The rugged terrain looked so unfamiliar to Jake Andersen in his hazy, disordered state of mind that he felt he might as well have been on the moon. But he decided he was somewhere south of the Wollondilly River.
For days Jake had seen no traces of human life, but now the far-off sound of picks and sledgehammers echoed through the deep gorge. No doubt an iron gang was hacking a new road through the bush.
Jake was conscious of his empty belly. He had eaten no food and drunk nothing but grog. He longed for the taste of water.
The thought of grog triggered fragments of recent memories … rowing a ‘borrowed’ boat across the Nepean River to his father’s farm … charging in with an armload of grog to entice his pa to fall ‘off the wagon’ … noisily toasting the birth of Jake’s eighth brother in Norwegian skol style … his mam’s Irish accent thick with rage at the discovery of their Demon Drink, ‘Go home to Jenny, you drunken, piss-weak eedjit!’
Jake couldn’t bring himself to tell them Jenny had bolted. He had told his mam to cross his name out of her damned family bible. ‘Tell everyone Jake Andersen is dead.’
He now regretted his parting words but he knew his mam would never back down. Neither would he. So he might just as well be six feet under. Dead men don’t ask for help.
He dimly recalled being locked up later for being ‘Idle and Disorderly’, a mild charge given the havoc he had created in some public house somewhere. On his release he had packed flasks of rum in his saddle bag, ridden off into the scrub and drunk himself into a state of bitter laughter as he argued with the stars in the Milky Way. This morning he had woken up feeling disgusted with himself.
At the sound of a creek far below him, he leaned backwards in the saddle to stay upright as Horatio began the steep zigzag descent towards what Jake hoped was drinkable water.
Eureka. Jake grinned with relief at the sight of a billabong beside the creek. He unsaddled Horatio to allow him to drink in comfort. When he bent to quench his own thirst a discomforting thought crossed his mind. In years past some Wiradjuri waterholes had been poisoned. What if this one is too? Well, I’ll soon find out.
After drinking his fill Jake topped up an empty rum flask with water. Tearing off his foul-smelling clothing he threw everything he owned, including his body, into the cold billabong, emerging clean and relatively sober. The mere idea of drinking the two remaining rum flasks made him nauseous.
As he travelled towards the distant sounds of road-making, Jake felt the rhythm of his body comfortably attuned to Horatio’s gait. The day was already hot. Clearly it was going to be a scorcher of a summer. He had lost track of time but reckoned it must be around mid October because of the signs of spring, the wildflowers, the red tips on the leaves of eucalypts. For the first time in weeks he was fully aware of the land around him.
The vast expanse of Wiradjuri country was a man’s world. It had many faces. Here craggy cliffs rose above deep gorges slashed with creeks that could be heard but seldom seen. The drab olive colour of gnarled gum trees was suddenly pierced by brilliant flashes of lorikeets and cockatoos in screeching flight. To Jake this country contained treasures more precious than gold, like the limestone caves full of stalagmite formations that few white men knew existed – and Jake was in no hurry to share these secrets.
Passing through a break in the bush he found the way ahead was suddenly clear. Giant trees lay like fallen soldiers on a battlefield. Stark evidence of a recent bushfire. Remaining upright were the survivors, blackened trunks of ironbark and bloodwood eucalypts that already sprouted a profusion of mint-green leaves from their burnt limbs – evidence to Jake of Nature’s bountiful assurance that no fire could ever permanently destroy her.
When Jake drew rein to relieve himself he saw a white object that he expected was some animal’s bones. On closer inspection he knew the truth.
A human skull lay bleached by the sun. A black beetle crawled from one empty eye socket. Lying in the undergrowth was a skeletal frame, arms outstretched in a cruciform shape, legs slightly parted as if in a desperate race to cheat death despite being shackled by leg-irons.
‘Jesus wept. You poor bastard.’ Jake’s voice rasped with the effort of forming the first words he had spoken in days. Kneeling beside the unknown bolter he wondered how far he had staggered from his iron gang. No doubt he had preferred the risk of this lonely death to being locked up each night in the suffocating heat of one of those portable convict huts so densely packed with prisoners that only a corpse could lie horizontal.
Jake began stacking rocks to form a cairn but he hesitated in covering the dead man. No name. Nothing of value to bury with him. Somehow that didn’t seem right.
