by Amanda Doyle
Rennie suspected—more than suspected, she knew—that Chad did not even notice her ignoring him! Beyond giving her the instructions he expected her to follow in relation to Magda’s everyday routine at Barrindilloo, he had left it to the rest of his staff to make friendly overtures to the girl who had brought the child all this way at his behest. And Rennie, who had clearly made a very great sacrifice to do this very thing, felt rebuffed.
Yes, however illogically, she felt rebuffed!
Surely a man of Chalford Sandasen’s business acumen must realize that, other considerations apart, her career had suffered already because of her enforced absence. A top model couldn’t just disappear ‘down-under’ for months on end, and expect to resume where she had left off at the end of that period of absence, just as though nothing had happened. He might at least have shown that he appreciated the gesture for the magnanimous one that it was! Could he not have relaxed his chill, formal approach just the tiniest bit, to let her know that her own unselfish interest in Magda’s welfare had been recognized, and even applauded? Could he not have shown her just one little marsupial mouse in its little grass home, or that eagle’s nest out there in the mulga? No, it seemed that he could not, so the best thing to do was to maintain the same stiff aloofness as he did himself.
Rennie found herself more than naturally grateful for the friendliness of all those other station people—of the light-hearted jackeroos, the laconic station-hands, the admiringly helpful Murtie, the grinning Harry Goola who referred to her as ‘that youngfella missus’, the plump and amiable Elspeth, the giggling Mayra and the doe-eyed Nellie, and most of all Ashley Ryarton himself, always so patient and informative, accepting and understanding.
Ash had told Rennie, at the very beginning of their friendship, quite a lot of things about himself that she might otherwise never have guessed. Today, it came as a surprise to learn that Ash was a widower—a ‘family’ man, a grandfather, in fact!—and that his children were all married, two sons living in other States, and a daughter in the city.
‘I went down there myself for a while,’ he confessed to Rennie, ‘to the Big Smoke. That was after I lost my wife. Before that, we had always lived at Koontilla—that’s another of the Sandasen stations, farther north. After Eileen went, I just couldn’t stay there, somehow. There were too many reminders of her, everywhere I looked or turned. I thought my sense of loss would never grow less, so long as I stayed there, so I went away. To the city—Sydney. That’s where my daughter is, you see. We were always very close, she and I.’
‘But you didn’t stay.’ Rennie gazed curiously at the weathered, grey-haired, kindly man—at Ash, her friend.
He shook his head. A small smile hovered at the corner of his mouth, a smile of self-derision, half-amused, a little regretful.
‘I couldn’t,’ he stated simply.
‘You couldn’t?’
‘No, Rennie, I couldn’t.’ He shrugged, spread his fingers ruefully. ‘I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t stick it, not for very long.’
‘But why not, Ash?’ Rennie thought of that big, excitingly turbulent city, with its arched bridge and newly-flowering Opera House, its pulsing night-spots, its fabulous harbour, these marvellous beaches frilling right up and down the entire coast. ‘Why not?’
‘I guess I was homesick, Rennie.’ The big, thick-set man looked faintly ashamed of this admission, but he met her eyes honestly. ‘Yes, that’s all that’s to it, it was as simple as that. I was homesick. Homesick for the bush.’
‘For the bush?’ She was incredulous. What could the bush have to offer by comparison?
‘Yes, for the bush.’ Ash’s expression gentled suddenly, and his mouth was smiling again, not even faintly ashamed this time. ‘I was homesick for the bush, Rennie—for the “great Outback”. It kept calling me and calling me. I longed for the open heavens overhead, with their milky spill of stars winking down on me at night; for the scent of the mulga, the warm wind off the plains, the sting of sand against my cheeks, the cloying of dust in my throat; the still, peculiar hush at noon, when the whole world seems to be temporarily suspended in timeless peace; for the screeching of birds going over at sundown, and those tentative first stirrings of the bush world at dawn—oh, and many, many other things besides, Rennie. Things that steal up on you unawares, and wrap themselves around your heart so secretly and skilfully that you aren’t even properly aware that they are there at all. You only miss them when they aren’t there, if you know what I mean?’
