The river is Down (10 page)

The speedometer read eight miles from where they had left Dicey at work on the Euclid. Cindie guessed there
would be roughly another two miles to go before they reached their destination.

Nick broke the silence. He too had come back to the present—a bumpy ride in a dusty Land-Rover.

'I forgot to tell you this morning that the wives up in D'D row had heard about your arrival in the camp last night. They've decided to give you an afternoon tea-party by way of welcome. Mary Deacon told me about it before I came out. That's why I said I'd take you back to the camp. They can't be disappointed, you know. Havoc in D'D row won't do at all.' He said this last in a voice tinged with amusement.

Cindie found it an effort not to turn her head and look at him. He was so different.

Had he really forgotten the message? Or just not wanted to tell her at the radio unit, or in front of the men on the site?

'Why is it called D-apostrophe-D row?' she asked.

The apostrophe stands for T. From politeness, we usually write it with the apostrophe.'

Was he amused? Or was he not? It was hard to tell. 'D—T—D,' she spelled it out slowly, puzzled.

'Detergent, Teacups, and Dynamite,' Nick said.

Cindie turned her head this time. He smiled: a wonderful flashing smile, then it was gone. Unexpectedly Cindie was

drawn to him. Had she dreamed it, or had she glimpsed magic for a moment?

`The men labelled the row,' Nick said. 'Sometimes you have to let them have their kind of humour. I thought it might be more diplomatic to cut the name down to initials only.' He glanced at her, one eyebrow raised. 'For the sake of peace; and good relationships.'

Cindie suddenly laughed. Jim Vernon would have called this her rainbow smile, illuminating her face like fire flame that made colour and light but did not burn. It only beguiled with its warmth and promise.

A second later she realised Nick had wanted her to laugh. He had made her do it. He had forgiven her her misdemeanours.

From then on to where the men were grading the track, the atmosphere between herself and Nick was easier in a subtle kind of way. So surprised was Cindie at this new relationship, and the certainty that Nick had manipulated it, that she forgot the worry about his possible connection with Bindaroo. She had been won over by him. Well, temporarily, anyway!

What an enigmatic, yet bafflingly human, person he was turning out to be!

Nick, when he had finished talking with the foreman, said he'd drive her to one of the uplands leading by a series of dips and climbs to the broken foothills of the ranges.

`I'm not taking up valuable time?' she asked.

`Not my time. Yours. There's that tea-party remember.' Again that glimpse of a smile, a little alarming now because Cindie felt herself succumbing to something she did not understand, but feared it was the pressure of another person's will over her own. If so—and she must think this out—it was something urgently to be resisted.

`Yes,' she said doubtfully. `I shouldn't be late for that

`It's early. Look at the clock.'

Cindie glanced at the dashboard. 'Not yet noon?' she exclaimed astonished. 'But the men back there were having their lunch. Everything is so timeless one doesn't notice Time.'

'Or dates. You're north of Twenty-Six now, Cindie. Working hours, on site, begin at seven in the morning. On this particular day the men put the clock on half an hour, before breakfast anyway, and cut their tea-break. To-day they'll have finished a day's work by three. An hour to get back to camp and shower-up, and the rest of the time's their own. Those who are lucky in the draw will take the utilities, and will make

the river before sundown. They'll fish, eat what they catch by the bank, and go without canteen dinner—'

`And you don't mind?'

`So long as they do their regulation eight hours on site—occasionally nine with one of the hours overtime pay—I have to be satisfied. It's still a free country up here, and this site is not a concentration camp. It's a construction camp. A boss who tries to make the men invariably eat in the canteen at six is a fool.' He paused. Then added slowly—`Take a man's freedom from him and you take his immortal soul.'

Cindie was silent.

What he had said was so true. It was the kind of truth one knew in one's innermost being, without ever having it taught or explained.

Minute by minute her feelings for Nick Brent were indeed undergoing a subtle change; and it worried her.

She remembered again, with a stab of unhappiness, the possible connection between Nick and Bindaroo. It had to be wrong, of course. As far as doubtful dealing with the Stevenses, anyway. Yet how subtly he had manipulated her departure with him from the site! Her mood, too! Or had he?

Nick drove Cindie back to the camp after a quick run to the upland. From there the road had been one long streak, slashing the landscape from horizon to horizon. It had no beginning and no end. It touched one horizon and went on and on, in a straight line, to the other. The wonder of it had left Cindie without words. Nick in his own silence did not seem to have noticed this.

Back at the camp, Mary Deacon greeted Cindie with some surprise.

`Oh, so you're back?' Her eyebrows were raised. 'You're a right one, you are! Off with one man and back with another. Not to mention talking over the air with a third. How many men in your life when you're not up in the north, Cindie Brown?'

`There aren't any secrets up here, that's for sure,' Cindie replied with a laugh. They were in the living-room of Mary's house and Mary had just finished dressing and making up her face. Going to the tea-party too!

`Well . . .' Mary looked at Cindie with pretended severity. `This place is so quiet in the day-time, when the men are out on the site, you can't help hear when a motor car goes by.

'

Yours first, dust-cloud and all— Next a Land-Rover goes, and then comes back much later with the visiting celebrity on board. As for the third man? Well, there's always the air

'Don't tell me you were listening in when I called Baanya, Mary? I thought the care-all was too busy—'

`How right you are. But if I don't have those two children doing their school work up there where I can keep an eye on them, they just don't work at all. They happen to have a radio for the School of the Air. They take care to turn it on early.'

'Oh!' said Cindie philosophically. `So, while waiting for the school session, they, and everyone in the canteen, including their mother, heard a private conversation?'

