‘Jeepers … Look at that,’ Freddie called out, rushing to the railings to peer down. ‘Marcus, come quickly. It looks like a carnival.’
For Kathleen it was difficult not to get caught up in her sons’ excitement.
CHAPTER
10
The first inkling Lillie had that things weren’t as they should be was when they disembarked into the huge iron shed on the wharf and Uncle Finn wasn’t there to meet them.
‘I’m sure he’s on his way,’ her father tried to reassure her mother. He ran a white handkerchief over his forehead. ‘He’s probably caught up in a traffic jam.’ He looked at his watch. ‘If rush hour’s anything like it is in Dublin, it’s probably bedlam out there.’
A few minutes later Ma looked around anxiously. ‘Perhaps we should get a taxi to the hotel? Maybe you misunderstood his letter, James.’
He rifled through his coat pocket, took out Uncle Finn’s letter and read it out aloud.
I’ll be there at the docks to meet you with bells and whistles. I’ll ring ahead and find out what time the boat gets in. Can’t wait to see the lot of you.
‘Sounds clear to me that he’d meet us here.’ He folded the letter up and put it back in his pocket. ‘So don’t panic.’
However, after another sweltering half hour passed, James went to the phone box in the corner of the terminal to try the only number he had for Uncle Finn, the one for the homestead at Eureka Park.
When he came back he told them the switchboard had attempted to get through but there was no answer. Lillie could see the tension around her mother’s mouth and the worry in her eyes.
After a further ten minutes, her father went outside to have another look around on the off-chance that Uncle Finn might be there waiting and hadn’t been able to get a park.
‘Probably the best thing is to do as you say and go to the hotel,’ he said to Kathleen when he came back and had found no sign of him. ‘Perhaps he forgot that he wrote he’d be here at the docks and is waiting there for us at the hotel. Wondering where we are.’
Ma nodded. ‘Please God you’re right.’
Half an hour later they were in two taxis driving through the city, the streets chock-a-block with honking, jockeying traffic. The driver of the taxi Lillie was in told them there was a burst water main so they would have to go a roundabout way to get to the hotel. Lillie didn’t mind as she could see more of the city, even though she was crammed in the back with Freddie on her knee.
She stared out the window at the tall buildings, some of which seemed to almost reach the sky and blocked the sun from the street. Every now and then there was an entrance to what looked like a railway station where masses of people jostled and shoved each other. One imposing building they passed with the name Mark Foy’s in gold writing on it, had a marvellous window display of furs and shoes from Paris. Around the next corner was a massive billboard advertising Taubman’s paint and another for a Frank Sinatra concert, which Lillie pointed out to Ma, as she liked Sinatra.
‘I don’t see any trams,’ Freddie complained to the taxi driver as he wriggled on Lillie’s knee and peered out the open window. ‘I thought there would be some here.’
‘Sorry, mate. The last one finished up a couple of years ago.’
‘Ah gees,’ Freddie said. ‘I really would’ve liked to ride on one. We didn’t have any in Sneem, but I saw a movie on the ship with one in it.’
When they stopped at a pedestrian crossing, Lillie saw that the younger women’s skirts seemed to be shorter than in Ireland. She loved the jeans one girl had on, rolled up at the bottom. Many of the older women were dressed in suits and most wore hats, as did the men. Now they were passing a cinema with a life-size poster of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and another one for West Side Story with Natalie Wood. That was a movie Lillie would kill to see; she loved Natalie Wood and dreamt of looking like her. It would have been ages before either of those movies came to Ken-mare, if ever.
Sheelagh would tell her that was one advantage Australia had already. ‘See, I told you it’d be fun. Wait till you meet the fellas.’
Shortly, the taxis pulled to a halt outside the Australia Hotel, a grand building of polished granite with fancy Greek-looking columns in the centre of the city. The family poured out onto the footpath and stood beside their luggage before a friendly porter came and loaded everything onto a trolley. Lillie eyed her family’s somewhat tattered belongings and then glanced at the grand entrance to the hotel. It didn’t seem like a good mix.
‘My God,’ she said to Ronan, looking at the dishevelled state of Freddie and Marcus’s clothes and their hair standing on end. ‘Talk about country bumpkins! They probably won’t let us in.’
