She stood, walked down the corridor and knocked on the study door, but didn’t wait for Papa to say ‘Come in’. He looked at her, his face wet. He had been crying.
And alone dwell forever the kings of the sea, thought Hannah, as Papa put his arms out to her, and held her as she cried too.
CHAPTER 31
STORM
They did not leave that night. Hannah had just reached her bedroom again when the sky split in a vast bolt of lightning. Rain crashed down on the roof as suddenly as if a bucket had been tipped on it.
She ran to her bedroom window. The world had vanished. There was nothing to see but white, as if a waterfall had enveloped all of Port Harris. The air was filled with drumming on the roof, the rush of water as the soil could no longer cope with the downpour and the water rose up towards the veranda.
And then a roar: the river, Hannah realised. But the river had captured the land now too. She watched a cow float by, its legs up in the air, its head thankfully hidden; followed by trees, a cart, logs, unidentifiable lumps, and then what must be the maypole, its coloured ribbons tangled round it.
And still it rained, but the torrent became less dense. She could see the drenched world again, the water still rising. Twilight came and the air grew dark, but she could still hear the water rushing about them, and thuds as objects hit the house posts as the water surged under her feet. It sounded as if the flood was close to the floor now.
She should feel terrified. She just felt numb. The family should be facing this together. Instead, each sat apart.
Mama knocked on Hannah’s door. ‘Hannah? We can’t leave in this. The ship won’t sail in a flood either. Would you lay the table for dinner, please?’
There was something comforting about the normality of dinner, despite the danger outside. Hannah put out the knives and forks on the table she had expected never to sit at again. Mama brought out Mrs Murphy’s vast mutton pie, slightly singed on one side, to which Mama had added mashed potatoes and cabbage; and stewed pineapple and Mrs Murphy’s lumpy custard for dessert.
The rain thundered on the roof, but there was a new and deeper note now — of water tumbling rocks and trees and whatever else lay in its path as it raced to join the river and flow down to the sea.
No one spoke. There was too much to say, and probably nothing that would make a difference. Nor could they be heard easily over the noise of the water.
At last Angus said loudly and nervously, ‘Is the house going to float away?’
‘No,’ said Papa. ‘This house is built too solidly.’
‘But what if the water comes up into the house?’
‘Then we climb onto the table and up to the rafters in the ceiling, or onto the roof where we can be rescued by a boat. But I don’t think the water is going to rise as far as the floor.’ Papa lifted the lamp and took it over to the window. ‘See, the flood level is already going down.’
Angus looked, nodded, then took Papa’s hand as they came back to the dinner table.
The schoolhouse must be half-underwater, thought Hannah. Would the desks float away? The piano would be ruined; the piano Mr Harris had bought for Mama.
But Papa would not be the schoolmaster here next year. Another teacher would come. Hannah supposed it would be the new schoolmaster’s job to see what could be salvaged from the school.
Somehow they all finished dinner. Perhaps their bodies knew that if the rain returned and the water rose again, they would need every reserve of strength.
Nothing more was said about the ship that night. Hannah slept fitfully, waking every hour to light her candle and check the water level. Each time it seemed to be going down.
At last she left the candle lit, found paper, pen and ink and blotting paper, and began to write. The words came as if they had always been there, waiting for her to put them onto paper. The poem only needed a single draft.
She blotted the paper, then folded it, ready to post before they left. Finally she slept.
The wind woke her, its howling almost a song, as if it was mourning the storm. Or saying goodbye to us, thought Hannah. A storm brought us here, and now a storm says farewell. But of course they wouldn’t sail till the river was clear of logs and it was safe for their ship to leave the port.
She peered from her window into the pre-dawn light. The Grafton Princess would not leave today. The water had dropped as swiftly as it had risen, but the grass was hidden under sludge. The hibiscus shrubs and fences were gone, replaced by mud and logs and tangles of wire and animal lumps that would soon begin to smell of death. They might not even sail for days. But Mama might decide they should go aboard, to prevent any more painful scenes with Papa. Hannah had an hour perhaps, before Mama was up and took charge of her children’s life again.
