Guardian Nurse

by Joyce Dingwell

  No, Frances had said, I’ll just run into her again...

  On the evenings that Burn was not at his books, the talk, after Jason had been put to bed, was, as only to be expected, Jason’s progress and Jason’s future progress. Jenny was very optimistic, and Frances watched Burn looking keenly at her. She did not blame him. Already she had made a noticeable difference in the boy, and besides that she was quite outstandingly pretty.

  Restoration of independence came tripping from Jenny’s eager lips. Factors hampering recovery and how they must be avoided. Reflexes. Movement of patterns. Then one night Jenny spoke of pool therapy, of water exercises.

  ‘They’re not just recreational activity, they’re relaxation, mobility and muscular education.’

  She went on to say how water exercises should be considered in their own right and not as exercises borrowed from a gymnasium.

  ‘And the pool itself?’ asked Burn with interest.

  ‘The usual house pool, but certainly heated. Sets of wall bars. Submerged parallel bars. Cork floats and wooden paddles.’

  Jenny spoke so enthusiastically she could have been building the pool herself. But why should she bother, Frances thought dully, when most obviously ... obviously to Frances anyway ... Burn was building it for her? For Jason really, of course ... but for Jenny, too? As Jenny went on in her eager absorbed way, Frances saw Burn taking notes.

  Burn West left the next week. Mrs. Campbell remained to maintain the apartment until the specialist proclaimed Jason as ready to go home.

  The weeks that followed went slowly for Frances. Because lessons had been allowed to lapse while everything was slanted towards Jason’s recovery, she found time on her hands. Jenny, however, was busy every moment of the day, and though she accepted Frances’ help gratefully, there were more things that Frances could not help her with.

  Still Jenny took her time off. She was sensible enough to know that it was necessary.

  Sitting at the window with Jason and playing the car game again, where Jason’s attention was on the contest, Frances’ attention suddenly was caught by a man on the street below, a man she had seen previously. But where? Even as she puzzled over it, Jenny came out of the building and went across to the man. They took hands and in a moment were lost in the crowd.

  Where, thought Frances, being scolded by Jason, had she seen that man? Why had Jennifer gone so eagerly across to him, taken his hand?

  ‘You’re not playing properly, France, you let two Holdens go without counting!’

  ‘Sorry, Jason.’

  ‘When Jenny plays she plays properly,’ grumbled Jason.

  ‘Sorry, darling.’

  ‘I’ll be glad when she gets back.’

  You ... and your father, thought Frances.—Also that man down in the street was glad. She refused to let herself puzzle over it, though, and concentrated on counting green Holdens. Jason won with blue Minis and became more amiable with Frances. They played until it was time for Jason’s bed.

  Sitting at the window again after she had tucked him in, it all came clearly to Frances. That man in the street had been that man at Mirramunna, that man whom she had thought was Trevor Trent. The man who had not been Trevor at all. But what was he doing now in Sydney, she wondered, not just in Sydney but waiting beneath their apartment? And what was Jenny doing, running to him and putting out her hand?

  At length the last X-ray was taken, the approval given for Jason to go home. The equipment that Jenny would need was trucked down, but a prearrangement had been made for the three women and Jason to fly back by chartered plane.

  Jason loved every minute of the flight. ‘Mushrooms !’ he called as he saw the small houses beneath. Then: ‘Ants!’ of the diminishing people. When they went through cottonwool clouds he clapped his hands, and the rainbow they slid through sent him in raptures.

  Burn West was at Mirramunna’s lonely strip to meet them, and as soon as the charter had skimmed to a halt in a field dotted with white thistle and dandelion he drove the big luxurious car across so they could transfer with barely a step.

  ‘But I wanted to show you how I could walk,’ protested Jason.

  ‘Plenty of time for that when there’s no grass seeds, you’d be covered all over with them, sonno.’ Burn spoke easily, but Frances, almost agonisingly atune with the man and impatient with herself because of it, felt an air of excitement in him, an eagerness to get back to West of the River.

