by Lucy Walker
She lowered her eyelids as she lifted her cup to her mouth because at that moment Tracy looked up. Cherry rather anxiously expected a silent criticism from the other girl at her own amateurish make-up.
‘I like your hair-do,’ said Tracy in her slow stage-voice.
Cherry’s eyelids flew up. This was praise indeed.
‘Thank you,’ she said warmly. Then she smiled at the other girl. ‘I like yours too.’
‘It suits me,’ said Tracy languidly. ‘Of course it’s out now but I rather care for the look of myself this way. Of course I can get it up in a chignon ‒ and do sometimes.’ She took a cigarette from a box on a table beside her chair and lit it, then blew smoke long and shadowy towards the ceiling. ‘Irrespective of the fashions,’ she said loftily, ‘I think long hair down is more attractive. Specially to men.’
She looked across the room at the three men.
‘Of course any kind of hair-do would drop dead as far as Hugh is concerned,’ she said. ‘But then Betty doesn’t bother anyhow. But Stephen …’ She shrugged a shoulder and laughed. She was not looking at Cherry so did not see the astonishment in Cherry’s eyes at this forthcoming and illuminating monologue on Tracy’s part. Tracy was not only modern in appearance, she was modern in her frankness. She said what she thought and bother who was listening.
‘Stephen, of course, thinks he’s immune,’ she said carelessly. ‘Actually I shall twist him round my little finger, when I’m ready.’
Cherry’s eyes above her teacup were round with interest. She looked across the room at Stephen. He was lying back in his easy chair, his legs stretched out straight before him, his eyes watching his brother as the latter talked, still in that quiet, flat but not unattractive voice. As Stephen followed these weighty words, whatever they were, he twice brought his left hand up to his forehead and quietly massaged the fingers backwards and forwards across it as if this action was helping thoughtfulness. Maybe he was just tired, as Cherry was, after that long flight. He didn’t look it. He was thoughtful, absorbed and a long way from Tracy and her hair-do, as he was from the other female occupants of the room.
‘How curious it is,’ Cherry thought with a sudden insight into the coincidence of this scene, ‘that here I am, in the same room with that man, more than a thousand miles away from the beach where I used to look at him with such interest. I didn’t know then that I would even meet him.’
‘Tracy has nothing else to do but think about her appearance,’ Mrs. Denton was saying lightly. ‘Wait till she’s married and has to run a station homestead, a husband and a brother-in-law who work too hard for hours that are too long. And bring up children into the bargain.’
Tracy, having disposed of the subject of hair-styles, and probably of Cherry too, picked up a magazine again and examined the cover girl.
‘You shouldn’t let the aborigines go walkabout,’ she said briefly, without looking at her sister.
‘That is something you don’t know anything about,’ Mrs. Denton said. ‘I never can persuade people to believe that the natives go walkabout when they want to, and there’s no power on earth can stop them. It’s to do with their tribal rites.’
‘You should educate them out of it,’ said Tracy, opening the magazine. ‘You’ve got a perfectly good governess for the children now. You should let her try out her paces on the natives too.’
Mrs. Denton looked at Cherry with an air that was a mixture of impatience, despair and resignation.
‘I just wish I could,’ she said. ‘Miss Landin ‒’
‘Cherry Landin,’ Cherry said again for the second time since she had arrived. She said it carefully and gently in case the Dentons would not care to call her by her Christian name. She had to give them the opportunity to do so, if they wished.
‘I shall call you Cherry then,’ Mrs. Denton said. ‘It’s rather a nice name. What was I saying? Oh, I remember. The natives are all walkabout just now. You know what that means? They just pack up, put on their corroboree paints, and go off heaven knows where for some sort of tribal gathering. They don’t come back for weeks. So I’m afraid you’ll find us in something of a pickle. It’s always like this when they’re walkabout. Still, if you’d take the children off my hands ‒’
‘I’d love to do that,’ said Cherry. ‘That’s what I’m here for.’
‘Good,’ said Tracy, suddenly throwing the magazine down and standing up. She stretched again as Cherry, through the open window, had seen her stretching before. It was a stretch that was as pretty as a dancer’s pose.
