Shadow of the Mountain Page 6

  ‘You’ve cut your foot,’ Angus said, glancing back at her.

  Geneva looked down. Blood was pooling around her bare sole. She couldn’t feel it. Angus was pressing a fresh section of the towel against her mother’s head.

  ‘I —’ Her voice came out a dull croak.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Angus said. ‘The cut’s not deep. There’s a good sized swelling — she must have hit her head when she fell. You could spread the blanket over her,’ he added. ‘Be careful though. There’s glass everywhere.’

  Geneva stared around, searching for a culprit. Long shards of green and blue glass lay in a minefield across the floor: the bowl that usually sat on the end of the bench, mostly empty, sometimes holding an overflow of fruit — she could see the heavy base, still intact, near the table.

  ‘Did you ring for an ambulance?’ Angus asked.

  She stared at him, struggling against the fog in her brain. Why hadn’t she thought of that?

  ‘Mind the glass,’ he said.

  Her fingers shook as she dialled, but the calm approach of the operator helped draw out the relevant details. Everyone but her seemed calm. She wiped impatiently at the hot, slow tears that dribbled off her chin, nodding as the unknown voice assured her of a prompt response. By the time she replaced the receiver her heart rate had begun to steady.

  Leaning against the wall, Geneva lifted her foot, gingerly removing a bright blue splinter. Blood welled from the thin cut. She’d left puddles of it across the floor, staining the terracotta tiles.

  Wrapping a tea-towel around her foot she swept the worst of the glass into a corner, leaving the jagged shards hemmed in by the broom. Angus had dampened a clean section of towel and was gently sponging her mother’s face.

  He looked up as she squatted beside him. ‘Okay?’

  She nodded. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Help me turn her. She might have fallen on some of the glass.’

  Geneva’s throat constricted. As gently as they could, they rolled her mother onto her side. Her face looked damp and pale.

  ‘Have you got a first aid kit?’

  Angus’s question brought her eyes quickly to his face, then down again. More blood was oozing from a gash on her mother’s hand. Her stomach lurched, queasiness building into an urge to be sick. Swallowing, she willed herself calm. ‘I’ll get it.’

  The cut didn’t look life threatening but it was just one more thing — and it was a long time since Geneva had felt confident of her mother’s resilience. Angus selected sterile pads and a gauze bandage from the first aid kit and began dressing the cut.

  ‘She’ll be okay,’ he said, glancing up. ‘How long did the ambulance say?’

  ‘Twenty minutes.’

  ‘Do you know where your dad is?’

  ‘He’s probably checking the heifers.’ Geneva hesitated. Despite knowing she was being about as useful as a wetsuit on a frog, she didn’t want to leave her mother’s side. ‘Do you want me to find him?’

  ‘As long as you don’t have to go far. Here,’ he said, handing her a couple of plasters. ‘Better put shoes on.’

  Geneva lingered. ‘Mum won’t know who you are if she wakes up,’ she said.

  Angus looked up. ‘I’ll call you. It’ll be okay.’ He smiled.

  Grateful that someone felt up to making decisions, Geneva nodded. She’d try up by the sheds. If her father wasn’t there, she’d at least know which vehicle he’d taken: truck, bike or tractor. That would narrow it down a bit, though there were still too many places he might be.

  In the past — years in the past — she’d have known exactly where her father was, along with his schedule for the day. She used to love going with him on the farm, helping with feeding out and docking, wading through the bleating and dust of the yards in summertime, feeling in her soles and chest the pulsing beat of the shed at shearing. They’d drifted apart over the last year. They’d all drifted. The farm had drifted, her father’s heart no longer in it.

  The implement shed was empty. That meant he’d taken the bike. Geneva ran across to the double garage that housed the truck and tractor. She might not have a licence but she’d been driving farm machinery since her thirteenth birthday. Her father had marked the occasion by giving her a lesson on the farm bike after presents and before school — she recalled with an ache the heady mix of fear and exhilaration.

  The truck started at the first attempt and she backed out into the yard, swung it quickly and drove to the top of the hill behind the sheds where she switched off and sounded the horn: once, twice, three times. Pause. Once, twice, three times. She repeated the process then sat listening.

