He sighed and rubbed the elbow he’d just banged against the van door. ‘Might as well. You’re very businesslike, Orla.’
‘Well, I am running one. Speaking of which, I’ve only got French leave today so I’d prefer to get back as soon as possible.’
‘Right,’ he said mournfully, ‘and here’s me thinking of a pleasant afternoon out.’
‘Not while I’m working,’ I said firmly. ‘Shall we go?’
The van was well loaded down by the time we’d finished. The loose garden tools were the most awkward and after Alec had almost brained himself on the rake handle I said, ‘Look, they’re not worth it. Let’s drop them back at the house. Who knows? One of the geologists might be a closet gardener.’ I looked doubtfully at the van. ‘It’s awfully full. Do you want to leave it in town and ride with me? Somebody can run you back after dinner.’
Alec accepted with alacrity. ‘An excellent idea.’
Later, having banged his head getting the garage door open he settled into the passenger seat, rubbing ruefully at his brow. He would have a fair bump, I thought, and marvelled that a man so inherently clumsy could choose a profession requiring a sureness of touch. We trundled down to the supermarket and I parked out front. ‘I have to pick up a pumpkin. Won’t be a moment.’
When I returned with my purchase he’d opened the glove-box and was studying a spare leaflet about the Park.
‘So how’s it going? What are your guests like?’
‘We’ve had some really nice ones,’ I told him, pulling into the street. ‘Couldn’t ask for better; pleasant, considerate people . . .’
I caught his glance across the cab, a raised brow above the dark eyes. ‘But? I can hear it in your voice – there’s a but, isn’t there?’
‘His name’s Darren,’ I said ruefully. ‘Fifteen, and beyond being interested in anything. Snarls and sulks; his dad yells, his mother’s given up . . . His kid brother’s great and nice mannered, so he must’ve been taught too, but you’d never know it.’
‘His age,’ Alec said sagely. ‘Teenage rebellion.’
‘I know. But that doesn’t give him a licence to make life hell for everybody else. Lord knows what he’s up to now!’ The boundary grid was approaching and I slowed for the dip just before it. ‘The rest of the family went to the Hill for the day. I told Marty we should stick up a sign at the homestead. You know, like boarding houses in the bad old days: No pets, no blacks, no Jews. Ours would simply read: No teenagers.’
He laughed. ‘I imagine the adult half of the world would agree with you, but we were all young and unsure enough once to be obnoxious.’
‘Yes.’ We passed the old hut, a salutary reminder of my own headstrong youth, and coasted round the bend to where the first thicket of mulga was massed beside the road next to the dark shape of an overturned vehicle. I stared for a long, uncomprehending, horror-filled moment trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Then, heart in my mouth and the blood roaring in my ears, I slammed the brake on, bringing the Nissan to a shuddering stop. Alec said something as I wrestled with the belt holding me there, then I was out of my seat, dying inside, with eyes only for the familiar shape of the old green Land Rover that Mark had said he would be driving that afternoon.
Vaguely I heard Alec’s door slam behind me. He was yelling, ‘Orla, wait!’ but I didn’t pause, even for the figure of Darren sitting dazedly in my path. I saw that the farm bike was there too, its front rammed into a mulga bole. A rear tyre, which the impact had hoisted off the ground, was still spinning, so the accident had only just occurred. The realisation came and went as I flew by him without a word, concentrating on the windscreen on the driver’s side where the glass had shattered into opaque pebbles but was still intact. Through it I could just make out the darker hump of a body.
‘Mark! Are you okay? Can you hear me? Mark!’ I tugged vainly at the passenger door, now lying on a horizontal plane, but either it was jammed or lifting it was too much for my suddenly weakened limbs. Alec appeared behind me then, moving me firmly aside.
‘Let me,’ he said urgently. ‘It’s leaking fuel.’ He grabbed the door and heaved on it from his greater height but it didn’t budge. Craning forward he peered into the cab. ‘It’s stuck fast, I’m afraid and he’s not responding. Seems to be out cold. I can see blood – drive for help, Orla. We’ll need jacks, fire foam, maybe a cable, too. Get Roger and his father – the breakdown truck will have the gear.’
