Woman at Willagong Creek

by Hart, Jessica

  ‘So I see.’ Secret amusement crinkled his eyes.

  Olivia found herself willing him to smile at her, but he only turned away and sat down at the table with the others. She was taken aback by her stab of disappointment, and vexation with herself sharpened her voice to brittle Englishness.

  ‘Coffee, everyone?’

  ‘Tea,’ said Guy firmly. ‘We only have coffee after supper.’

  Olivia’s lips tightened. She made some tea in a big, battered metal pot and then very deliberately poured herself a coffee. Risking a glance at Guy, she saw he was well aware of her reaction, and she put down her cup with a hand that was suddenly unsteady. She could make all the resolutions she liked about staying cool and businesslike with Guy, but he only had to walk in the room to have her acting jittery and illogical again.

  She looked at him again. The dust on his face gave his skin a matt appearance, and the lean lines of cheek and jaw were very pronounced. His brown eyes were shrewd, amused. Why didn’t he smile?

  ‘I see you’ve been baking too,’ he remarked.

  Olivia flushed. The cake sat on a wire rack, hard and flat, an admission of failure. She had tried to salvage it with icing, but somehow it had only made it look worse. After all she had had to say about Corky’s cooking, it was a humiliating start.

  ‘It would have helped to have had some decent equipment,’ she said defensively. ‘It’s bad enough making a cake at the best of times, without having to guess at all the quantities and temperatures.’

  ‘I thought you were a cordon bleu cook?’ he said, with deceptive innocence.

  ‘I am.’ Olivia gritted her teeth. ‘I’m just a little rusty on baking.’

  Guy was unsympathetic. ‘You’ll get used to it.’

  Like his kisses? Her eyes slid away from his, remembering his comments last night. ‘The kitchen needs to be completely cleaned and restocked,’ she said quickly. ‘When can I go shopping?’

  ‘Shopping?’ He looked at her as if she’d asked to go to the moon. ‘There’s a whole roomful of goods out there in the cold store. You’ll have to make do with what we’ve got.’

  Olivia had glanced in the store earlier and had been unimpressed by its shelves stocked high with basics like tins of powdered milk, sugar and flour. In the huge walk-in fridge she had found a dull selection of vegetables and enormous haunches of freshly butchered beef that made her wrinkle her nose in distaste. Why had she never appreciated the supermarket at home with its range of exotic fruit and vegetables and meat wrapped in nice, sanitised plastic packages?

  ‘It’s not exactly an inspirational choice,’ she pointed out, thinking that even a few herbs and spices would liven things up a bit.

  ‘We don’t need inspiration,’ Guy said flatly. ‘All we need is plain, nourishing food, and you can do that perfectly well with what’s here. I’m flying to Townsville next week, so if we’re running short of anything I can stock up then. You might make a list.’

  ‘Townsville?’ Olivia brightened at the reassuring thought of a city. ‘Can I come?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But why not?’ She still couldn’t get used to such abrupt refusal from a man.

  The ringers were talking among themselves at the far end of the table and tucking into the cake with every evidence of enjoyment - they didn’t have the most discerning of palates, Olivia reflected irrelevantly - but Guy leaned closer so that only she could hear. His mouth was set in a stern line. ‘You claimed that you wanted to look after David, Olivia, and that’s what you’re going to do. That means staying here with him, not jaunting off on shopping trips.’

  ‘It’s all right for you to go jaunting off, though!’ Olivia pointed out rebelliously, unsettled by his nearness and determined not to show it.

  ‘I’ve got a property to run. There are times when I have to be away, otherwise I wouldn’t have needed a woman to look after David.’

  A woman, any old woman! Olivia’s eyes sparkled dangerously green, but she bit back the bitter retort that sprang to her lips. Cool, businesslike, that was her. ‘Where can I buy the things I need now?’ she asked in a reasonable tone.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well … She searched her mind feverishly. ‘I need some eggs. I used the last two in the cake.’

  Guy looked long-suffering. ‘Eggs? Even a city girl like you must know where eggs come from!’ He nodded his head towards the door. ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to resign yourself to a shopless existence from now on, Olivia. You’ll find the chooks in a run across from the ringers’ quarters.’

