Whispers Through the Pines

by Lynne Wilding

  ‘Good,’ her smile was trusting. ‘This is the first time you’ve had to stitch me up, isn’t it?’

  He prefaced his words with a mild grunt. ‘And I hope it’s the last.’

  Simon stood back to allow Sister Holbrook to clean the wound. Most of the bleeding had stopped, but the diagonal gash, almost six centimetres long, was deeper than he liked, which made him study the wound to make sure there was no tendon damage. There wasn’t. Five to six sutures, nylon 5.0, would do the job, he decided.

  Jessica turned her head away as Simon, as gently as he could, began to work on the wound. By chance her gaze locked with the matron, who was standing by the door, watching. She gritted her teeth to stop showing a reaction to the pain. She wouldn’t give Sue Levinski the satisfaction of letting her see how much it hurt—which it did, like the devil! Didn’t the woman have any other work to do? she wondered. Or did she get a kick out of seeing people in pain? Yes, she answered the question herself, she probably did.

  ‘Doctor, how about a cup of tea for Mrs Pearce?’ Sue asked.

  Simon nodded without looking up from his task. ‘Good idea.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Jessica responded. Pettishly she thought that she would rather die of thirst before allowing the matron to administer any small kindness to her. She was blessed with a long memory, and Sue Levinski’s words and attitude at the party were permanently engraved in her brain.

  The matron shrugged and, after a moment or two, walked away, a thoughtful expression on her face. Simon’s wife was no fool. She had seen through her attempt to smooth over the discord between them. She recalled what Simon had said about her, that she’d been a very capable barrister in Perth. Sharp, intuitive, used to winning. Mmmm. She was going to have to find a way to make Jessica believe that the party scene had been a behavioural aberration and that Sue Levinski, Matron of Norfolk Island Hospital, was one of the good guys. If she could do that, get Jessica Pearce on side, it would be easier to influence Simon into helping her get a better position in a hospital off the island.

  Jessica was moved by Nan Duncan’s kindness. The day after her accident, Nan came round to visit, bearing a container of chicken soup and a freshly baked cake, together with an offer to take care of the housework until she was one hundred per cent mobile again. Jessica sensed that her friend felt guilty because the accident had occurred in her kitchen; that she felt somehow responsible. Which she wasn’t. If anyone or anything had caused Jessica’s wound, it had been the apparition at the window and her reaction to it.

  Jessica accepted the cake and the soup, but said she could manage the housework, even the cooking, with one good hand and Simon’s help—not that she was overly confident that she’d get much assistance from him. He was a domestic disaster.

  She showed Nan what she was working on, the scene near Anson Bay, which featured a fallen tree, with its gnarled, uprooted trunk in the foreground, and a sprinkling of Norfolk pines in the background.

  ‘You’re quite talented, Jessica,’ Nan complimented, after studying the almost finished painting for several minutes. ‘Nice colours, good texture, interesting composition.’ She looked at the two completed works which leant unframed against the wall. ‘I know someone who can frame those for you.’

  ‘I’ll wait till I get a couple more done, that makes the job more worthwhile for the framer,’ Jessica said, a rush of pleasure at Nan’s praise lifting her spirits.

  ‘How’s the hand?’

  ‘Simon’s left me some painkillers, and I’ve just taken one. It’s not too bad, just slows me down. I keep forgetting and start to do things, but then the bandage and the pain reminds me that I can’t.’

  ‘I’m sure Simon wants you to take it easy for a few days,’ Nan scolded, then abruptly changed the subject. ‘If you do fifteen paintings or so, I know someone who, I think, would put on an exhibition. A certain restaurant has a special room for exhibitions. Pottery, ceramics, paintings, handcrafted jewellery pieces. We’ve a small but active cottage industry and a variety of artists live on the island.’ Nan’s grey eyes appraised Jessica’s work again. ‘Maybe we could do a showing together.’

  Jessica’s eyebrows rose. ‘Really!’ She hadn’t thought of exhibiting, hadn’t thought she was good enough for that, but if Nan believed she was, then maybe she would. ‘I’ll probably take the six months we’ll be here to do twenty or so paintings. Providing I find suitable subjects.’

