‘But, Rena, I—’
‘Daddy, take her.’
‘But it’s the doctor, Rena,’ Uncle Preston objected, looking through the window, ‘and it’s me he’s come to see.’ He sounded peeved.
Pippa, looking at him, could well believe he was the reason for the doctor’s visit. The chauffeur had said he was not the best, and she had noticed when they had arrived he had a bad colour. Now, away from the sun, that pallor was even more pronounced.
‘Glen will see to you afterwards, Daddy. Do as I say. Do it now.’
In another minute both Uncle Preston and Pippa were in the hall.
Pippa could hear steps, she could hear a clear, pleasant male voice, then Rena’s high smooth voice in gentle response.
‘Ho-ho,’ said Uncle Preston scornfully ... he seemed to ho-ho a lot ... ‘now she’s put that plum in her mouth, and for all people, him. I can’t afford him, Pippa. You may think I was joking when I said that before about my present circumstances, about fortunes running out, but I wasn’t. She, of course, will never believe it, never having been deprived in all her life. But it’s true. Look, Pippa, I’ll put you in the picture, this picture my spoiled girl means to paint.’
But Uncle Preston didn’t. Not then. His daughter came to the door, and something had happened in the few minutes that had elapsed between their hurried retreat and the doctor’s arrival. Rena wore a charming butter-cup-hued overall, a nursing-type overall. With her shining golden colouring she looked quite beautiful.
And not just beautiful but dedicated as well. Rena’s eyes were soft and docilely downcast. Her smile was sweet.
‘Doctor Burt will see you now, Daddy. Take my arm, dear.’
She took it for him and led him back through the door, closing the door definitely before Pippa could glimpse this Doctor Burt.
The mysterious Doctor Burt. Pippa could not help but think that as she climbed the stairs. He must be a very exceptional man to ring that change so soon. One minute a pretty, petulant, headstrong girl, the next minute a tender nurse.
Pippa crossed to the window and looked curiously out, hoping to catch a glimpse of Doctor Burt, but—
She saw the incinerator, the waste-bins and the mulch-heap instead.
CHAPTER TWO
Pippa did not see Doctor Burt in the days that followed, even though he called regularly because Uncle Preston had had another turn.
‘What’s wrong with your father?’ she asked Rena on one of the few occasions she met up with her cousin.
Rena shrugged, if perhaps not actually callously then certainly carelessly. ‘Something or other,’ she said, and her answer was at a complete variance to her attire, for, as well as the nursing uniform, Rena now had taken to wearing a professional veil whenever the doctor called. She said it was to keep her hair, that gleaming gold hair, away from her face, but it was still a very becoming veil. ‘When one grows older things happen,’ Rena said vaguely about her parent.
She was not so unkind as simply untouched, Pippa decided. Like Pippa, Rena had no mother, her maternal parent, too, having died early in her life, but unlike Pippa she had no Aunt Helen. Pippa could find a great pity in her for that. Rena might have a father, but Uncle Preston was entirely a business person, never, Pippa remembered distantly yet with love, like her own father. Preston Franklin had a fatherly regard, but it was mainly a massive paternal pride, pride that Rena was a Franklin after himself.
Pippa thought of Uncle Preston as someone who once he got something into his mind would not let go of it. For instance, his comfortable status (even though he complained about reversals) must have come through long hard application as well as a natural acumen. She felt he had passed that iron determination on to his daughter, and whatever it was ... though that should be whoever it was, thought Pippa, for unmistakably it was this Doctor Burt ... she wanted, she would leave nothing undone not to get her own way.
For some reason part of that programme was to have Pippa away. Had she not been the owl, the rabbit so long, Pippa might have been complimented over this, but she had no illusions about herself. She was that ‘little brown thing’ that Rena had described to her father.
