by Amanda Doyle
Save for a single, infinitesimal shudder, the colt remained still.
Clancy didn’t wait to see Jed lead the animal triumphantly round the yard. She had had enough. She had seen enough. She had heard enough, too. Beyond any shadow of doubt she knew that, in fair fight, Johnny Raustmann could never hope to oust that implacable man now coaxing a reluctant colt round in circles with patient decision. But that wouldn’t balk Johnny Raustmann. If he couldn’t win by fair means, then he’d employ foul, and see how he got on that way. That was, unless Clancy herself could deter him somehow. She found her knees were wobbling just a little bit as she went up the veranda steps.
She had a feeling that Jed Seaforth was going to work on each one of the people at Bunda Downs homestead in the, same quietly persistent way in which he was now working on that fractious young horse!
Saturday brought the mail plane again. It came soaring down a little after ten o’clock, and Clancy went through her usual routine of making tea, dispensing it to the pilot, and washing up her dishes methodically, before she bothered to look at the contents of the heavy canvas bag. It had been surprisingly bulky this time—a sort of angular bulk—and Clancy surmised idly that it would probably be something for Jed. Until he came, the mail failed to surrender anything more interesting than occasional brown envelopes for Johnny, and the inevitable lottery tickets and betting circulars for the station hands.
Yes, it was for Jed. Clancy drew out a large, oblong box, brown-paper wrapped, and stuck with glossy red tape and a glistening pink label that had an undoubtedly expensive look.
She placed it on the sideboard, and sought to subdue her curiosity as to the contents.
She couldn’t help noticing the quiet satisfaction on Jed’s face as he turned it over, just once, before he sat down to lunch, but he made no reference to it until afterwards.
Only then he took Tamara’s hand into one of his own, tucked the box under his arm, and drew her towards the sitting-room. Tammy went more than willingly, sensing a mystery, but Clancy made a serious business of clearing the table, until Jed’s voice called her through to the other room.
There, on the floor, surrounded by mounds of tissue paper and the hastily discarded lid of the box, sat Tamara, her face upraised eagerly to Jed’s indulgent one.
He turned as Clancy appeared, and grinned.
“Come and join in the fun, Clancy,” he told her, patting the vacant cushion beside him on the sofa where he was already sprawled, watching Tamara’s antics with interest.
Instead, Clancy sank down beside her little sister. Her eyes were drawn to the two cotton dresses which had already been extracted and inspected. She felt her gaze was positively mesmerised by them, as if they’d been a couple of tiger-snakes about to strike.
She moved her mouth to smile, but the muscles were somehow pinched up tight. She looked up mutely to meet Jed’s surprised eyes, and dropped her own again quickly, back to where Tamara was fingering the frothy creations with adoring and respectful fingers. First she picked up one, scrambled to her feet, held it up against her thin frame, and laid it back. Then she did the same thing with the other.
Tammy was oblivious of her sister’s reaction.
“Oh, Jed! They’re lovely! Really they are!” She held them up against her in turn. “Jed, you—you! seem to know all about me. First the pony, and now these! I know you must be sick of my old blue floral. I’m tired to death of it myself—but how on earth did you know my size?”
“I didn’t,” Jed admitted sheepishly. “I have a woman friend in Adelaide who chose them for me. I gave her your approximate height, age and colouring, and she did the rest, Tammy.”
“Well they’re gorgeous, whoever chose them. Oh, Jed, thank you, thank you! Look, Clan, aren’t they super? D’you like the green or the pale yellow best? The yellow, I think, don’t you? Yellow is my favourite colour—although of course they’re both lovely,” she hastened to assure Jed gratefully.
Clancy pulled herself together.
