by Gloria Bevan
‘Anywhere suits me.’ What you really mean is, jeered the small voice in her mind, anywhere that takes you away from Stephen Crane’s infuriating authoritative ways. Why must she persist in thinking of him, anyway? With an effort she jerked her thoughts aside.
‘After that,’ Glenn was saying, ‘our time’s our own. We could take a drive up to the Waitakere ranges—there’s a massive dam up there that supplies water for the city.’ His gaze swept the misty blue outlines of the hills around them. ‘Up in the vineyards you must have seen plenty of bush already. Sure you don’t mind taking in a bit more on the scenic drive?’
‘It’s all new to me. Tell me, whereabouts do your friends live?’
‘That’s where I’m lucky! It’s a suburb no distance from here. They’re some sort of distant cousins, actually. Don’t ask me how it all works out, it’s beyond me, but they’ve sure been good to me ever since I came to live in Auckland. Frank and his wife, they’re a great couple, and Pam—’
‘Pam?’ Tracy’s sea-blue eyes glinted laughingly up at him. ‘Is she young?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Pretty?’
‘Not like you. Goodhearted, though...’ He sent her a wide grin. ‘She insists on laundering my white office shirts.’
‘Like that, is it? Could be it’s love?’
But he only laughed, swinging from the main thoroughfare into a quiet street. Soon they were turning in at the entrance gates of a ranch-styled home set amidst sweeping green lawns. Landscape windows overlooked the immaculately tended flower beds and clipped green hedges.
Almost Immediately Tracy felt she was being welcomed as if she were one of the family. Surrounded by smiling friendly faces, she and Glenn moved into a spacious room crowded with people and after a few moments she gave up trying to memorize the names of the various acquaintances. There were so many cousins, aunts, friends of the family, while outside children chased one another around the laden peach trees and’ flowering shrubs that dotted the spacious lawns.
She gathered that the chunky genial man with a lined tanned face was Frank Rorke, the father of the family. Apparently his interests were centred in two grown sons, both leading players in the district Rugby football team. His wife, Eva, was silver-haired and comfortably plump, with a merry smile. She appeared to be not at all put out by the stream of weekend visitors, for whom she provided mountainous piles of sandwiches and seemingly endless cups of tea and coffee.
One girl in particular captured Tracy’s interest. A few years older than herself, tall and well-built, she had a forthright manner and would have been attractive, Tracy mused, had it not been for having such a prominent nose. She wondered why the stranger’s eyes were fixed continually on Tracy and her escort.
‘Here comes Pam,’ Glenn said suddenly as the tall girl with cropped brown hair made her way through the throng in their direction. ‘She’s the one I told you about. A whiz on the tennis court! She’s Auckland’s leading woman player and now she’s going on to contest the national tennis championships.’ He raised his tone above the soaring notes of a radiogram as the girl reached his side. ‘This is Tracy, Pam. I’ve just been telling how famous you’re getting to be.’
‘Oh, you mean tennis?’ She looked towards him with laughing grey eyes. ‘I’d rather shine at something useful, like you.’
‘Me?’ He looked surprised. ‘What have I done?’
‘Don’t listen to him!’ she appealed to Tracy. ‘I think it’s fabulous being chosen by your firm to go overseas and study the markets there. I bet there were swags of older men with heaps more experience they could have picked for the trip. Do you know, Glenn hadn’t been with the firm for more than a few months!’
‘My press agent,’ Glenn said lightly, and turned away as he was hailed by a young man.
‘I was the first one he told about the offer to go overseas!’ The shining eyes, the ring of pride in the other girl’s warm tones betrayed to Tracy an unmistakable depth of feeling. ‘He knows me so well, you see. He stayed here at the house before he went away to England.’
Perhaps, Tracy mused, he likes her a lot too. Hadn’t he hinted about making plans for a home of his own? How lucky some couples were in their love affairs, with nothing to complicate their romance but just straight going all the way!
