Outback Kitten

11

Outback Kitten

    “Phew!” said Pete as the small plane took off for Adelaide with the Kitten’s three little mates waving uncertainly from its windows and the Kitten herself waving back jauntily at his side.

    “Yeah!” agreed Kitten sunnily.

    Pete took her elbow. “Let’s go. Unless ya wanna hang round in town and sample the urban delights on offer? Get an ice cream, or something?” –It was a mild May day. The local farmers were already starting to whinge about the lack of rain this season, though you couldn’t have called it a drought. Yet. It wasn’t really ice cream weather, though.

    “I wouldn’t mind an ice cream, actually,” replied Kitten calmly.

    “In that case, it better be the Lone Star Milk-Bar,” he said stolidly. “A dinkum Aussie treat for ya.”

    “Mm,” agreed Kitten, sort of... Pete couldn’t have defined the movement, exactly. Sort of leaning against his arm and—uh—kinda half-melting onto it? Talking of ice creams. Calculated to get your average dinkum Aussie bloke stiff as bejasus in two seconds flat, or his name wasn’t Pete (Muggins) Dawkins.

    When they reached the main drag there wasn’t, oddly enough, all that much competition for parking outside the Lone Star Milk-Bar: they found a spot quite near. He let the Kitten get sat down and started on the milkshake she’d decided on as a first course before he said heavily: “You’d better come clean. Whose is it? The ruddy Top Panjandrum’s?”

    Kitten wasn’t showing much, yet. She couldn’t do up her jeans, though. So instead she was wowing the local hayseeds in a pair of stretch-nylon things that Pete would have said were tights if they’d had feet in ’em. He’d seen young Venita from Lallapinda and a couple of girls in Nearby Bay getting round in similar, over the last year or two, so presumably they were normal, but to his mind “bloody indecent” was a better description: worn instead of your actual slacks, see? Kitten’s pair today were a sort of off-cream with grey, pink and purple marbling on ’em: kind of your varicose-run-riot look. Over ’em she was wearing a loose-ish fuzzy pink jumper with its sleeves rolled up. It kept slipping off one shoulder, just to confirm a bloke’s suspicions that them twin peaks under it were the genuine Kitten. From the front the get-up was almost decent, however. But from the back it certainly wasn’t: it showed every line, not to mention indentation, of her bum. They’d seen Ron Fredericks in the airport carpark—Senior Constable Fredericks to you—and if he’d been able to concentrate on anything but his hard-on, he’d have had a pretty good case for running her in for indecent exposure, if you asked Pete.

    She put her hand on the small bulge under the fuzzy pink thing, and smiled at him. “Hugo’s: yes.”

    Pete sighed heavily. “Yeah. So when’s it due?”

    “Beginning of October, same as I told Chris Bailey.”

    Pete sighed again. She’d told Chris Bailey the most incredible load of garbage, bawling her eyes out all over the kitchen at Lallapinda. Chris had believed every word if it—in fact she’d lapped up every word of it. So had Wendy and Venita. So had that fathead, Nev Bailey, but on second thoughts that hadn’t surprised Pete. He’d had a fair idea, from the sort of fixed, rigid, dead-goanna look on Cal’s face when Chris came over to Muwullupirri and told Mrs Wainwright the lot that he knew a bit more about it than he was letting on: but if he didn’t want to say, then Pete wasn’t asking.

    “Uh-huh,” he said noncommittally. “Does he know?”

    “No.” Opening her eyes very wide in her most artless look, Kitten told Pete her theory about Martin Jarrod.

    “Balls.”

    “Well—”

    “Balls. I dunno what them little mates of yours swallowed hook, line and sinker, though I’m ready to believe they’re dumb enough to swallow anything you care to feed ’em, but I’m not thick.”

    Kitten pouted horribly and stirred the remains of her milkshake with her straw. “He hated me.”

    “I could see that,” said Pete mildly.

    “Well, then—”

    “This isn’t one of your bloody Yank TV things. He might want to do you and your kid in, but he hasn’t got ‘cretin’ engraved on ’is forehead.” Pete scratched his chin. “Supposing you were dumb enough to write to Mr Top Panjandrum at his office, I can see that Jarrod type quietly managing to lose the letter: yeah. And I can see him offering you a fair whack to get out of the Top Panjandrum’s life and leave him and his wife alone: not out of sheer altruism, before you say anything. And actually,” he said, scratching his chin: “I can see him putting the frighteners on you, too: provided he could be sure that Mr Hugo Kent wouldn’t find out about it. –Has ’e?”

    “No. ’Cos nobody knows,” said Kitten, scowling horribly.

    “Mm.” Pete eyed her drily. “How are ya gonna prove it’s Kent’s, Kitten? Make him have his DNA tested?”

    Kitten pouted. “It might come to that.”

    “Uh-huh. Well, he’ll offer you a decent lot of maintenance,” he said with a shrug. “Good luck with it.”

    “I don’t want that!” she cried.

    “No doubt. Finish that milkshake, you need the calcium.”

    Scowling, Kitten finished her milkshake.

    Pete took the paper cup off her and stood up. “Still wanna banana split?”

    Kitten nodded hard.

    “Right.” He went and got them each a banana split. It was Kristel Keating from Nearby Bay serving, and she tried to tell him that you only got vanilla on a banana split, but Pete pointed and said: “Rats. Raspberry ripple. Scoop. That’s all it takes. Get to it.”

    “Ooh, raspberry ripple!” said the Kitten when he came back with it. “Thanks, Pete!”

    Pete had more or less expected that sort of reaction but nevertheless he looked at her with a sort of wild despair as he edged into his side of the booth again.

    “So what do you imagine you’re gonna get out of this, Kitten? Types like Kent don’t take little dollies like you and your bastard kids, pardon my French, seriously. It’ll be maintenance or nothing.”

    Kitten ate a spoonful of raspberry ice cream mixed with probably ersatz whipped cream out of a Mortein spray-bomb. “Mmm! –I’m not going to ask him for anything.”

    “You’re cracked, then.”

    “I’m going to present him with a fait accompli.”

    “While not asking ’im for anything: right.”

    “Once I’ve had it, Ingrid’s going to send over a whole lot of family snaps,” said Kitten, attacking the banana.

    “Really?” replied Pete in a bored tone. “—Does your cream taste like anything?”

    “No. Um—slightly of coconut.”

    “Good, thought me tongue had gone funny. –I can see the Top Panjandrum poring over the Reardon family album, yeah.”

    “They’ll send them to lots of people, you see,” she said calmly.

    Pete ate a quantity of coconut-flavoured Mortein cream, raspberry ripple and firmish banana before he replied to that one: he felt he needed it. “Ingrid knows she’s gonna send them, does she? Not to mention Reardon?”

    “No,” said Kitten calmly.

    Pete breathed heavily. Dumb little bunny. “Look, Top Panjandrums’ hearts do not get softened by the sight of fuzzy coloured snaps from Downunder featuring you in a cotton sunfrock and a blobby-faced Winston Churchill in a knitted bonnet!”

    “No. But it’ll start him wondering.”

    Pete just breathed heavily.

    “That’s not all of it.”

    “Do Dick and Karen know about it?” he said, ignoring this.

    “What, the baby? Not yet.”

    “Then you can bloody well tell them, or I will!”

    “It’s not their responsibility, it’s mine,” she said calmly. “And if you don’t want me to stay at your hut, just say so.”

    “They’ve got a right to know. And you can stay at the bloody hut till Hell freezes over, if you wannoo. –Which it will do, before Mr Hugo Kent and ’is English riding boots’ll offer you marriage on a plate, Kitten!”

    “They haven’t got a right to know, and they’d be much happier not knowing, actually.”

    “Tell them, you flint-hearted little brat,” said Pete, reaching over and grabbing her wrist, “or I will!”

    “Ow! All right!”

    “Who else knows?” he said, scowling.

    “Of the family? Melodie and Sloane.”

    Pete sighed.

    “Look, it’s nothing to do with anyone but me.”

    He sighed again. “Listen, Kitten, all considerations of blackmail, maintenance, and hefty lump sums aside, what about Kent?”

    Kitten looked blank. “What about him?”

    “Jesus, he’s its father: hasn’t he got a right to know it’s on the way? Maybe he’ll actually be glad!”

    “Maybe. But you explain to me exactly how I can tell him without making him think that I want him to support it and me, and I’ll think about doing it.”

    “Well, uh...” Pete scowled at his banana split.

    “See? It’s impossible, isn’t it? Whatever I might say to the contrary, he’ll never believe I’m only telling him because I think he has a right to know.”

    “Uh—no. Um—well, maybe he’ll believe it when you turn down the maintenance?”

    “Pete, he’ll set up a huge trust fund or something, I won’t legally be able to turn it down! And that’ll be the end of that,” she said grimly. “He’ll have tidied it all away: do you see?”

    Pete did see: yeah. Very vividly. He looked at her weakly. “You’re not wrong. But at least the kid’s future would be assured.”

    “I want more than that,” said Kitten calmly. “Finish your ice cream, it’s melting.”

    Jesus, what could ya say? Limply Pete finished his banana split.

    He had to pick up some groceries for Chris Bailey and Mrs W.: he did that, Kitten accompanying him and chattering away apparently without a care in the world. When they’d loaded them into the ute it was getting pretty late.

    “We could stay at a motel,” she suggested.

    “I’m not a townee, thanks.”

    “Um... the camping ground?” said Kitten dubiously.

    “It’s full of Abos getting stonkered on meths.”

    “That’s what I thought. Um... well, I suppose we’ll make it to the Nearby Bay turnoff by about tennish.”

    Pete heaved the last carton of washing powder, cabbages and tinned peas into the back of the ute. “I’m not going to the Nearby Bay turnoff. Get in, if ya wanna come back.”

    “You’re not going the Lallapinda back road?” she gasped.

    “Yeah. Geddin.”

    “But—”

    “We haven’t had hardly any rain, the creeks are low: geddin!”

    “In the dark?” said Kitten feebly, getting in.

    Pete got in beside her. “Yeah. We got headlights. Anyway, it’ll be a fine night, we’d be right even if they gave out.” He started up with a dreadful crashing of gears. The ute could take it, and it relieved his feelings somewhat.

    They’d got as far as the back “road”, read track, and gone about twenty miles down it, when she said in a small voice: “Pete, I’m busting.”

    Pete drew up, sighing. “Well, there aren’t any bushes, but there’s fifteen cartons of fancy bog paper with little flowers on it in the back: take your pick. I’ll look the other way.”

    “Thanks,” said Kitten in a small voice, getting out.

    When she got back in again he started up silently and drove on for several K before noting: “They say it’ll get worse before it gets better.”

    “Yes!” gasped Kitten as they jolted over a bump. “It always was rough!”

    “Eh? Aw,” he said lamely. “No, I meant having to have a piss. The baby compresses the bladder, that right?”

    “Oh—yes.”

    “Well, there’s only a finite amount of room available, I suppose,” said Pete.

    “Mm.”

    “What’s it do to the other urges?” he asked on a dry note.

    “What? Oh.” Kitten licked her lips nervously. “Um—nothing, so far.”

    “Right. This’d explain why you’ve been having it away for the last fortnight with that Yank at Lallapinda in the misguided Akubra, would it?”

    Kitten swallowed. “Milton Shapiro? Um—yeah. Um—well, he made a pass at me, it wasn’t my idea.”

