The Girl for Gillgong

by Amanda Doyle

  Through a sleepless night, tossing cautiously so that Hilary would not awaken, Kerry had fought a losing battle against the infection. She dozed fitfully, awoke hollow-eyed to find herself shivering and woolly-minded.

  In spite of her clouded brain and the hot dryness of her fevered head, she could still think lucidly enough to realize that she must inform Tad. She would have to tell him before he went out for the day.

  It was scarcely dawn, she was relieved to note. Hilary’s breathing came deep and even from the neighbouring pillow, and outside the first bird of morning expanded his little throat in a series of trilling warbles.

  Somehow Kerry managed to drag on her clothes. Each movement of her arm brought a now agonizing pain that crippled her actions, and it was with extreme difficulty that she buttoned her shirt and tucked it, one-handed, into her shorts. The empty stretcher on Tad’s verandah told her that he was already up and dressed. It was too early for breakfast, which meant that he would be about the homestead somewhere, or at the worst, down at the saddling-yard.

  Kerry slipped on her shoes and left the dressing-room. She felt weak and giddy, her one thought now to get to Tad. Tad would know what to do.

  Slowly she made her way through the hall, listening for sounds of movement. The library door was closed, but from inside came the soft whirring noise of the big overhead fan.

  Kerry knocked, and Tad’s voice, deep and commanding on the other side, called ‘Come in.’

  Kerry listened to the voice, but she didn’t immediately obey. She just stood there, feeling almost too ill to make the effort required to open the door, unable to believe her luck. Tad was there, very near now. Tad would know what to do. Soon she wouldn’t need to think any more, because even thinking had become a challenge. It would be heaven not to have to think, to let Tad make the decisions.

  ‘Come in.’ Tad’s repeated injunction sounded rasping, impatient.

  Kerry turned the knob, entered the room and closed the door behind her, leaning against it, staring at Tad.

  ‘Kerry! You are up early! Did you want to see me about something? Obviously you did, or you wouldn’t be here.’

  The words rang around in her mind, jumbling themselves up into the strangest disorder. They didn’t seem to mean anything. She put her hand to her forehead, wishing that Tad’s words made some sort of sense.

  ‘What is it, Kerry? Aren’t you well?’ Tad had risen from his chair behind the desk, and was coming towards her.

  Kerry waited till he got near enough, just in case he might not hear her, and then she said his name.

  ‘Tad?’ The word came out in a mere whisper. Maybe he wouldn’t hear her, after all! Kerry fastened her eyes on Tad’s stern face in mute appeal.

  Suddenly he was there, right beside her, taking her weight off the door behind her, steadying her, supporting her. His voice was urgent.

  ‘What is it, Kerry? What is it? Come on, Kerry—you’ve got to tell me.’

  He gave her an impatient shake. It sent waves of agony shooting through her, but it also had the effect of temporarily clearing her brain.

  ‘It’s my arm, Tad—my finger, I mean.’

  She extended her arm then, and he took her hand in his, palm upward. When he saw the angry red line running up under the soft, honey-coloured skin towards Kerry’s elbow, Tad said something softly to himself. To Kerry it sounded like ‘Jesus Christ!’, but somehow Tad didn’t say it in a profane sort of way. It seemed more like a prayer.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tad.’ She leaned against him, mumbling. ‘So sorry, Tad—in the garden—I thought—’

  Tad lifted her up into his arms, easily, carefully. His set face, pale under its tan, was quite near, yet curiously blurred.

  ‘It’s all right, Kerry,’ he said very clearly and firmly. ‘Don’t worry about it just now. Leave everything to me, do you understand. I’ll take care of things now. You don’t have to worry any more, Kerry.’

  She sagged against him then, thankfully, and closed her eyes. Tad would take care of things, as she had known he would. She didn’t need to worry any more. She had found Tad and she had told him, and he didn’t seem to even be the tiniest bit angry with her. He had just said not to worry, that things would be all right.

  When he laid her gently back on to her bed, Kerry couldn’t be bothered to open her eyes. She didn’t even open them when she was raised up and ordered to swallow the tablets that were placed on her tongue. Presently she felt a comforting cloth applied to her arm, held steady, removed, applied again. She did open her eyes then, just to see who could be doing this for her, grateful for the small measure of relief it brought.

