South of Capricorn Read online

  Kane’s eyes narrowed ominously.

  ‘Be careful,’ he told her softly. ‘I’m not a patient man, as you should know.’ Mrs. Farrell made no answer and Gail guessed that it was choked-up fury that prevented speech rather than a desire to bring this scene to a close. ‘Much as you dislike the idea you’ve no alternative but to step down now that my wife has arrived. She is the mistress here and as such her orders will always come before yours. In fact, you should already have stopped giving orders at all,’ he continued in a firm inflexible tone. ‘So I’m telling you now - no more orders from you at all. Keep away from the servants, understand?’ His face was set, his eyes hard as the slate they resembled. He was a man of authority, a man commanding, warning, and yet proffering’ advice.

  ‘The child,’ inserted his stepmother defensively, ‘do you expect me to tolerate her?’

  ‘My daughter?’ His dark brows shot up arrogantly. ‘Her place, like that of her mother, is here, in my house!’

  ‘There’s something strange about this whole situation,’ she murmured, quieter now and looking drawn and tired. ‘These two ...’

  Alertly he shot her a glance.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she replied, and then, rising from the couch on which she was seated, she sent both Gail and Kane baleful looks before sweeping wordlessly from the room.

  A few silent moments passed after the door had closed, moments during which Gail’s nerves fluttered, for she strongly suspected she was in for a reprimand and, be it ever so mild, she knew she would resent it.

  She was right in her suspicions. When presently her ‘husband’ decided to give her his attention his eyes were glinting in a way which sent ripples of apprehension running along her spine. What a powerful man he was! And what an awe-inspiring personality he possessed! Never had she felt so uncomfortable when in the presence of one of the opposite sex.

  ‘You went out with Dave, I was told?’

  ‘We went for a stroll, yes.’

  The grey eyes regarded her disconcertingly.

  ‘You and he were gone for some considerable time.’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘What were you doing?’

  A hint of anger lit her eyes.

  ‘Walking,’ was her brief and rather curt reply.

  ‘All the time?’ A narrowed gaze and an attitude of waiting. He might have been a judge, she thought resentfully.

  ‘No, we stopped to talk for a while.’

  Kane hesitated, choosing his words with care.

  ‘You heard what Rachel said — that tongues would wag and scandal flow—’

  ‘I didn’t take any notice of it. How can scandal flow when there’s no ground for scandal?’

  ‘Having been recently reconciled to your husband, you ought not to be strolling in the bush for several hours with another man. Most certainly scandal will flow if this leaks out - which it will, I’m afraid.’

  The colour mounted Gail’s cheeks, the result both of anger and embarrassment.

  ‘Who can talk — in a place like this?’ she wanted to know. Her nerves were still fluttering, for Kane was stem in his manner and his mouth was set in a thin straight line.

  ‘There are many people who can talk. We have the stockmen and their families, as you very well know. There are the others too - the two schoolteachers, the many other people who make up our community. But besides all these, and much more important as far as my prestige is concerned, there are the other graziers, most of whom are my friends.’

  ‘I thought there were no near neighbours,’ she said, diverted. ‘Dave tells me that the homesteads in the far Outback are separated by great distances.’

  ‘So they are. But great distances don’t trouble us overmuch. My nearest neighbour is thirty miles away. But I have friends whose homesteads are as much as three hundred miles away. We meet from time to time at parties or polo matches or dances. We do have some entertainment,’ he added, ‘as I think I mentioned to you once before.’

  She nodded her head.

  ‘Yes, you did. However, I shouldn’t think that my stroll with Dave would reach the ears of people all that way from here.’

  ‘I’ve just said that it would - or implied that it would. I must ask you, Gail, not to become too friendly with Dave.’ Implacable tones which plucked sharply at her temper. All she could think of was that she was doing him a favour, helping him to get rid of two people he did not want in his house. And here he was, ordering and censuring, adopting the most magisterial attitude . . . just as if she were really his wife! She refused to have it and she ventured to tell him this.

