In the wooden hospital in Goulburn Jake Andersen lay flat on his back staring at the flypaper stuck to the ceiling liberally speckled with dead flies. The ward’s new dividing wall smelled of freshly sawn timber and antiseptic permeated everything, including the hospital food.
The place had been built as a convict hospital in 1834 but whenever any of its thirty beds were empty they accepted free men as patients. Jake knew he was lucky to gain a bed. His leg had not been so lucky. Dr O’Flaherty had been so drunk when he set the leg it had needed to be re-broken and re-set. Jake swore at the plaster cast that imprisoned him, then slapped at a blowfly.
He was so bored he would have welcomed a chat with the Devil Himself. He brightened when a nurse told him he had a visitor.
Jake dragged himself upright, expecting to see Mac Mackie. He was the only person who knew where Jake was. But the figure walking towards him was a total stranger.
Stocky and bearded, the man carried a top hat under one arm and his dark dress coat, vest and contrasting trousers were distinctly formal.
Jake was suspicious. That’s the kind of garb worn by the manager of the bloody Bank of New South Wales or by some bloke in his coffin.
The man made a polite bow and introduced himself as Joseph Bloom of Ironbark. Jake decided all it needed was for his heels to click together and he’d be a dead ringer for some Prussian military officer. ‘I’ve heard of you. A lawyer from England, right? You’re Hobson’s new partner.’
‘If by new you mean for two years, that is correct. It is also true I’m a lawyer but I have not yet practised in the colony. Allow me to explain. I come periodically to Goulburn to celebrate Shabbat with my co-religionists. So what brings me to the hospital to call on you, Mr Andersen?’
‘Jesus. Rolly Brothers hired you to sue me! Look, I didn’t intend to wreck their bloody coach. Isn’t it enough they sacked me? What do they want? Blood?’
‘Calm yourself, Mr Andersen. This is not the reason.’
‘So what kind of strife am I in now?’
‘Your prolonged hospitalisation is causing concern to a friend. A lady.’
‘Which one?’ Jake asked quickly.
Joseph Bloom hid a smile. ‘Before my departure from Ironbark I received this letter with a request to visit you.’
Jake hated to be caught reading at a snail’s pace in front of strangers. ‘My eyes ain’t too good today. Would you mind reading it to me?’
Joseph Bloom opened the letter and cleared his throat. ‘Jakob Andersen is in hospital in Goulburn. I am worried about his injuries. I was a passenger on his coach. If you can visit him please tell him Saranna Plews wants to know if he needs any help.’
Jake was puzzled. Saranna Plews? Hadn’t she died the night of the accident? His memories of that night were full of holes. It was like trying to play poker with a pack of cards when the queens and aces were missing.
Joseph Bloom explained that Miss Plews was Ironbark’s respected schoolteacher. When he asked Jake if there was anything he could do to assist him, Jake grabbed the opportunity.
‘Yeah. If you should come across my missing wife and little girl.’
The lawyer listened solemnly as Jake relayed his usual description. The words seemed to have faded with constant use but Jake looked the lawyer straight in the eye to deliver the rider, ‘I’m no wife-beater if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘I would not agree to hand over any wife to her husband if I believed that to be the case. So, Mr Andersen, I am at your service if it is ever possible for me to assist you.’
After Joseph Bloom left, Jake was alone again, trapped with his thoughts. This time they didn’t revolve around Jenny. He was intrigued by the unexpected concern shown by the genteel Pommy girl who had looked down her nose at him. He could hardly expect any of his passengers to track him down after all the trouble he had caused them. How very odd that it was Saranna Plews. He wondered what had become of the mysterious Widow Smith. She had claimed to be an actress who was playing a Gypsy but Jake didn’t doubt she was the genuine article on the run from a bloke in England.
He felt frustrated, anchored in hospital and unable to find out what was happening in the outside world. The nurses kept telling him he had to be patient. Maybe next time Mac was given the Goulburn coach route he could fill him in on the fate of his passengers. Jake caught himself smiling at splintered fragments of memory – the widow pressing his face to her naked bosom to warm him. Right now he could almost smell the rosemary oil on her body, feel the cool touch of that silver amulet between her breasts. Startled by the sensual power of that memory he said the words out loud. ‘I sure hope that night was real. I’d hate to think it was just my fever making me imagine things.’
