Women and War (25 page)

‘You see, Alys, you have been caught! I told you it was not advisable for you to leave the house and now here is Dr Whitehorn to see you.'

‘I can see her perfectly well out here, Frances,' Donald Whitehorn said equably. He was a small compact man whose receding hairline gave a look of mature wisdom to his pleasantly ordinary face. ‘The fresh air will do you good, Alys.'

‘I suppose you will want us to leave you alone in that case.' Beverley got up from the lounger, managing both to look and sound the perfect martyr. ‘Robyn – now where are you, darling? Auntie Alys wants some privacy.'

Frances perched herself on the edge of the sunbed Bev had left vacant. ‘I don't suppose that applies to the patient's mother, does it, Donald?' Her playful tone was more marked than ever. She was actually flirting, Alys realized with a shock.

‘It's up to Alys.' He smiled at her. ‘I have no objection.'

Alys lifted her chin a fraction. ‘I'd rather see Dr Whitehorn alone, Mother.'

A tiny frown puckered the bridge of Frances' nose. ‘What on earth do you mean, Alys? I'm concerned, naturally, about your progress. I'd like to hear what Donald has to say.'

‘Mother, please …'

‘Just a few minutes, Frances, and then I'll be happy to take up your kind offer of a cup of tea.' He patted her hand, the soul of tact, but Frances was bristling.

‘I can't think why you should want me out of the way, Alys. But since you do – I'll be in the house.' She rose. ‘Come along Beverley. Let's leave your sister with the doctor.'

Alys watched them go and sighed. Why couldn't they let her be? Why should they make her feel awkward and uncooperative simply because she wanted the basic privacies which were her right?

‘How are you feeling, Alys?' Donald Whitehorn asked. With Frances out of the way his manner had become more professional.

‘Oh, not too bad. Improving, I think. At least I made it out here – though I must confess it took more out of me than I would admit to Mother.'

‘Ah-hah!' He smiled. ‘Was that what you didn't want her to hear?'

‘Not especially. I just wanted to be able to talk to you …' she took a quick breath. ‘How do you see the future for me, Doctor?'

‘You're doing well. You're a strong young woman and you should make steady progress now back to health. I wouldn't like to say exactly how long it will be but it's my guess that before the end of the year you will be good as new.'

‘Are you sure about that?' Alys asked quietly.

‘No, I just said I wouldn't like to make a definite prediction as to how long …'

‘Not how long,' she said. ‘How completely good as new?'

She saw the muscle in his cheek tic and suddenly his eyes were avoiding hers. She saw it and felt her stomach fall away.

‘Well, Alys …' His tone was hesitant.

‘It's all right,' she said with a brightness she was far from feeling. ‘You don't have to keep the truth from me. I think I have guessed it already.'

His eyes met hers again but the cheeriness had gone from his face.

‘In that case I may as well be straight with you, Alys. Your injuries were such that although you will be able to resume a normal life in all other spheres, I am afraid it is almost certain you will never be able to be a mother.'

She had known it yet somehow it still managed to come as a shock. The soft sounds of the afternoon went on around her – the crickets still chirping in the grass, the wasps humming in the pear tree; high in the sky an aeroplane drew a white vapour trail; out on the road a car honked its horn. And closer – somewhere between here and the house – Robyn's voice, clear and childish, called: ‘Mummy! Mummy!'

She heard it all and felt far removed from it as if she was separated from that other world by a wall of crystal. Only Robyn's voice had the power to touch her, make the bridge between the pool of dangerous stillness within her and reality. Harsh cruel reality. Once she had borne a child who would have been just a little older than Robyn. But that child had been lost to her. Now there would never be another.

‘Thank you, Dr Whitehorn,' she said and was almost surprised to hear her own voice so cool and controlled. ‘ Thank you for telling me.'

‘I am sorry, Alys,' he said. ‘But you wanted to know. And I do believe that in every other respect you will be able to lead a perfectly normal life.'

She nodded. ‘Oh, yes, I shall make certain of that.' But there was a catch in her voice now.

