by JH Fletcher
He left Alex in the wheelhouse and clambered down the ladder to the deck, where the men were already shifting cargo. It was a well-organised team and they cleared the decks quicker than he’d expected, passing the crates from one man to the next and stowing them soundlessly in the waggon, while the rising wind set the trees tossing and the river gurgled softly among the reeds.
Charlie listened to the voice of the wind and turned to the man directing the crew. ‘They could creep right up on us in this and we’d never hear ’em.’
‘We got watchers out, like always. They won’t get close.’
In half an hour the load was ashore and the hatch covers back in place. Charlie, standing on the riverbank, watched closely as McKinley’s man counted the money into his hand.
‘Good night’s work for you. Easy money, eh?’
Hardly that. His fingers closed on the cash and thrust it into his pocket.
A whistle sounded from the undergrowth. There was an explosion of confused movement, voices yelling, shadows charging out of the darkness, someone bellowing orders.
So much for the watchers.
Charlie spun on his heel, waving his arms furiously, yelling up at the wheelhouse, where Alex’s pale face was staring down at him through the glass.
‘Outta here! Go! Go!’
Thank God he’d thought to tell them what to do if things went wrong.
He heard the bell ring twice. The engine roared in reverse. Customs men were racing across the clearing, trying to board the steamer before she could escape. The paddles stirred into life, turning slowly, then faster. Brenda began to move. The bow slithered back down the bank.
The first customs men were almost there. Two more had Charlie by the arms. He made no attempt to resist, standing and watching helplessly as …
‘Go! Go!’
… A glint of water opened between the bow and the bank. The paddles churned the river, revolving at full speed now as Brenda drew away from the shore, with Alex at the wheel as so often in the past, but never like this, never in a race against arrest …
Two customs men were up to their thighs in the river, trying and failing to grab hold of the hull as Brenda backed away into deep water.
They had lost her. The men holding Charlie’s arms were cursing along with the rest.
A skirmish had broken out near the waggon. Frightened by the commotion, the horse was rearing and tossing its head. Any minute now it would break into panicked flight. Men were running to hold it, the night swarmed with curses, yells, the furious eyes and glances of thwarted men — and Charlie took a deep breath, thrashed his arms violently against the men holding him, broke free and ran for the bank.
Yells behind him, orders: ‘Stop ’im!’
Instinct took hold. He jinked as a pistol fired. Jinked again. A second shot. He heard neither round. He reached the bank and flung himself head first into the water. He just had time to think Here we go again as the current sucked him down.
He swam as fast as he could underwater, and came up with lungs bursting and the darkness turning red before his eyes. He was well out in the stream and being swept downriver by the current, but ahead of him Brenda was positioned exactly where he’d instructed, with a network of ropes trailing over the sides.
What women I’ve got, he thought. Thank God for them.
The current brought him to one of the ropes. He grabbed it and twisted it around his wrist. The cold was beginning to bite, but he ignored it and hauled himself in. Hand over hand, hand over hand, until he reached Brenda’s side. Arms reached down and seized him. He braced himself, feet firm against the hull, and came over the side in a tumble and crash, water flowing off him in torrents, to lie sprawling and gasping like a landed cod on the deck.
Safe.
Sarah was bending over him. ‘Charlie, are you all right?’
He grinned up at her and repeated what he’d said before the landing. ‘I’m too old for this caper …’
But he was all right, Brenda was all right, Sarah and Alex were all right. And he still had the money.
There were bound to be repercussions. It had been a cruel night for the McKinleys. Eight men lost, as well as a complete cargo; it would take months for them to recover, and with talk about federation between the states, rumours were that the smuggling game might soon be a thing of the past. The loss could not have come at a worse time and McKinley wanted to know whether Charlie was willing to hand back some of his fee for the night’s work.
This time they did not meet in the pub but in Brenda’s saloon. Charlie offered McKinley a beer. They sat on either side of the table with open bottles in front of them and stared at each other.
‘Pay you back?’ Charlie said. ‘Why should I do that?’
‘I agreed to that fee because I thought I could just manage it. It was going to wipe out my profit, but you needed the money so I was willin’ to help out, for old times’ sake. Now the cargo’s gone an’ I got families to help. I’m lookin’ at a heavy loss. I thought you’d want to do your bit. Seems only reasonable to me.’
Charlie drank and wiped his mouth. ‘You agreed a fee for the job. Not my fault the wallopers was waitin’ for us.’
‘I’m not sayin’ it was. But one good turn deserves another.’
Charlie finished his beer. He put the bottle down on the table.
‘No,’ he said.
Samuel’s shadowed eyes studied him. ‘I wouldn’t want to think we’d never do business again.’
‘We never shall,’ Charlie said.
‘You said that before.’
‘I’m sayin’ it again. Mate, I’m sorry the way it worked out. But it wasn’t my doin’. And, like you say, I need the money.’
‘A goodwill gesture? Hundred quid, perhaps?’
Charlie shook his head.
‘You’re a hard bastard.’
‘Goes with the territory. The answer’s no.’
After McKinley had left, Charlie told Sarah what the smuggler had wanted, and how he’d answered him.
