The River is Down: (An Australian Outback Romance) Read online

  ‘Is she the new care-all, Mary? You shooting through to better places? Don’t forget the river’s down!’

  ‘I won’t forget you have more to say than any of the other two hundred and seventeen men on this site, Smithy. No, I’m not shooting through. Cindie is the assistant care-all. As from to-day.’

  ‘Phew!’ Smithy whistled. ‘You see they pay you the basic wage, Cindie, plus site allowance, plus amenities and minus most tax if you stay north of Twenty-Six more’n six months ‒’

  ‘I will,’ Cindie smiled at him. She realised that Smithy was one of the men who had been with the Euclid out at the road-site yesterday. They were all so slim, burned and brown-dusted it had been hard to distinguish one from another. She recognised him now.

  ‘Oh …!’ Mary had just remembered another thing. She put her pencil down and stood up. ‘Come over and meet Miss Alexander from Marana. I’m so sorry. I’m that busy I clean forgot my manners.’

  Erica had remained as she was before. Only her eyes and the hand that held the cigarette moved.

  She did not stir now as Mary brought Cindie across the floor to meet her.

  ‘Cindie Brown, Miss Alexander,’ Mary said, making the introduction. ‘I guess you know already this is the girl who was stranded on the rise over the river, Erica.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Nick told me.’ Erica’s voice drawled, but not in the simple, light-coloured tone with which the men talked. This was a cultivated drawl. Affected. The thought popped up in Cindie’s mind uninvited. She wished she hadn’t had to think that.

  ‘How do you do?’ she said courteously, holding the sheaf of papers with both hands as if clinging to something important. This saved her the embarrassment of proffering a hand that might not be accepted.

  ‘Cindie? What did you say the rest of the name was? Oh, Brown! Of course. I think Nick called it …’

  ‘Something?’ Cindie asked, finding that unexpectedly she was becoming a little suave herself. I must stop this, she thought. This isn’t me. All the same, Erica deserved it. She wasn’t being too friendly, or even very nice.

  ‘It would be odd to go round the world with a name like Something tagged on behind the Cindie,’ Erica said, eyebrows raised. ‘By the way, what does “Cindie” stand for? It’s a shortie name, surely?’

  ‘Just Cindie.’

  To admit to the full name, Cynthia, would be coming too close to her real surname. Besides, as she had always thought, she needed to be tall, blonde, and beautiful to fit ‘Cynthia’. She was above medium height, but not that tall.

  Erica removed her left foot from the carton, unwound herself and stood up. She was the tall one, and oh, so beautifully built. Everything was in proportion: the long flowing lines of her body and the Roman-type modelling of her face. Except for the colouring of her hair, she ought to have been called Diana. She was as striking as that. Cindie felt like forgiving her the cold greeting because she was so good to look at.

  Erica tucked her shirt-blouse in her slacks top needlessly. Hers was a lovely outfit, the colour the same as the wings of the bronze eagle. Cindie felt dwarfed in all respects, specially when Mary, adding interest to the meeting, said:

  ‘Miss Alexander runs a large sheep station as equal partner with her father. She is quite renowned in these parts for her ability as a pastoralist in her own right.’

  ‘That’s wonderful.’ Cindie meant it. She knew that running a big sheep station was running a major industry. Hundreds of thousands of pounds could be won or lost on the turn of a season, or a miscalculation in stock-holding. It needed expertise, judgment, and a lot of outdoor supervision, as well as indoor book-work.

  That was why she herself needed to know what the Stevens brothers at Bindaroo had been doing since her father, the sleeping partner in the city, had died.

  ‘Well, I must go back to Nick and report,’ Erica said in her calculated drawl. ‘It’s close on time for morning tea.’

  ‘Report what?’ Mary muttered in a tone of annoyance as Erica walked away with the graceful swaying motion of one who not only rode horses often and well, but who knew just what that walk would mean to someone with a back view.

  Cindie, glancing at the men on the chairs along the wall, guessed that if the young woman walking the length of the long floor had been anyone else but Nick Brent’s friend, they would have whistled soft and long ‒ sheep station regardless. They had that look in their eyes. It would have been in admiration, of course!

