‘What the…?’ For someone supposedly ready to meet his maker, Hubert clearly had a way to go. He was white with terror. Morag was practically carrying him across the cottage floor as his old feet tried their hardest to scuttle on a surface that was weirdly unstable.
‘It must be an earthquake.’ She had him clear of the doorway now. Robbie was crouched on the back lawn, holding onto Elspeth, and the dog was whimpering in terror.
‘I don’t believe it.’ Hubert sank to his knees and grabbed his dog as well. ‘We haven’t had one of these on the island for eighty years.’
They were clear now of anything that could fall. The earth seemed to be steadying again and she had everyone well away from the house. Morag was hugging Robbie, and Robbie and Hubert were both hugging Elspeth, so they were crazily attached. It was a weird intimacy in the face of shared peril.
They didn’t talk. Talking seemed impossible. They just knelt and waited for a catastrophe that…that suddenly seemed as if it might not happen.
More silence. It was almost eerie. They sat and waited some more but the tremors seemed to have stopped.
Then they sat up and unattached themselves. Sort of. A bit.
‘Was it really an earthquake?’ Robbie demanded, and when Morag nodded, he let out his breath in one long ‘Cool…’
But his body was still pressed against Morag’s and he was still holding on.
‘We haven’t had one of these for eighty years,’ Hubert whispered.
‘You’ve experienced this before?’
‘We’re on some sort of fault line,’ Hubert told them, his colour and his bravado returning as the ground settled. ‘A bunch of scientists came here years back and did some testing but no one took much notice.’ He snorted, his courage building by the minute. ‘It’ll be the same as last time. A bit of a wobble and a fuss and then naught for another eighty years.’
‘I hope you’re right.’ Morag grabbed Robbie around his middle and hugged, hard. Her little nephew was usually the bravest of kids but it didn’t take much for him to remember that the world was inherently unsafe. His ‘cool’ had been decidedly shaky. Seven years ago his father had drowned, and four years back he’d lost his mother. Now he clung alternately to Morag and the dog, and Morag kissed his hair and hugged him tight and wondered where to go to from here.
The only damage up on the ridge seemed to be a dent in Hubert’s teapot. But down below… She shaded her eyes, trying to see down to the little village built around the harbour. It was a gorgeous day. The sleepy fishing village was far below them, but from here it looked untouched.
Maybe a dented teapot was the worst of it.
Please…
‘Maybe you’d better stay up here for a bit in case another shock comes,’ Hubert told her, his voice showing that he was just as wobbly as Robbie.
But she had no choice. She was the island’s only doctor and if there was trouble in the township…
‘I need to head back to check the lighthouse and radio the mainland,’ she told Hubert, but she was speaking to Robbie as well. There was a bit of a stacks-on-the-mill process happening here. Robbie was on her knees, Elspeth was sprawled over Robbie, and Morag had a feeling that if dignity hadn’t been an issue then Hubert would be up here as well. Nothing like the earth trembling to make you unsure of your foundations.
Robbie sat even more firmly in her lap. ‘I think we should all stay here,’ he told her. ‘What if it gets worse?’
‘Aftershocks,’ Hubert said wisely. He’d moved away a little in an attempt to regain his dignity. Now he clicked his fingers for Elspeth to come to him. Elspeth wriggled higher onto Robbie’s lap and Hubert had to sidle closer himself to pat his dog.
They were depending on her, Morag thought despairingly. So what was new? The entire island depended on her-when often all she wanted to do was wail.
This was an earthquake. This was truly scary. Who did she get to tremble on?
No one. Ever. She swallowed and fought for calm and for sense.
‘Hubert’s right. Mild earth tremors are nothing to worry about.’ She put Robbie gently aside and ruffled his hair. ‘Robbie, you know I need to go.’ She sent him a silent message with her eyes, saying she was depending on him.
And Robbie responded. He’d learned from birth what was expected of him as the doctor’s kid, and he rose to the occasion now.
‘Do you really have to go?’ he asked.
‘You know that I do.’
‘Can I come with you?’
‘It’d better if you stayed here for a bit.’
He took a deep breath. He really was the best kid. ‘OK.’ Elspeth got a hard hug. ‘I’ll look after Elspeth if Mr Hamm looks after me.’
‘Is that OK with you, Mr Hamm?’ she asked, and Hubert flashed her a worried look.
‘It’s fine by me, girl, but you-’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘You know, the first quake is usually the biggest,’ Robbie volunteered. It really hadn’t been a very big shake and it was already starting to recede to adventure rather than trouble. ‘I read about them in my nature book. There’s not likely to be another bigger one. Just little aftershocks.’
‘That’s a relief.’
‘Maybe a bigger one’d be cool.’
‘No,’ Morag said definitely. ‘It wouldn’t be cool.’
‘Or maybe this was a ginormous one out to sea and we just got the little sideways shocks a long way away,’ he said, optimism returning minute by minute.
‘Well, that’d be better,’ Morag conceded, thinking about it. ‘With the closest land mass being the mainland three hundred miles away, there’s not much likelihood of any damage at all. Mind, a few dolphins might be feeling pretty seasick.’
Robbie chuckled.
And that was that.
The earthquake was over. Even Elspeth started to wag her tail again.
But she still had to check the village.
Robbie’s chuckle was a good sound, Morag thought as she started down the scree. She’d worked hard on getting that sound back after his mother had died and now she treasured it. It was a major reason she was here, on this island.
Without a life.
Who was she kidding? She had a life. She had a community to care for. She had Robbie’s chuckle. And she had flying teapots to check out.
But it didn’t stop her mind from wandering.
Even though she lived in one of the most isolated places in the world, there was little enough time for her to be alone. She had so many demands made on her. If it wasn’t her patients it was Robbie, and although she loved the little boy to bits, this time scrambling down the scree when she wasn’t much worried about what she’d find below was a time to be treasured.
She liked being alone.
No, she thought. She didn’t. Here she was seldom by herself, but alone was a concept that had little to do with people around her.
She liked being by herself for a while. But she didn’t like alone.
Always at the back of her heart was Grady. The life she’d walked away from.
There was no turning back, but her loss of Grady was still an aching grief, shoved away and never allowed to surface. But it was always there.
He’d written her the loveliest letter when Beth had died, saying how much he missed her, offering to take her away for a holiday, offering to organise things in Sydney so she could return, offering everything but himself.
She’d taken the letter up to the top of the lighthouse. There she’d torn it into a thousand pieces and let it blow out to sea.
Enough. Enough of Grady. She hadn’t heard from him for four years.
Concentrate on need.
Surely an earthquake was worth concentrating on.
Two hundred yards down the path she paused. The closer she came to the village the more it looked as if there was no damage at all.