Eagle on the Hill

by JH Fletcher

  That evening, after they had met Alex off the train and hugged and kissed and congratulated her, they had headed upriver then pulled into the bank for the night. They were surrounded by the soft voices of the evening: the clucks and squawks of birds settling, the soft gargle of the river along the hull. They had a special tea of mutton and ham and fresh vegetables to celebrate Alex’s return. Charlie had a bottle of beer that he had bought especially, and afterwards had a few words to say about how proud he and Sarah were of their daughter, and how well she had done, and how she was going to honour them and herself in Melbourne.

  ‘One of the first women in the land to go there.’

  Sarah looked as happy as Larry too, except for the part about the university, which she did not hear. Like her father, she had a great capacity for deafness when it suited her.

  At last it was finished. Sarah went to wash up, with a lot of talk about how Alex should take it easy after her long journey from the city that Alex didn’t listen to, so that soon both of them were batting the breeze over the pots and pans.

  Up the river they went, and were happy together. They were just coming into Niland when, with all the world at peace, Charlie lost his footing and fell from the top of the funnel where he was fixing a new bottle screw to the afterstay, and landed half on and half over the railing that ran around the upper deck. And was still.

  There was a light emerging from the darkness. There was sound where before there had been only silence. There was the self, emerging from oblivion. There was an absence of sensation, bordered by the flickering fires of pain.

  A face was looking down at him. It had enormous eyes. Sarah’s blue eyes. Sarah’s face. He tried to focus on the face but the effort was too great.

  Sarah was speaking but he could not understand her. He heard sounds but could not sense their meaning. Tears shone in her eyes, her face was a map of anxiety. He sensed her pain but could not feel that either. Both sound and pain were no longer part of his life. They had become irrelevant. Everything was changing. He could feel the change, the flux of a world that was no longer his, the swirl of diminishing sensation.

  The cabin, the boat, the somnolent buzzing of flies … Gone.

  I believe in the light, he said. Or thought. The river was bearing him up. But he was escaping. From the river, the trees, the air. From Sarah, too. She was with him but diminishing. Into darkness. Or into another light, which no longer had meaning. Into …

  Gone.

  So to his grave went Charlie Armstrong, dead at forty-six in the dying days of the old century. It was a repeat of Jock Harris’s funeral, only twice as big because Charlie had been such a big man along the river, and many were the stories told about him.

  All the way from the wharf to the Niland church, striding step by dusty step through the hot and solemn air, Sarah walked. The coffin borne by Luke and the other bearers led the procession, with Sarah following, Alex behind her, then the rest. Hundreds in slow procession, accompanied by the funereal beat of drums.

  All through the town they went, and into the chapel for the service, and then out again, and Sarah endured everything with an expressionless face and without tears, standing or sitting as was required of her and looking quietly at nothing, and at all she had known of the past.

  She attended the funeral tea, as was expected. It seemed as though every man from every riverboat were there with his family. There were plenty of hands to help, before and afterwards, and Sarah sat, smiling when it was necessary, saying nothing. Not once did she cry or frown, just sat in silence. And afterwards, when it was all over, she went silently back to Brenda, with Alex and Luke on either side of her.

  While Alex went to take off her hat and her black dress and boots, Luke stayed with his mother in the saloon.

  ‘I’ll get out of the way when Alex comes back,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ Sarah said. ‘Stay with me. I need you now.’

  ‘But Alex …’ Luke frowned. It was a woman’s work to comfort a woman, and he did not know what to do with himself, or where to put his hands.

  ‘I love Alex with all my heart,’ Sarah said, ‘as I do you. But I’m afraid Alex will cry, if we’re left alone together.’

  ‘I’m not far from it myself,’ Luke said, with knives in his throat.

  ‘You’ll do no such thing. You are a man.’ As though ordering him not to forget it.

  The ordeal since Charlie’s death, all the things that had happened in every second of every minute, came together now to produce in Sarah a voice and certainty that she did not recognise but that flowed, calm and resolute, into the listening stillness of the saloon.

  ‘You can talk to me — sensibly. That’s what I need, sensible talk. I’m — I’m a riverboat woman,’ she said with pride. ‘A woman of the Murray. But Alex — she’s educated. She’s not so — hard. Not — so controlled. I think, with her father dead, she might forget — about control.’

  She walked to the saloon window and looked out at the river, then turned back, blinking and making what might have been a smile, or a grimace. ‘I’m afraid Alex would — cry. Would cry. And that — that, I think, might be — too much for me.’

  Devastated by her father’s death, Alex could not think beyond it. The future had been obliterated by the tragedy. Yet part of her mind saw another aspect to what had happened. She was distraught; Charlie had been her father and she had loved and admired him, and loved him still. Yet his death meant she would no longer have to go to Melbourne, and she was glad of it.

  She did not know why, exactly. The idea of going to university, of being one of the first women to accept the challenge, had excited her. Women were as capable as men; it was an article of faith and she had welcomed the chance to prove it.

  Yet she was glad — no, not glad, relieved — that it was now out of the question, although Sarah, who she thought had recently gone cold on the idea, was now pressing her to go ahead.

