by Lucy Walker
Mr Barker bent his head as if once more to pay attention to his desk work. ‘Well, that’s settled!’ he said as if finalising a very insignificant account. ‘We gotta bring ’em into town now’n again! Goodwill and lamb’s wool for business, you know!’
‘Mr Barker, you’re a darling,’ Kim said diffidently. ‘You could even be a super-darling ‒’
‘You say that to the six-footer on your right, young miss. He’s your first claim. Elsewise you might be letting loose fighting words.’
John looked at Kim.
‘That’s right,’ he agreed quietly. Once again he was wearing his smile ‒ not quite so remotely now. It did awful things to Kim’s heart. ‘Let’s go and have that drink,’ he said. ‘Mr Barker, Jeff and I will talk the matter over later.’
They turned to go through the swing doors into the parlour as Kathy came into the main hall from the back. She looked thoughtfully at the diminishing figure of Kim between two outlandishly tall specimens of man power.
‘You tell me something, Dad,’ she demanded, leaning on the counter. ‘Whenever there’s a nice stray girl who books in at this pub, and some straight kind of a feller at the same time ‒ me, Mum and the cook find ourselves with a wedding on our hands.’
‘You been overhearing?’
‘More or less.’
‘Well, it’s like this ‒’ Her father reflected on the parlour door with studied interest. ‘There’s only the race meeting out at Binni-Carra Station in the next three months to keep us lively in this place. They wouldn’t keep any staff down at the store or the garage, or even out at the air field, if we didn’t have some social life. And we’d be broke. It needs a wedding, or some such, to liven up the place. Give it a good name as a Stopover for social life. Brings people in ‒’
He glanced round at his daughter.
‘It’s good for business, my girl,’ he advised. ‘The station people come in here instead of going two hundred miles up the track to Blain’s Find. Now, if we could stage another big “do” before the Wet hits us, we’d be in pocket for the rest of the year. It’s what the district people can spend here instead of up at Blain’s that matters.’
His daughter looked at him thoughtfully. It was true that most of the weddings they’d had at Bim’s Stopover had been a success. People kept coming back to celebrate anniversaries. The station-owners around tended to drop in at the Stopover for months afterwards. And spend money ‒
As for herself? There was Don down at the garage, of course. Dad was always asking him up here ‒ Was there a subtle meaning in that remark about another big ‘do’ before the Wet?
Kathy turned and went back through the dining-room to the kitchen.
‘Mental telepathy,’ she told her mother. ‘I’ve just found out Dad’s been trying to put ideas in my head.’
‘That’s your father all over. What’s he up to now?’
‘Kim and Dr Andrews. They’ll get married all right. Her brother’s all smiles. All the same, strikes me there’s something sort of missing ‒’
Her mother lifted an apple pie from the oven and set it on the table.
‘Any just cause or impediment?’ she suggested. ‘That what’s worrying you?’
‘Could be. They don’t seem so very in love to my liking. Funny sort of way they are with one another ‒ Sort of distant ‒’
‘They don’t have to show feelings like some I know. Don Carter down at the garage for instance. What’s more, right now your father’s got other things on his mind about this particular wedding.’
‘Like what?’ Kathy asked handing her mother a fresh oven cloth.
‘Well, between you and me, your father has those wedding certificates ready drawn up for Mr Soames from Binni-Carra to take the ceremony. Him acting as local magistrate for the occasion. Your father keeps those legal documents in the safe for the J.P.s that might need them ‒ there not being any government office round these parts. It happens all over when you get this far outback. The pub’s a real social necessity ‒’
‘Oh yes, I know all that! When Mr Soames isn’t growing more wool than anyone else round about he’s baptising or marrying or burying.’
‘Here dear ‒ move those pies along will you. There’s more to come. What was I saying?’
‘Something about Dad making out the wedding certificates for Mr Soames.’
‘Yes. That’s right. That’s the point. I don’t reckon your father really knows the law like he thinks he does. And Mr Soames is that forgetful. I’m just hoping that getting Kim’s brother to give permission is good enough. Kim says she’s only nineteen.’
