A HAZARD OF HEARTS

by Frances Burke

  ‘You can’t run off yet. We’ve softened them up, and now we go in with the speeches, tell them what we stand for, what we’ll do for them when the elections are held early next year.’

  Paul glanced at him sharply. ‘You know something. Come on, Henry. Out with it.’

  Parkes winked. ‘I’ve had a private message from London, telegraphed overland and carried by the fastest steamboat. It’ll soon be official. Westminster has passed the Bill. We have a Constitution, my friend.’

  Paul threw up his hat, yelling like a schoolboy, and Elly flung her arms around him and kissed him, regardless of who might see. ‘I’m so happy for you, Paul. We’ll see you in Parliament next year, bringing all your own dreams to life. What a day. What a glorious, wonderful day.’ She held out her arms to embrace her two dearest women friends.

  ‘Who would have thought, a few weeks ago, that we’d have achieved so much? I can’t wait to get back to the hospital. There’s so much to do. Oh, I pray the people of Sydney will vote in my favour.’

  They all laughed, teasing her to give them a resume of her plans.

  ‘Well, I’ve got to prepare the programme for my nurses’ training school and I’ve so many ideas to implement once I’m given charge of the wards. Then I’ll just have to hope for a Board willing to work with me instead of against me. Nor will I forget all the women who have been so staunch in past weeks. Apart from recognising their hard work, we should harness their devotion and turn it to good use. I can think of a dozen ways.’ She threw up her hands. ‘I don’t know where to begin.’ Catching Paul’s wistful expression as he glanced over his shoulder at the last of the crowd pelting down towards the Domain, she began to laugh. ‘You too! I might have known. Off you go and ‘politic’ with the other men. We have plenty of our own work to occupy us, don’t we, ladies?’

  The three women descended from the dray, Elly standing arm-linked with Pearl and Jo-Beth, surrounded by new friends and supporters, knowing there was just one major thing lacking in her life to make it perfectly fulfilled. It only needed a little courage to try for it.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  A few days later, Jo-Beth’s wedding to Ethan was celebrated quietly, without any of the splendour and pomp she might once have wished for. Elly, helping to dress the bride, felt misty with pride in her friend’s beauty and serenity, knowing that this was a blessed union. The private ceremony took place in St. James Church, just a step away from the hospital, with the guests later adjourning to the Earl Grey Tavern, closed for the duration of the wedding luncheon.

  Afterwards they walked down to the Quay to see the newlyweds aboard a ferry going upriver, their final destination a carefully kept secret. They bore with the good-natured chaffing, although Jo-Beth’s glowing face could be seen like a beacon amongst the crowd on deck as the boat steamed out into the harbour and the guests left on shore dispersed.

  While it was still light, Elly slipped away from the others, around the back of Government House grounds to wander alone in the Botanical Gardens. From there she could see the main hospital building on the crest of the hill, its roof slates gilded by the sunset. Her days there seemed so far away. Had she really spent two years of her life struggling to bring system and order to a medical dinosaur? How different she was now from the woman who had sailed into battle against the Board like Drake amongst the Spanish, full of self-confidence, proud of her ability to stand alone.

  That confidence had been severely shaken, although it survived in a somewhat battered state, and she had known for many months that standing alone meant lonely separation. She did not want to be solitary for the rest of her days. With a sigh, she removed her large hat garlanded in blossoms and laid it on the sea-wall. Her eye followed the stonework running around the cove to Fort Macquarie, silhouetted against the light. Then she looked out over the harbour where swells as smooth as satin reflected the lamp-lights just beginning to prick out on the opposite shore. Sadness welled up in her, a product of the lonely hour and place, and of her own heartache. She knew she had to make her final bid for happiness soon.

  It seemed inevitable when a familiar, beloved voice spoke behind her.

  ‘You seem so sad, Elly.’

  She automatically pinned on a smile before turning to face Paul. ‘Not at all. I couldn’t be sad in the face of Jo-Beth’s joy.’

  Paul rested his back on the wall and searched her face.

  ‘You’ll be lonely with your dearest friends gone. Even with Jo-Beth living in the town, she’ll have a full life of her own.’

  ‘Need you remind me?’ She then added painfully, ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t snap at you. I’ve been trying not to think so far ahead. Pearl sails tomorrow and I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again. I’ll miss J.G., too. Without him there’ll be no-one to create a disturbance when least expected, and fewer red faces amongst the complacent citizenry.’

  Paul glanced aside. ‘He is my closest friend, a companion in all my activities, private and public, since my boyhood. It was he who brought me to the attention of my benefactor, the surrogate father who took me in, educated me and gave me a chance in life. He’s dead now, but he was a very great gentleman, and J.G. is another. We won’t find his like again so easily.’

  Hearing the wistfulness in his voice, Elly moved closer, touching his arm fleetingly. ‘I had forgotten you were losing someone, too. That was selfish of me.’ She studied the strong profile which had attracted her the first day they’d met in the lonely bush, a face grown so dear to her over the months and years since.

  Paul had drawn back a little, as if her touch disturbed him. ‘I still have other friends – Frenchy and all the men who work for political change.’

