by Amanda Doyle
Gib seemed to hesitate. Then he said quietly,
“I doubt it, Mattie. There’ll be nothing to take me back this way. There won’t be a road, you know, when the dam comes. The sundowners will have to change their route, won’t they?” A tiny smile lit his eyes. “Now, how about that hand-out you promised me all those weeks ago? Can you spare a little tea and sugar for an honest swagman?”
“Of course, Gib.”
Mattie took the container he offered her, glad of this last-minute opportunity to do him a small service. Anything to prolong the moments before he would leave her.
When she came through from the pantry, she handed him a small package as well.
“Just a few scones, too,” she said, “and some cold meat sandwiches. They’ve got pickle in them—tomato pickle?”
“Thank you, Mattie,” he replied, gravely and politely. “That’s my favourite kind.”
He secured the things under the straps of his swag, and swung it on to the table. Matilda. His Matilda. The only one he wanted. It was a bigger bundle than when he came, because it now contained some spare duds, and a well-cut tropic-weight jacket, and some narrow-legged gabardines, and a tie that was quiet and correct and somehow distinctive, just like its owner.
“Good-bye, Mattie,” he said, quietly and correctly, too.
Mattie put her hand into his big, firm one, and for an instant felt the pressure of his tanned fingers.
Then he picked up his swag, swung it on to his shoulder, and walked out of the door. Out of the kitchen. Out of her life.
Mattie watched his lithe figure go striding away from her.
She watched and watched, but he didn’t turn and come back as she was praying he might. If he had turned and beckoned to her to come with him, she’d have dropped everything and gone. But he didn’t even turn to wave, and when she couldn’t see him any longer, Mattie went back and put her hands into the soapy water again, and finished washing the dishes.
She got through the morning work really well, that day. She was quick and efficient, and automatic, because she didn’t think about Gib at all. It was easy not to think because, inside, she was numb and frozen, as though she’d been given a shot of one of those freezing anaesthetics.
Things were not too bad so long as the anaesthetic was effective, but about the middle of the afternoon, it began to wear off. As the numbness went away, an ache of hopelessness took its place. Mattie began to feel an agony that was almost a physical pain. How did one cope with it, she wondered, and how long was it likely to last?
She went and sat on the edge of the veranda steps, with her legs dangling down on to the geranium bed, and hugged her arms about her, trying to ease the tightness inside. When it didn’t go, she put her head in her hands and sat perfectly still, trying to make her mind a blank.
“What’s wrong, Mattie?” Lex’s voice spoke beside her.
He must have seen her from his window, and walked this way, or perhaps he had been taking one of those little strolls Aunt Allie now prescribed for him. He looked anxiously at her, and sat down heavily on the step at her side.
Mattie looked back at him, trying to compose herself.
“It’s nothing, Father. Nothing’s wrong.”
“Yes, it is, Mattie. I could tell by the way you were sitting there. Aren’t you feeling well? Do you feel ill?”
Mattie gave him a small, twisted smile.
“No, I’m not ill,” she said. “It—it’s nothing so simple as that.”
“Then what is it, Mattie? You can tell me. I’m your father.” Lex suddenly brought her against him in a warm, close hold. He was big and clumsy and awkward about it, because he hadn’t done such a thing for a long, long time.
Mattie was so surprised that she would have drawn back, but he wouldn’t let her. His voice was deep and gruff, and a little bit unsteady.
“A girl ought to be able to tell her father anything, shouldn’t she, or he’s not worth the name. Maybe I’m not worth the name, Mattie. Maybe, somewhere along the way, I’ve forgotten how to be a father—have I, Mattie?”
Lex sounded humble and uncertain, and—sort of loving.
“Oh, Dad!” said Mattie, and buried her face in his shirt.
Lex’s hold tightened around her.
“You haven’t called me that for years, Mattie—not since you were my little tomboy-girl have you called me Dad,” he told her huskily, on a note of wonder. “We seemed to lose each other, somehow, didn’t we, and we never got back on the old footing. And then, next time you came home, you were calling me “Father.” I can’t think why.”
