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‘Did he?’ Magnus had put it the other way round, Paddy thought, but then Magnus would. ‘Well, he must have had second thoughts. He’s now Into the Light.’

‘Ah! ’ smiled Kip appreciatively. He pressed her hand. They stood for quite a while with their hands locked. ‘Why did you leave Yoothamurra, Kip?’ Paddy asked presently.

‘One of those things. He never dismissed me and I never walked out on him. It just dissolved, I guess you could say. I simply found myself preferring to work here.’

‘More wages?’

‘Let’s say greater prospects. But let’s not talk about me any more, Padua. Would you like to come into Standen and look around?’

‘Not now,’ she said. ‘I only came out on impulse.’

‘An appreciated impulse.’

‘Appreciated, too, by me. Mr David and I had had a few words. I just felt I must get out.’

‘Keep feeling like that, and every time I’ll be waiting. By the way, Padua, after you put your kids to bed of a night is your day’s work over?’

‘Well, yes, I think it should be.’

‘Then why not come across to the club with me some time ? The Plateau Club, quite tasteful. It will be mostly horse talk you’ll hear, but not, I promise, at our table.’

‘And what talk there?’ she smiled.

‘Come and hear. It’s quite nice—good décor, a small but excellent orchestra. In a minor way the city come to the bush.’

‘I like the bush,’ Paddy confided.

‘And you’ll like the club. Will you?’

‘Does he go?’ she asked.

‘He does not. Not his cup of tea at all.’

‘Is that why you’re asking me? Because you know you won’t see him?’

‘I’m asking you because I want you,’ Kip said firmly. ‘But his absence, I must admit, makes it more attractive. And after all, why shouldn’t you step out?’

‘Why shouldn’t I?’ Paddy agreed. She said regretfully ‘I really must go now.’

‘Then till next time. Say that for me.’

'Till next time,’ smiled Paddy, and she turned and walked back to Yoothamurra.

The break had done her good, and she set to heating up the prepared meal that the boys would be looking forward to the moment they got in.

She emptied the jars into saucepans, then stacked the jars for Mrs Dermott to take back when she came tomorrow with fresh supplies. What a life, she smiled— she had not been called upon to cook once. Still ... picking up the banana book... she wouldn’t have minded trying her hand.

When the wards arrived, though the meal was as appetising as Mrs Dermott always made it, they did not do it justice. Paddy supposed that the two stableboys had over-eaten at lunch, and as for the schoolboys ... well, everyone knew schoolboys.

‘Have you a tuckshop?’ she asked them, suspecting a sweet feast during the day.

No, no tuck, nothing at all, it was just a one-room school in the valley, no shops, no stalls. Paddy, at a nod from the seniors, decided to believe that. She asked more questions but only got brief answers, not because of any secrecy, she thought, but because they were tired. The older ones looked tired, too. But teenage boys were never tired, she frowned.

There was no trouble in getting them to bed, indeed they were eager to go, and Paddy was putting out the unit lights and preparing to go to her own quarters when the telephone rang.

It was the first time it had pealed, and she crossed the room and took up the receiver suspiciously. She knew that the main connection was to the master flat, and that any calls had to be put through from there. Surely Kip had not rung up to fix up a definite date for the club? It would be embarrassing talking to him when one knew that two listened. Not necessarily perhaps, but Paddy still felt that Magnus David would do just that.

But it was not Kip asking David could he be put through, it was Magnus David himself.

‘Miss Travis?’

‘Yes.’—Who else could he think it was?

‘I’ve had a message from Mrs Dermott.’

‘Yes?’

‘She’s ill,’ he told her. ‘Can’t attend in the morning.’

‘Oh, that will be all right,’ said Paddy.

‘I haven’t finished. It’s likely she’ll be unable to attend all the week. She’s come down with that new virus that has reached the north coast, one that I hoped they’d keep down there, not send up to the plateau.’

‘You mean there are more cases?’

‘So I’ve been told, and still more expected. It’s a really vicious strain. I only hope we can keep the wretched thing down.’

‘Can it spread to the stables?’

‘No, man can’t transmit his diseases there, nor horses to man, but if the hands go down it’s going to be hard. Most of all I want the boys to miss it if at all possible. Any suggestions?’

