Whispers Through the Pines

by Lynne Wilding

  Nikko gave him a sympathetic grin. ‘Old mate, you look pretty done in. Why don’t you push off? There’s nothing you can do here. Go home and get a decent night’s sleep. I’ll have the matron call you in the morning to tell you how Jessica spent the night. Okay?’

  Simon sighed. Nikko was right. He couldn’t do anything at the moment to help Jessica, but the thought of being alone in the city townhouse or their large home at Mandurah didn’t appeal. Too many unhappy memories now. He pushed himself up and out of the chair. ‘You’re right. As usual. We’ll talk again tomorrow. Night.’

  Scrambled eggs, baked beans and toast, washed down with a can of Fosters. Not exactly a gastronomic delight, he admitted. Jessica would be appalled. In the kitchen she’d had the uncanny knack of being able to make something palatable out of practically nothing. He had no such skill, he decided as, with a morose chuckle, he relaxed back into the leather armchair in the living room, preparatory to pressing the remote to turn the TV on for the late night news.

  It was hard not to be aware of the silence in the house. And the loneliness of the place. Too large, he’d often thought. He downed the last of the beer. Very different from the two-bedroom timber homestead ten kilometres east of York where he’d grown up with his parents, who were both gone now.

  Delia and Don Pearce had been wheat farmers, often doing it tough, depending on seasonal rains or the lack of them. He remembered their disappointment when they’d realised he hadn’t inherited their love of the land. From an early age his passion had been books, books of all description and content, and in particular any story which had a medical theme. As children are wont to do, he’d practised his embryonic medical skills by fixing a blackbird’s broken wing, and had nursed a poddy calf with a broken leg back to health, arguing with his father for its life when Don Pearce wanted to butcher it for the table.

  There hadn’t been enough money to pay his university fees, so he had worked his way through, sharing accommodation with other students and holding down three part-time jobs to pay for tuition and books and his keep. Another reason he’d not been used to large houses, until they’d built one at Mandurah. He gave a second chuckle. That was also why he knew about scrambled eggs and baked beans. On occasions such fare had been his staple diet.

  Now in a reflective mood, from the softened glow of the brass table lamp his gaze encompassed the spacious room. The white leather lounge was stylish, the marble tiled floor with the Turkish rug which covered under-the-floor heating had been expensive. Paintings, originals—a Heysen, a Brett Whiteley pencil sketch—hung on the wall and complemented the wall units, which housed an array of electronic equipment: TV, stereo, CD player—all chosen by Jessica.

  Colleagues in the medical profession said that he had all the trappings of a successful medical career which, secretly, pleased him enormously. He did and he’d worked damned hard for them, but…Jessica’s image flashed into his mind. Picturing her still and silent in the hospital bed, he let out a low, emotional growl. The success, the fashionable home, the shares portfolio weren’t worth a damn when he thought of her there, looking so vulnerable. He had to bear the loss of his son, and he could, but to lose Jessica, too…Then he really would be alone and…he didn’t like being alone. Such a possibility made him shudder.

  She should be here with him, he thought, suddenly cross. They always watched the late news together. And, while it sounded self-centred, the timing of Jessica’s collapse couldn’t be worse for him. He was about to embark on an exciting project, a twenty-first century geriatrics complex which would set them up for life. He growled despondently into the empty room. That would have to go on hold now, until Jessica was well again.

  Only half seeing and hearing the world news, his mind drifted into mental replay, going back more than ten years. A New Year’s eve party in a cramped flat in Chelsea…

  He almost hadn’t gone to Nikko’s party but, being alone in London on New Year’s eve after a punishingly long shift at St Pancreas, hadn’t appealed, and neither had the box he called his room in the boarding house located two blocks north of the hospital. Nikko’s, musty bed-sit was packed, bodies wall to wall like tinned sardines. Late eighties music played on the scratchy record player Nikko had picked up for ten quid at a flea market. The music and the noise, with people laughing and talking above it, sounded much the same as the low hum of a beehive.

  He looked at his watch. 11:15. Another hour and he’d push off, catch six hours sleep if he was lucky, and go on duty again. He smothered a yawn, held up his glass of warm beer and debated whether trying to get to the makeshift bar on the other side of the room for a refill was worth the effort.

