Tyringham Park (32 page)

“I won’t waste my time.” Charlotte’s disappointment at her mother's attitude to the baby cancelled the usual caution she adopted when speaking to her. “I never
believed Teresa Kelly took Victoria, nor did anyone else except you – she would never have done anything so selfish.”

“I’ll thank you not to use that tone of voice with me. How would you have the faintest idea what that woman would do? You were a mere child at the time she was at the
Park.”

Charlotte stiffened. “I have to go. They’ll be waiting outside. Harcourt is ready to take us to the train. We can’t afford to delay as we might miss our later connections. Is
there anything else you want to say to me before I go?”

“Just remember who you are and where you come from. Now take these.”

Charlotte accepted the tickets her mother held out to her and thought it only fair to thank her for being so efficient at organising the wedding.

“Think nothing of it. Have a good trip.” Edwina remained rigid as if to stave off any last-minute show of affection. “I’ll stay on here until you’ve
gone.”

“Goodbye, Mother.” Charlotte’s mind blanked when she tried to think of something significant to say. To cover the awkward moment she flicked through the tickets and looked at
the itinerary – Cobh, Southampton, Canary Islands, Capetown. “This says our destination is Capetown. Why are we going to Capetown?”

“Because of the short notice that was the nearest destination I could find. Cooks assured me you won’t have any trouble securing a passage between there and Sydney.”

Charlotte’s eye came to the last entry:
Return – Void.

“But these are only one-way tickets.” She looked at her mother in disbelief.

“Yes?”

“I thought a couple of years – three at most – would be sufficient.”

“Do you personally know anyone who has returned from Australia? Now off you go and remember everything I’ve said. I’ll send you your instructions in the post.”

Lochlann was standing with his family in the graveyard beside the church. He didn’t seem to notice when Charlotte joined them and clutched his arm with too much force.
His solemn expression made him look even more handsome than usual, but older.

“I’ve said my goodbyes,” he said in a flat voice. “I told them we would slip off without any fuss.” There had been no wedding breakfast arranged by the
Blackshaws.

The pair followed an equally serious Harcourt, who had kept his word about not speaking to Charlotte. Lochlann looked back at the last minute and raised his hand in a gesture of farewell to his
mother, father and Iseult, but they had already started to walk off with their heads lowered and didn’t see him.

Australia
1939

Scottie Cunningham guessed who the two strangers on the platform were when he arrived to collect the mailbags. He was looking forward to hearing their story, which by the look
of them, would be no ordinary one.

The overdressed woman was flushed and damp from the heat. Looking as if she was about to pass out at any minute, she was leaning against the paling fence in the shade, her eyes closed. Her
companion, who must be her husband though he looked too young for the role, was trying to keep the flies away from her face with the vigorous flapping of a folded newspaper. If their clothes and
luggage didn’t already signal them as newcomers, that action with the newspaper did – give them a few weeks and they would be taking the presence of flies for granted. If the woman
removed her tweed jacket and undid the buttons on the high neck of her blouse she would be less likely to be suffering from heat exhaustion. It made Scottie, in his shorts and singlet, feel
uncomfortable just to look at her.

The stranger checked that the woman beside him was in a comfortable position, before coming forward with his hand outstretched to meet the mailman.

“Scottie Cunningham?”

“That’s right, mate. I was just about to make myself known. You the new doctor?”

“I am. Lochlann Carmody. How did you guess?”

“We’ve been expecting you.” He grinned. “Plus your accent.”

“The stationmaster said you would be able to give us a lift.”

“Happy to oblige. The lady feeling crook?”

Lochlann hadn’t heard ‘crook’ before but guessed what it meant.

“She is. She’s prone to travel sickness. The boat trip over was a nightmare for her and the twelve-hour train trip from Sydney didn’t help. Couldn’t sleep.”

“She’ll be as right as rain once we get her up the mountain where it is cooler. Talking to Matron only yesterday. She said she’d send someone down to meet you if she had any
idea when you were due to arrive.”

“We had no idea ourselves. No one seems to have heard of Redmundo and we didn’t have a clue.”

