Guardian Nurse (6 page)

‘Yes, he has a determined spirit. But while he’s more or less immobile he could begin painting. From there we could move to the actual objects he paints, the how and the why.’ She looked a little anxiously at
Burn
West.

He smiled back at her. ‘It all makes sense, good sense. Do you want me to send in for some equipment?’

‘I have some on hand. A teacher carries it like a nurse her thermometer.’

‘And you are both teacher and nurse.’ He looked at her for so long she found herself turning her own glance away in embarrassment.

The interview broke up soon afterwards,
a
very different interview from what Frances had anticipated. She went back to Jason’s bedroom, saw there was no pretence this time, that he was dead to the world, declined the jackeroos’ invitation to listen to more records and spent the evening until she went to bed checking her equipment.

The next morning it seemed sh
e
was starting all over again with the little boy, after her instinctive
arms around him that had not been pushed away following his ordeal in the lean-to yesterday she had optimistically hoped for something different from the inevitable ‘Nothing’.

It was going to be a hard road, she sighed, after he had said of her bright, ‘Would you like to paint today, Jason?’ a discouraging, ‘Don’t care.’

But when he saw the big white poster sheets, the gay colours, he lost his apathy. Soon he was sitting like any child, blissfully daubing.

Burn
West came in and watched him silently. When it became apparent that talk would not divert Jason, probably not even reach him,
Burn
said, ‘Like Joseph, Jason is fond of many colours—rather psychedelic colours at that. Tell me, France, why do the young see rivers in bright orange and trees in purple?’

‘Somewhere along the line the true colours come in,’ Frances soothed. ‘Just now Jason is positively splurging in this.’

‘That I can believe,’ Burn said with feeling, taking out a handkerchief and removing some splashes that had reached him. ‘While he’s making a bright pink hill would you like to come and learn the general idiosyncrasies of your car?’

‘I would be glad.’ She put another sheet out for Jason and followed
Burn
to the garage.

He gave a short resume of the particular make and Frances listened keenly. When he stood back for her to reverse the car out, drive around the gravelled ways, she did so confiden
tl
y, and was rather pleased at his praise.

‘I used to drive Scott’s,’ she said unthinking, and at once sensed the closing of a door that had opened between them.

‘In that case there was really no need for me to show
you,’ he said abruptly. He added, ‘Keep the keys,’ and turned back to the house. At the front steps, though, he must have had another thought, for he returned to her side.

‘You must have the afternoon off.’

‘I haven’t been here long enough,’ she protested.

‘Perhaps not in time, but certainly in happenings: I’ll make arrangements for one of the girls to keep an eye on the boy this afternoon.’

‘That should be easy,’ she nodded, ‘he’s fascinated with the painting. Thank you for the afternoon off, Mr.—I mean
Burn
. I’ll go into Mirramunna.’

‘Naturally.’

‘To buy Cook’s pattern,’ she finished determinedly, and went neatly past him into the house.

She enjoyed every moment of that drive into town. The road, though not sealed, was smooth and safe so that she could give some of her attention to the scenery unfolding on either side of her, flat gold country but always with a distant scallop of green hills, varying crops, the dozens of different sorts of eucalypts that the Riverina produced, red, silver, umbrella, paper, scribbly.

But, as the little town of Mirramunna loomed up, or at least as the inevitable wheat silos loomed, the old faithful peppercorns banked each side of the track instead of gums, spilling their red berries that gave out that warm, spicy tang. What country town, thought Frances, is that without its peppercorns?

Mirramunna, as well as its silos, comprised a small street of shops, a shire council building, a church with a steeple and a one-level cottage hospital. Frances supposed Scott’s offices would be in or near the hospital. But it was the shops that she went to ... if a little defiantly, defiant because of
Burn
West and that
‘Naturally’ he had flung at her ... and after ‘doing’ the saddlers, the bakers, an ice-cream parlour with coloured cottonwool ice-cream in the window, she turned into the Western Store, quite a large emporium with an old aerial money change system.

She enjoyed herself looking around. As in most Australian country towns fashion was never far behind, in fact avid representatives frequently saw to it that the country girl was more up to date than her city sister.

She bought Cook’s pattern and some accessories she had been asked to choose, then came out and went into the ice-cream parlour, weighed up Riverina Special or Mirramunna Sundae, then asked instead for squash. While she was sipping it she saw a car pulling up at an annexe to the hospital and Scott Muir got out. Stubbornly she had determined not to seek him out, but now that he had descended upon her...

She finished her drink, paid and came out. There were so few people on the sleepy street that it was no wonder Scott turned at the resounding click of her heels.

‘Fran
!
’ he exclaimed, and fairly ran across to her. She ran the last few steps to him.

It was very satisfactory. In no time they were back in the ice-cream parlour again, only it was coffee this time, coffee that they let grow cold as they chattered eagerly together instead, coffee which they eventually forgot.

But for all their excited interchange it all came back to Frances’: ‘I didn’t know you were here’ and to Scott’s: ‘I had no idea you were coming.’

He did not talk about his future, how long he intended to remain in this small Riverina town and Frances did not speak about what she thought of doing once Jason’s plaster was off and he was fit to be placed in boarding school. The present was enough ...
especially with Scott’s firm warm fingers enfolding hers.

‘I’m looking at the country with new eyes, Fran,’ Scott said. Fran—so different after Bill’s and the jackeroos’ Frances, Jason’s ... and now by agreement
Burn
’s ... France. Then he said once again, ‘I had no idea you were coming.’

The time signal from a radio at the back of the counter brought Frances up abruptly. She had better leave at once, she told Scott; it was thirty miles to West of the River and she was not familiar with the road yet.

