by Amanda Doyle
Kerry dug her heels into Bounder’s flanks, and the horse shot forward. As he gathered speed, she leaned forward, reins shortened, hands creeping up his neck as he stretched to full gallop. A hot wind sang in her ears, the brim of her linen hat flapped back, and the brown earth streaked until it became no more than a blurred, soft base for pounding hooves.
Kerry could hear the stallion coming up on her left—a slower hoofbeat that was approaching thunder, nearer every moment. Caution fled in the warmth of the rushing wind of movement all about her. She spurred her mount to even greater effort, exulting in her lead. Above the thunder came the yelping of the little German cattle-pup, away to the rear, where it tore along in pursuit.
Then her moment of triumph was over.
The black horse drew level, with Tad Brewster sitting easy in the saddle, legs stretched straight, his lean body angled her way.
‘O.K., Kerry! Pull him up! You’ve had your fun!’ The words were an order, bitten out.
It never even occurred to Kerry to disobey. She put pressure on the bit, gently, so she thought, and the next moment Bounder had reared in the air. It was a split second of such complete confusion that Kerry never really fathomed what took place. The sky seemed to churn with dust and pawing hooves, mingled with an expressive oath wrenched from Tad, the snorting of the stallion, the yapping of the pup.
When the turmoil ceased and the dust settled, Kerry found that Bounder was facing in the opposite direction, shivering slightly, beginning to walk hesitantly forward.
Surprisingly, she was still in the saddle.
A teak-brown arm came into view. A hand reached over, grabbed the bridle, and Bounder stopped obediently.
‘That’s enough!’ Tad’s voice was gruff, the least bit hoarse.
Kerry blinked at him stupidly, still dazed.
‘Wh-what happened?’ she inquired.
“You turned him.’
‘What?’
You turned him—at full gallop, too.’ The hoarseness was gone. Only stern rebuke was there now.
‘I—what him? I don’t remember doing a thing!’
‘Maybe not, but you must have done.’ Tad pushed his hat back, fished in the breast pocket of his khaki shirt, and began to roll a cigarette. Kerry saw that his brown fingers, normally so steady, were trembling the least little bit. ‘He’s a stock-horse, Kerry,’ he explained with returning patience. ‘He can turn on a sixpence if he has to—and he often does have to, when we’re cutting out cattle. The quickest way for a stock-horse to turn is to go up, and then come down, but he only does it that way in emergencies—and if his rider gives him the go-ahead.’
Kerry blinked again.
‘And I gave him the go-ahead?’ she asked, stunned.
‘I reckon you did, or he wouldn’t have done it. Were you frightened?’
She pushed a few golden strands of hair back beneath her linen brim.
‘There didn’t seem time to be frightened, Tad—but I guess I was! I was terrified, afterwards! She essayed a shaky laugh.
A reluctant smile spread slowly over Tad’s grim features. It crinkled up the sun-lines on his face, and turned his eyes into lazy green slits. Kerry could see amusement there, and something else, too. It might almost have been admiration a wary, grudging admiration. Not from Tad Brewster, it couldn’t be? But that’s what it was!
‘You handled it well, Kerry,’ he told her, and she warmed to the praise in that deep voice, which had seemed to spend its time flailing her ever since she had come. ‘I reckon you’ve been holding out on us, hm? Don’t you, Hilary?’ He turned to the little girl. ‘I reckon you’ve got yourself a riding partner, poppet, only no more racing, do you hear?’
They turned the horses homeward then, and Kerry basked in the glow of Tad’s approval all the way back to the homestead. She couldn’t think why it should mean so much, except that his opinion of her in most respects was so candidly low that it was nice to have surprised him in one tiny little way. She had been put through a test, and she had come through, if not with flying colours, at least with a measure of praise which told her she had made the grade.
It was very important to make the grade whenever and wherever she could—horribly important, really, because it could make the difference between success and failure. It could sway the balance between suitability and unsuitability. It could influence Tad Brewster’s ultimate decision upon whether she stayed or went.
