Eagle on the Hill

by JH Fletcher

  ‘Only another month to go.’

  ‘I’m that uncomfortable, I wish it was tomorrow. Seems like I got triplets in there. Couldn’t be possible, could it?’

  ‘I suppose it’s possible. But I doubt it.’

  ‘Whatever it is, I wish it’d get on with it.’

  Sarah paused. ‘I won’t be that long behind you,’ she said.

  Petal looked at her. ‘You mean …?’

  ‘Three months gone, I reckon.’

  ‘That’s great! What’s Charlie say?’

  ‘Haven’t told him yet.’

  ‘You won’t be able to hide it much longer.’

  Petal was right, yet still Sarah said nothing. They unloaded the wool they’d brought downriver with them, then Charlie spent the best part of a day in Tomkins’ fusty little shop, breathing the scent of cloth and foodstuffs and money, and arguing over the accounting as he did every trip. They took on fresh supplies and an imported wardrobe consigned to a sheep run north of Menindee. They left Petal to stay with her parents, afraid that the baby might arrive when they were a hundred miles from anywhere. At the last minute Will decided he’d stay too, to be on hand when the child was born. So it was only Sarah and Charlie and Luke who were on board when they headed back up the river.

  Still Sarah kept her news to herself; a pregnant engineer was too much of a complication to be admitted. But when they reached the landing north of Menindee and Charlie asked her to give him a hand with the wardrobe, which was large and clumsy and heavy as lead, Sarah said she couldn’t.

  He frowned. ‘Why not?’

  So she told him.

  Charlie came across the saloon to his wife. His woman.

  ‘What about the wardrobe?’ she said.

  ‘The wardrobe can wait.’

  ‘They’ll have men waiting for us.’

  ‘Not yet. We’re early. They’ll not be lookin’ for us for another hour yet.’

  And for once, providentially, Charlie had not blown Brenda’s whistle to warn the world of their arrival.

  He took her in his arms, holding her and looking down at her, then bent to kiss her on forehead, eyes, mouth. She stood with eyes closed, straining towards him in passionate surrender, biting her lower lip while a slow shudder ran through her and her hands clutched him tigerishly.

  His fingers were at the neck of her blouse. She made no attempt to help him as he fumbled, ripping buttons in his haste. Sarah swayed as first blouse, then bodice, and finally the long skirt fell to lie in folds about her feet. Acquiescent, she stood motionless, arms at her sides. Every stitch of clothing was gone, leaving her — wand-slim still — like the stem of an exotic golden flower upon which, silently, fervently, he set his mouth.

  Only then did she move, raising her hands to cradle his head and draw him down, draw him in.

  CHAPTER 31

  The time when Charlie and Sarah had been alone on Brenda was now six months past, although that hour of passion on the floor of the saloon, each of them mindful only of the other, would remain burned into Sarah’s brain as long as she lived.

  Now they were heading downriver to Goolwa on the same errand as before, with Sarah wondering whether she was going to make it in time.

  By the time they steamed into the open waters of Lake Alexandrina, twenty miles from Goolwa, she knew it was going to be a close-run thing. She lay on the cabin bunk with Petal holding her hand while, beyond the window, a mounting wind drove black clouds towards them out of the distant sea.

  ‘How ya feelin’?’ Petal asked for the hundredth time.

  ‘A bit queer,’ Sarah confessed. Nothing worse, thank God, not yet … but a bit queer, certainly.

  ‘Not far now,’ Petal told her. ‘We gotta be nearly there.’

  They both knew it wasn’t true. There was still the exposed length of the lake ahead of them.

  ‘Where are the kids?’

  ‘Charlie’s got them in the wheelhouse.’

  Raindrops, sharp as hail, clashed against the window.

  ‘You’ll be able to hang on, won’t you?’ Petal, who now had a child of her own, was more frightened than Sarah at the prospect that things might start happening before they reached port.

  ‘Don’t fret,’ Sarah said. ‘I’m a bit tired, that’s all.’

  That could be the reason, certainly. Yesterday she’d been helping about the boat as usual. Her belly made things awkward but she’d been determined it wouldn’t stop her doing whatever she wanted.

