Mosquito Creek

by Robert Engwerda

  Every time he had tried catching his father’s eyes his parent looked away sharply, his attention only taken from the coach window when checking the time on his fob watch. For the remainder of the trip Charles resigned himself to listening to the rattle of wheels through the galloping of horses. Above that tumult came the occasional blast of the coachman geeing on the horses and once, he thought, one of the fore-passengers shouting to make himself heard. With cold working its way inside the coach, his father had to rub at the glass to keep a view of the whiteness draping hedgerows and fields.

  He dipped his pen into the black ink.

  There is no one to stand beside me now. In this tangled country where gold speaks for wealth and where the natural order of things has been turned upside down there is no certainty about anything. What was solid yesterday is today a trembling on the air. The sensible and orderly keep to themselves where no one is to be trusted and where madness wanders unrestrained as a dog. Any attempt to illuminate and civilise dissolves into shabby folly. Truly I have met almost no one of respectable character since boarding the Whitby. I have been abandoned and betrayed by every living soul.

  34

  Niall’s mount protested at having to make another rubble-strewn climb of the escarpment but a dig of the heels into its ribs persuaded the animal to keep going.

  A slow-moving shower hung over the bush and kept the track slippery. The smell of wet leaves and clay was rich in Niall’s head. At the turn-off to the homestead he stopped to peer up and down the main track.

  Again he gauged how far he’d come from England and how he had to pinch himself sometimes to believe that land even existed now. Maybe as you walked further and further from home, he thought, in bits and pieces you threw off the past until all of your old self was discarded. And the voice of the magistrate came nagging again: ‘Make the most of it.’

  The events of this morning with the commissioner were much on his mind, providing reason enough for him to want to strike away from the diggings. There was a hard shell to the man that seemed impossible to crack, a new distance in his eyes that went well beyond his usual remote manner. It was as if what was going on inside him had nothing to do with the goldfield and life on it. And the more he looked and thought about it, the more he knew this place wasn’t what the future was going to be. Mosquito Creek was a forgotten outpost, a leprous trace of something that was already vanishing. The old country sickness – the Stanfields and the magistrates and the governors hanging on like grim death to what they believed was theirs – would one day be buried beneath the voice and push of people who wanted something better.

  He shook his horse into a slow gait to take it along the lesser track to where the Delaneys were now situated, nudging the animal further through the bush until he reached where the fence line was flush against it, towards where the bleached skulls kept watch. A shaft of sunlight angling through the trees seemed to line them up, urging him to count them and again make him wonder at the reason for the display. On every second post he saw the remains of some poor soul as he dawdled past. And out beyond the fence grew mile after mile of black, tangled bush.

  He pulled the horse to a halt when they reached the homestead’s boundary. All the stock had been herded into an enclosure. Further ahead there was no sign of hard-of-hearing Delaney and his black secrets. But perhaps the old man was no better or worse than his own father, he thought. All both cared about was themselves and trying to rein in the boundaries of their own small kingdoms, bending others to their will.

  What was left of his own family was now just crumbling memory: his father at court and his miserly saving of money, his brothers running off in the night and never once visiting him in gaol, his mother meekly giving in to whatever his father wanted, tolerating his extravagances when the rest of the family had nothing.

  In Van Diemen’s Land he’d had plenty of time to consider all that and learn that despite his desire to forget what had happened in England, the shackles of convictism were in many ways easier to cast off than the eager grip of family.

  As he rode into the cleared land surrounding the homestead he awoke to a glorious evening. Late rays of sunlight angled across the damp yards making diamonds of spiders’ webs and droplets caught in funnelled leaves. The railings of the yards were black with moisture, drying to grey as the sun just hung on over the bush. And with the passing sun the cattle, sheep and two chestnut horses were flighty with their new surroundings, the dogs yapping and making nuisances of themselves, ripping about the yards and upsetting everything that moved. Niall could spy the brown kelpie and a larger black dog with fidgety ears lying beside it. He could see they were already glancing about the yards, tongues lolling, thinking about what mischief they might cause next.

  When he looked to the house he thought he saw Sarah standing on the verandah partly shadowed by trellising and leafless vines, before realising he was mistaken. He hadn’t imagined a verandah for the house he held in his mind, but seeing this he was sure he’d want the same, to watch blue wisteria creep around his eaves. He’d want to see first greenery appear on his trellising, the first buds and blooms of apple trees show in the yard of their place, run his hands along knotty branches and push them through dense bundles of green leaves.

  Sarah didn’t notice him to begin with.

  When he’d first seen her behind the thick frame of her father he’d thought her like him, but since he’d been walking with her he understood how light of touch she was. Now, even as she moved around the back of the house, oblivious to his arrival, there was a graceful bearing about her as she swung her hips to check a fence was secure where it pressed against reaching scrub.

  Niall dismounted and tied his horse to a fence post close to the house, leaving his saddle and rifle under shelter of the verandah.

  He moved to keep Sarah in his line of sight, politely clearing his throat to announce himself.

  She was startled all the same.

