by Walker, Lucy
`With Cassie’s best hot scones in attendance I see,’ Andrew said. He looked directly at Jeckie, and she saw his eyes were really an unusual blue-grey with tiny gold flecks splintered through the colour. They were taking her in — those eyes — yet somehow shielding his own self, from anyone who looked into his eyes.
`Did I hear you say something about not being called Juliet?’ he enquired, still not smiling, yet being mildly interested.
`Generally I’m called Jeckie. But Aunt Isobel seems to prefer Juliet.’
`I have a feeling you have had a change of mind,’ he said quietly. ‘You were very firm about your other name last night. Or did I mis-hear you?’
He was still looking at her. Jeckie’s eyes met his eyes. `If Aunt Isobel prefers — ‘ she began with a determined kind of dignity.
Andrew actually smiled. It was not a big smile but it was rather a nice one.
`You are — let me see — a fourth generation Ashenden, aren’t you, Jeckie?’ he said. ‘I can see you have some of the Grand Old Man’s fire in you.’
His calling her `Jeckie’ mollified her a little.
`Well, of course I don’t remember Andrew the First,’ she said carefully choosing her words. ‘He lived so long ago, didn’t he? I wasn’t even born — ‘
`Nor was I born then,’ Andrew said. ‘But Aunt Isobel remembers him. She has quite a memory. You must ask her to tell you about Mallibee in its first and second generations. Thank you, Jane. Yes, that tea is just right. Jeckie, would you pass me the sugar, please?’
Jeckie had been won over by Andrew’s smile, but having to be reminded of her manners distressed her. She felt she
had fallen from grace again.
‘Where is Barton?’ she asked as she passed the sugar. And as if to change the subject. ‘Doesn’t he like tea and hot scones too? He was very kind to me last night when he picked me up at the airport. He told me about the country — ‘ she wavered. Andrew was watching her face
her.
How stupid can I be? she thought. He’s at home, and I’m not. I’d never beat him at this kind of silent interroga-tion. He only has to look at me — or anyone — that way …
‘Jane dear,’ Aunt Isobel interposed. ‘Pass the scones to Jeckie. She seems to have finished her wheat biscuit. Oh dear! I called her Jeckie, didn’t I? Well, so be it.
Though it’s such a pity. Juliet is a beautiful name.’
Barton had come through the passage door to the veranda.
‘Who’s talking about Juliet?’ he asked with a grin. ‘And if we have our Juliet — where, and who is Romeo?’
‘Now you all know why I am not called Juliet,’ Jeckie declared. ‘Those jokes weren’t funny even when I was only three.’
‘Well, may this Romeo sit down beside Juliet, Jeckie?’ Barton persisted, still smiling. He edged the chair out with the toe of his very dusty desert boot and sat down. He put his elbows on the table and leaned forward and sideways to look into her face. `Did you pick that seat where you are sitting, girl, because you knew in advance that this seat where I am now sitting is mine?’
‘Don’t talk nonsense, Barton,’ Aunt Isobel said sharply. ‘I invited I — Jeckie to sit there. It’s much too early in the morning for teasing. Nobody is in the mood at this hour. Jul-Jeckie, my dear, pay no attention to Barton when he is in this mood.’
‘Barton dear,’ Jane Baker said, peace-making. `Do have some scones while they’re hot. And here’s your tea. Andrew will pass you the sugar.’
‘Just to sweeten me up,’ Barton said, taking the tea then helping himself to a scone. ‘I’m not going out to the cattle camp this morning. Andrew is not pleased, are you, brother? I’m going to take Jeckie a few miles up over Mallibee’s hump so she can see how Westerly-Ann
Mine — and a certain Joe Blow — are together conniving to take lumps of Mallibee from us and send it off to sea. Jeckie, would you like to see for yourself how a land-lubbing mountain range looks like ending up as seafaring lumps of black gold?’
`Yes, Barton, I’d love to go with you,’ Jeckie said eagerly. ‘That is … if Aunt Isobel … thinks ..
‘You must do what you would like, my dear. There’s plenty of time for you to see the homestead and its workings later. Quite like a village, aren’t we, Jane dear? Andrew, do you think it advisable for Barton to take Jul … Jeckie so far out on her first day? It’s quite an exhausting trip and she travelled a great distance yesterday.’
