by Darry Fraser
‘Though?’
‘It’s a little loose. I wouldn’t want to lose it now.’
He rested his forehead on hers. ‘We can wrap some twine inside it.’
She nodded, her eyes still on the ring on her finger. ‘I am a tangle of nerves. It will be an exciting adventure, won’t it? We’re sure of that, aren’t we?’
He kissed her again, long and languidly. Then he took her hand. ‘Aye. It will be an adventure, and we’re sure. It feels right. More than right.’ He pressed his mouth to her shoulder a moment. ‘Let me take to you to our bed, Nell.’
It was in the dark silence of deepest night when Finn awoke. Aware of the lithe, sleeping woman beside him, he cursed his stiffening arm, his shuddering leg, and the violence within. It propelled him off the bed in a desperate bid to keep the tremor to himself and not wake her. So soon after the last one …
Under the glow of starlight, he saw Nell rise. ‘Finn?’
‘Stay in bed. This is not good to witness,’ he ground out. He pushed himself to the wall, and rolled onto his side. The table rattled as his body shook; a bag of something fell to the floor from the dresser as he bumped it.
Then Nell was by his side. He saw her feet first, then the slim, strong legs. A shirt of his was all he’d had to offer her for nightwear and it fell just short of her knees.
She knelt quickly, wedged between him and the wall, her arms wrapped around his chest. She moulded to him, the tremor buffeting her. She hugged him tight until it subsided, moments later, and the last few shakes petered out.
‘This is my nightmare, Nell,’ he whispered hoarsely and sat up tiredly, disentangling himself from her. ‘I’d no intention to hide it, but didn’t think you’d witness it so soon. I’m sorry for it. It feels at times like I am half a man because of it.’
‘Not so,’ she whispered back. ‘It’s a small part of the whole man.’
Thirty-Nine
Ballarat, Camp Hospital tent
Lewis could hear quiet chatter. His mind was still fuzzy—thanks to laudanum, they said—and so was the sight he had in his good eye. The bed creaked slightly as he moved, and the chatter stopped.
Canvas walls waved in and out on a breeze. He felt giddy each time he noticed it, and vomit threatened to surge in his throat.
‘Oooh, look. His good eye’s opened.’
Whose voice was that—a young woman’s?
Then a familiar face peered in. ‘Son, are you feeling well enough today?’
Lewis tried to focus and blinked at his mother. Then his gaze shifted to the young woman, and an older man hovering at her shoulder. Ahh. Annabel and her father Rufus Someone-or-other. ‘Well enough for what?’ he croaked.
Annabel beamed at him, clapping her hands together. ‘I’m so happy you’re awake, it’s been days and days and days.’
Enid held up an envelope for him to see. ‘This came from Mr Campbell’s office this morning. I thought we should wait to see if you are well enough to hear the news.’
Lewis squinted his good eye at the letter. It was addressed to him. He looked at his mother. ‘It’s been opened.’
She reddened but was smiling. ‘I thought it best.’
He glanced at Rufus, who nodded his head. ‘You are coming out of the worst of it, they say. You’re a strong man. A little more rest and you’re good as new.’ The gap-toothed smile appeared.
Grunting, Lewis struggled to sit up a little, the thin pillow behind not much help to him.
‘Read it to me in private, Mama,’ he rasped. At the stoic looks on the faces of all three, he added, ‘So not to burden these good folk.’ His tongue felt thick, and pain was creeping back. He’d rather pain, welcome it over the dulling, damning effect of laudanum. The nurse had told him he’d not be given any more.
‘Not a burden to us,’ Rufus said expansively. ‘We’re family, now that you’re betrothed and all to my daughter.’
I am? ‘Please remind me of my proposal.’ He knew he would be excused for being ungallant on his sick bed, but he added, ‘Perhaps it would help jog my memory of such a momentous occasion.’
Enid didn’t seem to notice. ‘You were on the stretcher, my boy, waiting for a hospital bed. You took Annabel’s hand. It was lovely for us all to hear. Even the nurse was delighted with it.’
He sank against the pillow. Wonderful. All those witnesses.