So far, apart from not wanting her present, Rena had been quite friendly to Pippa. Having her father to complete her little act whenever Doctor Burt attended, she had had no need yet to deprive Pippa of Davy, for Pippa felt she knew now why the pair of them, Rena’s distant English cousins, were here in Tombonda. It was that determination of Rena’s, that iron resolve to get what she wanted. Evidently she had tried other methods with the elusive doctor, then recognized the possibility of this one. Shrewdly she had built up a scene for herself ... Uncle Preston had said painted a picture ... and she had had the money to do it, to bring the two of them, though only one really was needed, Davy, over from England. She never really had taken to Davy, Pippa knew now. She didn’t dislike him, she simply had no feeling about it at all, but he had happened at a right moment, and she had grabbed what offered. Just now she could play the humanitarian role without the little boy, her father could complete a tableau set out for this Doctor Burt, but when Uncle Preston was around again Pippa had no doubt that Davy would take his place, and much more picturesquely, for there was something infinitely winning in the tender caring of a child.
What was he like, this doctor, for Rena to be so keen? So keen even that she did what could have been termed ‘homework’ on him. She sought out Pippa and asked her advice on nursing.
‘I was a typist, Rena.’
‘But you’ve looked after Davy.’
‘Never professionally.’
‘Only a few things, Pippa, sensible, convincing things will do.’
‘Convincing to whom, Rena?’
‘It’s really nothing to do with you, Pippa. You’ve been brought over here free and you are enjoying free board, so I hardly think—’
‘I didn’t mean it like that. I mean what manner of person is to be convinced. If it’s someone who understands a nurse’s duties—’
‘It’s Glen Burt,’ said Rena quite calmly. A pause. ‘I’m marrying him.’
No ‘I hope to’. No ‘If I do’. Had Uncle Preston been like that when he decided to be a business success?
‘Glen is not the usual type,’ Rena continued. ‘I mean not—well, not like Dom Hardy.’ Domrey Hardy shared his overseer duties between the Franklin property on this side of the hill and the Crag property on the other, the Southern Highlands estates not being large enough to warrant an individual man. Pippa had met him and been favourably impressed. He seemed the born all-round farmer, she thought, the right man for a mixed district like this where piggeries, dairy farming, poultry runs and orchards found the weather equally favourable. She felt sure he would have had his own farm had he had the means.
‘Dom is transparent, you can see what he’s thinking, and that is of me,’ Rena said with the lack of pleasure that beautiful accustomed girls often show.
‘But Glen,’ she continued, ‘is unaware of me. He is so dedicated, so lit up. It’s different to meet a man like that.’
‘You’ve been spoiled, Rena,’ Pippa smiled tolerantly. She suddenly found herself thinking of Crag, and wondering how apparent he had been. Was that overapparency the reason he had come back from his ‘Big Country’ to Tombonda to see what had happened between himself and the girl next door? Had he been too easy for Rena? Would Rena tell him so when he asked her as he had told Pippa on the train that he would: ‘What gives?’
She had not seen Crag yet, though Davy had spoken of him persistently and longingly. She had had the idea of walking the little boy over the hill to renew the acquaintance, for Davy had certainly made an idol of him, only she had been forbidden. It was ridiculous, really, and she didn’t understand it, but on the first morning that she had visited Uncle Preston in his sickroom, an approved visit since Doctor Burt was not expected until noon, she had said in answer to how she was filling in time a casual, ‘Looking around, Uncle Preston. This afternoon I thoug
ht I’d take Davy over to the next estate.’
‘Crag’s?’
‘Yes.’
‘No, my girl.’
‘No, Uncle Preston?’
'No.’
‘But, Uncle Preston—’
‘No. Do you hear?’
‘Yes, I do.’ She couldn’t see any reason, though, but Uncle Preston was not supposed to talk much, so she had left it at that. Evidently Rena was unconcerned where she went so long as she was not around when Glen Burt was here, but Uncle Preston had been quite emphatic.
‘I suppose I have been spoiled,’ shrugged Rena, continuing on with her musings. ‘I know I’m attractive. And that’s what challenges me. He ... Glen ... doesn’t notice.’
‘Do you love him or are you enjoying the challenge?’ Pippa dared.
‘They’re both the same when you’ve been bored like I have.’
‘Oh, Rena—’ began Pippa, but Rena broke in irritably:
‘Give me some nursing hints.’
‘I only took an aide course,’ demurred Pippa, but as Rena stuck out a stubborn lip she complied.
