‘Willing ... unwilling ... what crazy talk is this?’
‘My talk. And that man was me. I proposed to you before. Remember? Now, in spite of my better judgment, I’m doing it again.’
‘Your better judgment?’ she queried.
‘Yes. Because I’d know that if you did accept me it would not be because of me.’
‘I wouldn’t accept you, but if I did you would be quite right, it would not be because of you but because of the children.’
‘Nor them either,’ he said frankly.
She looked up startled at that, and he continued:
‘Not them as children but as a trust passed on to you by your sister.’
‘You’re—you’re wrong.’
‘Am I?’
She found she could not answer. It was a trust, how could it be anything else so soon and with children so impossible? Angrily she flung:
‘Anyway, you’re only offering marriage—that is if you’re serious about that—’
‘I am.’
‘To help you escape that woman entanglement you mentioned.’
‘Well, it could come into it,’ he grinned.
‘I think you must be quite crazy!’
‘Nonetheless that offer stands ... that is if you can bear a madman. And do mark it down in your book this time. I don’t believe you did so before. You see, Josephine, if you’re serious about these three you’re going to need a man’s name.’
‘I already have Gavin’s, thank you. I mean I will.’
‘Useless,’ he told her. ‘I only saw the guy a moment, but I’d say he would want three youngsters as much as I want a rash.’
‘I—I don’t know how I put up with you,’ Jo cried. ‘I should have been honest with Gavin, I should have told him you were here. I’ll tell him tomorrow.’
‘And are you going to tell him all?’ he asked impertinently. ‘Tell him I was as near to you last night as a thin partition and through your special invitation?’ Before she could reply he went out of the house, leaving a furious Jo to cook a meal she felt would choke her and felt sure also the children would not touch.
But the children did. Hunger must have caught up with them, for they scraped their plates clean.
‘Where’s him?’ Sukey asked.
‘Not him, Sukey,’ Jo rebuked.
‘Where’s he?’
‘You mean Abel, I think.’
Dicky supplied an answer.
‘He’s having dinner up at the camp. He said to tell you.’
‘Well, you didn’t, did you?’ Jo felt sorry the moment she snapped it. These poor children, she must watch herself, watch her tongue. She must watch, too, those too-keen eyes of Abel Passant. ‘You want these children only as a trust passed on to you,’ he had said, and it had been true.
Wretchedly Jo looked at the children and knew it as the truth. She felt nothing at all for them save sympathy in the horror they, too, had suffered, and actually rather little of that, for in all her life she had never known such a—She had been about to think callous, but stopped it. Such a difficult trio, she substituted. Yet she still wanted them, had to want them, because of Gee. ‘They must like me,’ Gee had written, ‘because I love Mark.’
I suppose it’s only a trust from Gee, as he said, Jo mused, but all the same I’m going through with it. I must. Gavin, Gavin darling, please help!
The next day it seemed at first that Gavin would help. He came out, as he had promised, and because Abel had left early, Jo put off any telling she had to do until Abel’s presence made it necessary. Anyway, she would have had little chance. Gavin was in a more masterful mood today and his arms round Jo were tighter than she ever remembered.
‘I have something to say to you, something I know will please you,’ he announced.
‘Please me?’
‘It pleases all women. Nature intended the woman to be the homemaker, the heart of family life.’
‘What do you mean, Gavin?’
‘That waiting time we decided on, Josie—’
‘You mean our engagement year?’ It had been Gavin’s decision, Jo recalled.
‘Yes. Well, now I want our marriage sooner, much sooner. Having you every day at the office, seeing you frequently as I did, didn’t give me any idea of how much I wanted you just to myself. Josie, I want to shorten the engagement. Indeed, as soon as all this business is over I want us to be married.’ He looked at her triumphantly and waited for her response.
‘Gavin, children aren’t just a business,’ Jo said, ‘they’re real. They’re meant.’
