Always a Rainbow Page 9

  Angela shook back the shining curtain of burnished copper that fell around her shoulders. Her eyes had a wicked glint. “I’ll tell him. He can scarcely refuse, it’s such a wonderful chance to let his aunt get away. He’ll have to put up with me and my cooking! He won’t be pleased, but he’ll have to make the best of it!” She could scarcely wait to get her revenge for all she’d been forced to endure at his hands during the last few days.

  “You came out from England just a short while ago?” Doris was saying.

  Angela nodded.

  “All the more reason for you to stay on here and see something of Waikare before you go.”

  Angela breathed a sigh of relief that the question she was dreading hadn’t been asked. If only she hadn’t complicated her life with Martha’s affairs!

  In the afternoon Jill was still with Brian. Angela washed out some of her garments and hung them on the line where the wind from the hills billowed them out. A little later in the comfortably furnished lounge room with its deep leather chairs and great stone fireplaces, Doris showed her the spinning wheel standing in a corner of the room, the black fleeces she had spoken of heaped beside it.

  “You do a lot of spinning?” Angela asked.

  “Oh, yes, it’s a hobby of mine. Last year at a show in Whangarei the team I was in won the competition. It was a contest to see who could be the first to finish knitting a garment right from the sheep’s wool. I was hoping to compete in the show this year, only—”

  “You couldn’t make it?”

  Doris shook her head regretfully. “Not with Brian just back from hospital that day. It was just unlucky for me that the show happened to be on in that particular week.”

  Blame Martha, Angela mused despairingly. Somehow it seemed that everything of an unpleasant nature that had happened here recently always came back to Martha. She pushed the disquieting thoughts aside and said brightly, “Oh, by the way, I’ve had an invitation to go out tomorrow night. John’s asked me to a dance that’s being put on somewhere or other. The others in the gang are going too.”

  Doris looked a little taken aback. “They’ve only got their old bomb,” she said with a worried air, “and it’s always breaking down in the most inconvenient places on the road. Oh they always manage to get it mobile again in the end, but with them you can never be certain what time you’ll arrive at your destination or get home again.”

  Angela smiled her warm friendly smile. “I’ll take a chance on it! One thing, it will be an experience going with the gang.”

  Doris looked doubtful. “I suppose,” she murmured uncertainly, “you could put it that way.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  During dinner that evening Angela made little contribution to the general conversation. She was content to listen as voices echoed around her. Jill speaking wistfully of Brian. “If only it wasn’t for those headaches of his he’d be up and about as usual by now.” Kevin the young farm hand, querying Mark regarding his work on the station, gazing towards him with a trusting expression as though, Angela thought, the boss knew the answer, to absolutely everything. Mrs. Blackman chatting about the departure of the shearing gang in the morning and the possibility of the big golden peaches that were ripening in the orchard being ready for bottling before long.

  Once during the meal the telephone shrilled through the room and Mark, excusing himself, went to answer the call. In the sudden stillness his monosyllabic replies were plainly audible. “Yes, okay. See you tonight, then. Bye, Sue.” Angela gathered from the one-sided conversation that his blonde girl-friend was asking Mark to take her somewhere this evening. He scarcely seemed enthusiastic over the arrangement and she found herself wondering if perhaps the feeling between them was all on the girl’s side.

  In her room a little later as she got ready for the evening’s entertainment she was glad that she had brought her entire wardrobe, such as it was, with her. Not that she need dress up particularly for the country gathering, nevertheless ... She chose the flaring emerald green skirt and pulled over her head a black short-sleeved sweater, then clasped around her neck the long silver chain with its silver medallion. She had pinned her hair back from her face and soft and clean and gleaming the mass of auburn flowed over her shoulders. John had been right when he had told her that it needed only one good night’s sleep to make even a shearers’ cook feel as good as new!

