Escape to Koolonga

by Amanda Doyle

  The room itself was shadowed, because the light was one of those old-fashioned, chained affairs that hung low right over the table itself, catching the diners in a small, round pool. She was aware that it was a long room, a dual-purpose one, evidently, like his office. The far end was taken up with chairs and sofas, bookcases and a long, carved chest. The fireplace was at that end, too, the grate at present empty, screened by a piece of tapestry-work on a wrought iron mount. It was of cavernous proportions, the fireplace. The type that would probably take whole logs at a time. It had a large brass fender in front, and a pair of handsome firedogs at either end. She could imagine how the flickering firelight must enhance the entire appearance of this room, and yet Emmie found herself wondering if there could ever be the need for a fire, out here? The night was uncomfortably warm, outside, and as she had walked along the veranda from the room which had been allotted to her, she had heard the thin, persistent whine of mosquitoes, the buzz of flies and buffing of moths against the fine gauze that enclosed the house. These were hot-country sounds, backed by the shrill of cicadas and grating of frogs at the creek. They fitted in, somehow, where the intimate crackle of logs in a hearth did not. It was strangely airless this evening, and difficult to imagine things otherwise.

  Airless, but in the house at least, not oppressive as it must be beyond. It was a cool retreat, a labyrinth of tall-ceilinged passages and peacefully shadowed, quiet rooms, such as this one she was in now.

  A fan revolved silently from the sideboard, and every time its rotation brought it opposite to where she sat, she could feel its welcome breeze sweeping over her face, lifting her fine silky hair each time it passed.

  Emmie had not realised that she was so hungry.

  The mutton stew was delicious, steaming, thick with vegetables. It was followed by a chilled lemon pie, light as air, and cream which she guessed must be tinned, but which was surprisingly good, all the same. She ate in silence, appreciatively.

  The man was silent too. He handled his knife and fork with the same deft, economical movements as he had those medicaments back in his study. Emmie was aware that his eyes were upon her several times during the course of the meal, but each time she looked swiftly away. The sense of being watched did little to ease the overwhelming shyness she was experiencing at finding herself dining, of necessity alone with a man who was not only an utter stranger, but a somewhat baffling one at that. The room was enormous, unfamiliar. The man was unfamiliar too. Yet here they were, just the two of them in this great cavernous place, encircled in a small, cosy pool of light.

  Emmie wasn’t used to this sort of thing at all. Her fingers tightened nervously over the stem of her glass as she toyed with it, waiting for her host to finish. Should she be making conversation? she wondered. Or did he actually prefer silence? Observing his now remote, preoccupied manner, and the stern set of his rugged features, Emmie decided that he probably did.

  ‘Well?’ A slow grin leavened the sternness. ‘After that detailed inspection, I reckon you ought to know me again, don’t you? What were you doing? Weighing up the enemy?’

  ‘What? Oh—er—I do beg your pardon!’ He had suddenly turned his dark head and looked directly at her, and one eyebrow was lifting quizzically. Emmie blushed, startled.

  ‘You were staring, Miss Montfort,’ he accused blandly. ‘Now, don’t get coy and say you weren’t, because that guilty blush betrays you.’

  Riddley Fenton grinned, leaned back, and searched in his pockets for the makings.

  ‘You have no objection if I smoke? We’ll have our coffee down the other end of the room, I think. You might find it easier to relax down there in one of those chintz loungers. You’re sitting in that chair like an affronted schoolmarm at the moment!’

  Again the grin.

  Emmie groped for something quelling to say, quite failed to come up with inspiration. Just as well, maybe. There was no doubt he was enjoying himself at her expense. No doubt that he was ‘taking the mickey’.

  She eased her stiffening back, forced her fingers to release the glass upon which they had been tensely curled, and to rest idly on the mellow table-top. He mustn’t suspect quite how she was feeling, must he? He was Millie’s sole executor, and she had yet to win a couple of points on that score, so he mustn’t guess that this sort of fascinated awe he aroused in her was a possible chink in her armour. Emmie had to control her breathing with a mighty effort, in case the chink should widen into a positive crack. If it did, he’d be sure to spot it. He was that sort of man, she knew it instinctively.

