by Amanda Doyle
Tamara realised then that it would perhaps have looked better if she hadn’t swept everything quite so cleanly off the plates, but he didn’t, after all, suspect a thing! Once their mutual task was completed, he gave her a cheerful goodnight, thanked her again for a lovely dinner just as if she were a really proper cook, and went off into the darkness along the veranda.
Tamara hung about dolefully for a short time, listening for any sound of Clancy’s approach, but she had had a tiring day, one way and another, and in the end she went to bed.
The rising wind had begun to whine shrilly. It rattled the windows, and snatched at the hanging bark-baskets of shrubs on the veranda outside her room, so that they creaked and strained at their wire loops.
Presently there was the clatter of deck-chairs toppling, too, and then the full force of the storm hit the house. Sand lashed against its weathered walls, dust forced its insidious way in through every cranny and crack in the old homestead, until you could smell it right under your nose.
Tamara didn’t mean to go to sleep at all, but the banging and rattling somehow had a soporific effect, and in the end she was slumbering soundly in her bed by the time Clancy stepped into the kitchen, pulling the reluctant door shut behind her.
She was still standing there, savouring the peaceful stillness after the tormented air outside, when the door was wrenched open and shut once more, and as light flooded the room, she found Jed Seaforth there too, right beside her.
For what seemed an infinity, they stared at each other.
Clancy’s brain quite refused to come to her assistance as she sought wildly for something to say. She didn’t feel he would welcome a polite remark about the weather, not by the expression on his face just now.
It was Jed who finally opened the conversation, in an invitingly mild voice.
“Well, Clancy, have you been out somewhere?”
Clancy patted her dusty mane nervously. Beneath her fingers it felt tangled and snarled by the gale outside, and she knew she must look appalling.
“I—went for a walk.”
“In that?” Jed jerked his head impatiently towards the restless world outside. His tone was frankly disbelieving.
“I—um—I wanted a little exercise—after being inside all day. You know how one gets to feel.”
Even to her own ears Clancy had to admit that sounded lame. Jed evidently thought it did, too. His ‘stern features twisted in a sarcastic grimace.
“Come, Clancy, can’t you do better than that?”
He waited.
Clancy stared fixedly at the linoleum, unable to answer. She’d felt defeated and frustrated and weary when she came in, and now she was cornered and confused as well. The lino danced in funny little jigging patterns before her eyes. She raised them to find Jed looking down at her with something akin to distaste.
“Clancy,” he said coldly, “I’m not a child, so spare me these uninspired inventions, please. It didn’t escape me that Raustmann wasn’t in for his meal tonight, and you weren’t over in your room, because I took the trouble to look afterwards. I know I suggested that you might find somewhere more private for your meetings, but it was not my intention to debar you from the use of your own homestead on a night like this. Your behaviour in this respect is from now on your own affair. But listen to me, Clancy.” Jed cracked out the next words in a voice that made her quail. “Let it be understood, there is one thing I simply will not tolerate—and that is having Tamara involved. I find it despicable in the extreme that you could employ a little girl to cover up for you like that.”
Clancy fixed her unseeing gaze on Jed’s middle shirt button, horrified, as the implication of his words broke over her.
Oh, how could he? How could he think that she had been with Johnny? And why ever, of all the nights in the whole year, must Johnny choose this particular one to stay away from dinner! Jed Seaforth thought that she, Clancy, had connived a meeting with him somewhere. How could he believe she would ever stoop to such a thing?
Clancy struggled to still the trembling at her mouth, and frame a suitable retort.
When she could speak at all, it was in a voice of strangled despair, and her eyes were bright and angry.
“I hate you, do you hear! I just hate you!” she announced bitterly, and quite untruthfully, before she managed to push past him, and run to her room.
CHAPTER 14
CLANCY awoke next morning with a heavy head and looked out on a landscape already simmering with heat.
