Amy's Touch
Authors: Lynne Wilding
To the medical and nursing staff of St George Private Hospital, Kogarah, Sydney, with much gratitude
30 April 1874
T
he man squinted against the early-morning sunlight. He reined in his horse, lifted his battered wide-brimmed hat and wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘So hot,’ he muttered unnecessarily to no one but himself as he watched the herd of cattle mill forward. They kicked up a cloud of fine red dust that made him cough as he inhaled the minute particles.
He hadn’t expected such severe heat in April. Back in Glasgow, where he’d left his wife and three children, it was spring and the days would still be bitterly cold. Now he was half a world away, in the Flinders Ranges in the colony of South Australia, looking for the parcel of land he had purchased ‘sight unseen’ almost a year ago.
Scottish by birth and cautious by nature, Howard McLean was not an impulsive man, but he had behaved that way the day he’d read the advertisement about prime land for sale in the Australian colony; partly because it had come at a time when he had been frustrated beyond measure with the lack of progress of the small farm his family had owned for two generations at Braemar—two days’ travel by horse and cart from Glasgow. Making a living, feeding, clothing and trying to educate his family was a day-to-day struggle and he was tired of it. He had talked it over with his wife, Mary, then scraped together enough pounds for a deposit and set in chain a series of events that would change his and his family’s lives forever, in a country far removed from their experience.
The land here was so different from the hills and dales of Scotland. Studying the terrain, his interested gaze was distracted by a rider skirting the western perimeter of the one hundred head of Hereford cattle they’d been droving for more days than he cared to count, from stockyards in Adelaide, north-west and slightly towards the ten thousand acres of virgin bush near the farming village of Gindaroo. The rider, his nephew, Angus Scotten, had taken to horses and the Australian bush as a duck did to water, enjoying himself immensely as he pushed the herd along. A gangly fifteen-year-old, Angus had been glad to put his schooling behind him to accompany his mother, Heather, and father, Hamish, on what he hoped would be a great adventure.
Howard gave a manly snort, then promptly sneezed. Great adventure! It might be that to Angus, but it was the greatest gamble Howard had ever taken, and one he had to win. Which was why he would be happier once he saw the purchased land with his own eyes. Only then would he be sure that he had made the right decision.
Far behind the herd, his sister, Heather, drove the wagon that held provisions, farming equipment and building goods purchased in Adelaide. Behind her came her husband, Hamish, shepherding a mixed flock of fifty ewes, lambs and two rams.
Howard’s hazel eyes scanned the horizon and the bush around him, looking for the ‘signposts’ described in the title deed. He had memorised them so he didn’t have to unfold the legal paper that described the parcel of land every time he thought they might be getting close to it. Yesterday, before they’d made camp for the night, they had skirted the fledgling village of Gindaroo, so, according to his calculations, his parcel of land couldn’t be too far away. Urging his horse forward, his right hand delved into his trouser pocket and brought out an ex-army compass. He checked the direction and gave a nod of approval. They were heading the right way, and the banks of the Boolcunda Creek should be just ahead…somewhere.
A movement caught his attention at the front of the herd. The lead steer had broken away from the others and was heading over to the right at a brisk pace. Then a change in the tone of the cattle’s lowing alerted Howard that the herd was shifting direction. His newly freckled, sunburnt forehead puckered in a frown. Why? As the cattle’s meanderings picked up pace, the answer came to him. Water. The cattle smelled water and wanted to get to it.
Suddenly he grinned. Water! Boolcunda Creek. Cupping his hands
around his mouth he yelled to Angus, who was trying to turn the herd back onto their original line, ‘Let them have their head, laddie. I think we’ve found the creek.’
And sure enough, there were his ‘signposts’. Howard recognised them as soon as he sighted the creek through the trees. To the left was a craggy, reddish-brown three-humped hill, and after fording the water, which was less than a foot deep, and riding up the bank for a better view, he came upon a wide, sloping valley, heavily wooded in parts, with a cluster of roundish boulders on the eastern side. All of which had been accurately described in his paperwork.
The land looked fine for grazing cattle and sheep, even with the grass tall and yellow from the summer heat. Dismounting, he knelt and dug his fingers into the grass until they penetrated beneath. Grabbing a clump of earth, he held it up to his face to smell and study it. The soil was good, and crops would grow here if the annual rainfall was decent. His grin widened with satisfaction, after which, being the good Methodist that he was, he said a prayer of thanks. The gamble had paid off. The McLean family had their new home…and by the time Mary and the children—Dougal, Helen and four-year-old Colin—arrived he would have a house built. It wouldn’t be grand to start with, but it would be a beginning, a new beginning for all of them.
‘Uncle Howard,’ Angus reined in beside his uncle’s horse. His voice, thick with a Scottish burr, was high with excitement. ‘Is this it? Are we here, Uncle?’
‘That we are, laddie. Over there,’ he pointed to a rise in the land that wasn’t too far from the creek, ‘is where we’ll camp tonight, and tomorrow we’ll pace out an area to build a cottage for winter. There’s plenty of timber and rocks close by, good building materials.’ The cottage and managing the livestock would be top priorities, for Howard had promised Mary that there would be reasonable accommodation for the family by the time they arrived.
