After he had left her, she sat staring into the flames, too tired and numb to truly comprehend that, without Will, she was alone in this strange and unfamiliar country. All the plans, hopes and dreams that had sustained her on the long voyage were gone. Her future loomed before her like the flames in the hearth, wavering and dancing, falling into embers.
Two
The winter evening had already begun to close in as Alec McLeod joined the mine foreman, Enoch Trevalyn, to watch the team manhandle the new boiler into place on its carefully prepared brick bed in the massive cavern that served as the mine’s plant room.
Trevalyn nodded his approval. ‘That’s going to change things.’
‘It means we can drive the steam-driven drills,’ Alec said without much enthusiasm. The revolutionary pieces of equipment had been ordered by Charles Cowper and were already on the way. Alec had seen the drills in operation on the Ballarat goldfields and disliked and distrusted the noisy pieces of equipment, particularly the amount of dust they produced. However, they would improve the speed of tunnelling and reduce the accidents caused by the mallet and drill bit.
Trevalyn pushed his greasy felt hat to the back of his head and scratched his bald spot. ‘Did you hear Will Penrose’s sister’s come looking for him?’
Alec’s stomach lurched. He had come to know and like his predecessor at the Maiden’s Creek Mine in the months before Will’s death. They had spent many a long evening discussing the intricacies of the mining industry. Will had mentioned he had a sister, but the girl was thousands of miles away back in England. She couldn’t be here in Maiden’s Creek.
‘The Harris boy came looking for Cowper this afternoon. I heard him telling the boss that Miss Penrose had been knocked over in the street and was in a fearful state.’
Alec almost swore out loud. He had sent the niece of his employer flying into the mud? Half the town must have witnessed his appalling behaviour and if it got back to Cowper … Then again, the only thing that really seemed to matter to Cowper was the price of his shares.
‘She can’t know about her brother,’ Trevalyn continued. ‘What a welcome.’
The two men stood in a silence punctuated by much cursing from the men installing the boiler.
‘You know Penrose’s father was one of the biggest mine owners in Cornwall?’ Trevalyn said.
‘No.’
‘Fell on hard times. No one wanted tin any more.’ Trevalyn shrugged. ‘Many a Cornishman found his way to these shores, me included. Penrose was a good boss.’ He glanced at Alec. ‘Not saying you ain’t a good boss.’
‘Thank you,’ Alec said in a voice dripping irony.
Suddenly the boiler tipped to the side, causing one of the men to jump out of the way to avoid his foot being crushed. Alec lunged forward to help steady the machine. It wavered but fell no further and the men finally manoeuvred it back in place.
‘Take a break,’ Alec said, and the workers stepped back from the heavy piece of machinery, mopping their brows.
A crib room had been cut into the side of the plant room, furnished with a rough table and bench. The men laughed and chatted among themselves as they opened lunch pails. Many of the miners were Welsh or Cornish like Trevalyn and those with wives gladly shared griddle cakes and pasties with their less fortunate single mates.
‘Come and join us,’ David Morgan called to Alec, in the singsong accent of the Welsh. ‘You’ve not lived till you’ve tasted me wife’s baking.’
Alec drew up a stool at the end of the table and accepted the offer of a pasty and mug of tea.
‘You married, sir?’ Morgan asked.
‘No.’ Alec paused. ‘Not any more. Wife died four years ago.’ They said grief dulled with time but every day he still felt the pain of the loss of his wife—his Catriona—and their child like a knife in his chest.
The atmosphere around him shifted like sand, but Alec merely tapped the pasty he had been given and continued, ‘Bridget O’Grady keeps house for my brother and me. A good woman in so many ways, but she can burn porridge just by looking at it.’
That provoked laughter and broke the tension. Alec brushed the crumbs from his shirt and rose to his feet, cracking his head on the low ceiling. He rubbed the injury and silently cursed his mother’s tall genes.
‘I can tell you weren’t born a miner,’ Trevalyn said. ‘You’d have lasted five minutes at Geevor.’
