GREEN GROWS THE VINE

NANCY CATO

Harvest time in the wine-growing district of
South Australia brings to Vindura three young
women, leaving life in the city behind them for
a few months of grape picking.
For Mitch, not long married, it is a chance to
escape her in-laws and to save money for the
house she and Richard hope will bring them
longed-for independence. Mandy, beautiful, rich
and spoiled, is on the rebound from yet another
unsatisfactory love affair. For Maria, newly
arrived from Italy. Vindura echoes the colour
and perfume of her home town, and evokes
memories of her husband, snatched from
life by a motor-bike accident.
They could not have known, as their train pulled
into the little country station, how the events of
the next few months would alter their lives --
enmesh them in a web of hope and disappointment,
love and passion both fierce and tender.

Nancy Cato presents "a complete, vivid and
genuinely memorable picture of life as it is lived
in a particular section of her country, a wine growing
district in South Australia. She is at all
times firmly in charge of the plot, directing its
romantic tendencies and making sure that there
is never a false note in this very beguiling
pastoral symphony.

Green Grows The Vine is an Arkon paperback
released by Angus & Robertson Publishers
ISBN 0 207 144826ANGUS & ROBERTSON PUBLISHERS
London 'Sydney Melbourne

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the
purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as
permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced
by any process without written permission. Inquiries should
be addressed to the publishers.

First published by William Heinemann Ltd, 1960
This Arkon paperback edition first published by
Angus & Robertson Publishers, Australia, 1982
Reprinted 1982. 1983

Copyright Nancy Cato 1960

National library of Australia
Cataloguing-in publication data.
Cato, Nancy, 1917.
Green grows the vine.
First published: London: Heinemann. 1960.
(Arkon paperbacks).
Printed in Australia by
The Dominion Press - Hedges & Bell

for Eldred: because he is mad also

Irani indeed is gone with all its Rose,
And Jamshyd's Sev'n-ringd Cup where no one knows;
But still the Vine her ancient Ruby yields,
And still a Garden by the Water blows.

'But why didn't somebody tell me?' cried Mitch. 'I
mean, here we are only a hundred miles from the city
and we're in real desert country . . . sand and saltbush.
It's bloody marvellous!'
Her friend shook her fair head reprovingly and
glanced at the third occupant of the compartment, a
dark girl who sat in the far corner absorbed in a piece
of knitting. Occasionally she looked up with a solemn,
inquiring, or startled expression. She had refused, with
a restrained smile and a shake of the head, the offer of
a drink of tea from their thermos-flask. So far she had
not spoken.
'Anyone could do a perish out there, I bet - that is, if
there wasn't a railway-line,' said Mitch. 'Ruddy miles of
it, and not a living thing to be seen . . .'
'Except a few dozen sheep and a couple of kangaroos,'
said Mandy.
'Where? Oh, those? Well, I suppose there are waterholes
and dams and things, if you know where to look,
but still . . . Listen to that!'
A weird groaning shriek came from under the train.
The dark girl looked across at the others with wide,
startled eyes of a most luminous brown.
'Bunyips! Or perhaps dingoes,' said Mitch, grinning
at her wickedly.
'It is sand on the track,' said Mandy.
'It is a very 'orrible noise,' said the dark girl, with a
slight foreign accent, a rather too-precise intonation.
Pale orange-coloured sand began to seep in through
the cracks of the closed windows. The compartment was
hot, the leather seats stuck clammily to their clothes.
Mitch's soft brown curls clung damply to her forehead.
She looked across at Mandy, who never appeared hot,
and tried to imagine her as a grape-picker, covered in
dust and sweat and grape-juice, her hair untidy, her
hands dirty. She could not imagine it. Mandy had beautiful
nails, unpainted, rather long, and the strong,
flexible, shapely hands of a pianist. Her hair was thick,
fine and gleaming, falling in a smooth helmet or bell
about her face, like metal; a sun-bleached gold on
top, but with strands of light brown showing underneath,
like a paddock of wheat-stubble at the end of
summer.
But there was determination in her strong nose and
firmly rounded chin. Yes, Mandy would keep at it as
long as she herself did; the amazing thing was that she
had ever agreed to come.
It was reaction, of course; the rebound from yet
another wild and unsatisfactory love affair, the shadow
of which could still be seen in her queer tortoise-shell
coloured eyes. Even when they were at school she had
been moody and madcap by turns, and by the time she
was fourteen had everyone's brother tagging round after
her on sports days.
She, Mitch, had never expected to be married first.
Nor had she dreamed that only a year after her
marriage she would be setting off for a season of grape-

picking in an irrigation settlement, leaving Richard behind
at his job in the city.
Yet here she was, on the way to Vindura for four
months, and Richard didn't like it at all, and his mother
was scandalised, and so were his sisters and his cousins
and his aunts. . . .
It was his whole family she was running away from,
not dear Richard. If they'd had a house of their own
she wouldn't have dreamed of leaving; but the nicest
of in-laws were only bearable when they lived in a
different house. Richard was trying to find a home for
them, and she had promised to return as soon as he
did so; meanwhile, she would save all she could from
her earnings as a grape-picker to buy furnishings.
'Scusi, signore, but at what hour do we arrive at
this place, Vindura?' The dark girl was looking at them
timidly. Italian, thought Mitch, and a fairly new arrival.
'What, don't tell us you're going to snatch a few
grapes too? You'll be sorry.'
'We'll be there by two,' said Mandy.
'Snatch?. I do not think I know this word. I am
to be a grape-picker, yes, but I hope to pick many grapes,
not a few. At home.'
'In Italy?'
'Yes. At Poggibonsi, in the Chianti district, I work in
the vineyards. When the grape harvest is over, I make
the reeds into bottle-covers for the Chianti bottles. I
have not before picked currants and sultanas.'
'It's simple,' said Mitch, her eyes very bright but her
mouth straight. 'The only thing is the grapes are not
crushed, so they have to be picked carefully, one at a
time, without any stems.'
'One grape at a time! Veramente.'
'Now pull her other leg,' said Mandy. 'Don't listen to this menace; she's mad. How long have you been in
Australia?'
'I have come tre-three months ago.'
'You speak English very well. It takes longer to learn
Australian.'
'But the Australian people speak English?'
'Some do.'
'And will there be any wild aborigines where we are
going?'
'Never a one. You might see a tame one in the town,
or in a humpy along the river,' said Mitch.
'A humpy is a hut,' said Mandy. 'A casa-casa piccolo.'
'Ah, you speak Italian? Parlate Italiano?'
'A little. ... I learnt singing, you see.'
'Oh, si si. You like the opera?'
'Puccini. Donnizetti. Some of Verdi.'
'And you know La Gioconda, yes?'
'Ah c'e bella.' And do you know Lorenzo's song?'
And she sang, with the accompaniment of clicking
wheels and screeching sand:

'Quant'e bella giovenezza
che si fugge tuttavia!
Chi vuol esser' lieto, sia:
di doman non c'e certezza . . .'

'Brava! That is good! It is a gay song, and yet it is
sad. It is true that youth flies away . . .' Her dark eyes
filled with tears; she turned away to the window. Mitch
and Mandy looked at each other uncomfortably, and
then stared out of the other window.
Now an indigo line of trees was visible above the red
sand, marking the line of the river. They had already
crossed it once, at The Bridge, where there were 'refreshments'
- those sandwiches peculiar to Australian rail

way
stations; large, thick, three-cornered and curling at
the edges with the heat. The only alternative had been
pies and pasties.
The Italian girl rested her cheek against her folded
hands and seemed to sleep. There was serenity in her
brow, her full white lids, her dark eyelashes lying on
her olive cheeks, the classical curve of her lips. Her pose
had the tranquil rhythms of a Raphael. Mitch, looking
at her, imagined a soft line of drapery about her head,
a gold-leaf halo above. Her hair was wavy, abundant and
almost black.
Mitch took a pencil out of her bag and began to sketch
inside the cover of a book, capturing the pose in clear,
flowing outlines. The girl seemed to sense her scrutiny,
and opened her eyes.
'Oh, don't move!' begged Mitch.
The girl smiled sleepily. 'So, you are an artist?'
'No, I'm not; but I sometimes get an urge to sketch
something - a tree, a face, a line of hills. I always carry
a pencil about with me.'
When she shut the cover of the book and looked up,
she started forward with her nose against the window.
'Green!' she cried. 'Doesn't it look strange in this
landscape? I mean it's so very green, not like gum-tree
green which is more olive or blue. It must be vines
we're nearly there.'
While the others gathered their things Mitch continued
to stare. It was miraculous, this growth of verdure
in the midst of the red sandy plain. They were passing
now between wheeling rows of vines, dark plantations
of orange trees, green apricots and pears. Poplar trees
stood above the level fields and the galvanised-iron roofs
of drying-racks. Between the green vines the soil was a
rich red.'You'd better stick with us,' said Mitch to the dark
girl as they prepared to leave the train. 'We've got a
job with Walton's, the big grocery firm that has an
interest in several blocks. On a small block you might
cut out before the end of the season. But the manager
of Walton's knows Mandy's old man, and we're sweet.
Influence!' Her blue eyes sparkled; her thin, eager face
was alight with adventure.
Oh, she was glad she had come, whatever her mother-in-law
thought - and said, 'Your duty is with Richard....
Really, dear, you seem very anxious to get away from
us ... I bought pounds of white wool the day you were
married, and you know how I love to knit ... I had
thought that by this time ... It is really very disappointing.'
The
Italian girl was standing just ahead of her in the
crowded corridor, holding her single case, on which was
a label saying GENOVA - MELBOURNE, with the
name: Sga. Maria Delcalmo.
'Is your name Maria?' she asked. Tm Mitch, and
that's Mandy Weston. . . . Mandy, her name starts
with an M, too. The Three Musketeers!'
'Don't be so obvious, darling,' said Mandy crushingly.
'Besides, your name is really Edna.'
'Yes; but I prefer to forget it. Lead on, Maria.'

II

With me along some Strip of Herbage strown
That just divides the desert from the sown,
Where name of slave and sultan scarce is known,
And pity Sultan Mahmud on his Throne.

Walton's man was at the Town Hall interviewing applicants
for jobs. They had come pouring off the train
new and old Australians, men and youths and girls,
following the seasonal jobs of grape-picking, pear-canning,
apricot-drying, and work in the packing-sheds
of the big dried-fruit cooperatives.
Mitch had spoken lightly of 'influence', but she was
impressed by the way the busy manager took time to
shake Mandy's hand, adding that if they would wait
around he would drive them to their digs on his way out
to the packing-sheds.
'I'm going past Block D,' he said, 'you can batch there
in one of the huts on a property where we have a
manager living. His wife will let you use the bathroom
and laundry, and there's a dam where you can swim.'
'Why can't we swim in the river?' asked Mitch.
'It's nowhere near the river. The irrigated area
stretches for miles on each side, you know.'
Mitch's face fell about a foot.
She was still muttering when they turned off the road,
where the main irrigation-channel was curtained with
green willows, into a poplar-bordered drive that led to
a low, broad house set in a sea of vines.'Come all this way to see the mighty Murray, and
don't even get a glimpse of the river . . . Oh!' she said,
and fell silent. She had been watching, fascinated, from
the back seat where she sat beside Maria (who had been
accepted as one of their team), the way the roll of fat
moved on the back of Mr Pike's neck when he turned
his head to leer at Mandy. 'Leer' was what Mitch called
it; she had disliked Mr Pike on sight.
Now she stared at the place where she was going to
live, and fell in love with it. The low iron roof of the
house, painted a faded red, stood out against a clump
of shapely gum trees. The young poplars along the drive
all bent their heads one way in the faint breeze, slender
and graceful as peacock feathers.
From beside the house the vines stretched away in
leafy rows, brilliantly green beneath the blue sky and
golden sun of afternoon. For a moment a sense of timelessness
came over her. They would forever be moving
up this drive, the vines all round, the light just so, that
bank of silvery cloud along the horizon. . . . She woke
to hear Maria saying softly: 'The vines-they remind
me of Italy.'
They skirted the house and drove along a red dirt
track between the vines. The ugly, grey, one-roomed
weatherboard hut did nothing to cure Mitch of her
ecstatic state; but she did notice a lack of enthusiasm in
Mandy, who was examining the stretchers with an expression
which suggested that she hoped not to find
what she was looking for, but expected the worst.

When Mr Pike had taken his hearty farewells, they
each sat on a stretcher and stared at the others. It was,
Mandy thought, rather like the beginning of a long sea
voyage when you were sharing a cabin with two other

passengers. You wondered if they had impossibly untidy
habits or talked in their sleep and whether you
would be friends or deadly enemies at the end of it. Of
course she had known Mitch ever since they were at
school, but had never lived with her at these close
quarters. She had always regarded her tolerantly,
amusedly and resignedly, as slightly mad. This whole
venture had been her crazy idea.
Why on earth had she come? She didn't need the
money, and was probably taking the job from someone
who did. She would ruin her hands (though she was not
worried about her complexion, which retained its
smooth golden tan summer and winter), and she certainly
wouldn't meet any interesting men in this two
bob township.
Perhaps that was why; she was tired of the endless
pursuit, the succession of would-be lovers that followed
her like a comet's tail. It had ceased to be important,
and had become mere distraction; novelty for the sake
of novelty, or for the challenge of a new man who might
prove impervious.
She had suffered; she had suffered intensely over the
last one when she had stopped seeing him, and it had
been more to save her father's shocked bewilderment at
the impending scandal than for the sake of the wife
she did not know. What 'people would say had not
worried her at all, as it affected herself.
Her mother was dead, and her father never dreamed
of the emotional storms that raged round his daughter's
smooth fair head. He was an astrophysicist, absorbed
in his work and loving it only less than his beautiful
daughter. He had looked with a jealous and hostile eye
on any young man who wanted to marry her. Mandy
now, since most of the men she met were alreadymarried, found herself perpetually cast in the role of
'the other woman'.
She looked across at Maria, wondering about her
romantic life. It was unusual to meet an unmarried
Italian girl. They were scarce enough in Australia, and
this one was extremely attractive with her pale olive
skin and gentle, lustrous, melancholy eyes. Then she
noticed the gold band on the third finger.
'It seems I am the only spinster here,' she said lightly.
'I suppose that means I'll have to let you two matrons
have the bath first. Mitch,' she said, turning to Maria,
'who was Edna Mitchison before she was married, is
now Mrs Fairbrother. I am only Miss Weston, and you are
Mrs Delcalmo?'
'Yes-that is, I was Mrs, but I am not.' Maria looked
distressed. 'You understand, I was married before I leave
Italy, how you call "by proxy". I know Mario before he
come to Australia. He lived in Florence, and come to
see me at Poggibonsi on his scooter. La piccola Lambretta!
Then, he write to me to learn English, and to
marry him. As soon as he saved enough soldi for the
fare, I come to Melbourne . . . and they tell me Mario
is dead.'
Two tears glistened in her large dark eyes, without
falling.
'Poor girl! I am sorry.'
'Hell! What stiff luck,' said Mitch.
'Deli! The priests would make you do a penance for
that language,' said Maria with a pale smile.
'That's nothing. You should hear me when I try.'
'She has already heard you, in the train,' said Mandy.
'Anyway, let's unpack and do some exploring. We
haven't seen the bathroom yet - or the dam.' Mitch
bounced up energetically.
The dam, they found, was cemented all round. 'It
will be too deep for me -I cannot swim,' said Maria,
looking doubtfully at the brown water with rotting gum
leaves floating on top.
'Then we'll teach you,' said Mitch.
The manager's wife with her faded yellow hair in a
tight bun, was at home. She greeted them at the back
door with some reserve, and twittered round them as she
opened the door of the back porch that led to the bathroom.
'The
floor is only wood, girls,' she said. 'I must ask
you not to get it wet, or to dry the linoleum very carefully
if you do. That's why we don't take shower-baths;
they splash so.'
'No showers!' said Mitch. 'No one could live
through the summer without a shower. You know not
what you ask, Mrs Jordan.'
'Nevertheless, I must insist,' she said, shutting her thin
lips which were painted to resemble a scarlet thread.
'Now, I will show you the laundry.'
They followed her across the paved yard against the
walls of which the vines seemed to break in waves of
green; the vineyard stretched as wide as the sea to the
flat horizon, with here and there the ship-like mast of
a date-palm against the sky.
'The troughs,' explained Mrs Jordan, 'are not cement
lined, and I would not like them to rust through. After
you have used them I must ask you to dry them as you
would a plate.'
'How many times do you like them rinsed?' asked
Mitch innocently.
'Once is sufficient. Now, the pegs are never left out
overnight . . .'
As they took their leave of Mrs Jordan an immaculately-dressed girl of about eight came round the side
of the house. She stopped at a distance and chanted:
'Pooey old pick-ers, pooey old pickers!'
'Di-anne, stop that,' said her mother indulgently.
'These girls are friends of Mr Walton's.' She smiled
rather acidly. The usual run of pickers, you know!
Not even the mailbox is safe from them. I've had half
my pegs disappear in one season!'
'Shocking,' murmured Mandy.
As they walked back to the hut Mitch exploded. 'That
old bitch hates the sight of us, but she's been told to be
polite. Mandy, your old man must own half the shares
in Walton's. She's stinking rich, you know - lousy with
it,' she explained, jerking her head at Mandy.
'Lousy?' said Maria, looking bewildered. 'Rich? Stinking?'
Her face cleared. 'Ah, you mean-molti soldi.' and she rubbed her first finger and thumb together,
while her dark eyes twinkled with sly humour.
'You've got it, mate!'
III

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

'Oh, what a beautiful mor-ning!' carolled Mitch, swinging
her legs over the side of the jinker. They were bowling
along the red sandy track beside the railway-line
behind a small, shaggy brown horse with the undignified
name of Peanut.
The driver was Fred Binks, who occupied a neighbouring
cottage on the Jordans' property, and whose wife
Rosie was 'boarding' the girls for two pounds ten a week
each - that is, she had agreed to provide them with
three meals a day for six days a week, including cut
lunches. There was nothing in the agreement about the
meals being edible; their first one had not been. The fact that not even Mitch had been heard to make an
audible protest said much for Rosie's formidable personality
and the intimidating look in her eye.
As for Fred, he looked a villain. lie might have been
a model husband, a teetotaller, and strictly honest, but
no one looking at him would believe it. His face was
deeply seamed, his look saturnine, his nose long, heavy,
and ill-tempered. It seemed likely that if ever he and
his tender Rose clashed, blood would flow. He wore a
white athletic singlet tucked into his trousers, and an
old cloth cap. A film director would have cast him atonce for a part in the chain-gang in For the Term of His
Natural Life. He said nothing but for an occasional:
'Gerrup, Peanut, yer lazy bastard.'
Mitch and Mandy were wearing jeans and boys'
khaki shirts, and Mitch had a Huck Finn hat of
dilapidated straw. Maria had looked rather askance
at these masculine garments. She wore a gathered skirt
and blouse, a pinafore and a kerchief tied over her dark
hair.
A morning goods-train came racketing down the line.
Peanut took no notice; the girls waved to the engine
driver. Along the railway-line, which was raised above
the level of irrigations, the natural vegetation held its
own: grey saltbush and blackbush clung in stunted
shrubs to the bare, red, sandy soil.
Beyond showed the salt crystals of successive irrigations
and evaporations, and then the green began - the almost
tropical luxuriance of grass and lucerne and feathery
wild asparagus along the head-ditches, and the rows of
vines curtained in summer leaf.
A blue crane rose with a scolding croak from where
he had been hunting yabbies in the wet sand of the
channel. His feet had left starry patterns where he
walked. A flock of galahs came over, turning their rose
pink breasts in one flash against the soft blue sky. The
air was like a crystal goblet, still ringing from the stroke
of dawn.
'Ah, quant'e bella giovenezza . . ' sang Mandy softly,
and this time Maria smiled. It was impossible to be
young on such a morning and not be happy and full of
hope.
At the block where they were to work, and where Fred
was to drive the cart between the rows to pick up the
full tins, they found most of the pickers already gathered round the end of the drying-racks. The foreman was
handing out tickets with numbers on them.
'Oh no! He's too much the typical outdoor Australian
to be true,' thought Mandy, seeing the long, lean, sun
browned, casually-dressed man in moleskins and faded
blue open-necked shirt who squatted on his heels above
a tin full of tickets.
He looked up suddenly, directly at her, through
narrowed eyes that were keen and quizzical in their
glance. They should have been blue by rights, but they
were brown, and not a very clear brown at that. But she
felt the old familiar shock go through her.
'Damn,' she thought, 'damn! Why does he have to be
so attractive? And why should I care? He's probably
illiterate, and certainly wouldn't know Bach from Beethoven.
A country bumpkin.'
'Name, please?' his voice was crisp.
'Oh-Mandy Weston.'
'Miss or Mrs?'
'Miss.'
'Number Eleven. Put one ticket in each tin as you
fill it. Any experience?'
'No.'
'Just stand over there.'
He hadn't even looked at her, not properly; she might
have been a tree or a stone. Immediately was born the
wish to make him look, to be aware of her. Here was
the challenge she had never learned to resist. Any experience?
Oh yes, but not in picking grapes. . . .
Maria, as one who had had experience as a picker, was
teamed with a newcomer to the game, a vacant-looking
youth with the name of Joe Sloan. Mandy was sent off
with Mother Mac, or Mrs MacGowan, whose youngest
child accompanied his mother-a small boy of aboutthree years, with snowy hair and a voice perpetually
raised in question and comment.
To Mitch fell the partnership of Fairy Smith, an
enormous girl who, as she said walking beside her small
boned partner along the row, 'would make two of you
easily'. Mitch, looking at the fourteen stone of young
girlhood crowned with a mass of yellow hair, wondered
if the Smith parents had been possessed of a wild sense
of humour, or merely bad luck. Their child was like a
caricature of a pantomime Fairy Queen.
The Fairy, however, was an expert picker, as Mitch
found when she tried to imitate the apparently effortless
way she stripped the bunches of currants from
the vine and dropped them into her tin with one movement.
'You
pull the bunches back against the way they're
growing, and then they snap easily,' she explained
kindly. 'Y' don't want to go wrecking yer hands first
go by pulling an' tugging. Like this, see?'
'And clean picking, mind - Mike is a stickler for clean
picking. Don't leave none behind, and if a bunch of even
three berries drops on the ground, you're s'posed to pick
it up. I just kick a bit o' dirt over it.'
She crawled through to her side of the vine, taking
three empty kerosene tins with her.
'Who's Mike - the foreman?' asked Mitch, tugging at
a bunch and feeling the grapes, almost ready to burst
with their load of sweet juice, crush into a pulpy mess
in her fingers.
Click! Thud! Click-click, thud! On Fairy's side the
stems broke with a clean snap, the bunches thumped
rapidly into the tin.
'Mike Hannaford - yair, he's not a bad foreman; a
real decent bloke, never goes crook at yer if your tins is a bit light-on. Only thing he hates is to see good fruit
left behind on the vine. He wouldn't roust at you, anyways;
he likes the girls.'
'One of these handsome outdoor types. Not the kind
that appeals to me. I always seem to fall for pale,
studious-looking types in horn-rimmed glasses; they
rouse a maternal instinct in me. Like my husband; he
always has a rather lost look, poor lamb, because he's a
bit shortsighted.'
'Your husband! You're not married, are yer? You
look too young.'
'I'm twenty-three.'
'Golly, I thought you was about sixteen, like me. Is
your husband up here too?'
'No, he's back in the city. I'm helping to earn some
money for a house.'
'You're on'y supposed to pick through to the wire in
the middle, y' know; what's on this side's mine, and on
that's yours. But I'll pick through so you can keep up,
till yer get the hang of it.'
Fairy was out of sight on the other side of the high
trellis of currant-vines, beyond a curtain of green. Only
her hands could be seen, picking busily. The bunches
hung in tight clusters of tiny globules, wine-purple, wine
red where the sun slanted through them. They were
deliriously sweet, with faint overtones of sourness in the
skins. Mitch crammed handfuls into her mouth and
felt them burst against her palate, the juice run down
her throat.
She had begun picking in a woollen pullover, but now
dragged it off and hung it on the vines. The sun was on
her back, insistently warm. The thick curtain of leaves
under which the bunches hid was wet with dew, and
leaves like clammy hands slapped her in the face, longcanes pushed her hat off. Her forefingers were getting sore, and there was a crick in her back.
'Try kneeling- down,' came Fairy's voice, 'when your back begins to go on yer.'
Mitch knelt gratefully in the soft red sand, dragging
the tin she was filling along with her as she moved, tucking
a ticket into it when it was full and taking another
tin. Fairy kept her supplied by throwing them over the
vine from her side. Mitch kept kneeling in squashed
grapes, and the currants were beginning to make her
thirsty; but she was starting to enjoy herself. She had
settled into the rhythm of the picking, and liked the
clean snip-snap of the stems, the comfortable thud of
the bunches into the tin.

Mandy was not feeling so happy. She was naturally a
more indolent person than the small, lively Mitch. The
only activity she usually indulged in was swimming,
and this she did very well. She was finding the new job
hot and tiring; she seemed to take a terribly long time
to fill a tin, and she was sure that the forefinger of her
right hand was about to break into a blister.
The child, Davey, made things more difficult. 'Don't
let him be a nuisance now,' Mrs MacGowan kept
admonishing from the other side of the vines; but
Davey, who had developed an unaccountable small-boy's
worship for Mandy (who was not very interested in
children and made no attempt to win him), kept 'helping'
her assiduously.
He gathered empty tins and piled them in a heap
where she would trip over them; he brought her half
squashed sticky bunches for her tin; he got in the way
and asked questions incessantly.
'Where'd you get that watz, Mandy?' he asked, examining the small wrist-watch set in diamonds and sapphires that she wore. 'Is your watz broked, Mandy?
Why doesn't it tick? Well, why doesn't it tick loud?
What time does it say? When will it be lunchtime?
Did you bring some lunch wiv you? What have you got
for your lunch? I've got a meranger. They 'quash when
you bite them. C'n I help you, Mandy? I'm GOOD at
pickin' grapes.'
'Look, why don't you make a motor-car with one of
those tins? See, sit in it like this, and hold this bit of
vine for a steering-wheel. . . . Off you go.'
Davey settled down to making whirring and revving
noises, which were less distracting than his questions.
'How many tins y' done?' asked Mrs MacGowan.
'Only five,' groaned Mandy. 'I'll never be any good at
this job.'
"That's not bad for a beginner.'
'How many've you done?'
'Fifteen. But then I'm picking through; and I've been
at this game since I was a kid.'
'Looks like an expert just behind me, in the next row.'
'Where?' Mrs Mac's small, rather withered face, with
its dim, kindly eyes and incongruous spectacles on a broad nose ('Like a koala bear in a pince-nez,' thought
Mandy) came through the vine. 'Oh, that's Mrs Wilkes.
She's a goer, that one.'
Mrs Wilkes was shuffling along on her knees, her arms
flailing like the sails of a windmill. Bunches thudded
into tin after tin; leaves and broken canes flew as before
a whirlwind, and berries fell like rain. Her khaki trousers
were stretched tight over a seat of enormous girth.
'She does a hundred and fifty a day sometimes; two
hundred on sullies,' said Mrs Mac.
Davey had tired of the 'moty-car', and came back toMandy, holding a small, struggling ant by one leg.
'Where does the ants come from, Mandy?' he asked.
'Out of little holes in the ground.'
'Where does the holes come from?'
'The ants dig them.'
'But where does the ants come from what digs the
little holes?'
'Out of eggs laid by other ants.'
'But where?'
'Davey,' said this mother tactfully, 'what about going
over to the pear trees and seeing if you can find a ripe
pear? See them trees over by the drying-racks?' David
dropped the ant and trotted off. 'You mustn't let 'im
worry you.'
'Oh, he's all right.'
Mandy found herself thinking about the foreman, of
his brown hands as he held out the tickets without looking
at her. They were surprising hands, long, nervous,
shapely as a woman's, the hands of an artist or a
musician. Odd. . . .
'Psst, I can hear Mike's voice in the next row; he's on
his rounds. Any berries on the ground your side?'
'No, I don't think so. In fact, I think I'm being a bit too careful.'
She saw the foreman's lean figure at the end of the
row, and began putting on a turn of speed, trying to
show off. To her confusion she broke off a huge spray,
and was guiltily tucking it back in the vine as he came
up, bending to look in the tins she had filled.
'Er - some of the fruit,' he said gently, 'is getting
rather squashed.'
'Well, it doesn't matter, does it? I mean it all gets
dried in the end.'
'Squashed fruit makes sticky currants, and may put the dried fruit down several grades.' He picked a leaf
from the vine, not looking at her. 'Also, you're filling
your tins too full; the grapes'll be crushed when they're
loaded on the cart.'
Mandy swallowed a smile. Surely his studied indifference
was overdone? Her spirits rose. 'Sorry,' she
said.
'No sense overdoing it.' He flashed her a smile of great
charm, so suddenly that she was dazzled. 'You only get
paid the same.' He walked on, leaving her with a
memory of very white teeth in a brown face.
'He gone?' muttered Mrs Mac. 'You want to watch
out for our Mike. He's a bit of a lady-killer, that one.'
'Don't worry, he doesn't appeal to roe,' said Mandy
coolly. 'Not sophisticated enough.'
'Suffisticated, help! Get the dictionary,' murmured
Mrs Mac.
'SMOKEOHI'
The cry was echoed down the rows. Mandy put a
ticket in her last tin and straightened her aching back.
Mrs Mac came crawling through the vine to her side,
and at the end of the row they came up with Mitch and
Fairy Smith. Mitch and Mandy stared at each other and
shrieked.
They were coated from head to foot with a sticky mud
made of red dirt and grape-juice. There were leaves in
Mandy's golden hair, and they looked like the trimmings
of a bird's nest. Mitch's dark eyelashes were pale
with red dust.
'Why don't youse girls bring your thermos and sit
under the pear trees with us?' said Mrs Wilkes, coming
up with her strangely immaculate-looking partner. 'This
is me daughter, Daisybud,' she added with obvious pride.
Daisybud fluttered her lashes while Mitch and Mandytried not to stare. Her face was spotless and perfectly
made-up. Her plucked eyebrows were a thin line, her
mouth was a hard red Cupid's bow, and her hair was
pinned into row after row of solid corrugations.
'There's Maria!' cried Mitch. 'Maria, how many tins
did you do? How are you going?'
'Non c'e male,' said Maria. 'But I only finish one tin.
It takes much time to pick these little grapes off the
stem.'

IV

Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise
To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;
One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.



