The river is Down (11 page)

'All in twenty-four hours,' Cindie added agreeably, still smiling. 'You left out the most important part. Having a tea-party in this lovely caravan

Mary Deacon looked at Cindie thoughtfully. The girl was corning through all right, she told herself. She was showing good manners. Maybe—well maybe, there could be an extra job or two to give her around the place. If she could handle the men as tactfully

She let the thought hang in air.

Meanwhile, since these three women were obviously trying out 'Cindie in their own devious ways, she'd take a hand in the game herself.

She knew very well who the words 'the one special person who could get through the bogged country' referred to. She'd known about it since midday. One of the men was bringing Erica Alexander down from fifty miles back up the road. Dicey George's two-way from the Euclid had passed that on.

'If one could get through the claypan country, coming west—then why not another, going east?' Mary took her tea from Hazel without looking up. 'Thank you. No sugar. Like Cindie, I have figure trouble. If one could get through by noon to-day,' she added, 'it doesn't say a different one could not get through—going the opposite way. But of course, she, or he, would need a lot of nerve. And know the route. Do you know the by-tracks through to Marana and Bindaroo, Cindie?'

Cindie, not knowing what all this double-talk was about, shook her head.

'My map showed only the main track leading due east along the river banks. Nick said it's impassable now. The

more northerly route is a maze of rarely-used station tracks, isn't it?'

`And you wouldn't want to try them?' Mary asked idly. 'I'd need to ask—' Cindie began dubiously. 'Nick Brent would know—'

`Erica Alexander didn't ask,' the dark-eyed one said with a laugh. 'The Queen of the Spinifex just came when she wanted. An hour ago. Guess she knows the way from the outcamp on Marana across to the road up north, from experience. Must visit the boss pretty often.'

There was a tiny silence.

Hazel carried two cups of tea, one in each hand, to her fellow wives.

`Well, she has a reason for coming,' she said so meaningly that no one in the room, not even Cindie, misunderstood her meaning. 'And how does anyone know the boss didn't ask her to come, even through the flood-land? Lots of people living up here use a kind of code language with one another over the air. They know how to get personal messages through and make them sound like business. Long experience in the north, I expect.'

`Goodness me. How that "Air" does talk—even in codes,' Cindie said with a laugh. 'It's a wonderful country. Not a human being in sight, not even a kangaroo or an emu, yet everyone knows when someone is coming to the site.'

Mary Deacon at the back of her mind gave her protegee another good mark. Cindie was deliberately and painlessly turning what was meant to be a pinprick against her own talk with Jim Vernon, also the starting point for gossip, into something that sounded more interesting—the wonders of the country.

Mary herself was not having too much 'Nick-talk' while

she herself was around, so she changed the subject smartly. Cindie's not interested in Marana. She's heading for She didn't have time to finish.

'She's heading for far places unknown, and my bet is the next stop'll be back to Baanya,' the one called Evie interrupted. 'Come on, Cindie, tell us the story. Are you and Jim Vernon old friends from far away? And how come you left him lamenting at Baanya and came on to the billabong crossing? Were you just sight-seeing, or heading for the construction camp?'

`Do you want my life story?' Cindie asked surprised. 'It would take such a long time. I'd rather hear yours. I'm

sure it would be more interesting. You've come down from Port Hedland, haven't you? They say it's like the roaring nineties up there—with the mining boom inland.'

Mary Deacon gave Cindie her third good mark for the day.

`When you leave Port Hedland you just plain forget about it,' Evie said flatly. 'It's that kind of place. Down here's better, with all the bird-watching that goes on.'

`Bird-watching?' Cindie wrinkled her brow in perplexity.

`Birds! Male and female. Miss Erica Alexander—and the company boss. Dicey George beating the other gallivants to the newcomer!' Evie laughed almost gleefully, but not unkindly. 'The newcomer with a sob in her voice talking to the overseer at Baanya. Yes, Cindie, bird-watching is quite a hobby on the construction camp.'

