The Tender Winds of Spring (14 page)

Well, perhaps it was the best this way after all. No doubt they would seek out Abel, pour out some kind of garbled story to him. Abel, being Abel, would listen gravely, note their distressed state and then come down to find out what was going on. Truths would tumble out. The relief of having Abel take over made Jo almost lightheaded. The nightmare would be finished, she thought. She would tell Abel about the children’s strange obsession about the valley, tell him about the patterned imprint, tell him about a telephone ring in the middle of the night. ‘A catch of a breath, that’s all I heard, Abel,’ she listened to herself describing in advance. ‘Help us, Abel. Tell us what to do.’ And Abel would help and tell.

As happy as she had been depressed before, for Abel would have a solution, Jo reached Tender Winds and ran up the steps to the verandah, then into the house.

She busied herself with dinner, putting on extra vegetables, for it looked like five places tonight, since the children would certainly bring Abel back with them. She sang as she worked. It would be good to have a man about the house again.

When she heard the small noise in one of the rooms down the hall she dismissed it at first as the blind tapping against the sill. A wind was coming up, she had noticed that by the bending banana palms as she had returned from the fox. If it blew hard enough through the open window it would scatter the things that the children had collected and left around. Drawings of engines in Dicky’s room, nursing hints and paper dolls in Amanda’s and Sukey’s room.

She must find the room where a window had been left too widely open, and fasten the catch.

She marched down the corridor.

From the shadow of the first room something ... someone ... stepped quickly, quietly out to kill her startled scream with a brutal hand over her mouth. The other hand slipped down and dosed round her throat. It tightened and remained there, adding vicious pressure every time Jo tried to move.

Jo stood there, terrified and trapped.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Somewhere
in Tender Winds a clock chimed. Jo counted the strokes and knew it would soon be dark. The children would hold out wherever they were until the last moment, and then come running in.

He
would be here.

Who was he? Who was this frightening man who stood with one hand over her mouth and the other hand round her throat? What did he want?

The chimes had stopped now and the clock’s tick had taken over. The house was deadly quiet, so quiet that, as well as her own uneven breathing and his deeper, also uneven breaths, Jo could actually hear the seconds click past. She also could hear all the other, usually unnoticed and unheard noises of a house, a breeze turning over something somewhere, furniture sighing as furniture does if you listen.

Still he imprisoned her.

Perhaps three minutes went by like that. It seemed like three years. Then he took the hand away from her mouth but still kept the other hand round her throat.

He said: ‘If you scream—’

‘I won’t,’ she said faintly.

‘I was going to say if you scream it will be useless. There’s no one to hear. Passant has gone away. The kids will wait until one of the plantation men brings them down. They’re scared out of their wits.’ He gave a low hateful laugh.

‘Please let me go. I won’t scream. You’re hurting me.’

‘So long as you’ve got the idea.’

‘I have.’

The man released Jo and she rubbed her aching throat.

‘If you hadn’t come in when you did this needn’t have happened,’ the man said. ‘I had no fight with you.’

‘Then who?’

‘Who do you think? Take a good long look at me. Come on, miss, take a real good look. Who?’

She stared at him in disgust at first, and then in horrified realisation. She tried to conceal her feelings, but it was no use, he read the recognition and the dismay in her face.

‘Oh, yes, it’s all there, isn’t it?’ he smiled evilly. ‘Amanda’s mouth, the boy’s chin, the young kid’s eyes. Oh, yes, I’m their father.’

‘Their father! But—’

‘But you thought they were orphans? Oh, no, far from it, my dear.’

‘Their mother—’

‘June? I don’t know where she is and I hope she never comes back. Not that there’s any chance, she had no more time for the brats than I had. When Mark took over, it was like a lottery win,’ he laughed.

‘Mark Grant?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then who are you?’

‘Grant too. Not all that surprising, it’s scarcely an unusual name, is it?’

‘Related?’ she asked.

‘To old sobersides? Oh, no.’ Another laugh.

‘Did you’... Jo took a deep breath ... ‘did you know he had died?’

‘Of course. Why otherwise would I be here?’

‘You mean you’ve come to collect the children?’

‘I didn’t mean that, but it does give me an idea.’

‘What kind of idea?’

‘Of taking advantage of a very obvious fact. You’re keen on these kids, aren’t you? Surely something can come from that.’

‘What?’ Jo asked.