  They drove quickly along the dirt road, the country shimmering bluely each side of them, everything watercolour as Frances had remembered it. And loved it. She wondered if the scene appealed to Jenny, too, and she half turned.

  Mrs. Campbell was sitting in front with Jason between her and Burn. Jenny and Frances shared the big back seat. As Frances half turned Jenny said, ‘That’s the road to Great Rock.’ She made no question of it, so evidently Burn must have told her of the different homesteads. But, puzzled Frances, even having been told, how would Jenny know that Great Rock did lie in there?

  She was ready at the gate to get out and open up, wait for the car to pass through, then shut up again. Once more they were rimming the avenue of pines, curving up to the lovely homestead. But before he got out to unfasten the car doors, Burn West said proudly: ‘Well?’

  There was no need for any of them to ask what he meant, for it lay blue and sparkling before them—a perfect little swimming pool. Frances could see from the faint quiver of steam that it was heated. She could also see everything that Jenny had said ... and that Burn had made notes about. The sets of wall bars. Submerged parallel bars ... in the blue translucency you could see them clearly—the cork floats and the paddles.

  ‘Oh, Burn!’ said Jason ecstatically.

  ‘That’s a very nice pool,’ Mrs. Campbell was admiring, ‘and put in so quickly.’

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Frances heard herself murmuring. She waited for Jenny ... Jenny who had inspired all this.

  But Jenny was collecting bags. Her back was turned. Burn was so pleased, so almost boyishly pleased with himself, he did not notice her silence.

  But Frances did. She was also amazed by the line of annoyance, when Jenny turned again, at the girl’s pretty mouth. For some reason, Frances thought, puzzled, for all the enthusiasm for pool therapy that she had expressed in Sydney for Jason, Jenny is not now pleased at all.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE exercise, massage, mechanical and electronic treatments began the next day under Jenny’s skilled hands. Breathing drill. Relaxation on a firm mattress using only one thin pillow. Then up again to practise a good carriage, because faulty posture could be responsible, Jenny told Frances, for strains on the ligaments and muscles. Jenny demonstrated to Frances ‘trigger spots’ on Jason, Jason curling up in tickles, which were localised areas of tenderness from which, she said, pain could be referred segmentally.

  In that first fascinating week with Jenny, Frances learned how important was the role of a physiotherapist, the wide scope physiotherapy covered. She also saw an almost dramatic relief in certain onsets Jason had suffered, she saw firm changes in weak muscle tone, she saw the test of movement, all adding up to general improvement.

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ Frances said.

  ‘It makes sense, doesn’t it?’ Jenny was obviously pleased with Jason’s progress. She talked happily over different aspects she still intended to try, but, rather surprisingly for one who had enthused over the therapy of pool exercises, the water aspect was not mentioned.

  Perhaps it was fortunate that the harvest had begun and Burn’s attention, and more often than not Burn himself, elsewhere. Otherwise, thought Frances, he might have been disappointed at that pretty sparkling blue pool with its tile verge, its lazing chairs and its bright umbrellas still in its virgin state. Frances knew she was disappointed herself.

  But just now wheat was king. The harvest was almost home, and even out at West of the River you could feel the excitement and expectancy, become part of the great wheat story. In thousands of
farmhouses, Bill Furness told Frances, pre-dawn bacon and eggs were sizzling at the beginning of every momentous wheat day. Barn doors were flung wide open. Headers were chugging out and the iron print of the tractors biting into the ground. Because West of the River only included wheat as another iron in the fire, there was not such frenzied activity, but the atmosphere was still there, the message of wheat.

  Burn West took time off from his own activities one day to whizz the girls and Jason in to see the national drama of the plainlands, to watch the great grain trucks raising the dust to the railhead. But not all the offerings came impressively like this. Jason, always car-conscious, called out excitedly as an old T-Model Ford came rumbling along with its dusty back seat piled up with bags.

