Fan heard Grandpa before she saw him. That booming, storybook voice he used when he talked to her. Fan walked into the smelly hotel, her nose in the air, chin defiant.
‘You must be lost, love.’ A man let out a long, slow whistle. ‘Does your mother know you’re here?’
‘I’m looking for my grandpa. Edwin Salt. I think I heard him.’ She pointed into the dimly lit bar.
‘Wait outside. I’ll fetch him.’ The barmaid eyed Fan. ‘You’re too young to be hanging about with his sort. Lord knows, you live in Fremantle for long enough and there’ll be plenty of time for that.’
Grandpa emerged, looking thinner than he did at home. He leaned on his walking cane.
‘It looked like rain. I didn’t want to catch my death,’ he said.
‘The doctor reckons you’re half-dead, anyway. Don’t think this is what he meant by fresh air.’ Fan grabbed his sleeve and dragged him along like she did with Ned when he was being stubborn. The sky was darkening with purple clouds. In Port Adelaide it would’ve meant a storm. Dad always said that harbours were the first places to feel the weather, and maybe it would be the same here.
‘What you doing in there anyway?’ Fan asked. ‘They looked like the sort Ma says to stay away from.’
‘Let’s just say I was pleased to attend a reunion of old friends,’ he said.
‘You ain’t been in Fremantle long enough to have old friends,’ Fan said.
‘Some friendships stand the test of time, Miss Johnson.’
By goodness, he talked some rot.
‘In any case, you must be pleased you found some mates to talk to,’ Fan said.
‘Their conversation is not a patch on your witty banter, Miss Johnson.’
‘But of course, Grandpa,’ Fan said in her best posh voice. ‘What’s your mates like? Where they from?’
‘They hail from across the globe.’ The grog had made him talkative. ‘What would you say if I told you I once knew a fine gentleman who had a quarter of a million in the bank? Or someone else who had killed a’ – he hesitated, thinking – ‘a lion with his bare hands?’
‘I’d say can you get your hands on that quarter million by teatime? ’Cos Ma’s in a terrible state about you going missing.’
He snorted. ‘I’ll make enquiries, Miss Johnson.’
‘Any of your mates from …’ Fan tried to say it lightly, ‘New South Wales?’ She hooked her arm through his. ‘You know anybody in New South Wales?’ She said it again slowly to be sure he understood.
‘What a curious thing to ask. No, Miss Johnson, I do not know anybody in New South Wales,’ he said, mimicking her.
They reached home just before the rain started. But that was nothing compared to the storm brewing in Ma’s eyes.
‘I found him for you,’ Fan mumbled.
Ma grabbed Fan’s fingers and she flinched. Then she realised Ma wasn’t squeezing. She was pressing a blue ribbon into Fan’s hand.
Ma’s silence lasted for days. She didn’t even say goodbye when she left the house. Fan dug her nails into her palms to give herself something else to think about.
‘You left quite a mess,’ Ma said eventually, while she was splitting pods and hurling poor innocent peas into a bowl. ‘But I tidied everything up. I doubt he’ll know.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ Fan burst into tears. ‘Are you going to tell him?’
‘Not unless you do such a thing again. Do you hear me?’
‘I promise, I promise.’ Fan wiped her eyes, but the tears wouldn’t stop.
‘What kind of stories is he filling your head with?’ Ma glowered.
‘Nothing, Ma, honest.’ Fan held Ma’s gaze as best she could. ‘Honest,’ she repeated for good measure. ‘He complains about things. The heat. The sea air. His feet. Your cooking.’
‘Ungrateful old man.’ Agnes snapped the backbone of another pod. ‘I have told you time and time again. Your grandfather’s mind and heart are failing. He has nothing to do with us besides food and lodging. And now you’ve turned into a sneak and a thief. I don’t want you bothering him anymore.’
‘But Ma, I was only –’
‘No, Frances.’
‘What if I’d found out where my Uncle Walter is?’ Fan blurted.
‘What did you say?’
‘I reckon I know where Uncle Walter is.’ Fan’s mouth had gone dry. ‘He’s in New South Wales somewhere.’
‘Oh, my Lord.’ Ma sounded like someone had their hands around her throat. On the stove, a blackened pot bubbled. Ma threw peas into the boiling water and watched them rise and split, wiping steam from her eyes.
Like other gaols, the Convict Establishment smelled of piss. It kicked men out of their hammocks and made them bathe twice a week whether they needed it or not. It fed its men lumpy porridge and salted beef and sometimes the slower men went hungry. It shoved its men to their knees on Sundays – Catholics on one side, Protestants on the other, and guards with their eyes on the men, not God. It had corridors and locked doors and a laundry and dark cells and secrets. It howled at night. It had strict routines: up at dawn, breakfast, inspection, instruction. If it was stew, it was Thursday. The routine trapped you inside, the routine saved you from the asylum. Sometimes Edwin woke up believing he was back in England and had a tiny glimmer of hope that somebody might visit him or that there might be a letter from Eliza. They rationed even that. They rationed contact, letters, news, and they doled it out in meagre portions like the porridge.
Like other gaols, it dispensed discipline. Warders prowled the corridors, their eyes opaque with cruelty or fear, you could never be sure which. If a warder didn’t hit you just to see if you’d hit him back, one of the other convicts would. The convicts knew that warders would take marks off for insolence, disorder, disobeying rules, talking, blaspheming, stealing. A convict knew he needed a blank slate to get his ticket-of-leave, and too many marks off would add extra time to a sentence. A ticket-of-leave was easier to get here than in England, everyone knew that, and because the colony was so desperate for workers, they’d forgive a man just about anything. Somebody noticed a couple of the Portland men, Watts and O’Neill, seemed to have gone missing, and Edwin joked they’d survived the voyage only to drown in knee-deep water. Turned out they’d stepped off the Lincelles and been given their tickets straight away. Everybody went quiet when a warder told them that. Nobody expected ever to see Watts or O’Neill again.
Everybody knew a warder would take off a mark if you so much as looked at him the wrong way and he didn’t like the look of you. Thanks to Mick McCarthy stealing tobacco from the wrong man, the Lincelles men learned early that the place was really run by a pig-faced, toothless Londoner transported for armed robbery five years earlier. McCarthy’s split lip and bruised eye took a week to heal and the man in charge, Comptroller-General Henderson, locked him in a dark cell for a couple of nights just to make an example of him. McCarthy’s absence for those two days made the atmosphere taut with some unnamed fear and all the whispers were of the lash this and the lash that. When they let McCarthy out of the dark cell, he swore it was the gaol water affecting him; after so long at sea, the shock of fresh water had sent him mad. Edwin told him to keep quiet if he didn’t want Henderson on his case and the cat on his back.
The rule in the Convict Establishment was silence at all times, but like some seeds and some settlers, silence had never really taken root. Before the first week was out, the Lincelles men knew which convicts were here for murder, which were here for robbery, who had stolen a sheep and who had first got their tickets years ago but kept getting into trouble with the Fremantle magistrates. Reoffending was a contagion, a Cornish forger told Edwin. Stick with a reoffender too long and you’ll catch it from him. You should have swung, and you’re so close to freedom now. For Christ’s sake, don’t fuck it up.
Once a day, in the early morning, the convicts were herded out to the exercise yard. They cursed and squinted in the sudden glare of daylight. The heat was unbearable. The sun reflected off the white walls and made their eyes water. There was always the smell of fire somewhere in the distance. Edwin didn’t complain. He turned his face to the sky and soaked it up. He walked in a circle and willed time to pass. Some days he ran as fast as he could around the yard until his lungs hurt. McCarthy just stared and talked to himself. The Irish congregated and whispered and smoked. A man didn’t need to be a lag to smoke with them, but he did need to be Irish.
On some mornings, the breeze was already ripping in hard off the ocean. On these days, Edwin had to be pushed and threatened to take his exercise. The smell of the sea. The roar of it in the background. He hated it. Even on the days when he couldn’t hear it, he could feel the stickiness of the salt air on his skin. With the smell of the sea came unsteadiness under his feet, sickness in his guts and the nightmares of Mary Ann dressed for the grave. Her bruised eye, her split lip. On bath day he scrubbed his skin red raw to get rid of the smell of the sea. Other men had never seen anything like it and wondered if the new English lifer might be more at home in the asylum.
Like other gaols, this place had a wall, but that’s where the similarity ended. Over the wall was nothing but sky. No London streets teeming with thieves and vermin, no piss-ridden docks. There were hills in the distance, Perth town was a few miles away, a scattering of frontier towns lay over the hills and goodness knew what was beyond that. Somebody said they’d heard there was an inland sea, but nobody had been there to find out one way or the other. The lads from London and Newcastle couldn’t believe how much nothing there was. They couldn’t stop talking about it. In the yard, the warders, too, liked to put their faces to the sky and talk about home or what might lie over those hills.