  ‘It’s not the same. We each need someone close to confide in, to tell our deepest thoughts, to comfort us. Paul, I want to talk about the night when you saved me from death in the fire.’

  ‘Must we? Can’t we put it all behind us?’

  ‘No, because something important came out of it. When I lay chained in that cellar, believing that I would soon die, my whole life-view changed focus. I fought Cornwallis, knowing I had too much to live for to give in, knowing that if I did escape, somehow, I would do things differently in the future.’

  He stepped forward, hesitated, stopped. ‘Elly.’ He cleared his throat. ‘That night changed me, as well. I suddenly realised what mattered to me, and it wasn’t what I’d always believed I wanted.’

  Their gaze met and held. Elly could feel her heartbeat in her ears, not racing, but measured and deep, like combers breaking on a cliff wall. Would he say it? Did he feel as she did, that they had wasted too much time looking in opposite directions? That all that mattered was to be loved?

  ‘Elly, darling,’ he said softly, with a note of tenderness she hadn’t heard for so long. ‘I’ve longed to call you my own darling. Oh, Elly, Elly. I have been a fool. I’ve known it for a long time. Only stubborn pride held me back, and fear that you had ceased loving me. I couldn’t admit to my own stupidity. I couldn’t face another rejection.’

  She stiffened, peering into his face, now a pale blur in the dusk. ‘Do you mean to say that you knew you loved me after all, yet didn’t say so? You’ve let me exist in misery for months, gnawed by regrets, vainly striving to kill off my own love for you? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘I suppose it is. But –’

  ‘You worm! You utterly blind, unfeeling toad! Ohhh! I could hit you.’ She shook her fist at him, and had it grasped as he pulled her towards him.

  He said, half-laughing, ‘Elly, you spitfire!’ His mouth descended on hers forcefully, quelling her by the simple method of stopping her breath. An instant later he released her hands and gathered her to him again, burying his face against her neck. ‘My own dearest girl. I’ve hungered for you so. Forgive me. Forgive me.’

  Elly closed her eyes, her mind reeling. It was her dream, she thought. How many times had she acted out this same scenario, night after night, knowing that she would waken to d
isillusionment? This was how Paul felt in that dream. This was how he touched her and how she had responded. Her head was swimming. Her pulse thundered like Niagara in her ears. She could hardly hear his dear voice above the sound.

  She pulled from his clasp, saying, ‘I... think I’d better sit down,’ and, regardless of her finery, sank onto the grass. She smelled the sweetness of clover crushed beneath her, saw Paul’s anxious face hovering above hers as he knelt beside her. ‘Paul, are you sure this time? I don’t think I could bear it if you found you were mistaken. This isn’t about pride or self-esteem, it’s about breaking a heart.’

  ‘What can I do to make you believe me? If it’s any consolation, I’ve suffered like the damned for weeks, thinking I had lost all chance. I didn’t dare to approach you after my ridiculous high-flown words about the impossibility of our loving each other and how we should remain simply friends. God! What an idiot I’ve been. I knew what a dreadful mistake I’d made on the night when you lent me your strength and saved my sanity as well as my leg. But I thought it was too late. You had made your life without me. Then when Cornwallis took you, when only my strength stood between you and a horrible death, I knew I would lay down my own life to save yours. I couldn’t have gone on alone if you had died.’

  She cupped his face, bringing it closer to study it. ‘Don’t! We must bury the memory completely. My love, I was the one who parted us. When we danced together at Botany Bay, then walked on the beach in the evening wind, you told me that you wanted to spend your life caring for me. I remember every word you said, the way you held me. It’s been a fire in my body ever since. Yet, like a fool, I rejected the greatest gift a woman can be given, mouthing about my ambitions and the sacrifice I’d have to make if I became your wife. How little I knew then.’

  He drew her back into his arms, his lips against her forehead, stirring her hair. She began to tremble.

  ‘What do you know now that’s so different, my darling girl?’

  ‘That there is such a thing as compromise. It’s been a hard lesson.’ She sighed. ‘Like your programme for vengeance which turned out to be so sterile and destructive. I finally saw how narrow my outlook had been, that I couldn’t channel myself exclusively to nursing, and that I wasn’t some sort of heroine put on earth to save others. I needed love and support, like most other people. But I’d cut myself off from your love, as I thought.’

  ‘Never. You could never do it. I know at the time my ambitions were paramount in my life, but that’s no longer true. They are important still, but not as valuable as you are to me. I live to cherish you, my dear love. Don’t you know you’re the pulse in my veins, the very breath that keeps me alive?’

  Elly had no answer. She raised her mouth for his kiss, which started gently, then swiftly grew more demanding. Held fast in his embrace she surrendered wholly, offering herself and accepting his own wordless offering, knowing that the freedom she discarded would be replaced by a lifetime of loving interdependence and support. Paul would always be there beside her. Whatever differences might separate them for a time, their love would soon heal and close them over. Together they could halve difficulties, endure disappointments, take on exciting challenges. And she need never feel solitary again.

  With her head on Paul’s shoulder she gazed out over the harbour lights reflected back from water like black glass and saw a different world, no longer sad in the dusk, but brilliant, vibrant with promise for the future.