Escape to Koolonga

by Amanda Doyle

  ‘Very well, thank you, Ridd. Very well indeed.’

  ‘Hmm. Well, if there are any problems at any time, be sure to come to me, understand, rather than ask anyone else to tackle them for you.’

  Now what did he mean by that, spoken in just that particular way?

  ‘I—I’m not sure that I do,’ she returned, suddenly—inex-plicably—a little nervous of this entire conversation.

  His mouth tightened perceptibly.

  ‘I just want to remind you that I am virtually your guarantor, so far as this—er—operation is concerned.’ He cast a disparaging glance around him. ‘If you’re encountering any difficulties, I’d like to know about them. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Financial difficulties, you mean?’ Her eyes rounded wistfully with the voicing of her own question. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if she could have approached him, just now, on Kev’s behalf? Dear, sad, inarticulate Kev! Wouldn’t it have been marvellous if she could point out to Ridd how unfair his own association with Susan was, in the light of the younger man’s prior claim? If she could only tell him how miserable he was making that other man! If she could only beg him to do the decent thing, just this once, and withhold that fatal, calculating charm of his, withdraw from the lists, give Kevin his chance to talk her round, even maybe to make up.

  The stern features congealed.

  ‘Financial difficulties, of course,’ agreed Ridd Fenton smoothly, stooping to place the rolls of wire over his shoulder before turning to the door again. ‘I haven’t found you exactly receptive to any advice I’ve been able to offer in other spheres, so I won’t presume to invite defiance of it again,’ he observed crushingly, and Emmie knew that her sudden temptation to confide had been no more than a crazy notion, born of some strange, inexplicable, extraordinary impulse; it was better to allow it to pass unheeded in the circumstances.

  A giggle from behind them made them both turn.

  ‘Good grief, what’s this? A circus, or Paddy* s Market?’

  Ridd’s surprise was agreeably received by the strangely bedecked trio who confronted him. They pirouetted before him, patently rewarded by his mock admiration as his gaze travelled from the trailing skirts, coats, shawls and other dated details to the hats that were perched precariously on the heads of these ribald figures.

  It seemed that he recognised that headgear instantly!

  ‘Don’t you mind?’ he asked Emmie curiously.

  ‘Mind? Why should I mind?’ she laughed. ‘It’s keeping them amused while I finish Daisy’s room, and far be it from me to knock any form of occupation that does that!’

  ‘I didn’t mean the form of occupation. I meant those hats.’ Surprisingly Ridd’s tone was sober now. ‘You don’t object to them getting bashed around like that?’

  ‘Not in the least.’ She shrugged, almost gaily.

  ‘You would have minded at one time, Emily. In the beginning,’ he pointed out. ‘When you arrived here, you were guarding those things with your life.’

  ‘That was then. Now is now.’

  She shrugged again, would have turned away had not Ridd’s hand suddenly clamped down on her arm, preventing her. ‘What’s so different about now? Why the change of heart?’

  His grey eyes were speculative, waiting, as if in some way her answer might hold some peculiar sort of significance. How could it, though, over a few frivolous hats?

  ‘Because my heart has changed, that’s why,’ Emmie told him hardily, refusing to be rattled by that vice-like grip. ‘The past means nothing to me now. I’d never have believed that it was possible to batten it down so successfully, but I’ve discovered that if one finds enough present activity for one’s mind and thoughts, the earlier things recede in importance. Those hats are related to the earlier things, so they’re not important any more either.’

  ‘I—see.’ For some reason her reply was distasteful to Riddley Fenton. She knew it in the hardening glint in his lingering gaze, the disdainful twist of that expressive mouth.

  He turned away abruptly, replaced his hat on his head, and shouldered his way out of the door with his load of wire, leaving the little bell jangling in his wake, and without even saying goodbye to the children.

  At the jeep, he remedied this oversight.

  ‘So long, kids!’ he called, and lifted a hand in casual salute when he had thrown the rolls of wire into the back. But there wasn’t a word for Emmie at all. Not a single word. Not a look.

  Chastened, she stilled the bell’s mad dancing and went back to Daisy’s room.

