River Run

by Alexander, Nicole

  ‘Hey, calm down.’

  On hands and knees, Lesley swept the floor with her palms. Finally, the bulky torch was found and she clicked the button, shining it first on the floor and then the bed.

  The patient smirked. ‘There’s a lamp under the washstand.’

  Lesley didn’t answer. Locating the kerosene lantern and matches, she lifted the glass flue and struck a match, her hands shaking. It took three attempts before the room filled with yellow light, so bad were her trembles.

  ‘Better?’ He sounded amused. ‘Can’t say I usually have that effect on women.’

  ‘They said you couldn’t speak.’ Lesley placed the lamp on the washstand, her heart thumping.

  ‘I couldn’t remember anything after the shooting,’ he admitted. ‘So I decided I would be better off keeping quiet for a while.’

  ‘I see.’ Lesley checked the contents of the washstand, and finding a thermometer, shook it out, before placing it under his tongue. The task calmed her and more importantly bought her some time before a more detailed response was required. ‘I can understand that. Sometimes the last thing a person needs is to be interrogated.’ She knew that from bitter experience. She had been told, however, that the man was still recuperating and most definitely couldn’t speak. ‘It’s now Tuesday night and the accident happened on Saturday.’

  ‘And?’ he said laconically.

  ‘Well, I’m wondering how long you’ve actually been conscious for and when you discovered you were able to speak?’

  She watched him, watching her. ‘You don’t really look like your sister.’ The thermometer rattled against his teeth. ‘In fact, you’re not like her at all, are you?’

  ‘Shush,’ she chastised, warning him to be quiet until she removed the thermometer. ‘No temperature. Are you in pain?’

  ‘My head and shoulder aches, but it’s not too bad. I’ve had worse.’

  In the hospice she met new people on a regular basis. Some needed the nuns’ care for months, others weeks only, but all their patients came to the hospice to die and in the time left before their passing, it was quite extraordinary how much of their lives they shared. Lesley had become adept at listening and skilled at giving comfort to those suffering not only from a terminal illness but the concerns of family and loneliness, and it masked the pain of her own misfortunes. She placed the thermometer on the washstand. But this man, he was different. He wasn’t dying, he certainly didn’t seem grateful for the care shown him and he was being deceitful. ‘How did you know my name?’

  ‘Pretending you’re asleep has its advantages.’

  The comment made Lesley uncomfortable. She looked out the window to the darkness beyond and shivered. The remark reminded her of something Marcus had told her on his return from the war. He had feigned unconsciousness in the hopes the torture would end. Immediately, Lesley’s heart began to race and she braced herself against the washstand. She’d steeled herself to not think about Marcus … at least, not the terrible things.

  ‘That young brother of yours shot me,’ the patient went on. ‘Aimed the rifle directly at me and pulled the trigger. If you were me, laid up as I am, you’d probably be a little cautious about the family of the person who’d deliberately shot you.’

  Lesley tried to push the image of a battered Marcus, his body smothered in leeches, from her mind. She’d not had one of these attacks for over twelve months. She had come so far with Sister Anna’s help. Lesley gritted her teeth. Had she been anywhere else she would have cried out. ‘My mother told me it was an accident. Have you been on morphine? You did tell me a moment ago that you couldn’t remember anything.’ She resumed her seat.

  ‘He did shoot me, the rest of your family are just covering up for him. Are you alright? You don’t look so good.’

  Lesley tried to visualise the large wooden cross hanging on the stone wall of the convent. ‘I see, and you’ve decided to place your confidence in me because?’ she asked. Lesley had forgotten what it meant to be wary of someone. Apart from dredging up unpleasant memories, which to be fair wasn’t his fault, the stranger was not only disconcerting, but also, what was the word? Manipulative. No, that wasn’t right, he was simply direct. Stating his case. And he certainly had every right to. She was the one with the problems.

  ‘You’re not one of them. I mean you’re family, but you don’t live here. I thought you’d be unbiased.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

  ‘You’re the patient.’ Lesley knew her voice sounded brittle. ‘Your accent sounds American. Is it?’

