Rescue at Cradle Lake

by Marion Lennox

  She should query it, but there was too much overwhelming her life at the moment to even begin to admit more.

  ‘I don’t know how I could have her adopted,’ she whispered, and his hands came out and caught her shoulders, holding her steady in the face of her fear. ‘But to take her on… A child…’

  ‘You don’t need to think of that right now,’ he told her. ‘You just think of the next half-hour. We need to get a bit of sheep’s blood off ourselves so we don’t scare the community of Cradle Lake half to death with stories of our bloody exploits. Then we need to go talk to Richard and to Tony and see what Richard has decided to do.’

  Richard was sitting up in bed when they arrived back at the house. He was angry. Ginny got that the moment she and Fergus walked around the side of the house. Tony was at his bedside, seated beside him on the veranda. Listening.

  Richard was trying to yell. He was gasping for breath but his anger was palpable. Ginny gasped and started forward-but Fergus’s hand found her arm and he hauled her back out of sight.

  ‘Let me-’

  ‘Shh.’

  ‘There’s no way you can make me,’ Richard was saying.

  ‘No one’s making you do anything,’ Tony responded, his voice unperturbed. ‘No one made you do anything five years ago. But it’s done, mate. Like the rest of us, you’re now facing the consequences.’

  ‘I have no intention-’

  ‘You deny she’s your kid?’

  ‘No, but-’

  ‘There you are, then,’ Tony said evenly. ‘It can happen to us all if we’re dumb enough.’ He grimaced. ‘You know, I got a bit pissed after a footy dinner a few years back. Me and Bridget didn’t take precautions. Bang, nine months later, there was Michael, bawling his head off, red-faced and scrawny. My kid. Bridget and I had been pretty keen on each other, so getting married wasn’t such a big deal, but we’d intended travelling a bit first, seeing the world before we settled down. Now we have Michael. Lissy followed soon after and here I am, a family man. Whoopee.’ Ginny could hear a smile enter his voice. ‘You know, now I wouldn’t have it any other way.’

  ‘You think I can possibly be interested-’

  ‘Not only interested, but involved, right up to your neck,’ Tony said ruthlessly. ‘I’ve seen your kid. Madison. Doc Reynard examined her all over. He says she looks like she hasn’t been getting enough to eat. Her mother’s obviously been too ill to take proper care of her. And she ran half a mile on gravel to save her mother’s life. She lost. That’s your kid, Richard. A tough, brave little urchin who looks like you. You want to turn your back on her?’

  ‘Ginny will look after her,’ Richard said flatly, and Ginny made to move forward again. Once again Fergus restrained her.

  ‘Not your conversation,’ he whispered. ‘Shut up and listen.’

  ‘I know where my sister would have told me to go if I’d tried that line on her,’ Tony was saying.

  ‘I’m dying.’

  ‘Aren’t we all, mate? I could get run over by a bus tomorrow. Hell, that’d leave my Bridget and Michael and Lissy in a right mess.’

  ‘You know what I mean. I’m dying now. How can I be anyone’s father?’

  ‘You already are. You just didn’t know. This is non-negotiable. What I want to know is if you’ll do the right thing if we bring her out here.’

  ‘What the hell do you want me to do?’

  ‘You can’t ask this of him,’ Ginny whispered, but Fergus’s hold was strong and sure and convinced. He had her hand in his, his fingers linked through hers. Reassurance in a crazy world. A notion that she wasn’t alone. That he was there for her.

  Dumb. It was dumb. She hauled at her hand but it wasn’t relinquished.

  ‘You want to see her?’ Tony was asking.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Do you mean that?’ Tony said softly. He turned. ‘Fergus, is that you, mate?’

  Their approach had obviously been heard, by Tony at least. Fergus gave Ginny’s hand a reassuring squeeze and tugged her round the corner, out where they could be seen.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, as if he was dropping in for a casual evening visit. ‘Ginny and I have just delivered a lamb. Horribly complicated presentation. Exhausted mother. Only the pure skill of two dedicated doctors could have created the outcome of healthy mum, healthy baby.’

