Escape to Koolonga

by Amanda Doyle

  Ah, well. Crying didn’t get anyone anywhere, so why even bother to begin?

  Emmie shrugged resignedly and went instead to inspect her wardrobe to single out any possible candidates for the Red Cross dance in Berroola Junction.

  When Friday night came round she had donned the only possible garment that would be even remotely suitable. It was a checked seersucker in muted tones of blue and grey and white. Unremarkable. Rather annoyingly juvenile, in fact. It made her hazel eyes glisten with the unenviable innocence of the schoolgirl she had been when last she wore it. Her hair, newly washed, silkily straight, had a ‘classroom’ cut and cleanliness about it, too. It framed her pale oval face in a way that made her long to sweep it away, up into something more exotic.

  She longed, even more fervently, when she was handed into the back of the Chev beside Kevin, and saw how Susan’s abundant dark tresses were piled on to the crown of her head, revealing a queenly neck and small neat ears from which dangled sapphire pendants the very same colour as the girl’s eyes. When they all got out at the hall, Emmie could see that Susan’s dress was white and starkly plain, full of impact. It was a perfect foil for her dark beauty and honey- toned complexion.

  ‘Shall we go in?’

  Kevin’s voice was strained. As he took her arm and guided her in through the crowded doorway, it occurred to Emmie that perhaps this evening had been sprung on him in much the same way as it had been upon her. A Royal Command, one might almost have said! He had spoken noticeably little in the car coming in, and neither had she. It had been Susan and Ridd who had carried on an intermittent, relaxed sort of conversation in the front seat as the big car purred smoothly over the wide dirt road into town.

  The hall had a structured steel framework with slabs of galvanised sheeting bolted to it to form the walls and high roof. A determined air of celebration was probably inspired by all those festive streamers that wound their giddy way up and down the supports and by the balloons that dangled in a myriad of gay colours from the ceiling.

  Emmie tried to feel gay, too, found she couldn’t. She felt ridiculously self-conscious and ill at ease, and all because Ridd Fenton had just walked into the hall behind her with the lovely, serene, poised young woman in white at his side.

  Emmie dropped her eyes, noted with despair that the dull yellow lighting from the overhead bulbs had drained the last vestige of colour from the seersucker checks. They looked dispirited, limp, unutterably nondescript.

  ‘Let’s dance, Emm.’

  Without even waiting for her assent, Kevin drew her on to the floor amongst the other rotating couples already there. Across the room she could see Ridd Fenton talking to a distinguished-looking elderly man, while Susan stood patiently beside him, smiling with faint indulgence as the two tall men became apparently more engrossed in what they had to say to each other. Sharon would have been able to stand there like that, too, just as Susan was doing, with the same measure of calm confidence, the same proud carriage. It must have something to do with knowing that one was beautiful, reflected Emmie sagely. In the same situation, she herself was invariably given to an attack of the fidgets! ‘That’s Selwyn Bruce,’ Kev informed her as he whirled her past. ‘He probably had to get here early to open the thing. He and Ridd are the big noises around here, you know.’ He grinned reluctantly. ‘If anything Ridd is bigger than Selwyn, but a good deal less noisy, if you get me.’

  ‘Is there a Mrs. Bruce?’

  ‘There’ve been three, no less, Emmie my sweet. What Selwyn lacks in actual acres he makes up for in wives. Maybe he reckoned that that put him one up on Ridd.’

  ‘They’re rivals?’

  ‘All big pastoralists are rivals to some extent, Emmie. But they’re good friends. He’s a big, brash, noisy galoot, is Selwyn Bruce, but he’s important too, and Ridd understands him O.K. They get along.’

  ‘He manages him, you mean,’ she accused resentfully. ‘How do you mean?’ Kevin was slightly startled at her vehemence. ‘He manages him, because it suits him to, just the way he manages everybody. He studies them, he gets an insight, and then once he understands what makes particular people work, he starts to jerk the strings. He makes them dance to his tune.’ ‘Hey, aren’t you being a little unfair?’ Kev looked mildly amused at her fierce expression. ‘What gives?’

  ‘N-nothing. Maybe I just don’t like big noises, that’s all.’ There was silence a moment. Then—‘Kev?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Kev, don’t be angry if I say something, will you?’

