The river is Down (21 page)

'I find myself at your mercy,' he said, so unexpectedly that Cindie almost fell off the chair.

'At my . . .? What did you say, Nick?'

'I need a secretary. For a short job, but an important one.' He looked up as if surfacing from a sea of strange thoughts and caught the amazed expression in her eyes.

A wry smile flitted across his face in an unexpected yet engaging way.

`I need to meet some very high-powered, influential and

boring gentlemen: the type who are impressed by status symbols. When one deals with such people one deals with them on their own terms. One puts on the trappings. How are you receiving at your end of this two-way, Cindie?'

A smile lit her eyes. She was receiving very well. She'd seen her boss in Perth in this same situation. But he, her last boss, had preferred a dragon of a secretary to give loftiness to status, and to keep at bay the staff of his business contacts. So this was to be Nick's way? A secretary installed between him and the adversary.

`You needn't reply to that, Cindie. I can see you have had office experience in what was a high-level concern.'

`The firm I worked for was rather that,' Cindie said with some modesty. 'But—'

`Buts don't matter. I have no one else but you for this job. And no one I can bring in from the coast at the moment. That river is still down. So ' He shrugged. He was momentarily amused at his own predicament.

This new manner of Nick's resisted Cindie's explanations. There was a quizzical intentness in the way he looked at her and waited for her reactions. He wanted someone, and she was available. What did she say to that simple declaration?

`If Mary can spare me—' she began tentatively. 'I would like to do what you ask. That is, if I have the ability.'

She had forgotten Bindaroo, Erica Alexander, her spiritless mother, and even Jim Vernon. She was mesmerised by the unknown, and involved with the challenge of the moment.

Nick had uttered the truth plainly, and without loss of personal authority. He was asking her a favour, and said so. He needed her. Would she comply?

`Of course!' she said, breaking the silence that had fallen in the room, where the last of the sun shed a pathway for a million motes shafting through the window.

`I did say the occasion would not be on the site?' he reminded her, watching her. He was wondering how she would take an immediate separation from Jim, but Cindie was unaware of that.

She put the tips of her fingers on the table's edge and looked at them, wondering only at the inexplicable.

She lifted her head again.

`Yes, you did mention that. Do you mean it is to be-somewhere farther up the road?'

`Right up and out of it. At Mulga Gorges—some hundreds of miles north. There's to be a conference at which I need

to be present. One always has to know what the other inventive fellows are up to, when road and rail construction begins in limitless lengths around and across our north.'

The road right up north—Jim had spoken of that. But one could only get to Bindaroo by aeroplane from there? At least there was a way—

If she earned enough money, even an air trip might be possible! Well, nothing was impossible anyway. That man walking in space, for instance—

At the thought of that distant station on the upper tableland Cindie came back to earth with a bang again. She remembered something else with a jolt like a knock on the head.

This journey to the north was the pleasant, almost friendly suggestion he had made after that fire-in-the-spinifex episode. Had she seen wildflowers up in the north? He might take her sometime.

Oh, wily Nick! He had known about this meeting at Mulga Gorges all the time. He had been watching, from lofty ambush, her prowess with the typewriter; and whether she did or did not get on with other people. He had known all along what he intended to do with her—if her colours came up bright enough.

She would challenge him with it, one wonderful distant day! That would be when she didn't have to depend on this particular job to finance her dear possession, the Holden!

The silence had not been as long as it seemed, for Nick had walked to the window, then returned to the table. He did not sit down this time.

He had played a shrewd, though engaging, hand with Cindie, and had won it. Weren't bosses always in the winning position?

'I've found one of the men, a greaser on the power engine, who some years ago was employed as a hospital orderly. He has never mentioned it, but I have it here on his record card from the employment bureau. I'll put him full time on the sickbay, and that'll take that load off Mary's hands—'

Will he want to do it?' Cindie asked, watching Nick cautiously.

'The river is down, and he can't walk out on me.' He had picked up a pencil and was putting a dot somewhere on one of his plans.

'You will apply pressure on him then? Not charm?' Cindie asked, too innocently. Nick looked up quickly. Cindie was in the process of standing, then putting the chair in towards

the table. She had to look at what she was doing, of course: not at Nick.

'Some people understand one kind of pressure, others another,' Nick said, ice in his voice. 'I've never heard of anyone who could resist the down-beat of an extra pay cheque for special duties. I don't think I will have to worry about James Brennan on that score. He's always short of money. It's a chronic state with him. He'll get time-and-a
half rates, with no extra hours.'

She wanted to apologise, but knew she couldn't.

`Have you finished with me now, Nick?' she asked instead, rather lamely.

`Yes. Thank you for coming to the office. Mary will give you the particulars of this assignment later. Meantime, I expect your dinner is getting cold.'

'It'll be covered, and in the oven.'

He walked round the table to the door and held the screen open for her. As she passed him, she looked up, but saw only the old frosty mask.

'Good night, Nick.'

'Good night, Cindie.'

As she walked away across the stubble grass, now blazing gold in the dying sun, she knew Nick was still standing at that door, watching her departure.

We're both a couple of double-sided fakes, she thought. I am not who I am on the employment card in that office of his.

He is never the same person twice running.

Erica Alexander, in her imperious way, was not used to being kept waiting. She had her own quiet manner of punishing people who crossed her.

When she discovered—from Flan passing by—the identity of the person keeping Nick late at the office, she sent an SOS to Jim Vernon to come and join them for dinner.

'Miss Cindie can do without her evening walk,' Erica reflected, as she applied the last touches of eye-shadow and lipstick to her make-up. She paid attention to her appearance at all times and in all places. She had learned long ago that this was a trump card in handling the staff at Maranaincluding her parents. The men on the property never argued with her when they were busy looking at her. Her parents

were proud of their beautiful daughter, who also happened to have brains and an able control of management. They let her have her way. It was easier for all.

