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“We don’t see Tim Torrance as much as we would like nowadays. He’s a busy boss, and hasn’t any time for social calls.”

“He works quite often himself on the trains,” Gemma heard herself saying. She added quickly: “Or so I’ve heard.”

“Tim Torrance would never ask anyone to do what he couldn’t do himself. He tries out every aspect, does it regularly. Ludy was telling me that Janet Willis visited you while you were ill.”

“Yes. I can barely remember, though. Do you mind her having come, Isabel?”

“Mind? Of course not.” Isabel smiled warmly. “Anyway, I’ve always liked Janet.”

“How would she know about me?” But even as she said it Gemma remembered Tim Torrance’s:

“Up here a wind will blow even a change of mind.” He had added: “And yours is a change of heart.”

“It’s a very powerful wind,” she said now.

“Are you all right, dear?” Isabel looked concerned.

“Wonderful.” Gemma told herself she must watch her tongue. “Only I do worry about putting you out,” she added.

“Putting us out? You were what I wanted but barely dared hope for.” For some reason Isabel’s voice shook, and Gemma wondered why.

“How do you mean, Isabel?” she probed gently when the woman did not explain.

Isabel moistened her lips, then looked at Gemma piteously.

“Chris,” she blurted at last.

“Chris?”

“That month in Melbourne was not a holiday jaunt, it was not business. It was a—health check.”

“Yes?”

Now there was a very long pause. In the silence, Gemma could hear all the things one does hear in silences. T he tick of a clock. The drip of a tap. An idle breeze turning over a curtain.

“He hasn't long. Gemma.” Isabel managed to say it quite calmly.

“Chris hasn’t—”

“No. I won't give you details. They’re involved medical terms, anyway, and I doubt if I could get my tongue around them. But it’s final, Gemma. Three of the best doctors are agreed on that.”
“Chris—” said Gemma again, and she bit her lip.

“He doesn’t know,” said Isabel presently. “It’s not that he isn’t, brave. Chris is the bravest man I know. It’s just that I wanted it that way. Besides—”

“Besides, Isabel?”

“Chris’s memory is deteriorating, and will finally go. I was warned of that, and I can notice the signs already. He’s still keen on things that are happening
now
. . . the weather, for instance, he always look a deep interest in that, and he’s now more alert there than ever.”

“But the past is receding?”

A pause, then: “It’s getting mixed up with the present, Gemma. You, for instance, sometimes become—” But Isabel did not go on with that.

“If the past had not forsaken him,” she resumed presently, ‘‘if he could look forward to his Neroli soon, for, Gemma, I’ve never seen two people so made for each other as were Chris and Neroli, it would be quite different. Chris could know. He could be told. But very soon he’s not going to remember Neroli as she was, only” ... a tentative look at Gemma... “as she is.”

“As she is?”

“If we told him there wasn’t long for him what would he have to hold on to, not remembering
that
Neroli, only knowing
this
Neroli?”

“This?” queried Gemma.

“He would be leaving someone,” Isabel said unhappily, “not going to her. Do you follow me, Gemma ?”

She left it at that. Then.

Janet visited the Mitchells again. She sat on the verandah and looked closely at Gemma.

“You really must have knocked yourself out, you still look pale. I expected you to be out of it by now. I expected the very relief of being rid of the Mannerings would put you on your feet again.”

“I never wanted to be rid of you, Janet, and talking of how people look,
you
look wonderful.”

“I’m having a baby.” Janet gave a little secret smile. “And it’s going to be a Willis. I don’t know about that Deborah that Bruce has entangled himself with,... oh, yes, it’s signed, sealed and delivered now ... but somehow I don’t think babies will be high on Deborah’s list. In fact I don’t think they’re going to appear at all. Which means that Mamma will be looking to me for future Mannerings. But
I
am having a
Willis
.”

“Because you love Jim.”

“Love that foreman!’’ But there was something in Janet’s voice that there was no mistaking.

"Bruce is coming to see you,” she said. “Will the Mitchells mind?”

“They never mind anything," Gemma assured her.

“Then he’s coming.”