‘A little hand-out to stay away?’ he suggested craftily.

‘I have no money.’

‘But you know someone who has. Passant, perhaps? But we won’t discuss that now. Time enough later. What I’m after at this moment, and what I might have found by myself and save you all this trouble, is a map.’

‘Map?’ she queried.

‘Of a mine. Very moderately profitable in the beginning, indeed so moderate that I took off for fresh fields ... for a consideration, of course.’

‘What kind of consideration?’

‘Cash,’ he said with brutal frankness, ‘in return for three kids.’

‘You sold your children!’ Jo gasped.

‘Put it that I let Mark take over while I looked around somewhere else. Their dear mother’ ... a low laugh ... ‘had already done that.’

‘But why would you want a map? You must know where the place is?’

‘Wrong. I never worked the find, if find it could be called. Mark had found possibilities and told me. We’d been partners up in New Guinea, and Mark,’ another laugh, ‘was a man of honour. But when he added that there was a lot of hard toil to it, I decided to leave that to him, so settled our partnership as regarded that venture with the cash and the brats.’

‘And why have you changed your mind now?’ asked Jo.

‘Because I’ve had second thoughts. If the place was producing enough to educate three children, producing enough to win a good-looker as I’ve been told your sister was, and looking at you I can believe that, then I could be on to something.’

‘But it wouldn’t be yours, would it?’

‘You mean morally?’ he smirked.

‘And legally.’

‘We’ll put aside the morals and concentrate on any legality. Although we’d been partners in New Guinea, as I said we had dissolved that.’

‘For a consideration.’ Jo could not help herself.

‘Exactly. But legally—well, it made no difference, did it?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Name of
Grant?’
he smiled thinly. ‘
Mark
Grant? Oh, yes, there were two Mark Grants. A coincidence, and I’ve never used the name. Instead I got Max. But two Mark Grants all the same—him, me. I won’t add take your pick of us, because he’s dead.’

‘You’re horrible!’ she whispered.

‘But I’m still Mark Grant and still the father of those children. A blood test would soon establish that.’

‘But that’s not what you want, is it? You want a map.’

‘After which we’ll go into the matter of some shut-up money. But the map first. I think the girl has it.’

‘There are two girls,’ Jo reminded him.

‘The older one, of course. Yes, it would be her. She always kept everything, the sly little piece.’

‘But how did she get it?’

‘Mark must have given it to her, he was nuts about those kids.’

‘He mightn’t have given it to her.’

‘He would. I knew him very well, and he was a stickler for things being done properly. Every time he went underground in New Guinea he left his identity with someone reliable, along with the way he wanted his money, if any, spread out.’ Another laugh. ‘He wouldn’t have had any money to leave when he crashed, it would have gone on paying me off for the brats, on the kids’ schooling, on impressing his bride-to-be, but, knowing Mark, he would have seen that that map was put in a proper place, and what better place, if his fiancée was going to be with him on the plane, than with the eldest child. Also, he’d know Amanda. Amanda would never lose it, never let it go. But by heaven she will this time, or—’

A voice Jo could hardly recognise as her own asked: ‘Or what, Mr. Grant?’

‘Or she’ll get what she’s always got, what they all always got from me.’

‘You’ve been cruel to them,’ she gasped, suddenly realising.

‘Put it that I’ve used a father’s prerogative.’

‘Cruelty.’

‘Please yourself, but kids have to be controlled.’

‘They’re frightened of you.’

‘They’re terrified,’ he corrected coolly. ‘Just as you were a few moments ago.’

‘You’ve ill-treated them,’ she repeated.

‘I’ve made them
mind
,’ he said.

‘Did Amanda see you that day?’

‘Yes. I’ve been roughing it in that storehouse for a week, sizing up the place.’

‘Did you speak to her?’

He grinned. ‘I had no need to, she was off like a flash.’ He added: ‘Like you.’

‘What do you intend now?’

‘I’ve told you. One map. One hand-out.’

‘How do I know you won’t be coming back?’ she asked.

‘You just don’t, do you? So you give.’

‘I’ll report you to the welfare authorities.’

‘They won’t touch a father. A paternal connection is sacrosanct, didn’t you know? A father is holy.’

‘I could tell them—’

‘And no one would listen. The map,’ he demanded again.

‘I don’t know where any map is. Amanda is secretive.’

