Prescription-One Husband

CHAPTER FIVE

IT WAS a weird breakfast.

Fern spent the meal trying to shake off the feeling that she belonged in this kitchen.

She felt as if she’d been here all her life.

It was crazy. Aunt Maud kept her kitchen as neat as a new pin and Fern’s hospital flat was clinically clean and uncluttered. No photographs. No sentimentality or memorabilia at all.

It was different here. The kitchen was vast. The centre point was a huge slow combustion stove that almost filled a wall and sent out a soft heat into the slight chill of the morning. The stove seemed the kitchen’s heart.

Around them was the semi-organised clutter of two professionals’ busy lives. There were not nearly enough shelves to hold all the different sorts of feed mixtures Jessie seemed to need. Bags of formula stood heaped along one wall and more were stacked by the stove. To complete the impression of confusion, from the ceiling someone had hung lavender. Maybe a hundred or more bunches were suspended to dry.

‘Jess loves the smell.’ Quinn smiled. ‘And I don’t object too much either.’ He motioned across at the open window to the sea beyond. ‘Especially when it’s mixed with the salt from the ocean.’

There was the smell of more than lavender and salt-and bacon. A bright mound of cut fuchsias and roses tumbled in disarray on the floor, giving off a heady scent of their own.

Maybe Jess had cut them before going out and had not had time to put them in vases, Fern decided-and then blinked as a tiny wombat burrowed out from its pouch somewhere behind her and snuffled over to chomp at the pile.

Fern thought the flowers beautiful. The wombat thought them delicious.

‘How…how many animals does Jessie have here?’ Fern asked faintly and Quinn shook his head.

‘Too many.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘She has four littlies inside at the moment-the wallaby, this little wombat, a baby rosella she puts on the verandah during the day and there’s an echidna behind the stove…’

‘An echidna…’ Australia’s answer to the English

porcupine. ‘How…how cuddly!’

‘He is cuddly, too,’ Quinn smiled. ‘Did you know they don’t grow spikes till they’re twelve months old? Jess feeds him herself, thank heaven. Porcupines don’t use teats-they knead their mother’s belly and the milk oozes onto the surface for the baby to lick off. Feeding Oscar is therefore a messy business.’

‘R-really?’

Quinn grinned. ‘Shame on you, Dr Rycroft. What do they teach in paediatric medicine these days? Didn’t you know that?’

‘N-no.’ Fern’s feeling of unreality was growing and growing.

‘Oscar’s the most frail of the babies here so I won’t take him out of his warm pouch for show and tell,’ Quinn told her. ‘Jess has had a hard time settling his diarrhoea. With luck, next time you eat breakfast here it’ll be feed time.’

‘I won’t…’

‘Be eating with us again?’ Quinn raised disbelieving eyebrows. ‘You know, I’m very sure you will.’ He smiled. ‘Very sure, Fern Rycroft. Coffee?’

‘What, have you emptied your teapot?’ Fern quizzed in an unsteady effort to lighten what she was feeling.

‘I have coffee twice a day to wash the tea down.’ Quinn grinned. His smile faded. ‘Dr Rycroft, this partnership is a serious offer, you know. I’m sure we could work together and your aunt tells me you’ve done an anaesthetic residency. I’m a surgeon, so…’

‘A surgeon!’ Fern’s eyes widened. So she had been right. ‘But…’

‘But I’ve also specialised in emergency medicine.’ He saw the blatant disbelief in her eyes. ‘So…So, together we could provide a damned good service…’

‘But I don’t know why you came…’

Fern’s tone was almost an accusation-as though consideration of his offer was dependent on her knowing his reasons for being on the island.

‘No.’ Quinn nodded, his face thoughtful. ‘You don’t. But I had my reasons and they’re good ones. Sometimes you just have to take people on trust, Dr Rycroft.’

‘But…’ Fern stared at Quinn, baffled, and then tried a sideways tack.

‘OK,’ she said at last. ‘Jessie must have come at the same time as you. Why did she come to the island?’

