Absolution Creek (42 page)

I
t was dark by the time Scrubber arrived at Stringybark Point. He trotted into town with his girls straggling up the rear, and Dog sitting on Samsara like a king. The stringybark trees still lined the road into town, still met at the three-way intersection like gabbling housewives. It was a spot where roads led to and from nothing. Cadging a paddock for his horses from a townie, Scrubber stumbled the remaining half-mile on foot. The street was quiet, the General Store and post office closed up for the night, and the children’s playground dark with shadows. He never did take to Stringybark. Even Veronica thought it just plain unwholesome for a small village to have three pubs. Of course, now there was only one left, which was where he intended to camp for a night or two while he gathered his strength for the final leg of his journey.

The public bar was packed. Scrubber made a point of acting inconspicuous and slunk to the end of the dented wooden bar amid the stench of beer and the haze of cigarette smoke. He paid for his beer and rum chaser and savoured the taste of the grog, eyeballing any stares with a come-and-get-me antagonism. ‘You got food?’ he croaked to the barmaid, keeping his neck concealed. He was sure Veronica’s damn scarf still reeked of strawberries.

‘Sure, love. Chops and veg, snags and veg or a bit of cow.’

Scrubber nodded. ‘With gravy and eggs?’ She wasn’t a bad sort, although one side of her head looked like a half-bag of spanners.

‘We can do that.’

‘Snags then and a bed?’

The barmaid selected a key from a numbered board. ‘Upstairs, last on the left.’

The bar was greasy with fumes, and the timber walls scattered with black-and-white photographs. Scrubber ran his eye over the old photos of the town, over relics from days past. There were long yellowing tusks from a boar pig mounted on polished wood, a brown snake curled tightly in a glass jar and the remains of a rifle that had been smashed over someone’s head. And then he spotted a newspaper clipping. ‘Hey, girl, can I see that?’

The barmaid followed Scrubber’s jabbing thumb to a cheaply framed newspaper clipping hanging over the till.

‘No busting it, mind,’ she warned him, lifting the picture off the wall.

Scrubber squinted through the haze of cigarette smoke at the print on the page. He spat on the glass frame, cleaning the grime off with his cuff. Sure enough it was Cora Hamilton. Said so right under her picture.

‘Well I’ll be damned.’

‘She lives here.’ The barmaid leaned forward, giving him a fine view of cleavage a younger man would drink all night for. ‘Not that we see her much. But that buy of hers certainly put Stringybark in the news.’ She topped up his rum, and shoved the cork in the bottle. ‘Course, we only got mileage out of it for a couple of days, but when a person lives in a town their whole life, well, it’s good to see stuff like that.’

Scrubber tapped Cora’s face through the glass. ‘So you know her?’

‘Me, know Miss Hamilton? My mother would say it wasn’t proper, but I’d be real pleased to meet her. She’s like a . . . like a famous person. You know they say she killed a man. There was some kind of kerfuffle in 1924. Course the locals here won’t speak a word of it. They’re afraid the relatives will walk out of the scrub one day and finish anyone who says a word against her.’ She sidled a little closer. ‘Do you know her?’

Scrubber nodded. ‘Aye, I do.’

The barmaid smiled. ‘How’d you know her then? Tell me.’

‘I saw Waverly No. 4 too. Used to work out there for the Purcells.’

‘Sure you did.’

That would be right, Scrubber thought. The few times a man had something worth telling, no one believed him.

Her face resumed its disinterested expression. ‘You want anything else, old timer?’

‘Got a pie? It’s for me dog.’

The barmaid returned with a brown paper bag. ‘Never heard of a man feeding his mutt with a pie.’

Scrubber snatched the bag from her, grease already darkening the paper. He opened the bar door and gave Dog the tucker, who took it politely between his teeth and swaggered off. His job for the day completed, Scrubber dropped enough coins on the bar for his food and board. His hands strayed to the pouch at his waist. He looked at the partition down the middle of the bar; through the mesh he could see blacks on the other side. It had been nearly forty years since he’d last eaten in a hotel and some things hadn’t changed.

