WIFE TO SIM

Joyce Dingwell

Miranda was in the unhappy position of being married to one man while loving another.

But Sim was such a kind and affectionate husband that the marriage might yet have work out had Jeff not come back into their lives again.

CHAPTER ONE

From the outside of the bedroom door Aunt Francie called: ‘The Leightons are here to take me to the church, Randy, so is there anything else, darling? Your hem? Your veil? Your—'

From the inside of the bedroom door Randy called back: ‘No, Aunt Francie. Thank you for everything. I’ll see you there. At least' ... a nervous little laugh ... ‘I’ll try.'

‘Lean on Uncle George,' boosted Aunt Francie, ‘that’s his role today, the bride’s leaning post. Also, take deep breaths. Then remember’ ... her voice receding as she started down the stairs ... ‘the one who will be waiting for you at the other end of the aisle.'

‘Yes,’ said the girl in white, ‘I’ll remember ... I hope.' She knew that Aunt Francie would be out of earshot for those last two words.

She heard the front door close. She heard the Leightons’ car going down the drive. In six minutes ... Aunt Francie had timed every detail ... Uncle George would knock on the door, bring in two glasses of fortifying sherry, say encouragingly, ‘Time, Randy,’ then that would be it. That would be it! What an odd way to put it. This was a marriage, not a - a—

Also, she cared about Sim. She cared about his kindness, his thoughtfulness, his dependability ... most of all his care for her. Surely all these cares summed up to the care that counted most of all. They must do, otherwise would she be standing here waiting for Uncle George to collect the bride to take her to the most important appointment in a girl’s life? Would she be waiting in white swiss and cloudy tulle like this?

I care, Randy said determinedly aloud. It had the earmarks of a rebound wedding, she knew that, but she had liked Sim from the moment she had met him, liked him much more really than she had liked Jeff, and everyone knew that in marriage a deep liking was more lasting than— But, in spite of her efforts, she found she could not finish that.

A little frantically she picked up the article she had clipped out of that magazine and read so often ever since. It quoted from a lecture by a professor in America, and it said, among other things, that in self-choice marriages one expects too much of love, but that in arranged marriages because only a little is expected there was always much more. All this, for her, was exaggeration, of course. This marriage now was self-choice, there had been no influence, not even the remotest arrangement, but there was also ... and Randy knew it... only a little expected, that was as far as she was concerned. The big expectation, the wonder, had been for Jeff.

She put the article down firmly. Which means, she summed up, that this marriage can have no let-down, whereas marriage with Jeffery ... Oh, Jeffery! She doubled her fingers so tightly that the palely-pinked nails dug into her palms and made her flinch, but at least the pain stiffened her, firmed her resolve. All that is over, she accepted. Now it is Sim - dear Sim. She meant that. Dear, dear Sim.

Miranda had met Simon Mallow here at Uncle George’s and Aunt Francie’s, and at once she had known it could be all right. An unromantic way to put it, but at least reassuring. It could be all right. It was going to be all right.

She had closed a door, or at least Jeff had closed it, though she had no doubt that Jeff had not thought so when he had written as he had down to Broadfields in the Riverina, where she had been governessing, from Sydney.

‘Mirrie’ ... he was the only one who called her that, it was his name ... 'I'm flying tonight to England to be with Uncle Benjamin, whose health is causing his housekeeper so much concern that she has written out to his only relative, yours truly, in Australia, and I intend to stop over there right to the end. I'll be honest with you, dearest, I’ll stop even if that end takes years. I love you, Mirrie, and if my action sounds mercenary, do believe me, I’m doing this first of all for the only girl in my world. Perhaps I would think twice if Uncle Benjamin was not quite so affluent, but he is, and I will be, and so ... I hope it with all my heart... will you.

Till I come back, this year? next year? some time? I love you,

Jeff.'

She had loved him, too, but after that letter it had been a broken, bruised love. A hurt love. Perhaps he was doing it for her ... well, for her as well as himself ... but if his love was all he had said it was, could he have placed it second-best, as he obviously had? Could love ever be second?

She had sat up all that night following the letter coming to terms with herself, and the sum total of her findings had been this: She believed that Jeff had believed he loved her, even had loved her in a pale sort of way, but not in a big way, an unending way, and certainly not in a way that would last this year, next year, some time, not this love that must wait on money, finally that when the money did come there probably would be another more convenient love. England was a long way away.

So. ...

*

She had been governessing in the Riverina at Broadfields Park, she had always been a country girl, and she had known it would be no use staying on at Broadfields, where she first had met Jeff who had been temporarily jackerooing there, because of the memories, so she had come to Sydney to Uncle George’s, Uncle George also country-bred but now in his maturer years leasing out properties instead of managing them, and among the many country guests at the city house had been Sim.

Then...

Uncle George and Aunt Francie had been overjoyed. Since her parents’ deaths they had planned for a ‘happy ending’ like this for their beloved niece. At times Randy had even wondered if their anxiety had been part of her quick capitulation to Sim, for she cared very much for both of them.

But no, that was unfair to Sim. She really had liked him, liked him immediately. As tall as Jeff, as broad, as blue-eyed (though where Sim came from the sun hid a lot of your eyes in sun wrinkles) and as nice. Nicer, perhaps? Nice enough not to think this year, next year, some time, where money was involved? But that was unfair now to Jeff. Sim already had his money, plenty of money, Uncle George, well pleased for his niece, had reported. Up Top ... that was in the Northern Territory and where Sim had achieved his sun wrinkles ... properties made the New South Wales properties seem mere backyards. 'Sim Mallow’s Yanni,’ Uncle George had told Randy, ‘covers over a dozen of your Riverina holdings.’

She had learned that Yanni meant journey ... ‘But it will be journey’s end,’ Uncle George had beamed on Randy, ‘for you.’

This had been after their quick engagement, an engagement had anyone been aware, though they hadn’t, could have been tagged rebound. Yet, Randy had known, if not exactly understanding why she had known it, it had not been like that, it had been - it had been— Well, it had been Sim himself. She had needed Sim. He, it seemed, had needed her. Needed her enough not to waste time on this year, next year, some time, but to plan to marry her at once.

‘Time, Randy,’ called Uncle George on the other side of the door, and he came in with the two glasses of fortifying sherry, ‘To our girl,’ he beamed.

‘To my aunt and uncle,’ appreciated Randy.

‘To Sim,' said Uncle George, and Randy nodded and drank again.

‘Ready, dear?’

So this was it. ‘Ready,' Randy said.

‘There was more mail for you. Want to read it in the car?'

‘I doubt if I could,' she admitted.

‘A few butterflies, eh? Well, I’ll slip the bundle on the top of your bag and you can read them in a more leisurely fashion tomorrow.' He was helping her down the stairs. ‘Randy girl, I’m not one for extravagant words, but you look a queen.'

‘Thank you,' she smiled, glad that she had not disappointed him or Aunt Francie by wearing the plain street dress that she had planned at first.

‘But, Randy, you can’t deprive us,' Aunt Francie had cried. ‘We always dreamed of a daughter, didn’t we, George, and our daughter of our dreams went to the church as a white bride.’

‘It’s Sim,' Randy had tried to explain, for in spite of her resolve she could not make herself feel like a bride. ‘I hardly think a tough Westerner like Sim would want a fuss.’ She had glanced at the big quiet man for support, but though his glance back had supported her, he had admitted diffidently, ‘I can see you as a bride, Miranda.’ He was the only one who called her Miranda. It seemed it was his name, as Randy was for the others. As Mirrie had been for Jeff.

‘There you are,' Aunt Francie had said happily, so Randy had come half way with the simplest frock she could find, but still a bridal dress. If it had turned out the success that Uncle George had just acclaimed, then she was glad.

The big black car with the white streamers ... she had capitulated there, too ... was threading its way through a benign traffic (even the truckies were giving way to romance, Uncle George declared) and the church with its spire pointing like a fingerpost to heaven was rising up.

Now was the time when half-hearted brides began having other thoughts, thought Randy, but to her surprise, for though she was not half-hearted she was less than wholehearted, she felt an inexplicable eagerness in her, almost a satisfaction. Not understanding it but very relieved because of the ease it afforded, she let Uncle George help her out, conduct her up the steps, through the arch, into the long aisle.

There were not many in the congregation, and they were mostly her aunt’s and uncle’s friends, nice, mature people, smiling benevolently at her, and, touched by their kindness, Randy smiled back. She was still smiling when she reached Sim’s side, and he was smiling, too, only his smile did more than lift his lips and reach his eyes, it came right out to her, it enfolded her, and, a little bewildered, for she had not expected this, she knew, even if she did not comprehend it, that wonder she had thought was only for Jeff. It was the excitement doing it, of course, but it was nice.

'Dearly beloved. ...’ The words were floating around her. She had determined not to think of Jeff, but she had felt sure he could creep in, and it was in amazement that presently she felt Sim’s lips gently on hers, heard the minister’s final declaration, listened to the happy congratulations of the guests. So it was over. She was Sim’s wife.

It was the same at the reception afterwards, she still felt glad. Glad? But she accepted it gratefully, let the gladness carry her to Sim’s car that carried them both up to the Blue Mountains for their brief honeymoon. ‘It has to be brief, Miranda, Yanni is at its busiest.’ Sim was negotiating a bend. He told her he had chosen these mountains because Yanni had none, or very little, and what heights they could boast were red and ochre, never blue.

‘Also, I wanted to keep in touch with my brother-in-law who unhappily is in hospital in the Lower Mountains,’ he sighed.

He had spoken very little of his family, and Randy asked him now to tell her.

‘Stepbrother-in-law, really,' he smiled, ‘I myself was an only. But I’m quite fond of my stepsister Ruth.’

‘They live in the Lower Mountains? Here in Sydney?’

‘No. It’s a long story, but I’ll tell you briefly. Ruth married a widower with two children. The marriage didn’t work, so Ruth went to Queensland and Carl came down here.’

‘With his children?’

A pause. ‘As a matter of fact the kids have been with me. But all that will be changed, of course, now that I have a bride.’

‘That’s why you want to be in touch with the children’s father?’

‘Yes. To make arrangements. Unhappily' ... Sim said again ... ‘he’s been taken ill.’

‘Not to worry,' smiled Miranda. ‘It’ll sort out.'

‘Of course.’ Sim accelerated and brought the car up a steep bend to halt at a charming mountain-top hotel.

‘It’s lovely,' Randy said.

He turned in his seat to look deeply and warmly at her. ‘It will be,' he promised quietly, ‘it will be.’

They had dinner at a small table by a window that during the day would look over the mountains. It was too dark to see anything now, but Randy could feel the pansy blue velvet almost as if she had it in her hands. The air was sweet and piney.

They walked in the garden afterwards, Sim excited at night-scented stock, at jasmine, at cool country blooms that you only dreamed of Up Top .. . ‘though, Miranda, we do have flowers.’ Then along to their room.

There was the blue velvet feeling here, too, the same piney sweetness. But most of all there was that unexpected wonder for Randy, that surprising realization that she was still glad.

Long after Sim had gone to sleep, Randy still gazed through the window at a handful of bright stars, amazed at her own bright calm.

When she awoke it was morning. Sim was not beside her and she remembered him telling her he was a cockcrow riser, and she smiled.

She lay deliciously inert for a while, enjoying her indolence, then she occupied herself with the pleasant pastime of deciding what she would choose today from her new clothes. It all depended on the programme. If they went rambling, she would need slacks, if they went sightseeing she would need— In the end Randy got up, then sat on the floor beside her second bag and opened it.

The bundle of letters was right at the top, Uncle George must have placed it there in a hurry because as she unsnapped the catches the letters all tumbled out.

They were all postcard size, card-thick, obviously congratulations and good wishes ... except one which was on air-fine paper. Even before she saw the writing, Randy knew whom it was from.

She sat there a still moment, steeling herself to open the letter - Jeff's letter. Then, tremblingly, she did.

‘My darling Mime’ ... his name for her, Jeff's name ... ‘It’s all over, Uncle Benjamin has just passed on. If you have judged me mercenary, my sweetest, believe me that I’ve been glad these last few weeks if I’ve been perhaps just that, if only I had known, and loved, that fine old man. I do believe I brought something to him, Mirrie, which makes me happier now to accept what he has left me. It’s quite considerable, darling, for which I shall always be grateful, but grateful most of all for knowing him. I will always cherish that.

‘I’m coming home as soon as things can be fixed up, and if you want to know where home is, it’s where the heart is, and my heart is, as it has always been, with you,

‘I know you love me, but still I must ask this: Is it too late?

‘That this year, next year, some time didn’t even reach one year, did it? Until I see you,

‘Jeff.’

She put the letter down, but she sat on. She was still sitting there when Sim came in. She turned her head away; she had not cried, but she felt sure that something must show.

But when Sim spoke, he was preoccupied, he was almost not with her, and she knew he would not have noticed, anyhow.

‘Trouble, Miranda,' he sighed.

‘Yanni?’

‘No,’ grimly. ‘No, I didn’t leave this address there. But I had to leave it at the hospital. I mean—’

‘I understand, Sim. Is there news?’

‘Yes. Unhappy news.’

‘Carl? Your stepsister’s husband?’

‘Ex-husband.’ He nodded. ‘He died last night.’ He walked to the window, stared broodingly out. ‘It was expected eventually, Miranda, I was warned that. But I never thought it would happen now. I mean not just yet. I mean—’

‘Those poor little mites!’ Randy’s thoughts at once were with the small ones.

Sim shrugged. ‘I doubt if it will touch them much, they’ve been with me for some years, and a few years in a child’s life seems forever.’

‘Then you’re sad for Carl, Sim?’

‘Oh, yes, I can be sorry there. For Ruth, too, who was as much to blame, I expect, as her husband. But most of all, Miranda, I’m sorry for us.’

‘Us, Sim?’

‘It’s this way, darling, I was trying to arrange for Carl to take up his responsibilities again, or at least make new arrangements, now that I’d become a family man myself. I can still fix things up, of course ... good schools, or a good hostel, or ... but until I do ... Why, Miranda!’

For Randy was on her feet and coming across to him to put her arms around him. She was putting them eagerly. They’re ours, of course,' she cried, 'ours. At least for as long as I can governess them. I was a governess, you know.’

‘I know, but they’re not ours, and they’ll never be, but if you can put up with them until I find a way out—’

‘Oh, Sim!’ In a sudden relief she could not have put a finger on, Randy put her lips on his.

'Darling, I do believe you mean it,' he marvelled.

‘I do. Oh, I do.’ And she did. All at once the pain in her was finding release. She could not have explained it, but these children, these demanding children, for all children were demanding, were easing an unbearable tension.

‘We’ll go back at once,’ she planned. ‘We’ll go up to Yanni. We’ll go to - what are their names?’

‘Jane and Justin. But Miranda . . . Oh, you amazing girl!’

He had his own arms around her now, and she stood in the circle, numb yet not purposeless, and that was all at present that she could ask. A purpose.

‘I could almost feel jealous,’ Sim whispered, and she looked up quickly. ‘Jealous of children,’ he went on. ‘If there’s so much for two who are nothing to you, how much will there be for ours?’

Ours. Ours had been Jeff’s and hers, now they would be Sim’s and hers. It seemed the first time she really had realized that.

‘There will be nothing left,' Sim was finishing with a smile, ‘for me.’

There was nothing now, she could have told him, all that temporary gladness and wonder had gone, gone with the words in a letter.

But she would never tell him, because she liked him so much, more than she had liked Jeff, and wasn’t liking more important than—

'Darling, you look so serious,' Sim said. ‘I was only joking, of course. I love you for loving children, but I just wanted you to know that I love you most of all for you!'

He picked up the letters that had scattered on the floor and put them in her hand. ‘All congratulations?’

‘All congratulations.' She put them away, then hesitated and turned round. ‘One needs a reply.'

‘Then reply, Miranda.'

She did so while he went out to arrange for an earlier breakfast, an earlier departure. She phoned the desk, gave the room number, then dictated the cable. It did not take long, for it was a brief cable. All it said was ‘Yes.'

Jeff had asked her if it was too late and it was better to close it at that, not to add to it, not to explain.

‘Yes,' she dictated. Then she said: ‘It’s to be signed M-I-R-R-I-E.'

She put the phone down.

CHAPTER TWO

It was three days later and Randy and Sim were flying home. It was a long time since Randy had been able to say ‘home’. Her parents had suffered a fatal road accident while she was in her teens, and after that it had been boarding school with enjoyable breaks at Uncle George’s and Aunt Francie’s yet still their but not her home, then when she had left school it had been governessing posts in different country towns but once more, however pleasant, somebody else’s place but not hers.

But Yanni was home, Sim’s and hers ... yet could that really be true? Home was where the heart was, Jeff had written, and though in the last few weeks Randy had thought she had known a change of heart it had not been a change really, for that uplift she had felt at her wedding had proved only a passing thing. It had been all reduced in the end to actuality, the actuality of her deep respect and her fond regard for Sim ... but her love for Jeff. She wished she could alter it. She was married to Sim and she wanted to make it a full marriage. For a brief moment standing beside him at the altar, lying beside him and looking out of a window at a handful of stars, she had felt it was. But it must have been only an acceptance in her, an acceptance because she had believed the page that was Jeff had been turned. It had not been turned, or at least ... and this made it much worse ... it need not have been turned. If only she had waited ... If only she had trusted ... If only she had believed ... If only she could put aside this pain.

She had embraced the thought of the children almost fiercely. Even driving down from the Blue Mountains on that first morning she had clung to the children, occupied herself with them. Since then they had become her defence, her buffer, her weapon against emptiness.

Sim did not know, of course, and she would see to it that he never did. Only on two occasions had she sensed a wondering in him. Once had been when he had emerged from the hotel that morning and crossed to where she had waited in the car. He had said nothing, only given her a quick glance that she could not understand.

But almost at once it had been over, and they had descended the blue foothills talking quietly, companionably.

‘I must wait until the funeral is over, Miranda,’ Sim had sighed. ‘I don’t believe Carl had any people, so—'

‘Will Ruth come down?’

‘I haven’t been in touch with Ruth, so I wouldn’t know where to locate her.’ He had sighed again, and, touched, Randy had put her hand on the hand at the wheel.

‘Sim dear—’

'Yes, I know. It’s just that I planned everything so differently. Now—’

‘Now two little children are parentless and much worse off than two adults who have merely suffered a curtailed honeymoon.’

‘Merely, darling?’

'You know what I mean.'

'Do I?’ For a moment that odd look had returned but again only infinitesimally. ‘Yes, poor nips,’ Sim had agreed.

‘Tell me about them, Sim - the children. Their ages, their appearances.’

‘Age,’ he said, ‘not ages.'

'Twins?’

‘Yes.’

‘But a boy and a girl.'

‘Only biologically. Although I know identical twins have to be the same sex, these two are like peas in a pod.’

‘The age?'

‘Ten.’

'The colour of the peas?'

‘Khaki tan all over - they’re outdoor kids. They have achieved, so the correspondence school report says, an exactly identical learning standard.’ He paused. ‘Low. Also’ ... before Randy could offer a defence ... ‘Mrs. Fife, my housekeeper, reports that they like and dislike exactly the same things. She also hints ruefully that they’re fair devils.’

‘That doesn’t scare me, all children are.'

‘Little governess,’ he said fondly, taking his eye off the road for a loving second. ‘I do believe,’ he said presently and more seriously, ‘that they could be a handful. Ruth simply couldn’t bear them.’

‘Tell me about Ruth.’

‘She’s younger than I am, older than you. She came with my stepmother when my father remarried many years after my mother died but only a few years before his own death. It was a companionable marriage, and it was a pity it had to be brief. I liked Marion very much. She looked after me wonderfully while Ruth was in boarding school, and when she, too, died, Ruth took over. But’... laughing tolerantly ... ‘not so wonderfully.'

‘But you’re fond of her?’

‘Oh, yes. I also feel responsible for her marriage, that marriage that never worked out. Ruth was impetuous, and had fallen in and out of several foolish affairs. The last one really angered me, we had some fierce words, and I think she actually took up with Carl just for spite.'

‘But how would that make you responsible?’

Sim gave a shrug. ‘She met Carl at Yanni,’ he said.

'Did he work there?’

‘He was an agent who happened to drop in, not a bad fellow, I expect, but you as a country girl must remember how in remote places a new male to a bored female can often take on an extra charm.’

‘Oh, yes,’ nodded Randy, recalling the agents who had had business to transact at Broadfields and the girl diversion they had created. Why, at one time, she half-smiled, a jealous Jeff had— But she put a brake to that memory.

‘He had a broken marriage behind him,’ Sim recounted. ‘Ruth had a broken romance. Sometimes it can work out, sometimes not. It didn’t this time.’

‘How did you come to have the children?’

‘An agent has to move around. Entranced with Carl... at first ... Ruth moved with him, left her new stepchildren with me. They simply stayed on when Ruth left Carl and when Carl neglected to call for them.’

‘Poor babies!'

‘You’ve said that before, but they’re not. Yanni is paradise for children, all the north-west is, there is space, sun, they can run wild. And they have run wild, Mrs. F. often indignantly reports. So, darling, there you are. But I promise you it won’t be for long.'

‘I might want it for long,’ she said. She knew she did want it for long, in fact just now she wanted it for ever. They were her buffer, those two.

‘Proper education, darling,’ he reminded her sagely. ‘Even correspondence with a governess to superintend it can’t take the place of a good school. Besides ...’ Again he took his eyes off the road to look deeply at her.

‘Yes, Sim?'

‘Ours. Ours, remember. Something entirely apart from any readymade family.'

She was aware of a choking feeling in her; last night in that bright calm she had not felt like this, but then all that had been only illusionary.

Quickly, jocundly ... or jocundly she tried ... she asked, ‘I suppose a cattleman always orders boys?'

‘Oh, no, girls.'

‘Girls?'

‘Ask any father Up Top. The boys move on to stations of their own, but the girls bring their men to the home station. Apart from that, girls are more help. That’s a fact, Miranda. A cattle station depends on its horsemen, and there’s no better horseman than a horsewoman. The fair sex have an affinity with horseflesh, in fact it’s almost impossible to keep them away from it. There are onion farms in Europe where I’ve read that daughters are prayed for because they are endowed with better onion- weeding fingers. Well, some of us up there pray for girls, too, because one dedicated girl in a saddle—'

‘I can ride, of course, but I can’t say I’m dedicated,’ laughed Randy.

‘We’ll have Jane look you over,' promised Sim, ‘though it wasn’t you I was meaning, darling, it was—’

‘The family that’s not readymade.’ She said it lightly, but was sharply aware of that pain again, that pain that never really left her.

She stopped with Uncle George and Aunt Francie until after the funeral, then Sim sold the car . . . ‘plenty of transport at Yanni, Miranda, besides the station plane there’s jeeps, waggons, utilities, but not fancy bits like this’... then at last they left for home. Home is where the heart is.

And that was what Randy was thinking now, looking down on a country like no other country she had ever seen before although she was a country girl, terrain in the baked colours of old pottery yet here and there peacock flashes in brilliant sky and vivid hill, home is where the heart is, and this is the Australian heart, but is it, could it ever be, my heart? Without Jeff, can there ever be home?

‘Miranda.’ There was a bemused note in Sim’s voice, and she guessed he had spoken to her before and she had not heard.

'I'm sorry, Sim, I - I was absorbed.'

‘It’s absorbing country. I was asking you had you had experience with our aborigines before?’

‘A little. There were some in several stations at which I worked.’

‘Yes, but these will be entirely different.'

‘A different race?’

‘More than that an untouched race. This tribe at Yanni have never been anywhere else but here. They are a gentle, proud, kind people, even the myalls.'

‘What are they?'

‘In this instance uncivilized aborigines, but their lack of civilization lies in the right direction, I mean, Miranda, they have retained a lot of what we could do with in our so-called enlightenment.'

She nodded, looking down at the terrain beneath her once more. It was amazing country, one moment hard and unyielding with its stretches of gibber, in its sparse offerings of mulga and spinifex, then the next rich in growth, in lagoon, river, in sun-dancing billabong.

‘When do we reach Yanni?' Randy asked.

'We're over it now. Probably in the first hundred miles,' he smiled.

He drew her attention to a brumby mob, to a dingo silhouetted on a hill, then soon after he was passing on the signal from the single pilot for her to fasten her safety belt, and the small plane was circling, then levelling off. She was standing up in the cockpit that just could hold the three of them, then being swung down.

‘Welcome home, my wife,' Sim said.

She had no time to think painfully this time that home was where the heart was; for the moment the propellers had cut to a standstill and she had been put down on rich red earth, she was the centre of a friendly group, pushing over the white upturned plastic buckets that marked the station runway as they clamoured forward to greet New Missus. 'Do you mind, darling?' Sim asked anxiously.

‘The greeting or New Missus? I don't mind either.' Randy smiled at the crowd that Sim was holding back.

There must have been forty of them, twice that number counting the piccaninnies, and several had taken advantage of the moment to dress up in tribal paints and feathers. The rest of them wore vastly varied attire. The house staff women were in shifts, the cattle boys wore Stetsons, some of the pics had shorts and T-shirts, but mostly the children were naked. But they all smiled, yet Randy, smiling back, noted that Sim was unsmiling.

‘What is it, Sim?’

‘Jane and Justin. They’re not here.'

‘Well, does it matter?’

‘Everyone else has come along ... not Mrs. Fife, of course, but she would be busy with tea.’

‘They may be helping her.’

‘The twins!’ He gave her a surprised look. ‘No, darling, this is probably deliberate.’

‘I can handle that, Sim, I never went to any place that didn’t produce a reluctant scholar.’

‘Perhaps, but they didn’t know about you being a teacher, so the reluctance is certainly for you and not any schooling. For me, too, probably, for bringing you back. Not out of jealous love, oh no! They’re simply completely insular, they resent any change, I’ve noticed that before. But this is still an impertinence, and I’m annoyed. Never mind, it won’t be for long.’

Won’t it? thought Randy. But it will be for long, it must be. I’m very fond of you, Sim, and I’ll stick to my bargain, but I have to have something - someone to work on, to absorb me. I have to have a purpose. She had no doubt she would achieve this quite soon. She had a natural instinct with children and so far she had never failed. She smiled up at Sim and impulsively touched the little frown on his brow.

‘Little governess,’ he said.

A station waggon was waiting to drive them to Yanni, which Randy now glimpsed in the near distance. It looked imposing for a home so far from anywhere, to where everything to make it such a home must have had to be transported considerable arduous miles.

The pilot of the small plane was waiting for them to move to the homestead so that the flying dust from his departing craft would not worry them. They climbed in, waved to him and set off. It was only a short distance, but it was a way of pure delight for Randy, for out of the sea of spinifex and mulga had been created an island of leaf and blossom that must have taken years of tending and loving patience to achieve.

‘Why, it’s beautiful, Sim,' she said eagerly.

‘It is - now,' he answered, his eyes saying it, too, and a little uneasy, she turned away, pretending new interest in the flowering oasis brushing at the jeep’s side.

First the overseer's cottage, then other cottages belonging to the book-keeper, housekeeper, several members of the staff, he recited, then outbuildings, then a neat row of chalets for those of the aborigines preferring that mode of living, for many of them he told her, still did not and would not, and who was he to dictate a preference?

A turn in the drive, then Yanni itself, surprising in its two storeys, for country homes invariably adopted the long, low, rambling design, Randy had always found; even the Queensland houses, though on stilts, were one-levelled. But Yanni was a formal downstairs and up; apart from its wide verandahs at both levels it could have been a town house. And a very beautiful house.

Lawns so green they almost accosted the eye ran right up to the iron lace of the lower verandah railings, while white pots of brilliant geraniums set off the upper levels. Beyond the verandahs through wide-flung, white voile- hung windows Randy could see large, gracious rooms.

‘I should carry you in,' Sim was saying softly by his wife’s side, ‘but I doubt if it would be understood.’ He glanced at the beaming audience, who, in spite of the fact that the jeep had transported Randy and Sim, were also there. Either they must have been remarkably fleet of foot, thought Randy, or known some short cut.

‘Neither,’ laughed Sim, reading her thoughts. ‘There was a truck out there, though in your absorption I doubt if you saw it.'

‘All those people in one truck?' she disbelieved.

‘I’ve seen it travel with double that number. Darling, I can't carry you, only in my mind. The myalls, and there are a few in just now, might think I’m using a new dragging-you-in-by-the-hair method.'

‘Then let it be in your mind,' Randy agreed. She walked beside him up the broad front steps. On top of the steps stood the housekeeper in welcome, and she began to clap, whereupon the natives took it up, especially the children, who added their own jubilant capers.

‘If we waited, our braves’ ... Sim indicated the decorated natives ... ‘would dance. They seize on any opportunity. But we’ll leave that for some other time. You must be tired. Also, you must want to see your home. I know’.... grimly .... ‘that I want to interview that offending pair. I can’t believe their absence was not deliberate.’

‘They’re not here,' came in Mrs. Fife tartly, but she smiled warmly at Randy and ushered her in.

The floors of Yanni were dark honey-stained wooden blocks for coolness, but rugs for comfort and colour had been thrown down, and they picked up the lights of the native woods in glowing red and tawny goldens. The house was formally laid out, reception rooms downstairs, bedrooms on the upper storey. The very large bedroom to which Sim led Randy opened out on to a personal balcony, and it was furnished very beautifully — for a moment Randy caught her breath as she thought of that rich furniture being brought overland across perhaps some of the toughest terrain on earth ... in a scheme of plain dark unpolished wood with drapes and spread of cool lime.

The rest she did not see. She was in Sim’s arms and he was carrying her across the threshold this time, no one to watch now, no puzzled natives, not even Mrs. Fife.

No one? Two small identical figures rose up from somewhere, either from beneath the bed, or behind a wardrobe, fairly magnetized out of hiding in their mutual curiosity and scorn.

‘Is she sick?’ asked one voice.

‘Can’t she walk?’ came an identical tone.

Sim put his wife down in annoyance. ‘Really—’ he began furiously, but Randy stopped him.

‘You wanted them here,’ she reminded him fairly, then she turned to smile brightly at the children, a boy and a girl, though as Sim had told her it was hard to tell which. The girl... that one, presumably ... wore her hair short, while the boy ... the other one if this was the girl ... wore his longer than usual. The length of both coincided. In fact everything coincided, features, colouring and clothes. Shorts ... boys’ type ... for both, T-shirts, thonged sandals.

They did not smile back at her, they also obviously did not appreciate her intervention on their behalf.

‘No good sucking up,’ they said together almost in the one low voice.

‘Yes, I wanted them here, but not in our bedroom.' Evidently Sim had missed the impertinence, evidently, too, by their disciplined voices they had intended that. ‘Has everything to be spoiled?' Sim went on. He said it in mild exasperation and Randy took advantage of the mildness to say consolingly that they were here, anyway, so not to worry.

‘Sucker!' Their small impertinent mouths mouthed silently but unmistakably. They mouthed it at Randy. Oh, well, she’d had worse than this in her time.

'Scram,' said Sim to the two banes, ‘vamoose, disappear. I’ll speak to you afterwards.'

‘You should,' said the girl, for only a female, decided Randy, would think of this formality, ‘introduce the lady.'

'The lady is my wife,' Sim said, ‘but I doubt if she would want to meet you.'

'Yet I do,' said Randy. ‘Hullo, Jane and Justin. I’m Miranda.'

‘A funny name, Verandah.'

‘I’ve been called that, too,' Randy agreed amiably, ‘even though it’s not. What do you want to call me?'

Jane said, ‘Nothing, really,' and Justin said, ‘A lot of things.' But they both backed a step at a certain look in Sim’s eye, for this time Sim had heard.

‘You can’t call her Miranda, that's my name for my wife, but there are other names,’ he said decisively.

‘The other name,' came in Randy quickly, for Mirrie could only be Jeff’s name, ‘is Randy. Will that do?’

‘What are the aborigines calling you?’

‘New Missus so far,’ Randy laughed.

‘Then New Missus will do.'

Sim began to object, but Randy, wise in the exasperations of the young, touched his hand diplomatically and appealed, ‘You said something about tea.’

‘Did I? Then, darling, of course. Tell Mrs. Fife we’re coming down’ ... he directed this to the twins ... ‘but take your own grub out to the verandah. You’re not eating with us.’

‘Was that necessary?' Randy asked as the children, rather deflated, went off, and Sim nodded.

‘They don’t belong here, it was only ever a makeshift arrangement, and after these impertinences I doubt if I’ll allow them to remain even the short time I had decided to give them. No, I’ll see to their removal at once. They’ve been quite abominable, and if it starts off like this how much worse could it get? We live our own life, Miranda, I fully intend that - our life, not theirs. But don’t look like that, they certainly couldn’t have won you, darling, not in that short time, not in any time, not those two.’

No, they hadn’t won her, but still she must win them, have them around her, for without them she was alone, she was - well, she was love-exposed, Sim’s love for which she had no love to give back, only deep regard.

Diplomatically again she averted, ‘Tea now, please,' and they went down.

The children were out on the terrace as ordered and each munching a large iced bun. They eyed Randy unblinkingly, but she refused to be discountenanced by their steady stare and began winning Mrs. Fife’s heart by cutting herself a large slice of her toppling sponge.

‘ “Soon Mi-ran-da

Will be as big as a verandah,” ’ Justin intoned slyly of the slice of cake, as pleased with his rhyme as his successful delivery of it, for obviously Sim was out of earshot again.

‘ “Keep eating, Justin,

And you’ll soon be bustin’,” ' retaliated Randy, who had always found that children appreciated participation. She was rewarded by Jane’s instant giggles at Justin, but not with Justin’s mirth. He turned his disapproval physically on his twin, and they staged a battle — bang, scratch, wham, yelp, nothing withheld.

‘So they’re not identical,’ mused Randy of the fight.

‘Not with each other, only when they’re united against the rest of the world,’ sighed Sim, ‘which is practically always.’ He went out, took an ear of each and marched them out of the house, sending them off with a kick apiece.

Once on safe ground they continued their rhyming, now coupling ‘New Missus’ with ‘Love and kisses’, and Sim said, ‘I won’t argue about that, darling,’ and he put his arms tenderly around her. He urged, ‘Don’t let those impossible young ’uns get you down.’

‘Oh, no,’ she promised, with much more intention than he could have thought, ‘I won’t.’

‘Because,’ he continued, ‘by the end of the week they’ll be gone.’

‘Gone where, Sim?'

‘School.’

‘Have you chosen the schools?’ That can’t be done overnight.’

‘Any school will do, any place will do, so long as they’re out of my hair.’

‘It’s nice hair.’ She said it impulsively, rather surprising herself; she had loved to run her fingers through Jeff’s fair thatch, almost as fair as her own tow, but Sim’s hair was crisp and deep russet, almost as though it had absorbed some of the glowing red of this glowing west.

