Authors: Meredith Webber,Alison Roberts
‘Charles is phoning now—he speaks German so
he’ll support the boy. But fancy someone phoning, Harry, to say your daughter’s dead.’
She began to shiver and Harry led her to the car, helping her in, wanting to get her home and dry—and safe.
Safe? Where was safe tonight? Nowhere in Crocodile Creek, that was for sure.
Grace fell asleep again on the short drive to her cottage and this time, when he stopped the car, Harry sat and looked at her for a minute. He had the list and could do the evacuations himself, although that would be pretty stupid as he was likely to be needed other places or would be taking calls that would distract him.
And on top of that, she’d be furious.
He sighed, reached out to push a wet curl off her temple, then got out of the car, walked, with difficulty as the wind was far stronger here on the coast, around the bonnet, then carefully opened the passenger door, slipping his hand inside to hold Grace’s weight so she didn’t slide out.
Her lips opened in a small mew of protest at this disruption, but she didn’t push him away so he reached across her and undid the catch on her seat belt, conscious all the time of the softness of her body and the steady rise and fall of her breasts.
She stirred again as he lifted her out, then she rested her head against his shoulder and drifted back to sleep.
But once inside he had to wake her—had to get her out of her sodden garments for a start.
‘Grace!’
He said her name so softly he was surprised when she opened her eyes immediately. Was it her nursing
training kicking in that she could come so instantly awake?
And frowning.
‘Harry? Oh, damn, I fell asleep again. You should have woken me. You’ve carried more than your share of people tonight, and your leg must be killing you.’
‘You don’t weigh much. I’ll set you down and as you still have power, I’ll put the kettle on. I want you to get dry, have a hot drink then gather some things together for yourself. I’ll drop you at the civic centre and you can sleep for a couple of hours.’
He eased her onto her feet just inside the door of her cottage.
‘Sleep?’ She looked so astounded he had to smile.
‘What you’ve been doing in the car. Remember sleep?’
The feeble joke fell flat.
‘I can’t sleep now!’ she muttered at him, then added a glare for good measure. ‘Unless you’re going to sleep as well,’ she dared him. ‘Then I might consider it.’
‘You know I can’t—not right now—but I’ll be only too happy to grab a nap whenever I can. You should be, too, and now’s as good a time as any.’
‘So you can run around on your own, doing all the evacuations I’m supposed to be doing, fielding phone calls and giving orders and generally doing your superhero thing. Well, not on my watch,’ she finished, her usually soft pink lips set in a mutinous line.
He was about to deny the superhero accusation when he realised that was exactly what she wanted. She was turning the argument back on him.
‘Well, fine,’ he grumbled. ‘But you’re not going anywhere until you’ve had a hot drink.’
He stalked towards her kitchen.
Joe had obviously remembered the cyclone preparations from his time working in the town because the windows were all taped with broad adhesive tape, and a note on the kitchen table told them he’d taken Christina to the hospital because he was working there and hadn’t wanted to leave her at the cottage on her own.
‘Also large as she is,’ he’d added, ‘she swears she can still be useful.’
Harry filled the kettle, banging it against the tap because his frustration with Grace’s behaviour still simmered.
‘Stubborn woman!’ he muttered to himself, finding the instant coffee and spooning a generous amount into two cups, adding an equal amount of sugar. It wasn’t sleep but maybe a caffeine and sugar boost would help them tackle what still lay ahead of them this night.
Still grumpy, though not certain if it was because of Grace’s refusal to obey his orders or her repetition of the superhero crack, he was carrying the filled cups and some biscuits he’d found in the pantry through to the living room when a small mumble of frustration made him turn. Grace was slumped on the sofa. She had managed to remove her boots but was now fumbling with the press studs that held her overalls together down the front.
Grumpiness was swallowed by concern so strong he felt shaken by the power of it.
‘Here, let me,’ Harry said, setting down the coffee and stepping towards her, telling her at the same time about the note and the preparations Joe had made,
hoping the conversation might mask the trembling of his fingers.
He undid the studs then the Velcro strips and eased the heavy, wet fabric off Grace’s shoulders. His voice—in the midst of explaining that Joe had left the water bottles, bedding, radio and batteries in the bathroom—faltered and his fingers shook a little more as he saw the swell of Grace’s breasts, clad only in some scraps of dark blue lace—the colour making her ivory skin seem even paler.
Reminding himself that this was Grace, his friend, he helped her stand so he could drag the clammy, all-concealing garment off her body, trying desperately to ignore his body’s reaction to the matching scrap of blue lace lower down, and the surprisingly shapely legs the stripping off of the garment revealed.