Quinn’s face cleared. ‘Well, that’s easy,’ he grinned. ‘Jessie came here because cats are banned from the island, foxes don’t exist and even rats haven’t made their way to the island yet. It’s a wildlife utopia, and Jess has been looking for such a place all her life.’

‘You mean she came here because of her animals?’ ‘Jess is a vet, Fern.’ Quinn’s face grew thoughtful. ‘She loves her animals-and maybe, like you, Jess has cut herself off from people. She’s one of the few registered carers in the state allowed to both actively treat injured wildlife and then keep them to release. On the mainland she has to send them to bush shelters after treatment because there’s nowhere round the city where they can safely be released. Here…’

‘There are still dogs.’

‘That’s where our Jess is a resourceful lady.’ Quinn smiled. ‘She knew the island wanted a vet so she wrote with a few conditions when she offered to come. One is that all dogs-no exceptions-are carefully controlled and kept confined after dark and that rule is rigidly policed. The farmers here are so pleased to have a qualified vet they’d have granted her the moon. Keeping their dogs under control seemed easy in comparison.’

‘I-I see…’

Fern put down her half-finished coffee and stared at the floor. She couldn’t meet those eyes.

‘So, what do you say, Fern?’ Quinn asked gently. ‘Will you join us?’

Fern shook her head.

‘Because the high board’s too far up from the water?’ Quinn reached out and tucked a curl back behind Fern’s ear. ‘Maybe I’d be below waiting to catch…And maybe, just maybe, the water wouldn’t be too cold after all…It’s feeling pretty warm from where I stand.’

The silence grew. Fern felt the colour grow from white to fiery pink and back to white again.

Quinn withdrew his hand from her hair. He didn’t touch her again and she didn’t know whether she wished him to or not.

‘I have to go…’ she said finally and he nodded.

‘I guess you do.’ Then, at her look of surprise, Quinn glanced ruefully at his watch. ‘I have a clinic at nine and a ward round to do that’s almost respectably long this morning so, much as I’d like to, I can’t keep looking at you and turning my thoughts from medicine. Will you have dinner with me tonight?’

The invitation caught her by surprise.

‘No!’ It was a whisper of defiance. Fern stood abruptly and backed a foot toward the door.

‘How uncivil!’ Quinn shook his head but his dark eyes kept smiling. ‘My cooking’s not that bad,’ he said plaintively. ‘Will you reconsider if I ask Jess to cook?’

Fern backed another foot. ‘It’s…it’s very kind of you-of you and Jess-but I’ll have dinner with my uncle. I…I only intend to stay on the island for another couple of days so I should spend all the time I can with…with my family.’

‘OK, Fern.’ Quinn rose, stepped forward and brushed her cheek lightly with one finger, the smile fading for an instant. ‘You do that. But in the next couple of days you’d better start believing that Al and Maud are your family. They love you already, Fern, no matter how hard you hold yourself away from them; and there are more people around than just your aunt and Al who could love you-given half a chance.’

‘Don’t…’

She pushed his hand away in confusion and turned to the door.

‘I won’t,’ Quinn said softly as she disappeared fast down the corridor. ‘At least, not yet…’

Fern visited her aunt before she left and found Maud almost asleep again, her face devoid of colour against the pillows. She turned to the door as Fern entered and gave a tremulous smile.

Fern crossed swiftly, her heart jerking within at her aunt’s obvious frailty.

‘Oh, Aunt…’ She stopped to give her a swift hug. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about your heart? You should never have tried to cope with the wedding. If only I’d known…’

‘If you’d known it would have been a glorious excuse to have your wedding in some dingy registry office on the mainland,’ her aunt whispered and managed to smile. ‘Go on, Fern. Admit it.’

‘It wouldn’t have been an excuse.’ Fern sat on the chair beside the bed and took her aunt’s hand. ‘But I should have noticed things weren’t right when I finally did come home.’ She sighed. ‘Aunt, Dr Gallagher says you could be a candidate for a bypass operation-and a bypass could just save your life.’

‘What does he know?’ Maud’s lips compressed into a tight line.

