The Far Country (18 page)

She shook her head. “I’ve never seen her, nor has Ma. I don’t think any of us know much about her.”

“She worked in London, so you ma was saying. She might be able to give you a few tips.”

“I want to meet her,” the girl said. “Be somebody to talk to up at Leonora, anyway.”

He lay propped on one elbow on the warm sand, staring out at the sunlit beach and the blue sea. He was trying not to keep looking at her, but it was difficult to keep his eyes under control. “When do you suppose you’ll be going?” he asked at last.

“About this time next year,” she said. “I’ve not told the parents
yet, but it’s what I want to do. I think they’ll let me—if the wool keeps up.”

“How long do you think you’ll be gone for?”

She stared down at the sand and traced a little pattern on it with one finger. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’d rather work in London than work here. I might never come back.”

“Bit hard on your dad and ma,” he said.

“I know. That’s what makes it difficult.” She paused. “I ought to be home by five, Tim,” she said. “I must see Dad and Ma this evening.”

“Too right. Your dad won’t worry because he was taking over the new Ford today. Your ma will want to see you, though. Like me to run you straight to the hotel, or do you want to go back to Toorak first?”

She thought for a moment. “I’d better go back to Toorak. I can’t go to the Windsor straight from here, like this.”

“I’ll run you back and wait while you change and take you on to the hotel.”

“Will you, Tim? That’s terribly sweet of you.”

He coloured a little, and she noticed it, and knew that she had been a shade too kind. “That’s all right,” he said gruffly. “We’d better get changed and get upon the road, if you want to be at the hotel by five.”

They changed back into their clothes in the tea trees and got into the utility, and drove back to the city with hardly a word spoken all the way.

The
Orion
docked at eight o’clock next morning, with Jennifer on board. Jane Dorman had written to her again at Fremantle, and Jennifer had replied agreeing to go to Leonora for a few days before she came back to the city to take a job. Now as the vessel docked she was uncertain if she had been wise; she knew little of the Dormans and nothing of Australia; she would have preferred to go to a hotel for a few days, and find a lodging in the suburbs, and settle down in her own way. It was impossible to refuse the evident kindness, however, and it would be interesting to see a bit of the country before starting on a city job. Moreover, it was to visit Jane Dorman that her grandmother had given her the money; but for that she would not have been there at all.

When she met the Dormans in the tourist-class saloon, in response to a loudspeaker call, she was surprised in one or two respects. For one thing, they were far smarter than she had expected them to be. Jack Dorman in a new grey suit, heavy though he might be, was better dressed than her father, and Jane Dorman, though her hands were old and worn, was very smart in a new black and white coat and skirt. Their daughter, Angela, was with them, rather younger than Jennifer, but even better turned out than her parents; Jennifer felt pale and shabby in comparison with this glorious young woman.

As she came into the saloon Jane Dorman got up to meet her; in the crowd of passengers and friends she came straight to Jennifer. “It’s Jennifer Morton, isn’t it?” she said. “I’m Jane Dorman.”

Jennifer said, “How did you know me, Mrs. Dorman?”

Jane said, “You’ve got a look of your grandmother about you, my Aunt Ethel. I knew you right away.”

Then there were introductions, and enquiries about the passage, and business of the luggage. The Dormans had brought both utilities to the pier-head and Tim Archer was sitting in the Chevrolet below. Presently Jennifer was passing through the Customs, and then her suitcases and trunk were down in the new Ford utility, and she was free into Australia.

She drove to the hotel with Jack and Jane Dorman, Angela following behind in the old Chevrolet with Tim. In a blur of first impressions the width of the streets and the great number of motor-cars impressed Jennifer most; whatever else Melbourne might be, it was a beautifully laid-out city, and obviously a very prosperous one. The Dormans had engaged a room for her at the Windsor for a couple of nights; she found herself whisked up into this, and then they all had lunch together, except for Tim Archer, who had started back for Merrijig in the old utility.