She dressed quickly in what she’d worn the day before rather than disturb her suitcase. Her boots would be ruined in the mud. The wind had almost died away but a hat wouldn’t stay on, nor did she pause to plait her hair. But she shoved the poem she had written into the pocket at her waist. She would not need to post it now.
She hesitated in the parlour, then took a pencil from the desk and an old envelope, and wrote on the back: I have gone to say goodbye to the Zebediahs. I will be back by lunchtime. Hannah. She put the pencil back and saw a single letter in the letter rack with Mrs Zebediah’s name and address on the front. She shoved it into her pocket too.
Down the stairs, through the muck in the garden, her hair whipping and tangling in a cloud about her. She wasn’t a good girl this morning. No one who saw her bareheaded, striding though the mud, uncaring about the muck catching on her skirt, would ever think she was.
The world had an eerie silence. No, not silence: the river that had shrunk back almost to its banks still roared and growled, covering the tentative cries of birds investigating the wreckage of their world.
Smokey wasn’t in his paddock. For a moment Hannah was struck motionless with grief, then realised that the gates had been tied open. Hopefully one of the Harris plantation’s workmen had taken Smokey to higher ground, but he would have been able to find his own way there too.
She made her way along the swamp that had once been a track, her boots glooping each time she pulled them from the muck, the mud rising to her ankles sometimes. The Murphys’ house, up on its stilts, was untouched, though a dead cow was wedged against the stairway.
Good, thought Hannah, after a moment’s grief for the cow. Mrs Murphy would be too busy with her own home to come to them today.
It was faster once she left the road and crossed the paddocks. Boodle barked, but she ignored him. Mr Murphy was unlikely to be snooping today.
Most of the cane had been harvested, but the fields that hadn’t were criss-crossed with yellow and black sticks, the crop ruined. Here and there the way was barred by long lengths of cane or bamboo, or fallen branches. Hannah tore her fingers pulling them far enough apart to let her through. The sky was a blue balloon, its colour so bright it seemed as if every layer of cloud had been wrenched from it to fall as water.
Suddenly she wondered if perhaps the farmhouse had been washed away. Would she only find ruins and tragedy? For a moment she wished she hadn’t come, so she could remember the kitchen warm and welcoming, smelling of good food, and Jamie laughing, and Mrs Zebediah looking proud as he read to her from the newspaper.
But they might be hurt, might need help. Nor could she leave without saying goodbye; without letting them know that they hadn’t been abandoned by the only friends they had, and that Jamie would be offered an escape from whatever the new law would bring.
At last the track twisted around the vast stand of fig trees. The farmhouse was still there. Its shingles were sodden, but the garden around it was untouched by mud. Hannah hadn’t realised their hill was so high up because the slope was gradual. But of course Mrs Zebediah and her parents must have weathered many floods here before.
Driftwood was lodged in the branches of the fruit trees in the lower part of the orchard,
and some branches were broken, but nothing that wouldn’t grow back. The cows nosing at the grass at the highest point of their paddock looked affronted, as if the flood had been created purely to disturb their night and cover most of their grass with silt. They made no move towards Hannah. Their calves were with them. Either the cows had been milked already today, or the milking had been forgone and the calves put in to drink the milk instead. But there was no sign of Jamie or his mother. Surely they would be out here, cleaning up the damage?
Hannah trudged over to the farmhouse door, and knocked. ‘Hello?’
No answer.
She called again: ‘Hello! Is anyone there? It’s me!’
Still silence. ‘Jamie!’ she cried. ‘Jamie.’ But not even the cat appeared, to twine round her legs as usual, hoping for a treat at morning tea.
She knocked on the door again, then flung it open. The stove was lit, but banked right down. There was no sign that breakfast had been eaten or was being prepared. No fresh scones under a tea towel; no half-loaf left from the morning meal; not even a pail of milk in the corner by the stove to make the cream rise faster. She had never seen Mrs Zebediah’s kitchen with no evidence of cooking or meals. Where were they?