Kerry knew, right now, this minute, that she wanted more than anything to stay. She had just found out that she belonged. She had found out that she was a funny-shaped little piece of jigsaw that fitted into the great big complex puzzle that was Gillgong Station. It had been a surprise, an unexpectedly happy surprise, to find out that the Kerry Peyton bit of jigsaw fitted so neatly into the little space lying vacant for it here on this outback puzzle-board. The only trouble was that the owner of the puzzle—the man whose sure, brown, capable, square-tipped fingers fitted the pieces into their proper places—hadn’t discovered what Kerry had just done. She looked at those fingers, with the stallion’s reins curled loosely through the third and fourth ones, while the other hand brought his cigarette to his lips, and hoped wistfully that she could pass some more tests, make the grade again and again, so that he, too, would eventually discover it in time.
Meanwhile, this dreadful uncertainty clutched at her mind all the time, this feeling of being always on trial, unacceptable, unaccepted. It made her turn and toss in the long, hot, dark night, on the sagging stretcher bed beside Hilary’s, wondering what she would do if Tad Brewster decided to send her away. It made her wake up with shadowed eyes, glad when she opened them to find that the dreams she had had weren’t really true—yet. Kerry kept on hoping that they never would be, because even the pluckiest heart could falter when it turned a corner and found only nothingness, which was what her own heart kept doing in those frightening dreams.
Each day found her thankful for the sound of the birds greeting the dawn in the shrubs outside, and the sight of Hilary’s brown plaits sprawled on the pillow of the bed beside hers, and the faint slop-slop of Bluebell’s canvas shoes along the verandah when she came to tell them it was time to get up.
‘I’m still here!’ Kerry would tell herself jubilantly. ‘Still here!’
By the time a couple of weeks had passed, Kerry’s cheeks had browned to a healthy apricot bloom, so that one hardly noticed the doubts and uncertainties lurking always in her soft brown eyes. Her legs and arms were tanned now to a pretty golden shade, smooth and slim, so that she didn’t feel pale and insect-like in her baggy shorts any more, although nothing could improve the cut of those. Her hair was growing fast, like it always had, and now the ends were fairer than ever, bleached by the sun, the palest toffee-candy. Kerry wondered if she should cut it herself, since there was no hairdresser out there at Gillgong, but finally she solved the problem by wearing it in bunches, or tied higher into a pony-tail with a ribbon borrowed from Hilary. It made her appear ridiculously young, but it was practical and cool. She saw little of Tad Brewster in any case, but he was the reason she was anxious not to appear so young. She made sure that, in the evenings, the ribbons were dispensed with, and her hair brushed out into what she hoped was the sort of sophisticated coiffure that went with maturity and dependability, as befitted a suitable ‘girl for Gillgong’ in the eyes of its demanding boss.
Every day brought an improvement in her relationship with Hilary, even if the one with the child’s father remained reassuringly pacific but static, confining itself to ‘Good morning, Tad’ and ‘Good evening, Kerry.’
With Hilary, life became fun. They did lessons together, went on nature study excursions, listened to the air sessions, moulded plasticine into models of the local geographic outlay, wallowed in Australian history books, and often pretended when they were out of doors that they were on journeys of historical discovery. Arithmetic was the only unpopular subject, but even that progressed, in spite of Kerry’s lack of experience as a teacher and
Hilary’s resistance as a pupil.
All appeared to be going well until the day they went out to the Three-miler, but after all, you couldn’t let a little child get away with sheer, blatant cruelty, could you? At least, Kerry found she couldn’t!
They had gone riding after lunch that day, taking Skip, the puppy, with them. Bluebell had provided a package of leathery scones spread with strong yellow butter—the tinned variety which Kerry found so unappetizing, but which nevertheless served the purpose well enough—and between them they had tea and sugar in their saddle-bags, and a blackened pint-pot, too.
The Three-miler was a dam with shade trees around its banked-up edges, and skeleton mustering-yards close by. It had seemed a good place to make camp for tea, in the shade there by the water. While Kerry got the billy boiling and brewed up, Hilary and the pup played down near the muddy edge of the dam.
