The Girl for Gillgong

by Amanda Doyle

  ‘Oh.’ Kerry’s lips rounded on an expelled sigh.

  ‘Well?’ That was Andy.

  ‘What’s Daddy say, Kerry? Is it from him?’—Hilary.

  Kerry looked at them, smiling. Her face felt quite pink with relief.

  ‘He says I have to wear a hat, that’s all. He says I’ve to ask you, Andy.’ She looked at him doubtfully. ‘He says you’ll fit me out, those are his words. He—he doesn’t seem to like my honey-coloured straw.’

  The book-keeper shifted in his chair, embarrassed.

  ‘I reckon it’s not that he doesn’t like it, Kerry—it’s a real pretty hat, and you can take that from me, straight but it just isn’t the kind we wear out here, see. It’s not a real sunstopper. Tad wasn’t kidding about that sun, you know. It can be your very worst enemy if you don’t watch out.’

  Worse than the boss himself? Kerry could not believe that!

  ‘I’ll look a fright in one of those khaki felts,’ she mourned, ‘even if you’re kind enough to lend me one. I’ll never be pretty, Andy, I know that, but I do like pretty things. They make a girl feel pretty, even when she knows she isn’t. I’d rather not wear a hat than look—a-a-sight!’

  ‘You’ll wear a hat, Kerry, do you hear me?’ Andy, grim, could sound just like Tad. Kerry nodded quickly in agreement, anxious to find herself back in favour. She couldn’t fight two men at once, and come to that, she didn’t want to fight Andy Matherson.

  He scraped back his chair, reached for his own broad-brimmed hat which he had placed on the sideboard when he came in, and said kindly,

  ‘You come down to the store with me now, and I’ll fit you out, like Tad said, eh?’

  Kerry followed his blocky figure along the verandah, through a gauze swing-door and down some steps.

  Together they walked over the lawn and through the neat white gate in the white paling fence. In the distance Kerry recognized the hangar that housed the lovely plane in which she had come. To the left, where Andy led her, there were so many other scattered buildings that it was like a small village—a little, dusty township squatting on a brown earth plain, with a steel-hot dome of sky above and a cool, green-lawned homestead behind, shut away from its neighbouring houses by that dazzling white fence.

  Andy pointed out his own little cottage, a neat, four-roomed affair with a single verandah along its front. Nearby were a blacksmith’s shop, a fodder shed, and a big loading-ramp. When they passed that, they came to a large hut with a red-painted iron roof and big brown double doors. Here Andy stopped, extracted a bunch of keys from his hip pocket and unlocked the doors, flinging them wide so that the strong sunlight poured in.

  Inside, it was hot and stuffy, but Kerry hardly noticed. She was too amazed at the extent and variety of goods displayed all round the shelves.

  The ‘store’ was little less than an amply equipped shop, stocked with every kind of article imaginable. There were veterinary medicines, tins of vermin poison, baits, firefighting equipment, saddlery, spare parts for motor cars and probably that aeroplane, groceries, blankets, mosquito nets on large hooped frames, an assortment of toiletries that would not have disgraced a city chemists’, a whole shelf filled entirely with assorted bolts of cloths and dress materials, rubber boots, elastic-sided boots, leather lacing-boots.

  Kerry’s eyes had reached the clothing counter!

  Shirts, trousers, a whole pile of those awful khaki hats, swimming trunks, socks, shorts and nylons.

  Nylons! Several shades, size 8-J right up to 10.

  ‘Oh, Andy! Stockings!’ she murmured, delighted at such a discovery, away out here at Gillgong Station.

  She picked up one of the boxes, and then put it down again, because she had suddenly remembered how little money she had. Kerry’s face got very red indeed. She had nearly done a rash and foolish thing, because she might need that little bit of money. She might need it soon, if she didn’t measure up to Tad Brewster’s exacting standards!

  Could Andy possibly have guessed her predicament?

  ‘Anything you need, Kerry,’ he was telling her, ‘you just put it by, and I’ll book it through for you. You don’t need to pay for it right now. Tad said you could have an advance against your salary for necessities, see.’

  An advance! Kerry brightened, touched beyond words at Andy’s tact, his amazing perception.

  ‘Well, if I could—’ She chose two pairs of stockings in a pretty tan shade. ‘Thank you, Andy.’

