‘You bet your sweet life!’
Now they dropped swiftly and the sea was rushing up to meet them. The engine was whining, and Joanna’s heart was in her throat. One slip, one mistake, and she and Adam would be lost together under that white rim of waves breaking around the sandbar. She didn’t dare to look at him in case she took his attention off the controls for a single precious moment, but she knew how every line and feature of his face stood out boldly as the sea light flared in on them, and the wheels whipped across the crests of the palm trees and there was a tearing sound as if the bottom of the plane was being ripped away.
‘Hold tight!’ he rapped at her. ‘We’re about to get jarred like a couple of bees in a bottle.’
She liked the touch of humour, it braced her as the wheels bounced on the sandbar and they went skidding like mad towards the sea. They roared to their doom, or their salvation, and suddenly there was a lurch and a blinding haze of sand was thrown up as they dipped nose-down in it, only a couple of feet from the water. The plane trembled, then with a thump it settled back and the door was flung wide open.
The wrench of Joanna’s safety-belt jarred the breath out of her. As it returned she took a rather stunned look at Adam. Neither of them said anything for several minutes, and there drifted into the plane the smell of seaweed and the sound of the sea washing against the coral under-bed of the sandbar. A jagged line of coral could be seen from the cockpit window, and it seemed a miracle that they had stopped short of being ripped to pieces by those sharp teeth.
‘Nice timing, Mr. Corraine,’ Joanna said with a shaky smile.
‘The credit doesn’t belong to me.’ His eyes held hers. ‘That was a stroke of destiny. And now let’s see about getting some of the gear to the beach.’
He unhooked his safety-belt, then he leaned forward and she felt his breath stir against her hair as he released her. A smile touched his lips as she let out a sigh of relief.
‘I was scared stiff as we came down,’ she said, and could feel herself still trembling a little as she looked at him.
‘You behaved like a trooper.’ He slid from his seat and went to the rear of the tilted plane. ‘There should be an emergency box back here.’
He found it, and when opened it revealed some cans of soup, some canned beans, and a tin of coffee. There was also a folded blanket, medications, a box of matches, and a billy-can, which Adam patted as if it were the pet among this precious haul.
‘Hand me that satchel,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to cart a heavy box along with us.’
He transferred the tins of food and coffee to the satchel, stuffed the first-aid kit and the matches into his pockets, and handed Joanna the blanket. It was soft as fur and quite large.
‘Wallaby lining,’ he said. ‘Wrapped in a swag like that and you’d sleep as snug as a bug.’
His words sent a ripple of alarm through her. While up in the air it had been easier to face the prospect of being alone at night with him ... here on the beach, on the edge of the sea, with the forest a mass of green above the sunlit haze of the sands, she was aware of something pagan in the air.
With her every nerve, her every sense, she felt the beat of the waves, the crying of the birds, the tang of coral and seaweed. These were primitive things, and she was alone among them with Adam Corraine.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THEY left the plane and made their way along the sandbar to the beach. It was around noon and the sun was shining brilliantly on to the sickle of white sand, and the plaited trunks of the palms with down-curving feathery fronds. It was a dream scene, a tropical poster, a place to catch at the imagination and the heart.
But Joanna’s heart right now was filled with apprehension of the man who walked tall in the sun at her side. Never had they been so alone in such romantic surroundings. Never before had she been so dependent on another human being, for he alone knew the secrets of the rain-forest and could find the way home through that teeming, shadowy, blossomy jungle.
‘We’ll rest awhile,’ he said. ‘Find a shady spot and have some lunch. Are you hungry?’
She stood on the silvery sands and watched the seabirds as they dived on the flying fish, winged arrows along the tips of the waves. Beauty and cruelty ... holding her as if in a spell.
‘Still a bit stunned?’
Fingers gripped her shoulder and she glanced up at Adam. He had discarded his flying-helmet and his hair was ruffled, his collar was open, and his skin was brown as bark. The satchel was flung over his shoulder, and he looked as calm as if they were here on a picnic.
‘The plane looks awfully forlorn, stranded out there on the edge of the water. Poor old Bony-bird!’
