Bride in Flight Read Online Free PDF Page B

plains on the east coast, with a mighty chain of Alps with very few passes dividing it from the narrow fringe of land that’s the west coast?
    “Well, there is just the Lewis Pass in North Canterbury, Arthur’s Pass direct west from Christchurch, with a railway line beside it, running through the gigantic Otira Tunnel, and far south a road tunnel through the Homer Saddle to get through to the glorious fiordland there. Well, the Haast Pass Road, between the last two, has just been put through. Now, recognizing the tremendous tourist value of a round trip, they are pushing the road on up north to link up with South Westland.
    “Even short stretches can take years to build. The hazards are unbelievable. It’s practically impossible country—rain forests. It has to be carved through gorges, through solid rock barriers, over rivers and valleys. We’ve had to bypass a main earthquake fault in our preliminary surveys. It’s been the challenge of a lifetime to the men who planned it. You’ve been brought up in a city whose population equals that of the whole of New Zealand. You’d be round the bend in a week. It’s no place for a city girl.”
    Her eyes met his levelly. “I don’t really belong to any city. Ancestry counts for something. I’ve often been strangely nostalgic for the country. You see, my mother grew up in the Wanaka district... isn’t that on the route to the Haast? And my father was a high country shepherd. She went to Teachers’ College in Dunedin, he took a course at the Agricultural College—is it Lincoln College?”
    He nodded.
    “They met at some students’ conference, eventually married, and were settled in as a married couple on a farm, hoping some day to own one, when war broke out. Mother took a house in Dunedin and went teaching. Father was killed and she kept at that for some time, but then was offered a position on an Australian sheep station, as governess to four children. Three years later she died and there was nowhere to go for me but the orphanage. Those years on the sheep station were the happiest of my life.
    “My mother must have been very homesick for New Zealand, at times. When I was eighteen and able to fend for myself, I was given all her possessions. Mother was fond of poetry—she wrote a little herself—and one poem written by a Molly Howden in the Australian Woman’s Mirror I found underlined in one of her scrapbooks. It made me determined to come back to New Zealand for a—holiday—to see it for myself. My husband and I had planned to come, but since—well, I thought I’d still come. I brought the clipping with me.” She opened her new bag, took it from one of the pockets, handed it to him. This man didn’t seem like a stranger now. He’d had much the same background as herself.
    He read:
    “I hadn’t heard a tui’s note for many years, it seems;
    The raupo and the taupata are wrapped in childhood’s dreams...
    Boronia and waratah, the flaming coral tree,
    The jacaranda and the vines hold out their gifts to me.
    I take them all and love them all; but sometimes, when it’s still,
    I see two sturdy little feet go skipping down a hill
    To where the briar roses grow all scented by the way.
    And in among the tufty grass the timid rabbits play.
    The dusty metalled road is edged with splendid kowhai trees,
    Their gold-brown flowers hung pendulous like drunken bumble-bees.
    I hear a tui call his mate—her answer from afar—
    And then I wake to Sydney streets and some loud clanking car.
    Ohills of home! O rain-drenched ferns and sweet konini trees.
    Waft me a little breath of you across the Tasman Seas!”
    As she too read it with him, a little of the old anticipation stirred Kirsty’s pulses. Perhaps Gilbert hadn’t robbed her of everything.
    “I see,” said the man beside her, and something in his voice suggested he felt moved.
    Kirsty said, “I hope you do. I hope you see that the New Zealand I want to see isn’t one of cities and macadam roads, but one