Paddy caught his breath when Annie led the horse into the stable yards. Annie's new horse was called Tara's Pride and she was no mere pony. She was a big, black mare and as sleek as a panther.
‘They don't have any side-saddles. And they won't let me ride her without one,’ said Annie, looking sulky.
‘Could I ride her? Just to see how she handles?’ asked Paddy.
Annie laughed. ‘do you know how to? You don't look like a horseman to me.’
‘There's a lot of things about me that you don't know,’ said Paddy.
Paddy put his hands on the mare's neck and then, in one swift movement, he swung himself onto her bare back. Annie watched as Paddy rode Tara's Pride around the stable yard. Suddenly, she caught the horse by her bridle.
Paddy smiled, questioningly
‘I want to ride up front.’ She called to a stablehand to help lift her onto the horse's back. Tentatively, Paddy reached around her to take the reins again. Annie's warm, sweet perfume enveloped him. For a moment, she rested one white-gloved hand on his arm to steady herself. ‘C'mon, Billy Dare,’ she said. ‘Let's see how she handles.’
Afterwards, Paddy and Annie wandered across the lawns. They passed by the rose gardens, and then climbed up into the wide grandstand. Up amongst the eaves, small birds wove in and out of the trusses.
In the shadow of the grandstand, Annie suddenly turned to Paddy, put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him. He stepped back in surprise.
‘What did you do that for?’
Annie laughed and then blushed. ‘You looked real handsome for a minute.’
Paddy laughed uncertainly. Annie looked at him expectantly for a moment and then scowled. ‘don't take it so serious. I just felt like doing it, didn't I? Don't get any dumb ideas. It don't mean anything.’
She flounced away, her white skirts swirling around her as she crossed the wide green lawns. Paddy watched her disappear and then put his hand to the place on his cheek where her lips had touched him.
34
Wherever green is worn
St Patrick's Day dawned bright and cool. Paddy was up before sunrise, pacing outside the stables of the Grand Hotel, waiting for Annie and Tara's Pride.
Annie rode out of the stables with Doc beside her. Paddy felt breathless at the sight of her. Ever since the kiss in the grandstand, just being near Annie made his heart beat faster, made every sinew of his body feel taut and hot. He thought about her kiss and tried to recall exactly what it had felt like, wishing she'd try it again.
Bridie had sewn a costume for Annie of emerald green and she wore her long black hair loose over her shoulder. She looked like a dark fairy, something from a poem rather than a real girl. Paddy couldn't imagine a more beautiful Spirit of Erin.
Paddy followed Doc as he led Tara's Pride into the street and down to St Patrick's Hall to take their place in the procession. People were flooding into the city from every direction. A huge banner of St Patrick was raised above the crowd. Everyone wore sashes of green. Men in kilts were tuning up their pipes and the bodhrans set a drum rhythm that rippled through the crowd. Paddy walked beside the Spirit of Erin float, watching Annie ride just ahead, waving to the cheering crowd like a princess.
Bridie waited at the top of Swanston Street, beaming as Annie came into view. She was wearing a new dress and a fancy, wide-brimmed hat trimmed with green. It was as if none of the terrible events of the past six months had happened – Sir Gilbert's death, the eviction, Eddie's betrayal. The weight of all those things seemed to have lifted and Bridie looked more like the feisty old woman who had given Nugget Malloy a good shaking and set Paddy on his feet.
That evening, Bridie insisted that they all go to mass at St Patrick's Cathedral to give thanks for being reunited. Paddy had always managed to avoid mass, quietly disappearing with Nugget on Sunday mornings, but this time there was no getting out of it.
Annie arrived in a long white dress, looking as if she was going to her first communion. Doc and Paddy walked a little behind the women as they sauntered up Macarthur Street.
As Paddy passed through the gates into the cathedral yard he felt a sinking sensation in his stomach and all the blood drained from his head. He wouldn't be able to enter the church. He couldn't take communion. He hadn't been to confession since he'd run away from St Columcille's. Doc looked at him shrewdly.
‘Here, Bridie girl,’ he said. ‘You and Annie go in ahead. This boy and I need to have a little talk.’
