The river is Down (31 page)

They were all her family now.

Well, for the time being.

She wondered what Nick was thinking about. They had spoken very little since that moment when she and her bags had been put in the car; then Nick had climbed in behind the drive wheel, waved his hand to the Mollisons standing at the front door, slammed his own car door, released the brakes, started up and driven away.

It had all been like that. Nick was in a hurry to be gone. So he went.

After a short while, Cindie began to notice something different. The sun was in the wrong place. They were travelling west.

'Are we taking a different route home, Nick?' she asked, breaking the silence.

'A detour. I want to show you something

'Me?' She was so surprised she sounded it.

He glanced at her. His face lost its look of absolute concentration. It almost softened.

'You did miss out seeing those gorges,' he said with some regret. 'I thought I might make up for that if I took you to see one extra rather special—sight. It's a longer way round. A longer drive, I'm afraid.'

'That's very kind of you, Nick.' Cindie was a little embarrassed. 'Won't it affect your most precious asset—time?'

'There are exceptions,' he said briefly. 'This is one of them. You may not come this way again.' He glanced down at her with a smile easing the muscles of his face. 'I'll be sorry for that, Cindie. You were a good secretary. Have I thanked you?'

'I had so little to do ' she protested.

'Enough, anyway.' He glanced at her again. 'Enough is enough, always.'

He was talking in conundrums, she thought. Moreover, some challenge had crept into the air between them. It bothered Cindie for the many more miles on their way to that 'extra (sight' he had said he wanted her to see. Why

should he do this for her, anyway? Reward? As if she wanted that! It was mean of her to suspect his motives, she knew. Yet she did, because one moment he was silent, almost stern-faced, then the next he would glance at her with something wary, yet very human, in his eyes. As if making some decision. There was no mask now at all.

There had always been something about Nick that defied definition, she thought. More now than ever. He was subtle, sometimes quietly ruthless in getting his own way: kind to the point of compassion

No. She must not think of that moment when he picked her up on the path I He would have been like that to anybody—

She shrugged those thoughts away.

Today was today. Tomorrow could look after itself.

It was noon when they swung round a hillside, making a three-quarter-circle turn, then ran in between two monstrous monoliths and braked to a stop.

Cindie sat quite still and stared at what lay before her.

`I have a feeling we are full of surprises for one another,' Nick said with that rare fugitive smile of his. He opened his own door and stepped out.

There—embraced on three sides by the walls of this gap in the hillside—was a glorious pool. In its still waters shone the brilliant reflections of the coloured cliffs that reached, glistening with seeping water, sheer to the top of the open hill above. Nick had driven between two rocks—a vertical slit in the wall of the hill—then this! So hidden, and so secret. So beautiful!

Nick took the Esky and lunch-hamper from the back of the Rover and now came round to Cindie's side.

`Well?' he asked, as he opened her door.

`I don't believe it!' she said. `It's not a gorge. One doesn't descend, or climb. It's just there—in a great cave with no top to it. Hidden, sort of in a mountainous rock: in a spinif ex desert—'

He smiled.

`I'll make the camp fire, if you'll set out the lunch on one of those flat rocks by the water. Preferably one in the shade.'

Cindie put out the lunch on the plastic plates. Then slipping off her sandals, and rolling up the legs of her slacks, she paddled in the pool while the billy came to the boil.

When the tea was .ready, Nick poured it. They sat on the rocks—silent but strangely happy—while they ate the cold

meats and salad provided by the hotel chef. Cindie wondered why, she had doubted Nick's reason for bringing her here. The pool spoke for itself. It was so peacemaking.

Her knees were hunched up, and she wrapped her arms around them while she gazed dreamily at the reflections in the water. Nothing stirred, not a leaf, not a blade of grass, nor a lizard, in the midday hush. The brilliant colours in the water were for ever still: immortalised in their dream of millions of years long past.

`I would like to say something to you, Cindie,' Nick said, interrupting her reverie. He paused, his face thoughtful, holding himself apart now. With a pang of anticipation Cindie realised there had been something deliberate about this visit after all. She had been right. She felt the old knock-knock of anxiety: like conscience tapping at her door.

`Yes?' She looked at him, but he in his turn was contemplating the mirror lake with its brilliant red and its viridian twilight of shadow where the sun could not reach it.

`I hope this is the right moment,' he said. 'Shall I go on, Cindie?'

`Yes—of course!'

`While we were at Mulga Gorges I kept in touch with Dicey George, and the foremen on the road. That was natural, of course. Dicey informed me there had been a call over the air from Carnarvon Outpost. A man—his name was David James—was making inquiries about a girl Cynthia

Davenport

Shock and anger brought unguarded words tumbling from Cindie's lips.

`He has no right to do that!' she cried bitterly. 'All that's over. Ages ago. Finished—forgotten. He has no claim. He's just being self-important ' She broke off.

Her face flushed the crimson of the weeping, glistening rock-wall, so silent and still as if it had heard all earth's sorrows long, long ago—a million years ago—and nothing would stir its motionless silence ever again.

Found out! She had given herself away.

She buried her face in her hands.

Nick, like the cliffs and the water, the trailing bush leaves beside it, did not move. Nothing in all the land moved.

The colour died slowly away from Cindie's face, leaving it very pale as she dropped her hands, and lifted her head.

`Do you think you could tell me, Cindie?' Nick asked. He spoke simply, even gently.

`I'm sorry about it, Nick. David broadcasting for me is

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of no personal importance whatever. Please believe that. It's not worth telling.' She spoke with a sad kind of dignity. 'You knew my real name was Cynthia Davenport?'

