‘One out of three,’ he nodded. ‘Has Gavin been on the phone about that lately?’
‘No.’
‘Has Gavin been on the phone about anything? I mean, Josephine, you’ve just had a lucky escape.’
‘Escape?’ She said it a little breathily.
‘On the Cessna,’ Abel reminded her a little sharply. He looked at Jo closely. ‘Where else?’
‘Nowhere else. But Gavin wouldn’t know about the Cessna.’ She knew Gavin would, the news was bound to get about, but she felt obliged to defend her fiancé.
‘Of course he would know,’ dismissed Abel. ‘The tender winds of spring, summer, autumn, whatever season is blowing, would see to that.’
‘Then they would also see to it,’ said Jo testily, ‘that he knew that all was well again.’
‘But surely all the same—’
‘It’s our busiest time at present at the office. You would have no idea how busy.’
‘Then tell me.’
‘Too busy for things unconnected with the firm.’
‘As you are unconnected just now?’
‘Yes.’
‘But Erica is connected.’
Jo agreed.
‘And this satisfies you?’ asked Abel.
‘Of course I’m satisfied.’
‘I see.’ His eyes were directed speculatively on Jo. ‘Then shall we come instead to the children and when they leave, because while you were racing up from the valley just now “like any sane adult” the welfare people rang to say that their representative will be out again tomorrow to review the situation.’
‘Oh,’ said Jo.
‘You still don’t want to tell me why you ran up the valley, Josephine?’ Abel asked.
‘I didn’t.’
‘You still don’t want to tell me?’
‘Would it make any difference?’ she flung.
There was another pause. It grew to be quite a long one.
‘You know,’ Abel said thoughtfully, and he looked narrowly at Jo, ‘I think it might.’
‘And I think you’re being quite ridiculous.’ Jo went out. She tidied up the house. That at least she could do to help with tomorrow’s interview, but she knew that the authorities chose their women wisely, and that not nearly so much emphasis was put on tidy rooms as on a sense of love.
Was there love here? Jo recalled Abel once saying that Jo’s concern over the children was really only a determination to honour Gee’s memory. She had denied it then, but somewhere deep in her she had known that Abel had spoken the truth. She had wanted to take upon herself the legacy of those three because of Gee, but—love? No, she had not loved them. They had not been lovable children. Mostly they were still unlovable. But, like the tatters of sky between the banana leaves, patches did steal through. Blue patches. Like Dicky standing to scout’s attention before he set out to rescue them. Like Amanda looking up suddenly after the bath incident and giggling with Jo. We were girls together, Jo treasured. Like Sukey—
But no, she had never reached Sukey.
‘Abel is getting up tomorrow.’ Amanda came into the kitchen. She had taken off her veil and with it her busy air. She looked as listless again as the pair in the garden.
‘Yes, he’s better, he says,’ Jo agreed. ‘Just as well, because the welfare lady comes in the morning.’
‘What for?’
‘To see if I’m treating you properly. To make future arrangements.’
There was a silence for a few moments.
‘I’d like to go back to school,’ Amanda announced. ‘We all would. We’d be safe there.’
‘Safe?’ queried Jo.
‘It’s not very safe here,’ Amanda muttered. ‘It’s surrounded by bush.’
‘There’s nothing in the bush to hurt anyone,’ Jo said sharply. She knew she was saying it for herself as much as she was saying it to Amanda. She knew she was as much on edge as Amanda. ‘Of course you’re safe.’
‘Would there be enough money to send us back to school?’ Amanda asked.
‘I don’t know. If the mine was a good one it would be all right.’ Jo looked directly at Amanda and waited. And waited.
When it was obvious that nothing was forthcoming, she said reproachfully: ‘You can’t expect Abel to pay for you, Amanda, and I haven’t any money.’
‘I think,’ gulped Amanda, ‘we’ll go to that welfare home after all. At least it would be safe.’
‘Amanda, what is this about being safe? Amanda, stop!’ Amanda, about to leave, reluctantly turned back.
