Guardian Nurse (3 page)

CHAPTER TWO

They
l
eft promptly at eight the next morning, which did not surprise Frances; anything Mr.
Burn
West decreed would be carried out, she thought.

She had packed Jason’s little things the night before, put her own in her single case.
Burn
West’s thick brows lifted at the economy of baggage, but he said nothing. He passed Bill Fu
rn
ess both ports and took Jason up in his arms.

The boy was withdrawn again ... a morning ritual, Frances decided. She look forward to the day when she broke down his resistance sufficiently to receive his answering (however faint) a.m. smile.

The great car was drawn up at the kerb and Frances and Jason were placed in the back seat. However, as four, even five, could have fitted in the front with comfort, Frances did not feel she was depriving anyone. Rather to her surprise
Burn
West took the wheel. He drove accurately, if, to Frances’ way of thinking, a little contemptuously, apparently contemptuous of the hazards anyone else found in city traffic. She noted that he took the coast road.

He had chosen this route, she appreciated, to divert Jason, and once the big estate wagon swung down the mountain-sea curves of Thirroul and Bulli the little boy thawed and began to count the ships and point out cliffs and rocks.

They stopped at an idyllic beach for flask tea ... milk for Jason ... and sandwiches. Before they started
off again Frances took Jason to the creaming water’s edge to pick up shells. He found the sand hard going for his clumsy leg, so on the return journey Frances picked him up in her arms. At once
Burn
West was by her side and taking Jason from her. ‘Don’t ever do that again,’ he frowned. At her look of surprise he said, ‘He’s heavy, far too heavy for a lightweight. I don’t fancy paying out a compensation.’ She did not comment on that. After a few steps he added ... almost
humanly
... ‘Also, I don’t want you to be hurt.’

The humanness spurred her to suggest something that had occurred to her as they had rounded beach after beach. This was a long journey for a little disabled boy and the novelty of the sea eventually would wear off. How interesting if they could turn west,
join the Federal Highway to Canberra, from there detour to the Hume Highway ... Gundagai and the Dog sitting on the Tuckerbox ... then on to Wagga Wagga, which would be on the route ... then past Wagga through to Mirramunna.

He listened to her suggestion and actually approved it. ‘Though I don’t know if he’ll be interested in politics,’ Burn West said of the capital.

‘Lake George, then? Imagine this, Jason’ ... she turned to the little boy ... ‘there’s a lake outside the first city of Australia that sometimes disappears and instead of water with boats on it, sheep and cat
tl
e graze.’

‘I want to see that,’ said Jason.

They climbed up through the rain forests of a shining valley, waterfalls springing but from mountain ramparts, lush green growth on either side.

As
Burn
West had shrugged, political history at Canberra at Jason’s age proved not very appealing. The child yawned at the memorials, brightened slightly at the new man-made lake but was pleased when they set off again. He dozed to the fabled Nine Miles from Gundagai, where Frances gently wakened him to show him the Tuckerbox Dog. She sang softly:

‘My Mabel waits for me underneath the bright blue sky,

Where the dog sits on the tuckerbox nine miles from Gundagai.’

She felt a fool, she had a small, inadequate, rather childish voice, but to her delight Jason asked her to sing it again, even tried a quavery note or two of his own. Mrs. Campbell joined in, Bill Furness.
Burn
West’s expression she could not see, but she could imagine the thinned, unamused lips. She felt sure her imagination was fact when he drew up rather abruptly at a shop near the Dog and without a word got out of the car.
He was gone for some minutes. Ea
r-plugs? she wondered.

Then he returned and he was actually smiling. He handed Jason a perfect little dog on a tuckerbox which not only nodded a head but half-barked, half-sang a tuckerbox song when you wound him up. Jason was enchanted. The novelty of the toy absorbed him to Wagga Wagga, and later to the turn-off to Mirramunna, some forty miles out.