‘Give me five minutes with her and I’ll cure her of that.’
‘No.
No
!’
Jo protested.

‘Then find it. Not now, you fool, the kids will be in at any moment.’

‘Isn’t that what you want?’

‘I’d sooner it was done quietly, and I think you would, too, for the brats’ sake. Just get Amanda aside and shake it out of her. Tell her if shaking doesn’t do it, I’ll find another way. She’ll remember about that.’

‘I’ll tell the police,’ Jo threatened.

‘And get nowhere. I’m Grant and the kids are mine. Oh, I know I’ve been a naughty parent’ ... now a sickening mock-contrite change of voice ... ‘but any wandering I’ve done has been only with the kids in view. The law leans heavily to the family. Always has, always will.’

‘When Abel comes—’ she began.

‘He’ll be the same. No one wants to buy into a domestic row. I’m going now—I heard the creak of the fox descending. I’ve been up and down so much I should know the sound. I’ll see you when you’re ready for me at the old storehouse. Don’t try anything funny, because it won’t be funny, for you or for them.’ He nodded his head to the track, from which Jo could now clearly hear steps coming.

‘If he means anything to you,’ Grant added, ‘don’t involve Passant. I don’t feel he’d come to the party, but if he did ...’ He gave another of the crooked smiles.

‘All right, Josephine ... oh, yes, I know all about you, your name, your love life ... go out now and meet them. Do your act. But don’t forget I’m watching. Also waiting. And that I don’t like waiting too long.’.

He put his hand round her throat and tightened it for a hideous second; then he released her and when she steadied herself enough to look round, he was gone.

She went out to the verandah, and there, trudging along the track, were the three children.

‘You’re very naughty.’ She wondered dully if they heard the crack in her voice.

‘We’re sorry,’ they said.

‘There was nothing in the valley.’ No, but there was
here.
They did not comment, so she asked: ‘Did you see Abel?’

‘He’s gone to Sydney.’ So that man
had
known. ‘Stanley brought us down.’

‘How long will Abel be away?’

‘A week.’

A week ... Abel away a week ...

‘Now come along in,’ Jo said.

She served out the dinner, but found she could not touch hers. She hoped they would not notice ... but Sukey did.

‘Can’t you eat ’cos you have a sore froat?’ she asked.

‘It isn’t sore, darling.’

‘Your neck is red.’

‘I—I was trying on a scarf and I tied it too tight.’

Across the table Amanda looked at Jo, looked at her with growing horror. But she did not say a word. Somehow they got through the meal, then Jo locked up the house. When she did a double check Amanda did it with her, still not speaking. Then they went to bed.

At midnight the phone went again, and Jo went out and picked up the receiver.

‘Yes?’

No answer.

Jo put the phone down. She knew she was being warned.

The next day was a day that Jo would remember with distaste for the rest of her life.

Nothing happened, but the atmosphere was so strained, so tense, that you could almost feel a heavy weight pushing you down. Jo knew by that unguarded look of despair in Amanda’s face last night that Amanda was aware that Jo had met their father. But Amanda still said nothing. She was not sure about Dicky, or whether Amanda had spoken to him. Amanda would be very conscious of her position as eldest, but there was a definite unease, too, about the boy. Sukey, the echo, as ever absorbed their moods as blotting paper absorbs ink. She was quiet and troubled, as no small child should be, but every time Jo tried to comfort her she shrank like a snail into a shell. Poor little snail. Poor children!

It was a measure of relief when Gavin rang. But not for long. Gavin, never a good listener, as Jo was realising now, hardly heard her.

‘Josie my dear, I should have been in touch before—that ghastly near-fatal crash, I mean. Really Passant had no right to take you over the range. But when I heard all was well, I thought it would be wiser not to bother you for a while. Also, Josie, we’ve been shockingly busy in here.’

‘Gavin, can you come out?’ she asked anxiously. ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘I told you to take your time with your decision, Josie.’ A slightly annoyed note now. ‘Please don’t hurry things on my account.’

‘Gavin, I have to see you,’ Jo insisted.

‘Really, dear, it’s very inconvenient. You know how it is at this time of year.’

‘Gavin, come out. Come out and help me.’ That was a mistake. Gavin had always disliked what he described distastefully as histrionics.

‘Really, Josie, where is my calm, collected girl?’

‘Gavin, can you lend me some money?’ That was a bigger mistake still.