Dolan of Sugar Hills (3 page)

They returned by a different route, past the barracks.

“Some of the men band together and employ a cooky, some prefer to bach,” said Cane. “I want to see the bookkeeper while I’m here, so you can push off home, or push around. Please yourself, but keep to the tracks whatever you choose or you might run into a snake.”

She kept to the tracks, so did not run into any snakes, but she ran into the Hawaiian toads, armies of them, big, beady eyed, performing seemingly impossible leaps.

When she got back Sheila unpacked some of her bags. Although it was winter it appeared she would need no warm things here, just cotton dresses, and a jacket for night.

She was soon finished, and decided to find Molly Ferris and offer herself as help. She had to do something, her pride demanded that. Even if she was not required officially until she got to the island—
his,
not her island—she could not stay on like this, simply as a guest.

She emerged into the long corridor with its maze of wide, airy, uncluttered rooms on both sides.

The room where they had eaten the big scones had been along here ... or had it?

Indubitably it had not. She knew that as soon as she entered.

The big, bare room was no living room, it was a bedroom, and by the stringent almost monklike absence of the unessential, she knew at once that it was his.

She began to step back ... to leave at once ... but instantly something caught her attention.

It was a photographic study ... she could tell by the personal rather than professional arrangement that it was an amateur’s work ... of some very cold land. Possibly the Antarctic, Sheila thought.

She stood absorbed in it ... absorbed in its frozen magnificence, its snowy peaks rising higher and then higher, its shimmering ice, its wastes of snow, its impression of utter detachment from the rest of the world.

A voice broke the spell... broke it harshly, furiously.

“What the devil,” demanded Cane Dolan, “are you doing here, may I ask?”

She started, not so much at the words but at the violence behind the words. She had the impression that the man was not so much angry at her being in his room as at her standing where she was.

“I—I took the wrong turn,” she stammered. “I came into the wrong room.”

“And stopped there,” he said, still as angry.

“Are you accusing me of—”

“Snooping? Yes, I am. It should take no more than ten seconds to see you’ve trespassed, and so retreat, but by your dazed look you’ve been here considerably longer than ten.”

“It ... it was the photograph.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” The words were hurled at her.

He fairly flung himself across the room, wrenched the photograph off the wall, turned it facedown on a small desk.

“I don’t understand you,” Sheila said.

“I see no reason why you should.”

“If I’ve offended—”

“You have, but let it stay at that. Make no more mention of it, give it no second thought, it’s finished, closed. Understand? And now, if you please, I would like to have my room to myself.”

Sheila crossed the room swiftly, aware that he was close behind her.

She had scarcely stepped out before she heard the furious slamming of his door.

CHAPTER FOUR

Sheila found her way successfully this time to the kitchen, where Molly Ferris was buttering hot date scones and slicing a large slab cake.

“Oh, there you are, Shelley, dear. I’m just taking this down to the men. Mind you, there’s no obligation. Their contract doesn’t include keep, they fend for themselves. However, Cane likes this little extra done, I don’t mind doing it, and the men appreciate it, I can tell you that. Sugar Hills has the reputation of a happy camp.” Molly put the food into two baskets. “Care to come along? You can carry the slab.”

Sheila asked about tea and Molly told her that the tea boy attended to that.

They set off down the path past the papaw and mango thicket, little secret paths running between the trees, the giant toads letting them know they were approaching the sugar long before they were in sight of the tall reed grasses.

The sun was warm on Sheila’s back and the cane smell came sweet and somehow oddly exciting, yet for all of this Sheila found that she felt curiously flat.

“Molly,” she blurted in a rush, “I went into the wrong room.”

“Well now, that’s easily done, rooms all over the place, that’s Sugar Hills.” Molly stopped suddenly and looked quickly at Sheila. “You went into ... Cane’s room?”

“Yes.”

The older woman started walking again, but at a slower pace.

“A pity,” she sighed at last.

Sheila felt she must know more. When it appeared that Molly was not going to proffer any information, she asked her straight out.

“I certainly didn’t mean to trespass, and I told Mr. Dolan so, but it didn’t do any good. Why, Molly? What did I do that was so wrong?”

Molly sighed again.

“Look, Shelley, let it stay at that,” she appealed.

“That’s what
he
said ... Cane Dolan ... let it stay at that, make no more mention of it. But it wasn’t finished for him, I could tell it at once.” Sheila’s voice was puzzled. “I think it was the photograph,” she decided at length.

