"Oh, no !" Selina cried.
As the morning wore on they found there was nobody else to cry for. Apart from the six absent men, about whom no one still knew anything, there were only three victims, and in a way Mr. Lockwood could not be called a victim.
So there were two. Cooky. Anton Wolhar. Anton's
mate, who had beaten with a wet bag beside Anton, said that Anton had only spoken once. It had been to ask about Ignace. When assured he was safe with Selina, he had said : "Then it's all right." The mate then reported : "He worked like I've seen no man work. He was almost a machine."
Yes, thought Selina, but how do I tell a little boy?
There were other fatalities, of course. Brent's pigs and chickens. Several kittens. Sam. Down in the forest two dingoes had been caught before they could get away. Birds had fallen to the ground in the intense heat.
And Eustace .`rich in corn' . . . would never keep down the rats any more. His beautiful skin remained to show them what a really fine carpet snake he had been, for the slough had not entirely burned away.
"He was lovely," the children wept ... they were all up from the twilight jungle now ... "worth three dollars a foot."
"Five," sobbed Michael, "with inflation."
As the homestead had the only kitchen left, the sole shelter, Selina took in the entire camp. She put as many as she could to each bedroom, then the rest overflowed to the lounge and the many verandahs.
The surprise was Maddie, Maddie who hated crowds and frankly disliked most people. She took over the meals, and the directing of the women cooking the meals, and obviously enjoyed every minute. But not when the supplies ran out, for the telephone was not functioning. The cars that had been prudently shifted to safety areas could have got through to Tallow Wood if there had been a road. But there was no road any more.
However, planes were going over continually, helicopters, estimating the position.
Roger, whose hands were full, sent Selina up to the ledge to mark out a message for help.
"Do it," he instructed, "by writing in the earth in large letters, then filling in the writing grooves with rolled white paper. Newspaper will do."
Because it would divert the children ... she still had not told Ignace . Selina took them all up with her. When they got there she could hardly believe that this was their plateau, their lovely green ledge. Now it was a ruin like the rest. She wondered what had happened to the distillery, but the source of the oil would always be there, because the gums were indestructible.
"What are we going to write ?" asked Michael. "We'll say we're all right, then ask for food." "Chocolate frogs ?"
"I don't think so, Phyllida. It must be necessary food."
"Chocolate frogs are necess—what you said." "Yes, dear, but ... well, potatoes to begin with." "Put chips," called someone. "I love chips."
"No, we might get timber chips," protested someone else. "Fancy eating wood !"
"Burnt wood, too."
"We'll put potatoes," said Selina firmly, and set Michael to do it.
Michael worked busily for many minutes, but presently he turned round to Selina. "I know how to spell potatoes," he said plaintively, "but I don't know where to stop."
"What do you mean, darling ?"
"Potatototo--"
"Make it spuds, mate," said a voice—a voice that Selina had been waiting for. Crying inside of her for Joel's voice.
She turned. Over the children's head she looked at him, looked at him, she knew, as if she was looking for a first wonderful time, because every time would be a first wonderful time with Joel. She knew she had always known it, but turned away from it, deliberately rejected it, because he could never feel like that with her, not Joel Grant. But now ... now ...
Yet what was this? She was engaged to Roger. "You're all right ?" How could anyone be so banal, she asked herself as she mouthed it.
"Yes." How could he answer her just in a word ? Iron Grant was thinking.
"The men—" she began.
"All sound. The young pilot, too. He ejected himself some time before the crash. The only sad part is that the craft didn't make the ocean as he intended."
"Was it awful out there?".
"By the look of things it was not exactly hi-jinks here."
"No. Cooky went. And Mr. Lockwood. And—" She glanced at Ignace. She said softly, "He doesn't know."
"Then leave it to me. If you've finished, come back to the house."
"But the plane we're signalling—"
"It will have to return to base after it reads the message to fulfil the order. It's not as if it's a travelling shop. How is this?"
They watched and he wrote, then filled the grooves
with rolled newspaper. ALL-OK-SPUDS ... He looked inquiringly at Selina for the next.
"Cheese," she supplied. ALL-OK-SPUDS-CHEESE . Another inquiring look.
"Jam," said Selina.
"Apricot," begged Michael.
"No, plum."
"Strawberry." ALL-OK-SPUDS-CHEESE-HONEY . . . "Now what else?"
Phyllida said wistfully : "Chocolate frogs ?" "That's too long, will chox do instead ?"
"Yes," they all agreed, and the message in rolled
newspaper was printed out in the grooved ashes.
ALL-OK-SPUDS-CHEESE-HONEY-CHOX-TA. "Will it work?" asked Ignace, enthralled.
"Like a charm, mate."
"I don't know how charms work."
"Then come and I'll tell you. I've something, anyhow, to say about your stepdad."
"Anton ?"
"Yes, son." Joel drew him to his side and they walked ahead.
There was one more to fit on the verandah that night, and already they were packed like sardines.
"That's something we could have asked for," said Michael, "sardines." He started inscribing : "Sir Deans."
"Not the potatoes that don't know where to stop again," laughed Joel. He wrote it down for him.
"Is that right, Miss Lockwood ?" Joel asked deliberately, and he did a copy for Selina. But when he
passed it over and she read it, she sat still and frozen. He couldn't be writing this to her. No one would write something like this in a crowded room in a crowded house.
For---`I love you', he had written.
"Sardines," Michael was inscribing. "We'll need more rolled newspaper."
