by Nevil Shute
Stanton Laird had gone to Perth for a conference, or she would hardly have been free to talk with David Cope after the movie. She bade her hosts good-bye and thanked them for their hospitality, and walked with David to where their jeeps were parked side by side in the bright moonlight. She felt guilty about David and a little self-conscious; she did not much want to be alone with him, but there was no escaping it.
As they went, she asked him, “How’s the rain been on Lucinda?” The district was on the edge of the monsoon country and normally they got an inch or two of summer rain in January, though the bulk of their ten or twelve inches of rain fell in June.
“Not too good,” he said. “We got about ninety points at the homestead.” He meant nine-tenths of an inch. “I think it was a bit better at the far end.”
“We did better than that,” she said. “I think we got about three inches. Uncle Tom says we won’t get any more now.”
“You always get more than I do,” he remarked. “It’s better country.”
“It doesn’t do us any good,” she said, seeking to ease the subject for him. “It goes straight down into the ground. You never see it lying in a pool, however hard it rains. All the water that we’ve got comes from the bores.”
“I suppose in America,” he said a little bitterly, “it falls straight into the sheep’s mouth.”
She laughed because it seemed the best thing to do, but the implication annoyed her. “It doesn’t really,” she said. “So far as I can make out, they run their grazing properties, their ranches, very much the same as we do. Only they seem to have a lot more water than we have, and much smaller stations.”
“Better land, in fact,” he said. “Everything’s better in America, isn’t it?”
“If it is,” she said hotly, “it’s because they’ve worked to make it so. I’ve never seen men work so hard as these people, and you haven’t either. They’ve got a lot of things against them in their country that we haven’t got—snow and ice in winter. If they’ve got better land than we have, it’s probably because they work harder.”
He nodded. “That’s right. I just sit on my arse and smoke a pipe all day.”
She softened suddenly. “I didn’t mean that personally, David. You work harder than anybody in the Lunatic. You know I didn’t mean that for you.”
“That’s all right,” he said. “But I must say I get a bit tired of these Supermen.”
“Don’t you admire them, though?” she asked, a little wistfully. They seemed to be drawing very far apart.
“What for?”
“I don’t know—everything,” she replied. “They achieve so much. Here we’ve been living with oil underneath our feet, all these years. We could have found it, but we didn’t ever think of it. We could have done all that they’re doing here, but we just aren’t up to it. Then they come along and show us how Australia should be developed, and we hate their guts.”
“You don’t, anyway,” he remarked.
“No, I don’t,” she retorted. “I think they’re fine people. They don’t drink on the job and a lot of them don’t drink at all. Lots of them don’t even smoke. They work hard, and they read the Bible. The only thing that people have against them is that they show us up.”
“That’s not what I’ve got against them,” he replied. “I don’t mind them showing us up over oil, because that’s not what I do. When some American comes here and shows me how to run four thousand sheep on two dud bores and does it better than I can, then I’ll sit up and take notice. But that’s not what they do.”
“What have you got against them, David?” she asked. “Why don’t you like them?”
He paused for a moment in thought. “I think it’s because they’re so ignorant,” he said. “Ignorant of everything outside their job. I’m no great shakes myself because I left school when I was sixteen, but I do take an interest in other things besides sheep, besides my job.”
She was silent for a moment. “I think they do, too,” she said, but a little doubtfully. “It’s just that we don’t know them well enough.”
“How many books do you think they’ve got in their camp?” he asked scornfully. “Outside the Bible? A few paper-bound crime stories, perhaps, and a lot of glossy magazines. But how many real books, bound books, books that you’d want to read again in ten years time?”
“I don’t think they’d bring books to a camp like this in a strange country,” she said slowly. “They may have them at home.”
“I bet they haven’t.”
“Books aren’t everything, anyway,” she said.
“That’s exactly what they are, so far as I can see,” he retorted. “If you want to learn anything, you’ve got to turn to books—unless you like to take it from the radio. And even the Americans can’t get much joy out of the reception here.” He paused. “That one—the manager—Spencer Rasmussen—he was round at my place last week looking at that book of modern French art. You know—the one I got from home last year with all the oil paintings, in colours.” She nodded. “I said something about Matisse. He thought I said mattress. God knows, I don’t know much about oil paintings, but I do take an interest.”
“It’s probably not his line, David,” she said.
“What is his line?” he asked. “The live Theatre? Poetry? Sculpture? World Politics? Music?”
“Music,” she said. “He plays the accordion.”
“I’ll give you that one,” he said slowly. “He does like music. Dance music. He goes all classical and highbrow sometimes and plays South Pacific—that’s about the top end of his range. But he does like music, and he makes it for himself. I’ll give you that one.”
“He’s probably got a lot of other interests that you don’t know about, David,” she said. “Be fair.”
“He pitches horseshoes,” he remarked. “A lot of them do that. They brought the horseshoes with them from America.”
She smiled. “How do you pitch horseshoes?” she enquired. “How’s it played?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Hit them with a baseball bat, for all I know.”
“Anyway,” she said, “Spencer Rasmussen is keen on music.”
