The Coral Tree

by Joyce Dingwell

  “All the things the heart remembers.”

  What did a heart remember? she wondered curiously. She had believed up till now that it remembered everything—including Mrs. Marlow’s legion persecution—but was it only the mind that retained those latter images? Already she believed she was half way to forgetting the unhappiness of this house and recalling, instead, an old woman’s last gentle wish, her final piteous plea. Those are the things the heart remembers, Cary thought; the others belong only to the mind. And it is the heart things, she decided quietly, that will bring the blossoming. They must.

  She got up and made her way through the darkening house. She wished now that Mr. O’Flynn had had time to start the electric plant. She would dearly have liked a deep, hot bath to take away that stiffness. She made do with a sponge of hot water, heated over the primus. Lucky for her that the thoughtful O’Flynn had included a bottle of kerosene in the supplies. It was too mild an evening to light the stove, and anyway, unlike Mr. O’Flynn, she had never been a good stoker.

  After the makeshift bath she boiled a kettle for a pot of tea. There was ample food in the hamper, so she had no need to raid the pantry, which, she recalled, Mrs. Marlow had always kept fully equipped. She did hunt out a lamp, however, and as soon as the shadows were deep she lit it and sat watching the yellow glow search into the corners to soak up the gloom.

  Her eyes fell on the notes she had been compiling to show to Mr. Farrell. She must not ask him for too much at once, although she felt sorely tempted. She thought practically: Perhaps if I wrote air-mail to Jan she could tell me the necessities and I could start on those.

  She pulled the pad to her and took out her pen. “Dear Mrs. Bokker—” she began, then she sat, pen in mouth, recalling that tall, quiet woman with the lovely steadfast eyes and the mission in life.

  She tore out the page.

  “My very dear Jan—” she wrote in its place.

  For a few moments she was not in the wide, airy room with the determined leaves of an encroaching coral tree tapping at the window, but in that lodge in Mungen, sitting with the two women and drinking coffee and talking by the fire.

  She remembered the soft fall of snow outside the house—then was aware, though without any actual alarm, that there was a soft fall of feet at this very moment outside this house.

  She got up and went to the door to open it, but it was opened before she could touch it. She stepped back, really alarmed this time, watching the lamp make a widening shaft across the threshold; then a man stepped in.

  For a moment she stared at him almost stupidly, and he stared in amazement back at her.

  “You again,” she said.

  He did not answer for a few seconds. He came right into the room and up to the light before he spoke.

  “I thought you were staying with the Fortescues,” he said bluntly at length, “or over at Ten Mile. I never associated you with Clairhill.”

  When she did not comment he proceeded in explanation: “I knew this place should be empty, so when I saw the light I anticipated an uninvited guest and slipped across to investigate.”

  “That was considerate of you.” She spoke stiffly.

  “Not at all. I would expect the same from you.”

  A silence fell between them. He had given her the reason for his intrusion, and she had thanked him. What was he waiting for? she thought, irritated.

  He was not only waiting, she soon realized, he was weighing her up again—as he had been estimating her that first morning when he had turned away from Lannwild Mountain to regard her with that speculative, cool stare.

  “So you are the new owner,” he said heavily. “Odd that I never guessed it today. It should have been apparent.”

  “Apparent?” she asked.

  “Isn’t it obvious? Only well-to-do young women, financially enfranchised young women, can afford to spend long luxury holidays in alpine resorts and spread themselves to the advantage of a solo guide.”

  She opened her mouth indignantly to correct his conjectures, then shut it almost at once. It was nothing to do with him, nothing at all. Let him think what he liked.

  Carelessly, indifferently, he resumed:

  “The local Sunset grapevine has it that, unlike myself, when you inherited you were an employee, not a relative. I must say it did not take you long to get into your stride.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “That expensive tour abroad—the immediate checking on what you were to receive as soon as you came back to Australia. No—it’s futile to try to protest. You must have been very eager, madam, very anxious. No woman not driven by greed would have raced out so soon to an unopened house, now would she? Well, are you satisfied with your new lot?”

  She did not answer until she had found control of herself. Then she said: “And are you finished?”

  He returned coldly. “I am not, I have been considering things and I have now decided to fetch you back with me to Currabong.”

  “You what?”

  He ignored her interruption. “I won’t tolerate the idea of your spending the night here alone, as obviously”—glancing around—“you intend. Hasn’t it occurred to you that other people might have the same possessive trait as you yourself, only backed up by a more vicious determination? In short, madam, there are such people as thugs and tramps.”

  “I am quite capable of looking after myself, thank you.”

  “Of that I am easily convinced. You have the knack of escaping yourself while endangering others, I’ve found. However, there is always a turn of fortune, in which case you had better come across with me.”

  “I’m not coming.”

  “Have no qualms if propriety is upsetting you. The excellent Mrs. Williams is ensconced in the house and will be a satisfactory chaperone.”

  “I am not coming.”

  “If that’s an invitation for me to try cave-man methods you are wasting your time. I like compliance, but it doesn’t amuse me to enforce it.”

