Читать книгу Sarah's Baby - Margaret Way - Страница 9

LATE THAT AFTERNOON Sarah drove into the desert to scatter her mother’s ashes. Harriet sat beside her in the passenger seat, her mother’s friend Cheryl in the back.

Red sand streamed off in the wind, the four-wheel-drive bouncing over the golden spinifex clumps that partially stabilized the dunes. It was an unending vista, awe-inspiring in its vastness. Low sand plains and ridges extended to the horizon, dotted here and there with a tremendous variety of flowering shrubs and stunted mallee, the branches of which were bent into weird scarecrow shapes.

Desert birds flew with them—the lovely swirls of budgerigar in flocks of thousands, trailing bolts of emerald silk across the sky, the countless little finches and honeyeaters, the pink and gray galahs, the brilliant mulga parrots and the snow-white sulfur-crested corellas that congregated in great numbers in the vicinity of permanent water holes. Apart from early morning, welcoming the sunrise, this was the time of day the birds were most active. In the noontime heat they preferred to preen or doze in the trees to escape the blinding intensity of the sun.

Sarah crossed Koomera Creek at a point where the iridescent green waters had subsided to a shallow, tranquil pool that, up until their approach, reflected the fresh, light green foliage of the river red gums. The brassy glare of the sun was now giving way to a sunset that spread its glory across the sky, innumerable shades of pink, rose and scarlet streaked with yellow and mauve, the whole brushed with deepest gold.

Sarah knew where she was headed. A solitary white-trunked ghost gum that grew out of a rocky outcrop some quarter of a mile on. It was a marker for anyone who got temporarily lost or disoriented in the dizzying wilderness, with its head-spinning, extravagant colors. Burned umber, fiery reds, glowing rust and yellow ochres, pitch-black and a white that glared in the sun.

“We’re here.” Sarah spoke quietly, looking up at the stark white bole and delicate gray-green canopy of the ghost gum, which stood like a sculpture against the incandescent sky.

All three were silent as they approached the curious stony outcrop, its surface so polished by the windblown sands that it reflected all the colors of the setting sun.

When it was time to release her mother’s ashes, Sarah walked alone to the base of the ghost gum, while Harriet and Cheryl stood side by side, quietly saying a prayer for their friend.

“No more heartache, Mamma,” Sarah told her mother silently. “What I did cost you dearly. Forgive me. The Lord will protect and look after you now. You’ll never be alone. Dad will come for you now. Life wouldn’t have been so hard for you had Dad lived. But that’s all past for you, Mamma. Go with God.”

WHEN THEY ARRIVED back in town, Sarah dropped Cheryl off first, both women hugging silently and swiftly. But Harriet’s thick dark brows knit when Sarah drew up at her old colonial, the front door guarded by an eight-foot-high Maori totem pole.

“How do you feel, my dear?” Harriet asked.

Sarah let her head fall back. “Empty. I think that’s the word, Harriet. My mother didn’t have a happy life or an easy life. I wanted her to come to me, but she wouldn’t.”

Harriet thrust out her strong chin. “Listen, my dear, don’t blame yourself for anything there. You were a fine daughter to your mother. I remember very clearly how Muriel’s face lit up every time we talked about you. You realized your ambitions. She was proud of that.”

“They came at a cost.” The words left Sarah’s lips before she could draw them back.

Harriet, too, sat back, still frowning. “I’ve always thought that, Sarah, although you’ve maintained a poised and dignified facade.”

“I learned that from you.” Sarah turned her head to smile.

Harriet’s thin cheeks crinkled into an answering smile. “Ah, my dear, with a face like mine, dignity’s all you’ve got,” she announced mock mournfully. “You were the best pupil I ever had and I’ve had a few that have gone on to make names for themselves, like Charlie Garbutt.”

“I was never as brilliant as Charlie,” Sarah gently scoffed.

“Charlie was and is entirely focused on other planets. He’s brilliant and respected worldwide as an astronomer, but you were more of an all-rounder. Interested in earth-lings, mostly. I don’t think I could’ve wished for three better pupils than you, Charlie and Kyall, who found passing exams with flying colors a piece of cake. Even when you didn’t study. Incredible, the bond between you and Kyall,” Harriet mused, touching the lace on her rather grand, faded gray dress. “Then it was all over.”

