by Amanda Doyle
When he reached the yard he rode through the gate and slid to the ground. Then he threw the reins to the waiting Darcy. The ghost of a smile played over his dust-streaked features.
“Right, you fellers,” he said abruptly. “You’ve had your fun. Now get back on the job. And you—Percy—get me a horse that hasn’t been ruined by someone else first, will you? That bay gelding will do.”
“Sure thing, Gib,” they replied.
“Said ’n done, Gib,” they assured him.
The group dispersed slowly. They didn’t seem to want to leave Gib now, but they were more than willing to do anything he told them. By crikey, you had to hand it to a bloke like that, even if you’d just lost a packet on ’im. He gave you a good run for your money, and that was a fact!
Charlie waited, still leaning on his broom, for Gib to come past him. The white chef’s cap had been knocked sideways a little in Charlie’s excited attempts to follow the moves of horse and rider between the apertures of the railings, but he wasn’t aware of that. A small smile hovered around his mouth.
Gib approached now, walking very close to where Mattie was concealed. She could see beads of perspiration on his forehead and temple, and he seemed to be limping very slightly. There had been reason to wince when his leg got jammed against that rail!
“You beaut, Gib! I knew you could do it!” said Charlie.
Gib stopped and stood with his feet a little apart and his hands back on his hips again. He looked closely at Charlie.
“You’re an old sinner, Charlie,” Mattie heard him say with amusement in his voice. “I suppose you made a packet off me, eh?”
“A blinkin’ small fortune, Gib,” admitted Charlie modestly. “I was the only one on you. Just me. I cleared the rakin’ lot.”
Charlie settled the chefs cap at a more secure angle.
“By the way, Gib, I just wanted to tell you—I’ve some fillet steak put by for your breakfast tomorrow. It’s better than the rump if you like it rare. I’ll send it up with Ben with the milk in the morning.”
Mattie couldn’t catch Gib’s reply, but Charlie laughed uproariously at it. It might not even have been very funny, but she had a feeling that, in his present elated mood, Charlie would laugh uproariously at almost anything.
When the station hands had all disappeared and Charlie had gone back inside the cookhouse, Mattie slid down from the lucerne bales, and retraced her steps to the house. She felt almost weak with relief, and a little bit sick too. Maybe she had been holding her breath too long. She realized now that her nerves had been tensed and keyed up to a ridiculous pitch. She had not expected things to end this way. The man Gib could certainly handle a horse! If she had known he could ride like that she wouldn’t have worried—she might not even have felt obliged to come and watch. It was just that, as Lex’s daughter, she felt responsible for everyone on the property, really—even for that newcomer, the swagman Gib, but it was pretty obvious that he could look after himself. Mattie remembered the awesome respect on the faces of the men, even though they had lost their money on him, with the exception of Charlie. Yes, Gib could look after himself.
Mattie went through the swing-door of the kitchen, and unbuttoned her blue cotton overall and hung it up on a hook. Then she went to the bathroom and washed her hands and face. After that, she put on a pale, tinted foundation cream and a light dusting of honey-coloured powder that matched her skin. She shaped her mouth with a frosted apricot lipstick and brushed her hair again, and then she went to see her father.
Lex’s bedroom was big and dim and cool. It was full of heavy, old-fashioned mahogany furniture, with big wooden knobs on the chests of drawers and lowboy. The same chintz curtains that had been there ever since her mother’s day were faded with sun and age, and looked stringy and unexciting.
Her father lay on a mountain of pillows, professionally arranged by Aunt Allie. His eyes were closed when Mattie first came in. With his shock of thick, near-white mane and hooked, aristocratic nose, Lex looked big and gaunt and impressive, as if he were still a force to be reckoned with.
When he turned to look at her, Mattie said, “Hello, Father,” and sat down in a chair beside the bed.
“Mattie?” It was only when he spoke that one realized how weak he still was. “Is everything going well, out there—eh?”
“Yes, Father, everything,” Mattie was quick to assure him.
“Bryn’s gone. Is that right?”
“Yes, Father. He—he left early this morning.” Mattie swallowed, feeling foolish.
