Song of the Spirits (77 page)

Elaine caressed his forehead gently. “Tim, right now you’re tired and disappointed. But it’s not all that bad. Mrs. Leroy was very optimistic, and look what I brought with me.” She pointed to the crutches. “Just watch, in a few weeks—”

“I won’t be able to do it, Lainie. Would you all just tell me the truth!” Timothy wanted to sound angry, but the words came out choked. Elaine saw the tears in his eyes and noticed that they were ringed with red. He must have been crying when he was alone. She once more fought the urge to take him in her arms like a child. She must not think of him like that! If everyone treated him like a hopeless cripple…

“The truth depends on you alone,” she stated firmly. “It’s a question of how long you exercise, how much you can take. And there’s almost nothing you can’t take. Shall I help you lie back down? You’re in pain right now, aren’t you? Why did you let them leave you like this?”

Timothy managed a brief smile. “I threw her out. I couldn’t bear it anymore—so both doctors declared me of unsound mind. That’s the only reason I’m still here. Otherwise, they would have packed me up in that thing straightaway.”

A burning rage seized Elaine when she spotted the wheelchair that Nellie Lambert and the nurse had deposited in a corner of the room. It was a voluminous thing with a headrest and flower-print cushions. Elaine would have picked something like that out for an old woman who was only ever going to be pushed from one room to another. Wheeling it with one’s own arms, as she had occasionally seen the lame do on the streets of Queenstown, would be almost impossible in such a contraption. With those soft cushions, Timothy would be forced into more of a reclining position than a seated one.

“My God, didn’t they have anything else?” she exclaimed.

Timothy shrugged. “This was apparently exactly to my mother’s taste,” he said bitterly. “Lainie, I’ll never get out of that thing. But maybe you can actually give me a hand me now. If I lie down, at least I won’t have to look at it anymore.”

Supporting his head, Elaine tried to gently remove the pillows out from under his body to lower him back into a supine position. It was not easy, however. His upper body was heavy, and she ended up putting her arm so far around his head that he rested on her shoulder. She felt his presence more strongly than she ever had, and it was pleasant to hold him and feel his warmth. Before she let him slide back onto the pillows, she turned her head to him and gave him a shy kiss on the forehead.

“You’re not alone,” she whispered to him. “I’m here. I can just as well visit you at home as here. After all, I still have two horses.”

Timothy smiled, though it was clear he was still in pain.

“You’re awfully meddlesome, Lainie,” he teased as he freed himself with perceptible unwillingness from her embrace. “What will my fantastic new nurse, Elizabeth Toeburton, have to say about that?”

Elaine stroked his cheek. “Nothing, I hope. Otherwise, I’ll get jealous.”

She tried to imitate his jocular tone, though she felt like crying. He looked so tired and helpless, and yet here he was trying to cheer her up. She would have liked to embrace him again—and all at once she could picture being embraced by him someday.

Elaine took a deep breath. “Or do you want to marry Miss Toeburton now?”

Timothy looked at her, and his expression suddenly turned serious. “Lainie, what does that mean? You’re not saying that out of pity, are you? I’m not misunderstanding you, am I? And you won’t take it back tomorrow, will you?”

She shook her head. “I’ll marry you, Timothy Lambert. But that thing there,” she said, pointing at the wheelchair, “I won’t marry that. So see to it that you don’t need it for long. Got it?”

Timothy’s exhausted face lit up.

“You know what I promised,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll dance at our wedding. But for now I want a proper kiss. Not on the forehead or on the cheek. You have to kiss me on the mouth.”

He looked at her expectantly, but Elaine hesitated. She suddenly remembered William’s deceptively sweet kisses. And Thomas’s violent entry into her mouth and body. Timothy saw the fear in her eyes and wanted to take his request back. But then she overcame her fears and kissed him, hesitantly and tentatively. Her lips had barely brushed his when she pulled back and looked around almost in a panic.

“Callie?”

