“David’s incubator and revised iron lung are being manufactured and sold throughout the world already,”
Val said coldly.
Gillian looked at her. “I bet David’s making nothing out of them. He’s got no head for business. Now in America—”
Val stood up. “Money doesn’t interest David,“she .,aid shortly.
“Isn’t that a stupid outlook?” Gillian asked mildly.
“Think of the good David could do with the money.”
Val looked at her and walked into the house. Gillian shrugged, turning to Ian. “I’m sorry, but Val is awfully touchy these days.”
Ian looked embarrassed. “She – well—” he began.
“Don’t bother to apologize, Ian,” Gillian told him with a smile. “I understand perfectly. Now is it my move or yours?”
“Your move,” Ian said, his voice unhappy.
Later, Mike asked Clare to take a stroll. As they left the verandah, Clare heard Gillian say something to Ian and they both laughed.
“How I hate that woman!” Mike said unexpectedly.
“I thought you liked her,” Clare told him.
The moon was beautiful. The mosquitoes were hungry! Clare slapped at the swarms that covered her face and arms.
“What made you think that?” Mike asked, his voice unsure.
“Well, you seem to see a lot of her. You’re always around these days, and you don’t sleep all the time like you used to – and you don’t tease her like you do me—”
Clare finished triumphantly.
He looked down at her. “I only tease people I like.”
“Let’s move about and smoke,” Clare suggested.
“These things are starving,” she added, as she ducked to avoid a zooming mosquito.
They walked along the smooth grass paths and then Mike stopped again. “Clare—” he began suddenly. In the moonlight, his face looked like that of a stranger.
“Clare, will you marry me?”
She was startled. “Oh, Mike!”
His hands were on her arms as he looked down at her. “I love you,” he said seriously.
“Mike, I’m sorry—” she began.
“I want to marry you, Clare. You don’t love me? We have such fun together—” he said slowly.
“Yes, Mike, we do have fun together, and I do like you very much, but—”
He suddenly pulled her close and kissed her roughly.
Then he let her go. “You only like me? Is it because of the way I fool around? Because I’ve never settled down?”
She looked at him steadily. “If I loved you, Mike, those things wouldn’t bother me. Oh, they might make life harder, but I’d still marry you. It’s just that I don’t love you.”
Life with Mike as a husband could be fun, she told herself. She felt sure he would develop into a good husband, but…. There was always that “but”. But she loved David.
“Look, I can wait,” Mike told her. “Meanwhile, let’s go on being friends. Okay?”
“Mike,” she said earnestly, “I don’t want you to hope.”
He was suddenly his old cheerful self. “Maybe you’ll eat your words one day. Just go on liking me, for I won’t settle for anything but you liking me an awful lot!”
They walked slowly back to the house, Clare a little sad for him, for she knew only too well how Mike must be feeling.
A few days later, they were watching Barry ride round the paddock, his face rosy with pride as Sparta trotted. Ian left Gillian’s side and walked across to Barry, adjusting the stirrups, talking to him.
Gillian, left alone with Clare, slapped at the flies and looked up at the hot burning-bright sky. “How I hate this climate,” she said crossly. “Thanks be, I’ll soon be out of it.”
Clare felt as if her heart had skipped a beat. “You’re going soon?”
“Not for a while,” Gillian said airily, “but sooner than we planned, I hope. David wants Barry to have you around for the full six months. He’s got a sort of thing about it. Were you Barry’s nurse in London?”
“I was his special for a few nights after his operation,” Clare told her. “He had no private nurse.”
“Then how did you get this job, Nurse? Sorry—”
The pony’s hooves kicked up small clouds of dust and the hot sun beat down mercilessly.
“I was offered the post because I got on well with Barry,” Clare said quietly. “Some of the other staff found him difficult.”
“Was that the only reason?” Gillian demanded, her eyes cold and searching.
Clare hesitated. “I think David wanted to help me. I was going to be married, and – and four days before the – wedding, it fell through.”
