Free The Tender Winds of Spring by Joyce Dingwell Page A

question was not in idleness, that he was listening keenly. For all his reassurance that he had known the position was not her doing, that he understood Gavin’s reaction, he was still blaming her and her fiancé. It made Jo answer him flippantly, carelessly, to hide the dismay she, too, felt.
    ‘Dicky so far,’ she shrugged. ‘He’s points ahead.’
    ‘Good for Dicky.’ A pause. ‘Or bad?’
    ‘I thought we’d finished all that.’
    ‘Yes, I did say so, didn’t I? Sorry, Josephine.’ Abel got up and went to the door. ‘I’m going to work in the plantation today. You start your pumping and I’ll be down later to hear any results.’ He saluted her and went out.
    The children were on the verandah, ostensibly playing snakes and ladders, but really conferring under their breath. As Jo approached they made a show of movement to conceal their purpose, and if Dicky had not gone up the snake instead of down, Jo would not have taken any notice. But before she could comment, Amanda said quickly: ‘Playing the proper way gets a bore. We’re doing it averse.’
    ‘Reverse.’ Jo sat down beside the table. The snakes reminded her of something—the day she had taken the children down to the creek and her advice on snakes. ‘I don’t suppose in a boarding school you know much about snakes,’ she had said, and they had replied, or one of them had: ‘Not in boarding school but once at—’
    Then Amanda had clammed up.
    But where? Some place where there was a mine? A miner? Their father? Their mother? Well, it was no use waiting for them to come forward with any information and it was no use skirting around. She decided to ask outright. ‘Where used you go at school holidays?’
    ‘School.’
    ‘School? but—’
    ‘If there’s no one, I mean if there’s nowhere for you, you stay on at school.’
    ‘That must have been disappointing.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Most children like to go home,’ Jo persisted.
    ‘We didn’t.’
    ‘I suppose it would depend on where home was.’ Jo cunningly did not make a question of it, she did it intentionally, but she still did not get a response. Also intentional?
    ‘You didn’t even see each other,’ she consoled.
    ‘Oh, yes, Amanda and Sukey are at the same school,’ Dicky told Jo, ‘and I’m next door. We’re a brother and sister school. Very soon it’s going to be one school. All mixed up.’ He said it with disapproval.
    ‘He means co-ed,’ said Amanda. She added: ‘Yuk.’ Sukey echoed: ‘Yuk.’
    The conversation was getting away from the channel in which Jo wanted to keep it.
    ‘Did you take dancing and music?’ she asked the girls, feeling false as she said it, for she already knew they had not.
    ‘No.’
    ‘No extras?’
    ‘No, we didn’t want to.’
    ‘Didn’t want to,’ Sukey repeated.
    Jo nodded sympathetically. ‘I understand, they cost a lot, and your father mightn’t have been able to afford a lot.’ No comment.
    ‘Not all fathers are bankers, shipowners, millionaires ... or miners.’
    Not a face was raised, not an eye flicked.
    Jo stuck it out for an hour, then she gave in. She went back into the house just as the telephone rang. She picked up the receiver. It was Gavin.
    ‘My poor dear,’ said Gavin, ‘how has it been today?’
    ‘The same, really. I mean, Gavin, you can’t expect—’
    ‘No, I can’t, but when one cares for somebody as I care for you, one gets impatient.’
    Resisting an impulse to remind him: ‘You weren’t before,’ Jo said instead: ‘You mustn’t, Gavin.’
    ‘Tell that to my impatient heart, my dear. Meanwhile, can you give me an idea at least?’
    ‘Idea?’
    ‘Which child, Josie. After all, if I’m to be a parent—’
    ‘Oh, yes, the child.’
    ‘Any eliminations yet?’
    ‘All the time—that’s the trouble, Gavin.’
    ‘No trouble at all,’ Gavin said eagerly, ‘I don’t mind forgetting the whole thing, my dear.’
    ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant the trouble if we took the