She nodded. ‘I think I can understand a little bit, Ash.’
Someone else had said almost the same thing as Ash, hadn’t he? Someone more articulate, but it amounted to the same thing in the end, didn’t it, even though the ‘someone else’ had expressed it a little bit differently? Rennie could even now recall the glow in those keen green eyes, the tender softening of Chad’s forbidding mouth, the deepening affection in his voice as his fingers had gone on stroking the nape of her neck all the time he was speaking of the selfsame thing as Ash, telling her of the spell of the Outback which, once experienced, lingered for ever, enmeshing people in its magic and wonder and vastness, so that they never wanted to leave, always longed to return.
‘And I crossed again,
Over the miles of saltbush plain.
The shining plain that is said to be
The dried-up bed of an inland sea.’
Rennie didn’t want to remember the way Chad had spoken those words. She wished that she could forget. She’d have liked to forget, too, the touch of those strong brown fingers as they ran over her own smooth, golden skin, the warmth of his breath against her brow, the odd gleam in those strangely penetrating green eyes as Chad had tilted her chin and studied her tear-stained face with such a disconcertingly thoughtful expression.
She wanted to forget, but she couldn’t.
In bed that evening, the memory returned to haunt her, as it so often did. How stupidly weak she had been to allow herself to break down in front of that man! If only she hadn’t, there’d be nothing to remember, nothing to tease her mind when all she longed for was to go to sleep.
Rennie tossed restlessly beneath the sheet, too disturbed to rest. At piccaninny daylight she got up and stole out on to the veranda, pulling her light silk kimono about her, glad of the coolness of the smooth pine boards against the soles of her bare feet. She peered beyond the gauze, then eased the swing-door open softly, and slipped out into the mild air of the false dawn, to sit on the step, her chin cupped in her palm as she strove to sort out the confusion in her mind.
If only Keith were here, she thought with sudden longing. If only Keith were here, he would put everything into its proper perspective. Keith had a way of laughing off doubts, of shrugging away complications as though they did not exist. Keith was single-minded, refreshingly so. If he had been here now, he would have made Rennie laugh with some idiotic and ridiculously irrelevant remark, and then he’d have kissed her, in that exciting, possessive way that sent the blood rushing to Rennie’s head and drove all doubts and fears from hex brain.
Ah, Keith! Where are you at this very moment, I wonder?
Rennie raised her eyes to the paling sky where the stars were fast disappearing, snuffing out their tiny, winking lights one by one, turned as a footfall sounded on the veranda above her and the door opened quietly.
Chad Sandasen stood at the top of the steps for a moment, and then came down them to her side.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘Renata? You startled me, sitting there at this hour of the morning! Are you all right?’
He glanced at her keenly in the grey light before hitching his moleskins and taking the opposite coping stone to the one upon which she herself was perched. His elastic-sided boots, with their defined stockman’s heel, gleamed in the dimness, unsullied yet by the day’s dust. His hair was sleek against his head, still darkly wet from the shower, and the unfamiliar tang of shaving lotion reached her nostrils as he leaned towards her.
; ‘Couldn’t you sleep?’
‘Are you always up as early as this?’ she countered, wishing he would cease that probing inspection.
‘Round about now, yes, give or take a few minutes.’ The wide shoulders shrugged. ‘It’s the first time I’ve run into you, though. What’s the matter? Are you still worrying about Magda? If so, you needn’t. It seems to me that she is settling down admirably, even better than I had dared to hope.’
‘I was thinking about myself,’ Rennie told him reprovingly.
Magda, Magda. It was always the child with Chad, just as though Rennie did not exist, or if she did exist, was not worthy of the least consideration.