‘Vance’s name for the craft’
‘Yes.’ She smiled nervously. ‘I hope the plane isn’t damaged - he’ll be upset.’
‘He’d be more upset if anything happened to you — wouldn’t he?’ Adam’s smile was faintly sardonic. ‘Now if you’ll be a good mate and collect me some pieces of driftwood - make sure the sun has dried them — I’ll get a fire going and we’ll have some coffee, and some beans and biscuits. How does that strike you?’
‘Right where I’m empty, Mr. Corraine—’
‘One minute!’
She had tossed the blanket to the sands and was about to dive off after the driftwood. She looked at him inquiringly.
‘We’ll cut out the formalities,’ he said. ‘This is no place for them. You know my first name so please use it, Joanna.’
‘You’re the Boss.’ She hastened away from him to where the pale sands were patched with pieces of sun-dried wood. She began collecting an armful, and she tried not to think of what might lie behind his statement that this was not the place for keeping up the formalities. For some odd reason she preferred things the way they were between herself and Adam — it was too disturbing when he chose to be less than boss-like. He was somehow not the kind of man you could take in your stride; he made too strong an impact, so that everything he said, or did, took on much more significance.
He might bear a physical resemblance to Vance, but they were not alike in disposition. It wasn’t that he had less humour, or less compassion; it was that for Vance life was a plaything, for Adam a vocation.
She brushed a crusting of sand off a piece of wood, and knew that it would have been easier on the feelings to be forced down on the edge of the Coral with Vance.
‘Ahoy there!’ Adam was calling her from the shade of a patch of trees, wild banana from the width and raggedness of the leaves that dappled him. ‘I want just enough for a cooking fire, not a distress beacon.’
‘I’m coming.’ She assumed an air of nonchalance as she walked to where he had made camp. She dumped the wood at his feet. It was hot and tendrils of fair hair clung to her forehead beneath the brim of her sunhat. Her cyclamen shirt and blue pants were gay in the sun.
‘Can I do anything else to help?’ she asked, avoiding the use of his name; avoiding that sense of intimacy it would create to call him Adam.
‘No, you cool down while I cook the food.’ His brown hands were deft as he laid sticks of wood above the shavings he made with his knife. He shielded a match and lit the shavings, and soon tangy spirals of woodsmoke were drifting upwards, mingling with the sea smells.
Joanna sat beneath the shade of the banana trees with her arms clasped about her updrawn knees. She had tossed off her sunhat because it made her feel warm beneath the shade, and her hair was tousled about the gravity of her face as she watched Adam set the billy-can on the fire, having filled it from the water-bottle. He dug holes in a can of beans and set them to warm at the edge of the fire, and from the satchel he took the butter biscuits. He glanced across at Joanna with a lopsided smile. ‘What a pity I can’t prove to you how proficient I am with a bent pin and a piece of string. That surf out there is full of fish, and at low tide we could walk to the end of the sandbar and pick mussels and crabs off the coral. What a place, eh? A couple of people could live quite well on the seafood,
and the wild bananas when ripe, and the yams that can be dug out of the ground.’
‘I don’t think it would suit you for long to live in sunlit idleness,’ she said, trickling the warm fine sand through her fingers. ‘I bet you’re impatient right now to get back to the station in case things go slack while you’re away.’
‘Do you think I’m an all-work and no-play man, Joanna?’ He tore off a couple, of banana leaves and laid them out as plates. ‘You’ll have to spoon up your beans with a biscuit, as we’re kind of short on cutlery.’
‘I think you thrive on work, Mr. ... I mean ... Adam.’
‘Don’t you care for my name?’ He quirked an eyebrow, mocking her hesitation. ‘It belongs to a rather intriguing story in the book of books - I’m sure you must have read it.’
‘I’ve read it, but I’m sure there are no serpents lurking on this coral strand, nor are there any apple trees.’
He grinned as he added coffee to the boiling water in the billy and stirred it with a sun-bleached stick of wood. ‘This isn’t going to taste too tempting without milk - watch the pot for me. There’s every chance that I might pick up a coconut. Sometimes they fall or get blown down ... I’m rather on the big side for shinning up a palm tree.’
