This Wish I Have

by Amanda Doyle

  Mattie hurried over the covered way to the kitchen, dodging the holes in the roof where the rain poured through, and wishing that her father had had them repaired. Not that it mattered now.

  From the kitchen she could see that there was no longer a gay line of washing at the junction of the creek. Diamond and Harry would have known that the rain was coming, and had removed all the family chattels to safer ground. Above the sound of the racing river came the drone of Gib’s tractor. Only Gib’s today, and it wasn’t one of the light tractors that he and Percy had been using all the week. He was working with the big yellow D2, because its wide caterpillar tracks could crawl over the muddy earth unhindered by the rain, pulling in its wake the heavy plough that churned the soil with relentless monotony, so that the freshly-tilled acreage increased with every hour.

  When Gib came in for breakfast, he was soaked. His shirt clung across his powerful shoulders and his hair was plastered to his well-shaped head in a gleaming cap.

  “Oh, Gib!” said Mattie reproachfully, before she could stop herself.

  Gib looked down at his sodden clothes.

  “I am a bit wet,” he conceded ruefully. “Would you rather I didn’t sit down?”

  “I’d rather you went and changed into dry things at once,” she told him, aware that she sounded maternal and fussy.

  He gave her a lopsided grin before he sat down and helped himself to stewed plums and cream.

  “Tut, tut!” he twitted her. “Rain never hurt anyone, Mattie, it makes you grow. Or didn’t it ever rain in Sydney? I’m sure it did. It’s a wonder if you weren’t out in it yourself, modelling some natty little shiny raincoat with bright spots all over it and a hat to match.”

  Mattie gave him a queer look. That was very much the sort of thing she had modelled, as it happened. All the young things were going crazy about that shiny, gay look in the rain just now.

  “At least we had the sense to wear raincoats, anyway,” she told him repressively, eyeing his clinging shirt with disapproval. “I’ll find you an oilskin afterwards, Gib. And please wear it.”

  “Right, Mattie. You find it. I’ll wear it,” Gib said agreeably, tucking into his chops and eggs and bacon.

  Mattie looked at him suspiciously to see if he was laughing at her, and of course he was. He never took her seriously at all, she thought with sudden sobriety, pouring boiling water into the tea-pot.

  “Gib, do you have to go on, in the rain, like this?” she asked, half pleadingly.

  “You know I do, Mattie. I’ve got to get it done, because these people are coming, and by the time they leave, it will be getting late enough to be sowing. Be reasonable, now. You know that as well as I do.”

  “Yes, I know, but—Gib, what’s the point of it all? Why do we have to bother, when—when we know the place is doomed?”

  Gib put down his knife and fork and looked at her. “That’s just how the thing works, Mattie,” he explained patiently. “When a valuation is made, it’s made on things as they are, not on what they could be potentially. If your father’s fences were in poor order, he couldn’t expect the same value to be put on them as he has the right to expect right now. The same applies to everything. And because one does not know precisely when the valuation will take place, one has to carry on as one normally would. You can’t just sit back and stop. Suppose your father did that, and for some reason the scheme was deferred for a year, and the valuation along with it? He’d be left with no crops—fully stocked, with no fodder—and he’d be in a mess then, wouldn’t he? He would have a considerable loss of income. No, Mattie, this is the way it has to be. The cruellest aspect is that the man concerned has to carry on just as though his heart was still in it, right up to the last minute, trying to ignore the uncertainty, although he knows all the time that the axe is eventually going to fall. If he gives up, his men give up too, and they drift away to other jobs, because they know there’s no future, and they have to think of their security. He has no choice but to go on, just as though he believes there is a future.”

  “Yes, Gib, I see,” said Mattie quietly. Poor Father! she was thinking. What a cruel way for it to have to end! He hated pretence in anything, and now he had to pretend to himself, as well as to everyone else!

  “I’ll get that oilskin,” she added, and went off to find one.

  The rain had settled by lunchtime to a steady soak. The thunder had gone, and the heavy clouds had given way to skies that were pale and sullen and overcast. It looked as though the change in the weather was here to stay for a few days.

