by Lucy Walker
Kim went back to her van, drove it into the courtyard and parked it nose-on to the strip of cement walk outside Number 7. All the doors round the courtyard were painted in bright colours. In the middle was a shady plot of ground, thanks to the two gum trees.
She turned the key in the door of her room.
First she put the milk in the mini-fridge under the work table, then took the hot water jug from the cupboard, and the sugar bag and tea bag provided by the management. She set the jug to boil.
She stared with pretended courage at the letter lying waiting for her on the table.
‘Friend or foe? To be or not to be? I’ve won the job, or I haven’t! If not, well heigh-ho for farther north!’
She picked up the letter, then fearing it might contain something as nasty as an adder, dropped it. She had an odd feeling there was something wrong with it.
‘Tea first. No one ever ran away from a mad selfish family without first having a cup of tea to reinforce.’
Within a minute the water-jug boiled. Kim put two tea bags in the pot and poured the boiling water on them. She had brought in from her van the packet of sandwiches from the store at the turn-off. She sat back in a cane chair, poured the tea, and nibbled a sandwich.
The odd feeling of something wrong with that letter came over her again. Not the inside of the letter, but the outside. She looked at the postmark. Perth. The counter-mark was ‘Private Mail Bag, Manutarra’. That was all right. In the bottom left hand corner was neatly printed ‒
C.O.C.R. Botany Department. South West Division.
If not claimed please return within 7 days.
Then the penny dropped!
It was addressed to Miss Wentworth.
Of course! Miss had been on her key-tag too!
They’d found out! She’d meant them to read ‘Kim’ for a man’s name ‒ on account of them not wanting girls on expeditions.
She tore the envelope open, and a single sheet of paper fell from it.
It read ‒
Council for Organic Chemical Research (Botany Department), South West Division
Dear Madam,
You are hereby appointed Temporary Technical Assistant to Dr John Andrews, C.O.C.R. (Botany Extension Services) for the duration of the Plant Collecting Expedition beginning from Manutarra, Sept. 3rd of this year. You are required to report to Dr Andrews not later than the evening of Sept. 2nd.
Your remuneration will be under Clause Four of the Technical Officers Award of this Branch. Details will be forwarded to your home address.
Yours faithfully,
George Stanton (Chief Clerk, C.O.C.R.)
Kim read it again. Then again.
She wanted to jump up and dance, yet somehow, for some silly reason, she was nearer tears. Till this moment she hadn’t really believed in success.
She’d actually won the job! The letter hadn’t contained an adder, but a bouquet!
‘Kim, my girl,’ she told herself. ‘It’s Dr Andrews ‒ whoever he might be ‒ who’s going to worry about my being a girl now. The Clerk of Records appointed me. It was all done from Head Office! I wonder how they knew I was a “Miss”, and not a “Mister”? C.O.C.R. must have booked me in here at the roadhouse, as my telegram did too. Why hadn’t I noticed?’
From outside came the sound of vehicles pulling up. She lit a cigarette and stared disbelievingly at her own image in the mirror. She couldn’t even think because she was so relieved; and so happy too.
Then came a sharp rap at the door.
Kim had left the key in the lock so, still only half with-it, she called ‘Come in!’
In came a girl; tall, slender, very pretty, and with a lovely cap of real golden curls on the top of her head. This was the ice-queen with fury fires within, for sure! She really looked it!
Kim’s legs came down from the chair with a clang.
‘Myree Bolton!’ she said. ‘How did you get here?’
‘I was booked in by C.O.C.R. You’re the typist from the Research Section at Crawley aren’t you? What’s your name? Sorry but I never really knew.’
‘Kim Wentworth,’ Kim said more dazed than ever. ‘You were supposed to take my place at Crawley. I mean ‒ that is ‒ not typing. Oh no ‒ except for plant names on tags ‒ but to draw the plants, section by section. Ralph Sinclair’s work, you know ‒’
‘What rot!’ The elegant slender girl was disdainful. ‘I’m doing an Honours Degree, and I don’t type. I was booked by our Department to join this Expedition as graduate-botanist in order to study the topic for my thesis.’