She smiled and watched him stroll along the beach, his eyes alerted for a coconut palm and a possible windfall. He could be so nice, and it was so disturbing, like a tiger purring in the sun but ready at any moment to show he wasn’t tame or predictable. He was lost out of sight around a bend of the beach and she was alone with the bubbling billy, and the roll and thud of the waves, like blue-green swirls of silk unfurling on the sands of crushed coral.
It was a beautiful place and she couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to share it - as if shipwrecked - with a man like Adam. A girl wouldn’t starve, nor would she be idle. He was so resourceful that in no time at all they would have built a palm-thatched house and he would have planted yams in their garden, which she would have edged with shells from the beach.
Quite an idyll, if she didn’t think too much about other aspects of being a girl entirely alone with a man ... especially when the stars shone through the fronded palms and the sea whispered its seductive music.
Suddenly there was a gleam of white among the undulant palms with the sun in their plumes, and she felt her heart beating in time with the waves as they beat the shore. His fawn trousers were narrow on his hips and his long legs. There was a strong, easy, out-of-doors swing to his way of walking. Much of the time at Raintree she had seen him on horseback and it seemed a little strange to see him out of the saddle.
‘We’re in luck.’ He carried two large tufted coconuts. ‘There’s even a dairy on this golden strand.’
‘No boutiques, no beauty parlour?’ she asked daringly.
His eyes captured hers and strong between them for a moment was the memory of their first meeting. He had not spared her, because right away he had taken her for Vance’s girl. The kind of girl who thought of nothing but making herself attractive rather than useful.
He shrugged his shoulders and looked curiously pained, as if he had hoped she’d forgotten, or forgiven him for the things he had said that day. ‘You’ll never know how you looked,’ he said, ‘standing there under the Australian sun, all daisy fresh, plucked out of an English garden, and certain sure to wilt within a week. Now I had all those steak lunches in mind—’
He laughed, gave a groan. ‘No use thinking about steak right now. Let’s get these nuts cracked and we’ll have milk in our coffee.’
He found a stone and after a bit of battering the shell yielded and Joanna held the nut while he lifted the billy from the fire with a stick under the handle and poured out the coffee, using the cups off the flask and the water-bottle. He added a little of the coconut milk to each cup and they quenched their thirst in silent bliss. Afterwards he dished up the beans and they sat propped against the banana trees and enjoyed their lunch, finishing up with a slice of fruit cake each.
‘Not bad food for a marooned couple,’ Adam said lazily. ‘More coffee, or are you replete?’
‘Just half a cup, please.’
‘You look comfortable,’ He flicked his eyes over her slim, relaxed figure, tucked into the incline of a tropical tree. ‘As if you belong to a coral beach ... a sort of mermaid in blue jeans.’
She sipped her coffee, sunwarmed, at peace, yet aware of the need to know when he meant to start the homeward trek. She looked at him, the question in her eyes.
‘Are you so anxious to leave all this?’ The look he gave her was faintly teasing. ‘Are you scared we’ll be alone in the rain-forest at nightfall? I’m afraid we will, Joanna, whether we leave now or rest for an hour. I’d advise you to rest, because the going through the forest won’t be all that easy. It’s a wild place, teeming with vines and vegetation, not to mention insects, moths and fruit bats.’
‘Sounds as if I’m going to enjoy myself!’
‘Have you got one of those filmy handkerchiefs with you? My tough skin can take scratches and bites, but from the look of yours—’ Again that flash of lightning grey over her slim neck and bare arms. ‘A chiffon square would offer some protection - in fact, when we get going you’d better wear my flying-jacket. It’s of canvas and not overwarm. Those arms of yours will be made a meal of if they aren’t protected.’
His concern was confusing, and she bent her head to search her shoulder-strap bag, which was of soft leather that stretched to accommodate a number of things a woman found handy to have with her on a trip. She sorted around in her bag, but knew in advance that she wasn’t carrying a chiffon square. Bonney Ryan was the girl for a flutter of chiffon at her throat or around her hair.
