The Tender Winds of Spring (15 page)

Gavin said quickly: ‘I’ll ring you when you’re more composed, dear. Really, those children are getting you down. I hate to think of later on with even one of them.’

‘Not one, Gavin, none.
None.
You see, their fath—’

‘Yes, dear, I’m sure. But now, Josie, let’s leave it at that As a matter of fact there are quite a few things to be discussed.’

‘Then come out, Gavin. I need you. Come out for me.’

‘It’s impossible.’ Gavin’s voice was chilly. Another mistake. Gavin disliked women who made the advances.

Jo went and stood on the verandah. She wondered whether, if she went up to the campsite, one of the men might tell her where to contact Abel in Sydney. But then she couldn’t leave the children here alone, yet on the other hand she couldn’t take them with her. If they all left together, he would make a move. He was out there watching. In some cranny he was sitting and smoking and watching. Waiting for what he said he must have.

Perhaps she could ring the welfare lady. Mrs. Featherstone had been very kind. But her organisation dealt in families, and that man was the father of this family. Oh, what to do? What to do? Please help us, Abel. Help us, Gee.

It had been mid-afternoon when Gavin had rung. Now the sun was heading to the west Jo had no doubt that the children’s father would come tonight, would come, indeed, as soon as it was dark. She had had the impression that he had wanted it all over before Abel returned. Having ascertained that Abel was gone for a week he might leave them to simmer, as it were, for a night or so, but Jo felt he would want to be miles away before the banana boss got back.

She wondered again about trying to get in touch with some of the plantation men. The children had mentioned Stanley, and she knew Stanley herself as a kindly, reliable man. But the story, she knew, sounded too fantastic to tell. Also plantation workers had always tolerated a vagrant or so around the place; after all; there was more than enough to go round. The country rule of charity to all was very high here. She could phone the police at the coast, but what in heaven’s name could she say? That the children’s father had turned up, that she was afraid of him?

No, like anything she would have told Stanley, it was all too unbelievable.

The car. Her little car. They could make a dash down to it, then she could drive away.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were changing your wheels around?’ came in Dicky at that precise moment with reproach. ‘You know I could help you with that.’

“Wheels?’ she queried.

‘You’ve taken two off. It’s a good idea. It gives better wear.’

‘Wheels!’ Jo said faintly again. After a moment of deep and controlled breathing, which she had once read helps to steady the nerves, she asked: ‘Where is Amanda?’

‘I’m here.’ Amanda came in.

‘I want to see you,’ said Jo.

‘Why?’

‘Don’t question me, come. Come at once. No, not on the verandah, into your room.’

‘Mine and Sukey’s.’

Sukey nodded. ‘And Sukey’s.’

“Well, Sukey can stay out here, I want only you.’

Jo led the way and Amanda, after a brief pause, followed. Jo shut the door and turned at once to the girl.

‘Where’s the map, Amanda?’

As she had expected, Amanda looked at her blankly. ‘What map?’

‘The map Mark Grant gave you before he—before he and my sister flew up here.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Amanda darling, don’t waste time. Out there’ ... she gestured towards the window, the blind fortunately down at this time of evening so that no one could see in, watch what they did ... ‘is someone waiting for that map. As soon as it’s properly dark he’ll come and get it. I think if you have it ready he might—he just might—go away again. But if you haven’t...’

‘It’s not his map,’ said Amanda mulishly.

‘Then you do have it?’

‘I didn’t say so.’

‘Amanda, I saw him. He was here. He told me things. He put his hand round my throat.’

Jo had not intended to say that, the last thing she wanted was to frighten her children, but at once the barriers were down.

‘Oh, Jo,’ wept Amanda, and if Jo had had any doubts about Amanda’s feelings towards her before, she had no doubts now. ‘Oh, Jo, I saw the marks and I knew. Oh, Jo!’

‘Don’t cry, darling,’ soothed Jo. ‘Try to help me fight this awfulness.’

‘You can’t. You can’t ever. You can’t fight him. Once he—once he—’ Amanda shivered. ‘And Dicky, poor Dicky. Then even little Sukey—yes, Sukey. That was when Mark—’

‘Yes, yes, but not now. The map, Amanda. If we give him the map he’ll go.’

‘Mark said it was to be ours. He said it was not to be his.’

‘But Mark didn’t know you would be in a position like this,’ Jo pointed out.

‘I can’t do what Mark asked me not to.’

‘All right for you then, but what about Dicky? And you told me just now even Sukey—’

‘Yes,’ said Amanda dully, ‘even Sukey, but I thought if we had some money we could all stay together. I mean with a map of a mine it needn’t be one out of three, need it, Jo?’ So the child knew about that.

