by Peter Watt
‘The lives of your family I believe,’ Michael said with a wry grin. ‘But your illustrious ancestors! I doubt that you have ever burnt incense for them.’
‘I was talking about my Irish ancestors,’ John retorted. ‘And from what I've seen of barbaric Irish custom it seems you drink to them. Not burn incense.’
‘Good idea. I suggest we share a drink for old times' sake and toast illustrious ancestors – Chinese and Irish.’
John nodded. An oath on the lives of his family was indeed a sacred blood oath and maybe he had forgotten to mention when he had promised to leave Sydney. At least not until he was sure his friend was not walking into a possible trap.
TWENTY-NINE
The meeting with the bankers dragged into the early evening. Lady Enid Macintosh hardly entered into the discussion on the merits of converting two more of the Macintosh ships with refrigeration engineering. Her hated son-in-law had taken most of the lead in the discussion with the grey men who would finance the enterprise.
She sat in the austere, dark panelled board room immersed in her grief and hatred for the smugness of the man who now sat at the head of the long, polished table. Granville had taken the chair as a gesture of his position within the Macintosh companies and Enid did not have the strength to comment on his assumed role as head of the financial empire that was, in reality, slipping from her rigid control.
The three other men who sat along the oak table represented the English financial institutions which backed the Macintosh companies. Granville had convinced them that the money needed to convert the ships for the Australia–England run would bring greater profit to the company with the addition of a meatworks in Queensland. Beef and lamb from the colony could be funnelled into the Macintosh abattoirs and then packaged for shipping direct to England. The revolution brought about by the invention of refrigeration meant Australian meat could be shipped fresh to English tables. No longer would the non-perishable clips of Australian wool be the only major product to be exported from the far-off colony. The finest cuts of Australian meat could grace even the Queen's table.
Cigar smoke curled in heavy blue clouds around the room as the bankers puffed and listened while the excellent port in crystal decanters made the listening even more tolerable. The men finally nodded as one and the plan was approved. Much as she hated and despised her son-in-law, Enid had to admit his plan to link the whole chain of meat production from the hardy Queensland pastures to the elegant tables of England, without a costly middleman, was sound. Theirs would be a monopoly.
‘Thank you, gentlemen.’ Granville smiled broadly as the men filed out of the smoke filled room to go to their exclusive clubs in town or to their families in Sydney's more affluent suburbs. But his fixed smile melted once he was alone with Enid. She had not bothered to thank the men and remained seated at the table. Granville closed the door and turned to speak to her. His aristocratic good looks had faded with time and he now looked in appearance like a middle-aged bank manager or accountant. But his suit was the finest cut in the colony and had been tailored in London's Saville Row.
‘I have been remiss in offering my condolences on your tragic loss, Enid,’ he said with feigned sympathy. ‘A terrible thing to happen to one so young.’
Enid stared listlessly at him. ‘You may be able to convince the men who were here on the merits of the proposal,’ she said in a tired voice, ‘but you will never convince me you have any feeling except for power.’
‘Oh, I have feelings for my daughters. Your grand-daughters,’ he retorted. ‘Both will have reached their twenty-first years very soon,’ he added as a veiled threat to Enid's tenuous control of the family fortune. ‘I will probably give them coming-of-age gifts of substantial sums of money so that they may enjoy the fruits of their grandfather's legacy to them.’
‘In return for their shares,’ Enid replied, attempting to keep the rising bitterness from her tone. She did not want her hated son-in-law to see her distress at the statement about his daughters most likely selling their shares to him. He would then have an almost clear two-thirds share of the Macintosh companies. ‘You give nothing away, Granville,’ she said. ‘Not even to your own flesh and blood.’
