Lu sat on the veranda of her cottage, and didn’t watch the river. Was it unintended cruelty, sending her to a place called River View when she would never see that view?
She could smell the river though, and even feel the slightly damper air currents on her face. You didn’t sit on a veranda to smell a view, but in the unacknowledged hope that someone might pass by to fill in days that seemed to have doubled in length in the past week since the River View kids began school. Radio, music tapes or even spoken books couldn’t fill in an entire day, and daytime television was impossible even if you could see the screen, and even more fatuous when you couldn’t. She bet no one on daytime TV even knew the word ‘fatuous’.
Today held two more meals, an hour’s therapy session with Ms Sampson-Lee, teaching her how to use cutlery and find the food on her plate, or tell the time with the new watch that had a big glass opening top, and nothing, plus nothing, then nothing once more.
She should be studying the braille primer, left unopened on the desk in her room. Ironically the seriousness of her injuries now meant her once-calloused fingers had softened enough for her to read the small braille lumps.
But to learn braille was to admit not that her sight was gone forever — she had accepted that, as she had the loss of her mother as well. Learning braille would be a promise that her life would continue, and that wasn’t a promise she was prepared to make. Not now, and possibly not ever.
An empty day. An empty life. No, not a life at all. Just empty, empty, empty.
Once, a year ago, a hundred centuries ago, it would have been a dream not to go to school. Now the silence of River View mocked her. Thanks to new technologies and the anti-discrimination legislation, as well as volunteer labour and engineers from the community building ramps and installing bars and wheelchair-accessible toilets, the younger kids now attended Gibber’s Creek Central.
But not her. If she wanted more schooling, she would need to learn braille and a hundred other things she had tried not to listen to as Ms Sampson-Lee explained. For all that she’d need to go to Sydney. And to do that she would need a reason to take up life again, as . . . what?
She suspected when the world saw you as blind, you had to be better than everyone else to get any work, unless you were willing to accept a charity job, feeding paper into a photocopier, then stacking it up.
Footsteps. Lu frowned. Peculiar footsteps — not quite a footfall, more a click. She’d read a sci-fi story once about giant mutated grasshoppers. The click sounded exactly like a giant mutated grasshopper might sound. If a giant mutated grasshopper were coming for her, she wouldn’t know until it grabbed her . . .
. . . though come to think of it, a giant mutated grasshopper presumably just wanted lots of grass, not girls . . .
‘Lu Borgino?’ The voice was male, pleasant, unfamiliar.
How many blind girls did he think lived at River View? She didn’t bother to turn to pretend to look at him, which Ms Sampson-Lee had told her was the polite thing to do. ‘Yes.’
‘I’m Nicholas Brewster.’
The name was vaguely familiar. A friend of Joe’s? she wondered, then remembered how Nancy had spoken on the phone to a ‘Nicholas’ the week before as he added, ‘I’ve met your stepfather a few times. Matron Clancy knows I’m here, by the way, if you’d like to check on me.’
‘No need.’ She still didn’t look in his direction, trying to express her deep and determined wish that he go away, stay away, and if possible vanish with the entire universe to that dead land where her vision had gone.
‘I suppose you call that your “poisoned glance”.’ His voice sounded amused. How dare he find her funny! ‘That’s one hell of a name you’ve got there, Lucrezia Borgia.’
How many idiots had made that joke? Did he really think he was being original? Her temper snapped. ‘My parents didn’t know my father would die when I was a few days old. Do you think that’s funny too? They didn’t know my mother would marry a man called Borgino when I was four. If you’ve got any other Lucrezia Borgia jokes, you can keep them to yourself. I’ve heard them all.’
‘I bet you haven’t. I bet you ten dollars the person who gives you an engagement ring will tell you it hasn’t got a poison compartment.’
‘Hilarious,’ she said. Who would ever want to marry her? But that was irrelevant. Why would she ever want to marry? She supposed you could learn how to wield a mop and the feel of scone dough and use a timer to know when to take them out of the oven. A blind woman might make the perfect housewife.
Never. Not for her.
Silence, but she knew by the lack of those clicking footsteps that he was still there. ‘May I sit with you?’ he asked at last.
She shrugged, trying not to display curiosity. Not to feel curiosity, because that would draw her further back into the world.
The strange sound clanked on the steps. Yes, clanked . . . She looked down automatically at where his legs would be, then bit her lip and looked away.
‘Ah, you can hear the Terrible Two?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘My prosthetic legs. They look a bit like something out of Doctor Who, I admit. My own were blown off in Vietnam. The ones you can hear are metal, a fairly new design. I called them that when I first got them because they were like a two-year-old — they went everywhere except where I wanted them to go.’ She could hear the smile in his voice when he added, ‘Not that I’ve lived with a two-year-old yet. My wife and I are expecting our first baby at the end of July.’
She was supposed to say, ‘Congratulations.’ She didn’t. She still didn’t bother to turn to face him either. Politeness be hanged.
