The Coral Tree

by Joyce Dingwell

  “They’re freckles,” said Janet with a superior air; “haven’t you seen anything?”

  Robert thought a long while. “Yes, I seen a pressure cooker blow up,” he said, and that settled the argument.

  Cary turned her attention again to Jim. He did not mind the comments on his freckles; indeed, he seemed to enjoy it. He was obviously starved for companionship. His eyes followed the others like a little dog’s. “Dear lonely little man,” thought Cary.

  Now they were thirteen, and complete.

  Four girls went into one upstairs bedroom, three boys into the other. The downstairs dormitory was divided by a curtain to match the bed-covers—by courtesy, thought Cary gratefully, of Mr. Mallarkey—and the littlies were bedded there.

  Of them all, at this early stage, Jim seemed the only one at all interested in the ponies. It was not, Cary told Sorrel, a very helpful sign.

  “Can’t blame them,” said Sorrel feelingly. “Is it so important?”

  “I’ve seen the remarkable results it can achieve. Besides”—ruefully—“it’s the only thing I can do.”

  Sorrel looked at her incredulously. “Are you fishing for a compliment or are you really sincere?” She decided Cary was sincere, and put aside her own dislike of horses to encourage her. “Give them time,” she urged. “They’re all city products, except Jim.”

  Cary glanced quickly at the nurse. “Tell me, Solly, how do you feel about Jim?”

  “The same as I told you when his dad’s—at least Mr. Ansley’s letter arrived. Cary”—a little sharply—“don’t go getting any mad ideas.”

  “Is it mad to want a child to live, live fully?”

  “No, darling, but it is sometimes unreal.”

  ... Yes, it was unreal, but something else had been unreal, thought Cary strangely. It had been that magic afternoon in Pan’s Meadow, the enchanted meadow as she thought of it now. That had been unreal, but it had been lovely, and everything had seemed changed since.

  She took Jim down to the stables. It took a long time, much longer than with Robert and Marilyn, but he got there. At once he fell in love with Molly. “One day I shall ride Molly.”

  “Of course, Jim. That’s why Molly is here. Does your farm at home have horses?”

  “Only Bill. He’s a big Clydesdale. Too high for Dad Ansley to lift me up.” Jim touched the little brown pony.

  Within a few days Clairhill had got into its stride, Sorrel attending the medical and manipulative side of the treatments, Cary spending three hours daily on the children’s correspondence lessons from Sydney, and the rest of the time on therapy and remedial gymnastics.

  One of the first preparations for the pony exercises that were to come when the small bodies were more pliant and relaxed was Jan’s and Else’s “little pups.”

  Down on all fours the children went and climbed and descended the stairs under Cary’s watchful eye. She permitted; for more realism, their loud, delighted and ferocious barks.

  “What a din!” protested Sorrel, bearing Robert off for his ray treatment. Evidently Robert had taken “little pups” seriously, for the next moment Cary heard Sorrel’s outraged yell. Obviously that little pup bit.

  None of the children liked ray treatment. It meant being under the keen eyes of Sister Sorrel, it meant getting uncomfortably warm, worst of all, even for incapacitated children, it meant “stopping still”.

  Garry called sorrowfully: “Can I come out now, Sister; it’s so hot a tear is running down my leg.”

  The allocation of clothes had been a problem. Janet, Malcolm and Pauline had too much, the others, with the exception of Robert, too little.

  Robert had none at all beyond what he wore on arrival. Although she had intended sharing the clothes around, something inspired Cary to ring through to Mallarkey’s and order a small new suit. “His age is five, and he’s on the thin side.”

  “I’ll send one with the Reverend Mr. Flett,” promised Mr. Mallarkey.

  Mr. Flett came out for Sunday school. Because of his other commitments the class was held on Friday, but to the children it remained “Sunday” school, and they looked forward to the stories and the hymns. Aunty Cary accompanying the latter on Mrs. Marlow’s beautiful old grand that once had only been opened for Alison’s classics—or, if his mother had been absent, Ian’s swing. Was the piano pleased to be in use again? wondered Cary, striking an opening note. In its small way could a hymn for a child be like a first petal to a bud to help a tree—and a house—to bloom?