  ‘So you can understand why I didn’t speak,’ he continued, disregarding her question. He adjusted a pillow, sitting up a little further in the bed. ‘Everyone seems to think I’m this bad person, especially that Greek nurse.’

  He was passionate. Young and vibrant, close to Marcus’s age had he still been alive. ‘Well, she’s no longer here.’ Lesley felt her eyes begin to water. It was some time since she’d been in the presence of a man who was in his prime. It reawakened all that she had lost. ‘Can you recall anything that might help us work out who you are?’ Breathe, she willed herself.

  The stranger looked up at the ceiling. ‘It’s all muddled. I remember riding across a paddock and then waking up in this room. My thoughts are all mixed up with other things.’

  ‘What things?’ Lesley was grateful for his self-absorption.

  ‘People talking about shearing, dogs barking, boards being nailed over the window, shouting, an Italian lover … there’s too much.’ He lay back on the bed, breathing heavily.

  ‘I think,’ Lesley said kindly, ‘you were probably given a shot of morphine. It can confuse, you know.’ Tea, she needed another cup of tea.

  The patient turned his head on the pillow to face her. ‘Why are you so sad?’

  The question hung between them.

  ‘You must be tired,’ Lesley finally replied, ‘and I’ve had a long day. Please go to sleep.’ She rested against the chair and sat on her hands, which were shaking uncontrollably. In all the conversations she’d had since Marcus’s death, no stranger had ever made such a comment to her. Was her pain so visible that even an outsider could see it?

  ‘Don’t you sleep at night?’ he asked. ‘You don’t have to stay with me. Didn’t you notice? I can’t go anywhere.’

  ‘Can we not talk, please?’

  The stranger shrugged. ‘Nowhere better to be, eh?’ He turned on his side and faced the wall.

  Lesley looked at his taut skin, the defined arm muscles stretched along the length of his body, and quietly began to weep.

  Wednesday

  The Great Escape

  Chapter Thirty-three

  The hum of the Lister engine in the woolshed carried on the morning air, punctuated by the sounds of barking dogs. Already the heat of the day was upon them. Eleanor wished she’d woken earlier feeling more refreshed. However, after what she’d witnessed in the garden shed last night, there was too much filling her mind. It felt as though her family was splintering, and the heat certainly wasn’t helping anyone’s dispositions. It wound about the property like a shroud, so that the land and its inhabitants appeared weighed down by the debilitating ferocity of the sun.

  Lesley was standing by the ponds in the garden when Eleanor found her, her sister’s attention focused beyond the back gate. The blue truck was parked outside the meat-house, the slim shape of Dawson, his arms moving back and forth, suggesting he was sharpening a knife. Eleanor carried two cups of coffee as she crossed the lawn, having decided not to invade Mrs Howell’s space as she cooked bacon and eggs for the rest of the household. How the Winslows could consume so much food and so many alcoholic beverages in this heat amazed Eleanor.

  ‘I still can’t understand why Robbie shot that man.’ Lesley’s first words were not ones of greeting. Thin arms were folded across her chest as she surveyed their surroundings, the pale brown of the ponds, the trellis and two willie wagtails hopping across t
he lawn.

  Eleanor instantly noticed that her sister seemed different to yesterday. She was certainly not the composed young woman who’d arrived with Rex.

  ‘How old is he, eleven? It just doesn’t make sense.’ She rubbed her arms as if she were cold.

  ‘I’m sure Mum’s told you all the details,’ Eleanor said in an attempt to pacify her sister. She really didn’t feel like re-hashing recent events. Having Lesley home, in spite of her worries regarding her complete recovery, was the one positive thing to come out of Robbie’s actions. ‘I know I said it yesterday, Lesley, but I am so glad to see you. To have you home.’

  ‘But you were there.’ The pitch of Lesley’s voice grew thin and tight. ‘How could you let it happen?’

  Eleanor didn’t respond, instead, she handed her sister a mug of coffee. ‘White with sugar, just how you like it.’ She hadn’t expected condemnation from her. The old Lesley would never have reacted that way.

