Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms (6 page)

P
ERHAPS A SUSCEPTIBILITY TO MALARIA,
rather like a susceptibility to love, is contagious. Will thought it must be. Seven years after his wife's death, William Silver started running a temperature. The next day, he collapsed on the packed earth floor of the stable and was put to bed by Lazarus, who was suddenly indignant and motherly and stern. “You shoulda
said
something,” he scolded as he poured water from a tin mug onto a flannel. “Who's going to look after the farm now, eh? You got to stay
still
now, till the captain comes back with the doctor. Don't you
move
.” Will watched him sponge at her father's forehead with thick fingers, more gentle now than she had ever seen him. “You got to get
better
, Mr. Silver.” Get better,
yes, and do it better than
she
did. Will could see the words pulsating, unspoken, in the air.

But Captain Browne did not return with a doctor. Instead, running down the drive to meet the doctor's little Mazda, Will saw only the captain's old truck, the roar of the engine drowning the lament of the bullfrogs and grasshoppers. Through the fumes that clouded the night air, Will thought she could see a sleek female head. Will hesitated, standing on one bare foot, feeling suddenly sick. In astonishment she looked down at her hand, and saw it shaking, as from the passenger seat emerged a brisk ankle and a heeled shoe; a long, muscular calf; followed slowly by the neck and head of a woman who could only be Cynthia Vincy.

Captain Browne smiled nervously. “Will, this is Cynthia. Cynthia, this is Will;
Wilhelmina
, of course. Not the Will that you've come for. . . . Though, I don't mean . . . I'm sure this Will will also be delighted. I mean . . .” He grew confused in the face of the woman's arched eyebrows, and began again. “Cynthia has come to help us with your father, Will. She's a trained nurse.”

Cynthia smiled down at Will. The smile marred the woman's perfect poise; it was a square smile, like a letter box. Cynthia was aware of this, and rarely smiled.

“It doesn't sound too serious a case, from what Charlie has told me,” said Miss Vincy. (
Charlie!
thought Will in horror.
She called him
Charlie
! The captain was Charlie to one man only, her father; to her, he was sir, or Captain. Charlie!)

“These sharp attacks are the least dangerous; it's the chronic cases you need to watch. I told Charlie there'll be no need for the expense of a doctor. Don't look so sullen, my sweetie! Just money matters; nothing for children to worry about.”

“Oh.”
Will stared up at Cynthia, at her neatly painted doll face, and understood why she'd so hated the idea of her. She'd been right to hate her. Cynthia was shoddy.

“We'll have him up in no time, won't we?” said Cynthia, making what was evidently a
capable nurse
face. But that was a pointless sort of sentence, Will thought. There was no such thing as “no time.” She tried to lower her voice so that only the captain would hear: “I think, hey, Captain . . . I don't think . . .” Will's tongue was suddenly too big, and she tried again. “Do you think Dad—my father—will want this”—this
plastic woman
, she'd been burning to say—“this Miss Vincy for a nurse? . . . Sir,” she added.

Cynthia gave Will a
We understand each other
smile. “I know how you feel, Will. But I
am
fully capable to deal with this, I promise. And there's lots that only a woman can do in a house”—she looked sideways at Captain Browne—“to make the men comfortable. Isn't that right, Will?”

No, it was not. Will fought the need to hit her, to set the
dogs on her, to tear at her smart belted dress.
No,
her whole body cried.
No, no!
We don't want to be comfortable. Go away. We just want to be as we were: well, and healthy, and happy. We are so happy. . . .

But the captain looked so imploringly at Will, and he looked so frail, so oddly desperate for her approval, that Will could not move any muscle but her neck, in a quiet nod.

“Yes,” she said.

“Yes, what?” said Cynthia Vincy.

What, what? Will looked down at the mosquito bites on her arm for help, and down at her long-toed muddy feet. “Yes, ma'am?”

“Yes, ma'am! That's
right
, Will! I like the old-fashioned formalities, don't you, Charlie?”

And Captain Browne, caught in the fierce beam of Will's meaning and miserable eyes, smiled a ghastly smile and led the woman inside to the darkness of the sick man's room.