‘You’ll have to do the rest yourself,’ he told her, his voice coming out as a throaty kind of growl.
‘I had better,’ she said, a teasing smile illuminating her tired face. ‘Although,’ she added wistfully, ‘I’m not so certain physical attraction is all bad.’
‘Right now any distraction at all is bad, Grace, and you know it. Now, scat, and take your coffee with you. Get into the shower and into some dry clothes—I’ll slip home and change, check that everything’s organised at the station and come back for you in ten or fifteen minutes.’
Getting away from her—doing things that needed doing—would surely distract him from …
From what?
He couldn’t find an answer, and she didn’t scat. She just stood there for a few seconds with her blue lace and white skin and exhausted face, seemingly about to say
something, then she shook her head and turned away, revealing the fact that the blue lace was a thong so the pert roundness of her butt had him almost agreeing that physical attraction couldn’t be all bad.
Except that he knew it was …
Grace stepped over the pile of emergency supplies Joe had deposited in her bathroom, and reached in to turn the shower on. She stripped off the sexy underwear she’d bought to go with the dress, sighing as she did so. She may as well have been wearing a nursing bra and bloomers for all the effect it had had on Harry. Although if she’d been too tired to argue as he’d stripped off her gear, he’d probably been too tired to think about attraction.
She showered, cringing as noises from above suggested half the forest was landing on the roof. Joe had been right to put the emergency gear in here—bathrooms were usually the safest room in the house, but if the roof blew off, or if a large branch caused damage, anyone sheltering in the bathroom would still get very wet.
‘Better wet than dead,’ she reminded herself, and a wave of sadness for a woman she didn’t know engulfed her so suddenly she had to rest her head against the wall of the shower for a few minutes, hoping the hot water would sluice away the pain for those they hadn’t saved.
Another crashing noise outside reminded her she had work to do, so she turned off the shower, dried herself and dressed hurriedly, pulling on a light pair of cargo pants with a multitude of pockets, and a T-shirt. Both would eventually be soaked even underneath a heavy raincoat but at least they’d dry faster when she
was indoors. Boots next—only an idiot would be outside on a night like this without solid boots.
They were wet and didn’t want to go on, and within minutes her dry socks had absorbed water from them. She shrugged off the discomfort, knowing it would soon be forgotten once she was involved in her work.
She unhooked her two-way radio and pocket knife from her belt and tucked them into the big pockets on her trousers, then added some spare batteries for the radio to another pocket. In the kitchen she found a packet of health bars and put four and a small bottle of water into the pockets down near her knees. Finally the list, carefully sealed inside a waterproof plastic bag, completed her preparations. She had another hard hat from her days in Victoria, and with that on her head and her bright yellow rain jacket around her shoulders, she headed out to the veranda to wait for Harry.
She’d taken down the hanging baskets from their hooks beneath the veranda roof before she’d dressed for the wedding, but although she’d packed them under other plants in the garden, one look at the already stripped stems told her how damaged they were going to get.
‘Plants are replaceable,’ she reminded herself, leaning against the wall as all the veranda chairs were stacked inside, but now, as she waited, her mind turned to Harry. Had it been the sense of imminent danger that had prompted them to speak of things that had always been unsaid between them?
She had no doubt that her friendship with Harry had developed, in part, because she
hadn’t
been on the staff at the hospital when Nikki had died. Harry was the kind
of man who would have shunned the sympathy on offer from all those who knew him—the kind of man who’d have pulled away from friends to work his grief out on his own.
But everyone needed someone and Grace had filled the void, providing a friendship not linked to either of their pasts and not going beyond the bounds of good but casual acquaintances.
If anything, since her discovery that she loved Harry, she’d pulled further back from anything approaching intimacy, so they’d laughed and joked and shared coffee and discussed ideas connected with the bits of their lives that touched—work and the SES.
She was still mulling over the shift in their relationship—if one kiss and some personal conversation could be called a shift—when Harry pulled into the drive. Pleased to be diverted from thoughts that were going nowhere—she was putting Harry out of her life, remember—she dashed towards the car, ducking as a plastic chair went flying by.
‘Some stupid person hasn’t tied down his outside furniture,’ Harry muttered as she did up her seat belt.
‘It looked like one of the chairs from beside the pool at the doctors’ house,’ Grace said. ‘I guess with the wedding and then the emergencies coming in from the bus accident, no one’s had time to secure that furniture.’
Harry was already turning the car that way.
‘We’ll do it before we start on our evacuations,’ he said. ‘Imagine some poor person seeking help at the hospital and being knocked out by flying furniture before he even gets there.’