‘It could be all of us,’ continued Amanda. ‘That man—that Gavin of yours, he would like the map, wouldn’t he, and we could say to him all of us or no map. We would have it to bargain with.’

‘But Amanda, it
is
all of you, not one out of three, and no map needed either.’

‘For you and Gavin?’

‘For me—and Abel.’

If Amanda looked surprised, it was nothing to Jo’s surprise. Why, I didn’t know, she thought, but it’s true, it’s true. It’s Abel and I. But Abel doesn’t know.

‘You and Abel!’ Amanda echoed in rapture. ‘Abel and you! Oh, wait till I tell the others!’

‘No, darling, not yet,’ said Jo urgently. ‘The map, Amanda. You do understand that?’

Yes, Amanda understood now, and there followed an amazing procession of events, at least it would have been amazing if Jo had not been young enough to remember having done much the same thing herself.

For Amanda pulled up a chain from under her dress with a little key attached to it. With the key she opened her drawer and took out another key. With this key she opened a writing folio and withdrew another key. It went on six times more while Jo watched fascinated. I never got past four keys, she recalled, though Gee once used five.

Then the big moment approached. Jo could see it was the big moment by Amanda’s mounting excitement. The final resting place was a small camphor-wood box with a lock.

‘Mark gave it to me,’ Amanda said.

She opened up importantly. No bridge was ever opened, no ship was ever launched, with more seriousness.

Then she turned over the contents. Turned them over and over again. Finally she tipped everything on to the bed, rummaged through them, tossed them around.

When she looked up to Jo her face had lost its pink excitement and gone ashy.

‘Jo,’ she gasped, ‘it’s gone! It’s gone, Jo, the map isn’t here!’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Jo did not waste time saying: ‘Are you sure? Let me check.’ She did not ask Amanda if she could have put the map somewhere else, then forgotten. She went out quickly to where Dicky and Sukey were waiting, Dicky with a rather odd expression had Jo noticed, Sukey sulky because she had been shut out of her own room. She said:

‘Listen, both of you. We’re leaving. Leaving by the back door. Do you hear me, Amanda?’ For Amanda had come out, too.

‘Yes,’ said Amanda. She looked promptingly at Dicky, and he nodded.

Sukey both nodded and said ‘Yes.’

‘We go quietly,’ said Jo. ‘I go first and you follow close behind. I know a secret track—I knew it when I was a little girl like Sukey. It takes us to the flying fox and when we get there Dicky must take over.’

Again Dicky nodded.

‘We leave the lights on. If we put them off he would guess we’d left. We tiptoe like the wind.’ Jo smiled a little shakily. ‘The tender winds of spring.’

‘That’s this house,’ they pointed out.

‘Now it’s us, dears.’

They stopped to pick up nothing, only for Jo to put a record on the player, and under the cover of its music they left. Jo knew she was taking a risk, the fellow could be watching from the back and not the front, but the front was more likely, since the wild banana palms grey thickly close to the back, and there would be a poor view. Jo also suspected that the man had not even come to the back of Tender Winds, people didn’t, but all the same she hurried the children over the exposed few yards, and not until they were concealed in a banana thicket did she catch her breath.

She allowed them a second to catch theirs, then she led them on, on through a tangled way she and Gee had discovered years ago. It had been wild then, but now, undisturbed, untrampled for ages, it was a veritable jungle. There were squelchy bits, slippery moss surfaces, sharp rock outcrops, stinging grasses, and once a large bough, falling unexpectedly from a soaring mahogany, only missed them by inches.

There were twigs and thorns and scratchy berries, and Sukey began quietly sobbing at a cut arm and a stubbed toe. But only quietly, and Jo was full of pride for her fortitude, full of pride for all of them. They were wonderful youngsters. The same as in the range after the crash, when it came to things that mattered they had courage.

They kept nervously close, but they never cried out to Jo. There were a few whimpers of frustration, of weariness, weakness, pain, but that was all. They also must have been as frightened as Jo was, wondering if that rustle of disturbed leaves meant more than a breeze through the trees, that twig falling, that faint brushing, that whispering, those odd movements, wondering if—

‘We’re coming out,’ Jo said. ‘The fox is just ahead in the clearing. Quiet, everyone!’

She made them stand very still for a long moment. Her eyes had become accustomed to the dark now and she was scrutinising the place very thoroughly. After two long sweeping looks, two double checks, she nodded to Dicky.

Understanding, he nodded back, and raced silently across to the fox.

