‘But there’s no slavery now. He’d be a free man,’ Adelaide said.
Caleb shrugged. ‘I pray to God that he is and that what little learning we shared has allowed him to make a new life, but the reality is many slaves had no choice but to stay on the plantations where they had been born and raised. I just hope they now receive a decent wage and work in the knowledge that they are free to leave.’
Danny and Netty came back into the room. Netty sat in her favourite chair with a sigh and fanned herself with her hand. ‘Thank heavens Christmas comes only once a year,’ she said. ‘Amos sends his apologies. He’s gone to see to the horses.’ She glanced at Caleb. ‘He says Mac wants to apologise to you.’
‘Mac?’
‘The horse that hurt you. Amos says Mac has been off his oats ever since the accident.’
‘He’s a horse. He doesn’t need to apologise.’
‘That’s as may be, but he’s bringing Mac over later. I have some carrot tops you can give him.’
‘He’s a horse,’ Caleb repeated.
Adelaide laughed. ‘Not in Amos Burrell’s world. His horses are people to him.’
Danny glanced at the Christmas tree. ‘Mama, can we open our presents now?’
Caleb clapped a hand to his forehead. ‘I clean forgot. I have Christmas presents. Danny, can you bring me my bag?’
Danny picked up the satchel Caleb had left by the door that morning and handed it to him. Caleb waited until the other presents had been exchanged. Socks and a notebook for Danny, a woollen scarf for Netty and a battered copy of Jane Eyre for Adelaide.
Caleb extricated the two neatly wrapped brown packages from Mackie’s General Store and a third, badly wrapped in newspaper and tied up with string. This last package he handed to Danny.
The boy’s eyes gleamed as he tore at the string. ‘A knife!’ he exclaimed.
‘Not just any knife, a Barlow knife,’ Caleb said. ‘You’ve got to be careful that you fold it properly. It’s sharp and will cut you.’
He looked up, feeling an icy chill in the room.
Adelaide glared at him. ‘Mr Hunt, I cannot approve of you giving Danny a knife,’ she said.
‘Why not? I had one when I was younger than him. I had learned how to whittle by the time I was ten.’
‘Mama, please. I’ve always wanted a knife.’ Danny paused and glanced at Caleb. ‘Caleb’s been showing me how to whittle. Have you seen his stick?’
Adelaide sighed. ‘It’s a gift, and I’ll not take it from you, but if you injure yourself, Daniel Greaves, I will take it off you until you’re old enough to know better.’
She unwrapped her own package, her face softening at the sight of the pretty handkerchief. She looked at Caleb and smiled and his heart melted in the radiance of that smile. She had forgiven him for spoiling their Christmas lunch.
‘Do you like it?’ He sounded like an overeager schoolboy.
She nodded and refolded the square of cambric. ‘It was very thoughtful of you, and not necessary. I’m sorry I have no gift for you.’
‘Ma’am, you have given me the gift of your hospitality and your friendship. That is more than enough.’
Netty unwrapped her parcel and gave a squeal of delight as she held up the blue ribbons. ‘They will be perfect for the New Year’s Day picnic.’ She glanced at Adelaide. ‘Have you told Caleb about the picnic?’
When Adelaide didn’t respond, Netty continued. ‘The Ladies’ Committee hosts it every New Year’s Day. The whole town goes. Even the mine shuts off the stampers. There’ll be dancing and games.’
‘Well, that sounds like an occasion not to be missed,’ Caleb said.
‘You’re not considering going? You won’t be able to dance,’ Adelaide said.
‘Maybe not, and I mean no disrespect to your good selves, but I can’t stay here in your tender care for ever, ladies.’
‘Suit yourself, Mr Hunt. I am not your keeper and I am certain the Ladies’ Committee will be delighted to have your company.’
‘What would you do on Christmas Day back home?’ Netty asked.
‘We would play parlour games,’ Caleb replied.
‘I don’t know any parlour games,’ Adelaide said.
