It was barely mid-afternoon, for, keeping in mind the advisability of crossing the Gibraltar in full daylight, Abel had left the Ridge prudently early. But down here in the deep forest it could have been pre-dusk. Jo inwardly shuddered at the darkness that night would bring. It would be quite obscure. Ink-black. That suggested locating the torch, locating other things they might require.
‘But once we know where they are,’ Jo said, ‘we’ll leave them in the plane, for we’ll be bedding down there, too.’ She added: ‘That is, if Dicky doesn’t come back with help.’
Amanda, by unspoken agreement, was leaving all the domestic details to Jo. She had taken over Abel completely, and even if she had not been so amazingly efficient Jo would still have stood back for the girl. Never had she seen anyone, child or adult, so lit-up, so shining, so glowing. After taking a long look at Abel to reassure herself, Jo with Sukey began making a little clearing around them, pushing aside any branches they could, rolling away any logs that could be rolled. They even ‘swept’ the forest floor with bundles of twigs.
Amanda’s quietly excited: ‘He’s coming round,’ brought them climbing into the plane again to look at Abel.
Abel did indeed look a lot better. Pink was stealing back into his ashy face and when he flicked his eyes open they were lucid eyes, if terribly tired.
‘Josephine,’ he managed.
‘We’re here with you, Abel,’ said Jo.
‘All?’
‘All,’ Jo told him. She thought it was enough to tell him now, and Amanda, on the other side of Abel, nodded grave approval. No need to add that Dicky was no longer with them.
Fortunately Abel was not yet to a stage of focusing. He looked at the blur before him and said: ‘Thank heaven.’ Then he said urgently: ‘Don’t try to move me.’
‘Of course not. The men will do that. The men are coming.’
‘Men coming,’ said Sukey, and Abel tried to nod, gave it up and shut his eyes and said no more.
‘He’s not fully conscious yet,’ said Amanda knowledgeably, ‘he’s—he’s—’
‘Drifting?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Zackly,’ came in Sukey.
‘He may be like that for a long time,’ Amanda went on. ‘I’ll watch him for any change. Check his pulse.’
‘Yes, Amanda,’ said Jo. ‘Come, Sukey, we’ll finish our chores and then see if we can find anything in the forest to eat.’
‘Snake?’
‘I don’t think so. Anyway, we’d have to cook it, and I wouldn’t like to light a fire. It might tell people we are here, but it could turn back on us. No, I thought we might find some berries.’
They found a few, but very few; down here where the sun seldom penetrated it was too cool for berries, and Jo did not want to get too far away from the wreck and climb up towards the more open ground where they probably flourished.
Sukey found fungus growing out of old fallen tree-trunks, which she claimed were mushrooms. Very good on toast, she said, adding her usual: ‘I can cook. I can cook toast.’ She was disappointed when Jo forbade them, calling them toadstools. Toads were frogs, Sukey argued, and they did not sit on stools, they jumped. She jumped to demonstrate, and something slithered. After this Sukey kept close by Jo and had less to say.
The gathering of the berries had taken quite a while, for, like all berry bushes, the ripest ones had had to be reached for, then carefully manoeuvred down.
When Jo and Sukey came back to the wreck Jo saw that it was perceptibly darker. Dicky won’t make it tonight, she thought.
They had water aboard, a few biscuits and some barley sugar Abel had put in in case the children were airsick. Dicky should have had those, but no one had thought of them, and now they sucked blissfully on them, and Sukey even forgot the mushrooms Jo had not let her pick.
Night came suddenly. Up in these latitudes it arrived sooner than in the south, but to compensate for that the moon and the stars were bigger, brighter. But it would be different here, Jo knew. They were so deep down, so enclosed, so—imprisoned, she felt certain they would see neither moon nor stars, the all-encompassing trees would block that. So at the last flicker of daylight they all got into the wreck, Amanda, as befitted the superintending sister, in front beside the patient, Jo and Sukey behind.
So started a long dark night.
For a while Jo diverted Sukey with stories, and Sukey responded with her own version of ‘I Spy’, for Sukey would quote any alphabetical letter at all and seem amazed when Jo could not guess. Amanda did not join in. She had the torch and every now and then she would check Abel.
