The mountain that went to the sea (7 page)

`Certainly. I will be with you in ten minutes.'

Andrew was speaking to Aunt Isobel, but Jeckie had the uneasy feeling his eyes followed her as she moved along the veranda with Jane.

What — she wondered — did those intelligent, discerning eyes really discover about her anyway?

Jeckie followed Jane down the passage towards the kitchen regions. Half of her noticed how wide and roomy the side passage was. Very comfortable and civilized was Mallibee's homestead. The other half was thinking—

`Funny, but it was the mention of that mysterious person Joe Blow that made me really want to go with Barton. Otherwise — well, there's no purpose in making Andrew angry. Perhaps he's not really angry, and doesn't even care. He's thinking of the cattle camp where Barton would be needed and the water bore that has to be shut down sooner than later.'

Jeckie met Cassie — a very large, benign cook with a wide

smile, white flashing teeth in an ebony face. She too,

like Jane Baker, had descended from families that had begun their life on Mallibee at the time when the first Andrew Ashenden had taken up this million-acre run. He had been given this acreage by the Government in recognition of his pioneering work in the days when the outback regions had not yet been explored. Some parts, such as back of the ranges, weren't explored even to this day. Cassie's people had lived along the creek-bed then, and had soon made friends with the first of the Ashendens. Mallibee had remained their home ever since.

Two young girls ran giggling from the kitchen, their dark eyes flashing, as Jeckie and Jane appeared in the doorway.

`Don't you take notice of those fellas,' Cassie warned, but in rich, comfortable tones. `They'm showin' off. They gotta go down the school about now anyway — '

`The school?' Jeckie asked in surprise. 'Has Mallibee enough people on it to run a school?'

Jane Baker pretended to be busy poking about in the pantry, but Jeckie guessed she was really letting Cassie do the talking. The kitchen was Cassie's realm.

`That's right,' Cassie said. 'Andrew Boss sent Minna — the big one — down to college in Perth to be a teacher. Now she's come back alla-time here, and teaches the other children proper. What you think, eh, Jane?'

Jane reappeared from the cavernous pantry.

'Yes, that's right, Jeckie. Minna is Cassie's daughter and she is a very clever girl. She did very well at college. She wanted to come back here to her own country. For that we were all thankful. She runs the school beautifully.'

'I want to know everything about the homestead all at once,' Jeckie said. 'There's so much to see — but I've said I would go with Barton — '

'Don't you worry, Miss Jeckie,' Cassie went on, busily pounding and turning dough on a large board. 'There's plenty time. You see everything tomorra. Or maybe nex' week. How long you stayin', eh? Miss Sheila now, she stayed two months. That's why those two girls ran off giggling. They gettin' ready to start singin' and dancin' to kep you company. Tha's altogether the way Miss Sheila was — '

`Yes, I know her quite well.' Jeckie nodded her head.

She did indeed know her cousin Sheila very well. Sheila was bright and very social - that was true. But -

Oh wen, Jeckie thought. Perhaps I'm wrong -and Sheila is less selfish and much nicer than I have thought. Anyone with those all-seing diagnostic eyes of Andrew would never be taken in. Girls weren't always the best judges of other girls: especially when they happened to be cousins. Well - distant cousins, anyway.

Jeckie was so wrapped up in these thoughts she hardly noticed she had said goodbye to Cassie and the dough-board, and was following Jane to the large back veranda.

'This is where the staff have their meals,' Jane was saying. 'Isn't it lovely with those green creeper-covered walls? And look at the scarlet bougainvillma along the yard fence! We wouldn't have all that greenery, and those lovely trees, if the homestead hadn't been placed by a water hole.'

It's like an oasis in a desert,' Jeckie said with a touch of wonder as she took in the colourful world of bougainvilla, tall whitetrunked gum trees with their pale down-pointing green leaves, the oleanders and the green lawns and shrubbery. `So rich and beautiful, isn't it? Then way out there, there's nothing but spinifex. Miles and miles and miles of spinifex. I could see it all last night, but only by moonlight. It was like a wasteland. So lonely and deserted too.'