  ‘I’d better get on with that job you gave me, Mary,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, you do that, Cindie, while Miss Erica goes back and “reports” to Nick. Reports what, I’d like to know.’

  Mary Deacon, it seemed, was not too happy about Erica’s visit to the camp.

  Where was Nick anyway, Cindie wondered. And what doing? She went through the rear door to find someone called Mike. Nick was not out engineering a road that stretched half-way across a hemisphere, that was for sure, if he had an appointment for tea with Erica. He must be very very taken up with other business affairs, or love. Perhaps both.

  An hour later, when Cindie came back into the main part of the building from the nether regions of the store-room, it was to be greeted with news from the children.

  ‘Cindie!’ Myrtle called across the room. ‘You know what we heard on the news-talk? Jim Vernon said he’s coming up-river to see if he can cross it some time maybe in the next day or two. All depends on how high the river is ‒’

  Cindie’s heart gave a jump of joy.

  Mary, still hard at work at the table, tapped it angrily with her pencil.

  ‘Get on with your work, Myrtle, and don’t gossip.’

  ‘What’s on the air is not gossip,’ Myrtle insisted. ‘It’s talk. Anyhow, Jim Vernon sent the message to the construction camp specially. How do we know Nick would get the message, if he wasn’t listening? No one but Jinx answered. We have to tell because someone would have to go out to pick him up. He can’t cross in a car …’

  ‘You’re supposed to be doing your nature-study drawings, aren’t you?’ Mary demanded. ‘How much have you done of yours, Jinx?’

  ‘Only a bit because it’s a frilled lizard and I’ve got to go out in the spinifex to see Swell, my own lizard. Copying from a book isn’t good enough. The teacher said to draw it from real life. She knows we live out here and she sets us things we can see for ourselves.’

  Mary looked up at Cindie with exasperation.

  ‘Don’t ever buy into an argument with children,’ she cautioned. ‘Their logic is too deadly.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Cindie agreed. ‘Shall I type out this pencilled list now, Mary? Or should I get on with the letters for those men?’

  ‘Do the list first. The men are outside having tea and a smoko with a couple of walking patients out of the sick bay. By the way, can you bandage, Cindie?’

  Cindie nodded assurance. ‘There are only a few things I do well,’ she admitted. ‘Typing and first aid are two of them. At one time I thought of being a nurse ‒’

  ‘Good,’ Mary interrupted her. ‘There’s plenty of bandaging that has to be done round here. When they don’t break a finger it’s an arm or a leg. With the Flying Doctor unable to land, you might discover you have more than plenty to do. Meantime ‒ after the list, and after the letters, you’ll find two chaps out on the step having that smoko. One has a broken bone in his wrist, and the other a sprained ankle. They need their bandages changed ‒’

  ‘Will do,’ Cindie said gladly.

  Mary looked at the girl, slightly puzzled.

  ‘You seem so eager to do everything. Do you like work? Don’t you mind I’m off-loading on your first day a large whack of my chores?’

  ‘I like work. I’m thrilled to be given a job instead of just being a hanger-on waiting for the river to go down. Besides, I think you must have too much to do, Mary. You can off-load a lot and still look busy.’

  ‘You’re telling me!’ Mary half-grumbled, taking notice only of the last part of what Cindie h
ad said. ‘Look at this pile of forms. Two hundred and seventeen of them. Do you know what that health department down below in the city wants to know? When each man working on this site last had his compulsory X-rays: who did it, where, and what was the result. As if I know! I’ll have to ask each jack one of them, and most of them won’t know either. Paper work! They need ten care-alls on this job.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ Cindie said. ‘I’ll get on with this list. Is that the typewriter I’m to use on the far table?’

  ‘That’s it. The one and only, so you’d better take care of it. If you need new ribbons, Mike will give them to you. You have to sign for them.’

  ‘I will, and with pleasure.’ Cindie’s smile had a touch of mischief in it. She had liked Mike the canteen-manager very much.

  What was really in her mind, however, was something so much gladder.

