Emma ran from the kitchen, burning from the scorch of Harry’s words. All she’d done was show him an article in the paper about Tom being hurt. Surely it was something a brother would want to know. Why had Harry reacted with such cruelty? He’d never thrown Hampton Hall in her face, not once – not until now. ‘We all do things we’re not proud of,’ he’d told her on their wedding day. ‘Especially when we’re backed into a corner. I’ll never hold that against you.’
How grateful she’d been for his acceptance and tolerance. How secure, sleeping in his non-judgemental arms every night. But today that sense of security had been turned upside down.
She would die if Tom ever found out she’d been a prostitute, but if Harry started holding that information over her, there were even worse scenarios, much closer to home. Her mother … Jack and Tim. How could she bear her family finding out the ugly truth? And Mrs Woolhouse? Emma had wangled a part-time position as a volunteer teacher at Campbell College, in return for taking the subjects she’d missed all those years ago.
The principal had warmly welcomed her back, patted her hand, and given a conspiratorial wink. ‘I know the university Dean very well, dear, and they’re planning a mature age intake to medicine next year. Your dream may not be dead after all.’
A strict character test applied to medical students, requiring them to be of high moral standing. Any hint of scandal would immediately disqualify her. Harry knew how much this second chance meant, had said how proud he was. So, why, after more than a year of marriage, why this veiled threat to expose her?
A sharp sliver of fear pierced her belly. Emma hurried to the conservatory, lifted up the window seat and looked in vain for the little leather trunk containing her scrapbooks. It was gone.
Emma replaced the window seat and sank down on it, all the strength drained from her legs. So that was the reason for his anger. She tried to imagine how Harry would feel as he looked through the clippings. The general ones weren’t so bad. Lots of people kept war scrap books, though hers were mainly about the RAF. The special Tom scrap book would be the problem.
She leafed through its pages in her mind’s eye. The first newspaper cutting, May 1940, an article about Tom and another Australian pilot, Stuart Kennedy. His Spitfire was shot down over the channel during the Dunkirk rescue, yet miraculously he survived. A photo of the two young men smiling together, arms around each other’s shoulders. They’d quoted Tom, and Emma remembered every word. Stu’s my best mate, like a brother, and he’s a true hero. I nearly ran out of fuel searching for him. She’d drawn hearts around the edge of the pages.
Then came the Battle of Britain section. The Australian press loved to highlight the part Australians played in defending the motherland. Reports of Tom clashing with German fighters and bombers during the Blitz, starring in the courageous air campaign that saved London. His Ace In A Day exploits, when he claimed five Messerschmitts in twenty-four hours, had the reporters in a spin. Later on, the part Tom and his squadron had played in the skies above Germany, defending the pilots of Bomber Command as they brought Germany to her knees.
By just imagining the scrapbook and its contents, Emma felt the old, familiar tingle of pride in Tom’s achievements. But Harry wouldn’t see it that way. Damn him. How could he still be so jealous of Tom? Tom, who she hadn’t seen since she was fifteen years old; who was married to a glamourous actress and lived on the other side of the world. He was a fantasy, that was all. A fantasy that had helped keep her sane through the years she’d worked at Hampton Hall. A harmless fantasy that had become a habit. If she explained things properly, it wouldn’t be too hard to make Harry understand.
But instead of going to find her husband, Emma stayed sitting where she was, staring out the window as if in a trance. She’d left a few roses in place to please her mother, but had dedicated the rest of the garden to natives. A honeyeater hovered among the first scarlet bottlebrushes of spring, flitting from flower to flower, heedless of human miseries.
Memories of another spring tumbled in. A magical childhood spring when the creek ran high with snowmelt. Building dams with her brothers as magpies and currawongs carolled overhead, and tadpoles skittered in the shallows. The bush alive with birds and animals and frogs and insects. Trees whispering ancient secrets to the wind. The very earth itself, bursting with life. How far she’d come from those carefree days.
