The Following by Roger McDonald Page B

know I’m a confounded cripple if I don’t get down and insist on helping her
. So he stayed where he was, his crutches under the seat, flicking the reins lightly to keep the horse moving.
    He looked down on her skull of tight, dark curls bobbing along, scrolled like an engraving of the sea. A dusty road stretched ahead of them.
    When she stopped to shake a stone from a shoe, he waited, and before she started walking again, tipped his hat brim. ‘I suppose I don’t have all day, then,’ he said.
    At this, she gave a cautious, relinquishing smile, made her decision and climbed up beside him. The way she held her basket, keeping its contents in, the way she furled her dusty skirts around her legs, ready for the adventure of getting up on the sulky, showed her spirit. The boy kept walking.
    As they went along sitting side by side, the two of them, they said nothing. But that was all right. It was a lucky advantage for Tim, that hired sulky.
    What Tim knew, in that first acceptance he was ever shown by a woman without a trace of pity in it, was that he knew her. Knew this stranger. Knew this woman in the way the heart knows. He never gave Luana Milburn, island princess of New Killarney siding, a second thought. So fickle is the heart supposedly. And so big.
    Her voice, not mellifluous, was husky. She looked up at him. He’d never seen a face so bright for looking at – dark eyes, full lips, small determined chin.
We could do great things together
, he thought, excitement getting the better of him, as it sometimes did.
    After a while the boy grabbed a stone and raised his arm in Tim’s direction.
    ‘I dare you,’ said Tim, affable as the boy came closer until he was almost under the wheels. Tim reached down and grabbed his arm, and the stone fell out of his hand. In one swift jerk, using the strength of ten, Tim hauled the boy up and dropped him flat on the sulky seat. There was a woof of the lungs.
    Then it was her turn. ‘Oh, my goodness, Bub – look at you,’ she laughed, scooping the air from her lungs, hoot after hoot. The boy scowled. Tim chuckled.
If two can do great things together, three only triples it
, he thought. Except with this little tyrant it felt like divide and rule.
    Then it came to him, ‘Bub?’
    And so it was her. Luana as described by Marcus. The son by Maguire. The needles and threads. The tight curls, the small determined chin, the clear lustrous eyes, the creamy coffee-coloured complexion. It beat the band – as falling in love with a stranger he’d betrayed the woman he’d been faithful to since first ever hearing about her and then was restored to her faithfully.
    And so they began. Something right was established between them. An easy agreement over small things – to keep their minds off a few big concerns, the visions, the very large, wide-spreading sorts of visions where the world of heartache was unified as one. Let these two be unified as one, heartache be damned.
    When they reached where she was going, Bub jumped down and ran off. Tim grabbed for his crutches, lying under the seat unnoticed, there was no way now of avoiding it. A bloody cripple revealed. He helped her down.
    Seeing how it was for Tim only made Luana think more of him, she would tell him in time, that he was stronger than she’d thought, to have the strength she’d already seen in him, and the strength for his disadvantage too. Thus she began to love him.
    Each day after that he visited her, on that wrong side of town. From shyness or fear of losing advantage, it was a while before he told Marcus. By then it was settled: there would be a registry office wedding. Tim’s happiness knew no bounds, and Luana was the one who said, ‘Our best man shall be Marcus.’
    Y OU COULD AVOID RUNNING INTO someone in a country town for years on end, but if you wanted never to see them again the job was harder. Aileen and Marcus managed to avoid meeting again until well into the 1920s.
    Seeing Marcus coming down the street