by Janine Grey
What on earth Felicity thought she’d gain by planting a story like this, weeks after Eliza had broken up with George, was impossible to guess. Maybe it was plain old malice – not an unheard of motivator in their social circle, where everyone wanted to be queen bee and one woman’s elevation was only possible with another’s downfall.
Whatever the reason, she hoped Felicity was happy to have her big brother back under her thumb, and that would be the end of it. Except that it wasn’t the end of it for Eliza. Shortly after twelve the next day, she got the first media call wanting her response to the story. The journalist refused to say how he had got her number. By evening, two more had phoned, and the following day, a woman’s magazine had hinted at serious cash for ‘her side of the story’.
Feeling grubby at the thought, Eliza told the journalist simply that no amount of money or publicity could buy class, and rang off. Irritated and embarrassed, she stopped answering her phone.
Two days after the article’s publication, she cashed Ernest Weaver’s cheque and bought an airline ticket to Coffs Harbour. Staying in Sydney would only fan the flame, and she just wasn’t ready to confront the gossip and speculation. She needed to leave the city until the whole thing died down, and a sleepy town on the north coast was as good a destination as any for an escape.
CHAPTER 3
Taking off her sunglasses – essential to counter the noon glare, which, even in September, was formidable – Eliza smiled confidently at the matronly receptionist on duty at Treetops Community Care nursing home.
‘I’d like to speak with Mrs McLeod, if I may,’ she said. ‘Mairi.’ From her research, she knew it was the pretty, Scottish form of Mary.
Wearing a crisp, dove-grey linen suit with her dark-brown hair up in a sleek chignon, Eliza knew she looked like the epitome of polished respectability. She was counting on it to extract some useful information.
‘I’m afraid Mairi already has someone with her.’ The middle-aged receptionist looked at her curiously, clearly trying to work out their relationship. ‘Are you family?’
‘I’m here on behalf of Mrs McLeod’s family in Sydney,’ Eliza answered smoothly, despite the way her heartbeat quickened at the thought that the McLeod boy could be here visiting his mother. ‘Can I ask, is Mairi’s visitor her son?’
Seemingly assured that Eliza was a family friend, the nurse relaxed her bulldog stance. ‘No, it’s Mr Bragg. Such a devoted man to visit so often.’
‘He’s a marvel.’ Eliza smiled her encouragement.
‘Such a shame that she rarely recognises him these days. Terrible thing for a relatively young woman.’
‘I know,’ she sympathised. ‘Mairi can’t be more than . . .’
‘Fifty-eight,’ the receptionist obliged. ‘Most of the other guests here are fifteen or twenty years older. I suppose it’s a mercy that she probably doesn’t really understand how far she’s declined.’
‘Absolutely. It’s true, then, that she has . . .’
‘Dementia? Well, it’s hard to say. Some of the symptoms are what you’d expect, but with these things it’s sometimes hard to know for sure. Either way, she’s with us less and less these days.’ She cleared her throat and glanced around nervously. ‘I shouldn’t really be telling you this. We’re not really supposed to talk about patients.’
‘I understand. I’ll wait for Mr Bragg, if that’s all right,’ Eliza said and settled herself in a plush visitor’s chair. She didn’t want to risk distressing Mairi McLeod, particularly in the circumstances, but if this Mr Bragg was the good friend the receptionist believed, surely he would know the whereabouts of Mairi’s son.
She didn’t have long to wait before a tanned man in his sixties, with knobbly knees revealed by old-fashioned dress shorts, came into the lobby.
‘Oh, Mr Bragg, this young lady is hoping for a word with you.’ The receptionist looked up from her computer to indicate Eliza.
With her professional smile back in place, Eliza stood and held out a hand. ‘I had wanted to see Mrs McLeod, Mr Bragg, but I understand she’s . . . not well.’
Mr Bragg’s tanned face collapsed like a brown paper bag, so abruptly did it fold in on itself. To Eliza’s horror, tears filled his eyes. Not sure what to do, she hustled him to a seat and dug out a tissue from her bag.
‘This must be distressing for you,’ she murmured, handing it to him.
