The Post at Gundoee

by Amanda Doyle

  THE POST AT GUNDOOEE

  Amanda Doyle

  Lindsay thought she had been rather clever to obtain the post of bookkeeper at Gundooee station in the Australian Outback—although she might be said to have got it under false pretences. But the forbidding station manager. Rod Bennett, didn’t think she had been either clever or amusing...

  CHAPTER 1

  Lindsay Dutten pushed a tendril of brown hair back from her forehead, and sighed.

  It was straight hair of an unremarkable colour—brown, mouse—and inclined to be difficult in the humid summer heat of Sydney. She was resigned to its contrariness, though, in much the same way that she was resigned to the fact of her orphaned status in life, and her unwelcome but unavoidable dependence upon her cousin Carleen, with whom she shared this unit.

  Her sigh, just then, carried a burden of resignation for almost everything Lindsay acknowledged wryly to herself in a spurt of self-honesty. She was one of the doormats of this world, she supposed. There were the givers and the takers in life, and in the same way there were the doormats and those who walked upon them, without sparing a thought that, in cushioning their own feet, they might be trampling a fellow-mortal, more sensitive and inarticulate than they.

  Lindsay wondered, as she carefully spooned small mounds of caviar on to the canapés she was preparing for Carleen’s party tonight, if it were possible to be a doormat and a taker at one and the same time. Lindsay didn’t think such a combination either likely or frequent. In her experience, the doormats were destined to give—sometimes unstintingly—while the takers took as though it were their right, and often stepped heavily upon the doormats’ fingers even as they clutched greedily at the offerings which were being proffered.

  Lindsay’s lips were pursed in a suddenly uncharacteristically mutinous manner, as she pushed her recalcitrant hair back again, and surveyed the trays of dainty and exotic bouchees which she had prepared. About two dozen people, Carleen had said. That meant there weren’t enough yet.

  ‘Make them attractive, but as substantial as possible, will you, darling. I hate stingy eats.’ Carleen’s cool, commanding voice rang in her cousin’s ears, and Lindsay did her best to shut out the memory, as she began to fill tiny vol-au-vent cases with a mixture of creamy smoked blue-cod.

  Carleen hated stinginess, enjoyed luxury, to such an extent that her demands upon Lindsay’s own monetary contribution to the weekly budget had increased out of all proportion to her own just lately.

  ‘After all, it’s my flat, Lindsay,’ Carleen had pointed out reasonably, with that peculiarly one-sided reasoning of which she was sometimes all too capable, ‘and it’s only out of a sense of duty to Mother and Father that I’m letting you share. They’d have worried about you on your own, and goodness knows, you’ve been enough of a bother to them one way and another, without stringing yourself around their necks all your life. I know you didn’t ask for your parents to dump you in this world all alone,’ she added judicially, aware of Lindsay’s uncomfortable flush. ‘Car accidents can happen to anyone. But it was quite decent of Mum to take you in, considering you were only her cousin’s child—and not even her favourite cousin, at that. Anyway, I do think you could contribute more than you do to the running of this place, I really do!’

  ‘But, Carleen, I already give you nearly two-thirds of my salary. Shorthand-typists don’t get as much as models, remember! With what I give you, I’m only left with a few dollars for clothes and things.’ She gestured vaguely. ‘Why can’t we be a bit less extravagant when you—when we entertain?’ she suggested with some temerity. ‘You didn’t have to have oyster cocktails to start with the other night, when that photographer came. I could have done it far more cheaply for you, and just as nicely, with some iced consommé and—’

  ‘Darling, that photographer, as you call him, happens to be the best in the game in this whole city at the moment,’ Carleen interrupted coldly. ‘He’s the entree to the big time, so far as I’m concerned, and if I say you’ll give him oysters, then you’ll give him oysters, do you hear?’

  ‘Yes, Carleen.’

  Her cousin studied her nails critically. They were long nails, beautifully kept, oval, perfect—so perfect that Lindsay suspected that the critical, annoyed appraisal they were receiving was not meant for them at all, but for Lindsay herself!