It was pleasant to sit there beneath drooping gums, away from the gruelling sun, listening to the raw screeching of the disturbed galahs, the muffled champing of the horses as they nibbled at the lower shoots of the trees, Skip’s yapping and Hilary’s answering, childish laughter.
When Kerry called her, the little girl came running up the bank, and together they shared out the scones and tea. Scalding hot, Kerry had already discovered that billy tea was quite the most refreshing antidote to the enervating mid-noon heat. They savoured each mouthful of their brew, then broke the last scone into pieces and fed it to the little puppy, after which both dog and child were drawn to the water once more. Kerry lay on her back on the dry-leaf-bed beneath the eucalypts, allowing herself the luxury of dozing intermittently until it was time to start back to the homestead. Then she collected up the few picnic articles, stowed them in the saddle-bags, and strolled towards the dam.
Only when she ascended the ridged earth surround did she realize that Skip’s barking was agonized, distressed rather than pleasurable, and when she looked down, the little blue head was bobbing in the water some yards from the shore, while Hilary’s well-placed bombardment of stones prevented him from reaching the edge.
‘Stop it, Hilary! Let him come in!’ Kerry shouted down. ‘Can’t you see he’s exhausted?’
Hilary was defiant.
‘I won’t! He’s having fun.’
‘It’s not fun, darling. Stop at once! He’s frantic, can’t you see!’
The child assaulted the panting animal afresh.
‘They can swim for ages,’ she replied offhandedly. ‘Dogs never drown.’
‘I don’t care. It’s cruel.’ Kerry scrambled down the bank, and Skip, sensing the arrival of an ally, whined pitifully from the water.
The little girl bent to pick up another of the small stones she had collected into a pile at her feet, but Kerry prevented her from flinging it by grabbing her arm.
‘Stop it, Hilary, do you hear?’ She was really angry now.
‘I won’t, so there. You can’t make me, anyway. You’re only on trial, you don’t belong on Gillgong even—I heard my daddy say so to Andy!’
Hilary was furious too. She kicked out at Kerry in an attempt to free her hand, while Skip, aware of this brief moment of advantage, struggled ashore and dragged his shivering little body up the bank.
‘Spoilsport! Spoilsport!’ shouted Hilary hysterically, lashing out while Kerry attempted to hold her away.
In the scuffle that ensued, Kerry’s hat fell off. In an instant the child had picked it up and thrown it, right out into the dam. It had happened in a moment of uncontrolled, childish rage, and in the second that the hat was soaring through the air Hilary knew she shouldn’t, but by then the damage was done. Together they got to their feet and watched, dumbfounded, as the brim darkened, reached saturation point, and the blue linen hat sank slowly down into the muddy depths of the water.
There was a moment of poignant silence after that.
Then Hilary accused, sullenly, with the logic of extreme youth,
‘It was your fault, anyway, ’cos you started it. I’m going home!’
By the time Kerry had resaddled her horse and coaxed the exhausted Skip to follow—he refused to be caught, or she would gladly have carried him—Hilary and Trixie were merely a disappearing dot on the distant plain ahead.
When Kerry got to the homestead her head felt as though it had been boiled in a pudding-cloth. She had seen the orphanage cooks do that with suet mixtures, and now she knew what that mixture endured during its metamorphosis, as it became thicker and heavier and finally swelled into a big, hot, stodgy pudding. After the sun went down, the tender skin of her face took on a positive flame colour, as though all the marshmallow pink of the western sunset had concentrated its fire upon her cheeks rather than allow itself to be banished beneath the night horizon.
Kerry showered and changed, dabbing tenderly at her seared complexion.
Oh, dear, why had this to happen, just when things were going so smoothly, just when Tad Brewster appeared almost to have forgotten that she was around at all? He would be sure to notice—those keen grey-green eyes missed very little of what they wanted to see. Unless—unless—!
Maybe, if she were very skilful, diverted his attention from her face, put on lots of pale make-up to hide the effects of the sun, he might never notice at all, might he? He might be so taken up conversing with Andy about all that was happening on his beloved Gillgong that he might never even look her way. Even if he did look, if she could rivet his attention somehow on her clothes, the gum-tip gaze might never actually reach her face.
