The Man From the Valley Read online

  “Yes.”

  “Did she need anything else?”

  “Virginia’s different.” He was silent a while. “She’s a natural, you see, she always wanted a farm of her own, she was born for the land. Besides that...” But he must have had second thoughts on what he started to say, for he closed his lips.

  She waited a long time. When at last she had given him up, had decided he had categorized her as too nosy, he began to speak again.

  “Since you’re so determined, and since I won’t be seeing you any more, not after Sydney, anyhow, I’ll tell you. Ginny came to me because what she wanted, she wasn’t going to get.”

  “You mean ... land?” Terese interpreted.

  “And the man to run it with. Understand now what I mean?”

  “No. No, I don’t.”

  “A husband.”

  “He—he...” Terese’s voice trailed off.

  “He didn’t turn up trumps, this feller, or I should say not the sort of trumps she demanded, so she came out as a jilleroo to Pickpocket instead. That’s why it’s different with Ginny, that’s why it doesn’t matter that there’s only a strip and nothing else. She asks nothing else. Now”—Joe turned to Terese—“do you see?”

  “I don’t see.” She said it almost urgently. For some strange reason she could not let this place, this Backdown, slip out of her grasp. “There must be some other women,” she insisted, “there can’t be only your jilleroo.”

  “Of course there are women, though only a few. Some wives, a few daughters, several cooks. Homeward Bound has a kind of governess—trust Arn to look after his kids.”

  Homeward Bound. Again that curious throb.

  “Then why shouldn’t I like it?”

  “I told you, it’s not the city.”

  “I don’t want a city again, not ever, not ever.” She was unaware that her voice had risen, had achieved an edge.

  The old man had turned in his seat to look at her, look first in kindly question and then in shrewd knowledge. She felt the burning red mounting her cheeks. None the less she looked levelly back at him, for all her embarrassment, almost glad that he had guessed.

  When he said in gruff kindness, “That way for you, too, was it?” she said simply, without explanation, excuse, adornment, “Yes.” The relief of admitting it at last was almost like losing a pain. She seemed at once to be standing outside her anguish, looking at it in a detached way, deciding how to defeat it, or at least how to live with it, how to go on from there.

  An hour went by. The old man closed his eyes and seemed to sleep. Terese closed her eyes, too, but she did not sleep. Homeward Bound, Dawson’s place, Homeward Bound, Dawson’s place, for some absurd reason she kept hearing it in the whirr of the engines. Homeward Bound. That meant going home. Suddenly it was an almost unbelievably beautiful thought.

  “Joe...” she said urgently, unaware of the deep need in her voice. “Joe...”

  He opened his eyes and blinked.

  “Could I go there, too?”

  He knew at once where she meant. “There’s nothing for you. I told you. No store to serve at, no office to clerk at, no work at all for a girl.”

  “Cook?”

  “The wives do that, except down at the lumber camps, and I doubt if a slip like you could handle that sort of grub.”

  “A jilleroo?” she almost begged.

  “Not much offering there, either, the plateau’s too small, though I suppose if you were a country lass...”

  “I was born in a country village.” Her voice was eager.

  “Do farm work?”

  “N-no.” She had to admit that, and was silent a discouraged moment. “I was a librarian,” she said futilely. A librarian, she thought disgustedly, in a place of high mountains, deep valleys and a plateau. A librarian.

  But the desolate admission had done something. The old man clicked up the incline of his adjustable chair. “Books, eh?” His voice was alert.

  “Yes.”

  “You really know books?”

  “Of course.”

  “How to buy ’em, how to fix ’em, how to dole ’em out, how to do all that?”

  “I told you, Joe, I’m a librarian.” Terese rattled off her qualifications, but she could see he was not listening.

  “There’s another thing.” He was saying it warningly to himself, almost, thought Terese, puzzled, as though he was trying to put a brake on too-fast thoughts. “You’d have to be able to handle a wheel. Handle it properly. Not just Sunday driving, but knowing what you’re about.”

  “I drive, Joe. I’ve driven for years.”