‘Will there be trouble?’
‘I don’ think so. Sam McKinley’s a businessman, not a bushranger. But I doubt he’ll deal with us again.’
Which suited Sarah just fine. ‘So now we can pay off the bank? Oh Charlie, it’s such a relief! I feel I can breathe again at last!’
‘And you’ve still got the land.’
She shook her head. ‘Many’s the time I’ve cursed myself over that land.’
‘Maybe you should offer it to the Grenvilles,’ he teased. ‘Let ’em put their factory on it.’
‘After all we bin through? No chance! It’ll be nice to build a proper house there some day,’ she said. ‘Just for you and me. Once Alex has left home.’
‘I know just the thing,’ he told her. ‘A bolt of hessian and some corrugated iron.’
‘I daresay I could manage it again, if I had to.’
‘And do what? Live on grapes?’ he grinned at her.
‘You’d think o’ somethin’.’
* * *
It was such a pleasure to pay off the bank. Not so much to be free of debt as to see the expression on the bank manager’s face when he handed over the money.
‘There is no need to redeem the full amount.’ Horace Pegler was quite tearful about it; loans meant power over other men’s lives. To watch their faces as he took away hope and joy, even life itself, sometimes … There was no greater pleasure. ‘I’m sure the directors would be agreeable —’
‘Every penny,’ Charlie said. ‘You bastards aren’t never gunna have a handle on me again.’
And waited as Horace wrote a reluctant receipt. Charlie read it through twice before putting it in his pocket.
‘And the papers,’ he said.
‘Perhaps, for safekeeping …’
As long as the security remained there was hope of recapturing him; loans were a constant temptation.
‘I’ll take ’em now.’
So that hope, too, was lost. A sad day indeed for
banking.
Charlie went back to the wharf. Sarah was watching from the deck. She came running to meet him.
‘Safe,’ he said, and laughed, swinging her round. They danced round and round together, careless of the amazed eyes of passers-by.
‘Safe!’ Sarah repeated, tasting it.
What a glorious day! They would celebrate, Charlie and his two brave women, who had saved the day for them all. Who had been so strong, so brave, so wonderful. What a glorious day!
1897
CHAPTER 77
A fortnight after Christmas, Rufus gave his son some news.
‘I’ve heard from Dr Horrocks at the Music Academy in Sydney.’
‘Oh yes?’ Martin watched his father warily. Beyond the window the blue sky trembled with heat.
‘It seems that quite by chance a vacancy has come up at the Academy. Dr Horrocks writes that he has had such good reports about you from the school that he would like you to start straightaway. Provided you satisfy the entrance criteria, of course.’
They both knew there’d be no problem with that.
To Martin it was a shock. Exciting, of course, but still … Alex’s face watched him from the shadows.
‘Why can’t we leave the arrangements as they were?’
‘Because it is such a wonderful opportunity. It shows how much they think of you. And it means you’ll graduate almost a year earlier than you would have done otherwise.’ Rufus forced a light laugh. ‘You do want to be a pianist, I take it?’
‘You know I do. But —’
‘Then there’s nothing more to be said, is there? I’ll write and let Dr Horrocks know.’
Martin walked down to the river. In the distance he could see a paddle steamer coming. His heart jumped but a second look showed him it was not Brenda.
Heart and mind warred within him. As long as he could remember, music had indeed been his life. It had been his steadfast companion, more to be trusted than people, so much more fulfilling than the tick and tock of his daily existence. It had been the life within his life, infinitely precious. It had compensated for the friends he did not have; it had been consolation for loneliness, for knowing himself to be different. It had been the glory and promise of the future.
And now there was Alex. He loved her. So simple, yet so complicated. Because if he went to Sydney …
When would he see her again?
Yet how could he not go to the Academy? It was what he had worked for. Prayed for. It was impossible to do anything else.
I shall go to Sydney, he told himself. I shall explain to her what’s happening. She’ll understand. We shall be apart but together always. She will know she is, will always be, my life. It doesn’t matter that we’re going to be apart for a little while, because what I’ll be doing will be for both of us. At the end of our time apart, we shall find the life that has always been ours, waiting for us to claim it. We shall travel the world together. We shall be one.
But first I have to take this initial step.
So he wrote to her. The letter took him a long time, and when it was finished, he was still not satisfied with it. It said none of the things he wanted to say. It seemed foolish to mention love, so he did not. He stuck to the facts, because that seemed the best way. He had wanted his letter to be like a tree, full of life and green leaves. Yet at the end, when he read it, it seemed not like a tree at all but as empty of life and feeling as a scaffold. Yet he sent it anyway, not knowing what else to say.
A week later Alex received Martin’s letter. She opened it eagerly. Sarah watched as her daughter’s lips raced down the page. She saw Alex’s face turn as grey as ashes.
‘What is it?’ Sarah asked anxiously.
Silently Alex proffered the letter. Sarah read it.
… There has been a change of plan. Following discussion between my father and the Academy, I am going straight to Sydney. Afterwards, in all probability, I shall go on to Europe. So I shall not be returning to Regency College. But I shall write …
‘Oh Alex, I’m so sorry ...’