“You broke off the engagement to come out here?”
Gillian asked.
Clare caught her breath. “No,” she said, her voice flat. “Peter broke it off. He changed his mind. David knew I wanted to get away from England, so—”
“He offered you this,” Gillian finished for her. She was smiling. “I see. Typically kind of David. I can’t help feeling you’re sort of redundant. Barry doesn’t need a nurse. I know you must have been hurt. So humiliating to be jilted. Not that it’s ever happened to me, of course.”
Clare stood very still, seeing the amusement in the blue eyes that were looking at her so searchingly.
“David is wonderful, isn’t he?” Gillian said.
“Yes,” Clare said coolly. “Everyone in London respected him.”
Gillian nodded. “I can imagine. You’ve seen these inventions of his?”
“No.”
There was a pause while Clare thought wildly for an excuse to escape those hard probing eyes, the amused smile, the blunt questions.
“David’s so fond of children,” Gillian said thoughtfully. “He’ll make a wonderful father.” Her eyes were sharp as she watched Clare’s face. “Don’t you think so?”
Clare looked at her steadily. “Wonderful,” she agreed.
Gillian smiled. “I can see I can trust you. I’m taking Barry to America, and David will be joining us as soon as he can.” She rested her hand, with its long fingers with deep red, pointed nails, on Glare’s arm. Clare resisted the desire to shiver and kept her face still.
“Please don’t tell Val,” Gillian went on. “She’ll try to talk David out of it. She wouldn’t succeed, of course, but it might spoil things. I think I’ll go inside, the heat is killing me.” She paused, looking at Clare with a smile that did not reach her eyes. “Remember, I trust you not to tell Val.”
“I’ll remember,” Clare said dully.
She stood still, clenching her fists, fighting the sick misery inside her. So David still loved Gillian, as she had thought, and one day — in the not too distant future — he would leave Australia and go to America with her.
He loved Gillian too much to demand such a sacrifice of her— the sacrifice Clare would have made gladly. But to ask Gillian to live in the Outback … that was unthink-able!
CHAPTER TWELVE
WHEN Barry and Gillian announced that David had told them after the medical session that he was coming up for the night, Clare wished that she could fall ill or find an excuse to stay in bed. How could she bear to meet David, knowing as she did now that he loved and proposed to marry Gillian, and to go to America with her? How much of her love for him had she betrayed?
she wondered anxiously. That day at Maggie’s…
would she ever forget the moment as she saw herself reflected in his grey eyes and caught a breathless excitement she had felt certain he shared?
But there was no way of avoiding David, and although Mike had looked surprised when she refused to go along with the children in the truck to meet him, she stayed in her room, writing a letter to her parents.
She had played with two solutions to her problem —first, she could marry Mike.
But she did not love him, and if he loved her, that would not be fair. They could be happy together, but it would not be real lov
e, and Mike deserved nothing less than the best.
Alternatively, and the more she thought of it the more the idea appealed to her, she could accept Mrs.
Mackenzie’s offer and go back to England with her.
Yet she did not want to leave Australia. Something about it pulled at her, made her want to stay.
Suddenly the door burst open. “Uncle David’s here!” Barry called excitedly, and vanished again.
Clare quickly made up her face and brushed her hair.
Whatever happened, no one — David, and especially not Gillian Hirst — must be allowed to guess the truth.
That her heart was slowly breaking. She was very light-hearted when she joined the others, chatting to David, asking questions about the hospital, Matron, Hazel, Joseph. Gillian, also, seemed to be feeling happy.
“We must dance. We’re three couples,” she pointed out later that evening when the children had gone to bed.
She persuaded Ian to have the verandah cleared and the radiogram brought out. Gillian looked very lovely in a leaf-green dress that clung to her figure and made her tawny-gold hair even brighter than usual. Next to her, Clare, in her blue flowered cotton, felt quite dowdy.