‘So is my decision that we get married at once. Your absence has upset me very much, dear. I really need you. I’ll let you get through this week; settle whatever has to be settled, and then—’ Gavin kissed her.
‘But there’s still the children,’ Jo said pitifully. She loved Gavin, and she did want to get married. At the back of her mind she heard: I know men, and of them I know only one who would be willing—’
‘Darling Josie,’ said Gavin, breaking into her thoughts, ‘I want you, not a family of children. Look, dear, if they were yours, though it’s very unlikely that I would ever have looked at you with children, it would be different. But they’re not. They’re nothing to you. I love you, my dear, and I want to marry you, not three children I scarcely know.’
‘No, Gavin.’
It went on for an hour or more. At the end of the time, Gavin said: ‘All right, it’s unfair, it’s unreasonable, but the fact remains that I do love you. I’m prepared, then, Josie, to take over the responsibility of one child. We can always put it in a school.’
‘One?’ Jo did not think about the school part yet.
‘Josie, be fair. I’m a young man, an ambitious young man. I adore you. You couldn’t, indeed, no woman could ask for more than that.’
‘No, no, I suppose not.’
‘Then your answer, my love?’
‘I—I still don’t know.’
‘You don’t know which child, you mean? Well, it’s difficult, I agree. Offhand I would say the boy. Every man wants a son. But on the other hand girls are usually easier to manage, and also I was rather hoping that you would provide our son yourself. Which leaves us with the girls. Which girl? The smaller one, who obviously because of her tender years would be able to be brought up our way, or the older, quite a presentable child, indeed moderately pretty?’
‘Gavin, I—’
‘Yes, dear?’
‘Gavin, I have a headache.’ She hadn’t, but she could think of nothing else to say.
‘Then I’m going to give you the rest of the week to come to a decision,’ Gavin said magnanimously. ‘You must admit that at least I’ve been wonderfully fair with you.’
‘You have been wonderfully fair, Gavin.’
‘Then I’ll leave you to think it over. Think over the fact that I’m perfectly willing to accept one of these unfortunate children.’
‘If the welfare authorities permit.’
‘My dear,’ said Gavin shocked, ‘there would be no question about that. The only stipulation required of a person of my standing would be a wife, and though it’s not all exactly as we planned, it could turn out fairly satisfactory. So, my dear, I leave you to make your decision. That surely is proof of my deep love for you. Not only will I accept a child, I will leave it to you to choose which child. You must admit I’ve been most generous, Josie.’
‘You have, Gavin, oh, you have!’
‘Then I’ll go back to town and re-open the office. It can’t have helped me having it shut like this. Goodbye, my dear. I expect to see a different girl in a week’s time. And Josie, I must commend you for listening to my advice regarding that person, that Passant man. I was pleased not to see him here today. He may be a man of substance, a new plantation owner would have to be, but it could still raise brows in certain quarters.’
‘Yes,’ said Jo faintly, faint because at that very minute she could see Abel’s car hurtling down to Tender Winds from the highway. The
car did not come to the house, though. Abel must have seen Gavin’s own car and shot off instead into one of the many tracks into the bush.
It was not until Gavin had gone that Abel’s car emerged again, and a few minutes later the new banana boss marched into the house.
He said studiously, evidently remembering yesterday’s correction: ‘Fiancé, not guest, departed?’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t look happy. Can I take that to mean it was not a pleasant interlude, or can I take it that it was pleasant and now you’re sorry to have him gone?’
Suddenly Jo felt at the end of her tether. ‘You can take it as you like,’ she snapped.
‘At least give me a clue.’
She turned away, but he came after her and turned her round again, turned her quite demandingly.
‘What’s wrong, Josephine?’ he asked.
‘Nothing. Nothing, of course. Gavin has been wonderful. Not many men would have—well—’
‘Yes?’
‘Accepted what Gavin has accepted.’
‘You’re not telling me he’ll take the kids!’
‘He’ll take—one.’
‘One?’
‘I said one.’ Jo’s voice had risen a note, a dangerous note.
