Daughter of the Regiment (3 page)

‘And the feathers he brought back for you, for your hat. You’re the queen of the garrison, Mrs Harrington, my love, you and Mrs Sorrell, but she can’t hold a candle to you. I should be jealous …’ There was more laughter suddenly and words he couldn’t catch.

‘Papa! Look!’

‘Look at what, my pet?’

‘That tree! Look, there’s a face on it!’

Harry looked. The kid was right. There was a face, shaped by the gnarled bark on the trunk of the tree.

‘It looks a kind face,’ decided Cissie. ‘I like this place. It’s the best place in the whole world. Who owns it, Papa? The black people?’

‘His Majesty the King owns it now, pet.’

‘Why? Did he buy it from them?’

Her mother laughed. ‘The questions you ask, Cissie! Who ever heard of a question like that!’

‘But King William owns EVERYTHING! I mean who REALLY owns it?’

‘No one then. Not yet.’

‘Can it be mine, Papa?

‘Of course,’ assured the man.

‘John!’ The woman’s voice was laughing again. ‘She really will think it’s hers!’

‘I think this place should be mine, because I love it best,’ decided Cissie. ‘Much more than King William. Besides, King William likes the sea, doesn’t he, Papa? Captain Piper said he was the sailor king. He’d think this pool was much too small. Papa, can I bathe?’

‘It’s too cold. Besides, it’s past time we were getting back.’

‘But Papa!’

‘Don’t argue, Cecilia,’ said the man.

Cissie wrinkled her nose and brushed the crumbs from her skirt. Would the man and woman come into view now, wondered Harry. But they didn’t. Cissie jumped to her feet and began to leap from rock to rock along the creek. Her boots clicked and slid on the granite. The voices grew more distant and the laughter; then the laughter merged with bird calls.

Then it was gone.

Harry stayed with his eye to the hole. But they didn’t return.

It was hot in the chookhouse, the smells more pungent in the heat. Harry’s neck was cramped. His knees hurt from kneeling above the muck.

‘Harry! Harry, where are you?’

‘Here! I’m here, Mum!’ Harry straightened his knees painfully and clambered out of the chookhouse.

Mum came down the garden steps onto the flat. ‘I saw your bag but didn’t know where you were.’

‘I was in the chookhouse.’

‘Looking for your hole?’ Mum smiled.

‘Yes. It’s …’ Harry halted. All he had to do was take Mum over to it, and she’d see it for herself. But something stopped him.

Maybe it was the laughter. It had been such private laughter, the girl and her parents believing they were alone. He’d eavesdropped and he wasn’t sure he wanted anyone else to eavesdrop as well. Besides, it was his world, that funny world inside the light.

And suddenly he realised he didn’t want anyone else to share it. Not even Mum and Dad.

‘Yeah,’ he said finally. ‘You were right, Mum. It was just a trick of the light. There’s this little hole on the wall and the light shines right through it.’

‘I told you it’d be something like that,’ said Mum sympathetically. ‘Come on. It’s hot enough to melt a mountain out here. You’ll be getting heatstroke, just like Uncle Ron did that time down at the coast when we were kids … did I ever tell you about that? Come and have some afternoon tea.’

He dreamed of the girl that night. Cissie, that was her name. Cissie.

In his dream she was laughing, among the rocks, the creek muttering beyond her, the ripples wrinkling the red gum shadows on the water. Then suddenly the laughter stopped. There was silence, the sort that seemed to echo even though there was no noise, and then the sound of sobbing, sobbing, sobbing …

Harry woke up shivering. His Doona had slipped sideways in the night. He was cold, that was all. He’d had a nightmare because he was cold.

Harry pulled the doona up over his shoulders again and twitched the curtain aside. The sky was grey, not black. A cuckoo trilled down the scale like it was practising for an eisteddfod. Arnold Shwarzenfeather would be crowing soon, and then the kookaburras would be gurgling, and the shrike thrush singing and then every other bird around would yell up at the sky.

There was no way he could get back to sleep. The dream was still too strong.

That small girl by the creek, crying, crying, crying, all alone.

But that was silly. Silly. She’d been laughing. Her parents had been with her. She’d been having fun, not unhappy at all. They’d all been picnicking by the creek which was so like his creek …

Harry sat up, the Doona slipping from his shoulders. Of course!

