Liberty

  My sister began to cry, nodding.

  ‘Thank you, little sister.’ She sniffed as she dug into the pillowcase until she found our mother’s gold wedding band.

  ‘You wear this,’ she said, handing it to me. ‘Mammy may not have beaten her sickness but she fought it bravely. The English are our sickness and you should wear it to remind you of Mammy and her courage.’

  I slipped the ring onto the fourth finger of my right hand. I would not wear it as a wedding band but as a reminder ring. It would remind me of the strong, passionate, fiery blood that ran in the veins of my women.

  ‘Be safe,’ Brigit whispered as she kissed me. She tied her baby to her chest as we slipped out to the horses.

  Through the cold night we rode, down the small back lanes, all the way to the ferry dock in Bangor. My cheeks stung from the cold, and my clothes smelled like sleet and the bog smoke that filled the cold night air, churning out in light-grey plumes from the chimneys. Baby Isabella was strapped to her mother’s chest to keep her warm but we rode slowly so as not to disturb the little girl. We kept our horses to a quiet pace when passing houses and inns and gathered more speed when traversing empty pastoral estates.

  Down on the water it was colder still and the sea breeze was bitter. The smell of brine and fish slopped through the night. We saw a lantern swinging from the deck of Patrick Lonigan’s boat. It was a big, seafaring vessel and he ran it from Irish to Scottish shores regularly. He was one of the rebel messengers who secretly trafficked news between the United Irishmen and the French fleets that were promising to send us reinforcements of artillery and men once the revolution was called. He was a good man and that night, praise be, he was sober and ready to sail.

  I helped Brigit onto the boat and kissed both her cheeks and those little cherubic ones on her baby’s face. The little girl smelled like soap and milk.

  ‘I’m so very glad I made amends with Da and that you and I have come so close these last weeks, Betsy,’ my sister told me, holding my hand tight. ‘Stay safe and keep your head low when the rebellion breaks. And send word if you hear more of what became of Annie O’Neal. That worries me.’

  My heart was heavy with the memories of that day, too. Annie O’Neal was still missing. No one had heard or seen a thing of her. It was as if she had just vanished into thin air. We all knew those three redcoats had been responsible for whatever had befallen the poor woman. To keep Jack O’Neal afloat we tried to convince him that the arrival of the redcoats had simply forced Annie to flee and that she was probably lying low with some distant relatives and would send word when she could. Jack clung to that story because to think otherwise would destroy him. Will told me many times that I should shake off the guilt because I could not have known they had ill-intent.

  George came across and wrapped both of us in a big bear hug.

  ‘This business will be forgotten within months, sister,’ he said gently. ‘You tell Jimmy to grow a beard, adopt a Scottish brogue and come back calling himself some foreign name. Or we’ll come visit you in Paisley in the summer. Send word by mail when you are settled.’

  We watched as the lights of the boat grew fainter and fainter until they were extinguished like the dying flame of a candlewick, disappearing on the purple horizon. The morning star winked down from the sky, which was streaked with shafts of grey. George, Will and I rode slowly back to Gransha as the sun crept out for the day, bathing everything in a tangerine glow. I was sad to farewell my sister and my little niece, but I was happy that we had been able to give her a new start.

  As we came to the gates of our farm, we pulled up our mounts and I felt my heart give a lurching thud. Two well-dressed horses were tied up near the potting shed down the end of our long gravel path.

  ‘Will,’ George said quickly. ‘Take the spare horses and rein them out the back of your place. If we pull in here with them, it will be clear what business we have indulged in. We will get them some time later from you. Best to be safe.’

  ‘What will we tell them when they ask where we have been?’ I asked George, more than a little worried that we were about to be found out and punished accordingly. ‘We don’t know what Da has told them.’

  I did not recognise the horses. George looked as terrified as I felt. Will carefully took the reins of the riderless beasts and hurried them back down the road toward his family’s farm.

  ‘Take good care,’ he called softly. ‘Ádh mór.’

