by Amanda Doyle
Had he been here already? she wondered. Had he fixed the damper? Mattie didn’t think so. There were no signs that he had been, no changes since last night.
Automatically, she emptied the ashbox and tidied the grate. Now that they had a man in the household, she would have to start thinking of breakfast in terms of meat. All the countrymen she had ever known liked meat for breakfast. They ate it in vast quantities at impossible early hours, washing it down with gulps of scalding tea. They had eggs with it, and bacon too, but these were less important sidelines. Meat was the essential ingredient, and she hadn’t got it. She had used the chops last night, and there was some neck of mutton in the fridge, which would do for a stew tonight. That was all she had. Eggs alone would have to do.
Mattie set the table, and put on it a big bowl of stewed apricots, and a packet of cereal. Aunt Allie adored apricots, and Mattie, following carefully the cookery book’s instructions, had preserved dozens of bottles, encouraged by the nursing sister’s passion for them. They had them almost every morning until even Aunt Allie admitted that she was beginning to tire of them, and Mattie herself felt she never wanted to see one again. She may as well get rid of some on the new man.
There was still no sign of him.
Mattie hesitated a moment, tempted to light the fire, then, thinking better of it, went back to the main part of the house. She made her bed and tidied her room swiftly. Then, very reluctantly, she made her way to the spare bedroom she had given Gib.
She had to force her steps in that direction. It was useless to pretend. She didn’t like this man, this intruder. She didn’t trust him, either. Whatever she did for him, it would only be because of Lex. She had to put Lex first, because he was her father, and because he was ill. But that didn’t mean she had to go out of her way to please this Gib. Not on your life! He would get the minimum of consideration and attention from Mattie. She hadn’t given up her hard-won fame as one of Sydney’s top models to look after a swagman—even one who frightened her the teeniest bit by his uncompromising thoroughness and air of authority. He was a hobo, who had probably thrown away his chance of being a decent citizen by some act of fraud or folly—or even crime. He could whistle for his meat as far as she was concerned.
He had taken advantage of Lex’s weakness and impaired judgement, and his knowledge of her own vulnerable position. He had charmed Aunt Allie into an alliance with him. He had bullied Mattie from the moment he set foot in her father’s office and forced her to drink out of his horrible old pannikin. And worst of all, he had alluded to her as a youthful sophisticate, as if she were some shallow, conceited youngster angling for his attentions.
Well, fair was fair. She didn’t want his attention, and he wasn’t going to get much from her—only as much as would keep Lex from chivvying her. She would make his bed in the mornings and air his room, and he was lucky even to have that done for him.
Mattie stepped into the room, and stopped.
The bed was made, almost as neatly as when she had put clean linen on last night. The pillow was even puffed up freshly, and on it lay a pair of fine blue cotton pyjama shorts, with white piped seams. Her roving eye registered an ivory hairbrush and shaving tackle laid out methodically on the old-fashioned marble washstand. Two toothbrushes, some paste, and a cake of abrasive soap were there too.
Over in one corner, propped against the wall, lay the blanketed bedding-roll that he had referred to as “Matilda”. It was strapped up tightly and securely, and the straps were hung about with a quart-pot, a pannikin—the pannikin—and a metal water flask.
Matilda.
“One. Matilda is enough for any man.” The derisive words echoed in Mattie’s mind. “I have mine already.” “I have mine already.”
Somehow deflated, she turned and went out.
Back in the kitchen, the chink of a pail and a tuneless swishing told her that Ben Burrows, one of the station-hands, had brought the morning milk into the small adjoining dairy. The swishing sound was not that of the milk being poured into the bowl of the separator—not yet. It was the sound Burrows always made, sucking air through the gaps in his teeth in some nameless form of music of his own. The only way Mattie knew it was music was because it had a number of syncopated beats and pauses as it went along. The tune itself must be in Burrows’ own head. Mattie found it almost as tantalizing as Percy’s ‘Pride of Erin’.
“G’day, Mattie.”