'No-you didn't really!' Mitch collapsed in the sand,
giggling. 'Dear Maria, I was pulling your leg.'
'Come?' Maria looked down at her feet. 'Which leg?'
'She didn't mean it - it was buffare, burlare - she was
joking,' said Mandy.
'But didn't your partner know?'
'Joe? I think he does not comprehend much.'
Joe was plodding up the row, looking more vacant
than ever, when a roar sounded from near the racks.
'Number thirteen! Number fourteen I Who the hell's
trying to be funny? Who's number thirteen?'
Maria clutched her tickets and looked as if she might
cry. Mitch stopped laughing at once and took her arm.
'Don't be scared. Come on, I'll tell him it was my fault.'
They met Mike Hannaford charging along under the
pear trees, his hat thrust to the back of his head, a ticket
numbered thirteen and fourteen clutched in each hand.
'Full of ruddy berries!' he was shouting. 'One tin
each before smoke-oh! One single, solitary, flaming
ruddy tin! Y' wouldn't read about it.'
'Sir, I am sorry -mi vergogna -I not understand.'
Maria touched his arm timidly.
'You! Are you thirteen? You told me you'd hadexperience, been picking grapes since you were a child.
How do you think we can spread currants on the ruddy
racks without any stems?'
'She's only picked wine-grapes before, in Italy. She
didn't know.'
He glared at Mitch. 'Then she ought to know. Anyone
with a grain of common sense.'
'She had only seen currants in packets, without any
stems. And I'm afraid I told her to pick them one by
one.'
'Yes, I believe-I not understand it is a joke.'
He looked at Maria's lovely tear-filled eyes and his
face softened. 'All right, kid, it wasn't your fault. As for
you, Smart Alec, you'd better help her fill her tins for
the rest of the morning, to bring up her tally. Don't
forget she's on piecework.'
'All right. I'm sorry, but I thought she knew it was a
leg-pull.'
'And as for number fourteen-is that him? Oh God,
another no-hoper!' as Joe shambled up. 'Who told you
to pick the berries one by one?'
'She did.' He rolled his pale eyes at Maria.
'And didn't you think-no, you're probably incapable
of thought. All right,' he said wearily, 'you three pick
together till lunch-time. That leaves Fairy on her own.
Kurt!' he called, to a squat-figured, square-headed little
man who came up smiling with square yellow teeth, 'you
pick with Fairy Smith instead of on your own for a
while. And don't chop her fingers off with those cutters,
mind.'
Kurt clicked his razor-sharp secateurs and grinned. He
was the champion grape-picker on the block, a Yugoslav
who had once had a vineyard of his own in Europe.
At lunch-time they all met again under the pear trees.
Fred had lit a small fire to boil his billy, and Mrs Mac
jeered at him: 'Hey Fred, you're not goin' to roast us
all with yer bonfires again this year! Why don't you get
a thermos?'
'Them things!' said Fred scornfully. 'Yer likely to get
lead poisonin', drinkin' tea outa them things. Shut up in
a tin bottle all day.'
'They're lined with glass, Freddo.'
'Tea don't taste the same. It's the smoke, and the
stewin' and the stirrin' 'er with a gum twig does it.'
'And the ants and the beetles and the ashes and the
dust what falls into it. That gives it a taste, all right.'
Mandy and Maria sat with their feet in the dry head
ditch, among purple flowering lucerne and asparagus
gone to seed. Mitch leant against the trunk of a pear
tree and half listened to Mrs Wilkes's flow of talk mostly
about ailments, operations or confinements, about how
she nearly died with Daisybud and young Alf had been
a twelve-pounder. . . .
'Like artillery,' murmured Mitch sleepily.
'Eh? Well, as I was saying, I got this medical book
through the post, it's got pictures and all in colour, and
it tells you everything about y'r insides. I said to Mr
Wilkes only this morning, 'e was bringing-up again all
last night, I said to 'im it's all in this here book if you'd
only read it, it'll tell you what's wrong in a jiffy. You
know, it's a strange thing.'
'Strange,' thought Mitch, 'life is unutterably strange.
What am I, I? Who leans against the tree-trunk, and
what is the tree but a collection of spinning electrons,
and this pattern of light and shade but the death of the
sun, flinging its life away in streaming energy into
space?''- that's what I always say, any'ow,' Mrs Wilkes was
looking at her expectantly.
'Yes; yes, I think you're absolutely right,' said Mitch.
She bit into a sandwich in which was a cardboard-like
wafer of meat strongly flavoured with garlic.
'I'm as 'eavey as anythink meself, this morning,' said
Mrs Wilkes reflectively. 'If anythink was to upset me
now I'd 'eave me breakfast right up.'
Daisybud, on the other side of the tree, was repinning
her solid curls with about four dozen hairclips. Two
loutish youths under the next tree, both wearing artistic
orange shirts outside their trousers, were grinning and
begging each other to 'get a load of that dame's coyfure',
while Daisybud tossed her head with conscious unawareness.
A middle-aged couple came trudging along the cart
track towards the rainwater tank by the sheds.
' 'Day, Myrtle. Owyer going?' called Mrs Wilkes.
'She's orright, thanks,' said the man.
'Break your fifty yet, Alf?'
'No, 'e only done forty-eight up to lunch,' answered
Myrtle expressionlessly.
'That's AlfanMyrtle,' said Mrs Wilkes in one breath
when they had passed gloomily on. 'It's a funny thing,
but if you speak to 'im, she always answers, and he
always answers for 'er. It's a funny thing.' she heaved
herself up as the distillery whistle blew, her red, round,
lively, inquisitive face beaming like a sun under her
cotton hat. 'Come on, Dais. No time to waste.'

Maria went back to picking opposite Joe, while Mitch
rejoined Fairy. In her remorse Mitch had worked doubly
hard and Maria now had an impressive line of full tins
behind her. These Australians! she thought, they were really kind but how careless, sometimes, of other people's
feelings! If you did not appreciate their rather cruel
jokes you were not 'a good sport', and if you were not a
good sport you were nothing.
Coming up in the train she had felt a sort of terror;
the country was so large, so empty, so inhospitable.
There was not even a ruin anywhere to suggest human
habitation; just the endless sand and the stunted bushes,
among which grazed some queer, dirty sheep looking
as though they belonged to the country as much as the
kangaroos.
And then, as they drove out to the block, among the
poplars and the willows and the green rows of vines, she
had begun to feel at home. She missed the hills, the soft
blue hills of Tuscany with their neat edging of pointed
cypress trees, but the vines made her think of Poggibonsi,
of the Chianti vineyards, of San Gimignano with
its forest of towers, and Firenze by the silvery Arno
where Mario lived, and the flowery hill of Fiesole.
The soft Italian names echoed in her mind like music.
She remembered grape-harvests at home, the laughter
and the singing, the stornelli drifting across the valleys
in spontaneous refrains as the drivers of the laden carts
answered each other.
And then, at the end of summer, before vintage time,
she saw the women pushing their barrows, laden with
bottles like green bubbles, taking them home with loads
of straw and reeds to weave the fitting baskets that
clothed them like a dress. It had been pleasant to sit in
the sun, weaving and plaiting and gossiping with the
other girls. And then, on Sundays, Mario would come.
Sometimes he took her back to Florence, and they
went up to Piazzale Michelangelo and sat on the parapet
looking over the slender towers and domes until the sunset behind the hills, and the city just below, with its
floodlit buildings, seemed near enough to lean over and
touch.
It had seemed the most beautiful place in the word to
her, with the wonderful things in the shops on the Ponte
Vecchio and the Lung' Arno, even though most of the
bridges had been blown up by the Germans. But it was
not enough for Mario. He would always be poor in Italy,
he said. He had a friend who had gone to Australia and
who already owned his own car. So Mario had followed
him, and in two years had sent for Maria. First he asked
her to marry him by proxy, so that she would be his
legal wife and it would be easier for her to get a visa.
And now Mario was dead, killed on the motorbike
he had bought with his first savings. She could not
understand how such a thing could happen to Mario,
protected as he should have been by her loving prayers.
So many Novenas she had said to her namesake, the
Mother of God, for his safety; and she had made a trip
to Siena cathedral to say a special prayer to Saint
Catherine, and had lit twenty candles before her shrine.
A little photograph of Mario was hanging there yet, in
a silver frame.
In Melbourne, where she had left the boat, she had
stayed with the very kind family which had befriended
her on the voyage. They had an uncle with an espresso bar in Little Collins Street, and she had worked there,
often very late hours. She would not have minded if
it had not been for the son, Domenico, who wanted to
marry her and would not leave her alone. She could not
forget Mario so soon.
And then, though there were many Italians in Melbourne,
she did not like the city. It was too big and
noisy after the little agricultural town where she had lived. When she saw in the paper that grape-pickers were
wanted along the Murray river, she decided to come.
The name of this place, Vindura, had appealed to her;
it had almost an Italian sound, and there were vineyards.
She imagined that the Murray was a great river
rather like the Po, which she had once seen on a summer
excursion to Piacenza-a great shallow flood of green
water among bars of white gravelly sand.
She was lucky to have made friends with these two
girls and to have found somewhere to live so easily. At
home, a girl did not travel alone or even go out by herself,
and the freedom of Australian girls had rather
startled her. But the men were different too, they did not seem to notice girls so much.
This Mike who had been so cross with her - he looked
at her in just the same way as he looked at Joe. But he
had called her 'kid'. It sounded friendly.
She could hear Joe moving slowly on the other side
of the vine, and occasionally his hand reached through
languidly to take one of her biggest bunches. She had
run out of tins, which were on his side of the row; he
was supposed to throw over a supply for her.
"I'm, if you please, Joe.' Silence from Joe. 'Joe, if you
please!'
She parted the heavy canes and looked through. Joe's
blank face stared back at her, motionless. He was sitting
on a tin.
'What say?' he said.
'I say I want some TINS .'
'Oh. Why'nt y' say so?' A solitary tin came over,
nearly hitting her on the head. Joe slowly began to pick
again, using one hand.
'Corpo di bacch'!' murmured Maria. 'He is a poltrone, this one.'V
Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry,
'Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry.'

Dawn was coming in a clear sky above the long rows of vines. Mitch rolled over in her stretcher, blinked at the
different position of the windows' grey squares, and remembered
where she was. Twice in the night she had
stretched out her hand in the darkness for Richard, and
then recalled with a shock that he wasn't there. The
single bed seemed small and lonely, the quiet inland
night vast and unfamiliar.
An early goods-train came toiling up the line, panting
past the house with huge breaths like a tired bunyip
returning to its lair. Mitch lay and listened to it, nerving
herself to get out into the cold. She had promised herself
she would be up to see the sun rise this morning.
She counted ten, and then ten again, and then made
a fierce leap and fell back, groaning quietly. To her
surprise she ached all over. All the unfamiliar muscles
she had used yesterday were protesting at being made
to move at all. Sitting up carefully, she got out at last
and stood shivering on the cold, bare boards. Her travelling
dock showed just after 5 a.m.; the others would
not need to get up before six to be ready for work at
seven-thirty.
Should she have a swim in the dam? She wouldn't dare disturb the Jordans by taking a bath at this hour.
Nor would she have a swim, she decided hastily, seeing
her breath steam in the frosty air as she lit a candle.
She was mad to have got out of bed at all.
But as soon as she was dressed and outside she was
glad. There was such a tingling freshness in the air;
Venus hung in the east like a great silver lamp; and
bands of white mist hung above the earth in horizontal
layers, like strips of cotton-wool.
It was years since she'd been up before sunrise in the
summer. She ran down the track to the dam, feeling
her fingers tingle with the cold. The few streaky wisps
of cloud in the sky were turning pink, and the dam was
full of pink and blue reflections on which the blackened
sickles of gum leaves floated. A blue crane was sitting
pensive on the windmill platform, and a flock of Noisy
Mynas shouted from bright yellow bills: 'In y' go! In
y' go! In y' go! Water, water, water, water.'
'No, thank you; it's much too cold,' said Mitch
politely. She stood motionless and watched the little
wax-bills come down to drink, calling in their creaking,
timid voices: 'What's that? Wha-what's that?'
'Only me; and I wouldn't hurt you,' said Mitch, but
they flew away with an agitated whirr of wings.
The sky was flushed a pale gold by now with the
coming sun. Mitch waited impatiently, feeling the
slow turning of the earth beneath her feet, until at
last it dipped down and revealed an orange sun, huge,
dazzling, like molten metal. Over those flat plains it
was like a sunrise at sea. She thought how soon her
mother-in-law would be stumping round the kitchen,
away in the city, putting on the kettle for the morning
tea she could not do without, grumbling to herself in a
way that used to make Mitch feel guiltily that sheshould be up getting it instead. Yet the mornings in
bed with Richard were precious, almost the only time
they had to talk, to enjoy each other's company apart
from the family. At night they were always afraid their
voices would keep someone awake. Even their lovemaking
was inhibited. . . .
Last night she had felt rather lost and lonely; now
she suddenly felt tremendously glad she had come.
Kicking up her heels like a brumby, she gave a high,
wild cry of animal joy and went running back to the
hut.
'Awake, my little ones!' she shouted at the two inert
figures in the stretchers. 'It is the morn!'

'Come an' GET it!' Not even distance and air like a
crystal goblet could make the voice of Fred Binks sound
musical; but hunger made it welcome as a peal of bells.
Mitch was ravenous after her early walk, and the others
were not far behind her as she shot across to the other
cottage in answer to the summons.
There was a plastic cloth on the long trestle table,
and three places were set; Fred and Rosie preferred their
meals in the 'other room' which was warmed by the
wood stove. Rosie slammed down three plates with a
sort of fierce pride. She believed that workers in the
field needed a meat breakfast, and meat she would give
them; no sissy 'cereals' and eggs and that.
The three girls did not waste time eyeing the dark
mass of onions and gravy that accompanied the three
thin slabs of meat, but fell to at once. Their knives
bounced off the meat as off indiarubber. It was possible,
they found, to tear it into leathery strips with the fork
and so convey it to the mouth, where the teeth bounced
off it equally. Still, the gravy was quite tasty.

Rosie came back with a plate of toast, and Mitch said
with her most innocent air: 'I reckon this steak came
from the Territory, Mrs Binks.'
'Yair?' Rosie eyed her with suspicion.
'Yes; and I reckon it walked all the way.'
Rosie's black eyes flashed a hooded fire. She raised
the tin plate of toast as if about to cast it in Mitch's
face.
'What's the matter with the steak?' she asked
threateningly.
'Oh, it's er-it's a bit dry, I thought,' said Mitch
lamely.
'It's very tasty,' said Mandy, swallowing a lump of
gristle.
'Hmph!' Mrs Binks set down the plate and, folding
her arms over her large bosom under its dingy black
dress, gave a silent, intimidating glare round the table,
and marched out.
'Golly!' whispered Mandy. 'I thought she was going
to take a swing at you.'
'So did I. Talk about a she-dragon!'
'I like to have meat,' said Maria. 'In Italy we have
plenty of pasta, and there is veal, and fish, but not much
of bif-stek. There is not so much land as here, not so
much grass, and the calf eat too much by the time he
grow up.'
'This beef didn't just grow up, it died of old age,' said
Mitch, but she spoke in a low voice, with her eyes on
the door.
At least, said Mandy afterwards, Mrs Binks made a
good cup of tea; but Mitch, who didn't care whether she
drank tea or not, remained gloomy. They decided to go
into town on Saturday and have a real feast.When they arrived at work they found that the
partners had been re-allotted; Maria was to pick with
Mrs MacGowan (and David), Mitch's partner Fairy
with the expert Kurt, as she was the only one who
could keep up with him; and Mandy and Mitch, to
their delight, were to pick together.
'You've got the hang of it now,' said Mike Hannaford
to them, 'and you two won't fight over the bunches, I
guess. Mother Mac, you look after Miss Maria; Joe
hasn't even turned up this morning, he's probably still
on the way. He can't do much harm on piecework, but
I'll let him amble along on a row of his own. You won't
miss him, will you?' he said, grinning at Maria.
She smiled shyly, and the classic melancholy of her
face became warm and alive. 'He is very slow,' she said.
'An andante movement,' said Mandy.
'Si, andante. Cost.' And she imitated his languid one
handed style of picking. They all laughed.
'Those things won't last an hour,' said Mike, looking
at Mandy, who carried a pair of gloves. 'I'll get you a
cutting-knife if your fingers are too sore for picking.
Let's see.' He picked up her right hand, casually, and
turned it over palm upward. The soft skin of the first
finger had a broken blister and a reddened area round
it. 'Well. Not much good for anything but playing the
piano, I'd say; but we can't have them ruined.'
'They're stronger than you think,' said Mandy. She
brought up her left hand and gripped his wrist, leaving
a reddened mark on it from her fingers. As she walked
away his eyes followed her slim figure, while he rubbed
his wrist thoughtfully. His face wore the look she had
wanted to see there; he was aware of her at last.
She and Mitch found, as soon as their stiffness from
yesterday had worn off, that they were actually enjoying themselves. As they warmed up to the work they
took off their cardigans and hung them on the vines.
The bunches broke with a soothing snap and they grew
so thickly on the vines that they filled a tin every two
yards.
The gloves were protecting Mandy's hands for the
time being, so that the acid juice did not run into the
blister and make it smart. The spirit of competition,
which made the pickers dash back to work after each
smoke-oh and had little to do with the money they
would receive, spurred her on and gave her a feeling
of achievement as she tucked into each full tin the
ticket with her number on it.
However, by lunch-time she was tired; her back and
her shoulders ached, and she got up with reluctance to
go back to work when the distillery whistle blew.
The empty tins were on Mitch's side, and the cart
came down Mandy's lane to pick up the full ones. On
the cart behind the saturnine Fred Binks rode Mrs
Wilkes's Alf, in dark blue overalls and a checked shirt,
a straw hat on the back of his head. While Fred drove,
he cast armfuls of empty tins over the vines, and got
down to load the full ones.
The cart came so close that Mandy had to press herself
into the vines or be run over. Young Alf threw a
small bunch of currants at her, and three berries went
down the neck of her shirt.
'Damn you!' she said, clawing them out, and making
a face at him.
'Not bad, eh, Fred? Where did she come from?'
'Young women is things,' said Fred, 'that I 'ardly
ever notices; but she's one of them we call Pike's
Privileged Pickers, staying up at the Jordans' second
cottage.''Oh, one of that mob,' said Young Alf, and Mandy's
eyebrows rose. Evidently the others already had them
taped.
Young David, tired of asking questions of an uncomprehending
Maria, came down the row in search of
Mandy. He was holding a completely bald thistle-head
and blowing at it mightily. His pale, straight hair fell
over his clear brown eyes. The knees of his little khaki
overalls were red with sand and currant-juice.
'Hullo, Mandy, it's one o'clock. C'n I see your watz,
Mandy? Wha' time does it say? Is your watz broked?
What are the blue 'parkly things round it? What's
saffirs? Your watz must be broked, because it isn't free
o'clock yet by the fistle.'
'Oh, help!' groaned Mandy. 'Can you hear him,
Mitch? He never stops for a moment unless he's eating.
Here, Davy, have some currants.'
'I've had some, fanks.'
'And I bet that's an understatement.'
'Maria's pickin' with my mummy now, she's good at
pickin' grapes, but she talks funny.'
'Ooh, come and see what I've found, David.' There
was such excitement in Mitch's voice that he immediately
crawled through to her side. It was a pale, creamy
coloured toad. Mitch was holding it tenderly in the
palm of her hand. 'Look at its eyes, David. They look
as though they're made of gold; beautiful!"
'Ugh, horrid thing!' Mandy put her head through
the leaves. 'I thought at least you'd found a nugget.'
David wanted to keep it in his hot little palm, but
Mitch crossed to the next row and hid the toad deep in
the tangled grass at the foot of the vines.
Mandy drew her head back to her own side and began
to pick again, or rather cut, for Mike had provided her with a knife; Mitch preferred to use her hands still.
Mandy had already cut her left hand with the knife,
so that now both hands were sore, and the currant juice
ran into the cut and the blister and smarted horribly.
The gloves had worn through in the first hour.
To make things worse, she found that as the day
went on and the dew dried out of the vines, the white
fluff that coats the back of currant-leaves floated off in
the air as she picked, and gave her hay fever. She
sneezed and her eyes became reddened and half closed,
her head stuffy so that her voice sounded thick. 'He'll
never look at me now,' she thought, remembering, however,
with a little thrill, that it was down her side of the
row Mike had walked when bringing picking-knives.
She had noticed today, as he stood beside her demonstrating
the use of the knife, how the little laughter
crinkles at the corners of his eyes were paler than the
rest of his brown face, for they had escaped being sunburnt.
He
had been wearing, as usual, a battered old Digger's
hat, its wide brim pulled down fore and aft into the
shape of a boat, but under it showed a careless lock of
dark brown hair. The hairs on his forearms were lighter,
bleached by the sun. She had watched his deft, strong
hands working among the bunches, had noticed again
their fine bone-structure.
'has found a fog,' said David, crawling back through the vines. 'She won't let me keep it. I fink she's
mean. ..."
Mandy became aware, from the tingling of her
nerves, that Mike Hannaford was approaching, and
buried her face in the vine so that he would not see
her disfigured eyes.
'You did seventy-four tins yesterday,' said his voicebehind her. 'Not bad for a beginner. How's the knife
going?'
'All right, thanks.'
'I helped her, Mike,' piped David. 'I'm GOOD at
pickin' grapes.'
'Hullo, young feller. How'd you like to come and help
me drive the tractor? I've got to open up some furrows
between the sullies for the last irrigation.'
'Ooh! The tractar!' David was swung on to the tall
man's hip, and clung there beaming as Mike went
striding off down the row.
VI

Into this Universe, and why not knowing,
Nor whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing:
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not whither, willy-nilly blowing.

There was a full moon the next night. Mandy glanced
restlessly out of the window. Though she was tired, a
swim in the dam, a bath and a change into a light frock
had refreshed her. She could not settle down with a
book.
Mitch, seated at the one small table, was writing a
long letter to Richard; Maria was reading a bundle of
old letters from Mario. Both were absorbed, one in the
future, the other in the past.
A cloud of insects came in the open windows past
the ill-fitting screens, to circle madly round the kerosene
lamp and flop upon the table. Mandy opened the creaking
wire door and stepped out into a bath of the most
brilliant moonlight she had ever seen.
Towards the east, the vines stretched away in misty
rows, veiled in a shimmer of light. Westward the
poplars were black against the pale, light-drenched sky.
The moon was so bright that she could distinguish
colours, the ghostly redness of sand, the almost green
of leaves.
Life, the secret life of growing plants, pulsed all
round her through a million intricate veins. She was a
city girl, born and bred among bitumen roads andhouses of stone and brick. She felt almost intimidated
by the quantity, the exuberance, of green living things
called out of the barren sand by the simple miracle of
water.
Vine and poplar, banana and date palm, saltbush and
gum tree grew together and accepted each other's alien
presence; it was she, the separate, thinking human being
aware of its apartness who was the intruder here.
She walked along the cart-track away from the Binks's
cottage, towards the road, and became aware of a water
music filling the night. The head-ditch was flowing, with
a faint bubbling sound as it overflowed into the furrows,
and everywhere resounded the joyous chorus of the
frogs - deep bass of bull-frogs, treble of little frogs, with
the liquid accompaniment of bubbling water.
The irrigation was beginning. Even as she watched,
a long silver serpent began to crawl out from the ditch
at her feet; beside it, in the next row and the next,
another serpent slid forth its head. Gradually the black
earth was becoming striped with silver bars.
Water! From the far-away river the water was being
pumped out into the thirsty furrows. The grateful scent
of parched earth drinking was breathed into the air.
Mandy walked, balancing on the smooth cement edge
of the head-ditch, until she came to the main channel
just inside the fence. Here the water was flowing like a
small river. She dipped a sandalled toe in. Pleasantly
warm, not at all cold. Without thinking she slipped out
of her light clothes and into the channel, stretching full length with her fingers resting on the cement bottom.
The water was alive, flowing like the blood in a great
artery through the body of the land. She felt the moonlight
flooding down from the sky, the water stroking
her flanks as it flooded out into the vineyards, the orange groves and the pear and apricot orchards to
nourish the swelling fruit. She was a part of that
mysterious force.
'Eh, wait for us, carntcher?' A nasal shout floated
down the road. 'Alf! Wait on.'
Mandy stiffened as she saw the wobbling light of a
bicycle approaching, followed at a distance by another.
The rider of the first bike was almost level with her as
he stopped and rested one foot on the ground, turning
to look back.
'Get a move on, then.'
The second bike, with another youthful rider accompanied
by a black dog, came up and stopped beside the
first.
'Thought it was you, Alf. What's the hurry?'
'Goin' into the dance,' said Alf. 'Mrs Wilkes's young
Alf,' thought Mandy in alarm. She submerged almost
entirely, leaving just the tip of her nose out.
'Well, so am I. Say, you've got some good-lookers on
the block this year. That blonde I saw ridin' on the
cart with Fred Binks today.'
'Yair, not bad. But 'er nose is a bit big.'
'Gawd, you don't wanter look at 'er nose. What about
'er brace an' bits?'
'Two beauts, aren't they?' Alf picked up a stone and
tossed it aimlessly towards the channel. The dog followed,
and caught sight of Mandy's offending nose in
the water. Whether he thought in some canine fashion
that it was a fish, an eel or some such game, or realised
that it was human, he began barking madly.
'Come on, Alf, if we're goin' we better make tracks.'
'What's the matter with that blarsted mong?' said
Alf, staring.
'Dunno. Seen a frog most likely.''It might be a Joe Blake.'
'Aw, come on.'
They set their feet to the pedals and wobbled away,
whistling to the dog. It gave a few last barks and left
reluctantly. Mandy, shivering from keeping so still in
the water, climbed out as soon as she dared and dressed
in the shadow of a great poplar which towered above
her with softly-sighing leaves. She felt inclined to
giggle. She ran back to the hut to get warm and tell the
others of her adventure. Mitch was amused, Maria
looked slightly shocked.
At home it had been considered immodest for a girl
to wear a dress without sleeves. Here she had seen
Mandy change after work into a pair of very brief
shorts and a sun-top like a brassiere, and be quite unembarrassed
by the glances of Fred Binks or of Mr
Jordan, who had come over to make their acquaintance
and to extend an invitation to dinner for Saturday
night from his wife.
Though the young people went swimming in the
Arno in summer, she herself had never owned a bathing-costume.
One of the things they were going to town
for on Saturday, Mitch declared, was to choose a costume
for Maria so that they could teach her to swim.

'Mitch!' cried Mandy reproachfully. 'You've been
shaving your legs in my bath water. As if it wasn't bad
enough to have half the silt from the whole of the
Murray-Darling Basin in it.'
'Now, Mandy, I've told you a million times not to
exaggerate. It's just slightly brown, that's all. And I
can't get a pumice-stone for my legs till we go to town,
and I'm not going to town with black fur all over
them.'
'Oogh, it's revolting. Why didn't you let me get in
first?'
'Because you weren't ready, my sweet, and we have
to catch a bus, remember?'
'And there isn't enough wood to run another bath.
I'm going to have a shower, just a little one.'
'Good for you! The freedom of the individual!
Down with the Jordans who would dictate to us! "A
little water clears us of this deed"- or rather, a little
judicious mopping with a towel will remove the
evidence. Sing, Maria, sing! We must cover our comrade's
actions.'
Maria, who for reasons of modesty had first bath
and was already in her under-things before the others
arrived, piled the last of the chips into the heater.
(Having first bath, in spite of its advantages of cleaner
water, meant getting the ancient heater to work without
it boiling or blowing up, and this was a nerve-racking
task.) She averted her eyes from Mandy's long
golden shape in the water, and Mitch capering about
in nothing but a pair of briefs.
Then, as the heater wheezed and hissed and the
water trickled reluctantly from the shower, she and
Mitch began a noisy rendering of Santa Lucia, Mitch
at the same time turning on a tap in the washbasin
and making splashing noises, while Maria beat time on
the medicine-chest with a tooth-brush and a comb.
'Oh, that was lovely,' sighed Mandy, stepping out and
towelling herself with leisurely grace.
'Hell, I wish I had a pencil,' said Mitch, studying her
friend's lithe figure with impersonal admiration. 'You
could always earn a crust as a model, if you weren't so
stinking rich.'
She is like the figure of Dawn on Lorenzo de Medici'stomb in Florence, thought Maria. There was a replica
of Michelangelo's Dawn and Night, and of his David, on the Piazzale where she used to go with Mario. . . . 'Caro Mario; ah Mario, mio tesoro!
Yet the old pain did not come back when she said his I
name to herself like that. It could not be that she was forgetting, she would never forget him; but the change, the new life, the work in the open air to which her healthy young body responded, the company of the other girls, had filled her with a new sense of well-being. She was beginning, ever so slightly, to feel at
home in her new country..'
When, all dressed in their prettiest cotton frocks, hatless
hair shining, lipstick outlining the tender curves of
their young lips, they emerged from the hut, there was
a new light of happiness in her dark eyes. 'Andiamo!' she cried, leading the way down the drive to the bus
stop on the corner.
In the town, where all the shops opened on Saturday
afternoons to give the workers time to do their shopping,
she felt even more at home. It was a pretty little : town, with public gardens full of flowers and green lawns sloping down to the river; a post office, a railway station, ;
a main street as at home. If only the streets were not (
all so flat, and lined with such ugly wooden veranda-posts I
On every corner, and especially outside the cafes,
there were groups of young Italian men, with long haircuts
and smart blue suits. 'Bellezza!' they cried as the
girls walked past, and made hissing noises to attract
their attention.
(Ci sono tnolti Italiani qui!' muttered Mandy in her
ear. 'Si, molti, molti.' Maria lowered her eyes modestly.
Mandy looked boldly and indifferently at the groups
of would-be swains. Mitch was staring avidly at the
river.
Smooth as green glass, still as a lake, the water reflected
the willows that drooped their fronds into their
own reflections, so that it was impossible to tell where
tree ended and water began. Below the town was a lock
and weir, so that the river was held back in a still pool.
White launches nestled in the willows, a paddle-steamer
with passengers on a river cruise was tied up at the
wharf, where a group of young people swam and dived.
Beyond the wharf was the exclusive, august building of
the Riverside Club, and the massive Community Hotel,
modern and imposing.
Maria looked about for an equally imposing church
or cathedral, but there was none visible. She was struck
by the newness of everything, the temporary look of
wood and galvanised iron buildings and fences. The
most solid-looking building apart from the hotel was
the headquarters of the Irrigation Trust set among a
grove of palms.
The girls did their shopping (they had been paid
that morning, Maria collecting the fattest envelope because
she was a faster picker), had a milk-shake, and
then walked down to the river. At the gate of the Riverside
Club they saw Mr Pike, with an angular matron
who was presumably his wife. He seemed for a moment
undecided whether to ignore them, as mere pickers, or
welcome them, as friends of Mr Walton's.
He compromised with a wave and a condescending:
'Well, girls; getting on all right?' He did not introduce
his wife, who stared frostily over their heads.
'We'll probably survive,' said Mandy laconically.
He raised his eyebrows, gave an uncertain smile, andfollowed his wife through the gate.
'What a drongo,' said Mitch.
'Dron-go?' said Maria.
'A dill - a no-hoper.'
Maria spread her hands helplessly.
'Stupido,' said Mandy.
'Oh, si si - capisco!'
As they were to have a free meal at Mrs Jordan's
that night, they decided not to eat in town after all. As
Mitch said, it would only be a waste since she couldn't
taste anything, because the inside of her mouth was still
burning from the intensely hot curry Mrs Binks had
provided for both breakfast and lunch. Diluted with
masses of tomato sauce, it had been just eatable.
They were in high spirits at the prospect of their
first social outing, and walking home from the bus
stop they sang, to a well-known hymn tune:
'What's for din-ner, Mrs Binks?
Do you know your curry stinks?'
'What is "stinks"?' from Maria. 'You mean it is
rich?'
'You know, pongs. It means something's on the nose,'
explained Mitch patiently.
'But before you say Mandy stinks because she is
rich.'
'No, no, I didn't say Mandy stinks. I said she was
stinking rich. That only means she has a lot of money,
she's stinking with it. But the curry pongs - it smells.
Or rather it's made strong so we can't tell how much
the meat stinks. It's probably just about crawling.'
'Mamma mia! I will never learn Australian.'

VII

Ah, fill the Cup: -what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn to-morrow, and dead yesterday, Why fret about them if today be sweet!

