Deep in the Forest

by Joyce Dingwell

  "But he wasn't pulling, Harry."

  "I don't mean the team events, I mean the individual saw and cut, especially the cut. If Iron had wanted to win, he would have brought his Philadelphia axe with him. And I put ten dollars on the boss."

  "He still mightn't have won," said Selina.

  "There's no one could beat Iron and that Yankee axe."

  The rest of the day went like all gymkhanas did. Tea in the tea tent for the ladies, the men in the beer tent, the kids round the cake and pop.

  Madeleine and Selina patronised the fortune-teller, who told Selina the same as she had last year, and years before that. The grass grew thinner and more scattered with lolly wrappers. Joel Grant announced through the loudspeaker that the new T.T. train was returning its passengers from four o'clock onward, and the Tall Toppers began moving away.

  Selina had been the first to come up on Billy, but something decided her not to complete the circle by being the last one to leave. It was the sight of Madeleine, Madeleine with an arm in an arm of each of the two men. Roger and Joel. They were looking at her as

  men did look at Madeleine, and Selina turned quickly,

  left the fair and hurried across to the landing platform.

  Had it only been a sawing contest Roger and Iron had been competing in ? she was suddenly wondering. An axe cut ? A length of rope ?

  From the way they both had looked at Madeleine just now a woman came into it, too, a lovely woman with blue eyes and copper hair.

  "Fezplis," called Ignace, well pleased with these new words he had learned today from driver Jock who had chosen him for his conductor. "Fezplis," and Selina took out five cents and gave it to the little boy.

  How foolish I am, she thought, I am like Anton's Svantovit, looking from all quarters. Seeing too much.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE following week saw a big change in Puffing Billy. Stripped of his balloons and streamers the morning following the gymkhana, he steadily lost his glamour to become a working engine instead. It was remarkable what wet sawdust could do to a spit and polish train ... yet even more remarkable what a train could do to sawdust. In no time their sawdust mountain was the pimple Roger had spoken about, and soon even the pimple was gone. There were still twenty tons to account for daily, but Billy took the tons in his stride, or at least on his back, up the vertical track. He also took logs, mill pieces, machinery, brought back tools, food for Brent's piggery and chickens, exchange equipment from Redgum ... and one morning, instead of in his Bentley, Joel Grant.

  Iron strode up from the clearing, but paused on the way to the house at the totem tree to inspect the horn of wine.

  "Still there ?" he called to Selina, who was out on the verandah, and who could not pretend she had not seen him and duck inside since he had previously waved to her.

  "What else did you expect ?" she asked.

  "Well, no noticeable evaporation as yet, but I did fear a little human interference."

  "No one knows about the wine."

  "You do."

  "If you think—" she began.

  "Oh, I think all right. I saw that pilfering finger the other day. This finger, wasn't it? Or this ?" He had reached the house and climbed the steps by now. He had her hand in his and was considering the fingers in turn. She wondered if he was noticing the difference between her hands and Madeleine's, Maddie's so silky, so white, the nails so long, so tapered, so tended and so red. Her own hand was quite square, a good commonsense hand, the nails cut straight except where she sometimes nibbled at the first finger on the left hand.

  Iron did notice. He noticed the shorter nail.

  "So you've been helping yourself," he accused, "while climbing up the totem tree you lost some of this nail."

  "I didn't !" she snapped.

  "You kept the nail, then ? Or preserved it in Svantovit's wine ?"

  "Oh, don't be ridiculous ! I bit it. I do upon occasions when I'm—"

  "Yes? When you're—?"

  "It's of no interest."

  "I find it quite interesting. Usually nail-nibblers are emotional people. I would never have thought it of you." He was regarding her with mock intrigue.

  "Did you come for something, Mr Grant ?" she asked politely.

  "Yes, to see you."

  "You are seeing me."

