by Lucy Walker
‘Silly game!’
‘I agree!’
‘What are we playing it for?’
‘Fun of course.’
Mrs. Benallen happily rattled and called on the others to count their cards. She had won by a handsome distance again.
‘And so to bed …’
In the morning Rick rode back with Kate.
‘We’re getting used to it,’ he said. They rode slowly because they had Beatrix’s horse in tow. They were rather silent too. Kate thought that Rick’s face was tired and a little strained. For the first time she wondered how old he was.
‘When did you go to the war, Rick?’
‘Nineteen-forty, aged nineteen. Australian Imperial Forces, Ninth Division. Taken prisoner off Africa.’ He looked at her slyly. ‘That makes me thirty-three. How old are you, Kate?’
‘Twenty-four.’
Appleton, as they rode into the stable yards, seemed strangely quiet.
‘Getting over it …’ Rick said. ‘It generally takes the men a ten-gallon keg and two days to get over a brumby hunt.’
‘Where on earth would a ten-gallon keg come from?’
‘They’ve probably ridden over to Arundel with Strong. He’s always got a healthy stock of beer there.’
Certainly there were no horses in the paddocks. Nor in the stables.
As they crunched their way up the garden path towards the homestead Beatrix came through the wire door and let it bang behind her.
‘Oh, there you are, Kate. Are you all right? Bellew told Hal you’d gone to Allandale with Rick. We knew they’d take care of you.’
Kate wanted savagely to ask why Hal hadn’t wanted to take care of her. Or Beatrix, or any of them for that matter.
Beatrix slipped her hand through Kate’s arm.
‘Uncle Harry’s still eating plums. He’s the only man around. I suppose you’ve heard what’s happened in Blackwood, Rick?’
‘No. Have the men gone on a razzle?’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake. How could you be left out of it Rick? Parsons and Sons is burnt down. There’s the devil to pay!’
‘Whew! How come?’
They were on the veranda now. Uncle Harry unfolded himself and looked at Kate kindly.
‘You all right, m’dear? Come and have some breakfast. Very late this morning. Nobody else in … so they just left ’em. Boys all went to town last night. You heard about the fire, Rick?’
Kate sank down in a cane chair. Who were Parsons and Sons? And thank God there’d been something as important as a fire to take Hal’s attention from her own needs.
‘Beatrix has just told me,’ Rick said. He too sat down. His slouch hat went on the floor under his chair and almost unconsciously he drew the bowl of plums towards himself. He ladled some out for Kate and some for himself. He didn’t even ask her.
So proprietorial … she thought. Or is it just brotherly? There was an unconscious intimacy about it … like making and lighting a cigarette for her that somehow touched her heart. If only Hal …!
Kate leaned back in the chair and tried to follow what Beatrix and Rick were saying instead of reflecting with indignation on the matter-of-fact way in which Beatrix had taken the events of yesterday. Being yesterday it was no longer of any importance. Like her first ride with Hal. No one had really sympathised. It occurred to her rather sharply that these people were so accustomed to such incidents in their daily life it just didn’t occur to them that others found them a little alarming, and something of a strain.
‘The wool stores must have smouldered all day,’ Beatrix said. ‘It was unbelievable they could flare up the way they did under hours and hours of smouldering. None of the men working in the stores suspected anything, of course.’
‘What have the men gone in to Blackwood for?’ asked Rick. ‘To see the sights?’
‘They’d do that anyway …’ Beatrix seemed uneasy. At that moment Annabel came round from the kitchen veranda.
‘Oh, there you are, Kate. I heard voices and guessed Rick had brought you home. How are you? Did you enjoy the hunt yesterday?’
No, there was no sarcasm in Annabel’s questions! So it was just a matter of ordinariness to them that she and Beatrix had been nearly run down by a brumby mob. It was, after all, just part of the business of the day.
Annabel sat down.
‘Mother’s ill,’ she announced. ‘That fire’s too much for her.’
‘Oh, I am sorry. Is she very bad? Can I do anything?’
‘No. We just have to keep off the north veranda all day. The noise would make her head worse.’