Granville glared with undisguised hatred at the frail woman who confronted him across the table. For so many years she had dominated the Macintosh family but her iron rule was coming to an end, he consoled himself. He suspected that she had only returned from England because she was paving the way for her beloved grandson, his own wife's bastard, to take a more active hand in the Macintosh companies, should he leave the army as he had promised Enid. If so he would have returned to Sydney. But that was a moot point now that he was missing in action and most likely dead. ‘It was your flesh and blood that gave me the opportunity to sit in this chair,’ he sneered as he grasped the back of the chair he had occupied at the head of the table. ‘A chair I doubt that you wished to relinquish in a hurry, dear Aunt Enid.’
‘You have no right to the position, as you well know, Granville,’ she replied as she walked towards the door. ‘Until your daughters come of age we both hold the balance of decision making in the companies. And a lot can happen before then.’
‘Not a threat I hope, Enid,’ he said with mild surprise at his mother-in-law's statement. ‘You don't have many friends left alive.’
‘I will never believe my grandson is dead. Not until I see his body with my own eyes,’ she replied with a steely determination in her statement. ‘And from what I know of my grandson he is too much like his father to be killed that easily.’
At the mention of Michael Duffy's name Granville blanched. One of two recurring nightmares was to wake up and look into the eye of the man who he knew would one day exact his revenge on him should their paths ever cross again.
The other nightmare was losing everything to his mother-in-law. But there was also a third nightmare that visited him in the dark nights. A nightmare with no real substance, just a vague feeling of dread for a place he had never visited: a hill on Glen View Station surrounded by endless plains of brigalow scrub, a primitive place, sacred to a people long since dispersed by Sir Donald almost a quarter of a century earlier.
Enid felt a surge of pleasure at seeing the observable discomfort the name of Michael Duffy caused the despised Granville. Oh, if only she could turn back time. She had made few mistakes in her life but when she had they haunted her down the passage of years. They were mistakes that had commenced as ripples and ended as life destroying tidal waves. Bad decisions had lost Enid the love of her only daughter and turned her into a bitter and vengeful woman. Fiona had long cast her lot with Granville and the sale of her shares to him only proved further the lengths she would go to inflict the maximum damage on her own mother.
When Enid opened the door to the board room she saw Colonel George Godfrey standing in the hallway, an umbrella hooked over one arm. He stood admiring a painting on the wall and Granville, who had followed Enid into the hallway, paused when he saw the former army officer.
‘Good evening, Lady Macintosh, Mister White,’ Godfrey said politely as he turned from the painting. He was not in the corridors of the Macintosh building by accident; he had walked the same corridor many times on his way to the Macintosh offices to pass on information that would be converted to important intelligence. ‘I pray I am not too late to see you.’
THIRTY
Steam and smoke swirled around the people waiting on the platform of the railway station. The chuffing iron monsters that trailed billowing smoke across the plains and mountains to the west of Sydney now trailed their smoky plumes into Sydney's Central Station.
The trains brought elegant ladies, rheumy eyed shearers, eagerly awaited mail, bales of wool and young men in search of work in the bright lights of the ‘big smoke’. The railway lines joined the distant colonial capitals in a way only once dreamed of. Now a traveller could step aboard a train in Melbourne and cross the Murray River to change trains for the trip to Sydney, a feat made pos
sible by the completion of the construction of a bridge spanning the river near the township of Albury.
Outside the cavernous structure of the railway station horse-drawn cabs, carriages, drays and buggies waited for fares, families or friends. Wealthy ladies wearing the awkward but fashionable bustled dresses of the day mingled with their poorer sisters who could not afford to be as uncomfortable and thus wore plainer, less voluminous dresses.
Adventurous or desperate young women from the country stepped off the trains in search of positions as maids and nannies in the homes of the colony's gentry. Young men in moleskins and the single shirt they owned left the station in search of a cheap flop house, and eventually a job working in one of the factories or building sites of the rapidly expanding prosperous city.
From an elegant horse-drawn carriage alighted a dignified older man in frock coat and top hat carrying an umbrella hooked over his arm. He searched the sandstone portal of the railway terminus for the man he had come to meet.
