Bride in Flight (10 page)

Fiona’s eyes were bright with unshed tears. “My dear, forgive me. Forget my cruel words. It’s being a redhead makes me so hasty. I thought what had happened to me was about the worst that could have happened—at the time. Later I was glad of everything because it brought me Edward. Kirsty, don’t let it make you bitter. There’ll be more in life for you than disillusionment I found that.”

Kirsty began to shake. Antagonism stiffened her spine, pity made her go to pieces. Fiona was crying, Kirsty couldn’t.

Presently Kirsty said: “I’ve got to ask you again what you’re going to do, because we haven’t much time. Simon and Edward may appear any moment, or the children want us. What should I do?”

Fiona considered it. “Kirsty, I don’t know. I can usually make up my mind quickly about things. Too quickly sometimes. But I honestly don’t know. Men—” she stopped, afraid to go on.

Kirsty took it up for her. “Men might see it differently?”

“Yes. You can’t tell. They hate scenes, they’re more orthodox. I just don’t know. They might think—”

Kirsty said stonily: “They might think I’d put one over you. That I’m not telling the truth. That I’ve fabricated this to excuse what I did. Please be frank. It’s the only way I can arrive at any sort of decision.”

Fiona’s voice was reluctant, “Yes, I’m sure that it’s advisable at this stage. As you say, it’s bound to come out soon. Gilbert’s wife will have to do something. I’m inclined to think that they’re working together in this hushing-up business. Some men can charm reason away. Suppose his wife has caught up with him, and he’s talked her over. She might easily forgive him, agree to say nothing. So he would go back to Queensland, take up his job again. He’s got to live. Well, sooner or later he’ll have to have her with him as his wife ... that would be her price. If not, she would publicize it. But it could be that by now, having stopped your wedding, she doesn’t want to prosecute her husband, lay a charge. So she may bide her time, and later, they may even pretend they’ve just married. “I think something is bound to happen, to come out. It’s a devil of a situation, I—oh, isn’t that like the thing! Here are the men coming. Kirsty, let it play along for a! bit. In a few days it may be cleared up. Give me that paper. I’ll stop Simon buying one at the store by saying I’ve put it in, and when he gets to Haast you can say, ‘Oh, Fiona must have forgotten the paper, after all.’ He’ll not worry, and there may never be another photo, or any reference to the time of flight.

“Oh dear, I wish we didn’t live in such a remote spot and so far from you. You can’t even reach us by phone. We’ve only a radio link at Belle Knowes Station. Listen, the best I can do it to say that
if
it comes out and Simon doesn’t take it the right way, say that
I
knew and advised you to lie low. That
I
didn’t see how else you could have acted. But I won’t breathe a word to Edward. Here they come.”

She thrust the paper deep into the waste-paper basket, seized a hanky, scrubbed at her eyes, moved to the bench and tossed a laughing remark over her shoulder as they came in.

In five minutes they were ready to go. Just as they went out of the room Edward said, “Fiona, you absent-minded beggar, you told Simon you’d put this morning’s paper in, and here it is stuffed into the basket.” He drew it out, straightened it, said, “What a good job I saw it.” He thrust it on top of the magazines Simon was carrying.

Kirsty and Fiona were struck dumb. They lagged behind a little. Fiona whispered: “He won’t have time to read it till tonight when you reach the camp. Perhaps when you stop for lunch you could get rid of it.”

Half an hour later as they passed through the Neck, the narrow strip of land separating the two great lakes, Kirsty thought of something else Fiona had said. She wouldn’t tell Edward. It had been said to reassure her ... but would any wife really be able to keep a secret like that?”

They left Hawea behind, and suddenly from a different angle, the cornflower blue of Wanaka lay before them. “There’s no road on the far side of the lake,” said Simon, “and that’s the side the Campbells live. We go for miles up this side, then the road leaves the lake and we go up by the Makarora River, in the Valley, then through the Pass. We’ll lunch in the camping ground at Makarora to give the kids a break before taking to the Pass.”