He dabbed at his eyes and blew his nose before answering. ‘She didn’t even know me today,’ he said. ‘Such a fine woman, despite it all. And just when she and I . . . well, that’s between us. But they’re real good to her here.’
‘Mr Bragg —’
‘Jerry,’ he said. ‘Sorry, love, I didn’t catch your name.’
‘Eliza Mayberry. I’m here on behalf of Mrs McLeod’s uncle by marriage, a man named Ernest Weaver, from Sydney.’
‘Good Lord. I didn’t know Mairi still had family on Logan’s side. Don’t think she did either.’ He scratched his chin. ‘From what I heard they were a right bunch of . . . well, didn’t treat her right.’
‘Mr Weaver is quite advanced in years, Jerry. In fact, he’s been told he has little time left, and he would like to make contact. I understand Mairi has a son.’
‘Much good it’s done her,’ he grumbled. ‘Boy should be here with his mum, not messing around God knows where. Like father, like son, if you ask me.’
Not wanting to be drawn into any McLeod–Bragg family politics, Eliza nodded reassuringly. ‘I understand, but I do need to contact Mr McLeod. Do you have an address?’
At that, Jerry Bragg let out a high-pitched laugh. ‘You could try Shit Creek, love.’ His expression turned sheepish when the receptionist sent him a reproving frown. ‘Pardon me French, love, but they haven’t got street names or mail boxes up Ruin Flat way.’
‘A mobile number, then?’
‘Can give it to you for all the good it’ll do you. No reception down in that mine.’
Eliza’s heart sank. She’d really hoped to find him today. ‘How far is Ruin Flat from here?’
‘Point your car west and keep driving for eight hours,’ he chuckled.
‘Eight hours?’
‘Depends how fast you drive, of course. Not too many cops on the roads out there so you can get a shifty on, usually.’
‘Could I fly?’
He looked her up and down. ‘You’re not seriously thinking of going out there, love? No place for a lady like yourself.’
Despite her irritation with a man who seemingly thought he was charm personified, she kept her professional smile firmly in place. ‘It’s extremely important I speak to Mr McLeod.’
‘Well, if you don’t want to drive all the way, you could fly to Tamworth and hire a car there. Or pick up another flight to Lightning Ridge. But it’s still a way on to Helton from there – that’s the nearest town to Ruin Flat. Best to pick up a car in Tamworth.’
‘I’ll manage.’ She sounded more confident than she felt. She didn’t think she’d ever driven further than Palm Beach and back in her life, never mind on outback roads. She would definitely fly to Lightning Ridge. Being a city girl, born and bred, she hadn’t been bush since she was a small child, when her mother would sometimes send her to stay with Grandma Jean and Grandpa Frank at their cottage in the Southern Highlands. She’d run wild there, she remembered now, under big blue country skies, or was she imagining the memory? In any case, Lightning Ridge would be nothing like the Southern Highlands.
‘Well, if you catch up with Fingal McLeod, you just tell that boy his mother could do with seeing him.’ Jerry Bragg’s voice dragged her back into the present.
Fingal.
Eliza tried the name out in her head and liked it, even if it conjured up images of soft Scottish rain and craggy peaks more than blistering desert. And proud warriors with blue faces rather than the sunburnt kid she’d probably find out near Lightning Ridge.
‘Thanks, Jerry. You’ve been a big help.’ She stood up to draw their conversation to a clo
se, and he followed suit.
‘Mind if I ask what this old bloke wants with Mairi and Fin?’
She was still thinking about heather-strewn moors when she answered. ‘Mr Weaver wants to meet Mr McLeod.’
‘In Sydney?’ He held the door open for her.
‘Yes.’
He stroked his chin thoughtfully as he walked her to her car. ‘Sounds like a fine idea. I’m all for family, love. I do think they’re important, don’t you?’
Eliza didn’t meet his eyes as she nodded.
Jerry Bragg gave her right hand a vigorous shake. ‘Good luck to you.’
