The Tartan Touch

by Isobel Chace

  “She’s wearing her own shirt!” Andrew said abruptly.

  I glanced at him nervously, “It’s a wee bit tight,” I said in a strangled voice.

  “Rubbish!” he retorted.

  “It is, just,” I insisted. “I—I washed them both—”

  “They’re shrinkproof,” he returned briefly.

  I swallowed. “I prefer to wear one of Mary’s shirts,” I said painfully.

  He glared at me. “You’ll wear your own just the same!” he ordered. “If you don’t, I’ll scratch Birrahlee from the race!”

  “But you can’t!” Mary protested in horror.

  “Try it and see!” he said to me. He scraped back his chair and went out of the room.

  “What’s so important about one shirt or another?” Mary asked blankly.

  Miss Rowlatt sniffed. “Can’t you even recognise your own tartan when you see it?” she bore down on Mary.

  Mary said nothing. Her eyes opened wide as she looked at me.

  “Oh, Kirsty!” she said, and giggled.

  “They were the only ones they had in the store,” I mumbled, scarlet in the face.

  But Mary was well away, enjoying her merriment in a way I could only find distasteful, “Oh, Kirsty!” she gasped again. “And you a MacTaggart!”

  “She’s a Fraser now,” Margaret put in coolly.

  “Certainly, she is!” Miss Rowlatt agreed warmly. “I can’t think what you’re making such a fuss about!”

  “It’s a wee bit tight!” Mary repeated, and collapsed into further giggles.

  Miss Rowlatt glared at her. “Be off, young woman,” she commanded her. “I hardly think you are going to wear those clothes to the races!”

  “I must change too,” Margaret drawled. Her eyes rested on my face for a moment, warmer than I had ever seen them. “Don’t let the Frasers get you down,” she advised casually. “At least Andrew isn’t as impatient as Donald was.” She went slowly to the door. “Come on, Mary, Andy won’t wait for you if you’re not ready when he is!”

  It was an unfortunate choice of words. I stared down at my uneaten breakfast, poking the egg viciously with my fork. “Oh, he’ll wait for her!” I said dourly.

  Miss Rowlatt gave me a displeased look. “Do you imagine that he won’t wait for you?” she demanded. “And may one ask why he should?”

  “I don’t know,” I said wearily.

  “It seems to me,” Miss Rowlatt said dryly, “that young people have the silliest quarrels these days. It isn’t in Andrew Fraser to wait for any woman, if you ask me. His style would be to take the girl of his choice out into the bush and woo her and bed her before he brought her back! And quite right too!”

  “Oh?” I said. I put my knife and fork down on my plate. My stomach had turned to water and my knees were trembling.

  “I suppose there was no time in Scotland for him to tell you what he was about,” she went on cheerfully.

  “But he did!” I interrupted her. “He—he needed someone here until Mary came of age!”

  Miss Rowlatt was startled into silence. “I see,” she said faintly. “I’m very sorry, my dear.”

  Fond of her as I was, her sympathy was very hard to bear, “At least I have a home!” I said in threatening tones.

  “Why, yes,” she agreed meekly.

  “And a name! A very proud name! Mrs. Andrew Fraser of Mirrabooka!”

  She looked at me with a hint of humour in her eyes. “And a shirt on your back!” she said.

  To my surprise it was Margaret who drove Birrahlee to the races in the horse-box. Mary elected to go with her, because, she said, they would get there earlier than the rest of us.

  “Miss Rowlatt can come with us too,” she suggested, her green eyes flashing.

  “I think she would prefer to come in the car,” I said gently. I could not imagine Miss Rowlatt enjoying a long, rough ride in a horse-box.

  “Oh well,” Mary said grandly, “just as you like!”

  We had a lot of trouble getting Birrahlee to go up the ramp. He was a big, heavy horse and he flicked us away from him as if we were no more than flies,

  “Shall I ride him in?” I suggested.

  “You’ll ruin your clothes!” Margaret wailed. “I’ll fetch Andrew.”

  “No! We’ll manage somehow!” I insisted.

