by Amanda Doyle
‘What is it?’ Daisy sniffed.
‘An apricot tree.’
‘It hasn’t any apricots.’
‘It will have, though. It takes time, just as it takes time to get used to not having Millie, time for you and me and the boys to get to know each other, time for us to become real friends. Everything takes times, Daisy. We have to be patient, and everything will work out happily for us all.’
‘When will it have apricots?’
‘When it’s big. It’s only little yet, as you can see. We’ll have to keep it watered so that the roots don’t dry out, and then it will flourish and grow, and one day there’ll be real fruit on it. You and I will have to carry water to it every day at first, until it gets used to being here. It’s no more at home here than I am yet, you see. This soil is strange to it. But if we look after it regularly and tenderly, every day, it will feel firmer and more secure as time goes on, and one day it will be a beautiful, strong tree. So we mustn’t forget to look after it. I’m depending on you to help me.’
Another sniff.
‘Do you know something, Daisy?’
‘What?’
‘Millie always wanted an apricot tree. When I was just about your age, she would tell me often about the little place she dreamed of having one day—a dear little house with white walls and an apricot tree.’
‘Why didn’t she, then?’
‘Because she was much too busy looking after you and Jim and Morris, I suppose. You were more important to her than they were, you see, and with the store and everything there wouldn’t have been time. But I think she’d be pleased, don’t you, about the pretty white weatherboard and the apricot tree, even if it’s only a little one yet?’
Daisy’s sobs had ceased. Except for an occasional almost inaudible hiccup, she had stopped crying.
‘Can we have hundreds-and-thousands on our bread at tea?’ she asked unexpectedly, with a child’s unpredictable change of mood. ‘There’s a whole jar of them in the pantry.
'‘Yes, I’m sure you can. We all will, probably. I haven’t had them for years myself.’
Emmie smiled, and they walked into the house together.
Suddenly she felt a lifting of the heart, as if she too had returned to those tender years of hundreds-and-thousands and wobbly jellies and an ability to scrap one’s grief with a swift, complete abandonment before the tears were even dry.
They settled down successfully after that. Indeed, the months that followed were some of the happiest of Emmie’s whole life. Her relationship with the children developed into one that could only be described as ‘sisterly.’ To herself she admitted that she must still be a child at heart, for she found herself positively enjoying their games and enterprises, the treks in search of grubs and chrysalises and locusts, the expeditions to the water-hole where the birds flocked, the fishing sorties in an effort to lure the mudbrown yabbies from their haunts in the only deep remaining pool in the Berroola Creek some distance away and trap them in the fat- baited tins which Jim and Morris had prepared for the purpose. It was fun to pack a picnic, load up the rusty old truck with grid-iron and billycan, and chops and freshly made loaves, and depart for the day with the ‘family’ chattering their approval and excitement as they helped her to get ready, and then to depart in a meandering course over the wide plains country, without any particular goal in mind.
Each day promised a new adventure, something to remember. A strange flower in the scrub, an unfamiliar bird flitting through the quandongs, a swarm of wild bees zooming over a patch of needlebush to their nest in a hollow tree—the ‘sugar-bag’ beloved of the dark people. Daisy knew as if by instinct where to find these things, although her tenderest years had been spent at a mission station and then the Far-out Homes. She had the quick humour of her mother’s race, the endless patience that enabled her to squat motionless for hours, observing the ways and wonders of. nature. The comings and goings of a bed of ants could keep her entranced for an entire morning. She would spend an afternoon quite happily, lying on her tummy over the green, slow water of the creek, watching the delvings of the carp amongst the weeds beneath the surface—as still and silent as a small, prone, dusky statue—and she would oblige the boys in their search for bait by pulling back the bark on certain saplings, reaching in with thin, quick fingers to bring forth the fat yellow grubs that were hiding there, almost as if she had known—had always known— just where they lurked. She was better than Emmie at making the little flat johnnie-cakes that could be cooked so deliciously in the ashes of the camp-fire, and her ear was always the first to hear the sound of the approaching animal, the initial sigh that presaged a whirlwind, her eye the first to note the changing colour of the air before a dust-storm, or the birds’ sudden swerve in direction as they swooped down to water at some undiscovered gilgai.