‘Have you lost any wool in the fire?’ Kate asked innocently.
Beatrix and Annabel looked at her, then at one another hastily.
‘We insured?’ Uncle Harry asked loudly and suddenly. ‘Won’t be any financial loss to us?’
‘I thought you always stored with the Co-operative Society, Beatrix?’ Rick said, looking at her. His face serious and intent.
‘We do, mostly. Still, we always distribute some round the agents.’
‘We all do that,’ said Rick. ‘But Parsons and Sons are a relatively new show. And backed by Eastern States investors. I never thought of them as being a good show.’
‘Now then, Rick,’ said Annabel. ‘Don’t start a quarrel on that one. It is a quarrelsome subject, you know. Beatrix and Uncle Harry were against it and Hal and Mother for it. So we’ve lost quite a lot of wool in the fire.’
‘Is that why Hal and the men have gone in?’
‘That, and the fact there’s likely to be trouble in Blackwood. All the men have gone in. Those who didn’t ride went in with the station waggon. They’ve all gone in from Arundel too.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Someone got drunk in the pub and reckoned … very loudly … that Castillon fired the wool stores,’ said Beatrix. ‘It went through the town faster than the fire. Castillon and his men came and the men whose wool got burnt went in.’
Rick was very thoughtful.
‘That business could mean a lot of trouble,’ Uncle Harry said. ‘What I want to know is what insurance company underwrit those wool stores? How does the insurance stand? I was dead against sending wool in there. I didn’t like the agents when they came out here. Not our type.’
‘I think you ought to go in to Blackwood, Rick. You could settle things faster than anyone else.’
Rick’s laugh was nearly a grunt.
‘Whose side do I take? Hal’s and the wool-growers’? Castillon … who’s probably innocent? I haven’t any wool myself, you know.’
‘What do you advise, Rick?’ asked Uncle Harry, who did not follow anyone else’s conversation.
‘I advise myself to stop out of it …’ Rick said close to the old man’s ear. ‘If you’re insured you won’t lose. If you’re not, the wool’s burnt and you can’t unburn it. It’s not my fight and I don’t want to be in it.’
A little crystal bell sounded.
‘That’s Mother,’ said Annabel, jumping up. She hurried off.
Rick glanced at Kate.
‘Want some more plums, Kate?’
She shook her head.
‘No, thanks …’
From the kitchen veranda came the incessant buzzing of the telephone switchboard and the equally constant banging of the kitchen wire door as someone went to attend to it.
‘Sounds like the whole district’s on fire …’ Beatrix said.
Judity came padding around the corner.
‘That’s Missis Benallen, Rick,’ she said. ‘She’m want you. I tink you got to go and fix them fellas in Blackwood. They’m bin ringin’ up Allandale all day.’
Rick retrieved his slouch hat and planted it on the back of his head. His heavy boots pounded round the veranda. In silence by the breakfast table his voice came clear, resonant … essentially Australian with his drawled dipthongs but lacking the nasal quality of the Eastern States.
‘Okay … okay … okay!’
The boots pounded back.
‘This is where I go …’ he said grimly.
‘What’s happened, Rick?’ Beatrix asked.
‘Nothing but a lot of talk and shouting so far. But things are uneasy. Peg Castillon asked Mother to send me in.’
‘Ho, ho! So you are going in on the Castillon side?’
Rick looked down on Beatrix from his great height.
‘I’ll let you know later,’ he said with a grin. ‘I’ll see who’ll pay me the most.’
The wire door banged behind him and his boots crunched up the garden path.
The three at the veranda table sat in silence. Then Kate and Beatrix glanced at one another and their eyes met.
‘Is it very serious?’ Kate asked.
‘All depends on the insurance,’ Beatrix replied.
‘I didn’t mean about the loss of the wool. I meant about the row. Will there be a fight? And what chance would an old man like Castillon have against young men like Hal and Burns and company?’
‘Lots,’ said Beatrix sardonically. ‘He’ll have Rick. That’s why Rick’ll go in on his side. And that’ll cool things off.’
‘Why should it?’
