Raintree Valley

by Violet Winspear

  He grinned, and then she felt the sudden tightening of his arm as she shivered. She went cold all through, and he let her go, picked up his flying-jacket, shook it hard, and then draped it around her shoulders.

  ‘You weren’t to know about the sharks,’ he teased. ‘And I know you’re worried about Aunt Charly - and the others.’

  She caught the note of meaning in his voice; he meant Vance and what his cousin’s reaction would be to this jaunt which had led to a forced landing. Then there was Bonney ... how would she react to Adam spending a day and a night alone with another girl? And what would the people of the valley have to say when they heard that the English girl had been involved in an adventure with the Boss?

  There was no reading Adam’s face for the answer. Looking calm and controlled he set about rolling their gear in the wallaby rug, so that it resembled the swags the stockmen carried on their saddles when they set out for night duty on the range. ‘There’s a length of string in the left pocket of my jacket,’ he said. ‘Will you toss it to me so I can make a shoulder sling for the gear.’

  ‘I’d like to carry something,’ she offered.

  ‘I’ve a broad pair of shoulders, Joanna,’ his smile was whimsical, ‘and I’m used to toting a swag.’

  ‘All right, be independent,’ she half-smiled, and sorted around in his pockets for the coil of string. She handed it to him and watched as he plaited it to make it stronger, then he tied the ends of the rug, in which everything was neatly rolled, and made a broad loop to pass over his shoulder.

  ‘Are we ready?’ He looked her over. ‘Y’know, it might be better if you tuck your hair under your hat, or braid it. You don’t want moths flying into that golden net.’

  Her cheeks warmed and she told herself it was the sun on her face. ‘I’ll make a braid,’ she said, and with fingers a little clumsier than usual - because never before had she been watched by a man as she did her hair - she divided the soft strands and plaited them. She fixed the braid with a scrap of ribbon found in her bag, and the braid hung down over her shoulder, beneath her sunhat, and she knew she looked amusing from the glint in Adam’s eyes.

  ‘Now I know how you looked when you went to school,’ he said. ‘Come on, pigtail, let’s be moving - but first have you got everything? I noticed you were carrying everything but a vase of flowers in that bag of yours.’

  ‘Really, you men haven’t a bit of gallantry these days,’ she said, as they began the climb up the sloping beach to the entangled greenery of the forest. ‘You don’t allow us to have any more mystery.’

  ‘On the contrary, I happen to think certain women as mysterious as this rain-forest. A man can feel a mite unsure of himself, until he gets his bearings and begins to untangle some of her ways.’

  ‘I can’t imagine you ever being unsure of yourself, not in a forest, or with a woman.’ She skipped under the vinery he held aloft for her. ‘Well, not since you were a boy.’

  ‘You’ve heard some of the tales, eh, about how King Corraine took me in hand and laid a whip across my shoulders for having a will of my own?’

  ‘Vance did mention the incident—’

  ‘You and Vance appear to have talked often about the history of Raintree.’

  ‘No - Aunt Charly has told me one or two stories about your ancestors, and your antics as boys.’

  ‘Really?’ He shot a grin down at her, a green and gold shadow across his face, the peak of his cap turned up, his eyes amused and inquiring. ‘What did she tell you?’

  ‘Oh, that Vance liked the gaiety of Hawk’s Bay, while you liked to explore the valley and the rain forest.’

  ‘True. Vance always was the one for smooth things, while I liked the going to be a bit more rugged. We’re not very alike, Joanna.’

  ‘There are times when you look alike,’ she said impulsively.

  He laughed, startling a trio of birds out of a bush, their plumage as bright as petals in the shafts of sunlight through the towering trees. ‘We’re both chips off our grandfather, but I came off the rugged side of King Corraine.’

  For some reason his words touched Joanna. Adam must often have rebelled as a boy against the demands made on him by King to be a man, a boss, a leader of other men ... while Vance was left free to enjoy the privilege of being a Corraine of Raintree Valley. The handsome, charming member of the clan, who had no need to be tough, shrewd and self-sufficient because the running of Raintree and the other stations would not be his responsibility.

  She wanted to tell Adam that she understood his feelings, because in a similar sort of way her own adolescence had been more work than play.