On impulse he tugged off his gold wedding ring and re-read the words engraved inside. 5 May 1833 Jakob and Jenny – Eternal Love. The same in-scription was on the matching ring Jenny had abandoned. Defiantly he tossed his wedding band into the open grave.
‘No use for this rubbish,’ he said. He covered the bolter with rocks, placed the leg-irons at the head of the grave then remounted Horatio.
A few miles down the road he slowed between two lines of giant scribbly gums stretching out across the road to form a cathedral dome that filtered out the sky.
The sound of sledgehammers and picks was now close. Rounding a bend Jake approached an ugly scene that was all too familiar.
A road gang of some thirty emaciated convicts hacked at sandstone boulders under the relentless sun and the encouragement of an officer’s musket. Most had shaven heads. All wore convict slops, sun-bleached garments branded with numbers or black arrows. Caps or knotted handkerchiefs covered their skulls. Shackled leg to leg, the gang looked like some strange species of human centipede.
The scene reminded Jake he was only one generation away from this punishment. Isaac Andersen had been transported as a prisoner-of-war after the British Navy captured a Dano-Norwegian ship allied to Napoleon. Pa claimed he was lucky to serve his time in the humane era of Governor Lachlan Macquarie, who had granted him land and a pardon. Pa had struggled with the soil to a state of fecundity and Mam’s fertility ensured a supply of free farm labour.
Jake could never pass a road gang without a friendly word.
‘G’day to you lads. It’s a real bugger working for Her Majesty in this heat, eh?’ Amid their curses and laughter Jake detected a half-dozen accents: Cockney, Irish, Scots, Gaelic and other dialects that bore scant resemblance to the English tongue as he knew it.
The sole officer in charge looked no older than Jake and a bit gormless. He sweltered in his serge winter uniform with the new issue baggy blue Cossack trousers. The flies were driving him mad and he swatted at them with a switch of gumleaves.
Perhaps the lad’s stuck out here alone as punishment. God only knows what the bloody military gets up to.
‘Left you on your tod, have they?’ asked Jake.
The soldier looked morose. ‘Sergeant in charge rode back to camp for water and supplies – so he said. More like a tumble with his assigned wench. We don’t ruddy well get supplied with enough of anything out here. Water, decent firearms, food or grog.’
‘Or women?’ said Jake.
‘What’s that!’ snorted the soldier. ‘Ain’t seen one of them in months.’
Jake unbuckled his saddlebag. ‘Could you go a drink of rum? Better inside a man than inside a bottle, I reckon.’
The soldier downed a tot of rum in a flash and Jake was quick to encourage him.
‘Send another down to chase it. All right by you if I give your men some water?’
The soldier nodded. Jake’s cask was still cold with billabong water. He told the prisoners to pass it down the line. Each drank greedily before the next demanded his share.
These convicts were so rough they could pass muster as second cousins to an ape, Jake thought. The last in line was different – young, swarthily handsome with dark, wild curly hair and eyes of the same dense black. On his left chest a heart-shaped gaol tattoo held the letter K. Despite being underfed the man was tall, well-muscled and agile. Jake recognised the body of another fighter.
The water cask was empty before it reached him.
‘Thanks, pal.’ The prisoner shrugged, ‘That was a friendly idea that ran out.’
Jake took note of the unfamiliar word ‘pal’ and the fact his voice had a trace of a Welsh lilt, plus something indefinably more foreign.
The soldier remained planted in the shade drinking rum, so Jake decided to chance it. He took the last rum flask from his pack and squatted beside the young convict.
‘Do me a favour and finish this off for me, mate,’ said Jake. ‘I’ve got an almighty hangover.’ He offered his hand. ‘Name’s Jake. I reckon from the looks of you, you’re like me. Gone a few bare-knuckle bouts in your time, eh?’
The man hesitated in surprise then accepted the rum and the handshake.
‘Name’s Gem. I won nineteen out of twenty fights. Lost that one because I slipped in the mud.’
Gem sighed with appreciation as the rum hit his stomach.
‘Been in the colony long?’ asked Jake.
‘Too bloody long. The beak insisted I build this road for them after I bolted from a pocket of hell they call Gideon Park. Know it?’