Yet, as the porter pushed the trolley through the gleaming door, he acted as though this sort of confused Irish family arrived on the hotel’s doorstep every day. Inside, Lillie gazed in wonder at the bustling lobby and the magnificent ornate staircase climbing to what she imagined would be the most heavenly rooms. Around her was a sea of polished wood, black marble and glimmering glass with intricate silver etchings of birds and trees splashed over the surface. She’d never been to the much-talked-about Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin, but she doubted it was as grand as this. And the people lounging in plush armchairs amidst potted palms, smoking and sipping cocktails or cups of tea, appeared as if they were part of a glitzy movie set. Some of the women were in glorious outfits with snazzy shoes and jaunty hats, reminding Lillie of how Clara’s mother dressed. And the men were so dapper in their dark suits with hankies poking out of their pockets; others wore sports jackets with cravats tucked around their necks, much like the ones Uncle Finn often wore.
Everywhere Lillie looked she could see herself in a mirror. Compared to the people around her she looked drab. She couldn’t help noticing that Ma didn’t appear out of place at all as she stepped over to the reception counter with Dad. Lillie saw her as one of the women sitting around in one of the lavish chairs might. It was the way she had of putting an outfit together: the stylishly cut skirt, the red scarf around her slim neck, the tortoiseshell slide in her auburn hair.
Lillie stepped over to join them at the counter, and found it impossible to believe what she was hearing. No booking had been made in their name. Or Finn Malone’s name.
‘And I’m so sorry,’ the pretty receptionist said to her father, ‘the hotel’s completely booked out, being a long weekend. There’s hordes of people here from the country — so I reckon most of Sydney will be full up.’
‘There must be some mistake,’ her father exclaimed in despair, his voice now slightly shaky. ‘Mr Malone assured me he’d made a booking for us. He was to meet us off the Orcades. He must have been held up. He’s told me he stays here often when he’s down from his horse stud at Gullumbindy.’
‘Oh yes,’ the receptionist said. ‘I remember Mr Malone well. He often stays with us. But,’ she went on in a worried tone, looking in the ledger again, ‘I’m afraid he hasn’t made a booking for tonight, sir.’
‘When did he last stay here?’ Ma asked.
The receptionist gave a cheery smile. ‘We were only saying last week that he hasn’t been down for quite a while.’ She smiled. ‘He’s one of our favourite guests.’ She pointed over to a bar in the far corner. ‘There’s a harp in there. He often plays it. He sings really well too. Great Irish songs. But also some Aussie bush ballads.’
‘How long is “quite a while”?’
‘Oh my,’ the receptionist said, raising an eyebrow. ‘I’d say it was at least six weeks.’
Lillie’s father took a deep breath and looked around at Ma, then Lillie and her brothers. ‘Are you sure you have no rooms at all? As you can see, there’s rather a lot of us.’
‘Sorry, sir. We’ve got absolutely nothing.’
‘Could the dates have got mixed up? Maybe he booked yesterday. Or tomorrow?’
The receptionist shook her head of neat-as-a-pin brown curls. ‘I thought that too, sir, so I checked
. I’m so sorry … we really don’t have any booking from Mr Malone at all.’ She gave a sympathetic smile and ran a hand over her sun-bronzed forehead where, despite the huge fan overhead, beads of sweat glistened. ‘If there was anything I could do, rest assured I would.’
She eyed Ma’s distraught face. For a second they held each other’s gaze. ‘If you wait here for a moment,’ she said, ‘I’ll try a couple of the other hotels in the area.’
Golly, Lillie thought, her heart sinking. What if no one’s got any rooms?
A while later the receptionist returned to the counter, shaking her head again. ‘I’m afraid, sir, the only rooms I could find for such a large group are in a boarding house in The Rocks area, not too far from here. I’ve tried everywhere else I could think of. Another receptionist’s aunt owns this establishment. It isn’t fancy, by any means.’ She smiled sympathetically. ‘At least it’d mean you’d have a roof over your heads for the night.’
