This Wish I Have

by Amanda Doyle

  “Two-timing,” asserted Gib sternly. “That darned Bob Rankin kept getting in the way! I was tempted to clobber the fellow once or twice to get him off the scene, but I couldn’t, because of the survey. But for him, I’d have told you who I was before I left, and a lot of other interesting facts besides.”

  “And instead you just walked away,” accused Mattie unsteadily, with tears at the back of her voice. “You never even turned your head. You never beckoned.”

  Gib’s possessive gaze raked hers.

  “Would you have come, Mattie, if I had?”

  “Of course,” answered Mattie, with simple candour.

  “I actually believe you would,” muttered Gib thickly, obviously shaken. “My heaven, Mattie, that’s more than I deserve, that sort of faith. That Lex Bennett’s daughter would have followed down the road after an ordinary swagman!”

  He sounded strangely humble.

  “A swagman, Gib, but never ordinary,” Mattie assured him. “But I should have known that you wouldn’t beckon, that you wouldn’t want me. You said you had your Matilda, and—and that one was enough for any man. Remember?”

  Gib regarded her gravely.

  “Yes, I remember saying that, Mattie, and right up to the day I left, it was true. I had some unfinished business to complete. I had to get rid of that other Matilda, before I could come back and claim my own one—the one I want by my side for ever. Will you marry me, Mattie, and be my wife?”

  Gib’s voice was deep and demanding. He took her face between his hands, and when she whispered, “Oh, Gib,” in incredulous assent, he leaned over her, and kissed her again, gently this time, because he was sealing a lifetime’s bargain.

  “I beg your pardon!” came Lex’s astonished voice from the doorway. “I didn’t realize anyone was in here!”

  Mattie’s father blundered out again.

  Gib reached for his hat, and captured her hand once more.

  “Let’s get out of here, and go somewhere where we can’t be disturbed.”

  He dragged Mattie after him, back past the kitchen, back around the veranda, and into the living-room. She had to run all the way to keep up, and this time she was more breathless than before, because Gib’s kisses had left her that way.

  Gib sent his hat whirling into a chair again, the way he always did. Then he sat down into the depths of the big, old-fashioned sofa, pulling Mattie down beside him.

  She was content just to sit there, close against him, whilst his thumb moved back and forth over her wrist in a curiously peaceful, caressing gesture. She felt the tight coilspring of nerves and unhappiness begin to unwind inside her, and tranquillity steal over her. At last she could begin to believe that what was happening was true.

  She was here beside Gib, and he was a tall, tanned, rather frightening stranger no longer. He was still tall and tanned, of course, and still just a little bit frightening, because he was in a possessive and demanding sort of mood that she didn’t understand, but he was also the man she loved, and he had asked her, Mattie Bennett, to be his wife.

  Wide-eyed with wonder, she turned and smiled in to his eyes, which weren’t very far away from her own. She was so close that she could see where the sun-wrinkles ended at the corners, and she caught the glint of one or two little clipped grey hairs in amongst the springy black ones at his temple. She had never been near enough to see those before. She supposed they had come because he was who he was—Greg Faversham, the Territory man, who not only had a string of stations to worry about, from Queensland right out to the west, but also was known to spare himself little in his efforts to develop those vast, less advanced areas so that they could contribute to Australia’s national wealth in a way that only men like him—men with vision and judgement and confidence and determination—were convinced that they one day should.

  Gib turned her hand over in his own, and studied her roughened palm.

  “You’ve been working very hard, Mattie, I think. Haven’t you been happy?” he asked now, gently.

  “One part of me has been happy, Gib,” she assured him solemnly, “and that’s the daughter part. It’s because of you that Dad and I seemed to get back on our old footing. Those things you said one night in the office started me thinking, and seeing my father in a different light and when he made the first move, I could recognize it for what it was. We seemed to have been groping around in a mist searching for each other, then suddenly we were confronted with each other, and all that time in between meant nothing, when we realized neither of us had changed.” Mattie gave a small, wry smile. “That part of me was very happy, Gib—the daughter part. But I soon found out that once a girl comes to love another man, the balance changes. The daughter part becomes smaller and less essential, and the woman part takes over. That bit of me has been terribly unhappy. I’ve felt so hopeless, and so helpless to cope with it, that I took refuge in action. I kept telling myself that I wasn’t going to let it beat me. I meant to go back to Sydney, once Dad and Aunt Allie were married, and try to build up some sort of existence there, even though I knew it would be a sort of living death without you. Dad knew I was planning to do that. I can’t think why he told you differently in his letter.”

