Facing the Flame

by Jackie French

  ‘Checking up on me?’ asked Jed.

  ‘Yep,’ said Michael.

  ‘Thanks.’ She managed a smile.

  ‘Thanks,’ agreed Sam. But neither he nor Scarlett were smiling.

  Chapter 19

  WEDNESDAY, 8 FEBRUARY 1978

  LU

  Lu lay in bed, listening to the wind butt its head against the cottage like the big bad wolf trying to get in. She could hear the faint hiss of dust and grit against the windows.

  The wind had arrived suddenly just before dawn, so hot already it seemed to drag all coolness from the world, first a strange high moan, a gust that shook the shingled roof, and then an endless screaming, leaves pattering against the cottage and the occasional thud of branches or the snap of twigs. Lu supposed most big bad wolves appeared suddenly, like cars that screamed out of a side street to take away everything you were . . .

  But the wolf had failed. Because she was still who she was. She always had been. That was where most of the pain of the last year had come from: not just losing Mum and her sight, but fearing she had lost herself too.

  She had not. She was the girl who could bond so closely with a horse — and not just any horse, but a king — that they worked better as a pair than alone. She was a girl whom horses trusted to match their strength with her judgement in a true and total partnership.

  Losing her sight had not destroyed this. It had, if anything, enhanced it. Perhaps all humans relied so heavily on their sight that they forgot to use the other senses. But those senses were even more valuable than sight when you were partnered with a horse like Mountain Lion, earning his trust, respect and love.

  She had despaired because everyone seemed so keen to push her instead into a nice suitable job for blind people. She was still a long way from properly defining a future. She’d need to work out ways around not being able to see: persuade clients to use a Dictaphone instead of sending her letters, maybe. Though a secretary could read letters out to her . . .

  The biggest step of all would be convincing others. Working out how to show them too, because everyone, even Joe, was going to take one look at her and think, Poor blind girl, then subconsciously assume she couldn’t without wondering if, just possibly, she could.

  Could a blind girl be a jockey? She was going to damn well find out. She was going to be a training jockey, at the very least. And from there on, well, she’d see.

  But she had to take the first steps now. Most of them boring but necessary. Study braille, not just because it would be useful, even vital, but because it would show that she could, no, had adapted. Learn to look as if she were sighted, which she’d need help with. But expert help with hair, make-up and clothing should be relatively easy to find, with three step-aunts who looked like they ate Vogue for breakfast instead of muesli.

  Plus keep riding, but with good horses, horses who saw their desire to challenge the horizon in her too. Learn to muck out a stable again — show everyone at the stables she was truly one of them, was not claiming special privileges. Because there were going to have to be special privileges. Rules like ‘don’t have a half-open door as my cane will miss it and I’ll get a black eye’ and ‘paths are left clear always and every tool hung on a wall, not left propped against a wall’. Others like ‘please read aloud any sign I need to know about and we need to have braille on every sign I need to read’, which would include each horse’s name next to their box.

  And anyone watching her forking sawdust and manure would not think, That is a blind girl, but, That’s Lu Borgino mucking out a stall.

  She’d ring Joe in the morning. Try, somehow, to explain she had not come home before not because she no longer felt it was home, or that he was no longer her father. Joe would always be her father, till the sun became dark and cold.

  And she’d better call late tonight instead, because Joe would probably cry when she explained why she never answered his letters, often refused his calls, returned his hugs politely and passively when he visited — that it was not because she didn’t love him, but because she couldn’t bear to love him so much and lose him along with her horses.

  If Joe cried, she’d start sobbing too, and she wasn’t prepared to do that if there was anyone else around the office.

  From this moment on she was not going to be the blind girl who waited for others to organise things for her, tell her where to go and when. She was going to leave a note, neatly, politely written, and pinned with a thumbtack to her cottage door, telling Nicholas or anyone else looking for her that she had taken some apples over to Mountain Lion, because he might be spooked by the wind. But she would be back for breakfast, which hopefully would be the first time anyone would be likely to look for her. Four hours was plenty of time to get there and back without being missed . . .

