by JH Fletcher
The brothers noticed the difference at once.
The selectors’ families still came on board at every landing. They were still eager for a chat. The women and children still pored over the goods in the store. But far fewer were buying, and in most cases the men were unwilling to make a firm commitment regarding the shipment of their wool.
‘Don’ miss out,’ Charlie warned them. ‘We only got limited space in the holds. Once that’s taken, everyone else will have to wait.’
But more and more of them, it seemed, were willing to take that chance.
‘What’s got into ’em?’ Will wondered.
‘Maybe they heard somethin’ we ’aven’t,’ Charlie said.
‘Like what?’
‘Competition?’
It was impossible to keep anything like this quiet. As soon as they put into Niland Charlie heard the news: a new steamer was being fitted out at Fitzroy.
Brenda was only one of many paddle boats trading up and down the river. Each had its regular customers and for the most part no-one poached on other traders’ territory. Each was much like the rest: a family operation working on a shoestring.
But this latest vessel had a different smell about it.
For one thing the new steamer was said to be much larger than its competitors. The talk was it would carry passengers as well as freight, each in individual staterooms. The store would be twice the size of anyone else’s, the range of goods far more extensive. The holds would be capable of transporting twice the amount of grain or wool.
Yet most of the other skippers were untroubled. ‘That kinda operation costs, mate. No way they’ll be able to compete.’
Charlie wasn’t so sure. Whoever was behind it — and so far no-one had been able to find that out — was unlikely to be a fool. He would have checked out the markets and suppliers and calculated the prices he would have to charge if he were to grab a big enough share of the market to make his investment worthwhile. This new steamer stank of money, and money — on the river as everywhere else — was power.
But Charlie didn’t waste too much time wondering about it. Because the Armstrongs had problems of their own.
CHAPTER 16
For the most part the three brothers got on remarkably well. Even Will, resentful of Charlie for being able to see further than he could, played his part — with a scowl, it was true, but the brothers knew Will’s scowls and had learnt to ignore them.
But it wasn’t Will causing the problems.
Henry had never been a drinker but now he was drinking heavily. At every settlement with a wine shanty, he was ashore almost before they’d tied up. And when he came back …
‘Pissed again,’ said Will.
Snoring his head off in his bunk, or sipping with stinking breath and furtive, bloodshot eyes from the bottles he smuggled aboard against Charlie’s orders, Henry was no good for anything. It was more than a nuisance; it was dangerous. A neglected boiler could explode very easily and these days Henry was in no state to take care of it.
One clean, bright morning Henry staggered into the saloon with a sagging face and bloodhound eyes. He looked like something the cat had dragged in and Charlie decided to have a word.
‘This can’t go on.’
Henry’s hands, still grease-stained from the previous day, cradled his no doubt aching head. ‘I was wonderin’ when you’d say somethin’ about it.’
‘What’s the problem?’
‘The only problem I got, Charlie, aside from owin’ money to every shanty owner from here to Murray Mouth, is I’m sick of the whole business. I’m wastin’ me time. There’s no challenge any more.’
‘You look after the engine. Without you we couldn’t operate.’
‘You’re more’n capable of lookin’ after the engine yourself. Will could do it. The ducks in the river could do it. You don’t need an engineer, just someone to open and shut the valves and keep an eye on the pressure gauges.’
‘It’s a livin’.’
‘But for how long? If what we hear about this new steamer is true, we’ll soon be out of work, along with all the other little men. That’s what we are, Charlie. Little men. It’s the big boats that represent the future.’
‘So you want us to give up before she’s even in the water?’
‘A stick of dynamite might help.’
‘Wouldn’t do no good. There’d soon be another one.’
‘Not for her. Brenda. That way we’d have no more problems.’ Henry picked moodily at a loose splinter on the edge of the table. ‘Up and down this damn river, same faces, same scenery. I’m an engineer, Charlie. First, last, all the time. It’s all I ever wanted to do, jest mess about with engines. Build me own, maybe. Come up with somethin’ new, so I can say I done somethin’ worthwhile with my life. And it’s not gunna happen so long as I stick around here.’ He looked at his brother with embarrassment. ‘I hate the river, Charlie.’
‘I can’t do nuthun ’bout that.’
‘I’ll do a deal with you. We’ll do one more trip. Far as you like. Right up past Bourke, if you want. I’ll look after the engine. I won’t touch a drop the whole trip. When we get back, I’ll tell you what I’ve decided. And you’ll let me go, if that’s what I want.’
‘I couldn’t stop you anyway.’
‘Maybe not. But if we’re gunna part, I want it to be with good feelings on both sides. I don’ want you thinkin’ I let you down.’
‘What else is he doin’?’ Will wanted to know.
Charlie didn’t see it like that. ‘It’s no use, the way he’s been recently. And he’s right; we can manage without him. If he hates the life so much …’
‘We got no money to pay him out.’
‘Then he’ll have to wait, won’t he, if that’s what he decides to do.’
* * *
So up the Darling they went. There’d been good rains in the Outback and there was twenty feet of water at Wentworth.
