Guardian Nurse (18 page)

On the evenings that
Burn
was not at his books, the talk, after Jason had been put to bed, was, as only to be expected, Jason’s progress and Jason’s future progress. Jenny was very optimistic, and Frances watched Burn looking keenly at her. She did not blame him.
Already she had made a noticeable difference in the boy, and besides that she was quite outstandingly pretty.

Restoration of independence came tripping from Jenny’s eager lips. Factors hampering recovery and how they must be avoided. Reflexes. Movement of patterns. Then one night Jenny spoke of pool therapy, of water exercises.

‘They’re not just recreational activity, they’re relaxation, mobility and muscular education.’

She went on to say how water exercises should be considered in their own right and not as exercises borrowed from a gymnasium.

‘And the pool itself?’ asked Burn with interest.

‘The usual house pool, but certainly heated. Sets of wall bars. Submerged parallel bars. Cork floats and wooden paddles.’

Jenny spoke so enthusiastically she could have been building the pool herself. But why should she bother, Frances thought dully, when most obviously ... obviously to Frances anyway ... Burn was building it
for
her? For Jason really, of course ... but for Jenny, too? As Jenny went on in her eager absorbed way, Frances saw
Burn
taking notes.

Burn
West left the next week. Mrs. Campbell remained to maintain the apartment until the specialist proclaimed Jason as ready to go home.

The weeks that followed went slowly for Frances. Because lessons had been allowed to lapse while everything was slanted towards Jason’s recovery, she found time on her hands. Jenny, however, was busy every moment of the day, and though she accepted Frances’ help gratefully, there were more things that Frances could not help her with.

Still Jenny took her time off. She was sensible enough to know that it was necessary.

Sitting at the window with Jason and playing the car game again, where Jason’s attention was on the contest, Frances’ attention suddenly was caught by a man on the street below, a man she had seen previously. But where? Even as she puzzled over it, Jenny came out of the building and went across to the man. They took hands and in a moment were lost in the crowd.

Where, thought Frances, being scolded by Jason, had she seen that man? Why had Jennifer gone so eagerly across to him, taken his hand?

‘You’re not playing properly, France, you let two Holdens go without counting
!’

‘Sorry, Jason.’

‘When Jenny plays she plays properly,’ grumbled Jason.

‘Sorry, darling.’

‘I’ll be glad when she gets back.’

You ... and your father, thought Frances.—Also that man down in the street was glad. She refused to let herself puzzle over it, though, and concentrated on counting green Holdens. Jason won with blue Minis and became more amiable with Frances. They played until it was time for Jason’s bed.

Sitting at the window again after she had tucked him in, it all came clearly to Frances. That man in the street had been that man at Mirramunna, that man whom she had thought was Trevor Trent. The man who had not been Trevor at all. But what was he doing now in Sydney, she wondered, not just in Sydney but waiting beneath their apartment? And what was Jenny doing, running to him and putting out her hand?

A
t length the last X-ray was taken, the approval given for Jason to go home. The equipment that Jenny would need was trucked down, but a prearrangement had been made for the three women and Jason to fly back by chartered plane.

Jason loved every minute of the flight. ‘Mushrooms
!’
he called as he saw the small houses beneath. Then: ‘Ants
!’
of the diminishing people. When they went through cottonwool clouds he clapped his hands, and the rainbow they slid through sent him in raptures.

Burn West was at Mirramunna’s lonely strip to meet them, and as soon as the charter had skimmed to a halt in a field dotted with white thistle and dandelion he drove the big luxurious car across so they could transfer with barely a step.

‘But I wanted to show you how I could walk,’ protested Jason.

‘Plenty of time for that when there’s no grass seeds, you’d be covered all over with them, sonno.’ Burn spoke easily, but Frances, almost agonisingly atune with the man and impatient with herself because of it, felt an air of excitement in him, an eagerness to get back to West of the River.

They drove quickly along the dirt road, the country shimmering bluely each side of them, everything watercolour as Frances had remembered it. And loved it. She wondered if the scene appealed to Jenny, too, and she half turned.

Mrs. Campbell was sitting in front with Jason between her and Burn. Jenny and Frances shared the big back seat. As Frances half turned Jenny said, ‘That’s the road to Great Rock.’ She made no question of it, so evidently Burn must have told her of the different homesteads. But, puzzled Frances, even having been told, how would Jenny know that Great Rock
did
lie
in there?

She was ready at the gate to get out and open up, wait for the car to pass through, then shut up again. Once more they were rimming the avenue of pines, curving up to the lovely homestead. But before he got out to unfasten the car doors, Burn West said proudly: ‘Well?’

There was no need for any of them to ask what he meant, for it lay blue and sparkling before them—a perfect little swimming pool. Frances could see from the faint quiver of steam that it was heated. She could also see everything that Jenny had said ... and that Burn had made notes about. The sets of wall bars. Submerged parallel bars ... in the blue translucency
you could see them clearly
—
the cork floats and the
paddles.

‘Oh,
Burn
!’
said Jason ecstatically.

‘That’s a very nice pool,’ Mrs. Campbell was admiring, ‘and put in so quickly.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ Frances heard herself murmuring. She waited for Jenny ... Jenny who had inspired all this.

But Jenny was collecting bags. Her back was turned.
Burn
was so pleased, so almost
boyishly
pleased with himself, he did not notice her silence.