  Nothing. She tried again. In the silence that followed she thought she heard an answering blare of horn. What would he be thinking? She hoped he wasn’t far away. She didn’t want him to have too long to worry — to panic, the way she had.

  Gripping the steering wheel, Geneva dropped her forehead onto the thin leather padding and took a couple of long slow breaths. She should get back to the house. Thank God Angus was here. Willing her legs to hold her, she got out of the cab to listen. She could definitely hear a bike engine now. It was over by the dams; not far away. He’d be home in a few minutes.

  By the time the ambulance arrived Geneva had settled into a numb lethargy. Her father had barely had time to take in her account of what had happened before they found themselves standing on the gravel of the driveway, their concern tinged with relief as the professionals took charge.

  Her father wanted to drive into town but the paramedics suggested he travel in the ambulance, for his own safety as well as for his wife. He still looked the way Geneva had felt in those first, drawn-out minutes: shell shocked.

  ‘Thank God it’s not more serious,’ her father said, squeezing an arm around Geneva’s shoulders as they watched the crew lift her mother into the ambulance. ‘She’ll have to stay in overnight.’ He hesitated. ‘You’re sure you’ll be all right? I could drive us both.’

  Geneva shook her head. ‘No, you go with Mum. She’ll want you there. I’ll be fine.’

  Her father nodded, his weather-beaten face folded into lines more deeply drawn than ever. He didn’t push it: he knew how she felt about hospitals. ‘Julia could come over, or one of the neighbours might —’

  ‘I’ll be fine, Dad. Anyway, Angus is here.’

  Her father nodded. ‘I’ll ring as soon as we know what’s happening. I’m not sure how long it’ll be.’

  ‘All set,’ the medic announced.

  Geneva hugged her father quickly.

  ‘I’ll phone,’ he promised.

  Watching her father settle on the folding seat opposite the stretcher and reach for his wife’s hand, Geneva was buffeted by a wave of emptiness. As the doors closed the wave broke, tears forcing their way up past the lump in her throat.

  ‘Come on,’ Angus said, his hand warm on the bare flesh of her arm as he steered her towards the house. ‘Time for a cuppa.’

  ‘It’s lucky you were here,’ Geneva said, nestling into the polar-fleece Angus had insisted she put on. ‘I still can’t believe you knew all that stuff. And you were so calm.’

  ‘It’s always easier when it’s not someone you know.’

  They were sitting in the den, a cup of sweet tea cooling between Geneva’s hands while Angus rummaged through the first aid kit at her feet. He’d insisted on checking the hastily applied band-aids. Geneva stared at the blood that had oozed around them as he eased off her running shoe.

  ‘This needs taping properly,’ Angus announced, lifting her foot.

  Geneva winced and Angus looked up in surprise. ‘Did that hurt?’ he asked.

  ‘I think I knelt on some glass when we first came inside.’

  With the memory, her knee began to throb. Setting the mug aside, Geneva bent to roll up the leg of her track pants. She was startled by the trail of blood on her shin, and to see blood still welling from a small but deep gash.

  ‘You should have said something.’ Angus
reached for a gauze pad.

  ‘I’d forgotten it till now.’

  ‘It might need stitches.’ His fingers were firm and professional as he removed a shard of glass from the wound. ‘I could drive you to A&E, if you think your father’d be okay about us using his car.’

  ‘No, it’s okay,’ Geneva said hastily. ‘It’s not that bad. Just tape it up.’ She flinched as Angus pressed a pad across the cut. ‘I can go to the doctor tomorrow if I need to,’ she added.

  Angus watched her quizzically.

  ‘I’d rather stay here, for when Dad rings. He’d worry if I didn’t answer when he calls and I’ve got no way of contacting him.’

  ‘We’d find him easily enough once we got there.’

  Geneva let the silence stretch. She wasn’t ready to explain further.

  ‘You okay?’ he asked.

  She nodded, her eyes sliding away around the room. ‘I’m sorry about this,’ she said eventually. ‘It’s always a bit weird round here, but not usually this weird.’

