Heart's Command

by Meredith Webber

  She frowned at him and he wanted more than anything to smooth away that faint crinkle on her brow, but if he touched her he’d forget his purpose.

  Forget everything.

  ‘What shock? What is it you want to tell him?’ Her brow cleared and her eyes widened again. ‘Oh, heavens! You share the same name! Don’t tell me you’re a long lost son and heir? A child conceived on some wild fling. Not that I can imagine Mr Graham indulging in anything as irresponsible as a wild fling. He’s the most proper man on earth. Yes, I can see that could be a shock.’

  Harry found himself smiling, more because he now recognised Kirsten’s babble of words as her reaction to her own shock.

  And recognising reactions was a big step up in any relationship.

  Not that they had a relationship.

  Or were likely to have one.

  Unless.

  ‘Well?’ she demanded, coming close enough to poke him again if he wasn’t careful. ‘Is that what this is all about? Am I right? Is that what you’re dithering about asking me? You want to know if telling Mr Graham you’re his son will kill him? Is that it?’

  Harry stepped back—not so much to avoid her finger but because being close to her made rational thought more difficult.

  ‘It wasn’t an irresponsible fling,’ he said, focussing his mind on the question even if his body was off on some diversion of its own. ‘My mother was his wife, and she was pregnant when she left, although she didn’t realise it until later. And then she knew if she told him he’d want to keep me, or at least have contact with me, so she changed her name, left Sydney—where she’d grown up and knew too many people to keep my existence a secret—and started all over again in Victoria.’

  ‘But you’re called Graham,’ Kirsten objected.

  He glared at her.

  ‘You’ve grasped at the most inessential bit of the whole story,’ he complained. ‘Of course I’m called Graham, it was my legal name. My mother didn’t want that changed, which was totally illogical as she called herself Purvis and I went through life telling lies to my friends to explain the difference in our names.’

  ‘What kind of lies?’

  Again the female mind had grasped a very minor point.

  ‘Early on, I said she was an undercover cop who had to change identities, though all my friends knew she worked in a nursing home. And because she never explained the difference to me herself, I assumed she’d remarried when I was too young to remember a man in the house, and that her second husband had died. Of course, if you take that further, because she hadn’t told me my father was alive, I’d always assumed he’d died as well, and during those terrible childhood years when imagination runs riot I often wondered if she’d somehow murdered both her husbands.’

  ‘With drugs from the nursing home—of course,’ Kirsten murmured.

  Harry felt a shiver down his spine. It was exactly how he’d imagined the murders, and he wasn’t sure he liked the way Kirsten’s thoughts ran in tandem with his. Weird!

  ‘Anyway, all that’s in the past. My mother died of cancer three years ago, and although there was no death-bed confession she left a letter, telling me about my father—also that I had a sister called Elizabeth—and that she’d loved Martin Graham but couldn’t live his life.’

  The words fell into a silence so deep Harry wondered if Kirsten had heard them.

  Until she said, ‘I can’t see any part of the story so far that might kill Martin Graham.’

  The words were slow-paced, like a lead-in to a song, and Harry guessed more was coming.

  ‘That’s not what’s bothering you, is it?’ Kirsten asked, crossing to the window and looking not at him but out into the darkness. ‘Telling the story is the easy part, but can you give the man a son and not be a son to him? Can you tell him who you are, meet your sister, acknowledge those three kids as your blood relatives, then climb into your Land Rover and ride off into the sunset?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have to be like that!’ Harry protested, although the damn woman had come close enough to the truth for him to feel uncomfortable.

  She spun back to face him.

  ‘Of course it would. You told me the army is your life. You’re not worried about the effect this news will have on Martin Graham, you’re scared of the effect it will have on Major Harry. Because you know the family is hurting, and you’ll feel guilty if you tell them who you are then go blithely back to your own life. So, really, you’re saying to yourself, Wouldn’t it be better if they didn’t know?’

  She stepped close enough to get the finger into action again.