‘What is this “safe”, Amanda?’ repeated Jo.
‘Nothing.’
‘Tell me, Amanda.’
‘Nothing. Will you please tell the welfare lady we’ll be going with her tomorrow?’
‘She’s only coming to review the case. Whether you go or stay is out of her jurisdiction, she. merely reports.’
‘But if we tell her we don’t like it here—’
‘But you’d be telling a lie, wouldn’t you? You do like it. You like Abel. I—I think you like me.’
‘No,’ said Amanda, but Jo had seen her little face in a quick unguarded moment, and she knew that Amanda was not telling the truth. A great joy rushed through Jo. She likes me, she thought, and I—why, I love her. I love Dicky. I love Sukey, even forbidding, withdrawn little Sukey. And it’s not love because of Gee, it’s love because of them.
‘Oh, Amanda!’ she said.
Amanda gave her an agonised look. ‘We have to go away,’ she cried in a strangled, quite unchildish voice. ‘He’s out there!’
Before Jo could say a word, Amanda was out herself.
But not out far, only as far as the other two. I must go and tell Abel, Jo decided. Abel will help.
But when she went to Abel’s room and tapped on the door, then opened the door when he did not answer a second knock, the room was empty. He must have dressed and gone out through the window, gone up to the campsite, Jo thought. She decided to tell him tonight.
But Abel did not come back that night. Jo waited up long after the children had been put to bed, then when she knew he wouldn’t be coming, she double-checked all the doors, a thing she had never done before on the plantation.
‘He’s out there.’ What had Amanda been talking about? What made Dicky and Sukey go so far into the garden but never one step further? Never down to the creek as children do? Why had the perfectly harmless print of a rubber sole sent Jo’s heart bumping? Why had she raced back to Tender Winds as though she had been pursued there?
She put out the lights and went to bed. She could not sleep, which would not be good for tomorrow. She would look strained, and welfare officers were trained to look for signs like that.
But what did it matter, anyway? The children were going. She was going. She was going back to the coast to marry Gavin. Why hadn’t Gavin rung?
At that moment the telephone whirred. Jo was out in the hall in a moment to kill the sound before it wakened the children, though, like all children, once sleep took them it needed a million telephone bells to rouse them.
So Gavin had rung after all! She wished Abel Passant was around to be witness to this. Only when she took up the receiver did it occur to Jo that it was not at all like Gavin to ring so late. But, she thought triumphantly, he had.
‘Tender Winds,’ she said. ‘I mean hullo, Gavin.’
There was no answer.
‘Can you hear me?’
No answer.
‘Gavin—’
Still nothing ... except the slightest of breaths at the other end.
‘Gavin?’
Then Jo heard the phone being put down.
She was right, she did look strained the next day, she looked drawn, hollow-eyed, tensed up. And the welfare lady noticed it.
Mrs. Featherstone arrived in the commission car with three bags of candy for the wards and an answer for one of them before the question could be asked. She said to Sukey: ‘There’s no reflection from the sky today, so my hair is not bl
ue.’ It wasn’t, it was a pleasing pale lilac.
Sukey bulged out her cheeks with the butter balls and regarded Mrs. Featherstone’s rinse with deep fascination.
‘Children are the end, bless them,’ Mrs. Featherstone said. ‘No wonder you look a little distraught. They can get you down. Will you be relieved, physically I mean, because I can see you’re genuinely fond of them, when it’s all over? Let me see’ ... she took out her book ... ‘it’s a little over a fortnight now since the sad event. We do like to leave children settled for at least a month. Do you think you could last out that long, dear?’
Jo wondered what Mrs. Featherstone would say if she answered ‘For ever,’ if she told her she looked pale only because she had not slept last night, that someone had rung and when she had answered there had been nothing, only the slight sound of a drawn breath. But it was all too silly, too fanciful, so she said nothing.
‘It says here,’ said Mrs. Featherstone, ‘that you and Mr. Gavin Martin will be applying for one child.’