  Lu smiled. And with no need of a torch either. Suddenly the whole day and night were hers. She might have lost the daylight, but she had found the night.

  She’d visit Mountain Lion every night, she decided. Let him learn her hand and voice. But not ride him. Nicholas was Flinty’s son-in-law, no, grandson-in-law. She needed Nicholas to tell Flinty that Lu Borgino was competent, responsible and reliable. And that she understood Mountain Lion like no one else ever could.

  With her help and Joe’s and a good word from Nicholas to help make it happen, in a couple of years Flinty McAlpine would have her Cup winner.

  Yes, this was the heart of her. Always had been. She was lucky, she realised, not just to know so strongly where her heart lay, but to have found it again. Was it what Nicholas had never quite found?

  The wind rattled the windows again. She dressed as hurriedly as she could, which would have felt like an unbelievably slow business a year ago. But a year ago she’d have seen at a glance if her shirt was on inside out, or if her socks didn’t match. She couldn’t afford to have anyone look sideways at her now. For the rest of her life she had to be so perfectly put together that people could ignore her white cane.

  She grinned. Maybe it was time to grow out of ‘Lu’ and give people a name they’d remember.

  Lucrezia Borgino could manage anything.

  Wind! The fire rolled in the wild west wind, kicked up its heels like a mountain horse, twisted, flared and then began to burn: fresh new country, bark, trees, tussocks, towards the east . . .

  Chapter 20

  JED

  The wind woke her, or possibly the baby pressing on her bladder. Sam stirred but didn’t wake as she crept . . . lunged . . . heaved . . . her way off the bed and down the corridor to the bathroom. New houses in big suburban estates had en suites these days, which she had regarded as conspicuous capitalist consumption, a Carol phrase particularly apt for such decadence as extra toilets. Just now, though, having a bathroom attached to her bedroom — and one where she needn’t worry Scarlett would wake if she pulled the old-fashioned chain — sounded like an excellent idea.

  Sam could add an en suite composting toilet to his list, she thought, lowering herself onto the loo. Sam’s list of projects for Dribble was now three pages long, so she doubted he’d get around to it before the baby was born. If it was ever born and she was not pregnant forever.

  A branch clattered against the roof. A draught buffeted her from the window open to catch the breeze, smelling of hot dust and red plains. Jed pulled the chain, not quietly — the ancient Dribble toilet did not have a setting for quiet — then shut the window.

  Instant still air, though a scattering of red dust lay on the bathroom floor. Jed smiled. Thank heavens for Sam and his sealing gun. A draught meant poor insulation in Sam’s view of the world, hot or cold air seeping into the house, not to mention lizards, millipedes or small snakes that might crawl into a warm, recently vacated bed and decide to take up residence there.

  But the wind pounded nonetheless. A crack and bang that might be a bit of the chook-house roof. A far-off thud that was a tree or branch coming down. Jed hoped it was not on the Dribble track or the road to town. Everyone assured her first babies
didn’t come for hours, but she still had no wish to wait, having contractions, while Sam chainsawed a fallen tree.

  She plonked herself back into the bed, pulled up the sheet, then pushed it off again. The wind seemed to have already made the room twice as hot.

  Sam snuffled beside her, his body radiating even more heat. Maxi lifted one ear to say, ‘Ah, good, you’re back,’ then began to snore again. A pallid cuckoo gave its liquid descant and then was silent, as if intimidated by the roar of the wind. No, not roar. More a mournful mooing, thought Jed. Surely you could not be afraid of a creature that mooed.

  But a mob of cattle could be dangerous too, even deadly in a stampede. So could a single cow, especially those equipped with horns. However, you could confine cows in a paddock. You could not contain the wind.

  She had loved the wind once, walked for miles in it as a child. The wind had cleansed her of all the miseries of home — losing a drunken mother she hadn’t loved enough to know how to mourn; the stepmother, spiteful and sly. Sometimes Dad would walk with her in the wind, and those were the only times she felt really close to him, as he answered questions like ‘Why are trees green?’ and ‘How fast can God ride a bicycle?’ After his death the wind had been her only companion.