As it was now nearly 7.30 p.m., she urged them to take it. ‘In fact,’ she went on, smiling now, ‘when I told Mrs Gatenby, the lady who owns the boarding house, what had happened, she insisted on getting her husband to make a couple of trips in his ute to collect you. She’d hear of nothing else.’
After her parents agreed to this arrangement, Lillie went over to Ronan, who was sitting with Marcus and Freddie, and told him what was happening. ‘Ma looks as though she’s going to cry. And Dad doesn’t look much better.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Ronan said, shaking his head. ‘Seems like a complete botch-up.’
As Lillie sat down beside them she was really angry with Uncle Finn. How could he have let them down like this?
* * *
An hour later Kathleen and her family were ensconced in the ramshackle, and not altogether clean, Parkway Lodge in a quaint area of winding streets, terrace houses, pubs and milk bars near the Harbour Bridge.
When Kathleen discovered the dining room had closed for the evening she looked at James in despair. ‘But we’ve got nothing to eat.’
James sighed. ‘I’m sure we’ll work something out.’
Fortunately, Mrs Gatenby, with her wispy peroxided hair, kindly sorted out the food problem by setting off down the street to a busy café with Ronan and Marcus in tow. There she got a huge helping of fish and chips wrapped in newspaper and a large bottle of ginger ale, which she refused point blank to take any money for.
‘This’ll do you until breakfast in the morning,’ she told Kathleen, while winking at Freddie and Marcus, ‘when these young larrikins can help me make a batch of pancakes.’
Freddie’s face broke into a huge grin. ‘Can we?’ he said with glee, jumping from one foot to the other. ‘Pancakes are my very favourite. Maisie always lets me lick the bowl.’
‘Well now, young man,’ Mrs Gatenby said, leaning down and patting him on the head, ‘I don’t know who Maisie is, but a decent bowl-licker’s what I’ve been missing all these years.’
After she had left, Kathleen laid out the newspaper on a small trestle table on the verandah off one of the dormitory style bedrooms the children had been given. Dragging a few rickety camp chairs across the uneven floorboards, she placed them around the even wobblier table. Everyone helped themselves hungrily and Marcus and Freddie scuttled to the corner of the verandah where they sat, legs crossed, with a pile of hot potato chips balancing on pieces of newspaper on their knees; a paper cup of ginger ale by their side; wide grins from ear to ear.
‘What the heck are we going to do now?’ Ronan asked, licking his fingers, as he wrapped up the oily newspaper at the end of the meal. ‘If Uncle Finn never shows up then what?’
‘Of course he’ll turn up,’ James said. ‘The Australia Hotel knows where we are, so when he arrives, he’ll come around here. I’m sure there was some mix-up about the booking, that’s all. Perhaps he got his dates confused.’
‘But no one’s set eyes on him for ages,’ Lillie threw in.
‘He’s probably been busy getting the place ready for us,’ James said. ‘That’s why he hasn’t been seen around.’
Moving to the edge of the verandah, Kathleen leant on the railings and looked down on the tree-lined street below where smoke curled from the chimneys of a row of terrace houses. In the distance she could hear the siren of an ambulance or a fire engine. Across the road a group of men seemed to be playing a game of cards around a makeshift table on the footpath under the glow of a street lamp; a couple of dogs loitered in the gutter close by.
‘I wonder how reliable he really is, James?’ She turned to her husband. ‘I mean, we know nothing about his life here in Australia, do we? Apart from what he’s told us.’ She paused, noticing Ronan and Lillie looking on anxiously. ‘Ronan, would you and Lillie mind going to check that Marcus and Freddie aren’t destroying the place?’
When they were on their own again, Kathleen gave a deep sigh. ‘Do you think he’s gone on a bender, James? Is that why he seems to have disappeared into thin air? I know we thought he’d given up drinking years ago. And he attends AA meetings. But let’s face it … that’s why his marriage broke up, isn’t it?’
‘Kathleen, that was years ago,’ James said, his voice clipped. ‘The man hasn’t touched a drop in ages. Besides, you saw him at Rathgarven. He wasn’t drinking then. You don’t think he’d be where he is with a successful stud if he’s a drunk?’
‘We’re only going on what he’s told us. What if none of it’s true? What if there’s no horse stud? No house?’