  ‘Tad?’

  ‘Hullo, Kerry,’ Tad gave her a calm smile. It was a crooked sort of smile, but it crinkled up his eyes in the way she loved.

  ‘So sorry, Tad.’ Speech was an effort. The link between brain and lips seemed a million miles long. Ideas travelled so slowly, and when she finally voiced her thoughts, the words were so soft that Tad had to lean forward to catch them.

  ‘Don’t try to talk, Kerry, just rest if you can.’

  ‘Such a nuisance—’ Kerry couldn’t leave it.

  ‘These things happen,’ he said expressionlessly. ‘We’ll soon have you right, Kerry. The doctor will be here very soon.’

  ‘The—doctor?’

  ‘Sure—the flying feller, you remember. He’s just round the corner of the next cloud, Kerry. He won’t be long.’

  Yes, she did remember! Tad must mean the Flying Doctor, the one that had to be called up on the radio. ‘Such a nuisance—’ she whispered again.

  ‘Don’t talk, Kerry.’

  ‘No, Tad.’

  Next time it was Andy who was sitting there, bathing her arm methodically. Dear kind Andy, with an absorbed expression on his freckled face.

  ‘Andy?’

  ‘What is it, Kerry girl?’

  ‘Is he—still around the corner?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The corner of the cloud, I mean.’

  ‘Don’t talk, Kerry girl.’

  ‘No, Andy.’

  Silence again, then more voices. ‘I think she’s delirious.’ ‘Pity she didn’t—earlier.’ ‘He’s here now, anyway.’ Yet another voice. A man in white. A strange man, in a white tropical outfit. The same as Kell Hunter wore when he flew back from Sydney. Kell flew right through the clouds—he didn’t go round the corners.

  ‘Did you really come round the corner?’ Kerry asked the man in the white tropic kit.

  He didn’t seem to understand her—just patted her shoulder and turned away. The voices went on.

  ‘Wherever you think best.’ ‘The bed in my room, I reckon.’ ‘More space to manoeuvre.’ ‘A good light.’ ‘Boiling water.’

  Tad was lifting Kerry up again, off her own stretcher, walking with her along the verandah. She felt as though she was floating away—a piece of thistledown, floating right out of Tad’s arms. When he laid her on the big white double bed in his own room, she almost floated away up off that, too. She had to cling to Tad to stop herself.

  ‘It’s all right, Kerry,’ Tad said comfortingly—but he kept hold of her hand, just in case. It was nice here with Tad. Kerry wished the others would go away and leave her. They talked too much. Their voices buzzed in and out of her mind like angry blowflies through a window.

  ‘Soon have you right, Miss Peyton.’ ‘Quite painless.’ ‘Localized—‘ the modern way.’ ‘Effective anaesthetics these days.’ ‘Antibiotics.’

  Kerry didn’t feel very much. She submitted her body to the few pricks of the doctor’s needle with listless disinterest. Afterwards, when the voices had all gone away, she slept, deeply, dreamlessly.

  It was late afternoon when she woke up. Kerry could tell that, because Tad’s verandah was the west one, and the lowering sun streamed through the gauze screen at this end.

  Tad was sitting in a chair near the bed, sunk down into the depths, with his long legs stretched out in front of him. His broad
-brimmed felt hat lay on the marble-topped washstand close by. Opposite her, on the mahogany dressing-chest, Kerry could see the little box that she had made Tad for Christmas. Idly she wondered if he had put anything in it—studs, cufflinks, or something. She supposed he must use studs and cufflinks sometimes, even though she had never seen him in anything but khaki bush-shirts with rolled-up sleeves, or blue ‘mail-day’ shirts with short ones. She must peep in some time, just to satisfy her curiosity.

  ‘Awake, Kerry?’ Tad got up out of the chair and came over. ‘Feeling better?’

  ‘Much better, thank you, Tad.’

  ‘You certainly look different.’ An experimental hand felt her forehead. ‘I think your fever’s down.’

  ‘I think it must be,’ she agreed. ‘I felt as though I was on fire before—eaten up by flames. It was horrid. Now I feel—well, very lazy and comfortable.’

  ‘Tired too?’

  ‘Maybe, just a little bit. I—I hadn’t slept very well these last few nights.’

