Turn Left at Bindi Creek

by Lynne Wilding

  ‘Where’s Luke?’ Wes asked Drew.

  ‘On the back verandah, Dad. He’s not very happy with himself. Keeps saying Adam’s accident was his fault.’

  ‘Right.’ This was something he could handle. Wes went in search of Adam’s brother and found him on the floor of the verandah surrounded by an assortment of toys but not playing with any one of them. He was just sitting there lethargically. His head was down, his young shoulders drooped. His thoughts were obviously in some faraway place.

  ‘Hi, Luke,’ Wes said, sitting down on the floor opposite the boy.

  ‘How’s Adam?’ Luke asked without looking up.

  ‘He’s going to be fine. He’s still sleepy, though. Your dad will be here soon, Luke. He’ll know what to do.’

  ‘You saved his life, Uncle Wes. Thank you,’ Luke said with a gravity beyond his years.

  ‘You’re blaming yourself for what happened, aren’t you?’ Wes said straight out.

  ‘I should have stopped him.’ Luke’s voice was a monotone. ‘I knew it was too dangerous but I let him do it; I always let him have his way. And the rope—I couldn’t hold it. I tried. I tried real hard, Uncle Wes.’ His young voice broke with emotion and he held his hands up to show the rope burns. ‘But the current was too strong.’

  ‘Of course it was. You know, son, it was just an accident,’ Wes said gently, ‘and accidents happen all the time. When I was twelve and my brother, Martin, was ten, we went fishing in the creek on our property. We caught a few trout—enough for dinner. Martin’s horse was faster than mine and he challenged me to race him home. I said yes even though I didn’t think I

  could win, but I picked the route over a patch of ground I knew well, where there were several fallen trees we hadn’t got round to cutting up. I knew my horse was a better jumper than Martin’s. I hoped that that would give me an edge. It did. On the second tree, Martin’s horse clipped its back hoof on the tree and it fell. Martin got concussion and the horse, well, sadly, it broke a foreleg and had to be put to sleep.’ Wes saw that Luke’s head had lifted slightly, interest in his tale breaking his mood.

  ‘My parents were very cross about what had happened to Martin and his horse. My brother had to spend a week in bed and I,’ he grimaced at Luke, ‘had to wait on him hand and foot. But Mum and Dad knew it had been an accident, that Martin and I weren’t to blame. It was something that just happened.’

  Wes touched Luke’s shoulder. ‘You didn’t mean for Adam to get hurt. Your parents know it; I know it too. Understand?’

  Luke looked at Wes thoughtfully, for maybe twenty seconds, and then he grinned. ‘I think so. Do you think I’ll have to do stuff for Adam until he’s better?’ His features brightened. ‘I wouldn’t mind, you know.’

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t.’ Wes ruffled Luke’s hair. ‘Why don’t you go in and see how he’s doing?’

  As they both got up and turned towards the doorway, they saw Brooke silhouetted in the open space. Still barefoot, she had changed into jeans and a roll-neck jumper and had dried her hair so that it feathered attractively about her face. She watched Luke scoot past, heading for the bedroom he and Adam shared.

  ‘That was nice of you,’ she said quietly, a quizzical expression on her face. ‘Was it a true story?’

  ‘Too right. My brother, the little rat, made me do everything short of wiping his bum for him.’ His grin was endearingly boyish. ‘As I recall, it was a very long week.’

  ‘Mum, Mum…’ Luke bounded back down the hall, through the living and dining room, towards the kitchen. His face was alive now and he beamed a wide grin at Wes and Brooke. ‘Adam’s wide awake now, and he says he’s hungry.’

  Everyone knew Adam’s appetite—it was legendary. The two adults smiled at each other, then at Luke.

  By late the next afternoon, Adam’s cough had developed into bacterial pneumonia, affecting both lungs, and he needed to be hospitalised. Curiously, and to everyone’s consternation, Luke developed a severe cough too, even though he rarely got sick. The illness deteriorated over the next few days into a condition called pleurisy. Consequently, the d’Winters family was plunged into weeks of nursing, until both boys were fit again. By that time the worst of the flooding had receded, the hens were laying again and Domino, back in her paddock, was prancing about impatiently, waiting for the boys to be well enough to ride and play with her.