  Lesley frowned. ‘Coffee? I don’t drink it anymore.’

  ‘Oh.’ Put off by the dismissive tone, Eleanor tossed the contents of the mug onto the lawn. ‘Are you alright? You seem a little on edge.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  Eleanor shrugged. ‘I’m sure Mum told you I wasn’t actually in the tree with Robbie when the shooting took place.’ The answer came slowly as she regained her equilibrium, sipping the milky beverage. When Eleanor had finally awoken this morning, for once her first thoughts were of something pleasant, the ride out in the paddock yesterday and Hugh’s story of the warrigal storm. And last night’s revelation regarding his dead wife had added a little more to the puzzle that was Hugh Goward. She could fantasise about the man locked in their downstairs room, but Hugh captured her reality.

  ‘But still?’

  ‘Yes, but still,’ Eleanor replied abruptly.

  ‘Well, Eleanor, you can understand everyone’s point of view. I mean, you’re the adult. You were with him.’

  Eleanor took another sip of the coffee. She’d not realised that everyone had taken a stance that laid the blame for the shooting squarely on her. ‘Perhaps I should be the one being packed off to school then?’

  ‘Now you’re being ridiculous.’

  ‘And you’re being unfair, Lesley. As are Mum and Colin, if they’re apportioning blame on me instead of taking responsibility for Robbie’s behaviour. I didn’t give him the rifle. I didn’t let him run wild. He’s just a kid.’

  ‘Well, you’ve been quick to forgive his actions,’ Lesley accused.

  Eleanor felt a rush of anger for the woman standing opposite, her hands clasped together, nose in the air, as if she were a school marm. ‘And you’ve been even quicker to take sides,’ Eleanor retaliated.

  ‘Well, thanks to Robbie we have him here.’

  ‘And what were we meant to do with him?’ replied Eleanor, wondering at the escalation of their conversation into an argument. ‘Leave the man out in the paddock to die?’

  Lesley rubbed her temples.

  ‘Where the hell have you been for the last five years?’ Eleanor couldn’t help herself. ‘Curled up in a ball in a convent, when you’ve obviously been quite capable of living a normal life for some time now. If you’d been around for the last few years you may have noticed that things aren’t peachy here on the family run. They haven’t been for quite a while. You’re not the only one with problems.’

  Rex rounded the corner of the house with an iron bucket, a creamy mass inside and one long almost translucent streamer, sausage casings, hanging over the edge. He waved at the girls, climbed the garden fence and headed towards the meat-house.

  ‘I didn’t come home to argue with you, Elly.’ Lesley’s reply was barely audible.

  ‘Looks like they’re making sausages.’ Eleanor flung her own coffee across the lawn, the milky liquid disappearing in the grass.

  Lesley cleared her throat, touching the crucifix hanging at her neck. ‘Mum said the shearers aren’t too happy with everything that’s been going on.’

  ‘Well, she should make the effort to get down to the woolshed,’ said Eleanor. ‘We started two days ago and she hasn’t shown her face there. It might ease things if she did what’s expected, what she’s always done.’

  ‘You still haven’t forgiven her for marrying Colin.’ It was more a statement than a question. ‘Is that what the sniping around the table was about last night?’

  ‘That was just Colin being Colin.’ Sitting the cup on the grass, Eleanor wound her hair into a knot, pushing it under her hat. ‘Can’t we just talk like sisters for a change, Lesley? I’ve missed having you around.’ She touched her sister’s arm affectionately.

  In the old days, Lesley would have relented, smiled and probably hugged Elly in return. But Eleanor was beginning to realise just how much her older sister had changed since Marcus’s death. The flickering smile, once so quick to appear, the playful light in her eyes, the confidence and poise … none of it had returned.

  ‘Just remember what you said last night, Eleanor, those things about a person’s life being their own. The same applies to Colin and Mum. That’s why Uncle Colin looked so pleased with himself. Hypocrisy tends to stand out like the proverbial.’

  There it was again, an unkind remark delivered with what could only be called disinterest.

