Ironbark (17 page)

She tried to ignore Saranna Plews's silent disapproval as she eyed the red petticoats peeping beneath Keziah's black mourning skirt. Drawing her shawl across her bosom to conceal her red blouse, Keziah gave her a tentative smile but the other girl turned her head and stared resolutely out the window.

Keziah was not surprised by the rejection, but Dr O'Flaherty, who was sitting beside her, gave her a friendly wink. ‘If I should be falling asleep on your shoulder, just push me back in my corner.' He took a swig from his flask, pulled his hat over his eyes and promptly fell asleep.

Keziah made mental notes about her fellow passengers in the same way she did when reading fortunes for
gaujos
.

The doctor's a drinking man but a harmless old codger. Saranna Plews's Chester accent is educated. Good quality travelling outfit. Expensive leather boots but the heels are worn down. That and the hole in her mittens show she's sliding into genteel poverty. Why does she keep patting that cameo brooch?
Keziah had a sudden flash of insight.
It's a link with her dead mother.

As the coach travelled further into open country Keziah was reassured by the vast size of this land – and her good chances of keeping out of the grasp of the Morgans' spies. Nobody here knew her real name or the secret baggage she was carrying. She was now Mrs Smith. A widow on her way towards the southern county where Gem was last known to be. At the thought of Gem she stroked the filigree gold ring he'd given her on their wedding day.

She was intrigued by the strange beauty of the landscape. The occasional whitewashed villages they passed might have been transported from a corner of England. Isolated bush huts with timbers bleached by sun, wind and rain shot up like hardy weeds in this alien soil. The bush seemed to flash past the coach in an endless blur of strange trees that bore no relationship to all the English trees and plants she knew by name.

Whenever their coach rocked past a lone traveller on horseback, Jake Andersen called out a greeting. The sight of a barefoot black family with a child clinging to its mother's back drew a wave of empathy from Keziah. Were black women treated as inferior beings by the
gaujos
as her own Romani tribe were at home?

She again pressed her hand over her grandmother's precious amulet hidden beneath her bodice. One day she would be free to reclaim openly her pride in being a Romani woman.

• • •

For days they had driven along roads so new they might have been hacked out of the bush at breakfast. When the coach drew to a halt on the crest of a steep hill their driver yelled out.

‘Hey, you lot. Eyes right! You ain't never seen nothing like this in the Old Dart.'

The coach ground to a halt. Jake Andersen's boast was no exaggeration. Framed by giant eucalypts, a vast panorama spread out below them.

Keziah climbed down from the coach and ran to the edge of the cliff, feeling like an eagle looking down at the world from its eyrie. Folds of distant mountain ranges of purple, burnt orange and olive green seemed woven together in a giant tapestry. Below lay a vast plain dotted with miniature figures of animals with long curved tails like sabres. They sprang across the valley as if on coiled springs and disappeared into the dense shadows of the bush. Keziah threw her arms wide, wanting to hold the scene in an open embrace.

‘The gods have blessed this land!'

She was suddenly aware Jake Andersen was looking at her curiously. What was wrong with him? Didn't he ever smile? She shrugged off her grandmother's prediction that if she made a bad choice her life would become entangled with three men, one of them a man with red-gold hair.
Well I certainly made a terrible mistake with Caleb Morgan. And Jake Andersen has red-gold hair. But from what I've seen so far, the colony is alive with men with the same Celtic colouring.

Jake Andersen really intrigued her. He was the first Currency Lad she'd spoken to. He didn't talk or look like any Englishman she'd ever met. A man of few words, he made every word count. His eyes sent the clear message that he didn't acknowledge any class of men were his betters – or beneath him.
He's not exactly arrogant, but he doesn't take too kindly to English criticism of
his
country.

She was suddenly conscious that he was looking her way.

‘Righto!' he ordered. ‘You've got to walk downhill for safety's sake. It's a steep grade, a drop of one foot in every three.'

Keziah shadowed him. ‘Why are you chaining that huge log behind the coach?'

‘To slow her down or she'll crash. Then you'd have to travel all the way by shanks's pony.'

