by Dave Freer
“Er…” The officer stuck his finger in his collar. “I need to consult with the duke, Your Majesty…on, uh, another matter.”
“Spit it out, man,” said Ernest.
“The strike force. They’re in trouble, Your Majesty. Some of them managed to break out of the tunnel, and the flying wings are hunting them. That’s all we know, Your Majesty. Transmission ended abruptly.”
He would never have thought it possible, but Lampy had fallen asleep in the cab of the Puffing Billy. They’d given him some of that laudanum stuff. He didn’t like it. It had grog in it. They’d also made him a space to lie down with his foot up. He’d contributed a bit to the stories being told to the driver and engineer, telling about the work on the prisoner railway and people dying there, telling about escape and crossing the desert with Jack. Leaving out his spearing the soldier…and then the dark, the voices, the clickety clack of the rails…he’d fallen asleep. He’d only awakened, feeling muzzy and a little confused, when they came into Sheba. The way the driver was blowing that whistle would have awakened the dead.
It seemed to wake enough people in the station. “Call out the militia!” shouted the driver who had a voice to carry for miles. “The British are coming!”
And things got a lot noisier from there. A little later Lampy noticed a Westralian cop, a sergeant, pushing through the crowd, a big feller with ginger hair. Lampy was worried by what was going to happen now, what the bloke would do about a blackfeller in his mob’s uniform. But there wasn’t exactly anywhere to run, even if he could have run. And he reckoned these two, the girl and the copilot, weren’t going to stand back and let the bloke get too rough.
What he wasn’t expecting was to be saluted. He fished the papers out of his pocket and held them out to the bloke. “They made me a special constable,” he said warily.
“Good-o,” said this sergeant, smiling broadly. “You’re supposed to salute me back, Special Constable.”
Lampy did, hastily, nearly dropping the papers, standing awkwardly on his bad foot and hurting it, wincing a little.
The sergeant noticed. Lampy soon realized there was pretty little he didn’t notice. “I think we’d better get you to the hospital.”
Linda must have overheard that. “Yes! He’s got a broken leg. He shouldn’t be standing on it,” she said. “Oh, hello Sergeant Morgan. This is Lampy. He saved Clara’s father and led us to the station to bring warning.”
The sergeant beamed. “Your parents are going be very, very relieved, Miss. But he’s Special Constable Lampy to you. I’m going to see him to the hospital. There’s a ward for the Westralian Police.”
Lampy looked at the scene, at the people. “I wouldn’t say no to a bit of tucker, Sergeant. But I don’t need no hospital. Just gimme a horse and a rifle, because there are a lot of them bastards coming.”
Lampy didn’t realize that his voice had carried above the hubbub.
There was an odd silence. Then someone said, “Blooming ’eck. That’s a tough copper.”
The Sergeant grinned. “You’ll get them, Special Constable. But I still want two strong fellows to help Special Constable Lampy to the hospital to see the doctor first.”
Lampy got six, and there must have been thirty volunteers.
He got a plaster cast, food, and had to wait. About three hours later, or so it seemed, the sergeant came in person to take him to the barracks to collect a rifle and a horse. The underground town at Sheba was big enough to ride them around in.
“The flying wings are on their way. And a clanker of more Westralian Mounted Police from Alice,” the sergeant reported.
He looked at Lampy. “You did the WMP proud down there. And I’ve been talking to the copilot of the flying wing. You and I need to have a talk when this is over. You’re an answer to my prayers, I reckon.”
Lampy had been on patrol, put in charge of ten whitefeller militiamen as the dawn had come up, and he’d seen the first flying wings arrive.
He hadn’t really found out what happened until they were relieved by regular soldiers. He’d been glad to go to that hospital then and rest with his foot up and with nurses fussing about him, just like he wasn’t a blackfeller.
Sergeant Morgan had come to see him that afternoon, after he’d had a good sleep. The pain was just a dull ache, and he was getting pretty tired of being in the hospital already. They’d treated him well, it was just…lying there.
