The Man From the Valley

by Joyce Dingwell

  Peter, the pilot, had taken the Dags from the Cessna, and Ginny went across and put one under each strong arm and allotted another to each strong young hand. Terese, shamed into action, ran across to help her, and was secretly relieved to see that only two suitcases remained, for she was sure she could not have emulated Ginny’s adroitness or hard young strength. As she was getting a grip on both cases she saw Peter step forward uncertainly toward Ginny, his hand half outstretched, then she saw Ginny swing deliberately away from him, though she certainly must have seen the offer of help as she, Terese, had seen it. Instead, she returned without any acknowledgment to a jeep that, for the first time, Terese noticed was parked on the dandelion verge. She lifted the bags in, then nodded for Terese to do the same. Joe sat himself between the pieces of luggage to steady them, so Terese concluded she was expected to ride beside the driver. Ginny did not open her own door, she just swung her trousered legs over the top as a man would have done, in the easy manner of one more accustomed to pants than skirts. But for all her skills, the gear change of the jeep as they set off along the mountain strip was jerky and unco-ordinated.

  “Sorry.” As the jeep lurched Ginny bit out the apology through tightened lips that gave her pretty face a hard, brittle look. She continued to drive badly until the Cessna had risen from the strip and flown out of sight and hearing. Then the driving improved, though the brittle look remained. A sudden bleakness possessed Terese. There, she thought, am I in the days to come, tight, hard, uncaring.

  Now the girl was driving expertly, effortlessly, with none of the nervous lurching that had shuddered the jeep at the same time as the plane engine had shuddered the Cessna. She was still coolly self-possessed, but the tightness—and some of the brittle quality—had gone. She took out a packet of cigarettes from her pants pocket, with one hand withdrew one, put it between her lips and lit it, never altering her speed over the tracks. She offered the packet to Terese, saying again “Sorry,” adding, "I’ve been on my own so long I’ve got into the way of helping only myself.” When Terese declined, she called over her shoulder, “Joe?”

  “No, Ginny.”

  She slackened the speed a moment to enable her to turn around and give him a quick hard look. “Since when?”

  “Doctors’ orders,” he answered cheerfully.

  “Has obeying the orders made any difference?”

  “Well, I’ve come home, haven’t I?”

  With the cigarette still in her mouth she tossed outrageously, “Home to die?” and Terese drew her breath in quick intake at the calm dispassion, but Joe only laughed.

  The track was twisting now, evidently coming to somewhere.

  “Just so long,” warned Ginny boldly, “as you’ve attended to your will before you leave.”

  “I did that years ago; I’ve told you.”

  “But years ago was before me, as I’ve told you.”

  “The will still stands, Ginny.”

  “Joe, it can’t. You can’t cut me out, so don’t be a fool.”

  “It stands, Virginia. My land began as Backdown and back to Backdown it goes.”

  “It’ll go back all right, back to ti tree and gum.”

  “What,” said Joe, “is so wrong in that?”

  “I’ve made it what it is.” The naturally pretty mouth was stubborn.

  “You’ve put a gloss on it, I’m not denying that, but it was I who carved it out of the bush, not you. No, Ginny, back to the bush it goes.”

  “You can’t,” she persisted. “It has to be mine.”

  “It won’t be, though, girl, and you know why.”

  “I know your fool reason.”

  He ignored that. Instead, he reminded her, “Besides, it’s not really your sort of place, you’ve always said so.”

  In a voice from which all the bitterness had suddenly dropped away, leaving only a flat inertia, the girl answered, “It’s all the place I’ve got.”

  There was no interchange for several minutes, then Ginny said, “We had a wash-out the other night, the clouds misjudged the valley and dropped their bundle on the plateau instead. Everyone was delighted, less mud for the timber drags and full tanks for us up here. Look, Terese, there’s our sign.”

  Terese read a painted “Pickpocket” nailed to a post, rather like a sign on an inn, beside it a drawing of fingers poised ready to do their pilfering. She laughed. She peered eagerly beyond the sign to see Pickpocket itself, but the encroaching night prevented her, all she could see were shadows, shadows of trees, of outhouses, and then a bigger shadow still, which must be the house.

