‘A cottage as well as the homestead?’
‘It’s practically a little town. Most of the Inside places have to be that. They form their own world. When you’re hundreds of miles from a store you start your own store. That applies to amusements, too. For instance, you show your own movies.’
‘Do you, Crag?’ asked Davy enchanted, forgetting the anthills.
‘Sure do, scrubber. You have your own church, your own sick bay, all the things an ordinary town would have.’
He understood her concern. ‘No, I don’t take over that side, unless of course it’s an emergency until the F.D. can get in.’
‘F.D.?’
‘Flying Doctor. Though I do dole out physic when needed to the pics.’
‘Piccaninnies.’
‘Yes. The scrubber won’t lack young friends, Pippa.’ At her frown he said stoutly, ‘They’re lovely youngsters, Davy will do himself proud.’
‘Of course,’ Pippa assured him, ‘it was the lack of a medico that was concerning me. I mean if suddenly...’ Her glance went to Davy.
‘Then just as quick as down south we get aid. Quicker, I’d reckon, there’s no traffic in the sky, so that the F.D. or F.A.—’
‘F.A.?’ asked Pippa now.
‘Flying Ambulance, ready to take a patient to the nearest base hospital, or, if more than that is needed, even down to Sydney or Melbourne. I tell you, girl, you’ve no worries.’
‘No,’ she said, relieved.
During the afternoon’s ride some occasional green crept into the red earth and rocks, and Crag said that around here was cotton country.
‘There’s water, you see, something a cotton stand must have.’
‘Haven’t you water?’
‘Cattle amount. Cotton needs more.’ He had pulled up the waggon for her to see the plants at nearer range. She found the shrubs in bloom very pretty, even bridal.
Soon the green cut out and the mulga and spinifex began again, the bare bones of rocks. They circled an emu’s nest so as not to disturb the mother. Later on there was another detour around a taboo ground, a place, Crag explained, where the natives believed ancestors walked. Davy did not sleep during the long warm afternoon, his eyes were wide.
‘What will happen, Crag,’ he asked, ‘if the sun gets down to two fingers and we’re still not at Falling Star?
‘I reckon we’d push on, scrubber. I know the track like the back of my hand. Only it’s not going to happen. See that hill?’
By this both Davy and Pippa had begun really to see hills in Crag’s ‘hills’. At first they had laughed at them, refusing to admit even a slight rise when he had pointed out Mount Westward ... Purple Mountain ... Gully Peak ... The Ramparts ... But now they had adjusted their ideas ... and their vision—and they both called eagerly, ‘Yes.’
‘Beyond that is Falling Star. In half a finger more, Davy, you’ll be looking at your home.’
‘Oh!’ Davy breathed, and he judged the westering sun by his little digit held sidewise. Presently he called, ‘The sun has moved that half finger, Crag.’
‘And Yantumara awaits.’
‘Where? I can’t see—Oh, yes.’
Pippa, too, had focused the setting. With Davy she sat silent while the waggon gathered speed on familiar ground and the distant cluster of buildings became more distinct.
‘It’s a township,’ Pippa called.
‘Not really,’ Crag grinned.
‘But all those buildings—’
‘The land has been good to the Crags, and that includes those who lived on our land, so we’ve given back what we can. Those cottages’ ... he waved his hand ... ‘replace the humpies of my grandfather’s day. That shed is an amenities hall, that small building our little hospital. There’s Mrs. Cassidy’s happy home. Next door is the book-keeper, and then there’s a dormitory for the stockmen. And that’s—’
Davy finished for him in a reverent voice: ‘Falling Star.’
‘Yantumara,’ nodded Crag. He had slackened speed so that he could gaze, too, at his home.
Pippa saw that Ku, as he had told her, had copied its pattern, there was the same sprawling design at Ku, the same wide verandahs. But the setting here, she smiled to herself, was very different. No cool country lushness at Yantumara, no singing pines, just the bare hot hinterland. Yet there was a tree ... a rather strange specimen.
‘It’s a baobab,’ said Crag, starting off again to finish the last short lap, ‘a bottle tree. Folk have been known actually to live in that wide trunk, but we’re not going to. Stand aside, scrubber.’ He had halted now and lifted them both out. ‘This is something I’m told has to be done.’
