by Sonya Heaney
There was decent, gentlemanly behaviour, and then there was suicidal behaviour. Peter could have dived into that murky water and tried his best, but there was a woman and a child waiting for him outside, and he’d prefer that the next time they saw him he was alive and relatively intact.
He stepped over an upended chair and then tripped over a sack of flour. A bowler hat floated past in a vision that might have been comical if the hoist hadn’t chosen that moment to veer sideways, missing Peter by a fraction of an inch.
Papers drifted past, absolutely ruined. If there was a packet of money amongst them it was too dark and shadowy inside to see it.
There were few benefits to ending one’s day squashed beneath heavy equipment. Uttering a couple of choice things better left unheard by others, Peter decided self-preservation was more important than a wild-goose chase.
Navigating his way out wasn’t as easy as it should have been, not with the force of the flood rearranging the layout of the mill faster than he could find his bearings.
For one precarious, ridiculous moment he started wading the wrong way, a mistake he only caught when a floorboard underneath his foot sank lower under his weight. The last thing he needed then was to take a jaunt downstream. The mill might be on its way to the ocean, but it would be without him in it.
Backing out of the structure while it was still strong enough to hold his weight, he emerged on the street to the sounds and sights of what could only be described as an argument. Tension was turning people cantankerous.
‘It’s hopeless,’ he called when he found Elizabeth in the crowd, and was on the verge of explaining there were better ways to help than being crushed under a freed pit wheel when movement off to his side grabbed his attention.
‘There!’ a man shouted, and pointed. ‘He’s been in there robbin’ me. Can’t count on everyone in this world to be trustworthy.’
It was the disagreeable man from the bank, the one who hadn’t the faintest understanding of interest rates, and as he advanced on Peter then he named a laughable sum of money he claimed to be missing.
‘Dad …’ the boy—clearly his son—tried to interrupt but was not heard.
Over the years, Peter had learnt restraint. He had had to, in order to preserve his sanity. His father’s good reputation helped, as did Peter’s solidly British education. And still he had no control over the assumptions of others. The flash of rage at the man’s audacity took him by surprise, and he had to fight hard to convert it to something numbing, to hold himself in check before he reacted in a way they’d see as justification for their accusations.
They would not have that satisfaction.
From a distance he felt the light pressure of Elizabeth’s touch on his arm, gone as soon as it came, and Peter raised his eyes beyond the man in front of him, searching the crowd. Most were making excellent work of pretending they weren’t listening.
It was then, in amongst the others, he saw the gardener from the mayor’s residence.
Weereewaa …
The other fellow’s gaze was steady and meaningful, and then he dipped his head, bent to heft a hessian sack, and was gone.
And the rest of the world came back to him. The growing assembly of onlookers. The drone of accusations.
‘How many pounds, you claimed? Please,’ Peter said, injecting all of the politeness Sydney society had taught him to use into his words, ‘that might be a fortune to you, sir, but it’s nothing to me. I can’t see why I’d bother.’
‘Why’d I take a stranger’s word?’ the man asked. Peter saw, though, that he’d begun reconsidering his accusation in the face of very little support.
‘Imagine,’ Elizabeth interrupted, ‘being foolish enough to accuse the only person who tried to help you.’
‘Why’re you always causing trouble where there is none, Mr Magee?’ That odd little Miss Hall had waded into the fray.
‘No trouble? Look at my bloody mill!’
‘Still not a cause to swear at an old lady. And I’d say that mill’s sinking into the river because of shoddy foundations. God’s not too pleased with you, sir. I wonder why.’
The man said something vile under his breath and then dismissed the woman with a turn of his shoulder, sending his rage back Peter’s way.
Peter stepped closer and lowered his voice. ‘Would you have made the same accusation if it had been another man?’ The way the fellow’s eyes shifted to the side was answer enough.
A few people who’d not been there to see the worst of the argument continued to rush past. The barricade continued to grow. The commotion unfolded around Peter as if he was merely a spectator to someone else’s drama. This was not a first for him, nor—he was sure—would it be a last. However, never before had it been played out so spectacularly, and so melodramatically. The insanity of the accusation was lost in the heat of the anger.
Something cracked and splintered, and an almighty crash came from inside the building.
‘Dad, the mill’s sunk.’ The boy’s early concern had transitioned into awe.
Another crack came soon after the first, drawing the curious closer and sending the sensible several steps back. A few men dashed past, shouting orders, doing their best to save the rest of the building.
Peter folded his arms.
‘I’d say you might want to help them.’
‘Dad,’ the eternally ignored boy tried again, ‘You’d better do somethin’.’
The man was so far gone in his outrage he was blind to sense, but his son grabbed him then and tugged with more strength than was imaginable in such a bony pair of arms, and it was the thing that snapped his mind back to reality.
‘I guess I’d better,’ he murmured, eyes on Peter’s. ‘Excuse me.’
It wasn’t an apology, but then Peter didn’t expect he’d ever receive one. For the time being, it would have to be enough. It would never be the time for fisticuffs. Much as he might like to, he wouldn’t be punching anyone that day.