A newly arrived convicted murderer stirred the slime at the bottom of the pond. Edwin was placed in the gaol’s tailor shop on account of his trade, but he proved less than helpful. On his first day, a Cockney armed robber grabbed him and held a knife to his throat. Edwin managed to wriggle free, only to be kicked in the stomach by two other men. He begged for mercy. The two men kicked him in the back again and again. One landed his boot hard on Edwin’s hand. He shouted in pain. Two warders watched and did nothing.
Edwin tended his bruises and patched up his hand. He refused to see the doctor. In the end he left the tailor’s shop and got thrown in with the labourers. The worst of the worst were in the tailor’s shop, somebody told him. Even stone-breaking would be better than that.
He forced himself to keep his fists in his pockets and his head down. A couple of the warders goaded the hardest men to take on the newly arrived murderer, pushing him to crack open. Edwin shoved them away and stared straight ahead at whatever life might be possible over that wall.
They’d all heard that the powers that be considered the land beyond the walls worse than Hell itself. That’s why they sent convicts out on work parties to Perth and Guildford and York to build roads and bridges and gaols and courthouses. Once a convict had a taste of the evil that lived out there, he’d be begging to be let back into the Establishment quicker than you could say ‘Not guilty, your Honour’.
Henderson was in charge of the gaol, but all the rumours were about the man they’d just appointed the new governor of the colony. Hampton had made quite a name for himself in Van Diemen’s Land. His reputation among convicts didn’t so much precede him as run, screaming, miles out in front. Talk was that Hampton was obsessed with the lash, that he slept with a cat-o’-nine-tails in his bed and kissed it every morning. More backs broken in Van Diemen’s Land than anybody would believe. Hampton would order a hundred lashes if a convict was out of his cell at the wrong time, or if a lag gave backchat to a warder. Talk was that every man who wore the broad arrow had reason to fear Hampton. So, what difference did it make whether any of them kept their heads down or not? It might not keep them safe from the lash. What did any of them really have to lose? At least this was how McCarthy explained it to Edwin the day they left for York and a few of the convicts decided to plan their escape.
They clung together on the dilapidated barge that carried them up the river to Guildford: warders Paterson and Brennan, a Cornish policeman called Lissman and a dozen convicts. The light was fierce and the horizon further away than anything they’d ever seen. The warders chained the convicts at the ankles, even though there was nowhere to go except into a river that was lumpy with jellyfish. Nobody talked. Eyes scanned the riverbanks. The warders braced their rifles on their shoulders and stared fiercely at the eyes they imagined were staring back at them through the dense scrub. The river weaved ahead of them. It looked like a giant snake swallowing them whole, Smith grumbled. This water was nothing compared to what they’d seen on the Lincelles, but they felt every inch of the unbearable slowness by the passing of trees. The occasional curl of smoke broke the blueness of the sky. How much further was there to go into this godforsaken place? The irons made it hard to keep their balance. They steadied themselves and cursed.
Once they were safely off the barge at Guildford, the convicts watched McCarthy. McCarthy watched the warders. The sun was hot. One of the policemen pointed his rifle towards a red-dirt track.
‘Look at those clouds.’ Molloy pointed east towards a mass of dark blue gathered on the horizon. It was impossible to see what, if anything, lay beyond them. ‘Never seen nothing like it.’
‘They’re not clouds.’ Lissman gestured with his rifle. ‘They’re hills. We’re walking towards those hills.’
‘How long’s that going to take?’ Molloy said hoarsely.
‘Plenty have done it before you.’ Paterson took a tin from his supplies. ‘Mutton fat. Rub this in. There’ve been complaints about the state some men’s feet are in by the time they get to York.’
In chains, the men struggled to walk: they fell and stumbled and swore. The warders threatened and shouted and prodded the convicts with their rifle barrels. They fell into step and the more they walked, the longer the track seemed to stretch. The track ran flat for a while but then started to climb at the foot of Greenmount Hill. The trees got denser. Paterson and Brennan watched the men. Lissman watched for Aborigines. Every now and then he fired shots into the scrub. The air crackled and birds flew, screeching, from trees. They had to get to Greenmount road station before nightfall, or so Brennan kept barking at them. Dusk brought kangaroos out from shadows, and they looked so comical and frightening, nobody could decide whether to make fun of them or shoot them. One of the Wakefield lads said he’d heard kangaroo meat was tough as old boots, but there was plenty of it out there if you were brave and starving. The men watched the darkening sky and waited for a signal from McCarthy.
It was nightfall when they reached the road station. It was little more than a couple of stone huts and a clearing. The men pulled their boots off and groaned and swore. So did Lissman, Paterson and Brennan. Paterson passed around a pannikin of rum and they all slugged a mouthful to calm their nerves. They smoked. Half of them were asleep on the ground before the fire had been lit.
‘Are you in or out, Salt?’ McCarthy kicked at the blood-red ants that crawled over everything. He gestured to where Lissman, Paterson and Brennan talked quietly. ‘Those three look scared out of their wits. We can make a run for it.’
McCarthy was right. The men in charge looked more scared than the lags. And no wonder. The stars sprayed across the blackest sky Edwin had ever seen. It looked unearthly. His feet throbbed, his head ached and he was hungry. Whatever was making that hissing noise in the trees was roaring in his ears. It made him wonder if he had in fact swung from the gallows and was already dead.
‘Where would we go?’ Edwin put more mutton fat on his feet. ‘Look at this place, McCarthy. Where in God’s name would we go?’
‘Suit yourself.’ McCarthy planted his boot into the crowd of ants. ‘You and the screws might be the only ones who make it to York.’
Four days walking and still no signal from McCarthy. Their feet blistered and bled. On the few occasions anyone saw a house or a curl of smoke above the trees, convicts and warders alike stopped and stared. They didn’t see a single person. The trees were monotonous and hid kangaroos and who knew what else. Their ankles bled from the chains but by now everyone had forgotten the pain. Lissman shouted an order and veered to the left down a narrow trail. Again, the smell of fire, but this time it mingled with the sound of men whose words they understood. In front of them loomed a wide waterhole.
‘Saint Ronan’s Well,’ Lissman announced wearily.
The land around the waterhole had been cleared except for a scattering of skinny trees near the water’s edge. A group of travellers were camped nearby, their horses drinking from the waterhole. Paterson opined about Sir Walter Scott and Saint Ronan’s Well and did whoever named this godforsaken swamp ask the great man for permission to use one of his finest storybook places? The mere mention of Sir Walter Scott reminded Edwin of his trial and he spat at the ground. Lissman said that it had nothing to do with the Scotsman, the Aborigines had a name for this waterhole, and what’s more, different sorts of trees grew close to water, and that once one of the Aborigines had explained the land to him, it sort of made sense. But none of the men were listening. Brennan unchained the men, and everyone took off their boots and pulled up their trousers and limped into the water.
Edwin’s feet had never hurt so much. The sun was still burning.
‘Civilisation.’ Molloy pointed to a rough-hewn building, more like a hut, fashioned from lumps of stone.
‘That’s a police station,’ Lissman said. ‘A convict road gang built that a few years ago.’
‘Thank the Lord, a police station out here in the middle of nowhere,’ McCarthy observed. His face was badly sunburnt. ‘We can all sleep safe in our beds tonight.’
The ants bit them. The mosquitoes bit them. Sweat mixed with dust ran in rivers down their faces. The night sky was impenetrable and the birds were loud. One of the Irish lads tapped McCarthy on the shoulder, whispered about making a run for it, but at Saint Ronan’s Well, even McCarthy was too tired to think about anything but sleep.
They woke up with drizzle on their faces. Finally, the hills were behind them. In front was flat, red land, divided by rows of trees and dotted with farmhouses.
‘That’s York?’ said a Wakefield man. ‘It don’t look nowt like the York I remember.’
It was crowded in the small depot. They slung their hammocks up in the cramped space. Edwin, McCarthy and Smith volunteered to sleep outside and put their hammocks up between trees. The stone-breaking would continue every day from dawn until dusk, come Hell or high water, Brennan bleated, because they were finishing this stretch of road to York on Governor Hampton’s instructions.
‘We’re already in Hell,’ Edwin said, ‘and we’ve seen enough high water for a lifetime.’
The ground was hard. The stone was harder than anything he’d encountered in Portland. Fortunately, Edwin had stores of rage to unleash. Smash one for his father. Smash fifteen for the jury. Smash the biggest one into tiny pieces for Mary Ann. Lissman had never seen anyone break stones like the English lifer did.
