Ignoring his appearance and the spasm of pity kicking inside her, Claire smiled brightly, sat down and placed her hand over his. He managed to turn his head a little but his eyes were vacant. Claire couldn’t tell whether he was staring past or through her, just that this was not what she’d expected at all.
She started chattering about the events of the past few days, squeezing his hand as she told him that Paycheque was home and waiting. Her father’s eyes brightened slightly and he squeezed back. For the umpteenth time Claire wondered if she had done the right thing getting the horse back for him. At this point she couldn’t imagine Jack out of bed, let alone out in the paddock battling with half a tonne of feisty horse. She sighed deeply. There was certainly a long way to go.
Claire was rambling about Bernadette’s shop, trying to lighten the dreary atmosphere by telling Jack how much a bloke had paid for one of Bernie’s water features: ‘You’d never believe it. It’s a piece of rusty corrugated iron that trickles water into an old concrete laundry trough.
‘Apparently it’s a sculpture, installation art,’ she was concluding when there was a knock on the door. Claire looked up to find a handsome middle-aged man peering in at them. He was wearing neatly pressed navy trousers, a crisp pale blue and white checked shirt, and shiny tan dress shoes.
‘Hello Mr McIntyre,’ the man called, then in a loud whisper said to Claire, ‘Ms McIntyre, I presume?’
Claire nodded.
‘Could I see you for a minute?’
Claire nodded, put Jack’s hand down with a pat and got up. Her shoulders ached from being hunched over the bed too long.
‘I’m Dr Jeffries. Michael,’ the man said, holding out his hand.
‘Claire McIntyre,’ she replied, returning the gentle but firm handshake.
‘There’s a quiet room down the hall, second on your right,’ he said, stepping aside and ushering her forward.
Claire experienced an odd sense of foreboding and hope both at once. On the one hand it was good to see how confident the doctor seemed, but she’d seen the lack of progress her father had made.
The door shut behind Dr Jeffries with a gentle click. He indicated for her to take a seat in one of the three modern vinyl tub chairs while settling himself in another. He opened a manila folder on the small round coffee table between them. Claire’s stomach flip-flopped in dreaded anticipation.
‘Ms McIntyre…’
‘Please, call me Claire. You make me sound old.’ She laughed nervously, instantly blushing with embarrassment. God, she sounded like she was flirting.
‘Claire, I’m one of the neurosurgeons here. I’ve examined your father’s scans and notes, and all seems fine…’
‘Well he doesn’t look fine to me. He’s not much different to when he was in a coma.’
‘Well he is awake, and that’s a big improvement.’
Hardly. Claire bit her tongue to stop herself uttering the word.
‘At this stage there seems nothing physically holding him back.’
Claire sighed with relief. So this man had seen what she had felt. ‘But he doesn’t seem pleased to have come out of his coma at all,’ she said.
‘No, I think it’s his emotional state that needs healing now. I think it best we get him back into familiar surroundings as soon as possible. Will you be available to take care of him – providing, of course, we can at least get him out of bed and walking a little? At this stage he seems disinterested – what he needs is some incentive.’
‘Well he was worried about one of his horses – he trained racehorses, you know – and I’ve managed to get it back. He seemed to brighten a little when I told him, but he didn’t exactly leap out of bed with joy.’
Dr Jeffries looked down at the folder. ‘I see in his notes he’s a widower.’
‘Yes. My mother died five years ago. But I’ve decided to move back home while he convalesces.’
‘Good. He’d like that, would he?’
Claire examined every angle of the question for hidden innuendo. She had no doubt that he’d love having her home again – at least she hoped so. They’d always gotten on well before she’d shunned the farm for a life of sophistication and disposable income. Guilt stabbed at her. Of course in doing so, she’d shunned him.
‘You and your father do get along okay, don’t you?’ he prompted.
‘Sorry, yes, very well. We get on very well.’
‘Excellent,’ the doctor said, snapping the manila folder shut. ‘I suggest you tell him your plans to move back home and see how he reacts. If it’s positive, we’ll just have to get him up and well enough to do it.’ He stood up.
‘Well, I have other patients to see. It’s up to you now. All the best.’ He shook her hand again, smiled warmly, and left.
Claire was left standing on her own in the small room. She didn’t know whether to be annoyed at the brush-off or relieved at the news.
There was nothing wrong with her father. He had every chance of making a full recovery, and she was to play a very important part in making that happen. Claire felt the empowerment of an achievable challenge, something she hadn’t felt for a long time. The only challenge she’d had at work all year was wrangling an invite to a decent corporate box for the Melbourne Cup. Which meant absolutely nothing now, thanks to her redundancy.
It occurred to her that Derek must have made a significant effort to lighten her workload in response to her series of personal issues this year. She hadn’t noticed at the time – a sure sign she’d needed it. Now she made a mental note to thank him when the opportunity arose. She wouldn’t make a special call – didn’t want him getting the wrong idea – but she was bound to bump into him at the races some time. There were less than two weeks until the Cup. God, she’d miss all the fun. But then she had an idea: maybe she and Bernie could organise something special, and give Jack a date to strive for.