  Angela bent to turn the switch of her tiny transistor and dance music flooded the room. She moved to the beat, her green skirt swirling around her ankles, then suddenly she paused, struck by a thought. What if the boss too happened to be at the dance tonight? He’d feel duty bound to ask her for a dance! For some reason she couldn’t understand the thought sent her mind flying into wild turmoil. But she could always refuse him. What a wonderful opportunity it would be to get a little of her own back for all she had gone through in the hot shed during the past few days. His sardonic “You did offer?” pricked at her mind, but she thrust the remembrance aside. How he must have enjoyed watching her frantic efforts to see the job through at all costs. Fair enough, he’d be thinking, she asked for it—forcing herself in here, lying to me.

  She could feel herself growing angry all over again. No, definitely she wouldn’t dance with him, not even if he were to get down on bended knees and plead with her. The mental picture the thought evoked was so utterly ridiculous that she switched off both the dance music and the wild fantasies in her mind. A glance at her wristwatch told her she was a little early, but no matter. She sauntered along the passage and made her way out to the shadowed porch.

  Outside the air was crystal-clear, perfumed with the great white blossoms that starred the long tendrils of mandevillia clinging to the end wall. Leaning on the railing watching a fat orange moon as it made a dramatic entrance over the dark ranges, at first she didn’t notice the glow of a cigarette in the shadows. Then a man moving along the path directly below paused. Even though she couldn’t glimpse his expression she just knew the disconcerting way in which Mark Hillyer would be regarding her. She was directly beneath the overhead bulb and the light burnished the dark auburn of her hair and struck shafts of silver in the medallion swinging on its long chain from her throat.

  “Waiting for someone?”

  “Yes, I am, actually. John—” Why did she feel she had to explain herself? Her social outings had nothing to do with him. Nevertheless ... “The presser in the shearing gang, you know? He asked me to go along to the dance with him tonight.” His silence was making her feel oddly confused. She heard herself adding stupidly, “He said I’d know when he comes. Seems the old bomb makes such a racket you can hear it miles away!”

  “You’re not going in that truck.” He made the statement quite matter-of-factly as though there weren’t the slightest doubt in the matter.

  “Why ever not?” she asked quickly. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Everything, just about. John should never have asked you to go along in that. I credited him with a bit more sense.”

  “It’s not his fault,” she argued. “He hasn’t any transport of his own. Anyway, I promised! I said I’d go!”

  “That’s all right, then. I’ll take you. You’ll be a whole lot safer with me in the Land Rover.”

  Well! Angela didn’t know how to answer him. He seemed to have a knack of rendering her speechless every now and again. All she could summon up was a faint, “Is it far from here?”

  “Far enough. A place like Te Awau,” he pointed out grimly, “mightn’t seem more than a step or so in a decent car or truck, but in that old jalopy of the shearers ... Besides—” He broke off, regarding her with a look she couldn’t interpret.

  “Besides?”

  The moon emerging at that moment from a bank of cloud let her in on his lopsided grin. It wasn’t what you could call a carefree smile. It was more in the nature of sardonic amusement at her expense—as usual. “Just that I happen to be going to Te Awau myself tonight. Be my guest. You and your boyfriend can come along with me.”
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  Nervously she twisted a long coppery strand around her finger. “He’s not my boy-friend. And anyway, he might not want to.”

  “He’ll come.” He was so hatefully sure of himself. “Make no mistake, if he wants to get you there he’ll have to! Don’t expect anything grand,” he was speaking as though the matter of transport were already decided. “It’s just a country hop—a banjo and a couple of guitars for music, Mum and Dad and all the kids there as well. But if you really want to go—”

  “I told John I’d go with him,” Angela repeated mulishly.

  “Right, I’ll get out the Land Rover.” As Mark moved out of a pool of shadow she realised that he had changed into lightweight slacks, a white polo-necked sweater, dark reefer jacket.