  Late that June, when the floodwaters had completely receded and people had mopped up and repaired the damage done, Wes held a celebratory barbecue-cum-tennis day at Sindalee for those who wanted to attend. Minta Downs and the Sindalee property, being higher up on the slopes, had been less affected by the floods than many other properties throughout the district. Stock losses in the district had been high and much of the seed sown in autumn for spring harvesting had been ruined or washed away, but thankfully there had been no deaths and only minimal damage to buildings.

  At Sindalee, young Adam was afforded much attention. His rescue and subsequent ill-health had been faithfully documented by the Cowra Guardian and the local primary school magazine, and the trauma had brought him and Luke closer than ever before. Where you found one twin, you soon found the other, and when they talked it was as if they were both so tuned into each other that one could start a sentence and the other finish it. Adults shook their heads at the unusualness of it, some kids thought they were weird and others treated them with a demi-god respect which alternately amused and irritated the twins, depending on their moods.

  The twins’ behaviour didn’t surprise their parents who had watched the special bond develop between them from an early age. When one said he didn’t like beans or broccoli, so did the other. When Adam had a suspected appendicitis attack, so did Luke. When a specialist had diagnosed a stigmatism in Luke’s left eye, the same occurred in Adam’s, which until then had been perfect. When Adam developed ambidexterity, so, to a lesser degree, did Luke. At eight they were developing their own individual traits, likes and dislikes, but in many ways they were mirror images of each other.

  Brooke knew that Fleece, in particular, was fascinated by the similarities of the twins and enjoyed spending time with them, but today, at Wes’s barbecue, Fleece and Nathan, both now fourteen, were spending a lot of time together. Brooke’s gaze moved to where Wes and Sharon stood side by side in their tennis gear, preparing to go on the court. She saw Wes watching the youngsters too, and frowning. He didn’t miss much. Often, when you were sure he wasn’t listening, that his thoughts were elsewhere in a conversation, he would pop in a pertinent question that showed he was, indeed, very much on the ball.

  ‘Come on, love, put your sandshoes on,’ Jason said, hustling his wife to get ready for their match against Wes and Sharon.

  With a sigh, Brooke pulled her shoes on. As she tied the laces she looked up at him. ‘It won’t be much of a contest. Have you seen how Sharon plays? She’d give Rachel McQuillan a run for her money.’

  Though she had improved considerably from when she and Jason had first started to play years ago, Brooke was nowhere near the standard of Sharon. Brooke’s medium-paced serve was accurate, her forehand was sound, as were her lobs, but her smashes lacked the killer instinct which was so much a part of Sharon’s game.

  ‘I don’t think she’s that good,’ said Jason, ‘though I have heard Hugh say that she played a lot of tennis in Italy. Besides, it’s just a friendly round robin; no-one’s taking it too seriously.’

  Sure, tell Sharon that! Brooke managed to bite back the tart reply. She had been watching Sharon play and the woman liked—no, more than liked—she needed to win. She pouted when a point went against her and would try to intimidate the umpire. In this case it didn’t do her much good because Jean King was umpiring and scoring the mixed doubles matches. So far, Nathan and Fleece were coming first, Wes and Sharon second and Brooke and Jason were a respectable fifth.

  ‘Now, this is our strategy…’ Jason ignored her raised eyebrows at the mention of the word ‘strategy’. ‘Let me take most
of the shots, ’cause your backhand is a bit suspect, and Wes and I are pretty evenly matched.’

  ‘Come on, you two, stop dragging your feet,’ Wes heckled from the other end of the court as he bounced a ball.

  After a brief hit, the match was under way. Sharon and Wes took the first set, only losing two games. In the second set, Jason initiated a strenuous comeback that had onlookers cheering himself and Brooke on. The second set became locked at four games all.

  With Brooke serving to Sharon and the score forty-fifteen, Brooke only needed one more successful serve and they’d be ahead and have the edge. The first serve was a fault. She threw the ball up again, struck it and it went deep to Sharon’s forehand. Whack! Sharon sent a blistering return straight at Brooke, who had telegraphed her move to the net to give Jason free rein of the back court.

