Eagle on the Hill

by JH Fletcher

  ‘Without my permission.’

  Rufus drained his glass and returned it to the tray. ‘Father, be reasonable. Mr Armstrong’s daughter saved Martin from drowning —’

  ‘So he says. All I know is he once threatened to burn this house about my ears —’

  ‘I did not!’

  ‘He stole my horse —’

  ‘I borrowed it! And brought it back! You lost nothing! Whereas you’re a cheat, and I lost a good deal.’

  ‘Get out! Before I have you thrown out!’

  ‘You tried that once before, if you remember. It didn’ work then, either.’

  ‘Father,’ Rufus protested weakly, ‘Mr Armstrong is our guest. We owe him our gratitude, if nothing else.’

  ‘Be damned to that!’ said George. ‘I owe him nothing.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Charlie said, ‘because you’ve nuthun I want!’ He turned to Rufus. ‘I’d best be movin’ on. If I can collect my daughter …’

  ‘I’ll send Mrs Trask to find her.’

  But there was no need, for at that moment the two children came charging into the room, slithering to a halt as the adults turned to stare at them.

  Rufus said, ‘Surely this is not your daughter? I thought she’d be years older.’

  ‘No, this is Alex. An’ behavin’ like an urchin, as always. Come on,’ he said to her, ‘we’re outta here.’

  Charlie couldn’t wait. Not ten minutes ago he’d been telling himself to forget the past. Now he knew it couldn’t be done.

  ‘But Martin was gunna play for me!’ Alex protested.

  ‘And so he shall,’ Rufus said, somehow finding the courage to challenge his father. ‘And we shall all listen.’

  Father and son stared at each other, then George sniffed disapprovingly.

  ‘I’ve things to do. I shall listen to Martin another day. And you and I,’ he said to Rufus, ‘need to talk.’

  He turned on his heel and walked out, leaving a lingering frost in the elegant room.

  ‘Come, Martin,’ Rufus said, snapping his fingers to dispel the awkwardness. ‘Let’s hear something.’

  Charlie enjoyed the music of a mouth organ or accordion. He had no interest in a spoilt brat labouring over notes, but there was no way to avoid it without giving more offence, so he resigned himself to listening until the kid’s party piece was finished.

  The boy sat at the piano and began to play. Alex sat on the floor nearby. Charlie watched the boy’s hands moving gently over the keys, plucking dreams from the air, then all at once flying in a cascade of limpid sound that flowed like molten silver through the room. Beyond the windows the river moved silently between its banks. Corellas flew, distant specks of white against the sombre forest, and in the room the music thundered to its triumphant climax.

  Silence returned.

  Charlie, no musician, was deeply moved. He turned to Rufus. ‘It was wonderful. I gotta congratulate you.’

  ‘Oh, yes. When your daughter pulled Martin out of the water it was not only a boy she saved. But of course it is the boy we value most.’

  * * *

  ‘He was brilliant,’ Charlie said. ‘Absolutely brilliant. I dunno nuthun about music but that child’s got talent.’

  Brenda had left Eagle on the Hill an hour earlier and was now heading upstream against the current. Charlie stood at the wheel with Sarah beside him, looking out as the river unwound slowly past them.

  ‘I wish I’d heard him,’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps one of these days you will.’

  ‘You think the Grenvilles will ask us in, next time we’re passin’? Somehow I doubt that.’

  ‘George was pretty anti,’ Charlie admitted. ‘But Rufus was friendly enough.’

  ‘People like the Grenvilles don’t make friends with people like us. He decided he owed you so he gave you a drink. That’s the end of it, as far as he’s concerned.’

  ‘You don’t know that. He was stuck up to begin with, I admit, but we was the best of mates when we parted.’

  Or nearly. He did not tell Sarah the last thing that had happened before he and Alex had walked back down the slope to the river.

