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“Bootha— where?” asked Gemma in dismay.

“It is rather a mouthful, isn’t it? Aboriginal, of course.”

“Bootha—”

“Gullagulla. Boothagullagulla. And, as I’ll show you presently, Miss? Mrs.?—”

“Miss Glasson.”

“As I’ll show you presently, Miss Glasson, very apt.”

“Boothagullagulla?” she queried. “But—but aren’t I at Mannering Park?”

“Mannering Park belongs to the Mannerings. I’m Christopher Mitchell. Chris.” The pleasant, barely middle-aged man looked expectantly at Gemma, and Gemma told him her first name. He was the kind of man, she knew instinctively, with whom you would want to be on first-name terms at once.

All the same she added pleadingly: “But where is Mannering Park?”

“Mannering Park lies over there.” Chris pointed. “A long way over there. We, the Establishment and I, share the same boundary fence and the same track in from The Bitumen. Only, and I think this is where you made your mistake, another twenty miles from the highway there’s a fork, and you forked to here instead of to there. I’ll have to check up on the fingerpost. I haven’t been down there for months. Perhaps it’s overgrown or even blown down. Or even faded out from our rains. Did you hear about our rains?”

“Yes,” said Gemma.

“They were unprecedented, but” ... knowledgeably . .. “there are more yet to come.”

“You think so?”

“I’m sure of it. I make a study of our weather, a close and detailed study, and all the warnings are there.”

“You just said the Establishment,” slipped in Gemma. “You meant the Mannerings, I take it.”

“Forgive my prattling tongue, please, I was just being a fool.” He smiled charmingly at her.

“And yet I’ve heard such foolish talk before,” Gemma returned.

Then take no heed. We’re all of us up here called something or other. Probably I’m Crazy Chris or Mad Mitchell.” He smiled again at Gemma, then called into the house: “How is that teapot, Ludy?”

An aboriginal woman came down the wide front hall. Already she was laden with a tray bearing a pot, cups and a plate of scones.

“I beat you to it, Mr. Chris,” she said triumphantly. “I saw the car coming along the track and I said to myself ‘This means tea or my name’s not Ludy’.”

“Your name is Special Ludy, Number One Housekeeper,” praised Chris. “Leave it, Ludy, I’ll pour.”

But Gemma did the pouring. She took over the rites, and as she did so, she felt his eyes on her, particularly pleasant eyes, she thought, very friendly, very kind, and just now very watchful.

“What is it, Chris?” she inquired after a while, finding the steady look a little disconcerting.

“Sorry, Gemma, but you reminded me of someone.”

“Someone nice?”

“The nicest.”

“You said remind
ed
then isn’t she—don’t you see her now?”

“My wife Neroli died in our first year of marriage.”

“Oh—I’m sorry.”

“It’s a long time ago now,” he said.

“But still—I mean—”

“Yes. Still that.” He nodded at Gemma, understanding what she had
not
said. There was a little silence.

“Do you live here alone?” asked Gemma presently. “I mean, apart from Ludy and the other employees?”

“My sister Isabel lives with me, only Isabel isn’t here just now. Isabel is my twin, unmarried and a wonderful person.
When I see her”
The last with feeling.

“Is she away a lot?”

“Isabel works like a beaver—no, not for herself, for others. She loves the aboriginal people and they love her. Just now she’s out on the Janana Mission while I rough it here.”

“I can well imagine that roughing,” laughed Gemma, biting into a feathery scone.

Chris Mitchell called to one of his stockmen who was passing to take Harriet out of the car, then let her roam. When Gemma warned that Harriet might eat his lawn, he said good, he had never been over-fond of the mower.

“You’re a really very tolerant person,” Gemma praised. “A very welcoming one.” Then she said impulsively : “I wonder if—”

“If?”

“If the Establishment will be as tolerant and welcoming.” She looked directly at Chris Mitchell.

“Look, I told you I was only being a fool when I said what I did,” he proffered anxiously.

“Yet Establishment has been said to me before. Several times before. Why are the Mannerings called an Establishment?”

“An establishment means a fixed state, and I guess that’s the Mannerings. Well, why not? Permanency is a very good thing.”

“And a very rigid thing?”

Chris did not answer. He pretended to be busy drinking. Gemma knew it was pretence because she had had her hand on the teapot before he began, since his cup, she had noticed, was empty.