‘She’ll be like Ma Arnott,’ Will said exultantly.
Charlie looked at him. ‘Meanin’?’
‘We’ll be right the way up ’er, no worries.’
He was right, at least about the river. Menindee, Wilcannia and Bourke, then higher still until they reached Collarenebri, on the Barwon. Only then did the water run out.
They were pretty sure none of them would ever get this far again, so they decided to commemorate the occasion. They picked the largest tree they could find and carved Brenda’s name, their initials and the date into the wood.
‘At least it shows we got ’ere,’ said Henry.
Over a thousand miles. It was hard to believe.
It had been a good trip, with plenty of water and customers. No-one up here had heard of the big new steamer, or the special deals her owners were offering. They never would, either. A steamer that size had no chance of getting so far upriver. In the meantime they’d sold their whole shipment of flour for more than three times the going rate — ten pounds a ton.
But Charlie was beginning to get itchy pants, thinking how far they were from home.
‘Get stuck here, we’ll never make it back.’
So they set out for the Murray. It was the middle of the day when they started downriver, but the northern skies were the colour of midnight and a succession of thunderstorms inundated every creek.
Flash floods made the Darling treacherous. They often went hungry. They had plenty of food but no time to cook it, with Charlie spinning the wheel frantically as they rounded the hundreds of bends, Henry tending the boiler and Will hauling wood to the stokehold and tying down cargo while Brenda flung herself this way and that through the racing water.
North of Wilcannia the river had burst its banks and spilt out across the flat ground, turning it into an inland sea whose shores were lost in emptiness. Following the river’s course became impossible. The current took short cuts across the bends and carried Brenda sideways into the trees, where Charlie could navigate only by following the opening in the forest canopy.
‘If the river drops now,’ Will said, ‘we’ll end up marooned a mile from water.’
Trust Will to think of that, yet it had happened to others before them.
‘Times like these, I start to see Henry’s point of view,’ said Charlie.
Although in truth he could imagine no other way of living. Which made the threat posed by the new boat, forgotten while they were up the Darling, a very real menace once they got back to the Murray.
It was blowing a full gale the night they reached the junction of the two rivers, and the next morning Henry informed his brothers that the long journey had done nothing to change his opinion of the river or the life, and he would be on his way.
‘Gunna make your fortune outta engines?’
‘Thought I’d try the goldfields. Some o’ them deep diggin’s, Ballarat way … Might be a chance there for someone in the engineerin’ line.’
Charlie watched the water’s surface moodily. The Murray was nowhere near as tumultuous as the Darling, but after the gale it was flowing strongly, heavy with silt and full of branches and the occasional tree. It seemed to him that the river was sweeping away not only the debris of the storm but also the fabric of the childhood that he and his brothers had shared in the remote sheep station where they had been raised. It was this kinship that had helped them survive the harshness of a stepfather who couldn’t wait to see them off his hands, a kinship Charlie had thought to revive by inviting his brothers to share with him in this venture.
Six months ago it had seemed he had nothing more to desire. A sound boat, a way of life that appealed to him and at least partially satisfied his need for adventure, far from the humdrum and those who sought to control his existence. He was young and strong, and had laughed in the face of a powerful enemy and got away with it. He had two brothers, very different from himself and each other, whom nevertheless he loved and whose comradeship gave meaning not only to the future but to every aspect of the life he had known since childhood. And now …
He watched the carcass of a tree, bark stripped by the workings of the current, as it was swept away by the stream.
Brothers, childhood memories and the future he had envisaged were all gone. Because for Henry it had proved to be not the life he wanted, and Henry, like Will and himself, had the right to make his own decisions.
The river flowed on, sweeping away dreams and regrets.
‘You gotta make up your own mind what you wanna do,’ Charlie told him. ‘You got my blessin’, whatever it is. But there is one problem, and I need you to help me solve it. You own one-third of Brenda and the stock. What we gunna do about that?’
Henry didn’t care. Engines, not cash, were what interested him.
‘Let’s skip it for now,’ he said. ‘If I ever need the money, I’ll send word.’
The next morning he took his suitcase ashore. A brief wave and he was gone.
‘It’ll seem strange without ’im,’ Charlie said.
‘Right,’ Will said.
Not much to mark the loss of a brother, but what was there to say, after all?
Charlie sighed. Will spat over the side. They loaded some cargo bound for Goolwa and secured the hatch covers. When everything was ready they put out into the current and headed downstream.
CHAPTER 17
So now it was just the two of them. On their next trip, with water levels having fallen even more quickly than they’d risen, Charlie and Will gave the Darling a miss and pushed on up the Murray to Swan Hill. They found plenty of customers in the upper reaches of the river, and when they turned back Brenda’s store was almost empty.
On the return journey they picked up wool from various stations, but not as much as they’d expected. Con Copper’s Titan was now in the river and making inroads into their market.
‘Stolen half our trade,’ said Will.
Stolen was perhaps too strong a word but the result was the same. Charlie soon found out why from Des Jolley. Des had dealt with them in the past and felt awkward at letting them down. Embarrassment made him belligerent.
