Escape to Koolonga

by Amanda Doyle

  ‘Ridd—what are you saying?’

  She raised a tear-stained face and took in his own almost savagely-controlled features, shook her head disbelievingly, light-headed at the welter of confusion his words had brought to her already distraught mind.

  ‘You—you can’t know what you’re saying,’ she protested slowly, with a conviction that was meant as much to bring herself back to reality as anything else.

  ‘Of course I know what I’m saying’— Ridd’s chuckle was brief, without mirth—‘only I hadn’t meant to say it yet.Not yet, nor maybe possibly for quite a while after this, either. I meant to give you time, to forget about that other brutal business, the things I said and did, to forgive me if you could, so that we could start all over again, with a clean slate rubbed free of past mistakes and stupid misunderstandings. Take it slowly, Ridd, I said to myself. Give her time to forget, time to adjust. Be patient and careful, and maybe if you do all that, and take your time about it, maybe you’ll be lucky enough to make her feel—some day—the same way as you feel about her.’

  ‘Oh, Ridd!’ Emmie’s eyes were brimming again. Not just with tears, but with a love for him that seemed to catch her up on a great, wonderful tide that was so overwhelming, so exquisite, that it was also curiously unbearable.

  ‘How could I know?’ she whispered, and he tipped her chin up so that he could gaze steadily and intently, right into her pale, oval, upturned face, and read the truth there for himself.

  ‘How could I know?’ she repeated, gazing back like a sleeper stepping right into a lovely dream. She hid her face against him. Now, if ever, was the time to start wiping clean that slate. Most of the misunderstandings were of her own making, anyway!

  ‘Ridd, I have to tell you something,’ she confessed in strangled but determined tones. ‘I—I’ve been terribly deceitful. I—there wasn’t any affair, Ridd. I deceived you terribly. There wasn’t even any—any rebound. That wasn’t why I came. And I—I d-don’t know much about kissing, either.’ She felt a ripple of laughter run right through him. Felt it against the side of her cheek.

  ‘Is that so, now?’ He sounded severe, but when his fingers found her chin again and forced her to look at him, she was surprised to see that the grey eyes weren’t angry at all. They too were brimming with laughter. ‘What a little deceiver you are, to be sure! But I knew it already, what you’ve just told me, Emmie.’

  ‘Knew it? How?’ She was bewildered. One could never tell with Ridd. How would one ever be able to fathom what he knew, and what he didn’t know?

  ‘I knew it, right in the middle of kissing you that time. I was devilish angry, as you know—a combination of jealousy and frustration, I should think. I meant to punish you for what you were doing to me, and for your callousness in leading Kevin on when you’d admitted it meant nothing. And then, right in the middle of kissing you, it suddenly got through to me that somehow I'd plunged you in at the deep end before you’d even swum the shallows.’

  ‘How could you possibly --- ’

  ‘I was shaken. Pretty thoroughly shaken. I could see what

  I’d done to you too, and I—thought—oh, hell! ------- ’ Ridd

  came to a husky halt, ran his fingers through his hair despairingly, finally forced himself to continue. ‘I got to thinking about how nothing seemed to add up, where you were concerned. I thought it out from every angle, and it didn’t square somehow. And then when I found you so desperately sick the day I came over with the telephone engineer, I knew you meant everything in the world to me, Emmie, that I couldn’t live without you, that I had to have you, that I couldn’t go on with this pretence much longer.’

  He stopped again.

  ‘Ridd, I knew it when you danced with me. I just felt your arms around me, and I wanted it to mean something. I wanted it to mean everything, and I knew it couldn’t, and my safe, carefully thought-out future seemed to mean nothing any more. It just seemed to collapse in smithereens at my feet. I realised I loved you then, but I couldn’t afford to even let myself recognise the fact, it was all so impossible. I stumbled around in such a daze, a panic almost, knowing that from that moment on everything I did would be second-best to the thing I wanted most in life—the children, the store—yes, even the children—it didn’t seem to mean the same any more, but I made myself go on. You have to go on, you know. I kept saying, if the little apricot tree is there, keeping pace with me, sharing my struggle, I can do it. And then—then

  His arms tightened.

  ‘That day I came over and found you, I made up my mind to do something about it, although I hadn’t the least idea of how I was going to win you over after that despicable kiss I’d put you through. You really shook me when you said things might have been different if I hadn’t given you that kiss, I can tell you!’

  ‘I said that?’

  ‘You did.’ He sounded grim.

  ‘I don’t remember --- ’

  ‘I spoke to Kevin after that. I was a bit desperate, I reckon, and there was plenty of time for the two of us to talk, hanging around waiting for you to get better.’ A pause. ‘He told me what you’d done for him, how you’d helped so much with himself and Sue.’ Another pause. ‘I knew, then, that there was more to it than met the eye, things I’d need to know. That’s why I left for Sydney straight away.’

  ‘For Sydney?’ Her eyes were wide.

  ‘I took a long shot, Emmie.’ He was holding her gaze now, compelling her to attend to what he had to say. ‘I went straight to Mark. No, stay still, we have to have this out.’ His tone, his expression, were the old, masterful, forbidding ones, as he held her right where she was, when she would have struggled to escape those encircling arms.

  ‘To—Mark? H-how did you know anything about Mark?’ she queried feebly, sensing his change of mood.

  ‘I didn’t, not for sure. As I said, I played a hunch, that’s all.’ He laughed a little grimly. ‘I couldn’t afford not to play hunches, at that stage, however unlikely they may have seemed. This one paid off.’

  ‘It did?’

