Whispers Through the Pines

by Lynne Wilding

  ‘Oops!’ Sue put her hand over her mouth. She looked at Simon. ‘Have I spoken out of line?’

  From somewhere deep inside her, Jessica, renowned for her quick thinking in court, found the presence of mind to respond sarcastically with, ‘No, you’ve just saved us the trouble of placing an ad in The Norfolk Islander, telling everyone about my breakdown and how I’m coping. No doubt the word will now spread throughout the island’s residents like wildfire. Thanks. You’ve saved us the advertising cost.’ Almost unable to control the shaking, she turned away. She picked up Simon’s half-finished plate, made her way to the back door and into the kitchen, her intention being to put as much distance as she could between that woman and herself.

  On the other side of the timber deck, Marcus, while involved in conversation with Sam Oliver, who worked at the island’s tourist bureau, observed the scene between the Pearces and Sue Levinski. He hadn’t heard what had been said, but it was obvious from Simon’s furious expression and Jessica’s body language—she was holding herself as stiff as a post—that somehow Sue had overstepped the bounds of politeness. His head gave an imperceptible nod, understanding completely. The matron was good at creating a scene when she’d had a bit too much to drink. She had a reputation around the island for doing it, which was Sue’s only real flaw. At least the only one he’d noted in the time he’d known her. Alcohol seemed to loosen her tongue and her inhibitions and she would just let it all pour out, regardless of who got offended in the process.

  He shuffled and moved position so that he could see Jessica through the kitchen window. She was talking to Nan and Derek Owens, who managed the Liquor Bond in Taylors Road. Analytical animal that he was, he could tell that Jessica was having trouble concentrating on the conversation. There was an edginess about her now, and she kept clenching and unclenching her hands as if something was agitating her. An interesting subject, Jessica Pearce, the thought crossed his mind, again.

  It wasn’t until all the guests had left and he and Nan were doing a tidy-up before bed that Marcus learnt what Sue had said that had caused such an upset.

  ‘That Levinski woman, I swear, if she wasn’t such a good nurse, I’d complain to the hospital board about her,’ Nan grumbled as she wiped the sink down. ‘You know that voice of hers, how piercing it can be when she wants it to. Well, she let it be known that Jessica had been ill, said she’d been a nutcase. Can you imagine that? You know, Julie Withington will enjoy relating that juicy tidbit to everyone she meets at the supermarket and when she attends church tomorrow. I can just hear the conversation: “The new head of the hospital, did you know his wife was a mental case?” Oh, Julie will have a field day.’

  Marcus’ curiosity rose several notches, despite his determination not to become embroiled in island gossip. There were benefits to only coming home for short periods: the gossip and most of the island’s politics didn’t interest him over much. ‘Nutcase. What do you mean?’

  Nan put the tea towel down and undid the apron around her still slim waist. Momentarily lapsing into native Norfolker, she told Marcus, ‘Haet sohri faret, claa pua gehl uni jes lors de beibi. It’s a shame. Jessica didn’t say much, but I saw how upset she got. Naturally, she would. The trauma made her quite ill; that’s why Simon brought her here, to get away from the memories.’

  Marcus stroked the stubble on his chin thoughtfully as he translated Nan’s Norfolker. The Pearces had lost a child and Jessica had, most likely, suffered some kind of breakdown. It happened. Now it made sense to him why a doctor of Simon’s standing would bury himself in such a quiet place.

  ‘I see. Well, we’ll just have to help her start afresh, won’t we?’ Marcus put the suggestion to his sister as she masked a wide yawn.

  ‘Yes, love, we will.’ Nan smiled up at him. ‘I’m bushed. Let’s talk about it in the morning.’

  Something was pounding inside her head. Or was there a metal band around her cranium with some evil person tightening it with a vice? She begged the pain to go away, but it didn’t. Moaning, she flopped onto her stomach and buried her head under the pillow. She was dying, she had to be. No one could feel this bad and live for very long. There was an alien feeling in her stomach, too, a queasiness. A bubble of bile rose up in her throat and she gagged. Shit, it was more than queasiness.

