by Amanda Doyle
She walked back to the kitchen, and started peeling pumpkin. It wasn’t mid-morning yet. The men were not far away, but they would not be in until lunch-time. When she looked out the window she could see the Land-Rover and the tough little Toyota clinging to the side of the nearer hills. Every now and then she detected a movement of tiny, distant figures, and the occasional flash of an instrument as it caught and reflected the sun.
Today she had the whole morning to herself, with no “smoke-o” to provide in the middle.
Mattie cut up the pumpkin and put it on to boil, and then she set about preparing a salad for lunch. They could have cold mutton and pickles and mint jelly with it. It did not sound mouth-watering, but she let her imagination run riot on the salad, making waterlilies of the tomatoes, and putting green fork-frills on the cucumber, and then she stuffed the hard-boiled eggs with some tinned sardine, like the illustration showed in her cookery book. Then for good measure she opened a tin of pineapple, and arranged little chunks of that around the edge of the salad plate.
Mattie stepped back and eyed her work of art critically. Yes, it was really quite attractive, slightly better than ungarnished mutton and lettuce. Not that the men would ever notice, but it gave her as much satisfaction to have her meals looking pretty as it did her clothes.
Next she mashed pumpkin, and while it cooled she ran across to set the lunch-table.
Mattie looked at her watch. An hour and a half to go. She would have time to make the pumpkin scones for the men’s afternoon tea.
When she put them in the oven, they looked orange and light, puffy and promising. Mattie washed the flour from her fingers, and walked over to the electric powerhouse to turn off the engine.
She turned the knobs back and cut out the charge-switch, then went over to the big green engine and flicked up the lever, waiting while it slowed to a sighing halt, and as she stood there a movement on the doorstep caught her eye.
Mattie looked, and froze in horror.
A big, brown snake was crawling slowly on to the shallow concrete step.
Mattie watched, both terrified and fascinated. If she kept quite still, it might go right past. So long as it didn’t come in, she would be all right. There wasn’t much room for both herself and a snake to manoeuvre in the little square shed.
Mattie felt as though she were turned to stone.
Her eyes did not even blink, not once. They didn’t even blink when the snake coiled itself up carefully on the step, and apparently went to sleep. Instead of blinking, they glazed with horror.
She was literally baled up in here by a drowsy brown snake who would soon be going to sleep for the winter, and was getting that somnolent urge already. Obviously it liked the feel of the sun-warmed patch of cement on the step. The rest of the little room had a concrete floor, too, but the sun did not reach it, and it was cold and unwelcoming. There was not much likelihood of the snake coming right in, she assured herself rather shakily, but neither did it look as though it intended to go away, ever. The late autumn sun had made it think the summer was back again.
Mattie looked about her helplessly.
There was nothing in this room at all except the engine and the switchboard and the rows of glass batteries. And the starting-handle.
Mattie gazed at it hanging on its hook near the door, and toyed with the idea of grabbing it and trying to kill the snake, but she discarded that as being a bit too risky. Her own movements would put the reptile on the alert, and the starting-handle was only about two feet long, and L-shaped, at that. There was no way of wielding it to ensure that the blow went home. It was too awkward a weapon altogether.
No, the only thing was to stand here and wait. Perhaps it would soon crawl away.
Mattie had no idea how long she stood there, but it must have been at least an hour. There was no seat to sit on, except the concrete floor, and she did not fancy being at snake level! So she stood and she stood, keeping her eyes on the doorway which the snake continued to occupy without showing any signs of moving away.
Mattie fought down a rising hysteria that threatened to choke her. She clenched her clammy palms and kept telling herself to keep calm, but it was easier said than done. She was beginning to feel giddy with her continuous standing, and wondered what would happen if she fell on the floor so near the snake, and woke it up.
By the time she heard the men’s footsteps coming, she felt positively light-headed.
Gib was in the lead, with Bob and young Richard at his heels. She could see them all quite clearly, but they could not see her, because they were looking out of the sun into the shaded interior of the power-house, and Mattie was standing very still indeed, a little to one side of the line of the doorway. She felt as though her feet were embedded in the concrete floor and that they would never move again.
