She should stay at home with him. But who else would do this? These were her people. She felt like she was being torn in two.
There was nothing to do except to work on through it, so she kept on doing what came next, and by her side Benjy was stoic.
She needed to get her life in order, she thought dully as she and Benjy walked home at dusk. But how? There were no answers.
As they approached her bungalow she saw her lights were on. Often the islanders would come to her house if they needed her. Surely not more work, she thought bleakly.
She was so tired.
‘You can do this, Lily,’ she murmured, and pushed her door wide.
There was indeed someone waiting for her.
It was Gualberto.
And Ben.
‘Gualberto,’ she said, setting Ben’s presence aside as too confusing. Gualberto, as head of Kapua’s council, was a stable presence, a surety in a world that was no longer sure. ‘It’s lovely that you’re here,’ she told him, and she meant it. ‘How can I help you?’
‘It’s not for you to help me, Lily,’ the old man said gravely. ‘It’s how I can help you. Ben tells me you need to rest.’
She flashed Ben a look of anger. He hadn’t been near Benjy. So much for promises, and now to tell Gualberto she needed to rest… He was piling more problems on an elderly man who had enough to cope with. ‘I don’t,’ she snapped.
‘Hear us out, Lily,’ Ben said, and she bit her lip.
‘Go run a bath, Benjy,’ she told her son, but Gualberto put out his hands and tugged her son onto the seat beside him.
‘Benjy needs to hear what we’ve organised.’
‘I hope you’ve organised nothing.’
‘We’ve organised you a holiday, Lily,’ the old man said, and he suddenly sounded severe. ‘Sit down.’
This was so unusual a statement that she did sit. Benjy was on the chair by Gualberto. It was a four-chair table. That meant she had to sit by Ben.
She sat but she shifted her chair as far away from him as possible.
Gualberto smiled at the movement, as if he found it amusing. What was funny about it? Lily asked herself, and then decided she was too tired to care. She wanted them all to go away. She could sleep for a hundred years.
‘There’s a thing called burn-out,’ Gualberto told her, and his hand came across the table to grip hers. ‘Ben tells me you have it.’
‘Ben doesn’t know me.’ She tried to tug her hand away but she couldn’t.
‘Ben has organised for you to take a rest,’ the old man said sternly. ‘We’ve thought this thing through. We depend on you, and we’ve pushed this dependence too far.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ This feeling of being out of control…she’d had it since that first morning when the finance councillor had stumbled, wounded, through her front door, and it was growing stronger rather than weakening. She felt as if her body was growing so light that any minute she could float free.
She felt terrified.
Maybe something of what she was feeling showed in her face, for the old man’s sternness lessened. ‘Lily, you’re not to try any longer,’ he said gently. ‘After medical school you came home to work here, on this island, but as the outer islands have discovered we have a permanent doctor, they’ve been using you, too. Your workload has built to the stage where you can no longer cope. It’s taken Dr Blayden to show us that.’
‘He doesn’t know-’
‘I do, Lily.’ Ben looked concerned, as he had no right to be on her behalf. ‘Sam and I have been looking through the records of hospital admissions.’
‘You had no right-’
‘And we’ve talked to the island nurses. You’re doing ten clinics a week, seven of them on outer islands. You’re on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The hospital is nearly always full because the islanders refuse to go elsewhere-why should they when they have you to care for them? You’re doing the work of three doctors.’
‘Meanwhile, Kira’s been caring for Benjy,’ Gualberto said. ‘And now Kira’s dead.’
‘Mama looks after me,’ Benjy interjected, trying to keep up with what was happening, and Gualberto nodded in agreement.
‘Of course she does. That’s what mothers do. But your mama takes care of all the islanders as well.’
‘She still has to look after me,’ Benjy said.
Lily heard panic and rose and rounded the table and tugged him into her arms.
‘Of course I do. Of course I will.’
‘Some things go without saying,’ Gualberto said heavily. ‘But, Benjy, your mother’s had a dreadful time, and we need to take care of her as she takes care of us.’
‘I-I don’t know what y-you mean,’ Lily stammered, but Gualberto was pushing himself heavily to his feet. He’d had a dreadful time, too, these past days, and it showed.
‘Lily, I can’t heal anything,’ he said. ‘But I’ll do my best. I know who Ben is and what he is to you.’ He looked at Benjy and back at Ben, as if confirming the undeniable resemblance. ‘There are many things you need to sort out, but one thing is already sorted. Ben is a good man. He is a good man, Lily,’ he reiterated heavily. ‘I know the men he works with and I know him myself. I’ve watched him work with our people in the time since he arrived and I tell this to you strongly-he is a good man, as Jacques never was. Maybe that’s none of my business but I have accepted his proposal on your behalf.’
‘Proposal?’ She flashed a glance of pure astonishment at Ben.
‘We haven’t paid you as we ought,’ the old man said heavily. ‘When you returned after medical school we had a subsistence economy. You agreed to work for a tiny wage plus a share of the necessities we all share in. That seemed reasonable. But now… Ben asked me if you could afford to go away for a little and I had to tell him you couldn’t.’ He grimaced. ‘Maybe we’ve been too afraid of what the oil money would do to us. Maybe we were too fearful of Jacques and his intentions. Regardless, what money we have is tied up in the short term.’
‘That’s nothing to do with-’
‘It is something to do with you,’ he went on, inexorable now he’d started. ‘For there’s no money to say to you go where you want. But there is an alternative.’
‘I don’t want an alternative.’
‘Listen, Lily,’ Ben said urgently and Lily subsided again. A little.
‘Ben tells us that he owns a farm on the coast of New South Wales,’ Gualberto said. ‘This is what he proposes, and I agree. There’s nothing there but a housekeeper and farm manager. Ben tells me there’s a beach, horses to ride and nothing to do. Nothing, Lily. You will stay there for a month.’
‘I can’t.’ She was staring wildly from Gualberto to Ben and back again. Were they out of their minds? To propose that she just leave…
And go to Ben’s property?
‘Ben will stay here to cope with medical necessities,’ Gualberto said, interjecting before the next obvious objection was aired. ‘Maybe he’ll join you toward the end of your stay, but not before. He says you and Benjy need space to be by yourselves. We all agree.’
She opened her mouth but Ben was there before her.
‘Think it through, Lily,’ he said urgently, his eyes never leaving hers. ‘I’ll organise the medical set-up here. I’m due for leave and I’ll take it as such, so even if there’s a crisis I can’t be called away. Officially Sam will stay on for a bit as well, and three of our nurses want to stay. With your people that’s a full medical complement.’
‘But…you can’t just do that,’ she faltered. ‘You can’t just walk in and say go to some farm I’ve never heard of.’