Good gracious! Could she have slept in? She had never done such a thing in her life, or not since her mother’s health began to fail, at any rate. She pushed back the sheet which clung stickily, noted that it was after nine o’clock already, and decided that a shower was the only thing to clear her mind, which still seemed’ to be revolving around the same perimeter of thought which had obsessed it last night for some hours after she’d retired. She knew, too, just why she kept skating around the edge of the matter, and not delving deeper. It was because she couldn’t bear to look the whole thing in the face. It was because she had been deceitful, just as Jed had accused, and she had been found out. And no matter how false they happened to be, Jed’s deductions had been readily understandable, going on the facts at his disposal.
All the same, Clancy couldn’t help a nagging ache of hurt that his opinion of her should be so low. Sadly, she reflected that, had their positions been reversed, she couldn’t have believed ill of Jed, no matter how damning the evidence that was stacked against him. Only, of course, that was because she loved him. If you loved someone enough, you just couldn’t think such horrible things about them. And you certainly wouldn’t sneer at them disdainfully, or rebuke them so cruelly, especially when they came in late after a wearisome and frightening ride through the beginnings of a dust-storm. Only she had to admit, in fairness to Jed, that he didn’t know she’d had a frightening ride in a dust-storm. He just thought she’d been around the corner somewhere with—with Johnny Raustmann. He’d believe that of her, Clancy, but he’d never, never think such things about his girl-friend in Adelaide, because his love wouldn’t let him.
Oh, leave it, Clancy! she adjured herself hopelessly, as she dabbed the last tepid drops of water from her brown shoulders. What’s the use of thinking, dreaming? It will get you nowhere, you know that. You’ve even forfeited the right to Jed’s friendship now. You’ve lost his respect, and you can hardly think he’s going to treat you with his usual endearing, gentle consideration ever again. Not after this! He made that clear enough last night.
Clancy gave an enormous sigh, returned to her room, and began listlessly to dress. Perversely—or was it an outward symbol of the futility she was feeling?—she selected the faded milky-grey jeans with shining, worn seams, and the ancient shirt whose tear, now neatly mended, had earned Jed’s disapproval on the day he’d arrived.
When she approached the kitchen, it was to find Tamara industriously wiping down the table and draining board. She was doing it with a vigorous concentration quite unfamiliar to Clancy, and when she returned her elder sister’s unenthusiastic greeting, her voice sounded thick and unfamiliar too.
Clancy knew instinctively that she had been crying, because every time she moved towards her, Tammy turned away, rubbing harder than ever with her doth.
Clancy somehow made herself speak brightly, but the apology in her voice was sincere.
“I’m sorry, Tam dear, I must have slept in. I can’t think what came over me! Are all the men off?”
“Yes, they’ve gone,” Tamara informed her tonelessly.
“Are—have they gone to the camps already?”
“Yes. Jed said not to wake you up. You were awful sound asleep, Clancy. I banged around and you never even heard me, an’ I thought maybe you were sick or something, and then Jed came an’ looked at you, an’ he said just to leave you where you were.” Tamara sounded almost accusing. Clancy blushed up to the roots of her hair at the thought of Jed coming to see her while she lay asleep. I
t hurt—deeply, somehow—that he hadn’t even wanted to say goodbye before he went off to the back boundary for a week or so.
“I’m sorry, Tam,” she repeated hopelessly. “Is that why you’re crying, because I didn’t come and help you?”
“I’m not crying, so there,” Tamara denied brusquely.
“Well, you have been, darling—I know you have. I’m awfully, awfully sorry I let you down by not coming over earlier. Why on earth didn’t you go ahead and waken me, no matter what Jed said?”
Tamara spun round and faced her. Now Clancy could see that her eyes were puffy and red, and her swollen nose and lips gave her vowels a nasal indistinction that wasn’t a bit like Tammy. Her reproachful, tortured gaze challenged Clancy with dogged unfriendliness.
