The Girl from Snowy River

by Jackie French

  She rolled parallel to the bed, grabbed the bar at the bedhead with one hand and hauled herself, sliding, onto the mattress. She lay face down, panting for a moment till the pain eased, then began to roll over.

  ‘No, stay like that,’ said Sister Burrows. ‘Do you mind if I pull up your dress?’

  ‘No,’ said Flinty.

  It was chilly in the bedroom. Sister Burrows’s fingers were cold as they touched her swollen back gently. ‘Can you feel that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Flinty.

  ‘I’m going to use a hatpin now. I’ll try not to hurt you. Can you feel that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How about this?’

  ‘No,’ said Flinty. ‘Ow! Yes, I can feel it now.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Sister Burrows. She put the pin back into her hat. ‘Now when I run my hands down your legs…what can you feel?’

  ‘I can feel your hands. They’re cold,’ she added.

  ‘Sorry. Can you feel when I touch your feet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Any pins and needles in your toes?’

  ‘No. They just feel like feet.’

  ‘I see.’

  Flinty felt Sister Burrows pull the dress back about her legs. ‘Come on, I’ll help you back into the chair.’

  ‘I can do it!’

  ‘So I see,’ said Sister Burrows calmly. ‘But you’re doing your back no good by jerking it that way as you try to get up. If you won’t let me lift you I’ll call Sandy —’

  ‘No!’ She let herself be lifted. She was surprised at the strength in the nurse’s arms, one under her legs, the other in a practised movement around her shoulders. When she was in her chair again, Sister Burrows sat on her bed and looked at her.

  ‘I’m not a doctor,’ she said at last. ‘If we were in Sydney or even Goulburn, I’d advise you to see a specialist. But I suspect that the jolting journey down to the city would do you more harm than good.’

  ‘Dr Sparrow said that nothing can be done about a broken back.’

  ‘He was correct. But there are…different ways…a back can be broken. If the spinal cord is severed…you know what the spinal cord is?’

  Flinty nodded. She’d cut up enough mutton and rabbits to know what a spine was. ‘It’s inside the bones that run down your back. They’re all connected.’

  ‘That’s right. Well, if your spine had been broken completely you wouldn’t have any feeling or movement below the injury. That’s obviously not the case.’

  Flinty glanced at her with dawning hope. Sister Burrows held up a warning hand. ‘You have, however, done major damage. There’s an area on the right side where you can’t feel anything, and it extends part of the way over onto your left side too.’

  ‘What…what does that mean?’

  ‘I think — and I have to emphasise this is only my opinion, and I am scarcely an expert in these matters — but I believe you have broken one, or maybe two, of the tiny “spurs” on the edges of your backbone. These bits of bone are causing inflammation and swelling in the soft bits around them, and that is pressing on the nerves. Am I right in thinking that you are able to move more now than when it first happened?’

  ‘Yes.’ Flinty gripped the arms of the chair. ‘You mean…you mean I might keep getting better?’

  ‘That depends. You may have improved as much as you’re ever going to. Or perhaps you’ll slowly find you can move more easily, even stand up and walk.’

  Sister Burrows reached over and gripped Flinty’s hand. ‘My girl, I’d dearly love to be able to promise you that you’ll walk again. But I can’t. I can’t even promise you that you’ll be able to stand by yourself. But I can promise that there’s hope.’

  ‘Hope,’ whispered Flinty.

  Sister Burrows nodded. ‘There’ll always be damage. Any jarring or bruising will make it swell again. You’ll probably never be able to ride again — it would jolt your back too much. That’s why I want you to accept help to get in and out of your chair, try not to pull or jar your back as you attempt to move, whether you’re lying in bed or reaching for things from your chair or pushing yourself around. Be gentle and let yourself heal.’

  ‘You mean I have to lie in bed?’ I’ve only just got out of bed’s prison, thought Flinty. Please don’t send me back there with a promise of ‘perhaps’.

  ‘Certainly not. Lying flat on your back is the worst thing you can do. When you lie on your back your weight will press down on the injury…’ She hesitated. ‘I’d say, do whatever causes least pain and, if it hurts, stop. The body is very good at knowing what’s good for it. Try hot bran poultices wrapped in a towel or pillowcase against the base of your back. Do you know how to make one?’