  ‘It isn’t as if I’m doing anything wrong in walking with him,’ she added, speaking swiftly so as not to give him an opportunity of interrupting her. ‘I shan’t become more friendly than I should, of course, simply because it would not be practical anyway. But as regards your attempting to restrict my movements or control my behaviour - you can be sure that you’ll soon discover I’ve a will of my own.’

  An awful silence followed. Gail felt a tightness in her throat and was furious to own that it was the result of fear.

  ‘You appear to forget whom you’re speaking to.’

  Pale, but determined not to be subdued by the power of him, Gail lifted her chin and replied haughtily,

  ‘And so do you, Kane. I am not your wife, and I’d be obliged if you remembered that—’ Before she had time to finish a hand was clapped over her mouth, Kane having almost leapt across the room towards her.

  ‘Be quiet!’ he hissed furiously. ‘Have you no more sense than to say a thing like that! – with ready ears about, as they must be!’

  Twisting, she swung out of his grasp.

  ‘I don’t believe anyone would stoop to listening at doors!’ she retorted.

  ‘I’m taking no chances - mark that!’ His face, tight with anger, came close to hers as with an arrogant gesture he again touched her face, this time forcing her head up with a hand under her chin. At the same time he stooped, bending his own head. ‘You’ll learn to guard your tongue as well as your actions – or there’ll be trouble—’

  ‘Just a moment!’ Once again she twisted from his grasp, white with fury at being treated in this way. ‘You seem to forget—’ A flick of his finger cut her short. She watched, fascinated, as with four quick but silent steps he was at the door. Wrenching it open, he then stepped back.

  ‘Were you coming in?’ he inquired suavely of his. stepmother. ‘Have you forgotten something?’

  With a face as crimson as the roses in the vase on the table, Mrs. Farrell stuttered and stammered for a few seconds before the door was closed in her face.

  ‘And now do you see what I mean?’ from Kane in frigid accents. ‘How much she heard I don’t know, but I warn you that, should she have learned enough for my plans to have failed, then you can get your belongings packed up — and Leta’s!’ and with that he strode past her and went on to the verandah where, later, she saw him sitting when she looked from her own verandah outside her bedroom window. He was alone, and there was a glass in his hand.

  With a deep sigh Gail stepped back, into her room. But she hesitated about closing the window, lest, hearing it, Kane should guess that she might have stepped out on to the verandah above him, and seen him sitting there. Not that it really matters, she thought, but for some strange reason she was reluctant to reveal the fact that he had been in full view of her. She stood for a while, the cool night breeze pleasant on her face. Away in the distance the dark indistinct shapes of animals could be discerned. So still they were, like the age-old hills behind them. She glanced around, into the infinity of space and solitude, remembering that, millions of years ago, this region had been a sea bed, and the mountains would then have been islands. No human had ever set foot upon it, and even now it was untamed land, defiant in the face of man’s supreme efforts to bring it under his domination. Fearsome, immense, desolate at this dark hour when the sky and stars seemed to be one with it, and yet
she was already affected by its peace, by the unsullied virgin earth, by the total absence of smoke or grime or hideous concrete blocks, or indeed any of those things which man in his haste and greed called ‘progress’.

  Here, time was way back, with a near-feudal society existing - the lord and his underlings, all living close to nature, where the clear sweet-smelling breeze blew over the spinifex plains where men and cattle roamed, free as the air around them. Some of the men, out on the run, would be away for months at a time, living on ‘saddle-pooch tucker’ - damper, salt-beef and billy tea., Dave had told her that they loved this nomadic existence, riding from one waterhole to another, often alone for weeks on end, or with Abos for companions. Every so often these lonely stockmen would return to the homestead to report, or to take a well-earned leave, and in the case of Vernay Downs all these men came into the house and were accommodated in comfort until the time when they went off again to roam the wild territory, mustering the cattle.