‘Got to get going, folks!’ Glenn took her arm as he shepherded her through the throng. ‘We’re off to see what the Waitakere bush looks like at close quarters.’
Everyone shouted farewells and Pam and her mother came to the car to see them off.
‘We’ll see you again?’ There was no warmth in Pam’s flat tones. ‘Glean said you were only here on a visit?’
‘That’s right.’
The other girl averted her face, but Tracy had caught the tell-tale colour that was creeping up the tanned cheeks.
So that’s it. The thoughts chased one another through her mind. She’s in love with him and desperately afraid that I’m planning to take her precious Glenn away from her. That was why her mother looked at me in that odd way when we met. She was kind and welcoming, but just the same there was a worried look in her eyes. If only she and Pam knew how ridiculous it all is! He’s no more in love with me than I am with him. If only she could come right out and tell Pam the truth, take chat stricken look from her eyes—but of course one didn’t do such things. Anyway, it might all be merely her imagination.
‘Goodbye! Goodbye!’ While the two women stood waving the children ran alongside the car for a few yards, then fell behind.
Soon they were sweeping upwards towards the blue hills that dominated the landscape in this western area of the city..
‘They call this the scenic drive.’ Glenn was taking the ever-ascending slope where the fronds of spreading pungas leaned from either side of the smooth roadway to brush the car as they passed by. Below the road level were steps cut in steep banks leading to homes hidden in thick bush. From the winding track Tracy looked down on waving green tree- tops, the feathery foliage of rimu, giant kauris, totara, with always the dense tea-free and native bush, and far below the blue sheen of the sea. At intervals the furry bodies of possums were sprawled on the highway. ‘They’re a pest up here,’ Glenn explained, ‘they’re dynamite on native bush, eat everything in sight, but it’s at night that they get killed ... the car lights blind them as they try to cross the roads.’
They swept around a curve of the scenic road to glimpse from the mountain ridge two great harbours, one on either side of the range. Then a little further on, looking down the steep slopes Tracy caught a fleeting glimpse of a white track through the bush. ‘Look! There’s a track!’
Glenn followed her gaze towards the narrow path snaking down to the gully below. ‘Like to have a look?’
‘Would I!’
‘Right! We can’t park here, though, there’s no room.’ He drove for some distance until he found a wader space between the highway and the bush-covered bank. ‘This should do it!’
They got out of the car and strolled back until they reached the entrance to the overgrown track.
‘Come on!’ Tracy ran on ahead, her sneakers making no sound on the thick fallen leaves underfoot.
‘Hey, wait!’ She could hear Glenn hurrying behind her. ‘You’ll come a cropper if you don’t slow up.’
She took no notice, running on down the steep slope.
Throwing a laughing glance back at him, she failed to notice a long rope of black supplejack that trailed from towering forest trees overhead and barred her path. The next moment she stumbled and would have fallen headlong had not Glenn caught her in his arms. His grip tightened around her and she felt the beating of his heart against her own. Then his lips came down on hers with swift pressure. Unresponsive and unyielding, she felt herself stiffen.
He released her gently. ‘What’s wrong, Tracy?’
‘Nothing. I...’ In truth she didn’t know herself why his light caress was all at once distasteful to her.
‘Okay,’ he grinned pen
itently, blue eyes twinkling. ‘It won’t happen again, if you watch your step—and I watch mine! It was just that you—well, it’s been a long time since I’ve been close to you. Couldn’t resist the chance of making the most of it. On the ship coming over you ... didn’t seem to mind.’
‘Well,’ she laughed lightly and hurried on ahead, ‘that was on the ship!’
But her thoughts were in a turmoil. Why did she mind now? Why had she changed in her attitude towards him? In all fairness it wasn’t Glenn’s fault. He was the same as ever, but she ... It’s that Stephen, she told herself angrily. He gets me so annoyed and het-up that I never get a chance to think of anyone else. He puts everything else out of my mind. Well, this was one day when she was free of his disturbing ways, his aloofness and disapproval. Today she would forget him.