‘He knows what’s best for you,’ Fern told her. ‘Auntie Maud, you’re an otherwise fit woman. You’re just sixty. You could have twenty or thirty good years if you have the operation.’

‘He can’t do it here.’

‘Well, no,’ Fern admitted. Coronary bypasses needed a team of skilled coronary surgeons and specially trained nurses. Such surgery on Barega was unthinkable.

‘So I’d have to go to Sydney?’

‘Yes.’ There was no point in dissembling. ‘But I’d go with you. I’d stay with you all the time.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘I’d bring you home to Barega. I promise.’

‘And then go back to Sydney?’

‘I must, Aunt,’ Fern said gently. ‘Sydney’s my home.’

‘No, it’s not,’ Maud said sadly. ‘Nowhere’s home. Not since your family died. You’ve never let this place be home and even when you marry Sam, Sydney will be just the place where you both get on with your careers. It won’t be home.’

‘Aunt, we shouldn’t be worrying about me,’ Fern said gently. ‘We’re talking about you-and about the probability of more heart attacks unless you do something about it.’

‘I’m not going…’

‘You don’t think that’s a little selfish?’ Fern tried, watching her aunt’s face. ‘Aunt, I don’t know how my uncle will cope without you and that’s the truth.’

‘He’ll have to.’

‘Do you want him to?’

Silence.

‘No,’ Maud said at last. ‘Of course I don’t’ She twisted in the bed and looked at Fern. ‘It was just so awful last time I went…’

‘Last time was fifty years ago,’ Fern said with asperity. ‘Last time your parents put you on a fishing boat in bad weather and it took a week to get to the mainland. Aunt, we can do better than that. We could even get a specially equipped hospital plane to land and transport you…’

‘A plane? One of those noisy tin cans that fall out of the sky…’

‘Believe it or not, they fall out of the sky once in a blue moon and I’ve been watching carefully of late. The moon’s not blue at all,’ Fern said. ‘You’d be surprised how comfortable they are now.’

‘My father went on a joyride once. He was green for weeks.’

‘That was forty years ago. Aunt, aviation has come a long way since then.’

‘I…’

‘Auntie Maud, you know you can get through this if you set your mind to it,’ Fern whispered, laying her cheek against her aunt’s. ‘Do it for my uncle. And for me. Please?’

‘For you…’ Aunt Maud’s hand came up to clasp Fern’s soft chestnut curls. ‘Oh, Fern, you don’t need me. You never have.’

‘I do.’

‘I wish that was true. But…’ A tear slid down Maud’s face. She closed her eyes. ‘Fern, you won’t even get married on the island now, will you?’

‘We’d be silly to,’ Fern whispered.

‘You mean you have a good excuse.’ Maud shook her head and her lips tightened. There was a long moment’s silence while she thought. Then her eyes flashed open again.

‘Fern, I still want you to marry on the island. Drat Lizzy and her tricks. I’m asking you to try again.’

‘But…’

‘No buts,’ her aunt said sternly, her voice strengthening with decision. ‘I’ll do you a deal.’

‘What…what sort of deal?’

‘If you promise to marry on the island then I’ll have this darned operation. Bring on your hospital planes, your helicopters…Bring on the army for all I care. I want to see you married, Fern, dear, and I want you to be married among your own. I want you to be married here. So…So is it a deal?’

Another island wedding? To go through with all this tomfoolery again? Every nerve in Fern’s body rebelled against the thought.

‘But Sam…’

‘Sam will marry here if you want to badly enough.’

‘I don’t think…’

‘You can persuade him, if you try.’

Maybe she could. The problem was that Fern wasn’t too sure she wanted to persuade anybody.

‘Aunt…’

Fern’s words broke off mid-sentence as the door opened behind them and Quinn Gallagher walked in.

‘I need to check your aunt before Clinic,’ Quinn said apologetically to Fern. He smiled down at Maud. ‘I suppose you haven’t changed your mind about this operation?’

‘I have and all,’ Maud whispered triumphantly, her eyes only just a little bit scared. ‘Tell him, Fern.’

‘She says she’ll go,’ Fern said faintly.

