by JH Fletcher
‘Of course naked,’ Alex said. ‘I don’t want to get my nightie wet.’
Well no, of course not. But actually to remove the last garment between herself and the watching moonlight … Annie trembled.
‘What if someone’s looking?’ Griselda worried.
‘Let ’em!’ said Alex and plunged head first into the water. It was freezing, it wasn’t the Murray, but it would do.
Inzy-winzy footsteps from her two friends, who shivered and hugged their ribs and looked doubtfully at each other. Eventually they stripped and, eager to hide their shameful flesh, let themselves fall splosh and splash into the water. They cowered, hidden to their shoulders, while Alex, spirit and body released, thrashed to and fro across the surface, daring the moon to look at her dimples if it wished.
‘Yeah! Yeah!’
The noise of her cavorting was swallowed up by the trees and the empty spaces of the night.
As for her two friends … They found Alex’s exuberance even more terrifying that the circumstances into which they had allowed themselves to be tempted. What if someone heard them? What if someone saw them? Even the thought of such terrors brought goose pimples to chests that, at least for the moment, had little else to offer.
The water surged as Alex continued to plunge, hippo-like. Griselda and Annie clung shivering together and wished they were anywhere but here. If this was adventure, you could keep it.
Most of all they feared the laughter of derisive boys, who might come and sit down beside the abandoned nightgowns under the cruel and revealing moon. And watch. And make raucous jokes. And wait. They would die! They would truly die!
At last Alex had had enough. She emerged like a naïad from the creek.
‘Let’s go!’
The other two needed no urging but clambered eagerly into soggy nighties, which clung to clefts and furrows, more revealing than ever.
‘So wet!’ The wail of the reluctant water nymph.
At last Annie and Griselda’s ordeal was over.
The three of them dragged on their shoes, left the shelter of the trees and ran back the way they had come, across grounds drenched in moonlight.
To discover that the ordeal was not over at all, but had barely begun.
CHAPTER 63
Far from ordering Sarah to go round the back of Eagle on the Hill, Mrs Trask was almost deferential, yet the first minutes were still trying. She left Charlie and Sarah alone in the reception room while she disappeared to tell the master and mistress their guests had arrived.
The furniture confronted Sarah with a dozen walnut frowns.
What is this woman doing here? demanded the tapestry-clad chairs, their contempt echoed by tables gleaming with polish. By Turkey rugs, gilt mirrors, silken drapes, by portraits of po-faced aristocrats in fancy dress who looked like candidates for the guillotine, which, luckily for them, had never reached England.
It was impossible to breathe with such faces staring down their arrogant noses. Panic rose. Sarah walked to the window, looked out at the familiar landscape and took a succession of deep breaths. The stillness of the river calmed her. That was her place: on the familiar steamer, amid the familiar trees, beneath a shining and familiar sky.
Panic vanquished, she turned to confront the room once again. By entering this house she and Charlie had brought a breath of Australian air to a room that until now had shut it out. Guillotines came in many guises.
It was not an intruder but the harbinger of the future who turned to face the Grenvilles as husband and wife came into the room.
The Grenvilles were on their best behaviour. Rufus greeted them with hand outstretched and beaming smile, while his wife, of whom Sarah had feared the worst, was friendly enough.
Sarah remained on her guard. Where folk like the Grenvilles were concerned, she had no belief in friendship for its own sake, yet their hosts were clearly in no hurry to explain the reason for the invitations.
Coffee was brought in the famous silver pot and Mrs Grenville poured.
‘You have two children?’ Mrs Grenville asked.
‘That’s right.’
‘And Alexandra is at Regency College with our son Martin. What about her brother?’
‘He’s a deckhand on Proud Agnes with Captain Harris. We hope he’ll get his own vessel eventually.’
‘And how is Alexandra enjoying school?’
‘All right, I think. Her letters don’ say much.’
‘These children …’ Mrs Grenville smiled. ‘Martin’s no better. I’m sure Alexandra finds it very interesting.’
