Free The Coral Tree by Joyce Dingwell Page B

drumming, she fell asleep.
    She woke with a start to find it was almost dusk. She had been dreaming, and in the dream she had been arguing that it was much too hot for a fire. Why had she dreamed that, she puzzled, lying relaxed and inert on the couch. Then she recalled the words of that verse.
    “ ... Music, laughter, fireside embers ...”
    Fireside embers, that had set her off, she decided. She smiled, yawned and stretched.
    Then, like the returning theme of a song, came the second line of the poem.
    “All the things the heart remembers.”
    What did a heart remember? she wondered curiously. She had believed up till now that it remembered everything—including Mrs. Marlow ’ s legion persecution—but was it only the mind that retained those latter images? Already she believed she was half way to forgetting the unhappiness of this house and recalling, instead, an ol d woman ’ s last gentle wish, her final piteous plea. Those are the things the heart remembers, Cary thought; the others belong only to the mind. And it is the heart things, she decided quietly, that will bring the blossoming. They must.
    She got up and made her way through the darkening house. She wished now that Mr. O ’ Flynn had had time to start the electric plant. She would dearly have liked a deep, hot bath to take away that stiffness. She made do with a sponge of hot water, heated over the primus. Lucky for her that the thoughtful O ’ Flynn had included a bottle of kerosene in the supplies. It was too mild an evening to light the stove, and anyway, unlike Mr. O ’ Flynn, she had never been a good stoker.
    After the makeshift bath she boiled a kettle for a pot of tea. There was ample food in the hamper, so she had no need to raid the pantry, which, she recalled, Mrs. Marlow had always kept fully equipped. She did hunt out a lamp, however, and as soon as the shadows were deep she lit it and sat watching the yellow glow search into the corners to soak up the gloom.
    Her eyes fell on the notes she had been compiling to show to Mr. Farrell. She must not ask him for too much at once, although she felt sorely tempted. She thought practically: Perhaps if I wrote air-mail to Jan she could tell me the necessities and I could start on those.
    She pulled the pad to her and took out her pen. “Dear Mrs. Bokker—” she began, then she sat, pen in mouth, recalling that tall, quiet woman with the lovely steadfast eyes and the mission in life.
    She tore out the page.
    “My very dear Jan—” she wrote in its place.
    For a few moments she was not in the wide, airy room with the determined leaves of an encroaching coral tree tapping at the window, but in that lodge in Mungen, sitting with the two women and drinking coffee and talking by the fire.
    She remembered the soft fall of snow outside the house — then was aware, though without any actual alarm, that there was a soft fall of feet at this very moment outside this house.
    She got up and went to the door to open it, but it was opened before she could touch it. She stepped back, really alarmed this time, watching the lamp make a widening shaft across the threshold; then a man stepped in.
    For a moment she stared at him almost stupidly, and he stared in amazement back at her.
    “You again,” she said.
    He did not answer for a few seconds. He came right into the room and up to the light before he spoke.
    “I thought you were staying with the Fortescues,” he said bluntly at length, “or over at Ten Mile. I never associated you with Clairhill.”
    When she did not comment he proceeded in explanation: “I knew this place should be empty, so when I saw the light I anticipated an uninvited guest and slipped across to investigate.”
    “That was considerate of you.” She spoke stiffly.
    “Not at all. I would expect the same from you.”
    A silence fell between them. He had given her the reason for his intrusion, and she had thanked him. What was he waiting for? she thought, irritated.
    He was not only