‘But tell him your promise,’ Maud demanded. ‘So you’ve made it in front of witnesses. If I die in the next five minutes your promise is still binding.’

‘I’ve promised my aunt that if she agrees to the operation then I’ll marry on the island.’ Fern’s voice was almost as weak a whisper as her aunt’s.

‘Marry Sam?’ Quinn’s expressive eyebrows rose skyward.

‘I don’t care if Fern changes her mind and marries the local undertaker,’ Maud muttered. She’d had her win and fatigue was starting to show. ‘But whoever she marries, she marries here. Right, Fern?’

‘R-right.’

‘Well, well,’ Quinn Gallagher drawled. He looked down at Fern and his mouth quirked into an enigmatic smile. ‘Well, well…’

Good grief…

What on earth had she done? Made promises that she had no way of knowing she could keep?

Fern left Maud to Quinn Gallagher’s capable care and escaped to the corridor.

Sam…She should see Sam before she went back to her uncle’s. He’d expect a visit for sure.

Why didn’t she want to see him?

She opened his door with trepidation, expecting maybe a repeat of the tirade of last night. Instead of scowls, however, Sam was sitting up in bed looking perfectly resplendent in his purple pyjamas and beaming with his usual good humour.

Sam normally was benign and happy, Fern thought. It was only the shock of being ill that had thrown him.

‘Fern…’ Sam held out his hands and Fern had no choice but to walk across to the bed and take them. He kissed her soundly on both cheeks. ‘How are you, sweetheart? And how’s your aunt?’

‘She’s better this morning,’ Fern told him, managing a smile to match his. ‘But still very weak.’

Sam took a deep breath. Clearly something was disturbing him. ‘Fern, Dr Gallagher told me this morning just how close to death she’d been-and he also told me I was a right twit last night Will you forgive me?’

The wind was knocked out of Fern’s sails in a rush. She looked down at Sam and saw the same kid she’d grown up with-the man she was as familiar with as a pair of old socks-and the reasons she was marrying him firmed back to solid comfort.

‘You were frightened yourself,’ she reassured him. ‘I was just grateful I didn’t eat any of those dreadful oysters myself.’

‘I didn’t think Lizzy would go that far for me,’ Sam said, and his tone was half-admiring. ‘She’s quite a girl.’

‘Sam…’ Fern pulled back and stared at her fiancé in concern. ‘Sam, are you absolutely sure you don’t want to marry Lizzy?’

‘Marry…’ Sam’s face froze. ‘No. Of course not. What on earth put that idea into your head? Fern, you know that thing we had in the past is well and truly over-at least it is with me. Sure, we were a pair when we were kids-but that was before you came, and before I decided I wanted a life off the island. What sort of lawyer’s wife do you reckon Lizzy would make? First, she’d be scared stiff to leave here and second…well, imagine asking clients home to dinner. If she didn’t like them I’d have to taste test their food for poison.’

‘She wouldn’t do that,’ Fern said slowly. ‘Sam, if Lizzy conformed a bit more…Are you saying you’d just as soon many her as me?’

Sam smiled and shook his head, his hands still holding Fern’s.

‘Of course not, Fern. I want a sensible wife-not a scatterbrain. You had a bad day, sweetheart, and it’s making you have doubts. Most brides have nerves before the wedding.’

‘But…’

‘Fern, we’ve agreed this is a really sensible choice. We know each other so well there are no surprises. We don’t fight We both want careers without children and neither of us believe in this crazy thing called romance. So…We’re made for each other, Fern, and you know it So as soon as we get back to Sydney…’

‘Aunt Maud wants us to marry here. Still…’

Sam frowned. ‘But Lizzy…’

‘I don’t think Lizzy will interfere again,’ Fern said sadly, thinking of Lizzy’s half scared, half defiant face as she’d left her yesterday. ‘I think it would be kinder to Lizzy if we married elsewhere-but my aunt’s desperate to see us married. She says if we marry here she’ll come to the mainland with us and have a bypass operation-and she needs it if she’s to live.’

