Patch whined and scrabbled as a rough crucifix was hammered into the ground, and Max’s jaunty hat was placed on top of it. The green feathers were faded, the braid worn, but it was a poignant reminder of the man who had entertained so many people over the years.
Velda was thanking the priest when Patch finally managed to escape. He scrabbled up the soft mound of earth and sniffed the wooden cross. He whined as he inspected the hat and searched for Max. Then, with a sigh of infinite sadness, he settled down, chin on paws, to wait for him to return.
Father Michael must have seen the distress on her face, for he turned to Catriona and took her hand. ‘He has to mourn, just like the rest of us,’ he said in the soft Irish brogue that had never been erased over the years of living in Australia. ‘I’ve seen it before. There’s none so faithful as a dog – he is indeed man’s best friend.’
‘But we can’t leave him here,’ she sobbed. ‘Who will feed him and look after him?’
The priest smiled. ‘I’ll come every day and make sure he’s all right,’ he promised. ‘And when he’s tired of sitting out here alone, I’ll take him home with me.’
‘You promise you won’t forget him?’
He nodded. ‘We’re all God’s creatures, Catriona, and even the care of a little dog is watched over by Our Lord. I would be failing Him as well as you if I didn’t keep my promise.’
*
They broke camp early the morning after the burial. Patch was still curled up on the mound of earth waiting for Max. Catriona tried to coax him away with a chicken bone, but he refused. She stroked his head and he licked her fingers, his eyes sad as he made no move to follow her back to the wagon.
Jupiter was backed into the traces, Kane was astride his prancing gelding, and Catriona was squashed on the buckboard between her parents. She couldn’t help but glance back as they left the clearing. The mound of earth already looked forlorn, and the tears ran down her face at the thought of leaving them both behind.
‘It’s a peaceful place to rest,’ murmured Velda as she dabbed away Catriona’s tears with a scrap of handkerchief. ‘Surely God must have touched this land to make it so beautiful? Look at the waterfall, Kitty. See how it splashes and roars, and listen to how the air is full of birdsong.’ She put her arm around Catriona and held her close as Declan’s fingers gripped the reins and steered Jupiter along the winding tracks. ‘It’s always a mistake to look back, acushla,’ she said softly. ‘And Patch will be looked after. The priest is an honourable man.’
Catriona knuckled away the tears and tried to appreciate the splendour of her surroundings that only yesterday had awed and excited her. Yet all she could think about was that sunny glade, the dark forest and the lonely grave with its sad little guardian. She hoped with all her heart the priest would keep his word.
Yet it was to be many years before Catriona could return to that wooded glade and learn that indeed the priest had kept his promise. Patch had spent his final years in the priest’s home, and at the end, had been buried alongside Max, the master he had always loved.
Chapter Four
The days turned to weeks as they headed north, and yet another blow befell them. Kane’s money had gone. He returned from his visit to the town, his face ashen, the newspaper clutched tightly in his hands. His investments had disappeared along with the main stockholders of the shipping company he’d been so certain was a safe deposit for his hard-earned cash. From now on he would have to rely on the small amounts deposited in the Post Office by his family back in England. It was a bitter blow – one that swept away his cheerful demeanour and made him surly and silent.
Bunyip Station sprawled over thousands of square acres in the heart of the Queensland Outback, and there was work to be had if a man could stand the heat and the flies and the unremitting loneliness of sinking posts and repairing fences. Because of the rains through the winter, the grass was lush and plentiful, the sheep fat and thickly fleeced. Now it was high summer – shearing time – with many mouths to feed. Velda and Catriona took on the task of managing the vast kitchen for the four weeks the shearers would be on the property.
The homestead was a long, low building sheltered from the sun by trees – the kitchen was situated close to the shearing sheds, the corrugated-iron roof shimmering in a heat haze. The noise from the sheds was constant, with animals complaining, men swearing and the angry buzz of the electric shears ripping through the torpid heat. Flies hovered in relentless clouds and the heat didn’t even wane after the sun went down, merely made it almost impossible to sleep.