He was there much longer than Jo cared about, and she was planning to leave Amanda minding Sukey while she joined him when the boy came back.

‘It’s all right now. I’ve untied it.’

‘Untied it?’ she queried.

‘He’d fastened it this end so as to be sure he could get away after he—’

‘Yes, Dicky,’ she forestalled. ‘When I nod, all of you run to the fox and get on. Dicky will operate. Look, I’m nodding now.’

They broke free of the forest and ran to the little lift and climbed in. Dicky pulled some gadgets, and they began to rise.

Under ordinary circumstances a trip up the cliff in the dark of night would have been spine-chilling, it was dizzy enough by day when you could look around, pinpoint yourself, but blind like this was far worse. Yet now there was no room for fright, only for relief, and they were relieved. When they reached the top, Jo explained, they would make for the tents, and Stanley and the men would look after them.

Like the height they must be now, it was a heady thought. Amanda heaved a little sigh and wondered once more where the map had gone to. Dicky said: ‘Phew, I’m glad that’s over!’ Sukey clapped her hands.

But only one clap was heard. The second, if Sukey got that far, was drowned in the sudden sickening, swaying halt of the flying fox.

Quick as lightning, Dicky pulled on the rope, and, seeing the strain in his face, Jo pulled with him.

‘He’s come after us,’ Dicky panted, ‘he’s trying to bring us down!’

‘Hold firm,’ Jo said.

But to herself she thought: Hold firm for how long? He’s bigger, stronger and he has an advantageous position.

He has the pull of the ground. We’re up. The fox moved down a few inches.

‘You help, too, Amanda,’ Jo ordered.

They stayed poised there for several minutes. Sometimes they even gained a little. More often they lost.

Then the man below began swaying the contraption. He would jerk it one way, then jerk it the other way. Twist it round. It was a horrible sensation.

‘We’re birds in a nest,’ tried Jo desperately. ‘We’re used to this.’

‘Birds,’ echoed Sukey.

There was no interference for a while, and Jo looked narrowly at Dicky.

‘Can he—’ she asked, and he understood.

‘Yes, there’s a sort of track up.’

‘Then perhaps while he’s climbing we can make it to the top.’

‘It’s fast,’ said Dicky. ‘He’s got it anchored down again.’

They looked fearfully at each other, and they could look now, for the moon had come up. Not much of a moon as yet, and they could not see far, but huddled together as they were, each could see each, they could identify Jo, two sisters, one brother. But nothing else. Not, for instance, that darkness on the cliffside, and whether that blob in it was a rock, a bush, or—

‘Hush!’ Jo said abruptly.

She did not need to tell them twice, they were all looking towards the cliff face with her now, listening to that slither, that scrape of a shoe coming at them.

Coming nearer. Coming closer. Here.

Still they did not cry out, not even Sukey, and Jo could have kissed them for
it ...
and Abel said afterwards he could have, too.

For it was Abel. He said so quietly over the space between them and the flying fox. He said: ‘It’s Abel, and I’m not putting on the flash because I don’t want to be seen, not yet. Stanley is with me. He’s standing right behind me. I want you to sway the fox inward, and when I lean over and take you off in turn I want you to help me all you can by keeping very still. Are you ready?’

They began the sway, and the third inward swing removed Sukey from the fox. She was promptly handed to Stanley. Amanda was next. Then Dicky. Then Jo.

But when Jo got off, Abel retained the fox long enough to climb on to it himself.

‘What are you doing, Abel?’ Jo asked in panic.

‘I’ll tell you when I get back. Stanley will take you up to the camp. Wait there. Understood?’

‘Yes, but Abel—’

‘
Understood
?’

‘Abel, he’s down there. He might—he could—’

‘Might he? Could he? Well, we’re going to see about that.’ Abel began manipulating the ropes.

‘They’re anchored,’ Dicky called.

‘They’re not now. I think he’s found the climb up a little too severe. See you soon.’

In the fitful light of the moon, Abel disappeared.

There was nothing for it but to follow Stanley. Silently they trudged to the top, then along to the camp where the men had made cocoa. But not even cocoa could cheer them, hungry though they were after going without an evening meal, anxious about Abel.

‘Don’t worry about Jam Label,’ advised one of the men, trying to brighten them up.

‘Yes, old Under the Table always lands on his feet,’ said another.

‘His name is Abel,’ Dicky said coldly, and if she could have found it in her to do so, Jo would have reminded Dicky that once he had said the same.

The men winked at Jo and she tried to wink back, but it was not much of a wink. If the children were worried, then she was sick with concern.