The look that Molly flashed her this time was definitely urgent. “Look, dear,” she persuaded, “if Cane wants it closed, can’t he have it that way? It’s not much to ask.”

“Very well,” Sheila conceded peaceably. “I’ll fall in line. I’m simply annoyed because I wasn’t doing anything so very dreadful and he—Cane—”

“I know, dear,” placated Molly anxiously.

“That’s the trouble, I don’t know,” returned Sheila. She smiled resignedly. “All right, Molly, if you want it like that I’ll do as you say, I’ll let the matter rest.”

“Good girl,” approved the older woman. “Now, watch yourself, honey, for here’s the cutting, and if there’s one thing these cutters like better than a cane check or a big steak it’s someone young, female, pretty and single like yourself.” She put her plump hands to her mouth and called, “Come and get it before it’s gone.”

The cane cutters responded at once.

Molly had not spoken facetiously when she had warned Sheila to watch herself. In no time Sheila found she was the center of a circle of men, all eating, talking, gesticulating, laughing, teasing and flirting outrageously at the same time.

“I think you and I dance together on Saturday night, eh, Shelley?” begged a fluid-voiced, chocolate-eyed man who Sheila decided must be one of the many Italians Molly had spoken about.

She could not have guessed at the other dialects, however, for the babble was deafening. Relieved for a brief interlude from their arduous drill of cut and swathe, the men talked loudly, at each other, not waiting for an answer. The only way of deciding their nationality, thought Sheila, was to separate the light eyes from the dark—but was that entirely reliable, she wondered, when two of the darkest eyes she had ever seen, darker than any of these, belonged to Cane Dolan, an Australian, a barbarian, as she had angrily flung at him, of a primitive land. One thing, whether Dutch, Italian, Australian, aboriginal, they had one thing in common. Here on the cane field they were all black with cane dust.

“Now, Umberto,” laughed a voice, “you must be careful if you want to cut next year at Sugar Hills. If you take the boss’s girl to the dance that’s the end of your big checks.”

This time they all laughed, Sheila with them, so it was a complete surprise when Molly’s voice cut above the laughter with a sharp, incisive, unmistakable: “Shelley is not Cane’s girl.”

In the silence that followed Molly added hurriedly, “If she has any sense she won’t be yours either. You’re a lot of black ruffians. Now, any more for tea?”

They all forgot the episode over second cups, and once more the babble was deafening. It seemed impossible to Sheila that she had been in this place only a few hours. She felt already so relaxed, so at home, it could have been years. She forgot about Molly’s sharpness until they were wending their way back to the house.

“Molly, why did you make such a point of telling the men that my presence here has nothing to do with Cane? I mean—” Sheila flushed slightly “—we both know it hasn’t, but it seemed rather odd you proclaiming it so forcefully after you’d just warned me to watch my step with the boys.” She looked inquiringly at the older woman.

Molly was at a loss ... as she had been at a loss previously, Sheila recalled, when she had recounted Cane’s anger at her intrusion into his room and had asked Molly about this.

Sheila waited, as she had waited before, saw by Molly’s face that no explanation was to be forthcoming once again, so decided a second time to accept and forget.

Even though it was winter, the day proved quite a long one up here in latitude nineteen. At five the sun was still bright in the sky. Then all at once, or so it seemed to Sheila, entirely without warning, any preamble, dusk was upon them, a lovely, dark, velvet dusk full of subtropical hush and perfume, with a closer moon and bigger stars than Sheila had seen before.

Molly set the dinner table for three. “Cane will be here tonight, but as often as not when he’s cutting he eats with the men.” She put down a huge bowl of fruit as a centerpiece, custard apples, papaws, mangoes, several pineapples cut into golden halves.

Sheila did not look forward to the arrival of the third diner, but when Cane strolled in it was as though nothing at all had happened between them, as though not many hours ago he had not all but thrust Sheila out of his room.

He looked down on the snowy cloth and shining silver, then looked across at Sheila. One eyebrow was cocked enquiringly. His look reminded her again of what she had called him, called this country, taunted her with a glance at the lovely civilized appointments of the table set before them now.

“I said before that I was sorry,” Sheila told him resentfully, reading the wordless reminder.

“Did you? If I remember rightly the trend was merely that you had made a mistake.”

“I did make a-mistake, and I’m sorry for it, Mr. Dolan. Can’t you accept that?”

