The Good Woman of Renmark

by Darry Fraser

  The bicycle bounced and threatened to toss him. If he didn’t watch it, he’d drop into a hole on the road. Don’t be putting wind up your own tail, man. Concentrate. First things first.

  Robert’s house came into view, a small cottage sitting in the middle of a row of three. As usual, Angus rode around the back and leaned his bicycle against the outhouse. Nothing appeared to have changed since he’d been here earlier in the day.

  He couldn’t hear any noise. Where are the youngsters? School was out; they should be home—they had chores to do. As he approached the back door, he felt the hairs lift on his arms, and a shiver gripped his scalp.

  He could see Myra’s booted feet, her body prone on the floor. He could hear a guttural sobbing.

  Thirty-five

  It was early the next morning, but Maggie knew Sam would already be in the wheelhouse with Dane. Perhaps there wouldn’t be a moment to catch him on his own today either. It had certainly been impossible yesterday after they’d left Lyrup, going upriver for Renmark. It was almost as if he’d deliberately kept out of her way. Hard to do on a boat this size, but he’d managed it.

  The Sweet Georgie wasn’t a big steamer; it was sleek and elegant, and by all accounts had been quite the vessel a couple of years back, mostly for passengers. Dane had bought it after he’d purchased his company that included the other two boats, the Lady Mitchell and the Lady Goodnight. Now the boat was a little less elegant—it was used more for freight than for passengers these days, but it was still a very fine vessel.

  Last evening, Joe had caught a sizeable Murray cod. While they’d waited for a snagging boat to clear a great old gum tree that had fallen into the water, Dane decided to tie up for the evening. The Sweet Georgie pulled into the bank close by.

  Maggie cooked the catch for their supper, roasting potatoes and carrots to accompany it. She felt useful; she had a purpose. Oh yes, woman’s work, some would scoff, but she knew she could make a living with it.

  With a little of the rum on board, she’d soaked a supply of raisins she’d found in the pantry cupboard and made a bread and butter pudding using day-old damper. Sam hadn’t looked at her throughout the meal except to add his thanks, but she could see her efforts had been appreciated, and by Dane in particular.

  ‘My wife doesn’t enjoy cooking overly much. Perhaps you would offer some advice?’ he’d said as he spooned a dollop of pudding into his mouth.

  Maggie had laughed at that. ‘I wouldn’t dare. I’m sure Georgina has many other attributes that compensate.’

  ‘But a man could starve,’ he’d said good-naturedly.

  ‘It doesn’t look to me as if you’ve starved so far,’ she’d replied. ‘I’d say she is busy with other things.’

  He’d acknowledged that with a grunt. ‘Our twins, and our toddler,’ he said. ‘And another on the way, whose arrival will occur in a few months. Georgie is also a fine horsewoman, keenly interested in the idea of our stud farm, and her correspondence with the Victorian Women’s Suffrage Society takes up a good deal of whatever time she can put to it.’

  ‘Well, she has her hands full,’ Maggie said. ‘Perhaps I could come and stay awhile, help out after I’ve got home and seen to my own family.’ She’d wondered then why Dane had glanced at Sam who’d gazed studiously at his hands.

  Conversation turned back to the events of the last weeks. Dane told them that he grieved for his men. His sorrow at the deaths of Mr Finn and Mr Bentley had been plain; a terrible blow. While losing the Goodnight in such circumstances had been a shock, he said it was forced attrition; river trade was down, he couldn’t economically justify three vessels any longer, and no one was buying boats. He was clearly saddened, but stoic.

  Now, sure enough, when she turned and looked up, there was Sam in the wheelhouse with her cousin. Dane waved at her, Sam only nodded and blandly looked away, as if something in the distance had caught his attention. She couldn’t hear any subsequent conversation properly, but the tone of the banter and the bursts of laughter told her all she needed to know. The discussion would not include her and nor, for that matter, would it be about her.

  Staring out over the river, the rhythmic paddle wheels slapping the water were dull sounds in her ears. Nothing seemed amiss, awry. The beat of the engine was steady, yet she couldn’t relax.

  She turned her thoughts to home. Home was where her parents were, and her brother. Home was wherever they were. Home was a refuge, that was true, but now that the overwhelming events of recent weeks were behind her, it was time to get on. Her plans to settle into a quiet domestic life on O’Rourke’s Run now seemed wistful. She must be soft in the head. She would have better thoughts. Yes, yes, recuperation wasn’t a bad thing, nor was helping at home, but she had things to do. There was a world to conquer.