“I’m sure,” he said presently . . . and over-optimistically, or so Gemma construed it... “that your calf will be most welcome.”

“Chris, do you always tell lies?” Gemma, more relaxed with this man than she could remember being relaxed with any man, laughed it back at him, and refilled his cup.

"We-ell,” he avoided. He looked curiously at the calf and then back at Gemma. “Anyway, why
did
you bring her?” he inquired.

“There was nowhere else to take her, and I couldn’t abandon her.”

“No, you couldn’t do that. But why did you fetch her in the first place?”

“But I didn’t. She was thrust on me. I certainly didn’t start off with her, not from Sydney.”

“Sydney?”

“That’s where I’ve come from.”

“Thrust, you said.”

“Thrust. By a road train boss. A blessed event had occurred, and if he had left the calf among the beasts—”

“Yes, that sometimes happens,” Chris nodded. “So you played mother. That was kind of you.”

“I didn’t feel kind at first, I was infuriated. You see, not only was Harriet thrust at me, she was thrust on—well, on a cake.”

“A cake? No, you wouldn’t be happy about that.”

“Worse was to follow.” There was something about this Chris, Gemma thought, that was quite irresistible, you simply had to confide in him. “Harriet was thrust next on to a dress,” she went on.

“Dress?” he questioned.

“I had this dress in the back seat. It was a special dress. A wedding dress.”

“And the cake, was it—?”

“Yes, it was a wedding cake.”

“You were taking this cake and dress to someone up here?”

“No. They were mine,” Gemma admitted ruefully.

“Yours?”

“Yes.”

Chris nodded, clicked his tongue in sympathy and was thoughtful a while. “And when you came to Boothagullagulla you were really intending to go to the Estab—to the Mannerings?”

“Yes.”

“Then you must be Bruce Mannering’s bride-to-be.” Future Mrs. Mannering. That was how Tim Torrance had put it. However, Gemma just answered Chris quietly: “Yes.”

“Mrs. Mannering.” 'Chris was looking at her very hard, but as soon as he saw her looking back at his hard look, he changed his focus.

“Well now,” he said.

A little uneasily Gemma related how Harriet had torn the veil and the gown, but for all that had been forgiven, then finally loved.

“That’s a good finality,” Chris approved.

“I took her on to the Rudhill block ... do you know the scientific station?”

“I have friends there. I’ve often run down just for a natter. Up here an hour of intelligent conversation can often do more for a man than a bumper season. Strange, though, you speaking of Rudhill. I've just learned through our grapevine that one of my best friends at Rudhill died this week.”

"Bernard Drews,” nodded Gemma. She bit her lip to steady it. “He was my godfather.” She had hardly said it than she felt his big hand over hers, tight and comforting.

“Steady,” he said.

When he saw that Gemma
was
steady, he went on: “So you were old Bernie’s girl.”

“Goddaughter.”

“He must have been proud of you.”

“I know I was proud of him. We were terribly close. And to think I just missed him ..."

“Well, it happens, doesn’t it, but nothing happens to the memories. So you went out to Rudhill ?”

“The funeral was the next day. After that—well, I came on here, even though the men wanted me to stay on. I could have stayed, too, I wasn’t expected at Mannering Park yet. You see, the arrangement was that I was to be married from Rudhill, but with Godfather gone ...” Gemma sighed.

“I understand.” Chris came in gently with it, and Gemma had a warm feeling that he did.

After a while he frowned and touched her hand again. “I should have been there, Gemma. The men are good, but you should have had someone of your own, or at least someone else.”

“I did. Well—in a way. He was a friend of Godfather’s, too. He was on the road, but he was contacted, and he came.”

“I’m glad of that, it must have comforted you.”

The high tower, Gemma thought. Aloud she said:

“Yes, it did.”

“But he didn’t come on here with you?”

“He couldn’t. He was on the road, as I said.”

“We’re all of us on the road once we get going with wheels under us.”

“Thirty-six wheels?” Gemma asked Chris.

“Thirty-six ... A road train?”

“Yes.”

“And the road boss came back for the service?”

“Yes”

“Don’t tell me.” Chris was holding up his hand to prevent Gemma. “It wouldn’t be Bagsworth or Maloney, they’d never stop, they like their pound of flesh.”

