The Burning Land

by John Fletcher

‘Who is it?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’ Like a sulky boy.

  ‘Catriona Simmons.’

  He stared. ‘How …?’

  ‘He went into town to see Mr Simmons this morning.’

  ‘I hope she doesn’t get into any trouble.’

  ‘Is she in trouble, Matt?’

  His cheeks were fiery. ‘Only if her dad doesn’t like her seeing me.’

  ‘Did she ask him? Did you?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Then he wouldn’t like it, would he?’

  ‘Her cousin was always there. Loads of other people. A dance at the shearers’ hall, that’s all it was.’ He looked back over his shoulder at the workshop door. ‘I must get moving.’

  ‘Are you going to see her?’

  He stared. ‘I can’t, can I?’

  ‘Where are you going then?’

  ‘I’ll find somewhere.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You wait here.’ She walked purposefully to the house.

  ‘Ma?’ he called after her. ‘I can’t wait.’

  ‘You stay where you are.’

  He stared after her, angry, perplexed, ready to leap into the saddle and ride, but did not.

  Within minutes she was back.

  ‘Here,’ she murmured.

  She had food and clothing done up in a pack. He took it from her and slipped his arms through the straps.

  ‘Thanks, Ma.’

  He was amazed she had done such a thing, a woman who for as long as he could remember had seemed scarcely there at all.

  ‘I also got you this.’

  He stared as she held out the rifled carbine to him. ‘You give me this he’ll kill you.’

  ‘I’ll not have you go off without some way to protect yourself. There’s powder and shot in the pack.’

  A moment’s hesitation, then he took the proffered rifle. ‘Thanks.’

  They looked at each other. There was nothing to do but go.

  ‘Go with God,’ she said.

  God, he thought. I’ll leave him to worry about God. But said nothing.

  Awkwardly, he leant forward and kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘See you, then.’

  Lorna stood without moving, watching him as he slipped away through the trees. Even after she had lost sight of him she waited, listening to the drumming of the mare’s hooves fading, fading, until she could hear them no more.

  I had my ain wee son. I had my friend, my love. I had Matthew whom I love as much as any son. I have nothing now.

  She remembered all the moments. His birth, the furious way he had yelled his challenge at the world. The time he had fallen into the river. How he had found the butterfly in the storm six years ago. Even then she had known he would leave her but she had not thought she would be the one to help him on his way.

  She had not done it only for him. She thought how her life had been all these years since Charlie Smith and his men had stolen her away. Andrew had neither understood nor forgiven, had never understood that there was nothing to forgive. She would be with him all her life but giving Matthew the food, the gun, the blessing, had been her way of rebelling against what her life had become.

  We should have had love and trust but did not. Even if he couldn’t manage love at least we should have had a life of warmth and affection instead of what we have.

  Slowly she turned towards the open door of the chapel. I better go and see what I can do, she thought.

  Matthew waited until dark. The town was sleeping when he rode in, the sound of the hooves muffled by the dust. He dismounted twenty yards from the store, tethered the mare to a post and slipped around the corner of the building.

  There was a small window, closely curtained. He listened but could hear nothing. Heart in his throat, he tapped. If it was Simmons’ room there’d be hell to pay.

  He tapped again, louder. Again, louder still.

  The curtain twitched. Catriona’s face stared at him through the glass. She unfastened the catch.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Her voice was high-pitched in astonishment but as quiet as breath in the still night.

  ‘I came to say goodbye.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The old man and me had a fight.’

  Her eyes went round. ‘A real fight?’

  He salvaged a grin from somewhere. ‘Reckon you could call it real. I knocked him down.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Us.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You get any trouble?’

  She shook her head. ‘Where you going?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Go to Currawong. The Kennedys will fix you up with something.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Of course. Dorian knows you, doesn’t he?’

  ‘All right then. Thanks.’

  ‘Will you write to me?’

  ‘Sure.’ Meaning it, if only for the moment.