  But—Sam Taylor. Where would he fit? She’d never wanted anyone else in her whole life. It was just that if she was with Sam, she wouldn’t be able to escape the thing she was most afraid of. No one could save her from that.

  Sam had to chuck Pie’s shit over the side. Thing about taking a horse on a paddle-steamer—a man needed to think about tidying up the poor fella’s business. He’d left the wheelhouse and grabbed a shovel, one from the engine room, and gone to shunt the manure into the river. Bucky thought it was a fine game and was all for launching into the water after it, but Sam grabbed him by the scruff.

  ‘Sam.’

  Startled—she’d crept up on him, dammit—he dropped Bucky who sat smartly at Maggie’s feet. ‘Yes?’ He must have yelled because she winced.

  ‘Dane tells me we’re due in Renmark midafternoon today.’

  ‘Yes. Good.’ They would be taking on freight that Dane’s company had contracted to take to Swan Hill, and Sam would, of course, lend a hand. Then they’d be off again and would tie up for the evening somewhere upriver. Bloody leisurely trip back home, it seemed. He didn’t know how he could keep up the pretence of ignoring Maggie for much longer.

  She glanced back towards the wheelhouse. Sam knew Dane couldn’t be seen, so that meant Dane couldn’t see them. Joe was aft, repairing the mooring rope, head bent to his task. Sam watched Maggie run a hand down Pie’s flank, and the horse whinnied at her.

  She turned to him. In her other hand she held an envelope. ‘Are you married, Sam?’

  He nearly fell over. ‘What?’ he barked. ‘’Course not. I’m free as a bird.’

  She nodded. ‘You stopped writing,’ she said, this new Maggie, this Maggie whose voice was subdued.

  Sam held his temper, rubbed his chin hard, felt his scratchy four-day-old whiskers roughen his fingers. When he was sure his voice would be even, not forced or terse, or wouldn’t break, he replied, ‘I wrote enough.’

  Maggie stared, eyes wide. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘You sent my letters back,’ Sam ground out.

  ‘You gave up in a hurry,’ she shot back.

  ‘Did I? Jesus.’ He heard the fury in his voice. ‘Who says it was in a hurry?’

  Maggie blinked at that. When a man stops writing after two letters, it’s stopped in a hurry. A woman gets the message—he hasn’t persisted, he isn’t interested. Not even dependable, patient and unflappable Sam would tell her it meant otherwise. He was no longer interested.

  He was no longer unflappable either, it seemed. This Sam erupting with anger was not the Sam she remembered. Usually, there would only be a wry few words, deprecating or witty. Not this time.

  I wrote enough. Clearly, the finality in his tone proved he was done with her. And she would not beg.

  ‘Well?’ he demanded.

  She looked him fair in the face then. He stared. Glared, more like it. Those eyes of his, dark under a frown and flecked with hints of autumn and glints of fire, took her breath away.

  Her hand crunched the envelope she held, uncertain. What difference would her words in the letter make now? But still, she thrust the crinkled envelope at him. It quivered in her hand.

  He looked at it. ‘What is that?’
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  ‘My letter to you. It explains how I feel.’

  ‘After two years?’ He snatched it. Lifted the unsealed flap and pulled out the pages.

  She watched his face as he looked at one page, then turned it over. He’s not even reading it. Her heart thumped.

  He looked at another page, shaking his head, disdain a grimace on his mouth. Anger rolled off him in waves, buffeting the air between them. ‘What the hell could you even mean by this?’ He shoved the pages back into the envelope, pushed it into her hands and stalked off.

  Maggie bent her head to the crumpled, pulpy pages in her hand, to check what she’d written, to try and understand what could have so offended him. Standing in shock, her heart crushed, her mouth dropped open in disbelief. The pages were awash with faded blue ink that had bled indiscriminately, making blotches and swirls. They’d been dampened, got wet somehow. She couldn’t think when … Had she not had her bag clutched to her side the whole time? Had she not made sure she had it through thick and thin these past weeks? Yes, yes, she had, so when …?

  Only the other day, at Lyrup. The day Sam had galloped off chasing Robert Boyd. She’d slipped and fallen into wet sand. Dammit, dammit, dammit.

