The boy was helped out and put in the car. As Frances slipped behind the wheel she was relieved, though she could not have said why, that the blue car now had left.
It was an uneventful trip back ... but not so uneventful their arrival at the West of the River front gates. The gates were open and ready and Burn West stood by them to shut them again after they had passed through. It was a long walk from the house along that avenue of pines. Almost a mile, Frances thought. Why had he done it?
He was back in the car now, sitting behind her, for Jason with his cumbersome leg took up all the space beside her.
‘Why are you so late?’ he demanded.
‘It’s not late,’ she protested.
‘It’s night. Even that other time you managed to get back before it was dark.’
‘Mr. West, Jason has been undergoing a long series of examinations and tests.’
‘Did they take up to thirty minutes ago? Up to the length of time it required from Mirramunna to here? Up to the moment when you left ... or should I say tore yourself away?’
‘No, but—’ She stopped. How could she explain, ‘No, but there was a car, and I don’t know why, I felt unsure.’ How could she say anything so unreasonable to this hard, demanding, totally unhelpful, unreasonable man?
‘Then what delayed you?’ he persisted.
‘Was there a curfew bell? You never informed me.’
‘At least you should have considered the child. What got into you, keeping him out like that while you— while you—’
‘Yes, Mr. West? You said “while you—”?’
He didn’t answer for a moment, then he said more quietly, ‘It was Muir, of course, and I suppose I can’t blame you for that. But I do blame you for using time that wasn’t yours. This was a direction, if you recall, not an assignment.’
‘Assignment?’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ He sat back as she cleared the last few yards and brought the car to the garage. ‘Take Jason in. I’ll attend to the car.’ His voice was flint.
Jason’s shrill young ‘I told you we should get going, France, I told you!’ as they went up the path together to the homestead did not help.
‘I’ll tell Burn,’ decided Frances after she had fed and bedded Jason, ‘when he comes in to bawl me out, as he will come in, being Burn West, I’ll tell him everything.’
But Burn didn’t come to bawl her out and Frances didn’t tell.
CHAPTER NINE
Perhaps Frances might have spoken to Burn the next day ... though it would have taken some self-prompting, she admitted, for considered hours after it all seemed a little too foolish to mention ... but the big boss was absent from West of the River.
‘He’s doing the rounds of his managers,’ said Bill Furness. ‘Anything you need, come to me.’ His eyes smiled impudently at Frances.
‘Poor managers,’ Frances said feelingly.
‘Not if they’ve nothing to hide, and being Burn’s men they would have nothing. I admit he’s a perfectionist, but he inspires ... and gets ... perfection in return. Look at me!’
‘I am,’ laughed Frances. She liked Bill. She asked the overseer if he was coming up to Sydney the same as he had last time.
‘No, it will be a full car without me. Anyway, I only went then because Burn didn’t know what faced him with the kid.’
‘But of course he’d know, Jason being his—’
‘As it happened,’ Bill continued, giving her no chance to insert anything, ‘signing you on left him free. Talking of freedom, Frances, there’s a free “do” at the Gillespies’ out of Mirramunna tonight. A barn hop. All we need is to take a plate, and Cooky can set us up with that.’
‘I have a charge, remember,’ Frances said a little wistfully. Although she had enjoyed her country outings they had been strictly scenic, and a little social life would be fun.
‘You can depend on Mrs. Campbell,’ Bill said seriously. ‘Why don’t you come? The kids are going ... Dawn and Sandra, I mean ... and the jackeroos, of course.’
‘I could ring up Scott—Doctor Muir,’ Frances mused.
Bill was not so enthusiastic about this, but he prompted, ‘Then don’t forget to tell the doc about a plate.’
‘X-ray plates?’ she asked.
‘You’re very bright today!’ he grinned.
‘Yes, aren’t I?’ Frances wondered a little guiltily if it was Burn West’s absence and the consequent impossibility of saying things to that granite man that last night she had decided must be said that made her bright. She had second and easier thoughts now. She heaved a relieved breath and began mentally rifling through her frocks.