  ‘And a hat. Try this for size.’ He held out a stitched linen in pale blue. ‘Bang on, isn’t it? Comfy? Right, we’ll put that down, too.’

  Kerry was charmed with her hat. She turned it over and over in her fingers, thinking that it wasn’t a bit ugly, after all. It was a very nice hat, sensible and sun-stopping as well.

  Andy cleared his throat.

  ‘Anything else, then, Kerry, before I shut up shop? A cozzie if you’re going to be swimming with Hilary?’ He looped a shirred cotton swimsuit over his arm.

  ‘I’ve got a cozzie, thanks, Andy. We did a little swimming at the—er—in Sydney.’

  ‘Shorts?’

  Kerry looked askance.

  ‘I never wear shorts, Andy. I mean, I never have. Th-they had to tell the boys from the girls, you see, at a glance, so we didn’t.’

  Andy scratched his head.

  ‘No one’s talking about boys and girls,’ he reprimanded her, puzzled. ‘It’s you we’re talking about, anyway, Kerry. A bloke could tell a mile away that you aren’t a boy, so what’s the objection to wearing shorts?’

  Kerry was dubious.

  ‘I just never have,’ she said again. Matron had insisted that the girls always wore skirts, so that each sex could be separated and have their number counted quickly at roll-calls.

  Andy Matherson took a firmer stand.

  ‘Look, Kerry,’ he told her reasonably, ‘I don’t want to be critical, but if you aim to keep up with that little Hilary back there in the homestead, you aren’t going to manage it in that pretty pink straight-skirted dress you’re wearing, are you, mate? She’s like greased lightning. She’ll leave you in your tracks, and then Tad’ll be on your neck, sure as I’m here. You take a spot of advice from an old-timer, eh? Maybe you’ve got another dress, though. Or a fuller skirt? Something you can move in?’

  Kerry shook her head.

  ‘One—pair—drill—shorts.’ Andy spoke the words as he wrote them in his book. ‘Waist—’ he looked up a moment—‘Twenty-four.’

  ‘How did you know?’ She was startled.

  ‘Practice,’ he informed her laconically. ‘Anyway, if I’m an inch or two out either way, they stretch, see.’

  From beneath the counter he produced white cotton shorts on an elasticated waistband, which he expanded deftly to its fullest extent by way of demonstration. Undoubtedly it was a most unglamorous garment!

  ‘Do I have to?’

  ‘You haven’t anything else. You just said so. That the lot?’

  ‘Er—yes, Andy, and—er—thank you again,’ Kerry said weakly.

  It was the craziest shopping expedition she had ever been on—and all on credit, too. Kerry felt quite shocked at the thought.

  ‘I’ll pay Mr.—um—Tad—just as soon as I receive my salary, Andy,’ she promised the book-keeper earnestly.

  ‘That’s O.K., Kerry.’ The man slapped his notebook shut and patted her shoulder kindly. ‘Tad won’t lose any sleep over it, so you don’t need to, either. It doesn’t amount to the leg off one of his steers.’

  ‘It was nice of him, though,’ Kerry replied, to her own surprise.

  All the way back to the homestead, clutching the box of nylons and the dreadful shorts, with the blue linen hat already on her head, she kept thinking the same thought—how kind, unexpected, that Tad Brewster had worried about her having a hat.

  And then she remembered his words last night, what a nuisance it would be to have to call the Flying Doctor, and her warm feeling of gratitude ebbed and cooled.

  He had on
ly done it so she wouldn’t be a nuisance, so he wouldn’t have to get the doctor to a sunstroke case! She might have guessed there would be some tough, practical reason for everything that man did, every move he made! And he had really been very highhanded, referring to her pretty straw boater in that derogatory way. Very high-handed indeed! By the time Kerry reached the verandah, she was flushed, not only with the heat of the summer mid-morning, but with indignation as well.

  The remainder of the morning was spent helping Hilary with her lessons. To Kerry’s surprise the child was quite an accomplished reader.

  ‘Daddy taught me,’ she proclaimed proudly. ‘I’ve been able to read for simply ages. I read and read.’