Jake nodded. ‘Yeah. Same county as Ironbark and Tagalong. You’re lucky to be shot of the place. Its reputation stinks to high heaven.’
‘That’s putting it mildly.’ Gem was politely curious. ‘I take it you were once one of us?’
‘Pa was. He’s an emancipist now. I’m as home-grown as a kangaroo.’
‘So that’s how kangaroos learned to box.’
Jake laughed aloud for the first time in weeks. He liked the young man’s style.
‘I’m a Currency Lad, all right, but don’t let that fool you. I’ve served time. A boss cocky refused to pay me my wages. I knocked him out cold. Turns out he was a mate of the magistrate. So I did a stretch inside. But I don’t intend to back up for seconds.’
‘I told my wife that.’ Gem shrugged. ‘But here I am, working for William Four.’
‘Not now you’re not. He went to God – heard it straight from the town crier in Parramatta last time I came out of the Watch House. We’ve copped a young queen now – Victoria, not a bad looker. Well, mate, hope you dodge being sent back to Gideon Park.’
Gem took a final swig of rum. ‘I might try the bushranging lark.’
Jake shook his head. ‘That’s a dead-end road. Stick to prize fights and you’ll make your fortune. The colony’s full of blokes who’d wager on flies walking up a shithouse wall.’
The soldier appeared to be itching to get the men back to work, so Jake rose.
‘I’d like to watch you fight sometime, mate,’ said Jake. ‘But I warn you. Match yourself against me and you’ll come a cropper.’
Gem’s smile was confident. ‘Don’t bet your shirt on that, pal.’
Jake sauntered over to yarn with the soldier whose tongue was now so freed by rum he confided that he would rather be a farmer than a soldier. Jake offered him a bit of advice.
‘One day you Brits will run out of prisoners. You’re already beginning to flood us with free settlers. Grab yourself some land while the going’s good.’
‘This country’s plum crazy. Seasons are arse up, the system stinks, you Cornstalks can’t talk proper Queen’s English and I’m buggered if I know what makes you laugh.’
‘Can’t fix the weather or the system,’ said Jake. ‘But you’ll get along fine if you can cotton on to our odd sense of humour. It’ll be hell for you if you don’t, mate!’
Back in the saddle, Jake glanced around to see Gem giving him an ironic salute.
As he headed towards Goulburn, Jake felt light-headed, blinded by sunlight as if he had just emerged from a long dark tunnel of despair.
‘Can’t waste no more time feeling bloody sorry for myself, Horatio. Got to clean myself up. Get a regular job. What about Rolly Brothers? Mac says they’re aiming to wedge in among the big coach companies. He reckons they’re decent bosses as far as bosses go.’
Jake made Horatio a witness to his vow.
‘When I’m back on my feet I’ll track down my baby Pearl if it kills me. But from now on the only wife I want is the kind I can hire for the night. No woman’s ever going to best Jake Andersen again!’
• • •
At the Rolly Brothers coach station outside of Goulburn Jake talked hard and fast to convince the English manager of four things. He would be an invaluable driver. He could predict a horse’s temperament as soon as look at him. He knew the colony’s roads like the back of his hand. He never touched a drop of grog when on the job.
Jake walked out of the office with a wide grin and tried to look casual when Mac slapped him on the back to congratulate him.
‘When do you start work?’
‘Next time you drive a coach to Sydney Town I’m to ride on your box seat and learn the ropes. Then drive my own coach on a new route through Liverpool, Campbelltown, the Cowpastures, Goulburn, Gunning and all. I’m in business.’
‘Good on you, mate. I leave on Wednesday so let’s hop over to Bolthole Valley. I’ll shout the drinks till you draw your first pay.’
‘I’ll need more than a drink or four,’ said Jake. ‘I haven’t bought a wife for the night in too bloody long.’
Noting Mac’s surprise Jake added quickly, ‘I said I was giving up good women for life – not the other kind!’
• • •
From his youth Jake had been no stranger to Bolthole Valley. He knew the place had once had an official name nobody bothered to use. The small respectable population was regularly swelled by drifters, escapees and cut-throats evading the law or an enemy’s bullet.
After Jenny’s disappearance Jake had posted her description with the local constable and Feagan’s General Store, but apart from a heap of gossip, no clues had come to light.
