A Thousand Miles Away

by Dorothy Cork

  No, she didn’t care a fig about the girls in Larry Sandfort’s life, yet, lazing in the sun-warmed water a few minutes later, she wondered why he hadn’t married his lovely Helen. Was she one of the girls he had loved and lost? Had he frightened her off by his bossy ways, his imperiousness? Was it this fault in his make-up that forced him to resort to planned tactics to get himself a wife? No, Farrell didn’t manage to convince herself of that. A certain despotism could be an attractive quality in a man, could emphasise his masculinity, and Farrell was well aware that there must have been plenty of girls in his life willing and eager to marry him and submit to it.

  She didn’t happen to be one of them, however. Not that it made any difference now, one way or the other...

  That afternoon she set out for the gorge. Mrs. Adams, to her surprise, for she seemed such a practical, down-to-earth sort of woman, was sitting at a table on the back verandah engaged in making a beautiful and. very detailed painting of a bunch of wildflowers. Farrell had sought her out to tell her where she was going when she discovered her painting, and apologised for the interruption.

  ‘May I look? It’s beautiful—you’re very talented.’

  ‘Talented? I’m painstaking,’ the housekeeper corrected her with a slight smile. ‘It’s a sure way of filling in my spare time.’

  ‘You must find it lonely here,’ Farrell suggested.

  ‘Not a bit. I’ve always lived in the bush—I wouldn’t live anywhere else. Besides, I often have company. My husband comes home most weekends—Mr. Sandfort may have mentioned to you that he’s a building maintenance worker in Ansell. Then I have two small grandchildren who sometimes come to stay. My daughter lives in Roebourne.’

  ‘And then there are Mr. Sandfort’s guests,’ Farrell said after a second. It sounded like fishing and so it was, for she had thought of Helen, but it didn’t get any results.

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Mrs. Adams pleasantly, and quietly returned her attention to her painting, putting a definite end to the conversation.

  Farrell grimaced a little and set off for the gorge, reflecting that the housekeeper, as well as being a paragon as far as running the house was concerned, was the epitome of discretion.

  She didn’t walk far up the gorge. It was very beautiful but more than a little awesome. It grew narrower and narrower as she progressed. The towering rock walls closed in and the path was almost impossible to follow through the wattles and eucalypts and paperbarks, tangled as it was with wildflowers and green ferns. It was obviously seldom used, and probably known only to visitors to Quindalup. In the deep green shadows to one side, Farrell could see pools of still water, shadowed, secret and silent. An occasional bird flew up against the blue of the sky, its wings flashing in sunlight, and sometimes a lizard slithered away through dry eucalyptus leaves and flaking bark, but otherwise it was like moving through an uninhabited world.

  Farrell spent two days swimming and walking and waiting, but Larry Sandfort didn’t come, and she began to feel jumpy with frustration. Not a single vehicle ever came along the narrow bush road, and she and Mrs. Adams were locked away in a tiny world that held no one else. Then one day while she was in the gorge she heard the drone of a small plane and saw it flying overhead. Later in the evening, as she came moodily back to the bungalow, it was there again, glinting tiny and silver against the azure sky.

  In the bungalow garden, Mrs. Adams was hunting the fowls back into the yard, and Farrell asked her idly, ‘What’s going on up there?’

  Mrs. Adams didn’t even look up. ‘That’s Mr. Sandfort’s plane,’ she said matter-of-factly.

  Farrell’s heart leapt. ‘Is he coming here? Is—is there somewhere to land?’

  ‘Oh dear, no!’ Mrs. Adams exclaimed. ‘He’s mustering sheep out at Mullamulla Downs, that’s all. I wonder if he brought Helen back from Perth with him?’

  Helen! Lovely Helen! Before she could stop herself, Farrell had asked simply, ‘Who’s Helen?’

