Wedding at Blue River

by Dorothy Quentin

  Jane had fought back the tears before they emerged into the clearing on the river bank where about half a dozen men had a camp and a bulldozer was depositing great boulders to form the new dam.

  Before riding out to the tents and speaking to the men Steve reined in and waited for Jane to ride alongside, and he added with cheerful casualness, “One miracle has already happened for us, Jane. Can you look at the boys’ faces and doubt it?”

  The men had stopped working—even the bulldozer driver—to stare with smiling interest at the newcomers. And it was Jane this time who got the full treatment of approving masculine approbation.

  She smiled back rather shyly. Under her breath she said to Steve, “You have the nicest way of making gatecrashers welcome, anyway!”

  At breakfast Lisa was in high spirits and had obviously made her peace with Mrs. Newbery.

  Jamie, wearing miniature ringers’ strides and soft-soled riding boots, had been waiting by the paddock rails when Steve and Jane returned from their upriver expedition. He said accusingly as Steve swung himself out of the saddle, “You didn’t say you were going to the weir, Uncle Steve! Why didn’t you take me?” He added, watching jealously as the man helped Jane dismount, “Can she ride?”

  “Who—the cat’s mother? She can ride, Jamie. Maybe if you mend your manners you can come with us next time.”

  “I’m sorry.” Jamie didn’t look in the least sorry. He grinned up at Jane as he led Starlight into the paddock and began unbuckling the girth straps with his small, strong hands in a businesslike way, while Steve attended to Ranger apparently oblivious of the other two. To Jane’s surprise the little boy could manage the stiff buckles, but he was not tall enough to lift off the saddle and blanket, or to reach the horse’s headgear.

  “You stick the saddle on the top rail of the fence,” he instructed Jane seriously, “and the blanket. That gets the sweat dried out. One of the men’ll put your gear away.”

  “Steady on, boy. That saddle’s a bit heavy for a lady.” Steve took it from her and swung it over the rail while she took off Starlight’s headgear and patted his neck. She thought she could probably have managed the saddle herself, but it was nice to be treated like a fragile female for once. Steve, she thought, would probably give up his seat to a woman in a London Underground train in the rush hour...

  “What are you laughing about?” Jamie demanded suspiciously.

  “Something I was remembering about London,” she answered quickly, lest his feelings be hurt. Certainly she was not laughing at him. He looked adorable in his miniature stockman’s outfit, but for Jamie it was not fancy dress but the everyday clothing for people who spent hours on horseback, and he was obviously knowledgeable about horses.

  “Have they finished the weir?” he asked as they walked up to the homestead by the lower track that passed the workshops and the locked store.

  “Not quite. They’ll finish it on Monday or Tuesday, I reckon.”

  “Too right they will. They won’t want to miss the races, will they?” Jamie answered in his odd, old-fashioned way.

  He pointed out the power-house, half hidden by a clump of trees, to Jane. She had not noticed it in the half-light of early morning. Now, too, she saw the tall aerial mast above the homestead, moored by strong steel hawsers.

  “That’s for the transceiver,” Jamie explained, pronouncing the difficult word distinctly. Jane thought his accent, a mixture of the Queensland drawl and his grandmother’s Scottish lilt, very attractive. For a four-year-old he was very advanced in practical ways and she wondered how the children of the Outback got their normal education—it was obviously impossible to get them to a town seventy miles away and home again each day. She asked a tentative question about his grandmother giving him lessons, and Jamie looked at her a little scornfully.

  “Gran only helps me with my homework. I get my lessons by mail, an’ every day we have a lesson over the air—” Jamie explained patiently, “I’m only in the kindergarten now. When I’m set I’ll be in the proper School of the Air—an’ afterwards I ’spect I’ll go to boarding school in the city, like Uncle Steve and Uncle Stewart.”

  Steve’s amused glance met Jane’s above his head. “You see, we’re pretty civilised these days! You’d be surprised how many children who have been entirely educated by the correspondence courses and School of the Air pass their university entrance examinations. They even graduate in technical courses.” Jane thought it was wonderful, and said so.