The road here was narrow and winding. Kirsty looked down on the waters, rippled by a baby breeze into blue silk, and across to the mountains on the far side, dazzling with snow in the ravines and corries, and glinting with silver in the valleys where the burns spilled into the lake.

She drank her fill of its beauty. This was the lake her mother had known and loved.

She would have appreciated silence to revel in it, but that wasn’t possible with Geordie and Rebecca in the back, fighting madly.

“Isn’t it wonderful what they can find to fight about,” said Simon exasperatedly, “during what should be a peaceful drive. They’ve argued solidly for ten minutes over the number-plate of the last car that passed, when there’s no hope in the whole wide world of ever knowing who was right. I reckon when we get to Makarora we’ll park Mark in the back and bring one of them in front.”

Kirsty leant down and fished a paper bag up from under the seat. “Fiona Campbell gave me a bag of animal biscuits. She knows kids! She put in three of everything. Lions, dogs, camels, tigers, horses and bears.”

Harmony and silence briefly reigned.

They weren’t as thankful for it as they might have been ....for into that silence crept a most disturbing sound. Not the gentle purr of the engine and the rasp of tires on the dusty shingled road, but a knocketty-knock sort of sound. They looked at each other in dismay.

“Engine trouble!”

Simon turned a bend, drew in as far as possible to the side of the road. “Now no one is to get out but me. This road is far too dangerous.”

He left the engine running, lifted the bonnet, peered in. “I expect we’re out of petrol,” hazarded Rebecca. Geordie jeered: “Silly things, girls. It wouldn’t still be going.”

Kirsty turned round, and something in her voice as she said quietly, “You’ll be asking for what you’ll get if you stage a fight when a man has just discovered engine trouble!” reduced the children to a state of neutrality. Not for nothing had Kirsty Macpherson been cottage mother to nine children.

Simon said, “Kirsty, put your foot on the accelerator and rev her up, would you? Gently at first, then increase the roar.”

Kirsty did. Geordie said to her, “Don’t worry, Kirsty, Uncle Simon can fix anything.”

But even Simon couldn’t produce a new part. He was amazingly philosophical about it.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to flag down the next car going to Hawea. One thing, there are always a few at this time of year, though more going the other way at this time of day. I’ll have to hitch a ride and see if I can bring a mechanic back with me. It will take more of a tool-kit than this thing’s got.” He sighed. “I don’t envy you, stranded here for upwards of an hour ... even supposing they have the part and that the mechanic can come right away ... with these three.”

Kirsty looked upwards. “I know there’s no room by the road, and it drops almost sheer to the lake the other side of the fence, but if we could climb up that putting—you could hand Mark up, and over the fence, with the rug and the basket, we could have quite a good time. Could you come up and have some lunch too?”

He shook his head. “No, I daren’t miss a car. There will be more coming this way, and no doubt some good Samaritan would go back, but it would cut into their day—there’s no accommodation on the way, you see, and the most people go through and back in a day.”

Kirsty said, “All right but I’ll pour you a cup of tea here, and you must have a couple of sandwiches.”

He drank it down, then they scrambled up, waved goodbye to Simon, and found a grassy plateau that gave the children freedom and provided a wonderful view of the lake.

It was all of twenty-five minutes before they saw a car stop and Simon get aboard. Kirsty hoped Wanaka would have the part and they would not have to get it from Cromwell.

One thing, she thought happily, she was going to be able to get rid of that wretched paper. They had their lunch, frisked around in the tussocks, explored a little stream bubbling over some rocks, rinsed out the cups, and, when the children were not looking, Kirsty screwed the paper up into a ball and wedged it under some rocks in the bed of the stream where it would soon be pulp.

The children splashed happily in the stream, building a dam that was a minor miracle of engineering, and Mark fell fast asleep in Kirsty’s arms where she sat under the shade of a gnarled old ngaio tree that leaned out from the rocks. There was a patch of bush nearby triangled into the gully.