Pausing, she waited for Glenn to catch up with her on the narrow track where there was room only to walk in single file. ‘You wouldn’t think,’ she marvelled, ‘that it would be so far to the valley. You can’t even see the end of the track from here.’
Indeed, as they went on the track seemed to curve endlessly through the filtered green gloom. Once a bush pigeon with a flash of iridescent blue went past their faces to alight in a kauri tree high overhead, and around them flew tiny fan-tails, darting from bush to bush, so close that once or twice Tracy put out a hand as a tiny bird flew past.
‘What’s that?’ She paused, listening, as a chime of bell like notes fell crystal-clear on the bush-spiced air.
‘A tui. See him? The black bird with the white throat up on that high branch!’ He threw an arm around her shoulders, his face close to hers, but Tracy pulled herself free and went on ahead. On and on ... Still they could see no end of the winding path. Then quite suddenly they found themselves in a gully where water rippled somewhere close at hand. Going forward, they came on a stream almost hidden by overhanging tree ferns and low-growing bush. Following the tinkling sound for some time, at last they dropped down to one of the punga logs with its stringy bark, that had fallen across the leafy ground.
‘Tracy! There’s something—’
At the sudden note of seriousness in his tone, she got swiftly to her feet. ‘Come on, I want to see what’s around that next bend.’
Resignedly he followed her lead. ‘As you say.’ As they moved deeper into the bush, Tracy was conscious of the utter stillness. There wasn’t even a bird song. They could be alone in the world, but thank goodness, she told herself thankfully, the thick green undergrowth held no poisonous snakes or dangerous wild animals.
Suddenly Glenn caught her hand. ‘Had enough?’ She nodded. ‘We may as well tum back.’
‘I wonder,’ he was eyeing a trail that zig-zagged up the bush-clad hill above, ‘if we could get back that way? It would bring us out nearer to the car.’
‘Is that how you’re feeling?’ Tracy laughed.
‘Well,’ he studied her with appreciative eyes, ‘I wouldn’t mind carrying you out, but—’
‘Let’s give it a go! We can always come back here if it doesn’t end anywhere.’
He took her hand and they began their upward climb, pushing their way through twining creepers and dense green undergrowth. Sometimes for a time it was easy as they cut through clearings beneath the trees, then once again they were forced to stop at intervals to disentangle themselves from hanging vines and the long trailing black ropes of supplejack
‘You know something?’ Glenn paused to extricate Tracy from the thorny clutch of a trailing bush lawyer vine. ‘Maybe it would be an idea to turn back?’
‘No use!’ she laughed. ‘We must have passed the point of no return ages ago. We’ll be in sight of the road up on top soon.’
But they weren’t. Indeed, it seemed to Tracy that the higher they climbed the further away they were from any sign of civilization. At last the thought that she had been loath to acknowledge could no longer be ignored. ‘Glenn, you don’t think we’ve taken a wrong turning somewhere between here and there?’
His grin was forced. ‘That place where the path branched off in two directions ... maybe we should have gone straight ahead.’
‘Just as well,’ she laughed a little jerkily, ‘that we’re not somewhere in a real jungle instead of just the Waitakere ranges. All the same...’ her tone sobered as she remembered Lucie telling her of various tramping parties who through the years had become lost among these hills. Parties who at least were familiar with the walking tracks, whereas with she and Glenn ... But it was too ridiculous to think they could really be lost in the bush, so near to the popular scenic drive with its passing motorists.
Glenn seemed to echo her thoughts. ‘If only I’d been a boy scout I might have brought a compass along with me. As it is...’ His voice died away uncertainly.
‘As it is, we’re lost,’ Tracy said. She tried to smile at his worried frown. ‘But I guess we may as well keep going. That way we’ll be pretty sure to hit the road sooner or later.’
‘Just what I was going to say!’ She had a suspicion that Glenn was acting with more confidence than he felt. ‘No need to be worried.’
