Amy's Touch

by Lynne Wilding

  Beth found him studying some late-blooming roses. ‘Don’t know how Meg manages to keep these rose bushes alive in this heat,’ she said enviously as she came up and placed her hand in his.

  ‘Plenty of water and chook poo,’ Randall disclosed. ‘I’ve learned that Meg’s a conservationist. She saves food scraps and anything organic for a mulch heap. Also, Fred Smith constructed a gravity-fed run-off pipe that takes used water from the bathroom and kitchen and funnels it into a holding tank at the rear of the back shed, out of sight.’ His index finger pointed to the approximate route of the underground pipe. ‘At the moment Meg uses a pail and hand buckets to water the plants, but Fred’s working on a plan to install a fitting with a rubber hose to do the watering. Apparently the water and the fertiliser keep the plants, the roses and their small orchard going in hot weather.’

  ‘Sounds ingenious.’ Beth’s tone was approving. ‘I must get the details from Meg. Dad might want to put a similar system in at Ingleside. You know how low the water gets at Boolcunda Creek at summer’s end. Though I suppose it’s a bit much to expect that water supply to cater to all the properties it runs through.’ She gave Randall a gentle tug towards the porch. ‘Come and have your pie before the flies find it.’

  Beth was diplomatic enough to wait until Randall finished his piece of pie before she launched into the subject of their wedding. ‘Mother and I have been discussing dates. The beginning of November seems perfect—that’s six months away, which I hope won’t clash with Amy and Danny’s wedding plans. Time enough to plan the guest list and for you to be completely fit. We could have the ceremony at St John’s and the wedding breakfast at Ingleside, because it’s nicer than the church hall.’ She paused to take a breath. ‘Daddy said he would put up a large marquee and bring caterers up from Peterborough to do the food.’

  ‘Sounds like you and Margaret have all the details worked out.’ Randall’s tone was a little dry, but his sarcasm went over her head.

  ‘All but the guest list. I’ll need to know how many you want to invite. Friends, relatives?’

  ‘The McLeans are a tad thin on relatives. Dad’s sister Helen and her family live in England. We’ve several cousins, the Scottens, in country Victoria, but most of my mother’s relatives—a sister and a brother and their families—returned to Scotland before the war.’

  Amy, who’d come in from being on duty at the hospital, paused at the kitchen doorway and unashamedly listened to Beth and Randall discuss their wedding. Why should their talking about their proposed wedding send her spirits into a decline? It made no sense, and besides, hadn’t her mother said that no good came from eavesdropping on others? Still, she couldn’t walk away. Curiosity and something else—envy?—kept her there.

  Amy knew one thing, though: she was getting tired of the way Beth dropped in every day, whenever she felt like it, to visit Randall. The woman might be his fiancée, and she had a perfect right to see him but…Bill Walpole’s daughter, with her ever-cheerful disposition, her assumption that whenever she called everyone would dance attendance on her, was beginning to get on Amy’s nerves.

  Oh dear! Her thoughts shocked her. Why was she thinking such mean things? Amy understood the reason, or thought she did. She had had a particularly bad day at the hospital. One patient, for whom a full recovery was expected, had died; another—an elderly woman who had fallen and broken her hip—had suddenly become senile through shock; a pregnant farmer’s wife had given birth to pigeonpair twins and the boy had died. She was down in the dumps because of all this, and that was why she had these liverish thoughts about Beth.

  Amy took a deep breath, plastered a smile on her face because she didn’t want either of them to know that she was out of sorts, and joined Beth and Randall on the porch.

  The bedroom at Primrose Cottage allotted to Randall was small, with just enough room for a single metal-frame bed, a bedside chest and a highboy with a mirror attached to the top. Muted patterned wallpaper lined the walls and the timber floor was stained and polished, and covered with a fringed rug. He had grown accustomed to the plainness, to the feminine mauve throw-over at the end of the bed, and looking at one of Amy’s watercolours—of Glenelg Beach on a windswept day—on the wall.