‘Well,’ said Paddy, ‘the two schoolboys could stay at home—germs spread through classes like wildfire. But I doubt if they’ll want that, they quite seem to like their school, even though they weren’t very communicative tonight.’

‘What’s that?’ sharply.

“They went to bed early, the whole four of them,’ she explained.

‘Oh, lor’!’

‘But don’t worry yet, the young... and after all, they still are very young ... recuperate quickly. Why, by tomorrow ’

But by the next day the four were laid low. Pains, cramps, aches, nausea, the whole bit.

When he came in at night to ask Paddy if she considered it absolutely necessary for the coast doctor to come up as he was already cruelly overworked, Magnus David looked so worn that Paddy caught her breath.

‘You really should be in bed yourself,’ she said.

‘Can’t. We’re shockingly under-staffed.’

‘Can’t you get anyone in?’

‘All the studs are suffering the same.’

‘... Standen?’

‘Probably.’

'They mightn’t be.’

‘No, but I’d never ask them.’

That’s foolish,’ said Paddy. ‘A Kip Norris worked here once, so I’ve been told, so surely he’d work again ... that is, unless he’s gone down, too.’

‘I will not have Norris,’ snapped Magnus. ‘Understood? I think you’re right, I think I am going to be under the weather for a while, but that’s still my last word, Miss Travis. No Norris: Understood?’

‘It should be, you’ve said it twice.’

‘No Norris—Three times. Now I’ll leave you. Sorry to be no help to you, but it would be worse still if I stayed. Perhaps if I hit myself with lemon and rum ’

‘No good at all,’ said Paddy.

‘Thank you for the advice, Doctor, but I will all the same.’

During the night Paddy heard him coughing, and because the boys were producing the same racking sounds she knew the worst.

When she got up, she checked, and yes, it was true. She had five patients on her hands.

Rest
and warmth—Paddy knew they were the two cardinal rules for ’flu, so she administered both relentlessly. She had no trouble with the boys. They were so sick not even a Melbourne Cup would have got them out of their beds, but she did, visiting Magnus later, have trouble there. Magnus, pale and drained, wobbly, hollow-eyed, still wanted to go across to the stud.

‘You’ll stay where you are,’ Paddy ordered.

‘You don’t understand. The stables ’

‘The stables are being well tended. No one has succumbed there yet.’ It was a lie. Paddy had not been down to find out. ‘The schoolboys must have brought the bugs from class,' she went on, ‘and so far it’s only confined here.' That was another lie, Paddy had heard that most of the plateau was infected.

‘What about you?’ Magnus mumbled weakly.

‘I’m fine. I had preventive injections in Sydney.' Another lie, the ’flu was a new strain and no vaccine was available yet.

‘I still think—

‘Drink this as you do so.’ She put a hot toddy in his hand, laced with something else besides rum, a rather strong sedative. Well, rightly or wrongly she had to keep him in that bed.

He fell asleep almost at once, and when his breathing got quite profound, Paddy went back to her boys.

Sick as they were now, they were no trouble. They were a worry, though, and Paddy contacted the coast doctor, for there was no medico up here. A tired voice answered her. No, said Doctor Williams, he could not possibly get up, he had too much already on his plate here. Yes, hot lemon and aspirin, and if she was really alarmed then some antibiotic that Magnus David would no doubt have in his emergency medicine chest.

Meanwhile, unless the sufferer was under five or over sixty-five, there was nothing else to do, and no need to send a nurse ... if they could rustle up one, and they couldn’t. It was useless, too, thinking of vaccines; the damage was done, also the ’flu had caught the country unprepared, there had been no pertinent preventative prepared yet.

‘Just common sense, my dear,' Doctor Williams said in an asleep-on-his-feet tone. ‘By any happy chance are you something of a nurse yourself?’

‘Something only.’

Then you are a nurse,’ encouraged Doctor Williams, and rang off.

All that day, and the next, Paddy ran from flat to flat, tending, applying, changing soaked sheets, pressing cooling foments to brows, keeping warm, keeping cool, persuading to take sips and bites.

The third day she saw a change in the boys, but not, yet, Magnus. Magnus was still very ill. What made him worse was his continual worry. The stable, the horses, the blind mare and her foal... the white hope Into the Light.