  Holding her forehead, Sue Levinski stumbled out of bed and moved as fast as a leaden sluggishness in her limbs would allow her to the bathroom. Five minutes later, the contents of her stomach emptied into the toilet bowl, she caught her breath and waited for the dizziness to recede. Holding onto the vanity basin to steady herself helped as she tried to focus on her reflection in the mirror.

  She blinked several times before she could see herself clearly. Frown marks marred the usual smoothness of her forehead. Her dark eyes had pale blue circles under them and her ink-black hair, of which she was excessively proud, clung limply to the sides of her head like proverbial rats’ tails. Her skin—by this time of the year she normally sported a healthy tan—had an uncharacteristic sallowness.

  She looked bloody awful, which was exactly how she felt.

  How much had she had to drink last night? Her narrow shoulders shrugged with uncertainty, which made the pain in her head worse. She couldn’t remember. Didn’t want to. But she could remember a couple of things, and one was that she was in trouble, which made her feel decidedly uneasy.

  She prided herself on her diplomacy, her capacity to get on with all kinds of people. Sue Levinski had learnt early in life, coming up the hard way from a tough environment in the back streets of suburban Newtown in Sydney, that being pleasant most of the time got her further than being sour and nasty. Through her school years she’d made it a point to get on every teacher’s good side, even if she didn’t excel at the particular subject the teacher taught. She never failed a subject, she believed, because she made them think that Sue Levinski was a nice person, an honest-to-goodness trier and so the teachers would reward her accordingly, with a passing grade at the very least. Through her career and swift rise up the nursing ranks to assistant matron at a Liverpool nursing home, at the youngish age of twenty-eight, and now matron of the Norfolk Island Hospital, being nice, being pleasant as well as intuitive with people had partly been the key to her success.

  She certainly hadn’t learnt what she’d discovered about how to get on, at her mother’s knee.

  From the age of eight Sue had learnt to stay well away from her mother’s knee, especially when Joan Levinski, who’d become an alcoholic by the age of thirty-five, was on a drinking spree. Her father, Yani’s mood swings and fondness for tranquillisers—to control the back pain he had from a construction site fall, so he said—put him in the category of borderline manic depressive. And her older brother, Rick…well, a pot smoker from the age of fourteen, he hadn’t been much of a role model either. By the time he had reached twenty, Rick was exhibiting the same weaknesses inherent in their parents.

  Sue had escaped home and the streets of Newtown as soon as she could, living at the nursing home near RPA while she trained as a nurse. Her youthful dream had been to marry a doctor; that’s what half the nurses in her year wanted to do, for they believed that would ensure them a comfortable, financially independent lifestyle. She’d gone close a couple of times in that respect, but marital success had eluded her, so she’d concentrated on building her career. Being matron of Norfolk hospital wasn’t where she intended to stay for the rest of her life. Oh, no, Norfolk was only a stepping stone to better things, of that she was sure.

  As matron of the hospital, she knew she was good at her job. She made the small hospital run like a well-oiled machine, and kept her finger on the pulse and the mood of both the patients and the staff, with whom she had a good working relationship. If she had differences with a particular staff member, sometimes a personality clash, or if, the person was just plain difficult, then she ensured that he or she didn’t stay in the job for long.

  She considered that an essential part of knowing how
to run a tight ship. At the hospital each staff member was a part of a team and they all had to get along. Anyone who didn’t had to go. In the six years she’d been running the hospital, she had only had to dispose of three staff members and had done it with such skill that they weren’t aware she was the one who had manipulated them out of their jobs.

  Sue stared at her mirror image. So how in hell had she managed to be so stupid last night? Yes, stupid, that was the only word for it. Now Dr Simon Pearce, her boss, was angry with her. Pissed off because of what she’d said to his wife. God, what made her mouth run off like that? As if it had a mind of its own.