  Draining his mug, he stood up. ‘We’d better get back to work. Lunch at one o’clock please.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ Olivia muttered, left staring resentfully at where the screen door banged into place after the last man.

  With a sigh, she leant her elbows on the table and propped her forehead in her hands. No music, no company, no shops, no relief from the endless round of cleaning and meals. How was she going to stand it?

  If she had been in London she would have been dictating letters, translating programme notes, sending off telexes, gossiping over coffee, worrying about how to get a hundred musicians and all their instruments from Rome to Berlin, rushing off to meet record producers, taking a call from the BBC while she was putting on her coat and talking to the promoter in Japan at the same time … It had taken her a long time to prove to her boss that she was just as good as Tim and should be made a director as well, but she had loved every minute - until Tim had decided he wanted to marry his secretary, a pretty girl whose ambitions went only as far as a house and family.

  Olivia was sure that Tim had come to resent her own success, and she didn’t blame him for wanting to marry someone who would be less of a challenge. The only thing she hated was the fact that everybody knew. She hated the sympathetic looks, the disbelief when she smiled and said she didn’t care, and it had been a relief to head for a country where nobody knew her for a while. She had planned to go back, of course, to show them all that she could make a success of her own business, but those plans had had to be shelved for a while. She had no business to run at Willagong Creek, only a house to clean and six stomachs to be filled.

  It was an unexciting prospect, but she would bear it. She would have to.

  She was still sitting there when the creak of the screen door made her look up, expecting David, who had disappeared clutching jam jars after breakfast, no doubt in search of insects.

  It was Guy. He stood for a moment looking down at the unguarded expression in her turquoise eyes. ‘You’d better wear this for cleaning,’ he said abruptly, tossing one of his shirts on to the table. ‘I daresay it won’t co-ordinate with your trousers, but it’ll save you ruining any more of your clothes.’

  He turned on his heel and left before Olivia had time to recover from her surprise. She would have thought he’d consider her expensive clothes merely unsuitable, and that he would simply shrug off any damage as her own fault for having nothing better to wear.

  She pulled the shirt towards her. It was a little frayed round the collar and cuffs, and the blue and green checked cotton was soft with age. There was no doubt it would be more comfortable than her own shirt, which clung damply to her back.

  Peeling it off, she shrugged herself into Guy’s shirt, smoothing it down with slightly hesitant hands. The material was cool and comfortable against her skin; it smelt clean and sun-dried, with a lingering, indefinable male scent.

  Guy’s shirt. For no reason, Olivia felt a flush spread slowly over her body at the thought of wearing his clothes against her bare skin. It seemed suddenly very intimate, and she was uncomfortably aware of her nakedness beneath the shirt. It was almost as if he were touching her himself …

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she said out loud. ‘It’s an old shirt, that’s all.’

  She walked slowly over to the chicken run, trying not to think about the way the material brushed against her as if in intimate caresses as she moved. The hens rushed ove
r to greet her as she let herself into the run, flapping their wings ridiculously and tumbling over themselves in their eagerness to find out what scraps she had brought.

  ‘I haven’t got anything,’ she confessed, feeling absurdly guilty as they clucked hopefully around her feet. She was a failure as far as the chickens were concerned too! ‘I’ll bring you some scraps later.’

  She found almost a dozen eggs in the roost and carried them back gathered in the front of Guy’s shirt. They were dirtier than she was used to seeing in the shops, so she washed them and laid them out neatly, then wished she hadn’t. Guy would only sneer.

  Determined to prove that she could cook, Olivia used some of the eggs to make a magnificent quiche for lunch, but that turned out to be the wrong thing too.

  ‘You don’t need to bother cooking anything for lunch,’ Guy said briskly. ‘Meat and bread and salad, that’s all they need.’

  The arrival of Ben and Darren, clattering up the steps, effectively silenced Olivia’s protests. Her beautiful quiche, spurned for tough, grey meat! He might at least have said how nice it looked, she thought, slicing beef sullenly.