  ‘My daughter-in-law,’ said the other woman calmly. Farrell’s head spun. So Helen was married—Larry had lost her to another man. It occurred to her that Mrs. Adams’ son must be powerfully attractive for Helen to have preferred him to Larry. She stood watching the housekeeper shooing the hens across the garden as her mind tried to process what had been said. She hadn’t known Larry was going to Perth, but now she realised that must be where he had gone to sign the papers he had mentioned. Why on earth, though, would he be likely to bring another man’s wife back with him? And why was he mustering sheep from the air? Why, come to that, was he mustering sheep at all, when he was a mining man and. not a pastoralist? It was amazing, she reflected, how many unexpected things there were to be discovered in another person’s life. Who would ever suspect Mrs. Adams of doing those fine, meticulous flower paintings, for instance? Or Larry Sandfort of reading poetry, or of mustering sheep?

  Rather thoughtfully, she followed the housekeeper across the garden, and when all the hens were safely shut up inside their yard, she asked casually, ‘Why is Mr. Sandfort using his plane to work the sheep?’

  ‘Oh well, Bob Nelson doesn’t have a plane now, and they’re shorthanded out there since the son’s gone,’ Mrs. Adams said almost reluctantly, it seemed to Farrell. She glanced at the large rather mannish watch she wore as she spoke, and immediately set off back to the house.

  Farrell gave up and let her go. She had already observed that Mrs. Adams had set a strict routine for herself which she followed scrupulously every day. In her life, every moment was accounted for, and now, no doubt, it was time to peel the vegetables or make the dessert or switch on the radio, or goodness knew what. Farrell would have liked to ask her some more questions, whether it sounded like prying or not—such as who was Bob Nelson, and where had his son gone, and what was Mullamulla Downs to Larry Sandfort, but she couldn’t bring herself to follow the other woman to the kitchen.

  Now, more than ever, she wished irritably that Larry Sandfort would come back to Quindalup and—and let her out of this cage she was in—though heaven knew where she would fly to!

  'He could have taken me to Perth,’ she thought resentfully. But he hadn’t given her the choice, and she wasn’t altogether sure that she would have gone.

  CHAPTER SIX

  On Saturday afternoon, Mrs. Adams’ husband Jim came home. Farrell, hearing the car, thought it was Larry. She was in the garden behind the house reading a novel in which she had somehow managed to work up a bit of interest, and she tossed it down abruptly. Her first impulse was to jump to her feet and hurry round to the drive, but she restrained herself. Let Larry come and find her! She didn’t want him to imagine she was delighted to see him. She wondered if Helen, Mrs. .Adams’ daughter-in-law, would be with him, and somehow she hoped not. She didn’t feel like—coping with lovely Helen.

  When, some five minutes later, it was a rather wiry man with a pointed beard and eyes crinkled with laughter who appeared instead of Larry, she couldn’t believe it. She stared at him with such a stunned expression on her face that he said with a smile, ‘It’s all right—I’m only Jim Adams. You’re Miss Fitzgerald, aren’t you? I’ve brought you some mail from town—two letters.’

  Two letters! One would be from her father, of course. Could the other be from Larry, explaining his non-arrival at Quindalup? Farrell took the letters eagerly, and managed to collect herself sufficiently to murmur something conventional and polite when Jim Adams asked was she enjoying her holiday.

  ‘I’m here to make sure the pumps are behaving properly,’ he told her, ‘and to replenish the larder with a bit of fresh meat and a few groceries my wife asked me to bring.’

  Farrell nodded, scanning the two envelopes and discovering with a feeling of disappointment that the second letter was from her aunt. Well, why should she expect Larry Sandfort to bother with apologies to her? He had probably put her completely out of his mind. Farrell decided she didn’t like the way he was treating her—not one little bit. In fact, what with one thing and another
, she was beginning quite positively to hate him. She wanted nothing so much as to get away from his famous Quindalup, and if she could do so before he turned up—if he ever did turn up!—then so much the better.

  As Jim Adams walked away, an obvious and brilliant idea came into her head. Of course! She would go with him when he went back to town! She would insist. And, just in case Larry had left any instructions about her, she wouldn’t ask, she’d simply present herself and her luggage the moment he showed signs of leaving, which would probably be some time tomorrow afternoon or night. She would pack after dinner tonight.

  That settled, and considerably heartened by the thought of action, Farrell gave her attention to her mail. She read her father’s letter first, anxious to discover what his reaction to her news about her movements had been.

