Sarah's Baby

by Margaret Way

  When he walked into the solarium, the women looked up.

  “Hello, darling.” Both spoke together. What had he done to deserve this damn-near hero worship? Was it because he was the heir? Didn’t they know that didn’t matter to him?

  He stared at them, silent for a moment. “Hi! What’s up?” He was nothing if not observant.

  “A bit of news, darling,” his mother replied, putting her hand to her thick dark hair, which she wore very short. “Muriel Dempsey died. Apparently she dropped dead in the shop. Just like that.”

  “Good God!” He felt something like an electric shock. “How awful. She couldn’t have been more than fifty-five or -six. What was it, heart attack?” He lowered himself into a chair, his mind immediately and inevitably springing to Sarah.

  “So Joe said.” Now his grandmother spoke, her voice not quite as strong and self-assured as usual. She’d lost weight recently and suddenly she looked her age, instead of nowhere near it. Only the eyes remained brilliant, sharp and searching. “The extraordinary thing is, I’ve been thinking about Sarah all day.”

  “So it was today?”

  “Only hours ago.”

  “How dreadful.” He knew genuine grief. For Muriel Dempsey and for Sarah. Muriel hadn’t had much of a life, although he’d heard through the grapevine that she’d resisted Sarah’s pleas to come to Brisbane to live with her. Muriel Dempsey had always struck him as completely unselfish. She’d probably thought she might be a burden to Sarah in some way.

  “Then Sarah will be coming home. Home, sweet home,” he finished ironically.

  “That’s what we’re afraid of,” said his mother, then flushed when Ruth sent her a frown.

  “So what’s the problem there?” he asked, his own voice sharpening.

  “We’ll be expected to put in an appearance at the funeral or send a representative. The town expects so much of us.”

  An angry feeling rose from his heart to his throat. “Perhaps because we have more than enough. I can’t understand what gets into you, Mum. Aren’t you the bloody mayor? Haven’t we known the Dempseys forever? Wasn’t Sarah’s father one of our best ringers? I can’t compel you to go, but I certainly will.”

  “We’ll all go,” Ruth said, signaling her daughter with her eyes. “Joe had already contacted Sarah before he rang me. She’ll be in town by tomorrow afternoon. She’ll be staying over the shop.” One of Ruth’s arthritic hands closed tightly over the other. “The funeral is scheduled for Friday. Muriel wished to be cremated and her ashes scattered over the desert like her husband’s.”

  “It’s just so very tragic,” Kyall said. “Sarah’s had so much suffering in her life.”

  “What do you mean?” Ruth asked very suddenly, her voice like a blade. She leaned forward in her upholstered rattan armchair as though hanging on his answer.

  “Why so surprised?” His expression conveyed his reaction. “She lost her father, and now she’s lost her mother, Gran.” Emotion tightened his striking features.

  He’s never forgotten her, Ruth thought. The knowledge made her feel more vulnerable and frightened than she’d ever felt in her life. What if he found out? What if Sarah suddenly decided to tell him? Well, if Sarah tried it, she wouldn’t know what she was letting herself in for.

  “I did my level best to help her, Kyall. I didn’t have to pay for her education, then send her on to medical school. Sometimes I think I was a damned fool. She’s never appreciated it. One doesn’t like to speak ill of the dead, but Muriel was the same, even though I put plenty in her pocket. She didn’t have to continue to work at that shop. She wanted to.”

  “Why exactly did you do it, Gran?”

  Shocked, she detected an undertone of bitterness and skepticism in the way he said it. “I carried on from your grandfather and his father before him. The McQueens are philanthropists. Isn’t that the truth?”

  “When it’s worth it to you.”

  “Kyall!” his mother gasped, her strong-featured, aristocratic face turning pale.

  “Mum, must you always be such a hypocrite?” he asked coldly. “Let it go. This news has upset me if it hasn’t upset you.”

  Ruth’s glittering black gaze flickered. “I can scarcely believe that my grandson, my splendid grandson, never in awe of me or our fortune, can’t escape that girl. Did she steal your heart, my boy?” For once Ruth allowed herself to show her contempt for Sarah.

