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‘Tomorrow. Or is that too soon?’

‘I think it will be very satisfactory. Sign there, please, Miss Travis. The wards are already established, and as he’s not a family man, I mean not married, I believe Mr David will be more than glad to see you.’

‘Until he does see me.’ Paddy had not been able to stop herself saying that.

‘What, Miss Travis?’

‘Well, I don’t look ... well ’

‘Experienced?’ helped the secretary indulgently.

‘Yes.’

‘But Mr David would know that already. He chose you himself.’

‘Chose me?’ Paddy queried.

‘Especially. I should know, I was directed to contact your Mr Aston ... is that right?’

‘Yes, but Mr Aston never told me.’

‘Probably remembered there’s many a slip, so kept quiet in case you might be disappointed.’

‘Yes, that would be Mr Aston,’ appreciated Paddy. ‘But—chose me?’ She said it in honest puzzlement. Why would anyone choose inexperience when

‘There you are, then. Your ticket is booked on the Northern Mail. You alight at Turnabout Creek ... don’t forget to warn the guard at the previous stop, as there’s no staff at the conditional stop station. You’ll be picked up from there by a Yoothamurra car. Goodbye, and good luck, Miss Travis, and don’t look so puzzled. I know if it were me I would be very pleased to be
particularly
selected by Mr
David.’

‘Particularly selected?’

‘I assure you.’

‘Then I will be pleased.’ But Paddy said it faintly. Why had anyone picked her ?

But there had been no time to worry about it, there had only been time for the last essentials, then attendance at Central Railway at eight sharp the next morning.

The train had left on time, in more time again had lost the suburbs, rimmed the coast to Newcastle, then done the usual railway unrolling of hills, flats, woods and towns. Cows were followed by pigs and pigs by crops. In the afternoon the big timber started, and, late afternoon, the bananas.

At dusk the mail pulled up at the conditional stop of Turnabout Creek and everyone ... save Paddy ... came to the window to look out. Paddy was intent on getting out.

There was a raised platform of earth and a small shelter in case of rain, but nothing else. Trees closed in on either side, and in the dusky blue of early evening they came almost like a green explosion.

It seemed lush country, the kind of country that bounteous rainfalls and bounteous sun produce together. Paddy could name a lot of the trees at a glance ... silky oak, black walnut, silver ash. There were occasional banana intruders, too, only to be expected in banana terrain, and parasitic fig, wild orchids and liana vines hanging in Tarzan-inviting loops and swings.

Lastly, and just now most important, there was a big black car halted on a rough timber track. A man was sitting behind the wheel waiting for her, and his look, even from the distance of the platform, was hard, flinty and unwavering.

Paddy still stood where the guard had deposited both her and her bag on the bare earth rise with its sign Turnabout Creek, Advise Driver, but
her
look back was soft, yielding and wavering—wavering with emotion. Why, Jerry, she was rejoicing, Jerry after twelve months. Jerry who was ‘mate’ to her own ‘old man’, Magnus to her Maryrose. Her fellow twenty-year-old one’ green September ago.

‘Remember September! ’ Paddy was laughing aloud as she bounded from the platform and ran to the car. Jerry
had
matured after all, she thought, he was not that sprite any more, but on the other hand he was not paunchy or anything like that.

He was getting out of the car now, and Paddy was pausing. Jerry ... yet not Jerry ... somehow not even Jerry, then. So—someone else?

‘Magnus?’ she said uncertainly.

‘Yes, madam, Magnus David. I presume you are’ ... a pause as he checked on a paper ... ‘Miss Travis. Padua Travis.’ Another ... significant
...
pause. ‘Alias Maryrose.’

Paddy added jerkily, nonsensically: ‘And old man.’

He did not comment on that. He said: ‘Kindly be seated in the car, Miss Travis. It’s getting dark, and as you can guess there are no lights on these smaller tracks, so we won’t waste time. I’ll fetch your bag.’

He had gone before his last word, a bigger, broader man than she had judged Jerry would grow into, very like Jerry, in fact the same, yet—yet

‘Brothers.’ The man had returned now and put her bag in the back seat. 'That’s to put you out of your misery of uncertainty,’ he added.

‘No misery,’ Paddy assured him.

