It Began in Te Rangi Page 2

  No! She wouldn’t sit here waiting to be pitied and condoned. Poor Maggie. She writhed inwardly as the sense of self-doubt returned once more to torment her. Damn Colin! And Andrea! Why did they have to come back here? Here, of all places! There were plenty of other towns, other law offices. Oh, damn everything!

  Pushing aside the plate of untouched food, she mixed a beaker of instant coffee and settled herself with the weekend newspaper. Turning to the columns headed Situations Vacant, she ran her eyes idly down the long lists. No lack of opportunity there. Even in the suburbs there were plenty of positions offering that would suit her, now that factories were moving their offices out of town. But the suburban situations were close to town.

  Idly her gaze moved over another column. It was headed Home and Farm Helpers. She hadn’t really considered taking such a position, not seriously. It had merely been the first thought that had entered her head when she’d given in her notice today. Yet why not? The more she considered it the more the idea appealed. No more grazing problems where Pete was concerned. No one to know anything of the past. It was an idea, at that. She studied the advertisements more carefully. It was a long list. Indeed, it seemed to Maggie that the back country of New Zealand was entirely peopled with farming households, all in desperate need of household assistance.

  ‘Urgent need,’ ran one. ‘Unmarried mother welcomed,’ another. ‘Housekeeper, sober habits, live in.’

  Directly below was an item that held her attention. Unfortunately the first line of the insertion was missing. Maggie remembered now having torn away the page to wrap rubbish in it, at the weekend. Still, even with what remained it seemed ... interesting! She scanned the black print a second time.

  ‘Urgently needed to keep house for sheep-farmer. Fond of children. Temporary. Three months. Sole charge. Excellent wages. Child no objection. Start immediately. Phone Te Rangi 165.’

  Child no objection. Well, she had no child, but Pete was every bit as dependent on her. Hadn’t she tended him from the time when he’d been a wild young colt? There wasn’t the slightest question but that wherever she went, Pete would go too. Te Rangi, the advertiser had declared, but where was that? Maggie had considered herself to be fairly conversant, even if only by name, with most of the country districts, especially in the North Island, but the name was unknown to her. After a search she found an old automobile map of the country, but she could find no trace of Te Rangi. Perhaps, though, that was all to the good. The farming district was apparently sufficiently remote even for her wishes. She could surely cope with the housekeeping part of the job. After all, she’d done it often enough at home in the past. Fond of children? Certainly she was attached to her brothers’ families, if that was anything to go by. She didn’t really know many other children.

  There was something about that ‘urgently needed’ that appealed to her. At least, she reflected forlornly, she would be indispensable to someone, even if the ‘someone’ happened to be three unknown children living in the back of beyond with their sheep-farming father.

  She stared with unseeing eyes at the busy street below, twisting a strand of long dark hair restlessly round and round her finger. As she hesitated, a tiny voice echoed in her mind, a voice that urged her on. ‘Go on, why don’t you? Give it a go! What have you to lose, Maggie?’ Then, shrewdly: ‘They’d never find you there, Cohn and Andrea, when they came looking for you. No one in this town need know your address. You could simply disappear for three months. Then at the end of the period you could make some other arrangement. Besides, think of all the money you’d be able to save!’ But she knew it wasn’t the financial aspect that she was thinking of just now.

  From out of her childhood another voice whispered, the voice of a much-loved aunt, gay and kind-hearted, who had been in the habit of proffering scraps of advice to an impressionable small girl. ‘Never say “no” to life, dear!’

  Okay, Aunt Myra, I’ll take your advice! Impulsively Maggie picked up the telephone receiver and requested the operator to put her through to the Te Rangi number. Evidently the place was some distance away. Well, that was what she wanted, wasn’t it?

  After making her snap decision it was with a sense of letdown that she heard the voice of the operator. ‘Sorry, I can’t get through to your number. I’ll ring you back.’

  Maggie sat waiting by the telephone and when the bell shrilled in her ear she jumped nervously. ‘Hello! Hello!’