  ‘Oh, there’s plenty of stuff on the island to paint. Emily Bay. The old buildings down at Kingston. The view from Mt Pitt. Hundreds of subjects. Marcus can take you to some interesting off-the-beaten-track places on that bike of his, too, if you’ve a mind to.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to put him out.’

  ‘Nonsense. He’d enjoy it. He loves to show the island off, as if it’s his own personal preserve,’ Nan assured her. ‘Do you do portraits?’

  ‘I’ve never tried portraits.’ The statement wasn’t quite true. She had done a beautiful portrait of Damian when he’d been eleven months old, and she had an old, as yet unfinished portrait of Simon. Both were in storage back in Western Australia.

  Nan nodded. ‘Marcus reckoned you should try to sketch the face you saw at my window. If it doesn’t upset you too much. He thought it might be good therapy to get it out of your system.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’ Jessica’s chin firmed. Could she? Should she? She didn’t want to stir up those strange sensations again. That’s silly, she decided. There was absolutely nothing wrong with her, and there was only one way to prove it. ‘Maybe I will.’

  ‘Good, I’d be interested to see it if you do.’

  Nan stayed for a cup of tea, which they had on the stone-flagged patio just outside the back door. Then she was off into Burnt Pine to deliver some of her pottery to two stores.

  Returning to the patio, Jessica sat with the sketch pad in her lap, the pencil poised half a centimetre off the paper. An odd nervousness pervaded her. Should she…? An expression of resolution firmed her features. Yes. She closed her eyes and tried to picture the image she had seen yesterday. That wasn’t difficult to do, it had become imbedded in her mind’s eye with amazing clarity. She began to draw.

  An hour later she had a reasonable picture of a woman’s face. Was this what Maddie Lynch looked like? she wondered as she stared at the sketch. Maybe someone had a picture of the old woman who’d lived in the cave, but then Nan believed it was only a story, that Maddie Lynch never really existed. If so, whose image had she seen?

  She tore the work off the pad, rolled it up and put an elastic band around it. A curious lethargy began to invade her mind and body. The Panadol Forte kicking in, she supposed. She gave a wide, tired yawn. It had taken an hour’s concentration to get the features of the woman the way she remembered, and her sore hand was beginning to throb. Possibly, she wasn’t as strong as she thought herself to be. She went inside and, after placing the sketch near the two completed paintings, headed for the bedroom.

  Her head was spinning by the time she reached the bed. Maybe the tablets were too strong. She wouldn’t take any more until she checked with Simon. She threw back the covers, stretched out and immediately fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  Simon Pearce made his way to the car the hospital had provided for him, noting as he walked, the beauty of a cloudless sunset over the western side of the island. It had been a hell of a day. Today Murphy’s Law had prevailed in the twenty-eight bed hospital and everything that could go wrong had done so. Two members of the staff had quit on the spot. Mr Smith’s sutures had split, and an infection had been located in the wound, which had required an extensive mop-up and new sutures. There had been an accident in Taylors Road, and two tourists had been admitted for treatment and observation. Thank goodness for Sue’s efficiency. Somehow, and he believed there was an art to it, she’d made the various dramas seem commonplace, which made his work easier to get through. Then, to cap the day off, there’d been a meeting of the hospital’s board of directo
rs. He had reported on his first month in the job and all of them had let him know that they were pleased with his work. But the meeting, as meetings often did, had meandered on and had only just finished.

  Jessica, who’d had her stitches out two days ago, wouldn’t be pleased with him coming home this late, but some situations in hospital life were beyond his control and he knew that as a doctor’s wife, she’d understand, even if she grumbled a little about it.

  He opened the car door and threw his case onto the passenger’s seat. His jacket followed and lay loosely on top of his medical bag. As he sat in the driver’s seat, he loosened his tie and undid his shirt’s top button. He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, trying to rid himself of the day’s stresses. Then, before he started the car, he did a stretching exercise to get the kinks out of his body. A smile creased his even features as he thought of the hot meal Jessica would have ready for him when he arrived home. He was so hungry he’d eat anything she put before him and love it.