'Once people live long enough in the outback they become addicted to it,' Jane said. 'If they go away they're never really happy till they come back to it. It has its surprises for one thing. You'll learn all about them from Barton.'

'Our farm down in the south west is so rich and green looking. Out there is like a different world ..

`Don't make up your mind too quickly against it, Jeckie. I hope you'll stay long enough to love it. The land, I mean. 'This station is the cradle of your people, as it is of mine.'

'Yes, I know.' Jeckie was thoughtful. 'Great-Great-Grandfather Andrew came from England as a very young man, didn't he? He was a surveyor and made these wonderful exploration trips into the outback with a camel train and the help of friendly Aborigines- '

There was a note in her voice as if wonder had crept into it. Not only for the first time but unexpectedly too. It boggled her imagination to think of what her great-great-grandfather had done. Come across this terrible plain, never knowing if they'd strike water again. So many of the early explorers had died of thirst out here in the outback. Why had she never thought of Mallibee this way before?

Jane gave her arm a gentle tap.

`So you see, Jeckie, we don't laugh when Miss Isobel speaks of him as "Andrew the First". He really was the First, you know. The first white man ever to travel into these regions, and see them in their natural wild state.'

`No. I won't laugh,' Jeckie said. 'But I didn't laugh out loud, did I? Yet you know I was, well, sort-of sceptical?'

'Everyone has a little laugh about the way Miss Isobel speaks of her grandfather — your great-great-grandfather. She remembers him, of course, and she's a very elderly lady now. But she has never left Mallibee — except when she went to school. It is her domain. She guards it, as well as loves it. All she needs now is to see Andrew and Barton happily settled and —' she broke off.

Jeckie realized Jane was reading her a kindly lecture for her own sake, as well as for Aunt Isobel's sake. Yet here again she could hear the faint echo of those family discussions down south. Isobel is writing all round the family relations. She's anxious to patch up old quarrels. She thinks perhaps the younger generation — girls like Jeckie and Sheila — should make an effort. Something might come of it. There are two very eligible bachelors up there— and they'd be only second cousins. Or would it be third?

In many ways Jeckie had heard of those surreptitious conversations amongst cousins, uncles and aunts. She'd been indifferent. After all, families were always funny if you looked at them from the aspect of distant relationships. Quite a circus, she had privately called them.

The only thing she hadn't heard was that Sheila Bowen — that very pretty, very social third cousin of hers — had indeed made a visit to Mallibee.

Now she had come herself — but for runaway reasons which her pride would never have let her disclose to anyone else. She wondered what had been Sheila's reasons.

Jeckie's pride had been lacerated. But with that pride she would get over her heartbreak. She just had to be determined about it !

Now here she was, standing on Mallibee's north veranda looking at the gay bougainvillea along the yard fence and the blaze of hibiscus and oleander in Aunt Isobel's jungle garden in the corner. Round by the side veranda were the pot-plants. Jeckie had looked at them too.

Whether it was the change of customs, or change of scenery, she wasn't sure, but she was beginning to feel better. Different anyway.

Kind, smiling Jane-dear was touching her arm, making her feel welcome, all over again.

But not to show feelings now! She might get herself another pair of wet eyes.

Best get ready to go with Barton.

'I'm going to enjoy myself,' she said aloud. 'Jane dear — that's what I'm going to call you — Jane dear. You're being very kind to me. I mean to enjoy myself, and I hope — '

`Why, Jeckie!' Jane said with a laugh. 'You sound as if you had been afraid you were not going to enjoy yourself.'

'I wasn't sure . . . I didn't think enough about how you would all take me. I just didn't think Now I'm sorry I was sort-of scared —'

'My dear, we're all sort-of scared when we go to a new place amongst strange people. Do you know I only go south once in a blue moon? To the dentist, or to do some special shopping — things like that. I feel sick for days beforehand. And very sick the first night and day in a strange hotel. Then quite suddenly I get over it. Then I begin to have a lovely time.'

