The Tartan Touch (8 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

They w
ere bringing the sheep in for the shearing. From all over the Mirrabooka the great wool rivers were converging on the home paddocks where they would wait to be deprived of their valuable fleeces, each one of which was worth quite a few dollars in hard cash.

This was the sight that Mary had wanted me to see. There was a slight smile on her face as she watched me see this grand spectacle for the first time in my life.

“The Fraser fortunes were literally built on their backs,” she told me. “The mining, even today, is only a side line.”

I was speechless. When the great flocks
a
malgamated on the slopes, flowing over the hard red earth into the valley below, where they would be penned up until they were wanted, it was just one great moving mass of sheep. I thought the noise would ring in my ears until I died. The exciting sound of thousands of sheep bleating in their different keys, some high, some low, a grand movement of sound to match the sheer size of
the
combined flocks.

Mary grinned at me. “This is where the hard work begins! I hope Andy warned you that we’ll all be going flat out while the shearers are here? It’s a bit different from your flocks on the Highlands, isn’t it?”

“In size,” I acknowledged carefully,

“Bet you’ve never seen a mob of sheep to equal this
!
’ she insisted
.

“I don’t bet,” I said.

“My word,” she said, “we’ll have to change that! Andy will never live it down!”

“It has nothing to do with Andrew,” I answered firmly. “I prefer to do things for the joy they have in themselves. It is sinful to wager money on events!” There spoke the daughter of the manse, I thought wryly, and wished I had kept my prejudices to myself.

“You’ll never convince an Australian of that!” Mary said flatly. “It’s half the fun of the races. The Cockies are so sentimental about their bets. They all of them back their own entries—they can afford to!—and they seldom even come in for a place. Do you honestly believe that Andy won’t put his shirt on you and Birrahlee at the Cue Races?”

I was troubled by the thought. “You mean money will change hands over me?” I exclaimed. “When I’ve only ridden this once! That would be daft!”

“Daft or not, that’s what will happen,” Mary said cheerfully, “so you may as well grow used to the idea. Or are you going to stop Andy betting on you?” she added slyly.

“I wouldn’t have the impertinence,” I admitted unhappily.

Mary looked very pleased with herself. “Just as I thought
!
” she smiled. “Andy has you on a string, hasn’t he?” Her shoulders sagged a little. “I know just what it feels like t” she sighed.

“Andrew is a fine man,” I agreed.

“Quite right!” she approved. “You ought to think so. I wonder why men don’t spend more time worrying about
our
feelings! I’d love to be run after for a change!”

That made me laugh. “I don’t think you have to worry!” I said dryly.

Mary looked grateful. “Do you really think so? I suppose Andy told you all about it. It’s a terrible
t
hing to be
young
!
Nobody takes one seriously, even when I
know
what I want!”

“And you want him?” I asked, knowing that it was the death-knell of my own hopes
.

“Yes, I want him,
”
she said, with more than a touch of desperation. “That’s why he went to England. Apparently the idea was that I should forget all about him! And my mother’s contribution was to try and take me away from the Murchison altogether
!”

“Perhaps she was afraid of your being hurt,” I suggested, wondering why I suddenly wanted to cry.

Mary gave me an ironic look. “She wanted to spite Andy. She doesn’t know about—about
me
! I wouldn’t be likely to tell her and I asked Andy not to, and he always keeps his word. I’m surprised he told you,” she went on, “but then I suppose he had to.”

“I suppose he did,” I said.

“Anyway, I don’t mind
your
knowing,” she sighed. “You wouldn’t laugh at me for falling in love with a man of his age, would you?”

I shook my head. “No, I wouldn’t laugh,” I said. How could I? There was nothing to laugh about I had comforted myself with her picture gallery of film stars and had thought her heartwhole, but now I knew my mistake.

“It’s such a waste of time having to wait until I’m twenty-one!”

“But you see
him
all the time,” I pointed out
.

She started. “Well, I do, but he’s afraid of making up my mind for me. If he only knew!”

