A Thousand Miles Away

by Dorothy Cork

  Farrell’s face went slowly scarlet. She was utterly shocked by his bluntness—by the knowledge that he thought she wanted that—that she was a girl who already knew all about going to bed with a man. For a mad moment, her instinct was to run. Then she swallowed hard and managed to say with icy coldness, ‘As far as I’m concerned, you’re—you’re quite wrong. You must have been—imagining things.’

  He smiled mockingly. ‘Oh, Farrell! I’m not completely insensitive. I know when a girl’s feeling amorous. There was urgency all over you—it was smouldering in your eyes—your fingers were wrestling with mine—’

  ‘My fingers? You—it was your fingers that were—were—’

  ‘Sending messages?’ he suggested when she couldn’t go on. ‘Well, yours were certainly answering ... But you don’t have to look so embarrassed about it all. I assure you, I’m very flattered. Still, I don’t intend carrying you off to my bed tonight.’ He drew on his cigarette, then asked her with sudden savagery, ‘What kind of a lover was the man who left you? Was he passionate? Exciting? Did he—He broke off abruptly and his tone changed. ‘Suppose we both cool off outside, take a walk down by the water—’

  Farrell scarcely heard him. She was so mortified she could have died, and she hated—hated—feeling this way. It was this warped idea she had been given by Aunt Jean that sexual feelings were shameful and debasing. She knew it was something she had to fight against, but all the same she couldn’t—she simply couldn’t—gather enough composure to go for a walk with Larry Sandfort just now—and tell him he was quite wrong about her ‘lover’, as she should. She shrank from his talk about passion, from the idea he had that she was eaten up with desire for him. Oh God—she couldn’t ever feel that way about a man unless she was deeply in love with him, and even then—even then she didn’t know if she would be able to let her emotions take over from her head. Bluntness, frankness, of the kind Larry was employing just didn’t seem to help.

  She moved a little, keeping her head bent, aware that her cheeks were still hectic.

  ‘Thank you—but I don’t need to cool down,’ she said aloofly. ‘And you can stop feeling flattered, Mr. Sandfort. You’re—you’re quite mistaken about my—my feelings,’ she floundered. She turned away from him swiftly. ‘Goodnight,’ she finished almost inaudibly.

  Larry made no attempt to stop her from going, but it seemed "to her that his ‘Goodnight—and sleep well,’ that followed her to the door had a note of mockery in it.

  In her room, she pulled the curtains across the windows, wondering as she did so if he would walk down to the water alone, smoking, perhaps, because he was—under stress, because he desired her. Her cheeks were still burning, and she turned quickly away when she caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror. She set to work to finish tidying her clothes away, wondering as she did so how long she—and Larry—would be staying here. Her emotions were so angled she couldn’t sort them out. She was deeply shocked that he thought she had been practically inviting him to go to bed with her.

  Was that why he had decided to stay at Quindalup?

  The sudden thought sent a tremor through her body. Hidden away here, what defence would she have if he chose to make love to her?

  In the middle of folding a shirt, she dropped it and tiptoed nervously to the door. It had no lock, no bolt—she already knew that. She dragged a chair across, and then moved it away again. She was getting hysterical. Because somehow she knew that she could trust Larry. He had said, ‘I don’t intend to carry you off to my bed tonight’, and she believed him. She need have no fears in that direction.

  In bed at last, she lay sleepless, not bothered now as she had been last night by plans for escape. Bothered instead by a turmoil that had spread from her mind to her body, or perhaps the other way around—from her body to her mind. Those things Larry had said about her—her urgency, her amorousness—And she had been so determined to impress on him that she had felt nothing, which wasn’t true in the slightest degree. Held closely against him, aware of the stirrings in his own body, she had certainly made the discovery that she was not a cold frog. Yet he had supposed her stimulated in a way she had often been stimulated before. By Mark Smith.

  If he only knew!

  She shuddered a little and turned on her side, staring into the black dark and listening to a silence that was intense. What did Larry intend to do? Of one thing she was becoming more and more certain. He would never again suggest that the way out of her dilemma was marriage with him. He had changed his mind about her merits. In fact, she was slowly reaching the conclusion that he could be in the process of handing over her place to Helen.