  The ball hit Brooke on the neck with such force that she dropped to her knees. For a couple of seconds, as the blood-flow to the carotid artery was blocked, everything went black. Surprisingly, she felt little pain, just extreme heat, as if she had been scalded. Reaction to the blow made her begin to shake.

  Jason ran to her and helped her to her feet. ‘You okay, love?’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ Sharon’s tone was contrite as she rushed to the net with Wes. ‘The ball came off the side of my racquet, I couldn’t control it.’

  Wes stared at her. After a second or two he shook his head slightly and muttered under his breath so only Sharon heard, ‘Bullshit. You knew exactly where the ball was going.’

  Rubber-legged, Brooke clung to Jason. Her head was spinning, her eyes watering as the first waves of pain began at her neck and spread across her shoulder and down her right arm. She didn’t want to think that Sharon had aimed the ball at her deliberately, but it was hard not to. Everyone knew there were other areas of the court where she could have effectively placed the ball to win the point.

  Jason looked at Wes, his usually pleasant features marred by a disgusted scowl. ‘That’s it for us. We concede the set and match.’

  ‘No, I’ll be all right in a minute,’ Brooke protested. Well, in maybe two minutes! Once the pain eased. She flexed the fingers of her right hand then shook the arm, trying to shake the pain away but knew deep down that she wouldn’t be able to.

  ‘No, you won’t,’ Wes said. He left Sharon standing, staring after her departing partner, as he manoeuvred himself over the net and came up on the other side of Brooke. The two men helped her off the court to a seat under the leafy spread of a camphor laurel tree.

  ‘I’m okay, really,’ Brooke objected, not wanting to be fussed over. She didn’t want Sharon to have the satisfaction of knowing just how much that ball had hurt—though, if it had been the other way round, no doubt her opposition would have milked it for all it was worth. Wes went off to get her a glass of water. (Men, strangely, seemed to think that a glass of water or a cup of tea solved everything in a crisis.)

  Jason gently explored the area where she had been hit. ‘You’re going to have a whopper of a bruise, but I don’t think there’s any clotting or muscle damage. An icepack will help with the pain and the bruising.’ He thought for a moment then said quietly, ‘She aimed at you on purpose, you know. Wanted to win so much she had to be unsportsmanlike. I don’t think Wes was impressed, nor were the others who saw it.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Brooke mulled over his words for a while. ‘Well, we may have lost the match but I think she’s lost a lot more. I’ve never seen Wes so angry.’ And she hadn’t. His face had resembled a mini thundercloud. She had seen him angry before, when Fleece had been tardy in minding Luke, but he was more so now. Silly woman. If Sharon seriously wanted to engage Wes’s affections, she wasn’t going about it with much finesse, for all her outward worldliness.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid! Still at the net, Sharon stamped her Reebok-clad foot in anger, and at herself. She glanced towards the camphor laurel tree and saw that several people had gone over to see if Brooke was all right and were mouthing words of comfort. All at once she felt isolated—from Wes, from everyone—as if she, not Brooke, were the outsider here. Fleece and Nathan were darting venomous looks in her direction, others were shaking their heads, and she interpreted still more glances accusing her of being a poor sport. And she dared not look at the umpire. Jean King clearly disliked her and would be ready to unleash her caustic tongue on her if she did.

  She moved along the net to the wire gate, head held high and refusing to look anyone in the eye. As she crossed the patio, Vince Gersbach, the Bindi Creek chemist, came up on her left. His hand reached tentatively for her arm to stop her.

  ‘Are you all right, Sharon?’ His tone was solicitous. ‘It was an accident, anyone could see that.’

  ‘Of course it was,’ she said sharply, ‘I’d never do such a thing purposely, Vince. Though from the way some people reacted, you’d think I did.’ Her bottom lip trembled slightly, for effect.

  ‘Damned right! Some folks just don’t understand. They’re jealous of you, of course.’

  Her eyelids fluttered. He had her attention because she sensed a compliment coming. ‘Are they? Why?’

  ‘Because you’re beautiful and sophisticated and wealthy. You make just about everyone around here seem downright ordinary—in fact, dowdy!’

