Women and War (35 page)

Love and triumph and a wave of passion so strong she thought she would drown in it overwhelmed her and she let herself be swept along – swept away – towards the inevitable white-water crescendo.

Afterwards, she opened her eyes to see Richard sitting up on the edge of a bale of hay. She put her hand on his thigh, trailing her fingers along the long muscle and feeling it still damp and sticky.

He turned and looked down at her. ‘Tara, what can I say?'

She sat up too, touching his shoulder with her lips. ‘ Don't say anything.'

He looked at her; looked away. The haunted expression on his face was visible even in the half light; it touched her warmth with a chilly finger.

‘No buts. Not now.'

He sat silently for a moment. She waited, wondering what he was thinking, wondering whether she should say something else or if it was better to say nothing at all. Then he moved, getting up, searching for his clothes.

‘The storm is passing – and I still have to find my keys.'

‘Richard …'

He looked back at her. The expression on his face tore at her heart.

‘I'm sorry, Tara.'

‘No, Richard, no!' she caught at his hand again. ‘Don't be sorry, please. I wanted it too. If you're sorry I can't bear it!'

‘I'm sorry … oh hell!'

He began to get dressed. There was nothing left for her to do but follow his lead. She found her own dress, getting into the wet clinging material with difficulty.

‘The horses have their water all right, have they?' He seemed to be taking refuge in normality. Stop it! Talk about what happened – what we just shared! she wanted to say, but no words would come. All very well to scheme when your heart is not involved, but how different it is when you care so much, so very very much …

He moved to the stable door, stood waiting for just a moment, then went outside. She followed, her legs still trembling just a little. The rain had became a steady thick mist, the ground and the surrounding vegetation steamed into it. She could not understand how withdrawn he had become. They should be closer now, instead she had never felt more distant. He crossed to the ute, opening the door and searching about on the floor for his keys. She got in on the passenger side, pretending to search also. Nothing for it now but to ‘find' the keys and drive back. Back to the hospital. Back to reality. Back to hardly seeing him and worrying and wondering …

A tear ran down her nose. He did not see it. She felt inside the crack of her seat then leaned across and pushed her hand down the back of his, pulling out the keys.

‘Oh – they're here!' To her own ears it sounded flat and false – surely he must know what she had done, she thought. But he did not appear to.

‘Thank God for that! How did they get down there? I must have dropped them …'

‘Yes.' She said. ‘You must.'

He started the engine and drove in silence. The unmade-up road was awash with mud and it needed all his concentration to negotiate it. Once they were back on the bitumenized Track she thought he might say something, but he did not and the set of his face made the muscles of her stomach tighten.

The journey seemed endless, yet when the hospital buildings came in sight she felt the last twist of desperation. He parked the ute, leaned over and for a brief second she thought he was going to take her into his arms again. Instead, he pulled a strand of hay from her hair.

‘Richard …' Her distress was all there in the one word. His expression softened momentarily, then closed in again.

‘Don't worry, Tara,' he said. ‘I'm not going anywhere. You know how I feel about committing myself while this damned war is on but if anything … if anything happens as a result of this afternoon, you know I'm here. We'll get married.'

‘But …'

‘I'd just have to forget my misgivings about wartime marriages, wouldn't I?' He leaned across, kissing her, and the tenderness of the kiss warmed her again, breathing new hope into her.

‘You don't think I would abandon you – or let a child of mine be born fatherless, do you?' he said. ‘What do you take me for, eh?' She reached for him, burying her face in his shoulder, clinging

again.
‘I love you,' she whispered.
But her words were soft and muffled and he did not hear her.

Alys Peterson put her foot hard down on the accelerator of her Alfa Romeo and kept it there.

