by Gloria Bevan
“Goodness!” Jill paused as a roll of thunder reverberated overhead, startlingly close to the house. “I don’t envy you the trip back over the hills tonight, Mark.”
“Not to worry.”
“He’s taking me along too,” Angela put in gaily, “just for the ride. But I’ll be back on the job in the morning!”
Jill made no answer. Her tightly set lips and angry expression made it quite plain that if Angela never returned to Waikare it would be too soon for her.
As they moved out into the moist darkness Mark hurried on ahead to open the door of the Land Rover and Doris said on a sigh, “It’s too bad about Jill. I feel dreadful leaving you with this poisonous atmosphere to contend with as well as everything else! She’s quite a nice kid too as a rule. If only she wasn’t so stubborn! Once she gets an idea into her head nothing on earth will shift it!”
“It doesn’t matter.” Yet somehow it did matter. It wouldn’t be so hurtful, Angela told herself bleakly, if she were really guilty of the machinations of which so many folk here appeared to suspect her. “Oh well,” she tried to make her tone cheerful, “I expect it will be only for a few days. Brian seems almost better now.” But in her heart she knew that the last thing Jill wanted was to leave the man she loved to the questionable ministrations of a girl who had been a friend of Martha’s.
As they swept out of the main gates of the homestead rain was falling steadily, splashing down into the dust of the driveway. At intervals flashes of lightning lighted up a sombre sky and in the hills long rolls of thunder seemed alarmingly close.
Doris had asked Angela to sit in the rear of the vehicle with her and as the Land Rover plunged on through the darkness the older woman chattered continuously. Didn’t Angela think that Kelly was a most attractive name for the new baby, providing of course it turned out to be the long-awaited girl, and this time, judging by the law of averages, it must be! Angela nodded. She was scarcely listening, her eyes fixed on the windswept road ahead.
At length they turned into the main northern highway with its smooth bitumen surface and vastly improved grades. As they sped over the quiet roads towards the city the scattered lights of farmhouses twinkled on lonely hilltops and presently they joined in the stream of traffic churning up a steep grade. “Is all the north just a series of high hills?” Angela asked Doris.
“Just about, but it’s worth it all! Wait until you’ve seen a bit more of the district further north. Whangarei’s a gorgeous town, so gay and colourful with flowers everywhere and the most fabulous swimming beaches all within driving distance of the city. There’s a boat harbour too and a bush-covered mountain almost in the centre of the town. Further on is the Bay of Islands—”
“Isn’t that the historical part of the country where all the tourists go?”
“That’s it, but it’s got to be seen to be believed! Bush-covered islands, deep-sea fishing, white sandy beaches—” Doris broke off, leaning forward in her seat. “Mark, why don’t you take Angela up there for a look around while she’s at Waikare?”
Angela felt hot with embarrassment. The boss taking her around the north on a sightseeing expedition, just for the fun of it! “Oh no,” she protested quickly. “I’ll—”
“I’ve got that in mind!” The cool masculine tones cut across her husky voice. “Meantime,” Mark went on as lightning zigzagged its way across a dark sky, “we’ll be lucky if we make it back to the station. If this downpour doesn’t let up soon there’ll be slips all over the road.”
“Just what I’ve been thinking.” Doris’s tone held a thread of concern. “Remember the storm we had about this time last summer, Mark, when the power and telephone lines were down for two days and no one could get across the river? Do you think you and Angela should put up somewhere in town and drive back in the daylight?”
Angela found she was holding her breath. Imagine being forced to spend the night at some strange motel in the company of a man who disliked and distrusted her! Worse, who seemed bent on taking revenge on her for a fancied slight to his younger brother. That really would be the end!
“We’ll make it,” Mark said, and Doris relaxed against the seat.
“I guess if anyone can get through to the station in a storm you can, Mark!”
Angela made a mental note to keep her fingers crossed.