He put his fingers over her fingers to keep them there, and something unexpected and electric went through Randy. She stood very still in the warm loving pressure, feeling her pulses quicken suddenly, hoping they did not betray her in that meeting of hands, for she knew that fingertips beat strongly, that they can comprise a giveaway. Yet, she thought, what could they possibly tell when there was nothing there to tell? Why was she feeling like this?

Mrs. Fife relieved her tension by coming in and saying that the overseer was ready to discuss the month’s business if Mr. Mallow was ready.

'I'm not, but I suppose I must,' regretted Sim. ‘Come on, Miranda, let me present my wife.'

Randy went with Sim, met Tony Juniper, then as discussions got under way went quietly back to the bedroom. Here she unpacked her bags and hung up her clothes. At the bottom of the second bag was Jeff’s letter. She knew she had been foolish to retain it, but somehow she had not found the heart to discard it, not his final... final for her . . . words. But firmly now she took it and tore it across, tore it again, put it in the tidy that was provided. She felt safer without it, even a little unburdened, and, changing into a cool shift and buckling on sandals, she went out to explore her new home.

Yanni could have been any other station she had lived at, Randy decided as she walked around, except for one thing: there was so much more of it. For example it wasn’t just a matter of one farm shop, that most valuable of functions as all countrymen were aware, it was a matter of many at Yanni. Instead of a single shed hung with sledgehammers, crowbars, shovels, saws, scythes and sickles, there were sheds hung with them. Bemused, she went down the string of outbuildings, peering into each, taking deep breaths, for farm shop smells were smells she had always privately delighted in, she loved that essentially male aroma of sawdust and creosote, that pungent honest tang of old leather, that now pervaded much more space than the space she had been used to. Why, this place was vast!

She turned from the sheds at last to look out at the flat terrain that surrounded her on every side until the blood- red of the horizon range outcrops rose up, the flat that stretched as far as she could see. It was a considerable distance that she could see. Sim had told her that. Out here in the desert, he had said, the curious atmosphere made everything much clearer, seem much closer, it could reduce twenty miles to the easy focus of one mile. A hazard if you were walking, you could think you were almost there whereas you could still face a long, long trek. It was mirage country, in fact.

Mostly Randy’s governessing had been in the Riverina, that paradise, she had often thought, of surely everything on earth - sheep, maize, fruit, oats, rice, wheat. She also had experienced horses at Broadfields, upon occasion even helped in a breaking-in, the milder ponies being reserved for her, and she had had this mildness in mind when she had told Sim that she could ride but she could not be termed dedicated. For here, she knew, dedication would be imperative, the object of the dedication the horse that you rode, for the mount that was yours would be all-important to you, it would stand between you and the cattle, for which this place entirely, solely existed. Cattle country, here it was all essentially, emphatically beef.

Beef Baroness. She experimented idly with that for her own amusement. And why not? If Sim was a beef baron, and looking round Yanni he certainly must be, wouldn’t Sim’s wife ...

Sim’s wife. Wife to Sim. All at once the country was wavering before her, this mirage country, or was it the sudden blur in her eyes disturbing her focus?

She brushed a determined hand across her face, straightened herself, then walked down the slight gully to the row of small chalets. She stopped to talk to the lubra sitting on the step of one of the cottages, and proudly the woman invited her in. The interior consisted of only one room, but it was large enough to partition with a bright bead curtain, that clinked with a rather pleasant discord in the faint soft breeze. The lubra drew Randy’s attention to the curtain, running her fingers lovingly through the gay bead slats. Cooking, Randy found, was done outside with the ‘fellers’ who lived in the ‘gully’. The gully was that slight decline where those who did not care about sleeping within walls divided their time at nights (according to the weather) between a canvas or sapling canopy or a ceiling of stars.

Randy found the woman friendly but very shy, harder to talk to than the aborigines she had encountered in some of her governessing posts, but then those people had seen much more of the outside life than the tribe who lived at Yanni.

She found the piccaninnies much the same as the lubra, eager to be friends but reticent about it. She waved good-bye to them, then sauntered on, attracted by noise and dust some several hundred yards across the flat... or was it much further than that in the mirage country? ... to what she thought could be a horse-break.

As she came nearer she saw that instead of a break, branding was taking place. It was something she had never cared about, she believed it was the innocent acquiescence of the calves that always dismayed her. She would have felt better had they protested, but it was still a necessary job, especially on a property like this, and as Sim’s wife...

Sim’s wife. Wife to Sim. There she went again. But this time she did not let her eyes blur, the country waver, she went firmly forward until she reached the outskirts of the group.

It was a brass day, that was the only way you could describe the weather up here, bright and hard and deeper than gold. Brass. She found shade under a coolibah to watch.

There were coralled herds being guarded by native stockmen looking very professional in their ten-gallon hats, high boots and bright shirts. The cattle, Aberdeen Angus, Herefords, shorthorns, a separate enclosure for some ‘Brahman Boys’, as she had heard Sim call this imported stock, waited peaceably enough. She had heard that a Brahma steer could be touchy, they were considered more intelligent, but in their corral, these big, grey, unusually humped fellows stood quite docile. Indeed, it was one of the shorthorns, from whom you did not expect trouble, that started the disturbance. Suddenly the beast must have grown exasperated with his fold, for, taking the opportunity when a boy was manoeuvring a calf out to receive his station mark, he made a dart forward, and then next minute all the branding was in a commotion. But not for long. These stockmen were always on the alert, and within minutes the whips were cracking and any start of a rush was being quickly and efficiently subdued. But also in those minutes Randy was drawn round to the other side of the coolibah tree, then half impelled, half urged up. What else would you expect from a slim ten-year-old than a hitch? she thought gratefully, looking across at Justin. Jane, sitting on a branch at her twin’s side, must have impelled and urged up, too, for she joined in his snort of careless derision when Randy proffered thanks for what had been done to her.

‘All the same, thanks,' Randy insisted, ‘I could have been trampled. Now’ . . . before they could utter a word ... ‘you’re going to say “would it have mattered?” ’ Their caught-out expressions told her that she was right there.

‘Why do you hate me so much?’ It suddenly occurred to Randy that perched on a coolibah tree must be perhaps the most unlikely position in the world to hold an investigation, and the absurdity of it made her giggle.

‘Steady!’ The giggles had unbalanced her and once more Justin did a rescuing act.

‘Thank you again,’ appreciated Randy. ‘Had you not grabbed me I would have fallen to the ground, and would it have mattered, anyway?’ She said it in the one breath, still caught up in the humour of it, the idea of an inquisition in a tree! Jane’s spontaneous giggles came first, Justin’s not far after. They might not have made high grades in their correspondence lessons, but they were bright buttons, Randy decided.

But sternly the giggles were stifled, their faces wiped free of mirth. Randy realized she was not to win through that easily.

‘We don’t hate you,’ said Jane, ‘at least no more than usual, but we’re sorry you’ve come.’

‘Isn’t it the same?’ asked Randy plaintively.

‘No.’ It was Justin now. ‘If you lived over at Rosslyn, for instance, or Ellesmere, or anywhere, instead of Yanni, we wouldn’t be sorry because we wouldn’t be leaving. Because you’re married to Sim, we have to go.'

‘Not necessarily,’ said Randy eagerly.

‘Oh, yes.’ They spoke together now. ‘Children don’t stop with—'

‘With parents?’ Poor little loves, Randy thought sympathetically, making a yardstick like this from their own confused lives.

‘With two grown-ups,’ they both amended coldly. ‘It’s nothing to do with parents.’

‘It was with you,’ dared Randy.

‘They weren’t our parents.’

‘Oh, I know that Ruth ... that Sim’s stepsister was not, but—’

‘He wasn’t, either. The one who just died. So you needn’t say you’re sorry, in a soft voice, because he was only a stepfather and we can’t remember him, anyhow.'

‘Oh,’ Randy said.

The herds were in order now, the branding nearing its finish. ‘Then you don’t hate me?’ mused Randy. ‘Then you only resent me coming here because it could mean that you have to go away?’

‘Why do you say ‘‘could’’?’ came Jane sharply. ‘Men and women never want children around. Those other ones didn’t - that Ruth and Carl. They left us here with Sim.’

‘And you’re unhappy now because you love Sim and you might have to leave him?'

'We don’t love anyone,’ they said together, 'but we don’t want to leave.’

‘Children on stations usually have to leave at some time or other. I had to go to boarding school myself.’

They gave her a cool look as though to say ‘So what?’

‘No one has ever wanted us, but Sim has taken us,' Justin stated factually, ‘so naturally we feel this way.’

‘Naturally,' agreed Randy, deciding that Justin with that cool reasoning could be a barrister, or a judge, one day, that is if his grades could improve. Grades reminded her of school, and she said mildly that schools become quite attached to the pupils and vice versa. At least she started on the vice versa, but Justin broke in, ‘Of course, when they’re paid to take kids in. Getting paid makes a difference. We have to say this about Sim, though, he’s never been paid for us.’

They were an odd little couple. Randy believed she had never met an odder pair of juveniles before. But she had to make allowance for their odd circumstances, for their isolation. Then one did not know what their parents were like, that is if it were true that even Carl was not their father. She must ask Sim tonight.

But immediately, she thought eagerly, she must establish her anxiety to keep them by her. In spite of all the modern slants in child psychology, the new angles, she still believed in the basic principles of love, as much love as you could heap on.

‘But I want you,' she said warmly, deeply, enfoldingly ... or at least she hoped it sounded like that. 'I can’t let you go, not just yet. Why, I hardly know you.’ It had always worked, love never let her down ... but it did this time. Or was it that her real reason showed through? That reason of the necessity for involvement so that Sim would not notice that their scales were unbalanced? Children were very perceptive.

‘Why,' demanded Jane, proving her perception, ‘would a new wife want us?’

Justin, not quite up to his sister in the way boys of that age generally lag behind, nodded agreement.

What have I landed here? despaired Randy. These children might get a poor school report, but they’re shrewd little baggages in the ways of the world. She thought ruefully a moment about her bad luck. Children mostly are untroubled small people, eager to accept on face value. These two were going to fight her every step of the way, but she still intended to fight back. She needed them.

‘I’m getting down now. If it will please you I’ll fall and hurt myself.’ She made a joke of it.

‘We’d still have to leave,’ they said bleakly.

She need not have spoken about falling down, one of the men came across and lifted her to the ground. She stood talking with him for a while, then when she turned round she saw that the children had gone. She went back to the house.

Sim had finished the business with the overseer, and came out to meet her. She told him about the branding incident, making much of Justin’s quick action in impelling her up the tree.

'Yes, you can get a sly beast at times,’ Sim nodded, not commenting on Justin. ‘Mostly, though, they don’t use an opportunity like that, they’re pretty amiable. I must speak with the stockman who manoeuvred out the calf to be branded. He’ll have to give a closer watch.'

‘Justin—’ Randy attempted.

'Yes, darling?’ patiently.

‘Oh, Sim!’ She realized she must go more carefully when she included the children, she must try to put herself in Sim’s place, try to feel the new wonder of love that he had. That she did not.

Ashamed, she reached up and kissed him, and he kissed her hungrily back. ‘My girl,’ he said.

‘Your girl must wash up before dinner.’ She withdrew herself gently but firmly, ‘You look so grand yourself.’ Evidently the overseer had been gone for some time, for Sim had showered and changed into a silk shirt with a russet cravat.

‘Do that, darling, and I’ll go down and have a word in the gully. It always gives me an appetite.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s the time of sizzling rib bones,’ he informed her, ‘cooked over a eucalypt fire there’s no more wonderful a smell. You must try some one night. I often did as a child, and I know the twins frequently steal down for a meal.’

That prompted Randy. ‘Can the twins—’ she began.

‘Not this time,’ he said firmly. ‘This time is our first night home, darling, not even Mrs. Fife will be there. Oh, she’s cooked the meal, and knowing Mrs. Fife it will be quite perfect, but she still won’t be there. But the champagne will be. The candlelight.’

‘The hands across the table,’ Randy added, a little wildly.

‘We’ll be nearer than that,’ he promised, not conscious of her note of hysteria, and she put her own hand up to hide a trembling lip.

She ran upstairs, ran the bath, went to the wardrobe to choose her prettiest dress. He was everything she could have asked, this Sim of hers, and she was determined to give back to him all that she could.

As she slipped into the deep pink chiffon he had said he liked, she noticed that Mrs. Fife had turned down the rugs of the bed, and, even though it was still early and barely dark, switched on the soft bedside lights.

Also, the tidy had been emptied.

They sat at the window in only one candlelight. The meal had been all that Sim had said it would, and after they had drunk the coffee that Sim himself had brought in from the percolator that Mrs. Fife had left bubbling on the range, Sim had blown out all but one candle, and coming round to Randy lifted her up in his arms and carried her to the window seat. There they sat silent listening to the thousand and one little noises in a silent night, feeling the beauty of the night. Gould there, marvelled Randy, be nights as glorious as these of the wilderness, all the brass tones gone, only deep gold and virgin silver, the gold of a big round moon so close you felt you could touch it, the silver of stars so near you felt you could pluck them?

‘It’s perfect, Sim.'

‘There speaks the countrywoman,’ he said contentedly. ‘A city girl could think differently.’

‘Is that why you chose me?’ she asked a little curiously. 'Did it have to be a countrywoman?’

‘I never chose you, Miranda, I just felt an unbearable misery fearing you mightn’t choose me, for heaven knows a girl like you could choose anyone she wanted.’

Not anyone.

‘But,’ continued Sim, ‘I must admit having a countrywoman will be handy. You see, in my position I have to be out a lot, out days, weeks, even a month, and a countrywoman—’

‘Can take it,’ she said calmly, rather surprised at herself.

‘Well, take it more than a newchum,' he smiled, and reaching down he took and lit a cigarette. He smoked little, and she commented on it.

‘I’ve got into the way,’ he told her. ‘In the beginning when I was learning the know-how I used to go out with the stockmen, and you learn discipline as well as knowhow there. I learned that a scrape of a match near a touchy mob and you’ve got yourself trouble. I found myself waiting for a safe period at night, a time when I could really enjoy myself without worrying, and now the habit is established. Can I light one for you?’

‘You don’t want me to light up when I’m droving, either?’ she teased.

He leaned over and took her hand. ‘I’ve dreamed of that, Miranda,' he said eagerly. ‘You and I together, listening while Cassidy goes singing the mob. You think the moon and stars are big here, but out there they blot out the sky. The air is wonderful.’

Yes, it would be wonderful, she thought dreamily, it would be wonderful if—

‘I must come,’ she said quickly, urgently. ‘When, Sim?’

‘Not this time,' he regretted, pleased with her anxiety. ‘But soon, Miranda. Unfortunately I have to go away as soon as tomorrow, only briefly, thank heaven. Will you be all right?’

‘In this busy place!'

‘I mean will you be too lonely?’

‘There are the twins.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the twins.’ He put his cigarette down. After a moment he invited ruefully, ‘Well, fire.’

‘Yes, Sim?’

‘You want to ask me about them, don’t you? You want to take me to task.'

‘Well,’ she admitted, ‘it doesn’t seem like the Sim I know.’

‘What Sim do you know?’ Briefly there was a return of that odd look she had known in him twice before.

‘A Sim,’ she said firmly, ‘who wouldn’t turn his back on children.’

‘Even though they’re nothing to him, even though they’re due to go south, anyway, to school, a school he will entirely finance himself and at considerable cost, and even though he has a new lovely bride and a new lovely life of his own?’ When she did not answer, he went on. ‘I have nothing against these children, Miranda, but on the other hand they don’t comprise my sun, moon and stars. You do. Now do you understand?’

‘No. I mean if you didn’t have me wouldn’t they have meant more?’

‘No, because when I hadn’t met you, I was waiting to. It’s as simple as that. I think I was waiting for you from the moment I was born.’

‘Oh, Sim!’ There were tears in her eyes. He loved her so much. He loved her in the same way that she loved. But loved Jeff.

‘So, darling, it’s not hardness, it’s just a facing of facts,’ he went on. ‘With your help I’ll pick the best of schools for them, we’ll fly them home every break, but Miranda, my Miranda, they will be themselves, not us, they will not be my life and they must not be yours.’

‘No,' she said, ‘no, Sim.’ Best to leave it at that now.

‘Is it true,' she asked presently, ‘that Carl was not their father?’

‘True. They came with his previous marriage, and I believe that wife brought them from a previous marriage of her own as well. Real flotsam and jetsam kids. But as you generously point out, they’re poor little mutts, I suppose.’

‘Of course you suppose,' Randy said severely.

He grinned at her vehemence. ‘You’ll change your mind,' he advised, ‘Oh, yes, I intend to give you time to find out.’ She caught her breath with relief at that. ‘You see, I know what they’re like, they positively hounded Ruth away. Oh, I give you in that their bad run made them what they are, but the fact remains they’re still that way by choice. So you must understand, darling, when I say I can give materially but never emotionally. No, Miranda, all that is used up on you.’

‘Love can stretch a long way,' she said a little frantically, but he did not notice, fortunately.

‘Not ours,' he said. ‘Ours is beautifully selfish and only includes us. Now, don’t scold, little governess, I know scholastically and psychologically, you’re better equipped ... who should be better equipped? ... but just let an ignorant stockman who knows cattle, not children, have his head for a while.’

She smiled, but he did not smile back, he said wistfully, almost boyishly, ‘Say it again, Miranda.’

‘Say what, Sim?’

‘It’s a nice head. Say it.'

'I said hair,' she laughed.

Tut your fingers through it again,' he whispered. 'Let me put my fingers on your fingers and feel a pulse. For I can, Miranda.'

She put her hands into the thick dark russet hair, felt his big fingers on her. She was glad he was not in a position to look back at her, that he was not seeing the slowly falling tears.

CHAPTER THREE

Randy awoke to a gold morning. She was to find that the mornings here were always golden like this, in winter ... winter according to the calendar only ... a paler lemon gold, summer a warm gold; the other seasons other gold, but still gold.

She pushed away the lime mosquito netting. The house was screened, but Sim had explained to her that he often threw open the bedroom screen doors; it became a sudden compulsion to let the world in.

She got up and went out on the verandah, breathing in the dry, rather herby air. There was sun gilt everywhere, on the leaves of the coolibahs, on the wattles that were in yellow bloom, anyhow, and not in need of such embellishment. It was a golden world.

About to come in again, she saw two little figures, bathing gear over their shoulders, running towards one of the station dams. It was not strictly a dam, Sim had said, but the bottom of a favoured sandhill, favoured because a small creek chose to flow at its base, and with strategic rocks the flow had been stopped, and now it was recognized as the Yanni swimming pool. She hadn’t seen it yet, but she had seen, and experienced, other station natural pools, and the thought of them, cool, clear, bird-visited, gnat-jewelled, enticed her and she decided to go swimming as well. She could not see Sim but expected he would be down at the saddling seeing to the preparations for his several days with the drovers, but she felt he would be pleased that she was finding her way around.

Outdoors, the air had a transparency you did not find in the south; everything seemed filtered, lighter than light. It seemed to put wings on your feet, and Randy ran first over the musk-scented station grass, then across the warm red-gold earth so fleetly that she was at the creek pool almost at the same time as the twins.

But evidently this pool was not their goal, for glancing back at her, they kept on, faster this time, and Randy had to hurry to keep them in sight. She wanted to keep them in sight. She wanted to swim where they swam. She wanted to miss no opportunity to get to know them.

They looked up at her with studied dispassion when at last she joined them at another waterhole, not nearly as attractive, Randy thought, as the rocky Yanni pool, and responded to her spontaneous ‘I saw you coming down for a dip and thought I’d join you’ with a marked lack of enthusiasm. Well, what had she expected?

Without any comment they stepped behind a rock, each to emerge almost at once in brief bathers. But they did not go in.

Randy, feeling she was a trifle large for a rock, looked around her, saw a thicket of acacia, actually the only shelter, and went towards it.

‘I don’t think—’ called Justin uncertainly.

‘Be quiet!’ Jane snapped.

That should have alerted Randy, but it didn’t. The fact that the children had still not started to swim should have alerted her, too, but it didn’t. She began to unbutton her shift.

A slight noise attracted her attention. She looked into the area from which she had heard it, expecting some stirrer, or rustler, or crawler, or slitherer, and being a country person, not over-alarmed, even if it should be a large lizard, or ... though she hoped not ... a snake, for snakes were as nervous and unenthusiastic over you as you were over them, and certainly would not make the first move. However, what she did see sent her hurtling out of the thicket in a hurry.

‘A croc!’ she gasped.

The children’s laughter was the first real mirth from them that she had heard. They had guffawed before, but they had not laughed, and though laughter like this was what she wanted from them, she looked at them suspiciously.

‘A croc,' she repeated.

‘Yes, old Ben. He’s only a Johnstone River croc and wouldn’t hurt pussy.’

‘That’s questionable.’ In their loud hilarity the children had not heard Sim approaching, and Randy was still too shaken to take notice of anything. The thing had looked an ordinary crocodile to her, if crocodiles could ever be ordinary, and she had had a shock. She turned thankfully to Sim and at once he took her hand in his own comforting hand. But his eyes were on the children.

‘A Johnstone croc,’ repeated Justin, but a little uncertainly, for Sim looked very stern.

‘Just a little old fish eater,’ said Jane stubbornly; she was the braver of the pair.

‘But not above snapping off an arm or leg just for the fun of it, after which he would leave it on his plate, thank you, but I don’t think that would make the arm or leg loser feel any better, do you?’

To give the children their due, they had gone pale. Sim drove home the lesson.

‘That’s true. It can happen - a finger, a toe, promptly spat out, but you’re still a finger or toe missing.’

‘We were just told,’ defended Justin, ‘that it was a Johnstone and not carn-i-vor-ous.’

‘That means it won’t eat you up,’ triumphed Jane, becoming bold again.

‘You’ve pronounced it wrongly, Justin, but you’re right, Jane, when you say it won’t eat you up. It simply tries you out for taste, that’s all. There he goes now.’ The fish-eating crocodile, a modest six feet, was slipping into the water. ‘Why don’t you go in for your swim?’ Sim asked the children blandly. He even took a step forward to encourage them to do so, but they backed away.

‘You knew about this fellow?’ Sim demanded next. ‘You knew he frequented here? Slept in this bush?’

‘Name belonga Jamu told us,' they answered in a chorus.

‘You mean Jamu told you. Don’t use pidgin when you haven’t the right. Even the piccaninnies are growing out of it. I suppose Jamu told you he wouldn’t hurt.’

‘Yes.'

‘Well, Jamu was wrong, but don’t believe me, go and find out.'

Justin said, ‘I don’t want to have a swim after all.'

‘I do,' said Jane stubbornly.

‘Go in. Go in,' Sim approached her.

‘But not here,' she hastened. ‘In our pool. Race you, Justin!' She sped off, followed after a second by her brother.

‘Those kids .. .' despaired Sim. He looked at Randy. 'Now, darling, you must see what I mean.’

‘Not entirely — I mean they really did believe that no harm could be done, just a shock for me.'

‘Well, harm could. It's uncommon, I'll admit, but it has, and it can, happen. It could have happened today. Oh, I wish I didn't have to go away on this trip. The way I feel now I’d like to sit at the telephone and ring every school in Australia until I find one to take that pair. Then I would get out the Auster pronto and fly them there, see them established, leave strict directions not to let them out.'

‘Oh, Sim, don't be so hard! They’re naughty, yes, but it must have occurred to you that there’s a reason.’

‘I’ll agree they haven’t had the best of beginnings, but dammit, Miranda, I’ve been jolly good to them these last years and I’ve had no call to be.’

‘Couldn’t that be the reason?’ she said gently. 'You’ve been an unwilling benefactor.’

‘Not unwilling,’ he refused.

‘Then indifferent,’ she suggested.

‘Possibly,’ he admitted honestly. ‘They’re such cusses of kids.’

‘All children are, only some more than others. They’ll grow out of it.’

‘Perhaps. Only not at Yanni. That’s what I’m trying to drive home to you, darling. I’ve no objection to them thinking this is home, returning here at vacations, but I will not have it for their background while they do that growing out, as you put it. They’re no responsibility of mine, no connection, relation, obligation, experimentation. God forbid! This sounds hard of me, I know, but I’ve been on my own so long I yearn ... I ache, Miranda, for family. A family of my own. My own wife. My own kids. My own home circle. Darling, do understand, I’m elastic, at least I hope, I try, but not that elastic.’ He nodded to the retreating pair. ‘I want you and yours, and mine, and ours. I’ll help Jane and Justin, but I won’t have them. Perhaps if they were more prepossessing little animals, and even then unwillingly — but they’re only a small step short of young fiends,’ He stopped, a little ashamed of his tirade, and she leaned up and touched his lips with an admonishing finger.

‘I don’t believe you mean half of that, Sim.'

‘Perhaps I don’t, but I do mean there’s only room for us. Well, just now. Why, damn it all, woman, we’re barely married. Miranda, you must understand what I mean—'

She did understand ... but she could not go along with him. She knew she must still have these children by her. How had she expressed it to herself? She must have them, be absorbed by them, for without them she stood love- exposed, Sim’s love for her. And I, she knew, have only love for Jeff.

He was kissing the top of her head. ‘Little governess,' he said gently, ‘I shock you, don’t I? We’ll let it drop until I come back. I don’t think you’ll have any more worry from the kids - well, not like this.’ He spread his hands. 'I'll be very surprised if it hasn’t sobered them considerably. I’ll have Juniper have a word with young Jamu about our Johnstone croc. There’s quite a misconception there. Meanwhile go your merry way if you want to, trying to win the kids, only don’t be too disappointed, sweetness, when you don’t. I suppose’ ... a rueful shrug' ... ‘I’d better let you get them out of your system, or you’ll never give up, and what sort of marriage would I have with a wife with only half her mind on the job? Oh, what it is to have a soft heart!’

No, Sim, she thought, what is it to have no heart at all, or no heart left, to have to borrow two children to hide that fact. Oh, Sim dear Sim, if only it wasn’t so, if only—

They had reached the saddling. The stockmen had the herds ready for the move off.

‘We pick up more a few miles out,' Sim explained, ‘in fact we keep picking up and re-distributing.'

‘How do you mean, Sim?’

‘They’re due for fresh grazing. Left on their own they’d starve. Yes, that’s a fact. It’s due either to lack of initiative or plain short sight, but the beggars won’t move for tucker unless you take them there.’ He stopped beside his mount, a big black stallion. ‘This is it for a couple of days, Mrs, Mallow,’ he said.

‘Be careful, Mr. Mallow,’ she answered.

‘Dream of me.’ His voice was quiet in her ear. He kissed her. It was a kiss slanted strictly for onlookers, but long after the cloud of dust from the receding mob and the men who drove the mob had settled, Randy’s heart was still thumping unevenly. It must be the croc episode, she told herself. Or it was Sim’s outburst. Or it was—

'You look as though you could do with a cup of tea,’ judged Mrs. Fife. ‘Come to think of it’... sternly ... ‘you missed out on breakfast. That’s no good, Mrs. Mallow. Women up here can’t afford to risk their health, it’s not like Sydney with a hospital round the corner. Oh, I know there’s the Flying Doctor and the Flying Ambulance, but what if they’re busy? I brewed a pot when I saw you coming. Sit right down and I’ll bring some steak to follow. I hope you like a lot of steak, for here it’s all steak — but you’d know that already. Now drink up and I’ll be back in a moment.’

She was back in several, and the teapot was drained. But Randy had thrown it over the balustrade instead of drinking, and she looked carefully at her plate of steak before she tackled it.

When Mrs. Fife, pleased at Randy’s prompt compliance with her appeal to drink up, took the teapot away for a re-fill (which Randy intended to check carefully), Randy said softly but clearly to some bushes below the verandah at which she had tossed the tea, trusting it was sufficiently cooled to cause no harm: ‘Thank you, twins, for the beetle, though I’m afraid they’re not my cup of tea.’

There was a stir and a slither, but it wasn’t beastie of any description this time, though Sim would not have agreed with that, Randy thought wryly, and the twins darted out.

Randy drank her un-beetled tea and wondered about her next move.

She went into the kitchen after her verandah breakfast and asked Mrs. Fife if she could help her.

‘I was expecting you,’ said Mrs. Fife, trying to make her tone cheerful. ‘As mistress of the house you’ll want to be ordering the day’s dishes.’

Randy smiled secretly at Mrs. Fife’s valiant effort to be reasonable about it. ‘Nothing was further from my mind,’ she assured her. ‘I know I have to pull my weight some time, but does it have to be now when I haven’t found my feet yet?’

She was rewarded by Mrs. Fife’s radiant smile. The woman did not want to relinquish her position as queen of the kitchen and frankly Randy did not want to do any removing. Some time, as she had said, she must think about these things, but she would only do so under Mrs. Fife’s guidance. She told her so, told her that she had previously been a governess, not a cook, that she would need her help if and when she tackled the providing side because it would be all so new to her.

Eagerly Mrs. Fife nodded, ‘And probably you’ll be busy with a little family, too, and not needing kitchen chores.’

A little family . . . What had Sim said? ‘I yearn ... I ache for family. A family of my own. My own wife. My own kids. My own home circle.’ Then he had appealed : ‘Darling, do understand.’

But how could she understand when a family to her had always meant her children - and Jeff’s?

‘I’m sorry, Mrs. Mallow,’ Mrs. Fife was saying, believing she had embarrassed Randy.

Randy hastened to reassure her, telling her that she had been preoccupied wondering how on earth she would manage when that dreaded kitchen day did come, why, she admitted ruefully, she had never even made a batch of bread.

That was all that Mrs. Fife needed. She lovingly recited the ingredients and quantities, and only that Randy had a fair idea that she would never be running the domestic side of this vast place, she would have halted the cook to demand how much exactly was ‘a good handful and then a bitty’ or ‘a heaped tablespoon but flattened down a mite.’

They had more tea together ... no sign of the twins, so no fear of marauders ... then, having been told that there was a kitchen girl to do the dishes, another girl to set the tables, for it was tables since the stockmen and staff ate in the next room, in fact there was someone to do everything, Randy wandered out again. An idea had struck her. There might be someone for everything domestically slanted, but there was no one to deal with the education slant. She knew the twins received correspondence education, but there was no one instructing them on it, and she knew by experience that the lessons, though lucid and interesting, needed a supervisor.

She had no doubt that she would not be welcome, apart from not caring about her, like most children they would not care about school. However, she would try it.

As she walked down to the ‘gully’ where she had glimpsed the twins playing with the piccaninnies, she thought eagerly that in time she could even start the aboriginal children on the path of learning. The School of the Air did a wonderful job, and she had no doubt that Sim if she asked him if he would be agreeable to fixing up a loudspeaker, clearing a bam, so that she could gather the little ones and get them interested in other things than bush lore. She believed she would have no trouble here. Though children of the earth primarily, they were intelligent and eager to find out other things than the things passed on to them from their fathers.

No, thought Randy, if there’s going to be any trouble it’s going to be Jane and Justin.

She had picked up a little transistor from the hall as she had come out, and, experienced in this, she found the appropriate national station and switched on. As she had thought at this time of morning the School of the Air was in session.

‘8GN, Paul,' called the teacher. ‘Good morning, Paul. How are you today? Did you learn that verse?’

Paul, whose parents had installed a radio transceiver, said he had, and he recited it proudly.

‘Lovely, Paul. What about you, 8YD Dorothy? Did you learn a verse too?’

Randy was suddenly aware of children all around her, piccaninnies listening. No — looking at the intent little faces - she would have no trouble here. But Jane and Justin, she noted, also there, were standing back.

The session finished with a tune that would go skipping over thousands of square miles, three states and many homesteads, and smiling at her pics Randy said, ‘That’s all for today,' and switched off. As the pics ran off, she looked inquiringly at the twins.

‘Pah!’ said Jane.

‘Kid’s stuff,’ demeaned Justin.

‘Not so kiddish,’ Randy pointed out. ‘The advanced class when I was governing at Broadfields was doing Navigation.’

‘Navigation?’ came in Justin with an eagerness Randy had not dared hope for but welcomed almost fiercely. 'You study stars in that, don’t you? I like that stuff.’ His eyes were shining.

Go carefully, prompted Randy to herself, go carefully and you’ve got him. It was going to be harder with his sister, though.

‘Mathematics is important to Navigation,’ she said casually, getting to her feet and strolling back to Yanni, Justin beside her, Jane coming an unwilling third. ‘How far are you there?’

‘Not far,’ admitted Justin. ‘In fact I’m not good. In fact I don’t understand. Are you sure they’re important?’

‘They’re necessary,’ said Randy. ‘Can I see your manual?’

'You bet. It’s this fraction thing. I just can’t get it at all.’

‘Perhaps if I explained...'

‘Could you?’

‘Pshaw!’ said Jane, but her brother took no notice of her. He led Randy to a small enclosure at the end of the lower verandah that Sim evidently had had fixed up for a study.

Once inside, and the difficult fractions produced, Randy bent her fair head to Justin’s brown bullet one and explained away the problem that was holding him up. She could see that he was genuinely interested, that he would be eager to be told how. But what about Jane?

‘I don’t like anything.’ Jane forestalled Randy’s ultimate inquiry by saying it promptly; no doubt she had seen a thoughtful look on Randy as Randy had eyed the rest of the lesson manuals. ‘I don’t like anything at all.’

‘Neither did Jennifer,’ remembered Randy calmly. ‘She used to race through her lessons so she could have more time on the handicrafts.’

‘I hate them, too.’

‘She certainly made lovely things. Baskets, mats, stuffed toys—’

‘Our lessons don’t have those,’ said Jane jealously. ‘These didn’t, actually, but you could send for them and I did as a reward when Jennifer got through her grade in time. She finished making a whole set of animals, lion, monkey—’

‘Felt?’ asked Jane.

‘And bits of material. Remnants of stuff.’ Go carefully, Randy.

‘Humph,' said Jane ,.. but Randy could see the interest.

However, it was not to be easy, for Jane saw Randy’s interest, and she promptly changed the subject. ‘Did you like the beetle tea?’

‘Did you?’

‘It could have scalded us.'

‘I don’t think so. Even the beetle recovered.'

‘He couldn’t have, he was dead. We wouldn’t have put him in if he hadn’t been dead. We’re not cannibals.’

'You know I think you are. You’re trying to eat me — trying to get rid of me, anyway. But it can’t work.’

‘It worked with Ruth.’

‘Ruth wasn’t married to Sim,’ Randy reminded her. ‘It’s different.’

‘I told you that, Jane,’ Justin complained. ‘I said it’s different when they’re married.’

‘It isn’t different,’ argued Jane. ‘The same things happen. They still leave each other. Ruth left Carl, remember, and they were married.’

‘It’s still different,’ persisted Justin. ‘Carl and Ruth didn’t... they weren’t... well, they weren’t like Sim and Randy.’