“A good thing he’s away,” Lex mumbled grumpily. “You hadn’t the sense to keep him in his place. One look should have been enough to tell you the kind of man you were dealing with. Didn’t they teach you anything about human nature down at that expensive goddamn school you went to?”
Mattie flushed.
“Yes, Father, they did,” she protested, “but—”
“Never mind the buts,” Lex broke in testily. “The damage is done, and the fellow’s off. You’ll have no need to worry with the new man, anyway—he’s a different barrel of corn altogether. Women don’t figure much with him—I dare say he’ll be sick and tired of ’em chasing him. What’s that ridiculous name he said to call him?”
Lex’s fingers moved impatiently over the sheet. “Gib,” supplied Mattie.
“Yes, Gib—that’s what it was, Gib.” Her father turned his head to look directly at her. “Well, Mattie, you do whatever Gib says out there, d’you hear me? He’s in an awkward position, but things will go along all right if you and the men co-operate. He’s not the sort who’ll stand for any nonsense, and he has my full authority to act as he thinks fit. D’you understand?”
“Yes, Father,” Mattie said in a troubled voice. “Only don’t you think—”
“No, I don’t think,” interposed Lex irritably. “I did all my thinking last night. Go along now, Mattie, and do as I say without arguing. Heaven knows why women always want to argue, argue—”
He sounded weak and angry and frustrated. In another moment Aunt Allie would come in and tell her that her visit had upset him.
Mattie rose hastily, and stood beside the bed, feeling forlorn and uncertain. She just couldn’t seem to strike the right note with Lex, and yet she longed to. She longed to take the irritable hand on the coverlet and squeeze it comfortingly, and she longed for its touch to give her comfort too. She felt the old familiar feeling of despair and failure that one word from her father might have dispelled. No such word was forthcoming. He didn’t need her. Even in his illness, he was self-sufficient. He didn’t need anyone—except, perhaps, Aunt Allie, and the man Gib.
“Yes, Father, don’t worry,” soothed Mattie. “I—I’ll do as you say, and I won’t argue. I wasn’t arguing, really. I only thought—it doesn’t really matter. It wasn’t important. The only important thing is that you’ll get well quickly.”
She walked softly towards the door.
“And—Mattie—”
“Yes, Father?” She turned, with her hand on the knob.
“If Gib needs anything in the way of clothes to help him out—shirts or jackets or anything—you might offer him the use of some of Nick’s.”
Mattie’s heart gave an agonized wrench. Could she have heard her father properly?
“Of—Nick’s?” she repeated painfully, disbelieving.
“Yes, dammit, of Nick’s. You heard me.” There was the merest quaver in Lex’s voice. “As I said, the man’s in a difficult position—he hasn’t much more than what he stands up in. If he’s to be in authority, he’s got to look like it, hasn’t he? He’s maybe a bit broader than—my own boy—but you can see what he says. Nick’s things are there yet, Mattie?”
“Yes, they’re there. I—I’ll see about it, Father, don’t you worry,” Mattie replied through the ache in her throat, as she stumbled out of the room.
The landscape outside was blurred and indistinct, but Mattie didn’t give way to tears. Her hurt was somehow too deep for that. By th
e time she realized where she was going, she had already entered the bedroom that had been Nick’s. She sank down in a chair and shut her eyes, and tried not to think at all, beyond the fact that one must be practical, and that life had to go on, whether one enjoyed it or not.
She didn’t know how long she remained there, or why, indeed, she had gone there at all. Certainly she had not looked through any of Nick’s clothes.
The day seemed interminable to Mattie.
She wrote a letter to the girl whose flat she had shared in Sydney, but it was difficult to project herself even momentarily into that world again, and the note sounded stilted and cold and disinterested. Mattie tore it up, in the end, and went down to the orchard to pick some lemons. She would make a cold lemon soufflé for the evening meal. While she was there, she dug up enough artichokes in the vegetable garden to make a cream soup, too. The neck of mutton was already cooking slowly in a heavy stewpan.