It was Daisy, today, who sat up first and listened to the slight crackle of a horse’s hooves picking their way delicately through the scrub to their side. The boys were making twig drawings in the dust, and Emmie was lying on the dry leaves in the shade with the shantung-baku hat over her head.
When she, too, heard the sound of the horse drawing nearer, she removed the hat and sat up.
Ridd Fenton was the horseman. The animal was his powerful bay stallion. When it broke through the scrub into the clearing, its rider halted it and waited there a moment, a broad-shouldered figure sitting easily in the saddle, hat down in that concealing way he had, reins clasped carelessly in one hand as he surveyed the little party.
‘’Lo, Ridd.’ Morris scrambled to his feet. ‘Can I take Rufus?’
‘O.K., mate.’ With a single, graceful movement the man swung down to the ground, a long-legged tree of a man, he
seemed, from Emmie’s sitting position, in wash-pale moleskins that hugged his narrow hips, and the familiar, dusty elastic-sides. ‘Over to that stringybark, then—and remember the hitch I showed you last time.’
‘I will, Ridd.’
‘It won’t kick him or anything, will it?’ Emmie twisted the hat between her fingers anxiously.
'Rufus?’ Ridd shook his head. ‘He’s quiet enough if he’s handled right.’ He removed his hat, and squatted at her side. ‘Never sap a kid’s confidence in handling an animal until he does something that gives you reason to Emily. Rule number one. If you do, he starts off nervous, and that makes the animal wary too. They’re quick to recognise the confident touch. That goes for horses, dogs, cattle-beasts, the lot.’ He shot her a swift look. ‘You don’t ride?’
She flushed.
‘I’ve never had the chance to learn, I’m afraid.’
Again that look—a slightly more unnerving one, this time.
‘I thought perhaps that was what Kevin was making those frequent visits to the store for—to teach you. He’s around quite a bit these days, isn’t he?’
Emmie stood up. Her face was hot, and not simply with the heat of the day.
‘He comes to—to service the utility, and look after it for me. He’s very good with engines and things,’ she added lamely. That’s why I asked him to do the electric light plant too. We don’t use much, and I thought it would save you calling in as well. You don’t mind, do you?’
The wide shoulders shrugged.
‘Why should I mind? As you say, it saves a call. Where did you get that utility, by the way?’
‘In Berroola.’
‘Naturally. But where in Berroola?’
‘I really can’t remember.’ Emmie sounded vague, kneeling down again on the dry leaves and gathering together the picnic pannikins.
‘Hmm.’
Ridd’s grey eyes were half-closed in that lazy, contemplative
manner that prevented one from knowing just whether he believed one or not.
‘You’re still too thin, Emily,’ he commented now, critically. Tell me, are you happy, now that you’ve got your way?’
‘My way?’
‘Over the kids. And the store.’
‘Oh. Oh yes, Ridd.
Very happy, thank you.’
‘You don’t regret your decision, then? No—er—no nagging, tender memories that keep you awake in the night?’
‘You’re trespassing, I think,’ she murmured evasively, closing up as she always did at any hint of a reference to her past, different though it was to the one that he imagined I ‘Are you still cutting scrub for those sheep of yours?’
He nodded, almost absent-mindedly, as though having to drag his thoughts towards the answering of her questions. ‘That’s right. And will be for some time, by the look of that sky. If we even got a slight fall of rain, you d be surprised how the green would appear, though. Even without a follow-up, they’d get a temporary pick, and if they were a bit stronger I’d move them nearer the homestead block.
‘You haven’t been out there today?’
‘I’ve been repairing a mill. I was riding back when I saw the smoke and reckoned Td better check. Did those bushes and other spares come in yet, Emily?’