*
Swearing as his already torn knuckles scraped against a sharp edge of sandstone, Fin threw the rock into the bucket. He sucked the blood from his skin, feeling more tired than he’d ever been in his life. It was as dark as ever down in the mine and only strategically placed torches provided flares of light along the three levels. He really should rig up some power but he didn’t know enough to do it safely himself, and hiring someone to do it would cost a small fortune.
Not that he needed to see what he was doing. After weeks of working in the confined space, he could have moved around it blindfolded. At last, the rubble was out and he was close to finishing propping up the middle level. The highest level had already checked out, and once he’d finished here, he’d move on to the lower level, which was the one that most interested him. His gut told him that it was where Logan had been working before he shot through, and the evidence of the rockfall bore that out. It was possible that his father had gone at the wall too hard, triggering the collapse. And when he’d realised the amount of work he’d need to put in to clear it, he cleared out instead.
The two largest boulders on the middle level remained in his path, but it would take time to remove them and, apart from having to walk around them, they weren’t in his way. Fin decided they would stay. In any case, he needed to move on. After almost two months, he’d barely begun to look seriously for opal deposits. It was early September now, and a relatively mild twenty-five degrees Celsius during the day. But by summer, even though temperatures underground would be milder, the heat above ground would be too intense to stay at the camp. That meant losing the last two months out of the six he’d given himself. He just didn’t have time to waste.
In the past, he’d admired open-cut mining operations, where mechanical diggers chugged away tirelessly – doing the work of a thousand men – even if they did leave the land looking like some sort of alien moonscape. But even with his knuckles torn and his calves aching from going up and down the ladder, he didn’t envy the lives of the blokes working those big commercial mines.
His last year with MineCorp had soured him for good. He’d rather his own rusty ladder in his own mine anytime.
Hammering in the final support, Fin breathed a sigh of relief and began the slow ascent out of the shaft. When he got to the surface, he was going to enjoy a well-deserved beer.
He got little warning that he wasn’t going to make it. Six rungs from the top, his weight combined with his tool belt overloaded the rusty ladder. Almost in slow motion, the left side ripped away, swinging Fin wildly to the right. If he’d been expecting it, he might have held on to one of the rungs above the fracture and tried to scramble to safety, but by the time he realised what was happening, the right vertical of the ladder came away with a screech of metal, and the ground was rushing up to meet him.
*
If she’d attracted a few curious stares on the flight from Tamworth to Lightning Ridge, it was nothing compared with the commotion Eliza caused when she arrived in Helton, the small town an hour’s drive from Ruin Flat, where the McLeod claim was located.
If Lightning Ridge was a sizeable town filled with people who had actual contact with the outside world, Helton was a township like nothing she’d seen before – a place that time had all but forgotten.
Built in the 1930s, a couple of decades after the discovery of opal in the area, Helton appeared little changed by the intervening years. Rundown stone-and-timber cottages lined the main street, along with old-fashioned street lamps. A small war memorial stood centre stage, just up the road from the Helton Hotel.
According to her online research, Helton had been busy enough in the early years, when hopes were high and small opal discoveries were regular occurrences. But Helton’s population began to slide as finds became more sporadic and opal’s appeal dropped off during the latter years of the twentieth century. Barely two hundred people remained, most of them men and none able to hide their curiosity about Eliza’s sudden appearance when she pulled up in her hire car outside the hotel.
Aiming for discretion, she’d deflected their questions easily enough with those of her own about the elusive Fingal McLeod. From Ernest Weaver’s and Jerry Bragg’s references to ‘the boy’, she assumed he was in his early twenties. A superficial Google search back in Coffs Harbour only told her that he’d recently been employed as a geologist with one of the big three miners. When she’d asked how she’d recognise him, the whole pub had collapsed into fits of laughter.
‘You see a mad bugger somewhere north of the lake, you’ll know you’ve found the bastard!’ a man who went by the name of Mick said.
Later, the barmaid, Chris, pulled her aside with a look of sympathy and told her that the reason she’d have no problems recognising Fin McLeod was that he was the only miner still up at Ruin Flat since Old Pauly had finally given up on it some weeks earlier.
