by Paul Howarth
Footsteps crossed the atrium: the houseboy bringing a silver platter of food. He saw Tommy and slowed, motioning toward the drawing room door.
“Excuse please, mister.”
Tommy stood rigidly. He flushed and touched his face and hid his bandaged hand. “We’ve met,” he said. “Before—what was your name again?”
“Is Benjamin, mister.”
“I’m Tommy.”
The houseboy kept his eyes down. “Excuse please, Mister Tommy.”
Tommy didn’t move. Building himself up to ask. “Where are you . . . I mean, who are your people, Benjamin? Where are you from?”
He frowned, then a cautious smile broke on his face. “I from Big House, Mister Tommy. I been always living here.”
Tommy stepped aside. Benjamin opened the door. Sudden silence in the room, then Sullivan sighed and said, “Thought you were the bloody missus. Come on in, son, come on in. Get yourself a drink.”
They were all there. Sullivan, Billy, Locke, Noone. Standing by the fireplace with drinks in their hands, the Christmas tree sparkling alongside. All were washed and shaved and dressed for the meal: Sullivan in a black dinner suit, Noone a starched dress uniform, Billy in a suit also, his hair slick and back-combed, and Locke in clean trousers and white shirt, his arm cradled in a fresh white sling.
Tommy edged into the room. Benjamin was offering the platter, but Sullivan waved him away, and he placed it on the sideboard and left. Tommy watched for some acknowledgment as they crossed, but Benjamin kept his gaze resolutely down.
“Get yourself a brandy,” Sullivan called. “That decanter there. After two weeks of that other shite it’ll do you good to have a proper drink.”
Two weeks. It had only been two weeks.
Sullivan chuckled to himself and all watched Tommy move toward the drinks table and do as he was told. He picked up the glass and joined them, standing between Billy and Noone.
“Look,” Sullivan said, “I might as well say, no one blames you for going off a bit out there. It’s done with, forgotten, you came through in the end. The bush can do strange things to any bloke. We all go a bit off sometimes.”
“Speak for yourself, John,” Noone said. “It was rather pleasant, I felt.”
More laughter. Sullivan continued, “What matters is we won. The bloody Kurrong—we’ve never been able to shake ’em, been after ’em for years. We’re all better off because of it. The cattle, the land . . . you two included, I mean. We’ll get to all that later, but Glendale’s yours if you want it, get the place going again. It’s exciting times, boys. The future’s in our hands now!”
He raised his glass and the others did the same, and the crystal clinked softly as it touched. They held the pose, waiting; Tommy lifted his glass and gave a mumbled cheer. Billy was grinning wildly, his cheeks flushed and his eyes already glazed, and Noone arched his eyebrows and inclined his head at Tommy, like this was all just a grand old game to him, and he was much amused.
* * *
Christmas and New Year had passed while they were gone, and Mrs. Sullivan had saved the feast. Pheasant, turkey, ham from a boar, carved and the joints broken loose, three steaming platters along the length of the dining table. Sullivan was seated at one head and Noone was at the other, with Mrs. Sullivan on her husband’s left, Locke to his right, and Tommy and Billy facing each other either side of Noone.
There was little conversation at first. The men gorged on the meat, rich and moist and thick, and though Tommy had doubted his appetite, the meal had him gorging too. He struggled with the cutlery. Couldn’t grip with his left hand; the fork slipped when he used it, the silver tines screeching on the china plate, and Billy scowled across at him as if only just noticing his brother was two fingers short.
“Tommy, just use your hands,” Mrs. Sullivan told him. “Put the cutlery down.”
“I’m alright, thank you.”
He glanced shyly at her along the table. Her eyes were soft but insistent. Tommy laid down his knife and transferred the fork to his right hand, stuck a lump of boar, and took a bite from the edge. Mrs. Sullivan smiled and went back to her meal, then as an afterthought added, “You too, Raymond, of course. If that shoulder’s bothering you still.”
Locke dropped his cutlery with a clatter and pounced on a pheasant leg. He tore into the meat, mumbling, “Much obliged, ta.”
