Wildflower Hill (31 page)

“Oh, God!” she exclaimed, thinking back to his stiffness that afternoon, his fever. “Oh, God! Charlie! Charlie!”

She ran from the room and through the kitchen, calling Charlie even though she knew he wouldn’t hear her at this distance. She felt intensely the farm’s isolation from the world, from help. Not even a phone to call a doctor. Icy moonlight spread across the dewy grass, threatening to slip her up. A few moments later, she was hammering on Charlie’s door in the shearers’ cottage.

“Charlie, come quick! It’s Mikhail.”

He opened the door, sleepy-eyed and shirtless. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.”

Charlie felt around on the floor for a shirt, pulling it on but leaving it unbuttoned. He was ahead of her in a second, finding his way through the dark to the house. The wind had whipped up, sending clouds scudding across the face of the moon. She hurried after Charlie, her heart thudding and hot, her breath fogging in the cold night air.

She waited outside Mikhail’s bedroom door. She didn’t want to see him again; his posture had terrified her. Charlie took the candle in and spoke gently to the older man, who moaned through his frozen mouth but couldn’t make any words. Then Charlie emerged, closing the door behind him, and looked at her gravely.

“He’s in a bad way. It’s lockjaw.”

Beattie’s heart tightened. She’d heard the word before, only ever in dark tones. “What can we do?”

“We have to get him some medical help.”

“Can you ride to Farquhar’s? Use their phone?”

“It’s not that much farther to town. Farquhar might not help us. He doesn’t like you.”

Beattie knew it wasn’t the time to be affronted. “How do you know?”

“Why would he like you? Your farm’s better than his, and he knows it. He’s got a swamp on his.” Charlie managed a smile. “Town is better. Dr. Malcolm. Abby’s not going to like going out in the dark, but at least there’s moonlight.”

“Abby? You’re not taking Birch?”

“I’m not riding to town, missus, you are.”

“Me? Why me? You’d be quicker.” Safer.

“Everyone in town thinks I’m a thief. They’re not going to help me.”

“But surely they won’t still think that. Nobody liked Raphael.” Even as she said this, she remembered Margaret’s opinion of Charlie all those years ago.
A white man shouldn’t have his things stolen by a black one, and that’s that.
“I really have to ride to town in the dark?”

“Abby’s a good girl. You can trust her. She can hear and smell things we can’t.”

Beattie glanced at Mikhail’s door. She dropped her voice very low. “Will he die?”

Charlie’s eyes were dark pools of emotion. “I don’t know, missus. I’ve seen one fella die from lockjaw and another two
come through just fine. While you’re gone, I’ll clean up that wound on his foot and keep him calm.”

Beattie nodded.

“There’s a torch in my room over at the cottage,” he said. “The battery’s getting weak, but it will help you get Abby saddled in the dark. Take it with you, too. Just in case.”

Abby took a while to settle, unused to being ridden in the dark. She snorted and shied at shadows, and it took all of Beattie’s nerve to keep her voice calm and reassuring enough to settle the horse down.

The wind was high, sometimes rattling, sometimes howling through the treetops. The moon shone, then disappeared through clouds, then shone again. Mad shadows flashed across the road; it felt as though the night were moving and shaking.

Beattie hung on for her life and urged Abby forward. Her hands burned with cold on the reins, her nose and eyes streamed. Her body buzzed with fear for Mikhail, with extreme alertness for herself. She didn’t want to have a fall and end up injured, too. The road disappeared underneath her, Abby found her stride, and they galloped along the hard-packed dirt toward town.

All of the little houses were in darkness. It must have been after midnight. She found her way to Dr. Malcolm’s house, tied Abby loosely to the fence. Her nose and cheeks were icy, her ears aching.

It took nearly five minutes and a lot of knocking to rouse
anyone. The porch light went on, the door opened. Dr. Malcolm was there in his robe, his wife shadowing his shoulder.

“What is it?” he asked, not bothering to hide his irritation.

“One of my men at Wildflower Hill. He has lockjaw.”

Dr. Malcolm fought within himself, sighing through his nose. “I can’t come out,” he said at last.

“But he might die.”