‘He’s not – strange, in any way, is he?’ Eliza asked. ‘Or dangerous?’ She’d never thought she’d have to approach the man somewhere completely isolated.
Chris frowned. ‘To himself, maybe. Only people with a death wish mine on their own. He’s only been up this way a couple of months, and mostly speaks to Old Pauly when he’s in town. Shame you missed the old fella. He coulda told you as much about the McLeods and their mine as anyone, probably more than Fin himself. Pauly’s off having his cataracts done, the poor old bugger could barely see, he was that bad.’
When she left Helton shortly before ten the following morning, Eliza had a full tank of petrol, plenty of water and three offers of marriage. She also had somewhat murky directions to Ruin Flat, courtesy of a map laid out in cutlery, a salt shaker and beer glasses on the bar the night before.
‘You can’t miss it,’ Mick had told her.
Eliza rather suspected she could, given the vast size of the outback, and the fact that one unsealed road looked very much like another. Yet the sense of adventure she felt was invigorating. She smiled wryly at herself in the rear-vision mirror as she let off the handbrake. Her father would have been horrified. This was not at all his idea of travel. Angela, she suspected, might have relished it. When she realised it was the first time in weeks she’d thought of them without sadness, her heart rose a little.
Should the worst happen, she had an emergency beacon. If she didn’t make contact with Helton within three days someone would come looking for her, or so she’d been told by the good people at Helton Hotel. Eliza had the distinct impression that the three would-be bridegrooms would only be too happy to rush to her rescue.
Ruin Flat sprawled out from the northern tip of a tiny waterway, officially called Lake Litton but locally referred to as the Puddle. It would only take about an hour to get there, but she was cautious on the unsealed road. It wasn’t hard to maintain her attention as there was little to look at but red earth and blue sky. Occasionally birds swooped low over the track on their way to the lake. She wished them luck finding water in the boggy brown ooze below the salty lake crust. According to the Helton locals Lake Litton had last filled two years ago.
Finally she reached what must be the top of the lake. On a gentle rise, she pulled over and got out. In that instant, every impression she’d ever had of the outback as an endless barren nothing was transformed into a landscape of stark, wild beauty of earth, sky and rock. A few gum trees and native grasses endured, beaten silvery-green by the heat, a
nd lizards lounged on rocky sunbeds. The air hummed with the ancient magic that had forged the land millennia before.
Eliza looked up as a bird called overhead, her eyes dazzled by the light, the infinite sky. Briefly blinded by the glare, she stumbled. Gasping, she remembered to watch her footing. Mick had warned her that the land was scattered with the ruin of old mine workings. Easy to break a leg or worse, he’d said.
Beautiful the outback might be but it was also harsh and unforgiving, and she’d best remember it. With that thought in mind, she hurried back to the car, anxious to reach Ruin Flat and talk to the mysterious Fingal McLeod so she could be back in Helton that afternoon. The following day, she’d return to Tamworth and then to Sydney, where she belonged.
*
Fin wasn’t sure if it was thirst or the early-morning cold that had driven him to draw on his last reserves of energy and drag himself out of the mine – or the thought that if he fell again, he might end up with a break on top of the bruises that covered his left arm and side.
With his limited resources down in the pit, Fin had tried to attach a rope to the remains of the ladder, brace his feet against the side of the shaft and climb up that way. All that had achieved was to pull the remains of the ladder down on top of him. In the end he’d crawled up the old way, centimetre by slow centimetre, with his back braced against one side of the shaft and feet against the other.
By the time he dragged himself over the edge of the mine shaft, it was getting light. The muscles in his legs were cramping in tiredness and his heart was about to hammer itself right out of his chest. He couldn’t move; he couldn’t even think. He shut his eyes, fell into near-unconsciousness and only opened them when the sun began to gnaw at his eyelids. He managed to roll onto his back.
As he lay in the dirt with his eyes shut against the glare, he groaned. Every muscle in his arms and shoulders ached, and his left side burnt like fire. His mouth was as parched as the bloody Gibson Desert. Not surprisingly, he was starting to hallucinate.