by Anne Hampson
‘Why didn’t you say you were taking a stroll?’ The alteration in his voice was almost staggering, as all the harshness had dissolved, and had the idea not been ridiculous in the extreme, Tina could have noted a hint of anxiety in the low vibrancy of his tone.
‘I hadn’t intended to go far, so I thought you’d all be occupied in conversation until I returned. If you had missed me I expected everyone would think I was in my bedroom.’
They had begun walking, Tina having no difficulty in keeping pace with him because he deliberately suited his steps to hers, a circumstance which afforded her no small degree of surprise, simply owing to its being a considerate action. She felt a sudden warmth, knew it was absurd, but there it was. She had no control over the emotion which brought on this warmth, and she was glad of the darkness which hid any tell-tale evidence that might reveal what he must never know.
‘I saw you go,’ he told her quietly.
‘Oh ... did you?’ Again that flood of warmth. He must have been watching her, then. And she had thought he was giving his entire attention to Moira, who had managed to put herself beside him on the verandah. Flo and Mac had also been talking together, while Austin had been in conversation with Oily and Bertha. Having risen from her chair, Tina had stood a moment, but no one looked her way and so she had stolen silently off, into the house and then out by another window. Charles must have been alert all the time, since had he been interested wholly in his lovely companion he would not even have noticed Tina’s absence, let alone have seen her walking from the house, into the purple dimness of the bush.
‘I should have thought,’ Charles was saying with a hint of his old sardonic amusement, ‘that having almost been gored by a scrubber, you would have refrained from strolling off on your own again.’
‘Had I remembered that awful experience,’ she returned without a second’s hesitation, ‘I should certainly have stayed at home.’
‘You’re telling me that you’d forgotten it, completely?’
‘As a matter of fact I had.’
‘One doesn’t ever forget such an experience, Tina.’ Softly-spoken words, challenging but not harsh.
‘You still don’t believe me, do you, Charles?’ Involuntarily she stopped, and found herself staring up into his face. Starlight dimly revealed the stern set jaw and mouth; his eyes were unreadable, but some strange instinct told her that the customary hardness was absent. To her surprise he said,
‘Tell me about it? What did you hear, and see?’
‘Have you had the same experience?’ she queried swiftly, and he nodded.
‘Yes, I have. Tell me,’ he commanded again, and she related everything that had happened. He was nodding absently long before she had finished and she knew a sudden lifting of her spirits because he was soon to say that he believed her. This he did, but asked her how she could think of coming out again after experiencing such a scare.
‘I really didn’t think about it when I started out.’ A small puzzled pause and then, ‘You, Charles—You’re not afraid?’ Strange, she thought, but she herself felt no fear at all so long as he was with her.
‘We’re inside the fences,’ he told her, going on to explain that on the night she had gone out a whole stretch of fence had been down, as a new one was being installed. ‘In any case,’ he went on to add, ‘it’s a hundred to one chance of meeting a scrubber so close to habitation. They usually keep to their own territory.’ Tina said nothing and he continued, ‘Don’t let my words give you too much confidence, though. It’s possible to meet up with a scrubber, so don’t ever stray outside the fences.’
His tones were low and pleasant; Tina wondered greatly at this situation in which she found herself. It was so unreal, after all the animosity that had existed between Charles and herself. She would never have expected him to drop his cold and censorious manner towards her—no, not at this particular time when she was responsible for hurting him by causing trouble between him and his father.
‘I’ll remember what you say, Charles.’ She was eager to appear tractable ... even meek, if by so doing she could make him like her a little. Fleetingly her thoughts strayed to Moira. She must be wondering where Charles had gone—or perhaps he had mentioned that he was going after Tina. If so, Moira would be far from pleased at being left. Tina added after a little while, ‘Thank you for coming out after me. I might have got lost again.’
He paused, momentarily silent. She had the impression that his instinct was to admonish but that he was guarding against saying anything which would bring about a renewal of the dissension which had existed between them. This conclusion, staggering though it was, became borne out the instant he spoke.