    No, it had only been her idea to, and this was only from Pete’s personal observation, mind you, so God knew what else she’d done to the poor bugger, (a) “play” in the sprinkler that Nev Bailey had set out on what he imagined was gonna be a lawn by next Christmas, wearing a flimsy white cotton dress and a pair of blue panties and observedly nothing else, while the Akubra-ed Yank was having Chris Bailey’s idea of a Devonshire tea on the verandah less than five yards away; (b) “fall” off the longsuffering Laddie’s back while the Yank just happened to be standing in the right spot to catch her; and (c) “help” Chris by taking the Yank up his breakfast tray: wearing, Pete had been in Lallapinda’s kitchen because it was one of Wendy’s trek days, so he could vouch for this, a trailing old-fashioned candlewick dressing-gown, very pale yellow and four sizes too big for her, slippers composed of high heels plus one pink pompon per slipper, and something bright puce and lacy which might have been a very, very short shorty nightie only Pete hadn’t been privileged. It would have taken more than what Milton Shapiro had, to have held out against that, walking into your own bedroom at eightish of a cool autumn morning. Two days after your wife—oh, yes, the Kitten didn’t let that sort of thing stop her—had had to go back to Adelaide to get on with her career as a corporate lawyer, the stress of which was half the reason they were up here in the first place. The other half being that Milton Shapiro worked for a Yank firm which was prospecting round trying to sell swimming-pools to Outback tourist hotels and/or motels with an average rainfall of minus something—so ya mighta said it served him right. If it had been anything but the Kitten, that was: no mere bloke coulda committed anything bad enough to deserve her. Well, maybe Attila the Hun?

    Pete sighed. He drove on in silence. She had to go again before they reached the Lallapinda fence, but he wasn’t surprised.

    “If ya gotta go, ya gotta go: don’t sit there wriggling, just say,” he said heavily as she got back in.

    Kitten put the torch in the glove compartment. “Okay.”

    They drove on. Hooray, the fence. Pete turned right and began to follow it.

    “Are we going this way?” she said cautiously.

    “Looks like it.”

    Kitten looked up at him dubiously.

    “The Muwullupirri gate’s thisaway, or had you forgotten that?”

    “No. So we are going to your hut?” she said in small voice.

    “Flaming Norah! YES!” he shouted.

    “Oh, good,” said Kitten weakly.

    Pete glanced at her sideways. He didn’t think she was faking anything, but with the Kitten, You—Never—Knew. After a while he said: “It’s got two rooms, now.”

    “Really?”

    “Yeah, I made some more of those mud bricks. Got all home comforts, now,” he said smugly.

    “Like what?” replied Kitten suspiciously.

    “A bath,” said Pete smugly.

    “What you mean is, you fill the sack up with water, when there’s any in the creek, and hang it from a branch and stand underneath it. Big deal.”

    “Nope, got a real bath. Found it in a shed at Muwullupirri when we were looking for something to make a pool for the swans. Bit of soldering, and she was good as new. ’Course, ya still have to trek down to the creek with the bucket when ya wanna use it.”

    “It’s not inside, I suppose?”

    “No, thought it might turn me mud brick walls back into mud. But I got a nice couple of sacks rigged up over it for some shade. Um—no: kidding,” he said awkwardly as she snorted. “It’s a real bathroom. Got a couple of drainage holes at the base of the walls, just in case.”

    “In case the snakes want to come in for a nice rest?” suggested Kitten coldly.

    “Uh—well, there is that. But ya can’t have everything. It’s what they used to call a hip-bath, according to Cal. And I’ve got an old washstand, too!” he said proudly.

    “A real one? Like they’ve got in the bedrooms at Lallapinda?”

    “Yeah, using ’em for dressing-tables, with poncy bowls of flowers on ’em. Mine’s got a nice plastic basin on top, and a nice old potty as to the lower shelf.”

    Kitten sighed. “Lemme get this straight. The hut’s now got two rooms, one’s what used to be the old hut, and the new one’s the bathroom, right?”

    “Right.”

    “You’re mad!” she said with conviction. “If you wanted to build on, why didn’t you make a proper bedroom?”

    “Well, can’t be in two rooms at once, can I? Um, the thing is, I found the hip-bath and hadda think of something to do with it. Too high for the swans, ya see.”

    Kitten took a deep breath.

    Pete drove on, smiling just a little. After a while he put a hard hand on her varicosed stretch-nylon knee and said: “I have got a bathroom. But I’ve put one of those poncy chemical toilets into it. The sort that—uh—disposes of everything by—uh—chemical means. It’s real nice.”

    “Really?” said Kitten, swallowing hard.

    “Yeah. Ya don’t wannoo be running outside every twenny minutes— Oh, Gawd.” He braked hard. “Now, look: don’t bawl,” he said firmly.

    Kitten continued to sob.

    “Listen, you little nana,” said Pete, putting an arm round her: “if you’d of told Kent you were up the spout to start with, ten to one you wouldn’t be in this shit, now.”

    “I’m—not!” she sobbed. “It’s all—in—my contingency pluh-plan!”

    “Yeah, yeah,” he said tolerantly, pulling her against him and resting his chin on her head. “Sure it is.”

    After a while Kitten stopped sobbing and sat up straight. “I’m all right.”

    “Yeah. What the—?” he said as a hot little hand then slid into his pocket.

    “I’m only looking for your hanky,” said Kitten meekly.

    In a pig’s eye, thought Pete. “It’s in me other pocket—hang on.”

    “Thanks,” said Kitten, blowing her nose hard.

    Pete started up again. “Keep it. We don’t want to end in a ditch at this time of night.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “I mean, don’t even think of kindly putting it back in my pocket while I’m driving.”

    Kitten said nothing, but she must’ve got the point, because she didn’t try it. Or anything.

    The Muwullupirri gate, at the point where the Lallapinda fence intersected with the Muwullupirri one, was reached at long last: Pete made her get out and operate on it, he figured she deserved it. Pregnant mum or not. When she got back in, instead of following the fence off to the right, which was more or less guaranteed to get you within cooee of the usual jumping-off point for the hut, he simply headed straight for it.

    “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” gasped Kitten as they bumped over a rise in the ground that Pete had forgotten was there.

    “Yeah. Cuts about five miles off it. –I come this way only a couplea weeks back. Well, a month, maybe.”

    “I see: you’re making a new track,” said Kitten acidly.

    Pete grinned, and patted her knee briefly. “Good one, the Kitten.”

    She had to go again before they were halfway, but so what? Even pastel bog-paper with, Gawdelpus, weeny gum leaves printed on it, was biodegradable, these days. Well, the paper was, Pete wasn’t too sure about the ink these fancy-bog-paper tycoons used.

    “You know that Burgoyne type?” he said as they set off again.

    Kitten jumped. “Which one?” she said feebly.

    “The one that came to stay last Christmas. Kendall Burgoyne.”

    “Oh, yes: I know who you mean, we saw him in Sydney. Ward knows him.”

    “Yeah. Well, he was saying his firm makes that fancy toilet paper. Well, some brands, forget which.”

    “Two. There’s the own-brand stuff they sell in Fine’s supermarkets and—” Kitten told him which brands of up-market fluffy bum-wiper Burgoyne’s firm made. Then for good measure she explained the corporate structure of the Fine group, making it quite clear that the actual K. Burgoyne, as if this was a need-to-know, did not nip out into the bush with ’is chain-saw and hack down the irreplaceable environment to make fancy bum-wipers with.

    “I was only making polite conversation,” said Pete meekly.

    “It serves you right, then, doesn’t it?” she replied composedly.

    “Yeah,” he said feebly. “Where in Christ do ya get all this garbage from?”

    She began to tell him, so he stopped listening.

    They reached the hut about threeish: not bad going. Pete’s hut had at an earlier stage in its brilliant career been your genuine bush hut: made of flattened kero tins and not very much else—bits of sacking, mostly. He’d started to do it up about twenty-five years back, largely on the strength of finding a huge fallen red gum along the creek—quite near, ’bout three mile upstream, maybe—and having decided the wood would make great roof beams. If he could haul it and saw it before the white ants got at it. Then he’d had to make something for the roof beams to rest on, and Ruth Keating from Nearby Bay had reckoned that her daughter-in-law, not Murray’s wife, the one that was married to their eldest, Tony, who’d moved to Adelaide permanent after they sent him there to uni, had seen this thing on the ABC that— Yeah, yeah. But Ruth had eventually produced your actual book—it had “Burnside Library” stamped inside it but if Mrs Tony Keating wasn’t worried nor was Pete.

    The book was a Yank-written thing, full of bad English and references to adobe, but after he’d struggled through it—the photos were very pretty but the diagrams were shocking—Pete reckoned he could do that, all right. There was plenty of mud around the place, that was for sure. Well, dirt, and when the creek wasn’t dry, water. What more did ya need? Rather fortunately Cal persuaded him there might be slightly more to it than that. So even though this was at the period where the Trisha thing had been at its height, or possibly nadir, and old Mr Wainwright was going round like a thundercloud while Trisha and Cal, in the intervals of screaming at each other, were ignoring each other all over Muwullupirri, and Mrs W. was alternatively doing her nut at Trisha and bawling her eyes out all over Cal, poor bugger, as if any of it was his fault, Pete temporarily deserted Muwullupirri and got on down to Adelaide and used the real library: the big State Library. They didn’t let you borrow their books, but they had these ruddy photocopiers. Pete photocopied a Helluva lot of stuff on mud bricks, various, and rammed earth, just for a change, and incidentally on how to put your roof on once the roof beams were in. The ladies behind the desk got to know him quite well, and Pete got to know them. And the eating spots around the place: there was this new Gallerie place that had opened up over the road, had the best chips outside Karakoulis’s of Port Augusta that Pete had ever tasted, and all sorts of foreign foods, and more or less next-door to the library in the Art Gallery of SA there was this coffee bar place that really hadn’t got wised up to itself and sold monster slices of tender, rare roast beef between two token bits of bread and called ’em sandwiches. –On his rare trips to the state capital, Pete had since revisited these old haunts. Nothing like it: the art gallery’s sandwiches now came in ruddy plastic containers, not even the sniff of a decent roast within cooee, and the muck that they had the cheek to call tuna was half sweetcorn kernels, I kid you not; and the Gallerie place’s chips tasted like the usual pre-cooked cottonwool soaked in beef dripping that ya got everywhere these days: yuck.

    The basic hut was now rammed earth, Pete had really cottoned on to that. With mud bricks forming the pillars and even the floor (he’d got carried away) of the verandah. It had been yonks before he’d figured out how to get a roof onto the verandah—shoulda drawn up his plans first, yeah, like the books said—and for a while Cal—he’d got over the Trisha thing, the construction had taken a year or ten—Cal had gone round calling the hut “Pete’s Acropolis”. The walls were two-foot thick, might as well do the thing properly if ya were doing it, so the hut should have been really cool in summer, but initially he’d only had a corrugated iron roof. Flat: perched on his magnificent pit-sawn, hand-sanded and hand-polished red gum beams. Heated it up real good, ya coulda said.

