Charlotte's Creek

by Therese Creed

  Lucy tried to read the woman’s expression: was it hostility, or just plain shyness? ‘I spoke to a man here, this morning,’ she began in a fluster, forgetting to introduce herself. ‘Your son, I think. He said you wouldn’t mind if I came to see you today, but if it doesn’t suit I’ll—’

  ‘You the new guvvie from Charlotte’s Creek?’ the woman cut in abruptly. ‘City girl?’

  Lucy took a little step backwards in surprise. ‘Oh, yes, I’m sorry—I’m Lucy, and you must be Mollie?’

  ‘You aren’t one of those soy-milk drinkers, are ya?’ Mollie said, eyeing Lucy.

  ‘No!’ Lucy gave a nervous giggle.

  ‘Well, you’d better come in then, lovey.’ Mollie came forward and took her by the arm, ushering her into the house. They walked down a short hall into an open kitchen and living area. Lucy stumbled a little as the toe of her shoe caught on the edge of the warped linoleum as they entered the room. Mollie seated Lucy at the table in what looked like the best of four ramshackle chairs. The seat was still warm, as though someone had just vacated it in her honour. On the other side of the table was an extremely small, stocky man with greying black hair and a round red face adorned with a magnificent moustache. He was holding a newspaper, and he looked up under his eyebrows at Lucy, then back down at the paper.

  ‘Little John’s got no time for soy-milk drinkers,’ Mollie said, and Lucy looked at him questioningly.

  Little John, his dark secret revealed, looked up at Lucy again, his eyes desperately apologetic, and shrank down slightly in his chair.

  Mollie probed further. ‘You eat meat, then?’

  ‘Oh yes, I love meat.’

  ‘True?’ Mollie looked Lucy up and down a little doubtfully. ‘You look a bit pale, is all. Then again, I’m used to looking at my Long John.’ At this Mollie inclined her head towards a couch in the far corner of the living room, facing away from them towards a switched-off television. Lucy now noticed the top of a large dark head over the back of it. ‘My Johnny’s as black as a boot, and Little John here’s always sunburnt to buggery.’

  The old lady went to get another cup from the bench. ‘See, there you are, Little John,’ she prattled, ‘eats meat, loves it, eh, no soy, no worries ’bout this one.’

  Little John nodded.

  ‘Get yourself up off that lazy man’s chair and come back to the table, Long John,’ Mollie ordered, the corners of her eyes wrinkling in another smile as she poured tea into the cup and pushed it towards Lucy.

  At this, an extremely tall, fit-looking young man unfolded himself from the couch and ambled towards them. Lucy noticed his muscles rippling under his shirt as he sat down and put his elbows on the table. Without meeting her eye, he picked up the teapot and topped up his cup, which he must have deserted a few minutes earlier when he’d got wind of a visitor.

  ‘Lucy says she spoke to you this morning, Long John,’ Mollie scolded, sitting down. ‘You never let on to me. Might’ve had a cake, or at least a batch of scones done.’ She pushed an open packet of gingernut biscuits towards Lucy. Lucy took one. Long John looked at her sideways. Although physically he was nothing like his father, he now wore the same apologetic expression.

  ‘Hello again,’ she said.

  At this, Long John seemed to relax, giving her a slight welcoming nod and a sweet half-smile before looking away again.

  ‘So . . .’ the elderly woman said, ‘what brings you here to see old Mollie?’

  All at once, three faces were staring expectantly at Lucy, and she felt suddenly self-conscious. How could she have been so presumptuous as to invite herself here expecting Mollie to talk about her past?

  ‘I wanted to ask you about the history of Charlotte’s Creek,’ she began.

  ‘History?’ Mollie looked alarmed. ‘I know nothing about that sorta caper. You wanna talk to old Noel. He likes old books ’n’ that.’

  ‘Well, actually, it’s Lotte Carlyle I’m interested in,’ Lucy clarified. ‘Mel says you knew her.’

  The smile lines disappeared from the corners of Mollie’s eyes. ‘Yeah, I knew her. Better than I wanted to. She didn’t think much of us blackfellas. I’d much rather talk about something else, not no dead lady,’ she said firmly. ‘Ask me another one, lovey.’

  ‘Never mind then,’ Lucy said disappointedly. ‘No one seems to want to tell me anything about her.’

  ‘Probably scared of her, same as me.’ Mollie gave a little shudder.