Doc took him by the arm and led him out into the street.
‘Listen, Billy, I'm not a man for the church any more. I'm sure the Lord will be happy enough to have two O'Connors thanking him without us adding to all that praise.’
Paddy laughed.
‘Sure, it's a nice town, this Melbourne, but you can tell there's been some bad business and folk have had the stuffing kicked out of them.’
‘Mum says the depression tore the heart from the city,’ said Paddy. ‘But things are getting better.’
‘Are they better for her? Living in a couple of old rooms, stitching her fingers to the bone?’ Doc shook his head.
Paddy felt uncomfortable. He'd always thought of Bridie as someone who loved her work, who laughed at the showgirls and took pride and pleasure in the fineness of her handiwork, but Doc was right. She was getting old and the rooms in Exhibition Street weren't like Charity House.
Doc led the way into an arcade in Swanston Street and up some marble stairs to the Celtic Club rooms. He ordered two long glasses of beer. Paddy looked into Doc's pale blue eyes as they raised their glasses.
‘To you, boy, with thanks. It's a grand thing you've done, bringing me here to Bridie. I was at my own club back home when I saw your letter in the Irish Times. My own sister's name in print, bold as brass. It was as if the clouds parted, son. I knew exactly what I had to do. I'll always be grateful to you for that.’
‘I don't know that I really thought it could work. I mean, when I sent the letters, it was just a lucky toss. It seems such a long time ago.’
Doc laughed. ‘It doesn't seem so long ago that Bridie and I were in the workhouse back in Ireland. I remember the night she came and told me she was going to Australia as if it were yesterday. We'd lost our brother and our parents but for me, losing Bridie, that was the greatest blow. I lost hope for a time, lost faith that I'd ever see her again.’ ‘Is that why you left Ireland? Because there was nothing to keep you there?’
Doc smiled. ‘that's a story! After Bridie left, I stayed on at the workhouse for another year until they found me a place with a blacksmith. I worked like a slave but he wasn't a bad master. He let me sleep by the forge in winter and he could see I had a way with the horses, so he didn't flog me often. Then one day, the local lord came in with his horse. It had lost a shoe and this fancy-pants wanted it fixed right away. I worked on the horse while the lord sat in the smithy's, warming himself by the forge, drinking from a jug of ale he'd ordered from the pub. Now there was a girl who brought him the jug, Maureen was her name. The most beautiful girl in the whole of Ireland. At least, I thought she was. But the lord treated her like a trollop. Disrespected her. Acted as if she were no better than a whore.
‘I can't bear to see a woman or a horse mistreated, and judging by the state of this lord's horse, he had no respect for either creature. I was only a whip of a boy, no older than you, but I wasn't going to stand for it. When he slack-jawed Maureen, I told that fine and mighty lord that there wasn't to be such talk in the forge.’ Doc laughed at the memory.
‘Did he mind you?’ asked Paddy.
‘Mind a fifteen-year-old smithy's apprentice? He brought out his horsewhip to thrash me. But I was damned if I'd let him get away with it. I took the branding iron out of the forge and split his majesty's face wide open. And then there was nothing for it but to run. There was no safe place for me in Ireland from that day. The first ship I could find – I was bound for America. I found work in New York, at the track, working as a stable lad. Best start a
boy could want. I've had a lifetime working at the track. Found my way out West later. Have my own ranch now, breed the finest racehorses on the west coast. I've had a grand life, for all the hard times.’
‘But listen, Billy Dare, I haven't brought you here to jaw on about the past. I want to talk about the future. You know that I want to take Bridie home with me, back to California, but she keeps telling me no. I don't want to stay in Melbourne any longer. I need to be getting home. I was thinking, seeing as you're like her own grandson, that maybe you'd be able to talk the old girl around. She's got no family, there's nothing to keep her here.’
Paddy, took another mouthful of beer. He didn't know how to answer.
‘We could take you with us, boy, if that's what's worrying her.’
Paddy looked away. A flock of silvery-grey pigeons winged past the arched windows. America. Doc really did want to take him to America.