The three men halted, and Gib spoke.
“Are you in there, Mattie?” he asked.
His voice was quiet, but at the same time clear.
“Yes, Gib, I’m here. There’s a—a snake in the doorway. Be careful, Gib.” Her own voice wobbled.
“Yes, I see him, Mattie. Don’t worry.” Gib sounded reassuringly calm. “Just wait a moment longer and I’ll deal with him.”
Mattie still stood transfixed, as Gib came right up to the snake. She hardly saw his hand move, but the next second her enemy was vanquished. Gib had picked it up and cracked it sharply, like a stockwhip. Its back was broken, and he flung it a little way away, and ground the heel of his dusty boot on its head to finish it off. It was a black fellow’s trick, that, but Mattie had never actually seen a white man do it. Some of them did, of course, but mostly they came from farther north, where the aborigines taught them these things early in life. The north men could do it. And so could Gib. He had just done it, right now.
Mattie fled through the doorway, straight into a pair of strong, muscular arms. She didn’t much care whose arms they were. They happened to be Bob’s, and they closed tightly around her.
“It’s all right, sweetheart,” he said. “Hell an’ damnation! It’s not right, a girl like you being stuck out here among these dam creeping horrors. You’ll come back to the city with me, my pet.”
Mattie put her head against his shoulder. It could have been anybody’s shoulder. It was just a place to lean on.
“Just anywhere where there aren’t any snakes! she said, on a treble note, and she gave a slightly hysterical laugh.
Bob kept his arm around her on the way back to the house. At the kitchen path she drew away.
“I’m sorry for all the fuss,” she told them. “You go to the dining-room, and I’ll bring over the lunch. It’s all ready.”
Mattie went to the kitchen on wooden legs. There was a horrible, charred smell in the air, and it came from the baking-sheet which lay on the flagstone-hearth in front of the range. There were little black squares stuck to the slide, and Mattie bent down and turned one over with her finger. Only then did she remember about her pumpkin scones.
“I’m sorry, Mattie. They’re beyond hope.” Gib’s voice spoke right behind her. “It was when we came in, and I smelt them burning, that I looked for you, and realized something must be wrong. You’d been there a good while? In the power-house?”
“About an hour, I think. Too long for my liking, anyway!” she said, as she stood up. She was trying to joke about it now, but her voice sounded miles away, and it hadn’t the humorous inflection she meant it to have. Gib’s form had receded, too. It had faded into a sort of yellow gloom that got darker and darker and darker.
The darkness wasn’t there for long. Soon it got lighter and lighter again, and the yellow gloom resolved itself into the pattern on the kitchen lino. It seemed to be incredibly near her face, and planted on it was the toe of Gib’s boot.
She found that she was sitting in the chair near the pastry table, and Gib’s hand was pressing on the back of her neck, forcing her head down between her knees. When she sighed and tried to straighten up, he relaxed the pressure of his hand, and she co
uld feel his fingers caressing the nape of her neck. There was a soothing reassurance about the feel of those strong fingers moving backwards and forwards over her skin.
“Don’t pass out on me, Mattie, there’s a good girl,” he said now. “Keep your head down a while yet.”
The feel of his fingers ceased, and the toe of his boot removed itself from her line of vision.
Presently he returned and squatted down beside her. In his hand he held a white cup from the kitchen dresser, with some spirit in it. He gave her a searching look, then held out the cup, and grinned.
“I seem to remember this is where I entered the picture,” he said. “Only it was the office chair I sat you in.”
Mattie managed a pale smile.
“And it was your horrid old pannikin, and not a kitchen cup,” she quipped unsteadily.
“Come on, Mattie. Drink it up.”
Mattie sniffed the contents. “Brandy,” she said. “Where on earth did you get that?”
Gib jerked his head in the direction of the dresser.
“Same place as the cup,” he said. “I’ve noticed it there when you’re cooking. Come on, it’s three-star stuff.”
