Then he was reproaching himself at not knowing about Gavin, marveling at Terese finding out, at what Terese had achieved. “But no more, of course. You’ll never go there again.”
“But, Arn...”
“Never, Terese.”
“Gavin...”
“From what you have told me Gavin can’t slip back, can’t lose what he has gained, whatever else happens. You’ve prepared the ground, Terese, you’ve given him the hunger. The kid couldn’t recede even if Flack burned every word in the camp.”
That was true, she thought, she had recognized that at their last lesson. Gavin had reached the stage where nothing and no one could keep him from what he reached out for, what he yearned.
“But the boy himself...” she repeated to Arn what Flack had told her of Gavin’s beginnings.
“No relation?” he repeated in interest. “Not a Flack at all?”
“No, not at all. Arn, couldn’t we—could we...”
“Listen, Terese, I’ve just had the moon and stars descend on me. Don’t spoil it by arguing a cause, however worthy, not now, my sweet.”
Now the impact really reached her, the impact of this man’s deep gentleness, and she came out of her world of bird-song and turned directly on him.
“You mustn’t talk like that, Arn.”
He looked at her in question, and still directly she answered, “You know that you can’t... you mustn’t.”
“And why?”
“The children.”
“They’re not here to hear, and what if they were?”
Suddenly a faint hope, a desperate hope was pushing through to Terese.
“Arn,” she asked quietly, “how many children did your parents have?”
“Only one.” He half bowed.
“Oh.” The hope was crashing to the ground, for a moment she had dreamed...
“You’re thinking of Sybil, of course. No, she was my father’s brother’s child, hence the family resemblance in Janet and Jalna, but she practically grew up here, and I always considered her my true sister.”
“Sister?”
“Yes.”
“Then—then the children, then the girls are not yours?” The hope was blossoming again.
“Good lord, no!”
“But—Da,” she murmured.
He laughed. “You know what youngsters are—boys, anyway. They live in a world of mystery and intrigue. Whenever I wrote to my cousin Sybil I was always the foreign agent, never the small boy, and instead of signing myself A.D. I became, for security reasons, D.A.” He laughed again. “It stuck.”
They looked steadily at each other for a few moments, then Terese begged, “Tell me, Arn, tell me about Sybil. I want to understand.”
“There’s very little, really, and it’s not an enthralling tale. Just a woman who couldn’t sift the good from the bad...”
“Her husband? The children’s father?”
“Yes.”
“You mean that she stuck to her husband, good or bad, but isn’t that the right thing?”
“Not when a family is pulled down, as her family was, not when there are young children like my lovely kids.”
My kids. Each time she had heard that she had thought ... “I won’t go into unhappy details. Sufficient to say that when I finally traced Sybil in Sydney after a long spell of not knowing where she was, I was so disgusted, so incensed, I simply put it to Syb that it was either the girls or him.”
“And she...”
“Yes, she let me bring the kids back and chose to follow him. Undoubtedly she believed it was the right step, she wanted the family to remain intact, but the thing she could or would not see was that he had no place in the family, any family.”
“He was the father,” Terese reminded him.
“He—Brett had gone abroad. He never stayed at home, not even when his children were born. When she chose her husband I gave her the money to follow him. I believed she could only get him out of her system in that way, and—finally—she has.”
“She’s coming home.”
“Yes, thank heaven. There is nothing between them now, not even legally. When I was in England I believe I saw the first glimmerings of a change, I think Sybil was beginning to know the gold from the dross.”
“Why did you go to England, Arn? Were you worried about Joe?”
“Joe has come to the end of the track. He knows it, and he’s glad, he’s a tired old man. No, I persuaded Joe to go because when my father died Joe took his place, and I wanted to be quite certain there was no new road to open up for him.”
“Then—?”
“I went for Sybil, to make another appeal for her to return to the girls. Heaven knows I wanted them, but a family is a structure, Terese, you can’t break it up like that.”
“She wouldn’t come?”
“You make it sound hard, yet it wasn’t. She loved them, but in her confused mind what she was trying to do was right. I remember that night you saw us—incidentally, sweetheart, you, too, have some explaining to do, and yet it doesn’t matter, I believe I know. It was something the same as it had been for Ginny, I think, and in your hurt you...”
But Terese was not listening to him.
“Saw you—saw you and Sybil.” A pulse was beating in her temple.
“She was crying because she had told me that she wouldn’t come back yet. She wanted to, I must believe that, she adores the kids, but...” He shrugged. “More water has flown under the bridge,” he said presently. “Now she has a second, and I believe final, thought. She has turned the page and she’ll be back where she belongs. Who knows?” He smiled slightly. “There could be a happy ending after all. She’s wiser and older, and the valley is full of good, solid lumbermen whom every minute of each day since I first saw you when you pulled up that initial morning I’ve feared would get a foothold before I could. And”—a teasing smile—“instead it was Flack.”
She could not smile back, and thinking he had offended her he leaned over and cupped her chin and kissed her mouth.
But Terese was thousands of miles away ... outside a London railway station ... and the woman in a man’s arms was not his wife, nor yet his love. She could not have thought that such a detail could have made her so happy, after all a person can love before, at one time she would have said that she had loved, but it did. The spring, the dew, the first, she rejoiced.