Sarah put her arms around Alex, yet could not help wondering whether it might not be for the best.
CHAPTER 78
At the beginning of February, Alex returned to college in a mood of abject despair.
Her days were empty but for the pain of separation, to which she woke each morning and which accompanied her until dusk. Her last thoughts at night were of Martin and how long it would be before she saw him again.
Yet separation was not the worst of it. His letter had been so cold and formal. She was afraid that his new life had carried him away from her forever, or that when he came back — because he must, surely, if only to visit — he would have lost interest in her.
If he had not forgotten her already. That was her worst fear of all.
‘I know you feel sad at the moment,’ Sarah had told her when she had left her at the beginning of term, ‘but it’ll pass.’
Her words were well meant but did nothing to help.
As the weeks progressed, Miss Dorcas wondered whether Alexandra Armstrong might perhaps be ill. Her antics last year had been a trial, but now that Alex’s high spirits were a thing of the past the teacher worried about her more than ever.
She spoke to Miss Hetherington about it.
‘I suppose you could call it an illness,’ the headmistress said. ‘Don’t you recognise the symptoms? Alexandra is in love.’
Gels were always falling in and out of love. Generally it meant little. Most of these tragedies, accompanied by despair and floods of tears, were hormonal in origin and passed quickly, often within days.
Alex was different. There were no histrionics, no threats of suicide; instead there was a weariness in the face of each bright day that was far more worrying.
At least it had not affected her work, which was, indeed, better than ever. From the first Alex had been one of the college’s brightest pupils, already a medal winner. Miss Hetherington nursed dreams of seeing the child’s name in gold on a wooden board in the College’s great hall, as one of the first generation of women to gain admission to university. Yet Alex seemed to gain no joy even from such a brilliant prospect, as she had before the holidays. Her work was done: so. This book and that were read: so. The marks were awarded, with Alex Armstrong’s name always at the top of the class. All this, yet to look at her was to see a life lost in the shadows between hope and dread, and to know that what happened at the college now meant nothing to her at all.
CHAPTER 79
Sarah found it an uncomfortable business, having herself and Charlie alone again on the paddle steamer. Once it had been all she had wanted from life, but now it didn’t feel right. Having Alex back at school and no-one to help her meant extra work, but she didn’t care about that. It was loneliness for her children that troubled her, and a sense of futility.
Even the cat conspired to make her sad.
Tibby Slippers was old and moth-eaten now, and spent nearly all her life asleep.
Sarah inspected her. ‘Wearing out,’ she said. ‘Poor old thing.’
She remembered how it had been when she had arrived.
‘A cat!’ Alex had said, and had run to it. Cat and child had stared wide-eyed at each other. ‘What shall we call her?’
‘Cat,’ said Luke.
‘Or Dog,’ said Charlie.
‘You can’t call a cat Dog,’ Alex protested.
‘Then when it rains we could say it’s raining Cat and Dog,’ he replied.
Luke liked that, and laughed raucously. ‘Cat and Dog! Cat and Dog!’
But eventually they had called her Tibby Slippers. Now Tibby Slippers’ time was running out. Sarah had grown used to having a cat and would not feel right without one.
She made inquiries one day and came home with a basket. In the basket was a tiny bundle of grey fur and needles. It sprang out when Sarah opened the basket and stood quivering.
‘Here comes trouble,’ said Charlie.
The kitten leapt si
deways, a breath of smoke blown by the wind, and was still again. Sarah reached out her hand. The kitten batted her and fled, while Tibby Slippers slept on, uncaring of usurpers.
Sarah called the kitten Queenie, after the real queen.
Maybe Tibby Slippers had given her the feeling …
‘I feel so old,’ she told Charlie that evening over tea. Queenie was curled up with Tibby Slippers. Around the table, the empty chairs mocked silently.
‘Old?’ Charlie tried to laugh her out of it. ‘You look pretty good to me.’
Her expression did not lighten; it would take more than Charlie’s flattery to cheer her up.
‘I don’ seem to have lived at all, yet I’m an old woman already. Where’s the time gone? I’ll tell you. Into the river, and nuthun to show for it.’
Charlie came around the table and put his arms about her. ‘Not into the river,’ he said. ‘Into life. My life and yours, Luke and Alex’s lives, too. Nuthun to be ashamed of there, surely?’
‘But I feel so old.’
‘You’re forty. That’s not old, for Heaven’s sake.’
‘It’s not young, either.’
‘The century’s ninety-seven. The Queen’s getting on for eighty. It’ll be time to talk when you’re as old as she is.’
‘I’ll have turned up my toes long before that.’
Sarah sighed, and felt restless and discontented in the saloon’s golden lamplight. Beyond the window the darkness pressed against the glass.
Charlie rocked her and spoke softly into the greying curls. Don’ mention that tonight, mate, he told himself, whatever you do. ‘I’ve a fancy,’ he said, very close.
‘For what?’
‘I’d like to take an old lady to my bed tonight. Right now, if she’s willin’.’
‘An old lady?’ She looked at him, eyes very wide. ‘You mean any old lady will do?’
‘The older the better, mind.’
‘Perhaps you’d like her to have the flesh rottin’ off her bones?’