Now they were in the true Riverina, the rich and varied Riverina, sometimes long, low green hills, sometimes flat, open, golden country, homesteads in the far distances but their front gates opening to the level, sealed road, different crops in different stages of growth. Trees, trees, trees. All eucalypts.

Windmills, dams, ponds, creeks, dried streams with beds of rounded pebbles, but no glimpse of any river until, after skirting an old stone house that
Burn
West called out was Seven Fields, their original and his childhood homestead, after passing, some time later, a more recent structure of red brick that he called to them was Great Rock, another West possession ... he said property ... a sudden curve in the road revealed the meandering Murrumbidgee, or rather, Frances was informed, an offshoot, and on the distant westerly bank of this offshoot a very beautiful if sprawling modern home of cream-washed timber, set in terraced gardens, a long row of young pines as opposed to the inevitable peppercorns that invariably comprised country drives leading from the imposing front gates to the house, an orchard, a gravelled courtyard, green and white striped canvas awnings shading wide windows and deep encircling verandahs.

‘Why, it’s lovely
!’
Frances gasped.

Burn West had stopped the car. He took the opportunity to roll and light a cigarette. He finished the ritual of whispering tobacco and paper before he spoke.

‘Too close to the river,’ he scowled.

Bill Furness had got out of the car to open the gate and Mrs. Campbell had followed to check the mailbox.

‘But it’s your house, surely you directed it,’ Frances said.

‘I did direct it, but it was built
... built hurriedly .
.
. in my absence. I had a piece of builder Glen Ellery, believe me.’

I would believe that, thought Frances.

‘But Glen had a comeback,’ half-grinned the big man. ‘He said, “You always possessed the river, so I never thought of putting the house anywhere else but beside it.” Well’ ... a shrug ... ‘it was done. But if the river rises
—
’

‘Does it?’

‘So far never enough to cause alarm, but trouble could come. Not from the dam miles up. That’s modern and controlled. However, there’s an ancien
t
high-level storage tank further down that evidently has slipped the authority’s notice, but not’ ... grimly ... ‘mine. It was on its last legs years ago. With a rush of
wet weather ...’ He
shrugged. ‘I tell you I was furious with Ellery.’

‘For knowing your possessive qualities?’ she baited, borrowing the builder’s words.

‘For not complying.’ His eyes flicked remindingly at her.

A little uncomfortably she said, ‘It’s still beautiful.’

‘Of course,’ he said infuriatingly. It sounded to Frances like: ‘What else, when it’s mine?’

Mrs. Campbell came back with some mail which she told Frances would be deposited by some obliging neighbour who had been into Mirramunna. Bill Furness signalled for the car to pass through the gates. He closed the gates again and got in, and they swept up through the avenue of young pines to the homestead.

There was a curved flight of shallow stairs to the wide verandah, a verandah already lavishly hung with a flowering vine for all the house’s apparent youth. The front door was open, and Frances noted that the interior was designed in the old colonial manner of a wide gracious hall with rooms on either side. It was thickly carpeted. Beside her now, for he had left the wheel and come to the back to lift out the boy, who now slept, Burn West said, ‘I like the style I grew up in, a hat brim of wide verandah, big rooms cheek by jowl to each other, everything four-square.’

‘I like it, too.’

‘What? We agree?’ He lifted Jason and carried him
up the steps.

Frances followed him to the child’s quarters, bedroom, playroom and bathroom, the whole connected with a room, sitting-room and bath of her own.

‘You’d almost think,’ she said impulsively, ‘that when you had the house built you knew
that ...’ Her
glance fell on the little boy.

‘I did.’ He said no more. He put the child down on the bed, nodded for her to take over, went out.

Jason was sleeping quite heavily; he must be exhausted, so she decided not to disturb him with either food or bath. She removed as many clothes as she could without altering his relaxed position, then she drew over the rugs, stood looking down a while, then crossed to her adjacent suite. It was tastefully furnished in tawny golds, her favourite range of colours. Gold curtains, gold carpet, gold spread. Only the chair, white leather, abandoned the autumn hues. It was a beautiful apartment.

