Daughter of the Regiment (5 page)

For a moment he thought it might be Cissie coming back. But they were men’s voices, laughing at a joke he couldn’t hear. How could they laugh when Cissie was so unhappy?

Was she still unhappy? How much time had passed?

Suddenly Harry saw them, pale among the shadows, two men in buff-coloured trousers, and shirts that were lighter still. Closer, closer, till they were almost directly in front of him.

‘Here’s as good a place as any,’ said one of them. ‘It’s a likely enough pool, I’ll warrant.’ He was Dad’s age perhaps, with tanned skin like Dad’s and long shaggy sideburns and dark blue eyes.

The other man nodded. He was Grandad’s age or even older, Harry reckoned. His sideburns were mostly reddish-grey. He carried a bundle which looked like a blanket. He unrolled it without speaking and Harry saw it was a net, with a rope along the top and weighted down with stones on the bottom.

‘You take that end,’ instructed the first man.

They handled the net like they were used to it, thought Harry, dropping it in at the head of the swimming hole, right where Harry kept his Lilo one hundred and fifty years later. Each man held an end as they dragged it along the swimming hole, dislodging the waterlilies so they bunched unevenly across the net.

Harry realised they were fishing. There were probably lots of fish in the swimming hole in their day, though you hardly ever saw a fish nowadays. The creek had never really recovered from the gold mining.

Something jumped in front of the net, brown and silver in the sunlight, then splashed back into the water. The first man laughed. ‘That’s the way of it,’ he called. ‘We’ve got them now!’

The older man knelt down and pulled at the bottom of the net and suddenly the whole thing was out of the water.

The fish were BIG, Harry saw. He’d no idea there’d ever been fish that big in the creek … six or eight of them at least, wriggling and squirming till at last they grew still.

‘A good enough catch,’ said the first man. The second nodded. He didn’t seem to talk much, thought Harry. He grabbed one end of the net as his companion took up the other, so they carried it like a giant fish-filled sling between them.

‘Think she’ll like this little lot?’ asked the first man.

The second man shrugged, then spoke for the first time. His voice was hoarse, like he yelled too often and had worn it away. ‘I don’t reckon she’ll like anything much today,’ he said. ‘Not with her Pa so new in his grave.’

They were talking about Cissie, Harry realised. They were hoping Cissie might like a fish.

‘Still and all, it’s a change from kangaroo,’ said the first. ‘What I wouldn’t give for a cut off the joint now. A giant beef sirloin all dripping juice, and a pudding with the gravy, and all the trimmings. Makes your mouth water doesn’t it, Wilkes?’

Wilkes grunted.

‘Not that there’s a chance of a sirloin here, not in this forsaken place. The sooner the recall comes, the better for me. It’s all right for you, Wilkes, with nobody waiting for you. I’ve got my Becky at home and it’s been six years since I’ve seen her.’

‘She could’ve come out here,’ said Wilkes in his rough voice.

‘I’d like to see my Becky in a place like this. Look what it’s done to Mrs Sorrel, to that poor kid’s mama! It’s no place for a woman out here.’

Wilkes grunted again, but whether he agreed or disagreed Harry couldn’t tell.

‘Come on,’ said the first man, as though it was Wilkes who was standing there talking. ‘Let’s get this lot back before the sun gets to them.’

They carried the fish back into the shadows. Then they were out of sight.

Harry sat back on his heels. It was hard crouching for so long. He looked through the hole again, but there was nothing there. It might just be luck, he thought, to have seen anyone at all. Most of the time there’d be no one there.

He stood and went to the door of the shed.

The chooks had finished with the scraps. Arnie Shwarzenfeather strutted round the edges of the flock as they scratched and pecked and investigated interesting bits of dirt and grass.

Above them the garden shone in the sunlight—the roses great-grandma had planted, and Mum’s grevilleas and the tall oak trees that sheltered the lawn. It was hard to think that they hadn’t been there back then. It felt like they’d always been there, that everything had always been the same, just like his family had always lived on the farm, and Grandad’s farm down the road. Dad and Mum, and Gran and Grandad, and great-grandad and …

Even the valley had changed so much, thought Harry. He wondered what the rest of the valley would have looked like in Cissie’s time.

