Doctor on Horseback E-Book

Vivian Stuart

• Herausgeber: Jentas Ehf
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Historical Romance
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 284

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

INTRIGUE. TENSION. LOVE AFFAIRS: In The Historical Romance series, a set of stand-alone novels, Vivian Stuart builds her compelling narratives around the dramatic lives of sea captains, nurses, surgeons, and members of the aristocracy. Stuart takes us back to the societies of the 20th century, drawing on her own experience of places across Australia, India, East Asia, and the Middle East.    A doctor comes to Wollaton Springs as locum — a young woman doctor, with blue eyes and corn-coloured hair. As might be expected, she is received with some suspicion by the inhabitants of the small Queensland township, but it falls to the lot of Phil Barton's young English jackaroo to be her first patient. When he is followed by his boss, events move swiftly ...

Leseprobe

Doctor on Horseback

Doctor on Horseback

© Vivian Stuart, 1962

© eBook in English: Jentas ehf. 2022

ISBN: 978-9979-64-417-0

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchase.

All contracts and agreements regarding the work, editing, and layout are owned by Jentas ehf.

–––

For R. J. O’Connell, best and most considerate of editors, in memory of eight years’ happy and productive association, during which he taught me a great deal about the craft of writing.

Chapter 1

Kevin Standish eased the pressure of his foot on the accelerator as the huddled rooftops of Wollaton Springs came into view at a bend in the road. He saw it through a swirling cloud of reddish-brown dust—a small township, typical of those scattered sparsely about the cattle country of northwestern Queensland, utilitarian in construction and, to his British eyes, unattractive in appearance as it sweltered in the pitiless glare of the noonday sun. The wide main street was deserted and even the railhead junction, with its single tin-roofed platform and its lines of stationary cattle trucks, appeared to be devoid of all signs of human life or activity.

Nevertheless, he was glad to see it, and expelled his breath in a pent-up sigh of mingled pain and relief, as he swung his vehicle in a tight circle and parked it in the thin patch of shade afforded by the railway buildings. He had made it, after all, he told himself defiantly, in spite of Phil Barton’s doubts and old Charlie’s glum warnings. He was here, in one piece, and he hadn’t passed out . . . and here, in this small, isolated community, was civilization in the shape, at least, of a doctor.

Wiping the dust from his mouth with a moist brown hand, Kevin climbed stiffly from the driving seat, wincing as his bandaged left arm inadvertently brushed the rim of the steering wheel. It was still bleeding, he observed without surprise, and was throbbing now as if ten thousand demons were at work with red-hot pincers beneath the folds of the cloth he had wound about it, three hours earlier. Obviously, as old Charlie had said, it was going to need stitching.

Still . . . he looked at his watch and from it to the doctor’s surgery across the street. Having waited this long to have it attended to, he might as well wait the extra ten minutes or so it would take him to collect the Barton’s Creek stores from the railway—thereby saving time, in the long run. Danny, the aboriginal rouseabout, could stow the stuff in the truck for him, while he was with the doctor—if Danny could be found and roused from sleep at this hour of the day. He was inclined to be elusive when there was work to be done and it was hot.

Whistling tunelessly under his breath, Kevin crossed the sun-baked expanse of concrete which separated him from the railhead office, jerked open the door and grinned, when he saw that the occupant of the office was at his desk, drinking tea.

“Hi, Jim I” he greeted. “Any more tea where that came from? I’ve got a whale of a thirst.”

Jim Blake, the white-haired railway clerk, was a brisk, friendly little man, who enjoyed a gossip. He nodded, took a mug from the wire-mesh protected cupboard at his back and motioned to a battered teapot, which stood on one comer of the scored desk-top.

“Help yourself, lad,” he invited, adding, as Kevin picked up the mug, “milk’s beside you. What brings you in here today, then? Boss got nothing better for you to do?”

Kevin gulped his tea. It was hot and very strong and it relieved the parched dryness of his throat, slaking the dust which clung obstinately to tongue and lips. He pushed his worn bush hat on to the back of his head, revealing a mop of thick, untidy red hair, and his grin broadened. “Thanks, that was great.”

