by Margaret Way
Genny was looking at the children too, laughing and splashing one another, as she used to do, her small face very much lost in thought and deeply introspective.
Dave caught her hand, grasping her fingers and nibbling on them. ‘What are you thinking about, Gent’
She turned to him apologetically, as though she realised now that the silence had gone on too long. ‘I‘m sorry. Had I gone off somewhere?’
‘You know you had. The fact is, you’ve been very preoccupied since the day I arrived.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry!’ she said, touching his cheek briefly. ‘I really want you to enjoy yourself.’
He looked at her, a very attractive young man who wanted to be with her exclusively. ‘Sweetheart, don’t think I’m complaining. I’m having the best time of my life. Close up to a great station I tell you it’s terrific. People don’t realise how different the life is. It’s staggering, the size of the place, talking in thousands of square miles. Boy, that’s awesome. It has to add some extra dimension. Your cousin is no ordinary guy, that’s for sure!’
‘No, he isn’t, now you mention it,’ Genny said rather flatly.
‘Very knowledgeable too about medical matters,’ Dave added, genuinely admiring. ‘Things must have been pretty grim before the RFDS. It’s really something, isn’t it?’
‘Literally our lifeline. Most station people are very resourceful. They have to be, but we rely on our Flying Doctor. He makes all the difference between life and death, a friend and a link beyond price. One of Ingo’s closest friends is Bob Melville, their top man, and he often drops in just to say hello. The Flying Sisters as well. People are very friendly in the Outback. There are so few of us, we cling together. ‘
‘Yes, I suppose so. That’s some medical kit you have.’
Genny nodded. ‘We all have them. Each item is numbered. It makes it easy for the doctor. Some things can be treated at home-you’ve heard the mothers speaking to the doctor about their babies. That accident over at Lake Frome was a bad one, but even the most isolated station can contact a doctor within minutes, so you can imagine what it means to us. The women use the vast RFDS network for their galah sessions. It can be very comforting, their only link with the rest of the world. Can you imagine what it was like before that? The suffering and the needless tragedies? A small child dies very easily. Tandarro has a good few graves.’
‘You’re fortunate in your aircraft, though, aren’t you? I mean, two private planes and a helicopter?’
‘Ingo uses the Cessna and the helicopter for directing and supplying the mustering teams, inspecting the stock and the property, that kind of thing. You don’t imagine he could ride over it, do you? We’d never see him from one year to the next. ‘
‘They must have cost a packet.’ Dave persisted, fascinated by everything on the station.
Genny shrugged. ‘They pay for it in performance. I think it costs the flying doctor planes in our sector alone about a thousand dollars a day, seven days a week, just to keep in the air. The Baron we use for city trips, for functions on other properties, country race meetings, the occasional ball. We have functions here too as well. Isn’t the ballroom terrific?’
‘The whole place is unbelievable.’ enthused Dave.
‘There are other magnificent properties. This is the home of the cattle kings.’
‘I have to hand it to them. That’s just how they live.’ Dave said enthusiastically, clearly unaware of the long hours, the hard work and the dangers involved. ‘I guess your cousin would be a highly eligible bachelor?’
‘He’s that. ‘ agreed Genny wryly.
‘Not for long. Our Sally would like to put him in a cage.’
‘How unimaginable!’ Genny said, waving back the children.
‘It would be hard, I agree. Even a velvet one wouldn’t hold him. He’s kinda tough, isn’t he? Super independent. The life style, I suppose-not very liberated towards women. You know, master of a great holding and the rest.’
‘It isn’t that. It’s a man’s world out here. Its our men who opened this country up. Their women made it habitable, fine brave women, but no woman has a man’s strength and physical strength and endurance counts.’
Genny smiled wanly. ‘Besides, you know how men are. They find it easier to relate than women. Ingo grew up to a great heritage. He never knew anything else. He wouldn’t even know how to be ordinary! ‘
‘Wouldn’t that make him kinda difficult to live with?’
‘It makes him damned difficult to live without!’
‘Well, Sally’s a tryer. A little pushy but very slick and glamorous. I like her. Think she’s got a chance?’