In front of her the road shone, sticky with heat; above the sky was endless blue. The sun, directly overhead, beat down mercilessly and as the car followed the kinks in the road it caught the wing and central mirrors, sending bright shards of light into Alys' eyes. A bend loomed up ahead and Alys took it the way Race had once taught her braking slightly before it yet keeping up the revs with her heel overlapping the accelerator then driving round it fast, fast! Even on these sticky roads she felt the weight of the car holding it steady and smiled with satisfaction. Oh, there was nothing like driving for helping to put your problems behind you for a little while. With the powerful engine roaring and the wheel between her hands she could forget that she was trapped in the mansion in Toorak, forget that her mother had once more become her gaoler. The faint odour of petrol on the fresh country air replaced the smell of the sickroom in her nostrils, a smell which seemed to cling to Frances Peterson even now she was able to come downstairs for a good part of each day. She would ride down in the special invalid's lift Daniel had had installed for her – a chair which hummed up and down its runners at the side of the broad stairway – dressed in a flowing caftan which hid the uselessness of one arm and leg, and with her head turned slightly to one side so that the twisted mouth and eye were not visible, she looked for all the world like a queen on her throne. But the smell came with her all the same, disguised by clouds of perfume yet still clinging to her, defiantly, inexplicably, immutably part of her.

Something materialized on the road ahead of Alys – a big black American Buick, shimmering in the bright heat. Alys eased up slightly to pass it. Unusual to meet much in the way of traffic out here on a scorching summer afternoon. Sometimes it was possible to drive out and see nothing at all. Then she depressed the accelerator again and the Alfa Romeo surged forward, eating up the road.

Oh, bliss – bliss! If only she could keep her foot flat down and drive forever. But she could not. A few hours' respite was all she could allow herself and Frances would be asking for her again, not because she needed anything that the servants could not do for her but because she liked to know that Alys was not far away; that the gossamer threads of her web held her as strongly as ever.

And they did. Alys had only to look at the drawn mouth, hear her mother struggle to form the words that had once come acid-sharp from her lips, to feel the familiar rush of guilt. And when the good eye looked at her with that ‘ you wronged me but I forgive you because I am your mother and I love you' expression, any thoughts of escape were instantly quashed.

‘How long will she be like this?' she had asked Dr Whitehorn one afternoon when he had called in to see Frances.

He had shaken his head. ‘Impossible to say. In cases like these progress is very, very slow. But your mother has done well. She is regaining her speech; she should soon be able to walk a little on the flat, provided you are there to support her. Yes, all things considered, with a stroke as serious as the one she suffered, her progress has been little short of miraculous. You are very lucky to have her, I don't mind telling you.'

Alys had hastily averted her eyes, ashamed of the small ironic voice in her head which had echoed ‘ lucky?', but placed a quite different emphasis on the word. She only hoped Donald Whitehorn had not seen her think it. But when he continued: ‘And, of course, you must be prepared for the fact that she could suffer another stroke at any time,' she felt that he might be reproving her.

That had been the end of any thoughts of escape and she had resigned herself once more to playing the role of dutiful daughter.

Only sometimes she thought if she could not get out for just a few hours she would go quite crazy.

She was in flat open country now – the vast rich pasturelands where the Victorian cattle barons held sway. Not the small to medium-sized farms of the north and north-west here, the family properties worked by a father and one or two of his sons with a plough pulled by a six-team, a few cattle, sheep and chickens. These were the properties and stations of the squattocracy, the wealthy families whose forefathers had established their claims when the land was there for the taking. As far as the eye could see it stretched, broken only by lonely clumps of gums and wattle or stands of box or the occasional creek and as the pasture stretched out, so did the distances between the lane entrances, guarded by the obligatory mailbox drums, marked with the name of the property which was way, way back out of sight of the road. Occasionally, there were the signs that a bush fire had passed this way – the blackened stumps of burned out gums, the scorched scrubby look of the land – and Alys suppressed a shiver. The thought of bush fires terrified her and always had done. The nightmare of being trapped in a hell of bright orange flame and choking black smoke, with the terror of the animals caught in its path in the wind and the sure knowledge that however fast you could run the fire could run faster, outpacing the swiftest horse, perhaps the Alfa Romeo even, leaping roads and firebreaks with ease, setting the next clump of withered gums alight with only the slightest touch of its hot breath. And the land was so ripe for a bush fire now – there had been no rain to speak of since 1936.

