Beyond the Red Horizon, page 27
At the farm, Elena left the horse and buggy near the stables and went straight to the house. It was empty, but then she hadn’t really expected to find Aldo there unless he’d fallen ill. She was, however, startled when she found he hadn’t lit a fire under the stove. Whoever was up first in the mornings always lit the fire. If there was no fire, then the kettle couldn’t be boiled for tea, and Aldo would never start the day without at least two cups of strong black tea. She’d left him enough bread to last two or three days, but it didn’t look like he’d had any breakfast, either. She’d been worried before she got home, but now she was terribly concerned.
Elena went outside and headed for the stables. She was startled to find Aldo’s horse still in its stall. If the horses weren’t to be used, they were fed and turned out into a paddock, but the feed bins were empty. This really worried Elena, because Aldo never neglected the horses. She went towards the home paddock, looking for Billy-Ray, but he was nowhere to be seen. The cattle for sale were in the paddock, but they were also bellowing in hunger.
Elena went back to the stables. “Aldo,” she called time and again, but her voice was quickly swallowed by the silence. She went to the chicken shed, but the fowl were also squawking in hunger, and the eggs hadn’t been collected. She couldn’t understand what had happened to her husband. She began to walk around the perimeter of the house, calling out for Aldo, but there was no answer. She knew it was unlikely that he’d been fixing the roof and had fallen off, but she didn’t know what else to do or where to look for him.
Elena went back to the radio and called Mr. Kestle, asking for her mother. She told Louisa that she couldn’t find Aldo.
“Maybe you should ask one of the neighbours if they’ve seen him,” Louisa suggested.
“I thought of that, Mama. I was also concerned that he might have fallen off his horse, but the horse is still in the stables. That rules out the possibility that he’s gone to the neighbours, so where could he be?”
“He can’t have gone far without the horse,” Louisa stated, now taking the situation more seriously. She’d initially believed her son-in-law was playing mind games with her daughter, as he was prone to be mentally cruel, but now she had to consider the possibility that something might have happened to him.
“None of the animals have been fed, and the fire under the stove hasn’t been lit today,” Elena said.
“That is strange.” Louisa was now very worried, too.
“I’ll keep searching, Mama. Over and out.”
When Elena went outside again, she saw Billy-Ray dismounting near the stables. She was relieved; he was sure to know something.
“Billy-Ray, where’s the boss?” she called to him.
“I don’t know, Missus,” Billy-Ray said as he walked towards her. “I haven’t seen him since yesterday evening.”
“His horse is in the stable, and none of the horses have been fed. Neither have the chickens or cattle. I’m really worried about him.”
“He didn’t seem himself yesterday evening, Missus,” Billy-Ray admitted. He’d been worried all night, which is why he’d come to see if Aldo was all right.
Elena frowned. “Did a woman come here yesterday?”
“Yes, Missus. She came in a plane. She didn’t stay long, but the boss seemed upset after she’d gone.”
“Upset! Do you know why she came here?”
“No, Missus. The boss didn’t say anything about her.”
“That’s odd,” Elena said, still mystified by this woman’s visit to their property. “You’re late getting here today, Billy-Ray. Is something wrong at home?”
“No, Missus. The boss told me to have the day off. I thought I’d come and see if he’d changed his mind. He’s never given me a day off before.”
Elena knew that was very unlike Aldo. He expected everyone to work as long and hard as he did. “That is odd,” she said. “I’ll keep looking for Aldo, Billy-Ray. Will you feed the animals, please?”
“Yes, Missus.”
Elena wandered around the property, thinking hard about what could have happened to her husband. She looked around her anxiously, trying to work out what he might have been doing the previous day. He didn’t usually tell her his daily plans, so it was difficult. Her gaze came to rest on the windmill and the water tank. She had a shocking thought. Had he fallen into the tank?