  Tony’s big face creased into a smile. ‘Sheep obstetrics. Multi-talented, huh? Aren’t we lucky to have you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Fergus said promptly, and Tony laughed. He turned back to Richard. ‘You want us to bring out your daughter?’

  ‘I need to speak to Ginny,’ Richard said, almost sulkily, but Fergus shook his head, joining the conversation as if he’d heard what had gone before. As indeed he had.

  ‘This isn’t Ginny’s decision, mate. It’s yours.’

  ‘Of course it’s Ginny’s decision,’ Richard said angrily. ‘When I die, Ginny will have to-’

  ‘Ginny won’t have to do anything. This is your call.’

  ‘I can’t get involved in a kid if Ginny won’t-’

  ‘Let’s leave Ginny out of the equation,’ Fergus said, and there was a hint of steel in his voice. ‘She has her own life to worry about. She’s agreed to do some part-time work with me over the next few weeks.’

  Ginny flashed him a look that was pure astonishment but neither man noticed.

  ‘And she won’t be around so much. Oh, she’ll be around when you most need her. She’s promised you that. But not every waking minute. She’ll go under if you ask that of her, and I’m here to treat her as well as you. You made her ill with your suicide bid this afternoon and it’s not going to happen again.’

  ‘This is none of your business,’ Ginny gasped, but Fergus took her arm again, restraining her from hauling away from his side.

  ‘It’s none of Tony’s business either, but he’s here. You’ve elected to come to a tiny community and that means people sticking in their oars all over the place. Richard, your daughter’s at the hospital and she has no one. If you permit, we’ll bring her here and care for her here for as long as you’re well enough to cope. If you play it right, when you die she’ll retain a memory of a father who cares. Her mother obviously thought that was important. If you don’t think it’s important then we’ll contact the social workers in the city and organise foster-care. You need never see her. Your call, mate. Decide.’

  ‘You can’t ask me-’ Richard gasped.

  ‘We are asking you.’

  ‘I need to talk to-’

  ‘You don’t need to talk to anyone. You make the decision now. You ask to see Madison-your daughter-and we’ll bring her to you, with a nurse to help care for her.’

  ‘I don’t want a nurse. Ginny can-’

  ‘Ginny can’t.’ His voice was tough, inflexible, giving no quarter. There was a long silence, broken only by the harsh rasping of Richard’s breathing. It wasn’t fair, Ginny thought miserably. To ask it of him…

  ‘It’s not fair, mate,’ Fergus said, in such an unconscious echo of her own thoughts that she gasped. ‘But she’s your daughter. I have no choice but to put things to you as they are.’

  Richard stared up at him. He glanced across at Ginny but Fergus’s hand was on her arm protectively, as if he knew that this responsibility would be handed over but there was no way he’d let this happen.

  ‘Tony said she looks like me,’ Richard whispered finally, and Fergus nodded.

  ‘She’s beautiful. She’s battered and she’s lost her mother and she’s alone. And, yes, she looks like her father. Do you want to meet her or don’t you?’

  Ginny held her breath. It could go either way, she thought, and she waited. They all waited.

  ‘I have a daughter?’ Richard whispered at last, and something in Fergus’s face reacted. It was like a muscle spasm-pain? It was there only momentarily and then gone, but Ginny was sure she’d seen it.

  ‘You have a daughter,’ he agreed.

  ‘Then maybe I need to meet her.’


  ‘Only if you agree to a nurse coming to stay as well.’

  ‘There’s no need. Ginny will-’

  ‘Ginny won’t.’

  The two men faced off. Strength facing… Fear?

  And strength won. Fergus’s determination was implacable and all of them could sense it.

  ‘Fine,’ Richard said at last. ‘If the kid needs a nurse-’

  ‘If your daughter needs a nurse.’

  ‘My daughter,’ Richard said, and the petulance disappeared from his voice. ‘My daughter.’

  ‘So we can bring her to her father?

  ‘Yes,’ he whispered, and looked up at them. ‘Yes, please.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  WHAT followed were two weeks that Ginny would look back on later as surreal. She didn’t know what was happening-only that she had to do what came next.

