Home at Sundown: An Australian Outback Romance

by Lucy Walker

  It was the colours, so brilliant, that fascinated Kim.

  Then, on the fifth day, Peck and Bill came back. It was a morning when John had been working close to the homestead.

  ‘What-ho! What-ho!’ Peck shouted with glee when he saw them sitting on the doorstep drinking their morning tea. ‘You two had the weddin’ bells an’ all? Heard way up the track you’d been off in the sand-plain country. This the honeymoon, eh?’

  He slapped his old dusty hat at his knee with pleasure at the thought.

  ‘No pub bills when you dig in here at the ol’ shack, eh mate?’

  John showed no reaction to Peck calling him ‘mate’, nor to the suggestion of quibbling at bills. He was inclined to ignore Peck’s talk of wedding bells and honeymoons, but he was annoyed that Kim was exposed to this brand of outback humour.

  When he had an opportunity later, after the old prospectors had been given tea and a welcome, he mustered Peck into a corner and briefly gave him a short lesson on good taste in a few tough but well-chosen words.

  ‘Sorry mate!’ Peck said, not understanding anything about taste or manners, anyway. ‘How was I to know it was like that, eh? Not married at all! Well, you live an’ learn, don’t you? You don’t look the sort of chap ‒’ He had a gleam of so-called enlightenment in his faded red-rimmed old prospector’s eyes. John’s jaw took on a sudden aggressive look and Peck, reading the signs aright, took cover. He reckoned he had things to do like unpacking his swag. It was beyond him to understand the nature and the composition of a scientific expedition.

  John, watching Peck’s bruised and corny fingers dickering with the straps of the swag, realised the desert-dyed prospector was on the way to being old as well as a little bush-whacky. He relented and offered the old man the only kind of grin of goodwill that he could muster at the moment. He gave the problem of definition and explanation to the stars to manage. It was beyond him.

  The complications of having women on the trip lay with other people!

  The pantry which Peck and Bill had taken over for the night was adjacent to the timber-walled spare room which Kim had tried to make habitable. In a housewifely mood ‒ perhaps to impress Peck and Bill ‒ she decided later that day to sweep out the latest layer of dust. The old tree branch came back into action again.

  John had gone on to the plain in a not very civil mood, she thought. She found it hard to believe he minded the two prospectors coming back.

  She swooshed with the leafy end of the old branch to the accompaniment of Peck conducting a monologue with Bill.

  When she paused to wipe the beads of perspiration from her brow she heard her own name.

  ‘Nice girl that Kim is too ‒’ Peck was saying. ‘Whatcha know, mate? They aint even thinkin’ of weddin’ bells. I kinda thought that feller John was a nice bloke. He fair near knocked me down when he got me in that there corner ‒ jes’ fer mentionin’ the subject. Makes you kinda wonder how some people live, don’t it?’

  Bill’s reply was a grunt, a satisfactory answer to Peck if not to Kim’s startled ears.

  ‘Thet means he aint the marryin’ kind. Or maybe he’s got himself a girl back some place else. Like he asked me would I get a message sent to some girl called Marie, or something, if we go back through Bim’s Stopover. Said he’d write it down and they could send it by radio from the pub. Maybe he has ’em, but don’t wed ’em. Sleeps an’ moves on, eh?’

  Kim didn’t wait for Bill’s answer, if any. She gave up sweeping out old shacks as a vocation from that moment. She went back to the living-room and the stew pot: although this last was once more Peck’s concern. He had brought with him a fine haunch of kangaroo steak.

  Stirring Peck’s stew, she thought again of Myree.

  John was sending Myree radio messages!

  ‘He has ’em but doesn’t wed ’em!’ That means girls in numbers! Would that be better than being in love with just one girl? Myree or any other?’

  Yet it ought to be Myree because Myree was beautiful. As far as Dr Andrews was concerned, she was very clearly a double-doer tryer too!

  Chapter Ten

  Peck and Bill stayed the bare twenty-four hours at the old homestead.

  The next day they departed. They were off to a hush-hush place ‒ ‘north a bitaways just out of Bim’s Stopover’, they said. They’d heard, back a week or two ago, a whisper of a find. Some bloke had come in to the Stopover with a pouch of gold dust.

