The Tender Winds of Spring (3 page)

‘And now,’ he said softly, ‘she has done the biggest thing of all.’

With the two hands that had gently shaken her he now gently drew her in. Enclosed her in big strong arms. ‘Cry,’ he said.

‘I can’t.’

‘Still try.’

‘It needn’t be true,’ she persisted.

‘It is. There’s no mistake. This isn’t a dream. Cry.’

For a long while Jo stood there, unbelieving, rebelling.
Not
Gee.
Never
Gee. Never gold and sapphire Geraldine. Not. Never.

‘Cry,’ he said again.

At last she did. She cried like a child into a blue denim shirt and he held and rocked her there until there were no tears left.

CHAPTER TWO

Just
before the tears dried up Jo was conscious of a gentle disengaging of the big encircling arms. The man called Abel, the new banana boss, steadied her for a moment, then went quickly out of the room and out of the house.

He must have come down from the camp in his jeep, and he must have taken something from the jeep, for he returned almost at once. She heard him taking a glass from the old-fashioned sideboard, she heard him pouring something. Then he crossed back to her.

‘Drink, little one,’ he said.

‘What is it?’

‘Just drink it. It will do you good.’

‘What is it?’ Jo started to ask again, but she never finished the question. Abel Passant had lifted the glass to her lips and ostensibly he was encouraging but actually he was forcing her to swallow.

‘Ugh!’ she spluttered.

‘A Scot would be horrified at such a description of his best Highland dew.’

‘Dew?’ she queried.

‘I believe it’s brandy that should be administered, but it was whisky that was in my flask.’

‘It’s very strong.’

‘No water. I wanted you to have it neat, Josephine, for I want you to lie down.’

‘No.’

‘All the same, I believe you will in a moment.’

‘There’s a lot to be done, a lot to be considered.’

‘That’s why you must rest first.’

‘I can’t. I can’t, I tell you. I—I don’t think I ever will again.’ But the last words came a little fuzzily, the strong neat spirits were having their way with Jo at once. The moment she swayed, he had her in his arms, and within seconds she was lying on a bed ... Mark’s? Dicky’s? The girls’? Gavin’s? she did not know or care ... and he was pulling over a rug, drawing a blind and shutting a door.

The bed was rocking and Jo was rocking with it. It could have been a soothing process except that she fought against it, fought desperately.

‘Not,’ she said piteously, ‘not Gee and Mark at all. Someone else. Not a plane but a tree. A big mahogany. Not. Not. Not!’

Then the mesmeric motion began taking over. The furniture instead of moving in front of her was misting. The pain was being blurred by memories.

She and Gee waiting at the end of Tender Winds for the school bus to take them to lessons on the coast.

She and Gee going down to the creek on school holidays with a stick against snakes and a hamper against hungry stomachs.

She and Gee riding with the bananas on the flying fox, that strange but highly practical means of transport, for some of the slopes were so steep a picker could not carry his hand of bananas to the top. When the Queen had come, one hand had been taller than the Queen, and over a hundredweight.

She and Gee lying in the clover and reaching up for a banana whenever they felt like it, an escaped banana of course, golden and sun-ripened and undisciplined.

She and Gee going backwards and forwards on the swing Uncle Mitchell had put up, all carefree summer and all uncaring childhood in the hollows of their hands.

She and Gee growing up eventually and starting beauty diets, only to be stopped by a toppling helping of Aunt’s banana cake.

She and Gee ... she and Gee ...

The mist was breaking. The pain was coming back. Jo got up. She went outside and found Abel Passant sitting at the table.

‘It’s no good,’ she said tonelessly.

‘I didn’t think it would be, but I just wanted you to have a moment before—’

‘Before?’

‘You faced up to it.’

She nodded, and took the chair that he indicated, also drawn up at the table, and opposite to him.

‘First of all—’ she said with difficulty.

‘Yes?’

‘Is it certain?’

‘It is certain,’ he said.

‘Quite certain?’

‘Quite.’

‘What do I do, then? I mean—’

‘Your sister?’

‘Yes.’

‘You leave it to me.’

‘Thank you.’

