Where the Murray River Runs Page 2

  1890s Renmark, north-east South Australia

  Ard O’Rourke knew he hadn’t died because one of his eyes opened. Yet the amount of sly grog he’d consumed last night should’ve killed him stone dead.

  Well, he wasn’t dead. So he groaned and rolled over, fighting sleep.

  Mary, enticing a man to—to do things he should know best not to do. Mary.

  He cranked open his other eye. Shut them both against the buzz of his thoughts and the buzz of a large blowfly about to settle on him. He shook his head to fend them off.

  He rolled onto his back. Inhaled.

  Linley.

  She was in Bendigo, back home in the colony of Victoria. He missed her. He’d missed her all along. Did he have any right now to think she might miss him?

  He was here in Renmark, had been for months, trying to earn a quid, trying to help his parents at the same time. Neither was working. The vicious bite of the depression had a big reach, and the new scheme for irrigation on the river was failing fast. Money was almost non-existent, men were being laid off, and he’d been one of them.

  He couldn’t expect his parents to keep him now he had no job.

  Golden light crept high behind the tops of the towering gums. Dawn over the Murray River. A balmy spring promise of summer heat was not far away, and a gentle tide lapped the muddy bank. The spicy, peppery scent of eucalyptus stirred a faint memory.

  He exhaled. No pounding head. No vile stomach. Yet.

  Linley, forgive me …

  Footfalls crunched closer on the leaf litter. Ard eased open his eyes. His father’s worn heavy boots landed inches from his nose, puffing fine riverbank dust up his nostrils.

  ‘Here.’ A steaming tin mug was thrust just over the large boots, nose level.

  ‘Mornin’, Pa.’ Ard pushed back the horse blanket wrapped around him and sat up. He palmed his eyes then reached for the mug. He sniffed. Strong, tar-brewed black tea.

  ‘Afternoon, you lazy lump.’

  ‘It’s barely light.’

  Lorcan O’Rourke squatted beside his son. ‘You feel better now?’

  ‘I will.’ Ard glanced at his father whose eyes matched his own colour. The cornflower blue was warm this morning, his father’s black brows only a little furrowed.

  ‘Was a fine one you threw last night.’ Lorcan laid a callused hand on his son’s head.

  ‘Seems sly grog isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I’m still here.’

  His father hunkered down beside him. ‘Listen, lad. ’Tis a sad thing, my boy, but Mary was another man’s wife, after all. Destroyin’ yourself night after night won’t change anything.’

  Ard lifted a shoulder and shook his head. ‘It was fine for her to marry, if she wanted. Just not fine for her to die that way. Birthing.’

  ‘True enough. But it happens. Best to let it take its place.’ Lorcan rubbed his chin, the raspy scratch of it loud in Ard’s ears. ‘Come on, lad. Your ma’s got the damper rising and your sister’s sent over a joint of mutton. God knows I prefer me fruit first thing in the morn, but Maggie’s kind enough to send it.’

  ‘I’ll wash the sleep off me and come up directly.’ Ard swirled the hot tea in the mug, blew on it to cool a bit then swigged. He watched as his father strode back up the bank to the stone hut he and his mother occupied. It was a caretaker’s hut on one of the Chaffey brothers’ blocks for the river irrigation project.

  George Chaffey, the older brother, had visited not that long ago. His usual vigour and enthusiasm for the scheme to draw water from the Murray had been a little flattened by the ‘economic restraints’, as he called it. His Yankee drawl was tempered by worry.

  Anyone could see now that it wasn’t going to work.

  The tea soured in Ard’s mouth. He tossed it out and threw the mug to the ground. He peeled off his shirt, his undershirt, undid his trouser buttons and let his pants drop. Naked, he waded in a few feet and let the cool water sluice off the last few days’ misery. It would only clean off the sweat of first grief, not the deep penetrating seam of guilt that burrowed through him. Inside him was a hard lump. More often than not it was in his throat these days.

  Mary Bonner, a childhood friend from his home town, dead, birthing her first child. By the time the news had found him, she’d been dead more than two weeks.

  He clenched his teeth until his jaw hurt.

  He’d have to face Linley Seymour at some point. She’d sent the news as well, with ill-concealed wrath, palpable in the hastily penned angry letter. It found him only yesterday, just days after Mary’s own letter had arrived.

