by Lucy Walker
She was pretty all right. She had on a new striped cotton dress. That store down the road couldn’t be as bad as its shabby dust-covered outside indicated.
Jeff’s heart smote him somewhat. Why hadn’t he seen Kim with a man’s eyes before? She had a way-out gamine charm, and those eyes were really beautiful in a big way. A bit shortsighted or something. It added to their charm.
Of course some fella ’ud fall for her!
‘He’s coming up the road now,’ Kim said. Jeff detected a small note of anxiety in her voice.
Now why that? he wondered thoughtfully.
He took in the tall rangy figure of the man coming along the road. Black hair, a square brow. Good strong features. A man’s man all right. Tough maybe ‒ in a wiry way. Anyway he looked it in those brown outback clothes.
Jeff stood up.
‘Guess I’ll have to talk with him.’
Kim was unexpectedly and drastically self-conscious. ‘You go and meet him, Jeff. I think I’d better ‒ Well, it might be easier if I’m not here.’
Jeff watched the tall figure moving nearer. The man came on in a leisurely way, yet there was confidence and a natural ease in his walk. He was a man no one could easily buck. Jeff decided that in advance.
‘I can’t talk to him out here in the middle of a raking dust track,’ he said nonplussed.
‘Just shake hands with him,’ Kim said quickly. ‘Then drift him round to the courtyard. There’s a clump of mulgas by the fence. That’s the place for talking. The best people settle affairs of business in the shade of those mulgas. It’s very much done, you know!’
Jeff glanced down at his sister.
‘Ducking it?’ he asked wryly. ‘You just want to run out and leave me with the right to sock on the jaw: or be socked on the jaw?’
Kim nodded.
‘That’s right,’ she agreed. ‘But the shade under the trees helps. It sort of mesmerises, or something ‒’
Jeff grinned.
‘Okay, Bratto!’ he said. ‘You skid inside. I’ll take care of the Queen’s honour, the realm, and Dr Andrews. You go slap up your beauty with yet another make-up. I’ll take him to pieces if I think it necessary.’
‘He just might do that to you by mistake,’ she said soberly. ‘Watch his left hook, Jeff.’
She reached up and kissed him. ‘He’s very, very strong!’ she added.
‘Hell!’ said Jeff rubbing the point on his jaw bone where the kiss landed. ‘As if I were a kissing man, and all that! This feller coming up the road might take the first jab at me.’
‘He’s also quick on his feet!’ Kim advised demurely. She didn’t exactly flee inside, though the feeling to do so was very strong. She did the opposite. She was so sedate that Jeff, watching her, shook his head once more.
‘Don’t understand girls,’ was all he remarked as he stepped off the veranda and walked out on to the dusty road.
In the hallway, Kim was still being so carefully sedate, she nearly walked into a stranger. In the darkness-after-light of the inside hall, she failed to see the well-dressed man who had arrived on the same plane as Jeff.
‘I beg your pardon,’ this same man now said courteously. The trilby hat he had worn as he alighted from the plane, was now in his hand.
‘It was my fault,’ Kim apologised. ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t looking where I was going.’
He smiled down at her from a benign seniority of between forty and fifty years of age. Yet there was something too kindly and too curious in his eyes.
‘It takes fifteen seconds for the pupils of the eyes to adjust from bright sunlight outside to the sepulchral gloom of an outback pub’s hallway,’ he said, explaining for her. ‘Quite impossible for you immediately to see anyone. Even me.’
Kim put her head fractionally on one side. She wasn’t sure she quite liked him. Too polished. Or was it the way he said what he said? Yet his voice was pleasant and he was being kind.
‘You would be Miss Kimberley Wentworth?’ he enquired, still smiling. Kim’s heart dropped a beat, though she had no idea why. It was as if he was a messenger of a not-very-gay fate. Someone who might know the true facts about special licences; and brides-to-be under age! And nobody outback called her Kimberley.
He saw the sudden gleam of anxiety in her eyes. In the long silence that followed he considered the girl’s disquiet. It could be ‒ it was possible ‒ this very disquiet would be an advantage. He might revise his planning.
