The homecoming, p.29
The Homecoming, page 29
‘I don’t believe that for a moment! Look at what you have achieved.’
‘Compared to what I came from? True, but I was fortunate, Danny. Fortunate to meet people who saw something in me I couldn’t see for myself. But I have to recognise my limitations. I could never hope to study medicine properly and become a doctor, so I decided to be the very best nurse I could be.’
‘And you are,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen you with patients. You have a gift. And why can’t you study medicine? They take women now.’
She laughed. ‘Danny, I can’t afford tuition fees or not to work, and I can’t go cap in hand to my benefactors, who have already been too good to me. I’m a grown woman of nearly thirty. This is my life.’ She stood up. ‘Speaking of which, it is late and I’ll be no use tomorrow unless I get some sleep.’
Danny jumped up, almost knocking over the stool he had been sitting on.
‘Goodnight, Charlie,’ he said.
She didn’t move and they stood looking at each other for a long, long moment.
He took a breath and held it as he reached out, curling a lock of dark hair around his finger. Her lips parted and, emboldened, he stepped forward, letting his hand stray to the back of her head, drawing her in towards him.
Their lips met with the bruising intensity of mutual need and long loneliness. She slid her hands around him, drawing him closer as they explored each other. Only the need to draw breath made them part and they stood in the firelight, arms around each other, hungry eyes scanning faces for the smallest sign that either had overstepped the mark.
It was Charlie who moved first. She stepped back and laid a hand on his chest. ‘Danny, that was—’
‘Wrong? Charlie, I’m so sorry…’
She smiled and pushed him lightly. ‘No. It was lovely,’ she said, ‘but it was a moment that we can’t repeat again … ever.’
Why not?
He wanted to rail at her. Hadn’t she understood what he had been trying to say to her? They were really not so different, and any difference didn’t matter.
Instead he settled for an embarrassed laugh. ‘Of course, you’re right. You go and get some rest. I’ll have the horses ready at first light.’
‘Goodnight,’ she said, lifting the curtain and giving him a last, lingering smile before slipping out of sight.
Danny lay awake for a long time, his hands behind his head, thinking about Charlie, reliving the exquisite delight of their kiss. He touched his lips, still feeling her touch like a burning brand.
He’d kissed girls before. He’d kissed Margaret Campbell just before he asked her to marry him, but it had never been like that. No woman had ever lit the fire that now coursed through his veins like Charlie O’Reilly had. His whole body ached for her … for more, and the thought that she lay just a few feet away when she could be in his arms only made the agony worse.
He forced his mind to recite Latin legal maxims, guaranteed to cool any man’s ardour, but despite his best efforts he found himself going over the confidences she had shared with him.
Ex abundanti cautela. From an excess of caution.
There was a legal maxim for every occasion. Had his whole life been predicated on an excess of caution? Maybe it was time to throw that caution to wind and follow where his heart led.
Whatever else happened, he would never be another William Fitzgerald.
The habits born of many years in nursing meant that Charlie could fall asleep without difficulty even after the most trying day, but she lay awake listening to the gentle burbling snores of the old lady in the bed. Danny lay within a few short paces of her and while she ached to slip beneath the covers of his bed and hold him close, to do so would be madness.
Charlie O’Reilly, daughter of Mad Annie and Matt Tehan, did not belong to the world of Daniel Hunt. To think otherwise would be to relive the foolish dreams of a younger, more naive Charlie who had believed William Fitzgerald would make good on his promise to marry her.
She cursed herself and blamed exhaustion and the grappa. Now he would think her the sort of woman who gave herself willingly to any man who treated her kindly. Fitzgerald had done just that. He had singled her out for praise for her nursing skills, lavished the sort of attention on her that she would only have dreamed of as a child, but when she had given herself to him, it had all changed. The letters and presents came less frequently. He had humiliated her in front of her colleagues and patients.