    Eventually Mr Wainwright had come out to see it. He hadn’t said anything, but the next order that had gone down to Adelaide had included a bit more besides packets of galvanised nails and a new freezer for Mrs W. This had been in the wake of the stroke, and when the order had come Pete had had a sick moment in which he’d wondered if the old joker had gone entirely gaga. But Cal had fallen all over the place laughing himself silly at the sight of what come off the truck, so Pete had smiled weakly and realised it was one of old Mr W.’s rare jokes. They weren’t just poncy housing tiles like you saw enough of in the more tarted-up bits of Adelaide, they were flaming Mediterranean curved terracotta tiles! Plus packets and packets of insulation batts. True, they were insulating the homestead at the same time, but Pete didn’t reckon it made it all that much more economical to get some for him, too. Nor did Mrs W., in fact she coulda been heard doing her nut all over Muwullupirri for several days. “Why did you let your father—” That sort of thing.

    Anyway, when the dust settled, Pete and Cal and Hughie, with a bit of help from young Ted Perkins from Nearby Bay who was working as jackaroo during his uni holidays, got out there and ripped the iron off ’er and put in an actual ceiling above Pete’s shiny red gum beams, and a roof complete with actual rafters on top of that. And, with the obligatory cursing and swearing, managed to figure out how the Spanish, Italians and Greeks might possibly of got them bloody Mediterranean tiles to go on and stay on. Mr Wainwright came out with them in the ute and looked after the billy and generally gave directions, even though by rights he should probably have stayed in the homestead, resting: it was pushing forty all that summer. Well, you couldn’t blame the old joker for wanting to get out from under.

    She was a real little palace, now! ’Specially with your dinkum Aussie corrugated iron verandah roof. Pete hadn’t managed bull-nosed, but she was pretty good, though. Them recycled bits of steel railing bolted onto the rammed earth as verandah girders were good, too. They’d been your dinkum unadorned steel railings for some time, but last winter Pete had actually got round to painting ’em dark green. And the verandah roof. Mrs W—not that she’d ever been all the way out to the hut—too far, and no decent track—reckoned it was a dinkum “Federation” colour. Whatever it was it went good with them Mediterranean roof-tiles: yep.

    Very, very fortunately Pete had taken the sage advice of one of the more sensible Yank books that knew what the New Mexican (and South Australian outback) climate was really like, and as well as building in your actual whopping great stone fireplace for them five-below-zero Celsius winter nights, had put a back door in the original structure, so as to get a through-draught in summer. Otherwise he didn’t think he’d have been able to add on a bathroom. Not your ensuite, accessible sort of bathroom, that was: not through two feet of solid rammed earth.

    “Ooh, there’s a passage!” squeaked Kitten in terrific admiration.

    Yep. there sure was. A dinkum passage. All of four foot long, it was: led straight from your previous back door to your new back door. –He’d decided that the through-draught was a bloody good idea, but he didn’t fancy it whistling through his actual bathroom in winter, thanks. The bathroom was off the passage, to the left, and when he found one or scrounged one, it would have a door in its doorway. Kitten didn’t seem to notice this lack: she admired it extravagantly anyway. It was pretty good: he’d whitewashed it. Cal had said it oughta be milk paint to go with Pete’s New Age image but Pete had offered to ram his teeth down his throat for him, so he’d stopped. Pete hadn’t let on he didn’t have a clue what the joker was on about.

    “I could put stencils round the walls!” she gasped.

    “Uh—yeah,” said Pete weakly, as visions of frilly cushions and dinky lace curtains floated before his eyes. “Right, so ya could. –Match the bog-paper, eh?” he said, rallying slightly.

    “Yes. So this is the chemical toilet? Isn’t it clever!”

    Pete took the hint, and went out so as she could go.

    “You hungry?” he said as she reappeared.

    “Yes, starving.”

    “Shoulda said: we coulda stopped, boiled up the billy.”

    “That’s okay, I had my yoghurt bar.”—Nobly Pete refrained from wincing.—“Is it okay if I have a wash while you’re getting tea?”

    “Mm,” said Pete vaguely, inspecting the sausages. Bugger: he shouldn’ta bought so many, they wouldn’t keep. Maybe Cal was right: he oughta see about resurrecting that old gas refrigerator they had out in one of the Muwullupirri sheds. Could put it on the front verandah, it’d look good there, eh? Um—well, out the back there was a sort of porch, he’d had some mud bricks left over. Just a few: two hundred or so. Nev Bailey from Lallapinda had come over apparently especially in order to inform him that what he had there was a patio, mate, but Pete had offered to clock ’im, so he’d stopped. Um.... Did gas fridges actually like sitting in your baking forty-three degree heat against a mud wall on a mud brick patio?

    “Oy, there isn’t any hot water, you aren’t in the Big Smoke now!” he called as she disappeared with her fancy pale blue suitcase. Matched the fancy pale blue vanity case she’d already deposited in the bathroom. Funnily enough this single act had made his bathroom look as if rows of ruddy stencils ’ud look right at home in it.

    “You’re boiling some up, aren’t you?” she said with a melting smile, popping her head back in.

    Pete had one of them nifty camping-gas burners. Up to now he’d thought it was nifty. “Yeah, but this is for tea.”

    “Just fill the kettle up,” she ordered, disappearing again.

    Pete looked at his giant black kettle. Uh—no way. That was the kettle that got slung over a giant hook in his humungous stone fireplace round about the first of June and stayed there simmering until round about the first of October. He looked at his small aluminium kettle and sighed. She obviously hadn’t realised it, but every drop of water in the blamed place hadda be carried up from the creek by hand. Not to say by back. Maybe Cal was right: he oughta rig up a water tank. One winter out of five there was a chance it’d get filled, too. No need to take Cal’s further advice, along the lines of dinky little aqueducts and pipes and pulleys and levers and valves and a genuine bush shower that types in zoot suits and black wraparounds ’ud come and film for the ruddy ABC...

    “Oy, KITTEN! We haven’t got water laid on, ya know!” he bellowed.

    After a moment her voice called back: “Is this water in here okay, though?”

    Pete had filled the bucket that belonged in the bathroom at some stage this morning: what seemed like in another life, yeah. “Use it, use it,” he muttered. “YEAH!” he shouted. “USE IT!”

    There was a moment’s pause and then she appeared, sort of a bright pink. “I don’t think I ought to lift it.”

    Pete nearly dropped the bloody sausages. Shit! He hadn’t thought of that. “You didn’t try, did you?” he gasped.

    “No. I remembered in time that I’m not s’posed to.”

    “No.”

    “Have you got a jug or something I could use to fill the basin?”

    “Yeah, I’ll find ya something.” He ferreted madly. He did have a jug, true. It was about four inches high and really dinky: entirely covered in an intricate pattern of weeny yellow, pink and blue flowers: Cal reckoned it dated from his grandmother’s time. It only had a minute chip out of its rim but Mrs W had demoted it, nevertheless. In fact she’d thrown it out, but Pete had rescued it.

    “Um... this jam jar’s clean. It had some of that weird kiwifruit muck in it that Chris Bailey made.”

    “It’ll do.” Kitten seized the jam jar and disappeared again.

    Pete sagged slightly. Shit—what else was there that he hadn’t thought that maybe a pregnant mum shouldn’t do? Um... well, hauling the water up from the bloody creek in the first place, actually. He’d sort of assumed they’d share that job. Um... lifting the flaming black kettle on and off its hook: right. Um... lifting the flaming stewpot on and off the other hook, shit again. Naturally the stewpot hadn’t been used in Muwullupirri’s kitchen since Kingdom Come, him and Cal had found it in a shed. Just the job, took a bloody great hunk of beef or, if you were less particular, a bloody great haunch of kanga. In fact it did your dinkum roo-tail soup real lovely: you just let it simmer all day. The Kitten ’ud never manage it: cripes, she’d never manage it bloody well empty, let alone with stew or soup in it! After some thought Pete went over to the passage doorway and sort of leaned his head against the wall and said: “Hey, Kitten?”

    “Yes?”

    “Listen, if there’s anything that looks in the least bit too heavy for ya, for God’s sake let me lift it, okay?”

    “Okay!” she said happily.

    “Yeah. Uh—there’ll be some hot water in a mo’.”

    “Thanks, Pete,” she said happily.

    Pete staggered back to his camping-gas burner and added willpower to the feeble energy provided by bottled gas. “Okay”: right. Only would she think before she done it?

    He poured the whole kettleful of water into the plastic basin which she’d already partly filled with cold. “All right?”

    “Mm, lovely!”

    Pete staggered out again. It wasn’t that she wasn’t perfectly respectable; she’d put her pale yellow candlewick dressing-gown on. It was just that the bathroom seemed to have sprouted... not yer actual stencils as such, no. Pale blue and pale pink fluff, probably put it best.

    By the time the sausages were done she was ready, and came out in the dressing-gown again but this time surrounded by a sort of fog of that powder smell. Endemic to the species, it was. Oh, boy. “That smells nice,” he croaked feebly.

    “Mm, it’s rose geranium.” Kitten proceeded to tell him what it cost per gigatonne and what the roses did to the geraniums or some such, but it was beyond Pete. They all smelled the same to him: powder smell.

    “We got sausages and sausages, and brown or white bread.”

    “What about that crate of tomatoes?”

    “Eh? Aw: they’re for Lallapinda.”

    “I’ll have sausages and brown bread, then. Haven’t you ever heard of roughage?”

    Yeah, it was what ya picked up in that run-down pub about two and a half blocks west of Karakoulis’s fish and chips shop in Port Augusta. “Definitely not. You want sauce?”

    She wanted it, but apparently he had to realise it was full of dye and preservative and salt. Okay, fine, he conceded that. They put tomato sauce on their sausages.

    “I coulda fried up an onion, only we’d be smelling it all night,” he said, peering at her through the haze of powder.

    “Yeah. What is the time?” said Kitten vaguely, looking dubiously in the milk carton.

    “That’s fresh, ya saw me buy it with yer own—”

    “Yeah; I was just wondering how long it’ll last out of the fridge.”

    “Well, overnight, for God’s sake! I’ll shove it in the safe if you’re that particular.”

    “Have you got a safe?”

    “More or less. Only gotta sling it up—”

    “What about that possum you reckon likes milk?”

    “It does, and I won’t take me oath it’s not athletic enough to get down the rope, but it hasn’t figured out how to actually open the safe.”

    “Yet.”

    “Right. And it’s pushing four-fifteen, since you ask.”

    Kitten yawned widely. “We could leave these dishes.”

    “Yeah, we certainly could. Unless you fancy trekking down to the creek to fill another bucket?”

    “No.”

    “No.” Pete opened the apricot jam and spread it lavishly on a slab of white bread. “Want some?”

    “Um—yeah. Thanks.”

    She ate tinned apricot jam and white bread with not a shred of roughage in sight and noted: “If the possum can get down the rope and if the dingoes haven’t figured out how to open the safe, why bother to sling it from a branch in the first place?”

    “Uh—ants?” said Pete hazily.

    “Are there any at this time of year?”

    “Dunno. I could leave this here apricot jam out and see.”

    “Yeah, hah, hah. Why didn’t you buy a jar instead of a tin?”

    “Too mean, the tins are cheaper—when ya can get ’em.”

    “It’s not cost-effective, though, if it means you have to eat up the jam twice as fast before the ants can get it.”

    “This is true. It’s a good excuse, though.”

    “I hate to think what this diet is doing to your colon.”

    Pete blinked. He didn’t think all that much about it, himself. “Um—I’m pretty regular,” he said cautiously.

    “That’s a good sign,” said Kitten seriously.

    “Talking of innards, have you been doing any chucking up, in the mornings or otherwise?”

