But the little boy did neither. He put them down
the toilet ... and that made it worse still. It was, as was to be expected up here, a septic system, something that had to be treated with respect and care and most certainly not stuffed with paper. Seeing Selina close on his heels, Ignace shoved in all he could, then pulled the chain, and that at least helped save the day, since the septic simply could not take such a load.
Selina withdrew the papers at once, wondering desperately whether she could dry them out ... wondering what she could do about Ignace, because one simply could not ignore anything like this, wondering—
But Ignace helped her there. He must have sensed the seriousness of his act, for he brought along his stepfather. Selina explained at once, and Mr. Wolhar proved very helpful in spreading the papers, fanning them, at last taking them into the big laundry ... blessedly empty at this shift ... and ironing each sheet dry.
It was all over half an hour after it had begun, all except the punishment of Ignace. Selina looked at the Ukrainian and the Ukrainian looked back at Selina. He knew, as Selina knew, that a lesson must be taught.
"Come, boy," he said.
Then something awful happened, or that was what Selina thought at first. Anton took Ignace down the valley and cut a big stick, then very soon afterwards Selina heard some loud whacks. They were extremely severe whacks, far too severe for a child . . . for anyone. Selina cried : "Oh, no— !" and ran out of the laundry and into Iron Grant's arms.
"What in tarnation—" He must have heard the whacks, too, the cries.
,
"Anton Wolhar is thrashing Ignace ... oh, it's awful !"
"What did the kid do ?"
"Nothing. I mean, he put the class papers down the toilet, but nothing . . . I mean, we fixed it up all right." Selina's last words were to nobody. Joel was racing down to where the sound of the punishment seemed to be centred. Selina rushed after him.
They were so quick about it, Anton Wolhar had no time to stage a deception. He was already staging one but he had no time to stage one to conceal the first deception. He had the big stick all right, but he was whacking a dead trunk, and Ignace was watching on, and every now and then yelling in pretended pain.
"What is all this ?" Joel called.
Anton threw away the stick and looked stricken. "He has been bad, very bad, but how can I thrash him ? How can I, Mr. Grant ? He has no mother. He cannot tell me even how he misses her. I cannot understand if he does."
"Even if you did understand him and he understood you, I hardly think a stick of that size—" said Iron. "Then?"
"A slap, of course. A good spanking."
"You will give it ?"
"Not now, Anton, it has to be done at once, not half an hour after. Anyway, I think I have a much better idea. It certainly worked on me."
"What, Mr. Grant ?"
"Ignace likes pudding ?"
"Too much. He hurries his meat and vegetables for ice cream and pie."
"Today," said Joel, "no ice cream and pie."
At that moment the whistle went, the middle of the day whistle meaning 'Tucker's on, come and get it'. Ignace ran eagerly up to get it, and he did get meat and vegetables. But no pie. It did not need Anton's gesticulations to tell him why, or Selina's frowns or Joel Grant's severe looks. Ignace, intelligent as Selina had guessed, caught on at once and hung his head.
"He won't do that anymore," said Iron, as he and Selina went up to the house.
"Where did you get such knowledge of children ?" she asked. She had been quite impressed.
"The same way as I got my timber knowledge, through myself."
"You were deprived of pie ?"
"Yes, for a punishment, and I soon caught on." "But I thought there were no women in your life." "A kindly neighbour used to send over apple pie.
I adored it."
"And learned your lesson when you didn't get it ?"
"Yes." A small nostalgic smile, the first time Selina had ever seen this big tough man look backwards. "I often think of those pies ..."
Selina could not have said why she did what she did do that afternoon. It came so naturally and so instinctively that she never questioned it. No, she did not make an apple pie. They had no apples. But they did have blackberries down the mountain.
She went into the blackberry valley with a billy can and a stick, for snakes like to sleep under blackberry bushes, and there in a sun-splashed corridor of trees she picked fat berries, heavy with syrup, from the wild bushes. It was quiet in the grove. The only sound
was the pleased exchange of birds feeding busily, the occasional plop of a too-plump berry to the ground. Suddenly Selina felt happier than she had felt for weeks. She looked down on her hands, her fingers stained with purple, and had the feeling that she held all fulfilment in the blackberried hollow of her palm.
She climbed back to the house and made a blackberry pie, and because she had been well taught by her mother it was a lovely pie. Flaky, light, oozing with dark fruit and luscious juice.
Iron Grant had remained on at Tall Tops to see to some item needing his attention, but towards evening he returned to his car. This was the time she usually stood at the window watching Roger come up from the valley. Today instead she took out the pie.
"It's not apple, it's blackberry. I had no apple. It's ... it's for you."
He did not take it at once. He just stood there looking at it. Then he looked at her.
"Blackberry is better than apple, blackberry is—why, blackberry is heaven. Why did you do this, Selina ?" He had never called her Selina before, always Miss Lockwood.
"I—I think I was sorry for a little boy."
"The little boy is grateful. The man the little boy grew into is asking you won't you still forget tomorrow ?"
"And lose my inheritance ?"
"And marry me," he said.
