sagging trousers and the same elastic-sided stockman’s boots as Chad Sandasen’s own. He was elderly, with a heavily weathered countenance and shrewd, dark eyes. A dependable sort of man. The level-headed type.
But—just one man, thought Rennie. No other people at all. Where, then, were all the friends whom Chad had promised for Magda? Was it ju
st another of his calculated and shameless deceptions?
‘ ’Day, Chad. ’Ow was it, then? Someone give yer the good oil, did they?’
‘The Cup?’ Chad’s lean face broke into a grin. He had reached into the cockpit for his wide-brimmed hat, which he now clapped down over his eyes at such an angle that all Rennie could see was the tip of his nose and that readily curving mouth. ‘Not bad, Murtie. How did it go here?’
‘Bennie won the sweep, the lucky cow. I drew Black Bandetto m’self. Of all the crook breaks a bloke can get! I never did trust a black horse, any’ow, and ’e finished last, like I might’ve guessed. G’day, ma’am’—This last remark was addressed to Rennie herself. It was accompanied by a courteous touch of gnarled fingers to the brim of his own wide-brimmed felt—a slightly battered replica of Chad’s and a solemn wink in Magda’s direction.
‘Miss Bentmore, Murtie. I’m sure she won’t object to you calling her Renata. Murtie is my head stockman,’ he went on to explain to the newcomers, ‘and we all use first names out here.’
‘And this here’s Magda, Chad? Reckon she’s got her pa’s eyes, ain’t she! The same blue as what Neil’s were, eh?’
‘Maybe, Murt.’ The curling mouth tightened suddenly. Chad Sandasen bent down, picked up the little girl, lifted her into his arms in a single easy, sweeping movement. ‘Let’s have a look at you, Magda.’
The child submitted to a critical inspection as those strangely penetrating green eyes roved her face.
‘Blue as periwinkles, aren’t they, scrap?’ His fingers chucked her chin playfully, and then ran gently, consideringly, along the angry, puckered lines of those thin, fine scars. ‘And these will soon go, Magda. The sun and the clean, dry air will see to that! Very soon the marks will heal and fade, and you’ll be the prettiest little poppet in the whole wide world, do you know that?’
He had spoken quite naturally, had chosen actually to draw attention to Magda’s disfigurement, rather than pretend that it did not exist. Rennie felt indignation welling up inside her at his tactlessness. He was a brutal man, she knew, but surely he could have curbed his sadistic tendencies in the child’s presence?
Now she held her breath, a tightness inside her as she suffered on Magda’s behalf.
To her surprise, Magda beamed.
‘Will I really be pretty, Chad?’ she asked, doubtfully, wistfully, hopefully.
‘Of course. Haven’t I just said so?’ His white, crooked teeth showed fleetingly in his swarthily tanned face. Rennie still could not see his eyes, only the square line of his jaw and the brown base of his throat as he brought the little girl s fingers up to the side of his lean, clean-shaven chm. ‘See, I have one too. Right down there, but you’ve got to look hard to spot it, because the sun healed it all up just as it will yours.’
And then she saw, as Magda was seeing, the thin, jagged seam that ran from Chad Sandasen’s ear, right down the side of his cheek. It must have been an ugly wound at the time, for even now the line had a ragged edge to it at the jaw-line and then continued for a couple of inches down the side of the neck. For all that, it was barely discernible unless one looked closely as Magda was doing right now.
Her small fingers followed it to its conclusion near Chad s khaki shirt-collar.
‘How did you do it?’ she asked wonderingly. ‘Will mine truly look like that one day?’
He laughed, shrugged carelessly as he set her on her feet again.
‘A micky bull did it, Magda, a long time ago. I went into the scrub after him, and my horse came down. If I’d got clear in time, I might have thrown him as he charged, but he beat me to it, so to speak. Your own scars will be much, much less noticeable than that one, because you had a doctor to tend to yours, and I only had Murtie.’
‘Aw, fair go, Boss!’ protested that individual hotly. ‘I did a decent job, I reckon, considerin’ the equipment on hand at the time. If you remember, I was all for callin’ up the Flyin’ Doctor—but ’e wouldn’t hear of it, see.’ Murtie appealed to Rennie for support. ‘Not in the middle of a bangtail muster, ’e wouldn’t hear of it. Expected me ter do the honours, back at camp—and when Chad says do a thing, well,’—a lift of thickset shoulders—‘I reckon it’s best just to get on an’ do it.’
‘Good advice, Renata,’ murmured Chad Sandasen into her ear, as he took her arm, and turned her towards the house. There was an ironic gleam in the eyes that glanced down at her, taking in the weary pallor, the beads of perspiration on her brow. ‘Right now you look as submissive as it’s been my pleasure to see you! You’d better get out of this sun, and into something cooler. I presume you bought hats for yourself and Magda?’
‘Of course,’ she returned coldly. ‘Beach hats, to wear on those lovely Sydney beaches, remember?’
‘Touché,’ he grinned. ‘Well, you’ll just have to come to terms with yourself about that, I’m afraid. You can take your choice of the creek or the tank for swimming, but we don’t have beaches on Barrindilloo, do we, Murtie?’