‘We gotta make a living and Titan’s rates are half yours.’
‘Half?’ Charlie wouldn’t believe it until Des showed him the slip. ‘How can he charge so little?’
Des shrugged. ‘What you expect me to do, eh? Turn him down?’
‘At that price I’d deal with him meself.’
Yet Des wasn’t happy; Charlie had been a mate. He liked to think he still was. He looked over his shoulder at the trees, as though suspecting them of spying on him. With lowered voice he said, ‘Tell you what I’ll do …’
He’d promised Titan an exclusive, in exchange for special rates. But what were mates, if they couldn’t stick together? He let Charlie have a few bales on the side, for old times’ sake.
‘I can’t offer you Titan’s prices,’ Charlie warned.
‘Don’ worry about it.’
A good mate, Des Jolley, and what Titan’s skipper didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
There were others willing to help too. Charlie and Will collected enough freight to make it a worthwhile trip, but only just. Profits were way down, which was particularly inconvenient with Will warning that the engine needed an overhaul.
‘We’ll have to see if we can match Titan somehow,’ Charlie said.
Again and again he went over the figures but it was clearly impossible, unless they were willing to starve. Which they might do anyway, if Titan took all their trade.
They’d been planning to buy a barge to give them greater carrying capacity, but for the moment that was out of the question. Now they were not talking expansion but survival.
A month later Charlie and Will went to a meeting in Niland with half a dozen other boat owners to see what, if anything, they could do about Titan’s cut-throat rates.
‘I don’ see how he does it,’ said Max Duggan, the owner of a boat so small and so packed with children — ten, at the last count — that it was a wonder to the rest of them he found room for any cargo at all.
‘Perhaps he doesn’t,’ Charlie said.
Everyone stared at him.
Quick-tempered Jock ran stubby fingers through hair as red as flame. ‘What you gittin’ at?’
‘Maybe he’s runnin’ at a loss.’
‘Why should he do that? It makes no sense.’
‘It makes plenty of sense if he can kill off the competition.’
‘Drive us out of business, you mean?’
Charlie nodded. ‘Then he can charge what he likes.’
‘You need deep pockets to play that kinda game.’ Walt Fiske owned a big sternwheeler. He was the shrewdest of them all, might have tried the same trick if he could have afforded it.
‘You think Con’s got that kind of money?’
‘No way!’
Con Copper was a chancer; those who’d met him were agreed on that.
‘So who’s behind him?’
‘Does it matter?’ Charlie asked. ‘The question is what we do about it.’
There was some wild talk, especially from Jock Harris. Open Titan’s stopcocks was one suggestion. Sling a handful of sand in her engine was another.
Charlie had no time for such nonsense. ‘You want to end up in jail?’
No-one wanted that. But …
‘We gotta do somethin’!’
Although no-one knew what.
‘There’s still the upper Darling trade,’ Max Duggan pointed out.
Titan drew too much draught to get higher than Wilcannia but it was small consolation; the cream of the trade was downriver.
They talked and talked and achieved nothing. Finally they decided to carry on as they were. ‘We’re makin’ a livin’, after all. She’ll be right, as long as Titan’s the only one.’
The two brothers went back aboard Brenda, chewing over the meeting they’d just left.
‘No point to it at all,’ said Will. He looked at Charlie. ‘Who do you reckon’s behind Titan? Only a rich man could do it.’
/> ‘Plenty of them about.’
‘A real bastard.’
‘Plenty of them about, too.’
‘If we knew,’ Will said slowly, ‘we could maybe have a chat with ’im. Peaceful, like.’
‘Or someone like Jock Harris might shoot ’im. Which is why I don’ see us findin’ out in a hurry.’
CHAPTER 18
The meeting of boat owners was the talk of the river. It was inevitable that the Grenvilles would hear about it.
Two days after the meeting, George and Rufus held their own discussion at George’s townhouse in Adelaide.
‘I said there’d be trouble,’ Rufus told his father. ‘The prices we’re charging …’
‘I never doubted it. The question is, what are we going to do next?’ George looked at his son. His eyes demanded an answer.
Rufus writhed. He knew it was another of his father’s endless tests. As always, it made him nervous. As always, his thoughts flew out of the window.
‘Well …’
‘Do you think we should give in to them?’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Raise our prices?’
How he wished he knew what his father wanted him to say! He made a desperate guess. ‘It would head off trouble, wouldn’t it?’
‘It would also mean we’d never recover what we’ve lost! Is that what you want?’
‘No. No, of course not …’
‘Then what?’
Rufus didn’t know what. He spluttered and gulped and said nothing. While George, cold and judgmental, watched him. ‘Hire some bruisers to sort them out? Is that what you’d do?’
‘Yes. No. I … I don’t know.’
‘We have to do something,’ George pointed out.
It was no use. Rufus was helpless to deflect his father’s contempt. He could think of nothing.
‘I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,’ George said. ‘Remember what I said about picking off the boat owners one at a time?’
Had he said that? Rufus had a vague memory of something of the sort.