‘How do you know my name?’ Kim asked.
The man indicated the register on the counter nearby.
‘Like all mere mortals I had to sign before I could enter and take possession of a room. A place to lay my head, as it were,’ he said with that too-kind smile. ‘You had to be the Miss Kimberley Wentworth registered here. There do not seem to be any other young ladies round about. You have an interesting name, Miss Kimberley.’
‘I was called after a pioneering forebear. It’s quite a common name in this state.’
‘Of course, of course!’ He spoke so pleasantly, yet somehow his soft voice did not tally with the hard vigilant expression in his eyes.
‘The tycoon look,’ Kim thought. ‘As seen on television of course!’
‘I didn’t know I was signed in with my full name ‒ Kimberley ‒’ she began, out of her unease.
He raised his eyebrows slightly.
‘Oh? Someone else signed for you? Not very proper my dear young miss!’ He smiled in a pearly-toothed way to indicate a joke. But the eyes still looked hard at her.
‘Yes. That is to say ‒’
Being a bratto had its virtues after all, she decided. She went back several mental leaps to the being she was before John had asked that irrational but fateful question.
‘I have a limp in my right hand,’ she added cheerfully. ‘From over-work you know. Like a housemaid’s knee, only in the upper limbs. Or should I say “fore” limbs? I always get someone else to do my writing for me.’ She smiled, her head still slightly on one side, as she looked at him out of the wide windows of her clear, dark-fringed eyes. She had a feeling he nearly said ‒ But not your pen-drawings of plant sections, my dear. Which was ridiculous. He couldn’t know anything about that, of course.
Kim found it easier to stay her old self just long enough to get away from this man.
‘’Scuse me, won’t you?’ she said, almost too brightly. ‘I have things to do to my face and hands. I’m expecting a visit from two important people. Right now they’re out under the trees in the courtyard discussing the season’s wool prices. And the cost of maintaining just one lamb!’
She edged round him, then ran up the linoleum-covered stairs.
‘Me being the lamb!’ she added to herself. She had an uncanny feeling about this man in the tailored suit who wore shiny shoes in the outback. And who had been curious enough to find out her name from the register!
Kim sat down in front of the mirror in her room. Over the left hand shoulder of the mirror’s frame she watched through the window the trees standing in the absolute silhouette stillness of a blazing hot midday.
Nothing stirred in that courtyard. Even the flies had gone to sleep. The whiskers of dried grass round the fences were spike-still. The mulga leaves, slim and pointed, were lifeless.
Kim watched as round the corner of the main building came the two men. John, head bent, was talking very quietly, but with a sort of compelling air. Jeff, hands in pockets, walked beside him. He looked down at the gravel ground as he did so: and kicked a pebble schoolboy-wise.
They came to the shade of the trees and there they stood, both looking out over the wasteland of spinifex to some unmeasurable distant place where the sky met the last rim of shimmering mirage land. They rocked back a little on their heels as they exchanged words.
The two men in her life!
Kim slapped cold cream on her face. Then some more. Finally she wiped most of this off and patted on a covering cream. She had never thought about wanting to be beautiful before. Not
much anyway. But now it was different
She dropped her hands to the table in front of her. What were they saying to one another ‒ out there under the trees?
She knew when she had first fallen in love with John Andrews. She’d been trying to cheat herself for ages, that was all.
He hadn’t had a handle to his name then. Or appeared to be anyone likely to claim fame. He’d been ‒ that man: standing there in the dazzling sunshine of the Mount, with the lovely shining river stretching away in bays and shoals and wide expanses below the cliffs. He had looked at her, and the look had struck a glancing blow at her heart.
As she had left that day, she had turned her head once. He was smiling at something that pleased him about a plant. It was a glorious flashing smile that almost took the shine out of the river. Bang had gone her heart all right!
Ever since, she had played at a game of chance ‒ blindfolded. And lived on hope and a camouflaged daydream.
Cheating herself?
The two men under the trees had turned round. They were smiling!
Kim, watching them through the window, drew the deepest breath ever.
It’s going to be all right.
