Walkabout Wife

by Dorothy Cork

  Narrunga proved to be a small town, and there was a strong smell of sulphur in the air, from the artesian water, she discovered later. The hotel was a reasonably modern-looking one-storied building, and a few fan-shaped travellers' palms made patterns on its white walls, that were just now flushed to gold by the richly coloured evening light.

  The taxi driver carried Edie's bags into the coolness of the lobby and when she asked him, 'How much do I owe you?' he told her with a friendly grin, 'You're all right, miss—it's all been settled.'

  A room had been booked for her, she discovered at the reception desk. She signed the register and was given a key and told which way to go, but she had to carry her own bags.

  `Now what?' she thought, frustrated and mystified, as she dropped her two bags on the floor and closed the door behind her. She looked around her quickly. Her room was largish, simply and coolly furnished, and equipped with its own small bathroom. The window looked away from the street into a dusty garden where the pink and white of oleanders mingled with the more flamboyant colours of cascading bougainvillea. Tired after the long day of travelling, Edie moved to survey herself rather dejectedly in the mirror. Her brown eyes were shadowed and her mouth drooped, and altogether she didn't live up to the gaiety of her red dress. She grimaced at herself, remembering how minutely she had examined her face in the mirror not very long ago. For what? To be met by an impersonal taxi driver and brought to this hotel. It was all a bit of an anticlimax. What on earth was she supposed to do next? Find her own way to Dhoora Dhoora cattle station? She'd fully expected Drew Sutton to meet her, but perhaps he was as shy and gauche as Barb predicted and hadn't been able to screw up the courage to meet her. With a sigh of frustration, Edie went into the bathroom to freshen up.

  When she emerged, she rang through to reception, using the telephone on the bedside table, hoping not very optimistically that a message might have come for her.

  Much to her surprise, there was a message.

  `Oh, sorry, love,' the girl said laconically. 'It slipped my mind—there's a letter waiting here for you. You can come along and get it whenever you like.'

  Feeling braced, but also apprehensive in case Drew Sutton had had second thoughts and left her stranded, Edie hurried along to get her letter, which she read standing in the lobby, aware that already the light had

  almost gone from the sky. Her eyes skimmed down the small half page of a handwriting that was familiar, though just now, to her rather jaundiced eye, it didn't look nearly so reassuring as it seemed to have looked before. 'Dear Alfreda,' she read, 'I hope you had a comfortable journey and that the taxi was on time. I shall not be in Narrunga until after you arrive, unfortunately. However, that should give you time to get your breath and tidy yourself up before we meet. I suggest the hotel dining room at seven-thirty. We can talk things over while we eat. Till then—Drew Sutton.'

  Suddenly excitement sprang up in her again. In half an hour she'd be meeting him. And this letter—she read it again with intense concentration as if it might give up the secrets of the writer to her. Brief and to the point again—no romantic messages or suggestions about getting to know each other before they made any decisions. They were to talk things over. No one would guess that the final object of their meeting was, in fact, marriage.

  Edie folded the letter away and slipped it in her handbag, then after a momentary hesitation made her way back to her room. If she stepped on it, she'd have time for a shower before seven-thirty, and most certainly she was going to change her clothes. Her dress didn't look nearly so fresh as it had when she'd put it on this morning.

  As she stood under the hot shower, she reflected that at least it had been considerate of Drew Sutton to give her time to tidy up and catch her breath before having to face him. He couldn't be a recluse if he understood women as well as that. Why on earth did he have to advertise to get himself a wife, then? Well, soon she would know it all.

  Determined for some vague reason to look her best,

  she chose a powder blue dress of Swiss cotton. Carefully packed with tissue, it didn't show a crease, and it was a nice compromise between evening and day wear. It had a tucked hemline and its camisole top and narrow straps made the most of her smooth shoulders. She left her dark hair loose, and fastened small heart-shaped silver earrings in her ears and clipped a silver bracelet on her wrist. High-heeled silvery blue shoes completed her outfit.