“We’re a bit off the beaten track, all right, but that’s how we like it. Greatest little place on earth.”

The men heard a moaning sound and looked over to see Charlotte slipping sideways. Lochlann was by her side in a second and eased her back into a sitting position.

When Scottie was introduced to Charlotte and heard her plummy accent he was convinced that their story wouldn’t be a straightforward one. His wife Jean would be dying to be the first to
know. He was confident he would find out during the next few hours – it was amazing how much people would tell you in the intimacy of the cabin of a truck that they would never divulge under
ordinary circumstances.

“Has your wife anything lighter to put on before we start?” Scottie asked Lochlann in a low voice.

“I beg your pardon,” said Charlotte, overhearing. She pulled her jacket more tightly around her.

“No offence, Mrs Carmody. Take advice from an old hand. I’ve seen a few in my day become crook from wearing wool in this climate. Especially black wool – it absorbs the heat.
The consequences can be serious. Even you mightn’t know that, Doc, being new. We can’t afford to stand on ceremony here.”

“So I see.” Charlotte, who had learnt from her father how important it was that British colonisers wear formal dress even in the tropics to demonstrate the superiority of their
civilisation to the natives, wasn’t about to let the side down on her first day. “I am perfectly all right, thank you.”

“Have it your own way, then. Come on, I’ll give you a hand.”

The two men supported her between them. Scottie had to reach in through the window to open the passenger door as the outside handle had broken off.

“In you go,” he said, standing on the running board to get better leverage as Lochlann passed her up. He could tell by the look on Charlotte’s face she didn’t like being
handled by him, but in her fragile state she didn’t have much option.

“Did you bring some Irish bullion with you?” asked Scottie, picking up one end of the trunk. “This weighs a ton.”

“No such luck,” said Lochlann, taking the other end to help lift it over the tailboard into the back. “Reference books. Thought I’d better bring the lot seeing I
won’t have any colleagues to confer with.”

“You can say that again. We couldn’t even rustle up a retired doctor these last few months.” Scottie was now warming to his favourite role – introducing someone from the
Old World to the hardships of the New. “Forty miles in one direction, sixty in the other before you run into one. Taking the state of the roads into account, you can double that distance. Are
we glad to see you!” He fastened the tailgate with a lever on one side and a loop of barbed wire on the other, gave it a slap and beamed at Lochlann. “Rightio, then! We’re
off!”

Charlotte’s face was bright red. Her blouse, soaked with perspiration, had black smuts dotted across the front of it, souvenirs from their trip on the steam train.

“The humidity’s what gets you,” said Scottie, sitting on the towel that prevented the seat from burning the backs of his bare suntanned legs. He accelerated as smoothly as the
old vehicle would allow.

Lochlann, holding Charlotte with her head on his shoulder, felt the heat radiating from her and, concerned, began to slip off her jacket.

“Don’t,” she mumbled in her half-awake state, shrugging off his hand.

“Sorry, doctor’s orders,” he said, continuing with the task as if she were a child. “There, now. Isn’t that better?”

While Scottie concentrated on making a right-hand turn Charlotte rearranged her smocked maternity blouse.

They had been delayed for three months in Cape Town. England declared war on Germany the day they arrived and they had to wait their turn for a berth. Lochlann sent a telegram to Redmundo to
explain his delay and was lucky to be offered a short-term post at the Cape as a locum, saving himself the embarrassment of having to wire home for funds, or worse still, having to ask Charlotte
for money, something he vowed he would never do.

“I’ll only be a tick.” Scottie pulled up in front of a produce and hardware store and went in to collect goods ordered by his customers.

Charlotte stirred.

“Nearly there,” said Lochlann softly. “Go back to sleep.”

Charlotte twisted her head deeper into the hollow between his neck and shoulders, enjoying the closeness enforced on them by the limited space in the cabin despite the extra heat generated by
having her body so close to his. If the journey went on for hours she would be well pleased.

“Still out for the count. That’s good,” said Scottie, re-occupying his seat and banging the door after him. “Rang the wife to get your house ready. Only two more stops
before the mountain.”

