Cane Music Read online

  “Yes,” came the voice, “a regular remittance. But now no more money. Instead the child is coming home.”

  “Home?” she gasped.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “To milk cows?”

  “There are none in the sugar country, we either buy in our milk or use the powdered variety.”

  “Belinda wouldn’t like that, she’s used to rich dairy products.”

  “She’ll learn,” the voice assured her.

  “Then failing milk, it will be to weed onions,” said Roslyn near-hysterically. “That’s another female chore, I believe.”

  “Keep believing,” he advised her idly, “but also have the child ready, please. You are—?”

  “Mildred Maddison,” Roslyn said promptly. She thought at once how foolish she was lying to him like this; he must have found her number, so presumably her name, in the directory.

  But he hadn’t, it seemed. He told her in his cool, rather detached voice that before ringing her he had rung the district hospital and asked for advice on securing a nurse to accompany a child up to Queensland, and when he had given the name of the little girl, he had been recommended to ring here first.

  “Yes,” murmured Roslyn, “they would know I’ve looked after Belinda since her mother’s death.”

  “Kind of you, but you’ll be recompensed.”

  “Did they say—anything else? The hospital, I mean.”

  “No. Why should they?”

  “I thought they might have said—could have said that there’s another offer for the child.”

  “My dear Mrs. Maddison ... or is it Miss? ... this is not an offer, it’s a fact. The fact of blood—the Moreno blood. There’s no one else who comes into it.”

  “Perhaps Mr. Dudley Forrest had relations.”

  “Probably did, but they would not be considered. Now, no more interruptions, please, I’m on a tight schedule. Tomorrow I’ll go to the hospital and pick up the nurse.”

  “What hospital?”

  “The one I contacted, of course. The district hospital. The Border, I think it’s called.”

  “Border,” Roslyn confirmed. She held her breath a moment, then: “It must be a certified nurse, no aide or pro.” She hoped her anxiety did not blast off.

  It did. With cool amusement, he said: “Look, I’ll even bid for Matron, Mrs. or Miss Maddison, will that suffice? After I secure the woman, we can start returning at once.”

  “Start returning? You won’t be flying?”

  “With very special cargo, Mrs. or Miss Maddison? Or should I have put that with Very special onion-weeding potential?”

  “You,” tallied Roslyn, not listening to his sarcasm, “the baby and the nurse.”

  “Precisely.”

  “And then?”

  “We are a conscientious child-minder, aren’t we? And then the nurse will be kept on long enough to settle the infant and to select a suitable local girl.”

  “Until Belinda grows to the desirable age to lend farm support.”

  “If you want it that way, yes.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Then don’t raise such stupid subjects, in fact don’t raise anything, Mrs. or Miss Maddison, except the child tomorrow morning, to be duly dressed and then handed over.” A pause. “Is this clear?”

  “Clear,” said Roslyn frozenly, and she slammed down the phone before she raised a lot more “stupid subjects”, before she—

  But at once she was dialling again, dialling Border, asking for Chris. Chris, who must have dealt with the Moreno request that had just been outlined to her, for it had all the thoughtful earmarks of dear Chris.

  Chris’s voice came back to Roslyn. “Yes, I know all about it, Ros, and I have only one nurse for release. How does that grab you? How’s that for love?”

  “Chris, you’re sweet, because it is me, isn’t it?”

  “Of course—fool that I am.”

  “Perhaps he won’t want me.”

  “No choice, Ros. Deliberately no choice. The Border is the only hospital for miles, and he’ll have to accept what’s offered to him when he comes to my office tomorrow. But how do you think you can get away with it? How do you think you can fool him? Your name—”

  “Means nothing. Young would mean nothing. I sent word about Nanette, of course, but I doubt if I put the name of the sender on the telegram. Anyway, that’s an age ago.”

  “But Belinda, Ros—he would wonder when she took to you so promptly, suspect a connivance somewhere.”

  “Belinda never shows outward affection, not even to me.”

  “Ah, but she’ll call you by name.”

  “No.”

