Over the Blue Mountains

by Mary Burchell

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Hello.” Martin came forward to greet her.

  With a hasty flick of her lashes, Juliet blinked away her tears, sufficiently, she hoped, to deceive him into thinking that she had merely been looking too long into the sun.

  “Why, hello, Martin.” She tried to make that sound cheerful and matter-of-fact. “Are you ready to go out to the house?”

  “Whenever you are,” he assured her.

  And ten minutes later they were on their way.

  If anyone had told her a week ago that she would soon be driving beside Martin to what she must now call home—a home, moreover, that he was helping her to put in order—she would have found the idea fantastic and impossible. And yet here she was, and she even thought the situation naturals soon as they reached the house they started on their respective tasks as though this were the natural pattern of existence. And later, when she was scrubbing out cupboards and could hear him whistling softly to himself as he added a last touch or two of paint to the scullery, she thought, It might be our home. This is how I used to imagine it again and again when I was back in England.

  By common consent they agreed that it was no longer necessary to work with quite the same intensity as in the first few days—the more so as the warmth of spring was already beginning to deepen into the first hot breath of summer.

  Juliet came presently to see how he was getting on. She stood watching him for a moment, strangely content in his company, and then, lifting her damp hair away from her forehead with the back of her hand, she said, “It’s getting frightfully hot, isn’t it?”

  “Hot?” He looked amused, and she was glad to see that his eyes could still twinkle in that boyish way. “This is just faintly warm to what it will be in a few weeks’ time. You don’t know what heat is yet, Julie.”

  “Oh, dear! Well, I’m glad we managed to do the worst of this job first, and I hope we can have the family settled in before what you call the really hot weather comes.”

  “This is going to be quite a good house from the hot weather point of view.” Martin looked round consideringly. “You have a good cross draft and, of course, those trees do shade the place well. Though I’m not sure that it wouldn’t be safer to have them down,” he added speculatively.

  “Have them down!” She was horrified. “Not for the world. They’re one of the loveliest things about the place. Why should we have them down?”

  “In case of fire. They’re really much too near to the house.”

  “Oh, but it’s their nearness that makes them so attractive! And why should we anticipate a fire, for goodness’ sake?”

  “One always starts anticipating fires as soon as the weather begins getting hotter,” Martin admitted. “Maybe we get them on the brain, but it’s difficult not to in this country. I never quite realized what it was like until I came out here. I just thought, Oh, yes—bushfires. The sort of thing you have in an adventure story or film. But once you have smelled one, even miles away, and seen the sullen grayish yellow of the bushfire sky, you take them more seriously.”

  “Max was right in one when he was a boy,” Juliet said, suddenly remembering his story and the long ragged scar on the back of his hand. “He had to get into a creek and stay there all day.”

  “Did he?” Martin showed a minimum amount of interest in the exploits of Max’s youth. “Well, it’s essential to know where your handiest water supply is. Do you know where it is in this place?”

  “I ... hadn’t thought about it.”

  “Then I suggest that when we’ve eaten our sandwiches and had some tea, you and I knock off for the rest of the afternoon, and go and explore the country at the back of the house.”

  “Oh, Martin, I’d love that!”

  She had been longing to see something of the surrounding country, and somehow it seemed right and rather lovely that, after all, it should be Martin who should take her, and answer her eager questions about the country she had always expected to see first in his company.

  After their sandwich lunch they started out together across the rough “scrub” country that lay beyond the house and garden and, as they walked along, Martin pointed out anything he thought characteristic or specially interesting. The curious, bullrush formation of a clump of grass-trees, the dozens of different types of wattle—all flowering with a profusion and a brilliance of color which was breathtaking—and the never-ending varieties of wild flowers.

  They paused a dozen times in as many minutes to look at the thick white petals of the flannel-flower, the blue of a little forget-me-not like flower with the strange name of leschenaultia, or the sudden startling red of the waratah. And every now and then when Juliet exclaimed with delight over some new wild flower, Martin would inspect it and pronounce it an orchid of one sort or another.

  “But they can’t all be orchids,” Julie protested. “I never heard of anything so luxurious as having orchids grow casually like this.”

  Martin laughed.

  “They aren’t the luxurious kind. Just wild—and pretty. The same family, but poor relations. I believe there are literally hundreds of different varieties of orchid in this country. They have no scent, you notice.”

  “And the birds aren’t supposed to sing much, are they?”

  “We-ell, they make themselves heard all right,” Martin told her with a grin. “But—no, I suppose their best friend couldn’t call it singing.”

  “What’s the queer noise that goes on all the time? Something between a rustle and a squeaking?”

  “Those are the cicadas. Some people call them locusts, but I believe that isn’t strictly correct. Does it worry you—the sound, I mean?”

  “No—I don’t think so. I’ve only just noticed it,” Juliet said. “It could get on one’s nerves, I suppose.”

  “When it’s terribly hot and there’s no sign of rain and you’re bored or unhappy, they seem completely maddening,” Martin declared. “But I suppose the same can be said for any continuous sound.”

