A quick shake of the head. ‘Not till I got to.’
There were piles of ripped-up cloths, a large container of water steaming on the kitchen fire. There was thread to tie the cord, a knife to cut. There was a piece of rope, about ten feet long. Lorna climbed into the sleeping loft and tied the tail of the rope to the wooden railing that ran around the opening. She pulled it hard to make sure it was secure and let the end of the rope hang down where Mary would be able to grab it later, then climbed back down.
Mary was lying still, holding herself tight, as though listening to sounds that only she could hear. A shadow crossed her face and her swollen body tensed, fingers clenched at her side. She lay still for a minute, and Lorna watched, heart beating sick in her breast. The shadow flickered on Mary’s face and went away and her body relaxed, settling deeper into the straw beneath her.
Lorna went to her. ‘How are ye?’ Afraid to ask.
A smile, but white about the lips. ‘Gittin there.’
‘And the clothes?’
‘Git ’em off, makes you feel better.’
‘It wasna me I was thinking aboot.’ But quick to undo buttons, all the same: there would be more than enough to think about without worrying about clothes too.
Mary’s belly was swollen and blue with veins. Lorna covered her with a sheet. Nothing to do but wait.
There was a rhythm to it, as to all things.
In summer, as a child, when she had been able to escape from the house, Lorna had often gone down to the beach to be alone, to be. The tide came in. You couldn’t see it happen but it did, eating up the rocks, the weed floating like green hair, the patches of sand. Until there the sea was, huge and threatening, breaking and gnashing where an hour before had been nothing but rockpools and stillness. And then, inch by inch, down it went again, crawling quietly away to thunder in huge rollers at a distance.
The business of the baby was like that, a tidal surge that came from nowhere and roared and raged and drew back. Each time the wave came it was higher than before.
Lorna held Mary’s hands slippery with sweat, bending over her to give such comfort as she could, while beads of sweat stood out like blisters on Mary’s face and her fingers clung tight. The moment passed, stillness returned. The pain ebbed but they both knew it would return. Nothing to do but endure. Cry out, if needs be, and endure some more.
There was a smell in the room now, the birthing smell that Lorna had smelt with cows when their time was come, of blood and milk and fear—and tenderness, too, perhaps.
There was little tenderness in the act of birth. The first amniotic gush of water. The tensed limbs, the eyes round and staring in the barely recognisable face, the first groans, gasps, cries.
The first screams.
The waves thundered.
Thinking, God help me I don’t know what to do. Saying, ‘Hold the rope, hold it, breathe, again, breathe deeply, that’s it, that’s it, pull, Mary, pull, I’ll help you.’ Knowing there was nothing she could do to help, only be there, praying that would be enough.
Afterwards, the straining, sweating legs spread wide, the birth canal opening, the head of the child emerging into the candlelight. Even at such a moment, she saw it was covered in a cap of dark hair.
‘It’s coming, Mary. Push! Push!’
The child delivered into her hands, the blood red and copper-smelling, cutting the cord. The baby blue and limp.
No!
In terror. She held up the child, slapped it gently at first, afraid of hurting it, then harder.
It screamed, turned red.
Thank God.
Lorna placed the unwashed baby on Mary’s stomach, up against the big breasts with jutting, purple nipples. Mary looked down at it, at the little cap of dark hair, then up at her, smiling now it was over.
‘It is a boy,’ Lorna said.
‘Is ’e orright?’
‘He’s fine.’
‘’Is name’s Matthew,’ Mary whispered. ‘If it had been a girl I’d ’ave named it after you.’
An unexpected lump rose in her throat. ‘Ye can hardly call a boy Lorna,’ she said briskly, to hide her feelings.
She bundled everything together, washed mother and child. They had a fresh palliasse prepared in anticipation. Lorna scrunched up the old one with the rest of the rubbish, the bucket of red-swirled water. She could not have felt more exhausted if she had given birth herself.