“That’s right. Ask him to play a bit of Beethoven on his accordion and see what happens.”
She was suddenly angry with him. “I’m going home,” she said. “You’re just looking for any excuse to pick on them, to run them down. I think they’re straight, decent people. They’ve brought a bit of America into the Lunatic and it’s done us all good. We’ve even got a road because of them. If they find this oil there’ll be a town here some day—a real town, with shops and hairdressers and cafés and picture theatres and a church or two. That’s what they’re doing for us in the Lunatic, and we ought to be grateful. But all we do is to sneer at them, and run them down.”
“I don’t run them down,” he said. “I never say a word to anyone about them. I’m very glad they’re here and doing what they are. It’s very good for all the rest of us. It’s only when you start to run them up and talk of them as Supermen that I get a bit riled.”
“I never talk of them as Supermen,” she said hotly.
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t. You’re just making that up in order to be nasty about them.”
He grinned at her. “I think perhaps we’d better change the subject.”
“I think we had.”
“Mind if I ask something? About something quite different.”
“What is it?”
He folded his arms and leaned back against the mudguard of the jeep. “Will you marry me?”
She stared at him, astonished and deflated. “Of course not. If that’s a joke, David, it’s a pretty poor one.”
“It’s not a joke,” he said. “I’m serious.”
“But, David—you can’t be!” Where was the soft music, the gentle touch that she had read about in books and seen so often on the movies? David must know the drill; he too had read the books and seen the movies. He couldn’
t really be serious, but if he was, he wasn’t going to get away with that.
“I’m quite serious,” he said quietly. “I’d have asked you six months ago, but for the fact I thought I’d probably be going broke this year. Lucinda’s not the best property in Australia, or even in the Lunatic. I’ve been in love with you for a long time, as well you know.”
She dropped her eyes. He had never tried to kiss her, or spoken the soft words of love that she had thrilled to read about; their conversation, when it touched on sex, had been of ewes with twins or impotence in rams. He hadn’t played the game according to the book for reasons of his own that seemed to her of trivial importance, yet he was quite right: she had known that he had been in love with her.
To gain time she asked, “What made you ask me now, then? Is Lucinda looking up?”
“I don’t think it is,” he said. “In fact, at the moment it’s looking down. If we’d had another sixty points last month it would have made a difference.”
“Then what made you ask me now, David?”
He grinned at her. “Just to remind you I’m still here.”
“Because I’ve been going about with the Americans?”
“I suppose so.”
“Oh, David!” She felt at a loss, not knowing what to do. She valued David Cope, but wider horizons were opening before her, horizons that led across the Pacific to the countries of the glossy Kodachromes in the big magazines she had been reading. She knew from her half-brother Michael that money was no barrier to a Regan if she wished to travel half across the world, and it was understood that she would go to England, France, and Italy before very long. A daring notion had occurred to her which she had not mentioned to anybody yet, that on her way home from England she might visit the United States and see with her own eyes the country of the Saturday Evening Post and Cosmopolitan. She had friends and contacts in America now, the families of Hank and Ted and Tex, and, most of all, of Stanton Laird. She valued David Cope and she respected him for his achievement, but all this had to be balanced against life at Lucinda with sheep dying all around beside the waterholes for lack of feed, and myriads of blowflies, and a rusty kerosene refrigerator that smoked and smelt of hot oil.
“I’m not marrying anybody yet,” she said. “I suppose some day I’ll want to get married and settle down, but that’s not now. I don’t know why you asked me this now, David, and I’m rather sorry that you did. Because the answer’s going to be No.”
He had expected nothing else, but her words gave him pain. “I thought you’d say that,” he replied, a little bitterly. “Well, let’s forget it.”
“Why did you ask me now, then?” she enquired. “Whatever made you do it, if you thought I’d say no?”
“Because I thought I’d have even a worse chance if I waited till next month,” he replied.
“I don’t know why you should have thought that,” she retorted. “I just don’t want to marry anyone, now or next month or any time. As soon as Elspeth gets through college, in a year from now, I want to go to England.”
He said nothing, and they stood in silence for a minute. “It’s all right for you,” she said. “You’ve travelled about the world. You know what England’s like, but I don’t. You’ve been to France. I want to go to France, and Italy, too. You’ve been to other places, and seen how other people live. I’ve only seen Perth. I want to see what happens in the rest of the world, outside the Lunatic.”
It was in his mind to say that she wanted to see America, but he had the good sense not to. He stood with her in the moonlight very conscious of her, slim and straight beside him. “I suppose that’s reasonable,” he said reluctantly, at last.
“Of course it’s reasonable,” she said. “There’s another thing, too.”
“What’s that?”
“I wouldn’t want to marry you, David. Not that I don’t like you. But we’d fight like cat and dog, right from the word go.”
“I don’t think we would.”
“I’m quite sure we would. We were fighting like cat and dog only a minute ago.”
“That’s different. That was over the Americans.”
“If it wasn’t the Americans it would be something else. We don’t get on well enough to marry, David. It wouldn’t work.” She paused. “There’s only one reason why you asked me to marry you.”
“What’s that?”
