The Man from Outback: An Australian Outback Romance, page 17
‘Kitty … she’s the middle-sized one with the gap between her teeth,’ Uncle Ralph said at breakfast. ‘She’s a good rider, Mari. You can take her anywhere on the run.’
‘More’n likely she’ll take Mari,’ said Bob. This was the first time Bob had used Mari’s Christian name. Till now he had avoided calling her anything.
Mari, in the ensuing days, found that Uncle Ralph’s words were true. When she and those three girls weren’t sprucing and decorating the homestead she and Kitty were out riding. The Aboriginal woman rode barefooted and barebacked on a horse of her own. She took Mari all along the creek beds, to the billabong for a swim and up amongst the hills where they found tiny hiding-holes of fern and soft-coloured flowers in the rock crevices where water oozed from tiny underground springs.
Then came a day when a violent thunderstorm suddenly turned the gravel square into a sheet of water. Next day, when the water had dried out, there were green shoots of grass on the paddocks and in the shabby, neglected garden. Two days later, beside the path near the gate, Mari found a tiny star flower, growing face open to the sky but close to the earth.
It was the first flower Mari had seen other than the strange prickly grey-green bush flowers and the brilliant bougainvilleas, growing fairly near the homestead. It was like a flower from home, except that its tiny stem, frail-looking at first, proved to be wiry and almost unpickable. Not that Mari had tried to pick the flower, but she had tentatively felt out the strength of the reed-like leaves that had appeared so miraculously with the flower.
She had not forgotten the primroses and violets and other modest flowers of her own home, but suddenly this small flower, so pale a blue it was almost white, seemed to her to be the sweetest of them all.
Half a dozen times a day Mari went to look at it, afraid the scorching heat of the sun would kill it.
‘What is it, Kitty?’ she asked.
‘That fella Drage,’ Kitty said. ‘Boss call him “desert daisy”. Him won’t die longa time now. Lil’ bit of water every two-three day. Alla-same not too much, him die.’
Mari guarded and nurtured her flower as much as she polished and nurtured her home. Each time she went out riding she went to look at the flower first. When she came in she looked to see if all was well with the desert daisy before she went into the homestead. She had shown it to Laddie, the kelpie dog, and cautioned him never to walk there. Laddie understood perfectly, especially as Mari had put a tiny barricade of small sticks around the plant. She didn’t have to worry about Laddie’s possible misdemeanours when she and Kitty were out riding. Laddie went with them, and would never have been parted from his mistress without a command from his master. Kane, and the dog he had given Mari, had minds that thought alike.
It was on Sunday night, after late tea, that disaster befell the desert daisy, and all but broke Mari’s heart.
Kane had gone down to the gate to let the dogs out into the square and Mari had run down the veranda steps to join him because Kane had forgotten to give Laddie the one command that meant he might leave his mistress. Laddie had stood irresolute on the path, looking first after his master, then uneasily backwards at his mistress sitting on the veranda.
Mari, looking up, saw Kane’s retreating back and Laddie’s indecision. She had jumped up and run down the path, calling Laddie as she went.
‘It’s all right, Laddie,’ she said. ‘You can go. Kane just forgot to tell you specially …’
Kane had nearly reached the gate when he realised something was going on behind him. He turned round, as Laddie, released from bondage, bounded at his master. It was almost as if he had to throw his whole weight at Kane to remind him that he too had to give the word of command. Kane, beset by two dogs jumping up at him, stepped back. The tiny stick barricade around the desert daisy cracked and crumbled under his boot, his heel rested on the face of the flower.
‘Kane!’ Mari cried. Suddenly she was at him, pushing him away, pummelling his chest with small clenched fists.
‘My flower …’ she was trying to say, but the words choked with sudden desperately unhappy sobs in her throat.
Kane, not comprehending what had happened, caught her fists in his two hands and held her tight. Mari struggled to free herself.
‘You’ve killed it … you’ve killed it,’ she cried, still unable to see the flower for Kane’s tall, wide-shouldered body.
