Wedding at Blue River Read online

  He told her that women did not go into public bars in Australian hotels. He called any inn or public house a hotel. “It’s nice not having to take your womenfolk into a special bar,” he said, “and your licensing hours are more sensible.”

  He seemed to find everything enjoyable, Jane thought as she scattered the dry mustard over the ham. That was another little Australian habit he had taught her. “We don’t mix it wet—in our climate it would need to be made fresh twice a day.”

  She was going to miss him abominably. She wiped her hands on the cooking-towel and touched the back of her neck where he had kissed it. The skin felt burning hot. She told herself that she was behaving like a frustrated spinster, getting in a twitch because a good-looking young man had given her a casual affectionate caress. She was twenty-five, she had been a nurse in a big London hospital, due to sit for her senior state examinations when she had had to come home and help her mother to nurse her father through his long final illness—she knew the facts of life.

  “You’re nobody’s pin-up girl!” she admonished herself in the small kitchen mirror, softly and aloud. She thought that the small face with its snub nose and wide mouth, its crown of crisp, short dark hair and its large brown eyes was too homely. Lisa had always been the beauty of the family.

  “Who says so?” Steve’s laughing voice asked behind her. As she swung round, startled, he took her in his arms and kissed her with sudden, expert passion. To her intense dismay she felt herself responding as passionately. The hunger of the past three barren years made her treacherous body yield to his ardour in a way that both frightened and thrilled her. She felt as if her very bones were melting. She hadn’t been kissed like that since Ian ... but she didn’t want to remember Ian now.

  “I’d like you for my pin-up girl,” Steve was saying when the first throbbing tide had passed over them, holding her a little away so that he could look into her face. And now he was not laughing any more, but his eyes were boring into hers with a curious intensity, “I’d like you for my wife, Jenny. Sell up here, my darling girl—come over to Blue River and marry me. We could be so happy—I think you’d like Blue River.”

  “Darling Steve! You must be crazy—we hardly know each other! Two weeks ago we were complete strangers,” she said the first words that came into her head, trying to sound as if she could treat the whole thing as a joke. She knew that it was not a joke. Steve had drawn her to himself as a magnet draws a piece of steel.

  “So what? It doesn’t take two weeks to fall in love. We were made for each other, Jenny,” he put a finger under her small determined chin and forced her to look at him He said with unusual seriousness, “If we part now we’ll never forgive ourselves. You know it as well as I do—you can’t look at me and say you don’t love me, Jenny—can you?”

  She cried indignantly, “It’s not fair! Swooping down on me like a—a spaceman or something. Selling me on the idea of Blue River, making it sound like the Garden of Eden!”

  He did laugh at that, and kissed her again until she broke away from him and began putting the sandwiches into a plastic bag. “You’ll need these for the journey. I’ll make you a flask of tea in the morning,” she said dully. For a moment she hated Steve for making her remember what it was like to be wanted and loved, for telling her so many stories about Blue River. When he had gone it would make her life seem much emptier, much duller than it had been before.

  “The hell with that,” he said, taking the sandwiches out and putting them on a plate, “let’s eat them now by the fire. I can get a snack at some hotel in the morning. I wish to goodness I could cancel this trip to the Argentine, but those cattlemen will be expecting me. They’ll want to sell me some stud stock for Blue River.”

  “Of course,” Jane said dazedly. Against all her common sense she began to believe he was serious in his proposal, and a vista of sheer delight opened before her tired eyes. She knew she would love Blue River, that she would fit into the station life like a hand into its own glove. Steve told her so, and there was truth somewhere in this fantasy. By Melcoombe standards he was a very wealthy young man accustomed to getting his own way. He called her Jenny, as her father had done. He made her feel for the first time in three years young and desirable and optimistic about the future as they sat together on the wide old couch talking, eating ham sandwiches, staring into flames of the log fire, making love, talking again.