Terror bit. She pressed her hands aginst her skirt to stop them shaking. Had Jamie and his mother been down at the beach, hauling the net to safety when the storm hit? Maybe a freak wave had washed them away, or the dry creek bed had suddenly become the path for a flash flood, hurling them out to sea?
But Jamie and Mrs Zebediah knew this land. They knew how to keep themselves safe in a storm, just like their house was safe. Where were they?
She ran to the dairy — empty, except for the cat, which peered down from a shelf. Sensible cat, to stay away from the mud.
The sheds were empty too, except for the remnants of broken bush furniture. But between the sheds was a freshly dug mound, the length of a man, that could only have been dug this morning after the rain.
Hannah stared numbly at the stone next to it, the words roughly engraved by a wobbly chisel: Mr Zebediah, beloved husband and father, died 1894.
Now someone lay next to him. But who?
Anguish leached the strength from her. Did Jamie lie there? Or Mrs Zebediah? Had Mrs Zebediah had a heart attack? Had ruffians attacked Jamie?
There was no one who would have helped either of them to dig a grave if one of them had died, nor stood over it to join in prayers. No one but me and Mama, thought Hannah, and we had already seemed to abandon them. She should be crying. She should be wailing in grief. But tears would not come.
Perhaps they could not come till she knew who lay here. Or maybe the grief was too big to bear. It was dammed up inside her and a single tear would leave her helpless.
She looked at the track to the beach. Had Jamie or Mrs Zebediah had gone down there, to grieve with the waves perhaps?
Once she saw the one who was left, she would know which one had gone. But while she stood here she could pretend that time had ceased, and she was back on the branch with Jamie, and fish pie in the oven and Mrs Zebediah’s smile . . . Then suddenly she saw them . . .
Footprints! She had been stupid! Two different-sized prints. Why hadn’t she thought of footprints? Those were Jamie’s bare feet, and the woman’s shoes could only be Mrs Zebediah’s. Relief worked through her, strong as the flood. They must both be alive! There was no sign of those prints coming back. They must still be down there!
But who lay silent in this fresh dug earth?
Water roared along the creek bed. She had made it halfway to the beach before it covered the track, shimmering dark and dangerous with mud. She had to climb halfway up the hill, clambering through the dripping maidenhair ferns, pushing away tangles of vines brought down by the weight of the water.
At last she came out on the cliffs above the inlet. Waves crashed on the shore, brown with sand and topped with debris-flecked foam. The air was thick with the stench of flood. But the beach was empty. Even the seagulls and the small darting birds seemed to have deserted the cove.
The terror that Jamie and Mrs Zebediah had been washed away returned as she scrambled down the rocky cliff.
Then suddenly there he was, at the far end of the beach. There was his mother, too. They had been hidden by a boulder, but now they moved towards her, each holding a hessian sack. Her heart seemed to crack. She stopped to find her breath. They were alive! But what were they doing here? Surely Jamie hadn’t put his nets out in this rage of waves?
‘Jamie!’ she yelled.
Mrs Zebediah started at the sound. She shoved her sack behind a rock.
Hannah clambered down the rest of the cliff. ‘It’s only me!’ she called. She jumped the last few feet onto the sand.
Mrs Zebediah waved cautiously. She looked tired, but sort of . . . taller, as if the sack had lifted her instead of weighing her down. And Jamie . . . Jamie was smiling as if he’d swallowed a rainbow.
He dropped his sack and ran to her. He grabbed her hands. ‘Are you all right? Your family? Mum said the schoolmaster’s house would be safe.’
She held his hands hard, felt their strength, felt her strength return as well. ‘It is. But we’re leaving Port Harris, maybe today. As soon as a ship can sail, Papa is going to another school, and Angus and Mama and I are going to Sydney to live.’ The words tumbled from her like broken twigs among the water. ‘I . . . I don’t want to go. I hate the sugar cane, and I hate the smug girls who don’t care about anything. But I’m going to write to you, no matter what Mama says. I’ll write every week.’ She took a deep breath. Because suddenly she knew what she had come to say. ‘And when I’m twenty-one I’ll come back here and—’
Mrs Zebediah had joined them now, without the sack she’d been carrying. Hannah’s voice must have been loud enough to hear along the beach. ‘Jamie isn’t staying here either,’ she said, raising her voice too to be heard over the waves that crashed and lashed, their foam almost reaching their feet. ‘The governor-general is going to sign the Bill to send all the Islanders away any day now. Mr Harris sent one of his foremen down here yesterday to tell us that if his men had to go, Jamie would be on the first boat out of Port Harris.’