Confused, Timothy watched her as she searched for the dog, which had curled up under his bed as soon as she had entered the room. Berta Leroy did not like having the dog in her sickrooms, which Callie seemed to understand. Normally she kept out of the Leroys’ sight, but now she came out, and, wagging her tail, pushed her face against Timothy’s dangling hand. For some reason, it seemed to calm
Elaine to see him scratch the dog between the ears before holding his hand out to her. Elaine approached him again and entwined her fingers trustingly with his.

“It’ll all get better, Lainie,” he said sweetly. “We just need to practice dancing and kissing a bit.”

And as he held her hand and watched the stars slowly appear in the little piece of sky he could see outside his window, he considered that Elaine’s path to dancing at their wedding might be just as long and hard as his.

When Elaine stopped by the doctor’s office the next day around noon, she did not find Berta in the clinic as usual. But the doors were not locked, and Elaine knew she would be welcome in Timothy’s room. However, she was not prepared for the sight that awaited her there. Timothy had disappeared, as had his wheelchair. Instead, she found Berta Leroy lying on the bed, propped up by cushions, and Roly O’Brien putting his arm awkwardly around her. He let her head slide to his shoulder, reached for her waist…

Elaine stared openmouthed at the old nurse. But before she could slam the door in horror, Berta caught sight of her and let out a booming laugh.

“Good God, Lainie, it’s not what you think!” she chuckled. “Oh, you should see your face. I can’t believe it. Did you really think I was up to no good with a half pint like this one?”

Elaine turned a glowing red.

“Hello, Miss Keefer,” Roly said. He appeared to grasp neither the situation’s suggestive nature, nor the comedy of it.

“Let me reassure you, child. This is only a nursing course. We couldn’t find any volunteers who would pretend to be patients. My husband didn’t really need to leave for the Kellys’ this morning—he just wanted to get out of doing this. He has the same feelings about male nurses as Nellie Lambert has.”

“Maybe Miss Keefer could volunteer?” Roly inquired hopefully, casting a covetous eye over Elaine’s slim body.

Berta leaped up. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you! And then afterward, you’d tell the whole pub Miss Keefer let you feel her up. Now get out of here. We’ll continue in an hour or so. Maybe my husband will be back by then and spare us any surprises like the one we just had.” She chuckled again, and it struck Elaine that it had been a long time since she had seen Berta so happy. “Perish the thought if Mrs. Carey or Mrs. Tanner saw us like that. Come have some tea with me, Lainie. I want to know what you did to Tim.”

After Roly had left the room, Berta closed the office temporarily and shooed Elaine into her apartment.

“If someone wants something, they can ring. Now tell me. How did you do it?”

Elaine’s head was spinning. “A male nurse?” she asked. “For Tim?”

Berta nodded, beaming like a child under the Christmas tree.

“Tim was like a changed man today. When they came for him this morning, they wanted to carry him out on a stretcher, but he insisted that they seat him in that monstrosity of a chair. He said he hadn’t suffered here for five months just to be carried out like he was brought in. And then the first thing he did was dismiss his nurse.”

Elaine smiled. “The Miss Toeburton I’ve heard so much about?”

Berta laughed. “One and the same. She said something to him like ‘And now we’re going to lay this nice, soft pillow under your hip, Tim,’ to which he answered that he hadn’t given her permission to call him by his first name. That awful mother of his looked at him like an ornery three-year-old and said, and I quote, ‘Now, be polite, baby.’ Then he exploded. And I tell you, a dynamite blast is nothing compared to what I witnessed. He had let Nellie’s caterwauling bounce off him for five months, but that was too much. They heard him roaring all the way out on the street, and I enjoyed every word. First, he sent his nurse packing. She’s leaving right away with the expert from Christchurch after he fits Tim with leg splints, though he thinks it’s too soon or too senseless to bother with them. But my husband took Tim’s side. If Dr. Porter didn’t want to put on the splints,
he’d do it himself, he said. And naturally, Dr. Porter didn’t want to risk letting a town doctor take the credit. After that, Tim asked for a male caregiver. If there weren’t any available, we’d just have to train one. And that’s just what I was doing with Roly. Now, tell me how you did it, Lainie. I’m dying of curiosity.”

