by Darry Fraser
‘Might be last time, young O’Rourke.’
Startled, Ard simply agreed. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Don’t “yes” me. Riverboat trade dying. Another drought on its way. All this irrigation settlement worthless then. Might be the last time for the ’Bidgee. Means we never get a good wharf here at Renmark.’ Egge waved his arms and ducked back inside the wheelhouse, then popped back out again. ‘You want something off my trading tables?’
Ard had almost forgotten. ‘Some sugar and a packet of darning needles for my mother.’ He reefed in his pocket for the shilling Eleanor had given him, leaned over the rail and handed it to Mr Egge.
Another ‘hah’ noise, another brief disappearance and Mr Egge came back with a small packet of sugar and a brown paper envelope. ‘Change from one shilling.’ He pressed some pennies into Ard’s hand. ‘You come back tonight. Goodbye.’ And he turned away to the wheelhouse again.
The exchange was over and Ard had his passage. He tramped home the two miles. If Mr Egge was right, and he was a sharp operator, then there was definitely trouble for the irrigation settlers, two of whom were his parents.
That afternoon, Ard sat in the tiny kitchen of his parents’ hut. ‘I’m going back to Bendigo.’
Lorcan nodded. ‘You said.’ He tamped his pipe.
‘Mr Egge’s got room on the ’Bidgee tonight.’
‘Good boat, that.’
Ard rubbed his chin. ‘He reckons the river trade’s dying, and there’s drought on the way again.’
His father looked at him. ‘We’ve been hearing that a while now. You think the Misters Chaffey haven’t heard it?’
Ard shifted, an uncomfortable tautness between his shoulder blades. ‘They’ve invested here but you—’
‘My brother and me haven’t let go of the orchard for that very reason. And Liam’s been on the place until lately, so it hasn’t been neglected. You know we’ve talked of selling. And that Chinaman Ling has started a conversation. When the time comes, we’ll make a decision.’ Lorcan continued to tamp, then he lit the tobacco and inhaled in short bursts.
‘I’ll work the orchard back up again, till you come.’ Ard shifted his stance, hung his head then looked at his father. ‘I have to go, Pa.’
His father studied him briefly. ‘I’m thinkin’ that the second well isn’t going to get sunk, after all.’ Lorcan sucked the smoke back. ‘Perhaps that’s a good thing. As it turns out, maybe time for us to think about moving back, make a few changes.’ He took the pipe from his mouth and tamped the bowl.
Ard looked away. ‘Have to make my own way, Pa. A new way. I know that you and Liam managed all the while on the orchard, and I won’t be letting you down. I just need to try my hand at different things.’
‘You have good experience with the land, Ard.’ Lorcan stuck the pipe back in his mouth.
‘For growing fruit trees, is all.’
‘For growing. Don’t be putting that down, lad.’ Pipe smoke drifted.
‘I know it’s good work. I just want something more. I’m thinking horses.’
Lorc scratched his head. ‘Need a bit more land for horses.’
Ard nodded. At least his father hadn’t laughed. Not that he expected he would.
‘Still, for now, we got an orchard,’ Lorc said. ‘We won’t starve. We’ll eat fruit if the worst comes.’
‘That could be years off,’ Ard said, but didn’t believe it.
Lorcan shook his head. ‘Won’t be.’ He puffed out plumes of aromatic smoke. ‘We’ll manage, just like before. I’ll think on the horses idea, talk to Liam.’ He spoke around the stem of the pipe in his mouth. ‘Now, do you need some help for this business you have a great burning need to do back home? Might have a pound or two spare.’
Ard looked at his father. ‘Maybe extra for the train fare from Echuca. Other than that, I’ll be right.’
Lorcan’s mouth pulled down over the stem. ‘Your mother worries.’
‘I know.’
Ard took his sleeping mat to the stern, rolled it out, and waved off Mr Egge and his pilot. He slid to the deck. Being under the stars was better than cramped quarters below.
He was tired. Six miles walking in a day in the heat was enough to wear any man out. He stretched and lay prone for a beat or two, then sat up, took off his boots and checked them over. These ones might only just last the journey. Maybe Mr Egge had a new pair for sale on board.