He took out his cigarettes and lit one slowly.

`I've lived in the outback a long time, Cindie. One always seems to know things about people intuitively. This one wasn't hard—for very good reasons.'

He blew a long shaft of smoke towards the water. It drifted away, then like Echo, was gone.

Cindie felt the desolation of one who has betrayed needlessly. It was only herself she had deceived. Deep down it hadn't been fun being someone else. The pretence had spoilt it. She had known it all the time.

`My road construction company—a family affair—has its headquarters in Perth,' Nick said slowly, not looking at her. The office there informed me quite a long time ago that a lawyer was making inquiries on behalf of a Mrs. Davenport. I had been aware of the troubles of a station along whose western boundary I would have to build part of my road. Bindaroo.'

`Ah yes,' Cindie said painfully, `Bindaroo.'

'I was told that Mrs. Davenport's daughter Cynthia was likely to come north to make contact with Neil Stevens and his brother. I imagined this was probably in connection with the road strip along Bindaroo's boundary.'

Cindie did not understand this last. She hardly heard it. She was thinking of Nick having known all along, or having guessed, who she was. -

'Cynthia was coming, and Cindie arrived! It was as simple as that?' she asked.

'Quite.'

There was a long pause. Cindie thought of her mother, and that share, lost or otherwise, in Bindaroo. Her own excursion to save it had been no more than an exercise in the tragi-comic!

'I changed my name first by accident,' she said. 'It was just a nickname Jim gave me. It fitted. I liked it. It was rather endearing. Then, I minded that you called me Cindie

Something.'

`Did I? When?' He looked surprised.

'When you called me through the megaphone across the river.'

'I'm sorry. I apologise. I didn't realise—'

Cindie felt she couldn't take it if Nick began to be nice

about it all now. This was a side of him that was always her undoing.

'I kept the name Jim gave me because I didn't want Neil Stevens and his brother to know I was coming. That air-talk! I had heard they were trucking out sheep. I wanted to surprise them.'

Nick's face was turned to the water again. She could only see his profile. It put a finger on her heart—his head turned away like that.

'Now that everything is known,' Cindie went on, 'what do you intend to do with Bindaroo? I suppose it is too late to stop a takeover?'

Nick stared at her in surprise. 'What do you think I intend to do with Bindaroo? Other than give Neil Stevens a lifesaving lump of money for that boundary strip? I need it for the road. I build right along it. It's a bare hundred chains wide, and is otherwise worthless country. Salt-pan mostly. Nothing grows on it. Not even spinifex. If anything, my road will service his station, and add to its value.'

The boundary strip?' Cindie asked, dazed.

'I've bought the lease from him; also given him some solid advice about not eating out his pasture land in the good seasons. I told him to call in the experts from the argricultural department in the bad seasons: or when in doubt.'

'The boundary strip?' Cindie repeated, puzzled. 'But you and Erica

'The only thing the boundary strip had to do with Erica is that she didn't want me to buy it. The same as she'd rather the rains hadn't come out of season and given Bindaroo some fresh life. She came over to the construction camp to talk me into re-aligning my road away from Bindaroo's boundary. She never loses without first giving battle—'

'You mean that you and Erica weren't together trying

'Just a minute, Cindie,' Nick interrupted. He was cold, even angry. 'Erica and I together, were not trying to do anything. We were on opposite sides of the counter. The rains and my purchase money for that otherwise useless boundary strip could save the Stevenses. Erica would have liked to buy Bindaroo. A fair bargain for her, if it had come off.'

Cindie closed her eyes. Then Erica hadn't been twisting Nick round her little finger! The perfume hadn't worked. It had been the other way round.

'I flew out of Muga Gorges to Bindaroo the other night

He wasn't trying to help take over Bindaroo. He didn't love Erica!

She had been in a sea of despair because of her mistakes; now she was spun to a hilltop. For one dizzy moment she didn't know where she was, so great was her relief.

Nick watched her.

`Cindie.' he said gently, repenting. He leaned a little forward. 'You have a face so full of changing thoughts, some sad, some glad. You are like an open book. You could never have got away with that change of name, you know. Those dark blue eyes of yours tell all.'

`I played such a silly game of duplicity.'

He laughed.

`Well, don't regret it. We all like to do that occasionally. We all like a little change of personality from time to time. What do you think I was doing at that conference, Cindie?'

She shook her head.

`I didn't care a two-by-four bit of ironstone about the railways and roads those tycoons are planning to build westwards from my road to their deep-sea harbours. I only cared about my part of it. The thousand-miler. For the rest of it I liked puffing up like Swell and talking in millions. Don't you think I was masquerading? Of course I was. I enjoyed every minute of it; and I haven't a twinge of conscience.'

She stared at him.

`Are you really so many persons rolled in one?'

`I suppose I am. But as you've just proved, Cindie
aren't we all? So what? So long as one is honest, and straight
from-the-shoulder when it comes to matters of principle, what does it matter if now and again we do a little play-acting with ourselves?'"

`You don't mind my being Cynthia Davenport—when I said I was Cindie Brown?'

There was a moment's silence. Nick's face lost its smile, and the twilight mask came over his eyes again; but kinder this time.

Cindie Brown-all-over,' he said slowly, softly. 'Jim gave you that name, didn't he?'

'I was so covered with dust when he first saw me! `You're very attached to Jim, Cindie?'

`Yes—in my own way. I needed him so badly. He could advise me. He was such a pet about it all!'

A new thought flashed into her mind and she looked up quickly.

He wasn't trying to help take over Bindaroo. He didn't love Erica!