‘Oh? So the Expedition was taking girls after all? Are there any more like you?’
‘No. The Botany lot agreed to my coming at the last moment.’
She was more supercilious than ever as she went on. ‘Someone high up put a special case for me. Professor Watts, I expect. After all, I do have to have a topic. No topic ‒ no thesis. Of course Dr Andrews would have asked for me. I’m sure of that. He knows me quite well.’
She put significant overtones to that ‘quite well’. Very meaningful.
Kim’s legs went up on the chair again and she laughed with a whoop of glee.
‘How I wish that dusty-booted man at that same Mount could see us! “No girls”, he said. Very flat and very final too. Wait till we get back!’
‘What man?’ Myree opened her carry-all and began taking up the best places on the table under the mirror, for her cosmetics. She was fractionally interested, that was all.
‘Oh, no one you would know. A sort of plant man. A very superior type. Probably an expert.’
Myree was busy distributing her things in careful order.
‘You still haven’t said what kind of a man. He seems to have made enough impact to provide you with impulses to revenge. A woman scorned?’
Kim’s legs wavered between coming down from the chair, or not. They decided not.
‘Thank you for calling me a “woman”. You’re the first ever. He’s one of the staff men who tried to warn me off the Mount because it wasn’t visiting day for “school girls”.’
Myree turned round and looked at Kim as if she were a plant specimen.
‘You haven’t developed much of a figure yet, have you? Not in the right places, I mean. Of course, I’ve only seen you from a distance round the Department. Rumour amongst the others had it that you were addicted to Ralph Sinclair. Is this other man on the Expedition?’
Myree was subtly interested, in her cool way.
‘Certainly not,’ Kim said firmly. ‘He’s a very rude man. Quite offensive, in fact ‒’
‘Because he thought you were too young to be interesting?’
Kim wished she had Myree’s eyebrows. They were exquisitely shaped with a nice little bend at the outer end that gave them a very prideful expression.
‘True,’ she said casually. ‘At least he said I was too young. He doesn’t have very good manners.’
‘Sounds interesting to me. I like frank people. I hope he does come.’
‘With all your brains why not concentrate on Dr Andrews? My brother said he’d heard he was a bachelor. Of course, he could be absent-minded and selfish like … Oh, well, never mind like who.’
‘Like Ralph Sinclair? So that was the trouble was it? I guessed right. But why run so far? My dear child, a scientist should marry a scientist. After all they have to live together, haven’t they? You’re only a typist ‒’
‘True again. Oh dash! Look what I’ve done ‒’
Kim stood up and shook herself. She had knocked the ash tray from the arm-rest with her elbow and spilt ash on her dress. She tried to rub the debris away.
‘I only have one other dress with me,’ she said disconsolately. ‘My bag’s full of shirts, slacks, shorts and working overalls.’
Thinking hard of other things, Kim was making the ash smudges on her dress worse as she tried to rub them off.
‘You should sponge it!’ Myree advised. ‘It’s only synthetic material, isn’t it? A rinse on that
place won’t show. It’ll soon dry. You ought to know that ‒’
‘I wasn’t thinking ‒’ Kim said. She escaped to the tiny bathroom with its shower recess. She was so entranced by this lovely ablutions adjunct that she promptly forgot the supercilious manner with which Myree had given her advice. She first sponged her dress, then turned on the other taps, not only of the wash basin, but of the shower recess ‒ just to see if they really worked. She examined the little cakes of soap left in the soap-rests, then pulled the chain of the cistern to make sure that worked too.
She examined her face in the mirror over the basin.
‘It’s really me!’ she declared. ‘Actually I’ve been in a trance ever since I arrived. I hadn’t quite, quite believed I’d get the job. I don’t even mind about Myree ‒’
Half an hour later the girls showered, then changed their dresses for dinner.
Myree was very glamorous now in a beautiful blue dress. It was short-short, but her knees were camouflaged with dreamlike tights.