“Have some more,” Jim Blake offered hospitably. He gestured with a blunt thumb into the shadows behind him, where packing cases and provision sacks lined the walls on three sides. “Your boss’s stores came in, spite of you being three days early. And that crate he’s been expecting from Townsville as well. Want Danny to give you a hand, loading ‘em?”

“Too right I do—if he’s about.”

“He’d better be,” the old clerk said grimly. He raised his voice to summon the absent Danny, but there was no response. He swore softly, made to get to his feet and then sank back into his chair again, as if even this small effort had been too much for him. “It’s too so-and-so hot to go rushing around after Danny,” he apologized.

Kevin nodded feelingly. Despite the shutters on the single high-set window, the heat inside the small, stuffy office was almost as overpowering as it had been in the yard outside. “Don’t worry, Jim,” he answered. “I’ll have a look for him on my way out.”

“He’ll be curled up asleep somewhere,” Jim told him unnecessarily. “But you’re not in a rush, are you?” He pushed a pad of delivery sheets across the desk. “Sign for those stores, will you—the first two on the list—and then I’ll buy you a drink. You look to me as if you could do with something a bit stronger than tea.”

Kevin set down his empty mug and drew the pad towards him. “The first two?” he asked, trying to keep his injured arm out of sight.

“Yeah, that’s right. Hey——” Old Jim Blake was eyeing him curiously, bushy white brows knit as, despite Kevin’s attempt at concealment, he glimpsed the stained bandage. “What’ve you been doing to that arm of yours, boy? Been fighting or something?”

“No—trimming a fence post. My axe slipped.” Kevin’s tone was rueful. “I’m on my way to the doc’s now, to have it stitched up. Is he home, d’you know?”

An odd look flashed into the old man’s dark eyes, half amusement, half some emotion Kevin couldn’t analyse. “Ain’t you heard about the doc, then?”

“Heard about him? No. What should I have heard?”

“He ain’t here, that’s what. Took a crook turn, two-three weeks ago, and had to go off to the city for hospital treatment.” Jim shrugged. “Reckoned it was his heart, I heard, and that he’ll be gone for a good few months . . . if he ever comes back. In the meantime——” He hesitated, watching Kevin with the same odd look in his eyes that wasn’t quite amusement. “I hope he makes out. He’s a good doctor and a decent old cove, Doc Bayliss.”

“Yes, he is,” the younger man agreed. “But——” He looked down at his arm, frowning. “This darned thing’s still bleeding, Jim—I’ve got to get it stitched. Does this mean I’ll have to drive on to Lomas before I can find a doctor to fix it up for me?”

“Well, you could do that, lad. There’s quite a few say that’s what they’ll have to do now, if they take sick . . . not liking the idea of a slip of a girl looking after ‘em, see? ‘Cause that’s the only alternative, now Doc Bayliss has gone off to Brisbane.” Jim gave vent to a throaty chuckle. “A sheila, just imagine that!”

“You mean they haven’t sent another doctor in his place yet?” Kevin was puzzled. Wollaton Springs was the centre of a large agricultural district, as well as being the railhead for the area, and its doctor was subsidized, under the State Health Scheme, in order to provide what was classed as an essential service to the community, he knew. “I thought they had to have a doctor here, Jim?”

Jim chuckled again. “So they have . . . and they’ve been sent one. Been here for three days now,”

Relieved by this news, Kevin’s frown relaxed.

“Then that’s all right. You had me scared for a minute, Jim.” He settled his hat on his head once more and moved in the direction of the door, a hand raised in parting salute. “I think I’d better slip along and see the new doc right away, before I bleed any more. What’s his name, do you know?”

“Dr. Ferguson,” Jim supplied. He added, his lined face blank and expressionless, “Dr. Margaret Ferguson.”

“But”—Kevin stared at him incredulously, jaw dropping —”Margaret is a woman’s name!”

“That’s so,” Jim agreed gravely.

“You can’t mean that the new doctor’s a woman?”