“It’s only for Christmas puddings.”
“Well, we’ll pretend Christmas is early this year, and overlook the currants, too. Come on, Mattie. Will you drink it nicely, or do I have to make you?” Gib sounded impatient, and somehow strained. No wonder, thought Mattie hazily. It must be a strain going around picking up snakes and cracking them like a stockwhip.
Hastily she took the cup and tilted the contents down her throat. The spirit caught her breath, and she choked and spluttered and coughed.
Gib drew her head forward on to his shoulder and patted her back, and Mattie rested her head there in a sort of exquisite pleasure. This time it wasn’t just anyone’s shoulder. It was Gib’s. It was a very special shoulder.
“I’d rather have it in a Christmas pudding,” she said when she got her breath back. She was beginning to feel strength seeping into her limbs. “I’m sorry, Gib, for being such a nuisance.”
She drew away from him, shamefaced at her stupid weakness, and stood up, smoothing down her overall. “I’ll have to get the lunch in. Just look at the time!”
Gib stood up, too, looking down at her keenly. “Sure you’re all right, Mattie? I’m staying to carry the tray, in any case. It’d be a pity if you keeled over with all that nice-looking salad.”
Mattie flushed. He had noticed her work of art, after all!
“I won’t keel over,” she promised. “It’s just that I don’t get baled up by a snake every day of my life. It sort of took me by surprise.”
Gib smiled a little grimly.
“It took us all by surprise,” he said harshly. “Never mind, Mattie. It’s not going to happen again, so long as I’m here. From now until the time I go, I’m going to be the one to deal with the electricity plant. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Gib,” she said humbly.
“And when I go, I’ll detail Dan Pirrett to do it. Understand?”
“Yes, Gib,” repeated Mattie, but she was only half listening. Her mind had fastened painfully on that “when I go”, and the old torment had returned.
“And after that, you’ll be back in the city with Bob and the rest, and there will be no snakes to worry about,” said Gib dryly, as he lifted up the tray and stood aside for her to precede him through the doorway.
CHAPTER TEN
MR. LODGE and Bob Rankin and the two boys left Twin Rivers three days later.
Lex Bennett made a point of being up and fully dressed to bid them good-bye, although Aunt Allie insisted that he shouldn’t go beyond his own veranda. So the two senior men came to him instead, and Mattie brought them tea and home-made biscuits, setting these on the little table outside his room.
Her father looked taller and gaunt—all frame and no filling, she thought. His clothes hung on him as if his shoulders were a big, wide coat-hanger, but his grasp of the present topic of conversation was comprehensive and sound. It was obvious that his brain was as alert and his mind as keen as they had ever been, and there was a healthier colour beneath the washed-out tan of his cheeks, and what Mattie always called “the light of battle” was back in his eye. After his long illness, he was badly in need of a haircut, and the unruly thatch of white above his strong-boned face and heavy brows made him look shaggy and formidable.
Mattie left Aunt Allie to dispense the tea, and returned to the kitchen where Richard and Paul were waiting for her. She had promised them a beer instead of tea, and they opened the cans and drank straight from them, sitting on the table and swinging their legs, and talking excitedly about what they were going to do when they got back to Sydney.
When they heard their superiors’ steps, they leapt off the table and hurried over to bring their cases from the main wing of the house.
Mattie joined the group waiting near the Land-Rover.
Gib was there, twirling his broad-brimmed hat in his hand as the others sorted and stowed their possessions and discussed who would take the first turn at the wheel of each vehicle. Then he and Mr. Lodge had a final short discussion, and good-byes were said.
When Bob turned to Mattie, she put out her hand formally. She might have guessed that he would ignore it. Instead he grasped her by the shoulders and gave her a light kiss on one cheek.
“ ’Bye for now, Mattie,” he said. “I’ll be looking for you back in the Big Smoke one day soon.”
Mattie nodded.
“You’ll be coming, won’t you?” Bob persisted.
