‘All alone?’ She glanced around. ‘Where’s Mim?’
‘She said she had something to do.’
‘Up to mischief, then.’ She shrugged. Her mother would return in her own good time. She studied the first man her daughter had brought home in five years. He looked pale, but not as pale as he had on arrival. There was no use asking how he was feeling because he’d just say ‘fine’. Maybe she could pump him for more background information. Make him see the disaster of he and Ava together in the city because again she could feel that vague hostility of foreboding when she thought of Ava with him in her future.
‘I’m sorry to hear about your wife.’
‘Thank you, Stella. I’m sorry to hear about your husband.’ Well, that served her right. But she didn’t give up easily. ‘Were you married long?’
He smiled at her. ‘Five years. You?’
Smart alec. ‘Five. Was she from Sydney?’
Now his eyes positively twinkled. ‘Yes. We grew up together. You two?’ Ping-pong. But she didn’t bite this time because she’d found her opportunity.
‘My husband and I were from two totally different worlds. Though lust blinded us. I nearly went mad when I went back to Sydney with him.’ There, she’d said it.
He studied her face for a minute and then said kindly, ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ He looked towards the door as Ava laughed from somewhere outside. His face lit up and Stella had the crushing realisation that she’d just wasted her time.
‘Tea, anyone?’ she called, half exasperated and half amused. As if anyone would have been able to change her or Noah’s mind all those years ago. It really was a shame that it had ended so badly. ‘Sorry for the inquisition. You’ll get used to us.’
‘I’m enjoying myself,’ he said and grinned at Stella, who simply shook her head.
Reckless, foolish young people. Yes, it was Ava’s right to choose, and the big man with his beautiful, tired eyes was a lovely-looking specimen. Perhaps her daughter would risk withering in the city’s soulless world of money and mayhem for him. Maybe she’d be fine. But she’d have to work in the fast lane of transient patients in a busy Sydney hospital or be stuck home alone with kids while he did his thing.
Stella thought back to those days. To being surrounded by neighbours who never talked to you and rushing traffic that never stopped. Would Ava shrivel into herself like she had until she cracked?
Stella sighed again as she glanced out and saw her son’s unsmiling face. Jock. There’d been a lot of grim looks lately. There were so many things to worry about when she really wanted peace.
Chapter Thirty-one
Ava
‘Never seen you hold a bloke’s hand before, Ava.’ Jock scowled at the house.
Ava narrowed her eyes. What’s eating him? ‘I never found one sexy enough.’
Jock nearly choked. ‘Hope there’s more to him than that?’
She was tempted to say ‘Is there more?’ to get a rise out of her suddenly protective younger brother. But Jock looked bowed down with some emotion and she glanced back at the house to see if Hana was there. She couldn’t see her. Hana kept him on an even keel.
‘Hana tells me the baby is growing well.’
A rare smile crossed her brother’s face. ‘It kicks like there’s no tomorrow.’ His face appeared sad for a moment before he seemed to drag a smile from the bottom of his boots. ‘We still don’t know the sex, but we don’t care either way, so the surprise is nice for Hana.’
She tilted her head at him. ‘The surprise will be nice for you, too.’
‘Of course.’ He brushed that away and faced the house again. ‘We’ve got a couple of weeks before we have to go back to Alice Springs. There’s the muster to get through first.’
‘We’ll manage. We always do.’ She lowered her voice. ‘You okay?’
Jock combed his hair back from his face with his fingers. ‘The stock look terrible. There were even a few that we’ve had to shoot. They’re starving. Mim says the rain will turn up, but I’m thinking I might have blown it.’
‘You’re not responsible for the drought. And the improvements you made were needed,’ Ava said. ‘Do you want to go for a drive together? See how the back looks?’ She wouldn’t let him go alone again if he came back from the paddocks looking like this. ‘I guess we could bring Zac?’
Jock looked thoughtful. ‘Mum says he’s sick.’
‘He’s recovering.’ Boy, was he recovering. ‘But I’ve seen him in action, and if you needed a hand with a steer he could help.’