“Lockjaw, you say?” He rubbed his chin, mouth screwed up reluctantly. “I’ll give you penicillin. And a barbiturate to ease the rigors. Call me in the morning if he’s no better, and I’ll come then.”

She was too tired, cold, and distressed to feign politeness. “We don’t have a phone,” she pleaded. “That’s why I just rode all this way in the dark. You’re a doctor. You have to help us.”

He wavered. Beattie felt certain he was about to change his mind when his wife put her hand on his shoulder and snapped, “It’s one o’clock in the morning. He’s not coming now. Which of your men is it? The Abo or the commie?”

Beattie fought down her anger. “Mikhail is not a communist,” she said.

“He can only speak Russian.”

“He speaks English perfectly well.”

“I’ll give you those medicines,” Dr. Malcolm said, shrugging off his wife, “and I’ll come out first thing tomorrow to look in on him.” He turned to his wife. “You go back to bed. I’ll just be a few minutes.”

His wife gave Beattie a look—perhaps it was one of superiority or perhaps pity. Either way, Beattie had to glance away to stop her blood from boiling over.

The doctor prepared two small jars with a few tablets in each and gave her instructions. Then he put her back outside in the cold—unable to meet her eyes—and went back to his warm bed. Beattie untied Abby and started the freezing dash home.

Beattie left Abby at the stables still saddled, and ran up through the laundry and into the house. She dreaded what she would see when she got inside. She expected Charlie to say that Mikhail was dead, that he had stopped breathing. She braced herself for the worst.

Charlie heard her and met her in the hallway. “He’s in a bad way,” he said on one rush of breath. “He’s just had a fit, couldn’t breathe. He’s breathing again now—”

“He has to have two of these and one of these.” She shoved the pill bottles into his hands. “I’m sorry, Charlie, I can’t do it. I don’t even know if he can swallow and . . . you should do it.”

Charlie looked at her and nodded. He took the bottles, his warm desperate fingers brushing hers briefly. He turned and headed toward Mikhail’s room, closing the door behind him.

Beattie waited in the hallway, her face in her hands. Tears threatened, but she didn’t let them spill over. Mikhail had been so good to her, so loyal and so hardworking. She couldn’t bear the thought that he might die. The image of him, his body twisted and stretched, haunted her. She lowered herself to the floor with her back against the wall and put her head on her knees to wait.

It might have been half a hour later that Charlie emerged, the candle burning low in the holder, and sat with her.

“Well?” she said.

“He’s settled. I think the pills might be helping. His body’s softened a bit.” He drew his long legs up and wrapped his arms around his knees. “The doctor wouldn’t come?”

“He says he’ll come in the morning.” Beattie shrugged, trying to stop her face from contorting with tears. “His wife called Mikhail a communist.”

“Ah. Her loss. Mikhail is a good man.”

“The best of men.”

A pause. “What did she say about me, then?”

“Nothing,” Beattie lied.

Charlie’s lips twitched as though he might laugh. “Sure,” he said. “She always holds her tongue, that one.”

Beattie couldn’t help but laugh. Then she grew serious. “Charlie, do you ever get tired of people around here thinking ill of you?”

“You don’t think ill of me,” he said plainly.

“No,” she said, her throat constricting slightly. It felt as though she were saying something she shouldn’t. “No, I don’t. Far from it.”

“I’ve had to worry about worse things than what Doc Malcolm’s wife thinks.” He nodded at her. “So have you.”

Beattie leaned her head against the wall. “It’s true, I suppose.” She glanced at him while he wasn’t looking at her, then away before he saw her. “I know nothing about your life, Charlie.”

“Not much to tell, missus.”

“Are you ever going to start calling me Beattie?”

He spread his hands. “Wouldn’t be right.”

“I’d like it.”

“You might regret it. If someone in town heard it, I guarantee you’d regret it.”

“I wouldn’t. I’m not ashamed to call you my friend. Why, without you and Mikhail, I wouldn’t have survived this long. And I’d be proud to tell people that.” She was immediately self-conscious about the vehemence in her voice.

Charlie’s eyes met hers in the dim candlelight. He seemed to be about to say something, then looked away. Something stirred inside Beattie, something that she hadn’t felt in many years, since she was a foolish teenager in love with Henry. With a thrill of alarm, she realized it was desire. Charlie’s long, lean body, folded up so close to hers; his creamy dark skin; his dark curls and black eyes . . . But she admonished herself, decided that she was tired and worried about Mikhail, that her mind was playing tricks on her.