Mrs. Sullivan nodded primly and smoothed the napkin on her lap. “You know, I probably shouldn’t ask, but what on earth happened out there? How did the two of you get so badly hurt?”
“Native speared him,” Sullivan said, nodding at Locke, who lifted his eyes in acknowledgment, then went back to his bone. Sullivan shook his head, added, “Useless bastard had a free shot and only hit a dog.”
“Got him in the end, though,” Locke said, chewing. “Got him in the end.”
She turned her head slowly. “And you, Tommy? Your hand?”
Noone lifted a finger to silence him. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Sullivan, but it’s really quite a gruesome tale. Such is the nature of the task, unfortunately, and we are talking about savages, after all. Not the kind of conversation suitable for a lady, and certainly not at her own dinner table. But I must congratulate you on this supper, and at such short notice too. It really is a marvelous meal.”
She held his eyes, a fixed but pleasant smile. “Thank you, Mr. Noone. The kitchen are responsible, but I’ll accept on their behalf.”
She sliced through a baby potato and popped a piece in her mouth. There was a silence. The silver tinkled the plates. Sullivan poured himself more wine and sent the bottle down the table, and when it came to him, Tommy filled his glass. He offered the bottle to Noone, who frowned and nodded for him to pour. Tommy did so. Billy slid his glass across the table but Tommy set the bottle on a mat. Billy glowered at him and poured his own wine.
“So are you married yourself, Mr. Noone? Any family of your own?”
All save Mrs. Sullivan paused. She went on eating in her delicate, precise way. Noone laid down his cutlery, dabbed his lips, took a sip of wine, then lowered the glass and affected a quick smile.
“It’s kind of you to ask after them, Mrs. Sullivan. Thank you.”
“How old are your children?”
Sullivan patted her wrist. “There now, Katherine. Leave the man in peace.”
Noone raised his palm, took another drink of wine. “No, no, we must talk about something and it’s preferable to the last line of inquiry at least. I have two daughters, Mrs. Sullivan. Ophelia and Bryony. They are, let me see, twelve and nine years old.”
“Two daughters. Beautiful. If only we were so lucky.”
Sullivan coughed and said quickly, “Problem with daughters is they grow into wives. Pity the poor bugger comes asking you for their hands.”
Again Noone forced a smile. Mrs. Sullivan gestured to Tommy and Billy. “Two potential suitors sitting right here perhaps?”
Noone looked dead-eyed between them. “Perhaps.”
“And how do they like living out here, Mr. Noone? All the dirt and heat and flies?”
“No, they’re in Melbourne. A much more civilized place.”
Sullivan pointed his fork at his wife. “That’s where I found this one. To hear her talk about the place you’d think the streets were paved with gold, not the shit of a thousand Jimmys come fresh off the boats. I’ve never liked cities. Living arse to cheek like that, it’s not natural. A man needs space, land.”
“You must miss them,” Mrs. Sullivan said. “Being away for so long.”
“The work is important. It’s a small price to pay.”
“Then perhaps the better question is that they must miss you?”
Noone stared at her. “They understand.”
“As we all must, of course. It is an age of abandoned wives.”
She said it evenly, unaffected, but Noone’s eyes twitched.
“I provide them with a very fine life, Mrs. Sullivan. The best of the schools, house help, a substantial property in K
ew.”
She looked up sharply. “Didn’t they build a lunatic asylum in Kew?”
Locke sniggered. Noone said flatly, “Cassandra has no cause to complain.”
Mrs. Sullivan squared her cutlery on her plate, dabbed her lips, then folded her napkin and laid it aside. “Well, I have to say I had no idea policing paid so well. John, I fear you’re in the wrong field.”
Sullivan glared at her. She ignored him and sipped her wine. Locke said, “It ain’t the policing that keeps him—” but Noone clicked his tongue and Locke fell silent and went back to his food. The others did likewise. Tommy glanced along the table at Mrs. Sullivan sitting straight-backed and formal with her hands in her lap, but there was an air of mischief about her, a smirk playing on her lips. Maybe the wine had done it, but in that one small exchange she’d said more to Noone than Tommy would ever have dared. Than any of them, in fact. And yet when he thought about it she’d not really said much of anything at all.