  In the doorway of the hotel dining room she paused. It was not a large room and not many of the tables were occupied, and she looked about her warily, trying to spot the cattleman, but she couldn't see a man among the half dozen or so there remotely likely to be Drew Sutton. There was only one man sitting alone—fat, red-faced, and when he looked in her direction he gave no sign that he was waiting for anyone. Thank heavens for that, Edie breathed inwardly, as she allowed the waitress to show her to a table and hand her the menu.

  She was feeling annoyed again by now. It was pretty mean and thoughtless to keep her on edge like this. He didn't understand women after all. The thought entered her head that the whole thing might turn out to be a great big hoax, and for a moment she wanted to get up and run. But at five hundred dollars plus the cost of those air tickets from Sydney, it would be quite an expensive hoax ...

  Telling the waitress with a pleasant smile that she wasn't ready to order yet, Edie decided to give him a quarter of an hour to put in an appearance, and if he hadn't turned up by then, she'd walk out and he could go to the devil.

  `May I sit down here?' a masculine voice said into her thoughts, and Edie raised her eyes to find a tall, lean, and stunningly handsome man looking down at

  her. She stared hard. A tanned face, a thick wave of smoky brown hair over an intelligent forehead, silvery grey eyes that looked like chips of ice against the dark warmth of his skin, teeth that showed fantastically white in a smile that shook her He wore a satin striped shirt that had the merest hint of pink in it, a black tie and black trousers.

  Wow! She had to be dreaming! She'd never seen a real live man with such shattering good looks, and her heart pounded madly as she told him reluctantly, `I'm sorry, I'm waiting for someone.'

  `For me, I imagine,' he drawled. 'That's if you're Alfreda Asher. I can't see anyone else who could possibly be she, and as it's'—he consulted the gold watch on his suntanned wrist—'seven forty-one, I took a chance on you.'

  Edie took a deep-breath, swallowed and said weakly, sure now that she must be dreaming, 'Are you—Drew Sutton?'

  `That's right,' he confirmed, and sat down opposite her, leaning forward slightly to look at her with concentrated intensity. Edie leaned back, and tried to recover from shock. Barb simply wasn't going to believe this. A man like someone you dreamed about!—not a hayseed in sight. She looked up and met his eyes and flinched as the realisation struck her that she had as good as contracted to be his wife. Oh God! What was she thinking of? Suddenly she was appalled right through to the centre of her soul.

  She said nervily, `I—I thought you'd be here before me. Or did you—did you want to see what I was like first?'

  `Oh, I'd have made myself known whatever you looked like,' he said quizzically, and his voice wasn't the slow drawling countrified one she had given him in

  her imagination. Nor were his eyes those screwed-up ones with a faraway look in them as he stared out at a mob of cattle in the hazy sunlit distance. They were fixed very decidedly on Edie Asher, right here in this small hotel dining room in Narrunga, western Queensland. 'We've made a contract and I'm sticking to it,' he added with a kind of quiet force.

  Edie flinched again. He sounded so terribly definite. It wouldn't be nearly as easy as Barb had suggested to say goodbye and thank you, but I've changed my mind. And anyhow, the mad thought came into her head, why should she want to do that—now?

  `You're—you're not like I expected,' she said jerkily.

  `You're not like I expected either,' he reciprocated.

  hadn't envisaged a nurse looking quite—like�
��you look. Are you in fact a nurse?' he added, his eyes exploring the curve of her mouth—her shoulders.

  `Of course I am,' she said, flushing. 'One doesn't have to look like Florence Nightingale to be a nurse these days, Mr Sutton.'

  `One doesn't have to talk like someone out of a Jane Austen novel either,' he quipped. 'My name's Drew—and it's not short for Andrew. No one calls me Mr Sutton, Alfreda. Particularly not any girl I'm about to marry.'

  Edie felt herself blush crimson. There it was again —like a statement of unchangeable fact. Was he about to. marry her? Hadn't he better check with her first? But instead of taking him up on that point she heard herself say pertly, 'No one calls me Alfreda either, as a matter of fact. Not since my grandmother died.'