Ard pulled two letters from his old satchel; it was still light enough to read. He held the one from Mary flat between his palms. He looked across to the cement-coloured sandy slopes of the bank beyond. All he saw was Mary’s laughing, happy face. All he felt was a rock in his chest.
He looked down at the crisp envelope caught between his hands. He didn’t need to read it again; he knew it line by line.
‘… we don’t love each other, and it’s both our faults for the stupidity …’
He knew that was true. They had not been lovers before, only friends in childhood. A lifetime ago.
‘… and from that stupidity you and I made a baby, Ard. It is yours, I swear to you.
‘I had no wish to raise rude suspicions and sully your name by asking after your whereabouts. I care not for myself, I never have. I’ve lived as I choose and I am aware of others’ opinions of me. So for the best at the time, to save my ailing aunt more shame, I found a man who married me quickly, knowing I was with another man’s child. I’ve learned since that he is not a nice man, or good, though I believed him to be, if a bit poorly. He seems to become possessed of some apoplexy at times. But we will be provided for until …’
Mary had let the line run to nothing. Ard wondered what she meant. She resumed—
‘Miss Linley Seymour has another letter, which I have asked her to keep sealed. We have not been friends, not ever. But she and her aunt are most kind women, and they do good work for women who find themselves in difficult situations. So should something happen to me and my baby while with Gareth Wilkin, Miss Seymour is to open it.’
One more reason why Ard had to return home. What was in that letter?
He slid Mary’s letter back into the satchel and withdrew Linley Seymour’s. It near burned his hands. So fierce were her words the pages trembled.
Light was fading. It would do him no good now to try and re-read Linley’s blistering accusations as she announced Mary’s death. He wondered about Mary’s baby, but as Linley had made no mention of a child, he knew it must have died with Mary. A sadness overcame him, and he shied away from everything that brought with it. He tucked the letter into his shirt pocket for the night. In the light of day, he might feel better re-reading it, but he knew not. He just hoped for a sign he could one day approach Linley again. Make it right, somehow.
Linley. Her reddy-copper hair. Her eyes—green … brown? Alive with promises she didn’t even know she was making. A woman’s body, soft where it should be, he imagined. He’d held her hand, when they thought they’d not be seen, had just glimpsed an ankle when she’d flung herself over a fence. He’d glanced surreptitiously at her proud bosom, which had his heart pounding and his thoughts turning to other female parts of her.
Then the last time he saw her, when she reached out and flattened her warm hand on his chest, when thunderclaps roared in his ears and lightning bolts flashed in front of him, and love and lust had banged in his gut and his cock … It was all he could do just to hold himself back.
He needed to marry her first, to make her his wife. But he had nothing to offer. No means, no house for her, few prospects. The depression had stripped him and many others of making a mark in the world. The urgency to claw back a living that could sustain a wife and a family had driven him away, and he wouldn’t make promises to her he couldn’t keep. Many other men had gone mad over it, lost their way. He only had to look at his own father to see what he needed to do to provide.
Ard closed his eyes and shook his head, blew a breath through taut lips. Stretching out on the mat, he gathered the swag under h
is head and settled back, staring up at the stars.
It had always been Linley. Always Linley.
He clenched his fists. Under the bright night sky, he let out a soundless angry roar. Linley’s letter tucked against his chest glowered over his heart, scorched it. And he felt the pain. The hurt he’d inflicted on her had not escaped him. He would have to take what was coming to him. But a life without Linley was not the life he’d planned. He would make amends for the two lives lost. Somehow. And hope to win his Linley back.
He let out a long breath again. No point dwelling on it now. He needed a new plan.
Ard rolled onto his side, folded his arms and shut his eyes against the world. There was sleep to be had.
Six
Bendigo, next day
Gareth Wilkin settled into the large leather chair on the other side of the lawyer’s desk.
Bloke feels like a dwarf in this thing.
Tea. He needed a drink of tea. So damn thirsty. Why wasn’t the old buzzard offering him any tea? He knew he wouldn’t get a drink of rum here. ‘I need tea.’