He had, in short, made her life unbearable, and all the while his eye had been fixed on a new and prettier nurse. When she had refused him on that last occasion he had not expected her defiance. No woman defied him. If a relationship ended it was of his choosing and his pride could not take the rejection.
That was why he had pursued her again on her return. He could not accept that she did not want him.
But did her experience with William Fitzgerald mean she should ignore the dictates of her heart? That traitorous heart was leading her down a path that could only end in more tears.
She rolled onto her side and pulled her knees up to her chest, fighting back the waves of nagging loneliness that crept into her thoughts in the darkest hours of the night, until at last she slept.
She emerged in the morning to a grey dawn. She found herself unable to meet Danny’s eyes and any conversation was monosyllabic.
After a quick and substantial breakfast provided by the old woman, Danny organised the horses while Charlie checked on her patient and satisfied herself that mother and baby were doing well. She gratefully received parcels of food that were pressed into her hands and swung into the saddle.
They rode away from the settlement in the damp early-morning light, both lost in their own thoughts.
On Charlie’s part, she had concluded the kiss had been a mistake, an aberration brought on by the stress of the day. She had to put things between them right, even if they could never quite return to the easy friendship that had been developing.
It didn’t matter—in a few days he would be gone, returning to his Melbourne life, and if they met again it would be as casual acquaintances, nothing more!
I just have to get back to the hospital, back to work, and it will make sense again.
But as they rode, the beauty of the bush folded her in its arms. Wreaths of mist rose from the gullies and the trees, and ferns dripped with moisture. The heady scent of eucalyptus hung in the air and bellbirds tinkled their distinctive cry in the treetops, echoed by the shrill call of the parrots.
‘I had forgotten how lovely it can be,’ she said aloud.
Danny did not respond, and she cast him a sidelong look.
‘Danny?’
He gave a shake of his head as if bringing himself back from a place far away.
‘Sorry … did you say something? I’ve been wondering how to apologise for my behaviour last night.’ A slow smile curled the corners of his mouth and for the first time all morning he met her eyes. ‘But the truth is I’m not sorry I kissed you.’
‘It can’t happen again,’ Charlie said.
His lips tightened. ‘Why not?’
That had not been the answer she had been expecting.
‘This track leads back to our normal lives and … well … we don’t belong in each other’s worlds.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Charlie, I don’t agree. You are now one of very few people who know I am a complete sham … a poor fatherless bastard, as people used to say.’
‘Absolute rubbish,’ Charlie said. ‘Richard Barnwell forfeited any right to call himself your father, but you have something many people … me among them … don’t have, and that is a wonderful man who was probably a better father to you than Barnwell would ever have been. So stop feeling sorry for yourself.’
‘When did you learn to be so wise?’
‘I had it beaten into me as a child,’ she said, without humour. ‘But my comment stands. I no more belong in your world than I did at your birthday party all those years ago.’
‘I disagree,’ Danny said.
There was no answer to that. He would go back to his Toorak mansion, or wherever he lived, and she would return, if she was lucky, to a boarding house somewhere near whatever hospital employed her next or, if she was unlucky, to the nurses’ quarters.
‘Charlie—’ Danny began, but she held up a hand.
‘I don’t want to talk about it anymore, not while we have the more pressing problem ahead of us of getting Joe Trevalyn off a murder charge. That requires our full attention. The rest can wait.’
They lapsed into silence.
‘Nico said a boy died of diphtheria while he was in the hospital,’ Danny said.
‘And?’
‘He didn’t think anything unusual surrounded the death.’
‘We can’t assume every death is brought on by a third party,’ Charlie said. ‘But I will go through the records today and see if there are connections and patterns.’ She smiled, thinking of her long-neglected love for mathematics and the challenge of finding those elusive connections and patterns.
‘I think it is looking likely that Janet surprised the person and paid the price,’ Charlie said.
‘If there was some way we could catch this person in the act,’ Danny mused.