‘Of what?’ Genny asked, crushing a flower.
‘Landing the million-dollar prize. Literally million dollar, I imagine.’
‘Sally’s people are in a very big way!’ Genny said, as though that answered something. ‘Ingo wouldn’t be a safe man to marry.’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Dave demanded, puzzled by the sombreness of her pure profile. ‘I thought you two were very close. I know he adopts a very protective attitude towards you, maybe highhanded.’
‘And that’s why I’m saying it. Ingo is a very complex man. He’s not like you, for example.’
‘You could kiss me in grateful acknowledgment!’
Dave suggested, not in the least playfully.
‘The children may turn around,’ she hedged.
‘Oh well, later. Come to think of it I haven’t kissed you properly once. In fact, I think you’re taking very good care I don’t. What’s up, Gen? You know I love you. I want to marry you. It’s my dream or my hang-up, I don’t know which.’
‘You know my views about marriage, Dave.’
‘I‘ve heard them. You’re the original crazy mixed up kid. Happiness isn’t known to all that many, I agree, but quite a few prefer marriage to any other way.’
‘I‘m not scorning it, Dave. I’m just very wary.’
‘Naturally!’ said Dave, looking at her seriously.
‘Don’t say any more! ‘ she pleaded.
‘Sweetie, I wasn’t going to. I’m greatly taken with your mother, as you know. I find it impossible to remember she’s anyone’s mother. In that outfit she had on this morning she looked Sally’s age, maybe younger. She’ll sure make her mark in Texas.’
‘Why do you say that?’ Genny demanded.
‘Because it’s true, little blossom. I’ve been here a week and I’ve had time to study Dan at close range.
She’s leading him around by the nose. Damned funny considering the size of him. Anyway, he’s an improvement on Hughie.’
‘You’re not the first to say that,’ observed Genny.
‘I’ll bet your cousin was the other. He’s perfectly well aware of the set-up. Would anything escape those diamond eyes? God, aren’t they lancing? The Chief has eyes like that, only they’re blue. He doesn’t like me much either.’
‘Ingo does.’
‘Yes!’ Dave agreed in a very pleased voice. ‘I had noticed his extreme hospitality, which doesn’t mean to say he thinks I’m a suitable mate for you.’
She shifted uneasily. ‘He hasn’t said a word on the subject. Not that I see much of him.’
‘He’ll get around to it, never fear. I very much admire him, but I wouldn’t like to cross him. I’ve noticed he’s the kind of man that comes right out into the open. I think he might even chop me up into little pieces. I’d have a hard time getting his permission to carry you off, anyway.’
‘I’m disappointed in you, Dave,’ she said in a little jeering voice. ‘I thought you’d just ignore Ingo!’
‘Ignore him? You’re kidding! That sort of man is impossible to ignore. Sneaking off wouldn’t do any good either, he’d come right on after you. Don’t misunderstand me, honey, I’m brave enough, but I’m not going to cross your cousin. Clearly he’s more of a man than I am.’
Genny heard him with her heart twisting over. It was getting harder every day to keep up
her own brave front when she was feeling so vulnerable. It was true that she saw little of Ingo. She had deliberately been avoiding him anyway, unconsciously aided and abetted by Dave and the children, with whom she spent all of her time. Only at dinner did she see him for any length of time. He was gone early and he never came in for lunch, not even to please Sally. Genny’s mouth twisted wryly. She had never been able to strike a balance with Ingo and these days he didn’t seem to care. It was beautiful at the lagoon, a paradise with its perpetual sunlight, its native trees and the moonshaped ring of clear, sparkling water, sloping from the shallows into very deep water. Like Dave, Genny had already been in for a swim and now the sunshine fell all over her, gilding her hair and her skin.
