Eagle on the Hill

by JH Fletcher

  With Will back on the barge and the two women sharing the job of engineer, there were times when life got complicated. Like when babies needed feeding, and one mother or the other was busy in the stokehold. Then it was two for the price of one, or all hands to the pumps, as Sarah put it. One mother with a baby on each breast; it made things tricky but they got by.

  While Luke, fascinated, looked on.

  ‘Did I do that too?’

  ‘You certainly did.’

  ‘Let me try now?’

  ‘Of course not! You’re far too big for that.’

  So for a while he felt shut out and might have come to hate his small sister. But that time, too, passed.

  The days, the months. Finally, the years.

  Alex was in her box. The sides of the box stood tall about her, keeping her safe. Then they were not so tall and no longer made her feel safe, but shut in. Little by little she discovered her feelings. She wanted to be free of the box, to explore. Screaming, she fought her imprisonment.

  She was anchored to a weight. She could not move it. Again she howled, but no-one took any notice. Day after day she pulled on the weight, once or twice half-strangling herself with the rope that held her.

  One day she felt the weight shift. She was crawling now, but the movement overbalanced her. She fell on her face. Again she howled.

  Later, she pulled on the weight again. And again shifted it. The weight became her enemy. Day by day she fought it. Little by little she overcame it. She pulled it a little, then further, then more still. Soon she was dragging it everywhere.

  There was a brightness, a smell of freshness, a glittering expanse of light rimmed by a distant darkness. She crawled closer, eager to inspect this new thing. Closer still. The new thing chuckled beneath her, just beyond her reach. She leant further, hoping she had found a friend. Feet pounded behind her. She was swept back into the clucking, reproving warmth.

  ‘Don’t ever do that again!’

  She heard the same voice speaking to someone else. ‘Another second and she’d have been over the side.’

  Alex was untroubled but interested. Because the world had changed.

  She was walking now. Staggering, then confident. Walking, then running. Then falling. Into the river. It was only luck that she was spotted in time. She was fished out and spanked. Stubborn as an old cod on a line, determined to spit the hook that held her, she did it again and was again fished out. She got a real talking-to this time, and was locked in her cabin until she promised to behave, while Luke scoffed, calling her a baby for falling overboard twice in a matter of weeks.

  Of course he was older, and a boy, and therefore her superior in every way. There were days when she could have kicked him. She’d have done it, too, if she hadn’t known he’d kick her back.

  He called her Chookie. She didn’t know why. He was always on at her.

  ‘Watch out for the spider, Chookie!’ ‘Watch out for the snake!’

  One day he threatened to chuck her doll overboard.

  ‘Mummy! Lukey said he’s gunna drown Mary Anne!’

  ‘Take no notice,’ Sarah said. ‘He’s just being silly.’

  Her mother proved right. Mary Anne remained undrowned. There was a raft of other incidents over the years, yet on the whole she got on pretty well with her brother.

  One day, when she was seven, Luke fell down the forward hold and gashed his head on a steel beam. There was blood everywhere. It was Alex, alerted by his screams, who found him. He’d been particularly vexing recently, so she thought it was a judgment on him. On the other hand she didn’t want him to die, so she ran to tell her mother.

  ‘Luke’s fallen down the hold,’ she said. ‘There’s lots of blood.’

  Sarah dropped what she was doing and ran. She screamed when she saw the blood, but hauled him out and ran with him to the saloon, shouting to Petal to bring bandages, a cloth, a bowl of warm water. While Luke shrieked fit to bust.

  By evening, Luke was enjoying being the wounded hero. Which, to his delight and Alex’s mortification, was what Will called him.

  ‘Quite the hero, mate.’

  Afterwards Luke was inclined to boast. For a time he combed his hair sideways so the scar was clearly visible, and gave up only when it became too faint for anyone to see. But the sense of being a hero stayed with him. He would have been lordly with Alex if he could have got away with it. But every time he started getting above himself she caught his eye and smiled and he shut up at once.