  “Through English lanes.” He brushed her claim aside. “Perhaps, but you still have to be a driver for that, lanes can be narrow, if they have high hedges they can be blind hazards. Your Backdown roads...”

  “Tracks.”

  “Don’t have to have all the dangers.” She said it defensively, but she also said it in appeal.

  He ignored the appeal. He snapped, “It would have to be a four-wheel drive.”

  “I could learn.”

  “Two gear controls, one for the front pair and one for the back.”

  “When do I begin?” she actually dared.

  He did not answer that. He reclined his chair again and closed his eyes in a manner that indicated unmistakably that this time he was not to be disturbed. Reluctantly, Terese had to comply. When lunch roused him, he only talked trivialities, refused any breakthrough, and over afternoon tea he talked cricket with the passenger across the aisle.

  The second day he deliberately found someone else to sit with, he ignored Terese, but on the third and final morning of the flight to Australia he shuffled back.

  “All right,” he grinned widely.

  “You mean ... oh, you mean...”

  “Books,” he nodded. “A man can’t live without ’em. Arn Dawson has always said that.”

  And what Arn Dawson says, Terese gathered, even in her mounting excitement, undoubtedly goes. But aloud she only acclaimed joyously, “A library! A library at Backdown?”

  “Around Backdown,” he corrected, “and not the sort you’re thinking of, not a room with a desk and a calendar and a phone, not like that at all. Backdown is different, you see. Sometimes people can’t come in for weeks, so you go to them instead.”

  “Go where? And how?”

  “They call it the Bookmobile at some places, the Traveling Library at others, but call it what you like, I reckon that Arn is right when he says it should be the first thing of all. I’m no scholar like Arn, but even I can see that. Books, Arn always says, books for Backdown.”

  But Terese did not want to hear about this man Dawson, in spite of the fact that he owned Homeward Bound, that name that set that pulse throbbing in her temple, she wanted to hear where she came in.

  But she didn’t, it seemed, not until Arn approved.

  “Do you have to wait for him?” she appealed.

  “Yes,” Joe said. It was a final yes.

  He went on with his account of Backdown. It wasn’t planned, he said again, it just happened. It was started years ago when two young men went bush from Glen Ingle ... that was one of the big New England towns.

  “Went bush?”

  “Left the bright lights, the big smoke. Arn’s dad and I... ”

  “You were one of the two young men?”

  Joe nodded. “We had the idea to go after the good oil, the eucalyptus, Terese, we were going to distil it ... Chaps are doing that right now in Backdown at Medicine Bend.”

  “One of my stops?” Terese claimed eagerly, forgetting that Arn Dawson had to agree first.

  Joe warned, “Not so fast!” But he grinned. “We didn’t bother about that good oil, Terese, we just stood.” His old eyes remembered and dreamed. “There it was, back down from everywhere, surrounded on four sides by almost perpendicular precipices, criss-crossed by deep valleys, so thick at places you had to hack your way through with a jungle knife, but full of magnificent timber, sassafras and
red cedar, and when we followed up the slopes of the cedar with our eyes we could see what lay on top.”

  “The plateau,” Terese breathed.

  “Yes. It looked all golden from where we stood, like a promised land, then when we got up there, it took some climbing, we found that it was as good as it had seemed—small, mind you, but that soil was fairly crying out for use.”

  “So you stopped there?”

  “Living on what?” scorned Joe. “Perched on top of the world with only a jungle knife and a billy between us. No, we came down again, and had it not been for the sapphire, I suppose, there wouldn’t have been any Backdown.”

  “But sapphires...”

  “All the New England is gem country. Agates, grass stones, amethysts, yes, there’s plenty of the semi-precious and a little of the precious there for the grubbing, not a big fortune, but...”

  “But you made one?”

  “We were filling in time,” Joe recalled, “grubbing around the creek bed before we turned in, and there it was, blue as a summer day. It was a good size and a fine stone, and even divided between two we could see it would still pay well. But”—Joe had grown serious—“we had to decide, of course.”

  “Decide what?”

