‘Yes, it will make a nice break. Come in, Lenita, and I’ll give you a cup of tea. Or would you prefer coffee?’
‘Coffee, please.’ The Italian girl followed Joanna into the kitchen, where she took off her sunhat and revealed the glossy darkness of her hair. She was quite lovely, and Joanna felt again that she must be rather plain in comparison to these girls at Raintree Valley. She invited Lenita to take a chair, and had no idea as she set about making the coffee that the flush in her cheeks and the wayward lock of hair above her smoke-blue eyes made her appealing in a very English way. She felt Lenita watching her with dark, interested eyes.
‘How long have you been in Australia?’ she asked the Italian girl.
‘I came here with my brother and his wife about five years ago. They have a small restaurant in Sydney, near the Opera House. I worked for them, and met Boye when he was there on holiday.’ Lenita lowered her eyes and her lashes looked very long and curly. ‘We knew at once that we cared. Just a look and we knew. It is sometimes like that, and we married quickly and he brought me home with him to the valley. One remembers Italy, with the lime trees alive with birds, and the vineyards, but I would be happy anywhere with Boye. We have a nice home, and Signor Corraine is a good man to work for.’
Joanna set a cup of coffee and a slice of cake in front of Lenita and sat down to relax with her own cup of coffee. ‘He certainly has plenty of drive and ambition, and I can tell from the little I’ve so far seen of the station that it must be one of the best in Queensland. Up to date, clean and thriving, and yet somehow unspoiled. It would take a keen and imaginative man to achieve all that.’
Lenita caught Joanna’s gaze over the rim of her coffee cup. ‘I think you are not quite sure of him as a person, signorina.’
‘Please call me Joanna! We English are always a little cautious when it comes to our feelings about other people.’
‘You are not impulsive like an Italian, eh?’
Joanna smiled. ‘Impulsive in action, very often, but we’re basically shy in our human contacts. The armour of the Crusaders and the restrictions of the Puritans have left their mark. To fall in love on sight would be something we might fight.’
‘Ah, but love is the best thing of all in life. It must not be something to run away from, Joanna.’
‘Not if it’s mutual,’ Joanna agreed. ‘But it would be awful to give away your love to someone who didn’t want it. We English buckle on our armour just in case.’
‘Is it not uncomfortable?’ A deep dimple showed in Lenita’s cheek.
‘Much more uncomfortable to give yourself away to someone who hasn’t really noticed that you’re alive.’
‘Supposing the man thinks that as well, then there are the two of you, clanking about in your uncomfortable armour when all you really want is to be in each other’s arms.’
Joanna laughed outright and felt the quick birth of affection for this Latin girl, who like herself had come from a far country to seek a new life, a fresh bounty of experiences in Australia.
‘When may I come to see Carlo?’ she asked.
‘Whenever you are free. Our bungalow is the one with the blue shutters and the cream walls, and the little swing between the poinciana trees on the lawn.’
After Lenita had left, Joanna cradled the little pot of basil and heard in the quiet the flying chuckle of a bower bird. ‘Our bungalow,’ the words lingered. ‘The one with the blue shutters.’
CHAPTER FOUR
THE sun went to topaz and the west was aflame with rose and tinges of violet. Tiny rosellas flew to their perches in the trees, and a hawk was etched with outspread wings against the glowing sky. The going down of the sun seemed to fill the valley with a beauty beyond words, and then a galah let out a squawk and the trees turned to tall dark shadows.
The air was cool now; a moment more and the sun had smouldered away and the valley was quiet.
Joanna, dressed and ready for the dance, walked down by the paddock fence, where some young horses, brought in for gentling, stood like statues in the afterglow. One of them whinnied and thrust his head over the rail. Joanna put out a hand and felt the warm breath against her fingers, then the thrust of velvet nostrils. She smiled a little. So bush horses were too tough for her to handle, eh?
Then all at once the colts became restless. Ears pricked and the one with the soft nose galloped off across the paddock. Joanna listened and heard plainly the sound of galloping hooves coming up the rise towards the house. She turned and watched and as the rider came into view he saluted with his whip and his horse cleared the gate and she heard the ring of a familiar laugh.