  Steve added, “It’s a development of the Royal Flying Doctor Service; we have to thank them for the use of their transmitters and link-up schedules. But you’ll hear one of them this morning, I want to get Dr. Mike or Dr. Paul out to look at Lisa.”

  “Get Dr. Banjo,” Jamie said, hopping on one leg like any small boy, “he mended my arm when it was broke”—he raised his right arm in the swirling motion of roping an imaginary steer—“he made it like new. D’you think he could mend Lisa’s legs—?”

  “Dr. Banjo?” Jane asked, puzzled.

  “His name’s Paul Banzowski and it didn’t take us long to make that Dr. Banjo,” Steve explained. When Jamie ran ahead to tell his grandmother that they were coming in for breakfast he added in a different tone, “He was a refugee from a Polish concentration camp—a New Australian, about twenty-five years ago—a brilliant neurological surgeon. We had quite a few like him, after the war. Brilliant men in their own field. But they had to take ordinary jobs for a couple of years, and if they wanted to practise they had to go through their finals again at one of our medical schools. Some of them felt they were too old or too flaked-out to do that, and they either stayed in the ordinary jobs or went back to Europe. Dr. Paul stayed, and qualified—I believe they offered him a specialist post in a big city hospital—but he chose to return to the Outback—he said this was the place that had rehabilitated him, and all he wanted to do for the rest of his life was to look after people who find it too difficult or too expensive to get treatment in the city hospitals.”

  “He sounds a very nice man,” Jane said thoughtfully. A brilliant neurological surgeon living in the Outback sounded as improbable as one of Steve’s miracles—and perhaps it was, “and the sort of man to understand Lisa’s case.”

  Steve nodded, flinging his hat expertly on to its peg on the veranda. “Of course he’s an Australian citizen now, and sixtyish. He’s in charge of the Oonga Hospital and on the Flying Doctor schedule for this area, with Dr. Mike Jeffries. The hospital has twelve beds.”

  Jane, on her way to her room, turned and stared at him, laughingly. “Twelve beds?” she thought she must have heard it wrongly. Most of the wards at Joe’s had forty beds.

  Steve grinned. “It’s quite a hospital, believe me. Of course there are bigger ones at Cloncurry and Cairns. But multiply that by a hundred, and you’ll get an idea of the size of the Oonga practice. It’s a scattered parish, and most of the doctoring and nursing is done in the homesteads. Your experience may come in useful yet, Jane.”

  “I hope so!” she answered wryly, before turning away. She was continually getting surprises in this place.

  After breakfast everyone except Jamie went to Steve’s office and sat round the table with the transceiver microphone and loud speaker and switchboard on it. Lisa, in answer to a question from Steve, said she didn’t mind in the least that his message to the doctor in Oonga would be heard by at least a dozen other stations on the morning session. “But couldn’t I see him at the hospital if we’re going in on Wednesday?”

  Steve grinned at her. “Not jolly likely! He’ll be at the races like everyone else, unless there’s a real emergency.”

  “O.K.,” Lisa laughed back. “Hand me over to your Dr. Banjo. I hope he’s as nice as he sounds.”

  “He’s nice,” Nubby said quietly, manoeuvring Lisa’s chair close to the mike while Steve turned on the receiving switch.

  Almost immediately they heard a woman’s voice, cheerful and brisk. “Nine Cross Wally, Nine Cross Wally, this is Nine
Cross Queen calling Nine Cross Wally. Come in if you are receiving Nine Cross Queen. Over to you. Over.”

  Nubby interpreted quickly. “That’s Sister Molly Bassett from Oonga calling Warren Downs station.”

  “Our nearest neighbours to the north-west,” Steve added, watching the girls’ absorbed faces, “we’ll come in after the next calls unless there’s an urgent message from somebody else meanwhile.”

  From the speaker came another woman’s voice, a little breathless. “Nine Cross Wally to Nine Cross Queen. I’m receiving you loud and clear, Mollie. Is Dr. Paul there? Susan’s getting up a temperature again though it was down to normal last night. I think she’s worried about not being able to come in to the races. Over.”

  A deep male voice with a foreign accent came in immediately, “Nine Cross Wally, this is Dr. Paul. Are all the scabs off yet? Over.”

  Jane smiled at Lisa’s puzzled expression. “It sounds like chicken-pox.”