So the joke had started all over again.
"Just because of a pie," she shrugged.
"Why not? I would never consider a woman who couldn't make a pie."
It was all so ridiculous she had to laugh. He laughed too. Roger, coming up from the valley, looked over at them in astonishment.
"Roger the lodger is astounded," observed Iron slangily.
That sobered Selina. It also annoyed her.
"He is not," she said stiffly.
"Then your fiance, Mr. Roger Peters, is taken by surprise, that ardent, reckless fiance willing to wait three years."
Suddenly the laughter was completely dissolved between them. None from Selina. None from Iron Grant.
The man got into his car. Selina went back to the house.
Madeleine went up to Redgum Ridge every day. She drove in the Mini that Unk had given Selina for her birthday, since Selina had only ever needed it to take Unk around, so had little use for it now.
Joel had allowed Madeleine free rein with the decorations and a very generous allowance.
"He told me to do it all just as if I was doing it for myself, he had no personal preferences and no orders, which was quite a relief." Madeleine glowed. "You wouldn't recognise the place already," she told her sister.
"I wouldn't have, anyway."
"But you've been there."
"Only once, and I never looked around. I didn't want to go. I disliked him. I still do now."
"So does Roger, which is only to be expected when you two are to be one one day. You would naturally
be supposed to have the same tastes and all that," Madeleine said a little sharply. "Personally I like the man," she finished.
Selina nodded, but repeated her own and Roger's dislike. "So long as they don't come to blows," she sighed.
"Who ?"
"The two men, of course."
"Oh, don't be absurd !"
"You don't understand, Maddie, you only understand the city male. Tempers flare high away from concrete pavements, and these two people are very different from each other."
"If you're referring to our couple of bosses—"
"I'm referring to Roger and Iron Grant. Roger is scarcely a boss," Selina said resentfully.
"Then," continued Madeleine, ignoring her sister's interruption, "you need have no fear. I know Roger . . . I really mean I know men like Roger, Academy men, campus men, they never flare up, they're too controlled, too well trained." Madeleine was talking very quickly, she seemed annoyed with herself for some reason, and Selina wondered why.
"Well," Selina said, "I wouldn't say that about the other one."
"Joel ?"
"Yes."
"Perhaps not, but he'd be strictly fair."
"You seem to know that kind of man as well," Selina observed.
"Darling, I know all men," Madeleine smiled. Selina had not been talking idly when she had
spoken about smouldering tempers. There was an atmosphere in the air, there had been all the week, Selina could feel it very strongly. She felt sure that not all the things that Roger did pleased Iron Grant. Being Grant, he would not put up with it too long. Certainly not as long as Uncle Claud had. And can I, despaired Selina at times, put up with it all myself for three years ?
She gave long thoughts to those three years. Apart from feeling ... well, piqued, for every woman wants
to be rushed, grabbed off her feet, she felt—uncertain. Not uncertain about Roger. Somewhere deep inside her, Selina knew that a hundred thousand was sufficient, and more than sufficient, to tie up Roger, but uncertain about Iron Grant. Roger had declared that the man would be ready to sell then, but would he, and if he was ready would he sell to them ? At times, too, it came distastefully but very surely to Selina that no sale might not comprise such a tragedy to Roger after all, that a hundred thousand in money but no Tall Tops would not cast Roger down as it would her, that given the choice of the two—
But she put that thought aside.
Ignace was coming to school every day now, behaving nicely, trying hard to pick up words and often surprising and delighting Selina with a full and lucid phrase.
"Darling, that was very clever," she praised once of a good effort.
"Yes, Mummy," he said . . . and Selina turned away to hide her tears. He was a fine little boy, and he would make a fine man ... but, Selina thought ach-
ingly, his parents would never know. However, his stepfather would, a loving stepfather, and that at least helped.
At the end of the week what Selina had felt in the air became actuality. There was a first-class row over the planting. Iron Grant believed as Unk had believed that seedlings must have room. He said so to Roger.
"But damn it all, they don't naturally," objected the overseer. "They grow up willy-nilly in the forest and survive very well, thank you."
"Only after they've killed off their weaklings. Yes, that's so. The forest that you encounter is a curtailed forest, Peters, curtailed beforehand by nature. If two trees are too close, one is allowed to perish. We don't do it that way. Instead we don't plant too close in the start."
"I have had success and have increased productivity," stuck out Roger.
"But not quality."
"I can't see it," Roger insisted.
"You don't have to, do you ? You don't have to deal with the finished article." Iron Grant strode off.
Roger had been enraged but still controlled; Madeleine had been right when she had said that about trained men. But he still complained to Selina. He said : "I don't know if I can stand him."
"The sleeper cutter ?"
"Of course."
"Then don't, Roger."
Roger had met Selina's eyes, read what she was thinking, asking . . . begging.
For something tight seemed to be enclosing Selina.
She felt if she didn't break away now, she would never break away. Break away from what ? She could not have answered that. She knew she did not know, not sensibly, herself.
"Darling," Roger, recovered now, placated, "it's all nothing really, I mean we can put up with it."
