Pregnant With His Child

by Lilian Darcy

‘What, you walked on your hands?’

  She told Grace about the series of fated delays. ‘I mean, they were minor. We delivered the joey to the park ranger, we fixed the tyre, we dropped the hitchhiker where he wanted to be let off. And then we got home and I couldn’t put it off, because if I’d had it hanging over me until tonight, or if Joe had heard from someone else today about the room…’

  Grace had questions. Had he tried to argue? Did Christina have any theories?

  They finished their sandwiches and their tea, and were still talking about it.

  ‘And I’ve even thought, yes, maybe he is married,’Christina said, ‘but that there are mitigating circumstances so he doesn’t want to tell me, even though if they were the right circumstances, I think I could…I’d try…to understand.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Grace made a sceptical face. ‘The great myth about married men—that there can be a good excuse. Like, for example?’

  ‘You know,’ Christina’s tone was self-mocking because, yes, was there ever a good excuse? ‘Like his beautiful blonde wife turns into a swan during the hours of darkness…’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And if he ever leaves her the spell becomes irreversible and she’s condemned to remain a swan forever. That kind of thing.’

  Grace tut-tutted sympathetically. ‘Yes, I’ve known a lot of men over the years with swan wife issues.’

  ‘All right, all right, so I haven’t been able to think of a reason I’d accept.’

  ‘It would be a stretch,’ Grace agreed. She paused, and her tone changed. ‘Have you ever asked him?’

  ‘If he’s married?’

  ‘Yes. Just straight out. “Joe Barrett, are you married?”’

  ‘Yes, I asked him at four o’clock this morning,’ Christina said bluntly. ‘When we met up in the passage outside my room because neither of us could sleep.’ She didn’t elaborate on what had happened after that.

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He said he wasn’t.’

  ‘But he could be lying.’

  ‘Except that I have to believe my judgement of character is better than that!’ she burst out. ‘Wouldn’t I know?’

  ‘Ugh. Thousands of women in history haven’t.’

  ‘Vote of confidence there, Grace.’

  ‘Sorry, but you were thinking it yourself, weren’t you?’

  ‘Of course I was.’

  ‘There’s more water in the flask—want the last cup?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  They heard the chink of metal and the creak of leather and a woman came round the corner of the building, leading a horse. ‘Can I tether him here?’ she said. ‘I’m here for the clinic. Am I early?’

  ‘Yes, tie him up here,’ Christina said. ‘Is that what you usually do when you come into town?’

  The woman made a face. ‘I usually drive. And I don’t come in often.’ She looked hot and tired and driven by much more than just a need to find a place to tether her horse. ‘Would there be a bucket inside? I’ll need water for him, too.’

  She eyed the metal tap protruding from the tank, and then the tank itself. This part of the country hadn’t had much rain. Banging the flat of her hand on the corrugated iron, she listened to the sound. ‘Still something in there,’ she said. ‘Water. That’s what I’d want if I had the Midas touch, for everything to turn to water. Gold, you can keep—useless stuff!’

  ‘I’m sure there’s a bucket,’ Grace said cheerfully. ‘Wait right here!’

  She disappeared through the back door of the building, and the woman—she must be in her late forties, Christina thought—leaned her forehead. against the satiny neck of the horse. It seemed a bit odd that Christina couldn’t place her. She was clearly local, and not a new arrival. That practised way she’d banged on the water tank to judge its level by the sound suggested someone born and bred on an outback property. But Christina had been flying these clinic runs for several years and hadn’t met her before.

  ‘You’d work at the hospital sometimes, wouldn’t you?’ she asked Christina, after a minute. ‘You’d have colleagues there?’

  ‘Yes, we rotate the workload a lot,’ Christina answered. ‘I know pretty much everyone.’

  ‘And patients? My daughter’s there at the moment. Megan Cooper.’

  ‘Oh, Megan!’ The conjectures dissolved and reformed themselves in a different pattern—one which gave answers and raised new questions. ‘We all know Megan. And the—’ Christina stopped abruptly, horrified by what she’d almost given away.

  The baby.