Lucy and Nellie scrubbed and peeled the artichokes for her. It was a tedious job, but the two lubras turned it into a prolonged and enjoyable affair, which involved sitting on the veranda steps with a basin between them, and the basket of artichokes in front of them. Every little finger and crevice of each and every artichoke was scrubbed and scraped, while they chatted and laughed to each other. Nellie even carved some of her more oddly-shaped ones to represent primitive animals and birds, and set them in a realistic line on the veranda rail. Work and play were always encroaching one upon the other in their simple, happy lives.
Mattie went off to have her shower.
She had sieved the boiled artichokes and was preparing the soup when the swing-door creaked, and Gib entered the kitchen.
He must have showered too. His hair was slicked down, wet still, so that it hadn’t begun to spring away from his scalp with its usual vigour. He wore a white shirt with no sooty smudges on it, and his other pair of khaki trousers—the clean pair. His boots were the same elastic-sided ones that he had had on in the morning, only now they weren’t caked with dust. They shone with polish, and Mattie could see that they were made of quality grained leather.
Mattie took all this in at a single glance before her eyes fell away. She turned back to the pan and stirred the artichoke puree briskly until it was smooth.
“The meal will be a few moments yet,” she said matter-of-factly. “I try to keep more or less to the same time as Charlie’s bell.”
“That’s O.K., Miss Bennett,” Gib replied easily. “I didn’t come early to scent out the food. I just wanted to make sure that my temporary damper-arm was standing up to the heat.” He squatted down before the range, and squinted up at it.
“Be careful,” Mattie warned him. “You’ll get soot on that shirt, too, if you don’t watch out. What have you done with the other one?”
“Washed it,” Gib told her succinctly.
“Oh.” Mattie looked blank. Never had she met a more self-sufficient man.
He stood up again, a little behind her, his height dwarfing her. She wished he would go away. He made her nervous, and that meant that her white sauce for the soup would be sure to have lumps in it. You had to give your whole attention to the making of a good white sauce, and that was difficult to do when a casual giant was standing right behind you, with his eyes boring into your back.
Now she felt his hands there, too.
One hand held her shoulder, and the other moved over her overall. Mattie stiffened, but the grip on her shoulder prevented her from turning.
“Did you know,” Gib remarked conversationally, “that you’re covered in lucerne?” He let her go now, and rubbed some desiccated greenery between two brown fingers. “Lucerne hay, to be precise,” he told her. “Now, I wonder how that got there? There’s some clinging to your front pocket, too, in case you don’t believe me.”
“Oh!” gasped Mattie, confused. She glanced down, and pulled it off. There were some other wisps there, too, ensnared around the buttons. She brushed them off, with her face aflame.
How could she have been so stupid! They must have been there since this morning. She remembered coming in and hanging up her overall, and she hadn’t put it on to get the lunch, because there had only been a salad for herself and Aunt Allie. Then, after her shower, she had snatched it off the hook without really looking at it, and buttoned it on to protect the pretty yellow linen sheath dress she was wearing. Yellow had to be pristine and spotless to look right, and looking right, to Mattie, had always been of first importance. It was her duty, a part of her training that came automatically. She had been thinking only of her pretty yellow dress and not at all of her blue cotton overall when she had slipped it on.
“What have you been doing? Frolicking in the hay?” Gib’s voice was deep and amused. “That doesn’t sound like the sophisticated Miss Bennett.”
“No. Yes. I—I mean—I don’t know how it could have got there,” stammered Mattie helplessly. Her cheeks were crimson.
Suddenly Gib put a hand under her chin, and forced her to look up. There was an odd gleam in his grey-frost eyes, although his mouth still smiled.
“Yes, you do,” he contradicted her evenly. “And I do, too. You were there this morning, weren’t you? Looking on?”
He somehow made her eyes meet his. Not until she nodded did he take his hand away.
“You knew, didn’t you, beforehand? When I came to collect my tucker-bag, you knew. That’s why you seemed so rattled.”
Mattie stole a glance at him.
He didn’t seem angry, really. More intent and curious than angry.
“Yes, I knew,” she admitted, embarrassed. “I—I found out, when I went to get the—the meat for your sandwiches. I—couldn’t tell you.”