  She looked at him through the open window. ‘It’s still not too late. If you spoke to father in the morning …’

  ‘I can’t.’

  He saw her lips—those soft, firm lips—tighten. ‘Oh?’

  She deserved the truth. ‘There’s a whole world out there. I want to see some of it before I settle down.’

  He had expected her to be angry but she was not. ‘I can understand that.’ She smiled at him, eyes bright. ‘You’d better go, then.’

  ‘Catriona …’

  ‘Go.’ She leant through the window and kissed him full on the lips, then smiled at him, running the tip of her finger around his eyebrow. She drew back inside the room. There were tears on her face. ‘Just go.’

  At the top of the hill he reined in and looked back. A light breeze had brought a scarf of cloud across the quarter moon but overhead the sky was clear. Starlight shone on the huddle of buildings. He could see a lighted window at the far end of the street.

  A hell of a girl, he told himself. I must remember to write to her.

  He turned the mare northwards.

  Part Three

  Gold

  Some tried their luck at Bendigo,

  And some at Fiery Creek;

  I made a fortune in a day

  And spent it in a week.

  Goldfields ballad, 1850s

  SIXTEEN

  Catriona’s relatives, the Kennedys, found Matthew a job as shepherd working for Henry Cusack, who owned the Glenmona run outside Amherst. Dorian Kennedy gave him a young sheepdog he named Jack and in no time at all he had settled in.

  He had worked with sheep all his life yet now he awoke to each new morning as though it were the best and brightest since the creation of the world. It didn’t matter if it was pouring with rain or if the north wind brought clouds of red dust and baking heat. Henry Cusack’s mean ways did not matter either. Every day was another step upon a road stretching into the unknown. The fact that he did not know where the road led was unimportant. All that counted was that he was alive, young and, for the first time in his life, free.

  He had one day off a month. On the first of them, by arrangement, he met Dorian Kennedy on the Amherst road and they rode into town together. There wasn’t much to it. A dozen slab-walled buildings with bark roofs, a few more substantial structures scattered here and there, the main street no more than a rutted track with hitching posts set along it.

  ‘Amherst,’ Dorian said, breathing the air deeply as though inhaling an intoxicating fragrance. ‘Welcome to the city of the Western Ranges.’

  A solitary figure emerged from the tavern at the far end of the street, wove a complex path across the track and subsided against the wall of the opposite building.

  Matthew grinned. ‘I’m a country boy. I’m not used to the crowds and bustle of the big city.’

  ‘A drink first,’ Dorian declared. ‘Then we’ll go and see a friend of mine.’

  The tavern’s name was drawn unevenly in white paint across a piece of splintered board nailed above the doorway.

  ‘“The Royal
Hotel,”’ Matthew read. ‘Doesn’t look that royal to me.’

  ‘Put it like this,’ Dorian countered, ‘do you see a better one?’

  Inside it was dark and gloomy. There were no windows and the only light came through the open door and from a pair of oil lamps secured to the walls. A counter ran along one side of the room. Bottles on shelves reflected the sombre light. On the other side of the doorway was a rough table and a bench. A tall man wearing a hat and smoking a short-stemmed pipe stood behind the counter; three men in red shirts and moleskin trousers faced him, glass in hand. A notice inscribed in black paint on a circular white board stood prominently on the shelves behind the bar. NO TICK.

  ‘The motto of the bush,’ Dorian said. ‘Jacob, we’ll have two glasses of your famous beer, please. And I’d like you to meet a friend of mine. Matthew Curtis.’

  Jacob nodded as he slapped the glasses down on the counter. ‘New in town?’

  Dorian said, ‘Matthew works with our friend Henry Cusack at Glenmona. He took Tommy Chapman’s place.’

  One of the customers, a giant with a big belly and coarse, drinker’s face, turned his head. ‘Found any gold, ’ave yer?’

  They all laughed. Matthew looked questioningly at Dorian. ‘Gold?’