Realising someone was missing, Peter turned this way and that, searching for Elizabeth and finally finding her off to one side, talking to a woman he recognised from the shop on the main street, and looking mightily alarmed.
***
A new fear gripped Elizabeth as Mrs Hobson passed on the news she’d heard. The road to the McCoy house was impassable, and the family had not been seen all day. She had to go. Immediately. There were enough people in the town’s centre to do what needed doing, but none outside it.
Peter caught her arm as she spun, desperate to be off, and released her the moment he had her attention.
‘What’s happened?’
‘I must—I must go. Now.’
‘Go where?’
Her mind was already on the task ahead. If the river had risen so much on the outskirts of the township then her chances of following the usual road west were slimming fast. If she didn’t go immediately she would have to take the longer way around, and then it might be too late.
The McCoys were not stupid people, and they’d know the land as well as she did—better, even. The problem was the way the river curved. From the viewpoint of their house they’d likely not even know they were in trouble until they were trapped and it was too late.
She had to—
‘Elizabeth. Tell me what the matter is.’
It was the use of her Christian name that caught her attention and broke her from her frantic thoughts.
She took a deep breath, released it, and then focused.
‘Harry McCoy. He’s one of the men I saw climbing into that collapsing mill just now. His family lives beyond our estate, and if what we were just told about the newly broken banks is true, then his wife and children are in trouble. Someone has to go and help them, and all those men are occupied.’ She could no longer see Mr McCoy at all.
She whirled, searching the heaving mass of townspeople, and then started off through the horde of men hauling bags, old boxes, and anything and everything they could think of to use to build bar
riers. Peter called her name, but she didn’t stop as she continued towards the river, sensing rather than seeing him on her heels.
She scanned the crowd again. Barracks Flat wasn’t a big town. Why did it suddenly seem to house the population of London?
‘We’ll never get to him in this. There’s not time to find him. By now—’ she broke off when a magnificent shudder took hold of her—her petticoat was soaked now, too—and then she spoke again.
‘I could ask Robert, but I haven’t seen him since I arrived.’
‘So nobody knows anything about the McCoys’ predicament?’
‘Nobody who’d know the way out to find them. Peter, will you come with me?’
‘Why do you even ask?’
He took her arm and set off up the street with enough purpose that Elizabeth didn’t even think to waste time questioning what he planned. Instead she went with him, trotting ahead faster and faster as she pictured the landscape between town and the McCoy house, speeding up to the point Peter was forced to lengthen his stride.
‘We can take the wagon I came here with Alice in.’ Elizabeth didn’t need to ask what he was thinking, nor what he was doing. He was aware of the urgency, and he was going to help her, just as she’d known he would. Why had she even asked?
‘We’ll take it as far as we can,’ he agreed, and she pointed, directing him to the place they had pulled up not very long ago, near the magistrate’s house.
He moved faster then, and she had to double her steps to keep up with him, but the urgency was reassuring. She jogged the last few yards, and accepted his help up.
They were away in moments. As soon as they’d passed Monaro Street the town’s roads were completely deserted. The park was abandoned, the small ponds as flooded as everything else, and the church’s doors were pulled firmly shut against a miniature waterfall running the length of the stone path.
‘What a disaster,’ she declared. And Peter urged the horse on with a shake of the reins.
Chapter 18
They’d known that at some point the road out west would become impossible to navigate in the wagon, but discovering it was true, and seeing it with her own eyes, was another matter.
Already, the wheels sloshed rather than rolled.
‘I’m sorry,’ Peter said, voice a little raised. He drew them to a reluctant but necessary stop and Elizabeth gripped the edge of the vehicle and climbed down. Her boots skidded a little when she landed.
‘Half the track has dropped into the river. We’ll have to continue on foot.’
‘I daresay you’re right. Elizabeth … You don’t have to come with me.’
He checked their surroundings as though a magical, cleared pathway might appear, and she extended a hand and tugged when he slipped his into it, pulling him from the seat to his feet.
‘I’m not sure standing about here will be any better than walking about down there.’
He was visibly reluctant. ‘You could sit under the wagon.’
She didn’t immediately realise he was serious, but then he ducked to take a look under its bed, and she had to fight to stop her jaw from dropping. Thunder cracked and the horse stamped. The vehicle swayed half a foot—and sitting beneath it definitely didn’t seem like the safest option. Elizabeth decided against honouring the suggestion with a response.
She set off instead. ‘We should hurry. The McCoy children are quite young.’
They plodded on, occasionally holding onto each other, and then walking single file when it became too narrow to go on that way. Occasionally one reached back or forwards to touch the other for balance, or in warning of a pesky tree root or poorly placed rock. Elizabeth took an odd step as one of her boot’s laces came loose, and wished she’d made a more sensible choice of footwear instead of rushing quite so fast out of Endmoor with Alice.
After a while the conditions forced them off the track entirely. Peter stepped to one side, holding back a branch for her to pass.
She dug up a smile from somewhere. ‘Thank you. That was very chivalrous.’