“It had to be, Harriet. You know that.” Sarah sighed uncomfortably.

“I know no such thing!” Harriet ripped off her glasses and rubbed furiously at her aristocratic high-bridged nose. “There’s so much I didn’t understand, Sarah.”

“Yes,” was all Sarah could muster.

“Are you coming in with me, my dear?” Harriet heard the exhaustion in Sarah’s voice. “I’ve got a bed made up for you. I don’t like the idea of your going back to the shop.”

Sarah shook her head. “You don’t have to worry about me, Harriet, but thanks all the same. There are things I have to do. Pack Mum’s clothes—” She broke off.

“Cheryl and I can help you do that,” Harriet answered crisply. “You look done in.”

“I’m not a girl any longer, Harriet. I’m not even particularly young. I’ll be thirty-one this year.”

“That’s hardly old! You’ve never looked more beautiful. You have the sort of bone structure that will last. You know, Sarah, if something’s wrong I’d want you to tell me what it is.”

“Plenty is wrong, Harriet,” Sarah found herself saying, staring fixedly at the street lamp and beyond that, the evening star. Was there a place called heaven? Was her mother there? She made a distraught movement of her hand. A hand that Harriet, thin face pinched, caught and held.

“Can’t you trust me, Sarah? You know that anything you tell me in confidence I would never tell anyone else.”

Sarah swallowed the lump in her throat. “I know that, Harriet. I’d trust you with my life. But there are some things we can’t unload on others. I’m fine, really.”

“That’s what your mother used to say when she was in the doldrums. ‘I’m fine, Harriet. Don’t you worry about me, Harriet.’ Of course I did.” Harriet paused briefly. “I couldn’t help noticing you and Kyall this afternoon. Neither of you is happy. You’re not married. Kyall’s not married.”

“Surely Ruth will get her way,” Sarah burst out scornfully. “God knows, she always does. I spoke to India briefly. She came up to me to say a few words. For appearance’s sake, only.”

“That’s right!” Harriet agreed. “She’s so different from Mitchell. But Ruth doesn’t run Kyall’s life, my dear. Pay attention, Sarah, because I’m right. Kyall is his own man. He has a different strength from Ruth’s. A better, brighter strength. So much time has passed, but I don’t think either of you has forgotten the other.”

“Isn’t that strange!” Sarah gave an odd little laugh. “Whenever I read an article about obsession I think of Kyall and me. And I think of a long-ago day when I made the decision to seek a new life. You have no idea how powerless I felt then.”

“I think I do. In fact, I swear I do.” Harriet sighed. “Am I right in thinking you still love Kyall?”

“Harriet, Kyall is a sickness. Nothing more.”

“That splendid young man a sickness?” Harriet snorted disgustedly. “I ain’t stupid, as the bad guy invariably says in the movies. I think for your own sake you have to get a few things out into the open.”

“I don’t have a child tucked away somewhere, Harriet, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Harriet didn’t answer immediately. “It’s not what I was thinking, not at all, because I never dreamed either you or Muriel would hide your own. All I know is, something is wrong. I’m speaking out because I feel you can’t go on this way. You deserve a full life, Sarah.” Harriet frowned. “A full life includes the man you love. Marriage. Motherhood. I had my chance at marriage when I was young, but I missed it. I was never pretty—not even a tiny bit—but I had a good figure, good hair and good eyes. But I played it too cool for too long. The chance never came again. I don’t want that to happen to you.”

SARAH SPENT THE EVENING sorting through her mother’s things. It was a heart-wrenching job, but she was desperate for something to take her mind off her despair. A comment of Harriet’s had upset her. The remark about her and her mother never hiding what was theirs. The terrible reality was that her mother had given in to Ruth McQueen’s demands for adoption, persuaded it was for the best. An absolutely harrowing decision, and it had returned to plague her. Her mother had gone into a kind of inconsolable bereavement. As she had herself. Except that she’d never signed the adoption papers, fighting it to the end.