‘Everyone knows he’s got a horse stud and doing well with it. It was even in the newspaper.’
‘You know as well as I do you can’t rely on what the newspapers write. In the very same article they wrote about Finn and his successful horse stud in Australia, they wrote that Donoghue bought Rathgarven, making it sound as though it was a normal, everyday sale. Not that the scoundrel had refused to give you time to come up with the money you owed him. Like any decent man would do. Despite me going to see him after the banks refused us a loan to pay him off.’
James looked both alarmed and annoyed. ‘You went to see him?’
Even though she’d promised herself she would go along with James’s plans to come to Australia, Kathleen had decided she had to make a final attempt to get Donoghue to see reason.
‘Your mother and I discussed it. I’ll tell you what he said. It was my husband’s debt. And my husband had to pay up like a man.’
‘You shouldn’t have interfered,’ James said. ‘Not without telling me.’
‘Well I did, didn’t I? And there’s nothing you can do about it now.’ She was so upset she couldn’t stop her outburst. ‘The best you can do is find Finn. Otherwise, not only have we lost Rathgarven, we’ve nowhere to go.’ She raised her voice. ‘What if we’ve come all this way and —’
James stood up. ‘Kathleen, you’re getting yourself worked up. You know as well as I do that it was at his suggestion — not ours — that we spoke to his accountant before making the decision to come.’
‘I know,’ Kathleen said, her voice raised in angst. ‘What if that was all a cover …’
‘For goodness sake, Kathleen! The poor man’s probably sick, had an accident or got caught up somehow. Let’s not make him into a roaring alcoholic and criminal. In any case, what good would it do him to bring us all this way if there’s no job? Think of it, Kathleen. Why would he do that?’
‘All I know is that we’re here, on the other side of the world in a dilapidated hotel, probably crawling with red-back spiders, not to mention rats. Marcus and Freddie are running bedlam around the corridors, and your eldest son and daughter are totally bewildered. It’s not exactly what I’d in mind for our first day in our new land.’
James placed his hand on her shoulder. ‘We’re getting ourselves in a state. I’m sure after we have a good night’s rest, things will work out in the morning. There’s bound to be an explanation. If Finn doesn’t answer the phone or turn up tomorrow, we’ll somehow head up to Tamworth and
go out to Eureka Park. If he’s not there he’s bound to have left the house open for us.’
‘You really think so?’
‘In any case we can’t afford to stay on here.’
There was a long silence, punctuated by the sound of traffic in the street below. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ Kathleen said, trying to be calm, even though she felt like screaming in exasperation. ‘There doesn’t seem to be much else we can do.’ She moved towards the door. ‘In the meantime I’d best get those young ones to bed or we’re sure to be booted out of here.’
As she headed down the stairs to find Marcus and Freddie, Kathleen told herself to get a grip on her feelings. Fighting with James was not going to achieve anything. That Finn had let them down wasn’t really James’s fault. Kathleen knew only too well that Finn had his demons. Had those demons taken hold of him again?
CHAPTER
11
The next morning James awoke before the rest of the family. He crept down the stairs and went out into the street as dawn was breaking. At the kerb he lit his pipe and took a long, slow draw. Despite being exhausted last night, he had hardly slept at all for worrying about Finn. He had a feeling Kathleen hadn’t slept much either, for he had heard her tossing and turning in the small bed by the window.
He checked his watch. Just gone six. What time would the switchboard open at Gullumbindy? It was unlikely it would be before seven. Knocking his pipe on the heel of his shoe, he decided to go for a short walk down the street. Across the road he could see the milkman going about his rounds, and a little further on was a bread van. Otherwise the street was empty. The houses were not unlike some of the terrace houses in Dublin, two storeys with verandahs top and bottom and a small courtyard to the front. Many of them looked to be workers’ cottages, some more loved than others. Although it was no excuse for what he had done at the Killarney Races, not for the first time he wished he could tell Kathleen about Jessica. But if he did and Kathleen confronted her, as she was sure to do, Jessica would make good on her promise. A promise Finn had told James she had reiterated to him when he had gone to London to pay her off.
The Homestead on the River Page 10