  He was still watching her calmly through a wreath of smoke, and not attempting to disguise the fact.

  ‘There’s a certain compelling fascination about a truly ingenuous blush, don’t you think?’ A sigh. ‘I’m afraid few of the women of my acquaintance are capable of it any longer. It’s a dying art, you know. Quite Victorian, but charming, nevertheless.’

  ‘Do you think we could have that coffee?’ Emmie choked the words out tightly. ‘I’m thirsty. I was j ust about to make myself some tea, if you remember, when that wretched little stove blew up.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ He stood up, helped her to her feet, looked down at her ironically with narrowing eyes. ‘You know something? You’ve got me puzzled, little Miss Montfort. You’re a contradiction in terms. First that transparent blush, quite fetchingly childish—and then an adroit red herring dropped neatly right across the conversational path. With quite a sophisticated little punch to it, too, telling me not to get personal.’

  ‘I’m glad you got the message,’ she returned with a creamily smooth inflection that matched his own. Drat the man! He seemed to bring out the worst in her. Emmie was never like this to people—not to ordinary people, that is! ‘I mean,’ she added appeasingly, forcing herself to sound more civil, ‘we don’t haveto be personal, do we?’

  ‘I’m afraid we do,’ he corrected her soberly. ‘For just a couple of minutes more, at any rate. You see, there’s something I intend to ask you.’

  ‘Yes?’

  Emmie’s eyes were round, waiting, fastened on his face enquiringly.

  ‘Yes,’ he confirmed—then paused. His own eyes were holding hers and she was conscious of the most curiously alert intentness lurking in their supposedly lazy grey depths.

  ‘Yes,’ he said again, quite firmly. ‘I knew some Montforts once. It’s a while ago how, but they weren’t the sort of family one could readily forget. Mark and Robert Montfort. There were a couple of sisters, too—Melissa and Sharon. Does any of that ring a bell?’

  It was so totally unexpected that, just for a moment, Emmie’s poise threatened to desert her entirely.

  ‘Should it?’ How on earth had she actually managed that offhand shrug? Emmie would never know! ‘It’s a more common name than you’d think.’

  Perhaps he hadn’t noticed her sudden uncontrollable intake of breath before calmness supervened, or the way her eyes had widened before she’d dropped them quickly and picked up the coffee tray.

  ‘Shall I pour?’

  ‘If you like.’

  Emmie ran her tongue over her lips. She didlike! It would give her something to do, help to tide her over what had been a surprisingly bad moment!

  She had passed it off all right, though, she was sure. He had made no further comment, had simply taken the coffee-tray from her and set it down upon a small round table. Then he had hitched his narrow-legged drill trousers, and had taken the chair opposite her own, stretching out his long frame comfortably.

  Emmie poured, passed him the cup and saucer with a hand that she was pleased to see didn’t tremble at all. It would have been too bad altogether if her family had succeeded in following her out here after all. Away out here, to Koolonga that in itself meant remoteness. It would have been the cruellest quirk of fate to find that she hadn’t, after all, escaped from the politely raised brows, the exclamation— What, another sister, good gracious me. The unspoken comparisons were so odious, so humiliating. So easily avoided, too, i
f you simply weren’t there to be compared. It would have been unbelievable, to come all these hundreds of miles, to Koolonga—the lonely, the out-of-the-way place of the aboriginals’ own language—only to find those old familiar exclamations and innuendoes following one, waiting here for her at the end of her trek just as they had always been.

  It would have prevented Emmie from emerging into the sort of person she knew she could be, if only her brilliant family had allowed her. Discovery would be so inhibiting. So cramping. So cramping, all over again!

  She swallowed, a little miserably.

  Surely it wasn’t dishonest, to deny her wonderful, brilliant family just the teeniest mite, in the most harmless way imaginable? She wasn’t actually hurting anyone by doing that, was she? Not them? Or him? Not them, anyway. The idea of Emmie having any positive effect upon her family, one way or the other, no matter what she did, was entirely ludicrous. They were all so self-sufficient, so wrapped up in their own lives, their careers, that she scarcely counted, did she?