• • •
Two nights later another visitor turned up.
Jake looked at the slightly built young man standing in the shadows of the darkened ward and was suspicious that this visitor was not a total stranger. Jake could always smell a man who was on the wrong side of the law.
The youth kept his broad-brimmed hat low over his eyes as he pulled a chair to the bedside and asked, ‘How are you getting along, lad?’
Jake was cagey. ‘I know you, don’t I?’
‘We met once under trying circumstances.’
Jake recognised the cheeky grin. ‘Shit! You’re the bloke who refused to shoot me! I reckon I owe you my thanks.’
‘But you’ve already repaid me – I relieved you of all your money, remember?’
Jake laughed for the first time in weeks. He decided not to admit his coin pouch was a blind for bushrangers. As always, promissory notes had been safely stashed in his left banking boot.
Will Martens formally introduced himself. ‘Are they doing right by you in here?’
Jake shrugged. ‘I’m going crazy. Bad as being in the stur. Can’t stand being cooped up.’
Will nodded wryly. ‘Neither can I. But be thankful they gave you a bed here. A few weeks back when I was last at Gideon Park my stripes got infected after a flogging. I asked permission to come here. It would have cost my master Jonstone one shilling and sixpence per day for a convict’s bed but the Devil Himself vetoed it.’ He mimicked the man’s soft vindictive tone. ‘No malingering Prisoner of the Crown is going to shirk work by lying around in hospital. Not while I’m Overseer of Gideon Park!’
Jake grinned. ‘You’ve got that bastard down to a tee, mate. How did he treat you? They say he’s a totally rotten mongrel – God’s worst mistake.’
‘That’s just the polite way to describe him in front of ladies.’
They talked nonstop for an hour. Jake was delighted to discover Will was as passionate about horses as he was. They had a friendly tussle weighing the merits of thoroughbred Barbs and Arabs. But Jake was concerned that a lad like Will was a pawn in an evil chess game, so he turned the conversation back to Gideon Park.
‘I ain’t got much time for Jonstone. A gent who keeps his own hands clean but turns a blind eye to his overseer’s methods.’
Will tried to make light of it. ‘Jonstone’s not a bad egg, but he’s in Sydney Town more often than not. He would never believe what the Devil Himself gets up to in his absence. I’d rather die from a trooper’s bullet than be sent back to Gideon Park.’
Jake knew this was a common convict sentiment but he hoped this lad would fair better.
‘The law says government men with a grievance have the right to go before the magistrate and be assigned to a decent master.’ Jake added, ‘In theory, anyway.’
Will shrugged. ‘Every magistrate has bounced me back to Gideon Park. The beaks are so matey with Julian Jonstone they dine at his table. There’s no chance they’d ever dish out a bit of justice for the likes of me.’
‘If I can help you, mate, I will,’ Jake promised. ‘But I draw the line at supplying arms.’
Will nodded. He asked Jake to tell him about his plans to breed thoroughbreds. Jake talked until he was dry enough in the throat to ask a favour.
‘Could you smuggle in a bottle of Albion Ale? Or anything else that’s going. There’s an inn just down the road.’
Will looked uneasy. ‘You want me to walk into the Policeman’s Arms?’
‘Nah. Solomon Moses just renamed it the Travellers’ Home Inn.’ Jake lowered his voice. ‘I’ve got a young nurse trained to fetch me the odd bottle. Thing is, I’ve run dry.’
‘No sooner said than done, Jake.’ Will was already out the door.
He returned bearing a ragged bunch of flowers that looked as if they’d been plucked from someone’s garden.
Jake registered his disappointment. ‘Thanks a lot!’
‘Smell them!’ Will insisted.
When Jake bent his head to examine them, he saw the neck of a beer bottle planted at the heart of the bouquet. He raised the flowers to his lips and drank deeply.
‘Will Martens! Your blood’s worth bottling.’
After the young bushranger gave him a silent salute from the doorway and disappeared into the night, Jake weighed the kid’s chances. Few bolters managed to survive beyond a year or two.
He felt a wave of frustration over the brutal treatment meted out to young Will, in contrast to the humane second chance his pa was given as a youthful prisoner in Governor Macquarie’s era.
The whole system is a bloody lottery. Those Whitehall blokes who run the whole show deserve to be transported themselves to get a taste of what it’s like.