Mary lay flat, face white and drained, at peace. The sheet covered her. Matthew was in the little cot beside the bed.
George was in the kitchen when Lorna went in. He jumped up, frightened eyes watching.
‘Ye have a son,’ she told him. Her voice was unfriendly. It was unfair but she was too tired to care.
‘Is he all right?’
‘They are both all right.’
She thought, if only you knew what women go through because of men. I never want a child of my own. Never. Not if it means that.
For a few days, after the others came back from the run, she was the heroine.
‘Handling it all by yourself,’ Andrew marvelled. ‘I dinna ken how ye managed.’
That sensation quickly passed; the feelings reawakened in him by the arrival of the baby did not.
‘Mebbe the Lord will bless us noo,’ Andrew said, leaning over her.
Under their combined weight, the straw-filled palliasse hissed and sighed.
‘Pray God,’ he said.
Lorna’s closed eyes, closed mind, watched darkness.
FOUR
During the next three years Andrew learnt nearly everything there was to know about managing a sheep run—no man could know it all.
He learned to recognise disease almost before it started, from the way an animal moved, held its head. He learned how to deal with it. Scab: the arsenic solution that killed some sheep but permitted the majority to survive. Footrot: pare the infected hoof and apply a dressing of bluestone or butyr of ammonia. Catarrh: a bullet and burn the carcass.
He learned how to deliver the lambs, how to castrate them when they were a few weeks old. He knew what it was to sit up over a kill, waiting for a dingo that more often than not never came.
He learned hatred of anything that would wage war on his flock, his land, his place in this new world: dingoes, black kites, the itinerant bands of black fellers that drifted through the landscape like dreams of a vanished and unmourned past. From time to time he gave them a sheep because that was the way Gavin Henderson wanted it. He told himself he would never have given of his own flock, would have driven the men off at gunpoint before parting with a single animal.
Every Sunday when Andrew was at home he conducted a service in the chapel that Henderson’s father had built. Lorna was always there. George and Mary normally came out of friendship. Gavin Henderson himself put in an appearance once or twice. Andrew watched him narrowly for signs of awakening fervour but was disappointed.
One Sunday morning after service Mary and Lorna went home while Andrew and George headed for the riverbank. They sat in the shade while George trailed a line in the water, hoping for redfin, and Andrew talked of the future.
His beard was longer now, spreading over his chest. He ran his fingers through it as he spoke. ‘Ye’ve been here five years,’ he said. ‘Have ye never thought to go out on your ain?’
George watched the fishing line cutting a furrow through the smoothly flowing water. ‘Never got round to it, some’ow,’ he said comfortably.
‘We’ll make nothing of our lives if we stay here.’
The float was flickering. George watched it. ‘Tesn’t so bad.’
‘It’s no’ why we came.’
The float dipped. George struck and missed. Methodically he rebaited the hook and tossed it back into the stream.
‘Mebbe I don’ ’ave ’nough ambition.’
‘I’ve enough for ten,’ Andrew said, knowing it was true.
‘What ee thinkin’ o’ doin’?’
‘I want my ain run.’
Geo
rge shook his head dubiously. ‘Need capital for that.’
‘I sold the shop I had at hame. No’ much, mind, but enough for a start.’
‘Not much land round yur.’
‘I thought of looking further south,’ Andrew said, watching the red blaze on a moorhen’s head as it moved in the shadows of the far bank. ‘I was in town a week ago. People were saying that a Major Mitchell has explored the other side of the Murray River. Guid country for sheep, they were saying.’
He glanced at George but George’s eyes were fixed on his float. Andrew took a deep breath and for the first time reached out to seize his future. ‘I dinna want to miss oot, George. Stay here, we will.’
‘We?’ For the first time George looked at him. ‘I don’ ’ave no money to set up as no squatter.’
‘The land’s free, George.’
‘Sheep bain’t. No more’s the gear.’
‘I told you, I’ve enough to get us started.’