‘I know why you’re here,’ she said flatly.
‘Do you?’ He sounded amused again.
‘Joe or Matron has decided that you’re A Good Example. Matron has told me about all kinds of Good Examples. Teachers, secretaries, a journalist, a librarian and a broadcaster who are blind and who lead Good and Fulfilling Lives. Now you are going to tell me you can lead a Good and Fulfilling Life with no legs.’
‘Well, no,’ he said.
She did look at him, automatically this time. And kept her face towards him, trying to pick up more information from the way he moved. Because there was something in that ‘no’ that was full hearted and true.
‘I’m happy,’ he said slowly. ‘But I wouldn’t say my life is fulfilling. I love my wife, enjoy helping her with her work, helping up at Rock Farm. But it’s helping. It’s others’ lives, not mine. I thought I was half a man, for a while. I’m not. But I’m still not the man I could be yet. And I don’t know how to find him.’
His honesty shocked her into a reply. ‘But it must be ages since you lost your legs. Haven’t you found anything you’d like to do since then?’
‘More than ten years. I could tell you to the day, except I try not to do that to other people. Makes them uncomfortable to be with someone who counts every single day since his loss.’
‘I count too,’ she admitted. ‘Try not to. It just . . . happens.’
‘Shall we cut the bulldust? I’m here because Nancy Thompson rang me. She and Matron want you out of here —’
‘You’re the removalist? They should have sent someone with real legs if you intend to carry me off to a car.’ She stopped, then muttered, ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘If you could see the expression I probably have on my face, you wouldn’t have. Now we’re even. No, I’m not here to shove you into a wheelbarrow and dump you in the gutter outside River View. Nancy thought you might decide to find a life again if you could ride. Matron agreed to let me bring a horse for you to try on. My grandmother-in-law breeds horses and I’ve brought one of them down here today.’
She let the anger show. ‘A nice twenty-year-old plodder for the poor blind girl to stumble around on? Does Matron know the first thing about riding?’
‘No, thank goodness.’ He sounded amused once again. ‘She probably did expect me to bring that nice old plodder. In fact I’ll bring a nice old plodder for the other kids if any of them seem interested. No, the one I’ve brought for you is different.’
Something seeped through the cocoon of black feathers that had been suffocating her for twelve months. ‘What?’
‘My grandmother-in-law is Flinty McAlpine,’ he said, teasing out the information. ‘It’s her horse I’ve brought down. He —’
Lu sat straighter, trying to detect the smell of horse, the sound of a snicker. But all she could smell was heat, gravel paths and far-off stir-fried cabbage. ‘Not . . . not Mountain Lion?’ Everyone — everyone who mattered — had heard rumours of the young horse in Flinty McAlpine’s paddock. It wasn’t possible Mountain Lion might come here. It was a joke. Nicholas probably wasn’t even related to Flinty McAlpine — just thought it would be fun to take advantage of a girl who couldn’t see . . .
‘You know Mountain Lion?’
‘I know of him. Everyone’s been talking about him —’ Lu stopped. ‘Everyone was talking about him a year ago,’ she amended. ‘Has Mountain Lion had an accident too? Is that why he’s here?’ Flinty McAlpine was reputed to never put a horse down, even if it would never race again or be put to stud.
‘Nope. He is in splendid, energetic and rather annoyed form at being driven down here instead of left in his mountain paddock, where he has Old Downer for company. You’ve got him for a month, then he goes into serious training. Flinty is hoping she’ll finally get a Cup winner this time.’
‘But . . . but she’s sent him for me to ride?’ It wasn’t possible. No one would risk a horse like Mountain Lion.
Except Flinty McAlpine, Lu remembered. The young Flinty had ridden the stallion Snow King so hard she had almost crippled herself, to warn the people in the valley below Rock Farm of the flash flood that was coming as the sun melted the snow. And so Snow King had never raced, even though he had bred champions.
‘Let’s see if you manage to lead him first. He’s not easy.’ The prosthetic legs gave a just-perceptible click as he stood up. ‘If you can manage to lead him around the yard, then maybe . . . maybe . . . you can ride him.’
‘Around the yard?’
‘Maybe more.’ The voice had authority now. ‘I’m not promising you anything, Lucrezia Borgia.’
‘My name’s Lu.’ She didn’t bother adding ‘Borgino’. It just wasn’t worth the breath.
‘And I’m the one who has the saddle and bridle. I’m not risking Flinty’s horse. If you manage to lead him, if you manage to ride him around the ring, then canter, then possibly, just possibly . . . well, we’ll see.’
You’ll see, she thought and then ecstatically, You will see, because she would show him . . .
Doubt paralysed her. Could she?
‘Come on,’ said Nicholas. ‘The descendant of Snow King is waiting for you across the river.’
Somehow she managed to stand, find her stick and follow him down the steps.