The Far Country Read Free Page B

when first she had come to Australia.
    She shook her head. “Not now that it’s a school. It’ld be all different. I’d rather remember it as it used to be.” Her father had kept two gardeners and a groom, and three servants in the house; she knew that nothing would now resemble the gracious, easy routine of the home that she had lived in as a child.
    He did not press her; if she didn’t want to go to England that was all right with him. He had only memories of a cold, unfriendly place himself, where he had been ill at ease and that he secretly disliked. He would have liked very much to go back to Gallipoli again, and to France and Italy—it would be interesting to see those. His mind turned to his Italian hired man. “There’s another thing,” he said. “About Mario. He’s got that girl of his in this town that he comes from. I don’t know how much he’s got saved up now, but it might be a good thing if we could help him with her fare. It wouldn’t be so much, and we might be able to charge it up against the tax. After all, it’s all connected with the station.”
    Mario Ritti was a laughing man of about twenty-eight, tall and well built, with dark curly hair, a swarthy complexion, and a flashing eye; a peril to all the young girls in the neighbourhood. He had been taken prisoner by the Eighth Army at Bardia in 1942, and he had spent two years in England as a prisoner of war, working on a farm in Cumberland where he had learned about sheep. After the war he had got back to his own place, Chieti, a hill town in the Abruzzi mountains near the Adriatic coast where his parentsscratched a bare living from a tiny patch of rather barren land. In Italy there were far more people than the land could support, and Mario had put his name down almost at once for a free immigrant passage to Australia. He had worked as a labourer and as a waiter in a hotel in Pescara and as a housepainter till his turn came round upon the quota three years later and he could leave for an emptier country. By the terms of his free passage he had to work for two years as directed by the Department of Immigration in Australia, after which he would be free to choose his work like any other man. Jack Dorman had got him from the Department, and was very pleased with him, and he was anxious not to lose him at the end of the two years.
    “I was thinking that we might build on to the shearers’ place,” he said. “Extend that on a bit towards the windmill and make a little place of three rooms there. Then if we got his girl out for him he’d be settled, and the girl could help you in the house.”
    Jane laughed shortly. “Fat lot of help she’d be, a girl who couldn’t speak a word of English having babies every year. I’d be helping her, not her helping me. Still, if she could cook the dinner now and then, I wouldn’t say no.” She sat for a moment in thought. “How much is her passage going to cost, and how much has he got saved up?”
    “He sends money back to Italy, to his parents,” Jack said. “He was sending home five pounds a week at one time, so he can’t have very much. I suppose the passage would be about fifty quid. We’d better pay that, and let him spend what he’s got saved on furniture.”
    “Find out how much he’s got,” his wife said. “He ought to put in everything he’s got if we’re going to do all that for him.”
    “That’s right.” He pushed his chair back from the table. “Like to drive into town this afternoon and put this cheque into the bank?”
    She smiled; he was still very young at times. “Don’t you trust the postman?”
    “No,” he said. “Not with twenty-two thousand pounds. A thing like that ought to be registered.” He paused. “We could take a drive around,” he said. “Look in on George and Ann for tea, at Buttercup.”
    “Giving up work?” she asked.
    “That’s right,” he said. “Just for today.”
    “Who’s going to get tea here for the boys if we go gallivanting