‘Don’ ’elp, not if I can’ kick in my share.’
‘We’ll be partners, George.’
George shook his head obstinately. ‘There’s the kid, too …’
Matthew had survived the dangerous first weeks of life and was now a sturdy three-year-old, big for his age, with reddish hair, white skin and brilliant blue eyes.
‘Bush aren’t no place for a kid,’ George said, scratching for excuses.
‘With two women to look after him? He’ll live like a king.’
It would be unknown country but the chance of unlimited free land was surely worth a risk or two.
‘’Nother thing …’ George still worrying away. ‘’Ow can the land be free? We go squat some place, nex’ thing the government d’come along and say this aren’t none o’ yourn, clear off out of it, where’s us then, Andy? I’ll tell ee—without jobs, without money an’ ten thousan’ miles from ’ome.’
By George’s standards it was a long speech but on his recent trip to town Andrew had heard something else that George didn’t know.
‘The governor’s come up wi’ a plan. We can take as much land as we like for a squatter’s fee of ten pound a year. An area big as Inverlochrie, mebbe bigger! All ours, George. For ten pound a year!’ His eyes were bright with excitement. ‘It’s the chance o’ a lifetime, George. What d’ye say?’
George shook his head. ‘Rent, tha’s what tes. Don’ matter tes only ten pound a year. Long’s we got to pay rent, land bain’t ourn. They can still sling us off.’
‘But they won’t. They want the land settled.’ Andrew was determined to go, but alone he would have no chance. He had to have George and Mary as well but he knew if he pushed George too hard he would say no.
He stood. ‘We’ll say nae more, George. Have a think aboot it and we’ll talk again.’
He strolled away, heading for home. There were more ways of cooking a fish than frying it in a pan.
On Sundays the cooking had to be done but after that Lorna was free to do her own housework.
She had brought the palliasses down from the sleeping loft and spread them in the sunshine to air. She did the same with their clothes and had just taken a broom to sweep through the quarters when Andrew arrived.
She was surprised to see him so early—even when he was home he normally kept out of the way on Sunday mornings. She looked at him and saw he had something other than housework on his mind.
‘Come for a walk?’ he said.
She put down the broom. ‘I’ll fetch my bonnet.’
They strolled the bank of the river while he told her of his conversation with George.
‘Have ye really decided to go?’
‘It’s aboot time, after three years.’
‘The time’s no’ been wasted,’ she said.
‘O’ course not. I could never have thought to have my ain run withoot first learning how to do it. And there’s aye been the problem of finding land. The Squatting Act means we can have as much land as we want for ten pound a year. But withoot George I canna do it. One man on his ain is too risky.’
‘There are other men.’
‘None we ken so well. No friends. Take yourself—ye get on fine with Mary. Ye’d never be so sure with a stranger.’
It was true, she did get on well with Mary. She felt closer to her than to anyone in her life. Perhaps it had been the intimacy forced on them by Matthew’s birth. It might have divided them but instead had drawn them closer. Since that time there had been a special feeling between them, like sisters, perhaps.
‘They’ve Matthew to consider.’
‘They need to consider him in other ways too.’
She looked questioningly at him. ‘Meaning what?’
‘What future does the boy have if they stay here? Gavin Henderson’s a right enough man but he’ll no’ be leaving his run to Matthew Curtis!’
She knew he was thinking about their own son, the child he so much wanted and of which there was still no sign. ‘Going off into the wilderness wi’ a young child, is that no’ dangerous?’
‘That’s true anywhere. He could fall in the river here and drown.’
Lorna looked shocked. ‘Heaven forbid!’
‘Aye, but he might. We can only do the best we can and put our faith in the Lord.’
‘But George is no’ sure?’
‘Ye ken what he’s like. He’s got a comfortable berth here … I’m offering him danger, every day a new challenge, but the rewards at the end are enormous.’
At their feet, the river chuckled peacefully as it passed over a sunken branch.
