Beyond the Black Stump (28 page)

The Judge said, “If I might make a suggestion, Mr. Regan, I should give her a return ticket so that if she decided that she wanted to come home she could get on to the aeroplane without having to ask for help from anybody in America. And then for spending money and for clothes, I would think about five hundred pounds. That would be about fifty drums of petrol.”

Pat Regan nodded slowly. “I mind a dress I bought for Mrs. Regan two years back cost thirty-five shillings in Carnarvon, good enough for a Cardinal to buy in the Holy City itself. Sure, a girl could buy the power of a lot of clothes for fifty barrels of petrol.”

The Judge said, “There will be other things besides clothes, Mr. Regan. She will have to pay hotel bills on her journey, and other little expenses such as that. But I think that if you give her five hundred pounds she should be able to put up a good appearance in America and not be short of money.”

Pat Regan struggled slowly to his feet. “I’m thinking that you’re in the right, judge,” he said. “And now I’m off to my bed. Will ye write to Michael in the morning, and say that’s what she’s to have for clothes and money in her pocket.”

A week later Mollie and Mrs. Regan travelled down to Perth together. They went in the little-used Humber, the hens and droppings having been removed from it by the Countess and the car dusted out. James Connolly drove them out to Onslow to fly down to Perth. Mike Regan met them at the Guildford airport with his wife Sylvia, and they drove to the very pleasant house off Bellevue Terrace where the Regans lived, looking out over the Swan River. It was a better house than so young a couple would normally be able to afford, for a small fraction of the profits of Laragh Station was devoted to helping the many children at the outset of their lives. In the case of Mike, however, his early success had removed him from the list the year before.

Mollie and her mother stayed in Perth for a week, getting a birth certificate, getting a passport, getting an American visa, and buying clothes and luggage. They left Perth in a rainstorm to return to Laragh about the middle of June. It had been raining at Onslow and throughout the country in their absence; when James Connolly came to meet them at the aerodrome he came in their old Army truck with four-wheel drive and he brought with him a suitcase full of khaki slacks and shirts for them to change into, thoughtfully packed for them by the Countess. For two days they wallowed and splashed their way into the Lunatic from the coast, staying for a night at Malvern Station on the way.

It rained steadily from Malvern to Laragh. As they approached Mannahill they passed the place where Mollie and Stanton Laird had found the jackeroo, but already after a few days’ rain the country was very different. The dry creek where they had dug for water only six weeks before was running now from bank to bank, over a foot deep as they splashed through it in the truck. Mollie pointed it out to her mother and to James Connolly, but it was difficult even for her to realise it was the same place. Already in the hot and humid conditions spears of bright green grass were showing, covering the damp red earth with a thin film of green. She knew it all, but each year it came as a fresh surprise.

“The feed’s coming again,” she said. “I wonder if David’s got it like this on Lucinda yet?”

“It’s a dry country, that,” her mother said. “There should be feed there before long. He’ll be taking his sheep back on to his own place then.”

“I’m glad Daddy did that for him,” the girl said. “I’d have felt awful, going away, if we hadn’t.”

“It’s a poor, starved place, Lucinda,” said her mother. “A good laddie on a poor station. I doubt he’ll stay long, after this experience.”

Stanton Laird came over to Laragh the first afternoon after they got back. Spencer Rasmussen and many of the men had already departed to other ventures, and Stanton was in charge at the oil rig, or what remained of it. “I guess there’s not much left there to see now,” he said. “The derrick’s down ’n dismantled for transport and most of the other gear, I’d say it would be quite a while before it can be got away, though, on account of the roads. They tell me that we won’t be able to bring heavy trucks in before September.”

Mollie asked, “Will you have to wait so long as that, Stan?”

He shook his head. “I can go now most any time I like. How’re you fixed, honey?”

“I can go any time, Stan. I’d rather go soon, now that I’ve got everything.”

“What say I write Mike, and see if he can get us reservations leaving Perth July 4th? That’s a Monday. Be in Sydney Tuesday, leave on Wednesday and get to Honolulu Wednesday. That’s a day later, but you cross the date line ’n it all goes haywire. Stay two days in Honolulu, ’n go on to Portland by Northwest on Saturday. Maybe my folks might drive over to meet us there, but anyway we’d be in Hazel Sunday.”

