The Tender Winds of Spring (11 page)

After lunch a gift all round from Abel, bought at the little store, the girls taking as long over their decision between white or black opal, whether to settle on a pendant or a brooch, as they had on the day Jo had taken them to town to buy presents. Then Abel looked at his watch and said they must make a start back to the coast, for the Gibraltar must be crossed in full daylight, there were tricky patches over the range.

After waving goodbye to the friends they had made, they went back to the strip again, and within minutes were in the air and heading east.

For a while the magic stayed with them all. Dicky watched the Cessna panel once more with deep absorption, the two girls tried on their opals, Jo looked down at the scene below and to the shadow of their craft travelling with them over the vast plain, Abel applied himself assiduously to the controls, particularly so with a small boy’s critical eyes on him.

Then the alchemy began to diminish.

The girls put away their gifts and sat listless, not bothering to look down even when Jo pointed out some highlight. Dicky turned away from the controls and simply did nothing. Jo still looked down, but she saw little. It’s not just listlessness with them, she was thinking, it’s reluctance to go back. They don’t want to return to Tender Winds. They liked it at first in their uncommunicative way, I’m certain of that, but now ... ever since Amanda saw what she saw, or imagined she saw ... it’s different. They don’t like it and they don’t want to return.

Abel had stopped humming cheerfully under his breath and he was frowning instead over a large wheel he was carrying. He had been annoyed over its discovery soon after they had taken off from the plateau strip this morning; he had told Jo that he had particularly instructed Pete, the attendant, to have it removed. It had been a large conveyor wheel he had bought for use on the plantation but had not got round to taking down the mountain yet. Now he was more than annoyed, Jo noted, he was concerned.

‘Is anything wrong?’ she asked.

‘Nothing. We’re going like a song.’

‘A lament, by the look of your face. Also the other faces.’

‘Your own isn’t exactly hilarious,’ he pointed out shortly. ‘It hasn’t worked, has it?’

‘You told me once that if a thing worked for a while, at least it was a step forward, not backward.’

‘Yes... but good lord, how long do you work on kids?’

‘I have a feeling they’d be different if we weren’t going back there,’ Jo sighed. ‘To Tender Winds, I mean.’

‘Well, we are, I can’t sail through clouds indefinitely just to please them. Also—’

‘Yes?’

‘Nothing. Nothing.’ But Abel said it too fast.

‘What, Abel?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ he said a third time. He set his lips, so Jo did not persist. Instead she looked round at the children with the idea of suggesting ‘I Spy’ or something of the sort. But they did not look back at her.

When she glanced at Abel again his lower lip was caught hard by his strong white teeth. He was frowning intensely. His knuckles, she saw, showed white through his brown skin. No longer did she hesitate to repeat a question, she asked quietly but directly: ‘Is there anything wrong, Abel?’ and he answered as quietly and directly:

‘Yes. That wheel has shifted. No’ ... as she made an instinctive movement ... ‘you’d never budge it, not you and me and all the kids together. I think it’s wedged.’

‘Oh. Is it affecting us?’

‘Yes. Damnably. It’s making flying this kite sheer hell. I’m going to look out for a place to put down.’

‘Can you?’ she asked.

‘It will be a lopsided landing, but given room—’

‘There isn’t room, Abel,’ Jo pointed out, still quiet but still direct, ‘we’ve left the flats. Perhaps if we went back—’

‘But we can’t. The thing is, the wheel has wedged so strongly I can’t change direction any more, because it’s upset the trim. If I tried an alteration anything could happen.’

‘Then—?’

‘Then all I can do is try to put the kite down in the same straight line as we are now.’

‘But we’re almost into the mountains, Abel.’

‘Mountains have gaps,’ he reminded her. ‘Look out, for heaven’s sake, Josephine, and find us one.’

Jo peered through the window. She looked so close that her breath fogged up the glass and she had to pull away and scrub the mist with her handkerchief. Then she peered again, she searched, and she probed ... and she willed. Willed that saving gap to open up.

Now they were well in the range. Valleys looked up at them, pinnacles, peaks, gorges, precipices, all with endless battalions of trees. Once Jo saw a small break caught between cliffs, but still the trees drew a forbidding screen between the break and their craft.

By this time the Cessna was unmistakably off balance. It was taking every ounce of Abel’s strength to keep full trim, every vestige of his attention and all his skill.

They were losing height, only slowly as yet, but Jo saw that the trees that had been only a distant green blur before were taking on more definite outlines, outlines of trunk and bough and branch. Once, shaving a particularly jutting cliff, she even saw leaves.

She looked back at the children. They still sat as they had sat before.

