by Lucy Walker
Cherry was able to admire Tracy’s beautiful feet, her lovely pointed elbows, the charm and grace of her posturing without jealousy yet with a touch of envy.
How lovely, she thought, to be like Tracy who had, for Cherry, the glamour of the ballerina and stage star.
Yet how curious that Tracy was here, thousands of miles from those lighted stages where surely she belonged.
It must be Stephen.
Whenever Stephen came into the homestead, Tracy was extra bewitching. In a subtle kind of a way Stephen reacted to this bewitching. Cherry could see the odd half-smile, the faint flicker of his eyebrows as he looked at Tracy when he came into the living-room after a bath and change.
Cherry brought her thoughts back to Tracy’s words which hung in the air for a moment and Cherry felt she was expected to say something.
‘You did ballet dancing in London, didn’t you?’ she asked pleasantly.
‘That’s the way I spent my patrimony,’ said Tracy and again made a sad fateful gesture in the air with her pretty slender hand. She paused. ‘After that, I was flat broke, except for some fund for which Hugh is trustee. He won’t disgorge.’
Cherry could not help a gurgle of laughter at the sudden change in Tracy’s expression as she said these last words with the air of a tragedy queen.
Peter thought Cherry was laughing at him and he looked up and favoured her with the kind of smile that said:
‘Yes, it is fun, isn’t it? But I’ll get these jolly pegs together sometime before nightfall.’ He sighed deeply and went industriously back to work.
‘Hugh and Betty,’ said Tracy with a small frown, ‘consider I ought to settle down and forget London. They, of course, have pots of money but nothing will prise it loose from Hugh.’
Cherry was so surprised at this entire conversation she couldn’t help wondering why Tracy was confiding her most private affairs to her ‒ when up to date she had shown no interest in the ‘governess’ whatever. She went on sewing and tried to say the right things the right way so as not to offend Tracy on the one hand, nor show too vulgar a curiosity about the financial affairs of the Dentons, on the other.
‘He has bought that very beautiful home down there by the ocean ‒’ she ventured carefully.
Tracy threw one leg over the other impatiently.
‘Oh, that was Stephen,’ she said almost irritably. ‘Of course they’re equal partners and Stephen can do what he likes. Perhaps he thought the house might be an inducement to me to stay.’
‘Yes perhaps he did,’ said Cherry. ‘Why don’t you ask him?’
‘Oh no, no! Not yet,’ said Tracy. ‘I haven’t quite made up my mind.’
She jumped up, went to the balustrade and grasping it with two hands began to do her foot exercises.
She was very pretty, Cherry thought. She had a sprite-like figure and her dancing exercises were graceful and clever.
‘Do ballet dancers ever fall in love with people?’ Cherry asked.
‘Oh yes,’ said Tracy. She lifted one hand from the balustrade and made an airy gesture with it. ‘Take Stephen, for instance. He’s really got something, you know. He really sends me. If one could be certain of getting away from the station sometimes ‒ well ‒ that would make the whole difference, wouldn’t it?’
‘If you didn’t like the station life ‒’ began Cherry tentatively.
‘My dear, I was brought up on a station,’ said Tracy. ‘The family’s lost it now, but what’s the odds if I’ve got this one?’
It seemed that Tracy wanted the best of all worlds, Cherry thought. Her dancing, her station and now her town house that had to be luxurious.
Nice to be some people!
‘If I loved a person I’d just go after him and get him, with or without station or town house,’ said Cherry firmly.
Tracy stopped her exercises and turned round. She looked at Cherry closely.
‘Would you?’ she said. ‘Now, would you?’ She paused, threw back her hair, dug her hands in the pockets of her slacks and took a step as if to go away. She looked down at the small boy seriously contemplating his uncooperative pegs. She glanced back at Cherry again.
‘Peter’s the only man round here available,’ she said. ‘Too bad he’s about twenty years too young.’
She picked up her swimsuit and sauntered away. Cherry watched her going.
