Margaret Way - Wealthy Australian, Secret Son

Although she would have died rather than say it aloud, Rohan was her shining white knight. She loved him. She loved the burning blue looks he bent on her. But these days a kind of humming tension had cut into their easy affection. Once or twice she’d had the crazy desire to kiss him. Proof, if any were needed, that she was fast growing up.

Rohan easily beat them into the water that day, striking out into the middle of the stream, the ripples on the dark green surface edged with sparkles the sunlight had cast on the river. “What’s keeping you?” he yelled, throwing a long tanned arm above water. “Come on, Charlie. You can beat the both of them!”

He was absolutely splendid, Rohan! Even as a boy he had a glamour about him. As her mother had once commented, “Rohan’s an extraordinary boy—a born leader, and so good for my darling Mattie!” In those early days their mother had been very protective of her only son.

“Won’t do him a bit of good, wrapping him in cotton wool.” That irritated comment always came from their father, who was sure such mollycoddling was holding his son back.

Perhaps he was right? But their mother took no notice. Unlike her young daughter, who enjoyed splendid health, Matthew had suffered from asthma since infancy. Mattie’s paediatrician had told their anxiety-ridden mother he would most likely grow out of it by age fourteen. It was that kind of asthma.

That fatal day Charlotte remembered running to the diving dock, her long, silver-blonde hair flying around her face. It was Martyn who had pulled her hair out of its thick plait. It was something he loved to do. Most of the time she rounded on him—“How stupid, Martyn!” was her usual protest as she began to re-plait it.

“You look better that way, Charlie. One day you’re going to be an absolute knockout. Mum and Dad say that. Not Nicole, of course. She’s as jealous as hell. One day we’re going to get married. Mum says that too.”

“Dream on!” she always scoffed. Get married, indeed! Some husband Martyn would make.

Mattie always laughed, “Boy, has he got a crush on you, Charlie!”

She chose not to believe it. She didn’t know then that some crushes get very crushed.

Rohan never laughed. Never joked about it. He kept silent on that score. The Marsdons and the Prescotts were the privileged children of the Valley. Certainly not Rohan Costello, who lived with his mother on the outskirts of town in a little cottage hardly big enough to swing a cat. Their mother said the pair would have to shift soon.

“Rohan is quickly turning into a man!”

At fourteen, nearing fifteen, it was apparent the fast-growing Rohan would easily attain six feet and more in maturity. Mattie, on the other hand, was small for his age. Rohan was by far the strongest and the best swimmer, though she was pretty good herself—but built for speed rather than endurance.

Totally unselfconscious, even with her budding breasts showing through her swimsuit and her long light limbs gleaming a pale gold, with Rohan—her hero—watching, she made a full racing dive into the water, striking out towards him as he urged her on, both of them utterly carefree, not knowing then that this was the last day they would ever swim in the river.

Years later she would shudder when she remembered their odd near-total absorption in one another that summer afternoon. A boy and a girl. One almost fifteen, the other twelve.

Romeo and Juliet.

Martyn appeared angry with them, sniping away. Jealous. Mattie was his normal sweet self. At one stage he called out that he was going to swim across to the opposite bank, where beautiful weeping willows bent their branches towards the stream.

“Stay with us, Mattie,” Rohan yelled, cupping his hands around his mouth.

“What’s the matter? Reckon I can’t do it?” Mattie called back, sounding very much as if he was going to take up the challenge.

“‘Course you can!” she had shouted, always mindful of her brother’s self-esteem, undermined by his sickness. “But do like Rohan says, Mattie. Stay with us.”

Mattie appeared persuaded. He turned in their direction, only then Martyn yelled, his voice loud with taunt, “Don’t be such a cream puff, Marsdon! Are you always going to do what Mummy says? Are you always going to stick by Rohan’s side? Rohan will look after Mummy’s little darling. Isn’t that his job? Go for it, Mattie! Don’t be such a wimp!”

“Shut up, Martyn!” Rohan roared, in a voice none of them had ever heard before. It was an adult voice. The voice of command.

Immediately Martyn ceased his taunts, but Mattie confounded them all by kicking out towards the opposite bank, his thin arms stiff and straight in the water.

“Perhaps we should let him?” Charlotte had appealed to Rohan, brows knotted. “Mummy really does mollycoddle him.”

“You can say that again!” Martyn chortled unkindly. Everyone in the Valley knew how protective Barbara Marsdon was of her only son.

“I’m going after him.” It only took a little while of watching Mattie’s efforts for Rohan to make the decision. “You shouldn’t have taunted him, Martyn. You’re supposed to be Mattie’s friend. He’s trying to be brave, but the brave way is the safest way. Mattie doesn’t have your strength, or mine. He isn’t the strongest of swimmers.”

“He’ll make it.” Martyn was trying not to sound anxious, but his warier brain cells had kicked in. Rohan was right. He shouldn’t have egged Mattie on. He went to say something in his own defence, only Rohan had struck out in his powerful freestyle while Charlotte followed.