‘Yes?’ A grin hovered at one corner of the level mouth. ‘From your mooning expression just now, I’d have said you might even be thinking about the boy-friend?’
‘Him, too,’ admitted Rennie defiantly, nettled at the accuracy of his perception. ‘And why shouldn’t I be thinking about Keith?’
‘No reason at all, except that the process hardly appears to bring pleasure or happiness in its wake.’ A pause. ‘I can see that you are fretting here, but I’m going to have to ask you to be patient for a while longer, I’m afraid, Renata. Although Magda is becoming well accustomed to her new way of life, I don’t think she’s ready yet to have you walk right out of it. Until that time comes, your presence here is a necessity. After that—’ again the shrug—‘you will be free to resume that other life where you left off, since it appears to hold such irresistible charms for you.’
Rennie pressed her lips together. ‘You think me frivolous, don’t you, Chad? Frivolous and insincere? Fun-seeking, shallow?’ She swallowed, to conceal the tremor of real hurt in her voice.
‘Have I ever said that?’ He shook his head. ‘I have told you already. I think you’re misguided rather than insincere, Renata. In any case, does it really matter to you what I think?’
She bit her lip.
‘Of course not. It’s quite immaterial, so far as I’m concerned. It’s just that—that—one doesn’t like to be judged or rather, misjudged. I have felt that you have done that from the very beginning.’
‘You forget that I found out a lot about you before we met, I think. I got the background fairly accurately.’
Her colour rose.
‘You spied!’ she accused him, aggrieved. ‘How did you do It, Chad? A detective agency or something? In any case, it was despicable!’
He raised an eyebrow at her vehemence.
‘Why get so het-up, if you reckon your way of life is above reproach? It was Magda’s life I was concerned about, may I remind you, Renata, and not your own. And what I learned about it—the inquiries were made through my wool firm, by the way, and not through a detective agency in the dramatically underhand way you seem to think!—what I learned was sufficient to tell me that Magda stood very little chance of turning out any better than her mother, under the circumstances, and the remedy appeared to lie with me.’
‘Her mother? Betty? Why, she was my own cousin!’
‘I know. And you cannot deny that she was quite unfit to be a parent in the first place. Unstable, scatterbrained—a model, too, like yourself, when Neil met her, I believe?’
‘She was also lovable, generous—’
‘To a fault. She went through Neil’s money like water.’
‘That’s true, I admit, and her own savings, too. They went through it together. They lived. They were happy.’
‘I’d prefer to call it irresponsible.’ His mouth had become grim.
‘But you can’t blame Betty alone for that!’ Rennie was indignant. ‘What about Neil’s part in it? What about your own brother?’
‘She was older than he, by several years, wasn’t she? She should have known better—especially after the child came. What Neil needed was a steadying influence. If he had to make a marriage while he was still so patently immature, why couldn’t it have been to someone else, to someone stable, sensible, home-loving? Maternal, if you like?’ he queried coldly, and there seemed to Rennie a wealth of bitterness behind that question.
Chad Sandasen had obviously loved his wild young brother with a depth of feeling that Rennie would hardly have believed possible in the stern, grim-faced man at her side. He had loved him, hoped that some day Neil would get his adventuring out of his system, return and settle down, take his place in the pastoral scene, eventually make his own personal contribution to the welfare of his family, to all those properties, to the nation itself, in the way that Sandasens had always done. He must have been disappointed when he had heard of Neil’s marriage, she could understand his reaction, in a way. A model, and older than he, at that! A hurried, furtive, register-office affair. No, not furtive, never furtive. Whatever Neil had been, he had never been capable of pretence. It was just that he was carefree, careless, couldn’t be bothered with all the frills. ‘Darling, let’s surprise them,’ he’d said impatiently, and Betty, adoring him, had agreed. And after that the money ran out, and Chad wouldn’t let him have any more, and Magda arrived, and there were all those jobs, one after the other, and then—the fatal car-crash. But they had been happy. Happy.