  Kyall stood up, the last rays of the sinking sun striking blue out of his raven hair and turning his skin gold. “Don’t overplay your hand, Gran. You have a tendency to do that, but I’m not one who’s going to listen.”

  “Kyall, darling, don’t!” his mother pleaded, stretching out a hand that shook slightly with nervous tension.

  “I certainly never meant to hurt you, Kyall,” Ruth said, aware that someplace inside her was trembling, as well.

  “But that’s your problem, Gran,” Kyall said, standing up and turning away, not waiting for her answer. “You do hurt people.”

  Normally charming, courteous, above all a gentleman, he spoke like a man who could say anything he wanted to.

  These next few days were going to be terrible, Ruth thought. She could hardly have foreseen that Muriel Dempsey would die so soon.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A FUNERAL WAS an opportunity for the whole town to come together, to reaffirm the bush tradition of “mateship,” of offering real comfort and support in times of trouble and grief.

  Father Bartholomew of the Aerial Ministry conducted the service, talking about Muriel Dempsey and her late husband, Jock, in a way that Sarah really appreciated. She’d known Father Bartholomew all her life. He had never failed to give Sarah and her mother comfort and hope. Father Bartholomew was a man you could really talk to, laugh with, whose shoulder you could cry on.

  There were no tears today. Sarah sat in the front pew of the small all-denominational church, her features composed. In her short years as an intern and then in private practice, she had seen many tragic things. Everybody lost a loved one at some time or other, many of them far too early—children with terminal leukemia, young women with breast cancer, adolescents overdosing on drugs, young drivers involved in horrific road accidents. She had seen and attended them all. That was part of her profession, what she believed with all her heart was a noble calling.

  But this was different. This was saying her final goodbye to her cherished mother. The one who’d loved her absolutely, unconditionally.

  Her mother. So lovely. Her mother had always called her “my angel.” Her long mane of curly blond hair, Sarah supposed, plus she’d never been a moody, rebellious child. She and her mother had been too crucially interdependent to allow disharmony into their lives. They’d been mutually supportive and caring. Her mother had continued to call her “my angel” even when she’d had to confess in floods of tears that she was pregnant.

  My Rose. I, too, would’ve had a girl. I would’ve had a wonderful, meaningful relationship. Little more than a child she’d been, but she had really wanted her baby. The child in Kyall’s image. Rose Red. Just like in the old fairy tales. She had since learned that everyone had to cope with dreadful losses over a lifetime, but it was something that shouldn’t have happened to her at fifteen.

  Joe had tried to talk her out of attending her mother’s cremation. He and Sister Bradley would act as witnesses. But she intended to be with her mother to the very end. Afterward she would borrow Joe’s vehicle to drive out into the desert to scatter her mother’s ashes. She knew where. Around a particularly beautiful ghost gum that had held some special message for her mother. Sarah never knew what.

  She would’ve given anything to be talked out of the wake, but she knew she had to go. Her mother had many, many good friends in the town. Attending the wake was expected. Harriet, that eternal tower of strength, had arranged it at her place. “Harriet’s Villa,” the town had always called it. A building considerably grander than those usually allotted to an outback town’s schoolteacher.
Convincing evidence of Harriet Crompton’s regal, no-nonsense presence. The villa was really a classic old Queenslander with the usual enveloping verandas, lacework balustrades and valances. As a child Sarah had loved it. What made the villa truly extraordinary was Miss Crompton’s remarkable collection of native artifacts. She’d gathered them from all over—the Australian outback, New Guinea, where she’d been reared by her English parents on a coffee plantation, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, which she’d visited in her youth. There was hardly a field of learning Harriet didn’t know about or couldn’t talk intelligently about. She was an inveterate reader with an insatiable appetite for knowledge. Miss Crompton—she hadn’t become Harriet until a few years ago—had sensed the day after Sarah and Kyall had made love that something new had taken over her favorite student’s life. Sarah had sometimes thought Miss Crompton had sensed the very day she knew she was pregnant. Certainly Miss Crompton had said Sarah could come to her at any time if she needed help.

