To Chase the Storm: The Frontier Series 4

by Peter Watt

  ‘I thought you might be out here,’ Lady Enid Macintosh said, jolting him out of his thoughts as she took a chair beside him. ‘Betsy told me you were home. Has it been a bad day?’

  ‘A different day, Grandmother,’ he replied distantly, trying to keep his feelings to himself.

  But Enid knew her grandson well and understood from his reply that he was troubled. ‘Is it Catherine?’ she asked bluntly. ‘It has been apparent to me that you have been rather melancholy lately.’

  ‘Catherine, my decision not to remain with the regiment – a lot of questions I have no answers to.’

  He did not see the expression of relief on his grandmother’s face at his mention of leaving the regiment. She had almost lost Patrick to another war and he had since become the most precious being in her life – possibly even more precious than her desire to retain the Macintosh name.

  ‘The children also wonder about their mother,’ Enid said. ‘She is never at home lately. She leaves the house without saying where she is going. Or who she is meeting.’

  ‘She has always been very independent,’ Patrick said defensively. ‘I suspect that her absences from the house will cease soon.’

  He took a long swig of the wine as if to drown his own doubts. He had taken little notice of Catherine’s restlessness until it had been too late; he knew that now. And although he would not admit his fears, Lady Enid suspected. Had not she lost a daughter to a young Irishman almost forty years earlier? Was her grandson now a victim of that terrible unspoken curse that seemed to haunt the family?

  ‘I pray that you are right, Patrick, but I fear that you need her in your life more than she needs you.’

  Enid’s blunt statement caused Patrick to glance sharply at her. His grandmother had a perceptiveness that had proven itself in her business dealings over the years, but he was surprised to see that same perceptiveness displayed in matters of the heart.

  ‘I can see you would prefer to be alone,’ she continued gently, ‘so I will bid you a goodnight.’

  Patrick rose to offer his arm as she got to her feet, even though she did not require it. She was still a strong woman. He kissed her on the forehead as she waved off his offer to help her to her room, and when she was gone Patrick sank again into his chair and his troubled thoughts. He knew that he was lost and he knew why. And there was nothing he could do about it.

  FIVE

  More than a thousand miles north of where Patrick Duffy sat on the verandah overlooking the beautiful harbour of Sydney, three people also sat on a verandah overlooking another harbour. The boy – though more a young man now – sat beside his mother, an attractive woman in her early fifties. Matthew Tracy was a strapping lad of fourteen years and could have passed for eighteen. He had inherited the broad-shouldered build of the Duffy men rather than the lankiness of his American father, gold prospector Luke Tracy, known only to Matthew through legend, having disappeared between Townsville and Burketown on the arid plains outside Julia Creek at the time of Matthew’s birth.

  The tall young man with the long, dark beard opposite them wore the clothes of a bushman and his floppy hat lay on the wooden plank floor of the verandah beside his chair. In his lap he balanced a delicate china saucer as he sipped at a cup of India tea. The house was large and cool, designed to capture the occasional breezes of the tropics. But for the moment Townsville harbour was perfectly still and all three sweated even in the cooling darkness of the evening.

  Kate Tracy, nee Duffy, who had also once been known by her married name of Kate O’Keefe, fanned herself with an ornately splayed Chinese fan. It had been a gift from her old friend John Wong who she regularly did business with importing and exporting to the Far East. Little was said amongst the three as Kate was still taking in the tragic news that the young bushman had brought of the death of his father, Ben Rosenblum.

  Saul had ridden into Townsville that afternoon to deliver the news to the woman who had once been not only his father’s boss but also a lifelong friend and to comply with a wish his father had expressed during his living years. He returned a small, battered case that had once been polished mahogany. Inside it snuggled a huge Colt cap and ball revolver. ‘He always said you were to have this back on his passing, Mrs Tracy,’ Saul had mumbled, awkward in the presence of the legendary woman of the frontier. ‘Said something about not needing insurance when he was gone.’