Scrubber and Veronica humped it out of Purcells’ in the summer of 1924. There wasn’t anything much to stay for after the boss cocky came down with an illness that saw him hole-bound within a week. The missus stayed on, Evans in control. Even old Dobbs walked. Didn’t like the look of things, he muttered, leading an ancient horse out the boundary gate. Scrubber agreed. They left at daylight on foot, the air thickening with heat and haze. Notwithstanding the sporadic stories circulating the bush about Matt and his missus, Scrubber knew Waverly Station had been good to him. He was leaving with full pockets. Waverly No. 4 stamped his hoof as they walked past his paddock. The glory days were finished, although no one informed the ram as he trotted away.

They eventually found work about fifty miles downstream at a place called the Five Mile. Veronica cleaned and cooked at a boarding house, and he joined a local shearing team about the district. The steady work was a boon for the both of them and they got on well, what with him being away three weeks plus out of every four. Soon after they heard Waverly was slipping. Evans couldn’t keep men on and the missus was too melancholy to stay out there. A month later everyone was talking about a big sale. The Gordons of Wangallon Station purchased Waverly Station, walk in, walk out. Scrubber reckoned old Purcell would’ve turned in his grave.

They were ten days into a month’s job at a big shed not far from town when Matt Hamilton showed up. Scrubber, waiting at the table for the next fleece to be thrown, fairly busted himself rushing to the shed door to say g’day.

Matt grinned. ‘I thought you’d be at Purcell’s.’ They shook hands. ‘Obviously the scrub-cutting got to you, eh?’

‘The boss dropped dead at Christmas, so I left. Been working the sheds around the Five Mile ever since. Even got meself a woman.’

A shadow crossed Matt’s face. ‘Well, I’m real pleased for you, mate.’

‘And your kid Squib? Any word?’

Matt shook his head.

‘Everyone was real sorry to hear what happened – me especially. She fixed my wrist.’ He held his hand up for inspection. ‘Still, there’s every likelihood someone may have picked her up, don’t you reckon? How long you been searching for? Sturt would be the one to talk to here. He knows everything.’

Matt lit a cigarette and took a long slow drag of it. ‘It was raining and then the creek flooded and then we got word the trackers were on our trail.’ His words tapered off.

‘There’re always signs, though,’ Scrubber persevered, looking over his shoulder at the wool table. The other wool rollers were calling at him to hurry up. ‘Muddy tracks, checking with people along the creek.’

‘The thing is I never got to look for her. The trackers found us. Evans pointed the finger and, well –’ Matt shifted his eyes about the cavernous shed ‘– Abigail’s in the State Reformatory for Women in Sydney.’

‘But there weren’t no proof.’

‘No there wasn’t, but . . . how’d you know that?’ Matt’s eyes tightened.

‘Heard it.’ He thought of the kid lost in the bush, waiting for the father who never came. ‘So, you just left her?’

‘Look, by the time the business with Abigail was done I didn’t know what to do next. I mean, I had the other kids to look after and I couldn’t leave Abigail.’ Matt wet his lips and looked at Scrubber. ‘Squib was out there too long by herself.’

‘So you think your girl could be . . .’ Scrubber couldn’t say the word. ‘Someone could have found her.’

’Maybe.’ Matt’s eyes grew watery. ‘I’d like to think that someone was caring for her.’

‘And she’s a real smart kid.’

‘Sure. Sure she is.’ Matt didn’t sound too convinced. He stubbed out his smoke on the boards. ‘I’m looking for a job, anything going?’

‘Dunno.’ Scrubber hadn’t felt such disappointment in a person, ever. He left a kid like that, didn’t even bother.

Matt stopped him as he tried to walk away. ‘You gotta understand. If Squib is still alive then she’s got a chance for a better life if she stays away from me.’ Matt sighed.

‘How’d you figure that?’

The boss of the board, Sturt, stalked towards them.