“It’s a long time since I danced,” David said with a smile.
Gillian rested her hand on his arm. You always danced divinely. You’re too young to give it up.”
“I just haven’t time,” he began.
She carefully chose the records, asking David’s help, refusing to believe that he was out of touch with modern dance music. They danced for about two hours. Ian, to Clare’s surprise, danced well but in a rather conserva-tive style. Mike, of course, was sheer fun, romping, making her gyrate till she begged him to stop.
When she went into David’s arms for the first time Clare was so nervous she stumbled.
Gillian, quick to notice anything, called out: “I thought all nurses were good dancers.” She was laughing. “But I could be wrong!”
David smiled down at the quiet girl in his arms. “The first time we’ve danced together, Clare.”
“Yes,” she said, and avoided his eyes. And probably the last time, she thought unhappily.
David was a skilled dancer, adept at making his partner feel at ease. Clare forgot her sadness for a while, and they had danced the length of the verandah twice when Gillian came, her face amused, to tap Clare on the shoulder.
“An old American custom,” sne said laughingly as Clare moved away from David and Gillian took her place.
In Mike’s arms again, Clare watched Gillian and David dancing. Gillian was taller than Clare, and her cheek kept brushing David’s as they danced. Every now and then she would lean back and laugh up at him.
Clare was glad when Val pleaded tiredness and went to bed, and Ian said he had an early morning job to see to so he thought he would go. As Clare and Mike said goodnight and Clare turned away, she heard Gillian say wistfully: “Could we have a talk alone? It’s pretty important.”
Clare hurried to her room, but David’s voice carried clearly. “Of course. About Barry, I suppose?”
In her own room, Clare undressed quickly. What was Gillian saying about Barry? That he no longer needed Clare — that there were good nurses in America — and could David hurry up his affairs and join them sooner than already planned? Clare could imagine how Gillian would look — wistful, pleading, her blue eyes tearful, her mouth tempting.
Next day it promised to be very hot. As David was there, Gillian was up for breakfast. It was a noisy meal with all the children talking at the same time to David, and Clare sat quietly, feeling that she had no place now in this household. Even Val was not there — having for once decided to have breakfast in bed. Perhaps because she could not bear to see Gillian and David together?
“Come and see Barry ride, Uncle David,” Marge begged.
Marge and Barry were on temporary speaking terms. Both were going through an uncomfortable stage of violent quarrels, which Gillian invariably made worse because she was staunchly on Barry’s side.
“I’ll meet you in the paddock in half an hour,” David told them.
He stood up, tall, broad-shouldered, in khaki jeans and jacket, his dark hair damply smooth, his eyes strange and accusing as he looked down at Clare.
“Could we have a few words alone, Clare?” he asked, his voice curt.
“Of course,” she said, her cheeks suddenly hot as she hastily stood up. Passing Gillian, she saw that she was smiling, and for a moment she wondered why.
She did not have long to wait before she knew. David led the way to Ian’s study and closed the door, leaning against it.
“Clare,” he began sternly, “I want to get to the bottom of this. Are you deliberately trying to come between Barry and his stepmother?”
The accusation was so unexpected that Clare took a step back, her hand flying to her mouth. She had no idea how young and frightened she looked as she stood there, her green eyes wide with shock, her mouth trembling a little. “Of course I’m not,” she said, her shock vanishing as she grew angry. “Did she say so?”
David frowned, jerked a chair forward and straddled it.
“No. Gillian isn’t like that,” he said curtly. “She’s just very unhappy about it. Sit down,” he ordered.
Clare groped behind her, and found a chair, sitting down, never taking her eyes from David’s face. How angry he was, how accusing his grey eyes.
“David,” she said earnestly, “I love Barry, I want his happiness, so why would I try to come between him and Gillian?”
He shrugged. “Gillian says you always interfere with her orders, that you’re much too strict.”
Again anger raced through Clare, giving her fresh courage.
