‘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.’