Walkabout Wife

by Dorothy Cork

  She switched on the reading lamp and went to the mirror, stared at her own flushed face and wide, guilt-filled eyes, and discovered her blouse was undone. She fastened the buttons with clumsy fingers, brushed her hair. Now what did she do? The room looked strange to her, like the room of some person she didn't know,

  and she thought with an inward gasp of disbelief of the man who had stood by her bed undressing only minutes ago, while she lay waiting for him. His shirt was still on the chair where he had flung it. Another few seconds and it would have been joined by his pants, and then—

  Edie pulled up her thoughts in mad mid-gallop. How easy it had been for him to persuade her ! —and it certainly hadn't been with words. Had it been deliberate? He hadn't been carried away as she had. Or—or had he?

  The wire door banged again and Drew came into the room while she was still in the middle of her thoughts, and his eyes looked at her across the room enigmatically as he picked up his shirt and put it on, covering the nakedness of his chest.

  `Mrs Wilson's crook, Edie. I don't know if it's appendicitis or gallstones, but it's bad. I'm going to call the flying doctor. Go over and see her, will you—and try to calm Frank down a bit. His mother died for lack of help when he was a kid—his father worked on a station in the Centre.'

  `I'll talk to him,' said Edie, drawn suddenly out of her self-absorption into someone else's troubles. Will the doctor come tonight, Drew? Or—'

  `Sure he'll come. This is an emergency. Frank can come out with me presently and we'll get some flares lit on the strip so the doc can get his plane down with the least possible trouble. It's a good hospital—they've got everything, so don't you worry. There's a torch in the kitchen,' he added over his shoulder as he left the room. 'On the dresser beside the bread bin

  When Edie hurried out there were lights all along the verandah, but beyond the trees that sheltered the garden there was a wide dark stretch to be crossed

  before she reached the bungalow, its yellow lights shining in the darkness. She flashed the torch ahead of her, thankful for its beam.

  Inside the house, Frank Wilson stood beside his wife's bed, his face so grey beneath its tan one would have thought he was the patient instead of Mrs Wilson, who managed a brave smile as Edie came in.

  Edie explained brightly and cheerfully that she was a trained nurse, asked a few questions and made a quick examination. She reached the conclusion that Mrs Wilson was suffering from appendicitis, not from gallstones, and that the sooner she could be taken to hospital the better. She told Frank confidently, as she carefully packed a bag for the sick woman, 'Your wife will be okay, Mr Wilson. You mustn't worry—all sorts of advances have been made in medicine since the days when appendicitis was a really serious matter. Drew will be along presently—he wants you to go out with him and get the flares lit for the flying doctor.'

  Only a few minutes later, car lights swept across the window, and Drew was there, and presently Edie was alone with Mrs Wilson.

  `I'm sorry this has happened just now,' the housekeeper apologised, her face twisted with pain. 'You aren't having much of a honeymoon, are you? I'd have liked to be here to look after you a little so you'd be free to enjoy yourself with Mr Sutton.'

  Edie turned away to hide her crimson cheeks. 'It doesn't matter in the least,' she said, and added untruthfully, 'We'll probably have a proper honeymoon later on, anyhow, when—when Drew is really free.'

  After that, the time passed somehow. Mrs Wilson didn't want to talk much, and Edie did what she could to comfort and ease her. It was a relief when the men came back and a still greater relief when, some time

  later, the hum of a plane could be heard, and the two men carried Mrs Wilson out to the car. Edie wasn't needed, and she went wearily back to the homestead, feeling years had passed since last she was there. She heard the plane take off finally, and reflected that it was fortunate she and Drew had come home that afternoon —though no doubt, if he had had to, Frank would have managed things himself. He'd have had to! After a moment's thought, she went to the kitchen and put the kettle on to boil. The men would appreciate a cup of tea when they came in—particularly Frank.

  The news that came over the transceiver for Dhoora Dhoora in the morning was good. Mrs Wilson had been operated on for appendicitis and everything was okay. Drew drove out to the muster camp a lot later than usual, and his smile at Edie before he left was enigmatic.

