by JH Fletcher
Then, on one evening of intense heat, when the mosquitoes had been particularly bad, indifference became anger.
Sarah’s father had been drinking at Cassidy’s place. Nothing unusual in that, or the state he was in when he came home, but on this occasion he was not alone. Charlie Armstrong was with him.
The pair of them propped each other up as they came through the gum scrub, preceded by her father’s voice bawling its way through some half-remembered shanty and sounding more like a cow in labour than a human being.
The sailors on board
They was all sick an’ sore
They’d drunk all their whisky —
Harold broke free from Charlie’s side and went staggering and weaving towards the house. ‘Where’s the grog?’
Sarah stood with eyes like fire, waiting to knock the pair of them to kingdom come.
‘You’ve had more than enough.’
A predictable bellow of rage. ‘Don’ you start tellin’ me that! I’ll make up me own mind when I’ve had enough!’
There was a flagon of brandy, two-thirds empty, that Sarah’s mother kept for what she called medicinal purposes. They were a healthy crew, thank God, but the brandy seemed to evaporate with remarkable speed, whether anyone was sick or not. There was also some gin, strong enough to strip the enamel off your teeth, with which Belinda liked to console herself during the lonely evenings. Now Harold went scrabbling into the hessian house, dingo-swift, hoping to dig them out.
Sarah and Charlie stared at each other.
‘Hi,’ he said sheepishly.
Her fury erupted. ‘You oughta be ashamed of yourself!’
‘I brought him home. I didn’t think he’d make it by himself.’
‘Drinking at Cassidy’s? I thought you’d have better sense. That muck’ll blind you, drink enough of it.’
But Sarah didn’t have a monopoly on anger. Lips tight, Charlie said, ‘I haven’t drunk a thing.’
Whoops! Only now did Sarah realise that Charlie wasn’t drunk at all, that what she had thought were the boozer’s staggers had simply been his efforts to hold her father up.
‘What were you doin’ there, then?’
‘Delivering a spare part for the pump. If it’s any o’ your business.’
It was none of her business, any more than Charlie himself was her business, and knowing it made her more frustrated than ever.
She opened her mouth to reply when she was distracted by crashes and yells from inside the house.
Belinda was an old hand at such situations and had the bottles well hidden. Harold came out raging. ‘Where’s she hidden them?’
But Belinda had done a runner, leaving Sarah as the only target.
‘What you done with ’em?’
She turned on him. ‘I haven’t done nuthun with them!’
After that things happened very quickly. Harold came at her, fists clenched, eyeballs red in his port-wine face.
‘I’ll rattle you!’ he screamed. ‘I’ll fix your waggon!’
Charlie moved to intercept him.
‘Outta my way!’
Harold took a swing, Charlie blocked it and hit him once, sharp and clean, and Harold was curled up on the ground, peaceful as a baby.
Sarah stood there gaping, while Belinda emerged from wherever she’d been hiding and came at a run, borne on a gale of gin.
‘You’ve murdered ’im!’ She was on her knees at Harold’s side.
Charlie had no intention of backing off. ‘Stopped him killing your daughter, more like.’
‘Private business.’ Belinda was spitting tacks. ‘Where d’you git off, stickin’ your nose into our private business?’
‘For Heaven’s sake, Mum! He was only tryin’ to protect me!’
Belinda gathered the rags of her dignity about her. ‘What you mean, protect you? He don’ ’ave no right —’
‘I’m glad he did.’ Now Sarah was willing to be friends with Charlie again. She turned to him and smiled. ‘Thanks, eh?’
‘That’s orright.’
‘That was a pretty good punch. I never even saw you hit him.’
He nodded. ‘A man gotta be able to look after hisself.’
He helped her carry Harold indoors. They chucked him on the bed and left him snoring, mouth as wide as a mine shaft.
Then Charlie left. Sarah couldn’t bring herself to say anything but hoped he’d be back. With her bloody parents the way they were, it didn’t seem likely, but there was always hope. She watched him as he disappeared into the trees.
Hope, she thought. That was what it was. She had recognised in him a quality she had never known before, and the realisation filled her with excitement. Because this was a man.
Against all the odds, Charlie did come back. One evening, in the first blurring of twilight, Charlie left Brenda tied up below the hessian house and came ashore. Sarah was very gracious, while, behind her formal smile, she was on fire.
Her mother didn’t help. Remembering what had happened on Charlie’s previous visit, Belinda was as surly as could be. Harold, on the other hand, might have been an old mate, and Sarah guessed her father had no memory of the fight.
Which did not mean he was about to let his daughter go walkabout with some bloke off a riverboat. His standards of propriety might include thrashing Sarah within an inch of her life but did not permit her spending time alone with any man but himself.
A month passed and Charlie came again. After a third visit Harold decided something was up. Or, if not, ought to be. And Sarah decided Charlie must feel the same as she did. Why else would a real man go to all this trouble only to see her for a few minutes with her parents in the room? Yet how long would he put up with such nonsense?
At last she had a word with her mother, and on Charlie’s next visit they were permitted to take a stroll together in the company of one of the Cassidy kids, a snot-nosed brat called Dilly.