Elaine, however, was still preoccupied with the idea of a male nurse. “How did you decide on Roly?”

Berta rolled her eyes impatiently. “Mrs. O’Brien was in the office next door when the bomb went off. And like I said, you couldn’t get away from Tim’s yelling, no matter how indiscreet you thought it was to listen in. Mrs. O’Brien came up to me rather shyly afterward and asked if we couldn’t give Roly a try. The boy hasn’t wanted to go down in the mine since the accident. You can’t blame him, but naturally it puts the family in a rather difficult spot financially. The father dead, the oldest son without a real job. Roly’s been getting by as an errand boy, but he makes next to nothing. He wouldn’t think anything of it if the others teased him for being a nurse. Not when it’s for Timothy Lambert. You already know how he worships Tim.”

Roly was among Timothy’s most dedicated visitors. The boy was convinced he owed Timothy his life, and he would do anything for him.

“Now, tell me, Lainie. What happened yesterday between you and Tim? You stayed for a while, didn’t you? I had to leave with Christopher, you know.”

Dr. Leroy had been called away to a difficult birth, and Berta always accompanied him to those.

“I stayed until he fell asleep,” Elaine said. “But that wasn’t all that long. He was deathly tired.”

“There was nothing more to it?” Berta asked incredulously. “You only held hands a bit, and then all was well again?”

Elaine smiled. “Not quite. While we were at it we… might have gotten engaged.”

Y
ou must help me, Kura! You’re the only one who can!” Caleb Biller appeared in the Wild Rover on a Thursday just before midnight, much later than usual and completely out of sorts. He was also more elegantly dressed than he usually was for a visit to the pub. His gray three-piece suit was better suited to a formal dinner party. Though he could hardly wait for Kura to finish the piece she was playing, he nonetheless managed to gulp down a whiskey.

“What is going on, Caleb?” Kura asked, amused. As she had gotten to know Caleb better over the last few months, she had grown accustomed to his occasionally peculiar reactions to more or less petty, everyday problems. Since the dance in the Maori village, she had done everything she could to quell her desire for physical love from Caleb. She understood that he shared the predilection of some of the members of Roderick’s ensemble who were more drawn to their own sex. Kura acknowledged this utterly without judgment. After all, having grown up the sheltered heiress of the Warden estate, she had never been confronted with resentment against homosexuality. And she had learned about this aspect of human nature for the first time among artists, where it was accepted as normal. Kura did not understand why Caleb made such a secret about it, but she had come to understand her role in the Biller household: Caleb’s parents were willing to accept even a bar singer with Maori ancestry, as long as it was a girl.

“They want me to get engaged,” Caleb blurted out. Much too loudly really, though the pub was fairly quiet at that hour on a weeknight. The mine workers had already left, and the few remaining drunks at
the bar appeared to be immersed in their own troubles. Only Paddy Holloway looked over with a smirk, which Caleb didn’t even notice.

“Seriously, Kura, they didn’t say it in so many words, of course, but there were these intimations! And the girl, the way she behaves. As though she already knew with certainty that she would be the future Mrs. Biller. Everything has been arranged and…”

“Slow down, Caleb. What girl?” Kura exchanged a look with Paddy that let her know that he had nothing against her closing the piano for the night. Instead, he brought two glasses over for Kura and Caleb at an out-of-the-way table.

“Her name is Florence,” Caleb said, swallowing down the second whiskey. “Florence Weber, of the Weber Mine near Westport. And she is quite pretty, well educated; you can converse with her about anything, but…”

Kura took a sip herself and noted with delight that Paddy had poured her a single malt as well. The barkeeper clearly thought she could use it.

“So, once more, Caleb. Your parents had a dinner party today. Is that correct?” That was not difficult to deduce from Caleb’s clothes. “For this Weber family from Westport. And they introduced the girl to you then.”