He nodded but looked disappointed. He would like to show her the hospital, quite well equipped for a small infirmary, and the district map on the wall of his surgery marking his large territory. Then Matron would like to see her, and Sister... He said all this, but his eyes told her that
he
wanted to see her, wanted to talk...

‘Yes, but not now,’ she declined regretfully. ‘I’ve really stopped longer than I should. I have other days off.’

‘And each liberty must be spent in Mirramunna,’ he insisted.

She smiled a little at that, recalling how she had answered Burn West’s taunt as to her destination with a quick ‘It mightn’t be town’ as she had thought of the attractive offshoots of road to be explored.

She must have said this now, for Scott agreed eagerly, ‘We’ll explore together. So far I haven’t taken much notice of this place. Suddenly ... well, suddenly, Fran, it’s rosy.’

‘Let’s close on that pink note,’ she laughed, squeezed his hand and hurried out to the car. He stood waving until she turned at the Memorial and took the left
road out to West of the River.

It was still light, thank goodness, so with steady progress she should make the homestead before dusk. Something warned her that although it was her afternoon off Burn West would not be pleased if she did not arrive until nightfall. Besides, as she had told Scott, the road was unfamiliar.

This was the hour of enchantment, she thought, putting her foot down on the accelerator and enjoying the gentler light now on her eyes. From the trees at the side of the track she could hear the slowing tempo of the nest-going birds; once, some distance away and apparently in some soggy spot, a curlew cried out. The bramble and sloe on the verge already stirred with night things ... frogs, field-mice, crickets. She put her foot down again.

She did not know how far she had gone or how near she was to home when, rounding a bend, she saw a car coming out of a property. The homestead could not be seen, but that was to be expected, as most of the homesteads here stood miles back from their gates. She would have driven on with no more than the usual country wave had the man behind the wheel, eviden
tl
y not seeing her, blocked her route. She stopped abruptly, a little annoyed. Even though it was an empty road and he was accustomed to coming and going without checking, he still should have checked.

Her annoyance disappeared, however, at the man’s genuine distress. He got out of the car at once and hurried over to Frances. He was tall, slim and thirtyish, fair, blue-eyed. He had a sincere smile.

‘All right, say it,’ he invited ruefully, ‘say some people want all the road to themselves.’

‘I was going to,’ she admitted with a laugh back at him, ‘but now you’ve said it for me I won’t.’

‘And you’ll forgive me?’

‘Only if you promise not to do it again.’

‘I promise. I’m afraid it’s a failing in this very exclusive stretch of road. There’s so few of us on it we come to think we possess it, think of it as our own. But I say’ ... eagerly ... ‘you would be the charming young nurse from West of the River?’

Frances demurred at that ‘charming’, but admitted she was the person he meant.

‘And where is our young fellow?’ The man peered into the car.

‘He’s not here now. I left him at home. You would be ?’

The man nodded backwards to the homestead gate. Frances saw that the property was called Uplands and concluded that he owned it.

‘I can’t say how pleased I am to meet you,’ the man smiled, ‘and I’m certainly anxious to see young Jason. Perhaps we can meet up, all three, one day. Say we make it by the river, it’s always a delightful spot.’

‘I’m sorry, but I can’t do that,’ Frances declined.

‘Not now, naturally, the boy isn’t well enough yet, but eventually...’

‘I couldn’t do it, anyway,’ Frances declined again. ‘Mr. West has given me strict instructions that Jason—’

‘I understand perfectly.’ The courteous voice that cut in
did
understand. Frances felt sure of it. She felt churlish, especially so when he did not argue with her. She said that she was very sorry.

‘Not to worry,’ he assured her, ‘I told you I understood. But I’m keeping you, aren’t I, and you can’t be familiar with the road as yet. Look, I’ll go ahead as far as the homestead gate, you just follow my tail-light.’

‘Thank you,’ she appreciated, and watched him go
to his car. What a considerate person he was!

He was as good as his word, and led her all the way to the gate, even opened the gate for her to pass through, then he waved her away, indicating that he would shut the gate again. In her rear vision mirror she saw him turn back to Uplands. A very nice man, she decided.

She negotiated the curves between the young pines to the homestead, saw a blaze of lights, and was about to garage her car when Burn West emerged from the other garage, his face, even in the less than half-light, stormy.

‘What in tarnation have you been doing to this hour?’ he greeted her. ‘I was just starting out to see if you’d had a puncture or been held up or something.’

‘Nothing,’ she answered politely, then thought to herself that it must sound like Jason. She reminded him a little testily that it was her afternoon off.

‘It’s night now,’ he came back. ‘You must have known when you left town that it would be dark before you got here
!’

He was still taking it for granted that she had been to Mirramunna, nowhere else, and unfortunately, unfortunately for all her real pleasure in seeing Scott, she could not correct him. She would have loved to have been able to do that, say to him, ‘I took a country road, I never bothered about town,’ but she hadn’t, so she said instead, ‘I’m sorry I’ve inconvenienced you.’

‘It wasn’t that,’ he grumbled, ‘it was the fact of your returning alone by night over a still unfamiliar route.’ For some stubborn reason she did not t
e
ll him she had returned accompanied. She said, ‘Well, I did it, didn’t I?’ adding, as his face darkened at her pert answer, ‘I was held up a while by a car coming out of Uplands.’

‘Trev Trent’s place,’ he nodded. ‘All right then, this time you’re excused. I’ve always told Trev his gate is in a bad position, bang on the bend as it is. There’ll be an accident one day. Run along now, the bell has gone. I’ll put away your car.’

‘Thank you.’ Over her shoulder she asked, ‘Is Uplands on the river like West is?’ She was remembering how that man, Trev Trent, had suggested a meeting on the river. It had, she thought a little wistfully, sounded fun.