  ‘Don’t look like that,’ Lesley continued. ‘I’m not on their side. I’ve just had a few things on my mind to worry about other than a marriage formed through mutual need.’

  A dog began to whine, low and plaintive, the noise momentarily distracting the sisters and easing the tension between them. Eleanor began to talk of other things, of Athena and the stranger and particularly the nurse’s doubts towards River Run’s patient. Lesley, however, wasn’t particularly interested in the Greek nurse’s views and she said as much.

  ‘Why not?’ Eleanor asked. ‘She and her family may have come from the other side of the world, but they’re not much different to us.’

  ‘The hospice is full of people born in Australia. We should be looking after our own kind, not importing more refugees.’

  ‘I see. And the patient,’ Eleanor queried, eager to change the subject. Her sister was clutching and unclutching handfuls of her dress. ‘How did you find him?’

  ‘He’s been shot. He’ll recover,’ said Lesley bluntly. ‘But he can speak. Has been able to for quite a while I’d say. I think it’s a good idea he’s locked up. Who knows who he is?’

  Eleanor turned towards the house and the ground floor sickroom. ‘He talked to you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It was a relief not carrying his secret around, but at the same time she felt quite deflated. The only positive was that if Lesley were the one to reveal the man’s return to full health, her protection of the stranger need never be known. ‘I knew he could too,’ Eleanor revealed. ‘He asked me to keep it a secret.’

  ‘Well, it’s not a secret any longer. He said he was confused initially, lack of memory, which is possible considering he hit his head, but I don’t like him. I don’t like him at all.’

  ‘Really?’ By the tone of Lesley’s voice Eleanor was convinced that something had occurred last night, which didn’t seem possible. The injured man was … well, she liked him. He was simply suffering from amnesia. They’d talked of art and writing and Eleanor felt quite relaxed in his presence. So it seemed at odds with the little she knew of Robbie’s victim, that he’d intentionally upset Lesley. And yet something had set her sister on edge. ‘Did he upset you?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about him.’

  ‘Well, did you find out what his name is?’ Eleanor asked.

  ‘No. He can’t remember.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What’s happened, Lesley? Yesterday you were –’

  ‘Normal?’ Lesley challenged.

  Eleanor was at a loss to understand the change in her sister. ‘Okay, if you don’t trust him, let me sit with him this morning. I’l
l see if I can find out a bit more about our mystery man before we tell Mum. Regardless of who he is, I think he’s disturbed our family enough with his presence.’ This seemed to placate Lesley and she gave a slight incline of her head in agreement.

  ‘It was so dark last night, and hot.’ Lesley looked at the sky, shielding her face against the morning glare. ‘I’d forgotten how hot it could get.’

  ‘Nearing the dark of the moon,’ said Eleanor.

  Lesley gave a tired smile. ‘You always were the dramatic one. It’s the new moon, Eleanor, call it as it is.’

  They could have continued arguing, instead Eleanor lit a cigarette courtesy of Mr Winslow from last night. ‘Did you want to come back?’ Exhaled smoke tumbled out with her question.

  ‘Mother can be persuasive. Funds are needed for our charitable works and when I was asked …’

  Eleanor inhaled and exhaled deeply, the smoke streaming from between her lips. ‘She bribed the convent?’

  ‘I offered to come back, Elly. The convent saved me. I belong there.’

  ‘But did you want to come home, to River Run? It’s a simple question.’

  Her older sister turned towards her. ‘Mum and Uncle Colin, clearly they’re having problems. But all partnerships require compromise, Elly. You shouldn’t be so hard on Uncle Colin. Dad and Mum, well they understood each other. They were partners in every sense, but Colin,’ she turned towards the homestead, ‘a man like that can’t live in the shadow of a woman. He’s not like Dad was. Dad had nothing to prove to the world, but Uncle Colin does. As a second son, with limited funds and no land to his name, he really needed to be with someone less dominant. He was never going to be given the opportunity of running things his way. Not here. So don’t be so hard on him, Elly. Everyone is fighting their own battle. The only thing I was concerned about was Margaret Winslow and the way she was looking at him last night. Probably just as well they’re leaving.’