Martyn chose to remain behind. He thought they were both overreacting. Mattie would be okay. Sure he would! The distance between the banks at that point wasn’t all that wide. The water was warm. The surface was still. There was no appreciable undercurrent. Well, not really. The waters were much murkier on the other side, with the wild tangle of undergrowth, the heavy overhang of trees, the resultant debris that would have found its way into the river. For someone like Rohan the swim would be no more than a couple of lengths of the pool. But for Mattie?

Hell, they could be in the middle of a crisis, Martyn realised—too late.

One minute Mattie’s thin arms were making silver splashes in the water, and then to their utter horror his head, gilded by sunlight, disappeared beneath the water.

All of a sudden the river that had taken them so many times into its wonderful cool embrace seemed a frightening place.

“Oh, God—oh, God!” Charlotte shrieked, knowing in her bones something was wrong. “Get him, Rohan!” she cried hysterically.

“Come on, don’t be stupid, Charlie. He’s only showing off,” Martyn shouted at her, starting to feel desperately worried. The traumas of childhood had a way of echoing down the years. Martyn felt shivers of prescience shoot into his gut.

Charlotte ignored him, heart in her mouth. Martyn never was much good in a crisis. It was Rohan who knifed through the dark green water with the speed of a torpedo.

She went after him, showing her own unprecedented burst of speed. “God—oh, God!” Tears were pouring down her face, lost in river water.

There was no sign of Matthew. She knew he wouldn’t be playing games. Matthew was enormously considerate of others. He would never frighten her, never cause concern to the people he loved. He loved her. He loved Rohan, his best friend. He wouldn’t even have caused dread to Martyn, who had taunted him either.

“Mattie … Mattie Mattie … ! ” She was yelling his name at the top of her lungs, startling birds that took off in a kaleidoscope of colour.

Rohan too had disappeared, diving beneath the dark green water. She followed his example, fear reverberating deep within her body. Lungs tortured, she had to surface for air. As she came up she thought she saw something shimmering—a shape moving downstream. She went after it. Rohan beat her to it. She was screaming in earnest now. Rohan was cradling a clearly unconscious Mattie like a baby, holding him out of the water in his strong arms. A thin runnel of blood was streaming off Mattie’s pale temple.

Fate could swoop like an eagle from a clear blue sky.

“I’ll tow him to the bank,” Rohan shouted to her. His voice was choked, his handsome young face twisted in terror. ‘I’ll try CPR. Keep at it. Charlie—get help.”

But Mattie was gone. She knew it. Lovely, laughing Mattie. The best brother in the world.

A swim across the river. She could have done it easily. Yet Mattie might have plunged into a deep sea in the blackness of night. There was no sign of Martyn either. He must have run back to the house for help. She thought she might as well drown herself with Mattie gone. There would be no life at Riverbend now. Her mother would most likely go mad. She knew her father would somehow survive. But her mother, even if she could get through the years of annihilating grief, wouldn’t stay within sight of the river where her adored Matthew had drowned. She would go away, leaving Charlotte and her father alone.

Except for the gentle shadow of Matthew Marsdon, who would always be fourteen.

The whole tragic thing would be blamed on someone. Her inner voice gave her the sacrificial name.

Rohan.

Rohan the born leader, who would be judged by her parents, the Prescotts, and a few others in the Valley resentful of the Costello boy’s superior looks and high intelligence over their own sons, to have let Matthew Marsdon drown.

Such an intolerable burden to place on the shoulders of a mere boy. A crime, and Rohan Costello was innocent of the charge.

Rohan Costello had returned to the scene of his childhood devastation. That showed passion and courage. It also showed that the cleverest boy in the Valley had become extraordinarily successful in life. Matthew Marsdon’s tragic death had locked the daughter, Charlotte, and Costello even more closely together. Eventually they’d gone beyond the boundaries, but that had never been known, or if suspected never proved. What was known was that the Tragedy had never driven them apart—even when Charlotte’s parents, in particular her mother Barbara, had burned with something approaching hatred for the boy she had in a way helped nurture.

There had only been one course left to the Costellos. Mother and son had been virtually driven out of the Valley, the sheer weight of condemnation too great.

The brutality of it!

People could only wonder if Rohan Costello had returned to Silver Valley to settle old scores? The past was never as far away as people liked to pretend.

Charlotte’s faint lasted only seconds, but when she was out of it and the world had stopped spinning she was still in a state of shock, her body trembling with nerves. She was lying on one of the long sofas in the drawing room, her head and her feet resting on a pile of silk cushions. Her hair had all but fallen out of its elegant arrangement. She was minus her hat and, she noted dazedly, her expensive sandals.

Rohan was at her head. Christopher was at her feet. Diane Rodgers and a couple of her mother’s old friends stood close by. Her mother’s friends’ watching faces were showing their concern. Not so Ms Rodgers, whose almond eyes were narrow. There was no sign of her father, but George Morrissey, their family doctor, hurried in, calling as he came, “Charlie, dear, whatever happened?”

Morrissey had brought the Marsdon children into the world, and Charlotte had always been a great favourite.