  That’s when he saw her—as a couple moved to the left. She was laughing, her face tilted to the light. So alive, and so damned healthy-looking with her tan. Obviously not a Londoner. Not beautiful in the strictest sense of the word, but her vivaciousness caught his attention and held it. He watched through the growing haze that he suspected was an almost equal combination of cigarette smoke and pot, observing her expressions, but especially her eyes. He wished he could tell what colour they were. They shone as she listened attentively to what some tall, red-headed bloke was saying. He was no doubt trying to feed her some bullshit line to get himself into her bed.

  He began to elbow his way forward, towards her. Close up, she was even better-looking. High cheekbones, nice nose, decidedly not aristocratic because it tilted upwards at the tip. She smiled a lot, he noted. Something, muscles around a vital organ he knew to be his heart, constricted. A lump rose in his throat and lodged there. He breathed in, coughed the lump free and, gathering his courage, said to her, ‘I’m going to the bar, can I get you a drink?’ Her eyes were blue, the colour of cornflowers. Beautiful.

  Jessica Ahearne looked up at the blonde-haired man on her left. Startled by the intensity of his gaze, she blinked. ‘Yes, thanks. A wine. White or red, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Coming up.’

  Intrigued, for no good reason, she continued to study him as he worked his way through the crush. He stood half a head taller than most of the partygoers. Nikko, the host and a friend since high school, tried to squeeze by. ‘Who’s the blonde feller?’ she asked, pointing. ‘That one.’

  ‘Simon Pearce, he’s a doctor at St Pancreas.’ Nikko gave her a wicked grin. ‘He’s got no money, no connections, love. Simon’s a country boy from east of Perth somewhere. Lives on the smell of an oily rag, so I’ve been told.’

  ‘You know I’m not interested in either of those angles,’ Jessica flashed back, the smile not quite reaching her eyes. If he’d been anyone other than a long-time friend, she’d have told him off good and proper.

  ‘I know,’ Nikko, unrepentant, observed, then advised, ‘and you don’t want to tell every feller about all that lovely money you have either. Agreed?’

  Twenty-seven-year-old Jessica sighed, and grudgingly nodded. Sometimes her inheritance was the proverbial pain in the arse instead of an asset. On his death, James Ahearne, one of Perth’s top property developers, had equally bequeathed his two children, her and her sister, Alison, small fortunes. So much that, with the money judiciously invested by the family’s financial adviser, she didn’t have to work to earn a living, but she had done law and worked because she wanted to prove that she could, even if she didn’t have to.

  Jessica’s level of interest in the young doctor didn’t diminish. She kept her gaze fixed on the top of his head, noting how the fine fair hair bounced as he determinedly pushed towards the bar.

  ‘Medically, I’ve heard he’s very bright. A born surgeon. Those who know say he’ll go a long way,’ Nikko added as he moved on.

  The red-headed man, decidedly bleary-eyed, plucked at the sleeve of her jacket. He held something up in his hand. ‘Want a joint, Jess? Good stuff. The best.’

  Jessica shook her head and removed his hand from her arm. Jerk. How could she get rid of him? She did a half turn away and almost crashed into Simon’s chest.

&nb
sp; ‘I’m Simon,’ he introduced himself. ‘Come on, there’s a balcony over there, we can enjoy our drinks in peace.’

  ‘Jessica Ahearne,’ she responded as she took the glass of wine. Secretly pleased to be rescued from the jerk, Jessica’s eyebrows rose at his invitation. She gave a feigned shiver. ‘It’s below zero out there. I’ll probably get flu or pneumonia.’

  Simon smiled confidently; she was still wearing her overcoat, so he doubted she’d freeze. ‘Don’t worry about that. I’m a doctor. If you get sick, I can make you better.’

  Jessica laughed, and the thought flashed through her mind that playing doctor with Simon might be fun. Whoa! That was one hell of an errant thought, but she was honest enough to admit that he was the first man she’d felt any attraction towards since she had broken up with Greg La Salle.