‘Ours is a hostile and dangerous country, Tina, and it behooves us all to treat it with respect. It’s not only wild bulls we have to fear; it’s the terrain itself. But you must have heard the men talking of the dangers of straying too far from the homestead?’ She nodded, faintly wondering when he would begin to walk on again ... yet she was happy just to stand and talk.
‘Yes, I have heard them. I’ve heard many times about whole families who’ve left their cars and wandered off, trying to find habitation, or water. They’re usually found dead.’
‘The first rule when travelling in the Outback is never to leave your vehicle. Remain with it and someone is bound to come along some time; leave it and you’ll never be found—not alive, that is.’
‘I suppose people leave their vehicles when they have a breakdown? They get worried.’
‘Mainly it’s when they run out of water or petrol. But this should never happen, because if they’ve listened, or read, then they make sure their supplies are adequate for their journey. It’s only the inexperienced who meet with mishaps.’
‘You say it’s a hostile and dangerous country, but you mean only the bush—and the desert, of course?’
‘Of course. Our towns are just like any others.’ He glanced down into her face, an odd expression in his eyes. This she vaguely noted, for he had switched on his torch again, as if preparing to move on. ‘I expect you hate the Outback?’ An unexpected question yet one which seemed to hold a most important element beneath the surface.
‘I could be happy here—’ She cut off, half regretting the spontaneous response to his inquiry, for it must sound strange indeed to Charles’s ears. Obviously it did, as surprise jerked his head.
‘You could be happy?—actually happy!’ Before Tina could produce a reply he went on, ‘What about the gay life to which you’ve been used?’
She blushed and lowered her head.
‘This is different ... it’s more real, somehow...’ Silence, profound and long. When eventually Charles spoke his voice was edged with surprise and disbelief.
‘You sound as if you could ... settle here?’
‘I’m not so pleasure-depraved as you’ve always imagined,’ she responded quietly, and she was impelled by some force to add, ‘I might have been a butterfly once, and an idle doll in continuous pursuit of pleasure, but you must remember, Charles, that Moira and I had been thoroughly spoiled for a number of years—Oh, please don’t think I’m blaming Father. He’s wonderful and I love him— truly. But he was too indulgent with us, and we weren’t at all appreciative, or grateful for what he did for us. We took it all for granted; but you do, when you’ve been used to it since ever you can remember.’ She paused a moment, half expecting Charles to take advantage of her hesitancy to put in some remark calculated to make her flinch, or squirm, but he remained silent, waiting for her to continue. ‘I must admit I could—could twist Father round my little finger, but I wasn’t the conscienceless little brat you said I was.’
‘So you heard that from Father, did you?’ He was in no way put out by her words; on the contrary, his innate confidence was more apparent now than it had been for the last five minutes or so.
‘Not all of it. That about my being a conscienceless brat I overheard myself. You were talking to Father in the garden, one time when you were in Engl
and.’
To her amazement he laughed.
‘Well, Tina, I’m not intending to apologize. At the time, it was true.’
‘At the time?’ she repeated a little breathlessly. ‘Have you changed your opinion of me?’ What was she trying to do—flirt with him? Of a surety she was using all her energies to dispel the opinion he once had of her. How strange this situation, she mused again. At dinner Charles had ignored her. Then on coming out to find her he was ready to subject her to wrathful censure—of this she was convinced. But somehow, and for some unfathomable reason, his manner had undergone an almost unbelievable change and he had not displayed any appreciable degree of anger at all. Just that one initial flare, and then this rather pleasant conversation, out here in the lonely wilderness of the bush.
‘I must admit,’ said Charles surprising her yet again, ‘that your behaviour since coming here has for the most part been at variance with what I expected. For one thing, I’ve been waiting for you to jib at working in the kitchen. That you accepted it has amazed me.’
She stared at him wonderingly.
‘I didn’t think you were noticing,’ she murmured on a faintly husky note. The fact of his having noticed afforded her immense pleasure. She had believed all along that he had no interest in her whatsoever. Moira, yes; he did appear to have an interest in her right from the start. It was this apparent differentiation which had upset Tina and been one of the chief causes of her deciding to persuade Austin to insist on taking her away from here. Now, the very last thing she wanted was to get away from here.