Caleb stared at her. ‘None?’
She returned his gaze with a fierce anger directed not at him, but at a distant memory. ‘It was only my father and I and Christmas was just another day to him. In fact, it was worse than any other day—it was a day no one worked, and that annoyed him.’
‘I know a game.’ Netty hauled herself out her chair. ‘We’d play it in the servant’s hall. Charades. Do you know that one, Caleb?’
Caleb nodded and Netty explained the rules to Adelaide. ‘And if you lose,’ she concluded. ‘You have to pay a forfeit.’
‘What’s the forfeit?’ Danny asked.
‘The men would have to kiss the nearest lady …’ Netty said.
Adelaide and Caleb looked at each other and Netty blushed. ‘We’ll think of another forfeit,’ she said hurriedly.
‘The things that went on in the servant’s hall,’ Adelaide remarked but her smile belied her apparent disapproval.
As Danny clowned through a charade of the word ‘pirate’, Caleb watched Adelaide. The sherry had put a pleasing colour in her cheeks and a bright, dancing light in her eyes. Her hair had come loose and as she pushed a lock behind one ear, their eyes met and in her shy smile Caleb caught a fleeting glimpse of the young girl she must have been before widowhood and maternal responsibility had hardened her to the joys of life. It struck him with a palpable force that they shared more in common than had first appeared. Life had put them both on a difficult path not of their own choosing. Had he now come to a fork in that road?
Adelaide lay fully dressed on her bed, looking up at the pressed tin ceiling. Apart from the occasional bark from a dog, answered by other dogs in the valley, the town drowsed in the last hours of Christmas Day. A change had blown through in the evening and she had the window wide open to let the cool air into the house, the curtains riffling with the breeze. It brought with it the heavy promise of rain.
She rose and went to the kitchen to fetch some water. Through the window she could see the faint glow of a lit pipe outside Mick’s shed. Adelaide was not the only one still awake.
She opened the back door and stood for a moment, on the point of returning to her bed.
‘Come and join me, Miss Adelaide.’ Caleb’s voice came from the dark and, without thinking, she crossed the yard to where he sat on the bench, his back against the shed’s rough boards, his legs stretched out, feet crossed at the ankles. ‘Forgive me for not rising.’
Adelaide stood looking down at him. ‘Can’t sleep?’
‘My leg is aching, and I am rather enjoying the cool air.’
‘What were you thinking about?’
He drew on his pipe and removed it from his mouth. ‘Now, why is it that you ladies always want to know what a man is thinking? I can tell you that it is never as interesting as you hope it will be.’
Adelaide laughed and joined him on the bench. They sat without speaking, looking at the clear sky, the stars so close she thought she could reach out and touch one.
‘Since you’re curious, I was thinking the constellations are so different here,’ Caleb said. He used the stem of his pipe to point to the Southern Cross rising above the dark hills. ‘I never thought I would see the cross. It’s beautiful.’ He tapped the spent tobacco out on the bench beside him and sighed. ‘My father would take me out on clear nights to look at the stars.’
‘It sounds as if you were close to your father.’ Adelaide wondered if he could detect the note of envy in her voice. She doubted her father ever thought about stars or anything beyond his own concerns.
‘He was a good man, but I’m afraid I was a disappointment to him.’
‘In what way?’
Caleb hesitated. ‘I chose a different path to the one he wanted for me. He did not approve of the war and still less of me j
oining the army, for whatever cause. He saw it as a betrayal of his beliefs.’
‘His abolitionist beliefs?’
Caleb shook his head. ‘Everything he stood for. He was a Quaker.’
Adelaide glanced at him but in the dark she could only see his profile: a long straight nose and finely chiselled cheekbones. ‘And you’re not?’
‘I left my father’s beliefs behind when I left his home, long before the war.’
Adelaide drew in a breath. She could say much the same thing, but for different reasons.
‘That is what war does to you,’ he added.
‘Was there only your father?’