‘Why’s that?’ Sarah as spiky as an echidna.
‘A new way of life,’ Mary Grenville said. ‘New friends.’
Sarah wondered if it was gentility she meant. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I daresay she’ll be able to teach ’em a thing or two.’
CHAPTER 64
Alex, Annie and Griselda came around the corner of the building. The moon-bright glasshouses greeted them. The wall confronted them.
Oh, no.
The gutter, which offered the only way to climb up, was out of reach. Alex, knowing that failure — in anything — might mean the end of her reputation, was not beaten yet.
‘Bend over,’ she said to Griselda, who was marginally more stalwart than Annie. ‘I’ll climb on your back. That way I’ll be able to reach the guttering and haul myself up. Then I can pull you both up after me.’
In the moonlight Alex saw how dubious Griselda looked. She was willing to bully, if she must. ‘It’s either that or stay here all night.’ And what would Miss Hetherington say then?
With a face of doom, Griselda bent over.
‘Not there!’ Clown! Imbecile! ‘Against the wall, Griselda.’ Unless you want me to break my neck.
Griselda tried again. Alex attempted to clamber over her, while Griselda sagged, her spine like warm toffee.
‘Stand still!’
‘I can’t!’
‘You must!’
Between them they were making enough noise to wake a thousand Miss Hetheringtons. It was no use. Not even terror could stiffen Griselda’s spine. As for Annie … one look at her wilting-lily form and Alex knew she could forget it.
‘I’ll bend over and you try,’ Alex said to Griselda.
That was no good either. Griselda lacked both strength and courage. She knew she could not do it and would not try.
Hopeless.
There was a wheelbarrow by the nearest greenhouse. It was old and rickety. The way things were going, fourteen-year-old Alex was beginning to feel that way herself. Nevertheless, it might serve. She went and fetched it. Its wheel creaked like a dungeon gate.
‘Don’t you start,’ Alex told it crossly. But the barrow must have been deaf and creaked louder than ever.
Puffing and panting, she brought it to the wall. She turned it over and propped it up on its handles.
‘Why have you turned it round?’ asked Annie.
‘Because if I put it on its wheel it’ll run away as soon as I stand on it.’
Annie the Dumb. It sounded like the name of a medieval queen.
Up, then, precariously, fingers clawing the rough bricks. Beneath her the barrow creaked. She could reach the guttering easily now, but whether it would support her weight …
There was a creak. A sag. ‘Oh, no!’
Yet somehow the guttering held; damaged, it was true, but till in one piece.
‘Made it!’
Or so far, at least. Above her the steeply slanting roof shone like glass. How they would ever manage it …
One thing at a time.
She hauled Griselda up. Then Annie …
But no. ‘You’ll have to put the barrow back, or Miss Hetherington’ll know what we’ve been doing,’ Alex told Annie.
‘But how do I get up without it?’ Annie was close to tears.
‘I’ll pull you.’
A long and very dubious look.
‘Hurry up!’ Griselda was willing to speak out, now she thought she was
safe. ‘Don’t take all night about it!’
Annie’s face screwed up. Tears were a real possibility, and a danger to them all.
‘You’ll be right,’ Alex told her hastily. ‘I’ll look after you.’
How to do it was another story, but Annie was willing to believe because Alex was her only hope. She righted the wheelbarrow and walked it back to the glasshouse, its ungreased wheel screeching like a throttled chook. Alex would have kicked it, given the chance.
Annie came back to the wall, trust and terror in her face.
‘Hang on to my legs,’ Alex instructed Griselda. ‘Sit on them so I don’t slip.’
Griselda’s fat behind squashed Alex’s ankles. She stretched out her hands to the frightened girl waiting below. ‘Grab hold!’
Annie was a dead weight, doing nothing to help herself, but Alex was strong and determined. Up Annie came over the gutter and lay panting and gasping. While Alex, who had done all the work, was pretty short of breath herself.