‘You seem to have forgotten that I was to report to Father periodically,’ Charles reminded her, and absently she nodded, her mind occupied by another matter, and although she feared the mention of it would bring an end to this pleasant interlude she knew also that there would never be a more opportune moment for voicing her request.
‘Charles ... Father is insisting on my going back to England with him, but as you know, I want to remain here. If he asks you to make me go, will you please tell him that the decision is mine?’ Charles had stiffened as she spoke and she waited breathlessly for evidence of the bitterness he had previously evinced, and for the disdain she expected to hear in his voice.
Instead, she caught nothing more alarming in his tones than curiosity as he asked why she was so anxious to remain at Farne River Downs.
‘I should have thought,’ he continued in the same accents of puzzled inquiry, ‘that you’d welcome the chance of getting away from here—and from me.’ He had begun to walk on again and Tina fell into step beside him.
Gently she said,
‘I’ve just told you I could be happy in the Outback.’ A strange and profound silence followed; Tina was reminded of his incredulous exclamation on first hearing her say this.
‘You said that the reason why you wanted to leave was because, in your opinion, you hadn’t been treated fairly,’ Charles reminded her at last. ‘Are you no longer of that opinion?’
An awkward question to answer, since Tina still felt she had been treated unfairly. With sudden temerity she decided to counter it by a question of her own.
‘Do you think I was treated fairly, Charles?’
Another silence. Glancing sideways at him, she noted the tightening of his mouth and jaw. He said at length,
‘Things are not always what they appear to be on the surface.’
Astounded by such a remark, Tina maintained a baffled silence while she endeavoured to fathom out its meaning. At last she said,
‘I don’t understand, Charles?’
‘I didn’t expect you would,’ almost inaudibly, for he was now in a mood of preoccupation as if he himself were dwelling pensively on his own remark. ‘Never mind it, though. At present it isn’t important.’
‘At present?’ she repeated, still baffled.
‘Forget it,’ shortly, and he asked again why she had changed her mind about leaving Farne River Downs.
‘I think I told you,’ she replied quietly. ‘I’ve done wrong, and by refusing to take advantage of the situation I’ve brought about, I hope to convince you of my sincerity when I say I want to make amends.’
To her surprise he stopped, and turning, looked deeply into her eyes, switching on the torch and holding it high above her head in order to enable him to see her face more clearly. She stood looking up at him, deeply conscious that his nearness, and the lonely setting of the starlit bush, were combining to send her pulses racing.
‘You sound sincere—’ The words seemed to come from him against his will, and yet he added, in the pleasantest tones he had ever used to her, ‘And you look sincere ... your eyes—’ The torch was snapped off, and lowered with an almost vicious movement as Charles began walking on again with a speed and abruptness that startled her. Eyes—Thoughts flew naturally to what she had once overheard Charles say to his father. Scoffingly he had dismissed Austin’s excuse that it was the pleading way Tina looked at him which rendered him unable to resist any request she might make. The female was not breathing who could captivate him merely by using her eyes, Charles had asserted emphatically.
And now Charles seemed himself to be affected by the way she looked at him. He also seemed furious because of this. Looking back over their conversation Tina found her mind grasping only one sentence, ‘Things are not always what they appear to be on the surface’, and the most stunning idea came to her, depriving her of clear thought for one long incredulous moment. Could it be possible, she managed to ask herself at last, that Charles had been deliberately testing her ... for some important reason of his own? Had he been driving her purposely to discover just how much she would take? Was it his object to transform her into a ‘nice’ girl ... the sort of girl he could care for...?
Ridiculous and unbelievable as all this appeared to be, Tina could not altogether dismiss it, since the conversation carried on during this stroll served in many ways to strengthen it. Several puzzling aspects of the conversation would be explained by the
fact of his caring—‘No,’ she whispered fiercely as the first flare of optimism began to fade, ‘I mustn’t even dare to hope for such a thing!’