  `Think you can manage to cook dinner for me tonight, Mrs Sutton?'

  `Don't call me that,' she said crossly, altogether uncertain of her feelings. She was wearing a short housecoat over her pyjamas, having only wakened when she heard Drew moving about the house. Now he crossed the kitchen and taking hold of her shoulders, he looked down into her eyes so that she was reminded with a painful, shaming vividness of those mad moments last night when she had been in his arms.

  `I'm afraid you are Mrs Sutton,' he said, and she veiled her eyes quickly with her lashes, her face crimsoning. She'd fallen asleep too quickly last night once she was back in bed to have thought any more about what had been happening between her and Drew before Frank interrupted them. She hadn't even had time to give a thought to the embarrassment of seeing him again this morning.

  `Well, whether I'm Mrs Sutton or not,' she said with determined dryness, `I'm sure I can manage dinner.' She pushed past the look in his eyes that suggested he might want to talk of other things besides dinner and added hopefully, `Will Frank be eating with us?'

  `Good God, no,' he said impatiently. `He can look after himself. We'll be dining alone—just you and me. You'll have to see how you can make out with the girls this morning, by the way. See you don't let them wriggle out of anything you want them to do—not anything at all. Be firm.'

  Edie nodded and told him with a confidence she didn't really feel, `I'll get on fine, don't you worry.'

  He looked down at her mouth, and the very expression in his eyes seemed to make her lips feel warm, and knowing they were trembling, she moistened them nervously with the tip of her tongue. He was going to kiss her goodbye—just as if she were really his wife. Did that mean that tonight he'd expect to take up where they left off last night? Well, she was going to have all day to think about that, she reminded herself, and found little comfort in the thought.

  Drew bent his head and his kiss was brief but firm. It was more the look in his eyes as she met them at close quarters that she found unnerving. Those eyes that had been so sharp and silvery now were warm with a desire that had melted their ice, and she felt her pulses begin to race. She knew she wanted him to kiss her again, but differently—and she coloured furiously when he shook his head slowly and said with an amused quirk of his mouth, `No, Edie—definitely no. I have work to do.'

  Had he? Hadn't he said he was the boss and could please himself? she caught herself thinking as he flicked her cheek carelessly and left her. Perhaps he

  didn't really want to stay with her today. Perhaps that thing last night was merely something he turned on because he was a man who needed sex and who knew how to arouse a woman. Any woman. How to stir her senses and weaken her resistance. She was thoroughly convinced he knew all about the gentle art of persuasion.

  It was an unsettling thought, but it lingered at the back of her mind all day.

  She had never looked in the other bedrooms in the homestead before, but that morning, as she planned work for the two housegirls, Ellen and Ruth, she opened each door to see if the room within needed cleaning. Besides her bedroom and Drew's room, there were four others, and the girls were adamant that there was no work to be done in any of them, but remembering Drew's advice, Edie insisted on seeing for herself.

  `No, missus, that Greg's room—he bin gone long time now.'

  Edie ignored the protest and took a good look around, then decided the room was immaculate and she couldn't possibly ask that anything more should be done. She moved on and pushed open the next door.

  `No more use that room, 'less visitors come,' said Ellen, her big
teeth showing in a cheerful smile.

  The third room too was a guest room, and as immaculate as the others, and Edie reflected that Mrs Wilson was certainly a treasure, and advanced confidently to the last room. Ruth and Ellen covered their mouths with their hands and giggled.

  `That Laurel's room. Clean 'im maybe last week.'

  Laurel's room! Edie's glance lingered on the spotless, prettily feminine room. Unlike the other rooms that had a vacant look about them, it looked somehow as if it had been occupied only recently, and she was

  aware of a feeling of curiosity. Laurel—Laurel Clarkson, hadn't Drew called her? Anne's goddaughter, the one who used to spend a lot of time here while Drew's uncle was still alive. She had asked Drew about Greg, and about Laurel. But though he had told her Greg was now in Ireland, he had said nothing at all about Laurel, and she, remembering Deborah and thinking of the trauma it must have been for Drew when she died —she had forgotten.