    “I was queasy for a while, but pregnancy seems to agree with me,” she said happily.

    She looked blooming, this was true. “I’m glad to hear it,” said Pete with a cracking yawn. “I’ll sort of make a gesture at clearing away, if you wanna use the bathroom first. Aw, and I think that torch you used is at its last gasp. There’s spare candles in that drawer and matches on the mantelpiece.”

    “Haven’t you got any spare batteries?”

    “None that fit that torch,” said Pete, yawning.

    “We’ll make a shopping list for next time we go into town.”

    “Righto,” he agreed, trying not to flinch. Shopping list? Boy, them words were music to a bloke’s ear.

    Kitten vanished into the bathroom with the torch, humming.

    Pete sighed. He collected up dishes and dumped them in his sink. –He had a sink. It had a drain, what was more. The water ran out and carefully watered the gum from which he suspended the safe. Which reminded him: just in case a snake felt like running in, he put the plug firmly in the plughole. Kitten showed no signs of coming out of the bathroom, so he wandered outside and watered the gum on his own account. After a bit, Digger ran up and licked his hand hopefully. “I don’t think so, old mate,” said Pete. “Not tonight, any rate. Better let ’er get used to no hot water and white bread first, eh?”

    Digger licked his hand again, gave a huffing sigh, and returned to his kennel. Probably could smell the ruddy powder on him. It did kinda seep into yer cracks, ya know?

    “Was that Digger?” she said as he came in again.

    “Yeah,” said Pete, hurriedly doing up his jeans. “—Sorry. Um—yeah, he doesn’t wanna come in. Doesn’t like—um, well, I was gonna say women, but to be strictly accurate he doesn’t like anyone. Bit Nev Bailey’s ankle, one day. Luckily ’e had boots on.”

    “What had he done?”

    “Nothing. Digger’s like that. Don’t try to pet him, whatever ya do.”

    “I’m not that dumb,” she said, yawning. “What side of the bed do you like?”

    “The side that’s least likely to get me trodden on, rolled on or jabbed in the ribs with an elbow when you gotta go in the middle of the night.”

    “Um—I’ll take the side nearest the passage door, then.”

    “Good idea,” said Pete, escaping to the bathroom.

    When he got there he found himself in the pitch dark but it didn’t matter because the Kitten came pattering helpfully after him with the torch. “I could boil up some water.”

    “You could, but between us we seem to have drunk it or washed in it, Kitten.”

    “Oh. Um—there’s some in this bucket, still, though!”

    “Y— Don’t LIFT it!” he shouted.

    “I wasn’t gunnoo,” she lied.

    “Much. Push off, let a bloke have a wash in peace, for God’s sake.”

    Kitten obediently vanished.

    When Pete managed to stagger out of the smothering fog of powder that was clearly gonna infest his bathroom forever and a day, she was sitting up in bed, with the covers pulled up neatly to her armpits. The pale yellow dressing-gown was folded neatly on the end of the bed.

    “What’s this?” said Pete weakly, bringing the lamp over to his side of the bed.

    “What?”

    “All this pale blue... fuzz.”

    Apparently that was a bed-jacket, silly!

    “I didn’t know girls still wore ’em,” he said feebly.

    “I do. I made this. It’s crochet, see? And the yarn’s a mixture of wool and angora, it’s really soft. The pattern was quite tricky, because it’s made all in one piece—” She raved on. Resignedly Pete removed his dressing-gown.

    “Do you normally wear pyjamas?” said Kitten dubiously, breaking off in the middle of a description of the immense time and immense amount of pale blue fluff it had taken to do the crochet edging all round the whatever-it-was.

    “No. I’m wearing them in your honour. Do you normally wear these blue fluff whatsits?”

    “I do in the middle of nowhere in rammed-earth huts without central heating, yeah.”

    “Right. I’m glad we got that straight,” said Pete grimly. He removed his pyjama jacket and threw it at the floor. Then he climbed out of his pyjama pants and threw them at the floor. His aim was very good: he managed to hit the floor, both times. “Stop staring and move over. You’ve seen ’em before,” he said nastily.

    Giggling, Kitten moved over about an eighth of an inch and held up the covers invitingly. Pete saw with a sort of—mad resignation probably wasn’t the right phrase: whatever—that she was wearing the lacy puce shorty thing of Milton Shapiro fame under the pale blue fluff.

    “You’ve got a good body,” she said approvingly.

    “You’ve seen most of it before, it can’t be that much of a surprise to ya.”

    “Not this, though!” said Kitten with a loud giggle, putting her hand on it.

    “Do you—ooh! Uh, do you ever by any chance let a bloke make the running?” said Pete faintly.

    “It depends,” she said soulfully, peeping at him with them baby-blues.

    Pete just bet it did. “Yeah. Well, be sure and tell me if I do anything ya don’t like,” he said acidly.

    “Don’t be mean,” she replied, pouting.

    “I wasn’t being mean, but sometimes a bloke likes to think he’s in charge of things, even when he manifestly—ooh! –Isn’t.”

    “All right, I won’t.”

    “Put your hand back, you nana. Just drop the tricks, okay? I don’t need ’em and I don’t want ’em.”

    “Um—all right. Um—whadd’ll I do?” she said on a doleful note.

     Pete smiled a little. “Just react, ’ud be real nice, Kitten.”

    “Um—okay.”

    He leaned on one elbow and undid the little blue bows on the blue fluff. “Now, if you get cold, tell me, okay? But I’m just gonna do a bit of excavation, here. Mmm-mm,” he said approvingly.

    Kitten gave a breathless laugh.

    “Well, the whole of Lallapinda and Muwullupirri’s more or less been privileged to see more or less of these, but it sure is nice to get a close-up,” he drawled.

    “Yes! Me, too!” said Kitten with a giggle, squeezing him.

    Pete grinned, and momentarily put his hand over hers. “Yeah. Now, lessee...” He eased the blue fluff back, and got one arm out of it. That’d do, really. He slid the strip of puce lace down that shoulder. “Mmm... Boy, these are good, Kitten,” he muttered. He put his hand experimentally on one of ’em and she shuddered all over. Not a bad sign. Then he sort of... fondled it, was probably the word. This time she sort of gasped and sighed. So he got the other one out and sort of mumbled his face between ’em, Jesus they were soft. The nipples were huge, so he might as well... Mmm. Yeah!

    “Oh, Pete!” said Kitten breathlessly as he sucked her.

    “Goob, eh?” said Pete indistinctly.

    “Yes!” she squeaked.

    He let her do a bit more squeaking and sighing and then he rolled on top of her—oh, boy!—and said: “When I put it in there I’ll go off like a rocket, I’m warning you now.”

    “Mm,” said Kitten, biting her lip.

    “Who’ve you done it with without a rubber?”

    “Only Hugo,” said Kitten feebly.

    “Good. Well, I only done it like that with my ex, and that was because she reckoned we were gonna have a kid, plus and after she’d taken her bloody temperature down there: not precisely encouraging for a bloke, to know he’s only gonna get it if the thermometer’s been up there and okayed it first. So if it’s okay with you, I won’t use one. But if you’ve got any doubts, or if there were any odd blokes you might’ve overlooked that you just might’ve let get into you without precautions, speak now.”

    “No. It’d be really stupid to lie about something like that.”

    Pete thought she was genuine. Anyway, at his age, what the Hell did it matter? “Right. Good.”

    “And Hugo’s never done it since AIDS without one, and he’s been tested and everything.”

    Jesus, a bloke needed them clinical details, just when he was on the point of it! Maybe he wasn’t such a New Age man as the whole of Lallapinda and Muwullupirri had always assumed? “Good for him,” he said feebly.

    Kitten looked up at him hopefully. “Are you gonna do it now?”

    “I was thinking about kissing you. Only what I thought was, if I do, I might not be able to stop meself from plunging it up there, see?”

    “Mm,” she said, nodding. Somehow this was immensely encouraging, though he couldn’t have said why for the life of him, so he did kiss her. Glory! In fact, cripes! She was some kisser, was the Kitten. Especially when you were lying right on top of all that soft, pale—uh—softness. Crikey Dick, in fact.

    “I like the way you kiss!” she panted.

    “Uh—good. Ditto,” croaked Pete.

    “Kiss me again!” she panted.

    Pete obliged but had to stop. “Um—it’s getting too good. Um—what say,” he said, idly squeezing them, “I get down there and give you a bit of go with me tongue. mm?”

    To his astonishment the Kitten went as puce as her bloody shorty nightie and squeaked: “I think I might come, if you do, Pete!”

    “Uh—well, good. Don’t you wannoo?”

    She nodded. Well—good. Pete didn’t bother trying to figure out what that was all about: he just got between the soft satin cushions of Kitten’s thighs and breathed in the smell of warm woman that the bloody bath powder hadn’t quite managed to smother and stuck his tongue up there. Jesus!

    The Kitten let out a shriek of “Oh, Pete! Oh, Pete!” to wake the dead, and writhed like billyo, so Pete concluded she must like that, then. She made him work at it, though: talk about singing for your supper—but eventually, just when he was thinking he’d have to bloody well leap up and shove it up there, she dug the fingernails in hard, took a very deep breath, clenched like fury and shrieked her head off.

    Pete leapt up and shoved it up there. He registered, more or less “Glory Hallelujah”, as she shrieked again and clenched on the old bit of meat; and probably managed three strokes, only he wasn’t counting, before he exploded in her like the flaming Whatsit.

    “Apollo,” he muttered, several aeons later.

    “What?” said Kitten faintly.

    Pete removed his head from her shoulder where it had ended up, funnily enough, and rolled onto his back, propping her head on his shoulder which was more properer: at least, in his youth it was what you occasionally got a glimpse of in dirty French films in the Big Smoke and today it was what you saw every other night on  the bloody Yank TV.

    “Went off like the bloody Apollo,” he mumbled.

    Oh, yes: Apollo 13: that had had Never-Heard-of-Him in it, blah-blah. Pete just lay there and let her ramble on...

    “Hullo!” said Kitten with a loud giggle next morning.

    Pete blinked groggily. The sun was streaming in through his uncurtained window, so— “Uh, whassa time?” he muttered groggily.

    “Half past eleven!” said Kitten with a loud giggle. “You went out like a light!”

    “What?” he croaked, sitting up groggily.

    “You went out like a light last night!”

    “I dare say. Did you say half past eleven?”

    Kitten nodded, giggling.

    He looked round wildly for his watch but it wasn’t there. “Look, if this is a bloody leg-pull—”

    “What do you mean?”

    “If you’ve hidden me watch and it’s only half past eight or something—”

    “No!” said Kitten with another loud giggle. “Don’t be a clot! I expect you left your watch in the bathroom.”

    “I never—” Pete broke off: he probably had. “Um, look, has there been any sign of Cal or—uh—of a ute?” he said, wincing.

    “No. There hasn’t been any sign of old Mr Wainwright, either,” she said airily.

    “Hah, hah,” he said weakly. That was what he’d been thinking, actually, that kid was so sharp she’d cut herself.

    “Want breakfast?” she said airily.

    “N— Y— Look, why the fuck didn’t you wake me up?”

    “I thought you looked as if you needed your rest,” she said seriously.

    Pete sighed. He’d never slept in till half past ruddy eleven in his life! Well, always a first time. And talking of teaching old dogs new tricks— “Any sign of Digger?” he asked, wincing.

