The Bush Telegraph, page 5
‘She didn’t know we hoped no one would come.’ Rita patted her hair to make sure it was in place. ‘Let’s go across and say hello.’ She was practically vibrating with excitement.
Phyllis felt the frustration rise like bile in her throat. Seriously? The beer glass hit the wooden table hard enough to slosh a few drops onto the hot surface. ‘Not on your life.’ Her arm shot out to point. ‘Look at her. She’s an infant. Tomorrow will be soon enough for me to be ordered around by someone who knows nothing. We have more experience than she’s had hot breakfasts, and with a bit of luck we can help her run screaming from this place in a week. Then we can retire in peace with a nest egg when they can’t replace her with anyone.’
Rita frowned, taking a tissue from her bra – she always said you never knew when you’d need a tissue – to wipe the drops on the table until the surface shone. Her face held a tiny frown. ‘That doesn’t sound very nice, Phil.’
‘The enemy are never nice, Rita, I learned that in the army.’
‘The army was a long time ago, Phil.’
‘You never forget.’
Phyllis was sick of living in a rundown flat with a cranky landlord. She hated having no home of her own – the worst decision she’d ever made was lending that money to her daughter. She didn’t own her own bed in one of the cheapest towns on the face of the earth. How pathetic.
Oh, she’d had a lovely cottage until she’d mortgaged it for her daughter’s first business. Rita had had a lovely little flat, too, until her sleaze of an ex had wriggled that out of her. So here they were, two sixty-year-old women who had to work to keep a roof over their heads. Which meant, of course, no choice. Unless they managed to get a payout. They’d been so close.
Phyllis would quite happily turn in her nurse’s registration and retire if they gave her enough money to buy a little hovel she and Rita could fix up. Though she had no idea what her daughter would do if Phyllis stopped paying her bills.
She picked up her beer again and downed it in one long, bitter swallow.
Chapter Eight
Maddy
Three hours after arrival, Maddy stood back and surveyed their hard work. Now the windowsills and benches had been wiped clean of the fine layer of red dust and the floor mopped. The windows had been opened to let in the air but were shut again against the heat.
It was an open-plan house, with efficient air-conditioning, big, curtained windows facing east and smaller windows with awnings facing west, where the heat would beat through them. A covered outdoor area at the shady side with a small barbecue was a nice touch that made her smile.
The beds were now made up in two of the four furnished rooms with the linen she’d brought, and their few clothes were packed into built-in wardrobes. Bee’s paints were in her box at the end of the bed. Alma had encouraged Bridget to paint watercolours and her daughter had a full portfolio of beach scenes that showed a growing artistic talent.
Maddy crossed her fingers that Bee would be drawn to paint the outback and become imbued with the same love that Maddy held for the colours and distant horizons out here. She knew her daughter still wondered why they’d moved here, to heat and sand and flies in a remote town so far from their island paradise.
Just so her mother could run an outreach health centre.
Of course, she could have done that from home. Even after Alma’s death, everything had been set up for her on Lord Howe. She’d had an exceptional offer to work in the health centre there and another from an outer Sydney Hospital, which would have kept Maddy and Bridget close to the place her daughter loved.
Then there was Alma’s little beach house, which was Bee’s to keep or sell when she came of age. As for live-in help, if Maddy worked away from home, there were plenty of keen islanders Bee liked who were happy to earn money babysitting for some of the week.
But deep down, Maddy had felt as if she were a passive receiver of life’s bounty. Everything had been sorted for her. Problems fixed by her friends with a flat in Sydney, or Alma with babysitting on the island, as if everyone had adored having a stray with a baby they could love and look after.
Maddy had taken the opportunity to study nursing, then midwifery; had striven with a little too much obligation to be everything everyone expected; had kept furthering her career, stuffing down the need to escape to the outback; had allowed Bee to grow up with her mother away half the week. It had been a relatively easy life courtesy of Alma, who had taken Maddy in and legally adopted her.