  ‘Couple of months ago there was talk young Tommy had found gold,’ Dorian explained. ‘Quite an excitement. Then he disappeared and we heard no more of it. Or of him.’ He raised his glass and tipped half its contents down his throat. ‘Most mysterious, as they say.’

  ‘Maybe Tommy took the gold with him,’ Matthew suggested.

  Dorian said, ‘You work for the man. Do you really see anyone lifting anything, let alone gold, from under Henry Cusack’s nose?’

  The man who had mentioned gold took Matthew’s hand in a powerful grip. ‘Dave Honeyman. I’m the blacksmith round ’ere.’

  ‘Good to know you.’

  Dave said, ‘Henry Cusack told me himself there weren’t no truth in the rumour but I weren’t convinced then an’ I aren’t now. There’s been traces of gold in all these hills.’

  ‘Enough to fill a tooth,’ Dorian said. ‘If that.’

  ‘It’ll come,’ Honeyman said. ‘You’ll see.’

  They finished their drinks and went out into the hot and empty street. The only sign of life was two dogs scavenging by the furthest buildings.

  ‘Where is everybody?’

  Dorian shrugged. ‘It’s always like this.’ His face brightened. ‘Never mind. I shall now take you and introduce you to the lovely Janice, fairest flower of all Amherst. Daughter of our blacksmith, no less.’

  The Honeyman house stood just off the main street. It was bigger and more substantial than the others Matthew had seen in town, with a shingle roof and a veranda along the front that was cluttered with bits and pieces of old metal.

  They stood on the veranda and waited for the door to open.

  ‘She’s got a bit of a reputation,’ Dorian warned under his breath.

  ‘Reputation?’

  ‘Men.’

  The door opened. After her father Janice Honeyman was a pleasant surprise. She was tall and slender and wore a flounced white dress and close-fitting bodice. Her hair, ripe corn streaked with gold, was caught up over her ears from a central parting. Her eyebrows were dark, her eyes large and dark brown and fringed with dark lashes. Matthew had seen pebbles like her eyes, brown and glossy with the sun warm on the water covering them.

  He thought, She is beautiful.

  Janice had a memory as phantasmagoric as a dream, of a scent, a voice, a presence. The voice … crying, spiked with what she now knew had been hurt, anger. She could recall a mouth opening, closing, no words, simply the mouth opening and closing silently, the outline of a face, a personality like an imprint on the air.

  That was all she had of her mother. Her father had told her she had died. Janice had grown up from earliest childhood believing this. Since what had happened three years earlier, when she was fifteen, she had wondered, without knowing why, if it were true. Perhaps her mother had simply gone away. In one way it made no difference but she would have liked to know. She could have asked her father about it but did not. She would ask him nothing.

  Sydney: that was another memory. Of people, bustle, of a walk by the water’s edge, the vast harbour with ships in it, masts spiking the blue sky. This memory was far more important than that of the woman. It coloured the whole of her being. It represented life. Of which she had been cheated when her father left the town, its raucous bustle and salt-stained air, and brought her to this one sad street of hovels drowned by the grey-green immensity of the bush.

  If she had been born here it would perhaps have been not so bad. She would have had nothing with which to compare the muddy street, the shuttered eyes, the closed and censorious minds. As it was, the memory seared her mind, her heart.

  She had to leave Amherst, to reclaim life. Her determination was as hard as diamond, yet it was not easy to do. I am in a locked box here. There is no key. Not for me, not for a woman. I need someone to open it for me. To let me fly away.

  She had looked, God knows. For a time she had thought Dorian Kennedy might be the one but came soon to realise that he was as bound to this place as she was. Worse, he had no wish, no thought, of escape. He was fond of her, she knew. In return she tolerated him. She despised him for his easy-going ways, the fact she could twist him so easily around her finger, yet it was nice to have one friend in a town that for the most part disapproved of her.

