I knew the house would be totally deserted, and it is. I’m not quite on this planet, still a little spaced out from those tablets Mum gave me last night. Sunday is Amai’s day off too, so the place is locked up. They’ll be at the hospital. Is that a good thing, or a very bad thing?
I’m thinking the yard is empty too, but no. The complete lack of human sound is all enveloping, soaking into the clammy humidity that clings to us, but over there is George, on the far side, sitting on an upturned bucket in the shade of the hedge. There’s a bottle of Coke in the grass beside him and he’s intently studying the Sunday Mail, eyes flicking between the paper and the Tote betting slips in his left hand.
He only looks up as we approach.
“Ah!” he grunts by way of a greeting, taking a swig from the bottle. “Not one winner again. I have lost too much money now!”
“Well George, you know what the answer is?”
I hadn’t wanted to come here in the first place and I certainly don’t wish to discuss George’s vices.
He reads my mind. Setting aside his Coke, avoiding eye contact, he tears the betting slips into tiny pieces, then stuffs these into the pocket of his overalls.
“Have they told you about Boss Nathan?”
It’s all I can do to nod. George does the “Ah!” again and when he does raise his head I see my own fear in his deep brown eyes.
“It has made Amai very ill. She has looked after him since he was very small. What have they told you? Is he going to die?”
“DON’T say that!”
I want to punch him for saying the words I’ve been trying to avoid all night – I mean, really want to punch him – and it shocks me.
“Bloody jackals,” he grunts. He hawks and spits into the grass a couple of metres away and then studies Danny with an oddly critical stare. I’d better introduce them.
“George, meet Danny. Danny, meet George, the best groom in the country and carer for my horse.”
“Mangwanani, Boss Danny. Ma rara sei? Do you know Nathan?”
Danny doesn’t complete the greeting. He nods cordially at George and says, “I do remember him from school George, but he’s older than me by a couple of years.”
He takes my hand, and his sweat is slimy in my palm.
“Come on, Babe. Lead me to that horse before we bake out here.”
He’s called me that quite a lot recently. I’ve liked it, but right now it doesn’t seem appropriate. It’s too comfortable a word for this fearful, horrible, cruel world. I allow my hand to rest in his and try to convince myself that the distraction of this ‘lesson’ is what I need.
*
I make us linger at the stables well into the lunchtime feeding routine but, although three more grooms appear to carry out the duties, the Owen family remains absent. Bravo’s brought in from his paddock; I have to spin on my heel and walk in the opposite direction because I can’t deal with remembering an image I may never see again. Him, riding that beautiful horse. Him, making that horse look like he’s performing every move of his own free will. Far too sharp in my mind as well, is the memory of him the last time he was back here on a weekend pass. I was arriving and he was just leaving on some errand in Charles’s company pick-up, and we never even greeted each other. It was the first time I’d seen him in his camouflage and army boots and it was so incongruous that the memory jars and hurts somewhere deep within me. He wasn’t the boy/teenager Nathan I know, lanky and casual in T-shirts with shorts or jodhpurs. This Nathan was an adult, business-like in uniform and with a grim set to his mouth that I’d never seen before.
And we never even greeted each other.
Maybe that’s what jars and hurts more than anything.
This is the point at which I realise I can keep Danny hanging about no longer. I’ve instructed him on the points of the horse, how to groom, types of grooming tools, parts of the saddle and bridle and even minor equine ailments until his eyes have glazed over. He may have displayed unexpected confidence on horseback and been able to guide Induna in circles and figures-of-eight – admittedly rather odd-shaped ones – while making me smile with some of his comments and silly questions, but he couldn’t disguise the fact that his sole objective was distraction.
I tell George I’ll phone at four o’clock and we leave.
*
I hover near the phone for a good ten minutes, but I know I’ll never make that call. Gill and I have had no end of marathon phone conversations over the years but right now it’s the coldest and most impersonal form of communication I can imagine.