Charlie considered that thought for a long moment. ‘There might be. Martha Drew is still very ill and may be a candidate for the angel’s ministrations.’
Danny shivered. ‘That is a terrible thought.’
‘It wouldn’t be hard to lay a trap,’ Charlie said, and a plan started to form in her mind.
‘But we’ve got no certainty they would fall for it. He or she may have been scared off by the confrontation with Janet Becker,’ Danny ventured.
‘Maybe, but I think we have to try something,’ Charlie said.
‘What are you thinking?’ Danny asked and she sensed the reluctance in his tone.
She explained her idea.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Absolutely not. You will be putting a patient’s life at risk.’
‘No, I won’t,’ she said. ‘The only life I’m risking is my own.’
‘Charlie, I’m an officer of the court. I can’t do anything illegal.’
She cast him a sharp sideways glance. ‘I don’t see how it is illegal. Sometimes we have to push the boundaries, Danny, and if we’re going to save Joe and hopefully other lives then we can’t just sit back. If Joe is convicted of this crime, the real murderer remains at large, free to go on killing at will.’
‘I am not going to be a party to such a foolhardy scheme, Charlie.’
She glared at him. He had his gaze firmly fixed on the track ahead, a mutinous line to his mouth.
‘What would you do? Wait for that idiot Prewitt to miraculously find the murderer? We are all Joe has, Danny.’
He turned to her, the anger fading from his face. ‘Charlie … I don’t know what to suggest.’
‘It could be nothing happens, Danny, and what is the risk in that? But I am almost certain that it has to be someone in the hospital and they have to be stopped. At least three innocent lives, that we know of, have been taken.’
‘I don’t take risks, Charlie. There is a reason I chose law as a profession.’
‘Then it is time you did,’ she said. ‘We don’t get anywhere in life without sometimes taking risks and what greater reason can there be than to save a life … Joe’s life!’
The horses stopped in the track, looking at each other in puzzlement while the humans glared at each other.
‘Learn to take risks, Danny,’ Charlie said.
‘What about you? Running away from Fitzgerald because you won’t stand up and expose him for the bully he is?’
‘That’s different.’
‘Is it? You talk about taking risks, Charlie O’Reilly—well let me tell you, you are the biggest risk to my health, safety and sanity I have ever encountered.’
Despite the blazing anger in his eyes, Charlie felt a burble of laughter rising in her chest. ‘But you still kissed me.’
‘Yes, I did, you mad Irish demon.’
‘I’m not Irish. I’m Tasmanian.’
‘Same thing, and yes I kissed you and talk about risks…’
‘It was nice,’ Charlie said.
‘It was … Stop it, I’m trying to be angry with you.’
Charlie bit her lip to stop the smile. ‘Come on Danny. Let’s give this mad, crazy idea of mine a try. At worst, nothing happens … at best, we catch a killer.’
He huffed out a breath. ‘God help me,’ he said, looking away from her. When he turned back the last trace of anger had gone from his face. ‘I want it noted by the court that I strenuously objected to Miss O’Reilly’s plan, but in the interests of her safety, I felt compelled to agree to cooperate.’
Forty–One
Wednesday 10 August
It was nearly midday before Charlie returned to the hospital, tired and mud-splattered from the difficult ride. Boards had been laid down in Main Street to allow the horses to pick their way through the gluey, stinking, muddy mess but despite this, both animals stumbled and sunk in potholes, nearly dislodging their riders.
The properties fronting the street had all been inundated. The owners were now faced with trying to clear their floors of layers of mud, and rotting produce and spoiled wares were being tossed out on to the boardwalk, adding to the stench. Charlie put her hand to her nose but it did little to alleviate the smell. Incredibly, one structure stood solid against the water that still swirled about its footings … the pretty little bandstand. A symbol of hope and normality in all the chaos.
They stopped to look at Netty and Amos’s cottage. It still stood but the impact of the floodwaters had undermined the foundations and the walls sagged and leaned alarmingly.