    “Yes. I got up to go to the loo at about... sevenish, I suppose,” she said vaguely, “and he came to the door. So I fed him.”

    “What on?” said Pete faintly.

    “A tin of dog food, of course.”

    “Jesus, and you’ve still got both your hands?”

    “Very funny. I just said ‘Sit’—in a terrible voice!” said Kitten with a giggle, “and he sat, he was very good, until I put the plate down and said ‘Eat’.”

    “Yeah,” said Pete, gulping a bit. “Well, that sometimes works. If ’e’s in the mood. Um—what plate, Kitten?” he added faintly.

    Kitten looked surprised. “His own, of course, he had it in his mouth—isn’t he clever?” she added, beaming.

    Barmy, more like. His favourite game was to bowl that tin plate down to the creek with ’is nose and stand there watching like a moron while it rolled down the slope and fell in. Then Guess Who hadda wade in and rescue it?

    “Yeah, sometimes. Well, thanks, Kitten,” he said feebly.

    “Um—I gave him the rest of the water from the bathroom,” she said timidly.

    “He doesn’t need water, love, he’s got the whole flamin’ creek down there,” said Pete, patting more or less where he thought her knee might be, under the bedclothes. She had the blue fluff on. “You cold?”

    “Not really,” said Kitten cheerfully.

    No, well, it was getting on for noon: she wouldn’t be. “Um... Now, I’m not criticising here, Kitten, and ya done good, and at least the bugger didn’t take a piece out of ya: but what bowl did ya put his water in?”

    “There wasn’t much that was suitable,” she said dubiously. “I had to use that big old blue and white one from under the sink. I wiped it out first.”

    “Aw, that,” said Pete, sagging. “Yeah, fine. Think it’s an old meat plate, or something, from Muwullupirri. Anyway, Mrs W chucked it out, so I rescued it. It catches the drips when the drainpipe starts coming away from the plughole in the hot weather.”

    “Mm,” said Kitten, looking sideways at him.

    “Um—if ’e’s tried that stupid trick of bowling it along with ’is bloody nose and broken it, don’t worry, it was cracked anyway.”

    “Bowling it along with his nose?” said Kitten blankly. “Um—no: it’s fine. Um...”

    Pete should have seen it coming, of course, but then, Muggins was his middle name, remember? “What, love?”

    “Um, well, it’s too good to waste on a dog, really. It’s Royal Doulton!” she said eagerly.

    Mighta been, yeah. Royal Bloody Big Crack, too. “Uh—yeah?”

    “Um, well, I was thinking, it’d look lovely with some pot plants in it!” she said eagerly. “Herbs and geraniums, maybe?”

    Yeah, right. Herbs and geraniums. “Yeah, sure: if you wannoo,” he croaked.

    “Ooh, good! Ta. Pete! I’ll put them on the—”

    Shopping list, yeah, yeah. “Cummere,” he said resignedly, putting an arm round her.

    Kitten squirmed against him, giggling, and held up her face, so Pete kissed it obligingly. Then he had to make sure the two of them were still there. They were, so he thought they’d better have a really good look at ’em, since it was daylight and Kitten wasn’t cold, so he took the blue fluff and the puce lacy thing right off her. They were still there, all rightee.

    “Jesus,” said Pete, kneeling up shaking like a leaf, with a handful of each. “Jesus, these are good!”

    “Ooh, Pete!” squeaked Kitten, putting her hand on it.

    “Bloody Hell, lemme in there!” gasped Pete, pushing her back onto the pillows and falling on top of her and shoving it up there.

    The Kitten put her knees right up and screeched: “OH! Oh, Pete! Oh, Pete!” She used the F word a lot, too, so he did. On the assumption that she liked it.

    “I’m gonna come!” he gasped.

    Kitten flung her head right back and made a sort of mewing noise and moaned: “Bi-ite me-ee...”

    Pete didn’t know that he was into that, much, but the neck was there, and all sort of pale, and the underneath part of the chin looked sort of... He bit it and she let out a shriek that they probably heard at Nearby Bay, shoved herself onto him and came like the clappers. Pete didn’t kid himself he wasn’t fucking like a buck rat while she was doing it, mind you; and then he let go and showered into her, roaring his head off as he done it.

    ... “Shit,” he said feebly, something like a fortnight later.

    Kitten gave a smothered giggle.

    “Liked it, din’cha?” he said.

    She gave another smothered giggle, so he bit the lobe of her ear, on the strength of it. She gave a sharp squeak and clenched like buggery on the old bit of meat. It just fell out when she let it go: spent was the word, probably.

    “Does that always happen when a joker bites your ear?”

    “Yes. Only afterwards. And only that ear,” said Kitten on a smug note.

    “Mm,” he said, kissing it, and rolling off her very slowly and reluctantly. He could hear her taking a deep breath, so when he’d thought he was squashing all the breath out of her, he had been. Uh—damn. “Um, Kitten, was I squashing the baby too much?”

    “No. If you’re worried, I’ve got a book that explains it all. Having sex while you’re pregnant, I mean.”

    “I better read it, I think. That is, if ya want this to go on for a month or two.”

    “Mm-mm,” said the Kitten, putting her hand on it, limp, not to say spent, though it was. Pete could only conclude she liked ’em that way, too. In fact, she just liked ’em. He lay back and looked up at his perfect ceiling and his wonderful red gum beams, and smirked.

    Twenty minutes later Nev Bailey turned up in the ute from Lallapinda, looking for them tomatoes, but very, very fortunately Pete had decided the old feller definitely needed sustenance before he went another round, so he had his jeans and a jumper on, and unless Nev had X-ray eyes he couldn’t actually know that was all he had on; and he’d been down to the creek and got a couple of buckets of water, and most of the rest of the sausages were frying up with a couple of tomatoes out of Lallapinda’s crate, but as Kitten had rearranged the remainder very carefully Nev couldn’t know that, either.

    Also very, very fortunately, when Kitten came wandering through from the bathroom on a blast of powder and shampoo with Pete’s best towel round her head, she had the pale yellow candlewick dressing-gown on. Never mind if Nev did guess there was nothing underneath it.

    “Gidday, Pete. Gidday, Kitten,” he said with a silly grin.

    “Gidday, Nev. Them tomatoes are all ready for ya,” replied Pete. –Kitten merely giggled. Typical.

    “Uh—right,” he said, dragging his eyes off the pale yellow candlewick. “That’ll be one of them blue towels ya went all the way down to Adelaide to buy at Meyer’s sale, will it?” he added nastily, rallying.

    “Push off,” replied Pete. –Kitten just giggled.

    “Hope it’s the one with ‘Hers’ on it, we wouldn’t want any rôle reversals here, this is the Outback,” Nev said to Kitten. She nodded hard, giggling like crazy.

    “These tomatoes,” said Pete clearly, dumping the carton in his arms, “are yours. Take ’em and push—off.”

    “Your sausages are burning, aren’t they, mate?” said Nev in a pointed voice, wandering out.

    “I’m gonna get a lock for that flaming door!” threatened Pete. Kitten collapsed in helpless giggles.

    Gritting his teeth, Pete marched out to load the rest of the Lallapinda groceries into Nev’s ute and make sure the bugger really did go.

    “Aw, isn’t there enough lunch for three?” he asked wistfully.

    “No! Push off!”

    “Does Mrs Wainwright know that’s staying with you?” he replied calmly.

    “No, and until you tell Chris and Chris tells her, she won’t, Nev, will she?” he returned nastily.

    Grinning, Nev said: “All right, I won’t tell her. But that doesn’t mean they won’t all find out, mate: women are like that. –You’ll learn!” he added with a snigger, driving off before Pete could clobber him.

    After lunch, or whatever it was, Kitten ended up sitting on his knee, Pete couldn’ta said how, with her hand in his jeans. Very fortunately Cal didn’t turn up in the Muwullupirri ute at the stage Pete was groaning: “Oo-ooh! Ooh, God, that’s good, pet!” Or at the point where Pete was kneeling up on the bed, a bit later, with his jeans down to his knees, saying in a sheepish voice: “Kitten, love, could ya just—OH! Jesus God, YES! JESUS!”

    Or at the point not very long after that where Pete was having an almighty come in her, yelling, goodness knew why, musta been all that encouragement: “Oh! Cunt! Oh! Kitten! AARGH!” –Words to that effect.

    When he did turn up was midway through the afternoon, when Pete, instead of getting on over to Muwullupirri, had started to demonstrate to Kitten that it was possible to have a shower, see: ya both stood in the bath and one person, preferably the one what was taller, held the sack up very high, and the other person—“Ow! Don’t do that, ya little bitch! Ow, help! Cummere!” And had stopped demonstrating that, for the nonce, and was demonstrating that even if an elderly New Age gent couldn’t get it up two hours after that after-lunch session, he was New Age enough, or perhaps knew enough about what made women tick, whichever, to get down on his knees—he’d had a shave by this time, Kitten had pointed out that the whiskers were scratchy and she didn’t like that look, one of these points had seemed valid to Pete—and give her a lovely gentle come that way. She’d got past the “Oo-ooh!” stage and the shuddering stage and, Pete calculated, was so far into the moaning and grabbing-at-his-shoulders stage that she was just about there, when his front door banged back and Cal’s voice shouted: “Hey, PETE!”

    Unfortunately, just as he was starting to shout it Kitten took that huge breath which Pete now knew meant she was gunnoo: and as he was shouting it she let out the usual shriek to raise the dead and came like fury. Gratifying in its way, mind you.

    Oh, well, at least they’d been in the bathroom. Pete found Cal sitting under a eucalypt down by the creek about ten minutes later. He was back in his jeans, by that time. And a shirt. In fact, even underpants.

    “Why the Hell didn’t you tell me she was gonna stay on with you?” said Cal without preamble.

    Pete didn’t bother to work out whether he’d guessed it was Kitten by a process of elimination or whether he’d actually recognised that steam-engine shriek of hers. “Wasn’t sure she would. Anyway, none of your business, is it?”

    “No. But you’re a bloody fool if you imagine she isn’t using you while it suits her.”

    “Yeah. But when you’re my age, mate, you won’t say no if that sort of bird’s handed to you on a plate, neither.”

    Cal hesitated. “Uh—no. Um—does she actually know how old you are, Pete?”

    “Probably not. But she could work it out if she’s that interested, she has known me all her life.”

    “Yeah.” Pete hadn’t changed much in the last twenty-five years. He had one of those scrawny, rangy figures that didn’t get fat with the approach of middle age, not to say old age. “Um—Mum said to tell you that there’s a couple of nice double quilts going begging. Her and Dad don’t use them, since they’ve got the twin beds.”

    “What’s she got: radar?” croaked Pete.

    Cal shrugged. “Probably, yeah. You gonna be on deck tomorrow?”

    “Uh—yeah. Aw, sorry, Cal, we were gonna fix that stretch of fence over near the Lallapinda boundary today, eh?”

    “Do it tomorrow,” he said easily. “Didja remember the groceries?”

    “Uh—yeah. Your mum’s not gonna like the baking powder, all we could find was these bloody dinky plastic bottles. Kitten reckons that’s what it comes in, these days.”

    Cal shrugged. “Whatever. So long as it’ll still make scones. If you’re at the homestead by seven tomorrow, me and Hughie’ll assume you’re coming to work. Otherwise we won’t. Only I wanna get it done this week.”

    “Yeah, right. So—uh—you’re serious about going up to Brizzie next week to talk to that joker that reckons he’s gonna breed miniature Brahmans?”

