Another island wedding? To go through with all this tomfoolery again? Every nerve in Fern’s body rebelled against the thought.
‘But Sam…’
‘Sam will marry here if you want to badly enough.’
‘I don’t think…’
‘You can persuade him, if you try.’
Maybe she could. The problem was that Fern wasn’t too sure she wanted to persuade anybody.
‘Aunt…’
Fern’s words broke off mid-sentence as the door opened behind them and Quinn Gallagher walked in.
‘I need to check your aunt before Clinic,’ Quinn said apologetically to Fern. He smiled down at Maud. ‘I suppose you haven’t changed your mind about this operation?’
‘I have and all,’ Maud whispered triumphantly, her eyes only just a little bit scared. ‘Tell him, Fern.’
‘She says she’ll go,’ Fern said faintly.
‘But tell him your promise,’ Maud demanded. ‘So you’ve made it in front of witnesses. If I die in the next five minutes your promise is still binding.’
‘I’ve promised my aunt that if she agrees to the operation then I’ll marry on the island.’ Fern’s voice was almost as weak a whisper as her aunt’s.
‘Marry Sam?’ Quinn’s expressive eyebrows rose skyward.
‘I don’t care if Fern changes her mind and marries the local undertaker,’ Maud muttered. She’d had her win and fatigue was starting to show. ‘But whoever she marries, she marries here. Right, Fern?’
‘R-right.’
‘Well, well,’ Quinn Gallagher drawled. He looked down at Fern and his mouth quirked into an enigmatic smile. ‘Well, well…’
Good grief…
What on earth had she done? Made promises that she had no way of knowing she could keep?
Fern left Maud to Quinn Gallagher’s capable care and escaped to the corridor.
Sam…She should see Sam before she went back to her uncle’s. He’d expect a visit for sure.
Why didn’t she want to see him?
She opened his door with trepidation, expecting maybe a repeat of the tirade of last night. Instead of scowls, however, Sam was sitting up in bed looking perfectly resplendent in his purple pyjamas and beaming with his usual good humour.
Sam normally was benign and happy, Fern thought. It was only the shock of being ill that had thrown him.
‘Fern…’ Sam held out his hands and Fern had no choice but to walk across to the bed and take them. He kissed her soundly on both cheeks. ‘How are you, sweetheart? And how’s your aunt?’
‘She’s better this morning,’ Fern told him, managing a smile to match his. ‘But still very weak.’
Sam took a deep breath. Clearly something was disturbing him. ‘Fern, Dr Gallagher told me this morning just how close to death she’d been—and he also told me I was a right twit last night Will you forgive me?’
The wind was knocked out of Fern’s sails in a rush. She looked down at Sam and saw the same kid she’d grown up with—the man she was as familiar with as a pair of old socks—and the reasons she was marrying him firmed back to solid comfort.
‘You were frightened yourself,’ she reassured him. ‘I was just grateful I didn’t eat any of those dreadful oysters myself.’
‘I didn’t think Lizzy would go that far for me,’ Sam said, and his tone was half-admiring. ‘She’s quite a girl.’
‘Sam…’ Fern pulled back and stared at her fiancé in concern. ‘Sam, are you absolutely sure you don’t want to marry Lizzy?’
‘Marry…’ Sam’s face froze. ‘No. Of course not. What on earth put that idea into your head? Fern, you know that thing we had in the past is well and truly over—at least it is with me. Sure, we were a pair when we were kids—but that was before you came, and before I decided I wanted a life off the island. What sort of lawyer’s wife do you reckon Lizzy would make? First, she’d be scared stiff to leave here and second…well, imagine asking clients home to dinner. If she didn’t like them I’d have to taste test their food for poison.’
‘She wouldn’t do that,’ Fern said slowly. ‘Sam, if Lizzy conformed a bit more…Are you saying you’d just as soon many her as me?’
Sam smiled and shook his head, his hands still holding Fern’s.
‘Of course not, Fern. I want a sensible wife—not a scatterbrain. You had a bad day, sweetheart, and it’s making you have doubts. Most brides have nerves before the wedding.’