Much scrubbing with Mitch's new pumice-stone, much
painful application of lemon juice to broken skin, had
at last removed the grape-juice stains from their hands,
and the three felt ready to step out into Vindura
society.
'We can't dine at the Jordans' with "pooey old
pickers' hands", in case that little menace of a Dianne
is there,' said Mitch.
None of them had anything like a dinner-frock
among their luggage, but only Maria was shy about
entering the big bungalow-type house, set so solidly
among its wide creeper-covered verandas, as a dinner
guest instead of a supplicant for baths.
Mrs Jordan came fluttering out to the front veranda
to meet them, in a long floral gown with floating
draperies from the shoulders.
'Oh, there you are, my dears,' she said vaguely. 'Come
on in - or would you rather stay outside in the cool?
Dinner's not for half an hour yet. Bob I Where are you?
Look after these girls, will you, and find them a drink?
I must just go and peep in the oven.'
Bob Jordan, a large, hearty, sanguine-complexioned
man with a complacent expression and a blue-blackjowl that looked as if it was never shaved properly,
brought them each a tall glass of ice-cold beer. Maria
regarded the amber, foam-capped liquid doubtfully, and
said she thought perhaps if there was some wine . . .
But Mitch said firmly that if she was going to be an
Australian she must learn to drink beer and like it.
Maria explained that she liked beer, but she was more
used to wine, and that beer in such a long glass might
go to her head.
'It's very light,' said Mitch, who believed that this
was true.
There were several guests walking on the twilit lawn,
from which came a scent like that of mown hay as the
dew descended upon the cut grass. Others stood about
on the lighted veranda. Mr Jordan introduced Mitch to
a fair, breathless little woman in hideously green
chiffon.
She immediately began on the favourite topic of the
growers' wives at this time of year: the iniquity of the
pickers. They'd had two on their block last year who
used to get drunk on the week-ends; she didn't believe
they were even married, though they enrolled as a
married couple. And they would, of course, steal anything.
. . .
'Yes, I know what they're like,' said Mitch, with an
affectation of sympathy. 'You see, I'm a picker myself;
so is Maria here.'
'Oh, er, well! I suppose just for fun.'
'No, not for fun, to earn money.'
'Indeed, how interesting!' but she drifted rapidly
away.
Mandy, in a strapless, form-fitting dress of yellow
linen, cut with a severe simplicity that made the other
women's dresses look hopelessly fussy, and with her pale golden hair gleaming under the veranda lights, was
already the centre of a group of three men. Her eyes,
that were sometimes more green than brown, tonight
were tawny as a tiger's. Someone had better beware,
thought Mitch, as she smiled encouragingly at the
rather lost-looking Maria. Mandy is on the prowl. . . .
She set her empty glass down on the veranda parapet,
and ran her hand over the red stones, still warm from
the sun. Maria emptied her glass too, and said that she
liked Australian beer. Mitch lifted her hand and saw
that it was stained a dark red from the painted stonework.
Mrs
Jordan came up and took her empty glass while
she was rubbing uselessly at the stain with her handkerchief.
'That
wretched rail! I should have warned you. Go
down to the bathroom, you know the way. There's a
guest towel by the basin.'
But the moment Mitch touched her hands with soap,
they turned a deep navy-blue. The grape-juice stains,
neutralised with the lemon, had come back twice as
dark at the touch of an alkali.
Meanwhile Maria was in something of a panic, which
did not show in her tranquil face and calm hands, only
in the hunted look in her large dark eyes. No one spoke
to her or brought her another drink. Mandy, a glass
in one hand, a cigarette in the other, was laughing,
quite at home, with her group of men which had now
been joined by Bob Jordan. She ignored Maria, or perhaps
had just forgotten about her.
Maria leant disconsolately on the veranda balustrade,
wishing she had not come, wondering if she could
escape back to the hut. She did not like this sort of
party. There was no music, no singing, and she did notknow anybody. And she was afraid there would be all
sorts of knives and spoons and special forks she would
not know how to use, as there had been on the ship
coming out to Australia. She felt a longing for a big
plate of pasta, some red wine and perhaps a fresh peach
to finish with; an almost physical yearning for the faces, the voices, the ways of her own people.
There was a movement indoors now, as Mrs Jordan
came out to announce that dinner was ready. It surprised
Maria that such a big, wealthy-looking house had
no servants; it seemed that Australian girls would not
do housework for a living if there was anything else
they could possibly do instead. They would rather work in noisy factories, or stand up all day in shops. . . .
She was almost alone on the veranda, and wondering
if anyone would see her if she ran away, when Mitch
came back; Mitch in pale blue cotton, crisp and fresh,
her soft brown curls clustered about her head, her eyes
bluer than by day.
'Where's Mandy? Why isn't anyone looking after
you?' she asked indignantly.
Maria stood up from the balustrade, suddenly feeling
that she liked Mitch very much, and not dreading so
deeply the ordeal ahead. She looked down, and gave a
cry of dismay to see that the front of her white frock
was smeared with red powder.
'And my hands have turned blue, now!' wailed
Mitch. 'Well, three cheers for the red, white and blue!
Let's keep together, mate, and share our shame.'
To her relief, Maria found that it was not a formal
dinner-party; it was a buffet dinner, and guests were
standing about the large dining-room eating with forks
from plates held in their hands. The first plate handed
to her was piled with spaghetti in tomato sauce.
'That's the stuff you Da--er, Italians like, isn't it?'
said Bob Jordan heartily, giving her a fork.
'Oh yes! But more in the south than where I come
from, they eat pasta.'
'Spaghetti da macaroni, eh? Ice-a-da-cream.'
'Si, but there are many other kinds of pasta - capelli
d'angeli, very fine, that is angels' hair, vermicelli, that
you call vorms, mustacchi, and ravioli that is like little
cushions.'
It's all spaghetti to me,' he said indifferently.
'There's that little bastard of a Di-anne!' whispered
Mitch as he moved away. The daughter of the house,
in a frilly pink frock and with a pink bow in her sausage
curls, was peeking in the door. Mitch scowled at her
and put one of her blue hands behind her back. Bob
Jordan came back with two more glasses of beer. Maria
found when she had drunk it that she felt quite happy
and not at all frightened any more.
After the meal was finished, she noticed that the
party broke up into two distinct groups. The men
gathered about the keg on the veranda, and appeared
to be enjoying themselves very much. One would talk
for a while in a slightly lowered voice, and then all
would break into a roar of laughter. Maria supposed
it was some sort of traditional entertainment. She had
seen the men dancing together at home, or joining in
part-singing.
The women sat about the drawing-room in little
knots, exchanging confidences and anecdotes, mostly
about food, clothes or babies. They did not seem to
be enjoying themselves so much, and after one of the
bursts of merriment from the veranda would look towards
the group of men in a rather irritated fashion.
Mandy, looking bored, was turning over some musicon the piano.
'Why don't you play for us, dear? Mrs Walton was
telling me you play beautifully,' said Mrs Jordan.
Mandy made a little grimace, but sat down at the
piano, picking up a volume of Beethoven sonatas. She
launched into the Quasi Una Fantasia, feeling that it
should be hackneyed enough for the present company.
Closing her eyes, for she knew it too well to need the
music, she let the notes ripple out from under her
ringers, like cool drops of water falling through the
night. Skipping the vigorous second movement, she
went on to the third, and saw, as always, a small sled
drawn by three black horses moving over a snowy landscape lit by moonlight. It dropped into hollows and
crossed small hills, following the land that undulated
like the music, then dipped into a final valley and was
gone.
Mandy opened her eyes like a sleep-walker awakened,
and looked round the room. There was a murmur of
polite applause, but the groups were still talking. She
played a lively Chopin polonaise, and mischievously
began a jazzed-up version of his Marche Funebre.
Some of the men drifted in from the veranda. Others
followed, and Mandy brightened visibly. She started to
play Santa Lucia, and for the first time that evening
seemed to notice Maria.
'Come on, Maria, let's hear you sing it in Italian.'
'Yes, do!' cried Mrs Jordan. 'I know you can sing it,
I heard you in the bathroom this afternoon.'
Then the old bitch was listening to see if we were
using the shower, thought Mitch. Aloud she said:
'Come on, Maria, I'll sing with you.'
Maria, who had just finished her third large glass of
beer, had the strangest feeling of unreality. Who these strangers were, or why she was here, she could not remember;
but she felt happy and confident and quite
ready to sing:

'Mare si lucido,
Lido si caro. . . '
By the time she had reached the chorus the second
time everyone was joining in, loudly if not tunefully:
'Venite agile
Barchetta mia . . .
Santa Lucia,
San-ta Lucia!'

By now all but the most determined beer-drinkers had
left the veranda, the women had stopped discussing
babies and looked less discontented, and the party was
beginning to be a success. It was then that the phone
call came for Mitch - a trunk-line call from the city.
She came back looking rather white, and hastily
swallowed a beer.
'It is bad news from home?' asked Maria timidly.
'Not exactly. But that was Richard - my husband. He
wants me to come home. He hasn't found a house,
nothing's changed, but he insists I should give up this
job and come back at once.'
'Then you will have to do so, non e vero?'
'No! Why should I? I'm earning money for the
house, and heaven knows we'll need it. Besides - I'm not
going to give in now. "What, without asking, whither
hurried hence?" ' she muttered. She held out her glass
to be filled by a man passing with a foam-topped jug,
and drank its contents straight down.'Another and another Cup to drown
The memory of this Impertinence.'

'You are talking poetry?'
'Omar Khayyam. A wonderful bloke.'
'I, too, know some poetry. We had to learn it at
school:

'Nel mezzo del' camtnin di nstra vita
Mi ntrovai per una selva oscura
Che la dintta via era smarrita.'

Maria's eyes were bright; her cheeks were flushed.
The words seemed to tumble out of her mouth, but she
had very little control over them. Mitch was staring at
her in surprise.
'I say, you're a bit tiddly, I believe. You'd better not
have any more beer.'
'What- is tiddly?'
'I mean I think you're stinko, in fact a bit full.'
'Oh no! No! NO I Not this word again.' Maria
collapsed in a chair, giggling. 'Not STINKING.'
'Shh, Maria! For Pete's sake!'
'I do not know Pete; I do not care for this Pete. I like
to be tidd-ly. Viva la musical Viva la birra!'
She was now shouting, and several of the feminine
guests were looking at her askance. Mitch went over to
the piano to get Mandy's help.
Mandy came at once, but Maria had meanwhile
found another full glass of beer on a table beside her,
and was rapidly putting it away.
'Maria, don't drink any more beer. It's stronger than
you think, and you've had enough - basta, basta!'
'I say, there's no need to swear at her,' protested
Mitch. 'She doesn't know.'
'I'm not swearing. "Basta" means enough. Maria,
dear, I think you need some fresh air. Let's come out
on the veranda, si? Please, Maria.'
Maria was feeling wonderful, and ready to agree to
anything. 'Si, si, si, the veranda.' She got up, giggling,
and cannoned into several guests on her way out, with
profuse Scusimis and Pregos.
Mitch mopped her brow in relief as they got her into
a garden seat. Bob Jordan was now singing, while one of
the men banged on the piano keys. He revolved gently,
intoning:

'I'm a little wild bush-flower,
I grow wilder hour by hour;
Nobody wants to cul-ti-vate me;
I'm as wild as wild can be. . . .'

'She's going to have an awful headache in the morning.'
said Mandy, looking at the flushed Maria.
'I've got one already. That was Richard who rang up.
He's demanding that I go home at once. Of course, I
said I wouldn't, and he's furious. I'll have to go down
next week-end and try to pacify him. . . . Let's go home
now, shall we?'
Mandy looked through the lighted windows at the
largely middle-aged crowd within, now looking as unreal
as figures on a stage seen from the wings. There
had been a responsive light in Bob Jordan's eye, but
she didn't really care if she never saw him again. 'All
right; let's go.' she said.
'Andiamo!' cried Maria.VIII

There was a Door to which I found no Key.
There was a Veil past which I could not see:
Some little Talk awhile of ME and THEE
There seem'd - and then no more of THEE and ME.

Once more the sand was screaming beneath the wheels;
once more Mitch was sitting in the River train, being
carried across the hot orange and salmon-red sandhills,
among bluebush and old-man saltbush and desert oak,
towards the green oasis of Vindura.
This time she was alone, but she was well entertained;
for in the next carriage was a group of young soldiers on
their way back to camp. At every stop they leapt out,
ran for the nearest bar, and came back laden with brown
bottles of beer. In a short time these began to fly out of
the windows, empty, to join the glassy cemetery of Dead
Marines that lined the track on each side.
Somebody began to sing in a lugubrious voice:

'A soldier told me before he died,
I don't know whether the bastard lied. . . .'

Blushing but interested, Mitch listened to the
chronicle of the soldier's amazing invention, and then
to the unexpurgated love-life of Abdul the Bul-Bul Emir,
and the sad fate of Joe the Night-Watchman, with
twenty-four kids and a terrible wife, with the roared
chorus:
'Dinki-di, dinki-di,
I hope you don't think I
Would tell you a lie. . . .'

Then the singing stopped, and an argument began.
With drunken seriousness a young voice proclaimed:
'Well, so we bloody well ought to be friends with the
bloody Eyeties and the Jerries now I mean, Christ we're
all mother's sons, aren't we? But when these bloody
things start, you've got to bloody well be in. . . .'
The adjectives were strewed indiscriminately, and
evidently had no reference to the actual bloodiness of
war. Mitch felt an old, wise, maternal tenderness for the
noisy young men next door.
Maternal! Heavens, was she getting broody? And did
that mean?' But no, the effect couldn't possibly
show so quickly. Really, Richard was very careless, and
had assured her that the same precautions were still
effective the second time. . . . For a scientist, he was
terribly impractical. What if she should have a baby
before they even had a home! It was just as well she
would be sleeping a hundred and fifty miles away from
him for the next month or two.
It had been wonderful to be with him again but the
visit had been marred by long arguments and by the
presence of his family. How tactfully - and how
obviously! -they had let the young people go to bed
early. It had made Mitch feel obstinate. They lay awake
talking for hours, and the effort of arguing vehemently
in a whisper had made her head ache.
She had convinced him at last, and he seemed resigned
to the fact that she had no intention of coming
home at present. Meanwhile, he was to keep scanning
the columns of houses to let, and she had promised toreturn as soon as he found a home. And when he had a
free Saturday he was coming up to Vindura for the
week-end; they would take the bridal suite at the Community
Hotel, he vowed, and at least have a place of
their own for one night, whatever it cost.
His mother was delighted to have her son to herself
again, and was spoiling him badly, of course. Thank
goodness, thought Mitch, that he was being well looked
after; she didn't have to feel guilty about leaving him
to fend for himself, and he would appreciate her all the
more after a separation. He was not the kind to console
himself with other girls. He wanted her or no one. Dear
Richard! If only he could be here tool
The voices next door had become quieter. It was very
hot, and Mitch felt drowsy; her head nodded with the
rocking of the train. Then a notice-board caught her
closing eyes:

NOTICE. The introduction of grapes,
grape-vines and cuttings into South
Australia is prohibited.

PENALTY $200

They must be near the border. There was the dark
indigo line of ragged trees that marked the course of
the river; it was not far to Vindura. She began collecting
her things, the home-made cake in a cardboard box
that her mother-in-law had given her, her gloves, once
white, from behind the seat, her overnight bag from
the rack. She felt a surge of excitement, different from
her first arrival when all was unknown. Outside the
windows the first green rows of vines became visible,
then they were whirling past like the spokes of some great wheel. The desert was past; the green leaves spread
a wide carpet of welcome for her return.

The first rack was already laden with currant grapes.
Ton after ton of purple fruit, untreated in any way,
was tipped out and spread on the wire-netting layers
to be dried and concentrated by the sun into black
wrinkled currants.
Mitch and Mandy, being among the least skilled of
the pickers, were taken off grape-picking for a few days
and sent to pick pears. First they had to pick up windfalls,
putting them into sweat-boxes to be peeled, cut
and dried. These were bruised, squashy, and unpleasant
to handle. Then they picked as high as they could reach,
and then had a day riding round on the cart to reach
the topmost branches.
The two lads, Tom and Dick, and Young Alf also
rode on the cart, while Fearful Fred (as they had now
named him) drove. It was a hilarious business, for Peanut,
becoming restive at the circular motion, kept starting
off with a jerk so that they fell over the back; or he
moved off and left them clinging to a tree.
The youths, who were so nondescript that it was difficult
to tell them apart, became very gallant about helping
the two girls aboard, leaping down to lift them to
their feet, and handing them up over the wheel.
At each occasion Mitch would bow deeply and say:
'Thanks, Rosencrantz and worthy Guildenstern,' while
Mandy would murmur: 'Thanks, Guildenstern and
worthy Rosencrantz.'
'Do they think we're bloomin' Jews or sumpin'?' Tom
was heard to mutter to Dick.
Once when Mandy tumbled off alone, she landed
awkwardly and wrenched her ankle. It was swellingvisibly when Mike Hannaford came up to the group
standing round her.
'I wish you wouldn't go knocking yourself about,' he
grumbled. 'I'm short enough of pickers as it is, with Joe
the Streak only half here. H'm, let's look at it. Can you
walk?'
'I-think so. Oh! No, I can't.'
'Then I'll carry you. You'd better come up to the
tanks and bathe it. You others go on; and Fred, try not
to kill any of them, will you?'
'I carnt 'elp it. It's the bloody 'orse,' said Fred
morosely.
Even if she could have walked, Mandy would not
have admitted it. As it was, her ankle was really painful.
Mike bent down, swung her off the ground, and
carried her unceremoniously over his shoulder, as
lightly as if she had been a child.
'This is known as the fireman's lift,' he explained.
'Thank you. Do you often go about rescuing damsels
in distress from fires?'
'Often. I even light the fires so as I'll get the chance
to rescue them.'
'That's a dangerous business.'
'What is?'
'Playing with fire.'
'Exciting, though.'
Did his grip about her knees tighten a little? His
voice was impersonal. He strode steadily up to the rainwater-tank
and set her down in the matted couch-grass
beside it. With a handy stake he knocked the tap
round, and held a folded khaki handkerchief under the
water. Mandy had slipped her shoe off and was gingerly
moving her foot.
'It's swollen quite a bit already.' He was squatting on his heels before her, in the comfortable pose in which
she had first seen him, his old hat pushed to the back of
his head. He took her slender brown foot in one hand,
and ran long, sensitive fingers over the painful lump,
pressing gently. 'That hurt?'
'Ow! Yes.' She looked up, and found his strange,
smoky brown eyes upon her face. A response to something
unspoken stirred in her deepest feminine being.
It was as if he had said aloud: 'I desire you.' The response
was instant, biological, and profound. She continued
to gaze into his eyes as though mesmerised, until
he wrapped the wet handkerchief round the ankle and
stood up abruptly.
'I'll put you over there in the shade of the sheds till
the cart comes back, and Fred can drive you home.'
He picked her up again, but this time he held her
cradled in his arms. It was only a few yards to the shade,
but they were both intensely aware of every step. When
he set her down again he was trembling slightly.
'Thank you. I'll let you have the handkerchief back,'
said Mandy with her sweetest smile.
"That's all right. You'd better rest up tomorrow.' He
went off to the racks without another look. Mandy was
piqued and puzzled at his gruff tone, his abrupt
departure.

Mitch was picking currants again, and because Fairy
was away for the day as well as Mandy, she had Kurt
Olmer for partner. The rapid click of his secateurs
came through the vine, always a little ahead. He was
picking through all the time, and since only the largest
bunches on her side seemed to take his eye, her tins were
filling very slowly with the small ones that he left.
'Goot crop just 'ere,' Kurt was saying amiably.'Orfen, you find in ze middle of ze row like zis, ze fruit
is all dried oop; but here he is goot all t'rough. No goot
when ze bunches dry; craikey it's crook picking zen.'
'Must be crook,' said Mitch. She was getting a little
tired of cleaning up all the small bunches. She made a
spurt, left a few behind, and reached through for a fat,
shapely bunch on Kurt's side of the wire. Even as she
grasped it the cutters flashed out and the bunch disappeared
from view.
Kurt's face, square and smiling, appeared in a leafy
aperture. 'Once more you take my bunches,' he said,
smiling with square yellow teeth, 'and I snip the finger,
sol' And he cut a thick vine-stem as though it had been
butter.
Mitch stared at the slowly-oozing stump, and fell back
quietly to her mopping-up operations. 'Craikey!' she
muttered to herself.
Mandy and Fairy came back to work, in time for the
great heat-wave at the beginning of March. For a week
the temperature stood above 100 degrees. In the still, airless channels between the vines, the pickers could
only guess at the temperatures they endured. Their
guesses were extravagant, their comments on the
weather profane.
Fred and Young Alf, riding about on the cart, created
their own breeze and looked aggravatingly cool. They
carried a water-bag of canvas slung underneath the
cart, whose contents, cooled by evaporation, were in
great demand among the pickers. Fred's shoulders had
burnt to almost black, Joe's to a coppery brown with
large freckles.
On the day when the thermometer reached 115
degrees in the shade, they knocked off early. Walton's
sent down half a dozen bottles of cold beer, and they drank it in the shade of the vines. Maria was a little
nervous of it-she had suffered a hang-over the day
after the party-but she agreed after the first sip that
there was nothing so thirst-quenching and satisfactory
to a parched and dusty throat.
Fred insisted on giving a share to Peanut, though it
worked out at only about a glass each. There were protests
from all sides:
'Hey, what about us?'
'Don't waste it, Freddol'
'Craikey, you give zat goodt beer to ze horse?'
'Peanut,' said Fred, ' 'as worked as 'ard as any of yz.
Look 'ow 'e laps it up.'
For Peanut, with a look of bliss in his brown velvet
eye, was sucking the last drop from the tin Fred had
given him.
It was so hot the next day that Mitch and Mandy
decided that they could not wait till after work for a
swim. The main ditch on the block was still flowing, so
as soon as they had eaten their lunch they made their
way to a secluded part in the far corner of the block,
shielded by a row of apricot trees.
Mother Mac and Maria went with them to 'keep nit',
as they had no bathing-costumes with them, and Fairy
decided to come too. Daisybud they did not ask; since
the two lads had transferred their sidelong looks and
audible remarks to the other girls, she had become
politely remote. She was evidently used to being the
belle of the block, and her nose was out of joint.
David took off his clothes and danced in and out of
the water, looking like Tom the water-baby and
bubbling over with questions and exclamations.
'Look at me, Mandy I Look at me, Maria I I can
swim,' he shouted, lying on the bottom of the cementditch and letting the shallow water flow over him as he
kicked his legs. 'Look at me swimmin', Mum! Look at
me swimmin', Mitch! C'n yous all swim as well as me?'
Mitch and Mandy took off all their clothes to feel
the cool flow of water over their skins, but Fairy sat
modestly encased in a pink shimmy and a huge pair of
bloomers. Maria took off her shoes and paddled, while
Mother Mac sat on the edge with her white, veined
legs in the water.
'Look out!' she cried suddenly. 'There's a man having
an eyeful. Up there by them sheds on the next block,'
'What! A Peeping Tom? I'll shame him,' said Mitch.
She stood on the edge of the ditch, drew herself up, and
pointed an accusing ringer at the man. He had probably
expected screams and a coy rush for clothes; now he
slunk away behind the sheds, and was seen no more.
'I don't see why I should only have the water after
youse girls,' complained Fairy. She got up, walked to a
higher point, and plumped down in the ditch. At once
the water stopped flowing, except for a little trickle on
each side of her; Fairy acted as a human dam.
'Did you hear,' said Mitch thoughtfully, 'about the
cod that got into the irrigation channel once? It grew
to be about a twenty-pounder.'
'Yes; they've got great big teeth on them like bulldogs,
I believe.' said Mandy.
'Yes. . . . Wouldn't it be funny,' said Mitch, 'if a big
cod was to come up behind Fairy now, and bite her
well, you know where?'
They were all facing down-stream, Fairy at the back,
David farthest in front. With a flick of her wrist Mitch
sent a pointy piece of broken wood over their heads so
that it fell in the channel behind Fairy. In a moment
there was a scream; Fairy struggled to unwedge herself and stood up. 'I've been bit! Something bit me!' she
yelled. The piece of wood was carried away past the
others as the water was released with a rush.
'Probably only a tiger snake,' said Mandy soothingly.
'They get in the channels sometimes, too.'
'Oh! Ooh! I'm getting out.'
'Look at me swimmin'! C'n you see me swimmin',
everybody?'
'I wish I had come in too. It is what you call very
stink-ing hot.'
'Come on, Maria! Why don't you?'
'No time, girls. The whistle goes in a minute,' said
Mother Mac.
They dressed, but saturated their shirts in the stream
and put them on wet through. Mother Mac was horrified.
'You'll both get your deather cold!' she wailed. But
the hot wind dried them five minutes after they were
back at work. 'Oh for a swim in the dam!' they groaned.
They had taught Maria to dog-paddle about the dam,
which was not very deep, and she had mastered the
breast-stroke and was beginning to learn the overarm
stroke from Mandy, who was an expert instructress. On
Saturday she was going to have her first swim in the
river, for they had all been asked to a swimming party
at the Riverside Club by moonlight.
Refreshed now by their channel dip, they began on a
new row with enthusiasm, only to find that it was a
mass of shrivelled bunches which fell to pieces at a
touch. They seemed to have been attacked by a mildew
which had since dried out, leaving a white web-like
deposit.
Mrs Wilkes had told them that grapes were sometimes
attacked by odium, or downy mildew, and that
they should not be picked with the others or they wouldcontaminate the rest. So they began leaving behind and
throwing away.
Their tins did not fill very fast, but they were making
wonderfully swift progress up the row. They tossed
bunches away with abandon, and ignored small ones
altogether.
Suddenly Mandy noticed the lean figure of Mike
Hannaford coming up the row behind her. He was
bending to look into the vines, stooping to pick up a
discarded bunch. She felt a ridiculous sense of guilt.
Her heart began a foolish thumping.
He paused beside her. 'You're leaving a lot behind,'
he said, without a smile.
'Oh yes, but it's no good, all mildewy. Mrs Wilkes
said -didn't she, Mitch?' she appealed through the
vine, 'that it was better to leave it than contaminate
the rest.'
'What you're throwing away isn't all bad by any
means,' he said coldly. 'You'd better go back and pick
up the biggest bunches. And clean up what's on the
vine.'
'Yes, sir!' She felt that he was the boss, and she liked
it. She had been spoiled and deferred to and adored so
much that she found his terseness refreshing.
'Also, I hear that some of the pickers were swimming
in the channel at lunch-time - without clothes. Chap on
the next block complained.'
'Oh!' Mandy blushed slightly.
'Yes. . . . Some blokes are hard to please.' He flashed
her his sudden, disarming smile, and she felt her bones
melt.
'I'm in love!' she thought, with a shock of joy, as she
turned back along the row. 'What, again?' said a little
cynical voice at the back of her mind, but she ignored it.
The pattern of leafy light and shade on the ground
reminded her of something. . . . She remembered now:
she had been quite young, about five years old, and she
had been kept in for some naughtiness in the morning.
The voices of the other children drifted in the open
window, and a pattern of sunlight fell on her book.
Beside her, not speaking, stood the adored kindergarten
teacher, and in her heart was this flood of peace and
joy. ...
'That must have been the first time I was ever in
love,' she said to herself, picking up a crushed and dirty
bunch.
As they were walking down to the dam that evening,
the observant Mitch remarked: 'I notice that when Mike
Hannaford has something to tell us, he always comes
down your side of the row.'
'Does he?' said Mandy, with elaborate surprise.
'Oh, he is so nice!' exclaimed Maria. 'I have found
he is a Roman Catholic, like me. I saw him at Mass on
Sunday.'
Mandy looked at her with new attentiveness.IX

While the Rose blows along the River Brink,
With old Khayyam the Ruby Vintage drink:
And when the Angel with his darker Draught
Draws up to thee--take that, and do not shrink.