  “We’re here,” said Ginny, and swung her long, slim legs over the door again. She turned suddenly ... and endearingly ... to Joe. “Welcome home. You know that.”

  “Yes, I know it, Ginny.” He touched her arm briefly in understanding. “And welcome, too, to Pickpocket for our Miss Books.”

  “Oh, books, is it?” Ginny was hauling the bags out of the jeep now, her moment of sentiment locked up again.

  “What did you think she was?” asked Joe.

  “One can never tell,” Ginny said indifferently, “with Joe’s lame dogs.”

  She opened the door of the house and turned up the lowered paraffin lamp so that it leaped into glowing light, then she bowed them in.

  As they entered the room Terese saw at once that though the lamp had soaked up the shadows it could not soak up the disarray. The place was a mess.

  Ginny must have been aware of Terese’s quick look, for her smile was faintly challenging. “Yes, it’s untidy,” she drawled. “I’m a land, not a house, girl.”

  She went to the kitchen, and Terese, deciding it was all none of her business, began to look around.

  Joe was looking at Terese shrewdly, measuring her thoughts, nodding his old head. “You see,” he indicated, “it’s not her place.”

  “Perhaps if it was it would be different,” defended Terese for Ginny.

  “Don’t you start on me, Terese, I’m not dead yet.”

  “You know I didn’t mean that, you know I meant...” But Ginny returned with the tea, and Terese’s voice trailed off.

  Joe had the teapot in his hand before Ginny could do the honors for him, and sighed happily at the strong, leafy brew he poured into his cup.

  “If I’d known you were coming I’d have baked a cake, and all that stuff.” Ginny’s voice was flippant.

  “If you had I’d have slunk away.” Terese’s voice was sincere. “Joe has told me what a wonder you are on the land. I don’t think I could have put up with a paragon in the house as well.”

  Ginny looked at her with the first faint flicker of interest. Obviously mollified, she said, “Do you mind if we talk shop, Terese, I’ve a lot to report to Joe.”

  “I’ll be interested, too,” Terese assured her—but she wasn’t, not after a few minutes. The details of crops she knew little about, different as they were from Drayhill’s, the tally of stock, of fodder, of seasons all new and unfamiliar, passed her by. She found herself wanting to break in, “Do you bake your own bread? Make your own butter? Are you self-sufficient, or do you rely on supplies from the New England towns?” She didn’t interrupt, though. She knew that Ginny would have resented it.

  “Terese, you’re dozing off.” Ginny’s voice cut through her thoughts. “You must be dog-tired; why didn’t you say? I’ll keep the rest for later, Joe. I’ll turn in, too, I’m going to give Sandy a gallop tomorrow—leave that bully more than a week and he tries to ride you. If you’re ready, Terese, we’ll hit the hay. Sorry, but you’ll have to accept my room tonight. If I’d known you were coming it would have been like the cake I would have baked, I would have prepared a room.” She laughed, said, “Sleep tight, Joe,” and led the way down a dark passage to a room where another lamp burned low.

  “We have our own power plant here,” she told Terese, “but I’ve had enough to do outside without attending it as well. Joe will have to see to it in the morning.” She turned up the wick of the lamp and a glow leaped
out, soaking up the shadows as the lamp outside had done, but again concealing none of the inattention. There were two beds, Terese noticed.

  “You’ll be better tomorrow in the bigger room,” Ginny was hastily assuring her, for all her previous show of indifference obviously not unaware of the room’s careless appearance. “I’ll fix it first thing. Meanwhile, Terese, at least you can be on your own tonight, that is if you can stand my way of living. I’ll sleep outside.”

  “Sleep outside?”

  “Sleep in the sleep-out,” interpreted Ginny.

  Terese did not argue then, she was too tired. Pulling her case on to the bed she undid the clasps. She could hear Ginny gathering up her things, and all at once, in spite of that cold dispassion, that glowlessness, Ginny was warm humanity, the same as Terese was, she was in need just as Terese needed. But how could you say to such a girl, “Stop, Ginny. Don’t leave,” how could you bridge that determined dispassion?