‘A nurse needs to be adaptable, tactful and discreet. Her patient is her first concern.’
‘Something more concrete. I could pretend all that.’
Pippa told her about room temperature, the storing of medicines, the necessity for a stock of good temper and patience, the need to concede yet stand firm.
‘Something definite,’ Rena demanded.
‘I’ve only dealt with children, with Davy.’
‘That’s what I want, because Father will be up again very soon, and I’ll have to use your brother. Oh, don’t look like that. I wish him the best as you do, but if I can avail myself at the same time, I will. Tell me something, Pippa.’
‘It’s as well to be able to amuse a sick child,’ Pippa said leadenly. Why had she ever come here? she wondered.
Rena must have seen she had gone a little too far. ‘Tell me about Davy,’ she asked quite gently. ‘What exactly is it?’
‘An incurable circulatory disease. That is, incurable now.’
‘You mean something might be found?’
‘I tell myself so, and no one really can say definitely these days, but—’ Pippa looked away.
‘All this will interest Glen.’ Rena became brisk again. ‘He wants to do research. That costs money, and you’d think he’d be aware that I could help him.’ She looked around at her affluent home with satisfaction. ‘Tombonda, she went on, ‘is only till Glen goes to Europe, or America, or—or somewhere right away.’ She said the last almost with passionate fervour, and Pippa looked at her in puzzlement. ‘Right away,’ her cousin repeated.
Pippa thought of how she had declared that love and challenge were the same when you were bored and she wondered had the doctor been any other man who had not thrown his heart at Rena’s feet would any other men be as attractive to her cousin? Undoubtedly, her thoughts ran on, Crag Crag’s failure with Rena had been his oversusceptibility. Perhaps if she saw the brown man before he returned to his Big Country, to his Yantumara, Falling Star, she could put him wise. A pity for such a family-anxious person to waste ‘time for living life as it should be lived’ by making wrong moves.
That afternoon Pippa saw Glen Burt. She was gathering flowers to brighten her room when his car pulled up. She got behind a shrub, knowing that Rena would be angry if she was around, but she had a good look at him.
She liked him instantly, and she would have loved to have talked to him about Davy. There was a gentleness yet a strength to him, she thought. No wonder that Rena...
Rena sought her out later and said quite frankly: ‘Father’s to be up and around again quite soon, indeed, he’ll be allowed on the patio tomorrow, so I’ll be using your brother. I’m not asking “Any objection?” because even if you had one, like Dom always has objections, I wouldn’t listen.’
She always brought Domrey Hardy into it, Pippa mused. She answered her cousin: ‘That’s all right, Rena, so long as Davy has attention.’
‘He’s going to have heaps of it,’ Rena assured her.
Uncle Preston was out on the patio the next day as promised, and during the morning he had a word with Pippa.
‘You’ve stopped away from next door as I said?’
‘Why, yes, Uncle Preston.’
‘You’re entitled to a reason.’
‘I think I am. You see, I met Mr. Crag on the train coming down to Tombonda, and Davy has been asking about him.’
‘Then Rena can take him over.’
‘I think,’ Pippa said clearly, ‘that that might be suitable, for Mr. Crag said on the journey that he wanted an understanding with Rena.’ Actually he had said he wanted to know ‘What gives?’ but he had meant an understanding.
She waited for Uncle Preston to explain, and, always the business man, he did.
‘They had a semi-agreement,’ he grunted. ‘It was just after Rena had that fall off Bunting, I remember.’—Bunting was one of the ponies—‘I thought everything was set between the pair of them, and I was pleased, even though ...’ Uncle Preston was silent for a moment. ‘Yes, I was pleased,’ he took up again, ‘because Crag could keep my girl in the way she was accustomed.
‘Then that fellow, that doctor fellow joined the act,’ he went on. He glowered.
‘And Rena fell in love with him?’
‘I don’t know about this love,’ grumbled Uncle Preston testily.
‘You must do. You married Aunt Millicent.’
‘She was suitable,’ he replied. That was typical of Uncle Preston, and Pippa half-smiled.
‘You don’t find Doctor Burt suitable?’ she asked.
‘He’s a dreamer. You only have to look at him.’