  “Well, it’s preferable to someone else’s radio,” Juliet said with a laugh. And she stood still and flung out her arms to the sunshine and the space, as though to emphasize the tremendous extent of the open countryside. “Solitude has its compensations.”

  He stood and smiled at her.

  “Do you think you’re going to like it here, Julie?”

  “I’m determined to.” She let her arms drop to her sides again. “The family genuinely needs me just now and I’m going to make a success of this place.”

  He looked at her almost wistfully.

  “You certainly have courage and optimism.” He sighed. Then he added musingly, “It’s strange to hear you talk of ‘the family’ when I’ve never known you with relations at all. Do they feel like your family?”

  “In an odd way they do,” Juliet confessed. “Particularly my uncle and Penelope. He is like mother in some moods, and she is peculiarly like me.”

  “I’d like to see her,” Martin said.

  “Well, I expect you will.”

  She had said that quite casually before she thought what it implied, but he seized on it immediately.

  “Does that mean that you expect to see something of me in the future, Julie?”

  “We-ll—” she was a little put out “—I suppose that depends on your own plans. Where you work, where you settle and so on.”

  “I’m my own master now. I can choose.”

  “Well, then, I—I suppose if you decide to settle and work somewhere near here, we would see you sometimes—and then you would meet Penelope. And the others,” she added, as though she took in the prospect only by degrees.

  “You mean—” he kicked the rough grass at his feet “—that this isn’t just an isolated incident—this helping you over the house? You don’t want just to—rule me out of your life because of what happened?”

  “Oh, Martin—” she gave a protesting little laugh “—one doesn’t rule people out of one’s life. Unless they do something awful, I m
ean. Don’t let’s start making definite plans at this point. Wait and—and see how things work out.”

  “Very well,” he said. And she was surprised that he looked so well satisfied with so little.

  But during the few days that they were together most of the time, he kept scrupulously to this arrangement.

  It was peculiarly soothing and pleasant just to have Martin to herself. No family to worry about, no new personalities to adapt oneself to. Just Martin and herself, working, talking, exploring the surrounding country, and finding that their relationship was much as it had been in the long, happy stage before they actually fell in love.

  She supposed that no one but her mother had ever been so close to her as Martin. They understood each other so well, still laughed over the same things together—and it was surprising how much they could still laugh in spite of all that had happened.

  Sometimes, when he was specially silent and unresponsive, she guessed that he was thinking of the sharp, brief tragedy that had torn such a gap in his life. There was nothing she could do for him then except let him know from her calm, sympathetic manner that she knew and appreciated his trouble even if she could not assuage it.

  On Sunday Max drove out as he had promised, and Verity—not very willingly, Juliet sensed—came with him. She went over the house and even said that she thought they had all made a good job of it. But Juliet felt that her cousin was already detaching herself from a family life that no longer had any attractions for her. Any interest she expressed was impersonal, the sort of interest she might have shown in the house of a distant acquaintance, and it was obvious that she hardly considered herself a part of the Burlett family any more. They had failed, and it was not Verity’s intention to attach herself to failures.

  “Do you really think your mother will like the house and what we have done with it?” Juliet asked, when for a faintly embarrassing few minutes they found themselves alone together.

  “Why, yes, I suppose so. As far as mother is prepared to like anything to do with the new situation, that is. What a queer girl you are, Juliet, Does it really matter to you at all much?”

  “Of course it does! It’s going to be their home. If Aunt Katherine—or any of the others, for that matter—disliked this house on sight, I would feel that I’d failed them just when they needed me most.”

  “And yet—” Verity looked at her cousin with frank curiosity “—mother hasn’t been specially nice to you, has she?”

  Juliet was faintly shocked at the careless candor of that. “Not ... always, I suppose,” she said slowly. “But when things have gone so badly for her it isn’t quite the time to remember that.”

  Verity laughed skeptically. “That’s when most people would remember. Frankly, I don’t understand the way your mind works. But maybe it isn’t your mind.” She regarded her cousin again with that air of curiosity. “Max says you have a naturally generous heart. Perhaps that’s it.”

  “Max—said that?” Juliet flushed, moved and surprised that Max should speak so, but considerably more moved and surprised that her cousin should see fit to repeat the words. “It was nice of you to ... tell me, Verity.”

  “Oh—I don’t know.” Verity seemed slightly surprised herself at her gesture. “I suppose you’re saving me a lot of work and responsibility that I would hate. I’m so thankful to be in Bathurst away from all this that it doesn’t seem much in return to repeat a compliment or two.”

  Juliet laughed. If her cousin thought her “a queer girl,” she in her turn found Verity quite as inexplicable.

  “Do you think you’re going to like it in Bathurst, then?” she asked, with more friendly intimacy than she and Verity had ever managed to achieve before.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. There are some rather more interesting people than I had expected.”

  “I’m so glad.”

  “Who is this nice-looking fellow who seems to be hanging around after you?” Verity inquired, becoming intimate in her turn.

  “Martin?” Juliet looked startled and a little put out. “He isn’t hanging around after me, as you put it.”

