The Shining Of Love

She numbly agreed to the arrangements made for her. She was vaguely aware of days passing, weeks passing. Tiffany organised activities. Suzanne went along with them. But they were meaningless. The only persistent thought in her mind was the wish that she could go back and relive the past, particularly the last year, giving Brendan all the love she should have given him instead of being preoccupied with needs of her own.

She was plagued with guilt over the way she had let Leith Carew seed the compulsion to start a family. Even though nothing of substance had happened between them, meeting him had affected her. It didn’t matter how many times she told herself that she had wanted a family anyway, she knew that if he had never walked into her life, it would not have become a matter of such urgency to her.

It was Tom who eventually rescued her from her morose apathy. He arrived at Tiffany’s home one day and asked Suzanne to accompany him on a journey.

“Where?” she asked without any interest.

“To my homeland. It will heal you, Suzanne.”

Despite her disinclination to make any concerted effort to do anything, Suzanne could not offend Tom by refusing his offer. She knew what a privilege it was to be invited to share a heritage that was unique to the people of his ancient tribe.

They flew to Alice Springs and Tom took her on a journey that was like no other she had ever experienced. It stirred her to taking an interest in learning to see through Tom’s eyes, and she gradually perceived that what was uninhabitable desert to most people was a place that lived and breathed to a different set of rules.

They were sitting in companionable silence around their camp fire one night when Tom’s head suddenly lifted, turned in quest of something Suzanne neither heard nor saw. Tom was unique. He could sense things that no other person, black or white, could feel, as though he was attuned to the vibrations and pulses of the universe.

She waited, aware of the listening stillness of his body, sitting absolutely still herself so as not to disturb his concentration.

The distant howl of a dingo carried faintly on the crisp night air. It did not strike any fear in her. Their camp fire kept the creatures of the wilderness at bay.

“Something’s wrong,” Tom murmured.

“What is it?”

“You don’t feel it?”

“No.”

But she knew he did. Tom’s deep affinity with this vast outback land was in everything he said and did. Even the way he walked over it had a sensitivity that no white person could ever appreciate. He came from a race that for over forty thousand years had taken this country into their minds and hearts, sharing a unity with it that no newcomer could comprehend. At least, that was how Tom explained it. The primitive tradition of the Dreamtime was very real to him.

He rose to his feet in a fluid unfolding that had all the instinctive grace of a wild animal sensing danger. “Wait here. Keep the camp fire burning.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know where.”

“Why do you have to go?”

“A life has passed. Another life calls. It calls to me.”

She didn’t question any further, sensing his urgency to follow the call that only he heard. “Take care,” she said, nodding her understanding.

A smile of assurance flashed from his dark face.

She smiled her trust in him.

He swiftly became a shadow of the night, needing nothing but the moon and the stars and his own instincts to guide him wherever he had to go.

Suzanne slowly turned her gaze to the fire and released a long, pent-up sigh. Tom’s softly spoken words lingered in her mind. A life has passed. Another life calls. They seemed to reflect her own situation.

Was there any meaning to life, she wondered?

Out here there was a timelessness that seeped into the soul. At night she could look at the brilliance of the stars and feel as though she was at the dawn of creation. By day, the sheer immensity of the landscape stamped a forever feeling in her mind, turning humanity into a mere speck of passing dust.

Yet even in this seemingly desolate world there was life, continually surprising her with its many fantastic forms. Without Tom to show her, she wouldn’t have noticed much of it. He unfolded the secrets of the desert, sharing his intimacy with all there was around them.

Suzanne felt intensely privileged to be with him, aware that it was only because she was his sister that he was teaching her a new appreciation of the cycle of life and death, and that at the very heart of nature there was a necessary passing from one to the other. To Tom, it was only a shift in form.

The night air was chilly. From time to time Suzanne fed the fire as Tom had instructed. She stayed awake as long as she could, but when she found herself dozing off, she climbed into her sleeping bag and settled herself for the night. She had no way of knowing how long Tom would be. He might not be back until morning and he would not expect her to wait up for him.

He was not back when she woke soon after dawn. All day went by with no sign of him. She knew it would be madness to go looking for him but she couldn’t help worrying. What was keeping him away for so long? She built a fire as the sun set, aware that he would expect it of her and would perhaps be looking for it after nightfall.

Suzanne knew she was in no personal danger. Their camp was by a permanent waterhole and she had plenty of food supplies. Tom, however, had taken nothing with him. She assured herself he knew how to survive in the desert and there was no need for her to worry. Tom would find his way back to her.

She ate a solitary meal, hoping that something else hadn’t gone wrong, that there would be no other disastrous turn of fate to blight her life.

She woke frequently throughout the night, her sleep disturbed by the need to keep feeding the fire. During the long hours of the early morning, she kept a vigil, growing more and more afraid that her brother was lost to her.

Something was happening. Something of importance. Otherwise Tom would not have left her like this. Whatever it was, she felt the weight of another turning point in her life.

Another long day passed. Suzanne was now so worried that she seriously considered calling in help. Tom could probably look after himself better than any other man alive in this environment, but if he’d injured himself... It didn’t bear thinking about. She busied herself with gathering more wood for tonight’s fire. She was watching the sunset when she saw the movement far off.

Her heart took wing at the wonderful sight of a dark figure loping past clumps of spinifex, heading towards her. Suzanne began to run, unable to wait, compelled to assure herself that it truly was Tom and he had returned to her. As the distance between them diminished, she saw that he carried a bundle. His arms were cradling it against his chest.

“Are you hurt, Tom?” she shouted.