  The tears welled in Kate’s grey eyes as she stared down at the battered case. A distant memory of a boy hardly older than her own son came to her. A boy who stood as awkwardly beside the giant bullock wagon as the young man now before her. She had given the new pistol to Ben when he had first set off with old Joe Hanrahan to take supplies to the far-flung, isolated properties west of Rockhampton. But then she had not been very old herself in those days. So much had happened in her fifty-five years; a deserted seventeen-year-old girl perilously ill with fever and losing her first baby had become the ruler of a financial empire that spread its influence across the oceans as far as America. With some persuasion she convinced the tough young bushman to stay on at her Townsville house for as long as he needed to. He accepted self-consciously but with some gratitude, as he had no lodgings arranged before his journey south to Brisbane.

  Over dinner Kate had marvelled at the similarities of the young bullocky that Ben once was and this young man sitting at her table.

  ‘Will you visit your sister in Brisbane, Saul?’ Kate asked after a long silence. ‘I have heard she will be married.’

  ‘I suppose I will,’ he answered. ‘If I have time.’ Kate’s questioning look caused him to continue, ‘Goin’ south to join up with the Queensland Mounted Infantry, Mrs Tracy. Hope to get down there before I hear they might be sailin’.’

  Glancing across at Matthew, Saul noticed a sudden attention to their discussion that had gone unnoticed by the boy’s mother.

  ‘You wouldn’t consider a job on my Balaclava property?’ Kate asked, hoping to detour the young man from the path to war.

  He shook his head. ‘Have a need to get away for a while. Joining up now seems the best way to do that.’

  ‘I was very sorry to hear about the foreclosure on Jerusalem. Just damned bad luck with all that has happened in the last few years,’ she said angrily.

  Saul was surprised to hear this woman, who he considered to be a true lady, swear. He would have been even more surprised to learn that her time walking beside the big bullock wagons in far north Queensland had given her an even more colourful vocabulary of words rarely used in public.

  ‘We did our best,’ he replied and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Just wasn’t good enough it seems.’

  Kate gave Saul a closer look. There was a tough fatalism in the young man’s statement that she feared might get him killed in a war. The trait was shared by her brother Michael who had lived life not caring whether he saw the sun rise. Perhaps it was the way of men who did not have families. ‘The offer of work will stand when you return from South Africa,’ she reiterated gently. ‘I have a feeling you are very much like your father, and that alone is enough to recommend you.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Tracy,’ Saul mumbled awkwardly. ‘My dad was a good ’un.’

  As they sat for another hour chatting, Saul noticed that Matthew said little but took in a lot. When Kate excused herself to retire for the night leaving Saul and Matthew alone on the verandah, the young man finally found his voice.

  ‘I’m going to enlist with you,’ he said quietly.

  Saul was about to laugh off the boy’s impulsive statement but when he looked into the boy’s eyes he could see a burning ambition that was not about to go out.

  ‘Why would you want to leave all this behind and run away to a war?’ Saul asked. ‘Anyway, you’re too young to join up. You won’t get past the front door of the recruiting depot.’

  ‘Your own father was only a couple of years older than me when Mother gave him the Colt. I know because she told me the story. That’s not much different to what I’m go
ing to do.’

  Seeing the fire in Matthew’s grey eyes, Saul felt uncomfortable. He could see that Matthew meant every word. ‘Your mother would have me horse whipped if she even suspected I would help you,’ he replied. ‘She’s a good woman and there’s no way I would want to do anything that might cause her pain.’

  Matthew leant forward and stared the bushman directly in the eyes. ‘My mother would never know you helped me enlist,’ he said in a pleading yet firm voice.

  Saul could see that the boy was used to commanding others. It was in his bearing and, he guessed, probably as a result of his upbringing as heir to his mother’s fortune. ‘I just need you to support me when the time comes to produce my birth certificate,’ Matthew continued. ‘Sort of back me up.’

