The next day they moored at Sydney. The bobbing fishing boats in the harbor reminded Tom of the Scottish ports he had visited. Here, though, the buildings were made of wood rather than stone. He could see timber yards and new buildings being constructed. There was a throbbing life here. It seemed like a place that could swallow up newcomers and not care about where they came from. Tom approached the sailor who was securing the gangplank and asked him to fetch his trunk.
“Can’t do that, sir. You need to speak to the captain first.”
“Why?”
“Quarantine, sir. All those that get off the boat have to wait in sheds on the quay. Get looked over for the fever.”
No chance of melting away, after all.
“It’s usually only steerage passengers who leave here,” Captain Searle said, looking hard at Tom. “But you and the boy haven’t been with them. The ship’s doctor can look at you and give you a pass.”
So Tom was forced to stay on deck, fighting the urge to run while the steerage passengers disembarked. The children scurried ahead, their parents staggering behind them. Weighted down with bundles, their haggard faces were limp with relief to be ashore. They were scooped up by waiting officials and herded away. The doctor arrived. Tom noticed the drops of sweat on the man’s brow as he peered into his mouth. After doing the same to Iain he pronounced them both to be healthy. Yet another wait while his trunk was brought up from the hold.
“Have a jar or two for us.”
Tom turned to see the tall Irishman who had shared his cabin. He laughed but didn’t stop to talk because there at last was his trunk, on the back of a sailor clattering down the gangplank. Anxious about his new camera getting jolted, Tom hurried after him. As he did so he felt a sudden tug on his arm. Iain was pulling him back. “What the devil …” But then he saw that the boy’s face had turned deathly white. As the sailor lowered the trunk to the ground, Tom groaned. It was the deckhand he had caught pulling Iain out of the lifeboat.
“Stay still.”
He braced himself and pushed the lad behind him as the sailor turned to look. Surely the ruffian wouldn’t dare to cause any trouble with all these witnesses about? But the crowd was melting away like damp snowflakes. The sailor grinned, exposing rotting stumps of teeth,
“We’re quits now, ain’t we? You held on to me legs in the storm.”
“So I did. I didn’t stop at the time to see your face.”
The man threw his head back and cackled with laughter. Well. That’s one enemy less to worry about. Maybe that’s a good omen for my new life in Canada, Tom thought as he shouldered the trunk. His task now was to find some sort of lodging. He paced along the main street of clapboard houses with Iain trailing behind him.
“Try Widow MacKenzie,” he was told by a passerby. Surely it couldn’t be the same person? Tom squeezed through the door of a small shop stuffed full with barrels of dried goods, heaped-up tools and sacks of seed. The owner bustled in as the doorbell jangled. It wasn’t her of course, but a short, round woman with busy eyes. Her voice was different too. Just a few tatters left of a Scottish accent. Tom breathed again.
“Aye, I’ve a small room upstairs that would do you and the lad. There’s my husband’s old workshop you could have too, if you give it a lick of paint. You’d take your meals with us, all included.”
Tom nodded. It would do for the time being. He gave the smaller bags to Iain and heaved his trunk up the ladder to the first floor. Mrs. MacKenzie hovered in the doorway of the clean but bare bedroom until he said he needed to rest. Even then he had to almost push her out. The evening meal was a big bowl of fish stew. He and Iain fell on it, famished after their weeks of mouldering oatcakes and salted meat.
“Here’s my family. Eliza’s just had her twentieth birthday. Helen’s my youngest,” Mrs. MacKenzie presented them as if they were part of the menu. “And Rab, of course, my firstborn. I’ve had to be both mother and father to them since their papa died,” she sniffed. “I never expected life would be so hard in a new country. Still the girls will have an easier time of it when they get married.”
Her eyes stopped their constant flickering and fixed on Tom’s face. Eliza simpered while her sister blushed and their brother grunted. Oh dear, she’s as bad as Mrs. Bennett, determined to marry them off, Tom thought. Both of them are penny plain too, with their broad hips and moon faces, younger versions of their mother. Rab though was a sturdy lad, with a firm jaw. Maybe he took after his father. Tom envied Iain whose youth and lack of English meant that he could concentrate on eating his way through the tasty food without having to talk. Tom meanwhile faced a fusillade of questions at that meal and every time afterward when he ventured downstairs.
“I hear tell that you saved the lives of everyone on board,” she announced the next morning at breakfast, nodding in excitement so that her double chin jiggled.
“That’s not true at all,” Tom replied, keeping his voice light.
She tapped the side of her nose. “Surely you know you can’t keep any secrets here, just like back home. I heard you were a hero.” She surveyed his long frame, sitting stiff and uneasy. “A brave sailor, they said.”