  She put the plug in the basin outlet and turned the cold water tap on. When the basin was half full, she splashed the water over her face, several times, shuddering as the cold permeated the three layers of her skin, through to her brain. She stifled the moan of pain as the headache erupted again. Serves you right, you stupid bitch! Again, and almost as masochistic punishment, she shook her head at her foolishness.

  Normally she was diplomacy personified; as matron of the only sizeable medical facility on the island she had to be. But she was honest enough with herself to know that she had an inherited character flaw—several, in fact. When she drank, really drank, everything loosened up, including her tongue, and out came whatever popped into her head. She was also thought to be something of a control freak, and her deep-seated fear was that she may have reached her peak of achievement at Norfolk. No. Damn it, she had more to achieve…and she would.

  Her thoughts returned to her boss. Simon would tear strips off her today. She closed her eyes, and Jessica’s face danced before her closed lids. A cynical half-smile curved her thin lips. Jessica Pearce hadn’t been quick or smart enough to hide the pain when she’d accused her of being nutty. The woman was mentally fragile, holding on to her self-control by a thread. That was obvious to anyone capable of half-decent clinical observation.

  Sue reached into the shower stall and turned the tap on. If she were smart, she’d call in sick which, technically she was, but that would only delay the inevitable with Simon. Best to get it over and done with. As she stepped under the water, she lifted her face towards the spurting shower rose.

  She had to hope that she hadn’t permanently undermined her relationship with Simon. They’d got off to a good start, until now. Somehow she had to get back into his good graces. That was imperative for hospital stability and for herself. Simon had influence, he knew people in the medical field who could advance her career, and she’d be damned if she’d let the convenience of that connection slip through her fingers. She was ready to move off the island to bigger things.

  Spreading shampoo over her black locks, she soaped it in, the water in a small way helping to ease her hangover. No more alcohol for her, she promised, forgetting that she had made similar promises in the past to herself and had not been able to keep them.

  Norfolk’s hot spell continued. The day after the party, the heat didn’t deter Jessica, in shorts and top and an old pair of joggers, from continuing her attack on the weeds in the front garden. She left it until late in the afternoon though, when there was enough shade to protect her fair skin from the sun.

  For most of the day, her anger towards Simon had simmered. They had argued as he’d driven them home. Well, to be honest, the row was mostly of her making. She had accused him of betraying a trust in telling the matron about her illness. He had argued back that he’d done so expecting Levinski to keep the information confidential. He’d apologised. She hadn’t forgiven him. They had undressed and gone to bed with her turning her back on him and eventually slipping into a numbing sleep. When she’d woken, Simon had already left for the hospital. This was not an unfamiliar happening. For many months, even when Damian had been alive, there had been a growing, underlying coolness between them, but she didn’t want to think about that. Their marriage was strong, and they were just going through a bad patch as many marriages did. Her professional work had taught her that. So stop over-accentuating things, the little things. God, don’t you have enough worries without trying to dredge up more problems?

  Jessica dug the hand spade into a clump of grass with vigour, wriggling the handle around to loosen the roots, before she pulled it out and dumped it with a pile of other alien flora from the garden bed. She remembered that was how her mother had taught her to do it years ago. Funny, the things that surfaced in one’s memory. With the physical activity she’d been engaged in for the last hour, much of her annoyance with Simon had dissipated. It was hard to remain angry with him for long. It always had been. Deep down she knew he was a good man who wouldn’t deliberately cause her pain and, if he’d been guilty of anything, it had been a naive belief that the matron would respect his disclosure as being for her ears only.

  Jessica leant back on her haunches to inspect what she’d done. Consistent work over the last week had begun to show results. She made the comparison that sometimes, in the legal profession, achievements were not so clear-cut. There were frustrations, disappointments and, even when one won, often the victory was an empty one.

  She had pruned and trimmed most of the annuals, weeded one of the garden beds edging the brick-paved path to the front verandah and, if she finished the other garden bed today, the front yard would once again look as if someone cared for the place. Yes, she took in the plants and the clematis flowering profusely along the verandah’s railing and nodded to herself. There was satisfaction in actually being able to see the results of one’s labour.