There was a pause, a long one, then he said gently but deliberately:

‘But you also have to do something else.’

‘What, Mr. Passant?’

‘Not that now, please. Not Mr. Passant. Afterwards, when I’m the banana boss again, that is if you prefer to, but not at this moment.’

‘What are you at this moment, then?’ she asked dully.

‘A friend, I hope.’

‘I mean what’s your name?’ As she said it, Jo rubbed at her forehead as though to rub back awareness. He had told her, she recalled, but she seemed to have forgotten. She still felt cut off, remote, detached. Not present.

‘Abel Passant,’ he prompted quietly. ‘You’ll remember again soon. Abel.’

‘A man called Abel.’

‘Yes, a man called Abel. Call me Abel.’

‘I’ve never known anyone called Abel before.’

‘It has two meanings. Breath: Vanity. I prefer Breath. I love the outdoors, and I like to think my name captures it. On the other hand that might just be my Vanity. Your name is Josephine.’

‘Yes.’

‘Meaning?’

She shrugged. She knew he was only talking to divert her, or at least to give her time. She cut short the diversion and asked directly: ‘Abel, you just said I also had to do something else.’ She paused. ‘What is it?’

‘You have to begin to think of others.’

‘Others?’

‘There are others in this, Josephine. You’re not the only one.’

‘I’m the only twin. We were twins.
Twin
twins, not just sister twins. Geraldine was Josephine and Josephine was Geraldine. Can you understand?’

‘Yes, and sympathise. But it can’t stop at that.’

‘Mr. Passant? I mean man called Abel?’

‘Just Abel will do. No, it can’t stop at that. It can’t stop because Mark Grant was in it, too, and because of Grant, his three children.’

‘I’d never met Mark,’ she said.

‘But your twin had, and presumably loved him.’

‘Yes, Gee loved him.’

‘And Geraldine is Josephine,’ he reminded her. ‘You’ve just said so.’

She thought that over. ‘Yes, you’re right, of course—I have only been thinking of myself. But the pain is so big it—it seems to fill eternity. There just isn’t room for anyone else.’

‘There has to be room. For a period, that is. There has to be temporary room for three children.’

‘Oh, yes, the children. I’d forgotten the children. Where are they?’

‘Being watched over in the stationmaster’s office in town.’ Abel paused. ‘Awaiting your instructions.’

‘My instructions?’

‘There’s no one else to give instructions, Josephine. Not, anyway, at this juncture. Had Mark Grant any relatives, do you know?’

‘I know nothing about him, only that Gee ... that she ...’ Jo’s voice broke off.

‘Well, that all can be untangled later,’ he came in. ‘The immediate thing is what do we do with the kids? They can’t sit in the stationmaster’s office indefinitely.’

‘Perhaps their schools—’ Jo suggested, still in confusion.

‘According to some good woman whom the stationmaster called in to talk to them, the children had finished with their schools, and you know how boarding schools are these days, as fast as a vacancy occurs, a child fills it up. Possibly and probably the children will get back in time, but that’s not
now
.’ He emphasised the now to arouse Jo, and he succeeded.

‘But they’ll come here now,’ said Jo in surprise. ‘Of course they will come here.’

‘That,’ sighed Abel Passant patiently, ‘is what I’ve been leading up to. Why couldn’t you have said so at once?’

‘Why couldn’t you have asked at once? Of course I’ll have them. It’s what Gee would have expected of me. She asked me to help win them for her, do the spadework.’ Jo stopped abruptly at an unmistakable closed-up look in the face opposite to her. ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘What’s wrong? What have I said?’

‘Just about everything,’ he told her baldly. ‘You’re not looking at the situation for them, are you, only for yourself.’

‘No,’ she defended, ‘for Gee.’

‘But Geraldine is Josephine and Josephine is Geraldine, remember? Or,’ drily, ‘so you said.’

‘I remember, but I don’t know the children, do I?’ Jo answered sullenly, for she felt ashamed of herself. She said: ‘Of course I’ll do my best.’

His face still had that closed-in look, but this time he made no comment.

