The Good Woman of Renmark

by Darry Fraser

  He stopped then, and for a moment the old Sam was there with that twinkle in his eye. ‘Oh, I think you did, Maggie.’ He ducked his head a moment. ‘I’ll be off,’ he said, the twinkle gone.

  ‘Ard said you wrote many letters. He’s seen them. All returned.’

  He paused. ‘Nothing for you to worry about any longer.’

  ‘I’m scared, Sam, you know it,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘I’ve said so.’

  He seemed to be waiting, as if expecting more, but when she offered nothing else, he drew a breath and said, ‘Well, I can’t help you with that, Maggie.’

  Struck dumb, she stood at the door of her parent’s house and watched him walk away.

  The afternoon sunlight was fading. They’d kicked dirt over the small campfire outside Sam’s hut, no need for it anymore.

  Sam snorted. ‘I woulda built a house for me horse if I thought it’d make him happy.’ He stuffed a drawstring cloth bag with a shirt, a pair of trousers and socks.

  Ard clapped him on the back. ‘Sorry, mate. My sister riles me sometimes. I’ve interfered.’

  ‘No matter.’ He looked around the hut. Nothing much more to pack. Still, he felt bad. ‘I’m letting you down, Ard. I’d give it another shot, if I thought it’d work. It’s killin’ me. It’s prob’ly best I just leave quick. See what happens.’

  ‘She’s hard work, my sister.’

  ‘Seems I don’t understand things. I’m not good with words.’

  ‘Don’t reckon she is either, though she’s always got plenty to say. Bet there’s many good words there.’ Ard pointed at the bundle of letters in Sam’s hand.

  ‘Ah. I forgot to burn these.’ Sam tossed them to Ard. ‘Drop them on the fire when you next stoke it up, mate. I don’t need to carry ’em.’ He took a big breath. ‘Maggie’s back safe and sound, that’s all that matters.’

  ‘There’s no need to go to the town wharf to pick up the Lady M—You know Mr Strike will come right by here tomorrow. Camp here one last night.’

  ‘I need to go, let off a bit of steam.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  Sam shook his head. ‘Better you don’t.’

  ‘Be a first.’

  ‘You’re needed here, you’re a pa. ’Sides, I reckon you lost the taste for a big drink a while back.’

  He looked out the door across to his—the manager’s—house, knowing there was only a little left for Ard to do. Sam didn’t feel bad about that. He lifted his chin in its direction.

  ‘House will be right handsome when it’s done,’ he said and hoisted the bag across his shoulders. ‘Time I was gone.’

  He grabbed his hat and strode outside, lifting the bag over Pie’s back, and strapped it on. He threw himself into the saddle. ‘Reckon we’ll see each other sometime soon. Have to help these boys get their new enterprise up and runnin’.’

  Ard had his hand on Pie’s bridle. ‘Aye. And Maggie?’

  Sam felt as if a heavy weight was sitting on his chest. ‘She knows I’m goin’.’

  ‘Have a drink on it, overnight. I always thought you’d make a fine brother-in-law. I mean it. You’re bad enough on your own around here—Maggie on her own will be hell. If nothing else, for my sake, mate, think about it one more time.’

  Sam laughed a little at the droll plea. ‘One more time? I finally figured it out. She’s heard it from me a thousand times already, so no more chasing. She’s only got to say the word. She’s only got to say the one thing that will make me stay. And she won’t.’ He pulled on the reins. ‘I’ll see you.’

  Ard let go. ‘See you, mate.’

  Sam rode off without looking back.

  Sam had been a speck down the track, riding out of her sight, when Maggie turned back inside. There was a finality to it, something she had never experienced before, not even when she was in Renmark, when she believed he’d finished with her and just hadn’t bothered to say. Not even after they’d been together on the boat and he’d left her in such a state.

  But this. This was final. Where were the tears? They wouldn’t come; instead it felt as if they were behind a dam wall and couldn’t get through. She pressed her fingers to her forehead, the pain in her head a tight band, and rested against the wall in the hallway. She knew that if the dam broke, and if she wailed like a two-year-old, her poor mother would come to her. That wouldn’t do. She had enough to worry about with Pa. Maggie wouldn’t go to Linley either. She also had enough on her hands—a brand new baby, and a toddler with a mouthful of new teeth bursting forth, making life hell.