‘What have you got in there?’ Adam peered forward to have a look. ‘Any cigarettes?’
‘Sorry, I don’t smoke. I’ve some mints if you’d like a chew.’
‘I won’t say no.’ He accepted a couple and crunched away contentedly, the peak of his flying-cap shielding his eyes from the dazzle of the sea. His long legs were stretched out, and his left hand played idly with the soft sand.
‘Relax for a while,’ he said. ‘You can wear my jacket and look helpless and cute in it.’
‘I can remember the day, Mr. Corraine—’
‘Now none of that, Joanna Dowling.’
She looked at him suspiciously, for he seemed to make her name sound like Darling on purpose. She couldn’t see his eyes, but his lips were quirked ... firm, well-cut lips blending with the strength of that square-cut chin. A shaft of gold through the trees lit upon his brown throat. She was very aware of him beside her, and of the seductive lisp of the sea, the sensuous warmth of the sun, the wild beauty of it all.
She rested against the tufted tree, her toes in the warm white sand, pleasantly tickling. She was almost on the verge of slumber when Adam startled her by surging to his feet and lifting her bodily a yard or so from their resting place. ‘W-what are you doing?’ she stammered, feeling the hard crush of his arms and then their abrupt release.
‘Saltbush snake!’ He flung the words over his shoulder, and she watched dumbly as he swung a rock and crushed something against the trunk of the tree where she had been dozing. A hand crept to her throat. No snakes, she had said, and all the time that slim and dangerous thing had been slithering nearer and nearer, until Adam’s quick eyes had spotted it and with equal alertness he had swung her out of its reach.
She swallowed dryly. ‘Another minute—’
‘Yes,’ he said laconically, and he began to check their gear. ‘Snakes travel in pairs ...’ He shook the wallaby rug, prodded about in the satchel, and even took a look inside her sandals, which she had slipped off so she could feel the softness of the sand with her feet. Now she became aware of their vulnerability and she ran towards him, holding out her hand for her sandals.
‘Come on, I’ll latch them for you.’
She put a hand on his shoulder to steady herself and felt the hard bone and sinew of him.
‘Ooh!’ she half-laughed as his hard fingers scratched against her instep. ‘Thank you... for what you did... Adam.’
‘I wonder what would have happened if my namesake had dispatched that other serpent in the garden?’ He looked at her and his eyes were crystalline and amused. ‘Any theories?’
‘I don’t reckon we’d be here, do you? If the story is fact and not fiction?’
He laughed and she felt his arm twine lazily about her waist as they stood and gazed out towards the sandbar, where the plane was abandoned, one side tilted downwards like a bird with a bent wing.
‘What will you do about the plane?’ She stood tense within the circle of his arm, and she was intensely aware that her head came only as high as his shoulder. It had been awkward for him to get his lean length in and out of that cockpit, looking so tiny from here.
‘When we reach Raintree I’ll get in touch with a shore station and have them refuel her and fly her home. Her undercarriage is a mite damaged, but she’ll make it home.’
‘Adam ...?’
He looked down at her, and she was shot through with disorganized feelings about him. Why this wariness in his presence; this tenseness at a touch that was merely protective? It was as if she were afraid of liking him, and never for a moment had she felt any doubt about liking Vance.
‘What if the folks at Raintree get in touch with Jeff Brennan by radio and he tells them we left Monkey Hill soon after breakfast? Won’t they be terribly worried?’
‘What would you have me do?’ He looked quizzical. ‘We’re well and safe, a little worrying won’t hurt them, and we’ll be home by tomorrow.’
‘Couldn’t we go out to the plane and contact them by radio? They might think we’ve had a crash...’
Even as she spoke the breakers crashed over the sandbar, sending white fangs of spray into the air, and she heard Adam laugh drily above her head.
‘I could swim out,’ he drawled, ‘but this is probably a shark bay.’
‘Sharks?’ she gasped.
‘These waters are alive with them, and it’s handy to have a pair of legs for a trek through the rain-forest.’
Raintree Valley Page 13