  “I am not coming. Also I might add something that you yourself said this afternoon. You spoke of trespass.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, you are trespassing now, and I ask you to go.”

  He had advanced to the table. His eyes had fallen on the book.

  He said sharply: “Where did you get this?”

  “You left it behind you down in no man’s land.”

  “At the bottom of my property,” he corrected. “So you took it.”

  “You would have preferred me to leave it to the elements?”

  He did not answer. He took up the volume, open.at the same page as when she had found it.

  “... Music, laughter, fireside embers,” he quoted, entirely without expression.

  “All the things the heart remembers,” he finished.

  He snapped the book shut and slipped the volume into his pocket.

  “In case you are marvelling at the fact that I am addicted to verse I must tell you I am not. The book happens to have been written by—my brother.”

  “Oh,” she said. She remembered too late that she had not noted the name of the author.

  “I am still waiting,” he said tersely.

  “For what?”

  “For you to get your gown or toothbrush or whatever it is you women need and come back to Currabong.”

  “I told you I was not coming.”

  What might have happened then, Cary did not know. In spite of his cool assertion that cave-man tactics were not his penchant, she did not believe he would ever have willingly countenanced the stubborn rebellion she offered him now. Advancing a pace, he came nearer to her—and to the letter she had been writing. Her round, rather childish hand fairly jumped up at them both. “My very dear Jan...”

  She glanced across at him, half in explanation, half in embarrassment, and was surprised at the suddenly frigid expression in his face. It was never a kind face, she thought, but now it was even more bitter and hard. What had caused it? Had he interpreted that Jan as Jan Lukn
it, and even if she had been writing to the guide, what business was it of his?

  To her relief he did not comment, for now she had stubbornly determined she would not explain.

  “You are not coming?” He said it almost casually.

  “No.”

  “Then I’m sorry to do this, but I must lock you in.”

  Before she could protest he had crossed to the door, removed the key, opened and shut it behind him. She heard the key turning in the lock outside.

  She ran to the window, but it was still nailed, nailed very tightly. There would be no exit there.

  “Push the key under the door this instant,” she called.

  “I’m doing no such thing. Not because of you but because of my own peace of mind.”

  “Please give me that key. I may need it. If I promise to lock up again—”

  “Sorry, I don’t trust you. Good night, madam.”

  He was gone. She could hear his steps dying away on the thick undergrowth. She sat down, more furious than she ever remembered. In a gust of temper she threw the letter-pad to the floor. She would have thrown the book of verse after it, but it was gone.

  As her temper ebbed she began to wonder if the encounter might have gone differently if she had taken the pains to correct his muddled version of her inheritance. Evidently his source of information, his grapevine which was probably his housekeeper, Mrs. Williams, had not been aware in what circumstances she was to step into Clairhill.

  Perhaps she should have related it, yet to have done so—to him—seemed suddenly humiliating. He was the sort of man who instinctively made you want to stand upright, unaided, independent and on your own two feet. He was a challenge, a spur. It was that entire lack of even ordinary, normal sympathy in him, Cary thought.

  “No, I’ll never tell him,” she resolved. “I’ll let him think what he likes.”

  She went upstairs to bed. There was plenty of linen in the cupboards, but she did not take out any sheets. She just lay in her old crib in her old room, thinking, planning, hoping for sleep. The afternoon’s rest had ruined any hope of complete oblivion. Any naps she did snatch were brief and unsettled. The house was full of the silent noises all old houses seem to accumulate with their years. Perhaps he was right, after all, she thought nervously. Perhaps she should have gone across to Currabong.

  At last it was grey dawn. The first yellow fingers of light pushed through the closed window into her room. Thankfully she rose, washed and went downstairs. How long, she wondered, am I to be kept a prisoner in my own house?

  And then she saw that, early though she was, someone had been earlier.

  He must have been very quiet, else surely she would have heard him through her light, uneasy rest.

  The door was still shut, but evidently unlocked, for the key was on the table beside the tidily replaced letter-pad—still open at the page beginning “My very dear Jan.”

  It gave Cary an odd feeling to know that he had been here while she slept.

  CHAPTER TEN

  CARY WAS pleased when Mr. O’Flynn arrived in the morning instead of the afternoon. Now that she had compiled her list for Mr. Farrell she was anxious to be off, and by leaving before lunch she could catch the earlier city train and be in Sydney tonight.

  They arrived in Sunset in time for a pot of tea at the Grande and a tasty lunch to be packed by Cook for Cary to eat in the train.

  Once again the women lined up and waved Cary goodbye. She stepped out at Central seven hours later, and spent the night at a quiet hotel.

  After breakfast she sat in the lounge reading the papers until she judged it time for Mr. Farrell’s office to be opened for business. She rang him from the lobby bureau, and he was warm in his invitation that she come round at once. She did so, still feeling the inner excitement and stimulation, or, as she related later to Sorrel, that welcome sensation of “getting somewhere at last.”

  Before she could start on any details, Mr. Farrell handed her a letter. The postmark was Mungen and the address was Clairhill. She looked at the solicitor in surprise, and he explained that for some time all Clairhill mail had been delivered here. “I must now give other instructions,” he added, “as that will be, Miss Porter?” She looked at the letter. “I think I can answer you after I read this. Do you mind?”