‘Now,’ she said, looking up the sloping roof at their window. ‘Don’t either of you dare slip. I won’t be able to catch you if you do.’
Lying full length, they inched upwards, while catastrophe breathed its cold threat on their necks. One slip …
But they made it. What joy!
They stopped for a minute, getting their breath back, then went to climb in. And stopped.
The window was shut.
CHAPTER 65
While Sarah and Mary Grenville shared confidences about their children and the practical problems of keeping up a big house and a cramped riverboat — making friends as only women, God bless them, could — Rufus Grenville and Charlie Armstrong got down to business.
‘Let me show you something …’ Rufus led the way to his office. He unrolled some plans and spread them on his desk.
‘My new factory.’
His finger traced the outline of the buildings and the road that would serve them. There was also a jetty, jutting out into the stream.
‘You’ll need to be careful with that when the river’s up,’ Charlie said.
‘The engineers have assured me it’ll withstand the strongest flood.’
‘Maybe. She’ll still be under water unless you put her on pontoons.’
‘That’s a possibility I’m considering.’
‘You’ll need mighty strong cables to anchor the pontoons. And something to fasten them to.’
‘There are plenty of trees.’
‘Trees get washed away with every flood. You’d be better off with steel girders driven vertically into the ground and concreted in place. Me, I wouldn’t settle for nuthun less. Even then you’ll need some kinda barrage, to keep storm debris away from the jetty.’
‘Sounds expensive,’ said Rufus doubtfully.
‘Not as expensive as losin’ your jetty. Why do you want one, anyway?’
‘To gain access to the deeper water. It’s too shallow inshore.’
‘You’ve got deep water right up to the bank.’ Charlie looked at the plan again, then at Rufus. ‘Where you plannin’ to build this, anyhow?’
‘I really regret our previous misunderstanding,’ Rufus said. ‘If you’d only given me the chance to explain …’
As though it had been Charlie’s fault. As though Will were still alive and Pandora had never happened.
And Rufus, conspicuously, had not answered his question.
‘Where?’ Charlie repeated.
‘On what used to be your father-in-law’s land,’ Rufus said.
‘That’s my land!’ Charlie said. ‘I bought it off ’im.’
‘There’s a problem about that. I’d like to think you knew nothing about it.’
Pressure tightened in Charlie’s head. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘That land belongs to me.’
‘Rubbish!’
‘Legally, perhaps not, but there is no doubt of the moral obligation.’
‘Mate, I haven’t a clue what you’re talkin’ about.’
‘One moment.’ Rufus opened a drawer in his desk, took out a sheet of paper and passed it to Charlie. Who handled it as gingerly as if it were a bomb.
It was a letter, dated two years earlier. It acknowledged a loan of one hundred pounds from Rufus Grenville. It was for a period of twelve months, repayable thereafter at call. Should the loan not be repaid when called in, the amount owing would be discharged by transfer of the land registered in the borrower’s name. The letter was witnessed by Amos Saul and signed by Harold Keach.
Rufus was watching Charlie with his pale blue eyes. ‘Saul lodged a claim for repayment six weeks ago.’
‘He can’t have done. You don’ know where Harold is!’
‘The law requires lodgment at the last known address. In this case, the Niland post office.’ Rugus smiled easily. ‘No monies have been received, I can assure you. Speak to your father-in-law, if you doubt me.’
‘Don’ think I won’t.’
‘I’m surprised he didn’t mention it to you.’
He was not; neither of them was.
Charlie’s hackles were up but for the moment he tried to control himself. ‘I dunno how legal this letter is.’
‘It bears your father-in-law’s signature, properly witnessed. Not in proper legal form, perhaps, but neither of us wanted the expense of a lawyer’s agreement. We were neighbours, after all.’
‘How do I know he hasn’t repaid you?’
‘If he had, I would no longer have the letter, would I?’
It was enough to make Charlie spit rocks, but he suspected Rufus was telling the truth. Knowing Harold, the hundred quid would have been poured down his gullet long ago.