Once that awful woman, the midwife, put the baby on her breast, there was no way she was ever going to part with her. A profound spiritual and psychological connection had taken place. Woozy, not exactly sure of her surroundings, she’d still protested, telling Ruth McQueen in the absence of her mother that she was going to keep her child.

“I’m keeping her, no matter what!” she’d cried, finally finding the decision so easy. “I haven’t signed your damned forms. I know I said I would, but now I’m not able to. This is my child. Mum and I will move away. We won’t bother you, but you’ll never take her from me.”

Words that must have brought down the wrath of God, for her child had been taken from her. She’d never seen her again, though she’d demanded in hysterics that she be allowed to kiss the lifeless little body.

She’d been given a sedative. And afterward she’d fallen into a deep depression, thinking she could still hear and see her tiny Rose.

God knows what had brought her back from the brink. Some inner strength she didn’t know she had. Or just the resilience of sheer youth.

“What you have to do now, my girl, is put your mistake in the past,” Ruth McQueen had told her, black eyes mesmeric. “You’re not the first and you won’t be the last. Get on with your life. It may seem hard now, but you’ll survive. My grandson will, too. You’ll realize in time that you’ve done the right thing by not telling him. Especially now that the child has died. Make no bones about it, he would blame you. For keeping him in the dark about your situation and for losing the baby. I know my grandson. Do what you’re told and you’ll have me as a friend.” There was a short pause. “Do you really want me as an enemy?”

Ruth McQueen. How did you protect yourself from a woman like that? How did you protect your mother? So the woman she hated gave both of them a helping hand. With McQueen money, along with her job working nights, Sarah had become Dr. Sarah Dempsey. Battling her aversion to taking McQueen money, she came to reason that they owed her. After all, Kyall had been involved in making their baby.

The going had been tough, but she’d made it.

Until now. Her mother’s death was a powerful turning point.

It was midnight before she went to bed, sleeping with her mother’s pink cotton robe wrapped around her. A robe whose front was soon soaked in tears. Having used up all her strength, Sarah fell into an exhausted sleep.

SHE RETURNED Joe’s four-wheel-drive first thing in the morning, parking it on the hospital grounds, then walking into the building to speak to the man himself. Looking around, she had to applaud what she saw. McQueen money had provided this hospital for the town. No expense had been spared in its construction, its neat gardens, its medical equipment, its cheerful interior.

She found Sister Bradley at the nurses’ station and exchanged a few words before moving down the corridor to Joe’s office. Joe had said he particularly wanted to speak to her. What about? Word in the town for more years than she could remember was that Joe had been Ruth McQueen’s lover. A rumor Sarah had found so overwhelming she’d tried to discount it. She liked and respected Joe. Everyone did. He was a fine, caring doctor, devoted to his patients and the well-being of the town. Joe had brought her into the world. It was impossible to dislike or distrust him.

But his relationship with Ruth McQueen…it couldn’t be true. Wouldn’t Ruth have a problem mating with a mere mortal? Sarah wondered if this was some wild story people chose to believe simply because it was so bizarre. Not that Ruth McQueen was without a lethal sort of attraction. Even now that she was a woman in her seventies, you could see that she’d possessed sexual magnetism.

Imagine trying to make love to her, Sarah thought. Joe would’ve had to manage the whole business on his knees. When she tapped on the glass door, Joe raised his head, his gentle, worn face lighting up.

“Come in, Sarah. Please sit down.”

“I’ve left your car out front.”

“Thank you, my dear. Did you manage to get a little sleep?”

“Not right away, Joe. I don’t have to tell you what it’s like. Now, what’s this you want to talk over with me? You look awfully tired. Are you all right?”

“Sort of.” Joe responded.

“That’s not much of an answer.”

“All right then, my dear. I have cancer. I’m not telling anyone else.”

“Joe!” Sarah was saddened and shocked. “If you can bear to, please tell me more.”

Joe did, going into clinical detail. It was clear he had only six to twelve months to live. “As I say, Sarah, and you will know, it’s the end of the line.”

“You’re so calm, Joe.” Sarah said, finding it difficult to swallow.

