MIRACLE ON KAIMOTU ISLAND/ALWAYS THE HERO (16 page)

‘Shall we join them?’ Ailsa asked, and Ginny realised Ailsa had been holding her hand all the time. Even while singing.

As if Ginny was her daughter?

She wasn’t this woman’s daughter.

She could be.

Courage.

‘I’m a wimp,’ she said softly, and Ailsa followed her gaze to where Ben was talking to the pallbearers while they watched the hearse drive slowly through the still rubble-strewn streets down to the harbour.

‘You trusted,’ Ailsa said. ‘You trusted your father and you trusted your husband. It’s no fault to trust, child. But you know Ben would never hurt you.’

‘It’s not that. I just...mess things up.’

‘Like Squid messed the island up,’ Ailsa said briskly. ‘Nonsense. You want to take that attitude, then you are a wimp. Get a grip, girl, go for what you want and stand up for yourself. Now, you want to head for the pub for a bit of Dutch courage? Squid’s prepaid for the very best beer—and whisky all round.’

‘I need to think,’ Ginny said, and Ailsa shook her head and tugged her forward.

‘Nonsense, girl. You need to belong.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

B
EN
 
AND
 
THE
 
pallbearers accompanied the coffin out to sea. Ginny headed to the pub and ordered a glass of Squid’s excellent whisky but only one, she told herself, because she really did have some thinking to do.

Serious thinking.

She was an accepted part of the island, she thought. No one looked askance at her; in fact, she was being treated with affection.

‘Word is you’ve had a rough time of it,’ one of the farmers who lived beyond her vineyard said. ‘Doc says we’re to leave you be, no pressure, but don’t you bury yourself too long, girl. We need you.’

‘I know the island needs a doctor...’

‘Not just that,’ the man said. ‘I know this sounds dumb but you’re an islander. You always seemed one, not like your mum and dad, but even when you were a little tacker it was like you were coming home every time you came here. And we don’t like losing islanders.’

He stared into his beer and gave a rueful smile. ‘We don’t even like losing ninety-seven-year-olds who smell like smoked mackerel and prophesy doom. We’ll miss him, like we’re missing you, girl. Doctor or not, this is your home.’

There wasn’t a lot she could say after a speech like that. She hadn’t brought enough tissues. Dratted funerals. Dratted islanders.

Dratted Ben.

She took her whisky and escaped out through the beer garden, through the back gate she and Ben had sneaked through when they had been under age, then out along the path that led to the island’s best swimming beach.

It had barely been damaged by the quake. A few rocks had rolled down the gentle slope but the path was fine. She headed down, slipped off her shoes and went and sat on a rock and stared out to sea. Towards the mainland.

You’re an islander.

She was crying good and proper now. There weren’t enough tissues in the world for how she was crying, and she didn’t care.

She didn’t cry. Until she’d come back to the island she’d never cried. Not once, not at her father’s funeral, not once when James had been diagnosed and died. So why was crying now?

Who knew? She didn’t. She was so out of control she felt like she was falling, and when Ben sat down beside her and put his arm around her and pulled her into him, she had no strength to pull away.

She was falling and he was the only thing stopping her.

He took the whisky glass carefully out of her hand—the thing was half-full and one part of her still acknowledged it was excellent whisky and Squid would probably haunt her if she spilled it. Ben set it on the rock beside them, and then he carefully turned her towards him and tugged her into his arms.

‘I...I’m soggy,’ she managed, and it was almost impossible to get that much out.

‘You’re allowed to cry at funerals.’

‘I don’t.’

‘Because you’re not allowed to?’

‘I don’t cry. I won’t cry,’ she said, and cried some more, and the front of his shirt was soaked and she was being ridiculous and she couldn’t stop.

‘I’m...I’m sorry...’

‘Ginny...’ He hauled back from her then, held her at arm’s length, and his face was suddenly as grim as death. ‘Don’t.’

‘Don’t...’

‘Don’t you dare apologise,’ he snapped. ‘Not once. You know what you did when I sank your bathtub?’

‘I threw...I threw mud at you.’ How did people speak through tears? It looked so elegant in the movies—here it felt like she was talking through a snorkel.

‘And very appropriate it was, too,’ Ben said, the sternness replaced by the glimmer of a smile. ‘And then?’

‘And then you said if I didn’t tell your mum what you’d done, you’d give me your best taddy—the one that looked like it’d be a bullfrog to beat all bullfrogs.’

‘A supreme sacrifice,’ he said nobly. ‘And I watched you care for him and skite about him to the other kids...’

‘I did not skite!’