Mr Campbell ignored him.
Might be just as well. Would only have to go take a piss right when he was handing me my money …
His feet couldn’t reach the floor. Hated that. So much of this hi-falutin’ furniture was made for people who were tall and had money. Otherwise, why would they have furniture so big a body couldn’t put its feet on the ground? Because they could pay for more timber and leather and tacks and all the other palaver that went into making a rich, tall person’s furniture. That’s why their God-blasted furniture was so big.
He shuffled back and allowed his feet to dangle. His left foot’s big toe had a bloody great black bruise on it after he’d cut it, kicking the hearth stone the day Mary died. Thing was getting darker, not lighter, and it was creeping up over his foot.
Must be all right, though. Don’t feel no pain in it, but stinks for some reason.
Good thing Mr Campbell couldn’t see over that desk of his, which was another bloody big lump of timber and leather. Not to mention the fact that the old lawyer himself looked all fancy, what with his nice clobber and clean hands. Bald as an emu’s egg, ugly as a bag full of knees, but clearly rich-ugly.
And the rich always had that air about ’em, confident, like they didn’t need to worry about nothin’. Well, if you’re rich, you don’t worry, do you?
And I’m about to be rich.
Mr Campbell was staring at his own hands, large and knotted at the knuckles. Could have been a fighter by the looks of those hands. They rested on some papers.
The lawyer looked up over his spectacles. ‘I note the time you chose to send for me was immediately after my client passed away.’
Gareth nodded. ‘It were in her papers I do that.’
‘Yes. Though perhaps unseemly inside the very half hour it occurred.’
Gareth frowned. ‘Eh?’
‘The good doctor reported Mrs Wilkin was still warm, and the baby appeared to be feeding.’
Gareth stared back at the lawyer. His guts churned. ‘I waited till she was dead. She didn’t want no cart ride to the hospital. Besides, the brat was still latched on. Weren’t moving nothin’ and be blamed for killing ’em.’
Mr Campbell waited a beat. ‘Quite.’
Gareth shuffled under the unblinking scrutiny. ‘Weren’t expecting no troops of folk to come back with the doctor, neither.’
‘Ah, well. I thought it best to relieve you of any burden at that sad time in case, in your grief, you forgot to hand over the child.’
Gareth levelled a glare at the lawyer. ‘It was me wife, dead. ’Course I was sad.’
‘Of course,’ Mr Campbell said. He glanced at a rectangular flat envelope, official-like stamps and scrawls on it, on the desk beside his left hand. ‘Your wife had made a will, Mr Wilkin.’
Gareth’s legs stopped dangling. ‘Meaning whatever was hers is mine now.’ He licked his lips. Dry as a chip. A man should be able to get tea …
Mr Campbell adjusted his spectacles and stared over the thin rims. ‘She has written her wishes and the law deems those wishes to be lawful. She didn’t stipulate anything for you.’
Gareth Wilkin started uneasily. ‘’Course she did.’ A creep of heat clawed its way up his chest into his throat.
‘She didn’t. In fact, her will stipulates very clearly that whatever worldly goods she possessed she bequeathed to Miss Linley Seymour.’
Gareth shifted in the seat, tried to scuff his feet on the floor. ‘Then that amounts to a big fat bequeath of nothin’.’
Mr Campbell inhaled and exhaled loudly. ‘That might not be so.’
Gareth felt his neck start to sweat at the collar. Why’d she done that? Hadn’t he taken her in and saved her from the gossips? Promised to give her kid a home … Least she could have done was given him the favours he’d asked for. He knew she would’ve come around, eventually … knew she would’ve been nice to him, sooner or later, if she knew what was good for her. It was only that one night he got riled up. Or two nights, perhaps. Her fault, anyways, and so she goes and wills it all past his reach.
He scoffed. ‘She can’t give it to someone else. She married me and what’s hers is mine now she’s dead. I married her so that her bastard kid could have a name—’
Mr Campbell held up his hand. ‘And on that point, she also made arrangements for her child to be placed under the guardianship of the same Miss Seymour should anything …’ He looked down at the paperwork. ‘… untoward happen to her.’