‘Very good indeed,’ Tracy added, coming down out of her stretch. ‘That takes young Peter off my hands at mealtimes. Cherry, he takes his own time to eat five meals a day. That means you can give up half your waking hours to feeding Peter, if you’ve patience. I’d recommend you stick to Sandra if it didn’t mean I’d have to face Peter and that bowl of cereal or that bowl of soup and vegetables myself.’
‘Wait till you have children of your own,’ said Mrs. Denton.
They were all three standing now and Cherry was helping gather the used cups and saucers together. When she crossed the space to the men and retrieved their cups they did not stir. Cherry realised this was because they did not notice. They were still talking about the price of beef, sale by weight and grade as against auctioning and the buyer’s quote. Women didn’t exist for them at the moment. Their entire thinking apparatus was concentrated on thousands of head of cattle and half a million acres of station country.
Cherry decided they were spoilt, and their manners were like their movements, sometimes active and sometimes recuperating.
‘I don’t intend to lose my figure,’ said Tracy coldly, in reply to her sister’s injunction to wait until she, Tracy, had children.
Whether it was Tracy’s words or purely an accident of timing it was impossible for Cherry to say, but at that moment Stephen looked up, then slowly unwound himself and stood up. Hugh, still talking to the pilot, followed suit but didn’t know he was doing it. His mind was now in air-freighting beef.
Stephen smiled across the room at Tracy who, having reached the doorway, threw herself into another pose against the door jamb.
‘Good night, sweetie,’ she said to Stephen. ‘See you in the morning when I can carve you loose from Hugh’s edifying conversation. You’ve got a foam-rubber pillow on your bed. A present from me. I brought it from Sydney.’ She hooded her lids over her eyes and made a spell-binding gesture with her hand. ‘Sweet dreams,’ she added and swung herself gracefully round the door jamb and out of the room.
‘Yes, truly,’ Cherry thought, watching, her own hands full of teacups, ‘bewitching, and Stephen used the right word.’
She glanced across at the three men but Stephen had turned slightly away as he went through the process of winding himself up again to sit in that chair. Hugh and the pilot were already down.
They did not look at Cherry nor say ‘Good night’ as she went out.
If she was a piece of furniture, she thought, at least she was a mobile one and would be useful. She came to Mrs. Denton’s aid with the washing-up in the kitchen.
A few minutes later, as she went towards her own room, she saw the three men again. They were standing up in the lighted circle of the living-room, obviously preparing to leave it. Hugh Denton was still quietly talking and Stephen stood, both hands in his pockets, gently rocking back on his heels.
He saw Cherry pass by and taking one hand out of his pocket raised it in an easy salute that meant ‒ good night. He actually smiled, and for the first time Cherry admitted he was as attractive as that dream figure she had thought about on those morning swims by the beaches down south.
It warmed her heart, but frightened her a little. She couldn’t think why. The picture of him standing there, his hand casually raised, and the brief smile disarming his otherwise preoccupied expression, went with her along the passage to her room.
It stirred her heart, as the sight of forbidden fruit might have done when she was a c
hild.
It was an unexpected, friendly, almost intimate smile yet it came from the heart of a stranger.
Chapter Five
Several weeks went past with Cherry not only adapting herself to station life but beginning to love it.
Mrs. Denton was a kindly person and Cherry felt a strong bond of sympathy for her. The older woman really did have too much to do when the natives were away and she occasionally suffered from migraine. This meant she was glad to have someone like Cherry to help her with the children.
Sandra was an attractive child, small for her seven years, sunburned, straw-haired and dedicated to an interest in everything that went on about the station to the total exclusion of spelling, arithmetic and anything to do with books.
She was friendly, in a quiet shy way, with Cherry. Often as Cherry worked with her she found the child’s attention wandering and her eyes gazing out of the window. Cherry felt a certain pity and understanding for Sandra because her thoughts and dreams were all for the outside world.
