by JH Fletcher
They were heading back after a successful trip. A celebration was called for. Normally each meal was the same: stew, and bread spread with cod liver oil, because butter wouldn’t keep. But that morning Will had caught a big cod and Sarah decided to cook it in a broth flavoured with wild herbs she’d picked the last time she’d stepped ashore. To follow the cod she made a batch of scones — on which, Charlie had told her, the reputation of every riverboat cook depended. She found a sheet and spread it over the table, and put out knives, forks and plates.
With everything organised, she tarted herself up as much as she could and asked Dilly to tell the boys that tea was ready.
Charlie and Will walked into the saloon. And stopped.
‘What the hell …?’ Charlie said.
‘Sit down,’ Sarah said in her poshest voice.
They did so cautiously, looking at the table as though expecting the knives to pick up forks and stab them.
Sarah brought in the cod, shimmering in its broth, its steam filling the saloon with the savour of herbs. She put it on the table and smiled self-consciously, waiting for praise.
Will said, ‘What you bin doin’ with my fish?’
Not at all the response she’d expected. In a voice unlike her own she said, ‘After a day like today, I thought you deserved a treat.’
Charlie scowled. ‘A treat? That what you call it?’
‘That fish was mine,’ growled Will.
‘What was wrong with today, anyway?’ said Charlie.
‘When I want you messin’ wi’ my fish, reckon I’ll ask you,’ said Will.
‘Days like today are what you get used to, in this business,’ said Charlie.
‘Nuthun special ’bout it,’ said Will.
Yapping like bad-tempered dogs. She had only wanted it to be nice for them, and for Dilly and herself. Now everything was ruined.
Fury surged. She lifted the steaming fish and dumped it in Will’s lap. ‘Take your bloody fish!’
She shoved her way past Charlie, staring at her open-mouthed, and ran from the saloon.
Up the steps to the cabin deck she went, stumbling on the last one so she nearly fell, assaulting the night with words she’d barely realised she knew. There came a sudden commotion in the reeds.
‘You can shut up, too!’
She marched into the cabin and banged the door behind her.
She flounced to her bunk and sat scowling at nothing, at everything — at her plans gone catastrophically wrong, at her life gone catastrophically wrong. On top of everything, she’d eaten nothing since breakfast and was starving.
Dilly came in tentatively a few moments later. Sarah glared, daring her to utter a squeak.
She fought tears but the tears won. They slid between her fingers as she covered her face with her hands.
A touch, a nudge, a cuddle. She lowered her hands and looked in surprise at Dilly, who was putting her arms around her.
Fresh tears as Sarah cuddled her back.
‘Sod the pair of ’em,’ said Dilly.
And so say all of us.
A tap on the door. Sarah neither moved nor spoke. The tap came again, louder this time.
‘Shove off, why doncha?’ yelled Dilly.
The door opened. Charlie stood there. ‘I thought you might like some tea.’
‘Keep it.’
‘I brought you some anyway.’
A plate piled high with cod, some scones on the side.
‘It’ll be cold.’
‘I heated it up on the stove.’
‘It’ll be burnt.’
But it wasn’t, it smelt delicious. Sarah breathed in the aroma. To her fury, her tummy rumbled.
‘Please …’ Charlie said.
‘We don’ want it,’ Dilly told him sturdily. ‘Go away.’
But there comes a point when catastrophe has run its course and there is no further to fall. From that point Sarah gained new courage, new hope. ‘It’d be a pity to waste it,’ she said with a smile.
Dilly was disgusted. ‘Hopeless, you are,’ she said.
Charlie grinned, and handed her the plate, and a knife and fork. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then.’
He closed the door firmly behind him.
Now Dilly’s attention was focused on the fish. ‘Smells good,’ she said.
‘Want some?’
‘You bet.’
They ended up sitting side by side on Sarah’s bunk, wolfing it down together.
When they’d polished the plate, Sarah said, ‘Might as well get ready for bed.’
‘You don’ wanna do that,’ said Dilly.