Charlie dismounted and picked her way down the side to the front door that stood ajar. She pushed it but the doorframe had warped and she could only open it enough just to squeeze through the gap.
‘Charlie, be careful. It’s in a dangerous condition,’ Danny shouted after her.
She ignored him. So many happy memories of this kitchen and now it was ankle deep in mud, the furniture scattered and broken like matchwood.
Danny followed her into the house, squeezing through the narrow entrance.
‘This is almost worse than a fire,’ he said.
‘How are we going to break it to them? What are they going to do?’ Charlie waved a hand at the irretrievable mess. ‘Netty’s always been here. I can’t imagine Maiden’s Creek without her.’
Danny nodded. ‘My parents have, on more than one occasion, offered them a home. Perhaps now they can be persuaded to move either to Melbourne or up to Mansfield. I think Amos would like it up there. Plenty of room for horses.’
He stooped and pulled something from the mud. Netty’s beloved brown teapot. Still intact.
He handed it to Charlie. She wiped it with her gloved hand, remembering happier times.
‘It’s something,’ she said. ‘Now we better get back. I’ll need to change before I go to the hospital. You know what you have to do?’
Danny nodded. ‘Find Bert Marsh,’ he said.
The decision to involve Bert had brought on another argument but in the end Danny had been forced to agree with Charlie that they needed an extra pair of hands. Bert could always decline and they would have to make do, but Charlie had every confidence in him.
‘Don’t say a word to Joe.’
‘Of course not.’ Danny looked indignant.
Charlie nodded. ‘I need to get back to work. Margaret will have been by herself all morning.’
They walked the horses up the hill to the hospital, Charlie clutching the muddy teapot to her as if it was made of precious metal.
At the hospital gate they parted, Danny to return the horses to Johnny with the news that the livery stables had been completely washed away. Charlie made her way up the slope to her cottage to wash and change. Smoke curled from the chimney and she glanced through the front window to see Amos and Netty sitting by the fire. Netty, as always, had some sort of needlework in her hand and Amos dozed, his empty pipe between his teeth.
Charlie’s heart clenched. She envied them their contentment. They might have lost everything but they still had each other.
She sat down on the bench outside the door and removed her soaking, muddy boots before venturing inside.
Netty was on her feet. ‘Charlie, lass, we were starting to worry.’
Charlie handed her the teapot. ‘I’m sorry, Netty. We checked on the cottage. I don’t think there’s much that can be salvaged and the cottage is irreparable.’
Netty took the teapot and looked at it as she nodded. ‘I feared as much. We’ll talk later. You need to get into something clean. The boy from the hospital has been up looking for you several times. Says that man Fitzgerald has been creating merry hell.’
Charlie grimaced, her mind racing to all the issues over which Fitzgerald could create ‘merry hell’. Her absence being the principal cause of his displeasure.
She washed and changed and, resisting Netty’s offer of food, straightened her back and prepared to face whatever new torment Fitzgerald planned to inflict on her.
In the kitchen she found Margaret Campbell helping Geraldine Ryan serve out the lunches.
The nurse looked up. ‘Thank heavens you’re back. Nell and the girls have left and Fitzgerald is here,’ she said, ‘and he’s not happy.’
‘Where is he?’
‘The office. He’s been in there all morning, writing his report.’
Charlie took a deep breath and knocked on the door to the doctor’s office. Fitzgerald sat at the desk with its usual incumbent, Linacre, seated across from him.
‘You wished to see me, Doctor Fitzgerald?’ Charlie tried and failed to muster an ingratiating smile.
Linacre half rose as she entered. Fitzgerald remained seated.
‘There you are, Sister,’ he said.
She ignored the intended slight.
‘Yes, here I am,’ she said.
‘And where have you been?’
‘Attending a difficult birth at the Italian settlement on Wildman’s Point.’
‘All night?’ Fitzgerald quirked an eyebrow.