‘They were happy,’ she told Chad fiercely, in a choking voice. ‘Isn’t that enough? To be happy? Shouldn’t you be able to forgive all the rest, forget all the shortcomings, because of the fact that they made each other happy? Who are you to judge? They loved each other, can’t you understand? No, perhaps you wouldn’t understand such a thing—the precious and wonderful thing it can be, true love between a man and a woman. The sort of love that shares and trusts and doesn’t question, gives all for the sheer joy of giving, because it is given to the loved one. That sort of love is rare and wonderful. It transcends things like family approval, or money and position, or stability and security.’
She paused for breath, looked over at Chad, to find that he was already looking at her—very attentively, in that way he had which produced the familiar, uncomfortable feeling.
‘And is that the sort of love that you yourself have experienced, Renata?’ he asked now, gravely.
The sheer unexpectedness of what he had said brought Rennie’s thoughts earthwards with an unpleasant bump. Had she experienced that sort of love? she asked herself uncertainly. With Keith?
Certainly Keith’s kisses could send her into a sort of seventh heaven, there was no doubt about that. His compliments could make her glow with pleasure. One lingering look was sufficient to transport her with its hidden promise, could bring a thrill of tingling excitement to her by its very implications. Of course, she had been disappointed over his attitude regarding Magda, but surely the very fact that he wasn’t prepared to share Rennie herself with anyone else must mean that his love for her was total, all-absorbing, just as hers was for him?
‘Yes,’ she said firmly, ‘that is my own feeling exactly.’ And she watched Chad’s brown hands as they abruptly stopped twirling his broad-brimmed hat between his knees, and gripped the brim quite tightly instead. He always seemed to carry his hat with him, apparently, even at this early hour, although he hadn’t actually got it on his head. ‘Oh! Whatever is that?’ she added, startled, as a sudden mad gale of laughter came ringing over the ground from the direction of the river. It was a hysterical, chuckling sound, human almost, that rent the grey dawn air with noise, and set the dogs barking down at Harry Goola’s gunyahs, and the cocks crowing in the fowlyard at the back of the house.
Good heavens! Somebody’s mirth had got quite out of control! The laughter rose to an abandoned crescendo, as if unable to stop itself.
‘Kookaburras,’ Chad told her, standing up and clapping the hat on his brow forthwith. ‘Or “laughing jackasses”, as they’re sometimes called. They do it every morning, Renata.’ He smiled down at her, but there was still a hint of the former gravity lingering in his eyes. ‘If they didn’t laugh every morning like that, it would be a poor lookout for all of us. We’d have no day to look forward to.’
‘How do you mean, Chad?’
Rennie stood up, too, and he frowned as he saw her bare feet.
‘You shouldn’t be out here like that, Without even slippers. You could tread on something—a trapdoor spider, anything. Don’t do it again, Renata.’
‘I won’t,’ she assured him, obedient for once. ‘Tell me about the kookaburras. Why wouldn’t we have any day?’
‘It’s an old aboriginal belief,’ he told her, taking her arm and guiding her firmly up the steps again and back to the veranda. ‘One of their ancient Dreamtime legends. They believed, you see, that the sun is really a big fire, started up there each morning by the good spirits to bring light to the world. At first, the fire is only small and the flame weak, but by midday it becomes very hot and fierce. Then, by evening, it glows red in the dying embers of the sunset. The spirits felt they needed something to tell the world below that daylight had come, so they instructed the morning star to come out and shine as brightly as he could. The trouble was, nobody saw him, because they were still fast asleep. So the good spirits asked the kookaburras to laugh very loudly at each and every dawn-time, so that the people down on the ground would wake up and see that the fire was lit and day had begun. They’ve been doing it ever since, and that’s why they’re laughing right now, in fact.’ Chad’s voice was whimsical.