  In sudden inspiration, instead of covering up the things she had brought from home, those pretty but unmistakably trousseau things that in the end she had decided she might as well wear as leave behind her, Terese tumbled them out.

  Soft, silky, feminine, they fell in damning evidence to the floor, and across the pretty crumple her eyes met Ginny’s.

  “You too...” It was barely audible, but Terese caught it.

  “Yes, Ginny.”

  The girl stood bleakly before her, her slim brown hands at her side. “I’m sorry, I’m wretchedly sorry, I wouldn’t have said that about lame dogs had I known.”

  “Why not?” dared Terese: “Isn’t it all right when it’s from one lame dog to another?”

  Ginny found her cigarettes and lit one. “Joe told you about me, then?” Some of the brittleness had returned.

  “A little. He didn’t know at the time that I would be coming on here. But does it matter, Ginny?”

  The girl still stood looking at the things on the floor, and, just as she had said in that empty, inert voice, “It’s all the place I’ve got,” there was an oddly touching defencelessness about her that pushed that other, that hard dispassion aside.

  “Stop here,” said Terese impulsively. “Don’t sleep outside.”

  There was a moment of nothing at all, neither emotion nor dispassion, neither the need to stand alone nor the need to share a need. Then, “All right,” said Ginny.

  CHAPTER THREE

  That night was the forerunner of all their other nights, of confidences exchanged in the easier tempo of presleep, of quiet admissions, less tempestuous thoughts ... of defences down.

  By the time Ginny had fetched sheets for the second bed, Terese had unpacked her first bag.

  “The other can wait till the morning,” she insisted, moving to the opposite side of the unmade bed to help Ginny.

  The girl had grown silent, and to break the sudden awkwardness Terese giggled, “It’s rather like schooldays, isn’t it? Only we had more than two to a dorm.”

  “Did you?” The response was polite but pointed, and Terese bit her lip. “My parents were not in the best of health,” she explained, “so I boarded. It was where I lived, Drayhill, so it wasn’t all that bad.” She knew she was babbling, but she felt unable to cope with Ginny’s new mood.

  “I thought Australian country children all went to boarding-school, Ginny,” she tried again.

  “Up to ten, or so, if they’re not within reasonable school distance, they take correspondence lessons, and after ten, if their parents haven’t the money for a college education in town, they keep on learning by mail,” Ginny said in a flat voice.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why?” Ginny looked mutinously up from the sheet she was turning over.

  “That you—that your parents—I mean apparently...”

  “I had no parents,” Ginny cut in.

  “Then I’m sorry that whoever looked after you didn’t have the money, Ginny.”

  “They had plenty of money. Well, enough, anyway. They also had three daughters of their own.”

  “You were the fourth?”

  “No. I never belonged.” Ginny finished off the bed and straightened up. “You can change your mind if you like, Terese, and kick me out. I’m not good company; I seldom am. As you see, I carry a chip.”

  “The chip of not belonging?”

  “No, I got over that a long time ago. I also got over not having the same things as Lucia, Dana and Barbie, at stopping home when they went to school in Sydney. No, it wasn’t any of those, it was Uncle Ben that I can’t ever forget, it was Uncle Ben not keeping his promise.”

  “What promise, Ginny?”

  “Land.” The girl’s green eyes were glowing. “My own land,” Ginny said.

  “But your uncle had three daughters,” Terese reminded fairly.

  “And Aunt Beryl.”

  “Then...?”

  “Uncle Ben broke his promise,” Ginny resumed presently. “It wasn’t just imagination on my part, he really had told me to expect what—what I never got. He used to call me his boy. I was known everywhere as Ben’s boy. But when he died he hadn’t remembered me at all.”

  “Your aunt...”

  “I told you. She sold everything and moved to the city. The girls always wanted the city, they were Ben’s girls, it was only I who was Ben’s boy. Though in the end it didn’t matter.” Ginny’s voice broke entirely this time.

  Terese again did not interrupt, she waited for Ginny to control herself.

  “I suppose to an English girl this all sounds terribly incredible, this longing for land, I mean. But it was the only love I ever had, Terese, until...” Another, but this time briefer, break.