  It must have been a couple of weeks after that visit of Ridd’s to the store that the rodeo came to town.

  ‘It’s half rodeo, half gymkhana,’ Kevin explained to her when he invited them to accompany him. ‘A lot of the locals go in for some of the horse events, but there are travelling professionals taking part, too, and you’ll see some good displays of the bushman’s traditional skills. I think you’d like it, Emmie, and it’s something you should see. The children come from miles around, of course—it’s a great day out for the youngsters.’

  ‘We’d love that, Kev. We’ll do as we did before, shall we? We’ll take the truck, and you can drive.’

  The gymkhana was held on one of the creek flats just outside Berroola Junction. By the time Emmie and Kevin and the children arrived, there was already a wide arc of cars, buggies, trucks, Blitzes, encircling the arena, and as they nudged their way into a parking space, a queue had formed behind them.

  The two adults joined the throng of people who were either standing, squatting bushman-fashion, or sitting on benches around the safety rails, but Morris, Jim and Daisy found their view a better one from their elevation on top of the utility’s dented cab. The next time Emmie looked round, they had been joined by a positive swarm of other children, all utilising the additional height of the back platform. Whether they had known each other before or not was hard to decide. They were all talking and pointing with animation at what was going on in the ring, with a child’s quick capacity for forgetting such things as shyness or unfamiliarity in the excitement of a common interest. Watching the lively little group that crowded on to the old blue utility’s rusted hulk under the mottled shade of the blue-gums, Emmie felt a lump come into her throat. How worthwhile it had been, this keeping together of Millie’s ‘family’. And how wise, after all, to choose a truck rather than a car, even if it wasa rusted and unreliable affair for which she had probably paid far too much, and which certainly taxed even Kevin’s ingenuity in maintaining it and keeping it on the road!

  Emmie withdrew her gaze from the children, looked around her curiously. Away down to the right, past the lanes of spectators and the luncheon and beer tents, came the ringing echoes of axe on timber. It was evidently a wood-chopping competition, and to her surprise the competitors were, without exception, women.

  ‘Yes, you aren’t seeing things. That’s the Ladies’ Wood-chop. There’s a nail-driving compo, too, if you’d care to go in for it?’ Kevin smiled his amusement.

  ‘No, thank you. They’d soon show me up, I’m afraid!’ she told him ruefully, remembering her inexpert maiming of those branches she had gathered, and which she had somehow finally managed to mangle into pieces on her first afternoon at the store. Strangely enough, since that first time, she had never had to use the axe again, because in some mysterious manner, piles of neatly cut blocks seemed to materialise each day out of nowhere. They were always waiting for her in the shed at the back when she went out every morning to get wood to light the range. Emmie had known then, when she saw them, that she hadn’t imagined the faint, dull, regular thuds in the soft dawn haze, when she was still muzzy with

  sleep, too drowsy to rouse herself to investigate.

  When she thanked Kevin for his kindness, he had looked surprised and said ‘Not guilty’ in a quite convincing way. And when she mentioned it to Ridd he had simply shrugged, frowned down at her bare head in that scowling, intimidating manner, and growled, ‘How often must I remind you, Emil
y, to always wear a hat? If I catch you out here again without one, there’ll be some sort of trouble, understand?’ and she had replied ‘Yes, Ridd’ so submissively that for an instant the scowl had threatened to give way to one of those intoxicating, curly smiles. Only he didn’t let it, of course. Instead he strode off to where Rufus was waiting and swung up into the saddle in one single, quick, fluid movement that never failed to entrance Emmie when she was watching.

  The actions of these horsemen in the ring just now reminded her of Ridd’s.

  They had the same controlled, graceful, athletic swing, the same supple body movement, as they raced at full gallop to cut out steers, or bent to pick up the trailing girth of a wild scrubber that had already flung its victim in the dust and was charging around in a blind scramble to get away from the unfamiliar smell of horse and human. Emmie found herself holding her breath in sheer dismay each time a contestant came plunging through the release-gate on one of these maddened animals, pivoting and jack-knifing in backbreaking succession, with spurs digging in and arm held high so that the judges could be assured that only one hand was clinging to the girth of the swivelling, pig-rooting creature.