In her brief two-piece swimsuit, a stark black against her golden-tanned skin, she looked so unintentionally provocative, so delicately sensual, that Dave was beginning to feel the blood thundering in his head. Genny simply didn’t know the pressures she put on a man. She was a highly intelligent girl, but she simply wasn’t aware, nor made the slightest effort to promote her own highly inflammable female aura. She was, in fact. Dave considered, despite her luscious Italianate eyes and mouth, a very conservative girl, in no way as forward as any of the nurses he practically had to fight off, or so he thought to himself. There was plenty of communication at the hospital on a one-to-one ratio. In his experience Genny had never been known to make the first move, and in two years he had no more than kissed her deeply moulded mouth. All the same, it more than measured up to his other adventures, which naturally he didn’t tell her about. They were not engaged or anything like that, not even a friendship ring, but Dave was unusually resolved to win a yes from her to his marriage proposal. A rising young doctor needed a wife. Maybe not quite so beautiful a wife; with such a face a few people might question her. As it turned out she was the most innocent girl he had ever known-unbelievable, he considered, with such a mother, who needed a man to love her like a swimmer needed air. It was a shame in a way Genny insisted on taking the children along on all their jaunts. Not that he didn’t like Sean and Sarah, they were very entertaining and well behaved; it was simply that they never strayed off for even five minutes, and Dave was down to regarding five minutes as half a lifetime.
Something had happened to Genny. She was in some way changed, and so far he hadn’t figured out what it was. She might almost have fallen violently in love, she was so lost in her own world, but it was fairly safe to assume that it wasn’t that. There was only her cousin Ingo, who was a natural to arouse any red-blooded woman, but he was family. There was no mistaking his attitude towards Genny, and Dave had to respect it. Their relationship had gone right back to Genny’s earliest childhood, so one could discount a cousin even if he did call the tune. Anyway, Sally was wild about him and ten times as experienced as Genny; delightful and enterprising, even if she didn’t make the heart race like Genny, who was in the grip of some strong emotion he couldn’t find out about.
She had worried for years about her mother, he thought. Perhaps it was that. She had had plenty of cause to worry too. Lovely dreamy Felicity was really a case, and a terrible judge of a man’s character. At least the big American was a man one could like and admire. He was no fool either, even if he was acting like one at the moment. Once he put a ring on any woman’s finger she would just have to behave.
Dave decided he would continue to prod. In another ten minutes the children would come tearing up the sandy bank crying out for an apple or a cold drink or whatever. Everything and everyone on the station seemed to revolve around Faulkner, the centrifugal force. There was something significant in that. Dave knew there was a curious affinity between Genny and her cousin, something that seemed to imprison both of them, for he had seen them striking sparks off one another. Ingo Faulkner really posed an unfathomable question mark in Genny’s young life. Dave felt immeasurably far from that kind of man, but not quite as effete as he imagined himself at the outset of this visit. He had acquired a very attractive tan, nowhere as deep as Faulkner’s but attractive all the same. The nurses at the hospital would certainly comment on it to his advantage. He had even succeeded in getting one or two of them to fall in love with him. But they weren’t Genny, that was the trouble.
‘Please look at me, Gen!’ he said softly, leaning over her and groaning aloud. ‘You know, I’m barely able to keep my hands off you. You have the most beautiful skin-tactile. I feel kinda breathless.’
‘I‘d better put my jacket on,’ she said prosaically.
‘Don’t. Anyway, it’s see-through. What a miracle a woman’s body is! Perfect. Perfectly formed for loving.
But you don’t, do you?’ He tipped her dimpled chin to him and held it. ‘You don’t love me, do you, Gen?’
‘What is love?’ she asked, grave as a child, her dark eyes as deep as the far end of the lagoon.
‘What I’m feeling right now. ‘ Dave said in a husky voice.
‘Couldn’t that be physical infatuation?’
‘Don’t knock it, kid. It’s rarer than you think.’
‘Believe me, I’m not. ‘ She shivered in the hot sun, still feeling the turbulence Ingo incited in her with just a glance.
‘Don’t you want to get married?’ Dave asked, stroking her satiny shoulder.
‘You’re off your head!’ she said, trying to smile.
‘Damn it, sweetheart, that’s no way to answer. Various young women of my acquaintance would be glad to be sitting right where you are now!’
‘I‘ll bet. You have a way with the female person. Don’t worry, I accept it. A good-looking young, doctor a big hospital-all those sex-starved nurses.’