Now, with Alma gone, Maddy needed to spread her wings. Her friends had said this feeling was grief, getting used to life on the island – everything, really – without Alma. Some of that was true.
But Alma had saved herself when the absolute worst had happened to her – even worse than Maddy’s lot – and later in life she had used her own resources to find contentment for all of them on the island. And made herself well-off in the process.
It was funny really. Thanks to Alma, Maddy now owned a row of derelict houses in Spinifex. But she wasn’t telling anyone else that.
She studied the few photo frames she’d brought with them, which now sat on the dresser.
Alma holding a baby Bridget; Maddy and Bridget on the beach with Mount Gower in the distance; Maddy’s nursing graduation picture with Alma standing proudly beside her. Lastly, a farewell group photo her friends had surprised her with from the island.
She looked at that now. Sienna and her husband, Douglas, and their two children. Douglas’s island relatives, who’d all embraced Alma, Maddy and Bridget into their lives. The mothers of Bridget’s schoolfriends and Bridget’s little friends.
She felt so separate from them. As if they were from another life – as if Alma’s death had cut all ties. The island had been all Bee had known since she was a baby, and Alma’s dream.
But it wasn’t Maddy’s dream. Though, yes, she could readily admit it was a wonderful place for children. Like she’d had in the early years with her much older distant brothers and one sister way over in Western Australia. She hadn’t spoken to them for years. Not since her mum had died and the family had disintegrated. Some families did that. But she was determined that she and Bridget wouldn’t do that now that Alma had died.
She might contact her siblings one day. When she was truly proud of herself.
Spinifex may not have heard her silent cry for help eleven years ago, but she hadn’t opened her mouth to ask and she needed to forgive herself for that. Because if she wanted to stand on her own, this was the place for it. Maybe it had been unresolved resentment from both players that had brought her here . . .
Enough! She was going around in circles.
The house looked much more appealing now that they were done with the basics. ‘Good job, Bee. We deserve a treat. How about we walk across the street for an ice-cream?’
Her daughter cocked one eyebrow, like Alma used to do. Maddy winced as grief sliced through her. ‘Do they have ice-creams here?’
‘Of course they do. There’s a shop.’ Or there had been, anyway. ‘You have to have ice-creams in a hot place like this. Besides, all the girls and boys who live here eat ice-creams.’
Bridget’s sceptical face made her stomach sink. ‘Are there other girls here?’
Smartypants. Gotta love pre-teens. ‘You’ll see when you go to school tomorrow. I’ve been talking to your new teacher on the phone. There are two classes. Four in the older class, which is yours. One boy and three girls. And five boys and five girls in the younger class. Not too many people to get lost in.’
Her daughter’s puckered face didn’t improve Maddy’s worry. ‘That doesn’t seem very many.’
‘It’s about half of what you’re used to, but it’ll be fun. Most of the kids live in town, so you’ll make friends.’ Maddy tried not to see the doubt on her daughter’s face. But she stepped forward and hugged her just the same. ‘Ice-cream?’
When Maddy and Bridget walked outside, the heat hit them and Bridget’s eyes widened. ‘It’s so hot!’
‘Yes. But not sticky. Outback heat is different. And it’s strong. That’s why people die fast out here from the heat if they get lost.’ It could happen in a matter of hours.
Bridget eyed the deserted street. ‘I don’t like this place.’
Maddy looked around quickly, but there was nobody to hear. ‘Shhh.’ She tucked Bridget in closer to her body and hugged her. ‘It’s just different. And hot. And an adventure.’ That word was getting a workout.
They crossed the deserted strip of tar, the soles of their shoes ever so subtly sticking to pockets of molten black, then they ducked out of the sun under the awning of the shop with relief.
The sign on the window said, Open Monday to Friday. Maddy glanced up the deserted street. ‘Oh. The shop is closed.’ Her shoulders dropped a fraction. ‘It used to open every day.’ She thought quickly. ‘Maybe we’ll be able to get an ice-cream at the pub.’ If it’s open on a Sunday, she thought grimly, and glanced towards the faceless concrete building.