  “My door is always open to you, Sarah. Whatever problems we experience in life, we can get through them with friends.”

  She was two and a half months pregnant, her body as slim and supple as ever, showing no outward changes, when Ruth McQueen put a name to her condition and in so doing put a name to her.

  “You little slut! What were you thinking of? What were you and your mother thinking of? That you’d trap my grandson? As though I’d allow it for one minute! It’s unthinkable. You’ll go away and you’ll stay away. You have no future here.”

  What did it concern her that the baby was someone she and Ruth McQueen’s adored grandson had created together?

  “I’ll protect my grandson in any way I have to. Understand me. I’m a powerful woman. Do you think I’ll listen to your stupid prattle about loving Kyall? This will ruin him, bring him and my family down. It will never happen. You’ll go away if I have to drag you off myself. If you truly love my grandson, you’ll recognize that this pregnancy has the potential to destroy his life. God almighty, girl, he’s only sixteen! Do you think I’m going to allow him to waste his life on someone like you? You’re fortunate you haven’t told him your little secret, or God knows what I’d do.”

  Sarah hadn’t doubted then, nor did she now, that Ruth McQueen would have taken drastic steps to shut her up. But basically it had come down to one thing. She did love Kyall. His happiness was very important to her. She’d never seen them in terms of a committed relationship; their backgrounds were too far removed. She’d accepted what Ruth McQueen and to a certain extent her own mother had told her. Exquisitely painful as it was, it would be better for her, for her baby and for Kyall if the child was adopted out to a suitable young couple who would give it a good, loving home.

  She remembered how frightened her mother had been of Ruth McQueen. “Everyone is, my angel. She’s done some terrible things to people in business. Her own son was forced to leave. She simply doesn’t have it in her to love anyone. Except Kyall. This is a real crisis, my angel. I have no money. Nowhere else to go. No husband anymore. I know it’s dreadful to accept what she’s offering, but she proposes to look after us if we do what she says.”

  So the answer, although it was terrible and not what she wanted, was very clear. She was to go away and put her baby up for adoption. Afterward, as though nothing monumental had happened, she could resume her education, one important difference being that she’d never go back to the town but be enrolled in an excellent girls’ boarding school.

  NOTHING HAD PREPARED HER or would ever prepare her for the sight of Kyall. She thought she gave a stricken gasp, but in fact she hadn’t made a sound. She stood outside the church, flanked and supported by Harriet and Joe, surrounded by people of the town, the mourners, as her mother’s casket slid into the hearse and then began its final journey to the funeral home on the outskirts of town. It had been decided that she would attend her mother’s wake first before the cremation. Harriet and her mother’s best friend, Cheryl Morgan, would accompany her.

  There was something eerie about seeing Ruth McQueen again. She had aged. Lost height and weight. Never a tall woman, she’d always had such an imperious manner she’d managed to overcome her lack of inches. From this distance—and Sarah hoped she’d keep it—Ruth McQueen looked almost frail. Wonder of wonders! Hard to believe that, but she still had the incredible aura of glamour her daughter Enid, though a handsome woman, totally lacked. Both women were dressed in black from top to toe—a lot of people weren’t—but the McQueens always did things by the book. Kyall’s father, Max, a tall, handsome man with lovely manners, glanced in her direction. He lifted his hand and smiled, somehow indicating that he’d see her at the house.

  The McQueen women had already turned away as Kyall cleared a path for them to the old, meticulously maintained Rolls Ruth McQueen kept for her dignified entries into town. What was more of a surprise—but then again, perhaps not—was the presence of India Claydon of Marjimba Station, who now stood beside Kyall, suggesting she was a young woman of some significance in his and his family’s life. India did not look in Sarah’s direction. Her concern was solely with supporting the McQueen family, as though they were the chief mourners.

