“Trees are not a matter of weeks, or months—or years, are they?” she answered hesitantly. “They deal in lifetimes.”
“So?”
“So it would be no use my adopting one. I’ll be gone a long time before that.”
If she had expected him to consider that issue, encourage her, she was to be disappointed. “Suit yourself,” was all he returned.
She watched him as he transferred some of the more go-ahead nurslings to another more advanced bed, the care he took to set the young tree the same depth as before, the inspection of the root pattern and the space gently shoved out for each growing fiber, the depression he made round the plant to collect moisture in the summer months, the almost tender attention. Suddenly, impulsively, she was begging, “Can I have this tree?”
He looked up at her from where he knelt, his mountain-blue eyes part of the Australian blueness of the bush around them.
“You mean you’ll take the lifetime for granted?”
“I’ll have to, won’t I?” She was kneeling beside him, tagging the nursling tree with a lace strip torn from the edge of her handkerchief. “I want this one for mine,” she begged.
He raised his brows at her urgency, but he did not refuse her. It took some time to maneuver the track to the lumber camp again; then Terese climbed into the bookmobile and followed Arn’s wagon up the deep ruts. It was much easier following someone, leaving the responsibility of the tortuous bends to the driver in front.
At the second safety runway the wagon drew up, and Dawson signaled Terese to do the same.
When the two vehicles were tucked safely in, he said, “I thought you could call in on Jill Watson. Coming down the track is a bit heavy for her now, I’ve given her only another week’s grace and then she’ll have to get into Glen Ingle.”
“A baby?”
“Yes. Choose some books for her, though she doesn’t deserve them, holing herself in like this.”
Terese took up a varied selection and followed the man up the track.
“Husband Ted is a lumberman. He’s a good sawyer, but no good when it comes to putting his wife on the Cessna and allowing a good safe margin.”
“He’s in love with her,” Terese said spontaneously.
“Love doesn’t fetch in a doctor in five minutes,” grumbled Arn. But he was quite different, Terese was glad to find, when the rotund and cheerful Jill came to the door of the cabin.
She greeted the books with cries of pleasure. “Ted is fetching me some tonight, but you know what his selection will be.”
“You’ve one week to read them,” warned Dawson grimly.
“Oh, Arn, I’ve a month yet, I can’t go off to Glen Ingle this soon.” She appealed to Terese, and Terese, looking at the radiant face, could not help but back her up.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Arn Dawson scowled as they came down the track again.
“Well, what if she doesn’t make it?” Terese argued stubbornly. “She wouldn’t be the first woman.”
“Seeing yourself in the role of ministering angel to young mothers now as well as the ministering angel of books,” he said sarcastically. “No, I’m afraid this is one thing you don’t learn out of a medical volume.” He could, thought Terese, have been Ginny speaking, only there the volume had been animal husbandry. She bit her lip.
The rest of the ascent was unspectacular except for the scenery. Every bend, every dip and rise, revealed a new facet. Not having to watch, because of Arn, for downcoming vehicles, Terese found time to look quickly to left and to right and draw in her breath at the sheer mountain magnificence.
Somewhere near the top she noticed the man in the vehicle in front of her wave out. She followed the direction of the salute, and saw a young man ... no, little more than a boy actually ... perched on a rock between the trees. He had a rough, home-made drawing-block on his knees, and he was sketching. He must be Gavin, she thought.
For all the compulsive quickness of her look, compulsive because of the narrow track, she still had the impression that the face had been a delicate and a sensitive face, a face for liking, and encouraging, and helping, and yet—“Don’t forget Flack.”
This boy belonged to Flack’s, but intuitively Terese knew she wanted to meet him, to talk with him, to listen to him. It was not just the simple yet true work she had seen of his, it was the boy himself, sitting on that rock, intent on that drawing-block. There had been something intrinsic about him, something to be guarded. She wanted to meet the lad, wanted it quite urgently.