  He smiled: “Of course not. Go right ahead.”

  The close-filled pages were from both Jan and Else Bokker. The letter was the long informative one that Else had promised. In their practical fashion the two women had enclosed a list of essential equipment. Cary was pleased over that. It was just what she needed. It was what, and a slight pink crept under her cheeks, she had started to write for last night.

  She saw at once that her own list was almost identical, and remarked upon this to Mr. Farrell.

  “May I see it, Miss Porter?”

  She handed it to him a little nervously. Jan and Else had written that every item of it was necessary; she felt it was necessary herself, but would it sound too much?

  But Mr. Farrell was agreeable and helpful—much more so than Cary had dared hope. He nodded favorably over every unit that she had written down, and actually suggested extras he would consider essential.

  Eventually they exhausted the long list of furnishings and equipment, both practical and medical, and he put down the pages. “You’re sure you’re not stinting yourself, Miss Porter?”

  “Not for a start, Mr. Farrell, but of course when I get going with my plans—”

  “Just what are your plans?”

  She told him as briefly as she could. She related the story of the lodge in Mungen and how polio, muscular and arthritic conditions in the young there were being fairly favorably and sometimes even successfully treated in a special after-care slanted particularly on the outdoors.

  “And particularly again, I have been given to understand,” said Mr. Farrell, “on the exercise involved in horse-riding.”

  “Yes,” said Cary.

  “You ride yourself?”

  “... Yes.” She hoped he did not notice her brief hesitation. Before yesterday, she thought ruefully, my answer would have been strong and confident, but that man’s derision was as certain a deflation to my ego as a pin to a balloon.

  He did not notice it. He asked her for particulars. She related the gentle but insidious exercise on important muscles needed in the sitting, and later the management, of a pony.

  “Of course,” she said humbly, “although that’s what I eventually want to come to, there will be earlier preparation for it in the new gym after it is fitted and equipped. Remedial bars, pedal bicycles, all the tested aids to form a prelude to the riding.”

  Again Mr. Farrell nodded.

  “Your patients will be entirely children, Miss Porter?”

  “Mrs. Bokker called them guests,” smiled Cary.

  “How many did you estimate?”

  “Twelve for a start.”

  “Both sexes?”

  “Yes, but not necessarily the same disabilities.”

  Now came the question that Cary had anticipated.

  “How disabled?” asked Mr. Farrell.

  She sat still a moment, trying to choose the right words.

  “That is my problem,” she admitted. “If they were very disabled—I really mean under immediate medical care, I should think permission to take them, from the medical authorities, might be difficult to obtain. However, with a lesser chronic disability which if it did not get any better could not worsen, I do believe I should secure sanction without any trouble.”

  “So that’s what you propose to do, restrict your intake to such lesser afflicted children?”

  Again Cary hesitated.

  “It’s what I propose to do now,” she admitted honestly, “but it’s not what I want.”

  She drew a deep breath. Then she turned her grey eyes on him. They were big and shining, he noticed, they were lit—just as Jan Bokker’s eyes had been lit, had Cary known it—with steadfast resolution. “I want to tak
e a badly-afflicted child, Mr. Farrell,” she said, “and I want to bring him back to health.”

  “You are asking a lot.”

  “Mrs. Bokker did it.”

  “She asked a lot, too.”

  “But she did it,” persisted Cary.

  Mr. Farrell said gently but stubbornly: “It’s still asking a lot.”

  “I know, but it has to be like that. Can’t you understand that, Mr. Farrell? Mrs. Marlow expected it.”

  Mr. Farrell rearranged some papers on his desk. “She did not expect miracles,” he said presently. “No one does.” There was a significance in his words and Cary could not help but comprehend.

  “I know what you’re trying to tell me,” she smiled back, “and I appreciate it. You’re wanting me to know that so far as you’re concerned a satisfactory house satisfactorily run would satisfy you and consequently Mr. Beynon and so assure my allowance. But it’s more than that to me, Mr. Farrell, it’s a matter of a satisfied heart—my satisfied heart. It’s that—and a house that will blossom.”

  Mr. Farrell said quietly: “I understand you perfectly, Miss Porter.” He paused, then added: “And I wish you well, my dear.” Cary repeated that, like Mrs. Bokker, she would accept children with varying disabilities. “She has told me it makes for greater cheerfulness and understanding in the child. They begin to take an interest in each other.”

  “And how do you propose to gather these little ones?”

  “From medical sources, probably. Hospitals and clinics who have finished their job on them will pass them over to us. Nurse Browning tells me”—and Cary’s voice was saddened—“that the finding will be only too easy. The refusing because of the numbers afflicted will be the hard part.” She asked Mr. Farrell if it had been all right for her to promise Sorrel a post.

  “Quite all right. How many staff do you estimate?”

  “I thought we could manage with Mrs. Heard, who was Mrs. Marlow’s old domestic, a local girl, Sister Browning, Matt Wilson, perhaps a gardener, probably Joe Heard, and myself.”