  She looked at the letter again, at the meaningless, whimsical shapes on it. Murray River water had dissolved every word on the pages. She shoved it in her pinny pocket.

  ‘Sam, wait,’ she cried. ‘Wait.’ She tried to keep her voice down as she hurried over the deck after him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’d started it much earlier, and I kept finding so much more to say, I couldn’t finish it.’

  ‘I got the message without it, don’t worry.’

  ‘Perhaps I’d been wrong to run away to Renmark—’

  He made a noise, unimpressed.

  ‘—but I couldn’t be stifled by what I saw all around me. Women, only good for home and … babies.’

  Impatient, he rolled his eyes, let out a snort. ‘Good thing then that we stopped doin’ what we were doin’.’

  ‘I know. I was afraid, and even what I felt for you wasn’t enough to stop that fear. It was easier to stay away.’ She rubbed her face, wiped perspiration from her neck.

  His mouth twisted but he didn’t look at her. ‘And all that was in this letter, was it?’

  ‘That, and more, and I still haven’t finished it.’

  ‘Taking your time, eh? Sounds to me like you were hedgin’ your bets, Maggie.’

  ‘That’s not it,’ she hissed, wronged and feeling heat bloom in her chest. ‘That wasn’t it. You know I’d said as much to you the last time we—’

  ‘And now—what do you say now?’ His hand tapped on his thigh.

  Do not beg. She floundered for a moment, trying to get it right. ‘I’m still afraid of it, Sam. It’s been a long time, I know, and—’

  ‘Aye. Too long,’ he cut in. ‘So I understand. Time for it to be over, letter or not. You’re afraid of it. You’re so afraid you couldn’t even post that.’ He pointed at the letter in her pocket. ‘I’m not second best, Maggie. I’m not waiting anymore. Stay afraid, just don’t pester me again.’ He stomped off.

  She couldn’t shout at him, the others would hear. They probably already heard. She gritted her teeth.

  Damn you, Sam Taylor. Thick as a lump of wood.

  Thirty-six

  Angus rushed into the house. ‘Myra.’ He dropped to his knees by her side, astounded at the amount of blood on the floor. It was coming from her head, her scalp sliced high over one eye. He looked up at Robert, who sat hunched in a chair at the table, his face in his hands.

  ‘What have you done?’ Angus seethed. Then he noticed the disarray in the room, as if someone had been looking for something. Someone in a hurry.

  His brother mumbled a few words and his hands came away from his face. The fiery bloodshot whites of his eyes were stark against the dark stains of his sagging, puffy skin beneath. ‘I’m in trouble.’

  Bewildered, Angus dropped his ear to Myra’s chest. ‘She’s alive, she’s alive. You can stop your blubbering. Why did you do it?’

  ‘Not her. Not Myra. I didn’t do that. She fell, the flask broke. Piece of glass.’ Robert pointed at a bloody shard under the table. He wiped spittle from his chin. ‘Other day, I went to Lyrup.’

  ‘You what?’ Angus had Myra’s head in his hands, trying to see how bad the cut was. He grabbed a thin towel from the discarded laundry nearby. ‘Where will I find bandages, Robert?’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’ Robert rocked in the chair.

  Angus feared he’d collapse it. ‘Stop the wailing, Robert,’ he flared, still holding Myra’s head. ‘Get a hold of yourself.’

  The chair stopped moving, but Robert dropped his head into his hands again.

  ‘Where are your children?’

  ‘Ran off.’

  Frustrated with him, Angus reached over and thumped him in the leg. ‘Ran off where—for help?’ He looked down. God forbid he’d have to put stitches in her head.

  ‘Dunno. Dunno. They came home when we were … havin’ words.’

  ‘You did do it. You pushed her, didn’t you?’

  Robert shook his head. ‘She’s drunk. She fell.’

  The bleeding wouldn’t stop. Jesus, now what? His knees were paining him, so Angus struggled up on his haunches. ‘Let’s get her into her bed.’

  He didn’t move.

  ‘Come on, you great lug,’ Angus raged, and punched his brother’s leg again.

  Robert’s chair scraped back as he stood up.

  ‘What happened in here?’ Angus demanded. ‘The place is a shambles.’ He kept the towel pressed on Myra’s forehead.