He laughed, but it was bitter and angry and she frowned in concern. ‘I blew the budget and it’s going to wipe us out.’
‘This isn’t like you, Jock, all doom and gloom. Stop it. You can’t take the blame for the weather.’
Jock positively vibrated with self-loathing. ‘I should have waited another year for the solar pumps.’ She’d never seen him like this. He’d obviously been stewing on it for some time. He dragged his hand through his hair again and she could see it was shaking. He was worse than she’d thought.
‘Overcapitalising happened to the Wilsons. And the Johnsons before that. Mum should have stopped me.’
His voice had risen and now Hana appeared at the back door. She glided across the grass to put her hand on Jock’s arm. ‘Hey, cowboy. Getting loud there.’
Jock’s stiff expression softened. ‘I know. Sorry, honey. I was telling Ava about the cattle. She said she’d come with me to count.’
Ava didn’t remember saying quite that, but she would. She’d bring Zac if he was up to it. And she hoped they wouldn’t find too many ill cattle. Jock didn’t look like he could take it. But then he’d been here day in, day out watching the feed disappear while she’d been in Alice in another world. Maybe he needed to get away for more than an ultrasound in town. She sighed. But they couldn’t afford that, either.
‘Tomorrow morning, then, rather than today?’ She was thinking that Zac would have had another night’s sleep and he’d managed the walk to the creek bed with ease earlier. Managed to hold her hand with no ill effects. She’d ask him if he thought he’d be up to sharing Jock’s run later.
Hana sighed and rested her hand on Jock’s arm. ‘Mim’s just told your brother he’s not to go looking for bad news.’
Jock brushed that aside. ‘We can say we’re showing Zac around. Take some food, call it a picnic.’ His voice was bitter and harsh. He must have heard it himself because he ended with his voice calmer and softer. ‘Mim will be happy with that.’
She and Hana exchanged looks. Ava wasn’t so sure Jock was looking at this rationally, and judging by Hana’s expression she didn’t think so either, but they could both see Jock was taking it hard. Ava couldn’t blame her brother. Everyone was struggling.
‘What does Mum say?’
‘She’s focused on the ecotourism.’ Jock waved his hand in disgust. ‘Believes it will save the day.’
‘It might.’
‘Tea, anyone?’ Stella’s voice floated out to them and Jock set his jaw.
He glanced at the house. ‘Better go in if we want to do this thing tomorrow.’
‘You go ahead.’ Hana’s voice was quiet but determined, and Jock nodded. ‘I want to talk to Ava for a minute.’
Ava watched as Zac stepped out onto the verandah to wave them in. ‘I’ll go out with you tomorrow, Jock, and see if I can help. After “we” –’ she used her fingers for inverted commas – ‘show Zac the station.’
Hana’s relief couldn’t be mistaken as her husband walked away. ‘I’m glad you’re going with Jock. I’m in no state to go bouncing around in the Polaris looking for him.’
‘He’s lucky he has you.’ They turned towards the house and started to follow more slowly. ‘How’s your pregnancy going this week? I know you said the baby is good, but are you keeping well?’
‘I feel great. And Jock makes a fuss of me.’
Ava smiled. ‘He should.’
Hana shrugged. ‘And I think your
mother is getting just a little bit clucky.’
They both laughed. ‘She’s got a lot on her plate with the tourism stuff.’ Not to mention the bombshell she’d dropped on Ava today. ‘She’s glad of your help. One day Jock will take over the station, and Mum and Mim will go to Alice to live. You’ll miss us all then.’
‘I wish Jock had your conviction. This drought has really knocked his confidence, and I think that responsibility at this moment could be the last straw. I’m worried about him.’
Reggie rushed up to Ava and she reached down for a pat of his soft neck as he sat against her legs, a warm quivering weight. ‘Me too.’ Then she said to the dog, ‘You’re a sook, Reg.’ Then lowering her voice she said, ‘This visit I’m thinking Mim is looking frail, too. What do you think?’