The cruelty left Hannah speechless. She gazed from one to the other, then she realised that Mrs Zebediah almost shone with joy. How could she be happy? Jamie seemed to bubble with excitement. What happened? But who’s was the grave?
‘There’s a way to save him,’ said Hannah tentatively. She let go of Jamie’s hand and pulled the now damp letter from Mama out of her pocket and handed it to Mrs Zebediah.
‘You read it, love,’ said Mrs Zebediah, giving the letter to Jamie. ‘It would take me too long to make it out.’
‘I know what it says, Mama’s arranged for Jamie to go on a cargo ship to Melbourne, and then to a farm job in Victoria. No one will think he’s an Islander down there. Well, none of the police or immigration people anyway.’ She gazed at Jamie. ‘I’ll write to you there.’
Jamie looked up from the letter. He nodded to his mother. ‘That’s what it says all right. The ship will dock at Port Harris in the next week or two. I’m to slip aboard at night and give this note to the captain to show who I am.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Hannah brokenly to Mrs Zebediah. ‘I . . . I want to be here with you when Jamie goes. But I can’t! At least he’ll still be in Australia. You could go and see him sometimes.’
If only Mama had added that Mrs Zebediah could visit them in Sydney. But Mama would be worried in case that brought Hannah and Jamie together again.
‘Hannah love . . .’ Mrs Zebediah held her close, still with that strange look of joy, kissed her cheek, then stepped back. She had tears in her eyes just as Hannah did, despite her smile. ‘I’m sorry you’re leaving. I really am. I love you like a daughter, and I always will. But if you love people, you want what’s best for them. Your ma is right. You need to be where people love books like you do. Somewhere with people like your ma, who don’t follow the leader
like a mob of cows. My Jamie needs to find a place like that too. He’ll never find it here.’
‘You . . . you don’t mind?’
‘It breaks my heart that you and Jamie are going,’ said Mrs Zebediah. ‘But it’s one of the best days of my life too.’
Hannah stared at her. Jamie would be free of Port Harris, but a coloured stockman’s life in Victoria wasn’t going to give him much more freedom than he’d had at Harris house. Didn’t Mrs Zebediah realise?
‘This solves how I’ll get away from Port Harris anyway,’ Jamie said, interrupting her thoughts. His smile looked odd as he added, ‘Give your ma my thanks — I really am grateful — but I won’t take that farm job. Can’t see me working with sheep. I’d be an outsider there too — not white, not one of the Aboriginal stockmen either.’
‘But what are you going to do?’ cried Hannah.
Mrs Zebediah smiled again, brushing away her tears. ‘You’ll never guess. Not in a million years.’
‘Guess what?’ What good could there possibly be today?
‘Show her, Jamie lad.’
‘Come on,’ said Jamie. He led Hannah back to the sacks, then opened one.
The contents gleamed like gold, even in the darkness of the hessian. It took Hannah a few seconds to realise it was gold — old coins, a fortune in coins. It was so impossible she simply stared, trying to accept that what she saw was real.
‘But where did you find them?’ she asked at last.
Jamie grinned at her, the brightest, most Jamie grin she’d seen. ‘Washed up by the storm on the beach. Soon as it was light I came down to check my nets were still safe up in the fig tree, and there the coins were, gleaming on the sand in the sun. I ran back to get sacks to put them in.’ Jamie paused. ‘There was a skeleton washed up in the seaweed too,’ he added quietly. ‘I reckon it was the slaver. Now his gold can be used to get me away. Maybe get everyone on the Harris plantation away too, or at least give them money to start again once they’ve been deported.’
The Schoolmaster's Daughter Page 24