As he approached her Pippa saw what he intended to do, and she said half in vexation and half in laughter, ‘Oh, don’t be silly, Crag.’
‘Don’t you be silly. I couldn’t do it before, I couldn’t carry you over the threshold of a tent.’ As he spoke he lifted her in his arms and bore her through the open door, Davy dancing delightedly at his heels, an audience of little dark people ... and quite a few not so little ... at the foot of the verandah. Also some ten-gallon hat men, stockmen probably, a man with a ledger under his arm, he would be the book-keeper, a woman in an apron, she would be Mrs. Cassidy. Others.
‘Oh, put me down,’ Pippa implored.
He did ... in a room that at once enchanted Pippa. It was large, with a cool cemented floor that had been painted green and polished to a high gloss. The blinds were rattan, the furniture bamboo, everything was for coolness, except the fireplace where fires would never be lit, and there, very effectively, either Mrs. Cassidy or the girls had arranged dried feathers of long grass.
Crag, watching her closely and seeing her approval, remarked of the fireplace, ‘I told you that my great-greats only thought in terms of so many rooms and as many chimneys.’
‘I like it,’ she assured him.
Davy was scampering around the house, discovering it all for himself, occasionally letting out squeals of joy.
‘There’s a sea outside, Pippa. Look through the window!’
‘Lagoon,’ called Crag. ‘We’ve had some wet. It mightn’t be there next month.’
‘There’s a windmill and a corral.’
‘We usually say pen, scrubber. Pippa, meet Cass, the best dab sponge hand Up Top. Cass, this is—’
‘I’m glad to meet your wife, Crag,’ the older woman greeted Pippa warmly. ‘Your mother would have loved to have seen this day.’
Your wife. All through the tea that Mrs. Cassidy insisted on serving at once, even though the main meal could not be far away, Pippa kept on hearing those two words. Your wife.
The tea over, Mrs. Cassidy now insisted on running across to her own place while Pippa got her bearings. She would be back to serve the dinner, she said.
There was a sensitiveness in this back-country woman, Pippa saw, and she warmed to her. She wanted to say: ‘Don’t go. It doesn’t matter. You see—this is a different marriage.’
Then Crag was taking her along to her room, showing her the larger room he would share with Davy.
Tonight we’ll go through things, medical things concerning the scrubber,’ he said, ‘you’ll tell me what to watch for in Davy.’
‘He’s my responsibility,’ protested Pippa.
He patted her shoulder. ‘Why don’t you flake out until dinner? Incidentally Mrs. Cass always does the cooking. Up till now I’ve eaten with the men, and I thought it might interest Davy if we continued doing so. Suit you?’
‘Of course. Unless—’
‘Yes?’
‘Unless you feel I should form a family table. I mean—’
‘You mean you at one end, me at the other, the scrubber in between? Compliance to a certain state?’
‘Oh, Crag!’ she said almost tearfully.
At once he was contrite. He touched her head gently, said, ‘Rest now,’ and left.
But after he had gone she sat broodingly at the window, not looking at the new fresh things that at fi
rst had captured her attention, thinking wretchedly instead of this big warm house, and what this house should be.—What this house wasn’t.
It should be filled with love ... and the children who come from that love. Of course there was the love of Davy, but for how long? How much more borrowed time?
She stared through the window but did not see the faintly mauve-grey grass that turned iridescent every time the small breeze teased at its blades, she did not see the glittering lagoon. When a bell went for dinner ... she supposed it would be dinner, for no one would ‘dress’ here ... she had only time to dab her eyes before Crag knocked and called ‘Tucker!’
If he noticed pink rims he said nothing, but he did appeal before he opened the dining-room door an anxious: ‘They’re looking forward to you, Pippa, you’re the only woman, bar Mrs. Cass, whom they see every day, for five hundred miles.’
‘You’re asking me to smile.’ She did smile.
‘Thanks, girl.’ He turned the handle and pushed the door.
There was one long table with benches each side, and everyone sat there. That is they did until she entered, then they rose while Crag introduced them all to her.