‘But…’
‘Fern, we’ve agreed this is a really sensible choice. We know each other so well there are no surprises. We don’t fight We both want careers without children and neither of us believe in this crazy thing called romance. So…We’re made for each other, Fern, and you know it So as soon as we get back to Sydney…’
‘Aunt Maud wants us to marry here. Still…’
Sam frowned. ‘But Lizzy…’
‘I don’t think Lizzy will interfere again,’ Fern said sadly, thinking of Lizzy’s half scared, half defiant face as she’d left her yesterday. ‘I think it would be kinder to Lizzy if we married elsewhere—but my aunt’s desperate to see us married. She says if we marry here she’ll come to the mainland with us and have a bypass operation—and she needs it if she’s to live.’
‘Your aunt leave the island…’ Sam lay back on his pillows and stared up at Fern in amazement He knew Maud almost as well as Fern did and he knew what a concession she was making. ‘Whew…’
‘So you see…’
‘Yeah, I see.’ Sam stroked his smooth chin thoughtfully. ‘Well, we’ve three weeks’ honeymoon and today’s only Sunday. How about if we marry on Friday? It still gives us two weeks’ study time back in Sydney before we start work.’
Just like that. As romantic as making a pot of tea…
Quinn’s tea…
Stop thinking about the man. Fern forced her mind back to practicalities with a mammoth effort.
‘O-OK. A small wedding, though, Sam. Maybe even here if my aunt’s not well enough to come to church. Just my aunt and uncle and your parents.’
‘Suits me.’ He smiled. ‘Even Lizzy won’t dare try anything if we’re marrying in the hospital. But you’ll still wear your gorgeous dress, won’t you, Fern? You looked smashing.’
Fern thought back to the crumpled mound of soiled wedding dress she had left lying on her bedroom floor. Ugh…
‘I’ll have to have it cleaned,’ she said reluctantly. Why was her major impulse to bury the dress and be done with it? ‘But, yes, I’ll wear the dress.’
‘Then that’s settled…’
‘And I’m staying in hospital till then,’ Frank Reid hooted from behind the curtain. He’d obviously been listening to every word. ‘I’ve no intention of missing your wedding after all this, Fern Rycroft, even if I have to promise to drink no beer, eat no lamingtons and touch not a single oyster.’
The day dragged on after that.
Sam decided that he was staying in hospital for the day, thank you very much, in case he had a relapse and Quinn agreed with such speed that Fern thought uncharitable thoughts about the account he was mentally preparing in his head.
‘You could go home,’ she told Sam, but he shook his head.
‘I’m not risking it,’ he said, folding his arms in a gesture of final decision. ‘A man has to take care of his health—and in Dr Gallagher’s hands I’m in very good hands.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ Fern agreed, casting a doubting glance at Quinn as he entered the room. There were dollar signs in his laughing eyes.
‘He doesn’t need to be here,’ she told Quinn as they left together.
‘Any suggestions how to shift him?’ Quinn grinned. ‘It doesn’t bother me that he stays, Dr Rycroft. He’s a paying customer and if I need the bed I’ll move him somehow—even by enema if I have to.’
Fern laughed, but she was mortified all the same.
‘Don’t fret,’ Quinn told her, seeing the doubt behind her smile. He touched her fleetingly on the cheek with a touch
that felt as if it was charged with electricity. ‘I’ll take great care of your beloved. For you…’
He left her standing on the hospital steps, feeling more confused than she’d ever felt in her life.
Fern drove back to the farmhouse to find her uncle in deepest despair. He cheered up, though, when Fern told him of his wife’s decision to have the operation and went off to the hospital to sit with her.
Fern was left facing the mess from the day before.
The mess suited her mood.
The lunch dishes were still unwashed from yesterday’s ill-fated wedding lunch. The guests had gone straight from lunch to the church. ‘We’ll fix this mess later,’ Maud had promised and here it was…later. There were still a couple of oysters, cold and congealed on plates around the room. Ugh!
Even after Fern had cleared the mess she cleaned on, polishing mirrors, searching for non-existent cobwebs…
Trying to block out Quinn Gallagher and his unwelcome offer…
She didn’t feel the least bit tempted. She didn’t…
Her uncle was being fed at the hospital. Fern made herself a sandwich for lunch and another for tea and then, toward dusk, she wandered down to the harbour.