Dusk was falling, Dilly all smirks and knowing eyes. Charlie offered her a penny to look at the river for a while.
‘A penny?’ Dilly was scornful. ‘I promised, didn’ I? Give ’em my word.’
Charlie looked at her. ‘Threepence.’
‘Let’s see it.’
He tossed her the coin. She snatched it out of the air, inspected it, winked and went off whistling.
Mosquitoes whined on every side as Sarah and Charlie walked deeper into the trees. They came to a spit of land projecting into the river. A breeze kept the mosquitoes away.
Sarah studied the stream, silver in the dying light, its surface broken by the dark shapes of sandbars. She had agreed to come here with him, apprehensively yet without hesitation, knowing what it might mean. Now she waited for him to make the first move. Yet he said nothing.
The silence went on.
Eventually she said, ‘I dunno how you find your way along this river.’
‘Sometimes we don’t.’
‘You said you’d show me how you winch yourself off when you go aground.’
‘I’d winch meself off now, if I knew how.’
He sounded so serious. She hadn’t expected that. She looked at him questioningly.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I reckon I’m hard aground this minute.’
And still she couldn’t be sure what he meant. ‘Aground?’
‘You dunno what it’s meant to me these past weeks, bein’ able to see you each time I go past.’
‘I … I like seeing you, too.’
‘Yeah?’ He threw the word at her feet, then turned to glare at the Murray as though blaming it for his feelings. ‘I’m a mug,’ he said.
‘Why are you a mug?’
‘Lovin’ someone who don’ love me.’
She took a deep breath. From their first meeting he’d had such power over her. To her Charlie meant freedom, adventure, a possibility of escape. He knew so much more about life than she did. But love, when they hardly knew each other …?
His words should have released he
r from his power, but they did not. If anything they increased his hold over her. She liked him, admired him, wanted him. His confession made her want to try to love him, too.
She said, ‘I never said I didn’t love you.’
He turned to stare at her. ‘You mean …?’
Whatever else she did, she must not lie. ‘I might, I suppose. In time.’
Charlie wasn’t interested in mights, or in time. He grabbed her hands and kissed them. ‘God, Sarah …’
She was scared, now things had become so serious. She freed her hands.
‘You’d best get back aboard,’ she said. ‘Get some sleep so you can make an early start in the morning.’
‘Maybe I should.’
But he didn’t move.
She wanted to gobble him up. Or run for the hills. She didn’t know what she wanted.
She said, ‘I gotta get back meself, or my dad’ll skin me.’
She turned to go, but his hand gripped her arm.
‘How’d you like to go upriver with me?’
She stared at him. ‘You gotta be jokin’!’
It was an outrageous suggestion. Her father would never allow it. She should never allow it. She wanted to go, oh yes, but was afraid, too.
He said, ‘We could ask Dilly to come along as well.’
Which was not what she wanted either, but at least it made more sense.
He grinned again. ‘Plenty more threepenny bits where that one came from.’
Her heart was beating so loudly she was afraid he would hear it. ‘Look at me,’ she demanded.
She studied his features. In the darkness she could just make out his quirky half-smile.
‘Why do you want me to come with you?’
‘Surely it’s obvious?’
‘Not to me.’
He took her hands in his; she could feel his body trembling with the intensity of his feelings.
She said, ‘My father wouldn’t ever agree. If I went without his say-so he’d never take me back again.’
‘You can trust me.’ Somehow he managed to say it.
‘Girls have trusted before and bin wrong. They say the streets of Adelaide are full of ’em.’
He shook his head, perplexed, staring beyond her shoulder at the river, which offered no solution. A breeze gusted, stirring the air about them with sudden coolness.
‘I think you’re more than one person,’ she told him. ‘The strong, confident man who takes his boat up and down the river in all weathers. The man who knocked my father out when he went for me. That man gives me confidence. But there’s another man, too, the one with me now. He’s so tongue-tied that when he asks me to do somethin’ no respectable woman would do he don’t know how to put my mind at rest. How can I trust a man who don’t say nuthun to help me trust ’im?’
She waited for him to speak but he did not.
Exasperated, she flung his hands from her. ‘It’s hopeless!’
He tried to grab them again but she shook him off and stalked away through the trees, her stride punishing the earth.
He caught her up after a few paces, grabbed her arm and spun her around to face him. Amid the gums it was darker than ever; she could see nothing, but the air between them shivered with his anger.
‘You say I’m two men. What about you? Aren’t you two women? You talk about respectable women … I never claimed to be respectable. I bin a drover, rabbit catcher, deckhand, now I got me own boat. I’m away up the Murray for weeks on end, up the Darling, takin’ goods in, bringin’ out wool and grain, doin’ what I gotta do to earn a crust. It’s hot, hard, dirty work, but without blokes like me selectors would never see another soul. They’d be that lonely they’d go mad — starve too, most likely. And how would they get their wool out? Their wheat? The river’s the only way to do it. I’m not ashamed of what I do. It’s important work. Only thing, it don’ give you a chance to meet many women.