Charles’s pace slackened as Tina began to do a little skip now and then to keep up with him; he was lost in a faraway mood of preoccupation and she wondered what he was thinking about. This was revealed to her when at last he spoke, with a sudden, unexpected harshness.
‘I take it that your stay here is meant to be in the nature of a self-inflicted punishment?’ His abrupt stop left Tina with the impression that he had checked some further question, and for some unfathomable reason the question which leapt to her mind was, ‘There could be nothing else that influences you?’
Her nerves tensed; she felt strange prickles running along her spine. If that really was what he had held back then it meant that he wanted to hear that she had an altogether different reason for wanting to remain at Farne River Downs. There was no doubt, she accepted at last, that some significant change had come over Charles during the last half hour or so. His coldly formal manner, his disdain and contempt, his bitterness and condemnation—Where were they now? True, there had been occasions in the past when he had dropped his formality and adopted a more friendly attitude towards her, but she would not have expected any such melting now. On the contrary, she would have found it much more feasible had he walked with her in a mood of frigid silence, angry at having to come out and look for her before she strayed too far away from the homestead.
She tried to imagine what he would say were she to tell him the thought had occurred to her that, given time, he might come to care for her, and that this had in some small way added to her determination not to leave. What she did say was,
‘I suppose it is partly that, but also, I feel that Father will stay on a little while, and you’ll then make up your quarrel.’
‘Is it so very important to you that we make up our quarrel?’
‘Charles,’ she responded with the merest trace of impatienc
e, ‘you know full well it is!’
‘Because of your love for Father?’ The unmistakably odd inflection in his voice left Tina in no doubt at all that here again was a wish for her to give another reason, and this time her heart actually gave a little leap. These pointers must be leading somewhere! Excited, and rather breathless, she stared up into his face. In profile it usually appeared harder than ever, but now there was a distinct softness about it, and as her excitement increased Tina forgot all about the small stones that invariably were to be found on the bush paths, and suddenly she tripped and felt herself falling.
‘Oh,’ she cried as Charles picked her up. ‘The spinifex tussocks—they do hurt!’
‘Your arms are scratched. You silly girl; what made you do that?’ Anxious his voice, and he was not making any attempt to put her from him. Instead, he was soothingly touching the scratches on her arms as he examined them by the light of his torch. ‘No blood has been drawn, but you’re going to feel some pain for an hour or so.’
‘Yes—’ She raised her head and looked into his anxious eyes, her own eyes bright because of her pleasure at his touch and because of the thrill of being so close to him. Her lips parted; she was pleading for his kiss.
‘We must be getting back,’ he decided, releasing her. ‘As I informed the others I was coming to look for you, they’re bound to be getting anxious by now.’ Tina’s excitement ebbed and she felt flat and depressed, her thoughts bringing the memory of Charles in the garden with Moira. He had not hesitated about kissing her...
CHAPTER TEN
Although he had seemed anxious about the others becoming worried at their long absence, Charles seemed in no great hurry to get back to the homestead. He walked slowly, in a mood of preoccupation, remote from Tina who, walking beside him, forgot everything but the haunting stillness and the beauty of the Australian night. Above the dark mysterious bushlands the Southern Cross flared across the sky in which a billion stars twinkled; in the misted purple distance the summits of the Mac-Donnell Ranges merged imperceptibly with the high vault of the heavens; wattles stirred in the breeze, spraying the air with their exotic perfume. A crescent moon came up over the mountains, brilliant and knife-edged in its clarity of outline. Suddenly the silence was shattered by the distant spine-chilling cry of a dingo. Shuddering, Tina pressed involuntarily closer to her companion. He glanced down and she looked up; Charles smiled as their eyes met and pulsations of pleasure and excitement passed through Tina’s body. She had had ‘crushes’ on one or two occasions, had believed that the particular boy of the moment was ‘the one’, but never had she been struck with such devastating force as she was now. And Charles of all people! It was rather ironical that after years of disliking him she should fall in love with him in a few short weeks.
