by Darry Fraser
‘And how is Miss CeeCee?’ Hat in his hand, his arm draped over a knee.
‘She’s opened her eyes, but apart from that, no change.’ Linley stared out over the river. Boats were tied to moorings, another chugged quietly in a turn back past the wharf. The cranes were now still. Only a few men could be seen atop, readying for the night.
‘And Toby?’
Linley nodded, felt the glimmer of a smile. ‘He is well.’
Ard scratched his head, flicked at the dirt at his feet. ‘I want to see him, Linley.’
‘You can see him.’ She tried to smile but her heart thudded so hard, it felt a bit wobbly. ‘Though because he has such the look of you, it will be difficult to hide—’
‘I don’t want to hide him, Linley. Or how he came to be.’ Ard slapped his hat on his leg. ‘But it is no one else’s business.’
Linley’s face burned. She glared across the river.
‘I found out about him from Sam,’ he said.
Ard’s leg was close to hers. She brushed down her skirt, tucked it loosely around her, and stared at the far bank. ‘How would Sam have known?’
‘Not that he was mine, but that he was alive. Mary sent me this.’ Two rumpled envelopes came out from his top pocket. He held one out to her, handling it as if it were fragile. ‘This came, and then not four days after, or only just, I got your letter.’ He looked at the envelopes. ‘In hers, she says he’s mine and about giving Toby to you if something happened to her.’
Linley swallowed down a catch in her throat. She pressed her hands into her lap, closed her fingers around the fabric of her skirt. She couldn’t look at Ard. She couldn’t. She’d break, say something stupid, ridiculous. Something bad.
Ard went on, a jag in his voice. ‘I thought both Mary and the baby had died. I didn’t know he was alive until Sam told me you had him. Your letter said—’
‘I know,’ she burst out. Linley still watched the small ripples land on to the banks. ‘I know what I said. I remember every word.’
‘Had I known then, I—’
‘You’d what, Ard O’Rourke?’ She spun around to face him. ‘You’d what? It was already too late. She was dead.’
‘I know, I know.’ He held his hands palm up. ‘And I’m sorry that happ—’
‘You … you’d been with her!’ Her face screwed up but the dam of emotion burst. She shot to her feet. ‘You were with her and made a baby, and left,’ she rasped between her teeth.
‘But I didn’t know there was a baby. Look—read what she says to me. Read it, Linley.’ He held the letter up to her.
She smacked his hand away. ‘I don’t want to read it. She was nothing to me! But you were, Ard O’Rourke. You were.’ Tears threatened. No. I. Will. Not. Cry.
‘I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’ His eyes squeezed shut a moment.
‘Sorry for what? You don’t even know—’
‘I’m sorry I hurt you,’ he said, quickly. ‘I’m sorry for that.’ Staring at his hands, he turned them over and looked at his palms as if there were answers there. ‘I am, Linley.’ He looked back at her. ‘But if she was nothing to you, why is it she wanted you to be the baby’s guardian?’
Linley almost stamped her foot. ‘Because she knew how I felt about you.’ Her voice was too loud. Too loud, Linley. She glanced around.
He seemed bewildered, shook his head, the dark hair brushing his collar. ‘But that’s strange. Odd. Look at what it’s doing now, it’s making it worse. Is that what she wanted?’
‘Don’t turn this around, Ard O’Rourke.’ Her voice shook, rumbled. ‘This is about you.’
Colour shot to his face and his eyes reddened. He clambered to his feet. ‘This is about a mistake I made,’ he ground out.
‘Yes, who is now three months old.’ Linley felt herself breathless, out of control. She needed to stop shouting, needed to slow her heart rate down. But his face. Looking at that face she loved, wanting to reach out and make it all good, and right and … She couldn’t stop a sob of frustration.
He scowled. ‘I know how old he is.’
‘Oh really?’ she snapped. And cursed herself. This is not going to plan, Linley.
‘Stop. Stop.’ Ard took a breath. ‘Linley. Please. Listen.’
‘I don’t have to listen. I loved you, Ard O’Rourke and you knew it. But you laid with her and then went away.’ She felt the snivel leave her before she could stop it. She thrashed at his hands in front of her. ‘You were with her!’