‘You mean Verandah,’ said Jane impertinently. ‘And why weren’t they not like them?’

‘Because ... well, Sim loves Randy.'

'Does she love him?’ The words cut at Randy, only a child’s careless, unrehearsed words ... yet were they that? Were they? Randy looked at the child, looked at Jane standing implacably there, no expression at all, and yet there was something, something she could not put a finger on, yet how could there be, how could there be this - this knowledge?

‘I think it must be getting near lunch,' she said dully.

‘A bell goes,' they told her.

‘Well, I have to wash up. What about you?'

Justin was unenthusiastic over that, but Jane said, ‘That’s nice soap you have in your bathroom.’ So she had been snooping. Randy could have felt indignant over that, but it wasn’t the right time.

‘I have the lotion to match to rub into your hands to keep them soft after you wash, would you like to try it?’

‘Yes,' said Jane eagerly, but she couldn’t bring herself to add, ‘Thanks.'

‘Girls!' deplored Justin as they went off.

Randy took the child up, as well as share her soap and lotion she showed her her new dresses. She noted that Jane knew her way around the room and was troubled at something that nudged at her, something she could not recall but still worried her.

'They're nice dresses,' admitted Jane unwillingly. ‘Better than Ruth’s were.’ A sudden thought came to her and she said meanly, unmistakably enjoying her meanness because it must have occurred to her that she was near-succumbing to Randy just as Justin had succumbed: ‘Ruth won’t like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘You having nice dresses.'

‘She won’t be here to see.'

‘She’ll come.'

'To get you two?’

‘She doesn’t want us, we’re only steps of steps of steps of steps. I wonder’ ... speculatively ... ‘where we really began? Adam and Eve, do you think?’

‘Jane, why would Ruth come, then?’

‘For Sim, of course. She’s mad about Sim.'

‘But Sim is married to me.’

No comment.

‘Sim loves me, and I' ... an infinitesimal pause ... ‘love him.’

Now once again words from Jane cut at Randy. How could a child do this sharp accurate thing to her, how could she - when she was unknowing?

For Jane said, looking long at Randy: 'Do you, Mrs. Sim?’

Randy could not have thought that a day could be so long. There were things to see, there were things to do, everything was new and different and fascinating, and yet she kept looking at the clock, finding that time dragged.

And she missed Sim.

She was amazed at just how much she did miss Sim. The place was not Yanni without him. If one day is this long, she thought, how long would it be with Sim weeks away, which is the length of time they often stay? But I won’t be left home any more, I’ll go too, go with Sim. Her thoughts bucked at that. What am I saying, she asked herself, what am I planning, I who need those children by me to keep me from love-exposure, Sim’s love, now thinking of escaping them to be with the one against whom I have cultivated them.

She looked at the clock again.

It was worse the next day. Jane must have had some pertinent words with Justin, for when Randy proposed a session in the study, he said, ‘No, thanks.’

‘I remembered a navigation angle that one of my pupils once brought up,’ endeavoured Randy.

Justin visibly wavered, whereupon Jane said, 'No, thanks.'

‘Let your brother answer for himself, Jane.'

‘It’s his answer.'

Randy took up some scraps of stuff she had found in an old workbasket that Mrs. Fife had said must have belonged to Sim’s mother. It was lovely stuff ... bright silks, elegant satin, actually a piece of mossy plush. She saw Jane’s eyes widen.

‘Well, some other time,’ she told Justin, keeping her eyes from Jane, but the materials still on display.

‘What sort of navigation thing was it?’ asked Justin wistfully.

‘An astronomy angle. To do with the Asteroids, as a matter of fact.’

‘Minor planets,’ murmured Justin, entranced, ‘whose orbit lies between those of Mars and Jupiter. What was the point that was brought up?’

‘Come on,’ insisted Jane, ‘you said we would go riding.’

‘Yes, but—'

'Come on.' Jane fairly pushed him out. Up to the age of fourteen, Randy knew by now, the female is the dominant sex. She saw that Justin, though unwilling to co-operate, had no hope of beating his sister. It gave Randy some consolation that the girl’s eyes on the array of fabrics that she had arrayed out literally had to be dragged away. But Jane still stood firm.

Left alone, Randy replaced her materials, then shut the study door and walked across to the book-keeper’s office. Matt Jones had spent some years book-keeping in the Riverina, and learning that Randy’s last post had been at Broadfields Park had been eager to talk with her. He greeted her now, cleaned the desk and put down some old Riverina photos. While she examined them he brewed coffee, and they enjoyed reminiscences for half an hour, then he said firmly that he must get back to his books.

‘Are you a busier man here, Matt?’ she asked.

‘It’s another world, Mrs. Mallow, it’s not a station, it’s a country town. I feel like a shire clerk, not just a farm bookie. But I like it, for all its demands.’

She knew it was time to go, that Matt was anxious to become the Shire Clerk again, to forget his strictly bookkeeping days. They had been pleasant enough, he had insinuated, but this was his life. The same as it is for me, Randy knew, and I must start to live it now that I am Sim’s wife. Sim’s wife. Wife to Sim.

The talk with Matt had taken very little of the day, Randy was astonished ... and disappointed . .. when, consulting her watch, she realized just how brief the interlude had been.

She did some gardening, though up here gardening mostly consisted of giving orders to little boys to whom was entrusted the wheeling of the barrow, the shifting of stones. Mrs. Fife had previously warned Randy not to allow a pic to water.

‘They love it, but they can’t resist douching each other with it. Also plants here need little and often, certainly not drenching downpours as they are prone to inflict.’

Randy did some watering herself, then, after weeding a bed and filling up a barrow with the discard, she looked around for a small toiler, not so much because she needed the help but because she did not know as yet where the rubbish went.

There were no young ones around, but there were voices down the gully, so she made her way there.

They were eager enough to assist her, and she soon saw why, even apart from the alluring possibility of being at the master end of a hose. It was because the barrow made a fine motor car. As soon as one of them pushed, half a dozen tried to climb on.

‘No, no!' she called, fearing as well for the overworked pusher for the burdened barrow, it had never been designed for such weight.

‘No one to jump on and only one to push. You’ll do’ - this to a likely young fellow. ‘The rest of you run off.’

Her choice of barrow-pushers added his shrill triumphant order, even chased the losers away. He came back importantly to take up his barrow assignment.

His name was Jamu, he said, and Randy remembered she had heard it before, it had been to do with the crocodile incident, he had been the one who had known where the crocodile hid himself. Jamu, she thought, seemed a very alert child.

He told her many things as they worked together, some clearly fiction, she guessed, but when he spoke of the car with the people gone from it ‘just over that hill then the next hill, New Missus,' he was so grave she felt inclined to believe him.

He recounted it unfalteringly. The car had stopped, New Missus, and the people had walked away from it, right in the middle of the day they had walked, sun on top of them, and they shouldn’t. His brown eyes rolled.

‘It’s naughty to make up such stories, Jamu.’

‘Not a story, New Missus. You ask them.’ He nodded to his gully friends.

‘If it was known they were out there someone would have brought them in.'

Jamu did not listen to that, he was intent on demonstrating to Randy the awful things that happened to people who walked away from their car when they should wait. He was a born little actor and did not pull any punches. His final sinking to the ground was so graphic that Randy stood horrified.

‘You shouldn’t, Jamu,’ she protested.

‘People shouldn’t, New Missus,’ corrected Jamu. 'Boss he always tell stop there and we’ll come.'

‘That’s what I just told you,’ said Randy. ‘Once it is known, someone always brings them in.'

‘They didn’t come in,’ said Jamu sadly, ‘still there, New Missus.’

The story was ridiculous, the child was not dependable, and yet, she remembered, he had told the twins about the crocodile, and the crocodile had existed.

Take the last load to the compost heap, Jamu, then that will do.’

‘Water the plants, New Missus?'

‘Not today. Now, that will do.’

She had to dismiss him three times before he finally gave up, and watched him go back to his friends in the gully.

She went to the house to seek out Mrs. Fife. The story was a fabrication, of course, but such things had happened and could happen again. She went first to the kitchen, then, not finding the housekeeper there, right through the house, then still not finding her across to Mrs. Fife’s own neat bungalow.

A girl called out as she tapped on the door, ‘Missus Fife she bin gone with Harry to take that Davey someping.’ Randy knew by now that Davey lived in a shack some miles out where he kept an eye on any straying cattle, rounding and penning them up until there were sufficient to drove back to Yanni, and she concluded that Mrs. Fife, a kindly person, had gone out with Harry in one of the station jeeps with a hamper of homebaked goodies.

She decided to ask Matt’s advice, and ran across to his office, but Matt, too, was absent, probably checking stores somewhere in this little city of a station; she knew he moved around quite a lot.

There would be some stockmen around ... failing them some stablehands.

But as she walked from post to post, through every barn, it almost seemed as though a wand had been waved, a wand to remove every responsible adult. There were children aplenty, but just at this moment not even a mother in attendance. Oh, well, it was all a fabrication, anyhow, so Randy turned back to the house.

Then she thought of the twins. In spite of their youth they were remarkably cool-headed little specimens, and though plainly not disposed to her would surely answer her truthfully if she asked them could there be any fact in Jamu’s statement.

She remembered that they had left her to take a ride, and retraced her steps to the saddling.

There was still no one in attendance, they must be either out on a job or snatching a kip, and Sim had told her that when a native stockman did that, little short of an earthquake would waken him.

Still, she didn’t need anyone. Though not a dedicated rider, as she had told Sim, she was a good rider. She was also a sensible one, she knew her limits. She knew, for instance, she would be no good on that lovely chestnut, now looking at her with a contemplative eye. She knew his sort, docile to begin with, then stretching out and giving her a lesson. No, she would take this fresh but amiable brown filly.

She went into the saddling room and took down what she needed. The brown girl stood peaceably while she strapped and buckled, but not too peaceably to discourage any idea of a smart gallop.

Finished, and still not joined either by a stablehand or a band of youngsters, Randy mounted and trotted out of the yard. There was no one in sight, so she descended to the gully where some of the pics were on their knees in a marble game of their own concoction.

She still did not believe Jamu’s story, so she did not ask which was the way to the car where the people did not do as boss said, but instead she asked for the twins. This way? That?

That way, they all chorused.

Randy galloped off. She had no intention of going far, she had respect for this country, she had seen the mirage quality of it, she appreciated distance that looked two miles but was twenty. She would not jeopardize anyone’s life by giving them need to search for her, and because she realized how easily such a situation could arise, she pinpointed herself very carefully.

She went a few miles, keeping the homestead in view, but still did not see the twins.

There was a rise in front of her, and she estimated that if she could climb it she should have a first-class view of everything around her . . . the children riding, if it had happened, though she still did not believe Jamu’s story, the deserted car.

She kept playing cautious. The homestead had now receded, but the lagoon’s glitter was unmistakable. She urged the brown girl up.

It was actually only a small hope that she would see anything, but here even the slightest incline took on the properties of a mountain after the endless flats.

The brown girl laboured on, growing less enthusiastic as they neared the top and had to climb a steeper grade, for these horses were born for the flats, but her lazy pace gave Randy an opportunity to look around her, and she caught her breath at the sheer magnificence of the strange land.

Now a shimmering red in the afternoon sun, the harsh mulga and spinifex seemed firelit ... as did everything else as far as she could see. Every sandhill was a scarlet mound, the distant peaks and ridges were blood crimson, the quivering plains a glowing rose.

Brown Girl... Randy named her that... reached the top at last, and Randy slid off and looked around. After her eyes had become accustomed, she found that she could see more than the swimming roseate colours, she could see features in them. For instance, those emus and brolgas down by that waterhole, a hole, though crimson like the rest of this afternoon world, with lupin shadows around its rocks. She could see a flight of budgerigars. High up, a falcon. But she could see no children.

She did not look for any abandoned car, she had accepted by now that Jamu had been indulging in a half-fact half-dream something of his own - a pastime, she suspected, he often indulged in.

Well, she would waste no more time, evenings were instant evenings up here, there was no preliminary softening up, no gradual paling, one moment it was glaring daylight and the next it was evening. She must cause no one any trouble, so she turned to Brown Girl again. And then it happened.

Something must have alarmed the filly, for suddenly she stopped her cropping. .. fleetingly Randy wondered what on earth she would crop from up here . .. and wrenching herself away so quickly Randy had to release the reins, she ran down the hill. But she ran, Randy saw, biting on her lip, on the other side.

‘Brown Girl!’ she called ... if only she knew her right name ... ‘Brown dear!'

It seemed a foolish thought that the girl would need her, but, miraculously, she did. She Came back obediently, and Randy mentally resolved to ask Sim to make her her own mount.

She fondled Brown Girl, praised her, then mounted again.

‘We’re now on the opposite side, Brown,’ she warned. ‘You’ve turned us round with that gallop, so we must go right up again to go home.’

The filly whinnied protestingly, and Randy, looking out again, saw that the lagoon, which she had pinpointed for herself as a landmark, was still there. Wise Brown. In this mirage atmosphere she must have thought they were in a different angle, but Brown evidently knew better. She patted her again and began to descend from this point after all.

They came to a patch of gibber that she could not remember before, but gibber was odd stuff, it could occur at any moment, then at another moment a grass covering take over instead. Even a few feet from her first ascent there could have been a patch of gibber only several yards away and she might not have noticed it.

They were on the flat again now, and Randy said companionably to Brown, ‘It’s all yours, take me home.’

Brown Girl whinnied again, and Randy wished she knew what the filly meant. She began to wonder if that whinny up on the height had been agreement with her and not a protest as she had interpreted, not an opinion that they should continue from where they were.

‘Do you know what?’ Randy said more lightly than she felt. ‘I don’t believe you know any more than I do.’

Brown Girl whinnied back, and Randy knew that she certainly didn’t, that she was just companionable. So what to do now?

There, at least, was the lagoon ... or was it the lagoon? That was the trouble. Were there a string of such lagoons? Was this one of many? Or was it a lagoon at all, was it just the reflection of one? In this mirage country, this illusion country, who knew?

Thank heaven, though, the world was still red. It was dazzling on the eyes, so much so that even when you shut your eyes to relieve them for a moment the red still burned and swam.

But it was better than evening, which would immediately grow into night,’ because once night happened, Randy knew she would never find her way.

Now she went cautiously, resisting an impulse to make hard for that lagoon in case it was not a lagoon at all, in case it receded as she approached, leaving her farther still from home.

She dismounted several times, but always carefully soothing Brown Girl as she did so, making sure of her hold.

It was no use. She realized that after another cautious approach on the glittering water. It was definitely coming no nearer, which meant it was either not the home water- hole or simply no hole at all.

She looked at the sky. Was it her imagination or was it less red? But even as she thought about that a first violet shadow came in, and she knew her answer. She also knew that in twenty minutes, less, in this remarkable country it could be black night. She knew it was no use reconnoitring any more, that her only move was to climb up again on the hill.

Brown Girl did not want to go, she preferred the flat, but Randy forced her, though apologetically. Perhaps she knew things that she, Randy, didn’t. Because this was cattle country, for instance, there was supposed to be no dingoes, but there is always an exception to a rule, and she knew that occasionally a pair had been sighted. Sim had even pointed out one himself on the trip up. It was not a pleasant idea. She knew that lambs were primarily a dingo’s fancy, but she sympathized with Brown Girl’s obvious distaste. She did not feel easy herself.

By the time they reached the top again, it was too dim to mark out which was the east, west, north, south. It was too early, too, to look for stars. She tried to subdue a fit of shivering, for she knew that horses were extremely sensitive to impressions, and that Brown Girl could grow alarmed, even wrench away again, and she had to have her by her.

That made her think of the twins whom she also had to have by her. ‘I’m a coward,’ she thought. ‘I can’t stand alone.’

She kept fondling Brown Girl patting her encouragingly. She actually cropped for a while ... that is until almost like switching off a light all the glow went out of the sky, and it was night.

Never had Randy imagined such black. It was even impossible to see her own fingers. In a short time the stars would begin, those big blossoms of stars almost like street lamps, but until then ... She tightened her hold on Brown Girl, but she needn’t have worried, the filly was as anxious to stop with her as she was to stop with the filly.

It was a nightmare half hour before a first star flicked through, a poor little silver star in the beginning, but rapidly blossoming. By the time it reached full bloom, the heavens were full of stars. She could see the Asteroids she had told Justin about. She could also see a light in the valley, if you could call that huge flat a valley, a light that was progressively growing bigger and brighter, yet not coming nearer. Why, it was a fire! They had found she wasn’t home, found that Brown Girl was gone. They had lit the fire in the hope of guiding her back.

She mounted Brown Girl and coaxed her downward. When she did not want to move she dismounted again and led her. She must not alarm her now by using force. It was no use calling cooee for some time yet, she would not be heard.

Then, at the bottom of the hill, a cooee came across to her, a man’s strong voice, an urgent voice. Sim’s.

She called back.

‘Stay there!’ shouted Sim. ‘Just call my name, Miranda. I’ll come. Stop. Do you hear?’

‘Yes. Yes, Sim.’ Then she called: ‘Sim! Here, Sim! Here, Sim!’ at intervals, hearing the ground reverberate faintly at first as he galloped over, then more strongly as he actually approached.

Out of the darkness he came, and before she could mount Brown Girl again to ride beside him, he had leaned down to gather her to him on the black stallion, Brown, though now released, not keen on any more adventures, stepping docilely by their side.

‘Never do that again, Miranda.’ The face above her in the near-starlit dark was so stem, so commanding Randy could scarcely recognize Sim, her good-natured, amiable Sim. ‘Never. Do you hear?’

‘I didn’t mean to be reckless, I really didn’t.'

‘Never, woman. Never. Or—'

‘Or?’ She did not know why she asked that, it was no moment for coy inquiry.

‘Or you’ll be sorry,’ he said brusquely. ‘You’ll be—’

She did not hear the rest. The other horsemen were galloping across from the fire to see if help was needed. In a few moments that it took for them to emerge out of the shadows, Sim’s lips came down on Randy’s, came down as no lips ever had, not even Jeff’s ...

When she came out of the swimming depths, she came out oddly confused, very shaken.

It was almost as though she had never known Sim before.

Sim directed a few men to stay behind to put out the fire. Although there seemed nothing to bum, although Randy would have thought that the gibber would have seen to the job without any help, as a countrywoman she also knew that you never left even the most minute ember glowing, since the merest breath of air could fan up something you could bitterly regret. She had seen paddocks she had believed were bare become infernos, and only after the flames had died had she realized how wrong she had been, how really deprived now was that once seemingly brown earth. It would be the same here, there must be something growing, otherwise Brown would not have cropped as she had. Then there was the chance of a breeze taking an ember and setting light to an outbuilding. She was not aware that she was murmuring all this aloud until Sim said indulgently, ‘Yes, little one, but be quiet now, you’ve had rather a bad experience. Relax, Miranda.’

She did - against him. For he had not released her after he had lifted her from Brown, she was riding home in front of him, and somebody else was leading her girl.

After a few moments she saw that it was Justin who was looking after Brown. So the twins had come along. Randy’s glance went from Justin to Jane, and Jane’s gaze back was disconcerting. The child’s eyes never wavered as they looked at Sim holding up his wife. Randy saw a preparatory moistening of the young pink lips with a young pink tongue, but the child must still have been selecting her words, for she did not speak at once, and in that time Sim began to talk.

He told her about his several days in the saddle, then he asked her, very tenderly, what she was doing out so far.

‘I didn’t know it was far, Sim,’ she repeated contritely. ‘I’m sorry. I was looking for the twins because I wanted them to help me.’

‘Help you, Miranda?’

‘Jamu—’

‘Ah, Jamu.'

‘Jamu,’ she continued, ‘told me this story of a stranded car. He told it so graphically, Sim, I felt it might be true.’

‘So you went looking for Jane and Justin to help you look for the survivors?’

‘Yes. Well, in a way. I mean— Oh, Sim ... Sim, is it all a tale?’

‘Not entirely. It did happen, only months ago, sweetheart. There’s nothing out there now. And if there ever is, you must leave that to us - to those who are experienced in such things. Promise me, Miranda.’

‘I promise, Sim, and I tell you again that I'm sorry.’ He touched her hair comfortingly. ‘It’s that little actor Jamu. I know he means no harm, but it seems he must build up on everything. I’ll have a word with our young brave.’

‘He’s very intelligent.'

‘Too much so for his own good,’ said Sim grimly.

‘I don’t agree. I think he needs guidance, I think he needs absorption.’

‘Absorption, darling?’

‘In learning. He’s a potential scholar if I ever met one.’

‘Little governess,’ Sim said as he had said many times before. ‘I suppose’ ... with a rueful sigh .... ‘that this is a broad hint that you’d like a schoolroom built and equipped, that you’d like to start on all our youngsters.’

‘Oh, Sim, could I?’ She had been relying on the twins for her outlet, but here were a dozen outlets, several dozen outlets, and reliable ones, not like those other two.

‘Give me time,' he smiled. ‘Rome and Yanni schoolrooms are not built in a day. Regular Daisy Bates, aren’t you?'

She said seriously, thinking of that grand woman who had changed the living of so many of the first Australians, ‘I would be proud to be that.'

°Yes, Miranda, but immediately you must step slowly, my love. I know you’re a countrywoman, but this is different country. It has to be learned first. I intend to take you out to learn it, Miranda, and only when you’ve passed by my standards are you to start on any project. Nor’. .. sternly ... ‘are you to venture out as you’ve ventured now.'

'Yes, Sim,’ she said docilely.

They cantered on for a while, then, all at once at peace, and she could not have said why, unless it was the even gallop, the even beat of the heart of the man who supported her, Randy said impulsively: ‘I’m coming out with you, Sim.'

‘Out with me? You mean when I go out like I had to this time?’

‘Yes, Sim.'

‘Sometimes I’m out for several weeks.'

‘I’m coming out. I - I was lonely. I — I waited for the time to pass.'

There was a silence. It grew to such a long silence that Randy became uneasy, and she half-turned to Sim.

‘It’s all right, Miranda.’ Sim’s voice was a little thick. ‘It’s just that I didn’t expect that. I mean—'

‘What do you mean, Sim?’

‘I mean I’d got the impression ... I had gathered ... I - well, I felt that - that it didn’t matter…'

‘Didn’t matter?’ she echoed.

'Didn’t matter if I went. But now you say—'

They had arrived back at Yanni. Sim climbed down and took her from the stallion into his arms. He told one of the stockmen to take the horse away.

‘I can walk, Sim,’ she endeavoured.

‘Only you’re not walking.'

He carried her up the stairs, and his arms around her were very tight. Randy could have relaxed in them, except that when they passed the twins, Jane was still looking at her with those enigmatical eyes.

CHAPTER FOUR

Sim devoted the rest of the week to showing his wife around Yanni. He let it be known to his overseer, bookie and head stockman that he was not to be interrupted in this, and day after day he took Randy out, sometimes on one of the waggons, sometimes on horseback, several times in his Auster aircraft. The twins must have been spoken to as well, for they did not come near them, and though they had shown a marked indifference as to whether they saw Randy or not, or so Randy considered, she felt sure that Jane would have been anxious to make some barbed comment on riders who get themselves lost and have to be rescued. On other things, too?

It was an exciting week for Randy. Hour by hour, day by day, she felt this strange pulsating country subtly entrapping her. Its shimmering beauty never failed to capture her afresh, to set her heart thudding. In the jeep they bounced over country that although it was desert was atmospherically dust-free, its red sand, Sim told Randy, so pure that the natives ... and many of the old-timers ... still believed in its healing capacity.

‘I’m not sure if I don’t believe it myself,’ he admitted, smiling. ‘I know I never hesitate, if I’m punctured or wounded and away from first aid, to apply a red earth poultice.’

They drove to peaks and ranges that looked as though you could stroll to them but were in actuality some thirty miles away. Of a long fork of outcrop in the very far distance Sim said that it was over a hundred miles but still well within Yanni.

‘This land of mirage,’ mused Randy, staring incredulously at the nearer distant opal hills that she had felt back at the homestead she could have run to and climbed in the duration of one morning.

‘Yes, darling. Now do you see why I was alarmed when I came back from the drove and you were out riding? I wasn’t afraid of that, you’re an experienced rider, but I feared you would underestimate this land.’

‘I did,’ she admitted. ‘I saw a lagoon and mistook it for our lagoon.’

‘It was really an illusion, or perhaps a more acceptable explanation would be a reflection of our sheet of water caught up by the sky and reproduced elsewhere.’

‘I wouldn’t have chased it up,' said Randy, ‘except that Brown Girl confused me by whinnying her approval, or so I interpreted. I must tell her to adopt other varieties of communication. At present she’s using the same tone for approval, disapproval and content.’

‘You like her, don’t you?’

‘We clicked at once. But you’re the one to say, Sim.’

‘She’s reliable,’ Sim approved. ‘I’d feel safe with you on Brown Girl, as you’ve named her. Only don’t look for a bump of locality in Brown, for she hasn’t been out much since I acquired her, for the reason that I have a suspicion that she could be in—’

‘Two newchums,’ came in Randy of Brown Girl’s lack of local knowhow. ‘No, Sim, I promise I’ll try to learn my own way around.’

She asked Sim how much truth had been in Jamu’s graphic car account, that dramatic story that had started her own adventure, and he answered that it really had happened some months ago.

‘A small party of tourists, darling, they ran out of petrol, then did the last thing they should have done, they left their car. Out there the heat is much more intense. Unless you know where to find shelter, and, believe it or not, there is shelter if you look wisely for it, there’s no hope, you can be dead in hours.’

‘Jamu was quicker than that,’ shuddered Randy.

‘I must have a word with that young fellow, he is entirely too gifted. All the same he has brought up a point, a point I must speak to you about. The subject of survival, Miranda.'

She nodded gravely and listened intently to all his instructions as to what to do and what not to do if she found herself in a survival situation.

‘The most important thing,' he repeated several times, ‘is not to get yourself in that position, but sometimes things happen, and then the next important thing is to keep a cool head.'

‘In soaring temperatures!'

‘It can be done. Also water can be won in the desert.' He told her, then made her repeat the plastic sheet and desert shrubbery ... ‘any kind of foliage will do’ ... method. He finished: ‘I’ve seen it save lives.'

They went on riding adventures, for adventures Sim made of these expeditions, cutting in at random through the identical sandhills encircling the lagoon so that Randy wondered how on earth they would ever find their way out again, yet knowing they would, because it was Sim on his stallion leading the way. She had complete implicit confidence in him, and more than once she thought, as she had thought with the deep liking she had for him: Isn’t it enough?

He taught her many things on these adventures, gave her tests to see how much she had absorbed. Water was the first importance, and she learned where to look for it When the creeks were dry, she recited to Sim when he examined her, if there were no obliging signs of animal pads, no convenient rock clefts or wurlies, then you searched for fine gravel which obviously resulted from sandstone, located the stone, then you tapped and tapped until a chunk of stone fell away and the sweet water gushed up.

When he had first said this she must have looked disbelieving, disbelieving that there could be water here, for he had insisted that there was actually a good supply, it just had to be reached. The rivers, unless there were floods on which rare occasion they came down sometimes forty miles wide, all flowed underground, but the water was still there, just waiting for release.

They were not all lessons on these riding trips, sometimes Sim took her to old favourite haunts ... a cave full of aboriginal carvings which he had been told went back to the Dreamtime ... a Valley’ of wildflowers, which, for some miraculous reason, bloomed right in the middle of a stretch of arid desert. Another place, which she knew by the smile in his eyes was a secret place, where as a child he had loved to come. When she went, too, she saw why. For there were actually trees here, not just sparse shrubs you determinedly called trees but shining, reaching greytrunked gums, and because of them the birds had come, and the music of them was so sweetly insistent that tears sprang to Randy’s eyes.

‘I know, I know,' whispered Sim, seeing the tears, and he held out his arms . . . and instinctively, not questioning the eager response, she went to them.

As they rode back he told her that their jeep and horseback exploits were finished and that tomorrow they would see the whole, not just corners, of Yanni.

‘We’ll be flying for the rest of the week, Miranda.’ He looked at her quizzically. ‘Will you still retain that confidence you told me you had in me?’

‘Of course,’ she said readily.

‘I thought you must be anticipating a change of transport, and not optimistically. You’ve been quiet since we left my secret place.’

‘Could be,’ she laughed evasively, because she could not tell him her real reason for her quiet, for it had been the wholehearted abandon with which she had gone into Sim’s arms just now, it had startled her. It was this country, she thought, this strange pulsating country, it does strange things to you, I like Sim like I like no one else, but I don’t, I never have, and even though I try and even pray for it, I never will love him. Yet out there. . . .

‘Well, darling;’ Sim was assuring her, ‘I’m a good pilot. I have all the necessary tickets, necessary, that is, to transport my wife from point to point. Nor do I go in for aerobatics, not when I have precious cargo.'

‘Am I, Sim?’ she asked lightly.

‘You are,' he answered, not lightly, and his eyes held hers until Randy turned her own glance away.

The next morning they set off in the Auster, running smoothly down the home strip with its marking of white upturned buckets. They left early, for Sim wanted to show Randy the salty beginnings of the Gulf, where, he said, from his low-flying bush plane they would see crocodiles sunning in the mud.

‘Fish-eaters?'

‘No, Miranda, man-eaters. You’ll see them take off into the water as we fly over.'

They saw many things as well that day ... salt-pans, clay-pans, brumby camels spread over low sandhills, dingo mates padding furtively side by side and only concerned with themselves, emus, kangaroos, and goannas so large that from the plane Randy took them for more crocodiles. They circled rice country, cotton country, pastoral country, country where tiny figures were setting out flags marking grid lines as reference points for geological work, for anywhere here could be nickel country, and sometimes just spinifex and mulga country with bare bones of rocks and nothing else.

The next day Sim flew his wife to Minta Minta for a ‘shopping spree’ and some ‘social life'. He said it deadpan, so she believed him. But when they put down at M.M. all she saw was a mixed store whose mixture dumbfounded her and a hotel with a worn counter, polished, the host said, by elbows. There was nothing else. But Randy enjoyed turning over the conglomeration of goods and pushing open the hotel’s swinging doors. ‘I thought,’ she said of the doors, ‘that these only occurred in Western films.’ She was delighted with it all, and said so, and Sim was pleased with her delight.

'You don’t find it too unsophisticated?'

‘I’m a country girl,’ she reminded him.

‘This is not one of the smart country towns, you know.’

‘I love it, Sim,' she said sincerely, and he pressed her hand.

‘One more place to take you, Miranda. Our neighbours, the Ramsays.’

‘That will be nice. Perhaps if you want to get back to work, I mean if you’re busy, Sim, I could take myself.’

‘You didn’t tell me you flew?' he smiled.

‘I drive. Oh - oh, I see.' She smiled back. For a moment she had forgotten the extent of Yanni, had forgotten how far away a neighbour must be.

‘The Ramsays are our nearest next-doors,’ Sim said. ‘There’s also the Carters at Rosslyn, the Pettits at Ellesmere, a few more, but all further out. But though the Ramsays are the closest they’re many more miles than you would like to drive for a cup of afternoon tea.’

‘I’m convinced,’ she laughed, and they strolled back to the Auster.

Flying west the next morning, Sim told Randy about the Ramsays.

‘They were my parents’ good friends, Miranda.'

‘Then they’re not your age?’

‘My parents’ age, approximately, were my parents alive today.’

‘Isn’t that rather advanced still to run a property up here?’

‘It is, and the Ramsays know it. They’re on the market, only ...’ A little laugh.

‘Yes, Sim?’

‘It’s a steep price ... well, perhaps not such a steep price as a top price. Woodowadda . .. that means rock, darling, and the homestead is built near an outcrop ... has been their life blood, their entire life. They imposed this high price so as to have an excuse, even though they admitted they should move out, to stop on longer. You’ll like them, Miranda, they were the real pioneers - an English pair, and it’s an interesting fact that the English, for all their immense dignity, something you wouldn’t think necessary up here, have made the most successful settlers.'

‘No children to carry on?’

‘No sons ... and none of those daughters I told you about.'

‘The ones who bring their husbands home? The onion fingers?'

‘You listen to me,' he praised.

‘Shouldn’t a wife, Sim?’

‘I don’t knew,' he smiled, ‘I’ve never had one before.'

The Ramsays later, said almost the same words. Mrs. Ramsay, tall, silver-haired, greeted Randy lovingly.

‘We were so glad about Sim. We always wanted him to take a wife.'

‘You make it sound like the farmer in the dell,' Randy laughed. ‘What came next?’ Her laughter stopped. Why had she said that? For it was the child, wasn’t it, who followed. ‘The wife takes a child.’

Mrs. Ramsay, fortunately, did not notice the pause.

‘We are particularly glad, Miranda’ . . . Sim had introduced Randy as Miranda ... ‘because we knew it was not like many marriages up here. So often a man comes to a stage when marriage is advisable, when a homestead needs, or must have, a mistress, but Sim had an established home before you came, he had his good housekeeper. There was nothing to hurry him, to push him on, which convinces us that he had only one reason, that best reason of all: love. After waiting so long you could be the only cause.’ She smiled and put her arms around Randy, and Randy tried to smile back. But her lips trembled. A stage when marriage is advisable, Mrs. Ramsay had said, and then she had said that she had been glad that Sim’s marriage had not had that basis. But what about Sim’s wife? Randy pretended to look at something so that Mrs. Ramsay would not see that her eyes were blurred, that her lips still trembled. I’ve cheated Sim, she knew. He came at the right moment, which was the moment when Jeff was not there, was not coming, or so I thought, so I accepted Sim as a substitute, and that is my basis. Poor Sim!

Woodowadda was not as large as Yanni, nor as modern.

‘Though I expect it will be brought up to date with the new owner,' Mr. Ramsay said over tea.

‘What’s this?’ demanded Sim. ‘You don’t tell me you’ve snared a sucker?' He said it laughingly, though, his glance around Woodowadda told them that he loved it almost as much as they did, for he had confided to Randy that he had spent many boyhood hours here, that it came second only to Yanni.

‘Yes,' Mrs. Ramsay laughed, ‘someone has come forward with the right price.'

‘It had to happen,' added Mr. Ramsay, ‘and we’re glad, really, that the wait is over. We're certainly not growing younger, Sim.'

‘You’re like this country, ageless. But tell me about our new neighbours.'

‘Neighbour,' the Ramsays said. ‘Male.’

‘A bachelor?’ exclaimed Sim.

'Don’t say it in such a shocked voice, you were one yourself until a month ago.'

Sim laughed amiably, then asked, ‘Country man?'

‘We can’t tell you any details except that he’s English. Which ... and please forgive us... makes it easier for our bowing out.'

‘Why should you ask forgiveness? There's been no better pioneers up here than the English. I've no doubt that this fellow—'

‘Name of Smith. That’s English if you like.’

