Emily (43 page)

‘Well, you’re not inferior, Em,’ Joe said. ‘You were born to good, hard-working parents. Nowt wrong wi’ that, in my opinion.’

‘That’s what Mr Clavell said. He said that such
people were ’salt of the earth and that I shouldn’t have so much humility.’

She didn’t tell all that Mr Clavell had imparted. That he had heard from Philip Linton; a letter had been delivered from a ship just arrived in harbour. She had at first been disappointed that he had not written to her, but she was immediately wreathed in smiles when Clavell had handed her a sealed letter which had been enclosed with his.

‘He is always circumspect, our Mr Linton,’ he said as he handed it to her. ‘He wouldn’t want a letter to you to be delivered into the wrong hands.’

She had opened it with trembling fingers when she was alone and although it was brief, it was to her like a breath of English air.

‘My dear Emily,’ he wrote. ‘By the time you receive this letter I hope to be on the journey back to Australia. I have obtained orders to sail and providing my business here is completed satisfactorily, I shall be back in Sydney Harbour by the spring. I have great hopes of good news to bring with me, but will not impart it in case I raise your hopes too high, so will beg of you to be your usual patient self and be assured that I think only of your safety and preservation at all times.

Your sincere friend,

Philip Linton’

He had put a postscript at the end. ‘I visited Roger Francis in his home at Elmswell Manor and found it to be in a fine country.’

My dear Emily! Your sincere friend! she’d breathed joyously, and he has been to Holderness! She shed a few tears at the thought of him being
where she longed to be, but a spring of joy kept pushing up as she thought of him crossing the ocean towards her and that soon she would see him. Mrs Fowler remarked on how well she looked at supper and although she could eat little as she was shy in such splendid company, she felt quite at ease when she was included in the conversation.

‘You know that Mr Linton cares for you, Emily,’ Clavell remarked on the journey back, as they bumped along the road in the hired chaise. ‘Do you consider that at all?’

‘I believe that perhaps he does, sir.’ She’d bent her head to hide her embarrassment. ‘I have not treated him as well as I should.’

‘You mean that you have not been more than a housekeeper, even though it is accepted by the world at large that you have?’ he’d said bluntly. ‘Come, my dear, I know you are of modest nature, but these are enlightened times. You must follow your heart to achieve happiness.’

‘My heart is happy that I have his consideration, Mr Clavell,’ she’d replied honestly. ‘It’s what I wish for more than anything else, to have his regard for me.’

There was something in the atmosphere when she arrived back at the farm. She had been worried about leaving Meg alone with Joe in case they quarrelled. There had been a few sparks fly between them recently, but now they seemed pent up about something.

‘Have you two been arguing?’ she asked. ‘If you have, you must settle it. You know I can’t abide it when you quarrel!’

‘Us?’ Joe put his hand to his chest. ‘Who? Me and Meg? Would we do that, Meg?’

Meg too looked equally astonished. Then she said, ‘Well, yes we did, Joe. Be honest. We did have that small argument.’

‘Ah, yes!’ he said. ‘So we did. Do we ask Emily her opinion or do we fight it out between ourselves?’ He couldn’t hide the huge grin on his face.

‘Joe Hawkins!’ Emily warned. ‘What have you been up to? Have you been upsetting Meg?’

He shook his head. ‘We couldn’t agree on whether we should ask ’parson to marry us now or wait for Mr Linton to come back. What do you think, Emily? What should we do?’

She flung her arms around the two of them. ‘I thought you would always be at loggerheads,’ she said. ‘I’m so happy for you!’

‘We probably will be,’ Joe grinned. ‘Meg’s not going to be ’meek little woman I allus thought I’d marry.’

‘Oh, you need a strong woman to keep you right,’ Meg laughed, and Emily thought how lovely she looked. So regal and handsome, her sunbrowned skin glowing with health, no sign of the scabs or gaol sores that she had once had.

‘Please wait for Mr Linton,’ Emily said. ‘I’ve had a letter; he hopes to be back in three months.’

They were interrupted in their conversation as the old Aborigine came across the paddock. ‘I forgot to tell you, he came looking for you, Emily,’ Meg murmured. ‘He wouldn’t say what he wanted.’

Emily signalled for him to come onto the
veranda, but he preferred to wait below the steps, so she went down to him.

‘This is for you, missus.’ He held out his hand. In it was what looked like a lump of dried-up mud.