Beatrix shrugged.
‘That’s Rick. He just has that effect on everyone.’
About an hour later a car going right through to the coast stopped at Appleton to drop Peg Castillon. The travellers were all given tea and scones on the kitchen veranda and went on their way. Their names had not been asked. They had asked after no one at Appleton. They might have been socially superior to kitchen-veranda tea but they did not expect anything different. Nor were they offered it. It was the traditional tea given to the traveller.
Kate was delighted to see Peg.
‘You quit, Peg?’ Beatrix asked.
‘Oh, Peg … there you are,’ said Annabel. ‘Mother will be so relieved to see you. She’s had a frightful head. She was supposed to do that fine stitching of the minister’s cravats. She said you’d do it.’
‘I wondered what she’d find for me …’ Peg said without animosity. ‘Good old useful Peg!’
‘Why don’t you say “No”?’ Kate asked, feeling brave.
‘I do sometimes,’ said Peg. ‘Then I feel sorry. I think how awful it must be to be Mrs. Weston. What a miserable life! And I feel sorry for her. I might as well give in first go and do whatever she asks me. After all, it’s never very much and is a change from the orchard.’
‘So you see …’ said Beatrix.
Nobody seemed to mind this frank discussion of their mother.
‘What’s doing in Blackwood, Peg? Have they killed your father yet?’
‘Not by a long chalk. He was built to live, not die. If heads roll to-day they won’t be Castillons’.’
‘Where’s Alan?’ Beatrix asked sharply.
Peg looked at her cheerfully.
‘The Westons are more likely to know that than the Castillons.’
‘You’re the weirdest people,’ Kate said. ‘You hate one another … and yet you like one another …’
‘Nobody hates Peg,’ Annabel said quickly. ‘Peg has the loveliest character …’
Peg winked at Kate.
‘Let’s go for a walk, Kate, before we start the sewing bee.’
The sun was high, and hot, so they chose the Blackwood River road that ran past the main entrance to Appleton. The great jarrahs reached their arms overhead shading the road. Here and there a lizard and even a goanna slid out of sight. There was a dead wallaby hit by some passing car.
‘It’s like a cathedral,’ Kate said. ‘These trees …’
‘Primeval forest,’ Peg said. ‘Can you beat it in England?’
‘It’s silly to make comparisons. The two countries are so different. They are not matchable.’
They sat on a log and lit cigarettes. Peg poked at the ground with a black-boy stick.
‘I’m so glad you came to Blackwood, Kate. I like you now. Before you came I hated you.’
Kate drew in a breath. ‘This is it,’ she thought. ‘I’ve got to talk to Peg about Hal … and it’ll be embarrassing.’
‘I like you too, Peg. I like everyone who belongs to Hal. It’s like being in the family.’
‘Hal? Huh! Fat lot it matters to Hal whom anybody likes. He goes his own sweet selfish way. And it’s not so sweet as all that either.’
Kate watched Peg’s face. It was full of a sad resignation.
‘I’d like to tell you, Peg … I really don’t think Hal and I will marry one another. I haven’t said anything to anybody yet …’
‘You don’t have to. Everybody knows. You don’t suppose I’d like you otherwise, do you?’
Kate could only blink.
‘Don’t look so shocked, Kate,’ Peg went on. ‘We all know Hal better than you do. And one look at you told everyone you wouldn’t stand his nonsense too long. You’re not the Peg Castillon type who goes on standing anything for ever.’
‘Why do you love Hal yourself?’
‘He’s so golden.’
The tears sprang into Peg’s eyes. She shrugged.
‘Golden?’
‘Yes. Everything about him shines. The sun on his hair, the glow in his brown eyes when he’s angry. The brown of his skin. The way he walks. Everything.’
Kate felt the scene was unreal and it was not quite decent of Peg to be so uninhibited.
‘I know what you’re thinking, Kate. But it doesn’t matter. Everybody knows me. I don’t bother to pretend any more. About Hal or anything else for that matter. It’s so much easier than walking through life bottling things up. I just out with everything, and people can take it or leave it.’
