Guardian Nurse (5 page)

Cook tapped on the door and handed in tea and
a
bundle of fashion magazines for Frances to see which she thought would be suitable for the grey material. When she returned for the cup Frances pointed out
a
waisted style in a stock pattern that she believed should be able to be purchased in Mirramunna.

Cook approved of it and Frances said she would buy it when she drove into town.
They
discussed accessories, then Cook went off.

And still Jason slept.

How long after it
was
that
she
decided she should waken Jason up, Frances could not answer later to
Burn
West.
And certainly that angry face of his did
not help.

‘Not in his bed?’ The big man seemed to tower above her. ‘Then where is he?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘How long has he been gone? Has he walked in his sleep?’

‘I don’t know. I—I just thought he was still resting ... it was quite an event for him today.’

‘When did you check up last?’

Frances stood in utter misery. ‘Not after I put him down. First there was lunch, and then there was the salesman, and then
I—’

‘In short, you forgot all about him.’

‘Yes,’ she admitted, ‘I did for a while. But afterwards I thought about him and how we must begin lessons.’

‘You mean
he
must begin lessons. That is’ ... the man turned on his heel ... ‘if he’
s
here to begin anything at all!’

‘Mr. West, what do you mean? He can’t have gone
far. His poor little leg is so slow that
—
’

‘
He
can’t go far, no, but he can be—taken.’

‘Taken?’ she echoed.

‘By someone else.’

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘Don’t try. Just find the boy, or at least do something else than stand there and bleat
!’

She was cut to the quick. Even allowing for the man’s anxiety (though for the life of her Frances could not understand the
extent
of that anxiety, for it was quite true that Jason could not move freely, indeed that any progress he made must be painfully slow) Frances still thought that West was being totally unfair.

But she turned with him, left the house when he did and began to search. Within minutes all the home
s
tead was searching.

‘What will happen next?’ Frances asked Sandra when she encountered the girl down in the orchard searching, as she
was,
through the taller bittersweet that possibly might conceal
a
little boy.

‘Mr. West will ring up Mirramunna, bring in the district police, I expect.’

‘But he can’t have gone far. It’s impossible. Unless...’ She looked at the river.

‘Yes,’ nodded Sandra, looking in the same direction. ‘The men are down there now. Some of them have taken the car further along the stream.’

Frances tried to steady a trembling lip.

At dusk Jason was still missing. Now even Cook was searching; no one would be asking for dinner tonight.

For the third time Frances went down and looked at the little red boat. It was like a boy, she had thought, to get into it, later to curl up and go to sleep. She stared emptily at it as she had the first time, then began edging around the river upstream, peering in the half light for any small mark on the bank, or print on the narrow strip of sand.

She came at last to where they had panned this morning. How Jason had loved that. Could he have returned to it again himself? But no, it was a long and painful way to drag a useless leg. Besides, he would have been seen.

But not seen when they were all at the meal table.
Had the child possessed the cunning to lie doggo and wait until he could return here himself? Return without being caught, even though his progress was slow, since all the grown-ups were somewhere else? Had he only
pretended
sleep when
Burn
had carried him back? He had loved this spot. He had not wanted to return to the house. Had he laboriously conquered the distance to the first concealing copse of trees while they had lunched, unsuspecting, and after that progressed in slow but achieving stages? But if he had, where was he now? She glanced fearfully at the river.—‘Not just yet, sonno,’
Burn
West had refused the boy, ‘that leg of yours isn’t up to managing soft banks and you could go for a drink.’

She remembered that little dropped lip.
Had
he come back himself? And if that had happened now
downstream was a posse of men finding a little
—

No.
No!

‘Jason,’ she shouted, ‘Jason
!’

There was, of course, no answer, there had been no answer all along. About to go away again, look elsewhere, she heard something that was not even the beginning of a whimper, so soft it was, so smothered, but her trained ears caught it; she had not served in a children’s ward not to hear even the catch of a child’s breath. She knew she was not mistaking that tiny, half
-
swallowed sob.

She found him in the lean-to in the copse of river oaks. Evidently it had banged tight from the inside so that no one would have dreamed of looking there.

‘It shutted on me,’ Jason sobbed.

‘Why didn’t you scream out, darling?’

‘I was tired. After a while I went to sleep.’

‘Again?’

‘I wasn’t asleep before, I was just waiting to come back to find gold to go on that rocket ship. I knew you would all be having lunch and not see me. But’ ... a trembling lip ... ‘it was a long way back here.’

A long way! Frances’ own lip trembled as she pictured the little boy’s arduous argosy.

‘Oh, Jason
!’
she cried, and had she not been shaking with relief she would have noticed that Jason was
not
drawing back from her now.

She drew him out of the lean-to, called a loud cooee, then started back with him in her arms.

Halfway there
Burn
West relieved her silently, and they returned as they had earlier in the day, only this time Jason did not pretend sleep. He was looking at his father rather nervously and Frances did not wonder. It was a
very
solemn face.