  ‘I’ll need another three dollars at least from you, Lindsay.’

  ‘Three dollars!’

  ‘At least. I ought to make it four. You haven’t got half the incidental expenses that I have myself. In my profession one can’t afford to let appearances slide, whereas nobody notices a nondescript little typist to-ing and fro-ing, you must admit. Why, you don’t even need to go to the hairdresser, or anything, do you? They’d only tell you that that dead-straight mouse of yours is best kept clean and brushed, and you can do that just as well yourself at home. You’re lucky.’

  Lindsay had fingered the ‘dead-straight mouse’ doubtfully.

  ‘I’ve never thought myself particularly lucky,’ she stated dubiously.

  ‘Then it’s time you started counting your blessings,’ Carleen replied tartly. ‘In the first place, you were lucky that Mum and Dad took you in at all, and I personally think you’ve fallen on your feet being able to share a unit like this with me. You could have ended up alone, couldn’t you, in some crappy boarding place?’

  Lindsay scraped the last of the New Zealand blue-cod from the bowl, and placed the last lid, with some finality, on the last vol-au-vent. Blindly she stared out of the window as she rinsed her hands under the kitchen taps and dried her fingers absently.

  Carleen’s unit, high up on Dover Heights, had a breathtaking view of the harbour. The water today was green rather than blue, choppy with the salt-spumed restlessness of foamy ‘white horses’ that broke before the stiff sea breeze. Yachts of all descriptions scudded about Sails of many colours darted and dipped, hoist by every type of craft, from the jauntily weaving dinghies to the thrusting eighteen-footers and the more stately twelve metres leaning into the wind. The headlands loomed above, jutting like stone-struck warriors on guard, impressively aloof from the dizzy gaiety enacted by the myriad craft in the sparkling water below, impervious to the suck and swell of the Pacific breakers that pounded hungrily against their feet—

  Lindsay was oblivious to the splendour of the scene.

  Her eyes—large, luminous green eyes that were her one singular claim to beauty—were misted and suddenly dreamy. Her mouth—generous and expressive, but too wide and vulnerable altogether—softened into a gentle curve of nostalgia, the mutiny gone. Her tip-tilted nose wrinkled under its scattering of freckles.

  Almost she imagined that she could smell the bush!

  Not the Sydney bush. Not the harbour fringe of eucalypt, nor the mangrove of the northern inlets, nor the banksia and bottlebrush of Kuringai. Not any of those, no.

  What Lindsay imagined for a moment that she could smell was the scent of the real bush—the country place where she had been born. She had only been six years old when her parents had met with that fatal accident and she had been taken away to the city by her mother’s dutiful cousin, but still she could remember those warm, earthy, country smells. There had been a grove of citrus trees at the side of the house, oily and pungent when the leaves were wetted by rain; sweet-perfumed wattle on dark-trunked, blue-foliaged boughs, all fuzzed with clusters of golden-yellow balls; delicate gum-blossom, creamy and fragile. The orchards had been riotous with scented blooms, cerise and pink and white, and after that there had been the fruit, clinging lavishly to sagging branches—apples, peaches, nectarines, apricots, warm to the hand, juicy and luscious—and after those, the plums and winter pears.

  Her recollections, dimmed by her
youth and the passage of time, had taken on a Utopian quality. Her childhood now seemed to her to have been one of happiness, of super-abundance.

  It was difficult to know exactly which of her memories were real, which imagined. She was almost certain that she could remember a pony, a squat little skewbald fellow called Taffy. There had been several dogs, too, living in kennels under the trees at the back of the house. She had been secretly afraid of their bouncing enthusiasm when they ran up to lick her. She could remember tractors, gay with bright paint, droning monotonously over the paddocks as their ploughs churned the soil to a rich tilth, and she still carried in her mind the vague image of a man called Bill, who had allowed her to ride on the footplate as he ploughed, and who had given her boiled sweets from his pocket.

  Lindsay could not recall a single jarring note in that secure life in the country. If there had been any unhappy moments, they had been confined to mere trivialities, such as her secret fear of the dogs.