‘Linley, it’s not what you think,’ Ard pressed. ‘It was a … a thing, I didn’t love her, it was just a thing that just happened and I—’
‘A thing? How can it be a thing? You made a baby,’ she shouted. Aghast, she checked her surroundings. No one was nearby. She had to calm herself. She had to.
Ard put his hands to his head. ‘I can’t explain … it … to you.’
‘That’s as lame as an old donkey!’ She still shouted. Couldn’t seem not to.
Ard let his hands drop. ‘If I’d known … Had she come to me and said about the baby, I would have married her.’ He met her angry glare. Spoke deliberately. ‘I would have, Linley. I would have married Mary.’
She blinked as the tears dribbled down her face.
‘I would have married Mary.’
Linley stopped cold. Abruptly, as decisive as the swift cut of a sharp blade, something deep inside, a piece of her, suddenly flew off, and burned to a wisp in the light of day.
Then he’d have been lost to me forever.
She heard the words again in her empty, addled head. Forever.
Ard stood taller and turned to face the river. The late-afternoon sun highlighted the stubble on his cheeks, the muscle moving in his jaw. ‘But she didn’t tell me until after she’d married Wilkin. It’s here, in the letter.’ He waved it at her. ‘Until after she needed help. By the time she let me know that, well, it was too late. A few days later I got your letter.’
And Mary was already dead.
Linley didn’t know what she wanted to say. To shout. To berate … He would have married Mary. She still looked at him blankly.
He blew out a breath. ‘It was that time after the picnic—’
‘I don’t want to know that,’ she said brusquely.
‘And I’d left you there because I couldn’t stand to be with you and not touch you. I know there were no promises between us.’ He let out a breath as if he’d been holding on too long. ‘I knew I had nothing to offer you. Nothing to make a life with you. And yet I …’
Linley waited.
He let out another long breath, a hand raked through his hair. ‘I got back to the orchard and tried to get back to work. But the orchard wasn’t making us a living, any of us. I knew I was going to Renmark, didn’t know for how long, or where I’d go from there.’ He stared at his feet. Shuffled. ‘And then, no excuse, but along came another quart of rum—’
‘A quart?’
‘I didn’t drink a quart. God knows if I had, I wouldn’t have been able to—’ He stopped then and looked away.
Linley had no clue what he was about to say.
‘Mary was without a care in the world, it seemed. And I—’
‘Ard, don’t.’ She held up her hands.
His jaw firmed up. ‘If there wasn’t a baby from Mary and me, if there wasn’t Toby here and now, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.’
Linley shook her head, bewildered. ‘What?’
‘I wasn’t a goddamned virgin, Linley,’ he exploded. ‘Mary wasn’t the only woman I’d had in my life. If it wasn’t for Toby, you wouldn’t have known about it.’
Burning heat flared in Linley’s face. She stepped away, confusion rattling through her. ‘Oh. Well, I—’
‘Don’t even try to make a comment about that,’ he ordered gruffly. ‘You have no clue about any of that sort of business.’ He rubbed a hand over his face. ‘If you won’t marry me, then I will find other ways to see my son—’
‘Marry?’ she burst.
�
�And to help support him.’ He threw out a hand.
She spoke softly. ‘Ard.’
But he carried on. ‘Watch him grow up, have him know my ma and my pa, teach him how to sow a paddock, and ride a horse, steer a riverboat, go fishing and …’ He waved up and down the river.
‘Ard.’ She held her hand out.
He spun back to her, took a breath. ‘Marry me.’ He scowled. ‘My uncle is finally marrying a woman he’s loved for thirty years. I don’t want to wait that long. I don’t want to go through what he did just because people would talk. I don’t.’ He glared at her. ‘When he told me his story I could see just by looking at him what it had done to him. I don’t want that, Linley.’
She cast about for something to grasp. Something she could hold on to, to keep herself together. ‘What if I don’t want to marry?’ she blurted. ‘CeeCee never married James. What if I don’t want to marry?’
‘What?’