Caleb did not answer for a long time. ‘Ma died just before the war and my brother and sister contracted a fever after they took a couple of sick Northern soldiers into their home. They died. The soldiers lived.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Caleb shrugged. ‘Pa didn’t live to see the peace either. He went to Washington to petition for my release from the prisoner of war camp. For days he knocked on doors but to no avail. He died of a heart attack on the Union Station. I’ve no one left.’
Adelaide could find no words for his grief and the silence lay between them for a long moment.
‘But what about your family?’ Caleb said eventually. ‘Is it only your father in England?’
She chose her words with care. ‘My father and I are estranged. My mother died when I was born. I never knew her.’ She resisted a sudden urge to confide her life story to this stranger. ‘My father was … distant. His world was his business.’
‘No siblings?’
Adelaide gave a bitter laugh. ‘He wanted an heir and he married again, twice in fact, but one wife died in childbirth, the child with her, and the other in a riding accident. That left me, another chattel to be sold as he saw fit. We … we parted on bad terms. I’ve had no dealings with him in ten years. He may have remarried and had the heir he so craved. I don’t know and I don’t care.’
‘Did he not approve of your marriage?’ Caleb asked.
Marriage? In this moment of honesty, the old lie almost caught up with her. ‘He liked Richard well enough,’ Adelaide said. That at least was the truth.
‘I see,’ Caleb said, but the uncertainty in his tone indicated he didn’t.
Adelaide chose not to fill the silence that followed.
‘What business was your father in?’ Caleb asked.
Adelaide hesitated. ‘Shipping.’ She prayed he would not ask her any more. How did she explain that Daniel Lewis’s fortune had been founded on the misery of others? In the years before abolition, he had been actively engaged in the slave trade.
A flash of lightning lit up the sky in the west and the distant rumble of thunder heralded an approaching storm.
Adelaide took a deep breath. ‘I hope that lightning does not start a fire,’ she said. ‘The bush is tinder dry.’
‘There would be no escape from this valley if a fire were to come through,’ Caleb observed.
‘None,’ Adelaide agreed. ‘Just pray that it doesn’t.’
The stars had disappeared behind rolling clouds and more lightning flashes illuminated the blackened sky. Adelaide stood. ‘I’m going in before that rain comes.’
‘Goodnight, Mrs Greaves,’ Caleb said.
‘Goodnight, Mr Hunt.’
When she reached the back door, she turned and raised a hand to the shadowed figure who sat in the dark, watching her. She shut and locked the back door and returned to her bedroom. This time she undressed and washed before climbing into bed, but she still lay wakeful, the delicate lace-edged handkerchief Caleb had given her held tight in her hand.
Ten
29 December 1871
‘Too much force,’ Caleb said. ‘The knife will slip and you’ll cut yourself and I will have to answer to Mama.’
Danny took a breath and looked at the object in his hand. It was supposed to be a horse but to his critical eye it looked more like a deformed dragon. Unlike the little object taking shape beneath Caleb’s skilled hand: a cat that looked like a cat. He pouted. ‘I’ll never be as good as you.’
Caleb smiled. ‘I’ve had a lifetime of practice, Dan. You’ve only been doing it for a few days.’
Danny set the unsatisfactory horse to one side and picked up his notebook. Drawing his knees up on the bench outside Mick’s shed where the two of them sat, he turned to his latest story.
Caleb cast him a sideways glance. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I write stories.’
Caleb set his own whittling aside and dusted his hands on his trousers. ‘Can I read one?’
Danny looked into the man’s face. He had never shown his stories to anyone, not even Mama. ‘Promise you won’t laugh?’
‘I promise.’
Danny handed the battered book over and Caleb turned the pages, a frown creasing his brow.
Danny held his breath, the heat burning his cheeks.
When Caleb closed the notebook, he held it on his lap for a long moment. Danny made to grab the book but Caleb held on to it.
‘I knew you’d think they were stupid,’ Danny said, torn between wishing the earth would swallow him and wanting to run as far away as he could get.
