The River Charm

by Belinda Murrell

  Charlotte and Emily exchanged worried glances. Their stepfather, George Barton, could easily have been the one to shoot the koala.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ replied Charlotte, tucking her jacket more securely around the joey. ‘I won’t trouble him.’

  ‘You girls ought to be careful riding up in that scrub,’ warned Dandy Jack, swinging down his hammer on the plank of wood. ‘There’s all sorts of danger that could harm a couple of young ladies like you – wild dogs, poisonous brown snakes, bloodthirsty natives . . .’

  He glanced at Charley with a sneer.

  Charlotte laughed and tossed her head. ‘You’re just trying to frighten us, Jack. The Aborigines won’t hurt us – they’ve been friends with my family for years. Besides, the brown snakes slither out of the way as soon as they hear you. They are far more frightened of me than I am of them.’

  ‘The dogs are fairly timid, too, aren’t they, Charley?’ added Emily. ‘We often see them whenever Charley’s family camp on Oldbury. They have lots of them, and they howl a lot, but are quite tame.’

  Charley hung his head and scuffed his bare toes in the dust.

  Dandy Jack grinned and put down his hammer. ‘Well, you should watch out for Mr Barton up there with his shotgun. He might think you are a pair of native bears.’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Charlotte. ‘But fortunately he rode into town this morning. He told Mamma not to expect him for dinner.’

  ‘Gone into town on business?’ asked Dandy Jack slyly. ‘That might take a few days.’

  ‘Mr Barton’s business is his own concern,’ said Charlotte haughtily. She turned to Charley with a warm smile, patting Ophelia on her sleek black neck. ‘Charley, would you be so kind as to put the horses out in the paddock for us, please? We won’t be riding again today.’

  ‘Yes, miss,’ replied Charley, leading Ophelia and Clarie forward by the reins.

  As they walked towards the house, Charlotte whispered to her sister, ‘We can only hope he’s away for a few days!’

  Emily smiled with relief. ‘A holiday.’

  A stone-flagged verandah ran across the back of the main house, separating it from the rectangular sandstone buildings of the dairy and kitchen to the left and right of the courtyard. Large pots were filled with flowers and herbs, while pale-pink cabbage roses and lavender grew against the protected kitchen wall.

  Bridget, the Irish maidservant, was sweeping the paving with a stiff broom, her pale skin flushed and sweaty with the exertion.

  ‘Bridget, where is Mamma?’ called Charlotte as she hurried across the courtyard.

  Bridget paused and pushed her damp, red hair back from her face, tucking it under her white cap.

  ‘She is in the office doing the accounts,’ Bridget offered in her lilting Irish accent. Bridget peered at the bundle in Charlotte’s arms. ‘Do no’ tell me ye two have brought home another native creature? Do ye no’ have enough already wit’ your wallabies and your possums? No’ to mention tha’ dog tracking mud on my just-cleaned floors? When will ye learn that wild creatures belong in the forest, no’ in the house?’

  ‘Oh, Bridget, I’m sorry,’ Emily said. ‘But he would die if we left him up there. His mother had been shot. The wallabies were orphans too, their mothers killed by hunters. Surely you wouldn’t rather that we left them to die?’

  Bridget smiled, leaning on her broom, a long white apron covering her grey dress. ‘Oh, be off wit’ ye both,’ she said. ‘I made some shortbread this morning if ye’re hungry. Take some to yer mother. And if ye need it, there is fresh milk in the dairy, for the orphan.’

  ‘Thank you, Bridget, you are a treasure,’ said Charlotte.

  The girls detoured via the kitchen to find the promised snack, then entered the heart of the house through the back door. Mamma was in the office at the rear, sitting at the desk by the window, frowning down at her work. In one hand, she held a small brown pebble that she rolled between her fingers as she read a letter. The desk was littered with papers and ledgers, while the walls of the office were lined with bookshelves crowded with hundreds of leather-bound volumes.

  As the girls came through the door, Mamma looked up and smiled. Her hair was tucked under a lace cap, a gold locket on a chain hung around her throat, and a blue merino shawl was wrapped around her narrow shoulders. Mamma was a slight woman, not very tall, with the same striking black eyes and black curly hair as Charlotte.