  It was a revealing statement, in a way that Hilary had not intended. It told Kerry of all the solitary hours she must have put in, all alone, because her father was out, and Bluebell no doubt was busy. She had read by herself, when she should have had companionship—a mother to love her, and perhaps little brothers and sisters.

  ‘I like reading,’ Hilary stated defiantly, almost as though she had divined the nature of Kerry’s thoughts, although she couldn’t possibly have understood their deeper significance. ‘I like reading, all by myself. I like it best with just Daddy and me. And Bluebell,’ she added, as an afterthought.

  Kerry felt rebuffed, but she was careful not to show it.

  ‘You can still read when you’re alone, Hilary,’ she said evenly. ‘I like some time to myself, too, you know, and I’ll expect you to amuse yourself sometimes. Let’s see where you are up to in arithmetic, shall we?’

  Hilary’s simple sums turned out to be wrong, and she knew little, if anything, of the most elementary facts of history.

  ‘How about nature study?’ Kerry tried again.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You know, all the living things we see—flowers, plants, how they grow—insects, spiders, worms, cicadas, how they’re made, and all that.’

  ‘Oh that.’ Hilary wriggled uncomfortably. ‘I’m s’posed to listen to the air for those, but I hardly ever do.’

  ‘The air?’

  ‘You know—the lessons on the air? The wireless session? There was one this morning.’

  ‘Well, why didn’t you listen?’

  Hilary was smug.

  ‘ ’Cos nobody made me. No one ever makes me—except Daddy, when he’s in, but he hardly ever is. Sometimes he’s away for days, when he’s at the outcamps.’

  ‘We’ll listen together from now on,’ declared Kerry firmly.

  Little monkey! she was thinking. She’s got quite out of hand!

  No wonder her father had been driven to putting in that advertisement! And no wonder the advertisement had been couched in those abrupt terms! It hadn’t been an advertisement with a general appeal about it, and the job itself wasn’t going to be easy, either. In fact, Tad Brewster had been smarter than she had at first realized, luring the unwary away out here to cope with his recalcitrant little offspring by means of a few vaguely-worded lines in a Sydney weekly.

  What had his wife been like? Kerry wondered. Nowhere was there even the tiniest bit of evidence to give her a clue. Nowhere was there a lingering touch of a feminine hand, except perhaps in the pretty pink bathroom which had been for Hilary’s use alone. There wasn’t a single photograph in the little girl’s dressing-room, and when Kerry went, eventually, to tidy up the father s, it was equally bare.

  Kerry picked up a pair of pyjama shorts, folded them, and laid them on the end of the wide brass-headed bed in Tad’s room—a bed for two, with a white cotton quilt, and an old-fashioned marble-topped washstand beside it. She dusted the marble surface, polished the mahogany dressing-chest and the plain, masculine lowboy in the corner, and then went out on to the verandah and made up the stretcher-bed, reflecting on the spartan austerity all around.

  Not even a snapshot, nothing anywhere to remind the lone occupant of the wife he had once had.

  He must have loved his wife very much, Kerry decided, recalling now that quickly-banished look of pain that she had surprised in his eyes when he had found it necessary to refer to her. He must have loved her so much that he didn’t want to be reminded of her, but surely that was wrong? There should be comfort as well as pain in even the most poignant memories, and it was hardly fair to deprive Hilary herself of a right that was unquestionably hers—the right to a mother, or at least, to the memories of one. Kerry had been denied that right herself, so she could appreciate what the little child was missing. In her lonelier moments, Kerry would have given much to possess even a handkerchief that had belonged to her mother, a piece of stuff from one of her dresses, the tiniest, most humble article to link her with the young woman to whom she had been born. It might have helped her to understand what sort of person her mother had been, how she had dressed, the colours she liked, the little personal things that went to make up her personality. Kerry had never had them, and Hilary didn’t have them, either.

  Still, Hilary did have a father, whose cold grey-green eyes could soften to the warm, smoke-haze colour of noonday eucalypt bushland when they looked upon his little daughter. They always changed to softness and warmth when they looked at Hilary, and then they changed back again to chill green aloofness when they turned to Kerry herself. They were chameleon eyes, discomfiting eyes that saw beneath the surface of one’s mind in a disturbingly uncanny way. Kerry would keep out of their way just as much as she possibly could.

  The gum-tip eyes turned to her at the dinner-table that evening.