A hot north wind was blowing dust and sand about the
vineyard. The sky was white-hot, covered with a film of
streaky cloud, and the air was taut with the electricity
of pent-up storms.
Mandy screwed up her eyes against the unpleasant
glare, feeling the dry wind burn her skin. The leaves of
the currant-vines were blown inside-out, so that their
papery undersides showed, and gave no impression of
cool green. 'A real b-- of a day,' said Mitch from the
other side of the vine.
'It's giving me the most aw-- aw-- at-CHOO! awful
hay-fever,. said Mandy, mopping her streaming eyes.
'Oh hell! I'd better take another anti-histamine, even if
it does make me dopey. I'm going down to the tank for
a drink.'
With her hair blowing into her eyes, a handkerchief
to her swollen nose, she went before the wind. At the
end of the row, with the tank in sight, she paused. Mike
was converging upon it also, a kerosene-tin bucket in his
hand. Don't be ridiculous, she said to herself sternly.
What if he does see you like this? She went firmly on,
and arrived just after him. He knocked the tap on for
her and she filled her tin mug.
'What's up? Hay-fever? D'you get it from the currants?'
he asked sympathetically.
'Yes, I've already taken a pill, but it's-archoo! achah!
worse than usual today. The north wind.'
'Ever tried a damp mask? Let me show you . . .'
He took out another of his clean khaki handkerchiefs,
wetted it beneath the tap, and wrung it out.
'Oh, but I haven't returned your other handkerchief
yet. I was waiting for a chance to iron it.'
'Don't bother. Regard it as a gift,' he grinned. 'Now,
turn around!'
She turned obediently, and felt the clammy, folded
handkerchief slipped over her nose and mouth. He tied
the corners in a knot at the back. A strand of her fine
hair was caught in the knot; he released it with a gentle
tug. Her heart began an uneven dance beneath her ribs.
He put both hands on her shoulders to turn her round
again. 'God, you look like an Eastern princess now
most seductive.'
'But my hair is fair.'
'Golden. A princess in a fairy-story always has golden
hair.'
'And I am not a princess.'
'You are to me. Beautiful - and unattainable.'
'In the fairy-stories I have read, the princess is never
unattainable. She is won by some brave or remarkable
action, like killing a giant or a dragon.'
'Unfortunately, there is a shortage of both those items
in Vindura. Tell me what I can do.'
'Well, we have a near-witch up at Jordan's - Rosie
Binks. Supposing you come up to tea at the cottage one
Saturday - that is the only night she doesn't poison us
with her witch's cooking.'
'This Saturday?''Well, we're going to a swimming party this Saturday,
at the Riverside Club. Shall I see you there?'
'You will not. A mere foreman does not pollute the
sacred precincts of the Riverside Club with his presence.
Surely you've learnt by now how class-conscious the
dear people of Vindura are? You must be the first picker
ever admitted-it's unheard of. But the river is free. I
might just be swimming about there somewhere.'
'Good. Arrivederci, as Maria says.'
'She's a nice kid.'
'Isn't she? Naive, but very sweet.'
'Very.' They spoke absent-mindedly, looking into each
other's eyes, not thinking of Maria at all. He broke the
spell by bending to pick up his empty tin. Mandy made
her way bemusedly back to her row.
In the afternoon David came running up to them,
slipping in the loose furrows, clutching his little cotton
sou'-wester against the wind. 'Mitch! Mandy!' he
squeaked. 'Mike killed a 'nake. It was a big black one.
It's head is all bloody. It nearly bited Maria.'
'Is she all right?'
'Yes, it didn't bit her, it only nearly did, and Mike
killed it with a big 'tick.'
'Poor thing!' said Mitch. 'People are always killing
snakes, but they have to live too. They won't hurt you
if you leave them alone.'
'Oh Mitch! You'd be sorry for dingoes because they
were so hungry they had to kill sheep. Wouldn't you kill
a poisonous spider, for instance, if it was in the house?'
'Ye-es, I suppose. And I don't like centipedes, I admit.
'I don't like 'nakes,' said David. 'They've got big teef,
and they bite peoples.'
That night Maria told them, on the way home in the
cart, what had happened. She had gone over to the small ditch at the end of her row, where there was still some
water lying, to bathe her hot feet. A black snake had
been cooling itself there in the wet mud.
It had risen menacingly hissing at her. Maria was
to petrified that she could not run. Fortunately Mike
had heard her screams; and, while Mother Mac
clung on to David and stopped him from going any
nearer, Mike broke its back with a stick and then
battered it to death.
'Oh, he is so brave I' breathed Maria. 'There is this
terrible serpent, capite, and I unable to move. . . . He
has saved my life.'
There was such a note of hero-worship in her voice
that the others looked at each other significantly. Mandy
said drily:
'He's lived on the river since he was a boy. Probably
killed hundreds before now.'
She was thinking: 'It should have been me that he
saved from the giant, the dragon, or the snake. . . .'
Soon after eight on the following Saturday night they
changed in the little dressing-shed belonging to the
Club, and climbed down the steep bank to join the
group of wet bathers on a raft moored among the
willows.
There was much the same crowd as at the Jordans',
and a few younger people. Beer and sandwiches were
spread over the raft and the two dinghies moored alongside
it. If it had not been for the mosquitoes it would
have been perfect. Everyone was smoking to keep them
at bay.
Mitch looked around her with delight. She had not
known the river could be like this; it had seemed rather
tame with its boats and willows by daylight, but now it
spread broad and mysterious beneath the moon.The trees on the far bank were black against the
misty, light-charged air. Under a moon not quite at the
full, high in the eastern sky, the river sparkled with
liquid light. Wild duck and waterhen, uttering their
strange cries among the reeds, could be heard far over
the still water.
Mandy, standing on the edge of the raft in her white
costume preparing to dive, looked like a marble statue
with bronze arms and legs. She went in cleanly, scarcely
breaking the reflection of the moon.
Maria looked nervously at the great still flood of
water. She sat on the edge and trailed her legs in the
river, finding it surprisingly warm; but she had no wish
to leave the raft and trust herself to those immense and
unknown depths. Dog-paddling about the dam in sunlight
was quite a different thing.
Mitch was not as good a swimmer as Mandy, and she
felt a little qualm as she struck out alone into the middle
of the stream, beginning to feel the gentle tug of the
current. But the slight prickle of fear added to her enjoyment.
She swam slowly, feeling the ends of her hair
spread out in the water. The river was less buoyant than
the sea, but was softer in its silken caress along her limbs.
She swam into the path of the moon, and then turned
on her back and floated, staring at its faintly distorted
face.
Such a pure and liquid light was reflected from those
barren moon-craters where there was no water, not even
a drop of dew! 'Now I am one with the night,' she
thought; 'I am the moon, and the flowing river, and the
dark fish that glides among the rock-holes. . . .'
But with that thought came a picture of the dim
depths below, of the great cod nosing the weed, the
transparent shrimps swarming in the mud, fifty, sixty, perhaps seventy feet down, where they waited to pick
the bones of drowned creatures. She dropped her feet
to tread water, and they went through the warmed surface
water into the cold layer beneath. Immediately she
began to panic. What if she got cramp?
She had drifted unconsciously with the current, and
now the raft, the light-hearted group upon it marked by
glowing cigarette-ends, seemed very far away. Would
any of them notice if she failed to come back? Not for
some time, probably. She felt suddenly overwhelmed
with loneliness, and longing for Richard. Why wasn't
he here? He was probably looking at this moon, and
thinking of her.
Richard! She must get back safely for his sake, for
the sake of the child they would one day have. She
began to swim wildly, too fast, and was soon out of
breath. The immense silent river, the enormous empty
sky where the brilliant light of the moon had drowned
the stars, seemed to press her down. She opened her
mouth to cry out, and it filled with water. The current
that had seemed imperceptible when she swam with it,
was now too strong for her floundering progress. She
must swim straight to the bank and hold on to a willow
tree, though the thought of submerged boughs wrapping
about her legs made her stomach go cold. She began to pray: 'Oh God, let Mandy notice. Oh God, let someone
come. . . .' The cold water was gripping her ankles,
drawing her down.
'All right, turn over on your back and float. Don't
panic'
She turned with a gasping sob and flung her arms
round the neck of her rescuer. Another human being
seemed to her then the most wonderful miracle of the
universe.'Don't clutch me, or we'll both go under. Do as I say:
turn over and float. I've got you.'
It was Mike Hannaford; how he happened to be there at that moment she had no idea. It was enough that he
was there, that he was supporting her head in strong
hands and drawing her rapidly through the water as he
swam on his back with vigorous kicks.
By the time they reached the raft she was feeling
rather foolish. She should not have gone so far alone,
she should not have swum with the current to begin
with, she should not have panicked when she knew
perfectly well how to float.
Maria helped her up with cries and exclamations. 'Oh, mamma mia Mitch, what is it you have been doing? Oh,
Mike, is she drowned? Are you all right, mia povera.'
Mitch collapsed on the edge of the raft, shivering,
retching, and weeping a little with reaction from her
fright. 'She'll be all right,' said Mike, holding on to a
rope. Several hands reached down to pull him on board,
he was slapped on the back and congratulated by the
men, while the women gathered about Mitch in a clucking
group.
Mandy came swimming back from up-stream, where
she had gone some distance in the hope of coming across
Mike. Now she found him established on the raft, with
Mitch thanking him for saving her life. She felt unreasonably
irritated at this second act of gallantry in
which she was not involved.
'You certainly seem to make a habit of rescuing
damsels in distress,' she said. 'However, I suspect Mitch
was quite capable of getting back by herself. She's been
able to swim since she was ten '
'I had cramp,' said Mitch indignantly and not quite
truthfully. 'If it hadn't been for Mike--' she shuddered.
'You're chilled, and should get home to bed,' said Mrs
Jordan. 'We've had our swim, and were going early
anyway; we'll take you back to the cottage won't we,
Bob? Bob!' she said loudly. Bob Jordan wrenched his
eyes away from Mandy's moonlit figure.
'Eh? Yes, certainly, we can take the girls home.'
'You stay, Miss Weston, since you're such a good
swimmer, you won't want to come yet. Miss Delcalmo
will look after this poor girl, won't you dear?'
'Si, si! I put her to bed, wrap her up warm. Andiamo, Mitch.'
'Sure you'll be all right, Mitch?' said Mandy perfunctorily.
'Yes,
I'm all right now, really. But Mike deserves a
medal.'
'Have a beer instead,' said one of the men, handing
a full glass to Mike. 'Lucky you were about.'
'He is so brave! He has saved my life also,' said Maria,
with worshipping eyes.
'Aw, come off it,' Mike grinned, embarrassed. 'Break
it down, Maria.'
'I do not know what I am supposed to come off or
break down; but I know you break the back of the
serpent which has attacked me.'
'Better pipe down, mate,' said the man who had
proffered the beer. 'You're a hero, and that's flat!'
Mitch was helped up the bank and into her clothes,
and Mandy returned to the raft. Someone was hospitably
offering Mike a sandwich. He refused politely;
emptied his glass; and with a 'So long, thanks for the
beer,' dived neatly overboard.
Mandy was speechless. Here he was, by the greatest
good luck, invited to join the party on the raft; here was
she providentially freed of the company of Mitch,Maria, and the Jordans; and he just went off like that,
without a word!
Someone called to her to bring her glass over to be
filled, but she scarcely heard. She made a long, racing
dive into the river and came up swimming. She could
see the feather of foam from his thrashing legs just
ahead as he drew away with a rapid crawl stroke towards
the wharf. She put her head down and fairly tore
through the water.
Fortunately he slowed up and began a leisurely side
stroke as he neared the wharf. She took a deep breath,
dived, and came up from below, catching him by one
ankle.
'Help! I thought a bunyip had got me.' She saw the
white flash of his teeth in the moonlight, but she was
still seething.
'Why did you go off like that?'
'Well, I couldn't very well stay on the raft. I don't
belong with that mob.'
'What nonsense! They invited you aboard.'
'Yair - that was just charity. They were waiting for
me to go.'
'Good Lord! You have got a chip on your shoulder,
haven't you? Why didn't you stop and speak to me?'
'Aw, I dunno. ... I thought.'
'You thought I was just a snob, too? Oh, Mike!
You're a nicer bloke than all "that mob" put together.
Come on - race you to the steps.'
Her anger had evaporated. She suddenly felt tremendously
happy, for she had remembered that the only
reason Mike was here, the only reason he could have
been swimming about in the vicinity of the raft when
Mitch got into difficulties, was that she had told him she
would be here tonight.
He reached the wharf steps just ahead of her, and turned to give her a hand and help her up. She emerged
dripping and gleaming in the moonlight in her white
costume that fitted like a skin. He drew in his breath
with a just audible gasp as he looked at her.
They sat on the edge of the wharf, where the wood
was still warm from its daylong soaking in sunshine,
and dangled their legs above the water, while their
chests heaved with the exertion of their fast swim.
'You certainly move through the water,' she said.
'You're not bad yourself.'
She pulled off her helmet-like white cap and ran her
fingers through her short fair hair, looking at him provocatively,
her head a little on one side.
'What are your plans for this evening, Mr Hannaford?
I'm on my own.'
'Well, I have a car here - parked up by the Post Office.
But-your friends.'
'They've gone home. I'll have to slip back to the raft,
and say good-bye, and get dressed. See you up there in
half an hour.'
She would think of some excuse for leaving the swimming
party, discourage any of the men who offered to
accompany her, and make her way to the Post Office. She
could say she had to make a trunk call to the city. As
she swam back to the raft she thought that all the water
in this great river could not quench the fire burning in
her heart.
X

One Moment in Annihilation's Waste,
One Moment, of the Well of Life to taste
The
Stars are setting and the Caravan
Starts for the Dawn of Nothing - Oh, make haste:

'Have you ever been out to the Lock?' Mike turned with
his arm resting on the steering-wheel.
'No, but I'd like to see it.' It had taken her some time
to extricate herself from the swimming party and to
change into her slacks and white cotton jumper and get
up to the Post Office, and she had been afraid he would
think she was not coming. But he was still waiting in
his car, a big sedan of a rather old model.
Her costume was rolled up in her towel. She dumped
it on the back seat and felt her hair with both hands.
'My hair got wet after all. Does it look terrible?'
'I can't see it. I can only see the brightness of your
eyes.' With perfect naturalness he put up a hand and
felt the damp strands. 'It is wet. Sure you won't catch
cold?' For she had shivered slightly at his touch.
'No! Come on, let's go. Andiamo!'
He started the car, and soon they were bumping along
the winding road to the Lock. They talked of mutual
acquaintances. Mandy found that Mike didn't like Mr
Pike or Bob Jordan any more than Mitch did.
'The land means nothing to them,' he said. 'It's just
something to exploit, to get as much money out of as
possible per acre, This place, the way it's been built up in the desert, the seasonal cycle in the vineyard-it means something to me, though I don't own even a
quarter of an acre of it.'
'And it doesn't to Mr Jordan?'
'Still less to Walton, who sits on his tail in the city
and rakes in the profits. Do you suppose he's ever planted
a vine-cutting, or sweated over a dip? It's all just profits
to him.'

'A vineyard by the river's brim
A prosperous vineyard was to him,
And it was nothing more,'

she misquoted.
'Eh? Yes, that's about it. I've got a theory that the
people who work the land ought to own it, or at least
share in it. I'm saving up to get my own block anyway.'
'Good for you.'
She could hear the roar of the water over the weir
before they reached the Lock. It had a sound of doom
about it. They got out, and he steadied her across the
narrow top of the Lock-gates to the wider cat-walk above
the weir.
The moon was now overhead. The river above the
weir lay in a great still pool, reflecting the sky's light.
The water fell six feet over the weir to the level below
with a ponderous roar, and broke into a sparkling mass
of white foam.
Mandy leant on the guard-rail, fascinated, and
watched the mighty weight of water sliding beneath
her feet. Quite near the weir it appeared not to move;
then it suddenly speeded up, seemed to gather itself together,
and fling itself over the edge in a curving wall
of glass.'Like someone who sees that death is the only way
out.' she murmured, 'and, without waiting to be carried
by circumstance, flings himself to destruction.'
'What are you muttering about? Death? On a night
like this?' and he swept his arm to include the moon
sparkling water, the dark trees, and the vast purity of
the sky. 'All the same,' he said soberly, 'there'd not be
much hope for anyone who fell in there. I've seen a
log caught for days in the whirlpool, rising and turning
and being swamped over and over again.'
She was silent. The doom-like roar of the water had
brought some lines into her head, and she was trying to
recall them. . . . Ah! yes:

'What was I? What was I? Nothing
But a Moment, aware
of the ruins of Time.'

Mandy had withdrawn into an unexpected mood of
melancholy; she was given to these sudden ups and
downs. She wished he would take her in his arms and
kiss her into forgetfulness, yet she felt too depressed
and inert to make the first move.
Meanwhile, he waited in unbearable tension for some
sign from her. He had never met anyone quite like
Mandy before, and he did not know what to make of
her. She seemed unconventional, yet she had a proud,
aloof profile, and she was-God help him!-a 'lady'.
The very accents of her voice paralysed him.
'Shall we?' He cleared his throat nervously, and
shouted over the roar of the water; 'Shall we go back
now?'
'All right. If you like,' she said indifferently.
They made their way back to the car in silence. He looked at her anxiously before he started the motor.
Was she offended for some reason?
'Is anything wrong?' he said. 'You seem . . . sad.'
She stared out at the river, her head averted. 'I just
had a tremendous impulse to throw myself over there,
that's all.'
'How strange you are!'
'No, not really. My mother took her own life, when
I was still a child,' she said abruptly. 'I still don't know
why. . . . But sometimes' I feel that I must go the
same way.'
'You mustn't say that. You're young, and healthy,
and your life, almost the whole of life, is in front of you.
Do you often feel like this?'
'Not often.' She turned with a pale smile. 'Let's go
now.'
They parted outside the Jordans' block, the air
between them still thick with words unspoken and
caresses ungiven.
As he drove violently back to the town, Mike was
cursing himself for missing such an opportunity; yet he
could not have risked the blow to his self-esteem if she
should snub him. He wanted her more than ever.

The currants were nearly finished. When there was
only one row left, all the pickers descended on it and
worked like mad to fill their last tins, until the vines
heaved and billowed like a green sea.
Maria was anxious to fill her tin. She wanted to show
Mike, by her good tally, that she really was learning to
be a good picker; once they started on the unfamiliar
sultanas her tallies would drop again. And she needed
the money. She was saving to buy a new, pretty dress to
wear to Mass on Sunday, when she hoped to see Mike.
She had nearly enough to get it this coming Saturday.
Daisybud was coming towards her from the opposite
direction, picking like a machine. They both reached
for the last fat bunch together. Daisybud removed it
neatly and fell back, panting. The currants were finished.
A cheer went up from the pickers.
'Here, you better have this; my tin's full,' said Daisybud
generously. 'Better top your last one up a bit,' and
she began removing bunches from her own last tin into
Maria's.
This generosity from her rival of a few minutes ago
warmed Maria.
'What will we do now?' she asked, smiling at Daisybud
whose usually immaculate waves were disarranged.
'Shaking down, most likely.' She pulled out a small
pocket-mirror.
'You mean?'
'Shaking down currants from the racks. You'll get
your arms nearly pulled out of y'r shoulders.' Daisybud
licked one finger, and passed it over the thin line of her
eyebrows.
Down at the racks, the pickers sat about warning or
leaned on posts. The serious business of getting in the
currant crop was over; there had been no rain to split
the fruit, and much of it was already dry.
At a word from Mike Hannaford they lined up on
each side of the racks that had been spread early. Taking
each wire-netting layer in turn as he loosened it, they
bounced it up and down between them.
The dry, brittle bunches fell to pieces. Currants shot
off stems, rained to the hessian at the bottom, flew
through the air, and went down necks and inside shoes.
A false sole of squashed currants formed on their shoes;
Mother Mac accused Mrs Wilkes of treading on as many

Si
as possible so that she could scrape them off at home
and make a currant cake.
It was great fun, and young Davey ran about between
people's legs, getting in the way and squealing with
delight. It was raining currants; he had never seen so
many before.
In the afternoon they began upon the sultanas, and
now everyone had to use a knife. The bunches were
irritatingly brittle; at the slightest touch the twigs broke
and the berries fell like hail. Yet the main stem was
tough, far too tough to be broken by hand, and it was
often twisted about the central wire of the trellis. Maria,
almost in despair, found herself hacking at the wire
instead of the stem, bluntening her knife and getting
nowhere. She saw the pretty dress fading farther away.
'You want to take it slow at first, love, till you get the
knack,' said Mother Mac kindly.
Nack! thought Maria irritably. Nack, neck, knock,
nick, they all sounded the same, yet some had a K in
front and some didn't, and what in the name of all the
saints was a nack, anyway? What a horrible language!
And she was tired of asking questions, and being treated
like a child, a silly bambina.
The real reason for her ill-humour was that Mike
had asked the other two girls, Mandy and Mitch, to
come down to the racks and help with spreading the
dipped sultanas. Not that she wanted to be put on to
spreading herself; she could make more money on piecework
and she preferred to work among the vines. But
Mike was working at the dip, which meant that he
would be close to Mandy all day. Maria's dark eyes had
noted the way Mike looked at the beautiful blonde one.
Yet it was she, Maria, who had been rescued by him
from the serpent. . . .Ever since she had found that he had the same
religion, she had nursed a wild dream about Mike
Hannaford. He was taller than Mario, and not so sturdy,
yet he had the same thick, dark hair and golden-brown
eyes. . . . Yes, he reminded her of her lost Mario. If
only, one day, he might take his place!
Down at the racks, Mitch and Mandy worked in large
rubber gloves, moving the piles of glistening bunches as
they were tipped on to the wire. They had to be spread
evenly in a single layer, and because of their fragility
they must be moved with the utmost care, with a gentle
rolling motion.
The sultanas were more amber-coloured than green,
ripened to perfect sweetness by the inland sun, swollen
to juicy fullness by water from the river. Peanut loved
them in any state; he would pull a bunch from the vine
and crunch it with its leaves, while juice ran down his
hairy chin; he would take a wet mouthful from the rack
and eat it, caustic, potash and all; and once he browsed
right through a loaded tin waiting to be dipped, until
driven off with blasphemous cries.
'It's a bloody wonder that 'orse doesn't bust,' said
Fred admiringly.
The two lads, Tom and Dick, had also been taken
from the picking ranks to propel the little trolley loaded
with dipped fruit along the line from the dip to the
rack. They seemed a bit overawed by Mandy's cool
beauty, but Tom began paying attentions to Mitch.
'Eh, what about comin' into the dance Saturdee
night?' he muttered in her ear in passing.
'Thanks, worthy Rosencrantz, but my husband
wouldn't like it.'
'Carn, you're not married! And me name's Tom; not
Rosenwhatsit.'
'Mandy, he doesn't believe I'm a married woman.'
'Show him your ring.'
Mitch pulled off a wet rubber glove and displayed the
small silvery band on her left hand.
'Get a load of that, Dick,' said Tom wonderingly. 'She
is married!'
'And my husband is coming up to Vindura next week,
and he's a crack shot.'
Tom faded away towards the dip.
The dip was worked by a large, brawny, rugged-faced,
jovial and blasphemous person called Merv. He had a
nose like the backbone of a mountain range, and teeth
like marble tombstones. He worked with unfailing good
humour in the heat and steam of the dip, like a jolly
devil supervising the boiling pitch in Hell. The dip-tins
had handles, and holes punched through them to let
the liquid out again as he passed each one through the
dip with the same steady, unhurried motion.

Mandy felt that she knew Mike Hannaford ever so
much better since their drive out to the Lock, even
though she was puzzled by his restraint on that occasion.
So
when she saw him close beside her scowling at the
spread sultanas and muttering to himself, she said cheerfully:
'What's up Mike? Are we butchering them?'
'Not you; it's that idiot Merv. He's got too much
caustic in the dip. See these great cracks in the skins?
Absolute mincemeat! They'll dry out too quick and turn
dark, and dark fruit means a lower grade. Not that
they're any different, mind you; but women seem to like
pale golden fruit the best. That's why you have to be
so careful in spreading, not to make berries. The berries
fall to the bottom and turn dark.'Mandy smiled. 'I like you to lecture me on the
properties of dried fruits.'
'Was I lecturing? I suppose I was. You're not really
interested, are you?'
'I like to listen to you. I wouldn't if it were Bob Jordan
talking.'
He gave her a long, intimate look before he went off
to complain to Merv. Mandy, warmed and elevated hadn't
he brought her to work at the racks so that they
should be near each other?-heard the beginning of
Merv's luridly-embroidered reply before it was lost in
the rattle of the returning trolley:
'But just now I topped it up with water, and it was
too bloody weak, so I puts some more flamin' caustic ...'

XI

Indeed, indeed, Repentance oft before
I swore-but was I sober when I swore?
And then-and then came Spring, and Rose-in-hand
My threadbare Penitence apieces tore.

An empty wine-bottle came whizzing out of the back
door of the Binks's cottage and stopped the girls in their
tracks. It was lunch-time on Saturday, and they were all
dressed in their best, ready for a visit to town. They were
going to choose a new dress for Maria.
'Ha-ha-ho-HO-HO,' came from within like the laugh
of a slightly crazy kookaburra. 'Missed yer, didden I?
Whatsamatter with yer?'
They looked at each other questioningly. It was
Rosie's voice, and Rosie was obviously rather the worse
for wine.
'Come orf it, Rose. Yer mighta smashed a window.'
'Ah, go on. I coulda hit yer if I tried.'
Mitch advanced, and cautiously put her head in the
door. 'Lunch ready, Mrs Binks?' she asked cheerfully.
'Come on in, come on in, girls. Make yerselves at our
place. Outa me way, Fred. Can't yer see them girls is
starvin'?'
She leered drunkenly at the girls and waddled into
the kitchen after the morose Fred. There were several
crashes and curses before she came back, balancing three
plates of cold meat and a bottle of tomato sauce.
There y'are, girls. Get that into yer.' She slammedthe sauce-bottle down in the middle of the table. 'I got
a bloomonge for th' next course, real pretty.'
When she went out the girls winked at each other
silently.
'Under the weather,' muttered Mitch.
'Full as a boot,' said Mandy.
'You mean stink-o, non e vero? Troppo del vino?'
'Yes. completely troppo,' said Mitch.
When Rosie came in with the 'bloomonge' they all
fell silent, staring at the horrible amorphous mass that
was visibly spreading its pseudopodia over a large flat
plate, like an enormously-magnified, bright pink amoeba.
'It never kept its shape,' Rosie was complaining. 'It
looked real beaut in the mould before I tipped it out.
It'll taste better than it looks, though.'
'It had better!' said Mitch.
There was silence again for a long half-minute while
they waited for the storm to break. But Rosie's bloodshot
eyes had lost their brooding fire. 'Try it an' see,
anyways,' she said amiably.
Gingerly they helped themselves to small serves, while
Rosie leant on the table, humming tunelessly. Mandy
took one mouthful, and laid her spoon down decisively.
'It's uneatable. It's got no taste'
'It tastes faintly pink, that's all.'
'C'c orribile!'
'Mrs Binks,' said Mitch, becoming more courageous
as the lightning failed to strike, 'you cannot expect us to
eat this concoction of gooey, gelatinous gobs masquerading
as a pudding.'
'All right, don't eat it then!' Rosie swooped on the
dish and flung it through the back door after the bottle.
There was a crash as it hit the fig tree, and pieces of 'bloomonge' went flying through the air. Rosie laughed
delightedly.
A high scream of outrage came from beyond the door;
then Di-anne appeared, arrayed in white socks and shoes
and an organdie dress. A large dollop of bright pink goo
clung to her curls, which she clawed at frantically
'OO! I'll tell my mummy on you, I will!' she shrilled.
The girls let out a simultaneous shriek of laughter;
Fred poked his head round the kitchen door to see what
was going on.
'I'll tell my mummy, so there!' sobbed Dianne.
'Go on then; go and tell her!' cried Rosie, picking up
the sauce-bottle as if she might let fly with that next.
'Always snooping around!'
Di-anne fled, shrieking. For the first time Mitch knew
a fellow-feeling for Rosie.
'Good for you, Mrs Binks; she's a little horror.'
Fred ambled in with some bread and jam to take the
place of the pink stuff; Rosie fetched a new bottle of
wine and asked them to join her. Soon they found that
in her alcohol-softened mood they could ask anything of
Rosie. They told her they would rather have fresh fruit
for dessert, and salads for their lunch, and it would
mean less cooking for her. They would rather have half
a cucumber or a tomato with bread and butter than the
meat sandwiches flavoured with garlic that she was so
fond of preparing; and would she mind cutting down on
the very hot curry?
Rosie agreed to everything, except that she insisted
they should still have meat breakfasts on working days:
'No one's going to say that Rosie Binks is mean with her
boarders. . . .'
They parted amicably, with Rosie promising to make
them hot scones in the morning.However, there were no scones for Sunday morning
breakfast. They came home from town, very late,
having missed the last bus after the pictures and walked
home, carrying their shoes, along the bitumen road
which felt firm and warm beneath their bare feet. There
was still a light over at the other cottage. Sounds of
drunken singing and the occasional smash of breaking
crockery drifted through the clear, still night.
'They're having a real bender,' said Mitch, pausing
to listen to a particularly loud crash.
'They are breaking things, more than just bending
them, I think,' said Maria.
'Oh, Maria, I love you; you are so quaint and literal.'
'Deh! What have I said now?'
'Nothing, cara mia. Come in and try on the dress.
You look stunning in it.'
'As long as I am not "stinking"!'
'You're very quiet tonight, Mandy. It's not like you
to stand about staring at the stars. If I didn't know
better I'd think you were in love.'
'Oh, shut up, Mitch!'
It was the middle of the morning before a surly shout
from the cottage summoned them to breakfast. They
went in quietly to find a plate of burnt toast, carelessly
buttered, in the middle of the table. Rosie came in with
a pot of tea, and they just managed not to gasp. Her
mouth was cut and swollen, and one eye was blackened.
The look in her remaining good eye was enough to keep
them silent. She went out without a word.
They sat glumly crunching the incinerated bread.
Maria was depressed because, though she had put on
the new dress and gone to early Mass, Mike was not
there. Mandy was abstracted, wondering how she could
arrange to see him again away from other people; and Mitch was in a state of suppressed excitement because
she was waiting for a trunk call to come to the house
from Richard, confirming his visit next weekend.
They did their weekly wash and then sun-bathed for
the rest of the morning. When Di-anne came over with
the message that there was a trunk-line call from the
city for Mrs Fairbrother, Mitch could almost have
kissed the unpleasant child.
It was Richard, his own dear voice. Its tones had a
physical effect on her, they vibrated in her nerves and
made her weak with love. And he was coming on the
plane next Saturday; he had already booked the bridal
suite. Recklessly, Richard went on for another three
minutes when the pips sounded. They couldn't afford it,
but what did it matter? They couldn't afford the bridal
suite, either.
Mitch hung up in a daze of happiness, and saw Mrs
Jordan hovering at the end of the hallway where she
had obviously been listening.
'My husband's coming up to join me for the weekend,
isn't it wonderful?' she cried happily.
'Well, how nice for you!' smirked Mrs Jordan. 'It'll
be a real second honeymoon, won't it?'
Mitch felt slightly ill. She hated that sickly word,
honeymoon. Thank goodness she hadn't mentioned the
bridal suite!
Mrs Jordan lowered her voice as though the walls
might have ears. 'As for that disgusting couple over at
the cottage, they're always fighting. Did you hear the
goings on yesterday? Drunk, of course. The woman
threw pink custard all over Dianne.'
'I don't think she meant to. But they had been drinking
wine. She looks sorry for herself this morning poor
old trout.''H'm! She'll be drinking again this afternoon. Once
they start, it goes on the whole weekend.'
It was evident that Fred and Rosie had been sampling
several hairs-of-the-dog by the afternoon. The three
girls were just setting out for a walk when the jinker
came tearing down the drive with Fred holding the
reins, Rosie beside him, and a nearly full flagon of wine
rolling about on the floor.
Rosie had regained her amiability of yesterday. She
smiled in a friendly fashion from her battered face.
Fred, too (although his seamed face was scored with
long scratches from Rosie's thorn-like nails), gave one
of his sinister grins. He pulled up with a jerk.
'Hop up, youse girls,' cried Rosie. 'We're goin' down
to the river, for a pickernic. Want to come?'
They looked at each other, hesitating. The Binkses
certainly looked a villainous pair in the afternoon sunlight.
But the river . . .
'Come on!' said Mitch, and began climbing up the
side of the cart. Mandy shrugged, and climbed after her.
Maria, however, hung back. 'I have much mending to
do. I think I will go a little walk, and then come back.
I will be getting the tea for us,' she said.
'Gerrup, Peanut!' roared Fred, and almost running
over Maria they went galloping out the gate, with a
swirl of dust and a scattering of gravel. Whether Peanut
had been sharing in the celebrations, or was just
infected by his driver's recklessness, he tore along the
red sandy road beside the railway-line, round the corner
on two wheels and up the green willow-bordered lane
beside the property like a mad thing.
Quite suddenly they passed the end of the last
irrigated block; the lane opened out into flat grey saltbush
country, dotted with clumps of old-man saltbush and bluebush, a few steel-blue box trees, and the dark
shapes of desert oak. The vines were a green dream behind
them; the landscape was now a symphony of blue
and grey, with an indigo band of distant gum trees
marking the course of the river ahead.
Rosie sang; the girls hung on tensely to the sides of
the rattling, bouncing cart. A dry roly-poly bush blew
across the track, and Peanut pretended to shy at it.
They were too nervous to speak.
This was sheep country, though it looked like desert
and they saw no sheep; it took a whole acre to feed
one animal. Mitch hopped down to open the first gate,
which bore the polite legend: 'PLEASE Shut The Gate.'
Rosie opened the next, which said more tersely: 'SHUT
THE GATE.' Mandy tumbled out of the cart, laughing,
to open the last one before the river. It said in
large white letters painted on a square of tin:

'SHUT THE BLOODY GATE.'