I found myself saying, as I had said to Andrew before:
“F
our years isn’t very long. I nursed my father for two years and it seems like a day now.”

“Was that why Andy married you? Because he felt sorry for you?” she asked carelessly
.

“No,” I answered. At least I could be sure of that. “He never even said he was sorry that my father had died,” I remembered.

“But he must have done!” she protested.

“Not he!” I said darkly. “Too bad, he said, and asked if I intended to dig the grave myself!”

“He didn’t?” Mary asked in an awed voice.

I remembered my own indignation at the time. “He was busy with his own worries,” I excused him. “He had no time to pity me.”

“He found the time to marry you,” Mary pointed out practically.

“Because it suited his own convenience!” I answered sharply. “He had to have a female presence in the house if you were to be allowed to stay here.”

Mary’s face looked very white
.
Her freckles stood out in sharp contrast to the pale fragility of her skin.

“Is that what he told you?” she said at last. “Oh, Andy,” she added, “you didn’t have to go as far as that!”

I took a last look at the river of sheep as it spread out, filling the valley beneath us, and turned Birrahlee’s head for home.

“The blame, if blame there is, is mine,” I said fiercely. “I didn’t have to come
.
I could have stayed at home in Scotland
!
”

Mary’s face softened as she looked at me. “Oh, Kirsty, I’m glad you didn’t! What would the Frasers have done without you?”

I loved her dearly at that moment. I had no heart to be jealous of her shining beauty. Mary Fraser might take everything I wanted for myself, but I knew then that I would never dislike her for it.

Andrew had left us when we had had our first glimpse of the sheep, leaving us to watch from the top of the hill, and so he was not there when we rode back to the homestead and the time came for me to dismount. Following Mary’s instructions, I wrenched myself out of the saddle and landed more or less on my feet, the reins still wrapped tightly about my fingers.

Mary took them from me and led Birrahlee away to his stable. Left alone, I staggered into the house and flung myself, fully dressed, on to my bed. Andrew had said I’d be stiff that night, and here I was like a poker and it was scarcely breakfast time!

“A hot shower is what you need!” Mary said heartlessly, strolling into my room without a by-your-leave.

I summoned up a groan, wondering if my hunger was greater than my stiffness, making it worthwhile to struggle to the breakfast table
.

“I’ll give you a rub down if you don’t get up,” Mary threatened. “And I have very hard hands!”

I believed her, I pulled myself off the bed and disappeared into the bathroom. The warm water rushed out at me, making my skin tingle with the force of it. I felt distinctly better and some of the stiffness left me.

“Tell me about the shearing?” I called out to Mary.

“Tell you what?”

“I’ve read about it,” I told her, not without pride, “Will they be here long?

“A fortnight maybe,” she said. “You’ll soon get the hang of it. We spend the whole time cooking for the gang, or that’s what it feels like. But it’s fun!”

“I enjoy cooking,” I said with satisfaction.

“Not for those brutes, you won’t! They put away the most enormous quantities of food, the duller the better.” She laughed. “If they don’t get the right food, there’s trouble, and then Andrew goes spare!”

“I see,” I said. I would have to ask Andrew to tell exactly what the men ate, if I was to do a good job, I thought. When I knew what they ate and the times of their meals, I would plan my campaign carefully to please them. I was used to hard work and I felt completely at home in a kitchen. To be honest, I welcomed the prospect of having something to do that would take my mind off the problems of being the temporary Mrs. Andrew Fraser
.

But that was the last I heard about the shearing for the first week that I was on Mirrabooka. I occupied myself by making a garden in front of the house, digging the rough ground in the evenings when it was a little cooler
.
Mary would have nothing to do with the project, but, to my surprise, Andrew took quite an interest, even taking the trouble to divert some of the water from the reservoir (which also served as the swimming pool), to irrigate the beds of flowers I put in.

We were fortunate on Mirrabooka not to be short of water. It seemed that when they had been prospecting for
min
erals on the land, they had found this shelf of water, deep down beneath the first layer of hard rock. An artesian well had soon followed and now there was a windmill too to pump the water up to the surface. You can see these win
dmills
all over the Outback and hear their sails beating against the lightest breeze.

