Miracle on Kaimotu Island

by Marion Lennox

  Now the crisis seemed to be over. It was a gorgeous autumn day. The rolling hills were bathed in warm sunshine, the cattle had gone back to grazing and only the occasional fallen tree or weird gash across a paddock indicated anything had happened.

  The gashes were easy to avoid. They seemed to happen in fault lines, where the earth underneath had simply pulled apart. They didn’t look deep but Ginny didn’t need to find out how deep they were.

  She could still see the tracks they’d made yesterday, driving the truck cross-country over the lush pastures. She kept to the tracks. She didn’t deviate to the houses she passed—she knew they’d been checked. The fences were all slashed thanks to yesterday’s efforts so she didn’t need to stop until she reached the vineyard.

  Her house was still intact.

  She climbed from the car, lifted Button out and stood looking at it. The long, low homestead showed superficial damage—a couple of broken windows, downpipes skewed, the front steps to the veranda twisted away and one crumpled chimney—but nothing major.

  The house had been shaken and then put down again on the same foundations and she stood and hugged Button and looked at it and felt her eyes well with tears.

  Why? This had been her parents’ holiday retreat. This place had only been home for her for six months.

  But that’s what it was. Home.

  This island was home.

  Ben was home?

  She had a tiny flash of longing. She and Ben. Kids, dogs, family. Here?

  Whoa, that was like a teenager sitting in class signing her name Ginny McMahon, over and over again. She’d actually done that when she was seventeen. Dumb. Emotional. Not based on facts.

  But it might be, she thought. Last night had been real. Last night Ben had said he loved her.

  So many emotions. She stood in the sun in the stableyard and for a moment she simply gave in to them. Yesterday the world had shaken, but for her, now, the world had settled, and her foundations seemed surer.

  ‘This is home,’ she whispered to Button. ‘We’ll fix this up. It’s big and solid and safe. We can live here for ever and ever.’

  And Ben? Big and solid and safe?

  So sexy he made her toes curl?

  That was way too much to think about right now. Ben and what had happened last night was an image, a presence, a sensation that had her retreating fast to the practical.

  She and Button ventured round the back of the house to the kitchen. She turned on the hose—miraculously the water tanks were still standing and she still had pressure. Button’s favourite occupation was still to stand and point the hose, and the late-producing tomatoes were wilting.

  ‘Give them a big drink,’ she told her, and knew she had a few minutes to enter the house. If she avoided standing under the beams she’d be safe enough. She needed to collect urgent belongings, things they’d needed to stay in the town for a few nights.

  With Ben?

  Don’t go there. She was starting to feel...just a little bit foolish. More than a little bit afraid.

  Get on with it. Move on, she told herself, and get back to the hospital. She might be needed. Coming up here was a bit irresponsible.

  Unless Henry did need her.

  She headed back out to the garage and grabbed bolt cutters for hacking through fences if needed, and then popped a happy, soggy Button back in the four-wheel drive. Henry’s cottage was further out on the headland. The track seemed to be okay. There weren’t any significant ruts or crevices, though at one place there was a small landslip partly blocking the way.

  ‘Nothing to this, Button,’ she told the little girl as they edged past. ‘We’ll reach Henry’s cottage in no time. It’ll be fine.’

  And then they topped the next rise and saw the cottage and it wasn’t fine at all.

  * * *

  Ben was starting to worry. It seemed simple, logical even, for Ginny to drive to Henry’s. It didn’t even seem risky to take Button with her. Childminders were at a premium, the way seemed safe and Ginny wasn’t one to take risks.

  So why was he worrying?

  It wasn’t as if he didn’t have enough to do. The boatload of school kids had arrived, with myriad cuts and bruises to be checked. There was nothing serious but most of these kids had parents who’d spent a sleepless night imagining the worst, and every cut needed to be checked.