The track now wound in and out of the big trees, and
down a slope of grey-white sand to the edge of the river.
Mitch was out of the cart before it had stopped; and
climbing out on a great red-gum root that projected
over the water, sat staring at the river.
This, this was how she had expected it to be: sundrenched,
silent, grey-green, immense, not closed between
walls of green willows as in the cosy town; not
cold and glassy as it had been beneath the moon.
Farther down it broadened out into a lagoon, an overflow
filled with the skeletons of grey, drowned trees. A
smaller backwater was covered with a red film of floating
duckweed, and beside it a white crane stood like an
alabaster image on a fallen log.
Mitch drew in her breath with delight. Mandy wasmuttering something behind her about wishing she had
brought her costume so that she could have a swim.
Mitch scarcely heard her. She was staring across the
river towards the up-stream bend, where a wisp of thin
smoke was curling among the trees. The sky above was
intensely blue.
There was quite a collection of huts there, she saw
now - mere humpies built of hessian or of rusted kerosene
tins beaten flat, and roofed with old bits of tin,
sheets of bark, or branches of dead gum-leaves. Two or
three women in bright dresses moved among them.
Several dinghies were pulled up on the bank, and a
dark-faced man was baiting a set-line for cod.
'What's that, Mrs Binks? It's almost like a little settlement
out in the bush.'
'Yeah, that's the blacks' camp,' said Rosie. 'It's not
so far out of town, the river bends around a lot. But
they have to keep on the far bank of the river; the
council won't let them live on this side.'
'What aborigines? Where?' said Mandy, interested.
'Over the river there.'
'You mean they have to live in those terrible dumps?'
'They're not allowed to build in the town, anyways.
They haven't got much chance to live decent, even if
they wanted to.'
'And once they owned the whole country,' said
Mandy softly. 'The river belonged to them, and all the
fish in it; the bush, and all its kangaroos. And now . . .'
'There's not many full-bloods left now, only half
castes and quarter-bloods; and their children you can't
hardly tell the difference, like Mike Hannaford,
frinstance,' said Fred. He stopped and blinked at the
burning gaze that Mandy turned upon him.
'Like WHOM?'
'Like Mike, you know, the foreman at the other block.
I'm just as dark as he is, to look at.'
Mandy continued to stare at him.
'Are you sure?' asked Mitch.
'Course I'm sure. Mike's gran'ma was born over the
river, but it don't make no difference. Mike's as white
a feller as you'll find anywhere. His old man fought
in the last blue for Australia; and Mike would of been
in it if 'e'd bin old enough. He's a good bloke, Mike; a
real gentleman.'
'Yair. Mike's all right,' said Rosie.
Mandy wondered why she should be so struck by the
simple fact of Mike's heredity- In the city, perhaps, it
would have meant less; out here, in the country, where
the miserable remnants of the once-flourishing Murray
tribes lived as outcasts beyond the town, it seemed of
immense moment. She could understand things about
him that had puzzled her before. She stared musingly
across the water at the collection of huts.
Alf hung a feed-bag over Peanut's nose, and he and
Rosie disposed themselves among the arm-chair-like
roots of a great tree. They seemed to have brought no
other refreshments on the 'pickernic' than the flagon of
sweet wine which passed between them regularly.
Mitch and Mandy looked at each other uneasily.
Fred's driving had been erratic enough on the way out;
how was he ever going to negotiate the gate-posts on the
way home?
They took off their shoes and paddled in the shallow,
lukewarm water at the edge.
'Ow! Yabbies!' cried Mitch as something nipped her
toe. They hastily got out and, peering from the tree roots
down into the milky-green water, saw the dark shapes
of the small crayfish moving about, waving their feelersgently.
'If only we had some bait.'
They searched up and. down the bank, and beside a
stick which had evidently held a set line they found a
rather dried-up fish's head. Fred produced some string
from his pocket, and they were soon absorbed, Mandy
fishing while Mitch made a landing-net from a piece of
wire and some hessian found in the cart.
The silly, greedy crayfish, once they caught hold
with their big claws, would not let go until they were
drawn almost to the surface. Then Mandy slipped the
net behind them, and as they shot off backwards towards
the bottom they were caught.
Soon they had two dozen imprisoned in the cart,
where they clambered over each other, blew bubbles,
and waved their claws menacingly. Their backs were a
beautiful iridescent blue.
'I wish we had a tin or a box to put them in,' said
Mandy. 'I don't fancy travelling home with them
clambering all over my feet. Not in sandals, I mean. .. .'
'I don't fancy driving with Fred in the state he'll be
in soon, for that matter,' said Mitch.
'Let's walk back, shall we? They can have the
yabbies.'
'All right.'
They told the others that they had decided to explore
along the river-banks a little way, and then cut back
across country to the block.
Rosie, her head resting on Fred's khaki shirtfront,
waved her hand amiably.
'Don't get lorst,' said Fred. 'Y' could do a perish away
from the river.' But there was little chance of their getting
lost with the river trees for a landmark, visible over
the flat plains for miles.
XII

Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly - and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.

Maria had a great deal of ironing to do. Where the
other girls had washed only a pair of blue jeans each
and two or three shirts, she had washed three cotton
dresses and five gathered aprons for she wore a clean
one to work every day.
She wished she could wear the becoming new dress
to work, since Mike had not been there to see it at
church this morning. Mandy always managed to look
lovely even in her old stained jeans; but Maria was
secretly convinced that no man liked to see a girl in
trousers.
She sighed, folding the last apron and putting it on
the freshly-ironed pile. Who ironed Mike's shirts for
him, she wondered, and sewed on his buttons, and
mended his socks? Did he have a mother, or a sister?
She knew that he did not have a wife. It was surprising
that he was not married, such a handsome young man
and with a good job; for surely every man wanted to
marry and have some bambini of his own?
She was day-dreaming about a little boy with a brown
face and white teeth like Mike's, when Mrs Jordan's
voice fluted at her from the door of the laundry:'Oh, Miss Delcalmo, you won't forget to fold the
ironing-blanket, will you, dear? And see that the iron
is unplugged. It was left plugged in last week.'
'Si, si, si,' said Maria, and pulled the iron-plug out of
the wall. 'I am Missus Delcalmo,' she muttered rather
sullenly, but Mrs Jordan had gone.
Maria walked back to the cottage with the coloured
dresses and aprons folded in a pile almost to her chin.
At the door she stopped. There was a car pulled up beside
the back fence. As she hesitated, Mike Hannaford
came round from the back door.
'Oh, there you are! I was beginning to think there
was no one home,' he said, smiling.
Maria blushed. 'There is no one home, only me.' Oh,
why had she changed her dress before he came?
'So you've been ironing? How domesticated! Let me
carry them in for you.'
'No, no, it is all right . . . prego ... do not bother,'
she said awkwardly.
He held the wire door open for her, and followed her
in. Maria was dreadfully embarrassed. There was only
the one room, except for the tiny kitchen, and the room
was full of beds. She began putting her clothes away in
the rickety chest-of-drawers.
'It was Mandy - Miss Weston - who asked me to
come, actually,' said Mike, sensing her restraint. He did
not seem depressed at Mandy's absence, however. "Come
up to tea on Saturday," she said. Something about
rescuing her from the old witch who usually gets your
meals.'
'Oh, that is Mrs Binks, the wife of Fred, you understand
. . . Mandy and Mitch have gone with them on aa
pickernick, I think she said, down by the river.'
'A picnic. And they didn't invite you?'
"They ask me, yes; but I have much ironing, I am
busy, as you see. I am to get the tea ready before the
others return.'
She went through to the lean-to kitchen and began
clattering the few saucepans.
He came and lounged in the kitchen doorway, one
hand on the lintel over his head. 'Gosh! I could scarcely
stand up in there. What are you making for tea? Can I
help?'
'Oh - omelettes, I am thinking. But perhaps you
could light the kerosene stove for me? I am a little
nervous of it.'
'Well, you don't need to start yet.'
Maria looked confused. 'I thought perhaps a cup of
tea? I cannot offer you wine.'
'That's all right. I've got beer in the car, and a bottle
of gin, and lemon squash - the lot. Hold on, I'll get
them. Never mind making tea.'
As soon as he'd gone Maria dashed to the mirror in
the outer room and did her hair. She looked longingly
at the new dress, hanging on the wall. . . .
Fortunately Mike came in backwards, his arms full
of bottles. As he edged past the swinging wire door,
Maria gave a small scream.
'Memento, signor - si vi piace -I am not ready. I am
changing my dress. Do not look, please!'
'AH right, but hurry, before I drop these bottles - my
sole contribution to the feast. I'll count a hundred.'
He began counting slowly, but then faster and faster,
till he gabbled: 'Ninety-nine, hundred, coming ready or not!'
He turned to see Maria, flushed and with her beautiful,
abundant dark hair disarranged, doing up the
demure white collar of a blue dress. It had a youthfullyfull skirt and became her very well.
Mike whistled. 'Some dress, Maria!'
'You mean it pleases you?'
'I'll say! Didn't the boys ever whistle at you in the
street in Italy?'
'No. . . . They do not whistle. Sometimes they made
a hissing noise, sss-ss! or said Bellezza that is "Beauty"
in English.'
'I'll bet they did!'
Maria smoothed her hair. 'I didn't see you at Mass
this morning, Mr-Mr Mike.'
'Just Mike will do. No, I'm a back-slider, I'm afraid.
I must go next week, before Father O'Toole comes after
me.
'Do you go to Confession, Mike?'
'No; I'm not a very good Catholic, as I said. In Italy,
I imagine, the Church is different, stronger ... a real
part of the people's lives. Here, we live so much out-of
doors, and ... I don't know. Sometimes I feel nearer
to God on a spring day in the vineyard, with the little
leaves sprouting from the dead wood, than in that rather
ugly modern church in the town.'
'Yes, it is different, I think. Our churches are so old.
You open the door, or go past the leather curtain, and
inside it is dark, and quiet, and peaceful, with only the
candle-flames and the coloured windows to give light
There is a smell of ... I went once to the Public
Library in Melbourne, and it had this smell, of something
old, and precious. . . . The air is holy.'
'Yes, I understand.' He was staring at her meditatively,
her pale Madonna-face and waving dark hair
above the blue dress. Maria . . . Santa Maria. . . .
' Then there are the feast days and the processions and
the Festival of the Car at the Duomo in Firenze. . ..
Religion is gay in Italy, sometimes.'
Florence, and Mario. . . . His image was faint as a
ghost's.
Mike had put the bottles down on the table in the
middle of the room. 'Well, let's be gay too. Any glasses?'
'Only cups. I will get some.'
She brought the thick white cups from the kitchen,
while Mike produced a bottle-opener. He opened the
beer, but Maria shook her head. She said that she was
frightened of Australian beer, she once had a very little
and it went to her head.
'I would have thought it was safer than gin; however,
I'll mix you a mild gin squash,' said Mike.
She thought it tasted like a plain fizzy drink, and
finished it quickly. 'It was hot ironing, and I am thirsty,'
she said, holding out her empty cup to be filled. Mike
looked at her in some surprise, but mixed her another,
and poured himself a second beer.
Maria's dark eyes were very bright. Through the
cottage windows she could see the feathery rows of the
vines, intensely green in the yellow light of afternoon.
If only there were wine, and music, she would feel quite
at home. Her knees felt rather weak, they were aching
in a queer way. She sat down on the side of a stretcher.
Mike, sitting on the end of the table, pulled a mouth
organ out of his shirt pocket, and began playing 'Maria,
Maria'. It was as if he had heard her wish.
Tears came into Maria's eyes; the music made her
almost painfully happy. She sang softly:

'Speramo ce parla.' . . .
Maria, oi Maria!'

To hide her tears, she got up and said she had better
begin preparing the meal. Mike wandered to the kitchendoor after her, still playing. Then he put the mouth
organ in his pocket and lit the stove for her.
Maria tried to pick up too many eggs at once, and
one rolled on to the floor and exploded like a small
bomb. She stood clutching the rest of the eggs helplessly
to her breast, staring at Mike in distress, two large tears
still in her eyes. Ah, how clumsy! What would he think
of her?
Mike thought that she looked very sweet and appealing.
He took the eggs gently from her, put them down
on the little table, and folded her in his arms.
'Don't be upset,' he said. 'Don't you know that we
have a proverb: "You can't make omelettes without
breaking eggs"?'
'But not on the floor!' Maria's voice was muffled. 'I
am so - mi vergogna. . .'
'Well, it is better to use a bowl. . . .'
Then they both began to laugh. She looked up into
his face, and he kissed her laughing mouth, and her
lovely eyes, still wet and tasting of tears. His arms tightened
round her. The stove purred quietly.
Just then there was a crash as the front fly-wire door
was flung back. They jumped apart; Maria began
feverishly breaking eggs into a bowl.
Mandy's voice sounded wearily: 'Well, thank God!
My poor feet! It must be nearly a hundred miles from
the river by your damned short cuts.'
'Nonsense! You're soft, that's all. Just because you're
used to driving everywhere.'
'I am making omelettes!' called Maria gaily.
'And I'm breaking the eggs,' said Mike.
There was a small, stunned silence from the other
room, then Mandy gasped: 'Mike's here!' and fled towards
the mirror.
But Mike was already stooping through the kitchen
doorway.
'Hullo girls, I'm afraid you weren't expecting me.
Mandy did ask me to tea a couple of weeks ago, and I
thought it was tonight.'
'Hullo, Mike. We're glad to have you,' said Mitch.
Mandy looked at him silently. She knew that her hair
was a mess, that she had no lipstick on, that her
face was shiny and sweat-streaked, her legs and arms
scratched from the lignum bushes Mitch had led her
through. And here he was, in a white shirt and a plain
tie, a well-cut sports coat and perfectly creased grey
trousers; she had never seen him looking so handsome,
assured and well-dressed. And at the corner of his mouth
was a little smear of lipstick.
She turned blindly towards the mirror, groping for a
brush. Her jealousy of Maria was like a physical pain
in her breast. Now that she was sure that she had lost
him, she wanted Mike more than any man she had ever
known.
Mitch went through to the kitchen to wash her hands
and help Maria, who was, she noticed, looking remarkably
pretty and animated.
When she had brushed her hair and dashed on some
lipstick, Mandy felt a little better, though she was tired
from the long walk and knew her face looked drawn.
She turned towards Mike and said in a low voice:
'You might have waited for me.'
'I did wait. I've been here over half an hour.' He
handed her a cupful of beer, and poured another for
himself. He was being wilfully obtuse.
'You know what I mean.'
He was enjoying for once being master of the situation;
but before he could reply Mitch came in and flung
herself on her stretcher.
She waved her hand at the thick white cups on the
table. 'Come, fill the Cup . . .' she murmured.
'Beer or gin, Mitch?'
'Oh, a beer please, Mike! I've got a thirst as long as
the Murray. How thoughtful of you to have turned up
with all these lovely bottles.'
He poured another drink for Maria and took it
through to the kitchen. She looked at him with shining
eyes. A light golden omelette was steaming in the pan,
Maria was sorry she had no herbs or cheese to flavour
it with, but the natural flavour of the butter would have
to do. Australian butter was tasty and salty, she was beginning
to like it very much.
Over the omelettes and the beer they all became quite
gay. Mandy had recovered her poise, and was the gayest
of them all. Maria, who had finished her third gin
squash, was inclined to giggle. Mitch gave an imitation
of Rosie's performance with the blancmange, and Dianne's
discomfiture, which reduced them to helpless
shrieks of laughter. Mike brought out his mouth-organ
and played.
The night, instead of becoming cooler, grew hotter
and more oppressive. Moths and flying-ants made a
cloud about the lamp, for the wire screens did not fit
properly. The ants shed their wings and went crawling
about looking for cracks in which to found new colonies.
Mitch, going out to empty the teapot after making
tea - for Mike and Maria had washed up, and Mandy
protested that she was too tired to lift a finger - saw that
the whole sky had clouded over. There was not a star
to be seen, and it was breathlessly still.
'Feels a bit like a thunderstorm coming,' she said as
she re-entered. Mike looked worried for a moment.
'Hope not,' he said. 'Rain now might ruin the gordos
and sullies if we don't get a drying wind after it. And
some of the currants are spread in the open.'
'Won't the roofs protect the sultanas that are already
on the drying-racks?' asked Mandy.
'Not if the rain drifts at all. I'd have to let down the
weather-curtains. And of course, if you leave them down
too long the fruit goes mouldy.'
'Mold-y?' asked Maria,
'Yair - whiskers all over 'em, you know. And I'm the
one who's held responsible. The poor bloody foreman is
responsible for everything, except the weather; and
they've got an idea that even that's my fault.'
He told them about the year when a stray monsoon
wandered down from the north and lingered about the
river towns for a week. The fruit still on the vines
cracked, and was then sucked dry by ants and bees; the
fruit on the racks sprouted whiskers long enough to
shave. Only a fraction of the usual hundreds of tons was
exported that year; and some of the smaller growers
faced ruin.
Other years there were droughts, when the river fell
below the level of the pumps, and had to be dammed;
or the lock-gates were opened too soon and millions of
gallons of life-giving water flowed away and were lost
in the sea. Then would come a flood so high that the
pump-house was inundated, and the vineyards as well,
and when the waters receded they left a saline deposit
leached from the soil, which began to kill the vines and
fruit trees. Then of course there were plagues of caterpillars
or snails, and the menace of odium and block-rot;
of severe frosts damaging the young shoots in spring.
'Always something interesting happening,' said Mike
with a grin.Tap!I Tap-tap-tap!
Something hit the iron roof like a hail of small
pebbles.
Mike sat tense and alert. A sudden gust of warm wind
banged the wire door to and fro. There was a feel of
dampness in the air.
Tap-tap-tap! Tap-tap-tap! Then a steady drumming
on the galvanised-iron roof.
'Hell! Rain!' Mike was on his feet instantly. 'My
hat?' No, I didn't bring one. Sorry, girls, but I must
sprint. I'll have to get the currants under cover. Thanks
very much for the meal.' He was at the door.
'Wait! Mike!' Maria had dashed to her corner of the
room, and was already tying a scarf over her dark hair,
dragging on a raincoat, 'I am coming to help you, I am
not tired.' She glanced at Mandy, daring her to deny
that she had just said she was too tired to move. 'I am
strong, I do not mind the rain.'
While Mike was still protesting, Maria dashed out of
the door ahead of him and ran to the car. She was rather
amazed at herself. She had lost all her timidity, and felt
strong and sure and wise.
'Well! What's come over our little Maria?' Mitch
said wonderingly. 'How much gin has she had, do you
suppose ?'
Mandy did not answer. She had flung herself on her
stretcher with her face to the wall. 'She really must be
exhausted,' Mitch thought.
Mandy was silently reviling herself. Why hadn't she
thought of offering to help Mike? It was she who should
be out there with him in the warm darkness. Always
something went wrong or came between them. Why
had she tired herself out walking back from the river?
And then, when he drew out the mouth-organ just now, after tea, she had not been able to repress a tiny
shudder of distaste, sure that he would play some dreadful
pop tune. . . .
He had begun a sensitive rendering of Schubert's
'Serenade'. Though she didn't like mouth-organs, she was
pleased at his skill.
'I didn't know you were musical,' she said, and felt
that she sounded condescending.
He had looked at her rather mockingly, tapped the
instrument on the palm of his hand, and said: 'There
are quite a lot of things you don't know about me.'
She was tempted to puncture his unusual complacency,
to say: 'I know something you don't think I know, about
your grandmother,' but she couldn't do it. Instead she
had turned away, pretending indifference. He began to
play an Italian song for Maria; and when Maria asked
her to sing, she refused.
Mandy groaned and bit the pillow.
'Why don't you get right into bed, Man?' said Mitch,
sympathetically. 'You'll be more comfortable if you get
undressed before you fall asleep.'
She mumbled something in reply, pretending to be
half-asleep already. But her every nerve was stretched
taut: the rain drumming on the iron roof seemed unbearably
loud.
XIII

Oh, Thou, who didst with Pitfall and with Gin
Beset the Road I was to wander in,
Thou wilt not with P'redestination round
Enmesh me, and impute my Fall to Sin?

Mike drove fast, saying little, feeling Maria's worshipping
gaze on his face in the dim light. Here was a mess!
The girl had probably never been kissed before, regarded
it as a sort of betrothal. There had been no time
to speak, to dismiss the moment of tenderness into
which he had been surprised, with a light word and a
laugh.
As they turned into the gate and drove along the track
of the other property towards the racks, he took one
hand from the wheel and clasped hers that were lying
in her lap.
'Look, Maria, I shouldn't have done that - kissed you,
I mean. You're only a kid, I know. But you looked so
sad and funny when you dropped that egg, and I suppose
I wanted to comfort you.' At the same moment a
sharp memory came back to him of the softness of her
lips, of her shoulders, and he knew that he wanted to
kiss her again. Hell! He glared at the rain which flew
towards the windscreen like a handful of flung spears,
or a shower of meteors from a radiant point somewhere
ahead.
'You are wrong, Mike. I am not a child. I am married.
My husband, he is dead.'
'Maria! I'm sorry.' He stopped the car by the racks,
but for the moment the fruit was forgotten. 'I had no
idea! You look so young.' The scarf over her hair framed
her face, hid the abundant hair, made her look suddenly
more mature. He squeezed her hand and got out. Maria
tumbled out the other side.
'I'll get a hurricane lantern alight.' They ran to the
shed, and he struck matches and found the lantern on a
shelf, full of kerosene. When together they went out into
the rain. He had put a clean sack over his shoulders to
keep off the worst of it.
Only two days before, Mitch and Mandy had spent
the afternoon spreading and rolling out the great heaps
of dried currants on the hessian ground-sheets into
which they had been shaken. They were now almost
ready to be tipped into the sweat-boxes and carted off
to the co-operative packing-sheds for cleaning and packaging.
The rain was falling directly on to them.
Mike threw canvas covers over the larger heaps, and
together he and Maria dragged the smaller ones to
shelter. Then they let down the weather-curtains on the
windward side of the racks where the sultanas were
already turning golden and wrinkled.
They were just in time, Mike said. No damage would
be done as long as the rain did not go on for days, and
a drying wind came up by the morning. Maria looked
at the rain slanting in golden lines past the lantern, at
Mike's figure as they sheltered in the lee of a rack. She
felt strangely exhilarated by their isolation in that circle
of dim radiance, all around them the night, the silence,
the darkness and the warm rain.
'Thank you, Maria,' he said gently. 'You were a great
help with those heaps of currants. You must have strong
arms.'Si. I have strong arms.'
Her eyes were only pools of greater blackness in the
night, he could not see the expression in them; but he
understood the note in her voice. He turned abruptly on
his heel. 'I must put the lantern away, and take you
home.'
She followed him into the shed, and put a hand on
his damp sleeve. 'You are wet, you will be cold.'
'No, I'm not cold a bit.' He set the lantern down, but
before he put it out he stopped, arrested by the look on
her face. She was staring at him with great luminous
eyes in which her love showed plainly.
'Ah, Mike!' She took his hand and pressed it to her
lips, and then to her breast, inside the stiff raincoat.
Mike stopped thinking entirely. Somehow she was in his
arms, her damp scarf fallen back from her hair, and he
was kissing her eyelids again, which no longer tasted of
salt tears, but of rain.
Lord, how soft! You forgot how soft a woman's body
could be. . . . He was remembering with his hands,
with his lips, like a blind man re-discovering a once
familiar territory. It was years, two years since a girl had
been his, and all because of his wilful pride, which had
messed up yet another affair; that, and his fear of being
trapped. . . .
'Maria. Darling!' He raised his head and looked questioningly
into her face. She looked back serenely. With
a quick movement he lifted her from her feet and laid
her on the pile of hessian in the corner. She lay with
closed eyes, smiling. He could hear nothing but the
thunder of his own heart.
Her face and throat were wet with rain, and in his
nostrils was the sweet scent of earth receiving the blessing
of moisture from the sky. He felt like a god possessing
the warm, fecund earth.

Back in the car, he sat a moment before switching on
the engine, his arm around her shoulders, his lips in her
hair. He felt both peaceful and guilty.
'Dear Maria, why did you tell me that fib?'
'Fib? Oh dear, what is "fib"? "Fig" is a fruit, this I
know - there is a tree outside the door of Mrs Binks's
and they grow also in Italy. At home, we.'
'Maria! Stop talking. I think you know very well what
a fib is. It is a lie.'
She said in a small voice: 'I do not tell lies,'
'You told me you were married, or had been married,
and your husband was dead. But you are a girl
still: or were. I can tell, darling. I am the first, isn't
it so?'
'It is so. But I was married, by proxy, to Mario
Delcalmo. He died before my ship arrives in Australia.
So, you understand, I am married yet I am not married.
I am a widow before I have been a wife.'
'Poor kid I'
'And I am not a "kid"!'
'No; you are a woman now. Maria, I'm sorry.'
'You are not sorry; you are happy. It is you who tell
fibs.'
He laughed. 'Yes, I'm happy. And you're lovely.'
He started the engine. Maria leant on his shoulder
with a happy sigh. Yet she was faintly uneasy. He had
not said one word about marrying her. And she loved
him sol

'Never again!' groaned Fred, as he helped Merv and
young Alf to unload the full tins from the cart, and
stack them beside the dip. 'Gurh, I feel awful. Can'tunderstand it, I never drunk nothin' but wine. Not as
though I was mixing me drinks or anythink.'
'What did yer do to yer face, Fred? Spoilt yer beauty
a bit, 'aventcher?'
'Dunno,' said Fred mendaciously, fingering his scored
cheek. 'Must of run into a barb-wire fence, I s'pose.'
'Or a rose-bush, per'aps?' said Merv, with a wink at
young Alf.
Fred ignored this, and they unloaded the rest of the
tins in silence, and piled a load of empties back on the
cart.
Mitch, watching from up on the rack where they were
now spreading on the third layer, several feet from the
ground, saw horse and cart disappear between the rows
of vines as into a green sea. The rack was like a jetty;
and from it she saw Fred and Alf borne along over the
waves of the vines as if by some miraculous process; they
were like old Triton and some attendant merman, and
she half-expected, at the end of a row, to see emerge a
boat of mother-of-pearl drawn by dolphins, instead of
the rickety cart and the prosaic form of Peanut.
Peanut, lusting after sultanas, made a nuisance of
himself at lunch-time, and had to be tied up well away
from the racks. Now, towards the end of March, there
was beginning to be a nip in the air, a touch of autumn.
It was cold if you were not actually in the sun. All the
pickers began gathering round the dip-fire at lunchtime,
toasting their sandwiches or boiling billies.
Mitch, asking after the health of the gloomy Myrtle,
was answered by Big Alf:
'Oh, she's not too good at present. It's the Change
comin' on her, yer see.'
'Oh, er, I see,' said Mitch, supposing that as a married
woman she must expect these confidences. 'My husband is coming up next week-end,' she said brightly.
'That'll be nice, love. A real second honeymoon, it'll
be. Alf an' me, we always go away together every year,
on our annivers'ry. Last year we was snatchin' potatoes
down in the south-east; next year we're goin' hop pickin!'
Mitch ground her teeth. What did this middle-aged
shapeless pair know of love? She and Richard were
young, and they should be together. Oh, why couldn't
they get a house? She closed her eyes and saw quite
clearly Richard's slim hips and waist, his broad
shoulders and smooth, hairless chest; and turned faint
with desire and longing. Oh, Richard, Richard!
She was lonely for him, among all the companionship
of the other girls; for Maria seemed to have some secret
happiness of her own into which she had withdrawn;
while Mandy was in one of her moods, silent and glum,
or flaring up over nothing.

Mike had taken the spark-plugs out of the tractor to
clean them.
'Where they dirty, Mike?' David was leaning forward
with his hands on his little grubby knees, inspecting
the spark-plugs lying in a clean handkerchief. Mitch
whipped out her pencil and sketch-pad, catching his
pose while he was intent and still.
'The points are dirty, these pieces of wire here, see?
When they're dirty they won't make a spark, and the
engine won't go.'
The rain had blown away quickly and left no ill effects.
Some of the sultanas were already dry. They had been
shaken down that morning and spread on sheets on the
ground.
There came a roar from Merv, who came chargingalong the rack, brandishing the dip-strainer in one huge
fist.
"That ruddy 'orsel' he shouted, belabouring Peanut.
' 'E's eatin' the dried sullies now.'
Peanut had browsed right across a sheet of hessian,
leaving a clean wake. Mike rushed to help Merv, and
Peanut, snatching a last mouthful, ambled off.
When Mike came back he was met by a cheerful
David, clutching the handkerchief to his breast, in which
reposed six dripping wet spark-plugs.
'I was'ed them for you, Mike,' he said. 'They'll 'park
in a minnut.'
'Oh, Davey! You naughty boy I' cried Mother Mac,
but after a moment of consternation Mike gave a shout
of laughter.
'Thanks a lot, old man,' he said, taking the bundle of
wet plugs. 'You're a great help round the place.'
Maria looked at him tenderly. He was so good and
kind! And she had been so frightened of him, that first
day, when he got cross with her for picking every grape
off its stem. She belonged to him now, and she was glad.
If he beat her every day, she would still want to be his.
David went up to Mandy, asking from habit: 'Where's
your watz, Mandy? Is your watz broked? What time
does it say?'
Abstractedly she held out her left wrist to him, but
he kept piping: 'Where's your watz, Mandy? Where's
your watz?'
'Oh, for heaven's sake, David,' she said irritably. 'It's
on my wrist, of course.'
'No, it's not!' his voice squeaked with excitement. 'It's
not on your writz. Is it broked?'
Mandy looked at her wrist, and gave a small scream.
'It's gone! My watch!'
'You can't have put it on this morning,' said Mitch.
'But I did! I know, because I checked it when the
en o'clock whistle blew, just after breakfast. I had it
then.'
'It must have fallen off when you were spreading.'
'Yes. Maybe.' She looked at Maria. 'Or maybe not. As
Jordan says, pickers will take anything.'
'Mandy!' Mitch stared at her. 'If anyone found it,
VI hand it back to you, I'm sure.'
'Maybe,' said Mandy again. Maria moved uncomfortably
under her stare.
of course they would,' said Mitch crossly.
The missing watch threw a blight over their hut. That
"it Mitch and Maria searched, while Mandy ostentatiously
did not. 'You won't find it,' was all she would say. 'It's not just that it's a valuable watch, but it was
my mother's.'
'You shouldn't have worn it on the block,' said Mitch. 'I thought it was safer than leaving it here.'
Maria took a deep breath and said carefully, 'Mandy, you perhaps think that I?'
'Oh, what rot, Maria!' interrupted Mitch. 'I think nothing,' said Mandy. 'It's gone, and there is no use talking about it.'
They went to bed in silence, and there was none of the usual light-hearted chatter after the lamp was out.
XIV

Ah, Moon of my Delight, who know'st no wane
The Moon of Heav'n is rising once again:
How oft hereafter rising shall she look
Through this same Garden after me - in vain!

Mitch was glad that a full moon coincided with
Richard's visit to Vindura. She was convinced that she
was sensitive to the moon's phases much as the sea was,
and like those sea-creatures of sub-tropical waters which
come to the surface to mate only on the night of full
moon, she became restless and excited and unable to
sleep on such nights.
He arrived by plane on Friday afternoon, and Mitch
left work early to go and meet him. She'd had to tell
Rosie Binks that she would not be in to meals for the
next two days, and had endured the inevitable reference
to 'a second honeymoon', with a terrifying leer from
Rosie's battered face. Mandy and Maria were coming
to the hotel to dinner with them on Saturday night.
At the Community Hotel she spread her few things
round the room, making herself at home.
'Oh, it's lovely, Richard. What luxury-three whole
rooms!' She opened the door once more into the white
tiled bathroom, and peeped again into the sitting-room.
There were wall-to-wall carpets, soft and thick, and full
length mirrors.
He caught her as she went flitting past, and folded her
in his long arms. He looked over her head at their reflection in a wall-mirror. She was a little thing, but full
of vitality. He closed his eyes and felt her well-remembered
shape, smelled her remembered perfume. He
removed his glasses and peered at the large bed.
'That bed,' he said. 'It looks all right, but I think we
should just try it out, don't you. . . ?'

Mitch woke some time after midnight and knew at
once that Richard was with her. It was as if they had
never been apart. They had gone down to dinner and
had what seemed a wonderful meal after Mrs Binks's
cooking, and a bottle of wine with it. And then . . .
There's a picture on at the local theatre if you want to
see it,' said Mitch.
They looked at each other and laughed, and went
straight upstairs after coffee. They had a bath together
in the gleaming sunken bath like two children, and went
back to bed.
Mitch lay and looked at Richard, who had rolled away
from her and was sleeping peacefully on his back, his
long legs spread half across the bed. In the moonlight
coming through the big french windows she could see
his light, tousled hair, his gentle mouth and closed eyes.
He had his lost, little-boy look without his glasses. She
resisted the impulse to kiss him, he must be tired after
his journey.
Instead she slipped quietly out of bed and went over
the soft carpet to the french windows that opened on to the balcony, with a view over the river. She undid the
latch, and the light of the full moon streamed whitely
into the room. Below lay the hotel garden sloping down
to the water's edge.
'Oh!' breathed Mitch. She could see a great curve of
the river gleaming under the moon. The smell of waterand trees came up to her, the throaty chorus of frogs,
the strange, hollow cry of water-birds. She stepped forward,
forgetting the high step, and landed on the
balcony with a crash and a cry of agony.
'Oh! My toe, my toe!'
Richard was with her in a moment, half-awake.
'I've never seen such a clumsy idiot,' he said crossly.
'What did you go and do that for?'
'I couldn't HELP it. I was just going out on to the
balcony, and there was a step.'
'Of course there was a step. The step was there this
afternoon when we went out to look at the sunset. I
believe you like knocking yourself about.'
'Richard!' she wailed. "You might show a bit of
sympathy. I think my toe is broken.'
He lifted her up and carried her inside, and they examined
her left big toe in the light. It was already turning
blue and beginning to swell.
'Not broken,' he said, waggling the bone. "You've
sprained it, that's all. I'll make you a cold compress.'
He bound the toe carefully with a wet face-cloth, his
hands gentle and deft. He was properly awake now, and
in a better temper. He comforted and caressed her until
she forgot the pain in her foot, and at last fell deeply
and peacefully asleep in his arms.