‘Every now and again I do try my best.’
Moments later a branch further above gave into the weight of the water and dumped the whole lot of it directly onto Peter’s head. Elizabeth pressed her lips together—firmly.
‘Don’t laugh at me.’ Peter’s voice was a rumble over his shoulder.
‘I’m sure that I didn’t. I am glad, though, you chose that instant to step in front of me. You probably wish you still had your hat …’
Despite her teasing he was kind enough to hold another branch back for her, and Elizabeth murmured her gratitude.
‘I don’t suppose you expected any of this when my brother wired your firm back in August. I’m sure this nonsense wasn’t in your employment agreement.’
‘Not precisely, no.’
‘It bothered you, didn’t it? The way that mill owner spoke to you.’
‘Yes.’
She took his hand when he reached back for hers and then moved up beside him when the path widened enough to allow it.
‘Does it happen often?’
His fingers flexed. ‘It happens sometimes. I suppose everyone’s definition of often is different.’
They reached the clearing sooner than Elizabeth expected; the world had changed so swiftly overnight she hardly recognised the place anymore. Everything had altered. Had she not seen the oddly shaped and now overflowing pond, with the antiquated graves beyond it, she’d have struggled to believe she’d ever been to this part of the valley. Soon—very soon—the pond would join up with the Murrumbidgee, and then they’d be swimming.
One of the headstones hung precariously at the edge of the grass, the angle defying gravity. It’d not be there much longer.
‘Miss Hall was right.’ Elizabeth wished it wasn’t the case. Silly stories about ghosts rising from the river’s edge, the tales she, Robert and their friends had spooked themselves with when they were younger, looked likely to come true.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Peter came to a stop and put his hands on his hips, orienting himself.
‘Nothing—it doesn’t matter. I didn’t know it was possible for this to happen so fast,’ Elizabeth whispered, the wind stealing her words before they could reach her own ears. Peter hadn’t a hope of hearing her.
They kept going. There was no sign of the McCoy family; there was hardly a sign of the track they needed to take to reach their property.
‘We should find higher ground,’ she said more loudly, and thought he made a sound of agreement. She might have said more, but Peter stopped then, so fast she whacked into his tense body. It did not take long to understand what he’d seen.
Mrs McCoy and her two children came into view, and Elizabeth gasped as the reality of the situation struck her.
‘Oh no,’ Peter said.
The people they’d come to find weren’t trapped on the wrong side of the flood. They were trapped in it.
The little boat Moira McCoy and her two children travelled in would have been perfectly serviceable on a normal day. Now, though, it connected with something hidden beneath the surface and tipped dangerously.
***
If her sound of dismay was anything to go by, Elizabeth saw the McCoys right after Peter did. They were in a lot more trouble than he’d prepared himself to deal with on the trip out, and that was saying something after what he’d seen in town.
The family was impossible to miss, a trio in a boat that would have survived a regular journey, but now rocked and tipped and spun in a swell, bouncing off the bank and spinning halfway around again.
A dropped paddle bobbed just out of reach. Grabbing the side of the boat, Mrs McCoy stretched an arm out for it. Everyone tipped wildly and the children shrieked as they struggled to steady themselves again.
‘Come on,’ Peter said to Elizabeth, grim. He didn’t have a plan, but if they didn’t get there soon and try something, the boat would capsize and probably take the two children with it.
They ru
shed to the ridge. Elizabeth drew up beside him and gasped again as the boy made a grab for a low tree branch, nearly launching himself into the water in the process.
‘What can we do?’
An excellent question. If the family drifted closer Peter might be able to reach out and grab them, but the incline was so steep he wasn’t confident about it.
‘Stay back.’ He threw himself down onto his belly, gripping at the vegetation for support, and reached as the boat completed a full pirouette, spinning them closer to the bank another time.
‘Moira!’ Elizabeth yelled, and the woman whipped around, hair in her eyes, hands gripping either side of the boat as it wobbled this way and that. She was astonished to see them.
The children, a half-grown boy and a younger girl, gripped the one remaining paddle, waving the thing uselessly between them, risking clobbering their mother over the head with it in their panic.
A wooden plank, freed from some unseen structure upstream, sailed past then, clipping the side of the boat at a convenient angle, slowly knocking it in Peter’s direction with its strength.
‘Perfect,’ he muttered, and braced himself as they neared.
The woman reached. Peter reached. The current finally decided to behave.
It nearly worked.
And then one of the children moved too suddenly in their desperation, unbalancing the lot of them. Just as Mrs McCoy’s fingers brushed Peter’s, gravity took over and she toppled directly into the river.
***
Various people screamed. Elizabeth might have been one of them.
She lurched further down the track, anticipating the boat’s progress. She had to do something—she didn’t yet know what—but the sight of those children caught in the swirl, alone now and still waving that paddle about …
Despite some atrocious judgement trying to cross the Murrumbidgee that day, Mrs McCoy was not stupid, and with grim determination on her face she kicked out and lurched in Peter’s direction. She grabbed his hand and fought her way up, shouting instructions to her panicked children along the way.