He beckoned to his passengers. ‘Off you trot. Take it easy. No broken bones mind. Ain't no decent doctor within cooee.' He realised his mistake. ‘No offence meant, Doc.'

Dr O'Flaherty laughed outright. ‘None taken, lad.'

Keziah picked up her skirts and gingerly led the way. She hid a smile at the sight of Saranna clinging to Dr O'Flaherty's arm. He was now as full as a boot. Who was guiding who?

Keziah watched in admiration as Jake expertly navigated his team down the rugged escarpment.

At the bottom, he shrugged off her compliment. ‘Ain't nothing to it.'

Saranna Plews chose to sit alone on a log so Keziah crossed to sit with the doctor.

‘We're lucky to have an expert bushman like Jake Andersen. I don't know about you, Doctor, but I'm parched. I suspect there is nothing half so refreshing as tea in the bush.'

O'Flaherty nodded but at this reminder of his constant thirst he swigged his whisky.

As usual Jake effortlessly got a fire going, the water in the tin quart-pot soon boiling for tea.

‘I'll cook you a real treat. Johnnycakes. Can't beat 'em.'

‘May I watch?' Unbidden Keziah squatted on her haunches beside him. Jake cast her a wary look but at least he didn't say no.

‘Here, make yourself useful. Chuck in the raisins when I tell you.'

The johnnycakes were a success and the passengers' silence was only broken by the appreciative slurping of tea and the sounds of birds. Keziah noticed how Jake stood apart from the group, as if mindful of Saranna Plews's attitude to Currency Lads not ‘knowing their place'.

‘Next stop there's a general store that handles mail. So if you want to grab the chance to pen a few words …'

Obediently the girl withdrew. It was clear to Keziah she was writing a love letter as Saranna's heart was in her eyes. Was the girl's fiancé a farmer? A clerk? Or a convict?

Minutes later Saranna nervously handed Jake her letter. ‘What will it cost to send this so far away?'

Jake looked at the letter. ‘Gideon Park ain't far in colonial miles, Miss. Just a hundred or so south of here.'

Gideon Park. Keziah felt her heart beat faster at the words. Gem could be close by.

‘Won't cost you nothing,' Jake continued. ‘Whoever gets letters pays the postmaster.'

‘Oh dear. Then he may never receive it.'

Saranna's blush convinced Keziah her lover was most probably a convict.
Maybe we have more in common than she knows but she'd die rather than lose face by admitting that. How awful it must be to be a middle-class lady.

• • •

During the next stage of the journey the heat and flies caused tempers to flare to flashpoint. Keziah was relieved when Jake stuck his head through the window, scratching his ragged whiskers.

‘Time to stretch your …
nether limbs
,' he added carefully. ‘We won't make the next inn much before nightfall. I'll make you a cuppa to keep you going.'

Keziah noticed how both her fellow passengers chose to sit by themselves, no doubt to grab a precious moment of privacy after being cooped up in the coach. It would give them all time to cool their tempers while Jake Andersen cooked damper in the ashes of the fire.

After serving tea to her and Saranna, Jake Andersen sidled over to chat with O'Flaherty but Keziah noticed how he kept glancing back at her as she hungrily devoured her share of the damper.

O'Flaherty poured a generous slurp of ‘medicine' into his own pannikin. ‘Tell me, lad. How many Irish would there be in the colony?'

‘How many stars in heaven?' asked Jake. ‘One in three assigned men are Irish. Settlers of like background herd together. In Tagalong there's more Paddies than gum trees. Kelso and Bathurst have a heap of Scots. One stretch of the Bathurst Plains is called Little Cornwall. And of course the Sterling are
everywhere
!'

He looked over his shoulder in Keziah's direction and hastily added, ‘No offence. Forgot you was English.'

She smiled at him. ‘Welsh. In a manner of speaking.'

O'Flaherty pressed him. ‘I trust I'll be having no trouble buying whisky in the colony?'

‘Water runs dry before whisky does!' Jake assured him. ‘On the Windsor Road in Irishtown, there's a public house called The Wheelbarrow because the publican wheels the drunks out of sight to avoid shocking
respectable
folk on the Parramatta Royal Mail coach.'

Keziah gave a little chortle of amusement that caused Jake Andersen to glance her way.

