by Lucy Walker
Kim put her pen down, drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. She cocked her head on one side and regarded her visitor.
‘You’re very generous,’ she said. ‘I guess I’d better take you up on that offer before you change your mind. You could send my percentage to the Herbarium at the Mount in Perth.’
Mr Harold M. Smith looked over the drawing-book at the young girl on the floor. He couldn’t read her expression because of the over-all coverage of the face-pack she was wearing. Nevertheless his sound business ear was tuned-in to what he diagnosed as a genuinely naive, very young girl, speaking quite seriously. The din of thousands of dollars would have a crashing sound in the ears of such an unworldly person, he decided. He’d spent two days taking good stock of her.
‘Done!’ he exclaimed.
She had accepted in words, clearly. Irrespective of where the offer was supposed to go! Whether he paid out any money or not, she had agreed in principle. He had her hooked, for agreement even in words, was a contract.
He stood up, putting away his cheque book as he did so.
‘Well now, I must leave you to your beauty cure. That is what all the mess is about, isn’t it?’ His face was creased with more smiles.
Kim nodded her head.
‘Not that anyone could really make me beautiful,’ she said regretfully.
‘I’m sure your good fairy attended to that long ago. A little sunburned, perhaps. But easily remedied.’
He was still smiling.
‘Now is this the record book I take along with me?’ He still held the book he had leafed through, in his hand. ‘I’ll return it to-night. Or to-morrow at the latest. Of course I’ll take the greatest care of it. I see it has a beautifully drawn map of the environs you have traversed lately.’
Kim thought a minute. She thought best when she had the handle of a pen or a brush in her mouth, so she picked up the pen again, and chewed on the end of the wooden stem. ‘Quite lately,’ she agreed. ‘In fact my latest. Those are most precious records.’
The man filled in more time by standing silent, in case she said more. He leafed through the book again. He could see the latter part of it was done with fresh ink, and paint. He guessed she was adding up dollars in that small, towel-shrouded head of hers. These ingénues were just so easily impressed! It was almost a shame ‒
‘You won’t forget to send the cheques?’ Kim asked at long length. He looked up a shade too quickly and only managed to mask his eyes with an effort. ‘There are two cheques aren’t there?’ she went on simply. ‘One to the Herbarium: and the other for the Wild Life Society.’
Was the girl shrewder than her fey-like simplicity implied?
No. Even the porridge mess on her face could not hide the clear candour in her very large eyes. The amount of the money talked ‒ had mesmerised her.
‘Two cheques it shall be,’ he said moving to the door with a soft tread, taking the book with him. ‘Meantime I’m giving instructions for the very best wines to be served at that wedding reception to-morrow! No. Don’t thank me, my child. It is my privilege to a fellow lover of wild plant life.’
‘I shall think of you with deep feelings as I sip it,’ Kim said quite earnestly. ‘When I lift my glass you’ll know I’m drinking to you, won’t you?’
‘I shall know you are thinking of me,’ he said. ‘Why not? I’m the favourite uncle, aren’t I? Back to your beauty care, my dear. You must look beautiful for to-morrow.’
He went out, closing the door silently behind him. He had her offer to accept money. That was all that mattered. She was rather a nice little thing, really!
Kim sat buddha-like swathed in her sheet, and thought very hard.
Mad, or bad ‒ was her final judgment of Mr Shiny Shoes.
Oh well, she had yet another group of sketches to do on the sheet of drawing paper lying stretched on the floor. Better do it now before her face-mask cracked because of too much talk with a cheque-happy tycoon.
She didn’t for a moment believe the madman would send cheques of any kind: to anyone, anywhere.
So long as he returned that record book! That was her only care. After all ‒ it was hers. And very precious.
Not to think about it now. To-morrow was her wedding day!
The wedding preparations had gone on during all that day. Meantime dozens of dusty cars and station waggons were driving up, off-loading equally dusty passengers to fill the pub.
Kim had not seen John since dinner the night before. Jeff, Mr Soames, J.P., and some of the station-owners who had already driven in, were busy giving what they were pleased to call a ‘Bucks’ party’. The women folk who had come with the men, had already wished Kim lots of luck, then settled down to tea and a free-for-all gossip. It was their wedding too and all they hoped for was a really beautiful bride to make the whole thing worthwhile.