  “But, Ros, she’s three, isn’t she? Up to names, surely?”

  “Belinda is an extremely intelligent three, but she’ll still call me Ness.”

  “Ness?”

  “My second name is Nesta, Chris, after a distant aunt. I’m Roslyn Nesta.”

  “But—”

  “When my mother, Roslyn before me, married Dudley, he found two Roslyns one too many, so I changed to Nesta at home. Or rather Ness.”

  “But even then—”

  “Ness, Chris, Nurse. There’s a close similarity, and Belinda does have an accent all her own.”

  “You have it completely worked out,” Chris said admiringly. “Perhaps you’re being over-cautious, though, perhaps he would accept a stepsister. Is that the right relationship?”

  “I’ve never worked it out properly, the only connection that mattered to me, still matters, is love, and I certainly have that. But no, Chris, he would not accept me. Not a man with that hard voice.”

  “Roslyn Nesta.” Chris was tasting it affectionately. “Ros, you are sure you want to go through with this?”

  “I have to. She’s mine, Chris. I mean, she’s me when I was three.”

  “And an adorable three,” Chris said ruefully now. “Well, good luck, Roslyn Nesta.”

  “Thank you, Chris, thank you for everything, for—for recommending me, for—”

  Choked up, Roslyn put down the phone, sat on the big chair, and wept.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Roslyn felt confident that the tears that had gushed almost to morning, and had resulted in a slightly husky, faintly blurred tone to her speech, would be sufficient, when she encountered the Moreno stand-in, not to have him recognize her voice as that of the defensive woman over the phone. When the huskiness went away they themselves would be safely away. Also it would be many hours away from that amputating conversation that had suddenly toppled her world.

  It happened as she hoped, but the man who walked into Chris’s office at the Border Hospital, a tall, broad-shouldered man who looked more like an outdoor worker than a representative, did give Roslyn a long searching stare. But it was her youth he commented on, not a voice.

  “I’m fully qualified,” Roslyn informed him stiffly. “I am the average age for a sister. You don’t have to have grey hair and a pillow of a bosom to look after a child.”

  “Your hair is tow, and your—” He lifted his eyes back to Roslyn’s indignant face, and half-grinned. “No,” he said when she did not permit even a quarter smile back, “the picture is not quite the one I had in mind, but the good doctor informs me that you are the only available nurse.”

  “Sister.”

  He ignored her correction. “And beggars,” he finished, “can’t be choosers.”

  “Thank you. When do we leave?”

  “Not so fast, you haven’t met your charge yet.”

  “Neither have you.”

  “I won’t matter, I won’t be tending her. You will, so you do matter. She might not take to you.”

  “Certainly she’ll take to me.”

  He gave her a sharp look. “What makes you say that?”

  “As a nurse—” she began.

  “Sister,” he reminded her smoothly.

  “During my nursing status,” said Roslyn, “I did several years in the children’s wards. All the lit
tle ones took to me.”

  “A regular Pied Piper, female variety!”

  “I can promise you I will only concern myself with one child.”

  “No rats? Well, before we settle this, we’ll try you out with Belinda.”

  Previously Roslyn had transferred a plainly bewildered Mrs. Maddison to the residence of Miss Belinda Moreno, as this man had ridiculously put it.

  “At least I’m keeping to my own name,” Mrs. Maddison had fretted, “if not to my own home. Really, dear, do you know what you’re doing?”

  “Perfectly. Just see to it that you do your side properly, Maddie, say yes and no at the right time, and for heaven’s sake don’t recognize me.”

  “I don’t understand any of it.”

  “And you needn’t. Just keep in mind that I’m doing it for our baby.” That was a shrewd touch, for Mrs. Maddison, too, adored Belinda. “Also don’t forget you were on the phone last night with the gentleman.”

  “Was I?”

  “You spoke spiritedly for quite a while.”

  “Oh, dear, did I? Will he remember that?”

  “He certainly will. Also he’ll know you’re Mildred Maddison because I said so.”