  Not a word from Linley before now. Not that he expected it after the way they’d parted. And now this.

  Wading back to step on dry land, he brushed off the water and pulled on his pants. He rolled his shoulders, stretched his neck side to side. Bent and picked up his shirt and shrugged into it.

  He checked for both letters in the pocket. Safe. Secure.

  It wasn’t the grog last night that had done him in. It was the bone-gnawing, wearying fatigue of sorrow. The knowledge that Mary had been carrying his baby when she lost her life.

  Three

  Eleanor O’Rourke tidied her long dark hair, removing some pins only to re-pin it more firmly. She patted both sides of her head when done, wiped her hands on her apron and reached for the large wooden spoon fashioned out of a stout stick.

  She looked over her shoulder at her tall, black-haired husband as she stirred the simmering fruit. The fragrance of stewing apricots filled the small room and the heat of the fire under the cooking pot broke a sheen of perspiration over her forehead.

  ‘Our lad is sorely tested over poor Mary Bonner,’ she said.

  ‘He is at that.’ Lorcan wiped a hand over his mouth. ‘Don’t know what more we can do for it.’

  ‘Naught to be done but to bear it with him.’ Eleanor sighed.

  ‘A true thing.’ Lorcan nodded. ‘I didn’t know he carried a torch for her.’

  Eleanor shook her head. ‘Don’t think he did. But something has happened. He feels it deep.’ She pulled the spoon through her jam. ‘Life is hard enough without more deaths of young people.’

  Lorcan nodded again, frowning. ‘But you’re looking fine this morning, my good wife. I’m a lucky man. It’s a pleasure to see your beautiful face.’

  Eleanor turned at the smile in his voice and rested the crude stick over the pot. ‘Perhaps it’s a pair of those spectacles we’ll be needing for you, Lorcan O’Rourke. I’m hot and sticky with fruit and looking like one of your old banshees, I’m sure.’

  Lorcan flashed her another smile, a dimple deep in both cheeks. ‘Not that, my girl.’ He sat at the table and lifted a booted foot onto his knee. ‘Besides, I don’t remember them.’

  ‘And no longer a girl.’

  ‘You’re my girl.’

  Eleanor’s turn to smile. ‘I’m lucky to have had a good life so far, Lorc.’

  He shrugged. ‘But perhaps better had we stayed in Bendigo than risking this venture.’ He tapped his large fingers on the tabletop. ‘You know there’s talk the irrigation scheme’s failed, that the Chaffeys are in financial trouble.’

  Eleanor turned back to the pot with a hand on her back and a stretch upright. ‘And who is not, now? You’ve given it a chance. And Mr Chaffey wanted your expertise in the orchard. He still has to pay your wages.’

  ‘And he has my expertise, such as it is,’ Lorcan said. ‘But if he can’t keep the funds secured, the project fails. No wages. We should head back to Bendigo.’ He brushed crumbs from the breakfast damper into his palm. ‘Vines do well in the valley at home, and I’ve an interest to cultivate, but ten acres is not enough land. If we get our last wages, we might have enough to buy more. But without water here, or money …’ He spread his hands.

  Eleanor followed her husband’s gaze out to the enclosed modest orchard just beyond the back door. ‘It’s not far to cart water. Or you could dig another well while we’re waiting for the new channel.’
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br />   ‘That would’ve been my next project, especially if we have Ard for a while. And speaking of Ard …’

  Their son filled the doorway. So much like his father in build, in height, his broad chest not yet as deep, his carriage a mimic of Lorcan’s, and Lorcan’s twin brother Liam, when they were both younger men. Eleanor glanced between the two, and a flutter warmed her belly. Her men. The elder, whose dark hair, laced with silver strands, was still curly and soft at his collar. His intense blue eyes had faded a little and his inner fire had settled. Now its constant warmth glowed, an ever-present beacon.

  Ard, her oldest child, made a good-looking young man. It was no wonder the girls went all a-flutter over him. Eleanor hoped he was sensible, but feared perhaps he was not.

  Ard looked first to his mother, then to his father. ‘Speaking of Ard?’

  ‘We need another well dug. I’m too old for carting the extra water up from the river, it seems.’

  ‘Lorc, you’re just too busy with the new project.’ Eleanor turned back to the pot and shoved it off the hot plate. She’d have to spoon the mixture into jars in a few minutes.

