Joanna parked the jeep in the shade of the hangar, and then she walked towards the monoplane, which stood like a big shiny bird on the sandstone runway. Her sun-hat was pulled down rakishly over one eye and her hair was bunched loosely at her nape. Her arms were slim and bare against the pink of her shirt; her jeans were a crisp dark blue and she wore light sandals with a couple of straps.
She could see a tall figure standing beneath the wings of the plane, watching lazily as she crossed the strip towards him, his eyes shaded by a flying-cap with a down-pulled peak. He straightened up as she quickened her pace towards him, and she felt the quick beating of her heart, a sense of strange excitement.
‘I see you took time to make yourself beautiful.’ The slow and deliberate sweep of the pilot’s eyes missed not a detail of her appearance. ‘Another five minutes and I’d have been up and away.’
He stepped out from beneath the shadow of the wing, and Joanna caught her breath as she met his gaze. She stood speechless, gazing at the pilot with astonished eyes, wide and smoky beneath her winged brows.
‘You?’ she exclaimed. ‘I thought it was Vance who left me the note to meet him here...’
‘Did you?’ Adam spoke in his softest drawl. ‘Do you want to change your mind about flying with me to Monkey Tree Hill?’ His lip quirked at her expression. ‘Jeff Brennan has them growing about his place. His wife Cherry christened the house Monkey Tree Hill when they moved out from the city five years ago on account of her health. She had a spot of lung trouble, but is entirely better now, thanks to our good air.’
‘Well,’ Joanna still felt a bit shaken, ‘how could I resist such a name for a house?’
‘Atta girl!’ His smile was quizzical. ‘The Brennans have a boy and a girl. Amanda was born out here in Queensland. Youll find her rather cute. I am her godfather.’
He assisted Joanna into the plane, and they buckled their seat belts. The engine started up and they glided along the runway like a bird. The throbbing of the plane seemed right inside her, or was it her heart still beating madly because this man had fooled her into thinking he was Vance? That note ... and the physical resemblance ... he had known even as he stood awaiting her in the shadow of the wings that she would take him for his cousin. She couldn’t understand his motive in playing such a game, and she cast him a rather bewildered side-glance.
He was intent on the controls, his profile outlined strongly against the vivid light as they were smoothly airborne and the ground fell rapidly away beneath them. They climbed high over the valley, and Joanna felt the tingle of danger in being so alone with this unpredictable man.
CHAPTER SIX
‘WHY the masquerade?’ she asked impulsively.
‘Would you have come on the trip if I had invited you in the usual way?’
‘Why should you invite me?’
‘Now don’t stretch modesty too far,’ he mocked.
Her gaze dwelt on his profile and she saw the slash of humour in his cheek. ‘The fact is, I want to discuss some business with Jeff and I thought Cherry and her moppet might enjoy your company. You see, Cherry was an English secretary from a place called Leigh-on-Sea. I expect you know it.’
‘I do.’ Joanna looked at him in amazement. ‘Leigh is only a few miles from where I’ve always lived and I’ve often been there for a swim, or a meal at one of the seaside restaurants.’
‘With a boy-friend?’
‘No - after my sister left home it used to get awfully quiet at the week-ends, so I’d take a bus into Leigh and liven myself up with a splash in the sea. It isn’t a big, gay place like Hawk’s Bay, but quite nice.’
‘Good, you and Cherry should find plenty to talk about as you know her home town.’
Joanna studied thoughtfully the far-down view from the cockpit window. ‘You knew already - that I used to live only a few miles from Cherry Brennan’s home town.’
‘I plead guilty to looking it up on an English map.’
‘Why do you use the word guilty, Mr. Corraine? Are you hoping I’ll feel so homesick that I shall want to go home to Hadley?’
‘Now look here—’
She looked and saw that his lips were compressed. ‘We get around to a misunderstanding each time we’re alone,’ he said crisply. ‘I was trying to be nice. I’m sorry the impulse misfired.’
‘Nice?’ For some reason she suddenly began to laugh. Her cheeks warmed and she took off her hat, and at once her hair became the target for the sun. She looked at Adam, who was everything except cosily nice. Even his sun-bitten hands on the controls had a ruthless look about them.
