Cane Music Page 14

  “Carl, you are nice,” Roslyn awarded sincerely.

  “Well, I would have to be, wouldn’t I, for you. First thing, Roslyn, up to Clementine, grab the reef-hoppers, then down to where I leave my boat.”

  “Is it your boat?”

  “Yes, and it’s very necessary.”

  “For islands like Little Cockle?”

  “Well, so far I’ve only dealt with coastal points that can’t be reached by road. Most of the established islands with a tourist trade can depend on a doctor visitor, or the facilities for a doctor flying in.”

  “Can I tell Belinda?” Roslyn asked.

  “Not if you think she’ll stay awake tonight anticipating it,” Carl laughed.

  Belinda, acquainted of the treat, was disappointingly non-committal, however.

  “Who will show the patients in?” she asked.

  “There won’t be any surgery, Belinda.”

  “There might be a daddy come for a baby.”

  “Not a daddy, a mummy, and there won’t be.”

  “I don’t like water so much, it’s wet.”

  “We’re going to an island. An island, darling, with a reef! You can clamber over the reef and see coral and little coloured fish.”

  Belinda remained lukewarm.

  “Though first of all,” continued Roslyn, “we must go up to Clementine and get your thick shoes.”

  This time there was a dramatic difference in the child. “The Fath-er,” Belinda beamed, and Roslyn sighed.

  “To collect the shoes,” she repeated, but Belinda was not listening.

  “Fath-er,” she said again, and did a little dance.

  “It will be different tomorrow.” Carl had come to the door to watch the announcement. He must have seen the disappointment on Roslyn’s face.

  “Yes. Yes, it will be different,” said Roslyn.

  It was indeed very different. If Roslyn had known how different she would have told Carl right then to forget his invitation. She wanted to see Little Cockle, yes, but she didn’t want to see it that much. Not at the price of blazing eyes and depriving hands taking Belinda away from her.

  For—

  “Do what you like to yourself,” Marcus almost roared, “but spare the child. Of all the damnfool ideas a woman could get—”

  ... But all that happened the next day.

  Carl, Belinda and Roslyn flew up to Clementine first thing in the morning, as Carl had planned. Carl had asked Roslyn to ring the house in the cane to request that a jeep came out for them around nine. It had been Marcus who had answered Roslyn’s ring, and for some reason she could not have explained then ... but could have afterwards ... Roslyn gave no purpose, simply said they were flying up, and could they have transport from the field so that she could pick up some articles of clothing that Belinda needed. Before Marcus could question her, she had cradled the receiver again. She had collected Belinda and they had followed Carl to his car. Almost within minutes they had been landing on the Clementine paddock.

  The jeep was there and Marcus was sitting in it.

  “I won’t go to the homestead,” Carl said, “I’ll tinker around with a few things I’ve been meaning to attend to for weeks now on Celia.”

  “You really mean,” smiled Roslyn, “you won’t take the risk of being cornered by a patient.”

  “It is a risk,” he smiled back, “it’s a well-known fact that a pain isn’t felt until one sees a doctor. Don’t be any longer than you can, Ros.”

  “I won’t. Coming, Belinda?” But she need not have asked, already Belinda was in the jeep with Marcus. Roslyn hurried across, too, greeted him, and got in the waggon.

  “Come to get some shoes, Belinda tells me.” Marcus was driving down the track now.

  “Yes.”

  “You could have bought some.”

  “I wanted strong leather shoes, shoes like she wore at home.”

  “Home?”

  “Well—down south.”—Really, this man! “Up here you need a different sort of footwear, more the cool open type, and not the kind Belinda needs now.”

  “It’s ‘cos,” came in Belinda busily, “I’m going to hop-rock.”

  “What’s that, honey?” he asked.

  “She means rock-hop,” interpreted Roslyn.

  “That’s what I said,” said Belinda.

  “Yes, you would want something stronger than sandals for rock-hopping.” Marcus was pulling up at the homestead now, and Roslyn, mindful of Carl’s “Don’t be long”, jumped out of the jeep and went into the house. She noted that Belinda did not do the same. The child had climbed on to Marcus’s knee and was playing with a coat button, a favourite pastime of hers.