  She could see Ben and Darren eyeing the quiche and the perfectly arranged salad out of the corner of their eyes, and exchanging glances with Corky and Joe as they arrived in their turn. David arrived last, looking grubby.

  ‘Ugh - quiche! Yeuch! He screwed up his face in disgust as he spotted Olivia’s work of art, lacking the inhibitions that had obviously kept the ringers from saying exactly the same thing.

  ‘That’s enough, David.’ Guy’s quiet voice stopped David in his tracks.

  ‘Sorry,’ he muttered in Olivia’s direction.

  She sighed, defeated. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said resignedly. ‘There’s bread and meat as well, and I promise never to make the salad look nice again!’

  There were a few sheepish smiles as they all sat down. As if to atone for their lack of enthusiasm, the ringers each took a tiny slice of quiche, and ate it stolidly, but with such an air of self-sacrifice that Olivia wished they hadn’t bothered. Guy took a large piece, she noticed, but ate it without comment.

  Her mind began to wander as the men talked about mending fences and checking licks, whatever licks were. There was a little restaurant she knew in Strasbourg, where they served the best quiche lorraine she had ever tasted, but the one she had made that morning was nearly as good. It was fortunate they had a more appreciative audience in Strasbourg …

  ‘Is that Guy’s shirt you’re wearing, Mrs R?’

  Olivia started to find herself addressed directly. ‘Er - yes … yes it is.’

  ‘Thought I recognised it,’ Ben said to Corky with satisfaction. ‘That’s the shirt he wears the whole time.’

  ‘So it is.’ Corky looked closer at Olivia, who sat feeling absurdly self-conscious at the end of the table, and added surprisingly, ‘Looks better on Mrs R, though, doesn’t it, Guy?’

  There was a pause. Almost shyly, Olivia looked down the table to where Guy sat opposite her. Had he really given her his favourite shirt? His dark eyes were unreadable, his face expressionless as ever, but illogically she found herself remembering how he had kissed her in vivid detail. The memory brought a warm tide of colour to her cheeks, and she looked quickly down at her plate.

  ‘Yes,’ said Guy, ‘it does.’

  David regarded Olivia critically. ‘You don’t look as smart as you usually do,’ he observed, with small-boy candour. He crammed the last of his bread into his mouth and continued indistinctly, ‘Did you choose it specially? It’s the same colour as your eyes. Look, Guy!’

  Olivia risked another fleeting glance at Guy. He was still watching her, and she felt oddly breathless.

  ‘Exactly the same colour,’ he agreed calmly.

  He had said nothing, done nothing. So why was her heart thudding uncomfortably against her ribs? Why had her appetite deserted her? Olivia pushed the remains of her quiche irritably around her plate. She had already decided not to let Guy affect her any more. She was the one who was cool and sophisticated round here. She was the one who could set pulses racing with a smile. Not Guy Richardson with his infuriatingly unreadable eyes, Guy who didn’t even smile. It was stupid to speculate about his shirt, pointless to analyse the little thrill of pleasure to know that he’d actually noticed the colour of her eyes.

  Left alone with the dishes and the chaotic kitchen once more, Olivia threw herself into cleaning in an effort to take her mind off all those things about Guy she had decided not to think about, but by three o’clock she was sick of it. Turning her back on damp cloths and scrubbing brushes, she closed the cookhouse door behind her and headed off, with no clear idea of where she was going as long as it was away from the homestead.

  The glare hit her as she stepped outside, making her screw up her eyes, and the heat bounced off the dry ground. She waved the flies away from her face and hesitated by the stockyards, where the track forked. To the left it stretched straight to the horizon, through interminable, shimmering scrub. To the right, past the paddock where the horses brooded in the shade, lay the creek.

  Shading her eyes against the sun, Olivia chose the creek. She slithered down the banks to walk along the river bed, completely dry now after months without rain. Desiccated brown gum leaves rustled beneath her feet, filling the air with their sun-dried fragrance. It was almost eerily quiet.

  She wandered aimlessly, scuffing through the leaves every now and then. It had been a humiliating morning. She had always been a perfectionist, and it irritated her that she had not been able to demonstrate to Guy quite how capable and efficient she was. He would think her totally inadequate after this morning, she realised glumly. Her clothes were wrong, her cooking was wrong, she was wrong.