Sarah stared at her. ‘I don’t?’
‘He said he was sorry.’
‘He did not.’
‘More or less. He brought you a plate o’ fish. What else could he do?’
Sarah looked thoughtful. ‘You reckon I should go and thank him?’
‘It’d be rude not to.’
‘You’re supposed to be keepin’ an eye on me. Lookin’ after my interests.’
‘Maybe I am.’
At Cassidy’s place the kids grew up fast.
Now Sarah’s heart resumed its war dance. Why had she agreed to come upriver at all, if not for this? She washed her face and rubbed it dry. She patted her hair nervously, while Dilly watched.
Sarah felt pale. She pinched her cheeks, hoping it might make a difference.
‘Pity you got no rouge,’ Dilly said.
At the door Sarah said, ‘I won’t be late.’
‘Be as late as you like,’ Dilly said.
The cabin door clicked behind her. She paused in the mosquito-singing darkness while her heart kicked up a storm. It was not too late to go back. There would be no shame in that, no risk of rejection.
Yet the decision had been made the moment she left the cabin. She walked purposefully along the deck until she came to Charlie’s door. She took a deep breath and knocked.
‘Yes?’
She opened the door and went in.
For a long while Charlie did not speak, nor did she. Her heart was thumping and her breath was tight in her chest.
At last he said, ‘I hope you enjoyed the fish.’
His voice was cool and detached.
What am I doing here? she thought. I gotta be mad.
‘I enjoyed it,’ she said. ‘Thanks for bringin’ it up to me …’ Her voice petered out. All she could hear was her heart.
They looked at each other across the cabin. His eyes burned like green lamps in his tanned face. The barrier between them seemed to dissolve. The river, the night with its birdsong and moonlight, everything beyond this instant, ceased to be. There was only him, her, this moment.
He put his arms around her and kissed her and she felt the cabin, the world itself, grow black before her eyes.
Three months later, on Saturday 18 August 1877, a day of unseasonable sunshine after a night heavy with frost, Charlie Armstrong and Sarah Keach were married in the church at Niland.
There were few to see them do it. Will was best man. Harold Keach, shickered to the eyes, managed to stagger to the altar, supported by the daughter whom ritual pretended he was giving away, while his wife wept tears of pure gin and Arthur looked as bored as he probably felt. The Cassidys turned up, too, with their daughter Dilly, whose eyes took in everything and whose knowing smile hinted at more than she was saying. The rector gave a fitting homily, but it was a half-hearted affair as far as entertainment was concerned, with a few drinks on board Brenda afterwards and scones cooked by the bride. Will managed to grab her father just in time to save him from falling overboard, while the happy couple exchanged jokes about cod that only Dilly and themselves understood.
Afterwards, having poured the guests ashore, they went on up the river to begin their married life.
1890
CHAPTER 9
Shearing was in full swing.
Brenda went as far upriver as Charlie dared take her and came back weighed down with wool.
‘
We’ll have to get a barge,’ Charlie said.
Another day, another year. When they had a bit of money put aside.
‘As long as we don’t have to go smuggling to pay for it,’ said Sarah.
When they got back to the Murray the family’s life changed. With Luke well past his tenth birthday, his mother was determined that he should go to school. Sarah’s schooling hadn’t been the best — the three Rs and not much more — but it had been enough to teach both children the basics. Charlie’s education had been even more rudimentary than Sarah’s, but he’d always had a flair for figures and some of it had stuck. He had taught them mental arithmetic up in the wheelhouse, but real education could be put off no longer.
Luke didn’t think much of the idea. ‘I’ll run away!’
Sarah set her lips. ‘No you won’t.’
Alex thought her mother was probably right. For all his bounce, Luke had never been a true rebel.
The school was in Niland, so to Niland Brenda went. Since their last visit a shipbuilder had opened in the town. Seemed to be doing well, too. There was a half-built paddle steamer on the slipway, and one end of the wharf was crowded with boats awaiting repair, with more lying off in the river. Everywhere there were casks and crates, floating woodchips and sawdust, and studded chains green with weed. There were men all over the place and the air was full of the noise of hammers and the sharp smell of paint. No prizes for guessing where Luke would spend his spare time when he was out of school!