Tom munched on his bacon while he ransacked his memory for the stories the captain used to tell about his early life. If only I had listened to his ramblings, he thought. I need to borrow them now.
“No, not a proper sailor although I was raised near the sea. I learned about boats from an old fisherman when I was a boy. But I never went to sea to earn my living. I was a shipping clerk in Liverpool.”
She kept nodding but her smile slipped a little. “What will you do in Canada?”
“Buy a farm but that’s not all. I’ve brought something very novel with me. I’ll show you.”
They waited until he came back with a wooden box. Mother and daughters gawped at him while he unstrapped it.
“Have you seen one of these before? I brought it across the Atlantic, the finest camera I could buy. Photography is all the rage now.”
They all ooed and ahhed in a satisfactory way.
“I’m sure your camera is very fashionable but I’d prefer a proper portrait. Would you draw a likeness of me?” Eliza pouted.
Tom smiled tightly, thinking that she was barely worth the effort of a photograph, let alone a portrait. He would prefer to paint Rab’s rugged features.
“I would be honored to do so, but my first task is to buy some land,” he said.
“Aye. You’ll need to be settled before the winter,” said Mrs. MacKenzie. “You’ve never seen a Canadian winter? It’s colder than you would ever believe.”
“Iain can give me a hand. And maybe you would like to earn some money helping me?” Tom asked Rab.
The young man shrugged. “There’s not much left now. All the good land’s been taken. If folk sell up, it’s to people they know.”
Was that a hint of malice in his eyes? Tom squared his shoulders. “We’ll have to see what we can find.”
So he hired a horse, swung Iain up onto the saddle in front of him and set off to explore the countryside. He asked advice from everyone they met and found to his surprise that the boy was very useful. Now that he was clean and well fed, the urchin had become a handsome lad with delicate features and wistful eyes. He charmed people, especially middle-aged women. His hesitant English only increased his appeal. So he smoothed the way for Tom, translating the Gaelic spoken by people outside the town and making Tom seem less of an outsider. But after two weeks of riding out in ever wider circles, they had found no land for sale. One evening, sweating, saddle sore and scourged by mosquitoes they were riding along the northern shore of Bras d’Or Lake, near the settlement of Wagamatcook. Dispirited they stumbled off the horse’s back and set about making a camp on the shore.
“I’m sure our luck will turn,” Tom said, trying to cheer himself up as well as Iain. “Look at this lovely sea loch here and the hills on the other shore. Not so different from home.”
“I don’t like those dark woods behind us.” Iain pointed at the ranks of birch, maple, and larch. “Who knows what beasts are hiding there?”
When they rose the next day, Tom affected a heartiness he didn’t feel as he heated up some porridge on the still glowing campfire. “Well at least no bears came to eat us in the night. There is another living creature though. Isn’t that a man I can see coming this way, with a fishing rod?” Tom greeted the stranger as he drew closer and with Iain’s help asked his usual questions about farms for sale. To his astonishment Mr. MacLelland gave a wary nod of his head, shouldered his rod, and led them to his farm. Iain talked to him with more excitement than he had ever shown before. Tom couldn’t follow much of their quick-fire Gaelic; so he concentrated on inspecting the farm. Most of it was pasture with healthy looking beasts and hay meadows. A patch of the original forest remained alongside a fast-flowing stream and there was an orchard of apple trees and sugar maples. Seventy acres altogether, with a solid one and a half story house of squared logs. After their tour Mr. MacLelland, a hardy-looking man in his sixties tapped Tom on the chest. “I’m willing to sell to you,” he said, in careful English. Both men turned to Iain for him to translate in detail.
“Why has he agreed to sell to a stranger?”
The boy’s face was solemn. “I told him you’re a good man, a hero for saving the ship and a saint for adopting me.” He paused and grinned. “That’s only a wee bit of the reason. His parents are from Skye, like mine, and he would prefer his farm went to a sgitheanach and a sasannach rather than some odd fellow from Lewis or Barra. His second cousin would like to buy it, but he’s a miser and a drunkard who won’t offer a fair price.”
“Ah, I see. And what would Mr. MacLelland call a fair price?”
“The cousin offered £150, but it’s worth £200.”
“Hmm.” Tom suspected he was being tricked. £200 was a great deal of money and it would use up most of what Mr. Armstrong had given him to start his new life. But what choice did he have? He had to escape from living with the MacKenzies even if he still rented a studio from them. The farm would mean he and Iain wouldn’t starve. The boy was more animated than he had ever seen him, his eyes pleading for Tom to agree. But then he was a Gael, rooted to the land. This land might be in another country, but Iain wanted to burrow down deep into its red soil.
“£200 it is,” he said, shaking Mr. MacLelland’s hand.