  ‘Hello, my loves,’ Mamma greeted them, slipping the pebble in her pocket. ‘What have you there? Another treasure from the bush?’

  Charlotte opened her jacket to reveal the koala, which was now sleeping soundly, rocked by the constant motion.

  ‘A native bear – Phascolarctos cinereus,’ said Mamma. ‘From the Greek phaskolos, meaning “pouch” and arktos meaning “bear”, or coola in the native language.’

  Charlotte nodded quickly. ‘But will he be all right?’

  Mamma stood up, dropping her shawl on the chair. She gently took the animal, deftly examining it to see if it was injured. The koala mewled in dismay.

  ‘He’s a fine little man,’ she said approvingly. ‘He seems strong and healthy. I think he will survive.’

  Emily smiled, her hazel eyes shining with delight. ‘So may we keep him as a pet?’

  ‘He can sleep in the schoolroom in an old shawl,’ Mamma assured her. ‘Remember, he is nocturnal, so he should sleep all day and become active in the evening.’

  Charlotte and Emily flashed each other a grin.

  ‘We can all take turns looking after him,’ said Charlotte. ‘I’ll ask John the dairyman if he’ll save us some milk each day.’

  Mamma carried the koala out into the hallway, followed by the two girls.

  ‘You should feed him stale bread soaked in milk, with some tender blue gum shoots,’ Mamma suggested. ‘We should avoid handling him for a few days until he gets used to us. We want to avoid him going into shock.’

  ‘I think we should call him Master Maugie,’ Charlotte declared, removing her black straw hat and shaking her curly hair.

  ‘Maugie – why Maugie?’ asked Mamma.

  ‘It just suits him,’ Charlotte said as they walked out the back door.

  Mamma shivered as the cold air hit her. ‘Charlotte dearest, I left my shawl in the office. Would you fetch it for me, if you please?’

  Charlotte ran back to the office and around the desk to pick the shawl up from the chair. As she leant over, her eye was caught by a letter lying on the desk. Her eyes skimmed across it.

  I have received your letter of yesterday’s date and beg to say that it is entirely on account of Mr Barton that I fear for the children’s property. He is your Husband – his intemperance is known to the whole world and I know from yourself and others that he is a useless idler who neglects his concerns . . . There is reason to fear that everything will be squandered. Therefore, the step I intend to take is to put the remainder of the property beyond his control . . .

  ‘Can you not find it, Charlotte?’ Mamma’s voice rose from outside. ‘It is on the chair.’

  Charlotte’s stomach flipped with anxiety and she stepped back, clutching Mamma’s shawl. It was a letter from the executors – the men responsible for managing her dead father’s estate. The men whose letters made her mother frown and pace the floor, white-lipped with anger. What did it mean? What did they plan to do?

  ‘Coming, Mamma,’ Charlotte replied. She buried her face in the shawl and sniffed the warm, comforting smell of her mother. It made her feel safe.

  She hurried out again.

  4

  The Missing Silverware

  It was warm in the stone-flagged kitchen, with the fire roaring in the deep fireplace. Plum puddings wrapped in muslin hung from the ceiling rafters, along with a leg of ham and a bunch of dried thyme.

  Mamma stood at the kitchen table, her sleeves rolle
d up to the elbows, a long white apron covering her grey skirts. She was rolling dough on the scrubbed-pine table with a wooden rolling pin. To her left, Charlotte and Emily stood peeling and coring apples with two sharp knives, chattering and giggling, while Louisa and James made animal shapes with the remnant dough.

  ‘I’ve made an iguanodon,’ James told Louisa, holding up his pastry creature. ‘And it is going to destroy your pussy cat. Ggggrrrr!’

  James’s dinosaur tussled with Louisa’s cat, biting its tail off.

  ‘Mamma,’ shrieked Louisa, holding up her tail-less feline. ‘James ruined my cat.’

  ‘James?’ reproved Mamma, but her face was soft, without the harried frown she often seemed to wear these days.

  ‘Here, Louisa,’ said James hurriedly. ‘See, the tail is fine. We’ll just squish it back onto the body and it’s fixed.’

  In a moment the cat had a fine tail, fatter than before. Louisa grinned and attacked the dinosaur in retaliation. Emily laughed to see the playful battle.