“I’m seventy. I’ve had a good innings.”

Sarah couldn’t contain her distress. “Oh, Joe, how I wish we doctors could change things that desperately need changing.”

“I have my faith to sustain me, Sarah. I believe in God. I believe in an afterlife. I don’t know how I’ll do getting through those pearly gates, though.” He briefly closed his eyes. “I lost myself for a few years there along the way.”

“You mean Ruth McQueen?” Sarah asked as gently as she could.

Joe laughed wryly. “Ruth had—still has—a certain technique for mesmerizing people. She mesmerized me from the start. I know it sounds weak, but for years she had an uncanny power over me. I knew she was only using me—Ruth had a very strong sex drive. In fact, to my shame, she threw me over.” He shook his head. “This is old stuff, Sarah. I know you chose not to believe it, but… The point is, I never neglected my patients.”

“I know that, Joe. You’ve made a real difference. The town owes you a great debt.”

Joe shrugged that away. “Caring for people, trying to cure them, is our role, Sarah. What I’m trying to get to is—Forgive my shaky hands. It’s the drugs I’m on. Would you consider for one moment replacing me? I hear all about you from colleagues. You’re a fine doctor and there’s plenty of doctoring to do in this town.”

“I couldn’t, Joe.”

“What’s your biggest obstacle? Unfinished business with Kyall?”

Sarah dropped her eyes. “I was over Kyall McQueen half a lifetime ago.”

“I don’t think so.” Joe reached a hand across the table, his voice so strange Sarah lifted her head to stare at him. “You’ve never told me, but did Ruth threaten you?”

Sarah almost broke down. “Ruth McQueen has been a very threatening presence in a lot of people’s lives.”

“I know she was desperate to break you and Kyall up. I wasn’t happy about that and told her so. She used to talk to me. She doesn’t any longer.”

“Does she really talk to anybody, including Kyall? I hate that woman.”

“Why?”

“Because she ripped me from Kyall’s side. I know it sounds extravagant, but Kyall meant the world to me. He was the sun, the moon, the stars. He was my brother, my soul mate, my very best friend.”

“Forgive me, Sarah. There’s so much I don’t know. Was he your lover?”

“It doesn’t matter now,” she said.

“I’m dying, Sarah, so your secret is safe with me. I’ll file it away and take it to the grave. Somewhere inside me, I feel a terrible guilt, as if I failed you and your mother.”

“No, my dear friend.” Tears sprang to Sarah’s eyes. “Don’t punish yourself, because there’s nothing for you to punish yourself about. Ruth McQueen persuaded me that I had to be brave and give Kyall up.”

“So she made you leave Koomera Crossing. I know you wouldn’t have gone easily.”

“She was afraid we would become lovers.”

“Are you telling me the truth? I won’t let Ruth hurt you.”

Sarah looked at him levelly. “What would you do, Joe? Kill her?”

Joe answered in a shaking voice. “Ruth doesn’t entirely have the whip hand. I’ve long suspected she was somehow involved in Molly Fairweather’s death. I’ve never told anyone. There was nothing substantial to go on. Just a feeling.”

“Good God!” Sarah revealed her shock. “Who’s Molly Fairweather, anyway?”

“Oh, I remember. You wouldn’t have met her. She came to town a year or so after you left. Big woman. Very gruff. People used to think she was crazy. Sure acted like it from time to time. ‘Mad Molly’ the kids called her.”

“Mum never, ever mentioned her.”

“No reason to, I suppose. She kept to herself. Had everything delivered to her door. She bought the Sinclair family home from Ruth, I believe, so I suppose she had private money. She was a trained nurse, but apparently she’d injured her back.”

“What has this got to do with Ruth McQueen?”

“I might go straight to hell for suggesting such a thing, but Mad Molly died of snakebite. Somehow a desert taipan got into her house.”

“How did it get there? They don’t usually choose someone’s doorstep.

Joe shrugged. “It was a bad year for snakes, but no one else in town spotted one in their garden. By the time I got out there—the postie raised the alarm—Molly Fairweather was dead, lying facedown in the hallway with the front door open. Later when I spoke to Ruth about it, I knew in the blink of an eye—or thought I knew—that she’d had something to do with it. Molly Fairweather’s will handed the house back to Ruth, which I thought decidedly odd.”