‘You can feed him and put him to bed, Miss Peters’ .... West did not speak to Jason ... ‘then feed yourself. A wash won’t do any harm.’ He was looking at her bedraggled clothes. ‘Then’... a pause... ‘come to my study.’

‘Yes,’ she said bleakly. She knew what was coming.

...‘You mean
he
must begin lessons,’ this man had said to her. Lessons, she had thought, and thought again now, that were
not
taught by her.

‘I have a few things to say to you,’ Burn West went on. Then, almost wearily, defeatedly, ‘I expect they have to be said.’

CHAPTER FOUR

But w
hen he said the ‘few things’ later in the study they were very brief, very bare.—
And not what she had expected.

Seeing her surprise, he lifted his chin up from where he had slumped it in the cupped palm of his big hand and burst out... if a man like
Burn
West could speak impetuously ... ‘I can’t tell you any more, there are too many gaps, too many half-truths—doubts, subtleties, innuendoes.’

But Frances’ surprise, at first, had not been the economy of his words, not what he said, though the impact of
that
came soon after; it had been the fact that she was not receiving the dismissal she had come for.

Then, close on the heels of the first surprise, his strange words re-echoed starkly.

‘Jason,’ he had said, ‘is in danger of—well, being carried off.’

‘Could you mean-—kidnapped?’

‘That would be putting it in the cloak and dagger manner,’ he half-shrugged, ‘less dramatic and more honestly would be: Jason could be taken away.’

‘But how ... why?’

It was then he had hunched his big shoulders and admitted wretchedly that he had no right and little basis to go any further.

“Too many gaps, too many half-truths—doubts,
subtleties, innuendoes.’

‘But, Mr. West
—
’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t even intend to say that much, I haven’t any foundation, but after what has happened today, after the flat spin I put on, I knew I must make some sort of explanation to you.’

She looked at him steadily. ‘Can I ask at least taken by whom?’

‘His—mother’s side,’ he said baldly. The bitterness of his mouth explained fully why he had not answered ‘Jason’s mother’ or ‘My wife’.

A few minutes went past in silence. Then Frances asked quietly, ‘That’s all I can have?’

‘That’s all I can give you. I just wanted you to understand why I was so upset today. It wasn’t just accident, mishap, it was
...’
He lapsed into silence again.

There were numbers of things that Frances wanted to say. Like, it not being very satisfactory for her. Like, how did he expect her to take up from the few poor shreds he had tossed her? Instead she heard herself telling him a little childishly, ‘I came prepared for dismissal.’

‘Dismissal? You?’ He stared incredulously at her.

‘You’ve made no bones about my being unsatisfactory.’

‘You actually thought that? No ... no, it was the
other. It coloured everything. Oh no, Frances
—
’ He
stopped short at his spontaneous use of her name. ‘Miss Peters,’ he corrected.

‘I would prefer Frances,’ she proffered. ‘It’s less formal in front of the boy. Too much formality is a disadvantage.’

‘Only if you retaliate,’ he bargained.

‘Bern for Bernard?’

‘As a matter of fact it’s the more painful form—
Burn
. B-u-r-n. Short for Burnley.’

‘Burn,’ she agreed.

‘I’ll address you as the sonno does,’ he said in his turn. ‘France.’ He had recovered himself now and was performing his ritual of paper and tobacco. ‘So you thought I was giving you the bullet?’

‘You did say,’ she reminded him, ‘that Jason must start lessons, but made no mention of my teaching him.’

‘You, Jason and lessons are in the same breath. I think you’re keen to begin. Would you like to talk about it?’

She sensed that he needed her to talk, that he was still unnerved by the raw statement he had made to her. She could scarcely believe it herself.
Had
she heard aright?
Had
Burn, not Bern, West said: ‘Jason is in danger of being taken away’?

With a mental shake of herself Frances changed the subject, as she knew he wanted her to, to the safer channel of education.

‘My training entailed a course dealing with the child of higher intelligence,’ she began. ‘I feel strongly that Jason is one of these brighter lit
tl
e buttons.’

‘Can you tell that, with the lack of formal lessons he has suffered?’ he put in.

‘I believe so. There are lots of little things I’ve noticed in him that promise a quick catching up, even a passing, of the standard he should be in. Also he has a vivid imagination.’ She was thinking of France and Be
rn
e.

‘No poets in the family,’
Burn
West dismissed of the latter, ‘but the grey matter should be there, I think. How do you intend to start the boy? Do you want me to send for the correspondence lessons?’

‘I think they can wait a while until Jason is literally looking around for them. I know he’s seven and a half, but I feel’ ... sensitively, sensitive for the man on the other side of the desk ... ‘that a lot of the things a young child has experienced, Jason has not.’

He was ashing the cigarette. He nodded briefly.

‘Then we’ll do the more baby things first,’
she
suggested, ‘things he may have missed out on.’ She flashed him an apologetic look. ‘I thought I could begin Jason while he’s still slow in moving, though’ ... a
lit
t
le
half
-
smile ... ‘he certainly must have moved today
—
’

‘I think,’ cut in
Burn
West, half smiling, too, ‘his progress was more dogged than inspired. He was certainly resolved to get back to the panning.’