He drove up the circular drive in front of the old
house that had originally been built as the Crocodile Creek hospital, and which now housed an assortment of hospital staff, parked at the bottom of the front steps and told Grace to stay where she was.
She took as much notice of this order as she had of his earlier orders to do this or that, and followed him through the downstairs area of the big building and out to where the garden furniture was indeed still around the pool.
‘Just throw it in the pool,’ Harry told her. ‘It’s safest in there and it’ll get a good clean at the same time.’
He picked up a plastic table as he spoke and heaved it into the pool, following it with a sun lounge, while Grace took the smaller chairs and tossed them in.
‘This is fun!’ she said, grabbing the last chair and tossing it high so it made a satisfying splash.
‘You find the weirdest things fun!’ Harry grumbled at her, then he took her hand. ‘Come on, let’s have more fun—getting Mr and Mrs Aldrich to move out of their house.’
OK, so it was a protective gesture and meant nothing, especially in the context of getting over Harry, but holding hands with Harry felt so good Grace couldn’t help but smile.
They ran back through the big recreation room under the doctors’ house, out to the car. In the cove below the headland, the sea roared and tumbled, sending spray higher than the cliffs.
Willie was flexing his muscles.
‘W
HAT
time’s high tide?’ Grace asked as they strapped themselves back into the vehicle.
‘It was midnight, so it’s going out now,’ Harry said. ‘I suppose we can be thankful for small mercies. The storm surge from the cyclone will be bad enough at low tide, but if it had coincided with a high tide, who knows how many places might have been washed away?’
They were driving past the pub as Harry spoke and Grace shivered, imagining a wave of water sweeping over the row of businesses beside it. The police station was directly behind the shops, although on a slight rise.
‘Are you free to be doing evacuations?’ Grace asked, thinking of the enormous task of co-ordination that must be going on, with the station at its hub.
‘There’s no room for me over there,’ Harry replied, nodding towards the station. ‘One of the benefits of getting a new building last year is that it’s built to the stringent category five building regulations so all the staff who live in less well-constructed flats or houses have shifted their families in. It was part of our contingency plans and it works because it means I now have
five trained staff there ready for emergencies and on standby for clean-up later, and also have enough people to cut down shifts on the radio to two-hourly.’
‘Two-hourly shifts? Is that all they can take? Is it so tense?’ Grace asked, wondering why she’d never thought about this aspect of an emergency. With the SES, all the members on duty had radios tuned to the police emergency frequency and although she and other team leaders radioed their members, they relied mainly on the police radio operator to co-ordinate their efforts.
‘It’s the radio operator who’s under the most stress at the moment,’ Harry explained. ‘Taking emergency calls and relaying them to wherever they need to go, so being able to run two-hour shifts cuts down on tension and the possibility of mistakes. But having staff in the station also means I’ve got someone there whose sole task is to plot the cyclone’s course, taking all the direction, speed and intensity readings from the Met and marking them on the map. He’ll give me a call when Willie’s an hour from crossing the coast and also get the radio operator to order any emergency crews off the streets. Once Willie’s that close, anyone outside is in danger.’
Grace nodded her understanding. All her people had orders to return to their homes as soon as they’d evacuated the people on their lists. In times like this their families had to be their prime concern.
They were driving past the Grubbs’ house and Grace nodded towards it.
‘Good thing the hospital preparations included orders for all staff in older housing to take shelter there. The Grubbs’ house always looks as if it will blow
down in a strong wind or slide the rest of the way down the slope into the creek. Heaven knows what Willie will do to it.’
Harry looked towards the house where the hospital yardman lived with his wife, who was in charge of the housekeeping side of the hospital. The old place had been added onto so often it was starting to resemble a shed on an intensive chicken farm. The oldest part, nearest the creek, stood on timber stumps so old they’d shrunk so the veranda on that side and the small room they’d enclosed on it were cantilevered out from the rest of the house—the stumps taking none of the weight.
‘Charles has been trying to talk them into letting him build them a new house for years, but the Grubbs refuse, saying the place suits them as it is.’
‘Or until it blows down,’ Grace commented, then, as Harry slowed down at an even older house further along the street, she wondered how it would feel to be so attached to a dwelling you wouldn’t want to change it—or leave it in a cyclone.
Was that what ‘home’ was all about?
Although her stepmother had always been kind, the concept of home had eluded Grace. Sometimes in her dreams she saw it as a whitewashed cottage set amid green fields, but that was wrong. She knew she’d lived in Belfast and had seen enough pictures of the city to know there was nary a field nor a cottage in sight.