  ‘You won’t get far on your birth certificate,’ Saul said with a chuckle. ‘I heard most of the recruiting people can read and write.’

  ‘I have a forged birth certificate in the name of Matthew Duffy. That was my mother’s maiden name.’

  Saul stared suspiciously at the boy. ‘How did you get your hands on a forged birth certificate?’ he growled.

  Matthew smiled mysteriously and leant back in his chair. He could see that he was slowly winning. But he was not about to mention his contact.

  ‘I have and that’s all that matters,’ Matthew replied.

  ‘If I was to help you, what’s in it for me?’

  A triumphant look crossed Matthew’s face. ‘You and I both know that you need to get to Brisbane in a hurry if you are going to join up in time to steam to Africa with the regiment. And we both know that you were going to try and ride south. How long will that take you?’

  Saul frowned. ‘A bloody long time.’

  ‘Then you might just miss the boat. Unless you were to take a boat from Townsville to Brisbane. It’s the quickest way to get there.’

  ‘You can do that?’ Saul asked with a sudden respect for the boy. ‘You got the money to get us a ticket on a coastal going south?’

  ‘Enough for both of us. And we can leave first thing after lunch tomorrow. I just need a few hours to get things in order.’

  ‘What about your mother?’ Saul asked with a touch of guilt for his seeming betrayal of her faith in him.

  Matthew fell silent for a short time and stared across the bay. The muddy water was flat and stagnant looking. ‘I will miss her but I’m going to leave a note to say I’ve decided to go off and see Queensland for myself for a year.’

  The bushman shook his head. ‘You really think she will believe that?’

  ‘She married my father,’ he replied with the ghost of a smile. ‘And from what I’ve heard of him he was always going walkabout. I think she will blame him for my sudden need to head out west. Sort of something in the blood I can’t help.’

  ‘Jesus, boy, you could get me killed before we even get into a war,’ Saul laughed softly. ‘You better make sure, no matter what happens, that my name never comes up as the person who helped you get in the army. If it does, I promise you I will kill you myself.’

  Looking at the tough, bearded bushman Matthew had no doubts that he would carry out his oath.

  It was a full day before Kate realised her son was missing. When she found his letter and read his lie, tears flooded her eyes as she remembered how a tall, lean American prospector had kept coming and going in her life. She loved that man still and even now she felt his ghost at her elbow, as if Luke Tracy were trying to tell her something was not right, that she could easily lose her son forever to some great tragedy. She did not suspect in a million years that the tragedy had a name – and that name was war.

  SIX

  The end of October saw the rain come to Sydney, but it did not deter what seemed to be the whole population of the city thronging the route between the military barracks in Paddington and the embarkation point at Circular Quay. For the second time in its short history the city was farewelling brave young men off to fight in the Queen’s name. Patrick Duffy was one of those who took his place in the crush to watch his regiment march past with rifles at the shoulder and bayonets fixed.

  He stood against the drenching rain under an umbrella and listened morosely to the unbroken roar of cheering and singing. He felt the loneliness of the deserter as the crowds became part of the spirit of the soldiers, soon to be Queen’s crusaders in far-off Africa. In places, the crowds hemmed in the New South Welsh contingent to the point where the bands and the infantrymen could hardly move. Small Union Jacks festooned the tips of bayonets as well-wishers pressed forward. Pretty young ladies kissed any soldier they could reach. Shops and buildings displayed the colours of the Union Jack from walls and windows and red, white and blue predominated in the grey streets lashed by rain. Snatches of ‘God Save the Queen’ and ‘Rule Britannia’ blurred together in the jubilant singing.

  Patrick stood in front of a bill board displaying a patriotic slogan: ‘The Lion and the Kangaroo will put old Kruger through.’ He could not see the marching men but neither did he have a great wish to. It was bad enough that his decision to remain at home and attempt to save that which was most precious to him, his marriage, meant that he could not sail with his men. Even if he had second thoughts it was too late now as officer appointments had been made and signed by the War Office in London.