“It’s not true, David. She spoils him terribly.”
“Spoils him? How?”
She tried to make him understand. “Everything he does is right, she laughs when he sulks, she gives him everything he wants. He’s sulky and temperamental, throws tantrums, and at night” he has nightmares.” She paused. “I don’t interfere, David, though I often want to. You did tell Val and me that we must be firm with Barry. But if I have to tell Barry ‘that he mustn’t do something, then Gillian is on his side at once.”
David’s stern mouth had relaxed a little. “I begin to understand, Clare, but you know, she loves him very much. Isn’t it natural that she should want him to love her? Can’t you see that she’s trying to make up for the years they’ve lost together?”
Clare was silent, looking down now at her hands locked together. She looked up suddenly. “Wouldn’t it he simpler if I just went away, David?” she asked.
He looked startled. “Went away? But why?”
“Well, as Gillian told me, Barry doesn’t need me, and it’s very confusing for the poor child to have three )f us giving him orders.”
“We arranged that you should stay six months,”
David told her, his voice stern again. “The term is not yet up. I consider Barry does need you still, but in perhaps a more subtle way. Try to see it through Gillian’s eyes, Clare. Barry will be spending the rest of his life with her.” He smiled. “I mean, his childhood and adolescent years, of course. Look, Clare, Gillian must work this out herself. If she spoils the boy, she will have to see it for herself and do something to put it right. We can’t nag her into it.” He stood up, looking down at her thoughtfully. “I know it won’t be easy, Clare, but please try not to interfere.”
He opened the study door and walked away. Clare sat as if frozen, and then at last managed to move. Her first impulse was to rush to her bedroom, pack, and leave! Unfortunately, in the heart of tropical Australia, it was not so simple.
In dismay, she sought out Val and found her in her usual sanctuary, the sewing-room.
“What’s wrong, Clare?” Val asked.
There were tears in Clare’s eyes as she told her. “He said I mustn’t interfere,” she said bitterly.
“Oh, darling,” Val said sympathetically.
She sighed. “What can we do? We just can’t fight her, she wins hands down all the time. You see why I called her evil? The way she dropped hints in David’s mind so that he should see things her way!”
Clare nodded. Like Val, she knew there was nothing she could do. Gillian was bound to win.
Val looked at her anxiously. “Don’t take it so to heart, Clare,” she advised.
Clare tried to smile. “It’s Barry I’m so sorry for.”
“I know,” Val said sadly. “If only I could be sure Gillian really loves Barry and will look after him properly, I could feel happier. If only there was some way we could test her — make her prove her love for the boy.”
The door, which was ajar, was suddenly pushed open and Zoe stood there. “Mummy,” she began, as if continuing a conversation she had been having in her mind, “I wish I didn’t have to go back to boarding school.”
“You’re so clever, darling,” her mother said, putting an arm round the unhappy-looking girl. “I can’t help you enough.”
Zoe looked at Clare. “Couldn’t you?” she pleaded.
“I shan’t be here much longer, dear,” Clare said.
“You’re going away?”
“Well, Zoe, once Barry goes, my job’s finished.”
Zoe turned to face her mother. “Barry is really going?”
“I’m afraid so. I don’t see how we can stop it.”
Zoe leant against her. “Couldn’t we find a school nearer than mine so’s I could come home weekends?”
Clare slipped away quietly. She stood on the verandah and saw David and Gillian walking towards the little water-house. Gillian had her hand on his arm and was talking earnestly.
If only there was a way … some way to test Gillian.
To prove that she really loved Barry. Clare knew that Val would be much happier, and so would she be, though it would still hurt to think of Gillian and David …
Mike came up the steps, his wide-brimmed hat on the back of his head. “Care to come for a run? I’m going out to inspect some of the windmills:: Clare hesitated. But recently Mike had been merely friendly, so it might not be embarrassing— and it would get her away from the homestead until David had gone.
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