by Lucy Gordon
She was clambering across fallen branches, stumbling, ripping branches aside. Feeling cold, empty terror. ‘Blake!’
She thought … she thought …
‘Blake!’
He lifted his head from the steering wheel. Pushed himself up. Spoke.
‘Mardie?’
Alive …
Her heart kick-started again. Just.
Blake. Alive.
He sounded dazed. Half asleep? ‘I got it down,’ he said. ‘The whole thing.’
There was even a tinge of pride in his voice.
He got it down.
Terror receded, leaving a void where things didn’t make sense. She was struggling to take it in.
She was in the middle of a crush of timber.
Blake was alive.
‘I thought you were dead,’ she said stupidly, not believing what she was seeing. ‘I thought …’
‘I went to sleep,’ he said apologetically. ‘I cleared the branches that fell, and then I thought I could get the rest of the trunk down. It took more than I thought.’
Asleep.
‘I thought …’ she said and then stopped.
He’d seen her face now. She knew she wouldn’t have a vestige of colour left.
‘I had dengue fever,’ he said apologetically. ‘It takes it out of me. I really wanted to get it down. Then I brought the tractor and trailer close to clear the mess but I thought …’ He gave her an apologetic smile. ‘The sun felt great. I thought I’d take a quick nana nap.’
A nana nap. He’d been taking a nana nap while she thought he’d been brained by a tree.
She gazed around her, taking great gulps of air. Maybe she’d forgotten to breathe.
He’d cleared half a tree.
Then he’d had a nana nap.
‘I might have been slightly ambitious,’ he conceded. ‘I had this idea of clearing the lot before you got home, and it’s a great chainsaw.’
‘It … it is,’ she agreed. Paused. Took a few more breaths. Then had to say it out loud. The thing that was hammering in her head. ‘You could have been killed. I thought you had been.’
She started to shake.
She couldn’t stop.
She couldn’t …
And suddenly he was stomping across the pile of crushed wood and leaf litter until he reached her.
He held her shoulders and he held her tight.
‘Mardie, it’s okay. Nothing’s hurt. I knew what I was doing. The tractor and I were on the other side of the driveway when it came down. It only looks bad because I brought the trailer in close to start clearing up.’
She couldn’t hear. His words were a buzz.
The events of the past, surging back. Moments that had transformed her life.
Her father, folding as he walked in from out in the paddocks. Dead in an instant.
Hugh. One stupid moment, stupid kids in a too-fast car, and his life was over.
And again … The instant she’d seen the fallen tree and Blake slumped over the wheel.
Reaction took over, leaving her no choice in how she responded. She tried to shove back from his hold and she yelled, as she’d never yelled in her life.
‘You stupid, stupid moron. You used a chainsaw when no one was home. Don’t you realise the first rule, the first rule, is to have someone with you when you use big power tools? You just chopped. Macho, macho stupidity. You’ve given me half a winter’s full of chopped wood and what good would that have done if you were dead?’
‘You’d have been warm,’ he said cautiously. Still holding her.
She wasn’t responding to humour. She couldn’t. ‘It’s cold in the cemetery.’ She was still yelling.
‘Yes, but it’s me who’d have been there, not you. But it didn’t happen. Mardie, it didn’t happen. It was never going to happen. Believe it or not, I knew what I was doing. I’m sorry I didn’t finish clearing it. I wanted to. I’ll pay to …’
‘Pay? I don’t care about payment.’ She was still hysterical. ‘I’m not in this for money. I’m not the one who walked away to make money.’
And suddenly it was about more than the tractor. More than this moment. Much more. She was out of control and she was saying it like it was. Years of hurt, welled up and finally released.
‘I walked away to make money?’ he said cautiously.
‘You never looked back,’ she said, still out of control. ‘Not once. You and your aunt and your stupid, rich family who couldn’t even look after a kid, and your stupid money making. If you’d been killed now it’d be no less than you deserve. Of all the stupid things …’ She caught her breath on an angry sob. ‘I could have lost you again. And now you’ve brought down the rest of the tree and we’ll have to clear this and all you can think of is paying.’
She’d almost lost him again.
She heard her words echo, reverberate. They’d come straight from her heart.
They both knew it.
She was shaking as if she’d stepped out of an ice box. Her teeth were chattering so hard she could hardly get the words out.
There were tears tracking down her face. The night Hugh died … The day her father collapsed …
The day Blake left.
The dogs moved close to the base of the mess of tree and whined, worried by her yelling. She was worried by her yelling. She didn’t get out of control.
She was out of control now.
She was still in the middle of the leaf litter. Blake was still holding her.
The branch under them sagged.
And suddenly Blake was in charge. He took her by the waist and lifted her free, tugging her down to solid ground. He set her in front of him but didn’t release her.
He held her round the waist as she trembled. Holding her tight. Not saying a thing. She tugged away, but not very hard. Not enough to succeed.
‘What … what do you think you’re doing?’ she managed.
‘Waiting until you get over the shock. Trying to reassure you that it’s okay.’
‘It isn’t.’
‘Tell me what happened, Mardie,’ he said softly. ‘The car crash. Was that how your husband died?’