  ‘Sorry,’ he began. She stared as if wondering what he was doing here before shooting glances in all directions, as she’d done the first time he’d come to the house. ‘This morning you said …’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, shaking her head.

  Then he looked at her, saw the last passing of sun catch her black hair, found her grey eyes and knew all he’d been thinking about her was right.

  ‘They’ll all be away till tomorrow, then?’

  ‘Yes, they won’t be back. Tomorrow at the earliest, but maybe even the next day.’

  ‘That’s good,’ was all he could reply.

  She relaxed then, standing easily. She blew a strand of hair away from her eyes the way women do when they’ve been exerting themselves.

  ‘And you’re sure?’

  ‘No one’s going to bite you, Niall,’ she laughed. ‘Come on, let’s go in.’

  He tugged off his boots, leaving them on the verandah as he followed Sarah into the house.

  ‘Sit down,’ she called over her shoulder, as she went in search of water to wash her hands.

  But he remained transfixed in what had once been the settler Millicent’s living room, peering long at dark floorboards waxed so hard they shone. He followed the grain of the wood with his feet. He listened to the easing of a board, the others around it solid when he trod on them to check. He was walking over someone else’s possession, wandering in their house.

  When Sarah returned she found him staring at everything: the arrangement of their few items of furniture, the walls and a painting they had already hung.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It looks like you’ve always lived here, everything so set out.’

  She laughed again. ‘You take it off the wagon, you put it inside. There’s not much more to it than that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t agree with you there.’

  ‘What do you have in your hut?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s why it seems like this, then.’

  He lifted and examined a clear glas
s vase, a blood-red thread spiralling from top to bottom.

  ‘I’d like to have something beautiful like this.’

  ‘I’m sure you will, Niall. How about you join me in the kitchen a minute?’

  He was almost relieved to see there was disarray in the tiny, cramped kitchen.

  Although most of the Delaneys’ kitchen tools were plain they were well equipped in terms of frying pans, pots and utensils, as well as in provisions. Canisters of tea, sugar, spices and salt were dumped in the lean-to larder, the only poorly built part of the house, where the settler had extended a portion of kitchen wall to create more space. Several bags of potatoes and onions were kept on a dark shelf inside and a cotton sack of flour sat squat alongside them. A colony of spiders had already made themselves at home in the dark recesses of the lean-to.

  Most of the goods taken from the old place occupied a low red-gum table Millicent had left behind, a skilful piece of work with tapered legs and top made from four separate pieces of timber.

  ‘I need to give everything a good scrub before I put them away,’ she said.

  While he watched, finding himself wanting to help, Sarah prepared an early dinner.

  As the sun sank behind the canopy of bush, black cloud hurrying in from nowhere and creating almost instant night, she lit a lamp in the kitchen and another in the adjoining room where they’d eat.

  Niall felt awkward not having anything to do. He moved his lips to speak several times before stopping.

  Finally he drew his courage and asked, ‘Sarah, anything more with your father?’

  She turned to face him.

  ‘No. Why should there be?’

  ‘Just everything else. What you were telling me.’

  ‘That’s gone. And he’s away now,’ she said. ‘You can’t turn it back, so you just have to leave it be.’

  ‘What if he did it again?’

  ‘I always look for where the door is.’

  ‘But what if he did? Or to Louise?’

  ‘I can’t know what he’s going to do. Maybe he doesn’t even know himself.’

  ‘That’s not an excuse, though. He’s your father, he shouldn’t be like that for any reason.’

  ‘And what should fathers be, then, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s easy to be sentimental about fathers, but the plain fact is some of them are never any good.’

  She set potatoes to boil on the stove, carved slices from a cold haunch of mutton and wiped her hands on a cloth.

  ‘It’s probably best not to have expectations of anyone. Carry your future in your own hands instead. Next time I’m at Makepeace’s store I’ll get a Wangaratta paper. A Bendigo one, too. See what positions might be available there.’

  ‘Would he let you go?’

  She returned her attention to the stove.

  ‘No, he wouldn’t. And that’s why I wouldn’t tell him. Or my mother. But my father wouldn’t be the reason I’d go. I’d want to leave because there’s nothing for me here.’

  ‘You could come away with me,’ he suggested, the words leaving his lips before he could stop them.

  ‘That’s kind of you, Niall,’ she said, ‘but I don’t know you’ve any more of a plan than I have.’

  ‘You’ll need money, too.’

  ‘Father might be away banking his money but he’ll keep some hidden about the house and I’ll soon discover where it is. I have some of my own, too, and I’m not frightened of working.’

  But Niall couldn’t understand how there’d been a shift in her, how she’d gone from almost offering something to him earlier in the day, even if she didn’t actually say it, to containing her notion of the future within herself.

  ‘If you would go, I’d go with you,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ she replied, without any sign that she was leaning one way or the other.

  She led him into the next room instead, and asked him to start a fire in the hearth, more for light than warmth.

  They served dinner and ate quietly in the dim of the settler’s home.