  “Aye.” Nubby was smiling as she listened attentively, “The puir wee bairn was all set to win the jumping in the Nursery Gymkhana, but I doot she’ll be riding at all.”

  “Most of them, doctor. Just a few she’s been scratching look a bit angry still. Her temperature’s been normal for three days. I think she’s just upsetting herself about the races, I really do.” The voice from the speaker sounded amused and exasperated, like any mother’s with a convalescent child on her hands. “You know what Sue is, doctor. She wants to come and watch her Dad and Vince even if she can’t ride herself. Do you think we ought to bring her? Over.”

  This time the doctor’s deep voice held laughter. “Tell Susan to stop scratching. I’ll drop in and have a look at her this afternoon, and put her out of her suspense, Mrs. Elliot. Keep her as cool as you can. Over.”

  “Oh, thank you, doctor! I’ll tell her. She’s been fairly driving me bonkers, seeing all the others getting ready for the races. We’ll expect you for tea. Over and out.”

  While the cool crisp voice of the hospital sister seventy miles away called another station signal and had a friendly chat with someone called Nell about her baby taking the supplementary bottle feed, Jane sat by the open windows of the office and looked down over the sloping, colourful garden. It seemed incredible that it was only twenty-four hours since she had pelted down the winding path beside the stream, hatless, her heart full to bursting with shock and pain and humiliation. This morning her ride with Steve had given her a feeling of calm confidence—more, a feeling of being really welcome and at home here at the Blue River.

  It was her pride and not her heart that Stewart had bruised, she thought ruefully; Steve was right. It would hurt a lot more than this if she had really fallen in love with Stewart. That left her with the startling knowledge that she had been prepared to come out twelve thousand miles and marry a man almost a stranger because of Lisa—and because she thought he was wealthy enough to take care of them both.

  And because he made love to you when you were lonely, her mind added honestly. Whichever way you looked at it, it all added up to a personality that was not very admirable, she thought wryly; discounting the years when she had given up her promising hospital career, and Ian, and any hope of fun and holidays for herself to look after her family.

  She thought Steve, knowing Stewart as he did, must think her pretty weak-minded and despicable; his kindness and hospitality was really sympathy for Lisa.

  She turned her head and looked at them, sitting so close together at the transceiver table. Lisa was listening wide-eyed like a child to the cheerful, intimate conversations criss-crossing the air; Steve was listening, too, but he was watching Lisa’s face with those little crinkles of amusement about his eyes, and a sort of tenderness about his mouth. Nubby, waiting to take over the transceiver when they had finished with it, was knitting tranquilly.

  Jane forgot everything else when the Blue River call signal came through.

  “Nine Cross Barry, Nine Cross Barry, this is Nine Cross Queen calling Nine Cross Barry. How is Spinifex today? Come in if you’re receiving me, Mrs. Newbery. Over.”

  Steve turned a switch and began talking in a natural voice. “Nine Cross Queen, we are receiving you loud and clear. This is Steve, and I want to talk with Dr. Paul in a moment about Miss Lisa Lesley. She and her sister Jane are on a visit to us from England, Mollie.”

  “I know. Jack flew them in yesterday; didn’t he? I suppose it was too early to come and see us at the hospital, but I’m hoping to meet you both on Wednesday. Welcome to Queensland, Jane and Lisa. Here’s Dr. Paul.”

  Steve nodded encouragingly to Lisa and she managed a breathless “Thank you!” before the deep amused voice of the doctor said, “That greeting comes from me too, to both of you. I was hoping you’d ask me to the Blue River tonight, Steve, when I’ve had a look at Susan Elliot. I’ve a day off tomorrow and if you’ve any fish left in your river—”

  Steve turned the switch again, grinning. “The level’s low, we haven’t had a drop of rain for weeks, but we might find a few survivors above the weir, Doc. Lisa would like a professional visit, we want your advice about whether she can ride and swim. Over.”

  “You have brought your notes with you, Miss Lesley? Your case-history, I mean. Over.”