  Her real unhappiness had come later.

  Mulling it over, she could only conclude, in fairness, that no one was to blame—certainly not the cousins whom she now called Uncle and Aunt, and to whom she would always feel a measure of gratitude for the way in which they had stepped into the breach. They had never actually complained about the additional commitment her presence represented, and it was almost certainly unintentional that they had made Lindsay conscious that she was a nuisance from the very outset. They had placed her in a boarding-school—not the exclusive establishment to which they had sent their own daughter, Carleen, but a quite adequate institution which gave her a proper education, and attended to her physical well-being and development while conveniently ignoring the spiritual wilderness into which a small, lonely child had been plunged.

  Even at school, Lindsay reflected, she had been a doormat. Shyness, uncertainty, and a total lack of affection at her aunt’s house, had all combined to render her withdrawn and self-effacing. She was demonstrative and warm-hearted by nature, but soon learned to curb and suppress these qualities in herself, for fear of a rebuff. She had been unremarkable on the sports field, average in the classroom. In her final year, the headmistress had advised a business course, as Lindsay would be expected to support herself at the earliest opportunity—the uncle and aunt had made this clear in an interview relating to vocational guidance, and Lindsay, who had no particular strong bent in any direction, had been glad to avail herself of her senior’s advice. She had worked diligently, yearning for the time when she could regard herself as independent, no longer a burden upon her relatives. She had followed up her school commercial course with a year of advanced tuition at a special college, and when she passed out, she was proficient not only at shorthand and typing, but also at book-keeping and elementary accountancy.

  The position which she held at present called for neither of these latter qualifications. Perhaps, if she had had a more positive personality, she might have projected herself better at all those interviews, she thought now, wistfully. Instead, she had been miserably shy and over-anxious, terrified that she would be turned down, that those other, more confident applicants would be accepted in her stead.

  They were, of course!

  Lindsay was learning the hard way!

  She knew she had only herself to blame. She had gone home in a mood of bitter self-reproach, and in a fit of reckless despair had blued her entire savings on a natty little linen suit—the sort which her rivals had been wearing at those interviews! It was a basic suit of uncluttered simplicity and excellent cut, and Lindsay was surprised at its improving effect, not only upon her physical aspect, but upon her morale. Gazing at her reflection in the mirror, she had seen a slender, well-proportioned figure, of medium height, dressed in a subtle shade of muted olive that livened the green in her wide, beautiful eyes. Her fly-away hair was flattened submissively against her ears. Her legs, encased in pretty, honey-coloured nylons, seemed depressingly long and coltish to her critical appraisal, but quite neat, nevertheless, and she had lightened her old shoes with a new sand colour to match her cotton gloves.

  The overall effect pleased Lindsay. Her wide mouth curved into an approving smile. Perhaps a touch of lipstick? Those other girls had! Carefully she rouged her lips with a soft peach colour and went, almost gaily, to her next interview.

  Half an hour later, her gaiety had subsided, but an aura of confidence remained. Lindsay knew it was that pretty suit!

  She also knew that, when she took it off and placed it back on its hanger, the new-found poise would probably get hung up along with the suit. But who cared? For the moment—and that was what mattered!—she knew that she felt good and looked good.

  Another half-hour, and Lindsay had acquired a passable job as a stenographer with a respectable firm, and when she took off the olive linen that night, she smoothed it out with careful affection before putting it away, because she knew that its magic had procured her her independence.

  At least, she had thought her independence was assured—but her uncle and aunt had had other ideas.

  ‘That’s nice for you, Lindsay,’ they had said when she told them. ‘Now that you can support yourself, you will be able to move in with Carleen. What a good thing she has that extra room!’

  ‘With—Carleen? But I thought—’

  Lindsay was dismayed. Carleen, five years her senior, had never treated Lindsay with anything but scant civility, or in her kinder moments, amused patronage. Her beauty, poise, and assurance served only to highlight Lindsay’s own feelings of inadequacy, and since she had become established in the top flight of models, she had scarcely bothered with the younger cousin who, to use her own frequent description, had been ‘foisted’ on them.