Jennifer decided that it was easier to submit until the hospitality of these kind strangers had exhausted its first impetus; she felt that it would be rude and ungenerous to battle against it now. Angela disappeared after lunch upon her own affairs, and Jane and Jack Dorman took Jennifer out to the new Ford utility. They all sat together in the wide seat and started out on a long drive up into the Dandenong mountains, clothed in trees finer and taller than any that Jennifer had seen in England. At the outset she protested diffidently at the waste of their time in making this outing for her, but she was quickly told about the newness of the car and made to realise that her host would certainly have done that anyway that afternoon for his own pleasure. Indeed, the fun that Jack Dorman was getting out of his new possession was so evident that Jennifer relaxed, content to enjoy herself.

By the time they got back to Melbourne she was dazed with new impressions. By common consent they spent the evening quietly in the hotel. Jennifer was tired, and at Leonora the Dormans were in the habit of getting up at six in the morning and going to bed soon after nine each night. So for a while after dinner Jennifer sat talking quietly with Jane Dorman in a corner of the lounge of the hotel, while Jack smoked a cigar and read the
Herald
.

The girl said presently, “I’d like to take a little time tomorrow looking for a room or a small fiat to live in here. It’s terribly nice of you to ask me up to Leonora, and I’d love to go back with you for a week, but after that I’ll have to come back here and take a job. I thought I’d better see about that tomorrow.”

Jane said, “I know just how you feel. We’ll get you fixed up with
somewhere nice to live before we go back home. I don’t think you ought to be in too much of a hurry to start work, though. The temperature was over a hundred the day before yesterday, in the city here. It’s the worst time of the year for anybody coming out from England, and you’re bound to feel it more than we do. You’d be much more comfortable if you stay with us at Leonora for a month, and start work in the autumn. It’s much cooler out there.”

The girl said awkwardly, “I think I ought to start earning something sooner than that, even if it is a bit hot.” The austerities of England were still strong in her; to relax and rest was somehow vaguely disgraceful. “I’m living on your money as it is,” she said.

The older woman said evenly, “You’re doing nothing of the sort, my dear. When we sent that money to Aunt Ethel we gave it to her. That was the end of it, so far as we were concerned.”

The girl said, “I’m sorry—I oughtn’t to have said that. But I would rather start earning my own living fairly soon. I don’t want you to think I’m ungrateful, when you’ve been so very kind. But I’ve got to paddle my own canoe sometime, and the sooner I start the better.”

“I know,” said Jane. “So long as you know that we should love to have you for as long as you can stay with us. None of our children are home now; Angie will be coming up at the end of the week, but she won’t stay longer than ten days. It’s dull for young people up at Merrijig, of course—nothing ever happens there.”

“I think I’d find it rather interesting,” said Jennifer. “If I stayed up there too long with you, I might not want to come back to the city at all.”

Jane glanced at her curiously. “Have you ever lived in the country, at home?”

The girl laughed. “No,” she said frankly. “I’ve always lived in towns—in Leicester, and then in London. I don’t really know what living in the country’s like. I suppose that’s why I’m interested in it.”

“It can be very dull in the country,” Jane said. “Long periods of doing nothing but the daily work a woman has to do, cooking and washing and cleaning the house. No one but your husband and the men to talk to, and only the radio to listen to. But … I don’t know. I wouldn’t like to live anywhere else.”

Jennifer thought about this for a minute. Then she asked, “How many sheep have you got?”

Jane looked up in surprise. “I don’t quite know—about three thousand, I think. Jack, how many sheep are there on Leonora?”

He looked up from his paper. “Three thousand five hundred and sixty, unless someone’s been along and pinched some of ’em.”

“Then there’s the beef cattle,” Jane Dorman said. “About two hundred Herefords.”

“Two hundred and six,” said Mr. Dorman, and returned to his paper.

“I suppose you sell a lot of them for meat,” said Jennifer.

“Sell about six or seven hundred fat lambs every year,” Jane replied, “and a good few ewes. But most of the money comes from the wool clip, of course.”

“I wasn’t thinking so much about the money,” the girl replied. “It must be rather fun raising so much food.”

“Fun?”

“Don’t you feel pleased at being able to turn out such a lot of meat?”

Jane smiled. “I never thought about it. Send them to market and that’s the end, so far as we’re concerned, except to bank the cheque when it comes in.”

“It seems such a good thing to be doing,” said the girl.