  If they, Peck and Bill, spotted George Crossman and the Land-Rovers as they went along, they’d pass on the time of day. A heft of kangaroo steak too maybe.

  All this was said ‒ on their departure ‒ with Peck’s chuckling goodwill, and an occasional nod of the head from the silent Bill.

  Kim and John waved them off from the edge of the weed-wild paddock that had once been the home of thousands of sheep.

  ‘Bill, old mate, old mate!’ Peck said after the last head-turn and as they trudged on round the curve of the track, their swags strapped to sticks slung over their shoulders. ‘Didn’t they look a right tied-up pair standin’ by that wait-a-bit tree waving us orf like that? Well, you never can tell, can yer? It’ll make a good story to tell the blokes up at the Stopover. They like a good story up there. The ways of them city folks! It kinda gets yer wonderin’ don’t it? Nice fella. Nice girl too ‒ only a bit young fer thet kinda caper ‒’

  If Bill was inclined to tell anything at all he did not put it into words. Peck did not expect it. Silence, he had always reckoned, suited Bill right down to the ground.

  Back at the old homestead, the next few days passed as they had before the two prospectors had come.

  Then on the tenth day George Crossman and Stephen came.

  A short while before their arrival John had come in from a plant-hunt back of the rise beyond the clay paddock. Kim was standing in front of the homestead shading her eyes as she looked to the north.

  ‘Land-Rover is coming,’ John said, stacking his satchel and specimen box side by side. ‘I recognise the sound!’

  Kim was excited. She also felt a sudden twinge of regret. It might have been lonely, and except for the wild-flowers everywhere scenting the air, desolate. Yet this camp in the old broken-down homestead had been fun in its own right. They’d been busy ‒ John in his wild herbarium of a million square acres: she with her pencil, her pen, and paint box.

  John pulled his jungle hat farther down on his brow, and looked out from under the shade of the brim. He glanced at Kim. She had a curious stubborn look on her face.

  ‘By the rheumy sound of that back-wheel drive it’s not only a Land-Rover. It’s the one George was driving!’ he said.

  ‘With or without the spare part for the jeep?’ Kim asked.

  ‘Not to worry. If we can’t salvage the jeep you’ll be able to return with George.’

  ‘That will be fine and dandy,’ Kim replied still not looking at him. ‘I go, and you stay.’

  He was surprised.

  ‘Did you burn the last of the stew, or something, Kim?’ he asked, an edge of amusement in his voice. ‘Your natural flair for hospitality at stake? Haven’t we enough supper for George? And Stephen?’

  Kim ignored the verbal underlining of that And Stephen!

  ‘We have. But it wouldn’t really matter if we hadn’t, would it? I mean, with all those brains they have between them they’d have remembered to bring something to add to our stores. Well, wouldn’t they?’

  John’s expression became fixed. ‘I think you’re afraid they might have been absent-minded about stores. Too much Ralph Sinclair in your past, I’m afraid!’

  Kim took half a minute off ‒ to think.

  ‘Do you know Ralph really well?’ she asked, pretending mere conversation. She was still looking at the growing dust-ball, and being careful to keep her voice natural.

  John, his hands in the belt of his shorts, rocked backwards on his heels. Then slowly forward again.

  ‘I know Ralph’s a first-class research man. Also that he has a
whacker of a reputation for being absent-minded. He was present-minded enough when you departed from his company, Kim. He tried to get C.O.C.R. to change its plans. He wanted to keep you.’

  Kim looked at John, almost disbelieving.

  ‘Did he? Did he really?’ Her eyes were suddenly shining. ‘Oh, dear darling Ralph! I was a meanie to him. I let him down. I was sorry afterwards. It was too late. But ‒’

  ‘Yes? But what?’

  ‘Thank you for letting me know, John. It makes all the difference ‒’

  ‘A difference to other friendships?’ he asked directly, challenging her, though not looking at her.

  Kim was really startled this time. John’s eyes weren’t so blue she noticed. Not now that he stood looking into the bright afternoon light. They seemed to be examining distant horizons again.