  She gave him a questing look, but his attention was upon the path ahead of them. It was becoming more overgrown, dim with shadows, alive with hummings, and a profusion of snaking, tangled, many-hued vines. Ropes and ribbons and sudden traps, catching at the foot, or an arm, like live things. There were trees that spread their roots for yards on end, sun and rain-mottled giants that reared into the sky and spread a great parasol of green-tinged shade. Despite this shade it was warm; an earthy, moist kind of warmth that made Joanna’s shirt cling to her skin; that encouraged into growth the cascades of orange-coloured trumpets that grew down the trunks of the forest trees, and which expelled a musky perfume when Adam brushed them aside.

  As the going grew more tiring, and the scents and the warmth more languorous, Joanna began to have that heady sense of unreality which is usually aroused by a glass of rich wine. She was half bemused, half fascinated, and wholly at the mercy of Adam and his forest lore. If he took a wrong turning she would follow and they would both be lost in the wild heart of the forest, and somehow that would be more dangerous than anything else. Everything here was so untamed, with flowers burning like flame in the shafts of green-gold sunlight.

  When Adam turned to make sure that she wasn’t getting tangled up, that strange green-gold light struck across his face and its strong planes and angles, lit by the glint of his eyes.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘Not getting tired?’

  The ground was uneven, and a couple of times she had almost been tripped by ropy vines. Her ankles ached, and the cloying heat seemed to press against her temples, but she said doggedly that she was okay and they pressed on through the maze of creepers, waist-high ferns, and great velvety leaves that wagged like ears as they brushed past them.

  Insects buzzed, and there were alarming sudden squawks in the bushes. A glinting mantis would hover in a coppery sun-shaft, or a winged creature would fly out from a clump of ginger and brush itself against Joanna as if curious, or attracted by her hair or the cyclamen pink of her shirt.

  It was - despite her tiredness - a world of wonder. A forest of Arden. Under the greenwood tree, who loves to lie with me ...

  Lost in her thoughts she didn’t watch her step and the next moment her foot caught in a vine and she went sprawling. Luckily she landed in a patch of those velvety leaves, and it was Adam who swung her upright with his easy strength.

  ‘You’re getting weary,’ he said, and his hands still held her, warm about her slim bare arms, ‘and soon it will be dark — here in the forest the darkness comes quickly. We’ll find a place to camp ...’

  ‘Adam ...’ her heart was beating quickly from her headlong fall, ‘I can go on for another hour or so.’

  ‘I think not,’ he said decisively. ‘I don’t want a worn-out girl on my hands. For the last ten minutes we’ve been heading in the direction of water—’

  ‘How can you tell?’ she broke in.

  ‘From the calls of the birds. Listen, can’t you hear them whistling and twittering just ahead of us? Dusk is coming on and they’re congregating near running water.’

  She and Adam stood very still for a moment, and she heard the piping whistles in the trees, and the beat of her heart. She glanced up at Adam and found him looking at her. A tousled lock of hair fell across his forehead and he looked every inch the son of pioneers; a man with a love of the wilds running in his ve
ins. His tanned skin was agleam with perspiration, and his shirt was thrown wide open at his muscular throat. There was a power and a passion in him that the forest drew forth, just as it drew wild scents from the raintrees.

  ‘You look a little frightened,’ he said, and he half-smiled down into her eyes, smoke-blue shadows in her slender face. ‘I shan’t lead you astray, Joanna.’

  Her reaction to' his words, and his closeness, was a primitive rush of confusion, so overwhelming that she had to break free of his touch.

  She pulled sharply away from him, and at once his smile was gone and a frown darkened his eyes. ‘Women always assume that a man deals in double talk,’ he said crisply. ‘Are you afraid in case I kiss you?’

  ‘Do you imagine I’d let you, without putting up a fight?’ she retorted.

  ‘Battling words, Joanna,’ he mocked. ‘Maybe if I kissed you here and now it might make things easier between us when we have to bed down for the night.’

  ‘Wh-what do you mean?’ she gasped.

  ‘Well,’ he drawled, ‘you’re all on edge right now, wondering when I’m going to pounce, so let’s get it over and done with.’