  Rufus had escorted them across the terrace. ‘I would like to apologise for my father,’ he said. ‘In many ways he’s a wonderful man but a little old-fashioned, perhaps. I don’t care what transpired between the pair of you in the past. That’s all over, as far as I’m concerned.’

  All well and good. Then Rufus ruined it.

  At the top of the steps he held out his hand to Charlie. ‘I’d like to give you something. As a token of my gratitude.’

  Charlie looked at the gold glinting in the open palm.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Five sovereigns. I want you to have —’

  ‘Is that what he’s worth? You think you gotta pay me because Alex saved Martin from drowning?’

  Rufus flushed. ‘Don’t be so stiff-necked, man. I’m grateful to you, don’t you see? I’d like you to have them — for your daughter, if you like. As a token of my appreciation.’

  ‘Forget it,’ said Charlie and turned and ran down the steps, with the blood beating in his head.

  No, he didn’t want to tell Sarah about that, or how the old feelings had come roaring back when, for the first time in fifteen years, he had once again set eyes on George Grenville.

  Sarah left him to go down to the stokehold and check the pressure of the steam in the boiler. In ten minutes Alex would be coming up for her daily stint of mental arithmetic. In the meantime, hands steady on the wooden wheel, he watched the river flowing between the silent ranks of trees.

  The forest had seen so much. For thousands of years the skin-clad hunters had provided the only human presence; the aeons-old silence had been broken by the noise of axes and guns, the calling of white men’s voices; the thrashing paddles of the steamers had churned the river white. All here, all remembered by the green air, the silent ranks of trees. And that first meeting between George Grenville and himself, and the events that had followed it, were also part of the history of this place.

  1874

  CHAPTER 11

  Twenty-one year old Charlie Armstrong shouted as the teams of oxen hauled the laden drays up the last few yards of the slope. From the top he would be able to see the river, the glint of water between the red gums inscribing a meandering line, lush and green, across an otherwise tawny landscape.

  The Murray, with its innumerable tributaries, flowed for over fifteen hundred miles from the snow-clad mountains of the distant emptiness to its mouth on the shores of the Southern Ocean. Add in the Darling and Murrumbidgee and it totalled three thousand seven hundred miles, one of the longest river systems on earth.

  To Charlie it spelt freedom. Born with his two younger brothers on one of the remotest of all the stations in the Outback, Charlie had never in his life seen either mountains or ocean, yet their images peopled his imagination.

  Perhaps one day …

  Again he swung his lash. Again the team redoubled its efforts. Groaning and panting, the drays swaying under their burden of wool bales, the oxen crested the rise. Ahead of them the track ran downhill between scattered trees, whose bone-white branches fingered an azure sky vibrating with heat. In the distance the river was like a first glimpse of salvation in the wilderness.

  A wooden jetty projected into the olive-green water, the paddle steamer moored alongside no bigger than a toy, yet even from here Charlie recognised it. It was the Mercury, one of the latest and most powerful of the riverboats. Vessels like this had been navigating the often treacherous river for twenty years now, helping to open up land that previously had been sealed by drought and distance, and Charlie reckoned he knew every one of them. To him their sleek lines and white paint, above all everything they represented, were like water in the desert.

  From the crest of the ridge he could see figures moving, another team that had already unloaded its wool sheltering from the sun beneath the trees that crowded the bank.

&n
bsp; After days of dust, the water beckoned with an almost painful intensity.

  Again Charlie shouted to the team but now the oxen needed no encouragement. They, too, were drawn to the water. One by one the drays crested the slope and rumbled swaying down the hill towards journey’s end.

  Two-thirds of the bales had been stowed in Mercury’s hold when Charlie first became aware of the man watching him.

  He was tall, lean and mounted on what Charlie recognised was a very good horse: a black gelding with one white sock and a distinctive white blaze on its forehead. He was not a young man, his face beneath the wide-brimmed hat creased by years and exposure. His pale blue eyes were close set above a long nose. He sat the thoroughbred easily, a man comfortable with both his mount and himself.