Her heart ached when she thought of the child being sent south to boarding school next year. She felt better when she learned that Sandra had been booked into a school that was based on a farm, and that riding was a curriculum subject.
Cherry was conscience-stricken about the little girl because in truth almost all her heart had gone to the baby Peter. This was something not regretted by Mrs. Denton for suddenly her younger round-eyed child with the angelic smile had discovered a fairy godmother. And Cherry had discovered her heart’s desire.
Cherry didn’t mind sitting three-quarters of an hour in the chair beside Peter’s high chair on the veranda, plying him with food in a spoon, while Peter took his time to masticate and swallow, occasionally blowing bubbles at Cherry, rat-a-tatting with his own spoon on the side of his table tray. All the time he favoured Cherry with the most guileless and seraphic of smiles. His large blue eyes beamed on her. Sometimes he had little chance of getting on with his eating at all because his small, red baby’s mouth was parted in delighted laughter.
If ever a child smiled his way into someone’s heart, that child was Peter, and Cherry was that someone.
‘Oh!’ Cherry exclaimed to Mrs. Denton once when she felt that she and Peter were taking just too long in the process of eating and beguiling one another, ‘I do feel that perhaps I spoil Peter for you. And I should spend more time with Sandra.’
This was an occasion when the feeding was going on in the kitchen in the early morning. Mrs. Denton was tidying up, after the men’s early morning breakfast.
‘Nobody can spoil a baby with companionship,’ Mrs. Denton said without turning round. ‘That’s what he needs and it’s just what I haven’t got time to give him. You go right ahead, Cherry. Anyhow Sandra’s gone out with her father to the outcamp. He wanted to take her and she wanted to go.’
‘But you did bring me here for Sandra,’ faltered Cherry as she wiped Peter’s hands and mouth and lifted him out of his chair. Holding the baby in her arms she looked anxiously at Mrs. Denton’s preoccupied back. That back was a little stooped this morning and it looked as if another migraine might be impending. If so it was just as well Sandra had gone to the outcamp with her father.
‘Enter migraine, exit arithmetic,’ thought Cherry with sympathy for both Sandra and her mother.
‘It doesn’t matter what you came here for,’ said Mrs. Denton in a quiet voice. ‘The point is, you’ve taken Peter off my hands. He does love you. I can see that. We can settle down to worrying about Sandra when the natives come back from their walkabout. The lubras will at least do this kitchen and the general housework.’
‘Shall I take Peter outside now?’ asked Cherry.
‘Yes, please. Take him out and put him on the floor of the veranda and give him the pegs. He’ll stay quietly playing with them for hours. That is, if you’re not too far away.’ She turned round. ‘Perhaps you would do some of the mending for me?’ She looked at Cherry anxiously. Mending wasn’t governessing, she knew. ‘I never can catch up with the buttons and frayed collars. Not to mention the holes Hugh and Stephen get in their working pants. It’s the loose wire out at the boundaries that does it. They’re always jagging their pants.’
‘Of course I will,’ said Cherry. ‘That way I can sit near Peter too.’ She smiled at Mrs. Denton. ‘And you know I don’t mind an excuse for doing that.’
‘You’re a kind girl,’ Mrs. Denton said with a grateful smile. ‘How lucky I am that Stephen chose you.’
Stephen didn’t choose me, Cherry thought. He just came across the road and took the first person available.
Cherry carried Peter out on to the veranda where she put him on his own piece of linoleum square on the floor. She brought him his box of gaily coloured plastic toys and the ordinary laundry pegs. True to form, he took only the pegs. Sometimes it took Peter nearly an hour to get two pegs to fit into one another. Then he would look up, deliver himself of that seraphic smile, heave a long sigh of satisfaction and pull the pegs apart again.
Truly, he was the most heart-winning child.
Cherry collected all the sewing she could find and settled herself at a table nearby, hoping that Peter wouldn’t absorb so much of her attention she wouldn’t reduce the pile by an appreciable amount.
The day was very hot, but its dry withering heat did not touch Cherry’s skin as she sat with Peter. They were enshrined on the veranda which was little more than an arbour of green trailing ferns and pot-plants all dampened by the early morning watering.
