Flight to Coorah Creek (7 page)

‘There's no hurry flying out tomorrow,' he said. ‘I want to drop by the hospital to see how Ed is doing.'

‘And I would like to do some shopping,' she countered.

They arranged a time to meet at the airport for the journey back to Coorah Creek. Adam bid her goodnight and left.

‘Adam,' Jess stopped him before he'd gone too many steps. ‘I have to ask. What happened to the boy?'

Adam turned slowly around. He was standing in the shadows, but he could see her clearly in the light above her door, her face softened by a look of gentle concern. He was struck again by her simple and unadorned beauty. Once more he spoke the truth. ‘He decided to become a doctor when he grew up. He wanted to make Sister Luke proud of him.'

‘I imagine she is very proud of him.'

‘I like to think so.' His voice was very soft in the darkness. ‘Goodnight Jess.'

As he walked back to his room, Adam was tempted for a few seconds by the lights in the motel bar. His steps slowed. No. He'd been down that route once, and wasn't about to do it again. He didn't drink alone any more. When he reached his room, he stripped off his shirt and tossed it casually over the back of a chair. The rest of his clothes followed and he headed for the shower. He turned the water on full blast and stepped under it. This was his way of easing the tension of his day. The cool water running over his skin took more than dust with it. He knew he felt his patients' pain too keenly. But that was the sort of man he was. This ritual washing away of the day's tensions was as necessary to him as sleep.

Except tonight there was a different kind of tension to wash away.

He stood with the water streaming over his body and thought about Jess.

She was so beautiful. A man could lose himself in her eyes and if she knew the effect those tight jeans had on any red-blooded male, she might blush. She was intelligent and funny and gentle. The sort of woman any man would be pleased to have sitting across from him at a restaurant. Or around a campfire. Or in his bed … But there was something else. She did a good job of hiding her pain, but it wasn't buried deep enough to hide it from someone who knew pain as he did.

The physician in him wanted to heal her.

The man wanted something more – something he knew he could never have.

Adam turned off the taps and stepped out of the shower. He wrapped a towel around his hips, and walked back into the bedroom. There was a large mirror on the opposite wall, above the dressing table. For the first time in an age, he approached the mirror and half-turned his body. They had faded with time, but burn scars never go away. His back was a total ruin, the skin puckered and pale. The scars continued over his left shoulder and down his arm, stopping just above the place where his shirt sleeve habitually sat. His upper thighs were also heavily scarred; some caused by the flames and others by the doctors taking skin grafts. He closed his eyes but he could still see the scars. He could still see the flames and feel the pain. He could still see his father's face.

He hadn't spoken about that day for years. Only Sister Luke knew about his past. What was it about Jess that had made him want to tell her? There was so much he hadn't said. He hadn't told her that he was that burned boy. And he never would. She would never see the scars on his body. She would never learn the true horror in his past. Not even Sister Luke knew the whole story. He would spare both women that knowledge.

Ellen was tired. She felt as if she had walked for kilometres – which she hadn't. If she walked that far, she would have been well outside the town. Right now, getting out of Coorah Creek seemed a good idea – if only there was somewhere to go. She wished she'd never laid eyes on this no-horse town somewhere west of everything.

What had she been thinking? Coming all this way – and dragging the children with her. Sure, she'd been desperate, but in the cold harsh light of day, were she and the kids any better off? What were a few bruises compared to knowing Harry and Bethany had a roof over their heads and would have food on the table every day? Had she put herself ahead of her kid's welfare? No! She might be able to manage if the bruises were hers alone, but next time it might be one of them at risk. She would not have her children grow up in a violent home! Even if she had to starve, or scrub floors for a living, she would make a safe home for them.

Ellen took a deep breath, fixed a smile on her face and walked through the door of the petrol station.

‘G'day,' the man behind the grimy counter said as she approached. He looked to be about fifty years old. His skin was wrinkled and dried by years in the harsh outback. Ellen suspected the lines on his face were put there by bad temper, not by laughter. He was reading a car magazine, and his hands were dirty.

‘Hello,' she said, keeping her voice cheerful even though she was dying a bit inside. ‘Are you the owner?'

‘Yeah.'

She'd done this so many times already today. In every shop in the main street. She had a feeling this was going to be the worst yet. ‘I'm looking for work,' she said. ‘I don't suppose you need anyone? Even part-time?'

‘What? Here? Don't make me laugh. There's barely enough customers to support one person, let alone two. Sorry, lady, you're outta luck.'

‘I understand,' Ellen said. ‘I don't suppose you know of anyone who might have some work available?'

‘You could try the pub.'

Ellen glanced across the road. She had hoped she might be spared asking Trish Warren for work.

‘No. Not that pub. The other one.'

‘There's another pub?' Ellen was surprised. The town seemed to have only one of anything.