It was as if she was in some sort of limbo—some waiting time—but she didn’t know what she was waiting for.
It was a glorious night, a repeat performance of the night before. The island might be in the grip of drought, its grasses burned brown from a long hot summer, but in the dusk little of that was obvious. The moon shimmered into existence low on the horizon and slowly started to rise.
Fern dug her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans and walked slowly along the rows of boats representing Barega’s fishing fleet. She knew each and every one of them. Normally they’d be out on a night like this—but most of the fishermen had been at the wedding…
Most had eaten Lizzy’s oysters.
They’d still be feeling weak and washed out after last night’s stomach upsets and the sea would have little appeal.
Fern walked slowly from boat to boat. They were as familiar as…as familiar as Sam.
She walked halfway down the jetty and then stopped dead as an unfamiliar sound smashed across the silence.
Fern turned, trying to figure out where the sound had come from.
There was another smash, the splintering of timber under something that sounded like an axe. Then a shout of horror echoed over the water from the end of the jetty and, as if driven by the shout, a diesel engine roared into life.
In the dim moonlight Fern saw a fishing boat swerve out from its moorings and head for the open sea. Fast!
It was Lizzy’s boat. The fishing boat that Lizzy’s father had operated before her. The Dolphin…
What on earth was the crash, though? Instinctively, Fern started to run toward the gap Lizzy’s boat had left, her sneaker-clad feet moving swiftly on the jetty boards.
There was someone else there. The boat next to Lizzy’s belonged to Alf Gunn. Alf was in his eighties and his boat was the old fisherman’s only home. He slept below deck. Now he was standing on the jetty, rubbing his eyes as if waking from a bad dream.
‘Alf, what is it?’ Fern reached the old man and took his shoulders in her hands. The sense of urgency inside her was making her feel sick. She just knew…
‘The girl…’ Alf’s voice was a disbelieving whisper. ‘Lizzy…I heard the first smash and was up like a cork in a bottle of fizz, thinking it was vandals. It was Lizzy, miss. She’s stove a ruddy great hole in her boat—in her lovely boat!—right below the Plimsoll line. And she’s headed out to sea with water pouring in! Top speed…’
‘Why…?’
They both knew why. The old man and the girl stared at each other in horror as they came to terms with what Lizzy had done.
‘It’s suicide, isn’t it, Fern?’ Alf said bleakly. ‘After what she did yesterday…’
‘I guess…’ Fern’s mind was racing at a hundred miles an hour. ‘How big was the hole?’
‘Big enough. Not so big that she’ll go down in the harbour, though. Most of the hole was above water. It’s only when the boat hits the ocean swell…’
Lizzy had thought this out well. If the boat went down in the harbour she wouldn’t drown. She could swim like a fish. But if she got her boat out into the main ocean currents…and her boat sank…There was no way Lizzy could change her mind after that.
‘So we follow her,’ Fern said frantically. ‘Can we do it, Alf?’
‘We don’t have a choice,’ Alf said grimly. ‘Come on, girl!’
Alf was born on the boat and born to the sea. The same as Lizzy. It took such a one to follow Lizzy because the girl was moving with both desperation and skill.
From the mouth of the harbour a reef ran eastward in a foaming, jagged line. Lizzy’s boat, lights cut, turned north—straight across the reef. If it hadn’t been a moonlit night they wouldn’t have seen her. As it was, Fern could hardly believe her eyes.
‘She’ll smash on the rocks,’ Fern gasped.
‘Not Lizzy,’ Alf said grimly. ‘Not that she’d mind if she did—but there’s a gap, if you know the way. If she hits the reef she’ll risk being washed up on the beach within minutes. It’s my guess Lizzy doesn’t want that to happen.’
‘Do you know the way…?’
She didn’t have to ask. Alf was already swinging his boat north and it was all Fern could do not to close her eyes in horror.