‘Reckon we don’t, Chad,’ Murtie agreed hesitantly. It was obvious that the admission was wrung from him reluctantly, that Barrindilloo was very close to his heart indeed, and that he did not like to think it could possibly be lacking in anything at all. ‘What’s the use o’them fancy beaches anyway, with sheilas lollin’ around sunnin’ themselves and makin’ free with all those fancy creams an’ stuff? Here, you don’t need to go sun-worshippin’, Renata, and lookin’ out fer the sun like they do on those beaches. Here the sun looks out fer you, and it’ll find what it’s lookin’ for quick enough without you even tryin’! You take care, or that lovely peaches-’n-cream of yours’ll end up as burnt and brown as a scrubber’s hide, ain’t that so, Chad?’
‘Very probably, Murt, except that Renata might not be here for very long.’
‘Well, you go ahead an’ I’ll bring that gear up in the jeep. S’long, Magda. S’long for now, Renata.’
‘Er—so long, Murtie.’
Rennie smiled, because she had taken an immediate and unexpected liking to this quaint old man.
The stockman’s eyes lit up appreciatively. ‘Some name, that Renata,’ he murmured admiringly. ‘It’s got class, I reckon. Kind of thoroughbred, like one of those fillies you were watchin’ runnin’ in the Cup, eh, Boss?’ He sighed. ‘All them thoroughbreds, and I had ter draw a mongrel like Black Bandetto! I never took to a black horse yet, nor one of them ter me. Come ter think of it, it was a black brute went down on you in the scrub that time, Chad. That vicious colt off Satan’s Whiskers, you recall?’
‘I recall.’ The other’s brevity was not intended to be encouraging, but Murtie didn’t appear to notice.
‘Give me a thoroughbred filly any day, Chad, eh! I always did like a palomino too—and so did you!’ he asserted enthusiastically, with a meaning glance at Rennie’s shining curtain of pale, beautiful hair. ‘Just anything you want, Renata—you or Magda—you just ask old Murtie and it’s yours, see. If you find yourself wonderin’ about anythin’, you just come to Murtie. I know every inch of this station, an’ I’ll be pleased ter show you round.’
‘It seems you’ve got yourself an admirer,’ remarked Chad Sandasen coolly as they walked the short distance to the homestead.
‘I don’t need admirers, thank you,’ Rennie retorted crisply. ‘I’m more in need of allies.’
‘Then don’t think that you will find them amongst my staff,’ he warned her abruptly. ‘They’re completely loyal. Come, Magda.’ He turned to the little girl, lifted her into his arms, and smiled, a smile of warmth and spontaneity, a smile of affection and genuine welcome, of pleasure and of justifiable pride. ‘This is your new home, Magda, and I know that you and I are going to be very happy here together.’
You and I.
Rennie, alone, walked behind them through a small gate in a dazzlingly white picket fence, and over the sweeping green lawns that surrounded the homestead at Barrindilloo, trying not to notice the way in which that tall, spare figure in front was giving a
ll his attention to the excited child whom he had now perched atop his shoulders. His strides were long and casual and loping, and they took himself and Magda away from Rennie so that she could no longer catch what they were saying to each other, but she could see Chad’s long arm pointing to something as he stood for a moment for Magda to look, and then she heard Magda’s childish laughter ringing out.
Rennie tried not to notice. She tried not to notice the beauty that surrounded her, either. What if the lawns were so verdant and close-cropped and extensive? It didn’t change anything, not one jot. This place at the back of beyond was not suitable for Magda at all!
Rennie tried to ignore the spilling shrubberies of oleander and acacia and grevillea, of hibbertia and bougainvillea, the colourful beds of portulaca and canna, of iris and leschenaultia, the cool, whispering screen of taller eucalypts and pines beyond, which threw a dappled shade over the path up which she walked.
At the veranda steps a mound of pig-face made a splash of vibrant purple against the neighbouring clumps of silver-foliaged white daisies, and a trellis of vines screened a wide, dark porch.
At the top of the steps, Chad Sandasen lifted Magda from his shoulders, took off his wide-brimmed hat, and held open the gauze-meshed door, indicating that they should enter. Rennie could feel his eyes upon her face, but she could not meet them. With a wooden expression, she stepped through the doorway and into the house.
So it was beautiful, but it still didn’t change anything.
Cool and sumptuous, traditional in style, modern in comfort. Cane loungers and deck-chairs, small wicker tables and a bookcase gave the enclosed veranda the appearance of an outer, casual living-room.
Inside, there were high ceilings, waxed pine floors, richly textured rugs, and substantial, cool leather chairs. A room with a tall, colonial marble fireplace, a vast rectangular table, high-backed chairs—the dining-room. Another with pretty elegant furniture, antique mirrors, tapestry cushions on a soft, somewhat shabby, sofa, and another of those generous mantelpieces over which, this time, was set an oil portrait. Rennie glimpsed it in passing a woman’s face, with the same high, intelligent forehead as Chad Sandasen’s own. The hair was the same, too—crisp and brown and abundant, although without those lighter, sun-bleached streaks of his. The eyes were not long and green and speculative. They were piercingly blue and bright and inquisitive. Neil’s eyes, perhaps? Or Magda’s.