For so many years Erica had never been crossed that she did not know how to take it when chance brought even a miner crossing. . . .

That unknown girl, Cindie Brown, had irritated her from the start. She seemed to have Mary Deacon and Flan, even the overseer from Baanya, wound round her adroit little finger. Erica had drawn Nick's attention to this already.

`To-night—' she decided, 'Miss Cindie will understand where her real place lies in this camp. Those blatant carryings on with Dicey George in the canteen! And Jim Vernon by moonlight! Now she's keeping Nick talking when it's right on the hour for the sundown drink. Who does she think she is—other than a waif brought in from the river?'

Jim Vernon, she knew, would answer that last-minute invitation by coming. No overseer at Baanya, any more than the half-witted Stevens brothers at Bindaroo, could afford to cross someone from Marana. Both those stations had either to truck sheep across Alexander land, as with Bindaroo, or share the same shearing team as Marana. It was the only team that would come this far outback.

Marana's south boundary was Bindaroo's north boundary; the way out for staff or stock. The northwest apex of Marana bounded, for a short distance, the north-east apex of Baanya. It was at that point the annual cut-out of weaners and stragglers was mustered and shorn between the two stations, as one simultaneous exercise.

Oh, yes! Erica told herself, pressing her newly-reddened lips together on a piece of tissue. Jim Vernon will come all right. Baanya has to co-operate with Marana.

He arrived ten minutes before Nick, while Erica was in the tiny kitchen thinking up the right extras to add to her sauce for a Chinese dish which she had prepared earlier in the afternoon.

`What are you doing, Miss E?' Jim asked, leaning over her shoulder to look at the recipe book. He had brought himself straight through the living-room, at her call from the kitchen.

`Making a sweet-and-sour sauce,' she said, not turning round. 'The wretched ingredients are so limited in this place!'

`Ever heard of Jim Vernon's version of a sweet-and-sour?' he asked cheerfully. 'You ask Mrs. Overton. She'll recommend it.'

Erica turned round and smiled at him. It was really an engaging smile, one well practised and one that could inevitably win her her own way.

`Dear Jim!' she said. For that, you've just landed yourself a chore. You make the sauce, while I go and get the drinks ready. I shall probably put quinine in Nick's—when he comes. I'll have to find some way of punishing him for being late. Office work, if you please! And at this hour!'

`You don't know Nick,' Jim remarked casually, tasting the concoction of onion and tinned pineapple Erica had already put together. 'He works all hours all days, so I'm told. That is, except when the Queen of this part of the earth comes over to the camp for a visit.'

'So!' Erica replied to that quip with a supercilious raising of her eyebrows. 'I know very well what they call me in this district. Queen of the Spinifex. It's a compliment, of course.'

`You bet!' Jim spooned large dollops of sweet chutney and some lemon juice into Erica's mixture; stirred it, then tasted it again. 'It's better to be the Queen than the dunce in any House of Parliament. Whose mighty tread is that I hear? Sounds like Nick. Don't forget the quinine—'

But Erica had gone through the door.

`Nick darling. So late!' She stood very close to him in greeting. So close in fact that he was aware—as he was meant to be—of her perfume, and of the near warmth of her body. She put her fingers on his lips, sealing them. 'No explanations,' she ordered. 'That tedious girl demanding an interview? I guess it in advance. Oh, well, pour yourself a drink, Nick, and one for me too. Jim's in the kitchen making a superior sauce. At least that's what he thinks.' Her laugh had its own brittle charm.

'Work must go on,' was all Nick said. 'I apologise, Erica. I don't know whether it's Jim's sauce, or what goes with it, but something out in that kitchen smells very appetising. I'm glad you asked Jim. I rather thought it was a bit late for him to be dining, when he possibly—'

'You mean you know about those nocturnal rambles with Cindie Brown? And you haven't stopped it? What will the rest of the camp think!'

'That they're twenty years old, at least—therefore adult. Jim, in fact, has knocked thirty-five off the calendar.' He brought her her drink, placating her with his rare but sometimes illuminating smile. 'In any case,' he added, 'Jim will go back in a day or two; on that same log, if he can't manage any other way. After all, they are mustering at Baanya!'

Jim came in at that moment, to announce the sauce was now on the simmer and could Miss E. spare him a drink too!

The dinner went quite well, but there was a strain in the air. Erica put it down to Nick's lateness. Certainly he was as attentive—as beautifully-mannered—as he could be, when he liked—but now and again she caught him glancing at Jim Vernon as if there was something on his mind. Whether Jim sensed it or not, she didn't know, but she was furious when ten minutes after the meal Jim excused himself.

`Sorry, Miss E. Sorry Nick, old chap!' Jim explained, putting his coffee cup on the table and standing up. 'I have a date.' His eyes met Nick's. They were two men accustomed to frankness. Jim had a date, so he saw no reason why he should not say so. Erica's little plot of punishment had fallen fiat, but she couldn't afford, for the sake of her dignity, to let Jim Vernon know that.

`Well, another night ' she said airily. 'That is, if you're

with us long enough.'

That 'us' spoken almost in terms of partnership did not escape Jim. He went out thoughtfully, quietly rubbing his bottom lip with one finger.

Had Nick and Erica really teamed up? Matrimonially, or business-wise? Maybe both! He wished Nick more luck than that.

Cindie, unaware of that truncated dinner party, was waiting for Jim on the canteen steps.

`Very brash of me, isn't it?' she said lightly, as she took his arm. 'I should have waited in the shadows to make sure you were here first.'