As he and Mac rode into the village Jake thought how little it had changed since his bachelor days. The northern end of the village snaked around a rocky outcrop onto the Sydney Road. Apart from Feagan’s General Store the main street boasted a bakery, produce store, livery stables, a carpenter cum coffin-maker and monumental stonemason, and a cluster of grog shanties so hastily erected they looked ready to fold like a concertina at the first breath of a westerly wind. The double-storey houses at either end of the street had always been known as the House of the Four Sisters and the Red Brumby.
Mac set up the drinks in The Shanty with No Name, placed his loan to Jake on the table then strode towards the exit.
‘I’ll hop down to the Red Brumby for a tick. You know me. I won’t take long but I know you’re a night stayer. Meet you here at breakfast.’ Mac was out the door.
During his bachelor years, Jake had created many good, lusty memories in the Red Brumby but he decided not to revisit his past. As he downed his first Albion Ale, he studied the façade of the redwood timber brothel across the road, the House of the Four Sisters.
It looked respectable enough with permanently shuttered windows, window boxes of geraniums and a front door that never closed – except on Sundays when the customers used the back entrance. Chinks of red light glinted through the timber slats and laughter resounded from Madam Fleur’s bar.
Jake was amused by the contrast between the men as they entered the brothel and the difference in their gait as they swaggered out. A few did not exit at all; the night stayers.
As a youth Jake’s only knowledge about women had been picked up from drovers, stockmen and old lags in shanties. Despite the fact his pa had produced a steady stream of sons and one daughter, he had told Jake nothing about how people mated.
On his eighteenth birthday Jake had paid a girl at the Red Brumby to rid him of his virginity. He had enjoyed himself so much he continued the exercise.
Jake knew that women came in only two categories – good women and fallen women. Respectable folk made a rigid boundary between the two, but Jake wondered if women could ever re-cross that line to the other side. Were all fallen women born to be ‘bad girls’? Could a fallen woman make a new life and regain her self-respect? Was Jenny condemned to be branded for life? Jake rejected that thought, told himself he didn’t care.
Yet he winced at the memory of himself at nineteen – so crazy in love with Jenny he never doubted their lovemaking would grow naturally out of his consuming passion. All he needed was to be gentle, give her time to overcome the natural abhorrence good women felt about a man’s base needs – ‘the connection’. To his shock he had discovered his Red Brumby experiences had been no help on his wedding night.
After he paid for the house grog that made The Shanty with No Name notorious, Jake returned to his seat. A man entered furtively through the rear door and sat in the far corner. Jake could smell a police informer a mile off. This one had shifty eyes, a drooping moustache and strands of ginger hair oiled across his forehead. The publican addressed him as Mr Evans and offered him a free grog – which was declined.
Jake knew Gilbert Evans by repute. The largest landowner in Ironbark was Bolthole’s lay preacher and a proclaimed temperance man. So what was he doing in this shanty?
The answer was soon clear. A man dressed in black except for a flash red shirt entered between two henchmen who he dismissed as he crossed to Evans’s table.
Jake knew Gideon Park’s overseer more by reputation than sight. It was known he took pride in the title given him by his Irish assigned felons – the Devil Himself.
He had florid but well-defined features, a shiny black beard trimmed to a sharp point. In profile he reminded Jake of the King of Spades. Jake had learned to pinpoint settlers’ origins from their accents, but the overseer’s speech gave him no clues. The man could have sprung from anywhere.
One of his henchmen brought him a bottle of grog then slunk back to the bar.
‘Rotgut,’ the overseer said with mild contempt, but downed a glass of it. He pushed a roll of banknotes across the table and Evans furtively placed it inside his coat.
The overseer was faintly amused. ‘Madam Fleur said to tell you business was slow this week.’
‘A likely story.’ Evans’s question was muffled. ‘Did you test the new merchandise?’
‘Pricey. But she’ll bring in the money. Loves it rough. Couldn’t get enough of me.’
Jake realised the grapevine was right – Madam Fleur ran her brothel as a front for Evans. Jake felt a sting of pity for the fallen women who worked it. By indulging two-legged mongrels like this overseer, the girls protected good women. They deserved to be better paid for it.
He finished his drink and ambled across the road to the House of the Four Sisters.