  Mattie spent the afternoon sorting out linen in preparation for the visitors. Aunt Allie helped her to inspect all the sheets, and when they had re-folded them, they put all the double ones in one pile and the single ones in another.

  Mattie sighed with relief when the task was nearly completed.

  “I’ve been meaning to do that ever since I came back,” she said. “Nellie and Lucy weren’t very fussy when they were looking after Father and Nick, I must say. I’ve a horrible suspicion that some of the time those men didn’t have sheets at all, but slept on their mattress-ticks alone.”

  “We’ll mark them in some way, now we’ve sorted them out,” Aunt Allie decided. “And then we won’t have to do it again. It’s funny, but men never seem to notice deficiencies like that, no matter how particular they are about things outside. We women worry and fuss over their creature comforts, and half of them at least are just as happy without them. Goodness, I can remember having some patients in the mission hospital who had never slept in a bed, never mind between sheets. We used to find them curled up on the floor, instead of on those nice, healthy horsehair mattresses, as soon as our backs were turned.”

  Mattie laughed.

  “I might, too, if I had to have a horsehair mattress. I don’t like the things. One of the men is going to have to have one, though—the one who sleeps on the stretcher on the veranda—but I don’t suppose he’ll mind.” “Shouldn’t think so. We’ll look the party over when they come, and see who we’ll give it to.”

  “The youngest and toughest?”

  “Or the one most in need of corrective postural treatment? It’s very hard horsehair, if I remember it rightly.”

  “It most certainly is,” agreed Mattie. “I jolly nearly gave it to Gib that first night, only in the end I weakened. My better nature prevailed.”

  They smiled at each other as they brought their hands together on the corners of the last sheet.

  “Done!” exulted Aunt Allie. “Actually, it’s as well your better nature did prevail, Mattie. I’ve a suspicion Gib is one of the kind who’d be equally happy on baked earth as on a feather-bed. He’d fit in anywhere without complaining, and your punishment would have misfired. He’s not the sort to notice or care what sort of bed he sleeps on.”

  Aunt Allie’s words came back to Mattie next morning, but not in the context in which they had been spoken.

  Gib had told them at “tea” that night that he was very nearly finished. Another three hours, he reckoned, and the ploughing of the arable land would be completed. Even the crawler-tractor was finding the wet ground heavy going, but he was elated that he had beaten the weather. When the ground dried up again, he and Percy would begin sowing.

  It had been nearly midnight when Mattie heard Gib’s weary footsteps going to his room. She lay there listening for them, as she had found herself doing for the past week.

  He didn’t come in for breakfast when Charlie’s bell rang. At first Mattie thought that he might be too far away to have heard the bell at the homestead. Then, as time wore on, she decided that perhaps, as it was Sunday, and the ploughing was finished and the rain still drummed sonorously on the iron roof, he might have slept in. Eventually she gave a last look at the toughening steak keeping warm in the oven, and dodged through the puddles of the covered way, slowing to a more dignified pace as she reached his room.

  She knocked, and when no reply came, opened the door.

  And that was when A
unt Allie’s words came back to Mattie, with all the dire impact of a soothsayer’s prophecy.

  Most certainly, today, Gib neither knew nor cared what sort of bed he slept on. To be literal, he was not sleeping, and he was only partially on the bed in any case. His tanned face was sallow and bathed in sweat, which trickled right down his neck and over his bare chest, and when she approached, he turned fevered, wakeful eyes her way.

  “Gib?” Mattie felt the cold hand of fear clutching her heart.

  It was a moment or two before he could reply. He seemed to be trying to overcome the violent shivering that seized his limbs and set his teeth chattering.

  “Gib, what is it?” Mattie asked fearfully. She thought she had never seen anyone look so frighteningly ill.

  “Don’t be alarmed, Mattie. I know what it is. I’ve had it before. Do something for me, will you?” Gib broke off as another spasm of shivering took control of him “Tablets—in my swag—the corner. Two—if you can.”