  Little Lucky, now officially known as Jackson Cooper. Christina had filled Joe in on the dramatic story of the little boy’s secret birth and miraculous survival after she’d picked him up from the airport last night, and Grace had marvelled aloud about the whole thing again during their flight this morning.

  Megan was still refusing to give her consent to her parents being told about the baby’s existence. Her mother—this tired woman right here, with her yearning for rain—thought that Megan had miscarried a stillborn child. The girl’s father didn’t even know that much. And medical ethics regarding patient confidentiality prevented any of the hospital staff from telling them.

  If only the two of them could get into Crocodile Creek to see Megan, everything would surely come out in the open and the teenager’s fear about her parents’ reaction would recede, but the Coopers’ cattle property was so crippled by drought that neither Honey nor her husband would consider making the long drive to the coast just yet. As far as they were concerned, they’d come and pick their daughter up when she was discharged, and life would go on as before.

  It wasn’t going to happen.

  ‘And—and the difficult time she had,’ Christina continued awkwardly, praying that Mrs Cooper hadn’t noticed her gaffe. ‘You must be very happy that she’s doing so well now.’

  ‘I haven’t even seen her, have I? It’s just…impossible, at the moment.’

  ‘Seems like you don’t travel very much.’

  ‘Not unless we have to. I’m like a cat on hot bricks just coming this far. That’s why I’m on Buckley, even though it’s a two-hour ride on horseback. If I’d taken the car, Jim would have wanted to know what I was going into town for, and he would have stopped me.’ She caught sight of Christina’s face. ‘I’m not a prisoner.’ She gave a tired laugh. ‘Well, I might as well be, I suppose, but it’s not Jim who’s keeping me in chains. It’s this drought. And the work. And—Listen to me!’

  Yes, I am listening to you, and I want to start treating you for depression and stress without so much as taking your blood pressure first, Christina thought. She said gently, ‘Want to wait until we’re comfortable inside and I’ve had a look at you, and tell me the rest of it then?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not here about me, Doctor,’ Mrs Cooper said. ‘It’s Jim, my husband.’

  Grace appeared with the bucket, and the horse’s needs were seen to. They were far simpler ones than Honey Cooper’s, Christina realised again when she’d introduced herself properly as Dr Farrelly and asked about why Mrs Cooper was there.

  ‘Jim won’t get himself checked out,’ Honey said in a weary voice. She was now seated in the little office they used for examinations and treatment. ‘He had a prescription for something to keep his blood pressure down, but that’s run out. Can I get another one for him if he’s not here?’

  ‘You really can’t, Mrs Cooper, I’m sorry. He has to come in himself.’

  ‘I’m cooking with less salt, like they told us at the hospital after his heart attack last year, but it’s no good, because he just adds it at the table. Says he sweats too much of it out to go without. And as for the stress…! He’s working too hard, his heart’s in terrible shape, we know that. He’s been told he should have a bypass eventually. What can I do, Dr Farrelly?’

  ‘You have to get him to come in. I really need to see him and give him a proper check-up before I prescribe any kind of treatment, even if it is just a question of renewing
prescriptions he’s had before.’

  Honey Cooper closed her eyes and shrugged. She was a woman who carried her burden with her wherever she went, her tortured heart right there on her sleeve.

  Joe had hinted at his own burdens last night—burdens he left behind in New Zealand and was glad to escape. Christina was his temporary haven, and maybe he needed it, had the kind of problems at home that meant he deserved it, but she didn’t want to be used that way any more.

  She thought about prescribing a casual, part-time affair to Honey Cooper. The Joe Barrett solution.

  It’ll really take your mind off your troubles, Mrs Cooper. It’ll do wonders for you, as a bit of R&R.

  The idea was so ludicrous that she almost laughed…and then she felt angry with Joe all over again.

  ‘Let me give you a good check-up while you’re here,’ she told Honey, and discovered that her blood pressure was higher than it should be, just like her husband’s.

  Honey’s expression lightened at the news, and Christina knew quite well what would happen. The medication she prescribed for Honey would get taken by her husband instead.