  She checked that Eleanor was still sleeping, that Lorcan was as comfortable as they could make him. Satisfied, she slipped out of the house and headed for Sam’s hut.

  Was it wrong that she just wanted to stand inside the place where he had lived all the time she’d been away? No. She told herself no, of course she did. She didn’t want to be wrong. That was the whole problem, wasn’t it? Wanting her own way, making no room for anyone else being right as well.

  Hesitating, she opened the door to Sam’s hut. A thin mattress was still atop the slim cot. Rumpled bedclothes looked as if he’d only just climbed out of them. She sat on the bed and flattened her hand on what was a pillow, a small cushion, the cover of which she recognised as something her mother had stitched. Maggie snatched it up, breathed in the scent of him, the soap he’d maybe used last night, and then dropped it as if scorched. Sam. Now she felt guilty being in here.

  The floor was still earthen. Not so unusual for huts, and he’d have checked for snakes each night before he went to bed. There was a little table in the room, and a cut-off piece of tree trunk serving as a chair. On the table was a nib pen and a pot of ink.

  She spun around slowly. This had been where he’d lived for two years. There weren’t any real trappings to it; the only other thing in sight was a stack of old fruit boxes that might have been where he kept his spare clothes or his shaving tools or some such things.

  She turned, walked out, and stood for a moment. There was a well-used campfire just over there. A blackened billy was sitting in the ashes. Enamel-chipped pannikins lay in the dust nearby, and two other logs sat upright, cut for seating. He and Ard would’ve sat out here many times, she was sure.

  The light was going. Knowing only a little time was left in the day, Maggie headed for the unfinished house. It would be similar in style to the other houses on the place—a front door, one or two rooms either side of the hallway, a back door. Perhaps a lean-to verandah until he could finish it with a proper one. The cookhouse, and outside of that, a laundry area where the copper boiler would sit.

  Inside, the timber smelled new. In the first room there was a box of nails and a hammer. The window was still shuttered, so no glass panel yet. She walked out of that room into the other. Clearly he had meant this to be the parlour room. There was glass already in this room’s window, and in a frame, with hinges and a latch. He would have spent good money on that. There were two chairs, sturdily built, and a table fashioned the same way. On it, he’d thrown a shirt, discarded perhaps when he’d knelt to place bricks into the fireplace he’d built in. Above it, a mantle—simple, functional and highly polished.

  She ran her fingers over the glossy finish. She could feel it. This was a house meant for her.

  ‘It’s quite lovely, isn’t it?’

  Maggie spun. ‘Linley.’

  Her sister-in-law leaned in the doorway, her swaddled baby girl in her arms. Her freckled face, framed by her glorious auburn hair, looked tired.

  ‘We watched him fell the trees, mill the timber, cut the lengths, turn the wood.’ She jiggled the baby a little. ‘We teased him about you. And then we sat with him when your letters kept being returned.’

  ‘I didn’t know he’d written so many.’ Maggie heard the catch in her voice. ‘I never received them to send them back. Not that I think I would have by then.’

  Linley shook her head. ‘Here. Hold your niece.’ She put Amy into Maggie’s arms before she could protest, and
kissed her cheek. ‘I’m so glad we didn’t have to name her Mairead had you been dead in a ditch.’ She smiled.

  Maggie sobbed a laugh. ‘Me, too.’ She rocked the sleeping baby, bent her head to the exquisite scent of this newborn, and closed her eyes. Amy’s little head was warm against her cheek. ‘I’ve been fearful.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘She looks so well. Are you well? Not ailing? I haven’t had a real chance to talk to you.’

  Linley squeezed her arm. ‘We are well, both of us. Fearful of what?’

  ‘Of this. Terrified,’ Maggie said and rocked Amy. ‘Did you always want children?’

  ‘I did.’ Linley scooped a hank of loose hair back behind her ear. ‘And there was a time when I thought I never would have. I was more frightened of that. Your brother was the only man for me and he seemed to be a bit tardy.’

  Ard had worried that he had nothing to offer Linley, and so he’d gone to Renmark to work with his parents. Then he learned that Linley was fostering his son borne to Mary, a woman with whom he’d dallied, who’d died at the hands of the violent man she’d married.