  They had kept to themselves up till then, except for a momentary softening in Hilary’s direction before they concentrated on the contents of the plate in front of them. It was a thick white kitchen plate, and so were Hilary’s and Andy’s and her own. Tonight it held a generous portion of the same ill-cooked stew as last night’s, congealing in a yellow frill of separated fat. Beside each place was a helping of pudding—another of Bluebell’s unspeakable concoctions—a ‘milk pudding’, Kerry supposed one would call it, if it deserved a name at all.

  ‘Tomorrow is our mail-day, Kerry. The plane brings incoming letters, and takes away the outgoing ones. Presumably you’ll want to let your people know you’ve arrived safely at your destination. If you bring me your letter when you’ve written it, I shall see that it goes into the sealed mailbag along with the rest.’

  ‘Oh. Yes, quite. Thank you, Mr.—er—Tad,’ mumbled Kerry, blushing.

  This was an awkward moment, and he had taken her rather by surprise.

  Of course, it was only natural, what he had suggested or practically ordered. One would write a letter to one’s people in the circumstances—that is, if one had people to whom to write! Kerry didn’t, but she couldn’t say so. He might think she was touting for sympathy, mightn’t he, and his remarks about the weakness of self-pity were too fresh in her mind for her to risk that! He would know, almost immediately, what a vulnerable position she had placed herself in, and that must be avoided, too.

  Throughout the rest of the meal, Kerry pondered over her predicament, searching for a solution. It finally came to her, in one sudden, simple inspiration.

  The wool firm man!

  She would write a note to Mr. Stenning, since he was the only person who knew she was here. It would be a courteous thing to do, for he had been kind and helpful—even a little bit worried on her behalf—and he had given her his card, too.

  When Kerry got out her writing-pad and pen, she wrote the nicest letter she possibly could.

  ‘Dear Mr. Stenning,’ it said, ‘I am writing to let you know that I have arrived safely at Gillgong. I enjoyed the journey very much, and that was my first ride in an aeroplane too. Mr. Hunter was very kind and gave me lunch, and then I came on part of the way by truck, and then by plane again—two flights in one day! Andy the book-keeper flew the second plane. He has been very kind, and Bluebell is nice, too, but her cooking is dreadful, except for steak and eggs at breakfast, which is delicious. You see I am being spoilt, getting a breakfast
like that. This is such a pretty home, with green lawns and shady shrubs. You mustn’t worry about sending me here. I am saying that in case Mr. Brewster reprimands you about the advertisement, because it wasn’t your fault, especially when I was the only girl for Gillgong to choose from. Hilary is only a little girl. I think she is lonely, and she is to be my special charge, so you see they really do need somebody here, and I hope they will let me stay. With best wishes and thanks from Kerry.’

  Kerry blotted the ink carefully, took out the white visiting card and addressed the envelope to Mr. Edmund Stenning. Slowly she copied the name of the unfamiliar street and the suburb. Then she slipped in the sheet of writing-paper, and sealed the flap.

  There was a strip of light beneath the door of the library. It was more like a library than anything else, Kerry had decided, with all those shelves of books ranged round the walls.

  When the deep voice inside called ‘Come in,’ Kerry turned the handle of the door and entered.

  The fan was whirring overhead again, and the room was deliciously cool. Tad Brewster sat beneath an angled light, with his brown forearms resting on the desk in front of him. He was surrounded by papers of one sort and another, and Kerry could see that he, too, had been writing letters. She came across with her own one, and handed it to him, and he added it to the small pile without comment. Then he stood up and came right round the desk to stand beside her.

  ‘How is the head tonight?’ Without waiting for her reply, he took her face between his hands and parted the silky-straight hair, carefully, to see for himself.

  Kerry wriggled beneath his fingers, startled into confusion.

  ‘It’s better, thank you—much better—quite better!’

  ‘Not quite better,’ he contradicted imperturbably, ‘but almost. I didn’t know Bob was such a reckless driver! Whatever did he do, for you to collect a bump of that magnitude?’ Tad Brewster appeared to be in a benign mood tonight—affable, conversational. When he was like this, he was more approachable, not quite so frightening. Kerry warmed to him, aware that he was attempting to dissolve the tension between them, a tension perhaps even more on her own part than his.