She looked at Abel. His teeth had bitten so deeply into his lip that there was a thin thread of congealing blood reaching to his chin. The sweat stood in beads on his brow.

‘What can I do, Abel?’ she whispered.

‘Check your belt. Check the kids’ belts.’

She did so.

‘What else?’

‘I’m going down. I have to. I remember from this morning that it’s thicker and steeper nearer the coast and that it thinned to the west. It has to be now or never.’

‘But where? Where?’

‘God knows. Perhaps you could ask Him. Pray, anyway, Josephine. Tell the kids to, if they know how.’

‘Oh, they know how,’ said Jo. ‘They did it at the memorial.’ Then she remembered that their offering there had hardly been helpful.

Then half-laughing, half-crying, Jo remembered Sukey. She turned and called:

‘Sing, Sukey. Sing
Pennies,
darling.’

By some miracle, Sukey, who never complied, who only took her lead from her sister and brother, did. She opened her mouth and raised her tuneless little voice and sang shrilly as they descended between tall trees, past jagged rocks, through dense scrub.

To
Hear the pennies dropping
the Cessna dropped out of the sky into the foot of a mountain. There was the noise of timber breaking, the crash of metal against stone. Undergrowth groaned as it was shredded into powdered leaves.

‘He shall have them all,’ shrilled Sukey at the top of her voice, and the plane gave a last shudder, discarded its tail section, ripped off one wing, then, after a split second of sharply poised silence ... even Sukey silent ... it shivered and settled down.

CHAPTER TEN

Jo
had lurched forward and knocked her head against the window through which only minutes ago she had looked out desperately for a landing space for Abel, gazed until her breath had fogged up the glass and she had had to scrub it clear again. Because of her confining harness it was only a minor knock, and she opened her eyes almost at once. Indeed the crippled craft was still teetering slightly, and instantly she thought of fire. She put her hand forward, but Dicky’s calm voice stopped her.

‘I cut off the ignition and the petrol,’ he said efficiently.

He was free of his seat belt and the girls were freeing themselves of theirs. They were absolutely untouched, not even marked, as Jo was, by her window impact. Abel, Jo recalled, had insisted on very tight harnessing for the children.

But what was Abel doing all this time? She turned and looked at him, and it was all she could do not to cry out. Abel’s impact had been much more severe than Jo’s. Doubtless he had loosened everything to have better control. A cut on his
forehead was bleeding profusely, and he
had lost consciousness.

But it was not the gash or blood or even unconsciousness that sent Jo’s hand to her mouth to stop a cry, it was Abel’s position. He was hideously jammed. Jammed by the conveyor wheel he had complained about so bitterly, the wheel that he had said would take more strength than all their strengths put together to move. The wheel that had started to shift, then wedged. The wheel that had put them in such a disastrous position that Abel had had no alternative but to put the Cessna down. Now the thing imprisoned him. Every part of him was pinned.

What was under that pinning? A twisted ankle? A tangled limb? A crushed body? Jo leaned as near to him as her harness, still fastened, permitted her, and listened for his breathing.

‘I’ve taken his pulse,’ said an efficient voice. This time the efficiency came from Amanda.

‘It’s not normal, naturally,’ continued Amanda crisply, ‘but it could be worse. I would say there’s definitely no danger. The wheel is pinning him in place, but it isn’t crushing him. The side of the aircraft must be taking its weight.’

‘You can take pulses?’ asked Jo.

‘I told you, I came first.’

Jo did recall a First for something, but thought it had been for coddled eggs. She said so. ‘But that was for Invalid Cookery,’ she murmured.

‘First Aid as well. Also Home Care. It was a hospital course. I think you’d better release yourself so I can check you for cuts. I’ll do it as soon as I’ve stopped Abel’s bleeding.’

‘Yes,’ said Jo humbly.

She undid the buckles, opened the door and scrambled out of the Cessna. No need for care for fear she’d dislodge the craft; the wrecked plane was forced tightly into a deft, and it would have taken more than their combined rocking to budge it away. The climb down to the forest was simple. The Cessna had knocked over a tree in its descent and it provided the necessary stair. The children soon followed her and eventually they were all standing together on the forest floor.

Before Jo could say anything, Amanda had taken her pulse in a very professional manner.

‘In telly hospital plays you see some terrible things done,’ she said as she checked. ‘In one series the doctor even counted a pulse with his thumb. The pulse in your thumb is so strong it spoils your feel for the patient’s pulse. Did you know that? No, don’t answer. Silence, please, while I concentrate.’ There was an impressive silence for a while. Then Amanda announced: ‘You’re all right.’