Now that Charlotte was in a deep sleep, Lochlann turned his attention to the countryside. Everything was in such sharp focus and the light so strong he had to squint to cope with the glare. The
sky was startlingly blue: he wondered if he’d ever seen a truly blue sky before now.

“Father Daly will be pleased to have two more recruits for his congregation,” Scottie said with a question in his voice.

“Only one. My wife is Church of Ireland. Anglican.”

“Ahh.”

“And where are you from originally yourself?”

“Aberdeen. Brought here when I was two. Fifty years ago this year. Living up the mountain suits me. Couldn’t take that coastal heat for long. Daresay that applies to you as
well.” He looked meaningfully at Lochlann for too long and hit the ditch. “Don’t worry, Doc,” he laughed, making a quick corrective swerve. “You’re in safe
hands. I could do this trip blindfolded. My life wouldn’t be worth living if I lost the doctor on his first day. I’d be taken out and shot. Now, where was I?” To Lochlann’s
relief he faced forward as he continued to talk.

They crossed a long wooden bridge over the Gillenben River that divided the flat coastal region from the mountain range.

“Wait till you get an eyeful of this,” Scottie said proudly. “Bet you won’t have seen anything like it back home. My favourite stretch of road in all the world. Not that
I’ve travelled the world, but who would want to when they can live in a place like this?”

Scottie double-clutched down to low gear as the rise became steeper. “We go up three thousand feet in seven miles. Must be some sort of Aussie record.”

The road had been carved out of an escarpment covered by a rainforest. Rocks and trees above them seemed to be held in place by some gravity-defying mechanism. On the other side, Lochlann leaned
forward to see bluey-green eucalyptus trees receding in successive drops hundreds of feet at a time into the pale blue distance that led ultimately to the Pacific Ocean.

The labouring engine precluded conversation. Scottie concentrated on the bends, one of them a horseshoe and all of them blind because of the steep banks. At one time he had to pull over into the
gutter to allow a bullock team pulling a load of cedar logs to pass.

Halfway up the mountain they stopped at a waterfall to give the radiator a chance to cool. Lochlann extricated his arm from around the still-sleeping Charlotte. He crossed to the other side of
the road the better to see the top of the fall, but it was so high up it looked as if the sheet of water was coming straight from the sky. The first thing he must do after they settled in was buy a
camera. Not that a photograph could ever do justice to the sight in front of him, but he would like an image to bring back the memory of it after he returned home.

Scottie was filling a can from a spring which gushed out of the rocks and into a stone trough beside the road. Lochlann joined him. He noted with interest that the overflow from the trough ran
into the same pipe that drained the falls under the road.

“Have a taste of that!” Scottie called to Lochlann over the sound of the falling water, with a jerk of the head towards the spring. “Can’t get purer than that. Straight
from the bowels of the earth.”

He went back to the truck and used a cloth to twist off the radiator cap in such a way the rusty, boiling water didn’t spit on him. He emptied the contents of the can into the steaming
opening and screwed the cap back on.

Lochlann cupped his hands and drank from the ice-cold spring, and made a sign of approval to Scottie.

The men, damp from the spray, returned to the cabin, sitting on either side of Charlotte. Scottie drove on, constantly changing to low gear with a double shuffle to make it over successive
crests, and dealing with the boiling radiator one more time. The temperature kept dropping.

The steep incline gave way to a more gradual slope and then finally the road flattened out when they reached the top of the plateau. Lochlann’s first impression was one of space and light
from the cleared pastures, with land disappearing into the horizon, and the second was the unreal vividness of the luscious red-ochre colour of the soil banked up on either side of the road.

The engine, now cruising along in top gear, was quiet enough for Scottie to speak without shouting.

“Nearly there.” They passed a little wooden church on the left. “Yours,” said Scottie, pointing. “We’re coming into the town now. Population, one thousand.
Main industries timber, cattle, potatoes, dairy. Butter factory and a bacon factory. And there’s your hospital. Twenty-two beds. Plenty for our needs. Matron’s highly qualified –
salt of the earth and all that, but a bit of a wowser.”