  “He”—she offered no name—“had come to Binaboo crop dusting. He did all the district. I suppose”—a little twist to her mouth—“you could say we fell in love.”

  “Say, Ginny?”

  “It must only have been that, otherwise I expect I would have gone with him—as old Joe always tells me. Whither you go, I go, he quotes. But when it came to it I couldn’t do it, Terese, I couldn’t follow up like other wives and stop in some hotel, or live in some apartment, while he carried on flying, I had to be outside doing something with the earth, my earth. I had to, Terese. It was either he concede to me or I concede to him, and I couldn’t concede and I never will.”

  “And he won’t?”

  “He still flies.” Ginny’s voice was bitter.

  A few moments went by in silence.

  Presently Terese proffered humbly, “This puts me in an entirely different category of lame dogs from you, Ginny. Unlike you I had no alternative. My story is the plain, unadorned story of jilt, and nothing else.”

  The girl nodded, but Terese could tell she was not really listening.

  Another silence encompassed them. Ginny took out and lit a cigarette.

  “Joe won’t last long.” Her voice was deliberately unemotional. “That was why Arn sent him overseas. He wanted to be sure nothing more could be done. As you heard, I want this place.”

  “But you don’t like it, Ginny.”

  “It’s not my land, I admit, but it’s land, and Joe should leave it to me, he has no one else. He’s a very righteous old man, though, whither you go and all that, and I’ve no doubt the wretch will do just what he says, give it back to the ti tree and gum. In which case”—she exhaled—“I have another idea.” She gave a brief hard laugh. She half closed her eyes against the smoke, then said, quite unexpectedly, “Why did you come here, Terese?”

  “To Backdown?”

  “Yes.”

  “I had to work somewhere.”

  “But why here? Did you have—anyone in view?”

  “Anyone?” Terese was plainly puzzled.

  “Do you want to get married?” Ginny’s voice, on the other hand, was a little impatient. “I mean there are chances here, a lot of the lumbermen are available and eager, you’ll soon find that out for yourself.”

  “I came because Joe offered me a job ... at
least offered it with the stipulation that Mr. Dawson agreed.”

  “You haven’t met Arn Dawson then?”

  “How could I? In England?”

  “Arn Dawson is in England.”

  As Terese stared, Ginny went on, “He left a month ago. Private reasons. He won’t be back for some weeks.”

  “No, I didn’t meet him,” Terese said despondently. If her job depended, as Joe had pointed out, on Arn Dawson’s approval, it appeared she was going to have to wait.

  “You’re sure of that?” Ginny was looking at her sharply, “you’re sure you didn’t meet Arn?”

  “Of course I’m sure, I’ve never seen the man. Why are you talking like this?”

  For a long moment there was silence.

  “Did Joe tell you how Backdown began?” At first Terese believed that Ginny was changing the subject.

  “The sapphire?”

  “Yes.”

  At Terese’s nod, Ginny related, “At weekends the Backdowners still grub in the valley. It’s quite fun, I often go myself. We get a few bits of the semi-precious stuff, and we work together as a team until someone sees something really promising, or so he hopes, and immediately warns ‘Hands Off. Which”—Ginny looked directly at Terese—“we obey. It’s an unwritten law.” Her narrowed gaze flicked at Terese.

  “All this must mean something,” Terese said soberly. “What are you trying to tell me, Ginny?”

  “Arn Dawson. Arn Dawson’s Homeward Bound. It’s a lovely hunk of property. Even I, a dedicated westlander, would think twice of knocking it back.”

  “You mean—you mean this is your other idea—if Joe doesn’t give you Pickpocket?”

  “Precisely. And I would go after it, too, and Arn, quite unashamedly, Terese. I’m hard, but then so is Dawson. We would match.” She looked challengingly at Terese. “Are you shocked?”

  “I believe I am.”

  “So long as you stay just that.” Ginny’s voice was intentional, and the intention sat grotesquely on her pretty, if shut-in little face. “So long as you don’t get ideas of your own, Terese. Dawson’s my sapphire, as the grubbers say, so hands off.”