The Australian

Yes, she thought, there had been a time when she wouldn’t have minded if he was caked in dust or covered with bits of wool. Her eyes closed for an instant on a wave of pain and humiliation and grief that almost buckled her knees. But she had to be strong. She had to remember more than just the beginning. She had to remember the end.

Her head lifted, and her own eyes darkened. That would do it, she told herself. Remembering the end would do it every time.

“How’s the college boy?” he queried as he unlocked the door of his late-model white Ford and put her inside.

“Ronald George, you mean?” she asked.

He went around and got in himself and stretched his long powerful legs under the dash as he started the car. “Yes, Ronald George,” he replied, making an insult of the name.

“He’ll be here Monday,” she told him, delivering the blow with cold satisfaction.

His eyes narrowed on her face. “What?”

“He’s going to teach with Dad and me in Providence,” she said. “He’s looking forward to the experience of small-town life.”

“Why here?” he asked narrowly.

“Why not?” she said flippantly and smiled at him. “Ronald and I have a special relationship.” Which was true. They were the very best of friends.

His eyes swept over her, and he turned back to ease the car out of the terminal parking lot with a low humorless laugh. “Well, I’m not all that surprised,” he said. “You were ripe for an affair when you left Australia.”

She flushed, turning her head out the window. She didn’t like remembering how he knew that. “How’s your mother?” she asked.

“She’s doing very well, thanks,” he replied after a minute. He put out his finished cigarette and lit another as they drove through Brisbane. “She tells me she loves California.”

“California?” she asked. “Isn’t she living with you anymore? I know she had a sister in California, but...”

“She lives with her sister now.”

He didn’t offer more conversation, so she busied herself staring around at the landscape. Brisbane seemed as foreign as it had that first day when she’d come here with her parents from Alabama. She sighed, smiling at the tall palms and golden wattle and royal poinciana trees towering over the subtropical plants that reminded her of Hawaii. Brisbane was a city of almost a million people, with gardens and parks, museums and galleries. With the Gold Coast and the Great Barrier Reef nearby, it drew constant hordes of tourists. It was a city that Priss often had wished she’d had time to tour.

She would have loved to see Early Lane, which re-created a pioneer town—including an aboriginal dwelling called a gunyah. John Sterling had two aboriginal stockmen, named Big Ben and Little Ben, because they were father and son. Big Ben had tried unsuccessfully for days to try to teach Priss how to throw a boomerang. She smiled a little ruefully. Another place she had always wanted to see was New Farm Park, on the Brisbane River east of the city. Over 12,000 rosebushes were in wild bloom there from September through November, and the scent and color were reputed to be breathtaking. If she’d been with her parents, she would have asked them to drive there, even though it was out of the way. But she couldn’t ask John.

He headed out of Brisbane, and she settled back in her seat, watching the countryside change. Outside the city, in the Great Dividing Range, was tropical rain forest. She could see copious orchids and scores of lorikeets and parakeets and other tropical birds flying from tree to tree. There were pythons in that forbidding glory, as well as several varieties of venomous snakes, and she shuddered at the thought of the early pioneers who had had to cut away that undergrowth in order to found the first big sheep and cattle stations. It must have taken a hardy breed. Men like John’s grandfather, who’d founded the Sterling Run.

She glanced at the hard lines of his craggy broad face, and her eyes lingered helplessly on his wide chiseled mouth before she could drag them back to the window. That hard expert mouth had taught hers every single thing it knew about kissing...

She moved restlessly in the seat as the car wound over the gap in the range and they began descending again. In the distance were rolling grasslands that spread out to the horizon, to the great outback in the western part of the state, which was called the Channel Country. John had cousins out there, she knew.

Southwest of Brisbane were the Darling Downs, the richest agricultural land in Queensland. But northwest were some of the largest cattle stations in Australia, and that was where Providence sat, along a river that provided irrigation for its three sheep and cattle stations. One of those was the Sterling Run.