It WAS his creek! Cissie’s creek was his creek like it must have been last century perhaps, before the gold miners dredged it and sieved it searching for their gold … the gold miners came in 1852 so it had to be before that. Maybe twenty years before or even more.

Mrs Easton at school said there’d been waterlilies all along the creek in those days, and giant red gums along the banks, instead of just a few skinny ones on the creek flats. The miners had cut down the red gums to fuel their dredges and the casuarinas had taken their place.

Hadn’t Mrs Easton said there’d been a garrison here in the early days, even before the farmers came? The soldiers had been stationed down by the river in case the French invaded, in case they sailed up from the sea with their cannons and their flag to claim the land, just as the English had claimed it a few years before … but no French ship ever came.

Cissie’s father must have been one of the soldiers at the garrison, and her mother and Cissie lived there as well. And that Captain Piper they spoke about, and Sergeant Wilkes … and there would have been more soldiers stationed at the garrison if they were there to keep out the French.

It would have been a lonely outpost in those days. It took weeks of trekking on horseback from Sydney to get there in the days before roads and cars and planes, unless you had a boat, and how many boats were there back then?

So, thought Harry, that’s what he was seeing through the hole. This place more than a hundred and fifty years ago. What was the hole then? A hole in time? Could Cissie see him … was there a hole at her end as well? There had to be … but she hadn’t seemed to see it. Maybe she was too upset to see the hole.

Or maybe… yes, Harry realised, that was it. He’d seen the hole because it was bright in the dimness of the chookhouse—but on Cissie’s side it’d just be another patch of daylight with daylight all around. You’d have to be right up against it to see that it was different. You didn’t hear anything from the hole unless you were right up close as well.

Maybe there were lots of holes like that, thought Harry drowsily, as though time rubbed thin just
there
and you never noticed. You just walked on straight past …

He must have slept. The next thing he knew Arnold Schwarzenfeather was yelling from the chookyard and Dad was singing in the shower.

Breakfast was always late on Saturdays. Dad had to go into work till lunchtime, and Mum usually went with him, but they didn’t open till eight-thirty or even nine, so there was no point eating early.

Dad fried bacon and eggs. He always cooked Saturday breakfast—Australorp eggs for him because he liked them best, and Isabrowns for Harry, and a white Leghorn egg for Mum.

Harry squeezed the oranges that came from the giant tree on the flat. The juice was yellow. It looked more like lemon cordial than the orange juice in bottles.

The tree had been planted over a hundred years ago, when orange trees grew into huge things, almost as tall as gums, not like the small neat modern trees at all. The oranges were hard and tiny, and always freckled (sometimes if you rubbed them off onto your skin the freckles stayed there till you washed them away), but the juice tasted better than the stuff from the supermarket. Or maybe you just liked what you were used to, thought Harry. He’d always drunk the juice from the fruit of the trees on the flat.

‘What do you plan for today?’ asked Dad. His hand hovered between the honey and the plum jam. ‘Coming into town with us? We could pick up a video if you like.’ He unscrewed the lid of the plum jam and began to spread it thickly on his toast.

Harry shook his head. ‘I’ve got a lot of homework,’ he said. ‘I’ll just get it over with this morning if that’s okay.’

‘Sure,’ said Dad, surprised. Harry usually left his homework till just before bedtime on Sundays, then panicked because he couldn’t get it all done. ‘Do you want us to pick up a video for you?’

‘Oh thanks,’ said Harry. ‘Any one … Hey Mum, can I take the scrap bucket down to the chooks.’

Mum blinked. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘No worries,’ said Harry. ‘I’ll take it down every morning if you like. It can be one of my jobs, like collecting the eggs.’

Mum smiled. ‘I’ll still have it to do it myself next year, if you’re off to school.’

Harry shrugged.

The chooks strutted and clucked inside the netting, impatient to get out for the day’s pecking around the flat, scratching under the blackberries for beetles and fallen caterpillars, wriggling ecstatically into the dust under the lavender bushes. It must be hard to be a chook where they made you stay inside all day, thought Harry.