  “Arn Dawson... Arn’s dad was Arn before Arn... knew more about the gem angle than I did. He reckoned there might be one other big find, but it could take a lifetime. So we had to decide between what might be and what was. Down there among the sassafras and cedar and looking up through the cedar to the plateau it didn’t take long. Those big trees were alive. So were the ferns and the staghorns that would be crushed and kicked aside once the prospectors got the wind and started in. So were the crops and the stock alive that the plateau could grow and raise. So we climbed up to Glen Ingle again, sold our sapphire on the quiet and bought up the land instead. New Englanders thought we were crazy buying out there, with no entry except down a mountain, no way out but up again, but Arn had looked down to the valley and I had looked up to the plateau, and we had different ideas.”

  “What happened then, Joe?”

  “A lot in a pretty short time when you consider the place is right back down. Yes, that’s how it got its name. The lumber started up and when it became big enough lines were set and a timber train run from Arrowdale, another New England town, to fetch the logs in. Cutters and sawyers started, a veneer mill got going, the eucalyptus distillery began, then Arn allowed smaller lumbermen to get a footing.”

  “Arn did?” Terese wondered where Joe, his partner in discovery, came in.

  “It was all his, you see,” related Joe. “With his sapphire share he bought out the bottom and I bought out the top. Only mine’s dwindled, Terese. I never married, like Arn did, and marriage is a very settling thing.”

  If you can get married. The thought intruded sharply. “Yes,” Joe was reminiscing, “Arn chose the bottom, I chose the top. Whenever we’d go into the Arrow or the Ingle for drinks folks would call me the Man from the Plateau and Arn would be the Man from the Valley. I’m out of the picture now, or near enough, but the next Arn inherited the tag. The Man from the Valley, that’s Arn.”

  “Why did he call his place Homeward Bound?”

  “His mother, the first Arn’s wife, chose it. Susan was English, like you. It’s my guess she named it Homeward Bound because she hoped what they made out of it would make her that as well.”

  “Make her homeward bound,” murmured Terese. Would another English girl feel like that? She wanted to ask Joe if Susan did return to England, but there were other things to learn.

  “I’m still not clear," she puzzled. “If Backdown was only a handful of minutes over the top to the New England towns, but it might as well be as far as...”

  “That’s right,” Joe cut in. “No entry and no exit, except by Shank’s pony, only now, of course, you can come by air. Or”—a sly grin—“by the timber billy, but only logs could survive that grade.” He indicated the steepness with the edge of one palm balanced on top of the other.

  “But the sheep, the stock...?”

  “I flew the sheep in by the Cessna, our small plane, a couple at a time. I only started them this year because Ginny wanted them, but old Arn helped me bring my stock down the mountain from Glen Ingle, along the same track we blazed in the beginning, soon after we bought Backdown. It took us six months, and we vowed we’d never do it again. I bred them, bred successfully, and in time supplied the rest.” For a while they both sat in silence, Joe with his memories of nervous beasts slipping down hazardous tracks, of whips cracking, Terese with her wonder.

  “You really are isolated,” she murmured at length.

  “Yes, I told you, we’re right back down.”

  “How about doctors, Joe?” she asked.

  “Folk fly out for that now, though at one time they had to go up the mountain. But Arn, young Arn, got this community chest going, the one that’s going to pay for you, girl, and the little Cessna was our first buy.”

  Terese said, impressed, “A plane would be a big purchase.”

  “It was. It took all we had. I beggared Backdown for months.”

  “Pickpocket,” she smiled.

  “Yep, that’s Joe. But it paid dividends. No one in Backdown now has to wait for a doctor.”

  “But an emergency, Joe?”

  “Then a doctor flies in instead of the patient flying out. A flying doctor, yet only a few miles from panels of doctors. Crazy, isn’t it, but then it’s a crazy land.”

  “How frequent is the plane service?”

  “Infrequent. It’s not official, you see, we’ve financed it ourselves. Also the strip’s not very sound yet, the craft has to be light. That’s another want down for the community chest.” He sighed.

  “How deep is that chest, Joe?” She had heard the sigh.