  “You said you were me,” reproached Mrs. Maddison, but she was fond of Roslyn, too, and let it pass. “How do I address him?”

  “Oh—” said Roslyn, realizing for the first time that she did not know his name. “Just hum and ha him, Maddie. His attention will be on Belinda, not on social niceties.”

  “Very well then, but I do hope you know what you’re doing,” Mrs. Maddison said again.

  At any rate, Roslyn found thankfully, Chris knew what he was doing. He aided and abetted Roslyn quite faultlessly. He finally came to the car with them, the car that was to take the stand-in and the nurse to the residence of Miss Belinda Moreno, and he said:

  “Border Hospital wishes you well, Sister Young, and will be ready to take you back should you ever come.” His nice bramble, eyes put something personal into the words for Roslyn’s eyes alone, but she had no time to flick anything in return, for the Moreno representative inserted:

  “Certainly Sister will be back. I’ve already explained what’s wanted of her, and that is her temporary service only. I should say three or four weeks should suffice.”

  “Goodbye, Doctor Willings,” Roslyn intoned correctly.

  “Goodbye,” Chris said, and turned back to the hospital.

  “If it weren’t that most certainly you’re just a starched veil and a red cape to him, I’d say the bloke was emotionally affected,” the man proffered unsentimentally.

  Roslyn stiffened. She wasn’t only that. But she couldn’t tell this person.

  “Incidentally, why did you wear uniform?” he asked, closing the car door on her and coming round to the driver’s seat.

  “Ordinarily at this time of day I would be on duty,” Roslyn lied. The real reason, of course, was Belinda. When Belinda addressed her as Ness, or Nessie, as she always did, it would make sense. After their initial meeting, or initial he must think it, she could tell him that she had instructed the baby to call her Nurse. (Ness from Belinda).

  “But you knew you wouldn’t be on ordinary duty,” he persisted.

  “I was for an hour before you arrived,” said Roslyn triumphantly, thankful she had come early today to Border.

  “Regular little workhorse,” he commented coolly, but there was no award in the praise.

  “Not so little!” snapped Roslyn.

  “Nor so large. In a place where the cane rises fourteen feet you can be hidden like a toad in the big grasses at your height.”

  “Does it rise that high?”

  “Yes, but about four feet of that is ‘top’. However, fourteen is nothing, New Guinea raises anything up to twenty. But we boast the sweetest yield.”

  “You sound knowledgeable.” They were winding round the river now, the lovely meandering Murray. Two more bends and they would be at the residence of Miss Belinda Moreno.

  “Of course I’m knowledgeable, I’ve lived with sugar all my life.”

  “The clerical side.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “The fact that you’re representing Mr. Moreno,” she pointed out. “It hardly seems the sort of thing a manual worker would be called upon to do.”

  He did not answer for a few moments. Roslyn had the uncomfortable feeling that he had taken his eyes off the track to look at her, but if he had it was only momentary; they still followed the river road with perfect precision as to curve and bend.

  “Typical Southerner, aren’t you?” he said at length. “Typical product of the thirty latitudes. Everything either black or white, nothing between. When you find yourself in the easier, warmer twenties and less, you will also find that everyone doesn’t fit into neat pigeonholes marked Clerical, Manual or Whatever. Up north we can do, and do do, the whole hog.”

  “In fact supermen.”

  “Yes,” he agreed maddeningly.

  She recalled unwillingly how her first physical impression of him had been more outdoor than indoor in spite of his apparent business acumen, but she knew she would never concede to this man. She said coolly:

  “If by the whole hog you refer to cane-cutting—”

  “I do.”

  “Then surely it’s not cut manually these days, surely on an estate as large as I’ve heard Mr. Moreno’s to be is large—”

  “It is large,” he broke in, “yet it’s still upon occasion cut manually. Not all sugar terrain lends itself to mechanism, and that’s where man must step in. Also, during the cyclone season, the winds can tangle up the cane so devilishly it can only be tackled by hand. Most of the northerners possess a mechanical monster, but they still don’t scorn the methods used by the Italians who once dealt with nearly all the Queensland cut I myself learned from a certain Umberto, since departed to open a ravioli bar in Kings Cross. I’d like to see that beggar if only to tell him I can top his eleven tons now by a hundred.”