  Alex never breathed a word about how he’d bawled his head off at the time. He was her brother, after all, and like all boys, brave in patches.

  Luke’s fall changed all their lives, because it brought Elsie to live with them. Elsie, their friend — eventually — and the target of their neverending torments.

  There was room for Elsie because the brothers had decided, finally, to part. There was no ill feeling, but the change had been inevitable. Three children now, and Petal with another on the way. Too much for everyone.

  So Will took Dido as his share of the business and used her to buy himself a berth with Rod Hollinger, an old bastard who was as toey as hell, with a needle-eye for a quid. Rod was in desperate need of an engineer, after the last had told him what he could do with his job, and Will cut a deal with him.

  Charlie was doubtful about Will’s choice of partner. ‘You reckon you’ll be able to handle him?’

  But Will was confident. ‘Mate, he gives me any grief, I’ll nail the bastard.’

  Well, perhaps.

  They were alone at last. Charlie and Sarah, Lukey and Alex and Tibby Slippers. And Elsie, in some ways the youngest of them all. While Tibby Slippers, lofty as all cats, allowed them to remain on what she had always known was her own craft.

  When Alex was eight there was trouble, fortunately short-lived, between her parents over the question of trading across the Murray. There was the day when Alex watched Lukey walking away from her in his stiff new boots, heading for school and a world that for the moment was denied her. There was the day she rescued Martin Grenville from the river.

  Alex was eight, then nine, then ten. Charlie and Sarah went with her when she had a brief interview with Miss Tossall, the ogre of Niland. Finally, on 12 October 1891, at the start of Christmas term, it was her turn to follow Lukey down the road to school.

  CHAPTER 33

  The evening before Alex left, Charlie had a word with both children.

  ‘You gotta look out for each other,’ he said. ‘It’s the family way. Luke, I know you got your own life to lead but Alex don’ know the ropes like you do. It’s up to you to give her a hand when she needs it.’

  From his expression Luke was not too sure about that.

  ‘In the olden days they had knights in shinin’ armour,’ said Charlie. ‘It was their job to look out for the ladies.’

  Luke’s mutinous expression eased. A knight in shining armour … he quite fancied that. He was a bit light on armour, of course, but there might be a way.

  Alex, spying on him later around the saloon door, found him with a saucepan on his head, admiring his reflection in the mirror.

  Next morning, as they walked up the hill from the river to the school, Luke offered her a deal. Never mind what Charlie had said. Luke would walk her to school the first day, but after that she was on her own. She was not to speak to him during the day. She was not to approach him. She was free to do whatever she wanted at school, as long as she left him out of it.

  ‘You mean I can’t talk to you, ever?’

  No, he was not saying that. Out of school would be fine. Out of school things would be as they had always been. But not during the day. School, as she would learn, was different. Above all things, she was not to drag him into any discussions about life on a riverboat. She was not to mention that at all.

  ‘And watch your Ps and Qs with Miss Tossall, Chookie,’ he said. ‘She’s a terror.’

  Alex knew he was warning her to keep quiet about his accident with the forward
hatch. She had no intention of telling on him, but sensed that here she had an opportunity to apply a little pressure of her own, so said she would think about it. He scowled and tried to cuff her, but she ducked and ran away from him and got to school before he did. Where she found twenty pairs of eyes staring at this strange creature who had come pelting into their yard, with neither parent nor anyone else to back her up. Strange kids didn’t just arrive. She would have to be taught a lesson.

  Three of them — two boys and one girl who looked the toughest of the lot — were moving towards her when Luke arrived. He had warned Alex she was on her own, but she hoped he would not stand by and let her get beaten up.

  Then the bell rang, which got her off the hook for the moment, and the teacher called them into the schoolroom.

  There were four groups. Alex saw Luke join an older group on the other side of the room; there was an even older group beyond that and a younger set in the corner. Alex was pushed in with a bunch of babies and was mortified to find herself the oldest among them, so she looked like a dunce who’d been held back.