‘My mamma will be pleased about that. She’s naught too fond of sleeping on hard ground.’
Howard nodded. ‘That I know.’
‘Uncle,’ Angus’s tone was contemplative, ‘the property should have a name. Have you given any thought to what you might call the place?’
‘No,’ Howard admitted. His mouth twisted to one side as he concentrated on Angus’s question. ‘Perhaps something with McLean
in it. McLean Downs. McLean’s Crossing. McLean’s Way. How about one of those?’
Angus wrinkled his thin, prominent nose, unimpressed by any of the suggestions. ‘McLean’s Crossing sounds the best, but, you know, we’ve been droving the herd for nigh on three weeks, and when we sell stock we’ll have to drive them to stockyards. And during the year we’ll be droving stock to different pastures. Can I make a suggestion?’
‘Of course,’ Howard said, only half-listening. His thoughts were already on plans to develop the land, to deforest part of it to make more paddocks for grazing, to plant a vegetable garden and perhaps a field of wheat.
‘How about Drovers Way?’
‘
Drovers Way
.’ Howard rubbed the beard he’d grown since arriving in the colony. ‘I like the sound of that. Let me think about it, see what your ma and pa say. For now we’d better stop our yapping and get the herd out of the creek. The wagon and the sheep will be coming along soon.’
Angus swung back into the saddle. ‘Och aye, Uncle. Right away.’
15 November 1918
A
grey dawn in a lightening sky greeted Sister Amy Carmichael as she walked towards one of the hospital buildings. Entering, she paused at the glass-panelled door, the entrance to Ward Twenty with its sixteen beds, to steel herself against the varied smells that would assault her nostrils on entering. Even after more than four years of nursing she hadn’t become used to the smells. Ample use of disinfectant and bleach didn’t disguise the building’s mustiness nor the lingering aroma of vomit, sweat, blood and, in some cases, decaying flesh. Little attention to the niceties had been given to this military hospital in the countryside near Dover. Walls and ceiling were unpainted timber, the floor was covered in hard-wearing linoleum, and the open fireplace in the middle of the ward, on the western wall, did little to generate warmth for those in beds at either end.
This was the reality of nursing soldiers who’d survived the hell of the Great War back to a semblance of health, so they could be repatriated to Australia. Still, even with the severity of the ward, her work in ministering to the sick meant that a sense of euphoria buoyed Amy as she started her shift. The war had been declared over four days ago, and the relief—from staff down to the sickest soldier—pervaded everything.
Her right hand dipped into the pocket of her starched apron-front to finger the letter given to her as she’d come on duty. She stifled a
frisson of irritation. The letter was from Miles in South Australia. He considered himself her boyfriend, though she didn’t reciprocate the belief. It took little imagination to know the letter’s contents. How was she? When was she coming home? He missed her. His letters were always the same and, to her dismay, lately she found it hard to remember what he looked like or the sound of his voice.
Postmarked almost three months ago, she would read the letter if and when she got a tea break. They were shorthanded today: two nursing assistants were incapacitated with flu, and had been isolated in case it was the Spanish Flu, so the possibility of an invigorating cup of tea was going to be slim. Miles and home—Adelaide, her doctor father—seemed so far away, almost a lifetime ago, considering what she had seen and done during her tour of duty in Britain. She shivered. So much death and disfigurement. So many young lives irrevocably changed. But there had been miracles too, soldiers who’d defied medical odds, who had been knocking on death’s door yet had recovered.
Dr David Carmichael had been very much against his daughter’s decision to leave her position at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and join the army’s nursing corps halfway through the war; he feared that he might lose her, as he had lost her brother, Anthony, at Gallipoli. Amy, however, had been determined to play her part, whichever way she could, and had defied his wishes and joined up.
As she grasped the door’s handle she wondered if Corporal Peters had survived the night—he had been desperately ill with a stomach wound. And there was that nice Private Daniel McLean, her only patient with upper-class credentials, in bed number sixteen, manfully struggling to recover from shrapnel wounds. Then there was the soldier from the Royal Engineers, Jim Allen, who, at seventeen, was four years younger than Amy. He had been a bricklayer, and had had his left hand blown off by a German grenade. Jim was in a deep state of depression, finding it difficult to deal with the loss of the limb and the knowledge that his bricklaying days were over.
Amy took a deep breath, composed her features and opened the door. A low wolfwhistle preceded one patient’s welcome. ‘Well, look who’s here, a ray of Aussie sunshine in gloomy, dull Mother Britain,’ Robbie, the man in the first bed on Amy’s right, quipped in his country drawl. ‘G’day, Sister Carmichael.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment, Sapper Bruce,’ Amy replied with schoolmarmish formality. She straightened the covers of his bed, took
his pulse and placed a thermometer in his mouth. ‘If your temperature’s normal, Sapper, the assistant matron might let you sit outside for a while and enjoy the British gloom.’