‘Thank you,’ she smiled politely, turning it over. ‘You’re very kind. What shall I do with it?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘White folk collect it.’

‘What is it, Em?’ Joe stepped down beside her. ‘What’s he given thee?’

She opened her palm to reveal the brown mud with yellow staining. She scratched at it with her fingernail.

Joe took in a deep breath. ‘Gold! He’s found gold! Emily – tha could be rich!’

‘But where did you find it?’ Emily asked the native. ‘Is it yours?’

He spread his arms to encompass the land. ‘All mine! My father’s, my sons’ and grandsons’.’

‘Where’s ’old devil found it?’ Joe was trying hard not to show his excitement.

‘Thank you,’ Emily said. ‘Thank you very much. Are you sure I should have it?’

The old man nodded. ‘More in the creek. You want some?’ he asked Joe.

‘Yes! Yes. Please! Will tha show me?’

‘But Joe, it’s not our land. We’re not entitled –’, Emily began.

‘Everybody’s entitled if it’s not on somebody else’s land,’ Joe said decidedly. ‘And if it’s on Linton’s land then we’ll dig it for him.’

‘But you must keep it quiet, Joe,’ Meg broke in. ‘If ’authorities find out about it, they’ll take it from
you. You’re still a convict, remember? Nobody will accept that it’s yours. They’ll say you stole it.’

‘Aye, that’s right, they will.’ Joe’s enthusiasm abated a little. ‘But I’m still going to look and I don’t have to tell anybody. Will you take me?’ he asked the native.

He shook his head. ‘My grandson. He take you. Tomorrow, for three days. I mind sheep for missus.’

The old man brought his grandson Benne before daybreak the following morning. Joe was ready and waiting for them. He’d packed a shovel and a pick and a roll of chicken wire for a sieve into a sack. He also had the rifle, but the young man, handsome but sullen, shook his head when he saw it. ‘Soldiers shoot us if they see rifle,’ he stated.

‘Will there be soldiers?’ Joe asked.

Benne shrugged. ‘Soldiers everywhere. Looking for bushmen and crappy convicts.’

Joe wondered why the old native had offered them the gold. There was no love between the Aborigine and the English, and the natives considered the convicts to be the lowest order on earth, even below themselves, who had been hounded from their hunting grounds, to be beaten and tortured and their women taken into slavery and prostitution.

Meg gave them bread and cheese for the journey, which Joe put into the sack and they set off, the old man going with them to the boundary of Philip Linton’s land. ‘He look after you good,’ he said. ‘You do what he say.’

They followed the creek, climbing ever higher, the watercourse wide in some places and running
through meadow-like land with patches of scrub, then narrowing through ravines, where the water rushed down in great torrents, falling over hidden rocks. By dawn Joe was sweating and he was thankful that it wasn’t high summer, but even so there was heat in the sun when it came up and soon the flies were swarming around them. He felt the bite of mosquitoes and saw the dart of lizards and heard the screech of cockatoos and the chattering, coloured cloud of budgerigars flying above them.

They stopped at noon beneath the grey-green foliage of tall eucalyptus which gave them shade and Joe brought out the bread and cheese and handed it to Benne. Surprise showed on his dark face as he was offered it, but he tore off a piece of bread and ate it. ‘It’s good,’ he said as he chewed. ‘Is that your missus?’

‘Yes,’ Joe replied with a grin. ‘She is.’

‘Are you crappy convict?’

Joe shook his head, knowing that he meant the Irish, whom the Aborigines hated even more than the English. ‘No. Assigned man.’

‘Ah!’ Benne chewed thoughtfully on the bread and then went to the creek and drank, cupping his hands to collect the water. Then he bent down and scrabbled with his hands in the mud at the side of the bank and brought out two grey-brown eggs. He cracked one of them and tipped it into his mouth, then handed the other one to Joe. ‘Eat,’ he said. ‘Good.’

Joe hesitated. The shell looked old. ‘Is it duck?’

Benne shrugged. ‘Eat,’ he said, so Joe cracked it,
looked to make sure that nothing was about to hatch from it and swallowed it whole.

‘I come and work for you?’ The question was direct. ‘My grandfather said I can – if we find gold.’

Joe made his decision fast. ‘Yes. Until master comes back.’ Then he asked, ‘Don’t you want gold?’

The boy shook his head. ‘No. Can’t keep it. I want sheep.’

Joe grinned. ‘If we find gold you shall have as many sheep as you want and so will I.’