“That’s the trouble with you, Clancy. You do anything you like, no matter what Jed says, just the same as you said it to me just now. Maybe you don’t care about what he says. Maybe it doesn’t matter to you. Maybe you don’t mind.” Tamara rattled on, oblivious of Clancy’s widening eyes. “Well, I mind. I mind very much, and from now on, I’m doing what Jed says, Clancy—not what you say, so there. Stiffen the crows! You don’t think I’d cry for a soppy reason like getting the breakfast alone, do you? I cried because Jed gave me the most awful telling-off I’ve ever had in my whole life, an’ he said he’ll skin my hide an’ throw it to the lizards if I ever deceive him again, and—” here Tamara’s lips gave a definite quiver—“an’ he’s set me pages and pages of school-work to do, and he says I’m not to go off that veranda all day till they’re done, and I won’t—I mean, I will—do them, I mean, and I won’t go off the veranda—not for anyone.”
Clancy was shocked.
How dare he? Really, this was beyond everything, upsetting her young sister so dreadfully, when Tammy had done nothing to deserve it. Well, almost nothing. For herself, she could bear anything, but now her maternal instinct rose in her to protect her motherless, blotchy-faced, angry little Tamara.
“Oh, Tammy,” she told her gently, “you don’t have to do it all in one day, poppet. I—I’m sure Jed didn’t actually mean that.”
“He did mean it, Clancy. If you heard him you’d know he meant it all right. And I’m going to do it, too. Only it wasn’t w-worth it, and all because of some silly old sh-sheep.”
Clancy flinched. She’d almost forgotten the sheep till this moment.
“Goodness, the sheep! Did you—?”
“I didn’t tell Jed, if that’s what you were going to ask. I didn’t tell him ‘cos I promised you I wouldn’t till you said I could. Only I wish I had. I wanted to, Clancy—terribly. Jed said it’s awful important to be honest, an’ he didn’t like to think a Minnow would cheat or lie. He said this was my chance to show him I could really keep a promise, even when he wasn’t there to see. And I was longing for him to know I’d been k-keeping a p-promise all the t-time—the one I gave you about the sh-sheep.”
Clancy recognised the threat of newly returning tears in Tammy’s hiccoughing voice.
“Never mind, darling,” she said, with a cheerful conviction she was far from feeling. “We’ll work things out somehow. Jed has put you on trust, and you must fulfil it, of course. You go now, and make a start, and I’ll do the bedrooms and tidy up down at the men’s cottage.”
Tammy’s thin shoulders took on a new lift. She slid from the table, upon which she had been sitting swinging her legs moodily, gave a watery grimace that Clancy hoped was a smile, and departed.
Clancy sat down abruptly, and put her head in her hands. Darling little Tammy, in trouble up to the hilt with her beloved hero, and all because of her, Clancy. She had meant to be so clever, to unravel this whole problem without involving anyone until she knew for certain what must be done, and whom she must tell. And now look what had happened! Tammy had erected that old barrier between herself and Clancy once more. She and Jed were on one side of the fence, and Clancy was back on the other. Worse still, for Clancy, that quizzical kindness had disappeared from Jed’s eye when he looked upon her. Perhaps it had disappeared for ever. He didn’t like to think a Minnow could cheat or lie. Wasn’t that what he’d said to Tamara? But it seemed to Clancy that he was more than ready to believe both those things of at least one Minnow. He certainly wasn’t giving Clancy a second chance to keep faith with him, the way he’d done with Tamara, either. There had been no heart-to-heart talk with her like he’d had with Tammy. Not for Clancy, there hadn’t. Why, he hadn’t bothered to wake her up, even. He had gone to the outcamp for days and days, and he hadn’t cared whether he said goodbye or not.
Clancy’s wretched heart contracted with pain.
What was she going to do? What about those stupid sheep, for instance? Clancy suddenly felt she didn’t care if she never saw or heard of the sheep again, didn’t care where they had come from or whence they were going. Only she had to care, didn’t she? Maybe she was back on her own again, but that’s how she’d been before. Before the change that had brought Jed into their lives. After all, she was the mistress of Bunda Downs, and she couldn’t just abandon all her responsibilities merely because her heart felt trampled and bruised and crushed by the indifference of the man to whom it had recklessly been given. Perhaps she’d been beginning to depend just the teeniest bit too much on Jed Seaforth. There was something about him that made you want to do that. And that had been a mistake. From now on, she would go it alone, get this muddle sorted out quietly and with dignity, by herself. She would need to see the sheep—deal only in facts, like Jed had once said—and then she would challenge Johnny. She had the tally-book anyway, so that Johnny’s denials would be useless if the mob of sheep at the Peacock were indeed theirs.