  After they’d paid out Alice Henderson there’d been enough money to buy the barge Charlie had always wanted. They’d called her Dido. A barge was a great thing to have: it doubled their carrying capacity and therefore their income during the shearing season. But someone had to steer it. Sarah had managed it well at first, but for the moment that was beyond her. Petal had never got the hang of it, so now Will was on Dido while the two women shared the engineer’s job between them.

  Petal usually did her bit, but yesterday her daughter hadn’t been well. What with feeding Emmie and caring for her, Petal had had little time for anything else. It had been left to Sarah to look after the engine. She had oiled the machinery, kept her eye on the water level in the boiler and pumped the bilge.

  None of it had caused any drama, but when she was lugging logs for the firebox she had felt a savage jab in her stomach, as though someone had stuck a knife in her, and decided there was a limit to what was possible.

  She had stopped at once but the damage, if it was a question of damage, had been done. Now, with the boat beginning to roll as the waves were kicked up by the gathering storm, she was paying the price.

  A bit queer …

  Of course, and who to blame but herself?

  With Dido in tow they made slow progress. To north and south, the shores of the lake fell back. Out in the middle there was still little wind, but it was on its way, the waves rising by the minute. Like every riverboat, Brenda had been designed for the smooth waters of the river and didn’t take kindly to rough conditions. Soon both boat and barge were rolling violently in the swell. The wind flung spray in gouts upon the deck. The tow rope joining the two vessels slackened and tightened with each lunge of the waves, threatening to yank Brenda’s stern timbers out of her. The paddles, not designed for this sort of work, laboured. Fuel consumption rocketed; every few minutes Petal had to dash to the stokehold to refill the firebox.

  Sarah was glad to have a break from her — Petal’s nervousness was catching — but there were disadvantages too. As long as Petal was with her, she could concentrate on Petal’s fear and forget her own, but as soon as Petal’s back was turned, it came flooding back. It was her own fault. A doctor had opened a clinic in Niland and Charlie had wanted her to use him but she hadn’t fancied the idea. To have a strange man examine her seemed indecent. As for the midwife in Evans … she was a woman, certainly, but notoriously fond of gin. No, Goolwa it would be, as it had been for Luke and Petal’s Emmie.

  Now this.

  She would manage somehow, even if she had to deliver the child herself. With Petal half petrified with fear it might even come to that, but hopefully all this was no more than a false alarm.

  She was missing Charlie. She knew he had to stay at the wheel, yet she felt his absence. She wanted him here, to show he cared for her, to tell her he loved her.

  Caught by a toppling wave, the hull plunged sideways. Yet another burst of spray obscured the window. Sarah swore under her breath and then aloud, hanging on to the bunk, hanging on to herself. All she needed at this stage was to be pitched onto the deck.

  A succession of gusts punched the two vessels violently, making them stagger in the water, while the voice of the gale rose to a scream.

  How much of this could the paddles take?

  If the steering chains parted or the paddle shaft broke they would be helpless. To say nothing of the barge. How was Will able to steer Dido at all in these conditions?

  Another explosion of spray. The hull groaned. Petal came in,
blown by the storm. The gale entered with her, a buffet of wind that barged its way about the cabin before she slammed the door behind her. She stood with her back to the door, arms outspread, hair, face and clothes awash with rain.

  ‘How ya goin’?’ Even Petal’s voice, gasping and half exhausted, had been stolen by the wind.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  Admit anything else and it would happen. Turn her back on her fear and it might not. To the last she would deny the possibility that things might be anything less than fine.

  Petal’s expression showed she was unconvinced.

  ‘You seen Charlie?’ asked Sarah.

  No, Petal had not seen Charlie. She had seen nothing but the stokehold and the firebox, and the storm had drenched her twice in the few yards between stokehold and cabin.

  Sarah tried to smile. ‘Exciting!’ she said.

  A damn sight too exciting, but there was no point weeping about it.

  ‘Where are we?’

  Petal didn’t know.

  ‘Any sign of Goolwa?’

  The pressure of the wind had forced Petal’s eyelids shut; she had seen nothing.

