The River is Down: (An Australian Outback Romance)

by Lucy Walker

  Jinx and Myrtle, entirely unperturbed by all the fuss, had been searching the area for Swell.

  ‘Come on chickens!’ Flan called to them. ‘Fire’s out now, and if you’re after that raking lizard you won’t catch up with him before dark. That’s advice from one who’s dealt with frilled lizards since long before you were born. When the rocks cool down he’ll be back to his own house, in top gear. Give him twenty-four hours, then come out and see if I’m not right.’

  ‘I guess Flan knows,’ Jinx said dolefully.

  ‘I guess so, too,’ Myrtle agreed. Then, since there was a promise of another near visit to their pet, and since the day’s adventure seemed over, the little girl cheered up. Their friend Flan was here and might bring them out to the rocks to-morrow. Besides, there was a brand-new visitor from over the river to be investigated.

  ‘You’re Jim Vernon, aren’t you?’ she inquired, looking up into the overseer’s engaging face. ‘We’ve heard your voice on the air lots of times when you’re calling other stations; and the outpost. We know about you and Cindie too. You sent a message to the construction camp that she was coming. You ought to have seen Nick’s face! I guess he was pretty wild about it being a girl, only he didn’t say so.’

  Cindie had to make believe she didn’t hear this. She wiped grime from her face as if preoccupied.

  ‘How did you come across the river, Jim?’ Jinx asked. ‘Did you build a flying-fox?’

  ‘No, young ’un. I swam.’

  ‘In all that mud?’ Jinx was incredulous. ‘How’d you get through it?’

  ‘It’s not all mud yet, young fellow. There’s plenty of fast-flowing water on top: teeming with fish too ‒ all coming down from their mud-holes out east. I found me a log.’

  ‘A log?’

  Jim nodded. ‘The nice long ant-eaten kind that floats high. I came over with a kick and a paddle, if you know what that means. When I reached the far bank I up-ended the log against the buffel grass and climbed to the top. Now you know how to do it when you’re grown up and your turn comes to swim a river in flood.’

  ‘But you’re all clean!’ Myrtle protested. ‘Why are you dry and your clothes clean?’

  ‘Well, it’s like this. I had my two-way radio with me. Packed in plastic, of course. I sent a message to the camp to say I was coming across and I had the mail with me ‒ any chance of clean clothes? Flan picked up my message, and decided one good turn deserved another. Right?’

  The children nodded.

  ‘You bet,’ Jinx declared. ‘Specially for Cindie. She wouldn’t want to see you covered in mud. The men’ll be pleased to get their mail, anyway.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Flan agreed cheerfully. ‘Miss Erica here thought that way too. She came with me to make darn certain about that mail. You must have something pretty important for Marana there, Jim?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. But Miss Erica would,’ Jim said, smiling at the haughty young lady cheerfully.

  Erica ignored this. She was quite indifferent to any opinions the overseer from Baanya might have.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said to Nick, who had walked away a few yards to take one last look at the burnt-out area.

  ‘How did Nick happen to come in the other Rover, then?’ Myrtle asked Flan.

  ‘I guess he was out on affairs of his own, young lady. You know how it is with the boss. He’s kind of busy building a road. A long one. He took the geologist out some place earlier. He picked up a cross-call from me saying I was going out to the river to pick up Jim Vernon, plus the men’s mail. Then I’d take a look at a suspicious-looking smoke-pall out by the rocks, where one frilled lizard was known to be in residence. So ‒’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘I guess he thought the same as I did, young Myrtle! Those darn kids again!’

  He glanced sideways at Cindie. There was a lugubrious expression on his face.

  ‘Pardon me if I appear to include you in that mention of “darn kids”, Miss Cindie. I sure didn’t know you were along with them too.’

  Nick had opened the door of his own Land-Rover.

  ‘Since you picked up Jim, I guess he’d like to go along with you, Flan. I don’t want to intrude on your kindness in that direction. Is that all right, Jim?’ he asked.

  The overseer grinned. He knew that Nick didn’t want to take from Flan the kudos of driving up to the camp as the men were coming in ‒ not so much with a visitor, as with the mail.

  ‘A hundred per cent right. That is, if I can take my girlfriend with me. How about it, Cindie?’