Jane Dorman glanced at her curiously. It was the first time that she had heard it suggested that there was any ethical value in the work that she and Jack had spent their lives in. In the early years they had been looked down upon as country hicks, unable to make a living in the city and so compelled to live upon the land; in those hard days between the wars when wool was one and six a pound nobody had cared whether they lived or starved. In recent years with wool ten times the price, they had been abused as profiteers. In neither time had anyone suggested in her hearing that their work had any social value. Jennifer, she thought, came to Australia with a fresh outlook; it would be interesting to find out what it was.

She asked, “How are things at home now, in regard to food? What’s it really like, for ordinary people?”

Jennifer said, “It’s quite all right—there’s really heaps of food. Of course, it’s not like it is here, or on the ship. But there’s heaps to eat in England.”

“Not meat, is there?”

“No. Meat
is
a bit scarce.”

“When you say scarce, Jenny, what does that mean? One hears such different stories. One day you see a picture of a week’s ration of meat in England about the size of a matchbox, and then someone like you comes along and says it’s quite all right. Can you get a steak?”

“Oh, no—not what
you’d
call a steak.”

“What about restaurants? You can’t go in and order a grilled steak?”

The girl shook her head. “I don’t think so. You might at the Dorchester or some hotel like that that ordinary people can’t afford to go to. I’d never tasted a grilled steak till I got on the ship.”

“Never tasted a grilled steak?”

“No. Even if you could get the steak, I don’t think you’d cook it that way, because of wasting the fat.”

Jane asked, “But what do you cook when you go out on a picnic?”

The question rather stumped the English girl. “I don’t know,” she said, and laughed. “Not that, anyway.”

“You eat a lot of fish, don’t you?”

Jennifer nodded. “A lot. Do you get much fish here?”

“Not much fresh fish. I don’t think we’ve got the fishing fleets that you’ve got at home. We get a lot of kippers and things like that.”

“Like the English kippers? Herrings?”

“They
are
the English kippers,” Jane said. “Scotch, rather. They all seem to come from Aberdeen.”

“Do you get those out here?”

“Why, yes. You can buy kippers all over Australia.”

“They’re getting very scarce at home,” the girl said. “I remember when I was a schoolgirl, in the war, the kippers were awfully good. But it’s very difficult to get a kipper now at home.”

“Funny,” Jane said, “We’ve had lots of them out here for the last two or three years. It always makes me feel very near home when we have kippers for breakfast.”

The girl asked, “Have you ever been home since you came out here?”

Jane shook her head. “Jack suggested we should go home on a trip a few months ago,” she said. “But I don’t know. All the people that I’d want to see are dead or gone away—it’s over thirty years since I left home. And everything seems to have changed so much—I don’t know that I’d want to see it now. Our old house is a school. It used to be so lovely; I don’t want to see it as a school.”

“That’s what everybody says,” the girl replied, “that England used to be so much nicer. Of course, I only know it as it is now.”

“Old people have always talked like that, I suppose,” said Jane. “And yet, I think there’s something in it this time.”

There was a silence, and then Jennifer said, “Have you been doing a lot of shopping since you came down here?”

“Oh, my dear. Do you know anything about pictures?”

Jennifer knew absolutely nothing about pictures, but she listened with interest to the results of the picture hunt to date. She went to bed early with the Dormans, thinking that these were simple and unaffected people that she was beginning to like rather well.

She went shopping with them next day, feeling rather shabby as she walked with them on a round of the best shops. Jane wanted to buy a wrist-watch for Jack Dorman to commemorate their holiday, and they all went into a shop that Jennifer alone would never have dreamed of entering, and looked at watches; finally Jane bought a gold self-winding wrist-watch for her husband for ninety-two guineas, and never turned a hair. Clothes did not appeal to Jane very much—“I so seldom go anywhere, Jenny”—but shoes were another matter, and she bought thirty-eight pounds’ worth in half an hour. Jack left them while this was going on, and they went on to Myer’s and bought a new refrigerator for a hundred and
twenty pounds and a mass of miscellaneous kitchen gadgets and equipment for fifty-three pounds eighteen shillings and sixpence. “We get down to Melbourne so seldom,” Jane said happily.