Eagle on the Hill

by JH Fletcher

  Because we are the people we are.

  ‘Of course, it’ll give you the chance to have a look over Eagle on the Hill,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Pooh!’ said Sarah. ‘As though I care about that!’

  How many times had she said she wanted to see inside the Grenville house? But Charlie said nothing.

  Next morning they tied up at Grenville’s wharf. They could have walked but, remembering past incidents, Charlie thought they should keep Brenda handy. Just in case. By ten to ten Charlie was ready. Sarah was not; she had spent the last two hours dressing and undressing, dressing and re-dressing, losing her temper with this dress and that, with herself for no longer being the thin wand of youth that Charlie had married all those years ago. It might still feel like yesterday to her, but the mirror gave the lie to that. If wishes were deeds she’d have instantly shed half her weight, or disappeared altogether.

  ‘It’s no use!’ She threw down her brush in despair and turned to Charlie, strangling in his high collar. ‘You go if you must. But I’ll stay here.’

  ‘But it was your idea! If it’d bin up to me, I’d have sent Saul on his way last night.’

  ‘You’re used to dealin’ with ’em. That Mrs Trask you told me about, one look at me and she’ll send me round to the kitchens.’

  ‘You think the Grenvilles are so much better than we are?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘You think we should be ashamed of ourselves?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘You say you want us to be friends. How’s that gunna be possible if you won’t even visit ’em?’

  ‘But they’re rich.’

  ‘And so am I.’

  ‘Come on …’

  ‘I’ve got you. Which makes me the richest man in the world!’

  How could Charlie have brought himself to say such a thing? Imediately he felt stiff with embarrassment, but the words were out. Their truth stood shining in the light.

  ‘You’re not so bad yourself,’ Sarah said with a smile. And she chucked on the nearest dress, and it looked just right, and threw her brush at her hair, which behaved itself. All because Charlie had said what he had.

  She squeezed her feet into her shoes. ‘C’mon,’ she scolded him, ‘what you waitin’ for?’

  They strolled up the slope towards the house. The queen herself could not have been more stately, but Sarah watched the façade of the great house growing larger and more intimidating and wondered once again what she was doing here.

  Charlie saw a man moving quickly away between two rows of vines and was after him at once.

  He caught up with Baxter and grabbed him by his grimy collar. ‘You bastard,’ he said and, shook him like a rat, while despairing Sarah looked in turn at her brawling husband and the house from which the incident must be clearly visible.

  ‘Charlie! Let ’im go!’ she implored.

  But Charlie did not. ‘You fired a gun at my family, you mongrel! What you got to say about it, eh?’ And he cuffed Baxter so that his teeth rattled in his mouth. ‘Try that trick again, I’ll chuck you under my paddlewheels!’

  He booted Baxter’s backside and sent him stumbling between the vines. Then he dusted his hands together and came innocently back to Sarah, as though nothing had happened at all.

  What a start.

  Yet the stone façade of the house — ‘As stony as George Grenville’s heart,’ said Charlie — now seemed less menacing than before. Perhaps, Sarah thought, it too had been cowed by Charlie’s ferocity. They walked on up the slope, Charlie’s hat sitting primly on his head as though he wouldn’t raise a finger at a fly.

  Money was a funny business, she thought. By some folks’ standards she and Charlie weren’t badly off. They had their own boat and were planning to buy a share in another one; they owned a block of land on which one day they would put a decent house; their daughter was attending a toffy school in Adelaide. Yet it felt as though they had nothing at all. Whereas the Grenvilles …

  She had to face it: she was scared by what they were doing at this instant. Yet what was it? Paying a social visit, by invitation, on a neighbour. She’d heard that George Grenville had started life as a shopkeeper, like Petal’s father, or like Petal herself, come to that. All of them had been born in the same way, would die in the same way. So why should there be any difference?

  We are what we think we are, Sarah thought. If I believe I’m equal to the Grenvilles I am, and them being able to buy and sell me a hundred times over don’ matter.