‘I … Yes.’ There was nothing else to say.
‘Here?’
She didn’t want to tell him. She never talked about it.
She told him.
‘We were driving home from Lorraine’s, up the road. A Christmas barbecue.’ Her voice was still shaking. Her world was still shaking. ‘Six o’clock on a warm Sunday night. A carload of kids came round a blind bend on the wrong side of the road and that was … that. I ended up with a fractured pelvis. But Hugh … my gentle, loving Hugh who’d give me the world, who gave me the world, was gone in an instant. And the dogs. All our dogs. They were in the back.’ Another sob. The urge to yell was back, but she couldn’t raise the energy. She felt desperately tired. ‘And you … you play with chain-saws as if it doesn’t matter one bit. You just … risk …’
It was too much. She choked on a sob, her knees gave way from under her and he drew her into him.
For a fraction of a moment she resisted, holding herself rigid. He could feel her anger. He could feel her fear.
But he could feel her shaking and it was the shaking that killed her resistance. She crumpled and he gathered her against him and held and held, as if there was nothing more important than to hold her against his heart and let the world go on without them.
Nothing was more important.
The dogs stood beside them, silent sentinels. Neither moved, as if both realised this moment couldn’t be interrupted by a wet nose; it couldn’t be interrupted for the world.
He simply held her.
Had she had someone to hold her when Hugh died? he wondered. Two years ago.
Had Mardie buried her husband and come home to an empty house?
The dogs …
He thought of them now. Minor in the scheme of things, minor compared to a husband, but still …
Every time he’d been
to this place there’d been a dog pack. ‘You need generations of dogs, training each other.’ He remembered Mardie’s father saying it. ‘You lose a dog, it’s a heartbreak. You lose all your dogs …’ He’d shrugged. ‘I don’t know how a man could go on without them.’
Bounce was Mardie’s only dog, and he was only about twelve months old. That meant it must have been twelve months before she could even bear to get another dog.
He’d have been in Africa. He scanned Australian news on the internet, but never in such detail as names of car crash victims. If he’d known …
The shaking was starting to subside. She tugged away a little and he released her to arm’s length, no further.
‘Tell me about Hugh,’ he said softly, and she managed a ghost of a smile. Realising he was trying to haul her from shock. Trying to respond.
‘He was from Whale Cove. Practically a foreigner.’
He smiled, straight into her eyes. It was a smile he couldn’t remember using before. Or maybe he had. It was a smile just for Mardie.
‘You met him at Whale Cove?’
‘That’s where I did my art course. He was a paramedic, an ambulance driver. He was gentle, kind, loving … all I ever wanted in a husband. We were friends for ages, were engaged for two years, married for three.’
‘He lived with you here?’
‘There was Mum.’ She was recovering a little but her voice was still shaky. ‘We couldn’t leave her, and Hugh was happy to transfer to Banksia Bay. Then, when she finally decided to move to the nursing home, Hugh said he loved this place as much as I did. It would have been a great place for our children …’ She broke off. Closed her eyes.
‘Enough,’ she said. ‘We have stuff to organise.’ She stared at the driveway. ‘This to clear, for a start.’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘I think,’ he said apologetically, ‘that neither of us should use the chainsaw for a while.’
‘You want me to come home to this mess?’
‘I’ve fixed that.’
‘It doesn’t look fixed.’ Indignation was returning. Indignation versus shaking? He almost smiled. Indignation any day.
‘That’s what I was talking of when I mentioned paying,’ he said. Whether or not the shaking had stopped, he was still holding her and she was still allowing herself to be held. ‘I rang Raff. He gave me the name of a guy who chops wood for a living. Tony Kennedy’ll be here at eight on Monday to clear the mess.’
‘But you’re already covering the cost of Bessie’s operation,’ she managed, sounding stunned.
‘You know I can afford it.’
There was a moment’s silence at that, drawn out, tense, loaded with something he didn’t recognise.
‘I don’t … take charity,’ she said at last.
‘I don’t believe I’m offering charity. I’m responsible.’
‘You’re not responsible for Bessie.’
‘I’m not paying for Bessie for you. I’m paying for Bessie for me. But, regardless, I owe you.’
‘Why do you owe me?’ she asked in a strange, tight voice.
That, at least, was easy.
‘You and your parents made my childhood bearable,’ he said simply and firmly. ‘I owe you a debt I can never repay. I should have been here for you two years ago. That I wasn’t …’
He let the sentence hang.
Silence. More silence. He wasn’t sure what to say next. How to begin to make things better?
There was no way.
Mardie was watching him. Her face was calm. Assessing.
Very calm. And suddenly he thought … it was like the eye of the storm.
He could almost feel the other side.
‘Do you think I needed you?’ she asked, almost diffident.
‘I assume …’
‘Assume nothing.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Do you think I spent the last fifteen years pining for you?’ she asked, still in that strangely calm voice.
‘I know that’s not true.’
‘You do,’ she said cordially. ‘Yes, at sixteen you were my boyfriend. I wept for weeks when you left. But weeks, Blake Maddock, not years. And then you know what? I got angry. And then I got over it.’
‘Good for you.’
