milk is lower in fat and lactose than cow’s milk and higher in iron, potassium and Vitamin C,’ he reported, after finding his way around the back of the house to what had obviously been stables at some time and entering the one that was brightly lit from within.
Neena, seated on the stable floor with the calf’s head in her lap, looked up at him and smiled, although he was so far beyond smiles he wondered how she’d managed it.
‘That’s great. We can work out some kind of formula but to begin I’ve given him some newborn infant formula I had out here from when we were looking after an injured foal. There’s no vet in town, you see, and the stables aren’t used most of the time. Someone told me about rubber gloves and he seems to have taken to it because he drank quite a lot before he went to sleep.’
She held up a two-litre soft-drink bottle to which she’d attached a rubber glove, the fingers tied off so the thumb formed a soft teat.
Mak shook his head, although was feeding a camel calf through a rubber glove any more unbelievable than the rest of the occurrences of the night?
‘You should be in bed yourself,’ he said, knowing if he didn’t lie down soon he’d probably fall down but not wanting to portray such weakness in front of this apparently inexhaustible woman.
‘I’ll go soon. You go—have a shower and leave your clothes in a heap on the bathroom floor. Ned will take care of them for you. Grab something to eat in the kitchen if you’re hungry. You won’t sleep otherwise.’
‘And you’re going to do what?’ Mak demanded, sensing she had no intention of following her own advice and going to bed.
‘I’ll doze here. From the moment I was pregnant I took up dozing. I can doze just about anywhere. And I don’t want Albert waking up and finding himself alone.’
‘Albert?’
She smiled at Mak and he felt a now familiar stirring deep inside him. Tiredness!
‘He’s got a noble look about him and I think Albert is a noble name, don’t you? I did consider Clarence— Clarence the Camel, you know—but he might think that’s a bit sissy when he grows up.’
‘And Albert isn’t?’ Mak muttered, but not loudly enough for Neena to hear because right now he didn’t want to get involved in an argument over the naming of a camel calf. Besides, she was talking again.
‘When Ned gets up he’ll rig up something for him, some way that Albert can feed on demand and some music or something to keep him company, but until then I’ll stay here. There’s straw and bags, I’ll be perfectly comfortable.’
Mak knew he should argue, but with what—the on-demand feeding? What did he know? Her staying there? He doubted he’d budge her.
He walked away, but the image of her, sitting on the floor, dirty and dishevelled, the camel’s head on her lap, wouldn’t go away.
Might never go away.
And that thought made him shiver…
Neena watched him go, her mind churning. A man who’d check out the constitution of camel milk in the early hours of the morning couldn’t be all bad. But what if her suspicions were right—what if he’d come to take her baby from her, if not physically, then at least to persuade her to let the child be part of a family of which she had a very poor opinion?
She had to be wary of him—and not be taken in by little acts of kindness. Except that kindness, right now when she was feeling so terribly, terribly tired, seemed particularly important.
She studied the calf’s funny face through teary eyes and told herself it was just pregnancy making her weepy, and thinking of the pregnancy—of her baby’s welfare— she stretched out on the bag-covered straw and settled the calf so its legs were stretched away from her, then she patted Baby Singh, talked softly to him for a few minutes, telling him about the little camel he’d have for a playmate, wondering about family—a concept not all that familiar to her, although deep down she knew that every child deserved to have a family.
But that family?
She wouldn’t think about it now. Mak Stavrou was here for a month. She’d work it out before he left; right now she needed to sleep.
But every time she closed her eyes an image of her visitor was fixed to the inside of her eyelids and she was forced to study his face and try to work out just why it had so appealed to her.
It couldn’t just be the strength of his facial bones, obvious because of the way his tanned skin stretched tautly over them, or the thick black eyebrows above dark hazel eyes, or the long nose kept from perfection by a thickening in the middle, or lips, pale but rimmed with a line of even paler skin so the sensuous fullness of them was emphasized.
‘Oh, boy! Talk about trouble,’ she told the sleeping Albert. ‘Six months pregnant and I’m fantasising about a stranger. And not just any stranger—a Hellenic Enterprises stranger!’
As if one stranger from Hellenic Enterprises wasn’t enough!
She patted the baby then curled her hands around the bump.
‘It’s okay,’ she told him. ‘We’ll work it out. Together we can conquer the world.’
But the promise lacked conviction so she added, ‘And if we can’t there’s always Ned and one thousand, four hundred and forty-two other Wymaralongites. Who needs family when we’ve got all of them?’
And on that note, she finally slept.
‘How could you let her bring that animal home?’ Ned demanded, when Mak, refreshed from four hours’ solid sleep and now starving, made his way into the kitchen.
‘You could have stopped her?’ Mak enquired, and the old man shook his head.
‘Nah! Never been any different, she hasn’t,’ Ned admitted, twiddling a knob on the coffee machine and pulling a mug out of a cupboard. ‘Kittens, puppies, tortoises she picked up off the road, a duck one time, a galah with a broken wing—you name it, we’ve nursed it or reared it or sometimes had to bury it. But a camel—that’s going too far. What’s she going to do when it grows?’
‘I imagine there are camel farms somewhere that will take it, or some tourist operator on the coast who uses them for beach rides. A sanctuary perhaps. I’ve never come across a baby camel before so am not sure about what one does with it when it grows.’
‘Tourists riding on her camel? Yeah, I can see her letting that happen! People peering at it in a sanctuary? No, we’re stuck with it.’
Ned handed Mak the mug of coffee, and waved his hand to milk and sugar on the table, somehow making the simple act a gesture of acceptance. Although Mak guessed Ned might be looking to him as an ally in some endeavour. Persuading Neena to part with her new pet?
Whatever it was, the man’s suspicion of the previous night seemed to have vanished.
‘Has she gone to bed?’ Mak asked, and Ned nodded.
‘Under protest, but I told her if she didn’t sleep it would harm the baby—that usually works if ever you need to get her to rest.’
Definitely an ally, Mak realised.
‘And the calf?’
‘Happy as Larry,’ Ned assured him. ‘I’ve rigged up a bag of old clothes and I’ve got formula in a plastic bottle inside it. The calf nudges and sucks and as long as the milk comes out he doesn’t know he hasn’t got a mother.’
Mak shook his head, aware this was becoming a habit, but it was obvious from Ned’s conversation that he was just as dedicated to Neena’s strays as she was. Or perhaps he was just used to being the one who had to work out how to feed them! A strange relationship, the wizened old man and the beautiful young woman—Mak would have liked to ask about it, but he didn’t think the alliance between him and Ned was strong enough just yet.
Until