‘You’re too tired to be doing this!’
Harry’s cross exclamation brought her back to the present. He was frowning anxiously at her, and his hand was warming the skin on her forearm.
‘Not tired, just thinking,’ she told him, pressing her hand over his. ‘Thinking about homes.’
Harry shook his head and got out of the car. Why would such a simple remark—thinking about homes—get under his skin?
Because he now knew Grace had never really had a home?
But should that make him want to wrap his arms around her and hold her tight against his body?
He couldn’t blame physical attraction for this urge, because it wasn’t part of the equation. Not this time …
He’d parked so the passenger door was away from the wind, making it easier for Grace to get out, although walking to the front door of the old weatherboard house was a struggle, so he kept an arm protectively around her shoulders.
Mrs Aldrich greeted them with a battery-powered lantern held at shoulder height, the light good enough to show a tear-stained face
and
the attitude of belligerence written across it.
‘I’ve got this lantern and torches and water and biscuits in the bathroom and Karen from next door has taped my windows and I’m not going,’ she said, and Harry heard Grace sigh as if she understood the older woman’s feelings and didn’t want to argue.
‘You have to, Mrs Aldrich.’ Harry used his firm policeman voice. ‘Your house just isn’t safe. We need to move you and Bill down to the civic centre.’
‘Bill’s dead.’
Harry’s stomach clenched. Another look at Mrs Aldrich’s face told him this was true.
Floored by this unexpected development, Harry
could only stare at her. Fortunately Grace had more presence of mind.
‘What happened?’ she asked gently, stepping past Harry and putting her arm around the elderly woman, carefully guiding her further into the house.
‘He just died,’ Mrs Aldrich replied, her resolute voice abandoning her so the words quavered out. ‘We knew it was close. I was sitting by him and he touched my hand like he was saying goodbye then that rattly breathing he’d had earlier just stopped.’
‘Oh, Mrs Aldrich, I’m so sorry,’ Grace said, completely ignoring the little hurry-up motions Harry was making with his hands. ‘Have you had a cup of tea? Can I get you something? I should have a look at Bill, just to be sure. Do you mind?’
She hesitated, perhaps aware she was asking too many questions, then, as Harry wondered just how she’d handle this, she added another one.
‘What if Harry makes you a cup of tea while you show me where Bill is?’
Harry wondered if she’d gone mad. OK, so Mrs Aldrich was in her nineties and she and Bill had been married for more than seventy years. Was Grace thinking they had to do this carefully if they didn’t want another death on her hands?
‘Strong, sweet tea,’ she said to Harry, as she guided the older woman towards the rear of the house where the bedrooms were.
‘Cyclone warnings are now hourly, Willie’s due to hit us in two to three hours and instead of evacuating people I’m making tea,’ Harry muttered to himself, but he’d known Bill and Daisy Aldrich all his life and his
heart ached for Daisy and the sadness she must be feeling right now.
He made the tea, still muttering to himself, knowing in his gut that this wasn’t the end of the Aldrich saga for the night.
‘We’ve got to get her to the civic centre,’ he whispered to Grace, who was sitting next to Daisy, beside the bed where Bill indeed lay dead.
‘I heard that, Harry Blake,’ Daisy countered. ‘Seventy years Bill and I have shared this house, our kids were born here, the roof’s blown off in other cyclones, but it’s survived. So if you think I’m leaving Bill alone here tonight then you’re very much mistaken.’
For one wild moment Harry considered the possibility of taking a dead body to the safe haven of the civic centre, then he saw Grace shake her head and wondered if she’d read his thoughts.
Of course they couldn’t. All their attention had to be on the living, but he knew he’d have a battle on his hands moving Daisy.
Grace was holding the cup to Daisy’s lips, encouraging her to drink, while Harry stood helplessly beside her, anxious to keep moving, knowing there was so much still to do.
‘Harry, would you get a thick bedcover from one of the other beds? I’ll wrap it around Mrs Aldrich’s shoulders so she’s got some protection should a window go. And one for Bill as well.’
Glad to have something to do, Harry went through to another bedroom where both the single beds had thick coverlets.
He brought them back and watched as Grace placed one carefully over Bill, folding down the top of it so they could still see his face.
‘If the window breaks or the roof goes, you can pull it up,’ she said to Daisy, now wrapping the second bedcover around the frail old woman. ‘Harry and I will try to get back—or one of us will—to sit with you. But if we don’t, use the cover to protect yourself, and if things get really wild, get under the bed.’
Daisy smiled through the tears that seeped down her face.