But there was another side to it that annoyed Charlie even more. Rufus had known what Harold was like. The agreement had been a trap to snare a drunk. And it had worked.
Or perhaps not.
Charlie’s anger was as hot as fire. ‘You’d better speak to my father-in-law about it.’
‘I would. But, as you’ve just admitted, the land has been transferred to you.’
‘I’ll find you the hundred quid.’
God knew how, but he’d do it, even if he had to mint the coins himself.
Rufus shook his head. ‘I am no longer interested in the money. It’s the land I want.’
The land that, for Sarah, carried the memories of her youth, the promise of security after a lifetime on the move.
‘Wanting’s one thing,’ Charlie said. ‘Getting is somethin’ else. If that letter’s not legal …’
‘That would be for the courts to decide,’ Rufus said. ‘I’m telling you the letter is genuine, and written in good faith. Which makes it a question of honour. Between neighbours.’
‘I had nuthun to do with it. I’ve said I’ll find the money.’
‘And I’ve said it’s not the money I want.’ Rufus tried a smile, warm and kindly, one friend to another. ‘I don’t want us to fall out over this,’ he said sincerely. ‘But the land, morally speaking, is mine.’
‘For your factory,’ Charlie said.
‘Why I want it is no concern of yours.’
‘What’s wrong with your own land?’
‘Let me show you something.’ Rufus led Charlie to the window. At the bottom of the vine-clad slope the river shone between the red gums.
‘The best view for fifty miles,’ Rufus said. ‘To build a factory there would be sacrilege. And since Keach agreed …’
Keach. As though he were the hired help.
‘It’s a question of trust between neighbours,’ Rufus said.
Trust.
Pandora’s whistle blowing in the Outback night. The flames licking the sky, the scabs running like lice. Will’s body, face down in the water.
‘You can go to hell,’ Charlie said.
Rufus flushed. ‘There is no need —’
‘I’ll find you the hundred quid. Plus interest, if you insist. But you can forget the land.’
Rufus was a picture:
cheeks flushed, white about the nostrils. ‘And this is your idea of honour?’
‘Honour? Persuadin’ a drunken old fool to sign away his property?’
‘I think we’ve said enough. Let the courts decide.’
‘I’ll fetch my wife,’ Charlie said.
Let me out of here, he told himself. Before I break something.
Savagery beat like blood in his temples. There must be something about this place, he thought. There is violence in the stones. I never come here without wanting to give someone a hiding.
But he would shame neither Sarah nor himself.
He went back into the reception room. He gave his hostess the benefit of his teeth as he grinned at her.
‘You must excuse us,’ he apologised. ‘We gotta be gettin’ back. My wife has a firebox to stoke.’
Mary Grenville looked at him in astonishment, while Sarah’s face was flushed with outrage.
Unexpended violence was as sour as vomit in his throat as he headed down the slope with Sarah.
‘What on earth were you thinking of?’ demanded Sarah.
‘Those people …’ He could have killed the lot of them.
‘I thought Mary Grenville was nice,’ Sarah said. She was furious at being so humiliated, hustled away without explanation when she had been getting on so well with her new friend. ‘I think you resent them because they’ve got more money than we have.’
‘Not that.’ Although that might be part of it.
‘What was it, then?’
‘Somethin’ Rufus said.’
‘Tell me.’
He waited until they were back on board and changing into their working clothes; only then could he bring himself to explain.
Sarah stared. ‘My dad’s land?’
‘Our land now,’ Charlie corrected her.
‘The bastard!’ said Sarah, who rarely swore.
Her eyes sparkled with anger. She was flushed and extremely desirable, the tops of her breasts swelling above her shift.
This is real, Charlie thought. To hell with the Grenvilles and their smart house, their bits of paper with a dagger in every word. This is what matters.
He stalked his wife. And caught her.
She fought him off. ‘No, Charlie … Really. I’m not in the mood.’