There was a burst of laughter at Evie's forthright way of putting things.

Cindie joined in, though Mary Deacon drank tea assiduously as if these last remarks had little interest for her. Yet her sharp ear and sharper mind caught the meaning of all that was said.

`Well, Dicey's a one for going straight through the ranks to the bait,' Hazel remarked as she passed around the cakes. 'Witness his good turn—opening up the radio unit—for a certain young lady this morning.'

For speed he's not a patch on Miss E. from Marana via the spinifex-neck between the claypans,' persisted Evie. `Watch her go straight through the ranks to you-know-who.'

`That's more or less been said already.' The third wife, Betty, also plump and dark-haired, had hardly spoken, but now she did, quite firmly. 'You two do sometimes talk rot,' she went on. 'Miss Alexander's interest in the boss is also an interest in Bindaroo, that station on the upper tableland. My husband said it's the last before the Never desert. Everyone, even as far as Port Hedland, knows there's a takeover being tried out there. Nick Brent is the cash behind the takeover and Miss Erica Alexander is the know-how. So it's said. She lives on the next-door station.'

`They ought to hurry up and marry and put the partnership in double-harness, and be done with it,' Hazel said, sitting down with her own tea.

Cindie sat perfectly still. Not even the teacup in her hand rattled. The tea in it didn't sway, and the unused teaspoon didn't clatter to the floor.

She knew her face was still and expressionless—but her

R.I.D.

heart raced. The pulse beating in her ears hurt. Yet she had to say nothing, and appear to feel nothing.

The first relevant thought that flashed through her mind seemed to be toneless and unimportant.

Thank God I didn't tell Nick that my name was Cynthia Davenport, not Cindie Brown. This morning, on that drive, he seemed . . . I nearly liked him. I nearly told him

It was at least three minutes, and some desultory but unheard talk about the station on the tableland, before the girl felt the real clang. Something seemed to hit her.

Nick, Erica, and Bindaroo! The signature tune sang in her ears.

Now she thought she saw him in his true colours. The landed man, turned engineer, who wanted to buy back on to the land using the takeover tool as his means. Fair and

square enough—if an important shareholder, namely Cindie's mother—had been informed about it! And agreed.

Her thoughts couldn't go on with the details of this iniquity. Something warned her loudly that she had now, this moment, to begin keeping an appearance of complete innocence of these things. Now, here in this caravan living-room, drinking tea with strangers, she had to begin to play Nick's game. And Erica Alexander's game. The silent game. The dead-pan way: illuminated now and again by a false smile.

This was big business, this was. And she, no matter how reluctantly, was in it too.

Cindie's heart sank. She didn't want to carry on deceiving people this way. She, unlike Erica, did not have the know-how. But she did have a duty. When she had left home in that Holden to come north she had assumed that mantle. Now she had to stay with it.

Her mother? Her gentle, spineless mother, with barely enough money left to live on! Yes. She had to stay with it. She had no choice.

At least—and this thought came with a sudden weariness of heart—at least she supposed she had to play some sort of game, for the time being. Until she could contact the Stevens brothers anyway.

Then, a ray of hope!

She thought of Jim Vernon over there at Baanya. He was her friend and had helped her out of one predicament. Now around the total horizon that encompassed her new acquaintances, he alone was the one who could and might help her again. He would tell her what to do. He knew the country. He knew the station business. He knew Nick Brent.

Jim Vernon!

Cindie clung to her idea of Jim much as she had clung to her steering wheel when stalled between the billabong and a river— When the river was down!

That night as Cindie helped Mary prepare dinner, the two children showed a readiness to talk, now they were used to the visitor.'

'You're very pretty.
Why are you pretty, Cindie?' Myrtle asked, staring at the newcomer.

Cindie was setting the table; she looked at the child with surprise.

'Am I? That's a nice thing to say to me, Myrtle. Thank you. I don't feel pretty. I feel as if my skin's dried out and the sun has burnt me brown-all-over.'