  Well, it was an interesting theory.

  They went through the gate in the stone wall that separated the house from the rest of the estate.

  ‘Good view,’ Charlie said.

  They stood for a moment and looked back at the river shining between the trees.

  ‘You know what I’d like to do?’ Sarah said. ‘Go on a boat.’

  ‘We live on a boat.’

  ‘A real boat, Charlie. One that takes you over the seas. I’d like to see more of the world than the dear old Murray.’

  ‘You’ve seen the Darling, too,’ he pointed out. ‘And the Murrumbidgee. We’ve been to Adelaide. When you were a kid you went all over …’

  ‘I’d like to see the world.’ For a moment she was tempted to stretch out her arms to embrace her vision, to hug it to her nervous heart. ‘To see everythin’ there is to see.’

  ‘When our daughter marries her millionaire,’ Charlie grinned, ‘perhaps he’ll pay for our tickets. Or maybe Rufus Grenville will. Now’s your chance; why don’t you ask him?’

  ‘Don’t laugh at me, Charlie. There’s so much in this world. I just want us to enjoy it while we can.’

  ‘In the meantime let’s enjoy Eagle on the Hill. Let’s pretend it’s ours and that paddle steamer down at the landing belongs to some poor bloke who earns his crust by sailin’ up and down, up and down, while we sit up here and sip tea and think important thoughts.’

  ‘I don’ wanna be rich, Charlie. There’s too much trouble in it. An’ I was never one for thinking. But I’d dearly like to travel on a boat.’

  ‘An’ be seasick.’

  She stuck out her tongue at him. ‘Why should I? I was never sick on the Murrumbidgee.’

  And across the lawn they went and up the steps to the terrace, where the dreaded Mrs Trask, in black dress and white apron, was waiting to greet them.

  CHAPTER 61

  Martin was well settled in college now. The normal lessons he tolerated, but it was music, as always, that fulfilled his dreams. Music and more music, each challenge a joy, each success a triumph. Yet he knew there would always be more challenges, more joy, that his union with music was permanent, filled with delight and humility. The music tutor was excited by his extraordinary talent and was already talking of a career that would bring glory not only to Martin but also to the college.

  And always, every night, Martin shared all he had discovered — of life, of himself, of the music that was both — with his memories of the dark-haired girl.

  She will have forgotten me, he told himself.

  Of course; how could he expect anything else? Yet his belief in his destiny insisted she had not.

  It was a wet Sunday in chapel when Martin first discovered that Alex was also a pupil at Regency College. Those pupils of the music faculty who were sufficiently advanced in their studies took it in turns to play the organ for the Sunday morning service. Today it was Martin’s turn.

  He went down the aisle to take his seat on the console of the organ. He was barely conscious of the shuffles and sneezes, the smell of damp cloth that surrounded him. Already his mind was moving ahead of his body, busy with the score, anticipating the organ’s power bursting into triumphant life beneath hands and feet, when he glanced up at the gallery at the back of the chapel where the pupils of the girls’ school sat in prim purdah. And found himself staring straight into Alex Armstrong’s eyes.

  He could not credit what he was seeing and stopped in mid-stride, as thoug
h he had walked into an invisible wall. It was for no more than a fraction of a second, but time enough for him to feel the current, intense and dangerous, that leapt across the gap separating them.

  It was a sensation stronger than anything he had experienced before. Perhaps his emotions had needed the interval of separation to mature; perhaps it was simply that he was older, his feelings riper now than they had been a year earlier. All he knew was that she was fifty feet away from him yet so close that he could have reached out his hand and touched her.

  In that moment of awareness, so brief that he doubted whether anyone else would have noticed it at all — but she would have noticed, he was sure, she would have been aware — he could not tell whether her expression had changed or not. Either way, it was unimportant. What mattered was that she was there.

  He sat on the organ bench, his hands reaching for the stops, his fingers for the keys, and sonorous Handel erupted into the damp air. The music reverberated among the shadowed rafters, echoed off the chapel walls. His heart rose with the music. He offered the sound to Alex, he laid heart and head and spirit before her. The music and his feelings bound them as one together.