  ‘Dad showed me for the horses.’

  Sister Burrows grinned. ‘They work for people too. Use them like a hot cushion for your back, as often as you can. Don’t let the spine get chilled or jarred. Heat will bring the swelling down and anything that brings down the swelling will make it easier for you to move and for the injury to possibly heal more too.

  ‘But mostly keep on moving gently.’ Sister Burrows shook her head. ‘You won’t find many doctors who’ll agree with me on this. Male doctors are happiest with patients all lined up neatly in bed to be inspected. But we nurses found that injured men got better fastest if they kept moving. Nurses are the ones who see what works and what doesn’t. So the best advice I can give you is to move as much as you can without pain. And hope,’ she added. ‘I’ve seen hope create miracles, and giving up kill a man who might have lived.’

  ‘What do I tell everyone?’ She felt adrift. She had finally accepted she was crippled. Now, it seemed, the sky was neither clear nor cloudy, but obscured by fog that might or might not lift.

  ‘The truth,’ said Sister Burrows gently. ‘Tell them your back is badly hurt. It may improve, or it may not. But if you are careful — and give it time and don’t aggravate it — then we will see.’

  Chapter 33

  4 September 1982

  Dear Diary,

  I thought Sister Burrows was the first woman I’d ever met who actually did things. It took years for me to realise that Mrs Clancy, Mrs Mack and Mum were just as capable in their own ways. They’re just not ways that men pay much attention to — unless their socks aren’t darned or dinner isn’t on the table at six o’clock. The life I’ve lived in the past sixty years has been built on the achievements of those strong women of my youth.

  Kirsty had put the kettle on the stove. The sound of an axe came from outside — Sandy must be splitting more wood for the stove, and Kirsty was stacking it. Flinty suspected he was using the activity as a way to prevent more questions about his own injuries too.

  She suddenly realised that Sandy had known what Sister Burrows’s diagnosis would be, was so confident that he didn’t need to ask now. He had probably even reassured Kirsty.

  Just how long had Sandy been in hospital or a convalescent home, she wondered, as she poured fresh water into the teapot, to be so familiar with back injuries like mine?

  ‘Could we have our tea on the front verandah?’ asked Sister Burrows. ‘I seem to have spent my life in rooms or tents that smell of antiseptic. It’s a treat to be in the open air for a while.’

  Flinty nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak yet. Sister Burrows carried their cups out the front door and Kirsty came to fetch Sandy’s tea. Flinty leaned back in her bathchair as Sister Burrows sat in the settler’s chair, gazing down the valley. ‘Beautiful,’ she said at last. ‘You’re blessed.’

  ‘I know,’ said Flinty.

  Sister Burrows shot her a glance. ‘More than you realise, perhaps. An injury like yours might have meant a nursing home. A row of beds of hopeless people and hopeless lives, nothing to look forward to but a visitor bringing buns at the weekend, friends slowly forgetting you as the years go by.’ She sipped her tea. ‘I don’t think your friends up here forget anyone.’

  ‘No,’ said Flinty. ‘Are…are you and Sandy good friend
s? It’s just,’ she added, as Sister Burrows looked at her enquiringly, ‘it’s a lot to ask someone to come all the way up here to look at me.’

  ‘We’ve been close friends, but not like that. I was engaged to his older brother.’

  ‘Rick?’

  Sister Burrows nodded. ‘We met when Rick was on convalescent leave in England after his first wound, and so was I — my hands again. We had nine days.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘He took me to a teashop and ended up holding the teacup for me to drink and cutting my teacake into pieces for me. We walked and we walked, every day — pebble beaches, not sandy ones like here. The wind in our faces, trying not to listen to the rumble of guns across the Channel, talking about cicadas and wattle trees and how you can’t ever explain to a French farmer why you can’t harness a kangaroo.