When Donald Whitehorn left her to go back to the house and drink tea with Frances she sat for a long while in silence. It was not fair. Oh God, it was not fair. Even now, before the rawness of the truth had fully come to her, she knew there would be times when the knowledge of her incompleteness would be almost too much to bear. But thinking like that was useless. She had suspected as much and tried to prepare herself for it with the cliché she knew deep in her heart to be no less than the truth. At least she was alive. At least she still had two arms and two legs, her sight and her hearing. And one day soon she would be strong enough to take up her life where it had left off. It was a great deal more than many thousands of poor souls caught up in this war had been left with. And as a price to pay for her freedom Alys knew she would do it all again.

Tara stood on the newly constructed stage gesticulating wildly with her arms to indicate to Dev just where she needed the spot to fall. ‘Here! No – here! That's it. Now, is my face in shadow or can you see it clearly?'

‘I can see it – and very pretty it looks too!' Dev's voice called back from the darkness.

Tara's dimples tucked in annoyance. Couldn't the wretched man take this seriously for even a minute? But she bit back the sharp retort that hovered on her lips. Dev and his lights were a necessity if the concert was to go on and really he had been a tower of strength. She couldn't afford to upset him now.

‘Right. Block that one in then. And then give me another pool over here …' she moved stage left, close to the steps up which her performers would make their entrances. ‘No, here –
here
! Not on the front row of the audience!'

‘She's not only pretty, she's bossy as well!' Dev's voice remarked.

‘It's bossy I have to be if this show is ever to get off the ground!' she retorted. ‘ We haven't got this far with nothing but moonshine, I'd have you know!'

He manoeuvred the lights to the position she wanted them, blocked them in on his chart and walked down to the stage.

‘No, credit where it's due, Tara, and you're making a fine job of it,' he said, serious at last. ‘ Who would think a couple of weeks ago this was no more than a twinkle in my eye?'

It was true. In the four weeks since Tara had gained the GO's approval, arrangements for the concert had gone ahead by leaps and bounds. An orderly who had been a sign writer in civilian life had offered to paint the scenery as it was built by the carpenter and several tins of paint to do the job had mysteriously appeared one morning. Would-be performers, too, had offered their services and besides the tenor and the conjuring surgical officer, Tara had auditioned the camp dentist, who recited the poems of Banjo Patterson with the drollery that he maintained came from spending his life looking ‘down in the mouth', and a masseuse who was a wonder when it came to playing the spoons. In an effort to provide variety Tara had persuaded two of the medicos to work up a comic drag routine.

By far the most important member of the company, however, was a US airman who was a patient at the hospital. He was a talented pianist and ancient and worn-looking as the camp piano was, Joe the Yank was able to jangle it to tuneful life, playing by ear any melody required of him.

There had been hitches, of course – Tara would have been surprised if there had not been – but the CO had been as good as his word in ironing them out. When white ants threatened to eat through the stage supports, it was Colonel Adamson who signed for the release of the corrugated iron that was needed to reinforce it; when Sister Bottomley refused to allow her to change duties so as to be able to rehearse with her cast, an appeal to Colonel Adamson quickly changed that. Even the paint had necessitated a visit to his tent office when Tara learned that he had been discreetly responsible for its appearance.

‘I must say the CO has been a great help,' she said to Dev now.

Dev replied with a non-committal grunt.

‘It's true,' Tara insisted. ‘Anything that goes wrong, I have only to see him and it is all worked out for me.'

‘I'll bet it is,' Dev said sarcastically.

‘Tara's eyes narrowed. ‘Now why are you putting the CO down? You wouldn't have that nice scaffolding for your lighting box if it wasn't for him. Sure didn't he send for me and offer it himself?'

Dev swung himself up onto the stage beside her.

‘Has it not occurred to you, darlin', that he's being a bit too helpful?'

‘Certainly not! What are you saying, Sean Devlin – that the CO …?'

‘He's a man, Tara. And you are a very attractive woman.'