‘I don’t think you do anything on impulse,’ she said. ‘You’re the most deliberate person I’ve ever met. You never take aim at a target without meaning to hit it. You like to shape events because you don’t like to be shaped by them.’
‘You make me sound very arrogant.’
‘It is a little arrogant to think you can run other people’s lives.’
‘Yours and Vance’s, do you mean?’
She nodded and kept her gaze averted from his, which she knew would be steel-like and dangerous beneath the flying-cap that emphasized the boldness of his features. ‘We’re flying over water,’ she exclaimed.
A pause, a long one, as they dropped through space and her heart was in her throat. From this height the coral undersea could be seen like a great sinuous snake, seeming to move as the green-blue ocean washed over its spine.
‘We’re flying over part of the Coral Sea - I thought you’d like to see it,’ Adam told her. ‘You’ll appreciate how many miles separate us from our friends and neighbours in this part of the world. Talking over the radiotelephone is no substitute for a hand-clasp and a face-to-face meeting, and that was why I wanted you to meet the Brennans, young lady. Cherry rarely sees another woman, let alone one from her own part of England.’
‘You must feel like shaking me.’ Joanna gave him a smile that shook him a little. ‘But it was a bit of a shock — to find you waiting for me.’
‘When you expected to see Vance? You hurried so eagerly - it was a shame to disappoint you.’
‘Please - can’t we call a truce?’
His grey eyes captured hers for one of those lightning moments. There was a whimsical quality about his smile. ‘I’m all for it. The Brennans happen to be my best friends - Jeff used to manage the meat works where I unload my steers - and I don’t want Cherry to find out that my rugged charm is lost on my prettiest employee.’
‘Don’t— colour flamed in her cheeks, ‘don’t go to the other extreme, Mr. Corraine.’
‘The name is Adam.’
‘I - I couldn’t.’
‘No?’ He quirked an eyebrow. ‘Can’t say my name, and scared I might flirt with you because we’re alone in the blue!’
‘You’re the Boss.’
‘Ah yes.’ The sky light was in his eyes, making them unreadable, but his smile seemed a trifle mocking. ‘A certain formality must be maintained, eh? You’re so English, Miss Dowling. Everything about you.’
His eyes flicked her hair and her skin, which was flawless even in the clear sky light in which the plane buzzed like a fly in a saucer of honey. When she looked from the window she saw that the blue-green waves had receded behind them and their winged shadow was passing over burned-gold hills covered here and there with shaggy clusters of sheep.
‘Jeff’s land,’ she was told. ‘Now you know who provides those juicy lamb chops we enjoy at Raintree.’
‘I thought he was a cattleman like you.’ She peered down with interest as they began to descend and a runway ribboned and widened in front of them, and the strap around her waist began to feel tight. She held her breath as the roar of the engine filled the cockpit and their wheels touched down on the tarmac and the air whined past as they ran out of motion. To one side of the strip stood an open-top vehicle. An arm waved, and a hat, and something small in bright pants leapt up and down in the back of the car.
Adam laughed. ‘They’ve come to me
et us and they’ve brought Mandy with them.’
All at once Joanna felt acutely shy. These people were close friends of Adam’s, and suddenly it struck her as a most intimate thing that he should bring her to Monkey Tree Hill to meet this family he was so fond of. It glinted in his eyes, a warmth that broke into a smile that held her with its powerful, sudden charm. Like a strong ray of sunlight it burst from its hiding place, and it took away her breath as she followed him out of the plane into the warm golden air and saw him scoop up into his arms the laughing child of Cherry and Jeff Brennan.
‘Uncle Dam - ooh, Mamma said you was coming to see us and you came in the plane, didn’t you?’ She kissed him and snuggled close, batting her eyelashes against his laughter-creased cheek even as she sought about in his pockets with small, eager hands.
‘Mandy, now don’t be a little fisher.’ A young woman came running up to Adam with a wide, welcoming smile under the brim of her linen sunhat. A wave of red hair flopped in her left eye, and her tip-tilted nose and rather thin cheeks were spattered with freckles. ‘It’s so nice to see you again, Adam. So very nice. And you’ve brought Bonney — oh, I’m sorry!’ Hazel-green eyes dwelt on Joanna with frank surprise and curiosity.
‘Mamma, look!’ Mandy had found the surprise package she had been searching for.
