“Wow! Do you mean they might still—” Lisa made a vivid gesture of cutting her throat, laughing, “and pop us in the cooking-pot?”
“No, no. But don’t play around with them, my dear. If ye take my advice, ye’ll do juist as Steve says—about the Abos,” she smiled to break the severity of her words, “and about everything else on the Blue River. Then ye won’t start any trouble.” She picked up the empty cups and went out with the tray, calling gently from the doorway, “Steve will be in for his breakfast at half-past eight.”
“Well! That’s little Lisa cut down to size!” the girl spoke ruefully as she swung herself on to her wheel chair from the bed—the side rails were easily detachable for the manoeuvre. “I’m beginning to think your Steve is quite formidable, Jane. Have you got yourself a strong, not-so-silent man, darling?”
“You bought that one, didn’t you?” Jane laughed and sobered suddenly. It was difficult to keep remembering the truth. She added quietly, “Mrs. Newbery has been here a long time, Lisa. Since Steve was a small boy. She wouldn’t think so much of him if he wasn’t worth respecting.”
“My goodness, as they say in these parts!” Lisa twisted to stare up at her sister pushing her chair. “Are you going to include ‘obey’ in your marriage service, sweetie? I thought that had gone out with the dodo.”
“If I love a man enough to marry him,” Jane replied briskly, running the water for Lisa’s bath, “I shall leave the marriage service alone. If a man’s worth loving, he’s worthy of respect, surely that’s a part of loving?”
“You could be right, I suppose. Only it sounds like something out of a Victorian novel. Are you really that square, Jane? Scrub my back, sweetie.”
Jane scrubbed gently at the slender, white-skinned back. Naked, Lisa looked like a fragile porcelain statue; only someone who had seen her dancing could know how strong she had been. Washing her sister’s long, slim legs Jane knew the familiar aching surge of pity.
“I’m—yes, I suppose I am,” she said gently, smiling a little. “Mother never minded obeying Dad, and they were happy.”
“I wouldn’t,” Lisa said gaily, splashing her face. “I think a man would get bored to death with a doormat. A man like Steve, anyway.”
It was still not really light when Jane left the house and began walking slowly down towards the distant, somehow compelling music of the didgeridoo. She had no intention of intruding into the native camp, but the little argument with Lisa had made her restless; she wanted to walk for a while by herself in the cool freshness, in the sort of dusky twilight that was very still. The smell of the eucalyptus and the bush was tangy and sweet. Already, on this, her second morning in Australia, the bush was calling to her like the haunting music of the didgeridoo.
When Jane had showered and dressed in a cotton shirt and denims, she’d asked if Lisa minded being left. She didn’t think she could manage the wheel chair down the steep steps from the veranda, and they didn’t want to summon help so early in the day. Lisa had been emphatic about not minding.
“For heaven’s sake, Jan, I’m not that helpless! Naturally you and Steve won’t want me round your necks all the time—go and find him, darling. Ride if you want to. I’ll go and make my peace with Nubby—help her get the breakfast.” She giggled suddenly. “I’ll grill those chops and things—there’s an eye-level grill on one of those cookers.”
Lisa, she thought affectionately, could drive you up the wall one minute and wring your heart out the next. Whatever she did you had to forgive her. It had always been like that, even before the accident. Her family had divided naturally into two camps, but without animosity. Jane and her father, both interested in medicine; Lisa and her mother, both very pretty and interested in the arts, especially in music and dancing. Mrs. Lesley had given up a promising career as a pianist to marry a country doctor and never regretted it; but thinking back, Jane could understand now why her mother had been so delighted to see her dreams coming true for her younger daughter ... in her eyes Lisa could do no wrong, all her demands must be met, when she was naughty it was just childish high spirits...