“She is, boy, she is. That’s to say, she’s a girl. Doesn’t look a day over twenty to me. Pretty too, as pretty as they come. Blue eyes, corn-coloured hair, the right sort of curves . . .” Jim’s hands moved expressively and his mouth twitched. “And you’re likely to be her first patient, Kevin lad. The folk here at the Springs reckon she’s too good looking to be a real, reliable doctor, see? And the women wouldn’t trust their men to go to her, even if she was one. So nobody’s been near her surgery yet, ‘cept to gape at her or try and sell her something. Like I said, you’ll be the first.”

“Me?” echoed Kevin aghast, flushing to the roots of his fiery red hair. “Not on your life! Why should I be the first, for crying out loud?”

“Well,” Jim pointed out, reasonably enough, “for one thing you ain’t married, so you’ve nobody to raise any objections, have you? And for another, you’re an emergency, in urgent need of medical attention before you bleed to death. So you’ve every excuse for going to her . . . no one’s going to expect you to drive over to Lomas with that arm now, are they? And somebody’s got to be the first” He was smiling openly now. “If the new doc makes a good job of you, maybe some of the others’ll risk it.”

“But suppose she doesn’t make a good job of me?” Kevin objected. “Suppose she doesn’t know how?” He was as reluctant now to consult the new doctor as, before, he had been eager and even the prospect of the hundred-odd-mile drive to Lomas, in the heat, seemed preferable to the course Jim was proposing. “You said she was young and——”

“She must know her job or she wouldn’t have been sent here,” Jim put in. “Anyway, Kev,” he went on consolingly, “one of the first things a young doc learns these days is how to stitch up wounds and that. I read in a book somewhere that they do it when they’re students. The difficult things, like diagnosing and prescribing, come afterwards, when they’ve passed all their exams. You don’t need her to find out what’s wrong with you—you know, and she’ll be able to see it for herself, won’t she? And if she prescribes you any medicine you don’t like, you don’t have to take it, after all. You can chuck the bottle away when you’re driving back to the station.”

“Well, I suppose I could do that,” Kevin conceded unwillingly, “but all the same, Jim, I . . .” He swallowed hard.

What would the other men say, he wondered unhappily, when he went back to the station and told them he’d had his arm stitched up by a sheila with blue eyes and corn-coloured hair . . . and the right sort of curves? He’d never hear the end of it. Blue-eyed, good-looking young women were all right in their place, they were very much all right. But that place—he swallowed again—wasn’t in a doctor’s surgery in Wollaton Springs.

He turned to say as much to Jim, but the old man, with surprising alacrity, had left his seat and was already donning his jacket, one hand reaching for the office keys, which hung on a hook above his head.

He cut short Kevin’s protests. “I’ll rout out that lazy so-and-so Danny” he announced, “and set him on to loading your stuff. While he’s doing that, I can walk you over to the doc’s house, boy, and make sure you get there safely.”

“Yes, but——”

“Aw, come on!” Jim ordered firmly. He took the younger man’s arm, urging him towards the door and, when he opened it, let forth a stentorian bellow which brought the missing Danny to his side at a shambling run. They left him slowly dragging out the first packing case, and crossed the yard together, Jim retaining his grasp of his companion’s arm.

Dr. Bayliss’s house was one of a line of similar frame-built houses in Colonial style, each with a wide veranda running round three sides of it, supported by broad, white-painted metal pillars. The roof of the lower, street-level veranda formed the floor of an upper one, and this had railings of wrought-iron, twisted into the intricate flower patterns and scrolls which had been in vogue at the time of their construction. Weather and the ravages of white ants and other destructive pests had, from time to time, necessitated the replacement of the woodwork, but the old Victorian-styled wrought-iron lasted for ever and was still serviceable, so it remained, a frame for the bright-hued creeper growing sturdily from either side of the front door.

Old Dr. Bayliss had never set out to be much of a gardener, but he had a fondness for blue flowers and, in addition to the creeper, plumbago bushes ran riot about the veranda steps and a stunted jacaranda tree—now past its best—half-hid the side door leading to the waiting room and surgery. For the rest, the small garden was untidy and a trifle wild, wilting in the hot sunshine and as much in need of water as the parched and dusty street it neighboured.