Time passed swiftly and to Angela it seemed only a short time before they were moving along suburban streets with their shaded windows, pausing at traffic lights where coloured smears wavered in sheets of water on the roadway. They followed the airport road for some miles and turning a curve came suddenly on a blaze of lights. Ahead was a modern terminal building. The tall column of the control tower winked its navigation lights and overhead a plane droned as it circled the airport before landing.
Doris gathered up her hand luggage. “It’s goodbye, then. I feel mean leaving you with everything.”
“You needn’t,” Angela disclaimed with a smile. “After a week of coping with shearers in the shed, normal appetites will be just nothing. The men will have to put up with my plain fare, though.”
“That’s all they want—and you know I didn’t mean that anyway! You’ll manage fine with the housekeeping, I know, but it’s Jill, she’s going to be difficult. It’s not going to be much fun for you while I’m away.”
“Don’t worry, she’ll be far too taken up with getting Brian back to work to waste time on me.”
“I know, but all the same—”
“Now don’t worry! Just have a good time and enjoy yourself! Drop me a line if you have time—and give my love to Kelly when she arrives!”
“I will! I will! Now you’re not to come out in the rain, dear. I’m used to this trip south, so no one needs to wait to see the plane take off. That goes for you too, Mark.”
“If you say so.” He was guiding the vehicle among lines of cars standing in the spacious parking area.
“I’ll wire you when I’m coming back,” Doris said. “Goodbye, Angela, and thanks for everything!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mark picked up Doris’s suitcase and Angela watched the other two as they crossed the rainswept roadway towards the lighted terminal building, the man’s tall figure shielding Doris from the full force of the gale. Tonight Angela knew it would take more than blustery winds and driving rain to dampen Doris’s high spirits, for wasn’t she travelling towards all the warmth and welcome of happy family life with the added excitement of the expected arrival of a new small person to love? Unconsciously Angela sighed. Not like herself, for now that she had said goodbye to the one person at Waikare who believed in Angela’s integrity of purpose, she was returning only to dislike and suspicion. Why on earth, once she had learned the truth about Martha, had she agreed to stay on? She must be a devil for punishment, she told herself ruefully, to continue to put up with Jill’s contemptuous glances and Mark’s two-edged remarks. What was there about the place that held her in spite of everything, made it worthwhile enduring so much downright unpleasantness? There was no answer to the query. She only knew that in some sad mixed-up way she enjoyed being at Waikare. She wouldn’t be anywhere else for anything, not even tonight in the long trip back to the station in the teeth of the storm ... with Mark.
He was back at the parking area in a few minutes, and climbing back into the vehicle. “Doris is okay. She’s just met up with a friend who happens to be travelling on the same plane to Christchurch. She’s in a tizzy about us getting through on the road tonight and said not to wait to see her plane take off. So come on, Twenty!” He got out to open the passenger door and a gust of wind struck her with sudden force. “If you sit in the back by yourself folks will think we don’t get on!”
Don’t get on, Angela thought hollowly. He must be joking! But she slipped into the front seat, he slammed the door, then went around to the driver’s seat, brushing the wet thatch of dark hair back from his eyes.
Soon they were moving away. The mechanical arms of the barrier lifted to let the vehicl
e through and they swung into the brightly lighted thoroughfare with its stream of moving buses, taxis and private cars.
As they left the terminal buildings behind and took the quiet road towards the city he said: “Doris will be on top of the world once she gets to Christchurch and sees that daughter of hers.” He swung her a sideways glance. “How about you, Twenty? You never let on much about yourself. Got a family of your own back home in the old country?”
“No.”
“Just you?”
She twinkled up at him. “Just me. My parents died so long ago I don’t even remember them.”
His tone softened. “Tough on you.”
“Not really. A nice aunt took pity on me and brought me up. She’s not in England any longer, though. Her daughter went to live in the States and two years ago my aunt joined her there.”