Alec let the comment pass. His family had been coal miners in Lanarkshire for more generations than he could count. He’d been born the son of a miner. And I’d have followed him down the mines, but for a sharp-eyed clergyman who had encouraged me to apply for a scholarship.
As each man finished his pasty they broke off the end and tossed it into a dark corner.
‘You’ll be attracting rats doing that,’ Alec said.
The youngest of the trio, Tregloan, grinned. ‘It’s for the Knockers,’ he said, then, seeing the puzzled frown on Alec’s face, added, ‘Do you not have the Knockers in the mines in Scotland?’
Alec shook his head.
‘They’re little dwarfish creatures that inhabit the mine and watch out for us poor miners. If you hear them a-knock-knock-knocking, that’s their way of warning you that there’s trouble,’ Trevalyn said.
Alec laughed. ‘You mean that the knocking that foretells a collapse is those little fellows?’
Every man around the table nodded.
‘In Wales, we call them the Bwca,’ Morgan said. ‘And there’s some that say the knocking is them hammering away and causing the fall.’ He shrugged. ‘Me, I prefer to think they’re on our side, so they get our pasty to keep ’em happy.’
Alec shook his head. Miners were a superstitious lot and no less so where he had come from, although the Knockers were new to him. The men returned to work and as the day ticked into evening, Alec glanced at his watch. ‘It’s late. Call it a day, boys.’
As he followed the crew out of the mine, he paused to glance down the dark shaft that had been sunk in the floor of the cavern. Only the faintest light showed where a team of men were working on a new lead, sweating in the cramped, dust-filled tunnel. The echo of the mallet striking the drill bit drifted up the shaft in a steady cadence. One man would hold the drill bit, the other strike it. Strike … turn … strike … turn. The new pneumatic drills would change mining forever.
Outside, Alec shrugged on his coat, shoving his hands into its pockets as he walked down the hill toward the light of his small cottage where his brother would be waiting for him. He thought about his childhood in Wishaw and the life of the coal miners—and the deaths. Had he moved so far from that life? He had substituted coal dust for gold dust and a pick for a pen, but his days were still spent in the dark and damp. He wanted to move into the light and the fresh air, turn his hand to the land, but that was a dream beyond the salary he earned.
As he turned onto the path leading to his front door, he took a breath and looked up at the pinpricks of the stars in the velvet sky. He stretched his stiff shoulders, grateful for the welcoming light that burned in the window and the curl of smoke from the chimney.
‘You’re late, Alec.’
Ian McLeod sat at the table, the old family bible open in front of him, making notes on a sheet of paper.
Ignoring his younger brother’s disapproving gaze, Alec sank into a chair beside the fire and let out a heavy sigh. Windlass, the large ginger cat who had adopted the brothers on their arrival, immediately jumped onto his lap, circled several times and settled with his big head on his paws. Alec let his fingers stray over the cat’s soft fur, finding its warmth and gentle purring soothing after his long, difficult day.
Rising from the table, Ian came to stand on the hearth, his back to the fire and his dark eyes scanning Alec’s face. ‘That bad?’
Ian had lost his hearing following a childhood illness but, as long as he could see the person he was talking to, he could read their lips. Those meeting him for the first time might only notice a slightly ponderous
tone in his voice to indicate anything was amiss.
‘We nearly lost the boiler on Little John’s. One of the ropes snapped. If the others hadn’t held …’ Alec shuddered.
‘That’s why you’re the engineer and I’m not.’ Ian gestured at the stove where a pot sat exuding the smell of burned food. ‘Bridget left a stew if you’re hungry.’ A smile caught the corners of his mouth as he resumed his seat at the table. ‘Up to her usual standard.’
Alec pushed an indignant Windlass off his lap and stood. He lifted the lid on the pot and sighed. Even if he had come in earlier his dinner would not be anything else but burned. He thought of the delicious pasty he had shared in the crib room and his stomach growled. Despite his misgivings, he spooned some of the blackened mess onto a plate, broke off a hunk of bread and joined Ian at the table. He poked tentatively at something that may have been a carrot and wondered what beast the grey, leathery pieces of meat had come from. At best wallaby, at worst possum, but if a man was hungry enough he would eat anything, even Bridget O’Grady’s cooking.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked his brother.
