Raintree Valley Read online

  RAINTREE VALLEY

  by

  Violet Winspear

  Joanna Dowling knew she was going to love the job of home-help at Raintree Valley in Northern Australia. The boss, Adam Corraine, considered she would do better working in some smart boutique in the big city, and gave her just two weeks in which to prove herself.

  Which of them would turn out to be right?

  CHAPTER ONE

  The long-distance bus had passed through country almost tropical and skirted the long rustling waves of sugar-cane. Now the air smelt of the sea, for they had crossed the border and were travelling along the coastline of Brisbane.

  Joanna gazed from the window of the bus and hoped that the job she was bound for would be as interesting as the name of the place where it awaited her. Raintree Valley had a romantic sound to it, but she might again be disappointed at her journey’s end. She drew a sigh, and a glance from the person sitting beside her. A glance that took in her ash-blonde hair, blue suit, and slender, ringless hands. To all outward appearances Joanna Dowling had a cool, composed, almost reserved air, but inwardly she was taut with nerves.

  She had come to this faraway country to live with her sister Viviana, and she hadn’t dreamed that her twin was still as impulsive and irresponsible as she had been at sixteen, when she had packed a suitcase and run off to London to go on the stage.

  Gay, attractive, self-seeking Viviana, just an hour younger than Joanna but different in every way. She had disliked everything at school except the dancing lessons, and living on a farm with a rather stern grandmother had never been her idea of fun. She had cut loose and wheedled her way into chorus work, and when the show had travelled to Australia she had stayed there and found stage work in Sydney. Then out of the blue she had written to suggest that Joanna join her.

  ‘There are no more drawbacks, Jo,’ she had written in her persuasive way. ‘You’ve done your duty by Gran and now she’s giving lip the farm and settling in with her sister, you’re free to live your own life. Come to Australia, pet! We’ll be together again, as twins should be, not miles apart.’

  Gran had been against the idea when Joanna had broached it. ‘You mark my words, girl,’ she said. ‘You’ll get there and then Viv’ll leave you flat to go gallivanting off somewhere else. She’s as footloose as your father was. He dragged your poor mother all over the globe, planting one thing and another without ever planting himself and his family in a proper home. Viv takes after him! She’s every bit as charming and selfish. You mark what I say, Jo. She’ll charm you into going out to her, and then she’ll leave you stranded!’

  Well, it had happened, just as Gran had predicted.

  Joanna’s journey had ended in twins not meeting, and the manager of the theatre had been left with the task of telling her that Viviana had gone off to New Zealand to star in a musical show. It was her first really big break. A chance she couldn’t miss. She left heaps of loving apologies, but was sure Joanna would make out fine in Australia, where she could make a life of her own without being tied to Gran’s apron strings.

  No, it did no good to weep over Viviana, but Joanna had felt very much stranded for a week or two. The lease on her sister’s apartment had run out, so she booked in at a small, inexpensive hotel, and it was there in the potted lounge that a sun-lined outback widow had suggested that she try for a job on one of the sheep or cattle stations where girls used to farm work were always in demand.

  Joanna scanned the situation columns in the various newspapers and her eye was caught and held by one job in particular. Her heart beat fast as she read the requirements of the situation. It was on a cattle station, where a young and active woman was needed to help in the home and to provide companionship for a young person. The homestead was situated in a place called Raintree Valley.

  Unlike her sister, Joanna had never been fond of bright city lights and though she could have found work as a waitress or a receptionist in a Sydney hotel, she had a love of the country and Raintree Valley sounded just her sort of place. She replied to the box number of the advertisement and asked the outback widow if she had ever heard of the valley. Australia was a mighty big place, the woman reminded her. It could be way up in Queensland.

  Several days passed and to fill in time Joanna went to the zoo to look at the animals she would probably meet in the Australian wilds. She loved the furry koala bears and the big kangaroos that looked so odd and friendly; the birds of paradise amazed her with their dazzling plumage. She sent off a coloured postcard to her grandmother, assuring her that all was well and that she hoped to land a job in the very near future.