On Monday morning Mitch came trailing in to breakfast
last. She was tired, and depressed because Richard
was gone and it was nearly two months before she would
be returning to him. She limped perceptibly, for her toe
was still swollen and painful.
'Oh-oh!' cried Rosie, who was just setting the teapot
down on the table. ' 'Ere comes the bride! Eh, look at
her, Fred. Second honeymoon too much for yer, lover? Never mind, a good strong cupper tea'll set you up.'
'I had a fall at the hotel, and sprained my toe.' said
Mitch with dignity.
'Sprained 'er toe! 'Er toe! That's a good one. Ha-ha
ho-ho-ho!'
Mitch just restrained herself from casting the sugar
bowl at Rosie, and gave a long-suffering smile to the
others. She was worried about the future of their little
group, for Maria and Mandy had scarcely addressed
each other at dinner the other night. This morning they
seemed more cheerful, but this may have been because
they were going to see Mike today. She had a shrewd
idea of how Maria felt about Mike, and that Mandy
would like to cut her out. There was more than the
incident of the missing watch behind their hostility, she
felt sure.
Mandy, for her part, was determined not to give up
Mike without a struggle. He had so nearly been hers,
up to that night by the Lock when she had behaved so
foolishly.
She would like to begin wearing a dress to work, like
Maria, so that he could see her to more advantage; but
after all, he had seen her in a bathing-costume, and presumably
his imagination and memory were adequate.
She decided on a piece of active strategy.
They were now working on the topmost layer of the
rack, hanging on somehow with their elbows while
standing on a plank. Mitch, because of her injured toe,
found difficulty in climbing up, and was set to stoking
the dip, unloading full tins, and stacking empties ready
for the cart to pick up.
Mike, who often helped the spreaders when a heavy
load came in, or when they had spread a load of dipped
fruit just before lunch or smoke-oh, stood beside Mandy
and rolled the wet bunches across the wire-netting. Sometimes
their gloved hands touched. It was both disturbing
and delightful to have him so near.
He got down to tighten a sagging layer, standing just
below. Mandy looked down out of the corner of her eye,
gave a small scream, and stepped with apparent artlessness
off the plank.
It was high enough from the ground for her to have
injured herself quite badly. It was a calculated risk she
took, and he did not fail her. He turned and caught her
in his arms, staggering at the impact to regain his
balance.
'I told you to be careful I' he scolded, still holding her
in his arms.
She looked up at him, unsmiling. 'Oh, Mike!' she said
softly. His eyes travelled over her lovely face and dwelt
upon her mouth; he kissed her with his eyes, not his lips.
The trolley was coming back with a load of dipped fruit,
and he set her gently on her feet.
'Mike!' she cried again. 'I want to see you, alone. I
must see you. There's something I want to tell you.
When?'
'I don't know. Saturday.' He looked away, towards
the approaching trolley pushed by Tom and Dick.
'Saturday, then - at five, I'll be down by the river, just
below the wharf. We always go into town on Saturday,
and I'll give the others the slip.'
'AH right.' He looked both pleased and troubled.
When the trolley came he did not climb up again beside
her, but went back to the dip to help Mitch.

Maria had dreaded the thought of going to Confession,
yet she knew she would feel better when she had
told her sin and been absolved.
She had not seen Mike alone since the night of the
thunderstorm; he had not suggested that they should
meet, or that he should come to the cottage. Perhaps he
was feeling ashamed of himself, sorry for what had happened?
It had been her fault, really. She did not know
what had come over her; perhaps she'd had too much
of that drink which looked like lemon squash. She was
glad this time that Mike was not in church.
She trembled as she knelt in the confessional and
heard the priest's stern questions: 'It has not happened
again? Do you truly repent of your sin?' and at last
heard the words: 'Go in peace, my daughter, and sin no
more.'
Now she felt better, picking in the cool early morning
sunlight opposite Mother Mac, while young David
crawled to and fro through the vines. The sultanas were
trellised, but not nearly as high or thick as the currant
vines, so that she could see her partner's kindly wrinkled
face and her spectacles flashing in the sun as she worked.
There was a certain satisfaction in picking sultanas,
for the bunches were so big and fat that only a few were
necessary to fill a tin. But the piece-rates had dropped
by half, so that she did not earn any more money.
She was beginning to feel that she had always lived in
Vindura, Australia, as though her other life had been
a dream; a dream dreamt only last night, still clear in
her memory, but belonging to a different order of reality.
Because Mike was here she could not imagine living
anywhere else. What was she to do when the grape
picking season was over? Perhaps she could get a job in
the packaging factory for the winter. She would have
to ask that Mr Pike, the one Mitch said was 'drongo'.
Her happiness had been ruined for the time being by
the loss of the watch. Mandy showed that she was suspicious, in all sorts of little ways. No one would believe
that Maria had not stolen it; even Mitch must be wondering. What if the police came for her? Perhaps she
would be sent back to her own country. . . . She knew
for certain now that she did not want to go. Since she
had worked close to its soil, she felt that she belonged
to her adopted land.
Then an incident occurred which made her feel, in
spite of her worry over the watch, that the other workers
were really her friends, her 'mates' as they called it.
People who worked together were mates, and they
always stuck up for each other.
It was Merv who first told the story, walking up from
the dip to the shadow of the racks at lunch-time, with a
great vein standing out in his brown neck, his hairy fists
clenched.
'It makes me bloody wild!' he was muttering.
"What does, Merv?'
'No drinkin'-water, that's what!'
'Water! Didn't know yer touched the stuff. Now if it
was beer'
'No, but these Eyetalians over on Pike's other block,
they got three little kids and a baby, see? And no fresh
water, because old Pike was too flamin' mean to let 'em
have any. ''e said they could drink the water out of the
channel - stagnant stuff left from the last bloody irrigation.
Now they'se come out all over sores, and bloody
well 'ad to go to 'orspital.'
'Shame!'
'He shouldn't be allowed to get away with that.'
'I suppose they could have boiled the channel water,'
said Mandy.
'Perhaps they're living in a tent, with no proper stove,'
said Mitch.
'They'se livin' in a caravan, just here for the season.
There's a bloody great three-thousand gallon tank on the
shed near them, but Pike reckoned they'd waste the rainwater.'
'She
would have much washing, the poor lady, with
four bambini,' said Maria.
'Well, what say we send a deputation to old Pike, saying
if they don't get a fair bloody go we stop getting the
crop in? The winter's comin', and he wouldn't like the
grapes to stop on the vines until it rains, now would he?'
'I'll be in on that, mate.'
'You've got to show 'im 'e can't get away with that
sort of thing.'
'All in favour? Righto. Now I'll just send round the
hat. Any little contributions gratefully accepted. We
should rake up enough to pay the bloody doctor's bill,
anyway.'
Maria was amazed to see the pile of silver coins growing
in the hat, on top of a crumpled ten-shilling note
put in by Merv. They were giving money for a family
they had never seen, a family of Italians; but they were
fellow-workers. She dropped in her own contribution.
Mandy pulled a folded pound-note out of the pocket of
her jeans and added it to the pile.
'Officially, I'm supposed to be on the bosses' side, but
here's my bit,' said Mike adding a handful of loose coins.
Merv grinned, his tombstone teeth flashing beneath his
broken nose.
'She's jake,' he said. 'Pike'll climb down, 'e's a bloody
gutless bastard. I'll go over an' chat him this arvo. Who
else is comin'? You, Alf ? And young Joe? Good on yer.'XV

And this delightful Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River's Lip on which we lean Ah,
lean upon it lightly! for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!

Mandy did up the buttons down the front of her brown and white
striped cotton dress, with fingers that were
clumsy with excitement. She wore a necklace of white
shells, which showed up the eggshell-brown of her bare
neck and shoulders. Her hair was brushed and sleek,
gleaming like a golden helmet.
She frowned a moment, noticing her bare left wrist
and the tiny pale line where the watch-band used to
protect it from the sun. She slipped a matching shell
bracelet over the wrist. A mere dash of powder over her
fine, smooth skin, and a generous amount of lipstick on
her ripe-looking mouth, and she was ready.
Instead of trying to shake off the others after they
reached the town, she had decided to let them go on
without her, saying that she was tired and was not going
in to do any shopping that afternoon. Then she would
catch a later bus and go straight to the wharf to meet
Mike.
Such small lies did not worry Mandy; she told them
automatically and habitually, so that they almost came
more naturally to her than the truth. Yet she had been
telling the truth when she said that she wanted to see Mike alone to tell him something. She wanted to tell
him that she knew about his quartering of dark blood,
that it meant nothing to her, that he should not be
ashamed of his ancestry. She would have to be very tactful.
Yet she felt that there should be no secrets between
them, and if he would not tell her himself, she must
broach the subject. . . .
She saw him at once, standing by the water's edge,
casually dressed in slacks and an open-necked white
shirt. He seemed to sense her coming, for as she
approached noiselessly over the sloping, lawn-covered
bank he turned and smiled up at her.
It was hot down by the river, which was not rippled
by the faintest breeze, but reflected the sun dazzlingly
from its smooth surface. Mike had a small boat pulled
up to the bank, the oars ready in the rowlocks. He asked
her if she would like to go for a row on the river.
Mandy was delighted. She hadn't wanted to stay in
the centre of the town, where they might run into Mitch
and Maria at any moment. She stepped in expertly, not
rocking the boat more than necessary, but also not dispensing
with the strong arm he put out to steady her.
'Gosh, you look lovely,' he said sincerely.
She sat on a thwart and arranged her full skirts gracefully,
but not too decorously, showing her brown legs.
Mike averted his eyes modestly as he sat opposite her to
row, looking over his shoulder for direction. Mandy
laughed with excitement. She had him all to herself,
and even if Maria were here, she felt she could have held
her own. Maria was charming to look at, but she had no
style, thought Mandy complacently.
Mike rowed competently; the dinghy skimmed over
the water smoothly and silently, but for the regular click
of the rowlocks; the oar-blades flashed wetly in the sunas they turned. Mandy's heart settled down from its
wild beating, and seemed to throb in time to the regular
back-thrust of the oars. She relaxed happily, closing her
eyes against the glare of the sun. Through her lashes she
saw Mike looking at her.
'Where are we going?' she murmured.
'Up-stream. The Lock's in the other direction. Besides,
there's something I want to show you.'
They were silent for a while, and then he said: 'You're
very brown. You didn't get that tan all in one season,
I'll bet.'
'No ... I do a lot of swimming at the beach. You're
very brown, too.' She opened her eyes and looked at
him quizzically.
'Yes ...' Mike looked away, and missed a stroke with
one oar. He recovered the rhythm quickly, but she saw
that he was ill at ease. Now was the time to speak.
'I wanted to tell you.' they both began together.
They stopped and laughed, and the tension was broken.
'Never mind. It can wait,' said Mike.
'Yes. So can mine. What a perfectly heavenly afternoon!'
They
had rounded a bend and were already out of
sight of the wharf, the Riverside Club, the Hotel
gardens and the many moored launches and houseboats
of the town, though they still passed private landings
among the willows, and fishermen's cottages with
drum-nets lying about the doors. They could see the
almost imperceptible current flowing between the pillars
of the big bridge as they passed underneath-only the
second bridge in four hundred miles of river, which
elsewhere had to be crossed by punt, or car-ferry.
Now the green willows gave place to grey box trees
and the sombre blue-grey and brown-olive of gum tree foliage, the land's original flora, unchanged since it first
became a separate continent. And now, too, the land's
original inhabitants, or some pathetic remnants of
them, came into view.
Mandy saw that they had reached a point near where
she had come on the 'pickernic' with Fred and Rosie
Binks. Ahead, on the far side of the river, she saw the
miserable humpies and the drawn-up dinghies of the
blacks' camp. There was no smoke today, and it had a
deserted and desolate air.
Perhaps she had been wrong about Mike. He couldn't
be very sensitive on the subject of his relations or he
would never have brought her in this direction. She
glanced at him, and saw that he was looking at her
intently. He shipped the oars and let the boat glide on
with its own momentum.
'I've often felt,' he said, wiping the sweat from his
forehead with his shirt-sleeve, 'that you were disappointed
in me, that night when we went out to the
Lock. You wanted me to stop and talk to your social
friends; you wanted me to be one of the mob.
"Well, I'm not; and I brought you here this afternoon
to tell you why. You see those huts over there?
That's known as Pinky Flat, where the natives and half
castes live.'
'Mike!'
'Wait a minute. "Pinky", in case you didn't know, is
another name for "plonk", or the cheap wine that they
get drunk on. They're not allowed to buy alcohol, of
course, and anyone selling it to them can get pinched.
But they never have any trouble getting it - at a price.
And there doesn't seem to be a place for them, in the
white man's civilisation, to do anything else but drink.
They drink to forget their hopeless position.''It's shameful. Why, the land belonged to them first.
And now they're not even allowed to live in the town,
or have decent houses.'
'How did you know that? Anyway, there they are:
outcasts in the country where their ancestors hunted for
thousands of years, not allowed to live on the same side
of the river as the white people. And my grandmother
was born over there, lived there until she was married.
Now you know.'
'Mike,' said Mandy softly. 'I knew already. That's
what I wanted to tell you, that I knew and it didn't
matter.'
"You mean you've known all along?' He began to row
again, mechanically.
'Not all along. I didn't know that night. But I'm glad
I know now. I think it's - it's rather romantic'
'Romantic! Hell!' He rowed a few vigorous strokes.
'My grandmother married a quarter-caste who lived in
the town, and my father married a girl whose skin was
not as dark as yours. But everyone knows. You said that
night I had a chip on my shoulder. Do you wonder?
Descended from a "dirty, demoralised.'
'Yes, I wonder at you, Mike. A man of your intelligence,
to adopt the mental attitudes of the Jordans and
the Pikes of this town. How clean do you, think Mrs
Jordan would look if she was forced to live in a bag
humpy in the bush? I'd just like to see her. And that
putrid little Di-anne! As for being demoralised because
they drink, I'd say most Australians, the men, anyway,
drink too much. These people are unhappy, they don't
fit into either world, Sydney or the Bush. As you said,
they drink to forget.'
He rowed with new energy, while looking at her
admiringly.
'Mandy, you're amazing! I didn't expect you to
understand. I just wanted to end a false situation.
Besides. He was thinking of Maria; and whenever
he remembered that night in the store-shed a pang of
guilt went through him.
'I suppose, coming from the city, I have a different
point of view. Actually the only aborigine I'd ever seen
was a singer, a full-blood from the far north. He had the
most wonderful concert platform manner and superb
natural dignity. I was most impressed.'
'That's different. An artist will always find his own
level. But-for instance - would you have considered
marrying him?'
Mandy dropped her eyes and flushed a little. 'Why, I don't know. I've never thought about it; never thought of such a thing. One would have to consider the possible
children.'
"That's not quite what I meant, but never mind.'
'If you meant, did I find him attractive, the answer
is yes -I can quite understand Desdemona.'
They rowed on in silence. Mandy turned to trail her
fingers in the water over the bows. She had suddenly
found his intent scrutiny embarrassing. 'Don't forget we
have to row back again,' she murmured.
'We could always drift with the current; but it would
take a long time.'
They had rounded another bend, and now the camp
and the last vestiges of the town had dropped behind
them. Mike made for a clean spit of white sand running
down into the water on the inside of the next bend. He
beached the dinghy with a soft scrunch, jumped ashore
and pulled it up higher. Mandy stepped to the beach
dry-shod.
The sandy bank was fretted with sharp-carved linesshowing the different levels the water had reached. It
sloped up to a levee bank crowned with tussocky grasses
and skinny tobacco-bush, and was strewn with fallen
leaves and twigs, strips of smooth bark, and small,
woody fruits from a great red-gum growing at the
water's edge.
The huge root system spread partly over the surface
of the ground. Half-way up the trunk was a large black
excrescence, a kind of diseased growth distorting the
tree's symmetry.
'They call those nigger-heads,' said Mike, pointing.
'Ugly things!'
'Hush! Mike.' Mandy put her hand over his lips.
'You don't have to wear your chip with me.'
He pressed her hand against his lips, then her wrist
and elbow, and bent his dark head to kiss her bare
shoulder.
'My love!' he said. 'I love you, Mandy. I've never
known anyone like you. . . . Ever since you fell off the
cart that day . . .'
'And I had to fall off the rack as well before I could
get you to admit it.'
'You mean you fell off there on purpose? You mad
girl, you might have broken your neck! Don't ever do
anything like that again. You're too lovely, too precious,
too beautiful . . .'
She closed her eyes and let his wild words flow over
her, like balm to her scarred and homeless spirit. When
his lips found hers at last she was half fainting with
happiness. 'I must sit down, Mike. You make me feel
hollow-kneed.'
He lowered her gently to the warm sand, half in the
shadow of the great tree, and sat beside her, gazing
tenderly at her face, her lips, her closed eyes. He pushed the soft hair behind one ear and traced its outline. With
trembling fingers he smoothed the curve of her brows,
the faint hollow of her cheek.
There came a high-pitched, mellow trumpeting, and
Mandy opened her eyes to see two black swans flying
down the river, low above the water, their long black
necks outstretched, their white wing-tips beating. At
each downstroke a double flash of white was reflected
from the surface. They glided down to landing at the
end of the reach, one behind the other, setting up a
wake of foam, and then sailed about with arched necks.
At that distance they were more than mere birds,
symbolic, heart-rendingly lovely. Foolish tears started to
her eyes. Once more a mood of melancholy threatened
to defeat her.
'Good Lord!' She was startled out of it by Mike's
vigorous exclamation. "The dinghy! I didn't fix it
properly, and it's floated off. Oh, hell, it isn't mine
either, or I'd let it go.'
They gazed after the dinghy, which had drifted to
mid-stream where the current was strongest. It was
beginning to float back the way they had come.
'Sorry, Mandy, but I'll have to go after it.' Mike stood
up and began stripping off his clothes. She sat with her
hands clasped about her knees and watched as, clad only
in his brief underpants, he made a running dive and
swam strongly after the truant boat. He guided it back
to shore without attempting to climb into it, and this
time fixed it securely with a clove-hitch round a projecting
root. She looked appreciatively at his lithe brown
limbs and muscular shoulders, but she said, mocking at
them both: 'Just like Alan Ladd! He always manages
to strip off before an admiring audience.'
'Ah, come off it! D'you think I did it on purpose?'
He turned his back on her and began pulling on his
clothes. The moment of tenderness was gone.
She laughed, seeing his small boy's scowl as he turned,
struggling with a shoe. She was not to know that all his
boyhood he had gone barefoot, until his father had suddenly
decreed that he must never go out without shoes
on again: 'That's how the black kids go about. My kids
have got to act white, see?'
She leaned over and touched his hand. 'I was only
teasing you. Why are you so touchy, Mike?'
'I am with you, because I'm not your sort. I know
you're only amusing yourself with me.'
'Mike, that's not true! Do you want me to prove it
to you? Let's stay here, I'll stay with you all night if
you like. As a-as a sort of an act of faith.'
He lifted her to her feet and kissed her, but his face
was troubled. 'You see, I didn't tell you . . . I'm really
not a practised Don Juan, but the fact is ... Maria.'
'Maria!' Mandy recoiled slightly. 'You mean?'
'I'm afraid so. I feel terrible about it, honestly. She's
such a child in some ways, but I thought she'd been
married before, and - oh, hell! I felt I ought to tell you
that she has a sort of a prior claim on me. It was you
I wanted really, it was you I loved all the time, but
you seemed hostile, and.'
'And Maria threw herself at your head? Oh, I know,
I've seen the way she looks at you. What a mess! And
I was feeling so happy, it's so peaceful here.' She flung
her arms round his neck. 'Let's forget there is anyone
else in the world.'
He gently detached her arms. 'No, we'd better get
back. The chap wants his boat at sunset. I'll have to see
Maria and straighten things out, tell her about you.
Poor kid! She'll take it pretty hard, I'm afraid.'
Mandy bit her lip, hard. She was not used to being
refused, and the sweetness of desire was beginning to
turn sour with keeping. On the row back she only just
managed to conceal that she was in a terrible temper.
For the time being she hated Maria.XVI

And look - a thousand Blossoms with the Day
Woke - and a thousand scattered into Clay:
And this first Summer Month that brings the Rose
Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobad away.

Autumn had come upon Vindura by imperceptible
degrees. The mornings were colder, the sun rose later;
distances were softened by a blue frost-smoke which
hung in the air until nearly midday.
The young poplar trees had turned to pencils of
yellow flame, and at each gust the leaves were scattered
like sparks. Maria felt in tune with the season as she
looked at the sad, sodden gold drifted along the drive.
Her hopes were falling one by one like withered leaves.
Yet the vines were still green - and vigorous, she
noticed as she walked between the rows of gordomuscatels
which they had been picking since the
sultanas cut out. She liked eating the luscious muscatels,
with their pulpy flesh in clear globes big enough to be
taken in two bites; but they had large bitter, pips.
She took a bunch with her, as she went up to the
dip at lunch-time, to eat with the rather unsatisfying
sandwiches that Mrs Binks prepared. Mother Mac had
gone off among the higher rows with David, who always
had to be helped when he wanted to relieve himself.
She met Mike at the end of the row, and they walked
together along to the dip.
He laughed as she screwed up her face over the tart, astringent taste of a pip she had just bitten into. There was a clever machine at the packing-sheds, he told her,
which removed the pips while still leaving the dried
raisins almost whole. They were then just right for
making plum-puddings and mince-pies.
He explained that a plum-pudding had no plums, and
a mince-pie no meat, and that they were eaten as an
accompaniment to roast turkey and ham at Christmastime.
(She had never known an Australian Christmas,
as she had spent hers with the Italian family in
Melbourne.)
"They are all the same as antipasta, si? Meencepie
and plumpud'?'
'Well, I don't know. What is antipasta?'
'In Italy, we have before the meal, to commence with.
Olives, perhaps, or ham and melon, or anchovies in oil. Pasta is spaghett', macaroni, ravioli - antipasta we eat
before the pasta.'
'Er, no, that's what we call savouries. These others
are sweet, and pretty solid. I'd like to try some of this
Da-Italian food, though I don't think you can beat good old steak and eggs.'
'I would like to cook for you.'
Oh, hell, thought Mike, how did I get into this?
He remembered the omelette she had prepared for him
that night. It had been a jolly good omelette, too. He
said impulsively: 'No, I'd like to take you out to a meal.
There's that new Italian cafe" in the town, I've never been there. What about coming on Saturday? And
then we could go to the pictures afterwards if you
like.'
He owed her that much, at least, he thought. He felt
even more uncomfortable about the role he was playing
when he saw how she reacted. Her whole face shone asthough lit up from within; her dark eyes became
luminous.
'Oh, Mike! Just me? You want to take me to dinner?'
'Sure, Maria.'
'I would like to come very much.'
"Then I'll meet you at Rizzoni's at six, shall I?'
'Si-I mean yes. It is Ritz-zoni's; that is how it is
pronounced in Italy.'
'Ah! like the Ritz?'
'Comer
'Skip it.'
To his surprise, Maria flushed crimson. She gave him
a startled, resentful look and began hurrying away.
'Maria! What's the matter?' He gripped her arm and
swung her round to face him. She stared at him with
dark, angry eyes.
'You told me to go away.'
'You're mad. I asked you out to dinner.'
'And then you said, just like that: "Hop it!" That is
how young Alf speaks to David when he is being a
nuisance.'
'I didn't say "Hop it", I said "Skip it." It's quite
different. It just means forget it, it doesn't matter, it's
not worth explaining, never mind. See?'
'Oh, of course! I am so stupid, I will never learn.'
"You're not stupid, Maria. It takes time to get used to
these slang terms.'
They had walked on and reached the racks, and now
Mandy came sauntering up to them, pulling off her
rubber gloves, her bare head shining in the sun. She
gave Maria an unfriendly look, and said to Mike,
ignoring her:
'I've never found my watch, you know. I suppose it
hasn't turned up anywhere on die block?'
'No, I'm afraid not. It could be buried in a furrow,
with sand kicked over it by now.'
'It could be,' said Mandy. Maria flushed again and
walked away.
Mike looked after her in surprise, and turned back to
Mandy. 'You're not suggesting, by any chance?'
'Well, what am I to think? To a girl like that, a watch
of any sort would be a temptation, and mine was a
pretty one, set in sapphires and diamonds.'
'I think you misjudge Maria. She strikes me as simple,
sincere, and honest as the day.'
'No doubt you should know,' said Mandy. Her face
was set in cold, obstinate lines.
She's a bitch really, a rich bitch, he thought, unblinded
for the moment by her charm and beauty and
sheer animal attractiveness. Then, as they walked along
to the dip side by side, in silent hostility, her arm
brushed his. The fine down of hers just brushed the
dark hair on his forearm, and an electric current of
attraction flowed between them. He could no longer
look at her objectively.
Mother Mac came along with Maria and Mitch. They
were talking about hospital, to which Mrs Wilkes's
husband had been carted off the day before with
appendicitis.
'Only real 'oliday I ever 'ad was in hospital,' said
Mother Mac, 'I was in there a month, and I got me
hands that nice,' she said, looking at her cracked and
stained fingers regretfully. 'They never been that nice
again. Almost sorry to leave I was, if it 'adn't been for
them bedpans.'
'I have never been ill,' said Maria. 'But on the boat,
coming from Italy, I had a holiday. It was too long
with nothing to do. I was, how you say, "sick of it".''You could give me a bit of that kind of sickness,'
said Mother Mac. 'A boat, eh? And all your meals
served up in style, and no washin' up. . . . I've got to
cut five lunches, and get breakfast, and milk the cow,
every morning before work, and there's always a bit of
washin' and ironin' at night, as well as the weekly wash,
and I got to do that on Saturdays. Young Davey gets
his clothes that filthy-Where is Davey, anyway?'
She stopped with a sandwich half-way to her mouth
to look round anxiously. Just then came the wail of a
train whistle from the road, and a train went clanking
past. Mother Mac went white. She struggled to her feet.
'David! David!'
There was no answer. The others looked round helpfully,
telling her not to worry, but Mother Mac was
clucking like a disturbed hen. He had gone back to get
his teddy-bear, which he had left sitting in a tin under
the vines, and she thought he was following her.
There was no sign of him at the racks or in the sheds.
Alarm began to spread when they had all called for five
minutes without result. Even Slow Joe stopped chewing
like a ruminant cow and gazed about shortsightedly.
We'd better organise a search,' said Mike. 'Now,
Mother Mac, calm down and tell us exactly where you
saw him last. . . . Right, we'll search between the racks
and the north fence. Each take a row, and look carefully
all the way; he's probably just gone to sleep under
a vine. When you get to the end, walk down the fence
to the road; if no one has found him, we'll spread out
along the channel.'
'The channel!'
'It's all right, Mother Mac, there are fifty acres of
vines he could be lost in. Don't start imagining the
worst.'
'Come, drink some tea,' said Maria, handing her a
cup. "Then come with me, and we will search together.'
By the time the pickers met at the road fence there
were plenty of worried faces apart from Mrs MacGowan's.
They had called and beaten right through the
section of vineyard where David had last been seen.
Mandy kept thinking of the train-line, Mitch of the
deep water in the main channel, Maria of the snakes
lurking in the ditches. David's mother saw a hundred
dreadful possibilities in as many seconds.
'I shouldn't of let him go back alone! I shouldn't of
let him!' she wailed.
- 'Do not blame yourself, cara madre. We will find him
allaright.'
They began to spread out along the channel which
ran just outside the fence. Then Fred Binks, who was in
advance, gave a shout. The others ran up to find him
standing up to his chest in the channel water, holding a
small, limp form in his arms.
' 'E was on the bottom,' he said hoarsely. 'Poor little
bastard! 'E's a goner, Mike,' he whispered, as Mike
knelt on the channel edge to take the burden.
Mrs MacGowan flung herself forward with an
agonised cry. She snatched the boy from Mike's arms
with extraordinary strength, and began kissing the cold,
bluish cheeks, the lank hair and closed eyes, crying as
though she would bring him back to life with her warm
tears.
'Alf! Run up to the house and get them to ring a
doctor,' said Mike urgently. 'Tell Mrs Pike to get a bed
ready, and fill it with hot-water bottles. I'll carry him,
Mother Mac . . .'
'Wait!' The others, standing round in numb horror,
started at Mandy's imperious tones. 'We ought to tryartificial respiration at once. There's not a minute to
lose. Mitch, you know the routine; we did lifesaving
at school. We'll take it in turns, but we mustn't stop for
a moment.'
Mrs MacGowan, beside herself, seemed disinclined
to yield up the little boy, but Mike gently persuaded
her. Mandy ran a finger round the boy's throat to feel
for any obstruction of food, held him up to drain the
water from his lungs, and then laid him face down on
the warm earth, his head turned to one side. She began
the rhythmic movements of artificial respiration, counting
slowly, with intense concentration.
If the others had expected a rapid miracle, they were
disappointed. A quarter of an hour went by, and Mitch
took over; a half an hour, and Mandy took her place
again. Alf came back to say the doctor was just leaving.
He brought two hot-water bottles. Maria tried
to comfort Mother Mac, as she sat rocking herself
with trembling lips, almost as pale as the child
on the ground, his cheek pressed to the rich, red, sandy
earth.
Mike stood tensely by. 'You must be tired,' he said
to Mandy. 'I could do that.'
'I'm going to try something else. Let's turn him over.'
As they did so they noticed a faint colour in the cheek
that had been undermost. X believe he's responding.'
Kneeling, she held his nostrils closed with one hand,
and putting her lips to the boy's mouth, breathed
steadily into it. His chest rose perceptibly. Again and
again she breathed for him. Gradually a pink colour replaced
the terrible blue of asphyxia in his face; the lids
stirred, and he gave a little whimpering cry. His mother
began to massage his feet, kneeling in the red sand and
sobbing with relief. Mandy put her ear against his chest and heard the steady beating of a small heart.
The doctor, hurrying down the track, met a subdued but triumphant procession bearing a David fully restored
to consciousness, and a mother who, with shock
and reaction, needed his treatment too. He congratulated
Mandy on her swift action; she was the heroine
of the hour. She had just time to notice that he was
young and good-looking, before he bundled the patients
into his car.
After lunch, Mike declared a holiday for the rest of
the day. They would just help him shake down a rack
of sultanas and then go home. So they bounced the wires
with a will, and the wrinkled, golden sultanas fell to the
hessian, leaving only a few dried stems clinging to the
wire-netting.
"What's that?' cried Mitch, pointing to a small,
glittering object that was left on the third layer. Tangled
among the wire, and bound there by a dried and twisted
stem, was Mandy's watch.
'It must have fallen off while you were spreading, and
been covered by the bunches. Look, it's not hurt at all!'
She handed it to Mandy, who wound it up and heard
its faint but sturdy tick, like the beat of that little heart
which she had set going again today. She had felt a
strange, godlike power, a creative glory such as a doctor
must feel when he has saved a life which otherwise
would have ended prematurely. She would like to have
been a doctor.
'A reward for your courageous action today,' said
Mike.
'I've had my reward already. It was when I heard his
heart begin to beat.'
'I am so glad it is found,' said Maria beside her.
Mandy turned, and gave her a smile of spontaneouswarmth and charm. 'Thank you, Maria. I'm glad too.'
She did not say: 'I am sorry for my suspicions, and for
making you miserable,' but she put out her hand and
Maria clasped it happily, knowing that this was what
she meant.
XVII

Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
TO-DAY of past Regrets and future Fears To-morrow?- Why, to-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n Thousand Years.