Ian tapped the bible. It had been their mother’s and was almost falling apart with use across the generations. ‘Reverend Donald has asked me to give the homily on Sunday.’ His mouth twisted in a self-deprecating smile. ‘At least I’ll not be able to hear the congregation snoring when I send them to sleep.’
It surprised Alec that despite everything he and Ian had been through, Ian retained an unshakeable loyalty to the Presbyterian faith and was now an elder of the St Andrews congregation. Alec only attended church for weddings and funerals. His belief in God had largely died with Catriona and the baby.
He changed the subject. ‘How was your day?’
Ian shrugged. ‘Same as any other. Books to keep, letters to write.’ Ian had a good head for figures and when Alec had taken the position at Maiden’s Creek Mine, he had secured the job of company clerk for Ian, a temporary position that seemed to have become permanent as his brother had proved his worth.
‘One interesting thing happened. Cowper’s niece arrived in town. The boy came with a message and Cowper shot off. Came back an hour later with a face like thunder,’ Ian said.
Alec paused, fork halfway to his mouth. ‘I know. I sent her flying into the mud this afternoon and I was probably less than polite.’ The memory of the encounter with the small, angry woman in the green coat came back with startling clarity.
Ian laughed.
‘It’s not funny,’ Alec said.
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Cowper’s niece of all people,’ Alec muttered and sank his head into his hands.
Ian studied his brother. ‘If she’s Will Penrose’s sister, she can’t know that Will is dead.’
‘I think you can assume Cowper told her.’
‘Cowper certainly wasn’t happy. He actually swore.’
Ian worked in the main office, which was separated from Cowper’s by a half-glass partition wall. While the partition itself was hardly soundproof, Ian kept his ability to lipread from his employer, who had got into the habit of handing his clerk written instructions. Ian could make out most conversations conducted in the privacy of the mine manager’s office as long as the participants’ faces were visible. Thinking he could not be overheard by his deaf clerk, Cowper tended to be less discreet than he would otherwise be. Fortunately for his employer, Ian had a strong sense of integrity and unless he felt it was something Alec should know, he kept his own counsel.
The thought of the awful news that Cowper would have imparted only intensified Alec’s guilt at his ungentlemanly behaviour toward the bereaved Miss Penrose and when he had eaten, he searched out the bottle of Scotch whisky he kept for these occasions. Ignoring Ian’s sharp glance, Alec took the glass he’d poured to his seat by the fire. Undeterred by his previous eviction, Windlass jumped on to his lap and settled again.
Ian closed the book he had been working on and joined Alec. ‘You drink too much.’ As a good Presbyterian, Ian disapproved of drinking for whatever reason.
‘Aye,’ Alec agreed. ‘I do.’
‘Drinking will not—’ Ian began but closed his mouth as Alec glared at him.
It was a conversation the brothers had many times and it was true, drinking wouldn’t bring Catriona back, but it eased the pain and helped him forget, if only for a little while. Alec lifted the glass, watching the reflected flames from the fire leap and dance in the soft amber liquid.
He turned his thoughts back to Cowper’s niece, Will Penrose’s sister. Her neat little figure in her green coat and some sort of ridiculous hat with a red feather, standing in the road looking for a brother who would not be there to meet her.
‘What’s the girl’s name?’ he asked.
‘What girl—Oh, Cowper’s niece? Eliza.’
Eliza Penrose. Alec turned her name over in his mind. She would surely be the young engineer’s legal heir. The guilt that coursed through him cut deeper. Will had trusted him with a secret—a secret that lay concealed beneath a floorboard in Alec’s bedroom—but now Will’s closest relative had arrived, Alec was left with a dilemma, a crisis of conscience.
On the morning Will Penrose had been found dead, Alec had discovered an envelope pushed under his door labelled, ‘Keep this safe for me’. Alec had thought it puzzling but simply set the envelope to one side, intending to ask Will what he meant when they next met.