‘Don’t patronise me,’ she snapped, and the storm moved closer. With the potential to build. ‘Of all the …’
‘I didn’t mean to patronise.’
‘Yes, you did,’ she said. ‘You do. You’re sorry you weren’t here for me two years ago. As if somehow, magically, you could have made it better.’
‘I never meant that.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you didn’t mean it. Because it wouldn’t have made one whit of difference. Do you know how surrounded I was?’
‘No, I …’
‘I was loved,’ she said. ‘I am loved. Don’t you dare think of me as poor, lonely Mardie, facing the big bad world because heroic Blake Maddock wasn’t here to take care of her. This place is my home. I’m loved. When people are in trouble here, we help. I had a broken pelvis and my husband was dead but I had my community to surround me. My freezer still contains so many home-cooked meals that I could live on tuna bakes for years. My sheep were cared for, my fences fixed, my house painted. My garden was replanted so that I’ve had veggies and flowers ever since. I have a friend who came and stayed for two months—Irena. I was cosseted to bits. And here you are saying you’re so sorry you weren’t here for me, as if it would have made a blind bit of difference.’
She took a deep breath, the calm façade cracking wide open. ‘And you know what? It’s great that you’ve organised this tree to be cleared, and I accept with pleasure. But I don’t depend on it. If I’m in trouble, I have a town full of people who’ll help. If I rang up a few friends and said I can’t cope with a fallen tree I’d have a working bee here in minutes. You know …’
Another breath.
‘Last winter I got the flu. I didn’t let anyone know because I hate fuss, only then I ran out of wood. The place was cold, and I was too tired to get out of bed and chop some. Then Liz arrived. She’s the administrator of Mum’s nursing home. I’d rung and said I had a cold and couldn’t come in, but Liz thought she’d check anyway. She practically called out the army. An hour later the house was a furnace, there was food, fuss, heat packs, every home remedy known to man. I was so coddled I had no choice but to get better.’
‘That’s … great.’ It was a pathetic comment but what else was he to say?
But she hadn’t stopped. She’d barely paused for breath.
‘And you know what?’ she snapped. ‘It all happened without you. And now … I love it that you’re helping with Bessie. I’m grateful you’ve organised the tree. But don’t you dare think I’ll fall in a heap without you. I spent a few weeks in tears as a lovesick teenager and then I moved on. Now, if you don’t mind, I have things to do to get my life in order before I leave. And, believe it or not, I can do all those things by myself.’
CHAPTER SIX
THE power came on.
Mardie headed down the paddocks to do one last run around the sheep before dinner.
He suspected she didn’t need to. He suspected she didn’t want to be in the house with him.
The tow-truck driver arrived and shook his head over the Mercedes. Blake had already rung the hire-car firm; insurance would sort it from here. He retrieved his laptop and briefcase, watched the wrecked Mercedes be towed away, and then went back to the house and set up his laptop in the attic.
It might be wise to lie low for a while, he thought. Leave Mardie to settle down.
He was due to speak at a fund-raising dinner on Monday. It was his first foray into public speaking since his illness.
He read his prepared speech and frowned. Surely he could do better.
He thought of Mardie and he thought … passion. The world could do with more passion. So could his speech.
He squared his shoulders and pul
led up a blank document. Try again? He couldn’t quite match Mardie in the passion stakes but he’d give it his best shot.
* * *
The sheep were as safe as she could make them. They had feed and water, the hens were happy, the place was secure.
Back in the house, she looked—tentatively—for Blake and was relieved when she realised he was upstairs. She could hear him on his computer. Working.
Good. He was out of her hair.
He wouldn’t have the internet up there. She should have offered him access to her computer.
She might make the offer, she decided, but not until after dinner. She hauled a tuna bake from the freezer. A nice easy fix. Plus it would underscore what she’d yelled at Blake. Excellent.
She picked a lettuce and a couple of tomatoes from the veggie patch. Practically gourmet. Blake Maddock would be used to five-star restaurants. How would he react to defrosted tuna bake?
She really had yelled at him.
Maybe she’d overdone it, just a little.
She should call him down. Have a drink before dinner.
Maybe not. She was, she discovered, still seething.
She should check the weather forecast. She hit the internet and confirmed there was not a storm in sight. Excellent.
She went to close the computer and then …
A thought.
She just happened to type Blake Maddock, Ophthalmologist.
She’d never searched for him. For all these years, she’d never enquired. She hadn’t wanted to know.
She wanted to know now.
Blake Maddock, Ophthalmologist. Enter.
She entered Africa.
She stared at the screen as if it had grown two heads.
For Blake was right in front of her, but not the Blake she knew. This was the face of some major foundation, Eyes For Africa. Blake as a professional.
Blake working in desperate conditions. Blake, surrounded by queues of kids. Blake operating. Blake standing in the background as a nurse removed bandages from a little boy’s eyes. A clip of a documentary describing Blake’s work.
On the front of the website there was a blurb for a black-tie dinner this coming Monday in Sydney. Head of Eyes For Africa, Dr Blake Maddock, will be addressing …
She’d known nothing.
This town knew everything there was to know about everyone. Surely …