‘Is that you, Joanna?’ He vaulted from the saddle. ‘I’ve come to take you dancing.’
She felt a rush of pleasure, such as a stranger feels when she sees a friend. She felt herself gripped by warm, rough, cattleman hands, and as she lifted her face to Vance he bent and had kissed her lips before she could stop him.
‘Oh—’ she said. ‘Show-off!’
‘Have you missed me, Miss Darling?’ He gave his throaty laugh.
‘I’ve been far too busy.’ It was good to see him again, with his gay, audacious eyes, and his charm that made him so easy to be with.
‘Little teaser.’ His hand travelled from her shoulder to her waist, caressingly. ‘All dressed up for the barn dance, eh? Mmm, nice material.’
She was very slim of figure in her magnolia-white dress with a pattern of soft green leaves, but when she tried to draw away from Vance his fingers tightened against her waist and he compelled her to stay close. ‘Bashful?’ he mocked.
She looked up at him and the new young moon was in her eyes. ‘No, I just don’t want to arrive at the dance looking - kissed.’
‘Don’t let’s go to the dance.’ He gestured at the moon. ‘It’s a young one riding over the valley, and there’s a bridge to the rain forest, just made for a kissing couple.’
‘We’re not that, Vance!’ Again in a panic, because he charmed her, she tried to pull away from him. They were struggling a little, and he was laughing, when a tall figure came striding past from the direction of the house. He tipped his slouch hat.
‘Hullo, Vance! You must tell me how things went at Once-Lonely - when you’re not quite so busy.’
The tall figure strode on, pushing open the side gate and letting it clang shut behind him. His face in the moonlight had been hard and unrevealing, but Joanna was quite sure that he hadn’t missed a detail of her white-clad figure pressed forcibly against Vance.
‘Now look what you’ve done!’ she pulled away from his slackened hands. ‘Your cousin won’t like you flirting with the home-help.’
‘Adam can’t stop me if I flirt out of working hours,’ Vance grinned. ‘We haven’t all been blessed with his brand of self-control. He’s a born bachelor who will have to take a bride ... or see Raintree go to a son of mine.’
Joanna’s hand shook a little as she smoothed her hair. ‘Let's be on our way to the dance.’
‘Joanna,’ Vance’s voice was a whisper against her ear, ‘you entice like a cool willow at the end of a hot day. For two days I’ve been travelling home to you, and I couldn’t care a snap of the fingers if Adam saw me holding you. It would do him good to hold a girl more often ... tell me something, does it intrigue a girl when she comes up against a rugged individual like my cousin?’
‘What exactly do you mean?’ Her eyes dwelt wide and wondering on Vance, and she saw the corners of his mouth bend in a quizzical smile.
‘Wouldn’t you like to shake him out of his armour?’
‘No indeed!’
‘Why not, Joanna? Do you think he’d be dangerous if a girl sparked off the slow-burning fires in that man of iron?’
‘Mr. Corraine is my employer,’ she said firmly. ‘I don’t know what he’d be like “sparked off” as you put it, and I don’t wish to know.’
‘Come off it, Joanna. There isn’t a single woman for two hundred miles who wouldn’t like to get under the guard of
the Boss of Raintree. He’s a challenge to women as an obstinate scrub stallion is to a stockman. He won’t be caught and they’d like nothing better than to see someone bring him to his knees.’
‘You speak as if you don’t really like him,’ Joanna said, and she found the fact disquieting. It seemed like a flaw in Vance that he could resent Adam. ‘Would you like to see him brought to his knees?’
Vance gazed over towards the mountains, dark shapes above the valley, and he shook his head. ‘I guess he needles me at times because he’s what I could never be, a man with a single purpose. But I’m not really sure that it’s right for a man to be that way. Somehow it rules out a warm, crazy love for a woman, and I don’t think I could live without that. Like King he’ll always put business first ... they always say that King’s wife died of being lonely for a man who always looked beyond her to Raintree.’
‘Bushy says that Adam isn’t entirely like his grandfather. The old swaggy reckons he cares more for people than King Corraine ever did.’
‘Maybe ... a little.’ Vance flicked a look over her moonlit heart of a face, with the fair hair drawn back in its usual neat style. ‘Are you defending him, Joanna?’
