Escape to Koolonga Page 7

  The thought of her little ‘family’ depending upon her was a strangely cheering one just then, when Emmie knew that she was presently to be confronted with the bleakness and isolation of Miss Millicent’s General Store again. As soon as she got there she would start to transform the bleakness into cleanliness and comfort, though. And by the time Riddley Fenton saw it again he would also see that she was neither weak nor helpless, and that she meant just what she said. She meant business! He was bound to be impressed by the transformation she intended to bring about, wasn’t he, and it would be more difficult for him to sustain his arguments in the face of the positive action she was about to take.

  ‘It’s good of you to bring me, Kevin. I hope I haven’t taken you away from something important?’

  ‘Nothing that won’t keep, Emmie.’

  ‘Maybe you could just let Susan Wensley know that I’ll be coming for those kids in a couple of days, while you’re out in the car, and so near?’

  Kevin glanced at his watch, hesitated.

  ‘I think I’ll leave that to Ridd, if you don’t mind.’

  Something in his tone made her look his way curiously.

  ‘Don’t you like Susan Wensley, Kev?’ she asked, reluctant to give way to her inquisitiveness, but somehow unable to help the question.

  ‘Susan’s a very nice girl.’ His tone was now carefully flat.

  A very nice girl. Well, that seemed to make twopeople who thought that particular thing about that particular young woman. The two being Kevin Condor, who had just said as much, and Riddley Fenton himself.

  ‘Have you been about here long, Kevin? In the Koolonga district?’

  ‘Not always, no. I was brought up in Victoria, actually. I’m a Gippslander, Emmie. But I jackerooed up here for two years after I left school. Then I got called up. Training, then war service. You know the routine. After which I came back.’ Emmie nodded soberly. Suddenly she knew the reason for that old-young look about Kevin which had puzzled her from the start, and which never quite left his face. He had had to become a man at a time when he was still in all essentials a mere boy, and now he could never recapture the clean-cut youthful zest that should have been his. You couldn’t turn the clock back upon experience, even Emmie knew that.

  ‘It was while I was away that Sue got married,’ Kevin volunteered suddenly, in a bleak voice. ‘I often feel that if I hadn’t had to go just when I did --- ’

  He broke off, manoeuvred the car around a stump with easy skill and smiled apologetically, as if ashamed at this indiscretion.

  ‘Mind if I smoke?’

  ‘Not at all. Go ahead. I didn’t realise Susan is married,’ Emmie observed after a small silence.

  ‘Not is. Was. Sue is a widow, Emmie. She lost her chap in a car crash, just a few months after their wedding. It was one of those tempestuous affairs, meeting one week, marrying almost the next—you know the sort of thing. Not like Sue at all, actually. I heard the news when I was away.’ His voice was expressionless. ‘And then it hardly seemed any time at all after I heard the first lot of news that the second lot arrived.’ A brittle laugh. ‘Odd to be confronted with that sort of thing when you’re away on a survival course, training in every conceivable method of self-defence, every artifice for selfpreservation that the book can throw at you, all designed with the specific purpose of helping you to stay alive. And then you hear that a cove’s been killed, just alone in his utility, with nobody gunning for him at all, and just because the heat builds up and bursts his tyre at the wrong moment on the wrong corner. It makes you reckon you’ve got a sporting chance after all.’

  ‘It must have been awful.’

  A feeble observation, but Emmie felt she had to say something. She wished she could think of something less ineffectual than what she had just said, something that would wipe away the bitterness from Kevin Condor’s nice blue eyes, erase those ageing lines of memory from his young-old face.

  There was nothing that she could possibly add that wouldn’t sound even more fatuous.

  She looked away. A stand of ring-barked timber lay to the left, a gaunt ghost-scrub, as gaunt and bleak as her companion’s expression. Among the bleached trunks scrambled dry grasses and reeds, and a few taller rushes with nodding black heads that looked like guardsmen’s busbies. A lizard rustled through the undergrowth and climbed along one of the fallen branches, lay inert as the car passed close, beady eyes staring, collar frilled in alarm. Its gaping yellow throat was as golden as a mustard-flower against the bark-like drabness of the grey head.