Girls were draped around the darkened room in various stages of undress. Several brightened at the sight of him. Jake hoped he looked presentable. He had bathed in the creek and ironed the clean shirt he had borrowed from Mac for the morning’s interview with Rolly Brothers. Women, including prostitutes, deserved a bit of respect.
He tugged at the red neckerchief that suddenly felt tight then removed his hat.
‘Good evening, ladies. Er – been hot enough for you?’
The girls giggled as if he had said something clever. The boldest, a girl with dirty blonde hair, cooed in response, ‘It’s never too hot for me! I’m Suzanne, lovey.’
Jake was surprised by the woman who ran the place. At first glance Madam Fleur could have passed as a Nonconformist matron who went to chapel. Close up she was rather different. She steered him to an alcove where she wriggled her hips into the seat beside him. She handed him an Albion Ale with the compliments of the house and sized him up as she ran through the house rules. He would pay as soon as he made his choice.
‘All good clean girls here. Not like that awful Red Brumby down the road!’
She bent her head to catch his request. ‘A wife for the night?’ She beamed and patted his knee. ‘Obviously you’re a real gent.’
‘I don’t know about that, Ma’am.’
Madam Fleur scurried off to greet another customer and Jake watched the girls as they moved between pools of light. His eye was caught by a redhead who sauntered down the stairs wearing a yellow Chinese robe embroidered with a black dragon. She appeared much younger than the others, but he was struck by the older expression in her hooded blue eyes. Her mouth was like a ripe plum, her complexion so fresh she had no need of the rouge other girls wore that reminded him of pink dots on the cheeks of a china doll. Red hair fell over her shoulders in disarray, suggesting she worked too hard to bother combing it between clients.
He glimpsed the bruises around her ankles – a sure sign she was another runaway assigned lass who had recently done time in the stocks.
He turned to Madam Fleur and discreetly nodded his head in this girl’s direction.
Madam Fleur seemed faintly surprised by his choice. ‘She’ll cost double.’
‘Righto.’ Hat in hand, Jake crossed the room to the girl in the yellow robe.
‘Good evening. I’m Jakob Andersen. Jake. You by any chance free all night?’
She smiled and nodded. ‘For you I am, cheri. I am Lily Pompadour from gay Paree.’
Jake wasn’t familiar with French accents, but having a mother raised in Dublin he could spot an Irish dialect a mile off. He went along with the game.
‘A French lass, eh? It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Lily. May I buy you a drink?’
He was not surprised when she ordered a bottle of French champagne to be sent upstairs to their room. Clearly Madam Fleur had her girls well trained.
At the foot of the staircase he offered Lily Pompadour his arm, a gesture that seemed to catch her unawares but she recovered fast. ‘Always the gentleman, cheri?’
‘I hope not so much that I’ll disappoint you, Miss Lily.’
Her smile was disarming but Jake recognised her manner was professional when she closed the door behind them and ran her hand down his chest inside his shirt.
‘Perhaps we are both in for some surprises tonight, eh cheri?’
Her dimly lit room had red and gold wallpaper and a large brass bed. A Chinese screen was folded to give him a nice view of her milk-white body as she changed into a bit of flimsy black lace. She draped one hand on the screen as she showed herself to full effect.
Jake had stripped off his shirt and unbuckled his belt. ‘I bathed this morning but no doubt you’d care to wash what matters, just to be sure.’
Lily nodded and Jake enjoyed the cool touch of her fingers. Then she surprised him. She held out a rope and whip. ‘Your generosity entitles you to other pleasures.’
He gave a dismissive wave. ‘Not to my taste, love, but if you’re willing to take me on, I’d like something else from you.’
Lily’s fixed smile almost faltered. ‘Your pleasure is my pleasure, cheri.’
‘It’s Jake. Thanks, but I’m not paying to hear false sweet talk. I want you to be straight with me. I always enjoy going to bed with a woman.’ He felt suddenly embarrassed. ‘The problem is I want to learn what makes a woman happy – in connection.’
Lily stared at him. Her French accent suddenly disappeared. ‘All in one night?’
‘Hell no. I don’t expect miracles. I’ve just been hired as a coach driver so I’ll pass through Bolthole every few weeks. If I keep coming to see you, will you—?’