Jason would be quite all right; Mrs. Campbell assured her of that. ‘You just go and enjoy yourself,’ she smiled.
Having ascertained from Sandra that the function was a casual country-style affair ... ‘Oldies doing waltzes and Pride of Erins and the children having slides between our pop sessions’ ... she put on a rosy pink cotton with a scooped neck and a full skirt. The boys whistled her as she came out to the car, Dawn and Sandra, having been previously whistled at, now sitting contentedly back in their pretty dancing dresses.
It was fun driving through the countryside at night, she had never driven before ... except on that occasion ... and this time there was no Burn West at the end of it all to glower down on her. Now she looked on the unlit bush, for there were no street lamps here, finding fanciful shapes where the moon illumined a bough or branch, where starshine greyly lit up an obscured paddock. The river, too, when it was visible, caught the car lights and shone like silver. Their shadow ran beside them, ahead of them, behind them.
‘It’s lovely,’ said Frances, gently but definitely disengaging herself from one of the jackeroo’s arms, and Terry ... or was it Toby? ... answered ruefully, ‘It was’ and turned his attention on Sandra.
They ran through Mirramunna, barely a handful of lights and most of them belonging to the hospital. That reminded Frances that she had forgotten to ring Scott. She said so aloud and Bill said feelingly from behind the wheel, ‘Well, that’s a good start, anyway.’
‘But probably he’ll know, some of the hospital staff will be sure to attend.’
‘Beauty!’ called the jackeroo who had been discouraged by Frances and evidently by the girls as well. ‘I might be appreciated at last!’
Another handful of lights pricked the countryside, and Bill said, ‘This is Broadfields.’
‘Is that the name of a town?’
‘It’s the Gillespies’ property in whose barn tonight’s scramble is being held.’ Bill pulled up the car and they all tumbled out.
At first ‘scramble’ seemed an apt description, for there seemed to be people everywhere. The small space, small compared to a proper hall, was crowded with people of all ages and dressed in all sorts of clothes, from ball gowns and a few dress suits down to ginghams and jeans. The music had not started, so the children were skating merrily on the waxed floor. Frances, instinctively on the alert because of her experiences with Jason when it came to slippery surfaces, went spontaneously forward, but Bill only laughed. ‘Relax,’ he advised, ‘these kids aren’t in plaster.’
‘I think some of them soon will be,’ said Frances, missing a young male torpedo by inches.
‘Not them ... but you or I will be. Come along while we put in our plates.’
Cook had supplied a very attractive hamper, but it was nothing to the fantastic dishes already burdening the corner tables, toppling sponges in the country manner, Pavlovas, great cartwheels of pies, both savoury and sweet.
The music began ... only piano, drams, a guitar and a harmonica ... and the rhythm was excellent, and that, appreciated Frances in Bill’s arms, was all you needed. She danced in both sections, in Sandra’s ‘oldies’ as well as pop, for she had learned ballroom dancing at school, and was glad then for the breaks when the children took over. ‘Thank goodness,’ she laughed at Bill, ‘I’m not expected to slide!’
She was fanning hers
elf, looking around the happy family affair, thinking there was no fun really like country fun, then suddenly she was not smiling any more. When her gaze had swept round the room it had included a lower exit door, leading out to one of the Gillespie paddocks, and at that door...
Frances looked again. There was nobody there. But there had been. There had been.
She sat very still and very quiet, relieved that Bill had gone for two drinks and that she did not have to talk back to him. For the flicked glance had focused briefly on a fair young woman ... the woman she had seen in the car at the rice-held that day ... had seen since, or at least recognised the car ... and on all occasions had felt oddly unsure about. Now she had seen her again, seen her looking quickly around the barn. It was the same person. And Frances experienced the same disquietening uncertainty.
She got up unobtrusively and left the barn. She wanted to check the cars. The moon had gone behind the clouds, so it was not so easy to mark the lighter ducos from the dark, then from the lighter ones find a pale blue.