Yes, thought Randy, but every other nationality as well _c.. and Australian. Jeff had been Smith.

Sim was nodding to Mr. Ramsay. ‘I’ve no doubt that he will take to it for all the world as though droving and air-beefing has been something he’s been doing all his life instead of planting bean rows or weeding strawberries or whatever you do on an English farm.'

‘It’s a little more than that,’ protested Mr. Ramsay, ‘but thanks for that compliment, anyway, Sim. We’re pleased over the whole thing. There was no haggling, no requests. Our agent simply wired that he had a buyer from England, and the thing has gone through.'

Mrs. Ramsay took Randy to see her garden, and there, anyway, Woodowadda was much better than Yanni. Randy said so warmly, looking around at the abundance of lovingly nurtured flowers, and Mrs. Ramsay pointed out that a garden needed a woman’s touch, and that from now on possibly the standards of the two homesteads would be reversed. ‘Unless,’ she laughed, 'Sim loans you to the newcomer.'

She gave Randy a few hints ... particularly regarding watering.

‘Mrs. Fife did tell me to do that myself because the pics love homing each other.’

‘The real reason is fungus. Up here over-moisture can start fungus almost at once. On the subject of piccaninnies, how are you going with your own two pale ones?’

‘Not exactly going,' Randy admitted ruefully.

‘So long as you are not going, dear. They did that to Ruth. They drove her away. It must have been a formidable effort, for Ruth was absolutely determined to—' Mrs. Ramsay stopped, embarrassed;

Sorry for her discomfiture, especially as she already knew from another source how Ruth had felt for Sim, Randy veered the older woman back to the house.

When they got there they found the men had gone, so they sat on the wide verandah . . . Woodowadda was single-storeyed like most country houses and encircled with verandahs ... until their husbands strolled up from the shed. By now it was time to leave.

Mr. Ramsay had one of the boys drive the visitors out to the landing paddock where Sim had brought down the Auster through the usual white upturned buckets, and then they were on their way again to Yanni.

‘Ramsay was having some trouble with his plant,’ explained Sim of his delay.

‘His wife wasn’t. Her garden is better than mine.’

He gave her a quick laughing look. ‘Want to be facetious, eh? Electric plant, muggins, not the green and growing variety.’

‘I see. And did you fix it, Mr. Fixit?’

‘What’s got into you, Miranda? What has Mrs. Ramsay been saying?’

‘Among other things that Ruth had a yen for you,’ she teased.

‘Jealous?' he said laughingly... but there was a note of eagerness in his voice. How boyishly transparent he was, and how - how dear. How she would have loved to have replied: Yes, jealous, Sim.’ But she couldn’t. Because she wasn’t. Because she never would be.

‘Perhaps,' she evaded.

‘I think the new man, seeing he’s youngish . . . yes, Ramsay told me so ... will update Woodowadda. The plant - electric, wife - needs updating. Oh, it’s quite safe, but strictly only domestic.’

Randy nodded. She had looked out of the window at night and marvelled at the extent of the exterior lighting that Sim had provided for Yanni. It could almost have been that shire of which Matt was the Shire Clerk, she had thought.

She was to think of this only five minutes after they put down at Yanni... only in a much different strain. Halfway home the blue skies that never seemed to alter up here darkened suddenly. Almost at once a quick violent storm was staged. Sim was supremely unperturbed, obviously he had experienced these freak affairs before. ‘It will be over as soon as it arrives, darling, we’ll push on. Don’t be scared.’

‘I’m not,' she assured him. She would never be — with Sim.

His word was good. The lightning was vivid. The thunder was tremendous. The gust of wind was violent. But the three came and went as though they never had happened.

The Auster put down between the home buckets in the Yanni paddock.

It was going in by the jeep that had been left there for them that the thing occurred, a thing to do with the subject on which they had last spoken - the electric plant. Abruptly Sim stopped the jeep, jumped out of it. Randy, following the direction of his horrified eyes, jumped out, too.

There was nothing they could do, nothing anyone could do. The bolt of lightning that had come and gone had brought down a private power line across one of the dividing fences, electrifying it, and into the fence were running a small group of confused cattle. Herefords, Randy saw.

It was too late to shout, too late to run; before their eyes the beasts were electrocuted.

‘Oh, Sim ... Sim!’ Randy cried, and she put her arms protectively around him.

He stopped in her arms like a little boy would, and she knew that more than realizing the financial loss of this prize group, for they would be prized in this enclosure, he was saddened because he loved all his stock, because he was a kind man.

‘Oh, Sim ...’ She tightened her arms, and he still stood there, seeking her comfort.

After a while he straightened, and pushed her back to the jeep. ‘We have to get in, darling, cut off the power.'

‘Sim, it’s so awful!’

‘It’s awful, but not so awful. It’s not any of the pics, any of the natives, the men, Mrs. Fife, the twins. Miranda, it’s not you. If it was you, it would be an end.’ He took a knuckle-whitened hand off the wheel a moment to touch Randy.

‘The end, Miranda,’ he said, ‘of everything.'

CHAPTER FIVE

The next few days Randy spent domestically, seeking tasks from Mrs. Fife, at her suggestion instructing the table girl to put the knives on the right and the forks on the left and not the other way around as Pearlie insisted, then joining in Pearlie’s resultant giggles, for these young women had a laughing outlook and one could not resist giggling, too.

Then there was the garden to rescue from determined pics, determined to be at the punishing end of a hose. There was a watchful... and hopeful.... eye for the first signs of further instruction-hunger from the twins, or at least one twin, Justin. There were begging missions to Matt, requests for future spare paper, if any, benches, if possible, should the classroom that Randy planned ever eventuate. There was Sim to look forward to when he came back to the homestead of a night, because, and Randy admitted it, she did look forward to Sim returning.

Oh, no, time did not drag.

Then on the third day Sim announced that tomorrow he would be going out with some of the stockmen to shift a herd, it would entail an overnight camp, and would Mrs. Mallow care to accompany Mr. Mallow.

‘Oh, Sim!’ Randy said eagerly.

Mrs. Fife, long experienced in ‘tuckering', refused Randy’s offers of help. ‘The men only ever take corned dog, as they call it, dear, and the makings of a damper, and of course tea and more tea. But you’d like something different?’ Mrs. Fife looked at her fondly; Randy had a fair idea that the housekeeper had rather dreaded a mistress at Yanni, but Randy had been eager not to take over any reins, and that had suited Mrs. Fife.

‘Corned dog, damper and tea,' approved Randy. ‘It sounds ambrosial.’

‘Strangely enough it is, out there,' agreed Mrs. Fife. 'Now about your sleeping gear, dear, you’d better go down to the stores and pick out a bag.’

‘Do the men carry bags?’

‘Oh, no.’ Mrs. Fife smiled at the idea. ‘A swag does them. A blanket under and a blanket over.’

‘Then that’s for me, too.’

‘But—’ objected Mrs. Fife, but there was a smile in the objection. Randy felt that she was being heartily approved.

Someone else did not approve, though, and it somewhat clouded Randy’s joyful anticipation.

Jane said coolly, ‘Going stocking with your - husband?’ Randy did not miss that faint pause before the last word. She had the sensation of a cold finger laid on her.

‘Yes, Jane,' she answered serenely.

‘That’s jolly.’

‘I hope so.’

‘You mean Sim hopes so.’ The child’s tone never emphasized one word, but somehow a point seemed made.

‘I do, too,' insisted Randy, annoyed that she found it necessary to be insistent.

Jane looked steadily at her, she looked a long time. Too long. Then she walked away. How could a child look adult like that? Randy thought. What had Jane been thinking? What did Jane know? How did she know it? Even Sim, she felt sure, found nothing lacking. Oh, he had expressed a pleased surprise when she had asked him to take her out with him the next time, but Randy was confident that he was supremely happy with her, with his life. So how did this small female sense what no one else sensed, what Randy took care that no one would ever sense? She felt like following Jane and having it out with her. But she had a sinking feeling that Jane would win.

The prospect of being away from Yanni a few days ... it could have been away from Jane ... suddenly exhilarated her. She saw Sim coming home, and, ignoring Jane’s cool amusement, for the child had not gone far, she raced down to meet him. His real pleasure at this spontaneous gesture stopped her short, but in her moment of agony, for any deception of Sim had now actually become that, he gathered her up and kissed her, put her in front of him on the stallion, and they cantered the final few yards home together.

‘Tomorrow under the stars, little one,' he reminded her.

‘Yes, Sim,' she smiled back.

'You don’t ask much, do you?' He was looking at her fondly.

‘What do you mean, Sim?'

‘You’re so radiant, Miranda, over so little. For it is because you’re going “out”, isn’t it?'

‘Yes.’ She did not add that it was also because she was going ‘away'.

‘Perhaps there may be a reward waiting for you when you get back,’ he hinted.

‘Why should I have a reward?'

‘For loving me?’

‘I couldn’t have a reward for that.'

‘Then you don’t love me?’ he suggested laughingly.

‘Oh, Sim, don’t tease!’ The exchange was too near the truth for Randy’s comfort. She was glad they were at the steps by now and that she could slide down to the ground. She was aware of Jane’s eyes as she went into the house, but she did not look across. Tomorrow she would be out on the plain, able to adjust, to think.

‘Yes, you really are looking forward to this, darling,' Sim said as he followed her in, hurrying his rather deliberate, loping pace to keep up to her quick light steps.

Randy was never to forget that early take-off the next morning. It was not even piccaninny daylight, in fact it was quite dark, but there was a sense of expectancy in the darkness; one knew that something was going to happen, and one instinctively hushed one’s voice in the anticipation of it. Down at the saddling everyone went quietly. The horses were spoken to in subdued voices, and they must have shared the hushed waiting, too, for they went quietly as well, almost as if shod in silence. Like a ghost contingent they left Yanni.

The first buttering of dawn found them several miles out in a string riding through wheat-eared grass - Mitchell grass, Sim told Randy. The hush that they all, including the horses, had felt, that dawn expectancy that somehow had lowered their voices, softened their steps, finished abruptly with the first shrill note of song and the first flash of wings as birds woke and rose up from grasses and trees. At once the butter hue left the sky and streamers of crimson took over. The sun burst out, for that was the only way to describe these sunrises, they fairly burst into full flower.

They moved west, still in a string, sometimes over sand, sometimes over patches of gibber, a clay pan, a salt pan, once actually over a field of flowers. A wedge-tailed eagle observed them from far up, but apparently grew bored and moved off.

They passed a mob of kangaroos, but the horses were accustomed to them and took no notice. A brumby camel, too, which Sim said would have strayed from a string, for there was a team up here now rounding up camel brumbies to sell them since lately there had been a market, did not interest their mounts.

They had smoko mid-morning by a creek known to the stockies, only a small lazy flow but a coolibah to shade it, and reasonable water access for the horses. Further upstream, Joe the head stockman knew a better source of water, too difficult for their mounts but excellent for billies. There was a fire ready by the time he returned with an overflowing demijohn, one of those fires that only bushmen can make; it was like turning on a jet of gas, even quicker, in no time the tea was being swung in a circle to draw. So as not to waste their time, Mrs. Fife had the first refreshment a pile of thick meat sandwiches and a generous supply of wide wedges of brownie, and they all ate hungrily, for breakfast seemed a long way back and the herby air gave a sharp appetite.

They were on the track soon after, the sun beating down now, Randy pulling over her fly veil. These flies were odd, she commented, they would pester you relentlessly, then all at once disappear. Sim said some locations seemed to attract them, yet often an adjoining location would be fly-free. There were none on the treeless plain they crossed next, and Randy did not wonder at that, she did not wonder at the absence of anything at all.

‘Nothing,' smiled Sim, and he pointed to surveying signs. So the nickel men had different ideas!

They reached the herds at noon. The saucer of land — it was too shallow to be called a valley - must have been ideal when the men had chosen it, but by now its grass had been cropped almost to shaving point, and Randy asked with concern if it ever would recover.

‘Yes, Miranda. As a matter of fact it does it good, and it will come back better than ever.’

‘To where are you shifting the mob, Sim?’

‘We’ll find somewhere. Not all the beasts are staying here, some are being driven to meet up with another overland assignment I have on the way. These will reach the Bitumen eventually and then be road-trained from there to the Coast. Have you seen a cutting-out, Miranda?’

‘No.’

‘Then you will tomorrow. The selected beasts will be corralled in a separate enclosure and after that sent on. How are you feeling, darling?’ He looked at her with concern.

‘Fine, Sim. A bit tired, of course.’ Randy sniffed. There was something very enticing about savouring the air.

‘Steak,' he smiled, looking at her tilting nose.

‘But Mrs. Fife said the men only lived on corned dog.'

‘On the move they do, but not on a stop. Not only are you having steak, Miranda, but damper, too. Roy’s a dab hand at it. While they cook our meal, do you feel up to a stroll to the hill?’

The hill was like all these hills, apparently not a hill, yet when you got there you were able to see everywhere. They sat and feasted on the sunset painting everything a burning scarlet, then Sim reminded her that here it was instant night and they had better get back to the camp.

‘But the firelight would guide us,’ she protested, enjoying herself so much she did not want to leave.

‘Some other lights could, too, Miranda, mysterious lights that have never been accounted for. Yes, that’s true, darling. There’s lots of scientific data about them, also lots of pooh-pooh and it doesn’t occur, but it still remains that there are lights. We might follow them by mistake. I don’t mind walking into the desert with you, but how would you feel?’

‘I’d like first to be fortified by a steak,' she said lightly, and was relieved when he accepted that evasion.

Back at the camp the steaks were ready, jacketed potatoes, Roy’s dab damper, and the ambrosial billy tea. Randy ate and drank appreciatively, enjoying the man talk all around her - stock, weather, likely cut-outs tomorrow. She smiled back at the brown leather faces as they smiled at her.

At length one of the men, Jack Cassidy, got up and said he would sing the cattle. She had heard of this but never actually heard it. She strained her eyes through the darkness and saw that Jack did not bother to saddle up first, he simply climbed on his mount, then clopped off. Presently Randy was listening to Rose of Tralee.

‘Yes, that’s Jack,' smiled Sim, ‘Ben, now, performs Carolina in the Morning.'

‘Which do the cattle prefer?’

‘I think they just react to a voice.'

‘What song do you use on them, Sim?'

‘I can’t sing,' he admitted ruefully, ‘but—' He looked diffidently at her, and all at once he was a different Sim, a boyish Sim, anxious to please, eager for approbation, but still a little nervous of her criticism.

‘Yes?’ she encouraged.

He took a harmonica from his pocket, put it to his long sensitive mouth and blew gently into it. An errant little tune escaped.

‘Oh, Sim, that’s lovely,' she said warmly.

Encouraged, he played on, and the elusive notes stole round Randy, sweet and reedy and teasing, and she began to sing with the tune simply to keep those notes there. She was not conscious until Roy joined in with a banjo, Bill with his home-made recorder and Clancy with a fine tenor that they were all gathered together, not ‘singing the cattle’ this time, but singing and making music for themselves, under a wide star-flung sky. It was something Randy knew she would never forget, those big, leatherfaced western men intent on music, not beasts, she would never forget the tunes wreathing and weaving round, staying yet escaping, wrapping you up yet slipping away. She would never forget Roy’s scalding tea and dripping toast afterwards. Nor that ceiling as she got into her swag . . . ‘blanket under and blanket over’ ... of Arabian blue with an unbelievable moon.

Nor would she forget a stolen moment, while the stockies were doing the last cattle round, of Sim’s arms urgently around her. Sim’s lips on hers.

Randy awoke to whipcracks. The cut-out had begun.

Everyone had slept as they had travelled yesterday, and would travel that way today. In fact, Sim had told Randy, one only changed clothes when it was a really long drove.

‘It’s rather like beer,’ he had grinned. ‘You don’t drink out here, you save it up for a long thirst at the end and meanwhile you dream of glasses with high white collars, just as you dream—’

‘Of deep baths and clean clothes?'

‘Something like that, Miranda.’

There was only a shirt straightening for Randy to do, water to be splashed on her face and hair to be slicked back. After that she poured herself black tea from the billy suspended over the fire, grabbed a hunk of damper with some corned beef on it, and climbed up on the rail of an improvised corral to watch the cutting-out.

Sim was doing the cutting. Roy, coming to Randy’s side, said that the boss was separating the primes from the rest, that these would be overlanded to the road-train. He drew Randy’s attention to Sim’s expert edging closer, almost inch by inch, on a chosen animal. Sim, Randy saw, circled the bunch first, then moved gently in.

After he had the beast secured he handed him over to Clancy to corral in another enclosure, then he started again. She noticed he wore shoes now, cattle shoes he told her between cuts; if he really got into strife with a bullock and looked like being dragged, the heels of these special shoes acted as a brake.

The cutting-out took several hours, then after a smoko the stockmen chosen to overland the primes to meet the Bitumen and the road-train set off.

Now came a pleasant task for Randy. Sim asked her to help him choose the next grazing for the mob.

‘How far away do you intend, Sim?’

‘As far as we have to,’ he smiled, and legged her up on Brown Girl.

He told her what they wanted, a slightly saucered terrain because that meant shelter, a marking hill if possible because it was handy to have a landmark, and, of course, grazing.

Had she not seen sudden valleys of grass, unexpected dents of flowers, Randy would have laughed at that last idea in red dune country like this, but she knew it happened, and after some miles across a sea of sand it did occur, that green saucer they required, even including the landmark hill, and, of course, the grazing.

‘Will there be water, Sim?' she asked.

He nodded to the grass. ‘It will be here.'

They rode back to the mob, and the stockmen prepared to shift them. It was not easy work, the cattle had grown used to idleness and were not willing to move. Randy could quite believe Sim when he said that unless they were driven there they would never search out new grazing.

Up and down the ranks the stockmen went, no singing now but the crack of whips. The dust rose and the mob moved off.

Randy was given a section and told to watch for breakaways and report them promptly to the nearest rider.

Anxious to be of real use, she took it upon herself to round one rebel up without reporting him, but she had only gone some yards when Sim came thundering beside her.

‘No, Miranda.’ His voice was quite stem. ‘Do what you’re told.’

‘Sim, I just wanted to help,’ she protested.

‘I know, but you’d finish up being less a help. Often a deviation like this can start a bigger deviation, and the next minute you have a rush on your hands. The best way is to rope the fellow back, then he doesn’t raise a dust and disturb the others, but I hardly think you’re up to that yet.’

'No, Sim. I’m sorry, Sim.’

He touched her hand so quickly in passing that it was scarcely a touch, but she still knew she was forgiven. She watched fascinated as Sim manipulated a lithe, rope and actually caught the beast on the run. There was a moment of strain, then the animal settled down again and allowed Sim to bring him back to the orderly huddle.

The rest of the overlanding went well. They settled the mob in the chosen saucer, had another smoko, then Sim selected the stockmen to stop out with them, then started to ride home to Yanni again.

‘Have you enjoyed it, Miranda?’ he asked.

‘So much so I don’t want to go back, I mean not yet.’

Sim did not answer at once. Then— ‘I don’t want to go, either,’ he admitted a little apologetically, ‘you see I’ve been told there’s a silver grey been sighted over the plain, Clancy saw this boyo at the rear of a mob of brumbies, and he vows he’s a charmer. I’d like to get him for you, Miranda.’

‘But I have Brown Girl, Sim.'

‘Just now you have, darling, but later on ... that is, I suspect. . . there are indications . . .’ He paused. ‘Anyway, you need a second mount. If not precisely for you then one day for—’ He smiled remindingly at her, and she hoped he did not notice the slight trembling in the smile she tried to give him back. The little family, she thought, the home circle. His children ... and she had dreamed of Jeff’s.

She straightened herself, firmed her mouth. ‘Then let’s go, Sim,’ she urged.

‘We’re not tuckered for another night, and it would take that possibly. Besides, it’s a man’s job.’

‘Then you go, Sim,’ she nodded.

He looked eagerly at her. ‘Spoken like a real stockman’s wife. Would you mind, Miranda?’

‘Of course not, I’ll be all right alone.'

‘Oh no, you won’t be alone,’ he came in quickly. ‘I wouldn’t let you return by yourself. I actually meant would you mind going on ahead with Ben?’

‘Of course not,’ she assured him.

‘In a way,’ he said presently, ‘I’d prefer it for - well, for another reason. I mean when you see it—’

‘The silver charmer?’

‘I haven’t got him yet. No, Miranda, I meant the surprise back at Yanni. Remember, I said there would be a reward?’ He had that boy look about him again, and Randy laughed.

'You get going after your boyo, Mr. Mallow, I’m getting back for my surprise.’

‘Then you really don’t resent this?'

For reply she lifted up her mouth to be kissed, quite surprising herself in the instinctive naturalness of the gesture. As soon as his lips pressed hers she gave his stallion a playful slap on the rump, and they separated, Sim to the hills, Randy back with Ben.

Randy talked with the stockman on the way home. Ben was an old-timer up here and had a host of bush tales to tell. One was about Arkaroola, the giant serpent, who was so heavy that wherever he went he carved out creek beds with his immense weight. One day he ate so much his stomach rumbled, and you could still hear the rumbles today. Geo men said they were seismic shocks, but the natives knew it was the stomach rumbles of Arkaroola, still alive somewhere in the desert. From the tone of his voice, Randy suspected that Ben believed that, too.

She listened to Ben stories, but her mind kept running on to Yanni, and wondering about Sim’s surprise. She had the feeling that he was diffident at being present when she discovered it, that he wanted her to find it alone. He was still, she thought, very much the small boy.

At sundown they approached the homestead. The native stablehands came out and took over the horses, and Randy went up to the house. Now to discover her reward, she thought.

There seemed nothing unusual, but Mrs. Fife, coming down the hall to greet her, met Randy’s explanation that Sim would be out a day longer than he had planned with a knowledgeable: ‘He’s embarrassed; he always was. I recall once as a small child he made something for "his mother and then actually hid while she opened the parcel. He does things like that. Why, once he—’

‘Like what, Mrs. Fife?’

The housekeeper smiled and refused to tell Randy.

Instead she said: ‘It’s at the end of the long verandah, dear. Go and see for yourself.’

When she had walked along, Randy found that an annexe had been quickly assembled in their absence — walls, window, roof and all. Why, it would be her schoolroom she had hankered after but not dreamed she would get for some time. Sim must have left directions for it to be built, built while they were away but, now that the moment of discovery was here, Sim had been too shy to join in the pleasure. Oh, dear, funny, thoughtful Sim!

Laughing a little, loving him for his boyish embarrassment, she turned the handle of the door and went in.

There she stood and looked around her. Caught her breath sharply.

Then she carefully shut the door behind her, leaned against it and looked again.

In dismay.

Whoever had done this unkind thing, knew Randy, had done it recently, otherwise Mrs. Fife would not have directed her so proudly down the long verandah.

The walls of the new schoolroom, for that, as she had anticipated, was what it was, were scrawled on, the little desks upturned, the papers and pencils that Matt must have contributed from his office were torn or broken.

Randy righted a chair and sat down for a while, but first securing the door from possible intruders. This was something she must handle herself, she knew, so she wanted no onlookers, but she had to think it all out, move wisely.

The piccaninnies? That was her initial thought. Like all little ones the world over, reluctant to be brought to a desk? No, that made no sense. These children had never known school, they had no older brothers or sisters to tell them about it since they also had no experience in school, to tell them in the foreboding manner, that, even if they really like, schoolchildren invariably adopt.

Their parents, then? Afraid of this innovation? Thinking it could take the children from them? Even adopting, as many people do, that ‘what was good enough for me is good enough for you' attitude? Oh, no, definitely not the parents. For never had Randy seen such wise tender love as that of these darker men and women for their small ones. More like it they would bring the child to the door, stay there to make sure he was availed all that was offering.

So that ruled out the pics and the pics’ fathers and mothers.

Who, then?

Miserably Randy knew she was only sifting things like this to keep herself as long as possible from the true answer, that answer she had known the moment she had stepped into the room. It was the twins, of course. But why? Why? If they did not want instruction for themselves, why had they seen to it that others were deprived? They could not have mistaken the new room as their own new larger room, not with those small tables and chairs, those many more pencils (now broken) than two students would require.

So why, Jane and Justin?

Randy’s impulse was to interview the twins at once, but her good sense told her that the thing to do first was to right the wrong, as far, anyway, as it could be righted, before anyone else could see what had taken place. In this cooling off time, she thought, though in her present state she felt she would never cool off, she should be able to face the twins in a more reasonable frame of mind.

She looked around her, and saw with relief that the mischief, although appalling, was not actually disastrous. For instance the scrawl on the walls would wash off. The desks would stand up again. The chairs could be replaced. The paper and pencils were a write-off, and she bit her lip at that, for it would mean interviewing Matt for some more and she hoped to keep the incident to herself, but the bookie’s office, she recalled, was very well supplied, so it was only a matter of stating her case and prevailing upon Matt.

She started on the walls with a damp cloth and had them cleaned up in a reasonable time. The tables and desks were no trouble, and she decided to tell Mrs. Fife, should the housekeeper investigate the noise, that she was readjusting the arrangement of the school furniture to her own liking. However, Mrs. Fife did not appear, and presently all that was needed to make it what it had been was a stationery supply again.

Making sure of the windows, carefully locking up this time and pocketing the key, she went across to the office.

As she went she planned subterfuges for Matt, evasions, half-truths ... she shied away from calling them lies ... but when she entered the book-keeper’s room she could not think of a thing and just stood there wretchedly, until Matt said knowingly: ‘So that’s how it is!’ and she felt a big relief that at least there was no need for any double talk.

‘Little wretches!’ he stormed. ‘I had a feeling when I saw them pussyfooting it across the long verandah.’

‘Matt, we don’t know,’ she pleaded.

'I know,’ he said. ‘It’s the twins, isn’t it? That pair—'

'Yes, it’s Jane and Justin, I do believe. No actual harm done, I mean I’ve cleaned it all up, but I’m calling on you for more supplies.’

‘Suppose I don’t give them to you? Suppose I ask for a requisition form from Mr. Mallow?’

‘Please, Matt, don’t do that.’ She made a straight-out appeal of it.

‘You’re going to shield them,' he accused. ‘Why should you?’

‘I’m not going to shield them. I’m going to find out why, but I’ll never find out by telling on them first.’

‘Humph,' Matt grunted.

As he still stopped unconvinced, Randy summoned up all her persuasive power to use on the book-keeper. She agreed with him that the children had been naughty ... he snorted at ‘naughty’ ... but on the other hand punishment without finding a cause would avail nothing. As he still stood unmoved she shamelessly brought up old days on the Riverina, the strong bond between country people everywhere. It was an unfair advantage, but she used it brazenly, and at last, though unenthusiastically, he brought out another supply of paper and some boxes of pencils.

‘Reckon what those kids really need is a wallop,’ he growled. ‘They needed it with Ruth, but would Sim give it? No.'

Randy wanted to ask ... and eagerly ... if Sim would not give it because he, too, wanted Ruth away? Her trend of thought, and the eagerness of it, rather startled her. It was almost as if she cared that Sim had wanted Ruth absent. Aware of her flushed cheeks, she said hastily of Matt’s wallop, ‘Sim’s far too kind for that.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Matt promptly, ‘he’s simply uninterested. Think this lot will do you?’

‘Yes, Matt. Thank you for ever. And Matt—'

‘It’s all right,’ Matt spared her, ‘the story will be safe with me.’

‘Thank you,’ she repeated, and went out. But all the way back to the new schoolroom she was thinking of something, and it was not the twins’ naughtiness but Sim’s uninterest in their naughtiness. Could, she wondered, could that uninterest be an underlying cause for all that was happening? She was no trained psychologist, but years of governessing had given her a fair idea of young human nature. One thing she did know for certain was that children needed a lot of love. Jane and Justin had not had that. Oh, they had been well looked after, more than they deserved perhaps, but love?

She unlocked the door and went in again, and was just in time to see two noses disappearing from the outside of the window. Wheeling promptly, she raced round to face Jane and Justin before they could scamper away.

‘I thought you’d like to come and see the new schoolroom,’ she invited.

‘We have,’ said Justin, caught out as usual.

‘Shut up!’ hissed Jane.

‘So you’ve seen it already? But in what state? Look, I really think you’d like it better now. I’ve just been down to the book-keeper’s for pencils and paper. You could help me place them around.’

Justin for once moved on his own accord, he stepped forward to follow Randy. Jane stood furious a moment, then undoubtedly unsure of what her twin would say, stepped forward, too.

They got to the schoolroom, Randy opened up, then shut the door again, and turned to the twins. ‘It’s a nice room,’ she smiled.

There was silence.

Randy continued, ‘But it wasn’t before I cleaned up. Thank you, anyway, Jane and Justin, for not doing anything really damaging. What you did was at least repairable.’

‘Why do you think it was us?’ Jane asked sullenly.

‘I don’t think, Jane, I know. You see, there’s no one else.’

‘What about the piccaninnies?'

‘They wouldn’t.’

‘Their mothers?’

‘They would never. Nor their fathers, sisters, aunts. Nor any of the stockmen, stablehands, the lubras. Nor Mrs. Fife, or Matt. No, you did it.’

‘Well, it doesn’t matter, anyway,’ shrugged Jane carelessly of Randy’s knowledge, ‘we wanted it like that. We wanted you to realize what fiends we are .. . Ruth used to call us that ... so that you’d see it was no use, that in the end you’d have to do what she did.’

‘Who did, Jane?’

‘Her. Ruth.’

‘What did Ruth do?’

Jane said triumphantly, ‘Leave.'

Randy stood incredulously staring at the twins, incredulous at their naivete.

‘But it was different with Ruth,’ she reminded them as she had before.

‘How?’ Again it was Jane - a truculent Jane.

‘Sim and Ruth were not married. There was nothing to keep Ruth here.’ Oh, if only she could stop this burning red mounting her cheeks, Randy wished.

‘I told you that,’ burst in Justin to his twin, ‘I told you it was a punk idea.’

Jane ignored him. She said coolly, ‘I still think it’s just the same. I still think you can go.’

How to handle this? Randy waited a desperate moment trying to think, but getting nowhere. The trouble was she did not know what Jane knew, yet how could Jane know?

She said crisply, ‘Sim and I are married, and when you’re married you don’t go away from each other.’

That was a wrong answer. This time Justin came in. He said, with Jane: ‘Oh, yes, you do,’ and Randy remembered their own early mixed-up days.

‘Properly married people, I mean,’ she said weakly, and was aware, as on previous occasions, of Jane’s sharp glance on her.

‘Look,’ she said at length, ‘there’s one thing you’ve missed. It won’t be me going away, it will be you. You’re going away, as you know, but it will be much earlier than you thought... once I tell Sim.’

There was a dead silence. This, Randy saw, was one thing their immature little brains had not anticipated, their own earlier removal. They had seen Randy as another later Ruth, exasperated, irritated, finally driven away by their unbearable badness. Because, suspected Randy of Sim, when it had come to a choice of losing two children, helpless children or a very self-sufficient ... or so she had gathered of Ruth ... young woman, Sim had stood behind the children. Not with love, she realized that now, and not with particular interest, but because it was the right thing to do. Sim always would be right.

She said this now as clearly as she could. Sim would do right. For instance, he would not let his wife leave. As she got to ‘his wife’ she gave Jane a hard stare that at least produced a short silence.

‘You haven’t shown any brains,' she finished cuttingly, ‘not to have realized that. If ever a pair did need school, or early removal to school—’ But as she looked at their wretched little faces, she knew differently. These two, before all else, needed love.

Yet there must be a kind of love on one of the sides, she thought reasonably, otherwise Sim would have ridded himself of the pair before this, otherwise the twins would have wanted to turn their backs on Yanni.

She recalled Matt’s ‘uninterest’ in Sim, and decided that that could be true. Which meant that the love feeling must be put down to the children.

She said frankly, ‘You didn’t want to leave Sim because you love him.’

‘We don’t,’ they said at once together.

‘But,’ admitted Justin, ‘he hasn’t pushed us around like the others did.’

‘He’s been fair enough,' said Jane.

They were old beyond their years in some things, but in other things they were mere babes. For instance Randy felt that if she would have said ‘But he loves you' said it in all truth, that she could have changed everything. But she couldn’t, and they knew it. They knew Sim was not interested, kind enough but not interested, and since in their limited experience of life no one was really interested, only protective because they were young, they concluded that Sim, on their behalf, would be the same with Randy as he had been with Ruth. He would let her go. That, anyway, was what Randy pityingly interpreted of them.

‘I’m not going to say anything to Sim,’ she announced presently. ‘On the other hand I’m not going to chew all this over as someone else evidently did before me, then finally leave you two to it. You’re very young not to realize that such things simply don’t happen. Oh, I know they have once ... but it’s not usual.’ She was sorry the moment she said that, sorry for the bleak, pinched look on their little faces. One of the foremost things in a child’s life is a desire to conform: they might assert otherwise, but the burning desire is there; to be like others, to do and feel and live the same. She had just as good as said that they were not the same.

‘It will be all right.’ She put a final encouraging note in her voice. ‘Tomorrow I'll start lessons with the piccaninnies. You’re welcome if you wish to come. On the other hand if you prefer you can use your own small room.’

‘On the other hand if we don’t want to do anything we can do that, too.’ It was Jane, recovered again.

‘Until you leave for boarding school, which, as you should know, is up to me. Sim wanted it at once. I wanted you to stop for company for a while... at least I did want you.’

Justin said quickly, ‘You don’t now.'

‘I have the piccaninnies now.'

Jane said, with that cool intuition that on several occasions had chilled Randy: ‘Why should you need anyone?’

‘You are a crosscurrent and a contradiction, Jane. You’re implying that as Sim’s wife I should need no one, yet before you thought so little of that you took it for granted that I would leave, the same as Ruth.’

‘I don’t know about people being married,’ Jane said flatly. ‘All I know is that it doesn’t work.’

‘Oh, darling!’ Something in that dulled little voice tore at Randy. She stepped forward.

‘And all I know, too,’ continued Jane thickly, ‘is it isn’t fair, it wasn’t fair ... for Sim.’ She turned and ran out of the room.

‘What does she mean?’ Randy asked Justin, but Justin was turning over the pages of a manual.

‘I think I might come, if Jane will,’ he said wistfully.

'Do that, Justin.’ Randy had sat down depleted. She watched the boy pick up some more books, turn them over, then at last wander out.

She found that she was trembling. It had not been a pleasant interview. No one had won. Yet on the other hand no one had lost. They were exactly where they had been before, except...

Before she had sensed Jane knew something, now she felt certain. But how? And how to deal with a precocious ten-year-old unbelievably naive in some things, incredibly knowledgeable in others? Randy sighed and got up, made a final adjustment to the room, then turned to leave.

As she did so a little smile pulled at her mouth. Sim had even provided a school bell, she saw fondly.

