The Best of Sisters (21 page)

Without warning, or maybe he had simply not heard her knocking, the door burst open and Mary Ann stood there with her dog snarling at her side and a burly miner standing behind her. Before he knew what had hit him, Bart was thrown bodily out into the street.

‘And if you put a foot inside my place, I’ll have you horsewhipped, you cowardly bastard,’ Mary Ann roared, tossing his felt hat into the street after him. ‘Keep away from her, d’you hear me? You’ll keep away from me too, if you value your skin.’

Nursing his bruised jaw, Bart got slowly to his feet, swaying dizzily. Mary Ann and the miner had disappeared back into the building; the business of the town was going on around him with no one taking the slightest bit of notice of his plight. He picked up his hat and dusted himself down, still dazed and hardly able to
believe what he had just done. Shame burned in his soul and, although he longed to find Daisy and beg her forgiveness, Bart knew that he could not face her even to apologise. Giving way to his vile temper, he had sunk to the lowest point in his life and if she hated him, then it was what he deserved. There was only one thing he wanted at this moment and that was rum, dark sweet rum that would blot out pain and thought. Slowly, limping slightly where he had landed awkwardly on his left leg, Bart made his way to the nearest grog shop and ordered a drink.

The stench of horse dung and urine-soaked straw made Bart catch his breath and retch. Opening his eyes, he looked up into the liquid eyes of a horse tethered in its stall. The horse whinnied and pawed the ground close to Bart’s head and the sound reverberated in his eardrums like the booted feet of a marching army; the light hurt his eyes and jagged shafts of pain seemed to be splitting his skull. He raised himself on his elbow, and his fuddled brain slowly came to the conclusion that he was lying on a heap of straw in a stable. He had no idea how he came to be here, what time of day or night it was, or who had dumped him here in the first place. Sitting up and groaning as demons with picks hammered inside his head, past events began to seep back into his stupefied mind. Daisy!

‘Oh God, what have I done,’ Bart groaned, licking his dry lips with a tongue that felt too large for his mouth. Getting to his feet, he staggered out into the stable yard, shielding his eyes from the harsh light of the spring sunshine. He felt sick and weak and he couldn’t remember the last time that food had passed his lips, but somehow he managed to get to the pump and stuck his head beneath an icy torrent of water. When he had slaked his thirst, Bart stood, shivering in the deserted stable yard. Judging by the height of the sun in the sky it was early morning and the town was just waking up.

Daisy, he must find Daisy and beg her forgiveness. He would go down on his bended knees and promise her anything if she would just tell him he was forgiven. Catching sight of his own reflection in the grubby glass panes of the stable window, Bart ran his hand through his tousled hair. The wild-eyed fellow staring back at him was not the image he wanted to present to Daisy. He needed a bath, a shave and some hot food in his belly before he even began to feel human again. He touched his waistcoat pocket, and heaved a sigh of relief on finding the pouch of gold dust. He had an overwhelming desire to find the honest fellow who had delivered his drink-sodden body to the safety of the stables last night without first robbing him of his only means of sustenance. But first things
must come first, and Bart slowly made his way out into Buckingham Street and headed for the bathhouse.

Two hours later, clean-shaven, sober and well fed, Bart entered Mary Ann’s establishment, dragging his hat off his head and looking about nervously, half expecting to be forcibly ejected before he could speak up for himself.

‘So you’ve turned up again, eh?’ Mary Ann leaned across the bar, glowering at him.

‘Hear me out, lady,’ Bart said, twisting his hat in his hands. ‘I come to beg Daisy’s pardon and yours too, for behaving like a hooligan and a brute.’

‘Nicely said, mister, but you’re too late. She’s packed up and gone.’

‘Gone?’ If Mary Ann had hit him with a bar stool, Bart would not have been more shocked or knocked off balance. ‘No, she can’t have gone. We was engaged to be married.’

‘Seems to me she’s had a lucky escape then. Get on your way, fellow, or do I have to throw you out?’ Lifting up the hatch, Mary Ann strode out from behind the bar counter.

Backing away, Bart held up his hands in a gesture of submission. ‘I’m going. Just tell me where to find my Daisy and I’ll never bother you no more.’

‘I’ll tell you, but it won’t do you no good. Daisy was leaving today anyway. She’s gone to
Riverton to help Rosie Hayes look after her new baby.’

