The homecoming, p.10
The Homecoming, page 10
Danny stood up and took a deep breath. ‘That is something I can do.’
She let him out by the front door, watching as he walked out into the cold night before she turned back to the patient who needed her help.
The morphine had taken effect and Bertie Campbell drowsed as Sister Keegan cut the expensive riding boot from his injured leg.
Sister Keegan ran a hand over the fine, well-polished leather. ‘This would feed a family of four for a year,’ she said.
Charlie glared at the nurse. ‘Sister! Concentrate please.’
Keegan flushed and set the ruined boot down. It had done a fair job of keeping the bone splinted but it looked like both the tibia and fibular had snapped. While they waited for the doctor, they made Robert Campbell as comfortable as they could and washed the worst of the mud and blood from his face and hands.
‘What have you done?’ Margaret Campbell appeared at the door.
Campbell turned bleary eyes to his sister, and something like a smile twitched the corners of his mouth.
‘Mags. Glad to see you. Do you know everybody here?’
‘Of course I do. I work here. Trust you to fall off a horse. I suppose you were riding recklessly?’
Bertie frowned and touched his now bandaged ear. ‘Someone shot at me,’ Bertie said. ‘Horse threw me.’
Margaret looked at Charlie. ‘Danny didn’t mention a shooting.’
‘He said something about a ’roo shooter,’ Charlie replied.
‘That’s ridiculous. How do you mistake a man on a horse for a wallaby?’
Charlie had no answer for that. She gave Margaret a quick summation of her brother’s injuries.
Margaret crossed to her brother and laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘I think, Bertie, you are going to be our guest for a little while.’
Bertie shook his head. ‘No. Going back to Melbourne tomorrow. Don’t want to stay here. People bloody shoot at you …’
The youngest of the three town doctors, Doctor Dixon, bustled in, his arrival interrupting any further discussion. He confirmed Charlie’s diagnosis and reset the leg. With the limb encased in plaster of Paris, the nurses saw their patient installed in one of the beds in the men’s ward, where he drowsed off the effects of the morphine they gave him.
‘If it’s all right with you, Matron, I’ll sit with him a while,’ Margaret said.
Charlie nodded. ‘I’ll stay on for a bit,’ she said. ‘Let me know when he’s settled.’
She paused at the door to survey the ward. She currently had three male patients, including Bertie Campbell. The other men had come in over the last few days with injuries from the mines. In the women’s ward she had a woman with dropsy, and another heavily pregnant girl who had arrived on the doorstep that morning. It had been a busy day and she needed to write up the records, so she turned towards her office.
‘Matron?’
Daniel Hunt rose from the bench in the front hall.
‘Visiting hours are from two until four tomorrow, Mr Hunt,’ she said.
He ignored her.
‘How’s Campbell?’
‘He’ll be fine, but he won’t be going anywhere for a few weeks.’
‘A few weeks?’
Charlie shrugged. ‘A broken leg is just that—broken.’
She pulled the envelope with Bertie’s coin purse, wallet, and hotel room keys from her pocket.
‘I think you should look after these,’ she said. ‘Not that I don’t trust anyone here, but I don’t like to risk temptation.’
Danny took the envelope, peering at the contents, before stuffing it into the pocket of his jacket.
‘Does Mr Campbell’s injury affect your plans?’ she asked.
Danny shrugged. ‘He was intending to return to Melbourne tomorrow, but I was planning to stay on a little longer.’
‘Thank you for fetching Sister Campbell,’ Charlie said.
‘We’re old friends.’ A smile caught at the corners of his mouth. ‘If he gets difficult, Matron, Margaret will deal with him.’
‘That’s good to know.’ She shivered. ‘It’s cold out here. Do you want to come to the kitchen for a cup of tea?’
Danny hunched his shoulders and nodded. ‘That would be good.’
Charlie installed him at the table in the hospital kitchen and set the kettle to boil.
While she busied herself putting together tea and sandwiches, she had the feeling that he was watching her.
