She cradled the Thermos cup in her hands and he refilled it for her. “I guess you needn’t worry about costing me a few hundred dollars, I shan’t miss it,” he said gently but factually.
“I’ll repay every penny, it’s nothing to do with how much you can afford,” Jane said crossly, “but it may take a little time. And we’ll have to think of a way out—for Lisa. You and I will have to—to have a quarrel or something. Break off this ridiculous engagement.”
“I guess we did that just now in the office,” he said, but smilingly. He was finding something likeable and candid in this girl now he knew the truth, “but at least let Lisa have a holiday here, Jane. Maybe she’ll get bored with being in the Outback, then it won’t be such a disappointment to her to return to England.”
“Maybe...” Jane felt a faint reviving hope, “she doesn’t really like living in the country even in England—she was always wanting me to sell Lilac Cottage.”
“Why didn’t you?”
She explained to him the simple economics of the case, the risk in selling their freehold comfortable cottage, the price of fiats or small houses closer to a town or the seaside. For the moment she had forgotten the awkwardness of her present situation. She talked facts and figures in a common-sense way. “Her treatments at the clinics cost quite a bit. So far they haven’t done the paralysis any good, but it’s worth it to keep, her hopeful.”
Steve nodded thoughtfully. “Could be the new kind of life here and the climate could help her.” He thrust his wide-brimmed ancient hat farther back on his head.
“Tell me about this accident,” he commanded, “then I’ll take you back to the house to have a good long sleep. Mrs. Newbery’ll give you a couple of tablets, sleep’s the best cure for the kind of shocks you’ve had this morning and we keep a pretty good stock of medicines here.”
She laughed involuntarily, and sobered suddenly. “Whatever did you tell Mrs. Newbery about us?” she whispered, aghast at the implications. But the housekeeper had been so kind and friendly.
“Nothing—except that you and Lisa were arriving from England on a visit.” Steve suddenly had a glint of amusement in his grey eyes. “Like everyone else, she naturally assumes we met when I was in Devon last August.” He added, drawling, “And like everyone else, she’ll take it for granted that there’s a romance in this. She’ll be delighted. She never wanted me to marry Alison.”
“Oh, Steve, how awful! She’s a dear.”
“Not to worry. She’ll enjoy mothering you both, especially a child like Lisa.”
“She’s not such a child. She’s twenty, Steve—and when the accident happened she’d just got her first good part in a film. She was a wonderful dancer.”
“Tell me about the accident,” he said again, quietly. He was surprised to learn that Lisa was twenty. She looked about sixteen.
Jane told him, slowly at first and then more easily, about the tragic skid that had killed her mother and maimed her sister. Steve listened gravely, nodding now and then. Jane was finding him quite easy to talk to now that they had come to an understanding.
“My word,” he said at last, “it must have been a terrible shock for you both. I suppose this thing is largely psychological with Lisa, isn’t it?”
“That’s what the specialists say. She’s had all sorts of treatment for the last eighteen months, but there’s been no miracle cure.”
Steve got up and retrieved the hat he had brought for her and handed it to Jane, and put the flask in the pocket of his slacks. As they began climbing the bush path back to the homestead he said quietly, “Jane, I think you got yourself engaged to Steve mostly for Lisa’s sake.”
He ignored the small movement of her shoulders and went on in the same reasonable tone, “And I think you’ll have to pocket your pride again—for Lisa’s sake.”
“What do you mean?” she stopped and turned back to look at him, straightening her shoulders in an unconscious gesture of defiance that made him smile inwardly. He had too much perception to show his amusement, though, to the girl.
“I mean that another shock—even a disappointment—might do Lisa harm instead of good. We’ll have to postpone our quarrel for a bit, Jane. Stay for a month at least—we don’t get the wet—the monsoon rains—until after Christmas. Give Lisa the chance to see what the new life and the Queensland sunshine can do for her. Let’s forget Stewart—to hell with him.”