‘Oh fiddlesticks! It's a prude that you are!' Tara snapped, all the more tardy for the finger of guilt that prickled up her spine. Perhaps she had turned on the charm a little. She had thought of the Colonel as a staid senior officer, the very epitome of respectability, and she had played up to him a little without a thought as to the consequences. You are slipping, Tara Kelly, she told herself. You of all people should know the way it can be …

‘What is it to you, anyway?' she asked tartly. ‘ If the show is a success that's all that matters, surely? You're always putting me down and pointing the finger at my morals – what's the point of having a reputation if you don't make use of it sometimes?'

‘I ought to put you across my knee and spank you,' Dev chided but there was an undertone to his joking which suddenly made Tara uncomfortable.

‘Never mind the CO, let's get back to what is really important – this concert!' she said sharply. ‘Now, I am going to arrange for chairs for the walking wounded but everyone else is going to have to bring their own seats. And we'll pray the weather stays good.'

‘Oh, it will,' Dev assured her. ‘This is Northern Territory, remember, and there is nothing drier than the Dry here!'

‘Oh, Dev!' Tara said, solemn suddenly. ‘I'm so scared something is going to go wrong! I never realized before just how many things could. None of my turns are pros – they could dry up with stage fright or anything. Then there's the stage – I know it's been reinforced but those white ants will eat anything they can get their teeth into – it could give way beneath the lot of us. Your lights could catch fire. And me …' she broke off, pressing her hands across her mouth. ‘It's so long since I sang maybe I can't do it any more!'

‘Of course you can.'

‘How do you know, that?'

‘Because you are a trouper, Tara. Come on, I have to be getting back to Darwin.' He swung himself down off the stage and turned back to her. ‘Are you coming or do you intend to stay out here all night worrying?'

‘I'm coming.' But when she reached the edge of the stage she drew back. She was trembling a little from exhaustion and nerves and the ground suddenly looked a long way down. ‘Oh – I can't! It's too high.'

‘Wait a minute, I'll lift you.' He put his hands one each side of her waist. She hesitated for a moment but the bunched muscles in his arms looked comfortingly strong. She placed her hands on his shoulders and felt the taut ridge there also, bracing to lift her as easily as if she weighed no more than a child.

‘All right?' Her feet touched the ground but he did not release her. The pressure of his fingers through her thin blouse seemed to be raising tiny warm vessels beneath her skin and sending sharp prickly needles through her veins. Her eyes flicked up, surprised, and met his – hazel eyes flecked with green, dangerous as a tiger's and very bright in his dark tanned face. Breath caught in her throat; she could not look away. His eyes hypnotised her; for a moment it seemed that everything in her was stilled and waiting, every muscle, every nerve cell, every thought even, and the world had reduced until it held nothing but the two of them standing there just outside the beam of the lights like cardboard cut-out characters against a picture-scope. His fingers tightened on her waist and the sensitized area around them grew and spread so that the whole of her body seemed to be suffused with warmth.

‘Dev!' she tried to say: but no words would come. He was drawing her closer, she could feel his nearness through every pore in her body and his face was going out of focus. Then his lips were on hers and she was no longer thinking, only feeling.

After a long moment he pulled away, holding her by the arms. She opened her eyes to see him looking down at her but his expression was masked by shadows. ‘You see, Tara, how good we are together? Didn't I tell you that's the way it would be? And to think now I won't be seeing you again until the night of the show.'

Her brow puckered. ‘ What are you talking about?'

‘I won't be able to get down again until then. I have business that will keep me tied up – you know I'm doing some work for the Government? They want it finished in a hurry.'

His words had sobered her and Tara became aware of sounds in the shadows telling her someone was there, only yards away. She jerked her head around, wondering who it was and whether they had seen her and Dev, and embarrassment made her tone sharp. ‘You're not going to let me down, are you?'

‘Now, would I do a thing like that? I'll be here in plenty of time to set up for you, darling.' He was still holding her by the arms. She gave a little shake but he held her fast. ‘ Come here.'

‘No!' she glanced over her shoulder into the soft dark. ‘Will you let me go? There's someone there!'