As Jo half-turned away, Amanda took over again. ‘But I’ll see that wound on your head, please.’ Jo bowed her head.

‘It will give you a headache, but that’s all, I think.’ Amanda declared at length.

‘Thank you, Doctor Grant.’ It was out before Jo realised it, and she looked at Amanda with genuine shame. The last thing she wanted to do was deride the child. However, Amanda was not hurt, only anxious to correct her.

‘No, I’m going to be Sister. I’m going in on the nursing side, not the medical. I’ll be Sister Grant.’

‘You told me you were going to be Matron Grant,’ said Dicky.

‘Matrons are head figures.’

‘Figureheads,’ suggested Jo.

‘And I have to be in things, not just supervise. I think’ ... to Jo now ... ‘you’d better sit down for a while.’

‘No, dear. I mean there’s lots to be done.’

‘There’s nothing at all that can be done here,’ came in Dicky knowledgeably, ‘that is except to Abel, and then not very much, only sponging him and all that.’

Amanda gave her brother a withering look. ‘There’s plenty to be done for Abel, he’ll need cool compresses, frequent sips of water, good attention, but I think I know what you’re trying to say. You mean there’s nothing to be done about the plane and most of all about the wheel and where it is.’

‘Yes, there’s no chance of getting it clear to take the weight off Abel,’ Dicky nodded. ‘That will need men.’

‘We have no men,’ Jo pointed out.

‘I’m coming to that,’ Dicky said with importance.

Jo stared at the children incredulously. Were these the same three listless, rather dullish youngsters who had sat behind her only minutes ago literally twiddling their thumbs? Even little Sukey was alert. Not offering anything to the conversation or the action as yet, but nodding wisely, mouthing the last words of her seniors.

‘What are you coming to?’ Jo asked Dicky, impressed.

‘To me going for help.’

‘Oh, no!’ These children certainly had surprised her, but she was still the authoritative adult, Jo thought, she still had the final word. ‘Oh, no,’ she said again.

‘Then what?’

‘Help will come. Of course it will come.’ But even as she said it, Jo thought: How? From where?

‘He’s quite good,’ came in Amanda sparingly. ‘He’s passed all his scouting tests.’

‘First,’ said Dicky modestly.

‘But you’re not tested for scout badges in country like this,’ Jo pointed out.

‘No,’ admitted Dicky, ‘it was the school gully, but it still makes no difference where you are if you keep a level head.’

‘His head is very level,’ proffered Amanda, inspecting her brother, ‘in fact it’s flat.’

‘Flat,’ echoed Sukey.

Dicky was not displeased with this.

‘If anyone can get through, I can,’ he assured them.

‘I don’t know about that, you weren’t so good at home.’

Jo said it cruelly, she knew, but she had to stop all this before it got any further. A little boy venturing into the forest, indeed!

‘It was different there,’ said Dicky, and Jo saw that the children were exchanging glances. ‘Here it’s all right because—’

‘Because?’ probed Jo.

But they would not answer that.

‘Even if you got through where would that get us?’ Jo demanded. ‘How would you ever find us again?’

‘By reading the compass, of course.’

‘You haven’t a compass.’

‘Abel has. I took it from the panel before I climbed down.’ Dicky displayed it.

Jo looked at the compass, intricate and detailed as a compass under these circumstances would need to be. Certainly no boy’s plaything.

‘Look, Dicky,’ she said, ‘the compass you read for your scout badge would be nothing like Abel’s compass. I mean, Abel’s would be—’ Jo had been going to say ‘more involved’. She changed it to a simpler ‘much harder’.

‘Yes, it’s harder, but I can still read it. Abel even tested me.’

‘I still think we must all stay together.’

‘And never be found,’ Dicky warned.

Sukey began to cry.

‘Dicky,’ said Jo earnestly, ‘at least let’s wait until tomorrow. It’s afternoon now, so night can’t be all that far away, and even if you went at once you would only have to shelter somewhere until daybreak. You couldn’t navigate in the dark. Also during our night here, all together, we could think things over, find a solution. Abel’... hopefully ... ‘might even ease himself out.’

‘Abel will never get out,’ said Dicky.

Sukey cried even harder. ‘Will vines grow over him?’ she asked.

‘Also’... Dicky squinted into the sun ... ‘precious hours would be wasted. Three to four of them, I’d say. Who knows, there may be a clearing in the next valley. I remember flying over a lumber camp on the way up.’

‘The rule of survival,’ tried Jo weakly, ‘is to stick together.’

‘And die,’ Dicky warned her.

‘There’ll be rescue parties.’

‘It’s a very big range and we’re deep down.’

‘Deep down,’ Sukey agreed sadly. ‘When the vines stop growing over Abel will they start growing over us?’