  She was more hopeful than optimistic, for these people at Raintree Valley might prefer to employ an Australian girl rather than one who was fresh out from England and green to the ways of the graziers.

  Then to her delight she received a reply to her application. It was written in beautiful longhand on good quality notepaper, in a style that had gone out at the turn of the century, and was signed very regally with the name Charlotte Maud Corraine, Miss.

  Miss Dowling’s qualifications for the post met with Miss Corraine’s approval, and that she was English was also most satisfactory. She would be required to take the long-distance coach from Sydney to Brisbane, where she would alight at Hawk’s Bay to be met by a member of the Corraine ménage, who would escort her the remainder of the way to Raintree Valley. There was a small hotel at Hawk’s Bay known as the Spearfish and there Miss Dowling would be met by Mr. Vance Corraine.

  Joanna was charmed by the letter and only too eager to obey its instructions, and now here on the bus she and several other passengers were gathering their hand luggage together in readiness for the arrival at Hawk’s Bay. Joanna took out her compact and powdered her nose. Her eyes were eager and as always her hair was smooth in its chignon. She pulled on her gloves and saw palm trees waving along a pale sandy beach as the bus slowed down and there was a hiss of hydraulic brakes and a sliding open of the doors.

  Because of the old-world charm of Miss Corraine’s letter, Joanna had half expected Hawk’s Bay to be old-fashioned. On the contrary! There were ice-cream parlours and boutiques along the seafront, and young men and girls were gaily surfing out on the rolling blue water. And the smell of steak and onions hung on the sea air as she alighted from the bus and there was a brightly painted air about the place that slightly disappointed her. Her romantic imagination had built a picture of the bay as it must have looked a long time ago, when Charlotte Corraine had been a girl. How long had it been since Miss Corraine had left the valley if she still wrote about this place as if it were untouched by tourism?

  The Spearfish Hotel was as modern as the sun-tanned girls in their gay beachwear; sparkling with glass and polish, and with a cocktail bar leading off the lounge.

  Joanna inquired at the desk for Vance Corraine and was informed that Mr. Corraine had gone out surfing and would meet her in the cocktail bar at six o’clock. She could if she wished use his suite to freshen up after her long trip.

  ‘Oh — thank you.’ Joanna accepted the key with a slight feeling of trepidation. There was something about the name Vance, and the fact that the man liked surfing, that conjured up a lean, alert and self-confident figure. But she did feel rather warm and creased and it would be nice to take a shower and to change into a dress...

  ‘I might as well book a room,’ she began.

  The clerk shook his head. ‘We’re full right up, miss. Besides I understood that Mr. Corraine would be checking out right after he dines here tonight. You’ll be going with him, won’t you? He came in his plane and will be flying home.’

  ‘His plane?’ she echoed, feeling more than ever that she had become involved with people who were not simple, down-to-earth farmers.


  The clerk smiled a little, aware from her accent that she was from England, and from the bewilderment in her smoke-blue eyes that she was a stranger to the man she was to meet here. She glanced at the key in her hand. ‘Did Mr. Corraine say when he would be in?’ she asked a trifle nervously.

  ‘When an Australian gets into the water, miss...’ The clerk shrugged significantly. ‘Maybe around sundown.’

  ‘Of course.’ Joanna felt a little thrill of wonderment run through her. Vance Corraine was an Australian and she would be working for his family. Strangely enough, no doubt because of Charlotte Corraine’s letter, she had been thinking of these people as almost English.

  A bellboy carried her suitcase to the lift and she was whisked up to a suite that was obviously one of the best at the hotel. She took a cool shower — still feeling nervous in case some brawny six-footer suddenly appeared — and changed into a sleeveless dress with a softly pleated skirt. The Australian sun slanted through the wide windows of the room and the sea-light danced on the ceiling, and she noticed as she tidied her hair in front of the dressing-table mirror that she looked rather pale. She pinched her cheeks and wondered how Viviana was making out in New Zealand.

  Happy-go-lucky Viv, who never worried about tomorrow as Joanna was inclined to.