His mother looked back at Rufus, and Lewis thought he saw something in her gaze. A softening, a light he hadn’t seen for perhaps his whole life. The pinched countenance had gone, and it looked as if years had lifted from her face. Dear God. Did he now have to contend with the prospect of a stepfather as well as a father-in-law?
Annabel still beamed, and somehow her happy face cheered Lewis a little. She was indeed a beautiful girl.
‘Read on then, Mama.’
‘“Dear Mr Wilshire, to reference the matter of your late uncle, Mr Andrew Amberton’s estate. It is my great pleasure to advise a most fortunate turn of events for you, most extraordinary and most unusual.
“It has come in the form of a waiver of the repayment of the loan, for which you are the remaining guarantor, as secured by the late Mr Amberton. It has been fully and unconditionally forgiven, as it were, and it is in writing that no further action will be taken against the estate, or you as its guarantor, for the purposes of retrieving payment.
“In short, the loan has been fully repaid to the Seymour family, and receipts are in hand as proof.
“As for the other matters, they can be attended once your mining is fully operational again.”’ Enid looked up. ‘It goes on in legal jargon, says he has written to the creditors and is very hopeful the mines will pay everyone to redeem our good name, et cetera. But this other is the most wonderful news, Lewis.’ She tapped his forearm.
He nodded dumbly.
‘And there’s more good news,’ she continued. ‘On Mr McNaught’s advice, I paid the license fees again, ensuring that our mines still operate while you recuperate.’
Lewis’s good eye met Rufus’s stare.
‘Yes,’ Enid went on happily. ‘And he has very kindly offered to oversee until you are back on your feet. Our mines can still produce to keep us.’
Everyone was beaming broadly. Lewis closed his eye to shut out all that happy, smiling, beaming optimism.
A rough hand clamped his shoulder lightly. ‘It is my pleasure to help, Mr Wilshire. And a pleasure to have the company of your good mother, if you approve it. We have become firm friends while we wait for your health to return.’
The good eye opened again and met with Rufus McNaught’s forthright gaze. ‘I’m sure if my mother has approved …’
‘I have,’ Enid declared. ‘I do.’
Lewis held Rufus McNaught’s look. ‘Then it is a very happy family, indeed.’
McNaught nodded. ‘And all family business will stay that way, son,’ he replied.
Lewis knew right where he stood with that seemingly innocuous comment. He groaned a little, felt ill, trapped but resigned to his fate for the time being. When his gaze settled on Annabel, he saw a light in her eyes, and a strange thought descended.
Flora never looked at me that way.
McNaught was talking. ‘Now, if the ladies will excuse us for a few moments, I should discuss some business with you, Mr Wilshire, if you’re up to it. No need to unduly burden your good mother or my daughter with it.’
Lewis shuffled against the pillow. The sooner he was done with whatever McNaught had for him, the sooner he could go back to the oblivion of the last of the laudanum dose. ‘Of course. If you’ll pardon us, Mama? Annabel?’ The women wandered arm-in-arm to the end of the tent then ducked outside. Amazing. Fixing his one good eye on McNaught, he waited.
The older man leaned closer. ‘I’m glad that you’re looking as fine as you are, yessiree, no mistaking that. But I reckon looking through a rifle sight might not be something you’ll be doing too much more of from now on.’
Despite how suddenly his heartb
eat pounded through him, Lewis’s stare was steady on McNaught.
‘Good thing I was here when you came ’round, yesterday,’ McNaught continued, and scratched at the bushy beard. ‘A nurse was finishing up the bandages for you, and she asked me to listen to whatever you were mumbling about. She was a bit worried.’
Blood pumped harder under the receding painkilling dose. Lewis’s chest expanded, and his hand bunched slowly in the bed covers.
‘I leaned closer to hear you say something about making a clean shot, and “no more uncle”. Fact, you said it three times.’
His open eye blinked once. ‘Strange thing.’ Lewis pushed himself up again, tried to wrangle the pillow to give him support. ‘A nightmare, perhaps?’