‘Not yet. I’ll give them to Kev as soon as they do. She stood up again, pushing back her hair, aware that his features had tightened. ‘I’m sorry if the smoke worried you, Ridd. We’re always terribly careful, as you can see—right in the middle of a bare place, and we always “kill” the ashes before we go.’ He didn’t reply, just stood there frowning.
It seemed to Emmie that Ridd was always frowning when she was around. It was only for Susan that he kept that sudden, tender, boyish grin that could flash out so surprisingly, grooving his tanned cheeks and crinkling his far-seeing eyes into laughing indulgence. For Susan, that is, and for the children. He was doing it right now, for Daisy, in fact, grinning down at her good-naturedly as she tugged at his trousers and cried,
‘Take me on Rufus, Ridd, please? Please, Ridd, take me up on Rufus? I like Rufus, don’t you?’
Brown fingers tweaked the mop of curls.
‘O.K., Daisy. But just for a minute, mind. Reckon I’ve got a lot of things still to do.’ He was untying the reins from the branch where Morris had looped them, talking to the children as he did so. ‘How’s Bingo?’
Bingo was the kelpie pup that he had given to Jim and Morris to train.
‘He’s coming on. He’s not too bad, really. He can bring back a stick and everything now, Ridd, and he’s doing what we order more, too. Where’s Fritz?’
That was Ridd’s own blue cattle dog which was usually to be found trotting endlessly in the wake of his master and the handsome bay stallion. Today Fritz wasn’t here.
‘He got a cat-head in his off hind pad, and went lame on me, so I left him at home today.’ Ridd was lifting Daisy into the saddle, and now he swung up behind her. ‘Talking of catheads brings me to cats. Susan tells me you found a stray at the schoolhouse the other day and took it home, is that right? I hope it’s healthy, is it? You haven’t landed Emily with some disease-ridden nuisance?’
‘Oh no,’ they chorused protestingly. ‘Emmie didn’t mind, did you, Emmie?’
‘No, truly.’ Emmie reinforced the point. ‘She’s the dearest little cat. Black as night, and affectionate too. And she was needing friends, so I was glad they brought her. We call her Quinty—Daisy named her that.’
‘Quinty, eh? Do you know what that means in the aboriginal tongue, Emily?’ There was a softness in Ridd’s eyes as they asked the question from his saddle-height above her— a softness that the children must have put there.
‘It means “plenty”, doesn’t it? Daisy told me that too, didn’t you, darling? And we called her Quinty because she was so thin and poor, and every time I was getting her something to eat they all kept saying “Give her plenty, Emmie, give her plenty” Isn’t that right, Jim?’
‘S’right, Ridd. We thought it was a bit different, see. I mean,
different from Darkie and Blackie or any of them ones.’
‘Those ones.’
‘Yeah, thoseones. I mean, everybody calls black cats Darkie and Blackie. There must be millions of ’em in the world already, but I bet there’s only one Quinty, and that’s our one.’
‘Yes, I’ll bet.’ Ridd was smiling now. In front of him Daisy was beginning to wriggle. ‘Come on then, Rufus. Round the block and back again.’
He didn’t need to dig his heels into Rufus’s flanks to make him leap forward, Emmie noticed with some apprehension. The big animal had been stamping and sidling impatiently, straining at his curb all the time that Ridd had been talking to them. She watched as the great creature pounded away from her as if unleased from a troublesome prison. The man who rode him was moving with the animal, long-legged in the stirrup, hat pulled down again, with one muscular brown forearm enclosing Daisy’s small, skinny frame in an enveloping clasp.
When they came out of the stand of timber and on to the open plain, Ridd put the stallion to a full gallop, and then horse and rider and passenger were one rhythmic form of grace and speed as Rufus stretched out to show his paces. From where she waited at the edge of the scrub Emmie could catch Daisy’s childish cry of pure ecstasy from the safety of that encircling arm, and when they returned and finally came to a frothing halt beside her, she could see that the little girl’s face was glistening with the excitement of that exhilarating experience, her eyes alight with joy.
Ridd handed her to the ground from his seat in the saddle.
‘Like to try?’