As Kevin trudged reluctantly up the path to the front of the house, he noticed that Dr. Bayliss’s worn brass plate still stood in its accustomed place, beside the surgery door. Still, Dr.—what was her name?—Dr. Margaret Ferguson would, of course, be only a temporary replacement and consequently wouldn’t set up a brass plate of her own. He couldn’t help feeling that she ought to, if only as a warning, and heaved a resentful sigh. Why, he asked himself indignantly, did he have to go and choose a time when old Doc Bayliss wasn’t here, to cut his arm? And why, in the name of all that was wonderful, did the Powers that Be have to send a woman doctor to Wollaton Springs, just when he had? And a young woman, at that . . . a girl who, according to Jim Blake, didn’t look a day over twenty. He himself was twenty-two and . . .

Jim touched his arm and said, his smile mocking, “Well, Kev, this is it!” He rang the surgery bell so forcibly that the jangle it set up echoed loudly through the house.

Kevin said irritably, “You’ve no call to make all that noise, have you? Anyway, I’m here, so you needn’t wait, Jim. I’ll be all right on my own.”

“I’ll see you to the door,” Jim insisted. He closed one eye in an elaborate wink. “Just to make sure, see?”

Dr. Bayliss’s plump half-caste cook let them into the waiting room. She motioned Kevin to a chair and listened blankly to Jim’s exaggerated account of the seriousness of his injury.

“I’ll go and tell Doctor,” she offered, “but she’s jus’ sat down to her dinner. An’ if you’re tryin’ to sell her anything, she won’t be pleased, take my word for it she won’t.”

She stumped off, deaf to Jim’s indignant denials and apparently setting little store by the sight of Kevin’s stained bandage. The sound of her voice reached them through the half-closed door leading to the main part of the house, a complaining note in it, as if she, at any rate, resented the presence of her new employer’s first patient.

The voice that answered her was low and pleasantly musical. Kevin waited, his heart inexplicably quickening its beat, and then the low, pleasant voice, after dismissing Jim, invited him to “Follow me, please.” Obeying it, he found himself in Dr. Bayliss’s familiar, high-ceilinged consulting room, facing a slim, fair-haired girl in a white coat. The room was shuttered and deep in shadow and he could make out little of her appearance, until she clicked on a light and he saw that, as Jim had said, she was very young and pretty and was smiling at him with disarming friendliness.

“Good afternoon. I’m Dr. Ferguson, Dr. Bayliss’s locum tenens. And you’re . . .?”

“Kevin Standish, Doctor. From Barton’s Creek.” Her voice held the faint trace of a Scottish accent, he realized, and wondered if, like himself, she was from the Old Country and a “Pommy”. If she was, then that might explain why she had come here. A British girl, fresh from Home, wouldn’t know what she was letting herself in for, doing a locum in a place like Wollaton Springs . . . she’d have no idea what to expect and probably no one had seen fit to warn her.

“Well, Mr. Standish, what’s been happening to you?” Her smile had faded, but a glint of humour lurked in the depths of her frank blue eyes. “According to the story your friend told Martha, you’ve been trying to chop your arm off with an axe. Is that right?”

“I only nicked it,” Kevin corrected, reddening furiously. That darned Jim, making a fool of him! “But it won’t stop bleeding, you see. So I thought I’d better come along.”

“I’ll have a look at it, shall I?” Her voice was crisp and incisive now, the voice of one accustomed to issuing orders and to having them obeyed without question. A confident, professional voice . . . Impressed, in spite of himself, Kevin started to unwind his bandage, but the girl stopped him with a gesture.

“Wait. Let me cut it off for you, please.”

She worked away deftly with scissors, brows furrowed as the saturated cloth started to stick, where blood had congealed. She fetched a shallow dish, filled it with water and disinfectant and motioned him to hold his arm over it. He heard a tap running and saw that she was washing her hands very carefully. When she returned and started to soak away the sodden bandage, she asked, “How long ago did this happen, Mr. Standish? Several hours, I imagine?”

He nodded. “About four.”

“You should have come to me sooner.”

“I couldn’t. Took me three hours to drive here.” He pointed to the bandage. “Pull that off, if it’ll save time. I don’t mind.”

She shook her head, not looking at him, and answered decidedly, “No, we don’t want to encourage it to bleed any more. It’s a very deep cut. Hold your arm quite still, please . . . that’s it. I shan’t be much longer now, but I shall have to stitch it. Are you in a hurry?”