“Because I’m the only girl here in the Lunatic, just at the moment.”
That stung him. “If that’s all you think of me, we’d better cut this short,” he said.
“I didn’t mean to be nasty,” she said gently. “I didn’t really, David. It cuts both ways, you know. If I married you, I suppose it would be for the same reason, because there aren’t so many young men in this part of the country. But that’s not the right way to set about a thing like marrying. One might make a terrible mistake that way. And I’m a Catholic; when I marry, I marry for good.”
“I suppose it’s a point against me that I’m Church of England,” he said a little bitterly. “I haven’t been for the last three years, but I don’t suppose that matters.”
She shook her head. “That wouldn’t worry me,” she said. “I suppose we aren’t very strict at Laragh. But I certainly wouldn’t marry anyone unless I was absolutely sure that it was going to last.”
“I am sure,” he said.
She looked at him doubtfully, a little shaken by the conviction in his voice. “You can’t possibly be,” she said. “How many girls have you met in the last three years, David? Really met, I mean, to talk to like this?”
He was silent. “Not very many,” he said reluctantly at last.
She nodded. “You ought to get away from here,” she said. “Get away for a holiday, David—go down to Perth, go to dances and parties and get to know some girls.” She smiled at him. “If you did that and still wanted to marry me, perhaps I’d take it as a compliment. More than I do now.”
“It was meant as one.”
“I know it was, David. It was very sweet of you. But the answer’s no, just the same.”
They stood in silence for a long time. At last he said, “Well, that puts the lid on it. I suppose you’d rather that we didn’t go on meeting?”
She thought for a moment, reluctant to break off the friendship. “I’d be sorry if that happened,” she said, “but it’s up to you. So long as you can realise that I’m not marrying you or anybody else for a long time, I don’t see why we shouldn’t meet. There aren’t so many people of our age here in the Lunatic. But if you think it’s not going to work out, we’ll have to give it away.”
“Okay,” he said heavily, “we’ll leave it like that.” He turned towards his jeep.
“Good-night, David,” she said in a small voice. “I’m terribly sorry.”
They got into their jeeps, the starters groaned, and the jeeps moved off towards the track beside the fence, David following in her dust. They parted where the tracks diverged beside the cemetery, and the girl drove home along the graded road to Laragh. In the moonlight at the homestead she parked the jeep in the yard, and went down the verandah to her room. She went to bed troubled and upset, conscious that she had done the right thing, distressed for the pain that she had caused, uneasy that she might conceivably have made a great mistake. It was some time before she slept.
At Lucinda, David hardly slept at all. Towards dawn he fell into a restless slumber, but he was roused at seven by his aboriginal housekeeper, who said that Jackie was waiting to see him. Jackie was his half-caste overseer, who brought him a report of fifteen sheep dead around the No. 2 bore with fifteen hundred others looking on and not looking too good. One of the water tanks had sprung a leak and had wasted five hundred gallons in the night; most of the horses had escaped out of the horse paddock; Sammy, one of his black stockmen, wanted to go walkabout and proposed to leave that morning for an indefinite period, and his jeep had a flat tyre. He put on his clothes, went to breakfast, and discovered that the lamp of the old refrigera
tor had blown out and all the food in it was bad. He set about his daily work, jaded and depressed.
That afternoon he had a visitor, Mr. Duncan Mann, the journalist from Perth. The photographer had returned to the head office, but Mr. Mann had been instructed to stay on with the oil men to cover the erection of the oil rig, writing feature articles. He had stayed on till he had written himself dry. He had covered every aspect of the oil men’s camp and work, and still no order had come through for him to return to his home in Perth. Finally, when the fifth birthday of his eldest child was drawing very near and it seemed imperative to him to get home without further delay, he had turned in a story about the pet kitten at the oil rig, an Australian kitten that was developing a taste for American hot cakes and syrup. That did it, and he received a telegram from his editor ordering him back to Perth. He drove over to Lucinda Station to say good-bye to David Cope before starting off in his Land Rover on the journey home at dawn next day.
A little ashamed of his kitten story, it had occurred to him that David Cope might make a feature article—British Boy Managers in the Far North, perhaps. Over a cup of tea he set himself to draw David out, and David was so miserable, and the journalist worked with such skill, that David never realised that he was being interviewed at all. He told Mr. Mann all about his upbringing upon the farm, about the requisition of their land, about their emigration and the farm at Armadale. Mr. Mann, warming to the story, quietly resolved to go and see the family at Armadale, and set to work to draw David out about his father. The fact that he had served at Gallipoli in 1915 made a close and obvious tie with the Australian forces, greatly strengthening the story from Mr. Mann’s point of view, and he asked one or two questions designed to find out if David’s father had had any previous contact with Australia before his emigration.
“I don’t think so,” David said. “He was in the Black and Tans for a time after the war.”
“What’s that?” asked Mr. Mann.
“In Ireland,” David said. “It was sort of being in the police, the Royal Irish Constabulary. Only they were armed like soldiers—tanks and everything. It was a full-scale war against Sinn Fein, the Irish rebels, for a couple of years. Worse than a war, I think. Very bitter.”