‘But Mr Soames can give permission, can’t he? He did for Nan Richards from Windy Station.’
‘Yes, but he knew Nan. He doesn’t know Kim. He hasn’t even met her yet. He’s supposed to know them both for nine days!’
‘So what? Dad’s met her. That’s good enough isn’t it? Mr Soames’ll take Dad’s word for it.’
‘Well maybe. Let’s hope anyway. So long as some bush-whacky loon doesn’t blow in and speak up when that question about “just impediment” gets asked.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Mum! Dr Andrews wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t in the book. He’s too important. A scientist, and all that! Besides what bush-whackers are likely to come?’
‘Well, there’s that Peck and his mate Bill. They’d have heard there’s a wedding on ‒ wherever they may be. They love a yarn, and when they’ve got one they tell it from one end of the state to the other.’
‘Well, tell Dad to lock Peck in the dog-house if he does blow in,’ Kathy said succinctly. ‘I don’t want anything to go wrong. I like Kim. She’s nice. She’s a bit nervous about something, and when I come to think of it ‒’
‘Don’t think too hard dear. You’ll addle your brains.’
‘Come to think of it,’ Kathy persisted. ‘There’s those radio messages about "love from Myree”. There’d be a lot of girls jumping out of their skins if someone like Dr Andrews came along kidnapping them. He’s that attractive.’
‘You keep your mind on Don Carter. He’s nearer your mark, my girl!’
Chapter Thirteen
It took three more days to organise that wedding. Some people, determined to come, had to travel from far. First they had to finish mustering-in the sheep, for the shearers who were due in the district from next week on. The air ‒ per radio and radio telephone ‒ was lively with voices. People far and wide, who had never heard of Kim Wentworth or Dr John Andrews, were determined to come to any wedding at Bim’s Stopover. But first the mustering had to be finished! The wedding had to wait willy nilly.
Kim wasn’t the only one counting days on her fingers. Kathy and her mother, with some relief, made it the bare nine days since Dr John Andrews and Kim had come in from Skelton’s old homestead. The only problem now was that Mr Soames still had not met the bride and groom. Not a soul far and wide was certain whether that mattered or not. Neither Mr Soames, J.P. ‒ from the distant reaches of the muster-yard at Binni-Carra ‒ nor Mr Barker, manager of the pub and Boss Cocky at Bim’s Stopover, were saying. Dr John Andrews appeared to have a mind sky-high above such negligible things as crossing ‘t’s.
Everyone that could be mustered was busy cooking, decorating, giving Kim advice about what to do with the white linen dress she had bought down at the store with her pay cheque. And whether she should or should not wear a hat.
John Andrews and Jeff Wentworth went for long walks along the dusty streak of track or across the drying grasses of the plain talking endlessly ‒ not of Kim and weddings ‒ but of forests, plants, and the uses to mankind of trees. Also of the obscure remedial drugs that certain plants gave to suffering humanity.
‘Myoporoides was a find enough,’ John Andrews mused aloud. ‘But hopwoodi! Of course it’s George Crossman who’ll hit the headlines with its chemical values. What a find! It’ll make history!’
‘It’s thought to have been extinct these twenty years ‒’
J
ohn spared time from high thoughts to give his future brother-in-law a cold look. ‘No one’s looked for it out here towards the western desert fringe before. That’s all!’
‘Okay, okay!’ Jeff agreed cheerfully. ‘So long as you don’t make mistakes in human relations: never mind plant species. You scientist chaps ‒’
‘Meaning?’ John asked him, his eyes losing their blue and turning a dark grey.
‘Nothing! Nothing!’ Jeff said quickly. ‘All the same, it’s strange how some people do make those mistakes. Take Kim, for instance. She’s not what she seems. If you know what I mean.’
‘Kim can err in her judgment of people?’ John asked the question bluntly.
‘Kim was brought up by the whole family,’ Jeff parried. ‘She came into the world a long time after the rest of us. She didn’t have much chance of experience ‒ Too many wind-brakes!’
John Andrews was silent.