  “Yes, don’t worry. I’ll get them.”

  Mattie knelt down and unstrapped the roll of blanket with fumbling fingers. She turned the contents out on to the floor, and searched hurriedly, wishing she knew more about what she was supposed to be looking for. Were they in a box? A bottle? A foil pack?

  She lifted a handsome pigskin pocket-book, with brassbound corners, and paused momentarily, askance, at the initials in the corner.

  G.I.B.F. Gold and clear. G.I.B.F.

  G.I.B. for Gib. And F. for Fortune. His choice of an alias was unbelievably simple.

  She hardly looked at the photograph which fell from somewhere among the pockets. A pretty girlish face framed by lovely dark hair gave her an almost reproachful stare as she thrust it back carelessly out of sight, and tossed the wallet aside. An assortment of odds and ends followed in its wake before Mattie found what she had been looking for.

  She shook out two tablets into her palm, and ran to the bathroom for a tumbler of water. When she came back and lifted Gib’s head, he swallowed the tablets and drank, but she had the odd feeling that his over-bright eyes weren’t seeing her at all.

  They must have done, though, because he whispered, “Thank you, Mattie,” very politely, and started to shiver again.

  “Now, go,” he urged her indistinctly.

  Mattie noted his glistening face and streaming torso, and shook her head.

  “No, Gib. I can’t leave you like this. You need fresh pyjamas, and the sheets are wringing.” She put a tentative hand on his shoulder.

  “For God’s sake, leave me, will you, Mattie, and get out of here? Out,” he said dangerously. Mattie knew that tone of voice only too well. Even in his present state she dared not disobey. He looked as if he was preparing to leap off the bed and remove her bodily from his room.

  “I—I’ll get Aunt Allie,” she told him distractedly, as another rigor shook him.

  “Yes, do that. Get Aunt Allie, and stay out, damn you,” muttered Gib hoarsely, this time not politely at all.

  Mattie turned and fled.

  She seemed to spend hours in the kitchen, waiting for Aunt Allie to come back. She wiped the shelves and tidied the jars and swept the floor, then she picked two ants out of the sugar-bowl, and hunted through with a spoon for more. But if there were any more there, she didn’t find them. Then she peeled some potatoes, and diced some carrots, chopping them into ridiculously little, neat squares, because it gave her hands something to do.

  When she heard Aunt Allie coming, she dropped the knife with a clatter and swung round.

  “Well?” she asked anxiously.

  “It’s all right, Mattie,” Aunt Allie said calmly. “It’s malaria—a slight attack.”

  “A slight attack? He—he looked awful to me!”

  “Yes—well, it looks more alarming than it really is, although it’s unpleasant while it lasts,” explained the nurse imperturbably. “He’s had it fairly recently, it seems, and it can recur like this sometimes. He’s got his mepacrine tablets, and I have quinine, too. He’ll be right as rain in a day or two, Mattie, you’ll see. He’s been working overtime, remember, and I don’t believe he changed his wet clothes the whole of yesterday. It’s no wonder that it caught up with him again, but it won’t last long.”

  Aunt Allie shot her a shrewd glance.

  “You can sit with him for a while if you like,” she offered. “In fact, it might be a good idea. You can tell me, then, if he gets too restless.”

  Mattie looked even more dubious.

  “He—he’ll eat me,” she replied. “He told me to get out. He was—he was really very rude about it, very rude indeed. He even said damn. He swore at me.”

  “Did he?” Aunt Allie smiled at Mattie’s injured expression. “Well, I don’t think he’ll be in any condition to eat you,” she continued dryly, “and I think he’ll be feeling too ill by now even to bother saying ‘damn’! Go on, Mattie, off you go.”

  Mattie went, on timorous and unwilling feet.