  Because Alex had come. And the world had changed.

  CHAPTER 62

  ‘Miss Hetherington?’

  The principal was at her desk, and busy with papers. She looked up. ‘Yes, Samantha?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Hetherington, but something’s happened. I don’t like to bother you, miss, but it was my grandmother’s, you see, and it’s all I’ve got to remember her by.’

  Miss Hetherington put down her pen and fingered her nose delicately. ‘Samantha, what are you taking about?’

  ‘Girls, I am sorry to tell you that something is missing from Samantha Wilson’s locker. If anyone has borrowed it, perhaps as a joke …’

  Silence.

  ‘I see.’

  Lockers were being searched even as the head teacher was speaking. Miss Dorcas came scurrying, worried and a little breathless. She whispered in Miss Hetherington’s ear. The head looked grave. She dismissed the school but raised her voice as the pupils rose in a muted hubbub of excited voices.

  ‘Alexandra Armstrong. Remain behind, please.’

  Samantha and Claire winked at each other and giggled. That was how to fix the competition. Cut it off at the root.

  The gold links poured snake-smooth from one of Miss Hetherington’s hands into the other. ‘Alexandra, how did this pendant get into your locker?’

  ‘I dunno nuthun ’bout it. I never seen it before.’

  Nuthun. Miss Hetherington noted it but for the moment was concerned with more serious matters.

  ‘Then how do you explain its presence in your locker?’

  ‘Somebody musta put it there.’

  ‘And why should they have done that?’

  A shrug. ‘Don’ ask me.’

  Miss Hetherington turned and walked to the window of her room. Swallows were roosting below the eaves of the building; they flew, squeaking and swirling, through the bright air as she watched.

  Alexandra’s first response had been interesting. Most children would have been alarmed but this child did not seem to care one way or the other.

  Miss Hetherington cared. Miss Hetherington was troubled. She had an instinct for gels. Alexandra was a child with an over-vivid imagination; she was stubborn, too, and had a rebellious streak, but she was not a thief. Miss Hetherington would have staked her reputation on it. Even if she were wrong and the child really had stolen the wretched pendant, she did not believe for a moment that she would have been foolish enough to leave it in her locker, asking to be discovered. Because that was another thing she had noticed about her new pupil. Alexandra, it was evident, was very bright indeed. Never would she do such a thing. Nor did she seem to care about trinkets like the pendant, which was worth no more than a few shillings at best. No, it was impossible. Which raised other, even more troubling, questions.

  She turned and walked slowly back into the middle of the room.

  She looked at Alex, who had not moved but stood staring at her.

  ‘Thank you, Alexandra. You may go. Please ask Samantha Wilson to come and see me.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Hetherington?’

  ‘This is yours?’ she asked Samanatha, holding out the pendant.

  ‘Oh! Oh, thank you, Miss Hetherington. Thank you so much! Where did you find it?’

  ‘It was found.’ She looked at this monstrous girl, who she was convinced had set up the whole episode. ‘That is all you need know. You may go.’

  ‘But it was taken from my locker —’

  Miss Hetherington did not answer. Had Samantha been innocent she would have been happy to have recovered the pendant. As it was, she seemed more interested in the question of blame. Exactly as Miss Hetherington had thought.

  Samantha’s face was a podgy scowl. At last she gave up and turned away.

  When she was at the door Miss Hetherington spoke again.

  ‘Be very careful, Samantha.’

  Alex was crowded by her friends’ questions. ‘What happened? What did Miss Hetherington want to see you for?’

  ‘Nothing happened. Someone tried to get me but it didn’t work.’

  Someone — she had her own theory about who it was, but for the moment she was keeping it to herself.