“That sounds beaut,” she said. “Why do we stay in Honolulu for two days, though?”

“Kind of a nice place,” he said, “and quite a ways from home, so you don’t get to see it very often. Time we get there you’ll have been travelling the best part of a week after leaving here. I thought maybe you’d like to stop off there, so’s you’d be fresh and rested before meeting my folks.”

She smiled at him. “You think of everything.”

“That’s what I’m here for, honey.”

After that the days passed very quickly for Mollie. Sorting clothes, mending, packing, weighing luggage, unpacking, packing again, telegraphing to Michael Regan, consulting Stan Laird: these things filled every minute of her day. Laragh Station was thrown into a turmoil and the men made themselves scarce. In the middle of all this David Cope took his sheep back on to his own property, where new feed was now beginning to appear. It took him a week of hard work in the intermittent rain, but they got back on to Lucinda in considerably better shape than when they had left. He came over next day to thank Pat Regan for the help, which he did rather awkwardly, in the wool shed.

“Be easy,” said the grazier, “and don’t think on it. I mind the days when we first come here or soon after that, in 1929 maybe, we started off with eleven thousand sheep before the dry, and finished with three thousand and they not worth a shilling each. It’s all a part of it, as Tom says, but sure, it comes good if ye keep on at it.”

The boy said, “Did that really happen, Mr. Regan—here on Laragh Station?”

“God save us! It’s many the time we’d have no stomach for our dinner for the stench of the dead sheep, and many the month when we’d eat sheep meat only with a little bread, the way we’d have no money to buy stores. Sure, and we all go through it, but the blessed saints walk with us and it comes good in the end.”

David Cope went thoughtfully to the homestead. Mollie was busy ironing dresses, for she was to leave in three days’ time, but she came out to him in the verandah. “I just looked in to thank your father for the agistment, and to say good-bye,” he said a little awkwardly.

“That’s very sweet of you, David,” she said. “Got all your mob back on Lucinda now?”

He nodded. “That’s right. I’d have been sunk but for your father’s help. As it is, we’ve only lost about a thousand.”

“I’m so glad,” she said. “You’ll make that up and more next year.”

“Unless we get another drought,” he said a little wryly. And then he said, “Your father told me he only did it because you and your mother kept on plaguing him.”

She flushed a little. “Nonsense,” she said. “He’d have done it anyway. He just uses that as an excuse.”

He smiled. “Anyway, I’m very grateful to whoever thought of it,” he said.

There was a little pause.

“You’re going away this week?” he asked.

She nodded. “On Friday. It’s quite a long way. It’s going to take us a week to get to Stan’s home, even flying all the way.”

There was nothing more to say, really. “Well, the very best of luck,” he said. “I don’t suppose we’ll ever see each other again.”

“Oh yes, we shall,” she said. “You know, I’m beginning to hate the thought of leaving the Lunatic for ever. It’s going to be marvellous in America, but I shall want to come back here for a visit every five years. When I come back you’ll be on your feet, I expect. No more agistments.”

He smiled. “Maybe.” And then he said, “I brought you over a book as a wedding present. I’ve got it in the jeep.”

“Oh, David, how kind of you! What is it?”

“I’ll go and get it.” He went out to the jeep and fetched the parcel, and returned and put it in her hands. “That’s for you both,” he said, “with the best of luck.”

She tore the paper off.
“A Shropshire Lad,”
she read. She opened it. “It’s all poems, is it?”

He nodded. “I like it quite a lot.” She turned to the flyleaf, and saw that he had written, “For Mollie and Stanton, with every good wish from David Cope.”

She fingered it appreciatively. “Stan will love this. You know, this is our first wedding present, our very first.”

He smiled. “Fine. Well, I’ll have to be getting along, Mollie. There’s quite a bit to do over at Lucinda now we’ve got the mob back.”

“Won’t you stay and see Stan, David, and show him this? He’ll be over this afternoon.”

