by Lucy Walker
He walked out of the door, across the main hall, down the side passage to the courtyard at the rear of the hotel. He walked across the gravel space to the mulga clump ‒ the only grove of trees in the whole town ‒ then stood staring across the bushland into nothing.
The manager wiped his hand over his chin, and shook his head as he watched John’s back go through the door. His wife came in from the side veranda and looked at her husband.
‘You tell him?’ she asked.
‘Yep. I had to. Only fair thing to do. Nothing to it but what old Peck made of it, that’s for sure. Peck’s idea of a good yarn. If only it hadn’t dust-balled into a bar fight!’
His wife nodded in agreement.
‘There isn’t anyone in the outback who didn’t hear that radio message from some girl called Myree at the Expedition’s Base.’ She reminded him. ‘You remember you gave it to that other science chap to take back to Skelton’s old place? Then there’s this other message came over the air this morning. Did you give Dr Andrews the new message, Joe?’
‘Jumping kangaroos! I forgot. It has that raking word “love” in it again. They’ll know about that in the bar too. That talking air! Send Ted out with it will you? I’d say that Dr Andrews’ love affairs has got him in one big fix. Any time someone’ll start another fight.’
‘I like the girl upstairs. Kathy does too.’
‘Well ‒ notwithstanding ‒ you’ll have to give him that radio message. The law says so.’
’I don’t believe anything against that girl upstairs, Joe. Well not yet, anyway ‒’
‘You tell that to her brother the forester come the day he arrives, if ever.’
Upstairs in Number Five Kim was bathed and clean at long long last. She had done the remnants of her personal washing. She put on the new bra and shirt she’d bought at the store. She sat on the stool in front of her mirror and was busy scooping out dollops of cold cream. Then spreading this snow-wise on her face.
Over the shoulder of the curved mirror she had a view of the yard. She saw John Andrews walk across the square and come to a stop under the mulgas. Her hand, spreading cold cream half an inch thick on her face, came to a stop too. She rested one elbow on the dressing-table, and her cream-messy-chin on the back of her hand. She sat quite still as she watched John.
The tall rangy figure was not very relaxed! His back was too straight. He’d dug his hands in the pockets of his trousers as he stood there and stared away into nothing.
‘He must be thinking,’ Kim told herself. ‘About something very important! Not very unworrying either ‒’
She watched him. First he rocked back on his heels, then forward. He took out a cigarette and lit it. Next he threw the cigarette on the ground and put his heel on it. He walked round the yard, his head bent in thought. Finally he came back to the mulgas and stood gazing out at the wilderness again.
‘Something on his mind!’ Kim nodded her head in sympathy. ‘Duboisia hopwoodi I expect.’
She felt a little sad for him. He was awfully alone out there.
She dug her fingertips in the cold cream again, and slapped on another layer.
‘If I leave it an hour?’ she reflected, meaning the cold cream. ‘Will it do anything for this poor awful face of mine in that time?’
She leaned forward and stared into the mirror quizzically.
Then she began to add layers of cream to her arms, to the backs of her hands, and in between her fingers.
When she looked up through the window John was no longer there.
‘He’s lost himself,’ she thought. ‘Poor Dr John Andrews! So High and Mighty! He has to walk round a yard all by himself!’
What had he been thinking about? Of something more than Duboisia ‒ even the hopwoodi kind? There’d been a thing very stiff and angry about his back. Then tired. Then stooped.
Some minutes later Kim heard firm footsteps come up the linoleum-covered staircase, turn the corner of the corridor, and come four doors along. Then stop.
The knock on her door sounded very aggressive indeed.
Next came John’s voice.
‘Kim? Have you something on? May I come in?’
She swivelled round on her stool.
‘Well, I do have something on,’ she said doubtfully. ‘But you won’t be able to see through it. I’ve cream all over my face.’
He turned the handle, and came in. He closed the door behind him and stood, leaning back against the door frame, his hands on the knob behind him.