Her eyes were like wide, misty peat pools. They begged him to understand just why she could not tell him.
Gib’s wide shoulders shrugged impatiently.
“Of course you couldn’t tell me, girl. No one would expect you to split on the men, least of all me. Why did you go down, though? Did you want to be there when my head rolled, or was it merely to pick up the pieces afterwards?”
He was laughing at her! Mattie knew by the satirical note in his deep voice that he was enjoying this inquisition.
She drew herself up, frowning at him. She knew she looked haughty and proud. She had had to cultivate that look for some of her modelling commissions, and she was aware that the effect of it was quite something! She also hoped that she appeared discouraging and deflating.
“I felt I should be there,” she explained carefully and with dignity, “because at present I’m deputizing for my father, and feel responsible for everything that goes on. If anyone were to be injured, I would have to take charge. Naturally I’d have done the same for any member of the station staff.”
Gib pretended to look rueful. Mattie was annoyed, because the pretence was so obvious.
“Dear me,” he said. “You aren’t very good for my ego, I think, Miss Bennett.” There was a mischievous twinkle in the grey eyes now, but Mattie refused to smile.
“If you’ll excuse me”—she pushed past him with her saucepan—“I really must stir this, or it will be ruined.”
Gib stepped aside quickly, and his leg brushed momentarily against the dresser. The muffled exclamation that escaped his lips was so soft that Mattie only just caught it. That must have been the leg that had been jammed against the railing this morning, and now she herself had literally pushed him off-balance so that it had knocked against the dresser. The man’s expression had not changed, but he was definitely a shade paler beneath his swarthy tan.
Compunction overcame Mattie. That, and some other feeling that intruded uninvited. Admiration? Perhaps a little, she admitted to herself unwillingly, as her thoughts went back to his morning’s battle with Suvio, and then to the long day in the saddle that had followed.
Mattie turned impulsively.
“Gib,” she said, “I’m—I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you this morning. I wanted to—badly—but I just couldn’t.
”
“That’s all right, Miss Bennett. It doesn’t need to bother you. I do understand, you know.” Gib’s voice was surprisingly kind.
Mattie swallowed, and blinked.
She did not know what made her say what she said next.
“Gib”—her own words surprised her—“I—I would like you to call me Mattie. I—I mean, everyone does.” Only after she had spoken did it occur to her that he might misunderstand her. Disjointed phrases rang through her mind in jumbled disorder. His own—“I’m immune to the allure of youthful sophisticates.” Lex’s—“Women don’t figure with him”—“A different barrel of corn”—“Sick and tired of them chasing him.”
Was that what he would think—that she was chasing him? That her artless words were intended to be alluring and seductive?
Mattie’s poise deserted her at the possibility. She flushed miserably, and wished she had kept quiet. Her eyes searched his face anxiously, trying to find there some clue as to what he was thinking, hoping it wasn’t what it might easily be. The awful thing was, you couldn’t tell, with this man. You couldn’t tell anything. His eyes were grave, and his face was grave, and when he spoke,
“Thank you, Mattie,” he said very gravely. “I’d like very much to call you by your name—as everyone does.”
CHAPTER SIX
THE meal went well that night. Aunt Allie was the first to remark on the difference.
“Mattie, my girl, you really can cook! What a lovely surprise! The nasty old oven wouldn’t let you do yourself justice, that’s all it was.”
Mattie laughed.
“I doubt if that’s true, Aunt Allie, to be honest, but it was a useful excuse, to be able to lay my failures at its door, all the same. Now there can be no such excuses.”
“I’ll weld the new piece on for you at the week-end,” Gib told her. “That one won’t last for ever. Tomorrow, I’m going over the north-west range—Paddy’s Hump, you call it, I think?—and by then I’ll have the place fixed in my mind. I can see why this is one of the few properties around the district that’s able to crop without irrigation, with the dual benefits of the higher rainfall and the alluvial loam of the river basin combined. It must be a fairly dependable catchment area, I should imagine. Does the river ever dry up entirely, Mattie?”