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

  ‘Oh, that,’ Erica said with a laugh. ‘It’s the first time I’ve heard a willi-willi called a bird. What name do you give to one that’s eighty feet high, Nick, and takes off the roof of the woolshed, or the stockmen’s quarters?’

  ‘A raking nuisance.’ He smiled as he spoke. ‘But then it’s a whole generation since a Brent owned a woolshed, let alone had a dust-sprout take off its roof.’

  ‘As a family you’ve made quite a lot of money out of road-building. Play your hand right, dear Nick, and it won’t be long before you have just such pleasant worries as woolsheds on your head again. This time for peanuts.’

  ‘I’m afraid I have an important contract to complete first. One very long road. A thousand miles of it. I’d like an interest in a good station, Erica, but not a has-been.’

  A smile flickered over his face. ‘I always take time to consider these projects. I take caution, too. Always have. And ‒’

  ‘And?’

  Nick thought of Cindie’s slim figure crossing the square in the not-so-new blouse and slacks: the pile of work-books on her arm. He shook his head as if dismissing some thought unrelated to money, or investment.

  Erica ignored his silence, and persisted. ‘If you insist on ripping yourself apart between being an engineer, and a station-owner, Nick,’ she said, offering this piece of advice with a smile meant to attract as well as assure, ‘you’re likely to suffer from split personality.’

  He grinned as if really amused. ‘That could have interesting possibilities. Two separate lives! I must give it some consideration.’

  A split personality? The toughest man could sometimes be beguiled by such a day-dream.

  Cindie surmised that Nick’s guest for the sundown drink would be Erica. Everyone in the camp took a vicarious interest in the latest visitor and her whereabouts at any given hour.

  The books on Cindie’s arm were heavy as she wound her way back between the caravans to Mary’s house. She was keeping an eye out for the children, and hoped she would find them at home. She had told Mary earlier she would get the dinner ready for Jinx and Myrtle, as Mary herself was delayed by the three wives, Hazel, Evie and Betty.

  Escorted by Dicey George, the wives were now looking over the canteen’s possibilities for a party.

  ‘Half a dozen females and two hundred and seventeen men, less three flu patients in the sick-bay, and the blokes camping a hundred miles back up the road,’ Dicey said, a knowing glint in his mischievous eyes. ‘It can’t be any ordinary party. Dancing and all that? Think of so many men being wall-flowers.’

  Between them they were deciding now on a cross between a concert and a film show. Dicey said he could provide the projector and a film. The wives declared they could organise some talent from amongst the men for a concert, and they would contribute a charade themselves. The possibilities of this last item sent Dicey’s eyebrows dancing heavenwards.

  Everyone, including Mary, agreed that decorating the canteen and preparing a party supper would take a big team of beavers.

  ‘There’s always plenty willing for that,’ Dicey declared. ‘The men like anything for a change.’

  ‘We three will be the control committee,’ Hazel pronounced. Betty and Evie made a chorus of approval.

  ‘Certainly,’ Mary agreed with some emphasis. She herself had no intention of adding the organising of a party to her many jobs.

  ‘And Cindie?’ Dicey asked.

  ‘Leave Cindie to me,’ Mary said. ‘I’ll decide if and when I can spare her.’

  Dicey winked at the three wives. He was young enough to be enthusiastic, but old enough to be amused at the prospect of being ‘run around’ by the three married women from D’D. He was also shrewd enough to know that Mary was, in fact, merely protecting herself and Cindie from being run around too.

  As he went out he spared a whisper for Mary’s ears alone.

  ‘What ho! Imagine the second sex taking over Nick’s road! Watch the boss’s eye for reaction when he hears about it. He won’t move a muscle of his face, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Don’t I know. You can’t teach your elders their know-how when it comes to the boss, Dicey.’

  He grinned cheerfully. Mary’s bark was always worse than her bite.

  Chapter Eight

  Cindie, back in Mary’s house, found it empty of children.

  On the table were two tins with perforated lids in which Jinx kept his assortment of flies, grasshoppers, ants and small sand-snakes, upon which he fed Swell, the frilled lizard who lived out in the spinifex. In a cage on the back doorstep twitted and flitted hungrily Myrtle’s collection of north-west finches. Cindie, when first shown the tiny birds, had been fascinated by their varied and brilliant colours.