“Miss Mottram said it was the proper and respectful way to t-talk to a parent.”
“The hell she did!” muttered Lex. “Well, she darn near lost me my little daughter over that. When you came home, Mattie, I couldn’t seem to make contact any more. You were always a lovely little thing, so like your mother that it used to torture me, and then you got lovelier and lovelier, and much more formal and elusive. It was as if a beautiful stranger had taken my Mattie’s place.”
“No, Dad,” said Mattie against him, “I’m just the same really, underneath, still the same as I always was. I—I thought it was you who’d changed, you who were different.”
Lex held her away, and they looked at each other, amazement spreading slowly over both faces. Lex gave her a little shake and shook his head. There was a gentleness in his eyes, and a smile started there too, and spread gradually over his gaunt, craggy features, softening them into a kind, paternal softness.
“I’m the same, too, Mattie. The same old Dad, but a wiser man than I was five minutes ago. And seeing I’m the same, you tell me, now, what’s bothering you, and I’ll help if I can.”
Mattie stared into her father’s anxious face with wonder. The old, dear, familiar look was there, the one she could remember from the time when she and Nick were very little. Before he got so remote. It must have been there all the time, all these years, only Mattie hadn’t seen it.
She was seeing it now, though, and it was a salve to the soreness inside her. It made her feel none the less sad and hopeless over Gib, but she suddenly wasn’t alone with her despair any more. She hadn’t been abandoned after all. Lex was here, big and awkward and worried, eyeing her with fatherly concern.
Mattie was reluctant to speak of Gib to anyone, just then, but if she denied her father the privilege of confidence now, she would lose this precious thing they had re-discovered in the last few moments. She must never, never, lose it again, so Mattie let him hold her hand, and then she said, quiet calmly and matter-of-factly,
“There’s no help you or anyone can give, I’m afraid, Dad. You see, it’s Gib.”
Lex’s bushy brows met in surprise.
“Gib?”
Mattie nodded.
“I love him, Dad, and he’s gone away.”
Her father was startled, quite obviously. Whatever he had been expecting, it certainly hadn’t been what he had just heard. For a moment they just remained staring at each other as they sat there on the step—Mattie pale and candid and calm, Lex astonished and slightly bewildered.
“Dear Heaven and all the saints!” he exclaimed abruptly. “Does he know?”
Mattie’s lovely mouth gave a bitter little grimace, that went straight to her father’s heart.
“No, he doesn’t know. That’s the one trial I’ve been spared, that he might have found out. I managed to hide it, Dad, but now he’s gone I feel so—so—empty.” Lex put his arms around her again, and fondled her hair, the way he used to do when she was small.
“What can I say, Mattie? What can we do?” he asked helplessly, completely out of his depth. “Cry if you want to, darling, if that will do any good.”
Mattie put her head back proudly, and met her father’s sympathetic gaze.
“No, I’m not going to cry,” she assured him, with a small courageous smile. “We Bennetts don’t cry about something we’re powerless to change. You didn’t, Dad, about Twin Rivers, and I
’m your daughter, aren’t I? I’ll face my challenge the same way you’ve faced yours. You’re going to make a future for yourself, and build on fresh ground, you and Aunt Allie, aren’t you?”
Lex nodded.
“Yes, I am, Mattie, God willing, and I’ll have Allie beside me. A man can do a lot with a good woman at his side.”
Almost Gib’s own words, recollected Mattie wistfully. How wise and understanding Gib had been! She remembered the little scene, just the two of them there in the office, when she had needed comfort so badly. She remembered Gib’s voice, so quiet and steady and sound, explaining those basic truths she had never comprehended before.
At her side, Lex stirred, and drew a heavy breath.
“That’s what we’re doing, Mattie, but what about you? Do you want to go back to that city career of yours, or will you come with us, and help us to build? We could all get back on our feet together, that way.”
Mattie shook her head wisely.
