Elizabeth led them along a well-trodden track. It was cooler in the shade. Caitlin heard the sound of running water. A few minutes later, they emerged into a clearing where water trickled over the rocks sending ripples across a water hole. A rope dangled invitingly from an overhanging branch above the water. It was obviously a favorite spot for the family. In the shallows, the water was like glass. You could see right to the sandy bottom.
“How lovely,” Caitlin said, wondering why Jake hadn’t mentioned it. “I want you two to stay right on the edge, please.”
She settled on the sandy rim with the children. The fresh water felt like cool velvet. William cheekily splashed her and stumbled away laughing.
“Look Elizabeth, fairy lights,” Caitlin said.
Shining through a filigree of leaves, the sun’s rays sparkled as they touched the water. Elizabeth put her hand on Caitlin’s knee and smiled up at her. “Do you think fairies live here?”
“Gumnut babies, perhaps?” Caitlin said, mentioning one of Elizabeth’s favorite books.
“Oh yes. Look, there are some Banksia men,” Elizabeth said, pointing to a bottlebrush tree. When she looked back at Caitlin, her eyes were filled with such delight, Caitlin held her breath. “I think fairies live in my tree,” she whispered.
“What tree is that?” Caitlin asked.
“A big, old dead one up in the top paddock. If you sit
very
quietly, you can hear them.”
“William!” Caitlin called. “Don’t go too far in, please.”
“I’m a champion swimmer,” William responded with dignity.
“You can show me, but not today.”
Even in the dappled shade, they were getting too much sun. “Time to go back for lunch,” she said, picking up towels and jamming hats on heads. “Then lessons before your afternoon ride.”
After a few grumbles, the children followed her along the dirt track. As they emerged from the bush, a horse and rider cleared the fence in the top paddock and raced towards them. It was Jake, looking thunderous. He reached them and jumped down from his horse. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?” he said to Caitlin.
“I took the children for a swim at the water hole.”
Jake’s blue eyes were frigid. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going there, Caitlin?”
Caitlin rearranged her towel trying to cover the revealing costume. “It was too hot for us to walk all the way to the dam. I was worried the children would suffer sunstroke. The water-hole was nearby.”
“Elizabeth? Did you tell Caitlin to go to the water hole?” Jake asked.
Elizabeth’s face paled. She looked at the ground. “Yes, Daddy.”
“You know a crocodile was sighted near there.”
“We didn’t see one, Daddy.”
“You were lucky, Elizabeth,” Jake said, mounting his horse. “I am very disappointed in you.”
Still frowning, he looked down at Caitlin. “I thought we’d agreed you were to ask me, Caitlin, before you took the kids off on some hair-brained scheme. I’ve told you before, you don’t know this country.”
Caitlin took Elizabeth’s hand, feeling it tremble. She was now as angry as he, but more for Elizabeth’s sake.
“I take full responsibility for this. Please don’t blame Elizabeth,” she said, aware that her towel had slipped. Clutching it ineffectually to her chest with her free hand, she said, “You did tell me I could take them swimming.”
“In the dam!” Jake’s hot gaze traveled over her body matching the tone of his voice. “If you’d discussed it with me first—as we agreed,” he repeated. “I would have warned you not to go there.”
Feeling Elizabeth’s small hand quivering in hers, anger almost robbed Caitlin of speech. He was undermining her authority in front of the children. “That’s hard to do when you’re gone before daylight,” she said fighting to stay cool. “And you seldom share a meal with us.”
Jake paused. “I’m there every night,” he said in a milder tone. “I’m not off in some pub or other. You know where to find me.” He turned the horse and rode away.
She had probably sounded like a nagging wife, but she didn’t care a damn. She watched him ride away over the paddock. Let him dismiss her if he felt she couldn’t do her job. When she could speak to him away from the children, she would give him a piece of her mind.
Caitlin’s temper began to cool as she led the children towards the house, and she couldn’t help a small smile. If she’d sounded like a wife, he’d reacted like a husband. She regretted he’d been so worried, but she felt slightly perplexed too. Surely he’d overreacted, for here they were safe and well after all.