  ‘Tell them we were partying at cousin Mary’s,’ George said flatly. ‘I know that Da is smart enough to tell them nothing at all so that our stories don’t clash. He’ll say he doesn’t know where we are and that he doesn’t know when we left. I just hope Mary’s husband will not betray us. He’s riding with the Monaghan Men, but he’s family and blood is thicker than water. He’s no Englishman.’

  I did not like to point out that Connor Kelly was only kin by marriage. He had not a drop of Gray blood in his veins. But his baby, George, did, and I hoped that would count for something if and when the time came to use him as an alibi.

  What confronted us inside made my innards constrict and knot. My father was tied to a chair and his face was covered in blood. I could see that his lip was split and swollen, and one eye was completely shut and as purple and round as a ripe plum.

  ‘What the devil?’ George shouted.

  ‘Aha.’ One of the two soldiers looked at us. Both were slick with sweat and their cheeks were flushed. ‘Here they are now. Your father was just telling us that he had no idea where you two rascals were.’

  ‘Da,’ I said, rushing to his side and dropping to my knees, crying. ‘What have they done to you? This is all my fault.’

  One soldier stepped closer to me and I felt his hot form standing almost on top of me.

  ‘And how might this be your fault, Missy? Have you been gallivanting about with your sister?’

  ‘My sister? I beg your pardon, sir?’ I asked, standing to face him.

  ‘We had word your sister was staying here with you in Gransha,’ he said gruffly.

  I shut my eyes and swallowed hard. So Connor had told them that much but how much more? I decided to take a leap and make up a new story that did not rely on Connor Kelly’s familial loyalty; I doubted he could be trusted. I girded myself, looked at the soldier and lied though my teeth. I was getting quite good at it.

  ‘Is my sister not here? I left her asleep in my room,’ I said, feigning surprise.

  ‘No, she is not, and her husband, Jimmy Ballantine, is gone. Busted out of the lock-up by two unknown men.’

  I put my hands to my face and shook my head.

  ‘Oh my!’ I whispered. ‘It cannot be. Two men, you say?’

  The soldiers cast a look between themselves and then back at George.

  ‘Where have you been, son?’ one asked.

  I interrupted and answered for both of us.

  ‘I’m most embarrassed, sir,’ I said, dropping my eyes to the thick carpet below. ‘I had crept out my window to meet up with my beau and my brother came after me to haul me home.’

  One soldier sniggered.

  ‘A typical wanton Irish lass!’ He laughed.

  ‘I’ll have you know,’ George said stiffly, ‘that my father and I have trouble containing Betsy’s wild spirit sometimes but she will be locked up good and proper from now on. She’ll be married off in summer, and not a moment too soon. It’s a danger, Betsy, don’t you know, to be out on the roads at night!’

  ‘And you’ve not seen your sister or Ballantine? Not at all this early morn?’ the taller man asked, still looking unconvinced.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Oh goodness! I hope no harm has come to Brigit. She was only staying with us because she was afraid the charges against her husband might be true. Imagine! Being married to a rebel and her not even knowing it. Perhaps he came by and stole her away, kidnapped her. We should check all
the roads for her.’ I was putting on a theatrical performance worthy of the greatest actors who had ever wandered the boards of a stage. George looked uncomfortable and I guessed he thought I might have been overplaying my role.

  ‘Well,’ one said, untying my father who drooped down over his knees with relief or pain or a combination of both. ‘See you inform the nearest barracks if you see or hear a single word from the fugitives. Your sister is on a wanted list as well. See that you don’t join her!’

  ‘Was it really necessary for you to manhandle my father this way?’ George grumbled as he helped my father across to the long settee.

  ‘He fell and we were simply helping him to stay upright.’ A soldier laughed. ‘Maybe too much Irish whisky. It’s just gone sun up after all! Don’t you savages stir whisky into your porridge for breakfast?’

  Both left, full of mirth, while George and I tended to our father.

  ‘Are you all right, Da?’ I sobbed.

  ‘I’ll live.’ He moaned and then whispered, ‘Did Brigit get away safely?’

  I nodded, wary that there might still be English ears at the door.