As she turned to him with a cup in one hand and a plate in the other, he said, ‘Do I know you? You seem very familiar.’
Her heart skipped a beat and with deliberate care she set the items on the table in front of him while wondering how best to answer his question.
As she straightened, she said, ‘We did meet once but it was a long time ago.’
He frowned and his mouth curled in a smile. ‘The girl behind the potted palm!’
She stared at him. ‘I didn’t expect you to remember.’
Danny laughed. ‘You were the most memorable part of the evening.’
Charlie sat down and poured tea for them both. ‘Not all that memorable. You had promised me a dance, but when the time came you had taken another girl for a partner.’
No one else had asked her for a dance that night—it seemed her status as Mrs McLeod’s grace-and-favour-case had been firmly fixed. She had stood beside Eliza McLeod, her heart hammering with anticipation as the time for the promised dance arrived. Her stomach lurched and shaming tears sprung to her eyes as Danny led another girl out on to the dance floor.
He picked up a teaspoon and stirred the tea, even though he had not put any sugar in it.
‘I’m sorry. That was shameful of me. In my defence, my mother seemed to have lined up every eligible young girl in Melbourne for me to dance with that night.’
She shrugged away the old humiliation.
‘I would rather have danced with you than anyone else in the room,’ he continued.
But you didn’t.
‘Eliza McLeod meant well, but I never belonged to your world, Mr Hunt.’
And that night confirmed it.
‘Danny,’ he said. ‘My friends call me Danny.’
‘Kind of you, but I’m not your friend, Mr Hunt.’
He smiled. ‘I think anyone who shared a glass of warm champagne with me on the floor behind a potted palm can call themselves my friend. Don’t you agree?’
Charlie momentarily shut her eyes. Two lonely people who had shared such a brief encounter hardly qualified for first-name terms. He could call her Charlie but she couldn’t bring herself to call him Danny. The social distance yawned between them.
‘Besides,’ Danny continued, ‘I believe we share two people in common for whom I have the highest regard. Are you the Charlie O’Reilly that Netty Burrell talks about?’
‘That’s me. Amos and Netty were very good to me when I was a child,’ Charlie said, adding with a rueful smile, ‘Not that I was a very easy child.’
Danny frowned. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t recall you from the school.’
‘No, I think we must have arrived not long after you left,’ Charlie said in a flat tone. ‘Everyone still talked about the amazing Doctor Hunt and how he saved the town from smallpox.’ She paused. ‘They still talk about him.’
Danny chuckled. ‘So I believe. Caleb does tend to make an impression. Was your father a miner?’
That was a difficult question to answer. Her mother had run a grog shop on the Aberfeldy road and her paternal uncle, Black Jack Tehan, had been a charming rogue who had disappeared from their lives on the night her sister, his daughter, had been born. Daniel Hunt did not need to know her family history.
She shook her head. ‘I just had my mother. She’s remarried now and very happy being a farmer’s wife down Korumburra way.’
‘Oh good, tea!’ Margaret Campbell walked into the kitchen and Charlie had never been so pleased to see her.
‘How’s the patient?’ she asked.
‘Asleep. I’ll leave him in the care of Sister Keegan. She won’t take any of his nonsense. He’s not going to be an easy patient, particularly when it dawns on him that he is stuck here.’
She poured herself a cup and sat down, fixing Danny Hunt with a hard look.
‘He keeps going on about how someone shot at him. That doesn’t sound very likely. Why would anyone shoot at Bertie?’
‘I heard a shot,’ Danny said, ‘but I didn’t see anyone.’
Margaret’s eyes widened. ‘He was very lucky. I think it should be reported to the police.’
Danny shrugged. ‘That’s up to Bertie. As far as I am concerned, it was just an unfortunate accident. Some idiot with a few too many under the belt out shooting ’roos.’
Charlie studied his face and noted the flicker of uncertainty behind his eyes.
‘I think you should report it,’ she said. ‘If only for the police to issue a warning about random shooting.’
A knock on the door prevented his response. Margaret answered it to the Italian who had brought Robert Campbell into the hospital.