Not for the first time, but perhaps more than ever before, Kerry found herself wishing that she possessed a really exotic wardrobe—something to give her confidence and poise and the courage to indulge in the little feminine deception which she now planned to execute.
There was nothing especially eye-catching about her blue two-piece, but it was her best outfit, so on it went, with the white blouse underneath. Kerry felt like a scalded lobster in it, but her sleeveless pink cotton would have clashed with her badly burnt face and neck, anyway. She whitened her shoes, brushed her hair, abandoned the idea of styling it in some way, because that would take the men’s eyes upward. Instead she slipped a couple of cheap, glittery bangles on to her smooth, tanned arm, and began to administer a disguise to her face.
Lots of opaque foundation, a thick matt covering of powder—that should help, since normally she wore neither of those things. A touch of lipstick, and there was the dinner-bell ringing.
Kerry shut her drawer, restored order to the dressing-table, and hastened to the dining-room.
‘ ’Evening, Kerry.’
‘ ’Evening, Tad, Andy.’
Kerry slid unobtrusively into her place.
Corned beef hash. That was the menu tonight—corned beef hash and darkening lumps of potato.
Phew! It was certainly a warm night to be faced with a helping of corned beef hash! Kerry stared glumly at her plate, and decided that she felt like eating almost anything except corned beef hash and lumpy potato. She did her best, though, playing around with it and pretending that lots of it was finding its way to her mouth.
She was congratulating herself on her miming abilities when a cold, arresting voice brought her fork to a stop in mid-air.
‘Leave it, Kerry.’ Tad’s deep voice reverberated right around the room. ‘A heavy meal is the last thing to be recommended in a case of sunburn.’
‘Oh!’ Kerry’s eyes flew to his.
He knew! One look was enough to tell her that.
She laid down her fork hopelessly, and sat there waiting for what she knew was bound to follow.
When Tad’s narrowed eyes had completed a thorough inspection which not only included her heavily made-up face, but the blue outfit and the glittery bangles as well, he spoke again.
‘Didn’t I tell you never to forget your hat?’ The tone was terse, impatient—the sort of tone one employed with an erring infant.
‘Yes, Tad.’ Kerry’s whisper was meek, appeasing.
�
�Well?’ Tad waited. The whole table waited. They had all stopped eating and were looking at her. Andy was looking sorry, kind of embarrassed. Hilary was looking agonized, pleading. Tad was looking— well, very near at the end of his tether. In fact, Kerry controlled a shudder at the severity of his expression, as the green eyes bored into her implacably.
‘I’m sorry,’ mumbled Kerry. ‘I forgot.’
‘Forgot?’ He was clearly incredulous.
‘I mean, I lost it.’
‘Which do you mean?’ Tad asked her, coldly.
‘Yes, I lost it.’
‘How?’
Kerry licked her cracked, burning lips.
She could see Hilary’s thin little fingers tensed on her knife and fork, the knuckles showing up whitely. Kerry didn’t look at Hilary’s face. She knew, without having to look, that the mute pleading would still be there, the agony of anxiety.
She licked her lips again.
‘I—er—well, I put it down, out at the Three-miler, and when I went to get it, something must have happened to it.’
‘What, do you suppose?’ How smooth and silky he could sound! Quite nasty!
‘Well, there were several alternatives,’ she suggested weakly. ‘The puppy was playing around at the time.’ Tad shook his head slowly. ‘The—er—the horses—they were eating, too—’ Her voice died way as she watched his features congeal into disbelief.
‘Don’t try me too far, Kerry,’ he advised, and the softness of those words somehow seemed more threatening than if he had shouted them. ‘I’d forgotten how much you appear to enjoy—toying with the truth. You may leave the rest of your meal, anything you don’t feel up to eating, but you’ll remain behind at the end. I, too,’—he picked up his knife and fork, signalled the others to resume—‘will stay.’
Kerry felt like groaning aloud, but she managed not to. She just sat there, trying to appear indifferent, calm, while Andy and Hilary and Tad Brewster finished their dinner in a forbidding silence.