‘They are not stupid,’ Caleb said. ‘Your father must have been an extraordinary man.’
‘I didn’t know him,’ Danny mumbled. ‘They’re all made up.’
Caleb handed him the book. ‘Then never stop writing the stories,’ he said. ‘Even if they are made up, it is important to think well of your father.’
Danny held the book to his chest. ‘I wish I had known him,’ he said. ‘He would take me out roo hunting and fishing, like the boys at school.’
When Caleb didn’t reply, Danny looked up at him. ‘Did you do things like that with your father?’
Caleb smiled but his eyes were sad when he said, ‘I suppose so. I have forgotten. He taught me to whittle. I remember that.’ He spread his hands. ‘Now pass me that horse and I’ll see if we can fix it.’ Danny watched Caleb’s skilful hands turn his mangled piece of wood into something more approximating a horse.
They were both so engrossed they didn’t hear the hinges of the side gate squeak.
‘Good evening, young Daniel. What are you doing?’
Danny looked up, squinting into the sun. ‘Good evening, Mr Penrose. Caleb is teaching me to whittle.’
‘Is he indeed? Maybe I should take a lesson too but for the moment do you mind if I take your teacher away?’
A wave of disappointment swept over Danny as Caleb handed him back the horse, folded his knife and rose to his feet, dusting his hands on his trousers.
‘Sorry, Danny. Mr Penrose and I have some business. I’ll be back later.’
Danny shrugged and nodded. He turned the wooden horse in his hands as he watched the two men walk away.
Caleb and Will Penrose strolled in companionable silence up the main street to the north end of town.
‘Where are we heading?’ Caleb asked as they passed several respectable hostelries. Since Christmas, he had been able to take more weight on his injured leg and although he still walked with a noticeable limp, he was able to cover some distance.
Penrose cast him a quick smile. ‘I’ve been sent to fetch you to Lil’s Place.’ A shadow of doubt crossed the young man’s eyes. ‘If you want to go, of course. If not, we can always have a beer at the Britannia.’
‘Lil’s Place?’ Caleb mused. ‘I met a couple of charming young ladies from that establishment. Said they were dancers.’ He glanced at Penrose.
Penrose stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets and hunched his shoulders. Two spots of colour had appeared in his cheeks. ‘It’s not exactly respectable … it’s on the edge of town for a reason.’
‘That suits me just fine. I’m not entirely respectable either, and I could sure do with a real drink. I swear I will not be responsible for my actions if I am offered one more cup of tea.’
Even at this ear
ly hour, music and a rowdy crowd were spilling out of a double-storey timber building set back from the main road beyond the entrance to the mine. On the upstairs balcony, two young women leaned over the railing, exchanging ribald commentary with a group of miners in the street, the paucity of their clothing leaving Caleb in no doubt about their profession.
On seeing the two men approaching the bar, one of the women waved and Caleb recognised the youngest girl from the post office. She whispered something to her companion, who shouted down at them, ‘Tell Lil your first drink’s on Nell, Hunt!’
Caleb bowed and Nell blew him a kiss.
They pushed their way through the crowded bar. Tobacco smoke hung like a foetid cloud in the warm evening air, mingling with the yeasty smell of beer and unwashed bodies. A fiddle player in the corner scraped out a cheerful tune that could barely be heard above the chatter. At the far end of the room behind the wide counter, a large woman, who must have been close to six feet in height and not much less in width, dispensed beer and banter in equal proportions. She saw the newcomers and waved.
‘Penrose, ’aven’t seen you in a while. Sissy’s been pining for you.’ She gestured at a table and a couple of stools tucked away in a quiet corner. ‘Kept your usual spot.’
Caleb turned an inquiring glance on Penrose. His friend coloured again and threw a glance at a closed door by the bar.
‘Who’s your ’andsome friend?’ The woman stood with her hands on her hips and looked Caleb up and down. Her lips pursed and she nodded as if in approval.
The Postmistress Page 8