Below, the water continued to rise. The worst of the flooding would be closest to the creek’s banks, the heights scaling the woody plants Captain Bob once pointed to years earlier. Cora began to hope the deluge might not be as bad as first thought. If the rain was limited to the river and creek system, a brief inundation along the lower country might be the worst of it.
A whirring noise sounded in the distance, waking Scrubber. Cora listened hopefully to the din as it grew in intensity, while grimly aware of the difficulty a helicopter would have attempting to spy them through the tree’s canopy. ‘It’s a helicopter searching for us,’ she told Scrubber. ‘They’ll be back.’ Her words were not as comforting as she’d hoped.
Scrubber lifted his arm and made a fist. The wrist bone was skew-whiff, as if it hadn’t quite fathomed how to hang onto the arm that joined it. ‘Near good as new, the job you did on it. You were good to me, you know, and your pa, too: getting me that job at Purcell’s, treating me as if I was like everybody else. Yeah, your pa was a good man.’
‘It was a long time ago, Scrubber.’ Cora thought of her father. It had taken years for her to forgive Matt for Jack’s death. Even now, she was not sure if she ever completely would. In a tree opposite, bedraggled birds perched on soggy branches. The water rose quickly.
Scrubber gave a noise that resembled a laugh. ‘Sure was. And here I am, the last one standing out of the three of us; never thought I’d make old bones. Even V’s gone.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Well, old V thought she was pleasantly plump but she ended up real fat. Diabetes got her. I had to wait, you see, before I could come visit on account of V.’
Cora shifted on the branch. Veronica, a late addition to those tragic events of 1924, had been a friend, albeit briefly. ‘You never did tell me how you knew Jack Manning.’
‘Couldn’t talk for six months, remember?’ Scrubber winced as pain shot through his stomach. It was taking all his concentration to stay upright. ‘We had a bit of a kerfuffle over a woman once. I knew Jack from my Sydney days.’
‘You and Jack were in Sydney together?’
‘Careful –’ he steadied her ‘– don’t go falling off. Yeah, tight world we live in, eh, love? We both left on account of the bridge.’
‘I never knew. So, the fight you two were involved in, which I heard Veronica talk about later . . .?’
‘Had nothing to do with you.’ Scrubber didn’t want to talk about Jack Manning. A man couldn’t make amends for everything. He could only thank his stars that Matt Hamilton was so concerned about his girl’s future that he took the blame for Jack’s death. Mills ‘Scrubber’ McCoy was the only one left at the end of that fateful day.
‘And Thomas and Olive?’ Cora queried.
‘Knew of them,’ Scrubber answered smoothly, ‘never properly introduced.’ Well, he thought that wasn’t really a lie. ‘They sure high-tailed it out of town after the fire.’
‘Yeah, they did leave quickly,’ Cora agreed. ‘They never came back to Absolution Creek.’
‘Well, I’m not surprised, girly. They were hardly the bush type.’
It gradually became obvious Olive wanted nothing to do with the events that occurred that morning beneath the balcony of Green’s Hotel and Board. She had been ill for two days from the shock of Jack’s death and, Scrubber figured, the knowledge that her attacker lay injured within the same building. Initially, Scrubber expected to be arrested. He figured a man couldn’t be lucky enough to escape two crimes. Yet just in case, he had a plan. In his defence he intended to plead mistaken identity. Jack was dead, after all, and Veronica and Squib had joined the bloody fray outside the hotel after Olive’s initial accusation, so they knew nothing of his past. As for Thomas – well, the lad only had Olive’s word to go by. Coppers required hard evidence. As the second day unfolded and the police didn’t come knocking at his door, Scrubber realised there were more important things afoot for Olive Peters. Veronica, at their door stickybeaking, brought Scrubber the news: Olive, who had already telegraphed her parents and told them she was coming home with her husband, Thomas, didn’t want to be associated with any scandal. Well that piece of information nearly blew Scrubber away. Olive and Jack’s brother, man and wife? Squib had only just finished telling him that Olive had left Sydney to join Jack. There had been more going on out at Absolution Creek than met the eye. Only one thing bothered Scrubber, and he didn’t understand why. Olive apparently was with child.