Amanda came to the rescue as regarded decisions. She said crisply: ‘We must give Dicky our sugar lumps. We all have some, except Jo and Abel, because we emptied the bowl at lunch when nobody was looking. Dicky will need sugar because sugar is energy.’

It seemed it was out of Jo’s hands and for that she could only be thankful.

‘Of course,’ she agreed. ‘But’ ... tremulously ... ‘you will be very careful, Dicky?’

‘A true scout is never reckless,’ Dicky assured her. He accepted all the sugar, put Abel’s compass in his pocket, agreed to take the stout stick that Jo had found, then he stood to attention and saluted them.

It was Dicky’s moment, and Jo made it as momentous as she could.

‘You’re a brave, brave boy,’ she said.

‘Rise up, go forth and do your best,’ wished Amanda.

It was all too much for Sukey. She came forward with a sugar cube she had been hiding in her sandal.

‘You take it, Dicky,’ she offered.

‘Have you sucked it?’

‘Not much.’

‘Then I will. It might stand between me and death.’ Sukey began to cry again, though Jo had her suspicions it was mostly because of the sugar lump. All the same the tears she shed were fat and real, Amanda’s eyes looked damp, and Jo had to keep her glance on the ground.

‘You can look up again,’ Amanda advised presently, ‘he’s left.’

‘Which
we
must
not
do. You must both of you promise me that. We must stay here together.’

‘Of course,’ agreed Amanda, ‘I have a patient to attend to.’

Sukey gave a quick look at the forest and came nearer to Jo than she ever had come. She even touched Jo’s hand with hers. ‘All together,’ she said.

It was barely mid-afternoon, for, keeping in mind the advisability of crossing the Gibraltar in full daylight, Abel had left the Ridge prudently early. But down here in the deep forest it could have been pre-dusk. Jo inwardly shuddered at the darkness that night would bring. It would be quite obscure. Ink-black. That suggested locating the torch, locating other things they might require.

‘But once we know where they are,’ Jo said, ‘we’ll leave them in the plane, for we’ll be bedding down there, too.’ She added: ‘That is, if Dicky doesn’t come back with help.’

Amanda, by unspoken agreement, was leaving all the domestic details to Jo. She had taken over Abel completely, and even if she had not been so amazingly efficient Jo would still have stood back for the girl. Never had she seen anyone, child or adult, so lit-up, so shining, so glowing. After taking a long look at Abel to reassure herself, Jo with Sukey began making a little clearing around them, pushing aside any branches they could, rolling away any logs that could be rolled. They even ‘swept’ the forest floor with bundles of twigs.

Amanda’s quietly excited: ‘He’s coming round,’ brought them climbing into the plane again to look at Abel.

Abel did indeed look a lot better. Pink was stealing back into his ashy face and when he flicked his eyes open they were lucid eyes, if terribly tired.

‘Josephine,’ he managed.

‘We’re here with you, Abel,’ said Jo.

‘All?’

‘All,’ Jo told him. She thought it was enough to tell him now, and Amanda, on the other side of Abel, nodded grave approval. No need to add that Dicky was no longer with them.

Fortunately Abel was not yet to a stage of focusing. He looked at the blur before him and said: ‘Thank heaven.’ Then he said urgently: ‘Don’t try to move me.’

‘Of course not. The men will do that. The men are coming.’

‘Men coming,’ said Sukey, and Abel tried to nod, gave it up and shut his eyes and said no more.

‘He’s not fully conscious yet,’ said Amanda knowledgeably, ‘he’s—he’s—’

‘Drifting?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Zackly,’ came in Sukey.

‘He may be like that for a long time,’ Amanda went on. ‘I’ll watch him for any change. Check his pulse.’

‘Yes, Amanda,’ said Jo. ‘Come, Sukey, we’ll finish our chores and then see if we can find anything in the forest to eat.’

‘Snake?’

‘I don’t think so. Anyway, we’d have to cook it, and I wouldn’t like to light a fire. It might tell people we are here, but it could turn back on us. No, I thought we might find some berries.’

They found a few, but very few; down here where the sun seldom penetrated it was too cool for berries, and Jo did not want to get too far away from the wreck and climb up towards the more open ground where they probably flourished.

Sukey found fungus growing out of old fallen tree-trunks, which she claimed were mushrooms. Very good on toast, she said, adding her usual: ‘I can cook. I can cook toast.’ She was disappointed when Jo forbade them, calling them toadstools. Toads were frogs, Sukey argued, and they did not sit on stools, they jumped. She jumped to demonstrate, and something slithered. After this Sukey kept close by Jo and had less to say.