‘There's nothing to hold you here,’ said Doc, leaning across the table. ‘I could give you work on the ranch. Real work, man's work, not like this errand-boy stuff you do down at the Bijou.’
Paddy blushed. As much as he loved horses, he didn't want to work on a ranch. If he explained he was waiting for the right part to come along to put him in front of the footlights, and not behind them, he might sound pathetic. And then there was Annie. The thought of being near Annie every day, for months, for years. It made his head swim. He wasn't sure if it was the beer or all his whirling emotions.
‘I'll see what I can do,’ said Paddy, swigging down the last of his beer.
Late that night, when Paddy came back from the Bijou, Bridie was still working beneath the glow of a gas lamp. She looked oddly pale and was frowning as she knotted the last stitch in the seam of the costume.
‘Mum, are you not feeling well?’ asked Paddy
‘Billy,’ she said, smiling ruefully. ‘I'm having to ask you a favour.’ She reached into her black bag and pulled out a letter.
‘This arrived this morning. And I'm worried. I'm worried ‘cause I'm not knowing what it says. I can pick out some of the words, but I can't make the sense of it.’
Paddy sat down beside her and opened the letter. It was from Eddie. The temptation to tear it up was strong, but he drew a deep breath and read it word for word.
Dear Mum,
I hope this letter finds you well. I'm writing to you from lodgings here in Sydney, where I am staying with my wife, Kate. I married Miss Kate Bowman last November. We are hoping to come to Melbourne soon, as my wife is with child and expecting to be delivered in August.
‘Oh, Paddy. A baby! Eddie's to be a father.’
We were hoping that it might be possible to stop a night or two with you at your lodgings until Kate has ascertained the exact circumstances of relations with her parents.
‘I knew he wouldn't write unless he wanted something,’ said Paddy, looking up from the letter.
Bridie sighed. ‘Can you read me the rest of the letter, Billy.’
‘That's all he says. The rest is only the address of his lodgings in Sydney.’
‘Will you pen him a reply from me?’ asked Bridie, putting away her sewing and hurrying over to the cupboard where Paddy's writing folio was kept.
‘Mum, there's something else I want to talk to you about,’ said Paddy, folding up Eddie's letter. ‘About Doc, and Annie. About going to America.’
‘Has Brandon been at you?’ asked Bridie, suspiciously.
‘Why don't you want to go with him?’
‘How can I ever be leaving Australia if I'm to be a grandmother?’ said Bridie, taking the letter from Paddy and looking at it as if it were a precious gem.
‘But Eddie's not your family. Doc and Annie, they're your kin, not me, not Eddie.’
‘Brandon has put you up to this. I've told him, I can't go to America.’
‘He only wants what's best for you. He said he'd take me too, if it meant you'd go with him.’
Bridie looked up sharply.
‘that's not why I'm talking about it,’ Paddy went on. ‘I haven't made up my mind what to do. Tom says Bland Holt has a new production coming up. I want to audition for it. If I got the part, maybe I'd stay. I don't really want to work on the ranch, I want to be an actor. It's hard for me to know what's the right decision. But it's different for you.’
‘It's not different. You want your own life. This is my life, here. I love that old man just as much as I loved him when he was a boy but I can't go and be part of his world any more than he can stay and be part of mine. And now this news from Eddie! A baby!’
‘But Doc's your family, your blood. Eddie … he's …’
Bridie crossed the room and took Paddy's hands in her own.
‘I know you think badly of him, but Eddie is as much my son as any son I could have borne myself. I loved his father and as difficult as Eddie can be, he will always have a place in my heart.’
Paddy pulled his hands away and shoved them deep into his pockets.
‘And so will you, Billy Dare. Maybe, one day, when you're as old as me, you'll understand. No matter how much you love your kin and homeland, in a long life, there are always other loves, other places that become a part of you. The memories that you store up in a place, they're as precious as gold. Fifty years I've lived in this colony. I've seen the best and the worst of it. I belong here now. Brandon's heart is in America with the life he has made there.’
Paddy stood by the window and looked out into the darkened street. He knew he'd never be able to talk Bridie into leaving.