‘You skited. And then I watched you let him go—my bullfrog—and I swear he or his descendants are around here still, thinking they owe their whole family lineage to you. That pond was full of ducks. He’d have been a goner but you were his lifesaver and not me. You know what? I should have just said sorry and kept the bullfrog for myself. But I didn’t feel sorry. I felt...’ He smiled at her then, a killer smile that had wobbled her heart when at eight years old and was wobbling her heart still.

‘I felt like it was the way things were,’ he said. ‘I covered you with mud so you got to raise my bullfrog. But you know what? I loved watching you raise my bullfrog. There wasn’t a single bit of sorry left in there.’

‘Ben...’

‘If we married,’ he said, and the smile had gone again. ‘That’s what I’d want. Not one single bit of sorry.’

‘You can’t want to marry me,’ she whispered. ‘To take me on with all my baggage. To help raise another man’s child...’

‘It’s like the bullfrog,’ he said softly. ‘You’d give your baggage to me and I’d take it on and you’d watch me care for it and it’d be like caring for it yourself. That’s the way I see it. That’s the way it’s always been for us, Ginny. Not a single sorry between us, now and for ever.’

‘But I hurt you.’

‘And I pressured you. Pushing a seventeen-year-old to marry me... We both needed a life before we settled down. It seems like I’ve had a happier one—I’ve had some very nice girlfriends, thank you very much, all of whom sound nicer than your creepier James, but I’d prefer if you don’t ask me about them, and you can tell me as much or as little about James as you want. All I’ll tell you about my girlfriends is that not a single one of them would have raised my tadpole into the fine specimen of a bullfrog he turned out to be. So no sorry, Ginny. Get every tear you need to shed, shed them now and then move forward.’

She couldn’t talk. What was it with tears? If she was Audrey Hepburn she’d have whisked away the last teardrop from her beautiful eyelashes and would now be fluttering said eyelashes up at her love.

Where were tissues?

‘Here,’ Ben said, and handed over a man-sized handkerchief.

‘A handkerchief,’ she said, sidetracked. ‘A handkerchief?’

‘I never go to a funeral without one,’ he said. ‘You’ll note the left-hand corner is already a little doggy.’

She choked and he tugged her close again and then he simply held her; he held her and held her until finally she sort of dried up and she sort of pulled herself together and she sort of thought...that this was okay.

That this was where she belonged.

That this was home.

But to let go of the baggage of years? To let go of sorry?

‘If you’re still harping on sorry, then I see your duty is to catch me a very big tadpole for a wedding gift,’ Ben said, putting her away from him again.

And she choked again. ‘How did you know what I was thinking?’

‘I just do. I always did. Like you know me, my love. You know we fit. Maybe it’s time we acknowledged it.’

‘Button...Button might like to be a flower girl,’ she said, and his face stilled.

‘I didn’t know you were thinking that.’

‘I’m thinking all sorts of things,’ she admitted. ‘So many things you can’t possibly keep up.’

‘So one of them might be that you’d marry me?’

‘Only if I can get braver.’

‘You’re brave already,’ he said steadily. ‘You took Button on without a backward look. You didn’t walk away from James, no matter how he treated you. It’s not bravery that’s missing, my love. It’s the ability to stand over a smashed vase or a broken leg or a patient we lost no matter how we worked to save him and say, “This is life.” That’s all it is, life. It’ll throw bad things at us, you and I both know that, but it’ll also throw joy. Joy, joy and more joy if you’ll marry me.’

‘Ben—’

‘You weren’t responsible for James’ death. You know that,’ he said. ‘Say it.’

‘I wasn’t responsible.’

‘Or for your father’s death or for his disappointment that you didn’t win the Nobel Prize before he died.’

‘I guess...’

‘And your mother’s appalling disappointment that you turned out not to be blonde.’

‘Hey, I wouldn’t go that far,’ she said, suddenly realising her tears had gone. She wasn’t sure what was taking their place—some emotion she’d never felt before. Liberation?

Freedom?

‘It was a heinous crime not to be blonde,’ she managed, and Ben grinned.

‘Yes, it was. So can you stand in the dock, look your accusers in the face and say it wasn’t your fault?’

‘I guess.’

‘You want to have fun?’

‘Fun,’ she said, and the word was weird. Foreign.

‘I’m not marrying you unless you turn back into the Ginny I knew,’ he said. He motioned to the gently sloping rise behind the beach. The earthquake had shaken free a great swathe of loose, soft sand. It looked...sort of poised.

Poised to slide straight down the slope into the shallows beneath it.

‘The Ginny I know would ride that slope,’ Ben said.

‘I’d get wet.’

‘You’re already soggy.’