Bruce did. He sat down and said awkwardly:

“I got your note, Gemma.”

“And later the ring?” Gemma had been worried about that, the ring had gone, but in the mood the Territorian had been she hadn’t known what to think. Had he returned it personally as he had said, said the things he had told her?

“One of the men brought it across,” Bruce told Gemma.

After a while he said: “Deborah and I—well—”

“I know, Bruce, and I’m pleased for you. I think it’s going to be very suitable.”

“I hope so. She’s a very remarkable young woman. In many ways very much like my mother.” For an unguarded moment a look came into Bruce’s handsome young face, a wondering kind of look.

The news of cyclone Clarissa approaching the northwest coast at Essway Harbour came as no surprise to the Mitchells. For weeks Chris had forecast it. He spent hours in his weather room, as Isabel called it, plotting sun rays, latitudes, longitudes, wind courses. He had expected Clarissa.

“After Clarissa the rivers will rise like they’ve never risen before,” Chris told Gemma. “You think the Lucy’s swollen now at forty miles, it will soon be a hundred miles across.”

“And our great snake in the lagoon,” asked Gemma, amused, remembering the legend, “will it also come out of its hiding to watch, bring up all its cooling water and spread as well?”

“And spread and spread,” sighed Chris. “Come and I’ll show you how, Neroli.”

... Neroli. There was a sharp edge in the room after Chris said that, but Chris was unconscious of any tension. Only Gemma felt it.

She crossed to Chris and listened to him telling her wind velocity, expected tides, cloud formation, all the rest, and all the time not hearing a word.

... Neroli.

That evening she told Isabel. She said simply: ‘I'm Neroli, Isabel.”

“Yes, dear, I expected that."

“Isabel, what do I do?”

“He’s my twin, he’s my half, how can you expect me to answer for you, Gemma?”

“I could tell him.”

“Yes, you could.”

“On the other hand ...”

Isabel said eagerly: “I was hoping you would say that. Oh, Gemma! ”

Clarissa reached Essway Harbour one early morning. It came with a force and a venom never before experienced. The radio remained intact, and it reported havoc and catastrophe. The entire town had been flattened, and evacuees were pouring south.

While Isabel fussed around and saw what she could donate in beds and blankets, how many evacuees, if asked, she could accommodate, Chris showed “Neroli”

in his weather room how every inland river now would rise, how every lower spot between here and Essway must feel the impact of swollen waters.

“Also our snake,” Gemma said.

“That’s aboriginal lore,” nodded Chris, “but I believe there’s something behind it, and that the underground waters will rise. I don’t pretend to know the scientific cause, but I do know that our lagoon is fed subterraneously from somewhere.”

‘‘How long will it be a lagoon, Chris?"

“I don’t know, Neroli.”

... Neroli.

“I only know,” went on Chris, turning to Gemma and taking her hand, “that we must face it together. You, Neroli. You and I.”

“Yes, Chris,” Gemma said gently.

Gemma let him keep her hand in his. When Isabel came in soon after, Chris said:

“Neroli has just indicated something very wonderful to me, Isabel. She feels the same for me as I feel for her.”

“Then that’s wonderful, Chris,” Isabel said, but her eyes went to Gemma, and they were blurred with grateful tears,

“Thank you,” she whispered when she could.

Though the cyclone was miles away on the coast, Boothagullagulla still received a share of the impact, and it was severe enough to make Gemma shudder when she thought of how frightening it must have been up there in the “eye”.

The first warning was rain, loud, deafening, bursting rain that fell without any preliminary showers on the iron roof. It could have been a million demons, Gemma thought, every demon bearing wet violence in the form of vicious drops as sharp as javelins. It came down in sheets. You could hear the roof shudder at the heavy impact. Even the lesser drops that managed to push beneath the shuttered windows were still like stilettos.

Then the wind began. Even though everything was shut and barred, it still got in. It sent papers flying, curtains billowing, scattered flowers from vases, then, growing more savage still, even crashed the vases.