‘I see.’ Abel Passant was silent a moment. ‘So your preoccupation now is because you’re wondering which one?’
‘Something of the sort.’ Jo fairly flung it at him. She hated him for putting it into bare words. ‘Mr. Passant’ ... with fury ... ‘Mr. Passant, what are you doing?’ The fury was because very obviously and very unmistakably Jo knew what Abel was doing.
For Abel had taken a coin from his pocket and deliberately he was looking at her to give the call.
‘Heads it’s the boy, tails a girl. If a girl comes up, we’ll have to toss again to see which one of them wins, won’t we? Or’ ... and the coin spun up ... ‘loses? It’s just a matter of how you look at it, isn’t it, Josephine? Heads Dicky, tails the girls. Winner ... or loser ... decide which for yourself.’
Jo did not hear him out. She dropped what she was doing and ran desperately outside. She raced down the hill to the creek.
There, exhausted, she leaned against a tree and whispered: ‘Gee, help me, help me.’ But there was no answer, not even that dream echo, as yesterday, of Gee’s laughter.
Gee is not amused, Jo thought dully, and neither am I. Poor Gavin meant well. He never deserved to be jeered at like that. Abel Passant is a pig, a pig!
At length she straightened her shoulders and went up to the house again.
‘He’s having dinner up at the camp again,’ Dicky supplied. ‘He said to tell you.’
‘Thank you, Dicky,’ nodded Jo, appreciative that at least this time he had remembered.
Dicky, she weighed up as she moved around the kitchen, all men want a son, and it seemed that Dicky was the first breakthrough she had had, for of his own accord Dicky had actually spoken to her.
Then she heard:
‘Who’s him?’ Sukey asked her brother. ‘Who told you?’
‘Under the table, of course,’ Dicky’s voice came pertly back. ‘Put the horse in the stable. Abel, the jam label.’
No, not Dicky, Jo eliminated.
Then Amanda came in coolly: ‘I quite like Abel.’
So—Amanda?
‘I like him better,’ Sukey said.
Sukey?
Amanda, Dicky, Sukey, one out of three. Heads the boy. Tails a girl.
Winner? Loser?
Jo stood at the sink, and all at once, uncontrollably, began to laugh.
CHAPTER FIVE
Dicky came into the kitchen and stood looking at Jo. ‘What is funny?’ he asked.
‘Nothing, really.’ Jo took a hold of herself. ‘It’s just that I have to make a choice. Do you know what a choice is?’
‘Of course. Rice pudding or bread and butter pudding at school. But they’re not funny.’
‘No, dear,’ Jo agreed.
‘Grown-ups are funny, though. They laugh at things that aren’t funny.’
‘Like rice pudding and bread and butter pudding,’ Jo agreed. Yes, she decided again, it would have to be Dicky of the trio, the only one so far to speak to her of his own accord. ‘We’ll have dinner now, Dicky, seeing that we don’t have to wait for Abel.’
The meal was a silent one. Dicky, it appeared, had made his contribution for the day, and Amanda and Sukey only spoke when spoken to. It was uncanny, Jo despaired, for children were born communicators, natural chatterers. What had happened to these three that they shrank like snails at a touch, in their case only a verbal touch?
Abel did not come down to Tender "Winds that night. It appeared, Jo thought, that those country conventions of Gavin’s would have very little on which to base any brow-raising.
He turned up the next morning, though, and promptly sent the children into the garden.
‘I have something to tell you,’ he said. ‘I had it yesterday but I didn’t get round to it.’
‘No, only to tossing a coin,’ Jo reminded him coldly.
‘I’m sorry if I upset you, I was a little upset myself.’
‘I didn’t make the rule,’ Jo pointed out. ‘If you’re referring to—’
‘I was referring to it, and I’m sorry for the way I went on. As you said, it wasn’t your doing but his, and in all fairness I have to see his side.’
‘His name is Gavin.’
‘See Gavin’s side. He’s young and ambitious and very naturally he doesn’t want to start off in such an extremely married state.’