  She knew at once Jinx and Myrtle had gone off somewhere in a hurry. The finches should have been caged out under the limbs of one of the white gums at this hour. The tins of ants and grasshoppers were absolutely forbidden the house by Mary, in any case.

  Cindie wondered if she should go looking for the children, but decided that peeling the potatoes and getting the dinner prepared might be more profitable. The two children were always appearing or disappearing at unexpected moments.

  Cindie knew that calling them was futile. If they weren’t consulting their watches, then the klaxon for the men’s dinner would bring them in in time.

  Having prepared the potatoes, opened two tins of beans, and set out the chops which had been sent over earlier from the canteen, to defrost, Cindie went about the business of showering and changing her clothes.

  She was barely ready when she heard the children coming tumultuously through the doorway.

  ‘My golly!’ Jinx said aghast. ‘Mum home yet? She didn’t see those tins, did she, Cindie?’

  ‘Or the finches?’ Cindie raised her eyebrows to indicate she didn’t exactly approve of broken rules in Mary’s absence.

  ‘That’s your fault, Myrtle,’ Jinx reproached crossly. ‘I told you to feed them and put them out ‒’

  ‘I wanted to go with you,’ Myrtle retorted. She watched Cindie out of the corners of her eyes, hastily talking as she tried to make up her mind how much to tell Cindie of their visit with Flan, and their plans for to-morrow.

  ‘Oh?’ said Cindie. ‘Is Flan back? Last I heard of him was at three o’clock when he asked if he could borrow my car.’

  ‘Not to worry!’ Jinx advised, gazing lovingly into his tins to see all was well with his insects and tiny reptiles. ‘Flan washed your car afterwards. It looks as good as ever. He took us out to see if we could find Swell, my frilled lizard, because he had a whole lot of tadpoles for him. Flan brought the taddies in from the test hole east of the road. That hole is full of water, even though rain hasn’t come down here at all. Not one drop ‒’

  ‘Flan says the water comes up out of the ground from seepage back in the ranges,’ Myrtle volunteered, putting bird-seed in the tins hooked to the side of the finches’ cage.

  The children’s manner was too innocent for Cindie, specially as Jinx had a square-shaped packet in his shirt pocket over which he hastily stuffed a handkerchief when he noticed Cindie looking at him closely.

  There was something more afoot than visiting a lizard in the spinifex, she thought.

  ‘So you went for a drive with Flan? Out to feed Swell?’

  ‘Well … yes. Well … actually yes.’ The boy was very busy putting the lids back on his tins.

  ‘Jinx,’ Cindie said firmly, ‘what have you in your pocket? You’re not concealing another live sand-snake in it?’

  ‘It’s some ‒’ The boy hesitated.

  ‘Some what, Jinx?’ Cindie persisted quietly.

  The boy pulled out the handkerchief, then the packet.

  ‘Not snakes. It’s cigarettes, of course,’ he said scornfully. He handed the packet to Cindie so she could see for herself. She opened it and, true enough, it was full of cigarettes.

  ‘But Jinx! You don’t smoke: I hope.’

  The children burst out la
ughing at her dismay.

  ‘They’re not for us,’ Myrtle scoffed. ‘They’re for Swell.’

  ‘The lizard?’ Cindie asked mystified. ‘Do frilled lizards smoke?’

  The children thought this uproarious.

  ‘No,’ Jinx explained. ‘Sometimes Swell won’t come out from his rocks. That’s generally because he’s fat and overfed. So we smoke him out by puffing cigarettes. We’ve done it before ‒’ He broke off and suddenly looked guilty. ‘Well, I guess that’s a kind of smoking cigarettes, but it’s only to get Swell out. It’s three miles out there, and I have to draw him for my nature-study lesson ‒ so I have to be sure he comes out so I can sketch him “live”.’

  ‘I see,’ Cindie was thoughtful. ‘All the same, even smoking cigarettes for that reason is not very good for a small boy and a small girl. You’d better find some other way of stirring Swell. Can’t you use a stick and poke him out?’

  ‘That might hurt him,’ Myrtle said indignantly.