  Charlotte took another apple from the bowl to chop. She felt a sense of peace that even the bickering of her siblings could not destroy.

  ‘Make sure you slice the apples nice and finely,’ Mamma suggested, scattering knobs of butter over the dough. She rolled this into the dough of flour and water over and over again. Then she glazed the dough with whisked egg white, before adding more butter and rolling again.

  When all the butter had been thoroughly mixed in, Mamma rolled the dough out into a thin pastry and laid it over the buttered pie dish to form a base. Charlotte and Emily then placed the sliced apple over the bottom, sprinkled with sugar, lemon juice and water. Finally, Mamma sealed the pie with a pastry lid, scoring two vents to let out the steam.

  Bridget came in from the main house, her freckled face furrowed with concern. ‘Ma’am, have ye moved the silver serving dishes from the butler’s pantry?’ she asked. ‘I just went to clean the silverware as ye asked and several things seem to be missing. I put them all away after Sunday dinner, but they are no’ there now.’

  Mamma paused, her hands sticky with dough. She wiped a tendril of hair away from her cheek, leaving a smear of pastry.

  ‘No,’ replied Mamma, frowning. ‘Are you certain you put them away in the right place?’

  Bridget wrung her hands in her apron, close to tears. Charlotte and Emily paused in their work. It was a serious matter when items went missing with no explanation. Their stepfather had been known to send convict servants to the lockup in Berrima for much lesser offences.

  ‘I swear to ye, ma’am, I wiped them all and put them away safe in the butler’s pantry, then locked it as ye told me,’ Bridget insisted. ‘I take great care wit’ the silver.’

  Mamma sighed and pushed away the pie. ‘I know you do – thank you, Bridget. Would you mind looking in the drawing room sideboard for me, if you please?’ asked Mamma. ‘Perhaps . . . perhaps someone placed them there by mistake?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ replied Bridget, hurrying away, head bowed.

  Mamma washed her hands in the stone sink and went to the locked store cupboard in the corner. Using the keys hanging from her belt, she unlocked the door and reached right up the back, pulling out a small tin caddy wedged behind a sack of currants. Mamma opened it with trembling hands. The caddy was empty.

  ‘All gone,’ she whispered, leaning against the door, her forehead on her hands. ‘It’s all gone. He’s taken it.’

  Charlotte felt a familiar knot return to her stomach. ‘Mamma, are you all right?’ she asked. ‘What ails you? What is taken?’

  ‘My allowance – our allowance,’ Mamma whispered. ‘All our money for the quarter, there is nothing left.’

  ‘Who could have taken it?’ asked Emily. ‘The shepherds? The stockmen?’

  ‘Perhaps it was bushrangers,’ suggested James, jumping to his feet. ‘Do you remember, Mamma, when the bushrangers came and attacked Oldbury? There was the time that they murdered poor Tom Smith, the groom, and the time last year they tried to shoot Mr Barton through the window? There is still that hole in the drawing room wall.’

  Louisa, the youngest, began to cry. Mamma went pale.

  ‘No, James, I do not believe it was bushrangers,’ Mamma assured him gravely. ‘I think I know who it was, but I do not want you to concern yourselves about it. Charlotte, I would be greatly obliged if you could take your brother and sisters to the dairy to wash themselves. I need to help Bridget search for the silverware.’

  Mamma bustled towards the door.

  ‘That’s why Mr Barton went to town, isn’t it?’ asked Charlotte, a surge of anger welling in her. All the joy in their unexpected holiday was gone.

  Mamma smiled wearily. ‘Perhaps you could make sure that young James washes behind his ears,’ she suggested. ‘I think he forgot to do that this morning.’

  ‘Yes, Mamma,’ replied Charlotte, ushering the three younger siblings towards the door. The apple pie lay forgotten on the kitchen table. James grabbed an uncooked pastry iguanodon to eat on the way out.

  The dairy lay on the northern side of the courtyard, matching the freestanding kitchen on the southern side. Its thick stone walls kept the milk urns cooler, and this was where Mamma and Bridget churned the butter and made cream and cheese. Emily helped Louisa wash the sticky dough from her hands under the pump by the deep stone sink.

  ‘There you go, my poppet,’ soothed Emily, drying Louisa’s hands. ‘Does that feel better?’