  Roslyn looked at him in bewilderment.

  “In the manual cut, the quota is six tons a man a day. Umberto could breeze through eleven.”

  “And you can go a hundred better,” said Roslyn, now enlightened, for him. Her voice was cold.

  Presently she said: “I believe there are many Italians or Italian descendants in the north.”

  “Quite right.”

  “Moreno sounds Mediterranean.”

  “Of course. What else?”

  There seemed nothing to add to that, so Roslyn did not speak again until they reached their destination, the residence of Miss Belinda Moreno. Roslyn almost broke her silence to say that aloud.

  If Mr. Moreno’s stand-in noticed any difference in Mrs. Maddison’s voice from the voice that had come over the wire to him, it was not apparent. He was more interested in the small girl Mrs. Maddison held in her arms.

  “Good morning, Belinda,” he said.

  Belinda stared unblinkingly and estimatingly at him, as she stared first at everyone.

  “Good morning, Belinda,” Roslyn hurried in. “I’m Nurse.”

  “Ness,” returned Belinda.

  “Caught on quickly there,” the man commended. “Looks a bright button.”

  Roslyn stopped herself in time from declaring proudly: “She is,” and began asking Mrs. Maddison about Belinda’s clothes.

  “You should know all about them,” Mrs. Maddison said, “at least you would know what to take, being in the profession.” She had gone a little pink.

  “Mrs. Maddison,” came in the man, “on behalf of Mr. Moreno I want to thank you for the care you’ve taken of Belinda.” He was bringing out a wallet.

  “Oh, no,” protested Mrs. Maddison, “I’ve already been paid.”

  “You mean by the love of a child,” the man said with surprising kindness, surprising to Roslyn. “All the same...” He pressed something into Mrs. Maddison’s hand.

  “Really—” the woman protested again. She looked at Rosl
yn and Roslyn looked expressionlessly back at her. It was quite enough for Mrs. Maddison. Expressionlessness on Roslyn’s face, Roslyn’s mobile, alert, glancing, glimpsing face was enough to tell her what to do.

  “Thank you,” she murmured. “I’ll help—Nurse with Belinda’s clothes.”

  But once in the bedroom she was not at all sure again. She had been paid already, paid by Roslyn.

  “Hush, Maddie, can’t you see I don’t like it any more than you do, can’t you see I have to go through with it for Belinda?” Roslyn was changing out of her uniform, putting on a skirt.

  “But in the end her relative will win, he’ll have to—he’s family.”

  “In the end,” said Roslyn darkly, “old Crotchety will be so sick of a girl around the house he’ll be glad to have her taken off his hands.”

  “He might, but that other one looks quite nice, even fatherly in a fashion.”

  “The eye of the beholder,” Roslyn said. But Mrs. Maddison’s ‘fatherly’ rather puzzled her, since, for some obscure reason, she had had that ridiculous impression as well. But the iceberg, even though he came from warmer latitudes, fatherly! Wake up, Roslyn.

  They came back into the living room to Belinda sitting on the man’s knee and examining a coat button.

  “Kiss Maddie goodbye, dear ... I can call you that, can’t I?” Roslyn said archly, quite pleased with her acting, to Mrs. Maddison. “Then come along with Nurse.”

  “Ness,” said Belinda, and she got down from the knee and crossed to Mrs. Maddison.

  “Is that a Riverina accent?” the man inquired idly as the child left him. “That ‘Ness’ for Nurse? If so we must get her out of it.”

  “At just three?”

  “Mr. Moreno is a stickler.”

  “As well as other things.”

  “I beg your pardon, Miss Young?”

  “Nothing ... nothing at all,” Roslyn evaded.

  “Good, then we’ll get going. No doubt you’ve travelled north before.”

  “I’ve been to Sydney.”

  “We shan’t touch Sydney.”