It was quite idyllic, Kirsty thought, the yellow of the dry. hillside, the cornflower blue of the lake, the azure of the sky, glistening snows on the uplifted peaks, and rising above the plash of waters down the hill, a chime of bells in such a variety of notes it sounded like a carillon, then, like a planned finale, the tu-whee-tu-whee-tu-whee-oo of the woodland harpist.

It didn’t need after all, Geordie’s whispered, “It’s a
tui
.”

This was enchantment. Kirsty forgot, temporarily, the cloud hung over her.

Geordie’s voice, as befitting a bird-watcher, was just a wisp of sound, “There it is ... in that
kowhai,
halfway up.”

The sun gleamed on the black, iridescent feathers, on the impeccable white wattles at his throat—no wonder they called it the parson bird—then, with a taffeta swish of feathers, the
tui
flew away.

A horn sounded below. Simon was back, with aid. It took half an hour to fix.

They left the lake for the spreading valley of the Makarora and the bush began to enclose the road at times. Here were huge herds of cattle, wide riverbends, wealthy-looking sheep stations, and interspersed with the bewildering variety of evergreens, English trees planted by pioneers homesick for autumn a century ago.

The scenery became spectacular, with gashes in solid mountains where river waters had split through to form gorges where their waters could join other rivers. There were rapids where there was no blue water, just froth and churning spray, waterfalls spilling from great heights, some misting out and blown away in tulle-like transparency, others crashing in one leap to the river, some almost hidden by bush, secret, lovely ways.

It was stiflingly hot now, with the humidity of, a glasshouse, and though the close-growing forest giants gave an illusion of shade that was pleasant, the shut-in valleys prevented the breeze that would have been so welcome from giving them relief. “My back is soaking wet,” said Geordie.

They all laughed. Kirsty said, “I ought not to be feeling it, after Australia, but the humidity is terrible.”

Simon nodded. “That’s what maintains this terrific growth on what is, after all, a comparatively thin layer of peat on rock. Annual rainfall of three hundred inches! No wonder we’re finding the last stretch of the road a roadbuilder’s nightmare. Never mind, kids, I guess you’ll find it cooler through the Pass, you often meet up with a cool breeze off the Tasman there. We’ll not really hurry, either, for they’ll think we’ll want hot water and put the range on, I suppose. No electric stoves, or water heating, of course, the power plant won’t stand it.

“My word, we were lucky getting that house. We might have had to split up and use two. The houses there aren’t constructed to cater for a housekeeper and uncle. I mean we need the extra bedroom.” He grinned at Kirsty. “I ought to have married you before we left!”

It gave Kirsty the most extraordinary feeling.

Geordie said consideringly, “Well, couldn’t you get a minister to fly in?”

They both laughed, and Kirsty decided she’d imagined that feeling.

Simon said easily, “Well, it is an idea, but as I managed to get a place with an extra room, I’d better not waste it.” He went on, “A cold shower would be heaven at the moment. The perspiration is trickling down between the back of my knees and the seat, it feels horrible. I wish I’d left my long trousers on. Tell you what, we’ll stop at the next river flat, and put the soft drinks in the water to cool them and have a bathe. Perhaps we could air our clothes off.”

They donned their bathing-suits, found a pool safe enough for even Mark to sit in and splash and one for themselves big enough to swim across in three strokes. They did not dare go further afield, leaving the children.

“You have to be terrifically careful anyway, even grownups,” said Simon. “These ever-changing rivers are treacherous.”

By the time they wanted to come out of the water the drinks were deliciously cool and went well with Fiona’s wedge of pie. Kirsty squeezed out some orange juice for Mark. Their clothes had dried out fairly well.

They were just bestowing the picnic hamper when Geordie said it. “We’ve got a flat ... look!”

“No!” groaned Simon. “What next? Do you know I’ve been on the Haast for years and never had a puncture on the road. Gosh, what will be the next thing!”

“I don’t know,” said Geordie, taking him seriously. “But Mum always says things happens in threes.”

Kirsty decided she’d better divert the attention of these Job’s comforters. “See who can find the most colored stones. From this side of the bank only, and no wet ones. They go a different color.”