They rested until the afternoon and then moved along again. They heard the sound of voices and up on the skyline saw the flash of red tunics which denoted soldiers. They flattened themselves on the ground beneath the shelter of bushes and ferns until they had gone, and then moved up once more, until Benne called a halt by an outcrop of rock which hid in its hollows nests of snakes and enormous spiders. The creek ran through a gully, here at only a trickle, and Benne crouched down on his haunches. ‘Here,’ he said, running his fingers through the water. ‘Here grandfather says he find gold.’

Joe put down his sack and he too let the water run over his fingers. He scooped up the mud from the bottom and let it trickle through his fingers. It was only mud and grit, no yellow staining. ‘Can’t expect to find it straight off,’ he muttered and bent to open up his sack. He took out the shovel, the pick and the chicken wire and threw the sack against the rock. A snake, disturbed by the movement, slithered out of one of the hollows and
down the rock, where it disappeared into the undergrowth. Joe grimaced.

‘Poison!’ Benne said. ‘Don’t touch it.’

‘I won’t.’ Joe took a step towards the rocky hollow where the snake had been resting. It was lined with dried leaves from the gum tree and where the snake had slithered out there was a line of yellow staining running down the rock. ‘Look!’ he called to the boy. ‘Look here.’

He felt a great well of excitement rising up inside him as he followed with his eye down the rock across the rough earth and rock towards the creek, where Benne was still crouched. A seam! ‘Thy granda was right,’ he beamed and shook his arms in the air. ‘It’s gold!’

The old Aborigine stayed away all day after Joe and Benne had gone, but as dusk fell he arrived back and sat on the veranda steps. Meg gave him soup and cold mutton, which he took without thanks, but when Emily came out he grunted, ‘Master get dog, look after sheep, keep dingo away.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ Emily said. ‘I’ll see to that.’ The Reverend Fowler had a house dog she remembered, he would probably know where to get one.

The Aborigine stayed all night on the veranda steps. Emily got up before dawn and, looking out, saw his dark figure merging with the shadows and felt safe because of his presence. Anyone coming to the house, not knowing he was there would not have seen him, but as the morning broke he had gone, slipping away to the pasture and the sheep. He did the same thing that night, blending into the darkness and shadows of the veranda like a chiselled wooden sculpture.

‘I wonder why he comes here,’ Meg said as they ate breakfast. ‘Do you think he has any other family but the boy?’

‘Mr Clavell said that the natives are being wiped out,’ Emily pondered. ‘I think that perhaps there’s just him and Benne left of their family and that the old man wants Benne settled with someone before he dies. He looks so very, very old.’

When he returned that evening to his customary place, he said to Emily, ‘Tomorrow they come back. You keep Benne here? He help with sheep till master comes on ship?’

Emily agreed. She didn’t think that Philip would object, the boy wouldn’t cost much to keep and he would be useful to have around the place.

It was late evening when Joe and Benne were seen in the top field. Joe was running and the boy was following after. Emily and Meg stood waiting for them. ‘Something’s happened!’ Emily exclaimed. ‘I can sense the way he’s running, just the way he used to when we were young.’

He was waving his arms in the air and had a huge grin on his face. He met the old Aborigine first and took him by the hand, shaking it vigorously, then on reaching Emily and Meg, who had come down the steps and into the paddock to meet him, he took hold of each of them and swung them round. ‘We found it,’ he said breathlessly. ‘We found gold!’

‘Where is it?’ Meg asked eagerly. ‘Did you bring it back with you?’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘At least onny a scraping, just for proof. We’re going to have to do some thinking about this. It’s not on Linton’s land but just above it. We’re going to have to buy it and then stake a claim.’

They gave the old man and Benne some supper and then went inside. ‘We can be rich!’ Joe said. ‘But it needs thinking about. The seam isn’t far from a main track; we saw soldiers up there and if word gets out ’place’ll be swarming wi’ folks.’

‘You’re off your head, Joe,’ Meg said. ‘How can we possibly buy it? We haven’t a penny between ’three of us! And even if Mr Linton buys it when he comes back, it still won’t be ours!’

‘And if we wait for him, somebody else might get to it before us.’ Joe looked at Emily. ‘Who would you trust apart from Linton, Em?’

‘Mr Clavell,’ she said softly. ‘He’s the only one. I could talk to him about it. But we’d have to wait until he comes again and it might not be yet, he’s going to be busy. He told me he’s trying to get the women organized into work groups.’