But having water didn’t make the heat any less. True, it was a dry heat, dry and dusty. It was a climate to turn the most abstemious man into a beer-drinker. If he was a rich man, he drank it by the schooner, if he was poor, he had to make do with a pony, but he still wasn’t doing too badly to my way of thinking. I drank it only under protest, and, after a while, even Andrew gave up trying to make me like it
.

“Perhaps you’re wise to stick to apples,” he said to me.

“And flagons,” I said without thought.

“Flagons of what?”

I blushed. “J-just flagons. Of raisins, I think, so I suppose they are flagons of wine.”

He gave me a look of pure pleasure. “Ah,” he said
.
“You’ve been reading more improper literature!”

“I was joking,” I said hastily.

“I’m shocked,” he reproved me. “It’s not a subject for joking.”

“Wh-what isn’t?” I stammered
.

“Love,” he said simply.

I turned my back on him, determined not to allow him to unsettle me. If he could quote Robbie Burns, then surely I could quote from the Song of Solomon without him making so much of it.

But mostly he didn’t tease me. He was kind, but he was distant. More often than not he and Mary would make conversation with each other every evening, while I sat outside that magic ring, trying not to call attention to myself. There was no more talk of Mary having to leave the Station and going to live with her mother, so I supposed that Andrew’s purpose had been successful and that I was considered to be a fitting chaperone for her. If I could do that much for him I was satisfied. Our bargain had been for four years and the MacTaggarts had always honoured their word. And so I concentrated on my garden. In four years I would have flowers for the house and a burst of colour outside the door. It would be my gift to Andrew and to his kingdom of Mirrabooka.

Then, just as suddenly, the whole place burst into life and the shearers were due to arrive within a matter of hours. Andrew was hardly in the homestead at all, so busy was he in arranging the quarters for the whole outfit and
i
n seeing that they had everything they needed.

The men arrived in a convoy of lorries and Mary and I went out to meet them. Their clothes were stiff with the grease from the wool and their faces were black from the sun
.
They were a tough body of men who spoke almost entirely in monosyllables and who had little time for women.

Their foreman was suspicious that a woman would be able to cook for them.

“They won’t clean up their language for a whole pack of females,” he told me.

“Of course not,” I answered gently.

“I’ll speak to Andy about it,” he went on, chewing on a piece of biltong in a way which I found quite revolting
.

“
I can see that you’re a hungry man,” I agreed. “If you tell me the menus that you expect, I’ll serve it to you.”

He shook his head. “We work hard, ma’am
,”
he said. “When we’re done we like to relax, and we can’t do that if we have to watch our tongues and take off our hats to eat.”

“I see,” I said. “I think I’ll speak to Mr. Fraser myself about it
.
”

“D
o that,” he advised briefly
.

It was hard to convince Andrew that I needed the work as much as the men needed the money they earned from shearing sheep. And what money! The sums they clocked up in a week would make one gasp! Even the roustabouts, the boys whose work it was to carry away the newly shorn fleeces and to clean up, earned more than any man I had heard about in Scotland.

“You’re a glutton for work,” Andrew said gravely. “I didn’t bring you here to wear you out. Why don’t you enjoy yourself doing nothing for a change?”

“If I don’t serve the meals myself, why shouldn’t I cook them at least?” I countered. “They could hardly complain about that!”

He looked at me solemnly for a long moment. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll try it. But if it doesn’t work out, don’t break your heart over it. Right?”

I stood up very straight beside him. “Right,” I said. And so it was arranged. It was a compromise that pleased all of us. The men were served by one of Andrew’s own men, and ate the food they were accustomed to, large platefuls of steaks and eggs for breakfast, more meat for their midday break, sometimes cold, and yet more steaks in the evening. But I had my way too. I cooked some of the things I had always cooked, remembering that Andrew had liked them well enough. At first only the young men, those who would eat anything, would taste my cakes and scones, but they were soon disappearing as fast as the steaks that Andrew had cut up for me every morning.