‘Steady, Mari!’ he said, his voice suddenly commanding, sharp and staccato.
Mari leaned forward, her head hitting Kane’s shoulder. Her whole frame was wracked with sobs, the tears ran wildly down her cheeks.
Uncle Ralph, thinking something catastrophic had happened, came down the path.
‘Mari … Mari girl,’ he said, puzzled, stooping and twisting sideways to try and see into her face where it was hidden against Kane’s chest. ‘What’s the matter, lass?’
‘My flower,’ she sobbed. ‘He’s got his foot on it.’
Kane dropped Mari’s wrists and one arm went round her shoulders tightly. Her head still stayed buried in his shirt, one freed hand was clenched, beating a slow desperate tattoo against his shoulder. Kane, still holding Mari tightly in the circle of his arm, stepped aside. He turned his head and looked down at the ground. The little blue-white flower was indeed flattened. It lay sick and stricken in a shambles of broken sticks.
Uncle Ralph bent down and peered at the flower.
‘I don’t know so much,’ he said judicially. ‘It might come all right again. Takes a lot to kill those daisy things. They look weak, but by golly, they’re strong. Last out the Dry they will, if they get a drop of rain at the right time.’
Kane caught Mari’s wrist again and attempted to lift her away from him so that she could collect herself … and to see himself why so small a thing should cause such a breakdown in Mari.
He was not a flower-conscious man, but he was prepared to understand that flowers were things that meant a lot to women. But Mari’s tears, her heartbroken sobs, were something more than the near-destruction of a flower!
Mari would not be lifted away. She could not bear to show her tear-stricken face to Kane or Uncle Ralph or even the two dogs, sitting, tongues lolling, the picture of misery themselves. She found herself clinging to Kane, where a moment ago he had had to hold her forcibly.
‘Now look here, Mari,’ Uncle Ralph said in his most avuncular voice, ‘you’ve too much sense to be crying over a flower that maybe’s not going to die after all. Just pull yourself together, lass, and have a look.’
Mari lifted her head and gradually disentangled herself from Kane’s arms. Somehow, she didn’t know quite how she had Kane’s handkerchief in her hand. She wiped her eyes, and, still keeping her head down-bent, looked at the flower. She knelt down and lifted the crushed leaves that radiated from its tiny earthbound stem.
They, by being lifted, lifted the small face of the flower with them.
‘It was so sweet,’ she said. ‘It was tiny and newborn and fresh and young …’
She looked up at Kane and said with bitter, sad reproach:
‘I hate you!’
Chapter Fourteen
Suddenly Mari too understood what it was all about. The flower was young and newborn and it had been hers. It had been a compensation for something else unuttered in her heart.
Marriage was only the opening of a book, and the next chapter should have been the hope of children. Mari suddenly was aware of all the biological complications of getting married. Once she had opened the book, she wanted to go on and turn every leaf, know every chapter.
Her marriage with Kane would be childless if she could not somehow win his love. There were signs of winning his kindness ‒ but then he was that kind of man ‒ but absolutely no signs of winning his love at all.
She straightened herself and stood up.
‘I’m sorry. I beg your pardon for saying that,’ she said huskily and turned and went back to the veranda.
Kane let the dogs through the gate and followed Uncle Ralph back to the veranda.
‘Excuse me, I have a headache,’ Mari said. ‘I’m going inside.’ She went through the front door, then into her room, which was already transformed into something feminine and attractive by the new curtains, the pretty blond-coloured furniture and the latest thing in frilled candlewick bedcovers.
She stood in front of the mirror, horrified at her streaked and tear-puffed face.
‘Not that it really matters,’ she said. ‘My face hasn’t done a thing to help me since I came here.’
Disappointed with her face, regretful for her behaviour, ashamed of her tears, she belaboured her skin with cold cream, more as a punishment than as a caress.