  Joanna gazed thoughtfully into her own blue eyes. By this time tomorrow she would be at Raintree Valley, miles away from Gran and the small farm at Hadley where she had spent most of her twenty-one years. She liked animals and being close to the soil; the smell of rain on cabbage leaves, and the cluck of fowls in a sunlit yard. She wasn’t afraid of hard work, but she was beginning to feel apprehensive about the Corraines.

  She picked up her suitcase and let herself out of the suite. She rode down in the lift to the foyer and asked the clerk to mind her case while she went for a stroll around Hawk’s Bay. As she crossed to the swing-doors, she looked altogether different from the sturdy, sun-tanned girls who were drifting in and out of the hotel. There had always been an air of retreat about Joanna, an elusive, woodsy quality. Her eyes were the colour of woodsmoke, and she had never yet let a man get close enough to count the various blue tints in her eyes.

  A golden bloom of sunshine lay over the bay and brightly-sailed boats were out on the water. She crossed the road and strolled along the promenade, watching the surfers and wondering which one of them was Vance Corraine, who piloted his own plane and who would fly her the rest of the way to the valley. She paused to buy a pineapple ice-cream and heard the laughter of a girl ring out down on the beach. A carefree-looking girl like Viviana, who waved an arm as a sun-dark figure rode in on a great blue swirl of water.

  Joanna watched him. He was like a Delphi bronze, his skin agleam from the water and the sunshine. His feet gripped the board and his teeth were a flash of white as the huge wave tried to buck him, and failing lashed him with spray.

  ‘Vance...’ the name sang on the spray and the blonde girl laughed again. ‘Is there nothing, Vance, that can rock you off your feet?’

  ‘A roller is nothing to a scrub bull and I’ve thrown plenty of those,’ he laughed back. ‘I’m a Corraine!’

  Joanna caught the ring of arrogance in his voice as she turned away and retraced her steps to the hotel, where she sat in the lounge behind a potted palm and a magazine and waited - rather tensely - for sundown.

  The hot sun outside had given way to cool shadows when Vance Corraine entered the lounge in search of Joanna. The wall-lights caught the pale sheen of her hair as she glanced up and met for the first time the quizzical impact of his eyes. Dark blue eyes with rather heavy eyelids and a sweep of light brown hair above them. There was an air of leisure about him now; of the sun deep in his pores and a sea-light captive in his gaze. A white dinner-jacket sat easily on his square shoulders and he was smoking a cigarette.

  ‘You must be Joanna Dowling,’ he said, and she remembered his voice from the beach, deep and assured and rather more cultured than one expected a cattleman’s voice to be. He also made her name sound like Darling, and a tinge of colour crept into her cheeks.

  ‘You must be Mr. Corraine.’ She rose to her feet, her fingers clenched on her magazine as she felt the brush of his eyes over her slender figure. She saw in them a flicker of amused surprise, and supposed that she would seem a contrast to his statuesque girl-friend of the beach.

  ‘Shall we have a drink in here before going in to dinner?’ he asked. ‘I guess you want to ask me a few questions about Raintree and the cocktail bar can get a trifle noisy as the beach crowd drift in.’

  ‘Yes, I am intrigued by Raintree Valley,’ she admitted, and she broke into the slight smile that crinkled her eyes. ‘And I imagine you have a few questions to ask me, Mr. Corraine.’

  ‘Yes,’ he narrowed his eyes against the smoke of his cigarette. ‘You wrote in your letter to my aunt that you were used to domestic work and helping around a small farm. I hope, Miss Dowling, that you were telling the truth.’

  ‘The truth?’ she exclaimed, and annoyance mingled with amusement that he should doubt the veracity of a girl reared by a stern countrywoman. ‘I can do more than tell a cow from a horse, Mr. Corraine. I can bake a batch of bread, whitewash a barn, feed pigs and toss turnips. I wonder if you can do as much?’

  He quirked an eyebrow at her comeback, and then he laughed, and it was one of the most attractive sounds she had heard. A trifle mocking and indulgent, and a little throaty. ‘I plead guilty to never having tossed a turnip - but you see, Miss Dowling,’ again he made it sound like Darling! ‘you look too fragile and cool to last for long in the hot sun of our territory. We’re way up where the tropics begin, did you know that?’