Once the stones were broken, the convicts hammered the pieces into the ground. ‘It’s got to last for a hundred years,’ Paterson said, tapping the barrel of his rifle into the dirt to make his point. Nobody listened. The road inched closer to the town. At night the convicts shared smokes and rum with Lissman, Paterson and Brennan, and everybody talked about home. The hot days were followed by chilly nights. Edwin shivered through fitful sleep. Molloy’s nightmares kept them all awake but Smith seemed better rested than the others. A couple of times Edwin woke in the night to hear low voices, one of them Smith’s. The other didn’t sound like English. Smith was either brave or stupid, but he swore it wasn’t ‘like that’; it was just Lissman who knew a couple of natives and they’d given him a sweet flower to crush and sniff to help with his sleeping. Smith said his tobacco was more than even trade.
The April rains began without warning.
The ground turned to rust-coloured sludge. The clay smeared their clothes and faces. The hammocks outside were soaked through. The land turned to river and those tall, skinny trees were suddenly growing in the middle of a glistening lake. The stones wouldn’t stick in the road, but the warders made them keep going. ‘Come Hell or high water,’ Brennan shouted again from the comfort of his hessian shelter.
A few of the convicts began to grumble. Edwin shivered in his sodden hammock.
‘McCarthy,’ Edwin hissed. ‘Wake up. I’ve been thinking. Let’s give it a go. Steal that idiot Lissman’s rifle and make a run for it.’
McCarthy made no sound.
‘Wake up, man.’ Edwin stared at the hammock.
McCarthy had disappeared.
McCarthy almost made it to York before the local policemen caught him. They took him to the York depot in irons, McCarthy screaming that all he’d wanted was a whisky, a woman and a proper bed. Lissman hit him hard in the back with the butt of his rifle. That soon shut him up. They put McCarthy on the next police cart back to Fremantle.
Once McCarthy had gone, Lissman, Paterson and Brennan grew wary. They stopped sharing tobacco with the convicts of an evening. They moved all the hammocks back inside the depot and chained up the doors at night.
‘It’s this damned land,’ Brennan said to Paterson one evening. ‘It lures you in. You don’t know where you stand. You forget who you are, who they are and who’s in charge.’
Houses, farms, people appeared in their sights. Settlers continued to cut trees and plant crops. They agreed such heavy rain was a curse from God, but it would surely coax something out of this land. The road gang heard whispers of local shoemakers, blacksmiths, builders, farm labourers, men who’d arrived as convicts but had got their tickets so long ago and built so much of the place that nobody thought it necessary to dwell on their origins. It was easy, Lissman said, to start work and just get on with it, because on land like this, everybody needed everybody else’s help.
‘We may have arrived on different ships, but we’re all in the same boat now,’ Edwin quipped, and they all grunted their approval.
Just as the road reached another creek, the orders came to return to Fremantle. They were back behind the piss-stinking walls of the Establishment before the week was out.
The silence was new, as was the following of warders’ instructions. It was Hampton, McCarthy whispered. McCarthy didn’t look like a man anymore. His back was so scarred and infected from repeated flogging that he couldn’t stand upright. He’d lost more teeth and had an unearthly pallor from being locked in the dark cell. Poor Smith started to recite frantic prayers at the sight of him.
They all had nightmares about the lash. Edwin kept his head down and said yes sir no sir, no matter how much bile rose in his throat, and made McCarthy do the same.
‘You’re so close now,’ Edwin said. ‘You haven’t survived all this only to die from your own stubbornness.’
A man who could read, let alone a man the other men liked, was rare among lags, Hampton said, so they made Edwin the school monitor at Perth Gaol after the previous man got his ticket-of-leave. Edwin made McCarthy swear to keep his nose clean until he got out. McCarthy agreed, but neither of them believed McCarthy could commit to keeping himself out of trouble.
Edwin didn’t think it would be possible for a prison to be darker inside than Fremantle, but Perth Gaol was like night itself. This was where they threw the town drunks, the whores, the illegal grog runners, the transported convicts who’d spat in the eye of freedom and somehow couldn’t keep their sorry arses out of a magistrate’s court. Perth Gaol reminded Edwin that the law was around every corner in this godforsaken place. It whipped his resolve into shape. He gritted his teeth and kept his head down. He taught idiots and drunks and lunatics to read Defoe and Dickens and Dumas. He read aloud, and the words he didn’t understand, well, he threw in a few of his own. Sometimes he put the names of his children into the stories just to amuse himself. Sometimes he told his pupils the stories were written by someone other than the rightful author. You will be pleased to know your book A Christmas Carol was well received by the intelligent gentlemen at Perth Gaol, he wrote to Eliza.
On the ninth of December 1864, Edwin Thomas Salt put his ticket-of-leave in his pocket, his few possessions in a swag and walked out of Perth Gaol.
‘Fan!’ Agnes screamed, not for the first time that day. The other walkers shook their heads at the dark-haired toddler who ran past them with wobbly determination.
‘Now she thinks it’s a game.’ Florence held onto her hat. It was almost three o’clock and the breeze was up. ‘She needs a bonnet, Agnes. She’ll catch too much sun.’
‘She has one. At least she did when we got here. Goodness knows where it is now.’ Agnes caught up to her daughter and scooped her up. Fan screamed and kicked.
‘Can’t you be still for just a minute?’ Agnes kissed Fan and put her down. Fan wobbled on her fat legs. She glared at Agnes before turning around and running back up the jetty towards the beach. Agnes spotted a man standing alone at the beginning of the jetty, wearing a dark coat, too heavy a coat for a sunny day like this. He slouched and grinned at the little girl who seemed to be running towards him. The man was smoking a pipe, and he tilted his head back to puff a heart-shaped smoke ring into the air.
‘Oh, sweet Jesus.’ Agnes left Florence in her wake and ran so hard to catch up to Fan she had a pain in her side from the effort. She picked Fan up. The man shivered despite the sunshine and the coat.
‘Everything all right?’ Florence caught up to them and scowled at the stranger.
Agnes nodded. ‘Florence, this is my brother, Walter.’
It had taken Walter a few weeks to get to Adelaide – Agnes didn’t ask how, and Walter didn’t volunteer the information – but once he’d arrived, it had been easy to find out from men at the port where Ernest lived. Sarah had almost fainted when he told her who he was, but once she’d gathered her wits, she’d told Walter Agnes’s address, and that he would probably find her at Semaphore today, like most Sunday afternoons.
Agnes made Walter have a bath and a meal. He needed the bath more than the meal, and he really needed the meal. Afterwards, he took out a tobacco pouch and a pipe. The cinnamon smell of tobacco filled the air, and it was as if Da himself had somehow leapt out from behind the folds of Walter’s clothes.
‘You took his pipe?’ Agnes asked. ‘He loved that thing more than any person.’
‘It’s not his anymore.’ Walter took another puff and savoured the moment. ‘It’s mine now. He took something of mine, so I’ve taken something of his.’
‘I’m glad you’re here.’ Agnes spooned more food onto his plate. Walter was pale and thin, and his eyes were bloodshot. He was crumpled and whisky worn.
‘Will you stay?’ Agnes ventured. ‘You can stay as long as you like. George will get work for you.’
‘I know, Ag – I could be swimming in money.’
‘So you got my letters.’
‘I suppose.’ Walter smoked.
‘Why didn’t you write back? I was worried sick. I just wanted to know you were all right, you know, after …’ the memory caught in her throat. ‘After the day I left.’
‘I was all right. Annie patched me up. Da kept out of my way, mostly.’ He coughed. ‘You know me, Ag. Not one for writing things down.’ He coughed again, rougher this time.
‘What’s wrong, Walter? Are you ill?’
‘Jesus, don’t fuss.’
‘Sorry,’ Agnes said. ‘Walter, what happened? You can tell me –’
‘For Christ’s sake, Saint Aggie.’ He sent clouds of smoke aimlessly into the air. ‘Let’s just enjoy my unexpected holiday in Adelaide, shall we?’
Walter slipped into their lives easily. He went to bed early and got up late; he said he hadn’t been able to sleep without half an eye open in years. Agnes didn’t care what time he surfaced, messy-haired and stubble-faced. The house felt different while he was sleeping in it – still and calm somehow, like it had when Fan was a baby – and she never got tired of it. She fed him porridge, and warm bread with fresh butter, and meaty stews, even though it was summer, and pinched his cheeks with delight as they grew plumper. George welcomed him generously, getting out the good rum in the evenings, and they discussed lofty subjects such as working conditions for wharf men and the prospect of the colonies agreeing amongst themselves to form a nation. The two men sometimes stopped talking mid-sentence when Agnes walked in, but she didn’t mind because she wanted them to know each other, to share men’s secrets.