  A blurring of sounds that she thought were muffled laughter reached her. I must be connected with a party line, she thought confusedly. She said, raising her voice slightly. ‘About the position advertised in the Herald. You wanted a housekeeper—’

  ‘No, we don’t,’ a girl’s childish voice cut in. Maggie could hear the giggling plainly now, followed by the sound of a scuffle. The next moment a woman’s voice came through clearly. ‘Mrs. Barrington speaking. Was it about the position here?’

  ‘Yes!’ Maggie found herself shouting to make herself heard. ‘My name’s Sullivan, Margaret Sullivan—’

  Once again the line spluttered and the woman’s voice faded away. Presently Maggie caught the words, ‘—you do understand ... quite isolated.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she cried. ‘It doesn’t matter—’

  Another interference on the line. Then: ‘Very pleased to see you. We’ll meet you if you get the bus to the nearest town. That’s Panua—’

  ‘No, no,’ Maggie found herself screaming back, ‘I have my own transport. I can’t come until Friday though, I’m afraid. How far away are you?’

  In spite of the interference on the line the unknown woman must have caught her message, for all at once her voice came through, clearly audible. ‘If you’re coming from Hamilton it’s the best part of a day’s trip by car. We’re at Te Rangi, five miles on from Panua. Do you know it at all?’

  ‘No,’ Maggie called back, ‘but I’ll find it.’

  ‘Good. We’ll be expecting you, then. Just take the first road to the right when you go over the summit of the big hill after you leave Panua, You can’t miss it. The road ends at Te Rangi. Amberley, the station’s called. Friday, you said?’

  ‘I’ll be late— The next moment Maggie realized that the line was dead and she could only hope that the unknown farmer’s wife at the other end of the wire had caught the words.

  Thoughtfully she replaced the telephone receiver. There, it was done! She was committed. Surprisingly, now that the decision had been taken she felt a lift of her spirits. She was running away, no doubt about that, but at least it was her own decision. She didn’t have to wait here in the flat for Colin and Andrea to call and make their stupid polite conversation, while all the time—

  Forget it, she scolded herself. Think of Mrs. Barrington, so desperately in need of household help. Probably she isn’t well. Maybe she has just returned home after a spell in hospital. Or could be there’s a new little Barrington in the house, and she needs someone to help with the babe. Hold on, Mrs. B.! Help is at hand! All I need to do now is to give notice of the flat rental, finalize grazing arrangements at the paddock, and I’m away.

  When she studied the map spread out on the small table she discovered Panua almost at once. There it was in the smallest of print. Evidently it was a farming district situated on a long arm of a west coast harbour. Te Rangi, where the sheep station was, must be too small a place to merit mention on the map. Not that she cared how remote it was.

  The following few days were filled with the preparations entailed by her departure. ‘Just as well you’re moving Pete out of his paddock,’ the owner of the suburban property told her when she gave notice, ‘I’ve just sold all these sections to a local building firm.’

  Maggie breathed a sigh of relief. For once the all-too-familiar words failed to fill her with apprehension. She was free at last of the ever-recurring problem of-finding fresh pastures for Pete within easy motoring distance from town. It was a problem that had become increasingly pressing with the passing months as the city spread its bound
aries further and further out, encroaching on lush green farmlands, bulldozing forest trees and running streams, until the landscape, was flat and uninteresting.

  She found it an easy matter to arrange transport for Pete to the new district. A load of racehorses was being taken to a meeting further north at the weekend and the driver of the big transporter offered to pick up Maggie’s horse on the same trip, dropping him off at Te Rangi, which he knew. ‘A one-horse town if ever there was one!’ He grinned at his own joke. For a moment Maggie hesitated, struck by a dismaying thought. By this mode of transport, Pete would arrive at the sheep station a day later than herself. What if she didn’t secure the position? She brushed the unwelcome possibility aside. The unknown Mrs. Barrington had seemed so anxious for Maggie to come, almost as though the inquiry had been the single response to the advertisement. Yes, she assured the driver of the horse transport, the arrangement would suit perfectly.