  They sipped their drinks on the balcony and talked about home, Australia, and their backgrounds. She: about her recent broken engagement to Greg La Salle, an Adelaide stockbroker. He: about his medical career. By midnight, as they heard Big Ben ring in the new year and marvelled as flakes of snow began to fall—for him his first experience of snow—Simon realised an amazing truth. He had, in the ridiculous space of less than an hour, fallen in love, deeply and irrevocably, with Jessica Ahearne, barrister, who’d come to England to mend her supposedly broken heart and have a month’s holiday before she started her new job at a prestigious law firm in Perth.

  On their third date they’d made love in her five-star hotel, and then she’d flown off to Edinburgh for a week to spend time with distant relatives. That had been the loneliest week of Simon’s life. When he met her at Heathrow, his first inclination was to ask her on bended knee to marry him, but he managed to compose himself and contain his emotions. Instead, he asked her to stay in London and move in with him. She said yes. For two weeks they hunted around London for a suitable flat, finally finding a one-bedroom in Islington, the rent outrageously overpriced, and Jessica wrote to the Perth firm advising them she wouldn’t be taking up the position offered. Then she found a job with a south London law firm.

  Six months later they’d married and, when Simon’s residency ended, they returned to Perth where, within six years, he was well on his way to establishing himself as a leading general surgeon in his own private practice.

  He shook himself out of his reverie on how their life together had begun. Dear Jess, he had to get her well again, and soon.

  Climbing out of oblivion was like inching upwards from a dark, smooth-sided pit towards a pinpoint of light. Her body felt leaden, her breathing shallow, her brain unable to keep a single thought for more than a second or two. It all kept sliding away. She forced her lids to open a fraction—hard work in itself because they, too, felt weighted down—and through slitted vision checked her surroundings.

  Where was she? Nothing looked familiar. Stark white walls and ceiling, a pastel-coloured, less-than-interesting framed print on the wall. Vertical blinds across a window with bars. Bars! She tried to move her hands and couldn’t, something held them down. Struggling against the confinement, puzzled by it, she opened her eyes wider as she recognised a TV monitor high on the wall.

  What the…! What is this place?

  Almost against her will, Jessica’s eyelids began to droop again and close. So tired, so damned tired. Can’t think, can’t feel. A flicker of a smile made her lips twitch. Damian. Remembrance. A tear slid from the corner of her left eye. Don’t want to think. She willingly embraced the darkness again.

  Alison Marcelle, flanked by her husband, Keith, stared in disbelief at her brother-in-law, while David Greiner and Max Lowe, Jessica’s business partners, tried to look inconspicuous in the living room of the Pearce’s mansion on the main canal at Mandurah.

  ‘You’re not serious, Simon. I can’t believe you’re planning to take Jess away. It doesn’t make sense,’ Alison ground out, trying to hold on to her renowned temper which matched her flame-red hair.

  Simon’s gaze flashed to Jessica’s sister, who was fashionably attired in a patterned pants suit. She was holding her age of forty-three well, despite the few extra kilos she carried. He’d known that Alison would take some convincing. Since Jessica’s hospitalisation, her sister had reverted to the proverbial mother hen protecting her chick. She visited the sanatorium regularly, tried to ferret out information on Jessica’s mental state, asked questions on whether her illness was related to the complaint their grandfather had suffered from, schizophrenia, and generally made a low-level nuisance of herself. All in the name of caring for her younger sister. The affection between them he didn’t doubt, but her nuisance value was a trial—to all.

  An ongoing worry for him was that Nikko hadn’t ruled out the possibility of Jessica or even Alison developing their grandfather’s complaint at some future time. Schizophrenia was a mental ailment that refused predetermination and, even with all the medical research being done, there remained too many unknowns about the mental disease. He’d been told to adopt a wait-and-see attitude, which didn’t satisfy him, but he’d move heaven and earth to make his wife whole again and, if it meant putting his project on hold, then that’s what he would do.

  ‘Actually, it does make sense.’ Simon remained calm, the direct opposite of Alison. ‘Jessica’s been in the sanatorium for almost three months. Nikko’s pleased with her progress, as you well know, and she’s almost ready to come home.’ He paused to look at various pieces of furniture his wife had chosen for the room. ‘I don’t think it’s a healthy move for her to come back here.’