  ‘It’s no big deal,’ he said, taping the edges of the pad.

  She looked at him. He’d been hot and sweaty when he’d arrived, and the hair that usually flopped over his forehead had dried back off his face. There was a thin smudge of chain oil on his left cheek, running down to meet the scar that curved along his jaw.

  ‘What?’

  She hadn’t realised she was staring. Geneva flushed. ‘Nothing. You’re really good at this stuff.’ She nodded towards the fresh bandage, and his hand which still rested beside it on her knee.

  ‘I’ve had a bit of practice. It’s kind of what I want to do.’

  ‘Medicine, you mean?’

  ‘Something along those lines. Not sure yet.’ He stood up. ‘Stay there. I’ll get something to clean up the blood.’

  Obedient, Geneva waited. When Angus came back he brought her a fresh cup of tea and settled himself again at her feet. As he began to gently sponge blood from her shin he glanced up and caught her grinning.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She smiled. ‘It’s just … nothing.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I was just thinking how it would look — you kneeling at my feet. If only my girlfriends could see me now, eh?’ she added lightly.

  Angus gave a snort.

  ‘Though I doubt Kitty would be impressed,’ Geneva said, a touch of bitterness edging into her voice. ‘Actually,’ she hurried on, ‘what I was really thinking is that it’s good to know something about you. Something serious, I mean, like wanting to go into medicine.’

  ‘If you’re about to confess a fetish for medical practitioners, I’m out of here,’ Angus announced as he finished sponging her shin. ‘For at least as long as it takes to collect my stethoscope.’

  Geneva smiled and shook her head. ‘No fetishes that I know of. It’s just good to know you’re interested in more than climbing. Some people get way too obsessed with it.’

  ‘You were worried I was a bimbo,’ he accused, sitting back on his heels.

  ‘No! It’s just, some people are. You know,’ she trailed off.

  Angus’s brown eyes studied her. ‘Okay,’ he said finally. He was good at knowing when not to push. She watched as he packed the first aid kit away. ‘You’ll need to restock this,’ he observed.

  She mumbled assent.

  ‘You should check that you can bend your knee without it pulling too much.’ With one hand resting gently on her freshly bandaged knee, he lifted her foot till the knee straightened, before slowly lowering it. As his hand slid from her knee to her calf, Geneva swallowed.

  ‘Feel okay? Not too tight?’

  ‘I don’t think they should trust you with a stethoscope,’ she said, her stomach jelly.

  Angus grinned, his fingers still laced around her ankle. ‘They’d probably be right.’ He paused. ‘One of the things I came out to tell you was that I enjoyed Friday night. Despite Jax.’

  She nodded. ‘Me too.’

  The sudden silence felt charged — almost crackling. Angus’s fingers moved on her ankle. The scar at the corner of his mouth lifted. ‘Hey, I was wondering —’

  The shrill of the telephone made them both jump.

  ‘That’ll be Dad,’ Geneva said, shrugging herself back to reality and an image of her mother being carried out to the ambulance. Keeping her weight on her heel she limped into the kitchen and reached for the phone.

  11.

  Geneva sighed and shook her head, Monday morning hanging in her head like fog. ‘I can still cook, Dad. You didn’t need to ask Mrs Macphee to do it.’

  ‘She wanted to help, and you’ve got enough on your plate. I’ve made you an appointment at the doctor’s straight after school.’

  ‘Dad! I told you it was fine.’

  ‘Your friend Angus advised me to ignore you if you said that,’ her father admitted, throwing her a quick sideways smile. ‘He seems a nice young man. It was good of him to stay — I couldn’t have left you on your own.’

  ‘I’d have been all right, you know,’ Geneva said, though she’d been just as grateful for Angus’s presence. ‘I’m not a kid.’

  ‘I know you’re not,’ her father agreed. There was a pause while she watched his hands tighten convulsively around the steering wheel. ‘I’ve been meaning to say, it was a good idea, beeping the horn like that. As soon as I heard it, I knew that something …’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘Oh, Dad! I’m really sorry. Not about beeping. I mean about … about everything.’