"Well, I can't. Oh, Roger, can't you see—"
"I can see it would be foolish to throw away a hundred thousand dollars in a moment of pique," Roger said practically.
"It's not a moment, and it's not pique, not for me." "Selina, you're becoming obsessed with the man, obsessed with hate."
She did not reply. She knew suddenly and sharply why there was an urgency inside her. She knew she was obsessed.
... But—was it hate ?
Soon after that the big blow-up that Selina had dreaded occurred. Voices were raised in the valley, and everyone from the cook to the man who fed the mill could not help but hear. Certainly Selina heard.
"I will not," shouted Iron Grant, "not, mark you, Peters, have my trees cut like that !"
"They're down, aren't they ?" It was Roger. "Down in half the time."
"So are four other trees."
"Not important ones."
"I decide on that, not you. What do you think you're playing at, ninepins ? The valley looks like the aftermath of a storm !"
"Mr. Grant, in these days of time and motion—"
"More time, please, and less motion. To me a tree
is life, and I will not have my lives thrown away like -that. Do you understand ?"
"Well, if it means that much to you—"
"It damn well means that much to me, and if it ever happens again you can pack your bags. All twenty of them !"
That was going too far, Selina thought, surely Roger would do something now. But Roger didn't.
Selina heard the Bentley spark up, then leave Tall Tops for Redgum Ridge as though fired by a rocket. She did not know how she felt. She sympathised with Joel about the ninepins method of cutting, that cutting of several trees so that they fell on several more all down the valley, but she did not approve of his bad-tempered attack. After all, there were many who still followed the ninepins way, small foresters did, men who could only afford to employ a few hands, and Roger could have been right, the trees that had not been marked but had still fallen with the others could have been less than special. Nonetheless Uncle had disliked it. She disliked it. But most of all she disliked Joel's biting attack . . . that final sarcastic : ". .. you can pack your bags. All twenty of them !"
That had been hitting below the belt. It made a fop of Roger, and he was never that, he was simply fastidious, proud of himself as any decent male should be proud. Trust that savage to seize on such a point.
Poor Roger ! She got up spontaneously and ran across to the overseer's villa to comfort him. But someone was already there.
She remembered now that Madeleine had come home early today. In the row that everyone must have
heard, from the cook to the boiler feeder . . . and Madeleine . . . she had forgotten her sister.
Madeleine was sitting in Roger's lounge, Selina saw her through the window, not near Roger, in fact right across the room from him, but—yet—
Selina went back to Tall Tops again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
FOR all their differences in opinion as to how a forestation should function, their beliefs in opposite methods as to milling, transport, marketing, the two men, if not enthusiastic friends, still saw eye to eye in many important things, and grudgingly but efficiently co-operated.
"It's like the Navy and the Army in a way," trilled Madeleine, "each taking different, paths but both going in the same direction."
"Marching to a different drummer," Selina put it.
The small railway lines that Roger was putting down in Tall Tops valley to meet the already established Redgum Ridge lines were proceeding satisfactorily. Roger estimated that very soon their sawdust mountain would be scarcely a tiny pimple, instead it would be on the other side of the ledge filling up a scar where Iron Grant eventually intended to establish his formal eucalyptus distillery. The distillery was working now, but the yield had proved so profitable that Grant considered it worthy of something better than the makeshift room that presently housed it. He could see it as Number One Dollar Maker, he said, and as such must be afforded e
very consideration.
"We'll have to stage a grand opening the first day that Billy runs up the mountain," proposed Selina one day to Madeleine.
"But it's already planned, darling," said Madeleine.
"Joel has even ordered the champagne." "Champagne ?"
"Pop for the small fry. We're going to have oodles of ribbons and I'm going to cut the ribbons, then the train will give its first toot and push up to the top."
This was news to Selina, and she felt a little put out. Why hadn't she been consulted, and why should Madeleine cut the ribbon ?
Madeleine must have seen a look on her sister's face, for she added placatingly : "Being the senior, dear."
It was the first time, Selina thought, that Maddie had been anxious to be the elder. She still felt piqued. After all, it was her home . . . No, no, it wasn't any more, it was his, instead she had, or would have in three years' time, a large sum of money. Money that would buy back Tall Tops. Or would it? She often asked herself that, but she never found herself an answer.
Ignace attended the verandah school every day now and was picking up quite a few words. So far they were mostly wrong words, words that sent the children into peals of laughter. At first Selina had been alarmed that the little boy would be hurt and run and hide in the bushes again, but Ignace quite enjoyed being a clown, and often, or so Selina suspected, pretended not to understand when he understood perfectly just to get the laughs.
Madeleine gave no indication of leaving for the city again. She was obviously enjoying her job of decorating up at Redgum Ridge.
"It's very satisfactory being right on the ledge," she
said to Selina, "all those pinnacled mountains beneath you, those steep-walled gorges. You really feel on the top of the world." It was totally unlike Madeleine to talk like this; secretly Selina was surprised her sister had even noticed the scenery. Maddie must be changing, she decided.
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