  ‘Please, try and get him to come to our next clinic,’ she said as Honey rose to leave. ‘Or if you can get into town over the next couple of days. Megan…’ She hesitated, pulled in opposite directions by the complexity of this family’s tribulations. ‘Needs help working out her future,’ she finished, knowing that it was inadequate and yet still probably more than she should reveal.

  But Megan’s mother was too weighed down by other concerns to pick up on any hints. ‘Into town?’ she echoed. ‘Yes, when she’s ready for us to bring her home.’

  A high-riding four-wheel-drive pulled up at the front of the little hall as Christina ushered Honey back into the larger space that served as a waiting room. She heard a male voice over the squeak of a vehicle door whose hinges needed lubricant. ‘Come on, you lot, out you get. We’re late and we’ll have to wait two hours at this rate.’

  Honey peered out the window and froze, her renewed tension going unnoticed by Grace, who’d just called in a mother and baby for a check-up and immunisations. A couple of the other waiting patients were aware of it, however. Distances might be vast out here, but neighbours were still neighbours, and they knew each other’s business.

  ‘Philip.’ A sun-weathered man in his fifties growled the greeting and stuck out his hand as the owner of the four-wheel-drive stomped confidently into the hall.

  Christina knew the new arrival, although they’d only met a handful of times. Philip Wetherby. He was Charles Wetherby’s younger brother, aged around forty, and he ran a huge cattle station not far from here. The two brothers weren’t close—barely spoke, she gathered—but town gossip was silent as to the reasons why. Whatever the source of their grievance, it had happened a long time ago.

  ‘Greg,’ Philip said to the man who had greeted him. ‘Good to see you. Your dams holding up?’

  ‘Getting pretty low. If we don’t get rain soon…’

  Philip looked around the room. Honey had turned her back, and was studying some health posters pinned to the wall. His eyes fell on her but stayed blank. There was recognition, but no acknowledgement, and his gaze quickly chased through the rest of the space.

  ‘Stupid to use this first-come-first-served system,’ he said. ‘I don’t have time to sit around all afternoon.’ He speared Christina with his impatient expression. ‘Look, can’t you apply some kind of triage? Lynley, my wife, had a migraine and I’ve had to bring these people in.’ His voice dropped as his gaze flicked to the three indigenous men who’d accompanied him. They were presumably employees on the Wetherby property. ‘You have to treat them like children half the time, they don’t look after themselves.’ He didn’t wait for her agreement, just took it for granted. ‘If we could get seen first…’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible,’ Christina replied coolly. ‘As you’ve said, we operate on a first-come-first-served basis, unless someone needs urgent treatment.’

  ‘My cattle need urgent treatment, but you’re telling me that doesn’t count.’

  ‘Sorry.’ She gave a short, polite smile then turned away from him to call her next patient.

  She knew that Philip Wetherby would be fuming behind her back. Hard to believe the man was Charles’s brother. Although Charles was the one with health problems, thanks to his confinement to a wheelchair, Philip looked like the weaker man—the kind who put others down in order to feel superior in his own estimation. He had a ropy build because of the physical nature of his work, but brute strength didn’t equal strength of character.

  Where Charles’s compassionate eyes saw straight into people’s hearts, Philip’s critical ones took in only enough detail to give him ammunition. His mouth turned down slightly at the corners, and his top lip was too thin. You wouldn’t notice it on someone you liked, someone who smiled, but on Philip Wetherby, you noticed at once.

  He sat down with a grunt on the opposite side of the room to where his men had stationed themselves, and when Honey slipped out the door, he uttered an impatient snort that could have meant anything.

  And even though Christina was determined not to give in to the man’s I’m-too-important-to-be-sitting-here vibe, she was on edge as she saw each successive patient, and relieved when she’d dealt with the three from Wetherby Downs.

  ‘I want you back in two weeks to see if that chest has cleared,’ she told the last of them, knowing Philip Wetherby wouldn’t be happy about it. Maybe he’d trust the man to get here on his own next time. Or he’d send his no doubt under-appreciated wife.