  Miss Tossall ran sprints around the room, pausing at each group in turn, setting tasks, snip-snapping questions in her nutcracker voice, tugging a cheeky boy’s hair in one case, before she came whizzing back to Alex and the babies.

  Miss Tossall had given Luke a hard time when he had first arrived; now it was Alex’s turn. She bounced a few questions off her. ‘What is the capital of England? How many shillings in a pound? How do you spell raspberry?’

  She answered them well enough, but later, when all the groups were brought together for prayers and notices, Alex got into a heap of trouble.

  ‘We like to know something about our new pupils,’ Miss Tossall said, ‘so we can make friends more easily. Alexandra, will you please come out to the front of the class?’

  Alex hesitated.

  ‘At once, miss,’ said Miss Tossall in a mean voice. ‘I don’t know how you live at home, but in this school we expect instant obedience. You understand me?’

  Yes, Alex understood. She came and stood in front of the class and felt everyone’s eyes picking holes in her, a snigger growing somewhere at the back of the group where a number of loutish boys were nudging each other. She felt a fool.

  ‘Alex lives on a riverboat,’ Miss Tossall told the children. ‘It is a rough, dirty life, so we must all be very patient with her and not laugh while she tells us what it is like to travel up and down the river on a boat every day of her life.’

  Alex thought Miss Tossall made it sound as though Brenda were a slum and those who lived aboard her the lowest of the low. Dirty, indeed! She’d been born with a tongue in her mouth and parents who had always encouraged her to speak her mind. She glared at Miss Tossall.

  ‘I am clean, at any rate,’ she said. As though suggesting that others might not be.

  Miss Tossall looked ready to go off pop at having been spoken to in such a way. ‘Just do as I said, miss. Tell the class what it is like to live on a riverboat.’

  Alex said nothing.

  ‘Well?’ said Miss Tossall, out of patience with riverboats and those who lived on them.

  Still nothing.

  Miss Tossall was beside herself. ‘Do what I tell you!’

  Nothing.

  ‘I’m warning you!’

  Nothing.

  See Miss Tossall’s eyes prowl then. Over every part of Alex’s body, inch by slow inch, burning holes in her back.

  ‘Stubborn children will not be tolerated,’ Miss Tossall said. ‘Just because you are ashamed of your background —’

  ‘Nuthun wrong with her background.’ It was Luke, who should have known better than to get into the argument. ‘My father says without the riverboats places like Niland wouldn’t even be here. Tell her, Chookie.’

  Now, that was something! For Lukey to back her up, in public, in front of his mates … Alex would have been quite choked up, if she hadn’t been so mad.

  It gave her courage to speak back at him. ‘You tol’ me I shouldn’t!’

  ‘That was diff’rent!’

  ‘But you said —’

  ‘Be silent, both of you!’ Miss Tossall’s scraggy features were rage-red. She pounded the top of her desk. ‘I will not tolerate your insolence, you hear me?’

  Alex felt this was unfair. ‘I wasn’t bein’ insolent, Miss Tossall. Only Lukey told me to mind my Ps and Qs around you and not say nuthun —’

  She was losing her flimsy grasp on grammar in her attempts to explain. Which did her no good in any case. Two strides and Miss Tossall was bending over her, breathing fire. Bone-hard fingers yanked her ear.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘I’ve had enough of you wretched gippos! Travelling up and down the river … despising decent folk … behaving like savages …’

  Each phrase was punctuated by a tug. It hurt, but Alex made the most of it, bellowing to bring down the ceiling.

  ‘Ow! Ow! Ow!’

  Miss Tossall, beside herself, was soon shaking not only Alex’s ear but her whole body.

  And Luke waded in. He went for the teacher, head down, fists going. Miss Tossall, not as flimsy as she looked, roundhoused him and sent him flying. He fell with his head against the desk with a thump that shook the building. It knocked him cross-eyed.

  The rest of the class stared in fascination. Riverboat kids fighting the teacher! It was the most exciting thing they’d seen in weeks.

