Ard was grateful for the cushioned seat at Constable Griffin’s desk at the police station. But he couldn’t sit up straight. His eyes were blurry, his speech was fuzzy, and each time he blinked the room spun.
James Anderson had waited with him.
‘A blow to the head like that one you copped will keep you out of action for a while, son.’ Constable Griffin sat opposite Ard, tapping his forefinger on the record book open on his desk.
‘What the hell did he hit me with?’ Ard blinked again, then decided to keep his eyes shut.
‘Something heavy, that’s for sure.’ Griffin tapped again. ‘Now, why had you gone to Miss Seymour’s house?’
Ard pried an eye open and stared at Anderson, then back at the constable. ‘I was hoping to make an appointment to call on her.’
‘To call on her for what?’
Griffin rolled his eyes. ‘You haven’t said how you know her.’
‘Known her for years. Knew her when we were kids. All growing up, going to Camp Hill school, same classes …’
‘You’re turning green again, boyo. I—’
‘Might be timely, constable, for me to take him either to the infirmary or to his home.’ Anderson sat forward, but kept his gaze on the policeman.
‘Home,’ Ard croaked. All he wanted was his rawhide pallet and darkness.
Griffin tut-tutted. ‘We haven’t seen Sam Taylor yet.’
Anderson stood up. ‘Constable, if you need a guarantee for Ard O’Rourke, I’ll deposit it.’ He moved his chair back another few feet. ‘Now, let me get the man home. As for Mr Taylor, I’m sure your men will find him in due course.’
Griffin nodded. ‘They will. And I don’t want O’Rourke going anywhere—’
‘If he could walk, constable, that might be an issue.’
‘—until we can get some sense out of him.’
‘My guarantee, I said.’ Anderson stalked around to Ard, gripped his elbow and encouraged him to stand. ‘Up you get.’
‘Sign off when you leave,’ Griffin said.
Ard stood, and once steady on his feet, he followed Anderson out to the front desk.
At the carriage, Ard lost whatever was left in his stomach. Heaving exhausted him, and sweat popped out on his forehead.
As he leaned over the wheel, Anderson patted his back. ‘Hospital.’
‘Mr Anderson, I just want to go home. To sleep.’
He kept his hand on Ard’s shoulder. ‘After a visit to the hospital. If it’s what I think it is, you can’t stay on your own tonight.’
Ard groaned and swallowed down another surge. Anderson helped him up into the carriage, leapt up to the driver’s seat then turned the horse for L Street.
James waited patiently at the telegraph office while the short, bespectacled operator sifted through a few telegrams.
‘Ah yes, here it is.’ Ink-stained fingers held out a crisp fold of paper.
James took it and unfolded it quickly. Arrived safe sound. In situ. Do not worry. CCS.
James’ shoulders relaxed. CeeCee and Linley, with the baby, had found their new home and were settled. He thought for a moment. They’d need money. He’d wire funds into an account CeeCee could withdraw from in Echuca, make the necessary arrangements with the bank here.
First, he would see to Ard O’Rourke. Then he would find a birth registration form. Perhaps there was one at the hospital. There usually was. All the other times he’d needed to register the births of the women in his care, the form was either at the hospital or at the church. After that, the bank.
Then he would pay a visit to Gareth Wilkin.
‘I’m feeling good, Mr Anderson. I can get home all right.’ Ard felt better than he had in the last day or two. A few days lying flat on his back in the hospital had done the world of good. His head was no longer giddy when he moved, and his stomach had settled. He swung his legs to the floor, and waited on the bed for a bit longer before standing.
‘It’s James, and it’s no trouble. Save your strength a bit longer.’
Ard would be glad of the ride home. He needed to get back out there and get water on to the orchard. God knows how long it had been since Liam was there. He should perhaps check at the telegraph office for a reply from his uncle, but he reasoned it would still be too early. Leave that for another day or two. Or three.
‘Thank you.’ He pulled on his strides, tucked his shirt—which had become a nightshirt—into his pants, shrugged into the waistcoat and buttoned up. He nodded at James again. ‘Ready when you are.’
On the road, incessant flies buzzed around. Ard and James were brushing them out of mouth and nose all morning. Ard remembered plenty of hot November days and the flies never sleeping in the sunlight.