‘Well, I know what it feels like to be misjudged.’
‘It was Adam who judged you for a girl who couldn’t push for herself.’
‘You’ve just said, Vance, that he spends all his time planning for the stations. I expect he can judge good beef at a single glance.’
Vance let out a laugh. ‘That’s what I’ve missed as well, that flash of unexpected fun in you, Joanna Darling.’
‘Watch your accent, Mr. Corraine!’
His laugh deepened and he touched a hand to her hair. ‘Let it loose, Joanna. Be a devil.’
‘No ...’ She backed away from him. ‘I can hear the music drifting up from the barn-hall. The dancing has started, Vance. We’ll be late.’
‘We’ll go to the ball on my knightly charger.’ His teeth flashed as he gestured at his horse, Rebellion, a handsome grey whose coat shone like mail in the moonlight. He vaulted into the saddle, then directed Joanna to step on his stirruped foot, to take his hand and let herself be lifted in front of him. His arm curved around her, and the grey broke into a gallop that carried them down the hill, through the soft wind and the moonlight, towards the barn-hall where the long veranda was lit by coloured lanterns, and where a barbecue was set up on the lawn of buffalo grass.
It was a gay spectacle, the glow of the lanterns against the honey-stoned walls of the barn, with a great swathe of scented trumpet flower tumbling from the roof. The sound of dancing mingled with the record music and the happy laughter.
‘Here we are, Cinderella.’ Vance brought his horse to a standstill and she slid to the ground. She stood in confusion a minute, aware of the men on the veranda, watching with grins over their tankards of beer.
‘I guess that job at Once-Lonely was a bore in more ways than one,’ a stockman called out. ‘You look pleased to be home, Vance.’
Vance secured the bridle of his horse to a rail and as Joanna preceded him up the steps towards the group of men, she realized that she had been optimistic in hoping she could avoid notice by dancing with the other bachelors. Even as they asked for a dance, Vance took her by the elbow and said possessively that she was all booked up.
‘My bonus for having to do that job at Once-Lonely,’ he drawled. ‘You boys have had over a week to stake your claims.’
‘The young lady wasn’t sure—’
‘That she’d be staying?’ Vance swept off his slouch hat and his brown hair sprang in a wave above his audacious eyes. ‘You can scotch the rumour as from now. Miss Dowling is staying. The Boss says so.’
‘Good-o!’ It was one of the younger men who spoke. His name was Tye and the other day he had come to Joanna with a cut arm. He was a pearl-diver turned drover, and while Joanna had applied antiseptic and bandaged him, he had told her about some of his exploits, how on one occasion he had dived too deep and come dangerously close to getting the bends, which could cripple a man. She liked Tye and gave him a smile over her shoulder. He winked and she knew he’d get a dance with her before the evening was out.
The hall was brightly lit and gay with bunting, spiky red flowers, and the casual but colourful dresses of the women. The older women sat about in comfortable chairs with wicker sides, and even as Aunt Charly gave a wave and the dance music started up again, Joanna felt as if lightning struck as a grey glance met hers across the room of dancing couples. She stumbled and Vance tightened his arm about her. She looked away as casually as possible from Adam, but still in her mind’s eye she could see him. She was deeply shaken by his look of distinction in a tropical worsted suit and a white shirt whose collar was pristine against the brown of his throat.
She couldn’t help but give him another cautious glance, and this time he was dancing with Bonney. The Boss’s ward was rather more than pretty tonight. There was a pale starry flower in her dark hair, and her dress was the colour of a wild geranium. She danced close to Adam and her eyes shone with the pleasure of a conquest.
‘Wonders will never cease,’ Vance murmured in Joanna’s ear. ‘The Boss usually puts in an appearance at these barn parties, but he doesn’t often dance at them.’
‘Bonney looks irresistible,’ Joanna smiled. ‘He’s terribly fond of her ... anyone can see it.’
‘You think so?’ Vance followed the other couple with his eyes. ‘Yes, she’s looking quite the little lady tonight ... and proud of herself for having the Boss in tow.’ He inclined his head as they danced past his cousin and Bonney. ‘Hullo, kid. You’re almost the belle of the ball tonight’
Bonney tossed her head and gave Joanna a stare. It was a look that took in the English girl’s fairness of hair and skin, and the quiet charm of her white dress with its pattern of leaves. Joanna felt herself tensing in Vance’s arms, and then the music changed its rhythm and it was a relief to find herself in the midst of a rollicking square dance.