  "I should have said to speak to you, and don't come back that I'm already speaking to you, because I'm not. That's just exchange of words. Please ask me

  in, put on the billy, then we'll discuss a few things."

  Selina did as she was bid, it was the easiest way with this man, then brought the tea things to the office where he had now settled himself. Well, why not ? It was his office.

  She poured and passed, and he accepted and drank, after which he said with the usual Grant lack of preamble : "I wish to discuss your pay."

  "My what ?"

  "I said pay, because I don't know whether you come under Wages or Salaries."

  "I don't understand what you're talking about." "You're teaching my kids, aren't you ?"

  "I'm supervising the correspondence lessons of the children of Tall Tops, yes," she agreed.

  "Same thing. Well, I always pay for services rendered."

  "But I'm being paid now—I mean, I'm staying in a house that isn't mine."

  "You would have to stay on to do any supervising regardless, wouldn't you ? You could scarcely travel up and down from Tallow Wood every day."

  "You did suggest a room in the overseer's villa," she dared.

  "I changed my mind about that." At her raised brows, he added : "A privilege, surely, of the boss of the outfit." When she did not comment he went on : "However, I am talking of payment, Miss Lockwood, not fringe benefits."

  "Living here is payment in kind."

  "Not my kind."

  "My uncle's kind, then."

  "Nor his, either."

  "He never paid me," Selina pointed out. "Then how has he left you all that money?"

  "You bought the property from him." She could

  not keep a bitter note from her voice. Why had Uncle

  Claud done what he had?

  "Yes, but how did the property get that good? It was because Claud ploughed into it the wages he knew you wouldn't take from him. It made a better place of it. Money always does that, along, of course, with hard work. But it's a different story with me. You'll take—" He named a sum that widened her eyes.

  "That's generous," she commented.

  "I'm a generous fellow." He had pushed his empty cup aside and was lighting his pipe. The scratch of the lighter flint made the only noise in an otherwise silent room in a silent house. Selina thought she had never known the house so silent before. She saw the flame of the lighter, the man's face behind the flame, that red brown skin of a man who has lived all his life out of doors, she saw the eyes narrowed above the flame. Narrowed at her.

  She looked away. He waited a moment, then he said : "Here is your first pay envelope, Miss Lockwood. I suggest a few dresses, that prefect's gym outfit you wore to the gymkhana hardly made the pulses flutter."

  "It wasn't intended to."

  "Not even the good Roger's?"

  "Roger isn't like that," Selina said coldly.

  "My dear child, all men are like that."

  She put the pay envelope down on the desk. "If this comes with a stipulation on how it's to be spent

  I'd sooner not take it."

  "You'll take it all right and no doubt put it in the bank. After all, you don't know what I'm going to charge you, do you, in three years ?"

  She looked at him incredulously, and he nodded calmly back.

  "I know what you're planning in your cunning little mind, how wouldn't I know ?"

  "Roger told you ?"

  "He certainly did not. Anyway, he wouldn't be sufficiently interested to do so."

  "Roger is terribly interested, he loves Tall Tops like I do."

  "But" . . . the brows raised quizzically ... "the cash would do equally well ?" />
  There were so many things she wanted to retort that none managed to come. It was usually like that. Instead she said : "Then Madeleine told you. You certainly see enough of her for her to tell."

  "Yes to the second, no to the first. I do see a lot of Madeleine, but Madeleine did not tell. I gathered it on my own accord. Gathered it from your eyes, your lips, the whole of you, from everything you do and are. You and this place are one."

  "So ?" she challenged.

  "So you put aside every penny to bargain with me in three years' time. 'Mr Grant', you will say, 'I offer you—' "

  "And what does" ... Selina breathed very hard ... "Mr. Grant say in return ?"

  "Ah, that's the sixty-four-dollar question, isn't it, something that time alone will tell. Do you think I can have some more tea ?"