  Tad’s eyes hardened. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it again, took a restless pace around the room. ‘Like a drink?’ he finally asked in a carefully controlled voice.

  ‘Please.’

  He raised her while she drank, tilting the glass. When he laid her back on the pillow, he spoke again, impersonally.

  ‘The doctor’s coming in again on his way back to Base, Kerry. Reckon you might sleep till then, if I leave you?’

  ‘Yes, of course, Tad.’ She wouldn’t sleep, she knew. ‘Please go, and do whatever you want. It’s not a bit necessary to stay.’ As he passed her, she added impulsively, “You look awfully tired yourself, Tad.’

  A smile creased his cheeks, crinkled the green eyes, took away some of the strain and pallor from his weary features.

  ‘Do I, Kerry?’ he retorted whimsically. ‘I can’t think why I should! You’ve given me a lazy day, lounging in that chair there, so I reckon I should be even more spry than usual.’

  With a nod and a casual ‘See you,’ he left the room. Alone, Kerry wanted to cry. She didn’t know why she felt like that, she just did. Silly, really, to cry now, when there was no pain beneath the thick white bandage that guarded her hand, no fire burning her limbs away.

  Weakly, Kerry allowed hot tears to roll down her cheeks. There was no one to see them, so she just let them fall. It was an indulgence of which she was vaguely ashamed, but when she eventually tried to stop them she found she couldn’t. They just rolled and rolled, and when Tad came back with the doctor her pillow was quite damp.

  ‘Hullo, young lady, what’s all this?’ the doctor asked kindly. ‘Got the miseries?’

  ‘No, not really.’ Kerry wiped her eyes hurriedly with the back of her hand, summoning a smile. ‘I—I was just being stupid, that’s all.’

  ‘Not so stupid, my dear. It’s a natural reaction, after an unpleasant experience. It means you’re feeling better, but you must have endured a great deal of pain before you sought medical help, I’d say,’ he reproved her sternly. ‘That’s always foolish.’

  “Yes, I know. I’m—very sorry.’ Kerry’s anxious eyes slid nervously to Tad’s set face, and away again.

  The doctor, who had intercepted that look, continued tactfully, ‘Never mind, though. It’s in the past now.’ He turned her arm, examined it carefully. ‘Where do we go from here, then, Tad, old man? The patient will live! She can even be mobile in the morning, and I dare say she’ll manage nicely with one hand for the next week or so. She’ll need to keep on with her tablets, of course.’ He smiled at Kerry. ‘How about it, Miss Peyton? I can take you back with me for a few days’ decent rest and supervision at the clinic, if you like?’

  Kerry licked her lips, glanced anxiously at Tad again. What could she say? What should she say? She had been nuisance enough here already, and the big tanned station boss standing scowling there in the corner owed her nothing. Why should he be expected to harbour a convalescent employee, just because she had nowhere else to go? Actually, she did have somewhere now, didn’t she? The doctor himself had just offered her an escape, a bolt-hole—the clinic! Just for a few days, until Tad and Andy had forgotten what a crisis she had caused, it might be a good idea to avail herself of that means of escape.

  Kerry propped herself up on her good arm.

  ‘That’s very kind of you, doctor,’ she said with dignity. ‘I think perhaps it will be best if I accept your offer.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing!’ Tad glared at her.

  Kerry glared back, pushed fair strands of hair behind her ear.

  ‘I shall if I wish, Tad. You can’t stop me.’

  ‘I can, and I will. It’s what I say around here that counts!’

  ‘The doctor has given me the choice,’ Kerry pointed out on a rising note.

  ‘Well, the doctor can dam’ well take the choice away again, can’t you, Dan? Dammit all, Kerry, after what you’ve put us all through today, I demand the satisfaction of at least seeing you recover!’ He turned to the doctor. ‘She stays,’ he declared tersely. ‘There’s no question of her going off to that clinic of yours, d’you hear me? She can just stay right here at Gillgong, whether she likes it or not!’

  His green eyes sparked at Kerry, and she went on glaring back—that is, until her face crumpled completely, and she had to bury her face in the pillow to stifle the sobs that racked her.

  ‘Reaction,’ said the doctor kindly, for the second time in the last ten minutes.