‘Barton will please himself, I imagine,’ Andrew said drily. ‘And what pleases Barton seems on appearances to please Jeckie.’ He looked up from the second half of the scone which he had been buttering. ‘Barton,’ he said shortly. ‘I’ll want you out at the Number Five Bore next week to start the shut-down. So perhaps you had better get your other goings and comings over during the rest of this week. Sheep, as well as cattle, remember, is the business of Mallibee Downs.’
‘I hear you, brother. Funny, but that’s just how I’d worked things out myself.’ He looked at Andrew challengingly. ‘You don’t mind if I rob you all of our cousin Jeckie’s company for today?’
Jeckie’s gaze moved from Barton to Andrew. Somehow she found herself waiting uneasily for Andrew’s answer. She felt like a bundle of goods being subtly passed, in some mysterious way, from one brother to the other. Then back again. She remembered that outrageous question of Barton’s: Which of us are you going to marry, Jeckie?
Was this business of marrying the last outstanding shares of Mallibee back into the Ashenden family something more than a joke in bad taste? Was bartering-ofbrides the inthing amongst the Ashendens of today?
Jane Baker looked at Jeckie, anxious to catch her eyes.
‘May I pass you something?’ Jeckie asked. She was embarrassed because she felt her colour rising.
‘No, Jeckie dear, I’ve quite finished, thank you. I just
wondered if you would like to come to the kitchen and meet Cassie and the other girls. They’re all dying to meet you. We don’t often have visitors so far across the outback as this. Sheila was our last visitor and that was some time ago — ‘
Jeckie knew instinctively that nice Jane Baker was again changing the mood and the subject at the breakfast table. No wonder Aunt Isobel always addressed her as ‘Jane dear’.
Jeckie nodded. ‘Yes, please. That is, if Aunt Isobel will excuse me.’
`Of course, my dear. But don’t be too long. You must get ready to go with Barton. Andrew, could I have a few words with you in the office when you’re ready? There’s the order for the homestead stores to go through.’
`Certainly. I will be with you in ten minutes.’
Andrew was speaking to Aunt Isobel, but Jeckie had the uneasy feeling his eyes followed her as she moved along the veranda with Jane.
What — she wondered — did those intelligent, discerning eyes really discover about her anyway?
CHAPTER FIVE
Jeckie followed Jane down the passage towards the kitchen regions. Half of her noticed how wide and roomy the side passage was. Very comfortable and civilized was Mallibee’s homestead. The other half was thinking—
`Funny, but it was the mention of that mysterious person Joe Blow that made me really want to go with Barton. Otherwise — well, there’s no purpose in making Andrew angry. Perhaps he’s not really angry, and doesn’t even care. He’s thinking of the cattle camp where Barton would be needed and the water bore that has to be shut down sooner than later.’
Jeckie met Cassie — a very large, benign cook with a wide
smile, white flashing teeth in an ebony face. She too,
like Jane Baker, had descended from families that had begun their life on Mallibee at the time when the first Andrew Ashenden had taken up this million-acre run. He had been given this acreage by the Government in recognition of his pioneering work in the days when the outback regions had not yet been explored. Some parts, such as back of the ranges, weren’t explored even to this day. Cassie’s people had lived along the creek-bed then,
and had soon made friends with the first of the Ashendens. Mallibee had remained their home ever since.
Two young girls ran giggling from the kitchen, their dark eyes flashing, as Jeckie and Jane appeared in the doorway.
`Don’t you take notice of those fellas,’ Cassie warned, but in rich, comfortable tones. `They’m showin’ off. They gotta go down the school about now anyway — ‘
`The school?’ Jeckie asked in surprise. ‘Has Mallibee enough people on it to run a school?’
Jane Baker pretended to be busy poking about in the pantry, but Jeckie guessed she was really letting Cassie do the talking. The kitchen was Cassie’s realm.
`That’s right,’ Cassie said. ‘Andrew Boss sent Minna — the big one — down to college in Perth to be a teacher. Now she’s come back alla-time here, and teaches the other children proper. What you think, eh, Jane?’
Jane reappeared from the cavernous pantry.