Mostly trees, probably, and kangaroo grass that would turn red in autumn, just like it did in the cemetery where the original valley grasses still grew, with little orchids like tiny horse’s heads poking through in the spring. There’d be no neat paddocks with well-strained, taut wire fences, no Herefords with their fat round droppings, no houses …

There’d be the garrison, of course. It had been down near the river, where they’d get a clear view if the French arrived. The building was still there, about 10 k’s out of town. There was a restaurant in it now.

It’s funny, thought Harry. He was so used to the restaurant he’d almost forgotten it had once been a garrison. They held wedding receptions and Christmas parties and things like that there, on the green lawns with gardens down to the water.

There probably hadn’t been any garden at the garrison in Cissie’s day, thought Harry.

The garrison building had been abandoned for years till the gold miners came. It had become a pub, and after that a saddlery, and a funeral parlour, then abandoned for decades before the Stefaniks bought it and turned it into a restaurant.

Maybe Dad and Mum would take him there for dinner one night before he went to boarding school … if he went to boarding school … He could look at the old walls and imagine Cissie there so long ago.

Harry stretched and stepped out into the sunlight. The chooks glanced at him, then dismissed him. Harry grabbed the empty bucket and walked slowly back up to the house.

What should he do now? Part of him wanted to stay down in the chookhouse, watching the other world through the hole. But part of him needed to anchor himself in his own life for a while, to remind himself that there was another world away from the tragedy of Cissie’s. Surely nothing would happen in the other world just for a while …

He could do his homework, just like he’d told Mum and Dad he would yesterday. But who could concentrate on homework after what he’d seen?

He could go down to Spike’s and go swimming … but he didn’t want to go down to Spike’s. He didn’t want other people. He wanted to stay here, near to Cissie, even if he wasn’t watching through the hole.

Maybe he
should
do his homework. Then at least he wouldn’t have to explain tomorrow why it wasn’t done. Then, after lunch, he’d go down to the hole again …

A chook sat on the nest—one of the Australorps, her tiny eyes intelligent in her dark face. She’s either Omelette or Chickenpox, thought Harry. The third White Sussex, Wild Thing, refused to lay in the chookhouse. Her eggs were always laid outside, a different nest every few months, as soon as someone found the old nest and took all the eggs.

The chook glared at him, daring him to disturb her till she was finished. ‘Don’t get all fluffed up,’ Harry told her. ‘I’m not interested in your egg. Not yet anyway. I’m going to the other side. See?’

He stepped over a pile of fresh droppings under the perch. Please let her be all right now, he thought. Please don’t let anything else have happened …

It was a clear blue day through the hole, just like it is here, thought Harry. The light looked strangely alike in both places.

But of course it wasn’t strange at all. It was valley light, slightly shaded green as the sunlight reflected from the hills, slightly tinged with blue from the eucalyptus oil of the gum tree leaves. The valley caught the light and changed it into something different from sunlight on the tableland, Dad reckoned. Harry supposed it had always been like that.

The sky was blue, and the trees were almost blue as well. Even the creek was blue. Down by the creek Cissie wore her pale blue dress as she watched the waterlily pads shiver in the breeze.

She wasn’t crying today, Harry noted happily, but she looked like she had been. Her eyes were red. Her face was very white. She stared at the waterlilies and didn’t move.

‘Cissie? Cissie girl?’

It was that man from this morning, Harry realised. The quiet one. Wilkes—that was his name.

Cissie glanced up. ‘Good afternoon, Sergeant Wilkes,’ she said politely.

‘I thought I’d find you here, girlie,’ said Sergeant Wilkes in his too-hoarse voice. ‘Sitting by yourself again.’

Cissie nodded. Sergeant Wilkes sat on a nearby rock. ‘It’s good to be by yourself sometimes,’ he said. ‘It’s good to be quiet.’

Neither spoke for a while. Harry wriggled to ease a cramp in his leg. Maybe he should bring a stool down next time. But Mum or Dad might wonder why there was stool in the chookshed.

Sergeant Wilkes rummaged in his pocket and drew out a pipe. He put it in his mouth, but didn’t light it, just chewed the end of it thoughtfully. ‘Sometimes it’s good to talk as well,’ he said finally.

‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ said Cissie.

‘Well, maybe, maybe not,’ said Sergeant Wilkes. ‘But sometimes it helps just to get things out into the open, so to speak.’

Cissie raised anguished eyes to Sergeant Wilkes. ‘They want to send me back to England!’ she cried.

‘Well, isn’t that a good thing?’ asked Sergeant Wilkes. ‘It’s what most of us want—to go home.’