But Frances did. She was also amazed by the line of annoyance, when Jenny turned again, at the girl’s pretty mouth. For some reason, Frances thought, puzzled, for all the enthusiasm for pool therapy that she had expressed in Sydney for Jason, Jenny is not now pleased at all.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The
exercise, massage, mechanical and electronic treatments began the next day under Jenny’s skilled hands. Breathing drill. Relaxation on a firm mattress using only one thin pillow. Then up again to practise a good carriage, because faulty posture could be responsible, Jenny told Frances, for strains on the ligaments and muscles. Jenny demonstrated to Frances ‘trigger spots’ on Jason, Jason curling up in tickles, which were localised areas of tenderness from which, she said, pain could be referred segmentally.

In that first fascinating week with Jenny, Frances learned how important was the role of a physiotherapist, the wide scope physiotherapy covered. She also saw an almost dramatic relief in certain onsets Jason had suffered, she saw firm changes in weak muscle tone, she saw the test of movement, all adding up to general improvement.

‘It’s wonderful,’ Frances said.

‘It makes sense, doesn’t it?’ Jenny was obviously pleased with Jason’s progress. She talked happily over different aspects she still intended to try, but, rather surprisingly for one who had enthused over the therapy of pool exercises, the water aspect was not mentioned.

Perhaps it was fortunate that the harvest had begun and Burn’s attention, and more often than not
Burn
himself, elsewhere. Otherwise, thought Frances, he might have been disappointed at that pretty sparkling blue pool with its tile verge, its lazing chairs and its bright umbrellas still in its virgin state. Frances knew she was disappointed herself.

But just now wheat was king. The harvest was almost home, and even out at West of the River you could feel the excitement and expectancy, become part of the great wheat story. In thousands of farmhouses, Bill Furness told Frances, pre-dawn bacon and eggs were sizzling at the beginning of every momentous wheat day. Barn doors were flung wide open. Headers were chugging out and the iron print of the tractors biting into the ground. Because West of the River only included wheat as another iron in the fire, there was not such frenzied activity, but the atmosphere was still there, the message of wheat.

Burn
West took time off from his own activities one day to whizz the girls and Jason in to see the national drama of the plainlands, to watch the great grain trucks raising the dust to the railhead. But not all the offerings came impressively like this. Jason, always car
-
conscious, called out excitedly as an old T-Model Ford came rumbling along with its dusty back seat piled up with bags.

Leaving their spectator side of the road, they went next into Mirramunna to see how King Wheat could change a small town. They gasped at the activity. The sleepy street was literally crowded. Outside the hotel big-armed, sun-tanned farmers talked optimistically of fat pay-offs, resentfully of the insufficient number of rail trucks and the late opening of silos, and, with an anxious upward squint of eyes at a blazing blue sky, cautiously of the weather and the chances of it holding.

‘There’s no time like harvest time,’ said Burn. ‘To these wheatmen it’s the difference between the pat on the back and the punch on the nose. No wonder
they’re touchy
!
’

‘Yet they all seem amiable to each other,’ Frances put in.

‘They are now, but pre-wheat nerves can be very real, believe me. However, once the harvest has begun tempers are better. Though, mind you, there’s still an ever-present anxiety that will persist until the very last grain is home.’

‘Weather?’ she queried.

‘Yes.’

‘But it looks so steady.’

‘A bad note has been creeping into the weather reports lately,’ said
Burn
with a look of worry himself. ‘It may even turn out a wheat race in the end. Would you like to see the storage in the local silo?’

They went eagerly,
Burn
explaining that though the rail trucks were like busy bees with their goings and comings, much of the local harvest would still have to be stored in Mirramunna.

‘And every bushel coming in must be accounted for,’ he said, ‘so the grain must be weighed. You can imagine what a fantastic operation that means.’

They watched the wheat hissing into the garner bin, and Burn at Frances’ side told her if she thought this was something she should see the many-floored wheat storage at Geelong, where the rail trucks shunted into the track shed, cascading their cargoes into hoppers ready for the fast shipping turn-around to Japan, other destinations.

After all this wheat dust,’ he proposed, ‘I think we deserve drinks.’ He left the girls and Jason at the soda shop and joined the big-armed, sun-tanned wheatmen outside the country pub.

Frances took the opportunity to cross the road to the surgery. She found Scott there, but very busy.

‘Things happen during harvest,’ he smiled, and shrugged. ‘I’ve three twisted ankles, one broken leg, eye irritations by the score and strains galore. How is the therapy going?’

‘It’s almost a miracle, Scott.’

There was little time to talk; Burn would be back from his beer soon, and obviously Scott was a rushed man.

‘Have you
—
’ Frances began tentatively.

‘Done anything about Pamela?’ he forestalled her. ‘No. Thank heaven, Fran’ ... another shrug ... ‘that besides physical therapy for Jason there’s work therapy for me.’

‘Poor Scott!’ Frances said sympathetically, and moved to the door.

She saw, across the road, that Burn had returned to the soda shop, that he was standing, wide brim of his country hat tilted back from his eyes, arms folded in front of him, watching her. No doubt watching her with estimation, as he always did.

But it was not Burn who unsettled Frances, it was the momentary glimpse ... only momentary but
there
... Of that fair woman she had noticed weeks ago, the young blonde girl whom she had also seen on the night of the
barn
dance. Frances stood on the footpath a moment, staring after the girl’s small blue roadster, that was already turning a corner.

‘You’re not looking as happy as a lover should look,’ said Burn softly as he seated them all again in the big black car prior to running them home. ‘The path not as smooth as you’d wish?’