Corporation Boss

CORPORATION BOSS Joyce Dingwell

When they had first met, Constance knew Anthony Vine had been interested in her. But now that she had come to work with him at Corporation City in the Northern Territory, he was cold and distant. What had gone wrong between them, and was there anything she could do about it?

CHAPTER ONE ALL day the narrow blue bitumen of the Northern Territory road had unwound for Constance in a dead straight line. It was not surprising, she thought, relaxed behind the wheel of the small car, that its nickname among its travellers was The Unbent Highway. But what Constance did find surprising after her last inland visit was the change now in the surrounding terrain. Down south in Sydney they all had read about the abnormal rains and what they had done to the 'Inside', but to gaze at flowers as far as the eye could reach instead of stone-strewn, stick-dry desert, on emerald grass instead of gibber, was almost unbelievable. She wondered how it looked from the air, the way she ... and Yolande and Guy ... had travelled before. The sandy creeks, she knew, had turned into rivers, some of them forty miles wide. And there was an inland sea. But not to think about such diverting things now, Constance prompted herself, all that could come later, rather to concentrate on getting to Corporation City before the sun went down. Corporation City! Such a ridiculous name! She hoped that when the project finally settled that the tag would die out, and C.C. become its aboriginal Ukurrie again, meaning Ours, though it was not theirs any more, not the natives'; they had sold it to Anthony Vine. It had been an amicable deal, since the rightful owners had been ready to move out, anyway - no sacred grounds to stop them, no tribal taboos, and more amicable since Anthony Vine had paid them so generously. Constance remembered Yolande's astonished face at the sum that had changed hands. 'Does anyone really have that much money, Consie?' she had gasped.

Anthony Vine had, but quite unconsciously, quite unobtrusively, quite - well, quite perfectly, Constance had thought at the time. She did not know what she thought now. But she had admired the man then, she recalled, missing a crossing kangaroo by inches, instinctively she had liked that big generous man with the frank blue eyes in the leather-brown face, with the smile that reached those eyes. Now ... once again ... she did not know. All she did know was that she must reach Corporation in an hour. One thing she must not do in this delicate mission was start off on a wrong foot. Constance put her right foot down on the accelerator and ate up a few more kilos. It was growing darker much more rapidly than she had anticipated, and now cared about. At Quartz Hill, her last fuel stop, the petrol man had assured her that she should make it by six at the most, but evidently his pace was quicker than hers, or perhaps his car abler. Not that she had any complaints about Lorelei, the mini she had bought from Mattie. Lorelei had been reliable, if bumpy, right from Sydney, but it was now getting towards six, and there was a dark cloud to the west, and dark clouds in the Territory were something she was not yet practised in. Constance put her foot down again. She tried to concentrate, but thinking of Lorelei made her think of Mattie and the girls. Three girls, four with herself. How well, how really well they had got on together. When people spoke of old gangs breaking up, they usually referred to the male species, but their own quartet had comprised a gang, too, a happy gang, but now it was all over. Phyllida and Mary had been preparing to go overseas to try their luck when Constance's Corporation call had come, and Mattie had been about to be married. 'I'm offering Lorelei for sale,' Mattie had said, looking at Constance, for she knew it would be useless looking at Phyllida and Mary, and Constance had said at once:

'Sold!' 'Seriously?' 'Very serious. I've decided, for obvious reasons, to drive, not fly, to Corporation City.' They all knew the story by now, Yolande's pitiful story, and had nodded their understanding. They had been saddened, with Constance, by the news of Yolande's accident, in spite of the fact that they never had met her; they had asked Constance why she did not go up to her friend. 'That's the crunch, girls, I'm not Yolande's friend. We just worked together for a period. Yolande must have much closer acquaintances, and I'm sure she had a family, so how could I go, without being asked?' 'But you were there before.' 'In the line of duty only. Oh, I'd like to help Yolande if I could, but we barely knew each other.' Then the letter had arrived. Three letters actually, but all in the one large encompassing envelope. One from Yolande. One from the Corporation doctor who had not been in attendance when Constance had been there. One from Anthony Vine. Yolande had written: 'I want you here, Consie, you're the only one I feel I could bear just now.' The doctor, a Doctor Hugh Mason, Constance had noted, had said: 'I think it would benefit Miss Lawford very much if you would join her, Miss Searle.' Anthony Vine had written simply: 'Come.'

'Will you go?' the girls had asked. 'I think so,' Constance had said. 'Only—' 'Only?' 'Only I don't know what lies ahead, not like I did before. Then it was simply work waiting ... meeting the promoter of that work, but now, well, how can I tell? I mean, I liked Anthony Vine.' (I liked him instantly, I thought he liked me, Constance could have added.) 'Now it could be altogether different. But of one thing I'm sure: I must be independent. Independent as to getting there, independent as to coming away. For Yolande as well, who knows?' 'You mean this Vine person could have turned into a depriving stinker?' 'No, I'm sure, he wouldn't, but I've decided, for obvious reasons, to drive, not fly, to Corporation City.' Constance had smiled at Mattie to whom she had just said of Mattie's car: 'Sold!' They had all sat silent a moment. They had shared each other's life patterns - four girls in one flat generally do share confidences as well as tea and toast, but Constance's had proved the quartet's most graphic story. They knew that Constance had worked as secretary and sometime model to Guy France, who was designing all those new, exciting (if so far less than lucrative) clothes. They knew that Yolande already had been working with Guy when Constance joined them, modelling his richer, more dramatic offerings, and that Constance had only been called in for 'aprony' things. That had been Constance's own description. 'Dresses to go to market in, house shifts, aprony things. Things Yolande wouldn't have been seen dead

in.' But Constance had smiled quite fondly as she said it, and they had known what she meant. They also had learned that when Anthony Vine had started Corporation City he had started first of all with a lavish hotel. No make-do pre-fabs for him, but the real thing, and a very beautiful thing, right from the start. 'I have a theory,' Constance remembered him saying one day during that working week-end when she had looked a little dubiously at the lush gardens, expansive shrubberies and expensive fountains in this literal middle of nowhere, 'that it's better to entice people to a beautiful place than to promise to make it beautiful if they come.' 'With the salaries I've been told the Corporation is paying I should say the men would come, anyway,' Constance had suggested. 'But clear out the moment they filled their pockets. No, Miss Searle, I want to keep them here, and the only way to keep a man in a place is to keep his woman beside him. "Whither thou goest" may work for a while, but it takes a great deal of love to embrace a remote desert as well as your mate year after year. For that reason we have to make it attractive for women; as good, if possible better, than where they came from. The Corporation bungalows I plan will be little short of luxurious, and here at the community hotel there will be everything a modern couple can ask .. . cool vestibules, swimming pools, libraries, music rooms, a dance floor, visiting artists. Fashion shows such as you're staging now.' It had only been a small fashion show, just as the visiting orchestra had also been small, but the number of women Anthony Vine had initially flown up to look around and see for themselves, women carefully chosen for their influence on other women, had also been small in number. They had been a hundred per cent delighted, Anthony Vine had later reported in satisfaction, and when their

homes were built they would come north with their husbands, advise their friends to do the same. It had been a complete success, the Corporation boss had assured the two girls. He had had to leave at once to fly down to Sydney for more recruits, but he had urged them to take their own time in returning ,. . even wait until he came back himself. There was so much still to see, so much more for him to show them. It must have been her imagination, Constance thought afterwards, that she had taken his words and his direct look... it had seemed direct... as words and a look for her. 'The hotel is yours,' he had bowed. 'Yes,' Constance remembered Yolande agreeing very thoughtfully. 'Yes.' Constance once more checked her watch, estimated that bank of cloud. The climatic offerings this year had confounded the experts. Actually it should be dry for months yet, but it seemed there was no longer any meteorological rhyme or reason. That crimson streak in the sky now, for instance, should ensure fair weather, but all Constance recognized in it was the same colour as the carpet Anthony Vine had laid down for his first female guests. 'Red carpet!' Yolande, on their arrival, had been delighted. 'Showing you your importance,' the man had smiled back. 'Does a mere male walk on it, too?' Guy, behind the two girls, had asked whimsically. Guy was the designer, the inspiration, without him there was nothing. Anthony Vine had nodded genially, and they had all passed into the beautiful hotel.

That week-end had gone in a flash, Constance recalled now. The future Corporation wives had been flown up, been shown Corporation City, been shown where the bungalows would be erected and what they would be like, had been entertained with music and the haute couture predictions of a young and rising Australian designer. Then they had flown out again. After them had flown Anthony Vine. Then after the Corporation boss, Guy, declaring he could spare no more time, with Constance. But Yolande had stayed on. Yolande had simply announced to Constance: 'I'm not leaving.' 'But, Yolande-' 'I know what I'm doing and I'm over twenty- one.' 'Yes, Yolande, but are you sure?' 'I'm sure of what I want, Consie, so you can at least be sure of that.' Constance had paused for a long moment, she remembered, and fumbled for the right words. 'If you're thinking in the same strain as I'm thinking, Yolande, it - well, it takes more than one.' 'Then you're quite right, pet. It has taken more than one.' Yolande had flashed her lovely tilted smile, her irresistible smile, but she had offered no more. She had not come down to the vestibule to see Guy and Constance off, a silent Guy for all the success of his small show. When the young designer had told Constance at the end of the flight that he was opting out, trying his luck in the States, Constance had felt she had understood. She had seen Guy look at Yolande many times, and she had interpreted that look.

She herself had still waited for something. Exactly what she could not have said. All she knew, all she was sure of, was that there had been a meeting somewhere between herself and Anthony Vine. A kind of exchange, a mutual look, an understanding. Then days had passed and at last she had accepted the fact that she must have only dreamed it all. What Yolande had insinuated must have been true, otherwise Anthony Vine would have written, otherwise Yolande would have come back by now. She had taken a new job and a new flat. The invoice typing was not as interesting as the design description and part modelling she had done for Guy France, but the company of the girls had made up for that. It had all become a brief and fast diminishing interlude ... except at odd small moments when a man's frank blue eyes in a leather brown face had come back to her, or a new red mat they had clubbed in for had reminded her of a red carpet. But that was all. It had to be all. Then a brief letter had come from the Corporation doctor, who must have been established after Guy and Constance had left, telling of Yolande's unfortunate accident some time ago. The girl had fallen down the hotel stairs and sustained considerable injuries, or so it was thought at this stage. Anyway, she could not walk. The shock had been very sharp and very real. Yolande was the last person in the world you could associate with physical injury, but as Constance had said futilely to the girls, how could she intrude? Then the packet with the three letters in it had arrived, and Constance found she was to intrude after all — though only intrude, she insisted to herself, by invitation. But because it could still be intrusion in spite of Anthony Vine's: 'Come', she had brought Mattie's old car, so she would be independent. Anthony Vine had seemed everything compassionate, everything generous and intrinsic, but that could still be imagination on her part as it had been for something else, so how

could she be sure? If Yolande was unhappy, a car, one's own car, would be invaluable. She could take Yolande out for a day, even take her right away from Corporation City if it came to that. But immediately ... and Constance saw with dismay that the light patter of rain that had accompanied her all the way from Quartz Hill was thickening ... she must get to, not from, Corporation City. She accelerated. She put her foot right down - and ran into a rut. It was a short but very deep rut. Constance tried reversing, but the back wheel could not make it. She put everything into a forward effort but to no avail. She sat bitterly disappointed. She had wanted to arrive at Corporation City quietly confident, confident she could help. Now it seemed she would need help herself. Vexed, frustrated, she turned the key in the ignition, for in the unsuccessful grinding backwards and forwards the engine had cut off. There was no response. Again Constance tried, using all the tricks she had been advised by Mattie guaranteed to coax a purr from a sulky Lorelei. Nothing happened. ... Nothing, unless, and Constance looked in horror at the rising water in the floor of Lorelei, you counted this as something. She watched the level keenly. Climbing up or going down? A freak run-off from some saturated creek or here to stop? She scratched a mark on the inside of the door. No, she found presently, the water level was definitely ascending. As she sat now the murky wet almost reached her knees. I'll have to get out, Constance knew, feeling sick at the thought of abandoning her car, and she looked behind her to see what she could rescue from the back seat.

'No time for that!' the voice shouted at her through the closed window, shouted so loud there might not have been any window at all. 'For God's sake, girl,' the voice said next, 'get out!' It was a man's voice. That was all Constance could register. Mechanically she opened the door, gasping at the immediate inrush of water that she saw now must envelop her to her waist. 'Come on,' called the voice. 'I can't.' In reply, the owner of the voice said: 'Then hang on.' He leaned into the cabin of the small car and lifted her out. He wasted no time. Still holding her, he began moving forward, and from his heavy breathing Constance knew it must be a hard job. She could hear the swish of water as he pushed through it, and though he held her high, at times water still broke over her face. She could not see him. The little vision she did have, held tightly upward as he held her, only gave her a picture of someone large and strong struggling through obscure murk. At times he went into a rut, as Lorelei had, and then Constance felt water closing all over her, but he never released her, and he never gave up, not even when an uprooted tree slid past them, evidently gashing his hand, for the grey murk showed a red patch of blood. Then he was climbing, climbing slowly out of it, waist-deep at first, and then to his knees. When he was ankle-depth he put Constance down, and they both turned and looked at Lorelei, slewed to one side by now, then, even as they watched, turning over several times into a deep ditch. 'Oh, no!' Constance cried.

'I'm afraid so.' There was no intervening glass to change his voice now, and it came subconsciously to Constance that she had heard that rather slow, rather deliberate timbre before. 'Will it go further?' she asked. 'No. The freak run-off has run away. But, unhappily, so has your car.' 'Could it be towed?' 'No, I doubt if the car would stand it.' 'But I have to get to Corporation City!'" she wailed. 'You're there now, Miss Searle.' Miss Searle? For the first time Constance really looked up at her rescuer. 'Not C.C. itself,' the man was saying, 'but pretty close when you consider this tall state of long kilos. Only thirty of them left now, I'd say.' But Constance was not listening. Also, for the moment, she was not thinking about Lorelei. 'Anthony Vine,' she said quietly. 'Yes, Miss Searle.' He was smiling at her. It seemed it was something he could do on a flooded outback road quite as well as in a luxury hotel. His eyes were as blue as she remembered, his face as leather brown. She had liked him from the first moment she had seen him, and that was the first instinctive thing she thought of now, but a lot of water had flowed

under the bridge since then ... oh, lord, why had she thought of water? ... and it was different this time. Different because Yolande had stayed on at Corporation. Different because Yolande had flashed her lovely tilted smile and answered Constance's warning 'It takes more than one' with a triumphant: 'You're right. It has taken more than one.' Different because Anthony Vine had never got in touch, never refuted what he must have known would be implied by Yolande's presence and his own apparent acceptance of it. Different because after months of silence, after a crippling accident, after doing everything together as those two would be doing things together, Anthony Vine must be, had to be - Yolande's man.

CHAPTER TWO ANTHONY VINE had taken off his jacket and now he was placing it around Constance's shoulders. She started to protest that she was not cold, for up in these latitudes the weather only ever differed from warm to hot, then stopped. Looking back on her moment of discovery just now, her discovery of Anthony Vine, she knew that involuntarily she had shivered. Shivered at the difference between them this time, for now there was Yolande standing between. That was ridiculous, she tried to tell herself, there had never been anything, not actually, so why was she suddenly cold like this? 'How are you here?' She managed to ask it quite unemotionally. 'It is my place,' he reminded her. 'But thirty kilometres ... it was thirty that you said? . .. away from Corporation?' 'It's still Corporation, or Ukurrie as I believe, like me, you prefer to call it, even if it's not the centre. We are, you must remember from your air flips that weekend, a very extensive concern.' 'Yes,' Constance said. But after a while she asked again: 'Why, Mr. Vine?' 'For heaven's sake make it Anthony. Tony, if you prefer. But not Mister. Not up here, Constance.' 'Anthony,' she agreed. 'Why?' 'A hunch. An intuition. Or' ... tentatively ... 'could we be in tune?' 'Not to the degree of expecting me to arrive by road instead of air,' she told him coolly. She felt she had to be cool.

'Yet I'm still here,' he pointed out, 'and don't ask why again, since the reason must be obvious.' 'Obvious?' she queried. 'Well, to be direct about it, Constance, you didn't know just what to expect here, did you?' he said bluntly. 'Whereupon you played safe and independent by bringing your own transport.' 'I brought it for Yolande as well,' she came back, equally direct and blunt. 'To a hotel already boasting more cars than people,' he reproached. 'I'm sorry, Mr. - I mean Anthony. You're right, of course. I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know how you were taking things, how Yolande was taking them. I didn't know anything at all.' 'Nor bothered to find out.' 'That's unfair! I wanted to, but it was not my place. Contrary to what you might think, Yolande has never been my close friend, otherwise I would have come before now.' There was a pause. It was quite a long one. Then: '... it was not of Yolande I was speaking,' he said. 'I don't understand you.' 'And yet I thought you did.' He spoke very quietly. 'I was sure you did.' The blue eyes were looking steadily now into Constance's grey ones. 'There was nothing to make you feel like that,' she returned at once. Until she knew more about everything she felt she had to speak like

this. But she turned her eyes away as she said it, sharply conscious that she was lying. Right from the moment she had smiled back at this man that first day she had been aware of a glow in her, of a warm certainty that if she had stood in the darkest room that glow would still be there. Show there. But why was he speaking to her personally now? He hadn't done so before. He had looked at her, and she had thought she had understood that look, but he had not said any of the things that he had just said a moment ago. Was the difference this time the fact that Yolande no longer stood comparatively beside her? Lovely, unforgettable, irresistible Yolande? Was it because Yolande could not now stand beside anyone since she was imprisoned instead in a chair? Was he a man like that? If the best no longer attracted, then turning to the second best? Constance shivered again and Anthony Vine said: 'Look, it's no use watching your car break up, we'll get going.' 'Where?' she asked a little stupidly. 'To Corporation, of course, where else?' 'I really meant how?' 'I didn't fly here, which you should have done, and certainly would have done had I known what you schemed. No, I've brought out my waggon. Somehow I sensed you would be doing this, coming on your own accord in your own ... now ex ... car. But mine is entirely reliable. It's a four-wheel drive and guaranteed to get you any place. Come on before you start a chill.' 'Up here?' she queried. 'It does happen.'

The waggon was parked further along the wet bitumen. He opened up and she got in. 'What about my clothes?' she asked. 'Gone with the car,' he told her. 'You'll have to send down to Sydney, we haven't got round to a boutique as yet. But I'm sure Yolande will help you. After all, she has little need of them herself.' She heard him distinctly but could not bring herself to turn and look incredulously at him, though incredulous she felt. She did not want to see those frank blue eyes she had once liked instantly emphasizing to her what he had just cruelly spoken, for direct, unadorned words like that had to be cruel. 'After all,' he had said, 'Yolande has little need of them herself.' This man ... this man could not be the man she had known before. 'How is Corporation City?' she asked, hoping he did not hear the choke in her voice. 'Bungalows up but wives not yet arrived. Thank heaven at least for that. I wanted a gay beginning, a promising start, not a—' His voice trailed off. Constance sat stiff and unbelieving. 'Have the rains affected anything?' she asked mechanically. 'Only opened up fresh fields for us. The place is a veritable mint, Constance, there's a wealth of multi- minerals everywhere. Everything the earth can offer so far, I think, bar oil. Dig a hole and you find something new.' 'You're fortunate,' she commented.

'No.' His answer was so abrupt, so immediate, so final, this time she did turn to look at him. The closed- in expression shocked her. He seemed to have shut a door. 'You have a doctor now?' she said conversationally. 'He's planning our future clinic. We'll need a clinic when we operate full strength.' 'A school?' 'So far that hasn't been considered, since our intake for a few years will comprise only younger couples. Babies are certainly to be expected, but no schoolers yet to be schooled.' She asked him more questions and he answered them, but she did not ask him the question that was tearing at her to be asked, and she was aware that he knew it. All at once he said without preamble: 'All right, you've done the list, now ask about Yolande.' 'Then - Yolande?' she half-whispered. 'In her room,' he said blankly. 'In a chair.' For a moment he took his eyes off the road and looked at Constance, but what the look said she could not have told. They did not speak for the rest of the journey. Quite ridiculously, grieved Constance, sad about the loss of Lorelei, it was fine at Corporation City. How could it be still sunny at seven o'clock in the evening when earlier, only thirty kilometres away, she had lost her little car and everything she had in it?

Anthony Vine drew the waggon up in front of the hotel. The shrubs had grown. The grass was even smoother and greener. There was a squash court now, several tennis courts, a bowling green, a pool. 'You've improved it, if that's possible,' Constance praised. Then she said a little unevenly: 'Oh, the red carpet!' 'Why not?' 'For just me?' 'Couldn't it have been just you before?' 'No, it was for all women, because the only way to keep a man in a place is to keep his woman beside him.' Constance quoted his words a little sharply. 'Well?' he asked keenly. 'Well, your woman is here already, isn't she?' she reminded him almost harshly. 'No, Constance,' he said at once. 'Constance, I want you to understand—' 'I believe I do understand, Mr. Vine. Also I think I regret Lorelei - I mean my little car - very much, because—' 'Yes?' . 'Because I could have got Yolande out of here, got her away, and you could have had your promising beginning, your gay start, or whatever it was, after all. Because—' But Constance found she could say no more. She jumped out of the waggon before the porter could come down to help her, and ran up the red carpet, by some miracle not tripping over it since she could see nothing at all for tears, then

turned instinctively to the suite that had been allotted to Yolande last time, a lovely set of rooms facing the Territory sunset the same as her suite had, for Territory sunsets were something special, dealing as they did in stunning purples, crimsons and golds, in everything on a grand scale. She knocked on a door. She heard Yolande's plaintive: 'Oh, Consie, come in.' Then she opened the door on Yolande at the window, her long flaxen hair shining in the last rays of the sun, her violet eyes courageous above that well- remembered tilted smile. Yolande - in her chair.

'You should have come before.' Yolande released Constance from an embrace that was the first she had ever offered, for she was, as she had often told her fellow worker, strictly a man's woman. 'It wasn't my place. You had friends,' Constance reminded her a little chokily. Yolande's emotional welcome had touched her. 'Not that you'd notice,' said Yolande of the friends. 'You have your mother.' 'My mother would be the last person I'd want here.' 'Mothers are useful,' smiled Constance placatingly, but Yolande would not smile back. 'I wouldn't want her,' she said. She was studying Constance. 'You look the same, but a bit bedraggled.'

Constance told her about the ill-fated Lorelei, putting much more into it to interest Yolande. But Yolande was not interested. 'Why did you do such a mad thing as bring a car? There are cars laid on. It was even mentioned about fixing one for me to drive, something without foot controls.' She said it almost indifferently. Before Constance could murmur anything tactful, she went on abruptly - and apropos of nothing it seemed: 'How about - him?' 'Him?' echoed Constance. 'Guy?' 'He's in America.' 'How do you know? Did he write to you?' 'He hasn't written, but he told me he was going there.' 'When was that?' 'When the two of us returned to Sydney, but you—' Constance did not finish it. 'And I didn't return with you,' Yolande finished for her. Her voice was quite expressionless. 'All right,' she challenged presently, 'say it. Say you should have come, then none of this would have happened.' Her violet eyes flicked briefly to her legs covered by a thin rug. Feeling torn to pieces, Constance assured her: 'I won't say it, Yolande.'

'You still can; also I rather wish you'd said it to Guy. That fellow always got the best of a deal, and this would have made it even better.' 'Yolande!' Constance reproached. She repeated: 'I tell you I haven't seen him.' 'Well, not to worry, anyway, I'm not.' 'You're very brave.' 'No, but I'm still the old Yolande, and the big thing ... to me ... is I'm not disfigured. They're still the same lovely limbs.' Yolande threw off the rug. They were, Constance saw at a glance, they were slender and shapely as they always had been. 'And yet you can't—' she began, then stopped, distressed. 'And yet I can't walk,' said Yolande for her. 'But not to worry, as I just said. I'm young, and what you lose on the roundabouts you make up on the swings, or something like that. Wasn't that the rhyme?' 'I don't understand you, Yolande,' sighed Constance. 'You never did, pet, you were always unbelievably naive. But it's early yet, and given time. . . . Oh, Consie, don't look distressed like that, I do love having you and I'm glad to heaven you came, but I don't want you doleful and going round with a long face, I just want the old Constance, I simply couldn't bear only men around me any more. Fancy me saying that, but it's true.' 'There'll be plenty of women soon. Mr. Vine told me the bungalows are ready.' 'Corporation wives? No, thank you!'

'Yet you yourself one day—' But once more Constance curbed her tongue. Yolande did not appear to have noticed her slip, or if she did she did not take it from there. She said instead: 'So you lost your car?' 'That's right, and everything in it.' 'Darling, that's terrible. I can help you with lingerie, of course, but when it comes to dresses you're so stunted.' She laughed, the old Yolande bantering laugh. 'Not stunted,' defended Constance, as she always had, because, with astringent Yolande, you continually found you had to, 'just slightly under average, or should I say not arrestingly tall like you.' Now Yolande grinned impishly. 'Yes, you should say that. Though' ... her face altering ... 'little good it did.' 'Yolande-' 'Oh, no, not that, not me and— No, Guy. Honest, Consie, I could have been just a poppy on a tall stem to him.' 'A lovely poppy, and he knew it. All those gowns he designed for you!' 'For his own reward.' 'Well, it was his work, Yolande.' 'Work that certainly never galloped to fame,' yawned Yolande. 'Get off the subject of Guy. He bores me. His dresses bored me. Though I did get a laugh out of your aprony things. Little housewife Consie.' 'You'll be one yourself one day,' Constance reminded her.