  ‘I guess at first, when I heard that Sue had hardly waited to get me out of the way before she up and married this other bloke—well, I thought, what the hell, I wouldn’t care if I collected one for keeps. But you do, you know. The instinct for

  survival is stronger than you think. And then, when I heard what had happened to Sue, my only wish was to get back to Koolonga Station as quickly as I possibly could, back to her. Death was something to be avoided at all costs, because Sue was alone, and it would have prevented me from getting back to help her. My philosophy altered from the passive conviction to the positive one.’

  ‘Thou hast not lived, why shouldst thou perish so?

  Thou hadst one aim, one business, one desire. ’

  Kevin glanced at her appreciatively as Emmie quoted the lines in a softly thoughtful voice.

  ‘Exactly, Emmie.’ A deprecating shrug. ‘Look here, I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. It must be that understanding, gentle little face of yours. It doesn’t judge one.’

  ‘I haven’t enough experience to presume to judge,’ she replied frankly.

  And judging one’s fellow mortals was a presumption, that was certain. Emmie put aside the fleeting vision of Riddley Fenton’s swiftly disapproving scowl, and returned her eyes to the monotony of the brown, bare plain.

  Finally she looked back at the young man who was guiding the big Chev saloon over the corrugated track.

  ‘Well, having told me so much, you might as well finish,’ she prompted gently. ‘You came home, and ------- ?’

  ‘And nothing, really.’ He shrugged again, but Emmie thought she detected a depth of hurt beneath the simulated carelessness. Yes, she was sure that she had not been deceived. ‘I suppose Sue had changed. One would, naturally, after what she’d been through, and I couldn’t get back before my time was up and I was demobbed. There were no compassionate grounds on which to return. I mean, hang it all, she hadn’t even been my fiancee. Perhaps it had all been too long, that interval. At any rate, she was withdrawn and ill at ease with me from the very start. She didn’t seem to need me as I’d hoped and dreamed she might. I can’t reach her now.’

  ‘Have you tried?’

  ‘Up to a point.’ He sounded suddenly terse. ‘I’m not going to prostrate myself on the ground, though, if that’s what she’s waiting for. She seems keener on accepting other people’s help than mine, so I reckon I’m not going to push it. She’s changed. She’s hard, self-sufficient, quite different.’ Emmie was silent about that. What, after all, could she say that would be of any comfort? It was obvious to her what had happened. In Kevin’s unavoidable absence, other people had been on the spot when Susan Wensley had needed that help most. They had been available, where Kevin had not been, at a time when Susan had been at her most vulnerable. People like Riddley Fenton himself, for instance. The domineering, managing sort, who liked nothing better than to dole out advice to helpless women. And what sort of a chance, when he came home, would a sensitive, retiring, idealistic boy like Kevin Condor have against a hard-bitten, worldly type like the boss of Koolonga Station?

  Their minds had apparently gravitated in the same direction.

  ‘Ridd’s been good to Sue. Good to me, too, since I came home,’ Kevin stated now, gruffly. ‘I finished my jackerooing, and then took a book-keeping course by correspondence, and he offered me the job I have now—a sort of roving commission. Some days I’m out on the run, others I’m in the office. I can tur
n my hand to most things on the property, and I’m never bored. It’s a job in a million, and Ridd’s a generous employer, the best a chap could ask for.’

  How could Kevin bear to be so charitable about the man who had supplanted him in Sue Wensley’s affections?

  Poor Kevin! Emmie could see, clearly enough, how he was placed. The man who had kept his place open for him while he was away in that ghastly Vietnam was also the man who had come between himself and Susan. He could not find it in his heart to blame Ridd, though, and so the entire force of his bitterness was directed against Susan herself.

  No wonder he spoke in that terse, bitter way! No wonder his approach to her was so cautious. No, not cautious. Hopeless.

  Emmie sat back against the luxurious leather upholstery and seethed.