She placed it ready for the following day.

Randy had let it be known that the schoolroom doors would open in the morning, and that any child who wanted to come would be welcomed. There was no rule to make them come, she told the parents, it was just if they so wished. She urged the parents not to force them if they were disinclined. Randy knew by now how one unwilling scholar can upset the entire classroom.

She had expected a fair roll call, if only out of curiosity, but she had not expected every pic belonging to the station. Behind them their parents, as eager as their little ones. Randy let the parents look around, remark eagerly on the desks and chairs, paper and pencils, then gently edged them out again. They went well satisfied, talking proudly with each other. Randy turned to her class.

She had never had such a class before. At several stations a stockman’s child had joined the station children, but never a host of shy brown ones like this. Their eagerness stirred her. She found herself giving of herself as she never had given before, and she had always been a dedicated teacher.

Jane and Justin did not attend, which was just as well at this initial gathering. She divided the class into age groups, started the smallest on finger painting, the in-betweens on match counting and the older ones on letters.

In no time it seemed Mrs. Fife was knocking on the door and handing in a tray, and Randy was ordering the class, for it had to be an order, to remove themselves from their desks and tables and run around outside for half an hour.

‘How is it going?' asked Mrs. Fife.

Tine, so far. I think tomorrow and the days that follow will be the judging time, though; just now it’s a novelty.’

‘You’ll be right,’ said Mrs. Fife sagaciously, ‘they’re bright enough youngsters. Of course, like with all kiddies, there’ll be the not-so-keens.'

‘Don’t you believe it, dear, they’ve been hanging round all the morning. Anyway, you’re better without them.’

‘Do you ever think, Mrs. Fife, that that’s their trouble, that everyone is better without them?’

Mrs. Fife looked surprised but thoughtful. After a while she said, ‘I’m not one for this psychology stuff or whatever it is. I really mean, dear, I don’t understand it.’

‘But you understand love.’ Who was she to talk like this, she who had no love, at least no love to return to—

‘Of course, dear.’

‘Yet,’ said Randy, ‘do they? Do Jane and Justin?'

‘I see what you’re after, but I’m afraid I’d be out of my depth there. Another cup, dear?’

‘No, that was lovely. I’m going to ring our bell now to bring the children in again. It would be a let-down, wouldn’t it, if they had had enough and didn’t return.'

But Randy need not have bothered about that. She started the entire class, finger painters to letter inscribers, on verse.

‘It’s called poetry,' she told them, feeling that with their keen affinity with nature and the rhythm of nature they should enjoy this.

‘I know that,' said Jamu, who was proving himself as scholastically bright as he was in thinking out humbug, ‘it’s chooks.'

‘What Jamu?’

‘Chooks. Cock-a-doodle-do.' Jamu did the appropriate actions, and all the class joined in. Though in rhythm, Randy noted with satisfaction.

‘It’s nothing like that,' she said when she had silenced them. ‘You have the wrong word, Jamu. Not poultry, but poetry.’

The class at her nod said poetry.

She was enchanted at the way they took to it. They even learned a small verse by the lunch break. She would ask Sim to rig up the transceiver and affix a loudspeaker, for although they were not up to the general lessons yet, they would enjoy listening to the verse sessions.

The twins were present at the midday meal. It might have been her imagination, but they eyed her a little wistfully. They made no remark, though, and she made none, either, except when she was leaving, when she said casually, ‘Call in any time you wish.'

There was a snort, but it came only from Jane, and then it was not a very intense one.

Randy went back and rang the bell again. It was now the hot time of the day, the afternoons were always the hottest up here, and she expected a few empty places at the tables. There was not one. Several of the tinies dozed off, though, as lessons resumed, and she let them sleep wherever they dropped their small woolly heads.

They had a ‘talk time’. She had found in all her governess posts that ‘talk times’ were very popular. She encouraged the children to tell her folk stories, starting them off by telling them what she knew about Arkaroola, the snake. From that a host of stories sprang.

While on the snake subject she decided it might be wise to consider the best way to tackle them. She did not say tackle, she said, ‘If I came upon a snake and I called to you for help, what would you do?’

‘We would come and say “Good morning, New Missus",' they chorused politely.

‘Yes. That’s good-mannered of you. But what would you do?'

‘Cook him,’ they cried.

Randy included a Bible lesson, and because of a quarterly visit from a bush padre the children were off to a flying start here. But when she came to a part in the Nativity story she was telling, one of them . . . Jamu doubtless ... interrupted proudly that he knew Frankenstein, he was in the pikshers that the piksher man showed.

‘Frankincense.'

'Yes, that’s the mongster.'

Promptly at three Randy dismissed her class, but found to her dismay, though it should have been with pride, that they were unwilling to go.

‘There’s tomorrow,’ she reminded them, ‘there’s the days after.’ Never had she had such an enthusiastic class.

‘What time tomorrow?’ asked Jamu.

‘After breakfast. Now outside, Jamu.'

‘How soon, New Missus?’

‘Oh, when I’m good and ready.'

Jamu looked at her incredulously... and lovingly. ‘But you’re not bad,’ he disbelieved.

Touched, Randy patted his little bullet head. ‘Out!' she ordered.

Screams of excitement outside set him obeying instantly, and, curious, Randy followed him.

Crossing the paddocks were the stockmen, and Sim, and between them they brought a string of captured horses. So the stop-out had had results.

As they came nearer, Randy saw that the one that Sim led was the coveted silver grey, and he was certainly all he had anticipated, slender yet strong, beautifully proportioned, satin-haired, velvet-eyed.

Sim raised his arm triumphantly to her, but shook his head against her coming down to meet him. The stable- hands, who had all come out, kept the children back from the new wild ones.

They were enclosed for the night, watered, fed. Standing by Sim’s side and watching, Randy said sympathetically, ‘Poor things.'

‘Yes, darling, I feel like that, too,’ Sim agreed. ‘But they’ll be happy here, I think. Do you think?' He had turned to her.

‘Me, Sim?’ she asked.

‘In a way you’re captive, too, aren’t you? A happy one, Miranda?’

‘A happy captive,' she nodded. Well, at least it was a half-truth, for she was captive, captive to Sim.

But — happiness?

Yet there were moments of happiness, happiness she had never dreamed of. Sim, for instance, beside her on that night of his return from the wild horse round-up, she and Sim on the upper balcony, the record player between them playing soft Grieg ... Grieg with his song of snowladen fir trees in this land of mulga and spinifex? ... while they both gazed up at a sky that a northern sky could not have outdone in gleaming plush. Then Sim shutting off the player and looking across at Randy and putting his finger over his lips for her to listen, and up from the gully stealing such elusive, errant music that Randy wanted to seek it out for herself. Yet she seemed tied here, tied by the very sweetness of sound, tied to warm voices raised to thin reeds and to the cry of the didgeridoo as the natives showed them their music. Later she had whispered to Sim about it, revelled in it, and he had said ‘Yes ... yes, darling’, then silenced her with his lips and his arms.

That had been happiness, too, yet how could it be when ...

Happiness again when the next day Sim had come to the schoolroom and seen the activity there. He had been delighted and his delight had been her delight, so more happiness. He had not noticed that the twins did not attend, and she had decided not to mention it. After he had gone, and the children had been intent on their different activities, Randy had remembered how important it had seemed to retain the twins so as to hide herself in them, hide from Sim the love she did not have for him. But now the twins were unimportant, for she had these children instead to hide in. Yet in this present mood they were unimportant as well, for she did not need to hide from - happiness. But how could she be happy without Jeff?

The children would have remained in the classroom all day, but about this Randy was very adamant. Every governess knows that the secret of enthusiasm, and without enthusiasm Randy knew she would never want to teach, was to keep the young brain always eager and reaching for more. So she rationed the hours, closed the books at a certain time, and would not be prevailed to allot even one minute extra.

‘Oh, Missusim’ . . . they called her that now instead of New Missus . .. ‘oh, Missusim, please!'

'Tomorrow,’ Randy decreed.

Leaving the room after the children had been dismissed, Randy walked right into Justin, whom she had noticed previously lounging intentionally near the door. She greeted him brightly, pretending not to know he had manoeuvred the meeting, and he fell into step beside her.'

‘Are the kids liking school?’ he asked.

‘Very much, Justin.’

Silence for a while, then: ‘Are you giving any of that navigation stuff to them?'

‘I intend to start them on lessons that will lead to that quite soon — that is, of course, the senior ones.'

‘Of course,’ agreed Justin. He looked gloomy.

Randy could not help feeling sorry for him. It was one thing, she thought, to plan a course of action, but another thing to keep to it. She had decided to let the twins go their own difficult way, she no longer needed them, but one of them needed her, or at least what she could help avail him. Justin thirsted for information, and Randy looked at him sympathetically.

‘When you go south to school, Justin—' she began encouragingly.

He shook his head.

‘But you’re going, darling we argued this out before.'

‘But it will be a while yet, Jane says, because you’ve asked Sim not to hurry with us, and at least, Jane says, you keep your word.'

‘That’s nice of Jane, anyhow,' Randy’s voice was clipped.

‘But Jane is never nice. Haven’t you noticed?’

‘I suppose your sister still hopes I’ll be gone before that, before school,’ Randy concluded.

This time Justin nodded his head.

‘But I won’t be going,’ Randy said. ‘In which case, Justin, seeing that it will be some weeks, possibly months, why don’t you drop into the classroom, as you said you might?’

‘Jane won’t.'

‘I’m asking you.'

‘I...' said Justin.

He was completely under his sister’s thumb, a common enough occurrence at his stage of growing, for the female, Randy had found, matures much quicker, and always dominates. Another year, less than that, and the worm would turn, the circumstances alter; Randy had seen it so often she almost could have called the day. She ruffled Justin’s hair quite fondly, sought for enticing words to say to him, enticing words in Justin’s instance like planets and Asteroids and such, then forgot them in her own ... and Justin’s ... sudden complete absorption in a scene about to take place.

‘They’re going to have a break,' said Justin excitedly, ‘come down and see it, it’s great!’

Simultaneously they ran down to the quickly assembled corral into which one of the wild horses was now being led.

Randy saw that it was Sim who was to attempt the break, and that he had chosen the silver grey. He came across to her and said, ‘In Spain they dedicate the bull to the beautiful lady, don’t they? Then this is my dedication to you.’

‘But, Sim, he must be the wildest of the bunch. I know he was the most coveted.'

'Yes, and that’s why I’m approaching him first. I have respect for a horse’s brains, something which many horsemen still argue they have not, but I reckon if the rest of our captives’ ... he pointed to the string that had been won from the hills now roped into little uneasy clusters outside the rigged corral and undoubtedly aware, by their glancing eyes, of what was happening inside ... ‘see that it’s not all that bad, then the worst is over. Yanni will have some more thoroughbreds for Matt to add to the records.'

‘Be careful, Sim,' she begged.

‘I have too much to lose.’ His voice was warm as he said it. He touched her shoulder briefly, then went back to where a stable-boy held the grey in a tight halter.

‘Ease him,' Randy heard Sim say.

‘But, Boss, he’s touchy.'

‘Ease him!’ There was a command in Sim’s voice, a command that Randy had never heard before; always Sim was gentle, even effacing, she had never seen him like this, taking the lead, issuing orders. How little, she thought wonderingly, do I know of him.

Sim was talking to the grey horse now, talking reasonably, even soothingly, but the same as with the stable- hand when he had questioned his judgment, with authority. Randy saw by the flick of the grey horse’s ears that he heard the command - and didn’t like it.

He did not move, though. He stayed quite still in the eased rein, then, showing indeed that he had the brains that Sim had acclaimed, he waited a full moment in the relaxed looseness, then, rearing his head, he spun out of Sim’s hold to the other side of the corral. For a moment Randy believed he was going to hurdle it, but it was too much to ask even for a horse of his undoubted ability, and the grey horse stopped and threw himself against the rails instead.

At least, Randy thought, throwing himself like that was not hurting Sim, but a glance at her husband told her he was hurt, hurt with each self-punishing impact of the grey. Fascinated, she watched Sim signal, his eyes not leaving the horse, for a long rope. She watched him take it from the stable boy, then with a deliberate and unerring twirl he lassooed the horse in one straight true movement. He let the horse rear and plunge for a moment only, then he drew the horse nearer to him, but did not alter his own firm yet relaxed stance.

Now came more conversation with the horse, quiet talk, so quiet that Randy heard no words, only saw the movement of Sim’s lips. Then nonchalantly, almost as if it did not matter, Sim climbed bareback on the horse and sat there motionless for a while. Randy caught her breath, waiting for the worst, waiting for the stallion to withstand the burden imposed on him, then she was aware that she was breathing again, and that Sim had climbed down.

But it was only temporary. Now came what she sensed was the crucial moment. A human burden after all was in a way a counterpart, it was flesh and blood, but the thing that was put on now, the saddle, and what went with it, was completely foreign to the brumby.

The horse knew it, and reacted at once, but at once, too, Sim was talking to it, talking reasonably as before but with the same firm note of command. The horse paused, plainly puzzled, and in that moment Sim remounted, and the horse stood up on its hind legs, then began racing round the confining rails of the corral, racing so swiftly that even watching made Randy dizzy.

The gyrations lessened, for the brumby was growing tired, but it still made a final bid for freedom, it made once more for the top rail. But this time it cleared it, and with Sim still on it. Across the field the pair flew, and with every jolt as the horse raced over an uneven patch, Randy’s heart jolted, too.

She watched till her eyes ached, everyone at the corral watched, then someone called triumphantly, ‘They’ve turned!’

Back they came together, the horse cantering easily now, Sim leaning across it and patting it, smoothing it, talking to it again. When they reached Randy’s side and Sim slid off, the grey actually stopped where it was, but with no waiting cunning as before, instead the liquid eyes never left Sim, and once, and Randy could not credit it, its nose actually nuzzled his shoulder. They were friends.

‘Sim, you’re wonderful!’ she breathed.

He smiled deprecatingly, but she could see he was pleased with her praise. ‘I quite like a break when it goes well for both sides,’ he admitted, now fondling the grey.

‘It didn’t seem a break,’ Randy told Sim, ‘it seemed more a getting-to-know-you.’

‘That’s what I always aim for, Miranda, but I’m quite satisfied if at least we come to terms. I don’t like the term break. It sounds the end.’

‘Like heartbreak?’ It was Jane, and she was perched on the top bar of the corral fence and looking down on them.

‘Some little pitchers around here have big ears,' grinned Sim to Randy.

'No,’ came Jane clearly again, ‘eyes.'

Sim said, ‘Vamoose, kid, this next little beauty doesn’t like an audience, she’s nervous.’ He pointed to a filly now being led in and being handled by the leading stablehand. As Jane unwillingly climbed down, he added to Randy, ‘I can’t always follow that young ’un. Heartbreak! Eyes, not ears! Sorry, Miranda, but you must go, too. We’re better alone when there’s a highly strung actress about to play out a scene.’

Randy obeyed too, also unwillingly. Because, unlike Sim, she had followed Jane’s trend, she knew that Jane had been saying something if not exactly to Sim then certainly at Randy. As before she knew that Jane knew something. How or what, it did not matter.

Jane knew.

Another happy week with Sim close by her. Had Randy paused to analyse it she would have been incredulous at just how happy she was, incredulous since happiness of this intrinsic quality belonged only with someone else, belonged only with Jeff. But Randy did not find time to probe; every hour was filled and brimming over, she had no moment for introspection.

Sim rigged up the transceiver in the new classroom and attended the first listening-in. He enjoyed the session as much as the piccaninnies, by his smiling absorption.

After lessons, Randy went on expeditions with him. Once to the Carvings, as Sim had always known the red rocks some miles out where centuries ago aborigines had chipped stories and legends.

‘It’s said,’ Sim told her, ‘that they’re scenes from the Dreamtime. There are debil-debils, and giant snakes.’

‘And Arkaroola?’ asked Randy.

‘He’s still writhing out creek beds somewhere,' Sim reminded her with a smile. ‘You’ll find the colouring is quite magnificent, Miranda.'

It was. Earth-hued but many graduations of hues, some quite brilliant. Randy traced her finger rather fearfully over the terrible debil-debils and then, more happily, over the stem yet amiable good spirits.

They had a picnic by the lagoon one day, the grass that feathered around it silver-tinged and delicate, somehow exotic in this strong red country. But the lagoon itself was not delicate just now. There had been a good Wet, Sim said, so it was full and sparkling, a goal for small insects who made gauzy flight patterns above it, of frogs who sang busily.

They had another flip across to the Ramsays, who would be leaving shortly, the newchum taking over. For Sim it was a sentimental journey, for he had known his old neighbours all his life. As the Auster took off again, he leaned over and snatched a last look at the elderly couple who had come out on this last occasion to wave him off.

‘Next time there’ll be a new owner,' he sighed.

‘He could be very nice, Sim.'

‘He will be, to choose here, and in a way it will be good to have more of a contemporary for a neighbour. It’s just old associations that’s making me nostalgic, darling. Life must go on, the Ramsays must move elsewhere.’ He took time off from his flying to touch her hand. ‘We’ll have to do it ourselves one day, leave our kids to carry on.’

‘Yes,' she said, that tightness that always came to her throat when he spoke like this affecting her again.

In the week, Sim also cemented his friendship with the silver grey. Though still a little cautious with the stablehands, Pina ... Sim had called him Pina, for pina meant big and Sim estimated that though largish now the grey would finish up a considerable size ... was eager for Sim’s attention. Since Randy was always with Sim, the horse included her, and Sim was pleased over that as quite soon Brown Girl, he informed her now with certainty, would not be fit for riding.

‘Motherhood,’ smiled Randy, for Sim had hinted before of his suspicions.

‘Yes. She’s coming along, Miranda.'

‘Nicely?’

‘I hope so. It’s always hard to say. Horses are not prolific, as you know, it’s never like - well, rabbits.'

‘We’ll give Brown Girl every assistance,’ Randy said. ‘I’ve never helped, but I have with a cow.’

‘The very fact of your presence will be a comfort,’ Sim assured her, and he flashed her one of those smiles that always did treacherous things to her heart - treacherous, she believed, because she could not match Sim’s love. ‘As a matter of interest,’ Sim said, ‘someone else will be standing by with comfort... at least I have a very shrewd suspicion.'

‘Matt? Mrs. Fife? Are they up in this knowledge?'

‘I meant a four-legged identity. Pina.'

'Pina? But how—'

‘Brown Girl was a brumby, too, she was also a wild one, though in Brown Girl’s case there was very little of the wild element, that filly was born gentle.'

'Yes, Sim?’

‘She must have been in foal... only barely, I’d say ... when we brought her in. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Miranda, but Pina has always been very interested in Brown Girl. Could she carry his foal?’

‘They would have been young parents,' said Randy, but enchanted.

‘Springtime lovers,' Sim nodded. ‘Why not?'

‘Why not?' she agreed, trying to make her tone spring, too, for it seemed to be expected somehow, yet in this moment she knew she had never felt less like spring in her life. Spring lovers, Sim had just said, and that had been Jeff and herself. But spring only happened once, and now it was over. She felt a tug of sadness for days that had gone.

‘I’m going out in the morning for a day or so again, darling. I’m not asking you this time because it’s something I believe you don’t care about – branding.'

She nodded back. It was something she never had taken interest in. She had not minded vaccinations,' she had felt they were doing the beast a wonderful service, but the sight of the long-handled branding iron had always set her returning to a homestead. It was necessary, she knew, but the meekness and acceptance of the animals had always made her nervous. She said now, ‘No, Sim, I wouldn’t want to watch that. Are you doing it here?'

‘No, out, as I said. In fact at Ten Mile. The boys are bringing in a thousand bullocks and calves for sorting. You’ll see the red dust from here.'

‘That’s all I will see,’ she vowed. 'A day or so, you said?’

‘Could run into three, darling. Apart from branding, I want to look these fellows over. You’ll be all right?’

‘Of course.’ She squeezed his hand, another little gesture that had slipped unconsciously into practice with Randy.

Sim went early as usual, and Randy went through her school ritual, resisting a temptation to detain the children longer to fill in time. They wouldn’t have objected, she knew, neither would their parents, but enthusiasm must be kept high, so again she dismissed them to the tune of ‘Oh, Missusim!’

She prepared the next day’s lessons, then went out of the annexe to stand on the verandah a while to watch the beginnings of that red cloud that Sim had promised as the herds began coming in.

She could imagine Sim out there, rather understated in clothes in comparison to the native stockmen who went in for bright shirts, wide leather belts and silver buckles. Sim instead would be in quiet check, drill trousers, calf high boots and broad hat. He would be narrowing his far-west blue eyes into the dazzling glare.

All at once Randy felt a call for the outdoors, not just the outdoors out-of-doors, on a verandah, but out. Out there. She had promised Sim she would not go out of bounds, and she was no fool, but even the nearer precincts of Yanni were extensive, and she would be perfectly safe. It would also provide an opportunity to become better acquainted with Pina, and Sim would be pleased over that. Pina, until Brown Girl got over her accouchement, was to be Randy’s mount. What better an opportunity to get to know Pina than this?

She changed into her jeans and went down to the stabling. There was no one around, but that did not trouble her. She had been talking with Pina for a week, admittedly by Sim’s side, but she felt sure the grey would know her.

Pina did. He even nuzzled into her, and when she saddled him he made no objection. He even seemed to look forward to a turn around the paddocks.

He had been standing looking over at the box at Brown Girl when Randy came in, and she had watched a while wondering if what Sim had supposed could be true. Spring lovers, she thought again, for both animals were still very young.

Pina treated her courteously when she mounted, waiting patiently at gates while she unfastened, then fastened them again. Soon they were out on the first field and moving easily.

Her success prompted Randy to venture further. As she went by the small creek she noticed a little lean-to that had been clumsily erected, and she smiled slightly, for she glimpsed Jane within the shelter. Sim had told her that the twins were keen on retreats. ‘So long as they don’t run into danger and upset the station routine, I don’t care where they erect their cubbies.'

Randy did not stop, she knew they might resent her intrusion and she had had enough of their resentment, she just cantered quietly by ... that is, cantered quietly until something smartly connected with Pina’s retreating rump, only a small pebble, and not at all dangerous, but a complete surprise to the horse, who in the past week had been conditioned to every consideration. He immediately rose, Randy hanging Successfully on, then sprinted across the field. Behind her, Randy heard the children’s laughter.

It was naughty, it was foolish, but, she thought, still managing Pina successfully, not all that naughty and foolish. They had not unduly alarmed the grey, simply wakened him up. Not that that had been their purpose, she thought shrewdly, rather it had been their ... Jane’s ... intention to embarrass, possibly unseat, Randy. Well, one up to Randy, applauded Randy. She had not been embarrassed and not unseated.

Pina, she considered presently, had let off enough indignant steam. She pulled on the rein. Nothing happened, and she pulled smartly again, accompanied it with an admonishing word. Pina ignored her.

'Pina, don’t be silly, the children meant no harm. Pina, stop! Pina, turn. Pina!' For Pina was going on.

On and on went the horse, and the further he went the faster his pace became. After some miles he snorted, then whinnied, and Randy knew why. He was smelling old scents, knowing old ways, the bush was calling him, the hills, the untrammelled stretches, he was going back to where instinctively he knew he belonged.

He leapt unerringly over uneven patches, he raced up slopes. Not once did he cause Randy alarm for her bodily safety, only alarm for her personal safety, the safety of direction, for if she feared she had been lost that time on Brown Girl, now she knew she was lost. She had not the faintest idea where she was, and she knew she never would have. Nor, she thought, would anyone else. Pina undoubtedly was looking for his old bunch, and since strings of wild horses were never a frequent occurrence, the possibility of being seen in a reasonable time, let alone captured, was extremely remote.

Seeing she was already lost Randy felt she could be no worse than that, so she let Pina have his head and keep on his untrammelled way, which he did for over an hour, until at last he was tired and stopped. Then she slipped off.

‘Oh, Pina!' she cried in reproach.

For an animal who had had his will, Pina, wild Pina, did not seem very elated. Instead of cropping, as Brown Girl had done that last time, he stopped close beside Randy ... foolishly she had let go his rein and now she realized that and took it up again ... looking around. He did not seem happy.

‘Your brothers and sisters could be miles away yet, foolish Pina,' Randy scolded, ‘they could be—'

Then something remarkable happened. Literally out of the sandhills swept a wild herd, the ground beneath Randy trembling as they galloped by. She saw Pina lift his head, extend his nostrils, raise one foreleg. She was not aware she had let go his rein, set him free, though it was the wise thing to do, she knew afterwards, for he could have dragged her with him, she only know that if that proud retinue was what Pina wanted, if it was that birthright of his he desired, then he could have it.

But Pina did not follow. He stood by her. He watched, but he did not move.

Then the wild horses were gone.

CHAPTER SIX

The episode, Randy knew, had taken a long time... after all, she had not left the homestead until the conclusion of lessons ... so she was unsurprised when she saw it was growing dark.

Although she was unsurprised, she was also, and this was surprising to her, not dismayed. Not like that first time on Brown Girl when night had caught up on them and she had experienced a minor panic. She decided it must have been the pleasant second night under the stars, that night with Sim, that made her unafraid now. But if she lacked nervousness, she had to admit she also lacked comfort. The evening could prove cool and around the small hours the thin blouse she wore might be totally inadequate. She also felt hungry already.

She felt sure Pina must be hungry, too, but he made no attempt to crop. He was restless, uncertain, he seemed to want to go in two directions. But the direction Randy had in mind was right here, and she kept her hand firmly on the reins.

Night was instant, one moment a blue sky, the next a black one. Presently stars blazed out.

There must have been water somewhere, though she had no need to seek it out as she carried a flask, a rule that Sim had made, and apparently, too, Pina was not thirsty, not in need of what those rustling animals were in need of, for she could hear the distant pad of creatures moving, and she knew there must be a drinking place. She had watched watering with Sim during the week, it had been at their local hole, and she had learned that the animals always came at the set of the sun and left at the first star. She had enjoyed that evening, marvelling in the mutual respect of each other in animals as they quenched their thirst. Sim had said he had never heard of an attack at a waterhole when creatures were watering. She had thrilled at the different pads leading to the source like the spokes of a wheel. She had been breathless as emu, kangaroo, even dingo had gone past her. She wondered what sort of being was watering now. Sim had told her that snakes wreathed down, and she gave a little shudder.

Pina moved restlessly again, he was still plagued with indecision, tom by two desires. ‘But I desire you here, my boy,' Randy said firmly, and doubled the rein around her wrist.

It was a lovely night like all the desert nights. She thought back to the stock moving and how Sim had taken out his harmonica and how presently all the gang had come round. After they had finished their bush concert, it had been dripping toast supper. Then bed. She remembered lying and looking at the stars until they all merged together. Until-they-all-merged-together. ...

Randy slept now.

She awoke to that thing she had been told about. The Lights.

The Min-min Lights that Sim had mentioned but never explained, because he, or others, had no explanation, yet lights seen thousands of times, and by people whom you must believe.

‘No one knows what they are, at first you think a truck is coming, and then you say to yourself “But how can a truck come here?” Anyway'... Randy remembered Sim’s amused voice ... ‘nothing happens.'

‘Only the Lights.'

'Yes.'

Now Randy saw them. It could be a satellite, she thought, in this strange, mysterious country it could be a million unexpected things. Watching the sky was mesmeric, and she felt her eyes growing heavy again, so she checked on the reins. They were not on her wrist, meaning while she had slept she must have relaxed her grip. But she had no need to worry, Pina still remained with her. He was just as uncertain, she could feel that, but she could feel, too, that he was not going to leave. Touched by his loyalty, she reached up and fondled him, and presently to her delight he got down beside her.

They slept together.

At the first daylight Randy was on her feet; she was really hungry and she wanted to start for home. She had no sense of which way to go, but she was going to try, anyway, and the earlier they began the longer they had for trial and error. She was hoping, though, she made no error.

There was a magic transparency of light at this silvery hour, from a few scattered coolibahs birds were chattering, the watering place from which she had heard the soft sounds of the animal pads last night must have been a kind of creek, for there was a faint washing noise of stream over stones.

She marked a rise that seemed higher than the rest - she could do that now; when first she had come here everything had seemed equally flat - and she urged Pina towards it. It became quite an urge, definitely Pina did not want to go. He was probably thinking of his wild herd again, thought Randy, but I’m thinking of Yanni, and how to get there before I starve. She touched her belt feelingly. ‑'

Pina protested all the way up. Randy decided it was only his good manners letting her urge him like this. That made her laugh. A wild horse with good manners! But she supposed some horses were born with such traits just as some humans are. She fondled Pina’s head gratefully and pushed him further to the top.

There she looked down.

It was some time before she saw it, for the morning was still very young and pearl-misted. But that red dust could not be mistaken. In that direction, behind the red cloud, would be the branding. Already it would have begun for the second day, and the milling up that was taking place was producing another crimson pall.

‘That way, Pina!’ she called.

Pina snorted and went another way.

‘No, Pina, no. No, I say!'

But it was useless. Just as yesterday Pina had shown a mind of his own, he showed it now. There was no stopping him, neither by plaint, pat, or ... ultimately ... punishment. Pina kept on and the direction he took was opposed, deliberately, Randy could have said, to the branding camp.

‘You’re awful. You’re losing us. You’re—' Randy stopped in surprise.

In the distance, but still unmistakable for all the miles yet to be covered, was home. Pina had brought her home, and probably by a more direct way.

Yet brought her home or brought himself? Randy wondered this an hour later when they reached Yanni. For the horse went directly to the stables, directly to the box near to Brown Girl. Only then did he let Randy off. She stood ready to scold, then smiled instead, smiled at the absorption of the brumby, the rapt attention he was giving the mother-to-be.

‘I do believe,’ Randy said, ‘Sim was right. This is the conclusion of a spring love. Thank you for returning me safe and sound, Pina, though I do believe you had other things on your mind.'

She came out of the stables, aware for the first time that she had things to do. First of all a thing like interviewing the twins. She only hoped her absence last night had punished them as they deserved to be punished, though she was sorry that Mrs. Fife ... and Matt and all the homestead not out at the branding ... had had to be upset as well.

But when she reached the house she found that no one had been upset. Mrs. Fife had been away last night, she had gone in with the mail man to stop the evening with a friend in Minta Minta. Matt, too, had taken the opportunity of a break while the men were absent and transport available and gone to ‘town’.

She asked the girl who had told her about the twins, and she learned that they had driven out to the branding when a jeep had come in later that afternoon for more men and more provisions.

‘Big mob there, Missus,’ Emmy explained.

So no one had missed her, no one had suffered. But the twins at least would be told, Randy determined.

She ate last night’s meal that Mrs. Fife had left ready in the fridge, then opened school. But today she could not concentrate on the piccaninnies, the labour of love became something to be got over. The subject of the twins persisted in intruding. She did not realize that she had kept the School of the Air on long after it had finished until a burst of giggles alerted her, and she listened, with the pics, to Mrs. Jones of Gangloo telling someone about her kidneys. It was the ‘galah’ session, that time when outback ladies exchanged confidences.

‘Class dismissed,’ she said, ringing the bell. ‘You’re very naughty children.’

They hung their woolly heads and went out ... and there resumed their giggles. Smiling secretly herself, though she sympathized with Mrs. Jones, Randy followed them. But on the verandah her smile faded. The gang were coming in, all the stockmen, Sim ... and the twins. The branding must be finished.

She stood hesitant a moment, still unsure what she would do. The obvious thing was to report the twins to Sim, for though it had been no great sin they had committed, it had been a very foolish thing, she could have fallen off Pina, and if perhaps they considered that no catastrophe, then Pina himself could have been hurt. She had no doubt that, as before, they did not anticipate any tale-telling from her, or, if She did tell Sim, then Sim to put them before the female usurper, for undoubtedly that was what they considered her, the same as they had considered Ruth. For a moment she felt a wave of sympathy for the miscreants, they were so unworldly, so naive. She supposed it was their isolation that made them so much less cunning, so short of real guile than their city counterpart.

The gang was getting nearer. Sim was lifting his arm in greeting. She waved back, thinking, ‘Why worry him? No one knows I was out all night. I’ll leave things as they are.’ She went down the steps and across the lawn.

By the time she covered the distance all the group had gone except one. Sim was standing by Pina’s box which was next to Brown Girl’s, and in a separate section from the rest of the horses.

‘Sim!’ Remembering her delight earlier when Pina had hurried straight to Brown Girl’s side, Randy now forgot the course she had decided on. ‘Sim, it was wonderful! When we came in—'

‘We?’ he queried.

‘Pina.’ Now she was remembering. ‘And I.'

‘You were on Pina?’

‘Yes.’ She looked at him. ‘Does it matter? I mean, you did want Pina for me.’

‘It doesn’t matter if you feel confident, Miranda. Indeed I’m glad for you, pleased you’re trying him out. But only in small doses, because he isn’t really ready, just as you’re not ready yet. Did you do that?'

‘Yes,’ she lied.

‘I see.' He was silent a moment. ‘And what was it you wanted to tell me?’

She did not want to tell him anything now, but she saw he was waiting. '

‘Just that what you said about Pina and Brown Girl could be true.’ Her voice trailed off I know it’s true, she was thinking, because last night the stallion weighed up finding his bunch against coming home to his mate, and the mate won. But she stood there saying nothing.

‘Miranda,’ Sim’s voice came cutting in, and it was a cut because he had never spoken to her quite like this before, 'why are you lying to me?'

‘L-lying?’ she stammered.

'You were out on Pina for a considerable period, weren’t you? I can see by his shoes. Pina isn’t yet used to his shoes. It wasn’t just you I was thinking of when I said easy stages, it was the grey, too.’

‘Mainly the grey,’ she said hotly. Her undeserved position made her rankle, but still she made no attempt to excuse herself.

‘Darling, that’s unfair.’

‘You are unfair. This place is. It’s so much the end of everything, so much—’ She did not mean a word she said and she could not have told why she said it. Pulling away from the hand that he had put lovingly forward, she ran out of the stables, tears blurring her eyes.

Mrs. Fife had returned, and going to her, Randy said, ‘I’ve developed a splitting head. Will you tell Sim? Tell him I’ll lie down in the spare room and sleep it off.’

Without waiting for Mrs. Fife’s click of sympathy, her offer of aspirin, Randy hurried to the end of the upper hall, feeling thankful that the house could have accommodated many more than it held. That at least there was one more room.

Once inside, she turned the key, then lay down on the bed. The tears were no longer a blur, and she let them fall.

Several times she heard quiet steps, a quiet knock. Once Sim called softly, ‘Miranda, are you awake?’

She did not move.