‘Suppose we change the subject,’ he said presently. ‘Let’s get back to your own topic. I’ve personally listed two hundred and eighteen varieties of eucalypts ‒ that excellent gum tree. I could possibly add another thirty to that with investigation. Those flourishing in unexplored pockets of the Sandy Desert, for instance.’
‘Then don’t forget to let me in on them,’ Jeff retorted. ‘I could muster an expedition from the Forestry Department. C.O.C.R. would back us, as with you people. Certainly ‒ if we could get the kind of tycoon you landed. One who’d give us a handsome contribution to the costs ‒’
‘As long as he doesn’t come along in the guise of a spy for an industrial chemist,’ John said so quietly Jeff was startled. ‘You get that kind mizzling in too?’
‘We don’t get them. We have them. The thing to know is when they’re around. Then you keep a guard on your discoveries.’
‘Hopwoodi, for instance?’
‘Hopwoodi by all means. It’s a narcotic known to have been used by the aborigines very effectively. Priceless, if reared, for some chemists! The sick and the ailing ‒’
‘Then you’ll keep very quiet about it?’
‘I will. George Crossman and you are the only two who know exactly what I’ve found.’
‘Thanks for trusting me,’ Jeff said, pleased at this compliment.
‘We’re fellow scientists aren’t we? You’d have any amount of top secret stuff down in the karri forest, wouldn’t you?’
‘Right you are. Very hush-hush. By the way, I suppose Kim has had to do the recording? Maybe the drawings? A bit of a responsibility!’
‘Yes, Kim knows what she’s doing. She’s a member of the team‒’
Jeff took this statement as a general compliment to his sister. A good way to begin a marriage.
They walked on without speaking for a long time.
Then John broke the silence unexpectedly.
‘I’m interested in that man Smith who’s staying in the Stopover. A character out of type. Giving no account of himself ‒’
‘Maybe out after gold prospectors?’ Jeff hazarded. ‘Since this state burst out of its seams with its big mineral discoveries those types are busy snooping all over the place. You positively trip over them. Generally they have a fat cheque book to buy out the prospectors, or to pay for information.’
‘In which case Peck and Bill had better keep away from the wedding,’ John mused. ‘Bill can’t talk, but Peck can’t stop. They might find the stakes pulled out of their own gold claims overnight.’
Kathy, having experience behind her, allocated herself to the role of bridesmaid.
Kim was grateful. Actually Kathy didn’t give her any choice. A submissive girl, she pointed out, was femininely attractive to men.
‘I guess it will take forty-eight hours to turn you into a picture-girl instead of a burned-off piece of brush in from the spinifex,’ Kathy said looking Kim over judicially. ‘My, when you first came in from that sand plain, dressed in brown dust and a tangy shirt, you sure looked a real waif.’
‘What, me?’
‘Yes, you! We really do have to do something about that face!’ Kathy shook her head as she gazed at her victim. ‘You’ve improved it. I’ll grant you that. But for a wedding we have to make it extra-super.’
She looked at Kim in a considering way. ‘Oatmeal’s the thing,’ she said at last. ‘Oatmeal packs from now till D-Day! You’re not the only bride that’s come in out of the wilds to the Stopover to get herself married-up tight. I’ve found oatmeal helps a lot. Gives the doubting Thomas something to look at ‒ instead of think about.’
In no time Kim found her face, neck and arms, firmly encased in a thick paste.
This was to be the pattern for two hours each day until the wedding ring was firmly on that third left-hand finger. Kathy graciously allowed the eyes to remain uncovered so Kim could while away the imprisonment by finishing the important duplicate of John’s notes and drawings.
The things she did for Myree!
Also she wanted to put a few final touches to the early record she had made of her own solo trip from Perth in the south, to Manutarra, the jump-off road-house for the Expedition.
‘Well, just as well to get on with some work,’ Kathy agreed. ‘You can’t go spoiling the honeymoon with ink and paints, you know. Have to stay a “picture-girl” till that’s over, at least.’
The very thought of ‘honeymooning’ alarmed Kim, but she wasn’t going to worry herself thinking about it now. Actually, she couldn’t bear to. Better to work and keep her thoughts on more familiar things like the flowers on either side of the road up the Bindoon Hill, and the miles and miles of golden wattle east of the Greenough Flats.