And yet—leaving Dawson at Homeward Bound and going along the plateau to Pickpocket—“Don’t forget Flack.”
In the week that followed, Jill Watson’s final week, so Arn Dawson had declared, but so far no protesting young mother-to-be had been flown across to Glen Ingle by Pete in the Cessna, Terese found herself thinking frequently of Gavin.
Gavin Flack? She asked Ginny, but Ginny did not know. “He’s with Flack’s camp, and seeing he’s a minor apparently he belongs, but no one’s found out because no one likes Ed Flack.”
“Why don’t they like him?”
“They don’t. I don’t. You wouldn’t.”
“But...” Seeing that Ginny was about to bury her nose in a book again, one on animal husbandry that she had taunted Terese about (Terese knew that’s what it was beneath the concealing cover because it was missing from her library lists), Terese put in hastily, “And yet they like Gavin, I mean they must like him to have him do their signs.” Curiously she asked, “How did the signs begin?”
“Homeward Bound was the first. The one Arn’s mother had painted years ago had faded, and one day when Arn was trying to fix another Gavin came along and took the brush from him. It went on from then ... Stray Leaves, New Moon, Pickpocket... but all at once Gavin stopped his signs. Ed Flack’s doing, no doubt.”
“A pity.” Terese, though not actually artistic herself, knew enough to recognize talent when she saw it, even if the meeting was through the medium of a swinging sign done on a piece of rough board with a cheap, coarse brush.
“Yes.” Ginny was preoccupied again, her brows furrowed as she pored over her book.
The next day Terese looked closely whenever she came to one of the boy’s signs. There was a freshness of approach, she felt, an imagination, a sensitivity. Yes, this lad could be good.
She wondered if she could speak to Arn about him, then dismissed the thought. No one likes Flack, she recalled from Ginny; I don’t; you wouldn’t. And Gavin, whether he was a Flack or not, still came from Flack’s camp, which made him also rejected.
It irked Terese, though, and she found herself wanting to reject his rejection, to contact Gavin on her own accord. But how could she when the “king” had warned her off, had made it a proviso of her already uncertain job?
But Arn Dawson could not prevent her from looking out for Gavin. She had seen the boy sketching that day on the rock so presumably might again, and if she ran into him, just by accident, then no rules would have been broken.
But Terese, on the alert though she was, did not see Gavin. She was beginning to know her borrowers now, remember their likes and dislikes, to suggest books when they asked it of her.
She had been down to the lumber camp again, and felt by a few more calls she would be on first-name terms with the timberjacks. She was pulling the steps in on a third visit and looking a little wistfully along the track to the nursery valley and wondering about her tree, for so many, Arn Dawson had said, never grew up, when Ted Watson, Jill’s husband, came along, looking wistful on his own account.
“If it’s books for Jill, I’ll take them,” Terese offered.
“It won’t be any use, Terese, she’s to fly over when Pete brings in the Cessna on Friday.”
“She won’t like that.”
“She doesn’t know yet,” sighed Ted. “Oh, yes, Arn’s told her all along, but she keeps thinking she can put him off as she’s put him off all this week. Well, she can’t. Arn’s made the arrangements. I
thought”—hopefully—“if you were calling in... “
“I’d drop the bomb. You coward, Ted!”
“I hate telling her,” he admitted. “I know Arn’s right, that she should cross in plenty of time, but ... Oh, hell, Terese, why can’t we be like other couples everywhere else, together in this biggest moment of our life, not Jill across the mountain by herself and me back here biting my nails.”
“It’s the penalty of remote places, Ted.”
“I suppose so.”
He went dolefully off, and Terese started up the bookmobile again.
Jill greeted her with her usual brightness, a brightness that did not help Terese to bring up the subject of Friday’s Cessna. She had to bring it up, though, there was only a day to go, a bag would have to be packed. Besides, Ted had asked her.
“Jill...”