Immediately after they were dipped to remove their
natural coating of wax, the gordos took on a beautiful
iridescence. Mitch liked to roll them gently into place,
and see them lying like globules of blown glass,
like pale-green Christmas tree ornaments, on the
wire.
They had just finished spreading a load, and she was
dreamily watching a flock of galahs perched in an
almond tree near the sheds, looking like a cluster of
exotic blossoms with their rose-pink breasts all turned
towards the faint breeze. There was a clatter and a
shout behind her, and she turned to see Dick hold up
a tiny, buff-coloured field-mouse by the tail. He had just
discovered a nest beneath a loose sheet of galvanised
iron.
'Let's put it down her neck,' he said to Tom, advancing
on Mitch with a gleam in his eye. It was the first
of April, and all sorts of practical jokes and leg-pulls
had been going on during the morning.
'I'm not frightened of mice, as it happens,' said
Mitch. 'Only, let the poor little thing go.'
Disappointed of their sport, they paused and looked
about. 'I know! Let's drop it in the dip,' said Tom.They went over to the steaming copper with its brick
chimney, at the moment left unattended by Merv, and
Dick held the squeaking mite above the hot caustic
solution.
'No!' cried Mitch, and flew at him like a tigress. He
raised his arm high above his head to hold the mouse
beyond her reach.
She grabbed at his arm, and the mouse was jerked
from his grip and fell straight into the scalding liquid.
'Oh, you beast! You hateful beast!' cried Mitch, in
rage and horror.
'Hell, I didn't mean to drop it in really. You knocked
it out of me hand.' Tom looked rather sick, but Dick
was grinning.
Mitch turned away with tears in her eyes, and went
back to the rack. 'Why didn't you help me get it from
him?' she demanded of Mandy, who was leaning composedly
on the wire.
'All that fuss about a mouse!' said Mandy.
Mitch said nothing, but her face was white. It was
not the first time she had noticed a certain hardness
and lack of sympathy in her friend.
Fred Binks had suffered most during the morning.
He had got down to lift the last two tins of grapes from
the end of a row, and the first one nearly broke his back;
it was lined with stones and clods of earth, with a few
bunches on top to disguise them. At the next tin he
tensed his muscles and heaved, and the tin flew up into
his face. It was filled with paper, leaves, and grass,
similarly disguised.
His temper was not improved by this, and when he
noticed the pickers pointing and laughing each time he
drove past in the cart, he began to look down his heavy
nose with a black, sullen stare. At lunch-time he discovered that young Alf had pinned a paper to the back
of his singlet with the legend:

I AM THE
BIGGEST GRAPE
ON THIS BLOCK

'I'll flatten yer!' he roared, shaping up to young Alf;
but Mitch sprang between them and quoted from The
Magic Puddin' in ringing tones:

Oh let the fist of Friendship
Be kept for Friendship's foes;
Ne'er let that hand in anger land
On Friendship's holy nose!'

This so astonished Fred that he sat down and stared
at her, while young Alf discreetly disappeared for the
time being.
'That's from The Magic Puddin',' she explained to Maria.
'This magic pud'-is it a plum-pud'?' asked Maria,
proud of her knowledge of Australian foods.
'It's a plum-pud', or a steak-an'-kidney pud', or any
other kind of pudding you want. It's a magic pudding,
and it can talk, and it runs away from its owners if they
don't keep it shut up in its basin. It is a famous character
of Australian literature; as famous as Renzo in Promessi
Sposi!'
'Ah, you have read Manzoni!'
'Only in translation, in English.'
'He was a great writer,' said Mandy politely. 'They
say, do they not:

Un tempio e un uomo,
Manzoni ed il Duomo.''Si, in Milano, where he was born. The Duomo is the
greatest church in Italy. I have seen it once, on my way
to catch the boat in Genova.'
'I should like to see Milan cathedral,' said Mandy
musingly. 'I've always wanted to go to Italy; once I
thought I would go there to study singing, and perhaps
sing one day at La Scala, but I wasn't good enough for
that.'
'You would like the opera there,' said Maria.
'Why don't you go? What's to stop you?' said Mitch.
'You could afford it. I'd go like a shot, if.'
She paused, thinking of Richard, with his pipe in his
mouth, sitting by their very own fireplace with a book.
Beyond the circle of light from the reading-lamp was a
wicker crib trimmed with blue satin bows, and a round,
downy head was just visible on the pillow. . . . Broody I
She was definitely getting broody. And yesterday she
had felt rather queer in the morning. Her heart beat
with sudden excitement, mixed with dismay. If only
they had a house! She just wanted one small piece of
the world to call her own.
'I don't know. I suppose I'm just lazy,' said Mandy.
'And then, I've usually been involved with my life
here.' Her eyes rested on the lean figure of Mike Hannaford,
who was talking to Merv beside the dip.
They were discussing the Italian family on the other
block. They were out of hospital again, and the baby
had no sores because the mother fed it herself. Pike
had agreed to let them use the rain-water tank until
the end of the season, which was only a month off.
That afternoon Mitch and Mandy spread and turned
tons of sticky sultanas as they lay on hessian sheets in
the sun. They delved up to their elbows in the golden
fruit, but they were not tempted to eat any. Queer bugs and beetles crawled among the heaps, and Mitch kept
thinking of the mouse, which had been fished out of the
dip with all the hair gone from its body. 'And people eat sultanas!' she said, shuddering.
'She would refuse to eat anything, probably, if she
saw the whole manufacturing process,' said Mandy
wisely. And, anyway, Mike had said the fruit was all
washed and treated at the packing-sheds. 'I'd rather eat
sultanas than sausages, any day,' she said. 'Mysteries,
they call them.'
'Sausages were the only things I could cook when I
got married. Oh, and boiled eggs. How I'd love to have
a kitchen of my very own! You know, I've half a mind
to have a baby straight away, and then we'll have to get
a house,' she said disingenuously. She was not going to
let Mandy know she hadn't planned it, if her suspicions
proved correct. She meant to slip in to see a doctor in
the town next weekend.
'M'm. Good idea,' said Mandy absently. She was
wondering how she would like cooking for Mike, in
some little house in Vindura. Not so little; her father
would help them, buy him a block of his own with a
house on it and give her a handsome dowry as well. She
would be quite content ... at least, for a time. But she
could not imagine living away from the city for ever.
'Blue-and-white checked gingham for the kitchen
curtains, I think,' Mitch was saying.
'No, red-spotted muslin, and a plain red linoleum ...'
Mandy's voice trailed away. She had suddenly remembered
something, something Maria had told her. Wasn't
Mike a Roman Catholic? And her father, intelligent
and open-minded as he was in most directions, had this
one blind spot, his prejudice against Roman Catholics.
He would never agree to her marrying one. If she didso she would have to forgo money, dowry, possibly even
her inheritance, unless Mike would give up his faith.
She had no idea how strongly he held to it, but Maria
said she had seen him at Mass. She would have to find
out very tactfully. She sensed an obstinacy and strength
of will in him as great as her own.

Mike filled Maria's glass from the bottle of vino rosso on the table.
'Salute!' she said, looking into his eyes.
'Your health, signora.'
'Prego. But please - signorina! I am not married any
more. I wish to forget the past.'
'To the future, signorina.'
Oh, how could she tell him? The future was bound
up with him; he did not know, but she knew, she was
almost sure, that she was carrying his child.
'Did you like the pasta.' she said lightly.
'Not too bad - what reached my mouth, that is. Now
I'd like something solid.'
'Like steak and eggs? Then, cutlets of veal, with green
salad and fried potatoes; and after, cassata speciale.'
'What's that?' asked Mike suspiciously.
'A kind of cake made of ice-cream, with cherries and
almonds and raisins.'
'You don't expect me to eat dried fruit, do you?
After seeing it in the raw all day?'
'This is very nice; you will like it.'
Mike found the veal rather thin, he couldn't get his
teeth into it like he could into a piece of steak, but it
was very tasty and tender, and the potatoes were excellent.
The bottle of wine was empty. He ordered
another.
Maria was animated, her usually slumberous dark eyes sparkling. She had been talking in her own tongue
with the waiter, and was surprised to find how easily
the words flowed, after two months of disuse. He came
from Bergamo, a little town not far from Milan; he had
been in Australia two years, and he did not want to go
back. He missed most of all the music, the open-air cafes
and the opera; and then the processions, the feast-days
of the church. But he liked this country, and his
youngest boy had been born here, a real Australian.
When he had gone back to the kitchen, Maria said:
'I, too, miss the church; it is different here. I have not
seen you at church lately, Mike. Perhaps you have not
been to early Mass?'
'No, but I must go tomorrow. Will I see you there?'
'Si, si-I mean yes.'
'Perhaps we could go for a walk afterwards.' For
Maria was looking so charming in the soft light, with
her pale blue dress and rippling dark hair, her eyes
alight with love and the joy of being near him, that he
could not stop looking at her. He was enjoying the meal,
but when it was finished he still felt hungry. He called
the waiter.
'He is still hungry,' said Maria, laughing. 'Ha fame.
Questi Australiani hanno i grandi appetiti!'
'Some fresh fruit, signor? We have-a da nice
grapes.'
'Hell, no!'
'Some minestrone for the signor, perhaps?'
'What is it?'
'Soup. Thick soup, with many vegetables. You like.'
By the time he had finished the soup Mike admitted
that he had had enough. As he sat sipping the aromatic
coffee he thought of the usual accompaniment of steak
and eggs: stewed tea, or 'coffee' made with essence andboiled milk, with a skin on top and an over-cooked taste.
A few more cafes like this one might educate Australians
into demanding, and getting, something better.
The wine had been Australian, light and dry, but it
had given him a pleasant glow. He picked up the bottle
and said musingly: 'The fruitful grape ... you can have
it fresh, or dried, or fermented; whole or crushed; with
pips or without; solid or liquid. A remarkable food.
What do you call it; in Italy, I mean?'
'Uva.'
'Uva? Isn't that an egg?'
'No, ova means egg.'
I'll be talking your
'Uva, ova, pasta, minestrone lingo soon. Andiamo, Maria!'
'Andiamo Micaelo.'
The first feature had begun when they arrived. After
the interval there was a turgid romance about a girl
with masses of dark hair who looked rather like Maria,
and who got her man in the end after the complications
necessary to spin out the story for one and a half
hours.
He found himself watching Maria rather than the
screen, as she sat beside him in silent absorption. Once,
carried away by a tense moment, she gripped the arm
of the seat between them. He covered her fingers with
his, and half unconsciously they twined about his hand.
He was still holding her hand when the lights went
up. He had quite forgotten to watch the screen. Looking
round he saw Mandy a few rows behind, staring at
him rigidly. She gave no sign of recognition, but turned
and pushed her way out of the theatre.
He realised that for a considerable time he had not
given Mandy a thought. Yet he was in love with Mandy,
he told himself, not with Maria. He had meant to be friendly, brotherly and kind tonight, to indicate that
he was sorry for what had happened and that it must
never happen again. And what must Mandy be thinking
by now?
Then, when he drove Maria home, she lifted her face
so naturally to his that it would have been churlish not
to kiss her; and her mouth was so soft that he found
himself kissing her again. By then it was too late to
make the brotherly speech. He would have to tell her
somehow after church. Meanwhile he felt sure that she
regarded herself as engaged. How on earth was he to
tell her?
XVIII

How long, how long in infinite Pursuit
Of This and That endeavour and dispute?
Better be merry with the fruitful Grape
Than sadder after none, or bitter, Fruit.

On Sunday afternoon the three girls swam in the rather
murky waters of the dam. Maria was becoming more
daring, and declared that she would not be afraid to
swim in the river now. But Mitch, thinking of the new
life she carried, felt that her own was more precious
than ever before. She preferred to swim in the dam
where she could drop her feet to the bottom if she had
to. However slimy and unpleasant, it was at least solid.
David's accident in the channel-he had gone there
looking for 'fogs', he told his mother-had made her
nervous.
Preoccupied as she was with her own affairs, she
noticed that Maria and Mandy were very quiet. They
had been quite friendly again since the incident of the
missing watch was cleared up; but yesterday when
Maria announced that she was going out with Mike,
Mandy's brow had become thunderous; and last night
she had gone off by herself. Today, she hardly spoke,
but lay inert on a towel, soaking the sun into her long
brown limbs.
Maria's arms and legs were just as smooth and
brown, though more sturdy and less slender; but her
neck and shoulders were still white. She covered them with a kerchief to save herself from getting burnt.
Mitch lay on her back and squinted down her chest
at her flat stomach. It was hard to believe that she
would soon be shapeless, just an enormous bulge from
the waist down. She had always been so small and slight
that she could not imagine herself large and unwieldy.
She was not going to like it, she felt sure.
She had resisted an impulse to wire Richard straight
away. He might ring her tonight, anyway; and she
would rather wait until the doctor confirmed what she
suspected. At least he must see now that they had to
get a place of their own; her parents-in-law were too old
to be bothered with babies in the house.
Mandy was sitting up, yawning and rubbing at her
wet hair, and announcing that she was going over to the
house to wash it. The Jordans had just gone out for a
drive, and she meant to have a shower while the she
dragon was away.
'Don't forget to mop the floor,' murmured Mitch.
'Dry it as you would a plate . . .'
She rolled over on her face, listening to the gentle
whisper of wind among the restlessly turning leaves of
the poplars. They seemed to be sighing and complaining,
in an autumn melancholy: 'Our life is brief, brief
.. . our youth is over, age is upon us, and soon we fade
and fall.'
'What is that song, about "youth is ever fleeting"?'
she asked Maria. 'You know, the one Mandy sings,
Lorenzo's song?'

'Ah quante bella giovenezza
Che si fugge tuttavia.'

'Yes, that's it: How beautiful is youth, which flees ...What would you say,' she added abruptly, 'if I told you
I was going to have a baby? At least, I think so. I'm
thrilled, really, but it's a sort of an ending. Life will
never be the same again.'
Never. . . . Never. . . . Never the same, sighed the
poplars tremblingly.
'Oh, Mitch, that is wonderful! Richard will be so
pleased, will he not? And so proud. Oh, Mitch.' and
Maria began to sob.
'Maria! -What's up? Is it Mario?' She rolled over
and put an arm round the shaking shoulders. Maria's
face was buried in her arms. 'You mustn't be sad. You'll
marry again and have lots of babies.'
'Oh! Oh!' moaned Maria. 'That is the trouble! I am
not married, and I am ashamed . . . mi vergogna . . .'
'You mean ... you mean, you too? We are both?'
Well!' Mitch pondered for a moment. 'Is it-is it
Mike?'
'St. And I love him, I want him to be the father of
my bambino, but he has not asked me to-to marry
him, and what shall I do?'
'Does he know about it?'
'No, no. I could not tell him.'
'Then I will!'
'No, no!'
Mitch stared under her wet hair at a blackened, rotting
gum-leaf floating on the surface of the dam. Here
was a mess! She felt somehow responsible for Maria,
alone in a strange country. Mike, she felt sure, would
marry her if he knew. But how much was he involved
with Mandy? And would Mandy give him up?
'I am surprised at Mike,' she said at last, her voice
severe. 'You, a young girl, alone, without friends or
relatives . . .'
'It was my fault! You do not know! He has thought
I am already married once, and I -It was when
we went to cover the sultanas. Last night, he bring me
straight to home.'
'I should think so! And he hasn't mentioned
marriage?'
'No,' said Maria, and added in a small voice: 'Mandy
is very beautiful, non e vero!'
'I'm going to have a word with Mandy,' said Mitch.
"You would not tell her! And perhaps she loves him
also.'
'You don't understand, Maria. All men are fair game to Mandy. She wouldn't be happy till she'd taken him
from you; but once he was hers, his value would drop
immediately. I think I can persuade her to leave the
field. And Mike is really fond of you, anyone can see
that. He wouldn't have asked you out last night otherwise.'
'You think so?' Maria sat up and smiled through
her tears.
'I'm sure of it. And I think you'd make him a wonderful
wife. Mandy is a city girl, through and through.
She would never fit in here. Look, I'm going to the
doctor on Saturday, why don't you come with me and
we'll both be examined?'
'Oh no!'
'Yes. You must make certain, and you should have a
check on your health. Meanwhile, you stay here and
have a sunbathe and I'll go and chat with Mandy. She'll
be back at the cottage by now. . . . This must be a
terribly fertile district,' she muttered, walking along the
red sandy track beneath the dramatic "sky in which the
clouds, long and flat-based, with their silvery tops and
strong purple shadows, looked unreal as clouds in atechnicolour film. 'I expect I'll have twins, at least!
"Fruitful as the vine," they say.'
Mandy was sitting on the ground by the back door,
leaning against the wooden wall of the cottage, with
her head down and her damp golden hair spread in
the sun.
'Mandy, I want to talk to you. About Mike.'
'Mm?' said Mandy lazily. 'What about Mike?'
'Is he in love with you?'
'Why? And what if he is?'
'If you're going to tell me to mind my own business,
I regard this as my business. I feel responsible for Maria,
she is the youngest of us.'
'What has it to do with Maria?' Mandy looked up.
Her eyes were greenish, guarded.
'Everything. She is going to have a baby.'
'Oh.' She bent her head again.
'You have to give him up, Mandy. You know Mike
would be in love with her if it weren't for you. He got
her into this mess, and I'm sure he'd marry her if he
knew, but that's not enough. He has to want to marry
her, or she'll never be happy.'
'And what about my happiness?'
'You know you will console yourself before too long.
It doesn't go very deep with you; it's just a way of passing
the time in this small town. To Maria it's her whole
life. Mandy, you've got to listen!' For she had dropped
her fair head again and Mitch thought she was almost
asleep. 'You must convince Mike that you were only
amusing yourself. You must make him hate you, if
necessary. But we have to get him to propose to Maria.'
Mandy looked up, and to Mitch's intense surprise
her eyes were full of tears. They looked shadowed and
tragic.
'I love him, Mitch. He's the first real person I've ever
known. I would even live in Vindura for the rest of my
, life, to be with him.'
Mitch goggled at her. 'I believe you really would.'
'Yes! And supposing I were to tell you that I am in
the same condition?'
'Oh no! Not all three of us.' Mitch sank down beside
her and began to giggle. It was suddenly more funny
than tragic.
'No, not really. Why, are you?'
Tm almost sure. I'm going to the doctor on Saturday.'
'Congratulations,'
said Mandy dryly.
'It has me worried, rather. But I expect I'll feel very
maternal once it actually arrives - the baby, I mean.'
'Yes, nature has a way of looking after these things,
I imagine.'
'But Mandy, what are we going to do? Here you are
both in love with Mike, and apparently he has managed
to seduce Maria (and I don't blame her, for he's
certainly very attractive), and for all I know he's
seduced you too . . .'
'What do you mean, seduced? Don't you know the
proper word? Don't be so old-fashioned; you sound like
a virtuous mill-girl in Mary Barton.'
"Well, anyway, the fact is that Maria simply has to
get married, and you don't. And it would be very apt
really, wouldn't it-I mean, an old Australian,
descended from the very first Australians, marrying
one of the newest of New Australians?'
'But why should I help her? Why should I cut my
own throat?' She turned and beat against the wall with
her fist. 'I love him, I want him more than I've ever
wanted anything, and I believe he loves me. . . .''Why did you work so hard to save that child's life?'
asked Mitch softly.
Mandy got up, keeping her face averted.
'I'm going for a walk,' she said. 'No, don't come with
me. I want to think.' And she walked away between the
long perspective rows of the vines, in the opposite direction
from, the dam.
Mike had still not managed to have an explanation
with Maria that morning. The longer he left it the
harder it became for him to speak. After Mass they had
walked along the river-bank in the clear sunshine, and
Maria had told him of her mother and brothers and
sisters in Italy, and how sometimes she longed to see
them.
For a moment a way out of his dilemma leapt to his
mind. 'Would you like to go back, Maria?' he had
asked. 'Do you want to go back to Italy? Perhaps----'
'Ahi, no, Mike! Never! I love ... I love everything
here too much. This is my country now. How can you
ask? Never could I go back.'
All her feeling for him was in her soft dark eyes, in
the agitated rise and fall of her breast under the demure
white lace blouse. After that he couldn't blandly suggest
that perhaps she would find another husband
among the Italian community, that he himself was
not the marrying kind, that there was someone
else . . .
And he couldn't help feeling responsible for her. He
had been the first. . . . And Italian girls were carefully
guarded. Perhaps none of her countrymen would
want her now.
After he had left her he walked away out into the
saltbush country, to the barren, sandy hills where only
the belars grew in sombre strength. A warm wind keened among the drooping fronds with a sound of
long-lost seas.
The wind moaned, over and over: 'Man-dy! Mandy!' echoing the cry in his mind. He was fond of
Maria, but Mandy was a fever burning in his blood.
He wondered, for the hundredth time, what had come
over him that afternoon when the dinghy floated away.
She had been there, in his arms, offering to stay with
him all night, and he had worried about getting the
dinghy back on time!
The sudden cold dip had damped his passion, and
his feeling of guilt over Maria had come between them.
Oh, if he had her here now, under this tree, in the
warm red sand! But Mandy at that moment was walking,
away over on the other side of the settlement,
between the rows of vines that turned about her like
the spokes of a great green wheel.
XIX

And when Thyself with shining Foot shall pass
Among the Guests Star-scattered on the Grass,
And in thy joyous Errand reach the Spot
When I made one - turn down an empty Glass!

Mitch wired to Richard:
INSIST ON HAVING OUR SON IN OUR OWN HOME
STOP LETTER FOLLOWING LOVE MITCH
It didn't occur to her until after she had sent it that
now Richard would enlist her mother on his side, and
demand that she come home and not endanger the
future heir of the Fairbrothers by climbing on racks and
spreading grapes.
The doctor had confirmed her suspicions and also
Maria's. There was not the slightest need for her to give
up her job, he said; exercise in the open air was good
for her and would keep the baby small, but she must
not go on to the point of exhaustion.
Talking to Mrs Wilkes during smoke-oh the next day,
Mitch realised that Maria was perhaps fortunate in
being in Vindura rather than the city in her predicament.
It was a tolerant community where such things
were concerned, and many families of now respectably
married couples had been begun in the soft, warm sand
of the riverbank.
As long as marriage followed within a year, there was
no stigma attached to the child or the parents who had
somewhat anticipated the wedding.
Mrs Wilkes confided that she was worried about her
daughter, Daisybud. She wanted to get married to a
young man in the town, an apprentice who was really
not earning enough to marry on, but Daisybud wanted
to marry and take a job as well.
'Why don't they wait until they've saved a bit?' she
complained. 'What they want to get married in such a
hurry for? It's not as though they had to. Dais is not
in the family way or anythink. I can't see no point in it.
A young wife shouldn't be working.'
'Then you think I should be home with my husband,
not working as a picker?' asked Mitch.
'Too right! If I was him I'd come up and take you
home. Money's not everything. A wife's place is with
'er husband.'
'I suppose you're right,' said Mitch meekly.
That night when Richard rang she was more ready
than usual to listen to his appeals; but she couldn't go
home now and leave Maria in such a fix, she must get
things sorted out. She couldn't explain all this on the
phone, with Mrs Jordan hovering in the background and
Di-anne openly listening.
Richard sounded excited, anxious, and incredulous;
he kept asking was she sure, and insisting that she had
better come straight home. 'If you don't come by the
end of the month,' he said ominously, 'I'm coming to
get you. And you won't be going back.'
'I'll write to you,' was all Mitch could say. 'I'll write
you a long letter and explain.'

Mandy had walked for miles on the Sunday afternoon,
and had come home exhausted in body and mind; for
her mind travelled round and round in circles, and
always came back to the same impasse: she loved Mike,but she could not marry him, and if she kept him from
marrying Maria she would be acting like a dog in the
manger.
Her father, she knew, would never agree to her marrying
a Roman Catholic, so she could not count on a settlement
from him. She was used to spending money
without thinking; and she had sufficient cynicism - or
good sense, whichever it should be called - to know that
love in a cottage would begin to pall after an idyllic year
or two.
She imagined herself with several babies, doing all
her own cooking and washing . . . nappies drying
round the stove, messy meals in the kitchen, yelling
children. . . . No, such domestic joys were not for her.
She had made one or two mocking remarks about
religion to Mike, to test the depth of his faith. 'It must
be very comfortable,' she said one day, 'to be able to sin
freely and then go to the priest and confess and be
absolved, as you do. . . .'
'That's not true I' said Mike. 'I never confess. But I
believe in the Church. My mother was a devout Catholic,
and she made me promise to follow her faith.'
Mandy said no more. She knew that his mother was
dead, and that he would never break a promise to her.
But how could she give up Mike? She felt that she
could not live without him. And would he consent to
being given up? She was sure he had meant it when he
said he loved her. And yet, last night, she had seen him
holding Maria's hand, gazing at her face. Supposing he
really loved her all the time? Mitch took it for granted that Mandy only had to lift a finger to make him her
slave. But she herself felt a nagging doubt. Her uncertainty
increased her love, her longing to win him
wholly.
She believed that she could do it; after all, he had not
asked Maria to marry him. Yet she shrank from putting
it to the test. And Maria, when she came back from the
doctor, had looked so tragic, so pale, that Mandy felt
alarmed in case she might wander away and throw herself
in the river.
She must not be responsible for another self-sought
death like her mother's. Mandy felt an odd personal
guilt over that long-ago tragedy which she had been too
young to understand or to prevent. She felt that if only
she had been older, if her mother had been able to confide
in her, it might not have happened.
Now someone's happiness, perhaps whole future existence,
lay in her hands. 'You will have to make him hate
you, if necessary,' Mitch had said. 'He has to want to
marry Maria, or they'll both be miserable.' Mandy came
to her difficult decision. She would convince Mike that
she did not love him, even hurt his pride so that he
would turn to Maria for solace.
The opportunity did not come at once; she had no
chance to speak to him alone, for he was busy getting
the last of the crop away to the packing-sheds. The
following week, the picking on the first block being completed,
they began working on the home block, among
the vines round the Jordans' cottage.
Mandy had developed hay-fever again, for the day was
warm and blowy, with thin streamers of cloud teased out
across the blue. She went to get a scarf to tie over her
nose and mouth, thinking how Mike had given her his
handkerchief two months ago for a mask.
Mike, who had been longing to get her away from the
others, and yet felt it would be unnecessarily cruel to
Maria to invite her openly to meet him (for he had not
yet plucked up courage to tell her of the 'other girl') hadto go up to the big house to see Bob Jordan. He hurried
along the track and caught up with Mandy where the
trellised vines hid them from the pickers.
Mandy looked at him with swollen eyes which were
not entirely due to hay-fever; she had scarcely slept the
last few nights, and had heard Maria tossing and turning
as restlessly as herself.
'You poor darling,' he said tenderly. 'That rotten hay fever again. I'd better come up to the cottage with you
and fix on your scarf.' He grasped the hand nearest to
him and interlocked his fingers with hers, just caressing
the inside of her wrist with his thumb. Mandy breathed
more quickly, but managed to leave her hand limp and
unresponsive in his.
His washed-out blue shirt was open at the neck showing
his brown throat; the whites of his eyes were clear
with health. Her heart turned over with love. At least
my eyes look terrible, Mandy thought with a corner of
her mind. That may make it easier for him. . . . She
did not know that he was long past being affected by
such trifles. If she had dressed in an old sack and painted
her face with woad, it would not have altered his obsession,
for he believed she loved him.
They reached the door of the cottage, and she
hesitated. She did not want to ask him in; but, emboldened
by the touch of her hand and the memory of
her warm kisses by the river, he opened the wire door
and pulled her inside and into his arms.
For a moment she went limp, then she stiffened, her
lips rigid and unyielding against his. She tore her mouth
away and said, rather unsteadily: 'Aren't you forgetting
yourself? What about Maria?'
He looked dazed, then bewildered. 'Maria? But I told
you, it's you I love. I'm sure Maria knows there's someone else, that.'
'And do you really think I'll remember you once the
season is over, and I've gone back to the city?'
'But -- but, Mandy, you said.'
'A momentary madness. Goodness knows what I said.'
Her voice was steady now, almost hard. 'It was fun, and
you are very attractive. But you surely didn't think.'
'You said - you said you could quite understand
Desdemona.'
'And no doubt she had time to regret her madness
before she died. No, Mike, you can surely see that Maria
is much more suitable for you . . . the peasant type.'
Mike dropped his arms and stepped back. His face
looked greyish with shock.
'In the fairy-stories,' said Mandy, 'the herd-boy always
turns out to be a prince in disguise. Can you produce a
palace, or even an uncle who is a king? King Billy perhaps!
King Billy of the River Murray tribes.' She began
to laugh, laughing so that she would not burst into tears
at the sight of his face, all the light and confidence gone
out of it.
'And I called you a princess,' said Mike wonderingly.
'Do you know what you are? You're just a-a coldblooded
. . .'
'Bitch? I quite agree. But never mind, I won't be here
much longer.'
He turned and wrenched the door open, and was gone.
She caught one glimpse of his bitter, baffled face as he
went past the window. Then she flung herself facedown
on her stretcher and lay inert. Misery flooded over her
in choking waves.