  He came a step nearer and she backed away from his mocking eyes, his wide shoulders and powerful arms. ‘Please, stop it!’

  ‘You started it.’

  ‘I - I did nothing of the sort!’

  ‘Now, now, Joanna, you took my chivalrous intentions for the other sort. Wasn’t that why you jumped a yard away from me a moment ago?’

  ‘I - I thought it time we moved on,’ she said desperately. ‘I’m terribly thirsty.’

  You prefer coffee to a kiss?’

  ‘Please, Adam, don’t be mean.’

  He studied her, pressed against a raintree with a chain of scarlet creepers holding her. The green shadows across his face made him look devilish, and a tremor ran through her and she didn’t know why it was so imperative that he didn’t kiss her ... just to be tormenting.

  ‘I’m not mean, Joanna, I’m like every other man. Only like everyone else you think I’ve got to act the stony image of a boss all the time, in any situation. Didn’t it occur to you that I was damn worried about bringing that plane down? We could so easily have crashed on the coral reef and I didn’t want to be responsible for hurting you, or killing you. I’m not made of stone. A kiss from me wouldn’t leave you with a bruise!’

  ‘Why should you want to - to kiss me?’ She could speak only in a whisper, for once again this enigmatical man had moved her, shaken her.

  ‘Just to feel you alive, just to know I didn’t break you in two out on that reef.’ His smile was a mixture of irony and whimsy. ‘Vance wouldn’t have hesitated, back there on the beach, but that would have been a different story, eh?’

  He hitched the swag that hung at an angle across his back, the loop of string pressing deep into his shoulder. ‘Come on, porcupine, give your prickles a rest and let’s be finding that camp site before it gets dark ... as I said, night falls quickly here in the rain-forest.’

  The creeper-hung trees made a canopy over the small clearing where Adam dropped the swag and stretched his arms with a deep groan of relief. Joanna stood gazing breathlessly at the willow-like trees that dripped their tresses into the stream that ran like a strip of silver through the forest. The birds for a moment had gone silent, as if peering in sharp-eyed curiosity from the branches overhead. Wings flapped nervously as Joanna swung round to Adam with the light from the stream shining in her eyes.

  ‘I’m hot and sticky, my feet ache, and I’d love nothing better than a cool, cool dip in all that lovely water. May I, Adam? Would it be all right?’

  ‘Certainly, but I don’t know what you’re going to use for a towel. I won’t let you drip-dry. You might catch a chill.’

  ‘Oh, I must take a bath! I can’t bear to feel grubby a moment longer. Jeff wrapped the sandwiches and the cake in a tea-towel - couldn’t I use that to rub myself down?’

  ‘If you don’t mind a few crumbs.’ She had the impression that he was grinning slightly as he unrolled the wallaby rug and produced the satchel of food. ‘What if I decide to join you?’

  ‘Oh—’ She caught her breath. ‘Couldn’t you wait till I come out?’

  ‘I guess I shall have to. In any case a tea-towel wouldn’t be much use for mopping my bulk dry.’ He handed her the towel and she caught the glint of amusement in his eyes. ‘I’ll get a fire going and the billy will be bubbling with hot coffee by the time you’ve had your dip. These forest streams run cool and clear, so you won’t be disturbed.’

  He walked with her to the edge of the stream, where he filled the billy-can. Now the forest birds had begun to twitter and call again, sweet long sounds echoing through the green mazes of the forest, and Joanna smiled involuntarily, for somehow the presence of the birds made her aloneness with Adam less acute. Their tiff among the scarlet creepers had left a residue of tension, so that each time their eyes met, each time they spoke, it was as if a fine wire shimmered between them.

  If she provoked him now ... if he touched her now ... there would be fireworks.

  ‘Call out if anything alarms you,’ he said. ‘The flying foxes have rather large wings, but they’re harmless, unless you happen to be growing on a tree.’

  Before he left her to bathe in the stream he took a look among the willow-like trees. The light was fast fading, but still the stream held a hint of silver and it outlined him tall and dark as he turned to her. ‘There’s no turkey-bush for you to get scratched on.’ His teeth glimmered in a smile. ‘Enjoy your dip.’

