Dreamtime by Anne Hampson

Author:Anne Hampson [Hampson, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7953-3895-3
Publisher: RosettaBooks
Published: 1983-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Jane was strolling in the garden, stopping now and then to watch the flock of galahs, forming a pink and grey cloud as they flew from one tree and settled, and from that tree to another. The roseate cockatoo was its name in England and Jane could recall seeing these in the zoo at Chester. But it was much nicer to see them in the wild, she thought, a smile coming to her lips and hovering there.

Suddenly she was aware of someone behind her and before she turned she heard Sue’s cheery voice.

‘Hi there, Jane.’ But then Sue seemed to take on a more respectful manner… almost deferential and it brought a swift frown to Jane’s forehead.

‘Hello, Sue. It’s obviously one of your days for coming in….’ Her voice trailed and her frown deepened. She had been about to say that it was one of Sue’s days when she came to do some cleaning at the house.

‘Awkward, isn’t it?’ perceived Sue on noting the discomfiture of the girl who had fast been becoming her friend. Now, though, with her being engaged to the Boss things were not quite the same. ‘You’ve taken several steps up while I have stayed where I was.’

‘Don’t!’ exclaimed Jane in distress, ‘We’re still friends and always will be.’

‘You’ll be the wife of my husband’s employer.’ Sue had a large basket over her arm; she was on her way to the vegetable plot where she would collect the vegetables wanted for dinner and then go back and prepare them, to be cooked later by the lubras. ‘It makes a difference, Jane, no matter what you say or what protests you make. The Boss wouldn’t care for his wife to be a bosom friend of the wife of one of his stockmen.’

‘Stop!’ protested Jane almost in tears. She felt so ashamed at the deception, wondering what Sue would think if and when it came to an end.

If…. With a sigh Jane watched Sue walk on, swinging the basket in her hand now in a careless manner as if she were telling herself that it did not matter that the friendship must come to an end.

‘Hello, Jane.’ Crystal came up a few minutes later, when Jane was standing by the pool, pensively staring down into the blue water. ‘Thinking of going in for a swim?’

Jane shook her head.

‘I don’t feel like it.’

Crystal, in shorts and a sun top, looked at her with a sidelong and perceptive glance.

‘Something’s wrong, isn’t it, Jane?’

‘No—er—what makes you ask that?’

‘You don’t act at all like the starry-eyed fiancée of one of the most eligible bachelors in the Outback—the most eligible bachelor, in fact.’

‘I’m very happy,’ returned Jane with a forced smile. ‘It’s wonderful to—to be engaged to Scott.’

Crystal continued to subject her to an intense scrutiny.

‘It was so sudden—no one so much as noticed that you two were even all that friendly, much less in love.’

Jane had nothing to say. After a week she was still in a daze, wondering what had made her agree to this deception, wondering too just what the real reason for it could be.

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