Marion Lennox - Rescue at Cradle Lake

‘Richard’s doing little but sleeping. Miriam’s with Madison…’

‘You see, there’s the problem,’ she whispered. ‘Madison needs to be with me. She needs to start seeing me as a constant.’

He drew in his breath at that. He really was absurdly handsome, Ginny thought inconsequentially. He was still wearing his theatre gown and slippers, hospital green. He’d raked his hair as he’d spoken to Stephanie’s parents and it was tousled and rumpled and she just want to…

No!

‘Maybe I could try,’ he said, and she blinked.

‘Try. Try what?’

He chewed his bottom lip. ‘Ginny, this thing between us…You say you think you’re falling in love.’

‘I’m trying very hard not to,’ she said, and he nodded.

‘Me, too.’

‘So why are you asking me out to dinner?’

‘Because I’ve got this appalling feeling that I might be making a mistake.’

‘Fergus, my appendages aren’t going to go away,’ she said softly. ‘Believe me, I didn’t mean this to happen. I know, this is really fast but it’s overwhelming. Every time I look at you I think how can I have appendages when it means I can’t have you? But I do have them, Fergus. Madison is right here in my heart and I’m even falling for my dogs.’

‘OK, then,’ he said, and she blinked again.

‘OK, what?’

‘I’ll try.’

‘You’ll try what?’

‘Let’s have a picnic on the lake tonight. With appendages attached.’

‘Not in the boatshed,’ she said in a hurry, and he grinned.

‘Not in the boatshed.’

‘A proper picnic.’ She sounded suspicious but she couldn’t help it.

‘Yes.’

She bit her lip but it had to be said. ‘I can bring Madison?’

‘You can bring anyone you want.’

‘A barbecue.’

‘Yes. If we can build one on the shore.’

‘There’s a cairn down on the east shore we can use as a barbecue.’ She stared at him for a long moment and came to a decision. ‘Right. If I leave now, I can catch the butcher.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Just like that,’ she said. ‘Are you doing evening surgery?’

‘Yes, but it’s lightly booked. It should be finished by six.’

‘I’ll see you at seven, then,’ she told him. ‘On the east shore. With sausages.’

‘See you then.’

Terrific, she thought as she drove butcher-wards. What on earth was she doing?

She didn’t have a clue.

SHE was there-with appendages. Fergus pulled into the east shore parking area, where a row of eucalypts divided the paddocks from the sandy shore, and he thought she’d brought everyone she could think of.

Ginny. Madison. Twiggy, Snapper and Bounce. Richard, lying on a blow-up mattress on the shoreline and seemingly asleep, and Miriam, calmly sitting beside him, her stockings off and her feet in the water.

It was a real family picnic, Fergus thought, and he wanted to run.

‘Hi.’ Ginny rose from where she’d been sorting through a picnic hamper. She was wearing a crimson bikini with a crimson and white sarong. She was smiling.

Maybe he didn’t want to run.

‘Bounce nearly ate the sausages,’ Madison announced. She was also wearing a bikini-a miniature version of Ginny’s. The Cradle Lake ladies auxiliary had held a working bee to augment Madison’s scant wardrobe. She now had outfits for every occasion, but her tiny body still looked waiflike and Fergus felt his heart wrench.

Maybe he should run.

‘So who saved the sausages?’ he asked, and Richard opened his eyes and managed a weary smile.

‘Our Ginny was a rugby player in a previous life. It was a tackle that would have done an international player proud.’

‘Ginny got a sore knee,’ Madison said gravely, and Fergus looked at said knee and saw a graze and a trace of blood.

‘Do you need a doctor?’ he asked, and she flushed a little.

‘I don’t need a doctor, thank you very much,’ she managed.

‘We need a cook,’ Miriam told him. ‘You’re on barbecue duty.’

‘Why?’

‘Men tend barbecues,’ Richard whispered. ‘And I can’t.’

It was all Richard could do to make himself heard, Fergus thought, looking down at his patient in concern. It must have cost him a huge effort to be there tonight. But together Miriam and Ginny had him comfortable. They had his oxygen cylinder set just above the water line. They’d lain him right on the water’s edge and he had a hand trailing lazily in the water.

The night was warm and dreamy, the sun a low ball of fading heat, reflecting softly off the water. If I only had a few days left, this is where I might like to be, Fergus thought, and glanced at Ginny and saw she was thinking exactly what he was thinking. There was pain behind her eyes, knowledge of imminent loss.

‘Let’s get these sausages cooked,’ he said, maybe more roughly than he’d intended. ‘Maddy, would you like to help me?’

‘Madison,’ she whispered.

‘Sorry. Madison, would you, please, help me with the sausages?’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Have they been pricked?’