'No!' 'But-' 'Perhaps a wife, who knows? but certainly not a house variety. And, as it stands now, not even that.' 'What do you mean, Yolande?' 'Open that second drawer. Help yourself. You'll need nighties as well as undies. And Consie, don't delve. Not yet.' 'Just as you say,' Constance shrugged. 'Then I do say. Because in one minute' ... peering through the window ... 'we're having a visitor. Doctor Mason is coming up to see his star patient.' 'Are you?' 'So far I'm his only patient, so I have to be. But no, I believe I would be regardless, with Hugh.' 'Hugh?' queried Constance. 'Hugh Mason. We're that kind of doctor-patient relationship. Open the door, pet.' Constance moved across the room, did as she was bid. A rather thin, eager, tall young man, dark-eyed, dark-haired, very good-looking, stood waiting to be let in. He smiled at Constance and the smile was warm and sincere. She found it easy to smile back at him. 'Hugh Mason, M.D.,' called Yolande from her chair, and a smile was in her voice as she announced it. As she turned back to the chair with

Doctor Mason, Constance saw that Yolande wore a smile in her eyes as well. Still, that was nothing. Constance thought this as she stood at the window while Hugh Mason took his patient's temperature, held her hand gently but firmly while he checked her pulse. Yolande had always been the same. Travellers in the beautiful silks that Guy had insisted on, departmental heads, buyers, sellers, representatives come to see Guy's collection - Yolande had been through them all. But shouldn't it have been a little different this time, for even though Yolande had tossed back to Constance when Constance had mentioned wives and housewives an eliminating '... as it stands now, not even that,' she nonetheless played with a very expensive ring. She did not actually wear it, but she slipped it on and off, estimated its glitter. And it did glitter. It was a very good ring, Constance saw. However, engaged or not engaged, flashing a lovely ring would be typical of Yolande. Constance strongly doubted that even a husband and a string of children would have made any difference to that glorious girl. Doctor Mason was obviously a very dedicated doctor, a very serious one, but he would have had to have been a not very aware person not to have been conscious now of Yolande's big violet eyes, her long sweeping lashes, her lovely tilted smile ... all for him. Also not to have been flattered. 'Consie had rotten luck,' Yolande was relating, 'the silly girl brought her car and it was swept off the road by a flash flood. All her things are gone, too, so she'll have to borrow mine. But she's such a tiny town.' 'The bags are here.' Doctor Mason had turned to Constance. 'They arrived just as I did. Evidently Tony sent out for them and they were brought in. There are sure to be some write-offs, but by the look of

the cases you could be fortunate. However, your little car—' He spread his thin surgeon's hands in regret. 'Foolish child to have brought it, we have plenty here. Did I tell you, Hugh, that a specially equipped car has been mentioned for me?' Yolande put in. 'Shall you need it?' he smiled. 'That's for you to say,' Yolande smiled back. 'No, it's for you to do.' 'Oh, Hugh,' she pouted prettily, and the doctor patted her shoulder. 'I think I'll go down and salvage the wreckage,' said Constance, feeling very much a third person. 'Even if you don't salvage anything you will dine downstairs tonight, Consie? Yes, Hugh, it's actually your difficult patient speaking. I feel I could go down tonight and share a table for four.' 'Four?' the doctor asked. 'Consie, Tony, me ... you.' 'I was going to spend the evening designing another clinic detail,' Hugh demurred. 'On the first night that I've volunteered to go down?' Yolande reproached. 'But I can put it off, of course.' He smiled at once. 'Then it's all arranged. Consie, go down this minute. If you can't find anything that hasn't been drowned, come back here and we'll see

what we can do. Oh, this is going to be fun! Thank you for coming, Consie. Thank you, Hugh.' The big violet eyes with the fanning lashes were lifted to the doctor again, the magic of the uptilted smile was directed on him. Constance went out of the room. When she went downstairs she was told by the porter that her bags had been dried and taken to her rooms. 'We didn't open them, of course,' he reported, 'but I feel, apart from the outer contents, that you'll probably find them just as they were packed. You're in suite five, Miss Searle.' Constance went back again up the stairs — the stairs, she thought suddenly and hollowly, that Yolande had fallen down. One day, when delving was permitted, she must ask Yolande all about it. It was better to have everything out in the open. Suite five was her old suite. She had only slept in it for three nights, but coming back seemed almost like coming home. Constance remembered that first time when Anthony Vine had led her into it, then beckoned her, before she could look around, to the window. He had pointed to the west, that fabulous purple, crimson, golden west of inside Australia, and then he had spoken excitingly, exciting to Constance, about this strange, newly abundant place. 'Once, it was dismissed as desert, barren country, gibber country, yet now it comprises some of the richest acres in the world. I'll take you out and show you the red flags marching to kingdom come, or so it seems, but they do, of course, eventually stop, and they comprise the grid line for our geos on the job. It's wonderful out there, all yellow, ochre and sienna, it's moon country that no one really believes.' He had dreamed a moment, she recalled. 'Burning hot by day, sometimes cold as charity at night, rough, tough, ruthless, yet still giving. It's given to me.' He had turned and looked at her with those deep blue

eyes in the leather brown face, the weather-hardened face of a man who has spent most of his life in places other men only read and dream about, a man who has found his pot of gold not at the end of a rainbow but in country where the colours come richer than any rainbow and in country that gives more than a pot of gold. But now the yellow, ochre and sienna were gone, the moon world had become a blossoming garden. There were still riches for the taking, for Anthony Vine had said: 'Dig a hole and you find something.' But that seemed the only similarity from the last time she was here. Constance turned back from the window to tackle her bags. The only similarity, she thought bitterly again. 'I'm sure Yolande will help out,' he had tossed when she believed she had lost the bags. 'After all, she has little need herself.' Also— 'No,' he had answered when she had said: 'Your woman is here already.' Later he had told her: 'I want you to understand—' Then Yolande had cried out that she was not a potential wife, not as it stood now. Yes, it was more than the terrain that had changed, Constance thought. A man had changed. The desert might have given abundantly to him, but it had given a hardness and a ruthlessness as well. Hardening her own rather wide, sweet, vulnerable mouth, Constance began to take out her clothes.

CHAPTER THREE ALL the contents of the suitcases were in good order, even the garments on the outer side were unaffected. Either the flood had been so brief it had had no time to deposit its murky evidence or the bags had been stout ones. Constance looked happily at her clothes, feeling that this, so far, was her first piece of good luck. She shouldn't say that really, since she was here, alive and safe, but everything was so much different to what she had thought it would be, even though she had allowed a few doubts. Anthony Vine was different. She took out her clothes, shook them, then placed them on hangers. So much nicer to have your own garments than borrow, she thought, for although Yolande was generous, she would also have laughed as she had pressed her generosity on Constance, she would have made those bantering, patronizing remarks about 'stunted' and 'tiny town'. For that was Yolande. Well, thought Constance tolerantly, laughter never hurt anyone. She selected a garment and held it up against her, then regarded herself in the mirror. We can't, her thoughts ran on, all be models. I modelled, yes, but I was never a model. She smiled at the idea, as Yolande always had smiled. Constance studied herself frankly in the reflecting glass. A smallish girl. A bluntish girl as to features and short-cropped, thick brown hair. Nothing fair and ethereal, nothing exquisitely chiselled, no elegant aristocratic look as with Yolande, no arresting height, no arresting anything, really, and that had pleased Guy considerably. 'A housewife going shopping never steps out of Vogue,' he had declared with satisfaction. 'You are just perfect for what I have in mind, Worm.' He had called Constance quite fondly Worm. 'A nice little homebody. One of those thrifty little souls checking first on the price before she buys. A neat little baggage. Brushed locks, scrubbed

face, turned-up nose. You're just what the designer of bread-andbutter offerings could order, my dear Consie.' 'No jam on the bread-and-butter?' she remembered sighing. 'Leave jam to Yolande,' he had grinned. Well, if she was no glamour girl, the gown she held up was certainly nonetheless very lovely. It should be. It carried a very telling tag, telling to the discerning: 'By Guy.' Guy had given it to her, and though it was not slinky, and breathless, and head-turning, it was still a darling dress, and she was glad it was not damaged. I'll wear it, she decided. She showered in her private annexe. Pale yellow decor here, pale yellow towels, pale yellow curtains, even pale yellow soap. No, Mr. Anthony Vine had not forgotten anything, except— Except pity, Constance thought. Except - love. When she came out of the shower, she went to the table and picked up the phone. The voice that answered was male, for the female side of Corporation had still not arrived. Probably they would come, along with the Corporation wives, next week. She asked for Yolande's room. She gave Yolande time to steer her wheelchair across her suite, the realization that she must do this sending Constance's nails cutting into her palms. 'Yes?' asked Yolande. 'Me, dear. Constance. My things are all right.' 'Oh, good, then you won't be borrowing?'

'No.' 'But you will be coming down to dinner?' 'Only if you're going.' 'It's because of you that I am. Consie, I feel renewed somehow. If anyone had told me a woman could do that to me ...' A low amused laugh. 'What are you wearing?' 'One of Guy's.' 'Oh.' 'Well, I couldn't wear better, could I?' 'That's a matter of opinion,' drawled Yolande. 'Also I have nothing else.' 'Then, darling, wear it by all means. Dinner is at eight. Tap on my door. Oh, Consie, it's really going to be fun!' Constance heard the phone go down and she thought: How can she? How can she be so brave? She began to dress. It seemed a long time since she had slipped into floor-length chiffon, into satin pumps. Since she had left Guy and joined the typing pool it had been a strictly business world for her. She had made no new male acquaintances, nor wanted to. Just work through the day, then the girls' company after work, and a movie or a gallery at the week-end had sufficed. But now she found herself enjoying it all. Guy had wonderful talent, he must have more than his share to make something out of the housebody he, and she, considered Constance Searle to be. She

looked at her reflection in the mirror. Blue, naturally. 'A girl-nextdoor like you,' Guy had said, 'simply must wear blue.' But it was still a very beautiful blue, a vibrant cornflower, and it had a lovely cut. Constance even found herself swirling round, something she had not done since her dancing days. She picked up a fluffy stole and went down the passage to tap on Yolande's door. It was like coming painfully to earth again to see Yolande in her chair. In her own absorption she had forgotten all about Yolande's chair. But the confining chair was the only confining thing about Yolande, she found at once. The girl looked lovelier than Constance had ever seen her look, and that was saying everything, for every time you looked at Yolande you looked at something even lovelier than before. 'Oh, Yolande!' she breathed. Yolande, well pleased with her effect on Constance, smiled: 'You're quite an eyeful yourself, pet. Guy's so- called magic, I suppose.' 'Yes.' 'He could design when he felt like it, I must admit that,' Yolande said grudgingly. 'As a matter of fact this is one of his, too. Certainly not intended to be modelled as I'm modelling it now, but effective?' 'You know you look a dream,' Constance came back. 'Hugh is coming up to help manoeuvre me downstairs. It will be quite a job, I expect.' 'You haven't been before?'

'Since it happened I've eaten up here. But tonight it's different. You have come. Also, there are quite a few men eating there now. I'm told. The executive staff, the department bosses. If I don't go now, their wives will be here, and men accompanied with their wives are dreary affairs.' She laughed. 'I can hear footsteps. That will be Hugh now.' It was the doctor, immaculate in dinner-suit, but he was not alone. 'Two penguins!' Yolande clapped her slender white hands. 'It's an important occasion, Yolande.' Anthony Vine came forward with a smile and a bow. He did not look at Constance. Hugh, meanwhile, was manipulating the wheelchair backwards and forwards, evidently estimating its passage through the door, down the hall, then down the stairs. 'No.' Anthony Vine said it casually and genially enough, but he said it firmly. Stepping forward, he leaned over Yolande, lifted her bodily, then turned to the door. Hugh, seeing his purpose, had hurried across to open the door, to check the corridor and stairs to make sure that everything was clear. It was clear, and Anthony Vine strode arrogantly forward with his beautiful burden. Hugh was still ahead clearing the way, getting a chair ready. Constance came slowly, silently, behind. But at the threshold of the dining-room she stopped feeling oddly left out and instead caught her breath. The room was quite beautiful. It had not had its chandeliers before, its floor-length drapes, its thick lush carpet. Also, as well as the ceiling lights, there were now hundreds of candles, candles on tables, in quiet corners, in secluded nooks. They soaked up the

shadows most successfully, yet gently, provocatively as well. A romantic semi-light remained. Anthony Vine carried Yolande to the table he had selected, then he put her gently down on a waiting chair. It was the first gentleness he had shown the girl, Constance thought, for although she had not heard him in actual conversation with Yolande, he had had conversation about Yolande with Constance, and his conversation there, she considered, had been anything but gentle. She found herself withdrawing, resenting his outward show of concern. Resenting, though she would not have admitted it, his fingers on Yolande's lovely white arms. 'I think we'll put you here, Miss Searle,' she heard him saying. What had happened to his: .. for heaven's sake, not Mr. Vine. Not up here, Constance.' 'Thank you, Mr. Vine,' Constance answered stiffly. There had only been a skeleton staff before, now the room was full of uniformed waiters. Diners, too, were actually arriving. All male at this stage, but in a week or so, Anthony Vine was telling them, they would be bringing their wives. Yolande made a little grimace. 'Not every night, though,' Anthony smiled at her, 'just special occasions or week-ends. I'm a great believer in family living. That's why I've gone to such trouble with the bungalows.' Another little grimace from Yolande. 'Well, my butterfly,' Anthony said tolerantly to Yolande, 'that is how I want it. What does our Miss Searle think?'

His question took Constance by surprise. Although she shared the table she had felt apart from the others. Now she tried to gather her wits. 'Consie is an aprony female,' said Yolande in her rather pouting but fascinating voice. 'She would love a family bungalow. She would think it out of this world.' 'Then we're depriving her here in a luxury hotel?' Anthony Vine said with mock concern. 'No deprivation when it's only for such a short time.' Constance found her tongue at last. An orchestra had started to play. It was not a large band but it was a good one, Constance noted. She sipped the very excellent wine that she had been poured and eventually felt herself relaxing. The conversation naturally enough centred around Corporation and future Corporation activities; also, since the doctor was present, the clinic that was soon to open. There would be a great deal of the clinic space allotted to Casualty, Hugh Mason explained, for in a project like this, one had to expect a rather high accident rate. 'But,' Doctor Hugh smiled, 'we already have a maternity ward, and that, I think, is quite unique for an undertaking that's barely begun.' 'Yes.' Anthony Vine took up the story. 'One of our up-and-coming engineers could only be inveigled here on the promise that his very pregnant young wife would get as good or better treatment as in a big city.' 'Couldn't you have signed up another engineer?' came in Yolande, patently bored.

'Andrew and Sandra Javes were manna from heaven,' said Anthony Vine. 'They were what I wanted: a beginning. I wanted to drive it very emphatically to Corporation City that here was no place from which to line your pockets, then promptly retreat. I wanted C.C. to be known as something enduring, something intrinsic.' 'Known as home,' Constance heard herself say, and flushed. She did not look at Anthony. She felt annoyed with herself that she had spoken. 'It all depends,' sneered Yolande, 'on what home was like.' She glanced around her, very aware that she was the cynosure of all eyes. She would have been, anyway, carried in helpless and appealing as she had been, but when the pity passed, and the men looked again and saw how angelically lovely she was, then the focus would become a brilliant specialized spotlight. Yolande clearly was anticipating that. But she did not enjoy Anthony Vine's next words. 'We have an excellent Sister coming up, capable, so Hugh assures me, of organizing then supervising both casualty and maternity. Hugh served at Martha General at the same time as Sister, then Nurse, Cressida Moore, and he's most enthusiastic.' 'Can one woman do both those things herself?' doubted Yolande. 'Casualty and maternity?' 'She will organize, then direct their functioning,' explained Hugh. 'Naturally she'll have a staff.' 'For both accidents and babies.' Yolande had forgotten her spotlight and was now not looking so angelic. 'What about general cases?' 'Naturally those too.'

'And cripples?' There was a tight note now in Yolande's voice and Constance saw the two men exchange quick looks. 'Darling,' she said, leaning across the table to Yolande, 'if you'd like to go upstairs—' 'She doesn't wish to go upstairs,' Anthony Vine came in quietly but finally. 'She's going to have some more wine, some special strawberries our chef has had flown up for the occasion when la belle Yolande finally has graced our table and which he has appropriately named Strawberry Yolande, and she's going to continue enjoying the admiring glances of our fellow diners.' He looked across at Yolande. The doctor had put a comforting hand over Yolande's hand, everyone in the room looked either sympathetic or adoring, and without much effort Yolande became an angel again. She hung her head in a littlegirl gesture and said: 'Please forgive.' Everyone loved her. Well, that was Yolande, Constance thought soon afterwards, enjoying la belle Yolande's brandy and sugar-drenched strawberries at the same time as la belle Yolande's sugar-drenched smile. Sweet when she wanted to be. Not sweet when she was in a mood. But she had every right to such moods, Constance's thoughts went on, to be so young and so beautiful and so hopeless. She gave a little shiver. 'The air-conditioning is a little chill for you?' Anthony Vine asked as he found the stole she had brought with her and placed it around her shoulders. 'No, it's quite perfect.' As everything, outwardly, is perfect in this ordered place, Constance thought. 'Yet you flinched.'

'Someone walking over my grave.' Constance tried to be patronizingly facetious. 'But I think it was not a flinch for the future but rather a flinch for now.' 'How ridiculous! Yet perhaps you're right, perhaps it is a little cool.' The easiest way to get rid of this man was to agree with him, she decided. 'Then we must alter the temperature.' 'No... no, I may be the only one finding it cool.' 'We must still alter it.' 'Don't fuss, Mr. Vine!' Constance snapped. She did not feel up to being co-operative any longer. He looked at her thoughtfully, then nodded. 'Yes, I expect there's reason in what you say. Why should the degree of heat or cool be altered for one person only, wouldn't it be simpler to alter that person's own heat or cool?' 'I don't understand, Mr. Vine.' 'Miss Searle, will you dance?' ... Will you dance? Constance could not believe she had heard aright. She sat staring incredulously at the man, this man who already had excused himself to the helpless girl beside him and actually risen to bow formally to Constance. 'Will you dance?' he said again. 'You're not being funny,' she said in a low voice for him alone.

'It was not my intention.' 'You're acting in shocking, unbelievably shocking bad taste.' Constance found she could say it, since the orchestra, caught up in a popular number, was louder than it had been. Doctor Mason, too, had Yolande fully absorbed in something he was telling her. 'Will you dance, Miss Searle?' Anthony Vine asked a third time. 'Please to answer yes or no, because you, not Yolande this time, are now inviting the looks. Also, I'm beginning to feel a fool standing here.' 'Then sit down ... go out ... do anything you wish.' 'I wish to dance with you. I danced, you might remember, another time. We matched quite well.' Everything matched then, thought Constance, a kindly man had matched with a believing girl. But now the man's kindness had turned to hardness, and a girl's belief had gone. 'If you don't get up in one second,' Anthony Vine was saying, close now to Constance's ear, 'you are going to be the fool.' 'How can you ask such a thing of me ... how can you...' 'Yolande is smiling at us. She's tapping her fingers in time to the rhythm. She's giving her audience big sad looks to remind them that once upon a time she, too, was asked to dance.' 'You're a sadist!' she snapped. 'Perhaps, but still glance across at Yolande and see for yourself, see that she's revelling in all this.'

Constance glanced, and saw that he was right. Yolande was looking beautiful and regretful and unselfish all in the one sweet trembling movement of her tilted lips. The girl caught Constance's eyes and flicked her own in agreement. Dance, the flick said. Not believing it all was happening, not crediting that such a thing could happen, Constance rose and allowed herself to be enfolded in Anthony Vine's arms. At once, as if by a signal ... had someone signalled? .. the chandeliers were switched off so that they moved only in candlelight. The music swelled, then diminished to a soft rhythm. As if one person, not two, for Anthony Vine had been right, they had matched well, they moved round the room. For all her cold anger, her dismay, Constance was still sharply conscious of the closeness of the man, just as she had been that other time they had danced. But there had been the beginnings of a sweet response in her then, not a hard reluctant but somehow compelled interest as she found in herself now. What had happened (besides the closing of a chapter for Yolande) to Anthony Vine when Yolande had fallen down a flight of stairs? They danced wordlessly, outwardly perfectly, but Constance knew, and she knew that Anthony knew, that though they were breath-close, they were still a smile apart. 'Thank you, Miss Searle.' Anthony Vine turned and applauded the orchestra. 'I think I'll let you do what you wanted to now,' he said, 'and that is take Yolande upstairs. After all, it's enough for a first time.' He preceded Constance back to the table.

Yolande was willing to go. The other diners were getting ready to leave, and though she had enjoyed their sympathetic looks, she had not enjoyed the dancing. For a little apron-girl, Consie performed far too well. She smiled ruefully, sweetly and wistfully, though, and looked pleased when the doctor this time, and not Anthony, carried her up the stairs. Constance and Anthony came some steps behind them, Anthony watching Hugh to see if he wearied, for he was a slimmer build of man and Yolande was a tall girl. At the turn of the flight, Constance paused a moment then half spoke, half whispered: 'It was down these stairs that she—' 'Yes.' The answer was terse, quite unadorned. 'I must ask her,' Constance said dully. 'It would be better if you got her to show you.' 'Show me?' 'That's what I said.' 'Mr. Vine, I don't understand you,' she sighed. 'And it wouldn't occur to you to try.' 'Try what?' 'Understand.' 'I don't understand that, either.' 'Then leave it, Miss Searle.' They had reached the upper flight by now. 'Our patient has evidently arrived safely. In which case I won't

proceed any further. Good night. Thank you for the dance.' He wheeled round and went down the stairs leaving Constance standing there. It was a few minutes before she could bring herself to proceed along the corridor to Yolande's suite. The doctor was just leaving. 'You did wonderfully tonight, Yolande,' Constance heard him commend the girl. 'I was proud of you.' 'I did it for you, Hugh.' 'Then try some more, please. Try to get up, Yolande, and move across the room.' 'Without your help?' The fright in Yolande's voice was too sharp, too real for incredulity. Quickly Constance stepped into the suite and said: 'Darling, I'm here. I'll help. It's what I came for.' She looked at Hugh, half expecting to find that same enigmatical look that Anthony had worn, but the doctor looked warmly, sympathetically back at Constance. 'You do that, Constance. She needs every help we can give her. Good night, my dear. You've been a grand girl.' He leaned over and kissed her brow lightly, then he went. Constance crossed to Yolande. 'All that goes for me, too,' she said sincerely. 'You were very, very brave.' 'But very, very imprisoned.' For the first time since she had returned here Constance heard a despairing note in Yolande's voice. It was all Constance needed. For a brief ... a very brief ... period, in Anthony's presence, she had actually wondered about Yolande, whether she - if

she— But now she felt sure. Anyway, hadn't Doctor Mason just said: 'She needs every help we can give her.' He had not said: 'Don't ask her, get her to show you,' as Anthony Vine had done. 'Oh, Yolande!' Constance went tenderly to her. She helped the girl into bed, sat by her until she heard the even breathing telling her that Yolande was asleep. Then she tiptoed out to her own suite. She did not go to bed herself for over an hour. She stood at the window looking out on a velvet night, for nights never came more deeply velvet than Centre nights. The stars, too, blossomed, no pinpoints of silver here but great splashy flowers of light you felt you could reach up to and pluck. It was all incredibly beautiful, but Constance, in spite of her awareness, missed most of the beauty. How could she see with tears pricking her eyes? Tears for Yolande. What would happen to Yolande? But tears, too, she knew, and despised herself for that knowledge, for something ... someone ... else. For a man who had changed so much she felt she did not know him any more. For Anthony Vine, stranger.

CHAPTER FOUR CONSTANCE woke at seven. Apart from week-ends, she had been waking for years at seven. Seven had given her the necessary time for a shower and breakfast at not too hectic a pace before she left for the office. First Guy's office, then the various offices supplied by the typing pool. It seemed luxurious now not to leap up at once and grab the bathroom before someone else beat her to it. She glanced smugly in the direction of her own private pale yellow bath annexe and at the same time rejoiced in the fact that even when Yolande had been the old complete Yolande the girl never had been punctual, never beaten her to a morning appearance, which all meant that Constance could lie abed now with a clear conscience. She did not lie long, though. A scatter of little pebbles on her window brought her to the window in a hurry. Who on earth— She looked down and saw Anthony Vine. The idea of the owner of a super hotel standing beneath a window and throwing up pebbles to attract attention was so laughable that in spite of herself Constance laughed. The man grinned back, and for a moment Constance felt there had been no winds of change after all, that he was not a stranger. 'Look,' he called, and waved an arm. Constance looked, gasped, then cried out: 'Lorelei!' 'Rescued from a ditch and towed in. Certainly not A1, but possibly able to be repaired. Come down.' 'I'm just up, I haven't dressed, I haven't showered.' 'Do you dress for a shower?' he asked. 'Put on a gown or a wrap or a towel or something, but come. Surely your old girl deserves that.'

For answer Constance grabbed the only robe she had brought, a short Chinese happy coat, and ran out and down. Once out of the hotel she hurried round to the courtyard where Anthony and Lorelei waited. 'Oh, Lorelei!' she greeted, and patted the Mini's muddy bonnet. 'Like you,' teased Anthony Vine, looking at her morning face, 'she'll come up better after a scrub.' 'Am I that cold-creamy?' 'You're rosy from slumber,' he said in mock flattery, 'but don't get carried away, you also have sleep in your eyes.' But he did not take his own eyes away from those eyes. 'Thank you for bringing her in,' Constance said. 'To leave her out there would be a kind of pollution.' 'Yes, it is awful to see cars strewn around. You really think she'll mend?' 'My word was "possibly". Meanwhile until Jim gives a verdict you must take the second Holden.' 'No.' 'I'm not inviting you, Miss Searle, I'm telling you. I have a lot of chores lined up for you, each located in a different office, and in a place like C.C., where different offices can sometimes be up to a mile apart, a car is not a luxury, it's a must.' 'But I don't understand. I'm here for Yolande.' 'I thought you could take Yolande with you.'