  ‘There’s something about it that gets you,’ she murmured to herself when at last she decided to try to close the window quietly and go to bed. ‘I’m going to miss it ...’ In her mind came a picture of Dave. Given time he and she could come to that point when he would ask her to marry him. She could then remain here ... But as she had said to him, there were too many problems. She could not possibly marry Dave and remain here, at Vernay Downs. And it was here that she wanted to stay—

  Her thoughts were cut suddenly. Wanted to stay? What a thing to say to herself! She wanted to go home, back to England, to her parents and the new job which she must find. A smile touched her lips as she recalled the letter she had sent to her parents. She had told them that she had accepted an offer of the post of nanny to Leta — and told herself that it wasn’t actually an untruth. She could scarcely tell them she was posing as the child’s mother, and the wife of her father! She had said that it was the spirit of adventure that had got into her, that the chance of having a few months in Australia was too good to miss. ‘I’ll be back almost before you’ve missed me,’ she had added confidently, unable to imagine Mrs. Farrell’s wanting to remain at Vernay Downs once her authority was taken from her. ‘Please phone my boss and give him my sincerest and most humble apologies for leaving so suddenly and without handing in my notice. I expect he’ll be angry, and I can’t blame him. I shall have to find another post on my return to England. Send out some clothes — just what you think I’ll need, and also some books and other personal belongings that you will consider to be useful here, in this wild place so far from civilization.’ There had been a little more; she had described Leta’s father and added that on the surface, he did not seem the kind of man who would act in so dastardly a manner as he had towards Sandra.

  Gail knew what kind of reply she would receive. Her parents, as she had told Kane, had never interfered in her decisions. She was old enough and level-headed enough to be able to keep out of danger, they would say this after declaring she was quite mad to think she could manage that dreadful child - that she must please herself, but they would be glad when she returned to the fold, as it were. Her mother would say little about the job her daughter had lost, but she would secretly assert that Gail would never find such another, no matter how hard she looked. She had short hours and long holidays, this because her boss was himself working fewer hours than normal, as he was sort of semi-retired yet spending some of his time at the office.

  ‘Bless them both,’ said Gail as after taking a shower she got into bed. ‘How very simple they make things for me; how uncomplicated it is not to have them interfere.’ She snuggled down and reached to pull the silken cord which would plunge the room into darkness. Less than five minutes later she was asleep.

  CHAPTER SIX

  JUST a fortnight later the letter arrived, delivered by the mail plane which landed on Kane’s own airstrip. She was reading it when Kane came into the room, dusty and hot from a hard day’s riding, and not in the best of moods either, having just been told that three of his best Abo stockmen had gone ‘walkabout’, that is, gone into the bush where they would live native until, tired of the life, they would return and ask for their jobs back. Mistakenly surmising that his stare was an interrogating one, Gail explained that the letter was from her parents.

  ‘I told them that I’d accepted a post as nanny to Leta,’ she began, when the look in his eyes stopped her from proceeding any further.

  ‘Will you never learn to be careful?’ he asked with an acid bite to his tone. ‘You should have been warned by what happened the other night. You know full well that my stepmother is not above listening at doors!’ Gail bit her lip.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a subdued voice. ‘I just can’t get used to the idea that anyone would be so dishonourable as to listen at a door.’

  ‘What have your people to say?’ he asked in a less hostile tone. ‘I was told that you received a parcel.’ ‘Mother sent me one or two things. The rest are coming Jater.’ She glanced down at the letter and added with a grimace, ‘Mother’s accepted my decision, as I said she would.’ Soft the words and also Gail had automatically moved closer to Kane. She was aware then of his great height, for she was forced to tilt her head right back in order to look into his face. Sweat- begrimed, it was nevertheless still handsome. ‘Perhaps you’d like to read it for yourself?’ she invited, amazing herself by the offer. She was puzzled that she could treat Kane like this; she wanted only to retain the contempt - and to reveal it now and then, just so that he would be reminded of what he had done to her cousin. Instead, she was as time passed becoming almost eager to be pleasant with him, and to have him be pleasant with her.