  Leaving their spectator side of the road, they went next into Mirramunna to see how King Wheat could change a small town. They gasped at the activity. The sleepy street was literally crowded. Outside the hotel big-armed, sun-tanned farmers talked optimistically of fat pay-offs, resentfully of the insufficient number of rail trucks and the late opening of silos, and, with an anxious upward squint of eyes at a blazing blue sky, cautiously of the weather and the chances of it holding.

  ‘There’s no time like harvest time,’ said Burn. ‘To these wheatmen it’s the difference between the pat on the back and the punch on the nose. No wonder they’re touchy!’

  ‘Yet they all seem amiable to each other,’ Frances put in.

  ‘They are now, but pre-wheat nerves can be very real, believe me. However, once the harvest has begun tempers are better. Though, mind you, there’s still an ever-present anxiety that will persist until the very last grain is home.’

  ‘Weather?’ she queried.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But it looks so steady.’

  ‘A bad note has been creeping into the weather reports lately,’ said Burn with a look of worry himself. ‘It may even turn out a wheat race in the end. Would you like to see the storage in the local silo?’

  They went eagerly, Burn explaining that though the rail trucks were like busy bees with their goings and comings, much of the local harvest would still have to be stored in Mirramunna.

  ‘And every bushel coming in must be accounted for,’ he said, ‘so the grain must be weighed. You can imagine what a fantastic operation that means.’

  They watched the wheat hissing into the garner bin, and Burn at Frances’ side told her if she thought this was something she should see the many-floored wheat storage at Geelong, where the rail trucks shunted into the track shed, cascading their cargoes into hoppers ready for the fast shipping turn-around to Japan, other destinations.

  After all this wheat dust,’ he proposed, ‘I think we deserve drinks.’ He left the girls and Jason at the soda shop and joined the big-armed, sun-tanned wheatmen outside the country pub.

  Frances took the opportunity to cross the road to the surgery. She found Scott there, but very busy.

  ‘Things happen during harvest,’ he smiled, and shrugged. ‘I’ve three twisted ankles, one broken leg, eye irritations by the score and strains galore. How is the therapy going?’

  ‘It’s almost a miracle, Scott.’

  There was little time to talk; Burn would be back from his beer soon, and obviously Scott was a rushed man.

  ‘Have you—’ Frances began tentatively.

  ‘Done anything about Pamela?’ he forestalled her. ‘No. Thank heaven, Fran’ ... another shrug ... ‘that besides physical therapy for Jason there’s work therapy for me.’

  ‘Poor Scott!’ Frances said sympathetically, and moved to the door.

  She saw, across the road, that Burn had returned to the soda shop, that he was standing, wide brim of his country hat tilted back from his eyes, arms folded in front of him, watching her. No doubt watching her with estimation, as he always did.

  But it was not Burn who unsettled Frances, it was the momentary glimpse ... only momentary but there ... Of that fair woman she had noticed weeks ago, the young blonde girl whom she had also seen on the night of the barn dance. Frances stood on the footpath a moment, staring after the girl’s small blue roadster, that was already turning a corner.

  ‘You’re not looking as happy as a lover should look,’ said Burn softly as he seated them all again in the big black car prior to running them home. ‘The path not as smooth as you’d wish?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she snapped.

  ‘Since when has love been ridiculous?’

  ‘Oh, be quiet!’ she managed before she could be overheard. She managed, too, to slip in beside Jason, so that Jenny took the front seat beside Burn. Jason was not at all pleased about this, and his pout clearly said so. Undoubtedly Jenny had won him completely, Frances accepted ruefully.

  But for all the rapport between the pair, between the therapist and the patient, Jenny still did not try out the pool, even though it was obvious that Jason was longing to begin to swim. For someone who had praised pool therapy so highly, Frances thought, it made no sense.

  ‘Such a waste of money!’ Jenny actually said this as she looked on the pool the next morning.

  ‘But it’s what you recommended,’ reminded Frances.

  ‘Yes, but not here. I was thinking of ...’ Jenny closed her lips firmly. Presently she said rather awkwardly, ‘What I really meant was it’s very expensive, and unless you’re going to use it—’

  ‘Why don’t you use it, then?’