  Cary noted that William, their baby, a four-year-old spinal case, was singing lustily. She was pleased with him, and told him so later, expressing surprise that he knew the words.

  “He didn’t,” assured Marilyn; “he just sang Teddy Bear’s Picnic’, Aunty Cary. He fit it in real well.”

  Sunday school over, the suit delivered, Mr. Flett departed for another call. Cary summoned Robert to her and took out his new clothes.

  The small boy, the youngest of a large family and the resigned recipient of all cast-offs, was astonished to be buttoned into a brand-new, shop-made shirt. He eyed it suspiciously. “ ‘Oo’s was this?” he said.

  “Nobody’s dear.”

  “Y’mean—y’mean it’s new?”

  “It’s new and it’s yours. All these clothes are yours.”

  Robert did not give any thanks; he hurriedly limped off, the typical ungrateful child, but his penny-round eyes were Cary’s reward.

  It came as a surprise to both Sorrel and Cary when the first month was up. They had established a routine. The children seemed contented. The equestrian side of the therapy had not been tackled yet, but Cary was determined it would not be long before she began on that.

  The summer was losing some of its languor. There was a slight crispness in the air. Sorrel found Cary looking often at the coral tree that never bloomed, and she asked her why.

  “It’s bud time for the corals. Haven’t you noticed the avenue?”

  Sorrel inclined her dark head. “I have. It will be a lovely crop of flowers. But not, I fear, for this fellow.”

  Cary knew Sorrel was right. The leaves of this last tree of all were thick, but there was no surprise of red petals like the other trees. So the house was not yet ready to bloom...

  Doctor Stormer had not visited them. Cary was anxious for his report. She felt justifiably proud of the progress they had made in their initial month. If there was any other reason for her eagerness to see Richard, she did not admit it, even to herself.

  She touched the tree tenderly, then went indoors.

  The children were in bed, and, as usual, she did the final goodnight rounds. Marilyn, evidently of the same stuff as Richard’s sister’s children, wanted a glass of water. Robert, still unaccustomed to the absence of street lighting outside his window, requested, as ever, that she switch off the dark.

  She went last of all to Jim in his corner cot in the dormitory. She kissed the little pulled-up side of his face. On his first night he had said: “Mum Ansley does that, then she says God guess.”

  Cary said “God guess” now, then tip-toed out.”

  It was dark—no wonder town-bred Robert wanted to switch off the night—but there was a luminous sheen to the sky.

  Her tree—she thought of it as her tree now—was silhouetted in the glow of it. The dark trunk and leaves were like deep soft velvet, but there was not one bud.

  “God guess,” Jim had said. Did He guess, thought Cary, what she was hoping, and would He let it happen?

  She stood very still, holding her wish close to her ... then suddenly another wish came, one not associated with little Jim, with any of the children, with the tree or the house. An unbidden wish that sent the quick blood pulsing through her in a way she had never known before.

  With burning cheeks and hurrying heart, she turned back from the night.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  AT THE END of the week Mr. Farrell arrived unexpectedly with Richard Stormer.

  “This surprise visit was not in
tentional,” Richard assured Cary. “I wouldn’t like you to think we planned to take you unawares.”

  “And yet you warned me in the beginning of the watchful eye,” she reminded him smiling.

  “Yes,” he admitted quietly, very quietly, “in the beginning ...” He seemed almost to be speaking to himself, yet Cary felt his echoed words with sudden sharp immediacy. Standing beside him on the veranda while Sorrel showed Mr. Farrell her sick-bay, she was glad of a railing to which to hold. There was a drumming in her head, and a faint giddiness, but in the middle of it, like a dream, the sweetness of the moment came engulfing her and making her happier than she had ever been in her life.

  Richard Stormer stood very silent, examining his words.

  “In the beginning ...” he had just said.

