Girl Alone: An Australian Outback Romance

by Lucy Walker

  Girl Alone

  Lucy Walker

  Copyright © The Estate of Lucy Walker 2019

  This edition first published 2019 by Wyndham Books

  (Wyndham Media Ltd)

  27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX

  First published 1973

  www.wyndhambooks.com/lucy-walker

  The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Cover artwork images © totajla / leungchopan (Shutterstock)

  Cover artwork design © Wyndham Media Ltd

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  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Books by Lucy Walker

  Chapter One

  It was a brown land.

  As far as the human eye could see it was this yellow brown.

  Flat, except for the occasional clumps of mulga. These were like stick trees since the cyclone’s wind had stripped them of leaves. Only in the far, far distance to the east did the land lift in a haze of low mesa-topped hills. The drought and later the cyclone had beggared and bared the land. Except for the stones. They were small, mostly ironstone cobbles, the last remnants of what had once upon a dreamtime ‒ milleniums ago ‒ been upland and mountain range. Now ‒ except for this place ‒ The Breakaway ‒ it was gibber country.

  Here at The Breakaway, Mardie sat in the store’s office and doodled with her pen on a piece of paper. Through the west window she could see the white-trunked gum trees growing along the boundary line. There was a lush garden at the back of the store. Green lawn, flower beds, and citrus trees. On the south side the trellised patio blazed bougainvillea and oleander. On the north side lay a melon bed. Rock melons, water melons, honeydews.

  This flowered tropical glory covering one isolated area in the shield-desert of gibber, mulga and spinifex, was because The Breakaway sat on an underground lake of water. A bore sunk deep and a windmill whirling above the tank-stand did the rest. Water sprayed from sprinklers all over.

  After that, and all around, was this desert again. That is except for the distant mesa range. Out there prospectors, explorers, and their camp followers were at work. The great nickel boom was on where once ‒ thirty to fifty years ago ‒ it had all been gold that the prospectors and outbackers had sought and mined.

  Mardie stopped doodling and put her pen down. She brushed her hand through her short dark hair, sat back in her chair, and gazed out of the east window at the landing ground on the west side of the road.

  ‘The bitumen’ they called this road. It led for nearly two thousand miles from the rich and verdant cities down south by the Swan River, up through the vineyards along the river valley, through the timber-belted Darling Range. Then progress by progress, this bitumen streak of a road ran northwards and onwards through the farm lands, out and up through sheep stations, across the great loneliness of the shield-desert ‒ to the Top End. Maybe right to the Timor Sea for all Mardie knew.

  At The Breakaway tracks came in to meet the bitumen. One came from the Never Never north-east, and another from the west. Yet a third, dusty and gravelly, came in from God knew where ‒ south-eastwards. They met, these tracks, touched one another, circled the green heaven of The Breakaway, then joined the north-south bitumen and so on their way.

  The real outbackers came to The Breakaway ‘stop-over’ by these gravel tracks. The through-travellers, perhaps one or two a day ‒ from north or south ‒ used the bitumen.

  Mardie had been here one month. Each day she sat at this office table and looked out through one window or another, and wondered at it all. So vast. So lonely. Always the great silence, broken only when a light plane, or an occasional helicopter came in on the landing ground on the east side of the bitumen, or maybe when a sheep or cattle truck, a delivery truck, or a car passed up or down along those miles and miles of blue bitumen. Only then did this girl, small, slight, dark-haired and dark-eyed ‒ all alone ‒ hear anything other than this silence. Funny how you can hear silence! she thought. The minutiae of the store’s internal clitter-clatter was the sound of an ant world beside it. No more.

  The buzzer on the radio fixture buzzed in the room like a muffled alarm. It was the small two-way on a closed circuit, not the main transceiver, now buzzing Mardie. She took the mouth-piece from the hook and spoke.

  ‘Bickleys Brandy,’ she said. ‘Mardie speaking. Over.’

  ‘Red Wine here, sweetheart.’

  A man’s voice came into the room as clearly as if its owner were sitting by the door.

  ‘David Ashton, love,’ he said. ‘The utility from the out-camp left three hours ago and passed through Mansell Downs Station one hour later. You should hear it coming any time now. Be a darling and call the Dig-in when it arrives. Just checking for safety reasons, pet.’

  ‘Message received,’ Mardie said. ‘Shall keep you informed, David. Back to you.’

  ‘Be sure to notify Mansell Downs when the ute leaves for the return run, Mardie darling.’

  ‘Will do ‒ without fail,’ Mardie said. ‘And I’m not your darling, David. Not yet, anyway. Tell me about the weather round the Dig-in. It’s safer as a subject for conversation.’

  ‘Look out the window, love. It’s the same as yours. Blistering hot. Cold at night. And Mardie, my darling, my dear, it’s nice to hear your voice. Did you know you have a lovely voice? Over.’

