Crimson Dawn

by Fleur McDonald

  ‘Very welcome,’ he nodded. He gave her a huge smile, and brown hair flopped over his eyes. As he pushed it back impatiently, Laura noticed his smile made his eyes seem to shine.

  ‘We’d better be off, but thanks again,’ she said, confused at what she was noticing about him. She hadn’t paid such attention to a man for ages.

  ‘Got all the instructions? All the drugs for him?’ Tim asked, leaning forward to look in the crate.

  ‘Mel gave us everything, thanks.’

  ‘Goodo. Any problems, you know my number.’ He put a hand on her shoulder before turning away and walking towards the door that led into his surgery. ‘See you at the Baggy and Saggy Ball, Laura,’ he called. ‘If you don’t arrive, I’ll come looking for you!’ The door banged shut behind him. Laura was sure she heard him add ‘and that’s a promise’.

  Avoiding Allie’s eye, she climbed into the ute and started it up. Allie got in, a half-smile on her face as she looked questioningly at her teacher.

  Laura said nothing, but as she drove out of the yard, a bubble of excitement began to form in the pit of her stomach.

  Chapter 21

  1939

  ‘All passengers for Portland!’

  Thomas woke with a start and realised he’d been sleeping for many hours. It was still dark, although there was a glimmer of light ahead. He rubbed his hands over his face, trying to get his bearings.

  ‘Passengers for Portland,’ the driver called again.

  That was him.

  Thomas stood and grabbed his bag from the rack above before stumbling down the aisle—a job in itself, with the bus lurching from side to side. His eyes peered towards the light and he looked around, eager to see where his mother had spent her childhood.

  ‘Coming home, lad?’ asked the driver as he negotiated the road.

  Thomas shook his head. ‘I’ve never been here,’ he answered, realising the man couldn’t see his movement in the darkness.

  ‘That’s the sea out to your right. Reckon the mist’ll be in tonight.’

  ‘The sea?’ Thomas echoed. He hadn’t known Portland was on the coast. He’d only seen the water once, when Mac had told him to catch the tram to Glenelg, a seaside suburb of Adelaide. He’d walked along the beach and not liked the way the sand had stuck to his feet. He hadn’t ventured into the water. It held no interest for him and, after buying an ice-cream, he’d caught the tram back to Mac’s home, where he felt comfortable.

  ‘Here we are,’ the driver slammed on the brakes and swung the wheel to the left, pulling up at the curb. ‘Have a good night.’

  Thomas thanked him and jumped lightly from the bus. He took a few steps forward to allow the bus to move on, then looked around.

  The air smelt humid and he could hear a whooshing sound. It must be the waves, he decided.

  It was dark, but for a pale illumination from the half-moon and the single globe light set on the side of the street.

  He heard a car door slam. ‘Thomas?’ A voice called. ‘Thomas Murphy?’ An elderly man hurried towards him.

  ‘Yes. Um.’ Thomas stopped, unsure what to call this man who was supposed to be family.

  The man stopped just short of him as if he, too, was unsure of the protocol in this sort of situation. Then he held open his arms and stepped forward.

  Thomas jerked back, but felt the frail arms enfolding him and heard a choked voice saying: ‘We’re so pleased you’re here. We would have helped if we’d known, my boy.’

  Hesitantly Thomas patted the old man on the back.

  Thomas rose to the smell of bacon cooking. His stomach rumbled. The three sandwiches he’d eaten the day before had held the hunger at bay, but now he was starving.

  He quickly rummaged through his bag and found a clean set of clothes. There was a mirror set into a dressing table and he stared at himself for a moment.

  His skin was smooth and tanned from the long days on the road. Blue eyes stared seriously back at him and his hair stuck up in cocky little nests. Finding a small jug next to his bed, which had obviously been put there in case he was thirsty during the night, he grabbed yesterday’s shirt and dipped the tail in. He dribbled the water over his hair and tried to pat it down. When he’d done the best he could, he knew there was no reason to stay hiding in his room. He needed to go and meet his family.