‘Extremely married state?’ she queried.
‘Three children must be extremely married. No, it would be asking too much.’
‘I never asked it of him,’ Jo defended herself again.
‘No, but I bet you made a stipulation, a kind of “either you do this or else”.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Accept a child or forget me.’
‘If I had made a stipulation, as you vulgarly put it, it would have been for all three, and anyway Gavin isn’t that kind.’
He shrugged and made no comment.
Biting back more angry words, Jo asked instead: ‘What was it you had to tell me?’
‘My report to you on yesterday’s investigations, Miss Millett. What I managed to discover from various sources, including schools, banks—no solicitor unfortunately—but—’
‘Yes?’
‘The Mines Department.’
‘What?’
‘I thought that would interest you. It did me.’
‘Why did you go there?’ she asked.
‘The bank told me that several deposits to them from Mark Grant had been made through the Mines Department. Of course I followed up the clue.’
‘And discovered?’
‘Absolutely nothing,’ he shrugged.
‘Then why are you telling me? I mean, where does it get me?’
‘Nowhere, but it is a pointer.’
‘You’re suggesting that I should write to the Department?’
‘No, you would be as much a disinterested party in the Department’s eyes as I was, so would receive a similar answer.’
‘Which was?’
‘How are you connected with this? As you leave kindly close the door.’
‘But I am connected,’ she insisted.
‘You are not, Josephine, so face up to it. But use the clue on the kids themselves. A Mines Department naturally enough deals with mines. Perhaps this Mark had made a nickel find or something of the sort and been paid a royalty, perhaps there’s more to come. Probe around. Pump them.’
‘Yes,’ Jo said uncertainly. She wondered if this man called Abel had the faintest idea what he was asking. Pump those three clams!
‘Ask them about their father, their mother, where they were before they were at their school. Get anything at all from them that you can.’
‘Yes,’ said Jo again.
A few minutes went by in silence,
thoughtful minutes. Then:
‘Still doing the elimination?’ Abel asked idly, but Jo knew the question was not in idleness, that he was listening keenly. For all his reassurance that he had known the position was not her doing, that he understood Gavin’s reaction, he was still blaming her and her fiancé. It made Jo answer him flippantly, carelessly, to hide the dismay she, too, felt.
‘Dicky so far,’ she shrugged. ‘He’s points ahead.’
‘Good for Dicky.’ A pause. ‘Or bad?’
‘I thought we’d finished all that.’
‘Yes, I did say so, didn’t I? Sorry, Josephine.’ Abel got up and went to the door. ‘I’m going to work in the plantation today. You start your pumping and I’ll be down later to hear any results.’ He saluted her and went out.
The children were on the verandah, ostensibly playing snakes and ladders, but really conferring under their breath. As Jo approached they made a show of movement to conceal their purpose, and if Dicky had not gone up the snake instead of down, Jo would not have taken any notice. But before she could comment, Amanda said quickly: ‘Playing the proper way gets a bore. We’re doing it averse.’
‘Reverse.’ Jo sat down beside the table. The snakes reminded her of something—the day she had taken the children down to the creek and her advice on snakes. ‘I don’t suppose in a boarding school you know much about snakes,’ she had said, and they had replied, or one of them had: ‘Not in boarding school but once at—’
Then Amanda had clammed up.
But where? Some place where there was a mine? A miner? Their father? Their mother? Well, it was no use waiting for them to come forward with any information and it was no use skirting around. She decided to ask outright. ‘Where used you go at school holidays?’
‘School.’
‘School? but—’
‘If there’s no one, I mean if there’s nowhere for you, you stay on at school.’
‘That must have been disappointing.’
‘No.’
‘Most children like to go home,’ Jo persisted.
‘We didn’t.’
‘I suppose it would depend on where home was.’ Jo cunningly did not make a question of it, she did it intentionally, but she still did not get a response. Also intentional?
The Tender Winds of Spring Page 6