He saluted the sergeant first, this time. The sergeant saluted him back. “The doctor said there is no reason to keep you here, and seeing as the people at Dajarra did such a good job stopping the invasion before it got here, all we have is patrols, and I’m off duty. I thought I’d take you down to the WMP mess and we could have our tea and a natter.”
Lampy was grateful to get out of there. Hospitals smelled. “So they stopped ’em did they? Good mob, them submarine blokes. That Tim said he’d speak to the captain for me if I wanted a place with ’em,” he said as they walked. The sergeant had brought him a pair of crutches to use, and it wasn’t that easy or fast. Still, they said he’d need another plaster-of-Paris cast in two days, once the swelling went down, and he was not to put this one on the ground.
“As it happens, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Special Constable. Ned—Edward Pascoe—the copilot, came and had a long talk with me. He was recommending that you should be asked to make that uniform permanent. To join the force properly. It’s something I agree with him about.”
“Me? They just gimme this to stop anyone shootin’ at me,” said Lampy.
“That’s the other thing I needed to talk to you about: righting old wrongs. He told me about that, too.”
They walked down the ramp to a doorway with the WMP dingo badge on it and went inside. It looked like a good tack-room…with tables and a bar. The sergeant helped him into a seat and got him another to put his foot on. “Can I shout you a beer?” said the sergeant.
“Don’t drink. Don’t do grog at all, mister. Sorry.”
The Sergeant smiled broadly. “I’m going to pull out all the stops to get you into the force, Special Constable Green. I’m sorry I called you Lampy earlier. I didn’t realize it was your first name.”
“Everyone calls me that.”
“No. When you’re in uniform, your friends call you that. Everyone else calls you ‘sir,’ or by your rank and surname. It’s respect. We need it. And so do you. Although, after talking to Miss Darlington and Ned, I think I’d be proud if you ask me to call you Lampy one day. But I’d like to make you Constable Green first. We, the Westralian Mounted Police, need you, firstly because of what you’ve showed you can do, and secondly because you’re aboriginal.”
“On’y half. Ma was from the Tialatchari people. But I’m a blackfeller, yeah.” It was odd having this held up as a reason to join the police. The entire thing was crazy. They probably wanted him as a tracker, if anything. He wouldn’t mind that so much, but…
“We need you because…hell,” said Sergeant Morgan. “Let me explain. I got called on to investigate the case in which some railway-men, drunk and ‘hunting,’ were reported to have shot an aboriginal man, near Boulia.”
“Me uncle.”
“I couldn’t find the body. I couldn’t get a single aboriginal tracker to help me. I couldn’t even get anyone to talk to me. The witness who reported it said there had been a boy with the man. I couldn’t find out from any of the aboriginals in the area who was missing, who this boy might be. I wanted to see justice done. I wanted to help. They wouldn’t even talk to me. With the end result that the murderer got off, and the man who’d stuck his neck out to report it got hounded out of Ceduna and treated as a liar. They won’t talk to me, but they would have talked to you.”
“I was that kid, Sergeant. You know that from the copilot, eh? My people just thought they was protecting me. The police don’ help us and we don’ trust them.”
“Which is why we need you. I’ve been talking to my boss, Colonel Clifford, in Ceduna alrea
dy. He’s agreed to let you work with Inspector Johns and me, if you’ll take it on. And our first task is reopening that case at Boulia. Your uncle.”
Lampy was silent, transported back to that place, to his anger and his fear. He only came back when someone put a plate of good-smelling mutton in front of him. He sighed. “I will show you where to find my uncle’s body, but I can’t be no policeman, Sergeant Morgan. I’m…I’m a thief. And a murderer. That’s why I was in jail in Queensland. And I speared a man. A soldier.”
“It seems you know what right and wrong is, son. Where did all of this happen? In Queensland?”
“Yeah. Well, the soldier was when we was running away.”
“That’s a different country, Special Constable. And you’re entitled to use force to defend yourself and your country from invaders. But tell me about it.”