‘Straight up this road, past the old diggings,’ he directed, swatting anew. ‘You can drop me at the gate. Not far after that.’
‘Do you have a horse to get yourself around the place?’
‘Only for the fields. I want to get one for myself but they’re expensive.’ Ard stared ahead, the dusty road as familiar to him as the lines on his hands. Only a mile or so, now. Suddenly it meant everything to get back there and check the trees, the water trough, to set fixings for the fire …
He puffed out a breath, his heartbeat wild for a few seconds.
James glanced sideways. ‘Still sore?’
‘Only an ache here and there. Head’s all right.’ He sat quiet a moment. ‘Why you helping me?’
‘Because you know Linley. And she is very important to her aunt. To both of us.’
‘And how is it you know Miss Seymour? Miss CeeCee?’
James chucked the horse some more and the pace picked up. ‘Ah. Miss Cecilia Celeste Seymour.’ He looked ahead, a small smile on his face. ‘Now, that is a story. Miss CeeCee was in the courthouse in Bendigo one day when my father came, a visiting magistrate.’
Ard’s brows rose. Son of a magistrate. He shifted on the seat. Magistrates, policemen and the law were suspicious bedfellows at times. ‘Miss CeeCee was in court?’
James nodded. ‘She was. I’d just walked in to take up my job as a clerk when I heard my father, using his sternest voice, berating some poor individual about the proper protocols for court. I turned to see who the poor man was, only to find a very feminine person with a very outraged voice arguing back.’
Ard glanced at James. ‘Miss Seymour, arguing with a magistrate?’
‘Correct. I know you don’t find it hard to believe.’ He gave a grin.
‘Arguing about what?’
‘As it turns out, about how the law treats womankind. CeeCee had followed some poor beggarly woman into court. She’d been dragged from gaol pending a hearing as to her behaviour in the street weeks before.’
Ard guessed at the behaviour. ‘She was working on the street.’
James lifted his shoulders. ‘I don’t make assumptions any longer. In the work CeeCee and I do, I have seen such great anomalies in the law’s treatment of females that I refuse to let the law cloud my judgment.’ He turned and looked at Ard. ‘If you follow me.’
‘And Miss CeeCee and your father?’
‘My father shut her down, citing contempt, and ordered that she be escorted from the room. He also ordered his clerk—that was me—to sit with her in the corridor outside and await his further instructions.’ James gee-upped past the old diggings. ‘I introduced myself to a very prickly woman, who was still berating the legal system for its imperfections.’
‘How long ago?’
‘Twenty years. Perhaps a little longer. And she’s still berating the system.’ James slowed near a gate attached to a post by a rope. ‘Is this it?’
‘Next one, maybe a mile along.’ Ard pointed further down the road.
The horse and carriage resumed a steady pace.
‘You said about the work you and Miss CeeCee do. I didn’t know she worked. I thought she was a lady who brought up her niece, that she had some means of her own.’
‘She is, she does, and her niece is the reason for her passion and her ire. More like, truth to tell, the treatment CeeCee’s sister Eliza received at the hands of her husband.’
Ard glanced at James who’d fallen silent as he negotiated the last mile before the turn-off. ‘Eliza. Linley never mentioned her mother by name.’
James’ mouth was a grim line. ‘She was beaten and close to death at the hands of her husband when Linley was only a baby. CeeCee took in her sister and the baby, only to have her sister die of her injuries some months later.’
Ard stared out into the brown and wasted paddocks, then back to James. ‘And the husband?’
‘He was apprehended. Not dealt with properly in my opinion, and CeeCee’s, of course. When he was released, he went to where CeeCee lived and threatened her. Then he disappeared. Never heard of again.’ James clicked the reins. ‘CeeCee badly missed her sister, felt she hadn’t ever done enough. So she declared it her business to defend the rights of women who have been beaten and left destitute by their husbands or their families, or by the law.’
Ard shifted uncomfortably. ‘A few men beat their wives, I know.’
James glanced over, a wry twist on his mouth. ‘There’s a line of thought that asserts it’s a man’s right. But by the laws of Great Britain, it is not. I heard one man in Melbourne was not dealt with properly until after he’d beaten his wife on twelve separate occasions.’