Hana nodded. ‘She works very hard and she’s worried about Jock as well. So is your mum. Mim won’t slow down on the station, even though Jock says he can do half the stuff she does. He tries to lighten her load, but she’s stubborn. And her hip hurts.’
They started walking again. ‘I know. I’ll have a talk to her. Maybe suggest Jock needs to feel like he’s pulling more weight. I’ll see what I can do.’
‘Thanks, Ava.’
‘Thank you. We’re so lucky Jock found you. Just take care of yourself and the next generation of Mays. Don’t work too hard.’ Hana was as bad as Mim on that front.
‘I’ll try.’
They pushed through the screen into the kitchen and her mum was there holding up the teapot as a question.
‘Yes, please.’ Ava sat herself next to Zac and smiled back at him. ‘So, you’ve been closeted with my grandmother and now my mother on your own. Still surviving?’
‘I’m enjoying myself,’ he said, and for some reason her mother laughed.
Chapter Thirty-two
Zac
Zac woke the next morning before light with only some stiffness and a few aches, and he felt better than he had for a week. Possibly better than he had for a whole year, except for the confusion of losing two weeks of his life. He didn’t know if it was the place or the people making him feel this way, though he suspected the latter. Especially the company of one particular person. He couldn’t remember when he’d slept so deeply once his head hit the pillow. The only discomfort was the itching around the suture lines at the back of his head and his arm. This morning, the silence seemed to beckon with cool desert whispers enticing him to slip outside and watch the sunrise. Come on. Come on. It’s nice out here.
He sat up and swung his feet to the cool floor, but before he could stand his door opened just as quietly and Ava poked her head around. When she saw he was awake she slipped into the room.
All his Christmases came at once. ‘Good morning, Nurse.’
She put her fingers to her lips, but he noted with satisfaction the quirk of her smile behind them. ‘I’m more of a midwife. Would you like to see the sunrise? We’ve still got time if you’re up for it.’
‘Oh, I’m up for it,’ he said, and decided he’d said that cheekily, which wasn’t like him, but something about her just made him smile. Rather than think why, he obediently reached to pull his shirt over his bare chest.
‘You’re wearing boxers.’ Their eyes met and he saw amusement from her that he didn’t understand. There’d been a few of those moments between them and he was learning to let them slide.
He nodded. ‘There might be a fire and Granny Mim would be shocked.’
Stella stifled a laugh. ‘Granny Mim would be delighted. Though my mother might be shocked.’
He wasn’t sure he agreed there. Stella was an interesting woman. Any lady who had raised the woman in front of him had to be interesting. ‘Your mother might surprise you. I’m looking forward to knowing her better. I think she has hidden depths that will help me understand you.’
‘Really?’ Ava smiled. ‘We can ask her later. Now you need to pull on your jeans and a jumper because it’s freezing out there. I’ve brought you one of Granny Mim’s beanies.’
She waited until he was dressed before she pulled it out from behind her back, and he tried very hard to laugh quietly. It came out more as a snuffle than a laugh.
Ava held it out. ‘I said last year’s theme was Weaving the Magic.’ The beanie resembled an intricately knitted magician’s hat reminiscent of that worn by Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings.
She handed it to him and he pulled it on. It held an incredible fuzzy warmth, but the conical point dipped over his left eye. ‘You’re kidding me.’
From where he stood, he could see that words had deserted his nurse. Her cheeks were sucked in and her eyes were almost shut as she tried to keep her face straight. He could see the enormous effort she put into not laughing out loud.
With a sudden comical wipe of expression, her face regained composure and she lifted her eyes to his. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Hang on a minute.’ He held up his hand. ‘Where’s your Granny Mim hat?’
She grinned at him and produced a blue beanie shaped like a homestead, complete with a sad little gum tree. The verandahs drooped over her ears. ‘Spirit of The Land – my home among the gum trees. Tada!’
‘To think I would have missed this if I’d slept in.’
She grinned at him. ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t.’