‘Yes, that’s right, Jeckie. Minna is Cassie’s daughter and she is a very clever girl. She did very well at college. She wanted to come back here to her own country. For that we were all thankful. She runs the school beautifully.’
‘I want to know everything about the homestead all at once,’ Jeckie said. ‘There’s so much to see — but I’ve said I would go with Barton — ‘
‘Don’t you worry, Miss Jeckie,’ Cassie went on, busily pounding and turning dough on a large board. ‘There’s plenty time. You see everything tomorra. Or maybe nex’ week. How long you stayin’, eh? Miss Sheila now, she stayed two months. That’s why those two girls ran off giggling. They gettin’ ready to start singin’ and dancin’ to kep you company. Tha’s altogether the way Miss Sheila was — ‘
`Yes, I know her quite well.’ Jeckie nodded her head.
She did indeed know her cousin Sheila very well. Sheila was bright and very social - that was true. But -
Oh wen, Jeckie thought. Perhaps I’m wrong -and Sheila is less selfish and much nicer than I have thought. Anyone with those all-seing diagnostic eyes of Andrew would never be taken in. Girls weren’t always the best judges of other girls: especially when they happened to be cousins. Well - distant cousins, anyway.
Jeckie was so wrapped up in these thoughts she hardly noticed she had said goodbye to Cassie and the dough-board, and was following Jane to the large back veranda.
‘This is where the staff have their meals,’ Jane was saying. ‘Isn’t it lovely with those green creeper-covered walls? And look at the scarlet bougainvillma along the yard fence! We wouldn’t have all that greenery, and those lovely trees, if the homestead hadn’t been placed by a water hole.’
It’s like an oasis in a desert,’ Jeckie said with a touch of wonder as she took in the colourful world of bougainvilla, tall whitetrunked gum trees with their pale down-pointing green leaves, the oleanders and the green lawns and shrubbery. `So rich and beautiful, isn’t it? Then way out there, there’s nothing but spinifex. Miles and miles and miles of spinifex. I could see it all last night, but only by moonlight. It was like a wasteland. So lonely and deserted too.’
‘Once people live long enough in the outback they become addicted to it,’ Jane said. ‘If they go away they’re never really happy till they come back to it. It has its surprises for one thing. You’ll learn all about them from Barton.’
‘Our farm down in the south west is so rich and green looking. Out there is like a different world ..
`Don’t make up your mind too quickly against it, Jeckie. I hope you’ll stay long enough to love it. The land, I mean. ‘This station is the cradle of your people, as it is of mine.’
‘Yes, I know.’ Jeckie was thoughtful. ‘Great-Great-Grandfather Andrew came from England as a very young man, didn’t he? He was a surveyor and made these wonderful exploration trips into the outback with a camel train and the help of friendly Aborigines- ‘
There was a note in her voice as if wonder had crept into it. Not only for the first time but unexpectedly too. It boggled her imagination to think of what her great-great-grandfather had done. Come across this terrible plain, never knowing if they’d strike water again. So many of the early explorers had died of thirst out here in the outback. Why had she never thought of Mallibee this way before?
Jane gave her arm a gentle tap.
`So you see, Jeckie, we don’t laugh when Miss Isobel speaks of him as “Andrew the First”. He really was the First, you know. The first white man ever to travel into these regions, and see them in their natural wild state.’
`No. I won’t laugh,’ Jeckie said. ‘But I didn’t laugh out loud, did I? Yet you know I was, well, sort-of sceptical?’
‘Everyone has a little laugh about the way Miss Isobel speaks of her grandfather — your great-great-grandfather. She remembers him, of course, and she’s a very elderly lady now. But she has never left Mallibee — except when she went to school. It is her domain. She guards it, as well as loves it. All she needs now is to see Andrew and Barton happily settled and —’ she broke off.
Jeckie realized Jane was reading her a kindly lecture for her own sake, as well as for Aunt Isobel’s sake. Yet here again she could hear the faint echo of those family discussions down south. Isobel is writing all round the family relations. She’s anxious to patch up old quarrels. She thinks perhaps the younger generation — girls like Jeckie and Sheila — should make an effort. Something might come of it. There are two very eligible bachelors up there— and they’d be only second cousins. Or would it be third?
