Authors: Joyce Dingwell
‘And keeper,’ he nodded.
‘You.’
‘If you’d explained all this
—
’
she
began.
“You would have turned around and said as she said in her letter that a child should
belong,
if no longer
to
his mother, then to the mother’s side
of the family.’
‘Perhaps I would,
but you wouldn’t have listened to
me. Burn’ ..
.
curiously
... ‘why
have
you
listened
to
argument now? For you have, haven’t you, or
you
wouldn’t be mentioning
a
mother’s side, an aunt’s right?’
‘Because,’ he admitted
quietly, ‘you have to listen to—
Jenny.’
‘Jenny?’
‘Jenny is Lesley’s sister.
I
never knew
Lesley.
I was away in the Territory
when
they were
here.
But
I
know now
they
could never
have
been
alike.’
‘No,’ Frances agreed. ‘And that’s why
,’
she said, more to herself, ‘Jason went instinctively to her. Perhaps before the accident blurred his lit
tl
e memory he loved her. But’ ... a little frown ... ‘where does your new tenant come in?’
‘He comes in as Jenny’s husband. They applied for and received a lease to Great Rock to be near Jason
.’
‘But Jason took a dislike to the man
.’
‘That has been explained ... oh yes, I was over at Great Rock while you staged your near-drowning episode ... and I learned it all. It was Grant ... that’s his name ... who actually disentangled the boy on the night of the crash. He and Jenny were honeymooning in Europe. She had been completing a physiotherapy course there, and Grant an agricultural degree. They met, loved, married. Jenny soon became alarmed at her sister’s behaviour, and she and her husband followed the car that evening, hoping to persuade the parents to leave Jason with them. The boy, though shockingly hurt, was still conscious, and undoubtedly associated everything painful with Grant in his subconscious later on. But it will fade. It will have to with a fine man like Grant
.’
A few moments went past in silence, then Frances disbelieved, ‘How can a man who has been so self
-
certain, so family-certain as you have now turn right round like this?’
‘
Jenny, I expect
,’
he said. ‘She’s good. She’s sweet. I don’t wonder she managed to get Mr. Gildthorpe to recommend her to me
!’
A little laugh. ‘But there was someone else before Jenny to make me see sweetness. Prepare for the end of drought.
You,
France. You gave
me new eyes. I was always pigheaded, forceful
—
’
‘Arrogant,’ she put in.
He accepted that, then went on.
‘I believe it first hit home when you allowed the sonno to paint bright orange water. My river orange
!’
He smiled at his thoughts. ‘I believe I knew then there was not just my side, there were other sides as well.’
‘Tell me,’ she said.
‘Afterwards. Afterwards
and
afterwards. Because there’s going to be all that long, didn’t you know? First things first, France, and our first is: We’ll share the sonno. Fair enough?’
‘With Jenny?’
‘With Jenny and Grant. After all, they worked hard for it, didn’t they?’
‘You’ll actually share him?’
‘I said we, France.’
‘You said we before. You said our. You said us.’
‘You’re a teacher, aren’t you? You should deduce something from that.’
‘All I know is that we means more than one.’
‘Wrong. It means one. For that’s what two makes the way I want things, the way they’d have to be.’
‘You and
—
’
‘Oh, you fool of a girl
!’
he said. ‘I love you. I loved you from the moment you sat across the desk in Sydney and disliked me more than anyone you had met.—Oh yes, I knew. But’ ... tentatively ... ‘I think that’s all changed, France.’
She did not answer.
‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘there’s time to find out. The new house has to go up on the hill. The shrubs. The trees. A hundred things to do.’
But Frances wanted only one thing done, and she waited. When he did not move to do it she asked wistfully, ‘Will it still be called West of the River up there, Burn?’
‘It will still be the same latitude and longitude, still the same river, still west.’ And then at last he knelt down, looked at her, then kissed her.
Kissed her.
The thing she had wanted done.
‘Besides, it will be your name, too,’ he reminded her. ‘Won
’t it ...
Frances
West
?’