'Yes, I would want to, but - but I'm not actually working for you, am I?' 'That,' said Anthony Vine, 'is something you and I have to discuss. No, not here. We may be in the middle of nowhere, but it is still not quite the thing to sign up a young lady still wearing her short pyjamas.' 'I'm sorry, but you did say to come.' 'I'm not complaining.' His blue eyes flicked briefly down the brief happy coat to Constance's slim bare legs. 'Run up and dress, eat the breakfast I'll have sent up, then meet me here and we'll try you out on the Holden.' 'No need - I mean, if I do agree to what you ask, I've driven for years.' 'Your Mini is a manual, this is an automatic - you have driven automatics?' 'Well-no.' 'Run up,' he said, and turned away before she could think of anything else to say. After a vexed pause, Constance obeyed. After her shower she zipped up a short, pink sleeveless shift, for there was one thing you could always be certain of here in the Territory: the days would be warm to hot. The nights, too, more often than not, though occasionally a sharp breath could blow, but the days were like the matched tears in a long amber necklace, full and golden and dropping slow. When she came out of the bath annexe she found a tray on the little table. Iced fruit, cereal, an omelette and toast and honey. A large pot of steaming coffee. Much better, she thought, than a bowl of muesli

while you watched the clock, but there had to be a catch somewhere. Admittedly Anthony Vine had asked her here, he had written 'Come', but that had been to see Yolande, and she had seen her, so what happened now? A second scatter of pebbles cut short any conjecture. Constance went to the window and called down: 'That's undignified. Aren't you aware that you're the boss?' 'So long as you are aware of it,' he called back. He moved across to the Holden that now stood where the Mini had stood ... Lorelei must have been towed away... and beckoned her down. 'I wanted to peep in on Yolande,' said Constance rather crossly as she joined him in the courtyard. 'It would be a waste of time, she doesn't stir until eleven.' That could be true. Yolande had never appeared at Guy's before noon. But the positive way Anthony Vine said it left Constance no doubt that he knew Yolande's waking time right to the minute. Personally knew it. 'True,' he agreed, reading her thoughts, 'and she really does wake up rosy from slumber.' 'Sleep in her eyes?' 'Her violet eyes,' he concurred. He nodded Constance into the passenger's seat of the Holden. 'I'll let you try her when we're further out,' he said. 'There's no need,' she protested. 'A lot of need. Manuals and automatics—'

'I meant I wouldn't be driving.' 'Then what the hell will you be doing?' he asked. They had moved away from the centre by now, and Constance tried to recognize the flowering paradise from the barren waste she remembered last time. It was not easy. The gravelly track that had wound through moon country with the golden bars of sun hitting the windscreen to add any relief was changed to a vast coloured garden, mostly Salvation Jane, a lilac-blue screen of Jane wherever you turned. Also a lagoon had happened since last time. A large sparkling stretch of water with insects weaving gauzy patterns over it, with frogs croaking in a busy chorus. 'Last appearance, so the natives have told me,' Anthony Vine said of the lagoon, 'some fifty years ago. It will probably be another fifty years for a second performance.' 'But still the minerals go on?' 'They're unchanged. Among the other few things unchanged'... he gave her a quick oblique look ... 'is the artesian pool. Remember that?' 'Oh, yes.' She remembered it clearly and with pleasure. Some ten miles from C.C. she had been shown a sky blue circle of smiling water. It had had ribbons of steam rising from it. The bore had been delightfully heated from its subterranean source, and Constance, dabbling her fingers into it, had announced that she preferred this offering of nature to the hotel's luxury pool. 'What, no tiles?' Anthony had laughed at the time. 'No changing rooms?'

'Artesian water is supposed to be good for rheumatism,' she had proffered. 'You don't know what the word means. You two girls are the ungirt runners in the poem' ... Yolande had been there as well... 'you swing ungirded hips ... the rain is on your lips.' 'Rain up here?' 'It comes.' It had come, thought Constance now. And one of the runners did not run any more. She tried not to let him see her shiver this time, but he still must have, for he said: 'And that, too, is changed.' But he did not go on with it. He pulled up the car, got out, then beckoned her to the driver's seat. 'Why?' she asked. 'You don't generally drive from where you're sitting now.' •I-' 'All right, Miss Searle.' He got back in the car again and took out the makings of a cigarette - he had always rolled his own, and it always had fascinated her. That dry whisper of tobacco in a big brown palm, that meticulous packing of the flattened weed. That final licking of the edges together. He lit the finished article, smoked a moment, then said: 'Because.' 'Because?' she queried. 'Because I need you in my employ.'

'You didn't say so in your letter.' 'No, I said Come. I--' ... hesitantly ... 'couldn't trust myself with more.' 'What do you mean, Mr. Vine?' 'But now it's different. What I had in mind is changed, just as the rest is changed.' 'Except the artesian pool.' He shrugged, then went on. 'I had thought you might achieve something with Yolande,' he said. 'If you're thinking differently now I must say you haven't given me much time.' 'Agreed, but the end result, I believe, will still be the same. No, you are not the answer there, Miss Searle.' Constance sat silent. She was angry that he could reach a decision so quickly ... she was also angry at the hollowness in her. When she had read that 'Come' that had comprised his letter to her in Sydney as well as pertaining to Yolande she had thought— 'Please go on, Mr. Vine,' she said. 'Although you're not the answer, you'll still be good for Yolande, if not perhaps in the way I hoped.' 'Then-?' 'Then I suggest you work for me, at least for C.C., besides being a companion to Yolande. Yes, I know she wrote and asked you, just as

I asked you, but I also know Yolande and how she can blow hot, then cold. Tomorrow'... another shrug ... 'she could want you out instead.' 'Then I would certainly leave.' 'That would be inadvisable for Yolande. It would also be a loss for C.C. We badly need a woman here to help with our initial female intake, and I can think of no one more suitable than you.' 'Thank you. What qualities were you looking for?' Constance spoke stiffly. 'Serenity. Resourcefulness. competition.'

Judgment.'

A

pause.

'Lack

of

'I think you mean by that last someone not to raise envy.' He looked at her. He saw thick shining brown hair springing from a wide brow, a sweet curved mouth, a small, very firm but somehow vulnerable chin. 'Perhaps.' He said it a little gruffly, but she did not notice. She was busy considering. 'I would sooner work for my keep than be a visitor,' she admitted. 'Then I offer you this job of ombudsman ... or should it be ombudswoman?' 'Just tell me what would be expected of me.' 'Friendship with the wives, which should come easily to you.' 'Because of my lack of competition?'

He ignored her. 'A general getting-to-know-you, getting them all to know each other. Help in settling in. There'll be sure to be some who will look beyond the luxury hotel I've so shrewdly provided to the empty desert beyond.' 'The flowering desert.' 'But still empty and lonely and hundreds of miles from home. You will start pottery classes, drama classes, yoga, eurhythmics, tango lessons.' 'Whether I can dance or not?' 'You can dance,' he said remindingly. 'At times you'll just talk, or you'll just keep silent, or make a cup of tea, or take a cup of tea. Well?' 'For which I stay at the hotel?' 'And receive a salary.' 'You're generous.' 'We pay generously for good service.' 'I'll try to earn my remuneration,' she said, poker- faced. 'Then you agree?' 'Yes.' 'Good. First of all, pending the repair of your car, this car is yours, Miss Searle. So now will you kindly change seats.'

Constance did so, and because she always had loved driving, always had had a liking for anything mechanical, she picked up the points quickly. 'I pass you,' he said at length. 'Will you now drive me back to the hotel in your car.' Constance did so, rather pleased that she had caught on so quickly, that she was driving so efficiently. 'Yolande said something,' she said conversationally, 'about you fixing a special control car for her.' He did not answer. 'I know they're made,' she went on, 'and I'm sure that Yolande—' He moved slightly in the passenger's seat beside her. 'Then don't be sure,' he advised coolly. 'But you said—' 'I didn't say.' 'Yolande told me that you—' 'Yolande has these hallucinations.' 'You mean it isn't true?' 'Only in her thoughts.' 'And you mean — you wouldn't?'

'Yes, I mean just that. I didn't say such a thing and I wouldn't do it. Well' ... his voice rising ... 'what are you going to do about it? Decide against the job after all?' 'No. On the contrary. I know now that I should be here.' Constance's voice, too, had risen. 'To stop an imposition ... or is that too weak a word?' 'Mr. Vine, it's not my place to interfere.' 'Quite right.' 'But to tell a helpless girl—' 'I did not tell her. Good lord, why should I? Why should I encourage someone to continue the way she's going when there's no reason for her to be that way at all?' 'What - what do you mean?' stammered Constance. 'I mean there's nothing wrong with her.' 'Except a simple matter of being unable to walk.' 'I wish to God it was simple. It's not. But involved or not, one thing remains, Miss Searle. There's nothing on earth to stop Yolande from getting to her feet and walking. Don't look at me like that. Don't you think I know? I've flown every specialist worth his salt up here. I've even inveigled one from the States. And the verdict? Nothing. Nothing at all. Yet Yolande can't walk. You're still looking incredulously at me. All right, ask Hugh. He's been in all this as long as I have, in fact it was Hugh...' His voice trailed off. 'Yes, ask Mason, Miss Searle,' he advised. 'Also stop the car and put me off at that next building. I think I've had enough.'

'You've had enough!' But Constance still stopped the car where he told her. He got off without another word, and she continued along the track to the hotel. She left the car in the courtyard and ran up the stairs to go to her suite, but half-way along the passage she changed her mind and tapped instead on Yolande's door. 'Come in, Consie,' Yolande called. The girl was still in bed, and only just awake, by her drowsy look. She was also, Constance noted, 'rosy with slumber', as Anthony Vine had said, though with sleep in her eyes. But violet eyes. That made a big difference. Constance crossed the room and sat on Yolande's bed. How beautiful she was. How could she be resentful that Yolande woke up in a way Constance was sure she never could! How could any man - how could he— 'So serious,' pouted Yolande. 'I brought you up here for smiles.' 'Then I have one. We have a car.' 'I had that at my disposal any time.' 'But not with me driving it. Where do you wish to go, madam?' Yolande was pleased. 'Oh, good, we'll do a lot of things I'd planned.' 'After I do the things Mr. Vine has planned,' Constance warned. 'Primarily I'm in his employ.' 'It's the least he can do,' Yolande uncharitably replied.

'Is it, Yolande? I mean should you say that, dear? Does Mr. Vine really owe you - I mean us - anything?' 'Me? Yes - he owes me two legs.' A pause. 'And a ring.' 'Yolande-' 'Well, I fell down his stairs, didn't I?' 'But a ring? You have a beautiful ring.' 'Yet for which finger of which hand?' There was a silence. Constance broke it. 'Darling, do you want to tell me?' she half-whispered. 'No.' 'But if I knew-' 'No. For heaven's sake no, Consie.' Another pause. 'Sorry, pet, but lying like this you do get to the end of everything.' Carefully Constance probed: 'But do you have to, Yolande?' 'Lie here, you mean? Or sit in a chair?' 'Yes. Oh, I'm sorry, Yolande.' Now the pause was a long one. Then: 'Yes, I do,' said Yolande. 'I know what you're driving at, Consie, I know what you're thinking.' 'Not thinking, just - wondering.' 'Then wonder, but let me assure you that I can't walk, Constance, I can't walk.' The girl looked up at Constance, and though truth had

never been a favourite commodity of Yolande's, Constance saw truth there. 'Dear Yolande,' she soothed, and kissed her. 'Look, I won't delve. Instead I'll take you out. Have you had breakfast?' 'I always skip it. Lying around can encourage a spread, and one day ... one never knows ...' 'Yolande, I know. You're going to be whole again. You are. But you should still eat something. Shall I ask the kitchen for a flask and hamper?' 'Yes, do that, a picnic would be fun. But first bring over those clothes.' 'You can manage?' 'Very well. In fact I'm quite expert. It's only the other end of me that's the snag.' Yolande gave a comical shrug. 'Get along with you, Consie, and see to that hamper.' Laughing, though she should have felt like tears, Constance thought, she went down to the kitchen. With Yolande propped up with cushions beside her, Constance first of all familiarized herself with Corporation City. She went in and out of the 'streets', past the bungalows, past the bachelor chalets, drove round the new golf course, the bowling green, the sports arena, the hospital. Only at the hospital did Yolande evince any interest. 'I hope Hugh has spent some of the money Anthony allowed him on himself,' she said. 'It would be just like that dear foolish thing to forgo a carpet for an extra piece of equipment. Blow the horn, Consie, I want to see Hugh, but I don't want to try to manoeuvre myself out to do it.'

'You brought your sticks, didn't you, Yolande? Wouldn't it be better if you made an effort on your own account? I mean, dear, they do say—' 'Oh, not you now!' Yolande's tilted smile went down like a reversed horseshoe. 'Yolande, do try ... Yolande, make an effort ... Yolande, it's all in the mind. I'd just like to see them in my place!' 'Darling, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. It's simply that I get stiff myself, if I sit too long, so I thought you—' 'Then stop thinking, Consie, and fetch Hugh.' A little fond smile. 'Dear Hugh!' Constance got out and walked into the clinic. The hospital proved all that hospitals should be, white walls, brown floors, that familiar and somehow reassuring smell of polish, hygiene, antiseptic, that air of getting better. That, anyway, was what Constance said to Hugh. 'Yes. But I'm afraid Yolande will be disappointed when she sees it. Not with the wards but the consulting room - she had visions of cedar desks and thick carpet.' 'Which you spent on an extra cot,' smiled Constance. 'I have our girl with me now. She's in the Holden Mr. Vine has allotted me,' 'Then I'll come out, of course,' Constance paused. 'I was hoping she'd come in to you.' 'It's asking a lot. It's not easy even for an agile person to leap in and out of a car.' 'And Yolande isn't agile, is she?' asked Constance.

The doctor looked quickly at her. 'You can see that for yourself.' 'But not medically, I'd like a medico's opinion, please, Hugh. I've already had a Corporation boss's,' Hugh sighed. 'I was rather expecting this.' 'Then?' There was an estimating silence for a few moments. 'Tell me first what Tony Vine said,' Hugh stipulated. 'Among other things that he didn't intend to encourage someone to continue the way she was going when there was no reason for her to be that way at all. Then he backed it up with an account of specialists,.. even one from the States. He told me their verdict. True or not true, Hugh?' 'True, Constance.' 'Then?' 'Then what? Oh, damn it, Constance, what do you really want from me?' 'I want Hugh's version.' 'After an American top-notcher's?' 'Yes. You see, he just examined Yolande, then left, but you've been here at Corporation City with her now for weeks... ever since it happened.' 'That's correct,' he agreed.

'Then what have you found?' Another pause - it was a morning of estimating pauses - then: 'What they found, of course. What Anthony Vine finds. But—' 'But?' 'I see it differently. I see a girl who should be able to walk but can't very differently from Anthony, Constance. Were my fellow doctors here with me, they would say the same. You see, in medicine there's no simple black and white, there's a very large gamut of colours. Most important of all, there are many varieties of patients. Some will make light of things that gravely matter; some will complain bitterly of nothing at all. But we can't judge them on it, since the nothing-atalls can quite feasibly feel as legitimate a pain as the true sufferers. It's not their fault they're built like that.' 'And you think Yolande—' 'Yes ... yet not entirely. I believe Yolande wants very badly to be better, but she simply can't make herself. She can't because the impetus is missing, she has to have an inspiration, an urge.' 'Surely Anthony Vine—' began Constance. After all, even though nothing seemed to have eventuated, Yolande had stopped back for Anthony, and as far as she knew Anthony Vine had not protested. 'No.' Hugh shook his head. 'Then—' But Constance did not finish what she started to say. If Hugh did not know how Yolande obviously felt about him, it was not her business to tell him, unless, of course, it could bring about that miracle for Yolande. She moistened her lips. But the doctor spoke before she could. 'We, Vine and myself, believed you might help Yolande.'

'A woman?' Constance said wryly, and he nodded wryly back. 'We even thought Yolande might feel a jealous urge when she saw you getting around.' 'You chose a wrong subject, Hugh. As Mr. Vine told me earlier today, I'm one of those comfortable types offering no competition.' 'That I would not believe, Constance.' The doctor smiled warmly at her. A little silence fell between them, punctuated presently by the car's horn. 'Perhaps I was wrong about you,' Hugh laughed. 'Perhaps you were wrong about yourself. Vine, too. Perhaps if we stay here long enough, Yolande will actually drag herself in to see what's what.' 'If I thought that—' 'Yes, if I thought that, too,' he agreed. But he made no effort to try anything out, instead he put his fingers under Constance's elbow and propelled her to the door. Yolande pouted when she saw him, announced that he had had time to remove Consie's appendix and put it back again. But she said it confidently, confident of her beauty, and Constance got into the car and waited patiently while the doctor talked to Yolande from Yolande's side. At last they left him, and Constance set out along the track to the artesian pool.

It was, as Anthony had said, still unchanged, and they picnicked from its banks, the blue water now bluer still from the blue Salvation Jane reflected in its depths. 'How warm is it, Consie?' Yolande called from her cushions to Constance kneeling by the pool's side. 'Beautiful. That glorious temperature on stone walls when lizards simply have to drop off to sleep.' 'What a description! Lizards! But it's given me an idea.' 'Yes, Yolande?' 'That heat, that natural heat, I do believe it could do me good.' Constance had been thinking that, too, but she had hesitated to say it. 'Look at all the spas everywhere,' went on Yolande. 'But mineral spas, Yolande. This is artesian, remember.' 'Which could be a better miracle, who knows?' 'Do you really think you need a miracle, darling?' 'Yes, Consie, I need a miracle. And what's more, I'm going to stage one. Constance, I'm going in!'

CHAPTER FIVE YOLANDE had very ably stripped to bra and panties; she had been right when she had told Constance she was expert at that. Quickly Constance did the same, but though she did not waste a moment, Yolande, with the aid of her sticks, was out of the car and manipulating herself down the gentle slope to the water before Constance could come forward to help her. There was a little splash, then an ecstatic: 'Oh, it's perfect, simply dreamy, no wonder the lizards like it!' 'That was sun-soaked walls, silly,' giggled Constance, joining her. She felt pleased that Yolande had taken the initiative. This lovely hot artesian water could do her no harm, and, who knew, it might do a lot of good. She was not asking for miracles, as Yolande was, just a benefit or two would suffice, but if a miracle came along... She felt no apprehension. Though Yolande had been a hothouse flower and very opposed to sport of any kind, she still had been a strong swimmer, she recalled. She looked at the girl floating now in the steaming water, her pale hair spread out around her like a river hyacinth, the sun beating down on her exquisite face and finding not one flaw. 'You're lovely, Yolande,' she said impulsively. 'Not bad,' Yolande grinned back. 'And my legs, Consie, they're still the same.' She splashed up with one. 'Darling, to make those huge ripples you had to move the leg quite considerably,' Constance said excitedly. 'I know. Yet I did it easily. I suppose it's just buoyancy, but I still did it as if I was normal again. Consie, do you think—'

'I'm no expert, but I'm sure this heat would loosen you up, relax you. All the same, we'll make haste slowly, dear. That will be enough for now. Keep floating while I go to the bank and find a suitable spot to roll you out again.' Constance already had found it, it had been the first thing she had done after she had plunged in, but she wanted to make sure that the bank surround was firm and safe, also to have Yolande's canes in readiness. She swam over and everything was perfect. 'Time's up,' she called gaily, 'swim over to me.' Then she turned to a pool without any girl at all. For an awful moment Constance knew nothing but blind horror, blind disbelief, blind panic. Then her vision cleared and she saw that there was something. It was a hand. In the few seconds since she had left her, Yolande must have turned on her back to do as Constance told her, but in the turning her foot must have caught something, or rather something caught her foot, and the log, or branch, or whatever it was, had tugged her down. Ordinarily there would not have been any log, any impediment at all, but there had been rain, weeks of rain, and vegetation had sprung up where vegetation had never been seen before. Even an insidious waterweed could have occurred in the pool, hot though it was. Constance dived in. She was not a spectacular swimmer, but she considered she was a solid one. But she had no illusions as to what lay ahead. Though Yolande was pencil-slim, she was tall, and tiny towns, as Yolande had categorized Constance, need telling inches themselves to deal with height. She swam to where she had seen the hand and dived under. The water was clear, but even down here very blue. For the first time Constance cursed the Salvation Jane and its bright glister. She could have done with colourless water, she thought.

However, she found Yolande immediately, and, thankful that the girl had been under only an instant, thankful that there could be no numbing effect with a temperature like this, she began to strain up. It was a strain. Whatever had caught at Yolande was determined to prison her. It came frighteningly to Constance that the only way she would ever free the girl would be to free the weed first, but to do that she had to let Yolande go, and once she let her go— Yolande still had been submerged for quite a safe period, but there was no time to waste.; Constance made a last desperate bid to pull her, desperate since she shrank from releasing Yolande to dive further down, and at the same time she heard the knife-sharp parting of waters at her side. Something flashed by her, and foolishly she thought of stories she had read about monsters who lived in pools, who dragged you under. She held Yolande even tighter. 'Let her go, you damned idiot!' If it was a monster it spoke the same language as Constance did. 'I've freed her. Now I'll bring her up.' Constance saw two entwined figures pass her, thought stupidly that it all seemed like something in a water ballet, then seconds after felt hands now on her. She was towed to the bank and pushed unceremoniously up. She lay where she had been put for a moment, then she leaned on an elbow and looked round. Yolande was there. So was the monster. Only the monster was Anthony Vine, though he could still have passed for a monster. He was supporting Yolande, but the eyes he turned on Constance flashed with rage. 'Yes, she's alive,' he said, answering her questioning look, 'and so, it seems, are you.'

Nothing else was said then. Yolande had closed her eyes. Constance had lost her tongue. Presently he got up and carried Yolande to his car that he had drawn up beside the Holden. 'Her clothes,' called Constance, finding words at last. 'Yolande's clothes!' 'You can bring them. At least you should be able to do that. And Miss Searle, I'll see you in the office as soon as you get back.' She followed him in her car, but she did not attend the office at once. She wondered how he would have reacted to her two wet pieces of apparel, bra and panties, and nothing else. However, she did not shower, as she would dearly have liked to have done, since the waterweed ... it had been waterweed ... had left several stubborn green stains on her skin. Instead she dressed in the first clothes she put her hands on, ran a comb through her wet hair, and that was all. She went down to the office and knocked on the door. 'Come in, Miss Searle,' he called. He was sitting at his desk, and he looked up and nodded her to a chair. She decided to get in before he could, but he waived any words of hers aside after her first few syllables. 'I've had it all from Yolande - how you're completely blameless, how you're the thoughtful angel - the rest. Her story, of course. I admit she might have surprised you by jumping into the water, but it was you who took her to the artesian pool, and made it all possible, so I can't pass that over.' 'No,' Constance said.

'When I didn't see you around the centre, when you didn't come to lunch, when I asked the kitchen and they reported that you'd taken a hamper, I didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to guess where you'd gone. To the unchanged place. You don't like change.' He looked hard at her. 'No,' she said. 'So I followed and prevented a tragedy. However, as it happens, everything seems to have turned out fairly well, if no thanks to you. Yolande, anyway, is suffering no repercussions ... now.' 'Now?' she queried. 'Now that she is the first patient ever in Corporation hospital.' 'Is she?' 'I thought, and Hugh thought, it was advisable to keep her in bed where she can be watched for a while, and there she lies, lapping it up as a kitten laps cream.' Constance had her head down. I suppose that's how you've been considering it all the time, she thought to herself, inability to walk has merely meant a grounded pet to you, something to be fed cream. She had to bite her tongue to stop her saying it aloud. 'Well, all's well that ends well,' continued Anthony Vine, 'though I can't exactly pass everything over, and I think you would be the first one to agree.' He looked sternly at her. 'Mr. Vine, I admit I did take Yolande to the pool, that it was entirely my idea, but I never thought... I never dreamed ...' 'No. But next time think.'

'And dream?' Now why had she said that? He looked at her quickly. 'Are you a dreamer?' 'I... I don't know.' 'Then be sure before you make such rash statements. That, incidentally, comes from a dreamer.' 'You a dreamer?' 'Amuses you, doesn't it? Well, enough of this. Let's get down to facts. Tomorrow the female intake arrives.' 'Yes.' 'Among them, as well as the wives, as well as the clerical and domestic staff, as well as Sister and her nurses - Yolande's mother.' His voice was over- casual. 'Yolande's mother?' 'Yes.' 'Oh, dear, Yolande won't like that!' sighed Constance. 'Why?' 'She didn't want her mother. And surely' ... Constance felt a slow rage building in her ... 'what she wants at her stage of health should count.' 'Everyone wants their mother,' he said expressionlessly, 'I have no doubt you want yours.' 'Yes, I do.'

'Where is she?' 'In Fiji.; My father deals in copra. But there are few occupations over there for girls, so mostly the daughters come over here.' 'I see. But you'd like to see her.' 'Yes.' 'Then why doesn't Yolande want to see her mother?' 'You should seek the advice of a psychiatrist regarding that, Mr. Vine. Perhaps you could even get one from the States,' she said sharply. 'When I do,' he came back coolly, 'I'll have two cases for him. A girl who should walk but can't. A girl who shouldn't talk but does. All right, you can go now.' 'Reprimand over?' 'Yes. You might call down and visit the patient, but I wouldn't advise a late session, we have a busy day tomorrow.' 'Yes, sir.' 'Sir now? Not even Mr. Vine?' 'Not unless you instruct me, sir.' He let it pass. He even let her get as far as the door. Then he called: 'Miss Searle, was your mother pleased when you left?' The question took her by surprise. 'I don't know.' 'I know,' was all he said. He waved her out.

Yolande was sitting up in the ward, and was certainly looking like that kitten that got the cream. She also looked quite breathtakingly lovely. She greeted Constance gaily, and Constance secretly commended the Corporation boss and the doctor for putting her in hospital. There was no room for repercussions in the excitement that showed up like pink roses in Yolande's usually magnolia-pale skin. 'So you've come to visit the first patient ever in the Corporation clinic,' she laughed. 'Yes, that's true. There hasn't even been a casualty yet.' 'Are you feeling as good as you look, Yolande?' Constance asked. 'Like the girl in the song, I feel pretty,' Yolande replied. 'You always are.' 'But more noticeably in here lying on a sickbed. Seriously, though, Consie, I'm a fraud.' 'No underwater monsters dragging you under?' 'It was a weed brought on by the rains, silly. When you visit me next time bring another negligee.' 'Yes, Yolande, though I hardly think—' Constance had been about to say that she hardly thought Doctor Hugh, if the doctor was Yolande's goal, would have time to appreciate it. Tomorrow was arrival day, arrival, as well as of the wives, the clerical and domestic side, of the hospital Sister with her small staff. Hadn't Cressida been the Sister's name? Also - Yolande's mother was coming. Constance did not know whether Anthony had told Yolande, but decided it would be better to mention it. Yolande taken by surprise

could be very unkind if the surprise displeased her, and she had said she did not want her mother. 'Yolande—' she began. 'I know, Consie, dear Mamma is coming. Why, I don't know.' 'Yolande!' 'Oh, she's all right, I expect, but she's so like me ... in nature, I mean ... and I'll tell you something, Consie, if I wasn't me I'd loathe myself.' 'Oh, you fool!' Constance had to laugh. She stayed with Yolande until Doctor Hugh came in, then excused herself and left. Yolande did not even see her go. The doctor must have stayed with Yolande for the evening meal, for he did not come to the dining-room. That, too, had been Constance's intention, she had decided she would ring for a tray, get into her gown and have a quiet night. But when she rang the kitchen, she was told that she was expected in the restaurant, that Mr. Vine had selected a table and chosen a meal for two. 'Two?' she queried. 'You, Miss Searle, and himself.' Constance put the phone down feeling very ordered around yet helpless to fight such authority, for after all he was the Corporation boss. She did not dress up, though, hoping that would show him her distaste for his high-handedness. But even this was denied her. When she came down the stairs he was waiting in casual clothes.