With Brenda tied up at the wharf and Luke like a prisoner in his stiff new boots, Charlie and Sarah left Elsie to mind the boat and walked him to the house where he would be staying.
Alex went, too. Sarah had been about to say no, but Charlie said she might as well. ‘A couple more years, she’ll be heading the same way herself.’
The house was on the outskirts of town but Niland was a small place and it took only a few minutes to walk there from the wharf. It was a little house, but clean and freshly painted. Mrs Target was small and round with a comfortable face. Husband Joe was assistant to the port captain. He was also one of Charlie’s distant relations, a cousin of a cousin, and it was on their last trip that Charlie had fixed up with him for Luke to board there. It was a tidy house with clean sheets on the bed. Sarah looked into all the corners, trying not to be too obvious about it, and could find nothing wrong.
After they had left Luke’s bag in his room, they walked to the school. The schoolhouse was up the road from the wharf, and the noise from the shipbuilders competed with the screaming of children in the little yard. It was a small school, catering for every age group in a single room, and there were children of all sizes in the yard, from toddlers to ones almost big enough to be married.
Miss Tossall was the teacher, a scraggy creature with dark hair drawn back from her face and a long, thin, red nose. An ex-pupil acted as monitor three days a week and helped her with the babies.
Miss Tossall looked at Luke and sniffed her disapproval. ‘River children find it hard to accept the discipline a sound education requires,’ she said.
Charlie was not interested in the teacher’s nonsense. ‘Place like this, I’m surprised you get anything but river children.’
‘You are quite mistaken.’ Miss Tossall was only too happy to put this man in his place. ‘We have the children of farmers, even one or two station owners from further north. We have a very good class of child here.’ Of whom two, unseen by Miss Tossall, were having a punch-up in the corner of the yard.
Miss Tossall looked severely at Luke, who had neither moved nor spoken. ‘Don’t try any of your tricks here, young man. I do not tolerate rowdiness.’
Sarah set her lips. ‘How do you manage when the monitor isn’t here? With all these children of different ages?’
Miss Tossall, scenting criticism, set her lips in competition with Sarah. ‘It is not difficult, Mrs Armstrong. Not to a trained mind.’ Her tight smile would have razored the fur from a tiger.
‘What, exactly, do they learn?’
‘To read. To write. To do arithmetic’
‘Luke knows those things already.’
‘Oh,’ said Miss Tossall, ‘I was so hoping you wouldn’t say that. It makes the teacher’s job very difficult.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Because then we have to teach the children to forgot everything their parents have taught them — with the best of intentions, no doubt — then teach them again properly.’
‘That makes no sense to me,’ said Sarah.
‘It’s very simple, I assure you. We use the Integrated System of instruction.’ She turned suddenly on Luke, thrusting her face down into his. ‘Seventy-three plus twenty-six plus nineteen?’ she said.
Luke stared back resentfully. ‘What about it?’
Miss Tossall’s red nose twitched, scenting what might be insubordination. ‘What do they add up to, child?’
‘Hundred and eighteen,’ Luke said. Not for nothing had Charlie taught him mental arithmetic in the wheelhouse, standing there day after day while the grey-green river slipped by beyond the window.
Luke’s unexpected reply set Miss Tossall back on her heels but she was not beaten yet.
‘Thirty-six times eight?’
A pause, while Miss Tossall’s eyes brightened. Then:
‘Two hundred and eighty-eight.’
The teacher sighed. ‘It’s going to be very difficult. But we shall undo the damage, Mrs Armstrong. Have no fear of that. We shall manage.’ She turned her attention to Alex. ‘And this is?’
‘Alexandra Armstrong,’ Alex said.
‘And how old is Alexandra?’
This to Sarah, as though no child could be capable of answering for herself.