Priss wanted to ask why John was driving a Ford. It occurred to her that he’d had a silver Mercedes when she’d left Australia. He’d driven the Mercedes when he was going to town, and a Land Rover on the station. But then, she also wondered about his clothing. John had always worn a suit to town, and it had usually been an expensive one. She laughed bitterly to herself. Probably he didn’t feel he needed to waste his time dressing up for her. Her eyes closed. If she’d been Janie Weeks, no doubt he’d have been dressed to the back teeth. She wondered whatever had happened to seductive Janie, and why John hadn’t married her. Priss knew her mother would have told her if he had.

“Turn on the radio, if you like,” he said shortly.

“No, thanks,” she replied. “I don’t mind peace and quiet. After Monday, I’ll probably never know what it is again.”

He glanced at her through a cloud of cigarette smoke, his blue eyes searching.

“Why is it that you’re here before summer?” he asked curiously. “The new term won’t start until after vacation.”

“One of the school staff had to have surgery. I’ll be filling in until vacation time,” she returned. “Ronald is going to work as a supply teacher, too, until we both have full-time positions next year.”

He didn’t reply, but he looked unapproachable. She wondered at the change in him. The John Sterling she used to know had been an easygoing, humorous man with twinkling eyes and a ready smile. What a difference there was now!

“Dad said something about Randy being at the station now; he and Latrice,” she murmured, mentioning John’s brother. “Are the twins with them?”

“Yes, Gerry and Bobby,” he replied. “You’ll be teaching them.”

“How nice.”

He looked sideways and laughed shortly. “You haven’t been introduced yet,” he said enigmatically.

“What happened to Randy’s own station in New South Wales?” she continued.

“That’s his business,” he said carelessly.

She flushed. It was mortifying to be told to mind her own affairs, and she resented his whole manner. “Excuse me,” she replied coldly. “I’ll keep my sticky nose to myself.”

“Why did you come back?” he asked, and there was a note in his voice that chilled her.

“Why don’t you do what you just told me to and mind your own business?” she challenged.

His head turned, and his eyes glittered at her. “You’ll never fit in here,” he said, letting his gaze punctuate his words. “You’re too much the sophisticate now.”

“In your opinion,” she returned with faint humor. “Frankly, John, your opinion doesn’t matter beans to me these days.”

“That goes double for me,” he told her.

So it was war, she thought. Good. This time she was armed, too. She ran a hand through her short hair. “Does it look like it’ll be a dry year?” she asked, changing the subject.

“No. They’re predicting a good bit of rain when the Wet comes. The past two years have been good to us.”

“That’s nice to know.”

“Yes, there have been some lean times...look out!” He braked suddenly for a kangaroo. The tawny beast bounded right into the path of the car and stared at its occupants, with a tiny baby in its pouch. John had stopped only inches from it, cursing a blue streak, and the kangaroo simply blinked and then hopped off to the other side of the highway.

“I’d forgotten about the ’roos.” Priss laughed, grateful that she’d been wearing her seat belt. “They’re bad pedestrians.”

“That one bloody near met its maker,” he returned on a rough sigh. “Are you all right?” he asked with obvious reluctance.

“Of course.”

He started off again, and Priss stretched lazily, unaware of his eyes watching the movement with an odd expression in their azure depths.

He seemed content to sit there smoking his cigarette, and Priss kept her own silence. She wondered at her composure. Several years ago riding alone in a car with John would have been tantamount to backing the winner in the Melbourne Cup race. Now she was so numb that only a trickle of excitement wound through her slender body. Perhaps even that would go away in time.

Eventually they came to Providence, which looked very much the same, a small oasis of buildings among the rolling grasslands with the hazy ridges of the Great Dividing Range in the distance behind them and eternity facing them. John turned off the main bitumen road onto a graveled track that led past the Sterling Run on the way to Priss’s parents’ home. She tried not to look, but her eyes were drawn helplessly to the big sprawling house with its wide porches and colonial architecture. The driveway was lined with oleanders and royal poinciana and eucalyptus trees, which everyone called simply gum trees. Streams crisscrossed the land. They mostly dried up in the nine months preceding the Wet, which came near Christmas, but when the Wet thundered down on the plains, it was possible to be confined to the house for days until the rains stopped. Once she and her parents had had to stay with the Sterlings or be drowned out, and their small house had suffered enormous water damage.