'No penguin?' she asked lightly. 'No dancing lady?' He had looked her quickly up and down at once. 'We're both utilitarian tonight.' 'In practice for tomorrow.' 'Perhaps. I've ordered the meal. I didn't want Louis producing a long list of offerings for only two.' 'Yes,' agreed Constance, looking around the room, 'there are only two of us.' 'The engineering bosses and the geos, etcetera, are getting ready, too,' Anthony explained, 'getting ready to welcome their wives.' 'As we will.' 'Not quite the same.' He grinned at her. 'Our speech of glad-to-haveyou will be at the airstrip, theirs will be pillow talk.' 'Pillow talk?' she echoed. 'Oh, come, Miss Searle,' he teased, and Constance flushed a vivid scarlet, comprehending too late and hating her naivete, or so he must think. The orchestra was not playing, so there was nothing to linger for once the meal was over. Anyway, as he had said, they were both strictly utilitarian tonight. They finished with coffee, then he walked with her to the stairs. She wondered where a big boss slept in an undertaking like this and boldly decided to ask him. 'This will rock you,' he grinned. 'A house.'

'A house?' 'A functional house, in fact a rather sparse one just now. I always believe in leaving the homemaking bits to the little woman.' 'Oh, so you intend—' 'Yes, I intend,' he said, and he looked directly, challengingly at Constance. She felt like retorting: 'Not that you'd notice,' but found that when it came to it she did not have the courage. Yolande might not be engaged as she had planned to be, but Constance felt she could scarcely say it to him without a lead-up to it first. He climbed the stairs with her. 'No, I'm not a believer in hotel living, I'm essentially a family man.' 'With no family.' 'That can always be rectified.' Again that direct look. They had come to the turn in the staircase; it was a beautiful flight, the tradesman must have been very satisfied with his work.: Involuntarily, Constance stopped. And stopped Anthony with her. 'It was here—' 'Yes,' he said abruptly. 'She was running down the stairs and she tripped.' 'Yes.' 'Was there something wrong with the rug?'

'No.' 'Her slipper?' 'No.' 'Then-?' 'The story goes, Miss Searle, and I underline story, that she saw me coming and made haste too quickly.' 'To run to you?' 'Yes.' 'Well?' Constance asked defensively. 'Well, if that's to be believed, it must also be believed of Hugh,' he returned calmly. 'He was here?' 'We both came in together.' 'But it would be you she ran to, or tried to run to.' 'Why?' 'Because it was you she - she—' She did not finish. 'Well,' he said very levelly when he saw she wasn't saying any more, 'it isn't me now, and unless Hugh wants the happy?' .. s he made a blunt question of the word ... 'ending that I did not want, he'd be advised to take the stand that I did.'

'You mean be hard, be ruthless, unsympathetic, cruel, think only of yourself?' 'Beware of pity, Miss Searle, particularly ill-founded pity,' he returned. She stood looking down the beautiful stairs where a beautiful girl had fallen. His stairs. She must have said so aloud, for he drawled: 'Yes, I never did deny that issue. Yolande has been well compensated.' 'Compensated?' she echoed. 'For something she hasn't lost, yes.' 'You mean, I think, the specialist's verdict that she hasn't lost. You mean her mobility?' 'I mean that.' 'But what about the compensation for the thing she did lose?' 'What do you mean, Miss Searle?' 'Compensation - for your love?' He turned savagely on her, he was so furious that his leather brown skin had gone ashy grey. 'She never loved me. She just saw in me a man in a big job. A boss. And I, for what it's worth to you, never loved her.' He stopped abruptly, almost seekingly, obviously waiting for her answer. 'It's worth nothing to me,' Constance said distinctly back.

CHAPTER SIX AT nine the next morning the first female contingent put down on the Corporation strip. Everyone attached to C.C. had gone out to the flat paddock earmarked for the future Ukurrie Airport. It was far from complete yet, a terminal had to be erected and made attractive, but the essential factor of safety had been assiduously attended to, and the craft had no trouble landing on the runway, marked at this initial stage by white upturned plastic buckets. The first plane-load was comprised entirely of wives. They climbed down into waiting arms, and from the length of time some of them embraced, Constance decided there would be no exchanges left for Anthony Vine's 'pillow talk'. How ridiculous that man had been! There were fleets of cars and waggons waiting, and the wives were whisked off for a champagne welcome at the hotel. 'Champers at nine a.m.,' they laughed. 'Not every morning, this is a red letter morning for Corporation. The girls have joined the boys.' That was Anthony Vine. He could be very smooth for a cigarette-roller, for an outdoor man with leather brown skin and Salvation Jane blue eyes, when he tried. He instructed Constance to go in with the women while he waited for the next contingent, comprising the remainder of the wives and the clerical and domestic staff. After that Hugh could take over, for the third load would be medical equipment and Sister and nurses. 'In that order?' Constance asked smartly. 'You're a sharp cooky this morning,' he commented. 'You are yourself, the women loved being girls,'

'Look after the girls,' he ordered, and strolled off. Yolande, being hospitalized, was not in attendance. Constance doubted whether she would have been, anyway; Yolande did not like women en masse. Constance jumped on the last jeep coming in, and by the time they reached the hotel had become friendly with several of the new citizens. But not a new young wife (she must be new, from the youth of her), for the child bride, scarcely any more, looked sulkily away every time Constance smiled across. When they reached the hotel there were choruses of Ohs and Ahs. 'I told you so,' Mrs. Amberley, whom Constance recalled from her first stop at C.C., called triumphantly, 'I said that the Corporation hadn't forgotten anything.' She was one of the more mature, dependable, experienced women, appreciated Constance, very glad to have her here; Rose Amberley was evidently used to uprooting herself to follow her husband, used to making the best of things, and that, even though C.C. offered the best, was what was needed now. For though there would be no hardship, no restriction, it was still a long way from home, from relatives, from daily papers, from supermarket specials, from things that women shrug carelessly over and pretend not to care about but still feel afraid to be without. 'It's going well,' Mrs. Amberley found time to whisper later to Constance during the welcome. 'We'll have a few misgiving souls here and there, that's only to be expected, but no drop-outs, apart, I should say, from Mrs. Grant. Yes, she's the young one, the sulky young one. Trouble there.'

Constance edged round the women, laughing more than usual because of the champagne to find the un- laughing Mrs. Grant. 'Let me fill your glass again.' 'It's not again,' the girl said. 'You didn't take any. That's a pity. It was to say "Happy to have you here." ' 'Well, I'm not happy to have come.' 'No, but I guess we all feel like that at first, however, being reunited with your husband—' 'I could have done without any reunion.' 'You're a long way from home.' Constance started on another tack. 'It's all unfamiliar.' 'No, it's all too silly for words. Girls joining the boys,' 'But they are, dear.' 'Which,' said the girl quite rudely, 'is yours?' Constance reddened. 'None. I'm not married.' 'Then you don't know what you're talking about, do you?' The girl turned her back deliberately on Constance, on all the gathering of women, and went into the garden. Mrs. Amberley, who must have been watching, caught Constance's eye and shrugged. The second contingent arrived at the hotel steps and more champagne was poured.

Then one of the secretarial staff began allotting the bungalows. This was always a touchy procedure, knowledgeable Mrs. Amberley whispered to Constance, knowledgeable in previous undertakings; the wives of the younger executives always resented the wives of the seniors having a better home. 'All the homes are the same,' Constance reassured her. 'Which makes me wonder if the senior executives will resent the juniors,' laughed Mrs. Amberley. 'Not to worry, I do believe we're going to jell.' The Sister and nurses did not come to the hotel. Hugh sent up a message that though they had been cordially invited they preferred to settle in first. Constance wondered how Yolande was taking the sudden presence of female hospital staff. She had a feeling that tonight Yolande would be back in her suite. She was wrong. With the nursing contingent had come Yolande's mother, and Yolande, after greeting her, must have told her she could use her hotel rooms while she remained in hospital. Smiling a little at Yolande's predicament, a bevy of women or one woman, Constance sought out Mrs. Lawford to welcome her. Her daughter might be like her in nature, but she was not in looks. Mrs. Lawford was an attractive enough middle-aged woman, but even in her young days would never have been in Yolande's class. Yolande was beautiful. 'You've been to see Yolande,' Constance smiled to Yolande's mother. 'Yes, Miss Searle. But just what is she doing in there?' 'In hospital?' 'Yes.'

Constance was a little nonplussed. 'Well, of course you know about her inability to walk»..' 'Oh, yes' ... impatiently ... 'I know all about that. But she doesn't need a hospital bed to get her on her feet again.' 'I think we should discuss that later, Mrs. Lawford. Immediately you want to know why Yolande is in bed now?' 'Oh, I think I know really. To avoid me.' 'Nothing of the sort, Mrs. Lawford. Yolande had a bad shock, and I take most of the blame myself.' Constance told the story of the artesian pool as briefly as she could. 'So she has that to work on now.' The older woman firmed her lips. 'I'm sorry if I sound hard, Miss Searle, but that certainly is my eldest daughter.' 'You have other daughters?' 'Four others. And all' ... proudly ... 'married.' 'That's nice.' 'It's essential. A girl must be married. I've brought up my five in the expectancy of marriage, also in the striving after a successful marriage. It's galling to think that the best-looking of the lot has failed so far.' Constance felt she had had enough for the moment, found something that needed her immediate attention, and turned away. She went with the wives to their allotted bungalows. They all seemed quite pleased, but they would not have been female had they not cast estimating looks at the houses next door.

One wife did not cast a look, though, neither at the house next door nor her own house. Young Mrs. Grant said: 'So this is it,' then went and stood by the window. 'Most of the women have so much to talk about they don't want to come up to the dinner Mr. Vine is giving tonight,' Constance said, 'but the invitation still stands if you'd prefer to eat out.' 'No doubt Barry would. I can't cook.' 'Is Barry your husband?' 'That's what it says on the certificate.' Constance gave a cheerful nod ... a determinedly cheerful one. 'So you can't cook? Now, that's wonderful. Yes, I mean it. There must be other younger ones like you, so we can be sure of a full attendance at our cooking classes. The hotel chef has very kindly agreed to donate some of his spare time. I'm confident even the good cooks will flock in, as Louis is a top-class chef.' 'Count me out,' Mrs. Grant said. Though she had other women to settle in, Constance still lingered. 'You're the youngest of all, I would say,' she smiled hopefully. 'Shows my lack of sense.' 'Oh, I don't know, you don't have to be mature to know what you want in life. Look, dear, I know you're feeling strange now, but when your Barry comes ... it was Barry, wasn't it?' 'Yes.' 'Then everything will be different.' Where was Barry? Constance wondered. Why wasn't he around like the rest of the husbands? She

knew that Anthony Vine had allowed the men the time. She waited a moment, then asked: 'So you'll come up for dinner tonight?' 'I don't know. Do I have to say?' 'Why, no, but— Well, you'd want supplies from the store if you prefer to cook your own meal.' 'I told you I couldn't cook.' 'Also, we prefer to tell our chef how many. Surely that's reasonable enough.' But there was no reaching this girl, neither with friendliness nor reason. With a little sigh, Constance turned away. Here was one character, she thought wryly, who could have done with a little of Yolande, not Constance. Thinking about Yolande prompted her to make her way to the clinic. In the short time since her arrival, the new Sister had made a hospital out of a collection of empty rooms. Constance did not see Sister Cressida Moore ... the sign on the Sister's office door already announced that ... but she had to admire the energy that had already put a different face on the place. ... And a different face on Yolande. Yolande looked anything but pleased with her lot. 'Hospital procedure, I loathe it. Hugh left me alone.' Yolande pouted. 'He was usually here when I came,' Constance pointed out. 'But it wasn't always hospital procedure,' Yolande said. 'That Sister is a pill herself as well as being a dispenser of them. She already has me signed up for a host of dreary, boring and probably very painful

treatments. When she suggested physio, massage, exercise and whathave-you, I said yes quite happily, thinking there would be nobody to give them to me. But no, that paragon has all those arts herself.' 'Hugh said she was clever.' Yolande looked sulkier than ever. 'It's all for your good, dear,' Constance urged. 'But I've had all those things, Anthony had every expert flown up to go to town on me, and what was achieved?' 'Those consultants were only visiting ones and could only give you a brief course. Sister Moore, being in attendance here, can spend weeks ... months.' 'Perish the thought!' 'What's she like, Yolande?' asked Constance. Yolande hunched her shoulders. 'Oh - aprony.' 'Like me?' 'Well, certainly not like me,' Yolande refused. 'Also she suggested a more utilitarian nightie for the treatments. Can you imagine me in flannelette?' 'It needn't be flannelette.' 'Well, neck to toe at least.' 'Oh, Yolande,' Constance laughed, 'it can't be that bad.' 'It's worse. You know my mother is here?'

'Yes, and I think it was very kind of Mr. Vine to fly her up; also kind of your mother to come.' 'And who,' Yolande asked plaintively, 'is being kind to me?' A nurse came in with a bowl of soup and Yolande said: 'I don't want it. Take it away.' When she had gone, Yolande complained: 'You've been drinking champagne and I'm given barley broth!' 'You're in hospital, Yolande.' 'Yes, I suppose so.' A sigh. 'I suppose the only other alternative is up there with Mamma.' 'Yolande, you shouldn't speak like that,' retorted Constance. 'Well, I am speaking like that, and I'll tell you why.' Yolande pleated and unpleated the top of the sheet. 'In a way,' she said bitterly, 'it's because of my mother that I'm here now.' 'Here?' 'Here. Like this. Unable to walk.' 'Oh, Yolande!' 'It's true. It's years since I left home, admittedly, but in the years before, the formative years, my mother prepared the ground for all this. I don't expect you to understand, Consie, how could you from the comfortable background you had—' 'Wait a moment, Yolande, my family was barely comfortable. Certainly they were never rich/

'You lived on a lovely island.' 'Yes, it was lovely, but the house was unspectacular.' 'Your father was an island trader.' 'A rather less-than-successful one.' 'Well, anyway, you didn't have an ambitious mother, made ambitious because she'd been left a widow and had five daughters to rear on nothing at all, a mother to drill into you right from kindergarten the importance of marrying well because poverty was so mean and rotten.' .. But also marry for love,' inserted Constance. Yolande laughed, and it was not a pleasant laugh. 'I can't ever remember love coming into it,' she said. 'Yet you've always liked men, Yolande, and not always successful men. I mean you did not demand to see their bankbooks first.;' 'I expect every armour has a chink,' said Yolande, 'everyone has an unguarded moment.' 'I still can't understand you putting the blame on your mother.' 'I suppose it does sound far-fetched, but Consie, when you've been trained practically from the day you walked to look for material gain, it's hard to forget.' 'You mean—' 'Well, for instance, I mean I saw Anthony Vine but saw dollar signs all over him, not his rather nice face. Oh, yes, I saw that face too, I'm

not entirely a lost soul, but his eligible state and the dollar signs stood out the most. Only' ... that reversed horseshoe moue ... 'it didn't work.' 'And what about - Hugh?' This time Yolande did not have an answer. She sat back against her pillows frowning. Constance could see she was not sure. 'There,' she smiled, 'you're not such a loss as you think.' 'My mother wouldn't agree, she allows no chinks in armours, no unguarded moments.' 'Yolande, you're adult now, you've cut away from your mother.' 'Have I? Have I? Then why didn't I - why didn't I -' 'Yes, darling?' 'It doesn't matter,' Yolande said, and turned her head away. Presently she told Constance she would like to go to sleep. Constance went up to the hotel and was met in the lobby by Anthony Vine. It appeared that the chef had prepared a special introductory dinner and wanted all the new ladies and their husbands to attend. 'Most of them were looking forward to a meal for two,' doubted Constance. 'That can still be arranged, we have an abundance of secluded nooks complete with sweetheart chairs and romantic candles. I thought you could go down to the bungalows and persuade them. Louis was most upset when he learned that the party had ended with welcoming champagne. He informs me sorrowfully that he has a load of chantillys and dubarrys and what-have-yous more than half prepared.'

'Very well, I'll see what I can do, but I know one couple who won't be there.' 'Yes?' 'She's a Mrs. Grant. I don't know her christian name. He is—' 'Barry Grant.' 'You know him?' 'Of course. I know every one of my men,' 'There are over a hundred men.' 'So?' Anthony asked. When Constance did not comment, he said: 'I gather that Barry Grant was not there to greet his wife today?' 'No.' 'His own fault entirely, I'd given the men time off. However, he may be the shy type, prefer to reunite in private.' 'If he does that at dinner this evening he'll find his bungalow empty, for I think Mrs. Grant is coming up here - alone.' Anthony Vine frowned. 'One thing I've left out of C.C.,' he admitted, 'is a marriage guidance counsellor. However, I still think you might be exaggerating. Probably Barry is all for skipping the meal and talking instead.' 'Pillow talk.' Now why had she said that? She saw that he was laughing, not with his lips, but with mirthnarrowed Salvation Jane blue eyes.

'You catch on quickly, Miss Searle, do you think you'd catch on as quickly with the art of such talk yourself?' 'I couldn't say. Being unmarried, I've never been in that situation.' 'As far as I know you don't have to possess marriage lines,' he returned lightly. He was teasing her, she knew, but somehow she could not banter back. 'That's an odd thing for someone to say, someone who told me that we may be in the middle of nowhere but it was still not the thing to sign up a lady in pyjamas,' she returned. 'Touche. I see I'll have to watch my tongue. If I hadn't been so censorious then I might have prevailed upon you now.' 'No.' 'Then - with a licence?' 'Licence?' she queried. 'Marriage lines, wedding ring, the rest.' 'With you?' 'Yes.' 'No,' Constance said. She turned and went down the corridor in as dignified a manner as she could, not helped by the soft sound of his teasing laugh.

CHAPTER SEVEN NEITHER of the young Grants attended Louis's dinner party that night, but any supposition that they had dined together in their new home, talked together .. s pillow talked? ... afterwards in the darkened bungalow was spiked by Barry's overseer's report that Barry had volunteered for overtime, then left later for the bachelor quarters. Constance was there when Sam Carmody told the Corporation boss, and she saw the blue eyes darken with anger. 'Has he been applying for overtime all along, Sam?' 'No, Mr. Vine.' 'Then he can't suddenly start now. He can have his share, of course, but not when it pleases him to take it.' When Sam had gone, Anthony Vine turned to Constance. 'I don't like it. You have to expect disenchantment somewhere along the line, life's like that, unfortunately, but not right at the start like this.' 'I'll do what I can with Joan,' offered Constance sympathetically. 'Her name, incidentally, is Joan. I'll try to get her signed up for some classes to divert her. But'... a sigh... 'she won't be easy.' 'Perhaps when we have our first baby' ... Anthony Vine stopped and grinned. 'That could have been better expressed.' 'I know what you mean, though. You think Joan and Barry will be influenced by a baby in our midst, then be encouraged to come together.' 'Come together? You really mean come together again, don't you? Anyway, it could be only a storm in a teacup and no drift at all.'

Constance shook her head at him. 'When I said come together I didn't mean come together again. Mr. Vine, I have a feeling, a pretty certain feeling, any coming together would be for the first time.' 'But they're married, Miss Searle.' 'Which doesn't necessarily mean—' 'My God, it does,' he came back with vigour, 'it damn well does in my book.' 'As a matter of interest,' she said coolly, 'what else is in your book?' His eyes flicked at her.: 'Would you like practical proof?* 'Verbal will do.' 'Then one man, one woman, one room.' He took out his makings and began rolling a cigarette, then lit it and put it in his mouth. 'One bed.' The cigarette was in his mouth as he said it, but the two words were very clear. Again ... hatefully ... he laughed as Constance turned and walked off. Apart from Joan, already the C.C. wives were 'jelling', as Rose Amberley had put it. Nearly all the classes were filled, and though midway drop-outs were to be expected, still this initial enthusiasm was a very satisfactory thing. 'A contented wife makes a contented husband,' Rose said. 'We have good conditions here, good pay, a good boss.' 'Yes, the conditions are excellent, and I've seen the salary scales.' Constance did not mention the goodness of the boss.

Anthony Vine took all the wives out soon after their arrival so they could see for themselves where they now lived, why they lived there, what it was all about. Because the terrain fascinated her as no terrain ever had before, even the balmy perfection of the tropical islands of her young days, Constance went too. The wilderness was still blooming, Constance found, and probably would for months, but eventually the ochre, the sienna, the burnt orange would creep back again, everything appear the barren waste that now was waste no longer, that gave back richer rewards than any lush pasture. Already the sparseness was making itself visible here and there by the occasional patch of gibber, by a drained salt pan shimmering like silver in the sun. Constance had noticed earlier that their town lagoon that had happened since her last visit was quickly diminishing. The contingent of cars and jeeps let out its passengers, and Anthony Vine drew the women around him. He took out what looked like a schoolboy's magnet attached to a piece of elastic. 'The geos ... in fact everyone who comes bush ... carry this as you would carry a lipstick, ladies. If a rock around here proved magnetic, it could ... it also could not, mind you... contain nickel. 'Mainly our C.C. geos look more formally for outcrops from subterranean rocks that through the years have come to the surface. That's their start. If tests are favourable then the whole G.C. business begins, technocrats come in, percussion drilling starts, and, with luck, we're in business. 'But that's only one of our more rare holes in the ground. Leaving the silica, we can come to bread and butter things ... well, you know that already from your husbands.'

They nodded, not over-anxious to hear a story they had heard already, for Rose Amberley had confided to Constance before they left that project husbands might not bring home briefs and estimates, but they still brought the equivalent, and that most of the women had come along today just for the jaunt. One asked about uranium, though, and while Anthony Vine talked about control and stockpiling and being careful over markets, Constance looked around and saw to her surprise that Joan Grant had come, too. She made her way round to the girl who was still standing by the jeep that she had evidently come in, and making no attempt to listen to what Anthony had to say. 'It's nice to have you join us, Joan.' Joan shrugged. 'Interested in things like this?' 'No.' 'Well, secretly I don't think any of the ladies are, either. Now if it was a cave of precious jewels, or perhaps an opal—' She smiled. Joan did not smile back, 'I'm not interested in either.' 'Yet you're wearing an opal ring, a very pretty one,' For answer, Joan looked down at her ring, then without a word tugged it off and threw it along the ground. She climbed back into the jeep. 'Joan, your ring!'

Joan looked away. Constance glanced desperately around for someone to help her search, yet to ask them would be to rouse curiosity, and she wanted no questions at this stage. She went in the direction she believed Joan had thrown the ring and began scouring a mental square foot by square foot. She wished the ring was something glittering to catch her eye; opals glowed but never glittered, except deep in their white or black hearts. In her absorption she did not hear the waggons and cars departing again until a voice asked: 'Are you working for Corporation, Miss Searle, or is this a strictly private digging effort?' She straightened up and saw Anthony Vine standing quite close beside her. His was the only jeep left, and it was empty. 'If it's nickel you're after, I must warn you it's quite a costly process once you do find it. If it's uranium, we have a strict code here regarding it and you'd find yourself up against a lot of red tape. But if it's opal...' He opened his big palm and there lay Joan's ring. 'Oh!' The relief was so apparent in Constance's voice, he looked at her quizzically. 'That precious, is it?' 'Yes.' 'I haven't noticed it on you before.' 'No.' 'Meaning you've acquired it recently?' 'Yes.' She had no intention of telling him about Joan.

'I see. Then you'd better put it on. It's usually the safest way to carry a ring.' He handed it across, and unconsciously Constance put it on the accepted finger. She had not meant to, the movement had come instinctively, but at once his blue eyes became pinpoints in his leather brown face. 'We'll get back,' he said, and crossing to the waggon he climbed up to the driver's seat, then leaned across and opened her door. They did not speak all the way back to the centre. That afternoon Constance took the ring back to Joan. 'Oh, you found it,' the girl said without enthusiasm. 'Joan, it was a very foolish thing to do. It's a good ring.: If you didn't want it, if it affronted you that much, you could have donated it somewhere. It doesn't serve any purpose throwing things away like that.' 'All right then, I hereby donate it to the deserted wives!' snapped Joan. 'There are no deserted wives at Corporation City.' 'By order,' mocked Joan, 'no deserted wives permitted.' She waited a moment. 'Then what do you call me?' 'You're not deserted. Barry may be living in the bachelor quarters, but Mrs. Jensen' ... Mrs.: Jensen was in the next bungalow ... 'has told me that several times he has come and knocked on the door.' 'Oh, so besides being fed, entertained, ordered, lectured, hospitalized, we're now spied upon!' 'Joan dear!'

'Well, aren't we? Look, I don't want this ring. If you leave it here I'll throw it somewhere you can't find it.' 'I'll take it, then, until you come to your senses. It's an engagement ring, isn't it?' 'Well, it isn't a plain gold band and it isn't, and won't ever be, an eternity ring.' Joan gave a short hard laugh. 'But you chose it.' 'I had it shoved at me. For that matter I don't believe Barry chose it, either. He probably said: "One ring, and wrap it up, please."' Again the hard laugh. Constance stood baffled for a few moments, then she said: 'Well, dear, you'll know where it is.' She waited another moment, then left the girl. She wore the ring for safety ... Anthony Vine had been right there, the most secure place was on a finger ... but the reason she chose the fourth finger, left hand, was simply because it was the only finger the ring fitted. She found that the corresponding finger on the right hand made it too snug a fit, and as for the rest of the fingers, they were either too slim or too plump. As she might have guessed, Yolande's sharp eyes spotted the ring at once. However ..smiling ruefully ... she would have been even more obvious in gloves. 'What's that?' asked Yolande. 'An opal ring.' 'Oh, don't be facetious, Consie, I can see that, but who gave it to you?'