    “Yeah. You got something against it?”

    “No, except that it’s bloody hobby-farming, and even Bob Bloody Dangerfield says there won’t any profit in it for at least the next twenny years. If then.”

   “I’m thinking twenty years ahead,” said Cal smoothly.

    Pete shrugged. “Okay, be like that.”

    “Seriously. Breeding’s the way to go, rather than simple production. And in any case the markets—”

    “I’m not arguing with ya, Cal,” he said with a sigh. “I’m twenny years out of date as it is. And it’s your property, not mine.”

    “Yes, well, I’m hoping it’ll still be in the family for my son to manage in twenty-odd years’ time,” he said grimly.

    Pete gulped. After a moment he said cautiously: “You planning to have this son with anyone in particular, Cal?”

    “Yes. Sloane.”

    Pete gulped again. “I see.”

    “What are you looking at me like that for? You’re up her ruddy sister, and you’ve got a good fifteen years on me, in case you’ve forgotten it!”

    “N— Um, the thing is, I overheard Kitten’s dumb little mates... Um—I wasn’t gonna mention this, Cal, ’cos I didn’t know you were interested in that direction. Not seriously.”

    “Well, I am,” he replied flatly. “So mention it. Or as an option, get your block knocked off.”

    “Don’t try it,” he warned. “Um—well, they’re only dumb little bunnies, of course, but, um... I don’t think they knew I was there: they were on the front verandah at Lallapinda and the rest of the guests had pushed off with Venita on a bloody trek and—um...”

    “They thought the coast was clear, and you were having one of your everlasting smokos on the side verandah: YES! Get ON with it!”

    “There’s no need to flaming shout! Yeah, well, I was. Only one. –They haven’t killed me yet, me lungs are as sound as a bell.”

    “Pete,” said Cal, turning a sort of purple shade—bit like that ruddy nightie of Kitten’s, actually: “if this involves Sloane, either spit it out right now, or have your block knocked off.”

    “Yeah. Sorry. Um—they seem to have got some potty idea that between ’em—the little mates, and Melodie, and the Kitten’s in there boots an’ all, and—um—evidently Sloane,” he said hoarsely, not looking at the poor bugger: “but I think Ingrid might’ve backslid a bit— Um, they’ve cooked up this daft plot that they’re gonna get Lallapinda back and—uh—do a complete takeover, more or less. Paying back Kendall Burgoyne for what they reckon Robert Burgoyne done to old Mr Manning comes into it, too. The Kents and the Reardons and them other lot are in it, because it was their firm what cooked up that deal with old Robert—”

    “I know that, and it’s ancient history!” he said impatiently.

    Pete looked at him nervously. “I never took it seriously. I mean, them three dumb little bunnies are off to Europe, according to them, so as they can get their hooks into young Reardon and—uh—Hugo Kent’s brother, I think they said, and—uh—some other joker. The P in KRP.”

    “Pointer?”

    Pete shrugged. “Don’t ask me. The Chinese one, well, she met him in Sydney, and he seems to have fancied her. In spite of the wife and kids back home. Um—this is why Melodie’s lost all that weight and changed her hairdo, and so forth. Likewise that dumb little Nikki. All a part of the master plan.”

    “This sounds like a load of old cobblers to me, Pete.”

    Pete scratched his chin. “Ye-ah. Well, it did to me, too, I gotta admit. Only— Now, don’t blow ya top, Cal. The original idea seems to have been that Sloane was gonna get hold of Burgoyne: lead him on, ya see, and—uh—then drop him with an almighty crash. Leaving him with egg all over his— Ya get the picture,” he conceded. “Um—well, that dumb Nikki bird, she ups and says it don’t matter if Sloane’s gone off him lately, because—uh—it’ll be a much better revenge on the Burgoynes for Sloane to become the mistress of Muwullupirri and—uh—really rub his nose in it,” he finished, wincing.

    “When?” said Cal tightly.

    “Eh?”

    “When did she SAY it?” he shouted.

    “Aw. I getcha. Tuesday: Tuesday arvo, because that was the day Venita took the rest of ’em— What?” he said in a doomed voice.

    “On Monday evening,” said Cal grimly, “I rang Sloane and said I might be over that way, if I have to go up to Brisbane anyway, and she was all sweetness and light, and said— Well, never mind. She was more or less joking, but the phrase,” he said, drawing a deep breath, “‘the mistress of Muwullupirri’ was used. In those exact words, since you don’t ask.”

    Pete grimaced. “I see. Um—look, don’t go flying off the handle, Cal. Those dumb little kids coulda meant anything or nothing.”

    “She admitted she’d had dinner with Kendall last week,” said Cal grimly. “I thought—well, I’ve always thought—that she was playing us off against each other, but...”

    Omigod, thought Pete, looking at him numbly.

    “According to her,” said Cal grimly, “she feels sorry for him.”

    “Y— Uh, well, that Joyce is pretty awful, Cal.”

    Cal took a deep breath. “I’ll face her with it.”

    “Now, look Cal, be bloody careful what you say! If there’s nothing in it, she’ll have every right to be bloody offended: probably never speak to you again. –Well, ya know what women are,” he ended miserably.

    “No, I don’t think I do,” said Cal coldly. “But I have a fair idea I’m beginning to find out. –Has Kitten admitted to you who the father of this baby is?”

    “Uh—Kent, she reckons. Coulda worked that one out for meself, given a bit of string and a handful of coffee beans. So?”

    “So, don’t look now, but talking of dumb bunnies, that’s probably part of the fucking master plan.”

    Kitten’s phrase “contingency plan”, never mind if she’d been bawling all over him as she said it, came back forcibly to Pete Dawkins at this juncture. He stared at Cal, his jaw dropped. “Shuh-she did say something about contingency plans— No, look, Cal! They’re a bunch of tiny pin-heads!” he cried.

    “Are they? A bunch of calculating bitches, I’d say. –And just let’s forget about the curls and the pouts and the big baby-blues for an instant, here, Pete: Kitten’s not a kid, she’s twenty-five. Old enough to know what she’s doing. And just by the by,” said Cal grimly, heading back for the hut and the ute, “Ingrid’s actually managed to marry one of them, hasn’t she? Dumb bunnies or not, I’d say this plan of theirs is going pretty good, wouldn’t you?”

    “Y—N— Um, Melodie reckons Ingrid’s really off the deep end about Reardon, Cal,” he said uncomfortably, hurrying in his wake.

    “Convenient,” said Cal sourly.

    Pete gulped. He followed him in silence.

    “Tomorrow. Seven.” Cal got into the ute. “And if I thought it’d do any good, I’d say get rid of that one.” He nodded grimly at the hut.

    Pete opened his mouth. He shut it again. Then he said weakly: “Um—hang on, I’ll get your groceries.”

    Cal just sat there, staring straight in front of him, while Pete heaved cartons of groceries out of his own ute and into his. Not like him, at all. When Pete had finished he drove off without a word. That wasn’t like him, either.

    Pete went slowly back into the hut. Kitten was doing the dishes. That bugger, Digger, was sitting by her side, panting, looking as if butter wouldn’t. She was dressed: in a different pair of stretch nylon footless tights, these ones were bright pink with black streaks on ’em. The top garment was a loose, lacy white jumper. Interesting bits of Kitten peeped through it, where other girls might have worn—well, anything. A bra, for a start. Pete found he was all of a doodah again, dammit.

    “Don’t feed that bugger, will ya?”

    “Um—he just had a weeny bit of left-over sausage,” she said, turning bright pink.

    “Yeah, all right,” said Pete heavily.

    “Was Cal awfully embarrassed?” asked Kitten sympathetically.

    Pete watched dully as she immersed his sacred, untouched-by-human-hand black frying-pan in ten gallons of the expensive environmental-friendly, strange-stinking detergent she’d made him buy in town. “Eh? Aw—yeah. Pity about ’im.”

    Kitten gave a smothered giggle and nodded.

    Pete came up behind her. Boy, it was agony, Ivy. “Um, listen, pet,” he croaked: “the other day I heard Melodie and those kids saying something bloody daft about Sloane and that tit, Burgoyne: about her giving him the push in Cal’s favour.”

    “Kendall Burgoyne? She’s never been serious about him. Well, he’s a married man, Sloane’s a bit straight-laced about that sort of thing. He’s been chasing her, mind you. If he’d make up his mind to leave that awful wife of his,” said Kitten, scrubbing the pan energetically, “I think she might consider him. He is quite attractive, and she does quite like him. And he can offer her a lot. A decent life—y’know?”

    “Yeah,” said Pete with a grimace.

    “But she’s definitely not in love with him.”

    Pete sighed. “No. I dare say. –Look, if I said was it a coincidence that the lot of you are chasing virtually the whole top management of KRP, and—uh—that Kendall Burgoyne’s dad was more or less responsible for your grandfather losing Lallapinda and—uh—” He broke off, floundering. It did sound bloody silly, not to say bloody unlikely, put like that.

    “What?” said Kitten in a mildly puzzled voice. “Kendall Burgoyne’s not with KRP.”

    “No. Uh—well, is it a coincidence, or not?” he said loudly.

    “Um... I’m not sure what you mean. We met them at the New Year’s dance: you were there,” said Kitten blankly. “I suppose that was a coincidence.”

    Pete sighed. “Right: yeah. And on the strength of this coincidence the lot of ya didn’t just hatch up some dumb plot to—um—get back at the Burgoynes and—uh—get back at the KRP lot and—uh—get Lallapinda back for the Manning family?” he ended feebly.

    Kitten gave a smothered giggle. “’Ve you been watching afternoon TV with Mrs Wainwright?”

    Pete grinned sheepishly, and slipped his hands under her armpits. “It’s since they got the dish. –Ya pick up all sorts: ya know the Japs and them have the same bloody awful Yank TV as we do, only theirs is all dubbed into Jap? Weird. You can occasionally get some sumo wrestling, only of course ya never know when it’s gonna be on, or if you’re gonna manage to pick it up.” He squeezed the pair of ’em experimentally: just very gently, ya know?

    Kitten leaned back against his genitals, sighing.

    Oh, cripes! “Uh—so is it a coincidence?” he croaked. “Ingrid marrying Ward, and everything? I mean, if Melodie and them are after these Potters or whoever?”

    Kitten gave a smothered giggle. “I see! You heard something Melodie and Jay were saying to Nikki, did you?”

    “Yeah: Tuesday arvo, over at Lallapinda, when you were having your rest.”

    “Well, that’s it, you see: it was Ingrid falling for Ward that sort of gave us the idea. The thing is, we’ve been trying to cheer Nikki up, because her husband’s left her. So we thought we’d give her a new look, and—um—well, she fancies Neil Reardon. Ingrid’s gonna write to him and ask him to look after them while they’re in London.”

    “I getcha!” he said with a laugh. Oo-er. Mm-mm... “Um,” he said, rubbing the hard-on against her bum, “um, so Sloane hasn’t been—uh—deliberately making a play for Burgoyne so as to—um—pay him back for what his dad mighta done in the dim dark past?”

    “Sloane?” said Kitten incredulously.

    It did sound bloody unlikely, put like that. Bloody unlikely. Sloane was too... up-market, probably put it as well as anything. “Yeah. Well, it was just something Nikki said.”