  Steve switched over for her and she leaned towards the mike. “Yes, doctor. They call it traumatic paralysis after a—a car accident. I’ve been in and out of hospitals for the past eighteen months and I don’t think they—you—can do anything more for me in the way of treatment. But apart from not being able to use my legs I’m well and strong. I’m longing to ride and swim—it couldn’t do any harm, could it?” Lisa was completely unselfconscious, as if she didn’t realise or didn’t care that everyone on the schedule could listen in to her conversation with the doctor in Oonga. She looked impatiently at Steve when there was no reply, and he showed her how to work the set. “They can’t come in until you turn the switch to ‘Receive’, that’s what we do each time we say ‘Over’.”

  “Nine Cross Barry, Nine Cross Barry, are you receiving us? We seem to have lost you. Over.” Sister Mollie’s voice was unruffled. This time Steve let Lisa work the set and she said, “Sorry. I forgot to turn the switch. Now we’re receiving you. Over.”

  “You’ll soon learn, it is very simple actually. I will be staying with Steve tonight, Lisa, and we can talk about the swimming and riding when I have seen your notes. Over and out.”

  “Well! He sounds a poppet.” Lisa was pleased and excited with her first experience of the Flying Doctor Schedule and Jane envied her, not for the first time, for her aplomb. In spite of her hospital training it would have made her shy to discuss her disability with a strange doctor over the air, with perhaps twenty or thirty other strangers listening in.

  They left Mrs. Newbery at the transceiver and Steve pushed Lisa’s chair round to the shady side of the veranda.

  “Does she listen in every morning, regardless?” Lisa wanted to know. “I mean, even if you don’t want one of the doctors or to send anyone a message?”

  “Yes. It’s our morning newspaper. The mail plane brings out papers once a week, and parcels-, and sometimes a friend who decides to drop in. But on the radio schedule we get the news of our neighbours, the stuff that really matters. Then, when the natter session is over, young Jamie will get his half-hour of Kindergarten School of the Air.”

  “I think it’s marvellous, don’t you, Jane? You can look out here and think there isn’t another house for hundreds of miles—yet they sounded so close!” she giggled suddenly. “Dozens of people listening to the click of Nubby’s knitting-needles! And they all seemed to know about our coming—it’s worse than an English village!”

  Steve grinned. “We can’t keep any secrets here. I dare say now they know Doc is coming this way today, he’ll be asked to bring along anything any of the stations wants from the town. Gilbert won’t be coming with the mail until Monday.”

  Chips and a couple of the apprentices arrived with the newly constructed ram
p in a truck, and Jane left them to discuss exactly how it was to be fitted over the veranda steps. Lisa’s face, already glowing from the radio session, was suddenly flushed with excitement at Steve’s surprise for her. “You’ll be independent, able to come and go as you please,” he said diffidently, when she thanked him.

  “Oh, Steve, you’re really a poppet! I do so hate waiting to be helped all the time—I could kiss you for that!”

  Lisa’s clear, rippling young voice rang through the house before the noise of hammering drowned it. Jane, helping Moonie wash up the breakfast things, couldn’t help wondering if Steve had taken her up on that. Imagining him stooping to receive Lisa’s warm, impulsive gesture of gratitude gave her a pang.

  Moonie accepted her help casually, almost indifferently. As she worked the girl hummed an Aborigine lullaby to herself, disregarding the clatter of the workmen on the front veranda and apparently incurious about its cause. The song was in a minor key and Moonie’s small but quite pleasing voice dragged out each syllable indefinitely so that it went on and on, like an echo; like the haunting, plaintive music of the didgeridoo that had called to Jane in the piccaninny daylight...

  Somehow it echoed that little flicker of pain in her heart and she thought, aghast, surely I’m not jealous of Lisa!

  It was a shocking, disturbing thought that made her despise herself more than ever. Stacking the gay china in the glass-fronted cabinets she faced it resolutely. Steve Forrest—the real Steve Forrest—didn’t belong to her. He owed her nothing. He was being exceedingly generous not to resent their being planted on him under false pretences, and he was perfectly free to fall in love with Lisa or anyone else. Perhaps even now, in spite of all that Stewart had done, he was still in love with Alison. He wasn’t, she thought, the sort of man to fall in and out of love very easily. Yet obviously he had a tenderness for Lisa, who was very, very lovable.