Still slightly fuddled by last night’s excess of alcohol, Bart stared at Mary Ann as if she were speaking a foreign language. ‘Why would she do that? She never mentioned it to me.’

‘Maybe you never give her a chance,’ she said, curling her lip. ‘Maybe you was too interested in satisfying your carnal desires to care what Daisy thought or did. You’re all the same, you men.’

‘I got to find her. I got to get her back.’

‘Get a hold of yourself, fellah. You go chasing after Daisy now and she’ll spit in your eye. And I wouldn’t fancy your chances if Bully sees what you done to her. Now get out of here before I lose me temper. You’ve cost me a good worker and I’ll not forget that, so if you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep out of me way from now on.’

Although Bart’s first instinct was to set off for Riverton and bring Daisy back, forcibly if necessary, Mary Ann’s words had hit their mark. He had brought this situation about with his own ungovernable temper and, if he wanted to win Daisy, then he would have to prove to her that he had changed. During the long trek up the mountainside to his hut, moving slowly under the burden of provisions, Bart’s anger and fear at the thought of losing Daisy for ever slowly crystallised into a single-minded determination to make himself worthy of her. As he reached the
hut, Bart stood for a moment, looking at the site with critical detachment. With Tate’s help he had picked this spot in a sheltered gully, just high enough above the Arrow to avoid being swept away when it was in full spate but close enough to allow easy access for the daily drudgery of panning for gold. Across the river, the Arrow Face rose steeply beneath its thick blanket of native bush. At his back, the foothills of the Crown Range climbed less steeply but to a greater height. This was not a bad place, Bart decided. Here he would build a stone cabin, with a chimney and a sturdy roof that would withstand the heavy snows of winter. He would make a home fit for Daisy, with a brass bed and a rocking chair so that she could sit by the fire in the dark evenings, and they could plan their future. He would tell Daisy about London and above all, he would tell her about Eliza and his ambition to return home a wealthy man. He would rescue Eliza from that old bugger Enoch, and he would see that his little sister married a man of standing, not a waterman or a stevedore, but a bloke with learning and a respectable trade or profession.

Staring up into the clear azure sky, Bart took a deep breath of the crystal air and closed his eyes. ‘God, if you are up there, I swear I’ll mend me ways. I’ll not let my women down again, but I need your help, not for myself you understand,
but for my Daisy and my Liza. Help me to help them, God. If you can spare a moment, that is.’

Realising that he had spoken out loud as his voice reverberated across the gorge, coming back in a mocking echo, Bart grunted, feeling his cheeks redden even though there was nothing but an eagle soaring overhead who might have heard his mumbled prayer. He scurried into his hut and dragged the door across the entrance.

It was not easy building a cabin large enough for a man and wife to live together and Bart was unskilled, although getting better with practice. In the day he waded in the river, panning for gold, or if the weather was too inclement then he began tunnelling into the mountainside. He had noted how other miners did their work, digging a little each day and shoring up their work with timbers, but it was a slow process and he found only minute amounts of gold. In the summer evenings, after a supper of damper or porridge and tea, with the occasional treat of a bit of boiled bacon, Bart set about gathering rocks and extending his hut, starting first with a chimney. His first attempt collapsed in a particularly bad storm, but he began again next day, learning from his mistakes in construction, and by the end of the summer he had succeeded in making a working chimney. By mid-autumn, he had completed the outer shell of his cabin, and before the
onset of winter he had saved enough money to buy timber and to hire a packhorse to bring it up the gorge, thus enabling him to construct a sturdy roof.

During all this time, Bart had continued to find small amounts of gold, either dust or tiny nuggets little bigger than a grain of rice, but having saved his hoard he raised enough cash to keep him in food during the worst of the winter storms. In the times when it was too dangerous to work in the swollen waters of the Arrow, he worked on the inside of his cabin, pounding the dirt floor until it was hard and dry as cement. He used planks left over from the roof to make a bed big enough for both him and Daisy. The brass bed would have to wait until later. Not for a minute had Bart allowed himself to think that this might all have been in vain. For almost a year, he had clung to the belief that Daisy truly loved him and that all he had to do was to prove to her that he had changed. Every stone in this cabin, every plank and every shingle was a testament to his love for her; once she had seen the home he had built, she would know that he was sincere and she would marry him.