Soon after the real darkness set in, Sukey blessedly slept, blessedly for her, and blessedly for Jo, who had run out of diversions. Also blessedly for Amanda, who had told Sukey several times to lower her voice.
‘Well, I’m glad she’s off,’ Amanda grumbled. ‘Noise isn’t good for a patient.’
Amanda had found a large handkerchief (Abel’s) and tied it professionally round her head.
‘You can sleep, too,’ she told Jo. ‘I’ll wake you in several hours for you to take over your shift.’
‘Oh,’ Jo said, ‘then I am going to be allowed to help?’
‘It’s necessary. A nurse must be rested to give her best.’
‘I think you give a wonderful best, Amanda. I think you’re a remarkable girl. I know my sister would have been very proud of you had she—if she—I’m sure your father was.’
Amanda, who had glowed visibly under Jo’s praise, lost her glow at Jo’s last words. Jo sighed to herself. That subject was still taboo then, she thought. Even down here in the forest huddled in a crippled plane Amanda would not open up.
But she did open up when Jo came back to nursing. ‘Yes,’ she answered Jo, ‘I was always going to be a nurse. Even before they had that class at school I knew. A lot of the girls decided afterwards, but I knew before. I would have liked to be Florence Nightingale, but I expect there’ll be more wars.’
‘I hope not, dear,’ protested Jo.
‘Anyway, you have to be prepared, and I’m preparing now. When I waken you to take over the shift I’ll go to sleep like that’ ... she snapped her fingers ... ‘because I’ve trained myself. Every night I say to myself: “Tomorrow you have a difficult case, so now you must rest”, and I do rest. We were told that at class.’
‘And you don’t oversleep?’
Amanda looked shocked at the idea. She closed the talk by repeating: ‘I’ll waken you in several hours.’
Jo did not feel like sleep, she felt like confidences. Surely if she did not get this child’s confidences now, confidences apart from Florence Nightingale, she would never get them.
She leaned back, a little restricted by Sukey’s dead weight. Sukey was sound asleep. She puffed out little snores.
‘Like a possum,’ Jo remarked to Amanda, but was met with silence. Amanda had told her to sleep and she expected sleep.
To her surprise, later, Jo did just that.
She became conscious of Amanda’s hand on her arm, of being shaken quietly but firmly.
‘The patient is still doing well,’ Amanda reported. ‘There’s nothing for you to do except check now and then, and rouse me if you’re at all doubtful. I will now rest.’ Amanda spoiled the speech somewhat by adding: ‘You see how quick I go off, I’ve trained myself.’
She did, too. Within minutes there were two sets of childish snores, possum variety. Jo smiled into the darkness and wished that Abel was out of his drifting and able to smile with her.
She groped for his hand to check his pulse, but she never did so, for the hand she groped for caught hers first. Weakly. Not really awarely. But it held to her hand, so Jo held on. Held until Amanda woke up and took over.
Then it was all repeated again.
It was a long night, a long dark night, but eventually it was over. Somewhere a bird sang sleepily, then more consciously. Another joined him. Crickets whirred. A frog croaked. A shaft of light actually penetrated through t
he deep green trees.
Sukey woke, and Jo took her to the little stream they had found yesterday and washed her face. They picked some more berries and had them with another barley sugar for breakfast.
Amanda meanwhile had been busy on Abel. She had sponged him as well as she could in his crouched position, eased away the congealed blood that had formed during the night. She moistened his lips continually and put compresses on his brow. At length she said gravely to Jo: ‘I’ve done all I can. Now something more is needed. I wish they would come.’
This was the moment that Jo had been dreading. How did she, or Amanda, or Sukey know if anyone ever would come? Where was Dicky? Why in heaven’s name had she ever let him go? Perhaps he was lying somewhere in the forest, perhaps he had fallen over a cliff, been bitten, stung. Perhaps he was lost. Even a compass cannot save you if there is no one for it to guide you to.
All through the night the wood pigeons had kept up their perpetual ‘Move-over-dear’, and they still called it, for they never seemed to stop or sleep. But now there were other birds crying out, noisy currawongs, sweet-voiced dollar birds, the crisp pluck of the whip bird ... and through it an unmistakable sound. The sound of feet. Men’s feet. Coming down the cliff to the cleft at the bottom.