Claire strode back down the hall to Jack’s room, rehearsing in her head a speech she hoped would prove motivational.
Before heading back up to the hills, Claire called into her house, checked the answering machine messages: five hang-ups and three messages from friends wanting to organise get-togethers. She’d call them back later. She was dreading having to reveal that she was now not only single and jobless, she was country-dwelling. She’d become her own worst nightmare.
Claire retrieved the esky from the cupboard under the stairs and emptied the fridge into it – no point eating Bernadette out of house and home while all her stuff went off. She packed a week’s worth of casual clothes, reset the alarm and closed the door behind her, slightly surprised to feel no pangs of regret or sadness at leaving the house.
‘Right, I think we’ve got everything,’ Bernadette said when she and Claire were strapped into her car awaiting departure. ‘We’ve got enough cleaning products to make the Sydney Opera House sparkle, and plenty of food and coffee to keep us going.’
Claire had been both anticipating and dreading returning to the farmhouse to prepare it for Jack’s homecoming.
‘Bernie, thanks so much for doing this.’
‘No worries,’ Bernadette said, waving away her thanks with a flick of her hand.
‘No, I mean it. You’ve even had to give up a day at the shop.’
‘It’s not a problem, Claire, honestly. It’s time Darren took on more of a management role, and anyway, I know you’d do the same for me.’
‘Well, I really do appreciate it.’
‘I know,’ Bernadette said, patting Claire’s leg. ‘So we’re off?’
‘Guess so,’ Claire winced.
They drove in silence, each left to their own thoughts. Claire gnawed at her lip in worried concentration. She needed to be alone in the house to really face what she’d been avoiding these past few months – years, if she was being totally honest. But how could she tell Bernadette to back off when she had set aside the whole day – not to mention practically the whole year – for her?
After ten minutes they turned into th
e long drive and then pulled up at the front of the house. Claire took a deep breath and got ready to blurt out her rehearsed excuses for cleaning the inside of the house alone. But Bernie got in first.
‘How about I start out here since I’m in the gardening game? Put my money where my mouth is, so to speak.’
Claire let out a sigh of relief that sounded more like a gasp, unaware she’d been holding her breath. ‘Thanks, that’d be great. I’ll start inside then – after I’ve fed the ’cheque.’
‘You make it sound like some complex refinancing move,’ Bernadette said, laughing.
‘Well he is a pretty big risk.’ Claire laughed back. ‘See you in a bit,’ she added, and disappeared around the side of the house.
When Claire returned, Bernadette had already finished weeding one of the garden beds and was starting on the next. She looked up, wiped her sweating brow and watched as Claire stared at the door for a full minute, before taking a deep breath and turning the handle.
Claire stood inside the laundry, the back door shut behind her. Her heart was pounding and her sweating hands clenched around bucket and vacuum handles. What was it about the house that did this to her every time? She looked around her at the small square brown tiles her parents had struggled to decide on all those years ago.
Claire had never liked the tiles, but now saw them as a solid memorial to a life possibly too regimented, and definitely less complicated. Her mother had been right when she’d said their size and particular composition would render them less prone to cracking and chipping. She smiled and sent a mental blessing to the woman who had driven her nuts ninety percent of the time.
She took a deep breath, told herself to be strong for Jack, and took a step forward, and then another, and another, gathering comfort as she did. This was her father’s house now, no longer her mother’s tight ship – it hadn’t been for a number of years.
Although she’d spent most of her life there, she felt like an intruder. Even her old bedroom seemed foreign. Her collection of satin-and-felt show ribbons were still piled on a coat hanger behind the door. Trophies lined the top of her wardrobe under a thick layer of dust. Framed photos of her triumphs and various mounts took up most of the pine dressing table. She was nervous about going through this person’s things, this stranger whose life she’d once occupied. The feeling doubled when she realised there was not one photo of her parents, cousins, aunts or uncles. It was all just her and her horses. Selfish, she told herself. But she’d been horse-mad, competitive, totally driven. She’d had to be.
So when had all that changed? She stared at the flowery quilt cover and matching curtains that her mother – in some guilt-induced moment – had made in an attempt at balancing her daughter’s life.
Of course! The curtains had coincided with her teens, boys and – she now groaned – that time when you didn’t want anything to do with your thick, unfashionable, old fogie parents.
She remembered how her father had tried to tell her of her mother’s chest pains and how she’d cut him off, saying she had to meet some boy – some boy she no longer even remembered the name of. And could he feed the horses for her?
She smiled now. Jack had been a pushover. He had always been there, quietly tending to her horse’s feed and water, rugs and bandages, while her mother had yelled at her from the sidelines for letting the horse refuse at the water jump, getting second place instead of first.
For the first time Claire could see what had happened, the fork in the road where she’d chosen one path over the other. But more importantly she now saw why. It had been more than simple teenage rebellion. She’d got tired of doing her best and still being seen as a failure. She had needed to walk out from her mother’s shadow and be her own person, her own success.
But she also had her mother to thank for the determination to prove she didn’t need her parents for anything. And it was all because of her mother’s tough love – her frosty, arm’s-length approach to parenting. Ah, the irony. While Claire was wise enough to understand the origins of her insecurities, she also knew that as an adult, she alone was responsible for her own decisions, right or wrong. And right now her decision was to stop being a big wuss and get on with getting everything in order.