  Yet Samantha’s locker was emptied one morning during assembly, its contents subsequently recovered from the rubbish pit, while Claire, standing in front of the school and governors to sing the solo that a modest voice and her father’s immodest wealth had decreed she should give, found the pages of her music glued together. The problem was not resolved by the tears of rage and humiliation with which she fled from the hall.

  It couldn’t have happened to a nicer child. Alex’s reputation among the girls climbed even higher.

  Oh yes, nerve had its uses.

  It was nerve that made Alex regard the out-of-bounds rule not as a restriction but an opportunity.

  She stared at her roommates in disbelief. ‘You’re telling me you’ve never done anything about it? Nothing at all?’

  Alex was not her father’s daughter for nothing. Secrets existed only to be discovered. Locked doors were meant to be opened. Late that night, shoes in hand, Alex tiptoed barefoot down the gloomy stairs, with her two friends behind her, as bold as squeaking mice, yet determined not to miss what might be Adventure.

  The main door that was never to be opened stood before them like an invitation to the gallows.

  ‘It’ll be locked,’ squeaked one of the mice.

  She was right. Alex tugged at the handle. Nuthun doin’.

  Alex’s fumbling fingers explored the lintel but it was no use. The key must have been hidden away.

  Other doors might be more amenable. They searched, venturing further and further from the stairs and the refuge of their own room, with Alex reluctant to accept defeat and her friends following in a twitter of frantic fear, but to no avail.

  ‘Sickening,’ Alex said.

  Still, every problem had its solution. If the doors were impassable, there might be another way.

  Back to their room they went. Alex tested the window, while her friends quivered in terror and moonlight flooded the night with its silver radiance. Through the glass she could see a sloping roof, steep as an avalanche, down which it might be possible to make their way.

  ‘It’s so far!’ whispered Griselda, voice trembling in time with her knees.

  ‘It’s so steep!’ whispered Annie.

  ‘It’s not too bad.’ Steamboat Alex could not permit her royal blood to be cowed by such trivial obstacles. ‘C’mon.’

  She heaved and hauled at the sash window, which yielded in a screech, like a pig with its throat cut.

  ‘Shhhh!’

  Out Alex went into the cold air, with the mice following, quivering in paroxysms of terror.

  The cold slope was wet with dew.

  ‘It’s terribly slippery!’

 
‘Shhhh!’

  An inch. Slip. Another inch, with Alex’s nightdress rucked so high that her bare and chilly bottom was squashed against the bare and freezing slate.

  ‘It’s cold!’

  ‘Shhhh!’

  Another slip. Then a slither, threatening catastrophe.

  ‘Help!’

  A hand grabbed, took hold. It did little good. Now all three of them were slithering. A broken slate checked Alex, who checked the others. They gasped, clutching each other.

  ‘C’mon!’

  And down they went again, little by little, while an owl hooted beneath the dizzy sway of the moon and the cold slates chilled them to the core.

  They reached the edge and looked over. There was a drop. Six feet or a little more. Alex looked in either direction. The moon shone white upon the glass of the dilapidated greenhouses but directly beneath her all was dark and still.

  She turned, taking hold of the guttering. She lowered herself full stretch and let go. She put on her shoes. A minute later the others joined her.

  Keeping to the shadows, she scooted around the corner of the building. Ahead of them the moonlit grounds opened up.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Griselda whispered.

  ‘The creek’s over there beneath the trees,’ Alex said.

  She had planned to break into the boys’ section of the school but every window they had passed had been closed tight. She had no doubt that the doors would also be locked. But the grounds themselves were out of bounds, weren’t they? Which meant they had already succeeded in defying authority. The creek, where the pupils sometimes swam under close supervision, would round off a successful adventure.

  ‘C’mon!’

  They raced across the moon-bright turf into the shadow of the trees. The surface of the water glinted, rippling in the moon. Its voice whispered in the darkness.

  ‘Let’s swim!’

  Alex kicked her feet out of her shoes and yanked off her nightie. Her skin gleamed ivory where the moonlight touched it.

  ‘You’re going to swim naked?’ Annie was shocked; bodies were for hiding.