“No, Dad, I won’t do that,” she replied. “One woman by your side is enough. You don’t need two, you know. I’ll come and visit you both often, and see how you’re getting on, but I’ve made up my mind to go back to Sydney. I’ll manage O.K. I’ll make a bright future, too, some day. But, just today, it’s hard to think about it. It still hurts too much,” she admitted forlornly.
Lex gave her hand an understanding squeeze.
“I’m sorry, Mattie. I’m not being of much help.”
“Yes, you are. Just telling you has been a help. It’s my own fault anyway, for letting myself begin to love him the way I did. It sort of caught up with me before I was aware of it, though, and then it was too late.”
Lex sighed.
“I think I can understand it happening, Mattie,” he remarked thoughtfully. “Gib is an extremely fine type of man. God knows if he’s physically attractive to a woman or not—that’s out of my orbit altogether—but that combination of judgement and perception and personality is a rare find in one person.”
“Except for his wanderlust. Why, with all those qualities, couldn’t he make better use of his life, Dad? That’s the part of his character I couldn’t begin to understand, the weakness underneath the strength—that he couldn’t settle to anything for long, or use his gifts to attain something permanent. And yet”—she gave a sad, ashamed little laugh—“if he had beckoned to me to follow when he walked down the track this morning, I’d have done it, Dad, without a backward glance. Stupid, aren’t I?”
Her father gave her a queer, searching look.
“You—? Mattie, did Gib never tell you anything about himself, in all the time he was here? I respected his confidence, of course, but I rather took it for granted that he might have done that, near the end of his stay?”
It was Mattie’s turn to look perplexed. She shook her head slowly.
“What might he have told me, except about the places he had been to?” she asked. “He did try to tell me, one evening, the reasons why he left New Guinea, but I—I remember now, I sort of stopped him. I suppose I was wishing that he could be different, and I didn’t want to listen to excuses for his instability. You see, Dad, I loved him, in spite of it.”
“Instability? Mattie girl, I doubt if there’s a more stable or dependable man walking the globe at this moment,” Lex stated positively.
“That’s just it—walking the globe,” she rejoined bitterly.
Her father watched her dubiously.
“Mattie, I could tell you about this man you love, if you’d like me to,” he offered doubtfully, “but I just don’t know if it’ll make things easier or harder for you.”
“It can’t make much difference either way, can it? He’s gone now, Dad, and nothing I hear could ever make me love him less than I do.”
“It might make you love him more, maybe, and that would be tougher for you, Mattie. I don’t want to make things worse than they are.”
“That’s impossible, too.” Mattie’s voice was ironic. “This feeling I’ve got goes too deep for that. I can’t love Gib any more than I do. I’ve told you, I’d have gone with him today, if he’d asked me. I’d—I believe I’d like to know the truth, all the same.”
Lex stood up, and took her hand.
“Come and sit in these deck-chairs, then, where we can talk more comfortably.” When they were seated, he asked abruptly, “Mattie, have you ever heard of Greg Faversham?”
Mattie nodded immediately.
“You mean the Territory man?”
“That’s it. The Territory man.”
“Yes, of course I’ve heard of him. Everyone has, haven’t they? He’s a—a sort of living legend up there in the north, isn’t he? A pioneer. He’s got strings of places, right east into Queensland, and he initiated an airlift recently, and he’s at the head of some big inland development company, and he was a prime mover in some wonderful water-scheme in West Australia, too, I think.”
“That’s him,” agreed Lex. “You never met him?”
“No,” said Mattie, “I didn’t actually ever meet him, but I’ve heard a lot about him from some of the girls in Sydney who had. They were crazy about him, I remember that much. Every one of them went all out to get him, and set their caps at him quite shamelessly. I suppose the mere fact of being who he was made him frightfully eligible, but they all used to say he was quite stunning as well—sort of slayingly handsome, in a unique and different way.”
Her father lay back in the deck-chair and said dryly,
“Well, you should know.”