There was something else, Sarah felt, about that terrible story. In a sudden flashback, she remembered the midwife who’d brought her little Rose into the world. A big woman with an aura of competence, but taciturn with rigid dark eyebrows. A woman who had appeared consumed with the desire to serve Ruth McQueen any way she could. Why am I thinking of her? she wondered in dull surprise. All these years, she’d never been able to rid herself of the sight of Ruth McQueen’s face, yet she’d all but forgotten the midwife. Mad Molly couldn’t be the same woman, could she? Still, Joe’s story was disturbing. She stared at him.

“How could you use a mere feeling against someone like Ruth McQueen? There must’ve been some inquiry.”

“There was an autopsy. I performed it myself. The verdict was bloody bad luck. But the whole business got to Ruth in some way. Don’t forget, I knew her very, very well. Or as well as anyone could know her. For all her fine family name, her power and influence, Ruth McQueen wouldn’t hesitate to walk on the wild side.”

“Kyall and Christine are nothing like her. And they only resemble Enid a little.”

“Enid’s just a shadow of her mother.”

“She certainly knows how to be cruel,” Sarah offered, feeling as though she had a splinter in her throat.

Joe nodded and put a trembling hand to his chest.

“Are you all right, Joe?” Sarah stood up abruptly.

“It comes and goes. Sit down, Sarah.” He spoke like a father. “I’m not quite sure why I feel this way, but I believe you were destined to return to this town. I’ve never given much evidence to dreams, but I’ve been having some odd ones lately. I know—” he held up a hand “—the medication. But the voice in my dreams tells me to beg you to take my place. There are unanswered questions surrounding you, Sarah. I believe the only way you’re going to find the answers is to return to Koomera Crossing. The way has been paved for you. Muriel is at peace. And here I am, dying, ready to hand over the running of the hospital to you. I don’t suppose it was ever what you had in mind. But for a few years? Would you mind so much leaving the city and the medical center you work for?”

“Joe, it’s not possible,” Sarah said. “Ruth McQueen drove me out of town. She’d do it again. Lest we forget, they own the town. They built the hospital. The dedication stone bears Ewan McQueen’s name.”

“Aren’t you forgetting Kyall is a man now? Not a boy. A lot of the power has passed to him. He’s enormously popular, not only in the town but the entire southwest. If you spoke to Kyall about taking over, what are the chances he’d say no? He’d back you to the hilt. I know Ruth’s been trying and trying to marry him off to India Claydon, but with no luck. The girls have always been after Kyall, but for him, it appears, there is only you. Unless there’s someone in your life?”

“No.” Sarah shook her head. “I’ve had a few relationships that didn’t work out. One almost came to something but in the end, I couldn’t commit myself. We’re still friends, though. He’s a fellow doctor.”

“Would you think it over for me, Sarah?” Joe looked at her out of strangely light-filled eyes. “You’d have plenty to do. Probably much more than at your city surgery. Challenges, too. You’re the kind of doctor who could run this place. You could manage the nurses. People warm to you, Sarah. They always did.”

“I’m afraid of coming back, Joe,” Sarah confessed. “There’s so much grief inside me. So much anger.”

“There always will be until you exorcise the pain.” Joe’s almost messianic gaze locked on to Sarah’s. “Don’t say no, Sarah. Talk to Kyall about it. You’re going to see him, aren’t you?”

“How do you know that?” Sarah stared at Joe, taken aback.

“I saw the two of you together, Sarah. God, I’ve known you both from babyhood. Ruth may not have considered you grand enough for her grandson but in my opinion she’ll never break you up.”

Sarah’s tone came out more harshly than she intended. “Wouldn’t your plan to bring me back to town put me in danger, Joe? You’ve as good as accused Ruth of conspiracy to murder.”

“I’ve never spoken a word of that to anyone other than you, though I nearly did to Harriet. Maybe I’ve found my calling as a psychic,” he said with a quiet laugh. “Either that or when you’re dying, you give your whole life a good going-over.”