Eventually she did sleep, and when she woke it was in a more reasonable frame of mind. She felt ashamed of her childish behaviour, but more than ashamed, puzzled by it. Why should she have been so put out by Sim chiding her? It wasn’t as if she cared one way or another. Oh, she liked Sim, she liked him very much, and she never wanted to hurt or upset him, but the feeling she had had when he had looked sternly down at her and asked ‘Why are you lying to me?’ had had nothing to do with simply liking very much, it had been more in the manner of someone who — who—

She stared into the darkness. She had almost been going to say ‘someone who loved’. But I don’t love Sim, she knew, I’d like to, but it would be no use trying. It’s Jeff. It will always be Jeff.

Yet still the feeling persisted, that feeling that had sent her running like a hurt child to the house simply because she had been spoken to. Yet why shouldn’t Sim speak like that to her? After all she was his wife. Poor Sim, how confused he must have been. How confused he must be now.

‘Miranda.’ There was another quiet knock. Then Sim spoke softly again: ‘Miranda.’

Miranda got up and opened the door and he gathered her in his arms.

Sim never complained of her outburst, but Randy knew he must have been worried about it, concerned over that ‘You are unfair. This place is. It’s the end of everything’ that she had flung at him, for he came forward with so many proposals to entertain her, even a trip south to Sydney, that in the end she said, ‘Sim, don’t. I was just being awful. I was being a child.’

‘And aren’t you, Miranda?’ He was running a finger at the time through her soft fair hair.

‘I’m trying not to be,’ she answered a little tremulously.

‘Let me know when the woman is there.’ He said it teasingly, but somewhere she sensed a bitter truth.

The episode finished there, that was the episode between herself and Sim, but the twins would be different, she would have an understanding with that pair.

It was impossible to get any further with Justin. He only looked to his sister. So Randy waited for Jane one morning and said what was on her mind.

‘You put me in a very unhappy position when you did that foolish thing, Jane, when you threw that pebble at Pina.'

‘Justin threw it, I can’t throw for nuts.'

‘But you directed it.’

‘His hand directed it.'

'Don’t be impertinent, Jane!’ she snapped.

'Does it worry you?’

‘It doesn’t worry me, but I don’t like it.'

‘Then you know what to do.’

‘You mean what Ruth did? What a silly little girl you are.’

As Jane sullenly did not reply, Randy went on, 'Pina bolted and made for the hills, made for his bunch. I ... we ... were out all night.’

She had the satisfaction of seeing Jane suitably sobered; after all it was a serious business to be away all night. But not sobered for long, not that self-possessed young female.

‘Well, you’re all right now,’ Jane said.

‘Yes and no. You see, I was upset because Sim found out I had overridden Pina and was angry with me.’

‘And did that upset you?’ Jane gave a cool stare.

‘It did.’ Randy could have added, ‘And it also puzzled me’, but of course she didn’t.

‘However, I didn’t pass on the blame,' she went on. ‘Thank you kindly, ma’am.’

‘Jane, don’t go on like that. It’s - it’s abominable. Not only is it abominable, it’s ridiculous, as I pointed out before. You two absurd children are still working on the theory of Ruth, working on the hope that I, like Ruth, will get worn down by your behaviour and go away, that even if I do report you to Sim, he will remove me before he removes you. I know that you know little of these things, because - well, because of your unfortunate background, but surely you must understand that we are married. Married, Jane. Don’t you comprehend that?’

Jane said, ‘Don’t you?’

‘Explain yourself.’ Now that she had come out with it, Randy felt a little sick.

‘Is there need?’

‘Jane!’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Jane hunched her young shoulders.

‘Your explanation, Jane.'

Jane said coolly and briefly: ‘A letter.'

‘A letter... what letter?’

‘In your wastepaper basket.'

‘What wastepaper basket?’

‘The one in your room.’

‘When have you been in my room?'

'Not since then... I mean not by myself, once you took me.’

‘When, Jane? When did you go to my room without me?’

‘The day you arrived.'

‘And you went then. Why?'

‘To look around. To see what Sim had got himself. And’ ... triumphantly ... ‘I found out. I found a letter. It was torn up, but I could piece it together and read it. It wasn’t your letter, I mean you hadn’t written it. He had.’

‘He?’ echoed Randy.

‘Name of Jeff,’ Jane said contemptuously. Then she said, almost as if she had been rehearsing it, which probably she had: ‘I’m coming home, and if you want to know where home is, it’s where the heart is, and that has always been with you.’

She finished: ‘My darling Mirrie.'

There was a silence. To Randy it seemed to fill eternity, but she knew ... vaguely ... that it could not really be long, because the piccaninnies’ voices echoing up from the gully were still saying the same words when, at last, she found her own words to reply to Jane.

‘So you went into my room’ ... a flush, then a correction ... ‘our room, and took away a letter.’

‘It wasn’t wanted. You had put it in the wastepaper basket.’

‘But you read it?’

‘If it wasn’t wanted.'

‘You read it?’

‘Yes.'

‘Then you drew your own conclusions.’ Randy had forgotten Jane’s tender age and she only realized it when Jane asked, ‘What’s that?'

‘You made your own interpretation.’ That was another word possibly beyond a little girl’s comprehension.

‘You thought that I... that I...’ she said instead. Jane said, ‘Yes.’

‘Then you were quite wrong.'

... But she wasn’t wrong. Jane was saying, in her own immature way, that Sim’s wife did not love Sim. And Sim’s wife didn’t.

But a little girl mustn’t know this, and Randy tried now to tell the child.

‘One day, Jane, you will grow up,’ she began awkwardly.

‘It usually happens,’ pertly.

Randy ignored that and went on. She said, ‘And then you’ll know.'

‘Know?’ echoed Jane.

‘Know that grown-ups ... that they... well, they—'

‘Yes, New Missus?’ It was a deliberate impertinence.

‘I am Miranda,’ Randy said. ‘Or Randy. You can use either.’

‘Mirrie will do.'

Mirrie. Mirrie was Jeff’s name. Only Jeff used Mirrie.

‘Miranda or Randy,’ Randy said mechanically.

'New Missus,’ Jane chose impudently.

‘Sometimes,’ Randy ignored again, ‘when you are a grown-up, as you will be, Jane, you may think things at times that are - well, not real things. I mean not working things.'

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Jane. ‘Then I’ll tell you more simply. I thought I liked - Jeff.'

‘And didn’t you?’

Didn’t she? With a heart still crying out for him?

‘But I made a mistake,’ Randy continued. Well, she had made a mistake.

‘So you married Sim, but you kept a letter from Jeff.' It was almost incredible, that adult contempt of the child’s.

‘I didn’t keep it, I discarded it.'

‘And I,' said Jane, ‘took it up.'

‘It’s nothing. It means nothing.'

'Does Sim know?'

Another silence to fill eternity, yet still the piccaninnies’ voices saying the same things.

‘No,’ Randy said.

Jane mouthed rather than spoke: ‘Poor Sim!'

Poor Sim. It was now ten minutes after Randy's cornering of Jane, and she was standing in the garden, ostensibly superintending the piccaninnies, yet not scolding Jamu as he did more than water the plants from his master end of the hose, that, abstractedly, she had handed him. Surprised at her preoccupied acceptance of her unwatchfulness to soak his companions, which perhaps was just as well since the flooding he gave them would have been the death of Randy’s plants, since in these latitudes over-moisture could mean destroying fungus in an incredibly short time.

But Missusim was not paying attention, and Jamu was never one not to grab an opportunity. It was only when one of the pics screamed over-loudly in pretended terror, for in reality they all adored being hosed, that the noise reached Randy at last, and she reprimanded, ‘Enough, Jamu, give me that hose at once.'

She had been reacting the scene with Jane, reproaching herself bitterly for not clearing up the matter as she had intended. But that bleak ‘Poor Sim!’ of the child’s had been her undoing. She had been robbed of words, of reasoning, she had let the little girl walk away, and after a stilly moment she had walked, too. She had come blindly to the garden, and there Jamu, and all the lesser Jamus, had taken over.

Poor Sim. Again, frozenly, she heard it.

She realized sinkingly that she had handled Jane the wrong way, yet what other way to handle, or try to handle, such a child? Especially when that child held the ace card, one could almost say, a card in the form of a letter that Jane knew ... and Randy knew, though she would not admit it, not even to herself... that she did not want Sim to see.

She should have been more lucid, more reaching. Most of all she should have stood up to Jane, told her that since the letter was now hers she could do what she liked with it, even go to Sim with it. She had every confidence that Sim would not listen to Jane,, that he would frown on her behaviour, but still the fact remained that she had not dared do this for the simple reason, and shrewd Jane knew it, that she did not want Sim to know.

Why didn’t she want Sim to know? Randy now questioned herself. After all, was it so unforgivable to have cared about someone else before you - before you - For all she knew Sim himself had had a dozen loves.

But he loved her now. He loved his Miranda. Randy knew this intrinsically, just as intrinsically she knew that she still loved Jeff.

‘Darling, have the floods come?’ It was Sim beside her, and, as always, and she could never understand it, any scolding word, however teasing and loving, from Sim immediately sent foolish tears stinging her eyes. Why was she like this? Why?

Almost as though he saw the tears and wished to divert her, he began talking about Windabilla over the range... the range? she smiled through the blur ... that had missed the rains that had filled their own lagoon but were expecting a Wet at last any day now. As over the range could mean thousands of miles, Randy knew by this to be unsurprised by a next-door town or neighbour experiencing totally different weather from their own.

‘You must go over to Winda, darling, and get the feel of a before-Wet. We ourselves have been lucky for seasons now, but we’re sure to strike a long dry some time, so it’s better for you to know.’

He never spoke any more of the local flooding he had walked into, though he must have known that there had been a reason behind Randy’s inattention, and, gratefully tucking her hand under his extended arm ... was Jane somewhere watching, somewhere curling her lip? ... Randy let Sim lead her back to the homestead, still telling her of Windabilla’s bad luck this last decade but the bright hopes they now had, finishing with the proposal that they fly up this week.

‘An afternoon flip like with the Ramsays?’

‘Oh, no, Miranda, this will be a two-day adventure. Winda is quite a long hop. I thought we could leave tomorrow, that is if you can bear to leave your class.’

‘I can,’ she assured him ... but much more than bear to leave her little piccaninnies she could bear to leave two other piccaninnies - the pale-skinned ones. Jane and Justin. Emphasis on Jane.

They took off at first light, the run between the upturned buckets a familiar routine now, the amazing difference in the country at every mile an accustomed sight.

It was the longest journey Randy had had in the Auster, and she could well believe that Windabilla was in a different weather belt from Yanni. They had been flying for hours and must have covered a great many miles.

They put down on ground so barren, so lacking in nourishment, that Randy wanted to cry. Even the usually green mimosa stood apparently dead. On the far-stretching plains on either side of them there was not a blade of grass. So different from Yanni, where the desert blossomed. Randy felt sad for Windabilla as she gazed at the silent scene, yet not serenely silent somehow, more a choking quietness. An irritable wind blew up from somewhere as she watched, and dust swirled in eddies, then, as the wind passed on, settled down again.

‘Not pretty, is it?’ Sim’s voice was grim. ‘I could show you much more, Miranda, much more ugliness, but I won’t.’

She nodded. She did not want to see the lost stock, for she knew that that was what he meant.

The Murrays had come out for them, and far from being depressed they were full of excitement. Every sign, every forecast, they declared, said that rain was on its way.

In the comfortable homestead, Randy lost some of the impact of that choking quiet. Mrs. Murray, cheerful and middle-aged, had had years of this, she was experienced in the game of waiting. In Windabilla, she said, they had a bad climatic position, the place missed out on what other stations gained, but once it had been favoured when the others had not, and the favouring had been lavish. Why, it must be eight years ago now...

The men had gone out, and suddenly above Mrs. Murray’s complacent voice, Randy heard something that cut into the choking quiet. At first she thought it was her imagination, for Mrs. Murray seemed to hear nothing, the dogs on the painted cement floor left uncovered for coolness still slept, then she knew she did not dream it, not that sharp dust storm rising out of nowhere, picking up pieces of leaves and wood and hurling them at the window. Every door in the homestead slammed. Every window rattled and appeared about to blow in.

‘It’s a willy-nilly,’ called Mrs. Murray joyously, ‘and that means we’ll break within the next four hours.’

'And it means we’ll push off,’ said Sim at the door. He was laughing at Randy. ‘Don’t want to get caught, do we?’

‘But can we?’ she objected. ‘That wind—'

‘It’s gone already. That’s a willy for you. Hardly here, but it’s off. But it’s written a message for you, hasn’t it, Harry’... Harry was Mr. Murray... ‘and unless we want the Auster to be bogged here for weeks, months, we’d better waste no time.’

Naturally Mrs. Murray was let down, for visitors were precious at Windabilla, but Randy could see that her excitement over the break would soon make her forget her disappointment.

Mr. Murray drove them quickly out to his paddock strip, and there Sim lost no time in taking off.

‘But can we make home tonight?’ doubted Randy above the Auster’s engine, for they had taken some hours to get here and already the sky was growing grey.

‘We’re not going to attempt to, Miranda,’ Sim shouted back, ^£we’re just going to leave Windabilla by itself to enjoy its first bath for years. It will be a wonderful thing, and after it’s over I’ll bring you back to see the change some day. You won’t recognize the place. Birds chirping. Frogs taking up the chorus. The Flinders grass clothing everything in lush green. Oh, it’s beautiful, Miranda.

‘There are disadvantages, of course ... grasshoppers and blowflies are always at their worst after the rains, snakes, lizards, rats . . . but the transformation makes you forget all that.’ He altered the beat of the Auster. ‘We’ll put down here.’

‘Down here’ was flat as usual, and with no impending trees. Randy saw that Sim had chosen it for its easy getaway in the morning. After Sim had landed the craft, he showed Randy the emergency rations he always carried, the emergency comforts. There was water, food, a swag of blankets and actually a rolled-up mattress.

‘It’s luxury,’ Randy appreciated.

Sim had a tinned stew heating up in no time, and while he mixed up a damper to go with it, Randy fixed up the bed, placed on the rugs.

It was dark by the time the damper was ready. Another one was buried in hot ashes to be ready for the morning. Sim made scalding black tea, and they ate a meal, like all these outback meals, like no other food in the world.

Sitting back satisfied, Randy noted the great pillars of storm clouds to the north-west whence they had come, and drew Sim’s attention. As they both watched they saw distant jagged shafts of light illuminate the sky, tracing paths of rippling fire through massed clouds, and then an obscurity that Sim said would be fiercely driving rain. So Windabilla’s drought had broken.

‘There will be debris washing from the spoutings around the homestead,’ described Sim, ‘years of debris, and water will be racing in little torrents along the ground, because the earth will be too hard to absorb it, Miranda. After the heavy deluges, the real beat will begin.’

‘Beat?’ she queried.

‘Of rain, darling. It doesn’t stop at just that.' He nodded to the distance. ‘There will be a tattoo on the iron roofs for days, weeks.’ He laughed ruefully. ‘That’s when the enthusiasm dies and the monotony sets in.' He told her how he had seen children of seven and eight years terrified of their first raindrops. They had never known them before.

‘Then supplies won’t get in, mail. Oh, yes, the break isn’t all roses. But when a man has a rose in his wife’ ... he looked steadily through the gathered darkness at Randy... ‘as Harry has in his Nora, it’s all right.’

‘Have you a rose, Sim?’ She could not have said what made her ask that.

But she knew his answer in his hungry arms as he gathered her closer than she had ever remembered.

To the north-west the lightning still occasionally cut into the grey obscurity, still lit up the sky and channelled it in flame, but Sim’s lips were close on hers.

As the dawn greyed, they awakened to the sleepy chirrup of birds, and sleepily, too, they exchanged good mornings.

‘While I’m home this time, Miranda,' Sim said, ‘I thought I’d go away.’

They both laughed drowsily at that, and Sim explained, ‘I mean take you away.’

‘You’re always taking me away,' she smiled.

‘Only for day trips. This one will be longer. I thought we’d go south. Remember, I suggested that. You’ve been looking peaky, darling.’

‘I’m sorry, Sim. I didn’t mean to. I mean I’m happy.' Well, she was as happy as she could be anywhere.

‘Are you?’ He said it lightly, but sensitively she found a significance in it that probably wasn’t there.

‘What, Sim?’

‘I’m joking, of course. What a sobersides it is! No, Miranda, I’ve been intending for a while to go to Sydney to arrange for schools for Jane and Justin.’

She was silent, and he said quickly, ‘You’re not going to oppose that like you did before, are you, sweetest? After all, I only put it off for a period.’

Oppose it? No. Not now. The sooner Jane was away the better.

‘No,’ she said, ‘they need to start serious lessons. Justin particularly. He has an inquiring mind.’

‘And Jane? She doesn’t inquire?’ Once more Randy heard a note that perhaps was not there.

‘What schools do you propose?’ she said quickly.

‘What would you say to one school, to a co-ed? There are some good ones now.’

‘No.’ She answered too promptly, she knew, but the negative had jumped immediately to her lips.

‘I think so too, Miranda, Justin has been too long under his twin’s thumb. Have you found this so?’

The last thing in the world she wanted to talk about was the subject of the twins. One of the twins.

‘Boys of Justin’s age are better among boys,’ she said as professionally as she could, and was relieved when he did not probe as he might have, question her as to her ready answer that Justin should not be with his sister, ask her about that sister.

Instead he smiled in his old way: ‘Little governess!'

Soon afterwards they took off again into the dawn and were home within the hour.

They left for Sydney several days later, going out of Yanni with the Flying Doctor, who had been called in to pass his opinion on a mild scarlatina outbreak among the pics, and from the Base catching a larger plane to the nearest airport, and from there an interstater south.

Her aunt and uncle were happy to see her. Between visiting schools with Sim, summing them up with regard to the twins and what it could be thought at this early juncture they would require later of life, Randy renewed past acquaintances, did a lot of city shopping, consulted her old doctor over a health detail but received only a benign smile and a request to hear more of the Territory in return, and found herself missing Yanni quite incredibly.

Also she found herself looking around for Jeff... or for a sign of him.

It seemed unbelievable that he had not responded in any way after that brief answer of hers. She did not want a response, of course, and intentionally she had made her reply brief to ensure finality, but it still seemed impossible that not even one letter, one page saying ‘Thank you for answering’ ... ‘I understand' ... ‘If it must be’ ... even ‘How could you have done this?’ had not arrived.

But there was nothing. Randy even got in touch with Broadfields to see if a letter had come and not been sent on.

Nothing.

They left Sydney for home again, Sim teasing Randy for being a seasoned Territorian now, only putting her magazine down after she had finished reading, not peering eagerly out as she had before to see the red heart open up.

‘Talking of opening up, darling,’ Sim said, turning away a moment from the vivid baked pottery colours, the ochre, purple and antique gold, ‘we must go over and welcome our new neighbour in his opening up. Smith, wasn’t he?’

‘Smith,’ she nodded. Jeff’s name was Smith. She was to have been Mrs. Jeff Smith. Only she hadn’t waited, she had accepted second-best. Looking at him as he leaned over again to look down on his beloved country, looking at his dark russet head, his strong line of jaw, one of his strong hands still clasping hers, she thought with a sudden rush of feeling: ‘Second best? Sim?’

Again they flew out from the Base with the F.D., who was answering a call beyond Yanni this time, and who was only too pleased to put them down in their home paddock, where in no time the jeep was coming out to bring them in, the piccaninnies coming, too, on a table top, those who couldn’t fit on taking short cuts through the spinifex to get them back at the same time.

Randy had brought simple gifts for the little ones, and she distributed them happily. She had not thought that returning to Yanni could be such a happy thing.

Jane and Justin had come out, too, which rather surprised Randy.

‘Thank you,’ she said shyly to Jane; it was nice to have the girl on her side for once.

‘We thought we’d tell you that you had a visitor.’ Jane’s voice was non-committal, so Randy took no notice.

‘That’s nice. Who is it?'

‘New neighbour,’ announced Justin.

‘Oh, yes, we’d planned to welcome him over there.'

‘Well, he’s got in first.’ It was Jane again. Still noncommittal. And still Randy took no notice.

She was not aware of any more watchfulness than usual from Jane as they drove back to the homestead, but it must have been there.

For when they alighted, Jane very close behind her, said softly, ‘There he is now.’

As Randy looked across, Jane finished, still softly: ‘My darling Mirrie.'

It was Jeff.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Everything that took place then was dreamlike, unreal.

First Sim stepped forward, his hand extended to Jeff, and for a while Jeff, slighter if as tall a figure, was obscured by Sim. But Randy’s acute consciousness of Jeff was not obscured. In spite of the dream quality of the situation, the unreality, she was vitally, vividly aware of Jeff. Her Jeff. Jeff here at Yanni.

But she found movement difficult, she felt as she believed a space explorer would feel, that every action needed an explicit effort. She found she could not speak.

She was aware of, but she was unable to deal with, Jeff's quiet awaiting for her recognition. His hand had left Sim’s now and he was looking expectantly at her. She only needed to step forward and say ‘Jeff’ and he would step out to meet her.

But she couldn’t, and when she heard Sim introduce clearly, ‘Smith, isn’t it? I’m Sim Mallow and this is Miranda, my wife,’ and Jeff murmuring in answer, ‘Jeff Smith, Sim,’ she knew it was too late to move. She had created a situation by not speaking at once. Jeff had, too, but he had taken his cue from her.

Too late she stepped forward and in her turn took Jeff’s hand.

Oh, the feel of that hand! At once she remembered Jeff’s hand in hers so often at Broadfields, the firm softness of it, for Riverina farming had entailed parturition, and that demanded a firm yet soft grasp, not the hard control of a cattleman. Jeff’s fingers, too, were longer and slimmer and more delicate than Sim’s; Sim’s were blunt and powerful. Earthy, honest hands.

She was careful not to let her hand stay in Jeff’s hand a moment longer than the greeting should entail, but the feel of the clasp stayed with her long after she had slipped back to Sim’s side.

‘The kids,’ introduced Sim casually, ‘are Jane and Justin.’

‘Yes, we did meet,’ Jeff smiled at the twins. ‘Yours, Sim?’

‘Perish the thought,’ said Sim, but amiably. 'No,’ he added, ‘it was enough to bring Miranda up here to the wilderness without inflicting her with a readymade ... and wild ... family as well.’

‘And yet she has country blood in her,’ Jeff mused. At once he added, ‘So I’m told.’

The twins, characteristically bored with the talk of grown-ups, had wandered away, even sharp-eared Jane had wearied of the adult exchange. Randy was thankful for their absence. She had no doubt that Jane would have inserted pertly of that ‘So I’m told’ of Jeff’s a smart 'You never heard it from us.’ She probably would have added ‘And we’re the only ones you’ve been talking to.’ Yes, thank goodness they were not around. Randy decided to try to keep it like that. Murmuring an apology and saying she would tell Mrs. Fife to lay an extra plate, she hurried inside without another glance at Jeff.

The housekeeper greeted her warmly after her absence, adding that a visitor had been put down by Murchison’s plane on the paddock strip shortly before their own arrival, and a jeep had gone out to get him, only she hadn’t seen him yet.

‘You will now, then, Mrs. Fife,’ said Randy. ‘He’s Jeff Smith, the new man at Woodowadda.’

‘The Englishman who is following the Ramsays?’

‘He’s not English,’ Randy said.

‘The application to buy came from England, so Mrs. Ramsay told me.’

‘Perhaps he happened to be there,’ Randy murmured. Oh, why did she have to hedge like this, but she could hardly say to Mrs. Fife: He is Australian, he has been staying with his dying uncle, he must have ferreted out the Ramsay property and decided to buy it because he wanted to be near me. Because we love each other. She could not say that.

‘Mrs. Mallow dear, you’re pale. Are you all right?’

‘Perfectly. I suppose it’s the travelling. I do seem to have been at it all the time this last week.'

‘And now a visitor,’ tut-tutted Mrs. Fife. ‘Perhaps you could be excused. Tell Sim you have a headache and I’ll bring you up a tray to your room. After all, it will be all man talk. I know these neighbourly visits.’

‘No ... no ...’ No, she couldn’t miss Jeff. ‘I mean,’ she said to the housekeeper, ‘it would seem inhospitable. After all, he hasn’t long come here.’ Her glance fell to the table that Mrs. Fife had already set to include the visitor. ‘Six,’ she said.

Mrs. Fife said apologetically, ‘You’d sooner me not eat with you this time—’

‘Oh, no, not that, certainly not. But - but what about the twins?’

‘They always do join us at lunch, Mrs. Mallow.’ Mrs. Fife added gently, Your orders.’

'Yes, but this time—’ But this time Jane could say something. If she did not say something, at least she would look, look with those incredibly adult eyes in her childish face. Yet wouldn’t depriving the twins this time only mark the occasion? Knowing that pair, Randy could see them lurking at the door ... or seating themselves outside on the verandah rail and staring in.

‘It doesn’t matter,' she heard her own voice murmuring dully.

‘You want them to stay?’

‘Just - just leave the table as it is. I’ll - I’ll go and comb my hair.’ Randy ran upstairs.

In the cool lime bedroom she stood quietly for a moment. There stood the wastepaper basket, empty now, but once she had tossed a piece of paper into it, writing paper, crumpled, but still reading clearly: ‘My darling Mirrie.’

What had Jeff looked like? She hadn’t had time to see clearly, she had not dared to let her eyes meet his. How had he known she was here at Yanni, because he must have known, otherwise he would not have come here, the coincidence was too strong.

Why had he come?

How did she feel about it? How honestly did she feel about it apart from feeling numb? No, I just feel numb, she thought.

She heard the men coming in. She heard the squirt of a syphon. In another few minutes Mrs. Fife would ring the bell, or call out, or—

‘Mrs. Fife says lunch.’ It was Jane at the door. She was looking triumphantly at Randy, and triumph, that sort of triumph, on Jane was not attractive. Randy stepped by her and went downstairs.

The two men were standing at their places at the table waiting for Randy to seat herself. Mrs. Fife must have told them to proceed without affording her that courtesy, since she would be up and down attending the meal, as she always was. She was absent now. Justin, copying the men, stood erect behind his chair, quite liking the adult formality, not even backing down when Jane flashed him a contemptuous look.

Randy sat, and instantly there was a scrape of chairs. Not daring to ask Justin to say grace for fear of offending Jane further for choosing him, and certainly not daring to ask Jane, Randy bowed her head and said it herself. As she did so, she recalled Peter . or Ailsa ... or Myfanwy saying it at Broadfields, and through her tented fingers seeing Jeff as the child asked the blessing. And her heart going out to him.

She did not look now.

‘Absurd of me,' Sim said with a smile as they started on soup, ‘but I only thought of an English neighbour, not one from England.’

‘Disappointed?’

‘Of course not, even though the finest Centralian and Up Top settlers have been English. No doubt they had to prove themselves. The climate would come as a shock.'

‘A shock to me, too,' suggested Jeff. 'I've only been around the New South Wales Riverina.’

‘Have you now? Hear that, Miranda? The Riverina was my wife’s stamping ground. You two should have much in common.’

Much in common. Randy sat very still and numb. Much in common. She - and Jeff.

She still dared not look across the table.

She heard, but did not register, the men’s exchanges on cattle versus sheep and wheat. Rice came into the conversation, for Broadfields had gone in for rice, and successfully. Rice, Sim said, was doing well Up Top. Cotton, too, was getting a foothold. Would Jeff be interested in cotton?

‘I’m interested in everything here,' Jeff said, and for the first time, as though magnetized, Randy’s eyes met his eyes, blue eyes like Sim’s, but not sun-wrinkled.

‘You shouldn’t use “thing” for people,' Jane inserted clearly.

‘So our drop-out from correspondence school absorbed something at least before she gave up the struggle.’ It was Sim; and he seemed amused at Jane’s correction.

‘I’m sorry, Jane,' Jeff said, ‘but I was speaking of course of non-people.’

‘Then you’re only interested in that,' Jane said next. ‘Oh, no, I’m interested in people, too.’

‘In one people, or— Oh, shut up, Justin!’ For Justin was in peals of laughter. It was seldom he could score on his twin, and now he seized on that ‘one people’ of hers.

‘Jane is a one people. Jane is a one—Oh, you filthy little beast!' For, infuriated, Jane had directed a potato ... they were on the main course now ... at him, and as well as hitting his nose it bespattered, for it had been resting in gravy, his clean shirt and pants. Resentfully, he flicked back some peas.

Randy knew, as the lady of the table ... Mrs. Fife was outside dishing the pudding .. . she should call for them to behave themselves. But she could not do so. Not only were the words not there, she also was afraid to, because of Jane. She was relieved when Sim rose, took an ear of each and directed them outside. She almost could have thanked that piece of potato for breaking up what could have been an uncomfortable situation.

‘Now you see, Jeff,’ explained Sim, sitting down again, 'why I answered “Perish the thought”.’

‘I see,’ laughed Jeff. ‘They do seem a handful. But not, you tell me, your handful?’

'No, the stepchildren of my stepsister, and if that sounds involved there’s even more involvement.’ Sim told Jeff briefly of the twins’ tangled origin.

‘Poor kids,’ said Jeff, and Randy thought how typical that was of Jeff, he had always been kind. He had, she went further, always been everything . . . everything. . .. She had hoped to see him from different eyes now, she even had steeled herself to see him differently, but that quick glance a moment ago, that meeting with the blue eyes had focused the same lovable ... and loved ... Jeff.

‘How have you found the Ramsay homestead?’ Sim was asking their visitor.

‘Comfortable. In impeccable taste. Though, of course, being a different generation—’

‘You mean you would like a change here and there?’ deciphered Sim sympathetically. ‘I understand perfectly, Jeff, the Ramsays were my mother’s and father’s contemporaries.’

‘Exactly,’ admitted Jeff. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I admire Mrs. Ramsay’s decor, but I prefer a more modern approach. Not’... ruefully ... ‘that I know how to go about it.’

‘Then Miranda will help you, she’s an expert on interior decorating.’

‘I’m nothing of the sort, Sim,’ protested Randy.

‘You fixed the schoolroom wonderfully,’ he reminded her, ‘and I’m sure you could give Jeff some pointers. At least, darling’ ... as she sat woodenly ....‘you can bestow the woman’s touch. Well, I see you’re not protesting that you’re a woman. Call upon this woman, Jeff.’

Jeff poured cream over the diced paw-paw that Mrs. Fife had put before him. ‘Thank you, Sim,' he said. There was a pause while he took up his spoon. ‘I will.'

When the men took coffee and brandy to the patio, Randy escaped upstairs again. Here she unpacked both her own and Sim’s city bags, hung up their clothes. Several times she tiptoed to the landing to listen. They were still there ... discussing air-beefing versus road-training the beef versus overlanding or ... if near to the coast as the Western Australians were ... water transport. How long would they stop, or at least Jeff stop? How long, even if she pretended weariness and rested, could she stay up here? Jeff’s homestead was not a matter of next-door, nor a matter, as at Broadfields, of some fifty miles away, it was hundreds, and when you were parted by hundreds of miles you just didn’t pop in to pass the time of day. On the other hand Jeff would have to be gone before dusk. Unless there were extreme emergencies the smaller planes always grounded at nightfall here.

She found herself tom between two impulses, the longing to see Jeff, the fear of seeing him. She felt a dizziness come over her, something she had meant to mention to the doctor and forgotten, and she went and lay down on the bed, trying to steady herself, to come to some decision.

The next moment, or so she thought, Sim was bending over her. ‘All tuckered up, were you?’ he smiled lovingly. ‘You’ve slept for hours.'

‘Have I?’ She sat up in disbelief. But a glance at the windows leading out to the upper balcony told her that Sim was right. It was almost dusk. At once a wave of relief passed through her. He was gone. He would have to be gone. But with the relief came a nagging regret. She had barely looked at him, only briefly touched his hand.

‘I was wondering, darling—’ Sim was saying.

‘Yes, Sim?’

‘Would you feel up to it to get dressed up a little? Mrs. Fife is quite eager to do us grand. I mean dinner by candlelight, all the trimmings.’

‘Why, yes, if you want it, Sim.’

'I'd like it, on this first occasion. After all, we should make the effort now and then, especially with a first-time guest.’

‘A first-time guest?’ A cold finger touched Randy somewhere. ‘You — you mean someone else flew in?’

‘No, but Jeff is staying on for a few days. I want to show him a lot of the ropes you don’t learn out of a book. He’s a fine fellow. I like him. Do you?’

‘I - I hardly saw him.’

‘No, you tired little atom, you came up here and went to sleep. And while you slept we two talked so long it would have been too late, anyway, to think of home. So I suggested to Jeff he stopped over, stopped till Wednesday. After all, he can afford that time now much better than he can afford it later.’

‘And he agreed?’

‘Yes, Miranda. Miranda, do you feel fit enough to be the gracious hostess tonight?’

‘Of course, Sim, there’s nothing wrong with me.’

‘You did seem a little strained at lunch, I thought. After all, I suppose it was a bit of an imposition, landing you with a visitor the moment you got home. But’ . .. ruffling up her hair, a habit of Sim’s . . . ‘that’s Up Top for you, sweetheart.’

‘I was a little tired,’ evaded Randy, 'but I’m fine now. I’ll dress up and I’ll light the candles and I’ll be the gracious hostess.’ But nothing, nothing, she knew, else.

‘Thank you, Miranda. I’ll shoo the twins off. Dinner by candlelight is no occasion for those barbarians.' He looked with loving challenge at Randy, waiting for her to defend them as usual, but she did not, she was too relieved to have that problem at least taken out of her hands.

She dressed carefully, selectively, she would not have admitted how selectively. Jeff had loved her in yellow, ‘You’re a buttercup,' he had said once. Now, rifling through her clothes, she replaced the deep pink that Sim liked for the reason that she ‘had worn it too often’ and chose the yellow instead. ‘I haven’t had any wear out of the yellow,' she defended to herself.

She went down the stairs.

She could not see the men, and decided they must still be talking shop, she knew that Sim still had not gone upstairs to change.

Then she heard him say out on the verandah, ‘I’ll go up and shower now, Jeff, or Miranda will have a piece of me, urging her on but not smartening up myself. You know where everything is. Mrs. Fife will ring the bell.’

Sim did not come into the room where she stood. He swung himself up by the tree that leaned, Romeo and Juliet style, by the house - a habit, he had told her once, of his from a boy. She had scolded him, saying it would only give the twins similar ideas.

But Jeff, as the guest, came in more formally. Also, she thought vaguely, he had no need for a tree, for the visitors’ rooms were on the lower floor.

He stepped through the long windows into the room, a room she had just lit by candles. He looked across the flickering shadows, the soft candlelight soaking up the nearer shades but leaving the further ones still in their slabbed violet, and said quietly, ‘Mirrie.'

Then, more deeply: ‘Mirrie.'

The sound of the now-unfamiliar name, his name, sent the treacherous tears pricking her eyes. With an effort she controlled herself, then awaited the words she knew must come next. She listened for his reproachful: ‘Why didn’t you wait?’