  `No? Then what are you called?'

  `Edie,' she said flatly.

  He leaned forward and took the menu from her and she realized that her hands were shaking.

  `You'll have to forgive me, but you signed yourself Alfreda and I've been thinking of you that way. Though let's face it, you don't look like Alfreda Asher ... Now what would you like to eat? I'd recommend the fillet steak with a salad, but you're entitled to make your own choice if you'd rather.'

  `I'll have the steak, please,' she said quickly.

  `It's a good way to get to know someone—over a meal,' he resumed, when he had given the waitress their order and asked as well for two dry sherries. Did he mean, she wondered, a little dazedly, that they'd get to know one another well enough over dinner to—to get married? There was a tenseness in the pit of her stomach that was definitely not due to hunger, and she recalled how she'd thought he'd be so quiet, that she'd have to take the lead in the conversation. And here she was struck dumb, while he was quite at his ease, leaning back in his chair and looking at her. Yes, he was still doing that, and she wished she knew what was going on in his mind Glancing at him from under her lashes, she simply couldn't believe he'd advertised for a wife. Why, there must be a whole queue of girls who'd be ready to say yes if he asked them. Instead, he'd made an open proposal and chosen her, Edie Asher, for no reason at all that she could possibly imagine.

  `Why did you choose me?' she asked abruptly, out of her thoughts.

  He shrugged his broad shoulders. 'I calculated you'd suit me best ... What made you write, anyhow?' Their sherries had come and he raised his glass and looked at her across it.

  `Oh, I'm sick and tired of men who aren't interested in marriage, I suppose,' she said uncomfortably, and saw a flicker of cynicism in his remarkable silver grey

  eyes that looked so vitally alive in his dark face.

  `And you are interested. For any particular reason? In other words—forgive me, I'm being brutally frank, but—are you pregnant?'

  Her face flamed. No! Of course I'm not!'

  He looked totally unmoved. 'Then that gets the record straight. You're a very pretty girl, you know, with those brown eyes soft as moth's wings and that very volatile mouth—which I'd rather like to see When it's unpainted, by the way. I haven't seen you full length yet, but you look a slight and graceful five foot four. You must surely have had more than one love affair, more than one proposal—yet you've opted to marry someone you've never met. There's a great big "Please explain" buzzing round in my mind.' He tilted back his head and looked at her quizzically through half closed eyes that unnerved her quite as much as what he was saying, and she looked back at him blankly, unable to marshal her thoughts. The waitress brought the steaks and salads, which gave her a chance to recover her equilibrium, but as he attacked his food he pressed her, 'Well, let's hear your side of it.'

  She bit her lip. 'Marriage isn't—as popular an end to a love affair as it used to be. Hasn't the news reached here yet? Maybe I've been unlucky, but the men who've dated me just haven't been interested in—legal tie-ups.'

  He raised his eyebrows. 'So you pounced on my ad because you were fed up? Or because you can't do without sex and you want it to be legal?'

  `No, of course not!' she exclaimed, angry that it

  was so easy for him to make her blush. `I—I was fed

  up, but I didn't pounce on your ad. My flatmate

  pointed it out because she thought it might interest me.'

  His eyes made another rapid tour of discovery. 'It's

  still incredible, you know—a girl like you going in for mail order marriage'

  `Don't look at me as if I were a freak,' she said crossly. 'You were the one who put the ad in the paper in the first place—you're interested in mail order marriage and—and you're not exactly Dracula,' she enlarged, reflecting that it was-a very decided understatement. She looked at him questioningly, because surely it was time he explained himself—they weren't going to talk about her all night.

  `Okay, so I'm not,' he said, and spent the next few minutes on his dinner. Finally he raised his eyes. `Anyhow, what was the catalyst to all this? Some particular man who let you down?'

  `More or less.' She too had tried to get on with her dinner, but delicious though it was, her appetite seemed to have vanished.