  “We’re dreaming all this up, Steve, my dearest. It wouldn’t be easy to sell this cottage, and there’s Lisa—”

  “Lisa will get strong and well at Blue River, and meet another handsome young Australian and fall in love and get married and have thirteen children.”

  “Why thirteen?” she asked, laughing in spite of herself. Would Lisa enjoy life on an Outback cattle station, even if there was plenty of money and every comfort?

  “It’s a lucky number. Listen, Jenny-Jane, and I’ll tell you what I want you to do. We can arrange everything so easily if you’ll stop being a pig-headed little pommie.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  IT was nearly midnight on the second day of the flight and all the passengers in the pressurised cabin of the Comet seemed to be sleeping peacefully in their reclining seats—all except Jane, who had never felt less like sleep in her life. Beside her Lisa slept like a child, her long eyelashes—darker than her golden hair—sweeping the flushed curve of her cheek with its delicate, rose-petal skin. Jane knew that Lisa’s air of fragility was misleading; apart from her tragic accident she had never known a day’s illness and her dancing training had made her supple and strong. But that was eighteen months ago, Jane reminded herself quickly; throughout the flight everyone from the captain to the stewardesses had gone out of their way to make the journey happy and comfortable for the girl whose wheel chair had been lifted up the gangway by a couple of stewards. Lisa had been excited and gay, more like her old vivacious self; the whole prospect of going to live in Queensland, of her sister’s impending marriage to Steve Forrest, had pleased and excited her, taken her out of her absorption with her disability.

  Jane would have loved Steve for that if nothing else. The adventure had given Lisa new hope. She had so many things to love him for, Jane thought warmly ... without his high-handed impulsive demands she would never have had the courage to sell Lilac Cottage and embark on this twelve-thousand-mile journey across the world ... not that they had seen much of the countries over which they had passed, and one airport was very much like another. The Comet flew too fast and too high to see anything except a carpet of flocculent cloud beneath them except when it was losing height to come in and land. There was no sensation of speed in the cabin, it had been a tranquil and uneventful journey. Jane looked at her watch; at dinner the second pilot had come round and given them local time at Darwin so that they could adjust their watches. It was nearly ten hours ahead of England. They would land in darkness at one-forty a.m. Friday, while people in England were having tea in the afternoon of Thursday ... Jane smiled suddenly. This time-thing was as fantastic as everything else about the whole adventure, and the Comet was nothing less than a magic carpet—as Lisa laughingly said.

  “Think of it, Jane! Leaving this beastly winter behind, stepping out into sizzling sunshine! Oh, how I love to feel warm! It’ll be better than the South of France, won’t it?”

  She’d dryly reminded her sister that they would be landing in the middle of the night, but it was impossible to damp Lisa’s high spirits. At the beginning, when Jane had gone down to Falmouth to tell her everything, she had tried to sound a few notes of caution. Blue River was a remote station, seventy miles from the nearest small township ... Lisa might be bored to death, especially as she could not ride or swim or take part in the more enjoyable aspects of the Outback life, like the monthly dances at the Oonga Club ... but Lisa had only laughed.

  “Of course you must marry Steve! He sounds a dreamboat, and if we do get bored sometimes he’s rich enough to take us to Brisbane or Sydney for a spree, isn’t he?” she had sa
id naively. Lisa made no pretence of disdaining Steve’s money. “Oh, darling Jane, lots of lovely cash and nice clothes and cars and things will be heavenly after all your pinching and scraping! I’m sick to death of being hard up, aren’t you?” She added laughingly, “I shall write to Steve and tell him so. He’s lucky to get an angel like you, sweetie, but we’re lucky, too. Fancy a white knight turning up in little old Melcoombe! He might even stump up for me to have more treatment in one of their marvellous clinics—or maybe, as he says, the sunshine will do the trick.”

