5

SATURDAY, CHRISTMAS EVE

FOUR DAYS BEFORE THE MURDER

ONE STOMP OF A boot crushed the skull to splinters, and so was eliminated the last identifiable remains of dog. David Rose scraped the skeleton’s disjointed, naked bones into an anonymous jumble among the ash, and sat on his stump to load a pipe. He felt easy, though he’d found no work yesterday, and had no particular drive to look for any today. What he did have was a belly full from another free counter lunch. Dinner had been secured, too. He hadn’t quite managed to talk a forequarter of mutton out of the butcher in Albert Street, but a story of hardship and an appeal to old Gelliner’s Christian charity had netted him three sausages. No, he’d decided, with tomorrow being Christmas Day, the Wombat Park Boxing Day picnic everyone talked about would be the place and time to find work. He’d be sure to get a good feed there, too, most like. Till then, he’d rest up, keep his own company. Maybe even wash some shirts, if the mood took him.

He sucked on the mouthpiece and drew the smoke deep. He closed his eyes and raised his face to the afternoon sun, its kick mitigated by thin eucalypt foliage nodding in a benevolent breeze. A magpie warbled there, and distant voices drifted in and out on the shifting air. He opened his eyes and beheld the world at his feet: men toiling at the Trafalgar Mine way below, a woman hanging a sheet, a horse turning a Chilean mill. And here he was, David Rose, the burglar from Blakeney, thirty-four years of age, fed, feet up on his stump and smoking a pipe, would you believe! He had such sweet moments from time to time, and was very glad of them, for they reminded him of his good fortune, scant though it was. But he was a free man, with a full belly, and tobacco in his pipe. What else could he want? He looked across the hill to the cottage. She was there, in the yard, singing while she washed clothes in a bucket. He emptied his pipe, stood, and walked towards her.

IN THE CHANGING SHADOWS one hundred and fifty feet below, a man had to mind his head walking along the tunnel to reach the head of the lead.

‘No place for the tall man, George,’ Aitken observed from ahead as he ducked beneath an irregularity of basalt in the ceiling. ‘None for the short either,’ he added with a chuckle once the constriction had been negotiated.

‘Or the fat,’ George added, for want of something else. He preferred to say little — he found reverberations of voice and sloshing water through flickering light and dark disorientating.

‘No, they’re all at Bleackley’s, getting drunk on the profits of our hard graft.’

George let the remark pass. He’d heard it all before from Aitken: the resentment, the jealousy. It was childish; there was no law that said he had to be down here, no gun at his head.

They’d reached the lead, the compressed remains of an ancient river where gold lay for the taking. They fixed their lamps to the shoring.

‘You must feel like a pig in shit, married,’ Aitken said.

George Stuart grasped a boring rod, ready to hold up for his mate to drive it into the seam with a hammer blow.

‘To her, I mean, a bloke like you. I mean, she’s a very good-looking woman, your wife, and young. She could be the wife of a gentleman. Instead, she’s with you. I don’t mean no offence by that, understand, George. I’m just saying, that’s all. I mean, good luck to you.’

MAGGIE WIPED DOWN THE table with a damp rag. With the afternoon light reaching across it from the window, she could see she’d done a good job. She smiled at her work, because she loved keeping house, and it very much pleased her to please her husband. And tomorrow was Christmas Day, and they would be hosting two of George’s workmates for tea and scones. Later, Mr and Mrs Homberg from the Argus would be their dinner guests. Nothing fancy — sausages and salad, and pleasant conversation with her favourite former employer. This was how she had hoped married life would be, and the anticipation of a lovely day was a joy to savour. But for now there was washing to be done.

Bless George, she thought, filling the butt for her earlier in the day — this was no easy job, loading two buckets at a time and walking a hundred yards to and back from the shaft. Now, as a dutiful wife, she would carry out her side of the enterprise. She filled her wash bucket and, with soap in hand, sat on the threshold and worked up a lather. First in was George’s shirt. She squeezed and rubbed, and in the shade of the doorway began to sing softly to herself.

Maggie wasn’t aware that she was being watched, and when she saw that she was, knew that the man from the tent hadn’t just arrived there on the road frontage. His stance was too square, his carriage too settled, to have been just walking by. No, he’d been there a minute or more, she was sure of it. She stood in the open doorway, with a wet petticoat dripping from her hand.

‘You live here?’ he said.

Maggie nodded.

He seemed unsure of himself, holding his large hat over his waist and rotating it by the brim. Maggie stooped to collect her bucket.

He stepped forward a few paces, ostensibly to let a dray go by. He pointed. ‘I’ll be camping across there … till the Christmas holidays are over.’

Maggie’s fingers flexed around the bucket handle. She stepped back, and felt for the door.

‘Well, good evening to you, Missus,’ the man said.

‘Good evening,’ Maggie said.

She nodded, closed the door, and locked it.