‘Pricked?’

‘No,’ Ginny told him. ‘They’re unpricked sausages.’

‘That’s a terrible state of affairs,’ he told the little girl. ‘Let me teach you how to professionally prick a sausage.’

They pricked, cooked and ate their sausages. They polished off salad and lamingtons and sponge cake and grapes and lemonade.

‘It’s time to swim,’ Ginny decreed.

‘Aren’t you supposed to wait for half an hour after eating?’ Fergus asked, and she gazed at him blankly.

‘Why?’

‘In case of cramp.’

‘What medical textbook did that come out of?’

‘My mother’s,’ he said, and she grinned.

‘My mother said every minute out of the water on a night like this was a minute wasted. Are you pitting your mother against my mother?’

‘No,’ he said faintly. ‘I daren’t.’

‘You did bring your togs?’

He had. He felt a bit self-conscious hauling off his shirt and trousers, with everyone looking at him. Ginny had seen him before but the thought of that made him even more self-conscious-and Miriam whistling didn’t help at all.

‘Ooh, Dr Fergus. You make me go all wobbly round the knees.’

‘I begin to see what you see in the man,’ Richard managed, and Fergus made a valiant attempt not to blush.

‘I’m swimming,’ he said, and turned toward the water.

‘Not before the race,’ Ginny announced, and he hesitated.

‘The race?’

‘We have a boat.’ Ginny gestured up the bank to where an ancient bathtub lay on its side.

‘That’s a bathtub,’ he said cautiously.

‘The man’s intelligent as well as good-looking,’ Richard whispered. ‘Ginny, you’ve struck gold.’

‘Quiet,’ Ginny ordered. She turned back to the lake and gestured to a series of poles curving about two hundred yards out into the lake. ‘We use the bath to paddle through as many poles as we can. The poles are all in shallow water,’ she said. ‘They mark the boundary of where non-swimmers can go. Plus they act as a sort of slalom run.’

‘A slalom run,’ Fergus said cautiously. ‘As in skiing. Right. Um… Anything else I should know?’

‘Our bathtub doesn’t have a plug.’

‘Right.’

Ginny grinned at his evident confusion. ‘Right behind where the bath is, there’s a clay bank,’ she told him. ‘It’s really gluey clay, and it’s the makings of a Cradle Lake tradition. You make your own plug. Your plug can be made of anything you can find on the ground, like leaves, grass, even cow pats-but the plug has to be held together by clay.’

‘I see.’ He shook his head. ‘Nope. I don’t see.’

‘The trick is to make your plug, launch your bath and then paddle-using only arms over the side. You weave in and out of the poles. The record is the third last marker before the plug disintegrates and the bath sinks.’

‘Who holds the record?’ Fergus asked, and Richard managed a smile.

‘That would be me. Aged all of fourteen. Twenty-three poles.’

‘Richard was great,’ Ginny told them, smiling down at her brother in affection. ‘But, Fergus, you’re a grown man with muscles that make even Miriam whistle. Surely you can beat a mere fourteen-year-old whippersnapper.’

‘With cystic fibrosis,’ Richard added. ‘Everyone without cystic fibrosis should be handicapped.’

‘No one’s beaten your record,’ Ginny said soundly. ‘Stuff cystic fibrosis. It didn’t beat you then.’

It didn’t beat you then…

This was a battle, Fergus thought. He looked from brother to sister and back again and thought this disease had been a part of their lives for so long that it was a tangible thing. A monster to be beaten, over and over again.

Until it could no longer be beaten. Which would be soon.

Meanwhile, they were watching him. Expectant.

‘You want me to show you how it’s done?’ Ginny asked. ‘Richard would but he’s a bit tied up at the moment.’

‘You could say that,’ Richard said, and grinned. ‘Madison, sit by me while your Aunty Ginny plays boat captain.’

‘I reckon Madison could go in the boat,’ Miriam said, smiling at the lot of them like an indulgent aunt instead of the efficient nurse she was.

‘Can the dogs go in the boat, too?’ Madison asked, and Ginny held up her hands in horror.

‘One child maybe but no dogs. I intend to set a mark that Dr Reynard can’t beat. Madison, you can help paddle but the dogs would sink us by the first pole.’

‘Right,’ Miriam said decisively. ‘That’s it, then. The crews are decided. Let’s get this boat race under way.’

It looked easy, Fergus thought, sitting on the sun-warmed sand and waiting as Ginny prepared her plug.

‘The trick is not to show Dr Reynard what we’re doing,’ she told Madison, and they turned their backs on him and stooped over the clay bank. ‘But the trick is to weave the grass, over and over. Watch.’

Two heads bent, intent.