Jane didn’t need to take any tranquillisers. After a glance into Lisa’s room to make sure her sister was still asleep, she undressed and crept into bed, utterly exhausted.
The nylon sheet and thin, open-weave blanket were light and cool. She grimaced a little as she loosed the mosquito-net around her bed and tucked it in; running out like that under the blazing sun without a hat had been idiotic, and sitting in the bush she had been bitten by mosquitoes on her arms and neck.
Steve Forrest—the real Steve Forrest—must think her an imbecile; even if he didn’t now believe her something worse.
She lay flat on her back, staring into the cloudy folds of the mosquito-net. It was cool in this south-facing room with the wire screens across the windows and in spite of the shocks she had had in the past few hours, and the problems awaiting her in the future, Jane felt strangely relaxed.
Steve had accepted the truth of her story, for which she was devoutly thankful.
He seemed to be accustomed to arranging things for people, and he had been extraordinarily kind about Lisa. For the moment—just for the moment, she thought sleepily, it was a relief to have someone arranging their lives for them...
A flicker of self-contempt ran through her mind when she remembered how she had let Stewart arrange this farce for her less than a month ago. But there was a world of difference between the two men and her self-respect had taken such a battering this morning that she didn’t want even to think about Stewart Finch any more. Not yet anyway. One day she would tell him just what she thought of him, but not yet.
Expecting to toss and turn, working out her problems, Jane fell almost instantly into a deep sleep, and dreamed that she was being married in Melcoombe Church to a man whose face she could not see in the dim shadows, and the veil that fell over her shoulders was made of spotless white mosquito-netting, and the bouquet she handed to Lisa in her wheel chair was a spray of tender pink bluegum-tips. And the vicar was not her familiar old friend at Melcoombe, but the brown monkey-like face of Joel McEwan, who said, “It’ll be cooler down by the river, Mrs. Forrest.”
“Sleeping like bairns, both of them,” Mrs. Newbery reported to Steve when they sat down to their cold luncheon on the back veranda, “it doesna seem worth while to wake them—they need their sleep, puir lassies.”
Steve nodded, pouring out some iced fruit juice for the small, fair-haired boy who sat between him and the housekeeper. He had ridden thirty miles since Jane had gone to her room, to see if one of the water holes had gone dry; returned to shed his sweat-soaked clothes and have a shower. It was his custom to change his clothes about three times every day. Moonie, the half caste girl who helped Mrs. Newbery in the homestead rather erratically, had already collected the shed clothing from his .room, washed it in the laundry under the house, and hung it out to dry on the line beyond the annexe. In ten minutes or so it would be ready to bring in and iron. Washing and ironing went on spasmodically all day, every day, in the big cool laundry under the house. No one regarded it as a heavy chore in this climate.
“Why do they have to rest in the morning, Uncle Steve?” Jamie demanded. His fair skin was tanned to a golden-brown and his blue eyes were very bright. “I want to talk to them! An’ why did you carry the pretty one like a baby and put her in that chair thing ... can’t she walk?”
“Hush and eat your lunch, Jamie,” Mrs. Newbery said evenly, smiling a little. “How did you know all this? I thought I told ye to bide quietly in your playroom.”
“You didn’t tell me not to peek, Gran.” Jamie grinned at her fearlessly. “I peeked from the windows, o
f course. Did a log fall on her legs or something, like Granddad?”
“No. Lisa was hurt in a car accident, Jamie,” Steve said quickly.
The boy was interested. “Won’t she ever walk properly—or ride n’ swim, or anything?” he demanded, frowning.
He was very curious about the newcomers. In his world anyone who could not do these things was unheard of. Almost before he could walk Uncle Steve had taught him to swim in the river pool, and to ride one of the quieter ponies. He was completely at home down in the stockyards and completely fearless of the horses. He had once been a bit frightened by a cattle stampede and he hated snakes, but those were hazards he had been trained to avoid. All the women and girls who came to the station could drive cars and utilities and ride like the men.
