by JH Fletcher
‘Who you callin’ names?’ Harold demanded indignantly. ‘Pisspot, indeed! Yer Irish hooligan!’
Cassidy had been called worse. ‘Maybe you could put in a word for me, eh?’
‘A word for a drunken Irish breadrobate like you? You gotta be jokin’! Min’ you,’ he said, remembering himself, ‘I’m not sayin’ I done nuthun like that, anyway. I never said it. There’s other ways to make a quid, if you know the ropes. My son-in-law’s a big man on the river these days, thinks the world o’ me. Contacts in the squattin’ fraternity. Friends in high places, mate, tha’s what I got, an’ don’ you forget it.’
But Cassidy had stopped listening. ‘Hooligan’ was one thing, and a good Irish word at that, but ‘breadrobate’ was something else. It was not a word Cassidy knew, and what he didn’t know made him suspicious. ‘Yer thumbknuckle! Who you callin’ a breadrobate?’
Harold was a runt of a man and the more ferocious because of it. He gulped the last of his grog and slung the bottle into the river. ‘I kin think o’ worse, if you’d rather. Names that’d fit, too. Larrikin!’
Then they were chasing each other up and down the bank — a regular stoush, it was — while the cockeyed moon went round and round overhead and the shadows of the two drunken, galumphing men flared erratically across the trees.
The next day it was all down the river how Harold had been on a run, and the day after that Abel Jones got hold of Arthur after work and took him off to the candlelit pub.
‘We got a problem,’ Jones said.
Arthur knew it; the word had reached him, too. ‘I’ll shut him up,’ he promised.
‘Too late. The minute the blues pick him up, he’ll talk.’
‘Not him.’ But Arthur spoke without conviction.
Jones’s eyes were pools of black shadow in the candle flame. ‘Can’t risk it.’
‘He’s my dad. I can’t let you do anythin’ to him.’
‘You can’t let me?’ Jones laughed; he seemed to find that funny. ‘You done all right by us, which is why we’re willin’ to return the favour. Get your dad outta here, take him back downriver with you, we’ll say no more about it.’
‘What about his selection?’
‘Not worth hangin’ on to, is it? He ain’t lifted a finger in years.’ Jones stood up. ‘Take it or leave it. He stays on here, you’ll be fishin’ him outta the river.’
‘Maybe I could come back after I got him settled?’ said Arthur. He would miss the easy money, to say nothing of the sheilas, and Murray Mouth no longer held the appeal it had.
‘Maybe. One of these days.’ But Jones’s voice held no encouragement. With these blokes, you were either in or out.
Harold didn’t want to go. Keach’s Landing might be more weeds than vines, the shack in imminent danger of collapse, but the selection resembled freedom, of a sort, and he had reached the age where new things had no appeal. To sit with a jug handy to his chair and watch the weeds grow seemed an admirable way of passing the remainder of his life. The grog, the song of insects, the brooding presence of the silent bush, all were now in jeopardy because his mate Cassidy couldn’t keep a lock on his tongue. And apart from anything else, the land might actually be worth money.
‘Why should I move?’
‘You aren’t listenin’, are you?’ Arthur was furious but it was no use; Harold was a virtuoso at not listening when it came to things he did not want to hear.
‘It’s my place! I worked hard to build that house. Look at it!’
Look at it, indeed; but, akin to his intermittent deafness, Harold was an expert when it came to seeing marvels that weren’t there.
‘Why should I give it up on your say-so?’
Arthur was out of patience. ‘Because they’ll drown you in the river if you don’t, you stupid old bastard!’
Two days later, on his way downriver to check out the possibility of Regency College for Alex, Charlie brought Brenda into the bank below Keach’s Landing.
Arthur explained the situation to Sarah and Charlie.
‘What is it with this family?’ Sarah demanded. ‘Doesn’t anyone obey the law?’
‘What’s the law ever done for us?’ Arthur wondered.
Not a lot. But the law wasn’t the problem, McKinley’s men were.