‘Believe me, it happens! ‘ Dave said not unpleasurably.
‘What are you trying to say-and leave your hand right where it is.’
‘I want you to marry me!’ he said in disgust. ‘Dad is thinking of buying me into a private practice next year.’
‘Why don’t you join the Flying Doctor?’
‘I’m not that brave. I like safe, city work. Except that it’s so crazy I’d say you’re in your cousin’s clutches.. Maybe you’ve even lost your head over him.’
‘Ingo wouldn’t stand for it. ‘ Genny said, shaking her shining head.
‘He’s very important to you, though, isn’t he?’
‘Of course!’ Genny said dryly. ‘Have you ever seen anyone more splendid than Ingo?’
Dave shook his head. ‘No, I haven’t, and it disturbs me to admit it. I’m glad he doesn’t work at the hospital. The nurses would ignore me. I know you share a special relationship with him, having known him all your life and being without a father or a brother. The pressures of your childhood, perhaps, a psychiatrist would say. Something has made you excessively wary of romanticising love and marriage, yet your cousin is altogether a very striking man. Deflationary for the rest of us. I mean he’s extravagantly classy. Sally thinks so.’
Genny moved a little fretfully, pushing her fingers through her drying curls. ‘Let me nip all your terrible suspicions in the bud. Ingo and I aren’t in the least bit romantic about one another.’
‘Thank God for that!’ Dave said piously, with very real feeling. ‘I thought as much anyway. I mean, it’s practically incestuous. Just thought I’d ask. It’s really a very strange set-up altogether, his family I mean.
His mother and sister living in Adelaide, his stepmother, the other one, what was her name? You did tell me.’
‘Barbara. Uncle Marc married her on the violent rebound and ignored her from that day on. She was a very attractive woman but not very nice. As far as I can remember, she was all mushy about Ingo!’
‘Great Scott.’ Dave sat up straight, staring into Genny’s face. ‘You never told me that before.’
‘You never asked. Ingo loathed her. In fact he tipped her out just as soon as he could. Ingo hasn’t got much time for women.’
‘Whatever it is that’s bothering him, it’s deadly with the ladies. I must try it some time.’
/> Genny smiled. ‘You’ve had a very different life, Dave -peaceful, happy. Your mother and father adore you.’
‘I know they think I’m more brilliant than I am.’
‘Ingo was involved in endless running battles between his parents. Deep down he’s as wary as I am. He’ll be thirty-four next birthday and there’s been a procession of Sallys. He’s never married one of them.’
‘Let’s hope he does this time. I like her. She’s great fun-a little too aggressive for my taste, but still fun. I suppose he wouldn’t look sideways at a submissive little woman.’
‘There aren’t all that many of them around,’ said Genny.
‘No, I guess he’d go for sensuality and intelligence. Come to think of it, that’s not Sally.’
‘She knows exactly what she wants and how to get it,’ she rejoined. ‘Unlike most men Ingo doesn’t respond to the usual tactics. I’ve said all along she should give him a bit of his own medicine. This has been going on for years. Sally’s Trish’s age. She’s more determined than most.’
‘Think how deliciously exciting it would be to be married, Gen! ‘ he said, appraising her in a slightly dangerous fashion.
‘Plenty of people wish they’d never got married.’
‘Your mother does it all the time. Whoops. ‘ he hit a hand to his forehead. ‘I’m sorry I said that.’
‘In a way, I don’t blame you. Flick is different. She can make easy undemanding relationships. Even when she marries them she doesn’t get very deeply involved. I wish she’d been different, but I love her all the same. If she does decide in favour of Dan I think my heart would break.’
‘Why, for God’s sake?’ Dave asked, grabbing her hand.
She shook her head, not even able to answer him. Overcome with tenderness at that point, he kissed her cheek. ‘Umm! ‘ He moved his mouth from her cheek to her chin and back again, aware of what was going to happen in a few moments. Genny was the most exciting girl in the world for him. Even kissing her cheek seemed to melt him.
‘Dreadfully sorry to interrupt!’