  ‘Then he went back to France, and a week later I did too. By some stroke of magic our casualty post was the nearest one to where he was stationed. We managed to meet every week or so, and the ambulance girls carried letters. We would have married, but then I’d have had to resign and come back to Australia. At least that way we saw each other, even got a note to each other most days.

  ‘We had it all planned — we’d get married the day the war ended. We’d buy a farm near enough to a town. I’d trained as a midwife before the war, and I’d go back to that. We even chose the colour of the kitchen curtains, the children’s names: Gladys and Pamela, George and Arthur. I know it sounds silly, but it really mattered at the time. Then Rick was gassed.’ She gazed out at the twisted trees. ‘He was blind after that, you know.’

  ‘No,’ said Flinty. ‘I didn’t know. Not about the engagement, not about him being blind before he died. Did his parents know how badly he was hurt?’

  ‘No. Not the first time, nor the second. He didn’t want them to know.’ Sister Burrows shook her head. ‘Most families just got that same form telegram, and then the postcard: I have been wounded, but I am in hospital now and recovering well. The same words over and over, saying so little, hiding so much.’

  ‘We had a right to know,’ said Flinty.

  ‘Perhaps. But the men had a right to privacy too. It helped them, sometimes, to know that their families weren’t too worried. Time enough,’ said Sister Burrows lightly, ‘to work out what would happen to a man blinded by the gas, or coughing blood, when he was able to be shipped back home. I used to write letters for them then — all of us nurses did — trying to prepare the families so they weren’t too shocked when their men were led or carried off the ship.’

  Sister Burrows looked out at the valley again. A fox trotted past, its red coat tipped with winter white. It seemed startled by the unexpected humans and darted up into the scrub.

  ‘When Rick learned he wouldn’t see again he tried to break off our engagement. I said it didn’t matter, though of course it did. But I’d rather have had him blind than not at all. And then he went and died anyway — many of the gas cases just got worse, no matter what we did. We had six weeks and four days together, all in all. I don’t know if that’s enough for a lifetime, but it’s all I’ll get.’

  ‘Do his parents know you were engaged?’

  ‘They do now.’ Sister Burrows blew her nose suddenly. She was crying, Flinty realised.

  ‘Sorry. Excuse me. I never cry… Rick was about to write of our engagement when he was gassed. It all happened so quickly. Things do in war. And then…’ She shrugged. ‘I’m glad Sandy insisted I come here, and not just to see you. It’s been wonderful to talk to Rick’s parents about him in the last couple of days. It’s like he lives in the marriage that might have been now. There’ll always be family who knew him, who I can remember him with. Mrs Mack wants me to have her engagement ring.’ She smiled and blew her nose again. ‘But she can’t get it off her finger, even with butter and tugging.’

  Flinty thought of Mrs Mack’s thick fingers, the swollen knuckles.

  ‘She says she’s going to have a jeweller cut it off, next summer when they go down to town. Then he’ll repair it for me. I…I should say no. But it will mean a lot to me.’

  To Mrs Mack too, thought Flinty. ‘You won’t marry anyone else?’

  ‘I don’t think I can,’ said Sister Burrows quietly. ‘When I see a man’s body now all I think of is pain and death. And when I look at my hands I see that too.’ She held them up. ‘Our hands were always wet, always working with infected wounds, so any cut or graze became infected too. The war is still with me every time I try to hold a cup of tea.’

  ‘Maybe your hands will get better. Maybe you’ll meet someone.’

  ‘Maybe your back will heal. We live in a world of perhapses.’

  ‘I didn’t know there were women in the war. I mean, I knew about nurses, but I thought you were all far away from the fighting.’

  ‘Oh no. Sometimes the shelling was a mile away, like a bad thunderstorm. Other times the battlefront would move. We’d have to move too, and be quick about it. Sometimes we weren’t quick enough.’

  She looked steadily at Flinty. ‘The men would go to the front for weeks, months sometimes, then have a break. We didn’t get any break at all, except when our hands were too swollen to work. Day and night sometimes. At one stage there were three of us sharing a single bed, but it didn’t matter, as we each only got two or three hours’ sleep before we had to be up again. Lived on cocoa and bread and dripping. The volunteers didn’t even get any wages.