  ‘You still work with CeeCee and James?’ Maggie asked of Linley’s aunt and her husband. They’d married not long ago.

  ‘I don’t do as much now as I used to, but yes, I still find work and houses for women who’ve been in unhappy circumstances.’

  ‘I could help.’ Maggie looked down at the tiny face, and the mop of black hair very much a mark of the O’Rourkes.

  ‘We’d be grateful, at least until this other family business gets underway. I imagine you’ll be needed there.’

  Maggie rocked the baby as she wandered the empty room. ‘I thought I didn’t want children. And now I can’t work out whether I was only afraid and that just clouded everything.’

  ‘Well, all the things that you know can go wrong when you’re with child do cross your mind, that’s certain. And I’d already seen enough of it working with CeeCee to make my nerves scream.’ Linley crinkled her nose. ‘And your brains seem to fly out the door at times too, over the nine months. But I survived. You would make a fine mother, so you needn’t be afraid of that.’

  ‘I never thought past what could go wrong having them.’

  ‘You take it as it comes, Maggie.’

  ‘And Sam was never … He just seemed like an eternal boy.’

  ‘They all are. Sam is good, and he loves you.’

  Maggie needed more. ‘But aren’t you tied in one place, and dependent?’

  ‘I don’t feel tied and I’m not dependent,’ Linley emphasised. ‘I’m building a life with my husband, who is a good man, and he knows I need worthwhile interests that are mine, and not just within the confines of our family home. I was brought up like it.’ She nodded at her daughter. ‘This one is dependent for now, but I’ll teach her to stand on her own two feet like I was taught. She’s the fourth generation of strong women. My grandmother Nell—I hardly knew her—worked as a laundress on the Ballarat goldfields. My mother Eliza I don’t remember at all. She was killed by her husband defending me when I was tiny. I wasn’t much older than Amy is now. And my aunt who took me in … CeeCee is the strongest person I know.’ Linley reached for the baby who’d begun to wake. ‘Now, time for her feed.’

  Reluctantly, Maggie handed Amy over. ‘I don’t want to let her go,’ she said. ‘It’s that beautiful scent, that new baby smell.’

  Linley smiled. ‘It’s irresistible, isn’t it? I remember how it made me feel when I first held Toby, even though he wasn’t mine.’ She turned to go. ‘It’s worth it, Maggie. All the happy, all the sad.’ She looked around the bare room again. ‘If it’s only fear, don’t let it win. Sam built this house with a lot of love in his hands and in his heart.’

  Maggie cooked a simple dinner that night for her and her mother—fresh eggs, and some sausage that Ard had brought back from the butchers the day before. Ard and Linley would try to have an early night; the wakeful, unhappy Toby was keeping all hours, along with Amy. There was a pot of broth slowly bubbling for her pa.

  Eleanor kept a hold of her daughter’s hand whenever one was available. She insisted on hearing about all of Maggie’s recent adventures, and whenever her free hand went to her heart, Maggie would stop relating the tale. But her mother wasn’t afflicted with a heart problem. When the doctor had visited last, he’d said it was most likely just nerves, caused by being so anxious.

  ‘And so what are we to do with ye? You’ve such fine ideas, looking for a grand position.’ Eleanor leaned back in her chair as she released Maggie. ‘But there’s not so much work around, even for such an enterprising young woman like you.’

  Maggie looked up. ‘I’ve been going back and forth over everything, driving myself mad. I’ve been thinking of other things to do, around here. Georgina and Linley both seem to think the new business would be interesting. Maybe it would need a bookkeeper, a ledgers person. I could learn that. I know Linley is still helping her aunt in the women’s refuge. I could help with that, too.’

  ‘You would certainly be busy.’

  ‘I would need to be paid something so I can look after myself.’

  ‘The new business would look after all of us. I don’t know there’d be a wage in it, not at first anyway, but ye’d want for nothing, and these times are hard. They’re going to get harder.’ Her mother’s tone was soft. ‘Maybe the sort of independence you’re thinking of right now is not as important as your bein’ fed and watered with a sure roof over your head, and in the safety of your own family. Look at it that way—start off on solid ground.’