‘Say thank you to Uncle Adam.’ Cherry Brennan didn’t take her eyes off Joanna as her husband joined the group.
‘Son of a gun, how’ve you been?’
Adam shifted the child to his left arm as he and Jeff Brennan wrung each other’s hand. ‘Jeff - Cherry, you’re both looking great. And I brought a surprise guest with me - someone from your part of the old country, Cherry. Meet Joanna Dowling, who works for us at Raintree. She’s a sort of aide-de-camp for Aunt Charly, and before coming out to Australia she lived on the Essex coast.’
‘Which part?’ Cherry smiled at Joanna, but at the back of her eyes there were question-marks, and Joanna wanted to say outright that she had no designs on Adam Corraine. She knew already that his family and his friends expected him to marry Bonney Ryan.
‘Hadley, of all places,’ she said, and added lightly, ‘Mr. Corraine has told me that you used to live at Leigh, Mrs. Brennan. I knew it well.’
‘The Broadway, and the cliffs, and the Ship Inn down where the cockle-boats come drifting in with the tide?’ Cherry looked eager, and seemed for a moment to forget her suspicions of Joanna. ‘Oh, I did miss that dear old place when I first came to Brisbane to work. I was on the point of running home again when ... when I met Jeff.’ She cast a smile at her husband, who was a lean, brown, soft-spoken man with silver-flecked hair. He carried a battered bush-hat in his hand, and wore a check shirt with khaki trousers.
‘How’s Terry?’ Adam asked, as they made for the car and Mandy sat perched on his shoulder, blowing the toy harmonica he had brought her.
‘He was fiddling about with some electrical gadget when we left to come and pick you up.’ Jeff grinned. ‘I’ve a feeling, Adam, that my boy isn’t cut out for sheep-farming, and I’m not one to press-gang the lad into doing what goes against the grain of him. If he wants something other than sheep-raising, then I shan’t stop him.’
‘I’ll take care of the jumbucks, Dadda.’
‘You?’ Jeff ruffled his daughter’s shining red hair with a fond hand. ‘You’ve always got your ears cocked, like a terrier. Know every word we say, don’t you?’
Joanna watched and slowly smiled as the child pressed her bright head against Adam’s. ‘Uncle Dam brought a lady in the plane, didn’t you, big man?’
He laughed outright, deep laughter filled with a warmth that made Joanna view him with new eyes. At Raintree he was always the Boss, busy, practical, riding his range on Blaze, while often at night the desk-lamp shone into the small hours as he pored over a new scheme for his stations.
They climbed into the car, Jeff at the wheel with Adam and the child beside him. Joanna sat at the back with Cherry, while Mandy peered over Adam’s shoulder and took her in with impish green eyes.
‘Hullo,’ she said at last. ‘Are you Uncle Dam’s lady?’
‘Hullo yourself,’ Joanna smiled, and hoped Adam was too deep in conversation with his friend to have heard the piping question. ‘I work for your uncle and cook nice things for his stockmen.’
‘So you come from Essex,’ Cherry said again. ‘It’s just like Adam to spring such a nice surprise on Jeff and me. We enjoy having visitors, and I haven’t had a chance to talk about home in such a long time. How long have you been out here, Joanna? We heard there was a new home-help at Raintree, but I never dreamed you’d be so young. Do you like working for the Corraines?’
It didn’t seem to bother Cherry at all that her eager questions could be overheard by Adam, and she looked amused when Joanna gave his broad back a hesitant look.
‘Those two are so deep in sheep’s wool and cow-hide that woman talk to them is so much wattle fluff on the wind. Tell me all about yourself, Joanna.’
‘There isn’t all that much to tell—’
‘Oh, I was just like you when I first came out.’ Cherry laughed. ‘Reserved, inclined to think these Aussies a brash and bossy lot. But at heart they’re warm and good as the wool they grow - and so tall, don’t you think?’ Joanna met the other woman’s eyes and she knew that once again Cherry Brennan felt curious about her in relation to Adam. At the plane, with the sun in her eyes, Cherry had assumed upon seeing him with a girl that he had brought Bonney on a visit. Instead he had brought the home-help. An irrepressible laugh broke from Joanna.