  Miss Tossall had spit bubbles on her lips.

  ‘The two of you! Banned from school for one week!’ She turned on Luke. He had staggered to his feet, but his eyes were still funny. ‘Lay one finger on me again and it’s the police! You hear me? The police!’

  Alex didn’t mind being banned from school — days exploring the river or the shipyard beckoned encouragingly — but once again thought Miss Tossall was being unjust.

  ‘He wasn’t really goin’ for you, Miss. He was only tryin’ to protect me, like he should.’

  She would have explained about knights in shining armour and how the chivalrous are always supposed to defend the weak, especially their sisters, but the words were beyond her and Miss Tossall wasn’t listening anyway.

  The teacher pointed her finger dramatically at the door.

  ‘Out! Out!’

  Her voice was halfway between fury and tears. Alex, her ear still on fire, grabbed Luke’s hand and ran.

  On the whole she thought it had been a pretty good beginning. It had never occurred to her that school would be as interesting as this.

  It was impossible to keep the story from Mrs Target. By the end of the day all the town was talking about it. The streets were full of Did you hear and Isn’t it dreadful and What we’re going to do about these children I don’t know — wild as devils, some of them.

  Fortunately Mrs Target was more understanding. She knew Enid Tossall of old. She was a bitter old cow who’d been dumped ten years earlier by a riverboat engineer who’d decided at the last minute he preferred a girl with more meat on her bones. She had never forgotten it and it had turned her into a bundle of splinters. Understandable, perhaps, but it wasn’t right to take it out on kids who had barely been born at the time.

  So Mrs Target said nothing to Luke and Alex, but knew she’d have to say something to their parents the next time Brenda put into the wharf.

  Luke and Alex spent the first day of their banishment hanging about the boatyard, getting in the way and nearly being crushed by a new barge on the slipway. Eventually they were chased off by Stanley Bartlett, the owner of the yard.

  ‘Git out of it!’

  Wild as devils, some of these kids.

  So Luke and Alex wandered along the riverbank, exploring the green mysteries of the gum forest. Several of the older trees had scars where, some time in the past, Aborigines had taken pieces of bark, several feet long, to make their canoes. The children surprised kangaroos and saw a snake that slid as smooth as water into the undergrowth.

  ‘What was it?’ asked Alex
.

  ‘King brown.’

  It might have been. Luke was back to his lordly best, but even at his most dogmatic wasn’t always wrong.

  ‘They dangerous?’

  ‘One chomp an’ you’re dead. You stay away from ’em, Chooks.’

  As though she was likely to do anything else.

  On the third day they found the most interesting thing of all.

  Black faces watched from the shadows. Luke and Alex had seen Aborigines at a distance lots of times and Charlie had shown them some kitchen middens that he’d discovered in the dunes, but these were the first they’d actually met. The two white children looked at the half-dozen black ones. For a moment the air trembled, no-one sure of themselves. Alex’s hand found Luke’s, then one of the black kids grinned and the next thing they were the best of mates.

  Their new friends — with their long arms and legs and big white grins — led Alex and Luke through the forest until they came to a camp. It contained half a dozen reed wurlies, shaped like tents. There were no men about, but a number of women were sitting in the dirt. They were bare-breasted and most were smoking pipes. Luke’s eyes just about fell out. Bare bosoms and pipes: that would be something to tell his mates. There were babies, too, as fat as butter, and Alex would have liked to pick one up but didn’t dare.

  She didn’t have time, either. Urged on by their new friends, they went with them down to the river. It was shallow at this point and the black children took a length of old wire mesh and used it to round up schools of small fish, which they dragged to a nearby sandbank. Nearby they built a fire from driftwood and dry branches. When the flames had burnt down, they put the netting over the embers and grilled their catch.

  Alex thought she had never eaten anything so delicious in her life. This was living! She would have been happy never to go back to school at all. Strangely, when she suggested it to Mrs Target, she got quite a different reaction.

  ‘Living like savages? Don’ even think about it! You don’t get an education, where will you be?’