  ‘Yes, I suppose it would.’ Cindie was contrite. The children’s wild-life hobby was a little beyond her. ‘Well, you’ll have to think of something different. Didn’t Flan feed him tadpoles to-day? Wasn’t that enough?’

  ‘He wouldn’t come out. So you see that’s why Flan said he’d give us some cigarettes. Then to-morrow ‒’

  ‘Well, not the cigarettes to-morrow, anyway. You’ll have to think of something else.’ Cindie put the packet behind the clock on the mantel-shelf. ‘I might be cross with Flan myself when I next see him. I’m sure your mother doesn’t know about it.’

  The children sighed as they looked at one another. Then shrugged.

  ‘Oh, well,’ ‒ Myrtle had a ‘such-is-life’ expression on her face.

  ‘I’ll be pretty mad,’ Jinx remarked ominously as he carried his precious tins to the door, ‘mad as hops in fact, if we walk three miles out in the spinifex to-morrow, and three miles back ‒ and I don’t get a drawing of Swell.’

  Cindie had no answer to that. She debated as she began to grill the chops as to whether she would tell Mary of the children’s methods or not. A little reluctantly she decided against. It would look too much like telling tales, and she wanted Jinx and Myrtle to trust her as she trusted them.

  Perhaps they would tell Mary themselves.

  The next day, Thursday, would be half-day for Cindie as well as the children.

  On Saturdays and Sundays, when the camp was full for the week-end, the personal demands for help or advice would be multiplied by at least a hundred. The men would all be in camp at once. Mary had said she would like Cindie’s help on the week-end days.

  ‘I don’t know what I did before you came.’ She seemed surprised herself at this mystery. ‘I’m flat out now, yet you, Cindie, seem to have work to do to keep you busy all day too. Nick thought this would be a part-time job for you. Seems more like full-time with two capital letters.’

  ‘I’m only too glad,’ Cindie said readily. ‘I like the men. I like helping them. And they seem so grateful ‒’

  Mary and Cindie were having a late cup of tea together in the kitchen before going to bed that night. The children were asleep long since. Cindie had not told tales on them, nor mentioned the cigarettes. She had decided she would give the packet back to Flan when she next saw him, and give him a good talking-to about misleading young children into doubtful habits.

  ‘Funny,’ Mary remarked reminiscently, both elbows on the table. She was resting her cheek against one hand and holding her steaming cup of tea with the other, as she sipped at it. ‘Funny how the men are first chary of women; a bit shy of them. Then they get uppity and teasing ‒ always pretending this is a man’s world up here. No place for females. But let one of them get into trouble back up the road and be brought in with a crushed leg or an inch-deep cut in the head ‒ the first thing that one does when he sees me is get all watery in the eyes. They’re all the same.’

  ‘Truly?’ Cindie too wondered at this. She couldn’t imagine Nick, entrenched behind the battlements of his wary watchful eyes, being that way. Not in a million years!

  ‘You wait for it when it’s your turn to be ready-to-the-rescue, my girl,’ Mary advised. ‘They’ll be almost in tears just at the sight of a woman. Even Dicey and Alan Aitken, the geologist, get that way. They walked in fifteen miles from a broken-down utility once. Temperature 115. They’d got themselves a touch of the sun, of course. Me? All of a sudden I was a guardian angel, just because I wore skirts. They thought they’d come home to Mama! You’ve heard that saying before, Cindie ‒ there’s a crying schoolboy in the heart of every man.’

  ‘To be needed by anyone is wonderful. Well, in a way ‒’

  Cindie’s voice was tinged with a past regret as she spoke.

  Missing Jim Vernon? Mary wondered, pressing her lips together in some pain of her own.

  She had noticed the girl falter to a stop. She saw the unexpected soft-sad look that came into the violet blue eyes. She shook her head regretfully. She, Mary, had an idea the overseer at Baanya would never have need of anybody. He was supposed to be a confirmed bachelor. Reliable, kind, but absolutely independent in mind and body. No, he would never come asking for help. It was more likely to be the other way round. Other people might need help of him.

  Mary only knew the reputation, and the voice-over-the-air, of Baanya’s overseer. Funny, but listening to that voice with its firm, kindly overtones had occasionally made her ‒ tough-hearted Mary ‒ feel it would be pleasant to be taken care of. Yes, she could understand Jim Vernon’s appeal to a young person like Cindie.

