Only by Chance. Betty Neels

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      ‘I think I heard the ute go by a few minutes ago,’ she added, glad to hear that her own voice sounded just as cool as his. ‘They should be back in their quarters by now.’

      ‘How many men are down there?’

      ‘Four at the last count.’ Juliet dropped the last potato in the saucepan and filled it with water. ‘I haven’t had much to do with them. The last manager brought them in when he’d succeeded in getting rid of all the experienced stockmen who were here when we arrived. His wife used to cook for them. I offered to give them meals up here when she left, but they obviously didn’t want to sit down with me every evening, so they take it in turns to do their own cooking.’

      Juliet tried hard to keep the loneliness and rejection out of her voice. It had been so long since she had had anyone to talk to that she would have welcomed the company of even the dour and taciturn men who so clearly disliked her. ‘I only ever see them when one of them comes up to ask for more flour or sugar or whatever. They don’t seem to require much in the way of fresh vegetables,’ she added with a would-be careless shrug.

      Cal frowned as he set the empty bottle on the side. ‘Then who tells them what to do every day?’

      ‘No one,’ said Juliet bitterly. ‘I didn’t have much choice but to tell them to carry on with whatever they would normally be doing until the new manager arrived, but I know they thought I was stupid to have sacked the last man in the first place. For all I know they’ve just been lying around for the last couple of weeks.’

      She set the pan on the cooker and turned on the element, then wiped her hands on her apron, trying to make Cal understand. ‘I’m pretty much tied to the house with the twins,’ she said. ‘I can’t leave them here on their own, and it’s too far to take them with me if I wanted to go and check up on the men—even if I knew where they were and what they were supposed to be doing in the first place.’

      ‘You’ve been here over three years,’ Cal pointed out. What he had seen of Wilparilla so far hadn’t left him in any mood for sympathy. He had sold a thriving property and had come back to find that all his hard work had been thrown away and the station left to crumble into disrepair. ‘You must have had some idea.’

      ‘My husband never involved me in the station side of things.’ Hugo had never involved her in anything, thought Juliet dully. She looked down at her hands, unable to meet Cal’s eyes directly. ‘When we first came here, he was taken up with the idea of turning Wilparilla into a place that would attract the kind of tourists who want to see the outback but who want a bit of luxury too. There was a nice little homestead here before, but Hugo said it wouldn’t be big enough or smart enough, so he knocked it down and built this one.’

      Juliet looked around her at the state-of-the-art kitchen, with its view out onto the wide, shady verandah that ran completely round the house. Everything had been done with a designer’s style, but it still made her angry to think of how much money Hugo had poured into the house when the station around it was neglected and falling inexorably apart. She had tried to remonstrate with Hugo, but he had brushed her objections aside. It was his money, he had said, and he knew what he was doing.

      ‘I went to Darwin to have the twins in hospital, and I ended up staying there nearly a year while the homestead was being rebuilt. I wanted to come back earlier, but Hugo said I would find it impossible with two babies.’

      Juliet stopped as she realised that the bitterness in her voice was telling Cal a little too much about the state of her marriage. ‘The point is that I haven’t been able to spend the last three years learning about Wilparilla,’ she told him. ‘Even after I came back, I had my hands full with the twins. They were only just two when Hugo was killed last year. Looking after two toddlers doesn’t leave you much time to learn how to run a cattle station.

      ‘Everything’s so far away out here,’ she sighed. ‘It takes so long to get anywhere. There’s no toddler group when it takes two hours to get to the nearest town, and no handy babysitter when your neighbours live eighty miles away. I haven’t even had the time to make the most basic of social contacts.’ The blue eyes were defensive as she looked back at Cal. ‘I had no choice but to rely on the manager Hugo had appointed.’

      Cal’s mouth turned disapprovingly down at the corners. ‘Judging by what I’ve seen so far, he wasn’t much of a manager,’ he said.

      ‘I know,’ snapped Juliet. ‘I’ve got eyes. I only see a tiny fraction of the property, but even that looks run down. But I couldn’t do anything about it when Hugo was alive, and when he died…’ She trailed off. How could she explain what a terrible financial and emotional mess Hugo had left behind him? ‘Well, it wasn’t a very good year,’ she went on after a moment. ‘It was all I could do just to keep things as they were.’

      It was the first time Cal had thought what it might have been like for Juliet since her husband’s death, and he was conscious of a stirring of shame that he had never considered the matter from her point of view. It couldn’t have been easy for her, isolated, and far from home, bringing up two small children alone.

      She could have sold, though, he reminded himself. He had offered a good price for the station. She could have gone back to England a rich woman and made things easy on herself, but she hadn’t. She had chosen the hard way.

      ‘I’ll go and have a word with the men now,’ he said, exasperated by the momentary sympathy he had felt for Juliet. ‘They’re going to start work tomorrow, and they’d better be ready for it.’

      ‘Should I come and introduce you?’ Juliet asked doubtfully

      ‘There’s no need for that,’ said Cal, a grim look about his mouth as he thought about the men who had let his property fall into disrepair. ‘I’ll introduce myself.’

      He didn’t say anything about Natalie, so when he had gone Juliet gave her something to eat with the boys. She could hardly leave the child just sitting there, and judging by the way Natalie gobbled it all up she was starving. Afterwards, Natalie helped her wash up, drying each plate with painstaking care.

      ‘You’re very well trained, Natalie!’ said Juliet, keeping a wary eye on a glass.

      ‘Dad always makes me do chores,’ Natalie admitted with something of a sigh. ‘I have to dry up and sweep the floor and tidy my bedroom every day.’

      ‘Oh? Is he very strict?’

      ‘Sometimes,’ said Natalie. ‘And sometimes he’s funny. We do good things together.’

      Hugo had never wanted to do anything with his sons. ‘Does he look after you all by himself?’ asked Juliet, uneasily aware that she shouldn’t be pumping the child, but, given Cal’s uncooperative attitude, it seemed to be the only way she would ever find out anything about him.

      ‘Most of the time,’ said Natalie, untroubled by any fine sense of ethics. ‘We used to have housekeepers, but they all fell in love with Dad so we don’t have them any more. Dad doesn’t like it when they do that.’

      ‘I can imagine,’ said Juliet dryly. All those housekeepers must have been brave women to fall in love with a man like Cal Jamieson. He wasn’t exactly encouraging. But perhaps he had smiled at them…

      She pulled herself up short. Was that why Cal was so hostile? she wondered. Was he afraid she was going to be tiresome and fall in love with him as well? Juliet felt quite ruffled at the very idea. She had no intention of falling in love again, least СКАЧАТЬ