‘Barney, Snowy, Harry, Nobby,’ said Crag. ‘Boys, the Missus.’
Four leather-dark faces creased into smiles, and the eyes, deep in the creases from years in the sun, disappeared.
‘Rupey, our bookie.’ Rupert took off his glasses and bowed.
‘Tim and Tom, two helpful jackeroos,’ put in one of a pair of fresh-faced boys.
‘Hopeful of stopping on considering the mistakes they’ve made while I’ve been away,’ growled Crag, and the other half of the pair retorted that it could be hopeful of getting out of here, but his voice did not back up what he said.
There were others, sundry helpers, Pippa judged, and they all smiled appreciatively at her, so much so that tomorrow she resolved to wear a pretty dress and have bright eyes.
Davy’s eyes, however, were positively glistening. Not from the company, she soon found out, and not from the festive board, but from the audience at the window. There was literally a score of little dark heads and double. At last he could bear it no longer, and he tugged at Crag.
‘Crag, where do they eat?’
‘In their own houses, of course, scrubber, like you’re eating ... or I expect you to start soon.’ He picked up Davy’s knife and fork to prompt him. ‘Only,’ Crag continued, ‘mainly their mums make one big fire and cook the rib bones there together.’
‘Rib bones?’
‘Over a eucalyptus fire there’s nothing better.’
‘Oh.’ Davy looked with disappointment at his own tasteful plate.
‘Look,’ said Crag, ‘if you lick that clean, tomorrow night you can have rib bones down there.’
Pippa gave a little gasp, and Crag said, ‘Won’t do any harm, in fact a power of good. I grew up on meals like that.’
‘But Davy’s different,’ she said in a low voice. ‘You shouldn’t tell him things that will leave him disappointed.’
‘Rib bones never disappointed anyone.’
‘You know I didn’t mean that,’ she said angrily.
‘Smile,’ he advised. ‘Only woman, save Cass, for five hundred miles, remember.’
Pippa, feeling more like kicking his shins, smiled.
Davy, prompted by Crag’s promise, reassured by the shy welcomes on the little brown faces at the window, ate his meal, listening with fascination to the station talk of herds, horse-breaks, overlanding ... places called strange names like The Overtake, Big Dry, Come And Get It.
It appeared that a horse-break was going on this week. The wild horses had been rounded up last month and now there was the job of breaking them in. The mares had been done, said one of the stockmen in a soft voice that rather surprised Pippa for a man in such a tough position, and they had been nervous but easy enough, but the stallions had been a challenge.
‘Especially,’ came in the stockman Harry in an equally soft tone, ‘that older feller we haven’t got round to yet. He promises to be a bad ’un.’
Mrs. Cass brought out plum duff ... she was certainly a great cook ... then all took their plates and scraped them and placed them in a dishwasher and poured their tea from a huge brown pot.
The little pansy-eyed people had faded away from the window—no doubt, explained Pippa to Davy, they had gone to bed. On hearing this, Davy, too, agreed on bed, and Pippa took him along to the room he was to share with Crag.
‘It will be funny,’ said the now experienced Davy, ‘sleeping under a roof.’
‘You liked the tent better, darling?’ Pippa was fixing a pillow.
‘Oh, no,’ Davy assured her, ‘I like it here, it’s my home.’
My home. He said it with such faith and assurance, Pippa’s eyes pricked. How long a home?
‘I feel like crying for joy, too, Pip.’ Davy, mistaking her tears, smiled it up at her. He said proudly, proud of himself, ‘You can go now. I don’t need you to sit with me while I go to sleep, not any more.’ As she rose obediently and went to the door, he called, ‘Pippa, you’ll tell him, won’t you?’
‘Tell whom, darling? Tell what?’
‘Tell your husband about me not needing you to sit with me.’
‘Yes, I will, Davy.’
‘And Pippa—’
‘Yes, Davy?’
‘Tell him I think that very soon I won’t want anyone ever at all. Will you tell him?’
‘Yes, Davy.’ She went slowly out. No one ever at all. Davy had said it with pride, he had always been sharply conscious of his dependence. But she had not heard it with pride but misery, because there soon would be ... no one ever at all.