  Roslyn found the shoes, sturdy, high in the instep, stoutly laced, and was about to leave the small girl’s room when a shadow came across the threshhold. She turned and saw that Marcus was standing there.

  “Where did you say you were going?” he said quite evenly, but Roslyn was not deceived by his equable tone. “I didn’t say,” she returned.

  “Then where?” Now the equanimity was gone. His eyes were narrowed, ostensibly against the light streaming through the window, but Roslyn knew they were really narrowed on her.

  “You heard Belinda,” she snapped. “We’re going rock-hopping, hence the stout shoes.” She nodded to the little black calf derbys.

  “Shouldn’t it be—coral-hopping?” he said.

  “Is there much difference?”

  “You damn well know there is! Rock-hopping can be indulged in anywhere on this coast, but to hop over coral you have to be near coral.”

  “Presumably,” she agreed.

  “And the coral is not on the coast, it’s on the islands.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so in the beginning, why didn’t you say that the kid needed strong shoes to walk over island coral?”

  “Why? Well—well, it wasn’t important, I thought.”

  “You were wrong, it is important. It’s also important to. me that you were taking pains for me not to know. Where is this proposed walk?”

  “It’s not proposed, we’re going.” Roslyn added mutinously: “At once.”

  “Where?” he asked again.

  “Little Cockle.”

  “You were going there?”

  “Are. Mr. Moreno, why are you going on like this?”

  “Because I know that island like the back of my hand. There’s no—”

  “No landing strip. Carl is fully aware of that.” Roslyn spoke contemptuously. “The doctor is taking his boat.”

  “He is not,” Marcus said. “Not with Belinda, he’s not.”

  “What on earth is wrong with you? Why are you going on like this? There are people on the island, so how do you think they got there?”

  “From Big Cockle, and only at a certain tide.”

  “You’re wrong, you must be—they have a tourist place on Little Cockle, quite a moderately thriving one. Carl is going now to see if instructions he gave to the Harpurs by radio for a broken ankle are still proving satisfactory.”

  “A broken ankle, yet the one who broke it didn’t come to the mainland? Good heavens, don’t you get the message now?”

  “What message?”

  “That Little Cockle is not like the other islands, just push a boat on to the beach to get there, just push a boat off to leave.”

  “Carl says Little Cockle is circled by sand.”

  “Plus reef.”

  “Oh, yes, he spoke of a reef as well—hence these shoes. He would know all you know, Mr. Moreno. Remember you said yourself he knew the tune.”

  “The tune of the cane, and mainland, but not the sea. Unless he goes to Big Cockle, waits for the appropriate tide, then he can’t, and won’t, make it.”

  “But the Harpurs never said anything like that.”

  “Did he tell the Harpurs he was coming?”

  “No, but—”

  “Look, Miss Young, I know Cockle. Good lord, I should do, I was born up
here, but Carl, in spite of the local know-how he’s acquired, is still more or less a new chum. In the case of Little Cockle more, not less. For which reason I propose to go out now and forbid him.” That choice of a word inflamed Roslyn. If he had said “... go out now and have a talk with him” ... or “warn him” ... or “advise him”, what followed then might never have happened.

  “Forbid what?” she demanded.

  “Well, first of all,” he said confidently, “forbid him to take Belinda.”

  “Yes, I suppose that is your right,” she conceded reluctantly.

  “Also forbid him to take you.”

  “What?” she gasped.

  “You heard what I said.”

  “Yes, I heard, but I can’t credit it. Just who do you think you are, Marcus Moreno? You don’t rule me!”

  “As a citizen I can make a rule if I think there’s a call for a rule regarding public safety. This time there is.”

  “You don’t rule me,” she repeated.

  “But I rule the child. All right then, do what you like to yourself, but spare the child. Of all the damnfool ideas a woman could get—”

  “I have every trust in Carl, I have no doubt that he’s as skilled a seaman as he is an airman. I have no hesitation in going across with him.” She saw the anger growing in his eyes, intense anger, and she added cautiously: “Without Belinda.”

