The Denniston Rose
Page 30
THE sky bristled with stars that night, over a sharp new moon. Night shift were at it hammer and tongs, running wagons to and fro, brake-man and hook-man sending them down every four minutes, yard lit with the big new electric lamps.
Yet she still managed to slip in unnoticed! Con the Brake might have seen her if he’d been there. Con might have noticed a small curled and darker shadow in the bottom of an ascending wagon; might have sensed a pair of eyes peering over the rim as the hook-man uncoupled her and ran her down over the rails towards the Bins. Rose herself would surely have jumped out with a smile and a shout if Con had been there.
Or would she? Rose was always a mystery.
At any rate, no one noticed her arrival. Con was who knows where, still searching for Rose (or so Bella said). Mary Scobie, peering in poor lamplight, was sealing up the next batch of letters, some asking after Rose but more angled towards political matters. Totty and Tom Hanratty laughed with their guests in the parlour as a travelling salesman gave a humorous recitation. Michael, sent to bed for fidgeting, teased his sister by pretending to be the ghost of Billy Genesis. Up at Burnett’s Face, Josiah and his boys, at band practice, blared out ‘Lead Kindly Light’ in Uncle Arnold’s front room, Brennan taking cornet solo, while Eddie Carmichael, alone in his high office, added up long lines of rather pleasing figures, which Rose would have understood and enjoyed.
DOWN at the Camp, Bella Rasmussen is washing face and hands in preparation for an early, lonely bed. She recognises the cold lump in her stomach, the sour taste in her mouth as despair. Con has been gone too long. No word, no message. Her life has shrunk, closing in around her shoulders like a shroud. She looks out the little back window but the eyes are dull, disinterested. Then she frowns. Something is moving in the back yard. Too large for dog and too small for man. The thing is scrabbling behind Conrad the Sixth’s tomb. She seizes the broom, flings open the door and shouts.
‘Shoo! Get away! Off!’
The scrabbling stops. The dark shape slides from view. Something about the quick movement stops Bella in her tracks. Her heart thumps hugely, blocking breath and speech. Gently, not daring to trust eyes or instinct, she lowers the broom, prays for another sign. Someone is there. No ghost, no animal, but a small person who is waiting too. Who also waits for a sign.
Above them, the Incline rattles on through the night.
‘Rose?’ Bella whispers at last.
Rose stands. In her hands is a scratched wooden box. ‘I can pay for my board,’ she says in her tight clear voice, older, much older than any child’s should be.
HISTORICAL NOTE
Readers may be interested in the real dates and events surrounding the period of this novel:
1879 October 24th declared a public holiday in Westport for the opening of the Denniston Incline.
1881 First women and children arrive on the Hill. Some will not go down again for twenty years.
The drive through Banbury Mine to Burnett’s face is completed. Some 50,531 tons of coal produced.
First school opens, run by Miss Mary Elliot, mine manager’s daughter.
Thirty colliers, recruited from England, arrive, via the Incline, at Denniston.
1883 New school built.
1884 The Track — a bridle path up to the plateau — opens.
John Lomas arrives on the Hill.
1884 September: Denniston Miners’ Protection Society launched. John Lomas president.
1884 December: First miners’ strike in New Zealand begins, led by John Lomas.
1885 March: Company sends eviction notices to thirty-one collier families. Many go to work at Koranui mine and support those at Denniston.
1885 June: Company capitulates. Returning miners drive scab labour off the Hill.
John Lomas was the real leader of the first miners’ strike in New Zealand, at Denniston. Like the imaginary Josiah Scobie, he was a Methodist lay preacher, a collier and a unionist from England. He and his party of recruited English colliers were temporarily stranded in Nelson because the Westport Coal Company feared an outbreak of unionism. However, apart from these similarities, all personal and family details of Josiah Scobie are fictional.
Eighteen years have passed since Rose first arrived in Denniston. She has grown into a young woman, intelligent and talented, with an outrageous zest for life . . . and love.
This is the tale of Con the Brake. A talented and impetuous Faroeman, he finds he cannot escape his past.
The lives of the people scattered along the edges of the Whanganui River come together in this vivid and moving story of a stunningly unique place.
A tender and amusing novel set in the nineties, with the Springbok Tour still a recent memory.
Elena glimpses her friend Jeanie in a New Zealand art gallery twenty-three years since she disappeared in Samoa. What are the secrets she is hiding?
For the little French girl, Lily Alouette, performing became a way of life. A life that those who love her must be prepared to share.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to pay tribute to the late Geoff Kitchin, Denniston miner, son, grandson and great-grandson of Denniston miners, who walked me all over the now-deserted plateau where the settlements of Denniston, Burnett’s Face and the Camp once thrived. Geoff breathed life into every lone chimney and homeless doorstep; he demonstrated how the rope-road worked and showed me the entrances of long-abandoned mines. His knowledge of early mining methods and his wonderful collection of historical photographs and documents was invaluable.
Also my thanks to Anna Rogers and Ian Watt, whose advice and encouragement kept me going and on track, and to Rachel Scott for the clarity and good sense of her editing.
And, of course, to Harriet Allan and Random House for taking a punt on me.
JENNY PATTRICK is a writer and former jeweller whose six published novels, including The Denniston Rose, its sequel Heart of Coal, the Whanganui novel Landings, and Inheritance, set in Samoa, have all been number one bestsellers in New Zealand. In 2009 she received the New Zealand Post Mansfield Fellowship. In 2011 she and husband, musician Laughton Pattrick, published the children’s book and CD of songs, The Very Important Godwit.
Also available from Jenny Pattrick
Heart of Coal
Catching the Current
The Illustrated Denniston Rose and Heart of Coal
In Touch With Grace
A BLACK SWAN BOOK published by Random House New Zealand,18 Poland Road, Glenfield, Auckland, New Zealand
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First edition published 2003
This edition first published 2012
© 2012 Jenny Pattrick
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ISBN 978 1 86979 842 0
eBook ISBN 978 1 86979 375 3
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Cover design: Kate Barraclough
Text design: Elin Termannsen
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