Lindsay Armstrong: Trial By Marriage

‘Excellent.’ Wendy looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘What does everyone drink?’

‘Beer,’ both Sarah and Mrs Tibbs replied, although Mrs Tibbs added,

‘And you don’t want to go suggesting spirits or gut- rotting wine, miss. Many a fight has started that way!’

Wendy grimaced but said nothing further on the subject. ‘How many people will there be, do you think?’

‘Uh… ten, twenty-three, twenty-seven—about thirty-two; there are a couple of ringers in the camp but fourteen of those will be kids,’ Sarah said.

‘What a thought,’ Wendy murmured.

‘It’s all right. I usually take care of the kids. We play games and so on until the food is ready. If we’re eating at five we generally collect an hour or so earlier—’ Sarah stopped as Amy trailed into the kitchen in a beautiful silk housecoat but sporting a pale, woebegone expression.

‘I suppose it’s too much to hope this barbecue is off?’ she said petulantly.

At four o’clock that afternoon Sarah was at the bar- becue area, as were most of the other employees, but there was no sign of the homestead party as yet. And she detected a certain amount of tension that was not normally present as smoke drifted through the air and the roasting carcasses were turned slowly on their spits.

It was a beautiful afternoon as the sun started to sink, with a few streaks of cloud in a sky tinged with apricot, and most of the men, cattlemen born and bred, discarded their tall hats which normally ap- peared glued to their heads. Most of them also wore boots with heels and silver-studded belts and, looking around, you couldn’t doubt this was cowboy country, Queensland style, because, although Edgeleigh now possessed a helicopter with the word ‘WYATT’ painted on its side, a lot of the men had been born and bred to a saddle as well and the night paddocks with their complement of horses were not far away.

For a couple of minutes Sarah stopped what she was doing—arranging dishes on one of the wooden tables—and looked around a little dreamily. It was romantic to be stuck out so far away from anywhere, with these people with their slower but not necessarily less wise speech, their far-seeing eyes, their simple ways.

Then she noticed two Land Rovers approaching from the homestead, and everyone sat up.

It was Cliff Wyatt who contrived to break the ice in a masterly exhibition that Sarah could only ap- plaud secretly and wonder how he’d done it. But the fact remained that in ten minutes or so he had everyone drinking and talking, he had Amy placed between Jean and Cindy Lawson and he himself with a beer in hand, and was surrounded by the men.

‘Not bad,’ Mrs Tibbs remarked, plonking a pot down next to Sarah’s rice. ‘Him I could get along with. Her—that’s another matter,’ she added darkly.

‘Amy?’

‘Not She won’t stay long—the other one, with the green eyes like a cat.’

‘Well, she’s definitely not staying long,’ Sarah of- fered, and had Mrs Tibbs look at her with severe con- tempt. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she queried with a smile curving her lips. ‘Wasn’t her curry any good?’

‘Her curry is bloody good,’ Mrs Tibbs said. ‘That doesn’t mean I have to like her.’

‘I still don’t see how it’s going to be a problem,’ Sarah said with a faint frown.

‘Then I’ll spell it out for you even though you’re the teacher round here—she plans to be Mrs Cliff Wyatt one day, you mark my words.’

Sarah’s lips parted and her eyes widened. ‘Oh…’ she said very slowly.

‘Yep, makes sense, doesn’t it? Well, maybe not to the likes of you, right off, leastwise, being a bit naive on these subjects—’

‘I am not!’ Sarah protested.

‘Course you are,’ Mrs Tibbs replied indulgently. ‘Hasn’t the veterinarian been making eyes at you for months—but have you noticed? Seems to me not.’

Sarah swallowed in an unusually flustered way as she thought of Tim Markwell, whom she liked, but not in that way. ‘He hasn’t!’

‘Who hasn’t?’ Wendy Wilson asked as she de- livered another pot to the table from the Land Rover. ‘My curry,’ she added gently. ‘Mrs Tibbs has allowed me to present it. Sarah, you can do either of two things for me—help Amy out a bit or help Sally and Ben out by starting to organise the kids.’

Sarah controlled an urge to tell Wendy Wilson to go to hell and said stiffly, ‘Right, I’ll do the kids.’

Whereas Mrs Tibbs said to the world at large, ‘What did I tell you?’

It was a successful barbecue. Almost from the first Ben joined in the games with vigour and initiative and even Sally released Sarah’s hand eventually and con- sented to be part of things. And when the meal was served Sarah had them all sitting in a ring so that they ate in a fairly orderly manner but with much en- joyment and it was only when they’d all finished that she released them to run wild a bit in the firelit darkness to play an energetic game of Cowboys and Indians. And Wendy contrived to hold court with the wives and older daughters in an exhibition almost as masterly as Cliff Wyatt’s that all the same irritated Sarah for reasons that weren’t that easy to identify. At least, she did acknowledge honestly to herself, the other girl rubbed her up the wrong way, so whatever she did would probably be irritating, however well she did it.

But surely why this was so could have nothing to do with Wendy’s ambition to be Mrs Cliff Wyatt— or could it? she asked herself once then shook her head in a gesture of disbelief, but added to herself, I don’t even know if it’s true and not an odd fancy of Mrs Tibbs’! But the irony of that thought made her feel curiously uncomfortable so she resolutely closed her mind to the whole subject.

It was a lot harder to keep her mind closed when she was presented with undeniable verification of Mrs Tibbs’ theory that same evening.

She’d helped Mrs Tibbs clear up after the bar- becue—Amy had taken herself and the children to bed and Wendy and Cliff had disappeared. And after they’d scoured the last pot they had a cup of tea in the big kitchen, then Sarah yawned, said goodnight and let herself out of the back door to make her way home. It was about a quarter of a mile to her cottage and she pulled her jacket around her and rubbed her hands as she descended the back steps and walked around the house. The night was clear, starry and cold and she walked soundlessly on the grass for a few yards until she heard voices and stopped uncertainly. They were coming from above and in front of her, from the veranda, and she immediately recognised Wendy’s voice—not only her voice but what she was saying and the way she was saying it…

‘You must admit I did well tonight, darling.’

‘Very well,’ Cliff Wyatt answered.

‘Surely I deserve a bit more than that for… slaying so many dragons in a manner of speaking?’ Every husky, sexy intonation of Wendy’s voice carried clearly on the cold night air.

‘What did you have in mind?’

‘This,’ she said, and Sarah couldn’t help herself. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she could see both Wendy and Cliff Wyatt—not in any great detail but their outlines—and she saw Wendy move into his arms and gaze up into his eyes. They stood like that for a long moment then she saw Cliff Wyatt’s dark head lower to the paler glimmer of Wendy’s up- turned face and their lips meet.

That was when she turned and slipped away around the other side of the house.

‘But do you believe in Father Christmas, Miss Sutherland?’ Billy Pascoe said. He was a thin, in- tense, trouble-prone child with awkward dark hair that seemed to grow straight upwards and resisted his mother’s every attempt to tame it.