Fan took an instant liking to her uncle. She sat with him on the front veranda when he smoked and whacked him on the arm when he fell asleep in the chair. She even followed him to the outhouse until Agnes told her off so severely that she cried. Walter relaxed even more when he mucked about with Fan, cooing and tickling behind her ears until she giggled the house down. On Sunday afternoons on Semaphore Jetty, Walter whizzed her around in dizzying circles and pretended to throw her over the rail. She squealed with delight and insisted he keep doing it long after his exaggerated protests about being a weakling with skinny arms.
They all trod carefully around the things that Walter never talked about. Agnes didn’t ask about Da or Annie or anything about home, no matter how hard it was to hold her tongue. She knew better than anyone that if Walter wanted to talk, it would only be when he was damn well good and ready.
Walter sat outside on the back step, an empty glass nearby, his head in his hands.
‘Any chance of a refill?’ he yawned.
‘Haven’t you had enough already?’ Agnes put her arm around him.
‘Bugger off, then.’ He shoved her away.
‘Oh, come on, Walter, I didn’t mean anything by it.’
‘Oooh, I didn’t mean anything by it!’ Walter mimicked her in his old way and pushed her harder. ‘Saint Aggie.’
‘I suppose you’re going to hit me next,’ she said, standing up. ‘Don’t end up like Da, Walter, all your anger coming out of your fists when you’re full of grog.’
‘Christ, Ag, I’m sorry.’ He gestured to the step next to her. ‘Come back, sit with me.’
She sat down and put her arm around him again. This time he leaned into her.
‘I’m sorry, Ag. It’s just …’
‘Whatever it is, you can’t keep it in.’
‘Dunno what you’re talking about.’
‘Oh, come on, Walter. I’m not blind.’ She looked him square in the eyes. ‘Whatever you’re not saying, it’s killing you. Tell me, don’t tell me, don’t ever speak again for all I care. Stay here with us forever – we’re your family. Just don’t let him win all over again.’
‘Bloody hell. You don’t give up, do you?’ Walter sighed so hard, he seemed to deflate like a carnival balloon. ‘All right, you asked for it. You still like those silly family stories? This one’ll make your hair turn white.’
A stranger had come home with Da from the Western one night, Walter told her. A miner from the Murchison, down on his luck – a stranger with ink on his forearms, hair the colour of wet sand, stark blue eyes. A stranger, but there had been something familiar about him all the same. Annie made him a bed for the night but a fortnight later he was still there. It was nothing like when Ernest visited. This man was tense, tightly wound, like a rifle cocked and loaded and just waiting for some poor unsuspecting thing to shoot at.
Annie never took her eyes off him, and Da, well, Walter had never seen him like this. Scared. Da said he’d known Eddie’s father in England, and he was to be treated like family. ‘You mean, treat him like shit and slap him about after too much grog?’ Walter said, but Da didn’t see the funny side. Da and Eddie spent a week fixing the fence. Eddie started cutting down trees at the bottom of the block where they’d never cleared trees before. Da dug in new fence posts while Eddie did bugger all except smoke and drink Da’s rum. Da’s usual cronies at the Western were silent on the subject of the house guest from God-only-knew-where. Eddie said he had brothers, that his ma had died when he was little, and he’d been drifting ever since, waiting for his ship to come in.
‘My mam died too, when I was little,’ Walter said, and Eddie got the strangest look on his face and said, ‘Do you remember her?’ Walter said, ‘Not really, although sometimes, a smell, or an Irish accent,’ and Eddie said, ‘Me too. I remember the smell of her hair.’ Eddie kind of leaned towards him and for a moment, Walter thought Eddie was going to hug him, or shake his hand or something. Walter said, ‘For strangers, you and me got a lot in common,’ and Eddie said, ‘More than you think,’ and the moment passed.
Walter caught Eddie swigging Da’s best whisky – ‘mother’s milk’, the smug bastard called it. Walter clenched his fist ready to teach him a lesson, but Eddie just smirked and said, ‘The old man owes me.’ Eddie showed Walter some papers. It may as well have been double-fucking-dutch for all Walter knew, but he could read pictures well enough, and he knew the shape of their land like his own self. And there it was: an official line drawn right where Da and Eddie had put those new fence posts.
Agnes shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t take this in.’
‘He gave Eddie half his land.’ Walter’s face was taut and shiny with anger. ‘Land that should have been mine.’
They sat, not talking, for what seemed like an hour.
‘Eddie has something big on Da, and Da wants to keep him quiet,’ Walter murmured. ‘I kept all his miserable secrets for my whole miserable life, and this is how he repays me.’
Agnes let out a long, slow breath.
‘Da had a wife,’ she said. ‘Before Mam.’
‘What?’
‘I saw a picture. Mary Ann. She died, and that’s why Da came to the Swan River.’
The look on Walter’s face was so peculiar Agnes thought for a minute he’d had some kind of attack. ‘What do you know about it?’ he said.
‘Nothing, not really. Sarah said she died. It was a baby, I suppose. That’s what it usually means.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me you knew about his wife?’ Walter said slowly.
‘You never wrote to me. I didn’t know where you were. There didn’t seem any point.’
Walter loosened his collar.
‘Are you all right?’ Agnes asked. ‘You’re scaring me. What do you know about Mary Ann?’
‘Nothing. Plenty of them had wives – kids too, probably. Talk was that Mad Molloy had a huge brood back home.’
‘Plenty of who had wives?’
‘Nobody.’ Walter kissed her forehead. ‘Anyway, Eddie got the useless bit of scrub down by the river gums. Come winter, that stinking river will rise right up through the ground. It’ll be like living in quicksand.’ Walter stood up. ‘What’s done is done. Let’s talk about something else.’
Walter did cartwheels on the soggy sand and pretended to fall over, sending Fan into squeals of mirth. Fan grabbed Walter’s hand and tried to pull him up, but he pulled her down and she rolled in the sand, giggling. He hauled her up on her pudgy feet and Fan ran off ahead of them shouting, ‘Un-kel Wa-ter. Wa-ter. Wa-ter!’
‘She’s saying your name.’ Agnes slipped her arm through his. ‘You’re officially part of her family. Fan’s given you her seal of approval.’
They walked from Semaphore up the beach to Largs and back, taking it in turns to carry Fan. The sun trailed reds and yellows as it sank into the horizon.
‘We should talk to Sarah and Ernest. See if they can tell us anything more,’ Agnes said. ‘Sarah knew about Da’s wife. She had a picture of them.’
‘It’s probably best left.’ Walter shielded Fan from the breeze. ‘He gave his land to a man he met at the Western. Neither of us are ever going back. Does it matter now?’
‘No, Walter. I want to know.’ Agnes turned her face towards the shore. ‘Let’s go tomorrow.’
Agnes knew by the quietness of the house. When the sun had risen enough to send darts of light through the window, she got out of bed and padded quietly to the kitchen. At least he’d left a note on the table, scribbled and messy. In all these years, it was the only letter he’d ever written. Agnes could’ve given him a clip around the ear if only she wasn’t crying.
Sorry Ag not sure were Im goin but will let you know were I am promise. What you got here is real good. Dont mess it up by looking back. I dont want to look back. Give angel Fan a big kiss from me. W.
Walter had drawn a picture of Fan running on the jetty, her little arms stretched out and her dark hair flying behind her. Underneath, Walter had written in careful, neat script, My Angel Fan.
Agnes’s eyes stung. George told her gently that if Walter wanted to leave, there was nothing they could do about it, except welcome him with open arms if he ever decided to come back, because he’d always know where to find them. Fan started to howl as she did every morning, but today her cries were harsher, as if she knew Walter had gone.
To the north, Largs and the port. To the south, the rest of Adelaide town, and in front of her, the jetty slicing the ocean in half. Left and right. Then and now, she thought.
George insisted on walking along the shore to keep watch. He went on about sailors and the power of the sea and how you were better off giving in to it than swimming, but she said, ‘Don’t worry, George, I’ll hardly leave dry land.’
Agnes waded in. Children stared and whispered, but she ignored them. She dug her feet in to anchor herself and when she felt the swell lift, she sat down in the thigh-deep water and dipped her head under. She shrieked with the shock of the cold, then stood up and wiped the sea from her eyes. George shouted something about mad women, but his voice was light.