  A search was made for Judith’s family. There was a father in New Zealand who hadn’t seen her for twenty years and who wanted nothing to do with either burying his daughter or taking responsibility for his grandchild. So Judith was buried in the Cradle Lake cemetery. Richard came in a wheelchair, and, on the advice of a child psychiatrist Fergus had organised to see her, Madison came, too. The little girl seemed impassive, and Ginny held her and watched her and thought of what people had said to her after Chris had died, after Toby had died, after her mother had died. And how nothing had helped.

  Fergus stood in the background and said nothing at all. There was this feeling between them, Ginny thought hopelessly as the ceremony moved to its conclusion. It was some sort of intangible link that was somehow just…there. Both of them could feel it, she thought, but neither of them wanted it. It was as if both of them were afraid.

  She was afraid, she decided, and she was right to be so. Whatever she felt for Fergus, it had to be sternly set aside.

  No involvement.

  After the funeral Ginny’s back veranda was set up as a hospital ward in miniature. A couple of tradesmen arrived. Refusing payment, they set up a screen that could be pulled back at will. Thus, there could be two rooms. One side was Richard’s. The other was Madison’s.

  The child was stoic. That was the simplest way to describe her, Ginny thought as the days went on. There were no tears. No emotion. Nothing. Tears might have been easier to deal with. What terrors lay behind the expressionless, listless façade?

  She voiced her concerns to Fergus and he organised the child psychiatrist from the city to make a second trip to see her. The woman sat by Madison’s bed for all of one long afternoon, gently probing, trying to make her talk. At the end the woman wondered whether she should be moved, taken to a specialist unit in Sydney.

  That was the first time Richard was moved to anger, surprising them all. ‘She stays here,’ he snapped. ‘This is where she belongs. And push back that damned screen.’

  That was a sort of breakthrough. Father and daughter at least seemed aware of each other from then on, although mostly all they did was sleep.

  But sometimes Ginny saw Richard watching his daughter with eyes that were sad and yet proud. And when Richard moved, Madison’s gaze followed him every inch of the way.

  ‘Don’t pressure her,’ the child psychiatrist advised before she left. ‘She needs time to get used to her new surroundings. To her new…’

  She faltered then, because no one could imagine Madison would have time to get used to her new father. Even for the psychiatrist this was new territory.

  ‘It’s not fair on Madison,’ Ginny told Fergus as the second week ended. Fergus had come out to check on Richard’s medication. There was no longer any need for him to treat Madison. The little girl’s feet were almost healed. There was no need for her to still be in bed, but whenever they dressed her, whenever they tried to do anything with her, she passively did what they asked, then returned to her bed as soon as she could. ‘Maybe we should be doing something more active to cheer her up.’

  ‘The psychiatrist said give her time,’ Fergus told her. ‘And Richard’s her father. He calls the shots.’

  Fergus had finished treating Richard at almost the same time as Tony’s wife, Bridget, had arrived to take a shift. They’d been walking back to Fergus’s truck-a bit self-consciously because that was the way Ginny always was around Fergus. Bridget was ‘an occasional nurse when I’m sick of the kids’, and her presence was a welcome relief, easing strain. Now she included herself in their conversation, putting in her oar with customary cheerfulness.

  ‘Leave them be,’ she advised. ‘Talking can sometimes make it worse with kids. I’m the eldest of eight and that was my motto. If you couldn’t figure out what to do, then do nothing. This is a funny sort of father-daughter relationship but if that’s all they have then I reckon we should leave them to sort it out.’

  ‘Richard’s not exactly being warm,’ Fergus said thoughtfully as Bridget walked up the steps and left them to it. Ginny wished she hadn’t. Fergus was too close for comfort. Whenever he was here he was too close for comfort, she thought. There was this frisson…

  ‘Can you blame him?’ she managed. ‘If he gets close to his daughter, she’ll be hurt all over again when he dies.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Fergus said. He looked as if he’d say something else but then thought better of it. Instead, he stepped away from her a little. Maybe he was feeling this frisson as well? ‘How are Madison’s feet?’

  ‘They’re fine. But check them yourself.’ She hesitated. They were out of earshot of Richard, Madison or Bridget. The frisson wasn’t going away and she wanted it dealt with. She needed this man as a person-not some gorgeous hunk of a doctor who sent her hormones into overdrive.

