Shadrach stared into his mug. “Dad promised fineries we never saw. A real iron bed for Mum. Velvets and laces and other nonsense. He was fixated on a mourning pendant she’d seen once, and wanted something like it, in memory of our Daniel.”
His eyes deepened from dark blue to just dark.
“That night, I was still at the table. I had a pocket of beans given to me by Jimmy Narong. He had the best market garden near us. I would count those beans each night and dream about being as far from a goldfield as I could get. Even then, all I wanted was my own farm.”
He let the tin cup go and leaned back in his chair. A catch in his breath stopped the flow of words, and he exhaled in one long deliberate breath.
“It was late and Molly’d been asleep for hours. Dad woke her with his foul screaming and she started to cry. She wasn’t used to seeing him. Didn’t trust him, I guess. Who could blame her? Each time he opened his mouth, the place shook like a wind ripping at the canvas roof. When Molly got out of bed, he…”
Shadrach grazed the edge of his chin.
“He’d roughed us up with shoving before, but this night something else got hold of him.”
He gripped the edge of the table. “Two wooden cross beams held our tent up. We used them for shelving. Gold panning equipment, baskets, lengths of wood for mine shafts. Dad wanted to know why no one listened to him. Only his mates were good enough ’cause they all stuck together. He was so angry, he grabbed a poker and pushed the kettle into the fire. Before we could work out where the steam and hissing came from, he scraped the poker across the table, right under my nose.”
Finella sucked in her breath. She didn’t want to hear what came next, but Shadrach held the corner of the table like a drowning man, and she wouldn’t let him sink in the memory without her.
“I let my body slide from chair to floor. Landed under the table like a puddle in a mess of beans. If I hadn’t, that poker would’ve wrapped around my head. He was so enraged he’d missed, he must have raised it and swiped at the rafter because next I knew, everything from the beams above crashed around our heads with a roar I’ve never heard since. Shelves fell, tins rattled into every corner. By the time Dad dragged me out by the elbow, Mum was crying and Molly was bleeding.”
Finella covered her mouth with both hands. The start of tears filled Shadrach’s eyes but he held them off. Like anyone who’d been thrown around from an early age, he probably kept his crying for when no one could see him. She hardly knew who she hurt for the most. The mother, young Molly, or Shadrach, still shattered by the events of a night so long ago.
“Did he strike Molly, too?”
“No, an empty vinegar flagon fell and shattered all over Mum’s shoulder but Molly took the brunt of it. Split her head open from temple to ear.”
Finella flinched as if it happened right before her eyes.
“Oh, Molly,” she whispered into her fingers.
“I thought he’d killed her.” Shadrach toyed with his cup, twisting it one way, then the other. “Don’t remember who came first, but someone helped us bandage Molly’s head and clean up all the blood. A mate of Dad’s took him away to simmer down and by the time the troopers got there, Mum had little to say. It had all been an accident…” He shrugged and tapped against the side of his cup with his thumbnail.
Finella waited for him to continue. Could her words ever soothe the ache?
“Soon enough, folks came with medicine and food. When Molly finally woke up, she didn’t speak. For weeks. Just sat there, following us with her eyes. And she never came near the fire.”
“What happened to your father?” Sickened, Finella needed to hear he’d been thrown into the foulest jail.
“He disappeared. Turned up four years later. By then Mum was working in a laundry in Ballarat. The gold boom had fizzled and only the big mining companies were striking it lucky. And Dad knew it. He’d changed. He looked harder, if possible. I think he’d had his nose broken in a fight. I couldn’t stand the sight of him and I left for Melbourne soon as I could.”
“How old were you?” Questions tore at Finella.
“Eighteen. I’d worked odd jobs for the boarding house owner where we lived ’til I found work with a carpenter. But what I really wanted was my own farm. I saw a job in the newspaper for farm hands on Churchill Island and next I knew I was shoveling manure with two other lads. Made my way here two years later.”
“What about Molly?” Finella quaked to think of her little friend, broken and afraid.