Bart had intended to wait until spring but now the cabin was finished he knew he could wait no longer and he must set off to find Daisy and bring her home. Packing a few things in a canvas bag, he set off for Arrowtown, his boots
crunching on the thick frosting of snow. Although he had hoarded his money, buying only the barest necessities, he had invested in a pair of good, if second-hand, boots and a waxed linen coat lined with felt to keep out the intense cold. He arrived in Arrowtown in the early afternoon, and went straight to the refurbished Prince of Wales Hotel where he ordered a steak dinner and a pint of beer.

‘Haven’t seen you in here before, mate,’ the barman said, drawing a pint from a barrel and handing it to Bart.

‘That’s because I ain’t been in here for a while,’ Bart said, not particularly wanting to chat for he was out of the way of conversing with people, but he needed information and where better to get it than in Bully’s former place of residence. ‘I knew the chap what used to own this place.’

Wiping spilt beer from the counter, the barman gave Bart an appraising glance. ‘Friend of Bully’s was you?’

‘Not exactly, but I did know him and his wife. I heard they’d gone to live in Riverton.’

‘You’re behind the times, mate. The word is that they left there to join Rosie’s brother, Conrad, in Carey’s Bay near Port Chalmers. Are you thinking of paying them a visit?’

‘None of your business,’ Bart said, picking up his glass and moving away from the bar to a table. He could hear the barman muttering
something uncomplimentary under his breath, but he didn’t care. He would have his dinner and then he would set off, walking to Port Chalmers. He’d done it once before, and he could do it again.

It was not a pleasant journey. Bart soon decided that only a fool or a man desperately in love would have undertaken such a long and arduous trek in the middle of winter, but he refused to be beaten by the weather, frostbite or sheer physical exhaustion. The journey took him almost twice as long as it had when he and Tate first walked to Fox Camp, and it was the nearing the end of August by the time Bart reached Port Chalmers. Exhausted and with little money left, Bart found a cheap lodging house near the harbour. It was late in the evening, and after a supper of mutton stew, his first hot meal in a month, Bart fell onto the mattress allocated him in a room shared by several other fellow travellers. He sank into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Next morning, filled with hope and determination, he found his way to the public baths, and set about getting clean and tidy. When he found Daisy he wanted to make a good impression. By midday, Bart was clean-shaven, bathed and had managed to get his underclothes and shirt laundered and, if not dry, at least not soaking wet as they had been on some of the
rainier days of his long journey. With hope in his heart, he set off to find the offices of the local newspaper. Enquiring at the front desk, he was uncomfortably aware of a change in the man’s expression when he enquired about the Hayes family. ‘You’re a stranger in these parts then, mister?’

‘I am,’ Bart agreed, ‘but I am a friend of the family.’

‘Then I’m afraid it’s bad news I have to give you, my friend. There was a tragic accident at sea just a couple of weeks ago. Captain Hayes managed to save himself, but his wife and baby were drowned, along with one of Mrs Hayes’s brothers and the nursemaid, whose name escapes me at present. Are you all right, mate?’

Unable to speak for the choking sensation in his throat, Bart stumbled from the building and only saved himself from falling by clinging to a lamppost. As he swayed on his feet like a drunken man, passers-by crossed the street to avoid him. If he had taken care of Daisy she would still be alive. It was his fault that she had drowned; he had killed her as surely as if he had pointed a pistol at her beautiful head. Stumbling along the street, Bart had no idea what he was going to do, but he needed to get to Carey’s Bay and to see the house where she had been living with the Hayes family. He had no idea what he would do when he got there; he was simply
following his instinct like a migrating bird.

It was late afternoon and the winter night was closing in on the Otago Peninsula by the time he arrived outside the gates of the Buckinghams’ house. Carey’s Bay was a small community and it had not been difficult to gain directions from the townsfolk. Standing in the street, Bart looked up at the building, lost in the desolation of his thoughts as he tried to imagine Daisy’s last days spent in this place. The sound of hooves on the road behind him made Bart move aside as a man drew his horse to a halt and dismounted, casually flinging the reins over the picket fence. He cast Bart a curious look. ‘Can I help you, sir?’ The man was well dressed and spoke in a beautifully modulated voice, as if he were an actor addressing an audience.