Elena began walking towards the windmill, her gaze locked on the tank that stood beside it. Water pumped by the windmill from underground was fed into the tank, where it cooled. It was then released into the animal troughs. The tank was rusty on the top and had been for some time. Aldo planned to fix it one day, but he was notoriously unreliable with those sorts of repairs. His priority was always the cattle and growing feed. She wondered if he’d decided to fix the tank and had fallen in when a rusty section gave way under his weight. He’d told her when they’d gotten married that he could swim, but she didn’t know how well, as they’d never had the opportunity to swim since they moved to outback Queensland. Then she had a terrible thought. If he’d been in the tank for hours, unable to get out, he would have tired and drowned. Her heart hammered as she prayed that hadn’t happened.
Elena was contemplating climbing the ladder on the side of the tank when a movement at the base of the windmill caught her attention. From a distance, it appeared that there was a newborn calf there. This was odd, as they didn’t have any calves at present. As she got closer, she could see it was a dog. Aldo wasn’t keen on dogs. He said they were dirty animals, prone to fleas and mange.
As Elena came closer, she realised that the dog was a good-sized dingo. It wasn’t uncommon to see dingoes on the property, but Aldo usually took a shot at them because sometimes they went for newborn calves or tried to dig their way into the chicken coup. For this reason, they usually ran away when they saw a human. Sometimes, though, if they were especially hungry, they could be brazen. Elena had even found one in the house when Dominic was a baby. It had been close to his crib and had scared the life out of her.
When the dingo saw Elena approaching, waving her arms, it ran off, and she looked up at the windmill again. The fish-tail was missing, she noticed, but she didn’t think much of it. She kept walking towards the tank that fed the long troughs. It was then that she noticed something on the ground beneath the windmill, near where the dingo had been. From a distance it looked like a mound of crumpled material. She supposed Aldo had left it there.
As Elena got closer, she still couldn’t work out exactly what the crumpled heap of material was. She kept walking towards it and thought she recognised a shoe—one of Aldo’s shoes. Suddenly, she gasped and began running. To her horror, she discovered that the crumpled heap was Aldo! He was lying awkwardly on the ground, his legs bent up and at odd angles, which is why she hadn’t been able to tell it was him from a distance. There was a gouge out of his cheek near his eye, and she realised in dismay that the dingo must have bitten him. His hands were also covered in wounds and bloody.
Elena screamed for Billy-Ray when she saw that Aldo’s lower legs were covered in huge, purple ants, both inside and outside his trousers.
“Aldo,” she cried, putting her hand on his chest to see if she could feel his heart beating. Ants immediately began crawling over her hand, and she pulled it away. She was sure her husband was dead. He couldn’t have survived a fall from the windmill platform. His head was also at an awkward angle. “Aldo, you can’t be dead,” she cried, immediately thinking of the children. How could she tell them their father was dead? How would she run the farm? How would they live out here alone without Aldo? Crazy thoughts ran through her mind as she tried to imagine herself rounding up cattle or planting feed.
Elena knelt in the dust beside Aldo’s body, shaking and overwhelmed with guilt. They virtually had no marriage, but this was not the way she saw it ending. Had he survived the fall and died because she hadn’t been home to help him? How would she cope with the guilt of knowing she was probably the reason he was dead?
Aldo opened his eyes for just a second and mumbled something in Italian. Elena thought he said prostituta, but she believed she must be mistaken.
“You’re alive!” she cried. “Thank God,” she whispered through her tears. By the angle of his lower legs, she knew he must be in incredible pain, and she didn’t know what to do for him first. She tried to flick the ants off him, screaming for help from Billy-Ray. It barely registered that Aldo didn’t seem to feel the ants biting him.
Billy-Ray came running in answer to Elena’s hysterical screams. His first instinct was to pick Aldo up and carry him to the house, but Elena stopped him.
“His back might be broken,” she whimpered in distress. “We can’t move him without worsening his injuries. Get the ants off of him, and I’ll radio the flying doctor.” Elena stood up, fighting tears of shock. She couldn’t bear to think he’d been lying there all night, suffering indescribable pain. It was a miracle he was alive. But would he survive? She ran to the house as fast as she could.