‘Billy, you could go with Brandon and Annie. If I ask, he'll take you with him. You're young. You have your whole life ahead of you. But I have to stay with my old life and welcome the new life that's coming into it,’ she said, looking down at Eddie's letter and smiling to herself. ‘Lord knows, it's the little ones that give you hope, that make you keep faith in the future.’
Faith in the future. Paddy put his head in his hands. He wasn't sure where his future lay, his faith, his hopes and dreams were all caught up in a whirlwind of impossible longings and confusing possibilities. Suddenly, through the darkness of his indecision, he had a vision of Violet – Violet with her small, trusting hand in his and her unshakeable faith. If he left Australia, would he ever see her again?
35
The great rescue
There was a crowd of actors waiting at the stage door for the audition. Paddy leant against the warm brick wall and studied the lines of the scene over and over.
‘Well this is a jolly surprise!’ came a voice. ‘If it isn't Billy Dare!’
Paddy looked up in surprise. ‘Clancy Lytton! What are you doing here!’
‘Auditioning, old man. What else?’ ‘But what about the Bowman-Lytton company?’ ‘Washed up, I'm afraid. Perhaps Father will get a new production up later in the year, but we need some dosh to tide us over so here I am. I say, you're not auditioning for the part of Lawrence Hargreaves, the trusty young companion of the hero, are you? I wouldn't stand a chance if you were.’
‘I'll take it if they offer it, but I'd really like to play Percival Hurricane.’
Clancy laughed. ‘Always aim high, don't you?’ ‘I know I'm a bit young, but they say you have to be a good horseman for the role so they're willing to take all comers. Did you see The Scout when it was at the Alexandra? The lead in that was only nineteen. He won it because of his horsemanship as much as his acting ability. I didn't spend all those months chasing those circus ponies for nothing.’
‘Well, I must say, it would be a lark if we both got the parts we want. I'd rather like to play your mate instead of your true love. No hard feelings, old chum, but I don't think I ever want to have to kiss you again.’
It was bright in the sunlit laneway and when the stage door finally opened it took a moment for Paddy's eyes to adjust to the gloom backstage. Clancy and Paddy joined the throng of performers milling in the wings, waiting for their call. An actor was already out in the centre of the stage, reading the part of Pe
rcy Hurricane.
Paddy listened to the actor and mouthed the words himself. There was something strangely familiar about the voice. It was rich and deep and reverberated through the backstage area. Slowly, Paddy edged his way into the wings and grabbed a handful of the curtains, clenching it tightly. Eddie stood centre stage, his hair cropped short, his profile strikingly handsome.
‘By Jove!’ exclaimed Clancy, standing behind Paddy. ‘the blaggard is back. I'm surprised he'd show his face in Melbourne again.’
‘You know he's married Kate and …’ Paddy couldn't bring himself to tell Clancy all the news.
‘I know,’ said Clancy, grimly. ‘she'll never escape his clutches now.’
Eddie finished his reading and climbed down into the stalls. When Mr Holt's assistant called ‘Billy Dare’, he looked up with curiosity.
Paddy drew a deep breath. He wasn't going to let Eddie's presence distract him.
‘death has been about me since first I set foot in this dry land. I have woken with his voice at my ear, each day since I ran away to find my fortune, taunting me, telling me failure is my fate and the grave but a heartbeat away. I have been to the brink of despair. I have heard his dry whisper and oft I've thought to listen. But now, there is a new voice. Her voice, and her need. What sweetness to have found my purpose in life.’
There was silence when Paddy finished.
‘Very fine work, Mr Dare,’ said Mr Holt without looking up from his notes. Then he stood and turned to the crowd of actors who sat waiting expectantly.
‘Messrs Alec Rickards and Edward Whiteley please stay in your seats, the rest of you gentlemen may go. Your services will not be required for the moment, though Miss Coppin will be in contact, as some of you may be called upon to fill smaller roles or audition again.’
Paddy turned away, feeling the weight of disappointment heavy on his shoulders.
‘Oh, and Mr Dare. Would you please stay where you are. We haven't finished with you yet.’
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