Burrows turned as she approached, giving a small grimace of his mouth which, for Burrows, passed as a smile. He wore the ubiquitous khaki drill trousers and denim shirt that somehow looked as tired as his faded blue eyes.
“ ’Morning, Ben.” Mattie smiled. “A nice day.”
“O.K. now, maybe. She’ll be a fair cow later, though—too hot by half.” Ben now showed his tobacco-stained teeth, which, for Ben, was the equivalent of a broad grin in someone else. He liked Mattie. She looked pretty and fresh, and she was always friendly. He felt sorry for her. “Want me ter tip the first lot in for yer? It’ll make the bucket lighter fer the next go.”
Ben sent the milk in a frothing stream into the bowl of the separator until it was full to the brim.
“There y’are, Mattie—no charge fer the extra service.”
He handed her a little newspaper-wrapped parcel which had lain on the milk table.
“Aw, by th’way, Gib said I was ter give yer that when I came up ter the ’ouse. Reckon it’s ’is meat fer breakfast, ’e says ter tell yer ’e likes it underdone—rare was the word ’e used. Same thing. S’long, Mattie.”
Ben ambled off in a rolling horseman’s gait, unaware that he had left Mattie saucer-eyed and stationary in the dairy, clutching the small parcel against her blue overall in disbelief.
Well! If that didn’t beat everything!
Mattie laid the parcel back on the milk table and opened it. Two delicious-looking hunks of rump steak! The man must have cadged it from Charlie Doherty. There was only mutton in the homestead meathouse, but Charlie had sides of beef hanging in the station’s cold-room, which was powered off the electric light plant.
Yes, Charlie must have given this to Gib, and that in itself was a victory for the newcomer. And there was Ben Burrows, too. He had been won over. Why, he’d only met Gib this morning, but he must respect him—even like him—or he wouldn’t have bothered to pass on that message about how Gib liked his steak cooked. Mattie knew Ben well enough to realize that if he had not liked Gib, he would simply have handed her the parcel, and ignored that other bit of the message.
Charlie, Ben, Aunt Allie, even Lex Bennett himself—all had been taken in, although Mattie had a conviction that her father’s weakness had somehow clouded his good sense. The others were gullible fools! It was going to be left to Mattie to add a touch of restraint, here and there, or the fellow would get bigger ideas of his importance than he already had.
With a marked lack of enthusiasm, Mattie picked up the steak and carried it through to the kitchen. She sniffed the air. There was a pine aroma lurking around—a sort of pine and tobacco and leather mixture. He must have been in while she was over making the beds.
Yes, there was the damper-arm, secured by a neatly coiled piece of baling-wire. Temporary, but effective.
Mattie knew a moment’s irritation that Gib had remembered.
It would have given her some satisfaction to catch him out so early in the piece. Then she recalled the ruined dinner last night, and all the struggles she had had with other meals before that, and she wasn’t irritated any more. One had to keep one’s sense of proportion, after all. He was only going to be here about eight weeks, and it would be stupid to let him get under one’s skin.
Mattie had the fire crackling and the kettle on by the time Aunt Allie came bustling in. She didn’t wear uniform or a veil, because Lex preferred her not to. Instead she was a homely figure in lemon cotton, with her pepper-and-salt brown hair coiled in a loose bun on her nape.
“ ’Morning, dear,” she greeted Mattie, taking down
a tray and commencing to set it for her patient. “Your father’s much better this morning, thank goodness. We seem to have got him over this business of Bryn going without any setbacks, thanks to Gib. He wants to see Gib every evening for a while, just to know how things are going, so I’ve had to agree, of course. It’s funny, but he doesn’t seem worried, any more about things outside—he’s more interested and curious now than worried. That’s a good sign, Mattie dear. Any nurse will tell you as much. So you mustn’t worry so much, either, not any more. Try to relax a bit now we’ve got Gib here, and let him do the worrying.”
Mattie had an insane desire to speak in the bush vernacular, and say “Oh, yeah?”, but she refrained. Firstly, because Miss Mottram would have shuddered at one of her ex-pupils using such an expression, and secondly, because Aunt Allie would be hurt. So all she said was, “Mm-hmm,” and slung a couple of eggs into the frying-pan instead.