He leaned against the door jamb and smiled at Margaret as he grasped the nurse’s hand and kissed it. ‘Ah, just the beautiful lady I was hoping to see.’
To Charlie’s surprise, far from being outraged, Margaret coloured.
‘Enough of that,’ Margaret said with no rancour in her voice. ‘You’ve had a few drinks, Nico.’
The Italian grinned and nodded his head in Danny’s direction. ‘My friend over there gave me a few shillings for my trouble so I have had some drinks and now it is too late to go home, so I will take a room at the hotel. But first I had to see the beautiful Sister Campbell.’
Charlie rose to her feet. ‘Are you going to introduce us?’
Margaret turned to Charlie. ‘This is Nico Alberti,’ she said. ‘He was a patient a few months ago.’
Nico grinned and pushed his sleeve up, revealing a long, freshly healed scar on his muscular forearm. ‘My cousin’s saw slipped,’ he said with a shrug.
‘Looks nasty,’ Charlie said.
‘It was,’ Margaret said.
‘But it is all good now,’ Nico replied. ‘Thanks to the care of the good Sister here.’
Charlie stood up. ‘Sister Campbell, I think that is enough socialising. You are letting the cold air in.’
‘Goodbye, Sister Campbell. Goodbye …’ Nico gave a cheerful wave and turned away
Margaret lingered at the door as Nico Alberti was swallowed up by the night. She sat down at the table, but her tea sat untouched and her gaze did not move from the kitchen window.
‘Your tea is going cold,’ Charlie said.
‘Sorry … I was wool-gathering,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to telegram my parents but it can wait till morning.’ She drained the cup and pulled a face. ‘My mother will create the most fearful fuss.’
The bell in the women’s ward rang on the board above the door. Charlie grimaced and rose to her feet. ‘You can go home, Margaret. Sister Roberts will be here presently and you’re not needed till morning.’
‘I’ll walk you back, Margaret.’ Danny Hunt was on his feet. ‘Margaret?’
Margaret’s attention had wandered back to the window. She gave a start and turned to Danny with a smile on her face.
‘Thank you. If you’re quite sure you don’t need me, Matron?’
‘I gave you the night off, Sister,’ Charlie said, but she hadn’t missed Margaret’s distraction.
Danny waved at the door with a slight bow. ‘After you, Miss Campbell.’
‘Why thank you, Mr. Hunt.’
Charlie glanced from one to the other, seeing the familiarity in Margaret’s smile as she passed him.
She supposed if Daniel and Margaret’s brother had been friends since schooldays then Margaret would have been very much part of their circle. Old and familiar friends in fact.
As the door closed behind Danny and Margaret, Charlie saw to the patient and made herself a fresh cup of tea. As she sat at the table, she thought about the kindness shown by a young man to a girl too terrified to move from behind a potted palm. Had he really wanted to dance with her? Or had he just been saying that to ease her disappointment, a disappointment that still rankled ten years later?
She shook her head. She hadn’t belonged to his world then, and she certainly didn’t now.
Seventeen
Danny retrieved his horse, looping the reins over his arm as Margaret slipped her arm into the crook of his elbow. Arm in arm, they strolled down the lane towards Margaret’s lodgings.
‘Do you know our new matron?’ Margaret asked.
‘I don’t … not really. We’ve met on at least one occasion, that I can remember, but we know people in common. That’s what we were discussing when you joined us.’
‘She’s hardly your sort,’ Margaret said.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Her mother ran a sly grog shop up on the Aberfeldy road. And from what I hear, grog wasn’t all she sold.’
There was something unpleasant in Margaret’s tone that caused Danny to stiffen. ‘Who her mother was and what she did is none of our business, and certainly of no relevance to who Miss O’Reilly is today.’
‘She was in Louisa’s year at school,’ Margaret said. ‘She was only there because she had some sort of scholarship. She was terribly clever, but she never really fitted in, if you know what I mean. Did you know her when you lived here?’
