Hearts in the Land of Ferns

by Jude Knight

  “Is it a pain?”

  She slid her eyes to him and quirked up one corner of her lips, but didn’t answer. He was such an idiot, trying to pressure her into staying with him when she was in the middle of having his baby. “What can I do to help?”

  She let her breath out with a sigh and took another sip. “A contraction, and gone now. I’ll get you to hold the watch, Trevor, and tell you when the next one starts. I need to time how long they are and how long from the start of one to the start of the next. So, you’re saying you want me stay here, with you? To be a farmer’s wife?”

  “We don’t have to talk about it now, if you don’t want.”

  “We are not going to decide now,” she corrected him, all no-nonsense Kirilee, which made him smile. “I just want to be clear about what you’re offering.”

  Clear-headed and direct, just as he remembered. “Okay, then. No. Not a farmer’s wife, and not here. Kev is taking a transfer back into Palmy so his kids can go to high school there as day pupils. I thought of applying for the police station at Hunterville. If I get it, there’s a house. We’d only be a bit over an hour away from the farm, so close enough to visit often, but far enough that Old Trev doesn’t get any ideas about making a farmer out of me. You’ve been here long enough to know how Cheryl loves this place, and she’s the farmer, not me.”

  Kirilee nodded. “If you can persuade Old Trev of that, good for you! He has his heart set on leaving you the farm. He’s an old dear, but he’s a fossil.”

  “It’ll be easier for Cheryl if I don’t live here. But it doesn’t have to be Hunterville. There’ll be other stations looking for cops. If you wanted to be nearer Wellington, so you could go to the shows and so on… It’s got to be about what you want, too.”

  “The watch!” Kirilee commanded. Trevor grabbed for it and divided his attention between her and the second hand as her thoughts turned internal again.

  “Thirty-five seconds,” he reported, as she sighed her relief. “Is that good?”

  “No idea. Everyone is different, the midwife says. Don’t look so worried, Trevor. Chances are we have plenty of time for them to get the phones going so we can call her. Or you can take me down to her in the valley once it is daylight.”

  Not in this storm, Trevor thought, and the phones could be out for days, if not weeks. Aloud, he said, “Have you given any thought to what you want?”

  She was silent for a long moment. “A lot of thought. Trevor, I don’t know if you can understand. I never had a family before. Poor little rich girl, right? All the luxuries in the world, but no one who was mine. I barely ever saw Bernard, and to him, I was a possession. An asset. Item: a luxury hotel in Malibu. Item: a chain of sweat shops in Calcutta. Item: a munitions factory in Kremnica. Item: a sister in Boston. He had me trained to give him a return on his investment.”

  Trevor at least had Cheryl and Granddad; Grandma, too, until he was seven. And Mum, however erratic, had loved them after her own careless fashion.

  “I only knew families from the outside: people I saw at school; families I read about in books. Then I came here. I want what you and Cheryl and Old Trev have. I want to be part of a community, like I have been here.”

  “Then…” Trevor started, but she raised a hand to stop him.

  “So, I thought that the baby and I would find a place like this. Somewhere that could be our forever home, where the baby could grow up knowing everyone. I never thought of staying here. I didn’t think you would want me. Us.”

  He started to speak again, and again she interrupted. “I am tempted more than you can imagine. But I don’t know you, Trevor, and you don’t know me. Dreams aren’t enough. The baby isn’t enough.”

  “I think we know more about one another than most couples starting out,” Trevor objected. “You see the essence of a person when they’re in danger.”

  Kirilee nodded. “I can partly buy that. I know I can count on you in an emergency. I know you don’t fall apart when things go wrong. But I don’t know if you are grumpy in the mornings or if you vote Republican or Democrat, or whatever they have here in New Zealand. People can be great when things are going wrong and drive each other crazy when there’s nothing to think about but one another’s annoying habits. It drives me demented when people leave dirty cups on the bench or don’t put away the toothpaste. You don’t know those things about me.”

  Trevor nodded. “Fair enough. Then let’s take our time. We’re married, at least for now, and living together, at least in the literal sense.”