  Stretched out on top of the sheet because, though it was early autumn, it was still too hot to need a cover, and just wearing pyjama bottoms, Randall lay in the darkness listening to the night sounds. The timbers of the cottage were settling. There was an occasional creak from the floorboards, which had expanded in the heat of the day and were now contracting. Someone was in the bathroom, because the door hinge squeaked when it was opened or closed. A shrub occasionally brushed against the windowpane as a light breeze stirred outside, becoming background noise, and a few houses down the road a dog was barking at some nocturnal creature that had disturbed its slumber.

  Randall willed sleep to take him away from the myriad thoughts tumbling through his head. He felt that he was being organised by his fiancée and her mother, and guilty towards Danny because of his feelings for Amy, and his passion to see Drovers Way return to its former status. Suddenly he remembered what Danny had said one night when they’d had a heated argument—that he was obsessed with Drovers Way. He frowned in the anonymity of the darkness. Was he?

  After learning of Edward’s death, thinking, dreaming, planning the property’s return to greatness was the main thing that had kept him sane during the war; knowing that one day the fighting would be over and his life would return to normal. Though the pace was grindingly slow, he was achieving success. The debts had been repaid, and they even had some money in the bank. His mouth twisted in a smile. Not a lot, mind you, but enough to buy essential furniture for the homestead and some paint to spruce the place up a bit.

  He rolled onto his side and sighed as the sounds quietened.

  …The nightmare came in the small hours of the morning, and it was always the same: reliving the bayonet charge that had gone wrong, destroying the two machine-gun positions, and the wounded German soldier. Behind his closed lids Randall could recall the man’s features as clearly as if he were standing in front of him now. Young, about eighteen, fair-skinned, with pale blond hair and startling green eyes, eyes that had implored Randall to put him out of his misery.

  ‘I am dying. It hurts,’ the soldier said in hushed, broken English. ‘Mein Gott, bitte, finish it.’

  Resting on the pillow, Randall’s head shook from side to side as the images intensified.

  The man had begun to haemorrhage, blood gushing from his mouth, his nose. His cough became a strange-sounding gurgle. Randall knew what was happening; he’d seen it before. The German was drowning in his own blood. A lump of bile rose in his throat and he gagged. Some inner voice, compassion, told him he had to do something. His dark eyes searched the machine-gun position. A Mauser rifle lay partly buried in the mud. Steeling himself, he picked it up, checked that there was ammunition in the chamber and looked at the soldier.

  ‘Danke…’ came out in a whisper and the soldier closed his eyes.

  During the course of the war Randall had killed many enemy soldiers—that was what a soldier had to do—but he had never killed a man who hadn’t been trying to kill him. With his stomach churning into a tight ball, he raised the rifle to his shoulder and fired one shot at the young soldier’s head. The man’s body sagged, the pain left his features and he lay still.

  Randall bent over double and was violently ill.

  Seconds later, while he was dry-retching, German shouts brought Randall’s survival instincts to the fore. The enemy had heard the shot, and would be on him in seconds. He had to get back to no man’s land and the Allies’ trenches fast! Gripping the rifle, he clambered out of the nest, hunched his body into a crouch and began to run as fast as such an awkward position would allow. Fleetingly he registered that the mist was clearing, the sun trying to struggle through the clouds. He made it past the barbed wire. Two shots rang out: one barely missed him; both ploughed into the mud. He dare
d not turn to return fire; he’d be done for if he did. Several soldiers from the trenches began to give him covering fire and shouts of encouragement as, heart hammering so fast in his chest he thought it would burst through his ribcage, breathing short and rapid, he dropped to the mud to make a smaller target and crawled the last five yards to the trench, then rolled over and down into it.

  As the face of the German soldier returned once more and became a solid image in his nightmare, Randall sat up and yelled, as he always did: ‘No, no, no.’ Still caught up in the throes of the past, he shook his head violently in an attempt to rid himself of the memory.