In the interval everyone went out on the lawn to enjoy the barbecue of sausages and steak sandwiches, luscious and smoky with long cool glasses of hock or lemonade. Joanna was the centre of a group who wanted to hear all about the ‘old country’. Several of the valley wives had parents who had come to Australia as emigrants, and she was plied with eager questions about places she had never actually seen.
‘I’m a country girl,’ she laughed. ‘No, I haven’t lunched on the roof of the G.P.O. Tower ... no, it really isn’t cold all the time. We’ve had some lovely summers ... yes, women are allowed to have a drink in our pubs ... Englishmen don’t mind at all!’
It was a relief when a stockman began to play a tune on his guitar and to sing a song that told of a bushranger who fell in love and was a good man till the day his ‘little gal’ went searching the bush for a wandering piccaninny and was seen no more. The bushranger looked high and low for her, but she was seen no more.
‘You all alone, Miss Joanna?’
Joana glanced round and met the lopsided grin of Tye Jennings. ‘Vance wanted a few words with his aunt.’ She smiled. ‘Are all stock-riding songs so sad?’
‘Riding round the cattle at night can be a mite lonely and that gets into the songs. These are mighty good sausages!’
‘Mmmm.’ Her eyes shone bright by the glow of the nearby coals under the grill of the barbecue, the dancing and the sense of excitement had sharpened her appetite. ‘I could eat another hot dog. How about you, Tye?’
He nodded and they went over to help themselves from the platter of smoking sausages and the basket of rolls. Bushy was assisting with the barbecue, having been a first-rate camp cook in his time. He looked piratical with the glow of the coals on his seamed face.
‘Where have you put the mustard?’ Tye wanted to know.
‘Do you need any, young feller, with a pretty girl in tow?’ Bushy chuckled at his own joke and winked at Joanna. ‘It’s over on that table with the bread and pickles.’
Tye was laughing as he stepped over a log seat and reached for the jar of mustard. Joanna went to say something to Bushy, and it was then there was a sizzle, a sudden spurt of flame in the fat-pan and the next instant some grease on Bush’s big apron caught the flame and jabbed her to shock and action in the same instant. The apron was the sort that tied at the back and even as Bushy’s face contorted with fear, Joanna was behind him and fumbling with the strings. Then she gave a gasp, echoed by a curse, as something doused both her and Bushy in a chilly foam, and she saw a tall figure standing over them with a gleaming extinguisher in his hands.
‘Oh — heavens!’ She brushed at the foam, while Bushy gave a hoarse, still frightened chuckle.
‘First time I ever had a lady risk her neck for my leathery hide. Missy, you all right?’
‘Yes, I think so - it brushes off.’
‘The pair of you could have been as barbecued as those beefsteaks.’ The deep voice lashed at them. ‘What were you playing at, Bushy?’
‘Weren’t my fault, Boss. The fat got in the fire and caught my apron. Missy here was helping old one-arm.’
‘Joanna ...?’
She looked up all the way to the stern face of Adam Corraine, still a bit shivery, and deeply startled to hear her name on his lips. Not gently by any means, but as if he were a trifle concerned.
‘You were quick, Boss.’ Bushy was fingering the burn hole in his apron, while people clustered round and flung questions, and looked askance at the fire extinguisher Adam was holding.
‘Good thing we keep one of these on the veranda.’ He gestured at the barn-hall with its wooden posts and lattice-work. ‘I was coming out for some food and I heard Miss Dowling cry out.’
‘Did I?’ Joanna looked at him with large eyes and wondered what it was she had cried out. A name perhaps ... his name? Anyway, it had been effective and he had come swiftly to their rescue. ‘It’s a good thing your reactions are such swift ones, Mr. Corraine.’
‘Yes,’ he said laconically. He turned to the crowd. ‘Let’s get back to the music and the dancing, everyone. The mishap is over, and there’s still an hour of fun left in the evening.’
Raintree Valley Page 7