‘Peg, you’d be absolutely miserable married to anyone like Hal. He’d punish anyone as sensitive as you really are … in spite of what you’re saying … every hour of the day.’
‘I wouldn’t care. I’d have him. He’d be mine.’
‘Nobody ever belongs to anybody,’ Kate said. ‘One can give oneself wholly, but one can never take anyone else wholly. You see, one never really knows … how much … the other has to give.’
Peg took out her handkerchief and blew her nose like a man. Kate felt irritated.
‘Listen, Peg. You want something so much … why don’t you go after it? Why don’t you blow your nose softly to begin with? Why don’t you keep your hair tidy and your face made up … and your clothes neat, and your walk more gainly …?’
She broke off, contrite. Perhaps she had hurt Peg’s feelings beyond repair. But no, Peg was staring into the forest unheedingly.
Kate tried another tack.
‘Peg … why don’t you turn your affection towards someone like Rick Benallen?’
When Kate had uttered these words she felt her heart thumping so loudly and uncomfortably she thought Peg must notice. Days ago she had decided she should do something about Rick and Peg. Now that the words were out she wished indefinably she had not said them.
‘Rick?’ said Peg, turning and looking at Kate. ‘Rick? Why, he’s a closed book. I don’t suppose Rick will ever marry anybody … he just isn’t in the game.’
‘But why not?’
Peg shrugged.
‘Don’t know. He’s odd where women are concerned. Used to have his girl friends when we were growing up. Nobody ever tried to compete for Rick. He always had the best. Girls from town … or the big stations in the North-West. He used to go to Bunbury for the tennis season and up in the North for the cattle mustering. He had a different life from the rest of us. Then when he came back from the war … he just sort of shut up. He’s not interested in women. Except Mrs. Railton.’
‘Mrs. Railton?’
The woman with frizzy hair and the voice like a chaff-cutter?
‘Now don’t go thinking what you are thinking, Kate! They’re friends. She lays his bets for him. He’s always going there … they’ve a house in one of the side streets behind the railway station in Blackwood.’
‘I’m not thinking anything except that she is such a different t
ype from him. What does her husband do?’
‘He contracts for timber cutting. Away with the trucks most of the time. So is she for that matter. She follows the races round the Great Southern districts.’
‘Then what does he see in her?’
‘Heaven only knows. They’re a semi-literate family. They’re Central Europeans … Czechs or Slavs, or something.’
Kate expelled the breath from her chest.
‘Oh!’
‘Mrs. Railton is an Australian really. It’s only her mother who wasn’t. Her father was a timber cutter himself.’
Kate said ‘Oh!’ again, and stared at the ground.
Why had she learned so much more about Rick than even those who’d spent most of their lives near him? Why should she know why he went so often to the Railtons’ house and Peg Castillon not even have a clue?
‘And you’re not going to fall in love with Rick … not even to oblige me?’
Peg laughed.
‘I’m too busy worrying about Hal.’
‘But if Rick fell in love with you.’
‘He wouldn’t. He likes the ones who do their hair and wear their lipstick straight. Preferably those who get off the seven-thirty in pink linen suits with dinky little Sydney hats.’
‘Peg.’
The tears spurted out of Peg’s eyes again. Again she blew her nose in a stentorian fashion.
‘Let’s go back and do the beastly sewing,’ she said.
Kate had been shocked into silence. She felt bewildered. How hopeless was it to try and do anything for Peg. She wanted so much so badly … yet she would do nothing to help herself.
Kate put her hand on Peg’s arm.
‘Peg, if I can help …’
‘You can ditch Hal and go away from Blackwood. But it doesn’t help much really. There’ll be another, and another, and another.’
‘Do you get anything from it, Peg?’
‘Just occasionally, in between loves. He gets lonely or bored and comes to me. But not for long.’
They walked back towards Appleton in silence, Peg periodically blowing her nose and intermittently swishing at the undergrowth with her black-boy stick.
When they reached Appleton gates she turned and looked at Kate.
‘What are you thinking of me, Kate?’
‘What a beastly waste!’
‘What? Of love?’