The sun bounced back at her off the upstairs window of Mrs Jensen’s seafront house. What was it Mrs Jensen had said? Everyone here was from somewhere else. Adelaide had Germans in the hills, English on the beachfront and Irish in the taverns. Now Adelaide had Miss Salt of the Sea with her father long gone and her mother long dead. She wished Walter would come back. But right now, she was Miss Salt of the Sea, with Fan, George and a house of her own. Ernest, Florence and Sarah were all the family she needed.
She held George’s hand tightly all the way home.
Henry Wood was still a youngish man, whippet-thin with black hair and a scar on his left cheek. His tailor’s shop in Perth town was squashed between lodging houses and taverns on Barrack Street. Black paint peeled off the door and the small front window was so clean that Edwin was tempted to reach in and feel the tweed on the jacket he had on display.
Henry had been sent out a couple of years earlier, he told Edwin with a grin, but he never talked about that unfortunate business anymore.
‘A misunderstanding, that’s all it were.’ He inspected Edwin’s hands. ‘You better be a good tailor. I don’t want no ham-fisted Portland stonebreaker tearing holes in my best Indian cotton.’
Henry pulled back a thin curtain to reveal a small room at the back of the shop. A lumpy hessian mattress took up almost all the floor and there was a water jug under the small window.
‘Welcome to freedom,’ Henry said.
After so long sleeping in a hammock, Edwin had forgotten what it felt like to stretch out flat on his back. He’d looked forward to it, but that first night, after what felt like hours, he was still wide awake, shifting from one side to the other. He opened the tiny window and listened to birds, animal sounds, the shouts of drunks. As the moon rose higher, the noises subsided. He’d never heard such a rush of silence, not even working on the York road.
The next time he opened his eyes the room was filled with the fresh light of sunrise. He threw on his clothes, found his pipe and tobacco and left quietly.
The sun was already bright enough to make him squint. The morning air smelled of peppermint. It was December, but it didn’t look like any December he knew. He walked down Barrack Street past a church and a couple of taverns, stepping over a sleeping drunkard. He followed a track to where it finished at the river’s edge.
Birds that looked like swans, but with black feathers and red beaks, waddled into the water. Funniest looking birds he’d ever seen. Across the water on the other side of the point, the trees seemed to move. It must have been a group of natives. He tipped his hat in their direction, wishing them good morning. They didn’t scare him. He’d seen so much to scare him in gaol and on the Lincelles, he doubted they would ever have worse to throw at him.
Edwin lit his pipe. The tobacco tasted all the sweeter for being smoked in the fresh air with no other man looking to barter or bash him out of his supply. Edwin tried to remember the last time he’d been anywhere without some other stinking body nearby.
He threw his shirt and trousers under a white-barked tree and ran shrieking into the river, beating his chest like a storybook savage. The cold made him gasp, but he waded in anyway. When the water reached up to his chest, he spread his arms out wide and dug his feet into the silt to stop himself from thinking about drowning. He imagined poor old Pullinger watching from Heaven, or wherever in the afterlife he had washed up.
How did people swim? Edwin shut his eyes and pressed his nostrils together for good measure. Then the man who’d never in his life stuck his head underwater in anything deeper than a bathtub let himself sink until his buttocks hit the rough stones of the riverbed.
Edwin stayed submerged for only a few seconds before he leapt up like a bloated fish gasping for air. Was this how it was for Pullinger as his weighted-down body sank under the waves? Poor Pullinger, shackled until the end. Did his soul manage to fight its way out of that burlap coffin and float up to Heaven? Was Pullinger looking down on him, McCarthy, Smith and Molloy, watching them struggle to escape the coffins of their own making? Was Pullinger in fact the only one of the three hundred Lincelles men who got the freedom they were all hoping for?
Edwin swung his flabby arms about. The sunlight twinkled on the water. Then, without warning, the memory of Mary Ann rose up and he choked so violently he thought he was going to die.
Edwin expected to see gentlemen who’d given their names to roads and vast tracts of land, but Henry Wood’s tailor shop wasn’t that kind of establishment. He smiled and nodded at the land speculators from New South Wales with their mongrel accents and their oiled hair and their nonstop chatter about profit. He talked amiably about York with farmers who were up in town for a dance or a meeting about roads. None of them asked how such a fine tailor had come to be in the colony, but before they took their leave, they checked their pockets.
It stuck in his throat, hearing his own voice mimic Samuel’s grovelling ‘Thank you, sir’ and ‘As you like, sir’ to men no better than himself. But what every man wanted from a tailor: well, Edwin knew that better than anyone. He soon remembered the feel of a needle and how to look at dark fabric under weak lamplight. He stitched every man a straighter spine, a broader shoulder, a collar so clean and snug that even a gentleman whose suits were made in London would see that this, too, was the work of a craftsman. Henry kept a close eye on him; after all, Edwin was the ticketer and Henry was the boss, but soon Henry began to give Edwin more of the work while he disappeared most afternoons to the Western.
One stinking-hot day, a man appeared, and the shock of a once-familiar face made Edwin spill his pannikin of water. It was young Joe Watts, one of the Portland lads who’d got his ticket as soon as he stepped off the Lincelles. Watts still had the wiry body of a young man, but his leathery skin and sun-whitened eyebrows made him look like somebody’s grandfather. Watts shook Edwin’s hand and pointed at the serge he wanted for his new jacket. A week later, Watts stood in front of the mirror and admired the cut of his newly stitched self.
‘My own mother wouldn’t know me,’ he said.
‘You could pass for Governor Hampton himself,’ Edwin said.
‘Next stop’s the Lands Office.’ Watts unfolded a pile of banknotes. ‘If I bump into Governor Hampton, I’ll tell him he can kiss my free-pardoned arse.’
Joe Watts was the first Portland man to wash up in Henry Wood’s shop, but he wasn’t the last. Word spread among a certain kind of man that the ticketer working for Henry Wood had a keen eye for precision and he got the job done at a good price. In the months Edwin was ticketed to Wood, and in the year that Henry kept him on, the work kept coming from liars, thieves, forgers, bigamists and thugs keen to cast off their ragged histories and make themselves anew.
Henry paid Edwin fairly, more or less, and Edwin wrote down the hours he worked, and what he was owed, but he never quibbled with Henry over a shilling here or there. He locked away as much money as he could in a tin hidden under his mattress.
In summer, the heat at night brought the smell of the swamps from the east. It pressed in on his chest. Edwin slept in the yard and got bitten by mosquitoes. His limbs swelled and he couldn’t work for five days. Mrs Wood gave him a jar of ointment for the blisters. Henry docked his wages.
Edwin cleared his head in the mornings by walking to the river. He rinsed his calloused and pinpricked hands in the water, and stood in it until his swollen feet didn’t hurt anymore. Sometimes he stood for a couple of hours and felt the tide creep up his shins. He began to notice the different tones of colour that flowed in the trenches and in the shallows. Everything moving, nothing standing still. Not even him. He thought about the growing pile of money he had locked away in that tin.
If a mug of tea waited on the table when he returned, he knew his nightmares had kept Mrs Wood awake again. He never remembered them. He felt only a vague sense of unease when he awoke, as if somebody had just left the room. Henry and his wife exchanged looks and Mrs Wood told Edwin he needed to get settled, find a woman who was keener to take the hardworking man who stood in front of her than ask about the criminal who’d left England.
Edwin drank himself sleepy at the Western Hotel on Howick Street with Henry Wood, Mick McCarthy, Smith, Molloy and a few others. The Western could have been the Anvil or Wallace’s gin shop, if not for the heat and the light. Edwin felt at home around the smell of tobacco and rum. They talked of grog, or women, or land, and if any man were idiot enough to start some talk about the Lincelles, or Portland or Newgate or Fremantle or England, Henry Wood or Mick McCarthy silenced him with a glare or a swift kick.
‘You escaped with your life. Don’t never look back.’ Henry’s voice was steady, but his eyes had the look of the hunted.
In the Swan River colony, months were marked off by ships arriving and ships departing. Every ship that stopped in Fremantle brought food and building materials and fabric and clothes and the sweetest sustenance of all: news from home. People stood in streets with their heads bent over letters, unable to wait for privacy before they ran their hands over their loved ones’ words. On mail days, the hotels on Howick Street were hushed, with little noise except the sound of the landlord pouring drinks. Men who had persuaded themselves that their wives and children were dead stared out of windows, dealing mutely with the resurrection of feeling.
When Edwin wrote to Eliza, he pretended he was holding court again at the Anvil, or Wallace’s gin shop, or that damp tavern in Galway whose name he no longer remembered. He told his stories with humour that a young lad might find amusing if the letter happened to be read aloud. He invented man-eating natives and serpents and trees that flowered grotesquely in the winter. He told of his own growing reputation as a tailor to a certain kind of man.
