Lindsay Armstrong: Trial By Marriage

‘I don’t want to start school today!’ Ben declared.

‘Oh, there’s no chance of that,’ Sarah replied. ‘It’s Saturday.’

Several hours later Sarah sat on the front steps of her very basic wooden cottage that adjoined the school- house and watched the Land Rover, with Wendy Wilson at the wheel, drive away. She’d not only given Wendy, Amy and co. a tour of the schoolhouse but had borrowed one of the property vehicles so that she could introduce them to the wives and show them the mustering yards, the horse paddocks, the machinery shed and so on. Whether it had been a success, whether she had accomplished what Cliff Wyatt had expected her to was debatable.

There were ten men employed permanently on Edgeleigh, four of them with wives who between them provided her twelve regular pupils, and there was Mrs Tibbs, an institution on the property. She was a huge, formidable woman who could rope a calf single- handedly yet had the lightest hand for making pastry and, although no one called her anything but Mrs Tibbs, the whereabouts of Mr Tibbs remained a mystery. They’d finally run her to ground at the cottage of Jean Lawson, wife of the station foreman, and Sarah had attempted to establish some sort of bridge between the newcomers and the two old hands, but although Jean Lawson had tried her hardest Mrs Tibbs had remained inscrutable and unforth- coming—although she had, Sarah had noticed, al- lowed her gaze to rest on the children, particularly Sally, several times. Mrs Tibbs had a very soft spot for children.

Well, I can’t do any more, Sarah thought, and shook her head ruefully. As a matter of fact he’s jolly lucky I did as much after what he said to me, let alone Ms Wendy Wilson’s patronising ways…

And she fell to thinking about her new employer. He would be in his middle thirties, she judged, and immediately thought bitterly, Why didn’t I make some comment about him not being married, which he ob- viously isn’t? In fact I’ve been told he isn’t by everyone who got into such a flutter when he bought the place!

She grimaced then propped her chin on her hands and let her mind roam backwards. As soon as it was known that Edgeleigh had changed hands much speculation had taken place. Once it had become known that the wealthy Wyatt family had bought it, the speculation had become tinged with reverence. Sarah herself had had no knowledge of them but then she was not even a Queenslander, let alone an expert on the great pastoral families of the state. But she’d swiftly become apprised of the fact that they owned other stations—Coorilla had been mentioned often in the context of being a showplace and the Wyatts’ home base—and it had been said that if anyone could turn Edgeleigh’s fortunes around Cliff Wyatt was the one.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ she murmured drily to herself; ‘but that doesn’t mean to say he’s anything but a thoroughly unpleasant macho type of man.’ Then she sighed and looked around. Edgeleigh had been her home for the past year; situated in western Queensland, it spanned thousands of acres and ran thousands of head of cattle. It was intensely hot in summer and could be brisk and chilly in winter, with cold nights. It was not the most beautiful place on earth unless you appreciated the often dry and arid countryside and to do that you needed a fairly subtle eye for colour. The greens weren’t lush and brilliant and sandy brown predominated but there were shades of it that were sometimes closer to ochre, sometimes blindingly pale, and shades of blue to the sky that could be breathtaking. There was always an unlimited feeling of space. And in spring there was the unbe- lievable glory of the wild flowers that bloomed and cloaked the earth in blues and yellows, purples and pinks…

But it wasn’t only the colours and space Sarah had become addicted to, it was the freedom of having her own school, she had to acknowledge, and she caught her breath suddenly, knowing it would be an awful wrench to leave.

At twenty-six, she had no steady relationship with a man, it was true, but she rarely felt it as a lack in her life. For one thing she had reason to be somewhat cynical about what went on between men and women; for another she was passionate about teaching and knowledge—for yet another she was heavily into cre- ative arts such as papier mûché, rug-making, de- coupage et cetera, she was a fine seamstress, a creative cook, she loved growing things and grew her own herbs and anything else she could get to grow in pots, and she was the one who always got landed with any sick or stray wildlife such as orphaned baby kanga- roos or koalas, and birds with broken wings.

Consequently her cottage was a riot of colour from her artistic and potted gardening endeavours—indeed they spilled over into the schoolhouse next door—and more often than not there was an inquisitive lame joey about the place, and she rarely had a free moment.

Yes, very hard to leave, she mused with a sigh, and thought of “her” school. Although the permanent number of pupils was twelve currently, she had a wandering population that sometimes doubled the ranks, of children and even occasionally adults from the mostly aboriginal pool of stockmen and ringers who came and went like the seasons. She never turned anyone away even when she knew they’d be here today gone tomorrow, and it was amazing how many of those children turned up again and again. But for her twelve permanents, she was more than just the teacher; she was the confidante of their parents, often the babysitter, sometimes the relief nurse, the adviser who knew a bit about the big cities some of them had never seen, and lots more.

At present she was even the dressmaker, she thought with a wry little smile as she got up and wandered inside towards an improvised dressmaker’s dummy, drew the protective sheet aside and contemplated the wedding-dress she was making for Cindy Lawson, just eighteen, about to be married to a stockman from a neighbouring station and determined to be married in a dress that would be remembered for years on Edgeleigh. It had everything, this dress, or would have when finished, Sarah thought ruefully. The basic white taffeta was in the process of being embellished with lace, with sequins and pearl beads, with ruffles and frills and bows, and it had underskirts of billowing net. And if I don’t take a stand soon, poor Cindy will be so buried by it all, we won’t even see her, she re- flected. But at least it is all nicely sewn, she thought as she fingered a sleeve absently, and found her mind for some reason of its own returning to Cliff Wyatt— and the uncomfortable feeling she had that he’d all too readily realised his first effect on her. And that a couple of his subsequent obscure remarks had been subtle allusions to it.

Which makes him no more likeable, she thought, then glanced at her watch and decided to spend the next hour until four o’clock making sure the school- house was in tip-top condition.

It was a waste of time. By four-thirty he hadn’t ap- peared, by five-thirty she decided he wasn’t going to appear although she hadn’t hung around the school house all that time, but at six she closed her front door firmly against the rising chill of an autumn dusk. She prepared a chicken casserole using herbs, bacon and mushrooms, indulged herself in a rare treat—a glass of wine to soothe her feeling of being ill-used by an arrogant man—put a compact disc of Bach on to the player to help the wine along, pulled the rubber band out of her hair and ran her fingers through it, and started to sew the last, the very last, she told herself firmly, of the pearl beads on to Cindy Lawson’s wedding-dress while her casserole cooked.

So engrossed did she become in the delicate work that when a knock sounded on her door she called absently to come in, thinking it must be one of her pupils or their parents. So she got the surprise of her life when a light, lazy voice she remembered all too well said with reverence, ‘Hallelujah! Is it possible I’ve done you a grave injustice, Miss Sutherland?’