When Charlie’s bell sounded down at the quarters, she laid the pieces of steak on the black grid, ready to place it over the flames. The fire was acting much more reasonably, she admitted grudgingly. It was really going very nicely, in fact.
Slow, unhurried footsteps sounded along the veranda outside. Then the gauze door swung to and fro, and a man entered the kitchen. He removed a broad-brimmed hat from his head and sent it spinning neatly into the cane chair over near the pastry table. A sort of pine and tobacco and leather smell now mingled with the aroma of spitting steak on hot flame.
Gib?
Mattie had to look twice, even a third time, to see that it really was Gib.
This man had the same springy dark hair and knifelike grey glance, the same firm mouth and beetling brows. But now she saw a square jutting jaw with the same clean lines as those unhurried brown hands, and there were grooves in the lean cheeks that matched the sun-wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
Ten years had departed with the beard.
He looked somewhere above thirty instead of forty, as she had at first supposed, and he also looked twice as firm, three times as decisive, ten times as—disturbing.
Mattie’s heart gave a queer, suffocating little leap.
Why had she let herself be surprised? Why hadn’t she guessed? The shaving tackle, the male pine smell. How silly to let herself to be taken off guard like this!
She gazed at Gib weakly.
He grinned and stepped past her. Then he flipped the pieces of steak over neatly on to their other sides.
“Underdone,” he reproved her sternly, but there was a belying twinkle in the grey-frost eyes.
Mattie very nearly twinkled back, but of course she didn’t. She was Lex Bennett’s daughter and her role at the moment had to be that of protector of her father’s interests, if he was going to be so silly as to be taken in by a complete stranger’s charm and persuasion at a time when he was too weak and ill to be more discerning.
Mattie wasn’t weak and ill. She could see right through this man. He’d heard of Lex Bennett—perhaps even about Nick—and he saw an opportunity to work his way into her father’s good books and a position on the place. He was a hunter of fortune, with everything to gain and nothing to lose in angling for Lex Bennett’s good will, and placing him in his debt. Yes, Mattie could see right through him. The only thing he didn’t know was that there was a proclamation hanging over the whole place. Twin Rivers would not be here much longer. It would be swimming at the bottom of a giant dam Mattie knew that, but the man didn’t, and she had no intention of telling him, either.
She looked up and met his eyes. They were intent and penetrating. The twinkle was gone, to be replaced by a slightly derisive glint. Mattie had a sudden, uncomfortable feeling that he could actually hear her thinking.
Blushing furiously, she whisked the steak off the flames, sat the eggs on top, and called to Aunt Allie in her most businesslike voice.
Aunt Allie had no inhibitions at all about referring to Gib’s changed appearance. He pushed her chair in for her, while she smiled up at him and said with homely candour.
“Land’s sakes, Gib, what a difference! Why ever did you grow a beard in the first place?”
Gib shrugged.
“Convenience, mostly. I haven’t always had one.”
Mattie looked at him curiously. What he really meant them to understand was that he hadn’t always been a swagman. Well, any fool could see that. His hands were clean, if rough, and the nails were pared short—no black: rims there—and there was a certain refinement about the way he dealt with his food that was quite untramplike. But as much could be said for others now leading that aimless open-air life. Why, some of them even had University educations and high degrees, but they were still failures in the eyes of a conventional society.
Gib’s eyes had been cast down. The two pieces of steak and the two eggs had almost disappeared. Mattie waited until he had finished, and then removed his plate.
After that, he drank three cups of tea—black and boiling, as the bushman does—and ate a fair quantity of toast and marmalade. Mattie eyed the bowl of apricots with misgiving, and wished he had done the same justice to them. He had taken a small helping only, with cream, but no accompanying cereal.
Perhaps he didn’t like them either. Mattie sighed. There were a lot left yet.
“We’ll have plums tomorrow,” she vowed silently. “I don’t think I can face them another day, and I don’t think Aunt Allie can either.”