“I can’t accept
Mr. Dolan.
“ The dark eyes were actually smiling at her now.

“Cane,” she murmured obediently.

“Then I accept,” he nodded. “The matter is closed.”

To Sheila’s surprise it was a pleasant meal. She had known the food would be excellent ... Molly had displayed her art already today ... but she had not expected the conversation to be blithe.

Yet it was all that, blithe, gay, fluent, immensely interesting. Cane Dolan was a polished conversationalist, he went from subject to subject with light, bright ease and when he spoke of his plantation and its management it was like watching a graphic newsreel, for he possessed that art of description that is not only informative but visual.

They sat at coffee afterward, and later he poured nightcaps. Then Sheila went to her room.

For a long while she stood at the wide-flung windows breathing in the beautiful, fragrant, subtropical night. Here at Sugar Hills she found that there was that poised after-quiet that only places that know a hard day’s work really seem to achieve.

The stillness was almost tender, it had a kind of soft abundance about it, a gentle repletion, a satisfaction, she thought. It was odd, but she felt almost the same as the stillness herself. Hers had been a full day, a varied day, a tiring and difficult day, a very amazing day, quite often an
angry
day, but now, standing in the still night, she could remember nothing that was unpleasing about it ... not even in Cane Dolan’s treatment of her ... not in Cane Dolan himself.

Suddenly aware of a heat in her cheeks though the breeze was cool and moderate, Sheila turned from the window and hurried to bed.

CHAPTER FIVE

In the week that followed Sheila succeeded in finding herself a niche.

She did not know whether Cane Dolan approved or not, but she knew that Molly did. Indeed, it was Molly’s suggestion that she go down to the married quarters and help the mothers out with their children. Molly, Sheila guessed, though not minding her assisting with the men’s smokoes, wanted, understandably enough, to remain queen in her own kitchen. The housekeeper’s face had lit up when Sheila had fallen readily in with her schemes.

The married quarters were beyond the bachelor row, four duplex units housing eight parents with fourteen children between the ages of thirteen and three weeks.

“Ann was born up here,” the new baby’s young mother informed her. “We come from Melbourne, and I’d booked up at one of the big city clinics. Then Dan wrote down that Mr. Dolan had accommodation waiting and that I was welcome in spite of being ready for hospital. We flew up at once and Ann was born a banana-lander.” Ann’s mother smiled.

“Shouldn’t it be sugar-lander?” queried Sheila, gazing out of the cottage window at the endless cane.

“Whatever it is,” said the new mother, “it’s pleasant to spend winter in balmy warmth.”

All these units, Sheila noted, housed only winter, or seasonal, families. She dearly would have liked to have come in contact with some permanent members of Sugar Hills, and surely there must be several in a large plantation like this. She wished she could talk with these permanents, hear their points of view, hear, perhaps, the answer to a few things that puzzled her ... why Cane Dolan always spoke guardedly of Silverwake Island ... why upon one occasion Molly Ferris obviously watched what she said ... why a man had wrenched a photograph from a wall and turned on her with blazing eyes.

But permanent workers were the workers with whom Sheila found herself never in contact. Always it was the seasonal cutters from the south. One and all they praised Cane Dolan, praised him highly, but not one of them seemed to know anything personal about him, and those odd things she had stumbled upon must be very personal, Sheila thought.

The cottages housed a Polish family of six, an Italian family of three, an Australian family of two boys and two girls, and the new addition, Ann.

The school-age children took correspondence lessons, and with these Sheila lent a helping hand.

She also allotted herself the task of watching the preschoolers, that they did not wander away from the paths. This might be a free-and-easy land, but it was also a very big land, a land to get lost in, a land of hazards more perilous than cane toads—or so she had been informed.

The children themselves Sheila found quite international; up here in latitude nineteen, whatever their origin, they were all just ragamuffins under a warm and benign sun.

Certainly they scrapped often, and certainly they boasted abominably, but what child doesn’t?

“My gran can talk in Polish,” boasted one of the small sons of the Polish family. Apparently, thought Sheila, his parents were serious Australians now and speaking only English, so the fact that gran talked Polish had become quite a feat.

“Mine can talk in Italian,” a chocolate-eyed girl claimed.

“Mine can talk in Melbourne,” the Australian said.