“I know. D-Day. Oh, Terese, I don’t want to go. I want the baby, of course, but I want it here, with Ted. Now read me a lecture about safety margins and not leaving things too late, as Arn does.”
“No, I don’t think I could, Jill,” admitted Terese thoughtfully. “You see, in England we don’t rely so much on hospitals for our babies as apparently you do here. In the small village where I lived, I don’t know any mothers who rushed away to a hospital for their babies, they simply stopped at home. I’m not saying it’s a good clinical idea, but sometimes...” Her voice trailed off.
“Sometimes love is more important,” nodded Jill. “I knew you would understand. I knew you would help me.”
“My dear, I can’t help you.”
But Jill just smiled and said. “Let’s have a cup of tea.” They lingered over the cup longer than they should. When Jill, looking out of the window of the cabin, called, “It must be late, the mist is coming up,” Terese knew she had disobeyed a very important rule, she had remained on a mountain road after four o’clock.
“I must go at once,” she decided.
“You mustn’t,” argued Jill, “it’s something that nobody does.”
“Look, it’s only wispy, I’ll go at once.”
“Well...” Jill smiled rather sheepishly, and Terese kissed her lightly, saying “If I don’t see you, make it a girl, there’s enough men down here,” and ran down to the bookmobile, now gathering drops of moisture from the swirling mist.
Visibility was still fair, though, and wasting no time Terese climbed into the van. Fortunately she was on the ascent and should lose the vapor with each upward bend. She put her foot down on the accelerator, ran out of the safety niche, then began to climb.
Almost at once she knew she had been mistaken about losing the mist. Instead of leaving it behind her she ran right into it, great gobs of silvery white nothingness, that when you were actually confronted with it seemed to lose its nothingness and become, instead, a formidable wall, lovely to look at if you were at the top but frightening when it gathered round, then closed you in. , She was determined not to stop, though, she felt that once she cut the engine she would be imprisoned in this wispy, ghostly world, so reducing speed instead she kept close to the overhanging rock and as far as possible from the steep edge. Several times she had to halt to get her bearings, and took nervous care to leave the engine purring, for just to run ahead to examine the track was like plunging into obscurity, and she needed the sound of the engine to guide her back. On the last occasion, despite the fact that she had the rhythmical tick to help her, it was all she could do to grope through the thick wisps to the van.
Her hand was shaking as she gently released the brake and her foot trembled as she trod down on the clutch. She only inched forward now.
The windscreen wipers were working overtime, but what she needed were fog-lights. But the van had no fog-lights because it was not supposed to be out in the fog; that was a strict rule.
She knew that her non-compliance with the rule was upsetting her even more than the predicament she was in. Frightened though she was, her disappointment in not doing things as things were expected to be done, no, directed to be done, was a bigger factor than her fear. It was not just the man who directed, not just Arn Dawson, though he could be formidable enough, it was the job itself. She wanted to hold this job, she wanted to do nothing to jeopardize it, and though she knew the post had no future, for Arn Dawson had made no bones about telling her that, she still wanted to keep it for as long as she could. It was since ... and tears blinded her eyes, though it made no difference in safety because she was already blinded in the mist ... she was not just homeward bound here at Backdown, but home.
She was suddenly aware that the van did not need the gentle but steady acceleration she had been giving it, that she needed to brake instead. She did so at once, her brow furrowed. The track from the Wilsons’ did not descend, then ascend in varying saucers of depth as the other tracks did, it went straight up. Which meant, and Terese held tightly to the handbrake almost as though she was holding the vehicle back herself, that she had left the main track. Feeling a mounting panic, Terese brought the van to a halt.
She wondered what time it was; how long she had been on the mountain. She wondered how long the night would seem, huddled in the van, for she was determined not to leave the bookmobile, not because she shuddered at the prospect of stepping into that wreathing white world, but because she could never bring herself to abandon what she had built up so lovingly, what she hoped to hold on to for as long as she could—and as long as Dawson permitted.
It was growing very cold now. Terese groped for a sweater she always carried and tied it around her shoulders.