‘You get them.’ I wasn’t even aware I was crying until the tears splashed onto my wrist. Frantically I ran around the front of the vehicle, drew my foot back and began kicking repeatedly at the starred window. The weakened glass gave way suddenly, showering Mark’s lax form with bits of shattered windscreen. Before Alec could stop me I stooped and wriggled through the aperture, trying not to land on the unconscious body within. It was a tight fit. The steering wheel pressed against my torso, and the edges of the frame scraped my arm. There was a smell of hot engines, of burned rubber and fuel. Bits of pebbled glass fell onto my head as I thrust and butted my way in, bruising an arm on the gearbox housing. The seat cushions had come adrift in the crash and the glove box had burst open. Clinging to the up-side window frame I leaned across the steering wheel and carefully turned the key to the off position. The smell of fuel was overpowering, and my throat closed in protest, making me cough, but all my concentration was on the slumped figure lying in a crumpled curve against the driver’s side window.
‘Mark.’ I put a gentle hand on his head, where the dark hair was starred with beads of glass. ‘Mark! Wake up. Oh, please, wake up.’ Fearfully, my breath almost stopping, I let my hand slide down to rest against the sturdy column of his throat and felt a huge surge of joy and gratitude when it pulsed against my questing fingers.
‘He’s alive! Oh, God, Alec, he’s still breathing!’ I called. ‘Go – go. And if you can get the nurse as well – tell Roger, he’ll know where to find her. And hurry, please hurry.’
He was stooped double, peering in through the empty window frame, and made no move to leave. ‘Let’s try and get him out, first. You feed his arms out through the front here to me and I’ll pull him clear.’
‘No! We might hurt him. What if his spine’s damaged?’
Alec said harshly, ‘What if the bloody thing catches fire? The fuel tank’s ruptured, Orla. If there’s a spark you’ll both go up in smoke. So we’ll have to chance shifting him. If you’re not going to get out, give me his hands.’
We tried. The blood that I too had become aware of was leaking from a gash in Mark’s forearm, puddling on the gearbox housing and greasing his wrists. I had nothing with which to staunch it and Alec brushed my concern for it brusquely aside.
‘That’s not going to kill him. Right, I’ll pull, and if you can lift his head over the wheel and through the frame . . .’ He grunted as he took the weight. I tried to help, which wasn’t easy as I had continually to hold my body off Mark’s. I slid my right hand under his chin to lift it and got a grip on the passenger-side door handle with my left but it was hopeless. We got his head through the windscreen but even Alec’s strength wasn’t enough to shift the rest of him. He groaned deeply once as Alec heaved and I pushed as well as I could one-handed.
‘Stop! You’re hurting him. It’s no good.’ The useless tears, of despair this time, threatened to flow again. ‘I can see the problem – his foot’s jammed but I can’t reach his boot to get it off. Just go, Alec, please.’
He swore then, admitting defeat. ‘Okay, I’m gone. Look, if you won’t come out then just sit tight, okay? And don’t even think fire.’
He vanished from view. I heard the motor of the Nissan turn over and, lacing my arms about Mark’s chest, drew his upper body carefully back inside to take the strain off the leg that had been twisted in our attempts to move him. His inert form was heavy and I lay back gasping, my own lower body braced against the gear stick and the hump of the transmission. His head and upper body tumbled into my lap so that when a tear
did fall it was onto his upside-down face. The smell of petrol seemed even stronger, making me glad of the smashed windscreen. Tenderly I brushed bits of glass from his dark hair and bent to kiss his brow. ‘Wake up, my love. Oh, God,’ I raised my eyes heavenwards, ‘please don’t let him be badly hurt!’
My voice must have roused him for he sighed out a groan and his eyes flickered open, staring blankly up into mine from only inches away.
‘Orla,’ he said groggily. His forehead contracted, drawing a deep V between his brows as his gaze wandered between me and the displaced cabin roof. ‘What happened?’
‘Oh, thank God you’re awake! There was an accident – the Land Rover’s on its side. Are you in pain? No, don’t move, your foot’s caught. I’ve got you.’ I gave a hysterical little laugh and dashed a hand across my eyes. ‘I thought you were dead, Mark! What hurts worst?’
He drew a deep breath and his face suddenly stilled, his look sharpening. ‘That’s petrol. Get out, Orla, now!’