He gazed, more than stared, at the girl on the opposite side of the room. The window behind her made a halo of light round her newly washed hair.
Her bare feet were smaller than he remembered noticing. Her shorts and shirt were sparkling fresh. It was the rest of her that all but held him transfixed. Her arms, hands, throat and face were covered a half-inch deep by a foam of white snow ‒ all except for a slit that was her mouth, and two round holes through which a pair of grey eyes stared at him, wide and so very ingenuous.
‘I’m sorry for this intrusion,’ he said trying to sound formal. ‘I wanted to ask you an important question.’
‘Oh well …’ Kim began. ‘That is …’
She wiped a dripping dollop of cold cream from her eyebrow with one finger, and looked at him over the tip of her cream-laden nose. ‘Is it something I’ve forgotten? You don’t mind me in face cream, do you? It’s my sunburn you know. It ‒’
She could see the outline of the oblong radio message in his shirt pocket. It was the unmistakeable red of the envelope they put such messages in. Funny, but the thought of Myree sending him messages here while he was busy with being saved from the aftermath of a sand storm, made the satan in her want to give battle. Right now that particular devil was having a wonderful time romping around inside her chest.
Myree hadn’t spent four days and four nights, or had the skin burned off her nose and her forearms, walking through sand dunes.
‘Do you think you could listen carefully to me for a few minutes, Kim?’
The expression on his face said he meant something serious. Kim banished the devil in her chest forthwith.
‘Well … If you don’t mind my appearance,’ she said blinking cold cream from her eyes. ‘Ought I be dressed for the occasion, or something?’
Darn! She was making a way-out gaffe again! And he really was deadly serious.
He caught her eyes, snow-ringed with cream yet with that unique, faintly unfocused expression of studied wonder in them.
He held her eyes with his own as he walked, quite slowly across the room. He was so tall, standing above her, she had to crick back her head to see his face. A splash of cold cream fell from her cheek and landed with a silent plonk on her shirt front.
‘Will you marry me, Kim?’
She didn’t move. And neither did he.
Utter silence.
He looked down and she looked up. His eyes weren’t so icy any more. They were almost gentle ‒ or did she imagine it?
Or was she, or he, just a little mad? Desert-happy?
‘I beg your pardon?’ she asked politely, not believing her ears.
‘Will you marry me, Kim?’ he repeated.
She lifted her hands, and with her fingers, one on each side of her face, wiped the cold cream away from her eyelids upwards to where her soft hair capped her forehead.
‘Darn!’ she said. ‘Now I’ll have to wash my hair again.’
The expression on his face changed.
There came the oddest of odd looks into it. Kim tried to think of the right word, but gave up.
Would she marry him?
‘I’ll think about it,’ she said nodding her head, as if to an offer of an afternoon walk. ‘Do you think you could ask me again to-morrow?’ She had an unreal feeling of acting a stage part: the dialogue already written for her ‒ He was sun-struck of course.
He bent down, put his hands on her shoulders and shook her to make her understand.
‘Kim. Will you marry m
e? Don’t think about it. Just marry me, and we’ll sort it out afterwards.’
She thought she saw some light.
‘You mean you like my drawings? They’re good, aren’t they? It would be useful to have me along with you all the time ‒ day and night ‒ so I could keep on drawing! And make you famous as a botanist? Like helping my darling Ralph Sinclair get his doctorate?’
‘Something like that.’ He dropped his hands from her shoulders, turned away and walked round the room looking at the floor.
‘Something like that ‒ if that’s the way you want to put it,’ he said. ‘But I need you. It’s imperative I have you with me all the time ‒’ His voice lightened a little. ‘We could make a success of it you know, Kim. You really are a splendid cook. You were quite housewifely out there at the old homestead. Of course ‒’ He broke off.
‘It’s a pity you mentioned those last two accomplishments,’ Kim said gravely, watching him. ‘I mean about the cooking and being housewifely, because I had a solution to your troubles. Only I don’t know if those two things fit. That is ‒ I’m not sure. Well, not exactly ‒’
He stopped circumnavigating the room and came to a halt.