  Louisa, the youngest at five years old, nodded and grinned a cheerful, gap-toothed smile, her earlier tears quickly forgotten. Like Emily, she had light-brown ringlets but grey eyes instead of hazel.

  ‘How does Mamma know it wasn’t bushrangers?’ demanded James as Charlotte pumped water over his hands. ‘It might be that convict John Lynch, who used to work at Oldbury and then ran away to join the bushrangers?’

  James’s face was alight with excitement. ‘It was John Lynch who killed poor Tom Smith the groom all those years ago,’ he continued. ‘And it was John Lynch who swore he wished he’d shot Mr Barton when he had the chance. I’ll wager it was John Lynch who tried to shoot Mr Barton through the sitting room window, too, shearing the collar of his coat and knocking him over.’

  Charlotte shivered in the cool dimness of the dairy. She pulled the pump handle up and down more vigorously, making cold water cascade into the sink and splash up onto James’s shirt.

  ‘That’s enough, James,’ reproved Charlotte, her mouth pursed. She looked remarkably similar to her mother when she was stern.

  ‘Imagine, Charlotte, if he had succeeded?’ James said, making a pistol shape with his wet hands and taking aim at an imaginary foe. ‘Wouldn’t our lives be different?’

  Charlotte and Emily exchanged a meaningful glance.

  ‘Hush, James,’ said Charlotte more forcefully, handing him a cloth to dry his hands. ‘You must not talk like that. What if someone heard you?’

  James looked sullen and kicked his boot against the floor. ‘Well, I do wish that pistol shot had found its mark,’ he insisted petulantly. ‘And I cannot see why you all pretend otherwise.’

  Charlotte sighed and soaped her own hands, a weight in her stomach.

  ‘That shot might just have easily killed Mamma,’ Charlotte reminded him sharply. ‘She was sitting in the drawing room too. The lead ball fell right at her feet.’

  ‘Thank goodness it didn’t,’ said Emily fervently, clasping her hands together.

  The children returned to the cluttered familiarity of their schoolroom, with its crowded shelves and large table covered in books, pencils, papers and sketches.

  Their noisy chatter woke Maugie the koala, who stalked from his crate on all fours, shaking his furry head grumpily. Louisa picked him up and gave him a cuddle, burying her face in his soft grey fur. James grabbed a leather ball and began kicking it around the table, shoot
ing goals between the chair legs. Emily peered dreamily out the window towards the mountain, her chin on the palm of her hand.

  Charlotte carefully opened one of the double cedar doors, which led to the elegant drawing room at the front of the house, with its avocado-green walls and red-and-blue Persian carpet. The room was furnished with several overstuffed chintz armchairs set around the wide fireplace, red cedar side tables and a grand piano topped with a large silver candelabrum. Two of Mamma’s landscape paintings hung on the walls in thick gilt frames.

  It was in this room that the family gathered in the evenings to read, sew and talk, while Emily or Charlotte played the piano.

  It was into this room one June evening, just over a year ago, that someone had fired a pistol, presumably aiming at Mr Barton. In one of the glass panes in the northern window was a small, round hole, its edges chipped and cracked. In the plaster wall on the far side of the room was another hole, where the shot had struck before bouncing back to the floor.

  Someone had wanted Mr Barton dead. But who could it have been? Charlotte thought about what James had said. Wouldn’t our life be delightfully different without him?

  Charlotte closed the door behind her and went back to the schoolroom feeling strangely unsettled.

  Oldbury, Spring 1839

  On a lovely September afternoon, Mamma appeared in the schoolroom with a large wicker basket over her arm. Sunshine streamed though the easterly windows and a small fire glowed on the hearth. Low shelves along the easterly wall were filled with scientific curios – shells, fossils, dried plants, stuffed beasts and seed pods. Maugie the koala, who had grown substantially, was asleep in the corner in his nest made of a faded merino shawl in a timber crate.

  ‘Who would like to come down to the stream for a picnic tea and some yabbying?’ Mamma asked with a warm smile. ‘I think you all need some fresh spring sunshine to put the roses back in your cheeks.’

  ‘Me, me,’ chorused the children, hurriedly packing away their notebooks and pencils.