  ‘Well, you can’t dump the decision on me, Harry Graham, because I’m not going to tell you the shock will kill your father. In my opinion, finding out he had a son could add years to the old man’s life, but only if that man was prepared to be a real son—to take on some responsibilities, help Elizabeth run the property, bring up those kids.’

  ‘Listen, you!’ Harry said, grabbing the marauding finger and gripping her hand in one of his. ‘I’d be worse than useless on a farm. I don’t know one end of a cow from the other—and as for kids—’

  ‘Oh, men!’ she muttered, snatching her hand away from him and pacing away then back towards him.

  ‘You could learn,’ she said, with maddening practicality. ‘With cows it’s easy. One end bites, and the other end—well, you know what the other end does. And kids aren’t that different. They need love and attention—is that so darned hard?’

  ‘I’m in the army!’ he stormed, glaring at the infuriating woman striding back and forth in front of him. ‘Has that escaped your notice? How can I take care of cows and kids and a sister and an old man when I’m likely to be posted anywhere at a moment’s notice? And this is exactly what I’ve been worrying about. I’d like to have a family, too—even if I don’t get to see them often. I’d like to have someone to belong to. But is that selfish? If I can’t help them, are they better off not knowing I’m related? I didn’t come in here to have you yelling at me about cows. I wanted to talk this thing through.’

  ‘You’re the one who’s yelling now!’ she told him, but he was pleased to see she’d calmed down somewhat. In fact, she was looking at him with a soft expression in her eyes which made his heartbeat go into double time and his head do an about-turn so it was now thinking of how well she’d fitted against his body, not the problem he was so adamant he’d come to discuss.

  ‘I can’t help you, Harry,’ Kirsten said, her voice soft with regret. ‘You know that, don’t you? You know it’s something you have to decide for yourself. I do agree you can’t have everything—but that’s life, isn’t it? It’s all about decisions and compromise, and doing the best we can within the bounds of what’s possible.’

  He took her in his arms and kissed her, although he knew that was a bad mistake—the worst—because she was an added complication in this impossible equation, but he was reasonably certain that finding a solution to how he felt about her was going to prove even more difficult than reaching a decision about his family.

  ‘We barely know each other,’ she murmured between the little kisses he was offering her lips.

  ‘I’ve three more weeks—longer if I give the troops a break and they don’t treat the job with urgency.’

  ‘Not fair on the townspeople hoping to come home,’ she murmured, edging her lips towards his ear and flicking her tongue in to punctuate the words.

  ‘Three weeks could be enough.’ He was nuzzling at her neck, drinking in the freshness of her skin, the smell of woman that seemed part of some essential essence of her body.

  ‘And then what?’

  She pushed herself away—not right away but far enough to look up into his face.

  ‘We’re back to decisions, aren’t we, Harry? What if we should fall in love? Want more than three weeks?’

  ‘You could be a doctor anywhere,’ he reminded her, leaning forward so he could kiss the lids that fluttered down to hide her eyes.

  ‘But not right n
ow,’ she said, her eyes opening to show how steely was her core. ‘I can’t leave Murrawarra at the moment. Not when the fight for the hospital has barely begun. I can’t let down these people who welcomed me into their lives, and have made me feel at home. I can’t walk away, knowing Moira and Mr Curtis would be transferred to a nursing home in Vereton or, worse still, to the city if beds weren’t available locally.’

  ‘So we’ve got three weeks,’ he said, and drew her close again, not for kisses this time but to hold her to his heart while he pondered fate and destiny and love and loss and pain.

  It was three weeks of snatched moments, three weeks with the shadow of the decision Harry had to make casting a shadow over their time together. Three weeks when the work of cleaning up a flood-ravaged town continued unabated, when locals trickled back to help and Kirsten found herself busier than ever, patching up the workers’ minor injuries.

  Yet they managed to see each other almost every day and, although the future wasn’t mentioned, Kirsten sometimes hoped that perhaps if Harry fell in love with her it might make his decision easier. Might make him want to stay in Murrawarra.