Kathy made no bones about where Kim should be ‒ walled up in her room, wearing a face mask and plying a needle.
‘I’ve pressed the dress and you’ve yet to sew those everlastings on your hat,’ she said.
‘Thank you,’ Kim said. All this kindness called for docility. She was in Kathy’s organising hands, and there she had to stay. Actually she wanted to see John. She didn’t know why, only that she wanted to see him very badly. If he came to say good night to her this latest face-pack would end all prospect of nuptials! She said so, feeling that Kathy might be understanding about this.
‘I’ll lock the door so he can’t come in, just to make certain,’ Kathy was very determined. ‘Besides it’ll be past midnight before they’re finished in that parlour, and the bridegroom is not supposed to see the bride on the wedding day … even if it is only in the early hours.’
Kim, with no other course open, submitted. She only hoped that inch-wide gap below the door was big enough to allow Mr Harold M. Smith ‒ the tycoon with the oily smile ‒ to return her record book as promised. Her diminutive amount of packing had already been done.
She had an awful fear that John might change his mind and take off for the fringe of the Gibson Desert in the night. After all, hopwoodi was more important to him than perhaps any bride, let alone Kimberley ‒ Kim for short ‒ Jessica Wentworth. Supposing he changed his mind? Funny how, later alone in her bed, she began to have doubts of herself too! Maybe she was cheating him, as well as Fate!
People from miles around were still pouring into the downstairs hallway. They had come from far and wide. All yesterday, then through the night, and now this morning, they came ‒ the men in their brim-shading slouch hats, their voices drawling as they talked, and their wives in pretty cotton dresses, their sun-dried skins hidden under careful layers of make-up. The children were in shorts, mini-skirts, or slacks. They had tumbled out of cars, or station waggons, as the vehicles pulled up in the dusty road by the pub. Their laughter, and calls to one another, all seemed to say the same thing ‒ ‘There’s a wedding at the Stopover! We’ve come!’
The noise in the bar had been thunderous for hours. Upstairs in the ladies’ sitting-room the chatter and tinkle of tea cups had been incessant.
‘You see what I mean?’ the manager said to John. His finger was stroking his chin as he leaned on the counter top. ‘Half this mob won’t go back for three days. It’s the only break they get. We have to have a party now and again at the Stopover. We’re bulging at the seams already. There’s more to come too!’
John could see this state of affairs for himself. And said so.
‘It’s like this ‒’ Mr Barker drawled on, his finger still stroking his chin. ‘If your wedding could give that Kathy of mine ideas ‒ why you’d be kind-of doing us a good turn Dr Andrews. Me a good turn for business, and this lot all over the pub would get another bit of a break from sheep, fences and windmills.’
John barely smiled. ‘Do you whistle up weddings as a matter of business, or of habit?’ he asked.
The manager straightened up from the counter. He planted both hands down on its top and looked John Andrews
squarely in the eyes.
‘It could be that I like seeing people enjoy themselves,’ he remarked with some emphasis.
John took out a cigarette, tapped it on the counter, then lit it. He took quite a time, and for the whole of that time Mr Barker kept his eyes unwavering on his wedding guest.
‘I’m beginning to think you are capable of anything, Mr Barker,’ John said very quietly.
The manager had leaned his elbows back on the counter. Once again he fell to stroking his chin with his finger.
‘Let me see,’ he said making an effort at brain raking. ‘What did Peck say? Seems like I don’t have a memory that good.’ He looked up sharply. ‘Tell you what, Dr Andrews. I’d sooner have Peck yarning in my bar than any other. He’s a regular attraction. If he bogs down at Blain’s Find, way up the track, he kinda has a habit of drawing my customers away from me. Not much trade in these parts, you know. The Stopover and Blain’s Find compete with one another quite a bit. This wedding now ‒’
John blew a spiral of smoke ceilingwards. He looked straight at Mr Barker for a good thirty seconds, then turned away. He went into the bar and bought himself, and the two men on either side of him, a drink.