  As for him—well, one only had to encounter that lean, imperious, stern-mouthed approach, experience the impact of that domineering, overbearing personality, to know that it couldn’t matter one jot to Riddley Fenton either. He was composed, self-sufficient, as self-assured as they were. A law unto himself. Quite invulnerable.

  ‘Those other Montforts—er—when did you know them?’

  She asked the question with simulated idleness, spooning brown crystals into her coffee as she spoke, and cursing her inquisitive nature for not allowing her to leave things alone.

  ‘Mark and I were at Varsity together. Different faculties, of course—he was Law, I was reading Engineering—but he was quite a chap. A big, powerful, handsome devil, and one of our best rugby forwards. Robert was younger, reading Medicine, if I remember. There were a couple of ravishing sisters, too, who used to come to our various social functions. Lissa and Sharon, their names were, as I’ve already told you, I think.’

  Emmie stirred her coffee feverishly. Well, that was the Montfort family, all right, wasn’t it? The Montfort family, as the world had always known it. She was safe enough, after all!

  ‘Still no bell?’

  ‘No bell,’ she affirmed, but her voice was oddly husky.

  ‘Funny that. I was studying you at dinner-time, and I’d have said there was a definite resemblance—to Sharon in particular. Not the colouring—Sharon was dark, of course— but the shape of the head, the set of the eyes, something about the bone-structure -------------------- ’

  ‘P-perhaps a far-out cousin?’ Emmie muttered weakly. She wished she hadn’t had to lie like that, wished she hadn’t got herself into this unpleasantly equivocal position, wished he would stop.

  ‘Now you’re blushing again. Why?’

  ‘You said they were—er—ravishing—the—er—Lissa and Sharon.’

  ‘Well? What if I did? Oh, I get it.’ His mouth lifted. ‘How like a woman, not to let that one pass! Well, so they were, and there is a resemblance—but I’ve been reprimanded already for getting personal, haven’t I, Miss Montfort?’ The grin spread, quite nastily. ‘Otherwise, if I hadn’t already been reprimanded, I just might have risked adding that, with a little more selfassurance, a little more experience, a little more maturity, you could -- But no, I can see that I embarrass you. Drink up your coffee like a good girl, and I’ll get Mrs. Bexley to take over. You’ll find her womanly conversation infinitely more to your liking, I dare say.’

  He stood up, took her hand quite firmly in a cool, hard grasp, and drew her to her feet.

  ‘We—we were going to talk,’ she reminded him on a shaky breath. ‘You promised. About the shop. You said we’d discuss it later. I—I have to know.’

  ‘It can’t be that important, child.’

  ‘It is. Terribly.’

  ‘Not tonight. You’re tuckered out, all eyes and pallor still. We’ll discuss it in the morning. But I wouldn’t hold out any false hopes, if I were you.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  She put a hand to the base of her throat in a flutter of anxiety. Apprehension—panic, almost—gripped her anew. If he wasn’t prepared to let her have that store, she’d be literally homeless!

  ‘Just that you’ll have to allow yourself to be guided in this,’ he replied levelly.

  At the door he paused.

  ‘It’s easily seen that your inexperience covers a wider range than merely the male of the species, young ’un. Admitting the fact, even if only to yourself, would be a step towards that maturity I spoke of. Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  She managed no more than a hollow echo as he disappeared to summon his housekeeper.

  CHAPTER THREE

  IN the morning Emmie woke early. No sound had disturbed her, or at least, not any of which she was particularly aware. Rather did she suspect that it was the strange stillness of the young bush dawn—the piccaninny daylight—that had aroused her by its very unfamiliarity. A great, wide, wondrous silence enfolded her as she lay between snowy linen sheets, marvelling at the utter absence of noise.