The world around her was absolutely silent. Through the day it was shrill with bird-song, with the ring of axes and the whine of saws, but now there was nothing, except occasionally the sigh of a tree, or the sound of the moisture dripping from the mist-soaked leaves.
She closed her eyes to shut out the swirl, the silvery encroachment of the vapor, the wisps touching the window of the van with thin witch fingers, but for all its ghostliness, the scene still fascinated her, and at every sound of the branches emptying their accumulation of moisture her eyes flew open again.
Afterwards she knew it must have been steps she heard, not the release from soaked leaves unable to hold any longer their wet burden, but when her eyes opened at a louder sound than before, it was not just on the swirling gray she looked, but a face as well.
The misted face of a man.
The fog blurred the features, blotted out the hair, it was just a face. The lips mouthed something she could not decipher, but she did understand the hand when it was raised, the message of that curled index finger could not be misconstrued, it said unmistakably, “Come out.”
Mechanically Terese made a movement to obey. But before she could do so the finger changed its beckoning curl to indicate for her to take care, to go gently, and as stark realization dawned on her, Terese fumbled frozenly with the door. Not knowing it, she thought hollowly, I’ve been balancing over the cliff. Any unnecessary movement now and I and the van will go. She was grateful when the hand on the other side took over the opening, her own fingers were trembling so much she could not turn the handle. As the door inched out, the arms caught, held, then quickly placed her some yards away from the van. Terese was numbly aware that the hands were not unkind, indeed they were quite gentle, and gentleness she never would have expected from Arn Dawson, not when his beloved bookmobile stood poised on the edge of a cliff. For Arn Dawson it was. As he carried her to safety she had seen his face, featureless no more, and it had been gravely concerned but not angry. Grateful tears sprang to her eyes, and the man said, yet still not unkindly, “There’s no time for that; stand here while I take care of the van.”
A few moments later, she stood facing him.
“I’m sorry, Arn.” In her extreme agitation she did not realize that she called him by his name, that he answered her with hers. “Say all the things you want to, say them, please.”
“Thank heaven, Terese,” was all he said in reply.
She
looked at him through the swirls of gray in wretched disbelief, and then his face was becoming featureless again, and the ordeal was catching up with her. She was only half conscious of his big arms supporting her, carrying her to the van now parked well back from the edge.
She emerged from her own private mist to strong fingers rubbing her wrists, massaging her cold fingers, cupping her hands in his. She was wrapped in a large jacket and she protested weakly, “You shouldn’t ... you’ll be cold.”
“Be quiet,” he said.
“I’m so sorry.”
“I told you to be quiet!”
“When I left Jill’s it wasn’t bad, really it wasn’t.”
“Listen, little one, I’m not angry, but I will be if you try to talk now. I know how easy it is to be caught even if you do obey the rules. If you’ll stop trembling long enough you’ll hear me praise you, not reprove you, for having the nous to have stayed where you were and wait.”
“I—”
“Quiet,” he repeated.
And, gratefully, Terese was.
She nodded in the darkness in agreement, feeling her eyes growing heavy. She had a vague feeling that he said, “Sleep, little one,” that he rested her head on his shoulder, but it must have been a dream, for when she woke some time later there was a rolled rug under her head for a pillow, and he was not beside her. Suddenly afraid, she leaped out of the van.
He caught her almost at once. “Hi there, where do you think you’re going?”
“I thought you’d left me, I thought...” she gasped.
He gave her a little shake. “I don’t do things like that. I was feeling out the land. In another ten minutes we’ll be able to move.”
“Is the mist lifting?” She was still in the shelter of his arms. “Shifting is more like it, but it will be quite safe to go up.” Still not moving, and not wanting to, for the swirls were even ghostlier when they were less obscure, Terese said, “It’s pretty, isn’t it? I thought when I looked down from Homeward Bound that day that I was a ship and this was a sea.”
The Man From the Valley Page 8