  What, he demanded of himself now, had happened since that beginning? ... What had happened one quiet afternoon in a paddock ringed in buttercups? Had it been only enchantment, as he had laughingly suggested to this girl now again beside him? Had there been a spell on the place, as years ago he and Gerard had pretended there was?

  —Or had it been, could it be—

  His glance fell on the garden, so changed since his last visit to Clairhill. He noticed almost with pain the plantations of seedlings flanked by gracious sweeps of grass. Already she has changed a house into a home, he thought humbly, this slim fair girl with the large grey eyes, who, in spite of my efforts to prevent it, has made each encounter no longer a meeting but a recognition.

  Looking back—as far back as Mungen—he knew there had been a faint glimmer of reluctant knowledge in him even then. That, he thought, was why I victimized her at every turn. Do we not always hurt the one who, consciously or unconsciously, is the nearest of all? He was aware that it had been there all along, just awaiting discovery; that on that afternoon in the quiet paddock he had known for sure.

  The realization had been shattering. For a while he would not admit it. He did not like, indeed he disliked, this girl who in some way to him had been instantly established as Gerard’s Julia. But, like a child’s house of cards, down had fluttered his plans. He had been aware ever since he had left Mungen of odd moments of waiting, pauses that came, unwanted in the busy nervous activity of his day. However hard he had tried he had found that he could not entirely fill these gaps, these perilous blanks. He had insisted they were for Gerard, then one day, in a green field, he had known that that was not true.

  The silence grew. Richard was recalling a telephone conversation with his sister Annette.

  “We saw the plane put down in the northern paddock, Dick. We hoped you might trek up to Byways. Frank was out and I, of course, could not leave Phyllida, otherwise we would have come to you.”

  Byways was the Stantons’ property. Annette had married Frank Stanton. She had been senior to the twins by several years.

  Richard remembered holidays at Byways with Gerard. He recalled the discovery of the northern field. He thought of the enchantment they had found, he and his twin ... how only one other person had seen it all as they had. Cary had seen it, he thought.

  Over the wire he had explained his failure to call in on his sister and niece. “I had a passenger, Annette.”

  “He would have been welcome.”

  “It was not a man.”

  Annette’s voice had become instantly pleased. “Richard, that is good. For a while I feared—”

  “You feared?”

  “Well—Julia, Dick. I’ve been frightened because of Julia. Your reactions were so—so—Not all women are Julias, my dear.”

  No, Richard had thought, not all women. This girl was not. Cary was not. Almost jealously anxious to keep his new sweet secret a secret a little longer, he had changed the subject to Phyllida.

  “She is the same.” Annette’s voice had lost its lilt and become drab. “She’s terribly lonely with the boys at school. I wish I could put her some place where she could have a little companionship. This new children’s home you’re interested in, this Clairhill next to Currabong—”

  “It would not be suitable.” Once more Richard had become the doctor. “I would not allow it, Ann. Phyllida is—”

  “Phyllida is incurable,” Annette had said flatly. “So, I believe, are most of those children.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I know what you mean but won’t say. As well as incurable, Phyl will never grow up. I realize that, Dick. I’ve faced it for years. But it’s her I’m thinking of.”

  “No,” Richard had said, “it would be wrong. It could hurry things; it probably might.”

  “Perhaps—perhaps I would not mind it that way.” His sister’s voice had been quite steady, he had recalled.

  “That’s not for you to say, Annette.”

  A little silence, then: “I’m sorry I didn’t come up to Byways yesterday. However, we had tea in the old spot.”

  He had rung off soon after that, Annette’s first pleasure at his announcement still sweet in his ears, the soaring knowledge of his own discovery singing in his heart— “Not all women are Julias,” Ann had said, and he had thought: “No, this one is Cary, and I love her. That much has emerged from the chaos of my loss of Gerard: love plain and simple, my ability to love, and, I believe, to be loved myself.”