Alma had opened her pub every day and they’d had a chest freezer full of ice-creams for the tourists at the end of the bar. Maddy steered Bridget to the left and walked the hundred metres to the low-slung pub. It was still hot in the shade where high tables and chairs made islands on the verandah that faced the street. An empty wineglass stood beside an empty beer schooner, and Maddy resisted the urge to pick them up on her way through, like she would have done when she worked at the old Desert Rose.
Instead, she walked past the door to the bar, glanced in and nodded a greeting to two older men who’d swivelled to eye them silently, then steered Bridget through the beer garden doorway. It was a long, low featureless room, with no sign of any memorabilia like Alma had had adorning the walls. No curving staircase or even fake plants here.
And two minutes later they walked out. No ice-cream there, either.
On Monday morning, Bridget’s lip wobbled as Maddy pushed her daughter gently towards the young teacher, Miss King.
‘School will be fun. You’ll be fine,’ Maddy said, her own throat thick as she kissed her daughter’s cheek. She forced a hearty smile at Miss King and tried not to see Bridget’s compressed shoulders. Bridget would have been so much more relaxed for her first day back at the school on the island. Maddy bit back the surge of suffocating guilt that rose in her throat.
Bridget jerked her head in agreement, though her eyes darted to the door behind them and her fingers fidgeted with the strap of her school backpack like a trapped bird scratching at a window.
‘I’ll try to come across when you finish, but if I’m busy just walk to the clinic after school.’ Maddy lifted her hand and touched her daughter’s stiff shoulder. ‘Smile,’ she said softly. ‘It helps everyone.’
Bridget jerked her head again and lifted her chin. Her compressed lips tweaked upwards in a fair attempt of fake delight that made Maddy’s heart squeeze.
‘Good girl. Love you.’ Maddy stepped back, waved and left before she apologised to her daughter again.
Bridget would tough it out, but Maddy couldn’t help wondering if she had put her daughter second behind her own need for independence. Her shoulders squared. Maybe she had in the short term, but in the long term she hoped the lessons they learned here would help Bridget in the future. Her daughter would be resilient.
Maddy cast a long look across the road to the health centre as she crossed the deserted strip of bitumen, thankful it wasn’t so hot yet that she would walk tar through her new workplace.
She breathed in and out to release the tightness in her throat before she choked with nerves.
Last night, she’d climbed the steps to the verandah and tried to peer past the blinds into the clinic, but it had been locked up securely. She’d get her keys today. It felt odd to think she’d be ultimately responsible for all that went on in this building from now on.
There was a lot to be responsible for. Saving lives far from help was, of course, the true goal, so her own clinical competence was crucial. Plus, making sure her staff were equally competent would be her responsibility, too. There’d also be managing the stock supply to keep the centre running and making maintenance requests to keep the building protected for patients and staff alike.
The safety of others was an enormous responsibility and she felt briefly overwhelmed at the thought of juggling everything. Even the ambulance was her responsibility, although she’d been told it was rarely used and the nurses would do the on-call for that now that there were three members of staff.
Oh, there were reams of paperwork laying out how it was to be done but, along with the procedures and protocols, they made sure to emphasise that she was responsible for overseeing all of it.
Her toe caught on a loose rock at the uneven edge of the second strip of bitumen, her anxieties making her clumsy. She picked up her feet. She would have to do better than this. She stepped firmly onto the footpath opposite the health centre with new resolve. Bridget wasn’t the only one with first-day nerves, but she could do this.
The clinical work didn’t faze her. A quiet town with the occasional crisis just didn’t compare with a busy Sydney emergency room. It was just that for a moment, she’d felt like the Maddy of years ago, who had stood outside the pub for her job interview with Alma the publican.
Well, she wasn’t that girl now.
Maddy climbed the stairs to the long, low verandah of the three-pod building and remembered how the area health manager had enthused over how fortunate the town was to get her. Her chin went up again. Not only could she handle medical disasters and chronic illnesses, but she certainly knew how to deal with air-ambulance personnel and any doctors who might visit. And as the clinic was brand new, the equipment would be top-shelf. This would be wonderful.