  It didn’t feel like a friend now.

  Wind brought branches down, dropped trees across the road, lifted roofs — though, thanks to Sam, Dribble’s roof would be safe in a tornado.

  And a bushfire. Jed had noticed how carefully neither Nancy nor Sam had spoken to her about the fire up in the mountains the last few days. Did they think pregnant women stopped noticing anything except their bulges? The wide ugly firebreaks, brushed off as routine, though they had never been burned before in the decade Jed had been at Gibber’s Creek, showed how seriously the men of the Thompson–McAlpine clans took the threat. Jed was not stupid, just pregnant. Nor, after even a few years of Matilda’s often daily instructions, was she ignorant when the land spoke.

  The land was fire ready: the indigofera and black wattle had set record seed loads, and the cicadas had stopped singing during the last week or so, despite the clarity of sunlight. Their nymphs were hiding deep below the surface of the earth, to emerge years later perhaps, when wet weather and sunlight combined to give the adults foliage to eat and a chance to breed again.

  But none of that means fire will come, she thought as she watched dawn bloom out the window. Matilda had seen the same signs several times in the 1960s. There had been bad fires elsewhere those years, but not at Gibber’s Creek. Jed knew it wasn’t the thought of fire that made her anxious now.

  Merv.

  She’d had nightmares all her life, or at least as long as she could remember. The earliest ones were of vast crashing waves that would not retreat, or of getting lost at school, unable to find her class or friends.

  These days her nightmares had settled into a familiar routine that should have been boring, yet terrified her every time: homeless in a black world, frantically hunting for light and shelter; or having coffee in a café with her father — ‘See you at home,’ he’d say, but as he left she would remember he had moved and that she had no idea where he lived, and had to knock on every door asking for him and never finding him.

  In these dreams she believed she must have a home somewhere, and scurried from streetlight to streetlight, instead of seeking shelter till the daylight arrived, a bus shelter or, better still, behind a wall or in a clump of bushes, somewhere she could hide till daylight made the world . . . not safe, for it was never safe, but at least drove some of the shadows away . . .

  Her skin grew cold, as if a small iceberg slipped past her. The nightmare had power even now, awake in the morning. She thought it always would.

  Sam stirred, yawned, regarded the ceiling for two seconds, then turned to her with the grin that still appeared every morning when he saw her despite half a year of marriage. ‘What’s for breakfast?’

  The iceberg melted in the morning heat. She lifted one eyebrow at the man lying beside her. ‘You expect your nine months’ pregnant wife to bring you breakfast in bed?’

  ‘No, of course not, I’ll get it.’ Sam pushed off the sheet.

  ‘Lie down, idiot. I’ll get it. I want to cook.’

  ‘You sure? How are you feeling?’

  ‘I want a mad scientist to invent a human incubation system. Think the Beards could come up with one?’

  He regarded her, belly bulging under his old shirt, which was all she’d been able to fit into at night for months, the delicate silks and satins of Matilda’s vast designer wardrobe put away till after the baby was born. ‘Not in the next week or so, darling.’

  ‘Excuses, excuses.’ She bent to kiss his lips; miscalculated and kissed his hair instead. Nice hair that smelled of soap and Sam. Maxi padded after her into the kitchen, secure in her knowledge that breakfast meant toast and crumbs and crusts to be passed down to dogs and even, with a bit of luck, marmalade as well.

  Jed let Maxi out to do her business, then put a cup of dog biscuits in the bowl by the door, which Maxi ignored, and opened the fridge. The Doberperson eyed the leftovers of the previous night’s spag bol: ‘That is what you want to give the dog for breakfast this morning,’ she very clearly said to Jed via dog– human telepathy.

  Which worked. Jed scraped half a cup of spag bol onto the dog biscuits, grinned as Maxi gulped it, dog biscuits and all, and decided to make an omelette. You had to focus on omelettes. And zucchini and walnut bread, which Scarlett loved too. No — she was going to cook huevos rancheros, Mexican cowboy eggs, with sautéed onion, garlic and lots of greens because suddenly that was exactly what she felt like. With sharp cheddar cheese on top — none of Mack’s pale goat stuff. And the routines of cooking and feeding family at her table would drive away fears and memory . . .