‘Cooee!’ called a voice, and it was Dicky’s.
‘Cooee!’ Jo called back.
‘Not too loud for the patient,’ reproved Amanda, but she looked very relieved.
‘For the patient,’ echoed Sukey happily, and she escaped Jo’s detaining hand and ran forward.
‘Dicky’s dead!’ she called back dramatically, adding comfortingly at an alarmed look in Jo’s face: ‘His foot is, anyway, because it’s in a sock and he’s being carried.’
Dicky indeed was being carried, Jo saw, he was borne by two strong men, and he did have a foot in a sock.
‘I’m sprained,’ he called out importantly, ‘but I found that camp. I thought I’d better show them the way because none; of these fellows can read a compass. They’ve brought a stretcher for Abel and food for you. How is Abel, is he—’
‘No,’ called Abel from the Cessna, and though his voice was weak it was clear and quite sensible. ‘Not passed on yet, just cramped. In fact you could say bl—very cramped.’ He leaned back again, exhausted at such a long speech, and Amanda tut-tutted and sponged his brow.
Jo and the children were deposited a distance away from the wreck, Amanda protesting under her breath and saying she should be at hand, then the posse of lumbermen started the difficult task of extricating Abel.
First of all the conveyor wheel had to be removed, and to do that they had to take off the pilot’s door. Then Abel was edged out and put on the stretcher, after which one of the lumbermen gave him something from a flask that Amanda said knowledgeably would be hot sweetened coffee for shock, but Jo had a shrewd idea it was something else.
‘How is he?’ Jo managed to ask the lumberman who had produced the flask.
‘Like anyone would be with a conveyor wheel on top of them for all those hours.’
‘Is he—’
‘Broken? Sprained? Injured? I don’t know. I don’t think so, but the doctor will soon tell. I think he’s just flattened.’
‘Will you take him to hospital?’ It was Amanda. ‘I am the attendant nurse,’ she added in explanation.
‘Pleased to meet you, Sister. I don’t know yet. We’ll take him up to the camp. We’ve already phoned through for medical help.’
‘Just a doctor would have done,’ Amanda said jealously.
The lumberman looked sidewise at Jo, then back at Amanda and praised: ‘I’m sure of that, Sister, but we didn’t know about you then.’
Amanda, satisfied, went off, and the lumberman grinned and said: ‘She’d be as good, anyway, as that over-proof I just gave him. Ah, we’re moving.’
Much slower than they had come down, they started up again, Abel on the stretcher and taking the necessary bumps that must be sheer agony to his cramped limbs with fortitude, assisted by more of Amanda’s hot sweetened coffee from the lumberman’s hip flask.
The children and Jo came behind, Dicky walking with difficulty, so welcoming the very slow pace.
It took Sukey to sum it all up, which she did very well for four. She said:
‘When the plane came down it went quicker than this.’ Yes, thought Jo, taking Dicky’s weight but not letting him know it, much quicker than this. But we’re here. We’re walking up to the sunlight. God’s in His heaven. ‘Thank you,’ she called, looking upward.
They stared at her in puzzlement, and Jo explained: ‘Thank you, God, for us being alive.’
‘Alive,’ said Sukey.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
When they reached the lumber camp the doctor had already arrived from the nearest timber town.
He examined Dicky and Abel cursorily at first, dismissing Dicky’s ankle as strained but not actually sprained, then he had Abel taken into one of the timber chalets where he spent more time on him.
‘As Abel’s nurse I should be there, too,’ Amanda complained.
‘I wouldn’t worry if I were you, Amanda,’ Jo soothed her. ‘By the look of Abel I feel you’ll have a lot of nursing yet to do on him.’
When the doctor came out he said almost the same words.
‘Nothing broken, sprained, crushed or pulled,’ he told them. ‘I’ll never know why, after taking the weight of a conveyor wheel. However, unlike our younger man here’ ... he looked at Dicky ... ‘he has suffered considerable shock and strain. He just has to have absolute rest, the very best of care.’
‘He will,’ Amanda assured him.