He shook his head. “I wish I could, but I think I’ll get on.” He hesitated, and held out his hand. “Good-bye, Mollie.”

She took it, a little sadly. “Good-bye, David. Will you write now and then and let me know how things are going in the Lunatic? Nobody here except Ma ever writes a letter if they can help it.”

“I might,” he said. He dropped her hand. “Well, I must be going on.”

He turned to the jeep, got in, and drove off down the
muddy, graded road that soon would be graded no more. She turned back to her ironing, depressed. With all America before her, it was absurd to feel so badly about leaving the Lunatic.

She showed her book with pride all day to everybody, including Stanton Laird. Later, in bed, she read a little of it. Leafing the pages through, she found a poem with a faint pencil mark against it.

She put the book down with moist eyes. It was absurd to feel so miserable about leaving the Lunatic.

Next day she weighed the book, and threw out a pair of shoes to make room for it in her air luggage.

When it was time for her to leave, it was a relief to her. In the last three days she was plagued with regrets, irrational regrets at leaving the arid, unsatisfactory, and uncivilised place that was her home. With her intellect she knew that she would have a happy life with Stanton Laird, a happy life in America, but she was unhappy at leaving the country she had been brought up in. Her mother sensed her trouble but did nothing about it, for everybody has to learn to live their life in their own way and from their own experience. Only on the last evening did she let fall a word or two in her dry manner.

“Now mind what I say, Mollie,” she said to her daughter. “Ye’re not to go marrying in America without ye let us know in good time to come over for the wedding. I’m thinking that the Laird family are decent, upright people who would think ill of us, and of you, if no member of the bride’s family were there to see her wed. I’m minded to come myself, for all that it’s a long weary way. I doubt we’d get your father to come, and maybe it’s a better thing he shouldn’t. But you mind what I say. If ye get wed, ye get
wed in a decent fashion with your mother in the church, for all you’ve been brought up on Laragh Station.”

She left next morning. Stanton Laird came to fetch her in the oil rig jeep which he had spent half a day in washing and trying to make a little presentable for the occasion, for a jeep was now the only vehicle that could be depended on to negotiate the morass of the roads down to the coast. He had arranged to leave the jeep at Onslow, to be picked up by another member of the Topex staff coming to the oil rig as his replacement in the final stages of dismantling. She went dressed for the road in khaki shirt, slacks, and gum-boots, with her clean new luggage wrapped around in tarpaulins to keep it from the mud. “One thing, honey,” said Stanton, as they piled these bundles into the back of the jeep. “You’ll never have to travel this way again, back in the States.”

“I suppose not, Stan,” she said. “It’s going to be marvellous.”

Her leavetaking was a short affair, for they had a hundred and fifty miles to go to the station where they had arranged to stay the night, and to travel that distance over the flooded roads would be all that they could manage in daylight. She kissed everybody all round including the Countess, got into the jeep, and sat in a depressed silence as Stanton drove her from her home. He realised her mood and did not bother her with talk. Within a quarter of an hour, however, she was jerked roughly from her depression, for a water slough a quarter of a mile long stretched ahead of them on what was called a road, and Stanton judged it better to go bush and drive across country with the jeep in four-wheel drive, rocking and swaying over the clumps of spinifex and coming back to the road half a mile ahead. From that time onwards she had plenty to do and no time for regrets.

They flew down together from Onslow to Perth two days later. The accommodation in the Onslow hotel had left a good deal to be desired, and she elected to travel in the Dakota still in her shirt and slacks, with the worst of the mud brushed off, rather than risk her fine new clothes. On that outback air service this attire was normal and aroused no comment, but at Guildford airport she felt shabby and out of place. From the airline office in the town they took a taxi to Mike’s house, and here Stanton left her while he went to his hotel.

When he came to her again that evening she had had a bath and washed her hair and done her face, and had put on one of her new costumes in his honour. In turn, Stanton appeared in a clean new two-piece suit of a distinctively American cut with very square shoulders.

He stood back and looked at her, amazed. “Gee, honey,” he said. “You look like a million dollars!”