After much thought, she put on the cotton dress she had worn earlier for fear Jeff would recognise any change and tease her about it in front of John. She must remind Jeff that when John was around, teasing was out of bounds. Besides, she was a working girl now on a good wage. She could actually afford a new dress or two. Even a diminutive trousseau.
How strange and impersonal John’s signature had looked on the pay cheque and the official cover note that went with it! There had been the date, her ranking ‒ Technical Assistant ‒ duration of work, period, and finally the magic J. S. Andrews. Officer in charge.
Her thoughts raced on as her hands raced too. She looked in the mirror.
If only I could look like Myree would look ‒
Somewhere she’d read that ‘envy’ was one of the seven deadly sins. Okay, she’d eliminate ‘envy’ from her character make-up as from now. Besides, Myree wasn’t getting everything this time!
Oh dear! What a meanie mind I have, after all!
She would think about her pay cheque instead. One hundred beautiful dollars. Oh lovely money!
Mr Barker, the pub’s manager, was back behind his counter. He looked up and offered a sly grin as Kim came downstairs.
‘Well, how’s the engaged couple to-day?’ he asked. ‘I heard your brother came in on the plane all right. I see he’s registered. Kathy fix him with a good room?’
Kim nodded.
‘Yes, thank you.’ She hadn’t seen Jeff’s room, but this mention of ‘registering’ was an opening gambit. She leaned against the counter and fingered the petals of a pink everlasting.
‘There was another man who signed in too,’ she said, as if not really all that interested. ‘He looks so different from an outbacker. Did you see him?’
‘I saw him ten minutes ago.’ The manager put his finger under the last name written in the register. ‘Name of Harold M. Smith. Now that surname is one I often see written in the register. Funny how many Smiths tread the dust of the good old outback.’
‘Is it so strange?’ Kim queried with her head on one side. ‘Actually there are Smiths right at the top of the social ladder, aren’t there?’
‘I guess that’s why so many people use the name,’ Mr Barker remarked dryly. ‘Snobbery!’
Kim laughed. ‘This man who arrived to-day spoke to me. He was very nice. I came in out of the glare and all but bumped into him. I wondered how someone like that could come on a freight plane. I mean ‒’
‘It’s the only plane for another two days. Anyone can get on a freight plane if there’s room. He could be one of the Charter Company’s men. Main-Office type. Anyhow, what about that brother of yours? How did he manage a berth?’
‘Oh easy!’ Kim smiled her most urchin smile. ‘He came as extra staff-hand to handle the freight. He has to go down to the airstrip this afternoon and do just that. Move the freight landed here! Jeff knows all the lurks about travelling cheap ‒’
‘Same with this other chap, I guess. Except this Mr Harold M. Smith didn’t come dressed as a cargo hand.’
‘He’s a sort of executive type, don’t you think?’ Kim suggested.
‘Like I said. A “Main-Office” character!’ He looked at the young girl with a bit of a grin, then added ‒ ‘If you really want the news of the day ‒ and most people in the Stopover do ‒ this Mr Harold Smith did not state his business. Kathy was at the desk when he came in. He did no more than make enquiries about a certain Mr Stephen Cole ‒ one of Dr Andrews’ men, if I remember rightly. A scientist or something. Mr Smith saw the name in the register ‒ dated back a while ‒ and mentioned casual-like that he knew Mr Cole. And where could he meet up with him now.’
‘He asked Kathy?’ Even Kim’s face was dead-pan. Very unusual for Kim.
‘Yes, he asked Kathy. She passed it on to me because when that Stephen Cole was here he just about burned up the “blower” sending messages through the radio base north of here to Sydney ‒ where this feller comes from.’
He looked up and caught Kim’s grey eyes fixed on his face. ‘Well, nothing to that!’ he finished off abruptly. ‘You’d know this Stephen Cole, I guess. Why does he want to send a spate of messages from here anyway? He could send ’em all backwards to the coast from your Base, couldn’t he?’