  Margaret was remarkably patient. “Does he like sugar?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  “I wish you’d let me get Andy!”

  I shoved at Birrahlee’s rump. “Do you think we’re tiring him out?” I enquired anxiously.

  “I doubt it,” Margaret said dryly,

  In the end we came to a compromise and Mary went to summon one of the stockmen, while I surveyed my dress, worried in case I had dirtied it. But it looked as fresh as it had when I had put it on. I brushed nervously at the skirt and saw Andrew approaching us out of the corner of my eye.

  “Why don’t you try him with an apple?” Andrew suggested mendaciously.

  I gave him a speaking look that said a great deal more than I would have dared to have given voice to.

  “Andy, do something!” Margaret begged him.

  He put his hand on the horse’s neck and pushed him purposefully up the ramp. Birrahlee blew angrily down his nostrils, but he went like a lamb, allowing us to slam the box shut behind him.

  “Oh, you’ve done it!” Mary exclaimed, coming back just at that moment.

  Andrew brushed his hands together with a satisfied air.

  “The master’s touch,” he said.

  We stood there together while the horse-box bounced its way across the home paddock and away to Cue.

  “Andrew,” I said carefully, “may I have next week’s money with this week’s?” I wouldn’t look at him. I dared not.

  “Today?” he asked.

  I nodded, reddening in case he should ask me why.

  “I thought you never gambled?” he said, his tongue in his cheek.

  “It doesn’t seem like gambling at all,” I replied innocently. “Mary says that Birrahlee will walk it!”

  “And naturally, she knows!”

  “Well, she does,” I said. “Mrs. O’Dell loses at the races every year, but Mary never does!”

  He counted out the money and gave it to me. “What will you do if you don’t win?” he asked me.

  I shook my head, unable even to consider the idea. “But I shall win!” I said. “You think so too, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “I think so.”

  Miss Rowlatt insisted on sitting in the back of the car as we drove to Cue. It seemed odd to be driving in anything else but the old ute, but Andrew had got out the Holden for the occasion. He had even polished its paintwork until it gleamed in the hot sun. These races were only the spring races, and not the more famous autumn ones, but they were an occasion all the same and everybody wanted to make the most of them.

  To my shame, Andrew checked on whether I had brought my own shirt, peeking into the bag I had brought with me.

  “I don’t see why it matters to you so much!” I said indignantly.

  He smiled at me. “Don’t you?”

  “Everybody knows he’s your horse!”

  “I’ll see to that!” he said.

  The hotel in Cue was doing good business when we got there. Although it was still officially spring, it was a stifling hot day, and everyone was soaking up ice-cold schooners of beer as fast as they could go. I had some lemonade and wished that the race was over. I was feeling increasingly nervous and I was beginning to wonder if it wouldn’t be sinful after all to put all that money on my winning the race.

  There was no sign of either Margaret or Mary, but Bridget O’Dell came over immediately, her eyes fixed on my white and gold dress.

  “Kirsty, you look beautiful!” she exclaimed.

  I was very pleased. “I bought it in London,” I told her, ’"Andrew made me buy a great many things while we were there, but I’ve not had the opportunity
to wear half of them.”

  “I hoped none of the others suits you as well as this one!” Bridget laughed. “I’m pea-green with envy!”

  My excitement mounted by leaps and bounds. “Bridget, if you want to put money on a race, whom do you bet with?” I asked her.

  She stood stock-still, amazed that I should ask such a question. “I’ll take you to a bookie,” she said.

  “Oh, yes, please,” I agreed happily. “I’m going to win, you see, so I have to put a great deal of money on the race.”

  “Is that wise?” she asked.

  “Oh yes!” I exclaimed.

  I felt very proud, placing my bet with the bookie. He had come all the way from Perth and was unaccustomed to the Murchison climate. His immaculate gabardine suit was already wilted and his face was scarlet with sheer heat. On his head he wore a broad-brimmed Panama hat that was so immaculate it filled me with awe.

  “Is it worth your while coming all this way?” I asked him politely.

  He stopped counting his money and looked up at me, “The Cockies make it worth while,” he said.