  ‘Not just now,’ he returned. ‘I must go and have a bath.’

  ‘Of course. Later, then?’

  He nodded, looking at her with an odd expression.

  ‘Very well, seeing that you obviously want me to. Put it on the table in my sitting-room.’ He turned, frowning, as Ertha entered the room. She was dressed for dinner and Gail had to admit that there was a most attractive beauty about the girl. It would not have been surprising had Kane fallen in love with her. Perhaps, decided Gail, Ertha would have stood a much better chance if her mother had not made an enemy of Kane. Mrs. Farrell had not been very clever, but the more she learned about her the more Gail realized that it was the woman herself who wanted to rule at Vernay Downs and that although she would have preferred her daughter to be the mistress rather than another girl, she would still have resented to a large degree anyone who superseded her.

  ‘Ah, Kane, so you’re back!’ Mrs. Farrell followed Ertha into the room. ‘That child—’

  ‘You mean, my daughter?’

  ‘Leta! She’s insulted me for the whole of this day!’

  ‘Leta’s been at school,’ interrupted Gail with a frown, ‘so how can she have troubled you all day?’ Gail sent a look towards Kane who, from the first, had insisted that Leta attend the school where provision was made for the acceptance of children from the age of four years. ‘She’s in bed now—’

  ‘Is she? And she’s been at school, you say? That brat’s played truant this afternoon!’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Kane’s stern voice boded ill for Leta, should what his stepmother have said prove to be true. ‘Gail, didn’t you notice her about?’

  She shook her head, feeling guilty.

  ‘I’ve been upstairs, helping Daisybell with the preparation of the guest-rooms. You said we’d need them when we had my party.’

  ‘I’ll get to the bottom of this,’ he began, obviously intending to go up to Leta and question her. But Ertha intervened, supporting her mother’s statement.

  ‘She’s been dodging about, trying to hide one minute and the next going out of her way to torment Mother.’ She spoke quietly, but the malice in her tones was plainly portrayed.

  ‘Why didn’t one of you inform Gail of this?’

  ‘We didn’t know where she was,’ replied Ertha, smooth as oil as she looked up at him and added, ‘It wa
s Dave’s afternoon off and we thought that perhaps Gail had gone off somewhere with him.’

  Flushing vividly, Gail opened her mouth to protest, and then decided that to defend herself would only result in further embarrassment for her, and also for Kane. That he was furious was revealed in the drifts of crimson which had appeared at the sides of his mouth. What he would have said was never known because Mrs. Farrell came in with the sly and subtle reminder that he had forbidden her to interfere either with what Gail was doing, or what Leta was doing.

  ‘I did have an idea that Gail was with Daisybell,’ she continued, ‘but after all the arguments we’ve been having lately, Kane, I felt I mustn’t bring Gail away from the task she had chosen - even though that task was quite unnecessary; we have two other lubras who could have assisted Daisybell with the guest rooms.’ Kane shot her a glowering look, and turned away towards the door. But at that moment it opened and Leta stood there, fully dressed.

  ‘I don’t want to go to bed,’ she said, coming into the room. ‘I’m not tired, so I want to stay up for dinner.’ ‘You chose tomorrow—’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind. I’m staying up tonight!’ She was in one of her most intractable moods, and had it been left to Gail Leta would undoubtedly have got her own way. But Kane, already in a temper, was clearly intending to stand no nonsense. It was the first time he had adopted an attitude of such firmness with her, and Gail guessed that she was in for a surprise.

  ‘Come here,’ he ordered sharply, and Leta gave a small start. ‘I said - come here!’

  Leta obeyed, but dragged her feet across the thick- pile carpet. Gail glanced at Mrs. Farrell, and then at Ertha. Both their faces revealed the intense dislike they felt for the child. In all fairness Gail could not blame them, since Leta had harassed them unbearably at times.

  ‘Daddy—’ began Leta, but she was not allowed to say any more.