‘I gave Mary Bonner a roof over her head so she could have a life with her brat.’
‘And such a pleasant place it was, too.’ Mr Campbell frowned. ‘I have her letter here, which tells me what she forfeited for that privilege, Mr Wilkin.’ He tapped the paper. ‘She does say that she agreed to marry for the reason you have just stated, but that you only agreed to it on the promise of the inheritance from her aunt, Edith Bending.’
Gareth shrugged, made a face. ‘So I am the rightful—’
The lawyer held up a large hand again. ‘Please stop, Mr Wilkin.’
You smarmy bastard. Gareth’s jaw locked and he shuffled forward in his seat. What the hell else was in those papers? What had that bitch said?
Mr Campbell pushed back in his chair. He removed his glasses and rubbed his nose as if it pained him. He blinked reddened eyes at Gareth. ‘I’m reading here that your wife, despite her belief that marriage to you would at least be civil, thought it was nothing but a sorry and degrading experience for her, despite the bargain made.’
‘She what?’
‘I don’t purport to understand what people do and don’t do in their private dealings, but what I am reading in Mrs Wilkin’s letter is astounding.’ He stopped a moment. ‘Shocking. Perhaps criminal.’ He tapped Mary’s paperwork with a stout, firm finger.
Gareth leapt out of the chair and pointed across the desk. ‘I was cured of all that before I married her. She made me go crazy with her whining and her brat squallin’—’ He swallowed down the urge to lash out, and forced himself to clamber back into his seat. ‘I didn’t come here to have no trumped-up law person look down his nose at me.’
Mr Campbell harrumphed. ‘I have no doubt of that. However, you entered a bargain. Mrs Wilkin entered a marriage contract with you in exchange for her child’s security. You were also to receive a part of the inheritance her aunt left her should you have acted in accordance with the marriage agreement.’
‘I did that.’ Gareth sprang up again. ‘Now she’s dead I have—’
‘No need to shout at me, Mr Wilkin,’ he said. ‘She maintains here that you did not deliver your end of the bargain.’
‘She’s dead and I—’
‘Stop!’ Mr Campbell waved a slim, folded document. ‘This is Mrs Wilkin’s Last Will and Testament, and as I said, you, sir, do not feature in it.’
‘—I’m entitled to that money, all two hundred pounds of it!’
Mr C
ampbell’s eyes widened, then narrowed just as quickly.
Old codger looks like a bloody old boot.
‘What was hers is now mine.’ Gareth could feel the spit dried in his mouth.
‘Not so, Mr Wilkin. A woman who has property before she enters a marriage is entitled to keep that property and administer it as she sees fit in accordance with the law.’
Gareth smacked an open palm on to the desk. ‘Never heard of such a thing.’
Mr Campbell continued. ‘As to the inheritance, my instructions read that the funds will be kept in trust for use by the child’s guardian for the upkeep and security of the child.’
Gareth felt his chin pucker, the rage burning the sense from his brain. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t grasp anything that would make sense of what he was hearing. He squinted, waving a contemptuous hand. ‘When did she write this new will?’
‘Two months before her death.’
Gareth blinked. Two months? She wasn’t ill then. She was all right, confined of course, heavy, but he’d been careful and hadn’t broken any bones—
‘And what was the point of that question, Mr Wilkin?’
Colour surged in his face, his mouth flattened to prevent speech escaping. He withdrew into the seat, his shoulders hunching. The bitch thought I was going to kill her so she … He darted a glance at Campbell and imagined that he could read his thoughts.
His breath came short. ‘What else does she say?’
Mr Campbell nodded. ‘It would be wise to wonder, sir. Despite her fall from grace prior to your marriage, these papers are very damning of you and your treatment of a woman heavily with child.’
Gareth bared his teeth. ‘Her bastard has my name on his birth papers. I’m his guardian.’
‘I don’t believe the child’s birth has been registered yet.’
Breath exploded out of Gareth’s mouth, but no words came. His wits were lost.