The doctor looked at her and then at Jo.
‘Sister Grant,’ introduced Jo, ‘uncertificated yet, but not that you’d notice.’
‘Then, Sister Grant, the patient is in your good hands once you leave here. But while you are at the lumber camp naturally you’ll have to give way to the company male nurse who’s always flown in on such occasions.’
‘Of course Sister Grant would understand that,’ came in Jo before Amanda could protest.
‘But once Mr. Passant leaves here,’ repeated the doctor, ‘Sister can take over.’
‘How long will that be?’ demanded Amanda.
‘A few days will be enough. I am assuming, of course, he has somewhere to go.’
Jo’s ‘He’s living in a camp’ and Amanda’s ‘We have a suitable room’ came at the same moment. Jo smiled secretly at the doctor and capitulated with: ‘Yes, he has a place to go.’
‘Excellent. Keep up the good work, Sister Grant. And who is this?’ He touched Sukey’s head. ‘An assistant nurse?’
‘I’m a cook,’ said Sukey. ‘I can cook toast.’
Jo murmured automatically: ‘And cuddled eggs.’
‘That sounds wonderful therapy to me,’ praised the doctor. ‘We’re all much better with a little love. Well, I’ll look in on Wednesday. After that, all going well, you can make your way home.’
‘Thank you,’ said Jo.
She searched out the camp manager and asked him to recommend a town motel for herself and the children until Abel was fit to travel. The manager would not hear of it. They had several empty chalets, he said, and the cook was anxious for more customers. Cooks always were.
When Jo told the children, they were delighted.
‘I couldn’t have gone, anyway,’ pointed out Amanda. ‘That male nurse might look after Abel very well, but I’d still have to make certain.’
Dicky was pleased because he had already inspected the huge circular saws, the veneering processes, and he wanted to know more.
Sukey had found the sawdust pile, gold, lemon and amber, very soft, sweet-smelling, just the thing to play with.
That left Jo, and she knew that she didn’t want to go either.
She had always been fascinated by lumber camps. Next to banana plantations they were her favourite background. There were quite a few in her own home mountains, for there the mahoganies
grew tall and straight and were very profitable to the lumber millers, and a visit to them had always been sheer delight. She had loved that honey breath of the trees, the sweet smell of the sawdust as the blades did their work, the endless leaves that seemed to touch the sky, the sound of the wind in the top branches, soft and sibilant.
A larger chalet with a dormitory of beds was found for Jo and the children, and Abel went to the sick bay.
Amanda, after sulking for a while when the male nurse would not allow her into his hospital, decided to make a holiday of it instead and prepare herself for the nursing that lay ahead.
‘Very wise,’ Jo nodded.
She watched sadly as the children ran wild and happy and grew brown as berries. What was it back home that restricted them once they were away from the house? in the house, too, if the conversation took an inward turn to themselves. What was it that made them wary? Uneasy? Here they were three normal young people, and it was refreshing, if puzzling and disheartening at the same time, to see them enjoy themselves so much.
After a day of absolute rest Jo was allowed to visit Abel. The children, too, but they were permitted a few seconds only.
‘Put yourself in the nurse’s place,’ appealed Jo when Amanda said she would not visit at all, ‘wouldn’t you do the same?’
‘I would stop Dicky and Sukey, Dicky talks too much and Sukey echoes.’
‘Echoes,’ said Sukey, ‘and I do not so.’
‘But I wouldn’t stop me,’ said Amanda.
‘But then you know yourself and your worth, Amanda, and to the company nurse you’re only a little girl. Please help Abel’s recovery by putting your head round the door and saying hullo to him.’
‘Oh, very well,’ snapped Amanda.
The three of them did what Jo requested. They looked round the door and called ‘Hi, Abel’ and then went out again. It was brief, but Abel was pleased with the greeting and very impressed with their happy looks.
‘Not a thing wrong with any of them,’ said Jo. ‘Dicky did turn an ankle, but it seems to have worn off. Also Amanda feels she’s been pushed out of her rightful position, and Sukey, as usual, is echoing a little of the complaints of each of them. But in all nothing amiss.’
The Tender Winds of Spring Page 13