The Man From the Valley

by Joyce Dingwell

  THE MAN FROM THE VALLEY

  Joyce Dingwell

  When her boyfriend heartlessly let her down, Terese decided to go out to Australia and start afresh. She found a life and a job that were utterly different from anything she had known before--but she discovered that she had by no means left emotional troubles behind her.

  CHAPTER ONE

  How long does it take for a dream to die?

  Terese did not know. But she knew that something young and tender had died in her when she replaced the receiver.

  She had raced down the three flights of stairs to answer the phone. It must be Jeff, and he must have something important to say, otherwise he would not have phoned here. “Phone the library,” she had instructed firmly. “Mrs. Coppins gets livid if there are calls for any of us.”

  Yes, it would be Jeff. Jeff telling her when. She imagined his voice rising in pleasure when she told him she had bought her own ticket. “Little Queen Midas,” he would tease, “little moneybags! But I appreciate that, darling, I’m dead broke.” Jeff was always broke.

  He was generous, though. Even if it was with her money, he did things brightly, gaily, with the grand gesture. He was infectious, and he had brought sunshine into her first winter in London. She supposed winter had been just as cold and gray down at Drayhill, but she could not remember feeling it as keenly, or as desolately, as she had when she had transferred to London. Knowing no one at all, the impersonal air of a huge city had had a chilling impact.

  Until Jeff.

  He had strolled into her new place of employment one cold gray February morning ... the large, perfectly appointed rooms so different from that imperfect but cozy old building that had served as the library at Drayhill ... and all at once the sun had shone.

  Tall, loose, a flick of sun-bleached hair falling over his left temple and an Australian drawl. He had captured her at once.

  Looking back, whenever she found time to look back, for life with Jeff ran swiftly, headily, Terese knew that it had all started from the moment she had raised her head from her books and looked into his eyes.

  He was in England to make contacts for his firm back in Sydney. They paid what they thought was a generous retainer, but Jeff ... Terese smiled affectionately, hearing again his plaintive protest ... would just like to see any of his bosses manage on the miserly pittance.

  “You do live it up, though, darling.” Yes, it had not taken long to get to the “darling” stage with Jeff.

  “Of course. Why not? Life is for living. And another thing, they don’t allow for falling in love, as I have with you. When I return, my sweet, I want you with me. But how, I ask you, can we manage it on my salary?”

  It had been music in her ears. He loved her. Jeff loved her. The world that had closed up with Dad’s passing, a narrow little world though it had been after her mother’s death, a year before, had opened up wide. Warmth had encompassed her, affection, sunshine. Jeff wanted to take her home as his wife.

  She had given freely of the small but tidy sum that had been left her, and Jeff with charming boyishness had accepted her hand-outs.

  “It’s awful of me, but somehow I don’t feel awful, not when it’s you. It’s because it’s us, I suppose. Do you feel that, Terry?”

  He was the only one who had ever called her Terry and not Terese, and it excited her. It made her feel different from the quiet, rather dull librarian recently transferred from Drayhill.

  “Of course I feel it,” she had assured him, and she had hugged to herself the thing she next intended to do. Pay her own air fare out to Australia. Show him the ticket ... or, as things had turned out now, tell him what she had done over the phone.

  “Darling, I’m a forward hussy,” she would begin. “Today I booked a flight to Sydney.” Not exactly booked yet, but prepaid the amount, instruction of date pending. She could hear in advance the sharp intake of Jeff’s breath, the whistle of elation. “You beaut!” he would applaud in that blatant—but she loved it—Australian way of his.