  She nodded. ‘I would like that if it’s all right with Nick; and Flan too ‒’

  ‘You’d better let those talkative children go with them, Nick,’ Erica said, as Nick held the car door open for her. ‘If their endless questions don’t drive Flan mad, they certainly can give me a headache. Personally, I think they’re thoroughly spoiled.’

  Nick made no reply to this, except to close the car door gently behind Erica as if she were some precious burden he had to treat with rare gentleness.

  ‘Seems I’m the popular one,’ Flan remarked, walking across to his own car. ‘Most people want to come with me. All in. You kids get in the back where we won’t see what next pack of mischief you’re up to!’

  The children bundled gleefully under the canvas cover.

  ‘We wanted to come with you anyway,’ Jinx said frankly. ‘We want to hear more about coming across the river on a log from Jim.’

  ‘For a short acquaintance you’re mighty free with first names, young feller,’ said Flan. ‘You ready, Miss Cindie? Hop in next to me, then Jim can come in on the door side.’ He turned to where Nick was walking round to the drive seat of his own car. ‘Any orders, boss?’ he called.

  Nick paused, his hand on the car door. ‘Yes. I’d be glad if you’d ask the chef to send late dinner over to my house for us, will you? I have to go up the road a bit and will be back late. I want to speak to the foreman about a matter.’

  ‘Shall do, boss!’

  ‘Thanks a lot. See you later, Jim,’ he called. ‘It was good of you to bring the mail. Sorry I didn’t mention it earlier. Will you come over to the house later this evening? Flan will fix accommodation for you meanwhile. We’ve a spare house for VIPs.’

  ‘That how I rank?’ Jim asked back, a twinkle in his eye. ‘VIP?’

  ‘Well, the mail does,’ Nick replied, his face suddenly relaxing in a grin, as he slid in under the steering wheel.

  He seemed no longer angry, Cindie thought. Having Erica all to himself for the drive up the road and back had perhaps softened his annoyance and given him some pleasure after the day’s misadventures.

  In Flan’s Land-Rover Jim put his right arm along the back-rest because he was a big man and there wasn’t much room for all three of them squeezed in the front seat. Cindie, between Jim and the gear stick, then Flan, leaned her head back on Jim’s arm. His hand cupped her shoulder. She was happy, now that the atmosphere between Nick and the party had relaxed by that crack of his about the mail being a VIP.

  ‘This is bliss …’ she said softly.

  ‘For all of us,’ Jim replied with a grin. ‘Pity for Flan that that gear stick is keeping him at bay.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it!’ Flan said as he roared up the engine into high gear and they shot forward. ‘One little chicken roosting down between two hefty chaps like you and me, Jim!’

  ‘You hefty?’ Jim’s laugh was explosive.

  ‘Guess she’s nesting down happy,’ Flan said ignoring this. ‘All because she doesn’t have to drive back with the boss and get a chin-wagging for lighting that fire in the spinifex. By the way, where’s your billy, Miss Cindie? And the picnic basket? They burnt or something?’

  ‘She didn’t light the fire,’ Jinx declared hotly from the back seat. ‘We did. Myrtle and me.’

  ‘Those cigarettes!’ Cindie reproached Flan, glancing at his averted face.

  ‘It wasn’t cigarettes at all,’ Myrtle interrupted indignantly. ‘We g
ave them back to Flan, in case Mother found them behind that clock. Didn’t we, Flan?’

  He nodded. ‘You did that. Then how come the fire?’

  ‘Swell wouldn’t come out, so Jinx and I tried to make a smoke the way the aborigines do. You know ‒ you showed us how, Flan. We rubbed a hard stick between two rocks. We were just getting up a nice smoke when a baby willi-willi started and whirled right across us. It took some burning leaves into the spinifex, and whizzed them round so they really caught alight. Then the willi-willi died down, all of a sudden, to nothing. You know the way they do ‒’

  ‘So that was it, was it?’ Flan nodded his head. ‘Looks like you two’d better do some owning up to the boss by and by ‒’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Cindie protested. ‘They’ll get into enough trouble as it is. It doesn’t really matter what Nick thinks as he’s not cross with them, anyway. It’s best for their mother to handle this.’

  ‘We’ll tell Mum all right,’ Jinx agreed reluctantly. ‘But not till she cools down.’