  Gib gave her a brief, heart-stopping smile.

  “I can,” he said. “It was just a piece of sound, masculine horse-sense. It was a way of telling me how the land lay, and it saved me a heap of bother, what’s more.”

  A thought must have occurred to Gib as he spoke those words. Mattie, sensitive to every change in him, watched sheepishness and uncertainty chase each other over his face. Uncertainty? In Gib? But yes, it was!

  He released her hand, and ran his own through his crisp, dark hair, hesitant and faintly apologetic. He coughed.

  “Mattie—er—perhaps I should have mentioned it before’—Gib appeared positively ashamed—“but there something you’re bound to find out fairly soon.”

  “Gib, what?” Mattie’s eyes were wide with alarm.

  “Well—er—Mattie, I’m not exactly a poor man, although I don’t go round yelling about it. I—er—do happen to have a yacht, Mattie. Just a small one,” he confessed. “It’s moored up at Surfers’ Paradise, actually. I mean, one has to get away from the pressure of business sometimes. You—er—do understand?”

  Mattie’s eyes were alight with laughter.

  “Perfectly, Gib,” she made herself say solemnly. “We’ll be able to sail together.”

  Gib scratched his chin with a square-tipped finger, not meeting her eye.

  “And—er—there happens to be a beach-house there too,” he confided, on an anxious note.

  “Marvellous!” breathed Mattie, taking his lean, abashed face between her hands, and drawing him nearer. “We’ll take the children there for holidays.” She pulled his head down and kissed that stern, warm mouth.

  “No racehorse?” she whispered.

  “No racehorse,” agreed Gib softly. “I’m not a gambling man, Mattie. I never have been. Especially when it came to wives. I’ve waited a long time for the one I would know was the one for me.”

  Mattie gave herself up to his slow, compelling kisses. Presently the opening door brought them both to their senses.

  Lex stood there, momentarily transfixed, with a newspaper in his hand.

  “I beg your pardon, Gib,” he said. “I didn’t know anyone was here. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  He stood a moment with the newspaper clutched to his chest. The merest hint of a smile flicked over his craggy features.

  “I’ll be in my bedroom if anyone wants me,” he announced obliquely. “Presumably you don’t intend to work systematically through the whole house.”

  Mattie turned to Gib once more.

  “Do you realize, Gib, that I don’t even know where you live, or what it’s like, or anything at all about you, except that I love you quite desperately?”

  There was a definite glint in Gib’s eye.

  “Well, you’ve a lifetime to find out,” he told her blandly.
“The last bit is the essential one, Mattie, because I couldn’t go on without your love.”

  “Your brother?” asked Mattie. “How did you find your brother? And Annabelle?”

  “They were both well and happy, and quite clear in their minds about what they wanted to do. I’m going to set Dave up in a garage business in Brisbane. We’ll see them sometimes when we go over to the coast. It took that spell out on the properties alone to make them realize that that kind of life is not for them. My deliberate absence for eight months brought them to a decision. In fact, it seems it was a good thing all round, in the end. Look what I got out of it!”

  He twisted his fingers into her wheat-blonde hair and pulled her towards him.

  When he stood up, he retrieved his hat, and made for the door.

  “Where are you going?” asked Mattie in alarm. Gib grinned, and the sun-wrinkles came back again, and his eyes narrowed into those lazy, grey, teasing slits.

  “I’m going to see Lex,” he said. “To ask for his daughter’s hand.”

  The grin spread, and his white teeth glistened in his lean, weathered face.

  “Like my grandmother, I’m old-fashioned,” he told her, on his way to the door.