Michael Duffy doubted that he would need the small pistol he carried when Godfrey arrived to pick him up. It was unlikely Granville White would make his appearance in such a public place – or that he would do his dirty work personally. No, it was more likely he would be taken to a lonely place where men would be waiting for him. But Michael had decided to go along with the colonel and maybe he would have a chance to get to Granville. How? He did not yet know.
At least this time he was forewarned and partially prepared, unlike the many years earlier when he had confronted the vicious Rocks' thug, Jack Horton, and his equally dangerous half-brother. Both men had been hired by Granville to do his dirty work and dispose of Michael.
Godfrey approached him through the crowds of passengers and waved with his furled umbrella. Michael moved towards him like a stalking cat. The colonel was aware of the Irishman's tense demeanour as he approached; he moved with the grace of a hunting cat ready to spring and the big man kept his right hand close to his side. He has a gun, Godfrey thought with mild amusement, realising Michael did not trust him.
‘The carriage is just outside,’ he said when Michael came close. ‘It will take us to our meeting.’ Michael nodded and followed.
The carriage was a fine piece of very expensive craftsmanship drawn by four beautifully matched greys. A well-dressed carriage man sat atop the seat with a long riding whip in his hand. He stepped up and into the carriage where he sat opposite Godfrey who sat facing the rear of the open carriage. The carriage man flicked the four horses into motion.
After half an hour of travelling it was dark. They had left the gas-lit streets of urban Sydney and were on a reasonably smooth dirt road that Michael knew led eventually to the south headland of Sydney Harbour. Shops and streets had given way to bush and the more luxurious homes of the colony's aristocracy and wealthy merchants.
Neither man spoke on the trip and even in the dark Godfrey noticed Michael's hand was never very far from the pocket of his trousers. ‘Do you have one of those greased leather holsters, Mister Duffy?’ he asked and Michael glanced at him with a mildly surprised expression.
‘That's right, Colonel,’ he answered. There was no sense in lying.
The colonel frowned and stared past Michael's shoulder. ‘And who may I ask is the person who has obviously hired a hansom cab to follow us?’
Michael's mildly surprised expression turned to a frown of puzzlement. ‘I thought you might know that answer, Colonel,’ he stated softly. ‘One of Mister White's men, no doubt.’
‘I most certainly hope not!’ the colonel replied and Michael experienced a moment of confusion. If they were being followed, as the colonel had noted, then it was not likely he would have mentioned the fact.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked and Godfrey glanced around himself before answering, ‘Not where we are going, Mister Duffy, as we are already there.’
The Irishman stared into the night and could see a huge home with a magnificent driveway bordered by mature trees. He knew immediately where he was.
‘I don't think you will need to use your gun here, Mister Duffy,’ he said lightly, smiling at Michael's confusion. ‘I doubt that Lady Enid Macintosh will prove to be that much of a dangerous foe.’
Michael returned the smile with a sheepish one of his own. ‘That remains to be seen. From what I have heard of Lady Macintosh's reputation …’
The colonel laughed softly. ‘You could be right, Mister Duffy.’
The cab following them stopped just out of sight as Michael and the colonel passed through the intricately decorated wrought iron gates.
Michael glanced over his shoulder at the pinpricks of the cab's light in the night. He shook his head and smiled. He now had a good idea who had followed them.
They had never actually met before. But Michael, whose life had been inexorably changed through her unyielding opposition to her daughter's future with him, felt he knew much about the matriarch of the Macintosh family. Nevertheless, he was taken aback by the woman. She appeared so frail, unlike the woman he had always imagined from Fiona's descriptions years earlier.
She sat in a chair with her hands joined in her lap. After the introductions George Godfrey stood protectively beside her chair in a manner that intimated a long and warm friendship.