It seemed hours, yet actually, she was told afterwards, it was all over in a very short time.

‘And no bloodshed,’ Abel grinned.

For it was Abel who told Jo. They were back at Tender Winds by then, and the children, absolutely exhausted, had gone to bed.

‘How did you manage it?’ Jo asked Abel. ‘What did you say to him? It was him, I expect.’

‘Him,’ Abel said. ‘It was simple. I gave him a map.’

‘You
what
?’ she gasped.

‘I gave him the map that Mark Grant gave to Amanda, and Dicky, the sneaky little thief, watched Amanda conceal, and duly stole and passed on to me.’

‘But why would he do that?’

‘Because men,’ said Abel, ‘have a better brain than women, they can see further.’

‘The rest of it, please.’

‘You have it, Josephine. The fellow came originally for the map and he got it.’

‘You gave away the children’s rights!’ she gasped.

‘I doubt whether it would have come out like that at court. The two Mark Grants had been partners, you know.’

‘You’ll let him grow rich where he should be poor.’

‘Believe me, he is poor. Very poor. He has no family, and that’s poverty. But we’re going too fast, it’s not family time yet, it’s the map. Yes, I gave it to him ...
but only after I’d ascertained that it was worthless
.’

‘Worthless?’ she queried.

‘A little came out of the digging, but only very little, and there’ll be no more. The fellow might win some agate or topaz or jasper, but only chance gold. Come-on gold, they call it. It sends men digging their hearts out for nothing at all.’

‘How do you know all this?’ asked Jo.

‘I made it my business when our wise Richard handed me a map. Armed with the map, a geologist and I—’

‘A geologist?’

‘Oh, yes, I had to be quite sure. Well, we found the place. It’s worthless, as I just said. But that’s for him to find out for himself.’

‘And come racing back here for shut-up money. Yes, that’s what he called it. Shut-up money for not saying the children are his.’

‘Oh, no,’ Abel grinned, ‘he won’t come. I tried the hair of the dog on him. I’m a great believer in that, remember? Well, not exactly hair of the dog, but in a way the same. I not only went along with him, I offered him the kids he had threatened to take. I said he
had
to have them quick-smart, that we’d had our fill.’

‘You took that risk?’

‘I took no risk with a man like that.’

‘You didn’t know he was a man like that.’

There was a pause. ‘Have you ever bathed these kids, Josephine?’

‘No. Amanda is too big and Sukey won’t let me. Abel,
why
?’ Her eyes were piteous.

‘Dicky helped me with the truck once. Like man like boy, he, too, took off his shirt.’ Another pause.

‘Oh, no!’ Jo whispered.

‘Oh, yes.’ Abel’s knuckles showed white in his big brown hands.

‘You don’t think Grant will alter his mind?’

‘He’ll never alter his mind. He’ll never return. He’ll never claim them. It’s up to you now, Josephine, to get back to your one out of three again.’ A pause. ‘You don’t look as pleased about that as I thought.’

‘There’s a problem there, too,’ Jo said.

When he did not ask her, she told him. Well, it had to be told some time, and if she did not tell it, the children would.

‘They’re under a misapprehension,’ she gulped.

‘The kids?’

‘Yes. Amanda was in an extremely nervous state, almost hysterical. He had come on the scene.’

Abel nodded grimly.

‘When Amanda said she must keep the map to keep all of them together, I was so touched that I—’

‘Yes?’

‘I said map or no map they would never be parted, there would never be one out of three, there would be all three.’

‘Yes?’

‘She didn’t believe it, not of Gavin, so I—’

‘Yes?’ repeated Abel.

‘I said you,’ Jo blurted, ‘you and me.’

‘Humph,’ was all Abel said. ‘Thank you for telling me,’ he added drily. ‘I presume you’ve already told Gavin.’

‘No. I’ll tell him in the morning.’

‘Yes, I’d do that,’ advised Abel very carefully, ‘before he tells you.’

‘What are you saying? Abel, what are you talking about?’ ‘About you and Gavin. I believe that is our topic now.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. I’m just tipping you off, Josephine, because I don’t want you to go into a fury. My advice is to get in before he does. You’ll feel much better if you do.’

‘Abel,’ said Jo quietly, slowly understanding, ‘tell me what you know.’

‘Only that Erica rang me recently, in fact just before I went to Sydney.’

‘It was—?’

‘Herself and Gavin. I hate hurting you, Josephine’ ... he looked mock-sad, a sadness through which a grin soon broke through ... ‘but she and Gavin have fallen in love. Briefly if cruelly it appears that for Gavin it’s not you any more.’