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘Well’—Lindsay hesitated, striving for tact—‘I thought that at last I would be able to strike out on my own, and relieve you of your responsibility for me. You’ve both been wonderful, and I’m enormously grateful, Aunt, but you have your own lives to lead, things you both want to do, and I just thought I’d like to be—well—self-supporting as soon as possible.’

  ‘You will be self-supporting.’ Aunt Evelyn sounded impatient. ‘Naturally you will contribute to the upkeep of the flat. It will be far more economical for Carleen to run it on two salaries than one, and a great comfort to us to know that you are there to do things for her. A model’s life is extraordinarily demanding, and you know how hopeless that dear child has always been at anything domestic. In her position, she has to entertain a great deal—one has to keep up appearances, you know, and you will be able to relieve her of some of the more mundane tasks in the flat. You’re much better at them than she is.’

  Lindsay stared soberly at the woman who had taken her into her home so readily. (Where might she be otherwise? An orphanage?)

  ‘I do think you might be more gracious about it, Lindsay,’ pursued Aunt Evelyn crisply. ‘After all we’ve done for you, surely it’s little enough to expect of you? You need not mix with Carleen’s friends—in fact, I’m sure she would prefer you to keep in the background. You’re hardly their type, and you’ve always liked to efface yourself whenever possible, so it should suit you both very well. Your uncle and I have this cruise to Japan coming up shortly, too, if you remember. I shall shut up the house, and go away with a peaceful mind. Surely that’s not too much to ask for? A little peace of mind, after all we’ve done for you? If you are enormously grateful, as you say you are, then now is your chance to prove it.’

  ‘Very well, Aunt,’ Lindsay had replied quietly. ‘Does Carleen know? When shall I move my things?’

  ‘Yes, she knows. We’ve discussed it with her, and she agrees that you share with her, so long as you do your bit. Remember, not many young girls are able to go to their very first job from a luxury flat, so it’s to your advantage, too.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ she had been assured with all the sincerity at Lindsay’s command.

  And I have done my best, Lindsay told herself now, w
earily surveying the trays of food which she had come home early to prepare, Carleen having warned that she herself would be late because of a hair appointment.

  She had done her best, but she was not quite sure how much longer she would be capable of carrying on like this.

  Life with Carleen was anything but easy. It was a timeconsuming job on its own, without trying to combine it with an office situation. After more than a year of it, Lindsay felt tired to her very bones, and she knew that her work was suffering. Often she dragged herself home through the peak-hour bustle, only to have to whisk around the unit, tidying up Carleen’s clothes, ironing garments which her cousin had left laid out with a note pinned to them—‘Be a darling, Lindsay’, those notes always pleaded disarmingly—hurriedly preparing innumerable dinners a deux, from which she knew she was expected to efface herself with some tactful excuse when Carleen’s swain of the moment should appear, or more frequently, like tonight, assembling an array of food and cocktails for ‘some of the crowd’. Here again, Lindsay was discouraged from putting in an appearance.

  ‘That’s marvellous!’ Carleen could be generous with her praise. ‘They look perfectly delicious, Lindsay! Now, don’t you bother hanging around. You don’t really hear much noise from your room, do you, sweet? A good thing it’s furthest from the lounge. See you in the morning, then—if I’m awake before you leave for the office. Or would you like me to bring you a coffee later—we’ll be making some, I’m sure?’

  ‘No, don’t bother, Carleen. Goodnight.’

  Lying in her bed, listening to the hubbub of voices, the laughter that sometimes reached screaming point, and which kept her awake far into the night, Lindsay often felt like screaming herself—only it would not have been a scream of merriment, but of sheer hysteria and desperation! She would try to close her mind to those disturbing sounds. Endeavouring to coax herself into that evasive state of sleep, she would conjure up childhood memories of peaceful country life—of lucerne plots with fat sheep grazing, willows trailing their green fronds in the slow-running creek, the lonely cry of a mopoke in the still bush dawn.