It was Jeckie's turn to laugh. 'Thank you for being so nice about it, Jane dear. You don't really know what a meanie I was before I came. Even when I first arrived too. Perhaps one day I'll tell you about it —'

'Well, I'm a good listener. And, Jeckie? Thank you for putting my name so nicely. Here comes Barton with

the Land-Rover. Run and get your sun hat or he'll start blaring that wretched horn just to annoy Miss Isobel. Barton really enjoys being irritating sometimes. Oh — and Jeckie, there's a jar of special lotion on your dressing table. I put it there. Put plenty on your face and arms. On the back of your neck too. That's where the sun strikes hardest. But be quick, dear!'

Jeckie was already half-way through the kitchen, heading for the front half of the homestead.

`I will, I will!' she called back. Her young girl's voice suddenly rang like chimes through the great old kitchen.

`That one hasn't taken long to have a shine for Barton, eh? What you think, Miss Jane?' Cassie asked.

`If that means she is going to enjoy herself and be happy with all of us, including Barton, Cassie, I hope she has,' Jane remarked as she made her way through the kitchen.

'Um!' Cassie addressed the lumps of dough she was deftly dropping into bread tins. 'Maybe Andrew likes that one Sheila. An' Barton might maybe like this one Jeckie. That'ud jes' about suit Miss Isobel all right. This old Cassie's no fool about reading right inside Miss Isobel's head.'

The morning land breeze blew coolly as the Land-Rover ricocheted over the gravel and flintstone track northwestwards. It was an empty land. So endless, not monotonous, yet sort-of empty. To Jeckie it was uncanny and not quite credible. It was a flat, red-brown country, so aged it was grotesque — yet in so striking and exciting a way, it filled her with wonder. The stony track wound and stretched on and on as if for ever. In the distance, blue-hazed hills broke the north skyline and everywhere grew the spinifex grass — here in humps and there in widespread misshapen mats. And the heat already was terrific.

'So different — ' Jeckie said, thinking aloud.

`From what? The green grasses and big trees where you come from? That's more than a thousand miles away,' Barton said.

`I know. How does anything grow here at all? The spinifex and few clumps of mulga

`The Wet. It can pour in high summer. Cyclones mostly.

Even flood. The creeks run bankers and the track's impass-able. Then there's seepage through the cracks in the hills — back in the ranges.'

'Where is the cattle camp?'

'Over that slow rise. Back behind us. You get dips in the land that-away, and that's where you find the water holes. The sheep will live on the spinifex. We have to run them further back in the bush land now. The cattle we run on higher ground. Herefords mostly, but Andrew is anxious to experiment with other types. Santa Gertrudis, or maybe Brahmin. It would be no more than an experiment at first. Out where the sheep are we get some occasional rain in early winter. Enough to keep the scrub alive, and that and the spinifex is what the sheep live on.'

Jeckie was silent for a while.

'Where are we going now?' she asked, at last. 'Do you have a road map, Barton?'

`It's seared on my brain, dear Jeckie. I can find my way any place north of Twenty-six, but there's many a one who's likewise thought they could do just that. Now and again he's found in time. But not always.'

Jeckie knew what Barton meant. Lost in the wasteland, and never found!

'How awful!' she said.

`So don't jump on a horse, or even into a car, and take off down any old track,' Barton said with a grin. 'It could be that particular track is an abandoned surveyor's route, or an old sheep or cattle pad. Leading nowhere. No place. No water. No hope.'

'Don't you care when that happens to anyone, Barton?' Jeckie asked.

'Yes. I do. But like Andrew I get exasperated because we have to start organizing rescue squads. That sort of exercise . . . looking for the lost . . . can go on for weeks.'

'I promise not to get lost,' Jeckie said fervently. 'Now please will you tell me where we are going?'

'I thought I mentioned it,' Barton said, still teasing. 'We're going to look at a mountain that's all but gone to the sea.'