She had looked at Kim’s dress and noticed the seams were not quite straight. It was a made-over!
What a bother to have to share with ‒
Myree pulled herself up and revised her thoughts. Kim may not be a scientist, but just how useful could a typist be? Well, come to think of it ‒ very!
Myree sat on the window bed ‒ on the principle that possession of the best bed was nine points of the law ‒ and as if she was in no hurry for dinner. She watched the other girl put a last pat to her not-very-docile hair. Then she opened a text book, and began to leaf through it.
‘Let’s go over to the dining-room,’ Kim suggested. ‘I’m ravenous ‒ in spite of three cups of tea and a sandwich ‒’
‘It’s not polite to rush the dining-room right on the tick of the clock. We should at least appear to be ladies.’ Myree replied, not looking up.
Kim sat down on a chair and watched Myree turn the pages of her book. She took in the fact that Myree was monopolising the window bed as if it were her own. Much educated by her two sisters, she deduced the fact that Myree really wanted to make an entrance in that dining-room.
‘Be in last, and make sure we’re seen?’ Kim asked equably.
Myree examined the other girl’s face, but made no reply. There had to be a catch to this question of Kim’s. It was too, too frank to be taken at its face value. In the silence, heavy footsteps could be heard outside. They belonged to men walking across the courtyard towards the dining-room. For half an hour there had been the repetitive sound of cars, caravans and even heavier vehicles drawing up.
‘What is this Dr Andrews like?’ Kim asked, breaking the icy silence. ‘I suppose you do know him?’
‘Oh yes, I’ve done quite a lot of my field work at the Mount.’ Myree sounded bored but in a way that did not mislead the other girl.
‘Let’s go,’ Kim said standing up with determination. She was hungry, and she was not going to be Myree’s docile subject about everything. ‘By the time we’ve both looked in the mirror, unlocked the door, then locked it up again ‒ and decided who is going to mind the key ‒ ten more minutes will be up. I’m hungry!’
Myree closed her book with meticulous care so as not to crease a page, then put it with equal care on the bedside table. She had placed it square-on so that the bottom edge was exactly parallel with the edge of the table. This had the compulsive effect of making Kim straighten her brush and comb and shut the drawer tight where she had put her cosmetics.
She wondered what Myree would have thought of the padding oozing from the old sofa at home, and the fact nobody could ever find which knife was where, in what kitchen drawer. Or where anything was for that matter.
They walked side by side round the cement path that led in to the glass doors of the dining-room.
As Myree pushed open this door Kim gave an ecstatic sigh.
‘Air-conditioning too. How gorgeous!’
‘Don’t you have it at home?’ asked the other girl; supercilious again.
Kim stopped still and looked about her. She took in the fact that most of the people in the dining-room were men. Some were sitting at tables, others were standing in a group talking together. There were one or two women with heat-tired eyes sitting with sun-weathered eagle-eyed men. Station people.
Standing by three adjacent tables in one corner were men who had an air of quickening purpose about them. This was the Expedition party!
Two, more senior men, stood talking a little apart. They had their backs to the girls as they entered, yet ‒ by the way they stood, their impressive air ‒ Kim guessed these were the leaders of the party. They had authority stamped over their well-set shoulders and their long straight backs.
One of them turned. He had bright smiling brown eyes, an easy expression and an unruly mop of hair. Kim felt a wonderful sense of relief. If this was Dr Andrews, and she hoped he was, all was going to be well. He looked an absolute pet.
Then the other man turned round.
He was tall, barely smiling, assured. He was different from everyone else in the room because of the subtle air of distinction about him.
It was her enemy from the Mount!
Kim felt cold all over. Myree, however, was walking towards him. In a very taking way too! Her backside wobbled beguilingly.
Kim stole another glance at him. He was tall and rangy, with a knock-out personality, and was dressed immaculately in khaki. He had a strange direct look in his dark depthy eyes, as he glanced past Myree at Kim. He obviously still had most aggressive tendencies where she was concerned.