* * *
Shaken roughly awake, he came lunging out of the wallow of sofa cushions and grabbed Billy by his jacket lapels, pulling himself upright, their faces very close.
“Easy now. He wants to talk, said to wake you. Come on.”
Tommy let go of Billy’s collar and slumped back onto the sofa, peering around the empty drawing room. The fire was low, the candles too, the windows turned to mirrors by the darkness outside. There were crystal tumblers on the tables and ashtrays of burned-out cigars: the last Tommy remembered was accepting a drink but refusing a cigar, and the drone of their voices as he fell asleep.
He coughed and cleared his throat. “What time is it?”
“Late. He’s waiting. Got a proposal for us, he says.”
Billy stood over him, his body all atwitch. Tommy’s eyes drooped and he let them close. “I don’t want to hear it,” he said.
“He says we both need to agree.”
“Fuck him. You go. Crawl in on your knees.”
“He’s giving us Glendale, Tommy. We get to keep the run.”
Tommy jerked awake and clambered to his feet, the two of them facing each other in front of the dying fire.
“Since when was Glendale his to give? What’s he want in return?”
“I don’t know. Got a plan, he says.”
“I’ll bet he fucking does.”
Tommy glimpsed their reflections in the window. Like he was on the outside and two other boys were confronting each other through the glass.
“Look,” Billy said. “You don’t have to like the bloke, but let’s at least hear him out. Everything’s different now, Tommy. Everything’s changed. You couldn’t hardly eat tonight—how d’you think you’ll go getting work somewhere else? Who’d take a cripple with eight fingers over a bloke with all ten?”
Tommy looked at his hand—that word, cripple—then back at Billy again. “Rather lose two fingers than my own bloody mind.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Means it’s not just me that’s changed. You’re blind to it, to everything, to what’s happened, to how things are between us now.”
“Which is how exactly?”
“You’ll make me say it?”
“Only way I’ll understand you.”
Tommy threw up his hands. “Fucking . . . me and you, I don’t hardly know you anymore. Laying with natives, shooting them, anything Sullivan says.”
“You weren’t no different. I counted at least three.”
“And I can’t hardly stand myself for it. You act like we’ve been out mustering, not killing a hundred blacks.”
“The law was with us. John said—”
“He’s a fucking snake, Billy. You’re going in with a fucking snake. The only reason he helped us was to get at the Kurrong; bastard’s kept Daddy under his heel for years, then as soon as he’s dead makes out like the two were best bloody mates.”
“How did he? What did John ever do to us?”
“Damming that creek for one thing, and who knows what else besides.”
“Well, might be he feels bad, or his wife might have put him up to it—I don’t care, Tommy! The bloke wants to help us so why wouldn’t we? Where else are we going to go? Me and you on the wallaby? You’d rather that than here?”
“Aye,” Tommy said. “Or on my own. Either way.”
Billy considered him carefully. “We’re all the other’s got left.”
“If you say so.”
“They fucking killed them! What else was I supposed to do!”
Tommy stepped a pace closer. “Joseph wasn’t there.”
Billy’s face twisted in disgust. “So you’re taking their side?”
“You see nothing, feel nothing . . . he’s broke you and you don’t even know it.”
Billy rolled his tongue inside his lips. A hard and steady stare. He walked past Tommy, deliberately nudged his shoulder, then marched out of the room. Tommy heard him walking across the atrium to Sullivan’s parlor. He looked at himself in the windows again. A stranger watched him back: a strange boy in a strange room wearing strange clothes.
“Tom-my!”
Sullivan’s voice. Two distinct syllables. A rising, full-blooded scream.
“Tom-my!”
He swallowed. Fidgeting his jacket hem, blinking at the floor.
“Tom-my!”
His name tolled around the atrium and through the entire house. A savagery in how he said it, a threat. Tommy started moving and the boy in the window seemed to hesitate before following, until Tommy was in the atrium and alone. In the far corner the parlor door was open, light flickering inside. They weren’t talking. Listening to his footsteps on the atrium floorboards.