    “Oh!” said Kitten with a laugh. “She’s been having a hate against all the KRP management, because they sent her husband to Head Office and that’s when he busted up with her, so we let her think we were out to get them. So when we throw her at Neil Reardon, she’ll think it’s part of it!” she said, giggling.

    “Aw, yeah: sort of thing a bunch of girls would think of,” said Pete foggily, rubbing it against her. Oo-er. Yum, in fact! He squeezed them two in front gently: her nipples had gone real hard.

    “And then she said what about Kendall Burgoyne, so Melodie said it was all a part of it—well, ya know what she is!” said Melodie’s sister scornfully.

    “Mm-hm: right,” said Pete muzzily. He nibbled her ear experimentally.

    “Ooh! –Personally, I’d just have said Kendall Burgoyne fancies Sloane and left it at that, because it’s perfectly true. Nikki’s a bit of a nit,” said Kitten blithely. “Never mind: when she gets to London it’ll all go out of her head. But while she’s thinking she hates all the Reardons and the bosses at KRP it’s as good a story as any.”

    “I see! Right, yeah! –Remind me to tell Cal: he’s got some bloody fat-headed idea that Sloane’s chasing him so as to rub Burgoyne’s nose in it, or something.”

    “Has he? Well, a bit of plain old jealousy won’t do Cal Wainwright any harm. He’s a nice bloke, but he’s bit full of himself.”

    “I wouldn’t say that.”

    “No, well, you’re a man!” said Kitten with cheerful scorn.

    “Aw, you’ve noticed.:” said Pete in a very foolish voice indeed, rubbing it against her. “Let that water out of the sink,” he said, biting her ear.

    “Ooh!” Kitten let the water out of the sink.

    Pete got all encouraged and got himself out of his jeans and rubbed it hard against her bum. Yum. Then, what with the way she was sighing and leaning back against it, and so forth, and what with the way he was still squeezing them two in front, he got real encouraged and pulled them tight pink things down. She had a pair of minute—minute—lacy pink panties under ’em. He pulled them down, too, and edged it between the buttocks...

    “Pe-ete, I love you,” sighed Kitten, squeezing her thighs tight on his old man.

    Pete was just about capable of admitting to himself that he didn’t care if this was a lie: at least she loved the old bit of meat. Then he touched the wet with his tip, forgot everything else, ordered her to hang onto the bench and bend over, got up into the wet from behind, and fucked his head off.

    He did turn up at Muwullupirri next morning at sevenish with every intention of telling Cal to calm down and back off: there was nothing in it, only some daft story the girls had cooked up for the benefit of their dumb little mate—but Hughie reported that Cal had left.

    “Eh?” said Pete, standing there like a nana.

    “He took the Cessna. Left just after dawn.”

    ‘SHIT!” shouted Pete, throwing his hat into the dust and stamping on it. “Shit, shit, shit!”

    “Uh—didja want him to collect something for ya? ’Cos I think he’s going to Sydney first, ya might catch him—”

    “Shut up. Just shut up and get into the ute,” said Pete grimly.

    “I thought I’d take the bike,” he whinged. Hughie always wanted to take the ruddy bike: he fancied himself as Evil Knievel or something, in spite of the fact he was Pete’s age or more.

    “All right, but put the fucking thing in the back of the fucking ute, ’cos I’m not wasting half the day while you fart around!” snarled Pete, stomping off to the house.

    Mr Wainwright had given in to the point of not getting up quite as early as Cal did. He was in the kitchen, fully dressed, just about to have his breakfast.

    “Sir, can I have a word?” said Pete grimly. Bugger your Aussie mateship: old Mr W. could buy and sell him and into the bargain most of the cretins around the district that called themselves farmers and lived off loans from the ruddy rural bank.

    Mrs W. began to bleat: “Sit down and tell us all about it, Pete,” but the old man had a bit of nous, he just got up, ignoring her completely, and took Pete into the farm office.

    “I’ve made a right balls-up of this,” said Pete grimly. “I told Cal a bloody fatuous story I got off Kitten Manning’s dumb little friends, without trying to verify my facts first. And I think he’s dashed off on the strength of it to—um—to ruin his life, most probably.”

    “Go on,” said the old man, sitting down with a sigh at the big desk.

    Pete told him all about it.

    “I’ve always liked Sloane,” he said slowly. “I think she’s the best of that family.”

    “Yeah,” agreed Pete glumly.

    “But I’d say she had quite a bit of her grandmother in her. Mrs Manning was a hard, unforgiving sort of woman.”

    “I remember,” said Pete with a shudder.

    “You’re very sure she’s not out to catch Cal because of who he is?”

    “Yeah, very sure. –I’m Helluva sorry, sir, I should never have shot my big mouth off!”

    “No. But it was the natural thing to do. And Cal’s always been a bull at a gate.” He sighed. “You’d better leave a message at his hotel in Sydney.” He rang Sydney forthwith, got through, and handed Pete the phone.

    “Uh—yeah,” croaked Pete. “Uh—can I leave a message for Cal Wainwright?” He could, so he said miserably: “Can you ask him not to talk to Miss Manning until he’s spoken to Pete Dawkins at Muw— Um, just till he’s spoken to Pete Dawkins? –Thanks.”

    “I’ve always found the hotel staff very reliable,” said Mr Wainwright as he hung up.

    “Good,” said Pete feebly.

    “Though whether he’ll call in to get his messages first—” He shrugged.

    “Yeah.” Pete licked his lips. “Um—look, sir, would it be all right if I brought Kitten over and got her to ring Sloane?”

    “If you think it’ll do any good. You’d better tell Quinn to go with Hughie, then.”

    “Uh—right,” said Pete sheepishly. “Will do. Thanks.”

    When he got back to the hut—the drive took the best part of an hour, even at the ute’s top speed on what was almost a real track—she was sitting on the verandah, with that bloody Digger beside her.

    “Look, what’s he up to?”

    “Probably trying to brainwash me into giving him a second breakfast.”

    “Yeah. Well, mind ya don’t. Um—listen.” He squatted down beside her and told her the lot. Rolling himself a home-made as he did so: he needed it.

    “I’ll come,” said Kitten dubiously, “but Sloane may not listen to me. Um—’specially not on the subject of Cal.”

    Pete looked at the pink cheeks. Yeah, no wonder, he thought. not saying it. “Mm. Um—look, lovey, can ya put something else on? I mean, Mrs W’s a bit hard to take at the best of times—”

    Kitten was wearing the varicosed stretch-nylon things, which she’d rinsed out yesterday arvo and hung on a rope between the gum and a verandah pillar.—Pete didn’t bother, he just hung his things in the tree.—The top was a tight black tee-shirt which showed every detail of all the bulges, plus a sort of lacy knit waistcoat thing which didn’t even reach as far as halfway closed over the top two of ’em. Not that that was bad in itself, mind you.

    “Okay,” she said obligingly, getting up.

    “Um—including a bra, if ya got one, pet.”

    “They’re all a bit tight, Pete,” she said, looking at him anxiously.

    Pete felt himself turn puce, like a nana. Oh, shit. “Yeah, well, never mind. Put a jumper on, or something, then.”

    She came back with a pink fuzzy jumper over what seemed to be, judging from the strap that was showing, a blue singlet. Plus and a bright pink miniskirt, possibly it wasn’t actually vinyl but it looked like it to him, under the jumper and over the not-tights. Oh, well, at least it hid the operative parts, so to speak.

    “I got this skirt at a recycling boutique. It used to be miles too big round the waist,” she said happily, getting into the ute.

    “So whatcha been doing?” said Pete with an effort as they started for the homestead. If anyone was counting, which of course no-one was, it’d be bloody nearly lunchtime by the time they got there.

    “Well, I made the bed and did the dishes,” she said cheerfully, “and then I did a bit of dusting and sweeping.”

    “Them mud-brick floors don’t need all that much sweeping,” he said cautiously.

    “No: I just swept the dust out.”

    “Uh-huh.”

    “Then I did a bit of washing.”

    He’d noticed that: one of his shirts and a pair of his jocks plus yesterday’s stretch-nylon not-tights, two pairs of lacy panties, the puce lacy shorty nightie and its little mate, the black lacy shorty nightie that had featured largely last night, were on the line. “Yeah. Lovey, ya didn’t haul water after we said ya didn’t ought to, didja?”

    “No. I made six trips, with the buckets only a third full. It wasn’t boring, Digger came with me,” she said happily.

    “Uh—to do what? Look, if that bugger bowls his plate into the creek, you ignore him, Kitten! He’s more than capable of getting it out himself, he just doesn’t like getting wet!”

    Kitten giggled and squeezed his arm. “Is that what he does?”

    “Usually, yeah.”

    “Well, he didn’t. He just came with me. You know: frisking!” she beamed.

    Frisking? That blighter, frisking? Uh—righto. Frisking.

    “So that was it, was it?” he said, putting his hand on her knee.

    Kitten put her hand over his. “Just about; I didn’t hurry. I’d just started to do some crochet when you came back.”

    He’d noticed some white fluff on her lap, yeah. “Crochet what?” he said with a little smile.

    “Bootees. The pattern’s diabolical! I did a pair for Janey Ortega’s baby—you don’t know her, she’s a friend of Nikki’s from the building—but I didn’t have any other projects on at the time. That was over a year ago: I’d forgotten how awful that pattern is. You see, you start off by making a circle, and of course you have to count the rounds, and it’s baby wool—”

    Pete let her tell him all about her ruddy bootie pattern. What the heck, it might take his mind off his hard-on. At least she seemed to be keeping busy and happy—thank Christ.

    Mrs W. shot out of the house like a rocket when Kitten got out of the ute, but Mr W. wasn’t born yesterday: he was waiting on the verandah for them and took them straight into the farm office.

    “While she’s here, actually, could she ring her parents?” said Pete awkwardly.

    “Ring anybody ya like,” he grunted. Pete knew he didn’t approve of the Kitten: he just nodded. She was doing her sweet little girl act, but it didn’t cut no ice with the old joker, that was for sure. Pete wrenched the receiver out of her paw, got the number out of her, and dialled. Sydney was a half-hour ahead of them: he just hoped to God Sloane wasn’t out at lunch. But she wasn’t: Kitten got through straight away.

    Pete couldn’t hear most of what Sloane said but judging from the Kitten’s replies, he didn’t have to. “No. I’m with Pete. I’m fine,” she said. “I’m actually ringing you about Cal. –No, he’s all right: why wouldn’t he be?”—Little nana. Pete glanced uneasily at the old man but his face was expressionless.—“Pete seems to have overheard Melodie and Jay talking to Nikki about that silly plot of theirs to catch Neil Reardon for her, and Melodie’s dumb idea about you and Kendall Burgoyne,” she said blithely. The phone quacked agitatedly and she said mildly: “Pete? He’s right here, do you wanna ask him yourself?” Evidently Sloane didn’t, because she then continued: “You know: Melodie was going on about you leading Kendall Burgoyne on so as to pay back the Burgoynes for Lallapinda, and then dumping him for Cal.” The phone here got very indignant and the Kitten just waited. “Yes, I know all that,” she said calmly. “But Pete went and told Cal, and he’s got it into his head that you’re chasing him— Um, I think that’s right—um—hang on. –Pete, is Sloane supposed to be chasing Cal because she wants to be the mistress of Muwullupirri or because she wants Kendall Burgoyne to end up looking like a twit?”

    Pete went very red. He didn’t dare glance at Mr Wainwright. “Both,” he said shortly.