  `Are you teaching him a lesson? Or consigning him to limbo?'

  She smiled faintly. 'Consigning him to limbo.'

  `But in this particular way?—and against everyone's advice, I'm sure ... No parents, you said '

  `No. I haven't had parents since I was six years old. My grandmother brought me and my sister up. She was partially blind, so we grew up to be fairly self-reliant. I haven't told my sister what I'm doing now. She's married and lives down the coast in Wollongong, and I don't see a great deal of her. But my flatmate, Barbara Bennett—the one who showed me the ad—she thinks it's a mad thing to do.'

  `Will she want to come to the wedding?' he asked, and Edie almost choked on a mouthful of food. The wedding! The way he said that, as though it were all cut and dried—no loopholes at all-

  `I—don't know,' she said faintly.

  `Do you want to make a social event out of it? Bridesmaids, confetti, guests, a three-tiered cake—'

  `I—I hadn't thought about it,' she said bewilderedly. `I—I don't suppose so.'

  `Then that'll suit me ... Have you finished playing with your steak? Do you want a dessert or just coffee?' `Just coffee, please,' she said weakly.

  All the questions had been on his side, she thought a few minutes later, as they drank their coffee. All the answers had been on hers. One thing he hadn't asked, though, was whether she had changed her mind—or even whether she had made it up. She glanced at him covertly and felt her heart lurch at the sight of those dark glinting lashes, that heavy fall of smoky brown hair over a broad forehead, that mouth, so masculine yet so—emotive. What on earth was a man like that doing, advertising for a wife? There must be a catch somewhere—there had to be !

  `When—I mean, how soon would you want me to —it to—'

  Her voice faded away, and he frowned over his coffee and moved his spoon abstractedly to the other side of his saucer.

  `As soon as it can be arranged.' He raised his eyes to hers and looked at her fully and candidly. 'You're not over-eager, are you?'

  `Well, we—we've only just met,' she stammered.

  `But by design,' he reminded her with a faint and unnerving smile. 'What I mean is, you're not exactly a frustrated female whose one big idea is to hurry through the formalities and get to bed with a man—any man.'

  She flushed and caught her lip between her teeth. `Did you—expect me to be like that?'

  `Actually not. But of course you could have been. One never knows what's in a girl's mind when slit

  writes to a perfect stranger agreeing to become his wife. It's something quite outside my experience to date.'

  `So is meeting a man who's advertised for a wife outside mine,' she retorted confusedly, and he smiled crookedly.

  `Touché! At all events, that's something I must talk to you about—but I think we could continue our conversation in a little more privacy ... Are you ready ?' he added, pushing back his chair and getting t
o his feet.

  Edie did so too and discovered that her legs were shaking. She went ahead of him through the dining room and into the deserted lobby, wondering nervously if he was at last, going to get around to telling her something about himself, or if she was simply expected to marry him blindfold, as it were. Though of course she wouldn't do that—not in a fit, she promised herself.

  He took her arm. 'The worst of a small town like this is that there's nowhere much to go for a bit of privacy. I don't want to invite you to my room—it would be all round the district in no time. As it is, there's going to be a lot of speculation as to whether I picked you up in the dining room just now or whether we were acquainted before. However, that's not worrying me particularly ... Would you object if we drove out of town and sat and talked in my car?'

  `No. Should I?'

  He raised his eyebrows. 'Well, you ought to know the answer to that. Run and fetch something to put around your shoulders, anyhow. I'll wait here for you.'

  Edie vanished in the direction of her room. How different everything was from any of her vague imaginings ! The crazy thing was that she hadn't the least idea what she was going to do next. The thought of marrying him was infinitely disturbing, and in her room she paused for an instant to look at herself in the

  glass before finding a silky black shawl. She discovered her cheeks were glowing and her eyes were bright, and she knew that deep inside her she was wildly excited against all reason—as if she were at the beginning of a journey that just could turn out to be absolutely fantastic, if only she didn't miss the boat—or step into the water by mistake.