  ‘It did. Emmie, don’t look like that. There’s no need, darling. I’m on your side where that selfish, brilliant, delightful, overbearing family of yours is concerned. You’ll never have to tackle them alone again so long as you live. I’ll handle them from now on. I told them just what I thought of them, some of it good, some of it bad’—he grinned reminiscently— ‘and I reckon we understand each other pretty well now. I told them they’d crushed the tender flower, the fragile, beautiful little selfless one, that they’d exploited her shamefully (through sheer damn thoughtlessness, probably), and that they’d been so taken up with their own glamorous, ambitious, self-interested lives that they hadn’t given a thought to what they were doing to her in the process. They missed you like hell, it may interest you to know, once they hadn’t got you there to wait on them hand and foot, after you’d gone!’ His lip curled lopsidedly. ‘I gave them their come-uppance. I told them that if they want to come to our wedding, if they want to count me in on the family scene, they’d better start cultivating a little more consideration for people, a little sensitivity, and not ride roughshod over the gentler member of their family anymore.’

  ‘Oh, Ridd, you didn’t!’ she exclaimed faintly. ‘You couldn’t

  have said that—that bit about a—a wedding. Not then, Ridd. I mean, you—we—you hadn’t -- ’

  ‘I hadn’t,’ he admitted ruefully, with a twinkle, “but I’m doing it now, Emmie, my sweet and only love. I’m asking you to be my wife.’ He became suddenly grave, tender. ‘Marry me, Emmie, please, will you, darling? I can’t go on like this much longer.’

  ‘I—Ridd, are you really sure? I mean, I—well, I’m so— ordinary.’

  He gathered her into his arms.

  ‘So sweet,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘So small and tender and sweet and appealing. Hasn’t anyone ever told you what a perfect little oval face you have, what enormous misty eyes under all those sweeping lashes, such soft, silky hair that�
�s as full of sunshine as a sunbeam itself?’

  She shook her head, demurely.

  ‘No one. Not ever.’

  ‘Well, I’m telling you, Emmie. I’ve wanted to tell you for so long, almost since the very beginning -- ’

  ‘Ridd.’ She'd been thinking, or trying to. It was difficult to be sensible at a time like this. ‘What about the children, if we—’ ‘When we,’ he corrected her with a touch of his old arrogance. ‘When we’re married, and they reach secondary stage, they’ll board in Berroola and come home at weekends. They can come to Koolonga now. There’s enough room in that rambling homestead for a regiment of children, our own included.’

  Her cheeks became a little pink.

  ‘I must say I’ve loved looking after them,’ she said swiftly, to cover that tell-tale blush. ‘And the Homes have been more than adequate in their assistance. I managed much better than I thought I possibly could. I worried a lot about it, just at first, you know, but with those monthly cheques coming in, and the revenue from the store too, it was easy. I must thank the Matron for her generosity when we tell them about the change of plan.’

  Ridd scratched his ear. He looked uncomfortable. Not like Riddley Fenton at all. Not like the Master-of-the-Situation.

  ‘I—er—don’t think I’d mention it, actually, if I were you, Emily.’

  ‘Why not? After all, it was decent of them, those regular bank drafts, don’t you think, so why not tell them so?’ ‘Yes—well --- ’ his own colour deepened beneath the heavy tan—‘you know what I’m trying to say. Official dispensations, Emmie, Government departments, local authorities, they—er—well, it’s not usual to thank them. Much better not. Much better just to say nothing.’

  ‘Why are you mumbling like that, Ridd?’

  ‘Mumbling? Who’s mumbling? I’m simply saying that it’s more diplomatic not to mention the matter to the Matron at all,’ he replied. But it had a lame sound. Suspiciously lame!

  ‘Do you know what I think, Ridd?’

  ‘What, Emmie?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s what happened at all,’ stated Emmie with quiet certainty. ‘I don’t think those monthly drafts even came from the matron, from the authorities, Ridd. I think they came from you. I’m right, aren’t I?’ The guilt of it was written all over his face. ‘Why, Ridd? Why?’

  ‘Can’t you guess?’ There was such an enveloping tenderness in his eyes that she couldn’t prevent herself from putting up a hand to touch his cheek in an impulsive gesture of gratitude, respect, love that was overwhelming.

  Ridd put his own hand over hers. She could feel the warmth of his fingers curling over her own fingers, keeping them there against his weathered brown cheek.

  ‘I wanted you to stay, even then,’ he confessed gently, and the controlled passion in him deepened his voice to a whisper. ‘I had to keep you here somehow, and I knew even then that it was the kids that might hold you. If you were managing financially with them, I knew you’d stay.’ A pause. ‘I never meant you to know,’ he confessed gruffly.

  ‘Ridd, I love you so much I feel I’ll die of it.’

  She stood on tiptoe, and touched her lips to his chin. That was as far as she could reach, unless he bent his head. ‘Darling’—the word wasn’t very distinct, but she caught it— ‘there are kisses, and kisses, Emmie. I’ve been wanting to tell

  you that, my precious one, ever since that—other time.’

  ‘Are there?’

  ‘Yes, there are.’

  ‘Show me, Ridd.’

  And he did. His kiss was everything that that other one hadn’t been, somehow. A kiss of discovery, that began somewhere near her ear, and travelled as light as a butterfly’s breath, over her cheek, across to the corner of her mouth. It was a slow kiss, yet compelling. Magnetic, yet very, very tender.

  Ridd lifted his head.

  ‘That’s the theme,’ he told her huskily, and his eyes were crinkling already into a teasing caress that melted her bones, and his lips were curving gently into one of those endearing, lopsided smiles that made her heart turn right over and skip a couple of beats. ‘The variations come later,’ he added, as he took her hand and led her back to the house.

  ‘We’ll just lock up again, Emily, and then I’m taking you home.’