  ‘Pa, I’m not sure you’re clear of high water here. You need to live above that.’

  Lorcan lifted his shoulders. ‘Took a risk. Not been a flood here for twenty years. We’re not living here for long. We’ll be gone by the time there’s another one.’

  Eleanor stared at her husband. ‘And how is it you know that, Lorcan O’Rourke?’

  ‘I have an ear to the old men about the place.’

  Ard cut in. ‘Pa said you had Maggie’s mutton. I’ll take some and go see if Mr Egge has already pulled in at the wharf. You need stores, Ma?’

  Eleanor pointed to a waxed packet in her pantry nook, a small niche in the stone wall. ‘Take some damper, too, but eat it quick. In this heat it sets like flint.’ She watched Ard tuck the packet under his shirt. ‘And if Mr Egge has arrived, bring me some sugar and a packet of darning needles, would you?’ She reached up over the stove and ran her fingers along the rough-hewn shelf embedded in the stones to find what she was looking for. She handed him a shilling.

  ‘I will.’ Ard pocketed it and turned to his father. ‘So if needs be, we should dig that well in the next day or two.’

  Startled, Eleanor looked at her husband.

  Lorcan raised his eyes. ‘And what is your hurry for that?’

  ‘I’ll be heading back to our old place soon as I can. I got things to do there.’ He doffed a non-existent hat at his mother, glanced at his father, nodded and left.

  ‘Things to do in Bendigo? I thought he wanted to go to Echuca.’ Eleanor glanced from the door to her husband. ‘Espe-cially now Liam thinks it’s a good idea.’

  ‘I haven’t heard from Liam lately, not since he said he was going to Swan Hill to live. But he’s long said the competition from the Chinamen at home is too strong. Liam liked Echuca.’

  ‘And he was approached by Chinamen wanting to buy the land,’ she said, reminding him.

  Lorcan reached for the damper, hacked a thick chunk, stood and walked to the cooking pot. ‘I reckon this hurry-up for Ard in Bendigo might be something else. Probably whatever’s troubling him.’ He took the wooden stirrer and dipped it into the stewing pot, then slathered steaming apricots onto the bread. ‘As for an offer on the land, nothing yet.’ He took a mouthful. ‘No reason to bother Ard with it until needs. When it happens, I’ll make a decision with Liam about it.’

  Eleanor took back the spoon from her husband. ‘If what you say about the irrigation settlement here comes to be, we might need the Bendigo land after all. Perhaps it’s a good thing to put vines on it. Keep a bit for orchard. We can live on fruit.’

  ‘Ellie, my love. If the Chinese people can cultivate better than I can, and they can work the place better than us with their families and their clans, I’m not about workin’ myself to death over ten acres. I’ll sell it, move on.’ He tucked a loose tendril behind her ear. ‘We will buy land elsewhere.’

  ‘How will we manage that?’

  ‘Like we always have. I’m thinking Echuca, too. Liam’s fair taken with the area, knows it better than me. Says he might have found an acreage would suit. The land’s good, plenty of water, right on the river. And Ard’s been there on the river with Mr Egge, says it’s the place to be.’ He took a look outside then back at her. ‘This South Australia colony is too dry by far. And there’s not much hereabouts for a bright lass such as yourself.’

  Eleanor spread her hands. ‘And Ard and Maggie?’

  ‘They can read and write good enough, thanks to you. They can keep themselves. And Maggie has a fine job at Olivewood. Who knows where it will take her?’

  ‘I won’t be leaving her on her own, Lorcan O’Rourke. I want her to get over that Sam Taylor.’

  Lorc scoffed. ‘Sam. The lad needs to grow up. He’s a good man, but still likes his mates too much to settle down. She’ll get over him.’

  Eleanor dipped the spoon back into the pot. ‘Well, she’s not over him yet. But Ard, without the plot in Bendigo …’

  ‘He will be fine, my love. A great strapping lad who takes after his father for brawn and his mother for brains.’ He chewed and swallowed the last of his bread and jam and sat down at the table. ‘Besides, we haven’t sold the orchard yet. Might not happen, any of it. But if it does, and your loving husband and your brother-in-law are working on it, don’t worry for Ard. My feeling is he’ll go for the Echuca idea. He needs to settle down, get his teeth stuck into something. It’ll be big enough for all of us to make a good living.’