Catriona’s world consisted of mounds of potatoes and vegetables to be peeled and prepared for the cooking pot. When she wasn’t doing that, she was helping with the washing up. The heat was like a furnace in that iron-clad kitchen, the ovens glowing from dawn to dusk. Three meals a day for over a hundred men was a task almost beyond Velda, but despite the long hours and the gruelling heat, they made it to the end of the month.
‘You done good,’ said the owner as he handed them their wages. ‘Reckon you might come back next year?’
Catriona looked at her mother, so pale and bedraggled, so wrung out by the heat of that awful kitchen. Velda shook her head. ‘We’ll not be coming this way again,’ she said quietly before turning away. When they were out of earshot, she took Catriona’s hand. ‘I feel as if I’ve been released from prison,’ she sighed. ‘Surely there’s an easier way to make a living?’
‘We’ve got lots of money to see us through for a while,’ replied Catriona as they joined Da and Kane.
Velda handed over her wages to Declan. ‘Guard it with your life,’ she muttered. ‘I never want to do that again.’
As they trundled further north, the heat and humidity increased. Even the lightest clothes felt heavy and were soon soaked in sweat. Biting insects left their marks on bare arms and legs and the flies hovered in great clouds around their faces. At night the heat stifled them in a blanket of humidity, the large, ugly cane toads kept up a constant racket and the deep rumble of thunder and sharp forks of lightning startled them from uneasy sleep.
The rolling grasslands gave way to mile upon mile of verdant green cane fields that swept from the purple-headed mountains almost to the sparkling ribbon of sea that edged the horizon. The cane stood taller than a man, in regimented lines that dipped and swayed in the hot wind. Catriona shivered as they jolted along beside the rusting tracks of the cane railway towards Bundaberg and the smoking chimney-stacks of the refineries, for this northern country was like an impenetrable jungle, dark and unforgiving, with unseen predators she suspected were waiting to catch the unwary.
While the men went into the refinery to see if there was any work to be had, Velda and Catriona made their way to the deserted shore. Shallow dunes tumbled down to a beach that was so wide it disappeared north and south over the horizon. The scent of pine and eucalyptus overrode the sickly sweet aroma of the smoke coming from the refinery’s chimneys, and the few clumps of spiny grass clung tightly to their sandy anchors as they rustled in the breeze.
Catriona stood on the dune and stared in amazement. The sea stretched before her in a glittering feast of the brightest, clearest blue she had ever seen. Sailboats dipped and tossed in the frothy waves, their sails gleaming in the sun. Yet it was the sheer breadth of the ocean that took her breath away, for never, even in her wildest imagination, could she have expected this. With shrieks of delight, she and Velda pulled off their shoes and raced across the soft, warm sand to the ripples of water lapping the shore.
‘The water’s warm,’ she breathed in awe. Holding up the hem of her dress, she ventured further, laughing as the little waves splashed her thighs and caressed her ankles. She watched the white seabirds hover and swoop above her, heard their mournful cries, and breathed in the clean, salty air that drifted back to her on the warm breeze. This was a magical place – a place where she felt anything was possible if you wished hard enough.
‘Can we stay a while?’ she begged Velda.
Velda splashed in the water, her face content, the lines not so deeply carved at the side of her mouth or around her violet eyes. ‘If your da and Mr Kane can find work,’ she said. Then she grinned as she unpinned her glorious hair, shook it out, and let it blow freely in the wind. ‘But I’m sure we could all do with a rest. So why not?’
Catriona watched her mother open her arms and lift her face to the sun. She looked so young, so carefree despite the tendrils of grey that now sparked in the dark hair, and for the first time in a long while, Catriona began to feel the weight of sorrow lift from her shoulders. She stretched out her own arms and embraced the warmth of the sun, spinning around and around until she was giddy and her black hair fell in a tumble over her shoulders. For this one joyous moment she could forget everything and just be a child again.
*
There was no work in the refinery, and Da and Mr Kane were forced to seek employment with the cane growers. It was a rough, tough and unforgiving man’s world, and very few women were courageous enough to withstand it – so there was no work for Catriona and Velda.