‘I’ll talk straight. And I promise you, Jake, you’ll love every minute of what I’m going to teach you.’ She took his hand and led him to the bed. ‘Lesson one,’ she said softly.
• • •
Next morning as he dressed in the half light Jake studied Lily Pompadour’s sleeping face. Her arms lay above her head on the pillow, a painful reminder of Jenny the very last time he had seen her. He pushed aside the sharp memory.
When he dropped one of his riding boots the sound woke Lily. She rolled over onto her stomach and gave him a naughty sidelong glance from under her tangled mane of hair.
Her voice was an impure invitation. ‘You’ll come back to me for more, Jake?’
He pulled on his left banking boot. It was empty now but would be healthy again after he drew his first Rolly Brothers pay cheque and repaid Mac’s loan.
‘All right, girl. What’s your verdict?’
‘If I said you had no problem, you wouldn’t come back. That’s bad for business.’
‘You agreed to talk straight, remember?’
‘I am. The first time you were so excited you couldn’t last long enough. Happens a lot. Once you were familiar with my body you were very good, very strong. Next time I’ll teach you clever new tricks. How to delay your own pleasure and drive a woman crazy.’
She lazily waved him goodbye. ‘Is that worth a second bite of the cherry, Jake?’
His short laugh had an edge. ‘Try and stop me, Lily.’
As he crossed the road to The Shanty with No Name he saw Mac had already set up their drinks for breakfast. Jake was never guilty of allowing a cold Albion Ale to grow warm.
• • •
On the day before his scheduled departure for Sydney Town on Mac’s coach, Jake rode Horatio towards the turn-off signpost that read ‘Ironbark – One Mile’ but he knew the village was really a bushman’s mile off the Sydney Road. The last time he had passed through Ironbark was en route to Tagalong to see Mac about the Bulldog Kane match. He had been light of heart, sure he would soon be holding Jenny in his arms. That day seemed a lifetime away. Now he was in search of his bolting wife. One-horse towns had long memories.
Ahead of him on the Sydney Road stood a stationary wagon piled with packing cases. The line of the driver’s slouched shoulders had the familiar look of a New Chum lost in the bush. He was hunched over a map, swearing loudly.
As Jake rode up to help the man find his bearings, he grinned in recognition. There was no mistaking the stuttering surgeon who had stitched him up at the Rum Hospital.
Dr Ross spoke as if to a stranger. ‘Could you kindly direct me to Barnes’s Farm, Sir? This map is bloody useless except for getting a body lost.’
Jake pretended not to know him at first. ‘Can’t miss it. Just follow the road till you come to a scribbly gum. Cross a wobbly bridge. The turn-off to the left leads straight there.’
‘Thank you. But what in God’s name is a scribbly gum?’
‘The white trunk looks like kiddies scribbled over it. Don’t remember me, eh Doc?’
The Highlander frowned. ‘Aye, you’re the lad crowned by a flying bottle in The Rocks. I’m surprised you can remember me. Roaring drunk as I recall.’
‘Guilty as charged but you did a good job. Right as rain now. Can I shout you a drink, Doc?’ Jake reached for the whisky flask in his saddlebag.
‘Much obliged to you, but I’m on my way to inspect a property for sale. Barnes’s Farm. I understand the locals are in dire need of a physician in these parts.’
‘Last one died at the bottom of a bottle. The farm ain’t a bad bit of dirt but it’s got a funny reputation. Known as the Haunted Farm. The story goes Barnes was a wife-beater. In 1825 he went to God with a hatchet in his skull courtesy of a convict protecting Barnes’s wife. Play your cards right, you’ll cop it for a song. That’s if you don’t hold with that ghost bullshit.’
Dr Ross’s mouth twitched. ‘Aye. Sheer drivel. Thanks for your advice, Mr—?’
‘Name’s Jake. Good luck, Doc. If I cop the wrong end of another fight, I’ll know where to come.’
‘In that case I suspect I’ll be seeing a fair bit of ye. What are the odds of running into you twice over such a great distance?’
‘You ain’t in England now, Doc. There’s only fifty-five thousand of us white fellas – half of them convicts – scattered down the whole of the colony from Moreton Bay to Port Phillip. And bloody few roads. You’ll find we all keep bumping into each other, like it or not.’
Jake realised the irony of his words. So why can’t I bloody well find my own wife?