  But the anger did not diminish at that as she had thought. “You’re not going.” He must have changed his mind.

  “What?”

  “You’re not going, Young.”

  “But I just told you that you don’t rule me.”

  “Well, I’ve set a new regulation, and from this moment on I do.” He moved intentionally forward.

  His half step into Belinda’s room left a gap at the threshhold. Before she realized what she was doing, Roslyn was slipping past him. Quick though he was with his impeding arm, she was quicker. She was lighter, so fleeter on the stairs than he was, she had an advantage on him down the hall.

  Then when she reached the steps to the drive, she saw almost with disbelief that he had left the keys in the waggon, something she knew he never did. She leapt in, switched on, and the next moment, one moment away from a grasping hand, the jeep moved off. He would follow, she felt sure of it, but she should have at least three minutes’ start by the time he reversed out his other car. If only Carl had finished his ‘tinkering’ ...

  Carl had. He was waiting for her. Her urgency must have been conveyed to him, for he pushed her aboard without any question, climbed up himself, and within seconds almost they had taken off.

  “No child?” he asked as they climbed skyward.

  “Nearly no me. But I considered that a little too authoritative.” Roslyn had no intention of telling Carl that Marcus had considered him inexperienced, and was glad when he did not probe.

  “I agree, Ros. Marcus can be a tyrant at times.” For a moment Carl turned from the Cessna controls and smiled at Roslyn, and the friendliness after that scowling face back at Clementine was all Roslyn required.

  “Carl,” she said warmly, impulsively, “I’m going to love all this.”

  “I’m loving it now, Ros,” the doctor said, and he began to descend to his private strip again. They collected his car, drove to the spot on the coast where the doctor s boat was moored, climbed on, started off.

  Forbidden fruit is always sweeter, Roslyn thought, trailing her fingers in the blue water. Were forbidden journeys as well?

  She decided to put Marcus Moreno right out of her mind,, and, catching the cushion that Carl flung to her, sat backs and prepared to enjoy her first reef trip.

  The looking-glass water was not quite so mirror like as it had appeared from the mainland. It was still calm, but there was a dancing ripple at closer quarters that distance evidently smoothed away.

  The Dorothea was a businesslike yet at the same time attractive boat, small yet ample, its ‘cabin’ an enclosed corner under a canopy. It had swayed at the end of the small jetty, but Roslyn, anxious to get away before anyone else arrived to stop her ... Marcus Moreno, to be concise ... did not notice Dorothea’s attractive lines and pleasing tangerine and white paint until the engine had ticked over, and Carl had headed her to the Whitsunday Passage Almost at once Roslyn felt she could have leaned out and gathered up armfuls of Islands. There were islands everywhere. Bare atolls. Wooded ones. Large ones. Small dots you felt would collapse with the weight of one visitor. But all alike in one category: beauty. They must be the loveliest spill of islands in the world. Roslyn looked around her and could scarcely credit the scores of them, islands with fiord-like inlets and pine-clad cliffs rising steeply up, islands of more moderate height with gently shelving beaches and incredibly snowy sands.

  “Coral sand,” called Carl. “You know about coral?”

  “No.”

  “It’s the home of a tiny polyp which in time builds reefs, and these white beaches you so admire are the result of coral being pounded by the sea for millions of years.”

  “Not if the crown of thorns does its damage.”

  “You’ve heard of that, then?”

  “Of course.”

  “Some scientists think it’s a natural happening, that it’s only a trick of nature to provide the reef with a breathing space and that all will be well given time. Let’s hope so, anyway. If you want some tourist book stuff, the Great Barrier Reef is twelve hundred miles long, and that’s a lot of reef, and a lot of coral.”

  Roslyn nodded. She was looking down at a coral garden far beneath them, far enough, anyway, to offer no danger to trailing fingers. She knew she had never seen anything lovelier in a real floral garden. There was every colour in the world, every shape of coral, stars, flowers, branches, branchlets, mushrooms ... all the faerie fantasies of which dreams are made.