How odd she, Cherry, should have said anything as silly as that but odder that Tracy had said as much as she had of her own private life. Cherry wondered if there had been an object and if so what was it?
As for herself going after anyone and getting him! She wasn’t made that way, alas!
Like Peter contemplating his pegs, Cherry put her head on one side and gazed at her sewing.
‘Of course that is what a girl ought to do,’ she thought. ‘Win her man. One thinks of that way of doing things, but one never does them. Well, for one thing, the man is generally looking the other way. Or it’s the wrong man ‒ or something.’
She looked up at the scene that lay outside the veranda. Beyond the fence, lit up with the bushes of blazing bougainvillaea, was a trail of horsemen riding out through dust clouds across the endless brown paddocks towards the western skyline. She wondered where they were going. Where Hugh and Stephen had gone this morning?
One of the things Cherry had liked about station life was that early morning scramble of getting the men off.
Before daybreak there was a thundering of boots about the homestead veranda. Hugh and Stephen appeared in the kitchen, geared like the stockmen for a day out on the run. They wore tan-coloured shirts and heavy drill trousers. Round their waists were wide leather belts that always had a few cartridge heads showing above the seaming. Always one or other of them took a gun. They might see a snake to kill or a ’roo for its hide. Occasionally a bush turkey was brought in as an extra delicacy for the table. Sometimes a bullock, injured by the terrible horns of another beast, had to be shot out of mercy.
Hugh Denton wore spurs as did the other stockmen waiting below the veranda for the morning’s instruction, but Cherry noticed that Stephen never did this. She wondered why but didn’t like to ask for Stephen took very little notice of her.
Nobody took any notice of anybody at that hour of the morning. Everyone was busy getting the men breakfast … and it was an enormous one … and getting them away before the sun had been ten minutes above the horizon.
Everyone, that is, except Tracy. Tracy only appeared on those mornings when she was going out with Stephen. These were generally days when he was delayed in the homestead by business in the office. Cherry had been quick to see that Stephen was the business manager. He dealt with the information coming over the Transceiver. He sent and received telegrams. He attended to the mail which came in with the bi-weekly plane.
On those days it was almost mid-morning before he left the homestead and then he occasionally took the truck and went to inspect the nearer bores. Tracy would pack a thermos and take lunch and go with him.
By this time Cherry was on the veranda with Peter, if Sandra had gone off with her father. She would watch the truck disappearing over the trackless paddock in its own cloud of dust.
Whither were they going? she would wonder. And what was it like out there beyond the last rise of the paddock? Were there trees and water and places to picnic?
And what did they talk about when together like that?
Cherry had mental visions of Stephen with that slow, assured half-smile of his, the dark grey eyes looking keen, perhaps amused, certainly intelligent, as Tracy talked.
Tracy was a lucky person, Cherry thought. All this and heaven too, because now she wanted a town house and a fortune to add to her talent, her exotic appearance and the apparent conquest of Stephen Denton.
This particular morning Stephen had not gone out with the other men and Cherry had quite expected that he and Tracy had gone somewhere together later.
A period was soon put to her wondering for round the side of the homestead
she saw both Hugh and Stephen Denton riding up to the fence. Stephen threw one leg over his horse and slid to the ground, then Hugh followed suit. They came up through the garden together.
Cherry wondered if something was wrong that both brothers should come in before lunch like this.
They came up the steps and along the veranda and stood and looked down at Peter, then at Cherry.
Peter’s father smiled in his distant but pleasant way. Stephen, oddly enough, smiled when he looked at Cherry.
‘The perfect nursemaid,’ he said. ‘Don’t you get tired of him, Cherry?’
She shook her head.
‘No,’ she said simply.
The men spoke to her so rarely that she felt embarrassed at the event now. She knew, by this time, that it was shyness on the part of the older brother that kept him so silent: and preoccupation on the part of Stephen. All the same it made her a little nervous about what to say when they did speak.
Hugh coughed, searched in the pocket of his shirt for cigarettes and, still standing there near the child, began to roll a cigarette for himself. He then handed his brother the makings and Stephen did likewise.