'No one.' 'I know you, Consie, you wouldn't buy one for yourself. Don't be afraid to tell me if it's Hugh. I've come to expect something of the sort these last few days. That Sister Moore—' 'If it is Sister Moore, would I have Hugh's ring?' laughed Constance. 'Then it's Anthony, and I'm not hurt there, either. I was put in my place very swiftly by the Corporation boss, which was rather a relief, actually, though he would have been a scoop, but still' ... a shrug ... 'a boss.' 'He had already given you a ring.' 'Oh, no, money, which I spent on a ring. A big difference. Oh, Consie, tell me before I die of curiosity.' There was no need to keep it secret from Yolande, and indeed it might prove beneficial. Yolande had a very down-to-earth attitude to things, she might come up with a solution. 'I told you about Joan and Barry,' she began. 'It's not his ring? Barry's?' 'Yes.' 'Men are the last word,' burst out Yolande, 'To give you her ring! Also, and I must say it, Consie, you—' 'Darling, it's still his wife's ring, but she threw it away. It all happened like this.' Constance told her. 'She needs to be spanked,' Yolande said when she had finished.

'I agree, but he's never home to do it. But apart from he-man methods, what else?' Yolande was thoughtful, rather enjoying her role of adviser, especially since she was enjoying nothing else. She did not enjoy the treatments she was undergoing, she did not enjoy hospital, she did not enjoy the daily visits of her mother, and she did not enjoy Sister Moore. Leaving Yolande still preoccupied with the case, Constance went down the clinic corridor and almost bumped into the Sister. No taller than Constance, and smaller still just now under a load of linen, she looked so wholesome and practical and durable, qualities Yolande did not admire, that Constance wondered why the girl was so touchy about her. But it would be Hugh, of course. 'Been to see our patient?' smiled Cressida Moore. 'Is she still?' 'Yes, which is good news for Corporation health. But we expect another arrival fairly soon, though she'll be good news, too.' 'Our mother-to-be?' 'Our first Corporation baby. Got time for a cuppa? Wait till I dump these sheets.' The two girls drank coffee in the little office. 'I really wanted to talk about Yolande,' Cressida Moore said. 'You're giving her all the aids, therapy, massage, the rest.' 'Yes, and in spite of a reluctant recipient they must help, I think, but they will, of course, never make her walk.'

'Doctor Hugh has told you there's no medical reason why she shouldn't walk?' Constance asked. 'He has, but, just as he does, I know it doesn't end at that.' 'You are kind.' Not like someone else, Constance could have added. 'I suppose,' she said aloud, 'a psychiatrist could tell us.' 'Tell us, but not do the cure for us. Constance, somewhere someone can. I feel sure of that. I was wondering if you knew.' 'No. As a matter of fact I know little of Yolande at all. We worked together previously for a Guy France,' 'The dress designer?' 'You've heard of him?' 'Yes.' 'Then Guy certainly must have progressed. No one knew him much in our days. Oh, he had a show here and there, but only a small one. It was because of its handy size that Mr. Vine had us up here. To transport too many girls and too many wardrobes can defeat a goal.' 'So you worked for Guy France,' said Cressida with interest. 'So you've heard of him,' said Constance also with interest. 'I should say many people have now,' Cressida nodded, 'I should say he has his first firm foothold on the ladder of success. Oh, he has a long way to go, but he's young.' The Sister looked thoughtfully again at Constance. Constance broke her introspection with a brisk: 'Well, if you fly a psychiatrist up, perhaps he could look at Joan too.'

'Yes, I've heard about her. But not only Joan, surely, what about her husband?' 'Unlike you, I'm only to concern myself with women. Which prompts me to start again now. I've loitered too long. Thanks for the coffee, Sister.' 'Cressida. I call you Constance.' The two girls exchanged smiles, and Constance went back to the hotel. She had left her car in the courtyard and was surprised to see Joan Grant standing beside it. The girl was peering through the window at the controls. 'Interested, Joan?' Constance came up quietly, very interested herself. Her father once had told her that everyone is interested in something. It could take ages to discover what, but it was very rare to find a person who had no interest at all. Cars seemed an unlikely interest for a young woman, though Mattie had been car-minded, she recalled. She came nearer. 'It's an automatic. Do you drive yourself?' 'Oh, yes, I can drive.' 'Previously I'd only driven manuals, but now I'm a fan of autos. It's nice to have a car to do your thinking for you.' 'Yes... yes, I'm sure it must be.' Constance drew a deep breath. 'It's my car ... I mean it's been allotted to me.' 'Yes, I've seen you in it.'

Another deep breath. 'Perhaps you'd like a run in it, see the difference in autos from manuals?' A pause ..Constance now holding her breath. Then: 'Yes. Yes, please, I would.' 'Now?' 'If it would suit you.' If it would suit her! Constance opened the door for the girl, got behind the driver's seat, then they started down Corporation road towards outer C.C. where there were no cars, no one to watch. No one to spy, Joan would undoubtedly be thinking. As a matter of fact Constance was thinking it, too. She wanted no spies just now. For she intended showing Joan the controls.

Joan was amazingly quick, much quicker than she had been herself, Constance thought, and she recalled feeling very proud of her performance. Her father had been right, everyone was interested in something, and by good fortune she had discovered this interest of Joan's. If Constance had not felt so thrilled over the discovery, over the fact that she had broken the ice at last, she would have looked deeper at Joan's sudden thaw, would have noted as well as Joan's dexterity with the knobs and the buttons, a trembling urgency there. Yet ... as she was to think afterwards ... she would still have dismissed it as a natural nervousness, a desire to show Constance that she was good in this one thing at least. She was so good that Constance let her take over, but she had the good sense to put her back in the passenger's seat before they returned to Corporation City.

'Thank you, Miss Searle.' 'It was a pleasure, Joan, you did wonderfully. Keep it up and you'll be picking up Barry of an afternoon.' That was putting her neck out, and Constance waited for her rebuff. But none came, Joan said: 'I'd need more practice.' 'You're having it, dear. Tomorrow? Around ten?' 'Yes. Thank you very much.' They had seen no one, so there were no comments. Although Constance had a clear conscience over the matter, she still was glad she was not called upon to explain it all. She dined with Yolande's mother, who was speaking of going home. 'After all, I have other daughters.' 'Yes, Mrs Lawford, it's been good of you to spend this long.' 'That Sister Moore had me in for afternoon tea. A very efficient person, I'm sure, but she's wasting her time on Yolande.' 'Well, the massage and exercise won't do any harm.' 'I really meant trying to find out more about her. There's nothing to find out about Yolande. She is what she is.' 'A beautiful girl.' 'It hasn't got her much.' 'Mrs. Lawford,' Constance dared, 'you, I believe, didn't have much.'

'I had nothing. I married my husband in the belief that he had prospects ... my parents brought me up to value a good position.' 'As you brought up your children,' 'Yes. Then Edward died, and the prospects, if there were any, too. It's always been a lesson to me, a lesson to pass on to my girls.' 'Yes, Mrs. Lawford.' The same as the last time, Constance felt she could not bear any more. She took Joan out the next day ... and the next. After Mrs. Lawford, Joan's quiet, or at the most her small conversation, was bliss to Constance. They went along the various tracks. They circled the new lagoon. They drove out to the artesian pool. 'Where does this road go, Miss Searle?' Joan asked on one occasion when they were traversing a major C.C. outlet. 'Eventually to the Bitumen, or the main Territory road, or, correctly, the Stuart Highway, Joan. Actually I've been told that ours here is the only subsidiary sealed track. The C.C. took over that expense.' 'And once you're on the Highway?' 'Right up to Darwin, right down ... in time ... to Adelaide. With' ... a laugh ... 'many kilometres between.' 'Could a driver miss the Highway?' Joan asked. 'Goodness, no, it would be the only road to take.' 'Could you get lost on it?'

'It would be very unlikely. Tourist coaches run quite frequently these days, and then, of course, there are the road-trains.' 'Road-trains?' queried Joan. 'Bulk carriers with Diesel engines and trailers snaking behind. It's not an isolated way any longer. Now, would you like to reverse again?' 'I'd sooner go forward,' said Joan, then she bit her lip and amended, 'but I should conquer the other as well' She applied herself assiduously, and Constance praised her. On the way back she told the girl that tomorrow she had a full day with the women. 'Cooking ... yoga ... you should join, Joan.' 'Yes. I will soon. So you won't be taking the car?' 'No, dear.' It was on the tip of Constance's tongue to tell the girl that she could, but she thought a second time about it. Joan came with her to the hotel, which was a big improvement generally she scuttled away the moment they reached the bungalow. 'You leave the car in the courtyard?' 'Yes, and Jim takes over when he considers it needs gas or oil or a tune-up, which it doesn't just yet, I think. It's wonderful to have your car attended to and not have to ask.' 'I suppose so. You'd just look out of your window and say: "No car today, Jim must have it in dock." ' 'Exactly.; Life is very uncomplicated at Corporation City. You'll find that out yourself one day.' Joan nodded, said thank you once more, and went off.

When Constance went to the window the next morning she had to smile. The very thing she had told Joan about the car's welfare had happened. Jim had taken the Holden for a check-up — very opportune. She didn't need it today. It was still not there at noon, which meant something more than oil and gas, and Constance wondered a little uneasily if she had done something she shouldn't do to Anthony's car ... worse still, for her, if she had sat by while Joan did it. She had plenty to see to, but after lunch she strolled down to the garages to hear the bad news from Jim. If she had known what lay ahead she would have run, not strolled. Looking around the large shed she saw a number of cars, Lorelei included, and certainly appearing almost her old self again, thanks to Jim, but no second Holden.; She went to Jim's office and he looked up rather anxiously and asked: 'Anything wrong, Miss Searle? I thought the car was running particularly well.' 'It is, I mean it was... I mean ... Jim, isn't it here?' 'Why, no.' 'You mean you didn't remove it from where I always leave it?' 'No need to, it wasn't ready for a check and you hadn't complained.' 'No. I hadn't complained.' Constance stood dead quiet for several minutes, then she turned and ran out of the garage. She ran down to the row of bungalows ... to one bungalow. She knocked on the door. But she was wretchedly aware that she was

knocking for nothing, that Joan was not there, just as the car had not been there either, not in the courtyard, not in the garage. Both Joan and the car were gone. They had already been gone for half a day.

CHAPTER EIGHT CONSTANCE retreated silently from the bungalow before Mrs. Jensen, seeing her, came out of her own villa to report the latest on the couple next door. She walked back to the hotel as casually and unobtrusively as she could, but every step was a torment when she wanted to race instead. Conversely, her mind raced so fast she felt her head would burst. Although an island, later a Sydney, girl, she had a deep respect for the Australian outback. She knew one did not, simply did not, treat it lightly. She knew the first thing to do was to find Anthony Vine and report what had happened. She squared her shoulders and went through the hotel's rotating doors. She asked formally for Mr. Vine at the desk; there was a pretty unmarried - girl receptionist there now, for the Corporation boss had considered the bachelors as well with his office assistants, his hotel employees and his hospital staff. 'Mr. Vine has just left for Mount Diamond, Miss Searle' ... Mount Diamond was a subsidiary of C.C. and some hundred miles away and Corporation travelled there by helicopters ,.. 'as have most of the bosses.' 'Thank you, Helen. I'll see him later.' Constance turned away feeling dismayed but relieved at the same time. She would find someone else. She hurried down to the different offices she had come to know by now, Research, Physics, Field Stations, Control, Chemistry, Mineralogy, but it could have been a boarding school during the long vacation, for apart from a junior clerk or two and several janitors, there was literally nobody.

She decided on the clinic. Hugh would advise her what he would do under the circumstances. But when she got there both Hugh and Sister Moore were away, and Yolande, though she had no intention of asking her, was asleep. She came back to the hotel but did not go in this time, instead she went round to the garages again, something she should have done before, she reproved herself; Jim would have come up with a sensible answer. But Jim, too, was now away. Probably he had been taken to Mount Diamond as well to drive the heads of the departments to the field. She looked around desperately. There seemed literally nobody left but Mrs.: Lawford and she was the last one Constance would confide in. The talk would only harp back to the importance of advantageous matrimony, she thought wryly, then Barry's and Joan's case be dealt with, but only as regarded monetary gain, never as to whether one of the two was missing. Good heavens, and Constance clapped her hand over her mouth, she had completely forgotten to tell Barry! She hurried down to the section where he worked, but, and she might have known it, today the section was closed. Probably he was at Mount Diamond as well. Probably it was an entire Corporation effort. She came back to the garage. There was nothing else for it but to go after Joan herself. After all, the girl was only some hours in front. But why was she thinking like that? Joan would simply be out on that empty road they both favoured, reversing, parking, stopping and starting. She had admitted she would like to conquer all the aspects of driving. Constance looked around the large shed, crossed to Jim's office in the hope that he had only left temporarily. Came back again.

There was a selection of cars to choose from if she decided to take one, but all unfamiliar makes. Also ... looking wistfully at Lorelei... all belonging to him, to the Corporation boss. Lorelei was hers. She crossed to her Mini and peered inside. Jim had certainly made a good job of the poor drowned thing; Lorelei looked as good as she ever had looked. She was evidently functioning, too, for she was filled with petrol. Jim must have been trying her out. Constance opened the door and sat behind the wheel. There was no key in the ignition, but like many old and familiar cars, Lorelei was not averse to gentle persuasion by means of a bobby pin. Mattie had taught Constance that emergency procedure, and Constance tried it now. Almost at once the engine sparked. After that Constance played it by ear. She left the garage by the back door, left C.C. by the back roads. She set off first of all for the artesian pool, she and Joan had gone several times to the pool. It was quite possible Joan had taken the Holden there this morning, had enjoyed a hot swim, then, relaxed by the balmy water and the soaking sun, slipped off to sleep. It was ten miles out to the pool during which Lorelei did not falter one inch.- But any satisfaction Constance might have received from that performance disappeared when she got out of the Mini to find no Holden. She looked behind thickets of trees in case Joan had parked there for greater privacy, she even walked to where the bore track petered out behind an outcrop of tall rocks ... silica? ... but there was no car and no girl. It was obvious that Joan had not come here. Biting her lip in disappointment, Constance went back to Lorelei. She decided to try the strip they usually practised on, but she was not optimistic. If Joan had merely come to practise, she would have finished hours ago and returned to Corporation.

She reached the strip and ran up and down, a foolish procedure really, since it had no more bend in it than the Unbent Highway and you could see ad infinitum. At last, stopping Lorelei, Constance just sat at the wheel and thought: Where is that girl? But in her heart she knew ... though still would not face up to it. Joan had simply run away - no, driven away, and all that had preceded this, the humble interest in the Holden, the eagerness to learn its controls, the gratefulness to Constance for teaching her, the casual .-.. but cunning ... questions as to where the C.C. road led, then where the Territory Highway went, had had only one thing in view: Joan's escape. Turning the car, Constance left their practice strip and got back on the main Corporation road again. Then she turned west. West led to the Territory Highway, the Stuart Highway, admittedly a long way off, but, and she felt quite certain of it, the way Joan would take. To Darwin, to Adelaide, it did not matter so long as it was not Corporation City. She knew she had no possible hope of overtaking Joan, but at least it was better than going back to a near-empty town, to nothing at all. And as it happened, the driving did her good, cleared her brain. Nothing can happen to Joan, she told herself, for once she's on that big Commonwealth road if she runs into trouble, there are mail cars, tourist buses, road-trains in abundance to help her. At least she'll be safe. She could not have said how long she would have followed that narrow ribbon of Corporation bitumen, probably until she felt the last of the tension in her relaxing, had she not seen the tissue.

A paper tissue. The kind you pull out of boxes ... in Constance's case the kind you generally keep in the glove compartment of your cars This tissue stood out because here was the practically untrodden, seldom visited 'inside', the remote 'centre', and in such places you do not find discarded facial tissues or paper hankies. It also stood out because it was mauve. 'Mauve tissues,' she remembered Joan saying once of the box. The tissue was not on the bitumen, it was some twenty yards up along a fork from the Corporation road, Constance, who had driven past the fork, reversed back, then turned slowly into the fork. She drove as deliberately as Lorelei permitted her, looking continually from left to right. She wished she had a black tracker with her to mark some leaf from a tree that had been brushed aside, or some displaced pebble. But ... coming to a damp area ... even a black tracker was not needed to note that recent wheel pattern. Joan certainly had come along here. The tread of the car was left clearly in some sticky clay; it was definitely the Holden's because she particularly remembered the design. Constance went on. She went much further than she had anticipated and now cared about,; If Joan had taken the wrong track by mistake (though how could the girl do that when one surface was earth and the other bitumen?) she should have discovered it before now. She looked at her watch. It was still early, but it would need to be; she had not found Joan yet, and she must be miles now from C.C. She drove on for another twenty minutes. Ten minutes more, she told herself, and she must turn back and get help. Nine of the final minutes went, and she was leaning out of the car looking for a likely turnable, for the track was barely wide enough

even for the Mini, so how had the Holden got through? when two things happened. The first was the unpleasant discovery, as her glance flicked past the Mini's control panel, that she was out of petrol, that in her absorption she had neither watched the gauge nor allowed for a return, and the second was the sudden glimpse of something through the trees. Forgetting her own fuel dilemma, she braked and got out and ran to the end of a shallow bank. At the bottom of the bank, entangled in shrubs, actually fastened round a small tree, was the Holden. She slid down the slope beyond the bank calling 'Joan ... Joan!' She put everything into her cry. When Joan climbed up from wherever she had found herself, Constance burst into tears. When at last she scrubbed the tears away she saw that Joan was crying as well. They clung together for a long minute, then Constance asked: 'First of all, are you hurt?' 'Not a scratch, but I'm afraid the car—' 'Yes,' said Constance grimly, 'I'm afraid, too. Can you bring yourself to tell me what happened?' 'Something brushed across the road s.. it could have been a 'roo ... but instead of braking, I swerved. Swerved down here.' Joan shivered. Constance waited for a few moments. 'Joan, why were you on this road?' she asked. The girl looked miserably away, then looked unwillingly back. 'You must know that already, you must guess that I was running away, or trying to run away.' 'On a rough track to nowhere? Why not the Corporation bitumen?'

Joan looked at her stupidly now. 'Aren't I on the road? I didn't know. I was driving fast and I mustn't have seen properly. I - I know I was crying. I remember I'd taken out one of your tissues.' 'Yes, and because of it I'm here now. But didn't the state of the road alert you?' 'I did think it wasn't as smooth as before, that is when I did any thinking. I was just leaving everything, Constance, or that's what I hoped, I didn't spend much time on any other thoughts.' 'You're not practical, Joan,' sighed Constance, 'or you would have planned your escape much better.' 'I did the car part all right,' Joan defended. 'But once you actually got the car you went all wrong. To come out on this improbable track!' She was silent a moment. A dismaying ... no, frightening ... thing had just occurred to her. If she had found it an improbable way, wouldn't others? Wouldn't C.C.? If they saw the tissue, and she doubted it, they would not put the same significance on it as she had. Men wouldn't. They would never dream that an escaping girl, and a girl pursuing her, would be anywhere else than on bitumen. Certainly never wrecked below an overgrown, barely discernible path. And she herself could not drive back to tell them. She had not watched the fuel gauge, so she was impractical as well. She glanced at her watch and the time frightened her. Another hour and the first shadows would begin. How far to walk to the fork? she wondered; at least cars sometimes passed there, only occasionally, but they did come and go, but out here they would never venture. She looked at some broken growth across the track, broken by Joan, and felt that prior to now there had been no attempt to drive here for years.

'Joan,' she said, 'we'll have to start walking to where you left the bitumen.' 'I couldn't, Constance, I couldn't. I'm not hurt, but I still couldn't. I feel so weak, and my legs have gone to jelly. Also I think I'm going to be sick.' 'Then, darling, I must go.' 'No. No! Constance, don't leave me. I'm one of those people who grow hysterical alone in the bush. I think I was almost that way before you came. I think it might have been that and not any 'TOO that sent me down the bank.' 'A Pan person,' nodded Constance more to herself. 'Pan who began all panic.' She did not feel the same herself, but she knew that such fear could be a very real thing. 'Well, you know what the alternative is,' she sighed. 'Stay here,' nodded Joan. 'Stay here all night.' Joan shuddered, but she said: 'I'll get through it - with you.' 'Then we'd better get prepared now, you know how quickly it gets dark. Any rugs, by any chance?' 'Yes.' Joan slid into the tortured Holden and brought out a bundle. 'Also food.' She produced quite a supply. 'You were certainly practical in this, anyway,' commended Constance.

'I thought I might have to camp on the Territory Highway. You see' … hesitantly ... 'I have no money.' 'No money? But surely Barry—' Joan lifted her chin, proud even in her humility. 'I wouldn't take his money,' she said. 'But how have you been living all the time? How have you existed since you arrived at Corporation?' 'I had a little of my own, and I didn't need anything.' 'You needed to eat.' Constance wished Mrs. Jensen had been even more curious and had reported that young Mrs. Grant never appeared to buy anything at the store. 'I had some biscuits,' said Joan. 'Biscuits?' echoed Constance. 'They were all I wanted. I was never hungry. But I did bring more things today. I felt that doing all the driving I would need my strength.' Constance said: 'Thank heaven at least for that!' She dropped the subject for a while and began busying herself on the blankets, then on the seats that she and Joan prised out of the car. But as she pulled and forced, she noted that Joan, though a bigger girl, did not appear to have as much strength. Biscuits, she despaired. How long had she been starving herself like this? It took them a long time to fix things, but eventually they had made themselves as cosy and secure a refuge as they could hope to. It could turn cold, Constance knew, but on the other hand the temperature

could remain as velvety warm as the day. She suggested they ate at once while they could still read any labels, then put something aside for night nibbles. 'Because,' she warned, 'it's going to be a very long time to daybreak.' They sat side by side chewing the sausage and crisp- bread Joan had brought, eating the apples. Joan ate hungrily after her diet of biscuits, and Constance smiled to herself. At least my presence has done that to her, she thought. Then, the way it always happened up here, all at once it was night. Instant night. No preparatory lilac blur. It would be pitch black for an hour, Constance knew, and then the stars would prick out. It probably would be dead quiet, too, for animals prefer a little light for their foraging. They sat silent for the entire hour. Obviously Joan was absorbed in her escape failure, and Constance felt it better not to delve for any details yet. But she did intend delving eventually. Joan could not go entirely scot free. At last the corner of a moon came out of a nest of pillowy cloud. Somewhere among the rocks there was the familiar skippety-hoppity of a 'roo. Something slithered through the undergrowth, a lizard, or goanna, perhaps. A wood pigeon called his 'Move- over-dear', and a pheasant cried his 'Puss-puss'. 'Constance—' Joan said. 'Yes, Joan?' 'It's rather beautiful really. Not scarey as I thought. I wish—' 'Yes?'

'I wish .. . well, I wish it was different.' 'You and Barry?' Constance said intuitively. 'Yes.' 'Then why aren't you different?' 'How can I be? I mean, he doesn't want me.' 'Did he say so?' 'Yes.' 'Had you said something to him first?' 'I'd said the same. That I didn't want him. You see - you see we didn't know each other. Not at all.' 'When you married, you mean?' 'That's right.' 'Yet you still went on with it?' 'Yes.' 'But why, Joan, why? 'Because Barry's Linda married my Michael. Yes, they did, Constance. One week after they met they—' 'I see.' Constance did see now. She was silent a moment. 'So you did it to get back at them?' 'Yes.'

'As a kind of revenge?' 'Yes. But it didn't work like that. They really loved each other while we - well, we were stuck with each other. Now do you understand?' 'Yes, Joan,' Constance said, but not so concerned with understanding now as she was concerned with Joan. For Joan's hand in hers was ice cold and she could feel the girl shaking. Move-over-dear, the pigeon called again, and Constance took the advice and encased the unhappy young wife in her arms. She stayed like that all night, stiff and cold herself, for unfortunately it turned out a chilly night, but warm, she hoped desperately, for Joan. She had a hollow feeling that Joan was on the verge of something that could be serious. She was still holding Joan when Anthony Vine and his party found them the next morning. He stood looking a long hard moment at them, then he called over his shoulder: 'Grant!' 'Yes, sir?' 'Take over now. She's your wife. And listen to me, son: take over better than you've been doing or you'll have no wife at all.' The young man, little more than a boy as Joan was little more than a girl, looked down at the two, then caught his lower lip with his teeth. She was such a child, such a helpless child, such a— He did not even see Constance. But Anthony Vine saw her, and the effect on him was little short of inflammatory. All the same, without approaching and touching her, and he would never know how he refrained, he directed his men to get her into his car. He did not speak all the way back, he could not

trust himself to, and Constance did not speak until the jeep pulled up behind Barry's with Joan in it at the clinic. 'Why are we here, too?' Constance asked. 'Because you're going to hospital as well.' 'I'm not,' she protested. 'You are.' 'For what?' she asked. 'I don't know. I leave that to Hugh, but at least I'll know where you damn well are. Now shut up and let me carry you in, or by heaven the doctor will have something definite to cure!' He took her up in his arms and when they reached the ward he put her down so forcefully on the cot that even Sister Moore's eyes widened. But Constance shut her own eyes . -.-. and shut him out. She heard him talking to Cressida, heard him speak to Yolande at the other side of the ward, say something to Barry who must be with Joan. She kept her eyes shut until he left, and then, because she had stayed awake all night to support Joan, her eyes stayed shut on their own accord, and she slept.

CHAPTER NINE CONSTANCE was roused by the sound of a trolley being wheeled somewhere, the soft clatter of china and ring of cutlery. A savoury smell reached her, reminding her that her last meal had been cold sausage, crispbread and apples. She opened her eyes. It took a few seconds for her to recall everything, to stop wondering where she was and remember instead her unceremonious arrival here earlier in the day ... Anthony Vine's rather brutal depositing of her on the clinic cot. 'I must have slept,' she said a little stupidly. 'For hours and hours,' complained a petulant voice, and Constance focussed on Yolande sitting up in her bed on the left. 'I've been aching to hear everything, and every time the Gorgon went out I'd cough or ho- hum to wake you up.' 'She isn't,' said Constance, still semi-drowsy. 'Cressida? No, she's no Gorgon, really, but she can be strict. For heaven's sake don't fall asleep on me again, Consie, I've simply got to know.' 'The thought of food will keep me alert. Do you always get that much for morning tea?' 'It's dinner, silly, and since you chose to remain unconscious, a rather late one. We're now into the afternoon. Here's Nurse now. Nurse, another meal, and a big one, Miss Searle is starved.' Yolande was considerate enough to let Constance get through her broth, but after that she could not contain herself. 'Tell me the story,' she begged. 'You don't know how dull it gets here, hospitals are so cloistered.'

