The Glittering Fields

by Patricia Shaw

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

Can seeking your fortune lead to happiness? Set against the turbulent excitement of the Australian gold rush, Patricia Shaw presents The Glittering Fields, a story of courage, ambition and desire. The perfect read for fans of Tamara McKinley and Sarah Lark. 'Storyline as dramatic and colourful as the land itself' - Gold Coast Bulletin Following the tragic death of their father, Clem Price and his sister Alice take over the running of Lancoorie sheep station in Western Australia. Despite his youth and inexperience, Clem is determined to see the farm prosper. When wealthy Dr Carty suggests that Clem marry his daughter Thora, Clem cannot afford to refuse the handsome dowry she will bring. And although he knows that Thora is carrying another man's child, he is enchanted by his beautiful young bride. Yet Thora proves to be flighty and demanding, disappointed that her husband is not as wealthy as she had imagined. Desperate to please her, Clem joins the goldrush to Kalgoorlie to seek his fortune. But his prolonged absence enrages Thora further and, despite Alice's warnings, she travels to Perth to find her husband. Her dramatic reunion with Clem is to have shocking consequences from which those involved might never recover... What readers are saying about The Glittering Fields : ' Spellbinding ' 'One of the author's best ' 'Another excellent book by Patricia Shaw with the same great research '

Release date: March 15, 2012

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 384

Sample

Everyone on board yearned for the long voyage to end; everyone, that is, except the boy, Clem Price, who gloried in this great adventure. He loved the ship, from their snug little cabin to the swaying decks above, where a boy could scuttle about as nimbly as the sailor men. Every day was a new excitement. In good weather there was so much activity up top. Passengers played quoits or deck tennis, some did their physical jerks, others strolled about or set up deckchairs to read or chat with passers-by, while the crew worked under the Captain’s watchful eye. But when the weather turned foul, passengers stayed below, squashing in for meals at the long mess tables, or wasting time just lying on their bunks. Clem could never stay still that long. He roamed about with the stewards, or slid into the galley to talk to the cook, who could always be relied on to produce a slice of apple or a piece of bread and dripping for the boy.

And then there was the ocean itself, a never-ending delight to Clem, who clung to the rails watching the endless surge, revelling in its moods. He was there when they first sighted dolphins, and he would never, ever forget the massive whale that surfaced near the ship like a great steam train bursting up from the depths. Clem’s father had grabbed him, thinking he’d be frightened, but the boy thrust him away, not wanting to miss a second of this awesome spectacle.

At night, as he lay in his bunk, the sounds of shipboard life captivated him. Back home on the farm, nights were still and silent, but here, darkness came alive. He could hear the swish and swirl of the ocean, the creaking timbers, the clink of steel rings on the masts, the call of the watch, the unlovely whine of winds that were much gayer in daylight. Clem liked to listen and identify all these sounds, adding them to his repertoire as if to distinguish instruments in an orchestra.

And over all this were the less disciplined sounds of the voices of his fellow passengers, raised in fun and laughter or community singing or even, at times, angry shouts, followed by the buzz of earnest talk. All of which told the boy that he was safe, that the fine clipper with its three tall masts was bearing him across the oceans as surely as a bird on the wing.

Then, one night, the voices ceased. Disturbed by the sudden quiet, Clem waited, straining. For a minute he thought the world had stopped, but the ship was still ploughing on, rising and dipping, and the ocean sounded louder than ever.

He sat up in his bunk and peered about him. The others were still up, his mother and father and even Alice, his sister. She was nine, allowed to stay up later than he was because he was only six, but even so, she should have been abed by this. Slowly, he slid to the floor and opened the cabin door to peek along the narrow passage.

He saw two ladies down the companionway, talking quietly, and watched as they disappeared into their cabin. At least now he knew he wasn’t the only one left on board.

Only slightly reassured, he returned to his bunk, allowing himself to be lulled to sleep by the comforting whispers of the ocean rather than dwelling on the vague concern that was stirring within him.

In the morning, his father, Noah, woke him with a mug of pale tea and then sat heavily on the low bunk to talk to him.

This was a rare occurrence and Clem was uneasy. ‘Where’s Mother?’

‘You know your mother has been bad sick, son,’ Noah said with a sigh, and Clem nodded, sipping his tea.

‘So poorly, she’s been in the ship’s infirmary for the last week,’ he continued.

Clem heard Alice sniff, as if she was crying, and he peered up at her bunk. ‘What’s the matter with Alice?’