When he ambled off to smoke his pipe a polite distance away from the ladies, Keziah studied him openly. His beard and long hair left little of his face exposed except for steely grey eyes and a generous curve of mouth. She was curious. What would he look like if he shaved? Suddenly she was conscious of his lithe but powerful frame, the broad line of his shoulders. These Currency Lads were a breed apart. Jake Andersen walked like a man who owned the earth.

And yet he stiffened when she picked up her skirts and headed for him. He held up a warning hand. ‘Don't sit on that hollow log! I saw a snake's head sticking out of it a minute ago.'

Mi-duvel!
Keziah retreated a few steps. ‘Poisonous?' she asked.

‘Deadly.' He added casually, ‘But only if they bite you.'

Keziah stifled a nervous laugh. ‘There is so much to learn in this land. Do my questions bother you?'

Jake seemed to avoid looking at her eyes. ‘I reckon that's the only way you learn.'

Keziah took him at his word and followed him around, eager for answers to her burning questions. ‘What is that strange animal we saw this morning? How many kinds of gum trees are there? How do kangaroos give birth to their young? You call them Joey? What a sweet name. That's the name we give circus clowns at Home. What is an opossum?'

Jake gave her an odd look. Keziah wondered if she had gone too far. He seemed a bit irritated by her barrage of questions. But when a flock of rainbow lorikeets flew across their path and a rainbow-coloured feather fell from the sky, he was quick to fetch it for her.

Keziah laughed in delight and placed it beside the ostrich feather in her hat.

Jake kept averting his eyes from her so Keziah tried a different tack. ‘What is the most important thing a new settler needs to know, Mr Andersen?'

Jake looked a bit stumped. ‘I reckon you can't survive here unless you understand our strange sense of humour.'

She leaned forward, intent on the answer. ‘Why? What makes you different to us?'

He thought for a bit. ‘Let's see how you react to this. Back in 1830 the traps rounded up a gang of escaped convicts turned bushrangers known as the Ribbon Gang because they wore ribbons in their hats. Heroes or villains, depending on how you look at it. A scaffold was built in the street in Bathurst to string up ten of them at once, but the priest's last rites failed to put the fear of God into one of the condemned. This lad yelled out to the crowd, “Me old mother said I'd die like a brave soldier with me boots on but I'll be making a liar of her!”'

‘What happened next?' Keziah asked, holding her breath.

Jake paused for effect. ‘He kicked off his shoes and went barefoot to eternity!'

Keziah stared at him. ‘You mean he died laughing at death and the system!'

Jake grinned. ‘You got it! I reckon you'll get along just fine down here, Mrs Smith. Now hop back in the coach. I aim to get us on the road in two shakes of a lamb's tail.'

• • •

The following day the sun was shining one minute, the next the sky turned black and rain descended like a waterfall. Wind whipped the coach with such force it seemed intent on pushing it off the road. Huddled beneath oilskin covers, Keziah watched the wind attack the trees. Branches seemed to cry out in pain as if torn from their mother's trunk as they crashed into the bush. She was excited by the power of the gale but Saranna's eyes were wide with terror. She managed to give Keziah a nervous half-smile.

Keziah's answering smile was genuine. All the time they'd spent cooped up in the coach seemed to have peeled away the barriers of class like onion skins to reveal who they really were. She and Saranna had both crossed the world to join the men they loved. Both were short of money, battling alone for survival.

When they drew up at a staging inn, Keziah nudged Saranna toward a trestle table protected by a net from the swarming army of flies. Sensing her poverty, Keziah whispered in encouragement, ‘Jake Andersen said the food here is
free
.'

Dr O'Flaherty was in a loquacious mood. ‘Miss Plews, what do you think of the Australian bush?'

Saranna was politely disparaging. ‘It's difficult to compare with England's verdant green beauty. I'm afraid the colony's trees all look the same to me.'

‘A case of seen one gum tree, seen 'em all, eh?'

Keziah could no longer contain her frustration. ‘Is that
all
you can see? Every day offers a new kind of beauty. Can't you feel it in your blood? This land has fire in its belly!'

Saranna looked startled and ventured a more searching look around her.