'Then you should go back to the hotel, Yolande, you could still come to the clinic for your treatments.' 'Not until dear Mamma departs. Now tell me, Constance.' But Constance hesitated. There was a screen to her right and behind the screen was probably Joan, and the story had everything to do with Joan. Yolande, propped up now in deep intrigue, saw the direction of her glance, and advised: 'She's gone.' 'Gone?' 'To a private room. She seemed in a bad way.' 'She was in a bad way out there,' nodded Constance, remembering the girl's ice-cold hands last night, her shaking body. She felt worried. 'She's going to be all right, though,' said Yolande, 'the Gorgon just felt we would chatter when you woke up and disturb her. All right, Constance, chatter.' Constance told her the story from beginning to end, and was a little aggrieved when she finished to be scorned instead of praised. 'What you should have done right in the start was to let her go her own un-sweet way, the silly idiot.' 'Yolande, she's a child.' 'But a married child.' 'What do you mean?' 'Well, doesn't she realize that that entails something?'

It was so unlike Yolande, or what she expected of Yolande, that Constance looked questioningly at her. 'Oh, yes,' Yolande nodded calmly, 'I believe in forever and ever and happy ever after ... once you get the man.' She finished on her usual bitter note. 'You talking like that!' laughed Constance, trying to divert the bitterness, 'you who used to step out on the catwalk and have every male eye on you.' 'But not one of the males with view to mat. This Joan needs some straight talking, and when she comes back here again she'll get it. But talking of straight talking, Consie, it looks like your turn. Here comes the big boss.' Anthony Vine was very polite, however, very considerate.; The ideal visitor. But any idea Constance might have had that she was escaping scot free was spiked by his parting shot. 'Sister informs me that you're hale and hearty again, Miss Searle, and ready to leave at any moment. After you're back at the hotel please to see me in my office.' 'Yes, sir,' Constance said deliberately, sending Yolande's eyes widening in admiration at her daring, but Anthony Vine's eyes narrowing in something else. Sister Moore came in after he had gone and told Constance that she could get up when she felt like it. 'I don't think she feels like it,' giggled Yolande, but Constance said: 'If it has to be, it has to be,' and acted on that.

Once at the hotel, though, she took her time in going down to the office, even though she knew that Anthony Vine was waiting for her. The receptionist had called: 'Glad to have you back, Miss Searle, A.V. says to tell you he's ready for you now.' Constance nodded but still went upstairs first. She stood at her window a long time. Then she went slowly up and down the corridor thinking that if Yolande's mother descended on her, this time she would give her her full attention and time. But no one came. No one delayed her. At last she gave up and went unwillingly down to the sanctum on the ground floor. His first words after she had knocked and entered gave her a foretaste of what was to come. 'You've taken your time, Miss Searle/ 'Yes, s— Yes, Mr. Vine.' 'That's better. I've had about everything else from you, so I won't take impertinence as well.' 'Impertinence?' she queried. 'Don't tell me that "sir" in the clinic ward just now was meant respectfully?' 'It was meant as you took it.' 'I took it as a deliberate rudeness, then. However, that's not what I want to bawl you out for now.' 'Bawl?' said Constance.

'I didn't ask you here to say sweet nothings.' 'You say sweet nothings!' 'Well, heavens to Betsy, I haven't brought you here to applaud you.' He waited a moment. 'Sit down, please.' Constance sat. 'When Jim sought me out at Mount Diamond and told me a peculiar story about you coming into the garage and then running out again, I decided to cut short the field day and come back to Corporation,' he said bluntly. 'I'm just telling you my side first before I hear yours.' A pause. 'Then reprimand you.' 'Reprimand?' 'Well, penalize, and don't make a question of that, too, you must know you have to be penalized.' 'You mean the car?' 'The car that was,' he confirmed grimly, 'the Holden that is now a complete wipe-off.' 'Is it?' she asked. 'Jim might be a treasure, but he's not a magician.' 'He fixed Lorelei,' Constance defended. 'Lorelei was drowned, not wrapped round a tree, Miss Searle. You can resuscitate, but you can't build a broken body, and that's what the Holden has. She's beyond repair.' 'I'm sorry.'

'It's a bit late, isn't it?' he sneered. 'I didn't actually do the deed,' she protested. 'No, but it was because of you that it was done. You fool, why didn't you tell me first what you were intending?' 'You mean tell you that I was allowing Joan to drive the Holden? I thought you would forbid it, and I felt it was important that she did this thing, I felt it was the first issue on which Joan and I had met.' 'Well, you know differently now, don't you?' 'No.' Constance's small firm chin went up. 'We did meet, and that, to me, was a very satisfactory thing,' 'Even though you might have killed the girl, killed yourself in the process?' 'You're being over-imaginative now, Mr. Vine, I'll agree that Joan might have done herself great harm, might have wrecked herself as well as the car, but I was not in peril.' 'Not in peril? You young idiot! You city slickers ... island slicker in your case, isn't it? ... make me sick. You're still, even in this latter end of the twentieth century, in a near-primitive world. You must have read, surely, that down here we're perhaps the last outpost, yet you leave a prescribed road to heaven knows where and happily expect to be rescued.' 'I was not happy, far from it, and I hardly dared expect rescue. I was terribly glad when rescue came, of course, but I never expected nor banked on it. Did a helicopter spot us?' 'No, and it never would have, you were in a pocket, as it were.'

'Then was it the tissue?' she asked. 'What, Miss Searle?' 'I followed a mauve tissue,' Constance explained. There was silence for a while, and all the time he looked at her closely, and, if she had looked back at him, troublously. 'Are you all right, Constance?' His unexpected use of her name once again sent her glance darting at him. 'Yes. Why?' 'It doesn't matter,' he shrugged. 'I simply turned off at the fork because I had a feeling.' 'The same as you did that first afternoon when I drowned Lorelei?' 'Yes, you could say that. You could say we were - in tune.' 'No,' Constance returned, 'I couldn't say that, Mr. Vine.' There was a long silence now in the room. It grew ... and grew ... until unexpectedly, obviously unplanned, he put his elbows on his desk and his face on his hands. He looked unswervingly at Constance. 'What's happened?' he asked. 'Happened?' 'It was not like this before. Constance, it was not like this. What has happened to us?'

She could not believe he did not know; he must know. He must be taunting her. She sat silent. 'What's happened to you?' He altered his question. 'I'm the same. Only - only Yolande isn't, is she?' Constance's voice broke. 'Yolande doesn't come into this.' 'Doesn't come into it?' She stared at him in disgust. 'She doesn't and she never has. Does that enlighten you?' 'No.' 'Then I'll tell you. I didn't before because ... well, even an outback like me has some chivalry.' Constance said nothing. 'I didn't expect to find Yolande here when I returned from that recruiting drive in Sydney,' he said harshly. 'But you had issued an invitation.' 'I had said the hotel was at my guests' disposal.' 'Well, Yolande took you up on that.' And on another invitation, a more personal one, had he forgotten, or did he choose ... afterwards ... to forget? 'But you didn't stay on,' he reminded her, 'yet it was you I meant, Constance.'

Her first reaction was such a rush of joy that Constance found she could barely remain as she was, sitting formally in his office, opposite to him as he sat at his desk. Then reality restrained her. It was easy to say these things now, now that Yolande no longerShe saw that he was looking at her closely, trying to read her expression. She closed herself up from him. He waited a moment, then he took his own glance away. Presently he said crisply: 'The money for the Holden will be taken out of your pay envelope each week. Fair enough?' 'Fair,' she agreed, 'but it won't be taken out of my pay envelope here. Oh, I'll be settling my debt, don't worry. What I meant was I'll be settling it from somewhere else. I'm resigning as from now, Mr. Vine. I can return to the typing pool, I'm sure they'll place me, and I'll post up remittances from Sydney.' 'You'll do nothing of the sort,' he answered, 'you'll work out your debt where you incurred your debt.' 'You can't make me, there's nothing to stop me. I signed along no dotted line.' 'There is Yolande to stop you, and having been so righteous with me over Yolande I hardly think you can turn your back on her yourself.' 'Perhaps she doesn't need me any more - you did say once that that would be typical of Yolande.' 'Admitted, but until that occurs we'll go on as we're going now.' 'If I say,' she dared. 'Oh, no.' He had leaned right across the desk and suddenly taken up her hand. His grasp was like iron. The Salvation Jane blue eyes in the

leather brown skin were pinpoints of angry light .. s how had she ever thought of this man as kindly? 'Oh, no, Miss Searle, as I say.' 'And why?' she flung at him. 'Because we're still primitive, still an outpost, ten miles away from this unreal city I've built life is still the same as it was millions of years ago.' A pause. 'Man is the same.' 'And woman?' she asked tauntingly. 'Woman is the same, meaning where man goes and where man is, she goes and she is.' 'You are barbarian!' she said crossly. 'Just don't try me, that's all.' He waited a moment. 'And that's enough for now. Next week the hotel is opening its doors for tourists. Yes, that's true. It's surprising how many city people want to come here and see what's being found, then watch what's being done with the findings, and all from the comfort of a luxury hotel. I'll need you as a kind of persona grata.' 'You have a receptionist already,' she objected. 'This's a different category.' 'I haven't been trained,' Constance persisted. 'I'm aware of that, believe me I'm very aware of all your shortcomings. However, you are the only one available.' Constance had got to her feet, moved towards the door. 'The only one available now,' she said clearly, but she did not move out of the room quick enough.

He had crossed over in a few rapid steps, and he wheeled her around. For a moment she thought he was going to shake her ... or even strike her,.. or— Then he stepped back. 'Yes. Now.' he said coolly. 'After all, though a wheelchair inspires pity it scarcely inspires a holiday spirit, does it? Good morning, Miss Righteous.' He opened the door for her to leave, then shut it sharply when she went.; Numbed, Constance went through the tasks she had set herself, the calling in at the different classes to see how they were functioning, stopping for a cup of tea and a chat at a bungalow, helping to roll someone's hair and agreeing that it would be good when the beauty salon in the hotel was completed and a hairdresser ensconced. She even made a fourth at tennis and played a shocking game. 'You're tired, poor dear,' one of the women said, 'we've all heard what a wonderful job you did with Joan. How is she now?' 'I'm on my way to find out.' Constance mopped a hot brow and went down to the clinic. Joan was still in the private ward, and Cressida Moore beckoned Constance into her office before she allowed her in. 'That girl was in a much worse way than she should have been after only one night in the bush.' Constance agreed, and told the Sister the story. 'I guessed so. She simply hasn't been eating. Well, she'll eat now even if we have to do it intravenously.'

But when Constance was allowed to see Joan she could tell there would be no need for any compulsion. Joan was attacking a big plate of goodies with relish. Constance had coffee with her, then when they were done and the tray taken away, Joan said shyly: 'Barry's been here.' 'That's nice.' There was a pause. Then Joan said, and there was a little note of pleased surprise in her voice: 'Yes, it was. 'He - he is nice.' 'I think so, Joan.' 'We didn't know each other at all, you know. I told you that, didn't I?' 'Yes, dear.' 'It was a marriage on the rebound for both of us. We went blindly into it not even looking at each other. I know, anyhow, I never looked at him. Then Barry came straight up here, and I followed a few, weeks after.' 'And he wasn't there to meet you ?' 'No, but I didn't want him to be. All the way up I kept thinking perhaps we could have an annulment.' The girl looked up frankly at Constance. 'I mean, we never ...' She flushed. 'We never have ... You know what I mean,' 'Yes, Joan. But all that is what you were thinking when you weren't looking at each other. Joan, what are you thinking now that you are looking, and have looked?'

Joan's eyes were down. 'I don't know,' she said, 'it's like meeting someone for the first time. But'... a small smile ... 'he's nice. But I don't know what he thinks of me.' Any further confidences were stopped by the sudden arrival of Cressida Moore. 'You're going back to the other ward,' she said to Joan, 'we want this private room for a VIP.' 'VIP?' both the girls asked. 'Yes,' announced' the Sister importantly. 'The first mother at Corporation City. Our baby has started. In years to come you'll be able to tell your children, Joan, that you had to vacate your bed for the first child in Corporation history.' 'My children—' said Joan, a little experimentally. After Joan had been wheeled back to Yolande's ward and Constance had talked with both girls for a while, Constance walked back to the hotel. As she passed the different offices she could not help but be aware of a different atmosphere in the air. It was always a cheerful enough atmosphere, but a cheerfulness through occupation and the satisfaction of doing a job well and being well rewarded for it, Constance had thought, not as it was now. Now the whole place was positively bursting with excitement and anticipation. 'I hear the baby's coming,' was called to Constance a score of times. And almost as if she knew the spotlight was ready and that people get tired if they have to wait too long, Constance Javes, daughter of Andrew and Sandra Javes, did not keep them too long.

Sister Moore came out and posted an announcement on the clinic door ... sex, weight, height. Name. Almost at once the happy report went from office to office, project to project, field to field, digging to digging. Mount Diamond sent in congratulations, but so did rival drills, miles out in the mulga, applause from Takeover, Savage Valley, Roaring Billy, United, Gin Street. 'I told you it would make history,' Sister said when Constance went down to the clinic. 'But why the name?' Constance still could not understand that. 'Sandra quite liked it, and if it had been a boy it was to be Anthony after Mr. Vine, so when it was a girl, she asked him what he thought.' 'He thought Constance!' Constance could not believe that. 'Well,' admitted Cressida, 'he did say that if she wanted a Corporation name, a sort of token name, as she had evidently wanted with Anthony, then it had better be Constance, since you were the first lady.' 'At the moment,' tacked on Constance. 'If you say so,' Cressida shrugged. 'Now do you or do you not want to see your namesake?' 'Of course I want to see her. We all do.' The baby was brought in, small waving fists and a pink rug and little else to be seen.

Joan nursed her carefully. Then Constance nursed her. Then Mrs. Lawford, who was visiting her daughter, nursed her. Then the Sister took her up again to bear her away. 'What about me?' Yolande called. Cressida Moore came back and put the little girl in Yolande's arms. Yolande put her own hand round the small curling one. Constance watched with pleasure, for Yolande and the baby made a lovely picture, then she half-turned at an odd kind of noise, a quiet little noise.: It was Mrs. Lawford, and she must have drawn in her breath and then let the breath out. She was her old brisk self, though, soon after. 'I'm leaving tomorrow,' she told Constance. 'We'll be sorry to see you go,' Constance said. She had dinner with Mrs. Lawford that night, and the woman was quieter than usual. 'You know, Miss Searle,' she said unexpectedly once, 'you can be wrong.' Constance, thinking she was speaking of Constance's recent misdeeds, for though all Corporation had applauded her, Mrs. Lawford had not added her praise, began to offer excuses, then stopped. Mrs. Lawford was not listening. She was intent on her own thoughts. Yolande's mother left the next morning, and Yolande promptly came back to the hotel.

'I would have, anyway,' she told Constance, 'with all this influx of tourists someone might have grabbed my suite. Bother, I've left my beauty case back in the ward. Fetch it for me, Consie, won't you?' Constance went down to the clinic, and because Joan now was in the room that Yolande had just left, she stopped for a few words with the girl. 'I'm going away, Constance,' Joan announced. 'Oh, no.;' Constance was disappointed. 'But' ... Joan smiled ... 'Barry is, too.' 'With you?' 'Of course,' Joan said proudly. 'Well, I'm terribly glad, darling, for both of you, though I did hope—' 'But,' broke in Joan, 'we're coming back.' 'Coming back?' 'We're only going on a honeymoon. Mr. Vine must have learned how it all was and he came and said he simply couldn't accept a married couple who hadn't had a honeymoon, that it was a Corporation rule.' She laughed. 'Anyway, he's arranged for this simply fabulous one, much more fabulous really than Linda's and Mike's.' Joan permitted a malicious little smile, but not very malicious. She finished: 'He's a wonderful, wonderful man.' 'Who, Barry?'

'Of course, but I was really meaning Anthony Vine.' Joan looked up at Constance. 'Don't you think?'

CHAPTER TEN 'DON'T you think?' Constance was glad in the days that followed that she didn't have time to think. That session in Anthony Vine's office had unsettled her more than she had thought possible. One moment it had been all she could do not to get up from her chair and go instinctively to the man ... the next she had withdrawn from him in dismay. Now, she thought, busying herself with visitors, I have no time for either thoughts. The enterprising tourist agency who had dreamed up Target: Information, as they had called it, had arranged for a three-day stay at Corporation City for each tour, and the tours had filled rapidly. Constance had literally not raised her head. She had enjoyed every moment of the first two. She had conducted the parties through the different projects as though she had been born in a world of mineralogy, she had walked around rock outcrop and used words like 'gossan', 'silica', 'serpentine belts', 'intrusives', 'indications' as though she was a geologist herself. She imagined how Anthony Vine would have given his crooked smile. However, the third group of the trio of tours had several opal-hungry members in it, and after much pressure from them, Constance agreed to ask the Corporation boss as to whether, how, when and where. 'Whether they can go to see the opal,' she elucidated, 'how they go, when, then most important of all where, or rather if there are any opal places around.' 'Sure there are fields,' he returned unenthusiastically, 'damn it.' 'Why?'

'That was unfair of me, I suppose, this is a free country, free for all, it's open for every trier, but opal miners are a different breed to us. Rightly or wrongly they consider the exploration leases the Mines Department are allotting us as squeezing them out. Unlike us the opal bloke is entirely on his own, he has no geologist to help him with 'signs' as we have with our rock. His dreams are his own dreams, not his boss's.' 'Dreams with dollar notes?' 'Exactly. I don't blame him. But opal is pure hazard from beginning to end, and it tends to make the man the same. We've had no trouble ourselves, but we're very careful not to tread on toes. Some projects I could mention have had gelignite shoved into expensive equipment.' 'From the opal fields?' 'Well, I can tell you it wasn't from the cattle fields, the pastoralists are friendly to us, we often find them water. Water might not be needed now, but it has been, and it will be again.' Constance nodded. 'I think you're trying to tell me that you want everything to go smoothly.' 'I'd prefer it not to go at all, I had hoped our visitors would be content with bauxite, magnesium, tin, the rest. However, if they are clamouring—' 'They are.' 'Then take them. How many will there be?' She told him, and he said: 'They should fit in the one plane load. It's only a half-hour run.' It was then arranged that they go the next morning.

This occasion proved the first time that Yolande was truly regretful. Abysmal would have been an even better word. 'Opals? Oh, Consie, I'd love to go!' 'I know you would, darling, but it would be out of the question. I'll have my hands full, Yolande. But I'll bring you back a piece, so don't despair.' 'A piece? I want ear-rings. A bracelet to match.' 'Yolande, these opals will be in the rough, not the finished article.' 'Well, a piece big enough for both, and lovely enough, too. Look, Consie, money will be no object.' She manoeuvred her wheelchair to a drawer and withdrew a bundle of notes that widened Constance's eyes. 'I want black opals,' Yolande continued, 'with fiery hearts.' 'Yolande, where on earth did you get so much money?' gasped Constance. 'Now where do you think? Don't be silly. Black opals, Consie, with fiery red hearts.' Most of the intending opal-lookers the next day seemed merely casual, curious trippers and little else. Constance was glad of that, she was still very aware of the Holden incident and did not wish to offend again by any more 'trouble'. She had to admit to herself that there were several on the plane she could have done without, but probably she was doing them an injustice. As Anthony Vine had said, it was a free land . s. free for all. It was only a short flip to the fields, though by road it would have taken hours. They would have been rough hours, estimated Constance, looking down from the plane on to a tortuous track, and possibly lost hours, for often the track disappeared altogether.

But it was all very lovely from the air. As with the rest of the inside, now that the wet was retreating, the old parched barrenness was taking over again. But with the parch came the glorious colours, colours no longer challenged by startling greens, the reds and violets and purples, the ochres and siennas, all spreading their splashy hues in brilliant abandon. The plane began to descend. They ran along gravel for a while, then stopped. They all poured out. There was nothing to mark any town save a water tank, but everyone had known beforehand that Thunder Gap ... that was its name ... lived underground. By invitation they went into the underground store. It proved cool and fairly comfortable, and offered a few groceries and drinks. The owner had not been lucky with opals, he said, so had turned to shopkeeping instead. He also ran the post-office and sold stones to visitors. The visitors, including Constance, grouped around and made excited purchases. While they turned the rocks over, Henry, the storekeeper, told them about opal, from the miner's right in the beginning to the four pegs marking a claim. Then ... and a grin ... you dug. And dug. And dug. . Loose sandstone came first, then the real sandstone, solid, though. You used gelignite then and shifted out the dirt on a windlass. Then, if you were lucky, you struck opal. You knew you were striking it because it was like sinking a pick into glass.; Constance could see nothing that would suit Yolande, but she knew she could not return empty- handed, so she bought a token piece. The pilot came underground and announced that time was up, and Constance went to the plane to count her passengers as they boarded again. They were all there, so the plane taxied off once more, waved

away by a pleased Henry, who had got rid of quite a lot of 'potch'. Constance suspected amiably that her piece for Yolande was potch. She reported to Anthony Vine the moment the tour returned to the hotel. 'Mission successfully completed,' she said from the door of the office. 'Good girl,' he awarded sincerely, and quite absurdly pleased at his praise she went up the stairs. She gave Yolande the parcel, expecting a sulky response. But Yolande cried out: 'Why, it's beautiful, it's a dream! It will cost a lot to polish and set, but the colour is fantastic.' Deciding not to disillusion her, Constance left her with her plaything and went up to change. She had come out of her shower but was still in her robe when there was an urgent knock on her door. She tied back her damp hair, drew her robe tighter, then answered the knock. One of the tourists stood there ... one of those several she had felt she could have done without. He was pleasant enough, though. He smiled apologetically and said: 'I'm sorry to bother you, but it appears that there's been some mistake.' 'Mistake?' she queried. 'Like you, Miss Searle, I purchased an opal piece at Thunder, but on opening it just now I find it isn't mine.' 'Then whose is it?' 'Yours, I believe.' 'What makes you think that?' she asked.

'Our bags were together in the plane, and I believe I put mine in your bag by mistake.' That could happen, Constance knew, the bags were all identical airline overnight bags, the tourist firm had donated them, and there had been one over for Constance. But even if he had made an error, would she have made a similar mistake? She must have asked it aloud, for he shrugged and smiled: 'It does happen. All I know for certain is that this isn't mine.' He opened his purchase and showed her, and undoubtedly it was her piece, the piece that she had bought from Henry. 'If you would return my little knick-knack of potch ... I suppose it is all potch, don't you think? ... I'd be grateful. There are several of us leaving at once by car, not waiting for tomorrow's plane. We thought we'd like to see the inside from the ground this time, not from the clouds.' 'Yes,' said Constance, but doubtfully, reluctantly.; She did not want to go to Yolande and take back what she had given her ... (just what had she given her?) ... yet undoubtedly this was the piece she had bought. 'I purchased it for a friend,' she proffered unwillingly, 'if you'll wait until I dress—' 'Of course, but the boys are anxious to get moving and they're waiting.' 'I expect so. Then I'll run along as I am.' Constance stepped out of her room and hurried to Yolande's suite. She tapped on the door. When Yolande did not answer her third knock, Constance went in. She could hear Yolande in her adjoining bathroom, and because the

girl had to be very careful on the tiled floor, she decided not to worry her, but to exchange the opal purchase, still on the table, instead. She would explain later. She did so, came out and gave it to the man, then went back to her room again. In exactly ten minutes, the time it took Yolande to emerge from her bath to her suite, then, Yolande-like, to take up her latest acquisition to adore it once again, the storm broke. It broke with a ring on Constance's phone.; 'Consie, my opal piece has changed.' 'Yes, Yolande, but I can explain.' 'You can't explain this piece - why, it's awful, it's nothing at all. Mere potch.' 'Which we all bought, dear. The good stuff doesn't go to trippers.' 'That other wasn't potch, it was beautiful, or would be beautiful when it was finished, it was the real pure, genuine, intrinsic thing. Consie, I want my own piece back again.' 'I'm sorry, Yolande, that one is yours. There was a mistake in our bags on the plane and you got someone else's. What you call yours, dear, was actually someone else's, and he, the rightful owner, has claimed it and gone.' 'Of course he would go with a piece like that! You must be quite mad, and I'm going to ring Anthony at once.' 'Yolande—' But Constance said it to a dead phone.

She stood by the window, remembering uneasily how doubtful she had felt, how reluctantly she had agreed to return the opal. She had not liked the man before that, and she had not liked him then. Yet she had believed his story about the bags. How couldn't she when the two canvas holdalls had stood together? Yet would two people make the same mistake at the same time? It seemed unlikely, and that was why she had been doubtful and reluctant, but the evidence of her purchase that he had held out to her had convinced her that he was right. Yet had he been? Or had she been gullible again? The phone pealed a second time, She crossed and took it up, ready for another Yolande onslaught. To her relief, for her nerves were jangling, Anthony Vine spoke in a low, quiet, even soothing voice. 'Having opal trouble?' 'I'm afraid so.' 'I had a little myself once. I took a ring on a girl's finger as her ring, not someone else's.' Before Constance could say anything, he went on: 'Has Yolande got the piece you bought her?' 'Yes, she has.' 'Then tell me about the piece you gave her before this.' 'I can't. I never looked at it. I simply passed it over.' 'She claims it was a beauty, nothing like the one she has now.' 'I never looked at it,' Constance admitted miserably again. 'Could an exchange have been made?' 'Yes.' She told him as matter-of-factly as she could.

'On the other hand, could it have happened innocently?' 'Well - yes.' 'Yet I think you have your reservations.' 'The bags were certainly close together, but - but it's not like me to do a careless thing like that.' 'Like him, then?' 'I don't know. How could I know, Mr. Vine?' 'You must have had some impression of him,' he insisted. 'Yes.' 'Then-?' 'I didn't like him, but then there were several I didn't like. Mr. Vine, you don't think—' 'No. I know. Lucky for C.C., Thunder got in touch with us before they took any GA, and those two letters mean gelignite action, with our equipment.' 'They wouldn't!' protested Constance. 'It's been done at some places, I told you, remember, but since we've been on amicable terms right from the start, we got our chance.' 'To deny it?' 'The opal piece ... yes, Yolande was right, it was the real stuff ... was gone, so how could we deny it? The only thing was to apologize, point out that it was an outsider's doing, not ours, then pay up/

'Pay up?' she queried. 'Pay up handsomely. Hush money added to the considerable value of the opal.' 'But this is terrible!' gasped Constance. 'You're right, and terrible, I hope, for the fellow when they get him, which they certainly will. There's one thing to be said about our inside, it's practically impossible to escape from. In fact I've no doubt that the opal is on its way back here now, so we won't be entirely out of pocket.' It was slightly heartening news, but Constance still could have cried with disappointment. Everything had been going well again, and this had had to happen. 'Why did he do it?' she protested. "The old dollar,' he reminded her. 'But why did he put it in my bag, my little purchase in his?' 'In case the loss was discovered before the plane left, in which instance he would have been in the clear.' 'Had he stolen it?' 'Oh, no, he bought a piece all right, not where you did, but somewhere out there. But the piece he bought and the piece he substituted when the miner's back was turned were very different.' 'I see,' Constance said wretchedly. After a long moment she half whispered, half sobbed: 'I'm terribly sorry.' 'For what?'