She had become used to the great empty distance of the outside paddocks with their red-brown floors and their pale shimmering skies. At the side and back of the homestead were the stockmen’s quarters, the store, the meathouse, the smithy and the workshops.
They were clustered round the homestead but some distance away. It was a small and busy settlement and over it all, framed in a clump of tall trees planted there at least a generation ago, towered the windmill. This drew the water for the household from the underground reservoir. Most prosaically it was called the Number One Bore.
Under the giant frame of the windmill was the swimming tank from which Tracy could now be seen emerging.
Cherry looked up with interest for she had not seen Tracy about the homestead this morning and thought she had gone out with Stephen as she sometimes did when he was going to one of the nearer bores.
At this time of the year, Cherry had quickly learned, the cattle were always feeding round one or other of the bores.
Cherry thought of this a little wistfully as she looked up from her sewing and watched Tracy coming through the garden. She would have loved to go out on to the run to see what it was like, but no one had suggested it. Besides, Mrs. Denton needed help in the homestead.
Tracy stepped up on to the veranda, dropped a wet swimsuit on to the floor and with an air of subtle laziness lowered herself into a cane chair nearby.
Her lovely red hair was damp but still neatly in place. Tracy’s grooming, though casual, was always perfect. Her white cotton slacks and tiny scrap of a blouse were spotless. Her feet, bare except for flimsy strapped sandals, had the nails of her toes as perfectly painted and polished as if they’d been on her fingers instead.
Though she sat near Cherry she did not look at her; instead she let her large deep-sea eyes gaze out beyond the homestead garden to the vast space of fenceless paddock beyond.
‘That house Stephen bought,’ she said lazily and without any preliminary greeting. ‘What’s it like? As good as the awful price he paid for it? I mean ‒’ She shrugged one shoulder and made a small but eloquent gesture in the air with her hand. ‘Is it luxurious?’
‘I don’t know what it’s like inside,’ said Cherry. She was pleased that perhaps she and Tracy might have some conversation. She had been disappointed in Tracy’s indifference to her so far. ‘But it is a fine old house outside. By old I mean it was built a long time ago but built very well. You know they did, in those days. And the grounds are lovely �
��’
Tracy turned her head and looked at Cherry casually.
‘How do you know so much about it?’
‘I live opposite,’ Cherry said quietly.
‘Oh yes. Of course. I’d forgotten.’
There was a long silence which Cherry did not care to break. Tracy rarely had any conversation with her and she felt now that Tracy’s coming to sit by her, and asking these questions, meant there was a purpose behind them. She was a little nervous for fear she might say the wrong thing.
‘Of course if it’s really luxurious,’ said Tracy airily, ‘I might consider it.’
Cherry hid her surprise by biting off a thread from her sewing. She looked up at Peter who was quite indifferent to Tracy’s proximity and who, with a small frown on his brow, was still cogitating the problem of fitting two pegs together. Cherry could not help an involuntary smile. The fate of Peter’s whole immediate world hung in the balance. Would the pegs fit, or wouldn’t they?
‘That is to say,’ said Tracy, a little piqued that Cherry had not asked her what she meant, ‘I just might settle down and get married. A house like that makes all the difference between yea and nay, don’t you think?’
Cherry was so surprised at this candour from someone who had previously rarely noticed her that she could not hide it.
‘But you wouldn’t be marrying a house,’ she said. ‘You’d be marrying a person, wouldn’t you?’
‘When you’ve led the life I’ve led,’ said Tracy in a world-weary voice, ‘you’ll understand that a house and a fortune matter very much when you consider giving up a career, not to mention single-blessedness.’
For some silly reason Tracy’s words gave Cherry a pang. She knew she ought to laugh but somehow the laugh wouldn’t come.
How nice to be some people, she thought.
Cherry had only been one day at Yulinga when she had discovered that Tracy had a flair for ballet dancing. She did her exercises, spinning, curtseying, arabesquing, posing, to the charmed delight of everyone who had time to cast an admiring glance in her direction.