‘Yes, we’re getting married.’
‘It’s nice of your fiancé to agree to such a thing, but a pity that—’ Mrs. Featherstone sighed.
‘Please,’ Jo asked directly, ‘would it be wrong in your eyes for us to separate these children?’
‘It’s not a question of my eyes, dear, it’s the board’s.’
‘But I’m asking you. Should they be separated?’
‘They will be separated, anyway, in a few years,’ pointed out Mrs. Featherstone practically. ‘Twelve is almost up to teenage-ship, and my goodness, how girls grow then! And the boy isn’t so far behind, is he?’
‘Only Sukey is. She’s very young, Mrs. Featherstone—’
‘No, my dear, in my experience it’s right, not wrong, that is if it has to be. Your Mr. Martin, he wouldn’t agree, would he, to taking all three?’
‘No, he wouldn’t.’
‘Well, perhaps it would be too much asking him to accept so many.’
‘It’s one out of three,’ Jo said mechanically.
‘In my opinion,’ advised Mrs. Featherstone, ‘excellent as our small family homes are now, if one, yes, even one, can have a real home, it’s a far preferable thing to none of them at all. You poor dear, you’ve been fretting about this, haven’t you? Never mind, at least for another few weeks. I’m advising the board that everything is well but that a longer period is needed for adjustment.’
‘Thank you,’ said Jo.
She called the children in to say goodbye to Mrs. Featherstone, and they all watched the car turn the corner of the track that led to the coast. Then the children went back to the garden and Jo went and sat at the kitchen table and tried to think.
But through all her tumbling thoughts only one thing emerged clearly. It was the certain knowledge that she must break up that spell, that evil spell that seemed to reach up to the three children from the valley. Until she did so she would get nowhere. She considered Abel and his hair-of-the-dog treatment, and determined to try the system for herself. She and the children would go down the valley. They would go now. She rose.
‘Amanda, Dicky, Sukey,’ she called firmly from the verandah, ‘come at once! We’re going down the valley to the creek.’
They looked up. They got up. For a moment she thought they were obeying her and she congratulated herself. Then they turned and they began to run. They ran down the track to the fox, and by the time she had descended the steps into the garden and started after them they were a good hundred yards ahead.
She saw them climb into the flying fox—operating it was easy stuff to Dicky—and at once begin to soar up the cliff. Jo still ran on, but she knew it was futile. Those little wretches would fasten the fox at the top end so it couldn’t come down to take her up after them. She would have done the same herself at their age.
Well, perhaps it was the best this way after all. No doubt they would seek out Abel, pour out some kind of garbled story to him. Abel, being Abel, would listen gravely, note their distressed state and then come down to find out what was going on. Truths would tumble out. The relief of having Abel take over made Jo almost lightheaded. The nightmare would be finished, she thought. She would tell Abel about the children’s strange obsession about the valley, tell him about the patterned imprint, tell him about a telephone ring in the middle of the night. ‘A catch of a breath, that’s all I heard, Abel,’ she listened to herself describing in advance. ‘Help us, Abel. Tell us what to do.’ And Abel would help and tell.
As happy as she had been depressed before, for Abel would have a solution, Jo reached Tender Winds and ran up the steps to the verandah, then into the house.
She busied herself with dinner, putting on extra vegetables, for it looked like five places tonight, since the children would certainly bring Abel back with them. She sang as she worked. It would be good to have a man about the house again.
When she heard the small noise in one of the rooms down the hall she dismissed it at first as the blind tapping against the sill. A wind was coming up, she had noticed that by the bending banana palms as she had returned from the fox. If it blew hard enough through the open window it would scatter the things that the children had collected and left around. Drawings of engines in Dicky’s room, nursing hints and paper dolls in Amanda’s and Sukey’s room.
She must find the room where a window had been left too widely open, and fasten the catch.
She marched down the corridor.