  ‘No, I didn’t, and I haven’t. Your turn.’

  ‘The men out here are itching to see the Voice’s owner. Cross my heart ‒ it’s true. Your turn to speak, love. Say something I can dream about.’

  Mardie laughed. It was like the fluted sound of angels’ wings to the lonely men ‒ all of them ‒ out at the Dig-in Exploration Camp, but Mardie did not know this. She did not believe David. She thought he was a flatterer and
only talked this way because he was on a closed circuit, and so was safe. She knew there was a ‘female’ geologist out there with all those men. Young and pretty too ‒ so Mr and Mrs Richie, the store’s managers, had told her. Actually she ‒ this girl ‒ was a geo-physicist ‒ someone who did the analysis and assaying of rock specimens. So they weren’t all that girl-hungry, were they? Even if Mardie had known about the ‘angels’ wings’ and her own clear voice, she would not have understood what was meant by the kind of ‘male loneliness’ that meant each man wanted his girl. Not someone shared.

  ‘Thank you for those nice few words,’ she said, a laugh in her voice now. ‘’Bye, David. Will call you later when the ute leaves.’

  ‘’Bye now, sweetheart. Come out and see us some time. We’re all agog. Me specially. Out.’

  ‘Over and out,’ Mardie said, almost sadly.

  David Ashton’s voice always had something special in it. A kindness, and a bright boyish kind of ‘cheek’, though its owner had to be older than that. He was the chief geologist out there. The man who advised the ‘Company’ as it were. And reported back to the Exploration Company’s headquarters in Sydney. Another two thousand miles away, across two deserts ‒ and what else ‒ to the eastern seaboard.

  He was really very nice ‒ Mardie thought just a little wistfully. She understood some kinds of loneliness because she’d been lonely herself ‒ for a long time ‒ before she’d come out here. And that, right in the middle of a city! Always alone. Funny how her life had worked out like that!

  Funnier still, she thought, how the cat always hears something coming. Seconds before her own ear could detect any sound, the cat had lifted its head. The sound was of a distant gnat of a plane ‒ the one due to bring in Mr Lawson, the solicitor. Too early, Mardie reasoned, for the utility from the Dig-in. She didn’t know which she hoped for most.

  Then she heard the sound more clearly. It was the utility all right ‒ the one coming in from the out-camp, many miles north-east of the Dig-in. Mardie pushed her hair back from her forehead again. The utility had probably come in for the mail as well as the stores, she thought. Who would be driving? That other, different geologist again? The mystery man? If hope was a little flame ‒ like lamplight in the dark ‒ she didn’t recognize it. So she did not admit it.

  The ute swung in from the road, and came to a stop broadside on to the store’s track.

  Twice before, since Mardie had been here in the north, she had heard that utility stop just that way, in just that place.

  She pushed back the chair and thought of going to the mirror, gilt-chained to the office door. What did she look like? If she put on lipstick …?

  But she wouldn’t. No. She didn’t want to fool even herself.

  She hadn’t really seen this particular geologist ‒ close-up. Only at a distance of quite a number of yards.

  He didn’t come into the office, ever.

  Mr Richie, who managed The Breakaway, generally went out to meet him as if he were some very special person. The geologist usually came into the front entrance, Mr Richie would pack his order, then carry it out to the jeep. Mrs Richie, no matter what she had busily been doing, would come padding in, soft in those foam-soled canvas shoes of hers, and bundle up the mail. Then she’d take it out to the jeep for him. He didn’t have to carry his own personal mail, let alone the carton of stores. They just wouldn’t let him. Everything was done in a ritual performance, and it seemed that he ‒ this important one ‒ didn’t want to deprive the Richies of this glad-act of theirs.

  Just how important could one man outback be? Mardie wondered about this quite a lot. All she had seen, in the four weeks she had been here, was a tall shadow-man with a brown flop-brimmed cotton hat on his head. And the yellow-brown exploration boots at the ground level. Only this, and no more, as he had passed along the shadow side of the trellis into the service part of the store.

  Next she had heard the voices as Mr and Mrs Richie talked to him. Mr Richie’s voice was a bit nut-cracking, generally, but always quiet when this particular man came in, Mrs Richie’s speech had that thin outback, slow-speaking quality about it. It was hard to hear anyway.

  Mardie had early recognized this man’s different sort of voice. It was quieter, more deliberate, yet somehow authoritative. None of the other through-travellers and outbackers spoke quite like him.

  His name was Jard Hunter. The Richies had told her this when he had come to The Breakaway the first time after her own arrival. They had told her he said there was no need to come in and meet her. He was too busy and in a hurry. No time for social contacts.

  Yet he hadn’t hurried as he’d gone along the shade side of the trellis. He had walked in a casual sort of way. Later he’d gone back towards the utility in the same manner. His hat was each time well down on his forehead so that the upper part of his face was in deep shadow.