‘I know. Alec said the fuel tank burst. He’s gone for help. We’ll just wait quietly till it comes. I turned the ignition off. Your boot seems to be jammed – can you work your foot out of it?’
He tried, grunting deep in his chest with the effort, but it was no good. ‘I think the pedals have twisted over it,’ he said, body going limp. His face had lost colour and I realised that it was his bad leg that was trapped. ‘I’ll wait,’ he said tersely. ‘You get out. Leave me.’
‘I’m not going anywhere, Mark. You’re bleeding. Here, let me.’ I bent my mouth to his upper arm to bite at the shoulder seam of his shirt sleeve, keeping at it until I’d made a hole I could get my fingers into. ‘Lie still, you’ve got a bad cut. I need something to stop the bleeding.’ I yanked and tugged until the sleeve parted company with the shirt, then fed it down over his hand, and wrapped the length of it around the nasty-looking cut on his forearm. ‘A good thing you weren’t wearing a coat. There.’ Satisfied, I tucked it back against his body.
He seemed to have accepted my refusal to leave him and asked instead, ‘Why are you doing this?’ His blue eyes searched my face. ‘I thought you hated me.’
‘So did I until I saw you hurt. Then I knew . . . Oh, Mark, why didn’t you at least answer my letter? All right, I expected a commitment you obviously weren’t willing to give, but you might at least have written to me. Just the once. It’s not much to ask, is it?’
‘What letter? I never got one.’ His brows drew together in remembered anger. ‘That was the hardest thing of all to forgive. How could you do that to me, Orla? Just vanish and leave me dangling that way. No word, no warning. Did you think I cared so little for you that I wouldn’t worry? I was frantic! Christ! You could have been dead for all I knew.’
‘But I did,’ I cried. ‘I sent a letter, marked Personal and addressed to the agency so Gail wouldn’t see it. Are you saying you never got it?’
‘No,’ he replied simply. ‘I never did.’ The pain in his face was partly despair. ‘Why didn’t you just tell me what you were up to, or ring me? You know Palmer would have recognised your writing; he probably saw it and opened the letter. No wonder he wouldn’t report you as missing!’
‘But I didn’t address it,’ I protested. ‘Of course I thought of that! I took the letter in a blank envelope to a post office and got someone else to write the address. I’d said I’d sprained my wrist. Do you think Gail took it?’ His wife had been jealous of every woman Mark spoke to, and the older I got the less she liked me. That knowledge had made us ultra cautious but suspicion, I thought with a sinking heart, would always win over discretion when it came to affairs. ‘If she read it . . .’
‘Then what? I’m pretty sure she already suspected that there was someone in my life, and I think your leaving settled the matter for her.’ He twisted his head, bit his lip and heaved again at his trapped foot. ‘God, I wish you’d get out, Orla. If this thing goes up . . .’ The smell of petrol was like a weight on the air. ‘After you’d left,’ he said quietly, ‘she used to taunt me about you – so maybe she did read the letter. I suppose that Palmer could just have handed it to her, if he saw her first. She always opened my mail. What did you write anyway?’
It was my turn to bite my lip. I stroked my fingers over the line of his jaw and steadied my voice. ‘That I was pregnant. That’s why I left. I had to. And I asked you for help. I had nowhere to go, no money. I didn’t expect you to leave your family – well, perhaps I secretly hoped you would – but mainly I needed support.’
‘Oh my God, Orla.’ He closed his eyes for a moment then opened them again to stare upside down into mine. ‘We made a baby? And you had to face that alone? I’m so sorry. So where . . . What happened?’
‘He died, Mark.’ The tears I couldn’t control splashed onto his face as his hand rose to cover mine. ‘My little Jamie. He was only two when I lost him.’
‘But what – why? An accident?’
‘There was something wrong with his heart.’ Sniffing, I smeared the tears away, trying to wipe my eyes on the shoulder of my coat. ‘They said – at the inquest – they said it was a ruptured coronary aneurysm. It’s not that common in young children and of course we were on the island with only a visiting GP. He died before I even knew what was wrong with him.’
He looked appalled. ‘I had a son,’ he said slowly, the words like a wound, ‘a son – and I never knew it. God, if only I’d known!’