That was the first day. On the third (which to Will's bewilderment was sunlit and full of the smell of the jasmine, as if there were no father delirious behind the sacking curtains), Cynthia began to make herself felt. Simon called to Will from atop the stone wall that wrapped round the captain's formal garden. He was writhing with laughter and with anger and barely able to keep his balance.

“She's
mad
, Will,” he said. “The bad sort of mad. Tedias met her first. She calls him Thomas. She says she can't
pronounce
‘Tedias.' ” And Simon made a gesture to express what he thought of that. “So I thought, okay, I'll go look at the captain's madam. And I ran down, from the fields, fast, and I couldn't stop, and she was out picking flowers and I ran into her, boom! And she was mad like a hornet, mad like a whole nest of stingers, Will, man! And she's
huge
, Will—a proper
zisikana
, this huge woman! And she said she caught me in the private garden again—private garden, Will! Like it was hers, or something—she'd get the boss—that's what we all got to call the captain now—to beat me. And then,
ja
? She smiled, and said I could tell my
little friends
that the same applies to them, and I told Peter and he said we'd put mambas in her bed, but I dunno how we'd catch them—”

He had been telling his story fast, with gestures, miming his collision, boom!—crash—but Will thought he looked suddenly darker, subdued, and he screwed up his face.

“I don't like her, Will. I . . . hope you'll be okay. And your baba, your dad, too? I'm gonna have to stay this side the wall for a while,
ja
—but remember, any trouble, and we'll get Tedias and Peter and all that lot, and we'll pull down the fence and set the bushdogs on her.
Ja?
Okay? So—no worries, my madman.” But Simon's bravado was breaking down
in patches, and he sniffed and frowned and tried to grin and then, defeated, dropped behind the wall. Will was left with a picture of a boy crouching, ill at ease, with unknown laws sweeping in on him.

On the fourth day, Will knew there was a fear in the house. The doctor's Mazda arrived at midnight, and did not leave until the next afternoon. As soon as the car drove off, Will ran to see her father, clutching a fistful of cannas and roses and grass, a bouquet from the bush, but Cynthia had locked the door from the inside. Will hammered on the heavy dark wood.

“Hello? Can I come in? Hello? Papa? Dad? Please let me in, hey! Miss Vincy, ma'am, please, I've got to, please, I've
got
to come in. My dad needs to see me.”

On the other side of the door, Cynthia was winding herself into a fit of indignation.
Dad needs to see me
. It was sad, deluded. How would a scrap of a girl, not reached puberty, know what a sick man needed? Cynthia opened the door a crack. Will had not known brown eyes could look so cold.

“Will!”
she hissed, “Your father is asleep. But if you continue this noise, he will not be for long. If he doesn't sleep, he won't recover. And it will be your fault.” She hadn't meant to say that, but it shot out, venomously—snake words. “Do you want to kill him, Wilhelmina?”

On the fifth day, Cynthia herself found the door locked. Pressing her ear to the keyhole, she heard the voices of the captain and of Silver. The captain's voice was gruff, his breathing ragged at the edges.

“Of course I'll keep her safe, Will. You know I will. That girl . . . she's my sunlight.”

William Silver laughed, weakly. “Would have thought you had enough of that here, Charlie,” he said.

But the captain blinked tears from his milky eyes. “She's sunlight and she's water and earth,” he said. “And she's fearless. Remember when I was chewed by that hyena? Remember the blood? The shrieking? Any other child would have quailed, William; no other girl would have done what she did and washed and bandaged and sung like that. She's . . . William, if I'd had a girl, and she'd been an ounce as valiant and strong as yours, I'd be dying happy.”

Silver's face was rigid with pain, but his voice smiled. “
Ach
, Charlie, I
am
dying happy.” There was a pause, while William fought for air. “But, Charles . . . I wish I'd had longer . . . I'd have left her with . . . a mother, or a home, or . . . a future, or . . .”