“I think you’re winning,” Mary said at last, noting the pile of empty plates that came back from the men’s dining-room.

“‘Andrew
says
that if the men are pleased with the food they’ll come back again,” I told her. “These are the best team he’s ever had.”

She sat on the table, watching me as I washed the dishes, a job which she had no taste for herself.

“You know, Kirsty,” she said, “you worry too much!”

“In what way?” I asked her.

“I don’t think you’d even breathe if you thought it would displease Andy!” she pronounced. “You ought to stand up for yourself more!”

“Andrew has a right to my loyalty,” I said uneasily. I found it hard to speak of any part of my relationship with Andrew Fraser
.

“And your work? And your sympathy? And the sweat of your brow?” she went on with a lordly air.

“All that!” I agreed.

“
But what do you get in return?” she demanded
.

I was surprised that she couldn’t see it for herself. “What do you want from the man you marry?” I asked her quietly.

“His love,” she said. “And his money!”

She laughed, and I laughed with her. It was not her way to be serious for long.

“And his protection, and his care, and his name,” I added, returning to the washing
-
up.

She was silent for a long moment. “It’s funny,” she said after a while, “but I do want to bear his name, even though I don’t like it very much! Didn’t you resent having to give up the name of MacTaggart?”

I swallowed. “I did, of course,” I admitted. I crossed my fingers in the soapy water. “One is not a wife until one bears one’s man’s name,” I remarked. “No matter who calls one Mrs. Fraser!” I added with sudden passion.

Mary took up a cloth, idly wrapping it around a pile of dishes and dabbing at the more obvious streaks of wet on theme

“
Kirsty MacTaggart!” she said absently, almost as if she were trying the name out for herself. “I prefer Kirsty Fraser, don’t you?”

“I’m not saying,” I grunted.

She grinned at me, her green eyes sparkling. “You don’t have to!” she said lightly
.
“You may be the wise one, Kirsty darling, but I’m not a
complete
fool!” She
threw down the cloth and, kissing me lightly on the cheek, she was gone.

Andrew took me through the shearing sheds himself. I was as proud that day as I had been when a MacTaggart had beaten the lot of them at the Highland Games, even though he had not been known to me. I had read it in the papers and had cut the piece out and had kept it by me for a couple of years, until my father had found it and had burned it before my eyes.

The sheep that Andrew ran on his station were crossbreds that he had imported from a friend of his in New Zealand. They were merino sheep, but their faces were clean, making them easier to handle. He pointed out to me the various merits of their fleeces, but all I knew was that they were fine and very heavy. The wool fell away from the sheep at a touch from the electric shears, and was left on the floor like a hearthrug until the roustabout came and cleared it away. It was hard work for all concerned.

The shearers were men who lived for their work. They wagered huge sums of money on their own skill and speed. Once a week they went into the nearest town and soaked themselves in beer, returning in the small hours of the morning to waken the whole station with their noise. They were men apart and had little to do with the Mirrabooka workers. They had their own life, going from station to station right across Western Australia, wherever there were any sheep to shear. What they did with themselves at other times of the year, I never discovered.

In the sheds they were stone cold sober.
Th
e sheep were brought to them where they stood, and were sat down firmly on their rumps while the shears neatly robbed them of their wool. In no more than a minute
the beast was released, looking strange and clean, to join the others who had already passed through the lines
.

The roustabouts took the fleeces to the woolpressers whose job was to take the new-shorn fleeces, to sort them for quality, and then to press them into compact bales, covered with burlap ready for transportation.

“What happens to them then?” I asked Andrew. I had a proprietorial interest in them by now, for this was wool that had grown on my husband’s land.

“A few years ago they were all shipped to London and sold there, but now we have our own market over here. We sell through a local agent. His head office is still in the City in England, but as England turns towards Europe, we have had to find other markets.”

The grease from the wool made the floors slippery and I skidded as I tried to step out of the way of one of the roustabouts.