  ‘I can’t promise till I hear what it is.’ ‘It’s just a—a suggestion, really.’ She looked up at him, soberly, willing him to take her seriously just this once. ‘Kev, please ask Susan for the next dance.’

  ‘What?’ She had startled him this time, all right! ‘For heaven’s sake, why should I want to do that, Emmie, when I’m quite happy here with you?’ he countered gallantly enough. ‘Or am I such a rotten dancer that you’re longing to escape already?’ ‘No, don’t joke, Kev. Please?’

  Her gravity had arrested him right in the middle of his gentle smile. It faded, half-uncertainly, and she felt his fingers tightening over her own although he obviously wasn’t aware of the fact. The old, familiar, haunted look was back in Kevin’s kind blue eyes, and Emmie was responsible! She thrust away a twinge of remorse, nodded encouragingly. ‘Go on, Kev, do. To please me?’

  ‘How would it please you?’

  ‘It just would, that’s all.’

  ‘She’d turn me down flat.’

  ‘Don’t be silly! In front of all these people? Susan isn’t the kind to make a scene.’

  ‘That’s a pretty poor reason for her to want to dance with me, Emmie, simply to avoid making a scene.’ His voice was quiet, but she recognised the stubborn set of Kevin’s jaw well enough.

  ‘That won’t be the reason,’ she said, equally quietly. ‘You’ll see, Kev. You’ll see just what I mean, I’m pretty sure you will. Honestly, Kevin darling, I wouldn’t be urging you if I didn’t have some—some—inner knowledge, now would I?’

  ‘That feminine intuition?’ He was smiling a little again, but it was a fairly unsuccessful smile, by and large.

  ‘More than mere intuition. Something much more positive.’

  ‘I—don’t think I can, Emmie. I couldn’t go through all that again!’ There was real pain in his voice now, and she knew that the raw place had been reached.

  ‘Isn’t she worth it?’ she whispered gently.

  ‘Well, of course she’s worth it! But----’

  ‘Go on, then, Kev.’ Her eyes were persuading him, pushing him on.

  ‘What about you?’ He was gruff, uncertain.

  ‘I’m not a child. I can take care of myself.’

  ‘All right, Emmie, I’ll do it.’ Kevin suddenly seemed to have given in. ‘And then we can leave the subject once and for all, amen, for ever after, can’t we?’ he reminded her heavily, with a scowl that was not unreminiscent of Ridd’s more minor ones.

  ‘Go on.’

  She gave him a little push away from her, stood watching as he squared his shoulders and threaded his way through the people to where Ridd and Susan were speaking to a few others. Even from where she was, Emmie could see Susan’s small start of surprise. She found that she was actually holding her breath and clasping her hands together in an act of silent supplication, in case Susan should refuse. And then she expelled her breath again in relief, as Kevin took the tall, white, slender figure into his arms and moved out into the middle of the floor like a man in a trance.

  Emmie glanced around, chose a seat beside a comfortable-looking matron in a violent floral dress and white platform sandals.

  ‘Hullo, love. You’re with the Koolonga party, aren’t you? I recognised you instantly when you came in that door. Frank, I said—Frank’s my hubby—Frank, I said, that’s the girl over there, look. Don’t you remember her, I said.’

  ‘I—I’m afraid I don’t recall—I haven’t met you before, have I?’ Emmie gazed
rather helplessly into the florid face of her voluble companion. ‘If I have you must forgive me. You see, I’m still a little strange. There are so many faces, you understand.’

  ‘You don’t remember? Surely you must! We sold you the truck, remember? Gulliver’s Travels? That’s my hubby over there, see. Frankie Gulliver.’ The purple floral heaved and shook as she turned herself to point him out for Emmie. ‘There—see!’—triumphantly.

  ‘Why, yes, how stupid of me. I don’t usually --- ’

  ‘You don’t mind if I take Miss Montfort away from you, I trust, Mrs. Gulliver?’ Ridd Fenton’s polite voice chipped in from somewhere above. ‘Our dance, I believe, Emily.’

  She felt his firm, imperious fingers warm upon her own, drawing her to her feet, and then she was swept adroitly into his arms, and the sight of Mrs. Gulliver’s quivering, indignant face was entirely obliterated by Ridd’s wide white shirt- front.