‘What? Now?’ Emmie was startled.
‘I wouldn’t let you fall, Emily.’ Ridd’s tone was grave, but there was an unexpectedly teasing gleam in his narrowed grey eyes.
‘No, thanks, I couldn’t possibly.’
She couldn’t possibly. What? Sit up there like a six-year- old, with that man’s sinewy arm slung right around her? Pulling her back against his broad, exposed, open-shirted chest until it looked as if it were just one passenger seated up there in Rufus’s saddle? Never!
‘Another time, maybe.’
He shrugged offhandedly, but she could tell by his expression that her face was as scarlet and uncomfortable as it indeed felt, and that this fact merely added to his amusement.
How she hated that man, she told herself as he raised the slanting hat and then allowed Rufus to amble away at a quick, restless gait without even bothering to look back and wave. You never knew where you were with Riddley Fenton, not in the way you did with Kev, for instance.
Dear Kev! How kind he had been to her, ever since she had arrived. True to his word, he came along regularly to check over the truck for oil, tyre pressure, all the things she knew nothing about. And it had been her own idea that he might keep an eye on the electric light plant, since he was around already anyway. It didn’t take long, and it was a way of avoiding Ridd Fenton’s uncomfortable presence except for those rare times when he actually came himself for something he wanted from the store.
There was little doubt which of the two men the children welcomed most.
They liked Ridd’s teasing attentions, found it difficult to understand Kev’s reserved manner, his grave kindliness that hid that endless preoccupation with his own personal problems. Sometimes he would ask cautiously for Susan, but mostly he didn’t mention her. When he did enquire, it was almost agonising to see him working carefully around to the subject, setting the verbal scene, as it were, for the casual question which Emmie guessed was certainly anything but unimportant.
Emmie’s heart ached for him. Ached for them both, in fact. She had grown to appreciate that there were lots of likeable things about Susan once you sifted out the brittle remarks and small sarcasms, once you penetrated that hard, protective shell which she had adopted.
Two perfectly nice people, who had somehow lost each other in life’s rocky way.
A pity, that, and it was most unlikely that they would ever come together now—not now that Riddley Fenton was on the scene.
Emmie could hardly pretend, not even just to herself, that the man was without attraction. A sort of animal attraction, it was. The kind that made you just a little breathless when he pinned you under that confo
unding grey gaze. The kind that caused your pulses to flutter in an annoying and inconvenient manner when his work-rough brown fingers happened to come into contact with yours as you both went for the same article on the same store shelf at the same moment. The kind that sent a warming glow right through you when that level mouth lifted in a word of praise—rare moment, indeed!—or jerked your heart almost to a stop when it chose to actually put on one of those sudden, uncomplicated, eye- crinkling smiles.
Yes, Riddley Fenton was a—well, a peculiarly attractive man, she supposed, even when he didn’t care very much for one and therefore didn’t even bother to try. When he actually set out to be attractive, as he no doubt did with Susan Wensley, he must be positively devastating!
Poor Kevin! He didn’t have a chance against that sort of competition!
Emmie stood on the outskirts of the timber until the horse and man were just a single, moving dot on the horizon, and then, sighing, she turned and went back through the trees to the picnic clearing.
CHAPTER SIX
It was at the end of the following week that Kevin invited them all to go to town.
‘No school tomorrow, so how about it? I’ll come over early and we’ll make a day of it.’
‘Well --- ’ Emmie hesitated, observed the shining expectancy on three young faces, and made up her mind. We’d like that, Kev, wouldn’t we, children? Thanks very much.’ “That’s settled, then. It will have to be the jeep, I’m afraid. Ridd will be off himself in the Chev, or I know he wouldn’t mind me
using it.’
‘Is he going away?’ Emmie did not mean to sound hopeful, but life would be a lot more comfortable without Ridd Fenton’s background presence and the possibility of his always turning up in the wrong place at the wrong time, which he had a positive knack of doing. He hadn’t been away on a single one of those plane trips of his, not since the day she had arrived, so surely one must be in the offing by now?