‘I needed that,’ was his only remark.
Chapter Fourteen
All went well for Kim on her wedding morning. The record book had been returned ‒ under the door. John had not gone to any desert, let alone the Gibson. Kathy reported that he was downstairs, first having had breakfast with Jeff, then yarning with her father.
The last of the face-packs came off. The tip of Kim’s nose had grown a new skin over the days. The freckles were subdued. Her skin, though tanned, was as clear as her dark-fringed eyes.
She had washed her hair while under the shower, and Kathy then set it with the help of dozens of bobby pins. The captive was next commanded to sit near the window and not dare move till the ‘coiffure’ was dry.
The white linen dress lay creaseless on the bed beside a biscuit-coloured straw hat, which was now delicately trimmed with the everlastings. Kim gazed at this particular decoration lovingly. She even went so far as to wonder why she had not become a milliner instead of a typist.
Lunch, sometime later, was brought to her on a tray by a fussing Mrs Barker. Finally ‒ as the clock’s hands seemed now to have whizzed round ‒ Kathy came back in her guise of bridesmaid. Out came the bobby pins, and swish went the brush till Kim thought she was certain of a sore head.
Next the linen dress was put on, and patted down. Kathy tried three different ways of settling the straw hat on the bride’s head before she was satisfied. Kim, letting her minister, had her own intentions as to the angle at which she would wear her hat. She would do something about that later.
Lastly, right on the hour, Jeff came rat-tatting on the door.
‘Are you dressed and ready, Kim? Heaven save us, so you are!’
He walked round and round his sister.
‘You know what!’ he said puzzled. ‘You sure look beautiful. How’d you manage it?’
‘Oatmeal porridge,’ was all Kim said.
How she went down that staircase and into the decorated dining-room she never afterwards knew. It was all a daze. One minute she had been in her room, and the next she was looking into the bronzed, lined face of Mr Soames J.P. from Binni-Carra Station. John, tall and anonymous, was standing beside her. He was wearing a fine new set of khaki drills ‒ as such a thing as a suit was not known in Bim’s Stopover ‒ except in the case of Mr Shiny Shoes Smith.
Kim’s thoughts went on being hazy and dazy too.
I’m being married! Did John notice the wild-flowers on my hat? What is Mr Soames saying? Who ever would have thought of a dinner bell for a wedding march! John! Oh John! Where are you?
Words were spoken: responses made. Time marched on.
At the side of the dining-room, almost hidden by the crowd, Mrs Barker was becoming more agitated.
She had seen Peck and Bill come in. They stood a few inches inside the door, their ancient felt hats dusty as ever ‒ though they had the grace to carry them in their hands, and not on their heads.
Peck was grinning. Was it a knowing grin?
‘It’s all right, Mum,’ Kathy whispered standing near her mother now. ‘For all we know it might be the law for a brother to give his sister permission and all that. And Dad and you’ve known Kim and John nine days, even if Mr Soames hasn’t ‒’
‘It’s only what Peck might say at the wrong moment,’ Mrs Barker answered in a desperate undertone. ‘He always likes a good yarn. He won’t be able to keep quiet when Mr Soames asks that question! He could speak up, even as a joke.’
‘You mean that one about “anybody knowing just cause or impediment?” Nobody knows what “impediment” means anyway,’ Kathy whispered back. ‘At least not in the Stopover ‒’
Two minutes later the moment came! Mr Soames looked up, and took in the whole congregation with one magisterial glance.
‘If anyone knows any just cause or impediment ‒’ He forgot to drawl, and became sonorous. He delivered as from the Bench ‒ ‘why these two should not be joined together in legal matrimony‒’ he paused, then added ‒ ‘let him speak now, or forever remain silent.’
Mrs Barker looked dizzily around in the stillness that followed. Nothing could be heard inside or out ‒ not even a willi-willi prancing across the dusty gravel yard. Mr Mystery-Smith had gone, after paying in advance for a large amount of champagne for the wedding. A Land-Rover had called for him, and whisked him away in the early hours of the morning.
All that Peck did was shift his weight from one leg to the other so he could lean against the door jamb more easily.