‘You don’ mess about with these blokes,’ Charlie warned Harold. ‘They say they’ll do somethin’, they will.’
Harold looked sideways at him, licking lips that shone even in the wan light inside the house. ‘You’ll have to buy me land off me.’
Charlie tried an unconvincing laugh. ‘I’m a riverboat man. What do I want with land?’
But Sarah had always wanted a foot on the ground as well as one afloat, and that night, before they turned in, she reminded him of it.
There was a hint of early frost in the air and Charlie had a lit a fire in the pot-belly stove in the saloon. Sarah stretched out her feet in front of it as she and Charlie talked about her parents and how going downriver with Arthur might be the best thing for them.
‘People need a special kind of strength in the bush,’ Sarah said. ‘You got it. I have too, at least I think so. But they don’t. P’rhaps they’ll do better with a few other people around ’em.’
Charlie doubted it, but would not spoil the tranquillity of the evening by saying so. Instead they exchanged words casually from time to time, about the cargo they might collect at Edward’s Crossing, the prospects of doing business some day with Wilf Laird, and Alex’s chances of becoming a student at Regency College.
The boat was quiet about them, with only the murmur of their conversation, relaxed and intermittent, to disturb the silence. The hull creaked gently beneath them. It was good to be together like this, enfolded by the fire’s warmth and the comfort of their own companionship.
Like the relationship between the river and the land through which it passed, each feeding off the other, so it was with Charlie and Sarah: love given and love received, the fulfilment of being, which strengthened and uplifted them both.
‘What will happen to Keach’s Landing?’ Sarah asked after a while.
‘They’ll sell it, I suppose.’
‘Who’ll buy it, the state it’s in?’
‘That’s not our problem.’ But it was; with increasing certainty he knew it. Sure enough …
‘I want us to buy it off him,’ Sarah said.
‘What do we want with it?’
‘It was my home once. It means somethin’ to me. It was where you ’n’ me met for the first time, too. I don’ want it goin’ to strangers.’
Charlie always felt at a loss when Sarah engaged him on the grounds of sentiment. ‘But what do we do with it?’
‘Build a house on it. Then, if we ever get sick of the river, we’ll have a place we can go. Somewhere that’s ours.’
‘Brenda’s ours.’
‘It’s not the same, Charlie. Always movin’ … Sometimes it seems to me we don’ belong anywhere.’
‘You want us to give up the river?’
‘No! This is our life. But maybe, some time down the track, we’ll feel like a change. If we’ve got the block, all we gotta do is sell Brenda and settle down.’
And do what? But again Charlie said nothing.
‘There’s another thing,’ Sarah said. ‘You’ve always felt guilty about turnin’ Rufus Grenville down when he offered you a job.’
Charlie moved in his chair and half-opened his mouth to protest.
‘Don’ deny it, Charlie! You know it’s true. Not for yourself, not even for me, but for Alex, because you thought you was denyin’ her the education that might’ve bin hers. Now we’re doin’ somethin’ about that. An’ I want to do somethin’ for my parents too. And for me. Their problems are their own fault, mostly, but that means we should give ’em more help, not less. I wanna do it, Charlie. They’re not much, I know that, but they’re the only parents I’ll ever have, an’ I love ’em, drunken old rubbish that they are.’
‘That’s all good an
d fine.’ Charlie could barely remember his own father, or the mother who, after her second marriage, remained in his memory as no more than a shadow against the ferocious light of a stepfather who had dominated her, and her children, with fists and flaying tongue. ‘Money in case we go into business with Wilf Laird, money for Alex’s schooling, now money for your dad’s land … We’re not made of the stuff, you know.’
‘It wouldn’t be much.’ Sarah was not to be deterred by practical considerations. ‘Money’s for buyin’ things, after all.’
‘George Grenville would have a good laugh if he heard that.’
‘Let him. What use is it, if you don’ spend it?’
‘It’s not money that worries me,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s the lack of it keeps me awake at night.’
‘Listen to the man,’ said Sarah. ‘Keeps him awake … And him turnin’ the paddles with his snorin’.’