  ‘You mustn’t let your father’s death interfere with your life …’

  Quite right. But what mattered was the direction her life would take if she went to Melbourne, and if she did not. To say nothing of which direction she wanted it to take.

  If only she knew. If only she, like the river, could run purposefully and without fuss towards the sea.

  Meanwhile, Sarah sat in a little chair in the saloon with her hands in her lap and looked through the open doorway at the bright and pitiless sky.

  ‘He worked so hard,’ she told the empty saloon. ‘All his life he worked. And at the end to fall. Is a man nothing, then, to fill the whole world and then, in a single instant, to be gone?’

  Where was meaning? Where was God?

  But she knew, even in her pain, that they were not the right questions. Because death, too, was of God and part of the whole, and death, with its partner life, possessed its own meaning.

  But that did little to ease her sense of loss. ‘Oh, Charlie!’ she cried. ‘How could you go, when we still had so much living to do? How could you leave me to face the years alone?’

  And the river, with all its sorrows and joys, ran silently on.

  1899–1900

  CHAPTER 93

  Christmas, for the Grenvilles, was holiday time. Rufus was in Sydney. He had bought a toy — one of those newfangled machines with wheels that some said were going to take the place of horses — and used this time to trundle to and fro on the outskirts of the city, thinking what a fine fellow he was for doing so.

  Life was good, even wonderful.

  Then, early in January, he received a letter from Melbourne and his world fell to pieces.

  George Grenville and his wife were also on holiday near Sydney, in their case five miles down the coast, in a hotel whose Olympian façade sought to subdue the ocean. It was an ideal setting for a man who had once thought it his destiny to subdue the world. With age and declining health George had been forced to modify that ambition; nowadays he was content to claim sovereignty over the one portion of the wo
rld that really mattered to him.

  Eagle on the Hill was proof of how far he had risen from Hindley Street. Its wines were winning accolades, and not only in Australia, but it would not have mattered had it produced not a single grape. To George it was the most precious acreage on earth. The rest of the empire he was happy to leave to Queen Victoria.

  George had put on a great deal of weight in the last year or two. He was easing his belly in a cane chair on the terrace, no longer an eagle in its eerie but an elephant seal on its rock, when Rufus galloped up to the hotel on his grey gelding as though the devil were at his coat-tails.

  George recognised both horse and rider as they came up the drive. His heart might not be all it should be but there was nothing wrong with his eyes. He clicked his tongue in vexation; Rufus had no business to ride the horse like that. At least he had left that damn toy of his at home, but a voice at the back of George’s mind was asking why. The motor car, or whatever the wretched thing was called, was his son’s pride and joy; Rufus liked nothing better than to show it off around the countryside in a stink of blue smoke, making a fool of himself. The fact that he had not brought it here today meant he had something on his mind, and from the look on his face as he came bounding up the steps to the terrace, that something was not pleasant.

  The news turned out to be worse than anything George could have imagined. With trembling hands Rufus handed his father the letter he had received that morning.

  The plump fingers of George’s free hand gripped the arm of his chair more and more tightly as his eyes ran down the page. When he had finished he lowered the letter and stared at his son. His face was expressionless; only a dark light flickering in his eyes revealed the extent of his agitation. ‘What is all this about?’

  ‘What it says.’ Rufus flapped his hand at the letter; the weak gesture of a weak man, George thought. ‘Thomas Sutton is bankrupt.’

  ‘That’s what the letter says. But is it true?’

  ‘How am I supposed to know?’ The words burst shrilly.

  ‘Then find out!’

  George feared his son might disgrace himself by bursting into tears on the terrace. If George bullied him he might regain control; Rufus was used to being bullied.

  Sure enough, he coughed and straightened his velvet jacket — even today he had to play the dandy, George thought with mounting irritation — and, with evident effort, himself.

  ‘Ogle Mason is Sir Thomas’s right-hand man. If he says Sir Thomas is bankrupt then I have no doubt he is.’

  ‘The signature is genuine?’

  ‘It was the first thing I thought of. It seems so.’

  ‘A quarter of a million pounds,’ George said. His voice was without a tremor; only inside his head was his blood seething, sending stabbing pains through his brain. He tapped the letter. ‘I wonder how many of these Mason has sent out.’

  ‘How many?’ Rufus gaped stupidly.

  ‘Surely you don’t imagine you’re the only person to be favoured with the news?’

  ‘But that’ll mean panic!’ Rufus’s eyes scurried this way and that. ‘What’ll happen to the National Bank?’

  ‘Never mind the National. What about the Clarence Bank?’

  ‘Oh, God!’ Rufus buried his head in his hands.

  ‘Stop making an exhibition of yourself,’ George said sharply. ‘I was a fool to let you talk me into it, but we’ve survived worse crises before. The money we invested with your friend Thomas Sutton may be lost but it’s no more than a temporary setback. As long as the depositors’ funds are secure …’

  Rufus raised his head and stared at his father. Tears were pouring silently down his face, but suddenly the shame of that was no longer important.

  George stared back at his son, his weak and stupid son. His face grew mottled with rage while his beleaguered heart thundered unsteadily in his chest. His voice was dangerously quiet. ‘I take it they are secure?’