“She didn’t talk for a full year. Then one day in her sleep she called for Mum. Just like that. Next morning, she said ‘hungry.’ After that, it was small words. One by one. Then short sentences. But she never went to lessons. Never really grew up as we would’ve liked. Lived in a world of her own, but I think she was always happy alongside Mum. No one troubled her.”
He twisted to see her again. Wrapped in innocence and secure in the embrace of her rag doll.
The horror deepened and seized Finella like a bandit by the back of the neck. “What happened to your father?”
Shadrach turned back. “Eventually, he left and never came back. Mum got a letter from one of his mates saying he drowned in a river one night after a fall.”
Finella’s heart held no sincere condolences. So she left them unsaid. “What happened to his body?”
“Got washed away, I guess. Not that we cried any for him.” He dug his nail into a long chip in the table. “This is where the poker hit. Didn’t do as much damage as when he lifted it up and brought the roof crashing on our heads.” He rubbed the table with his palm. “Mum kept it. All these years. I shipped it here with her things after she died. And every time I look at it, right here,” he pressed his fist across the worn top, “I remember it was me who slid under like a snake and let someone else take the brunt of the old man’s fury.”
Finella reached her hand for his. “Shadrach.”
He wouldn’t look at her. Kept his eyes on his fist.
“You were just a boy. A terrorized boy who’d already lost a brother. No one could blame you for wanting to protect yourself.”
“I blame myself.” His fist came off the table to pound his chest. “I should’ve had that poker in my hand long before he did. Should’ve held it in his face and told him to get out and never come back. Before he ruined my sister’s life.” Blue eyes flashed at her. Dark and tortured, they barely restrained his torment.
“I should’ve defended them. Risen. Fought. Instead, I cowered under the table.” His words held a resignation she’d heard before.
She reached for the teapot and refilled his mug. The aroma seeped into the room like a salve, gentle and smooth. A small dose for a deep wound.
“My father often said the same. Wished he’d fought harder against my mother’s murderer.” Finella refilled her own cup. “He died on that ship, holding a grubby newspaper clipping one of the thieves dropped in the scuffle for my mother’s brooch. He never let Aunt Sarah burn it. A ragged article, on how getting the right amount of sunlight makes people happier. None of us could ever explain it. A dirty thief held a pure ideal close to his heart. And he still stole away the sweetest light from our lives before Father had the chance to stop him. My father wasn’t a child, Shadrach. He was a grown man who lived with regret all his life.”
She set the pot down but kept her fingers curled around the handle. “Don’t make the same mistake. Be proud. Dwell on how you’ve taken Molly in. How she’s safe in your home, now.”
He watched her for a very long time, his face so drained of color she feared he’d slipped into the silent place where Molly found comfort. A place where thoughts and memories burned at their most fierce.
But some color returned on the tail of a smile.
“I always knew I’d end up with her. Didn’t realize it would be this soon or how much trouble she’d be.” He twisted his lips. “I bet you didn’t either.”
Finella stirred sugar into her tea. The only real trouble around here w
as the way he held her with his blue eyes. She set the spoon down. Think of Molly.
“I didn’t realize she would be so reluctant to cook, but now that I know why, I can work around it.”
“How?”
“I’ll let her get over her fright, first. She was almost at the fire when I dropped the pan. Deep down, I think she wants to try. We’ll work on it together.” She sipped her tea, hoping she sounded confident. “By the time I’m ready to leave she’ll be stirring the pot like a seasoned cook.”
“You don’t have to leave us.”
Finella blinked hard and searched for the right reply. One they could all live with. “Well, if I don’t leave, Molly will never get the chance to do things for herself. That’s what you wanted all along wasn’t it?” Her voice sounded too cheery. Too much like a strangled attempt at steering this from where it might go.
He ignored her chatter. Pinned her with a look that had nothing to do with Molly. Her heart skipped a row of beats.
He’d already managed to unnerve her with words. Now he came at her with a look, and it snagged.