  ‘It hasn’t been much of a year, has it Genna?’ He cleared his throat and turned brusque. ‘You get off to school, now, and I’ll go and see your mother. I’ll be here to pick you up at three.’

  Geneva nodded and climbed out of the truck. There was so much that needed saying that her throat felt full with it. He smiled thinly as she held the door. ‘You’re a good girl, Genna.’

  The metal felt smooth and cold beneath her fingers. ‘See you, Dad.’

  ‘Hey, Gen-eeev-er. I hear you’re a bit of a dark mare.’ Leonie smirked while the rest of her coven giggled. ‘Who’d have thought it, eh? Wakefield boys, two at a time.’

  ‘Do they know about each other?’ a sniggering voice asked.

  ‘They probably go in for threesomes,’ Leonie answered. ‘You know what that Wakefield lot are like.’

  Geneva shouldered past them.

  ‘How come you’re limping, Geneva? Worn yourself out?’

  More sniggers.

  ‘Did you have a good time, down at the beach last Saturday?’ Leonie called before turning to her cronies in mock surprise. ‘And I always thought she was such a goody-good,’ she added loudly.

  ‘Good at all sorts of things, Leonie,’ Geneva snapped, unable to keep to her decision to ignore them. ‘Not two-dimensional like you.’

  Leonie narrowed her eyes. ‘You’d better watch yourself, Knowles. Days when we had to be extra careful with precious little Geneva are long gone.’

  The library was cool and quiet. Ms Tiedemann, the librarian, had often turned a blind eye to Geneva using the place as a refuge, but it had been months now since she’d been in for anything other than a book, and this was the third time this week.

  ‘Hello, Geneva. How are you today?’

  ‘I’m fine, Ms T. Do you mind if I sit in here for a while? I’m still off PE and I’ve cleared it with Mrs Jamieson.’

  The librarian eyed the wide plaster that covered Geneva’s knee. ‘Looks nasty. What happened?’

  ‘It’s no big deal. I cut it on some glass.’ Geneva knew from experience that Ms Tiedemann was discreet but there seemed no reason to go into detail.

  Her mother was still vague about what had happened. The doctors hadn’t found any specific reason for her fall. The consensus seemed to be that she’d fainted, put out a hand to save herself and knocked the bowl to the floor in the process. Her injuries came from hitting her head on the edge of the bench as she went down and then from landing on fragments of glass. That
was the theory.

  It didn’t quite add up. Her mother had never been prone to fainting and Geneva could see no reason why that would change — unless she was on some medication that might cause it, but the doctors were adamant it wasn’t that.

  The one thing everyone agreed on was that it could have been worse. She could have fallen on the jagged base of the bowl or done worse damage when she hit her head. The doctors had kept her in for an extra couple of days so they could run a series of tests, but they hadn’t turned up anything. She’d been cleared as fit to go home on Wednesday, and questions about the reason behind the incident had been shelved.

  ‘How’s your mother, Geneva?’

  Geneva started guiltily, wondering if the librarian could read her thoughts. ‘Fine, thanks.’

  She’d been sleeping a lot since she came home from the hospital. Her father said that was normal after a head injury, but Geneva wondered whether it meant that the nightmares which had troubled her earlier in the year were back. Suddenly she found herself longing to share her fears.

  ‘Mum had a fall at the weekend and knocked herself out — we don’t know why she fell. She broke a bowl, and I was cleaning it up when I cut my knee,’ Geneva blurted. ‘She’s getting better now.’ At least I hope she is, she added silently. All her father had said when she’d asked was that time was the best healer.

  Ms Tiedemann had stopped cataloguing books and was eyeing her with concern. ‘Do you need help at home? There’s always Community Services —’

  ‘Oh, we’re fine. My aunt’s been helping out,’ Geneva answered hastily. Julia had rung to see how they were every day since the accident. Angus had called too, not as often, but Geneva had found herself hoping it would be him each time the phone rang.

  ‘I don’t imagine you can cycle with that knee. How are you getting to school?’

  Geneva knew that the woman’s concern was well-meant but she was already regretting her outburst. Ms Teidemann had always had a nose for the weak spots.