Sheila began to enjoy strolling down through the cane in the morning, waving to the men, who raised their knives and paused in their swathing to wave back, holding her arms out to the children, who within a few days had come to the stage of running down to meet her, to shout out things they considered she should be told.

“Misshelley,” Carlo would greet her, “gee, you’re lucky, my new lessons have come and it’s the kind of sums you like.”

“Misshelley,” said Hendrik, “I dried my toes for mamma this morning, and you know what? I have five on each foot, but only four spaces.” His blue eyes were wide.

“Misshelley—”

“Please, Misshelley—”

Ann’s mother went into town one day, so Sheila set the older ones to study, put the baby in the pram, and with the preschoolers set off for a walk.

They went past the cutting, pausing for a while for the children to watch and wave to their dads.

All the men waved back—with the exception of one. Cane Dolan, blackened like the others, finished his cutting first, put away his knife, lit a cigarette and strolled across.

“Would the kids like a ride in the tram?” Immediate shouts assured him that they would.

“Would teacher?” he inquired glibly, “or is it mother today?”

“Do you object?” Sheila asked, bending over baby Ann to fix her in a more comfortable position.

He shrugged carelessly. “You don’t have to do it, but if you choose to then it’s no concern of mine. I told you before, I actually signed you up for the island, not here.”

“Then when do we cross?”

“Bored?” His eyes were narrowed above the cigarette smoke.

“No, but I want to feel I’m earning my keep.”

“Oh, so all this is merely out of sense of duty?” He nodded to the little party.

“Not entirely. I happen to like them,” Sheila said.

He did not comment on that. He piled the children on the narrow gauge train, then drove them to the next field, then shunted back again.

“Now Misshelley’s turn,” he told them, “and if any of you move while we’re away I’ll feed you to a cane toad.”

“Toads eat beetles,” said young Nino.

“They eat boys and girls, too,” said Cane. To Sheila he shrugged, “Not perfect child approach, I admit, but sometimes a bit of fear does them good.”

Down through the tall grasses the little train rumbled, shining green each side of them, the entire world, it seemed, a wreathing, weaving expanse of cane.

“I’ll take you to Sugaropolis one day,” Cane shouted above the tram’s rumbling.

“Sugaropolis?”

“The bulk loading at Mackay Harbor. You’ll see a whole mountain of sugar there ... but don’t dare to remark inanely, as many tourists do, ‘What a lot of cups of tea that would sweeten.’ ”

“I won’t,” promised Sheila promptly, and then she reminded him slyly, “only fools are unaware that there’s rum, power alcohol, vitamins and what-have-you’s as well.”

Cane cocked one brow at her, then brought the tram back again. Sheila returned Ann to the pram and they all set off once more. When they had covered all the fields that had been burned off to remove trash before cutting, Sheila decided to turn the children home. By this time she had learned that burning also drove the snakes out of the fields, so she considered it was wiser to keep by the side of the cane that was ready to be cut.

Rounding a new curve, the children called out to Sheila, “Misshelley, look at the dear little creek. Can we go down, please?”

It was a dear little creek; there was a stretch of yellow sand, a small pebbly beach, a leisurely flow of green water. There was, also, only a short distance to cross from the burned-off cane, so there should be little snake hazard. Sheila parked the pram, took up the baby, and led the Way down.

Shoes were removed and the small folk paddled happily. It was peaceful here; Ann woke and blinked at the trees and sky and Sheila gave her button nose a kiss. The children’s voices rang in the still, soft air.

Then young Nino called, “Look, Misshelley, look what I’ve got,” and he waded out with a small creature.

“It’s a lizard,” shouted a small boy.

“It’s a goanna.”

“It’s a bunyip.”

“Whatever it is,” said Sheila firmly, distastefully, and not caring to look very close ... also feeling for the first time that perhaps she should not have brought the children down here ... “put it back at once.”

She gathered the little ones up and shepherded them along to the track again. She had to call to Nino, who brought up the rear.

Ann’s mother was back from town when they returned, the older children finished with their allotted lessons. Sheila gossiped with the women awhile, accepted a cup of tea, then returned to the house.

It was during dinner that night that Nino’s father came up to Sugar Hills.

“Cane,” he burst in excitedly, “my small boy play with something, so I look and then I find—you guess!”

“What?” asked Cane.

“This,” said Nino’s father, and held something aloft. Sheila saw that it was the small creature that Nino had taken from the water. “Holy smoke,” burst out Cane. “Where did he get it?”