‘I’m going to carry on with the work CeeCee was doing. I am.’ She knew her eyes were squinting at him. ‘The unmarried women with a child or children, or the deserted ones, the beaten ones, homeless, cast out.’ She flung out a pointed finger. ‘James and CeeCee have houses, they support … I can’t do that with a husband.’ She saw her life so clearly in that one moment, all the good she could do. But something else cracked inside her, gave way.
He shook his head to clear it. ‘Why can’t you do that with a husband?’ He still glared at her. ‘Why not?’
She glared in return, hands on hips. ‘Because you’d want your dinner on the table, or your trousers fixed, or your tea made, or the laundry done, or the fruit preserved—’
‘Or my children cared for, fed, bathed. Happy. Exactly what you’re doing with Toby, now,’ he stormed.
‘And I want so much to continue CeeCee’s work. I’ve only scratched the surface of this work, never before fully realised how important it is to me, to be of use.’ She clamped a hand on her hat, holding tight. ‘To write the letters to champion the causes. To battle with government for education and nurture.’ Fists bunched at her hips. ‘For CeeCee, as much as me. She gave me so much. And because I don’t think she can do it anymore. I can’t do both,’ she finally shouted.
‘You can,’ he shouted back at her. ‘Because I will be there, too.’ He threw his hands in the air. ‘Like James is with CeeCee.’
Facing him, shouting at him, believing him, Linley felt her fear fall away. She stood stock still, the light slipping away. She could see the anger slip from him, too.
He reached out and his callused hands closed over hers. She heard him swallow, saw his Adam’s apple bob in his neck. ‘I have a son, Linley, and you are his guardian. I want to know him, and him to know me, and my family. I want nothing more than for him to have brothers and sisters that are yours and mine.’ He looked down at their hands. ‘I never wanted a life without you, Linley. Never.’ He licked his lips. ‘I never had much to offer. I don’t know that I have anything much more to offer now, but I will have.’
She looked down at the grip he had on her hands. Felt the caress of the roughened, dense skin. Watched as his large hands engulfed hers.
‘And I know,’ he said softly, ‘if I have you, and everything you are, I will get what we want. For you, for me, for our family. Ours.’
Numb, she withdrew her hands. She backed up the bank, tears falling. It was too much. Too much feeling, too much uncertainty, too much. She turned to walk the rest of the way up the hill. She needed to think.
‘Linley?’ Ard called.
She had to keep going. She couldn’t work out all the things she’d said to him. Where they’d come from, what she had even tried to say. All the things he’d said to her—
‘Linley,’ he called again, softly this time.
She shouldn’t resist this. Why did she want to? She didn’t want to. She wanted Ard. Wanted to be with him. She’d go back to him, talk some more. Work something out.
She turned.
‘Do I have to walk your cauliflower home alone?’ he asked, holding the pram with one hand, and the cauliflower, the huge white floret sitting inside its leafy greens, in his other.
Holding her hat on her head, she hurried the few steps back and stopped a whisker from him. Carefully, he placed the huge vegetable back into the pram.
He slid a hand down her arm, and squeezed her fingers. His other hand came up to her cheeks and a crooked finger stroked the contours of her face.
‘It’s always been you, Linley.’
Fifty-Six
James nodded at the sister in the ward. ‘Just a few more minutes and then I’ll be off.’
‘It is dinner time, Mr Anderson, and we do need to finish up with our patients so they can get to their sleep.’ She waited a moment.
‘I heard you.’
She clamped her mouth shut and left him to it.
He remained holding CeeCee’s limp hand. Her stare followed him. He was sure she could hear him, could understand him. He squeezed her fingers.
‘We will take you home, my darling girl, early next week,’ he said and pressed his lips to her fingers. They were warm, pliant. ‘I think we will settle here in Echuca, don’t you? Linley is here, of course, and we have two staunch allies in Millie and Annie. A couple of new houses to build. What do you say?
Why couldn’t she speak, or at least engage? Nothing but the soft stare, her beautiful dark eyes on his.