Considering how pretty she was, and how they had all indulged her whims, Lisa could have been a great deal more spoiled and capricious than she was, Jane thought as she walked slowly down the track. The smell of wood smoke from the kitchen quarters and the native camp added to the fresh sweetness of the morning dusk—the sweetness of a heavy dew after the long hot hours of yesterday’s sunshine. From the back of the quarters there came a sound of men talking and whistling and the splashing of water as the stockmen began their day, but the front was deserted except for a few lean sleeping dogs among the bushes. They raised alert heads as Jane passed, one or two growling, but none of them responded to her voice or her outstretched hand.
She quickened her pace then, suddenly shy at the thought of finding herself alone with all those men at their morning ablutions. Lisa’s lovely men ... Jane smiled involuntarily as she went down a fork from the track, exploring a route that they had not used yesterday. She knew what her sister meant by the outspoken comment ... yesterday she had come in for her share of the slow, appraising stares from the men who did not hesitate to show their approval.
It was of course only because they were starved for young female companionship in the Outback, but there was a heart-warming welcome in it all the same. A real welcome.
Perhaps, her thoughts added ruefully, that was how Stewart had overridden her scruples and native caution so suddenly; a love-starved spinster in a remote moorland village had fallen easy prey to his charm and his passion—and his vivid descriptions of the Blue River country.
If it hadn’t been for Lisa, she thought angrily, she’d be packing now to catch the next plane home.
Ahead of her another row of buildings sheltered by the graceful blue gums loomed out of the dusk. A big shed with a heavy padlock on the door, then several open-fronted ones housing the utility, a Land Rover, and several tractors with their various attachments. Then came another closed shed, and Jane went curiously to look in through the big windows; with the big benches and assortment of tools on racks round the walls she saw that it was a mechanic’s place, and probably a blacksmith’s shop too as there was a furnace and a shoeing-iron. Most of these things were familiar to Jane, though the blacksmith at Melcoombe had gone into the garbage business now for lack of trade. She realised that out here, on a property this size, they would have to be able to effect urgent repairs and be pretty self-supporting all round.
The sound of hammering ahead told her that one of the workshops, anyway, was already busy.
“Taking an inventory of your future possessions, Jane?” Steve’s low mocking voice said at her shoulder. He had the same trick of sliding noiselessly up to you that Stewart had.
Damn Stewart! she thought, echoing Steve’s wish of yesterday.
She swung round and found herself almost in Steve’s arms.
When he saw the mutinous look on her face he said softly, “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair comment, was it? I was a bit surprised to find you here in the piccaninny daylight—the false dawn.”
Piccaninny daylight ... the expression so delighted her that she forgave him the crack about making an inventory.
“Couldn’t you sleep? Or is something wrong with Lisa?” be added anxiously. “Did the journey and all the hoo-ha upset her?”
Jane shook her head. “We’re both awake, but perfectly all right. Lisa’s helping Mrs. Newbery with breakfast. I didn’t want to risk bumping her chair down all those steps.”
“Oh. Good-oh.” His relief was obvious. He said eagerly, “Come and see what we’re doing about that little problem, Jane. I don’t want Lisa to feel cooped up in the homestead when there’s no one around to lift her chair.” He led the way to the longest shed at the end of the block and the noise of hammering grew louder. “Chips will have the thing ready in a couple of hours. His real name, believe it or not, is Herbert Hoover. He’s our carpenter, officially, but he can turn hi
s hand to anything.”
In the long workshop smelling of newly sawn timber, the man working on the large object in the middle of the room raised his head, grinned a greeting, and went on with his steady, accurate hammering. Jane stood in the doorway while Steve went to him and they conferred for a moment, then Steve came back to her and they walked on downhill to the home paddocks where the horses raised their heads hopefully and one or two whinnied. In a very short time they had a semicircle of searching muzzles about them, held back only by the stout rail fence. Steve put sugar into her outstretched hands to feed them, until his pockets were empty, and pointed out a handsome roan to her. “That’s Starlight—your mount if you really can ride. He’ll take you for ever and a day if you can handle him the first time out.”