She thought she might have to persuade him by means other than words, which would be no burden to her at all. She snuggled closer. ‘You done so much for me,’ she murmured. Her fingers moved, pausing, then once again exploring, feather-soft. ‘You done so very, very much.’ Exploring and delving. ‘You shown me how important it is to give. And give.’ Delving and finding.
The triumphant fingers teased, felt the response gathering in his body and her own. ‘To give, an’ — an’ never stop.’ Breath and words were intermingled now, lips parted now, eyes shining, senses swimming, yielding.
‘Isn’t that right?’ sighed Sarah, close to swooning. ‘Give and never stop.’ Giving herself as Charlie’s fingers mimicked her own, stroking, feeling, exploring, while passion ran like flame through her and her nerve ends leapt in response to …
Oh, and oh, and oh.
Afterwards, heart pounding, beads of sweat on breasts and parted thighs, sundered flesh languid and rosy, she lay on the floor of the saloon, with Charlie’s sleeping head cradled in her arms, and listened with sharpened senses to the small voices of the night. The paddle steamer stirred and creaked so quietly about her, yet in the sound were all the memories that she had of her life since she had first come aboard, with Will cursing not quite under his breath as he brought her across the foam-curdled river. That first trip, and how she had waited long weeks afterwards for Charlie to come back. Their first trip together, with Dilly sending her to Charlie’s cabin, Charlie’s bunk. The night they had watched the fishermen hauling their nets; the terror she had felt watching Charlie’s fight with Jake Cousins; the storm when Alex was born. The trauma and terrors of the trial … The faces, too: Luke and Alex and Will and Petal, Alice Henderson and Martin Grenville, the boy’s eyes huge as she dumped his half-frozen body into the bath … Martin, Alex’s friend, member of the family that Charlie hated beyond all others, that he still blamed for Will’s death and all the traumas that had followed.
Why, oh why, did Martin have to be a Grenville? Why was Charlie a man who did not know how to forgive others or himself?
Maybe, with her parents gone downriver, this would be her chance to do something about it.
Sarah’s thoughts went racing.
They would buy Keach’s Landing. Alex would go to Regency College. The two families would be neighbours, and Alex and Martin would be at the same school. Surely those facts would be more important than the disagreements they’d had in the past?
Sarah shifted her body on the hard floor, seeking comfort, while Charlie continued to sleep. She was determined to do what she could to bring the two families together. Surely it must be possible, between civilised people? She would not rest until this ridiculous vendetta was buried.
For the moment, though, she would keep her plans to herself. Buy the land, fix up Alex at Regency College, and only then do what was necessary to achieve reconciliation with the Grenvilles.
Once again the faces of the past watched her in the saloon’s golden lamplight. Half-asleep, body at peace, Sarah believed that she owed it as much to them as herself to make peace between the Grenvilles and themselves.
1896
CHAPTER 57
In the end, they bought the land at a fair price, but Harold still claimed they’d cheated him.
In January 1896 the Keaches and Armstrongs sailed down the river together. Through the long, slow miles Harold’s tongue and bitter spirit belaboured them endlessly, until Sarah grew sick of it.
‘We shoulda left you to that Abel Jones,’ she said. ‘How much would we have had to pay for your acreage then?’
Never mind the storm clouds gathering over treacherous Lake Alexandrina; they carried their own tempest all the way to Goolwa.
There were some shacks overlooking Mundoo Channel, not far from Murray Mouth. It was a country of low sedges and crooked waterways where pelicans bobbed and fished, of deserted mud banks, the silence interrupted only by the clicking of crabs, the lonely crying of gulls and the booming of the distant surf. In the open channels the river ran arrow-swift and the south wind from the ocean pincered the skin of the handful of people who lived there.
Harold stared, turning on his heels as he surveyed this vision of hell. ‘What’m I supposed to do here?’
‘Whatever you like,’ Sarah told him.