  So why didn’t he let her go?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It was strange to get up in the morning knowing that he was there, that she would not have to spend the day alone with herself and her restless thoughts. She discovered he had asked Mrs. Adams to serve breakfast in the garden, which made an unexpectedly agreeable start to the day. It provided an excuse for wearing sun-glasses too, and she found them useful to hide behind, because at the moment she felt a need to hide. She hadn’t really recovered from their conversation of last night, though as far as Larry was concerned, it appeared to be completely forgotten, he was so calm and pleasant and matter-of-factly impersonal.

  Mrs. Adams was baking that morning, and Farrell decided to do some washing, partly out of necessity, partly from a desire to make herself unavailable for some perverse reason. Larry let her go her own way without questions, and from the laundry she saw him stride off in the direction of the electricity generator. He didn’t appear again until, her washing hung out on the line, she was about to go inside the house.

  He caught up with her on the verandah. ‘How about a swim before lunch, Farrell?’ he invited with a smile that was a combination of politeness and friendliness. The perfect host, she thought somewhat wryly. ‘Or have you something further to do?’

  ‘No. I’d like a swim,’ she agreed. She couldn’t, after all, avoid him for ever, and she didn’t really want to.

  ‘Fine. I’ll be ready when you are.’

  Farrell went to her room. She had been wearing her bikini here, while swimming on her own, but now she chose to put on a one-piece swimsuit patterned in pale apricot and brown. Her wardrobe consisted almost entirely of casual sun-clothes, because she had expected to be living at her father’s resort hotel. If she’d landed a job in Port Hedland, or if she took one up anywhere in the near future, she would need to re-equip herself. As it was, the gear she had was ideal for Quindalup—terrace wear, sun-dresses, pants and an assortment of tops. For an instant she considered slipping on the robe that belonged to Helen, as a cover-up, but it didn’t really go with her swimsuit, and as she had a long skirt that matched, she finally put that on. Then, slipping her feet into thongs and picking up her beach towel, she emerged from her room by the verandah door.

  Larry was waiting for her, his muscular sun-tanned torso contrasting strongly with the white swim shorts he was wearing. She had a sudden vision of Mark, smaller, slimmer, similarly clad, standing by her bed, the towel around his neck concealing part of his scarred chest—She shut off the image quickly, almost guiltily, and stared down the steps.

  ‘You have some attractive clothes,’ Larry commented as they walked through the shady garden. ‘Is fashion one of your interests, Farrell?’

  ‘Not really. I suppose I like clothes, but I never bothered much about fashion when I was in Perth.’ She swished her long skirt pleasurably, feeling the fine cotton cool on her thighs and the backs of her legs. ‘Most of my things are newish. I bought them specially to come to the North-West.’

  ‘Your father footed the bill, I presume, since you were a student.’

  She nodded. Was that a criticism, or was he—drawing her out? There wasn’t much to discover about Farrell Fitzgerald. She’d hardly begun to live yet. She went on in case it was expected of her, ‘Daddy made me an allowance all the time I was down south. My aunt managed it till a couple
of years ago, and then I started to cope for myself. I never spent much on my back—I was too busy studying to have a social life, and Aunt Jean doesn’t entertain. She likes books better than people.’

  ‘And did you go along with that?’ he quizzed.

  ‘Till I realised there was an alternative,’ she admitted seriously,

  ‘Ah yes, of course,’ he said dryly. They were walking by the water now, towards the sun shelter, and Farrell glanced at him through her lashes to see how she should take that. He returned her glance and commented, ‘You certainly made big changes when you came to the North-West, didn’t you?’

  That was probably a reference to running away with a man, as he had once chosen to put it, but she decided to take if differently, though she flushed slightly.

  ‘If you’re referring to what Cecile said, I didn’t intend to be lazy, you know. I planned to help my father at the hotel—and my stepmother too, of course. I’d only met her a couple of times, but I knew she had special interests of her own—she collects shells and all sorts of things to make really fascinating collages. I thought she might be pleased to have me around to take some of her tasks off her hands.’