  All at once she remembered the telephone conversation of earlier in the evening. He had arranged to meet Susan at the dance. Meet her there—how strange. He certainly seemed most casual in his courtship of the blonde girl. Perhaps, though, Susan lived in the vicinity of the district where the dance was to be held. It still seemed an odd arrangement up here in the hills where vast distances were usual and no one appeared to think twice of a forty-mile drive over rugged country roads.

  At that moment, a loud rumbling and clanking noise heralded the arrival of a battered old open truck. As Angela glanced towards the cheerful crowd squeezed in at the back of the vehicle she couldn’t help but be grateful towards her employer for rescuing her from an uncomfortable journey. To her surprise John too appeared relieved that Angela had been offered more reliable transport. A little later to loud remarks, chaffing and laughter, the ancient truck with a last loud explosion took off in the direction of the main road.

  Doris and Jill wandered out to the porch to see them off. It seemed to Angela that Jill’s eyes held a wistful expression. Was she regretting that she and Brian too were not climbing into the Land Rover to dance the night away as no doubt they would have, had it not been for Martha?

  Soon Angela found herself seated once more beside her unwilling escort, tucking her long skirt around her while John took a seat in the rear of the vehicle. At least on this occasion John would be on hand to open and close the gates on the property. They gained the main highway and sped up a road winding over dark hills. Around the first bend they came in sight of a truck labouring up the rise and to derisive hoots and calls, swept past the old vehicle.

  The two men made desultory conversation about the week’s shearing and Angela lapsed into silence. The terms they used conveyed little to her, for it seemed as though these back-country sheep farmers spoke a language of their own. The thought prompted her to say suddenly, “There’s something I want to know about the shearing. I asked the gang about it,” she added in her soft husky tones, “but they wouldn’t tell me.”

  “No harm in asking.” Mark’s voice was laconic, his eyes fixed on the road ahead as he guided the vehicle around a sharp tree-lined bend.

  “All right, then. It was that first morning when I brought the tea up to the men at smoko time and I heard one of them call out something. It sounded to me like ‘ducks on the pond’, but it couldn’t have been,” she glanced uncertainly towards the man at her side, “could it?”

  Mark broke into laughter and John joined in with him. Puzzled, Angela glanced from one to the other. One thing, she told herself, she’d made Mark laugh out loud, and that was certainly a triumph seeing that up till now he had treated her with either cool politeness or grim-lipped contempt. “You two might let me in on the joke,” she complained. “What’s so funny?”

  Recovering himself at last Mark said, “What the gang were doing was passing on a message. Something to the effect of ‘Hey, boys, woman cook’s on the doorstep. Better watch your language’.”

  “Is that all?” Angela couldn’t help laughing too. “You mean, fair warning?”

  “Something like that.”

  Her spirits rose and for a moment she imagined that Mark had decided to revise his initial opinion of her and treat her just as he would any other visitor to the homestead. But a quick sideways glance towards his set profile as he gazed ahead told her all too clearly that he had been sharing a joke with John and that was all. To the boss she was and always would be someone not to be trusted.

  The moon climbed high above cloud and the miles fell away behind them. Now there was nothing in the world except the blurred shapes of high hills all around, no sound but the whirring of tyres on rough metal and the plaintive “more-pork” of a native owl somewhere in the dark bush.

  They came on the woolshed suddenly, a long lighted building standing in a clearing by the roadside. To Angela it appeared little different from the one in which she had recently spent so many arduous hours. Trucks, cars and Land Rovers were parked at odd angles on the grass and as Mark swung the vehicle alongside a gleaming late-model car a girl who was seated at the wheel tooted a horn. The next moment Susan’s smiling face was thrust from the open window.

  “Thanks.” Angela turned to Mark, but with a brief nod he had turned away. When she glanced back a few moments later he and Susan were standing beside the car. The girl was talking animatedly to him, her face raised to his, her hand laid on his arm.

  Angela thought irritatedly. Why must she cling to him so tenaciously? Habit, possessiveness, fear of a rival?

  “Come on,” John was saying, helping her to pick her way in her fragile black sandals over ground deeply rutted from the trampling of cattle in the winter rains.