‘I’m Matt Hamilton, formerly of Waverly Station.’ He extended his arm to shake hands, but it remained there, mid-air. ‘I was looking for a job. I was overseer and –’

‘I know of you, Hamilton,’ Sturt replied. ‘Oh yes. Your missus was the one who robbed Mrs Purcell and you lost a kid, too, didn’t you? What’d you do with it then, eh? What’d you do with the money? Or have you still got that fancy piece of jewellery?’

‘My wife never took it.’

Sturt crossed his arms across a fatty chest. ‘But you ran?’

‘Not only because of that.’ Matt scratched his thinning hair. He’d run because he’d thought it possible that Abigail did take the necklace. After all he’d never believed his first wife could have been a thief and look what she did. And he’d run because he was worried for his kids. And he’d run because of Evans’ insinuation regarding the dead overseer, Martin. But he couldn’t explain all that to Sturt or Scrubber. ‘We ran cause I thought at first she might have.’

‘And your missus is in gaol,’ Sturt confirmed. ‘Ain’t no work for the likes of you here.’ He turned on his heel. ‘And
you’re
lucky to be here, Scrubber, so get back to the table.’

Scrubber couldn’t believe it. Matt hadn’t even gone looking for his own kin. Some people would kill to have a semblance of a family. He knew he would. ‘Waverly Station’s been sold,’ he called after Matt. ‘Seems like everything’s been buggered up.’

Matt Hamilton kept on walking out of the shed.

It was some time after Matt’s brief appearance that Scrubber started to feel crook. It came on gradually, like a dose of the squirts after a hefty feed of emu egg. Veronica was good about it, mopping his brow and such, but it soon became pretty obvious that he wasn’t suffering from any malady she could cure. He lay on the sagging mattress in the lean-to at the back of the boarding house, groaning as flecks of light striped the mattress through the ill-fitting timber walls.

‘You’ll be right, lovey. Reckon you ate something a bit off.’ Veronica shovelled dirt over a puddle of water from the previous night’s rain. The muddy liquid had drained in from outside and, having filled a quarter of their narrow space, was enticing a hoard of critters into their shady home. A hairy bush spider, young black snake and a couple of lizards had already been in for a visit and Veronica wasn’t reckoning on welcoming anything bigger. With a final splash of dirt onto water she flattened the gooey concoction into a smooth paste, before tossing the shovel out the open door. Throwing armfuls of water over her face and neck from a bucket, she patted her neck dry. ‘I know what you need.’

Into a bowl Veronica scooped two handfuls of flour, added a spray of sugar and then opened a paper bag of currants. She sprinkled the dried fruit on the rough table, picking out invading ants. Satisfied, she added a handful of the fruit to the mixture, and scraped the remainder into the bag. She added water before she began kneading the dough like a prize-fighter, her forearms bulging white sinews of muscle. ‘How about I make you some johnny-cakes, eh lovey? I might even be able to nip a bit of honey from the kitchen after I’ve tidied the rooms up.’ She rolled the dough into a ball and rested a dripping rag over the top. Wiping floury hands on her dress, she placed a cool palm on Scrubber’s brow.

He clucked Veronica under her chin and patted her rounded backside. ‘You’re a good girl to me you are, real good.’

‘Nonsense.’ She dabbed at his brow, and moistened his lips with a bit of water. ‘You saved me, you did, from working for that toff. Never did take to Mrs Purcell. No need for a woman to strut around like she’s got a carrot up her behind. Not when everyone else is starving.’

‘It weren’t a bad job, though?’

‘No, not too bad. Not until Mrs nose-in-the-air Abigail Hamilton arrived; her with her books and big ideas. Us housemaids was expecting them to ride out together one day – you know, like best friends. Beats me why the woman would go and steal that pearl necklace. I had it on good account that as her husband was overseer it wouldn’t be long before Mrs lah-de-dah Abigail became Mrs Purcell’s fulltime companion.’ Veronica wrung out the wash cloth and wiped his arms. ‘Come up in the world they would have then. How the mighty fall.’