  How callous, how insensitive that Fenton man was, not to see what an invidious position this poor young employee was in, and through no fault of his own. All because he had gone off to fight for his country—or for that dim, unreal cause that was supposed to be synonymous with patriotism!—he hadn’t been there, and Riddley Fenton had. Surely, even if the Fenton man were serious over this girl, the decent, gentlemanly thing to do would have been to stand aside and let Kevin have his chance? After all, it was Kevin who had been courting her before he went away. By all accounts Riddley Fenton had had no interest in her then!

  He wasn’t a gentleman, that was clear. And what was more, decided Emmie hotly to herself, he probably enjoyed cutting out the opposition in that ruthless, remorseless way of his. He probably got a real kick out of the situation! Well, the less she saw of him personally, the better. Once she got those children safely over here, there shouldn’t be any need to have much to do with him at all.

  ‘Here we are, then.’ Kevin interrupted her churning thoughts.

  In the harsh, early afternoon light, the store appeared even more derelict than she had remembered. The dust gave the counters and tumbled stock a powdery sort of unreality, as though she had stepped into a veritable ghost-town. Chains of cobweb festooned the ceiling, strung sagging, beady threads from chair to shelf, from window to floor. The very undisturbedness was in itself disturbing. Eerie.

  Nowhere, at the back of nowhere. Beyond even the beyond.

  Once Kevin left her, the only other living things besides herself would be those spiders, and at the moment even they were inactive. Or perhaps they had left, too. Perhaps it had been too lonely even for them!

  Behind her, Kevin cleared his throat.

  ‘Sure you’ll be all right?’

  ‘Of course.’ There was far more confidence in her smile than she was actually feeling.

  ‘Well --- ’ He hesitated, put out an awkward hand. ‘I’ll see you, Emmie.’

  ‘Yes, see you.’ She smiled again, bravely, and shook hands, since that seemed to be what he expected.

  To Emmie it savoured of finality, that handshake.

  She watched from the front veranda until Kevin’s big, dust-covered car (or rather, Riddley Fenton’s big, dust-covered car!) had disappeared, right into a distant clump of mulga, and then she walked slowly back inside.

  Into her own place. Her very own inheritance.

  Emmie squared her slim shoulders, and resolution took control.

  The first thing Emmie did, that afternoon, was to gather some wood from the surrounding scrub and light the large old-fashioned cooking range. She dragged logs and branches patiently, choosing the smaller ones which she knew she could handle, and stacking them carefully in a pile in one of the sheds at the back of the premises.

  She worked under the blazing sun, with the shantung-baku hat perched on her small brown head, pulling and tugging at the wretched things until her face was scarlet, and the bandage on her left hand filthy with grime. When she had got a good supply, she chopped enough for her present needs, breaking the thinner pieces with the back of the heavy axe which she had found, and cutting stubbornly into the thicker ones with biting strokes that seldom landed in the same place twice, until they yielded. She might not be much of a wood-chopper, but Emmie had no intention of doing battle with that treacherous little kerosene cooker again. She would need some shorter pieces of wood, too, to feed that mysterious-looking chip heater in the bathroom. The thought of a soak in warm soapy water, when all her chores were accomplished, was enough to set Emmie swinging the axe with fresh determination.

  When the water was hot, she commenced her scrubbing programme.

  All the moveable furniture had to be got out on to the-veranda, and then she had to dust down the entire interior before she could wash down the walls and floor.

  Emmie worked at speed, swiped down the spiders’ webs with almost hysterical fervour, trying not to think about those fat, scuttling, venom-filled bodies as she chased them frantically as they fell and clobbered them with the back of her long-handled broom.

  Instead, she thought about her family, and with a certain grim amusement. If they could see her now!

  Emmie could just imagine Sharon’s fastidious gestures of distaste, Lissa’s condescending pity, Robert’s unnerving compassion, and Mark’s demoralising sneer—the one that said I-told-you-so as clearly as if he had spoken the words aloud.