‘Yeah. Down near the railway station.' The man looked her up and down, taking careful note of her well-ironed white cotton blouse and dark skirt. ‘Of course, it's mineside. And a bit rough. Might not be to your taste.'

‘Thank you for your help.' Ellen made a hasty exit and turned her steps towards the railway station.

It was hard to keep her spirits high as she walked past the row of dilapidated and empty houses she had seen on the day she arrived. This part of the town obviously hadn't benefitted from the prosperity brought by the mine. The sagging roofs and peeling paint of the abandoned homes felt like an added burden of despair as she walked past, trying not to wonder about the people who had once lived there. She reached a corner. A gravel road led off to her right. Looking down the road, she could see more buildings. They looked less dilapidated than the ones she had just passed, but were still not very appealing. This, she guessed, was the accommodation for the single mine workers. On the other side of the road, fronting both the highway and the gravel road, was a pub.

Ellen's courage nearly failed her as she looked at it. It was a long, narrow, single storey building. The yellow paint had been faded by the sun. The corrugated iron roof was rusty in patches. The obligatory wide veranda along the front of the building had no railing, and the floorboards were weathered and rough. The windows were dark and even from this distance she could see the layer of dust on the glass. There was no attempt at a garden, or any sort of decoration around the building. Just a wide bare patch of hard packed dirt where the customers could park. Down the side of the pub she could see a pile of metal kegs, and a forty-four gallon drum overflowing with empty bottles.

It took every ounce of her courage – and her desperation – to cross the road and walk into the bar.

Her eyes needed a few seconds to adjust to the dim light after the brightness outside. Slowly she became aware of her surroundings. A long wooden bar ran the length of the room. The top of the bar was pitted and stained. Despite the laws against smoking inside buildings, the whole place reeked of cigarettes and stale beer. The floor was bare timber … not polished, but rather blackened by many years of grime. Rows of upturned beer glasses covered a bar towel. There were beer taps on the bar, and on a shelf behind it, bottles of cheap whisky and Bundaberg rum. Despite the fact that it was barely lunchtime, there were several men on bar stools, looking like they'd been there for some time. They were all staring at her.

‘Hey, Pete. Get out here,' one of them yelled in the direction of the open door of the big cold room behind the bar.

‘Just hold your horses. The beer ain't going nowhere,' a disembodied voice answered.

‘There's someone here I think wants to see you,' said the speaker. ‘I don't think she's looking for me, more's the pity.'

‘What are you on about …?' The man who emerged from the cold room was surprisingly young. Early thirties, Ellen guessed. He was very thin, his skin pale among the tanned faces of the men around him. He had pale grey eyes and a voice as reed thin as his body.

‘Can I help you?' he asked Ellen.

‘Are you the owner?'

‘The manager. Name's Pete. The owner would never set foot in here. All he does is take the money each month.'

‘I'm looking for work,' Ellen said, thinking that this time she would welcome the refusal.

‘Work? Not much work around this town, unless you're a miner,' one of the men at the bar suggested.

Ellen wanted to just curl up and die. She started to turn towards the door, knowing that at least she could say she'd tried every possibility.

‘Can you cook?'

She turned back to face Pete. ‘Well, yes. I'm not a chef, but I can cook.'

‘We don't need a chef,' he said. ‘We need someone on Friday and Saturday nights who can burn a steak and mash potatoes. Can you do that?'

‘Yes. Yes. I can.' Ellen tried not to sound too eager.

‘And you might need to pour a beer or two. It gets pretty busy in here on Friday and Saturday nights.'

‘I can do that too.'

‘And you'll have to clean the kitchen. At least well enough to keep the health inspector off my back.'

‘That's no problem.'

‘All right.' Pete glanced about at the interested faces of the men at the bar. ‘You should look at the kitchen before you agree to anything.'

It wasn't the nightmare Ellen had feared. But it wasn't good either. The kitchen boasted a huge hotplate, an equally large oven on one wall and a big sink under the window on another. There was a large refrigerator and an even larger freezer, and a big wooden table sat in the centre of the room. It would all benefit from a good clean, but Ellen knew how to clean. It wasn't ideal, but it was the best – the only – offer she'd had all day.

‘All right,' she said. ‘Let's talk about money.'

Jack saw Ellen the minute he pulled up in front of the pub. She was walking up the street from the direction of the railway station. For a minute he wondered if she had just booked her journey home. That thought was strangely disappointing.

‘Hello,' he said, as she approached.

‘Hi Jack,' she replied, with a slow smile.

‘How are you and the kids doing at the pub? All right?'

‘We're fine,' Ellen said. ‘Thank you for bringing us here. Trish Warren has been just wonderful. She even offered to look after the kids today while I went looking for a job.'