  It would come as a special surprise after his three weeks in Scotland. He had grumbled over that; as well as being away from her he had grumbled at not having enough money to do things as things should be done, or rather, and Terese smiled tolerantly, as he liked doing them. Yes, Jeff would be amazed, he would be exultant, he would say the endearing, charming things he always said, and, being Jeff, he would begin to plan. Jeff was always full of plans. There would be a celebration dinner tonight. Afterward a show. Useless to tell that infectious fellow that money, once a couple had decided on something as big and enduring as they had, should be conserved, that two people, in spite of the old adage, did not live as cheaply as one. No, they would wine and dine. They would fix a date to be married, a date, too, for their flight home. Home. Going home. How lovely it sounded. Homeward bound. Going home.

  Terese picked up the phone.

  How long does it take for a dream to die?

  Five minutes after Mrs. Coppins’s angry summons, “Telephone, Miss" Staples,” and the accompanying sniff conveying unmistakably that if Miss Staples was not prepared to abide by the house rules there were many prospective tenants who would, Terese was back in her small room on the third floor.

  She stood at the window and stared blankly out.

  The roses were in bud, she saw with surprise. Knowing and being with Jeff must have pushed winter out and hurried in spring without her noticing.

  “Is that you, Terry?” Again she heard the smooth drawl over the phone. “I’m off, sweetie.”

  “No, I’ve finished with England, I’m going to Canada. Looks like several years this time. Got my orders up in Glasgow. An increase in pay and a better retainer, too. All the same, old girl, if you’re rolling in dough and sick of the filthy stuff...” A laugh.

  It was then that she heard the accompanying laugh—no, more a soft giggle, the barely whispered “Oh, Jeff—” but so faint it could have been her imagination.

  But no imagination had been Jeff’s clear, “I always like to tidy up before I close things. My firm can fault me a dozen times a day, but they have never faulted me in that.”

  “Jeff?”

  The rest could have come out of a book, one of the books that Terese date-stamped each day.

  “Good friends.” “Remember you fondly.” “Bid me goodbye, before high summer passes, all that sort of stuff.”

  Words, phrases, clichés...

  It had concluded smugly with Jeff repeating that he liked to do things the right way, that he was above slinking out as many in his position would have done. He always tidied up, came a second chorus, even his firm applauded him in that.

  So obviously did the soft intake of breath at his side. She must be very close to his side for Terese to hear the breath.

  Loud enough for whoever it was to hear back. Terese had said clearly, “Of course. By all means. No strings. It was a pleasant interlude. Goodbye and good luck.”

  She had smiled mechanically as Jeff, characteristically unable not to make the bid, had tried his luck again for a hand-out, but whoever it was beside him cut it short. Either she had more principle than he, or, and more likely, Terese realized, more money than Terese had.

  The phone went dead.

  An hour later Terese was still standing by the window. The sun had gone, the night was drawing in, lights were bursting out. But she left her own room unlit.

  She had loved him, there was no denying that. Time might prove that she had been only lonely and empty and needing, but right now it was still love. It was love spilling over, with nothing to catch it. Not even a friend, for her absorption with Jeff had kept her away from all other contacts, even her fellow librarians.

  And yet, and Terese’s cheeks bur
ned in the darkness, they had even planned a party for her despite her protests. “We all have showers, Terese, why not you? Just because you’re going to Australia ... oh, yes, we found out... there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have the same fun as the rest of us. No, we simply refuse to let you slink away.”

  She did not have the courage to go to work tomorrow and say, “It’s all off, I spoke too soon, please keep your money and your good wishes and let me just continue as usual.” She had not that kind of courage, she supposed, because she hadn’t the heart to remain in the library, remain in London. In Drayhill. Anywhere in England.

  She heard the snap of lights in the other rooms as the tenants returned home and began preparing their meals. Any minute now Elaine would bounce in for a cup of sugar, Dinah to tell her about her new job.

  Suddenly frantic after her hour of death, or so it had seemed, Terese wheeled round and ran out of the room and down the stairs.

  She walked ... and walked. Up streets, down streets. Through mews, along closes, around heaths. Beside parks, past railway stations.

  And at the last railway station she saw the couple together ... a tall, broad man, even taller and broader than Jeff, and a woman with her head pressed to his shoulder.