‘Yessir, I’d heard your uncle was an unpleasant fellow, got himself shot by a bushranger in a hold-up. Not by you. Of course not. No, that never entered my head.’ McNaught reached behind him and plumped the pillow, grabbed another from an empty neighbouring cot and shoved it in behind him. ‘So, I said to the nurse that it sounded like a delirious mind, which she agreed it could have been. Or maybe you’d said snot and carbuncles or the like, and that I couldn’t make anything of it to worry about. Think that satisfied her.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘Couldn’t have you with two unexplained problems, now, could we? Especially now that you’re soon to be married to my daughter and building up a respectable business again.’
Lewis grunted. ‘I’ve heard that laudanum can give some folk the deliriums.’
‘Son, my thoughts on the matter exactly. Annabel will get you all cured of that. She’ll look after you properly.’
‘She will, at that. Lovely girl. Be assured, she’ll be well looked after too. Be assured.’ Lewis closed his eye. Exhaled quietly. ‘Carbuncles,’ he repeated, musing. ‘Damnable things.’
‘They are at that.’
‘I would hope that information doesn’t get around.’
‘No one will hear it from me,’ McNaught said. ‘Son.’
Forty
The weather had been favourable–warm, clear and no rain–on the way to Geelong. It was the easiest way to Melbourne, and to the wholesale stores from which Finn purchased his goods.
Ben Steele had agreed to drive an extra dray, smaller but sturdy. He thought it a good idea to push hard on the way there, to spend more time loading extra merchandise. He took Finn aside before they left to say, ‘At last, a happy light in your eye, Finn. It looks good on yer.’ He’d nodded approval at Nell being with them.
Nell’s spirits had greatly improved too, once they’d left the hills of Ballarat. The noise of the fields had drifted to a silence that only their voices, or the horses’ hooves, had broken.
In Melbourne, the drays had been piled high, and their return took longer, as expected. Lumbering bullock wagons ahead slowed their days even more, and now once in more gentler terrain, Finn and Ben could pass them without undue havoc.
On board the dray Finn drove, a chest for Nell was packed with new clothes, simple and functional, as she had chosen. She refused to fuss over things that would not be practical and prudent. A few new blouses, skirts, aprons, two new bonnets, and her precious cottons for underwear had been carefully selected. Warm jackets were added after encouragement from the shop assistant. Two pairs of new boots too.
Finn piled new blankets and linens for the bed into another timber box and slipped a pair of dancing shoes in for Nell. Not that there’d been more dances since the Subscription Ball but there would be, and then they would dance together as husband and wife.
There’d been good news on the return trip from miners walking to and from the fields: two of the thirteen diggers incarcerated in Melbourne for treason over the Eureka Lead incident had been cleared by a jury of any wrongdoing. Everyone thought the others would be freed as well.
That gave some people an excuse to let off steam. Gunshots and drunken shouts of merriment had dogged their campsites for a couple of nights on the track. Finn’s tremors had broken out late into the night. Before the creeping dawn was upon them, Nell had fought them with him, on their mattress under the cart, away from sight.
Then last night, back in Ballarat, they’d all taken to their own much longed-for beds for a quiet night. Finn and Nell, exhausted, wrapped in each other’s arms, fell asleep and barely stirred until dawn.
This morning, the merchandise would be driven to Finn’s store in the town and unloaded. Finn had agreed, on the drive back from the city, to begin the task of operating from there. Ben had been very vocal that it was the right thing to do.
Before he left for Steele and Sons, Finn kissed Nell hard. ‘A promise of things to come tonight, good Nell,’ he said, cupping her chin, his other arm around her waist. ‘If you’ve a mind, though, come visit the store. I might be in need of your company.’ With a wave, he set off on foot.
Nell, dressed in a new blouse and skirt, looked about the house. She would live here with Finn—marry formally one day soon, they’d agreed. She wandered into the parlour and stared at the pictures on the mantel. The one of Finn and Louisa caught her eye.
He was the same man, but different, of course. The horror of battle was still with him somehow, his family gone. Nell and he would make a new one. Her face grew hot at that. He’d thought his fortune lost, too, but now it was found. He’d told her it was a wiser man with whom she lived.