  Besides, to a traumatised five-year-old a bandage was a badge of honour, a signal to the world that he’d been doing something dangerous. It was therapy all by itself, Ben thought as he applied a much-too-big plaster to Rowan March’s grazed arm. He’d applied antiseptic with liberal abandon as well, so Rowan headed off with his parents, plus a bright orange arm and a plaster to brag about. He was all better. And suddenly there were no more kids.

  ‘We have a bit of medical overkill.’ Margy was clearing trays, keeping a weather eye on the door. ‘So many helpers... The guys have been wonderful, though. Four deaths, five major injuries, minor injuries arriving slowly enough to be dealt with promptly, and teams are reporting most properties have been checked.’

  ‘I should have sent a team out to Henry’s,’ Ben growled, and Margy frowned.

  ‘Didn’t Max and Ella check on him?’

  ‘Apparently not. Their daughter’s here in town. They came down in a rush and stayed.’

  ‘I’ll ask one of the rescue guys—’

  ‘There’s no need. Ginny’s gone up there.’

  ‘Has she now.’ Margy eyed him thoughtfully. ‘And that’s why you seem distracted?’

  ‘I’m not distracted.’ Then he shrugged and grinned. ‘Or not very.’

  ‘You want to follow her up there?’ Margy raised a quizzical eyebrow and smiled. What was it with the people around him? Was he that transparent? ‘Surely she shouldn’t be out there by herself.’

  But one of the searchers was coming in now, cradling his arm. He needed to be seen to and the two fly-in doctors were taking a break. Margy and Ben were it.

  ‘I don’t have time.’

  ‘But when the others come back on duty?’

  ‘She’ll be back by then.’

  ‘So she will,’ Margy said, pinning on a smile. ‘So you can stop worrying.’

  ‘I’ve got you worrying now,’ he said.

  ‘She’s a sensible woman.’ But Margy was starting to look worried.

  ‘Will you cut it out? There’s no reason to worry.’

  ‘Except that if it was my Charlie I’d be worried,’ Margy said. ‘And the way you feel about Ginny...’

  ‘What the...? I do not feel—’

  ‘Sure you do,’ she said, cheering up. ‘You think you can sleep together on this island and not have every islander know in five minutes?’

  ‘Margy! We were exhausted. She needed to stay in my apartment.’

  ‘Of course,’ Margy said equitably. ‘But if you slept on the sofa I’m a monkey’s uncle and if you’re not feeling like I feel about Charlie, when you’re looking the way you’re looking...’

  ‘Will you cut it out?’

  ‘Yes, Doctor,’ she said meekly. ‘Anything you say, Doctor. But let’s get this arm seen to and get you up the valley to rescue your lady.’

  * * *

  Henry’s cottage was ramshackle. He’d run a small farm up here before her parents had employed him, but he’d let this place go. He’d only left the vineyard six months back, when arthritis had overtaken him, and he’d refused Ginny’s offer to stay in the caretaker’s residence permanently.

  The old cottage, therefore, was hanging together with rotting timbers and rusty nails. Ginny had been out here a couple of times to see him. She’d been horrified but he wouldn’t move.

  And now...maybe the time for him to move was gone. The entire building had folded in on itself. The chimne
y looked as if it had crashed down, bringing the rest of the house with it.

  It looked like a huge bonfire, set and ready to go.

  And where was Henry?

  ‘Stay in the car, Button,’ Ginny said, handing Shuffles over. ‘I need to see...’

  ‘Henry,’ Button said, and Ginny wondered how much this little girl understood. Henry had been down in the vineyard teaching Ginny to prune. He’d shown Button how to build Shuffles a little house with the clippings and then, the last time Ginny had come up here, the day after Henry came home from hospital, Henry had made Button red cordial, which she liked very much.

  ‘I don’t know where Henry is,’ Ginny conceded. ‘But you stay in the car while I look.’

  ‘Okay,’ Button said happily, and Ginny left the doors open so the sun wouldn’t heat it up too much and turned her mind to Henry.

  Somewhere in this mess, an old man...