  How useless could you get?

  A shadow obscured the light. The barge, out of control, had caught up and was now wallowing just beyond the window. Sarah and Petal barely had time to realise what it was before a violent crash flung them sideways. Brenda fell away from the impact as the barge collided with her.

  Sarah was hanging on to the bunk. Petal had been thrown across the cabin and now lay, half stunned, on the floor. Dido, brought up on her tow by a freak surge of the waves, was poised like a hammer at Brenda’s side, waiting to strike again.

  In the instant that Sarah realised the tow line had parted, the bow of the barge swung in for the second time.

  Crash! And again: Crash!

  A sound of splintering timber. The engine gulped, roared, hiccuped once or twice then fell silent. The paddlewheels, with Dido’s bow jammed firmly in the starboard paddlebox, ceased to turn. Alone and powerless, the two vessels locked inextricably together, Brenda and Dido drifted at the mercy of the storm.

  ‘Is she holed?’

  Sarah envisaged Brenda sinking in the middle of the lake, without hope of rescue amid the wild waves.

  Petal had struggled to her feet; now they heard only the wind. The paddle steamer floated freely, with no hint of a list, but the barge was still jammed against her side and with every movement they heard the grinding of the hull beneath them.

  ‘She’s sinking!’ Petal’s fingers were in her hair; her eyes stared, her voice was shrill with terror.

  ‘Of course she’s not sinking!’ Sarah had gone beyond fear; now she was furious. Weren’t the storm and coming baby enough trouble? Now she had to look after Petal as well. It wasn’t fair.

  But Petal wasn’t listening. ‘Will! Emmie!’

  Sarah forgotten, Petal threw open the cabin door and raced out onto the deck. The wind came booming while Sarah, abandoned, cried aloud for her husband and her son who should be together in the wheelhouse, who should be safe.

  Should be. There was no comfort in the words. Nor would be, until she knew for sure.

  Feeling queerer than ever, thrown off balance by her stomach, Sarah tried to scramble out of bed. On her feet, stumbling, feeling her spine about to snap under the strain of all that was happening both inside her and out, she struggled to the door in time to see Petal collide with Will, who was running in the opposite direction with Charlie at his heels.

  While Will and Petal clung together, Charlie shoved past them and took Sarah in his arms.

  She clutched him. ‘Where are the kids?’

  ‘In the wheelhouse. They’re fine.’ He looked at her. ‘What are you doin’ outta bed?’

  ‘I had to know what was goin’ on.’

  ‘The good news is we’re not sinkin’.’ A groan of parting timbers accompanied by a splintering sound came from the shattered paddlebox. Charlie smiled grimly. ‘Or not yet.’

  An iron fist seized Sarah and shook her so that she gasped and felt her face go white.

  Charlie gripped her hands, staring at her anxiously while the wind tried to tear the hair from her head. ‘We’re safe enough. I was wrong to joke —’

  ‘It’s not that.’ Rounding her lips about an eggshell of sound. Her body was focused. She felt the tick of her blood and the sense of things beginning to happen. In the moist and secret darkness came a sudden clutch of pain.

  ‘What’s the problem, then?

  Men.

  ‘Get Petal,’ she said.

  ‘Petal? You mean —’

  ‘I mean get her now! I’ve a feelin’ it’s comin’.’

  Sarah let go of his hands and staggered back into the cabin, while Charlie bellowed for Petal. Who understood and came running at once.

  As the hours passed the wind grew even stronger.

  It wasn’t a part of the world for ice or frost, even in midwinter, but for those more used to heat than cold, the southerly gale was chill enough. The shore was much closer now, yet hidden in mist. The waves reared and toppled, the voice of the wind threatening destruction.

  Spray burst like hail against the cabin window while Sarah, with Petal beside her yet alone in the ordeal that was now upon her, looked up at the ceiling with unseeing eyes, all her attention focused upon the tumult taking place within her.