“Of course not,” came the reassuring reply, a touch of scorn in his voice at the affront to his pride and dignity.

“What’s kept you so long?”

“It was far away.”

“I was so worried.”

“I had to carry the child.”

Suzanne rushed to meet him, to relieve him of the burden he had borne for the sake of the life that had called to him. The child was wrapped in a blanket. A little girl. Barely skin and bone. Asleep or unconscious.

“She’s breathing,” Suzanne said in relief.

“Yes. Given time and care, she will be all right.”

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know. She was alone with a woman of my tribe. An old woman whose life had passed. That was what I felt. Why I had to go.”

How Tom could feel such things was beyond Suzanne’s knowledge, but she had seen it happen before and she accepted it as normal. At least for Tom.

“The child is so fair. She can’t be of your tribe. Nor of your race.”

“That’s true. But she needs food. We should give her something to eat.”

They turned and walked to the camp site together. “It was good that you found her, Tom. If the old woman was alone...”

“Yes. The child would have died,” he said with the emotionless resignation with which he viewed death. Suzanne was suddenly struck by a possibility that squeezed her heart. “Tom, we’re over five hundred kilometres from the Gunbarrel Highway.”

“That also is true.”

He tipped some water into a mug and brought it to where Suzanne stood stock-still, holding the child with mounting emotion. It had been eighteen months ago. So far away. It couldn’t be...

“Who is she, Tom?”

“I’ve had a long time to think about it. I knew the old woman, Suzanne. From when I was a boy. She was childless and always walked alone. Perhaps, to her in her old age, she believed the child was a gift.”

He gently stroked the little girl’s cheek. Her lashes slowly fluttered open. She had green eyes. Tom put the mug to her lips and let her drink sparingly. Although she obviously wanted more.

“But I think this is the child you asked me to find, Suzanne,” he said quietly. “The one that was lost.”

“Amy,” she whispered. “Amy Bergen.”

And the child looked at her with Leith Carew’s eyes, as though the name struck some distant chord of memory.

The realisation came to Suzanne that her life was once more linked to the man who had refused to say goodbye to her. The man who had said there would be another time and place for them. She wondered if Leith Carew still thought about that. Whether he did or not, it was now inevitable that their paths would cross again.

CHAPTER FOUR

WITHIN HOURS of being notified that his niece may have been found, Leith Carew flew from Adelaide to Alice Springs to make an official identification.

There was little doubt in anyone’s mind as to the outcome. None in Suzanne’s. The photographs in the police file had been conclusive. The features of the child were the same as those of the two-year-old Amy Bergen, who had been lost eighteen months ago. Apart from which, she responded to the name, although her language was a garbled mixture of aboriginal words and pidgin English.

Suzanne heard the commotion outside her home when Leith Carew arrived, accompanied by the chief of police and other various authorities. Representatives of the media had been camped in the street ever since the news had broken. It was a big story and they intended to make the most of it, but the clamour of their demanding voices frightened the little girl, and she was Suzanne’s first consideration.

Four days of travelling with Tom and Suzanne was too little preparation for the adjustment from a primitive life in the desert to the bewildering strangeness of civilization. The child was stronger now from their careful nurturing, but Suzanne was concerned about the mental and emotional upheaval that this experience might have caused.

She had clung to Suzanne like a limpet from the moment they had hit Alice Springs. Prying her loose for a medical check had been traumatic enough. Handing her over to an uncle she almost certainly didn’t remember would undoubtedly be even more traumatic for her.

Suzanne tried to stay relaxed as Tom admitted the official visitors to her home, but she felt every nerve in her body tighten when Leith Carew stepped into the living room. He seemed to fill it with his strong presence, and Suzanne could not deny the tug of attraction she felt, despite all that had happened since they last met.

There was an immediate vibrancy in the air between them, an awareness that pulsed with memories and the possibilities of what might have been. Suzanne felt her skin tingle. Whether it was excitement or a sense of premonition, she didn’t know. In her mind and heart was a recognition that this man was important in her life.

His green eyes held a look of reserve. He stood very erect, shoulders squared, body rigid, his face wiped of all expression. “Mrs. Forbes,” he acknowledged her in the most minimal manner of greeting.

“Mr. Carew,” she returned stiffly, her manner affected by the memory of how fiercely she had spurned any further connection with him, the cutting words of condemnation she had used, her violent dismissal of his feelings. And her own.

“It’s kind of you to receive us here.” It was a polite recitation, nothing more.

He challenged the interest in her eyes with a relentless impassivity, as though needing to prove to her and himself that she had no power to affect him any more. He was comprehensively armoured against any form of rejection from her today, Suzanne thought, telling herself it was only to be expected.

“We didn’t want the child disturbed any more than she has to be,” she offered softly, hoping to put him more at ease.

It was a vain hope. “So it was explained to me,” he said, and in a pointed and deliberate dismissal of her, he dropped his gaze to the child cradled against her shoulder.

She, of course, was the prime focus of his interest, yet his attention seemed more directed at the way Suzanne had the child clasped in her arms. Suzanne had the distinct impression he would have preferred anyone other than herself to be involved in this situation.

A woman stepped up beside him, a tall, blond, beautiful woman who slid her arm possessively around his. It was not his sister. His only sister was dead. The woman was far too young to be his stepmother. The way she looked at Leith Carew evoked a weird little lurch in Suzanne’s heart.

He glanced at the woman then returned a hard, glittering gaze to Suzanne. “This is my fiancée, Danica Fairlie,” he announced. “Danica, this is Mrs. Forbes.”

“How do you do?” the blonde said with polite formality.

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