So, while the food grew cold, Lampy explained how when he came back from the desert his father had sunk deeper into the grog, and in with this new woman. How he was sent out to bring home a sheep every few weeks. They’d eat, and the rest would go for alcohol.
“Which is why you don’t drink,” said the sergeant.
“Yeah. Me dad wasn’t a bad bloke until he’d been drinking. I don’t want to be like that. When he had the booze in him he…he used to be real wild. I come back one night with the mutton…and he was beating up that woman of his. She got away and was screaming for help, and she run to me. Me dad…I tried to stop him. He tried to hit me with the axe from the woodpile, and…we was wrestling for it and we fell over. Cut him here. On the neck.” Lampy shuddered. “He bled a lot, and some coppers come in with his missus. They heard her screaming as she run off. And then his missus said I done it. And I did do it.”
The sergeant looked at him and nodded slowly. Lampy felt dreadful, but the effects of that old nun back at the mission school were still with him. “So it ain’t borders that matter, see. I know what I done. And I know I killed him.”
“Let’s get you some hot food. That’s gone cold. And some tea,” said the sergeant. “Let me tell you this. I was pretty sure we needed you in the force before. Now I am absolutely certain we do. Firstly, I doubt if any jury in Westralia would convict you, and certainly I wouldn’t, and secondly, well, you will blame yourself, no matter what we say. Putting you in jail didn’t fix any of it. You already know the difference between right and wrong. But as a serving policeman you can square that against your conscience. Because you already have saved more and better lives than you blame yourself for. And there is lot more of that work to do.”
Lampy sat there as new food was brought. Not talking, just thinking, eating, and drinking tea.
At the end of the cup he said, “Reckon you could call me Lampy.”
“I think you can call me Tom, then, Lampy,” said the sergeant, holding out his hand. “The pay is terrible, but the food’s not bad. And your uniforms are free.”
“It’s good tucker. I’ll talk to Jack about it,” said Lampy, feeling strangely light and at ease, but not quite ready to jump, as he shook the big hand. What was it his uncle had said? Yeah: “When the water looks nice, it’s got crocodiles.”
That hadn’t stopped either of them from swimming.
Linda had been a little nervous and surprised by her stepmother’s reaction to that relatively short phone call. She’d been hugely grateful to the copilot for organizing things in the underground mining town. She might have known how a respectable young lady behaved in Ceduna, but she was a lot less knowledgeable about how one coped with Sheba. Where one ate, slept, and how one got home. Fortunately, Ned had taken this into his hands, starting by speaking to her father. He’d arranged for her to spend the morning recovering at the home of the mayor’s wife, one of the few women in Sheba, at least of the kind her stepmother would approve of, and to fly back to Ceduna with an empty troop carrier going back for more men. He’d said he’d see her at the riding school…sometime.
“I’ve rather let riding slip, since growing up on the farm,” he’d said cheerfully. “So what days do you go, Miss Darlington?”
She’d still been wary about the response she was actually going to get at home. What she hadn’t expected was for her stepmother to run onto the airstrip, beating her father there, and hug her so hard and then simply refuse to let go of her.
Her father had to content himself with patting her on the back when he arrived.
“I didn’t think you’d miss me quite that much, Stepmama.”
“I don’t think she slept after we heard the wing had been attacked,” said her father. “Now, dears, we’ve got to get back. The jarvey is waiting.”
They began to walk, her stepmother still holding onto her. Some inner demon prompted Linda to say, “But I thought it would be better for you without me around. You’d have Father to yourself.” It was said lightheartedly, but she’d always felt it.
Her stepmother stopped dead, jarvey waiting or no. “Linda…I thought you knew. I married your father because he had a daughter. I can’t have children of my own, dearest. You were the nearest I was ever going to get.”
“Your stepmother was one of the most courted women in Ceduna,” said her father. “She could have had any one of half a dozen suitors. But she proposed to me. It was a leap year, mind you. I thought it was because I was a handsome fellow. But she told me that you needed a mother and she needed a daughter, and she’d put up with me for that.”