Perhaps he had only come to bring the specimen cases, or the microscopes, or something. To-morrow he would be driving one of those Land-Rovers back down south. Jolly good luck to that too!
Kim brushed her hair away from her forehead and quickly turned to the other man, the nice one. He was coming towards her.
This could be Dr Andrews. That’s why he was smiling at her ‒ being the host, as it were. He wasn’t as tall as the other man, but he was tall enough and he had a fine friendly manner. He hadn’t minded girls coming at all. It had all been a myth. He liked them. He wore his liking in his welcoming eyes.
Myree, meantime, was giving her most brilliant ice-queen smile to the enemy. What a let-down poor Myree was in for! In a minute she would probably get the snub of all snubs. Kim couldn’t bear to wait for it, and in any event here was Dr Andrews speaking to her, the mere Technical Assistant.
‘How do you do?’ he said, smiling. His pleasant brown eyes had a twinkle in them. ‘I hope you had a good trip up. A long drive, I’m afraid. You must have a lot of courage to come all that distance in one day. By yourself too.’
Kim said, ‘How-do-you-do’ and ‘Yes, thank you she had had a very good trip up. She’d made a few drawings as she’d come along. She’d record them properly later when she had time. No, she hadn’t minded being alone, even for ten hours. Her botanical observations, you see ‒’
Well, she told herself. I do have to make some kind of an impression! Considering Myree’s academic attainments it’s only fair ‒
When she stopped explaining herself she saw a rather blank look had come into the man’s eyes.
‘Are you Dr Andrews?’ she asked, imagining she was summoning up the kind of assured smile Diane and Celia wore so often. ‘I haven’t told you my name. I’m …’
‘Kim Wentworth,’ he finished for her, the smile coming back. It was almost a grin. ‘We know Myree Bolton, of course. She did some preliminary research work with us at the Mount some months ago. She was interested in a special “find” we made out on the Sandy Desert last year.’
Myree was ten paces away talking very eagerly to that man. Kim chose not to notice this too much.
‘We had to check your reference with Ralph Sinclair at Crawley, of course,’ her welcomer went on saying. ‘That’s how we knew you were a “Miss” and not a “Mister”.’ His grin deepened in quite a big way.
Kim blinked. He hadn’t minded her being
a girl then? Why had they given her such a wrong impression of him at the Mount?
Of course they would check her reference! Why hadn’t she thought of that?
‘There’s a table over there. Shall we sit down?’ he was saying. He looked round, then added ‒ ‘We’re all here now. We might as well have dinner.’
As they moved towards the table he added a resounding postscript to his remarks. ‘I’m not Dr Andrews, by the way. You’ve promoted me, I’m afraid. I’m George Crossman, the organic chemist with the Expedition. That is Dr Andrews over there talking to Myree Bolton.’
‘Oh no!’
Kim stood quite still, dazed by the thunderbolt he had thrown at her head.
‘I beg your pardon?’ George Crossman said, but not sure he had heard right.
Kim wasn’t listening to him.
That man was Dr Andrews? She’d been rude to him ‒ well, not quite unforgivably because after all he had called her a school girl, and he had meant to be rude to her.
The chair, with George Crossman holding it, was still waiting. Kim sat down on it not very gracefully.
‘Thank you.’ Her voice had a fog in it. Her ears were muffled and the only thing she could hear was the laughter that had followed when she had gone to the office at the Mount. Those superior-looking females in white coats, and the man at the desk! They’d all laughed at her!
George Crossman, sitting opposite her now, was saying pleasant nothings about the decorations in the dining-room, but Kim did not hear him.
She would never forgive him ‒ Dr Andrews ‒ of course. She was tired of being laughed at. Her family had been doing it ever since she was born.
‘Yes thank you,’ she said absently to the waitress who was standing beside her, holding out the menu. ‘I’ll have the kangaroo-tail soup. Then roast chicken.’
Chapter Three
George Crossman watched Kim’s face with amusement. Here, he thought, was a naive but interesting young person. Kim recognised the signs of his summing-up from long and hazardous experiences with her sisters’ friends.