He unlatched the wire gate and propped it open. If you didn’t prop the gate open it might swing shut and then the chooks couldn’t get back in at night, and flew up to the trees instead. Once chooks got used to roosting somewhere it was hard to get them to change their minds. Chooks weren’t very bright, Harry guessed. The chooks clustered round him, unwilling to leave till they’d feasted on the contents of the scrap bucket.

Harry tipped it out at the far end of the run—two banana peels, half a piece of toast and plum jam, congealed gravy, a mouldy end of cheese, a quarter of a loaf of stale bread, his lunchtime apple that Kevin Briggs had trodden on yesterday, potato peelings, silver beet stalks and outer lettuce leaves, pumpkin peel and seeds, six bacon rinds, half a piece of fruit cake (where had that come from, wondered Harry—he hadn’t known they had a fruit cake), tea leaves and three crushed eggshells (Mum crushed them so the chooks wouldn’t get the idea of eating the eggs).

The chooks began to scratch the pile apart, pecking first at the cheese and bread and leaving the greenery till later.

Harry checked their water (still flowing well) and their food container (still half full), then hesitated. He was almost scared to look through the hole this morning. But of course there was nothing to be scared of. Cissie had been happy yesterday. The sadness was just a dream.

The chooks were still busy with the scraps at the end of the run. Harry peered through the gloom of the chookhouse. Faintly, in the distance, he could hear the sound of the ute bumping across the ramp as Mum and Dad headed off to town.

The hole was still there. He’d half hoped it wouldn’t be, but it was shining just the same behind the perches.

Harry ducked, making sure he didn’t bump his head on the perches. Someone would be sure to notice if his hair was mucky and ask why. Harry pressed his eye to the hole.

There was no one there.

What had he expected? Harry thought, almost in relief. Of course there was no one there. They’d only been there yesterday for their picnic. They’d all be back at the garrison today. He’d probably never see Cissie again; never see anything again through the hole, except the creek and trees.

Wait a second—something moved on the far side of the creek. It leapt out of a bush, then bounded down along the creek bank, out of sight.

Harry grinned. A wallaby. Maybe it was the zillion times great-grandaddy of the wallaby who lived nowadays over on the flat on the other side of the creek. He could see a wallaby any day he wanted to, without glueing his eye to a hole …

Someone was coming! That’s why the wallaby had fled. Perhaps it was Cissie and her parents again. Perhaps it was someone else from the camp.

It was Cissie. But she looked different, thought Harry. She was taller, surely, than she’d been yesterday. How could she have grown so much taller in just a day?

Maybe it hadn’t been just a day for her, Harry realised. She looked at least eight now, or nine. Maybe more time had passed in her world.

Cissie came closer. She’d been crying. Her face was swollen, her eyes were red. She breathed in funny shaking gulps, as if it was hard to run and cry as well. She sank onto the rock where she had sat the day before—or had it been two years before, or more—and sobbed.

It was like his dream, and yet it wasn’t. The dream had been indistinct, as though reality wobbled to and fro. But this was real.

What was wrong? wondered Harry. Had someone hurt her? Had she quarrelled with her parents? What had happened? Harry pressed his mouth close to the hole.

‘Hello!’

There was no response from the other side of the hole. He tried again. ‘Hello! Cissie! Cissie, can you hear me?’

The girl kept sobbing.

It was no use. It was just like it had been yesterday. He could hear her, but she couldn’t hear him. But there must be something he could do to help. Her sobs sounded so desolate.

‘Cissie? Cecilia, love.’ The voice sounded out of breath.

‘Papa?’ The girl looked up. Both she and Harry had been too intent to hear him come. ‘Papa … I … I’m sorry I ran. I just couldn’t stay there. I just kept on running …’

‘It’s all right, Cissie love. I understand.’ The man stepped into view.

Cissie’s father was short, thought Harry. Why had he thought a soldier must be tall? He had black hair that stuck up like he had run his hands through it, and bushy side whiskers that nearly met at his chin. He looked like he had been crying, too. Did soldiers cry? He knelt by the girl and took her into his arms. ‘Mama is with the angels now.’

Harry froze under the perches. ‘No,’ he thought. ‘Oh no …’

‘I don’t want the angels to have her!’ cried Cissie. ‘She’s mine, not their’s! I want her here. She shouldn’t have gone away.’

‘But she can’t be here, my love. She would be if she could.’