Tommy presented himself in the doorway. Billy twisted in the wingback to watch him; Sullivan spread his arms over the desk.
“There he is. Thought you’d nodded off again, son. Come in now, take a seat.”
Tommy inched forward. The sconces were lit and the room was full of shadows and there was a strong smell of liquor in the air. On the desk before him Sullivan had a decanter and a whiskey glass and he rotated the glass back and forth, watching Tommy all the while. The three of them were alone. Locke and Noone were gone. Tommy lowered himself into the other wingback and Billy straightened on his. All Tommy could see of his brother were his forearms and legs.
“There now,” Sullivan said, smiling. “I know you’re a little reluctant but it’s important you hear this. Drink before we start? No? Well, probably for the best—we’ve all had plenty tonight.” He smiled, raised his glass, took a sip, and smacked his lips. “Anyway, I thought it best we got this done straight off. I don’t like drawing things out, figured you two would want to know where you stand.”
“Stand with what?” Tommy said, and Sullivan raised a pudgy hand.
“Boys, listen. I understand it’s been a bad time, and you’re not in the best of ways, but there’s more bad news coming, I’m afraid. Your father, he didn’t own Glendale. I don’t know what he told you, but it’s not a real selection in the legal sense of the word. He wasn’t the one that cleared it, or settled it, or built the house and sheds. He took on the run from someone else. Leased, not bought. And unfortunately, now that he’s gone, that lease becomes forfeit since you boys are still minors and too young to hold land. Are you following what I’m saying so far?”
He took a drink and looked at them, then nodded and went on.
“Good, because here’s the thing: Ned had run up a fair debt over the years, and that debt still needs to be paid. The only ones left to pay it are you.”
There was a silence. Hesitantly Billy asked, “What debt? To who?”
Sullivan spread his hands open then folded them on the desk.
“You see, the whole of this district, it’s mine. You get on a horse, and just about anywhere you can ride in the space of two days, one way or another belongs to me. Name on a title means nothing. My grandfather was the only bloke who dared come out here and stake a bloody claim. He cleared the land, beat o
ff the natives, got this whole valley ready to graze. They hailed him as a hero, now the wig wearers are trying to carve it all up with their bloody Land Acts. So what I do is, I dummy them. You know what dummying is? The land gets bought by my agent—he’s just a name on a deed—then I put in a man of my choosing on a short lease. I set him up with all he needs, he pays me an amount in return. Not a share of profits, mind you: I get paid out first. Should be he can make a very fine life for himself, but sometimes they do fail and I have to find a new fella to take on the run . . . but the debt, the debt stays with the first bastard, minus whatever he leaves behind. You understand what I’m saying here, boys?”
He took a drink and waited. Billy said, “What’s Daddy’s debt to us, though?”
“Everything. You’ve been living in my pocket all your short lives.”
“Meaning what?” Tommy asked him. “You want us gone? Fine, we’re gone.”
“No!” Sullivan said, laughing, slapping a hand on the desk. “I want you to bloody stay! There’s potential in the pair of you. I’m going to give you a chance. I can’t grant you a formal lease, but you’ll be selectors in all but name, run the place as your own. Course, you’ll need cattle and men, a few horses maybe, we’ll get to all that once the rains have passed. You can pay back what’s owed over time, same terms as your old man. Assuming you’d be interested, that is?”
“Yeah,” Billy said quickly. “I mean, thanks.”
“What do you get out of it?” Tommy asked.
“The debt gets paid, plus my own people on my own land. It’s not hard, son.”
“And how are we meant to feed our cattle when you’ve got the river dammed?”
Sullivan sniffed, took a drink. “That dam’s been there for decades. Ned knew the conditions. Same as I’m offering you now.”
“What if we don’t accept?”
Billy leaned forward, looked across. “Will you shut your bloody mouth?”
“He ruined us,” Tommy said, pointing over the desk. “That debt was a noose round Daddy’s neck—you saw how he was. Even scuttled us in town when Daddy couldn’t pay, starving us out by the end.” He looked at Sullivan. “Tell me I’m wrong.”