From the shadow of the first room something ... someone ... stepped quickly, quietly out to kill her startled scream with a brutal hand over her mouth. The other hand slipped down and dosed round her throat. It tightened and remained there, adding vicious pressure every time Jo tried to move.
Jo stood there, terrified and trapped.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Somewhere in Tender Winds a clock chimed. Jo counted the strokes and knew it would soon be dark. The children would hold out wherever they were until the last moment, and then come running in.
He would be here.
Who was he? Who was this frightening man who stood with one hand over her mouth and the other hand round her throat? What did he want?
The chimes had stopped now and the clock’s tick had taken over. The house was deadly quiet, so quiet that, as well as her own uneven breathing and his deeper, also uneven breaths, Jo could actually hear the seconds click past. She also could hear all the other, usually unnoticed and unheard noises of a house, a breeze turning over something somewhere, furniture sighing as furniture does if you listen.
Still he imprisoned her.
Perhaps three minutes went by like that. It seemed like three years. Then he took the hand away from her mouth but still kept the other hand round her throat.
He said: ‘If you scream—’
‘I won’t,’ she said faintly.
‘I was going to say if you scream it will be useless. There’s no one to hear. Passant has gone away. The kids will wait until one of the plantation men brings them down. They’re scared out of their wits.’ He gave a low hateful laugh.
‘Please let me go. I won’t scream. You’re hurting me.’
‘So long as you’ve got the idea.’
‘I have.’
The man released Jo and she rubbed her aching throat.
‘If you hadn’t come in when you did this needn’t have happened,’ the man said. ‘I had no fight with you.’
‘Then who?’
‘Who do you think? Take a good long look at me. Come on, miss, take a real good look. Who?’
She stared at him in disgust at first, and then in horrified realisation. She tried to conceal her feelings, but it was no use, he read the recognition and the dismay in her face.
‘Oh, yes, it’s all there, isn’t it?’ he smiled evilly. ‘Amanda’s mouth, the boy’s chin, the young kid’s eyes. Oh, yes, I’m their father.’
‘Their father! But—’
‘But you thought they were orphans? Oh, no, far from it, my dear
.’
‘Their mother—’
‘June? I don’t know where she is and I hope she never comes back. Not that there’s any chance, she had no more time for the brats than I had. When Mark took over, it was like a lottery win,’ he laughed.
‘Mark Grant?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then who are you?’
‘Grant too. Not all that surprising, it’s scarcely an unusual name, is it?’
‘Related?’ she asked.
‘To old sobersides? Oh, no.’ Another laugh.
‘Did you’... Jo took a deep breath ... ‘did you know he had died?’
‘Of course. Why otherwise would I be here?’
‘You mean you’ve come to collect the children?’
‘I didn’t mean that, but it does give me an idea.’
‘What kind of idea?’
‘Of taking advantage of a very obvious fact. You’re keen on these kids, aren’t you? Surely something can come from that.’
‘What?’ Jo asked.
‘A little hand-out to stay away?’ he suggested craftily.
‘I have no money.’
‘But you know someone who has. Passant, perhaps? But we won’t discuss that now. Time enough later. What I’m after at this moment, and what I might have found by myself and save you all this trouble, is a map.’
‘Map?’ she queried.
‘Of a mine. Very moderately profitable in the beginning, indeed so moderate that I took off for fresh fields ... for a consideration, of course.’
‘What kind of consideration?’
‘Cash,’ he said with brutal frankness, ‘in return for three kids.’
‘You sold your children!’ Jo gasped.
‘Put it that I let Mark take over while I looked around somewhere else. Their dear mother’ ... a low laugh ... ‘had already done that.’
‘But why would you want a map? You must know where the place is?’
‘Wrong. I never worked the find, if find it could be called. Mark had found possibilities and told me. We’d been partners up in New Guinea, and Mark,’ another laugh, ‘was a man of honour. But when he added that there was a lot of hard toil to it, I decided to leave that to him, so settled our partnership as regarded that venture with the cash and the brats.’
The Tender Winds of Spring Page 15