Mrs. Montgomery at the flying doctors’ base answered the call for help, and she radioed Lyle and Alison, who had just made a visit to a station between Winton and Boulia. She assured Elena that they were on their way to Barkaroola. Aldo had barely been conscious in the time since Elena found him, but at least he was alive. She and Billy-Ray had made him as comfortable as possible. They’d gotten the ants off him, but he had hundreds of red bites on his legs and arms, even his stomach and chest. There were also blotches on his face. He looked a shocking sight.
While they’d been waiting for help, Billy-Ray told her that he could see evidence that more than one dingo had been circling Aldo during the night. The thought that he’d had to defend himself against the dingoes in the dark was even more upsetting for Elena.
Within an hour, the flying doctors’ plane landed on Barkaroola, and Lyle and Alison ran towards the windmill with a stretcher. Elena witnessed the shock on their faces when they saw Aldo. It confirmed that Aldo was in real trouble. As gently as they could, they loaded him onto the stretcher.
“Is his back broken?” Elena asked Lyle.
“I think he has a spinal injury, but I believe it’s in his neck, and both legs are broken, perhaps in several places,” Lyle said. He was really worried, because when Aldo was briefly conscious, he didn’t seem to be in much pain. This was not a good sign.
Just as Aldo was being loaded into the plane, he opened his eyes.
“Who are you?” he barked at Lyle.
“Doctor Macallister,” Lyle answered. “We’re taking you to the hospital, Mr. Corradeo. Don’t worry. You’re going to be all right.” Lyle always tried to reassure his patients because it kept them calm.
“Macallister,” Aldo said, and his expression changed to one of fury. “Get away from me, you bastardo,” he said.
Elena heard him and gasped. “I’m sorry, Lyle,” she whispered.
Aldo heard her and hissed “prostituta” again. She understood the Italian word, but she didn’t know why Aldo was saying it to her.
“It’s all right,” Lyle said when he saw Elena flush with embarrassment. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
“I know what I’m saying, you bastardo. If I could get up … .” Aldo tried, but he couldn’t, so he began throwing his arms around, trying to hit Lyle. Elena didn’t recognise this crazy man as her husband. She gaped at him as if he were a demented stranger.
“Be still, Mr. Corradeo. You have serious injuries,” Lyle said.
“I’ll kill you, you bastardo,” Aldo said.
Alison stepped in to restrain his arms while Lyle jabbed him with a sedative. In no time, he was quiet again.
“I don’t understand why he’s reacting this way,” Elena whispered to Lyle as Alison climbed into the cockpit. She looked at him in such a way that he knew she’d never told her husband about their affair. He hadn’t expected that she would have.
“It’s not uncommon,” Lyle reassured her. “He’s probably in a great deal of pain and shock, so he’s become delirious.”
“That must be it, Lyle. I’ve never seen him like this before.”
They discussed whether Elena should fly with them to the Winton Hospital, but she said she’d stay behind to make sure everything was taken care of and then make her own way to town. Lyle told her it would take a while for Aldo to be assessed and treated, and that by the time she got to town, they’d know more.
“What do you make of his injuries, Lyle?” Alison asked when they were in the air and she knew Aldo had fallen unconscious again.
“They’re quite serious,” Lyle said. “But he’s lucky to be alive after falling from such a height.”
“He had a strange reaction to you,” Alison added. Normally, people who were injured had the opposite reaction. They saw Lyle as their saviour.
“He must be suffering from delirium,” Lyle said. “He’s been in terrible pain for a good many hours.”
“Your name seemed to have meaning to him,” Alison said.
“I thought that was odd, but we’ve never met,” Lyle said, equally confused. He wondered if it was possible that Aldo had found out that he and Elena had once been in love. “I still think he’s suffering from delirium. Or perhaps he has me mixed up with someone else.”