“They are beautiful, Tam—they suit you so well. You’ll be able to wear a different one each night!” Her voice was almost brittle with brightness. She knew Jed was watching her—he always was, so intently, she thought irritably. What did the yellow dress matter, anyway? Tonight she’d have finished stitching on the bands of white braid. A final, secret ironing, and tomorrow it was to have been Tammy’s. What did it matter? It was childish to let it hurt like this, and in fact it didn’t hurt nearly as much as the other thing. What really hurt her now, unbearably, was the thought of that woman friend in Adelaide—Jed’s woman friend. Well, she had no right to care about that, either, even though it was like a knife twisting in her heart. He was entitled to have friends, wasn’t he—woman friends too. He probably looked upon Clancy as a mere child anyway, and certainly he often spoke to her in much the same way as he did to Tamara. He didn’t guess that she was an adult, with an adult love and need for him that would have surprised him—probably it would even shock him, amended Clancy bitterly to herself.
That evening, Tammy wore’ the yellow dress. It fitted perfectly, sleeveless, high-necked, full-skirted, with a frill of white nylon organdie that was much prettier than Clancy’s ric-rac braid, she had to admit. Tamara had loosened her hair. It had the shining, earthy colour of wet sand, and she looked almost beautiful, and not a little proud of herself, as she walked with young dignity into the room.
“Darling, you do look pretty—terribly so!”
Clancy’s praise was spontaneous. She pushed back her own blonde curtain of hair with an absent gesture as she gazed at her sister. Why, Tammy was going to be a beauty—a real beauty—when this coltish phase was over, she reflected, leaning forward in her old blue linen frock to survey her “tomboy’s” transformation with maternal awe. Clancy suddenly became aware that Jed’s eyes weren’t on Tamara at all. They were directly upon herself, and Clancy thought she detected something definitely like approval in their blue depths. Johnny Raustmann was watching her, too. She knew that by the way her flesh went prickly. She caught his eye, and looked down at her plate.
Jed said matter-of-factly,
“We’ll start mustering at dawn on Monday, I think, Raustmann. The boys can get word tomorrow to the boundary-riders, and they’ll join them afterwards at the outcamps. We’ll take this end first. The girls can help if they like—you’d hate to miss it, wouldn’t you, Tam?” He twinkled at her, and Tamara grinned back. “There’s a low pressure trough moving this way, according to the forecast, so we can do with your help—yours, too, Clancy, if you will? I’d have been on to it sooner if it hadn’t been for this damn shoulder.”
Johnny Raustmann looked up and met Clancy’s accusing gaze fixed upon him. A slow flush spread over his neck and face, but he held her with a compelling, almost challenging stare. Jed Seaforth glanced from one to the other, then away. Apart from Tamara’s spasmodic chatter, there wasn’t much conversation after that, and Clancy was glad to escape to the kitchen as soon as she could.
Tammy came to help her, carefully tying an apron over her new dress. They sang as they worked, and went through “Ten Green Bottles” twice. It was almost like the old days, and Clancy felt cheered.
Jed had gone back to the bungalow, and Tamara took off her apron and retired to her room, probably to preen and plume in front of the mirror again! At the thought, Clancy smiled affectionately. She dried the last of the knives and forks, looked up, and the smile faded. Johnny Raustmann had slipped quietly in from the veranda.
He came straight over to where she stood.
“Why the look at dinner, beautiful?” he asked. His tone was jocular, but there was no smile in his eyes. Clancy hedged.
“What look?”
“You know well enough what I mean, Clancy,” he said in an ugly voice. “You just quit giving me looks like that one, will you, Sunshine? A little more of the loving kind will please me a whole lot better.”
He put his hands on her shoulders, and Clancy, remembering that other time,
tried to still the tremor that ran through her. She steeled herself to suffer his hands upon her as they moved from her shoulders.
“That’s better, Clancy. You’re going to be nicer to Johnny from now on, aren’t you? Like you used to be? Little Clancy, nice and kind to everyone. It pays to be nice to people, and it doesn’t pay to be the other way. I just don’t like people that rub me up the wrong way, and can’t seem to mind their own business. But you carry on like this, and things will be O.K. between you and me. Only no more looks like that one I got at the table. Understand?”
Clancy was trembling now.
“Yes, Johnny, I do understand.”
