This Golden Land (61 page)

     "Oh Marcus," she whispered, giddy with desire.

     He brought his face close to hers. "I realize now, my dear, that it was more than just having the most capable hostess in Melbourne organizing the event. I wanted
you
to be part of my hospital. I wanted you at my side as I showed off my great achievement. But you are here now."

     "Yes I am," she whispered, captivated by his eyes. "And I shall stay."

     He frowned. "Perhaps you should go home. You almost fainted."

     "I am regaining my composure." And indeed she was. As the initial onslaught of sensations and memories began to subside, she felt strength return to her body and soul. She also felt Marcus's touch, the power of his voice, revitalize her. "The first step was the hardest. That was the one that I had to get past. From now on it will get easier, I am certain of it."

     "You are an amazing woman, Blanche Sinclair," he murmured, wishing they were in another place, another time. "But now we must get to work."

     "Tell me what to do."

A
LICE!
A
LICE
,
WHERE ARE YOU?"

     She snapped her head up, Blanche and Martha spun around, and a few of the patients cried out. They turned toward the doorway at the end of the ward where they heard heavy footfall running up the stairs. Who was making such a commotion at this late hour?

     When a young man burst in, wearing an evening frock coat and a top hat—a very handsome young man, many noted as he rushed down the length of the ward—the patients drew blankets up to their chins, and visitors in the aisle got out of his way.

     Fintan shouted again for Alice.

     She stepped out of a cubicle formed by three hanging sheets where she had been feeding a patient.

     "There you are!" he said, and seized her by the arms, looking her up and down. "Are you all right? Are you sick? Are you hurt?"

     Before Alice could respond, Blanche Sinclair stepped forward and said crisply, "Young man, you are frightening the patients."

     "Oh! Sorry," he said quickly, blushing and collecting himself. "Miss Star, they told me at the theater that you were in the hospital."

     "I'm helping out."

     He gave her a puzzled look, then finally noticed the others who stood around him. He recognized Margaret Lawrence, Alice's lady's companion, and he knew Blanche Sinclair from the gala at Addison's. The fourth was also clearly a lady, although he did not know her name. What was strange about Alice and her friends was their attire. They wore homely aprons over their gowns, their sleeves were rolled up to expose bare arms, and each of the ladies had her hair gathered up in a the sort of scarf scullery maids wore.

     Aware of other eyes watching him, Fintan gave closer look to his surroundings, now that the panic of thinking Alice was hurt or ill had passed, and in the light of lanterns and candles, he saw the rows of beds occupied by women, and women in the coarse dresses shawls of the lower classes, sitting at bedsides, offering cups of water, brushing patients' hair. The atmosphere was hazy, thick with pungent smells, and illuminated by the glows of lamps and candles.

     Fintan had never been inside a hospital. And as he realized he was the only man among so many females, he was suddenly self-conscious.

     Alice took his arm. "Come with me, Mr. Rorke," she said. "I shall explain." To Mrs. Lawrence, Alice added, "I shall be all right, Margaret, we won't go far."

     As they entered the corridor at the end of the ward, Alice turned and said, "Mr. Rorke, you should leave. There is contagion here."

     "Ah, that explains it."

     "Explains what?"

     "I don't want to alarm you, but there is a crowd gathering out front of the hospital, people demanding to know if there loved ones are safe here. Dr. Iverson is trying to reassure them, but they seem agitated."

     "All the more reason for you to leave. Please," Alice added with a hand on his arm.

     Fintan's look darkened. "All the more reason for me to
stay."

     When Alice saw visitors staring at them, she said, "Let us get some air."

     She took him downstairs and through a rear door that led into blessed
fresh night air. Fintan could not believe the pungent smells in the ward. He had thought his throat would close forever. As Alice explained that what he had smelled was chlorine, and that the four friends had come to help Hannah during a crisis at the hospital, she and Fintan followed a narrow gravel walk that was illuminated by moonlight and the occasional glow from sparsely placed garden lanterns. They could see where a grid of flower beds had been laid out, with blooming shrubs sitting in sack cloth bags, waiting to be planted.

     Alice told Fintan about the work she had been doing since arriving at the hospital that afternoon. "I have never nursed the sick before, and so I had no idea of what to do. Hannah showed us."

     Fintan only half listened. He had been thinking about Alice all day, had been looking forward to seeing her again at the theater. And then when he had been told that she was at Victoria Hospital—

     He had not understood the depths of his feelings for her until that moment. His angel hurt or sick, or possibly worse. It was unthinkable. But now she was all right, not sick at all, but performing charitable works, an angel truly, he thought in relief as he walked at her side. And he would stay, too, in case the crowd in front of the hospital decided to get unruly.

     They paused on the path, and Fintan looked at her to say, "It's an admirable thing you are doing here, Alice Star."

     She looked up into deep black eyes and felt her heart flutter. Fintan Rorke moved her in ways no man ever had. Was it his physical beauty? His endearing shyness? His gift for creating beauty out of prosaic wood? Or his tragic tale of Galagandra? It is all of that and more, she thought. Fintan is so many things, so many aspects.

     And Alice yearned to explore them all.

     "It's not just me. Blanche confessed that she has had a mortal fear of hospitals all her life. You should have seen her this afternoon, Fintan. Just stepping through the front doors took great courage. And then going up to the ward, facing the patients. Blanche has been bravely battling her fear all evening. In fact, when Hannah said the ward attendants had run off, it was Blanche's idea that we come and help. Especially as Hannah is helping Dr. Iverson to determine the cause of the fever."

     "I thought bad air caused fever," Fintan said, wanting to speak of other things. Wanting to touch her, take her into his arms.