  ‘It’s not only the army versus the family,’ he said one day, when they stood above the town and saw the main street water-free. ‘It’s what I’d do. I couldn’t take the farm from Elizabeth, even if I had the skills to run it, which I don’t, and although I wouldn’t have to work—I’ve money and a pension—I couldn’t not work, Kirsten.’

  That million-dollar question—what could Harry do in Murrawarra? It remained unsolved between them, dimming any hopes Kirsten might have harboured that her presence in the town would be enough.

  Yet the intensity of their feelings for each other grew until not taking it to an ultimate conclusion seemed pointless.

  ‘Is it like the navy? Do you have a girl in every port? Every town you go to rescue?’

  Kirsten asked the question as they lay together in her narrow bed, replete with loving but unable to tear themselves apart, unwilling to waste what precious moments they had left.

  He kissed her hair, and rubbed his chin against her head.

  ‘Not quite every port,’ he teased, knowing now exactly how to rile her—and delighting in the way the sparks flashed in her eyes.

  Except this time it wasn’t flashing eyes he received but a sharp jab in the ribs. It made him lose his precarious balance on the edge of the bed so he had to grab at her to stabilise himself. And once she was in his arms again, talk became irrelevant

  ‘Only in Murrawarra,’ he amended huskily, his lips pressed against her ear, his body coaxing hers back to heated need.

  ‘Only in Murrawarra,’ she repeated, a long time later, and Harry heard the sadness in her voice and knew exactly what she meant.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE army had been gone for six weeks, and Kirsten dragged herself through each day wondering if, like morning sickness, lovesickness would pass.

  True, she’d had postcards from Harry. Of the army base— ‘Home safely,’ it had said. Of towns he’d visited. The dry message, ‘We’re on manoeuvres.’ Several from Sydney, more army barracks or bases or whatever they were called. ‘Visited HQ’ told her such a lot! There was even one of the Health Department offices, with a note on the back, ‘Reconnoitring the enemy’s stronghold.’

  But the strangest of all, and the one that caused her most anguish, was one from Melbourne. It was a postcard apparently printed for a private hospital, perhaps given to patients in the same way hotels provided stationery.

  Kirsten, her heart pounding at the thought that Harry might be ill, turned it over, to find a message even more cryptic than usual.

  ‘Does this give you a clue?’ it read, and she frowned over it for ages, eventually going back to the picture of the building, a large and pleasant-looking bungalow set in beautiful gardens, looking more like a private home than a hospital.

  She squinted at the ornate sign at the bottom of the drive and just made out the words, ‘Purvis Private Hospital’. The name evoked a flash of recognition, too transient to capture, so she turned the card back over and contented herself with brooding over the way Harry formed his words—firm, bold strokes, easy to read. Like the man—the firm and bold part—but easy to read? No way!

  ‘Another love letter?’

  Ken came in as she was brooding over it.

  ‘Only if it’s written in invisible ink,’ she snapped.

  ‘Well, he can hardly write sweet nothings on a postcard, knowing someone on the staff would read it and spread the word.’

  ‘He could put the damn things in envelopes,’ Kirsten muttered, then she realised what she’d said and added quickly, ‘Not that he’s got any reason to write sweet nothings to me!’

  ‘Tell that to the marines!’ Ken joked. ‘Or should we say “the army”?’

  Kirsten turned the conversation to work-related topics. They were back on full staff, the evacuated patients had returned and the hospital was running smoothly. It was also running out of money as the quarter neared an end.

  ‘I’d better speak to all the staff as soon as you can rally them. Perhaps at change of shift. Could you ask everyone going off shift this afternoon to meet in the dining room? I’ll explain where we stand to them and then talk to the next shift when they go off duty.’

  ‘Tell them we’re closing?’ Ken asked, and Kirsten sighed.

  ‘I’ll tell them we might have to, unless they’re willing to keep working for nothing for a few weeks. I’ve enough reserves of cash to keep the place running that long.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have to do that,’ Ken protested. ‘It’s the administrator’s job. I can’t believe John Finch has taken stress leave at this time. We’re all under stress—especially those of us who stayed here during the floods. And he’s pulling his wage and doing sweet nothing!’