Trying to be helpful, Alex said, ‘I’m eight.’
A roguish smile from Miss Tossall. ‘I hope we don’t think we can read, too?’ Again to Sarah.
‘Only in English.’
The smile vanished. ‘Please, Mrs Armstrong … Have pity on the poor teacher, hmmm?’
They said goodbye to Luke, who said he would be fine, but with a doleful face as he contemplated this first step into a new and unknown world.
Doleful faces, too, as Alex and her parents walked back to the wharf. ‘I’d fetch him back for sixpence,’ Sarah said.
‘He has to go to school,’ Charlie told her. ‘How will he get ahead in life, without an education?’
‘Is that what you call it?’ Sarah knew he was right but was reconciled to neither school nor teacher. ‘I’d like a penny for everythin’ Luke learns in that place. “We shall undo the damage”,’ she mimicked savagely. ‘Get me outta here before I go back and strangle her.’
And bang went her boots on Brenda’s deck, and bang went the pots in the galley. And by and by the boiler as well as the woman had raised a head of steam and out into the current they went.
Sarah stood in the stern and watched until Niland was hidden by a bend in the river. ‘Stupid old school,’ she said, and went into the galley to make tea.
The boat seemed empty without Luke. After tea, when they were moored for the night, Sarah looked at Luke’s things still scattered about the saloon. She sighed, collected them and put them away in a drawer. Many times she had ticked Lukey off for making too much noise, or not sitting still, but now she would have given a sovereign to hear him rampaging around the deck.
She went and sat down in the saloon with Charlie and Alex and Elsie. She shook her head and sighed until at length Charlie looked at her over the top of the newspaper he had bought in Niland.
‘You’ll get used to it. And so will he.’
‘It’s not Luke I was thinking about.’
‘What, then?’
‘This Integrated System … What’s that, when it’s at home?’
‘It must be the way they teach ’em. The children are all different ages. Stands to reason they gotta have a system, or the children will end up dunces.’
‘But Luke knows it already. You saw how he sh
owed that woman up, when she asked him those questions.’
‘Maybe he did. But it’s gotta be done and that’s an end of it.’
Charlie went back to his paper, while Sarah glowered and Alex and Elsie sat very still and tried to make themselves invisible.
‘Integrated System,’ Sarah muttered, scowling. ‘I’d integrate her, given half a chance.’
The next few weeks were an empty time for Alex, too. Every night the cabin was full of echoes, and for the first time she wanted a night light when she went to sleep. But Charlie had been right. No-one forgot Luke, of course, but little by little they grew used to his not being there.
Nevertheless they never passed Niland without going ashore to see how he was doing. It seemed he was doing fine.
‘And Miss Tossall?’ asked Sarah of her enemy.
Miss Tossall, it seemed, had tried to rub him out but hadn’t succeeded and now she left him pretty much alone.
‘Do you read much?’
‘Just the teachin’ primers.’
Which made Sarah fret still more, but Luke didn’t care; he’d never been much for reading.
‘But does Miss Tossall teach you anything?’ asked Alex, when she had a moment alone with Luke. It wasn’t easy to ask, because Luke would be eleven in a few months’ time and was almost a man. But she asked anyway.
‘No,’ he said shortly.
‘What happens, then?’
‘I sit there all day. When school’s over, I go down to the boatyard. I watch the men working,’ he said with his first hint of enthusiasm. ‘I learn lots of things there.’
‘But what about school?’
‘What about it? I’ll stay there till I’m big enough to leave. Then I’ll come home.’
‘Doesn’t seem much point,’ she said.
‘There isn’t no point,’ her brother said. ‘It’s just somethin’ you gotta do.’
Meanwhile Alex’s education on board Brenda continued. She read what she could — Sarah managed to get hold of some books by Dickens and some poems by a new bloke called Lawson — and ran the gauntlet of Charlie’s mental arithmetic exercises.
But most of what she learnt had to do with the river.
Charlie taught her to steer the boat.
Sarah objected. ‘She’s too little.’