‘It’s what Jack would expect,’ Thomas argued. ‘Squib should come back to Sydney with us.’ They were sitting outside their shared room on the hotel balcony, Jack’s saddle bag on the timber floorboards between them. ‘I just can’t believe all this has happened. My own brother, dead.’ He hung his head in his hands. ‘He never should have come north. The bush changed him.’
‘I can’t talk about Jack, Thomas. Every time I think of him all I see is Jack lying in a pool of blood. I don’t want to remember him that way. I can’t remember him that way.’ Olive handed the papers back to Thomas. ‘Anyway, we were talking about Squib.’ She glared at Squib who sat on the floorboards a good ten feet away. Olive had lost weight over the last few days despite the pregnancy, and her right hand now trembled uncontrollably. ‘None of this is any of our concern, Thomas.’ Her voice wavered slightly. ‘Firstly, Jack doesn’t own Absolution Creek, otherwise we could sell it. Secondly, Mr Grey has confirmed the legality of this transfer. Jack left the management of the property to her.’ Olive gave Squib a brief incredulous glance while dabbing at her forehead with a handkerchief. ‘Of course, it’s ridiculous. The contract will have to be terminated and Mr Farley will have to find another fool to run his backwater piece of real estate.’
‘That’s exactly why Squib should return to Sydney with us,’ Thomas argued.
‘To be reminded of this horrid ordeal on a daily basis? My, but you have a strange sense of humour, Thomas.’
‘You’ve changed, Olive. Where’s your sense of kindness? Please don’t be like this.’
Olive leant over the railings and peered into a gathering darkness. ‘I lost it on the way to Absolution Creek.’
‘Well, Squib’s coming anyway, regardless of whether you agree with me or not.’
‘How like your brother you are. You cajole your women with flattering words and a gentle kindness, but in the end it is only your decision that counts,’ she replied wearily. ‘Bring her then.’ Olive straightened her shoulders. ‘The upper classes are always looking for staff. But we’ll be dropping her in the suburbs. She can’t come with us.’
‘Olive!’
‘We can’t risk it. You and I are returning to Sydney as a married couple. I’m with child. That’s enough of a disgrace for my family without the added possibility of that girl revealing the truth. Do you really want to add our presence at a murder to our list of disasters?’
‘Murders,’ Thomas corrected quietly. He watched as Squib walked back indoors, leaving them alone.
Olive wiped her eyes. ‘As for the other. . . matter, the one involving that McCoy person . . . well, I don’t want it discussed ever again.’ She blew her nose into the sodden handkerchief. ‘If we’re not careful we will be nation-wide news.’
Squib found Veronica by Scrubber’s side. She quickly told them of Thomas’s suggestion.
‘Well, of course you don’t want to go to a place like Syd-e-ney with the likes of them.’ Veronica nodded in agreement as she poked at the angry flesh of Scrubber’s windpipe. Having been holed up in their room for three days while Scrubber recovered, Veronica was keen to move on as soon as her man felt marginally better. Squib couldn’t blame her.
Squib sat by his bedside. ‘The thing is, V, they’re sending father to prison or worse.’
Veronica nodded and patted irritably at lank hair.
‘I should follow him to Sydney. At least be there –’ Squib swallowed ‘– if the worst happens.’
‘They’ll take you then, girly, for sure.’ Veronica looked
at Scrubber for support. ‘Then what will have been the point of all this?’
The words hung in the airless room. Squib could still smell blood. She expected the raw stench of it would haunt her for the rest of her life.
‘Why not go see your father tonight before they take him in the morning?’ Veronica took Scrubber’s hand. ‘Do as your father asked of my Scrubber. Do you think you can go to the gaol with her, lovey, for a little visitation with Matt? Squib here can pretend she’s doing the speaking for you?’
‘I don’t know if I can,’ Squib said softly. ‘He killed . . . he killed Jack.’
Scrubber turned his face to the wall.
Veronica squeezed Squib’s hand. ‘You’ll go and you’ll make your peace, Squib Hamilton. Your father came to rescue you, and you’ll not thank him by deserting him.’