  ‘You mean Stephen?’ She brushed this off uneasily. ‘Well, you see, I have to be friendly with Stephen for Ralph’s sake. A sort of bargain I made. Oh, I can’t exactly ‒’

  ‘Bargain?’ John switched his glance quick as lightning. He was looking right at her now. Kim was puzzled.

  A distant sound, growing louder, had become a thrumming.

  ‘Look!’ she said. Anything to change the subject. ‘Here they come. Round the bend.’

  She could never explain to John that half-witted threat Stephen had made about Ralph’s doctorate!

  The Land-Rover became a reality. Minutes later it was roaring down the track before it slammed to a stop. George spilled out of one side and Stephen the other. As Stephen was nearest Kim he shouted a joyous greeting. Then, when he came up, he flung his arms round her. Out of the corner of her eye Kim could see John and George Crossman shaking hands.

  Stephen took her by the shoulders and held her back from him.

  ‘Darling girl. What are you mumbling and bumbling about? Some loving words of cheer for me after ten long days’ absence? Don’t forget you have to show me every little jot of work you’ve done ‒ just to prove you haven’t been wasting the funds of the mighty C.O.C.R. in my absence.’

  Kim blinked as she looked into the brown eyes eagerly scrutinising hers as if to read some hidden message. He had underlined the ‘every little jot of work’. Why had John’s mention of Ralph’s name made her meeting with Stephen suddenly give her a jolt of fear?

  And yet she had been grateful to him before. Because it was someone to appear to love her a little? Give her feminine ego a lift-up! It had been crumbs from the rich man’s table to recompense for the glamorous bitchery of Celia and Diane. And Myree too!

  She turned away from Stephen to greet George ‒ whom she really did love in a good, quite selfless way.

  George Crossman had finished telling John he had a new, but barely run-in, gear box in his Rover. Also some spares ‒ but not all that were needed ‒ for the jeep. Stephen’s Land-Rover had had to be left behind. A new axle was a major job ‒

  ‘They flew some parts up for us from Perth in forty-eight hours to Bim’s Stopover. By the way ‒ here’s a love note for you John. A radio “hullo” from Myree back at Base.’ He handed John an envelope, then turned to Kim and held out both hands. Somewhat mutely she took them. He held her back and looked at her. There was a split second of silence while Kim looked at George with her eyes, while her mind watched John open that note. He read it carefully, and equally carefully folded it and stowed it away in his shirt pocket ‒ the left side. The one over his heart.

  ‘My, oh my, Kim!’ George was saying. ‘You look more like a desert rat than a girl these days. Brown all over. Sunburned! And look at those small, very horny hands! What in the name of wild dingoes have you been doing with them?’

  Kim was not amused.

  ‘The sun out here burns everyone brown,’ she explained spelling it out in syllables. ‘As for my hands! They’re not small, and not very horny. I’ve been peeling wild yams for dinner.’

  ‘Yams?’ He was incredulous. ‘Out in this wasteland?’

  ‘Certainly,’ she said loftily. ‘In some far distant time the inmates of this homestead planted parsley and yams behind the wash-house ‒ now derelict. They all went to ground, then emerged wild but edible. I wouldn’t expect a botanist ‒ involved with long scientific names ‒ to understand that.’

  Stephen gave a shout of laughter.

  ‘She sounds like a lecturer I once had. Old Wilkinson-Brown. He was ponderous as a hippo.’

  Kim’s backbone stiffened. Dr Wilkinson-Brown? He had been a lecturer at Crawley two years back. In the same department as Ralph Sinclair. Had he also lectured in other realms in the Eastern States later?

  ‘There’s something inside on the stove, George,’ John Andrews was saying. ‘If it’s the yams and wild parsley that make it edible I can recommend letting all garden vegetables run to seed ‒’

  The two men turned away. John led George Crossman to the place where he’d stored his specimen cases.

  ‘I’ve something here to knock you sideways, George,’ he was saying. ‘You’ll have to look at this collection right away. If I’d only had the microscope ‒ which you took off with you ‒ I could have cut some slides!’