  She was later in leaving on the journey than she had anticipated and the sun was high in a cloud-filled sky when at last she swept along the wide-smooth motorway with its centre strip of brightly flowering shrubs. She sped over the graceful arc of the bridge spanning the sparkling blue waters of Auckland harbour, then followed the main northern highway. Presently; at the foot of the Brynderwyn range, she branched off on a side road.

  The winding metalled highway took her past sunny farmlands. Behind the homesteads, orchards were pink drifts of peach and nectarine blossom. Timber loading-ramps rose from the roadside and the vast green paddocks on either side were dotted with sheep and tiny lambs. Hedges of tall bamboo lined the deep ditches and arum lilies grew wild in the long grass. Ahead of her the mountains were blue in the distance, purple where long cloud shadows slanted over the bush-clad slopes. She met little traffic on the country road. A silver milk tanker travelling in the direction of a dairy factory a few miles distant, covered vans with their loads of kumeras dug from the sandy soil of the north, cars and lorries, and once a farmer driving a red tractor. Presently through a gap in sheep-threaded hills, she glimpsed a strip, of beaten silver that was a long arm of the harbour, and knew that she was well on the way to her destination.

  It was late in the day when she swept into the tiny township of Panua with its clean wide main street lined with old-fashioned stores. The scattered houses were painted in bright pastel colours, the sweeping green lawns studded with flowering trees and blossoming shrubs. Magnolias with their wine-coloured cups and heady perfume, a profusion of camellias, and the strange bird-like blossoms in blazing blue, violet and tangerine of the bird of paradise flower.

  Still seething with annoyance after her humiliating experience with the old van and him, Maggie found herself regretting her stop at Panua. She wouldn’t think of him any more! She wouldn’t! Concentrating on the road, she turned up the slopes of a bush-covered hill, dropping to a lower gear for the steep climb. She could glimpse only a fragment of the winding track as she went on between high dark banks where tall tree ferns swished their long dust-coated fronds across the windows of the van. Fortunately, she reflected, there was little traffic on the road. Once a long transporter and trailer, tightly packed with sheep, roared past her, followed by a logging truck. And around a bend of the road a sudden glare of headlights behind her made her hug the fern-encrusted bank as a Land-Rover sped past to vanish among the dim curves ahead.

  Lost in her thoughts, Maggie hadn’t realized how far she had travelled from Panua until all at once she found herself in sight of the tree-covered summit. Hadn’t Mrs. Barrington made mention of a track not far from the hilltop? The next moment the dark banks on either side fell away and she swept up to meet a triangle of night sky pricked by faint stars. Moving over the summit, she swung down a steep curve, almost missing the timber gateway that glimmered faintly through bushy trees crowding the entrance. Maggie stopped the van and went to peer up at the faded lettering on the wide white gate. Amberley. She was here! Swinging the gate wide, she guided the van through the opening and returned to close the gate carefully behind her. Then, following twin tracks that curved faintly over the hillside, she came in sight of a rambling old timber homestead nestling amongst a shelterbelt of towering evergreens. Lights gleamed from the windows and a lantern illuminated the long front porch that ran the length of the dwelling.

  Clattering over a cattlestop, she swept past the dim outlines of buildings—a woolshed, barns, garages, to pull up on the red gravelled driveway below the lighted verandah of the long, low house. As she stepped lightly from the van she reflected that by now Mrs. Barrington must be wondering whether or not her new help would arrive today, as arranged. Maggie hadn’t realized how far away the district was, or how much her speed would be cut down by frequent pauses at one-way bridges, and winding unfamiliar roads. Never mind, Mrs. B., you can relax! Your helping hand has arrived late, but here at last!

  She went lightly up the wide steps, conscious of the sweetly-perfumed starry pink jasmine that festooned the verandah. She pushed a button at the side of the shabby doorway, and that was the first thing that wasn’t as she had expected, for it was clear that the bell had ceased to function. Probably the children in the house were to blame for that. She rapped loudly on the door and the next moment was aware of muffled voices followed by a burst of stifled laughter.