  He was not sure whether the wetness on his face was from rain or tears but he knew he had enough of the desolation he felt. Even his faithful secretary could not resist proudly boasting of his own son’s enlistment in the regiment now sailing for the war. With his chest stuck out, and tears behind his spectacles, George Hobbs had related how his son would show the English the prowess of Australians on the battlefield. Patrick had listened and wondered whether George truly understood that the war was not some grand cricket match. How could he deflate the proud father with his own recollections of war: dying men screaming for their mothers, others cursing the very existence of God as they clawed at bowels hanging from ripped stomachs, and always the ever-present stench of decaying flesh, thirst and numbing fear. Instead he had mumbled his own admiration for such courageous patriotism and then taken his umbrella to join the rest of Sydney farewelling her troops.

  With some difficulty, Patrick now pushed his way through the crowd until he came to a hotel. Most of the patrons were out on the street and very few stood at the bar. Patrick was aware of someone tugging at his sleeve as he forced his way through the door past a pack of young men with beer glasses in hand boisterously toasting the Queen. He turned to see Arthur Thorncroft at his elbow.

  ‘Thought I might join you,’ Arthur said with a weak smile. ‘A bit too much for me out there.’

  Having shared a campaign and similar scenes of departure, Patrick welcomed his friend’s company. It was humid inside the hotel’s main bar as the spring rains heralded the coming of a hot summer.

  ‘Like this when you left for Suakin?’ Patrick asked as he fronted up to the bar with the smaller man beside him.

  ‘Not much different,’ Arthur replied as he shook off the rain and unfurled his umbrella. ‘Except we didn’t have the crowds the boys have now.’

  Patrick ordered two pints of ale which had improved considerably since the early years of the colony. It no longer poisoned a man – just got him drunk.

  ‘They deserve the gratitude of Sydney,’ Patrick mumbled as he sipped at his beer and stared at the painting behind the bar of a woman reclining naked on a couch. She smiled at him and he felt an ache for Catherine along with the sense that she was gone from his life, although he could not yet admit this to himself. ‘The memory of this day is going to have to get them through a lot of hard days and nights ahead,’ he continued sadly.

  Arthur nodded grimly. They had soldiered together as officers under the blazing sun of Sudan’s arid lands and faced death together. That would always be a special bond between men, just as the birth of children was between women. ‘Anyway, it will all be over by Christmas,’ Arthur offered lightly, hoping to reassure his friend. ‘The
lads will be back before Easter. Might not even get to see any action for that matter. The British regiments will probably roll up the Boers before they get to Capetown. After all, they are only up against a rabble of peasant farmers.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ Patrick replied quietly. ‘I’ve seen how they operate – any man who could kill my father has to be more than a peasant rabble. No, it will not be over by Christmas.’

  Arthur sipped his ale and said nothing. He knew of Patrick’s search many years earlier for his father, the legendary Michael Duffy. And he knew of the determined defence that father and son had put up from under the cover of an ox wagon on the African veldt against a force of mounted Boers – a defence that had cost the life of the big Irish soldier of fortune so that his son might live.

  ‘Your daughter, Fenella, certainly has an interest in my work,’ Arthur said, attempting to distract Patrick. ‘She badgers me to allow her to see my other work.’

  Patrick’s mood shifted slightly at the mention of his daughter. ‘It would do her no harm. I will arrange for her governess to take her to your studio to see how moving pictures are produced.’

  ‘I think that you should come and have a look yourself. It would do you no harm either.’

  Patrick smiled. ‘You don’t have to sell me, Arthur,’ he said. ‘My grandmother has already approved finance for you to travel to Europe. You know that. And you don’t have to change the subject because of my apparent melancholy. I will adjust in my own good time.’