  “Watch!” Kirilee demanded, and he went back to the second hand, noting the time. Nine minutes twenty seconds since the start of the last contraction. And this one was thirty-five seconds, too.

  “I am going to pace for a while,” Kirilee said, when it was over, and he got up to walk beside her. Through the sitting room, out into the hall, through the kitchen and dining nook, and back around again, stopping to count seconds at each contraction, and for the rest of the time talking lightly about the farm, the neighbours, and possible names for the baby.

  The minutes crept by. Eventually, the pitch dark lightened perceptibly, and Cheryl hobbled from her room not long after. Trevor installed her in a chair with her foot up and raided the pantry and fridge for the makings of a country breakfast. Kirilee said she’d be happy with some toast, and he managed to unearth some old toasting forks to grill the bread over the flames in the wood-fired oven, but he and Cheryl had sausages, bacon, eggs, hash browns, and fried mushrooms and tomatoes, as well as more toast.

  Kirilee stole a rasher of his bacon and walked some more. Even now that it should be full daylight, the gloom of the storm meant the hurricane lanterns were still needed. For the birth, they agreed, they’d put on the generator. He should check it first, and while he was about it, he should check on the hens, the pigs, and the dogs. He asked Cheryl what other chores needed to be done and togged up in his rain gear to brave the storm.

  Even up here on their hill, where everything sloped, water was inches deep, gushing down every tilted surface and pooling in every hollow. The wind howled and whined, doing its best to push him off course or strike him with its collected burden of branches and other storm rack. He ducked a metal bucket that came from who knows where and jumped a mangled piece of roofing iron that crossed his path at high speed. Visibility was no more than a hundred meters, but he could see three slips from where he stood. They were on their own till the storm passed.

  When he returned inside, Kirilee was washing the dishes, and Cheryl was leaning against the counter balanced on one foot, drying them. Managing women who thought they needed to do everything. He cast a glance at the ceiling but said nothing. They were, after all, his managing women.

  “I’ll just check on Granddad,” he said, “then I’ll come and put those dishes away. Just leave them wherever you can reach, Cheryl.”

  Old Trev was awake and insisted on getting up. “About time you got home,” he told his grandson, but his eyes were damp, and he patted Trevor’s hand when Trevor offered it to help him sit up.

  Was he usually this slow? And clumsy, too, knocking the pill box from his bedside cabinet when he suddenly flailed his hand dangerously close to the sharp point of the corner. Trevor retrieved the box from the floor: one of those segmented devices with a place for each meal of the day. When did Granddad start taking so many pills? He put it back where it belonged. “Can I fix you some breakfast?”

  Another order of toast, and by the time Old Trev emerged from his room, grumbling about something being wrong with the buttons on his shirt, Trevor had a place set for him at the table, with butter, marmalade, and vegemite ready to spread.

  He helped Old Trev with the recalcitrant buttons, exchanging worried glances with Cheryl and Kirilee. “I’ve made a pot of tea, Granddad,” he said. “Something else for you, Kirilee?”

  But his wife was having another contraction, her hands resting on the top of her exercise ball as she bent over, focused on her breathing.

>   Cheryl had custody of the watch, and she reported that the contractions were now fifty-five seconds long and six and a half minutes apart. “Getting stronger, too,” Kirilee said.

  Trevor thanked all the powers of heaven and earth that Cheryl knew what she was doing. Though if she’d assisted at a human birth, it was more than he knew. Lots of animals, though, both here on the farm and as her husband’s assistant.

  “Cheryl and I are going to make a start on the trifle for Christmas dinner,” Kirilee announced. “Do you think we can do the pavlovas in the woodstove, Cheryl?”

  Trevor took heart at their casual approach. Surely, they’d not be cooking if they were worried?

  “How are you feeling, Granddad,” he asked, when Lee and Cheryl were busy in the other room, and got his ear blistered about his long absence, about abandoning the pretty girl he had married, and about his duties to the future and the farm.

  He let the old man have his rant, recognizing that most of it was anxiety about Kirilee.

  The day wore on. He played a game of chess with Old Trev, worried when he noticed that the old man was using his left hand to move the pieces and favouring his right. In the middle of the game, he was summoned to do massage duty, “because it is your job more than mine,” Cheryl said.