‘We’ll probably be laughing about this in an hour or two,’ she glanced up at the sky where lowering grey clouds, heavy with moisture hung overhead, ‘or wishing we’d brought our windbreakers with us!’
They didn’t speak much after that, both busy with their own thoughts. The swift darkness was already filling the gullies, throwing a purple haze over a dense bush where even if there had been tracks, it would be difficult to distinguish them.
To add to her discomfiture, Tracy’s sneaker was wearing a painful blister on her heel and at last she could no longer disguise her limping progress.
‘You should have told me!’ Glenn stared down at her sympathetically. ‘We’ve been hiking for hours. That does it, we may as well face it, we’re good and lost! In another few minutes it will be really dark. All we can do now is try and find some sort of shelter, even if it’s only tree ferns, and wait for daylight.’
‘Guess you’re right!’ She no longer particularly cared. All she wanted to do was to rest her aching limbs, wash her hot face and hands in water, sit down for a few minutes. At least the stream’s here.’ For they had come once more within sound of running water in the tree-lined gully. Perhaps, Tracy thought wearily, they had described a full circle in the way she had read that travellers often did when lost in the bush. Pushing their way through the bushes and ferns, they knelt on the mossy ground, plunging hands into the cool clean ‘water, splashing it over their heated faces.
‘Couldn’t we just stay here?’ Tracy said.
‘You’ve forgotten the mosquitoes!’ Glenn’s fair skin was already marked red with welts from the bite of insects and Tracy was aware of a maddening itching on arms and legs. ‘You’ve got a point there,’ she conceded.
Under the tree branches further up the rise they were conscious of the hum of insects too, but at least they weren’t entirely at the mercy of the mosquitoes.
As they dropped down on the rustling leaves, Glenn caught her hand’. ‘Sorry, Tracy,’ he said in a low tone.
‘It’s all right. It was just as much my fault as yours. It was my idea to come down the track. Remember? One thing,’ she glanced up towards the spreading fronds of pungas overhead, ‘we’ve got something that looks like a big green umbrella up there. If only we don’t need them!’
As if in answer to her light remark a drizzling rain began to fall, softly at first but gradually increasing until although they shifted from place to place in an effort to find shelter below the dark foliage of tall trees above, there seemed no escape from the pelting raindrops that were now slashing down in sheets of water. Huddling close together because it was the only way to keep warm, shaken by violent shivering as time went on and the rain didn’t abate, it seemed to Tracy incredible that she could be so cold, after the heat of the day. And the rain ... it wasn’t just rain but a torrential downpour.
A shaft of lightning lit up the bus
h around them, illuminating Glenn’s pallid wet young face. He looked utterly miserable and in spite of her own discomfort she felt a pang of pity for him. Although she knew he was longing to do all he could to help in the situation, somehow he looked so helpless. Now if it had been Stephen Crane, he’d have done something, she didn’t know what, but something to make the position more bearable. But that’s not fair, she scolded herself the next moment. Stephen was accustomed to bush country, he would be well versed in bushcraft and rescue procedure in the mountains, whereas poor Glenn ...
Another shaft of light played over the bush.
‘Don’t worry, Tracy,’ Glenn murmured comfortingly, ‘I’ll look after you!’
‘I’m not frightened!’ In spite of her brave words she shrank closer to him as the jagged illumination of forked lightning played over the trees and zigzagged through the darkness. Hadn’t she read of trees being struck by this type of lightning? The next moment there was a shattering explosion, then peal after peal of thunder crashed and reverberated around the bush with a volume of sound that Tracy had never heard in any ordinary storm.
Drenched, shaken by long shivers that shook her from head to foot, never had she felt such utter discomfort. The constant slanting rain slashing down through the punga ferns above swiftly soaked their thin summer clothing, plastering their hair close to their heads, running down their faces until Tracy thought there couldn’t possibly be anything more chilling and unendurable. Only you had to endure it, get through the long night somehow, as the slow hours passed in the wind and the rain.