  ‘I’d love to know why she’s so sad all the time,’ Lucy wondered out loud, sipping her tea pensively, then realised with embarrassment that she’d referred to Lotte as though she was a living person.

  But Mollie was not surprised. ‘Oh yep. I know that,’ she said. ‘She was always sad when she was living, too, so I suppose I can tell you that without no disrespecting. She lost someone, eh. Was always searching the place, wandering off to some-bloody-where.’

  ‘Oh! That’s horrible!’ Lucy exclaimed.

  Little John suddenly piped up, his voice surprisingly rich and low for one so small. ‘They’re all gone to God now, mate.’ He smiled sympathetically. ‘Lotte, all of them.’

  ‘Except she’s not gone,’ Mollie contradicted sternly. ‘Don’t say her name, Little John, I’ve told you and told you. She’s still round about. You ask those twins.’ She sat back in her chair. ‘Now ask me another one, because I don’t wanna talk about no more dead ladies.’

  ‘Thank you for what you’ve told me, Mollie,’ Lucy said quietly. ‘Is there anyone else I can ask about this?’

  Mollie regarded Lucy closely through squinted eyes. ‘Suppose I could tell you one or two bits more.’

  ‘Thank you!’ Lucy said.

  ‘I couldn’t have been much more than ten when she died, twelve maybe,’ Mollie began. ‘But I was real scared of her, eh. Not right in the head ’n’ that. Old Mr James, Noel’s grandfather, he made it my job to check on old Lotte every day, clean for her ’n’ that. Had to feed her in the end.’ Mollie snorted in disgust. ‘She never thanked me, neither. She was always walking off in the swamps, always hunting around.’

  ‘Poor bugger,’ young John observed, his handsome face full of pity.

  ‘And who had to go drag her home from the paddock?’ Mollie said, looking around theatrically at all their faces. ‘Lucky old me, of course. Her face and arms were always full of mozzie bites for me to sponge down. Just lucky she wore those big dresses, or they’d of eaten the rest of her too.’

  ‘How old was she then?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Real old. Or maybe not more than I am now.’ Mollie chortled. ‘Felt real old to me back then.’

  ‘Her husband left her at Charlotte’s Creek, didn’t he?’ Lucy asked. ‘Why did he do that?’

  Mollie shook her head. ‘Long story that one. I’ll make more tea.’

  Lucy waited then, making stilted small talk with the men while Mollie pottered around making another pot of tea and rummaging in the cupboard for some more biscuits. By dint of persistent questioning, Lucy discovered that Little John had been a drover and stockman in the area all his life, and that Long John liked boxing. Then at last Mollie returned to the table and nestled herself into her chair with the air of a great storyteller. When she spoke again, her voice was soft and husky and she had a faraway look in her eyes.

  ‘Thomas Carlyle was big rude ugly bugger, out from England, all tied up in the gold at Charters Towers in those boom years, eh.’

  ‘When was that?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Long time back now, honey—Noel’s grandfather’s day.’ Mollie nodded. ‘Any rate, big Tom one day, he thought he’d had enough of gold, and he’d more money than he could poke a stick at, so he reckon he wanna try a turn at being a cattle baron. So he got his bit of country—Leichhardt’s Creek, it was called then—and got a wife sent over, Lotte. She was fresh out of England, poor bugger. Just a girl, seventeen, my grandmother told it. My gran’s people lived on Leichhardt then, eh, and Gran, she was Lotte’s age too.’

  ‘Seven
teen!’ Lucy exclaimed.

  ‘Yep. And had to marry big Tom. And he’d be older than her by years and years. And even worse, she’s real pretty, eh, like a doll, Gran told it, and him like an ugly pink pig.’ Mollie sipped her tea thoughtfully, and took a bite of gingernut with infuriating deliberation.

  ‘So was she unhappy?’ Lucy prompted.

  ‘Well, she never did tell much to the Murris,’ Mollie sighed. ‘But big Tom never came much to Leichhardt. Real jealous-type fella, so he kept her out here, away from all the looking eyes of other men at the Towers. He kept on telling her that he’s coming home to live at Leichhardt, finishing up with the gold and the town, but he never did.’

  ‘So he lived in Charters Towers and left Lotte out at Leichhardt?’ Lucy asked in astonishment.

  Mollie nodded. ‘He got an Irishman, Mr Owen, for head stockman at Leichhardt. He was a real good fella, good and fair, and my gran’s people loved to work for Mr Owen Leahy. The Murris are real good stockpeople, eh, Leichhardt was doing real good, making lots more money for that big Tom.’