But Jeff said instead, intently, with meaning: ‘I’ve come.'

I’ve come. What on earth did he mean? Of course he had come, she could see he had come, but why did he have to say it with significance like that? Almost - almost as though she had known about it, had waited for it to happen?

'Yes, Jeff,' she said with difficulty, ‘but why? I mean’ ... at his incredulous look at her ... ‘why here? I mean, it’s not your sort of land, it’s not what you’ve been used to. Oh, I know’ ... hastily ... ‘that a countryman is intrinsically and instinctively an any countryman, but it’s go different here, the approach needs to be so different—'

His voice cut into her meanderings. He said sharply, ‘Mirrie, what are you trying to say?’

She looked at him helplessly, murmuring uselessly what a strange world she had found it after the lush Riverina, so how much stranger he, who would have to deal with it, not just live in it, must find it.

He simply repeated: ‘What are you trying to say?’

Fortunately, for Randy, Mrs. Fife rattled in with a tea- waggon of plates and dishes, and though Jeff moved intentionally towards the glass doors, Randy did not move with him. She knew he must leave soon to wash up for dinner, and until then she could find nothing to answer. There would have to be something, she was aware of that, but just now that sharp ‘What are you trying to say?’ had robbed her of words. ‘Surely, surely Jeff knew what there was to say.

He must have seen her decision, for he moved away from the doors, said rather stiffly, ‘I’ll tidy up,’ then left the room. She heard the shower cease at last upstairs. ... Sim was a slow washer ... then some time later Sim came down.

Across the room she looked at her husband, and thought ... rather with surprise ... how very nice he looked tonight. She had only ever seen him in Western gear or formal town clothes. Now he appeared relaxed yet sophisticated in his cinnamon slacks, deep cream silk shirt with a brown and gold cravat at his tanned throat.

‘Sim, you’re very continental,' she commented.

‘Is that nice?’

‘I meant it nicely.'

‘Thank you, Miranda. I put this on to complement your buttercup. For after all'... the slightest of pauses ... ‘we are a pair.’

He poured her a drink, and they went and stood on the patio. The twins had been forbidden this part of the house, so Sim assured Randy, so at least she did not have that anxiety. Though ... uneasily ... she had others. ‘What are you trying to say?’ Jeff had demanded. But he must know.

Mrs. Fife came to the french window and said that dinner was ready, that Mr. Smith was coming along the passage, and could she please be excused from eating with them, she had tried herself out on new dishes tonight, and she would be up and down seeing to them so much, no one would be able to relax.

‘Fifey,' laughed Sim, ‘that’s a good one if I’ve ever heard one. You just want to scrape the saucepans!’

They were laughing as Jeff joined them, and Sim put a drink in Jeff’s hand and invited him to laugh, too.

‘To what?’ Jeff held up the drink in inquiry.

‘To the funny side of life,' suggested Sim, and Jeff nodded agreement.

‘Though sometimes it isn’t all that easy to find it,' he suggested.

Randy hoped desperately that it was not going to be a probing sort of meal. She hoped, too, that such conversation was safe, that the station would not take over. She loved hearing about station doings, but not all the time. She was pleased when Sim began at once on Jeff’s months abroad ... though she hoped that Jeff did not answer too personally.

He did not. He described the state of the countryside around where he had stopped, only pausing briefly on the uncle who had been the reason for his English visit.

‘Why did you choose to take over Ramsays’, Jeff?’ Sim asked.

‘It was on the market,’ Jeff said simply.

‘That sounds rather like the answer a man gives when he’s asked why he climbs a mountain. But I can understand it. You read about it and found a challenge?’

‘Yes.’

Sim nodded. ‘I knew the Ramsays were advertising overseas. They wanted a good price.’

‘It was a fair price,’ Jeff told him.

‘If one had it.’

‘I had it.’ Jeff did look across the candlelit table now.

He was very handsome tonight, casual in an elegant style, like Sim, but obviously more used to such sophistication than her husband. Instead of a cravat, he wore a wide, very loosely-tied tie. It did not hang free, as such ties usually do, it was anchored with a thin bar with a small black opal. Several times in conversation he fingered it. Randy pleated her napkin, then shook it loose again. She had given Jeff that.

It was a delightful meal, and well worth doing without Mrs. Fife, Sim told his housekeeper with a congratulatory smile. As she went out for coffee, Sim crossed to the bar for brandy, stopping on the way to put some records on the player. As he bent over them, choosing suitable ones, Jeff said quietly but distinctly to Randy, ‘We must talk.’

Randy did not answer.

Still in the same low voice, Jeff went on, 'You know we have to, so tell me when. Now?’

‘Oh, no.’

‘Later?’

'No.’

‘Tomorrow,' he said finally.

‘Jeff, can’t we leave it at this?’ she begged.

‘Tomorrow.’ She might just as well not have spoken. ‘I want to know why, after my odd reception today, you sent for me.’

‘Sent for you?’ she stared at him in complete surprise. ‘I sent for you?'

Sim was coming back to the table. ‘I was telling Jeff how you’d begun lessons for the piccaninnies, Miranda,' he said. ‘He’s very interested.’

‘Why not?’ nodded Jeff. ‘There’s quite a few of those young fry at Woodowadda.’

‘Jeff would like to see the layout.’ Almost Sim might have known that Jeff was trying to find a time and a place. ‘How about taking him along with you when you ring the bell tomorrow?’

‘That would be fine,' Jeff agreed.

One thing, it would not be private. Randy almost answered that aloud.

Music began to drift around them. Randy gulped the brandy so quickly that Sim’s brows raised and he plied her with coffee. The men talked, easy friendly talk, though what the words actually said, Randy did not know.

All she knew were the words that Jeff had said just now. He had said ‘I want to know why you sent for me.’ She had never sent for him, she had only answered when he had written ‘Is it too late?’ a final ‘Yes.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

An hour later Randy managed to escape upstairs. The men were talking shop now, and neither of them noticed when she went quietly out.

She undressed in the dark, then stood for a long while at the window staring into the night. ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave,’ came into her mind, yet... knowingly ... she had never deceived, so why should there be a web? She had been honest with Jeff, she had answered him honestly in her return cable. She had been honest with Sim, too, though less directly, for though she had never gone to Sim and told him everything, Sim never had asked it of her.

She came back to the bed at last, threw off her robe and lay down. She felt a little giddy again ... when she had time to think she must look into that... she was sure after her long sleep this afternoon that she would not sleep now. She was surprised some time later when Sim’s lips gently brushed hers in a goodnight kiss. She must have slept, for the downstairs clock was chiming midnight.

‘Sweet dreams, darling,’ Sim was saying. Then he said something else. He said: ‘He’s all right, Miranda, he would have always been fine.’

After that Randy did not sleep.

She lay quietly beside Sim, hearing his even breathing. Why had he whispered that? Almost as if he was - excusing her? Why had he said that word? What had Sim to excuse? Yet why would he say ‘He’s all right’?

How was she to handle Jeff tomorrow? What would Jeff have to say? What would she have to say in reply?

She dozed towards dawn, and when she opened her eyes, Sim as usual was gone.

All six breakfasted together; Mrs. Fife and the twins were there, but a chance word from Jeff concerning his jet trip out set the trend of the conversation, a trend that Justin zealously kept alive by eager questions. Jane, beaten, sat ominously quiet, or at least Randy found it ominous.

The meal over, Sim asked Jeff to come down to the stables for a while. Jeff glanced questioningly at Randy, and Sim assured him cheerily, ‘You won’t miss out on school, Jeff, you’ll hear the bell.'

If ever Randy had not felt like ringing a bell, and on several occasions when Jane had been worrying her for all her enthusiasm she had felt like that, she felt like silence now. But it was no use, the piccaninnies were already queuing up. Their keenness shamed her. Not even the smallest one, not even the outlaws (by repute) were class laggards. There was never any need for prompting parents to urge them on. She sighed and nodded to Jamu to ring the bell. At first she did not see Jeff and she thought hopefully: ‘He’s not coming.’ Then he was crossing the lawn, and for all her uneasiness, her reluctance, her heart was going instinctively out to him as he came.

‘Mirrie,' he said as he reached the door. Just ‘Mirrie'. He sat beside her at the table.

They started with a prayer, then All Things Bright and Beautiful. Then came the School of the Air. After that, if she kept to her syllabus, and she knew she must, for the children would expect it, there would be quiet work, books for the older ones, word building for the middle ones, sand trays for the babes. In this hour most often there was not a word spoken. These children became absolutely involved.

It was the same today. A rapt silence enfolded the room, an absorption that enclosed the piccaninnies from everything and everyone else. Randy had often thought she could have beaten a drum and they would not have heard. She knew they did not hear Jeff now as he said: ‘Mirrie, I’m waiting.'

He resumed as she did not respond: ‘Not that you waited.'

‘I’ve explained that.’ At his look of surprised inquiry, she reminded him briefly, ‘My cable.’

As he still stared at her, she said, ‘My cable in answer to yours. It said—’

‘It said Yes,’ he forestalled her. ‘That,’ he went on before she could resume, ‘is why I’m here. Oh’ ... impatiently ... ‘there are other reasons, real estate reasons. I needed a good property, so when this one came up, conveniently near you ... yes, Mirrie, I’d found out whom you married, where you had gone, it proved easy enough .... I knew it was my fingerpost.’

‘But, Jeff, I still don’t understand ...’

‘I did. Or at least’ . . . bitterly ... ‘I believed I did.'

‘Understand what, Jeff?’

‘That “Yes.” A cable with one word: Yes. Allowing you a fair degree of naivete, Mirrie, you must still understand the word Yes.’

‘Of course I comprehend it. But - but did you?’

‘I’m here, aren’t I? Oh’... impatiently ... ‘why are we confounding each other like this?’

‘Confounding, Jeff?’ she queried.

'You know why I’ve come. I’ve come because you told me to. Darling, I know you’re upset. I’m not the happiest, either. It’s Sim, isn’t it? He’s the best. He’s not what I expected, Mirrie. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you had— But then you didn’t, did you?’

‘I didn’t what?'

‘Fall in love with Sim.'

‘No,’ she said slowly, ‘I didn’t fall in love with Sim.’ She hadn’t. There had been no sweet, rather mad uplift of spirits as with Jeff. Not ever. And yet - and yet—

He was watching her closely, trying to understand something she didn’t quite understand herself.

‘You told me to come,’ he began again doggedly.

‘I didn’t, Jeff.’

‘That answer to my cable—’

‘It was to tell you what you had to know. I thought it explained everything.’

'Yes isn’t usually an explanation,' he said dryly. ‘It’s an affirmation, an agreement, a sealing, a fact.’ As she looked at him in dawning horror, he finished, ‘It’s that the world over, Mirrie. Yes, I love you. Yes, I will. Yes, yes, yes.’

‘But you never asked that,' she stammered. ‘You asked—’

‘Oh, not in actual words,' he said impatiently, ‘but you would understand.'

‘You didn’t ask that,' she repeated, ‘you asked—’

‘Why not take out the letter?’ he interrupted irritably, and she put a warning hand on him to keep his voice down. ‘Take it out,' he said in a lower tone, but still angry, ‘tell me what I did say and what you choose now to misunderstand.’

‘It wasn’t a misunderstanding.'

‘Take out the letter,' he repeated.

‘I haven’t got it, Jeff.'

‘I see. It wasn’t sufficiently important to keep, is that it?’ He was silent a moment. ‘Then why, for heaven’s sake, Mirrie, did you ever tell me to come?’

‘I didn’t. I didn't. I said not to come. I said—'

‘You said yes.'

‘And yes the world over is an affirmation, an agreement, a sealing,' she repeated wearily. ‘Jeff, there’s been a terrible misunderstanding.'

‘Your marriage with Sim?’

'No ... no, I went into that fully aware - well, aware of what I was doing, and it hasn’t been a misunderstanding, it’s been—’ Her voice trailed off. Again she knew that puzzlement. ‘But you coming here has been a misunderstanding,' she went on. ‘When I answered your letter—’

‘Which you no longer have.'

‘It was to tell you I’d married, that everything before my marriage was finished, that from now on—’

‘All that in one word,' he scorned.

She nodded.

‘And what, pray, did I ask in my letter?'

You asked “Is it too late?” so I answered ‘Yes.” That was bare, I knew, but it told you what you had to know.' She looked across at him, and was rebuffed at the unamused amusement in his face. For that was the only way she could describe it: an unamused amusement. Patronizing amusement at her imagination, or so he considered, but unamused since he found it distasteful. She saw he simply didn’t believe her. ‘That’s true, Jeff,’ she persisted, but a little uncertainly, uncertain at that look he gave back at her.

'Yet you can’t show me the letter I wrote that needed to be answered like that?’

'You don’t believe me, do you?’

‘I can’t believe that I wrote something that called for a significant “Yes” but didn’t mean what yes usually means.’

‘Like?’ she said a little hysterically.

‘Like “I love you, Mirrie.” Like “Do you love me?” Like “Will you-” '

‘Stop!’ She said it rather loudly, and one of the children glanced up. She waited till the child was absorbed again, then turned and looked at him fully. ‘It was as I said, Jeff. You asked me was it too late, and I said yes. You misunderstood me.... or at least you misunderstood yourself. You came. And now.... and now ...’

‘And now?’ he asked. He repeated it quietly. ‘And now?’

‘How can you say that?’ she returned painfully- ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I wouldn’t have thought I could have said it, not after you’d married someone else, marriage to me has always been intrinsic. It is still, but—’ He paused. ‘Most of all,’ he continued unhappily, ‘I wouldn’t have thought I could say it after meeting him. Sim. But I can say it, and the only thing that can stop me saying it, asking “And now?” is you telling me not to.'

‘I am telling you, Jeff.'

‘But with your eyes as well as your lips?'

‘I’m telling you,’ she repeated.

He was looking steadily at her, Jeff was, her Jeff, and she tried to put in her glance back at him the new world she now lived in, the Miranda, not Mirrie. She tried to put the end of the affair. But she couldn’t. She looked away. ‘Oh, Jeff,’ she said brokenly.

‘Mirrie!’

‘Missusim,’ said Jamu, who could tell the time, ‘the bell should be ringing.’

‘Ring it, Jamu,’ said Randy.

Jeff left in the afternoon. Sim contacted the Flying Doctor to put down at Yanni on his way back from another call in their direction, and after lunch Jeff was driven in the jeep to the paddock strip between the white upturned buckets.

Randy did not accompany them, even though Sim raised his brows at her rather abrupt refusal. She felt irritable with Sim. He had brought up the subject of decoration again, and she had repeated her lack of knowledge in that art. When he had persisted that she was only being humble, that he knew that Jeff would benefit from her advice, when he all but promised his wife’s advice, Randy could have stamped her foot at him. Only that Jeff had no air conveyance, a state that he intended to remedy quite soon, he said, and would have to depend on a lift like today’s to bring him to the source of advice, Randy felt that a definite date would have been made. ‘I could take the interior decorator over myself,’ regretted Sim ... maddening Sim ... ‘only I’m going out again very soon.’

‘I’ll be going, too, then,’ Randy had stated.

‘Not this time, Miranda, it’s a tough assignment.'

Oh, you fool, Randy could have cried, can’t you see what you’re telling Jeff?

If Jeff noted Sim’s impending absence he made no sign. He did not show any disappointment either when Randy, after shaking hands with him, turned and went inside the house, not even standing to wave the jeep off.

She heard the F.D. put down, then almost immediately take off again. She heard the jeep return.

When Sim went through the rooms until he found her, it was to her apparent absorption in some manuals of work for the piccaninnies. Typical of Sim, he did not interrupt, and would have left silently except that some maddening impulse in Randy prompted her to stop him. She supposed it was the irritation she still felt against Sim.

‘Sim,’ she called across the room, ‘why did you have to persist like that?’

‘Persist, Miranda?’ he queried.

‘You - you know I know nothing about decoration.'

‘I feel you do.’

‘Well, if I do, but I still say I don’t, why did you have to push me on to him like that?’

‘Darling,’ he said, surprised, ‘this is Up Top and Up Top—’

‘You’re neighbourly,’ she concluded bitterly. ‘But since the neighbours are so far apart can’t the courtesies between them be equally spaced?’

‘I don’t understand you, Miranda,’ he said.

‘You - you were putting us .. . Jeff Smith and me ... in the one pocket.’ The silly words were out before she realized it, and she glanced a little nervously across at him for his reaction.

Again, typical of Sim, calm Sim, he showed no reaction. He kept moving away, apparently solicitous of leaving her to her manuals, but he said an odd thing ... that is odd if she heard aright, which easily could not be, since he was always quietly spoken. He said, or it sounded: ‘And shouldn’t you be? Haven’t you been? Is there any other pocket?’ and then he was gone, along the corridor, and she wasn’t sure he had spoken at all. She wasn’t certain she hadn’t thought out the words herself.

Sim was the same as always at dinner, kind, considerate, loving, so she must have imagined it all ... but the taunting little smile on Jane’s face the next morning at breakfast she did not imagine, and she knew she could not let it pass. She had to have an understanding with Jane.

There was a gap between breakfast and lessons. Seeing Justin through the window, but not his twin, Randy decided that Jane would be in her bedroom, and that it would be a good opportunity to have a quiet word with the girl.

She went along the passage to where she knew the twins slept in rooms apiece. She had never been down this corridor before, and she looked through the first open door and decided the room behind it must be a boy’s judging by its bareness, so went on to the following room. But here stood an astral globe on a bench, space charts were tacked to the wall, a telescope (of a sort) was rigged at the window. Justin’s domain unquestionably. That made the first room Jane’s room. It also made, to Randy, after she had knocked, then entered to see if Jane was there, and she wasn’t, for belief. For Sim would furnish it to the best of his capability - that is bed, desk, carpet, chair, all child-size - but he would never, though to give that cattleman his due he had made an honest job on their bedrooms, dream of differentiating between boys and girls. Poor little Jane, Randy thought sympathetically, to live barely like this.

Then she saw a few awkward knick-knacks that Jane must have added. A cut-out picture from a magazine of flowers. Flowers? Jane? A bow, inexpertly tied, adorning the handle of her brush. Touched, Randy took up the brush.

‘What are you doing in my room?’ said a voice. ‘Put my things down! And while you’re about it have a good laugh.’

Randy, still holding the brush, turned to Jane, who stood at the door.

‘I’m sorry I came in, but I did knock. In case you didn’t hear me, I took the liberty of making sure you weren’t here. You see, I felt I must talk to you.'

'Put it down,' Jane said, ignoring her, and Randy did.

‘Darling,' she said, ‘if you’d told me, we could have made this a lovely room. We still could.’

‘I hate lovely rooms,' said Jane, and going to the wall she pulled down the flower picture. Then she tugged off the bow and finding scissors cut it across.

‘Sim wouldn’t know about girls’ rooms,' Randy excused him ... then was sorry she had said that.

‘He doesn’t know a lot of things,' Jane replied.

Randy decided to make this her entry. ‘I intend to tell him, Jane,' she said. ‘For, in spite of what you’re thinking, there’s nothing much to tell. But before I do that I have to talk to Jeff ... to Mr. Smith. I - I have to show him a letter which he - well, he can’t remember.'

‘You couldn’t have shown it, could you, if you’d thrown it out?’

‘No, Jane,' Randy agreed.

‘And you did throw it out,' Jane triumphed.

‘Yes, but you—’

‘It’s time,' Jane interrupted blandly, ‘for your classes.’

‘Can I have the letter first?’

‘No.’

‘I don’t mind if you take it to Sim, in fact I’ll go with you when you take it, but just let me show it first to Jeff.’

‘No,' said Jane.

‘It’s important, Jane.'

‘No,' Jane said again.

They stood facing each other, the cool little girl, the less cool, though she hoped it did not show, Randy. How long they would have stood like this, Randy wretchedly could not have guessed, had not Jamu, apparently checking the time again, decided to ring the bell.

For another minute Randy stayed on. Then she turned and went out of the room, down the corridor and along to the class annexe.

To the prayer. To All Things Bright and Beautiful.

—Was there beauty? Randy thought.

CHAPTER NINE

Sim went ‘out' as he said he would the next morning. Randy did not mention accompanying him again, and he did not make an offer to take her. For the first time Randy was sharply aware of a hair-fine strain between them. They had never been a loving pair as in a book sense, there had been no bright romantic flag waving between them, but there had been a pleasing serenity and a deep friendliness that had warmed them both - and had meant a lot to Randy. Now it was not there.

She stood on the verandah watching the procession of horses take off. She thought of that time when she had gone, too. The sense of expectancy that was part of every expedition. After the near-home miles had been conquered the shimmer of the sun on the westered wheateared Mitchell grass. Another wedge-tailed eagle would watch the string of riders from far up ... or would he be the same eagle and wonder where was Sim’s wife? Sim's wife. Only just now she felt miles from Sim, many more miles than that string of horsemen would be covering.

She thought then of midday smoko under a coolibah and near a plash of water, tea swinging in a circle to draw. Thick beef sandwiches and wedges of brownie.

The men were rounding a sandhill now, in another moment they would be out of sight. Surely Sim would turn round.

What had come after lunch? She searched, still watching for the last rider who was Sim. More riding, then making camp for the day, steak for tea, singing the cattle, then saying good night to Sim and getting into your swag and looking up at the stars and feeling ... feeling like you had never felt before in all your life. Randy knew that now.

Sim did not look round.

She turned back from the verandah rail to the house. The men had left early, but not as early as when she had gone with them, not in that mystic world of slowly greying skies, then a faint buttering from the east. Instead the sun had been up when they had rounded the sandhills, and now it was shining down fully. It was too soon, though, for breakfast, and anyway, she had had coffee with the gang. She went to the bedroom and tied a few things, then, somehow restless, strolled down to the garden.

Here she found Justin, manipulating a washer to the tap to which she connected the garden hose.

‘That’s good of you, Justin,’ she appreciated.

‘It was more to see how it works,’ Justin, who was more honest than tactful, said naively. He finished the job, then got into step beside Randy.

‘About that school—' he asked her, having glanced round first to see that Jane was not in earshot.

‘Oh, yes, Justin. It’s called Brenton, and it’s situated far enough out of Sydney to assure you a good night sky, something I knew you’d want.’

‘Thank you,’ said Justin. He asked tentatively, ‘Girls, too?’

‘Boys only. I thought... we both thought that Jane—’ Randy did not say that she and Sim both had agreed that Jane had had her twin under her thumb far too long. ‘There aren’t all that many co-eds in Sydney,’ she said instead.

He nodded, and waited for more.

‘Sim wanted a good general education for you,' she went on, ‘and I wanted an emphasis on Maths, which you must have, Justin, if you’re to pursue what you tell me you want to.’

Justin seemed satisfied with his fate, but years of being with Jane, almost breathing with Jane, had made him as conscious of Jane as of himself. He looked questioningly at Randy and she knew what he asked.

‘Hers is called St. Hilda.'

‘She won’t like that.'

‘Would Jane like St. Ursula’s? St. Helen’s? Pine Hill for Girls? Redfields for Young Ladies? Would Jane like anything?’ Randy said impulsively.

‘No,’ agreed Justin, ‘she wouldn’t. Though just now…' He scratched his bullet head and was silent.

‘Just now?’

‘She’s different somehow. Not such a pepperpot. Do you reckon she’s sick?’

‘We’ll see if she eats any breakfast,’ proposed Randy. ‘There’s the bell now.’ Rather relieved not to have to discuss Jane any more with Jane’s twin, she turned back to the house.

But at the table she noticed that Jane was definitely quieter than usual. It would have been apparent even without Justin’s prompting. The child also looked a trifle pale. Except that she knew she would have either received a stinging reply or no answer at all, Randy would have asked if there was anything wrong.

She went along to the classroom after breakfast, Justin, either inspired by the thought of the school in which he was soon to be a pupil, or having been shown, as he sometimes was, that he was not wanted by a moody Jane, accompanying Randy. She found him some graph paper and projectors, and he settled in happily, not even hearing, Randy guessed, the pics as once more they raised their little voices in All Things Bright. Bright, yes, she allowed, but, as yesterday, not beautiful.

It was while the children were at their ‘quiet’ studies, the books, the word-building, and the sand trays, and Justin still absorbed in graphs, that the door suddenly opened and Jane stood there. She wore an entirely different look from what she had worn at breakfast.

‘What is it, Jane?’ Randy asked. ‘We’re at lessons, dear.'

‘She’s here. She is. Didn’t you hear the plane coming down?’

Randy had heard a plane, but only vaguely; she had been as absorbed as her pupils. Besides, planes put down frequently along that paddock strip between the plastic buckets.

Seeing that Justin was still busy with his projectors, sorry for Jane, and taking the risk of a rebuff, she asked, ‘Who is, Jane?’

‘Ruth,’ said Jane.

This time Justin did look up.

‘Ruth?’ he echoed.

'Ruth. She just flew in.’

‘How could she do that?’ Randy asked.

‘She’s a pilot,’ said Justin. He looked at his sister bleakly, and Randy concluded he must be remembering all those devilries the pair of them had delved in when they had set out to rid Yanni of their stepmother. And had succeeded. But success had done an about turn. Ruth evidently was the winner now. Ruth was back. Ruth, of whom Jane ... and old Mrs. Ramsay in her way ... had said: ‘She’s mad about Sim.’

Randy suddenly and inexplicably knew she felt bleak herself.

What was she like, this Ruth? This daughter of Sim’s stepmother? For a moment Randy felt bewildered with all the steps that Yanni had provided. Wasn’t there even one straight-out relationship anywhere? But yes, there was Miranda. Wife to Sim. Husband and wife were as simple as - as day itself. But... a little weakly ... no day seemed to turn out in the simple way it should, not up here. And now, on top of everything else, there was Ruth. What was she like?

Almost as if answering her, a voice called from the door: ‘Hi!’

It was some time before Randy saw Ruth. At once she had been surrounded by children . . . but not, Randy noted, by her own stepchildren, by Jane and Justin. They remained stonily where they were.

But that Ruth was popular with the piccaninnies was very obvious. ‘Root,’ they called, ‘Root!’ and whether it was the way they pronounced it or their own pet name for her, it still was apparent that they were glad to see her.

‘Hi,’ she called again, and now Randy did see - tall, slim, tow-haired, with amused grey eyes, a rather wry smile. Not strictly pretty, but extremely fascinating.

Pic by pic, she good-naturedly untangled herself from their entwining arms, said, ‘Scoot! scram!’ then, after they had, approached on Randy.

‘So you’re Sim’s wife.'

Jane had recovered herself. She had edged nearer Randy. A little nervously, or so Randy judged, but concealing her nervousness in her usual defiance, she said: ‘Well, I’m not.'

‘I should hope otherwise.' Ruth turned coldly to the child. ‘I wouldn’t wish a snake that.'

It seemed a preposterous thing to say to a little girl, but, having had experience of her own with Jane, probably it was deserved.

‘Yes,’ said Randy before Jane could think out a cutting rejoinder, 'I'm Miranda.’

‘Ruth,’ Ruth presented herself. She looked around the schoolroom with interest. ‘This was a cunning move.'

‘The children love it.'

‘And Sim ... of course.'

‘Yes, he does.'

‘As I said, cunning.’

‘How do you mean?’ asked Randy.

‘Nothing like cementing a relationship, is there? Sim is a sucker for these piccaninnies.'

‘I like them myself. I mean'... defensively ... ‘I didn't do it for - for any cement. I mean—'

Jane, though the conversation must have been beyond her, broke in purposefully, ‘She’s married to Sim.' Except that she couldn’t and wouldn’t believe it, Randy would have said that she was siding with her. Siding with New Missus? It seemed impossible. Probably, she thought a trifle hysterically, the better of two evils.

‘When does this class finish?’ Ruth was looking at her watch. ‘Mrs. Fife, who incidentally doled me out a similar welcome—’

‘I’m sure you’re very welcome, Ruth.'

‘Then don’t be too sure, and when I said that I didn’t include you, though I suppose’... a sly laugh... ‘I could have.’

‘You’re very wrong, I assure you.’

‘All right, honey, but about that bell. Fifey said lessons finish at noon.’

‘That’s right. At any time now...’

‘Make it sooner.’ Ruth looked around, picked on Jamu because he was already preparing himself for his self-appointed bell-ringing duties, and nodded her head. Randy knew she should have felt indignant at Ruth’s calm taking-over of the class, but she felt too bewildered. Jamu rang the bell, and the piccaninnies marched out. With them, very smartly, marched Jane and Justin, evidently not ready yet to do battle. Ruth watched them wryly, but made no comment, then she went and closed the door. Leaning against it for a moment, she looked Randy deliberately up and down. Then she came back and sat at the nearest desk. She smiled. It was a very nice smile. Randy realized that rather with surprise. The only thing against it was that it didn’t last long. Almost at once Ruth wiped it off.

‘Now we can talk,’ she said.

‘You’re pretty.’ Ruth had taken out a cigarette and lit it. Randy stopped herself from requesting Ruth not to smoke here.

‘Not really,’ she said instead.

‘I agree.’ Ruth’s voice was dry, characteristically dry, Randy judged. ‘You’re too soft ... but that would suit Sim. Hard country, soft woman. It only makes sense. I should have adopted a soft touch myself.’

Extremely uncomfortable at the trend of the conversation, Randy defended herself by stating firmly that she was a countrywoman.

‘I was born in the New South Wales Riverina,' she said.

The scornful smile on Ruth’s wide full lips made no comment necessary. ‘So,' she said once more, ‘you married Sim.’

A little gust of exasperation took possession of Randy. ‘Here’s my ring. In my room are my marriage lines.’

She became aware that Ruth was laughing at her. ‘So there is spirit there! I began to think—’ The laughter was abruptly wiped off. ‘What about my room?' she insinuated.

‘It’s ours.’ Now Randy’s cheeks were brick-red.

Ruth had ashed the cigarette she barely had begun and had crossed to the window. Randy knew what she was looking out at ... that fantastic country where everything, even miles away, stood out in almost unbelievable clarity. Her own country, Randy suddenly, and jealously, thought. Ruth’s country.

‘Sorry,' Ruth flung over her shoulder, ‘for intruding so indelicately.’ She turned directly round on Randy. ‘I wouldn’t have,' she added bluntly, ‘if everything was all right. But it isn’t, is it? Don’t ask me how I know. I just know. Women up here, away from everything, get that extra sense.’

‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about.’ Now Randy’s brick-red flamed to geranium. For she did know.

Ruth was aware of her knowledge, too, for she went on from there.

‘I came here in a fair-to-good spirit, ready to embrace you. But there’s nothing to be embraced over, is there?’ A deliberate pause. ‘You don’t love Sim.’

‘How — how dare you talk like this?’

‘I dare because he should have married me. I muddled the thing, and in the end I cleared out. As I just said, I returned in a benevolent mood, but only if it all had turned out as I would want for Sim. Sim’s the very best, you know.'

‘I know.'

'Yet you don’t love him,' Ruth said again.

‘I... I... Oh, why are you going on like this?’

‘Because whatever else I am, and I’m a lot of mean things, and I admit it, Fm not dishonest. I’m saying all this to give you the picture, Miranda. The picture is that since Sim’s unhappy, or less than happy, or any fancy equivalent to unhappiness that you choose to use, then I am going to get into the picture, too. Now do you understand?’

‘No.’ But Randy said it faintly.

‘Then let me put it in simple words. I’m stopping on here.’

‘Until Sim asks you to go. As he did before.'

It was Ruth’s turn to redden. ‘I went on my own accord. Oh, I’ll admit he refused to turn out the kids, but— Anyway, no need for post-mortems now. I shouldn’t have gone, but I did. I should go now, but I won’t. Now do you see?’

‘No,' Randy said again.

‘Then this is it. I want Sim. Seeing you don’t, I’ll start my crusade again. You must admit that at least I gave you a chance.'

‘I’m Sim’s wife,' Randy reminded her.

‘I know. You have a ring. You have your marriage lines in’ ... a pause — ‘your room. But good heavens, girl, it takes more than that. It takes ... well, it takes something I could tell the moment I came in here that you didn’t have - for Sim.’

‘Sim might have it for me.'

‘It has to be both. Were it both, I’d bow out right now. But now I’m not bowing out. Do you understand?’

Did she understand? Jeff had said almost the same thing, only for another reason. Leaving her manuals spread across the desk, Randy blundered blindly out. Half-way down the passage from the schoolroom, Jane emerged from the verandah rail where she had been perched. Suddenly Randy knew she could not bear any more.

Then Jane said, ‘Randy ...’ Not New Missus, not any of the impertinent hating things she had said before.

‘Yes, Jane?’ Randy stopped.

Jane stood and looked at her.

‘Yes, Jane?’ she repeated.

‘Nothing,' Jane blurted, ‘nothing.'

‘She means’ ... now it was Justin, who also must have been perching, but Randy had not noticed ... ‘that we’re on your side.’

The absurdity of it all caught at Randy. Turning from the solemn faces of the two children, she ran the rest of the way to the hall then up to her room. Our room. There she sank down on the bed and laughed. Thank heaven for laughter.

When Mrs. Fife rang the lunch bell she descended ready for all the Ruths in the world.

The therapy of mirth! Randy thought this as she sat opposite Ruth at the lunch table, carrying off the situation with more composure than she would have thought possible.

They ate alone. The twins, who usually only missed out on dinner in the dining-room at night, were not there. Mrs. Fife had excused herself and no doubt was eating in the kitchen.

‘I’m terribly popular, as you see,' Ruth grinned.

‘The piccaninnies like you,' Randy submitted.

‘Oh, yes,' carelessly.

She ate little, and as soon as the coffee came she lit up again.

'No wonder I’m taboo now. I was a real menace around this place. Ask Sim.’

‘He’s told me.’

‘How I drove him mad having unsuitable love affairs? It was only to awaken him, of course. You as a woman would know that scheme.'

‘Sim is a man.’

‘And blind like all men. In the end he infuriated me so much by his lack of intuition that I accepted Carl. Oh, no need for you to look like that, it was a fair match, Carl was as good as I was, which wasn’t saying much. In a way we should have made a go of it, same likes and all that, but I hadn’t taken stock of the fact that two demons came with him.’

‘According to Sim they didn’t, they happened to be left with him.’

‘And that,’ said Ruth, ‘was the crux of the matter. I hated those brats.’

‘Poor little ones!’ Randy said impulsively.

‘Poor my eye! They’ve been indulged right and left by Sim.’

‘But — loved?'

‘Loved? That pair?’ Ruth gave an incredulous laugh. 'In the end,’ she said, ‘Carl cleared out. Carl always did, I later found out. I wasn’t in tears, I can tell you, but I was ... well, as near to tears as I can get... when I found out that Sim expected me to play mother to the twins. I wanted to send them off at once, but he wouldn’t have it.’