She wiped the cream away with a tissue, then remembered she had performed this rite with her dress still on her. She slipped her dress off, and in doing that, somehow managed to take off her other clothes without quite knowing what she was doing. Her thoughts, sad and chastened, were elsewhere. When she found herself in her bath-robe she decided she would go to bed anyway. It was not yet dark, but she couldn’t go back and face Uncle Ralph and Kane on the veranda. Bob, thank goodness, had followed his usual practice and gone to his own quarters in the little cottage on the other side of the station square.
Mari padded down the carpeted passage to take her bath. For the first time since it had arrived, Mari failed to notice or feel a thrill of pleasure in the carpet under her feet.
The bath over, she went back to her room, put away her toilet things and hung out her towel to dry, then lay down on her bed, full-stretched on the cover. Mari, had she had her mind on things, would have lent out her immortal soul on lease rather than lie on her bed without turning back that beautiful, much-loved but very new bedcover.
She lay staring at the ceiling, thinking such muddled thoughts that she would never have been able to put them into words.
It wasn’t just ‘all over a flower’, she kept telling herself. It was much, much more. It was so young, and new. And it was Kane who did it … like what he has done to me.
But what has he done to me? Was it his fault that I came anyway?
There was a sharp tap on the door, and Mari, turning her head, saw Kane there.
He came in, taking acceptance for granted.
Mari did not stir. She was too emotionally tired, ashamed, though she wasn’t sure she cared any more.
Kane sat on the side of her bed and picked up her hand. His eyes had that distant, troubled concern that Mari had seen once or twice before. She turned her face so that she could go on looking at the ceiling. Yet she did not take her hand away.
That would have been a childish thing to do.
It did not occur to Mari that Kane too might have understood the implications of her love for that flower, and that he too was troubled. If she had, she would have said to herself, ‘So what?’ It didn’t make any difference to the fact it was a barren marriage and this was Kane’s decision.
He loved Miss Icy-voice over at Half Moon. To-morrow was Monday and he was riding over there to muster their cattle for them. He would be away a week. He would have dinner at their dinner-table, and eat their steaks … but not a meringue pie as good as one Mari could cook.
As a plain statement of fact, she hoped they’d be very bad cooks over there.
Childish? Yes, she knew she was childish. Maybe Kane was right, and the Altons too. She was too young to be married.
A thin shining edge of tears glistened along her lashes. Mari closed her eyes to force them back.
Not again, she told herself. We’ve had enough hysteria for to-day.
Kane had waited a long time in silence, watching the clouds in her troubled face. When he saw her effort to quell back those tears he put her hand down on the bedcover beside her and reached in his pocket for cigarettes and matches.
‘Mari,’ he said, not looking at her but watching his own fingers closely as they wrapped rice paper round fine tobacco. He slitted his eyes because though he was watching his fingers he was thinking about choosing his words carefully. ‘I’ll get the men to dig a flower garden for you. This time of the year we get occasional thunderstorms, whiskers of the first cyclones. They soften up the ground ready for the Wet.’
Mari still looked at the ceiling, and meanwhile Kane had made his cigarette. He cupped his hand over a match to light it.
‘When the Wet comes,’ he went on quietly, persistently, as if he were talking to a child who needed instruction, ‘the whole aspect of the plain changes. The grass comes up overnight and there are flowers as far as you can see.’ He paused and added more kindly, ‘Desert daisies, mostly.’
Mari flickered her eyes, but still she said nothing.
‘It is more than flowers you want, Mari,’ Kane said suddenly. Now her eyes went quickly, wide-open, to his face. ‘You want a home and a husband and children. I’m sorry I thought of you as a child. It was because you are so slight … and yes, in spite of your eighteen years … just a little naive. But you are a woman all the same, and those things … your very young figure, your pretty soft face and even that naivety … make you a very attractive woman.’
Mari’s eyes were dark and questioning. What did he mean? She was not so naive as all that? Was he going to tell her that mere physical attraction was enough to call a special relationship in marriage love?