“Down at the creek.”

“But the kids don’t go down to the creek.”

Nino’s father looked apologetically at Sheila.

“They went,” he said.

Cane whirled on Sheila. He was white with anger.

“You took them down there?”

“They wanted to go.”

“Of course they did, creeks fascinate all kids, but it was you who took them?”

“As far as I know,” Sheila said coldly, “there was no one else in charge.”

“Don’t be a fool, Miss Guthrie—”
again the fool,
Sheila thought wearily “—I’m not playing at conversations, I’m asking you did you take the kids down to the creek?”

“The burned cane went almost down to the water. I saw no danger.”

“Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

There was a moment’s silence, a furious silence.

Sheila broke it with, “What’s all the fuss about? I knew Nino had found something or other. I told him to put it back.”

“You what?”

“You heard me, I told him to put it back.”

“Yes, I heard you, but I didn’t credit anyone could be so all-time stupid.”

“A fool,” she said cuttingly, “is capable of a lot of stupid things.”

“This is no time for sarcasm. Couldn’t you see what Nino was holding?”

“A small reptile or something. One of the kiddies said a goanna. I know I didn’t like it particularly.”

“You’d like it less when it grew up. It happens to be a croc.”

“A what?”

“A crocodile, a species that perhaps you’ve been told is not entirely friendly to man.” His tone cut her. It also inspired her to cut back.

“Well, I certainly haven’t had first-hand experience before today,” she said pertly.

He took a step forward. Had Nino’s father not stood watching with bright-eyed interest Sheila thought he would have put his hands on her shoulders and shaken her, shaken her hard.

“The presence of young usually indicates the presence of a parent,” said Cane Dolan furiously.

That sobered Sheila ... silenced her for a long unsteady moment.

“I—I didn’t know,” she stammered unhappily at length.

“No, you didn’t know. I don’t suppose you could know. Not being a barbarian in a primitive land you couldn’t be expected to comprehend such a crude position. But good grief, woman, shouldn’t this be one of the things you sense?”

“I wasn’t aware that Australia had crocodiles.”

“All Northern Australia
could
have. This—” his voice was cold “—is the north.”

“I know. It’s latitude nineteen. You’ve told me so. But—” Sheila tried to defend herself “—you never mentioned crocs.”

“Perhaps I presumed you had read,” Cane answered tersely. “They’re not prevalent here since cultivation has taken over, but they still evidently exist. This fellow proves it.” He took the reptile and considered it.

“We’ll freight young master croc down to the Brisbane Zoo,” he told the Italian, “and tomorrow we’ll call off the cutting and croc hunt instead.”

“Won’t that delay you?” asked Sheila, trying to be sympathetic and helpful, though she did not feel at all that way.

“So presumably would a fatal attack on a child,” he returned flatly.

As Roberto left, Sheila submitted fairly, “It was my fault, not Nino’s.”

Cane was putting the young crocodile into a crate. “If I had my way the punishment would be the same,” he came back.

“But you don’t have your way, do you?” flung Sheila, feeling she had been now bawled out quite sufficiently for her misdemeanor. “Not yet,” was his reply.

She should have left it at that, taken the opportunity to get away from trouble, but obstinately she persisted.

“You mean you’re not my chief, yet, not until we cross to the island.”

As before, as always at the mention of Silverwake, he was silenced. Once again Sheila was aware of something that seemed to disturb him ... of something that she could not fathom herself.

He did not reply. He finished the crating, then went out of the house and down to the barracks. After she mentioned the island there was not another word.

The next morning Molly recounted graphically over breakfast how at the expense of only a few hours’ cane cutting a female crocodile had been shot half a mile up the creek.

“Cane organized it last night. Half the men were armed and started off at sunup. The other half were left to start building fences round the barracks and units.”

“Fences?”

“Crocs can’t climb,” Molly informed her. “This might be only an isolated instance, and probably it is now that the country is so opened, but you simply can’t take a risk with a croc.”

Molly paused for breath, then resumed proudly, “All the cutters took a shot, but it was Cane who got it.”

Cane would.
Sheila thought,
that paragon in everything would be the first.

Her lip curled as Molly added confidently, “And it will be Cane who shoots its mate, you see if it’s not.”

But for all her derision Sheila found herself shuddering ... shuddering at the thought of six children ... of a tiny baby ... even herself.

“From tail to snout,” gloated Molly, “it measures fourteen feet.”