The work in the cane fields was something only done by the toughest breed of men, who worked hard and lived hard and, when Sunday came around, fought and drank hard. Mate-ship was everything; to be the ‘gun-cutter’, the fastest cutter in the team, was an ambition they all envied and strived for. Fights broke out on a regular basis, and the teams of cutters formed almost medieval tribes and territories which they guarded and protected jealously.
These men lived in long, dilapidated shacks that were perched on poles above the canopy of the surrounding rainforest. They were old before their time, burned by the sun, bowed by the heat, their faces etched with lines of exhaustion. They wore torn singlets and baggy shorts, with thick socks and heavy boots to protect their ankles. To a man they shared the dream of one day owning their own cane plantation, and were single-minded in their quest to earn the vast sums of money that could be had if their day’s tally beat the one before.
Yet these ambitions were soon forgotten as they drank away their hard-earned money at the weekend – for cane cutting was thirsty work, and if a man didn’t drink he wasn’t a mate, wasn’t a part of the tribe.
The interminable heat and humidity, combined with the constant attack by mosquitoes and flies, sapped the remains of their strength. Yet these men knew no other life; had no desire to leave the familiarity of this masculine world where a man was judged by his strength and his tenacity, to explore what else there was outside the cane fields. Many suffered from Weils, dysentery and malaria, but they still kept going, for the lure of the money to be made was a fever of its own.
Working in the steamy, fly-blown heat from sunup to sundown Da and Mr Kane laboured with machetes. They were slashed by the razor-sharp cane and lived in fear of the enormous rats that scuttled around their feet – one bite from those deadly teeth would mean sickness, maybe even death. Their soft hands were soon covered in blisters, their clothes soaked in sweat, hanging from their sunburned, mosquito-ravaged bodies in rags. The filth from the cane and the back-burning streaked their skins, ingraining the dirt so well that not even a swim could dislodge it. It was back-breaking work, made worse by the jeers of the men who lived in this hell and seemed to relish it.
Velda and Catriona bathed their wounds and smeared them with ointment, but there was nothing they could do about the red-rimmed eyes, the sunburn and the bites, and the bone-weariness that had them falling asleep over their meagre supper every night. Even Kane seemed to have lost his spirit, and no longer regaled them with the outrageous stories that usually had Catriona laughing until her sides hurt.
*
Within two weeks, Velda had had enough. The site they’d chosen for the wagon was in a good spot, high above the cane fields on the flat mesa of a nearby hill. The air was slightly cooler, the river fast-flowing, and the flies and mosquitoes didn’t worry them as much. But she could see what life in the cane-fields was doing to her husband, and didn’t like the way he was slowly being drawn into this twilight world.
She looked at the two men who were drooping wearily over their cups of tea and made a decision. ‘We’re leaving this hell-hole,’ she declared. ‘You’ll be picking up your wages in the morning, and then we’re off. I’ll not let either of you kill yourselves anymore.’
‘But it’s good money, Velda,’ Declan protested. ‘Another week and I’ll be bringing home an extra couple of quid. In a month I’ll be earning more than ever.’
‘Another week and you’ll be dead,’ she snapped. ‘We leave tomorrow, Declan. And that’s final.’
Catriona had never heard her mother talk to him like that before, and she might have protested if she hadn’t seen the fleeting look of gratitude in her father’s eyes. It was the depths of his weariness and lack of self-worth that stooped his shoulders and made him give in to her demands – and it was only as she watched him shuffle from the camp and climb into the wagon, that she realised why Mam had taken the decision out of his hands. He was too proud to admit he couldn’t cope, too sick at heart to voice his fear that this was all he could do to feed his family.
Her heart ached as she watched him collapse on the mattress. He would be asleep in an instant – but perhaps now he could dream easier knowing he wouldn’t have to go into the fields again tomorrow.
She looked at Kane, and saw that he too had acquiesced to her Mam’s demands. The cane had to be a terrible thing if it could do that to two such strong men, she decided. And although she would be sorry to leave the ocean and the beach, anything had to be better than seeing them so beaten and defeated.