  Charlie stared at him frankly, wondering what he was doing here, but the man did not move until the last bale had disappeared into Mercury’s hold. Then he touched his heels to his horse’s flanks and trotted forward.

  ‘Charles Armstrong?’

  Charlie watched him cautiously. ‘Who wants to know?’

  ‘My name is George Grenville.’

  Which meant nothing to Charlie.

  ‘I wonder if we could have a word?’

  The well-rounded vowels proclaimed what might be a gentleman, a title to which Charlie certainly laid no claim. His caution grew. He said nothing but waited for the stranger to make the next move. Which he did, dismounting with the fluid ease of a man much younger than his years.

  ‘Let’s find some shade, shall we?’

  Without waiting for a reply he headed for the shelter of the gum trees, leaving Charlie to follow or not as he chose. In the branches above the man’s head, two cockatoos observed the world with knowing eyes.

  Charlie waited for a minute, making a point to this George Grenville, then followed at his own pace. Talk cost nothing.

  The stranger wasted no time. ‘I’ve heard good things of you.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Charlie was sceptical, knowing flattery when he heard it. ‘Who’s been talkin’, then?’

  ‘I asked Duncan Ross to suggest a good man. He recommended you.’

  Duncan Ross was master of the Mercury.

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘I’m planning to develop a vineyard on the banks of the river. I need someone to give me a hand.’

  Charlie felt his heart thud harshly in his chest. An end to droving …

  But he was still cautious. He knew nothing about this man.

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Clear the bush. Open up the soil. Put up trellises for the vines.’

  ‘How big an area?’

  ‘I’ve bought two thousand acres, with an option for a thousand more. But I’ll only be developing three hundred to start with. No point wasting money until we see how the vines take to this environment.’

  Charlie gestured at the river flowing a few yards from their boots. ‘At least you got plenty of water.’

  ‘That’s why I chose it. And because the river gives me access to the city.’

  ‘I could give it a look over, I suppose.’

  George Grenville nodded. ‘I’ll expect you, then. Ten o’clock tomorrow morning?’

  ‘Where do I find you?’

  ‘A mile upriver. This bank. I’ll be waiting for you.’

  Grenville swung into the saddle, nodded again and rode off without another word.

  Charlie watched him trot away through the trees. Not particularly matey, but with the gentry you didn’t expect that. He’d go and see him in the morning, have a look at the land, drive as good a bargain as he could and see what came of it. Maybe something, maybe nothing.

  Tomorrow would tell.

  * * *

  George Grenville was waiting as promised when Charlie turned up the next day. They walked the gently sloping land as George explained his vision of the future vineyard. Water points here. Vines here and here and here, grouped by cultivar. The big house would be built there, on the ridge overlooking the estate and river.

  ‘Got a name for it, have you?’

  ‘My wife — the former Lady Jane Glastonbury — has come up with an idea.’ George Grenville unveiled his wife’s name and title with a touch of reverence, as though she were an especially valuable cultivar herself. ‘An eagle forms part of her family’s escutcheon. She suggested Eagle on the Hill.’

  They continued their walk, passing gum trees that by their size must have been hundreds of years old. Here and there chunks of rock stuck up out of the ground. Some of them were huge, even the part you could see. God knew how far down they went. One thing Charlie did know; it would be a helluva job to clear this slope without an army of blokes to help him.

  But that, it seemed, was out of the question.

  ‘Money’s always a consideration,’ George told him. ‘You wouldn’t believe how much it’s costing me to set up this operation.’ Which meant there’d be no extra workers. Not much pay for him, either, or not at first.

  ‘The labourer’s worthy of his hire,’ Charlie pointed out.

  ‘I can’t pay what I haven’t got.’

  Eventually they agreed on a figure. It was less than he’d made droving, but at least here there might be a future.

  ‘You’ll be on probation for the first three months,’ George said. ‘To see how we get along. But if you work hard and things go well there may be the chance of a permanent place for you here.’

  The creased face smiled almost boyishly as George Grenville slapped Charlie on the shoulder. ‘What do you say, eh?’

