Guardian Nurse (21 page)

‘
Yes. Actually the two freak waves were nothing to do with our river, the weir was handling the water quite efficiently. But the storage gave up, and by some odd whim the outpour deviated from the river course, where one would have expected it to empty, and found a new course of its own. We’ve lost our gold-sluicing beach, I’m afraid, our little equipment lean-to, our stables, and’ ... a pause ... ‘we nearly lost you. Except that I happened to come alon
g—
’

‘Yet the island wasn’t inundated?’ she asked.

‘The waves didn’t touch the island at all, but our sonno could have gone. No, don’t try to get up yet, France, I told you he was safe.’

‘Tell me everything,’ she appealed.

‘The storage collapsed, as I had always anticipated. The contents should have been released in controlled stages years ago. Now ... and thank heaven again ...
it
won’t bug me any more.’

‘Tell me about the house. Burn. You just said
it was
there but wouldn’t be for long.’

‘No, but it will be gone from
my
efforts, not from those of the water. You might recall, France, that
I
was never pleased with the location of the house. This has finally decided me. We’re going up the hill. We’ll
dis
mantle West of the River, transplant it and put this riverside section under rice. After all, what more suitable a position for rice? Then after all shouldn’t our particular sample of the Riverina include rice? Our basket have another egg? Well, do you like the scheme?’

He was speaking in the plural, she noted rather dazedly.
We’ll
dismantle
.
—
Our
sample.
—
Who was he coupling with himself?

‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ she replied.

‘Dammit, it’s everything to do with you,’ he said almost harshly, ‘and though I know this isn’t the time to drive that home to you, half-drowned as you are, you have to know some time, France.’

‘Know?’ she echoed him bitterly. ‘I know nothing. I’ve never known anything. Mrs. Campbell was going
to tell me, then the storm broke and
—
and
—
Burn, you’re
sure
about Jason? Where is he?’

‘The men have him. Oh, yes, I’m sure all right. And they must be sure, too.’ He gave a short proud laugh. ‘Jason’s going to dine out on that swim of his for months.’

‘Swim?’ she said, aghast.

‘Yes. You see I brought the men with me when I came looking for you and the boy. When the wave caught you, Jason struck out to save you. It wasn’t necessary, I already had you ... but by the same token it wasn’t necessary for anyone to go after
him
.
France, I’ve never been so bucked in all my life. He swam like an old-timer, and
you
made the miracle. It was wonderful to see him. Wonderful of you.’

‘
Don
’
t say things like that to me,’ she appealed, ‘don’t say wonderful. I’ve a lot to tell you, Burn. I should have told you before.’

‘Oh, I’ll be coming to
that
,’
he warned grimly, ‘don’t think you
’
ve escaped. But until you feel up to getting what you’re getting ... oh yes, you are ... how do you like my idea for our house?’

Our
again! She felt it was time to sit up.

He carried her and propped her against a tree, and from the other side of the tree she could see the homestead standing as firm as ever. It had just been out of sight before.

‘Rice,’ he was planning, ‘more suitable for these river flats than bricks and mortar.’

‘What about the new swimming pool?’ she put in.

‘It can be dismantled and taken up and reassembled.
Or’ ...
a direct look at Frances ... ‘given to Jenny until we need one ourselves.’

She put aside that ‘we’, and murmured, ‘Jenny?’

‘She never liked the pool, did she? She found it permanent, and any permanency ... with Jason ... she wanted for herself.’ He paused,
gave
Frances
a long
look, then said firmly, ‘Well, who talks first?’

‘I will.’ Frances felt she had to
get
it over, spill all she had not said when she should have said it.

Quietly she began.

He heard her out
—
every word, every admission. The man she had taken for Trevor Trent, the time he had come here, Jason’s resentment
of
him.

‘That figures,’ he nodded, but he did not explain. Then Susan McKinney’s account of Jenny’s frequent attendances at Great Rock. How Susan had pointed
out the new lessee to her and how he had been
—

‘
But,’ she defended herself, ‘I couldn’t have told
you
that even though I had decided to, because you were away
at
the wheat.’ She thought suddenly of the importance of the wheat and asked him anxiously
if it
had been harvested in time.

‘To the last grain. Quite the little countrywoman, aren’t you?’ he grinned
at
her. ‘And that will figure, too.’

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘You will.’ He took out his makings, found that they were wet and threw them away in disgust. ‘Any more to tell me, France?’

‘No ... oh yes.’ She told him about the
fair
young woman who had seemed to be looking and watching and waiting. How it had puzzled her.

He interrupted quite harshly, ‘First let me know about you and Muir.’

‘What,
Burn
?’

‘Were
you
... was
Scott
.
.
.’

‘I
—
I believe so, if you mean
—
’

“Yes, I mean that.’

‘Then
—
yes. In a kind of way.’ She added,
‘
Then
.’

‘I
see.’
A
sharp look. ‘And
now
?’

‘Oh no,’ Frances said.

‘Right then, we’ll go ahead. While I was in town I saw our good doctor. He’s a happy man, France. In fact I’d describe it as radiant.’

‘Scott?’

‘Yes. A girl called Pamela. She had come forward at last. I even met her.’ He waited for it all to sink in.