*
The next day dawned brightly, but there were thick clouds coming in from the mountains which soon brought a refreshing coolness to the hillside. Da and Kane had gone to the cutters’ camp for their wages, and Catriona was helping her mother pack up in readiness for leaving.
‘Can we go to the beach, Mam?’ she asked as the last box was stowed away and the fire was stamped out and covered with earth.
Velda smiled, but it was a weary smile as she knuckled back the wisps of sweat-dampened hair from her eyes. ‘We’ll wait for your Da,’ she replied. ‘I’m thinking the men would like a dip in the sea to refresh them before our journey.’
With the week’s wages hidden away, they took the horses and wagon down to the beach for the last time. Catriona was too impatient to wait for the adults, and she ran into the sea, splashing the water so it rose in droplets of diamonds. She scooped the salty water in her hands and washed her face and her arms. It soothed the bites and washed away the dirt, and she wished she could strip off her clothes and immerse herself in the freshness of it.
As the adults splashed and laughed in the water, Catriona hunted for shells, and watched in fascination as a tiny crab scuttled across the hard, wet shore, leaving a beaded trail of sand in its wake before swiftly burying itself at the edge of the waves.
Tired of the game, and wanting to drink in this glorious scene, she stared out at the expanse of incredible blue. She had to shield her eyes, for the light on the water was blinding as the sun streamed down between the gathering clouds. Shadows of those clouds raced across the surface of the water, turning the turquoise to a dark green that was now laced with white as the gulls swooped and screamed overhead.
She turned to Kane who had come to stand beside her at the water’s edge. ‘It’s a bonzer place,’ she sighed. ‘I wish we didn’t have to leave.’
He put his arm around her and gave her a swift hug. ‘We all have to move on, my dear,’ he said. ‘And the sea is just as beautiful in Cairns.’
She looked up at the sky. The wind was freshening and the clouds were thicker now, bringing an eerie twilight to the world. She shivered, wrapping her arms tightly around her waist. ‘It’s getting cold,’ she said.
‘We’re in for a tropical storm,’ muttered Kane as he shielded his eyes and looked out to sea. ‘And if my memory serves me right, the rain will come down very heavily. We�
��d better get the wagon off this sand, or we’ll be bogged down.’
‘But it’s summer,’ protested Catriona. ‘It doesn’t rain in the summer.’
‘Not much in the south,’ admitted Kane as he looked down at her and smiled. ‘But up here in the north it’s the rainy season – what the locals call, the Wet. Rivers flood, roads get washed away, lightning strikes and thunder booms.’ He put a finger beneath her chin and looked deep into her eyes. ‘But there’s no need to worry, Catriona,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll see no harm comes to you.’
Catriona eased from his touch. ‘My Da will protect me,’ she said firmly. ‘Anyway, I’m not a baby to be scared of silly old storms.’
‘Of course you’re not,’ he said thoughtfully as he regarded the damp cotton dress that clung so tightly to her. ‘In fact you’ve become quite grown up.’ His thumb brushed the dimple in her chin. ‘How old are you now? I forget.’
‘I’m eleven,’ ‘she said, pulling away from that caressing thumb, feeling uneasy beneath his close scrutiny. She folded her arms over her tiny, burgeoning breasts, suddenly aware of how the wet cotton was clinging to them. ‘And old enough not to be treated like a kid.’
‘How very right you are,’ muttered Kane, his eyes thoughtful as he looked down at her.
*
The sun was soon hidden behind the rolling black clouds that raced in from the mountains. A cool wind whipped the surrounding palm trees and ferns, making them dance and clatter as the wagon and horses made their way along the dirt tracks that led through the hinterland. By leaving the coast they had hoped to by-pass the storm – or at least find shelter from it – but there was to be no escape.
The rain began to fall. Softly at first, with a slow drip, drip, drip on the roof of the wagon, that was quite pleasant to listen to. But all too soon it turned into a rapid tattoo which muffled and deadened all other sound. It beat against the surrounding trees and bounced off the hardened earth, pummelling it into muddy submission. The great, grey curtain of water enclosed the little group and blotted out their surroundings, bringing night where there had been day as it hammered all beneath it.
Dreamscapes Page 7