“I’ll go over on the bike and be back for supper,” I call out as I pass the living room door, rattling the shed keys in my hand like they’re red hot. I want news, but I don’t. My insides are churning and I wish I could run away somewhere – anywhere – or just dig a hole and get in it.
“Are you sure she should be going there?” It’s Dad’s voice and I pause mid-stride, just out of their line of sight.
“She’s upset, Bob. Heaven knows, we get to hear these things every day but don’t forget this is someone she knows so it’s really hit her. I don’t know what I should say to her.”
Mum’s voice changes in pitch and volume, calling me back.
“Tessa? Tessa are you still there? Dad thinks… I think… Maybe leave them alone darling. It’s a very private, family thing and if they’re grieving…”
I’ve reversed and am back in the doorway. I stop her there with, “I am family.”
It just comes out. While she’s still looking confused, I escape.
Grieving. No, they won’t be. They won’t.
*
I’m here, but I don’t know how I got here. Well of course I know how I got here, but what I mean is… It doesn’t matter.
Charles is in the driveway and he’s dragging a large sports bag from the rear seat of his Mercedes. He hears my squeaky brakes, looks up at me by the open gate and I look at the bag.
Whose bag is that? What’s in it? Has he brought it back from the hospital? Why would he need to bring stuff back from the hospital?
I push my bike into the hedge and, with no warning to either of us, burst into tears with a wail.
“Oh, Tessa!” He runs the few steps to reach me, and I’m in his warm bear hug. In order to do this, he has to drop the bag on the macadam surface and it makes a metallic clinking as it hits the ground. He rocks me several times, kissing the top of my head.
“It’s all right, my darling. Don’t cry. It will all be okay.”
He pulls away a bit, tilts my chin up with a finger and tries a smile. “Now then, Missy. You’re making my shirt wet.”
I don’t know what my streaked face looks like to him or what he can read in it, but I see such affection in his eyes that I start to blub all over again.
“No, no, no!” he protests, pulling me back into his chest. “He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s still very much with us. Look, come inside and I’ll tell you everything. Gill and Moira are longing to see you.”
He picks up the bag as he leads me to the door. Past Nathan’s pale blue Datsun 140J, adjacent to the garage, where he last left it.
“Finally got those two bridles back from Fairmont Saddlery on Friday. Buggers’ve had them for four weeks!”
When we’ve all finished hugging each other and I’ve blown my nose noisily several times, they sit me down at the big kitchen table. Moira shoves a heap of what looks like Charles’s paperwork aside, pushes a glass of water into my right hand. Gill pulls her chair close and holds my left. Charles turns one of the chairs around so its tall back is against the table and sits astride it, his thick brown forearms crossed on top of it. He talks.
As is his habit, he doesn’t waste words. A routine patrol in a follow-up operation after the murder of some villagers, an ambush, shots taken in the right side of the body and the right leg, blood and tattered uniform cloth, comrades not knowing the extent of the damage, chopper casevac, unconsciousness, transfusions, a list of operating procedures – which I try very hard not to listen to – and then life and a clean, white hospital bed.
“I’ve no doubt we’ll get the full story in time, but he’s still drugged up. He’s a lucky boy. His vital organs are intact and so’s his pelvis and femur. Flesh wounds only, you know?”
Pointlessly, I recall to mind the names of the pelvic bones: ilium, ischium and pubis. I can see the skeleton drawing in my biology file.
“The doctors are saying he’ll end up with a bit of a limp for a while due to some muscle damage. What they need to do now is prevent infection. We’ll see.”
We talk some more and then finally, we laugh. It’s a relief. Amai appears from the garden, which means it’s nearly dinner time, and there’s more hugging. She wraps me in her soft brown arms and clamps my face against her cushiony bosom so I can’t breathe. She smells of Palmolive soap. Goodness and safety. Charles eventually prises me away.
“Don’t start her crying again, Amai. And you, don’t you start either!”
Family. I’m as much at home and as loved here as I am in my own house. This can’t be right, but it feels right. Me, Gill, Moira, Charles, Amai – we’re good together. And Nathan? Nathan should be here too.
He will be.