  ‘You’re trembling. Did that woman say something to upset you?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘What is it, then?’

  ‘N-nothing,’ she replied lamely, not sure that she even knew the answer for herself. He was an expert performer, but she was so overcome by nervousness that she seemed to have three feet tonight, and they all kept getting out of step.

  When she had tripped for the second time, she said, ‘Ridd, I think I must be t-tired tonight. I—don’t think I want to dance.’ ‘But you’re going to, all the same.’ His voice was almost dangerously calm, and his grip was like a vice. She couldn’t have escaped even if she had tried. ‘What’s more,’ he added tersely as he whirled her expertly into a cross-chasse and out again, ‘you’re going to enjoy it, or at least look as if you are.’ His mouth relented a little. ‘Come now, Emily, relax. It’s not as bad as that, is it? Did you do much of this in Sydney?’

  ‘Much of what, Ridd?’

  ‘Dancing?’

  ‘Oh—some,’ she prevaricated, vaguely. It was easy to prevaricate tonight. She felt vague, unreal, in any case, as if she wasn’t Emmie Montfort at all, but some frightened, lost, panicky little creature who suddenly found itself trapped in a place where it knew it didn’t belong.

  ‘—don’t you think so?’ Ridd’s insistent voice reached her from somewhere in those mists of unreality.

  ‘I—beg your pardon?’

  His fingers tightened as he glanced down at her sharply. ‘Aren’t you feeling well, Emily?’ He sounded grim.

  ‘Yes, wonderfully well. In the pink. Never fitter. Why?’ ‘That’s good. In that case, we’ll have the next dance too. You’re beginning to loosen up a little, I believe, so we may as well go on, even though you obviously find it an ordeal.’ There was a biting sarcasm in his voice that made her turn her eyes upwards to his in bewilderment. Flint and steel could hardly have been colder.

  They revolved, after that, in complete silence. Ridd guided her steps relentlessly, with expertise, and Emmie felt as if she were up there in the balloon-festooned rafters, watching woodenly from aloft, a helpless onlooker of this cruelly comic little farce. She moved automatically, sensing his directions, miserably aware that for some reason he was furiously angry. She found herself praying that the music would soon stop, and when it did she stumbled blindly to the chairs at the side of the room.

  ‘I’ll get you a drink.’

  ‘Don’t bother.’

  ‘It’s no trouble, I assure you.’ That deadly, formal politeness again!

  Emmie got up again, looked around wildly, and moved over to where a party of young people were talking on the opposite side of the room. They eyed her curiously, but with the unfailing courtesy of country people nevertheless allowed her to join them. She had managed to engage one of the girls in a rather feverish conversation, and when Ridd came back she succeeded in obscuring herself in the midst of the other group. She saw him looking around him, and then he presented her glass of squash, quite charmingly, to a perspiring dowager in pink who was sitting fanning herself, and shouldered his way through the crowd again.

  When next Emmie caught sight of him, he was waltzing with a vivacious blonde girl in a scintillating Lurex dress, and Emmie herself was forced to give her entire attention to getting through three repeats of the Blue Danube with a pimply-faced youth in rubber-soled shoes who plunged her hand up and down like the handle of a well-pump and trod all over her toes as he surged forward on every downbeat with a good deal more enthusiasm than subtlety.

  The night dragged on. Interminably. Would it never end? she asked herself desperately.

  There was no sign of Sue and Kevin anywhere in the hall, and now she couldn’t even see Ridd around, either. Maybe they had all gone home. Maybe they had dumped her. Maybe they had even forgotten that she had come with them at all!

  She giggled, weakly, too weary to even become alarmed at the thought of such abandonment, or to worry as to how on earth she’d get home. Serve her right if they’d left her! Maybe she had convinced them that she was having a whale of a time, with all this bright, incessant chatter, this brittle laughter that came bubbling up so easily into her throat!

  Emmie Montfort—the life and soul of the party!

  When a couple of rusty fiddles and the accordion struck up the National Anthem she stood at attention dutifully along with the rest, and then made her way thankfully towards the exit.

  The night air was warm, but still cooler than inside the hall. Smoke-free, too. She gulped it in as she stood, undecided as to what to do next.

  ‘Here she is.’ Kevin’s voice. ‘Where in heaven’s name did you get to?’