  Kirilee instructed him on where to rub his thumbs and how much pressure to apply, and sighed with pleasure when he got it right, pressing her spine into his hands as she bent over the exercise ball once again.

  By mid-afternoon, Lee and Cheryl had given up on the preparations for Christmas lunch. The contractions were strong, lasting more than a minute, and with increasingly short breaks between, and Lee found it harder and harder to come back out of her daze when the clenching eased.

  Old Trev took a stack of farming journals and one of the hurricane lanterns and retreated to the porch. “I’ll leave you to get on with it,” he told the three-younger people. “Let me know when he’s born.”

  Trevor was sharing Cheryl’s coaching duties, reassuring Lee, distracting her with foot rubs and stories about his childhood, massaging her back, providing someone to lean on during a contraction.

  The plan had been for Cheryl to hold Lee’s hand during the last part of the labour while the midwife dealt with the messy end of the business. Could Trevor handle the midwife’s part? Certainly, Cheryl shouldn’t be on that ankle for too long. Lee asked him, and saw the effort he made to look confident. But what else could they do?

  Another contraction started, gripped, crested and stayed, just the other side of unbearable, but she had to bear it, and Trevor’s strong arm held her up, his hands firm under her clenching grasp. She had snapped at him last time he tried a massage, poor man, and he’d made no complaint. Now, her fingers were undoubtedly leaving bruises. Well. Better him than Cheryl, who had played no part in getting her in this condition.

  At last, the contraction eased, and she could focus again on Trevor’s voice. “That’s it. Now it’s going off again, isn’t it? You’re doing well, Kirilee. I’m so proud of you.”

  She straightened, rubbing under her abdomen and feeling the last of the tension still in the muscles just as it returned, the womb clenching again.

  “Another one? Hold on, sweetheart. Breathe. In through the nose one two three. Out through the mouth…”

  But the pressure was now low between her thighs, and she urgently needed to push. She moaned, and Cheryl instructed her to pant pant blow, which helped for long enough for the contraction to ease.

  “Is it nearly time?” Trevor asked.

  “How am I supposed to know?” Lee growled. “I haven’t done this before.”

  “Let’s go through to the birthing room,” Cheryl suggested, and she led the way hobbling, while Lee held onto Trevor, whimpering as she tried to pant her way through another contraction, but had to give up and let her body bear down as it wanted to.

  After the long day, the pushing stage itself took only half an hour. Kirilee stripped to her tee-shirt and squatted on the floor before the chair where Cheryl sat, her arms around Cheryl’s waist, her head resting on Cheryl’s knees in between contractions. And Trevor followed the instructions of both women to build up the fire in the bedroom’s small fireplace, to wash thoroughly and put on gloves, to keep up the encouraging patter as Kirilee grunted with the effort she was making, to wait to take the baby as it emerged.

  As she emerged. The crown of the head, and then on the next push the whole head, and then the shoulders followed by the whole sliding bundle. His daughter in his waiting hands, already complaining loudly about being expelled into the world, and the baby’s mother laughing weakly as she leaned against his sister, her work not quite over, but well done.

  11

  “Hopelessly besotted,” Cheryl commented, giving Trevor a nudge in the ribs. He grinned without taking his eyes from Kirilee, who was sitting next to the Christmas tree feeding Anne Margaret, named—to Old Trev’s utter delight—for his wife, her great grandmother.

  “Guilty as charged,” Trevor agreed.

  Kirilee was wearing the greenstone pendant he had given her for Christmas. His wife was gorgeous, his daughter adorable, and he was in thrall to them both.

  Yesterday, as the trailing edges of the storm cleared, Jamie had ridden over from his place to check that the Greenshaws were okay, and then on along the hilltops from farm to farm. A couple of hours later, a helicopter dropped off a doctor to check out Trevor’s family.

  “Anything you need?” the helicopter pilot asked, as he and Trevor waited for the doctor to complete her rounds.