‘What are you talking about, Kim?’
‘Myree Bolton. She can draw ‒ almost as well as I can. But not quite. She doesn’t have to have a pen-hand as fine as Ralph Sinclair needed. But she’s a real botanist. This time next year she’ll have First Class Honours. Right now ‒’
Kim thought of that folded radio message in the shirt pocket over John’s heart.
He took out a cigarette and began tapping it on his thumbnail.
‘I know all Myree’s attainments. They couldn’t be bettered,’ he said quite brusquely. ‘I had thought of offering her a job at the Institute by the Mount next year. She’d be valuable for the particular work there and to …’ He broke off.
Funny how she, Kim, was always giving Myree away to her own possible future employers! First Ralph, and now John. Wouldn’t Myree be mad if she knew. Kim donating her as a gift to eligible men!
Meantime she hazarded a guess at what John was up to.
Me in the back room out of sight ‒ doing the cooking when taking time off from drawing, typing and tagging ‒ probably somewhere between the soup and the frozen vegetables! Meantime Myree in the front room! Twin beds, or a double one?
Kim’s small chin firmed, and her eyes darkened.
Oh no you don’t, Dr Andrews! No you don’t!
Anyhow what was this all about?
‘Dear John,’ she said with calculated gentleness. ‘Thank you for the compliment. Wait till you’ve tried my Irish stew or my chow mein. I’m good at burning things like that.’
She swung back to the mirror. In its reflection she looked at him, the latest cigarette unlit in his hand, his wonderful handsome head framed by the door behind him.
Her heart misgave her.
‘I’ll think about it,’ she added, almost too quickly. ‘I’ll give you my answer in the morning. Would you wait that long?’
He put the cigarette back in its packet, and stood staring past the shoulder of the mirror out into the courtyard. His eyes were full of shadows, and tired. Kim’s heart dropped a beat.
If he doesn’t go away in less than one minute, she thought sadly, I’ll get up and throw myself at his selfish scientific head. Cold cream and all!
John’s eyes came back to her.
‘Fair enough, Kim,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s quite a big step to take. Leave it till the morning.’
He turned on his heel, opened the door, went out and shut it behind him. His footsteps fading down the passage weren’t so heavy as when he had come. The very sound of them on the old linoleum caught in Kim’s heart strings.
One or other of us is mad, she decided, and wished she really could cry ‒ something she refused to do on principle.
‘Clearly I could do with a change of name and a change of tune too. What motto would go with “Andrews”, I wonder? No more “Wentworths are worth where they went!” ’
She slapped on another lot of cold cream to hide her face from herself. There wasn’t much left in the jar.
Kim thought about that strange proposal of marriage all the evening; and later between jagged razor-backs of sleep.
John wore a kind-of-kindness in his manner at dinner: much like a man wearing knight-of-old armour. He waited for Kim before he went into the dining-room. He pulled out her chair with a certain firmness about the gesture, as if it was his usual duty, and more than just good manners. He passed her things like the cruet and the glass dish containing the bread ‒ long before she wanted them.
He asked her questions about her home, her family and about her brother Jeff. Why was she so fond of Jeff in particular? He smiled, and looked at her quizzically when she told him about the sofa with the padding falling out, and about her wild-flower plot. Also about the tank to catch the rain-water from the roof in winter.
In fact, she hardly recognised him as that man!
‘Diane and Celia think the tank spoils the salubrious beauty of the back garden,’ she told him. ‘Funny, but they never notice the weeds, or the broken gutter on the garage.’
She watched John guardedly as she went on.
‘About my family ‒ the female side of it ‒’ she explained. ‘They’re foresters. Oh no, my sisters don’t climb or fell or grow trees like Jeff and my father. They sit in the office at headquarters and write up records and keep charts. That sort of thing. Still, they were trained. Like you are ‒ at the University. They don’t understand about wild-flowers though. Undergrowth is a mere hazard in the forests to them.’