“I just hope that Millie woman I flew out to Barkaroola yesterday didn’t upset him and bring about this whole chain of events,” Alison said. “The more I think about her behaviour, the odder it seems.”
“Millie woman?” Lyle said, baffled.
“Yes, Millie McFadden,” Alison said. “The woman I flew out there yesterday.”
“I know who you mean, but you didn’t mention yesterday that her name was Millie,” Lyle said.
“Didn’t I? That’s not important, is it?”
“Perhaps not,” Lyle said. “What did she look like, Alison?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I’m curious, so tell me.”
Alison thought about it. “She wasn’t very tall, and was a little on the plump side, and she had curly hair.”
“Was it auburn in colour?” Lyle asked, his heart slowly sinking.
“Yes, a very pretty auburn colour, and she had an accent just like yours, so I take it you were from the same part of Scotland.”
Lyle could hardly speak. “Can you remember what colour eyes she had?” Millie’s were vivid blue, not easily forgotten.
“A cornflower shade of blue,” Alison said, perplexed by the question. “Why do you ask? Have you remembered that you know her after all?”
Lyle felt sick. For a few moments, he couldn’t speak.
Alison glanced at his expression in concern. “Is something wrong, Lyle?”
“My ex-wife’s name is Millie,” he muttered.
“You did mention that once,” Alison said, not seeing the relevance.
“And your description of this Millie McFadden woman fits that of my ex-wife, Alison,” he added, distressed.
“Millie McFadden is your ex-wife?” Alison was flabbergasted. “Surely not.”
“Her name was Millie Evans before we married, but now that I think about it, her mother’s maiden name was McFadden.”
“Why would she use her mother’s maiden name, and why would she want to see Aldo Corradeo?” Alison asked. “Did she know him?”
“No, and I’m not sure why she’d want to see him, but the reason can’t be good. I never told her that I was in Australia.” Lyle had no idea what was going on. “I sent her divorce papers through an attorney in London.”
“Obviously, she found out where you were, perhaps from family.”
“My family doesn’t know where I am yet, either. I didn’t want there to be any chance Millie would find out my whereabouts, so I was going to tell my family after my divorce was final.”
“I see.” Alison assumed Lyle’s separation was acrimonious, so he must have had good reason for his secrecy. “I wonder why she didn’t speak to you at the Cloncurry Hospital? And why would she lie about the reason she wanted to see Aldo Corradeo? That I don’t understand.” Alison felt like such a fool for being duped by this Millie woman. “I’m sorry, Lyle. If I’d known her real identity-”.
“It’s not your fault, Alison,” Lyle said. “I guess we’ll find out the answers when Mr. Corradeo is well enough.” He suspected that Millie had discovered that he’d loved Elena, but why that should be of any relevance to her now, he didn’t know.
CHAPTER 31
Two hours after the flying doctors’ plane left Barkaroola to take Aldo to the hospital, Elena pulled up behind her parents’ house in her horse-drawn buggy.
“How is Papa, Mama?” Marcus asked anxiously when she came through the back door. “Is he at the hospital yet?”
Elena was afraid to tell him how serious things might be. She didn’t want him worrying. “Yes, he’s at the hospital. I’m going there now. Don’t worry, Marcus. Your papa is strong, so I’m sure he’ll recover in time.” She smiled bravely, but she wasn’t fooling her eldest son. He could see the worry lines around her mouth and how pale she was.
“I want to see him, Mama,” Marcus insisted gravely. “I’m coming with you.”
“Not right now, Marcus. You can see him just as soon as he’s well enough for visitors,” Elena explained. She looked to her mother for support. Before leaving the farm, she had radioed Louisa, and they’d discussed the severity of Aldo’s injuries. She’d tried to be strong, but had been unable to stop herself from sobbing when telling her mother what a shocking sight he was and how badly hurt. They’d agreed that the younger children couldn’t see him, but they knew Marcus might be insistent.
“Your mama will go and see him first, Marcus,” Louisa said sternly. “The doctors will decide when the rest of the family can go.”