  It was dark by the time he eased the car into the carport attached to the side of Cassell’s Cottage. He sat for a moment, looking at the side of the cottage, a frown imbedding vertical lines between his eyebrows. Strange, not a single light was on. Maybe Jess had gone to bed early. He knew she wasn’t out, because her car was parked in front of his.

  On closing the front door Simon stood still, listening to the sounds of the house. Silence and then the occasional creak of timber contracting after the heat of the day, noises that always reminded him of his childhood back on the farm near York, greeted him. He reached for the light switch and flicked it on. For half a minute, as he browsed through the mail on the occasional table, he didn’t see the person huddled in a corner of the lounge. Being also blessed with a keen sense of smell, he registered disappointment when he detected no residual mouthwatering aromas wafting in from the kitchen. But…he could smell something.

  His nostrils dilated as he breathed in deeply. Alcohol! Then he saw her.

  ‘Jess.’

  She didn’t react, didn’t appear to have heard him. The way she lay, in the classical foetal position, something he noted as he crossed the floor and sat beside her, concerned him. The room reeked of liquor. He saw an empty glass and the bottle of Napoleon Brandy he had bought last week from the liquor bond store. It was half empty.

  Jesus, what was going on? His gaze narrowed as he saw her flushed cheeks, the mussed-up hair, her features devoid of make-up. Damn it, was she having some kind of relapse? Worried, he put his index finger against her carotid artery and felt the pulse beating strongly. He shook her by the shoulder. No reaction.

  ‘Jessica.’ This time his voice was louder, a hint of impatience in it.

  She stirred momentarily, opened one bleary eye, sighed, then closed it again.

  Simon rubbed his chin in distraction, at a loss to understand her behaviour. Jessica didn’t drink. Well, she might have a social drink, no more than two to three glasses during the course of a night out, but that was all. She didn’t, had never got stuck into the grog and downed half a bottle of brandy. No wonder she was almost comatose: the brandy combined with the residue of Valium he’d put her on would be sufficient to put many people to sleep. God, didn’t she realise the two didn’t mix! But why? He scratched the hair around his temple. Why?

  ‘Jessica, can you hear me?’

  She opened her eyes again, tried to speak, but all that came out was an incoherent mumble.

  He dragged her into an upright position, placing her legs on the floor, her hands in her lap. Her head lolled to one side like a rag doll. Something serious must have happened to cause this type of behaviour, he told himself, but for the life of him, he couldn’t work out what it was. Suddenly her head straightened and her eyes snapped open.

  ‘Simon. Oh, Simon,’ she slurred at him, and then tears began to run down her cheeks.

  ‘What is it, Jess? Tell me?’ He took her hand in his, encouraging her to go on.

  ‘Oh, s’awful. Can’t believe…’ Her eyelids drooped, closed, opened again. It took her a while to get the words out. ‘Don’ understan’.’

  ‘What don’t you understand, love?’ She didn’t answer. He made an exasperated sound. It was worse than trying to talk to a small child. She had imbibed so much that her eyes couldn’t focus and her brain simply refused to function. Bed was the only answer. Though puzzled by what she appeared to have done, he resigned himself to having to wait until she had slept off the effects of the alcohol.

  It was no easy matter lifting Jessica as a dead weight but, with a few curses and several grunts, he managed to get her onto the bed. He slipped her shoes off before covering her with the doona. For a while he stood at the foot of the bed studying her and, as he did, a sense of deja vu washed over him. He recalled standing this same way the night she’d been admitted to the sanatorium. She looked different now, though. Peaceful and almost angelic, with her chestnut hair spilling over the pillowcase, her features in repose.

  He shook his head, just once, then turned off the light and wandered into the kitchen to get something to eat.