“Hurry? No. Why should you think I was?”

“Your efforts to save time. It would have hurt quite a bit if I’d pulled that bandage off, you know. But you asked me to.”

“That was on your account,” Kevin confessed.

She looked at him then, a strange, wistful little smile playing about her lips. “Oh, you needn’t bother on my account. You’re the only patient I’ve treated in three days.” She cleaned his arm and moved over to the sterilizer, set on a table at the far end of the room. Over her shoulder, she said,

“I appear to be the doctor nobody wants—or else this is a very healthy community.”

Kevin, recalling his own reluctance to come to her as a patient, felt the embarrassed colour rise hotly to his cheeks.

“People here aren’t used to lady doctors,” he explained apologetically.

“Aren’t they? How odd.” She took instruments from the sterilizer and set them out, neatly, in a kidney dish, avoiding his gaze. “There are quite a lot of us now, you know.”

“This isn’t Home,” Kevin pointed out.

In the act of threading a surgical needle, she paused, studying his face with renewed interest. Then, as if to signify that she understood, she nodded. “Of course. But you’re not Australian, are you?”

“No.” He smiled. “Except by adoption. I’ve been out here eight years now. I’m even beginning to feel Australian, believe it or not. It’s a grand country.”

Dr. Margaret Ferguson came towards him, set the kidney dish beside him and reached into it with a gloved hand. “So they never seem to tire of telling me,” she confirmed, and then, professional again, “Keep quite still, please. This will only hurt a little.”

He braced himself instinctively, but she was very quick and competent and, true to her promise, hurt him very little. As she was placing a sterile dressing on the neatly stitched wound, Kevin said gratefully, “Thanks, Doctor, that’s just fine. You’ve made a beaut job of it and no mistake.”

Her answering smile was friendly but her tone a trifle dry as she returned, “You sound surprised. Didn’t you think I would, Mr. Standish?”

“I wasn’t sure,” he evaded.

She laughed then, her laughter as low and musical as her voice. “Well, you can spread the glad news, can’t you? And then I might get some work to do, to justify my presence here. Tell me” —she was looking again at his wound— “what sort of work do you do?”

“I’m a jackaroo, on a cattle station.”

“That means you’re training to manage one, doesn’t it?”

“Sort of, yes. I came out under the Big Brother scheme, when I was fourteen. The owner of Barton’s Creek Station —Phil Barton—was my Big Brother. He made me go to college in Brisbane until I was eighteen and then took me on as a jackaroo.”

“I see.” The doctor’s eyes were narrowed and pensive. She asked him a few questions about the nature of his accident and the condition of the axe, gave him an injection, which she described as purely a precaution, and then asked, unexpectedly, “Do you ever want to go back to England, Mr. Standish?”

Kevin didn’t hesitate. He shook his head, “No, I don’t.”

“But . . . your family? Surely they——”

“I haven’t any family.” Kevin’s tone was short, his voice harsh with remembered pain. “I was an orphan, brought up in Dr. Barnardo’s Home.”

Wisely, Margaret Ferguson did not attempt to probe any deeper. She tucked the end of the bandage into place and, going to a cupboard, took out a folded square of thick, unbleached cloth. But, before she could adjust it about his arm, Kevin backed away in alarmed protest. “Have a heart, Doc—you don’t expect me to go around in a sling, do you? How can I drive, with my arm in a sling? That’s not the easiest road, you know—it’s just a track, most of the way.”

“All the same, Mr. Standish, I’d rather you wore one for a couple of days, at least.” Her voice was the voice of authority, cool, composed, brooking no argument. “And if the road’s difficult, wouldn’t you be wiser not to attempt to drive on it, with one hand? Surely there’s someone who could drive you? Or”—her glance went to the telephone on her desk—”how would it be if I rang up your employer and asked him to send someone here to pick you up? You ——”

“No.” Kevin spoke sharply. “Don’t worry your head about me, Doctor. I’ll be all right.” He submitted to the sling, reflecting as he did so that he could take it off as soon as he was out of sight of the surgery. When it was in place, he turned to face her, a trifle sheepishly.” Thanks a lot. You’ve been very kind and the arm feels great now. Just great. I——”

“I shall want to see you again, Mr. Standish,” Dr. Ferguson reminded him.