  There had been others besides Dorian, passers-through, emissaries from the world. Nothing to any of them, breaths taken by a drowning person, uncaring about the quality of the air, but the town had categorised all of them—and her. With their whispers, their knowing and scandalised looks, they called her the scarlet woman of Amherst. Stoked by the town’s outrage her father had once tried to intervene. She had seen him off in quick order, as he must have known she would. Now he ignored her as she ignored the town. He could afford to do so. He was good at his job and her reputation had not damaged trade.

  She was in the house when the knock brought her to the door. When she opened it the first thing she saw was Dorian’s face smiling at her. Beside him was a figure she did not recognise, a large, strongly muscled man of her own age, dark hair with a flame in it, blue eyes full of life. Even standing there, he had a force about him. Her heart lurched.

  She thought, I knew that someone would come.

  She said, ‘Where have you sprung from?’

  ‘Jim Jim.’

  ‘Must be more to Jim Jim than I thought.’

  Even as she said it she thought that was not the way to talk to him, but she was helpless to do anything else. She was trapped in the flirtatious personality she had acquired to deal with the passers-through and that now seemed too strong for her to discard.

  She asked, ‘Are you staying around here?’

  ‘For the time being anyway.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Who knows?’

  She pouted. ‘Another one with itchy feet. The colony’s full of them.’

  ‘Never mind, dear,’ Dorian said. ‘You’ve got your old faithfuls to admire you.’

  She laughed and put her hand on his sleeve. ‘I have, haven’t I?’ To Matthew she said, ‘Dorian’s so sweet. He really looks after me. Or would, if I gave him the chance.’ She smiled flirtatiously at them both. ‘Would you like some tea? Or have you,’ the faintest sniff as she smelt the beer on their breath, ‘had enough to drink?’

  Matthew said, ‘Tea would be nice.’

  There was another veranda at the back of the house. It faced a patch of rough grass littered with piles of rusty metal, an old boiler, a number of weathered waggon wheels and other bits and pieces. They sat on the veranda while Janice poured tea into heavy earthenware cups.

  ‘So what do you think of our little town?’ she asked Matthew.

  ‘It’s certainly little.’

  ‘My father thinks it will grow into
a large town eventually.’

  He smiled. ‘When they find gold?’

  ‘I wish they’d find something. This place drives me mad, it’s so boring.’

  Dorian said, ‘If you married me you’d have plenty to do.’

  She made her mouth smile back at him. ‘Milking the cows.’

  ‘To say nothing of seeing to the house, cooking the meals, doing the washing and ironing—’

  ‘Don’t!’ she said. ‘You make me feel quite faint.’

  ‘Janice plans to be a lady of leisure,’ Dorian explained to Matthew. ‘I’ve told her she’ll have to go to Sydney. No landed gentry around here.’

  ‘There’s always my employer,’ Matthew said.

  She looked aghast. ‘That slimy old man?’

  Matthew was amused. ‘He’s not as bad as that.’

  ‘The way he looks with those bulgy eyes of his. It’s not as though it’s your face he looks at first either.’ She watched Matthew as she spoke. Some men did not know how to deal with a plain-speaking woman but she could detect no sign of alarm on his face.

  ‘Mr Curtis,’ she said, ‘how do you pass your spare time?’

  ‘One day a month is all I get. This is my first day off since I’ve been here. I haven’t thought what I’ll do next month.’

  She wasn’t used to men playing hard to get. ‘Maybe you’ll be down the ale house getting drunk with the other labourers,’ she said, a lot sharper than she had intended.

  ‘If I feel like it. There again, I may not.’

  They left soon afterwards. She watched them as they walked down the street, knowing she had handled him all wrong, had said all the foolish, flirtatious things she had told herself she would not say. She might have seen the last of him because of it yet something told her he would be back.

  Walking down the street Dorian said, ‘Got on the wrong side of her.’

  ‘I did, didn’t I?’ Not caring and showing it.

  ‘She’s the nearest thing we’ve got to a beauty in Amherst,’ Dorian said.

  ‘And knows it.’

  ‘See the competition, you could hardly expect her not to. A nice girl, Janice, whatever people say about her. I’m very fond of her.’