The river is Down (13 page)

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 before 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 sometime—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 quite 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 of 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 esssential questions were asked. He was only concerned about the quality of work.

Yet—he wondered! Then he 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 williwilli of dust spiralling out of a still air like a fairy dancing across the dusty gravel.

'Oh, that,' Erica said with a laugh. 'It's the first time I've heard a williwilli 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-spout 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 sickbay, 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.

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 twittered and flitted hungrily Myrtle's collection of northwest 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