  A fried egg toasted sandwich with melted cheese, washed down with a cup of coffee, was the best Simon could come up with. He grinned to himself as he thought of what Jess would say about such a choice of food, but so what? As he sat at the kitchen table and munched the plain fare, he decided that whatever had come over Jess—most likely memories of Damian and then a severe bout of depression, which had brought on the urge to drink—had happened before she’d started to prepare the evening meal. That meant she had been drinking for several hours; it would take that long for her, as an amateur, to down the contents of half a bottle of brandy.

  He made a second cup of coffee, raided the fridge again, found a piece of apple pie to go with the coffee and, still mentally ruminating over what had triggered Jess’s regression, wandered out onto the verandah. He’d thought her happy, that she had found a reasonable level of contentment, mostly brought about by painting and forming a friendship with Nan Duncan. He’d hoped, prayed that the bad times were behind them, but…It appeared that there would be periods where she stumbled and went back.

  It was just as well that he, or rather they, had decided not to have another child. He sighed and there was no small amount of frustration in the sound. A tiny part of him, though he tried not to be disloyal, was coming to the opinion that she might never be as she had once been. Even the optimistic Nikko had implied as much, without putting the possibility into words. He ran a hand across his eyes and tried to inject into his psyche a glimmer of hope that eventually Jess would be okay. The six-months’ period here on Norfolk had to work, it had to! He’d only pushed the idea of coming to this place because, first of all, it would appear to all and sundry that he was trying to do the right thing by Jess, and he’d reasoned that it would be plenty of time to return Jessica to normality. But after today, he wasn’t sure…of anything.

  And sometimes it was a pain, the waiting. He really wanted to get back to Perth and get on with his project, but now he was stuck here until his time was up, and he could only hope that it would be enough time…for her.

  As he stood in the dark looking out the window at a total blackness, he had an inspired thought. What if Jess’s lapse had something to do with her painting? Curious, he moved to the doorway and turned the light on. He stared at the easel expecting to see the completed painting of the Anson Bay scene.

  Good God, what had Jessica done?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Shock made Simon spill his coffee on the timber floor but, unmindful of the mess made, he walked up to the easel, his eyes screwed into a squint, and unable to believe what he was looking at. His free hand came up to his shirt pocket to take out his glasses. He put them on to examine Jessica’s painting.

  The Anson Bay painting had been desecrated.

  Across the serene scene with its muted greens and pastel shades, had been sketched in black and grey paint—bold scrawling strokes scraped so hard that
in one or two places the paper had been torn—were the faces of four men.

  Simon looked at it until his eyes ached. What on earth had come over Jessica?

  Somehow she’d overlaid the features of the men onto the watercolour and, in the doing, had ruined a lovely work, possibly her best one to date. He tried to make sense of what she’d done and couldn’t.

  The harsh strokes, the anger implied in the lines, the twisted, leering expressions on three of the four faces were beyond his comprehension. He made himself study each face. All had rough features and longish, mostly unkempt hair. Not the typical tourists one saw on Norfolk Island! Each face, with its hardened expression, looked to have been plucked from another time. And, interestingly, as the first sketch of the most dominant male, had been painted in with great detail, from his scruffy hairstyle to the vertical scar on his left cheek, the baleful expression in his eyes and the cruel twisting mouth. Also showing were the neck and part of the shoulders, garbed in a type of uniform, a soldier’s uniform. The other three faces comprised little more than broad, sweeping outlines which undoubtedly were intended to be completed sometime in the future.

  Shaking his head, completely puzzled and alarmed by what he saw, he paused before he followed through with the thought: it looked like the work of a mad woman!

  Was this—what she’d done to the painting—the reason Jessica had opened the bottle of brandy? But…what had possessed her to ruin the painting by drawing the pictures of four men over its surface in the first place?

  Only his wife could answer that, and he knew he’d get little rest until he understood what had driven her to such uncharacteristic behaviour.

  She came in through the bedroom window. She paused for maybe half a minute by Jessica’s bed, studying her. The lass had worked herself into a frenzy this afternoon, and the brandy had been a necessary release. Thoughts of the fine alcohol she had watched her consume until she had rendered herself senseless made her moisten her lips with her tongue. She had once been rather partial to a drop of the good stuff herself, and it was one thing she sorely missed, since…