CHAPTER NINE
It was a wonderful week.
Terese supposed that she walked on solid earth, but frequently she doubted it. Instead she sailed on a cloud, she soared like a bird, her feet never touched ground; this was how she felt as she went her usual way and did her accustomed things. She marveled that her rapture did not show, did not cry out, yet evidently it didn’t, for apart from a friendly “You’re looking fit, Miss Staples”, no one commented at all.
Arn surprised her at unexpected corners of the mountain. She would be rounding a bend and there he would be sitting on a fallen tree, or perched on a rock, waiting for her to come.
They would ride into the perpetual twilight of the jungle together, they would emerge into sun-slatted slopes, they would stand hand-in-hand and watch the mists wreathe up until the whole valley was a sea of white. Through the ornate tangle of the tropical trees on the north of the dividing ridge they would struggle through to the pine and fir of the southern side, and then back past the rather stringy green of the nurslings growing taller now, and Terese calling excitedly, “Mine’s getting bigger every day!”
She knew now that she had never been happy, really happy before. This was separate to anything she had ever known. This was love.
One night, trying to keep awake, for wakefulness since she had loved Arn and Arn had loved her, was really a dream, and sleep was wasted time because it was oblivion, four idle words from a drowsy Ginny had suddenly swept Terese’s waking dreams aside.
It was quite absurd that when Ginny yawned from the companion bed, “New man in town” at once she had thought of...
&nbs
p; “When did he come?” she had asked.
“Today.”
“What’s he like?”
“Tall, slim, smooth, a kind of traveler, I suppose.”
“Do travelers come to Backdown?”
“A few. Farm implements, lumber mechanism, those sort of contacts, though this man looked more as though he would sell himself.”
Ginny laughed. “You know the kind I mean?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t like him. You wouldn’t, either.”
“Goodnight, Ginny,” she had whispered, but she knew, too, that tonight there would be no oblivion for her.
She dragged herself around the next morning. Could this be the same person whose feet had not touched the ground? She told herself that she was making mountains out of molehills, that it would not be Jeff in Backdown, that even if it was it could make no difference, that when she explained, Arn would understand.
But when she was given a chance to explain, she did not do so. Arn phoned before she left on her morning calls, and his voice was unstudied and casual. Deliberately casual?
“Terese, I’ve had an overnight visitor ... a traveler representing a firm I deal with ... we have these salesmen occasionally.”
“Yes, Arn?”
“This one, during our nightcaps last night, seemed to think he knew Backdown’s new librarian. I said that that would be a heck of a coincidence in a place like this, that only by arrangement could such a thing happen.” Was that just a pause for breath—or was it Arn waiting? “No name was proffered, so I played possum, too.”
“Played possum?”
A little laugh. “I never told him you were Terese Staples. These traveling men are not always the type one wishes to present to one’s womenfolk. I reckoned to myself that he was just using this line to meet a Backdowner who was not a male—at least I did until he repeated that he felt sure it was the girl he knew because he had seen her briefly in Glen Ingle. A few weeks ago.” Another pause. “Were you in Glen Ingle?”
“Yes. For the baby’s present. Remember?” Could he hear the uneven thump of her heart?
“No, it would be after that, several weeks after.” There was satisfaction in Arn’s voice. “I knew the fellow was mistaken.”
Thank heaven, thought Terese, the lie has been taken away from my lips. She remembered Arn once saying that though she had not told a lie ... he had been referring to Ed Flack that time ... she had implied it, she had implied she had not been to Flack’s. Now, without saying a word, she was implying that she had not gone over to Glen Ingle, not actually a lie yet really as much a lie as if she had deceived, “No, Arn, I haven’t left Backdown.”
He was speaking softly and tenderly, and it made it much worse that he believed her so implicitly.
She should have spoken, she knew that, but his tenderness was her undoing. Tenderness was such a precious thing—in Arn.
When she replaced the receiver futility caught up with her. Arn had only to ask Pete for confirmation. Arn had only—but no, Arn Dawson wouldn’t.
For a few moments she felt fortified, and then, wretchedly, her fears began again. Ginny, or Joe, could meet the newcomer and mention her name. She herself had only to run into him.
And yet, desperately, there was actually no certainty it was Jeff.
And if she was careful there was no need for any encounter.
She was thankful that the bookmobile had been left at Pickpocket overnight. Although its garage at Homeward Bound was away from the house, it might have been difficult to collect it without arousing attention.
She went through her work rather mechanically. Her mind was on the salesman calling now at Backdown. Was he ... Could he be...
Through the eternal sough of the leaves she heard the whirr of the Cessna, and it struck her that Arn Dawson might, if casually, speak to Pete about her reported crossing to Glen Ingle. The chances were against it, but now that she had spun her web it seemed she had to keep spinning. Oh, why hadn’t she spoken out right in the beginning? Even at the risk of lost tenderness it would have been worth it not to feel like this.
Terese climbed up to the plateau and hurried along to the strip. She would tell Pete to forget that quick trip that day, he would do it for her, she knew, then if Arn happened to ask...