She wiped away the single tear sitting on her cheek, put down the photo frame, and got up with renewed determination. She started removing the cobwebs from the corners of the ceiling. As she worked, she decided that next she’d take down her photos, trophies and ribbons, and pack them away. They belonged with the past.
Chapter Thirteen
Claire stretched out in bed, listening and feeling her surroundings. It was her third morning waking up at the farm and it didn’t really feel like home yet. Warm, comfortable, reassuring, yes; but home, no. Still, it wasn’t as bad as she’d imagined. She hadn’t actually felt like the spinster daughter moving home, though that could all change when she began sharing the space with her father.
He’d had five years to rebel against her mother’s strict standards of hygiene and tidiness. Whenever she’d visited there had never been any obvious evidence of the place having gone to the dogs. But then, she’d never turned up unannounced. Surely if her father lived like a piggy bachelor she would have seen some signs – especially when she’d done her big spring clean the other day.
Claire was starting to realise that she didn’t know Jack McIntyre very well at all. She knew him as her mother’s husband and then her widower, someone who did as he was told and avoided rocking the boat. Had he changed as a result of those thirty-odd years together? They did say couples grew alike, just like pets became like their owners. It might actually be quite exciting to get to know the real Jack McIntyre.
As far as Claire could see, the training of racehorses was the only area that had remained free of her mother’s domination. Some time in the early days – before she’d been born – there must have been some kind of major demarcation dispute, which her father had won. You could just tell. She’d often noticed her mother standing at the window, gnawing at the inside of her cheek. The vein at the edge of her eye would pulse as she watched Jack with his horses, the same as it did when she was issuing Claire criticism.
Their methods and personalities were so different. She was all about making the animal submit, do as it was told at all costs, which often meant working it on the lunge – round and round at the end of a long rope – in heavy sand until it was foaming, quivering, dripping in sweat, literally putty in her hands.
Jack subscribed to a natural horsemanship approach: the animal was asked to comply, taught to oblige its master out of respect and not fear. This polarising saw Claire’s mother take on the eventers – competition horses – and her father the racehorses. Claire had often wished it had been the other way around, then she might have been spared all the emotional baggage that had taken her so long to work through.
It was wrong to think ill of the dead. Of course she’d loved her mother and sometimes still missed her; love of one’s parents was one of those things programmed at birth. But it didn’t mean she had to like everything about them.
Grace McIntyre had done what she thought was right at the time. Just like children, horses didn’t come with an operating manual with a solution for every problem, and her mother had liked to win at all costs – had needed to, for some reason.
Claire checked the clock radio, threw back the covers and swapped her pyjamas for farm clothes. It was 5:45 a.m. Ordinarily she would have cursed the ridiculous, uncivilised hour and rolled over. But this morning, the first time for as long as she could remember, Claire felt energised and was keen to face the day. And so, it seemed, was the lonely little horse.
‘Coming,’ she muttered in response to Paycheque’s second bout of whinnying.
Claire grabbed a couple of carrots from the kitchen and bolted out of the house, reminding herself to get a big bag of ‘horse’ carrots and all the other feed he’d require. She wanted him looking his best – bright, shiny coat and eyes – for w
hen Jack returned.
Two days later, Claire visited her father and was pleased to notice a dramatic improvement. His face had a pale pink tinge. It was a long way from a tan, but healthier nonetheless considering he hadn’t had any direct sunlight for over two months. He was sitting up in bed dipping a Scotch Finger biscuit into a cup of tea, and wearing the new lumpy grey jumper Daphne had knitted. He beamed at Claire, put down his cup and saucer, and held out his arms for a hug. Claire let out a deep sigh of relief and held on tight.
After what seemed hours, a voice called from the doorway and they parted with little murmurs of embarrassment and self-consciousness.
‘Um, Ms McIntyre? I saw you come in. Would you like a cuppa and a bickie?’ The nervous, pimply-faced girl looked about twelve – hopefully she was only in charge of the tea trolley.
‘Yes, please. That’d be great – white, no sugar, thank you.’ Claire beamed her most gracious smile, trying to make up for her uncharitable thoughts.
‘Another cup, Mr McIntyre?’ the kid asked, already fossicking about in the trolley.
‘Yes, thanks – and for the hundredth time, my dear, it’s Jack.’
The young lass blushed. With shaking hands she placed the two cups, rattling dangerously in their saucers, on the side table. She grabbed Jack’s empty one and backed away, mumbling for them to enjoy their tea.
‘All this “mister this” and “mister that” makes an old bushie like me a bit uncomfortable,’ Jack said, reaching for his cup.
‘Probably part of their strategy,’ Claire laughed, and picked up her cup. ‘To stop you wanting to stay too long.’
‘Yes, well, no problem there. You know they wake you up all through the night? All part of their strategy too, I suppose.’
Claire took a sip, put her cup back on its saucer and said with mock seriousness, ‘No, I think they really are checking your vital signs – death isn’t too good for business, I hear.’
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