They were given five minutes. Scrubber sank into a chair in the shadows, a single candle barely illuminating the lock-up. In spite of the emotions tearing at her belly, Squib’s hands linked with her father’s and they stood brow to brow, the cold of the metal bars unable to dull the warmth that flowed between them.
‘He was good to you, this Jack Manning?’
Sweat and urine saturated the stifling cell. ‘Yes, Father, very good.’ Squib was torn. She didn’t want to let go of her father, ever. Yet at the same time she wanted to hit him so hard that it hurt. Matt looked over his daughter’s shoulder to where Scrubber sat. ‘I’m sorry. You, you –’
‘I loved him,’ Squib blubbered.
‘I’m sorry,’ Matt repeated. He waited until his child calmed down a little. ‘You understand now why I didn’t come for you?’
‘Because I’m a half-caste,’ Squib whispered between choked sobs.
‘Don’t ever use that word. You’re a beautiful child born out of pure love. When I first saw your mother she was singing. She had the most beautiful voice, Squib. It was a voice that made people stop and stare. It was a voice that made you believe that you could do anything. I was at a Mission up north at the time and if she’d not agreed to run away with me, I swear I would have gathered her up and thrown her across my nag, then and there.’
‘Really?’
Matt grinned. ‘Really. Your mother was part-Aboriginal, and a finer woman I never knew. However, the world’s a strange place, Squib. People are afraid of those that are different and this land still has wounds from when white fought black.’
‘What happened to Ben?’ Squib asked softly.
Her father gave a low moan. ‘How did you know?’
‘I dreamed of him.’ Her father looked old to her. It was as if a lifetime had passed since they were last together. It showed in the grey edging his hairline, and the sunken depths about his eyes.
Matt nodded. ‘Your mother had such abilities.’ He paused as if considering his next words. ‘The authorities took him.’
‘Where?’
Matt’s gaze fell to the dirt floor. In the silence Scrubber’s laboured breathing sounded very loud. ‘An orphanage.’ His eyes met his daughter’s.
Squib mouthed the word, her lips trembling. ‘Was it Jane?’
‘Yes, it was Jane,’ Matt admitted. ‘Don’t think too unkindly of her, Squib. She never knew a father’s love. She was jealous.’
Squib thought of her own doings with her stepsister, specifically the fall from the back of the dray.
‘She’s now a maid for the Gordons at Wangallon Station,’ Matt explained.
‘And Beth?’
‘I had to give her up.’ Matt brightened. ‘But she’s with a good family, Squib. They’re from Tamworth way, with means. The father’s a lawyer. I couldn’t keep her, not the way things were, and, as it turns out –’ he looked about the dingy cell ‘– it was the right thing to do. You always were a good kid, Squib.’ He squeezed her hand.
‘Father?’
‘Yes.’
Squib tightened her grip on his hand. ‘I’ll always remember those nights when the moon was fat with light.’
‘Me too, Squib, me too.’ He kissed her forehead through the bars. ‘Now go over there and wait for a minute, will you? I need to have a little chat with Scrubber before you go. Hey Scrubber?’
‘But I’ll never see you again.’ Squib couldn’t help the tears forming in her eyes.
‘Sure you will, Squib.’ He smiled. ‘Sure you will.’
Reluctantly Squib drew away from her father. Scrubber walked across to the cell, his feet dragging.
‘Can’t say I ever expected to be on this side of the law.’ Matt gave him a smile. ‘What they said about you back there – what they said about that woman, Olive – is it true?’
Scrubber hunched his shoulders.
Matt rubbed his chin. ‘Wrong place at the wrong time?’ he asked almost hopefully.
Scrubber wheezed.
Matt shook his head. ‘You’ll take care of Squib for me? You and Veronica? I’m trusting you, Scrubber. There isn’t anyone else.’ He took Scrubber’s silence as agreement. ‘They tell me I’ll be hanged by my neck till I’m good and dead.’ He gave a sour grin. ‘The only good part is with Abigail being in the State Reformatory in Sydney the Constable reckons I’ll get to see her; one last visitation before I have my own judgement with the Almighty.’