'You take your clothes off and get yourself a shower before you make any more rash or ignorant statements, Cindie. There's nothing private on the air in this place. You might as well live cheek by jowl with your neighbours in a suburb.'

Cindie was pulling her blouse over her head in haste. 'Am I late? Nick told me about the tea-party 'You're not late, but you will be if you stand there talking.' 'I'm forgiven for running out on the camp, then?' Cindie's

face, eager yet anxious, appeared below the hem of her

blouse as she hoisted that garment in the air high above

her head.

Mary glanced in the living-room mirror to see what next she would do about her face or her hair, before declaring herself dressed, ready and waiting.

She shook her head from side to side as she met the girl's eyes in the mirror.

'Don't kid yourself about Dicey George, Cindie Brown. He has a girl in Carnarvon who wouldn't let him go short of a battle-axe act. He probably put all that blarney over you just to get a loan of your car. He wanted to drive out to that site in luxury style. That was to put one over the boys.'

Cindie had her blouse under her arm and was unbuckling the belt of her slacks. She was amazed that Mary had thought she had even remembered Dicey existed, after seeing the thousand-miler.

`For your information, Dicey didn't put any blarney over me. I wanted to talk to Jim Vernon at Baanya. Besides, I wanted to see the road. Furthermore, in addition, and altogether, I'm glad he has a girl in Carnarvon. If she carries a battle-axe, I don't; nor a pennant for Dicey George either.'

'Get showered, child, and argue afterwards. There won't

be one of those women up in D'D row who doesn't know

you had a sob-talk with Jim Vernon, drove out to the site

with Dicey George, and back from it with the boss. So get your arguments ready, to convince them. You might succeed with them—they're that hay-wire—but you won't fool me. You can tell me about them all when we come home. Incidentally

Cindie, who had almost exited, put her head back in the doorway. Mary turned away from the mirror to look squarely at the girl.

No Nick-talk up there,' she cautioned. .'Remember he's the boss, so they're full of him. He's royalty on this job. They won't stop talking about him-, but if you're a wise girl you'll listen and stay dumb. You know what I mean?'

'I do,' Cindie said quickly. 'Don't worry. I'll be wise.'

She suddenly gave Mary one of those accidental -rainbow smiles. 'Anyway I'd be scared stiff of you, Mary. And that glowering eye of yours.'

'Me glowering?'

Cindie missed the indignation because she was heading for the shower-room at the back of the house at top speed. She could hear the children's voices as they went about building a cubby-house under the white gums.

There were three wives in number two caravan in D'D row. In the first five minutes of meeting them Cindie gathered only their Christian names. Hazel, Betty and Evie. Hazel was fairish and the other two dark. They were all probably in their middle thirties. The dark ones were plumpish. Hazel was thin and over-eager about being the hostess for this occasion. Instinctively Cindie felt she would be, as a type, probably over-eager about everything.

They were welcoming, and because they had preceded Cindie as visitors to the construction camp, they gave the impression of long establishment. By implication they were old hands at the game of knowing everything about what went on, how, when and why, on the site. Cindie was the newcomer, therefore not quite 'with it' yet.

They treated Mary Deacon with a subtle distance which indicated they might be superior because they were 'wives' and she was staff.

It could, Cindie thought, mean they were a little afraid of Mary: or of her power over their own men—via Nick Brent.

`Come in,' Hazel had greeted them brightly. 'Three steps up. It's the same as every other house in this village.' She laughed on, a key a shade too high. 'Just too funny calling these things on wheels "houses", and this camp a "village"! How uppity the company can get!'

`The company,' Mary said, blunt as ever, 'invites you down here to visit. All for free, too. So I guess it's good policy to let the company call this, that, or the other just what it pleases.'

They were all sitting down in the living-room of the caravan now. To Cindie it looked very much like the lounge car of a railway carriage, and quite comfortable.

`Including calling this lot up here D'D row?' one of the plump dark women asked with a glint in her eyes that was half a smile, half a sly question. Cindie decided that this one's dark eyes were a little wicked; but she could have more fun in her than the other two.

Hazel was at the tiny stove at the end of the narrow room, pouring hot water into a teapot. 'Oh, the company gave us that name all right. Typical Nick Brent, I'd say.'

Mary Deacon's eye caught Cindie's blue ones. 'By "company",' she said, 'they mean Nick Brent.'

All three wives looked at Mary. Their expressions could have been baleful, if they hadn't been trying to hide it. '

'Who else? It's a proprietary company, isn't it?' Hazel asked. 'One family owns it. Nicholas Brent Proprietary Limited.'

She brought the teapot to the table in the middle, and began to pour out.

'You didn't let it stand three minutes,' the dark-eyed one remarked critically of this exercise. 'Personally I prefer coffee. The instant variety.'

'Then, darling, we'll have that when it's your turn to entertain.' Hazel went on pouring unperturbed. 'You take milk, Cindie?'

'Yes please.' She thought she would say something peacemaking, and added—'It was kind of you to ask me up here, on my first day.'

'The one thing you don't know,' one of the others put in, 'is when it'll be your last day. They say over the air that water's up everywhere. All over the claypan country north of the site.'

'Except there's always one special person who can get through,' Hazel put in meaningly, bringing Cindie's tea to her. 'Sugar too?'

Cindie shook her head. 'Somebody told me when I was twelve sugar would be bad for my figure when I was twenty,' she laughed. Anything to make this tea-party pleasant. Who did Hazel mean by 'one special person'?

'Goodness me! You twenty? Why, you look only a child. Then on the other hand—the things you do . . .' Hazel shook her head as she went back to the table for Mary's tea. She had her back turned as she went on. 'Drive by yourself across the north; get yourself marooned, then rescued by the Lord High Panjandrum himself; take a run out to the site with the smartest of the gallivants round the place—'