“See me again? But what for? I’ve told you it feels fine.”

“I shall have to remove your stitches.”

“Oh.” He was crestfallen. “Yes, I suppose you will. Well, I’ll try and get back—maybe next Saturday, if that would suit you?”

“That will suit me very well. About the same time, or” —she smiled at him again, disarmingly—”perhaps a little later. I usually have my lunch now.”

“Sure,” Kevin promised, anxious now to get away. He began to edge towards the door. “Then if that’s all, Doctor?”

“That’s all, Mr. Standish. Good afternoon.”

He mumbled an answer and, once in the waiting room, mopped his perspiring brow. Gosh, what a girl she was! As pretty as a picture and as unyielding as . . . as granite. Shifting the sling into a more comfortable position, he let himself out into the street, hearing, as he did so, the shrill, metallic sound of a telephone, ringing inside the house. May be she’d had a call. Somebody in Wollaton Springs—somebody who was, perhaps, too ill to care if she was a woman— had asked for her to be summoned.

He had got as far as the pick-up when he heard hurrying footsteps behind him and recognized her voice, calling to him by name. He turned resentfully. “Yes, Doctor?”

“Mr. Standish, that was your employer—Mr. Barton.”

“Was it?”

“Yes. He was ringing up to ask how you were. I told him I didn’t think you were in a fit state to drive back on your own, so he’s coming in to fetch you himself.”

“He’s what?” Kevin rounded on her, jaw dropping in ludicrous dismay. “You mean to say you told Phil Barton he was to come in and fetch me?”

“Yes, I did,” the girl admitted coolly.

“But I’m perfectly fit to drive myself.”

“In my opinion, you’re not, you know. Not on a bad road, Mr. Standish. I should feel responsible if you met with an accident. Come.” She gestured in the direction of the white-painted frame house. “Martha shall give you some lunch and then you can lie down on the couch in the consulting room and rest, until Mr. Barton gets here.”

“I don’t need to rest!” Kevin objected indignantly.

“But I’m sure you need a meal,” Margaret Ferguson countered. She flashed him her friendly, disarming smile. “If you’d prefer to eat alone, that can be arranged.”

“It’s not that, Dr. Ferguson,” Kevin assured her, flushing. He couldn’t explain that it wasn’t the thing to drag one’s boss out on a three-hour drive on a dusty track, quite unnecessarily, in the heat of the day—obviously she wouldn’t understand. And she didn’t know Phil Barton. He sighed, feeling trapped and helpless, in the face of her determination. No doubt she meant well, but he didn’t relish explaining things to Phil Barton, when he arrived to find him, apparently perfectly well and in the company of an exceptionally attractive-looking girl . . . And if the story reached the bunkhouse, as it probably would—he shuddered, his imagination busy.

Misunderstanding his evident discomfiture, Margaret Ferguson said sympathetically, “I did make it quite clear to Mr. Barton that this wasn’t your idea.” She led the way back to the house and Kevin followed her glumly. “So cheer up! He can’t eat you, can he?”

“He can have a dam good try!”

“Oh, come now, Mr. Standish”—she held the door for him, standing aside to permit him to precede her—”what sort of a man is this Mr. Barton of yours?”

“He’s a very good bloke.”

“That tells me nothing, does it? Are all his men as much in awe of him as you are?”

“I’m not in awe of him, Dr. Ferguson,” Kevin protested.

“It’s just that he’s my boss and—well, he’s got more important things to do than come haring out here to pick me up. Anyway, he hadn’t time to come, that was why I said I’d fetch the stores for him. Since I was coming in anyway.”

“You mean he let you pick up stores, with that arm?”

“Why, of course. I offered to fetch them. It saved him sending any of the others. Barton’s Creek is a big station and we run a lot of stock, you see. Stock don’t look after themselves, Doctor.” Kevin talked to her of the problems of caring for stock, while Martha, hastily summoned, set a second place for him at the small, cloth-covered dining table. She carried in a very appetizing-looking meat pie and withdrew, grumbling under her breath, because of the length of time she had been compelled to keep it waiting in the oven.