  ‘We’ll leave the two young ones to the kitchen,’ George agreed with a shrug. ‘Do you know, John, I had a feeling they might be mating-up back at Base. Stephen had that certain look in his eye. I was a bit anxious ‒’

  John Andrews was silent.

  ‘Sorry,’ George amended quickly. ‘I know you don’t like shinannigans on field work. Nothing too foolish going on anyway ‒’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of Kim,’ John said briefly ‒ too briefly. ‘I was thinking of Stephen. I’ll have a talk with you about that later. I want to show you my Duboisia myoporoides. Better, and unique ‒ two specimens of hopwoodi. I found any amount of the first. Kim found the bigger clumps here on this old station. Not the hopwoodi of course. I found that right out beyond.’

  ‘She found Duboisia like she found wild parsley and yams?’ George was incredulous.

  John, who had bent over his specimen case, straightened up. He stared at the other man curiously.

  ‘You just waking up, John?’ George persisted mildly. ‘That girl knows more about wild-flowers and native plants than a lot of trained scientists ‒ though I admit she’s allergic to their botanical names, and possibly their valuable chemical extracts.’

  John turned back to his specimen case.

  ‘If I’d had the microscope,’ he repeated, ‘I’d have some conclusions at this stage.’ He unstrapped two of the cases.

  ‘You were always a stickler for regulations, John,’ George said. ‘It was my job to take the microscope. Part of the chemist’s equipment. You’re plain botanist!’ He laughed to take the sting out of his joke.

  ‘I’ll lift other plants hereabouts at the last moment,’ John went on. ‘Yes, I know the regulations. I sometimes blast them. Meantime Kim has made the live drawings.’

  He fished in his pockets for a cigarette. As he lit up he turned and watched Stephen and Kim entering the old homestead. Stephen had his arm along Kim’s shoulder.

  John’s eyes met George Crossman’s.

  ‘If you want to do a little salvaging, George,’ he said evenly. ‘Forget the microscopes and prise Kim lose from Stephen Cole. That’s an order for security reasons only. I think you’re the man to do it. She feels well disposed towards you.’

  George glanced at the other man quickly.

  ‘What news from Base?’ John asked relaxing, not waiting for an answer.

  ‘Nothing but good news. We received messages at Bim’s via Nookbennie, on the two-way. They’re on the right wavelength there for Base. Everyone’s at work and most of them have found something of prize interest. Myree Bolton’s outstripping them for her own topic. She has a first class research brain, John. She’s fast and cool. Also confident.’

  John, like George, looked out to the west. The sun was declining and the sky was changing from white to pale blue. Then came amethyst, and the beginning of t
he sunset glory.

  ‘I know,’ he said briefly. ‘It’s been in my mind to give Myree an appointment at the Mount. I picked her quality when she first did that stint of work with us last year. She has a sound analytical approach.’

  He turned back to George, a question in his eyes. ‘Would she come?’

  ‘You ask. She’ll come!’ George said bluntly, giving John the message ‒ if that was what he wanted. The double-loaded message. Myree would come to John, for John ‒ as much as she would come to the Institute. Everyone in the Expedition knew that.

  ‘Good. Now let’s get on with these specimens. Ready for the bonanza, George? I have it here in my perforated bag. Hopwoodi.’

  ‘I thought you could be joking.’

  ‘I’m not. Look at it. A unique find! The aborigines chew it as a medicinal drug.’

  ‘I can hardly believe it,’ George said doubtfully. ‘It was thought to be extinct. My heavens, John, we may have here another of nature’s wonder medicines. Another quinine? Or penicillin?’

  ‘You’re the organic chemist, George. You have the microscopes and equipment. It is as startling a find as digitalis from a common English hedgerow.’

  George stared at the miserable straggling tree plants. How unprepossessing! Yet what magic they might possibly yield!

  Suddenly his thoughts went off on another track. He looked at the other man quickly. ‘You’ve kept those specimens under lock and key? The whole time? Out in the desert?’

  John flashed his rare smile.

  ‘They were kept under my dehydrated, all but dead, body. Even when snatching moments of sleep.’

  ‘Good fella!’ George was obviously relieved.