‘Yes, these men are inclined to be overpowering - Mr. Corraine thought it would be nice for you to meet someone from England who lived so close to your home town. It was only three months ago that I left to come out here - I understand from Mr. Corraine that you’ve been here for some years, Mrs. Brennan.’
‘You must call me Cherry. Well, I met Jeff about six months after I came to Brisbane to work, and our boy is now thirteen. Mandy is just three and a half, aren’t you, tinker?’
Mandy gave-a fat chuckle and leaned over Adam’s shoulder, one hand clasping his brown neck while he continued his conversation with Jeff. ‘You’re not all brown,’ she said to Joanna. ‘Only sort of gold.’
A remark which must have penetrated the wool talk up front, for instantly Adam turned his head and his eyes held Joanna. ‘How are you girls getting along?’ he asked.
‘Just fine,’ Cherry smiled back at him fondly. ‘You know, Adam, you are a surprising man. Why didn’t you tell us over the radio-phone that you were bringing an English girl to meet us?’
‘Because I’m what you called me — I like to spring surprises on people.’
‘Joanna is a very nice one, Adam. When we reach the house and get settled with long cool drinks, she’s going to tell me how Leigh is looking after the fourteen years I’ve been away. Fourteen years! I can hardly believe it’s been so long!’
Jeff shot her a smile over his shoulder. ‘That’s a compliment, Cherry-pie. Shows what a good husband you found for yourself.’
‘Australian men don’t suffer from modesty, Joanna,’ Cherry warned. ‘They’re well aware that nature made them tall and wide to fit this land. Adam, how is Charlotte these days, and is Bonney as pretty as ever?’
‘Prettier,’ he drawled, a large hand caressing Mandy’s hair, as if the thought of Bonney made him think of the future and a child of his own. ‘She’ll be eighteen on Saturday and we’re giving her a party.’
‘Eighteen — already?’
Joanna felt a hazel-green side-glance, and then they arrived at the house on Monkey Tree Hill.
Joanna liked the wide, attractive spread of the house, with the monkey trees growing on the slopes that cradled it. There was a cool, deep veranda set on wooden pillars, around which flowering vines climbed and clustered. Long cane chairs were set about, with one or two tables, and from the beams of the roof there hung lamps and amusing aborigine carvings.
It was a
sun-mellowed house, with the scuffs and marks of children. Toys littered a corner and a rocking-horse snorted as Mandy climbed into the saddle and set it galloping. ‘Look at me, Uncle Dam, look at me!’
‘Ride ’em, cowboy.’
They stretched out in the cane chairs, and Cherry went to fetch a pitcher of fruit juice, and came back with slices of iced melon as well. Mandy scrambled off the horse and perched on the foot of Joanna’s long chair. Soon her face was up to its eyebrows in melon juice, and emerald birds fluttered about the roof of the veranda.
‘I still remember how lovely the bells of Leigh Church always sounded on a Sunday, and that part of the cliffs like a hanging garden.’ Cherry gave a sad-happy sigh. ‘Funny how you look back and the things that seemed a bit dull at the time now take on a sort of long-distance glamour. I worked for an estate-agency and sometimes there was nothing to do but file my nails. My father - he was a widower for several years - married again and being stepdaughter to someone in her thirties was impossible! We couldn’t hit it off, and then one day a man came into the agency who had just returned from Australia after thirty years. He was looking for a small house, and we got talking - the upshot was that I fell for the idea of coming Down-Under to work.’
Cherry gazed into her drink, while Mandy looked at her mother with her head cocked. ‘Mamma?’
‘Eat your melon, darling. I’m enjoying a few memories.’ Cherry smiled. ‘I’ve never regretted coming here, not even when I got rather ill about five years ago and Jeff decided we’d move into the country. It’s funny. It’s as if every now and again in your life you come to a crossroads and something seems to nudge your shoulder. Did you feel that, Joanna, when you decided to leave home and hearth for the wilds of Queensland?’
‘Perhaps.’ Joanna felt the impact of grey eyes on her profile. Her head rested against a scarlet cushion, at her feet sat the small lively figure of Mandy. She felt a curious sense of peace, as if for the first time she could relax from feeling guilty about leaving her home and her grandmother, and Gran’s equally elderly sister, to strike out for herself in a faraway land.
Raintree Valley Page 11