  It was a pittance, barely that. But with the prospect of a worthwhile future, what could Charlie say?

  ‘I’ll give it a go,’ he replied.

  * * *

  It was a bastard of a job, but Charlie gave it his best shot.

  It was quite a change for someone of his temperament. All his life he’d been as wild as a rabbit and a hundred times as ferocious. He never looked for trouble, but somehow it had a way of finding him. He’d done his share of fighting, sometimes for money, and had won far more often than he’d lost. Well, those days were past. He would be a good boy now.

  Keen to show Grenville he’d chosen the right man, Charlie laboured long and hard, beginning before it was properly light and going on until it was too dark to see. Some of the rocks were as big as houses and had to be broken up by hammer and crowbar before they could be shifted. With the smaller stones he dug yards down into the reluctant soil, freeing them for the oxen to tow away to the crest of the rise.

  ‘Don’t waste them,’ Grenville had said. ‘They’ll make excellent foundations for the house.’

  Which began to take shape as soon as enough stone had been lugged up the slope to meet the requirements of George Grenville’s architect. As far as this particular project was concerned, it seemed that cost was no object. Almost every day various men walked the site, talking gravely to George Grenville and each other, pointing and consulting plans. Once a richly gowned woman put in an appearance. She, too, walked and pointed while the men followed, deferring to every imperious gesture. Lady Jane Glastonbury herself, Charlie assumed, not that it mattered to him. For all the notice she took of him, Charlie, sweating over rocks, might have been a tree. Well, he could live without the Lady Jane Glastonburys of the world.

  The trees presented as big a problem as the rocks. Each mighty trunk shook the ground as it came crashing down. Branches were lopped, chains fastened to the naked trunks and teams of oxen dragged them away to the sawmill. This had been set up on the bend of the river and its steam engine with its plume of smoke throbbed constantly in a world that until now had known only silence. Nothing was wasted; even the sawdust was used to fuel the mill’s furnace.

  Once this was done only the stumps remained, and these it was impossible to shift. Even a double team of oxen could do nothing with them.

  ‘We need saltpetre,’ Charlie told George.

  ‘Why?’

  The stumps were still alive. Drill a few holes, dress
them with saltpetre and in a short while the tree’s sap would distribute the chemical through the wood. A fire lit on top of the stump would follow the chemical, consuming the stump utterly. Even the roots would be destroyed.

  George looked at Charlie with astonishment as he explained all this.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  Every bushman knew it, but Charlie thought it wiser not to say so.

  ‘Heard it some place.’

  So saltpetre was brought in and, one by one, the stumps disappeared in an acrid drifting of smoke.

  Days became weeks and finally months. The cleared area grew steadily.

  When his probationary period was up Charlie went looking for his employer. He had worked his backside off and was proud of what he’d achieved. All that remained was to negotiate a new and more realistic wage.

  The two men walked over the cleared land while George Grenville poked here and there with his silver-handled cane.

  ‘Good. Very good.’

  They returned to the site of the house. The walls were already three feet high, in some places higher. There were men here whom Charlie had never seen before. One of them, a bruiser with a face remodelled by blows, lounged with his back against the uncompleted wall, looking at nothing, heavy arms hanging loosely at his side.

  George looked at Charlie.

  ‘I’m going to have to let you go,’ he said.

  Charlie couldn’t believe his ears. ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve worked well. But it makes no economic sense for me to pay you a higher wage when there are other men happy to work for less.’

  ‘You promised me! You said if I worked hard —’

  George’s mouth set like a sprung trap. ‘I promised nothing. I said if you worked hard there might be a permanent job. Well, there isn’t.’

  ‘You’ve cheated me!’

  ‘Rubbish! A three-month job is what I said and that you’ve had. I like to think I’m a reasonable man. I was planning to pay you a bonus for the hard work you’ve put in but if that’s your attitude you can forget it. Your work here is finished. You can get out. Now.’