  Rufus said nothing, but his expression said much.

  ‘We shall go to my suite,’ said George. ‘It will be best to continue this discussion in private.’

  His voice was firm and harsh — indestructible George — but his body told a different story. Weighed down by more than bulk, the man who tottered from the terrace had aged ten years in the last ten minutes. George Grenville was eighty-three now and needed the burden of no extra years. By the time they reached his suite he was breathing like a furnace and his face and hands were plum-red.

  The suite was empty; Lady Jane would no doubt be in the card room, following her normal practice of playing whist with a few like-minded guests.

  George groped his way to a silk-covered chair in the sitting room of his suite. Beyond the window the seascape was vast, the tossing waves shot with silver light, but George paid no attention to the view for which he was paying so much. He sat down and stared at Rufus, who stood dithering in front of him.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said.

  Rufus did, with many a stutter and hesitation. Sometimes he dried up altogether and only George’s remorseless questioning got him started again, but eventually he had finished.

  Only then did George fully understand the enormity of the disaster that had befallen them.

  He got rid of his son, brushing aside his futile apologies. At last he was alone.

  His heart thundered like a cannonade of artillery. He sat clutching his chest, and looked at his life.

  The part that mattered had begun with the Hindley Street shop he had inherited from his father. He had made something of it. He had always known there were limits to what he could achieve in the shop’s restricted environment, yet his will had acknowledged no limits. A world of status and wealth was waiting. He wanted it and saw no reason why he should not have it.

  There had been talk of a copper strike in the remote country far to the north. There were no roads to take the miners in or bring the ore out, but that was no problem. If the find was as rich as rumour said, the roads would come.

  It had taken foresight and guts, oh yes, but he’d had both. He had invested every penny he could raise in the venture; he would have been ruined had the reports lied. But the gamble had paid off.

  He had become rich, yet his ambition had not been satisfied by the success of the Burra Burra mine. He had also married well. His new wife told people how she had brought her name to the marriage, her husband the shekels. Much tittering behind fans and nudging of elbows. No matter; he was rich enough to disregard such talk.

  He had built Eagle on the Hill as a symbol of his wealth. He had given his wife a free hand to make of it what she liked, but more for his benefit than hers. The big house had been his statement to the world, proclaiming what he had become. Later deals had quadrupled his wealth, but none had brought him the delight he felt in his estate on the Murray.

  He had trampled all opposition. He had become one of the richest men in the country. Wealth had given meaning to his life.

  Now this.

  His clenched fists shook and would not be still. The room was filled with a red haze. It agitated him to remember what Rufus had confessed. It must not; agitation was dangerous, as his thudding heart was telling him even now. He must control himself. He took a succession of deep breaths, his chest creaking. Control …

  The red haze faded. He breathed more easily. But to forget what he had been told was impossible.

  Sutton had been a talker. George had seen through him at once, had hoped to use him as he had used a dozen others in his time. He had thought to gain control of the National Bank, to turn Sutton’s guile against himself. He would have done it, too. George had known Sutton was on the skids; there’d been rumours about him for years. Another six months and George would have had the National, a final coup to round off his career. But Sutton had fallen more quickly than he’d expected. That alone would not have mattered, but Rufus had ruined everything.

  Because his son, his imbecilic, stupid, misbegotten son — rage again snatching George’s breath from his lungs, setting
his heart pounding, bringing back the red haze to his eyes, the bloodshot darkness thickening — had struck a deal.

  Sutton, with his adder’s tongue, had beguiled him. He had dangled in front of Rufus the vast fortune that, as he had put it, awaited those with courage.

  ‘A hundred thousand pounds,’ he had said, the information levered by George’s crowbar questions from Rufus’s reluctant mouth. ‘Nothing less. Small investments are more trouble than they’re worth. Don’t you agree?’

  And Rufus, flattered, thinking how in one deal he could eclipse his father’s greatest triumphs, had agreed.

  He did not have one hundred thousand pounds, or anything like it. But the depositors did. No harm in a loan, after all. A loan that would be repaid in full, the moment the looked-for riches materialised. They would be better off than ever. And Rufus, King Rufus …

  George bared his teeth, rage out of control now, fighting his son and the world, fighting his own heart. It crashed and banged like an iron pot in his chest. King Rufus, indeed. More like the court jester. Because the fortune had been a dream, the dream had become a nightmare and the depositors’ funds had been lost. And the Grenvilles …

  After a lifetime of endeavour, wiped out.

  George’s hands shook, snatching at shadows. It must not be. There had to be a way, if he could find it. He would think, he would scheme; all would be well. It was impossible that such idiocy could bring him down. Such betrayal and vanity, the son trying to prove himself a better man than his father. Fool! Fool!

  But he would think. He would reason. He would restore order from chaos. He would find a solution.

  He got to his feet. He shrugged off the protest of his painfully leaping heart. He walked purposefully through the red haze. He stood by the window of his suite and looked out at the tumult of the sun-bright sea.

  All will be well, he thought. He willed it to be so. Over and over again the words ricocheted through the bony chasms of his head. All will be well.