If only ‒ if only ‒
No, she couldn’t finish that thought either.
On the afternoon before the wedding ‒ while Kathy was safely out of sight helping with the decorations ‒ there came a tap on Kim’s door.
She was lying stretched prone on the floor, the pink tip of her tongue peeping from one corner of her mouth. Her mapping pen was in her hand, the ink bottle handy, and a large sheet of drawing-paper spread out on the floor before her.
‘Come in!’ she answered absently. She finished a line and began another. Of course it would never be John!
The door opened, but there was only silence. Kim carefully shook a blob of ink from her pen, then turned her head.
It was the man from some-city-nowhere. Or was it Sydney? Mr Shiny Shoes.
He stood in the doorway, sleek and suited, looking at the front-side-down figure of a young girl who was swathed in a sheet, her hair tied back in a towel and her face covered ‒ except for the mouth and eyes ‒ in a paste of porridge.
He smiled at her as if amused. But in a very friendly way.
Much too squeazy a smile, Kim thought.
‘I’m sorry I can’t get up,’ she said. ‘It’s the sheet you know. It’s all I have on. And it’s only pinned in one place ‒’
‘Please don’t. I wouldn’t disturb you for one moment ‒ except that ‒’
‘Except what?’ she asked politely.
‘I wanted to tell you how delighted I am about this very unique outback wedding. I wondered if I dare ‒ That is, if I may make a suggestion, and which you might receive kindly.’
‘Yes?’ Kim’s eyes didn’t widen, but that was because her eyelids were all but fixed by the oatmeal mixture.
‘You don’t mind if I speak to you in the guise of a favourite uncle?’
Strange, but Kim noticed he had behaved exactly like that. And he wasn’t that. She hadn’t any uncles at all. He moved over to her bed and began casually looking at an open record book with its page of finest hair-line drawings.
‘Goodness me,’ he said, by way of winning favour. ‘Such exquisite drawings! What wonderful eyesight you must have. Minute work!’
Kim was used to a bohemian way of life at home, so she saw nothing remarkable about a middle-aged man coming into her room. Anyhow the door was wide open ‒ and he was being friendly in his own peculiar squeazy way.<
br />
‘Oh I have very good eyesight,’ she agreed. ‘That’s a very important record book to me. I had to be super-careful.’
‘And this very thick book is full of such drawings? All annotated?’
‘Full ‒ up to date. Why did you want to be my favourite uncle?’
He was turning pages of the record book with one hand. With the other he seemed absent-mindedly to be taking from his inside pocket a cheque book.
‘I would like to give you a wedding present,’ he said glancing down at Kim. She decided he must have quite a gallon of oil on the hinges of his face.
‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said gravely. ‘But I’m not having any presents. Not for this wedding anyway. Of course, you could send something to the disabled children. Or to the Wild Life Society. You could write to Prince Philip about the last. Someone gave him a cheque for £200,000 for that. In sterling, of course. It would be $400,000 in Australian money, wouldn’t it?’
That was a statement outrageous enough to startle him surely!
His smile was a little fixed now.
‘Roughly,’ he agreed. ‘Of course Bank Exchange would account for a little more ‒’
‘You don’t mind talking in terms of thousands of dollars?’ she enquired. She wormed her way up to a sitting position, carefully adjusting her wrapping sheet as she did so. Perhaps he was rich enough not to be dented by anything.
‘Not at all. I’m a very wealthy man,’ he said meaningfully.
Kim bit the end of her mapping pen and stared at him.
‘Then which is it to be?’ she asked, wondering if he was mad, or bad, or both. And how far she could go with her remarks.
‘That depends on you,’ he said smoothly. ‘I’d like it to be the Wild Life Society with a nice percentage to you for giving me such sound advice. I happen to be interested in wild life. Plant life very particularly. I don’t suppose you could bring yourself to let me have a look through your record book in some idle moments? To-night for instance? I daresay I would feel all the more eager about that gift if my interest was really stirred by some new or exotic find!