  She returned to the subject of Cindie’s day off.

  ‘You take time off on Thursdays,’ she had suggested. ‘More’n likely I’ll need you in the week-ends.’

  ‘I could do without a mid-week break,’ Cindie protested.

  Mary began to gather the cups and saucers together.

  ‘You haven’t any choice, when the chips are down,’ she said flatly. ‘Union rules, and all that! You have to have a certain amount of time off. Everyone up here has to abide by that. You break the rules, and every Tom, Dick and Harry on the site will start doing it. Nick’s family company is building this road on contract and has to finish on time. He has to make his profit but not at the expense of men and staff working too much overtime.’

  ‘Yes,’ Cindie agreed thoughtfully. ‘Of course Nick must take his profit too!’

  Mary glanced at the girl with surprise. She thought she had heard a note of sarcasm in the other’s voice.

  Cindie’s mind had flown back to the suspicion first engendered by that signature tune ‒ Nick, Erica and Bindaroo.

  Now Erica was here, inhabiting the VIPs cottage in the construction camp. She was here to talk business with Nick ‒ that was openly said by the grapevine that wove its course through the canteen, regardless of her own and Mary’s pretence of deaf ears.

  ‘Business and love don’t mix,’ one man had whispered to another within Cindie’s hearing.

  ‘Miss Alexander will mix anything she likes from a fizzy drink to a matrimonial deal counted out in sheep ‒ and make a go of it,’ another had said with some admiration. ‘Marana Station’s double what it was before she came into her half, and started pushing her father round to catch up with modern methods, modern machinery and to-day’s know-how about business cunning.’

  He hadn’t meant cunning in its more sinister sense, either. He had actually meant acumen. Cindie, head bent over her work on that particular day, had known and registered that fact.

  Mary always advised, don’t listen to gossip.

  To some kinds of gossip Cindie had had to listen. It was the only way she could learn about Bindaroo. That is, until Jim Vernon came.

  Waiting for Jim seemed like waiting for her own special guardian angel to rescue her from her own swamping thoughts whenever the name Bindaroo came up.

  The next day, it being Thursday, Cindie obeyed Mary’s decision and finished her work at midday. Mary carried on. She explained to
Cindie that like the professional men on the job, as different from the skilled men and workers, she herself was on a salary. Like the boss, and several others, the geologist, for instance, there were no set times for salaried people.

  They were paid so much per month ‒ regardless.

  ‘All hours of the night you’ll see Nick at his drawing-boards, if you happen up that way,’ Mary remarked. ‘Saturday and Sunday he’s back up the road, checking and seeing things for himself, when the men are out of the way and the dust-cloud has settled. He does his thinking up there too. It’s why he likes to be alone. He’s responsible for all the thinking on the job.’

  Cindie wondered if Nick would go up the road alone this week-end. Or would he take Erica too? Well, of course he would!

  Meanwhile, to-day was her half-day.

  Except for the whirr in the engine block behind the canteen there was a midday silence all round the camp. Specially so in Mary’s house. There was no sign of the children, though there was evidence of a hurried lunch. The washing up had been forgotten.

  Cindie cut herself a sandwich from the new-made bread and a slice of cold meat. She made the tea, then sat down to rest a few minutes and to let the tea draw.

  Where, she wondered, are Jinx and Myrtle? A sudden thought assailed her. She jumped up and went outside to an enormous packing crate which was the children’s shed for storing their play things and treasures gathered from the outback. The tins of insects and sand-snakes were gone.

  Cindie walked back to the house slowly. It didn’t matter, of course, that Jinx and Myrtle had gone off to keep tryst with their beloved frilled lizard, but it mattered that they had said nothing about it, Mary had warned Cindie that if she wanted to spend her half-day having a sleep-off she might find the children too noisy.

  So Mary had expected the children to be around!

  Cindie’s steps were even slower as she moved across the room to the mantelpiece. She hated looking behind the clock because she hated the idea of distrusting the children. She would apologise to all the gods in heaven if she found that packet of cigarettes safely there. But look she must. She slid her hand edgeways down the space between the clock and the wall. The cigarettes were gone.