‘What could you have done?’ I asked sadly. ‘Gail would never have divorced you, and you’d have lost your daughter if you’d left.’
‘I’ve lost her anyway. If you’d told me, I’d had gone with you, then we could have shared our son’s life, however short it was. I never stopped loving you, Orla. But when you returned you made it very plain that it was all over between us.’
‘I thought it was. I was so stupid!’ I said despairingly. ‘I held Jamie against you, and every little hardship and inconvenience I’d suffered along the way. I saw myself as the wronged woman, which I see now was ridiculous – and unfair. Nobody forced me into your arms. I didn’t get pregnant on purpose, but I certainly put myself in the way of doing so. And I can’t regret what happened. Jamie was —’ my voice wobbled ‘— the most marvellous thing I will ever experience.’
‘Tell me about him,’ he said abruptly. His face was strained and there was sweat on his brow. I was far from comfortable myself with a steady ache in the left side of my body from bracing myself against the gear lever, so how much worse was it for him? I said worriedly, ‘You banged your head – you might be suffering from concussion. Is your foot crushed or just caught?’
‘It’s fine,’ he said brusquely. ‘So’s my head. Tell me about Jamie.’
So, trapped in the overturned vehicle, my own head beginning to ache from the fumes, I talked of those magic two years with my son, creating for Mark a glimpse of the sturdy toddler with the thatch of wavy dark hair (‘beautiful hair, Mark, just like yours’) and the tiny cleft in his chin. He had never suffered an illness in his short life, save the occasional bout of colic as a baby, until the day he collapsed in my arms. I was still talking, caught between smiles and tears, reporting the little things he had said and done, his first steps, his first encounter with a dog, when the Brigsons’ breakdown truck came roaring along the road with my Nissan in close pursuit behind.
I kissed him then and, manoeuvring his head off my lap, wriggled cautiously with Roger’s help back through the gaping windscreen. Mr Brigson was laying down a carpet of foam about the Land Rover, so it was Alec who caught my hand and steadied me as I came wincingly upright. The nurse, Sandra, was with him. She ran a cursory eye over me but her mind was on the trapped man.
‘Is that your blood?’ Surprised, I looked down at the stain on my clothes and shook my head. ‘Good,’ she said briskly. ‘Right then, give me a report – how is he? Conscious? Bleeding? Any breaks you know of?’
‘He’s awake and quite lucid. His foot’s caught and he’s in pain but it might be from
the way he’s lying; he already has a bad leg from a previous accident. He has a gashed arm but I bound it up and the bleeding’s stopped. That’s where this is from.’ I rubbed at the dried stain I had discovered on my wrist. ‘We just have to get him out.’
She nodded. ‘Doesn’t sound too bad then. How did it happen?’
‘I never asked.’ But her question made me remember Darren and the three-wheeler run up against the mulga tree, its hind wheel spinning. I looked around; the bike was still there amid a glitter of broken headlights but there was no sign of the boy. Well, we would deal with that later, along with everything else. All that mattered now was Mark.
Chapter Thirty
It was a tricky bit of manoeuvring but the Brigsons, father and son, knew their business and with the aid of the crane on the breakdown truck they managed to get the Land Rover upright again. The driver’s door had been caved in and was badly jammed. I watched heart in mouth, for Mark – flung across the steering wheel by the movement as the vehicle teetered upright then crashed down onto its four wheels – seemed, for a few long moments, to be not responding while Mr Brigson levered the buckled panel off.
‘Let me in there.’ Sandra was at his shoulder, bag in hand. ‘He ought to have a neck brace on, at the very least.’
‘Half a mo, Missus.’ Brigson looked past her at Roger. ‘Get a jack, son. Pedal’s twisted and his boot’s under it.’ To Mark, he said, ‘You right there, mate? We’ll have you out in a jiffy.’
‘No hurry,’ Mark muttered. My heart swelled as his eyes sought and found mine, then anxiety tore at me. He looked so drawn and pale, his mouth tightened in obvious pain.
It took a little longer but finally Sandra had her patient out and sitting on the tailboard unencumbered by machinery. The first thing she did was to clip a neck brace into position. ‘Just till we get you to hospital,’ she said, flashing a torch into his eyes and taking his pulse.
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