  ‘I suspected it,’ she said dryly. ‘Raintrees grow where it’s hot, don’t they?’

  ‘English wild flowers don’t,’ he said, with a glint in his eyes. ‘Facing tropic temperatures and the Corraines as well might make you wilt.’

  ‘Are the Corraines so formidable?’

  ‘I think I’d better get you a drink before I answer that one.’ He turned to the waiter who had just served a couple who were sitting together in a corner of the lounge -honeymooners, Joanna was willing to bet, from the way the girl couldn’t take her eyes off the young man’s face.

  ‘As you’re a farm girl, I’d better order for you,’ drawled Vance Corraine.

  ‘I’d like a gin and pineapple,’ she said in a cool voice.

  ‘Fond of pineapples?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘We grow them up at Raintree.’ He gave their order to the waiter, and Joanna sat down on the banquette and smoothed the soft pleats of her dress. She had bought the dress in London and the skirt revealed her slim legs in seamless nylons. Her feet were small in kid casuals, and she felt Vance Corraine looking her over from her ankles to her ash-blonde hair.

  ‘I don’t think I ought to take you to Raintree,’ he drawled.

  Her eyes flashed to his sun-tanned face. ‘Your aunt is hiring me to help around the house, not the stockyards, Mr. Corraine.’

  ‘You speak up for yourself, don’t you?’ He sat down beside her and rested an elbow on the back of the seat so that he faced her. He was lean and attractive in his white dinner-jacket, and his eyes were so deeply blue that the pupils were like sparks. Points of sunshine or fire. A man no girl could ignore.

  ‘Aunt Charly likes people to have a bit of spirit in them,’ he added with a smile.

  Joanna sat tense on the banquette, without leaning back. If she did so her shoulders would come in contact with his arm, and she was already close enough to this vital Australian. ‘You think your aunt will like me, and yet you imply that I won’t be suitable for the job she is offering. I’m a little puzzled, Mr. Corraine.’

  ‘Did you know, Miss Dowling, that your eyes change from blue to smoke when you’re puzzled?’

  ‘I haven’t made a particular study of my eyes,’ she rejoined. ‘I would prefer to discuss this job, for which I have travelled all the way from Sydney. In her le
tter Miss Corraine seemed perfectly satisfied with my qualifications, which I do assure you are quite good.’

  He laughed again. ‘I like a sense of humour, but it isn’t for me to say you’re good, or for my aunt. It’s the Boss who does the hiring and the firing.’

  ‘The Boss?’ she echoed. ‘But—’

  ‘Adam Corraine, my cousin, who runs the whole of Raintree and a couple of other stations some miles from the homestead. Once-Lonely and Wandaday are not so big, but we muster the cattle at one or the other when the “fats” are ready for transport to the cities in the big trailers we now use instead of droving all the way and running the fat off the cows. They feed for months up on the Raintree hills, where the land is fertile and grassy, and then comes the big drive down to Once-Lonely or Wandaday.’

  The names were fascinating, but it was the name of Vance Corraine’s cousin that held Joanna’s attention. ‘I thought—’ Her throat had gone rather dry and she was glad to accept her drink and ease the dryness.

  ‘You thought I was in charge of things up at Raintree?’ Vance looked quizzical as he swallowed most of his cocktail. ‘I’m Adam’s offsider. That is to say I share the management of the stations, but he’s the Boss. We’ve both lived at Raintree all our lives, but Adam was trained by our grandfather, Kingsley Corraine, to run things after he died. You see, Joanna, my father was the Prodigal Son who took his portion and spent it in the gay city. Adam’s father worked day and night for the old man, and then came the war and he was called to the colours. He died out in Burma and the old man turned to Adam and never let him alone until he lived, breathed and thought of nothing but making Raintree and its mustering stations the envy of Queensland. When King died, as everyone called the old man, I fell in line as Adam’s second in command. King always said that I had the charm, and Adam the arm.’

  Vance looked at the drink in his hand and there was a small twist of a smile at the edge of his mouth. ‘I suppose it could be said that Adam takes after the old man and that pride in Raintree is in his bones.’