Nell wondered about Louisa and her life with Finn. The woman seemed to smile at her from the photograph, her gaze serene. Nell smiled back, nodded to the picture of his parents, and headed for the front door.
Today she would walk to where Flora had made her laundry and confirm that she and Josie had really left. She’d walk to where she’d pitched her tent, where she’d been hopeful of a different life among the detritus of the old. She would venture onto the digging fields for one last time, to take a walk over the damaged, sad hills filled with empty holes and dashed dreams, and finally leave all her old life behind. All of it. She needed to do it.
Pulling on her old boots, she was ready. It was a reasonable walk and she wasn’t willing to risk blisters forming if she wore her new boots.
It was overcast. The din of the fields increased with each of her steps. Her mood plummeted despite her best efforts. As she stepped over the camp litter of tin cans, broken bottles and torn sailcloth and canvas, she began to regret her decision. She stopped to check her bearings.
A little had changed in four weeks; a few tents had gone and the folk she had waved to at one time were no longer there. Other tents close by, new to her, stood slightly aside from the original sites, as if the owners didn’t want to stand in the same footsteps as their predecessors.
Looking up the low incline to where Flora’s tubs had been, she saw a couple of tents there, one larger than the other. Perhaps it was her father’s. He’d said he’d relocated to this site. Deciding to press on, she trudged a bit further up the hill until she was within a few yards of the tents.
No Flora and Josie here. She gazed at the smaller tent and walked to it, realised it covered a hole which had some sort of small corral over it. As she peered in she saw it was a deep shaft. Men had been digging deeper for gold for over a year now that the surface stuff was harder to find. Shafts were everywhere, their openings hidden from sight by canvas gone grey and splotchy with damp. She glanced about, reckoning that the tent was over the site where she’d pitched hers. The larger tent was just about where Flora and her mother had lived.
Sadness crept in. But Flora would have gone on to something better for herself, just as Nell had. She knew that Josie would be more comfortable, too. How quickly things had happened for all of them. New lives far distant from the ones they’d led only weeks before.
It is done, here. Over for me.
Nell jumped at a voice.
‘Ah. I wondered if ye’d made a full recovery and ye needed yer old man after all. Is why ye’re here, I take it.’ Alfred stepped out of the larger tent, a pipe stuck between his teeth and a tobacco pouch
in his hands. His clothes were not so old any longer, and his boots still had both toes in them.
‘I don’t need you. It’s curiosity, that’s all. A friend of mine lived here, gave me shelter, kindness. You might remember.’
Alfred grunted. ‘She and her mad old-woman mother have gone to Bendigo.’ He stared at Nell a moment, then flicked a wrist at the other tent. ‘It’s why I got in here. I said so, remember? I came up here and pitched the big tent where hers had been. Thought I’d look around.’ He stood as if carefree, a jaunty tilt to his head.
She couldn’t help the sarcasm from creeping in. ‘Is that so?’ Nell asked, ‘Did you not bring your wife?’
‘’Course, I did,’ he answered sharply. ‘She’s gone to Mrs Willey’s. Got some female garb to buy.’
Nell was a little surprised. While Dora had always been intent on spending, she was shopping in the best of the shops. Interesting. She wondered who her father had fleeced this time. Well, no reason to stand and make chit-chat with him. She had the answer she sought; Flora was gone, and Nell had made her own goodbyes. She turned to go.
‘I put another tent over this spot, here,’ her father called.
She turned back at the curious tone in his voice.
‘Reckoned it was on your patch that burned,’ Alfred mused, thumbing towards the canvas over the wooden framework.
Nell looked across and lifted her shoulders. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, though she knew it was.
‘Got curious, meself, about a real soft little hollow there. Thought maybe there’d been somethin’ hid in it. Long gone, o’course.’ He took his pipe and knocked it against his palm, a plug of tobacco shooting out. ‘It made diggin’ a bit easier to begin with. Came up with a nugget, a beauty, I did. Big as me fist. Not more’n a foot down under the soft stuff.’
Nell gave a short laugh, the irony of it not lost on her. ‘Well, I’m thinking that now you’ve found this beauty of a nugget, you won’t be pestering to sell me off, then.’