She had told Charlie she loved this man, and she supposed she did, although it wasn’t always easy. She remembered the hundred times he had taken his fists to her and she had wished him dead. But love or no love, she was no longer prepared to accept any more responsibility for her parents or what they did with their lives. Unlike Charlie, she did not carry the burden of the past. She did not trouble herself with what they might have done or could have done or should have done. It was over; the burden was no longer hers.
She saw her parents into their new home, a wooden-planked house hunching its narrow shoulders against the wind, with a steeply gabled roof and a jetty sticking out into the water. She’d dickered with the previous owner herself, and got it for a good price.
‘I’ll die here, you know that?’ Harold said. ‘This place’ll kill me off. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’
Sarah thought he might just do it, too, to make her feel bad. But the trip down the Murray had made her bullet-proof. ‘You certainly would have died if you’d stayed upriver. Abel Jones would’ve seen to that.’
So Arthur went back to his fishing mates at Murray Mouth and Charlie, Sarah and Alex sailed upstream to Edward’s Crossing. With Brenda safely moored under the eye of the harbour keeper, they bought tickets for the train journey to Adelaide.
That was an experience.
CHAPTER 58
None of them had been on a train before. The twin rails ran away with a glint of steel, to become one in the shimmering distance. Sarah examined them as though they were a passport to another world. The air was acrid with smoke. She was quaking in her boots and not ashamed to show it.
‘Is it safe?’
‘Of course it’s safe.’ Charlie was determined to be patient with his wife in her most uncharacteristic fit of frailty. ‘Trains go all the way to Melbourne, nowadays.’
‘Then why doesn’t it feel right?’
‘Because you’re not used to it. But think of it! Travelling so fast —’
‘People say it’s too fast to breathe —’
‘Who says?’
‘Mrs Tungston said something when she heard.’
Vera Tungston was the witch of Niland. She was as ignorant as a pig yet thought she knew the answer to everything.
‘She would.’
They took a few paces up and down the platform, Sarah looking askance at the people they passed. No-one else showed the fear that was chewing holes in her own stomach, so why was she afraid?
‘Runnin’ on wheels, Charlie … It don’ seem right, somehow.’
‘Coaches have run on wheels for years.’
But they were drawn by horses. Horses were natural. A steel box belching smoke … what was natural in that?
‘Mr Dickens almost died in a train accident.’
‘Mu
mmy, that was years ago!’
Alex was excited, constantly craning her neck to look out for the train that eventually appeared in the distance.
Sarah held Alex’s hand, to keep her safe. Or herself safe. Because Alex, it was clear, felt in no danger at all.
Why should a young girl take all this for granted while her mother was trembling in fright? I am an old woman, thought thirty-eight year old Sarah. This new world is too much for me.
The train arrived in a groaning of wheels, the engine hissing like a cartload of snakes. Sarah climbed aboard, knees trembling. It was like passing through the gateway of hell.
‘Grit everywhere!’ She held up a disapproving finger. ‘Why can’t they at least keep it clean?’
‘It’s the smoke from the funnel,’ Charlie explained.
‘Brenda has a funnel. Are you telling me we live like coal heavers because of it?’
A jerk nearly had her off her seat. Eyes shut, she balanced on the edge and prayed for an end to terror.
Regency College inhabited a world vastly different from that of locomotives or riverboats. In the girls’ section much emphasis was placed on arts, etiquette and domestic management. Painting in watercolours was encouraged, because this was a skill admired in polite society. Instruction in bookkeeping was available for those less fortunately placed. Languages, especially Latin and Greek, were also taught, although parents were warned that too much emphasis on the academic might damage their daughters’ chances of a suitable marriage. This was the principal purpose of the college: to produce young ladies whose upbringing, in a colony noted for its lack of elegance, would qualify them for entry into the best families.
Alex, at home in a world without elegance, after an upbringing that some would have called rough, thought it was a load of nonsense. But her mother was determined that Alex should have all the advantages that she had never had. As always when she had made up her mind, Sarah won.
‘I understand you came to Adelaide by train,’ the school principal said. ‘Did you find the experience enjoyable?’