  Somehow troubled, she told the girls to clean the bathrooms, checked to see they were doing it properly, then busied herself tidying the linen cupboard. She noticed that many of the sheets and pillow slips, the big tablecloths and damask napkins, must have been here since the days when the house was lived in by a family.

  Much later, after the girls had gone, she walked slowly through the house and once again looked in the empty silent bedrooms. At least, she looked in two of them—Greg's room first of all, not entirely empty of his personal belongings, for on top of a chest there were a few books with his name scrawled in the front. There was an old school photograph of a Rugby team too, and she presumed that Greg was one of their number. Quite definitely, it had been a man's room.

  But it was Laurel's room she really wanted to see, and she stepped inside the door feeling guilty. A faint perfume hung in the air as if Laurel—or somebody—had been there recently, or had stayed there often. For a moment Edie wished she had asked the girls how long it was since Laurel had slept there, but she knew that she couldn't and wouldn't ask them—not tomorrow, not ever. Her dignity forbade it. And anyhow, why should she care—or even be interested? Yet she did care, and she was interested, and she moved

  slowly into the room and stood on the fleecy cream carpet looking around her—looking for secrets. Outside the long windows the vine-draped verandah lay in shadow, with the sun high overhead, and beyond it the garden was in brilliant sunshine. Who had chosen the pretty floral bedspread, the pale green curtains that exactly matched it? she wondered. It was a very feminine room and its soft furnishings struck her as being newer than those in the other bedrooms.

  After a few seconds, as if compelled, she opened the wardrobe and looked inside. With a feeling of faint but deadly shock, she found clothes hanging there—a green velvet cloak, long dresses-- She closed the door abruptly, then almost tiptoed to the chest of drawers that, backed by a triple mirror, obviously served as a dressing table. She stared at her own reflection and saw that her cheeks were pale and her eyes bright. What on earth was she doing here? Well, didn't she have a right? Wasn't she—Drew Sutton's wife? She bit her lip hard and pulled open one of the drawers. Scent, a pot of face cream, a small enamelled jewel box. At the other side of the divided drawer, neatly folded scarves, a few handkerchiefs, and, half hidden under them, a coloured photograph in a silver frame. She took it up, her fingers trembling. Three faces looked back at her—one of them Drew's. The others she didn't know, and she stared at them intently. A man and a girl.

  Debbie? she wondered, looking at the blonde hair, the laughing mouth. The girl stood between the two men, each of whom had an arm around her shoulders, and she looked happy and confident. It was sad that she had died so young.

  But it couldn't be Debbie, Edie realized suddenly. Debbie had died nine or ten years ago and the Drew in the photograph was the mature man she knew. So

  was it Laurel? And the other man—handsome, smiling, a little arrogant—it must be Greg, she decided for no real reason whatsoever.

  Had Laurel been in love with Greg? Or had she been in love with Drew?

  It struck her after a moment that she was acting like a jealous wife, which was crazy. In all probability Laurel Clarkson was a kind of sister to the two men she had known since she was little more than a child.

  Edie discovered she was looking at Drew's face, and she felt a shiver run through her bones. Tonight he would be coming home to her. And after last night, what was he going to expect of her? What was going to happen? Had they been a normal newly married couple they'd have made love.

  But they weren't a normal married couple, and he was—yes, he was a stranger still. She knew next to nothing about him. With an impatient nervous movement she put the photograph back in the drawer where she had found it and slammed the drawer shut. She told herself she'd ask Drew again about Laurel tonight —and this time he'd have to answer her.

  CHAPTER SIX

  BUT she didn't ask Drew that night. She found she simply couldn't.

  As she cooked dinner for two—braised steak with vegetables, to be followed by caramel cream—she thought of his saying, 'You'd be quite happy living

  here with your man coming home to you at the end of the day'. But when he did come, when she heard the sound of the car, she made a point of staying where she was, in the middle of something very important in the kitchen. He wasn't her man, so she didn't go to the verandah to greet him, and it was he who had to seek her out.