  She stood watching Larry as he strolled across the sea-grass matting that covered the floor of the sun shelter, and looked inside the small refrigerator. As well as the fruit juice and soft drinks that were usually there, Farrell noticed there were now bottles of various spirits as well as some cans of beer and a row of frosted glasses. He closed the door and picked up two li-los.

  ‘Shall I put these outside, or do you prefer to come up here into the shade when you’ve had your swim? You have a nice tan, I see.’

  ‘I generally dry off in the sun,’ she said a little awkwardly.

  As she followed him from the shelter, he remarked over his shoulder, ‘So you discovered your well-meant offers of help weren’t so acceptable after all.’

  ‘Yes. Well, Cecile seemed to think I was trying to upstage her, or something.’

  ‘And you weren’t?’ He set the li-los down and looked at her thoughtfully.

  ‘Of course I wasn’t! I thought Cecile and I would get along well together. I’d liked her—very much—when we met before. I just can’t understand where it all went wrong.’

  ‘No? Well, I can,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’ll admit your stepmother’s an attractive woman, Farrell, but she can’t compete with youth.’ He looked at her through narrowed eyes, and Farrell, who had unfastened the single button on her skirt, for some reason did it up again. ‘You have a whole heap of attractions,’ he resumed. ‘If you give it some thought, it’s natural that Cecile should want to be the undisputed leading lady in her husband’s hotel.’

  ‘Of course, I know that! I didn’t want the limelight. I kept out of the way.’ Farrell swung her towel and remembered how she had tried to do just that, how tactful she had been. Out of the blue, she recalled too that Cecile had accused her of butting in that day she had been having a drink with Larry Sandfort. She looked at him, opening her eyes wide. ‘I suppose you think I was pushing my frame in that day I joined you and Cecile for a drink on the terrace. Did you think I was trying to win your attention away from her?’

  ‘Now what on earth do you expect me say to that?’ he said dryly. ‘You know damned well I invited you to join us. In fact, you picked up my signal to you so quickly I took it as a sign.’

  ‘A—a sign?’ she repeated bewilderedly.

  ‘Yes, a sign—that you were as much attracted to me as I was to you.’

  Farrell stared at him. Had she been attracted to him? She knew she had. But she had definitely not been attracted in the way she suspected he meant.

  ‘I felt it so strongly, I tell you I was stunned when I came back and found you gone,’ he said after a pause.

  She didn’t know what to say, and told him uncomfortably, feeling she had been—and still was—naive, ‘I—I couldn’t stay. You—you told me that yourself.’

  ‘So I did.’ His smile was ironic. ‘But I told you, too, to wait for me ... Well, are we going in the water?’

  Farrell kicked off her thongs and discarded her skirt, and his eyes skimmed over her figure in a way that was vastly different from that time at her father’s hotel. There was something hard in his eyes now, and though she had been wearing only a bikini then and was now far more covered up, she felt even more naked on this occasion than she had then. Rather quickly, she turned her back on him and walked down to the water. She felt he had made an unpleasant comment on her going away with another man, and had somehow underlined the implications by the way he had looked her over. How on earth could she explain to him that he was wrong about her relationship with Mark? She could hardly shout it out to him while they were swimming in the pool!

  Neither could she come out with it over the cold drink he poured for her later, she discovered, because by that time, he was playing the considerate host again, talking of the beauties of Quindalup and suggesting that after lunch she might like to take a walk up the gorge with him.

  ‘Have you discovered the lily pools yet, Farrell?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you must see them. They’re part of the unique charm of Quindalup. I expect you know many of the wild-flowers. You’ll have visited King’s Park in Perth often enough, I’m sure.’

  ‘Yes,’ Farrell agreed, but had to admit that she didn’t know many wildflowers by name. Such knowledge wasn’t required for the exam subjects she had been expected to pass, she told him, and she had been too busy stuffing her head with essential facts to spare time for the inessential ones.