  They did not see her, that couple, they were completely absorbed in each other as she and Jeff had been absorbed. The woman’s face was crushed against his coat as she had loved to be crushed, and the man was kissing the top of her head as Jeff had kissed her.

  How often had she stood like that, loving the tobacco smell, the feel of rough material, the maleness of Jeff? How often? And now—no more.

  Suddenly and unrestrainedly Terese was laughing aloud.

  It came in one of those silent minutes that even the busiest city achieves, a minute out of time, a minute when everything stops still. Into the minute Terese’s laugh rang derisively, scornfully, harshly, making cheap fun of something that Terese remembered—for herself, anyway—had been neither cheap nor funny.

  The woman did not move, her head remained where it was, but probably that was because the man held her firmly that way. But his own head lifted, lifted proudly, arrogantly, and the ice-cold look that he directed at Terese made a Matterhorn night of the mild spring evening.

  There was not just ice in the look, there was dislike, censure, challenge. The eyes, singularly clear, very blue, thick-lashed, looked unwaveringly, contemptuously at her. If she could have moved, Terese would have turned and run, run from that steady, withering gaze, but she seemed rooted to the spot, and she just stood there staring wretchedly back.

  For fully a minute his despising gaze raked at her for the ugly laugh she had tossed, and then, guarding the woman, he put a pillar between the pair of them and Terese, and Terese, able to move at last, had stumbled away.

  She had walked miles from Green Gardens, and it took her several more hours to retrace her steps, for in her heat of departure she had not grabbed up her handbag and could not take a bus.

  In those returning hours she thought of that man, of his cold, despising look, and she had felt deeply ashamed. If only she could have explained, have uttered a few stumbling words, have whispered her regret.

  Yet what else could she have said, she knew wretchedly, than—“It was like that, too, for me once, but the dream burst.”

  What could she say tomorrow to the girls? And, if she didn’t tell them and accepted their gift and left, the library, where could she go?

  It must be out of England, not just away from London but away from—pain.

  Africa? New Zealand? She still had a moderate sum, she could manage it. Canada?—No, never Canada, never where Jeff was.

  Then it came to her. Came quite clearly. The best place to hide was always the obvious place. The expected, thus unexpected, place. It had been proved many times that the unobscure concealed more than the obscure, the open refuge more than the hidden one. Criminologists knew it. Writers featured it. Even to Terese in her emotional stress it made sense. It would be so simple, too, for she already had her ticket, she had only to confirm a date. Australia, of course.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Within a week Terese was on her way.

  It had been easy to set a date, collect her ticket... too easy, she thought wretchedly. Even her departure from the library had been easy. Instead of some domestic adjunct that she would have had to leave behind, her shower present had been acceptably noncommittal, a leather beauty case.

  No one was there to wave a hand as Terese took her seat on the plane. The engines whirred, the craft moved forward. The thrill that should have cut through her lethargy, that brief soaring thrill of one’s first flight eluded her.

  When she had booked her seat, the clerk had asked, “One only, Miss Staples? You did mention...”

  “Yes, but I was wrong.”

  “Good. That will do for my persistent friend. He’s been around three times for an earlier booking. He’s Australian and probably can’t take our spring.”

  But even in her lethargy she was now becoming conscious of the man seated beside her. It was not just his size, which was rather bulky, or the time he took in making himself comfortable ... “a gammy old leg”, he proffered chattily ... it was the obvious manner in which he was trying to break through to her and talk.

  Terese did not want to talk, and yet, she thought sensibly, I can’t travel all those miles shut up in myself. She turned rather ruefully at last and managed a weak smile. Smiled into one of the kindest old faces she had ever seen.