“So there’s no one back in London who’s missing you a lot?” His gaze was fixed on the rain-swept road ahead and the question hung in the air between them. What was he getting at? she wondered. “Oh, boy-friends, you mean?”
“It’s not unusual—a girl like you.” His brief glance took in the eager young face and softly parted lips.
“Actually,” she admitted slowly, “there was someone, or I thought there was—”
Mark caught her up quickly. “Was?”
“You know,” she admitted with a slight feeling of guilt, “I’d all but forgotten about Graeme since coming to the station. Isn’t it terrible?” she added half to herself. “It must be that hectic week in the shearing shed that put everything else right out of my mind.”
“Or someone you met there?”
In the dim glow of the dashboard she glimpsed the sardonic twist of his lips. So it was John to whom he was referring. She might have known he wouldn’t have forgotten John’s warm goodbye on the shadowed porch. All at once she remembered that this was the boss, inflexible and unrelenting, with whom she was having this cosy little chat. What had her private life to do with him? “Does it matter?” she asked sharply.
He made no reply, or perhaps in the roar of the wind she hadn’t caught the low murmur of his voice. For the wind was rising rapidly to gale force, wildly tossing the tops of tall trees bordering the dark paddocks stretching away on either side of the highway and sending leaves and broken branches skittering across their path.
Mark was putting a hand to a knob on the dashboard. “Feel like some music?”
“If you like.”
The next moment the beat of a dance melody pulsed around them, but almost immediately the music was drowned out in a crash of thunder overhead. “It’s no use.” He turned the switch and they relapsed into silence. Not a dreary kind of silence, though, Angela’s thoughts ran. It was almost... exciting ... as though the electricity that crackled through the air tonight had charged the atmosphere within the enclosed vehicle so that she was terribly, achingly aware of Mark and everything about him. The damp dark hair, the strong masculine face, even the tanned hand resting on the steering wheel. She wrenched her glance aside, fearful that he might somehow sense the way she was feeling about him. Mark Hillyer, of all men! A man she scarcely knew, a man who didn’t even like her ... on the contrary! She must be crazy!
They had left the city behind them and were taking the bends and curves of the northern highway when the storm broke in all its fury, an electrical storm that sent lightning zig-zagging almost continuously over roadside paddocks, throwing into sharp relief tossing trees and the sheep huddled for shelter beneath. Angela’s thoughts went to the road snaking over the high hills to the station. She recalled the many slips that had threatened to block the road on the day of her arrival at Waikare. In a heavy torrential downpour such as this there must be more than a likelihood of falls of earth from the raw cuttings on the hillsides. The disquieting thought made her say anxiously, “Won’t it be risky going over the hills in a storm like this?”
“The roads up there are always a risk, whatever the weather.” He sent her his lopsided smile with its hint of amusement. “Scared, Twenty? I told you you need to be tough to live out here in the never-never.”
“Not scared,” she protested quickly, “it’s just that I—”
“Don’t trust me to get you safely back tonight all in one piece? Is that it?”
“Something like that.” She was tempted to point out to him that the question of her spending her life on an outback New Zealand sheep station scarcely arose, but something about the stern set face at her side dissuaded her. The subject was fraught with emotional pitfalls, like the way he insisted on dragging John into the conversation, and somehow tonight she wasn’t in the mood for argument.
At length they swung off the smooth wet bitumen of the main highway to turn into rough metal roads. Earth washing down from the banks above lent the pathway a surface of slippery mud. Swish, swish, branches of overhanging tree-ferns scraped the roof as they plunged on through the dark, wind-tossed night. Once again the silence seemed fraught with some emotion she couldn’t pinpoint, and for something to say Angela murmured, “You’ve always lived at Waikare?”
He slewed the vehicle around a bend, sending a shower of mud and rubble over the wheels. “That’s right. It belonged to my dad and his father before him. I spent a few years at boarding school in town, put in a stint at agricultural college and after that there was a period of training on another station. There was a manager on the place until I could take over—and believe me, I couldn’t get back soon enough! Brian,” his voice softened, “he was different. As a kid he was a delicate little brat, always in and out of hospital for one thing or another. The outdoor life here has been the making of him. He’s grown out of all that now.”