“Thank you,” she said rather breathlessly. The ridiculous tears had stung her eyes again at the sight of the contraption Chips was building.
“It’s a ramp,” Steve explained casually, “it’ll fit over the veranda steps near Lisa’s window. Then she can come and go as she pleases—there’ll be a guard rail for her to hang on to—her arms are quite strong, aren’t they?”
“Yes. You’re being terribly good to us about all this, Steve. So—generous. But I’m desperately worried about Lisa finding out—or—or upsetting Mrs. Newbery.” She sighed, giving Starlight the last lump of sugar. “It was touch and go about the October Drift yesterday, and—there’ll be other things. I’m scared, Steve. The whole thing’s built on a lie—and Lisa’s so absurdly happy. Happier than she’s been for a—for a long time.”
She turned to face Mm, leaning back against the rail. The sky over towards the east was lightening and she could see the curiosity in his deepset eyes, the hint of a smile at the comers of his mouth.
He put a hand on the rail either side of her, not touching her, and said quietly, “Never mind Lisa for a moment. If there was no Lisa, and I asked you to stay for a while, would you? Or would you want to shake the dust of the Blue River off your feet just as soon as you could book your return flight?”
In the growing daylight Jane looked at the red dust of the track, suddenly shy of Steve’s penetrating gaze.
Only a short while before she had been thinking that if it were not for Lisa’s disappointment, she would be taking the next possible flight back to England...
Now Steve had asked his question, bluntly, and she knew that it was not true. Going back to England would not be going home any more. Their home had been sold, and she certainly could not imagine returning to Melcoombe and facing all their friends with the sorry story of Stewart’s hoax. When they returned to England, it would have to be to a new place; they would have to find a new home, whatever they could afford, and make new friends. It seemed important to Jane that they should own their house, however small, if Lisa was to be permanently crippled. They would have no more capital for expensive nursing homes and clinics, and she could not risk insecurity for Lisa.
“Would you stay for a bit, Jane?” he repeated in that slow Queensland drawl she had first heard from Stewart Finch. “Or don’t you find the Blue River so attractive as Stewart painted it?” He was giving her his brief mocking grin now. “The real Blue River and the real Steve Forrest?” he added softly.
“Oh, Steve, don’t choke me with eating humble pie!” she retorted between laughter and tears. “What I’ve seen is just as good as—as he described it. You know perfectly well it’s a lovely place.”
“But the owner is different.”
She was furious with herself for the slow tide of colour she could feel mounting into her cheeks; she wished she had anything but the clear, fine skin that betrayed her feelings too easily.
“Now that I know how despicable he can be, I’m glad he doesn’t own all this,” she made a small gesture with her hands.
“So you would stay? I thought you were looking a mite depressed just now, as Nubby would say.”
She made herself look at him, speaking quietly. “I’m a bit overwhelmed by everything,” she admitted frankly. “I don’t like being made a fool of. Stewart carried me away with his fine plans, and they’ve all crumbled to dust,” she felt Starlight’s heavy head on her shoulder and stroked his velvet muzzle absent-mindedly.
“Not all of them. Coming out here may still do something for Lisa,” he reminded her quietly, watching her face. “It’s bothering you more than anything, isn’t it—the dirty trick on Lisa? It was a damned dirty trick, the worst thing Stewart’s ever thought up, and he can be a mean beggar at times.”
“It’s something so mean I just can’t believe it,” she frowned into the distance. “I mean—he knew about Lisa. I never pretended to have anything but Lilac Cottage. He knew that we only managed by running it as a guest house in the summer. He deliberately insisted on my selling up and coming out here—knowing I would have to bring a—a crippled sister with me. Is the man bad or mad?”
“A bit of both, maybe.” Steve ran his fingers through his thick hair. “He’s always had a thing about the property—thinks he should own half of it, though his branch of the family never invested a penny in buying it.”
“I might have cashed that forged cheque, too,” Jane said bitterly, “and perhaps been prosecuted, even imprisoned. The man must be raving mad, Steve!”