  He turned from the garden now to look at the girl beside him. He looked tenderly, if she had been able to raise her eyes to see the tenderness. But Cary could not. An absurd shyness kept her own glance down. “A watchful eye was not needed,” he said quietly, answering her reminder. “Vigilance would never be needed over a loving heart.”

  This time her glance did come up. The grey eyes met the brown, the glances interlocked. For a long moment the two of them stood there, aware of nothing and of nobody else in the house.

  Then Mr. Farrell and Sorrel emerged together and the tour of the rest of Clairhill began.

  The children were introduced to the solicitor. He saw them at lessons, at therapy, at remedial gymnastics, he even saw Robert under the ray. “It makes my leg cry, Mr. Farrell,” confided Robert; “when I come out there’s tears running down my toes.” Mrs. Heard brought tea, and they took it under the avenue of corals.

  “Beautiful trees,” praised Mr. Farrell. He put on his glasses. “The last tree does not bloom?”

  Cary met Richard’s glance fleetingly. “It will,” she said.

  With an effort she asked: “How were you impressed with our progress to date, Mr. Farrell?”

  “Favorably impressed. You have done great things. I shall write immediately to London, my dear.”

  He would not stop, although they assured him that a room was available.

  “The doctor is returning to Sydney, so I shall return as well.”

  At three “Paul” took on from the Currabong strip.

  “That was a short visit,” grumbled Sorrel. She liked visitors, and had been planning a rubber of bridge for tonight.

  This lack of evening company for her friend sometimes worried Cary. Now, while everything was new, time did not hang, but later, when routines went like clockwork, Sorrel might find the country boring and dull. Cary recalled the Clairhill she had once known and remembered feeling that lassitude herself.

  She did not feel it now, though. She was on wings. Apart from that brief conversation, she had not spoken again to Richard, but still the feeling persisted. It gave her new enthusiasm. She felt she could conquer a world.

  “Tomorrow,” she said, forgetting Sorrel’s little woes, “I’ll start on the pony drill. The children must be ready for it by this. They will love it and they will benefit. I know they will.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  IT PROVED a lovely morning. Overhead the sky was garlanded with fluffy white clouds and underfoot the grass was dew-crisp, but warm. It would be a perfect time to introduce the children to what Cary considered would be the most telling exercise of all.

  Because to date they had showed little enthusiasm, and, in many cases, even a little fear, she produced th
e small exciting shirts and jodhpurs that able Mrs. Heard had run up on the Clairhill machine. These, at least, Cary knew, would be hailed with delight.

  They were.

  “Polo pants,” acclaimed Jim, who saw more of that game in the country than the city children.

  “Do me undone,” urged young William. William had a direct grasp on language. He always demanded bananas “unpeeled”, said a clock was “unwound”. As soon as he was wriggled into his small cowboy shirt and riding breeches he ordered: “Updo me.”

  Putting on the clothes took a long time. Little awkward bodies grown accustomed and familiar to their own everyday clothes, even to the extent of coping, sometimes, unassisted with them themselves, needed guidance now, with this new shape of garment, with differently situated buttons and hooks.

  Surgical boots had to be taken off so that the jodhpurs could go on, then put back again. Braces had to be reharnessed over the business-like riding-shirts.

  Maysie, who had been brought in to help, grumbled aloud that the kids could have ridden just as well in their everyday clothes. “For the fat lot they’ll ride, it’s a waste of time, I say.”

  Cary reminded her quietly but firmly that she had not been asked to say. She, too, knew it was a lot of trouble for probably a poor reward, but she was determined that the children would not be deprived of any of the enjoyable little details that go to make riding such an excitement and delight.

  “When you become quite good,” she promised them, “there will be corduroy caps and you can carry a little crop.”

  They were enthusiastic—inside the house. It was like putting on make-believe clothes for a fancy-dress ball, but once outside their dormitories their gaiety diminished. They shot nervous glances in the direction of the stables. Marilyn, Bruce and Pauline refused to go at all.

  It was no use compelling them. That would have put them back many months, even for all time, thought Cary, disappointed.