1936. How long ago it seemed! So many things had happened since then. Falling in love with Race. Getting pregnant by him. Seeing him die. The war. The bombing. Frances' stroke … all that and more, but no rain. I have gone far enough, Alys decided. Time to be getting back.

She slowed the Alfa Romeo, executed a neat turn, and headed back the way she had come, but although she still drove fast it was not as fast as she had driven on her way out. Much as she still loved the sensation of speed, it had a little less attraction when it was taking her back to Toorak and Frances.

Some way back and she saw a dark shape on the road in front of her. At first, the distance was too great to see what it was or which way it was going, then as she came nearer she recognized it as the black Buick which had passed her earlier on her way out. Closer still and she saw that it was stationary, the bonnet up, emitting a cloud of steam. She slowed. A breakdown on a lonely road such as this meant trouble.

At the sound of her engine a man emerged from beneath the bonnet of the Buick, straightening and wiping his hands on a dark blue handkerchief.

‘Having trouble?' she called.

He came towards her, a tall well-made man of about fifty. His face was leathered from exposure to the sun, his hair still thick though iron-grey and his eyes were grey also, sharp and piercing in that dark-tanned face.

‘Hi. You could say that.'

Alys eyed the Buick hungrily. Not a car she knew – and a new car was as attractive to her as a fresh clump of untouched honeysuckle to a bee. She pulled into the side of the road in front of the Buick and got out.

Careful, now! she was warning herself. Don't upset him. Men could be so funny about a woman knowing something about what went on under the bonnet of a car. Casually she ambled back. He did not look the sort to be easily annoyed. A strong face, too strong to feel threatened by a woman, no matter what her talents.

‘Can I look? I'm terribly interested in cars.'

He cast a glance at the Alfa Romeo. ‘I can see that,' he said dryly.

She leaned over the engine marvelling at the condition it was in.

‘You keep it beautifully!'

His mouth quirked humorously. ‘I can't take the credit for that, I'm afraid.'

‘Oh, it's not yours then?' she was still bending over the engine and when he did not answer she wondered briefly whether perhaps the car was stolen, then dismissed the thought. If ever a man looked like a car thief; it was not this one.

‘Hmm. One of your hoses has gone, hasn't it? Looks like it's a job for the garage.'

She looked up to see him watching her with an amused expression.

‘I'd come to that conclusion myself,' he said wryly. ‘The damn nuisance of it is there's no garage for at least twenty miles and I'm due in Melbourne for an appointment. I'm late already.'

‘Well, that's no problem,' Alys said. ‘I'm going back to Melbourne. I can give you a ride.'

Again his mouth quirked.

‘Are you sure about that? Don't you know it could be dangerous, picking up strangers on lonely roads?'

Alys laughed. ‘If you had wanted to attack me you've had plenty of opportunity already. Besides, you look perfectly respectable. I'll take the risk.'

‘In that case – thanks!' He locked up the Buick, then followed her to the Alfa Romeo. ‘This is some motor you have here.

She flushed slightly, remembering his borrowed Buick.

‘Yes, it's my pride and joy. And my salvation. I have an invalid mother to look after. If I couldn't get out and blow away the cobwebs once in a while I'd go crazy.'

‘You don't get out much then.'

‘Hardly at all. Oh, I have a married sister I visit sometimes but we don't really see eye to eye.' She broke off, her flush deepening. She did not usually open up like this to a perfect stranger. Yet somehow she felt totally at ease with him. ‘You don't live in Melbourne, do you?' she said, changing the subject.

He smiled, deep crinkles appearing in the dark tanned skin around his eyes.

‘How do you know that? Here am I, all dressed up in my best city-going bib and tucker …'

She smiled again, noting the smart lightweight suit. ‘Oh, it has nothing to do with your clothes. But no one from the city would be as brown as you are. My guess is you're a farmer – am I right?'