The Tender Winds of Spring (5 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

Gavin
kissed Jo very discreetly. He disliked an outward show, and for the first time Jo was relieved about that. She had always wanted Gavin to let himself relax more, give out. Now she was glad of his understatement because she knew that if he had put his arms around her she would have been embarrassed in front of Abel. She did not know why, all she knew was that she did not want emotion from Gavin, not with Abel Passant watching on.

But when she looked quickly around, there was no Abel.

Before Gavin could ask about the other car, she took her fiancé into the house, and there his embrace was much more abandoned. It rather surprised her. I should have left him by himself before this, she thought whimsically, certainly my absence has made him fonder.

‘I’ve missed you quite intolerably, dear girl,’ Gavin was saying. ‘Only a few hours since you left, scarcely more than a day really, but it seems like forever. When I heard the shocking news over the radio and immediately confirmed it I knew I couldn’t stay away from you any longer. Josie, I even closed the office.’ He looked at her with pride.

‘Oh, Gavin!’ Jo said, impressed.

‘What an appalling thing to have happened, and what you’ve been through, poor sweet. But it’s all over now, my dear, and I’m taking you back with me.’

‘Oh, no, Gavin, I can’t. You see, I have the children here.’

‘So I perceived. They seem a quiet bunch.’ Gavin seemed quite pleased about that, and Jo soon learned why.

‘We’ll take them back with us,’ Gavin said magnanimously.

It was the last thing Jo had expected, and she looked at him tremulously.

‘You—you mean it?’

‘Of course. I only hope they’re as docile on the journey as they are now. Children can be such a trial travelling. Once in town, of course, we can hand them over.’

‘Hand them over?’

‘Yes, dear.’

‘Over where?’

‘Over to some good welfare soul until their future is determined, my dear.’

‘But it’s determined already. I’m taking them.’

‘You’re—’ Gavin looked at Jo incredulously, then after an oblique moment his face cleared, even appeared shrewdly approving.

‘Perhaps you’re right, too,’ he nodded. ‘You did give me the impression that the father was—er—well placed, and after all, the children’s private schools, and the man’s private aircraft ... poor unfortunate fellow ... would bear that out.’

‘Except,’ came in Jo with a composure that surprised her, ‘that they were not expensive schools, Gavin, and that Mark only rented the plane.’

‘What?’

‘That, anyway, is how things are, I’ve been told.’

‘Dear, dear.’ Gavin frowned for a moment. Then he recovered. ‘All the more reason then that we do take them in. If what you’ve just told me is true, if these young people are—well—’

‘Waifs and strays?’ asked Jo bluntly.

‘Your words,’ Gavin said stiffly.

‘Then,’ went on Jo, ‘it’s
not all
the more reason, Gavin. What will become of them if what we thought was available for them is not available at all?’

‘My dear, in this enlightened age I should think you should have no fears about that. Social welfare, especially as regards children, is now quite an established thing. Anyway, it has nothing to do with you, has it? You’re no relation.’

‘My sister would have been, and Gee and I are—were twins.’ Jo’s voice choked.

‘My dear, you’re overwrought, and quite naturally so. But after some more thought, after the service—’

‘We’ve had that already, Gavin. We had it in the garden and—’ Jo stopped. She wondered, not far from hysteria, what Gavin would have said had she finished: ‘And we sang
Hear the pennies dropping
.’

As it was Gavin was a little shocked at the small amount he had heard, and frankly said so.

‘Well, really, dear, it’s nothing to do with me, but—’

‘No, Gavin, it’s not!’ Jo said quite sharply, and he gave her a sharp look back, and then said again:

‘Poor child, you’re overwrought. Now go and get your bag and I’ll take you back at once. The children’—he beat Jo to it—‘can be looked after by that person presumably belonging to that car now outside the house.’ So Gavin had noticed Abel. ‘Who is he, Josie? A welfare officer this soon?’

‘No.’

‘There is a relative of some sort, then? Good. In that case we can leave them safely with him.’

‘The person is nothing to do with them, Gavin.’

‘Yet he’s here?’ Gavin looked at her keenly now.

‘He owns the place,’ Jo said. ‘He’s the new plantation boss.’

‘I see. Presumably he came down here to tell you that your tenancy days are at an end?’ Gavin looked around him with distinct distaste; it was obvious he saw only the chaos and none of the love. Well, looking with him, could she blame him?

‘No, he didn’t,’ admitted Jo, ‘he said I could stay on. His name is Abel Passant and he’s been most helpful.’

‘Which I would have been had you thought to communicate with me, dear. Why didn’t you?’