  Jim laughed. ‘I never heard that voice of your mother’s on the air, talking to the Flying Doctor or the outpost, when it wasn’t cooled down.’

  ‘You don’t know her round the clock seven days a week,’ Flan muttered, so the children would not hear.

  Jim raised his eyebrows as he glanced at the girl nestling beside him. Cindie shook her head.

  ‘She’s tops really,’ she told him. ‘But you do have to know her. It’s Nick who is hard to understand. One minute he’s … well … he’s …’

  ‘Oh, ho!’ interrupted Flan. ‘So that is why the little lady was all upset, is it? The boss came up when least wanted and said his piece. And the city girl isn’t used to it?’

  ‘Don’t you start on me too, Flan,’ Cindie warned with renewed spirit.

  ‘You mean you’ve got a champion right the other side of you, and I’d better mind my Ps and Qs or Big Jim’ll take a swipe at me?’

  ‘Two swipes, Flan,’ Jim Vernon said with a grin. ‘Cindie’s my girl, so you watch out.’

  ‘We’re on your side, Flan,’ Jinx said loyally.

  ‘I should jolly well think so,’ the little monkey man declared. ‘You never know what human nature’ll do next. First I rescue Cindie from the flooding river. Next I go out to that same river, with a brand-new set of clothes from the store, to bring in the overseer from Baanya ‒ and what do I get! Gratitude? Not on your life. Sounded mighty like threats to me. From Miss Cindie too. Well, who’d have thought it?’

  ‘That’s because you took Erica Alexander out to meet him instead of Cindie,’ Myrtle declared with childlike frankness. ‘Cindie’s jealous.’

  Jim looked down at Cindie’s upturned face and at the violet blue eyes.

  ‘That true?’ he asked gently.

  ‘Well ‒’ Cindie’s air was judicial. ‘Let’s say I’m the teeniest bit envious of Erica. Is that the same thing? She’s beautiful, isn’t she? To some people’s way of thinking anyhow.’

  ‘Nick’s?’ demanded Myrtle from behind.

  ‘You two brats raise too much dust and have too much to say,’ Flan commented affably. ‘I never knew such kids ‒’

  ‘For asking questions!’ Jinx finished for him. ‘How do we learn, if we don’t ask questions?’

  A day indeed it was, for it was not yet over. Not for any of them in the house under the white gums.

  The children made their confessions to their mother on the principle that the sooner it was done the sooner it would be over.

  Mary was furious and denied them their chilled sweets from the canteen as a punishment. A sharp order sending them to bed early was added later when the children, determined to get the whole load off their chests, owned up about the cigarettes episode too. They figured out in their small shrewd way that another lot of punishment to-morrow wouldn’t be so good.

  Mary was in no patient mood when the bedraggled three, Jinx, Myrtle and Cindie, came in. She’d had a time and a half of it herself. The wives from D’D had held up the work in the canteen by their continuous requests of Mike, the canteen manager, for advice for the party. They had wanted to know what stores there were ‒ how much of this and how much of that ‒ till Mike confessed to Mary that he was used to men: he could deal with men: but three visiting wives? That was worse than iron-stone dust in one’s hair.

  Add to these trials, the fact that the mail had arrived with Flan! Chaos followed. The men, instead of showering and shaving for dinner, had queued up for letters. Dinner had been dreadfully late.

  Now, to fill Mary’s cup of irritation, the children had come in with their tale of the afternoon’s misdoings. She didn’t even seem pleased about Jim Vernon’s visit to the construction camp ‒ now it had finally come about ‒ after long anticipation on her part. The children, before going to bed, had wound the story of this wonder-man’s arrival in and out of an account of Cindie running into his arms in tears, and being all jealous of Erica Alexander having gone out to meet him.

  ‘What rot!’ Mary had said forcefully. ‘As if the Queen of the Spinifex would look at an overseer. He might be a big gun over at Baanya, but he doesn’t own a station. Miss Erica does.’

  ‘Jim did at least bring in the mail,’ Cindie said, trying to placate Mary. ‘It might have meant late dinner, but it would have pleased the men.’