‘If you’d be willin’ to sit with me, girlie, that’d brighten my day, but probably send my temperature up a bit.’
‘Better watch it, Robbie—give too much cheek and you’ll be in nurse’s bad books,’ muttered a sergeant, one of the two noncommissioned officers on the ward.
Several patients snickered and murmured a low ‘hear, hear’ at Robbie’s cheekiness and the sergeant’s retort. All eyes, except Jim’s, were surreptitiously trained on the brown-haired, slenderly built nurse doing rounds. She spent more time than she had to around Corporal Peters’s bed, obviously concerned about his condition.
A particular pair of brown eyes watched Sister Carmichael draw closer to his bed. Half sitting up in bed, resting on his elbows and supported by two pillows, Danny McLean was finding it hard, almost impossible in fact, to drag his gaze away from the attractive nurse. There’d been a time when he had been too ill with his wounds to care what any of the nurses looked like, but as his condition improved and he became more lucid, Sister Amy Carmichael had become a source of fascination, which, really, was foolish on his part. His wide, wellshaped mouth curved in a self-directed, cynical smile, because he knew from ward gossip that she had a boyfriend, someone named Miles, who worked in a bank back in South Australia.
Randall, his older brother, would tell him he was a fool to secretly cherish the possibility of getting to know her better. Randall was and always had been emotionally tougher than Danny. And while there might be some truth in Danny’s quest being a hopeless cause, something about Amy Carmichael’s persona had embedded itself in his thoughts and his soul, and he couldn’t shake it free.
Besides, he shrugged one shoulder and winced as a shaft of pain shot across his bandaged chest, Amy gave him something to think about other than the war, and Drovers Way, the country property owned by the McLeans for three generations. And now, with peace declared, he could think about going home. When his wounds were healed he’d be shipped back to Australia. The dream he had carried through the trenches, among the grime, the disease and the privations that were part and parcel of the Great War, was going to come to fruition. By some miracle he had survived, and because he had, he intended to make something of his life.
Still, many a time he’d feared—yes,
feared—
he would end up like his late brother, Edward, who’d been head of the family since their father died. Colin McLean’s premature death, after falling from his horse and breaking his neck, had been a significant blow to his three sons. And then Edward had become a victim of the vicious mustard gas somewhere in the Somme. Like thousands of Allied soldiers, Edward’s final resting place was unmarked. Neither Danny nor Randall knew with any degree of certainty where their brother’s remains lay.
‘Good morning, Private McLean.’ Amy’s clear voice wafted from the foot of the bed. ‘How are you feeling today?’
Much better for seeing you, Sister Carmichael
, ran Danny’s thoughts, but an innate reserve and shyness prevented him from voicing the truth. ‘All right, I guess.’
‘Did you have a restful night?’ she asked as she moved towards the head of the bed. She felt his forehead, took his pulse and checked his temperature.
‘As restful as was possible,’ his reply was dry, ‘what with Harry snoring across the aisle and young Jim crying out and moaning in his sleep.’ Poor bastard. God alone knew how Jim would handle the knowledge that he’d only have one hand for the rest of his life. What could a one-handed man with little formal education do? The options were limited, and, worse, he’d probably not be entitled to much of a disability pension.
‘Your temperature is normal, but your pulse is a little fast, Private.’
Harry, in the opposite bed, guffawed loudly as he responded to Danny’s criticism of his snoring. ‘That’d be ’cause you’re the prettiest nurse in the hospital. I reckon every bloke’s pulse runs fast when you’re on the ward.’
Amy ignored Harry’s comment as she told Danny, ‘Your wounds have to be re-dressed today, some time before lunch.’ She smiled her friendly, professional smile. ‘I’ll be assisting matron.’
It was thoughtful of her to warn him of what was to come, and he liked her doing it because she had a gentle touch, unlike some of the other nurses. Taking the soiled bandages off his chest, shoulder and right thigh, swabbing the wounds and checking for infection, then redressing them, was a painful but necessary process. Still, on the brighter side, at least the wounds were healing, and with luck he’d be discharged from hospital just after Christmas.
‘At least I have a pulse, Harry. You probably don’t.’ Danny threw the smart remark back and ventured a grin at Amy.
‘Gentlemen,’ she replied, her tone a mild rebuke.
She was good at handling the men, Danny noted, as Amy walked back down the aisle with her patients’ reports book tucked under her arm, considering she wasn’t as old as some of the other nurses. The same age as him—twenty-one—he reckoned. She had to be, because she was a fully trained nursing sister. He admired the way her hips swayed slightly from side to side as she walked, feminine but not too obvious, and how rebellious wisps of brown hair strayed from beneath her veil. But what he liked most of all were her clear blue eyes, and the way she would look directly at him when she spoke to him. As she left the ward, he watched her stop at Jim’s bed and rearrange his bedcovers for the second time. She had a good, kind heart, Danny decided.
Lighting a cigarette, he settled back against the pillows and watched the smoke spiral towards the ceiling. If the blokes didn’t rattle on too loudly, maybe he’d get an hour’s shut-eye before breakfast.