‘Your aunt leave the island…’ Sam lay back on his pillows and stared up at Fern in amazement He knew Maud almost as well as Fern did and he knew what a concession she was making. ‘Whew…’

‘So you see…’

‘Yeah, I see.’ Sam stroked his smooth chin thoughtfully. ‘Well, we’ve three weeks’ honeymoon and today’s only Sunday. How about if we marry on Friday? It still gives us two weeks’ study time back in Sydney before we start work.’

Just like that. As romantic as making a pot of tea…

Quinn’s tea…

Stop thinking about the man. Fern forced her mind back to practicalities with a mammoth effort.

‘O-OK. A small wedding, though, Sam. Maybe even here if my aunt’s not well enough to come to church. Just my aunt and uncle and your parents.’

‘Suits me.’ He smiled. ‘Even Lizzy won’t dare try anything if we’re marrying in the hospital. But you’ll still wear your gorgeous dress, won’t you, Fern? You looked smashing.’

Fern thought back to the crumpled mound of soiled wedding dress she had left lying on her bedroom floor. Ugh…

‘I’ll have to have it cleaned,’ she said reluctantly. Why was her major impulse to bury the dress and be done with it? ‘But, yes, I’ll wear the dress.’

‘Then that’s settled…’

‘And I’m staying in hospital till then,’ Frank Reid hooted from behind the curtain. He’d obviously been listening to every word. ‘I’ve no intention of missing your wedding after all this, Fern Rycroft, even if I have to promise to drink no beer, eat no lamingtons and touch not a single oyster.’

The day dragged on after that.

Sam decided that he was staying in hospital for the day, thank you very much, in case he had a relapse and Quinn agreed with such speed that Fern thought uncharitable thoughts about the account he was mentally preparing in his head.

‘You could go home,’ she told Sam, but he shook his head.

‘I’m not risking it,’ he said, folding his arms in a gesture of final decision. ‘A man has to take care of his health-and in Dr Gallagher’s hands I’m in very good hands.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ Fern agreed, casting a doubting glance at Quinn as he entered the room. There were dollar signs in his laughing eyes.

‘He doesn’t need to be here,’ she told Quinn as they left together.

‘Any suggestions how to shift him?’ Quinn grinned. ‘It doesn’t bother me that he stays, Dr Rycroft. He’s a paying customer and if I need the bed I’ll move him somehow-even by enema if I have to.’

Fern laughed, but she was mortified all the same.

‘Don’t fret,’ Quinn told her, seeing the doubt behind her smile. He touched her fleetingly on the cheek with a touch that felt as if it was charged with electricity. ‘I’ll take great care of your beloved. For you…’

He left her standing on the hospital steps, feeling more confused than she’d ever felt in her life.

Fern drove back to the farmhouse to find her uncle in deepest despair. He cheered up, though, when Fern told him of his wife’s decision to have the operation and went off to the hospital to sit with her.

Fern was left facing the mess from the day before.

The mess suited her mood.

The lunch dishes were still unwashed from yesterday’s ill-fated wedding lunch. The guests had gone straight from lunch to the church. ‘We’ll fix this mess later,’ Maud had promised and here it was…later. There were still a couple of oysters, cold and congealed on plates around the room. Ugh!

Even after Fern had cleared the mess she cleaned on, polishing mirrors, searching for non-existent cobwebs…

Trying to block out Quinn Gallagher and his unwelcome offer…

She didn’t feel the least bit tempted. She didn’t…

Her uncle was being fed at the hospital. Fern made herself a sandwich for lunch and another for tea and then, toward dusk, she wandered down to the harbour.

It was as if she was in some sort of limbo-some waiting time-but she didn’t know what she was waiting for.

It was a glorious night, a repeat performance of the night before. The island might be in the grip of drought, its grasses burned brown from a long hot summer, but in the dusk little of that was obvious. The moon shimmered into existence low on the horizon and slowly started to rise.

Fern dug her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans and walked slowly along the rows of boats representing Barega’s fishing fleet. She knew each and every one of them. Normally they’d be out on a night like this-but most of the fishermen had been at the wedding…

Most had eaten Lizzy’s oysters.