  It was after four-thirty by the time she and Grace finished, having referred two patients for further tests in Crocodile Creek. They’d need to pack up their equipment quickly, as their pilot, Glenn Corcoran, would want to be in the air again within half an hour in order to get back before the light went.

  Grace was in a chatty mood. Perhaps she was being kind, taking Christina’s mind off Joe. ‘Mrs Strachan is getting huge,’ she said. ‘I’m thinking she’ll be early, but she said the other two have been a week late. She doesn’t seem too bothered about having it at home if it jumps the gun. How did you go with the mob from Wetherby Downs? Ticked the boss cocky off, I hope.’ She was talking about Philip.

  ‘You don’t like Charles’s brother?’

  ‘Do you? He’s so far up himself he needs caving equipment. Which I’m sure our Charles would be happy to supply, along with a very inaccurate map.’

  Christina laughed, and felt the tight fist around her heart ease its pressure just a fraction. ‘You’re good for me, Grace.’

  ‘That’s the plan, Chrissie. Sorry, you don’t like Chrissie, do you? Or Tina?’

  ‘Not much. Bit prissy, both of them.’ Which was why Joe had soon changed Tina to Tink.

  Grace dropped her voice. ‘Tell me about Honey Cooper.’

  ‘Do you know her?’

  ‘She came to this clinic with her husband once. You must have been off that day. Who would have been doing this instead? Oh, nasty Kirsty, I suppose. The Coopers are both the type that never have a day’s illness until they drop in their harness twenty years too soon. Which is about due now.’

  ‘Grace, after that summary, I don’t need to tell you a thing about Honey Cooper!’

  ‘So why was she here?’

  ‘For advice on her husband, who wouldn’t come. They both have high blood pressure. Jim isn’t taking his underlying heart trouble seriously. His wife takes it seriously enough for both of them, but there’s not a lot she can do.’

  Grace shrugged. ‘I could write a book on the psychology of the outback male and his partner.’ She locked the cupboard where they stored a few basic supplies and surveyed the three neat rooms. ‘Are we done here?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  Mrs Considine, the CWA stalwart who ran the tiny post office and store, had closed up her premises in order to help them ferry their supplies back out to the airstrip at the edge of to
wn, where they found Glenn frowning about a warning light on the instrument panel that was showing when it shouldn’t be. He lifted hatches and checked gauges and muttered a couple of ominous phrases, then found the problem, which fortunately turned out to be an easy fix.

  ‘Still, we’ve lost twenty minutes,’ he said, looking at his watch.

  He was a good pilot, and good at anticipating the needs of the medical personnel who flew with him, but, as Grace had said once, the sense of humour gene on the personality chromosome was missing,

  ‘Which means he could be the best-looking man on the planet—and I’d have to say he comes close—but in my book he’s about as sexy as a cardboard cereal packet.’

  Christina had the same book. She spent hours with him every week, but didn’t think she’d get asked to his wedding.

  ‘What, your girlfriend can’t wait that long?’ Grace teased Glenn now, since she was a self-described ‘woman who refused to recognise a lost cause when she fell over one’.

  He raised his eyebrows and shrugged at the comment about his girlfriend, uttered a mechanical laugh since Grace’s twinkling eyes had telegraphed that he was supposed to, and went through his pre-flight routine exactly as usual.

  Christina hid inside her headset and looked out the window as she waited for takeoff. The late sun had begun to glow a darker gold on the rust-coloured rock and hard ground. A trail of dust boiled behind a vehicle racing along the road into Gunyamurra from the west. The town always looked so small in all this vastness, as if a giant had thrown a handful of matchboxes onto an empty table.

  She tried to appreciate the grandeur of it all, to tell herself that her infinitesimal place in the universe simply didn’t warrant this amount of pain in her heart about one incomprehensible New Zealander, but it didn’t work.

  Nothing worked today.

  The dust trail from the approaching vehicle got closer. Glenn revved his engines to the moment of juddering and screaming that came just before he launched into the taxi down the airstrip, and a second later they set off, gathering ground speed rapidly. They’d shake off the earth in a few moments, and in about an hour they’d touch down in Crocodile Creek.