  “Well what’s in it doesn’t ring as much as those ringing names,” he admitted ruefully. “Most of the timber families who make good move off when they’ve saved enough. That’s where you’ll come in.”

  “I?”

  “The books. Something to help keep them there. Oh, they get their reading through the mail, the kids are educated that way, but it’s not the same and never will be, so Arn...”

  Terese said it before Joe could, “So Arn says.”

  “Yes, so Arn says,” nodded Joe, seeing nothing amiss, taking it for granted that she should admit this Arn Dawson the same as he did.

  “There’s no certainty that you’ll be signed on, Terese, I told you that. Arn has the final word.”

  “Why?” she dared to ask.

  “Because he’s the biggest giver, that’s why, yet not just that, either, it’s because—well, because he’s Arn.”

  She would have liked to have challenged that, but she restrained herself.

  “The other Arn, your Arn...” questioned Terese.

  “He’s under the red cedars now.” The blue eyes took on the faded look again. “Susan, too. It’s a long time ago. I’m an old man.”

  She was quiet a moment with Joe, but her thoughts were racing ahead of her.

  “Do I wait in Sydney until I’ve been duly approved?” she asked presently.

  “No, you’ll come with me. You’re my first real bite and I’m not letting you off the hook.”

  “But if Mr. Dawson—if I’m not finally approved?”

  “Then you can help Ginny on the farm until I fly you out again.” Before she could voice any dissatisfaction over this indefinite arrangement, before she could tell him she had changed her mind, Joe went hastily on.

  “You’ll see country you’ve never seen before and never will again. You will be in a place that’s many places and among people who are many people, because that’s how Backdown is. You’ll—you’ll...”

  “Stop!” she told him humorously. “I was coming, anyway, Joe.” Their eyes, faded blue, young gray, Terese’s shining for perhaps the first time in weeks, met in understanding and mirth.

  Joe didn’t tell her any more, but af
ter all was she really entitled? He was flying her up to Backdown, he was housing her at Pickpocket, paying her for it, he was putting her case to Arn Dawson, he was backing her, in fact.

  Joe’s backing stiffened her spirits. It stiffened them when they landed some hours later at the Glen Ingle airfield. Most of all it stiffened them when Joe pointed to a flimsy aircraft tuning up on a shorter adjoining strip, and said, “That’s why I cut you out of Sydney. I had a notion Pete might be crossing this afternoon.”

  Terese climbed out of the big plane behind Joe, she followed him across the field, climbed up again into the waiting Cessna, only giving the brightly painted Glen Ingle terminal a quick wistful look, all the time feeling unreal, unsubstantial, infinitely small and pinched.

  The smile she returned to the breezy pilot had a quiver to it. Backdown, she was thinking, back down from everywhere, that’s what Joe had said. Country you have never seen before and never will. A place that is many places, people who are many people. Everything good and everything bad. Different, unaccustomed, strange. And she, Terese Staples, was going there. For a moment she experienced pure panic, all this was a dream, she had to get out, go back. But it was too late. The Cessna moved down the runway.

  Then without any warning, almost in an instant, a mountain grandeur was reaching toward her, deep vast valleys were looking skyward, jutting pinnacles straining up and a loveliness almost primeval, a beauty that looked older than anything else on earth, was encompassing her. Trees rode the mountains, the gorges, the precipices. There were trees wherever she looked, in only one place did they not command the scene. Here, instead, there was a wide pasture, a golden summit, a summit that spread out lushly, but was stopped by cliff edges on four sides. The plateau, she thought.

  They were coming down again, it had only taken a handful of minutes as Joe had told her. The Cessna was running along a strip edged with dandelions. There was no building in sight, there was not even an encompassing fence, just that one narrow strip cleared of weed.

  And through the surrounding dandelions, her hair as naturally pale as their petals but even then sun-streaked here and there, strolled a tall, slim girl.

  The thing that struck Terese was the casualness of the girl’s greeting. After some fourteen thousand miles she would have expected something more, had she been Joe, than that easy “Hi”, that nonchalant nod. Ginny gave the same acknowledgment to Terese when Joe introduced her.