     "There's talk that the hospital was built on sacred Aboriginal ground, and that it's haunted. They say that the hospital is cursed and that's why there is an outbreak of contagion. I don't believe it of course, but the ward attendants were Irish, and you know how superstitious
they
can be." Alice cast him a playful smile as she said this.

     Fintan returned the smile, and then he grew serious. "You are even more beautiful in the moonlight, dear Alice. I cannot understand why you are not married. Or is there someone in your life and you don't make it public knowledge?"

     "There is no one," she said, breathless at his unexpected presence—Fintan had been in her thoughts all day. How tall and elegant he was in his frock coat (although he had left the top hat in the hospital). "For a long time I convinced myself that my singing career was my life, that I didn't need a husband or children, that I could live without romantic love. It was easy to convince myself of this, Mr. Rorke, because no man ever stole my heart." She added silently: until now.

     "Why would you want to convince yourself of such a thing? It sounds terribly lonely."

     "There is something you must know." Reaching into the waistband of her skirt, she drew out a handkerchief. While Fintan watched in puzzlement, with the night wind whispering around them in the garden, rustling the branches and leaves of newly planted elm trees, Alice rubbed the linen over her right eye. She then folded the handkerchief and wiped it up and down her cheek and temple, back to her right ear. Then she faced him, giving him a good view of her face in the light of a garden lantern, and said. "Do you wish to see more?"

     His thick black brows came together. "More of what?"

     "Fintan, I am showing you my real face, something no one else sees." She held out the handkerchief. "This is a façl;ade."

     He looked down. "All I see is a very clean handkerchief."

     Alice brought the handkerchief closer to her face and saw, in the moonlight, an unblemished square of linen.

     "The makeup probably wore off," Fintan said with a smile, "while you were working in that very warm building. No doubt you wiped your face a few times."

     She stared up at him. She
had
dabbed her face with a towel, not thinking that her carefully placed cosmetics were coming off.

     "Alice," he said, taking her by the shoulders. "Last night in your dressing room, while we talked, I noticed you kept bringing your hand up to the side of your face. It was as if you were trying to hide something."

     "I haven't done that in years!"

     "It made me wonder. I looked more closely and realized your makeup was concealing something. And that was when I understood the truth about your singing, why it moves so many hearts. I realized that you don't sing from your throat, Alice, but from your soul. You don't just sing lyrics or musical notes, you sing your own pain. And I wondered if perhaps what you are hiding here," he said as he tenderly touched her temple and cheek, "is a personal anguish."

     She spoke quickly, while she had the courage, about the fire at the farm, the rescue that disfigured her face, being on the streets, her life with Lulu Forchette—"But I was never with the customers, I never even sang for them."—until it was all out and Fintan Rorke was the second person in the world to know Alice's secret.

     "It makes sense now, dear Alice. This is what you are singing about. And your audience hears this. They feel that you are singing directly to them, each man and woman thinks that your voice touches just them and no one else. You reach into their sorrows, Alice, you touch their fears and bring them peace, because most of us have a Lulu Forchette or a Galagandra in our lives. It is a wonderful, and powerful, gift that you have."

     He laid a hand on her cheek and said, "Did you truly think I would leave you once I saw this?"

     She looked into his eyes and understood a new truth. "No," she said.

     Alice realized now that she had thought at first that she was testing Fintan, to see if his feelings for her could withstand her hidden scars. But now she realized it wasn't Fintan she had doubted, but herself. All the new selfconfidence she had gained since her first audition at Sam Glass's music hall
had been an illusion, built upon a foundation of cosmetics, hair pieces and tiaras. Alice had never put her new self-confidence to a test. But now she had, and she had learned a truth about herself. That her self-confidence was genuine. The scars didn't matter any more. She no longer had anything to hide.

     Fintan cupped her face in his hands and said, "Alice, you are a very pretty woman. Has no one ever told you that? Your eyes are captivating. I have never seen such a shade of blue. This lovely nose and delicate mouth. You are so much more than a few hidden scars. You have a face that is the envy of many women."

     "Oh, Fintan," she said.

     "Dearest Alice," he whispered, placing his hand at the back of her head.

     She lifted her face to his and met his kiss with tears—her first kiss, a perfect kiss.

     Fintan drew back and said with passion, "You inspire me to want to create beautiful things, Alice Star. I will carve your loveliness out of the finest wood God has created, and it will last for eternity, testament to my undying love for you."

     They came together again in a deep kiss, bodies entwined in the moonlight, casting a single shadow on the garden path. And as they explored their new love and desire, and expressed it with their bodies, Fintan and Alice were unaware of ghosts moving nearby in the shadows—the "haunts" of this sacred ground who paid no attention to the lovers in the garden.

     Stark white apparitions that moved on silent feet, their bodies spectral in the moonlight, as they advanced upon the stone building with hands clutching boomerangs and woomeras, and deadly spears.

     Suddenly aware that they were not alone, Fintan and Alice drew apart and stared at the mysterious procession that walked by, an eerily silent parade of tall, thin-limbed people with skin as black as the night, their bodies glowing with white paint. Adorned with feathers and stones, animal teeth and beads, the Aborigines seemed to have stepped out of another world, another time. They marched with their eyes set resolutely forward, ignoring or unaware of the young white couple who looked on with goose-flesh. Alice had never seen tribal natives before, except in pictures, and she saw now that mere pictures
did not do them justice. There was a supernatural power in the dark, ancient flesh and deeply set eyes that peered from beneath heavy brows. Their silence was unsettling, their steady march to the front of the hospital, disquieting, for what on earth were they doing here?

     Remembering the crowd of anxious white people gathered in front of the hospital, and what Alice had said about this ground being under an Aboriginal curse, Fintan said, "This can't be good. We had better get back and warn the others."