Chapter Nine
Maddy
‘Here she comes.’ The deep whisper slipped out of a slightly open window to her left and she saw the vertical drape shift out of the corner of her eye.
Maddy pretended not to see. Her footsteps echoed hollowly on the wooden boards of the plank. Plank? What the heck made her think of walking the plank?
She glanced at her watch. Still five minutes before her official start time. Her job description stated that she worked nine until five, with one nurse opening up at eight-thirty. Eight hours would be easy after the back-to-back twelve-hour shifts she’d been used to since she graduated. But then she’d had her days off on the island with Bee and Alma to look forward to. She shut that thought away.
Another real whisper, deeper and more abrasive, drifted her way. ‘Where’d she go?’
‘I’m here.’ Maddy pushed open the door. ‘Good morning, ladies.’
Two older women, one tall and one short, stood frozen at the edge of the room beside the windows, staring at her. The taller woman recovered first, her cool blue eyes flashing in her weather-worn face. Her curved nose and the spike in her short-cropped silver hair made her look like a crested pigeon, but there was nothing to coo about in her expression . . . though her flat chest did puff out to make her appear bigger.
‘Morning.’ It was clipped, with no ‘good’ included in the salutation.
The smaller, rounder, blonder of the two – in fun red-rimmed glasses – bustled past her colleague and held out her hand. ‘I’m Rita. Rita Monroe. Monroe like Marilyn.’ She patted her platinum hair.
Maddy’s lips twitched at the introduction, but she didn’t laugh. Instead, she took the outstretched hand and shook it. ‘I’m Madison Locke. You can call me Maddy. It’s nice to meet you, Rita.’
She glanced at the other woman, who still hadn’t introduced herself. Rita fluttered a hand. ‘This is Phyllis Pemberton. Phil was hoping they wouldn’t find a replacement and we’d get a redundancy.’
Phyllis stared woodenly back with the tiniest inclination of her nose. ‘We both were.’
That bitter bite of information hummed around their heads like a halo of horseflies until Maddy waved it away. ‘And what about the town? And the people who need us?’ She might have said it lightly, but she was serious.
‘Is that why you’re here? For the poor people who need your help? Or are you just here to get more experience at our expense and move on up the ladder?’
‘Now, Phil.’ Rita moved in front of Phyllis and ushered Maddy to the left. ‘The lockers are in the staff room.’
Maddy let herself be steered through the office while she considered the other woman’s attitude. She wasn’t going to be rushed into a confrontation until she was ready, and no doubt Miss Phyllis had been stewing for a while to generate that much venom.
While still hustling, Rita murmured over her shoulder as if Maddy couldn’t hear, ‘Come on, Phil. Give the girl a chance to put her bag down before you go menopausal on her.’
Maddy tightened her fingers on her briefcase, keeping the faint smile on her lips. This was going to be very interesting.
Rita walked ahead, pointing to rooms on the left. ‘Your office. Resus and assessment room, visiting consultant’s room, sterile stock, patient bathroom, plaster and X-ray, pathology, sluice room. Staff toilet.’ With a magician’s wave, Rita finished in a rush. ‘And this is the escape room.’ She showed her to the small square tearoom with a wooden table and chairs for four, a kitchen bench with jug and toaster, and a thin bank of lockers behind the door.
Rita opened the fridge door and waved at the sparse food. A glance inside warned Maddy that she wouldn’t be getting milk in her coffee – like when Jacob had taken it all and Maddy had to drink it black all those years ago. She stopped that thought in its tracks by looking at the room more closely.
The faint tang of burnt toast clung to the walls and steam still rose from the jug, misting the window above the bench. Apparently breakfast was consumed at work.
The opposite wall held a closed door labelled Emergency Exit, but Maddy’s eyes were drawn to the window and outside. As from her own residence, the red paddock disappeared into the distance, though at a different angle, and from here she could just see the mesa on the horizon.