  The women had been adamant that they would not evacuate unless there was a compelling medical reason. “We’re pretty self-sufficient,” Trevor said. “I’ve feed for the animals, fuel for the generator and the woodstove, plenty of food for us. I’d like to be able to get word out if something goes wrong. Any time scale on repairing the cellular tower?” Or a Satellite phone. Maybe he could borrow a Sat phone. Jamie might know where he could get one.

  “Could be a few days, they say. It’s a priority, but tomorrow is Christmas. It’ll be a while before you have other services. Power up in the remote farms is low on the list, I’m sorry. Roads, too. Too much damage to bigger population centres.”

  They straightened as the doctor came out from Trev’s bedroom. “Right. Mr Greenshaw, your family are all fine. The baby is healthy and her mother is well. Your sister needs to stay off that ankle, but it’s a sprain, not a break. More serious, however, your father has possibly had a transient ischemic attack. A mini-stroke, in lay terms. All the symptoms have resolved, but I’ll want him to see his own doctor after the holidays. He’ll probably order a full battery of tests.”

  “What do I need to do meanwhile?” Trevor asked.

  “There’s a slightly elevated risk that he’ll go on to have a full CVI in the next three months. A stroke. I’ve suggested evacuating, but he won’t hear of it, and I can’t insist.”

  “I could,” Trevor growled, but the doctor shook her head. “Adding to his stress might make things worse. You know the signs to look for?” She rattled them off. “Call emergency services straight away.”

  He definitely needed a Sat phone. The helicopter pilot promised to try to source one, and later Jamie brought one back with him, plus one of his tough hill country ponies for Trevor to ride if he needed to.

  Jamie was back here today, to celebrate Christmas with the Greenshaws, joining the brief service that Old Trev led, then chipping in to help prepare the dinner. Which they would serve in a few minutes, as soon as Anne Margaret had had her fill.

  Even as he had the thought, the baby dropped off the breast, suddenly twisting her head to look at the tree, half a yard away, the decorations catching the light.

  “Has she had enough?” he asked. “Shall I take her?”

  “The decorations!” Kirilee was efficiently tucking herself away with one hand. “Cheryl, we forgot to put up this year’s decorations! “

  She was right, and no
wonder. Christmas Eve family traditions had dropped off the radar, with all that had happened yesterday and the day before.

  He called Old Trev from the porch, and took his daughter, cuddled into his shoulder, off to his bedroom to collect his ornament. Cheryl and Kirilee emerged from their rooms, with their hands cupped and broad grins, and Kirilee returned to her chair next to the tree, so Trevor relaxed on the floor at her feet and settled the sleeping Annie across his legs.

  Cheryl took a seat on her fiancé’s knee which set Granddad grumbling about having enough chairs so everyone could sit on their own. Granddad pulled a box from his pocket, and took his carving for this year out of it: a beautiful nativity intricately carved from a single piece of pale gold wood—Mary, Jesus, and Joseph under a stable roof, with a star above.

  “It seemed the right thing,” he said, brushing off everyone’s praise, and he found a place for it on the tree.

  Trevor was next in age. He reached back, careful not to disturb Annie, laughing as he fixed his relaxing pig to a branch. “This is what I thought I’d be up to when I got home. Little did I know!”

  It was examined and exclaimed over, and then Cheryl jumped up and limped over to add her water-skiing Santa. “Holidays,” she explained.

  Kirilee unwrapped a beautiful medallion; a gleaming metal cut-out of the Madonna and child, and placed the ribbon over her chosen branch, then a matching medallion, this one with a cut-out silhouette of a man. Joseph. “Your first contribution, Annie,” Trevor told his sleeping daughter.

  They contemplated the tree in silence for a moment. Trevor was about to suggest it was time to dig into the home-cured ham, lamb roast, and huge stack of roast vegetables he and Jamie had ready when Jamie cleared his throat.

  “I hope you don’t mind, but I brought one, too.”

  “Put it on the tree,” Cheryl insisted.

  “You’re family now,” Trevor reassured him.

  “And about time,” said Granddad, “the way you’ve been hanging around here for years.” He grinned, though. Granddad liked Jamie, and the idea of merging the two farms had reconciled him to Trevor’s refusal to fall in with his plans.