  And then a chain rustled, a dog barked somewhere beyond the veranda, and as if that bark had been a prearranged signal, the dawn chorus began—a cacophony of sounds, growing with the filtering light itself. A cock began to crow, hens to cluck in tentative rebuke at being thus rudely disturbed. From the sliprails came the creak of sadlery, the chink of stirrup-irons, the soft snorting of horses through black velvet nostrils, the rattle of a milk-bucket, the protesting bellow of a cow being driven to the bail. Overhead, a rush of air, a crescendo of buffeting, beating wings, as a great flight of galahs swept low over the homestead in a pink and grey cloud, and a shrieking, twittering flock of lorikeets soared out of the box trees next to the stockyards, a vivid carpet of colour against the paling sky.

  The big station—‘Koolonga, the remote and lonely place’ — was awake, and Emmie with it.

  She slipped out of bed and padded barefoot along the veranda to the tiled bathroom at the end, managed a shower without wetting her bandaged hand. It was better this morning. The smarting pain had gone out of it, and she succeeded in buttoning up her blue-and-white checked dirndl

  without discomfort.

  Emmie brushed her hair, touched her lips with pale rose colour, decided against any more obvious efforts to make up. ‘When in Rome.’ Or rather, when in the country, do as the country people do. The trouble was, she hadn’t any very clear idea of what they did do, or how they behaved. Quite suddenly she had found herself plunged into a totally unfamiliar world, and one that already seemed oddly full of contradictions.

  This house, for instance. So big. So old and rambling, yet surprisingly modern and comfortable notwithstanding.

  And that man—the man Riddley Fenton. A contradiction, too. Shabby and dusty and work-stained and tough. Also suavely polite, pleasantly witty when he wasn’t being scathing, unexpectedly sophisticated, patently widely informed.

  And domineering.

  Emmie supposed it was that last quality in him that made her take a deep, steadying, purposeful breath as she pushed open the dining-room door and entered.

  As it happened, the breath was wasted, unnecessary, since the only other person in the room this morning wasn’t Riddley Fenton at all.

  Emmie expelled her breath again and smiled shyly at the fair-headed young man who was sitting there, busily tucking into an enormous plateful of steak and eggs.

  ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Oh! Hullo.’ The chair scraped back as he stood up and grinned at her, put out a hand. ‘Miss Montfort, isn’t it? Ridd said I was to look out for you, and see that you ate a decent breakfast. He says you could do with feeding up.’

  ‘Does he?’ She made a face. ‘That makes me sound like one of his precious animals, bound for slaughter. Do sit down again and carry on.’

  She took the chair opposite, helped herself to orange juice from the frosted jug in the centre of the table. The young man went
on eating his steak and eggs with his former relish, apparently quite unabashed that he now had company. Emmie, studying him, saw that he was actually older than she had thought at first. He must be about her own age, she decided. Certainly not the callow youth she had first taken him for.

  There was the firmness of maturity about his shaven chin, a certain quiet assurance about his person and his movements that only experience can put there. A likeable young man, she reflected. The steady, dependable sort. She wondered who he could be, and what he was doing here, eating such a hearty breakfast at Riddley Fenton’s own dining-table.

  As if in answer to her unspoken speculation, he looked up and smiled again, with an engagingly open friendliness.

  ‘Condor’s my name, Miss Montfort, Kevin Condor. Bookkeeper extraordinary, and Ridd’s right-hand man as well. You’d better call me Kev, since everyone does out here.’

  ‘Then you must call me Emmie,’ she returned warmly, responding to his friendly approach with eagerness. What a relief to find someone in this place who was actually disposed to be pleasant, after that Fenton man and his bossiness! ‘Emmie—that’s right. Ridd told me that too.’ He pushed his empty plate to one side, helped himself to toast, and reached for the marmalade. ‘Pity you came out here all that way for nothing, Emmie. I’m really sorry, because I can just imagine how disappointed you must be. Ridd’s pretty mad himself, actually—what with the lawyers down there not putting you wise at the start, like he instructed them to. There seems to have been a slip-up somewhere.’

  A slip-up! That was putting it mildly, thought Emmie grimly. She had burned her boats, severed her connections, abandoned her now-resentful brothers and sisters, thrown up her all, to come, and he called it a slip-up! She gulped miserably, tried to smile.