  ‘Fergus, why are you leaving Madison’s medical care completely to me?’ she tried tentatively. ‘Why don’t you go close to her?’ She hesitated but the sudden stillness of his face told her she wasn’t wrong in her guesswork. ‘There’s more than Richard and I who are scared stiff of being involved here. No?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  In truth, she didn’t know what she meant either. It was just a gut reaction to what she saw-the slight hesitation every time he approached Madison’s bed. There was something…

  ‘Hey, Doc, what about taking Ginny out to dinner?’ It was Bridget, calling from the veranda. ‘She could do with a break and you two look so good together.’

  They both took a hasty step in different directions and Bridget grinned.

  ‘I don’t need-’ Ginny started, but Bridget was on a mission.

  ‘You don’t need sausages,’ she retorted. ‘Which is all you have here for dinner. Richard likes them, Madison likes them but the last time we had them you hardly touched them. Take her out, Doc.’

  ‘Would you like to go out?’ Fergus asked.

  Would she?

  In the last two weeks she hadn’t been housebound. She’d spent time at the hospital, sharing Fergus’s load, immersing herself in the medicine that gave her blessed time out. But that didn’t mean she’d spent any real time with him.

  And then there was this scary frisson…

  ‘The pub’s good on Friday night,’ Bridget was saying, breaking into her train of thought. ‘Take her there, Doc.’

  ‘I should stay,’ Ginny said, taking another step backward.

  ‘Why?’ Bridget demanded, and crossed her arms in disapproval.

  ‘There’s no need for you to be here,’ she told the nurse, trying to sound decisive. ‘You could go home to Tony.’

  ‘I have two kids at home and an untrained puppy. I’m staying here.’ Bridget grinned. ‘My kids need to bond with their daddy. Tony’s done less than his fair share this week and I’m here to stay.’

  ‘Bridget’s not going home,’ Fergus said. ‘That was the agreement when we brought Madison here. There’ll be a full-time nurse here all the time.’ He hesitated and she saw the same uncertainty in his eyes. But it seemed he was braver than she was. ‘What about a steak at the pub?’

  But what about…? What about…? Ginny looked
at him and thought about the tension between them and thought this was a really bad idea. But when she opened her mouth…

  ‘Fine,’ she said.

  What was she saying? Her head was screaming that it wasn’t fine. It was high risk to both of them.

  ‘Fine,’ said Fergus, and she knew he felt exactly the same way. ‘Let’s go to dinner.’

  The eating-out options at Cradle Lake were limited. To the pub. The pub served steak and chips, sausages and chips (bleah), fish and chips or the vegetarian option catering for city types who cruised through the place on Sundays-pasta and chips.

  The steak, however, was fantastic, deservedly famous throughout the district. Dorothy, the pub chef, had been cooking steak for fifty years. She cooked their steaks now, then came to the dining-room door to watch her product go down.

  The whole pub watched Fergus and Ginny’s steaks go down. The dining room was separated from the rest of the pub by the bar, but from the moment they’d walked in every eye was on them and it stayed on them for the entire meal.

  ‘You wouldn’t want to be an undercover agent in this place,’ Fergus complained, and Ginny grinned. In truth, she was enjoying her steak very much, and enjoying being away from the claustrophobic atmosphere of the house even more.

  ‘I’m used to it. I was brought up here-remember?’

  ‘Which is why you didn’t want to come back?’

  ‘I never said I didn’t want to come back.’

  ‘You didn’t have to. You look like a deer stuck in headlights.’

  ‘Gee, thanks.’

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ he said, and concentrated on his steak again.

  ‘So how about you?’ she asked as they ploughed through their massive plates. ‘How come you look like a deer caught in headlights as well?’

  ‘I don’t.’ He glanced up at her, startled, and then caught himself. His expression regained that careful control she was starting to recognise for what it was. A shield.

  ‘I’m the one who’s afraid of the commitment Madison might mean,’ she said softly. ‘But when you’re forced to be near her I see exactly the same fear. Only worse. At the funeral you acted as if you were afraid of coming close. So what’s happened in your past to drive you here, Dr Reynard?’