Months passed with no replies, and he fought hard not to feel his own irrelevance. He wrote knowing another part of himself would disappear in the coal fire at the back of the shop or in the freezing-cold privy or wherever Samuel destroyed his letters. But imagine if Eliza or one of his sons risked Samuel’s anger, even if it was just curiosity, to find out how his story ended?
In the colony a tailor is as good as a magician, he wrote to Eliza. I take one sort of man and turn him into another. The air stinks of swamp and the mosquitoes could kill you in your bed, but there’s the promise of land for the likes of me.
‘Want to be a real man? Get home to your feckin’ children.’ A dark-haired woman stood between a redheaded woman and one of the Irishmen. The man stood up. The redheaded woman covered her face.
‘I said, leave her alone.’ The dark-haired woman put her hands on her hips. The other Irishmen stared into their drinks.
‘Damned Irish.’ Henry gripped his glass so tightly his knuckles went white. ‘How many taverns are there on Howick Street? You’d think they’d find somewhere of their own to drink.’ He stood up. ‘Somebody wants to teach ’em how to keep their women in order.’
‘Leave the fighting to the Irish.’ Edwin gestured for Henry to sit down. ‘Haven’t you seen the inside of enough gaol cells in your life?’
‘Wouldn’t say no to one of their fine ladies.’ Smith licked his lips. ‘As long as she didn’t talk. The accent wittering in my ear all night.’ The others mocked him. Smith’s own Devon accent was as heavy as clotted cream.
The dark-haired woman stood her ground, her arms folded. Her pale face was rosy with anger.
‘Come on, Deirdre.’ The Irishman gulped his drink and grabbed the redhead’s hand. ‘Don’t want you mixing with the likes of this whore.’
‘You keep drinking like that, Jimmy, and a whore’d be a big waste of your little wage packet.’ The dark-haired woman’s eyes flickered to Jimmy’s belt buckle. Edwin sniggered, despite himself.
The dark-haired woman turned around and walked slowly over to where Edwin stood with the others. She stood so close he could smell the starch in her brown dress, see the roundness of her breasts. Her eyes were the same colour as her hair, blue-black.
‘You think it’s funny, Englishman?’
‘N-no.’ Edwin felt his cheeks flame.
‘You’re blushing.’ The woman reached out and touched his face. Her skin was rough, but her touch was light. ‘You got a stutter, Englishman? You afraid of a poor little Irish girl?’
‘No and no,’ Edwin said, holding her gaze. ‘And I can see you’re not afraid of anything.’
‘A few years in this place and I got no fear left.’ She was smiling but her voice had an edge. She followed Deirdre and Jimmy out of the door.
‘By God but she’s got a mouth on her,’ Smith said, and Henry guzzled his drink.
Long after he’d left the Western, long after he’d done what he needed to do to get to sleep, Edwin’s skin still tingled from where she’d touched him.
‘There are so many more men than women here in the Swan River,’ Mrs Wood told him the next day. ‘Be kind to a woman who hasn’t seen much kindness, and she’ll forgive you much more than you’d imagine.’
‘In the Western they keep kindness on the top shelf and it costs a week’s wages,’ Henry said.
It was weeks before he saw her again, but he was ready.
‘May I buy you a whisky, miss?’
‘A gentleman? In the Western? You must be lost.’ She smirked. ‘By the way, I’m not a miss.’
‘Oh. My apologies, madam.’
‘I’m not staying. Specially not for some layabout lag.’ She gazed around the crowded room. ‘Checking up on a friend.’
‘What a fortunate friend. Tell me, madam. Are you from Cork or Dublin?’
‘You a seer as well as a lag?’
‘A few years in Ireland taught me a few things.’
‘But not when to give up.’ Her eyes shimmered with mirth. ‘County Cork, thank you for asking.’ She wiped her forehead with her sleeve. ‘It’s like an oven in here. All right. One whisky.’
Edwin ushered her to a quiet corner and fetched two glasses.
‘My, but aren’t you the answer to a girl’s prayers?’ She picked up the glass and turned it upside down. ‘You’re a bigger fool than I’d reckoned on. It’s empty.’
Edwin felt warm, but not from the sun.
‘I was told that in the colony, the way to win a lady over is with kindness,’ Edwin said. ‘So that’s what I offer you.’
‘Is that all you got? Don’t look like much to me.’ She stood up to leave.
‘Please.’ Edwin grabbed her hand.
‘Oh, very well,’ she said, looking from his boots up to his eyes. ‘But only because I feel so damned sorry for you.’
It rained all week. Humidity settled heavily inside the house. Ma left the windows open all the time in the hope of a breeze, but it never came. Animal smells wafted up from the wharf. Fan couldn’t sleep. She got up and sat in the kitchen and listened to the faint rhythm of the sea in the distance.
Fan felt a warm wave of air. It was Ma in her nightdress, her hair unwound down her back.
‘Jesus, Ma. I thought you were a ghost.’
‘Language, Fan.’ Ma pulled up a chair. ‘Is there any breeze?’
‘Not a whisper.’
They both stared out of the window.
‘Turn the lamp up. I want to show you something.’ Ma handed her a piece of paper. Fan blinked into the light. It was a sketch of a small child running, her hair flying out behind her and her arms out like bird wings. A small child running down a jetty. The wooden structure looked as familiar to Fan as her own mother. It was obviously Semaphore.
‘That’s you.’ Ma pointed to the child. ‘Your Uncle Walter drew it the last time I saw him. He came to Adelaide when you were very small.’
‘I met my Uncle Walter?’ Fan’s eyes were hot. She tried to recall something, anything. ‘I knew him?’
‘He lived with us for a while. You wouldn’t remember.’
‘Jesus, Ma.’ Fan ran her finger over the sketch of her younger self.
‘Your uncle was – is – the bravest man you could ever meet.’ Agnes’s eyes glistened.
‘Grandpa says he was a liar and a thief.’ Fan frowned. ‘Why would Grandpa say it if it’s not true?’
‘You and Walter took such a shine to each other. He would want you to have this picture, I know he would. I hoped he would stay with us in Adelaide, but I got up one morning and he was gone.’
‘I reckon Grandpa would tell you where he is,’ Fan said.
‘Walter and your grandpa had a terrible, terrible fight.’ Agnes squeezed Fan’s hand. ‘So I don’t think Walter would be in touch with him.’
‘People fight and say they’re sorry. Me and you, we do it all the time.’
‘Some things can’t be fixed with sorry.’ Ma’s voice prickled. ‘Fan, listen to me. It can’t be Uncle Walter in New South Wales, because Walter told me they’d fallen out. Your imagination’s run away with you. I keep telling you, your grandfather’s mind is going. You can’t trust anything that man says.’
If she shut her eyes, the smell of the sea made Fan feel like she was home, but, when she looked out across the uninterrupted blankness of water, she ached with homesickness. She pulled off her boots and clothes. The costume she’d worn underneath was already beginning to feel tight around her hips and up top. Nothing was the same shape anymore. Fan walked in up to her waist and slid underwater.
She swam out a little way and kept one eye on the shore. Her hair spilled out. It was better to be in than walking on sand, even if the current was unreadable. She swam deeper to where she couldn’t touch the bottom.
This was the peace she craved. Fan opened her eyes. Underwater, it was easier to escape Ma, Grandpa, Uncle Walter or whoever-he-was in New South Wales. The current was strong, and she let it carry her deeper.
A clump of yellow weed swirled and billowed, brassy in the fractured light. The seabed seemed to shift, and something thumped her back. The sand clouded around her legs. Fan thrashed and panicked before her feet touched sand and she crawled up to the shallower water.
The strip of white beach gleamed. Foam bubbled up to the shore. The wave that hit her was stronger than she was used to at Semaphore. Fan spat out water until her heart stopped pounding. Then she turned back to the ocean and swam in the direction of the straw-gold seaweed. In a single breath she dived under, grabbed a piece and dragged it up with her to the surface.
Tom was obsessed with building that stupid contraption in the yard. Charlie’s mum had complained that Tom had whacked Charlie’s ankle with a hammer. Tom stubbornly defended himself, said it was Charlie’s fault, Charlie got too close to where he was hammering, but Tom would never have dreamed of even picking up a hammer before they came to Fremantle. Ned had started saying ‘Jesus’ and ‘for God’s sake’. That lovely young lad, Lee, had taught Ned some rude words in Chinese. Ned had recited them to Lee’s mother, who had given Agnes a lecture about taking better care of her children. And as for Fan … Agnes sat down and read through a list that sounded like a charge sheet. Fan had ransacked her father’s room like a common thief – left the window open, taken the lid off the wooden trunk and spilled his papers everywhere. Agnes had packed everything up as best she could, as quick as she could, without looking – she didn’t want to know. Fan wasn’t interested in school and it was obviously because her grandfather was filling her head with ridiculous stories. Fan had become slow to answer her mother’s questions, speaking carefully, as if she was making sure her lies would hold water.