'They’re all right,' Paddy assured him.

‘How do you know?’

‘I’ve been there,’ she lied... how many more lies? ... ‘and all the hands are in the pink. You’re being done without very well, thank you.’

‘Oh.’ For the first time he looked a little better, and presently he slept, not tightly as before, heavily, but with easier and regular breathing, and a pinker look about him as he did so.

It was that burden off his mind, Paddy knew... and at once she knew the burden on hers. How did she know that the men in the stables were unaffected? It had been easy to tell the lie to Magnus, but what if they were shorthanded down there ? What if

The more she thought about it, Paddy knew she must find out. She looked at Magnus and saw that he would sleep for hours, looked in at the boys and saw that although they were improved they were still not up to the stage of moving, then quickly left the house.

The first thing that struck her was the quietness of the world outside the house. Usually there was a sound somewhere ... a rattle of a bucket, a ring of a hoof as a horse was exercised, a clang, distant voices, laughter, men yarning.

It was a completely silent world.

Shivering a little, Paddy hurried across the field. She expected victims. An attack like this must strike some of them down, even though they were hard, tough, outdoor men, and never seemed to ail anything, but what greeted Paddy really shook her.

There was absolutely no one in attendance. There never were many, for the stud was run automatically, but there were several strappers, stablehands, exercise boys, and the resident caretaker was always here. These, with Richard and Paul, and, of course, Big Boss, had been enough. Now she could see no one.

She went from outbuilding to outbuilding without meeting one man, then ran ... for she was definitely alarmed now ... across to the caretaker’s. His neat little cottage was unlocked, and Paddy walked in. There was no one there, and for an hysterical moment Paddy thought of the
Marie Celeste
... then she saw the note on the table.

‘Crook. Gone to Joe’s.’ Joe was the book-keeper. ‘Sorry. Sam.’

Paddy put the letter down. That meant an entirely empty stud, and she had told Magnus

She did a round of the stables. Everything seemed to be all right. The sick hands, before they had left, had prepared everything, and the fodder and water were mechanically controlled. But prize bloodstock needed more than that, Paddy fretted. They needed grooming, exercise, things that could not be done by automata.

She went across to blind Melisande’s paddock. The mare was cropping peacefully, her ears as always on the alert for her child, for her ears had to act, too, for her sightless eyes.

‘Dear Melisande,’ Paddy fondled, ‘you’re all right, anyhow, and so is your daughter, but what about your firstborn, the white hope? How is Into the Light?’ She hurried across now to see.

There was no difference in Magnus’s special boy, but Paddy was sensible enough to see that there could be. A carefully nurtured animal like this needed constant attention, and where was any constant attention? Where was any attention at all ?

‘I can’t give it to you,’ she told the acorn-coloured beauty forlornly, ‘I’ve five of my own to attend to, and even if I had time I haven’t the learning. That takes skill and know-how and ’

She stopped. She knew someone who did have skill and know-how, in fact even Magnus had spoken of him as the best trainer he had had: Kip.

She wondered if Kip, too, had succumbed. Not that it made any difference if he hadn’t, of course, she still couldn’t possibly, she would still never—Why, Magnus David would never forgive her.

Yet in a case like this ... Paddy looked at the lovely creature again in its well prepared, well planned but still restricted box.

At that moment Into the Light whinnied, and Paddy knew what had to be done. She went back to the house.

The boys had drifted off to sleep again, they looked brighter and much better, but they were still weak and still in need of bed. She checked Magnus. He slept very deeply now. She went out to the hall, switched through the phone to her own unit for privacy, then went and rang Standen Stud.

Rather to her surprise, for she had expected a delay while Kip was found, Kip answered himself.

‘Norris here.’

‘It’s Paddy, Kip.’

‘Padua, my dear!’ he exclaimed.

‘Kip, I’m concerned,’ she told him.

‘Not as concerned as I’ve been about you. I heard through the plateau grapevine that Yoothamurra went down badly with the bug.’

‘Not I ... well, not yet.’ Paddy added that because all at once she was feeling terribly tired. ‘But,’ she said, ‘the rest.’

‘By the rest you mean ?’

‘All the hands, the boys ’

‘David?’

‘Yes.’

Kip whistled from the other end.