And suddenly hot tears were streaming down her cheeks. Tears for poor burned Tom. Tears of shame and hurt and anger. She should have known. Every time she clawed her way back to a semblance of happiness, something or somebody always threatened to tear it down. She hadn’t expected that this time the threat might come from her own husband. How foolish she’d been, how naive. Perhaps she deserved it. Perhaps it was her punishment for never having loved Harry properly. For having lied when she made her vows. For having talked herself into believing that gratitude and affection would do.
Chapter 28
Harry’s hands trembled as he put the scones in the oven. He hadn’t meant to react like that. He didn’t like feeling out of control, but Emma had surprised him with that damn newspaper.
He could hear faint crying from the conservatory, and was grateful that Eileen and Elsie were still glued to the parlour wireless. So, Emma had discovered her missing scrap books. He’d found them yesterday while searching for an old boating magazine, and all the painful, conflicted feelings about his brother — feelings he’d tried so hard to suppress — had come rushing back.
So Tom was badly hurt, burned in a plane crash. Part of Harry was horrified — the boy in him who’d loved his brother, as a best friend, confidant and companion in grief. Part of him saw it as payback — the vengeful, jealous part of him who blamed Tom for stealing his grandmother’s love and his wife’s heart. Worst of all, for shattering his faith in their father on that fateful day at the waterfall, when everything between them had changed. And part of him wished that he could trade places. It would be worth the pain of a fiery plane crash, even worth the pain of dying, to do his duty and prove his courage – to himself, as much as to anybody.
Papa had been a naval officer during World War I, and part of the Zeebrugge Raid, an attempt to block the Belgian port of Bruges-Zeebrugge by sinking obsolete ships in the entrance. For his efforts he received the Distinguished Service Cross for gallantry at sea in the presence of the enemy.
Harry was immensely proud of that medal, positive proof that his father was a hero; not just in his opinion, but in the objective opinion of the world. Sometimes he’d been allowed to play with the little silver cross. His finger would trace the circle at its centre with its engraved crown of George V. Harry would pin it on reverently by its blue and white ribbon, then do drills around the house, chest puffed out, feeling instantly taller and stronger. Or he’d take his fleet of toy boats to the pond, pretend the giant goldfish were German U-Boats and spend lazy afternoons trying to sink them.
He tried to involve his brother in these games, even offering to let him wear Papa’s precious medal, but Tom wasn’t interested. He preferred reading in the garden or watching birds or making paper planes. It annoyed Harry no end that Tom didn’t appreciate the significance of that simple silver cross.
After Papa died, Harry pestered Grandma Bertha about the medal, insisting his father would want him to have it. However, Bertha shooed him away. ‘I’m too busy to bother with trinkets,’ she’d say. Trinkets! Seething with impotent anger, Harry complained to Tom who didn’t seem to care a jot.
When the war came Harry tried to enlist, dreaming of following in his father’s naval footsteps and perhaps earning his own medal for bravery. But he soon discovered that shipbuilding was a reserved occupation. It came as a bitter blow. For Harry there’d be no glory on the other side of the world. No joining his mates and brother in the adventure of a lifetime, no serving his country.
Instead there was a white feather in his letterbox, the first of many. White feathers were aimed at men not wearing uniform, branding th
em as shirkers and cowards, and designed to shame and offend. One seventeen-year-old shipyard apprentice, disqualified from enlisting both by age and occupation, received three white feathers in the course of a single week. One morning he put on his cadet uniform, took his rifle, and blew his brains out on the beach.
Harry grimly endured the misguided contempt of the public, and his own personal disappointment. He went back to the docks, striving to honour his father’s memory by working tirelessly to reclaim the family shipyard. When he succeeded, when Abbott & Son finally became his, he thought he’d put his childhood demons to rest.
Yet when Harry looked through Emma’s scrapbooks; when his brother’s stellar war record was laid out so comprehensively before him, all his own accomplishments turned to dust. Tom had lived Harry’s dream life. Emma loved him for it, and who could blame her? If Papa had lived, he’d have loved Tom too. He’d have recognised his mistake in favouring the wrong son.