Relievedly, she thought she heard Tammy’s steps returning. Johnny had grabbed her to him. Now Clancy felt his rough, moist kiss land clumsily on her cheek as she dodged his embrace. Johnny wasn’t pleased. He grasped her wrists, brought her arms up with an exaggeratedly meaningful gesture to clasp themselves behind his head, and gave her a slow, deliberate embrace.
The rescuing footsteps drew near. Only it wasn’t Tamara who stepped through the doorway. It was Jed.
For a lingering moment he amply stood.
There was such a look of naked disgust on his face that Clancy cringed before it. The suave, unamused smile he gave her as he walked past stung her more than she’d thought possible, and each word held a whiplash for her as he said smoothly,
“You don’t lose a moment, do you? If you’d promised him that reward before the washing-up, he might even have helped you with it. I do apologise for interrupting, but there must be more private places where you two can do your—courting.”
The imperceptible pause before the last word made it sound almost obscene, and Clancy flushed painfully, aware that it was useless to defend herself before Jed’s open scorn. How long had he been there? Only long enough, obviously, to see her hands clasped behind Johnny’s neck, and to draw his own conclusions from her apparent acquiescence.
Dimly she registered the fact that Johnny had discreetly disappeared. She stumbled after Jed’s retreating back, stood watching mutely as he leafed methodically through the newspapers which had arrived that morning, selected the one he wanted, and straightened up.
“Jed,” she said, almost whispering in her distress, “I—I—wish I could explain.”
Jed’s face wasn’t disgusted any more. It wasn’t anything. It had no expression in it whatever as he looked down at her.
But his voice was level, controlled and remote.
“I didn’t ask for an explanation, Clancy, and you mustn’t think you owe me one. I merely suggested that, next time, you choose a more discreet setting for your assignation. Goodnight.”
The next day was Sunday, and it passed quietly enough. Clancy cooked several large joints of meat to help out the rations during the muster. She also baked some soda loaves and teacakes, and a huge slab of yellow caraway-seed cake, which she knew was a favourite with the men. By the time evening came she was physically weary, and not at all in the right form to cope with Jed Seaforth when he said peremptorily, after tea that night, “Come to your bedroom a moment, will you, please, Clancy.”
She looked up, startled. Jed’s firm mouth twisted sardonically as he saw her expression.
“It’s quite proper, I assure you—it’s just that there’s less chance of being disturbed there than in the sitting-room, and what I have to say is private.” His voice revealed nothing. Puzzled, Clancy led the way to her room. Once there, he closed the door softly behind him.
“Clancy, would you be kind enough to explain that?” His voice now was steely with some sort of carefully curbed emotion, as he indicated a brown-paper parcel on the bed. Clancy looked at it dumbly, then to Jed.
“Go on, open it. Then perhaps we’ll get somewhere—you and I,” he said savagely.
With nerveless fingers, Clancy fumbled with the paper, pulled it apart, stared for a moment, then sank down on the bed. It was the yellow dress she’d made to give to Tammy!
She gazed up at Jed, perplexed. He looked frighteningly stern, and a muscle jerked near the corner of his set mouth.
“Wh-where did you find it?” she whispered.
“I was down at the huts this evening giving the boys their orders for tomorrow. While I was talking with Rex, Jackie’s little girl—Nellie, is that her name?—came running out to show me. She said you gave it to her today. She’s absolutely delighted with it, so naturally I said I’d give it back to her. I told her I just wanted the loan of it for a few hours.”
“Why?” Clancy swallowed apprehensively.
“Because, Clancy, I thought it might make a good starting-point for a talk between us,” Jed replied inexorably.
“H-how? I’m afraid I d-don’t understand.” Clancy looked at Jed, and waited, completely baffled by his attitude. His eyes fell from hers, he thrust his hands in his pockets and took a quick turn about the room. When he stopped in front of her again his voice was husky and uncertain—so unlike Jed that she could only gape.
“Good God, Clancy—why couldn’t you have told me you were making Tamara that dress? Yesterday, when you saw the two I’d ordered, you could so easily have said it then. Yet all you did was to look at them with those great brown eyes of yours full of hurt—you told me nothing, you never do, ever. I’m supposed to guess what you’re thinking and doing, all along the line, and then I—I’m the means of hurting you, when that’s the very last thing I want to do, believe me.”