  With an ecstatic sigh Roslyn asked: “Where is Little Cockle?”

  “It lies due east. Actually it’s that far gem in the distance.”

  “It seems innocuous enough.” She was not aware of any note in her voice.

  Carl looked at her instantly. “It is. It must be with white sands like that. What made you say such an odd thing?”

  “As what?”

  “That it seemed innocuous enough.”

  “It was Marcus Moreno,” admitted Roslyn wretchedly, wishing she had not spoken. “He seemed to think that the island was—well—”

  “Yes?”

  “Well—inaccessible.”

  “But it’s not, is it? The Harpurs are on it.”

  “They came,” said Roslyn rather miserably, “from Big Cockie, and at high tide.”

  There was silence on the Dorothea.

  “Then why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought you knew, Carl. I felt sure you knew.”

  There was another pause. Then:

  “I’ve never taken the Dorothea to an island before.”

  “But—”

  “Oh, I’ve been out, and I know how to handle her, but my stops have been strictly coastal stops, as I told you.” Another moment of silence, a vexed moment. “Roslyn, you should have told me.”

  “And listened to him?”

  “And listened to him,” Carl said.

  “The Harpurs don’t know you’re coming.” Roslyn broke another vexed silence.

  “Not a clue. I planned it to be a surprise. And a surprise it will be, won’t it, with us reefed on their doorstep.”

  “We needn’t be,” she pointed out.

  “But we could be,” he retorted.

  “Carl, I’m terribly sorry. I just had confidence in you, that’s all.”

  “Confidence in me—or distrust of Moreno?”

  “I don’t know,” admitted Roslyn, “but I still think we’ll be all right.”

  “If we turn back we will,” he nodded, “return with our tail between our legs.”

  “No, let’s try it,” said Roslyn, wrinkling her eyes against the shine of distant Little Cockle. “Let’s give i
t a go.” Anything, she thought, rather than hand Marcus Moreno a chance to score.

  But Carl shook his head. “You’re a temptress,” he told her, “but I think more of my Dorothea. We’re turning back. My next instructions to the Harpurs will be strictly by radio.”

  “Fraidy-cat!” she teased.

  “Perhaps, but I’m running no risk.” He began to edge the boat about.

  It was very soon afterwards that it happened. There was no island immediately near them, not even any atoll, at this stage of the full high tide any protruding rocks. But the raw scrape, the grating, the sickening thrump left them with no illusions as to what had happened.

  In that smiling blue sea, that seemingly harmless blue sea, they had reefed.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Something had happened to their looking-glass water. When they had boarded Dorothea, Roslyn had noted a disturbing ripple not discernible from a distance, but now even that harmless movement had changed to a gurgling rush across the hull to a fierce hiss of spray from a bow wave across the stern.

  “Is the weather freshening?” she called to Carl.

  “No, it’s just that we’re caught cross-breeze, as it were, or in other words we’re dead in the centre of an island corridor of wind.” He looked resentfully at the sea. “We just would reef here!”

  “Are we stuck fast?”

  “I hope so,” he said grimly, “because I think we’re well and truly holed, so if we did get off we’d only last for as long as it takes Dorothea to fill up. Anyway, I’m going to see.” He put one leg across the edge of the boat.

  “Carl, be careful!”

  “Oh, I won’t drown. I couldn’t.” He looked ruefully at the shallow water showing above the submerged coral.

  “But be careful all the same,” she persuaded.

  “Yes, Ros,” he promised seriously.

  He had changed from the deck shoes he had worn when he had boarded to sturdy boots. Roslyn heard the boots crunch down on the reef as he stepped over. He was right about the depth of the water, it went barely past his knees. When the tide went out Dorothea should be high and dry. She watched while the doctor made his examination.

  Dorothea moved a fraction from a gust of wind happening at the same moment as a slap of a wave, such a small shiver that Roslyn was not unseated, yet the noise to the small boat was like gravel discharging on concrete.