‘It’s him. It’s all happened since he’s been in our house,’ Agnes told George. ‘He’s bitter and ungrateful. He’s made up all sorts of terrible stories about Walter. He’s not as ill as Annie led us to believe. I can go into Fremantle and find him a room in a lodging house.’ She stood up, as if she meant to do it this minute. ‘You said we could look at how things worked out once we got here. Well, that’s how things are working out. I want to go home.’
George took hold of Agnes’s hand and kissed it. ‘I love you, my Agnes, Miss Salt of the Sea,’ he said, his words nuzzling her palm. Then he ran through a list of his own. He was well in with all the foremen at Fremantle. After a shaky start, he was getting shifts every day because he’d made it his business to prove himself. The foremen all knew he was strong, he was reliable, he was careful with cargo, he never complained. Things were getting easier. There was a union fund now, to look after lumpers’ families. Agnes and the bairns would be taken care of, if anything happened to him on the wharf. He was happy to be working among Sunderland men and River Clyde men and good men from all over the world.
‘We can’t pack up and leave now, Agnes, love.’ George kissed her hand again because that was all he was prepared to offer. ‘I’m too old to go back to Adelaide and start again.’
‘I miss home.’ Agnes’s eyes stung. ‘Ernest and Florence and Sarah and … everything.’
‘The boys are happy here. Why don’t we get Fan into the brush factory or in service somewhere? She’s old enough, too old to be in school. Girls are flighty. She just needs something else to fill her head,’ George said.
‘But you promised, George.’
‘My back’s giving me some trouble. It could go at any time.’ George couldn’t look her in the eye. ‘As Annie said, he probably doesn’t have long. He could be dead in a month. We need to stay the course.’
Agnes let go of his hand. ‘I’m writing to Annie tomorrow, to tell her to take him back.’
‘If you think that’s best, love,’ George said. ‘And it’s not a contraption. I had a look under the tarp. Tom’s not building a contraption. It looks like he’s building a boat.’
Her name was Cath Curtin. She’d come to the Swan River with her husband, ‘dear Johnnie’, on the convict transport York. Johnnie had come home from the Crimea with a banged-up leg and a mind shot through with the horrors of war. Everyone agreed that the fresh air and sunshine in the colony might ease his troubled spirit, and as a guard on a transport he got free passage for his family. Cath gave birth on board the ship – in the captain’s cabin no less – just as the York headed into the rough waters off Fremantle. Everyone said a boy born on board would bring good luck, but the poor little mite didn’t last the summer. Johnnie went last winter with consumption. Now she worked six days a week in the governor’s laundry and on the seventh day she sat with Johnnie in the churchyard up on the hill come rain, hail or shine.
‘Holy Mother of God, you took little Christopher and my lovely Johnnie.’ Cath raised her third glass to the sky. ‘When you coming for me?’ Her tone was as dark as her hair.
‘Not this evening, I hope,’ Edwin said.
She slid her hand into his.
Every hour Edwin spent with Cath, his past cut itself a little freer from its moorings. His vision was filled only with the roundness of her hips, her long black eyelashes, the roughness of her washerwoman’s hands.
Edwin spotted Cath from the bottom of the track that led up the hill to the cemetery. She was kneeling. He tipped his hat to a white-bonneted woman who stood next to one of the large headstones near the church entrance.
Cath bowed her head, crossed herself and wiped her eyes. He felt uneasy, as if he was spying on her while she bathed. He coughed politely and kneeled next to her. She glared at him but turned back to fussing with the small wooden cross, scraping her fingers in the dirt to straighten it up, pulling out weeds. When she’d finished, she clasped her hands together and murmured a prayer. Edwin closed his eyes and said ‘Amen’ with her and afterwards she wiped her eyes again, leaving a streak of dirt on her cheek.
‘Let me help.’ Edwin took a handkerchief out of his pocket, spat on it, rubbed her face.
‘Don’t be daft,’ she said, but she closed her eyes and let him finish.
‘Something else, if you’ll let me.’ Edwin fished around in his pocket. ‘Give me your hand.’
‘Edwin, what are you doing? Johnnie’s watching.’
‘He won’t mind. Give me your hand.’
‘Come on, it’s a bit soon ain’t it?’ Cath said, but held out her hand anyway. ‘Plenty of men in the colony, I’m sure I can do better.’
‘Don’t be so cocky, pretty colleen. I haven’t picked you yet.’
Cath laughed, loud and rough. From his pocket, Edwin took out Mrs Wood’s jar of eucalypt ointment. He gently rubbed the peppermint-smelling cream into her palm, the back of her hand, her fingers, then her other hand. Her skin drank it up. When he’d finished, he did both hands again, then rested them back in her lap.
They sat in silence for a long time.
‘Kindness,’ Cath said.
‘Anything for you, pretty Cath.’
On the walk down the hill from the cemetery to Howick Street, the sun warmed their faces.
‘So, you got some witch of a wife saving her pennies for a passage out here?’ Cath said. ‘Jimmy sent money for Deirdre. God only knows where he got it, and everybody knows better than to ask.’
Edwin stared at the horizon. ‘Nobody’s coming for me.’ His neck felt tight. ‘I haven’t heard from my family since I left England.’
They reached the bottom of the road that turned into Howick Street. Noise from the taverns drifted into their ears. The afternoon light made Cath’s skin look even whiter, her eyes blacker.
‘You lot are worse than a secret society.’ Cath pulled away from him. ‘You tell me your story, Edwin Salt. I don’t care what it is, but I better hear it from you and not the likes of Mick McCarthy.’
Edwin sat down on the side of the road. He’d walked much further in much worse heat, but he was sweating so much he half-wondered if he’d wet himself. Cath sat down next to him.
It felt like spitting out pieces of rotten apple, but Edwin gave Cath the story he was sure she wanted. His poor wife Mary Ann had died of a fever. His grief had sent him mad and taken him far away from home, and his children. A stupid bit of thieving, a bit of a mouth on him when he drank too much and here he was, marooned on colonial shores.
The river in front of them glinted in the sun.
‘You get some land and I’ll marry you tomorrow,’ Cath said, her eyes on a group of men strolling down Howick Street.
‘No. You marry me tomorrow,’ Edwin said, his eyes on her hips. ‘I’ll get my land before the year is out.’
Edwin paced to the eastern corner. Small lizards scattered in the wake of his boots. He walked to the bottom of the block to where the land sloped away to the river. The jarrah trees gave way to pale-barked river gums where the water ran unseen under the ground. To the west was a sawmill, and the sound of saws cut through the noise of crickets.
He stared from the deed of title in his hand to the land in front of him and back again.
‘Victoria, by the grace of God. To have and to hold,’ he read out loud from the paper.
The transaction had been signed into existence by old Governor Hampton himself. He’d shaken the clerk’s hand and promised himself he’d never again hear a bad word about Hampton, his son or his second cousin twice removed for that matter.
To have and to hold. As if he owned a woman, not a half-acre of snake-infested river gums and stumpy little grass-headed trees that smelled of rum when they burned.
To have and to hold. He certainly would, until death did them part. Samuel Salt and Son, unwilling tailor, feared excise officer and condemned man, would spend the rest of his days as lord of the manor among the magnificent swamps and slaughterhouses.
Cath stood in the middle of the only patch that had been cleared.
‘I present to you the vast empire of the tailor of Water Street.’ Edwin strode towards Cath, his arms outstretched.
‘Is this the best you could do? Downwind from the tannery and slaughter yards,’ Cath grinned. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if blacks still lived here.’
‘Don’t be daft. They’re long gone.’
‘So you’ve got the land even the natives born on it don’t want.’
‘Nothing but the best for the likes of you and me.’ Edwin pulled her closer.
‘The luck of the Irish.’ Cath kissed him.
The sun was directly above them in a cloudless blue sky. Edwin ushered Cath under a tree. With the heel of his boot, he dug a line from Cath to the last river gum that marked the boundary of his land.
‘You call that a fence?’ Cath called, her eyes shining.
The sun burned his face, but he didn’t care. Molloy and Smith and a few others he knew had bought land up here already, but he couldn’t see another house or another person anywhere he looked. The huge jarrah trees dwarfed him, and the sun blinded him so much that when he looked up, he couldn’t tell where the trees ended and the sky began.