Music had started again in the hall, Bill would be back with the drinks and looking for her, but still Frances remained outside. There was no pale blue car, and it worried her. She felt quite definitely that the young woman who had so briefly stood at the doorway had been that young woman, but she was not in the doorway now, nor had she been in the barn when Frances had slipped out, so where was she?
She checked the cars again, found a space where a car had been and felt more disturbed than ever. The trouble was she couldn’t put a finger on her dismay, it was simply there. All at once she was thinking of Mrs. Campbell minding Jason at West of the River. In spite of the housekeeper’s responsibility the uneasiness persisted. She went back and peeped into the barn. A barn dance was beginning. She knew these dances, they went on very often for almost an hour. By the look of the happy crowd they would cry out for more and more. Bill, after a quick search, would pick up another partner, and in the hilarity of the hop forget all about her. It only remained now that he had done what she thought he would do, what most easy-going country people do: she hoped he had left his keys in the car.
She had no trouble in finding the homestead’s estate wagon. The doors were unlocked. The key was in the ignition. Quietly ... as quietly and unobtrusively as a pale blue car? ... Frances switched on, moved gently out. But once on the dark country road she put her foot down on the accelerator. In no time the handful of lights that was Mirramunna was coming up, then she was leaving the little hamlet behind her and taking the river road. Now she had no opportunity to find fanciful shapes in the unlit bush, but she did glance to left and right every time the moon emerged to light up the night-shrouded countryside. But she saw no car.
She let herself in at the gates, leaving them open for she would have to return to the barn-dance otherwise their party would have no home transport. When she drew up on the drive she sat behind the wheel for a long moment. I’m a fool, she knew, I’m here, but I don’t know why. I don’t know what I’ve come for.
But she did know really, though she wouldn’t admit it. How long she would have sat there trying to gather the courage to get out, go to the front door, go in, see if everything was all right, she did not know. And she did not have to find out.
A voice at the driver’s window right beside her asked, ‘Yes, Miss Peters?’
Frances jumped.
It was Burn West. Without another word he came round to the passenger’s side, opened the door and got in.
‘Sorry I startled you,’ he apologised, ‘but you did intrigue me sitting silently there. The hop no good? Has the gang come home?’
‘N-no,’ Frances said. ‘It’s very good. No one’s home—except me. I came ... I came ...’
‘Yes? You came?’
If she said ‘To check up on Jason’ he would look at her incredulously, make some disparaging remark. After all, he had employed Mrs. Campbell for years and obviously thought the world of her. Also he might not have been pleased at her going tonight, and might say crisply that it had taken her a long time to have a second thought about the outing.
A third point struck Frances, and it was like a sharp finger on her heart. Perhaps he had just arrived himself, had not been indoors yet. Perhaps—
In a voice that didn’t sound like hers to Frances but evidently did to Burn West, for he did not seem at all perturbed, she asked banally, ‘Have you just come in?’
‘I’ve been here an hour. All’s well. Mrs. Campbell is enjoying a night free from records and the sonno sleeps soundly.’
‘Then that’ ... a deep breath ... ‘is good.’ She glanced at him in the dark. ‘Were you—were you angry that I went to the dance?’
‘Good heavens, no. A barn dance is food and drink to the country man.’ He added, ‘And woman. Now don’t say’... impatiently... ‘that you’re a townie.’
‘Then you weren’t annoyed?’
‘Not then. But I am now.’
‘You are now?’ Again she drew her breath.
‘I was on my way to attend the dance myself. Tell me, is there any Pavlova left?’
She laughed a little unsteadily at that. ‘If there’s not there’s rainbow cake.’
‘Then let’s get to the shed before that disappears. At least after you get what you came back for.’
‘What I ... Oh yes.’ She unfastened the door and went into the house. Inside the house she stood for some minutes, and then she came out again.
‘Right?’ he asked casually, and she answered as casually, thankful he hadn’t inquired what it was she had left behind, for she had not planned what she would say.