  Jessica had also become aware of the therapeutic effect of physical work. It made her pleasantly tired, and doing it allowed her to focus on something other than the recent, unhappy past. It was still hard though, and she waged a constant battle to keep Damian out of her thoughts, her memories. Now…memories of him were all she had left!

  She tugged at a particularly stubborn weed, pulling until it came free of the soil. Gotcha! She grinned triumphantly as she tossed it onto the pile. She stood up and stretched, her tank top lifting to expose a midriff devoid of excess fat. As she straightened her spine, the muscles tightened and then slowly relaxed, but the stiffness remained. She did a limbering exercise for her legs and the calf muscles which had begun to ache. God, she was unfit! Before Damian’s death she had managed to fit in three sessions a week at the local gym. But since then…

  Catching her breath from her exertions, she took the time to look around her. Green pastures now cleared of trees and shrubs dipped down to the sea, and the land was dotted with grazing cattle. It was beautiful here. Serenity personified. Once she could have run down to the shoreline and back again and hardly raised a sweat. She threaded not-too-clean fingers through hair that was damp around the hairline and raked them through the chestnut locks. Not now, she admitted. She might have made it down the hill, but not back up. Definitely.

  Jessica walked across to the half-rusted wheelbarrow she’d found hidden at the bottom of the back yard. She began to fill it with weeds and tufts of grass. That done she pushed the barrow around to the side gate, then returned to survey her labours. She was nearly finished.

  Standing still, the afternoon sunshine dappling through the trees onto her, a sudden chillness penetrated her body. Goose bumps spread rapidly along her forearms, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. The next instant the breath caught in her throat and became uneven. Her pulse started to race, her heart pounded…Her body tensed.

  She was being watched.

  On the other side of the road, opposite the cottage where the bush was thick, Jessica sensed eyes upon her, curious, discerning eyes. But for the life of her she couldn’t say what had alerted her to being watched. Maybe the first clue had been the sudden stillness in the bush and the birds stopping their intermittent chirping. Or was it because the light breeze which had helped keep her cool as she’d worked, had dropped away.

  The stillness and her body’s reaction unnerved her. It was so peculiar to feel this way.

  You’re being r
idiculous, she chided herself. Who’d bother to spy on you? And to prove her foolishness she pivoted around to face the bushy glade. Anxious blue eyes darted along the perimeter of the forested area, straining to catch movement, colour, a branch twitching, anything to prove her senses were correct. Nothing. Yet the acute sensation of someone observing what she was doing persisted.

  So what? Ignore it, a voice in her head said. It’s probably kids, teenagers, trying to rattle you.

  The next instant a single gust of wind, so cold it made her shiver, whipped about her body. After which the stillness returned. Pervasive. Suffocating. And there was something else, an aroma she couldn’t identify. Something sweet-smelling, flowers of some kind, but—she glanced about the garden—apart from the climbing roses which had no perfume, no other scented plants in the garden were in bloom. How decidedly odd!

  Snatched memories from her legal career, from voyeurs to peeping Toms, to the more threatening—stalkers who stalked women—and rapists who’d got off, returned to haunt her. With difficulty she brought those rioting thoughts under control.

  Jessica ran her right hand across her forehead, noting that her fingers were trembling. Was she letting her imagination run wild? For God’s sake, she told herself again, there’s no one there. She peered at the mass of greenery once more, willing whoever it was to show themselves. No one did.

  Could she have sunstroke?

  Becoming thoroughly rattled, even though she could see no visible reason to be, she abandoned the remaining patch of unweeded garden. It took only a minute or two to gather her gardening tools and then she went inside, closing, then locking the front door behind her. For several minutes she leant against the cool timber, listening to the heavy thud of her heartbeat, and aware of the trembling in her legs as they threatened to buckle beneath her. What on earth was wrong with her?