  Each time he had come, the same routine followed. The yard man carried out two cases of bottled beer to the utility.

  ‘Two cases,’ Mr Richie had said, ‘because Jard Hunter doesn’t allow too much drinking out at his camp. Never too much on the place at a time. A bottle per man a day … is his ration.’ The big truck, when it came in for the main Dig-in camp ‒ generally a week later ‒ always took out cases and cases of soft drink as well as the heavier loads of stores.

  Very indifferent and unfriendly, Mardie thought of Jard Hunter now, as once again she listened to that unmistakable tread as it came down the gravel track, on to the cement path, then along the shade side of the trellis.

  Yet there was something about him. Something intangible and unnameable that edged at her curiosity, and at the aloneness that was in her too. That funny sort of occasional, yet unpredictable lonely feeling had the better of her again now. Yet she ought to get on with the accounts …

  She pushed back her chair so that she could see through the one window that looked out on to the trellised path.

  He walked casually, yet like a man with certainty about him. His head was down, because as he came abreast of the window he kicked away a gravel pebble lying on the cement. She could see his chin, but the rest of his face was shadowed by the flop brim of that brown cotton hat. She heard him go into the bar and then Mr Richie’s voice saying something newsworthy to him.

  Mardie sighed. Ought she to take the initiative and go and make this man’s acquaintance? It would be a routine thing to do, wouldn’t it? She was the new owner at The Breakaway. It made sense to meet and know the people with whom she did business.

  She almost stood up. But didn’t.

  The Richies had managed the place for years and years and years ‒ like they owned it. She had to leave things that way, for her own sake as well as for the Richies’. She couldn’t do without them. Besides, the will ‒ that instrument of part-pleasure, part-torture ‒ had laid down that The Breakaway was to remain the Richies’ home, so long as they wished to stay there. It had advised the legatee ‒ herself, Marie-Ann Forrester, commonly called Mardie ‒ to retain the Richies as managers and/or advisers so long as they were physically and mentally able.

  Thinking of all this, and looking at the cat which had lifted its head again because it had heard yet another distant sound, she remembered what it was she had really been waiting for. It was the arrival of Mr Lawson, the solicitor, who had drawn up the will and who was the trustee. He was coming ‒ really from kindness ‒ to see how she was getting on. He would not be explicit about this because he didn’t want his visit to look as if he doubted her wisdom in coming to The Breakaway. He had put all that into plain words three months ago.

  ‘You should simply take over where your godfather left off,’ he had advised. ‘He went up north to the place once a year to see the Richies, and that was all. He merely owned The Breakaway, but didn’t run it. The profits have been moderate. But steady. With all this outback pegging for mineral claims ‒ specially nickel claims ‒ he took the precaution of having The Breakaway pegged to safeguard it from prospecting marauders. A
firm of professional geologists did that for him. If there was anything worthwhile found, those claims have, in the will, automatically been transferred to you.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking about that,’ Mardie had said sadly. ‘I was thinking that I loved him. And I didn’t let him know. I didn’t go to see him very often. I never told him I loved him. He was the only one I really had …’

  ‘You mean you didn’t tell him in as many words. That happens so often, Mardie. The aftermath for those who loved the person gone is always remorse. In my profession I see it happen every week. Ben Parry would have known you loved him. He would have known.’

  She had shaken her head. ‘No. He had no one else to leave it to, I suppose, being a bachelor. In a way, he too was alone. Like me. Except perhaps for Mr and Mrs Richie.’

  ‘There are other benefits in the will for them. They were very happy and touched that the old man thought of them. A home for life ‒ where they’ve always been and where there’s work to do ‒ is not to be sneezed at, Mardie. The big thing is for you to play it cool, and not to make it hard for them.’

  Mardie had looked across the table. ‘You are the trustee,’ she said quietly. ‘You are there to look after their interests too, aren’t you?’

  Mr Lawson had really smiled. ‘You’re very discerning, aren’t you, my child? Yet you don’t look in the least like the “business-head” type.’

  ‘What type do I look like?’

  ‘A gentle, quiet girl ‒ but one with spirit carefully hidden away, I think.’

  Mr Lawson had done his best to persuade her not to go outback to live at The Breakaway. ‘Go and have a look-see,’ was what he had advised. ‘Then come back to civilization. I think you will come back once you see it’s neardesert up there. The west side of a vast shield-desert actually. All but gibber country. You know what that means? Stones. Not soil, nor even dried-out earth. Just stones … like egg-sized pebbles. There’s mulga scattered over it, but that’s because the stones are smallish and somehow ‒ when the cyclones bring rain ‒ the mulga, and some grass, grow through them. Of course, The Breakaway is an oasis, alone in that desert.’