  ‘So buy another house, in another suburb,’ Alison shot back at him. ‘Let her decorate it herself—that would help, wouldn’t it? Keep her occupied.’ Her gaze followed Simon’s, noting the lack of photos. Once there had been a multitude of photos of little Damian sprinkled throughout the house. Photos taken at his christening, crawling, cutting his first tooth, walking, kicking a ball. She remembered how she used to tease her sister that it must take forever to dust the place.

  ‘Yes, but she’d still be in Perth. Close enough to go to the cemetery,’ Simon replied. ‘That’s one thing Nikko learned in his therapy sessions with her. Jessica was visiting the cemetery every day. She’d sit by Damian’s grave for hours, crying, wishing she were dead so she could be with him.’ His gaze turned to Max. ‘The day you found her in the office. She could have been exhibiting suicidal tendencies, couldn’t she?’ He watched Max nod in agreement.

  ‘Shit,’ Keith Marcelle uttered, half under his breath. The large man shook his head. ‘We didn’t know. Al tried to keep tabs on her, but with running the kids to and from school and stuff, she couldn’t be with her all day every day.’

  ‘Of course not,’ David agreed gruffly and turned towards Simon. ‘You’re sure she’s okay to be released?’

  ‘Nikko thinks so. Jessica’s still fragile, emotionally. She’ll be taking a mild anti-depressant for some months until she’s normal again, and I’ll monitor the dose.’ He realised then that today was the first time they’d all been in the one room at the same time, apart from Damian’s funeral. He had invited them to advise them of his plans, knowing each would be affected by his decision.

  ‘But wanting to take her thousands of kilometres away from what she’s used to. Friends, relatives. I can’t see how that will do her any good. Isn’t that cutting her adrift without a life preserver?’ Alison persisted, hands on hips in usual battle stance. She loved her younger sister, felt for the pain she had been going through and she wasn’t going to allow Simon to waltz her off to some god-forsaken island for six months. Not without a stand anyway.

  Simon held on to his patience. ‘Nikko, Jessica and I have discussed it. She agrees that a complete change will do her good.’

  ‘Take her on a cruise, a trip overseas, something like that,’ Alison, the only person disagreeing with Simon, suggested.

  ‘No.’ His tone brooked no argument. ‘I talked about that to Nikko. He feels that it’s important for Jessica to get back to a normal envi
ronment, not play the tourist.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Anyway, the deal’s done. I applied for the position as resident surgeon at the Norfolk Island hospital and they accepted me. They wanted a two-year contract but, when I said no more than six months, they surprised me by agreeing.’ He didn’t add that the hospital board was overjoyed to get the services of a surgeon of his calibre. ‘We leave in a week’s time.’

  ‘Norfolk Island!’ Alison laughed mockingly. ‘Where’s that? Some god-awful speck in the Pacific Ocean. A bloody tax haven for people and companies who want to minimise their tax obligations. The place’ll probably bore the pants off Jessica in a month. And you,’ she pointed a finger at Simon, ‘what challenge is there for a surgeon with your skills in such a place?’

  ‘Oh, it won’t be too bad,’ Simon stated. ‘It’s a thirty-bed hospital with a maternity and geriatrics ward and has an overall forty-plus staff. As well, there’ll be visiting specialists to discuss medical matters with.’ His eyebrows lifted confidently, then slowly settled. ‘I doubt I’ll get too rusty in just six months. And I’ll have the opportunity to finetune the plans for my building project, the geriatrics complex.’

  ‘But leaving before Christmas! We’ve always shared that time together. Christmas is for families,’ Alison said. She grimaced noticeably at the pleading note in her voice but appeared unable to control it.

  ‘My contract at the hospital starts on the fifteenth of December. I had no say in that and I’m honour-bound to be there by then.’

  ‘You ever been there, Alison?’ Max Lowe asked. ‘To Norfolk?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she scoffed, ‘there’s more interesting places to holiday, you know.’

  ‘It’s quite lovely,’ Max assured her. ‘Very scenic, peaceful. Jessica could paint, which would be beneficial for her, wouldn’t it?’ He looked directly at Alison. ‘It’s not really a tax-free environment there, either. Residents and holiday-makers pay considerable indirect taxes. That’s how the island’s government raises their ten million dollars annual budget without financial assistance from the federal government.’