“Not really. I told you, Dad, I never actually set eyes on this fabulous creature. I got quite tired of hearing them drooling on about him, in fact.”
For the first time since their conversation began, there was laughter in Lex’s voice.
“Mattie, of course you’ve set eyes on him. Think again.”
Mattie looked at Lex, and Lex looked back at Mattie. She thought again, like he had said to do, and as she thought, her peat-brown eyes got rounder and rounder.
Finally she whispered it. Just the one word. A question.
“Gib?”
Her father nodded sombrely.
“Yes, Mattie, Gib. And of all the providential moments in my life, that one when Greg Faversham walked up the track was the luckiest. Just when everything seemed against me, when I wondered if I’d ever have the strength and the guts to get up out of bed again and go on living, he walked right in and made up my mind for me.”
Mattie hardly paid attention to what her father was saying. Gib, she was thinking, had managed to evade all those lovely would-be wives in Sydney. Or rather, Gregg Faversham had. He had eluded them all, and he had married Annabelle. She said that aloud, just to make the information clear in her mind for ever and ever.
“He married a girl called Annabelle,” she said distinctly.
Lex Bennett shook his head.
“No, he isn’t married himself,” he told her. “In fact, he seemed to be off women in a big way when he arrived at Twin Rivers that night. I’m sorry, Mattie, but I’m being blunt. I expect he was tired of being pursued by the fair sex wherever he went—some of them can be pretty shameless these days. I think his young brother’s wife is called Annabelle, though. Yes, I’m sure that was the name he said.”
“But I don’t understand.” Mattie looked blank “I—I distinctly remember, when he had that bout of malaria, he spoke about that girl, Annabelle. He said her name, so she must have been on his mind, and naturally, I thought—well, never mind what I thought, but why should he mention her at a time like that?”
Lex shrugged.
“For the very reason you’ve said. She was on his mind They both were, she and his brother. You see, Mattie, his young brother had been a bit of a harum-scarum fellow up till now—driving racing cars, mostly, I gather. When he married this nice young girl called Annabelle, whom he’d actually met in the first instance at some Grand Prix, she persuaded him to give it up. She found that she couldn’t bear to stand there watching her crazy
young husband doing his utmost to get himself killed. For a while, he wouldn’t listen, and then there was a baby coming, and she was able to make him see sense. He wanted Greg—or Gib, as we’ve got in the way of calling him—to set him up on a property straight away, but Gib wasn’t sure that he had the stamina or the interest to stick that sort of life. He was prepared to help him, of course, but even Annabelle had her doubts, and thought he might be better suited to a garage business, or commercial career. So Gib agreed to him taking over the management of the property he lives on himself, for a period of eight months, to see how he would make out. In the interval, Gib took on a job as an engineer on some bridge-building project up in New Guinea, more, I gather, to get himself conveniently out of the way than anything else. That was where he contracted malaria. The project was progressing towards its final stages when he got it, and badly. A while later it came back, and they flew him down to Sydney to recuperate.”
Lex stretched his legs out and smiled wryly.
“Well, you’ve described pretty vividly yourself what happens to an eligible chap like Gib when those man-eating women down there discover he’s in town. His one idea was to get out. He didn’t feel he’d recover properly in the city atmosphere anyway, and he longed for the country life again, but didn’t want to be available for his young brother to defer to too easily. Men like Gib are always being deferred to, one way and another, for advice or even financial help, wherever they go, I’m afraid, Mattie. He had ten weeks to go, and he decided that he would take a dander around some of the country he hadn’t seen, leading the sort of quiet, open-air life that he loves. It was the quickest way back to health for a man like Gib. He could take his time, and go where he liked, and nobody knew who he was—at least, not until he came here. He asked me, that first night, to respect his confidence. He was enjoying seeing life from ground level for the first time in years. It was a relaxing situation for a man in Gib’s position, and one that he wanted to continue for the rest of his few weeks. Once people heard who he was, and that he was in the area, his precious peace would have been stormed forthwith.”