Oh, dear! How guilty that phrase made her feel.

'Brown. That's your other name, isn't it?' Myrtle persisted.

'Why—er—yes.' Cindie muddled the knives and forks at the place before Jinx's chair. She had to change them about. 'You're right-handed, not left-handed, aren't you, Jinx? How silly of me!'

The children had a single line of thought and were not to be deployed by a knife and fork being placed left to right.

'Miss Erica came down the road in the bulldozer with Ted Hawkes from back-up towards the Gibber Gorges. Nick said that's fifty miles out,' Jinx put in. 'She was the one that ought to have been brown-all-over, only she wasn't. She's all clean and beautiful, like last time she was here. She'd changed her clothes before she went up to Nick's place. They were having a drink—'

'Jinx!' Mary said crossly. 'You talk too much. Up now, and help Cindie set the table. You know where the pepper and salt are kept.'

Jinx began slowly to sidle from his chair and move towards a cupboard by the wall. It was Myrtle who took up the tale.

'All the same this one's pretty too,' Myrtle said, after consideration, meaning Cindie. 'She doesn't laugh the same way as Miss Erica does, but Nick smiles when Miss Erica talks to him. Up at his place they're sitting down in those chairs that rock, Mummy. You know the ones Nick lets us sit in sometimes. And they're having a drink with ice in it. The ice tinkles on the glasses. Nick gave me and Jinx some Coke, but he forgot to put any ice in it. He didn't forget for Miss Erica.'

'You see what I mean?' Mary said with exasperation to

Cindie. 'There's nothing for anybody to do in this place but talk about every little thing that goes on in one house or another. Even the kids catch the talk-epidemic--'

'Miss Erica was the one doing the talking,' Myrtle objected, tossing her head a little. 'That's the wrong pepper and salt, Jinx. That's the Sunday set. We have the blue pots on week-days. Mummy, Miss Erica was asking Nick why Cindie Brown was here, and I don't think she liked Cindie Brown being here. She said she hadn't heard of anyone called Cindie Brown coming through from the coast. Most times she hears, on the radio, about everyone coming.'

'She heard all right,' Mary said succinctly, forgetting the children in her irritation. 'She'd have heard the radio call from Jim Vernon over at Baanya like we all did.'

'She must have known,' Cindie said gently. 'Because after Nick rescued me he spoke to her on the radio from the utility. Perhaps she thought I was someone else, or something—'

'Yes,' said Myrtle. 'I heard that talk over at the canteen. Nick just said it was a girl called Cindie Something, like you said, Cindie. But your name is Brown, not Something, isn't it?'

'Names don't matter much, Myrtle,' Cindie parried. 'It's what people are that matters.'

'What are you Cindie?'

'Well, she's not Miss Erica Alexander, that's for sure,' their mother put in impatiently as she lifted potatoes from a saucepan on to the array of plates set out on the table.

'She doesn't look like her either,' Jinx added, now putting the blue pepper and salt pots on the table. 'If Miss Erica hadn't been there, Nick wouldn't have forgotten to put ice in our Coke. You know what, Cindie? Nick never lets us drink Coke out of a bottle, like everyone else does. He's a bit funny in some ways '

'Funny be blowed!' Mary said flatly. 'He's teaching you manners, that's what. How to sit up and drink nicely out of a glass, for instance.'

'Did he teach Miss Erica?'

'Oh!' Mary cried, almost in exasperation. 'Will you stop talking about Miss Erica! She came over the neck between the claypans from the outcamp by the lower ranges. She came down the road in a bulldozer. She's had a shower and changed her clothes, and right now is visiting Nick—drinking out of a glass that tinkles with ice, and sitting in the

rocking-chair. Now we've had the lot! The total bulletin! Let's get on with dinner '

The dinner now being served on to the plates looked good and smelled good. The children gazed at it longingly, waiting for their mother and Cindie to sit down and begin. Plainly, hunger had made them forget Miss Erica, rocking-chair, and ice that tinkled in a glass.