Linley was very happy. It was an absolute boon to have a walking carriage for Toby.
Mrs Rutherford straightened and pressed a hand to her back. ‘That’s as best we can come up with. Belonged to one poor dear … Never mind that. It’ll be fit for your son, Mrs O’Rourke. We just need someone to come along and tighten a few pins and things.’
Mrs Cooke stood back. ‘Seen better.’ Hands on hips and her wiry froth of rusty hair whipping about her face in the stiff breeze, she eyed the baby carriage. ‘Seen worse.’
Linley looked it over. A tired old contraption that needed a fair bit of repair. The three women had walked it up and down the street, to and fro out the front of the house, checking for any instability. There hadn’t appeared to be any; it just looked as if there might have been.
‘I reckon if you have a spare old blanket or two for underneath, he’ll be very comfortable.’ Mrs Rutherford scrutinised the carriage itself.
‘Could do with a scrub up as well,’ Mrs Cooke said.
Annie Rutherford glared across the pram. ‘Is that right?’
‘And some oil for them wheels.’
‘We’ll likely have to do it ourselves, so we should set about it.’ Mrs Rutherford winced as she stood up.
Linley had a flash of fear in case the woman was beginning to feel poorly. ‘Is something ailing you, Mrs Rutherford?’
‘Good heavens, no. A chill is all.’ She rolled her shoulders. ‘It eases with work.’ She gave the pram another push and pull. ‘Now, if you run home and find some extra padding for the base, we should be able to put Toby in for the walk back this afternoon.’
Now, much later, Linley strolled up High Street pushing the perambulator with a snug Toby O’Rourke tucked inside. The street was busy. Pedestrians, carriages and horseback riders populated the wide road. Most people she passed nodded at her, gentlemen tipped their hats.
She pushed on towards the river, not wanting to go home just yet. She didn’t want to idle along for she had little interest in the shops, or the banks, and had no business with the survey office. There’d been nothing at the telegraph office for CeeCee from James. Mrs Rutherford had fed Toby. Back home there was a plentiful supply of tinned milk for his next feed when they returned, so time was at her disposal.
Well, a couple of hours at best. That would be enough. Her mind was on the docks. She wanted to see the boats, fancied she could smell the river not far ahead.
Hesitating at Leslie Street, she knew a right turn would get her to the wharf area. A carriage clip-clopped past her, the driver nodding in her direction, and once past, she stepped onto the road. Compacted dirt underfoot eased the push of the perambulator, yet all the same the carriage rattled and clattered across the road. Toby gave a few squawks but settled back to sleep, a faint frown of discontent on his face.
Linley stood at the corner in front of Customs House and looked across the road to the tall trees that lined the river on the other side. From her vantage point all she could see were the sheds and the cranes on this side, sitting on the wharf above the river level. Men issued shouted orders far away, and carriages and riders passed her by. She heard an engine idle somewhere, but she couldn’t pinpoint where on the river it might be.
She crossed the road to stand at the edge of the wharf area and stared wide-eyed at what spread before her. The wharf was huge, much bigger and longer than she expected. A great expanse of heavy timbers rising out of the mud-coloured water. The level was low, lapping fully ten yards below where she stood. She edged closer, pushing the pram carefully, hoping not to awaken the baby.
Toby snuffled and let out a yell. Linley leaned over the carriage to check him, but he was soundly asleep. She drew her shawl up over the opening so he was protected from the sun as he slept.
Horse and buggy passed behind her. She turned and followed its progress until it pulled up a little further along the road. The driver dismounted, and tied the horse to a rail. Something familiar about him caught her eye—
‘Missus, you’re likely to get mown down if you stand around here.’ An impatient voice rasped at her back.
Startled, Linley spun the other way and a working man, by the looks of his clothes, stood with a battered hat twisted in his hands, his gaze on her face.
‘Am I not meant to be here?’ she asked. ‘It seems a public thoroughfare.’
‘Not that so much as it could get busy, what with traders and merchants and shearers and the like all milling about, unloading and such things.’ He kept wringing the hat with his large, gnarled hands. His shirt was dirty with dust and sweat and oil stains, his pants held up with braces, his worn boots muddied.
‘I’ll be all right,’ she said, though she gripped the handrail on the baby carriage more tightly. He peered at her and she backed up a step. ‘I just wanted to see the boats.’ She waved over her shoulder towards the river.
He looked over and back again. ‘Not too many to see right now. We got the Hero in, the Pilot and her barge. They’re at the dock master’s over yonder side. Sweet Georgie’s just unloaded waitin’ fer her captain. Fact is, that’ll be him just there.’ He lifted his chin towards the dismounted carriage driver. ‘See?’