‘But it isn’t
my
home. This is my home. It’s all I’ve got, now Mama and Papa—’ Her voice broke off.

‘But you’ll like it back in England,’ offered Sergeant Wilkes. He seemed just a bit too emphatic, thought Harry, as though he wasn’t sure. ‘There’s … there’s all sorts of things at home.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like …’ Sergeant Wilkes seemed to search for something good to say. ‘Snow? Wouldn’t you like to see snow? A real white Christmas?’

‘Snow’s cold,’ said Cissie. ‘I don’t like the cold. I couldn’t go swimming if there’s snow, could I?’

‘Well, no,’ said Sergeant Wilkes. ‘You can toboggan in snow, though. You sit on a tray from the kitchen and down you go … your nose gets cold, and your fingers, even in your mittens …’

Cissie shrugged, as though the thought of tobogganing held no appeal.

Sergeant Wilkes frowned. ‘There are all your cousins,’ he offered at last.

‘Second cousins once removed,’ said Cissie bitterly. ‘They don’t know me. They don’t WANT me.’

‘Of course they’ll want you.’

‘How do you know? They don’t even know Papa is dead yet. The mail won’t reach them for months and months and then I’ll be there before they’ve had time to say if they really do want me.’

‘Of course they’ll want you. They’re your only living relatives.’

‘That doesn’t mean they’ll want me,’ said Cissie. ‘Or that I’ll want them.’

They were silent for a time.

‘Girlie girl, you can’t stay here,’ said Sergeant Wilkes at last. ‘Not now Mrs Sorell’s going back. You can travel with her to Sydney on the next supply ship, and then travel back to Dover with her. You can’t go all that way by yourself. You have to take this chance to go.’

Cissie shook her head stubbornly. ‘I can go on the supply ship by myself. I can travel to England with another family that’s sailing back. I don’t have to go now.’

‘But you can’t stay here by yourself. Not without a woman to look after you.’

‘Why not? Papa looked after me after Mama died. Why can’t I stay here with you and Captain Piper and old Sam and Corporal Johnny …’

‘But …’ Sergeant Wilkes stopped.

‘Just till I hear from my cousins,’ Cissie pleaded. ‘Just till I know they really want me. What if I go back and they … and they put me in a foundling asylum or something?’

‘They wouldn’t do that,’ protested Sergeant Wilkes.

‘They might!’

‘Well, if they did the regiment would have something to say to that,’ said Sergeant Wilkes. ‘The regiment looks after its own and your Papa was in the regiment. That’s what the fund is for, for the widows and orphans, and you’re an orphan of the regiment …’ his voice trailed away, as though he realised it wasn’t tactful to call her an orphan. But Cissie didn’t seem to mind at all. She was too intent, thought Harry, too concerned to make him see her way.

‘Please?’ pleaded Cissie.

‘Maybe,’ said Sergeant Wilkes tentatively. ‘Maybe it’d be possible. But it’s not my decision to make, you know. It’s Captain Piper’s.’

‘But you’ll ask him?’

Sergeant Wilkes stood up. ‘I’ll ask him, lass.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes, now. If he’s not busy you understand. I won’t disturb him if he’s busy.’

‘And you’ll ask if I can stay till the mail comes from my cousins?’

‘It might be a year … or even more,’ pointed out Sergeant Wilkes. ‘The news has to get there, and then get back. But yes. I’ll ask him, lass. Are you coming with me or are you waiting here?’

‘I’ll wait here,’ said Cissie. ‘You’ll come back and tell me what he says?’

‘I will at that,’ said Sergeant Wilkes. ‘If I don’t come it’ll be because the Captain’s busy. You’ll come back for your supper, won’t you?’

‘I promise,’ said Cissie.

‘That’s my good lassie,’ agreed Sergeant Wilkes. ‘You watch out for snakes too—and don’t let those bears go dropping on your head.’

Cissie gave a half giggle. Sergeant Wilkes smiled. ‘If you’re to stay here you’d have to follow orders.’

‘I can follow orders,’ promised Cissie.

‘Well then,’ said Sergeant Wilkes. ‘Then I’ll be …’

‘Hey, what’s going on?’

Harry started. The voice wasn’t coming from the hole. It was here. Harry ducked quickly under the perches towards the door.

‘Harry? Harry, what the heck are you doing in there?’

‘Spike! I was just … I was just collecting the eggs for Mum.’

‘What with?’ Angie poked her head round the chookhouse door. ‘You don’t have anything to put the eggs in!’