  He was, it appeared, quite happy—even delighted—to learn she was under Larry Sandfort’s protection. ‘What a piece of luck, darling, to have such a man take an interest in you! I’ve often felt guilty about my own inability to provide you with a normal family home, and it disturbed me when you decided to leave Perth—and, to be truthful, even more when you left here, recently. But I realise that neither Jean nor I have the right to prevent you from going your own way about finding a meaningful life for yourself. Is there any chance of getting yourself some position with Ansell-Sandfort Mining? In the Perth offices, I mean—I wouldn’t like to see you working in Ansell. I had a very nice letter from your protector by the way, and I feel reassured you’ll be completely safe doing your meditating at Quindalup. Between you and me, I had the feeling when he was here asking for you—he’ll have told you about that—that he was more than a little interested in you. It’s quite an amazing coincidence you should have run into each other, isn’t it? Well, darling, I enclose a cheque and hope to hear more news soon. Your loving Father.’

  Farrell finished reading the letter and folded it up again thoughtfully. So Larry had written to her father, had he?—and obviously her father had hopes of a romance developing between them. Well, that was about the most unlikely thing in the world to happen. Things had changed quite drastically since she and Larry had so strangely run into each other again!

  Her aunt’s letter was a brief one and had been forwarded on from the Coral Reef Hotel. Its main import was that Jean had succeeded in having Farrell’s course deferred till next year. She was quite sure her niece’s unrest was no more than the aftermath of that attack of illness she’d had, and she assured her that she would be welcome to come back to Perth at any time. ‘The academic life is a very satisfying one, Farrell. It would be a pity for you to reject it because of post-’flu depression.’ She was Farrell’s ‘affectionate aunt, Jean Roseblade.’

  It was a pleasant letter, but it was entirely unemotional, and Farrell was sadly aware that warmth was one of the main things that had been lacking in her life in Perth.

  That night after dinner, she went to her bedroom and busily packed her bags, leaving out only the necessities for the following day. On Monday, she decided, she would cash her father’s cheque in Ansell, and then somehow or other she would get herself on to the plane, even if it meant using an assumed name and disguising herself with scarf and sunglasses! Her protector, when he returned from Mullamulla Downs, would find the bird had flown.

  Farrell’s plans, however, went sadly awry.

  She broke her routine on Sunday—no morning swim, no afternoon walk—because she wasn’t going to miss that lift in Jim Adams’ car for anything on earth. The day seemed endless, the heat interminable, and when dinner went by and he still had shown no signs of departing, she began to feel nervily tensed up. Surely he must go soon, she thought, sitting in the dark on the verandah, her ears alert, her luggage by the steps. But the moon moved slowly, inexorably, across the garden and nothing happened. Farrell waited and waited, until through sheer weariness, she fell asleep.

  She woke with a start to find it was after one o’clock, and she almost wept. She must have missed hearing the car! But a stumbling walk across the garden revealed that the car was still there, and with an inward prayer of thanks, she went wearily to bed. She was awake well before six—but this time she was too late, as she discovered when she had flung herself into some clothes and hurried outside. She was so frustrated and so furious she opened her cases and scattered the contents all over the room. Aunt Jean would have disapproved thoroughly. Farrell remembered throwing things about like that when she was in a temper soon after she went to Perth, but she had never done such a thing since. It had been trained out of her with several other traits that her aunt regarded as undesirably emotional or exhibitionist. Well, it was all flooding back now...

  She lost heart that day, and she thought moodily that she really hated Larry Sandfort—for dumping her, deserting her, forgetting her. She never wanted to see him again except to acquaint him of just that fact. And of course, he wouldn’t care. She was lounging listlessly on the verandah that afternoon wearing a sleeveless top that showed her midriff, and a long cotton skirt, when she saw Mrs. Adams come briskly along the path from the back of the house. She looked smart in a blue linen dress, and she carried a handbag and a flat parcel. Farrell was on her feet in a flash.