“Molly’s future is not the sum of all things I want.” His eyes pleaded with her, and Finella lowered hers to the blue vein in his neck.
“I have to leave. Eventually.”
“No. You don’t. You can stay here with us. With me.”
She stood to let her lungs take in air. Turned to the fire to do something. Anything, but see the way he looked at her. She put her hands on her hips and looked at the flames where they played.
The scrape of his chair charged the air with a crackle sharper than the fire’s spit. Heat from the hearth stole wisps of her hair and blew them against her neck.
“I don’t want you to leave.” His voice came in a whisper from behind her. Soft and hard all at once, it grazed her skin, carried on a breath so close it rivaled the sparks of the fire.
A gentle tug of her hair made her shiver. She knew not to turn around. He stood right at her shoulder. Like the day she’d thanked him for the shells, he wound his finger through a fallen curl.
He did not insist.
Although she imagined he loomed closer than he should, his reach for her served more to fix her course, until she could not resist the pull. A gentle sweep she wanted, and could not fight.
First her chin tilted, then her cheek.
“Finella…”
She allowed her neck and shoulders to turn, carried by the coaxing of his voice until she faced him and he released her hair to rest his hands on her shoulders.
“I want you to stay. You don’t have to leave.” He repeated his words and she felt them, each one, land on her heart like drops of rain on his roof.
“I do. I’m only here until Aunt Sarah comes, and then I—”
He cupped her chin and raised it up. “You don’t need Aunt Sarah. You’re not Molly. You can decide for yourself where you belong.”
She couldn’t look away. Her heart bounced against her ribs to a beat stronger than any fear she’d known. And more compelling.
“Let me help you work it out.” He leaned in, unhinging his eyes from hers. They roamed her face, and settled on her mouth, followed in a heartbeat by his lips.
Warm and soft, he tasted like sweet tea and Finella closed her eyes, overwhelmed by the scent of earth and smoke. Lost in a sensation too frightening to be good, too good to be real.
His thumb caressed her cheek and when she pulled away, he slid his hand behind her neck and drew her back.
She wasn’t sure the wildness in her heart could take another kiss.
“Are you telling secrets?” Molly stared up at them.
Blush swept over blush and Shadrach released his hold.
“Never you mind, Miss Molly. What are you doing?” He guided her back to bed.
“I wanted to hear the secret, too.”
“There is no secret. Other than if you don’t sleep you’ll be all grizzles in the morning.” He gathered her quilt and held it up. “Hop in.”
“Is it the secret about Finella? The one, you promised George?”
“I told you. There’s no secret. Now, sleep.”
“Night, Brother.” Still puffy, her eyes held affection for Shadrach, but he patted her cheek and she let her lids slip back to sleep.
He stepped away from the bed.
“Pity she woke.” A smile played with the corner of his mouth.
Finella’s blush simmered. “What secret about George? And me?”
“About you? No, She was… talking in her sleep.” He stumbled over his words and eyes which only a heartbeat ago sought hers, now studied the door.
He held the latch. “Better watch it. Molly might have tales to tell at breakfast.” He opened the door and chuckled, but the smile wasn’t fixed to his face anymore. He lingered, his hand on the rope.
“You shouldn’t have done that.” Finella spoke first.
“Done what?”
“Kissed me. There’s no place for that Shadrach. We were talking about Molly, and her welfare.”
“No, we’d moved on, to yours. And pretty soon,” he snuck a look at Molly and lowered his voice, “I’m going to make sure we get to talk about it some more.”
His whispered promise sent a thrill into Finella’s belly. It toppled there alongside the flicker of uneasiness Molly had thrown into the mix. Confused, she turned to object, but the last word belonged to Shadrach.
“Goodnight, Dandelion.”
20
November 3
One violet noonflower and one cape dandelion is all I’ve added to these pages. My feeble attempt to make an Everlasting. It hardly rivals Aunt Sarah’s.
I don’t dare read the words already here. I dare not look back. And even looking forward causes something to churn inside me, now.