‘She’s upset, leave her be. I want to talk to you. Here, finish your tea.’ Noah held the thick mug as Clem swallowed the tea. ‘There, that’s better. Now, Clem, it’s as hard a thing as I’ve ever done to have to tell you that your dear mother has gone to heaven. God saw she was suffering and in his kindness took her to where she can rest in peace.’

Clem stared. He didn’t believe a word of it, and he was angry with his father for making up such a lie.

Above him Alice was sobbing loudly now, and Clem wished she’d stop. She might be a big girl but she could be a real cry-baby at times. His father was still talking, explaining, apologising, and Clem didn’t dare contradict him. Noah was a huge man with a loud voice, not one to cross. So Clem said nothing, nodding dully like the loose head on Alice’s doll, until Noah resorted to prayer, with both children kneeling beside him, cramped over the bunk.

Ladies came to the door, whispering, conferring with Noah, crowding in, patting Clem on the head, calling him a brave boy. They said Alice was a brave girl – which she was not, she was howling – and Clem didn’t trust any of them.

When he finally escaped from all the suffocating clutching and patting and sweet talk, he ran headlong up top, barging into the Captain himself. That was the best thing to happen all morning. Captain took him into the wheelhouse, normally out of bounds to passengers, and let him steer the ship. He didn’t go on about heaven and death, he had more important things to do, and Clem appreciated that. Standing on a stool, he steered the ship into the steep waves with care, to show he was a serious person, mindful of duty, and beside him, Captain smoked his pipe with patient respect.

The next day Alice stepped out in a shiny black dress, and Clem stared at her. It was an ugly dress, with a lopsided collar big and flappy across the front, and an uneven hem that scraped the floor at the sides.

‘Where’d you get that funny dress?’ he asked her.

‘Some ladies made it for me.’

‘Take it off, you look like a dwarfie old lady.’

To his astonishment Alice burst into tears.

‘You don’t look like a dwarfie old lady, Alice, truly you don’t,’ he offered, but she was not to be consoled.

‘I do so. It’s an awful dress but I have to keep on wearing it because we’re in mourning. I’ll always be ugly now.’

He tugged at the dress. ‘You’re not ugly, Alice. I heard the ladies saying what a pretty girl you are.’

‘They did?’ She looked at him in pleased astonishment.

‘Yes, cross my heart.’ It was true, but they’d added ‘except for …’ and Clem reasoned that was best left unsaid, if he was to make up for saying the wrong thing in the first place.

He wished his mother hadn’t gone to heaven; she wouldn’t have made Alice wear a dress like that. But she’d gone all right. After he’d looked for her in the infirmary, Clem had searched the ship. He’d looked everywhere, using his diminutive size as a cloak for spying into cabins and deep in the hold. He hoped she’d be all right in heaven but he missed her, he’d been her favourite.

Just the same, if she had to go it was a pity she hadn’t taken Alice with her. He and Pa would be fine, but it was hard on Alice. She cried a lot, probably because the family had become uneven: two men, counting himself as one eventually, and only one girl now. Alice had no one to plait her hair or make her dresses or sit sewing with her, all those ladies’ things she’d have to do on her own now. Poor Alice.

‘Don’t you worry,’ he said stoutly. ‘I’ll look after you, Alice. When I grow up I’ll always look after you.’

‘Which lady said I was pretty?’

‘Mrs Cathcart, and the others all agreed. I told you true, I did.’

Despite his brave words it was Alice he clung to when the ship docked at Fremantle, the first port of call in Australia, and he found himself in the bewildering confusion of the wharves, a very small boy intimidated by the noise and the crowds.

They waited an age, staring at nothing but sheds as their father made sure all their luggage was ashore, and then, to their astonishment, they had to join a queue to board a barge.

‘Where are we going, Pa?’ Alice asked nervously. ‘I thought we had arrived.’

‘We have, girl. From here we go upriver to the city of Perth. This is only the port.’

Alice was tired, and she dozed leaning against Noah as the barge plied upstream, but Clem ran from side to side, looking out at the green forests that lined the wide, calm river. Hours later they rounded a bend and came upon Perth.

Noah roused Alice. ‘Look up, girl. Here we are now. End of the journey.’

Shipboard companions raised three cheers to celebrate their arrival and everyone looked eagerly at the scattering of white buildings among dusty green trees.

‘Doesn’t look much like a city to me,’ a woman complained, but Noah laughed. ‘And there’s the beauty of it. A fresh country and plenty of land for all. A city doesn’t have to be all smoke and clutter.’