  Lisa turned a little under the light rug that covered her useless legs and smiled a little in her sleep. She had accepted the situation at once with the impulsive eagerness of Steve, refusing to see any snags. Poor darling! Jane thought. She’s been so frightened and bored and depressed with all that time in hospitals and clinics ... Jane hoped with all her heart that Steve and Lisa were right in their optimism. Sometimes she wondered if, contrary to appearances, Lisa was the practical one of the family and she herself the shy dreamer ... hiding her dreams and fears under a practical exterior.

  Everyone had seemed to think like Lisa. All her old friends in Melcoombe. Especially Anne and Roger. “Of course you must go! Darling Jane, it’s the chance of a lifetime—and about time you had some fun after three mouldy years—” they’d cried, enthusiastic about the idea because they themselves were emigrating to Canada. They’d even suggested to the new owner of Barton Manor that he might like to buy Lilac Cottage for his wife’s parents, and to Jane’s amazement it was all signed and sealed within a couple of weeks. Completion could not be obtained before the Lesleys left England, but he had paid a substantial deposit and Jane had not had to use the cheque for five hundred pounds Steve had left with her for their air-passages. She was glad about that. It left her with a small shred of her native independence, she thought wryly.

  She stared out of the window at the tropical moonlight shining on the broken cloud carpet far below the aircraft. It was a silvery, magical world like a beautiful dream; it was difficult to realise they were flying thousands of feet above the chain of islands between their last stop at Singapore and Darwin ahead ... islands in the Java Sea, the Timor Sea. Jane and Lisa had studied the map of their route intensely. Places with wonderful names like Sumatra, Java, Bali, Pango-Pango ... Jane wondered if the natives in these tropical islands ever turned in their sleep, aware of the great silver aircraft speeding through the sky above their heads ... if they ever gave a thought to the travellers from London, Zurich, Beirut, Karachi and Calcutta ... but of course the Comet was a commonplace in their lives, unseen, unheard.

  It was nearly one o’clock in the morning of Friday, the twenty-fourth of November, when the hostess came round, gently nudging people awake enough to fasten their safety belts. The Comet was losing speed and height preparatory to coming in to land at Darwin. The steward followed her with cups of tea for the yawning passengers.

  “I hope Steve got home yesterday, as planned,” Jane murmured, suddenly anxious. “I wish now he’d given us his addresses in the Argentine. Writing all those air mail letters to wait his return to Blue River seems rather silly, somehow.”

  “I think it was a nice, romantic idea!” Lisa sipped her tea, her eyes sparkling with mischief. Who would ever have thought that staid old Jane would get herself entangled in a gorgeous love-affair like this! “Wanting a great bundle of your letters to welcome him home—he must be a poppet of a man. You’ll have to get married fast or I’ll steal him from you yet, darling.”

  Jane smiled wanly. Now that their landing was only minutes away she was suddenly terrified in case something had gone wrong with Steve’s fantastic plan. “Do you realise that if something detained him in the Argentine, he won’t even know we are arriving?” she muttered in sudden panic. She had a hundred pounds in travellers’ cheques with her, equal to two hundred and fifty Australian dollars. It wouldn’t last long if they had to go to a hotel and wait for Steve’s return...

  “Don’t fuss, sweetie,” Lisa said equably. She was looking forward very much to meeting Steve Forrest. “He asked you to try and get here as soon after the twenty-third as you could, he left you the money for our fares, didn’t he? And you’ve had that sheaf of long, expensive cables! I don’t think he could have gone off the boil in three weeks, or he’d have put you off.”

  Jane laughed, relieved. She was more relieved when, following Lisa’s wheel chair down to the lighted tarmac of Darwin Airport, the immigration officer stamping their passports and entry permits told them that a charter plane was waiting to take them straight on to the Blue River station.

  “The F27 over there, Miss Lesley. Here’s your pilot, Jack Hennessy. These are the ladies for Blue River, Jack.”