But as she pulled up the bookmobile on the dandelion verge she saw that her already tangled web would have been better if she had left out this final precautionary spinning.
Arn’s Land-Rover was already parked there and standing beside him, some fifty yards away, evidently waiting to board the Cessna was the man that Ginny—and Arn—had spoken about.
It was Jeff.
If she could have turned and fled, she would have. If she could have hidden, she would have. But to reverse the van would have taken several minutes, all the time its mountain-blue duco attracting attention, declaring her intention ... her intention of running away.
Wretchedly Terese pulled up, climbed out, approached the trio farther along the strip.
But before she had gone a few yards she saw to her dismay that Jeff had recognized her and detached himself from the group. Now he was actually running toward her.
“Terry!”
Terry. Jeff, and only Jeff, had called her that, and it had thrilled her. Now she found herself listening to the little name and waiting to catch the old thrall, but there was nothing there, nothing at all.
“Jeff!” she faltered.
“I knew it was you. I knew it. Dawson put me off, and if you hadn’t turned up right now I might have taken his word for it that I was mistaken, that a girl I knew in London couldn’t possibly turn up in this outlandish place. Unless...” He smiled, the old confident Jeff smile. “Unless, as Dawson carefully hinted, it was a heck of a coincidence. Only by arrangement, our friend here said”—they had reached Arn and Pete now—“could such a contact happen. Well, it wasn’t an arrangement on my part, though if I’d known it certainly would have been, but who can be sure what went on over your side, Terry? Did you look up my list of calls and decide this was the most intimate reunion?” He slipped her arm in his and held it tight.
Stiffly, Terese detached herself. She was conscious of that wretched pulse beating in her temple, of Arn’s eyes on the little throbbing vein.
“Of course not. I knew nothing about your work. If you remember, I never asked you.”
“No, we had other things to talk about,” he smiled.
Pete, tactfully, had wandered off, but stubbornly Arn stayed. “You didn’t know Mr. Felton’s routines”—Arn was addressing Terese—“and yet you came to Australia.”
“Yes, but not because of...” Terese turned to Jeff, waiting for him to add that he had been transferred to Canada and had not intended returning to his home country for years. But he did not speak.
“To Australia.” Arn’s eyes were narrowed on her as he repeated it.
“I felt sure it was you I saw that day,” Jeff was saying triumphantly. “Had I not been running late for an appointment I would have stopped once. It didn’t worry me then as I thought I could track you down easily enough in Glen Ingle. But when I didn’t, I began to ask questions, and I found out that the Backdown librarian had flown in the morning I believed I saw my Terry. The Sherlock Holmes work went on from that.” He smiled. “Why did you come, darling? And the answer had better not be books.”
“You’re making it sound as though I followed you, chose the most romantic rendezvous I could.”
“Well,” he said baldly, “didn’t you?”
“No, I didn’t! I chose Australia because it was the farthest away from you; you were going to Canada, so I—I...” Suddenly unable to bear Arn’s cool, unwavering regard any longer, she turned on him and challenged, “Must you listen to all this?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I must.” Dawson in his turn turned to Jeff. “You were on your way to Canada. Please go on.”
“I wasn’t up to Canada. If you don’t mind me echoing Terese, Mr. Dawson, I think she
’s a little embarrassed by a third person. After all, when a woman comes all those thousands of miles for her man, it does become a little private.” Jeff stepped forward to Terese and extended his arm.
Dully but directly Terese said to Arn, “This man jilted me. I already had my ticket to Australia, and when he said he was going to Canada I thought I might as well go through with my original plans.”
“Terry, if it’s all turned out come hither and not thither as you’d modestly have us believe, then, my darling, what’s so embarrassing about that? After all, when one is in love—”
“I’m not!”
“And you haven’t”—Jeff stepped even nearer—“come all these thousands of miles...”
Pete started the engine. The little Cessna roared its response and then settled down for a quieter beat until the pilot decided to take off.
“If the lady says she hasn't, then she hasn’t.” Arn’s voice rose above the engine’s throb.
“But all those thousands of miles, I ask you...”
“You’re doing no asking, Felton, I am. Right now. Miss Staples, did you follow this man here?”
“No.”
“Did you come to Australia because of him?”
“No.”
“To Backdown?”
“No.”
“Do you want him here?”
“No!”
“Not for the moment or not ever?”
“Not ever.”
Abruptly, the questions stopped. Whirling around, Arn Dawson called, “Your passenger, Pete.”
As Jeff protested, he simply, without fuss, wheeled him round and impelled him bodily to the craft. By the time they had reached the Cessna, Jeff realized what was happening, and turning furiously, he began to struggle.
With what looked like a minimum of trouble but must have taken a considerable effort, for Jeff was a tall man, Arn Dawson manhandled him into the seat beside the pilot, and at once the craft took off.
Terese was still standing dumbfounded, no time yet to absorb the situation, to shrink from the scene she knew must follow, when the shrill high wail she had never yet heard but had been told about rose starkly above the engine’s departing roar.
The Man From the Valley Page 12