  The pace changed to a quieter one as the children now filed in on fat-bellied ponies and proceeded to play Musical Chairs, and then went back to their own unfenced plot to engage in bending races, barrel events, trotting and other equestrian achievements, while the railed enclosure was taken over once more by those lean, sun-toughened men on their churning, galloping, cantering, propping mounts.

  By noon, the bar and lunch-tent were swinging into action also, and a band of volunteers dealt with crowding diners and drinkers. Corned beef. Tomatoes out of wooden boxes. Hard-boiled eggs. Iced beer. Even tea, mugged out into pannikins from an enormous iron pot under which a wood fire burned and hissed continuously. All very civilised, marvelled Emmie, as she accepted some of the steaming brew, turned to speak to Kevin, and found that it was Ridd who stood there instead.

  Ridd. And Susan.

  ‘Oh! Er—hullo.’

  Ridd raised his hat, but it was actually Susan who spoke first.

  ‘Hullo, Emmie. I thought it was you from away around the other side, and then when I saw Daisy and Morrie on top of the truck, I knew you must be here somewhere. I suppose Kevin’s around somewhere too?’

  It was with a cool, studied carelessness that Susan looked about her for a moment before bringing her eyes back to Emmie’s flushed face. How lovely she was today, in spite of that indolent pose. Tall and slender and very trim in immaculate jodhpurs and a crisp white shirt. Ridd had on a white shirt too, instead of the usual khaki. His sleeves were rolled, but he wore a tie in honour of the occasion. The tie had small green symbols on a geometric ground of brown and tan, and his brown forearms were the same colour as the ground of the tie as he folded them across his chest and looked down at her.

  She gazed feverishly around for Kevin, but there was no sign of him.

  Where on earth had he disappeared to, darn him? He’d been here only minutes ago, and now she found herself experiencing a vague sense of panic and desertion.

  ‘Yes, we’re all here,’ she replied a little defensively. ‘Are you enjoying yourself, Sue?’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Yes, very much. It’s all so—so new to me, remember. I’ve never seen anything like it before. And Kev’s been very good explaining it all to me—the pick-up men, and what a scrubber is, and why they keep one hand up high, and—oh, loads of things I didn’t know.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure he’s very attentive.’ Somehow Susan managed to alter the whole meaning of Emmie’s innocent summing-up.

  She did it so subtly that perhaps only herself and Emmie were aware of the undercurrent, the innuendo. Certainly Ridd’s expression remained inscrutable.

  ‘Have you had lunch, Emily?’ he enquired evenly, with his customary imperturbable politeness, apparently quite oblivious of the tension in the air. ‘Would you like something to go along with that tea?’

  ‘I’ve already had lunch, thank you, Ridd. I—we were just having a quick mug of tea before we went back to the ring. At least /was, and now I seem to have lost Kevin.’

  ‘Too bad.’ Susan’s voice was creamy. ‘I’m sure you’ll manage to find him again, though, won’t you, Emmie?’ The girl turned, put a tentative hand on Ridd’s brown forearm. Against the thickly-haired, teak-dark colour, that hand of Susan’s looked honey-pale and smooth and somehow a little helpless.

  ‘I’m so hungry, Ridd,’ she asserted plaintively—and it didn’t sound like Susan at all, somehow. ‘Do you think we could eat now?’

  ‘Yes, of course. You’re sure you won’t join us?’

  When Emmie shook her head, he tipped the broad-brimmed hat and left her, and she finished her tea quickly and passed the mug back to the volunteer-helper. Those last few mouthfuls had tasted cold and bitter. They left an unpleasant dryness behind as she turned once more into the throng of people and walked slowly back to her position on the rails just in front of where the utility was parked.

  The children shouted at her, and waved bottles of coloured lemonade aloft to show her that they were fending for themselves rather more than merely adequately. She smiled indulgently, but her thoughts were elsewhere.

  Why had Kevin chosen that particular moment to disappear? What was the use of evading the issue in that manner? She was sure that that was the real reason for his hasty departure, and she was also certain that if he continued to dodge reality like that, he would never come to terms with himself. Such behaviour could only serve to aggravate the wound so that, at this rate, it might never heal.