  Jim Vernon was coming. Somehow he would get across that river, and when he did he would tell her what was going on at Bindaroo ‒ since everyone in the north knew everyone-else’s business. He would give her advice, and it would be kind advice; so she was certain it would be good too. Funny, but because Jim Vernon had been the first person Cindie had met in this area east of the Meridian, Longitude 120, she felt he was not only her oldest friend but her best.

  If only he would think of her as someone special too! He was the only person who could make her forget a person like David ‒ for keeps!

  That’s because I’m Cindie Brown now. A brand new person. She fed the paper into the typewriter. I’m new, so everything about me and my life is new. Brand new. My friends, my work, my world.

  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if she could stay here more than six months? Token tax only ‒ to begin with: and a job!

  And ‒ Jim!

  Suddenly, once again, Cindie felt the thrill of starting life again from scratch, with a new identity. All old mistakes, like her ignorance of universal constants, and how computers worked, were erased.

  Mary Deacon noticed Cindie’s new air of poise. A kind of happiness, a sort of joy, radiated from the girl as she bent her head over the typewriter. Mary had also noticed the quick flush that had coloured Cindie’s face when Myrtle had announced the news of Jim Vernon’s impending visit ‒ if he managed to cross the river.

  A combination of love, and a willingness to be useful, Mary thought dryly. Ah, well, nice to be young! Wait till she’s my age.

  Her thoughts turned darkly, for one spare moment, to Erica Alexander and that ill-considered way of putting things ‒ I must go and report to Nick. Report herself? Or what was going on in the canteen? Probably report on the new girl, and first impressions!

  That’s love for you, Mary thought with an unusual touch of cynicism. Catch as catch can ‒ and be wary of the dark stranger.

  One thing for certain, she was not going to spill Cindie’s secret for her ‒ if Cindie had really come outback to consolidate a more-than-budding friendship with the overseer at Baanya. It was, of course, still a mystery as to why the girl had come on up-river.

  One’s bound to find out in due course, Mary told herself as she turned with an exasperated air to the pile of forms from the health department. Even if Cindie doesn’t talk, sooner or later that air will. Now where is that record book of the staff’s vital statistics?

  She said nothing, even to herself, of missing Jim Vernon’s friendly voice over the air this early morning. That was a real loss.

  Mary shrugged her shoulders, as she had done so many times during the six years since her husband had died.

  Two or three days passed, and during that time Cindie heard no more news as to whether Jim Vernon had succeeded in finding a possible way across the river or not. Nor had she seen more of Nick Brent than a glimpse in the distance; and once, when he had come into the canteen during the morning’s work to speak to Mary Deacon. Then he had only glanced at Cindie, who was furiously dashing away at the typewriter with her own queue of clients waiting for help.

  She had looked up when Nick came in, and he had given her a smile, half-quizzical, half-surprised.

  Maybe he hadn’t thought I could work so energetically, nor be of so much use to Mary!

  She all but tossed her head. She felt like it anyway.

  Well, now he knows!

  Cindie was unaware that Mary Deacon had already talked over with Nick the godsend that Cindie was quickly proving herself to be. Typing, bandaging, and painting a sore throat or two for the flu victims, had been the least of her efforts. She had made friends with Myrtle and Jinx, and was taking an interest in the things they learned from the School of the Air. Moreover she had suggested something no one had thought of before. Some of the English Speech lessons could be taken off on a tape recorder. Later, in the idle evening hours after dinner, Cindie had introduced the two non English-speaking Italians to them as well as the several men who could speak but not write the language. The men were eagerly applying themselves to improving these abilities, and in Cindie’s company, they were losing their self-consciousness. They had felt the isolation of a language difficulty keenly.

  Nick probably knew all about these innovations. As Mary had said on that first day ‒ there wasn’t anything going on in the camp or up on the site that Nick didn’t know. But Cindie wasn’t worried about his reaction. He would know it was doing the men some good, anyway.

  ‘Quite a little lass is this Cindie Brown.’ Erica laughed edgily over the tinkle of ice in her glass one evening, as she sat in Nick’s house for dinner. ‘She wouldn’t have known Jim Vernon that long, surely. A budding romance, would you say? Or do we have the universal coquette in our midst? Seems to be amongst the men quite a lot. Why did the girl come on east, up-river, Nick? Has anyone extracted that piece of information from her?’