  `Have a good day?' he asked from the doorway, and she felt a current run electrically along her nerves—because it could all have been so different.

  `Did you?' she countered with a cool smile, instead of answering.

  `Sure.' A brief pause, and she stooped to lift the casserole from the oven. As she rose he said from close behind her, 'I won't kiss you. I'm filthy—and you don't like that, do you? I've time for a shower, I hope, before you put that mouthwatering dish on the table.'

  `Of course,' she agreed, and despite herself she turned to look at him, remembering too clearly how she had reacted before to his dusty unshaven state. She felt a shock go through her as she encountered his grey eyes, brilliant against the tan of his face, now coated lightly but definitely with red dust. He was badly in need of a shave too, and she turned away sharply. She had an almost physical sensation of the roughness of his jaw against her cheek, of those lips moulding themselves against her own in the most intimate possible way. She thought of her own breast being crushed against that partly unbuttoned sweat-stained shirt and she felt her most secret nerve centres respond in a way that was totally primitive and almost frightening.

  He didn't touch her. After a second he walked out of the kitchen and she took several deep breaths to steady herself before she resumed what she had been doing.

  They were so restrained over dinner they could have been two people who hadn't seen each other since childhood and couldn't fill the gap. Or so it seemed to Edie. She trembled to think what was going to happen afterwards. Though part of her mind was obsessed with thoughts of the faintly perfumed room she had entered that day, the photograph she had seen, she could find no casual way to refer to it or to Laurel. The nearest approach she made was to remark on the extra bedrooms.

  `The girls said the—the empty ones don't need cleaning every day,' she said awkwardly. 'I suppose they're not much used.'

  `That's right,' said Drew without much interest. 'We do get a bit of dust in the house when it's dry, but the housekeeper has an eye on that.' After that he changed the subject.

  At the end of the meal he suggested they should take coffee on the verandah, where it was cooler, and when Edie brought it out she was at once aware of the perfume of roses.

  Drew stood with his back to the rail, his face illumined by the small table lamp he had switched on and around which a few small moths that had somehow found their way in were already flying.

  `Do you dance, Edie?' he asked, his voice cool and casual, as she set the coffee tray down on a table near the lounger.

  `Yes.' She stra
ightened up and looked at him in surprise.

  `How would it appeal to you if I suggested we put some music on the player and danced, then?'

  `I—I—don't you want to teach me to play chess?' she stammered.

  `No,' he said uncompromisingly. 'We managed very

  well without chess last night, didn't we—up until the time we had that rather untimely interruption.'

  She turned away full of confusion, her cheeks burning. She hadn't the least idea what she wanted—or she told herself she hadn't, but she shivered when Drew said softly from behind her, 'You're going to sleep in my bed tonight, aren't you, Edie?'

  As he spoke he put his arms around her and cupped her breasts in his hands so that her shiver deepened to one that was half delight, half fear.

  `It—it wasn't the arrangement,' she heard herself protest almost inaudibly.

  `I know it wasn't the arrangement.' His fingers were caressing her, and she closed her eyes and let him pull her back against his body, feeling a terrible weakness in her limbs. 'But you wanted it last night, didn't you?'

  His words had an odd effect on her. Yes, she had wanted it last night—she had wanted it badly, because he had been so cleverly persuasive. Just as he was being cleverly persuasive now. His touch sent little impulses of pleasure along her nerves. It was very obvious he was no stranger to lovemaking. There must have been other girls since Deborah Webster, she thought —girls he had made love to even if he hadn't wanted to marry them. Now he was married to her, Edie Asher—but only because he had to have some sort of a wife by the time he was thirty-five. As far as she was concerned, she thought, he might as well have shut his eyes and stuck a pin in a list of names—that was the care with which she had been chosen. It was to be a marriage in name only, he had told her very positively. Now, because he was a virile, very masculine type of man, he wanted to make love to her—and God in heaven ! she wanted to let him !