  She remembered Luke’s birth and how she had been frightened, not knowing what was in store, but Luke’s birth had been nothing like this. On that occasion all had been still and white in the still, white room, until bed, room and world had turned scarlet with pain, with blood, and the only sound had been her own tortured cries. Now the screaming of the gale, the sense of catastrophe sweeping out of the cloud-racked sky, combined to mock her, saying that her ordeal was all for nothing, that her agony, like the baby and herself, were going to be washed away in a cataclysm that would see them all at the bottom of the lake.

  All for nothing — while the pain tightened its grip. And ebbed. And came again, even more fearsomely.

  All for nothing — with sweat on face and body, eyes staring sightlessly at pain and fear and the howling wind.

  Until that, too, ebbed.

  There was a white face that came and went. A laugh. A smile. Gone. Silence, but for the wind.

  She remembered the first trip she had made in this boat, how she had travelled down the flooded river with Charlie at her side and the throb of the engine had vibrated up her arms as she grasped the wheel. The later trip upriver with Dilly to keep her company, when she had felt so alone. As now.

  Somewhere behind the staring, clouded eyes, she heard her first moan of protest. Her first gasp. Her first scream.

  A cruel light grew close about her. From the trees an owl watched with golden eyes, lantern-bright, while Charlie turned from the meal she had prepared, and from herself.

  ‘Take your bloody fish!’ she said.

  All her hopes were drowning in the river. In the storm that howled its triumph.

  There came a lull in the wind, but the pain went on. Surge of wind, surge of pain. Now there, now gone, each wave closer to its predecessor.

  The wind was treacherous. The storm would wait until she was distracted by the pain, then it would rise and fill her mouth with water. She could not permit herself to concentrate only on the pain; she had to fight both it and the lying wind.

  ‘I know you!’

  She tried to shout her defiance at the waves and howling wind, but uttered only a croak. A face stared down at her, fingers clasped her own, sweat-slick.

  ‘What did you say?’

  It was Petal, Will’s wife. Frightened Petal. Sarah felt such tenderness for her, and for the world. Because all the world was with her now, within and without. She was giving birth to the world, she the mother of the world, she the creator, she the custodian of the gale. The gale that screamed, that was her servant.

  Alice Henderson smiled, the human face staring out of t
he white stone in her outstretched hand.

  Charlie said, ‘All talk, that’s what he was.’

  A stranger’s face scowled. ‘No place for a woman.’

  She saw two men fighting, a skull brimming with blood as a body fell, arms wide, crucified upon a cross of pain. She was being crucified upon that same cross. The red pain was ripping her. It consumed her like fire. A voice choked on oaths. Her voice.

  ‘I’ll rattle you!’ her father shouted. ‘I’ll fix your waggon!’

  Running at her, fist raised.

  Her head tossed on the pillow. Her body strained, again and again. Pain like fire, again and again.

  A voice cried, ‘I don’t know what to do. Oh please …’

  She felt an explosion of agony yet with movement behind it, and somehow knew that, despite the anguish, despite the storm, all would be well.

  ‘A daughter! You have a daughter!’

  Little tyke, she thought. Or said. Damn near killed me. Ferocious little tyke. What’ll we call her? Not Petal, that’s for sure.

  The little thing was there, against her breast. As was Charlie, looking down at her. She groped for a smile in this strange new world, empty of pain, empty of the howling gale. ‘Well, Charlie?’

  ‘Very well, my love.’

  Had he said it? Charlie never said such things. Charlie was gruff and a fighter. I must be something of a fighter, too, she thought, and smiled at the child sleeping on her breast. Such a snip of a child for such a performance. She felt the baby’s weight upon her, so much less than the weight of the pain that had preceded her. You give me any trouble, she promised her daughter, I’ll rub you out.

  My love …

  Had he really said it?

  1881–1891

  CHAPTER 32

  They called her Alex. From the first she was a lively one, screeching like a banshee, gums like tyrants clamping onto Sarah’s nipple.

  Even Petal complained.

  Because, after the gale had blown itself out, after the fishing boat that rescued them had towed them in, after everything had been fixed up — good as new, the shipwright said — after they had loaded fresh supplies and were heading upriver, everything was as it had been before. Two babies instead of one, that was the only difference, with that much less space to breathe or move.