‘I haven’t,’ admitted Pippa. Well, actually she hadn’t, only between the boughs of a shrub.
‘Then you will,’ he promised.
‘Rena doesn’t want that, though I don’t know why.’
‘Don’t fish for compliments. You’re pretty, Pippa. Not a beauty like my girl, but lots of men like a quiet type like you. She doesn’t want you because she’s afraid Glen might be one of those men. Which would suit me. Oh, yes, you’ll meet Burt, my girl.’
Uneasily Pippa had left Uncle Preston. At no time had she expected to be rapturously happy in Australia, so long as Davy was contented had been all she had asked, but this in-between position in which she found herself, in between Rena and her father, was certainly something she had not anticipated.
That she had not dreamed up the situation was established at once by Rena meeting her in the hall just beyond the patio.
‘I know what he said,’ Rena pounced at once.
‘It was unimportant, Rena.’
‘Not unimportant to me. I told you I was going to marry Glen.’
‘Yes, I heard you, but I can’t see where I come in.’
Rena looked hard at her but did not explain. ‘I meant it, Pippa. I am marrying Glen. So I don’t want you in this.’
‘I don’t want to be in it, either, I just want a quiet life with Davy.’
‘Then you’ve come to the wrong place if you interfere. Father doesn’t want Glen for me, so he’s encouraging you to step in. But I won’t have it, Pippa. Do you understand?’
Pippa said, confused, ‘He’s forbidden me to take Davy over to Crag’s.’
Rena shrugged carelessly at that and the shrug prompted Pippa to complain: ‘You tell me to keep away from the doctor, yet your father tells me to keep away from your neighbour. What am I to do?’
‘What I say, of course.’
‘And that is to—’
‘To see Crag. To do what you like with Crag. I don’t want him.’ A toss of the golden head.
About to add, ‘Neither do I, Pippa said impulsively instead, ‘But you did once.’
‘I don’t know if I did,’ Rena shrugged again. ‘I think it was just—just—’ But she did not finish it. She set her lips instead.
Pippa broke the littl
e silence that followed by repeating, ‘You must appreciate my position, Rena. Your father forbids me to see Mr. Crag. You forbid me to see Doctor Burt. I have no particular desire to see either, so what gives?’
What gives? Crag Crag’s drawled words. She thought of Davy’s Big Country man and wondered why she had copied the foolish phrase.
‘Oh, just make do with Dom,’ advised Rena crossly, for the overseer was coming up the drive now. Quite rudely the girl turned and left Pippa to greet the young farmer alone. Dom took it philosophically. ‘Always,’ he sighed, ‘Rena is running away from me. It was just a buying authority I needed. Something dull to do with pigs.’
‘Only you don’t find it dull?’ deduced Pippa sympathetically.
‘No,’ he admitted, ‘I love what I’m doing.’
‘Except that you’d sooner be doing it for yourself?’
‘And with—’ he began impulsively. Then he stopped.
It came to Pippa that if anyone could help her in her odd position, the in-between uncertainty in which she found herself, in between stubborn Uncle Preston and determined Rena, it could be this kind young man.
‘Mr. Hardy—’ she ventured.
‘Can’t it be Dom?’ he smiled. ‘Admittedly we’re not the wide untrammelled west—’
‘The big country.’
‘Yes, but even in these Southern Highlands formality is out of place.’
‘I’m Pippa,’ she agreed warmly, for she couldn’t help liking him. As he nodded back, she began again, ‘Dom—’
But she wasn’t to ask his advice or help or information, because Rena’s imperative voice called to her through a window.
‘Where’s Davy?’ Rena asked sharply.
With a little gesture to Domrey Hardy, Pippa went inside. Rena met her as she came through the door. ‘Glen is coming at once to give Father a final look-over before he’s allowed right out of the house and around the grounds again. Daddy’s obviously thriving, so no doubt Glen will make this a last visit unless he’s called out especially. But he’s one of those righteous doctors you can’t call. I mean he wants to know if it’s absolutely necessary.’ A little rueful laugh. ‘What a man! So I thought I’d present Davy today, start a new programme of events. But the wretched boy is missing.’
A Thousand Candles Page 3
