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“Me too, yes,” she groaned again. “Please.”
Rosie fetched bowls and spoons, while I found my torch to give us more light than the fire.
We sat on the armchairs, eating in silence, letting the warmth of my mother’s cooking seep through our bones.
While Rosie left me to my bucket bath, I’d also radioed in and spoke to Ryan, omitting how Rosie’s campsite had been obliterated by a gum tree in my report. And then refilled the billy with water and put it on to boil.
As I licked the last of the soup off my spoon, the water bubbled and splashed.
“Just in time for tea,” I announced, standing and taking Rosie’s empty bowl.
Her hands were shaking.
“Holy shit, Rosie. You’re frigging cold.” I grabbed her hands between mine and rubbed them.
“I’m okay, just a frog in this weather.”
She didn’t resist my touch. She was cold, alarmingly so and needed to warm up. I kept up the friction with her hands.
“Where are your gloves?”
“I … oh. I think I left them outside. When the tree crashed.”
“Rosie, you need to be warmer. I think we need to get you into bed.” Her mouth fell open but I kept going. “We can zip the sleeping bags together. They are compatible. Body warmth will be essential for both of us to stay warm.”
The fire was warm but there was little to no insulation in this old hut. I’d have to bank up the fire with more logs to get through the night.
“And tea?” she grumped.
I couldn’t help but laugh a little. “Yes, and tea.”
“I’m so tired.”
“You were in the saddle and up before dawn, and had a near-death experience.” My voice cracked on those last three words. Rosie’s bottom lip quivered.
We said nothing more, letting our morbid thoughts imagine what could have been.
“I’ll set up the sleeping bags so you can get in, and then I’ll bring you tea.”
Surprisingly, Rosie nodded without an argument.
Any moisture from earlier had dried off her sleeping bag and I zipped the bags together to make one big one. I helped Rosie with her boots and she settled between the layers with a contented sigh.
I washed out the port in our mugs and made tea from tea bags, adding sugar.
What would it have been like if we’d stayed together? Would it have been like this, doing musters together? Bringing her tea in bed at the end of a long day?
Would we have ended up like her sister, Anthea, married young and with kids? Would we even still be together? What if we’d split up, angry and spiteful?
I guess, up until the day before, that’s exactly what had happened.
“Did you ever—” I stopped myself in time. Such thoughts were meant to be inside thoughts, and the port had loosened my tongue.
Rosie sat up on the mattress. “What do I ever …?”
“Nothing.”
“You can say it,” she said softly.