  ‘He did try, early on, and he doesn’t handle stress well,’ Kirsten said, feeling obliged to make excuses for their absent administrator.

  She sighed again. ‘Martin Graham has always stepped in and saved things before but he’s been so unwell lately, and depressed over having to stay on here instead of going back to the property, that I can’t worry him with my problems. And with Jim Thompson still recuperating in town, I don’t know where to turn.’

  ‘The staff will work for nothing for a while, but it’s not the answer.’ Ken pointed out the obvious.

  ‘And shutting down is?’ Kirsten snapped, then she apologised for her shortness, sent him on his way and resumed the pacing she’d been doing before the postcard had arrived.

  The postcard!

  Her reaction to it!

  In puzzling over where and what it was, she’d forgotten her first thought. The clue was the hospital. Harry was in hospital. Ill or injured.

  She dialled Information and took the short option of being put straight through. When a voice said briskly, ‘Purvis Private Hospital,’ she realised she didn’t know what to say.

  ‘This is Kirsten McPherson,’ she began, then, realising a hospital might take more notice of her profession, she amended the introduction to, ‘Dr Kirsten McPherson.’

  ‘Yes, Dr McPherson. How may I help you? Do you have a patient with us, or were you wanting information on our services?’

  ‘I wanted—Do you know—? Would a Harry Graham be a patient there?’

  There was the click of computer keys then the woman returned. ‘No, Doctor, no Harry Graham. Rosevale Private’s just up the road—have you tried there?’

  Kirsten thanked the woman and hung up. She reached out for the card again and wondered how you brought up messages written in invisible ink.

  And sighing didn’t help at all.

  By nine o’clock she’d told all but the night staff and those off duty of the dire straits facing the hospital. Unable to remain within the confining walls of the old convent, she walked outside and sat on the bench she and Harry had often shared.

  Instead of moonlight shining on the water, there were lights
gleaming in the town, squares of paleness where curtains covered windows in the houses, bright flares of street-lights.

  Her town, she thought, and sniffed the air, wondering how long it would take for the smell of mud to completely clear away.

  Not long, surely, with this hot weather, she thought, for the deluge had given way to summer sun that baked the mud and cracked it into chunks like haphazardly cut slabs of milk chocolate. Even the night was warm, the crickets busy, the moon a taunting yellow lantern in the sky.

  ‘Bother!’ she muttered to herself, and, knowing she’d start to feel gloomy if she thought about the moonlight, she looked for something to occupy her time.

  The garden and the lawn! She’d looked at it this afternoon and had realised how dry it was getting. After so much rain they’d all assumed it would never need watering again, but she’d need to get the sprinklers going on it if she wanted to keep the grass green.

  She walked along close to the building, seeking the main tap at the western corner. Having found it, she turned it on, knowing the timer would automatically switch it off an hour later. A yell of anger from around the side startled her.

  A familiar yell?

  Surely not.

  She hurried around the corner and saw the still protesting visitor, standing wet and dripping, under the lights at the entrance to the hospital wing.

  Only this time he was in jeans and a knit shirt, which clung just as lovingly as wet fatigues to the flat planes and sculpted muscle of his chest.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, woman?’ he yelled at her. ‘You nearly drowned me.’

  ‘Welcome back,’ Kirsten managed to get out in between bursts of laughter and silent admonitions to her heart to remain calm. Harry could just be passing through. ‘Come to buy a postcard of Murrawarra to send to someone in another port?’

  ‘That’s what I should do!’ he retorted, flapping his arms to get rid of the water trickling down from his hair. ‘A man must be mad to get involved with this place!’

  ‘Why don’t you get into some dry clothes?’ Kirsten suggested, smiling because she couldn’t help herself. Just seeing him again was filling her with joy. ‘You’re usually much better tempered when you’re dry.’