There was foam surging all around their boat and jagged rocks on either side. Surely this was impossible…In the dark…
It wasn’t impossible. The boat lurched through the last breaking wave and surged on. Ahead of them was Lizzy’s boat, sinking lower and lower in the water as she went
‘May it keep afloat another five minutes,’ Alf said through gritted teeth, ‘or she’ll drift back onto the reef.’
His wish was granted. Lizzy’s boat was gunned hard out to sea; it went on and on, its deck sinking to an impossible level…
Then it stopped dead. A swell must have caught it broadside and the huge mass of water below decks shifted.
The boat reared sideways and slowly, slowly, slipped under the water.
As it disappeared under the surface, a thin, forlorn figure raised her hands in the air and slipped beneath the waves with her boat.
CHAPTER SIX
‘DEAR God!’
Alf had unconsciously gripped Fern’s arm in—for Alf—an almost unheard-of gesture of emotional need. He’d throttled right back to dead still.
‘The boat will suck her down,’ Fern whispered.
‘It’s not big enough to pull her right down and hold her,’ Alf said, as though thinking to himself. ‘Too small a boat for huge suction. It’ll put her down a way but she’ll come up again—unless she’s caught…’
‘But…’
‘She’s aimed right for the middle of the slipstream.’ Alf chewed his lip and then gunned his boat forward fast, slowing as they reached the point where Lizzy’s boat had sunk. ‘She’s thought this out, all right.’
There was nothing to see. A vague turbulence swirled on the surface as though air was escaping from the cabin below but there was no Lizzy.
Alf cut his engine. He grabbed the lifebuoy on the side of the boat and tossed it overboard and then tossed a couple of life-jackets over, for good measure.
No one tried to swim to them.
There were no cries for help. Nothing.
There was dead silence apart from the slap of water against the wooden sides of Alf’s boat.
Nothing at all to show that Lizzy had ever been here.
‘She’s gone…’
‘She won’t have drowned yet,’ Alf said grimly. ‘It’s darned hard to make yourself drown if you’re as strong a swimmer as Lizzy Hurst. The slipstream here runs straight out to sea and it’s too strong to swim against. That’s why she’s come here, I reckon. Lizzy’ll be carried out—and the only way we can stay within cooee of her is by letting oursel
ves be carried with her.’
‘But, Alf…’
‘Water pushes everything along at the same rate,’ Alf muttered. He was talking more to himself than to Fern. ‘See the lifebuoy and life-jackets I tossed over? They’re still almost together. As soon as we start the engine we’ll lose her. Drifting with her is our only hope. Her only hope.’
The old man cupped his hands around his mouth.
‘Lizzy,’ he yelled. ‘We’re here. Swim to us and stop being a damned fool…’
The old man stopped on a spurt of coughing.
‘You yell,’ he said grimly. ‘My lungs aren’t as strong as they used to be. I’m going below to see if I can find a torch.’
‘Lizzy…’
Fern’s yell drifted over the eerie silence like a hopeless dirge.
Ten seconds later Alf was back with his torch—a big flashlight with a powerful beam. He played it over the water while Fern yelled.
On Fern’s tenth yell they both saw her, a frail floating figure that ducked under the surface as the spotlight hit her.
‘Lizzy,’ Fern screamed. ‘Lizzy…’
‘Go away…’ The girl was within thirty yards of the boat, sobbing with despair. ‘Go away. Let me drown…’
And she duck-dived again into the depths.
‘We’ll never get her,’ Alf said morosely. ‘Not if she don’t want to be got The water in this slipstream comes straight from the Antarctic, Fern. She’ll get hypothermia and drown—that’s if the sharks don’t get her first.’
‘Sharks…’
‘Not many round here.’ Alf moved the torch over the water again. Nothing. ‘Water’s too cold. But enough…’
‘So…’
‘If she wants to die, I don’t see how we can stop her,’ Alf said. ‘Guess we just stay here in case she changes her mind. Maybe we ought to radio the local cop—not that he can do anything…’
Of course. The radio…
‘Sam might be more use…’
‘Beg pardon?’ Alf queried but Fern was already clambering below, her thoughts converting to instant action. Fern had spent heaps of time on fishing boats as a teenager and knew how the radio worked. She needed Sam…
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