Oh no, Kane! she wanted to say. I learned about that sort of thing before my hair was long enough to put up on my head. We aren’t children when we’re sixteen or seventeen in our age. Maybe in yours, or your grandmothers’ … but in our age we know what is what and what is not what … whether we look young and act naive or not. You’d be surprised, but what we want is love. In our age, anyway.
Kane saw the expression in Mari’s dark blue eyes. He smiled a little grimly.
‘I was thinking,’ he said slowly, drawling in that effective, hard-bitten way that he used when he was saying something he meant to get through, and stay through, ‘I was thinking you’ve been tensed up ever since the mail came last week.’
Not tensed, thought Mari. Only excited because of my furniture and my curtains … and Kitty coming riding with me.
‘I don’t think it was your friends’ letter,’ Kane went on steadily. ‘I think it was the letter from your neighbour. I am sorry I was somewhat derisive about marrying-on-pocket-money. Perhaps you were right when you said nothing matters if you marry for love. Are you listening to me, Mari?’
She nodded. It occurred to her he had no idea how he was hurting her. On the other hand he might be doing that to make her understand more clearly how he felt. Sometimes you had to hurt to kill. Perhaps he sensed she had fallen in love with him, and wanted to kill that … very dead.
‘If …’ he said, dropping his words one at a time, like stones in a pool. ‘If you went back now, would this young man, this Robert, be free to marry you? I would of course set you free. Please be frank with me, Mari. Is he too tied to his studies, or do you think his parents have too strong a hold on him?’
‘It doesn’t matter which it is, Kane, we wouldn’t get married anyway.’
She couldn’t bring herself to say that Robert’s silence proved he had changed his mind, and the things that had happened to her had certainly changed hers.
‘I see,’ he said. He stubbed out his cigarette on the tray on her table and picked up her hand again and held it palm upwards. For a moment there was something in the way he held his bent head, something suddenly whispering in the air that filled it with an unexpected urgency.
If only he would … if only he would!
All her barriers would be down. She would throw herself in his arms because she wouldn’t be able to help it. A greater power than herself would be in command.
She half lifted her head from the pillow. Kane looked up and caught her eyes. He put her hand down and stood up abruptly. His eyes were quite dark.
He went to the door.
‘I’ll bring you a cup of tea before I go to bed,’ he said from the door. ‘It might help you to sleep better. I’m afraid I’ll be gone to Half Moon when you get up in the morning, Mari. I hope you’ll be all right while I’m away.’ There was a sudden softening in his face as he added, ‘I’ll leave Laddie to look after you.’
He went out and Mari lay on her bed, the fingers of her hands curling inwards so that the nails bit into her palms.
Stay on that raft. Stay on that raft. Some day the current will wash you up on shore.
Her hands relaxed and she turned her head into the pillow.
‘Yes, but what current?’ she asked herself sadly.
Later that night Kane came in with the promised cup of tea. Mari had taken off her beloved bedcover and folded it up. Even in the midst of what she called ‘dire distress’ she could not bear to spoil her new possessions. Her room was lovely and she loved it. She wasn’t going to have it spoiled by the fact she’d had a childish cry over a flower that Uncle Ralph had said would probably recover.
Mothers probably cried when their children had measles … but the children always recovered, and probably were happier for some temporary coddling.
Mari felt so much better after that cry that she decided she was up on that raft after all. There wasn’t a storm brewing in the heavens or on the sea that could shake her off.
She had combed her hair, plaited it, and pinned the two plaits like a coronet over her head. That way the lumps of hair wouldn’t stick into her head and keep her awake.
She had creamed her face again, more as an apology for the way she had done it before than because she thought her face really needed it. She had added some night-cream just for luck.
Kane had said she had a nice soft skin.
What a lost opportunity, not to have looked coy!
Mari had reached the smiling stage. The idea of coyness having any but an adverse effect on Kane was very funny.
I’m not doing too badly, she told herself as she slipped into her bed, under the single cover of a sheet.
She reached up and turned off the light, then lay staring out of the veranda door at where the moon, early up, was already beginning to flood the place where Kane slept.