Mattie made her lips smile somehow. You had to face facts, didn’t you? You had to face up to the situation, when the only man you felt you could ever love did not love you in return. You had to build a future for yourself somewhere—somewhere busy and buzzing, where people would not look beneath the surface and see that your heart was really just a poor, broken thing, glued together by mere courage and determination.
“Yes, Bob, I’ll be coming,” said Mattie, and her mouth felt stiff with smiling.
“Bravo!” Bob slid behind the wheel of the Land-Rover, and wound down the window. He leaned out then, and blew her a kiss with two fingers. “Take care of yourself, darlin,’ and hurry and come down soon, won’t you? Sydney misses Roselle when she’s not there!”
“Yes, I’ll hurry,” Mattie laughed back at him, but her eyes were full of unshed tears.
Not tears for Bob Rankin, but Gib, who was looking at her closely, was not to know that. He couldn’t and mustn’t know that they were tears for the might-have-been, the wandering thistledown, the transient sunbeam.
The party left amid a revving of gears and a cloud of dust. Soon they were over the brow of the hill, and Gib took Mattie’s elbow and walked with her back to the house. His grip was impersonal and kind, and so was his voice as he said,
“Cheer up, Mattie. It won’t be long now before you can join them.”
Mattie stared straight ahead.
“No, Gib, it won’t be long,” she repeated hollowly, because that was how she was feeling, really, just plain hollow. She was wondering how she could possibly bear what was coming next—her parting with Gib.
The funny thing was that, when the time came, Gib made it easy, because he took her by surprise, and at the moment she could hardly believe it was really happening.
He just walked into the kitchen in the middle of a Monday morning, and said, with a lopsided grin, “I’m on my way again, Mattie. I’ve come to say goodbye.”
Good-bye! How final that word could sound!
Lucy and Nellie were scrubbing clothes in the laundry. You could hear their giggles even from here. Mattie herself was washing the dishes that they normally did for her, on every day that they happened to appear, unless it was a wash-day.
Mattie took her hands out of the soapy water, and dried them on the roller-towel. Her heart felt as though it had dropped in a leaden ball to the pit of her stomach, but she heard her voice answering,
and marvelled at its steadiness.
“You’re leaving us, Gib?”
“Yes, Mattie. It’s time I was moving on. I’ve been having a word with your father, and he’s confident he’ll manage to cope now. The work is well forward, and very soon he’ll be getting the results of the survey. It appears almost certain that the scheme will go ahead immediately, and in a way that will be a big relief. He’ll know where he stands, and he’ll be able to make plans.”
“Yes, of course. I can see what you mean. It’s always better to know the worst, I suppose, and then you don’t go on hoping in vain.”
Mattie’s voice shook just the tiniest bit. She did hope he had not noticed. She rushed on.
“I—I’ve got to thank you, Gib, for all you’ve done for us, my father, and me, and Twin Rivers. I’ve realized for some time now that we could never have got through without you. Aunt Allie was right—I was very rash in dispensing with Bryn like that, and if you hadn’t turned up, goodness knows what would have happened.”
If you hadn’t turned up, my heart wouldn’t be all broken up into aching little fragments. That’s what she’d have said if she’d been truthful.
“That’s all right, Mattie.” Gib brushed her thanks aside negligently. “I was glad I could help your father over a bad patch. I’ve a great regard for your father, Mattie. He’s a man who inspires respect. We’ve talked a lot together these last few weeks, and I’ve got to understand him pretty well. You won’t need to worry about him when you go back to Sydney—not at all. Already he’s over the knock, and beginning to get his teeth into some new ideas for the future. I shouldn’t be surprised if he’ll sink some capital in another property and begin all over again, shaping it to his liking.”
Mattie met his eyes. They were steady and kind. He was reassuring her in that understanding way he had.
“And what about you, Gib?” Mattie asked. “Won’t we see you again? Mightn’t you come back this way, some time?”
She made the question light and unimportant, but inside her, she was saying, please, Gib, please say you’ll come back. She kept her eyes down, because if she didn’t, he might see the pleading in them. He had always been too clever at seeing things he wasn’t supposed to.