‘But much memory?’ he insinuated drily. ‘It seemed so on Jeremy’s part, anyway. Well, all that’s finished now.’ He had got in the car by now, and he began to move forward at once.

‘You mean because I’ve been found?’ asked Paddy confused. She had never dreamed that that September had meant such a lot to Jerry, it hadn’t to her, it—it had just happened, it had just been good fun.

‘No.’ The man beside her negotiated a difficult bend rendered more difficult still because it twined between two spreading gums. ‘No ... because Jerry now won’t be inserting any more ads.’

‘You mean—Remember September?’ Paddy asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Jerry has married?’ Yes, that would be it. Come to think of it, as a new wife she wouldn’t very much care about it herself.

‘No,’ Magnus David answered harshly. ‘Because he died.’

He began to climb, and though the going was rocky, he took enough time from his task to look quickly at Paddy and repeat himself.

‘Jeremy is dead.’

A
full
minute went by, and a full minute in a dark car in a fast darkling world can be a very long time.

The man
.
.. Magnus David, he had told her ... had his attention on the track, and it was a very treacherous track. Even in daylight its necessary detours round rock outcrops, fallen logs and encroaching trees would have been a hazard, but now it was a demanding, full-time job. Yet Paddy was not thinking of the difficulties the man was dealing with, she was thinking only of Jerry, that nice idiot, that mate, that Magnus to Maryrose.

‘He called himself Magnus,’ she heard herself saying dully. It could not be true, that fellow witness to last year’s September and last year’s spring could not be gone. She could never think of that eternal elf, that constant sprite, as

‘And you called yourself Maryrose,' he said coldly.

‘Only out of fun.’

‘But I don’t think poor Jeremy’s part was in fun.’ A pause. ‘No,
I
am Magnus.’

‘Yes, you said so.’

‘Well?’

‘Well what?’ she asked.

‘Doesn’t that explain things?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I was senior to Jeremy, I was bigger, stronger, more successful, more experienced, a man of the world, it was only natural that Jeremy ’

‘Yes?’

‘That he emulated me.’

Only natural! That his brother emulated him! What kind of person was this ?

‘So,' concluded Magnus David, ‘in your game of make-believe Jeremy was me.’

‘You’re quite wrong,' Paddy corrected him coolly. ‘There was no game of make-believe.'

‘Maryrose? Magnus?’

'That was only a joke.’

‘And the rest—was it a joke, too?’

‘What rest?’

‘One year, twelve months, fifty-two weeks of remembering. Was that a joke, Miss Travis?’

‘No, not a joke, just a reminder by Jerry of a good month.’

‘Yet no reminder from you,’ he pointed out.

‘Oh, you’re wrong,’ she protested. ‘I remembered.’

‘Please go on.’

‘And it was a very good month.'

‘Just that? Just good?’

‘I said very good,’ Paddy repeated.

‘Yet it only lasted that long for you? A month?'

‘What do you mean?’

‘We’ll come to that later.’ He braked for a fat wombat who decided at that moment to cross the track. ‘No wonder they get killed,’ he said absently.

‘No, not later, now.’ Paddy was not watching the wombat, she was too concerned with herself. She did not know what was coming from this man, she only knew that it would be unpleasant, but she was still not going to be set aside like that.

‘Very well then,’ he conceded promptly, ‘was it just for a month or ’

‘What do you mean by “it”?’ Paddy broke in. ‘Whatever was staged there.’

‘Nothing was staged there. I presume you’re meaning Pelican Beach?’

‘I am. Was it just for a month or ’

‘Or?’ she questioned.

‘Until now. Until this.’

‘I don’t understand you, Mr David.’

‘All this,’ he repeated harshly, ‘all part of the David
.
.. and Jeremy was a David ... estate.’

‘I still don’t understand you.’

‘But I understand you,’ he said harshly.

‘You can’t. I—I mean, there’s nothing to be understood.’

‘Oh, come off it! I’m not one of your tender wards, house-mother, I’m an adult. Well adult. I’m thirty-five, more than twice Jeremy’s age when he fell for your sly trap.’

About to object angrily at that ‘sly trap’, Paddy stared at him instead, stared incredulously.

‘You couldn’t be!’

'Thirty-five? Thank you, madam, it’s nice to be told, even falsely, that you don’t look your age.’