  “Welcome to Australia,” the bronzed young pilot looked them over with obvious appreciation as he shook hands. A middle-aged man called Art Ross joined them and was introduced as Jack’s engineer. The passengers from the Comet were dispersing rapidly, some to cars and utilities beyond the barrier, some into small aircraft that took off almost immediately. The night was dark and still beyond the airport, and very hot. Jack smiled, as everyone smiled, at Lisa. “Shall we be on our way, or do you want to freshen up first?”

  “Let’s be on our way. How long will it take to reach Blue River?” Lisa decided for them. Jane, now that Steve had obviously got home yesterday and had all the arrangements in hand, was as eager as her sister to get there.

  Jack, grinning at their eagerness, drawled lazily, “We’ll get you there for breakfast, Miss Lesley. It’s about eight hundred air-miles, across the Gulf. This little job isn’t a Comet, you know, but I hope you won’t be too uncomfortable.” While he talked he was pushing Lisa’s wheel chair towards the plane on a distant runway. When they reached it he and Art lifted it up the steps as if Lisa were a featherweight. Jane followed with their hand baggage and one of the Customs men followed with their big suitcases.

  Everyone seemed friendly and easy, yet curious about the girls. Jane wondered if they knew she was to be Steve’s bride.

  Once the lights of Darwin dropped astern they could see moonlight flooding the calm waters around the coast, then the craft turned inland and flew over a tableland that Art said was Arnhem Land. It was very hot in the small cabin, but Lisa didn’t mind; she hated the cold. Art brought them sandwiches and a flask of tea while they were crossing the Gulf in the waning moonlight, and after that they slept a little through sheer fatigue though this plane, flying lower and much more slowly than the Comet, without air-conditioning, was not nearly as comfortable.

  The girls woke suddenly to the splendour of a tropical sunrise, the sky ahead shot with fiery splendour, the golden light spilling suddenly over the eastern mountains of the Cape York Peninsula.

  “Nearly there. Better fasten your belts.” Art was laconic, but his hands as he helped Lisa were gentle. “We’re putting down at Oonga airstrip—Joel McEwan will be there to meet you with the utility. Joe’s the Blue River manager. Tell Steve from me, he’s a lucky devil.”

  “Thank you,” Jane laughed, but she was very tired and her heart sank a little because Steve was not meeting them himself. Perhaps, if he had only got back from South America yesterday, there would be too much to do on the station.

  The pilot introduced the station manager when he had made a bumpy but safe landing on the rough airstrip. Joel shook hands and got on with the business of seating them in the front seat of the Chevrolet utility and stowing their baggage in the back. “Guess you must be pretty tired? Would you like to stop at the hotel for breakfast, or go straight home?”

  “Straight home, please.” This time it was Jane who made the decision. Lisa stared curiously about her as the utility shot through the small town of timber houses along a wide street with grass verges and many flowering trees, but Jane was on tenterhooks to reach the journey’s end. To get home. To see Steve again and know that it was not, after all, some crazy dream she had dreamed up for herself. She was glad Joel had brought a d
eep foam-rubber cushion for Lisa’s seat, because the dirt track across the dry-looking plain was bumpy travelling. “It’s better—greener—when we get into the hill country near the river,” Joel said once and relapsed into a silence that was somehow not unfriendly. Jane, used to the spaciousness of Dartmoor, thought that it was like a pocket-handkerchief compared with this vast sun-drenched land with its flocks of clean white sheep grazing, its scattered clumps of forest trees and bluegums providing shade for the cattle.

  Joel stopped the utility each time to open a series of gates in the electric fences when they were on Blue River land, and Jane began to recognise landmarks. This was hilly but not mountainous country and the grass was greener as they approached the homestead. The utility swung round past the long sheds and the stockman’s quarters without pausing, though small groups of men and women and children stood about with undisguised curiosity to see the new arrivals. Lisa waved to the children. “I feel like Royalty,” she said laughingly, and fell silent with the sudden beauty of the river below as the car turned the shoulder of the hill and drew up by the front steps of the homestead.