The barn dance was still in progress. Only in a country shed, Burn said when Frances expressed surprise, could it last as long as this.
‘But it’s the Pavlova I’m after,’ he relished. ‘You slip in with the crowd.’
‘And put them all out? No, I’ll eat, too. If there’s anything left.’
‘Anything left! You are a townie!’ he laughed confidently as he slipped a huge wedge of meringue filled with passion-fruit cream on to a plate for her. He said teasingly, ‘You can do with some weight.’
He cut a wedge for himself ... but they never finished that Pavlova. The compare called out that they were making this last round of the barn dance the final waltz of the night. ‘After all’ ... feelingly ... ‘it’s now tomorrow, and I have a date with a tractor!’
The piano, guitar, harmonica and drums were making magic that Frances had not believed they were capable of.—Or was it because she was with a new partner, a partner who had put down his plate, taken away and put down hers, who was pulling her up and into his arms as though he had planned it like this?
Balloons and paper butterflies were streaming down on them, laughing couples were jostling into them, Bill, piloting Sandra, called reproachfully, ‘Hi, where did you get to?’ following it with a more respectful, ‘Hullo, Boss.’ Children, determined on their final frolic, were skithering between the dancers. The guitar player was singing and he had a low rather dreamy voice.
‘What are you thinking, France?’ Burn asked softly.
‘That I never thought you would dance like this.’
‘Then you do think about things like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like West Senior instead of West Junior. Oh, yes, I know, and I give you credit just how much you think about the sonno. That’s really why you came home tonight, wasn’t it? To see if he was still asleep. Funny little thing!’
‘Who, Jason?’ she asked.
‘No, you, darling.’—It sounded like ‘darling’ but in a shed like this you could not know.
‘I appreciate that, France,’ Burn continued, ‘but—’
‘Yes?’
‘Sometimes there’s something left over. Do you know what I mean?’ His eyes were holding hers.
She knew, and for a moment the headiness of her knowledge made her want to tell him that there was something left over. Something for someone else. But, th
e words rushing to her lips, she remembered that though he had guessed that her real reason for returning in the middle of a dance to West of the River had been Jason, he had not known why she had done it. Because she had never told him. Her omission silenced her now, made her withdrawn, apart, in her guilt.
He was waiting for her to answer to his ‘Sometimes there’s something left over. Do you know what I mean?’
He waited ... then gave the merest of sighs. He released her a little. Moved away the fraction of an inch.
A moment was gone.
Several days later, Scott released from Mirramunna Hospital for an agreed interval from duty, Burn West’s station business in order and nothing to demand his immediate or future attention, the party left for Sydney.
There were two men, two women, one little boy: Scott, Burn, Mrs. Campbell ... ‘Can’t go anywhere without you, can I, Mrs. C.?’ Burn said affectionately ... Frances and Jason.
The big car was more than ample. Once more Frances sat in the back with Jason and the other three shared the front seat. Burn drove. They did not dally this time, take sidetracks to see the capital, skim up the coast. Burn got on the Highway and stayed there. He drove safely, steadily, but kept his foot well down on the accelerator. They made Sydney in very good time.
Burn drove immediately to the city apartment, telling the others as he let them off to follow Mrs. Campbell while he garaged the car.
At West of the River Mrs. Campbell was officially the housekeeper, but she never cooked, and now Frances, thinking this city arrangement could be an imposition to the older woman, came forward with an offer to help.
‘Thank you, dear, but actually I enjoy doing it. I did it for Burn’s parents. But I was much younger then and numbers didn’t dismay me. I wasn’t at all reluctant I can tell you when Burn suggested when he started West of the River that I leave the cooking to Cook.’
‘I wouldn’t have had I shown any sense.’ Burn must evidently have handed the big car over to an attendant, for he was only one lift behind them. Taking the key from Mrs. Campbell and opening up the apartment, he said regretfully, ‘I’ve never enjoyed a steak and kidney pud since.’
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