* * * *
The next morning at breakfast, Elizabeth was even more quiet than usual. She moved her food around her plate managing to eat hardly any of it. Caitlin decided to leave her alone. She would draw her out later, gently, during lessons. She had a few tricks up her sleeve to tempt her. One was a new book she’d found last night. Elizabeth loved to read. Caitlin was constantly searching the library shelves for books suitable for a child who seemed to have an understanding far beyond her years.
Elizabeth remained quiet during lessons and failed to respond to anything Caitlin tried. In the afternoon, when William rode his pony around the paddock, she declined a ride and sat with Caitlin while she watched him.
“You’re not coming down with something are you, Elizabeth?” Caitlin put her hand on her forehead.
“Coming down where?” she said, looking up at Caitlin wistfully.
Caitlin laughed. “Silly. You’re not feeling sick, are you?”
Elizabeth gave a wane smile and shook her head.
At four o’clock, Jake arrived. Caitlin left the children with him and went to do her washing.
Jake appeared at the laundry door. “Have you seen Elizabeth?”
“No. I thought she was with you.”
He shook his head. “She left the room nearly an hour ago. She’s not in the bathroom or her room.”
Together, they rushed out onto the verandah, but there was no sign of her. “Did she say anything to William?” Caitlin asked, with a growing sense of unease.
Jake shook his head. “I asked him.”
“She’s been very quiet today.”
He looked at her, his eyes stricken. Then he ran down the steps and strode off through the grounds calling Elizabeth’s name.
Caitlin raced through the house, checking under beds and in cupboards, but there was no sign of her. She found William sitting on the floor of his room, playing with his train set. “Do you know where Elizabeth might have gone, William?”
He looked up at her with those blue eyes so like Jake’s. “Elizabeth’s very sad that Daddy was cross with her.”
She kneeled down beside him. “Is there somewhere she goes when she’s sad?”
He moved his train along the track. “Perhaps to her fairy tree,” he said.
“Where’s her fairy tree, William?”
He shrugged, and then started making tooting noises.
Caitlin shook his arm. “Where is the tree, William?”
“She said it’s a secret.”
Elizabeth had told her about her fairy tree. She wished she’d been paying more attention. Where did she say it was? She ran to the kitchen and grabbed a torch. It was now quite dark outside and there was no sign of Jake.
Elizabeth’s words suddenly came back to her. The old tree in the top paddock! She ran as fast as she could through the long grass, holding the torch in front of her. She kept yelling Jake’s name and Elizabeth’s, but no one answered.
Caitlin climbed the fence, jagging her knee on the barbed wire. She flashed her torch around. A ghostly, gray Gum stood in the far corner of the paddock. She stumbled towards it, the torch’s beam wavering over the rough ground, as her hand shook and fear made her mouth go horribly dry.
The tree appeared to have been struck by lightning at some stage and burned. She aimed the torch into its hollow centre, her heart racing. There was Elizabeth, curled up. Caitlin let out her breath in a gasp and she opened her eyes.
“Sweetheart,” Caitlin said gently, “We’ve been so worried about you.”
“I hurt my leg,” Elizabeth said, her big eyes blinking in the light, her cheeks tearstained. “And I saw a snake.”
Caitlin suppressed a shudder. “Where was the snake?”
“In the grass near the tree.”
“First we’ll look at your leg.” Caitlin ran her torch beam over Elizabeth’s legs and saw that one ankle was swollen. “Nothing bit you, did it?”
“No.”
“How about I lift you out of there and carry you home. Can you stand up?”
Elizabeth climbed to her feet and gave a cry of pain.
“That’s a good, brave girl. We’ll go back to the house and have a drink, shall we?”
“Daddy will be even crosser.”
“No, darling, he’s not cross. Just worried, that’s all.”
She picked Elizabeth up. Her little body felt frail in her arms.
She was carrying her down towards the fence when she saw Jake’s torch flashing like a mad thing across the bottom paddock. She yelled at him.
He vaulted the fence and came running up.
“You’ve found her? Thank God!”
He took Elizabeth from Caitlin, holding her tenderly in his arms. “I didn’t want to go to the dam, Daddy,” she said, beginning to cry.
“It’s all right, darling,” Jake said, hugging her. “I’m an awful cross old bear, sometimes.”
When they got back to the house, Jake took Elizabeth to her room and Caitlin went for the first-aid box.
She watched as Jake expertly bandaged Elizabeth’s ankle.