When they had finished, Aunt Allie went off to get Lex’s tray, and Mattie stacked the plates at the sink. Lucy and Nellie would be up soon, she hoped, and she would set them to wash the dishes while she worked the separator in the dairy.
Gib walked over to the chair and retrieved his hat.
He stood a moment, for the first time appearing slightly diffident, twirling the broad brim through his two hands.
“I wonder would you mind packing me some lunch?” he asked Mattie. “Anything at all will do. I’ve arranged to ride out with Pirrett and Thomson to get the layout of the property.”
“Yes, I can fix something,” Mattie said indifferently. “It will take me a quarter of an hour, though.”
“Thank you.” Gib still stood there. “One other thing. Do you happen to have any decent maps of the place to which I could have access? That way, one has a good overall picture before one starts out. It’d be a help.”
“Yes,” said Mattie again. “There are some topographic ones, and some Ordinance Surveys, on the wall in the office. The place is in three different Pastures Protection Board areas. The maps are fixtures, though. You pull them down like blinds.”
“That’s O.K. Fixtures they will remain. I don’t intend to abscond with them, Miss Bennett—only study them.” Gib’s tone was dry. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes for the tucker, and—thanks for a nice breakfast. The steak was perfect.”
Mattie didn’t turn away from the sink until his unhurried steps had faded altogether. She didn’t want to co-operate, but she had to. Even without Lex to consider, there was this strange magnetism about the man that made her obey. Mattie resented the feeling it gave her, even more in this morning’s Gib without a beard, than in last night’s Gib with a beard. He was more upsetting and unsettling this way. Without that beard he certainly appeared younger, but more ruthless, less benevolent.
For the first time in many a year Mattie found herself wishing that her mother was here. What difference it could make she didn’t know, but she wished it—terribly. She was sure, somehow, that they would see eye-to-eye about square-jawed, calm-eyed, educated swagmen who turned up out of the blue—and stayed. Lucy and Nellie came in, giggling.
“G’day, missus,” they greeted her, somewhat inaccurately, but in their eyes she was the only “missus” the homestead had known, since they and their families took up their abode at “Twin Rivers”. They had wondered uneasily what the young “missus” would be like when they heard she was returning from Sydney to look after her father. They hoped their easy ways and humorous approach to household chores
would pass with her, the same as with the boss. They did pass, of course. Mattie tried to raise standards in certain respects, but with little success. Life was for laughing at, and laugh they did, infectiously. Soon Mattie gave up trying to change them, and smiled too.
Now she realized that she had no cold meat, and it was unthinkable to send a man out without meat in his sandwiches.
Mattie looked at her watch. Then she put Nellie to washing dishes in the kitchen, and Lucy to turning the handle of the cream-separator in the dairy, snatched up her linen hat, and went racing down to beg some from Charlie.
There was the sound of a hose running in the cookhouse. Mattie, forewarned, stood to one side of the doorway as a rush of water came swooshing out, with Charlie close behind it. He had a big stiff-bristled broom in his grasp, and he was swilling down the concrete floor.
“Charlie!” Mattie tried to attract his attention.
“Madam?”
Charlie stopped brushing, and turned off the hose. Then he straightened his chefs chap and came over.
“Charlie, I wonder if you could let me have a little cold meat—anything at all—for Gib’s lunch? I seem to have run out.”
She sounded apologetic. It was a silly thing to do, to have no cold meat in one’s larder. Very bad housekeeping. Only, yesterday, she had not known that today they would have Gib. She wished she knew what Gib had told the men, how they had been made to accept his presence so readily.
“I most certainly can, madam,” said Charlie obligingly.
He disappeared within, and presently returned, bearing another of his newspaper-wrapped parcels.
“It’ll do two days, madam, if it’s only for Gib’s lunch-pack,” he told her. “I’ll send up more steak for his breakfast if you haven’t got any.”
“Thanks, Charlie, but there’ll be a sheep in the meat-house tonight. He can have liver,” Mattie returned stiffly. And like it, she added grimly to herself. What had Gib done? Had he hypnotized everyone into thinking he was royalty?