Down in the Forest: An Australian Outback Romance, page 1
Down in the Forest
Lucy Walker
Copyright © The Estate of Lucy Walker 2021
This edition first published 2021 by Wyndham Books
(Wyndham Media Ltd)
27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX
First published 1962
www.wyndhambooks.com/lucy-walker
The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Cover artwork images © Roman Samborskyi / becauz gao (Shutterstock)
Cover artwork design © Wyndham Media Ltd
Wyndham Books: Timeless bestsellers for today’s readers
Wyndham Books publishes the first ebook editions of bestselling works by some of the most popular authors of the twentieth century, such as Lucilla Andrews, Ursula Bloom, Catherine Gaskin, Naomi Jacob, Mary E. Pearce and Lucy Walker. Enjoy our Historical, Family Saga, Regency, Romance and Medical fiction and non-fiction.
Join our free mailing list for news, exclusives and special deals:
www.wyndhambooks.com
Books by Lucy Walker
from Wyndham Books
The Call of the Pines
Reaching for the Stars
The River is Down
Girl Alone
The One Who Kisses
The Ranger in the Hills
Come Home, Dear
Love in a Cloud
Home at Sundown
The Stranger in the North
Wife to Order
A Man Called Masters
Follow Your Star
Down in the Forest
More Lucy Walker ebooks coming very soon
Wyndham Books is reissuing
Lucy Walker’s novels in new ebook editions.
Be the first to know about the next reissue
by signing up to our free newsletter.
www.wyndhambooks.com/lucy-walker
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Books by Lucy Walker
Chapter One
Jill Dawson stirred in her seat in the bus. She glanced up to the rack overhead to see if her carry-all and coat were safely afloat on the wire mesh.
They must be getting very near to Darjalup now. It was the next main town on the Great Southern Road, and was her destination. For an hour past the bush had become thicker, the trees taller, the undergrowth dense and green. The great sweep of road wound away ahead and behind like a wide blue snake; and for miles there had been no sign of the wide paddocks with sheep grazing that Jill had seen earlier in the day. It was summer and this forest country, hazed with heat and fine smoke, perhaps from some bushfire in the far-off distance, was very beautiful in its strange, austere, almost frightening loneliness.
Jill was a little frightened herself, not of the bush but of her first job away from home, which lay ahead in Darjalup.
She had finished her training two months earlier and she was now on her way to join the staff of Darjalup High School as sports mistress.
How, she kept wondering throughout that day-long journey, would she be able to manage the older girls ‒ girls who weren’t really so much younger than herself?
When Jill thought about these unknown girls she herself felt very young and inexperienced. When she thought of being twenty-three years of age, and going out of the city, away from home into the distant bushlands, she felt very old indeed.
Spinster ‒ she had had to write against her name in connection with her appointment form.
‘And that’s about it,’ she had thought ruefully.
As she could not look into the future she did not know she was destined never to see that school at all.
The bus was now passing cottages. They stood on small blocks of land that had been hewn out of the forest. The trees around them were tall and black-trunked, very still and wise looking in their silence as if they also were very old, like the rest of this grey ancient land. How quiet, secret, yet lovely was that forest bush!
Jill had a sudden wish to turn round in her seat and see if the sophisticated and very beautiful young woman who had got on the bus at Perth, as she herself had done, was still there. This was a silly inclination and Jill knew it was, for she also knew the young woman in question had not got off the bus. Neither had she evaporated into thin air. Her name was Vanessa Althrop and she had only left the bus at the morning-tea and lunch breaks; as all the passengers had done.
Jill had been fascinated by her fellow traveller from the moment the latter had boarded the bus. Vanessa Althrop had a clear ringing voice, slightly affected but not unpleasant. It had a honey quality about it: attractive and inviting.
The bus conductor, and the driver had both known her.
‘Good-morning, Miss Althrop!’ they had each said, one at a time, as if greeting someone well known to them and evidently very important.
‘Has Darjalup got the red carpet out for you, Miss Vanessa?’ the conductor had later asked with a cheery smile, as he clipped her ticket. ‘It’s quite a time since we’ve seen you down this way. Been on your travels again?’
So that is her name, Jill thought. Vanessa! How much more interesting than plain Jill.
‘Oh, here and there!’ Vanessa had replied.
‘We’ve another passenger on board for the Timber Camps,’ the conductor had gone on. ‘The young lady up in the front seat.’ He meant Jill.
‘Oh really!’
That had been completely lacking in interest! The voice hadn’t even kept its honey quality for that remark, Jill thought ruefully. She wished the conductor hadn’t mentioned her. She felt nervous about her new job and the last thing she wanted was to start off in Darjalup on the wrong foot ‒ especially if Miss Althrop was a V.I.P. in that town.
At the lunch stop Jill had hardly been able to take her eyes from the other girl. She had seen that Vanessa Althrop’s clothes must have come from Sydney or Rome. They were out of the world for the far west, and so was the beautiful green and red velvet swathed hat that sat with a kind of shining beauty on Vanessa’s dark hair: also the dark glossy handbag with the large gold lettering on it, was very impressive. It told the world Vanessa’s name.