Tom had everything now, everything that Harry wanted, and perhaps the worst thing was that Tom hadn’t intended any of it. He’d acquired Binburra on a whim of their grandmother. He’d surpassed Harry in the estimation of their dead father, and wouldn’t be the least bit interested that he’d done so. He’d unwittingly monopolised Emma’s love from afar. It was all so damn innocent. Tom had made a mockery of Harry’s life without even trying.
Harry sat and gripped the kitchen table hard enough to make his knuckles show white. Seething inside, while hot waves of emotion coursed through him. What to do about Emma? She was still in love with his brother, after all these years. Could he forgive such disloyalty?
Harry wasn’t dishonest enough to be outraged. He wasn’t blameless. If the truth be told, part of his wife’s attraction was that Tom had cared for her. Harry had wanted to possess her. He’d wanted Tom to come home and discover that the girl he’d loved belonged to his brother, and Emma had wanted to escape the shame of Hampton Hall. An odd alliance from the start, both using each other, both with their own agenda, but an alliance built on genuine affection nevertheless.
The timer rang on the oven. Harry buried his face in his hands, wiped his eyes, and fetched the scones. Music was playing in the parlour, signalling the end of the radio play. He was glad Eileen and Elsie hadn’t heard the row. Harry was fond of those two. It felt like a proper family, living here, and he didn’t want to give that up.
Harry didn’t want to give Emma up either. A woman of rare strength, courage and intelligence. Flawed of course, and scarred by life, but then so was he. He admired her compassion, appreciated her beauty, craved her body when they were apart. Emma was a skilful lover, and knew tricks in bed that left him begging for more. He cared for her deeply, and Emma cared for him too, in her own way. It wasn’t love, but it was enough.
Harry rarely apologised, and when he did, he wasn’t very good at it, but today he decided to make an effort. He put the kettle on, went out to the garden and picked a fragrant yellow rose just starting to unfurl, aware Emma could see him through the window. He made a pot of tea, filled a dish with cream, and searched the pantry for her favourite blackberry jam. A silver tray, a crystal bud vase for the rose, and the Devonshire tea was ready.
When he took the tray in, Emma was sitting on the window seat with red eyes and a guarded look. Harry dropped a sugar cube into each cup and poured the tea. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you.’ He sat beside her and she moved slightly, increasing the space between them.
‘Why are you so jealous of Tom?’ she said.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because my wife keeps a secret scrapbook of his heroic exploits.’
‘It didn’t mean anything.’
‘We both know that’s not true.’ Harry handed her a cup of tea, with a scone balanced on the saucer. ‘I’m no monster, Em. I’m sorry Tom’s hurt. When we were growing up, he was my other half, my best friend.’
‘Please don’t tell him about me. Don’t tell anyone.’
Harry sighed and lit a cigarette. This wasn’t the fearless woman he’d married. He hated the pleading note in her voice, and the apprehension on her face. He hated even more that he was the one who’d put it there.
‘That telegram you were talking about, wishing Tom well? Go ahead and send it, Em. Send it from both of us.’
Chapter 29
Tom seemed to have been lying in darkness forever. His body had been unwrapped weeks ago; a grim experience accompanied by the sort of pain that even an extra dose of morphine could not mask. Daily saline baths were doing their job, and he could now lie directly on the bed with a reasonable degree of comfort. Yet he was still blind, and found it difficult to distinguish between sleeping and waking, nightmares and reality.
Then one morning, after his liquid meal the staff called breakfast, Tom’s nurse removed the bandages from his face and, for the first time, left them off. It was Jean – he knew all the nurses by voice now – and instead of wrapping him back up like a mummy, she slathered his lips with Vaseline and applied cool, saline compresses to his eyes.
What was the point when he was blind? Yet within hours those compresses soothed and lessened the angry swelling of his face. When next the nurse came to change his dressings, he tried for the millionth time to open his eyes. A crack of light appeared. He could see!
Tom hardly dared to believe it. Little by little, he drew back what was left of his eyelids, and widened his lens on the world. He could see the nurse bending over him; a pretty, red-headed girl with a freckled nose, fussing around with washers and salves. She looked like an angel, and he was thankful his first glimpse was of something so lovely.