  I handed him the roll of notes that Andrew had given me. “I want to put it on Birrahlee of Mirrabooka,” I said.

  He shook his head at me. “You might as well kiss it goodbye! Not that I mind!” he added.

  “No,” I assured him seriously. “It will be all right. You see, I’m riding him myself.”

  Bridget looked ready to die. “This is Mrs. Fraser from Mirrabooka,” she muttered, hoping that he wouldn’t hear her.

  But the bookie ignored her, looking me up and down. “All right, Mrs. Fraser,” he said. “That’s forty dollars on the nose!”

  I nodded demurely. “Why don’t you put something yourself on us?” I asked him.

  He wiped his brow with an enormous handkerchief. Bridget plucked at my sleeve. “For heaven’s sake, Kirsty!”

  “Reckon I will at that!” the bookie said. “Thanks for the tip, Mrs. Fraser.”

  I smiled happily back at him. “It will be much nicer if everyone wins, won’t it?” I said.

  “Too right it would!” he laughed. “But it doesn’t happen quite like that!”

  “No,” I observed thoughtfully. “I can see that.”

  “Well, good on you!” Bridget said crossly. “Are you coming, Kirsty? You ought to go and get changed!”

  “Yes, I’m coming,” I said.

  The racecourse lay half a mile out of town, so I changed into my jeans and the hated Fraser shirt before we scrambled back into the car to go out there, The red, dusty track went close to the ‘pearling ground’, where they had once mined for gold alluvial. Mounds of white quartz lay in the sun, forgotten now by those who had made them, and almost covered by the red dust that flew everywhere as the cars went bade and forth. Beside the road lay the Tabletops, two relics of a prehistoric plateau that had once covered the area. They rose to some thirty feet of red laterite and were about the only feature that stood out in the dull landscape.

  The grandstand was a permanency—a fact of which we were all extremely proud, even though some of us wondered how it stood up from year to year. In front of it lay the oval track, bright and crunchy under the horses’ hooves. Above the sun beat down on all of us, stifling the small breeze that played here and there across the plain.

  I went straight away to find Birrahlee, wondering if he was as nervous as I. Mary was walking him slowly up and down, looking as white as a sheet, with her freckles standing out like orange spots on her face.

  “Have you changed your mind that we’ll win?” I asked her immediately, my mind on the forty dollars I had left with the bookie.

  She shook her head, her skin looking greyer and more transparent by the second.

  “What is it, then?” I inquired gently.

  The tears started into her eyes and her shoulders slumped.

  “He hasn’t come!” she moaned.

  “Of course he’s come!” I said, bewildered. “He drove Miss Rowlatt and me here in the Holden.”

  But Mary only shook her head. “Not Andrew!” she exclaimed miserably. “Frank! Frank Connor!” The tears spilled out of her eyes and down her cheeks. “He promised he’d be here today! He promised!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “WHO?”

  “Frank Connor. You met him in London, remember?”

  “Oh yes!” I said. “I liked him.”

  Mary cried harder than ever. “He promised!”

  “But does he write to you?” I asked with disapproval.

  “Oh, Kirsty, you know he does!”

  “I know nothing of the sort!” I said stiffly. “What would Andrew say?”

  “Andy knows!” Mary exclaimed impatiently. I thought she looked quite ill with unhappiness.

  “He can’t know!” I breathed. “Mary, aren’t you in love with him?”

  She looked completely defeated. “I’ve loved him ever since I can remember,” she said flatly. “And for just as long everyone has been telling me that I’m too young for him! But I’m not! I can’t live without him!”

  I was as pale now as she. “He’s waiting for you to come of age,” I burst out.

  “How do you know?” she demanded. “He couldn’t be so silly! The difference in our ages won’t grow any less!”

  “Perhaps he doesn’t want to make the decision for you,” I said coldly.

  Mary laughed briefly, crying at the same time. “That’s good!” she said. “But if anyone makes the decision it will be Andrew. I have to have my guardian’s consent. And he doesn’t mind!”