‘Twelve?’ Ard’s father had never laid a finger on his mother. His father might not survive it if he ever tried. Not that he would.
James continued, nodding. ‘We condemn it, but have no success deterring it because we turn a blind eye to it,’ he scoffed. ‘A woman-beater is a coward. What does that make the rest of us ignoring that it happens? And it rarely receives the punishment the crime deserves.’
Ard had given it no thought before now. What was the fate of those women who befell a heavy hand, or lost their place in their home?
‘Unless the women have sympathetic families,’ said James, ‘they are very nearly always condemned to the streets on a perpetual wheel of misfortune. Most often returned after their time in gaol to the men who put them out in the first place.’
‘But a woman cannot possibly survive on her own without a man to—’
James cut him short. ‘Not lawfully, anyway. Even if she does, on only the presumption she is surviving unlawfully, she will meet the wrath of the law. And her children are awarded to the husband, who most probably bashes them too. Sometimes they’re awarded to the state. And I don’t know which is worse.’ He clicked the reins. ‘I’ve seen it all.’
Ard’s head was foggy. ‘This is a whole different world for me. So how was CeeCee able to—’
‘Independence, by way of her father’s diligence. It seemed he had secreted his wealth earned on the gold fields and had taught his eldest child, Cecilia Celeste, to be wise and frugal.’
Ard waved his hand towards an upcoming gate and James slowed the horse to make a turn. ‘That the law even allows her to carry on this work—’
‘Indeed. The law, and society.’ James tilted his head.
‘And afterwards, did you continue in law?’
‘I did, for a while. Now, I no longer practise.’ He glanced at Ard. ‘I had to spend some long years helping to build the railway to Swan Hill.’
Ard looked sideways at James.
‘Let’s say I took the law into my own hands at one point and uh, needed a distraction from my indiscretion.’ Anderson stretched his fingers holding the reins.
Ard noted the knotted knuckles. A bent ring finger.
James continued. ‘But back to the main tale. I was enamoured of CeeCee from that very first meeting and I championed her with my knowledge of law, and still do. My father and mother in Melbourne are also her champions, though from a discreet distance. She has bought herself respectability. It’s the only way at present. Society is very slow to advance and the law is even slower.’
‘Your parents must be very …’ Ard couldn’t find the right words. ‘New world, new order?’
James looked at Ard with a glint in his eye. ‘If you knew my mother.’
Ard’s laugh burst out. ‘And mine. My father credits her with my upbringing, me and my sister.’
‘She’s done a good job. You are well spoken, Ard.’
‘I have my letters. I went to school, but mostly I read and write thanks to my ma.’
‘Ah, education. CeeCee believes therein lies the answer to all this.’ James nodded at Ard. ‘But I don’t know. How do you educate thugs? I think there is only one way.’
Ard felt he was in over his head. He needed time to sift through this new knowledge, this advancing of ideas.
James went on. ‘My mother is all for the vote for women.’
‘Mine, too,’ Ard said. ‘But my father draws the line at them entering the parliament.’
James scoffed. ‘Not frightened he’ll lose his privileges like some would think?’
Ard was startled by that. ‘Not by a long shot. He reckons women wouldn’t stoop to entering parliament. And either way, he says, “if a man has to go fishing, a man has to go fishing. Ain’t no one going to stop me”. Don’t reckon he was bothered by losing any privileges.’
‘He might be right. Women will vote in South Australia next election. I don’t see any mention there of fishing coming to a halt.’
Ard laughed at that. ‘My mother, she casts a line herself.’
‘Aha!’ James looked at Ard. ‘Interesting we met, don’t you think? Interesting our folk think alike.’
Ard wondered about that. Clearly, James Anderson’s family’s circumstances were vastly different to his own, yet here they were, relating similar ideals.
The horse and carriage had taken a full turn and now faced back the way it had come.
Ard pointed at the stone cottage to the left in the near distance. ‘Home.’ He held out his hand and James gripped it. ‘Thank you. If I was able to offer hospitality, I would. I’ve naught but water from the channel well.’ He dusted himself off and felt a rush of heat burn his face.
I have naught but water …
James tugged on the reins and turned the horse through the gate. ‘Sounds good to me on this fine morning. Let me see what enterprise you have here.’