My heart aches for this motherless girl, lost in a world I cannot reach. She is there. And she is not. I can help her. And I cannot. The day will come when I will be forced to leave her to her own devices and I fear for her then.
Once, the promise of an unknown name, a deep-rooted misery, kept me under its thumb. But Shadrach Jones has snatched a portion of my heart, and I add to my fears a new companion.
My own sorrow at leaving what has already won me.
I long for russet. The absence of bramble leaves and hawthorn berries reminds me I watch the seasons upside down. Or am I the one displaced? I can hardly tell these days.
Would the Finella who once wrote here, have let the son of a convict steal her heart? Would she have turned for his kiss? Would she have laid aside the dying wish of her mother, the deep-seated desire of her father, their collective search for a name?
What has happened to her?
Instead of autumn, we skid into the last days of spring and with it, a flush of growth; it threatens to overtake my senses. Shadrach’s crops beckon in the wind like dancers on a stage.
Molly sits on the edge of his chicory field sorting shells in a tin lid. Behind her the cornflower blue of the chicory crop soaks up the sun.
This hint of blue has fallen on the muddy landscape, as if God himself tipped the sky at my feet. But I am not surprised.
Blue has followed me from the day the sea and clouds delivered me here. Landed me so close to the water’s edge I cannot escape it, not even for one day. Deep marine skies hem me in beside waves of turquoise, and even when it all hides beneath midnight blue, I still look into the sapphire eyes of Molly, and Shadrach Jones.
And now, behold a blanket of blue takes hold of the earth, as well. Invites the wren with its puffed chest to pluck and bring gifts to its mate, while I watch, and tremble at the ancient game of courtship before me.
*
Shadrach whistled a tune he’d not heard before. It came completely out of his own good cheer and he didn’t mind it one bit.
He tethered Old Lou outside Trilloe’s General Store and Bakery, tapped his breast pocket to make sure his list had not flown away, and bounded inside.
The smell of fresh bread ga
thered him in, and he drew a deep breath. Not just bread, but something sweet and fruity beckoned from the baker’s cart. He made a mental note to find out what before he left.
“Shadrach Jones. We were only now talking about you.” Mrs. Trilloe beckoned from behind the counter. She lowered her voice and mumbled to the stranger. “She lives with him and his sister. For now.”
A punch to Shadrach’s jaw would not have felled him any quicker. Did she think he couldn’t hear her? He eyed the stranger.
A tall fair-haired gentleman, neatly dressed in crisp white shirt and rolled sleeves turned to Shadrach. Relief swept over the man’s face. He stepped away from the counter and offered his hand, almost too quickly.
It wasn’t often Shadrach needed to look up at another man. “Shadrach Jones.”
“Goliah Ashe. New preacher.”
Already? Weren’t there any grey haired preachers out there looking for a church to shepherd?
“Goliah?”
The man laughed. “Most people get stumped by it. I just finished telling Mrs. Trilloe here what I may as well tell you, too.”
Mrs. Trilloe nodded. She already knew more about the new preacher than most would for days, and wore the pleasure on her face like a country fair blue ribbon.
“I was one of those big babies. Looked three months old the day I was born. My parents knew little about Bible stories and thought Goliath was a giant hero. So they named me in his honor, not realizing they’d left out a letter. Anyway, here I am, Goliah Ashe, at your service.” He bowed a little and shrugged.
Shadrach guessed Goliah Ashe had made peace with his name long ago and wasn’t afraid to share the tale. He liked that.
“I guess anyone who’s weathered life with a name like Goliah’s got a bag full of good sermons. Welcome to Phillip Island. Moved in yet?”
“Just pulled in this morning from Melbourne. Crates are lined up on the verandah at the church house, with more due on the steamer tomorrow, but I thought I’d secure a fresh loaf for my lunch before I did anything else. I imagine with aromas like these you’d sell out before noon. Is that right, Mrs. Trilloe?”
She beamed. “We do most days. Bread’s our specialty you know. I’m sure it wouldn’t be prideful to say we’ve the best oven on the island.”
Carry Me Home Page 15