  ‘So did Tom eventually come back?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Now you’re rushing the story along,’ scolded Mollie.

  Lucy fought back a smile. For someone who’d been so reluctant to speak, Mollie was certainly getting into the swing of it now.

  ‘Tom did come home, from time to time, but he never stayed on. He wanted a baby boy Carlyle, see. He says to Lotte, when she has the boy, then he’s home for good. But years and years went along, and still no baby.’

  ‘And did Lotte want a baby too?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘You ask some curly ones.’ Mollie shook her head and frowned. ‘I s’pose she did. Any rate, one year, big Tom hardly comes home at all, and when he does, Lotte’s pregnant, and big Tom, he knows it’s not his.’

  ‘But how could he be certain?’ Lucy was intrigued.

  ‘Dunno for sure, honey, but Gran always used to joke about big Tom. She reckoned he must of knew he was firing blanks from his big old gun.’

  ‘Oh, now the plot thickens!’ Lucy was leaning forward in her chair.

  Little John suddenly piped up again. ‘Too right. Some things money can’t do for a man, even a big hefty bloke like that.’

  ‘Not like my good John here,’ Mollie agreed proudly, ‘not like him at all. Look at him, Lucy.’ Mollie pointed with a wrinkled brown finger. ‘Little, eh?’

  Lucy glanced at Little John, and then quickly withdrew her gaze. The unfortunate man looked as though he wanted to sink through the floorboards.

  But Mollie went on relentlessly, ‘He’s got a buffalo heart in that little old body. True. And he got me our boy, and me pushing forty then, eh.’

  Lucy nodded, suitably impressed.

  ‘Look at our boy, but.’ Mollie nodded towards Long John, who was now slowly turning the pages of an Outback magazine, his thick brown forearms bulging with sinewy strength below his rolled-up sleeves. He was certainly a fine figure of a man. He kept his eyes on the page, but one shapely eyebrow and a corner of his lip twitched almost imperceptibly. ‘Long, eh?’ Mollie’s voice was full of pride as she looked at him.

  Lucy smiled in agreement, then took the heat off John the younger by asking, ‘So, what happened next with Tom and Lotte?’

  ‘Well, when Tom saw Lotte with her full belly he got real sulky, then real mad, like a stuck pig,’ Mollie resumed. ‘Because some other man’d slunk in on his patch and cut his grass for him. Did a proper job of it, eh, when he couldn’t do it himself ’n’ that.’

  ‘What then?’ Lucy asked urgently, seeing that Mollie had picked up another biscuit.

  Mollie shook her head sadly. ‘It was an ugly day. My people talked about it for years after. They could all hear him down the camp. They say he tried to kill it in her belly, and only Mr Owen Leahy stopped him. And Mr Owen got fair knocked about and got his walking ticket right then.’

  ‘So the baby was Owen’s?’

  ‘That’s what big Tom thought, at any rate,’ said Mollie. ‘But talk in the camp said it wasn’t him. My gran said it was a “cheeky-bugger-pretty-ringer”. That’s how she used to talk, eh. He was a whitey ’n’ that. All the Leichhardt Murris knew. And he’d shot through long time ago.’

  ‘Oh, poor Lotte!’ Lucy said softly.

  ‘Yeah, I reckon,’ agreed Long John, looking up from his magazine, his dark eyes smouldering at Lucy and his voice down in his boots.

  ‘Everyone knew ’bout the caper that’d gone on there,’ Mollie went on. ‘Lotte, but, she was still too much a precious-lady. Didn’t stop her going on like the queen of England, did it? And Gran’s mob, they still treated her like that too, eh. Did all they could for the poor silly bird. Wouldn’t let no black-gin-sheila be her friend.’ Mollie shrugged. ‘Always wearing some fancy turnout even with no one to appreciate it. But she must’ve been lonely for a fella, eh, Little John—just like you liked to get a look at me from time to time when we was back at Leichhardt.’

  Little John’s face deepened from its regular red to a dark blotchy scarlet, but Mollie chattered on, apparently oblivious. ‘Things went downhill now. Big Tom took off back to the Towers, wild in a rage. A new head stockman came, “real-no-good-pommy-lubber”, Gran said, and all my people started to walk. No work getting done on Leichhardt. But Lotte, she had her baby, a boy, and she was real happy. My gran stayed to look out for her, even when the other Murris mostly went.’