‘Perhaps you could speak to Mary?’ Andrew said.
She wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do. What if George died or, worse still, Matthew? She would never be able to live with herself. ‘Shouldn’t George make up his ain mind?’
A small raft of twigs and leaves swept down the river, entered an eddy and disintegrated. Andrew pointed at it. ‘If a man’s house is falling to pieces, is it no’ your duty to warn him?’
It was not a fair comparison. George and his family would be in more danger if they went than if they stayed. They walked further, Lorna thinking that she could keep them all here, if that was what she wanted. All she had to do was persuade Mary it was too dangerous.
It was a temptation. She looked behind her at the river with the trees lining its banks, the station buildings in the distance. It had become home to her. If they left she would miss it as much as she had missed Scotland when they first arrived. More so, perhaps.
They had been so lucky here. Some of the other passengers on the coach had fared much worse. On one of her rare visits to town she had bumped into one of the women who had travelled with them on the coach. She had not been able to remember her name and had tried to hide her ignorance by asking for news about their companion, the lady in the silk dress.
It seemed she and her husband had gone to a terrible place where the squatter had abused them for their fancy ways and their inability to carry out the heavy manual duties he had expected of them.
‘She didn’t last long,’ her acquaintance said.
‘What happened?’
‘Got bit by one of them snakes,’ the woman said with lugubrious satisfaction. ‘Brown snakes, they calls ’em. Dead within minutes, what I ’eard. Probably a blessin’. What would she ’ave done if they’d lost their jobs?’
Lorna had never ceased to thank God for their luck. Now Andrew wanted to set off again, following the dream that might lead them to disaster. She dreaded going. She doubted she would survive in the bush, far from any town or civilisation. It was not as though they needed a fortune for their child … Yet it was because there was no child she felt she could not stay.
Andrew wanted his own run so much. He had said so from the first. They had come to Australia on that understanding, to create a future better than they could have achieved at home. They would not do it by staying where they were.
Lorna knew he thought she had let him down by failing to produce the son he wanted. She
could not disappoint him in this as well.
She looked at him, standing at her side. ‘I’ll speak to her. Though I canna promise what her answer will be.’
FIVE
Andrew had hoped to buy eight hundred sheep but had only the fifteen hundred pounds from the sale of his business plus forty pounds he had saved since arriving in the colony. With rams in Goulburn market going for five pounds each and ewes up to three, that number was out of his reach.
‘We’ll have to manage with four hundred,’ he told George. ‘We need cows and stores to see us by, and a dray and a few horses. Nae matter. We’ll build up the flock later.’
They ended with five hundred head—one hundred breeding ewes, three hundred and seventy-five hoggets and twenty-five rams—because Gavin Henderson sold them some of his own flock at an average of two guineas each. It was a generous price.
Andrew said so, awkwardly, words of gratitude coming uneasily to a tongue more familiar with the tempest of hellfire and retribution. George stood at his side, helping not at all, twisting his hat in his hands. Andrew knew George was feeling guilt at leaving—guilt, after five years, loyal and faithful service!—but at least he was coming.
The day before they left they mustered the flock into the cattle enclosure. Their bleating troubled his sleep during the night. That was all it was, he told himself fiercely. Only the noise the beasts had made, unused to being penned. I have nae fear for the journey. None. The Lord will provide.
They left at first light. The sky was clear, pink mixed with gold, and across the vast plain the gum trees held their breath. Scabbard, the gelding Andrew had ridden since he first arrived at Inverlochrie and that Henderson had also agreed to sell him, tossed his head and snorted. The bridle jingled. Andrew looked at his party—the dray piled high with stores, Mary sitting up in the driving seat with Lorna and the boy Matthew beside her, George astride his mare Domino with his hand on the gate into the paddock where the sheep were penned. The three dogs wound eagerly around the legs of George’s horse.
‘Let’s get moving.’
The Burning Land Page 4