  ‘Then a little of that won’t go astray,’ he said with a smile.

  Farrell smiled back. It was almost impossible to believe that last night they had engaged in a very different kind of conversation...

  That afternoon they walked into the gorge. It was completely different from the walks she had taken alone. In Larry’s company, she was far more inclined to look around her and notice things she had been too distracted to bother with before. The steep rock walls were fiercely red, and contrasting with them were the pale gold of acacias and grevilleas, the whitened clumps of spinifex and the shining green of the wild fig trees. Crimson finches and crested pigeons fluttered in the snappy gums, and there were vivid splashes of colour on the ground where Sturt’s Desert Pea flung the savage crimson of its flowers.

  Pausing to admire the tender mauve of some mullamullas, Farrell discovered a spiky lizard, completely motionless except for the rapid movement of its tongue, as it dealt with a trail of busily running small black ants.

  ‘That’s a Mountain Devil,’ Larry said from her side. They both watched for a while as the reptile, oblivious of their presence, licked its tongue rapidly in and out, whipping up one by one the tiny insects that formed its diet. Farrell found a deep fascination in watching nature this way, and remarked wonderingly as they moved on, ‘You know, I never seem to have had time since I was a small child to stand and stare at things like that.’

  ‘Pity,’ he murmured, frowning slightly.

  ‘Yes. I was too busy trying to keep pace with Aunt Jean’s expectations,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘I was terrified I’d let the Roseblades down by not passing my exams. It’s a wonder I don’t need glasses! I always had my nose in a book except when I had them closed, committing to memory all the donkey bridges that were supposed to help me remember other strings of facts.’

  He smiled sympathetically. ‘Do you keep in touch with your aunt? Or have you cast her into outer darkness?’

  ‘Oh no, I couldn’t do that,’ said Farrell, horrified. He held aside a trailing bunch of bougainvillea laden with flame-coloured flowers and she stooped and moved past him. ‘I write to her. I had a letter from her the other day, as a matter of fact. She’s made arrangements so I can go back to university next year if I want to.’

  ‘And will you want to?’

  ‘Never!’' she said emphatically. ‘I do love Aunt Jean, though. It might sound funny after
some of the things I’ve said, but it’s true. She never encouraged me to show it, though—demonstrativeness was frowned on. I was all inhibitions after a while. My parents were loving people, and it took me years to learn that hugs and kisses were out.’

  ‘And now you’re unlearning it?’

  Farrell looked at him suspiciously, and blinked as he flicked a fallen flower from her hair.

  ‘I’m trying to unlearn it,’ she said, going on ahead again. ‘It’s not all that—easy.’ Oh God, how did that sound? Would he take it as an invitation to help? She added quickly, ‘But I’m managing all right.’

  ‘I’m sure you are,’ he agreed sardonically.

  ‘Perhaps not as well as you imagine,’ she said in a low voice. ‘And not in the way you mean.’

  Larry didn’t answer, and she concluded, thankfully, that he hadn’t heard her, because she felt she might soon be out of her depth.

  ‘Just ahead,’ he said, a few seconds later, ‘beyond the Japanese bamboos, are the lily ponds.’

  ‘They’re well and truly hidden, aren’t they?’ she said, moving on eagerly. Half her eagerness was to escape conversation, even though the way it had been going it was leading in the direction she should have wanted it to take—where she could tell him outright that he was wrong about her and Mark.

  She stood aside when he told her, ‘Here, let me go in front—there’s a way to get through this tangle—’

  She followed him, and beyond the bamboos they came into what seemed a different world. High above, the red rocks towered, and Larry told her, ‘Up there you might find some Tiger Eye if you cared to hunt for it. I’ll show you the way up when we’re on our way back.’

  Presently they reached the lily ponds—a string of small and beautiful pools linked to each other by tiny cascades of lively crystal water. Pink lilies grew in two of them, and they were shaded and secret, as though belonging to some lost world. The water reflected the heavy thickets of bamboo, the bright tumble of bougainvillea, the white of the papery cadjeputs and the red of the enclosing rock walls.