  The house was on the headland overlooking the sea. From here you could almost see to the mainland. A sea eagle was soaring in the thermals, seemingly having given up on fishing for the day just to soak up the sun. There seemed no urgency at all. How could anything dreadful happen on such a day?

  Where was Henry?

  ‘Henry?’ It was a cautious call, and produced nothing. She tried again and put a bit of power behind it.

  ‘Henry!’

  And from the ruins...

  ‘Well, about time. I’ve bin thinking I was going to have to chop me leg off with a penknife, only I can’t reach a penknife. You want to get me out of here, Ginny, girl?’

  Ginny, girl. He’d called her that all her life, she thought as she tried to get closer, tried to figure where exactly he was.

  Feeling ill.

  She should have insisted he stay with her. She thought suddenly that this man was more of a parent to her than her own parents were. Henry at the vineyard, Ailsa in town, her friend Ben—those were her people.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ she called, shifting to the far side of the house, calling loudly because he was far in, she could hear it from his voice.

  ‘I’m stuck. Bloody piano came down on me ankle. I can still wiggle me toes. It got me sideways, like. I never even played the thing either. My May only got it ’cos she liked the look of it.’

  He was sounding brave but she heard the pain and weakness behind the bravado. But how to get him out? She was looking at vast sheets of roofing iron topping a crumbling mess.

  ‘I need to call for help,’ she told him. ‘Can you hold on for a bit?’

  ‘Can you get me one of them intravenous line things you docs have? You could feed it down through the cracks with a bit of beer in it. A man ’d feel better with a beer in his belly.’

  ‘You’re still recovering from a stomach ulcer,’ Ginny retorted. She had him pinpointed now, she thought. From the sound of his voice he was near the remains of the main chimney but completely under the roofing iron. ‘No alcohol for you!’

  ‘No, ma’am. But you’re calling for help?’

  ‘You’d better believe it.’

  * * *

  ‘Ben!’

  Ben had just finished splinting the fractured arm. It was a vicious break; it’d need setting by a decent orthopaedic surgeon, but he’d done enough to make the guy comfortable. He was starting to clear up when Don Johnson, the island’s fire chief, stuck his head around the door. ‘Can I have a word?’

  ‘Sure. You settle down on the pillows, Mac,’ he told the guy he was treating. ‘You’ll be on the next chopper out of here.’

  ‘Chopper’ll be half an hour,’ Don said across him, glancing at Mac with concern. ‘Do you have decent painkillers on board, Mac? Can you wait until next trip?’

  ‘Sure,’ Mac said. ‘Broken wing is all. I can still handle a shovel if you let me.’

  ‘I don’t need a shoveller,’ Don said, but he sounded worried. ‘What we need is more vehicles. Ben, Ginny’s just contacted base. She’s up on the headland past her place and Henry’s trapped under his collapsed house. I’m hauling a team together now. Are you free as soon as we are?’

  ‘I’m free now,’ Ben said.

  * * *

  It was the longest wait. There was nothing she could do but sit in the sun by the ruin that was Henry’s house, and cuddle Button and talk to him. If she tried to climb onto the ruin to rip up the sheets of iron that hid him from view, she could bring more down on the man beneath. She had to sit and wait, sit and wait, and Henry knew it.

  ‘So tell me why you never came back?’ Henry asked, and she shook herself and thought it was she who should be asking questions, she who should be focussing on keeping him distracted.

  ‘I did come back.’

  ‘From the time you were seventeen... Your parents came back every summer and played the landed gentry. Why not you?’

  ‘I guess I didn’t...like playing the landed gentry.’

  ‘Or were you scared you’d fall harder for our Ben?’ Henry said. ‘That’s what my May said. “She’s fallen for that lad in a big way,” she said. “If she comes back next summer they’ll be together for life, mark my words,” and then you never came back. So what was it about our Ben that scared you?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She was holding Button on her knee, making daisy chains to keep the little girl occupied. She was as close to Henry as she dared to go.