A clock ticked unobtrusively in the background and sweet steam rose from the creamed coffee in Michael's cup. He was aware that Lady Macintosh was examining him closely with her emerald green eyes and guessed she must have been a stunning young woman. It was obvious from where Fiona inherited her own beauty. The intense appraisal did not cause Michael any discomfort. It was as if Lady Enid was looking for something.
Finally Godfrey broke the strange silence and cleared his throat. ‘I'm sorry if you were under the misapprehension that I was working in the interest's of Lady Macintosh's son-in-law, Mister Duffy.’
‘Suspicion is something I have come to accept as part of life, Colonel,’ Michael replied. ‘However, I do not see why you did not tell me it was Lady Macintosh you wished me to meet.’
Godfrey shifted ever so slightly before he answered, thereby disclosing to Michael his discomfort. ‘I agreed with Lady Enid's opinion that you might not meet with her.’
‘A lot of things have happened in my life,’ Michael replied, without displaying any emotion. ‘Some good, most bad. But your care and concern for my son in the last few years wipes away any animosity I may have held for you. I know now that you had no complicity in the matters concerning my reasons for fleeing the colony, Lady Macintosh.’
He could see an expression of gratitude flicker in her aristocratic features. Time had brought them together in a strange and unforeseen alliance; they both shared common blood in Michael's son.
‘I know your life has been full of tragedy, Mister Duffy,’ Enid said gently. ‘I know my opposition to your acquaintance with my daughter those many years past has brought much of the pain that I see in your face. But I also know that I would make the same decisions today that I made over twenty years ago should the same situation arise.’
‘I would expect nothing else from you, Lady Macintosh,’ Michael replied with a rueful smile for her intransigence. ‘From what I know of your reputation.’
‘Thank you, Mister Duffy. We know where we stand with each other.’ Enid appeared to relax slightly now that their mutual positions on old issues had been established. She took the coffee that Godfrey poured for her and continued, ‘Patrick is so like what I see in you, Mister Duffy, that your presence reassures me that my grandson cannot be dead as the army has presumed. I was watching you when you entered the drawing room and what I felt was your power.’ Michael raised his eyebrows in surprise as she continued. ‘You are a rare man amongst men. I have been informed that you have survived many wars and carry the scars of each one. Your life has always been one spent in extreme peril and yet you have survived. I also believe that Patrick has inherited your power and that he is still alive. I will confess that until you entered the room I had
intended to ask you to help me find and recover his body. But meeting you I now firmly believe Patrick is alive.’
Michael listened to the sincerity of her words and felt a strange liking for the woman. He placed his cup and saucer on a polished walnut coffee table. ‘I would never believe my son was dead,’ he said. ‘He has the luck of the Irish.’
‘He is also English – and Scots – by birth, Mister Duffy,’ Enid reminded him quietly. ‘I would like to think he has our luck as well.’
‘That too,’ Michael replied with a grim smile. ‘He will need all the luck he can get if he is to be found safe and well.’
‘I think if anyone can find him it will be you. His father.’
‘You and the Colonel obviously have some plan for me,’ Michael stated. ‘If so, I am willing to be part of it, I assure you, Lady Macintosh.’
‘Colonel Godfrey has valuable contacts in the army. His contacts extend even to the Sudan and he is able to arrange for you to carry letters of introduction. Those letters will assure you of all possible help from the general staff. To ensure that those in the Sudan comply with your requests I have purchased a newspaper. It has correspondents covering the campaign. I am sure my recently acquired employees will be more than willing to assist you by revealing any cases of tardiness or hindrance to your efforts from the army to me.’
That Lady Macintosh would purchase a newspaper company solely to ensure that the correspondents would make themselves available to help him impressed Michael. Then she spoke further.
‘My son-in-law tried to oppose me on the purchase of the paper. But we compromised on another financial matter.’
‘May I?’ Michael requested politely indicating an empty chair opposite Enid. She nodded and he sat down. ‘I am curious,’ he said, ‘to know why you didn't elect to choose someone else to find Patrick. You appear to have the means to hire your own army rather than just one man.’