There was to be another evening party at the Jordans',
to which Pike's Privileged Pickers, or Mitch, Mandy andMaria, had been invited. Maria, however, could not go,
as she had been invited to a dance by Mike.
Mandy declared that she did not want to go; but
Mitch, who had seen Mike's face when he came back
from the house that day, and who had found Mandy
in bed with her face turned to the wall when she came
home in the afternoon, thought the outing would do her
good. She was worried about Mandy. She was morose
and silent, and her lovely eyes had a cloudy, troubled
look and were ringed with deep shadows.
To take her out of herself Mitch suggested that they
should go shopping in the afternoon; she for a maternity
smock which she would soon be needing, and Mandy
for a short evening-dress. Mandy went indifferently, and
bought a severely plain dress of black taffeta with a low
neckline.
Once more the clink of bottles sounded from the
veranda, and a scent of cut grass and roses drifted from
the dew-wet garden. But the night was chill, the poplars
showed almost bare branches against the starlit sky,
where the Milky Way stretched in a curving river of
light.
In the big drawing-room there was a fire of vine-roots,
a friendly blaze not giving out a great deal of heat.
Mandy listlessly accepted a gin-squash from Bob Jordan,
whose gallant remarks about her appearance fell for
once on deaf ears. Mitch became caught up in a
group of women discussing confinements, and found
herself for the first time listening with interest to the
gruesome details of what she would soon have to suffer.
The men drifted towards the table where the bottles
were set out, and began telling bawdy stories.
Mandy swallowed her drink without tasting it. She
would like to get drunk, to forget everything. . . . She accepted another drink and swallowed that too, feeling
the sharp edge of the pain become dulled, though it was
still insistently there, like a toothache which can almost
be ignored but which you know will be set raging again
if a certain spot is touched.
'Oh, Mike, Mike, Mike!' she murmured into her glass.
'If only you were here! How am I to get through the
awful boredom of this night?' She leant despondently
on the mantelpiece and gazed unseeingly into the fire.
'-that is Miss Weston, who's staying in our spare
cottage. Would you like to meet her?'
Mandy looked up, and became aware of Mrs Jordan
bearing down on her with a young man in tow. He was
rather small, and lithely built, with a pale face and a
thick dark moustache. A pair of lively, alert blue eyes
with a gleam of humour in them studied her intently as
he crossed the room. She had seen that face before where
?
Mrs Jordan muttered vague introductions and drifted
away in a flutter of chiffon. 'I'm sorry.' began
Mandy, who was not concentrating very well, about to
ask him to repeat his name.
He raised a hand to stop her. 'Why do you always
wear mourning?' he asked.
'I dress in black to match my life.'
'Ah! I thought so.' He laughed delightedly. 'I thought
you looked like something out of a Chekhov play.
Russian . . . Slavic, anyway. Tell me, you don't belong
here, do you?'
'I'm an Australian, if that's what you mean, and so
were my parents. It annoys me rather when people,
especially people from overseas, say "But you're not
Australian, are you?", obviously meaning it as a compliment.''As a matter of fact I am from overseas - what you
call a Pommy. I came up here to do a locum, and I was
amazed. The air- so fresh, so dry, so pure.' He inhaled
through delicately quivering nostrils, and his eyes
glittered with a kind of feverish energy. 'And the wine why
didn't anybody tell me about it in England? This
is an excellent claret,' he raised his glass and passed it
under his nose, and the nostrils quivered again.
'What are you drinking? Gin? That's no good for
you. I'll get you a decent drink.' He hurried away to
fetch a bottle of claret, and Mandy was relieved of the
flow of words, the brilliant, penetrating gaze that would
not let her be alone with her thoughts. He came back
with a clean glass and filled it from the bottle. 'There
you are - try that. Doctor's orders.'
'Doctor! Of course I That's where I've seen you before.'
Mandy waved the glass at him. 'Don't you remember,
they called you when the little boy fell in the
channel?'
'Good Lord! You're the girl who did the artificial
respiration. I remember now. I noticed your eyes then,
but the costume was - well, it didn't reveal your possibilities.
Smart girl. You saved the kiddie's life, probably.'
'Oh, I don't know. Anyone could have done it.'
'But no one else did. Now tell me what you're doing
here. You don't belong in this town, do you?'
'No, I'm from the city. . . .' She found that it was
easy to talk to him, he was so eager and receptive. He
wanted to hear everything about Australia she could tell
him. Time began to flow again, she forgot the insistent
ache at her heart. He said that he would be returning to
the city soon, and hoped to see her there. Immediately
she was reminded that the grape season was almost over,
that soon she must leave Vindura, and perhaps never see Mike again. She emptied her glass and turned it upside
down on the mantelpiece.
' "Turn down an empty glass," ' he said. 'What does
that mean? The finish of something?'
'Perhaps. . . . Something already finished.'
'I hope, all the same, that our friendship is only beginning.'
At
that her old coquettish spirit flared up again; she
raised her lovely, shadowed eyes to his and gave him a
long look. He blinked, slightly dazzled, and swallowed
the rest of his drink.
'And just when I've discovered you, I have to leave.
I've a mid. case due, and I only dropped in for half an
hour.'
'But it's quite early yet. I thought babies were always
born in the middle of the night.'
'Not always, though they often are - inconsiderate
little beggars.'
'Don't tell me you're talking about confinements, too,'
said Mitch, coming up to them with a glass in her hand.
'I came over here for a change of conversation.'
'It's his job,' said Mandy laconically. 'He brings unfortunate
infants into this world of sorrow. Mitch, this
is Dr . . . Carlton, is it? Mrs Fairbrother, an expectant
mother.'
'Oh, Mandy!' protested Mitch. 'Don't be so clinical.
I'm a grape-picker, Dr Carlton. I could write a new
chapter in the medical books on Pickers' Hands, a most
painful complaint.'
'That's a new one to me. But what unusual names Mitch
and Mandy!'
'My name was Mitchison before I was married. It's
easy to remember them - Mitch rhymes with bitch, and
Mandy with Candy. Her real name is Miranda.''I'll remember that!' he laughed, and went away to
make his farewells to his hostess.
'Let's go too,' said Mandy, suddenly despondent again.
'We can't! Not yet. Why don't you play something?'
'No!' said Mandy in a violent undertone. 'I feel I
never want to touch the piano or sing again.'
xx

And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press,
End in the Nothing all Things end in - Yes Then fancy while Thou art, Thou art but what
Thou Shalt be-Nothing- Thou shall not be less.

'What's the matter, not eatin' yer good breakfust? Yer
must be in love!' Rosie set down the teapot and stood
with her hands on her hips, regarding Mandy with a
not unfriendly gaze. Now that the season was nearing
its end and she was soon to lose her boarders, she began
to feel almost an affection for them.
'I'm not hungry,' said Mandy listlessly.
Many a true word is spoken in jest, thought Mitch unhappily,
looking at Mandy's shadowed eyes and drooping
mouth.
'She has not yet got over the party,' said Maria. 'Ah,
that Australian beer! It goes to the head. I was dancing
until after midnight, yet I was quite well yesterday
morning, and today I am quite well.'
'Brava!' said Mitch. 'All those verbs I Your English is
certainly coming on.'
'What verbs?'
'The ones you just used - the imperfect, the past perfect,
and the present tense.'
'I do not know one tense from another.'
' "I don't know." You may not know their names, but
you know how to use them correctly.'
Truly, Mitch? You are not pulling my leg?''No, fair dinkum, Maria. You're a real Aussie now.'
Maria beamed at her.
'Well, come on youse girls, if yer want any more.
I got to wash up and get stuck into that grape
picking.'
For Rosie had joined the pickers for the last few weeks
since they had been working in the vines about her
cottage.
'I finished long ago,' said Mandy, getting up and
leaving the others to finish their cups of tea. 'See you at
the racks.'
Mitch was worried over Mandy; she had not expected
her to take her sacrifice so much to heart. But to counteract
this there was the obvious, glowing happiness of her
other friend. Maria looked quite beautiful this morning,
with her usually tranquil face animated and a sparkle
of joy in her dark eyes.
On the way back to their own cottage she stopped
Mitch with a hand on her arm. 'I want to tell you why
I am so happy,' she said. 'He has asked me - on Saturday
night, after the dance. When I am married to Mike
I will be truly an Australian, non e vero.'
'Maria! You beaut! And did you tell him about - you
know?'
'Not until afterwards. He did not know, when he
asked me. And then, when I told him, he was so surprised,
and pleased, and cross, and gentle. ... I mean
he was cross that I did not tell him before. We are to
be married soon, as soon as the fruit is in and he is free
to go away for a holiday.'
'That's wonderful! I'll have to come up for the wedding.
For I'm afraid I promised Richard I'd go home as
soon as everything was settled. He'll be coming for me
next weekend.'
'I do not -I don't - know how you have stayed away
from him for so long.'
'I don't either. Home is where he is, whether we've
got a house or not. I see that now.'
Maria's heart echoed the words. Home is where he is.
My home is here . . . Australia is my home. Here is
my home. . . . And her children and her children's
children would be Australians. They would forget that
their grandmother came from a little village in Italy;
they would go to school, and learn to speak this queer
Australian-English as a native tongue: beaut, good-oh,
dinkum, orright, so long, crook, bastard. . . .
She began to laugh, thinking how casually they
dropped that last word into their conversation, in an
almost affectionate way: 'He's not a bad old bastard. Of 'Course he's a bastard, but he's not a silly bastard, if
you know what I mean.' The one thing they didn't
mean, she knew now, was that 'he' was the illegitimate
son of unmarried parents. She should really not have
been so upset at the idea of having a baby.
Mike had been delighted, disbelieving, dismayed, and
proud by turns, when she told him. He had asked her
to marry him in the car, going home, while he drove
with one hand, the other clasping her full breast.
And then, when he stopped the car and kissed her, she
had told him, crying a little in her happiness.
'You should have told me,' he kept saying. 'I should
have known, I suppose. . . . But I didn't guess ... I
didn't dream . . . I've always been scared of marriage
and having children, and all that. And now it's just
happened. A son to leave my land to, when I get me
own vines!'
'But if it is a daughter . . .'
'That's all right! We'll have a son next time,' he said,and laughed. 'You must be careful. . . I'll see you don't
work too hard, next week. Maria! Little mother. . . .'

The morning was frosty, and the dew so heavy that
the vine-leaves were soaking wet, so there was no dust
to give Mandy hay-fever. In spite of the clear golden
sunlight, the remote and perfect blue sky through which
black crows wavered with melancholy cries, it was cold
enough for the girls to keep their woollen pullovers on
as they picked.
When they had settled into their stride, and the gold
and amber sultanas were thudding rapidly into the tins,
Mitch plucked up heart to tell Mandy. She said, through
the wall of green leaves: 'Maria tells me that Mike has
asked her, and they are going to get married as soon as
all the fruit is in. She is terribly happy, of course. She
doesn't realise what you have done for her. It was really
unselfish and good of you, Man.' She stopped and
listened. There was absolute stillness on the other side
of the vine. No more bunches fell into the tins. 'Mandy?
Did you hear what I said?'
'Yes. I heard.'
'I don't know what you said to him, but the reaction
evidently sent him straight to Maria. Their baby will be
a dinkum Aussie, a brand-new Australian with his roots
going back about twenty thousand years. She's had a
rotten spin, losing her proxy husband like that, and she
had nowhere to go when the season ended. I'm so glad
it's all come out right ... for her.'
There was no answer, so Mitch began to work again.
After a while Mandy's voice came through the vine: 'I
think I'll have to go up to the cottage.'
'Are you feeling sick?'
'Not exactly. But, as Tennyson put it: "The Curse has come upon me I" '
'Oh, the curse! Didn't you expect it?'
'Of course I did. But not just this morning. I'll have
to-oh Lord! Here comes young David.'
'Hullo, Mandy, how many tins you done, Mandy? Is
you pickin' sultanas? C'n I help? I've got my pocketknife
wif me.'
Since he had been rescued by Mandy, and his mother
had impressed on him what a wonderful person she was,
he was always wanting to help her. Mother Mac in her
gratitude baked delicious cakes at night after her long
day's work, iced them in the morning and brought them
to Mandy with apologies: ' 'Fraid the icing's not quite
set. ... I know how youse must long for a bit of homemade
cake after Rosie Binks's shop slabs. . . . It's no
trouble, dear, I like to cook.'
'Thank you, Davy,' said Mandy more gently than
usual. 'You can go on filling my tins while I'm up at the
cottage, will you?'
'Has you got your watz, Mandy? Is your watz broked?
What times does it say?'
'Here, you read it yourself. I'll put it on your wrist,
see, and tighten the band so you can't lose it. It says
half-past ten.'
'Harst-past ten,' said David solemnly, overcome with
joy at having this great treasure to himself. 'Oo, gee!
C'n I keep it?' he breathed.
'Yes, I won't want it.' She went off without a word to
Mitch.
It was nearly an hour later when Mitch began to
wonder. Half-past ten she had gone, and now it was
nearly half-past eleven; in half an hour it would be
lunch-time. David ran off to show the watch proudly to
his mother. It was odd that Mandy should let him have
the watch which she valued so much. . . . Mitch laid
down her knife and walked up the track.
As she had half-expected, the cottage was deserted.
The wire door creaked in the waiting silence. The sunlight
fell across the bare wooden floor. Mandy's handbag
was lying on her table. She had not gone to town,
then, to buy some necessary she'd found she needed.
She would hardly go for a walk in her present condition;
she had said nothing about not coming back to work,
however.
Not coming back! The watch, given so carelessly to
David! Mitch shot out of the cottage and began running
down to the main channel. She knew Mandy's
moodiness and something of her family history, and the
morbid interest she had always taken in suicide. Then
she paused. No, Mandy was too good a swimmer to
choose the channel or the river. There was the railway-line,
and the next train was due in about an
hour. . . . But by now she could be anywhere along the
line.
Mitch went to the racks and sought out Mike. By an
effort she kept her voice calm. She must not let him
know; she must not spoil what Mandy had done for
Maria. She said:
'Mike, I have an odd request to make of you. Mandy
has gone off in a huff. We had a quarrel, and she tore
off, I'm not sure where, probably towards the river, and
I'm afraid she'll get lost. Could I take your car and go
and look for her? I've been driving since I was sixteen,
and I'd be very careful.'
'Of course, Mitch; but she may not keep to any tracks.
Don't you think I'd better come?'
'No, I know you're busy, and she can't have gone far.
But she's such a moody creature, you don't know what she'll do next. She might go and catch a train back to
the city.'
Mike did not particularly want to come; the very
sight of Mandy was painful to him now. He said
musingly: 'There is something odd about her. I remember
one night out at the Lock, she spoke very strangely
. . . something about her mother.'
'Yes . . . well, can I take it?'
'Go ahead. There's plenty of petrol in the tank.'
'I'll put some in anyway.'
Mitch ran towards the car. The Lock, the Lock! Of
course, the place a strong swimmer would choose, the
foaming whirlpool below the weir where nothing could
keep afloat.
She started the unfamiliar car with difficulty, found
the bottom gear and roared off in a cloud of dust. She
would drive in along the railway-line, and then ask at
the Post Office for the road to the Lock.
The line and the road to the town were deserted. As
she neared the outskirts of the main streets there were
a few vehicles, and under a tree outside someone's gate
a small English car was parked. As she drew nearly level
she saw a man come out of the gate, a man with a large
moustache who carried a small black bag.
She stamped on the brakes and leapt out of the car.
'Dr Carlton! Oh, Doctor, I'm glad I saw you. It's Mandy, she's disappeared, and I'm afraid she's planning to do
away with herself. Will you come with me, out to the
Lock? We may be too late.'
One glance at her face showed that she was in earnest.
'Hop in, we'll go in my car,' he said at once. 'I thought
she had a temperamental Russian look. Has there been
some upset since the other night?'
'No - yes, she's been under a strain for some time,and this morning she heard something ... It doesn't
matter. Only hurry.'
They asked the way at the Post Office, and were soon
tearing along the road to the Lock.
XXI

Alas, that Spring should vanish with the Rose!
That Youth's sweet-scented Manuscript should close!
The Nightingale that in the Branches sang,
Ah, whence, and whither flown again, who knows!

Mandy walked down to the corner in a black mood. She
didn't know where she was going, only that she wanted
to get away from everyone and be miserable in peace.
She stopped at the railway-line and stared at the rails,
polished, gleaming like water, as they disappeared into
a perspective point in the distance. Here was a way out.
Either she would catch the evening train to the city, or
she would throw herself under it; but she couldn't go
back to face Maria's happiness.
She had picked up her purse and put it in her jeans
pocket without any plan. Now, as a bus came along the
main road, she hailed it and got aboard. She noticed
nothing of the passing vines, the willows that dropped
yellow leaves into the main channel. Her eyes were
turned broodingly inward.
What hurt most was that Mike had given her up so
easily, had turned so instantly to Maria. She had
thought he would be downcast and inconsolable for a
time; she could have borne a gaze of sorrowful reproach,
but not the light, jaunty, almost jeering tone he had
adopted this morning. He had looked at her with
positive aversion. And this of course was what she had
wanted.Nevertheless she felt she had succeeded too well. He
believed she cared nothing for him, and pride made him
act as if she did not exist. He was not one to cry for
the moon.
Well, once she was dead he would understand her true
feelings, and remember her with tenderness. It was this
rather childish wish to be thought well of by Mike
which drove her to thoughts of suicide. 'Even Mitch
doesn't understand how I feel,' she thought. Tears of
self-pity gathered in her eyes. She dashed them away,
and got out of the bus in the town.
Walking down towards the river, she considered swimming
out and then along the centre of the stream until
she was exhausted. It would be pleasant rather than
frightening, just to let her tired legs drop, and sink down
among the grey-green depths. But she could swim so
well, perhaps the will to live would be too strong for her.
She stopped by the big hotel on the river frontage.
She would just go and have a drink first; she had hours
to wait for the evening train. She ordered a gin-squash
from the young, dark-haired waiter who seemed to be
the only person about. She knew him by sight; they had
sometimes dropped in for a beer on a Saturday afternoon
in the lounge, for the bar was forbidden to women.
The waiter's name was Feathers, and the other waiters
called him Chook.
'Not workin' today?' asked Chook with easy familiarity,
glancing at her grape-picking clothes.
'Not today. I'm on strike. I'm celebrating,' she said
with a crooked smile, 'the end of the season - for me.'
'Good for you. A one-girl strike, eh?'
'That's right. The others are still working- the scabs.'
She swallowed her drink as soon as it came, tasting the
gin unmixed in the bottom of the glass. After the second gin-squash her legs felt weak. She was not used to drinking
in the morning. But it helped her not to think. . . .
'A double whisky!' she said recklessly when Chook
came back again for her empty glass. He raised his eyebrows,
which were very thick and black and met right
across his nose. He scooped up her glass, however, with
an expert sweep of the hand.
When he came back with the whisky he said: 'These
things ain't made with water, you know.'
'I know, Chooky-hen. You won't have to carry me
out. I'm a confirm-I'm a hardened drinker.'
'Yair. But you don't wanter go ruinin' that schoolgirl
complexion.'
He wiped up the spill-marks on the table, his lank
black hair falling over one eye, and went and stood by
the glass doors. She began to be irritated by the anxious,
almost motherly looks he kept directing at her to see if
she meant to drink any more.
At last she got up and weaved her way with dignity
among the tables, over the thick carpet, to the door
marked 'Ladies'. There seemed to be more tables than
before, and the space between them was smaller, but
she made it without a collision.

Mitch and Dr Carlton stood and stared at the foaming
weir, and the water trickling through the closed Lock
gates. There was not a soul in sight. Half-unwillingly
they walked out above the spillway and looked down at
the churning water. No dark shape bobbed among the
foam.
Relieved, they went back to the car. 'We'd better inform
the police,' said the doctor. 'They'll make a proper
search. . . .'
'Oh no! Not the police. There may be nothing toworry about, really.' Mitch felt she could not bear to see
them solemnly dragging the river.
'But you said she has these moods, this impulse towards
self-destruction. What about the train-line?'
'There's no train before this evening.'
'Well, that's good, anyway.'
They drove slowly round the town, seeing no sign of
Mandy; then decided to go back the other way and take
the track out to the river and the picnic-place. Dr
Carlton was surprised to note the depth of his relief at
not finding her in the river. He took more than a professional
interest in the missing girl. What lovely,
alluring eyes she had! There must be a great deal behind
them: a mind that it would be fascinating to explore.
And her coolness and resource in saving that
child's life. ... He trod impatiently on the accelerator.

Mandy noticed that the floor of the washroom undulated
gently in front of her as she walked. She sat down
and concentrated until the up-and-down movement
ceased. Her head felt light as a dry puff-ball. Already
the pain of Mike's engagement was dulled, she no longer
felt the need to cry out and beat her head against something
hard.
The picture of herself being found dead on the train
line had faded a little (Would that nice young doctor do
the post-mortem? She hoped not.), and the other picture
of a remorseful Mike lifting her broken body in his
arms. After all, she was not a very romantic figure in
her stained denim jeans and cotton work-shirt. Anna
Karenina, she felt, would have managed things much
better.
And what was she going to do until the beastly train
arrived? It was rather hard to be a tragic heroine in a little country town where there were only about two
trains a day.
She was going to feel terrible when the effects of the
gin and the whisky wore off, and she couldn't sit drinking
all day under Chook's anxious eye. She decided to
get a bottle of wine and take it down by the river for the
rest of the afternoon.
She walked carefully to the bottle department and
bought some strong, sweet muscat. Then she wandered
down the sloping lawns and sat under an ornamental
shrub close to the river-bank, and forced herself to take
a long drink from the bottle. She put the cork back and
lay down under the bush. The sun came through the
leaves in sudden sharp gleams that hurt her eyes. It was
well past noon and she'd had nothing to eat since breakfast,
but she didn't feel hungry. The important thing
was not to think. She sat up and took another swig from
the bottle.
There was something infinitely soothing about the
broad sweep of river in front, the willows softly cascading
their fountains of green from the opposite shore, and
the quiet, invisible flow of water held back by the lock
and weir.
The Lock! She sat up so suddenly that her head
throbbed. Why hadn't she thought of it before? The
place where she had stood and looked over at the mad,
churning water on that night - it seemed years ago when
Mike had pulled Mitch out of the river. Mike's
voice: 'There'd not be much hope for anyone who fell
in there.' Oh Mike, darling Mike! But she mustn't
think; she'd have one more drink to give her courage,
and then she would walk out to the weir. It was so much
less messy than the railway-line, and not so unpleasant
for other people.Mandy was not given to unselfish thinking, but now
she began to consider other people besides herself and
Mike. There was Mitch, who would be dreadfully upset
certainly, but she had Richard to comfort her. And then
there was her father.
She hadn't given a thought to her father, that lonely
figure; he had been so remote from her inner life for so
long. But how different he might have been, how gay
and companionable, but for the tragedy in his life! He
had never been a happy man since she had known him.
And was she to put this further burden upon him; to
make him feel that he had failed both his wife and his
daughter? It would be too cruel.
She got up, steadying herself against the sturdy shrub
which had half concealed her. The bottle, half-empty,
rolled along the ground. She heard carefully modulated
voices nearby, and turned to see Mr and Mrs Pike escorting
a toothy female in smartly-cut clothes, a small
feathered hat, and just the right amount of lipstick for
her age. She was evidently a visitor to the town, and
they were showing her round.
These gardens are a community effort entirely,' Mr
Pike was saying in his pompous, public-meeting voice.
(What voice did he use when he was in bed with his
wife, Mandy wondered fleetingly, or did he address her
like a hall-full of people too?)
'Chawming,' said the visitor. 'A chawming little town
altogether. And the hotel is a community one too? Of
course, in England . . .'
She stopped in mid-sentence as Mandy appeared before
her on the path: mud to the ankles, hair wild and
full of leaves, her shirt stained with grape-juice and dust.
'Why, Mr Pike!' said Mandy in her most seductive
tones. 'How do you do? We have seen so little of you
lately, and I did want to thank you for your chawming
hostility-I mean hospitality. I have seldom inhabited
a more delightfully appointed hut. Such comfort and
convenience!'
The look of dazed shock on Mr Pike's flabby face was
like a tonic to her. In a sudden reaction to her grim
mood of depression, Mandy felt a wild flow of spirits.
The visiting lady's eyebrows had shot up so far that they
were lost under her hat-brim, and Mrs Pike was rapidly
turning puce. Her horrified gaze was fixed on the half
empty wine-bottle which lay on the path. She clutched
her husband's arm and hissed: 'Do you mean to say you
know this-this?'
'Yes, yes,' he muttered. 'I told you, you remember?
Her father is a great friend of Walton's. . . . Er, may
I present Miss Weston, Lady Halibury? Miss Weston,
my wife, Mrs Pike.'
'How do you do?' said Mandy sweetly. Her half
offered hand was not taken. 'Lady Halibury, you must
come and see our humble abode. It will be quite an
experience for you. A unique experience. Thick, white
cups with cracks in, no saucers, canvas stretchers to sleep
on, and nowhere to hang your clothes except on nails
in the wall. Have you ever slept in grey blankets, Lady
Halibury? They tickle the nose, but they're warmer
than sheets. On hot nights, of course, we don't wear
anything at all . . .'
'Edward! This young woman is drunk. Come, Lady
Halibury, let us return to the car. I really must
apologise.'
'Not at all,' said Mandy, enunciating her words with
elaborate care but swaying slightly on her feet, 'if you
imagine, Mrs Pike, that I am under the influence of alcohol, I can assure you that you are labouring undera delusion. I am, in fact, cold, stone, stinking sober.'
'Miss Weston! I beg you - you are in no fit state . . .'
Mr Pike stepped forward impulsively and on to the
empty bottle, which rolled under his foot. With a graceful
slide he landed in the river. He was so taken by surprise
that he did not even cry out as he disappeared with
a resounding splash.
'Oh dear! Oh dear I He'll be drowned, I know!' wailed
Mrs Pike. 'With those heavy boots on, and he can
scarcely swim!'
'Never fear, Madam. Your husband shall not drown,'
said Mandy dramatically, kicking off her shoes and
diving neatly into the river. The bank was steep; Mr
Pike had sunk in twelve feet of water. She caught him
by the collar as he came up, and in this undignified
fashion towed him to the bank. Mrs Pike was stretching
her hand to help him, regardless of muddy splashes on
her nylon stockings and suede shoes. The grim-looking
old trout was actually fond of him, thought Mandy.
Poor Mr Pike had all the pompousness washed out of
him for the present. His hair was glued in sorry strands
about his bald patch, the wet clothes clung to his rotund
figure and turned him into a comic caricature of himself.
But
Mandy when wet looked particularly attractive,
with her golden mermaid-hair and sodden shirt transparently
outlining her lovely breasts, and her eyes
washed to a clear green.
Or so Dr Carlton thought, hurrying down the slope
of the lawns with Mitch behind him. They had come
back to the centre of the town after a fruitless drive out
to the river, and were on their way to the police station
to report Mandy's disappearance, when they saw the
tableau on the bank opposite the hotel.
Dr Carlton grasped Mr Pike's wet hand and shook it
gratefully. 'We've been looking everywhere for her,' he
said. 'Did you pull her out, sir?'
'No! She pulled me out. I slipped on a blasted bottle
- where is it? It must have gone into the water. I'd have
been all right, of course,' he added hastily. 'But thank
you all the same, Miss, er - Miss Weston.'
'A very neat rescue,' said Lady Halibury crisply.
'Yes!' said Mrs Pike resentfully, 'but he wouldn't have
fallen in if it hadn't been for her.'
They went back to their car, Mr Pike squelching as
he walked.
'Oh, Man I We were so worried.' Mitch had taken
Mandy's hand, and in one quick, reassuring squeeze all
was understood between them. Dr Carlton was looking
at Mandy with twinkling eyes.
'You seem to make a habit of saving lives. As that is
my profession too, I think we should see more of each
other.'
Mandy smiled. In her large, strange-coloured eyes was
that indefinable invitation or promise which had made
so many masculine hearts beat faster. 'Well, will you
begin by driving us back to the cottage? I must get out
of these wet things.'
'I have to drive Mike's car back, if you'd take me to
it,' said Mitch. 'You bring Mandy; though she doesn't
look as if she needed medical attention.'
'Oh, I don't know; shock and immersion . . .'
'It's poor old Pikelet who had the shock, I fancy. But
I'm afraid I don't look respectable enough for the main
street of Vindura.'
'You look absolutely wonderful,' said Denver Carlton
sincerely.Back in the hut, Mandy peeled off her wet clothes and
rubbed herself dry. 'That doctor is rather a dear,' she
said. 'He's so interested in everything, so fizzing with
energy and appreciation, you can't help liking him. And
I thought the English were supposed to be cold and
reserved.'
'There arc exceptions, no doubt. I hate those vague
generalisations about people. You might as well say all
Australians are slovenly dressers and talk through their
noses.'
'Yes; it's just as silly. Throw me my pyjamas, will
you? I think I'll just crawl into bed and have a snooze.
I've had a tremendous amount to drink, you know. I'd
better sleep it off.'
'Then I'll leave you quiet. Sure you're all right?'
'Quite sure. And Mitch - thank you for coming after
me.'
'That's all right, mate. Don't mention it.'
Mitch closed the wire door softly after her, and went
back to work. She told Mike that she had found Mandy
in the town, that they had made up their quarrel, but
she would not be coming back to work today.
'That's all right with me,' said Mike. 'She's on piecework,
anyway. She doesn't have to worry about the
money, does she?'
'No; too much money has perhaps been bad for
Mandy. You mustn't judge her too harshly, Mike.
She.'
'I don't presume to judge her at all. She's outside my
comprehension.'
She left it at that. It was evident that Mike had not
recovered from the blow to his pride.

Mandy lay with her face turned to the wall, as she had
on the night when Maria followed Mike into the storm;
but now she felt strangely indifferent. She was too
drowsy to think or to care. She felt the comfort of the
rough grey blanket that she drew over her face, shutting
out the light, and the comfort of Mitch's sturdy
friendship. She was glad she had not done anything to
hurt Mitch, who understood everything without the
need for explanations. She would go home and try to
be a companion to her father, if it was not too late; she
intended never to marry.
When she woke it seemed only minutes later, yet a
mellowing of the light, the feel of the sunny day, told
her that the afternoon was well advanced. Her first
thought was that she did not want Maria to find her
prostrated; she got up quickly and went over to the
house for a hot bath, then dressed and did her face carefully.
When she heard the others approaching, she was
able to turn towards the door with a casual smile.
'Well, I played hookey -I mean I took the day off,
Maria,' she said. 'Don't tell Mike, will you? Did Mitch
tell you about it?'
'Si, Mandy.'
'And she tells me that you and . . . Mike are engaged.
Congratulations. The best woman won. That is, the best
for Mike.'
'Oh, I do not know . . . But thank you, very much.'
'Prego, my child.'
The others went across for their bath, while Mandy
sat down and lit a cigarette with a hand which was not
quite steady. Her mouth was dry, her head ached, and
she felt a longing for another drink.

'This is our last expedition together!' said Mitch
rather sorrowfully, as the three girls walked down thedrive to catch the bus on the following Saturday afternoon.
Richard was arriving that night, and she would
be driving home with him in the morning.
By the end of the week the season would be finished.
Mandy would return to the city, and Maria go to board
with an Italian family in the town until the day of her
wedding.
'Let's have a real shopping spree!' said Mandy. I want
to get a wedding present for Maria, and a boy's watch
for David' for his mother had made him return the
good watch, much to his sorrow), 'and something for
Mother Mac, and a bottle of plonk for Rosie. Oh, and a
new dress for me.'
'Another new dress! Mamma mia!' 'Yes, I am going out somewhere rather special tonight.
Dr Carlton is calling for me after he's finished consulting.'
Mandy
looked rather smug, and Mitch wondered
again at the change in her friend. Her expression was
softer, she seemed to have mellowed in some way. The
experience of working on the land had been good for
her-or was it just that she was older? They were all
indefinably older, changed, a new self growing out of
their old selves as imperceptibly as a plant put on leaves
or a flower unfolded.
Maria was more Madonna-like than ever, her pale
olive brow serene and lovely under its cloud of dark
hair. Since she was promessa, with the status of a wife-to-be,
she had a new dignity and assurance. And as for
herself - Mitch looked wryly down at her waistline - today
the zip-fastener on her dress had simply refused to
meet, and she'd had to cover the space with a wide belt.
And Richard would be here tonight. He had sounded
pleased and excited on the telephone. 'I have a surprise for you - a pleasant surprise - a very pleasant surprise,'
he'd said, and would say no more. She guessed that it
was about a house. She didn't mind if it was a year before
they could move in, as long as she had something
to look forward to. Living in one room with two fellow
workers had taught her something about living with
others.
Dead, pale-brown leaves were whirled across the drive
by a sharp breeze. Two nights ago there had been a
severe frost that withered the remaining leaves on the
vines. The next day a strong wind rose, and the air was
thick with fallen leaves. Today the vines were almost
bare.
Mitch was disappointed. She remembered the lovely
autumn vineyards she had seen in the south, burning
through the mists in gold and russet and amber for a
month or more. Here were no mellow lingerings of a
declining year; withered age came at one stroke.
The poplars were like witches' brooms, mere bundles
of sticks against the sky, that for once was grey and
overcast. Mitch looked back at the house and the two
cottages.
They appeared bare and mean, reduced to ordinariness
without their surrounding verdure. Only the gum
trees by the dam retained their leaves and their original
pride and grace.
It was sad to see all else so changed. She remembered
the day they had driven in the gate with Mr Pike and
first seen this place, and the strange feeling she'd had
of an eternal moment among the flux of time. It seemed
long ago now. So much had happened since then.
She had the sensation of standing on a sandbank
which felt firm, yet was being eaten away and undermined
by relentless waters. You could not hold themoment, which was forever fleeting. This day was being
swept away into the past with all the others already
gone. She would begin to look back upon it: 'When I
was at Vindura . . . last year, grape-picking on the
Murray. . . . When I was a girl . . . Once, long ago . . .'
'Let's sing something,' she said, shaking off her
thoughts, feeling the present fall into place and close
firmly about her with an almost audible click. 'Mandy,
you begin.'
Mandy was thinking about the train journey from the
city, when they had met Maria. She sang: 'Ah quant'e bella giovenezza
Che si fugge tuitavia'
'Oh, for Pete's sake! Not that!'
'Then I will sing,' Said Maria. 'Listen: Non ti scordar di me . . .
That means, Mitch: "Do not forget me".'
'I won't forget, Maria. I'll never forget the time we
all spent here.'
'Nor I,' said Mandy, thinking of Mike.
The also,' said Maria.