Free Lauren's Dilemma by Margaret Tanner Page B

for a moment, deliberately forcing out the vision of Danny. I have to
go on living. Dad's right, he's dead. I'm alive, and he wouldn't want me to
mourn forever but I’ll never forget him.
    Her
thoughts strayed to Christmas. It had passed without the usual lighthearted
festivities; too many homes had loved ones absent now. To please her father she
had forced herself to attend the annual Christmas Eve dance.
    It had been
surprisingly well-patronized considering the circumstances. Most of the young
men of military age wore uniform. The lucky ones were home on leave, but many
familiar faces were missing, some of whom would never be seen again. The agony
of thinking and remembering all the time was slowing driving her mad. She must
get a grip on herself. Look forward instead of backwards all the time. Memories
were cold comfort on the lonely nights when she tossed and turned because she
couldn’t sleep.
    Forcing her
thoughts back to the present, she took a book out of her bag and made herself
read every line before she turned the page over. Only the three of them shared
the carriage. Strange how on the two occasions she had caught a train to Melbourne, her carriage
was practically empty.
    Would Blair
remember her?   Probably not. What had the
Chaplain said, partial amnesia? As for his blindness, she couldn’t bear to even
think about such a terrible occurrence.
    “Going to Melbourne on holiday?” The
young woman enquired in a friendly fashion, as if feeling the need to break the
silence hovering between them.
    Laurie
started in surprise. “I'm going to Melbourne
to see, um, a friend.   He’s in a
convalescent hospital, recovering from wounds he received on Gallipoli.”
    “I'm so
sorry,” the other girl said.
    The young
soldier took an interest now. “What unit did your friend serve in?”
    “The Eighth
Light Horse.”
    “Infantry
myself. Copped it in June. I got sent to a convalescent hospital in Melbourne. Perhaps your
friend is in the same one. I heard that a lot of large private homes have been
opened up for this purpose now.”
    She
explained where Blair was, and by some strange quirk of fate it was the same
place where the young man had recuperated. They became quite chatty after this.
    “I stayed
at a small inexpensive private hotel a short stroll from the hospital while my
husband convalesced,” the young woman said.
    Sounded
like a good idea Laurie decided on the spur of the moment. “Could you give me
the address of the hotel?”
    On a scrap
of paper, the girl wrote the address and directions on how to find the hotel.
    “Thank you,
I meant to stay with my aunt, but the hotel sounds ideal. It will save me a lot
of traveling.”
    She was
sorry to have to say goodbye when the young couple left the train at Seymour, as they were
pleasant companions. She ate her sandwiches, read her book for a while, and
when her eyelids became heavy she slept.
    “Melbourne in ten minutes,”
the conductor called out, waking her from a fitful sleep.
    With no-one
available to help, she struggled to lift her case out of the luggage rack.
Placing it on the floor near the doorway, she decided the sensible thing to do
was catch a taxi to the hotel, rather than risk getting lost.
    Melbourne , at last. Alighting from the train,
she carried her case in one hand, her bag in the other. What an awful
noise!   Everyone seemed to be in such a
frantic haste, she felt tempted to jump on the next train and return home.
Don’t be such a coward, she scolded herself. Blair Sinclair was in Melbourne, in desperate
need of someone, and for the moment she was it.
    A cheerful
porter took charge of her case, and within minutes she found herself sitting in
the back of a motorized taxi, giving the driver directions to the hotel. The
middle-aged man drove carefully. Once, a few short months ago, she would have
watched the comings and goings of the Melbourne
populace with interest. Now she wanted to get settled into the hotel and visit
Blair in