Danny shook his head. ‘I think she must have come after I left.’ The talk of Charlie O’Reilly made Danny oddly uncomfortable. It was time to change the subject. ‘What about you? Are you content working here in the back of beyond?’
Margaret shrugged. ‘I have found some interesting challenges but I had hoped they would offer me the job of matron in Matron Birch’s absence. I’m just as qualified as O’Reilly and I know the hospital and the town better.’
‘We can’t always have what we want, Margaret,’ Danny said. ‘You wanted the freedom to pursue a career as a nurse. Has it turned out as you imagined it?’
Margaret looked up at him. ‘Do you ever wonder if you had made a different decision, how your life may have turned out?’
Danny stiffened. ‘What do you mean?’
Margaret stopped and faced him. ‘What if I had agreed to marry you?’
‘But you didn’t.’
‘But if I had … would I now be a beautifully dressed society hostess in a nice house, organising servants and charity drives? That is my mother’s and sisters’ life. I would have hated it … or at least I thought I would have hated it.’
Danny had no answer to that. They walked on in silence.
‘Why did you really come to Maiden’s Creek with Bertie?’ Margaret asked at last.
‘I had some business in Maiden’s Creek. Caleb sent me to check the old mine.’
That was not a lie, he told himself, even if it was just one of several reasons.
‘Did you suggest Bertie accompany you, or was it the other way around?’
‘It was his suggestion,’ Danny said with complete candour. ‘It’s been some years since I was last here and I had no other plans, so I thought, why not?’
Margaret gave him a sidelong look with narrowed eyes. ‘No other reason?’
‘None.’ Now he lied, uncomfortable with her line of questioning. ‘Why? Should there be?’
Margaret shrugged. ‘I thought maybe … you might want to … Ignore me. Just being silly.’
He took a moment to appreciate her discomfort. Perhaps she was remembering her short, sharp dismissal of his suit, but that thought was unworthy.
Margaret stopped and dropped her grip on his arm. ‘Would renewing our friendship be so terrible, Danny?’ she asked.
It was too dark to read her face and Danny chose his words with care. ‘We will always be friends, Mags.’
When she had refused his offer of marriage, he hadn’t understood her reasons. He’d wanted to rail at her. What was wrong with him? Apparently he had everything a girl could want—wealth, good looks (or so he’d been told), a genial personality. He even had a respectable profession on top of his considerable private income. Yet she had still said no. What did she want of him now? Or he of her?
They had reached the gate of the little cottage where Margaret lodged and she turned to face him.
‘This is me. Goodnight, Danny.’
He took a breath. ‘Margaret, tell me honestly, why did you turn me down?’
She looked at him. ‘Really, Danny … it was nothing against you.’
When he didn’t respond, she looked away for a long moment before turning back to face him, her face shadowed in the dark. ‘Very well. I really did want to experience something of life. Make my own way in the world … not eke out my existence as someone else’s chattel.’
‘I never thought of you that way,’ Danny blurted out.
‘I know, but that was the expectation of my parents and I just thought there was something more for me in the world.’
She hefted an audible sigh and Danny wondered if she had found what she had been looking for. He doubted it existed in these hills.
Margaret’s gaze slid to the gate behind him. ‘It’s cold and I would prefer to be inside. Will you be returning to Melbourne tomorrow?’
‘I never intended to. I have that task for Caleb, and besides, I can hardly desert poor old Bertie in his hour of need.’
‘Good. Then we shall be seeing each other regularly.’ She caught his hand. ‘Perhaps we can find each other again, Danny?’
He gently disengaged her fingers. ‘I shall be busy, Mags.’
She stiffened. ‘Visiting hours at the hospital are between two and four. As for Bertie’s hour of need, I shall be putting him on a train back to Melbourne as soon as can be arranged. He’s going to be the worst patient.’
Danny laughed. ‘I fear you might be right.’
She kissed him lightly on the cheek. ‘Goodnight, Danny. I’m glad you’re here.’
Surprised by the gesture, he hadn’t formed a response before the front door to the cottage shut behind Margaret and he was alone.