  ‘I was lookin’ for where she’d been stashing her coins. She’s been getting grog, Angus.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Married to you, any bloody wonder,’ he muttered.

  ‘Gettin’ grog when we’ve got no money. You know what she said? You know what she said?’

  ‘I’m not deaf and I don’t care what she said.’ Angus struggled to his feet. ‘You get her legs.’ Better a husband at that end. He got his hands under her armpits. ‘Lift,’ he ordered, and clumsily they got her from under the table and down the hallway to the bedroom.

  Heaved onto the messed-up bed, Myra’s scalp ran with more blood, the towel next to useless. Angus pulled open a dresser drawer and found one of Robert’s shirts. He ripped off the sleeves.

  ‘That’s my only good shirt.’

  ‘You won’t be needin’ it. Now what the hell happened?’ Angus wound the sleeves around Myra’s head with the towel packed against the cut, and tucked in the end.

  ‘I took Cutler’s horse to go after a fella who had a good-looking stallion I wanted and—’

  ‘I said we couldn’t afford a horse.’ Angus looked at him, incredulous.

  Robert erupted. ‘And I told yer, a man my size can’t go around on a bicycle,’ he shouted. ‘I had that woman to hunt down, the one that clobbered me.’ He paced. ‘So I was gonna follow the fella on Cutler’s nag and get the horse, when before I left, Myra said stock was due in at the wharf and I had to get it first for the store. Bugger that,’ he stormed, warming to his story. ‘There was a boat in, just about to go for Lyrup, so I got on board—’

  ‘And paid how?’

  Uneasy, Robert turned away, pacing a little more in the small room. He didn’t once glance at his wife. ‘Traded hats, belts.’

  Angus set his mouth. ‘You bloody great fool.’

  Robert’s eyes twitched. ‘Then I get to Lyrup, and bugger me, I see the girl, the one who hit me. I took off after her.’

  Angus jumped to his feet, took two strides and grabbed his brother’s collar. ‘Did you get her, did you hurt her?’ He bared his teeth right under Robert’s nose.

  ‘She disappeared.’ He stared wide-eyed at Angus. ‘Truth. I lost her.’

  Angus shoved him away. He glanced at Myra. Still out to it. He took a deep breath. ‘So, what’s this thing you’ve done that�
��ll bring trouble?’

  Robert licked his lips. ‘She was with another piece … and so I rounded up that one.’

  Angus spun back. ‘And?’

  A hesitation. ‘And nothin’.’

  ‘Liar,’ Angus blasted. He remembered Mr Reiners’s photographs. Then a thought uncurled. If the O’Rourke woman was alive …

  ‘Swear,’ Robert said. ‘She took off like a bloody rabbit, straight into the scrub.’

  Angus squinted. ‘And then?

  ‘Whole village of blokes came after me when she ran. I bolted. But now they’ll have me for … somethin’. I dunno what.’

  Angus thrust a finger at Myra. ‘They’ll have you for being a danger to women—’

  ‘Ballocks. She’s me wife.’

  ‘And the way you keep makin’ a right pest of yourself, you will get done for rape.’ Fury pumped through his veins. His mind worked. He felt the hum of Adeline’s ivory hatpin close to his heart. ‘There’s some proof of what you do, and I have that proof.’

  ‘Whaddya talkin’ about—proof?’

  ‘That fella that takes photographs. He gave me four. And you don’t look good, not what you’re doin’ in ’em.’

  ‘They attacked me.’

  ‘Look at yourself, you bloody great lummox. They ain’t none of them fallin’ all over themselves for you.’

  ‘Bah, you don’t know anythin’.’ Robert checked to see that Myra was still unconscious. He turned back to Angus, and as if imparting a secret, he said, ‘They all want it—the uppity O’Rourke piece. The other woman. That Adeline of yours—’

  Angus launched. A red mist, a fury dropped over him and frenzied, he took Robert crashing to the floor. Arms flailing in the air, Robert landed hard on his back, his legs akimbo under his brother’s full body assault. They grappled, knocking the bed sideways. Angus growled, his hands twisting Robert’s collar. He wanted to punch that absurd arrogance out of his brother’s fat, ridiculous, buffoon head. ‘Where is she?’ he yelled into the puffed-up, mottled face, his knuckles pushing down on Robert’s windpipe. ‘Where is Adeline?’