  If the housekeeper was going to Ansell—and where else was there to go?—then she was going too. She felt a momentary dismay at the thought of her belongings still scattered in confusion about her room, but she dismissed it, and leaping down from the verandah, she raced across the garden towards the garages with their screen of bougainvillea.

  Mrs. Adams was just settling herself behind the steering wheel.

  ‘Are you going to Ansell, Mrs. Adams?’

  ‘That’s right. I’m taking some paintings to the craft shop, and then I have a few purchases to make. Was there something you wanted, Miss Fitzgerald?’ She glanced at her watch as she spoke, and Farrell thought wryly, oh yes, she’d have her movements worked out to the last split second. Well, today she would have to make a few adjustments.

  She said imperiously, ‘Yes, I want to come with you. It’s urgent I should get to the bank,’ she improvised. ‘If you’d told me you were going, I’d have been ready. You’ll have to wait a few minutes.’

  She didn’t wait for an answer but hurried back to the house. She needed shoes—she was barefoot—her handbag and her cheque. Apart from that, she didn’t dare take any longer than was needed to thrust pyjamas, toilet things, and a random armful of clothes into her big folding beach bag before she darted back to the car. One never knew—Mrs. Adams just might have taken off without her, particularly if Larry had said she was not to leave, which Farrell wouldn’t put it past him to do.

  The housekeeper drove fast and expertly, without wasting time or energy in making conversation. If she wondered what Farrell had in her beach bag, she didn’t ask. In Ansell, she let Farrell out at the shopping complex, after arranging to pick her up at the same place at five-thirty. Farrell had no intention of going back to Quindalup, but she nodded agreement, and thought ruefully that she would have to live without her belongings till she found somewhere they could be sent on to her.

  She went straight to the bank and cashed her cheque, then debated whether she should ring the air services or present herself in person. Without flattering herself, she rather thought she might manage to be more persuasive in person, and anyhow she needn’t give her name, and they wouldn’t know what Farrell Fitzgerald looked like, surely! She managed to get herself a taxi, and soon she was speeding out of town to the small airfield. She felt full of nervous excitement. She had absolutely no plans, and at the moment she didn’t care where the next plane went to so long as she could be on it. She would show Larry Sandfort he couldn’t treat her this way any longer! She had seen his small plane in the air again that morning, so it was reasonably safe to conclude he was still at Mullamulla Downs, which was reassuring, and meant that she wouldn’t be likely to encounter him at the hotel if she had to stay there overnight.

  At the rather desolate iron-
coloured airfield, she asked the taxi driver to wait and walked over to the administration building, which was little more than a shed. There were several small planes on the ground, but no sign of activity at the moment. In the shade of a big poinciana tree was a dusty four-wheel-drive vehicle that Farrell recognised with a slight shock as belonging to Larry. No doubt he would pick it up there when he came in from Mullamulla Downs.

  When she walked into the booking office, the young man at the desk looked at her interestedly and smiled pleasantly as he asked what he could do for her. Farrell smiled back engagingly.

  ‘I wanted some information about the next flight to—to Port Hedland. There’s nothing this afternoon, I suppose.’

  ‘No. Eleven-thirty tomorrow,’ he told her. She noticed uneasily that he was scrutinising her pretty thoroughly, his gaze lingering on her curly hair, and she wished that she had covered it with a head scarf—only she had collected her things so haphazardly she doubted whether she had one. Still, she could have bought something. Now it looked as if it might be too late, because in her heart she knew what he was going to tell her before he said another word.

  ‘I’m afraid that plane’s booked out. We have a lot of to-ing and fro-ing going on at the moment, I really can’t give you anything. Best thing for you to do will be to keep trying, day by day.’ He smiled as he said it, but Farrell was totally incapable of smiling back at him. She felt almost as much infuriated by him as she was by Larry Sandfort, and without a word she turned on her heel and went outside.

  What did she do next? Because she wasn’t going to meet Mrs. Adams at five-thirty and be taken quietly back to Quindalup. So she stayed at the hotel. Indefinitely. Until she won. Because surely even Larry Sandfort wouldn’t drag her screaming to his car! Oh God, what a country to be stranded in! And what a man to have drawn as a protector!