“Are you going to go get some sleep?” he asked her, shaking her out of her train of thought.

“Are you?”

“I’m going to stay right here.”

“Then I am, too,” she said.

He climbed to his feet. “I’ll go unsaddle poor Abby. You keep an ear out.”

Beattie waited, reorienting herself. The spear of longing had unsettled her. She had long ago given up thinking about men; had presumed that nobody would want sullied goods such as her. She had been so consumed with caring for Lucy, with
fending off poverty, that desire had waited in the wings. That Charlie should arouse it was unexpected. She examined her feelings cautiously, for surely nothing could come of them.

He returned, slipped inside the bedroom, then came back quietly to sit. “He’s asleep. The fever seems to be going down.”

“His body?”

“A little more relaxed.” He smiled. “I think he’s going to make it.”

Beattie’s heart was warm with relief. “I hope you’re right.” She was growing tired, her head heavy on her knees, but was determined to wait out the night for Mikhail. She rose and lit a new candle. The wind rattled the windowpanes, but they were safe and inside. “Keep me awake,” she said to Charlie, lowering herself to the ground again. The candle wax smelled warm in the dark. “You said there’s nothing to know about you, but I bet there is.”

Charlie nodded once. “Sure, missus, if you really want to know.”

So he told her. He told her of the random glimpses of childhood he remembered, far, far north in the warm and wet part of the world, where the sea was green and the sky blue enough to make his eyes ache; of realizing early that he wasn’t the same color as his beloved mother and how that made his community wary of him; of white men coming to take him to a special school for other kids like him, his mother weeping and saying it was for the best; being confused and disoriented, realizing and not realizing at the same time that he would never see her again.

“You can’t imagine it, missus,” he said, “all around you,
people are saying something is good for you. And all you got inside you is a feeling so bad . . .” He trailed off, his voice buckling under the weight of emotion.

She reached for his fingers with her own, but he shrank away a little, and she recalled her hand reluctantly. The night wore on, the deepest part of the night when secrets come to the surface. Every nerve in her body ached to reach for him again, but she didn’t. It wasn’t right, and she had to remember that he was her employee. When his story wound down, he asked her about her life, and she told him about her childish dreams of making clothes, of her love for fabrics and design, her fantasies about making something out of the wool they grew here at Wildflower Hill. She was encouraged by his interest, and somehow other truths slipped from her grasp: about Henry, about Lucy, even about Raphael and how she’d become the owner of Wildflower Hill—this made him laugh without stopping for a full ten minutes.

Somehow, in among the words and stories, dawn broke. So, too, did Mikhail’s fever. Dr. Malcolm came soon after; Charlie disappeared back to his cottage. The spell of the night had passed, and practical needs reasserted themselves. Mikhail would be well in a week or so.

But Beattie feared her heart would not be the same again.

I
f Beattie hadn’t had Charlie to organize shearing season, she would have fallen apart.

Five shearers came, moved into the cottage, and demanded huge breakfasts and dinners. Faced with spending the last of her money on paying either them or the bank, Beattie chose them. She wrote to the bank saying her interest payment would be late—until after the wool clip—and hoped for the best.

There was no money for extra stockmen, so Beattie and Mikhail were pressed into service. Beattie spent the mornings mustering and the afternoons cooking; Mikhail managed the gates and drafted the sheep into the pens; the dogs worked so hard that they dropped in the afternoons and slept like the dead. And Charlie ran the whole show. He knew where every person was at all times, he called out orders in his slow, gentle voice, he managed the mobs of sheep from one side of the property to the other, and he made sure that the shearers did their eighty sheep each a day.

Lack of room in the shearers’ cottage meant Charlie had to sleep in the house. He rolled out his swag on the floor of one of the upstairs rooms. When Beattie climbed into bed at night, she often found herself thinking of his proximity. Just down the dark hallway, two doors down . . . his long body stretched out, his warm skin . . . But then she either banished the thought or fell asleep from exhaustion and the next day tried to deal with Charlie as though she’d not thought such things of him at all. He certainly gave no indication that he was thinking such things of her.