Will’s trust in him had only become significant when he arrived at work to the news that Will lay dead at the foot of the tailings. When Alec opened the envelope later that evening and sorted through the papers, he recognised what his friend had left for him: meticulous diagrams and mathematical calculations that comprised a new design for an industrial boiler that would revolutionise the mining industry—if not all industries.
He waited until Ian went to bed and he heard the gentle snores that indicated his brother was sound asleep. Alec retrieved the oilskin-wrapped package that he had hidden on the day of Will’s death.
In the living room, he set the package on the table and unwrapped it, to reveal a large, stout, buff-coloured envelope from which he pulled the much folded and slightly grimy papers that had been Will’s passion. A new and more efficient heat exchanger that would double the power output of the industrial boilers.
When Will died there had been no one to claim the plans and Alec had lain awake many a night, wrestling with his conscience. The devil on his shoulder had whispered in his ear and told him that, if he still believed in God, this would be the answer to his prayers—he had left Lanarkshire and come to Australia for the promise of a better life and the proceeds from the patent on such a machine would mean he and Ian could live like kings. All he had to do was lodge the patent in his name.
There were just two small problems. Although he had discussed some aspects of the concept, the design rightfully belonged to one William Josiah Penrose, not Alec James McLeod. And the second problem? The design had a fundamental flaw that Will had been agonising over. In their discussions, Will had mentioned a problem but had not confided the details of the flaw. As Alec studied the papers again, trying to make sense of Will’s scribblings and deletions, he had the sense that they had indeed missed something important. Until the issue had been identified and resolved these designs were worthless.
He folded the papers, replaced them in the envelope and poured himself another whisky.
Keep this safe for me.
The devil on his shoulder had been wrong, and Alec had always known it. With Will’s death, the design rightly passed to his next of kin: his sister, Eliza Penrose. It had been easy enough to dismiss Eliza when she was safely back in England but now she had come to Maiden’s Creek. The voice of Alec’s conscience had Catriona’s soft, Highland lilt: You know ’tis the wrong thing to do, Alec McLeod. Now the lass is here, for the love of your friend, you have to make this right for her. What she does with it is her business, not yours.
All very well, he
told his conscience, but why had Will Penrose chosen that night to leave the plans with him for safekeeping? Had Will had a premonition of his own death or were there more sinister forces at work that had prompted him to entrust Alec with the precious plans?
The thought had nagged at Alec in the weeks since Will’s death but as time passed, he had pushed it aside. The coroner had found that Will’s death had been an accident and Alec had nothing to prove anything different.
Despite the warmth of the room, he shivered.
Three
21 June 1873
Eliza sat on the edge of the single bed and looked around the sparsely furnished bedroom into which Mrs Harris had shown her the previous evening. Exhausted, Eliza had been able to do little more than wash before falling into the comfortable bed and into a deep, dreamless sleep.
She had woken at first light, momentarily confused as she looked at the pressed metal ceiling above her. She’d sat up, hugging her knees to her chest as she looked around the room that had been Will’s while he’d worked for his uncle. Surely he must have left some essence of himself, of his laugh and his bright eyes? Was it possible for someone with so much life and love in their soul to just cease, as if they had never existed?
But within these four walls, decorated only with a faded and yellowed needlework sampler proclaiming the biblical text My help cometh from the Lord, which hath made heaven and earth, it was as if Will had never been.
She dashed her tears away and set her bare feet on the rag rug beside the bed. Her breath frosted in the cold air and she shivered. Her travelling clothes, which she had draped over the chair, had been spirited away, no doubt by Mrs Harris. Eliza rummaged in her leather portmanteau for clean linen and the mourning gown she had purchased after her mother’s death and which by rights she should still be wearing. She had deliberately chosen not to arrive in Maiden’s Creek in deepest mourning. To do so would announce without words the sad news of their mother’s passing. Little had she thought that now she would be wearing mourning for both Will and Mama. Another sob gathered in the back of Eliza’s throat and she sank onto the bed, clutching the crumpled gown to her chest.
The Goldminer's Sister Page 2