Linley glanced around but the rider was on the other side of his horse. Only his legs were in view as he hunted for something in the saddle bags.
‘So, no sightseeing. It’s all work around here, no room for spectators. You should get along now.’
‘Oh. But I won’t be …’ She was about to stand her ground when a team of horses pulling a heavy dray and carrying a dozen or so men rounded into the street from where she’d come.
‘Get along, now, missus,’ the man said. ‘The boys will offload here.’ He waved his hat at where she stood.
It was a legitimate reason for her to clear the area, albeit somewhat gruff. She pushed the perambulator back over the road and onto the corner. In front of the wharf master’s buildings she turned to watch.
The dray pulled in where the man had indicated and the workers clambered off it to disappear over the boards and down, she believed, to the dock area below. They shouted and laughed, strode or slouched, all in a uniform of pale shirts, buttoned trousers, braces and sturdy boots. One or two doffed their caps in her direction as they went.
How she wished she could get to the docks. Perhaps another day, without Toby, she would visit. She could walk at her leisure, explore without putting herself in the way of working men going about their business. On foot, and with no baby with her, she could get down to the water’s edge and watch from a distance.
Her gaze drifted. The carriage driver from before caught her eye again.
Her heart leapt in her throat. ‘Ard!’ His name came out of her mouth as a croak, the shock of seeing him left her almost speechless. He hadn’t heard her. Hadn’t seen her.
Her chest felt tight. Too many thoughts raced in her head, crowding out the sense and spinning with the nonsense.
It was him, wasn’t it? That black hair, the set of his jaw …
Should she stay and confront him here on the street—this busy street with men coming and going? She rubbed her hands together, lacing her fingers, as she paced past the pram a little way, then back again. She glanced at the shawl over the baby; he couldn’t be seen. Her heart pounded, her hands wrung on the carriage’s rail, her feet planted her where she stood.
The man walked around the horse’s rump, his hand gliding over the broad flank. He checked the harness on this side, intent on his business and oblivious to her.
Of course he hadn’t seen her. She was twenty or thirty yards away, and now he had his back to her. But was that him? If so, he was leaner than she remembered. He looked taller. She hadn’t seen Ard O’Rourke for many months. He might have lost weight working at Renmark …
She blinked hard. Her breath ached in her throat and tears threatened to erupt, but still she stood on the spot, clutching the pram with all her strength.
What was he doing here?
His hat didn’t look right. She stared. Stared hard. She squeezed her eyes closed and open, trying desperately to see his face more clearly.
Definitely Ard O’Rourke, how would she ever mistake him?
Then a female voice caught the man’s attention and he looked up sharply. A woman, her hair as black as the man’s, hung in a thick long plait down her back. As Linley gaped at her, she burned anew. The woman was with child. She could see quite clearly the proud bulge that was her pregnancy. She walked steadily towards the man and lifted her face for his kiss.
Ard!
Linley’s heart groaned, sank. Her knees threatened to give way. ‘Ard,’ she finally said, she thought in a whisper.
Both the man and woman looked in her direction and she froze anew, aghast that she might have been heard. She dragged the pram backwards. Bumped it carelessly over the ruts and the exposed cobbles of the road. When she looked back, the laughing face was Ard’s.
But not Ard’s.
What is wrong with me? It is Ard O’Rourke. With a woman who’s with child. Kissing her, laughing with her.
But it couldn’t be Ard.
Linley dared not look back. She took a wide turn with the pram to face it the other way and stumbled, and the carriage faltered with her. Toby let out an indignant yell, the type that heralded a screaming episode. She tried to hush-hush him. She scurried away from the man who was his father, all the while hoping she could get home without having a screaming episode herself.
Toby would not quieten. With every bump in the road, his squalls grew louder and more agitated. His little screwed-up face had reddened and his eyes squeezed shut.
No no no, don’t do this now, Toby-boy. Let me get you home before we both have a complete tantrum.
She hurried down the street, not thinking to turn back to find High Street again.
Toby bellowed up at her. Deep inside her gut, the gnawing need to stop, to pick him up and hush him was … The squalling was almost too much, but her legs just wouldn’t slow down.
A street corner … She turned right, as much to hopefully get back to High Street and to find her way home from there, as it was to get out of sight. The baby carriage wobbled, jumped in her hands, and Toby hit the high notes. Her ears rang.
‘Hush, hush,’ she crooned raggedly and realised tears ran over her cheeks. She barrelled down the little street, wondering where on earth she was. Surely High Street crossed it at the end … It seemed to be going in the wrong direction.
She passed buildings on either side of the road, but paid no great attention. Outside one, a woman, stooped over to pick something up from the weeds, stood up and stared at her.
Linley barely noticed until the woman shouted at her. ‘You want to keep that one quiet around here, missy. We got gemp-mums coming.’