In many ways Jeckie had heard of those surreptitious conversations amongst cousins, uncles and aunts. She’d been indifferent. After all, families were always funny if you looked at them from the aspect of distant relationships. Quite a circus, she had privately called them.
The only thing she hadn’t heard was that Sheila Bowen — that very pretty, very social third cousin of hers — had indeed made a visit to Mallibee.
Now she had come herself — but for runaway reasons which her pride would never have let her disclose to anyone else. She wondered what had been Sheila’s reasons.
Jeckie’s pride had been lacerated. But with that pride she would get over her heartbreak. She just had to be determined about it !
Now here she was, standing on Mallibee’s north veranda looking at the gay bougainvillea along the yard fence and the blaze of hibiscus and oleander in Aunt Isobel’s jungle garden in the corner. Round by the side veranda were the pot-plants. Jeckie had looked at them too.
Whether it was the change of customs, or change of scenery, she wasn’t sure, but she was beginning to feel better. Different anyway.
Kind, smiling Jane-dear was touching her arm, making her feel welcome, all over again.
But not to show feelings now! She might get herself another pair of wet eyes.
Best get ready to go with Barton.
‘I’m going to enjoy myself,’ she said aloud. ‘Jane dear — that’s what I’m going to call you — Jane dear. You’re being very kind to me. I mean to enjoy myself, and I hope — ‘
`Why, Jeckie!’ Jane said with a laugh. ‘You sound as if you had been afraid you were not going to enjoy yourself.’
‘I wasn’t sure … I didn’t think enough about how you would all take me. I just didn’t think Now I’m sorry I was sort-of scared —’
‘My dear, we’re all sort-of scared when we go to a new place amongst strange people. Do you know I only go south once in a blue moon? To the dentist, or to do some special shopping — things like that. I feel sick for days beforehand. And very sick the first night and day in a strange hotel. Then quite suddenly I get over it. Then I begin to have a lovely time.’
It was Jeckie’s turn to laugh. ‘Thank you for being so nice about it, Jane dear. You don’t really know what a meanie I was before I came. Even when I first arrived too. Perhaps one day I’ll tell you about it —’
‘Well, I’m a good listener. And, Jeckie? Thank you for putting my name so nicely. Here comes Barton with
the Land-Rover. Run and get y
our sun hat or he’ll start blaring that wretched horn just to annoy Miss Isobel. Barton really enjoys being irritating sometimes. Oh — and Jeckie, there’s a jar of special lotion on your dressing table. I put it there. Put plenty on your face and arms. On the back of your neck too. That’s where the sun strikes hardest. But be quick, dear!’
Jeckie was already half-way through the kitchen, heading for the front half of the homestead.
`I will, I will!’ she called back. Her young girl’s voice suddenly rang like chimes through the great old kitchen.
`That one hasn’t taken long to have a shine for Barton, eh? What you think, Miss Jane?’ Cassie asked.
`If that means she is going to enjoy herself and be happy with all of us, including Barton, Cassie, I hope she has,’ Jane remarked as she made her way through the kitchen.
‘Um!’ Cassie addressed the lumps of dough she was deftly dropping into bread tins. ‘Maybe Andrew likes that one Sheila. An’ Barton might maybe like this one Jeckie. That’ud jes’ about suit Miss Isobel all right. This old Cassie’s no fool about reading right inside Miss Isobel’s head.’
The morning land breeze blew coolly as the Land-Rover ricocheted over the gravel and flintstone track northwestwards. It was an empty land. So endless, not monotonous, yet sort-of empty. To Jeckie it was uncanny and not quite credible. It was a flat, red-brown country, so aged it was grotesque — yet in so striking and exciting a way, it filled her with wonder. The stony track wound and stretched on and on as if for ever. In the distance, blue-hazed hills broke the north skyline and everywhere grew the spinifex grass — here in humps and there in widespread misshapen mats. And the heat already was terrific.
‘So different — ‘ Jeckie said, thinking aloud.
`From what? The green grasses and big trees where you come from? That’s more than a thousand miles away,’ Barton said.
`I know. How does anything grow here at all? The spinifex and few clumps of mulga
`The Wet. It can pour in high summer. Cyclones mostly.
Even flood. The creeks run bankers and the track’s impass-able. Then there’s seepage through the cracks in the hills — back in the ranges.’