  Verity laughed. “Well, he’s giving an excellent imitation of doing so.”

  “Didn’t Max tell you about him?”

  “Mercy, no! Max never gossips cozily about other people’s affairs,” Verity said with a shrug, and her tone implied some criticism of him.

  “Well, I suppose he thought I might not want it talked about. Martin was my fiancé.”

  “But I thought he married someone else.”

  “He did. But she died most tragically almost on their honeymoon, and Martin is only just beginning to get over the shock.”

  “With your assistance?” That was more like the usual Verity.

  “He seems to like being here, and ... that’s all there is to it at the moment,” Juliet said firmly.

  Verity smiled. But after a moment she said quite unexpectedly, “Well, good luck.”

  Juliet was so much surprised that she made no answer. Only, afterward, when she came to think about that conversation, she could not help feeling that she and Verity had probably arrived at the greatest degree of tolerant friendliness that they were likely to achieve.

  She thought a good deal about the change in her cousin during the following week, and wondered what could have brought it about. Presumably Verity was finding her new life more agreeable than she had had any reason to expect, which made her naturally better tempered. But that seemed rather little to account for the virtual disappearance of her resentment against her cousin.

  Perhaps she has finally woken up to the fact that I have no designs on Max, thought Juliet.

  Then she forgot about the matter, because the furniture from Melbourne arrived, and there were several busy but exciting days putting everything into place.

  Max came over to help with this final stage, and he and Martin worked fairly amicably together under Juliet’s direction. But it was obvious that the two men would never get on particularly well together, and as the weather grew hotter their manner to each other became cooler.

  There was no doubt about it, the weather had become very trying by now, especially to Juliet who was not used to such heat. But at last all was in order, and they had only to await the coming of the family.

  Max was to fetch them by car from Bathurst, and on the day they were due to arrive Juliet was as nervous and excited as if the entire responsibility of the new order of things rested on herself.

  “Dear Juliet, you’ve done your very best. Can’t you leave it at that?” Martin said when, in company with him, she was making a final tour of the house.

  “I suppose I should.” She laughed apologetically. “But it does look nice, doesn’t it, Martin?”

  “It looks lovely,” Martin said. But he looked at her as he said it. And Juliet had the curious feeling that fate was putting back the clock.

  Just about midday there was the sound of a car arriving, and Martin said, “I’ll slip out the back way and leave you to yourselves now. I only stayed to keep you company until they came.”

  “Oh, Martin! Won’t you stay and meet them all?”

  “Later,” he said. “Let them have the place to themselves.”

  And, realizing the wisdom of this, she let him go and went to the front of the house to welcome the others.

  Juliet warmly kissed both her aunt and uncle and hugged Penelope. Then she turned to greet the good-looking boy who brought up the rear.

  “You must be Andrew.”

  “That’s right. And you are Juliet.” He gave her a friendly glance, though he was obviously afraid she might try to kiss him, too.

  Juliet avoided this error, however, and rather nervously followed her aunt into the house.

  “Why—” Aunt Katherine looked around her “—it’s like the house I lived in when I was a little girl. How nicely you’ve done it over, Juliet, Pretty curtains—” she felt the material “—in a cheap way, of course. But very suitable. Where did you get them made
?”

  “I made them,” Juliet explained, indescribably gratified by her aunt’s first reactions.

  “You must have been busy,” was Aunt Katherine’s sole comment on that. But as she moved from room to room, followed by the others, it was evident that at least the place seemed pleasant and acceptable to her.

  “Very nice indeed,” was Uncle Edmund’s verdict, after the most superficial glance around. Then, obviously very tired, he sat down near the window in the sitting room and took no more interest in the tour of inspection.

  “It’s wonderful, Juliet!” Penelope hugged her arm. “I like it better than—” She caught her mother’s eye and tactfully changed the sentence to “I like it better than I expected.”

  “And what about you, Andrew?” Aunt Katherine consulted her son’s opinion with an anxiety Juliet had never seen her display over anyone else. “Do you like it?”

  “Of course. Don’t fuss, mother,” he replied good-humoredly.

  And Juliet decided that she might consider the house an outstanding success.

  Max seemed to think so, too. Because, having taken little part in the inspection and discussion up to now, he met her glance at this moment and grinned.

  “Passed with honors,” he whispered, and patted her shoulder reassuringly.

  During the rest of the day there were various discoveries on Aunt Katherine’s part, of course, which drew such comments as, “Oh, dear me no! Quite impossible,” or “We shall have to change that!” But on the whole, she was not only satisfied with the house, something about it seemed to give her a definite feeling of happiness.

  This was so much more than Juliet had dared to hope that she accepted all minor criticisms with the utmost good humor. And so much improved did her own relations with her aunt seem that it was even not very difficult to explain about Martin.

  It was annoying that, once more, Aunt Katherine seemed to have forgotten who Martin was. But, once reminded, she was willing to take him in her stride.

  “I hope you haven’t any ... definite plans for the near future, though,” she added. “We wouldn’t want to lose you just yet, you know, Juliet.”