  The light was fading by the time she turned out the two adjoining bedrooms and scrubbed them, too, but this time she was better prepared. She had trimmed the wicks and filled the lamps, and now she lit them carefully and placed them in strategically chosen positions, to give her the best possible illumination.

  A pity she had no idea how to start the electricity generator in the little power-house out there. Since the place was wired and fitted with a civilised lighting system, that must be the obvious purpose of the small green engine embedded in its concrete floor. One glance at a complicated switchboard and rows of glass batteries had been enough to tell her that she’d be out of her depth in even trying to get the thing started, though. A burnt hand was bad enough. She’d be of no use to those children if she went and got herself electrocuted.

  Emmie restoked the chip heater. Once the water became hot again after all she’d drawn off for scrubbing, she’d have that longed-for bath.

  In the meantime, hunger was the most demanding contingency.

  She had just found the frying pan, and was about to cut some slices from the side of bacon which Kevin had given her, when she heard the car coming round to the back of the store.

  No, not a car. Ridd Fenton’s jeep. Emmie drew the pan to one side, put the bacon back into its wrapping and waited for him to come in.

  It was something of an anticlimax when he did not come in at all! She waited a while longer, tense and expectant, her heart beating almost in her very throat as she mentally steeled herself for battle. Finally, when he still didn’t come, she opened the back door and peeped out. Immediately the torch which had been playing over the pile of fresh-cut logs detached itself from that target and pinned her in its beam. ‘Tired of my hospitality already, it seems, Miss Montfort.’ Riddley Fenton’s harsh tone, leaping out of the darkness, was even chillier than she had anticipated. It was deep and emphatic, with the careful coldness of controlled anger. As he stepped into the light from her own doorway and flicked off the torch, Emmie could see that his face was set in hard, unyielding lines, his eyes stormy and dark and accusing.

  With a grip that bit into her soft flesh, he took her arm and turned her abruptly indoors again.

  ‘Come here. I want a word with you,’ he announced grimly, and to Emmie, wincing at his hold and shivering with sudden apprehension, it seemed that she’d be lucky indeed if a word was all she got off with!

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The whole place still reeked of damp wood and carbolic.

  Emmie saw Ridd Fenton wrinkle his nose and cast a quick, comprehensive glance around him. Pride spurted in her at the transformation she had wrought, but if he noticed any improvement he certainly wasn’t going to applaud it. By the look of things, he wasn’t in an applauding sort of mood.

  ‘Just what
do you think you’re playing at, Miss Montfort, jumping the gun like this? I suppose you told Kev a whole pack of lies in order to skin out like that while I was off. Did you reckon that by moving in and staking a claim you’d have a stronger case for staying?’

  His supposition was so nearly accurate that Emmie caught her breath.

  ‘You said you’d discuss it today,’ she returned woodenly. ‘You promised. And you didn’t.’

  ‘So what? It’s still today, isn’t it?’ He had removed his wide-brimmed hat and thrown it on a table—a table which Emmie was pleased to see now shone darkly clean, free from its former pallid coating of dust. Again Riddley Fenton didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t even look around him anymore. He just ran his fingers through his black hair where it had been flattened by the hat, and confronted her with a steely grey gaze. ‘You were sleeping when I left this morning. Oh, yes, you were,’ he emphasised, as she opened her mouth to deny it. ‘I looked in on my way out, and you were dead to the world. You looked as innocent as a babe, I might tell you, lying there on those pillows, but we both know you’re not that, don’t we, you underhand little schemer.’

  ‘Now look here, Mr. Fenton, you’d promised, and when I

  heard you’d gone I just thought ---- ’

  ‘You can call me Ridd,’ he interrupted her brusquely. ‘Everyone calls me that. It doesn’t mean anything, so don’t go all wide-eyed at the invitation.’

  ‘Emily, then,’ she replied feebly, scarlet, reluctant.

  ‘Well, you listen to me, Emily, will you? If you think a busy man like myself is going to hang around the homestead while my sheep are starving until you happen to choose to open those big, wide, innocent eyes of yours just so we can discuss a relatively unimportant matter of no comparative urgency----’