  As they moved into the shed her swift glance took in the high rafters intertwined with coloured streamers and gay crepe paper flowers. Great punga ferns plucked from the bush sprayed their fronds from corners of the room and the long line of the walls was broken by logs and trailing greenery.

  Her gaze moved towards a makeshift stage made of piled haybales where two Maori youths strummed guitars and a third plucked the strings of a banjo. There were people everywhere, she mused, as John piloted her through groups and family parties. Girls and men moved on the crowded dance floor slippery from the oil of the fleeces, and children skated around the edges or mingled with the dancers, their small faces puckered and tense in concentration. It looked as though everyone were having a lot of fun, she told John as they joined the maze of figures keeping time with the pulsing lilt. Moving to the infectious throbbing of the guitars, she thought how strange it seemed to hear Maori players in a far-away farming district in New Zealand beating out pop recordings that had recently topped the hit parade charts in London. But of course radio and television brought music to the other hemispheres only a short time after the tunes had gained popularity in London, New York and other great cities of the world.

  Among the crowd on the dance floor she recognised two of the shepherds from Waikare with their young wives. Occasionally in a gap in the crowd she caught glimpses of the other members of the shearing gang, scarcely recognisable now they had discarded their black sweatshirts and tough slacks for gay coloured shirts and lightweight longs. Their friendly grins told her they bore no ill will over hectic efforts to get them fed on time, so she couldn’t have done so badly after all, thanks to Rusty’s help. Or should she thank the boss, even though no doubt he had ordered Rusty’s assistance for reasons of his own? For how could a shearing gang proceed without their cook?

  Since their arrival at the woolshed she hadn’t seen Mark. Was he still outside the hall with Susan? At that moment she caught sight of them both on the dance floor. There was no doubt that Mark was a faultless dancer. He would be, she thought uncharitably. He was the type of man who would do well everything that he attempted—even when it came to hating her! And why on earth must she keep thinking of him all evening, peering through the scintillating throng in search of him, wondering if he would ask her to dance? The shearers’ cook? Martha’s friend? She must be dreaming.

  For a long time John was her partner, then the music changed to an old-time tempo. Angela had taken lessons in ballroom dancing, but John told her regretfully that he had never mastere
d it. She was swept away into the Paul Jones by a burly young farmer with a red face and a shy expression. Intent on his footwork, he did not utter a word, then all at once the beat of the music changed and he released her to join in with the moving chain circling the big room. As she whirled from partner to partner she looked always for Mark, wondering if she would find herself swept into his arms at any moment and what it would be like to dance with someone who despised you. She need not have concerned herself, however, in the matter, for as the various partners claimed her for the dance and released her at the change of tempo she realised that he was not amongst them. Perhaps he hadn’t ever learned old-time dancing and being the boss would never attempt it were he not proficient, flawless. There she went, dwelling on him again!

  Presently the infectious rhythm of a modern number rang out and Angela watched Mark and Susan move on to the floor. The girl’s glittering gold dress seemed moulded to her lithe body, her ash-blonde hair floated in a cloud behind her as she swayed to the melody. A golden girl, was that the way he thought of Susan? One thing was for sure, it wasn’t exactly the way in which he thought of Angela. “I was told to look out for a girl with red hair”. Oh well, everyone couldn’t be fortunate enough to be born one of the Susans of the world with every single thing they could wish for right at their fingertips, including Mark Hillyer.

  The music crashed to a crescendo and long trestle tables were carried in at the wide open doors, tables laden with such a varied assortment of home-made goodies that Angela regarded the heaped up plates of food in amazement. So this was the Pavlova, the traditional New Zealand dessert she had heard so much about, this delicate snowy mound piled with whipped dairy cream and decorated with strawberries and pineapple slices or circles of some pale silvery-green fruit that was new to her. There were meats and pizzas, curries heaped in beds of rice, delectable seafood, savouries in small pastry cases, oysters and scallops. The selection seemed endless.