He laughed shortly. “He knew damned nicely I wouldn’t prosecute you—or turn you away if you actually came over here, Jane.”
“But he’s foisted us on you—you don’t think it makes me very happy, do you? If it wasn’t for Lisa I could get a job in Cairns or Brisbane, and save up. But as it is—we’re just sponging on your generosity. You’re doing so much for Lisa—I’m truly grateful, Steve, but—”
“But you’d rather be paying your way in a hotel?” He sounded amused. “You haven’t sampled our Outback hotels yet, Jane. I don’t think Lisa would enjoy one, anyway, and it would eat into your slender capital still more.”
Starlight, despairing of more sugar, moved away down the paddock. The sunlight was spilling over the peaks of the Great Dividing Range many miles away between them and the coast.
“Isn’t Lisa happy this morning?” he asked after a while, still trying to find out the cause of Jane’s troubled expression.
“She’s almost too happy!” Jane smiled ruefully. “You’re all spoiling her. With kindness. That electric buzzer. And now the ramp ... all this trouble and expense. I shall never be able to repay you, Steve.”
“We’ll see. I told you, I shan’t miss a few hundred dollars. You must try and bow that stiff little neck of yours, Jane, and learn to take instead of giving, for a change.” He was drawling as if the matter of money was of little importance. “I thought Lisa’s happiness was the object of the manoeuvre,” he added drily.
“It is,” she answered quickly, without caution, and his slow smile made her flush again, “but Lisa wouldn’t want to sponge on you any more than I would. She’d—she’ll be terribly angry and humiliated if she ever finds out the truth, Steve.”
“Then we must make sure she doesn’t find out.” He grinned suddenly. “Cheer up, Jane. Stewart’s got to learn that malice is a boomerang. I’ve a feeling he’s going to be good and sore one day, when he knows that he’s done me a favour.”
“What on earth do you mean?” she demanded, astonished because there was real laughter crinkling his eyes.
He put a finger on one of the mosquito bites on her forehead, gently. “Joel wasn’t fooling when he said we needed some fresh female faces around the Blue River. The boys in town mil be envying us when they see you and Lisa. We’re short on young unattached women in the Outback still.”
She couldn’t help laughing a little, though her expression was still rueful.
“The pretty one is in a wheel chair,” she said gently, “and I’m nothing to start a bush fire, Steve.”
“You’re not vain, I’ll say that for you. Now I’m going to ride a couple of miles upriver to a new weir that we are building. You can come if you like.”
&nbs
p; She nodded, subdued by his sudden change of manner to the normal business of his day. “I’d like that.”
He led the way to the saddle room, where several of the men were soaping and polishing their gear ready for the races. Some of the saddles on the racks were of fine, supple leather and decorated with silver studs. All of them had a central horn for the rope lariat, and some had side horns as well.
“They’re cradle saddles, useful when you’re riding twelve hours a day for two or three weeks on end,” Steve explained when he saw Jane looking at them curiously. “We’ll put Lisa up in one of those.”
“Ar, she’ll be right in one of those,” Joel agreed. He had left the silver-studded saddle he was polishing to help Steve carry out a couple of saddles, which were slung over the top rail of the paddock fence. He saddled Starlight for Jane and gave her a leg up, adjusting the stirrup strap, while Steve saddled Ranger. Both men talked softly to the horses all the time they worked.
Jane was surprised by the comfort of the supple leather saddle, but she protested when Joel told her to stick her legs straight down in the stirrups. “I’ll never be able to grip with my knees.”
“You won’t have to. That’s one of Steve’s best horses and one of his best saddles.” Joel sounded laconic as usual but he gave her a brief friendly grin. “Jest touch his belly with a foot, lightly, see? when you want him to canter. But if you’re goin’ to the new weir it’ll be uphill most of the way and you’ll be walkin’.”
Wedding at Blue River Page 9