  Selina did go down to Tallow Wood to buy a few frocks, but that was because she needed them, not because she had said that skirts and blouses don't make the pulses flutter. She also made a substantial bank deposit, thinking ruefully that had he been there he could have taken a bow on both accounts.

  Coming out of the bank she became aware, as you do become aware sometimes, and especially in a small place, of someone watching her. She glanced curiously across and saw an oldish middle-aged man looking at her. He looked away at once, but not before she had registered shabbiness ... and a kind of wistfulness. Wistful for what ? She wondered if the fellow was hard up. In Uncle's days she would have taken him up to Tall Tops with her, found him a niche somewhere. He didn't look very robust, but there was a lot of work at a lumber camp as well as hard physical work. He could help Cooky, or if he was the bookish type assist Mr. Brown with the wages and accounts.

  However, Uncle was not boss any more, and she had not the right to return with a new employee. Besides, it might not have been a good move, these days all kinds of dubious people were on the road. Though—and she glanced over again—he didn't look harmful.

  She finished her shopping and set off for the mountains. It did not take her long to leave the township behind, after that the crumpled blue-green grass of the foothills, and then she was into the sharp turn and the steep rises of the Tall Tops ascent.

  No opportunity now to look at gushy streams, at trees full of parrots, at ferns and mosses and trails of wild orchids, the road from Tallow Wood took up

  every moment of a driver's attention. Selina knew it well, though, knew it by its many names marking its many bends. Rogue's Corner . . . Dead Horse Rise ... Roaring Jimmy . . . of all tags, Piccadilly Circus.

  It was just beyond Piccadilly Circus and . . . fortunately as it happened . . . just before the old and now disused track up to Tall Tops when she turned with the contour of the mountain and saw the car. That meant nothing, it was a public road, and though cars were not plentiful they certainly were not rare. But the position of this car was rare. It was right over the road, blocking anyone coming or going, and meaning that if she was to pass she would have to call out to the driver to correct his own vehicle first. But the car was empty and there was no driver in sight.

  She was still proceeding, but very slowly now, trying to work out what was the best thing to do. She was fully conscious of the possible danger in the situation; she was inexperienced, but she was not naïve. The fact that there was no one in the car, no one in sight, alerted her. She could alight only to find out that her alighting had been expected, that it had been planned that way, and that someone was lying in wait either for her, or for her car, so that to step from the Mini might be a very foolish move.

  She had fifty more yards to go, but between the car and where she was moving now almost at snail's pace was the old turn-off. Probably the now discarded road was in a bad state, overgrown in many places, but she did not think it would be unmanouvrable. Bumpy and unpleasant driving perhaps, very bad for tyres, but not impossible.

  Thirty yards to go. Twenty. Still no driver, still no one anywhere. Ten. Selina turned her car down the old track.

  Right from the first moment she detoured she was appalled at the growth that had taken place since the new road had been in use. Young saplings had sprung up in the most inconvenient spots, and branches of larger trees scraped the sides of the car and at times seemed as though they would stop her altogether. But by proceeding gently but firmly, she was able to get through, though she shuddered to think how the duco must be faring.

  It was getting dark. That was understandable, she had left Tallow Wood in the late afternoon, and the blockage on the road had frittered away a lot of time, while the negotiation of the old track, even this short distance of the old track, must have eaten up over an hour. Still, it was a more direct way than the new road, so with the same fair luck as she was having now she should reach Tall Tops before it was actual night.

  She inched carefully round a bend and said : "Oh, no !"

  Across the path, just as the car had been across the road from Tallow Wood, was a very large log.

  Selina looked at it in dismay. She knew there was nothing, just nothing, she could do. A log that size would stay there anti' it mouldered away in, say, ten years. She felt for a miserable minute like mouldering away herself. It was too far to walk to Tall Tops. It was too far now to walk back to the Tallow Wood road. There was nothing else for it but to sit. Sit all night.

  Because she never went driving at night, not up here, Selina had no rug in the car. No cushion No biscuits. And . . . looking estimatingly at the semi-gloom . it could not be much more than seven.