  “Ah, that’s better,” he twinkled. “All that ho-humming of mine, all that wriggling was to get you out of yourself. I’m a chatterbox, all Australians are, and if you think I’m going to sit like the English do and not open my mouth, you’re mistaken. I just have to chat.” He looked at her warily, laughter in his faded blue eyes, in the wrinkles of his tanned leather skin and said, “If you can’t bear it, then move now, for I tell you I could no more travel all that way without nattering than I could miss my cup of tea. Talking of tea, let’s have some now.” He called the hostess. When she had gone, he grinned, "Well, girl, going to move?”

  “No, I’ll stay,” Terese said readily, She liked him, and ... she had to admit it ... she needed him.

  “Name is Joe,” the old man smiled.

  “You must be the one who was harrying the clerk for an earlier booking. Couldn’t take our spring.” Terese smiled back.

  “I certainly could.” He denied it at once. “Spring at Pickpocket is quite as damp.”

  “Pickpocket?”

  “Home. Back in New England.”

  “Is that the name of a village?” she asked incredulously. She knew Australia had some odd names, but Pickpocket...!

  “We call ’em towns,” he told her. “No, Pickpocket is my own place, and it’s not in a pocket, either, it’s bang on top of the plateau. But, like Arn, I’ve earned myself the reputation of being a cadge, of prising what it takes out of ’em, all for their own benefit, mind you, all for the good of the community, so some of the lumber boys changed Joe’s to Pickpocket instead.”

  “And this Arn, did they change his name, too?” She asked in friendly interest, for she liked the old man’s twinkling eyes.

  “No one ever changes Arn,” Joe replied seriously. He mused amiably, “Pickpocket. Reckon it’s apt?”

  “Very apt. It rings.”

  “So do all the names at Backdown.”

  “Backdown?”

  “Now you have the town, or village as you call it. Backdown is backdown from everywhere else.”

  “But you love it,” she acclaimed.

  “Well, it’s my corner, though even if it wasn’t, I believe I’d still feel like this. You just said it: it rings. Not just the names at Backdown but the place itself. It has great mountains and deep valleys, and the axes echo all days and the saws sing, and yet ... would you believe it? ... on top of the plateau, where I am, there are a few orchards, and I”—with pride—“am trying sheep.” He added carefully, �
�Dingoes permitting.”

  “You mean there’s dingoes there, too?”

  “Everything’s at Backdown, good and bad. Well”—another twinkle—“have I sold you my place?”

  “You might have,” she replied ... but somewhere in his tone was an odd soberness and she wondered why.

  “What about those other names?” she asked. “There’s Backdown. There’s Pickpocket. What else?”

  “What about your name?” he asked first.

  “Terese Staples.”

  “That’s a fine handle. I’m Joe. But I told you that.”

  “And the ringing places?” she insisted laughingly.

  “Sky Creek, Calico Track, Young Jim, Blunt Pick, Red Ribbon, Homeward Bound.”

  “Homeward Bound.” She said it again, but this time slowly. Homeward bound was what she had rosily believed herself to be when she had bought her ticket before Jeff could buy it for her. I’m going home, she had thought, I’m homeward bound.

  “Yep,” old Joe was nodding, “that’s Arn Dawson’s.”

  The tea arrived, and Terese poured. Joe watched her sorrowfully, not hiding his contempt of the brew. “Haven’t had a decent cup since I left the plateau. I take it black, sweet and with leaves. I’m always telling Ginny that.”

  “Ginny is your daughter?”

  “My jilleroo.”

  “Jilleroo?”

  “You’ve heard of a jackeroo?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then Ginny’s a girl jack. There’s not many of ’em, and I’ve the only one on the plateau.”

  Terese was impressed.

  “Ginny can do anything. But”—regretfully—“she’s no better on tea than the one who brewed this. How are you on the billy?” His eyes twinkled. They twinkled readily, Terese thought.

  “Are you offering me the job?” she dared back.

  “No go, I know you young things. There’s nothing at Backdown except an air-strip. Not another thing.”

  Irritated, Terese demanded, “Is Ginny a young thing?”