Scrubber shuffled his feet.
‘Now I realise you’ve already done more than a man can ask, however I need one more thing of you.’ He waited for Scrubber to nod. ‘Good.’ Matt lowered his voice. ‘Wherever they bury me, let Squib know so she can come and visit one day. I’d . . . well, I’d just like that. It’s important for your kin to know where you lie. Will you promise me that?’ Matt angled his arm through the metal bars and they shook on it. ‘Good. Now go.’
Scrubber looked at the water flowing a couple of feet below the branch where they sat. The girl was still asleep, an occasional low moan escaping her lips. Scrubber’s own discomfort refused to lessen and he knew that time had finally run out. But by jove he’d given that thing way out in the east a good run; that thing waiting to snatch him up and cart him away to the nether world. Not a man could fault him for lack of determination. Scrubber put a hand down his shirtfront. The pouch was still there, if a little damp.
Thinking back to that visit to the gaol cell some forty years ago, Scrubber wished he’d not been so out of sorts. If he’d been of sound mind and not beset by a throbbing ache that refused to ease, he may have paid more attention to the shadowy form of a person lurking behind the police station. At the time he was more concerned with his own wounding and the soft comfort of a hotel bed. So he’d hunkered down by a paling fence not ten yards from the police station, his stomach aching from a lack of food as it couldn’t pass down his gullet. When Squib was finally thrown out of the lock-up it took all of Scrubber’s strength to coerce the sobbing girl back to the hotel. It was too much for him, this doing of good deeds. Nothing ever went to plan.
At some time during that night he awoke to a flare of light. At first he thought the brilliance reflected into the hotel room was due to the rum and laudanum Veronica made him swallow to ease his sleep. Light flickered across the tongue-and-groove wall boards and it took some time for the haze swirling in his head to clear. The commotion in the street cleared his thoughts.
The fire was lit during the night. By dawn the timber lock-up and the station were totally destroyed, a burning pile of timber the only sign left of the law in Stringybark Point, for two constables along with Matt Hamilton were burnt to death and lay buried in the charred heap.
The rumours circulated quickly: Lickable Lorraine pointed the finger at Mills ‘Scrubber’ McCoy; Veronica pointed the finger at Lickable Lorraine. Half the townsfolk reckoned Lorraine was just the woman to seek revenge for Adams’s death, and when she punched Veronica in the nose, even the publican – the fount of all knowledge – considered Lickable Lorraine’s involvement possible. Within hours, however, the sting of gossip floated back in Scrubber’s direction. He was the stranger involved in the previous fight;
Lorraine was local. They didn’t have much choice.
‘But you can’t go back out there to Absolution Creek,’ Veronica complained to Squib as she stuffed their items into cracked saddle bags, ‘and we can’t stay.’ She looked at Scrubber for confirmation, her nose bruised and swollen. ‘It’s too risky. It’s likely they’ll hang Scrubber in the street, the town’s that riled up. There are six people dead, including them coppers.’
Squib walked out onto the balcony. It was mid-morning. She could barely think straight. Jack was in a grave on the edge of town and her father had been burned to ash. It was almost beyond comprehension.
‘I want to get some of the ash, as a remembrance, so I have something of my father.’
‘Did you hear what I said?’ Veronica yanked Squib back inside their room and shut the wooden door with a firm click. ‘No one’s hanging around Stringybark Point, my girl.’ She glanced at Scrubber. ‘Not even Thomas stayed.’
‘What?’ Squib asked.
Veronica folded her arms across her chest. ‘Him and that woman left at daylight. So you don’t have to worry any more about being dragged off to Syd-e-ney.’
Squib swallowed. ‘Without me?’
Veronica touched her swollen nose. ‘They weren’t hanging around to see what happens next.’
‘What do I do, then? Where do I go?’ Squib wrung her hands together. ‘Jack’s dead,’ she sniffed, ‘my father’s . . .’
‘High-tail it out of here with us, I say. Otherwise, girly, all these men –’ she glanced at Scrubber ‘– all of their efforts will have been for nothing.’
Absolution Creek Page 46