  ‘She is safe.’ I smiled and held his hand gently, trying not to grimace at his broken face. ‘Oh, that I could say the same for the rest of us.’

  A bitterness rose up in me like gall. I hated the English invaders more than I ever had before.

  I didn’t realise how much I missed home until I saw the old FJ Holden parked in the bus stop carpark in Toowoomba with my dad leaning up against it, a pipe hanging out the side of his mouth and his unmistakeable halo of springy ginger hair that seemed charged with voltage.

  Dad gave me a once over. I wasn’t sure if he approved or not. I was wearing a floral cotton dress and a pair of brown leather sandals. I had a new, short haircut. He grinned and wrapped me up in a bear hug, lifting me off the ground.

  I looked at myself in the side-mirror of the front passenger seat and noted that I looked older than I had when Dad had driven me to Brisbane three months earlier. I wondered if he thought so too.

  The Holden rattled and throbbed along the red-dirt road. Outside, the clouds folded down over the undulating yellow fields and I inhaled the cool air rushing through the open window. I smelled dust and dirt and that familiar mix of animal dung and fertiliser. The road ahead quivered.

  ‘You look different.’ Dad smiled across at me. ‘Older.’

  So it wasn’t just me. I felt kind of pleased that he had noticed.

  ‘You’ve chopped off your hair.’

  ‘Well, I had a haircut.’ I laughed. ‘I wouldn’t use the word “chopped” myself.’

  We drifted into an easy silence and I stared out the window and continued drinking in the familiar landscape.

  It was almost lunchtime. The bus ride up the Range had been slow and steep. Out over the western hills, the sky was filling with braided clouds heralding rain. I could smell it, like metal in the back of my mouth.

  Our farm, Tobermory, bearing that name on account of the small town in Scotland where my dad was born, was exactly five-and-a-half miles north of downtown Bandaroo Flats. There, we raised two hundred head of Black Angus cattle on seven hundred and eighty acres of land.

  As we bounced over the cattle grids and headed through the wide gates, I was surprised to find that it was nice to be home. Agnes asked me all the time if I missed the farm and I always screamed noooo in response. But I did.

  Instead of taking the car around the back to the garages, Dad pulled up at the front steps of the rambling colonial homestead as if I were royalty and needed to be dropped at the entrance. He leapt out and opened my door, grinning, bowing low. I laughed and slapped him on the back as I got out. A fat splodge of rain landed on my forearm.

  ‘It’s going to be heavy,’ Dad called as he bounded up the steps with my bulging port to open the squealing screen door.

  I gave a little yelp of joy as Oscar, our black labrador, came loping down the front steps to greet me. Falling to one knee, I rustled his fur and let him slobber all over me. His tail was wagging and he was as excited as a puppy, even though he was eighty-four in dog years.

  ‘Settle down, Oscar.’ I laughed and smiled up at Dad, who was holding the screen door open so I could go in ahead of him.

  The central hallway that cut through the middle of the house was dark and cool, and I could smell meat cooking from the kitchen. I looked in at my old room. It was exactly how I left it, which was comforting.

  I was excited to see my brother, Murray, so I hurried down toward the huge kitchen at the back of the house. As I walked into the dining room I stopped, mouth open, hands going comically to my cheeks. Grandma and Grandpa were sitting at the table with Murray and Uncle Jack, with my terrible twin cousins beside them, all dressed in their Sunday best. My grandparents had come all the way from Scotland. I hadn’t seen them for years, not since I was little!

  ‘Surprise,’ they all yelled.

  ‘Okay!’ I squealed. ‘You got me! I’m surprised!’

  I wondered where Laura was. It was unusual for her not to be there; she and my brother were inseparable. Aunty Jan came in from the kitchen wearing a frilled apron.

  The family all stood up and came shuffling over to me, jostling for a hug. Grandma smelled like musky talcum powder and Grandpa smelled like the Brylcreem he lathered through his snow-white hair to stop it falling over his craggy old face.

  ‘You look taller and skinnier,’ Murray said, with a lopsided grin. ‘You’re wasting away. Might have to start calling you Bones.’