  Crushing a few of the narrow gum leaves in her hand, she bent to breathe in their scent before letting the dried fragments crumble through her fingers. This was her life now. She would have to prove to Guy that she could do things right too.

  ‘There you are.’ Guy’s quiet voice seemed to echo in the silence, and she jerked round. He was watching her from the edge of the creek, sitting easily on a chestnut horse that tossed its head up and down against the flies, his hat tilted low over his eyes.

  He looked solid, overwhelmingly distinct as he sat outlined against the harsh cobalt-blue of the sky. Olivia felt the breath leak slowly out of her. His eyes were shaded by his hat, but the lower half of his face was very clear in the sunlight, the uncompromising jaw, the cool, firm mouth with the creases on either side that deepened to what was almost, but not quite, a smile.

  ‘You shouldn’t be out here without a hat.’ He guided the horse down the bank towards her. ‘I saw you heading off into the distance, so I brought you this. Here.’ He unhooked a cattleman’s hat from the saddle and tossed it down to Olivia, who caught it, much to her surprise, as she edged away from the horse. It looked enormous close up.

  The hat was old and stained, the felt torn and battered into shape. She turned it dubiously in her hands. ‘I don’t know that it’s really me,’ she said, only half joking.

  ‘As long as it keeps you from getting sunstroke, it doesn’t matter whether it’s you or not.’ Guy’s voice was dry. ‘That perfect English complexion of yours isn’t used to sun like this, and the last thing I need is you sick on my hands. Go on, put it on.’

  With a sigh, Olivia obeyed. The hat sat a little askew on her shining hair, framing the pure lines of her face. Beneath the brim, her eyes were wide and very blue.

  There was an arrested expression in Guy’s eyes as he looked down at her, standing in the dappled shade of the gums. It was hard to believe this was the smart, sophisticated woman in the Townsville hotel, but, if anything, the faded shirt and battered hat served to emphasise her vivid beauty and indefinable glamour. Without taking his eyes from her face, he swung himself effortlessly out of the saddle.

  ‘You look all right in it,’ he said, tipping his hat back slightly in an unconscious gesture.

&n
bsp; Afflicted by sudden shyness, Olivia stooped to pick up some more gum leaves. ‘It’s so quiet here,’ she said, the first thing she could think of. She concentrated on tearing the leaves beneath her fingers, trying not to think about how right Guy looked in these surroundings.

  ‘It’s peaceful.’ He glanced around him at the silent, leaning gums silhouetted against the sky, at the sharp contrast between the dazzling light and solid blocks of shade, and the lovely girl standing in front of him in the absurdly battered hat, head bent over her shredding fingers. His horse shifted its legs and blew softly through its nose. ‘Don’t you think so?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Olivia confessed. She scattered the shredded remains on the creek bed and moved away - as if casually, she hoped - from Guy’s disturbing solidity. ‘I’ve always lived and worked in cities. I listen to music the whole time, and, even if there’s no music, there are always other noises in the background. Here there’s nothing. No cars, no sirens, no music, no neighbours arguing. Just … silence.’

  ‘You’ll get used to it. You might even find you get to like it.’

  You might get used to the cowboy technique, Olivia. You might even find you get to like it. Guy’s words from last night reverberated round the creek in a rush of memory, and for a moment she felt as if he had just kissed her again, her lips tender, her body aroused.

  She drew a shaky breath. ‘There seem to be an awful lot of things I have to get used to, don’t there, Guy?’ Her voice was sharper than she had intended, as if in self-defence, and the memory of last night hung between them, a tangible thing.

  There was a silence. Guy half turned away and ran his hand over his horse’s neck. ‘It wasn’t just the hat,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘I followed you because I wanted to apologise for last night.’ He hesitated, turned back to look at her again. ‘I shouldn’t have kissed you like that.’

  Olivia moistened her lips. She literally couldn’t think of anything to say. ‘I … I think we were both on edge last night,’ she said eventually.

  ‘I thought you’d like to know that it won’t happen again.’