Suddenly it was borne upon Clancy that perhaps Johnny had had a reason for not being there at dinner last night. How could she possibly have overlooked the significance of his absence, when everyone else had made so much of it? she chided herself humourlessly. Could it be that he hoped to get rid of the sheep, somehow, before going off to the far-away paddocks with the men? If so, he certainly couldn’t have managed in the conditions that prevailed last night.
Clancy had a sudden urge to go out to the range as quickly as she could. She had an intuitive feeling that Johnny would be there, right now, making some arrangement before he joined the other men. Today was the only day he wouldn’t be missed. Rex and Jed would think he was with the station-hands, and they in turn would think he must be with Jed, or riding ahead to join the “boys.”
Undoubtedly, this was her chance. There were no meals to prepare, she could make all the beds when she came back, and she was absolutely certain that nothing short of an earthquake would stir Tamara from the task Jed had imposed upon her. Clancy could see her along the veranda, frowning in concentration, her tongue protruding as she worked feverishly, completely absorbed.
Clancy filled her water-bag, crammed her hat well down on her head, gave her faded trousers an absent-minded hitch, and trod along the veranda to where Tamara was busily employed.
“Tammy, I’m just going out to the range again. I’ll be very quick this time, I know just where to go now, and I’ll come straight back once I’ve seen our—the sheep. There’s some cold mutton and cucumber in the safe for your lunch, pet. You’ll manage, won’t you?”
Tamara lifted her eyes from the map she had been painstakingly copying. There was little more warmth in them than there had been earlier, as she muttered her assent, and she made herself sound as though it didn’t matter at all where Clancy was intending to go, nor how long she took about it.
Clancy gulped, and reminded herself that that was only to be expected, now that Tammy was back on Jed’s side. Oh dear! Why did there have to be sides at all? Why couldn’t things be like they once were? Why did Jed Seaforth ever come here, to tear her heart into two ragged halves, to sabotage Tamara’s feelings for her very own sister, to antagonise Johnny Raustmann, and wield his own implacable brand of discipline over them all?
Clancy slung her water-bag
over her horse’s withers, gave her mount an affectionate pat on the neck, and slid nimbly into the saddle.
“Dear old fellow,” she murmured, leaning forward to his pricking ear as if she could communicate and draw comfort from him. “You’re the only one who seems to like me, aren’t you, Jason? Tammy doesn’t, anyway. And nor does Jed, and nor does Johnny. So that just leaves you, doesn’t it?”
The plain slipped away behind her, and the Peacock Range loomed ahead. The sky was clear and cloudless, the air still, but the whole scene had been subtly altered by the giant, gritty, sweeping hand of the dust-storm. Sand lay in eddies and swirls everywhere, in ribbons and frills of fantastic russet design. Where the land sloped steeply, and the creek bed wound inward beneath its sentinel cliffs, the sand lay up against the smaller boulders in soft, rounded dunes that contrasted weirdly with the jagged, cracked shapes of the larger rocks thrusting skyward from their beds of scalloped dust.
Clancy made easy progress along the creek. This time she knew just exactly where she was going—or did she? In one way she did, and in another, she didn’t. Her heart thudded nervously, and her palms were sticky with apprehension at the thought of an imminent showdown with Johnny. She wiped her hands down the sides of her jeans in a gesture that was peculiarly resolute, before beginning the upward climb from the creek-bed to the plateau above her. She was panting with effort by the time her head came level with the top, and with a final heave she dragged herself up and on to her hands and knees. From there, she was hauled easily and ignominiously to her feet by a large, strong hand.
Clancy found herself not inches away from the furious face of Jed Seaforth.
For a moment she sagged against him with surprise, striving to regain her breath and balance. His hand was still grasping her upper arm with fingers that bit into the soft flesh, and his blue eyes blazed down on her so angrily that Clancy felt he was probably suppressing a mad desire to shake her. She gritted her teeth in preparation for the assault. Instead, she was released abruptly with a sharp little push.