‘Then I pronounce you man and wife!’ Mr Soames declared.
Mrs Barker decided not to faint ‒ a diversion she had planned in advance. Instead she beamed with relief.
Kim stood suspended in time and space. She wondered why she felt stunned.
Man and wife? What had she done? Who was this tall, silent man of will beside her? Why had he asked her?
‘Now kiss the bride,’ Mr Soames was saying.
There was a hand touching Kim’s arm. It belonged to the stranger, John Andrews. He turned her towards him. It was the first time she had looked at him to-day.
His face was quite serious, and his eyes were dark. Concerned? Was that possible, after this fraud? Then she saw ‒ far back in the very recesses of his wonderful eyes ‒ a tiny light.
Dear God! This man was her husband! It had all happened like a flash. Maybe it was the way madness came on.
There was a silence in the dining-room as everyone waited, some standing on tiptoe.
John took Kim’s pixie chin in his free hand, bent his head and kissed her.
It was so gentle and chivalrous a kiss! It seemed as if the sky had opened one chink. She nearly, very nearly, saw into Heaven!
She would never be the little sister again. She would be the wife of a botanist who one day might be famous. Dr John Andrews!
She turned instinctively to where Jeff was standing.
‘Give everyone a smile, Kim,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t look so scared, Bratto! They’re all waiting for that smile. That’s right. Now another. Good, it’s a real beauty. Now your colour’s back! Jumping kangaroos! I thought you were going to faint!’
The pub manager on the far side was now wringing John’s hand. Mrs Barker was bustling up with much relief in her face. The details of the reception ‒ yet to be ‒ were temporarily forgotten. The men ‒ some of the girls too ‒ swarmed round John. Kim was cut off from him by a wall of flowery dresses.
Jeff, the care-taking brother, took her arm in his. ‘Keep smiling, Bratto.’ he commanded.
‘I’m still me, Jeff? I’m not that much different?’
‘You’re not different at all, except for that ring on your finger. Not to worry, Kim! You never really did worry. Now did you? You had your own way mapped out of the trees right from the start. Well, you’ve made i
t. Now you’ve got yourself a first-class husband. You’re free of that mad hatter’s tea-party back home. You’ve cut and run ‒’
‘Is that why you came up? To help me escape?’
‘Partly. Once I got here I took a shine to this feller John Andrews.’
The wedding guests were swarming round her.
Jeff beamed. ‘Like I said,’ he finished in a whisper. ‘Not to worry! Most people feel shaky the first five minutes of finding themselves married ‒’
The guests were crowding Jeff away from the bride.
The men were still taking it in turns to wring John’s hand, while the girls, and children, fluttered around Kim. Everyone loves a pretty bride, specially this one in the lovely shady hat, who had such wonderful dark-fringed grey eyes.
‘You look lovely!’
‘My, aren’t you lucky! How’d you get someone so good looking like Dr Andrews? A real science man isn’t he? Can he fly in space?’
‘Who did your make-up, Kim dear? Kathy! Well, come to think of it she always does. We always have our weddings here. Kathy’s always the make-up girl!’
Kim answered questions, smiled willingly, and exchanged kisses with absolute strangers who suddenly had become loved and loving friends.
Then, as minute by minute passed, her fright retreated. Something else was taking its place. A sort of muted, mounting excitement. Her heart could just possibly be beating to the sound of happiness.
She was married to John. She would make her marriage work. She could do it. She was not Kim Wentworth, the bratto, any more. She was Mrs John Andrews.
The incredible had happened.
Her heart lifted and lifted, up into a wonderful world of hope and anticipation as she kissed and was kissed by all around her.
She saw Peck’s brown wrinkled face peeking impishly through the door in the far corner. It could have been the face of Pan, it was so wicked. But heart-warming too. She wished he wasn’t too bush-shy to come and kiss her. When she got the chance ‒ Well, look out Peck! You’re in for some kissing too!
The moon lifted its shining apricot globe over the eastern stretch of plain as Kim and John went out to the jeep. They were in their work clothes again ‒ all freshly laundered and ironed by the pub’s laundress.