“Oh, Max. It wasn’t quite like that!”
“Close,” said her father, tugging his moustache and smiling.
Linda was silent for a while, absorbing this. Then she hugged her stepmother. “I feel I’ve been such a bad daughter after that. I thought…well, everyone says things about stepmothers. I’ll try to be better. Tell me when I’m not.”
“The only thing I would ask is for you to call me ‘Mother’ sometimes. And, of course, to have grandchildren for me.”
“Just not quite yet!” said her father. “And it would be nice if we knew who…”
Linda’s stepmother put a hand protectively on her shoulders. “That’s for us to know and deal with, and for you to stay out of, Max. Isn’t it, Linda?”
“Er…” Linda really wasn’t too sure how school was going to go after the stories that would get around from all of this inevitably started behind her back. “Yes. Thank you…Mother.”
She wasn’t prepared for her stepmother to burst into tears and hug her again even more fiercely. Or for her father to say, while handing over a handkerchief, “Dry your eyes, my dear. We have to get along to the court.”
“Court? Am I in trouble?” asked Linda. Had the subpoena arrived?
Her father smiled broadly. “No, your st—your mother is. She’s up for assaulting your last boyfriend in the street. The doorman declined to press charges.”
Nothing ever ended quite tidily, or all at once, thought Clara, as she prepared the cups, saucers, small plates, and cake forks for tea in the guesthouse. The loose ends in Westralia were going to take quite some time to tie up. The Imperial soldiers who had been trapped in the tunnel were still, some of them, being hunted in the desert. Their vehicles had been destroyed, but there were a lot of men on foot out there. The aboriginal trackers were now in high regard and higher demand. The soldiers came out of the escape hatches when given the chance to surrender, but that had been a ruse. Their sappers had blown a hole and let nearly two thousand of the three thousand escape…only the flying wings had been overhead by that stage, and their lumbering trucks were easy targets.
Then the Cuttlefish crew all had to get out of Dajarra—which was now cut off with a wrecked tunnel and a desert full of desperate soldiers around it.
They’d had to stay put there for two days, on guard and wary, before a troop of Westralian soldiers arrived to relieve the place. Linda had already gone south, but was waiting at Mandynonga station to meet them…along with half of Ceduna, it seemed. She was very firmly between her stepmother and father, holding their hands.
&
nbsp; “I want to introduce you to my mother,” said Linda with a sparkle in her eye. “The popular jailbird.”
It was odd to see how Linda had changed—and how the relationship with her stepmother had changed, too.
“Oh, you…” said her stepmother, blushing furiously. “The nice policeman said he only did it because he had to.”
“She poked the doorman at Discovery North in the tummy with her parasol. And she chased Nicky out into the street and pulled his trousers down and spanked him with it. The parasol was exhibit A,” said Linda, proudly.
“The magistrate was very understanding,” said Linda’s stepmother. “Linda is my daughter. I had to deal with that poisonous little toad.”
“And ask her if people didn’t carry her out of the courthouse on their shoulders.”
“It’s because I have a heroic daughter. There was a piece on the front page of the Westralian about her ride,” said Mrs. Darlington, obviously so proud.
“That was all Ned’s fault. The copilot,” said Linda airily.
Clara wondered if there’d be secret letters there, too.
Her father still looked like he’d been given a piece of pretty glass that had turned into a diamond, though.
Clara had had her own share of the court system of Westralia. Discovery North Railroad, it appeared, had badly needed to finish the line. Really, really badly, and not just because it had a nasty managing director, but because it was on the verge of bankruptcy. Building the line was very expensive, and they’d done some shady things. And when the line suffered a serious hold-up, and creditors started demanding money, it had all fallen apart—and the audit had been all the Westralian police had hoped for so far. It would be a little while before powerful businesses would start riding roughshod over people. But that was too late for Clara. They’d already charged her with theft.