“She won’t have any fun, will she?” he added thoughtfully.
“I hope she will,” Steve answered quietly. “I hope Doctor Mike or Doctor Paul will make her better. And brave people like Lisa can have lots of fun even in a wheel chair, you know.”
Jamie, munching an apple with his sharp white teeth, said doubtfully, “Can they? I hope the other one can ride. I hope they’re not going to sleep all the time.”
“Whist, boy! If ye’d been travelling for two whole days right across the world, ye’d need some rest. And now it’s time for your nap, my laddie.”
“Too right. Joel said you put in a couple of good hours at the crutching this morning. And no more peeking—you’ll meet the visitors for tea, Jamie, if you behave yourself.” Steve sent the small boy off with a pat on his behind and pushed his chair back from the table, stretching out his long legs.
“And what are you grinning like a Cheshire cat for, Nubby?” he enquired, his own eyes crinkling at the comers.
“Am I?” she countered blandly, pouring his third cup of tea. “Mebbe I was just amused, Steve. Four or five of the men have been up to the house this morning, on one excuse or another. Jamie isn’t the only one longing to meet the girls. They’re dying of curiosity down at the quarters, ever since Joel brought the utility back.”
He laughed softly and she thought how much happier he seemed. She hadn’t seen, those wrinkles round his eyes for quite a while. “Are they? Maybe if they feel up to it, we’ll go down to the quarters in the cool after tea. Jane and Lisa will have to parade for inspection some time, better get it over with.”
“Aye. Or we’ll have older eyes than Jamie’s peeking through the wire screens,” the housekeeper said drily. As Steve lighted her cigarette she looked at him thoughtfully.
“How did Lisa come to be injured like that in an accident, and no harm to her sister? I’m being inquisitive, ye ken, but folks are sure to ask questions and I don’t want them poking and prying in front of the little lass herself.”
Steve told her briefly and factually about the accident, thankful that he had got the story from Jane earlier. Nubby shook her head sorrowfully. “Och, the puir wee thing! No wonder the doctors canna heal her when she’s blaming herself for her mother’s death. It must have been a sair shock for Miss Lesley, too.”
“Yes. Call her Jane, Nubby—they’ll have to get used to everyone using Christian names here. I want them to feel at home.”
“Och, aye, of course! They’ll soon settle down. No one stands on ceremony in the Outback.” She stubbed out her cigarette thoughtfully. “It’s queer, Steve, how bad things seem to happen suddenly juist when everything looks so rosy—my Jock was killed the week before he was to be made manager of the lumber camp,” she added wistfully, “he was a guid man, my Jock. The loggers liked him. He would have been a guid manager.”
“Poor Nubby.” Steve laid his hand over hers on the table for a moment. “You never told me that before.” She shrugged. “Nae use crying over spilled milk. But to think it happened to that child when she was a dancer, and set tae become a film star and all—I wonder she’s not embittered by it all. Is their father alive, Steve?”
“No. He was a doctor, Nubby. Lisa told me he died of cancer three years ago.” He didn’t say Lisa had told him this in one of her frank letters about their life. “Jane was a nurse in a big London hospital, nearly through her training. She went home to the village on Dartmoor to help nurse her father. His illness was slow, and afterwards her mother turned their cottage into a small guest house.” He was rearranging unused cutlery on the table in neat geometric patterns. “I gather Jane thought her place was at home, helping her mother. But according to Lisa she liked musing.”
“Aye. I doot she’d be a guid nurse, that one.” Nubby sighed. “They’re gey young, both of them, to have their careers cut away from under them.” She thought, so he’s collected some more lame dogs...
“Lisa’s not as young as she looks. She’s twenty.” Steve got up and whistled to the dogs who were lying in the shade of a fern tree. From the top step of the veranda he smiled down at Nubby. “We’ll have to see what the Blue River can do for them—sun and fresh air and your cooking and some new interests might work wonders!”