  ‘Perhaps. He keeps saying over and over lately that he needs to make money, as if he’s become desperate. And these last few days he looks worse, beaten down. It’s not like him.’ She looked at her husband, but he only lifted his shoulders. She shook her head. ‘He’s twenty-five, so old enough I shouldn’t ask, is that it?’

  Lorcan laced his hands and looked at his boots. ‘You can always ask him, but old enough, that he is. He’s grown man enough to do whatever it is he has to do.’

  Eleanor looked at her husband. ‘At times, he still seems a lad, Lorc.’

  He smiled at her. ‘A lad who’ll find his way. And no worthy journey is ever easy.’

  Four

  Bendigo

  Cecilia Celeste Seymour stood in the doorway watching her niece with the baby boy. From time to time, Linley would reach out to him in his cradle then withdraw her hand. She murmured some, fell silent, shook her head and murmured some more. She hesitated over the cradle, then scooped the baby into her arms, pressed her cheek against his little face and inhaled.

  CeeCee smiled. She knew that feeling well, that delightful smell of an infant. It slipped deep into an internal space and brought forward a myriad of warm feelings. ‘He looks right where he belongs—in your arms.’

  Linley turned with a start then smiled broadly. ‘His eyes have not left my face.’

  In that instant, CeeCee glimpsed her long-dead sister, Linley’s mother. She was so much like her. Even to the way she fashioned her coppery-red hair—the simple winding of a taut plait into a pinned bun at the back of her head. Eliza’s mark was well stamped on Linley: the full figure, the straight stance, her strong hands. Her face was open and her smile broad. A smattering of freckles, the colour of Mallee honey, dotted across her nose and cheeks. Her eyes were her father’s though, green and moody with flecks of hazel, under well-defined, strong auburn brows. Thankfully, unlike him, Linley was a sunny person.

  ‘He’s probably desperate to clutch a great hank of your hair and pull like mad.’ CeeCee crossed her arms and leaned on the doorjamb. ‘That, or he’s concentrating on messing his britches. He’s a lovely babe. I’m so glad you haven’t given him up.’

  ‘I wouldn’t, ever.’ Linley shook her head and a bemused frown appeared. ‘But I haven’t yet worked out how I can provide for him.’ Her glance at CeeCee was pained. ‘I wanted to keep my job at Mrs Tilley’s shop.’

  ‘I know you di
d.’ CeeCee nodded. ‘Stop worrying about a job. You have a bigger job now—motherhood. It would’ve been a juggle to keep up at Mrs Tilley’s as well.’ She studied her hands a moment. ‘Besides, other young women without children need to work. It wouldn’t have been fair to keep your job when we can manage without it.’

  ‘It’s just that I won’t be able to contribute—’

  ‘Nonsense. You’ve been contributing since you were old enough to walk. How could we possibly have done those things for all our women and children if you had not made a worthy contribution?’ CeeCee smiled at her niece.

  ‘You and James didn’t ever need me. I only did chores when I was a child. And only lots of hand-holding as I got older.’ Linley looked across at her.

  ‘Don’t underestimate that.’ CeeCee shook a finger. ‘And we needed you to keep quiet about our work. That’s a very hard thing for a young girl to do, but you did, especially when you understood why. And now you are learning more and more.’

  Linley smiled, but it looked sad. ‘I still never tell a soul. But I’m sure there are many people here who know what we do without my saying anything.’ She gazed at the baby. ‘Mary certainly knew to come to you. I didn’t tell her about our work, but had I known she needed …’ She stopped.

  ‘Don’t feel badly. You didn’t know anything about her circumstances at the time. Not your business until she wanted to make it so.’ CeeCee came to stand alongside her. ‘Perhaps she didn’t want to enlist your help.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Linley jiggled the baby, swinging a little.

  CeeCee watched a fierce burn redden her niece’s cheeks. ‘Something the matter?’ she asked.

  She averted her eyes. ‘You never said what Mary told you.’

  ‘All she told me was what you already know.’ CeeCee reached around and hugged her niece with one arm, stroking the baby’s cheek with her other hand.

  ‘Yes, but how did she know you and James could help?’

  CeeCee leaned on the crib and looked over her shoulder. ‘She said that she’d heard in the hospital. Probably a kind soul took pity on her rather than shunning her, and let her know to come to us, if she needed to.’