  ‘Something did,’ Henry said, and she heard the pain in his voice and knew he was trying hard to find anything—anything to distract him. ‘You don’t need to tell me, but May said you were as besotted with him as he was with you, and then you disappeared. It seemed dumb to us.’

  ‘It was too hard,’ she said, and she didn’t say it loud enough. In truth it was barely a whisper.

  ‘You still there?’ Henry’s voice rose sharply and she caught herself. This wasn’t about her. This was about Henry and distraction and nothing else.

  And maybe...maybe it was time to say it like it was.

  ‘I wasn’t brave enough to love him,’ she said. ‘I was seventeen and my parents treated this place as an escape. That summer...I told my mother I was in love with Ben, and she laughed. And then she told me exactly what would happen if...if I was stupid.’

  ‘What would happen?’

  His voice was so thin she was starting to panic. He sounded so weak there was no way she could do anything but tell him the truth.

  ‘My dad was a powerful man,’ she said. ‘He was at the top of his field and he was wealthy to boot. Very, very wealthy.’

  ‘You know, I figured that,’ Henry said dryly and Ginny managed a smile.

  ‘So he had friends all over the world. Friends in most of the major teaching hospitals. Friends in Auckland. The head of medical training for Auckland Central was a house guest here that summer. Dad said he only had to drop a word. He said nursing was a much more suitable profession for someone of Ben’s background—his words, not mine. He said it was fine for a kid like Ben to have aspirations and he could have any aspiration he wanted except his daughter. And if he was to keep wanting me then his plans to be a doctor would be pulled from under his feet, just like that. So be a good girl, Ginny, he said. Let him down kindly and move on.’

  ‘So that’s what you did.’

  ‘That’s what I did,’ she said drearily. ‘And, of course, he was right. We were only seventeen, and it even seemed sensible. Medical school seemed exciting. The way I was feeling seemed dumb. I managed to dump Ben like it was my idea. But if I’d had the courage to maybe keep writing, keep in touch, who knows? But I couldn’t write without crying and then I met James and it was the easy way out. Now I’m so, so sorry.’

  There was a long silence, a silence that stretched until she got scared.

  ‘Henry?’

  ‘I’m still here,’ he said, almost amicably. ‘And Ben
could have written, too. Is he sorry?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, confused.

  ‘Bet he’s not,’ Henry said. ‘He’s a guy. I’m seeing a pattern here. I know it’s sexist, but women. You know, my May once dropped her best meat platter—a plate she inherited from her mum who inherited it from her mum. So she’s standing there staring down at five or six bits of broken crockery and she’s welling up with tears and saying, oh, Henry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. Like she’s apologising to me, or to the shades of her mum and her grandma, but who’s hurting? Daft woman. Hell, this piano hurts. You think they’re coming?’

  ‘They’re coming,’ Ginny said, and they were, at least she thought they were. In the distance she could see a Jeep, coming fast. ‘At least...I hope...I think Ben’s here.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ Henry said morosely. ‘A nice shot of morphine’d be useful and I hope he has tin cutters.’

  ‘Or a crane,’ Ginny said, hugging Button and climbing to her feet to wave to the approaching Jeep. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been more useful.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, you know where you can put your sorry,’ Henry snapped. ‘Let’s put the past behind us and acknowledge all we both want is Ben.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  BEN WAS ALONE. Ginny had called for the cavalry and the only one who had come was Ben. That was fine, as far as it went—the hard hug he gave her when he arrived was reassuring, as far as it went—but she wanted more.

  Did Wellington have these sorts of problems? Ginny wondered. Did ‘Get the fourth infantry division to the front now’ mean get them here after the fourth infantry division had finished dinner and put their boots on? Or after the fourth infantry had coped with a wee crisis like fighting five French divisions down the line?

  Something must have happened. There must be another catastrophe somewhere, because there was no back-up in sight.

  Meanwhile, she and Ben walked carefully around the ruined house, with Ginny carrying Button, while Ben tried to assess how he could get in there.