  India, a tall, athletic young woman with a long fall of glossy brown hair and bright blue eyes, appeared cool and elegant even in the heat of the day, which had most women waving decorative straw fans. India Claydon was a few years younger and had never been a friend. India, as heiress to Marjimba Station, liked the locals to keep their distance. Certainly she had looked down on Sarah and made the fact very plain. India had been educated at home until age twelve, when she was sent away to boarding school. As fate would have it, she’d attended the same prestigious school Ruth McQueen had picked out for Sarah. An excellent school was something Muriel Dempsey had found the strength and the courage to insist on for her clever daughter. Right from the beginning, India had made it her business to let the other girls at school know Sarah was there through the charity of that philanthropic family, the McQueens, her own family’s close friends. If it was meant as an embarrassment, the ploy backfired. No one cared. Sarah Dempsey was a bright girl, a real worker and she excelled at sports. Everyone liked her. She was kind and courteous, respectful to her teachers, who couldn’t praise her enough. Eventually she was “dux” of the school, the top student, as well as school captain. Impossible to believe Sarah Dempsey had ever put a foot wrong in her life. Impossible to believe that behind the sweet seriousness of her expression lay a grief and a guilt that had never been resolved.

  What did I do wrong that my baby was born without a chance at life? Sarah agonized endlessly as she faced the future without her child. What had happened? During all that long, lonely waiting time, she’d tried her very best to take care of herself. She had felt physically strong, never questioning that she would deliver a healthy child.

  But I slept while my baby died.

  LEAVING THE CHURCH, Kyall kept moving forward, unaware that his face was still and somber. People greeted him on all sides, saying the usual things one said at funerals. Untimely…sad occasion…no nicer woman than Muriel… He could see they were pleased he and his family had come to pay their respects. Some were a little awkward about mentioning Sarah. These good-hearted people knew all about the adolescent bond between him and Sarah Dempsey. They had been inseparable. He knew there’d been lots of whispers when Sarah had gone away so suddenly to boarding school, everyone certain his grandmother had put an end to an “unsuitable” relationship. No doubt in the town’s view it had been for their own good. Kyall had to admit their bond had amounted to near obsession. They were both too young for it. Probably the townspeople felt that the breakup had been inevitable from the start. Such a friendship would never culminate in anything, given the fact that his family reigned supreme and the Dempseys, though respectable people, were nevertheless working class. That would be the reasoning.

  Still, Kyall knew the town had a soft spot for the remarkably bright Sarah, Miss Crompton’s pr
otégée, fatherless child and a great comfort and help to her widowed mother.

  There were just too many obstacles, too much formidable opposition from his family. His grandmother Ruth, who showed little or no affection for anybody, doted on him. Who knew why? But the upshot had been the severance of the greatest bond of his young life. With some bleakness, Kyall pondered that. I could never forget her, but Sarah quickly enough blotted out all memories of me.

  Now his family was attending Muriel Dempsey’s funeral, an odd gesture, perhaps, but one that was obviously much appreciated. It was, everyone seemed to agree, in the true spirit of the bush, yet the pain in his heart was so bad Kyall thought he might groan aloud with it. Across the room he could see the women of the town, one by one, go to Sarah and wrap their arms around her, hugging her, their faces full of sympathy and compassion. The men gripped her hand. Some of the older men, the grandfathers, hugged her close. He saw India’s brother, Mitchell, a friend and in his view the pick of the Claydons, kiss her on both cheeks; he wasn’t surprised when she lifted her beautiful grave face and gave him a heartbreaking smile. Sarah had always liked Mitch. It was Mitch who’d christened her at age ten the “little Queen of Koomera Crossing” a reference to some quality in Sarah that put her above the rest.

  She was more beautiful every time he saw her. Even now, when he knew she was filled with desolation, she managed to keep the tears at bay. She was…gallant. He knew she wouldn’t break down until she was entirely on her own.

  She wore a simple black dress that made her skin glow and her hair glitter. That extravagant blond mane was pulled back from her face and arranged in a thick upturned roll, though wisps like little golden flames found their way onto her temples and cheeks and clustered on the creamy nape of her neck. Taller than most of the women around her, she was slim to the point of thinness.