  She spent the next two days, off and on, in Gib’s room. To her relief, he looked much more peaceable, firmly tucked in blankets and heavily sedated by some potion of Aunt Allie’s. She only had to wipe away the sweat that trickled down his face, and listen to his occasional meaningless mutterings. Aunt Allie herself dealt with his medicine, and each time Aunt Allie visited him, Mattie went back after an interval to find him lying in fresh sheets, appearing much more comfortable and relaxed. Aunt Allie had even brushed his damp hair, and Mattie thought what a wonderful nurse she was, and what courage she had, to brush Gib’s hair. Mattie herself would not have dared, but Aunt Allie was nothing if not thorough. It was doubtful if he even knew Mattie was there, and as soon as she saw signs of returning normality, she stayed away. She was determined that she wasn’t going to be told to go again. It hurt too much.

  On Wednesday evening, as she was dishing the vegetables, she heard Gib coming along the veranda, and her pulse started to race in spite of herself. She knew the sound of his elastic-sided boots treading firmly over the boards. When he was coming, the familiar glow of gladness warred with a sadness that he did not notice her very much, and a longing that he would.

  Tonight, his face was a paler tan, and his grey eyes held the lingering shadows of a recent fever, but his expression was as inscrutable as ever.

  “I came to thank you, Mattie, for helping me to deal with my bug.”

  Mattie flushed.

  “I didn’t help you at all,” she said. “You wouldn’t let me.”

  “I seem to remember being a bit boorish at one point. I’m sorry, Mattie. I was feeling rather grim at the time.”

  “That’s all right, Gib,” Mattie told him awkwardly.

  When he looked apologetic like that, she had an insane desire to take his head in her hands, and ruffle his hair, and smooth his lean cheek against her own, and tell him not to be silly.

  “Aunt Allie tells me you were a devoted watchdog,” Gib continued more casually. “I hope I didn’t bore you with any ramblings?”

  “You did say one name quite clearly, Gib. It was Annabelle.”

  “Annabelle?” Gib looked thoroughly taken aback.

  “Good grief!” he murmured thoughtfully, almost to himself. “I must have been wondering how she was getting on.”

  Without you? Mattie longed to say. But she didn’t.

  “Where did you pick up malaria?” she asked instead.

  “In New Guinea.”

  “Oh.” She looked blank.

  “I was up there with some other chaps, building a bridge,” Gib told her, as though he guessed that her curiosity was tormenting her unbearably.

  “Then why aren’t you still up there? Or was it a long time ago?”

  Gib shrugged. “Not very long, really,” he informed her carelessly. “And I’m not up there now because they turfed me out.”

  Turfed him out! He’d been thrown out, and he didn’t sound even remotely ashamed. In fact, he was even cheerful and careless about it. Mattie felt near to despair.
How could she love such a feckless person, even if he was kind and comforting and tender at times?

  Why had he to be a rolling stone, wasting all the admirable qualities that he obviously possessed? He had shown that he wasn’t afraid of work. Look at the way he had ploughed and ploughed, day after day, doggedly into the nights, with the headlights to guide him, just because her father was in a fix, and they were shorthanded.

  But his efforts appeared to be spasmodic. New Guinea one week, somewhere else the next. Perhaps he would always be a wanderer. There were people like that. They just couldn’t help it.

  “Aren’t you going to ask why they turfed me out?” Gib’s eyes were on her, crinkled with amusement.

  Mattie shook her head.

  “No, Gib,” she said coldly. “It’s entirely your own affair. I’d really rather not know.”

  “That’s a pity,” stated Gib whimsically. “It was a good story, too.”

  Mattie’s eyes smarted. Oh, Gib, she thought, why do you joke about it? I can’t bear it, she thought. It’s like loving a piece of thistledown that wafts away on the first breeze, or a sunbeam that warms you, then splinters and fades.

  Suddenly she was grasped by the shoulders, and turned round slowly, face to face with the man who held them.

  “Don’t look like that, Mattie,” he adjured her gently. “I was only teasing, you know. You’ve had a rotten couple of days, haven’t you, cooped up with a sick man, listening to his malarial gibberish? And all those sheets out there on the line? You washed them too, didn’t you—and got the meals?”