She laughed up at him. “You’re for ever bringing me something—someone—to mother! Anyone would think I was a foster hen, mebbe I am at that. Do you really think the Oonga doctors can do aught for Lisa when the big specialists have failed?”
He shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.” He looked around, up at the hill behind the house and down to the stream trickling between its ferny banks down to the river, and spread his big hands in a comprehensive gesture. “We can try, can’t we?” he said quietly.
CHAPTER FIVE
MRS. Newbery stood on the front veranda watching the small procession wending its way down the track leading round the hillside to the quarters and the stockyards on the other side, her eyes smiling yet a little puzzled.
Steve was pushing Lisa’s chair; sometimes the girl turned her head up to him, laughing and chattering, as he pointed out various things to her.
Beside him Jane walked, her hand held tightly by Jamie, who was obviously constituting himself her guide. Jamie would make a thorough job of it, his grandmother thought with amusement; he wouldn’t let Jane go before she had seen all the horses in the home paddocks, for a start.
Nubby was glad that Steve’s mood had lightened, though everything about the Lesley’s coming was a bit mysterious; watching him bend over the fragile-looking girl in the wheel chair she knew a moment of fear. Steve, for all his hard-working masculinity and common sense, had always been a pushover for lame dogs. He wasn’t as tough as he liked to pretend, though he could be tough when the occasion demanded it; like last June, when he had run Stewart off the Blue River, bag and baggage; and when he had thrashed the shearer who had got Betty into trouble...
She hoped it wasn’t Lisa he was interested in. The girl was pretty, gay and charming—but a cripple. The wife of a grazier in the Outback had to be strong and healthy, it was a hard life even nowadays when they had the Flying Doctor Service and a lot more roads and a lot more aircraft flying between the towns, and their own generator for electricity, and a lot more comforts in the homestead from the fat wool and beef cheques ... she doubted if Steve himself knew exactly how much money he had accumulated in the bank, he left it to his accountants to pay the station bills and taxes now that Stewart had left. Joel was a good practical manager, good with the stockmen and the day-to-day scheduling of work over the big property, but he wasn’t so good at the office work.
Steve had trusted Stewart, and Stewart had let him down.
Nubby sighed briefly and returned to the kitchen, where a great sirloin of beef with roast potatoes and kumeras sizzled in one of the ovens. She liked Lisa—one couldn’t help liking her somehow—but she wouldn’t be the right wife for Steve. She might be as bad as Alison, always fretting for the bright lights of the cities, once the novelty of the Outback life had worn off. And Steve was too busy to have much time to cosset an invalid wife.
She basted the beef with unconscious savagery. Usually they ate more mutton than beef, but dinner tonight was a special o
ccasion and, if the English were anything like the Scots, they liked good beef.
Nubby scolded herself as she worked. She had more sense than to try and arrange Steve’s life for him—he had always gone his own way, whatever the outcome, and when things had gone wrong he had not come crying for sympathy. Besides, she had no business speculating about it—the poor girls were orphans and Lisa bright and brave about her misfortune, and she had no right grudging them their chance of happiness at the Blue River when the Forrests had been so good to her in her time of trouble. And to Betty. Steve had paid the bills for Betty to have the best attention in the private hospital in Brisbane when Jamie was born.
It was funny, she thought, beginning to hum one of the numbers from The Sound of Music, how the coming of the girls from England had made her remember things she had almost forgotten ... her own arrival at Brisbane as a schoolgirl nearly thirty-five years ago, and how she had hated it at first after Lochiemuir; how her father had failed in the Depression and gone back home, disillusioned—but by then she had met Jock and fallen in love with the young lumberman, and decided to get married and stay in the new country she was beginning to understand and to love.
“Eh, ye must be getting old, Kirsty!” she admonished herself with dour amusement, folding in a generous spoonful of rum to the whipped cream that would decorate her trifle.
Wedding at Blue River Page 6