The silence was a little unnerving so Cherry bent her head and went on sewing without exactly seeing what she was sewing.
‘Stephen got a call through from Timor Bay this morning,’ Hugh said slowly, at length. ‘It’s about young Peter. There’s a session on up there; inoculating the kids with Salk vaccine. You know about Salk vaccine?’
He looked through a cloud of smoke at Cherry.
She nodded.
‘It’s an immunisation against polio. All the children down south have had it.’
Stephen by this time was sitting down on his heels beside the small boy on the veranda. He held his cigarette with one hand and with the other hand made a third to Peter’s two hands. Miraculously the pegs fitted into one another and the long job was done.
Peter sighed deeply, looked at the pegs, then looked up at his uncle. He smiled.
Cherry actually felt jealous.
It was all right for them to smile like that at one another. They were related. She was just the nursemaid. Stephen had said so. She had been meant to be the governess to Sandra, but somehow Peter had changed all that.
Hugh, standing, was still considering his next words. His manner was almost diffident. It was Stephen, sitting there on his heels beside Peter, who took over.
‘How’d you like to take this young fellow up to Timor Bay for his injections?’ he asked, looking up at Cherry. He smiled encouragingly. ‘I’m going up on the Northern Airline in a couple of days. Betty doesn’t feel up to it and I’ve a feeling Peter and I’ll need you.’
Cherry was so startled her heart leapt. Not that she particularly wanted to take another aeroplane ride, let alone go to Timor Bay. But there was something exciting in the fact that the brothers felt she would be capable of looking after the child on such an occasion. And somehow the way Stephen looked up at her seemed to embrace the whole of her with those dark grey eyes and included her in that ‘Peter and I will need you’.
How wonderful to be needed.
Her eyes lit up and the colour deepened in her cheeks.
‘Of course … of course …’ she stammered.
She had nearly said, ‘I’d love to go,’ and only just stopped herself in time. That would not have been the right way of contemplating a trip that meant poor little Peter would have big needles shot in his arm and that his own mother didn’t feel well enough to take him.
On the other hand, there was cause for gladness. They trusted her. All of them. They must have talked it over and Stephen had gone out on the run to bring his brother back to announce the decision to Cherry. After all, Hugh was the father of the child.
That old amused ironic smile came back into Stephen’s face.
‘Your parents would approve,’ he said. ‘Tracy is coming along too. We won’t be alone in foreign places.’
Now he had spoiled it. Not because Tracy was coming too, of course. But because he had once again laughed at the old-fashioned way she had been brought up.
Cherry pressed her lips together a trifle primly.
‘I wasn’t thinking of that,’ she said calmly. ‘I was thinking that I would like to go very much and that I’ll take as much care of Peter as if he were my own. I was also feeling so sorry that Mrs. Denton is not well. It’s that migraine again …’
‘Yes, that’s a bad thing,’ Hugh Denton said slowly. ‘I’ll be taking her down south to that house in February. The change will do her good.’
Cherry nodded.
‘It’s lovely down there by the ocean,’ she said brightly. ‘There’s always a cool breeze in the evening.’
Stephen had risen to his full height again. He was still looking at Cherry but she was trying to look at his brother, not him.
‘Beautiful beaches all spattered with beautiful girls,’ Stephen said and then really laughed at the quick cold look that Cherry gave him.
He turned to his brother.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk the thing over with Betty. She’ll be relieved that Cherry’s going. She knows Tracy is very good at lots of things but not with small boys.’
‘Er … thank you very much …’ Hugh Denton said a trifle awkwardly to Cherry.
She smiled back at him. He was very shy, this tall outback cattleman. Her heart quite went out to him. It wasn’t an easy thing surely to be trusting his only son to someone who was a near stranger.
It was too bad of Tracy not to feel some responsibility in such a case. After all, Peter was her nephew too.