  She watched him disappear among the trees, and as she unbuckled the belt of her jeans a peewee cried across the stream, a long and rather lonely sound, as if the bird were calling home its mate to their resting place. There was a strong scent of nectar, stealing out from the grevillea that grew wild, and the tree-orchids that were rich in perfume. The water shimmered as Joanna slipped into it, and she wondered with a little shiver of pleasure and coldness what Gran would say, what Viviana would think if they could see her now, bathing like this - a nymph in a forest stream - with a man of the Australian range only a few yards away. He was hidden by the trees, and busy building a fire for their supper of soup and biscuits, but she was very aware of him as she splashed about in the stream and felt a tingling aliveness from her toes to the tips of her ears.

  She tried to picture the Joanna she had been, travelling out sedately from England to join her sister, but the outlines blurred and she knew that some intrinsic change had taken place and she not only felt different, she looked less serious and reserved.

  She laughed to herself. In the old days she would not have dreamed of swimming without a stitch of clothing.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WHEN Joanna pulled herself out of the water the night had grown a little colder and she rubbed down briskly with the rather inadequate towel and was glad to slip into her clothes. The ends of her hair were damp and she looked forward to warming herself beside the fire, whose tangy smoke stole among the trees along with the aroma of coffee. She stepped into her sandals and was latching them when a harsh cry rang out from among the bushes, abruptly broken off, leaving a silence filled with the hammering of her heart.

  For a second or two she couldn’t move, only her lips moved, murmuring a name.

  ‘Adam ...’ She broke into a run, thrusting her way towards the ruddy glow of the fire, where the billy boiled merrily with the coffee in it.

  ‘Adam - where are you?’

  ‘Here, Joanna.’

  She swung round, white-faced, as he emerged from the bushes carrying something in his hand.

  ‘What - what was that awful cry?’ she gasped.

  ‘It wasn’t me, honey.’ The casual endearment shook the ground again and she didn’t know whether to weep with relief because he was all right, or to stamp her foot at his exasperating calmness.

  ‘I - I thought you were being murdered.’

  ‘Well, you could say something like it was g
oing on.’ He held aloft the object in his hand, feathered, with a long, scrawny, broken neck. Adam’s mouth crooked into a grin. ‘I heard him grubbing about in the bushes and stalked him — one quick grab and we have turkey to go with our soup. It should taste fine roasted in the hot wood ashes.’

  ‘Well,’ Joanna’s smile trembled on her lips, ‘he sounded very reluctant to provide us with supper, and he looks a bit scrawny.’

  ‘Now that’s just like a woman,’ Adam mocked, ‘after I bring food to the hearth like a regular cave-man!’

  She laughed, but as they walked to the fireplace, which Adam had built within a ring of stones, she felt a trembling in her legs. Her fear had been for him, not for herself. And she knew, with the force of a blow, that if anything should ever happen to this big, able, strangely protective man, it would take the sun and the stars out of the sky for her.

  As she looked at him, at his face bronzed by the firelight, she knew that slowly, inexorably, Adam Corraine had walked into her heart, and her heart had enclosed him and there he would remain, even when a thousand miles separated them.

  He lifted the billy-can from the fire with a stick of wood under the handle and settled it on a stone. He then put more wood on the fire, so that when it burnt down there would be a bed of ashes in which to roast the scrub-turkey, and his brown hands moved deftly, etched by the firelight, as he plucked and cleaned the bird. A breeze rustled through the trees, stirring the woodsmoke, and Joanna zipped his flying-jacket to her throat with a tingling sense of pleasure in wearing a garment of his.

  While the bird roasted in the glowing ashes, they sat on a log and enjoyed their coffee, and there danced about them lovely plushy moths with wings of silk painted with golden eyes. The soft pulsing of the wings, and the forest murmurings, bathed Joanna in a cool peace after the turbulent discovery that she was in love with Adam. She hugged her secret, as she hugged her cup of coffee, and didn’t think beyond these hours with him. Tomorrow she would have to face reality, but right now it was good to dream. All this she would have to remember when she left Raintree ... to stay and see him marry another girl was not possible.