‘So I am.’ She looked at him, her gorgeous, kind, clever Ben, her love who’d magically waited for her for all this time, who’d made her see what she should have been yelling at the top of her lungs for years.

‘I believe I’m about to burst a few chains,’ she said, and Ben looked startled.

‘Pardon?’

‘You don’t know what you’re getting into. If it’s not my fault I’ll break cups all over the place. And...’ she eyed the sandy slope thoughtfully ‘...I’ll get sand in my knickers. But I won’t do it alone.’

‘I don’t want you to do anything alone any more,’ he said, and then added a hasty rider. ‘Within reason. It seems to me you’ve been on your own all your life. You hook up with me, you have a whole island. We’re part of a community but we’re a team. You and me, Dr Koestrel. Together for ever.’

‘Prove it,’ she said, and he blinked.

‘What?’

‘Remember all those years ago when I wanted to be your friend. Prove it, you said, by rowing this bathtub all the way across the pond.’

‘Haven’t we moved on from that?’

‘Maybe you have,’ she said. ‘But I’m still wary. See this slope? It’s gentle sand—a gentle slope. It shouldn’t hurt someone who had his surgery laprascopically and I’ll kiss the bruises. Together or nothing, Dr McMahon.’

‘I’ll get sand in
my
knickers.’

‘Yes, you will,’ she said serenely, because suddenly she was serene. She was happy, she thought incredulously. She was totally, awesomely happy. She was in love, in love, in love, and miraculously the man she loved was smiling at her, loving her right back, and all she was asking was that he slide on a little sand for her.

She thought of the impossibility of asking either of her parents to do such a thing, or James, and she wondered why she hadn’t seen it? The fault had never been in her. It had been in them. They’d chosen the wrong daughter, the wrong wife. Their perfect daughter, perfect wife was maybe out there somewhere but it wasn’t her, and whoever it was who wanted to be blonde and perfect and servile, well, good luck to them. It wasn’t her.

‘Slide or nothing,’ she said.

‘You will kiss the bruises? Slide and everything?’ Ben asked, and that gorgeous twinkle was back, the twinkle she’d first met twenty years ago, the Ben twinkle, of mischief, life and laughter.

‘Everything,’ she said, and turned and headed up the sand bank, and she knew he’d follow.

And he did.

Two minutes later two very wet, very sandy doctors emerged from a shallow wave, laughing and spluttering, and Ben was holding Ginny and Ginny was holding Ben, and she knew that here was her home.

Here was her love. Her life. Her whole.

And then—after all the bruises had been very satisfactorily kissed and a few other places besides—because it seemed like the right time, the right place, the right everything, Ben took Ginny’s hand and led her back to the pub. Squid’s wake was just starting to wind up but most of the islanders were still there.

They turned to stare in amazement at the picture of the two sodden island doctors, Ben’s suit dripping, Ginny even wearing a bit of seaweed.

They stood in the doorway and Ben held Ginny’s hand tightly while the voices faded and every eye was on them.

‘We have an announcement to make,’ Ben said to the whole pub, the whole island, the whole world. ‘I’d like to tell everyone who’s listening that Ginny has just agreed to marry me. And, Squid, if you’re listening up there, no, it’s not your fault but you lent a hand. The lady loves me, ladies and gentleman, and the next ceremony on this island’s going to be a wedding.’

* * *

And so it was.

Ginny’s wedding to James had taken place in Sydney’s biggest cathedral, with a luxury reception in a lush ballroom overlooking Sydney Harbour.

Ginny’s wedding to Ben took place in the small island chapel where they’d said goodbye to Squid, and the reception took place on the beach.

Simple, Ginny had decreed, but she didn’t quite have her way. The islanders prepared a party to end all parties. Ailsa made her a dress that was breathtakingly lovely, with a sweetheart neckline, a cinched waist and a skirt that flowed out in a full circle if she spun.

And she did spin, as Ben took her into his arms and proceeded to jive instead of doing a bridal waltz.

‘You can’t waltz on sand,’ he decreed, and she didn’t think she could jive on sand either, but it seemed she could.

And did.

So did Button, dressed in a gorgeous pink dress the same style as Ginny’s, jiving along with Henry, who was enjoying himself very much indeed. He was back living in the manager’s residence at the vineyard now, pottering in the vineyard, falling in love with Button, deeply content with the way life was turning out. Looking forward to Ben and Ginny and Button sharing the big house.

He’d decreed Button was now his family, as was the tiny black and white kitten that followed Button everywhere. As for Button, she was pretty much in heaven. The heart specialist had decided surgery would be necessary to repair a slight abnormality but it could wait, he said. No rush. No drama. For now they could settle into what they were.

Family.