  ‘I will,’ evaded Jenny. ‘But just at present Jason is at this other important stage.’

  ‘I can’t understand you,’ Frances dared. ‘You enthused about a pool and now you don’t want it.’

  ‘I didn’t want it here. I mean—’

  Frances looked at the girl curiously and directly. ‘Jenny, what do you mean?’

  There was a pause, then: ‘I can’t tell you. I’m sorry, Frances, but I can’t. Not yet. It was very good of Burn to erect the pool, but it was unnecessary, it was an expense. I really mean—’

  ‘Don’t begin all that again if you’re not going to explain, Jennifer.’

  ‘I can’t explain.’ Jenny turned away.

  Frances had started lessons again, but still in the abbreviated form as before, not because of the importance of retaining Jason’s enthusiasm this time but because the little boy now had his spare time taken up with therapy.

  Unfortunately ... Frances supposed that Jenny would consider it that since she so obviously was against the pool, or was it this pool? ... the window at which Jason took his instruction overlooked the blue sparkling water. On such a perfect blue and white day as the following day proved ... too perfect? Did it mean rain as Burn had feared? ... it was too much for the little boy.

  ‘France,’ he said wistfully, ‘can you swim?’

  ‘Of course, darling. Everyone swims these days.’

  ‘Not me.’

  ‘You will.’

  ‘Teach me, France,’ he begged.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that, Jason.’

  ‘Teach me, France,’ he appealed. He coaxed, probably guessing the trend of her thoughts, ‘Jenny won’t mind because she can’t swim herself.’

  ‘Oh yes, she would be able to swim, Jason, these days everyone sees that they can swim.’

  ‘If she could she would have teached me,’ said Jason. ‘Taught, dear.’

  ‘Then,’ said Jason, flushed with the burning desire to try the water, ‘after you finish teaching me, you can teach her. Please, France!’

  Frances said, ‘Get on with your writing, Jason,’ but she found herself gazing at the pool. She always had had a ‘thing’ about swimming. She considered it all-important for a child to learn. Why not teach the boy? she thought. Jenny, if she assured her she had no intention of trespassing into the therapist’s realm of water therapy, could have no objection. Anyway, she was an intelligent girl, she would agree with Frances how important swimming was to a child.

  She decided to ask Jenny that afternoon, but, lunch over, when she looked for the physiothe
rapist she could not find her.

  ‘She’s gone out in her car’ ... Jenny too had been given a small runabout of her own ... Mrs. Campbell told Frances. ‘She said that a little rest from exercises would do Jason good.’

  ‘I see.’ Frances went back to Jason’s room, only needing the sight of his wistful eyes on the blue pool to decide her there and then. ‘Right, darling,’ she said, ‘Lesson One.’

  She was a strong swimmer, but had had no experience at all in imparting the skill.

  Keeping in view then that Jason in all probability would never take on the sport seriously, she planned to teach him in the manner she had been taught by her father. ‘If you can do what a dog does, and that is paddle,’ her father had said, ‘you won’t drown. That’s the important thing.’

  She knew there were planned preparatory exercises that could be practised, a scientific approach, but after pressing home to Jason the elementary example of a dog retrieving a stick, taking him down to the river to watch it being done, she decided, Jason helping the decision by wanting to emulate Rough at once, to go straight ahead. The pool water was deliciously warm, and it was no hardship to lower oneself into the sparkling depths.

  ‘It’s not blue when you take a fistful, France,’ puzzled Jason.

  She let him play round for a while, then she explained how water brought you to the surface if you were under it, not drew you down as you might think, so there was nothing at all to frighten you. When Jason said of course he wasn’t frightened, she took him up and challenged him to put his head right under and keep it there for a while. He came up spluttering but laughing, and after several more attempts he managed to open his eyes when he submerged. Frances, diving under, grinned at him, and he grinned back.

  Jenny arrived home in the middle of the lessons, and Frances, drawing herself up to the side of the pool, said at once, ‘I’m sorry, Jenny.’