  Maggie knew she’d caused enough worry to her family these last few weeks, and that Eleanor was right—these were trying times. ‘I’ll always want to be independent, Ma.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But I’ll stay, at least until the depression is over. I know it’s best.’

  ‘That would ease my poor heart, Maggie-girl. I’m still just astounded at what you went through,’ Eleanor said. ‘We were right to have Sam go look for you. He loves ye, you know. He always has.’

  Maggie’s chest swelled, and her resolve not to cry was threatened. ‘I know.’

  Eleanor sighed, and patted her daughter’s hands. ‘You think it’s best to let him go again?’ She tried to catch Maggie’s eye.

  Maggie pinned her lip between her teeth and her face scrunched, then everything rushed out. ‘Too late. He’s already gone. I never told him all the things I wanted to tell him. I started, I told him I was scared and he said he couldn’t help me with that, and then he went.’

  The smile Eleanor gave her nearly brought her to tears. ‘Aye, he can’t help with that. He needs you to tell him you’re goin’ to be brave. You love him, don’t you?’ She stroked Maggie’s cheek. ‘You trust him to stand by your side, no matter what?’

  ‘Yes,’ Maggie cried, and pressed her hands over her mother’s hand, warm and soothing as it cupped her face. She held it close, rocked against it, closed her eyes as tears spilled. She would always remember Eleanor in that moment and the sudden rolling wave of love that enveloped her.

  ‘It’s never too late to tell him that, me darlin’.’

  Ard appeared in the doorway. He held up a bundle of letters. Some were a little charred around the edges and wisps of smoke slipped into the air.

  ‘Just so you don’t die wondering about him, Maggie,’ he said.

  Fifty-four

  Maggie was up well before dawn. She’d slept fitfully, kept jerking awake, then would doze, only to jerk awake again. Bucky, who was sleeping in her room until Ard could build a night-time pen for him, had nudged her worriedly each time she’d bolted upright.

  When she finally got up, she felt like she’d been knocked on the head by a brick. She washed, put on one of her mother’s old dresses, and brushed and tied her hair.

  She reached for the stack of Sam’s letters that Ard had brought to her. They’d been by her side through the night. Some of what she’d read had made her laugh—Sam ha
ving to pull Ard out of the newly dug, though empty, long-drop after he’d toppled in, or both of them having to look after Toby while they worked and had hung him from a tree using Lorc’s braces. And some had made her cry—that he missed her, and didn’t understand why she wouldn’t reply to his letters.

  She wondered why they’d never spoken to each other about hopes and dreams. She’d had her own ideas, Sam had assumed they were the same as his.

  She hurried, even though she knew Mr Strike wouldn’t be back before first light. Maggie would have to be there and wait for the boat to approach. Then she’d wave it down, make Captain Strike stop. She’d go on board and drag Sam off if she had to.

  She hoped she wouldn’t have to drag him. She wouldn’t waste time thinking about that now. With the letters under her arm, she dashed into the cookhouse. No time to boil the kettle for tea. She just grabbed up a piece of yesterday’s bread and jam and ate most of it as she stood there, sharing the last chunk with Bucky.

  Then, as dawn’s rays crept over the dark line of the retreating night, she marched onto the track, past Ard’s house, past Sam’s lean-to, and finally down the path that led past his new house. She took a deep breath. If she was nothing in her life, she was an optimist. If he refused her, she would think of something else.

  The sun was a great golden orb now, and streaks of wispy cloud floated across it. Maggie stood on the landing, and while the dog wandered around, she turned, ready, and faced the direction the boat would appear.

  The day was as still and calm as any autumn day could be. Not a ripple on the water, no flies buzzing. No sound of engines puffing, that she could hear anyway.

  How long would Mr Strike be? Pacing back and forth, the dog pacing with her, the minutes plodded by. The sun rose higher. Of course. The air grew warmer. Of course. She hadn’t brought a hat, but if Mr Strike was on time, she wouldn’t be out in the sun for long. She shaded her eyes and looked upriver.

  Nothing.

  She looked at Bucky. He was only interested in a line of ants trailing from one side of the landing to the other. No indication he’d heard anything at all. He stamped a foot on the ants.