‘You really love those wild-flowers, don’t you?’ John said. ‘That’s why you want to paint them, as well as draw them for the records?’
‘Yes,’ she replied thoughtfully. ‘It sticks a nasty long pin in me to see the flowers on paper just as sections. I like to give them colour too. I like drawing things tiny ‒ the tinier the better ‒’
John, crumbling bread with one hand and twisting the stem of his wine glass in the fingers of the other, went on looking at her. He took in the wide-spaced frank grey eyes; the half shy, half daring smile. She was like a prankster who might, for the fun of it, bring a scorpion out of a cigarette box any moment.
A wisp of regret, light as the brush of a feather, touched him as he looked at the deep sunburn on her face and throat and arms: the brown scratches on the backs of her hands, and the last remnants of physical tiredness at the back of those same grey eyes.
She’d been through as severe an ordeal as any he’d been through himself. Yet she had not said one word about it. The smile and the ready wit had come as easily as on those first few days at Base. His only concern about her then had been her attraction to Stephen Cole. He’d had a certain curiosity about her leaving Ralph Sinclair, of course. He’d made up his mind early ‒ when he thought of her association with Stephen ‒ that if anything special or unique were found he’d have to make it plain these finds were confidential.
‘Have you thought over the question I put to you earlier?’ he asked, almost abruptly. He was suddenly serious, all over again.
Kim pursed her mouth, put her head on the side, and contemplated the peeling paint on the ceiling of this very old outback dining-room.
‘Ye-es ‒’ she said slowly. Her eyes came back to his. She smiled, just that much impishly. ‘You’d better look out,’ she warned. ‘I might accept. Then where would you be?’
Chapter Twelve
After dinner Kim went for a walk by herself around the gravel yard of the hotel. She took a studied interest in the clump of mulga under which John had stood so thoughtfully this morning. Perhaps they had some particular mesmeric quality about them. She looked the trees over: also the view beyond them across a wasteland of weed and spinifex.
She shook her head perplexed.
‘Something must have given him odd ideas while he was out here.’
If not the trees,
then what? There weren’t even bats in the evening air and she didn’t really think there were bats in John Andrews’ belfry either. At dinner he had seemed quite sane ‒ only kinder. It had made her heart quicken just a little madly.
I’ve a jolly good mind to accept! She shot these parting words at the darkling sky. The last pink tinge on the western horizon was a fade-out of the dying day.
But what a day it had been!
She went upstairs and decided she’d go to bed on the grounds that she might have a try for ‘beauty sleep’. She didn’t want to be way-out, or to make gaffes any more. She didn’t want to have jokes inside herself as a protection against being hurt. She wanted to look beautiful in the morning.
She could never be really beautiful. Not like Myree ‒
She didn’t want Myree in the front room being a clever botanist while she, Kim, cooked and swept and washed ‒ also kept her skill with a fine drawing pen ‒ ready for use come John’s demands.
It wasn’t good enough. And looking at it another way, it was absurdly funny! Yet she wanted to say ‘Yes’ to John Andrews!
She couldn’t bring herself to admit, let alone say ‒ ‘I love him.’
She went on thinking it all out ‒ even in her sleep. Some of the things she thought in those half-dreams had woken her right up. They were ideas like sleeping with John: his head on the next pillow to hers.
John Andrews was not present at breakfast.
Changed his mind? Forgotten? Had second thoughts?
Kim ate her way steadily through cereal, steak and two eggs, then too much toast and finally two cups of tea. Still he didn’t come. She felt fed very full. It was all, of course, an excuse to stay at the table in the hope that he’d come.
When she had finished she delayed even longer. She watched the few through-travellers to Perth finishing their breakfast before they revved up their cars, or station-wagons, and wended their way farther along hundreds and hundreds of miles of track ‒ first sand and clay, then gravel and finally the bitumen, till at long last they would come to civilisation ‒ close by the shining River Swan ‒ far, far away.