“You can have your tea in bed, Elizabeth,” Caitlin said. “And look, I found a book for you to read today.” She placed Alan Marshall’s
I Can Jump Puddles
, beside her bed. “I’ll read you the first chapter, if you’re not too tired.”
Angela came in with a tray and Caitlin left the room. She was walking down the hall when Jake called after her. She knew she looked a sight; her new green shorts were torn and stained black from the burnt tree. Blood trickled down her leg from the scratch on her knee.
Jake bent down and examined her wound. His fingers on her skin were like hits of electricity. She felt herself wobble and put her hand on the wall, looking down at his dark head. She curled her fingers trying to resist touching him.
“Best put a bit of iodine and a band-aid on that,” he said, straightening up. He smiled. “I doubt it will scar.”
“I’m fine,” she said, feeling slightly breathless.
“I think we could both do with a drink. Join me in the living room?”
“I’ll just clean up a bit first,” she said and hurried to her bedroom.
Ten minutes later, with a wash, a fresh change of clothes and a band-aid on her knee, she entered the living room to find him cradling a Scotch and ice.
“I’d love one of those, please,” she said, sitting in a wing chair beside the fireplace. “Does it ever get cold enough to light a fire?”
Jake nodded. “The nights can get quite cold here in the winter.”
It lovely big room had been thoughtfully decorated. The furniture, a nice mix of antique and homely, picked up the theme of blues and yellows found in the patterned carpet.
Jake poured a drink and placed it on a coaster on a table beside her. When she picked up the glass, she noticed the coaster had beautiful Australian wildflowers on it. Another of Caroline’s touches she was sure. As she sipped her drink, the alcohol warmed her stomach, easing the cold knot of anxiety that hadn’t quite gone away. She looked up to see Jake studying her.
“I have much to thank you for,” he said. “I didn’t know about that tree. No doubt Caroline did, but Elizabeth doesn’t talk to me the way she did her mother.”
It was the first time she’d heard him mention his wife’s name.
“Sometimes,” he went on. “I make mistakes. Men don’t always….”
She felt a surge of compassion for this man, who seemed to have lost so much with the death of his wife. “We all make mistakes, Jake. We’re human.”
“This could have been a bad one.”
“Jake … I’ve wanted to discuss Elizabeth with you for some time. There’s something wrong, something that worries her.”
“Her mother’s death, you mean? It’s a while ago now—she was very young.”
“She’s very bright and sensitive, but I think there’s more to it. I feel as if I’m struggling in the dark.”
Jake sighed and dropped his eyes to his glass. “Yes, I should have filled you in, but I still find it hard to talk about it.” He finished off the last of his drink and rose. “Another?”
Caitlin shook her head. Walking to the silver tray where the drinks were kept, he poured himself another half-glass, and, rubbing the scar on his cheek with his forefinger, sat down again. “Caroline, the children and I were returning from a trip to Darwin when the engine of my Cessna plane began to cut out. I managed to bring it down, but it careered into a dam. I was knocked unconscious. Caroline got the children out of the semi-submerged cockpit. I’ll never know how she found the strength. The crash had been seen by a neighbor and help arrived an hour later, but Caroline was too badly hurt.”
“I’m so sorry,” Caitlin said quietly.
“We’d flown to Darwin to take Elizabeth to the dentist. She’d knocked a tooth running in the hall and cut her gum.” Jake looked pensive. “That vision of her running…” He shook his head. “She was such a little dynamo then.”
“Do you think she blames herself for the accident in some way?”
Jake looked astonished. “No. How could she?”
“Children get funny ideas sometimes.”
“I’d better have a talk to her about it,” he said.
Caitlin wanted to say, be gentle, but somehow she knew he would.
Chapter Seven
Caitlin was looking forward to her first country dance. Elizabeth seemed much better and Jake had taken both children to Darwin for the weekend to visit his mother and, she guessed, Vanessa.
She decided to wear the bright, cotton wrap around dress she’d bought in town, with a pair of dressy sandals. Her shoulders and limbs were tanned from the sun, although not the dark honey of Jake’s.
It was odd rattling around the big house by herself. Angela had taken the opportunity to visit relatives for a couple of days. Caitlin took ages fiddling with her hair. In the end, she just drew it back into a ponytail. She was glad when she heard Harry drive up.