“
Sus
, Will! That's nonsense, hey?
Ja?
Ach
, William, my boy, Bill,
Will
, what are you talking about? As long as I have the farm, your girl'll have a home here. And I hope to have it
to my dying day. And as for a mother . . .” His voice trailed off. Cynthia pressed herself so hard against the door that its grain was imprinted on her cheek. She thought she heard a muttered “. . . Miss Vincy . . .” But it may have been phlegm, a cough, a wheeze from an ugly old man.

The captain lifted his voice again, unnaturally hearty. “Anyway, Lazarus asked after you, William. I told him he could come in later. The baccy crop's looking good,
ja
, and one of the mombies calved this morning. Lucian said . . .”

Cynthia Vincy had no interest in the staff. She stole away.

•  •  •

On the seventh day, Will was sitting by the edge of the stone pool, building pyramids of pebbles and dangling her feet in the water. Captain Browne came to find her, calling her name in a voice too weak to echo. He was thinner than ever, and his skin no longer seemed to fit. Will could see long loops of it hanging from his chin, covered with week-old stubble.

He crouched down beside her.

“
Howzit
, Will?”

“Fine, Captain. Fine, thanks.” Will was lying, and she knew she did it badly. “And you, sir?”

“
Ja
, not bad, Will, not bad.” Then he drew breath, and looked properly at the tense, honest little body next to his. The wrists looked like skin-covered glass, terrifyingly
fragile. In the thin face the girl's brown eyes were bush-baby round, and her clothes had not been changed for a week. It hadn't seemed important. They fitted badly, for Will too had lost weight; for seven nights, she had shuddered in the dark, waiting, hoping, fiercely praying—a long stream of half-conscious words. “Please, God, please, Lord, God, I need you now, God, please.” Praying that her father would open the door, look in, whisper her name. He hadn't come.

The captain laid a hand on Will's knee. “Listen, little Cartwheel. Your father . . . it's not just a short attack. William's ill,
ja
? Seriously ill. Very, very seriously ill.” The captain looked at Will, a miserable look from under bushy brows. “Do you understand what I mean, Will?” he asked.

Yes, Will understood. And it was as though the farm and the trees and the pool had gone up in sudden flames.

“
Ja
,” she said. “I understand,” and as she said it, she felt so weary and tight and small that to drop down, fainting or asleep or dead, would have been a relief. But you couldn't faint by choice.

“You okay, chooky?” The captain had never seen anyone so white.

Will tried to nod, but her head wouldn't move. Through the ringing in her ears she could hear a terrible nothingness;
no crickets sang. Will tried to speak then, in fear of this new brand of hush, tried to say “
Ja
, I am. I will be. We'll be okay, sir,” or just “Yes, Captain Browne,” but the words got trapped in the back of her throat, mixed up with vomit, and Will could only mutter, choked from behind closed lips, and touch his knee. And then she ran, hard, tripping over a spade, ran out, past the limits of the formal garden, to be sick, wretchedly, behind a bush.

Lazarus, passing ten minutes later, found her crouched on her haunches, weeping hacking sobs, roaring, spitting, crying deep rivers of tears down a dusty face. Wordlessly, but murmuring soft noises, he gathered her up and took her in strong arms to his own fire, where she wept for hours, as though her father were already dead.

So when the time came to actually say good-bye, Will was strong again, and only her awkward, passionate love for her father was with them in the darkened room—no despair, and no strange doctors, was allowed. She kissed the frighteningly thin hands, and cheeks, and forehead and chin and lips and eyes—eyes that were open, at half-mast, and very tired.

“You look after yourself, chooky,” William Silver whispered.

Will stared at his hand, very hard. The ache in her nose and the roof of her mouth meant tears were coming.
Don't
you dare cry
, she told herself fiercely.
No tears. No hullabaloo. Just love. Not tears.

“
Ja
, Dad,” she said quietly. “Will do.”

“And be good, my girl. Always goodness. Be brave. Be happy, okay? Courage, chook,
ja
?”

“Yes, Dad. Of course.” Her voice was wobbly, and she licked a single tear off her upper lip. It tasted of salt, and love.

“Good, and brave, and happy, little Cartwheel.
Ja
?
”