  ‘I doubt if anyone has asked too many questions,’ Nick said easily, getting up from his chair to offer Erica the olives.

  Erica looked into his face. She liked Nick standing close to her in this manner ‒ leaning down and over her as he spiked an olive on a toothpick, then placed it in her glass. His face was near hers, and she could feel the magnetism of his personality and of his strong taut body. It did something to her.

  The girl could have Jim Vernon, or any of those men transcribing from a tape recorder at night: but she’d better not waste any of her time on Nick! These fly-about girls sometimes had a past worth investigating. She herself would remind Nick of this some time ‒ if and when it suited her.

  Nick went back to his easy-chair on the other side of the occasional table. He leaned back and lit a cigarette, then idly watched the whirl of smoke rise to the low fabric ceiling.

  ‘Girls are independent these days,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘They have enterprise and adventure our parents never dreamed of ‒ for women.’

  ‘Enterprise?’ Erica asked derisively. ‘Come, Nick. It’s sheer irresponsibility. They do it for kicks; and to appear interesting. More often, to find a man. They go back down south and brag about their escapades in the outback, without ever mentioning the trouble and often expense they’ve put us to. We feel at Marana we need a whole staff for rescuing operations now people have started losing themselves on station side-tracks as an occupational hazard.’

  Nick’s eyes met Erica’s across the table with a smile.

  ‘I find it a good practice not to know too much about people straying across the road-construction area,’ he said. ‘They’re mostly self-help tourists ‒ men and women ‒ anxious to see the road they read about in the down-south papers. After all, the papers do use us as a colourful writing-point when they run short of wars or political squabbles.’

  ‘So she came to see the road, you think?’ Erica’s laugh was a shade hollow. ‘What did she expect? She looks like the quiet subtle kind to me. It’s always the quiet ones, Nick, that are the deep ones. Take that from someone who knows her own sex.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, being mere man, myself.’ This time he looked amused as he met Erica’s eyes across the rim o
f his glass as he lifted it to drink. ‘I have other very serious things on my mind. Cindie is Mary Deacon’s problem. For me, the road comes first. That’s in the nature of things. But I’m still mulling over that deal with Neil Stevens up at Bindaroo. I’m not altogether happy ‒’

  If he was quietly changing the subject, Erica was too sharp-witted to miss his intention. She dismissed Cindie in this new turn in the conversation, for the time being.

  ‘Leave it to me, Nick,’ she said. ‘They can’t get away with anything up there on Bindaroo. Don’t forget they have to truck what sheep they have left through Marana, if that’s what they’re up to. Meanwhile, the river being down, they’re tied to the place. There’s a water wall round them, for the time being.’

  The expression on Nick Brent’s face was no longer easy or courtly. He frowned and his eyes narrowed slightly as he looked past Erica through the window. Cindie, at the top end of the square, was walking away from the canteen with a pile of papers and books on her arm.

  She carries herself so well, he thought. His eyes followed Cindie’s neat figure in its check slacks and slightly worn shirt-blouse. He did not intend to probe into Cindie’s plans. That had been a first principle in his handling of all his men. He took them as they came. None but the essential questions were asked. He was only concerned about the quality of work.

  Yet ‒ he wondered! Then wondered at his own curiosity.

  Cindie had turned the corner round one of the caravans and disappeared from view.

  Erica, her back to the window, was unaware of what had interested Nick as, his eyes habitually expressionless when he was veiling something, he gazed idly into the distance.

  ‘What were we saying?’ he asked.

  He came back from the outside world, and gave Erica a wry smile.

  ‘So you admit to mind-wandering?’ She raised her eyebrows.

  ‘I believe the wives up at D’D call it bird-watching,’ he said with a grin.

  Erica was suddenly suspicious. She turned quickly, and looked over the back of her chair through the window. There was nothing in the square but a tiny willi-willi of dust spiralling out of a still air like a fairy dancing across the dusty gravel.