  ‘And Tom?’ Lucy asked. ‘Did he come back eventually?’

  ‘Just one other time he come,’ Mollie said. ‘To see the kid, prove it wasn’t his.’

  ‘But how could he confirm that? Was there no resemblance?’

  ‘Wasn’t ugly enough, eh, Little John?’ Mollie laughed. ‘And a baby boy too, that made him wilder.’

  ‘An heir that wasn’t his,’ Little John muttered.

  ‘He ranted something terrible,’ Mollie continued, her eyes wide. ‘My gran reckoned he gonna strangle the kid. But Lotte there, she got the rifle, and she mean business, eh. Give him a fright, that did. Big Tom, he didn’t know she had it in her, did he? Mother love, eh. You don’t wanna muck about with that mighty thing.’ She chuckled and beamed at her son. ‘Something that bastard never run into before.’ Mollie bit into the remainder of the biscuit that she’d been waving around in her hand, then added thickly, ‘He never come back after that.’

  Lucy waited on the edge of her seat, trying to hide her impatience.

  At last Mollie swallowed, took a sip of tea, and went on. ‘News came then, Leichhardt gonna be sold. But it wasn’t till a couple of years on that the Wests bought the place. And big Tom, he took off back to England, taking a new woman with him. And now lady Lotte, she was high and dry. So Mr James, he let her stay on. Had a real soft spot for her, he did, real good fella. Some of the Murris come back then, and Leichhardt come back on track.’ Mollie leaned back in her chair and sighed conclusively.

  ‘And what happened to Lotte’s boy?’ Lucy asked.

  Mollie’s face darkened. ‘Maybe another day,’ she muttered, looking away.

  ‘Thank you so much for all you’ve told me,’ Lucy said quickly.

  Mollie brightened. ‘Well, honey, I like a good yarn-up. Just ask my Johns.’

  Lucy stayed on for another two hours of ‘sit-down time’, during which both Johns silently departed to go about their business. Then Mollie walked her to her car and gave her a firm hug. ‘Been real good talking, honey.’

  ‘That’s for sure,’ Lucy said, hoping it was clear how privileged she felt to have spent the morning with the remarkable woman. Mollie smiled. Lucy got into her car and waved out the window.

  ‘Say g’day to Goldy from old Mollie, would you?’ the old woman called, raising her skinny arm. ‘He’s a real good fella, next best after my Johns. You should hook up with him, eh.’

  Lucy was taken aback, and drove away quickly, but not before she’d heard the old woman’s knowing chuckle.

  Chapter 12

  After her morning
with old Mollie, Lucy did some research on the schoolroom computer. Thomas Carlyle, she discovered, had been born in 1862, the youngest son of an aristocratic English family. With no fortune to inherit, he’d been sent out to Australia in 1886 and had taken up an important position managing the railway that had been constructed between Charters Towers and Townsville to cater to the booming gold trade. The clever businessman had soon extended his fingers into many other pies and become instrumental in the international trade of gold. But to Lucy’s great disappointment, no amount of searching would reveal even a snippet of information regarding his lonely wife, her son, or Thomas’s ties with Charlotte’s Creek.

  When Lucy set off for her walk that evening, instead of taking her usual route down the main Ingham road, she headed for the little Charlotte’s Creek cemetery that Noel had pointed out to her, set on the side of the hill to the south of the buildings. Under some gnarled old mango trees, she found the graves of all the departed Wests and other miscellaneous characters who had lived and died over the years on Charlotte’s Creek ground. Then at last she located a small discoloured marble headstone reading simply, Charlotte Carlyle. 1880–1952. There were also several tiny graves, mostly unnamed, that Lucy assumed were those of children, but she imagined that if one of them had belonged to Lotte’s son, she would have insisted on a proper headstone. Lucy cleared around the granite slabs over the graves of James and Edward West and, with extra care, removed the grass that had grown up over Lotte’s grave. Then, sitting on the remains of a horse-drawn gig as the sun went down, she took out a notepad and jotted down every detail about the sad life of Lotte that she could recall from Mollie’s story—for what reason, she couldn’t be sure.

  When she arrived back at her cottage, she poured some milk into a saucer and left it just outside the door, as she’d done every evening now for a week. The milk was for a shy young cat that had recently begun to visit each night. It was an unspectacular tabby, but its eyes were a most striking green and, Lucy believed, full of sadness.