It thrashed the rain under every door, under every window, no matter how strongly secured. Once, when Gemma caught up enough courage to look out, she saw that the rains that had covered the lawns with mirror-like sheets were now wind-shattered into a million glassy pieces.

But she only saw it for a moment. The next moment it, and everything else, was darkly obscure.

Three of the windows smashed in and the noise was deafening. They could hear roofs being grabbed away, buildings dismantling.

“The men will be all right, though,” Isabel assured her, “they would all make for the old stone barn, nothing will dislodge it.”

“How about Harriet?” asked Gemma.

“They’ll take Harriet as well.”

Chris was their tower of strength. Weather had always been his passion, and now he anticipated every change of wind before it came, moved his women from room to room.

The deluge went on all night, but Chris said that in the morning it would have blown itself out.

“Mannering Park ?” Gemma asked once.

“They would be getting it, too, of course, but not like this. We’re in the direct line.”

They bedded down that night in the room that Chris advised. Gemma thought she would never sleep, that the noise would prevent any sleep, but she must have. Probably through exhaustion they all must have.

They awakened almost at the same time, and it was dawn ... and calm. No rain. No wind.

“It’s over!” Gemma called.

“No, Neroli, it’s only beginning.” Chris was at the window, and Gemma joined him there.

At first she could not orientate herself, Everything looked different. Not different because it was smashed down, swallowed up, but
different.
She did not know where she was.

Then she saw that it was because of the water. There was water everywhere. They could have been on a ship. .. for a few minutes Gemma felt certain she was on a ship. Why, there were even islands. .. Islands with cabbages growing on them But they were not islands, and they were not cabbages, and she realized that. They were higher level paddocks, and the “cabbages” were tree tops.

All kinds of things were floating in the water. Uprooted shrubs, a garden scat, a small shed that had dismantled. The current was so strong in places that Gemma saw it suck in a blown-off roof and bear it rapidly away.

“What about our lagoon?” she asked.

“All this is running into it.” said Chris, “and then there’ll be the subterranean flow rising up in it, too. It will soon be an inland sea.”

“A little more,” said Gemma a little unsteadily, “than the great snake anticipated.”

“Or I anticipated.” Chris’s face was grave. He reached for Gemma’s hand and held it.

“But we’ll come through, Neroli,” he promised.

THE telephone had long since ceased to function, hut Chris had always been able to contact his men’s quarters and outhouses by a private system of his own making. He had been one for tinkering even as a small boy, his twin recounted to Gemma as she fussed around. There would be no evacuees now, more like it
they
would be the evacuees, but Isabel still had to think about other people, and to prepare.

Fortunately the home phone was still operable, so Chris rang his men, since the line was from homestead to quarters only and not reversible so they could not ring him. The women stood by, eager to know the position.

It was OK so far, Barney reported, but the water was rising fast. What did the boss think?

The boss had an answer to that at once.

“Get going,” he told Barney. “Don’t waste any time,”

“But—”

“We can’t leave. We’re too far under. We’re in a slight saucer here, remember, but you should be safe for the next hour. Take the biggest trucks, Barney, they’re higher from the ground, and if you begin at once, the track out should still be passable. Tricky, and you’ll have to keep your eyes peeled for debris, but passable.”

“But—”

“Look, Barney, I’m not suggesting, I’m ordering.
Get going.
Our outward phone connection is dead. We’re depending on you to raise the alarm for us, so for heaven’s sake, man—”

“What about the stock?” Gemma heard Barney shouting through the home phone.

“You can’t have much left in there. Drive what you do have outside right now. They’re not fools, they’ll climb to the highest spot they can find. But” ... smiling briefly at Gemma ... “find room in one of the trucks for Harriet. Yes, the calf. Now get going, man!”

Chris, Isabel and Gemma stood at the window and watched the evacuation. The water was almost up to the top of the wheels of the trucks, but it was still quite safe. That Barney was not happy over the arrangement, though, was evident by the way he kept on looking anxiously towards the homestead. At length, since his voice would not carry that far, Chris picked up the phone again, gave it some savage rings, then fairly bellowed into it when it was answered that if the contingent did not start at once he’d get out his shotgun and make them start.