‘Well, for now, the nurse is ordering me off the premises. I’ll go back to Millie’s house. I’ve been staying there until their nerves settle.’ He nodded and smiled as if he could imagine her surprise. ‘Oh, yes, I sleep in the laundry room. Annie sleeps in Millie’s room to tend her in the night, and the little children are in the other room. Linley and Toby sleep in the parlour.’ He gave a small laugh. ‘It is a very noisy household. So we might have to purchase another house sooner than later. Linley is not in a hurry to return to where you were living.’
He brushed a long tendril of dark hair from her face, tucking it back behind her ear. Cupping her chin, he planted a light kiss on warm but unresponsive lips.
‘I’ll take you home next week, Cecilia Celeste. And I’ll continue to love you and care for you until my dying day, and beyond.’ He looked into her eyes and he knew, he just knew she was there.
He clasped her hand in both of his, bent and kissed it, pressed it to his cheek. Felt his tears fall and wet his fingers. Over twenty years he’d known her. Loved her. Had done whatever it took to be with her, on her terms, her way. He loved her. What else would he have done? And in return he got a life of sheer joy and happiness and warmth.
Honour. It was his honour to be with CeeCee, and with her, he had honour. He would never let her down. Ever.
I promise you, CeeCee.
Weary, James rode home, not looking forward to the chaos of young children at their mealtime. Perhaps he would move Millie and Annie into the other house so he and CeeCee and Linley could reside in this one. He shook his head at that. Mrs Bailey’s house was opposite. Too close a reminder.
He cantered a little way, and turned into their street. Since putting up the fence he had to ride around the back and enter from the gate he’d made. At least the horse had some shelter under the lean-to, with a food bag and a water trough. It was close to the laundry, James’ own temporary sleeping quarters. Dismounting, he grunted, then stretched. He was getting too old for this. Time he set about a proper house for him and his lady. The doctor had said it would be a slow recovery for CeeCee, but he was hopeful for a good one. James wanted to be ready.
At the back door, he spied a pair of large boots—a man’s boots— alongside a daintier pair. He called out before he entered the house. The children greeted him with happy yells, their pudgy hands clutching bread sopped in dripping, waving at him. Little faces were sodden with mashed food. Millie was scraping bits into open mouths, and wiping faces down, her movements slow but determined. Her face was no longer puffed, and around her eye the bruise was
fading to a pale yellow. Annie had just laid her youngest in his crib.
And there was Linley in her house slippers. And Ard in his socks, holding Toby. The expression on the lad’s face nearly brought more tears to James’ eyes. It was a look of sheer joy. Ard held the bundle of Toby up to greet him, and the smile on Linley’s face said more than words ever could.
James felt his chest constrict. This was his family. These people. And they were waiting for him to bring CeeCee home.
‘Evening, James,’ Ard said, a broad grin across his face. He held out a free hand.
‘Evening.’ James clasped his hand in a quick grip. ‘I see you’ve found someone who belongs to you.’
‘I have indeed. And a bright boy he is, too.’
Toby had a smile on his face, gummy and moving, and his alert little eyes hadn’t left Ard’s face.
Annie straightened up and adjusted her smock a little. ‘Well, the bright boy has to have his dinner now, if you please, Mr O’Rourke.’ She held out her hands.
Ard reluctantly handed Toby over, and Linley took his arm. ‘Let’s go into the parlour. Would you take your dinner with us there, James? You look tired.’
‘Thank you, I would. I am.’
Millie spooned cold mutton and hot vegetables and gravy into three bowls for them. They took their leave of the kitchen and sat in the parlour.
James felt old all of a sudden. Worn down. He looked across at these two people who would be lovers, if they were not already, and felt loss, grief. They should be lovers. They should marry and have a long life together. He’d wished to marry CeeCee long before she had finally agreed. By delaying, it meant they’d never lived together. He desperately wanted that, before it was too late. Before he got too much older. Before she died.
He sat his bowl aside, food untouched, and leaned forward, choosing his words carefully. ‘I might be too unsteady of late to think clearly,’ he began, noticing the look that passed between Linley and Ard. ‘But I must take my own course of action now.’ He clasped his hands. ‘CeeCee will come home soon, to whichever house we decide—I decide—will be the best for her.’