‘I dunno what respectable women might say about you coming up the river with me. Don’t care, either. All that matters is how we feel about it. This once-a-month business is no good for either of us. If you come with me we’ll have a chance to get to know each other better, and you can see what life on a riverboat is like. I thought you might be interested —’
‘Because I was willin’ to come out in the dark with you?’ She couldn’t help smiling; there was such pleasure in this strong man. ‘Feelin’ that desperate, are you?’ She was feeling pretty desperate herself.
‘That’s the woman I want,’ he said doggedly. ‘Not the other one, worryin’ about what other people may think, sayin’ it’s impossible to do what seems common sense to me. It’s not impossible and I don’ care what other people think. I don’ care nuthun about any of that. But if you don’ wanna come with me, don’t.’
Now it was his turn to walk away, hers to go after him. Because the words she needed had been found after all, had been spoken, and had changed the balance of her world. She was nineteen, growing older with every day, and the opportunity of another life had opened its doors to her. She felt her legs dissolve. She said:
‘When do we leave?’
CHAPTER 8
Harold Keach had bellowed at the prospect of losing the most willing worker in the family, but his feckless nature came to Sarah’s rescue. At first he told her she was a wicked and ungrateful daughter, a disgrace to him and his name. But that degree of outrage required too much energy to maintain for long, and by the time she walked down the slope to the river, carrying in a little cloth bag everything she owned in the world, he was weakly, tearfully, drunkenly forgiving. ‘Even though you’ve broken my heart, even though you’ve behaved so badly, you’re still my daughter.’
Belinda said much the same, through a jug of gin.
Dilly came along too, as agreed.
Sarah had expected she would have to fight Charlie off — or go through the motions of fighting Charlie off — and the prospect had set her tingling with a mixture of trepidation and excitement.
Instead, for long hours she saw no-one, spoke to no-one but Dilly. She slept — with Dilly — in one of the cabins on the second deck, with only the sounds of the river to disturb her dreams. Each day, with Dilly at her side, she watched the river’s slowly passing banks, the yellow maze of sandbars through which Brenda eased her cautious way. With the air of a man bestowing a great favour, Charlie permitted her to make tea for them at the end of each day’s run, but that was as far as her duties went. He’d always done things his own way and had no plans to change. The days grew cooler as autumn tightened its grip, and more and more she wondered why she had come.
From time to time Charlie or Will, still as surly as ever, would open the store on the lower deck, chucking the goods down on the counter so that the customers could examine them more easily. Brenda would blow her whistle and draw into the bank. Within minutes, a handful of people would emerge from the trees and come aboard. After they’d picked over what was on offer, and perhaps bought a few things — a can of kerosene, a saw or packet of tea — the visitors would go ashore again, disappearing as silently as they had come. With one final toot of the whistle, the paddles would turn as Brenda pulled out once again into the current.
After one such visit Sarah spoke to Charlie.
‘They never pay for anything.’
‘They got no money. I keep a note of everything they buy. They’ll settle up when their wool cheque comes in.’
She said, ‘Let me run the shop for you. Dilly could help.’
Doubt shadowed Charlie’s face.
‘I gotta do something or I’ll go mad,’ she pleaded. ‘Why am I here if you won’t let me help you?’
‘So you can find out what it’s like to live on a riverboat.’
‘I’m just a passenger. I don’t know any more than I did when I started. At least let me run the shop for you.’
He shrugged. ‘Not much to it. But give it a go, if that’s what you want.’
So Sarah did. Instead of chucking the goods do
wn, take it or leave it, as the boys had done before, she took time and trouble to show them off to advantage, separating fuel and ammunition from clothes, clothes from household goods, all of them from the food. She laid out everything according to colour, because she’d heard somewhere that this encouraged customers to buy. When they could afford it, she talked people into paying now rather than later by offering discounts for cash. Dilly didn’t do much, work not a tradition of the Cassidy clan, but that didn’t matter. By the time they reached Wentworth, at the junction with the Darling, more than half the goods were already sold.
‘Bloomin’ marvel, you are,’ Charlie said admiringly.
‘I can do other things, too,’ she said.
He could take that how he liked.
The rivers were low and dropping. The shallow Darling was always tricky. They wouldn’t be getting far upstream this trip but Charlie decided to do the best he could.
‘When they know there won’t be anyone else for months they’ll wanna stock up.’
So up the Darling they went, stopping at ever more remote stations, everyone buying and eager to talk about what might be the start of a drought, the latest depredations of the Kelly gang — even in the remotest areas people had heard of them — the destruction wrought by rabbits, the prices they might get for their wool.
At last Charlie decided they’d gone far enough. ‘Best get back, or we might be stuck here for months.’
Will didn’t agree. ‘We can get up to Menindee, easy. Wilcannia too, maybe.’
Charlie wasn’t interested in Will’s nonsense. ‘We can get there, but can we get back through Christmas Rocks? I don’ think so.’
The river was barely wide enough for them to turn, yet somehow they managed it and headed south again.
That night they pulled into the bank. It was tricky work, navigating the Darling’s shoals when the river was falling, and Charlie hadn’t left the wheel all day. Sarah had been careful not to go near him or bother him in any way, but now, as soon as they were tied up, she pinched some provisions from the shop and went into the galley.