  Eyes open, his gaze fixed as if in a trance, awake but still mentally enmeshed in the nightmare, was how Amy, holding a lit kerosene lamp, found him when she came to investigate the noise she’d heard.

  She stared at Randall, and he was staring straight at her and through her as if he couldn’t see her. Being a nurse, she was conversant with soldiers’ nightmares—the doctors labelled it shell shock—and she had seen them many times as they recovered from their wounds. With her summer dressing-gown wrapped around her, she came into the room and over to the bed and sat on the side of it, near him.

  ‘Randall. Randall, it’s all right.’ She spoke gently in an attempt to ease him out of his torment. ‘No one can hurt you. You’re safe now.’ She touched his hand in a physical attempt to reassure him.

  He blinked, and his gaze narrowed on her, as if he didn’t know who she was. ‘Safe?’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Not safe. German soldier not safe. Dead.’ There was despair in his voice. ‘All of them, dead.’

  ‘Back then you were a soldier. That was your job. It’s all in the past.’ She continued to pat his hand. ‘Time to forget those days and think about the present and the future.’

  Randall shook his head vehemently. ‘Can’t! The dreams won’t go away.’ And then he covered his face with his hands.

  Amy recalled that more than once Danny had mentioned Randall’s dark moods. Was the war the cause, or was it related to his maternal parentage? Interestingly, Danny appeared not to suffer any such impediment.

  ‘Tell me about your dream,’ Amy asked. ‘Sometimes, talking about what’s worrying you helps to make the worry go away.’ Her father, an amateur psychologist as well as a doctor, had told her that.

  Tell her he’d murdered a man? Damn it all to hell and back, he couldn’t tell her that; he couldn’t tell anyone. ‘Can’t. Not now.’

  Patience was the key, she told herself. ‘All right, Randall. Later. When you’re ready to talk I’m ready to listen.’ Watching several different emotions—guilt, frustration, anger and, finally, hope—flicker across his features, it was as if Amy were seeing a different man from the Randall she’d known for several years.

  Uncharacteristically, at this very moment he appeared endearingly vulnerable, and the compassion within her turned to something else, something deeper and…

  As she stared at his bare muscled chest with its triangular sprinkle of dark curling hair, something about him was overwhelmingly appealing. All at once she had to draw in a breath and struggle to regain her composure. She moved, intending to get up, but his hand shot out swiftly and took hold of her forearm. His other hand moved around her shoulders, bringing her closer to him. As they gazed into each other’s eyes, Amy felt as if she were drowning in some deep, unfathomable emotion. Drawn to him as metal to a magnet, she was unable to resist, unable to pull away from his touch, his mesmerising gaze.

  ‘You look…beautiful.’ A hand reached up to stroke her hair, to run a strand or two through his fingers. ‘Smell beautiful too.’ His voice was soft, husky, his near-black eyes subjecting her features to an intense scrutiny, as if he had to memorise her appearance and how she looked at this moment forever.

  Amy found that she could hardly breathe. The pulse in her throat was beating madly, her stomach muscles were rolling into a tight ball and her fingers trembled. She could feel her body going soft, warming to the emotional tension that was rising between them, and which was enveloping them in a private world where sensible thoughts could not intrude.

  Slowly, unerringly, his body moved forward until their faces were inches apart. And still she could not move, could not break away, though she knew she should. She was trapped by a feeling deeper, stronger than she had ever experienced. His lips touched hers, feather-soft at first as his arms went around her body to bring her hard up against his chest. The heat emanating from him was incredible and his lips scorched hers. He deepened the kiss and his tongue sought and found the sweet cavern of her mouth, their tongues beginning an erotic dance of discovery.

  Excited in a way she had never been before, Amy could only respond to the demands of her body and her heart. Indeed, a small, still-functioning part of her brain told her she could do nothing else. As Randall’s hand began to explore her body, caressing her throat and working down to one breast, circling it, rolling the nipple till it hardened, and then the other, she was swept along on a tide of emotion and need that surpassed anything she had previously known. And though innocent in the art of making love, she knew that she wanted more, and that she didn’t want him to stop.