  Peering through a waving pattern on the glass panel, she realized that someone was coming to answer the summons, for a shadow moved against the glass. Then the door was flung open and a man stood silhouetted against the light, a tall man with dark hair and sideburns and an appearance that was all too familiar. Shock and surprise all but bereft Maggie of her usual presence of mind. She heard herself say idiotically: ‘Mrs. Barrington?’ The glint of astonishment, in the blue eyes changed to an expression of amusement.

  ‘I mean—’ she stammered, and stopped short, hating herself for her confusion. She had never suffered from self-consciousness in the past, even when called upon to interview distinguished barristers from overseas. What was the matter with her tonight? It was the way in which he was regarding her that was so unnerving, as though he too were utterly taken aback.

  ‘Dangerfield’s the name. John Dangerfield. Too bad she’s not here just now ... but come in! Come in!’ He stood aside as Maggie stepped into the long, narrow hall. ‘I didn’t expect to see you again so soon!’ He made a gesture for her to precede him along a passageway. ‘Car trouble, hmm? What’s the problem this time? Run out of gas? Not to worry. I can let you have some. In here...’ He reached past her to open a door, revealing a spacious, dimly-lighted lounge room. Maggie had a swift impression of heavy old-fashioned furniture and faded carpeting. ‘Take a seat.’

  As she dropped down to a linen-covered couch she was disconcertingly aware of his puzzled expression. He didn’t appear to be expecting her. On the contrary. And where was Mrs. Barrington? Wait, hadn’t he made some mention of having an appointment tonight with someone, a woman, at his home at about this time? There was no doubt but that he had made a swift change from the workmanlike khaki drill garments in which she had last seen him. His cream terylene shirt, open at the throat, was crisply laundered, the tan walk shorts immaculate. He wore knee-length, light-coloured socks, deerskin moccasins on his feet, and she would hazard a guess that the damp waves of his dark hair indicated a hurriedly taken shower. Could it be, her lips lifted at the thought, that it was Maggie Sullivan with whom he had an appointment, even though he might be unaware of the fact?

  The thought made her decide to get the explanations over with as quickly as possible. ‘It’s not the car this time. It’s just—’ She broke off, glancing up at him, a shadow of perplexity in the huge dark eyes. ‘This is Amberley station, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sure is.’ He was regarding her intently.

  ‘But,’ she bit her lip, ‘I thought that Mrs. Barrington—’ His puzzled expression cleared. ‘Oh, you know her?’

  ‘No, no, not really!’ Oh dear, she thought, this is getting more and more involved. ‘Look,’ s
he leaned forward and two long dark plaits swung around her small face, ‘I’d better explain. We seem to have got our wires crossed somehow. You see, I’m looking for a housekeeping job. You know? Looking after children, and all that, in the country. I rang Mrs. Barrington a week ago about one I’d seen advertised in the Herald. She—’ she stumbled and caught herself up. He might as well know the truth. ‘You see, I arranged an interview with her here today and she said—well,’ Maggie finished in a rush of words, ‘I thought—I mean, I sort of hoped that the job was as good as mine.’

  He didn’t answer directly. He fished a packet of cigarettes from a pocket of his shirt, offered it to her, and bent close to flick the lighter. Too close, Maggie found to her dismay. He was definitely distracting and whether he intended her to feel that way or not, the effect was the same. Dropping down into his chair once again, he inhaled, studying her, stiff with that maddening expression of amusement. ‘Let me get this straight, Miss—’

  ‘Margaret,’ she put in. ‘Margaret Sullivan. My friends,’ she added, ‘call me Maggie.’

  ‘I get it, Miss Sullivan. Well, I guess, I owe you an apology. Thing is, things have been happening around here since that ad went in the paper last week. Mrs. B. took off in a bit of a rush unfortunately, or she could have put you in the picture about all this. She only stayed a couple of weeks herself. She did say something about someone coming up here tonight to see me about the job, but—well, I didn’t connect it with you. If I’d known about you earlier,’ he said regretfully, ‘I’d have had a go at getting in touch with you. Not that it would have made any difference. Saved you a trip up here, that’s all.’