  ‘Year in, year out… Never think, Miss McAlpine, that women can’t put up with as much as men. It’s women who bear the children and women who lose them too. And maybe that’s another reason why I’ll never marry now. I couldn’t bear that a son of mine might go through what I have seen. Not George. Not Arthur.’

  ‘But there won’t be another war. The Great War was “the war to end all wars”.’ Suddenly Flinty remembered Nicholas saying ‘World War I’ as though there had been a World War II — and maybe even III and IV. She wished she could tell Sister Burrows about Nicholas. Perhaps, if she had been whole, she might have. But an injured girl, shut away from real life, could so easily have imagined such a companion, a handsome young man who came from the fog.

  Sister Burrows was already shaking her head. ‘Do you think war ends so easily? To me it seems no more than a ceasefire while the generals work out ways to recruit more men, so they can be at it once more. But maybe I’m wrong. I hope I’m wrong. Miss McAlpine, will you forgive a personal remark?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You’ve had significant courage to manage as well as you have over the last years. Do you have enough courage to say yes if Sandy Mack asks you to marry him?’

  ‘But he won’t! He’s never even kissed me properly since he got back!’

  ‘Sandy Mack used a chunk of his savings to come to Sydney to talk to me about your case, and buy my train ticket and pay for a night at the Gibber’s Creek Boarding House so I could come here and take a look at you. He asked me not to tell you. I haven’t broken my word, because I just nodded, and let him draw the conclusions he wanted to. That young man cares for you very deeply.’

  ‘He was my brother’s best friend.’

  ‘That sounds like a good recommendation for a husband.’

  ‘You don’t understand. He just feels responsible for me.’

  ‘Somehow,’ said Sister Burrows, ‘I doubt that’s all there is. By the way, if you are wondering, I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t have children, even if you are forever confined to your bathchair. If you wish to, that is.’

  Flinty thought of Nicholas, so far away. Of Sandy, chopping wood at the back door.

  ‘Sandy needs a proper wife. One who can help him run the farm.’ Scrub floors. Round up the sheep, she thought. Chase brumbies across the hills.

  ‘There are many kinds of marriage,’ said Sister Burrows. ‘If Rick had lived, even if he had remained blind, I think we’d have had a good life. I enjoy my work — it would have been no hardship for me to be the breadwinner, extraordinary as
that sounds. Well, as I said, we live in a world of perhapses.’

  She glanced up at the clouds creeping over the mountain, swollen as plums and almost as purple. ‘And now I had better tell Sandy we need to go, or perhaps I will miss my train.’

  Chapter 34

  3 August 1920

  Dear Diary,

  I think I met an angel today, one in jodhpurs and with swollen hands. I can’t really believe it yet. I might walk. And Sandy…there are even more ‘perhapses’ with Sandy. I wish now I had asked Sister Burrows how he was wounded, how bad it was. I knew Sandy as well as my brothers for thirteen years, or even better. Then there were three years when I didn’t know what was happening to him at all, and those might be the most important ones of his whole life. Or maybe those are to come. Happy ones. I hope so.

  Oh dear, I’m hoping now. Hoping about so many things. Hoping hurts, but, oh, it’s good.

  It snowed that afternoon and all through the night, deep steady falls that leached all sound from the world, except the creaking of the roof. Flinty was glad Andy and Joey were down in the valley. The snow would probably be rain down there, and even the sight of Rock Farm would be cut off by its cloak of snow and cloud.

  It was impossible to sleep. There was too much to think about: the possibility that one day she might walk, a gift from Sandy, quiet Sandy with his freckles and blushes, who had never spoken a word of love and maybe never would, just like his Military Cross would probably stay hidden under his clean socks.

  Was Sandy waiting to see whether her back got better? But then why had he been so cold before her accident? He’d kissed her once. Why not again? Sandy… Sandy was a perhaps…a wonderful perhaps, but still just that.

  There was more to think about. Somehow today the world had stretched and expanded. For eighteen years Flinty had assumed that women existed as a help to men, feeding them, cleaning for them, so that men could do the small or great deeds of the world.