  Thomas cracked open the door and looked out into the passageway. It was lined with polished wood furniture, and at the far end was an arched doorframe with a stained-glass window set above it. ‘These people have money,’ he whispered to himself, then immediately corrected himself. ‘My family have money.’

  He stepped out into the passageway. His boots made a loud sound on the floorboards and echoed throughout the house. He knew his movements would be heard before he was seen.

  Within seconds he was standing in the kitchen doorway. Sun streamed in through a large window, the light bouncing off the shining sink and clean glasses.

  ‘Thomas,’ a soft voice said. A white-haired lady was sitting at a long table, a delicate cup in front of her.

  ‘Hello,’ Thomas uttered in a morning voice.

  ‘Come and sit down. Would you like tea? I’ve brewed a fresh pot.’ The lady pointed to a porcelain teapot and an empty cup and saucer.

  ‘Yes, please. Um . . .’

  ‘I’m Dorothy,’ she said, answering the unasked question. ‘Jessie’s mother, your mother’s mother. Your grandmother. How would you like it?’

  ‘Just black, please.’ He searched her face. ‘You look like her.’

  A small smile touched her lips as she poured tea into the empty cup. ‘Sit,’ she said. She indicated a chair across from her and he took it, wondering why she was so restrained after the effusive greeting his grandfather had given him the night before.

  ‘I see you’ve learned stockman’s habits,’ she said as she handed him the cup of hot tea.

  He looked at her, horrified that his manners had failed him.

  ‘Black tea,’ she explained. ‘It’s hard to find milk and sugar in the bush.’

  He almost laughed out loud with relief. ‘Yes, it is. Mac, ah, Mr McDougall told me that from the start. Although we always had access to it on the stations, which had milking cows.’

  ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘I’m starving,’ he admitted.

  ‘I’ll get you some breakfast.’ Dorothy rose from the table and went to the oven. She pulled out a plate piled high with eggs and bacon, toast and tomatoes. Thomas’s mouth watered. After the bachelor’s lifestyle that he and Mac led, this was a treat!

  When the meal was put in front of him, Thomas waited what he hoped was the right amount of time before picking up his knife and fork. ‘Where’s William?’ Thomas asked after he’d swallowed his first mouthful.

  ‘He’s gone to check the water in the stud ewe paddock. He’ll be back any moment.’

  Thomas was silent, eating, but all the while there was a question on his lips. He wasn’t sure if he could wait until William returned.

  ‘Tell me about your childhood, Thomas,’ Dorothy quietly prompted.

  That was something he didn’t want to do. He stalled, eating another few mouthfuls, but when he saw there was nothing left on his plate, he couldn’t delay answering anymore.

  ‘It was okay. We worked a lot, but with Mum around, it never seemed to matter. She made everything fun. But after she’d gone, everything always seemed much harder . . .’ He searched for the right word. ‘I don’t know, dark, I guess. Dad used to order me around like I was a dog. Howard not so much. Dad hated that I looked like her. Like Mum.’ He glanced up at Dorothy and saw she was staring into her cup of tea and sitting unnaturally still. He stopped.

  ‘So you left?’ she asked.

  Thomas continued as if he hadn’t heard her. Now he had finally cracked open the vault, it was a relief to talk about his childhood. ‘He’d come home from the pub so drunk he could barely stand. Trouble was, when he was like that he was more dangerous than usual. You’d th
ink his actions would be impaired by the drink, but they never were. He always knew just where to lay a fist or a knee.’ Thomas winced at the memory of a knee going into his stomach when he least expected it.

  Dorothy’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh my Lord,’ she muttered.

  ‘I know if I’d stayed the beatings would have gotten worse. It wasn’t just physical stuff. I had to clean the, uh—’ He looked down at his plate, unsure whether to tell her. He rushed on to fill the void, ‘—up after him, after he’d vomited. He made me cook his dinner after he came home and then he’d throw it across the room if it didn’t taste right.’

  He drummed his fingers on the table, still not looking at her. The shame he felt in telling this story was immense. He still harboured a fear that something he’d done had caused his father to reject him. Surely, just looking like his mother wasn’t crime enough.