‘How did that go?' Jack knew there wasn't a lot of work to be had outside the mine.

‘I have a part-time job cooking at the pub. It's only Friday and Saturday nights, but it's something.'

‘Really? That's great. Trish and Syd are good people.'

‘No. Not this pub. The other one.'

Jack's heart sank. She obviously had no idea what she was letting herself in for. ‘Ellen, that pub's not … well. It's mineside.' He couldn't think of any other way to describe it.

‘Mineside? You're the second person who's said that. What does it mean?'

‘Well, the town really has two parts. Townside is where the families live. With kids. Shops. The school and so forth. And the Warrens' pub is a sort of family gathering place. The other side, the mineside, is where the single men live. The mine workers. It's not … nice.'

The word was totally inadequate. Jack knew he sounded like a snob, which he most certainly wasn't. But he didn't know how to explain to Ellen what life was like for a miner in a place like the Creek. There was hard work at the mine and there was hard drinking at the pub. That was all they had. Jack didn't judge the miners. He'd been one for a time. He'd come to Coorah Creek to work in the mine. It was good money for a youngish man with no real training or skills, and no family to worry about. He worked the mine for a year before people started to notice how good he was at fixing things. His life had changed since then. He no longer came home exhausted after eight back-breaking hours, covered in dust and with a thirst that might kill a man. He no longer drank at The Mineside. But he had few illusions about what happened there on Friday and Saturday nights.

‘I don't have much choice,' Ellen insisted. ‘I need a job and it was the only one going.'

Jack saw the way she held her head, clinging on to her pride. He thought about trying to find her something else, but there probably wasn't anything and the look in her eye told him she wasn't about to accept charity. It wasn't his place to tell her where she could or could not work. But the thought of Ellen in that pub on a Friday night … Well, he didn't like it.

‘I was wondering,' he said tentatively, ‘if you are still looking for more work. I have an idea.'

‘Yes?'

‘There's some stuff needs doing on the hospital house. We're getting it set up for Jess – the pilot.'

‘I know. Jess and I met at the pub.'

‘I'm doing all the repairs and stuff, but there's some cleaning and so forth. It's just a couple of days work. It won't pay much.'

‘I'll do it.' The eagerness in her voice told him more than she probably would have liked. ‘I'll be happy to do it. Will it be all right if I bring the kids? I don't want to impose too much on Trish. I haven't enrolled them in school yet. I wanted to be sure …'

Her voice trailed off, but Jack knew what she didn't put into words. She wanted to be sure she was staying before she went through the paperwork at the school.

‘Of course you can bring the kids,' Jack said. ‘But what about when you're working at the pub in the evenings? Trish won't be able to look after them because she'll be busy.'

‘I am sure there'll be some teenager willing to babysit,' Ellen said firmly. ‘Jack, I appreciate your concern, but I need to work. And that job at the pub is the only option I have.'

He heard the desperation in her voice. He was surprised by how deeply that touched him. He heard the determination, too, and that he admired.

‘Do you want to come and have a look at this house?' he said, changing the subject. ‘We need to get it done fairly fast. The doc was supposed to organise accommodation for Jess, but …' Jack paused. ‘It's complicated. Why don't you get the kids? I can explain as we drive over there. Then, if you're willing to take it on, we can get started.'

‘All right.'

Ellen seemed to find Jack's explanation about the house rather amusing. ‘I'm looking forward to meeting this doctor,' she said with a smile, when Jack finished the story.

When they walked into the silent house, Harry and Bethany took one look around at the big empty rooms and raced off to explore.

‘How long was this left to decay?' Ellen asked.

‘The doc has been here for five years. He moved into the hospital a couple of months after he arrived. I guess that means it's been empty since then.'

‘And he expected it still to be liveable?'

‘That's the doc,' Jack said. ‘He doesn't think much beyond his work.'

‘And the furniture has gone where?'

‘I guess Adam took some of it to use at the hospital. A chair or two. He gave some bits and pieces to Sister Luke for one of the Aboriginal families that needed help. I remember helping him shift the fridge to the hospital. And I think the bed in the maternity ward came from here.'

‘This is a lovely house,' Ellen said, as she stood in the centre of the living room, slowly turning in a circle. ‘Or it will be by the time we've finished with it. It needs a good clean, of course. And furniture – a sofa over there. That room through there could be the main bedroom – but there are those other two rooms around the back. Then here – for a dining room table.'

Jack listened to her. In her head this dusty shell was already a home.

‘It's such a shame to see such a lovely big house empty,' Ellen continued, almost as if talking to herself. ‘It would be the perfect home for a family, with that other big room out the back. Perfect for kids. You could do so much with it.'

Jack almost heard the ping of the light bulb springing into life above his head. Now there was an idea! He'd have to be careful how he went about it – but if he played his cards right … two birds with one stone.