They’d still be feeling weak and washed out after last night’s stomach upsets and the sea would have little appeal.

Fern walked slowly from boat to boat. They were as familiar as…as familiar as Sam.

She walked halfway down the jetty and then stopped dead as an unfamiliar sound smashed across the silence.

Fern turned, trying to figure out where the sound had come from.

There was another smash, the splintering of timber under something that sounded like an axe. Then a shout of horror echoed over the water from the end of the jetty and, as if driven by the shout, a diesel engine roared into life.

In the dim moonlight Fern saw a fishing boat swerve out from its moorings and head for the open sea. Fast!

It was Lizzy’s boat. The fishing boat that Lizzy’s father had operated before her. The Dolphin…

What on earth was the crash, though? Instinctively, Fern started to run toward the gap Lizzy’s boat had left, her sneaker-clad feet moving swiftly on the jetty boards.

There was someone else there. The boat next to Lizzy’s belonged to Alf Gunn. Alf was in his eighties and his boat was the old fisherman’s only home. He slept below deck. Now he was standing on the jetty, rubbing his eyes as if waking from a bad dream.

‘Alf, what is it?’ Fern reached the old man and took his shoulders in her hands. The sense of urgency inside her was making her feel sick. She just knew…

‘The girl…’ Alf’s voice was a disbelieving whisper. ‘Lizzy…I heard the first smash and was up like a cork in a bottle of fizz, thinking it was vandals. It was Lizzy, miss. She’s stove a ruddy great hole in her boat-in her lovely boat!-right below the Plimsoll line. And she’s headed out to sea with water pouring in! Top speed…’

‘Why…?’

They both knew why. The old man and the girl stared at each other in horror as they came to terms with what Lizzy had done.

‘It’s suicide, isn’t it, Fern?’ Alf said bleakly. ‘After what she did yesterday…’

‘I guess…’ Fern’s mind was racing at a hundred miles an hour. ‘How big was the hole?’

‘Big enough. Not so big that she’ll go down in the harbour, though. Most of the hole was above water. It’s only when the boat hits the ocean swell…’

Lizzy had thought this out well. If the boat went down in the harbour she wouldn’t drown. She could swim like a fish. But if she got her boat out into the main ocean currents…and her boat sank…There was no way Lizzy could change her mind after that.

‘So we follow her,’ Fern said frantically. ‘Can we do it, Alf?’

‘We don’t have a choice,’ Alf said grimly. ‘Come on, girl!’

Alf was born on the boat and born to the sea. The same as Lizzy. It took such a one to follow Lizzy because the girl was moving with both desperation and skill.

From the mouth of the harbour a reef ran eastward in a foaming, jagged line. Lizzy’s boat, lights cut, turned north-straight across the reef. If it hadn’t been a moonlit night they wouldn’t have seen her. As it was, Fern could hardly believe her eyes.

‘She’ll smash on the rocks,’ Fern gasped.

‘Not Lizzy,’ Alf said grimly. ‘Not that she’d mind if she did-but there’s a gap, if you know the way. If she hits the reef she’ll risk being washed up on the beach within minutes. It’s my guess Lizzy doesn’t want that to happen.’

‘Do you know the way…?’

She didn’t have to ask. Alf was already swinging his boat north and it was all Fern could do not to close her eyes in horror.

There was foam surging all around their boat and jagged rocks on either side. Surely this was impossible…In the dark…

It wasn’t impossible. The boat lurched through the last breaking wave and surged on. Ahead of them was Lizzy’s boat, sinking lower and lower in the water as she went

‘May it keep afloat another five minutes,’ Alf said through gritted teeth, ‘or she’ll drift back onto the reef.’

His wish was granted. Lizzy’s boat was gunned hard out to sea; it went on and on, its deck sinking to an impossible level…

Then it stopped dead. A swell must have caught it broadside and the huge mass of water below decks shifted.

The boat reared sideways and slowly, slowly, slipped under the water.

As it disappeared under the surface, a thin, forlorn figure raised her hands in the air and slipped beneath the waves with her boat.