  ‘Oh, you and Jim Vernon!’ Mary said testily as she scoured the bottom almost out of a saucepan. The children had gone bedwards, as commanded. ‘It’s what Nick says in the camp that matters. He’s the boss. The overseer’s just paying a social visit ‒’ She looked up and caught the expression on Cindie’s face. ‘So you don’t like Nick? Now listen, Cindie Brown! He’s the boss, and he’s given you a job here. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’

  Cindie was surprised. She couldn’t understand how the conversation had switched, without logical progression, from Jim to Nick.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘I did want a job. And I’m grateful for it.’ She was wiping a cup almost inside-out herself.

  Mary put the saucepan down and leaned her hands on the sink.

  ‘I see it all,’ she declared. ‘You’ve an aversion to Nick. That’s because he’s wining and dining Jim Vernon over at his house with Miss Erica looking glamorous while passing the sugar and the cream? Well, listen, my pet! Nick does what he likes ‒ how, when, where and what! You and I, hired and paid by cheque per month, don’t get asked what we think or what we like. So on with your work; and me on with mine. That’s all there is to it ‒ as far as Nicholas Brent and Co. are concerned.’

  Cindie started to laugh. She couldn’t help it. Mary sounded so like a prosecuting lawyer addressing the jury.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mary,’ she said, wiping her eyes, conscience-stricken. ‘I always cry when I laugh, but truly … you are tired to-night. Can’t I do something more to help?’

  Mary’s wrath went out as if a fire-extinguisher had been applied to it.

  ‘I guess we’re both tired,’ she said lamely. ‘Me, and those wives from D’D! You and that spinifex fire! Let’s go to bed early and forget about it. Those children are dead to the world already, judging by the silence in the sleepout ‒’

  She cocked her ear as if listening.

  ‘Did I say silence? If I’m not mistaken some heavy-footed male is coming.’ Her eyes turned to Cindie. ‘Maybe it’s a certain person bringing you your mail. After all, he’s swum a river with it. Why not cross a stretch of gravel?’

  ‘Jim!’ Cindie cried. ‘Oh, my hair! And my face!’

  ‘Go and fix them. Off with you ‒’

  Cindie flung the tea-towel over the rack and sped through the door to her room.

  Mary, always pernickety, straightened the tea-towel, then glanced at herself in the wall-mirror hanging in the living-room. She brushed her fingers through the loosened wisps of hair; then gave up with a sad gesture.

  ‘What’s the good,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Too late to do anything with my poor sun-baked face! Why don’t I buy
a bottle of colour-rinse? The men would all laugh, of course ‒’

  The footsteps came to the screen door.

  Mary looked at the man standing in the glow from the living-room light. It was Nick Brent.

  ‘Oh, come in, Nick,’ she said with so much relief that the remnants of her ill-humour disappeared altogether. She gestured to one of the easy-chairs. ‘I’m glad to see it’s you. We … that is, Cindie and I … were half-expecting someone else.’

  Nick’s eyebrows moved imperceptibly. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint. Do you mind if I smoke, Mary? I’ve had quite a day of it.’ He leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs as if relaxing for the first time perhaps in hours.

  ‘Of course not. The ashtray is by you on the table, Nick. Will you have some coffee? We’ve been busy clearing up and haven’t had ours yet.’

  She put the kettle on as she spoke, taking Nick’s assent for granted. She reached for the cups and saucers in the overhead cupboard.

  ‘Cindie is beautifying herself for Jim Vernon,’ she went on, her back turned. ‘If her face falls when she comes in, Nick, you’ll know why. Don’t take it as anything personal. She seems really to have fallen for that man. Oh, well! Love’s the main preoccupation of the young, I suppose. From what I hear, Baanya’s overseer is quite a man. I don’t really blame her.’

  As Cindie came in, Nick was holding a light to his cigarette. He looked over the flame at the girl. As usual his eyes were expressionless. Cindie realised who their visitor was, and seemed to fold up, as if on guard, as he rose to his feet.

  Nick felt a touch of compunction. Did he really have this effect on people? The girl looked as if she was afraid of him. Her eyes were suddenly deeper: a protective covering. Like hovea, he thought ‒ the darker kind: certainly not welcoming.

  There was quite a silence in the room, except for Mary rattling coffee cups and lifting the lid of the kettle, wishing it to boiling point.

  Nick flicked out the match, then put it carefully in the ashtray.

  He has fire on his mind, Cindie thought angrily. She was not ready to forgive him his injustice.