'For all of this.; I mean, I wouldn't have had it happen for the world.' 'My dear child, I'm not blaming you. How could I? I'd just like to lay my hands on that fellow, that's all. Robbery is one thing, but hiding behind a girl is another. Constance, are you listening? What's that noise?' 'It's me. I'm crying. Crying with relief, I expect. I think -1 think I was scared.' 'Scared?' 'Of you.' 'Of me?' There was a long pause. Then: 'Constance, I'm coming up.' 'No, I'm all right,' she insisted. 'Do I always scare you?' he asked. 'No.' 'You're not scared any longer?' 'No.' 'Then I'm still coming up. You see, I am scared, and I want your advice.' 'Advice?' she echoed. 'On what to do.' '... About Yolande?'

'Good lord, no, that was never in doubt. No, it's nothing emotional, it's ... well, it's rock again.' 'Rock?' 'Yes.' 'Opal?' she asked. 'No.' 'Nickel?' 'No. Nor bauxite, tin, what-have-you.' He paused, then he said: 'It's gold.'

'Yes, gold.' Anthony Vine repeated that magic word as they sat at the window with a tea service on the table between them. Constance was still in her robe, for the tea and the boss had arrived at the same time. In spite of his exalted position, he had actually carried the tray, and it had come forcibly to Constance that besides being manager material he could be husband material., She even had found the ridiculous words on her lips, but he had said 'Gold' again before she could make a fool of herself. 'Where?' she asked. 'In the diggings.' He shrugged. 'I won't say which diggings. Even wind picks up a message like gold,' 'But that's wonderful!' 'It's damnable,' he contradicted.

'You can't be serious.' 'I'm very serious. This gold is good, and there's enough of it, but it still could be a disaster.' 'How do you mean?' 'When I say there's plenty of it, there is, but over a vast area. It's not economical gold.' 'Yet there.' 'There, along with stuff the nation depends on. Gold is not depended on. It's a luxury. In other words, Constance, gold is jam, but it's never bread and butter, which must come first. Now do you understand?' 'Not entirely. Would it interfere with anything else?' 'It would interfere with everything else. Not because of its encroachment, but because of its impact. All my men are good, tried, trusted men, but there's not one I could depend on not to down tools and join a rush. It's natural. It's instinctive. But it still adds up to a disaster.' Constance was silent a moment. 'Seeing you know what your answer must be, why are you asking me now, and what is it you're asking?' 'Yes, I know my answer, I know the thing has to be scotched at once, but how? I'm asking you that because although only Jock Sanders, and Sanders alone, is in on this, I find it inconceivable to believe he hasn't confided in his wife.' 'I know the Sanders,' said Constance, 'they're—' 'A close pair.' He said it before she could.

Constance asked: 'And you say that he alone knows?' 'Yes. Jock found it when no one was about and he kept it to himself. But he did report it to me. He's a very dependable young fellow.' 'Then why are you worrying?' 'Because naturally he wants to go on from there. Good lord, I would have myself at twenty-six.' 'Have you told him the prohibitive cost?' she asked. 'I have - for hours. But I doubt if he even hears. Gold fever is a very inflammatory disease.' 'Where do I come in?' she asked. 'Not with Jock Sanders?' 'With Mrs. Jock. Pump her. Connive with her.' 'She might not be receptive.' 'Perhaps, but she has a nice bungalow, a nice weekly pay packet from Jock, all the amenities a woman could ask. Make her see how little she'll have of her Jock once he succumbs to the fever. Be girls together. It's urgent. In fact the future of Corporation could depend on the next few days.' 'It is that serious?' 'That serious,' he assured her. 'Then I'll do my best, for what it's worth. For naturally Jock will come first with his wife.' 'It's because he comes first that the gold must come last. Try to make her see that.' A pause. 'You do see it yourself?'

'Oh, yes.' Constance did. But she was unsure of her role in it all and she told Anthony so. 'Just try for me,' he appealed, and there was a weary note in his voice. She looked at him covertly. He seemed tired. But then there was so much for a boss to do even in the ordinary course of events, and he had had extraordinary happenings these last few days. Opal. Now gold. 'I'll try,' she promised. As it happened she did not have to seek out Janet Sanders, Janet came to her. Constance spared her any awkward preliminaries by saying: 'It's all right, Janet, I know.' 'The gold?' 'Yes.' 'I don't want it, Constance. I don't want anything to do with it. I'm happy and secure here. In fact we're better off than we've ever been. Jock admits that, too.' 'But-' 'But he's still excited. Well, I can understand it. I think the word gold to a man is something like wedding bells to a girl.' Janet laughed. 'Yes, something like,' Constance agreed. 'I know what I want and don't want myself,' Janet resumed, 'but I feel I can't stand in Jock's way. What if he missed out on a fortune! He'd never forget it... so neither would I.'

'Except that there wouldn't be a fortune,' said Constance, and she explained the large area over which the vein extended and the huge sum it would entail. 'I thought so,' Janet said. There was no need to add to Janet any loss of Jock's company while he did his mining, no need for Anthony's 'pumping', 'conniving', being 'girls together'. Janet understood and came to a decision without that. 'He's just not going on with it,' Janet said firmly.; 'But how?' 'I can fix Jock.' A small smile touched Janet's mouth. Her eyes met Constance's and a woman message was flashed between them. You wouldn't, flashed back Constance's glance. I will, flashed back Janet's. Constance rang for tea and not another word was said about gold. Later that afternoon Anthony Vine sought out Constance. She had been down at the lily pond feeding the carp, a job she had taken upon herself, and now ran up the stairs to her suite to find him waiting at the door. Without being asked, he followed her in. 'Thank you,' he grinned. 'For what?' 'For fixing my problem.' 'Is it fixed?' she asked. 'Yes.'

'But I did nothing. Janet did it.' 'On your instigation.' 'Not exactly, she already had certain ideas herself.' 'Well, they worked like magic.' He was fumbling in his pocket for his makings. He began the ritual of rolling and filling, but he did not ask any questions until he was licking the edges of the paper together. Then: 'What happened?' he said curiously. 'How do you mean?' 'I mean with Jock and Janet Sanders.' 'How could I tell? I certainly wouldn't be there to find out.' 'Where?' 'In their own home .., their own room ... their own bedr—' Constance felt her heightened colour. 'You mean—' 'I don't particularly mean anything.' 'But you know.' 'Oh, yes, I would know.' 'How would you know?' Suddenly irritated at his obtuseness, or so she thought, she turned on him and said: 'Because I'm a woman. Because a woman ... well, she

might - or she might not - I mean—' She felt the flush warming into two bright red spots on her cheeks. He was still licking the edges together. 'Go on.' 'No, Mr. Vine.' 'Then let me. I think you mean male and female created He them but for any further creation please wait on the female's pleasure. I think Janet said this in so many words, I think she said "Gold or me, Jock." Tell me, Constance, what do you think?' 'I think you're abominable!' But Constance did not finish it. Without seeming to move he was by her side, and the next moment she was in his arms. When his lips came down on hers, she was breathlessly aware that there was nothing standing with them, neither Yolande, nor opal, nor gold, nor anything - only a man's sharp desire. 'And tell me, too, Constance,' he said, his lips still on hers 'what do you think of this?'

CHAPTER ELEVEN WHEN Constance came down for breakfast in the morning, she had to compel herself every step of the way. After yesterday's hard, breathless kiss, after Anthony Vine's demanding 'And what do you think of this?' as he had held her, he had left her without - another word. She had stood flushed and trembling at the window until instant night had come, after it that deep darkness before the moon and stars changed obscurity to a gold and silver world. Still flushed, still trembling, she had left the window and crossed to the phone and rung room service. She felt she could not go down to the dining-room tonight. The meal had come up ... a waiter pushing a waggon this time, not a boss carrying a tea tray ... and she had eaten alone. Anthony must have understood her reluctance to go down, she had thought when she was not disturbed, and after she had finished she had half waited for him to come to her then. He had not come ... and it was a vast relief. Yes, she had insisted several times to herself, a very big relief. But she could not remain upstairs indefinitely, and this morning she had showered and dressed and descended as she always did. It had been her own idea entirely to eat breakfast from a dining-room table and not a tray by her bed, but with each downward stair now she regretted that decision. Already her cheeks were flushing, she could feel the warm pink in them. She could hear her heart thud. Still, she had to meet him some time ... She squared her shoulders in the cool lime linen she wore, and went out to the sun patio where breakfasts were served. Several tables were filled, but there was no one at Mr. Vine's special table. He was an early riser and always ate at the same hour. Could it be that he was as embarrassed to meet her as she was to meet him? Oh, no, never that man. She sat down.

She went through the ritual of juice, cereal and eggs that she had refused in the beginning, insisting she was a non-breakfaster, but had had to change because of that insistent and persistent man, and was sipping her coffee and watching the door (but trying to appear not to) when the receptionist came in. 'Constance, seeing there's no one else to fit the bill, you'd better take this.' She handed Constance a letter. Constance looked down and read: 'Mrs. A. Vine.' She looked up again. 'Obviously it isn't mine.' 'Then it isn't Yolande's. I sent it up with her tray and it came back again.' 'The S added to the Mr. could be a mistake.' 'But it's typed perfectly,' pointed out the receptionist, 'it looks quite intentional.' 'But there isn't such a person, is there? Anyway, why pick on me?' 'There's only two to pick on, you and Yolande, you're both the old hands up here. I mean it couldn't be me, and it couldn't be any of the wives.' 'It's a mistake,' dismissed Constance. 'Anyway, why concern yourself? Let Mr. Vine unravel it himself.' 'Gladly, if he were here.' 'He isn't here?'

'He must have received an urgent summons, for he flew out very early at short notice. But I rather think by the fact that he has his overnight bag and nothing else he won't be long.' 'I see,' said Constance. 'Will you take the letter, then?' 'It isn't mine, and it's no good saying it's nearer mine than yours or well, Janet's, or Rose Amberley's, a letter is for one person only, the person it's addressed to.' 'Paging a Mrs. A. Vine,' grinned Helen. 'I'll put it on the notice board, then the person for whom it's intended will have to claim.' 'Yes, do that,' Constance smiled back. She finished her coffee and followed Helen out of the breakfast patio. Previously, she had made a timetable of her work, so many hours allowed here, so many there. She had given it to the Corporation boss to O.K., and his brows had risen. 'Quite the practical Girl Friday,' he had said. 'A secretary has to be. Will it be all right?' 'Of course. But if you want to spend more time on one thing, less on another, put something off until tomorrow ... or next week ... just do it. I leave it entirely to you.' Now Constance got out Lorelei, running perfectly again thanks to Jim, and set out on her rounds. It was pleasant work. Most of the women who had followed their husbands up to C.C. had done so because they had been told of the benefits, and now that these benefits had materialized they were

pleased and contented. The few who had come less enthusiastically had been agreeably surprised, making in all a happy family. Of course there were several thorns in their midst, there were always thorns, but no thorns like Joan had been, and now even that difficult girl was won over. Constance smiled as she wondered how the honeymoon was proceeding. She called in at the different classes, at the tennis courts, at the pool. She visited the sick in the clinic. There were not many in hospital at the moment, and none of them considered serious. 'Gather people together,' said Doctor Hugh, who met Constance in the corridor, 'and you always raise a wog or two. That's what this lot is here for. We're calling it Corporation Virus. You're not leaving yet? Have I scared you?' 'Of course not, but I've talked to every patient.' 'Yolande?' 'What about Yolande?' 'She's here. She has been coming regularly to Sister for massage, exercises, what-have-you. You must have known.' 'I knew she had special treatment while she was in hospital, but knowing Yolande I thought she would drop everything once she left.' 'She didn't,' smiled Hugh. 'She's in the end room being stretched.' 'It sounds frightful!' she shuddered. 'It gets results.' Yolande was not being stretched, she had just finished with whatever it was Cressida Moore imposed on her.

'Oh, Consie, come in and talk to me,' she implored, 'while I catch a breath. This Gorgon' ... she looked affectionately at Sister ... 'is destroying me.' 'You know I'm benefiting you,' reproved Cressida. 'Yes, I know it,' said Yolande in a humble little voice. Constance went and sat beside Yolande. She was a little pale from the strain of manipulation, but it was a healthy pallor. After a few minutes she recovered and sat up. 'Darling, I had no idea you were working so hard,' commended Constance. 'Well, you know it now. I struggle down every day in my chair and I really try,' 'That's splendid, Yolande.' 'I think so. I think it's really big of me. After all, why should I bother? It was done at C.C., I say to myself, so let C.C. take care of me. I say that, Consie, and what do I do? I come down here and try to help myself.' It was so unlike Yolande, lovely but indolent, selfish Yolande, that Constance could find no words. Yolande waited a while, then said impatiently: 'Well, you might at least praise me.' 'I want to, but I'm so surprised. Why, Yolande? Why - all at once?' 'Because - well, because I have a feeling, Consie.' 'A feeling?'

'Oh, don't echo me, just listen. I have a feeling that something's going to happen. Haven't you ever had that feeling, Constance Searle?' Constance looked back through her happy enough but rather unremarkable yeans. 'No,' she said at length. 'Well, that's something in store, I feel - well, I feel I'm at the end of something. Don't ask me how, when or why. It's just that I feel, and Consie, it's a good feeling.' Yolande put up her arms and literally hugged herself. 'Tell me more,' Constance begged. 'I can't, how could I, I don't know myself. I simply know something's going to happen, and it's going to be what I want, what I've always waited for.' 'Then I hope it is, Yolande,' Constance said, 'and I hope it comes soon. Now how about a run round with me, I'm calling in at the different offices.' 'To speak to women,' Yolande grimaced. 'Of course. That's my job.' 'No, thank you, pet - you, the nurses and the Gorgon are enough females for me. Anyway, I'm going to exercise all morning.' 'Then at least let me drive you back to the hotel.' 'I'll struggle there myself. Gorgon says it's good discipline.' Another grimace, but a fond one. 'Yolande, I'm proud of you,' said Constance.

She called in at the different offices dotted around Corporation City. As each section comprised a small entirety, and as the secretaries ... all female ... to the particular section worked side by side with the particular project boss, or manager, or geologist, a car became, as Anthony once had said, a necessity, not a luxury. It was, for instance, a mile from Mineralogy to Physics and twice that to Biochemistry. Constance talked to the girls, but there were no complaints, and she didn't expect any. Anthony Vine had chosen his female staff very shrewdly, she thought. He had brought in fewer bachelor girls than bachelor men, and girls in demand are invariably contented girls. Constance supposed that the surplus men could find solace in the time-honoured and unfailing male manner. A very large bar had been provided, and what came over the bar, some of the boys had told her with satisfaction, was less than city prices. There were a few suggestions from the girls for more frequent social nights, but apart from that everyone seemed happy. She drove back to the hotel again. Yolande was in the hall, and she told Constance that she had wheeled herself into the lift and manipulated herself out again. 'That's right,' Sam, the operator, assured her. 'I thought if you're doing nothing now we could drive out to the bore. Don't look alarmed, Consie, I'll only dunk myself, not go right in as before. Also, Gorgon says the waters could be good for me.' There were a few things Constance had to do, but they were not important, not important, anyhow, compared to this: to Yolande's eagerness. Anyway, Anthony Vine had assured her '... if you want to spend more time on one thing, less on another, just do it. I leave it to you.'

'I'll have a hamper packed,' she smiled to Yolande. They set out along the artesian road, and Constance was surprised at the difference since the last time she had travelled this track. That had been during the Joan episode, and though the vegetation had not been as high as it had on her first occasion with Yolande, it had been a lush wilderness compared to the present depressed state of growth. It was amazing how quickly and completely the rains ran off. In a few weeks, she estimated, everything would be burnt and barren again. They arrived at the pool, sunned themselves, dipped into the hot, sparkling artesian water ... Yolande keeping her promise ... then ate their picnic lunch and drowsed on the rugs and cushions that Constance had thrown into Lorelei. 'I'm happy,' Yolande said, half asleep, half awake. Her dark lashes fanned her pink cheeks. 'Anyone should be happy with looks like yours,' smiled Constance. 'It's not that kind of happiness, though,' Yolande said, still drowsily, 'it's much better than that, Consie. I wonder when it will happen.' 'What will happen?' 'How can I tell you if I don't know? It's just this feeling.' Yolande smiled, and slept. As they drove back again, Constance wondered how long Anthony Vine would be away. She did not wonder why he had gone; she simply supposed it would be for more recruits. She was at the desk telling bachelor girl Helen the results of her meetings this morning with the other bachelor girls when Helen said: 'Here comes the big boss now. That didn't take long.'

Constance's back was turned on the door, and she said idly: 'Possibly news of the good conditions here has spread, and he didn't have to look for recruits.' 'Recruit,' corrected Helen. 'One only. Female section.' 'Oh, yes?' Constance was writing out a notice concerning a meeting to do with more social gatherings. When she finished it, she would direct Helen to pin it to the board. There were not many things pinned on the board just now. One of them was that letter: Mrs. A. Vine. Her first impression of the 'recruit ... one only ... female section' that Helen had just reported was a vocal one. A quiet voice said: 'Oh, look, Anthony, a letter for me - already!' 'Yes, dear,' Anthony Vine agreed. He raised his voice slightly and asked: 'Can you reach Mrs. Vine's letter for her, please, Miss Searle?' Automatically, not knowing how she did it, Constance leaned over and pulled out the pins. She turned and presented it to a tall, slender, rather fragile-looking girl. 'Thank you, Miss Searle,' the girl smiled, and she held the letter up with her left hand to inspect it. On the fourth finger of the hand there was a simple gold band. 'Mrs. Vine, Miss Searle,' said Anthony Vine, 'but you've gathered that already.' 'Yes,' Constance murmured. 'Also Helen, our most valued receptionist, the hearer of complaints and the holder of keys.'

'Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Vine,' said Helen in her receptionist's voice. 'Talking of keys, Mr. Vine, what suite for Mrs. Vine, do you think?' 'No suite, Helen. Mrs. Vine is coming to the bungalow with me. Get someone to bring along the bags.' 'Yes, sir.' 'Also you could have dinner sent down tonight. Megan will be tired.' 'Yes, Mr. Vine.' 'Anything urgent to tell me?' 'No, sir.' 'What about our female ombudsman?' He had turned to Constance. 'No, sir,' Constance echoed Helen. 'Then I think we'll call it a day, Megan-girl. That suit you?' 'Please,' said Megan Vine. She smiled briefly at the girls, put a hand in his extended arm, then they went down the long corridor together to the bungalow annexe.

'Well, you could have fooled me.' Helen said it breezily as she fixed Constance's notice on the board. 'I would have sworn he was an eligible bachelor. Very eligible. All the girls were crazy about him. I was myself. Were you, Constance?'

'Me? Oh, no.' Constance made herself say it casually, disinterestedly ... but not too disinterestedly. She did not want Helen to put it down to an instance of 'Methinks the lady doth protest too much,' But she was protesting, protesting in every fibre of her. How could this man have said the things he had? That first day of her return with his .. And yet I thought you did understand.' Then later: 'It wasn't like this before, Constance, what's happened to us?' Most of all: 'And what about this?' with his lips hard on hers. She had thought Yolande had stood between them. What a fool she had been! She had thought Anthony Vine had cooled off Yolande because of the accident, and she had loathed him for it, yet at the same time seen his dilemma, particularly since the whole thing, knowing Yolande, could have been of Yolande's making. But it had not been like that at all. Constance said something trivial to Helen, then went up to her room. She knew she must tell Yolande, but she shrank from doing so. Yolande was such a factual, down-to-earth person. When she heard the sound of a wheelchair in the passage, and then a knock on her door, she went to the door, glad it was Yolande who would be raising the subject. Yolande did at once. Even though she was a different girl, the old habit of boredom, boredom that must be relieved, still persisted. 'What's this I hear?' she asked, intrigued, 'Helen has just rung me to say there's a Mrs. Corporation boss.' 'Yes. Yes, Yolande, there is. As a matter of fact a letter came this morning, and we knew then.'

'Oh yes, that was the letter that was sent to me - but it wasn't mine, and I didn't read it,' mused Yolande. 'And you never told me?' 'Was it that important?' 'For my ego, yes.' 'Your ego?' 'Look, Consie, I've never told you anything, and you've never asked.' 'Because I was instructed not to delve.' 'Well, you can delve now. When you left C.C. last time - with Guy, and I waited here, it wasn't like you were thinking at all. As a matter of curiosity, Consie, what were you thinking?' 'What you issued out to me in little bits and pieces. That you and Anthony Vine ... that you—' 'Yes?' 'Had a mutual agreement before he left, but upon his return, and your tragic fall, he had other thoughts.' 'Oh, dear,' said Yolande. She asked: 'Did I give that impression?' 'Yes,' Then poor Anthony, it wasn't like that at all. In fact the fall came after ... a week or so after.' 'You didn't say that.' '.That's me,' shrugged Yolande. 'Worthless, every inch of me. But it's going to be different now, Consie.'

'Don't tell me about the future, tell me about then.' 'Anthony came back from Sydney and he was furious, absolutely savagely angry. It appeared I shouldn't have stayed at all.' 'He asked us.' 'He asked one of us. Well, that was no news to me, I knew it all along.' 'Knew he didn't want you?' 'Yes. But, because of dear Mamma, because of my "training", I knew what I wanted, and that was a good-looking, very presentable, but most of all very rich man. So..Yolande shrugged. 'Yolande, you're shameless,' Constance cried. 'I was then,' nodded Yolande, 'but you must see my side, Consie. I didn't know there was a wife standing between. When Anthony Vine said No very definitely, I thought it was - well, I was sure it was—' She looked at Constance but did not finish. 'Well, anyway, I didn't think it was already signed, sealed and delivered. So I just stayed on while I thought out another move. It was during that thinking that Hugh arrived, and you must admit he's a dear. I thought so, and I liked him at once. Well, you know Yolande Lawford with men. I even decided it would be Hugh, not so rich, not so good- looking but still quite a catch. Only the old story repeated itself. Hugh didn't want me, either. Consie, what's wrong with me? - and don't give me that talk about the moment I used to set foot on a catwalk, because it hasn't worked in real life. I was really keen on Hugh. That fateful evening I was coming down the stairs and fell it was Hugh I saw, not Anthony. Oh, they were both approaching, but I had eyes only for Hugh. I never looked where I was going.' A pause. 'I fell.'

'And you let Anthony think you were hurrying down to him?' 'Self-preservation,' Yolande submitted. 'At least I had to be compensated if Hugh didn't come off.' 'Anthony would have compensated you, anyway.' 'I know, but I was in a filthy mood. I told you before, Consie, I've been reared like this, trained to carve a good advantageous niche, then to hold on to it like grim death. Anyway, I think I knew even before Hugh spoke of Cressida Moore coming up as Corporation Sister how it was, or would be in the end. It didn't hurt me, so I couldn't really have liked him, could I, just as Anthony turning me down didn't hurt me, either. No, no hurt at all, but certainly a surprise now that a wife, not what I thought, once halted the C.C. boss. I don't mean that really, nothing ever started, but it's still a surprise.' Yolande paused. 'What's she like?' 'Mrs. Vine? Oh, brownette. Slim. Tall. A little fragile. And I think, though it could be my imagination, sad. 'Sad? With all those millions?' 'Yolande, you haven't changed.' Constance tried to make a laugh out of it, because, she thought suddenly and emptily ... very emptily ... if I don't laugh, I'll cry. Cry over something that never was. Over something that never can be.

CHAPTER TWELVE MRS. VINE must have been still tired all that week, for she did not come to the restaurant for any meals. Though the bungalow, as Anthony Vine called it, was a complete villa, it still was an annexe of the hotel. To enter it, instead of the main red-carpeted corridor, you followed a slightly narrower red carpet to the left, and at the end of the carpet was the strictly private residence of the Corporation boss. And now his wife. Anthony Vine always had breakfasted in the sun patio, grabbed lunch wherever he happened to be, but dined formally at night in the hotel restaurant. But now, like Mrs. Vine, he did not appear. He did not neglect his duties, though. Constance frequently saw him going out in his car, saw him interviewing project leaders and geologists in his office, saw him instructing Helen, but he never went, as he used to, down to the pool to join the employees in a plunge, or make the fourth for tennis, or play a few holes on the golf course. Apart from business, neither he .. nor Mrs. Vine... was seen at all. 'She must be exclusive,' sniffed Helen. 'I don't think she looked well.' Constance felt she should defend Mrs. Vine. 'That could be. The Corporation boss instructed me to ring through to Sydney to arrange for a V.I.S. to come up at once.' 'Helen, what is a V.I.S.?' 'A very important specialist. You could be right about her not being the best. She certainly did seem fragile.'

The specialist came. The specialist went. Then one evening Megan Vine came to dinner. When Constance had seen her before, she had put her obvious fatigue down to travel, for it was a long hop from Sydney, but Megan Vine looked more fragile than ever, yet she had had a week of complete rest. Constance regarded her covertly from a corner table. She was lovely, but in a pale, strained, sad way. In spite of herself, Constance's heart went out to the girl. If Anthony asks me, she knew, I'll do my best for her. She's sweet, I think. But she's sad. However, Anthony Vine never asked Constance. He took Megan out in the car several times himself, but he never trusted her with anyone else. It became an important issue to Constance, important that she try to help this girl. She did not know if Megan Vine actually and genuinely had need of her help, some women naturally have a sad and a fragile look, but she found herself so anxious to put out her hand to her that eventually she went along to the head office and tapped on the door. When Anthony Vine said 'Come in' she went. 'Oh, Miss Searle.' 'Yes?' 'I haven't seen much of you, Miss Searle. My fault, I know. Put it down to one of those things.' 'Yes, Mr. Vine.' A pause. 'How is Mrs. Vine?' There was no answer for a while, then the man looked at Constance and said: 'I don't know.'