Linley nodded, ducked her head closer to Toby and tried desperately to calm him down with more hushes. He stopped his rage for a second, took one big-eyed look at her crumpled face and then bellowed afresh. She sucked in a breath and kept moving.
There it was. The street she hoped to find. Now that she had her bearings, she needed to turn left and as she did she nearly ran the baby carriage into a stout, fierce-looking matron on the same footpath.
‘Young woman!’ The affronted lady drew herself up imperiously.
Her severely parted head of hair was dragged back to the nape of her neck. She had a look of old Queen Victoria about her, a hooked nose, beady little eyes and fat cheeks, as though she kept her spare dinner tucked away in there.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Linley began, sucking in air, trying not to snivel.
The accusation stopped Linley mid-sob. She stared at the older woman but couldn’t place her.
‘You visit that despicable house where those two creatures pretending to be married women live with their brats.’
Linley had no clue who this woman was. ‘What house?’
‘And that would be right, you coming out of that street,’ she said and flicked a sneer at the street out of which Linley had just emerged.
The baby’s screeching had reached crescendo. He now waved his clenched fists in the air, outraged.
The woman peered into the pram. ‘Another brat without a father, is it? You’re shameful.’ The woman held herself taller and swept around Linley to carry on, thankfully in the opposite direction to Linley.
Shaking and tearful after sighting Ard O’Rourke, heart wrenched over the inconsolable Toby O’Rourke, and slighted by a stranger in broad daylight, Linley burst into fresh sobs herself and hurried back down High Street.
CeeCee tested her stride again down the narrow hallway of the little house.
Linley had headed off to Mrs Rutherford’s, so as soon as she felt up to it, CeeCee had taken a few steps to check her stamina. It didn’t take many before her side would ache and her breath would shorten. She’d shuffled along the wall with her eye on the doorway to the little sitting room. At least in there was a chair by the window into which she could collapse.
Linley had pulled a face when she’d seen CeeCee’s bruises earlier. ‘They’re turning quickly, Aunty. You’re green around your cheek and faded purple further down. At least your eye looks almost normal.’
‘I wish I had a mirror.’
‘I’m glad you haven’t.’
Linley had helped her bathe her face, and stood by as CeeCee took care of the rest of her ablutions over a shallow basin. Then she’d helped her dress.
‘At least I feel human in my street clothes.’ CeeCee patted down her rumpled skirt. ‘But I will be happier to get this one washed and be outfitted in a new one.’
Linley wouldn’t be too far away now. Hopefully with news from James with her.
Oh, how many days before I’m feeling normal again?
She made it to the chair by the window and sank gratefully into it. Inhaling as deeply as was possible, she closed her eyes, the squelchy feeling in her blackened eye almost gone.
Of all the rotten things. Being beaten upon by a man, the very likes of whom she’d struggled most of her adult life to avoid. At least she’d stepped in between him and Linley and the baby. A small price to pay, after all. The baby was safe from a life such as his stepfather would damn him to, and for that CeeCee was glad she had taken the brunt of his attack.
She held up her hands. The shaking was there, again. She clenched and unclenched them, and concentrated on stilling the tremors. This was what remained with all who had encountered violence … a physical memory of it. As if it were embedded in the victim somehow.
CeeCee shuddered, remembered her own sister’s face from so many, many years ago. Great with child, with Linley, and crawling towards her big sister begging for help …
Eliza had died of internal bleeding, and CeeCee had snatched her newborn niece and run from the sick bed as fast as she could to hide them both away. But her brother-in-law had found them, threatened them and then left, swearing he’d be back for his kid. She’d never heard from him again. She used to think she would kill him with her bare hands if he ever showed his face. But she knew, now, he never would.
And now she had become a victim of violence too, but not at the hand of a lover. She wrung her hands.
Deep breaths, my dear, when you can. Keep calm, Cecilia Celeste. He is no danger to you now.
How many times had she said that to some poor beaten woman over the years since her sister’s death? The only difference now was her own name.
She inhaled as deeply as she could, exhaled slowly. Do not think of the violence. The violence she had never experienced first hand until three days ago.
She closed her eyes. Closed down those thoughts.
They must get that registration paper for Toby and get it lodged as soon as possible. She would put her mind to the repair of her house. For a moment, she couldn’t remember who had insured it for damage. She would think harder on that later.
And while she was at it, did she even want to return to Bendigo? Echuca seemed a perfectly reasonable town. It always had. Once she was able to move a bit more freely, she would explore the place to make sure it was where she wanted to be.
That’s what she would do.
Perhaps she would ask James to join her here more often. A little further for him to travel, she knew, but he might be open to the idea. It might even be the right time to propose to him. She smiled at the thought.