  ‘Then one night, I snapped. Knew it was time. I’d had enough. I’d toyed with the idea about leaving for maybe a year or more, but I’d never had enough money. During the weekends I’d done some extra work for our neighbour, getting firewood for the house, and he paid me. I saved until I had enough to leave Howard some and take a small amount for myself. Then I walked out. That was nearly three years ago.’

  ‘Did he let you go without a fight?’

  ‘He wouldn’t have known until he woke up the next day. He was passed out on the couch when I left.’

  The door swung open and William entered, his face serious.

  Dorothy continued with her questions. ‘It didn’t bother you, leaving Howard?’

  Thomas found her tone accusing and he bristled. ‘No,’ he said shortly. ‘He never got the same treatment as me.’

  William laid a hand on Dorothy’s shoulder. ‘Come on, Mum,’ he said, a habit Thomas assumed he’d kept from the time when Jessie had lived at home. ‘Don’t be cross with the boy just because we feel guilty.’

  Smiling ruefully, Dorothy reached up to touch her husband’s hand.

  ‘Now, I believe it’s smoko time,’ William said. ‘Is there a hot cup of tea for me?’ He turned to Thomas. ‘Good morning, young man. Welcome to our home. Your home for as long as you want. It’s good to have you here.’

  Thomas stood and held out his hand. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he answered as they shook.

  ‘Just call me William,’ his grandfather said. ‘Like I said last night, we’re probably a bit too far gone for you to call me Grandpa or something similar.’

  He sat down at the table, and Thomas followed suit. There was a heavy silence until William cleared his throat. ‘We know you’ve had a tough go at it, these last few years.’

  Thomas just nodded. He could have agreed, but lately he’d come to feel that the whole experience had been some sort of rite of passage that had ended when Mac had picked him up. It shouldn’t have happened, but it had made him who he was today and who he would be for the rest of his life.

  ‘We wish we’d known,’ William continued.

  Dorothy looked across at him with pale, watery blue eyes. There was a pause and finally Thomas asked the question he had wanted to scream since he’d alighted from the bus. ‘Do you know where she is? Where my mother is?’

  The atmosphere grew even heavier and Dorothy covered her mouth with her hand, but not before a small sound of distress escaped.

  With shaking hands, William held the cup of tea to his lips and took a sip before answering. ‘She’s dead, Thomas. I’m so sorry.’

  Heat pierced Thomas’s eyes as soon the words left his grandfather’s mouth. He swallowed hard. ‘I was sure she must have been,’ he finally said softly. ‘She would have come back for us, otherwise. I know she would have.’ The anger, which had been building over time, left him and was replaced with a deep sense of sadness.

  Emptiness.

  Relief.

  With the relief came lightness. He knew. He finally knew.

  ‘It’s not quite the story you probably think,’ Dorothy said, having gathered herself. She sat ram-rod straight and looked him in the eye. ‘We didn’t approve of Jessie marrying your father, Thomas. She was still hurting from the death of her fiancée, George, so she was vulnerable. Open to Ernest’s charismatic ways and silver tongue.

  ‘We made sure we visited as often as we could, but as I’m sure you’ll understand, it isn’t easy to travel these long distances unless one has a motor vehicle. We didn’t back then, but we still tried. Especially after you boys came along. Jessie wrote us letters—happy ones. Full of the details of life on the farm, tales of you boys and what Ernest had been doing. She sounded happy and our misgivings were slowly put aside. We hoped we had judged him wrongly.’ Dorothy shifted in her seat.

  ‘Then we visited one Christmas—you lads were only small. Jessie had a bruise on her upper arm. It was obvious it was from a strong hand—you could still see the finger marks.’ Dorothy stopped to take a shaky breath and William took up the commentary.

  ‘We asked her about it, but she laughed it off, saying one of their horses had nipped her. We didn’t want to pry. Even though we’d brought all of our children up to have close relations with us, there were still subjects that just weren’t talked about.

  ‘Over the years, there were small things that, when you look back, added up to one large thing. Her letters changed from wanting us to visit to discouraging us, and her happiness seemed forced.