  She tackled him about it on the way home.

  ‘Kookaburra singing in an old gum-tree-ee’—in the breezy back of the truck the children’s voices were floating away, chanting the roundelay that they had learned at school—a round that Susan herself had probably taught them!

  Snatches of the song came to Emmie as she broached the subject to Kevin in the front cab.

  ‘I can’t help feeling that Susan cares for you more than she dares to show, Kevin, do you know that? And even if she doesn’t, what’s to be gained by dashing off into the crowd like that?’

  ‘I’ve told you, Emm, I didn’t dash, as you put it.’ He contradicted her patiently. ‘I hadn’t seen them coming when Bluey Rourke suggested that beer. And then, later—well, you seemed to be getting on all right, so I just left you to it. It would have been—intruding, to go back at that stage.’ ‘Intruding! How can you sit there and talk of intruding, when you happen to love the girl?’

  ‘Who said anything about love?’ Kev’s expression was wooden as he swung the wheel to negotiate a rutted place in the road.

  ‘I said it,’ Emmie returned stoutly, finding that she was becoming angrier and more frustrated with each successive second, so unshakeable was Kevin’s calm. ‘It’s time one of us said it, time one of us was honest about it.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that I’m purposely ducking the truth?’ he asked quietly. ‘What a gutless crank you must take me for!’ She turned to him in quick distress.

  ‘Oh, Kev, you know perfectly well that’s not what I mean at all! You’re neither gutless nor a crank. On the contrary, I think up to now you’ve displayed a more than ordinary amount of courage in your life.’

  ‘See the conquering hero comes? Medals and all?’ There was a bitter twist to his mouth, so gaunt a cynicism that it hurt Emmie far more than if he had laughed openly or become really angry with her. ‘Don’t make the mistake of confusing heroism with obedience, Emmie. The one is a glorious

  compound of impulsiveness and crass stupidity, the other a somewhat characterless and compulsive wish for selfpreservation that rather conveniently happens to coincide with ordered military combat-behaviour. When I was a kid in Melbourne my one idea was to get onto the land, Emmie. I never looked beyond that goal. And when Ridd offered me a place at Koolonga I reckoned I was the luckiest guy on earth. It was a dream come true, and you
’ll never know the wrench it was to have to leave. Suddenly everything I’d hoped for seemed to be snatched away. The radical change, the suddenness of it, the uncertainty, were pure hell. I couldn’t adjust, though Heaven knows I tried.’

  ‘Kev darling, I’m not talking about then,’ Emmie chided him gently. ‘I’m talking about now. About you and Sue. Remember?’

  ‘It’s all muddled up together, Emmie, whatever you say. You can’t just divide your life up into neat compartments like you’re trying to do, however much you’d like to.’

  ‘It’s only in your mind that it’s muddled up, because of what happened to you and what happened to Sue. It’s because it happened to her while you were away, can’t you see that? Can’t you see, the one thing was then, the other is now. One’s past, the other present. Maybe even future,’ she suggested softly. ‘If you would only try a little harder to put the past behind you, and meet her on realistic, present-day terms.’

  ‘I’ve told you, she doesn’t give a rap.’

  ‘She’s not indifferent to you, whatever you may think.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I just have a—an instinctive knowledge of it. Women are intuitive about these things. We’re good at reading other members of our sex. No, Kev, honestly, I wouldn’t even talk about it if I didn’t feel that somehow it’s terribly important. To Susan too. To both of you. Whatever it is she feels—and I’m not clever enough to know what it is—it certainly isn’t indifference. It’s nothing so negative as that.’ She slipped a quick glance his way, took in the set face, the whiteness of his knuckles tightening on the steering-wheel ‘It’s something quite positive, Kev, something that’s alive between you still. I

  don’t know what it is, but you could find out.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Don’t ask me how, Kev!’ She turned to him in pure exasperation. ‘Don’t ask me how you go about finding out! You do it how you used to do it, before any of this happened to either of you, you silly chump! You talk, you idiot! You