  She took out onions, slid more spag bol remnants into Maxi’s bowl before the slobber grew to a puddle, and began to chop.

  The wind could batter and pound as much as it liked. Thanks to Sam and his sealing gun, not even a draught could get into Dribble.

  Chapter 21

  ANDY

  The phone rang when he was . . . not sleeping. Andy McAlpine never slept after lunch. He’d just closed his eyes after checking the ewes. He might be officially retired as Drinkwater manager, and young Michael (who would forever be ‘young Michael’, even though he was now in his fifties) did an excellent job. But you never knew with ewes. And this wind could bring a branch down on a fence and the rams would get out, or some idiot might decide it was a good day for a campfire . . .

  The phone shrilled again. Had been shrilling, while he had been neither asleep nor awake. He shook himself to alertness, then headed out to the corridor and picked up the receiver.

  ‘Hello? Yes.’

  ‘Bushfire control room here.’

  Adrenalin kicked in and his focus sharpened, then he slowly relaxed again as the words from the other end of the line made sense. They were not calling him in. Just ‘Letting you know . . .’

  ‘Yes. What?! You’re not bloody serious. Yes, I know, but —’

  The back door opened, shut. Mah came in, dressed like she’d been into town, a skirt instead of jeans. She still had better legs than any of those skinny models. He was aware of the voice on the phone again. ‘Yes, I know,’ he said shortly. ‘Thank you for letting me know.’ He banged the receiver down.

  ‘Trouble?’ asked Mah.

  ‘Bloody Douglas! You know what he’s just done?’

  Mah waited. Something different about her. Hair, that was it. She’d had it permed again. He’d need to remember to say something nice about it . . .

  Later.

  ‘What’s he done, darling?’

  ‘He’s just gone and taken the big fire truck up to Gosford.’

  ‘Gosford?’

  ‘Some drongo has set fires on both sides of the tollway. Traffic into Sydney is banked up for miles. They’re calling in every tanker they can.’

  ‘But Gosford�
�s eight hours’ drive away! And the fire danger here today is extreme! And there’s that burn in the mountains too.’

  ‘That’s Sydney for you. And bloody Douglas. Sydney gets what Sydney wants and to heck with the rest of New South Wales.’

  ‘Cup of tea,’ said Mah firmly.

  He followed her into the kitchen. ‘Your hair looks nice.’

  She grinned. ‘I had it done yesterday. I’ve just been having coffee at the Blue Belle with Blue. But thanks for noticing. Andy, I know what you think of Douglas. But he didn’t have a choice.’

  ‘Of course he did.’

  ‘No,’ Mah said patiently. ‘Remember when we raised the money for the big tanker? Gibber’s Creek raised half, and the state government paid the other half — on condition it would be on call when needed elsewhere.’

  Andy sat silent. He had agreed to that deal, not Douglas. It had seemed so obvious then. They’d raised enough money locally for a second smaller fire truck, but a big one would make all the difference. So he’d proposed they accept state money and everyone had voted with him, just as they had always voted with Andy McAlpine.

  Mah handed him his tea, milk and sugar added, and a squished-fly biscuit on a plate. Just one. She was watching his weight these days. Watching him get heavier, she said.

  ‘Mah?’

  ‘Mmm?’ She sat beside him.

  ‘Your hair does look great.’

  She took his hand. Mah always could read him like a book. ‘It’ll be all right. No one around here is going to be fool enough to light a fire on a day like this. And there’s plenty of clear country between here and the mountains to fight any fire coming from there.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. He knew all that. And they were good blokes too. And that sheila — what was her name? — the one from Sam’s factory who had joined the Gibber’s Creek brigade too. Could handle a hose as good as a man. Not that he’d want any wife of his risking anything like that. Bad enough she’d let her brother saw her in half every night at the circus . . .