‘They’re going now.’ Randy tried to withhold a little note of pride. She had, she thought, gained a point on Ruth there. Sim had not wanted the children absent when Ruth was here, but he wanted ... and insisted ... on it now. It was a mean triumph, and she wondered why it pleased her, why should she feel like this when her feeling for Sim - when—

Ruth did not comment. She sat smoking for a while.

‘I never thought of Sim marrying,’ she said at length. ‘I guess no one up here did. When I blew out of Yanni I believed I could just blow in again and find things as they were.’

‘But they weren’t,’ Randy said quietly.

Ruth looked across at her for a long probing moment.

‘I don’t know,' she answered as quietly.

‘What did you do when you went away?’ Randy broke in hurriedly; she was uncomfortably, acutely aware of Ruth’s estimating gaze. ‘Sim tried to contact you when Carl died, but he was unsuccessful.’

‘I was air-taxiing . . . I’m a pilot with my own small craft ... between some far north-west Queensland stations. There’s room for air-taxis up there. The way I moved around it took all that time for news to reach me. Then I decided to try Yanni again.’ Her glance flicked at Randy.

What they would have gone on to from there, how far they would have delved, Randy did not know, for the telephone pealed, and jumping to her feet, Ruth, who was nearest, without any apology, any reference to Randy, calmly took it up.

‘Yes?’ she said ... Yes, Yanni ... No, I’m Ruth ... Yes, Ruth. R-u-t-h.’ A pause. ‘Mirrie? Who’s Mirrie?’

There followed a one-sided . . . for Randy . . . conversation that went on so long that at last she rose.

‘She’s coming now, Geoff, you said Geoff, didn’t you? G. or J.? . . . J. . . . Yes, of course . . . Yes, yes, I’d like that... Yes.’

Holding her hand over the mouthpiece, Ruth gave Randy the phone. She wore an amused smile.

‘So,’ she said with a quirk at Randy, ‘it’s like that, is it? Still, he sounds nice. I don’t blame you.’

‘Ruth-’

‘It’s all right, Mirrie.' Ruth smiled, went back to her chair and lit up again.

At the other end of the connection Jeff was chuckling to himself. Evidently Ruth had amused him.

‘What a girl!’ he smiled across the wires after Randy had announced herself, and she knew he didn’t mean her.

‘Who, Ruth?’ she asked all the same.

'Yes, Mirrie. Oh, darling, it’s lovely to hear your voice.’

‘Jeff, I-'

‘Sim away as he said?’

‘Yes.’

‘If I were Sim I’d chain you up and stay by your side. I’d never leave the homestead.’

‘Jeff, don’t talk like that.’

He spoke seriously now. He said: 'You know that ordinarily I wouldn’t, Mirrie, but you know, too, that this isn’t ordinary, not this situation you’ve put us into.’

‘It is, Sim, it - has to be.’

'You mean you want an ordinary marriage?’

'You know I don’t mean that.’

‘I know just what you do mean, in spite of what you say. Your face, your lovely Mirrie face, has told me.’

‘Jeff, please stop!’ she begged.

‘It’s no use, Mirrie. If I’d found at Yanni what you insist you wish me to find, I would have stood down at once - the property I’ve bought and all. I trust I’m not that much of a no-hoper to break up a happy marriage. But I didn’t find it. I found the girl I had loved and still love and I found she still loves me. And because of this I’m putting aside all the principles I might have used had I discovered in you a truly loving wife. But the true love was for the old love ... for me. Can you deny it, Mirrie?’

Randy’s mouth was dry, too dry to answer, and he said triumphantly: ‘I knew it!’

‘Jeff, don’t. You - you sound like Ruth.’ Ruth had strolled to the patio, she was out of earshot.

‘Yes?’ There was a quick note of interest in Jeff’s voice, a note, too, of waiting, waiting to hear more. Randy felt obliged to explain.

‘She said she wasn’t bowing out, either ... she said she was staying . . .’ Randy spoke uncomfortably.

‘For whom?’ Now Jeff’s voice was very interested.

‘For - Sim.’

The whistle at the other end pierced her ear. ‘What a kettle of fish!’ said Jeff.

‘Jeff, I must go now.’

‘No, Mirrie, not before we make our arrangement regarding this house. You promised. Remember?’

‘I did not!’

‘Then Sim did, and as your husband—’

‘Oh, you do recognize that, then.'

'Darling, don’t be so edgy. I’m not suggesting anything clandestine, I’m just reminding you that you have a promise—’

‘Sim’s promise.’

He ignored that. ‘To fulfil.’

‘And how would I be expected to come across even if I agreed . . . which I don’t. That is unless you’ve already bought yourself a plane.’

‘No, I’m waiting for Ruth’s advice on that.’ Ruth’s advice already! ‘She’s the small craft authority. And she can give me the advice tomorrow. It will be Ruth who will bring you.’

‘Ruth will?’

‘That’s right,’ said Ruth, who had come back from the patio and now stood beside Randy. ‘We’ll fly over in the morning.’

Before Randy could make an objection, Jeff, who had evidently overheard, said cheerfully, ‘It’s all arranged, then. Good-bye, Mirrie.’ Then louder: ‘Good-bye, Ruth.’

He put down the phone.

Bewildered, Randy turned to Ruth, but that amazing girl was simply lighting herself another cigarette, then sitting back idly to watch the thin blue weave of smoke. She seemed pleased with herself.

In frustration, Randy turned and walked out.

Mrs. Fife was in the kitchen garden directing one of the boys on her herb section.

‘They kill the parsley with kindness,’ she complained of a sodden plant.

‘Ruth and I,’ said Randy unenthusiastically, ‘are going over to Woodowadda tomorrow, we probably won’t be here for lunch.'

Mrs. Fife must have taken Randy’s lack of enthusiasm for a doubt as to Ruth’s flying ability. ‘She really is a pilot,' she assured her sparingly.

Randy nodded, then, not wanting to go back to Ruth and the further pertinent disclosures that she knew must come, she wandered down to the stables. For quite a few days she had not visited her little mother-to-be ... nor the father, as Sim had declared.

She went in now, immediately diverted by velvet ear and warm nose. More therapy, she appreciated, nuzzling Brown Girl back.

‘Not far off her time, is she?’ It was Ruth by Randy's side, and Randy felt piqued because she could not have said herself how far off was Brown Girl.

Ruth was kneeling by Brown and running able fingers over her, or they appeared able. Randy felt jealous of her apparent capability. She had been country born herself, country bred, had earned her living in the country, but she had not been a countrywoman, not in the way Ruth undoubtedly was, and it irked her. At Broadfields all she had known of parturition had been the delight of a new foal or calf, on one memorable occasion, a helping hand to Jeff, who, as Ruth appeared to be, was very knowledgable on such things.

‘A little trouble here,’ Ruth was saying concernedly. ‘Could need a vet.'

‘Sim has one, of course.' Randy was aware she snapped.

If she noticed the irritation, Ruth ignored it. ‘But not on hand,' she reminded her, still in concern. Another examination. ‘Not to worry, though, I’ll be here.'

It was too much ... again ... for Randy. She left the stable and went back to the house.

The rest of the day she avoided Ruth, making four of them, for the twins kept well out of sight and Mrs. Fife remained in the kitchen. If Ruth was aware of Randy’s withdrawal she did not say anything, nor did she speak of the housekeeper, but of Jane and Justin she said scornfully: ‘They’ll keep.’

The girls were eating a dinner for two, now, Mrs. Fife still not joining them, the twins very likely sharing the piccaninnies’ rib bones down in the gully, something that really was more reward than deprivation. ‘What do you intend to do to them?’ Randy asked.

‘Something of what they did to me, I hope,’ answered Ruth rememberingly. She had told Randy of her many persecutions.

‘They’ve been handed over too often,' excused Randy.

‘But never handled enough. If I’d had my way I would have handled a horsewhip. Only Sim wouldn’t have allowed it. He has indulged them ridiculously.’

‘Yet never owned them.'

‘Do you think those little barbarians would understand ownership?’

‘Yes,' said Randy firmly.

Ruth looked at her intently. ‘And you, what are your views?’

‘On the twins?’

‘On - ownership.'

Randy got up and went to the big old-fashioned sideboard that Sim had retained, and on which Mrs. Fife always laid out the dishes ready to be served.

‘More coffee, Ruth?’ she asked.

Ruth did not reply at once, and Randy feared she was going to pursue the subject of ownership, and she found herself shrinking from that. But Ruth must have decided against it.

‘No, I’ll turn in, Randy, have an early night. In case you’re nervous, I take my flying very seriously, hence the good sleep unimpaired by too much caffeine.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘You need have no fears.’

‘I’m not nervous.’ Randy almost added as Ruth went out of the room, ‘Of that.’ Then she wondered what she meant by ‘that'.

She herself had a restless night, and was glad the next morning that she was not piloting a plane. Ruth was glowing, though, ready for action. She even pushed aside the aboriginal driver from the control seat of the jeep to take them out to her Cherokee, telling him he could do the driving going back.

‘I love motion,' she said to Randy, ‘I love to control it.’ She drove very fast but very safely, twisting ably round the rutted track and taking hairpin bends with accuracy.

When the four-seater, small version Cherokee took off it was apparent that Ruth was just as efficient in the air as she was on the ground. She rose smoothly into a clear sky, and, relaxing, Randy looked down on the scene that had now become so familiar .. . and so loved. Yes, loved. She had come to love this remote place.

Ruth had no trouble in finding Woodowadda. ‘Not that I went often,' she told Randy. ‘The Ramsays never liked me.’ She was putting down now in a paddock of thistle, for flying made minutes of miles. ‘Jeff had better attend to his strip,' she criticized, and Randy thought how accustomed Jeff's name sounded on the amused pink lips.

Jeff was out in a jeep to meet them. Hardly had the Cherokee taxied in than he was helping them both to the ground.

‘Ruth, I presume.’ He was looking first at the new girl. ‘Mirrie.'

They drove back to the homestead ... Ruth in the middle and criticizing Jeff's handling of the tough little waggon. ‘You want to push them hard,' she said. You don’t handle these boyos with kid gloves.'

‘Know everything, don’t you?’ Jeff took his eye off the track a moment to toss this at her, and it was a moment too long. They went into the sand.

Ruth laughed at Jeff's embarrassment, but she was out of the jeep as soon as he was, helping to manoeuvre the waggon back to the track. ‘Not that way, dopey,’ she called once, ‘that way you’ll go farther down.’

‘Know everything, don’t you?’ Jeff said again. ‘Damn expert!’

Ruth said maddeningly, ‘That’s me.’

She knew everything in the house, too ... what to toss out, what to retain. Randy would have had to admit in all fairness that it was just as well Ruth spoke up because she herself remained silent, but she rather sympathized with Jeff when he said at last: ‘Aren’t you ever wrong?’

‘No.’

They both looked at each other a long moment, then burst out laughing. Somehow Randy felt excluded. She waited awkwardly a few moments, then went out to the verandah, acutely aware that they were not even aware of her going.

Some time later Jeff found her there. ‘Mirrie,’ he said, and she waited for an apology from him. But there was none. He did not seem conscious that any was called for. ‘Mirrie,’ he said again, ‘she’s really some girl, isn’t she?’

‘Some girl,’ Randy agreed.

‘She wants to go now. She’s a real perfectionist. Nothing to chance. She’s quite unique actually ...’ He did not finish but turned as Ruth, too, came out.

‘Everything in order out there?’ he asked as they drove back to the waiting Cherokee.

‘Would you know if it wasn’t?’ answered Ruth acidly.

‘Hasn’t anyone ever told you what little girls are supposed to be made of?’ he tossed.

She made a face at him, jumped out of the jeep before it stopped and climbed up into her little craft before he could help her.

‘Little shrew,’ Jeff said as he legged Randy up. He remembered, however, to say, ‘I’ll be seeing you, Mirrie.’ The Mirrie was only registered on his lips as far as Randy was concerned, for already Ruth . . . deliberately, Randy thought...was tuning up the engine. They took off at once.

Within a few minutes, but for all that a sky away from Woodowadda, Randy heard a change in the beat of the engine, and half-glanced at the pilot. Ruth was frowning. The rhythm appeared to reassert itself for some seconds, then it broke out again, and Ruth said briefly, ‘The instruments are playing up.’ She began checking and rechecking the altimeter, air speed indicator and compass.

‘Serious?'

‘That’s something a sensible pilot doesn't ever stop to consider, if he can he simply puts down first.' Ruth added laconically, ‘Just in case.’

She began looking around for a clear stretch.

Up here, that was generally fairly easy, but outcrops of rock could occur, occasional oases of trees. At length one clearing suited her, and she brought the little Cherokee down with the same perfect three-point landing as she had done before. She certainly was a good pilot.

Randy started to say so, but saw at once that as well as a good pilot, Ruth now was a very angry one .... angry with herself. It appeared she had forgotten some detail. She related what it was to Randy, but having very little mechanical sense it did not make for clarity.

‘I still think you’re efficient. That landing—'

‘It never need have been had I... oh, it doesn’t matter, you wouldn’t understand, anyway.' Ruth bit her lip. ‘I hate to be second-rate.'

She really meant short of perfect, Randy half-smiled to herself. She had heard Jeff’s ‘Know everything, don’t you?’ to Ruth, his ‘damn expert!'

‘What do we do now?’ she dared ask.

‘Nothing. The thing that I left out... well, I won’t go into details . . . rules action right out. Sufficient to say we can’t take off until it’s righted.'

'You mean we stop here?'

‘Any alternative?’

‘No, Ruth. Anyway, it won't be so bad. I spent the night in the Auster once with Sim and’ . . . Ruth’s lips thinned ... ‘and it was quite comfortable,' Randy finished her sentence a little weakly.

‘Well, you won’t be comfortable this time. There’s not a thing aboard, and by not a thing I mean rug, torch, eats. Not even a chocolate bar.’ Ruth stuck out her lip, a gesture, Randy decided, of stubborn defiance. She was obviously waiting to be censured.

Randy said nothing. What was the use? The girl was punished more than enough in her own let-down. If she criticized her she would only increase that truculence that Ruth was already putting on to conceal her own self-disgust.

‘Well, it could be worse,' she placated.

‘How worse?'

'We could be hurt.'

‘I believe I’d sooner that than his - his hilarity.'

‘Whose hilarity?'

‘Your friend Jeff's. Won’t this be right into his fighting corner! I can see the grin on his face.’

‘But how will he know?’

‘We’re still on his property, it’s still Woodowadda, and up here the noise of an engine is like a heartbeat. Miss out a beat and you’re jolly well aware of it. Particularly him, because ... well, because he would be listening.’

About to ask Ruth how she would know that, Randy closer her lips instead. But presently she doubted aloud if their predicament would be known.

‘Then for heaven’s sake hope it is, even at my extreme embarrassment. It can be a disaster to be lost out here.’

‘I know all about it,' Randy said gravely. ‘The important thing is not to leave your plane or—'

‘I only wish I could!’

'Don’t be foolish, Ruth,' Randy said sharply; she did not want the girl to do anything foolish, and although she seemed exceptionally level-headed, she knew how these extra-efficient types can suddenly become inefficient when they have found themselves wanting. She sensed that Ruth was proud beyond the usual standard of pride, so much so that she would have to watch her reactions now that she was humbled.

‘Any water?’ she asked.

‘I told you, nothing. That’s what I’ve put you in for. Me, the know-all, the do-all, the paragon.’ Ruth went to light a cigarette, then found she had no matches. Angrily, but somewhere a sob in the anger, she threw the cigarettes away.

‘I’m going to look into the water situation,' Randy said.

‘Do you know how and where?'

‘Perfectly. Sim instructed me.’ This time Randy said Sim’s name firmly. ‘I even know the plastic method if we have to seek water out.’

‘Clever, aren’t you, but where’s the plastic?'

‘I bought a windjacket.’ Randy could not help feeling a little triumphant there. ‘However,' she went on hurriedly, not wanting to score off Ruth who already had been deflated enough, ‘I don’t believe we’ll need it. See that outcrop over there? Isn’t that a line of trees near it?’

‘I believe you’re right. Want me to come across with you?’

‘I want you to stop here, Ruth. One is enough. It’s better for you to stay by the plane.’

‘All right, then.’ Sullenly Ruth watched Randy go. But when Randy was some ten yards or so, she called in a rather muffled voice, ‘Thanks.’

Smiling to herself, Randy trudged on.

It was a longer distance than she thought, though, knowing now these strangely deceptive horizons, she had really known that, too. In all she judged it took her twenty minutes to get to the outcrop and ascertain that at least they would not parch, for there was a thin but steady trickle of good water. She rested a while, took a long drink, then started back. If Ruth had brought nothing, as she had said, there would be no container in which to carry any water, so they would have to take turns between the craft and the stream, one watching the little Cherokee in case an investigating party arrived, then, not finding them around, began a search.

But as she approached the plane again Randy saw that a waggon was pulled up, and she recognized it as the one that Jeff had brought out to his own strip to meet them this morning, had delivered them back there after lunch. So there would be no need to be rescued after all, she smiled.

But Ruth was not smiling, she was almost crying with frustration. Jeff, for it was Jeff, was rolling a cigarette for her, handing it over in a lordly manner, making much of his lighting of it for her when she had to admit she also had no matches.

‘Don’t let it fret you, Miss Fix-It,’ he said with enjoyment.

Turning to Randy, he suggested that they all get back to the jeep, for, he said, they would be spending the night at Woodowadda, it would be too late to return them to Yanni today, even if he had a craft.

When they reached Jeff’s waggon, Randy noticed that this time it was Ruth who pushed herself into the seat by the door. Randy rode between.

CHAPTER TEN

During the entire journey back to his homestead Jeff picked relentlessly on Ruth. Miss Know-All, Miss Never Wrong, Miss Fix-It. How did it feel to be less than perfect? Ruth sat accepting it all until Randy could bear it no longer. Oh, for goodness’ sake, Jeff,’ she objected.

He looked down at the passenger beside him almost with a start, and Randy realized with wry amusement that he had actually forgotten her presence.

He included her then, answering her inquiry as to how he had come to their rescue so soon that he had heard the engine’s failure ... as Ruth had said he would ... and immediately pinpointed the direction.

‘I came straight out — you can with a four-wheel drive - but as you see now it’s much longer than that five minutes in the air when you go by truck.’

‘I can’t see any landmarks.’ Ruth was regaining a little of her impertinence. ‘Are you sure you can find your way home?’

‘As sure as I am of your reaction if I didn’t,' he retorted.

‘Don’t be sure of that,' Ruth advised. ‘In fact don’t be sure of anything.’

‘I’m beginning to think so myself.'

‘Don’t tell me we actually agree!’

Once more Randy knew she was forgotten.

As soon as they reached Woodowadda, she rang up Yanni, even though they would not be missed there yet and Mrs. Fife still unworried.

But it was Sim who answered the ring. So Sim was back.

‘Miranda!’ How singularly sweetly that name came after Randy, after Mirrie, Miranda. Sim’s name for her.

‘Sim!’ She told him the story.

‘You’re all right?'

‘Perfectly.'

‘But you’re stuck there.'

‘Yes. Though' ... anxiously, anxious for Sim to know this, and she wondered at her eagerness ... ‘Ruth is there, too.'

'Yes,' he said thoughtfully, ‘Ruth. Well, you’ll have to wait the night, won’t you, but if you put Ruth on and she tells me what's needed for the Cherokee, I’ll fly the Auster over in the morning.'

‘And take me back?'

‘Bring you both back.'

‘Of course, Sim,' she apologized, ‘I was only thinking of myself.'

‘Someone else has been only thinking of you, too. The twins. They've come several times asking me about you. Particularly Jane.'

‘Jane?’

‘She has something for you.' A little laugh. ‘And it doesn’t look like a red-backed spider or a python either.’

‘Sim, don't be silly,' Randy laughed.

‘Sorry, darling. It seemed so odd to have Jane moon up with something she declares she must give to you.'

‘You mean odd when it’s not a spider or a snake.'

‘Oh, Miranda!' he laughed again. ‘As a matter of fact it appears to be a letter. She tried to conceal it, but she has a small hand.' A pause. ‘Now put Ruth on, like a good girl.’

Ruth came to the phone and stated her needs concisely. She seemed to have recovered much of her self-sufficiency ... at least when Jeff was not there. He was not there now, he was giving instructions for the girls’ overnight stay. Randy went after him to say the usual guest things about not going to too much trouble.

He looked at her a little uncomprehendingly for a minute, then he said, ‘But it’s an occasion, Mirrie.'

‘Of what?' she asked quickly. She was thinking of his reason for buying the Ramsay property, that reason of his old love, as he had said, of — well, of her, and she looked at him sternly.

To her surprise he answered, ‘I can’t tell you because I don’t really know myself. I only know it’s an occasion somehow. Can’t we leave it at that?’

‘Jeff .... ’ She started to speak, but did not go on. She didn’t know what she had to say, or whether she really wanted to say it even if she found the words.

At that moment Ruth joined them.

‘I’ve told Sim all my defects.' She looked challengingly at Jeff. ‘He’s coming to remedy them in the morning.'

‘But that would take a lifetime, surely,' Jeff offered.

‘Care to apply for the job?'

‘It depends on the pay-off.'

As before, the quick repartee was beyond Randy, and she slipped out.

It turned out a better evening than she had expected, though. The dinner that Jeff jollied his man into producing was quite good, and Ruth found candles the Ramsays had left behind and put them in bottles she first treated with artistic ribbons and wreathings of the melted wax.

‘Quite the homemaker, aren’t you?' Jeff applauded. ‘Dinner by candlelight demands a special bottle, and luckily I have one that I put away for a special occasion.’

‘Put away or brought especially with you for that occasion? Brought from England?’ Ruth asked sharply.

‘Nosey, aren’t you?’

‘I just want to know.'

‘The past as well as the present?''

‘You don’t mention the future.’

Randy had found a radio player in the corner of the room, and she put on a record. It was quite ridiculous, but she was feeling out of place. She was feeling - a third. Almost as if to confirm her thoughts, Jeff, catching the strain of the music, asked Ruth to dance.

They danced perfectly, danced as if made for each other. Randy suddenly remembered how waltzes had sent Jeff and herself into hysterics of mirth, they had both declared they had no time for the old movements, but really, she realized now, watching the graceful pair, it had been that they had not co-ordinated with each other. But Ruth and Jeff did. Perfectly. Randy watched and smiled at the picture they made. Smiled. All at once she was realizing that smiling. Pm happy in their happiness, she was realizing, which means that I no longer care about Jeff, not - not in the way I thought. Which means—

But that was a thought to be kept for seclusion. Taking the opportunity of the couple’s complete absorbtion, Randy went to her room. There she undressed and lay in the darkness, longing to think yet almost afraid to begin. It was while she was feeling around thought like that, that she remembered something else she had reminded herself several times to consider. She considered it. And sat up.

‘I can’t be. It couldn’t be! Yet - it is. It is?'

She was still touching gently, experimentally on what had suddenly come to her when sleep took her instead. The next thing she knew was the sun streaming into her room.

Ruth was up already, and exchanging sharp comments with Jeff. I must have dreamed up that mood between them last night, Randy thought. Then she thought: I didn’t dream something else, and she smiled.

‘Breakfast, Mirrie,’ called Jeff from the kitchen, ‘ruined as only this female can ruin, but if you can eat black toast...’

Randy dressed and went out.

Ruth was eager to get out to where she had left the Cherokee, and Jeff asked her pointedly if his hospitality had been so poor that she had to hurry things like this.

‘I just want to go,’ she said shortly.

‘And so you will.’ A pause. ‘Of course you gave Sim the location.’

There was a silence, and Randy took it that Ruth hadn’t. Jeff took it that way, too, and began a repeat performance of his Miss Fix-It, Miss Perfection, Miss Never Wrong.

In the end Ruth almost screamed at him, then getting up from the table ran out.

‘Jeff, why do you needle her like that?' Randy asked, vexed.

‘Why?’ He looked back at Randy in a bewildered fashion for a moment, then ran his hand through his hair, making the crisp curly strands of it stand up in peaks, like a small boy’s after he has come from swimming, something that had always torn at Randy’s heart before, yet now ...

‘She just maddens me,’ he said.

‘But Sim will see the stranded plane,’ Up here, Randy thought, a thing that was not outcrop, spinifex or red sand would stand out like a beacon.

‘It’s not that, it’s her omission, I mean she’s so damn self-sufficient... or so she thinks.’

‘Why should it worry you?’ Randy asked levelly.

‘Because ... well, because .... Oh, it doesn’t, of course. The girl’s a fool girl. Look, if you’ve finished, Mirrie, we’d better push off, it takes longer to get out there by the waggon than by the Cherokee.’ He added ruefully, ‘Much longer.’

This time Ruth made no comment on Jeff’s driving. She sat rigidly in the door seat of the jeep once more, and Randy, imprisoned between two obviously warring people, gave up the struggle of trying to appease both, or either, and instead looked around her. The country of course was the same as at Yanni, and yet, in the odd way of up here, every mile brought a different aspect, so it was similar yet dissimilar at the same time.

When they approached the strip where Ruth had put down her craft, it was to find that another small plane had landed. Evidently in the noise of negotiating the waggon over a rough spot, and there were many, or detouring to avoid some pitfall, of which there were also many, they had not heard the second craft. They looked at it wonderingly. It was not the Auster.

It was Ruth who recognized the pilot when Jeff drew up the jeep.

‘Bill Timms,' she said to the others, ‘vet surgeon to these parts.’ She got out and went forward to him, Randy and Jeff behind her.

As he worked on the Cherokee with Ruth, Bill said that Sim had phoned him to bring Ruth the part she would want on his way out. ‘Because,' he explained, ‘he can’t come himself. It’s that young mare of his, she’s having trouble.’

‘But why did he ask you?’ It was Randy, puzzled that Sim would call on a busy vet when he could ask someone else.

‘He didn’t, he phoned me to come out professionally to this difficult girl, but it’s out of the question if not out of the direction, for I’ve a big job at Carrady’s, but seeing Woodowadda was on the way, I said I’d do that much for him at least. That’ll be right, I think, Ruth. By the way, glad to see you in these parts again. And you’re our new bloke, I believe.’ To Jeff, ‘Welcome.’ He moved to his own small plane.

‘The mare.’ Randy was running after him. ‘Brown Girl. Is Sim having worries with her?'

‘Plenty of worries, and it kills me not to help, but this job at Carrady’s entails a hundred steer, so there was no choice.’ He got into his Cessna, waved his arm to them and set off.

‘Brown Girl!’ Randy cried in distress, but Ruth said with that impatient practicality of hers, ‘Sympathy doesn’t help, that young woman needs action.’ She was climbing into the Cherokee.

Randy hurried after her, climbing in unaided, and it was only when Jeff spoke in her ear, something he had to do to be heard above the Cherokee’s engine, that she realized why she hadn’t received Jeff's aid. Jeff must have scrambled in before her.

If Ruth was aware of him, and possibly she wasn’t, for the passenger seats were behind the control, she did not show it.

She flew unerringly in the Yanni direction, and twenty minutes later was skimming her little craft along the home strip. From the homestead a jeep was coming to take them in, but as it got nearer Randy saw Sim was not in it.

The aboriginal driver said that boss was with the brown mare. Plenty sick girl, he told them.

When they reached Yanni he drove them without being told past the homestead down to the stables, where Sim was busy on the distressed mare.

As they reached the box, Randy was aware that Ruth had pushed past her, but any resentment she might have felt was swept aside in Sim’s obvious relief to have her there. Feeling more inadequate than she had ever felt in her life, Randy stood behind the others, for Jeff had stepped forward as well, wishing that her country experience had entailed more than a general familiarity with country life and the teaching of country children. Wishing that it included a knowledge, as with Ruth, of horse breeding.

Ruth was kneeling down by Brown Girl, feeling for the foal. Randy saw that Sim had done the usual preparatory things that she would have known and done herself, for instance the disinfected, staw-lined box, of which Sim now said to Ruth that he knew that she preferred a paddock since the mare preferred that, but because of Brown Girl’s touchy condition he had decided to keep the mare inside.

Ruth nodded briefly, almost as though she was too busy to bother, and over her shoulder she called, ‘Jeff, what do you think of this?’

Jeff went to her side.

From that moment they took over, took over as if one person, not two. When the actual foaling began, and there was no room in the foaling box, it was Sim and Randy who stepped out, Ruth and Jeff who attended the mare.

She was a trouble from the first contraction, but they worked side by side doing contributory things for each other without any asking. They did not speak, they had no need to. They simply understood.

Randy and Sim were at the stable door, and comforting a plainly anxious Pina, anxious about the Girl. His girl?

‘She’ll be all right, Pina,' said Randy again and again.

‘She is all right,' called Sim suddenly, ‘and so is that foal.’

Randy looked and saw that the little thing was born, all legs, all head, soft wet ears, amazed eyes.

‘Tell that father he has a son,' Ruth called.

When Sim went in to help, he was brushed aside. Between them Ruth and Jeff were taping and tying, disinfecting and painting.

Ruth was offering a cool drink to the mother, then following it with barley meal gruel. Automatically, Jeff had taken over the foal. They worked together as though they had done it for years, Randy thought.

She was not aware that she had said that aloud until Sim asked, ‘And for years to come, Miranda?’

She looked back with him from the sunshine outside into the bam, and there in the brown-gold light, above the miracle of birth, above the little wet foal, the pair had come together instinctively in a quiet embrace. Ruth and Jeff had. Even as they watched, they kissed.

‘Come along, darling,' Sim said.

They walked down to the pool at the foot of the sandhill that Sim had had enclosed for swimming. The one, Randy said a little breathlessly, without the croc. She did not wonder at her breathlessness now, not as she always wondered at these odd feelings when Sim was near. Now she understood.

No one was in the pool, so its surface was very still, so still that gnats were weaving gauzy patterns over its shining surface.

‘Are you hurt?’ Sim spoke first.

‘Hurt?’

He jerked his head. 'Back there.'

Yes ... yes, in a way. I longed to do what Ruth could do with Brown Girl.'

‘So did I. I'm a cattleman, a handy cattleman I hope, but never a dab hand at general country husbandry.'

‘Only at being a husband,' said Randy.

‘Miranda?'

'You have been, Sim. You are.’

‘More important, will be?' he asked cautiously.

‘Oh, Sim, yes!’ She turned to him and held out her arms.

But he did not come.

‘When I asked just now “Hurt?” I didn't mean Brown Girl,' he said directly.

‘What did you mean, Sim?'

‘I meant - Jeff. He came here because of you, didn't he?'

Randy said quietly, ‘Yes.'

‘And now it looks as though—'

'Yes, it does look as though, and Sim ... Sim darling, I'm glad.'

Still he did not come to her.

‘Is that because you can see the way things are going to be, so you’re going to make yourself content with next best?'

‘Next best? You? Oh, Sim!' How, she wondered incredulously, could she ever have thought that?

‘But I was, wasn't I, Miranda, right from the first I was.'

'You sound very knowledgeable,' she said curiously.

‘I thought before we were married it could be someone else, but I wanted you so much it was heaven even to be a consolation prize. Then after we were married I knew.'

‘Knew? How did you know?’

'Does it matter? All that mattered was that I had you, that you were mine. Not all the time, I knew, but at times, I would swear to that.'

'Yes,' she reminded him softly, ‘out on the plains with the stars looking down. At a window listening to a native song. But Sim ... Sim, how did you really know it had been ... it had been…'

‘Someone else?’ he finished for her. ‘By one word. One word in a cable that I was asked to pay for. The word was Yes.'

‘But that wouldn’t tell you.'

‘I figured it did. Yes to me was—'

‘It was affirmation,' Randy said, remembering Jeff, ‘it was an agreeing, a sealing, and Jeff thought so, too, only it wasn’t, it wasn’t, it was an answer to a question, it was an answer to “Is it too late?” and the answer was “Yes”.'

‘Too late because of a signature to a document, Miranda?’

‘Then it was, but later, gradually, Sim, that’s all I can tell you, too late because I loved - someone else. I know it sounds very convenient, I know, after those two in there' ... she looked back to the barn ... ‘it sounds incredible, but... Oh, Sim!’

For at last he had her in his arms.

‘It’s not incredible, I’ve believed all along that it was me, not a dream, but I knew, too, that you were still unaware,' he said quietly.

‘Sim, even had I not realized, and that thought seems impossible now, even if I had still thought of Jeff in that way, I wouldn’t have—'

He stopped her before she could finish.

‘I know it, I’ve always known it. You’re wonderful. You would have gone on as ever. And because I loved you, I would have thanked heaven for that much. But even in my humbleness, and I. have been continually humble, I have felt, I have known that this is the right design, not any other. Not just my arms around you, yours around me. Put them around me now so I know.'

‘What about the children?’ she asked.

‘Are you afraid they’re watching?'

'Never afraid, Sim. No, I was just thinking about them.’ What she really meant was that she wanted them included.

‘In my pocket is Jane’s offering. It looks like a letter.'

‘It will be a letter from Jeff,' Randy said.

‘She stole it?’ sternly.

'No, I’d thrown it away. You must believe that, Sim.'

‘I believe,’ he said.

‘And you must own that pair - own, do you hear me, Sim? That’s been the trouble all along, you treated them well, but they were not yours. Now they must be ours. Because I don’t think that Ruth and Jeff—'

‘They won’t get them even if they want them,' Sim said quickly. Then, at a surprised look from Randy: 'You see, for quite a while, ever since I brought you here, I’ve felt that way, too. It was you, of course, darling. Anyway, it’s a good start for a family, don’t you think?’

‘... If we need a start,’ Randy said in a low voice.

He looked at her quickly, incredulously, and she smiled back at him. ‘It does happen, Sim.'

‘And - has it?’ He spoke so softly she could hardly hear.

'Yes.' She took a deep breath. ‘And I want you to know now that it wasn’t because of him ... or her ... that I’ve come to you, that I - I mean— Oh, Sim!’ For he had her very close now.

There were still things to say, and she tried to say them. The twins first of all.

‘That’s all over,’ he brushed aside. ‘I just told you, darling. I think with Justin it always was, anyway, he’s a fine boy.'

‘And the girl?’

He smiled whimsically. ‘She’ll grow on me, no doubt. By the way, Miranda, here is that letter.’ He handed her the crumpled torn page ... or at least she knew that that was what it was. There was nothing to encourage any new opinion of Jane, unless you counted that brief: ‘To Randy with love.’ Then: ‘From Jane.’ The two crosses. That was all.

But Randy was crying and Sim was mopping the tears up. ‘They’re happy tears,’ she tried to tell him, and he said, ‘Yes, yes, Miranda.'

Miranda, not Randy. New Missus, Missusim, Mirrie,

Miranda - his name for her. Her husband’s. Sim’s.

She was wife to Sim.