Cath teased him, said he was a damn fool fit for the insane asylum. He whooped like a little boy. He was a giant and he was no bigger than the ants scrambling over his boots. He was condemned and he was saved, reborn in this light with the help of this woman, her hair shining blue, her arms open to receive him.
They lived through summer without a proper roof on their four-roomed cottage. Edwin worked days and nights. Henry Wood went out of business, then started up again. Cath ran chickens and kept a cow and planted vegetables. She spent long hours digging in the heat and dust. Some days she was out there until dusk but came in smiling. She dug her sweat and her homesickness into the dirt and made it sweet and rich with shit from her cow and the chickens. She stood guard with hessian and wire to protect her little rows of potatoes and beets from the heat as best she could. ‘It smells like home but without the hunger,’ she told him. Cath’s plot was the envy of the Smiths and the Molloys and all the others until a heatwave sneaked in and killed everything. Edwin planted it over, even though the seasons were all wrong, because the sight of Cath smiling made him forget the blisters and calluses on his tailor’s hands.
At the end of summer, Cath gave birth to a tiny boy. Edwin insisted they call him Albert. Cath thought it would be bad luck, but she was too tired to argue. Little Albert must have known his name was already taken because he died without warning. Cath screamed and thumped her fists into Edwin’s guts so hard he spent a night at Molloy’s until the urge to smack some sense into her subsided. Edwin worked more days and nights. Despite the trouble on Howick Street between Mick McCarthy and some of the other Irish, Edwin gritted his teeth and grudgingly tipped his hat.
They lived through rain that dissolved Perth’s dusty roads to grey dirt that stuck to boots and hooves. Cath’s belly swelled with another baby. She was slower on her feet, but her eyes were bright with hope.
One rainy day a parcel arrived.
Edwin saw the postmark and made a noise like he was being strangled.
‘What’s wrong? Who’s it from?’ Cath asked.
‘My sister.’
‘Oh, Jesus,’ Cath said. ‘After all this time.’
Edwin poured himself a glass of best whisky and unwrapped Eliza’s parcel. Inside was a letter and two smaller parcels. He stared at her handwriting. Neat, evenly spaced, like her stitching. She always was the best at everything.
He opened the envelope and Eliza rushed at him, talking fast and precise as she always did. It took him by surprise, the force of it, the nearness of her.
My dear Edwin.
Da says you are as good as dead to the family but, like progress, I choose to pass him by! I found your letter by the fire. I am supposing he must burn them, if you have written before.
I was pleased to read about your wife and your land. I am glad you are making a life in the colony. They say the climate is good for improving the temperament of a certain kind of man. I pray very little these days, but I pray you will find it a healing place.
There is some sad news. Our mother died soon after you left for the colony. She didn’t suffer. Da gets some help from young Amy Bullock next door.
He pressed the letter to his face. The smell of the coal fire, the scent of bread. Many months at sea in a calico mailbag and the paper still held traces of home. His chest hurt. He put the letter down. It was too much to take in. He poured another whisky and picked up the small package. He tore off the paper to find a piece of light-blue cotton, about a foot square. He unfolded it.
Eliza had sent him a summer day at Lichfield Cathedral. Tracing his finger over neat stitches, he followed the road past the Crown Inn, up Dam Street, up the curved path to the small door, the three spires. Eliza had embroidered the cathedral outline in white thread and under each spire, an initial: A, E and M. Albert, Edwin, Matthew. His three sons.
One last thing: a cloth pouch. He opened it and the sweet smell of old tobacco smacked him hard in the chest. He knew without looking what it was, but he made himself open it anyway.
Something to remember me by, Mr Wishless.
A small lock of straw-gold hair tied with twine. Edwin laid it on the table and it curled into a question mark.
The sunny cornfield of their days.
He lifted the memory of Mary Ann to his cheek.
‘Throw it away.’ Cath’s voice was sharp. ‘Don’t look back.’
‘For Christ’s sake, you’re dripping wet. Why have you been outside?’
‘I didn’t like the look of you in that foul mood.’ Cath shivered.
‘You must be freezing. You’ll catch your death.’
‘I’m fine. It’s only rain.’ Cath shook her wet hair.
‘Don’t do that, woman. It’ll end up soaking in here as well as outside.’
‘D’you know your mate Molloy’s got a wife and an army of children back home?’ Cath put her hands on her hips. ‘He don’t talk about ’em, and he’s better off for it. Like I said, don’t look back,’ she repeated.
Edwin put the letter back in its envelope.
‘All right,’ he said.
‘It’s best for everyone. Most of all, for you.’
‘I know. Go and change your dress. I’ll throw it all in the fire.’
The blue embroidered church. The lock of straw-gold hair. He waited until Cath had gone to the washhouse and then he locked them up in the tin where he kept his money. He poured another whisky and read the rest of Eliza’s letter.
Mick McCarthy looked surprised to see Edwin so early in the day, but he made room for his mate and beckoned to the publican for more rum. Edwin matched Mick drink for drink, which had everyone shaking their heads. Mick asked him if there was anything in particular that was bothering him, but Edwin shook his head and bought more rum. Edwin drank until he couldn’t stand up. He drank until he couldn’t hear Eliza whispering in his ear. He drank until he could feel the sea breeze and not think it was Mary Ann whispering at the back of his neck.
In Howick Street after closing, a Scottish carpenter bumped into him, and Edwin cursed and lashed out. He barely noticed the thud of his knuckles on the man’s cheekbone, but by Christ it felt good. The Scotsman swore and punched Edwin in his face. Edwin hit back again and the other man fell. McCarthy and Molloy tried to hold Edwin back, but he shoved them, too. They stood back. The look in his eye told them that whatever had possessed Edwin wasn’t finished yet.
The magistrate raised an eyebrow and brought down a gavel and declared, ‘men with your dubious moral character, Salt,’ were bound to end up back in gaol sooner or later, and ‘given your history’ frankly he was surprised he hadn’t seen Mr Salt before this day.
Molloy said he’d tell Cath about Edwin’s sentence of one month with hard labour.
Thank goodness Mrs Molloy called in when she did, because she found Cath in agony on the floor. Cath gave birth to twin boys and instead of asking the good Lord to bring her husband some peace of mind, Mrs Molloy saved all her prayers that night for Cath and her tiny newborns. It was winter, yet the air was sticky and warm enough to smother both infants in their beds. Cath washed her babies and wrapped them in clean cloths. She buried them alongside Johnnie and little Christopher and the boy who should never have been called Albert. Mrs Molloy stood next to Cath because somebody had to, and Cath’s no-good drunk of a husband still had a week left to serve. Mrs Molloy made a point of telling Edwin all this on the morning they let him out of Perth Gaol. She waited for him at the bottom of the track that led up from the road to Edwin’s house, her arms folded, her face like thunder. ‘Johnnie’s widow’s too good for you, Edwin Salt. Say what you like about my Arthur, but at least he never hit nobody on account of drink. I dunno what set you off, but you make damn sure it don’t happen again or else God forgive me, I’ll throttle you myself.’
Edwin looked around for signs of birth, or death, but the house looked exactly the same as it had a month and a day ago.
‘Oh. You’re back.’ Cath appeared at the door. She had soil on her face and hands. Her dress was shapeless and roomy on her. ‘Sorry I’m late for your homecoming. I’ve been working in the yard.’
Edwin stood up and tried to speak.
‘For the love of God, Edwin, shut your mouth. You trying to catch all the flies in the colony, or just one or two?’ Cath wiped her hands on her dress. ‘Oh, there’s trouble with the well. Smith took a look. Reckons we need another one dug.’ She went back outside and slammed the door.
He dug until his arms hurt more than they’d ever hurt breaking stones in Portland. He dug until the blisters on his hands dissolved into raw flesh. He tore into the black dirt harder than he’d torn into anything in his life. He dug deeper than a grave, than two graves, than all the graves Cath had kneeled by. He dug to the rhythm of her name – Mary Ann, Mary Ann – because no matter who had pardoned him and who had sold him land and who had borne him more children, she would not leave him alone.
He dug until night fell and for hours after. Another shivering summer night in a crooked country where a day’s heat could burn you alive and its darkness could freeze you to death. He continued to dig long after the lamplight up at the house had been dimmed and he could no longer distinguish his house from the blackness that surrounded it. He dug until the shovel hit the cool river that slept underneath his house and his bed and his crooked freedom. He dug until he stood knee-deep in the water that coursed through all his borrowed days. He dug because there was rum in the house for when he finished digging. Rum and a walk to the cathedral and the feel of straw-gold hair against his cheek.