No more springs. Doctor Harries had told her that, and already that last spring was three months gone.
She found her way to the big room where she expected, by its lights, Crag would be awaiting her. The stockmen, the book-keeper, jackeroos and general helpers had departed to their own quarters. Mrs. Cassidy’s kitchen light was out, so she must have left, too.
Pippa knocked on the door, then entered the cool domain. Crag got up from the bamboo rocker he was relaxing in and insisted she take it.
‘No,’ he said as she objected to shifting him out, ‘I like seeing a woman rock, it looks more in keeping than a man rocking.’
‘I think a man is more in keeping,’ she argued, ‘a man sitting on a porch smoking his pipe and looking back through the years.’
‘Do I seem that old to you?’ he grinned.
‘No, it’s just how I see a man and a rocker.’
‘Shall I tell you how I see a woman and a rocker? I see her there with a baby and singing lullabies.’
‘I suppose your mother rocked you here,’ said Pippa a little stiffly, ‘sang you lullabies.’ Before he could elaborate, she prompted, ‘You wanted to talk to me about Davy.’
‘Yes.’ He waited to light his pipe.
As he did so, Pippa remarked on the stockmen and how impressed she had been that such big tough fellows could speak in such gentle, controlled voices.
He put down his pipe at that and laughed till the tears came down his cheeks.
‘Barney, Snowy, Harry, Nobby,’ he guffawed. ‘Gentle, controlled voices! Wait till I tell the jackeroos.’
‘I don’t see anything funny.’
‘You’ll hear it, though, when I take you out to see a muster. Of course the fellers’ voices are gentle and controlled, they’re saving them for the next time they’re cracking a whip and digging in the spurs as they take off after a trouble-maker. But’... seeing that Pippa was still unamused ... ‘it’s nice of you to tag them “gentle and controlled”.’
‘Don’t you like your staff?’
‘Like them?’ He looked at her amazed.
‘You don’t sound as though you do. Though perhaps’ ... coolly ... ‘you dislike anything gentle and controlled.’
He did not answer for quite a while. Then he said in a rather husky voice: ‘It’s not alw
ays easy to be that. Gentle and controlled.’ He had got up and gone to the window. She saw that the knuckles of the hands on the sill were strained and white. ‘Not easy,’ he said again.
There was a long pause. Feeling uncomfortable, yet not understanding why, Pippa reminded him what they had come together to talk about. He nodded and came back to sit beside her, and then quietly but firmly he drew from her every detail she could give him concerning Davy. The first grave signs in a small child, the attention he had been given since, what each doctor of the many doctors had reported. Finally Doctor Burt.
‘Glen Burt repeated what I had previously learned, but he said that every day new reading was coming in concerning Davy’s trouble. He said—’
‘Yes, Pippa?’
‘That sometimes in spite of facts, in spite of all a doctor knows, it doesn’t always happen as a doctor believes. But’ ... a break now in Pippa’s voice ... ‘how long can a little boy wait?’
Several times during the long questioning Crag got up and made tea. Then he would come back and ask for more. But finally the questions stopped, and they sat silent in a room that Pippa realized with drowsy surprise was fast becoming lighter. They had talked all night.
Crag had got to his feet again, but this time not for tea. Leaning over, he gathered her up and carried her to her room. At least,’ he said, ‘you’ll get an hour before early cuppa.—Though a fine watchdog I made for our scrubber.’
‘You had to understand everything,’ she defended for him, and knew it was the first defence she had made for Crag.
‘Yes, he agreed, ‘and it was better to talk the night out than sit and think.’
She looked quickly at him, and he went on.
‘Think, he said, ‘like you were thinking this afternoon, Pippa. Sitting at a window and thinking about this house.’
‘How could you know—’ she blurted, her cheeks burning. Then she stopped and looked away.
But he answered her unfinished question. He said, ‘Because I was sitting at a window, too, thinking of what a house should be, but isn’t. Grieving for a house. So it was better to talk out tonight, wasn’t it? Though’... putting her down on the bed ... ‘it will be different... when a house is.’
A Thousand Candles Page 12