‘Not really,’ Kim said casually. ‘He might have thought the Land-Rover wouldn’t be absolutely certain of getting back to Base. And he had to leave a vehicle here at the garage. They’re fixing it now. Base couldn’t reach us out at the old homestead. Too far from a transmitting station. We don’t have the new 25 watt transceiver either ‒’
‘Well, Mr Cole didn’t look like the over-anxious kind to me. A bit self-confident. Brash, I’d say!’
‘He’s not either of those things,’ Kim said quickly, team loyalty up in arms. At the back of her mind, however, she felt a prickle of anxiety.
The man behind the desk watched the doubt and the unease cloud Kim’s face.
‘An old sweetheart eh?’ he asked. ‘This Stephen Cole?’
Kim shook her head.
‘Just a friend.’
‘Guess all you people in the Expedition have “special” friends?’
Kim made no comment because she was still deep in thought. The manager decided not to tell her that yet another radio message via the base at Binni-Carra had come in for Dr John Andrews from the Expedition’s headquarters. This was the only wave-length that could communicate from the west. He remembered the message ‒
When are you able to return. Important I inform you of arrangements to meet you. Please reply at earliest date.
Best love Myree.
This girl, Myree, had sent too many messages signed with that word ‘love’. Now here was Miss Kim looking pink and thoughtful about Mr Stephen Cole!
The manager, with a vested interest in seeing this wedding come off, decided to forget, temporarily only, where he put the written copy of this latest radio call. A proper monkey he’d look with the people around about if someone threw a jinx on this wedding. What with big orders of fresh fruits and salads coming on the freight plane ‒ extra staff taken on ‒ the safest thing he could do was forget all radio messages in or out. That mob back at the Scientific Base could find out about the wedding in God’s good time. He, Joe Barker, not being God, was not going to do the telling.
Through the open door men’s footsteps could be heard coming round the veranda.
Kim stopped leaning on the counter. She straightened up as if touched by magic. The unpleasant cobwebby man named Mr Harold M. Smith ceased to exist.
She had to meet the two ‘J’s! With an air too! How would Celia or Diane ‒ even Myree ‒ do it?
Her heart started to beat far too fast. She looked at Mr Barker, but in vain. Worldly wise, he had decided this was the moment when paper work in front of him was more
important than the affairs of his paying guests.
Kim watched the door instead.
She saw the grin on Jeff’s face, and that a shadow flitted across John’s eyes, as they came in. Then John smiled too! Her relief was almost overwhelming because mixed up with it was a longing that he might one day really love her.
‘Hullo, Kim!’ John’s voice was a matter of fact. Yet was there something else, indefinable, too?
‘I have your brother’s blessing,’ he went on. ‘Shall we all three go in and celebrate with a drink?’
Kim was fresh out of words so she just nodded. Then caught Jeff’s eyes. He grinned, a little wickedly. John looked over Kim’s head towards the desk where the manager was leaning on it stroking his chin with one finger and now looking up at the trio with an expressionless face.
‘Will you come and join us?’ John asked him. ‘This could be your wedding, you know.’
What did he mean by that? Kim wondered vaguely.
Mr Barker grinned, but shook his head.
‘Not mine. Yours,’ he said. ‘You look like a family party. You go ahead and I’ll keep any unwelcome strangers out of the parlour. By the way,’ he said looking at Jeff now. ‘Talking of weddings, I’m standing you one right here in this pub that’ll be the best ever for this year’s takings. It’s my party. Are you on?’
Jeff stared at the manager as if he was seeing a man from Mars.
‘Look here ‒’ he began. ‘I’m the bride’s brother ‒’
‘I’m her sponsor,’ Mr Barker said in his slow flat way, yet in a voice that conveyed the outback authority only the town’s Boss Cocky wielded. Not a hint in it of the crates of fruit and salad already en route. ‘Give me seventy-two hours and I’ll run a wedding that’ll give this district more of a kick than it’s had in months. Don’t count the cost because I’ll rake it back in the bar. I always do. Bedroom service too. And more. That’s the way we manage things up hereabouts.’
Jeff laughed, though somewhat abashed. This was a flat statement of fact, but a wonderful one. He himself could barely muster enough to run a small wedding. But the whole district?