‘Fair. Young. Watching. Waiting,’ Frances said slowly and with understanding. ‘So all the time that part of my mystery was Scott and not Jason.’ She was recalling a recurring blue car.

‘Exactly. Pamela had been looking for Scott. Then she found him. But when she did it seemed to her that she had as much right to go to him as he had felt he had right to go to her. Incomprehensible to an insensitive extrovert like West, but that was what I learned.’

‘It’s true,’ nodded Frances. ‘Scott said there was nothing actual between them, just a knowledge on his part and a feeling that it could exist for Pam as well.’

‘It did. Scott will finish his term and then join up with the Meldrum Clinic. He should have joined it before, not given me all the trouble he did by being so self-righteous. Oh yes, France, I’ve heard all about the necessity to find you first.’

‘Scott gave
you
trouble?’ she took him up.

‘Just a trifling matter of hell every time he looked at you,’ Burn said.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘As I said previously, you will. Well, all your confessions over?’

‘Yes. I know I should have told you, I know my orders were to tell you, but I was blind.
Burn
, why did I have to be blindfold like that?’

‘Because I suppose I was blind myself with rage,’ he admitted. ‘When I went over to Europe to collect the boy and I saw what they’d done to him I ...
I ...’ He
was quiet a moment.

‘I’m still blindfold,’ Frances appealed.

‘Yes, but you won’t be. This is the story.’ He waited a moment, then began. ‘There were two of us young Wests.’

‘Gareth and Burnley,’ she put it.

‘Yes. But Gareth was never a West really. I mean not one of us
land
Wests. I don’t believe he belonged in spirit to my mother’s side, either. Gareth was ... well...’ Another pause. ‘Gareth was clever—too clever. Everything came easy to Gareth. Too easy. He was clever. He was creative. But he had no sticking power, no reliability. He soon got tired of things.’ A pause. ‘The only thing he never wearied of finally was good living ...
his
definition of good.’

‘
La dolce vita
,’
Frances murmured quietly.
‘He lived for the sweet things of life.’

‘Yes, that was Gareth. A throwback somewhere, I suppose. It happens.—But, by heaven, he was still a West for all that.’

‘So you supported him?’ she asked.

‘Of course. So much so that
I,
not his wife’s sister, for all her determination, all her warning, got the child away.’

‘Child?’ she echoed.

‘Jason.’

‘But Jason is ... Jason is...' She paused. ‘He’s your son.’

He looked at her in amazement, then, slowly, in comprehension. But he did not comment on that comprehension.

‘Sonno,’ he said. ‘Sonno isn’t son, France. Sonno is just a love name, it’s never, never son. Son means
my
son, mine and
—
’

Frances said, dazed, only half believing, ‘Go on.’

‘Gareth married Lesley. They had Jason at Great Rock.’

‘Was that why you wanted him to love the place?’

‘It’s his, isn’t it?’ fiercely. ‘Then they went away. They went to Europe.’

‘So Jason wasn’t imagining when he said he’d lived in France and Berne.’

‘Not that sonno.’
Burn
’s smile showed pride in his nephew. ‘It was not the right life for a young child,’ he resumed, ‘dragged from city to city, exposed to their perpetual spats. He should have been home at Great Rock, growing up with horses and crops—and love.’

‘But he would have had love.’

Burn
said bitterly, ‘Only a
kind
of love.’

‘I sometimes think,’ he went on, ‘that that killed my parents, they were the old home type, the family stalwarts. It was no good appealing to Gareth, though, even after they had gone, so when he asked me to buy Great Rock from him, buy out his share in Seven Fields, I did so. After all if I hadn’t, someone else would.

‘Finally, I got this awful cable that Gareth and Lesley had been killed in a motor accident, Jason severely injured. I flew out straight away.’

‘For Jason?’

‘Perhaps. I wasn’t sure of that then, even though I directed the house to be built, but I was sure when I saw the boy.’

‘Because of his condition?’

‘Y
es. That wretched pair had taken him with them on their mad caper.’

‘Surely parents’ right?’ she questioned.

‘
Not a right when they were even less responsible than their baby, or little more than a baby, son. I can
see it all still, France
—
Gareth’s sudden mad urge to get going, Lesley’s equal
irresponsibility.
I don’t
know
why they ever had a
child.
You’ve
seen
for
yourself
that no attempt has been made to
educate him, teach
him even the preliminaries.
Yes,
it
was
la dolce vita
all
right
for
that selfish pair,’ bitterly.

‘But still
you
took
your
brother’s
part. Why?’

‘I was
a
West, and Jason
was
a West, and
would
remain a West.
With
a
West
.’

‘But the security you directed?’
she
asked,
confused.

‘From Jason’s aunt, his mother’s young sister.
She
had the same determination and the same
right as
I had. Possibly
she
blamed Gareth
as
I blamed Lesley. We’re’ ... a shrug ..
. ‘both
of us
similar types.
She wrote to me
that
she would
take him. I
didn’t wait
to
write back, I simply took
him
there and
then.
I brought him to Sydney,
started the treatment, called
for a teacher-nurse.’

‘And keeper.’