AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Gerry set her bag down and glanced in the direction of the other nurses. All three were thigh deep and engaged in splashing each other. She turned back and met Meg’s eyes. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way but I haven’t seen you collecting your allotment of disposable pads.’
‘What?’ Her breath caught, hooked by the lie she had told. The lie she had to hold onto so she could stay in Townsville a little longer. ‘What is there to take the wrong way about that?’
‘Since I arrived you haven’t once brought pads into the hut or stuffed them into your toiletry bag. Are you just really irregular or are you—’ Gerry’s gaze flicked to Meg’s waist. ‘Pregnant?’
The lie wouldn’t come. Sunlight became blinding. A buzzing in her ears blocked every other sound—her nurses frolicking in the water, trucks rumbling past; the cawing of seagulls overhead. Meg stared at Gerry as everything slipped from her grasp. Around her the day blurred.
Gerry grabbed Meg’s wrists as she sank onto the warm sand and squatted in front of her. ‘It’s okay. Breathe, Maggie. Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell anyone if you are.’
Meg shook her head, unable to meet Gerry’s searching gaze. She’d been so careful about everything else. Not changing in front of the others, blousing her top over her skirt to disguise the undone button, the slow increase in her waist. Missed periods had seemed one of the few positives among the changes in her body, but now they were to be her undoing. ‘I guess I should be grateful Eagle-eyes Eva wasn’t sharing our hut.’
‘So it’s true?’
She nodded. ‘I had hoped to see Seamus before he shipped out, but I missed him. I think it happened around the end of March, while we were in Adelaide River.’
‘Didn’t you want to go home when you found out? Maggie—what on earth are you doing staying in a war zone?’
‘I’ve asked myself that a dozen times since the Oonoonba raid, and I know I’m probably crazy, but Gerry, I love my work. I love the responsibility and learning so many new things. I don’t want to lose all that.’
‘But you will, no matter how long you wait here before someone finds out. Someone else I mean. At some point, and I reckon you’ll be lucky to last another month before that happens, you’ll have to tell Doc and then you’ll be sent south.’
‘I know.’ Even now, she held back sharing that Doc already knew. While nobody else knew that he knew, he couldn’t get into trouble for her choices, her decisions. For the choice he had knowingly made in allowing her to stay. ‘Please don’t tell anyone. It’s difficult enough that Seamus and I weren’t married before he left, but—I want to find someone in Brisbane to look after the baby so I can return and keep nursing.’
Gerry sat with a thump. ‘Are you really going to give up your baby to keep nursing?’
‘I didn’t mean I’m giving my baby away!’ The thought of never knowing her and Seamus’s child chilled her to the bone. ‘I want a temporary mother for my child, just until Seamus returns and we can be married. When he comes home, we’ll marry and be a family and maybe then I can help out at a local hospital. Maybe that will be enough.’
‘And if it isn’t?’ Gerry’s voice was soft, but the question had played on Meg’s mind before now. ‘What if being a wife and mother isn’t enough for you?’
‘It will have to be. Unless the laws change to allow married women to keep working.’
‘What a lousy choice we women have.’
Meg shrugged. ‘Home and children, or single and a career. It’s a man’s world all right. I can’t see it changing any time soon, even though the army has just changed the rules so married nurses can keep working.’
‘And yet, Maggie, here we are in this man’s army, and women back home are doing jobs men used to do while they’re away fighting. Maybe that should give us hope that things can change because they have to change.’ Gerry gripped Meg’s hand between hers. ‘As to your choice about returning to work after your baby is born—I know a nun. We were friends at school; now we’re both sisters.’ She grinned at her quip. ‘The thing is, she lives at Magdalen House in Wooloowin. They look after unmarried mums and bubs there. I could write to her and ask if she knows of someone who can help. If you like?’
‘Thank you, Gerry. Yes, I’d love for you to write and ask. It will be such a relief to know it’s all sorted before I have my baby.’
Squeals of pleasure erupted from the trio in the water, and Ria waved at them. ‘Come on in, you two. The water is wonderful.’
‘Go on, Gerry. Get in and enjoy your swim. I’ll walk up that way.’ She pointed towards a rocky section. ‘Maybe I’ll dip my toes in a rock pool.’
‘If you’re sure you don’t mind?’
‘With your kind offer and this balmy day, I can relax now. And to be honest, I’ll love a little solitude.’
Gerry smiled then ran across the sand and joined the others.
Meg kicked off her shoes, had a drink from her water bottle then set off towards the rocks. Sand squished up between her toes and the wind tossed loose hair across her eyes. She clambered onto the rocks, shaded her eyes and looked across the water. Magnetic Island seemed to doze in midday heat hot enough even in winter to create a light haze. She knew there were gun emplacements at strategic points, but from here, without a pair of binoculars, they were invisible.
Probably even if I had a pair, I wouldn’t see them.
But she could imagine them. Davis had described the emplacements built into the hill up Pallarenda way. Hidden beneath flat concrete roofs, he’d spotted one when he was out bird watching on a rare half day off. He’d described his find in a quiet moment one day on the ward. Meg and one of their patients, another bird-watcher, had been so involved in Davis’s poetic descriptions of bird life on the Town Common, they hadn’t noticed Doc’s approach until he tapped her on the shoulder and requested ‘a moment of your time, Sister’.
A seagull glided down onto the rocks not far from her and sat at the edge of a small pool of water, its beady black eyes searching for food. Here on the sun-soaked rocks, the warmth of midday had drawn a line of sweat along Meg’s upper lip. She lifted her hair off her neck and looked around. Sun glinted off water in a bigger rock pool than the seagull had claimed.
Meg climbed carefully down to the big pool, examined the sandy bottom for other life then stepped into the water. If she’d brought a bathing suit, she could have fully submersed herself. As it was, she tucked her skirt up and waded, even scooping water over her arms. A sea breeze cooled her wet skin, enough that she no longer felt envious of the others frolicking in the shallows.