They slipped out of Zac’s door, straight onto the verandah and around the side of the house to the paddock. Zac was pleased she reached for his hand at the same time as he reached for hers. Then Reggie appeared beside them wagging his tail and Ava scratched his neck with her free fingers. ‘You can come too.’
Zac’s hand tightened on hers as they moved towards a slight rise, with another hill he hadn’t noticed behind it. They hurried up the incline, crunching dirt and scattering rocks as the sky lightened.
She said, ‘I try to watch the sunrise in the first couple of days when I come home. It reminds me how it must have looked to Mim when Pop brought her here and it connects me again to the land.’
They crested the slight rise before them to the left of the higher mountains and the view opened, multifaceted, shrouded in the last of the night. Shadowy features of rocks and small trees appeared slowly out of the gloom with the approaching dawn like waiting soldiers in the camouflage of night.
They climbed on top of the red outcrop of boulders, one of half a dozen different-sized rocks, bumping each other like a group of giant marbles waiting for a new game.
He eased down to sit on the scratchy rock, next to the most restful woman in the world, and took her hand again, watching the sun inch fingers of orange paint across the dark vista in front of them. They peered over the roof of an old stone shed below them, which Ava told him had been the original settlers’ dwelling.
As it rose in the sky, the sun reflected unevenly off glistening rocks and washed down ravines, until it deepened the colour of the red dirt to the far horizons. The endless vista held a magic he hadn’t expected. He also hadn’t expected the seeping peace that seemed to fill him at the sight.
As he sat there holding Ava’s hand, soaking in the silence, taking in the tranquillity, something seemed to be osmosing into him, like the sun’s early rays healing the darkness in his soul. He’d never experienced anything like it and wondered if that was where Ava drew her strength of spirit from. It wasn’t hard to imagine that was so. They stayed there, quietly, for almost half an hour.
On the way back down, he listened to Ava talking about her grandparents’ adventures and those of their friends, both Indigenous and settler, and the stories of hardship made him appreciate the distance they were from the comforts of the city. Not for the first time he considered that Ava should never leave here, and, more pointedly, that he didn’t fit.
This intrepid outback woman had her beliefs nurtured by a never-ending sky, with a vision untethered by human construction, the endless plains tempting her with adventures he’d never thought of. Realistically, he wasn’t actually worthy of finding a future with Ava, so it was lucky h
e didn’t expect one.
Back at the homestead, the saliva-inducing aroma of bacon and basil swirled in the air, and Zac couldn’t remember ever being so hungry. This truly was turning out to be a place of firsts.
When they walked in, Granny Mim stopped, snorted and cackled with laughter, then demanded she be allowed to take a photo of them for her beanie album.
Jock arrived after breakfast. They were taking the Polaris, an all-terrain buggy Jock had picked up second-hand from one of the clearance sales, and it fit three adults comfortably across the front.
‘Hana not coming up to the house to wait here?’ Ava asked.
‘She’s got an order that came in last night that she’d like to start on.’ Jock took a cold bag with food and drinks from Stella. ‘Thanks, Mum. Did you put any of Mim’s Anzacs in there?’
Stella gave him a sardonic look. ‘Yes, dear. Your grandmother would like Zac to get some too.’
‘What about me?’ Ava teased, and Zac watched them all, soaking it in. A family that worked and talked and squabbled and let emotion sit front and centre, not pretending that ‘feelings’ was a dirty word. Each determined to get their view out there but happy to listen to those of others.
It was incredibly different from the way he’d grown up, which was: Listen to your parents until you leave home. Even with Roslyn and their marriage, which had been a little more relaxed than his parents’ house, it had never had this sort of playfulness. It was strange, the ease with which he could slip into this rapport. Something he’d lacked in the busy world of medicine. Ava would always be a part of this, and maybe that was why he found her so different and so incredibly appealing. But his time here was short-term and had a purpose. To find his memory. He needed to remember he was trying to remember, he thought with a wry smile.
‘Let’s go.’ Jock’s voice broke into his thoughts and he and Ava headed for the door with Jock carrying the cool bag.
The Desert Midwife Page 19