Angela’s thoughts went back to what Doris had told her of the Hillyer family history. The two brothers growing up without a father, did that explain the elder one’s protective, authoritative attitude towards the younger? In the small community of the remote sheep station Mark apparently held himself Responsible for the welfare of his younger brother. Some perversity sparked her to say, “He might be just as well in town. I mean, did he really want to be a sheep farmer all his life? Was coming back to the station his own choice?”
“Fair question, Twenty! But what lad at school-leaving age has a clue as to what he wants to take up when he gets out in the world? Not too many, I’d imagine! Besides, he was always a scary, timid kid, he needed someone to make up his mind for him.”
So the decision had been forced on Brian. “And you’ve never found out from him since,” she persisted, “whether he’s really happy or not about his life here?”
“Hey!” He swung her a swift amused glance. “What are you getting at?” His tone sharpened, “He hasn’t been confiding his troubles to you by any chance, has he?”
“No, of course not!” Belatedly she remembered her own rather questionable position at the homestead. “I guess it’s really none of my business, but—”
“But?”
Angela gathered her courage together. In spite of the intimidating note in his voice he couldn’t eat her. “Seems to me,” she said in her soft tones, “that he’s the type of fellow who’d be more at home living in town than in the country. A big city where he could have easy access to good libraries, attend literary clubs and meet people with similar interests. That sort of thing.”
“Similar interests? You don’t mean those verses of his that he’s always scribbling away at? Oh, I grant you they’ve got something, occasionally he hits a nerve with something he says, but if you’re thinking of persuading him to try to live on his earnings in that direction you’re way off-beam. He tried that idea out once before and it didn’t work. He took off for six months to Wellington and tried to support himself on his writing efforts. He’s a stubborn cuss, but even he had to admit after a few weeks that he was beaten. I guess that’s another thing that didn’t do anything Towards bolstering up his sagging confidence in himself. He’s one of those unlucky guys somehow, what with that—and your friend Mar
tha!”
Martha. Her spirits plummeted and the warm intimacy of the rain-swept night was dashed. So he was still thinking of Martha Stanaway and no doubt linking her name with that of the other girl. Of all the arrogant, egotistical men! Arranging other people’s lives, treating Brian as though he were still the kid brother of nine or ten years of age. And yet could there be some sense in his arguments? Possibly Brian did need a stronger nature to guide him, an older brother to depend on. But was such direction really helping Brian to make a life of his own, discover his own potential for personal fulfilment?
Her unseeing gaze was fixed on rivulets of rain running down the streaming windscreen and her soft lips drooped. Mark has made up his mind about me in just the same way as he’s summed up his young brother. In his book I’ll never be anything else but “Martha’s friend”. Right from the start he’s written me off as a cold-hearted husband-hunter, and a liar and cheat into the bargain! Unconsciously she sighed. It’s a pity, because there’s something about him. Call it masculine magnetism, call it anything you like, I only know that tonight it’s difficult to fight against it. Yet somehow I must.
He’s tough and brown and hard, yet he really does have a care for those around him. There’s no doubt he thinks the world of Brian, even though it seems to me he’s rather overdone the caring in that direction. Because he knows that Doris has set her heart on getting to Christchurch in time for the new baby’s arrival he’s taken this long drive to the airport tonight. And look at the patient way he takes the trouble to explain all the details of station work to Kevin when the lad asks about them. Oh, you have to hand it to Mark—he’s a good employer. Anyone can see that to the shepherds and hands at the station he stands ten feet tall! Susan likes him too, likes him a lot. How much does he like her? I wonder. I wish I knew the answer to that one. Funny, it’s only me he treats with a sort of mocking amusement as though I were a female farm-cadet or something.