CANDLE-HOLDERS, ASH PANS, AND household containers from tea caddies to flour bins were typical of the assortment of items manufactured, and repaired, by Cockney tinsmith Joe Latham in the shed at the rear of his residence in Bridport Street. In all practical regards this address was an undeniable improvement on his last, the tiny cottage he’d built in Albert Street for his family and business. In fact, with one child from his wife’s first marriage and eight since, the move was a necessity. Though he had been the builder, in Latham’s head there was no fond nostalgia for the old place, no dreamy musing or cherished memories of humbler beginnings. There was only a deep loathing, such as he might have for a lover who’d wronged him. The simple two-roomed wooden abode, with its makeshift chimney, rough-hewn weatherboards and shingles, one door, two windows, all put together by his own hand, had become for Joe Latham a monument to betrayal, for now it was the place where Maggie and George Stuart lived.

Late that afternoon, Alice returned from town to find Joe at home making repairs to a chair. With her were four of their girls: Maggie’s half-sisters. In expectation that Maggie might accept her invitation after all, Alice was made anxious seeing him still there.

‘Aren’t you going out drinking at the Union?’ she said.

Joe looked up from his work. He was a short man, broad and muscular, with sandy hair and eyes that were blue from the scantest pigmentation. They lent him a menacing mien, which he was not loath to exploit.

‘In good time,’ he said, in a practised tone that let it be known that he considered himself the master of his own life.

Alice was just as practised at ignoring the implication.

‘Of course, Joe. Only let me know when you might be home for dinner.’ She smiled and went inside. Joe followed, hammer in hand.

‘I won’t have her in this house, you hear me?’ He didn’t shout the words, which for Alice didn’t make them any the less tiresome.

The girls were by their mother, watching their father as sheep watch a dog. Alice motioned for them to go outside.

She turned to her husband. As usual, she would hear him out, so as not to provoke.

‘Margaret defied me,’ he said. ‘If she don’t respect the rules of the house, she’s got no place in it. Simple.’

‘Why are you still tellin’ me this, Joe? I know this is how you think —’

‘Because, woman, I don’t think you give me the support a wife should give her husband. I turn my back, and she’ll be here, laughin’ at me. Both of you, most like. Well, I won’t have it, you hear me?’

‘I think you need to calm yourself, Joe. All them angry words do you no good —’

‘You went behind my back, you did, Alice, givin’ permission for a marriage that should never be.’

‘I did what I thought was right, for my daughter, for all of us. And now she’s happy. Don’t you want her to be happy, Joe? And please, Joe, would you put that hammer down?’

Joe glared at her a moment, and began to leave the room. At the door, he turned and said, ‘George Stuart is no man for Maggie. He’s twenty years older, whatever he says; soon enough she’ll be alone, with no means of support. How fuckin’ happy will she be then?’

He turned and kicked open the door; he was going back to work.

‘More happy than stayin’ here,’ Alice muttered as she turned her back and began to unload her basket. For heaven’s sake, she thought, the wedding is five weeks past. And to support her husband, she hadn’t even attended it. To think of it, having to miss her own daughter’s wedd —

Her wrist was suddenly up by her ear, and she was being swung in close. Joe’s eyes and nostrils flared. She flinched from his breath, and braced herself for whatever she had coming.

CAN YOU BELIEVE IT, Sarah Spinks fornicating with Angus Miller all Christmas Eve! Yes, and her with six children and a husband, such a good man he is.

Sarah could hear the gossip. When blissful thoughts should be stirring her mind on this walk home, imagined conversation drove them out. Well, they can all be damned, she thought. What business is it of theirs? They know nothing! She and Edward had not been matrimonial in a year or more, not since the mine accident. Who would know that two days alone in the dark under collapsed rock could so change a husband? Well, it changed hers. Edward had turned anxious, he jumped at shadows, was feverish in thought, quick to temper. He wasn’t the husband, let alone the man, she’d wed. Who knows the mind of a woman in her place? Who knows that her love could evaporate as fast as a summer puddle? She hadn’t deserted him, and never her children. It’s just that there was Angus now, for the manly company, and where was the harm in that, she kept asking herself.

She passed by the Stuarts’ house and began down the Perrins Street hill. It was six o’clock, and she ought to have been home an hour ago. Edward would be there from the mine — they all said what a good worker he must be for Roman Eagle to keep him on up top, since he would no longer go below — and the children would be circling for dinner. And thus, with every step closer to home, she felt the weight of the everyday increase.

The sun was still strong in the west, and she paused a moment to lift her face to it. She closed her eyes and reminded herself that it had been a grand afternoon, and ought not be spoilt by guilty thought …

She heard their happy squeals before she saw her children. Across the hill they were, all six of them: Anna holding the baby, the others spearing sticks into a fire and shrieking at the spitting sparks. There was a man sitting there, too. He could have been the man she’d seen these past few days on her way into town. She began walking across the rough ground of debris and stumps of the bygone forest. She drew close and saw that it was him, with his imitation sealskin coat and high-domed hat; the man who had given the children sweets. Had she not told Anna that strangers offering treats were not to be trusted! And didn’t Anna know that a fire was not for playing with, and in the summer dry, too!

She reached the children, and their mood became at once respectfully subdued. She took the baby from Anna and admonished her eldest with a look.

David Rose twisted at the waist and looked up.

‘Good evening,’ he said.

‘Good evening.’ She hesitated a moment. This man was polite enough, but so brutish. His face was thick-boned, thick-whiskered, and with eyes dark and deep-set. What was she to make of such a man keeping company with young children? Her young children?

He tapped his hat rim, nodded, and turned away. Quickly, Sarah marshalled her brood and left him alone.