  Sharon blinked and took a more discerning look at Vince. At forty, a widower with a son at university, he was, now that she was really looking, quite presentable. He wasn’t overly tall, but had a trim physique and pleasant, if not outstandingly handsome, Germanic features. She knew he was one of the better catches in the district, having overheard enough idle chatter from women around and about to learn that. As well, her sister, Bethany, who irritated her immensely by always trying to play matchmaker, had mentioned that Vince was quite well off. He owned the pharmacy at Bindi Creek, had another one in Blayney, plus a controlling share in the Mount Kangarooby Winery on the western side of Cowra. As well, he had several investment properties scattered throughout the district. Not exactly in Wes’s class, financially, but not to be sneezed at either.

  She glanced back fleetingly towards Wes, saw that he continued to hover over the d’Winters, and returned to a decision she had made some time ago. What Wes Sinclair needed, where she was concerned, was to see that other men of means found her attractive.

  ‘Can I get you something?’ Vince asked. ‘Wine? An orange juice?’

  ‘After this little drama I think I need something stronger—brandy.’ She flashed him her brightest smile and was rewarded by the sight of him beaming back at her, waiting for her command. ‘Over by the pool you’ll find a well-stocked bar. Wes is sure to have brandy there.’

  It took an hour or so for the atmosphere at Sindalee to warm again, and that coincided with the finals of the round robin: Fleece and Nathan against Wes and Sharon. Youthful energy defeated experience and Fleece deliberately lorded it over Sharon until Wes spoke quietly to his daughter, telling her to tone down her exuberance.

  Usually, Sharon didn’t accept defeat with good grace, but this time she decided it would serve her purposes. Vince was soon by her side, and she made sure Wes saw him talking to her. Before the party broke up, she and Vince had made a date for dinner next week in Cowra. It could prove interesting, she thought as she allowed him to see her to her car. Hopefully Wes would react, become jealous and pay her the attention she deserved.

  End of financial year stocktaking was a simple matter at the surgery, but getting the accounts books in order for the accountant was not. Jason traditionally left the task to Brooke and Jean and, to make it easier to do, he scooped the children into the station wagon for a Saturday afternoon outing to the radio telescope at Parkes.

  ‘Frank was telling me that the retirement village was broken into last night, the nursing-home part. Kids, probably. Stole drugs, pills, that sort of thing.’ Jean was passing on the latest local gossip as they worked on the books. ‘Vince Gersbach said his locks were tampered with, too. Guess they tried him first, then went on
to easier pickings.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Brooke said, only half-listening as she added a column of figures. ‘I thought that here we were relatively safe from the drug scene, but I guess, in reality, there is no safe haven these days.’

  ‘You’re right. I heard too that young Craig was pretty cut up after his grandmother’s funeral last week. Broke down and cried like a baby, continued Jean. ‘You know, the “For Sale” sign’s already gone up on Amelia’s property.’ She sniffed with disgust. ‘Poor woman’s not cold in her grave and they’re selling off the assets. Constable Roth from Carcoar said there’s been suspicious stock losses on Amelia’s old property too. He’s looking into it.’

  ‘Do they suspect Craig?’ Brooke asked, her curiosity sparked enough to stop her in the middle of a long column of numbers. ‘Surely he wouldn’t steal from his own grandmother.’

  ‘Who knows?’ Jean shrugged her shoulders as she continued to alphabetise a stack of receipts. ‘Pete’s had reports of small losses throughout the eastern part of the district—sheep mostly, because they’re easier to transport.’

  ‘Sheep rustling!’ Brooke chuckled. ‘Sounds ridiculous with today’s low prices.’

  ‘Well, I’ve heard they’re taking cattle too. I heard talk at the pub. Greg and I went there for dinner on Thursday night for one of those great steak and kidney pies. We heard some graziers talking of forming a vigilante group to track the culprits down.’

  ‘Sounds like they mean business.’ Brooke stopped work to gaze at the set of three Jack Absalom prints on the wall. She thought before she spoke. ‘Funny about the conception you have when you live in the city, about life in the country. You think its tranquil out here, that nothing much exciting happens, that all the action is in the city.’ Her features lit in a momentary smile. ‘I’ve learned that that’s far from the case.’

  ‘Yes, and talking about action, how are the negotiations going with the manager of the National Bank?’