'Don't know?' 'A little trouble, Miss Searle.' He hunched his big shoulders. 'I flew up a doctor.' 'Yes, I knew.' 'It's a matter of waiting, of hoping.' He lapsed into silence, a silence Constance was reluctant to break into, but she felt she must. 'Mr. Vine, if I can helpHe looked at her almost foolishly, she thought. 'How in heaven could you help?' 'Well, you said it yourself once, you said "girls together".' 'But Megan isn't a girl, she's a woman.' 'I'm a woman, too. The other was just a phrase.' 'Megan is past phrases,' he said wearily. 'Just leave things be, Miss Searle.' It was an easy way out, but somehow Constance still had to persist. 'I could take her for runs in the car while you're at conferences or out on the field. Oh, I'd be very careful. Don't hold Yolande and Joan against me, Mr. Vine.' 'I'm not holding anyone or anything against you, I'm just telling you that Megan wouldn't be interested. She's not interested at all, not at all, except—' 'Except?'

'That's enough, Miss Searle. Thank you for your offer. You've been most kind, and it's been appreciated, but leave it at that.' At what? Constance felt like crying. At ... 'I thought you did understand' ... at... 'it was not like this before' ... at ... 'and what about this' and your lips on mine? You want me to leave you and your wife at that after what you've said to me? after what you did? But she never said anything. She got quietly up and left. On the second week Megan Vine came out a little more often, though only with Anthony. Always her hand rested on his arm and he held it gently. Constance learned through the grapevine that he was taking Megan for a few flips. 'I didn't know he flew,' she said. 'Of course he flies. You have to up here.' 'I suppose so.' Alone in her room, Constance closed her eyes a moment and saw Anthony Vine at the controls, his deep blue eyes narrowed against a blazing sun. She wondered what it would be like sitting beside that man and going into the sun, everything red and gold and wonderful. Then Anthony Vine must have decided to spend more time on Corporation affairs. He was seen more often at the different diggings ... in the office. Helen, who, as receptionist, got to know these things first, reported that Bill Trennery, their young Corporation pilot, was now taking Mrs. Vine around. 'It seems,' explained Helen, 'that she likes flying.' Constance was glad that Megan Vine had found something to like, because she was finding nothing to like herself. Constance had come to a decision: she would leave C.C.

She told Yolande that evening, and Yolande appealed: 'Not yet.' 'Look, Yolande, I came here because of you, but how long must I stop? It's obvious I can't do anything for you, so what use is it for me to stay? For that matter, Yolande, why are you staying on?' 'I can't give you an answer, Consie, but I feel I shall soon.' 'Now you're going cryptic on me again!' 'I don't mean to, I mean I'm not making it up, it's just this certainty in me.' 'Certainty of what?' 'That things are going to happen. After they happen I'll be out as quick ... quicker ... than you. But see me out, Consie.' 'Just don't make it forever and ever, that's all,' Constance snapped. 'You're cross,' pouted Yolande. 'You never used to be.' 'I'm tired, Yolande. Tired of being nothing.' 'You nothing? Oh, you goose! You're everything.' 'To whom?' 'Are you serious? Do you really want an answer?' 'I just want to be out of here,' Constance said miserably. But she stopped on, of course, went through her usual duties, did them as well as she always did them.

But every time she saw the Corporation Cessna in the air, she looked away. Away from the thought of another man, not Bill Trennery, flying into the sun through the westered gold and red. Bill, when he took Megan up, used Anthony Vine's craft, the Corporation Cessna. But on the day the thing happened it was a Cherokee, not a Cessna. It was Bill's own fly-around. The Cessna was on an overhaul. Anthony Vine was at Mount Diamond for several days, so he could not be there to insist on the Cessna, or nothing, something he had done before, and without any explanation, to a rather puzzled Bill. But today the boss was absent, Megan asked to go, and they took the Cherokee. They had left around ten. When the forty-minute flip extended to eighty minutes, the men at the Corporation strip were unconcerned, nor did they question the Cherokee's non-appearance half an hour later. Bill had probably put down somewhere ... an easy task out there on dead flat terrain ... for Mrs. Vine to see some wild horses, or a pack of 'roos. As a matter of fact, a distraught Bill Trennery reported later again, it had been camels. There were camels all over the inside, but evidently Mrs. Vine did not know. She had been very interested, and since it was hard to get her interested in anything, Bill had asked would she like to go down for a few moments to watch the mob. They had descended, and the young pilot had jumped to the ground to look around for a vantage spot for his passenger to observe the brumby camels. He had barely got away when the Cherokee's engine had ticked over, and then, to his utter dismay, the little craft had taxied along the flat, then risen. He had stood a horrified five minutes waiting for the sound of a crash, for out here there was so much silence that any noise reverberated for miles, but nothing happened. The Cherokee must have proceeded successfully on its way, but it couldn't be for long, for Bill had only fuelled for a flip, then a return.

Bill said all this wretchedly to his rescuers. Previously around noon, when no Cherokee still had returned, the Corporation field had contacted Anthony Vine at Diamond for advice. Anthony had returned at once, then come out in the helicopter, and a search had begun, a search that had pinpointed Bill Trennery fairly soon, for Bill knew what to do to attract attention, but a search that found no plane and no girl. Bill had sat on a small rock outcrop and put his head in his hands. 'My God, if I'd only known what she had in mind I wouldn't have left the kite. She was never like this before, in fact she showed no interest.' 'No,' Anthony Vine said heavily. 'There was no crash within miles. I could stake my life on that. Out here there's no noise at all, so that even a leaf falling can be heard. I would have heard an impact, I know it. Oh, why did she do it? Why?' Bill was young, he was very disturbed. He began to cry and at the same time, manlike, try to stop the crying. Constance, whom Anthony Vine had brought along with Cressida Moore in case when ... if ... they found Megan, she needed women, had glanced at Anthony. But Anthony was looking at Doctor Hugh, who also had travelled out. The doctor administered a sedative to Bill, and while it worked Anthony said a few quiet words. 'It's my fault entirely, Bill - I should have confided in you, but I didn't. I saw no reason to alert you, though had I known you were taking the Cherokee it would have been different and I would have spoken. But I was away and I never knew the Cessna was out of commission. Then this ,.. this happened.' 'What, sir?' Bill was plainly confused. They all were.

'You see - Megan was a flier herself.' 'That, anyway, is a relief,' nodded Bill. 'She flew a Cherokee. An identical Cherokee. Yours would be as familiar to her as the back of her hand.' 'If she'd told me, Mr. Vine, I would have given her a go at the controls,' said Bill. 'She wouldn't tell you because she wouldn't purposely intend any of this. No, a sudden impulse would come ... that's the wrong word, a sudden compulsion would come, and— Well, you know the rest.' 'But why wouldn't it have happened on the Cessna? The controls are almost identical.' 'Almost, Bill. That's the answer. To Megan the Cherokee was her craft. For a few bitter minutes she turned the clock back to a damnable ten days ago when she was flying her Cherokee ... or should I say Andrew's.' 'Andrew?' 'Andrew is ... was my brother. They lived in the New Guinea Highlands. Like most people up there they covered the large distances by plane, and Andrew, like most young husbands, taught his wife to fly. 'That's why she went instinctively to the Cherokee where she did not even glance at the Cessna. The Cherokee in her grief-stricken haze was hers and Andrew's.' A pause. 'And Bunty's. Bunty was their three-year-old daughter.' 'What happened, sir?'

'A crash. It wasn't Megan's fault, nor the plane's fault, it was one of those wretched hazards that happen sometimes - not frequently, but they still occur. An obstruction in the visibility ... or perhaps a flock of birds. I doubt if any positive finding will ever establish a reason.' 'A - finding?' 'Yes. Her husband Andrew and her child were killed instantly in the impact. Megan was unconscious for days, and as the family was comparatively isolated where they had gone to live, comparatively newcomers, I was not alerted until it was all over and Megan flown down to Sydney.' 'I see,' Bill said. Presently he asked: 'Now what?' 'I have spotter planes cut. We'll scout around ourselves in the helicopter. Apart from that I just don't know.' Anthony Vine drew a weary hand across his brow. Cressida Moore placed a soothing arm on his arm, but Constance did nothing. She felt incapable of comfort, though she knew he needed it. Why hadn't he told her that Megan was his brother's wife? she thought. Oh, he had never spoken of Megan as his own wife, but then he had spoken to few people at all these last weeks. In not doing so he had let everyone ... and Constance Searle ... think— 'I feel you've had enough, Bill,' Anthony was saying. 'I'll leave you here with Johnson while we search around. Besides, if we do find Megan, we'll need the extra room.' Bill nodded. They returned to the helicopter and circled for half an hour. The visibility was perfect here, there were no ' valley pockets. If a craft had landed ... or crashed ... it would have to be seen.

They were on a western arc when Constance glimpsed something that attracted her attention. Out here the rain had not been as long and as heavy as further in towards Corporation, with the result that where C.C. was now in the process of losing its green, already below them the ochre and sienna barrenness had returned to the terrain. On the brown cracked earth the thing showed out like a flag. It was ... narrowing her eyes ... a garment. Perhaps a jacket or cardigan. It was blue. Constance called out. The helicopter hovered, then lowered. And then it all began. Some hundreds of yards up, practically concealed by a thicket of gnarled old trees, they found Bill's Cherokee, perfectly grounded, and apparently in good order. But there was no Megan. They went back to the blue cardigan and worked on from there. The pilot of the helicopter, who had been examining the Cherokee, ran along to report that though Bill had stored water on his little craft, it had not been touched. 'Evidently she wasn't thinking of it,' nodded Anthony, 'or if she did she couldn't find it.' He sounded desperately worried, for it was hot out here, much hotter than Corporation, and that discarded cardigan could be a significant pointer. It could meanThat the cardigan was not just an accident was established soon after by the discovery of a scarf, then a sunhat, then a blouse. 'She's casting things away,' groaned Anthony, 'she's either dehydrated or sunstruck,' 'Or both,' prepared Hugh.

Now it was essential to find Megan within a very short time. They all arced out, since obviously the distraught girl had not kept to the flat surface of the terrain or she would be clearly in sight. They searched every thicket of mulga, every clump of spinifex. They went round every rock outcrop. It was Cressida who found her. Megan must have discovered an old wurlie, or native drinking pool, for it was there she had dragged herself. She had not drunk, however, and Hugh frowned over that. A sip or two of the muddy water would have helped. Still, and he knelt down with a flask, she was alive. They brought the helicopter as near as they could to the wurlie, then they put Megan in it. Cressida and Hugh travelled with her, but Anthony and Constance waited. The girl would need the room, lying prone as she did. When the craft had gone, Constance said dully: 'I thought she was your wife.' 'Yes, I suppose you would. I never explained. It all happened so quickly. There was an early morning call, then everything toppled. After that I was - well, I was broken. I loved my brother. I was happy in his happiness, in his family which was his happiness. The only thing I could think to do was to bring Megan up here, and then try to work it out, if it could be worked, from there. 'She was deeply shocked. That was why I flew up the specialist. He wasn't optimistic about doing anything.' A pause. 'Nor anything for the future.' 'But she's alive, Anthony.' 'For what?' Anthony answered sadly.

They did not speak after that.

Megan Vine lingered for two days, and then, in spite of every attention, every care, she quietly died. The impact on Corporation City was deeper than it would have been anywhere else. Here was an untried place, trying itself out in citizenship, in prosperity, in endeavour... and now, for its first time, in death. There would be other deaths. It was inevitable. In mines there were always accidents. In field work there are fatalities. In homes people die. Later on, when children came to Corporation and grew up there, at some time an over-venturous small boy would stop living. Perhaps a small proud sister following him would die. That, tragically, was life. But Megan's death was the first, and even those who had never seen the gentle sad girl, and most hadn't, were saddened themselves. The place was quiet for days. Then Bill took his Cherokee up once more. Two of the hotel's boutiques opened. The hairdresser arrived. Life began again. Constance desperately wanted to go to Anthony and tell him that Andrew, Megan and Bunty were beginning again. She knew it and he must. But she hesitated, and the moment was lost.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE first mother was back in her bungalow now with her baby, but Cressida Moore had started a pre-natal clinic and no fewer than six had already applied. One of them was Joan. 'We've beaten Linda and Mike,' the girl triumphed to Constance, who had been down at the clinic visiting when Joan had called in to add her name to the baby stakes. 'We think, Barry and I, it was that honeymoon place that did it, that paradise that Mr. Vine chose and paid for us. It was just dreamy. You should go there, Constance. You, too, Sister.' 'Not, I should say,' said Cressida, 'in my present unmarried state.' 'But when... if..' suggested Joan. 'Yes, dear. When and if. Now what date do you think you'll be?' She had taken out her case book. But when Joan left, she closed it. 'No "if",' she smiled significantly at Constance. 'You mean—' 'Yes.' 'Then when?' 'We rather fancied to stage the first Corporation marriage, Hugh and I. By the way, I hope I'm not shattering any dreams, Constance?' 'You are. I fell in love with Hugh at once and now I'm bereft.' 'You say it too blithely and not heartbrokenly enough for belief. But what about Yolande?'

'Oh, she loved him for a while, but that's our Yolande. Seriously, Cressida, I'm happy for you.' Cressida looked dreamily through the clinic window. 'I liked Hugh from my first nursing days. I knew he liked me. We would have come together before, but we both wanted to establish ourselves first. But when Anthony Vine approached me to come to Corporation City as Sister on the recommendation of Doctor Hugh Mason, I knew it was practically a declaration.' 'Will you stay on afterwards? Or will Hugh seek out some profitable G.P. job?' 'It's very profitable here,' appreciated Cressida, 'though if Anthony Vine sends us to the same place as he sent Joan and Barry for their honeymoon, we may have to entertain different ideas. After all, our children will have to be taught.' 'There'll be schools then. Perhaps even a university.' 'Now you're being an Anthony Vine, for him only the sky's the limit for this place.' 'Can I tell Yolande, Cressida?' 'Of course, but don't expect dramatics. I doubt if she'll even hear you.' 'Oh, so you've noticed her abstraction, too?' 'Abstraction? The girl isn't with us!' Cressida laughed. The Sister was right about Yolande, she was not at all upset at the forthcoming engagement announcement. At one time, Constance thought, it would have sent her into the doldrums, into wondering why life was passing her by. Now Yolande merely smiled and wished

them well. She was more interested in the boutiques that were opening ... one for dresses, one for lingerie ... and in the Coiffure. But all Corporation was anticipating Coiffure. As a gesture, Anthony Vine donated an initial hairdo to every woman. For a week all the heads of the girls were perfectly dressed. Then for a joke some of the longer-haired bachelor males borrowed female clothes and came for a hair 'hand-out' as well, but it did not turn out as funny as they planned. Christine, the imported hairdresser from Sydney, fell first of all for the golden locks she was arranging and then for the owner of them. It was a very quick courtship, and while Chrissie and Hal went down to Chrissie's home for parental blessing, the salon was closed. 'This love business,' scowled Yolande, who hadn't had her free hairdo yet and now looked as though she would miss out. But, just as with everything else lately, she wasn't really worried. But something did occur to worry her. Evidently Rose Amberley had been to see Anthony Vine, for the Corporation boss mentioned Rose when he announced the next attraction. 'Mrs. Amberley says the women would like a fashion show. As an ex-model yourself, Miss Searle, what do you think?' 'I wasn't really a model, I just helped Guy show some of his lesser creations. Yolande did the good things.' 'Yes' ... a little impatiently ... 'but I asked you what you thought?' 'Women are eternally interested in clothes, and it isn't the same just reading about them in magazines.' 'Then the reply is Yes?' 'Yes,' Constance said.

She thought no more about it until a week later when Anthony stopped her in the vestibule. 'I'll need your help as to where to stage the show, Miss Searle.' 'Show?' 'Fashion show. You remember. I told you it had been suggested to me. I thought in the big conference room. I know we used the foyer before, but we've grown since then.' 'Yes, that would do fine,' approved Constance. 'Can you fix a stage, otherwise the women at the back of the room would be at a disadvantage.' 'It will be done,' he promised. It was not until Constance told Yolande that she remembered she had not asked Anthony which fashion house had agreed to come. It was the first thing that Yolande wanted to know, and she was cross when Constance could not tell her. 'Really, Consie, you're impossible! Can't you recall whether it was Faversham? Or Brenda's? Pink Paeony? Terry's Togs?' 'I don't know who's coming.' The big conference room was duly fixed as to dais and catwalk and the chairs arranged. The designer and dresses ... and personnel, Constance supposed ...; were to arrive in the morning. She went with Anthony Vine to meet the incoming plane. 'Where's the other car?' she inquired. 'What other car?'

'There'll be bags and there'll be girls. Even for a small show at least two girls, and there won't be room in one vehicle.' 'It's a small show,' was all Anthony replied. They stood on the field, rough with last year's dandelions now, but by the time Corporation finished with it, it would be a fine port. The plane loomed out of the bank of clouds in the east... no clouds ever here in the west ... and then touched down. A ladder went out and down the ladder came a familiar figure. Guy France. 'Guy!' Constance ran across at once to throw her arms around him and kiss him. She had been very fond of Guy. 'Young Worm again,' he greeted. 'Little apron Constance. Say, that sounds a bit like Little Orphan Annie, doesn't it?' Guy grinned. 'Hullo there, Mr. Vine. Good of you to have me back.' 'Good of you to come. In fact, very good. From what I hear of the House of Guy France, you can pick and choose these days.' 'Well, I have climbed up the ladder a little.' Guy had always been a humble type and he offered it humbly now. 'Guy, I'm so pleased for you,' Constance said, 'and I can't wait to see what you have. But' ... puzzled ... 'where are your girls? Are they coming on another plane?' 'No, Worm.' 'I see, then you're calling for a few young amateurs from the audience.' That was often, and quite successfully, done in small shows.

'No, again, Worm.' 'Then?' 'Then you.' 'Guy, I couldn't!' she protested. 'I mean, I'm out of practice.' 'You were never in,' he grinned. Then he said, more seriously: 'You... and Yolande.' Constance stared at him in dismay. He must know ... he couldn't not know... 'Oh, I've heard about Yolande and her wheelchair,' he said airily, 'but I still think she'll be showing my stuff.' 'Guy, she couldn't!' 'Like to take a bet on it?' 'She wouldn't,' Constance insisted. 'Now that's a different angle altogether, wouldn't and couldn't are very different cups of tea. I can see I'll have to work on that one. Yes, Mr. Vine, the bags will do nicely there.' All the way back to the hotel Guy spoke in a quiet intentional voice to Constance. 'I'm taking her back with me, you know,' he said. 'Yolande?' 'Who else?'

'And why do you think she'll go with you?' 'I just know she'll go, that's all.' Constance considered that a moment, then: 'Can you look after her, Guy? She's had all the help, and more, that she has needed here.' 'She'll be helping me,' he grinned. He added: 'On her own two feet.' 'Guy, she isn't pretending, she simply can't walk.' 'But she should be able to walk, I'm told, there's nothing to stop her. Oh, yes, Constance, I've had all the gen.' Constance must have glanced at Anthony behind the wheel, but Guy shook his head at her, at the idea of any information coming from that source. 'No, Worm, I had it all from her mother.' 'Mrs. Lawford contacted you?' To say the least Constance was amazed. Guy France would never have been down on Mrs. Lawford's list of possibles for her daughter, not even on her casual friends list. 'Yes, it is rather unbelievable, isn't it, particularly since very early in the piece when I went to see her about Yolande with v. to m. and all that, she all but slammed the door on my face. I was not rich, I was no catch, in fact I was nothing at all. But now she had changed her tune.' 'Because you're rich, a catch and something?' 'To give my future mother-in-law credit, she didn't know that, to her I was the same obscure bloke.'

'Then?' 'Something happened up here,' said Guy. 'It happened, I've gathered, when a baby happened.' 'Yes, we had a baby.' 'She described it all to me ... Yolande's mother did. She said: "Yolande took the baby in her arms and touched its hand with her hand, and all at once I knew I'd been wrong. Please forgive me, if you ever can, Guy, but anything I did, and said, and tried to influence, was for Yolande alone. I'd been brought up in a hard school, so I brought my daughters up to be able to be hard and resilient as well. But now I'm not sure. I saw her face, Yolande's delighted face, and I wasn't sure any more. If you'd like to go on from there ..." ' Guy paused, then he smiled again, 'I'm going on from there,' he said. When they got to the hotel, Constance saw to her dismay that Yolande had come down to the vestibule. She had wanted to break it quietly to Yolande, let it steal on her if possible, and yet perhaps this might be a better way. If Yolande felt like Guy felt perhaps she might even get up from her chair and come to him. Constance caught her breath at the dramatic idea. But nothing magical happened. Yolande just looked across and called: 'Hi, Guy,' and that was all. Later in her suite, Yolande laughed at Constance's crestfallen face. 'You expected a miracle, didn't you? Wake up to yourself, it just doesn't happen like that. What are the models like?' 'There are no models.' 'What?'

'None, Yolande.' 'Does he intend recruiting from the audience?' 'No.' 'Holding the things aloft?' 'Yolande, I don't know,' Constance said. She couldn't tell Yolande what Guy had answered to her when she had asked that. It appeared though he was still going ahead with his show. When Constance went downstairs, everything was arranged ... the portable room for changing, the girl waiting to help with the changing, the orchestra. Guy himself would compere. Constance was prevailed upon to display a few minor dresses, the kind of dresses the women knew they would finish up buying ... but their real and thrilling interest was somewhere else. Then Guy was holding up an evening cloak, a glorious thing in silk brocade, in glowing colours, in a beautiful flowing cut. And he was looking across at a girl who had just wheeled herself in. 'Yolande?' he asked, and whatever it was in his voice, Constance would never know, none of them there would know ... but Yolande knew. And she responded. She rose to her feet, unsteady, but only unsteady for the fraction of a minute, for weeks of exercise and application had seen to that, then she walked. She walked to Guy. And she showed his cloak. *

Within two days Yolande and Guy had left. Yolande had said to Constance: 'When things happen I'll be out as quick ... and quicker ... than you,' and she was right. 'I've always loved him,' she had told Constance, 'only he never said a word to me. I know now it was because of my mother, but I can't say anything against her, for she made it all come good in the end.' Yolande had been silent a moment. 'She's all right, Consie, isn't she?' 'Who, darling?' 'Dear Mamma. She's all right.' 'I told you mothers were useful.' 'Well, I'm going to use mine. And I think I'm going to like her quite a lot. You have to like people when you're happy.' In her happiness, Yolande did not ask Constance what would happen to her, and considering she was only here because of Yolande, Constance thought that that was a little unfair. But the girl would not have listened had she told her, she was walking to a new sweet beat. Constance came back from seeing Guy and Yolande off in the plane, and knew there was only one person to make listen. He had to listen. She went and tapped on the office door. 'Oh, come in, Miss Searle. The lovers away safely?' 'Yes, Mr. Vine.' 'Then what next, do you think? Rose Amberley tells me the library list could be more comprehensive. She takes a wonderful interest in C.C., does our Mrs. Amberley.'

'I'm glad you've brought up her name. I think she would be a splendid person to take over my position.' 'Female ombudsman ... though I concocted ombudswoman, didn't I?' 'General here, there, everywhere plus everything for women,' nodded Constance. She took a deep breath, 'From which I now wish to resign.' 'Oh, yes.' That floored Constance. She had expected arched brows at least, a questioning look, but certainly not a cool acceptance like this. 'You don't mind?' she half-stammered. 'Not at all, because I'd planned such a move myself.' 'You didn't need me any more?' 'Not as ombudsman, not as here, there, everywhere plus everything for women, and, seeing Yolande has gone, not for Yolande either. But'... a long deliberate pause ... 'how does Mrs. Corporation Boss sound?' 'Mrs — But you're the Corporation boss.' 'I believe it's what I'm called.' 'Then Mrs. Corporation Boss would mean—' 'Yes, it would mean the wife of the boss, Miss Searle.' He had taken up a pen as he talked, but now he flung it down. 'Oh, for heaven's sake, Constance,' he called, 'why are we playing around like this? Why are we wasting our lives? Once upon a time

we looked at each other, our eyes met, and we knew. Well, didn't we? Didn't we, girl?' 'Yes, but-' 'Then something happened. Yolande happened. Oh, that devilish, dear but completely misguided girl. I wanted her out, but how could I put her out, not as she was, or as she thought she was. If she had been tied to that chair, then it would have been different, it would have had to be different, I would have had to be tied to her. And I would have done it— God knows that. Only I knew, and specialists knew, it wasn't so, that it needn't be. Instead she needed something ... a touch, a look, a spur. I tried you, I tried her mother. Of her own accord Yolande tried Hugh. And nothing happened. But in all that time, that wretched time, you never helped me, never asked me, never understood. Instead you blamed me. Constance, you've put me through hell!' 'But you changed so much. You were so different.' 'Different? My God! When you left C.C. that first time I was a free man who'd just felt the first ties of love around himself. I was waiting to tighten them, to enclose myself in them. I was living for that. Then suddenly I was free no longer, I was trapped by other ties. And you' ... reproachfully ... 'didn't lift a finger.' 'You could have explained to me. You could have said—' 'Said: "I'm embarrassed by this woman who can't walk," could I have said that?' he broke in savagely. There was a long pause, then Constance admitted: 'No.' 'Then say it, you maddening girl. Say it, Constance ... with everything else.'

'Everything else?' 'With your love for me. Oh, yes, I know you have it. I knew from your eyes when I first saw you that day you and Guy and Yolande came to Corporation. I knew in unguarded moments the second time around. Then I knew ... for sure ... when we settled the gold rush that time.' His eyes, his Salvation Jane blue eyes in the leather brown skin, flicked at her. 'You knew!' she protested. 'But it was you who - well, who—' 'And you,' he smiled remindingly, 'who responded. Oh, yes, you responded.' 'I didn't want to. I tried not to. I - I loved you, but I— You see, I didn't like Yolande standing between.' 'She wasn't,' he assured her. 'I knew that after. Then I didn't want your wife between us.' 'Not my wife.' 'No,' sadly. 'Poor Megan ... yet I do believe happy Megan. Now.' He was silent a moment, his fingers running through Constance's thick brown hair. 'You were so eligible,' Constance quoted Helen. 'I didn't want to be in the rush.' 'Gold rush?' 'Man rush.'

'So long as it was this man, my love. But we were talking of responses, not rushes, Miss Searle.' He came closer to her. Swiftly she was in his arms, and she knew that the moment they both unconsciously had been holding off because the coming together at last would be so much sweeter, could be suspended no longer, delayed no more. Without any words she let him press her nearer. She raised her face in eager response. Mission over, she heard him whispering, conquest ended, but she added nothing herself. She couldn't... she was only aware of a bright gladness ... of a singing everywhere. Of his lips on hers.