‘I ... I ... oh, Gavin, it only happened yesterday!’

‘But surely I should have been the first person you would have thought of, turned to.’

‘I couldn’t think. I couldn’t turn. I can’t now, not properly. Oh, Gavin, don’t be angry with me.’

Gavin looked gently down at her. ‘How could I ever be, my dear? But try to look at it my way. I come all the miles out here, rough miles, certainly bad on the tyres, to find you walking down from the mountain with a total stranger. Some fiancés might even get a wrong impression, Josie, they might think if it’s good enough to entertain a man outdoors it’s good enough to entertain him in a house.’

‘But it is his house.’

‘With
you
in it!’

‘Also him.’ Jo meant to say it, but somehow it did not come out. Instead she asked:

‘Would it be so awful with three children in it as well?’

‘My dear, you’re in the country, and you know country conventions. That’s why I wouldn’t stay here myself—not now. Had things been as we thought ... your sister, her husband-to-be here as well—’

‘But they’re not, are they?’ This time Jo was not just near hysteria, there was a definite hysterical note in her voice.

Gavin kissed her soothingly. ‘I’m going back to town,’ he said. ‘I’ll be out again tomorrow. It’s time-consuming for me, and I really can’t afford such wastage, but I realise I’ve expected a little too much of you, that it will take longer than I thought. Now be a brave girl and try to collect yourself. Remember always that I love you, my dear, otherwise would I have given you your ring? Would we be engaged? And dear, don’t, for your own sake, which incidentally entails me, too, now, and so makes it my sake as well, be seen too much with this person.’

‘Be seen out here!’

‘You know what I mean,’ Gavin said a little stiffly. ‘I’m leaving you now, Josie.’ He kissed her gently and left the house. A few minutes later she heard his car going down the track.

Dear Gavin, she thought fairly, he means well and I should have been nicer to him. More important, I should have been honest with him. Tomorrow I’ll tell him that Abel is staying here so there’s no reason why he shouldn’t stay here as well.

Jo, going to the door to see what the children were doing, wondered how Gavin would take that ‘as well’.

She did not have much time to think about it, though. Abel reappeared from somewhere and came into the house. ‘Guest gone?’ he asked.

‘He wasn’t a guest, he was my fiancé. I think it was impolite of you to have hidden yourself.’

‘I thought it was discreet,’ he grinned. ‘I thought he mightn’t like me looking too familiar with the place. Ah’ ... giving Jo a triumphant look ... ‘you gave that a thought, too.’

‘Of course I didn’t. I mean—’

‘Yes, Josephine, what do you mean?’

‘I—I told him you were the new plantation boss, that you owned the house,’ Jo said shortly.

‘Also that I was living in the house?’

‘No. I had no time. Gavin is coming again tomorrow.’

‘Why didn’t he stay on instead of buzzing in and buzzing out again?’

‘Country conventions. Now are you satisfied?’

‘I’m answered,’ Abel replied.

He watched Jo as she began to prepare the evening meal. She did not know whether the children would eat it, but it still had to be prepared.

‘I’m glad he’ll be here tomorrow,’ he said, ‘because I won’t, and I don’t want you to be left moping.’

‘Are you going away?’ She hoped her alarm did not show in her voice. Heavens, she thought, I’ve let myself come to depend on him.

‘Only to Sydney. I want to find out more about the young fry.’ He paused. ‘For you.’

‘Then thank you.’

‘Because very soon,’ he continued, ‘you’re going to have to make your decision about them, aren’t you?’

‘About the children?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve already made it,’ she told him.

‘And when you’ve made that decision,’ he ignored her interruption, ‘you’ll have to tell me so I can help you carry it out.’

‘
You
help me?’

‘If you want the children, you haven’t the remotest chance of getting them on your own. You see, you’re unmarried.’

‘I’m engaged.’

‘No help at all—sorry.’

‘But I’m going to be married.’

‘Not the same as being married. It has to be signed, sealed and delivered, something I think your young man is not falling over in eagerness to make happen. Even,’ he added deliberately, ‘
without
children.’

‘You have no right to say that!’

‘No right to declare the truth?’

‘Truth?’ Jo demanded hotly.

‘Can you honestly—
honestly,
Josephine, state that your fiancé is ready to marry you tomorrow? the day after? next week?’

‘I—we—well, we decided—’

‘Particularly accompanied, as you would be,’ Abel continued ruthlessly, ‘by three minors?’

‘He could,’ Jo said stubbornly. ‘Gavin could. You don’t even know him, so how can you talk like this?’

‘I know men, and of them I know only one who would be willing to marry you, children and all, at the same time unwilling.’

‘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.’