“It was Territorian Transport.”

“Yes, Tim Torrance’s bunch would do just that.”

“Only it wasn’t the bunch, it was—him.”

“Him?”

“Tim Torrance,” Gemma said.

“But Tim is the big boss, the boss of the bosses.”

“He still keeps in touch,” she explained.

“I know that.”

“He was driving that day,” Gemma told him.

“The day of the blessed event?”

“Yes.”

“A blessed event, too, I’d say for Tim.” The kind eyes now were frankly admiring Gemma.

“Chris, I am the future Mrs. Mannering,” Gemma said sternly.

“Of course,” Chris agreed. There was a short silence.

Gemma broke it.

“So you know Tim—Mr. Torrance—the
Territorian?”

“Since the year dot. He used to overland for me before overlanding was done mechanically, and he used to do the impossible, get the beasts through without a loss. He’s doing the impossible, still, but in the new road train way instead of from a horse. That” . . . proudly . . . “is our Territorian.”

"He’s been lucky,” Gemma said stiffly.

“Not Tim. Farsighted, yes, shrewd, discerning, but the rest has been sheer hard work. Still, it’s paid off. He’s right at the top now, can thumb his nose at any of the pastoralists, and that’s why . ..” But Chris did not finish that.

“Does he thumb his nose at you?” Gemma asked. “Not Tim. We’re old friends. He even gives me cut rates.”

“That,” said Gemma, “should give you an advantage over the Mannerings.”

“The Mannerings,” Chris answered briefly, “don’t truck with Tim.”

He was quiet a while, and then he laughed to himself. “So it was Tim’s blessed event,” he mused again.

“Yes.”

“Then that would make the calf probably my property. Tim was road training the beasts for me.”

“Yes, he said Harriet was rightly the property of the pastoralist whose beasts he was carrying, but he also said he didn't always write it down.”

“I’ll book him for that! No” ... at an alarmed look in Gemma’s face . . . “I’m only joking. Tim is the straightest bloke in the business.”

“But the calf. .. but Harriet is still yours, Chris.”

“No, yours, Gemma. I don’t want her. But—”

“But?”

“But I’ll take her later on if you ask me.”

“You mean when I go to the Mannerings’?”

“Yes.”

“Why should I ask you?”

“Because . . . well ... that is ...” A pause. “Look here, take no notice of my babbling. It’s high time Isabel got back. I’ve only Ludy to. talk to, and I’m beginning to lose the knack. I say mad things. Mad Mitchell, that’s me all right. Now where were we up to?”

“Harriet. . . and if she’s not wanted.”

“I never said that.”

“No, but you didn’t say she’d be wanted, either.”

They looked at each other, grinned, and knew they were at a deadlock. Gemma tried to break him down, but Chris resisted. In the end he won, and the subject was closed.

Cunningly, successfully, he steered the conversation away from Harriet and her welcome, or lack of it, and began talking instead about Boothagullagulla.

Meaning seagulls.

“Curious how a name, or close to it, can be repeated through time,” Chris said. “Boothagullagulla is from the Western Australian dialect, and it was used before white man ever set foot here.”

“Boothagullagulla was actually the name of this place?” Gemma asked incredulously.

“Yes,” said Chris. “I’ve established that, or rather Isabel, who is an expert on such things, has. It was always called Gulls.”

“But how? We’re in the centre of the inland, away
from sea, away from water. Oh, I know I saw sea birds as I came up beside the swollen Lucy River, but they had a reason, even if I could scarcely believe they’d flown this far into the interior. But there’s no river here, is there?”

“No,” said Chris, “and yet again yes."

“Yes?”

“Ever heard of upside-down creeks?"

Gemma said that she had.

“There are quite a few out here. Sandy river beds, quite often dried up almost to erosion, but underneath there is water. We feel, Isobel and I, that Boothagullagulla was once a waterway, back in the Dreamtime it would be
,
but through the centuries of centuries strange things have happened, strange things have always happened to this strange country, and the water went down and the sand and the earth came on top. Sort of reversal, if you follow me.”

“I do, and I have heard of it, but would it be only here in this particular district, Chris? Only at Boothagullagulla?”

“Yes. When you go to Mannering Park you’ll see you’re higher and on entirely different kind of ground.”

“I know,” came in Gemma eagerly, “no sense of the sea as there is here.”