  He went out of the room, and Tad, after some moments of noticeable hesitation, followed, closing the door behind him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Everybody at Gillgong was kindness itself to Kerry during the days that followed. Even Tad was gentle and pleasant, and forbore to reproach her further. Kerry guessed that he must have been very angry indeed that he had had to spend a whole day at home, organizing the Flying Doctor’s visit and all that sort of thing. Frustration and an afternoon of inaction sitting in the cane chair beside her bed—or rather, his bed—would have accounted for his brief, grim-faced outburst in front of the doctor. She was grateful to him for not mentioning the matter again. He was patient, concerned and attentive.

  ‘Is there anyone you would like me to inform, Kerry—about your being laid up, I mean?’

  She felt her face close up, dropped her eyes.

  ‘No, thank you, Tad, there’s no one. I shall soon be able to use my other hand again, and I feel perfectly well otherwise. I don’t think you’ll find that my work suffers. I shall do my utmost to give satisfaction in that respect.’

  Tad’s own face was impenetrable.

  ‘I’m sure you will, Kerry,’ was all he said, in an expressionless voice. ‘Remember to continue with the penicillin tablets,’ he had added, pleasantly but distantly, before cramming on his wide hat and striding away along the verandah.

  Kerry settled down once more to her usual routine, and the days and weeks slipped past much as they had done before. Just lately, though, she had been aware of some subtle change in Tad, an almost imperceptible alteration in his manner towards her. Often she found him watching her with a brooding thoughtfulness that was difficult to analyse and somewhat unnerving.

  Tonight he was standing near her shoulder in the kitchen, looking on as she put the finishing touches to the icing on Hilary’s birthday cake. The little girl would be eight years old tomorrow, and Kerry, reminding Tad of the date, had asked him if it would be possible, just this once, for him to come to the homestead for his daughter’s birthday tea. He had agreed readily. He had, in fact, to check one of the windmills at a tank near the house, and he would make a point of being present.

  ‘It’s late, Kerry,’ he said now. ‘Have you much more to do?’

  Kerry shook her head. She was concentrating fiercely on her task, which was that of making tiny rosettes of pink icing all the way round the edge of the cake.

  ‘No, Tad.’ She put down the icing-gun, eased her aching fingers, and gave a sigh of satisfaction. ‘That’s it
finished, I think. I had to wait till now to do it, so that Hilary would be asleep. It’s a surprise, you see.’ She frowned, squinting at the cake again. ‘I wonder if those rosettes are even enough, or should I squeeze one more in there. What do you think?’

  Kerry looked up, and caught again that odd expression on her employer’s face. It was almost as though he hadn’t even heard her question.

  For an arrested moment in time they simply stared at each other, and then Kerry spoke.

  ‘What’s the matter, Tad? Is something wrong? Have I got flour on my face, or something?’ She pushed back her hair, a sure sign that she was nervous. It was a gesture she must learn, some time, to control.

  Tad shook his head slowly.

  ‘No, Kerry, no flour.’ He smiled faintly, but his eyes—as dark and deep as rain-soaked gum-leaves now—were curiously grave.

  ‘Have I done something wrong, Tad?’

  Again that shake of the head, but there was a long, hesitant moment before he replied.

  ‘Not actually wrong, Kerry,’ he said with care. ‘It’s rather something you omitted to do. Nothing to worry about,’ he added kindly as her eyes widened, ‘but I must speak to you about it.’ He touched her arm. ‘Come to bed now. It can wait. We’ll get Hilary’s birthday over first, in fact.’

  “Very well, Tad. I’ll just tidy up here, and put this cake out of sight. I do hope Hilary will like it. It’s got three colours of sponge under that icing.’

  Again that faint smile, a gruff ‘good night’, and Tad’s heavy footfalls could be heard, fading away along the corridor from the kitchen, through the hall.

  ‘I won’t think about it just now,’ Kerry determined firmly, putting the lights out after her as she went to her room. ‘After all, he did say it’s nothing to worry about.’ This morning when she awoke, she had forgotten all about last night’s conversation.

  ‘Happy birthday, darling!’ she greeted Hilary, leaping out of her own bed on to the other one, and giving her a hug. ‘Eight years old! You are growing up!’

  ‘Have you got a present for me, Kerry?’ Hilary always believed in coming straight to the point.