But lovely as it was it did not matter when she crossed to the window to look out. The view almost accosted her with its sheer radiance. From this angle every curve of West’s portion of the river offshoot was captured, the distant, faintly-silver bend, the small stretch of yellow sand, the weaving willows, a backwash of quiet, entrapped water with lily pads on it, jutting into the moving stream a tiny jetty and actually a small scarlet boat. Behind it all gums. Far away beyond the gums the gentle rise of hills.

Glorious, Frances thought.

She took out her things and hung them up. She decided to leave Jason’s until tomorrow. She combed her hair and went out. She went down the hall, her eyes darting from left to right, finding more to delight her in the gracious yet comfortable layout with every step.

One door was half-closed, and curiosity got the better of her and she peered through the open space. To her embarrassment it was a study, and Burn West was already seated at the desk.

‘I’m sorry,’ she stammered, ‘I didn’t intend ... I mean...’

‘Come in,’ he cut short. ‘I was coming after you, anyway. I thought you might care to look at these.’ He handed across some familiar forms, familiar because they were X-rays.

‘The sonno’s leg,’ he said briefly. ‘Make sense to you?’

‘A little,’ she affirmed, ‘though, of course, being only a nurse...’ Her voice stumbled away. She found she had nothing to say, nothing, because if she spoke it might be everything, for frankly the X-ray shocked her; the child had suffered several extremely severe breaks. How had it happened?

She did not know she said ‘What happened?’ till she saw his tightened lips, tightened, she concluded, because she was doing that forbidden thing, probing.

‘It appears to be a severe injury,’ she amended at once, hoping to hide what she had asked him. She went to hand the forms back again.

‘No, keep them and study them, then when Doctor Muir comes...’

‘You’re sending for him?’

‘Yes. Jason doesn’t need him immediately, but he will in time, so I’d like the pair to become acquainted now. How are you getting on with the boy?’

‘It’s early,’ she admitted, ‘but we’ve met over noughts and crosses.’

‘Great oaks from little acorns,’ he half-sighed. ‘I’m not even up to that.’

T
here was silence for a while. He asked, ‘Are you
comfortable?’

‘Completely. And the view from the window..

‘Not bad,’ he agreed, ‘but then it’s not a bad river. Some sing of Old Man Murray, or the Lachlan, but the Murrumbidgee is my idea of a stream, even though I’ve only snared a small and insignificant bend.’ Suddenly boyish, and Frances had the feeling she was seeing a different man, he said, ‘Come and meet it face to face.’ He swung out of the room, and after a moment’s hesitation she followed him.

The growth of everything surprised her in the terraced gardens, terraced right to the water’s edge; the Riverina, though fertile, could not have the fast growth rate of the tropics, or so she believed, but these shrubs and ornamental trees were already half
-
matured. She spoke wonderingly of this.

‘I put them in that way,’ he answered, ‘or nearly so. So it’s me, not the Riverina. You see everything had to be ready for when
...’
The boyishness had left him, his lips were thin again.

But he changed by the river. He was indeed that West of the River he had named himself, and named the house. Frances knew about sea fever, or hearts pledged to the outback, but this man loved ... and lived for? ... this river. She could see that although he did not move or betray himself he almost hugged it to him, claimed it as his. And, by the rippling water, she suddenly felt the same. The sun, though fast going down behind the furthest green rise, still shone brilliantly, catching the wings of river swallows who had come out to hunt and play, making their curved flight into a gleaming necklace. There was a spicy breath of thyme and resin, a tang of eucalypt, but most of all that smell that could be only the smell of a river, a kind of sweet-sour, cool-warm, reed-redolent, broken stems and old logs smell. It only needed the little bitten-in beach and the grassy slopes for Frances to feel herself embracing it as well.