  It was going to be a very long evening.

  She closed the windows and leaned back. She tried to assure herself that a rest would do her good.

  But it was difficult to rest in an Australian forest, there were too many noises, a scrape and slither of leaves and twigs as a small animal or a snake pushed through, the plop of a fallen leaf, the drip somewhere of water. A mopoke.

  ... And behind her, coming slowly as it would have to come, another car.

  Selina sat petrified. Then, with difficulty, she made herself turn the handle of the door. Before the car came and found its way blocked by her car, she had to be out of her car and concealed somewhere. She did not know whether it was the car on the Tallow Wood road that was behind her, whether it was following her, but she had no intention of waiting to find out.

  She wrenched at the door, in her agitation not twisting the handle properly. Then when she did twist it, and open up, she made the mistake of slamming the door shut again, which would mean she would have to run so much harder because he, whoever was in the following car, would hear the bang. But she couldn't run. Her dress was caught. She went through the terrifying business of trying to release herself in a hurry . . . and was picked up by a spotlight.

  She stood in the spotlight, not knowing which way to turn, and when at last she made up her mind, and turned left, she turned into imprisoning arms. The

  spotlight was still fixed, he must have left it like that, but she was fixed, too, fixed by those imprisoning arms, she could not move an inch.

  "Help !" she sobbed into some material. She knew she could not be heard, but she cried it all the same

  "Yes, little one ? What kind of help was it you required ?" Iron Grant's voice came patronisingly down to her, and Selina knew relief and apprehension in the same breath. Relief that there was no danger, apprehension as to what would come next.

  Actually he seated her back in the car next. But before he did he brought a rug, a pillow and a flask from the car behind. He made her comfortable, poured some coffee, waited till she drank it, before he spoke.

  Then he said, drawing in a long hard breath : "What in tarnation do you think you're at ?"

  "Nothing. Nothing at all. There was a car blocking the Tallow Wood road and I wasn't taking any risk."

  "Very prudent of you, except, you young idiot, that it was mine."

  "Yours ? It wasn't your Bentley."

  "I use the Holden for lesser occasions. You must have seen it before."

  Yes, sh
e had seen it, in fact she had seen it quite often, but she must have forgotten. Anyway, it was a common make and a popular colour, one you would encounter anywhere, so how would she have known it was his, especially with the number out of sight with the car positioned like that ?

  "I didn't position it," he said irritably, "skidded. I only went down the valley a minute, no more, to get a few big stones, and when I struggle back I see

  you turning down the old track."

  "You knew my car ?"

  "Of course. I'm not like you, madam. I also recognised the stupidity you generally succeed in demonstrating."

  "You're unfair ! Did you want me to stop and be killed ?"

  "I wouldn't have killed you," he said drily, "but I think at least you could have stayed in the Mini, winding up the windows, of course, and waited at least to make sure that someone else wasn't hurt or killed."

  "I never thought," she admitted.

  "No," he agreed, "but think now."

  She did, and was a little ashamed of herself. "I suppose it was that man," she murmured. "What man?"

  "A stranger in Tallow Wood. He kept on looking at me."

  "Why? Were you looking at him?"

  "No. He was old. Well—oldish middle-aged. Very shabby and—and wistful somehow."

  "So you looked sympathetically at him and he consequently tagged on after you departed. That was what you were thinking?"

  "In a way."

  "Then how in Betsy would he get in front of you ?" Joel Grant asked, exasperated.

  "I didn't really think it was him. I didn't really think of anything. I just took the old track."

  "And stopped. Why did you stop?" Joel focused his very powerful torch and groaned. "Now I see," he said.

  "Any hope of rolling the log away ?"

  "You ask that? You, a lumber girl ?"

  "I suppose it is a bit big," she agreed.

  "A big bit big. It would feed the mill boilers for a week. No, we're stuck here."