This thought brought to her mind the picture of two brothers being married to two sisters. Well, quite a good idea when you come to think of it. It was what was called in her psychology text book ‘the familiar grouping’ and was regarded as the very best. People living happily together in families.
All the same, clearly a nursemaid was needed in the Denton family.
When Cherry later spoke to Mrs. Denton about the projected trip she found the older woman greatly relieved.
‘I didn’t like to ask you, Cherry. A baby that old is a full-time job, but I felt I just couldn’t make it. And I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to Peter if he didn’t get his vaccine. It’s months before the Salk people will be in Timor Bay again.’
She hesitated. Her tired grey eyes were already beginning to show, deep in them, the first hard light that meant a bad headache was coming on.
‘It’s this migraine,’ she said. ‘I’ll be much better when I’ve had that break down south. I do love Stephen for having gone to that trouble to go down there and find the house. And fix it up. It was a real sacrifice because he hated leaving the run. So does Hugh, of course. Stephen’s much more a man of action when he really gets stirred.’
She hesitated.
‘It is a nice house, isn’t it, Cherry?’
‘Lovely,’ said Cherry warmly. ‘We live quite near and it’s the most beautiful street ever. A double road, you know, with pines down either side and more down the middle between the two roads. They sing in the wind. And they’re cool and shady in the hot summer.’
Mrs. Denton looked at Cherry curiously.
‘I believe you are just a little homesick.’
‘There is a call from those pines,’ Cherry laughed. ‘And the ocean too. Not to mention my parents. But I love the north already, Mrs. Denton. And I think the station life is thrilling. I hope I can go out on the run some day.’
‘Yes, of course. I’ll get Hugh or Stephen to take you when you come back from Timor Bay. You’ll only be gone four days, you know.’
She had never asked Cherry anything personal about her life before but this sudden decision to put Peter into Cherry’s willing charge had unexpectedly brought them a little closer.
‘You might make up your mind to stay in the north for good,’ Mrs. Denton said. She was putting away the silver after the lunch wash up. She did not look up as sh
e spoke. ‘That is unless you have some special reason why you would want to go south again. I mean in addition to the call of the pines.’
‘Well, I did make a promise,’ Cherry said reluctantly. She too was helping put the things away. She had just reached up to put the plates on the top shelf of the old-fashioned dresser that took up a large portion of one wall of the kitchen. She turned round and looked at Peter, still sitting in his high chair, chewing at a rusk which he held in one hand, and beating a tattoo with his silver spoon on the tray with his other hand.
‘It’s going to be a tussle between two men,’ she said, looking at Peter. ‘That young man there and the north on one hand, and another ever so much older and the pines on the other hand.’
‘I expect you will have to wait the whole twelve months to see who wins,’ said Mrs. Denton reluctantly. ‘Already I begin to wish you would stay on with us, Cherry. But you mustn’t sacrifice your own chances in life for other people’s lives, you know. Every girl wants to get married some time.’ She hesitated as she pushed in the drawer of the dresser after the last of the silver had gone in.
‘I’m always telling Tracy that. It’s time she stopped racketing around the world. She has a wonderful home and security here with Hugh and me. All she’s got to do is marry Stephen … she’d like marriage then. He’s a wonderful person.’
Cherry picked Peter up from his chair and wiped his mouth with a small piece of towelling.
‘I think I’ll put this young man to bed now,’ she said. ‘His eyes have got the kind of look that says it’s time for an afternoon sleep.’
‘How quickly you have learned about babies, Cherry,’ Mrs. Denton said. ‘I wish Tracy ‒’
‘I wish I had some of the things Tracy has,’ said Cherry going towards the door. ‘A lovely figure, beautiful hair. If she loves Stephen she’ll marry him in the end. On the other hand, if she is a true artist perhaps it would be kinder to give her an opportunity to use her art.’
‘She ought to settle down and get married,’ Mrs. Denton said a trifle stubbornly. ‘She’d like it if she’d only try it.’
‘I’ve got a feeling she will,’ said Cherry wisely. ‘She’s in love with Stephen, and that’s a good start.’