‘Bill always said he’d protect me, no matter what,’ she said, then she touched Grace’s cheek. ‘You’re a good girl. If that Harry had a scrap of sense he’d have snapped you up a long time ago.’
Grace bent and touched her lips to the lined cheek.
‘You take care,’ she said, then she led a bemused Harry out of the room.
‘You’re going to leave her there? Not even argue about it? We can’t just give in like that?’
‘Can’t we?’ Grace said softly. ‘Think about it, Harry. How important is her life to her right now? I know in a month or so, when the worst pain of her grief has passed, she’ll find things she wants to live for, but at the moment she has no fear of death—in fact, she’d probably welcome it. And look at it from her point of view—Bill’s been her whole life, how could she possibly go off and leave him now?’
Harry began to reply but Grace had turned back towards the bedroom, fishing her mobile phone out of her pocket as she went.
‘Here,’ she said, offering it to Mrs Aldrich. ‘The
phone lines are all down but the cellphones will still work. This one is programmed to reach Harry’s cellphone, the one he’s carrying today. Just press the number 8 and it will ring through to Harry.’
‘Won’t you need the phone?’ Harry demanded, although what he wanted to know was who had the number one to seven positions on Grace’s cellphone.
He knew she didn’t have a mother …
‘I’ve got my radio,’ she reminded him, ‘and just about everyone at the civic centre will be clutching their mobiles so they can report on conditions to their relatives in far-flung places or sell their phone pictures to television stations. I think I’ll manage without one.’
‘Because you’ve no relatives in far-flung places?’ Harry asked, disturbed that the question of family and Grace had never occurred to him before tonight’s revelations.
‘Because I’ll be far too busy to be phoning anyone,’ Grace replied. ‘Come on, we’ve people to evacuate.’
They ran from the house to the car, and he struggled to open the door and let her in, but even if conversation had been possible he wouldn’t have known what to say. In some vague way he sensed that Grace was right about leaving Daisy where she was, but for so long his practical self had ruled his emotional self that it took a little bit of adjusting to accept emotion might have a place even in emergency situations.
Fortunately the next four couples were more easily moved, and by the time they had the last of them settled in the civic centre, everyone had been checked off the evacuation list.
Harry looked around the crowded area. Babies cried,
and small children, excited by the different location and the thrill of being awake in the early hours of the morning, ran around excitedly. Somewhere a dog barked, and a cockatoo let out a loud squawk of complaint, but most of the refugee pets were as well behaved as their human owners.
‘At least the majority took note of what we said, about making sure they had animal carriers for their pets as part of their cyclone preparations.’
Grace was by his side and he nodded, acknowledging it had been a good idea. The circular dropped in the letterbox of every dwelling in town had not only been an initiative of the SES, but had been delivered by the volunteers.
‘Where’s Sport?’ she asked, looking at a small kelpie cross who was protesting loudly about his accommodation.
‘He’s at my parents’ place. I couldn’t risk leaving him in the house when I knew I wouldn’t be there.’
‘Bet he’s furious he’s missing all the fuss,’ Grace said, and Harry smiled. He’d rescued the small kelpie pup from the local rubbish dump after a wild thunderstorm. Whether he’d been abandoned because of an injury to one leg, or the injury had happened during the storm, Harry didn’t know. He’d paid to have the leg treated, and when that hadn’t worked, the leg had been amputated. He’d intended giving the dog away, but the fiercely loyal animal had had other ideas, finding his way back to Harry’s no matter where he’d been taken.
In the end, his sheer determination had persuaded Harry to keep him.
‘I need to check on a few people,’ Grace said, and
moved into the small corridor between sleeping bags, mattresses and assorted padding brought along by the evacuees.
He watched her bend to speak to a heavily pregnant woman who should probably have been at the hospital rather than here, then, mindful that watching Grace was not his job right now, he walked through to the kitchen area where volunteers were making sandwiches and handing out tea or coffee to anyone who wanted it. He grabbed a cup of coffee and a sandwich, thinking Grace was probably in need of sustenance as well.
She was at the far end of the hall, talking to one of her SES crew, her arms waving in the air as she explained some detail. And although she was wearing plain cargo trousers and a T-shirt, all Harry could see was a curvy figure in two scraps of blue lace.
Muttering to himself once again, he took his coffee into one of the meeting rooms so he could concentrate on the messages coming through on his radio. Reports told him where power lines were down and where the emergency crews on duty were handling problems. The hour when the radio operator would order everyone into safe shelters, whether at their homes, at the police station or here at the civic centre, was fast approaching. Another report told him the hospital had been switched over to generator power, and even as that message came through the lights went out in the civic centre.