"Selina and I are going out to arrange about that," said Iron, and he got calmly up, put strong, calm fingers under Selina's elbow, and the next moment they were descending the steps and walking away from the house.
The pall still remained, but there were irregular tatters of sky now where the clouds had broken up, and faintly, very high up, they could see the first nervous prick of stars. The air was still heavy with smoke, it still stung the throat and nostrils, but pittosporum, guaranteed, said Iron, to penetrate from earth to outer space, came poignantly in with its scent of lemon, carnation and crumpled violet.
His fingers were still under her arm. He was guiding her downward. Down where ?
"Oh, Joel," she said with joy when he stopped, for she had not checked before, "the totem tree is still here !"
She touched Anton's carvings lovingly. Then she released herself from Joel and leaned back against the trunk.
He stood in front of her, but with a hand on the trunk each side of her. She was imprisoned there.
"I told Ignace," he began.
"What did he say ?"
"He cried a little. Then he asked me would his
mother know about it, and when I said that Anton would tell her himself he was relieved about that. I said I would build him another billycart."
"You have a lot of things to build, Joel. Barns, depositories, new mill, new mess, new chalets. Then there are the things that go in chalets. The toys and the teddy bears."
She noticed how, unlike Madeleine and Roger, he did not question her there.
"There is also," she said sympathetically, "the Ridge."
"The Ridge will not be built again."
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"Not built again ? But it was a marvellous house."
"I agree . . . but it was never home. Never home, Selina, only Tall Tops was that. It was a place of rooms, and after Madeleine had finished it, it was an elegant place of elegant rooms. But it never had been, never was, and never would have been, home. It had no corners where a little girl had sat and dreamed, no nooks where a bigger girl had sat.. . and dreamed ? . . . as well. It had no old swing. No old playroom. No big grey gum continually told he could encroach no more but still nothing done about him. It wasn't you, Selina."
"Roger . . ." breathed Selina. She knew she had to say his name before—before-
"As soon as the road is open, Roger and Madeleine are going down to be married, as they should have been married years ago."
"I don't understand you," she faltered.
"But you must have understood a lot of things.
At least you must have sensed there was something."
"A look between them," nodded Selina. "Maddie's
knowledge of Roger's capability up at the gymkhana. Joel, could you have beaten him that day? Won the event ? Harry West said you could."
"I didn't take my special axe," he said. "On the subject of axes—"
"Your Philadelphian is safe under my bed. I forgot to return it after I came back from the mill-race."
"You took the axe there ?" He looked at her incredulously.
"Yes," Selina said.
He took an imprisoning arm away as though to put it to another use. Then he must have decided to hold off.
"Yes, I would have won," he said. "I could beat the whole world" ... his voice rang not boastful but sure ... "but only for the right prize."
"Roger—" she reminded him again faintly, feeling something infinitely sweet and inevitable about to enclose her.
"He was always in love with your sister, she was always in love with him, but being two of a kind, when a dispute between them cropped up, neither would give in, and so they split up."
"Then Roger knew when he came here to work for Uncle—"
"No, he'd know nothing, it would be sheer coincidence, he'd just get the job through the usual source."
"But he'd know about me. Know my name from Maddie's name."
Drily Joel said : "Roger was doing an extra course in America when he met Madeleine, and she was between husbands, but" ... he looked sincere ... "I have a feeling she won't ever be between husbands
again. Those two are made for each other, basically sound, but otherwise happily superficial. They'll stay in Sydney. Roger will take on what he always should have taken on . . . an executive job."
"Will he regret" . . . Selina gulped . . . "my money ?" "Down deep in him I don't think Roger ever really believed he would last out that long."
"Why did you persuade Uncle to make such a will ?"
"I didn't. It was entirely his own idea. He didn't dislike Roger, don't think it, Selina, but he just didn't see him as your fellow. He was willing to be proved wrong, hence that three years' wait before you could marry. As a matter of interest, I was against it. If Roger waited three years, I argued, it would only prove his acquisitiveness. But Claud said it would give you time to think it over. Has it ?" He looked hard at her.
"Too much time. I've only had six weeks of the three years and I've thought already."
"And the answer ?"
"Forget tomorrow," she said. "That's my answer. But of course, there has to be two minds about that."
The hands had come down now. They were fitted tightly instead round Selina's waist.
"Tree husbandry is going to do itself very well," Joel Grant said, and his lips came strongly, firmly ... everything this man did would be strong and firm ... on her mouth.
"We'll live in our house," he said presently, "that house with the little girl and the old swing and the big grey gum. Talking of trees . .." He let her go, then
shinned easily up the totem's trunk and looked into the horn "It's incredible !" he called down.
"Is there wine there ? Joel, there could not be wine there. Not after all that searing heat."
"It's there. It's there, Selina. We'll have a fruitful year."
He came down again.
"Isn't your very name fruitfulness, oh, woman ?" he said as he had said before, and his eyes were deep, dark and warm on her His arms came tight around her. His lips came firm and strong again.
She gave herself back to him, lovingly, wholly.
"We have a start" she heard him say with soft laughter between his kisses ... "one small apple already."
"Ignace ?" she asked.
"Ignace," he said.
Svantovit kept looking out on four quarters. Down from Tall Tops came the voices of Michael and Phyllida arguing how many e's to put on tomorrow's plane message for coffee.
Deep in the forest a mopoke called.
Deep in the Forest Page 15