  ‘I might ask the same of you,’ she retaliated in a meaning whisper, as she sank gratefully into the softness of the leather upholstery in the back of Ridd’s saloon. ‘How did it go?’ she asked, taking advantage of the fact that Ridd himself was walking around the front of the vehicle with Susan to the passenger side.

  ‘I’ll tell you later,’ he whispered back, but he reached across and gave her hand a quite uncharacteristic squeeze that certainly did seem to have a measure of triumph about it.

  In the light from the dash, Susan’s face appeared softly tranquil and composed as usual, Ridd’s dark and enigmatic. Impossible to tell how the evening had turned out. She would just have to control her curiosity until an opportunity presented itself for Kevin to enlighten her.

  She hadn’t long to wait.

  On the journey home she dozed fitfully, lulled by the hum of the engine and the soft swish of tyres in the dust, and it seemed no time at all before they were pulling up outside her own small white weatherboard abode, and she was being shaken gently into wakefulness.

  ‘I’ll see you inside, Emmie.’

  Kevin took her arm and guided her up the new gravel path. The stones glimmered dimly in the moonlight, and the gravel made a satisfying, scrunchy sound beneath their feet.

  ‘We’d better go around the back. The bell might waken Mrs.

  Bexley.’

  In the lean-to at the rear, Emmie fumbled for the light switch, turned to her escort.

  ‘Thanks, Kev, I’ll be fine now. You go back.’

  ‘I will in a minute.” He hesitated, and then he stepped forward and took her hands. ‘Darling Emmie, I want to thank you for what you did tonight,’ he said in a husky, vibrant voice.

  ‘I did nothing at all, except dance around all evening in a most exhausting manner.’

  ‘You did! You know what I’m talking about, and it has nothing to do with dancing. No, Emmie, I owe you a debt that I’ll never be able to repay, for forcing me into some sort of action tonight. I needed someone to do what you did, say what you said. I don’t blame you, or Sue, for thinking me spineless, I really don’t.’

  ‘Oh, Kev, I’ve never thought you that, and you know it.’ ‘Well, Sue did. Yes, she did, and she was quite right, of course. I was wrapped up in myself and my own stupid introspection, not thinking of her at all. Fearful of getting hurt, rebuffed, snubbed, or whatever you like to call it. And so I did nothing. My
will seemed to be frozen into nonexistence, and I’d brainwashed myself into thinking I was a complete failure. Damn it all, a man’s supposed to have some guts, some initiative, and I had none, did nothing that was as positive as either of those two things. And then you made me see it, Emmie. You forced me to do something physical about it, and the mental processes got going again too. All of a sudden I could see what a waste of emotion it all was, how futile, fruitless. I said to myself as I walked across the floor towards her, Dam it all, I said, the girl’s right, it’s at least better to be a positive failure than a negative one!’ po‘sAitnivde-f-a-i-l?u’re than a negative one!’

  ‘You were right about the other too, Emm. Susan does still feel something. We both knew it, as soon as we touched each other—the old magic is still there, the old chemistry, it still works. It will just take time, a little time, that’s all, to make her completely certain about it. But I’ll get a kick out of wooing her all over again, and I have a feeling that it’s all going to end up the way we both want it.’

  ‘Kevin, I’m so—so glad.’ Emmie’s voice was soft. Words seemed quite inadequate to show the true joy and relief she felt for himself and Sue.

  ‘It’s all thanks to you, Emmie.’

  ‘No, Kev.’

  ‘Yes, Emmie.’ He took her face in his hands and kissed her gently. ‘Do you know that you’re the most wonderful girl, Emmie my darling? You’ve made me very, very happy.’

  ‘Things will be different from now on.’

  ‘Not between us, they won’t. We understand each other, don’t we? You understand just what I've been saying?’

  ‘Yes, Kev, I do, and it makes me very, very happy too,’ she breathed fervently. ‘I was beginning to fed quite worried that I was pushing you into something that you didn’t want. I felt quite miserable earlier, but now you’ve reassured me.’ There was a sound from the shadow of the back step. ‘Well, it’s nice to know that everyone is so happy,’ drawled Ridd Fenton deeply, ‘but if you don’t mind cutting out any further touching farewells just now, Kev, we’ll all get home. Might I remind you that we share the same transport, and you do happen to be taking the devil of a time?’