‘Jerry didn’t look twenty.’ Paddy was saying it to herself, not him. ‘But he couldn’t have been, he wasn’t ’

‘Only seventeen rising eighteen?’

‘Yes.’

‘He was, though, Miss Travis.'

‘But I was twenty.’ Paddy almost whispered it in her dismay.

‘And Jeremy was under eighteen,’ Magnus David repeated.

‘He didn’t say so.'

‘Did you ask?’

‘We never talked about things like that, only about ’

‘Yes?’

But Paddy found she could not go on.

Magnus David waited a while, then changed to the subject of wards.

‘I have to break it to you that they’re not tender ones, as I just said, they’re the usual horrors.’ A thin smile. ‘I thought you would like to know.’

‘I’ll cope,' she assured him.

‘I doubt it.' A shrug. 'Their particular category’ ...
particular
category? ... ‘needs years of experience, something you haven’t got. However, I was well aware of that when I chose you from the applicants.'

‘How did you choose me?’ Paddy asked. ‘And how did you know where to go to choose?’

‘I think you mean how did I track you down? How did I find out that you were connected with Jeremy?’

‘I was never “connected”, as you put it, with Jerry.'

He ignored that.

‘I chose you, Miss Travis, because I’d previously found out about you, and it was too good a chance to miss.’

‘A chance not to be missed?’

‘I said that.'

She was silent a while, then at last she found words. ‘You took me on even though I was inexperienced ... well, inexperienced in situations if not in theory, simply because it was too good a chance to miss?’

‘Yes.’

‘You didn’t think “Poor wards”?’

‘I did, but I put the thought aside.'

‘Why?’

‘Because I wanted to see you, estimate you, observe you ... weigh you up.’

‘Weigh me up?’ she echoed.

‘Yes.’

‘For what?’

‘You could say’ ... thinly and with a thin twist to his lips ... ‘to be found wanting.’

‘Yes, and I think you would want that.'

‘Perhaps I did.’

‘No perhaps,' refused Paddy wretchedly. How could she feel less than wretched with such a wretched man? She bit hard on her lip.

‘Yet you were quoted to me as a great benefactor,’ she said angrily.

‘I am. Believe me, I’m a very charitable man. I inherited a considerable estate from my uncle, and the business it deals with is expanding every day.’

‘Bananas.’

‘Bananas?’ He glanced quickly at her.

‘It said so on the map in your Sydney office,’ she explained.

‘Bananas on the coast, yes, but we’ve left the coast. In case you haven’t noticed we’re climbing.’

‘Then what is the inherited business?’ asked Paddy.

His look was sharp this time. ‘Yoothamurra?’ he prompted.

‘I don’t know what it means.’

‘It’s aboriginal for great luck.’

‘Well?’

‘Well, don’t try to pretend you’re unaware.’

‘I am unaware,’ she insisted.

Magnus David gave an unpleasant, disbelieving laugh, then he resumed again.

‘I set aside a large portion of my—well, fortune, you could call it—for the association
you
work for, Miss Travis.’

‘Only out of goodheartedness, of course.’ Paddy’s lips were curled.

‘Of course. What else?’

‘I think a great deal else, Mr David.’

‘You’re right,' he agreed blandly. ‘As a matter of interest, you come in as well.'

‘I?’

‘You.'

‘But '

‘I had, through devious methods, discovered who you were and where you worked. So instead of donating to one of the usual charities that I might have, I chose the Closer Families Association. Your concern.'

‘That’s true.'

‘Because,' he continued, and even in the dark that had descended now Paddy could see the man’s derision, ‘you were involved.’

'That’s true. I work for Closer Families.'

'That was not the involvement I meant, but it will do just now. You worked for Closer Families and now’ ... a deliberate pause ... ‘you work for me.'

‘I think,' said Paddy jerkily, her mind made up before he explained any more, ‘that can be rectified.’

‘I don’t think,' he said smoothly back, ‘that it can.'

‘I don’t understand you.'

‘You said that before.'

‘Will you tell me, please?’ she asked.

‘Gladly. Briefly. Yesterday you signed a paper.'

'That is so,' Paddy agreed.

Then it’s a pity you didn’t read it, Miss Travis, because—it’s, binding.’

‘Binding?’

‘You are bound, under a penalty of cash repayment, to work for me.'