  ‘I’ve missed you, Fi.’ Jan smiled. ‘No one to run across the fields and pinch the scones off my kitchen window sills and tell me stories over ginger ale.’

  ‘I’ve missed you too.’ I smiled back at her. ‘And those scones!’

  The men cracked the tops off their bottles of beer and Aunty Jan poured herself a tipple of her usual brandy and dry. Grandma frowned sternly at them all as she was a staunch teetotaller. I sat down at my regular place, poured a glass of lemonade and geared up, ready for Grandad’s loud stories. Aunty Jan rolled her eyes and I could tell she was thinking the same thing.

  Dad stood up and whistled for everyone to shut up.

  ‘Now, now!’ he said in his booming dad voice. ‘We’re here to welcome Fiona home after her first term of university, but we’re also here to share some other family news.’

  I raised my eyebrows, intrigued.

  Dad gave a nod to Murray who was sitting at the table opposite me and my tall brother stood up, looking pleased as punch, with a stupid, big smile plastered across his suntanned face. He’s going to ask Laura to marry him, I thought, imagining that she would suddenly appear, sporting a fancy engagement ring.

  ‘I’ve been called up to serve my country!’ he announced as if he had won the bumper meat tray at the pub. ‘Got my draft notice a week ago.’

  I felt sick. Dad was beaming beside him, banging Murray on the back. Grandpa roared as if he’d backed a winner at the races. Grandma raised her eyebrows, crinkling her forehead into a web of wrinkles. I looked at Aunty Jan and she had a smile painted on her face, but her eyes bore into mine and I could see exactly what she was feeling. Maybe it was a woman thing, a nurturing thing, but the idea of a young man going to war just summoned images of blood and death for me. For Murray and Dad and Grandpa it seemed they were just like small boys thinking about the ‘heroics’ of it all.

  The twins, two milky-faced ten-year-old boys, cheered. ‘You can shoot up them Commies!’ One of them, Billy or Bobby, I’m not sure which, laughed and followed the comment with a short, sharp clatter of noise that sounded like gunfire.

  ‘You know you can get out of going if you take it to court,’ I said, quite seriously. ‘You can claim a conscientious objection if—’

  ‘My son’s not a coward!’ Dad said down the table, his face darkening. ‘Murray will proud
ly serve this nation.’

  ‘Well, America,’ I muttered, a little sarcastically.

  ‘Yes, Fiona, our allies!’ Dad snapped.

  I shrugged and spoke into my chest. ‘It’s a bit different from the big wars, is all.’

  ‘You do your old grampy proud, lad.’ Grandad smiled. ‘I served the Crown in the Great War.’

  ‘Will you serve in Vietnam then, Murray?’ Grandma asked in her thick accent. I could barely understand her.

  ‘Don’t know,’ Murray said, sitting down as Dad headed to the fridge for beer. ‘I have to pass the physical first before they’ll sign me up and then it might be home service or Vietnam. I hope I get to see some action.’

  ‘Murray. Action means killing or being killed,’ I piped up. ‘Don’t glorify it. War’s pretty serious stuff. I hope you get stuck behind a desk or something safe like that.’

  Murray looked at me, confused.

  ‘It’s more honourable to go and actually do something and make a difference on the ground on the frontline. They need all the manpower they can get. I don’t want a posting on Australian soil. Not even in New Guinea. I want to get into those jungles and fight the Viet Cong!’

  ‘Just a question,’ I said. ‘If you wanted to fight, Murray, why didn’t you enlist? Why wait for the draft?’

  All eyes fell on me.

  ‘Murray’s been helping out on the farm,’ Dad said, coming back to the table. ‘It’s all getting a bit much for me these days with my arthritis. We talked about it, didn’t we, son?’

  ‘Yeah, Fi.’ Murray explained to me, ‘We decided that I’d stay here, working, and if my birthday got called up, well then, I’d front up and if not, then I’d keep on working the farm. But I got called up so I’m going.’

  ‘Only if you pass the physical and the other tests,’ Aunty Jan said softly.