The blue eyes that looked into hers appealed to her to understand. An unfamiliar, dark fire smouldered somewhere beneath the appeal. Clancy couldn’t speak for a minute—Jed was too disturbingly near. She knew that if he went on much longer in that cajoling, reproachful, kindly voice, she would be demoralised completely. She managed to whisper rather helplessly, “But it doesn’t matter. What does it matter?”
“It does matter,” he contradicted firmly. “It matters to me. It matters to me that you must have spent endless hours, nights and days, stitching away to make a pretty dress for Tammy, and you didn’t even have the pleasure of giving it to her. You ended up giving it to Tamara’s skinny little black friend down there at the creek, and now Tamara won’t even know you meant it for her. Good heavens, Clancy! I’m not altogether a blind man. I can see what the making of it stood for—it wasn’t just the dress itself, was it? It was the labour of love for your little reprobate of a sister, wasn’t it—a reaffirmation of the affection between you? And you say it doesn’t matter!”
He was too perceptive by half, thought Clancy miserably. Hearing her motives put with such uncanny accuracy into words brought all the hurt flooding back. The disappointment, the anti-climax, the bitter sense of failure, the knowledge that the dress wasn’t even a very nice dress anyway, compared with those two beautiful, city creations—all proved too much for Clancy. Everything, after that sordid moment in Johnny’s arms last night, was too much for her, and probably Jed’s nearness and dearness had something to do with it too, if he but knew. She began to cry, silently, shakingly, her body torn by uncontrollable sobs.
Jed gave an audible groan, took her hands, drew her gently up and into his arms. She was cradled against his broad chest, and one of his hands came up to the back of her head, to stroke the bright hair that spilled silkily against his shirt.
“Clancy, don’t. You mustn’t. You mustn’t cry like I that. I didn’t mean to upset you. I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I’ve felt pretty bad about a lot of things since I came here, and this was one—one I thought I could maybe put right. I don’t want to hurt you further—I just want you to know that someone appreciates all the thought and care you put into making your little yellow dress, do you understand? And I want you to promise to tell me if I’m ever trespassing on your territory again, hmm?” Jed went on talking, murmuring, soothing. Clancy didn’t hear half of what he said. She only knew the immeasurable comfort of being held in those strong, kind arms, of listening to that calm, deep voice, of feeling that rough hand stroking her hair and caressing
the nape of her neck. There was something so safe, so impersonal, about Jed’s hold that presently she was able to steady herself and look up with swimming eyes to receive the big white handkerchief he put into her hand.
“I’m sorry to be so s-stupid,” she finally managed to breathe.
Jed smiled at her as he pocketed the handkerchief once more. There was something almost boyish about the way he took her hand and said, “Come to the kitchen, Clancy. I think we could both do with a cup of tea!”
CHAPTER 10
PERCHED easily on the kitchen stool, facing her over their teacups, Jed went on talking casually, so that soon Clancy forgot that her eyes were pink and her face streaked with tears. Listening to him, she even forgot her resolve to keep him at a reserved and safe distance, not only for the sake of her own impetuously loving heart, but also to prevent the arousing of further antipathetic feelings in Johnny Raustmann. This was a different Jed again—relaxed, younger somehow, not so ‘stern. There was something almost triumphant about the square set of his broad shoulders, as he eased his long legs from under the , table, and tucked the heels of his elastic-sided boots behind the rungs of the stool. It creaked alarmingly as he shifted his weight, and his grin was youthfully guilty as he murmured to Clancy, “Reckon it’ll hold me?” with a twinkle in his eye like the ones with which he was apt to favour Tammy. Clancy’s own eyes were laughing as she responded, “Let’s hope so! There’ve been enough accidents already without—”
She broke off abruptly, and the laughter died out of her expression, as she recalled the previous appalling mishap in which she had unwittingly been involved. Her worries and fears threatened to oppress her once more, only Jed Seaforth was demanding her attention again.
He resumed his conversation where he had previously left off.