    “Aw, right. –Both, Sloane. –What? Sorry; Cal thinks you’re chasing him because you want to be the mistress of Muwullupirri on the one hand, and because you want Kendall Burgoyne to end up looking like a twit on the other hand.”

    The phone then shouted at the Kitten. Pete couldn’t have said what a lot of it was, but some of it was certainly: “I am NOT chasing Cal!”

    Eventually the Kitten said soothingly: “Nobody thinks you’re chasing Cal, Sloane. Well, only Cal. He’s coming over to Sydney, he left this morning. Um—Pete says he reckons he’s going to confront you with it.” Pete winced, and stared at his feet. He missed the next bit. When his ears had stopped ringing she was saying: “I said, I’m fine! They’ve got ante-natal classes at Nearby Bay, you know: it’s not the ultimate back of beyond! –Um, no, well, once a week, it’s not that far... Pete wants me, he said so, ages ago. –No: before that. All right, ask him yourself!” She shoved the receiver at him.

    “Yeah, gidday, Sloane,” he croaked. “I’m sorry about the mess-up. I should have known you wouldn’t do the dirty on Cal.”

    “That’s all right,” she said, sounding very grim. “Look, Pete, Kitten’s... devious, you know.”

    “Yeah. But I did tell her, back when she first laid eyes on ruddy Hugo Kent, that if she was ever in strife, she could come to me.”

    “Really?” said Sloane weakly. “That’s very generous of you. But she does take advantage of people, you know.”

    “Yeah. But if she’s gonna stay quietly somewhere for a few months while she’s waiting for the baby, why not here?”

    “She could be back in Sydney earning a living, no-one thinks twice about a girl getting pregnant these days,” said Sloane drily.

    In the Big Smoke, they didn’t. The neighbourhood of Nearby Bay, Lallapinda and Muwullupirri took a real keen interest in it, though. “Yeah. Never mind, she doesn’t even eat as much as Digger does. And she’s keeping the hut clean for me.”

    “Mm. Well—um—send her back if you get fed up with her, Pete,” said Sloane feebly. “And—um—thanks for—um—bothering to let me know about Cal.”

    “That’s okay,” he said glumly. “All my fault. Don’t be too hard on him, will ya? I did give him the impression that you were playing him and Burgoyne off against each other.”

    “I think he already had that impression,” said Sloane in a hard voice, sounding just like her late unlamented grandmother: Pete winced. “But thanks again.”

    “Sloane, he’s a really decent type, ya know,” he said awkwardly.

    “Yes, well, another description, possibly just as valid, would be a macho man with a closed mind,” said Sloane grimly. “Thanks again, Pete. Tell Kitten to ring Mum and Dad, they’re starting to wonder what the Hell she’s up to.”

    “Yeah, I will,” he said numbly as she hung up. “I’d say she’s hopping mad,” he said glumly to Mr Wainwright.

    “Yes. But at least it’ll give her time to think it over before Cal lands on her doorstep,” he said with a sigh.

    “Yeah. –Oy, you: call your Mum and Dad.”

    “They’ll be at work.”

    “Yes, so with a bit of luck you’ll find ’em there. Ring Karen.”

    Funnily enough Karen took the call. A certain amount of shouting ensued from her end. Kitten’s end consisted mainly of, first the bad news, terrifically off-hand—went over like a ton of bricks with old Mr W.—and then mild assurances that she was all right. Eventually she shrugged and handed the receiver to Pete.

    “Gidday, Karen,” he croaked.

    “Pete, I’m terribly sorry about this.”

    “That’s okay. I told Kitten yonks back she could come out to the hut whenever she fancied it.”

    “I dare say. But do you know anything about delivering babies that arrive in the middle of nowhere before they’re expected to?” she said baldly.

    “Uh—well, yeah: I’ve done it a couple of times, I won’t be phased. But she’s planning to go into town in plenty of time.”

    Karen sighed. “I’d say tell her to come home, only there’s no telling her anything.”

    “No. Um—she’s making it a pair of booties,” said Pete, clearing his throat.

    Karen replied in some amusement: “Are you trying to say she’s gone all maternal?”

    “Something like that, yeah. I think she’s pretty genuine, Karen.”

    Karen snorted, and demanded to speak to her again. Well, there was no doubt where the Kitten got a fair amount of it from, thought Pete, silently handing her the receiver again.

    What she came out with was: “See? I’m probably better off with Pete than I would be in Sydney at the mercy of an idiot ambulance driver trying to break the speed limit in city traffic and a thick paramedic that’s gone into it because he fancies himself in the uniform.” The phone, funnily enough, got quite ratty at this, and Mr Wainwright, with what you could only have called a disdainful expression on his face, heaved himself to his feet and went out.

    Eventually she was forced to disgorge the actual computed due date. She then allowed grudgingly that Karen could come out a month beforehand if she wanted to. And, saying that she’d better hang up because the Wainwrights were paying for this call, did so.

    After a few moments in which his ears rang, Pete croaked: “Did she ask whose it is, or did I miss that bit?”

    “No,” said Kitten calmly.

    Pete went into a sort of shaking, spluttering fit, which lasted for some time.

    “She’s like that,” said Kitten calmly. “She sees that it’s irrelevant.”

    “I bet Dick won’t think it’s irrelevant,” he predicted. “In fact, I bet he’ll be on the blower before Mrs Wainwright’s finished forcing a nice hot lunch down ya. –Come on.”

    They went out and got it. Evidently old Mr W. hadn’t let on that the Kitten had only just informed her mother that she was expecting to make her a grandmother in about five months’ time, because Mrs W. merely said placidly: “Did you have a nice chat to your mother, dear? Good.”

    The Kitten then proceeded to—wind Mrs W. round her little finger would have been putting it a bit too strong. But knitting patterns and crochet patterns and one or two dresses that Kitten could probably make use of, and recipes for this, that and the other certainly got mentioned. Pete had to leave Kitten to it, he had a feeling he better do some work around the place—Quinn’s, for example—to justify his wages. When he came in to collect her they were forced to stay on for tea because Mrs Wainwright was sure Pete wasn’t feeding her properly. He waited in fear and trembling but, thank Christ, she didn’t mention roughage or colons in front of old Mr W.

    They were then packed off for an early night—she actually said that; did she let the brain contemplate what came out of the mouth? –No, Pete had long since concluded. Complete with mounds of quilts, several of them hand-sewn genuine patchwork that had belonged to Cal’s great-grandmother and as far as Pete was concerned were gonna be quietly handed back to Cal when the Kitten had pushed off to pastures new, and a hottie because Mrs W. had been—rightly—quite sure that Pete wouldn’t have one, complete with a hand-knitted woolly cover featuring a sweet blue kitty and a large purple pansy as big as it was; let’s hope it didn’t indicate the kitty’s sexual preferences. There were also several really nice saucepans—she had cupboardsful of ’em that she never used, but still it was bloody decent of her; an extra pillow complete with a frilly pillowslip for the Kitten; an extra extra pillow that ponged—herbs for whatever it was that ailed ya, Pete doubted if they could deliver a kid, but never mind; a tower of nice fresh towels, untouched by human hand; a whole carton of home-made jams; a smaller carton of home-made chutney; half a dozen large jars of bottled peaches which considering the fruit had been bought in specially, was bloody generous of her; fifteen tins of bully beef plus a haunch of actual beef for tomorrow; and umpteen pots, jars, shakers and containers, various, of bath powder, bath salts, scented soaps, bubble bath, talcum powder, talcum powder and talcum powder. Oh, and talcum powder: yeah. Mrs W had been given these at various times over the last fifty-odd years and was never gonna get round to using ’em. This was true: she had a large cupboard full of this sort of stuff, but that didn’t stop her buying more every time she went to Adelaide. In fact the name “David Jones” was, as far as Pete could see, synonymous with “nice talcum powder” to Mrs W.

    “You won’t run out of bath powder in a hurry,” he noted as they drove through the dark.

    “No: wasn’t it nice of her!” she said happily.

    Pete sighed and patted her knee. “Yeah. She’s not all bad. And you mind you take her at her word, and tell her about any funny symptoms ya might have.”

    “Yes, righto,” she said obediently.

    Pete sighed again. It was a long and very bumpy road from any part of Muwullupirri you cared to name to the safety of the small hospital at Nearby Bay.

    “Women are having babies every day!” said Kitten with a laugh.

    Yeah, that was true. Didn’t make it any the less worrying for those nearly concerned, though. He patted her knee again and didn’t say anything.

    Cal eventually returned with a face like a thundercloud. Pete forced the Kitten to ring Sloane again but all she got out of her was that she never wanted to hear Cal’s name again. Hell. And at that, it was more than Pete managed to get out of Cal.

    “I’m sorry,” said Kitten miserably.

    “Not your fault!” he said bracingly.

    She smiled wanly, so to cheer her up he let her play the new game Digger had invented. He brung ya the bloody plate, ya hadda wrench it off him—he was bloody cunning, the bugger, he held onto it like grim death when it was Pete trying to wrench it off him, but only pretended to hang onto it when it was the Kitten—and then ya flung it as far as ya could and he raced after it. Naturally when he got to it the bugger didn’t pick it up and bring it back: he just sat beside it. “Proudly” according to her. Oh, well. The both of ’em seemed to enjoy it.

    In spite of the dire predictions of such as Nev Bailey, Chris Bailey, Cal, and Mrs W. (who put it nicely but left you in no doubt as to what she meant), Kitten did not appear to get bored with the hut or Pete’s company. She carried on pretty much as she had that second day: doing the housework for him, trotting back and forth from the creek with little bits of water in the bucket, doing the washing, crocheting little bits for the baby, and—wonder of wonders—cooking actual edible food. She had told him she was a good cook but Pete hadn’t believed a word of it. But she was. She got a few bottles of red out of Nev Bailey—conned them out of him, strictly speaking, but more fool him—and the stews she made with them and any old hunk of meat and a few onions were ruddy unbelievable! The hut duly sprouted pot plants and a few frilly cushions donated by Mrs W. and a couple of mats ditto, and a couple more that Kitten picked up in Port Augusta, but Pete was quite prepared to clock any wise-guy that thought he’d be funny on the subject. She did them stencils in the bathroom, too. Bluebells. Oh, well, if it made her happy. They certainly went good with that powder smell.

    “Not bored, are ya?” he said, one night when she was well into her seventh month and they were sitting on the verandah, well rugged up against the perishing cold, looking at the stars.

    “No!” said Kitten in amazement. “I love our evenings!”

    “Yeah. Uh—not that, lovey. In general.”

    “No, there’s always plenty to do.”

    He’d noticed she’d had her head in a magazine when he got home today. “Mm. Them magazines, they keeping you amused, eh?”

    “More or less. Fashions... It all seems rather far away.”

    Pete licked his lips. “Mm. That sorta thing does, out here.”

    He didn’t say any more. He was old enough to be her bloody grandfather. And—well. No use hankering after something you couldn’t have. He knew she’d be off out of it as soon as the baby came. He was bloody lucky to have had this much. Well, how many jokers got to celebrate their sixty-fifth birthday by having a peach like Kitten Manning, six months gone or not, do the dance of the seven veils on their ruddy kitchen table? That plus cook him a real, dinkum home-made Aussie jam sponge for his tea. Not flaming many, mate.

Next chapter:

https://thelallapindarevenge.blogspot.com/2022/11/sloane-ranger.html