  My knees buckled and I sat down in a hurry. “Is it Frank Connor you’re wanting to marry?” I asked her.

  She tossed her flaming hair impatiently. “Of course it is! D’you think I want to marry Andy?”

  That was, of course, exactly what I had thought!

  “But Andy is in love with you!” I protested feebly.

  “Nonsense!” she returned brusquely. “Andy likes me well enough as a kind of niece—he’d go mad if he had me for a wife!”

  “Do you think so?” I asked, intrigued.

  She wiped the tears off her pale face. “Oh, Kirsty, don’t be silly!”

  That shook me a little bit. Silly! I tried to still the trembling that had seized me. Could it, just possibly, be true?

  “But how could you?” I demanded hotly.

  “How could I what?” Mary asked, sniffing miserably.

  “Want to marry Frank Connor, when there’s Andrew?”

  Her laughter mixed with her tears and I thought she was going to choke. “I thought you knew,” she said at last.

  “I did too,” I sighed,

  “You seemed to know!”

  I felt unaccountably sad. “Has it always been Frank Connor?” I asked her.

  “Always.”

  “And Andrew has always known?”

  “Of course. It was he who talked me into some sort of resignation when Frank took off for England. Mother kept saying how young I am and he got cold feet and went all noble and said I had to have time to think—”

  “Well, he is a bit older than you,” I said reasonably. “Maybe he wanted time to think too.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Mary admitted on a sob. “Perhaps that’s why he hasn’t come? Because he’s changed his mind!”

  I shook my head. “It’s too early to despair,” I said. “Why don’t you look for him after the race?”

  Mary searched erratically for a handkerchief. “I wanted to stand beside him by the winning post when you came in first!” she exclaimed. “He hasn’t got a horse running today. It would have been so fine!”

  “I suppose it would,” I said uncertainly.

  There was a long silence between us. Then a curious tension crept into Mary’s body and she stared at me, her green eyes free of any further tears.

  “Kirsty dear,” she said softly, “what on earth did you think Andy was playing at?”

  I blushed. “Waiting for you to come of age,” I s
aid matter-of-factly.

  “But why?” She blinked. “Andrew?”

  “There’s the property,” I explained.

  “Oh, my word, was that it?” she exclaimed. “But Andrew wouldn’t fool around waiting for me to come of age! He knows he’s a fine catch! He wouldn’t have bothered about my feelings if he had wanted me. He never considers anyone’s feelings,” she added admiringly.

  But he had, I thought. He had considered mine—and he had been gentle.

  “And when I had come of age, what then?” she went on indignantly.

  “I should have been free,” I told her. “He promised he would pay for any training I wanted.”

  “Big deal!”

  “It is when one has nothing,” I reminded her. “I was grateful. Though,” I remembered fiercely, “I still think he might have said he was sorry that my father was lying there dead and waiting to be buried!”

  To my consternation Mary began to laugh. “And you really thought that Andrew would let you go?” she asked me.

  I nodded my head, puzzled, “Why should he want me to stay?”

  She chuckled again. “Now that would be telling!” she said.

  I didn’t try to sort out her meaning, for the loudspeakers blared and then a voice announced the start of the first race.

  “I must talk to Birrahlee before the race,” I said. “I want him to get it into his head how important it is for him to win!”

  Mary grinned. “Has Andy put a lot of money on it?” she asked cheekily.

  “I don’t know,” I said grimly, “but I have forty dollars!”

  “Kirsty! How could you?” she demanded in mock disapproval. “A whole forty dollars?”

  “I borrowed twenty from Andrew,” I confessed, shamefaced. “I borrowed it against what he will pay me next week.”

  The pale, lost look had gone from Mary’s face and her freckles no longer looked foreign to her face. She gave me a curious look and then she said suddenly, “You know, Kirsty, you’ve given me something to think about. There’s my share of the mine and Mirrabooka, whether I like it or not. Frank is always going on about it too. You know, I think I’d rather just be Mrs. Frank Connor and have a share in his station. Is that silly? I think I’ll give my share of Mirrabooka away!”

  “To Andrew?” I demanded. I knew that he would never accept it.