  ‘Then, one day in February, six years ago, we had a letter from Ernest saying Jessie was very run down. He was worried about her and had booked her into a sanatorium for a break.’ He looked down at his hands before continuing. ‘We were pleased. The last time we’d seen her, which had been in 1929, she had dark circles under her eyes and was thin. So thin.’ His voice trailed off and he looked all of his many years. ‘We were going to the Royal Adelaide Show to display our rams and we called in unannounced.’

  It was Dorothy’s turn to talk again. ‘You were very young. Only eight, I think, and Howard would have been seven, which is probably why you don’t remember us. We’d given her a necklace for her birthday that last visit. An expensive silver chain, thinking she could sell it if she needed to leave and get back to us.’

  Silver chain? Thomas couldn’t sit still anymore. He leapt from the table and hurried to his room. Throwing clothes and other items from his suitcase, he returned quickly to the kitchen with the chain in his hand. ‘Was this it?’ he asked, placing it gently on the table.

  Dorothy and William reached for it at the same time then both sat back without touching it. ‘Yes, it was.’

  Thomas swallowed. ‘Go on,’ he whispered.

  ‘The holiday was to be a surprise, so we didn’t mention it in any of our letters and didn’t expect her to. Then her letters stopped. It was six months before we contacted your father. The letter we got in return was full of threats and abuse.’

  William reached out and covered Dorothy’s hand with his own, then reached for Thomas’s.‘Please understand how hard this is for us to tell you,’ he said, tears in his eyes. ‘He had . . . um, your father had Jessie committed.’

  There was another silence, while Thomas tried to comprehend what had just been said. ‘I don’t . . . I’m sorry, I don’t understand,’ he whispered.

  ‘He had her committed to an asylum. He pretended she was mad. Insane.’

  ‘What?’ Thomas exploded. ‘That’s ridiculous. She wasn’t. There’s no way . . .’

  ‘We knew she wasn’t, Thomas.’ William’s voice was gentle now. ‘We can only assume it was because he wanted her out of the way for some reason. We really don’t know why. You must understand, we looked for her. We tried.’ The grief in his voice echoed what Thomas’s heart was feeling.

  ‘She was my daughter. I wouldn’t let down my own daughter. But it ended up that I did. I was too late, Thomas. She’d been drugged and strapped to the bed for so long, she had gone mad. My dear Lord, I’ll never forget that sight. Her eyes were dead—she didn’t even recognise us. Her wrists were tied to a bed c
overed in filthy sheets. We wanted to take her home, but the law wouldn’t allow us too. We fought the doctors, your father, everyone, just to bring her home and care for her. She died before we could. Just like that. I have always suspected they gave her larger doses of tranquillisers than they should have.

  ‘We tried to see you boys as well, but Ernest wouldn’t let us onto the farm. He threatened he would hurt you both, if we came. Seems that accepting what he said didn’t stop that.’ He fiddled with his teacup, before speaking again. ‘I know Jessie would have tried to escape, whenever she could. Until they broke her, and they certainly did that. That’s why she’d been tied down, you see. She tried to get back to you boys. You were the reason she kept trying to get away. So she could get home to you.’ The bitterness in his voice was raw.

  Thomas remembered tales of the crazy lady who had escaped from the asylum near his home, crying and screaming, her hair flying everywhere. Could that have been his mother? Had he been so close and not realised? He clenched his fists. ‘There were stories,’ he muttered. ‘People who escaped from there.’

  William shrugged, looking exhausted. ‘Who would know, Thomas. It may have been her, but we’ll never know.’

  ‘I’ll kill him,’ muttered Thomas. ‘The bastard. I’ll kill him.’

  Chapter 22

  2008

  Laura breathed a sigh of relief as she pushed open the door on Friday afternoon. The week had gone pretty smoothly if she discounted Monday, which had been a complete write-off—apart from getting Random home.

  The four rams were now reunited out in the paddock. They hung together in a group, occasionally bunting each other’s sides, and Laura liked to think they’d missed each other. A silly notion, she knew, but it made her feel good.

  The fence was now up and all that was left to do was tie on the plastic batons—three between each pine post. ‘That job’s hell on your hands,’ Tegan had informed her.

  Laura had smirked. Really? Like I wouldn’t know, she’d thought to herself.