“The trouble is,” Stephen said to Richard over a mess of fried chicken and rice Kitty had flavored splendidly with sage and onion from her garden and pepper from her pestle, “that one has to have a line of sight to survey, and Norfolk Island is a dense forest of trees which all look the same. I can survey wherever there is cleared ground, but a lot of these sixty-acre blocks will not be on cleared ground. I can put Elias Bishop at Queensborough, but Joe McCaldren refuses to go so far out of Sydney Town, and Peter Hibbs and James Proctor want adjoining pieces right in the middle of the island. Danny Stanfield and John Drummond want to be near Phillipsburgh. By the time I am through, I swear I will need to be confined in a strait-waistcoat and chained to a gun in the shade. Supervising the likes of Len Dyer is a holiday compared to this.”
“Is Danny Stanfield coming back, then?”
“Aye. He went off to marry Alice Harmsworth. A good man.”
“The best of all the marines.”
“With Juno Hayes and Jem Redman, aye,” Stephen agreed.
Kitty interrupted. “Is the supper tasty?” she asked anxiously.
“Magnificently so!” Stephen responded, wishing he could snub rather than encourage her, but too fair to do so. “Such a change from eternal Mt. Pitt bird too! I admit they save our salt meat—I admit that the Major’s pessimism about how many future mouths we will be feeding is well founded—but I confess that when I heard the birds had flown in to nest in apparently unreduced numbers, I was near sick to my stomach. However,” he said blandly, “Tobias is very partial to Mt. Pitt bird.”
“Oh, dear! I thought it was forbidden to give them to our pets,” said Kitty, looking frightened. “Please do not get into trouble, Stephen!”
Richard went into God the Father mode. “The wastage of Mt. Pitt birds,” he said ponderously, “is shameful. Stephen has no need to catch any to feed Tobias, Kitty. All he needs is to pick up carcasses strewn along the tracks. The greedy ingrates pillage the poor females of their eggs, then throw the rest away.”
“Oh, yes, quite!” squeaked Kitty, retreating in confusion.
“Richard,” said Stephen after she disappeared through the door with an empty bucket and a flustered explanation that she needed to fetch water from the stream, “sometimes ye’re an absolute looby!”
“Eh?” asked Richard, startled.
“When the poor little creature ventures a remark, ye squash her flat with logic and good sense! She makes us a delicious repast—out of fucken rice, of all things!—yet how d’ye thank her? By donning the snowy vestments of God the Father!”
Mouth open, Richard sat stunned. “God the Father?”
“That is what I call you these days. You know—as in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost? God the Father is the one sits on the throne and dispenses whatever-it-is He deems just reward or punishment, though it seems to me that He is quite as blind as every other judge in or out of Christendom. Kitty is the most harmless of all His creatures—for a man in love, Richard, ye’re as inept as a hobbledehoy! If you want her, why in fucken Hell d’ye not act as if you want her?” Stephen demanded, his exasperation fanned because of his own predicament with her.
Face a study might have made Stephen laugh were the situation different, Richard heard this diatribe through, then said flatly, “I am too old. Ye’re right—she thinks of me as a father, which is not unreasonable. My daughter would be her age.”
Stephen saw an even brighter shade of red. “Then make her think of you otherwise, you fool!” he cried, shaking with rage. “Damn you, Richard, ye’re one of the most beautiful men I have ever seen! There is no flaw—I know, because I have searched for one. I have been in love with you since before I was born and I will be in love with you until long after I die. The fact that I am a Miss Molly and you are not is irrelevant—no one chooses whom to love. It simply happens. Somehow you and I have managed to cope with our different preferences and forge a friendship too strong ever to break. Yes, I know the silly child thinks she is in love with me, so shut your mouth and stop looking noble! Just as well for her that she does fancy herself in love with me. Did she not, she would come to you a complete child—and that no man in his right mind wants!” He ran down, hiccoughed, looked spent.
“But you said it, Stephen. No one chooses whom to love, it simply happens. And she has chosen you, not me.”
“No, no, you miss the point! Jesus, Richard, where Kitty is concerned ye’re an ass! To her, I am the transition between child and woman—I am her first girlish passion, unrequited because they always are. She is a plum ripe for the picking, man! I saw her walking down the vale to Stores the other day, dangling an empty basket. The wind was blowing straight in her face and plastered her shapeless slops against her—were I a man for women, I would have snatched her away that instant. And do not think that other men did not notice! Apart from her eyes, her face does not have much to recommend it, but in the body she is Venus. Long shapely legs, swelling hips, tiny waist and superb breasts—Venus! If ye do not lay claim to her, Richard, someone else will in spite of his fear that ye’ll tear him in half.”
Stephen got to his feet. “Now I am going home to Tobias before she returns from her errand. Tell her that I remembered some urgent business.” He went to the door. “Ye’re too patient, Richard. ’Tis an admirable virtue, but while the cat crouches for an hour watching the mouse, a hawk may swoop down from the sky and steal it.”
* * *
Kitty shrank into the shadows beneath the unshuttered window, but Stephen Donovan looked neither to left nor to right; he strode off down the path between the vegetables and disappeared into the darkness. The moment he vanished, she crept back to the stream. Why was it not deep enough to drown in? Stephen’s calling Richard an absolute looby had stilled her footsteps, aroused her curiosity; forgetting adages about eavesdroppers, she placed herself beneath the window and listened.
How was that possible? How could Stephen say he was in love with Richard? Mind reeling, she could not get beyond that. Stephen, a man, was in love with—desired—another man. Richard. And he had called her love a girlish passion. He had called her a child. Spoken of her with tender sympathy but no love whatsoever. Could recount the details of her figure with the same sort of remote admiration she felt for Richard. Who, Stephen had said, was in love with her. But Richard was her father’s age! He had said it! She fell to her knees and rocked back and forth, tearless. I want to die, I want to die. . . .
Richard crouched beside her. “You heard.”
“Yes.”
“Well, better to hear it that way than from my wife,” he said, put an arm about her shoulders and hauled her upright with himself. “You were bound to find out sooner or later. Come, off to bed. ’Tis cold out here.”
She suffered herself to be led inside, then looked at him out of a wan white face and William Henry’s eyes.
“Go to bed,” he said firmly, face impassive.
Without a word she turned and went to her room. He was right, it was cold; shivering, she got into her night shift and climbed into that warm soft feather bed, there to lie sleepless, going over and over what she remembered of their—no, not conversation. Nor argument. What she had heard was an exchange of feelings and impressions between two very old friends, friends who could not truly offend each other no matter what had to be said. From the little her life had shown her, a rare occurrence. The word “maturity” came from somewhere, and it suited them. Why were they what they were? Why did Stephen choose to love a man? And why was that man Richard? Why had he called Richard “God the Father”? Oh, she thought, squeezing her hands together in pain and bewilderment, I know nothing about either of them! Nothing!