  There was an arrangement of seed pods and dried flowers from banksias and acacias on the windowsill beside them, each one positioned to best show off furry pods or dried flower spikes. Fire had burst open one ragged cone of seeds, black shadows creeping from outside across the arrangement.

  Niall saw a doll reclined in a chair on the opposite side of the room, its long, woollen, yellow hair in tangles down its face, its pipe-shaped legs arranged straight on the chair as though in splints. He wondered where the others might be.

  ‘I’m done with this place,’ he said. ‘I know my time here is up. I’ll be going and this is what I was always going to do anyway, so it’s not just entered my head because you want to leave. If you were to go, Sarah, I would go too.’

  ‘I can’t decide that yet,’ she answered as she heard rain falling outside, wind getting up through the yards.

  A dog’s yapping came from a distance.

  ‘There’s not much to keep either of us here though, is there?’ he said. ‘And listen. It’s raining again.’

  ‘Those men on the island,’ she said, ‘I wonder what will become of them.’

  ‘From what people say they’re somewhere to the other side of the river. They’ll be feeling it by now.’

  ‘Do you think the commissioner’s plan will work?’

  ‘Perhaps. If it doesn’t it could be days more before the water falls enough for someone to find their way through. There’ll be no food. Cold will have got to them. I don’t know how long someone could last.’

  ‘Let’s hope, then.’

  ‘They should have left when they had the chance, when they saw the water rising,’ he said.

  ‘I expect they thought it wouldn’t go that high.’

  ‘Or they couldn’t tear themselves away from their claims. For a few ounces of gold that’s what you end up with.’

  ‘You can’t blame people for what they don’t know. Everyone’s still feeling their way in this country.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And the goldfield itself. I wonder what will happen there.’

  He thought about it.

  ‘Perhaps people will just give up. Pack up and head south again. There’ll be some who won’t want to go no matter what. But if the commissioner is taken away and the troopers with him what’s left might also leave pretty quickly.’

  ‘It’s cholera, isn’t it? That’s killing those men?’

  ‘The doctor says it’s probably cholera. We think we know where it’s coming from, too. It’s Mosquito Creek itself that’s rotten.’

  Rain began falling heavier, enough that they both glanced upward at the sound.

  ‘It was very good of you to come here,’ she said. ‘I’m fine on my own, but out here is just that bit further away from everyone again.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have come if I hadn’t wanted to,’ he answered.

  ‘I know that.’

  And she looked at him in that curious way again before averting her eyes.

  The dogs began howling in the yard.

  ‘Something’s stirring up the animals,’ he said, his chair legs scraping as he sat more upright. ‘Do you want me to have a look?’

  ‘It’ll just be the rain, or a possum or something. I need to fix them some proper shelter tomorrow.’

  But Niall turned to the window, to hear better above the weather. There was another noise this time, the snuffling of a horse he knew wasn’t his.

  ‘Someone’s out there,’ he said, listening.

  ‘It’ll be nothing.’

  ‘No, there’s something. I’m going to take a look.’

  And instinctively he glanced for his rifle before remembering he’d left it on the verandah. He cursed himself for not following the rule he’d drummed into his troopers – Always carry your rifle.

  ‘Just wait here,’ he ordered. ‘There’s something. Blow out the lamps.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Don’t speak any more,�
�� he whispered. ‘I’m going to see what it is.’

  Wind and rain ran over the settler’s house, straining battens and jostling roof shingles. Niall moved first to the front door before changing his mind, thinking, It’s too obvious – it’s where someone would expect you to come out.

  He backed into the darkened room and motioned to Sarah to stay still where she was, out of sight of the window. He crossed on socked feet to the rear of the house.

  Cross out back through the dark, he thought. He had the feeling of all those Harbour years in him, every instinct creeping.

  There was a wash house outside. He’d work his way around that to the front of the house, climb onto the verandah and retrieve his rifle before he did anything else.

  He eased the back door open soundlessly.

  ‘Thought it’d be you,’ a gravelly voice came.

  As Niall swung around a rifle was raised to his face.

  ‘You!’ he gasped.

  ‘Thought I’d just take off and leave the cat to get the cream, did yer?’

  ‘Put the gun down.’

  ‘I knew.’ The old man glared, his face wet.

  ‘You wouldn’t know anything.’

  ‘Know enough to know it’d be you.’ Draped in a long coat with a broad hat dripping rain, Delaney stared back at him. ‘But then I knew yer a long time ago, didn’t I?’

  ‘You’ll be thinking of someone else.’

  ‘No I ain’t.’ He waggled the barrel of his rifle at Niall. ‘I know it’s you, all right. Escaped one time, didn’t yer? Took off about the same time those other three did. I know what happened. I know what they say yer did.’

  ‘It wasn’t me that ever did anything except escape.’

  ‘I reckon there’d be people here that would like to hear all about it. People like that Stanfield. Wonder what he’d think about his sergeant then, eh?’

  ‘You’d be wasting your time. There’s nothing to say.’

  ‘Well, that’ll be for me to tell, won’t it, not you.’