It tasted, in spite of her complaints, as good as it looked. Kevin, feeling unexpectedly hungry, attacked his portion with gusto.

“This is good,” he observed.

“Yes, Martha’s an excellent cook,” Dr. Ferguson agreed.

“Though I find it a little difficult to accustom myself to her habit of going about the house barefooted. It looks . . . well, odd, doesn’t it?”

“Does it?” Kevin laughed. “I hadn’t noticed—or else I’m used to it.”

“I suppose you would be, after eight years. I’ve only been out here for six months.”

Her tone was flat, and Kevin asked quickly, “But you like it, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, I do. I always wanted to come to Australia to see what it was like. So, after I qualified, I took a berth as ship’s surgeon, in a small passenger ship bound for Fremantle. That was great fun, I must say.”

There was a little silence. Kevin tried to imagine her as a ship’s surgeon but, for some reason, couldn’t quite picture her in a peaked cap and uniform, although he supposed she must have had to wear a uniform of some sort. He wondered how old she really was, but could not summon the courage to ask her, point-blank. It took about six years to qualify as a doctor, he knew, so—if she had begun her medical studies as seventeen—she must be two or perhaps three years older than himself. Not that she looked it, and he felt, sitting there facing her across the white-covered table, a comfortable and even slightly protective male superiority. She was very small. Her head scarcely reached his shoulder, when they were both standing up, and . . . he drew a sudden, quick breath. She was very beautiful. The most beautiful girl he could ever remember meeting in his life. She . . .

“Tell me,” Margaret Ferguson asked curiously, when Martha had come and gone with their second course, “more about your cattle station, Mr. Standish. Do you employ aboriginal labour to do most of the work?”

Kevin shook his head. “We have some, Doctor. But the boss isn’t keen on them. He reckons they’re better with sheep than with cattle. We have a few gin cooks, of course, stockmen’s wives. They’re the only women we do have, at the moment, out there. Only a couple of our men are married and both to city girls, who prefer to live here, at the Springs.”

“But”—she looked and sounded surprised—”isn’t your boss, isn’t Mr. Barton married?”

Kevin hesitated, wondering whether to tell her the story. She might understand more, perhaps, if he did, and since she’d be meeting Phil and would hear it anyway, sooner or later from someone else, there didn’t seem any harm in telling her now.

He said, “No, Phil’s not married now, Doctor. He was, but—well, it was a terrible thing and he’s never been able to forget it. Or stop blaming himself for what happened. It wasn’t his fault, of course, but you can’t tell him that. He won’t listen to you if you try.”

Margaret Ferguson looked at him in some bewilderment, and he reddened, realizing that he wasn’t making himself very clear. He began again. “Phil had known the girl he married all his life, Doctor—they were cousins and what are considered close neighbours out here. Her folks own a station property about fifty miles away, on the Lomas side.

They were engaged when they were both kids, but it wasn’t until 1955 that they married. And then”—Kevin sighed, pushing his plate away—”his wife was killed in a car smash, on their wedding day, driving away from the reception. Phil was driving and he wasn’t touched. You can imagine how that made him feel.”

“Yes,” Margaret Ferguson said, an edge to her voice, “yes, I . . . I can.” She said no more, and Kevin, faintly embarrassed by the reception she had given his story, finished his meal in silence. When it was over, the doctor rose.

“I expect you could do with a sleep,” she told him and, without giving him the chance to voice any objections, led him into the consulting room and indicated the leather examination couch. “That’s reasonably comfortable, I think, and you can smoke if you want to—I’m not expecting any other patients. I’ll call you, of course, as soon as Mr. Barton gets here.”

Kevin was tempted to argue with her, but a glance at her face caused him to change his mind. Her expression was withdrawn, her eyes shuttered and remote, as if her thoughts were a long way from him and from this place where, briefly and for the first time, they had met.

Feeling affronted and even a trifle sulky, he let her go and, ignoring the couch, sat down at her desk and started to roll himself a cigarette.

He fell asleep before he had completed this simple task, the loose tobacco and the packet of papers still in his hand.

Chapter 2