All Jill’s surmising about Vanessa, and her clothes, had been hours ago. Now as they neared Darjalup Jill had this odd compulsion to turn round and look at Vanessa again. She resisted the temptation and concentrated on what was passing by instead.
The bush suddenly thinned out into more open country; cleared land. There were veranda bungalows, each set in a half-acre of garden and orchard. They were pretty houses against the dark backdrop of smoke-hazed trees in the distance.
‘The Timber Camps!’ the conductor called cheerily. Jill realised this was a little joke for Vanessa Althrop’s benefit. They were entering a sprawling but lively country town.
Jill stood up and pulled her coat and carry-all down from the rack.
‘Don’t worry about your big luggage, miss,’ the conductor called. ‘I’ll get it out for you.’
Jill smiled as she thanked him.
The bus had run straight into the middle of the town and now pulled up alongside the kerb, outside the hotel. The conductor jumped from the bus first and was busy getting cases from the rear carrier as Jill and Vanessa Althrop stepped down on to the pavement. The dark girl with the lovely clothes took no notice of her fellow passenger whatever.
Jill looked around, a little unnerved by having ‘Arrived’.
‘Excuse me. Miss Jill Dawson?’
‘Yes ‒ that’s me,’ Jill said in surprise. A young man with sandy hair and grey eyes ‒ his feet planted wide apart, hands in pockets and a pleasant grin on his brown face ‒ was looking at her. She wondered how this stranger knew her, and who he was.
He took one hand out of a pocket and with it a piece of notepaper. He put his head on one side and read from it.
‘Medium to tall in height; fair-haired, green-eyed. Looks the kind that rides and plays tennis and golf well.’
Jill’s eyes widened.
‘But who wrote that?’ she asked. She hadn’t expected anyone in Darjalup to know her. The headteacher of the school, Mr. Beckett, knew she was coming but he had never met her. His deputy had interviewed her in Perth … and the deputy had not been returning to this school after the holidays.
‘Kim Baxter,’ the young man was saying. ‘He’s just come in from the bushfire. He’s taking off his charred clothes, and washing half the jarrah forest out of his hair. I had i
The bus conductor had put Jill’s heavy luggage on the pavement by the side of Vanessa Althrop’s cases and she turned and thanked him. Vanessa, she noticed, was talking to someone through the window of the bus and took no interest in either Jill or this stranger meeting her.
The young man with a pleasant grin and a magicianlike manner picked up Jill’s cases, one in each hand.
‘Follow me,’ he said with mock irony. ‘Destiny, in the form of Kim Baxter, awaits you.’
‘But please,’ Jill said. ‘You’ve got my right name. And I have got fair hair …’
‘And green eyes!’
‘But I don’t know anyone called Kim Baxter.’
‘He knows you ‒ hence the note. Come along, child, through the door. That’s right. Now turn left into the lounge and find yourself the most comfortable seat in the place. I’ll check your name in for you.’
Jill did as she was told. She sat in a large chintz-covered arm-chair and watched the mysterious young man carry her cases to the desk, put them down on the floor; then leaning sideways with one elbow on the counter, engage himself in conversation with the very chic girl behind the counter.
This activity was almost immediately interrupted by Vanessa Althrop who came in through the main door and advanced across the carpeted floor like an indignant but beautiful queen.
‘Isn’t there anyone to bring in my bags?’ she demanded of the desk girl.
The girl looked at the young man, who straightened up and looked at Vanessa.
‘Oh, it’s you, Shane!’ Vanessa said, surprised, but still haughty. ‘How you’ve grown up!’
‘You too, Vanessa. Let’s see, it must be all of three years ago. I was on my annual holidays the last two occasions you honoured Darjalup. Right me if I’m wrong but didn’t you have … all those three years back … a gym tunic and dark plaits of hair down your back?’
‘I never wore a gym tunic in my life ‒ or black plaits,’ Vanessa said coldly. ‘We don’t seem to have an official help here. Will you bring my cases in for me, Shane?’
This was a request and order, mixed together, but Jill could see from her arm-chair across the lounge and through the wide archway that divided it from the hall, that it was Shane’s obligingness and not Vanessa’s request-order that would get those cases inside.
Jill wished very much that she knew who was Shane, and who was Vanessa Althrop. Above all who was Kim Baxter, the man who had written that description of herself.
She had quite a long wait, sitting there in the lounge. Shane first brought in Vanessa’s baggage, then took it up to the first floor for her. Jill’s luggage remained on the floor beside the desk.
When Shane returned from his good-deeding he came straight across the lounge to Jill. He pulled up a chair so that he sat facing her, and smiled engagingly.
‘I guess Kim Baxter’s taking his time. Ah well, he’s had quite a day of it! Have a cigarette? Good.’ He struck a match and lit both their cigarettes, then settled back and beamed in a friendly way at Jill.