He forced his tongue between his teeth, separating lips that he’d feared were fused together forever. ‘Hello, Jean.’ His voice sounded strange and unfamiliar in his ears and he seemed to have a mouthful of sawdust.
She stopped what she was doing, stared in astonishment and bent close. ‘Tom, what colour are my eyes?’
‘Green as emeralds.’
She gave him a radiant smile. ‘Tom, how marvellous. Wait until I tell the others!’
Within half an hour the room was filled with excited nurses, and he began to put faces to voices. Wendy, the stern-faced senior burns nurse, who’d been in charge of his case all along. He knew her voice well. She’d been the one to read him the telegrams during his early days in hospital – so many that he couldn’t take them all in. They’d merged into a confused blur of well-wishing. It seemed all of England and Australia were praying for his recovery. She read him Stu’s letters, telling of his new life with Dolly in Canada, and Kitty’s letters, full of news about how the film was going.
There was Daphne, his night nurse, who loved amateur theatrics and who practised her lines on him in the wee hours. Mary and Eve, volunteer aides who always stayed longer than they needed to, chatting about their love lives and making him feel that he did belong, after all, to the land of the living. Sometimes they forgot he was listening, and talked about Kitty in disapproving tones. ‘They say she’s only been in to see him once, right at the start. She may be a la-di-da Hollywood actress, but she’s not much of a wife.’
Tom had wanted to defend her, wanted to say that Kitty didn’t visit because she was making a movie in America. But he couldn’t talk, and even if he could, it would have been like defending a stranger. He was still missing great swathes of memories about Kitty and their marriage. He couldn’t remember how they met or where they lived. He couldn’t even remember their wedding day.
‘We’ll need to irrigate your eyes hourly to keep them clean and healthy until you get new eyelids, but I expect you’ll move next door now,’ said Wendy. ‘Much more fun in there; even a keg of beer on the ward.’ He tried to smile, but it hurt too much. ‘You can get up just as soon as the boss gives the okay. I’ll go talk to him now.’
The gaggle of nurses left the room, chattering softly like birds. Tom watched them go, then gazed in wonder at the window. It framed a watercolour sky and a silver birch tree with freshly unfurled l
eaves and robins flitting through its branches. He could feel himself coming back to life. Lifting the sheets, he inspected his legs – blistered and discoloured, but perfectly serviceable. He swung them off the bed, gritting his teeth against the inevitable stiffness and pain, and waited for a wave of dizziness to pass.
A man from the next bed offered a cane. It helped Tom’s wasted legs to bear his weight, and for the first time in weeks, or maybe months, he was standing.
Faint cheers, and a few calls of, ‘good on you, mate,’ came from nearby beds. Tom ignored them. He wasn’t game to look too closely at his fellow patients, remembering all too well the ghastly, frightening faces from his former visit.
Dabbing at his aching, streaming eyes with still-bandaged hands, Tom staggered to the window for a better view of the birch tree. He recoiled as he glimpsed someone in the glass of the ward door. Poor devil. The skin of his melted face stretched taught over his skull, mouth fixed in a twisted smile. A shapeless lump for a nose. Monstrous eyes bulged, angry and red, from swollen sockets. It took Tom a few long seconds to realise he was looking at his own reflection.
* * *
Tom took to his bed and laid a cloth over his eyes. For days he wouldn’t eat or speak to the nurses. He refused to see his aunts or friends, or read Kitty’s letters. What was the point? His life was as good as over. He could face down enemy fighters in the air, but he couldn’t look in the mirror down here on the ground.
On the third day Archie McIndoe himself came to see him. ‘What’s this I hear about you not eating?’
Tom kept his eyes firmly covered, and turned to the wall. He heard a chair being dragged across the floor and felt a hand on his shoulder.
‘Self-pity is sabotage, Tom. Give me six months and I’ll give you a new face, but to do that, I need your cooperation. What do you say? Get up, Tom. Get up and help me save your life.’
The Lost Valley Page 21