  Her fingers travelled over his chest, savouring the warmth of his bare skin against her fingertips, to tangle in and stroke the mat of hair there, then up and over his shoulder to the back of his head. And then, just when she was about to surrender to the sensations he was arousing in her, deep inside her her conscience awoke.

  What in God’s name was she doing? It was…wrong.

  Amy went very still and then, awkwardly, pushed away from his chest, out of his arms and struggled to her feet. She backed away towards the door. If she didn’t go now, if he reached out for her and touched her, she knew she would not be able to resist, so strong was the pull of her attraction to him. Her cheeks—her whole body—were aflame with wanting, aching with sensations she didn’t, as yet, fully understand.

  Something in her expression made Randall heave a drawn-out sigh. ‘God, I’m sorry. We…I…shouldn’t have done that.’

  ‘No, you shouldn’t have,’ she agreed, whispering. Her hand groped for and found the door handle. She turned it and fled the room on shaky legs, back to her own bedroom. Closing the door, she leaned against the cool timber and tried to make sense of what had just happened. Danny! For the first time in all that had just occurred she thought of him. What had she done? Her hands came up to touch her still-warm cheeks. What had they done? She moved to the bed and sat on its edge, twining her fingers together as if she were praying. In a way, she was. For understanding, for forgiveness from the man to whom she was engaged, to whom she could never confess what had happened between her and his brother.

  It had been a moment of madness. Yes, that was what it had been; she worked hard to convince herself. Nothing more…nothing less. Automatically she undid the cord on her dressing-gown and lay down on the bed, her troubled thoughts running in several directions at once. Randall was going to marry Beth Walpole—they’d set the date—and she was going to marry Danny: soon, she decided there andthen. And why shouldn’t she? The interlude between her and Randall meant nothing…and then, all of a sudden, tears pricked the corners of her eyes and began to roll down her cheeks. Her body shook as an avalanche of silent sobs engulfed her. What was the matter with her?

  In the darkness she could feel the accentuated beat of her heart, the increased pulsing of blood through her veins, and in that instant she knew a horrible, and wonderful, truth. For several minutes she fought to deny it, but when the memories of past events, her reaction to them, and the way she was feeling now found supremacy within her, it forced her to acknowledge the truth.

  She had fallen in love with Randall McLean.

  Rightly or wrongly, and foolish as it might seem, that was what had happened. She was in love with a man she didn’t particularly like because of his personality quirks, his distant manner—but still, in spite of his shortcomings, she loved him!

  CHAPTER TW
ENTY

  Ignoring protestations from the Carmichaels and Meg that he wasn’t fit enough, Randall called Danny and returned to Drovers Way the next day. Driving into the property’s front yard Randall expected a sense of elation at being home to engulf him, but instead felt nothing. Since Amy had come to his bedroom and they had kissed, he had been unable to think of anything else, no matter how hard he tried to force himself to. They had faced each other over breakfast in the cottage’s kitchen as if nothing had happened, and Meg had scolded them both for hardly touching their food. On the trip out to the property, just sitting beside Danny had multiplied the guilt he felt inside. He had tried to make love to his brother’s fiancée. What on earth had possessed him to do something so foolish?

  He knew the answer only too well: want, need, love.

  What would he do if Amy told Danny? His conscience told him he wouldn’t deny what had happened. But…perhaps Amy wouldn’t tell him. Perhaps she’d be too embarrassed to and would know that disclosing what had happened would drive a wedge into his and Danny’s relationship. But oh, God. How splendid it had been to have her in his arms, if only briefly. It had given him a glimpse of what earthly heaven could be like, until she had retreated. With difficulty he climbed the porch steps to the back door, and managed to pull his thoughts off Amy and onto Beth.