‘I see you have booked in here,’ he said. ‘So we’ll leave what happens next to you to Kim ‒ when he comes.’ His grin deepened. ‘You know what? If the pub had been burnt down the whole community would have turned out to try and save it. As it was the school ‒ well, it just got burned down to the ground.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘People!’ he finished deprecatingly.
Jill put one hand to her head.
‘Please tell me what goes on?’ she begged. ‘First, I don’t know Kim Baxter. I don’t know anyone in Darjalup. And ‒ did you say the school was burned down?’
He raised his eyebrows.
‘Sure. Didn’t you know? But, of course, what a clot I am! You were in the bus all day. Well, Miss Dawson, here’s a list of the facts. A bushfire, not uncommon to us, you know ‒ swept through the south end of the town and licked off the High School in passage. Dear girl, you’re out of a job. By the way, how come you don’t look like a sports mistress? No bulging muscles in unfeminine places? In fact everything very petite and feminine indeed.’
‘You’re thinking of Swedish drill and hardboard dragons of the past,’ Jill said with a smile. ‘Everything’s different now. Sport-rhythm, the dance-music. That’s how we do it now ‒’ She broke off and a frown of worry creased her forehead. ‘Yes, of course, I’ll be out of a job. But …’
‘But what, Jill? You don’t mind my calling you Jill?’
‘No, I don’t mind you calling me Jill. But what will become of the children if they have no school? What a terrible thing!’
‘They’ll have one long glorious holiday while we’re building another bigger, brighter, better school. There’s nothing terrible about a holiday. Ask the kids.’
Jill suddenly had an illuminating thought.
‘Kim Baxter would be one of the staff members?’
Shane gave a hoot of laughter that nearly made him tilt his chair far enough back to be at the danger-angle. He righted himself in time.
‘Kim Baxter,’ Shane said slowly, dropping each word one at a time, ‘is the biggest landowner hereabouts. In Darjalup he’s next to the Deity; and this is a pious town. So now you know what I mean.’
‘But why ask you to meet me? And how did he know about … well, about what I look like?’
Shane shook his head and spread his hands.
‘No idea, but when I see him I’ll ask him. Should be here any minute.’
Jill looked over Shane’s shoulder and saw a tall, well-built man walking down the carpeted staircase. He had shining black hair, wet from recent showering ‒ and a cigarette in one hand. His clothes, a loose jacket and dark brown shoes, were casual but somehow looked as if they’d been cut by the best of good tailors. He was a lot older than Shane but how old Jill couldn’t guess.
He reached the ground floor, said something to the girl behind the desk then turned towards the lounge where Jill and Shane were sitting. Jill watched him fascinated. There was no hint of a smile on his bronzed face. His eyes were a dark blue, Jill thought. They were intent and quite serious. He was very impressive.
At that moment Vanessa Althrop came down the staircase. She had changed her dress and now wore a beguiling pale blue dress of fine silk. She had a gold chain round her neck and from it hung a large embossed gold locket. Her gold ear-rings were small but lovely. With her dark hair swathed on the crown of her head she looked very beautiful.
‘Kim ‒ darling!’ she said.
The man moving across the lounge turned round quickly at the sound of her voice.
‘Why, Vanessa!’ he said. His voice was resonant and soft, also glad ‒ in a controlled way. Jill, from the distance, thought this man would be controlled about everything.
Vanessa came right up to him. There couldn’t have been more than two inches between them as they stood there in the centre of the room. The man now had his back turned to Jill and Shane in the corner of the lounge. All Jill could see was his tall body, the excellent cut of his jacket; and that his hair shone blue-black under the overhead light; as did Vanessa’s hair.
‘A cigarette please, darling,’ Vanessa said. He took out his cigarette case. Vanessa Althrop went on in her clear-toned voice ‒ all the honey in it now. ‘I told you I’d be down in late February. I’m surprised you weren’t counting the days.’
Shane had turned in his chair, also watching the scene. Now he turned back to Jill.
‘Leave them be till they get that “darling-when-did-I-last-see-you-act” off; and Kim’ll come and explain all things to you, Jill. Meantime patience. The dark Vanessa means business when she starts playing up to Kim that way.’
‘Please,’ said Jill. Her pretty eyes were beginning to be tired behind their veil of long lashes. ‘Would you explain this whole situation to me. I don’t even know your name.’
‘Shane Evans,’ he said with a smile. ‘I’m sorry, Jill, but honestly you swept me off my feet. In spite of Kim’s accurate physical description of you I didn’t expect anyone so young … or so well, downright pretty …’ His smile was a little sheepish now. ‘You know, one gets a sort of build-up in one’s mind about school-teachers. I never seem to remember any of mine being under fifty …’
‘I’m not a teacher any more if the school is burnt down,’ Jill said quietly. ‘I did my training as a private student in the college so the Government doesn’t have to find me another job. Naturally, I’m worried.’