‘I’ll ring town, then,’ he said instead. ‘Get the hire car to bring them out here. By the way ...’

‘Yes?’

‘They don’t know yet.’

‘About—’

He nodded.

‘Oh,’ Jo said.

‘Will I get the good woman to break it?’ he asked when Jo said no more.

‘No—no, don’t do that.’

‘It won’t be an easy job telling them.’

‘But nothing is easy, is it?’ Jo said hollowly, the pain of amputation encompassing her again.

He must have seen her wretchedness, for his face lost its closed look.

‘I’ll be here,’ he told her, ‘if it will help.’

‘Yes, it will help.’

‘Gingerbread men might help, too. Perhaps you could put them back in the oven, or won’t that be necessary?’

‘I’ll put them in.’

‘Good girl.’ He crossed to the phone. ‘I rang before,’ he explained as he dialled, ‘while you were asleep.’

‘Not asleep, drifting.’

He nodded, then spoke into the receiver. When he put the phone down again, he said: ‘They’re leaving now.’

‘They still don’t know?’

‘No. So’... a pause ... ‘it will be up to us.’

Jo moved around the kitchen, attending to the range, altering the position of the gingerbread men so that one side would not be burnt, washing the teacups they had used when he had first come in, washing the glass in which the raw spirits had been. She was conscious all the time of his eyes on her.

At last he broke the silence.

‘It’s not going to be easy.’ He repeated that.

‘No.’

‘Wouldn’t you like someone with you?’

She turned from what she was doing in a small panic. ‘But you said you would help.’

‘Oh, yes, I’ll be here, but I meant someone—well, someone who counts.’

‘Abel—?’ she started to ask, but did not reach the second syllable. She saw that he was looking at her ring, looking at it very significantly. Of course it was only natural that he would think she needed someone as near as a fiancé. As Gavin.

Yet she didn’t, and the realisation shocked her. She loved Gavin, but in this ... well, in this she simply didn’t want him here. Not, anyway, just yet. Later he would help her. Gavin had a very cool head, he would know what was best. But not just now. And yet with love shouldn’t you turn to someone special in sorrow as well as in joy?

‘I won’t ring Gavin yet,’ she said.

‘Not ring your fiancé?’

‘No.’

‘But isn’t that odd?’

‘It’s something I want
not
to do. It’s also,’ she drew a deep breath, ‘nothing to do with you.’

‘If you say so.’

‘I do say so.’

Jo went to the bathroom, combed her hair, rubbed in some lipstick, pinched her cheeks. She must not let the children think they had come to a ghost, she told herself. What would they be like, those three, those young people who were to have become Gee’s young people?
Were. Were.
Oh, stop crying, you mustn’t face them with red eyes. Gee had given an impression of possible difficulties ahead. Not all roses. How did you deal with difficulties when death intruded? Could you hope to sort it out with gingerbread?

She could not have said how long she stood there, but it must have been for some time, for distantly at first, then nearer, she heard a car coming up to Tender Winds, and the plantation was some miles from the railway station. So, she faced up, they’re here. She straightened her shoulders and went out to the verandah. Abel Passant already stood there.

The hire car gave a grunt and halted. Jo saw that Hector was driving it. Hector was a friendly soul, guaranteed to put anyone at their ease. But today he had obviously met his match. The boy he had placed beside; him simply sat there. The two girls in the back seat simply sat as well.

‘Here we are then, ho-ho,’ boomed Hector rather uncomfortably. He got out and came round and opened the two doors.

Abel stepped forward to descend the few stairs of the verandah. Jo came urgently behind him.

‘Don’t ho-ho,’ she begged.

He gave her a quick reassuring look. ‘I won’t,’ he said.

The children were out of the hire car by this time. A tall girl, a short boy and a very small girl. Amanda, Dicky, Sukey. There was little difference in the seniors’ ages, Jo recalled, but in the characteristic way of children the girl had leapt ahead, whereas the boy had more or less stopped still. A little later he would begin to grow again and quickly leave the girl behind.

‘Hullo,’ Jo called.

‘ ’Lo,’ they responded ... at least two of them responded like that. The tall young lady said: ‘Good morning.’