Ashore again, Noah and Alice were busy. A wagon appeared from somewhere and Clem was told to sit on it and wait, but he sat there so long in his sailor suit, he thought they’d forgotten him, and in a panic went looking for them among a welter of luggage and hooped skirts.

Alice came running after him with that funny wobbly run of hers. She had a turned foot. Noah always said it was a perfectly good foot, it just liked looking at the other neat foot instead of the way ahead, but Alice was shy of it. Her dresses were always longer than need be, to keep it hidden, but the good ladies on the ship hadn’t allowed for it, so her black boots were in full view, in all their oddity.

Her brother sighed. Adding a black shawl and black bonnet to that clumsy dress, she did look like a miniature old lady, but this time he did not tell her so.

‘Give us a go, Clem,’ she puffed, yanking his arm. ‘You were told to stay on the wagon.’

‘You took so long! Where have you been?’

‘We had to fill in a lot of papers, and then there was an argument over the horse and wagon. A man claimed it was his but Pa wouldn’t have that. It was the one he’d ordered to meet us, well in advance. We’d have been in a nice fix if we’d got here with all our stuff and no transport.’

‘Where is our stuff anyway?’

‘It’s coming on the next barge. Now come back to the wagon and sit, and I’ll get you a raspberry drink from the kiosk by the jetty.’

He didn’t sit, but stood on the high German wagon, watching people collect their goods, and after hugs and kisses and tearful farewells march up to the town. For some reason the departures reminded him of Mother, and he hoped she knew where they were.

Noah seemed to know exactly where they were. He soon had the wagon piled high with as much as they could cart in this load – the rest of their furniture was in store, he said – and they too were on their way. They drove slowly along sandy streets until, on the outskirts of Perth, he stopped at a roadside café and bought them steaming bowls of thick soup.

‘We must say grace,’ he told his children.

Obediently Alice and Clem clasped their hands and lowered their eyes as he prayed.

‘We thank you, Lord, for our first meal in this land, which I am pleased to say was splendid fare, and we thank you for delivering us in safety to these shores. We ask you to keep Esther Price, our dear departed wife and mother, as close to your heart as she will always be in ours, and further to bless my little family in this our new life. Amen.’

He picked up his hat and grinned broadly at his children. ‘Come along now. We’re off to our new home. The farm is ten times bigger than any in our county, with a ready-made farmhouse. ’Twas a pity to have to leave Old England but we’ll prosper here in the new world.’

Clem heard the excitement in Noah’s voice as he lifted them into the wagon and took the reins, giddy-upping the new horse, and he grinned too, pleased to see his father in such high spirits.

But then they hadn’t seen the farm.

Using the map that had been sent to him, and asking directions all along the way, Noah finally found his land at the end of a bush track that could hardly be rated as a road. But there it was, a sign nailed to a post that read: Winslow Farm.

By this, Noah’s mood had changed, and he didn’t seem too pleased at all, but Clem thought it was because they’d come so far and it was nigh on dusk.

‘Where’s the house?’ he asked.

‘Not far now,’ Noah said, and they followed another track across this unfenced land, assisted by arrows nailed to tree trunks, until they came to a collection of broken-down sheds.

‘Which one is the house?’ Alice asked, but Noah handed her the reins. ‘Hold on here. I’ll look around.’

When he came back he had a face like thunder, and the children quaked. ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘Get yourselves down.’

‘It doesn’t look much to me,’ Clem said, but Alice shushed him.

‘Be quiet. Don’t you think Pa knows that?’

Dismayed, they followed Noah into the foremost shed, and when he lit the lantern they saw that it was indeed their new home, just one large room with four windows, no glass, each covered by hessian bags. It had a bare corrugated-iron roof and an earthen floor. The furniture consisted of grubby bunks lined against the far wall, a bare table and chairs at the other end near a large open fireplace and, surprisingly, a new pine kitchen dresser.

Clem sniffed. This place stank, and underfoot he could feel the scrunch of animal droppings, mice or rats maybe. He looked to Noah who stood, arms folded, surveying their miserable home, seething with rage.

Suddenly he went into action. ‘No point in us standing staring,’ he said. ‘We have to bunk down here for the night, but first we light a fire and clean up this place.’

As they worked, sweeping and dusting, hauling buckets of water from the well to wash away the grime, throwing out the musty mattresses and carrying in necessities from the wagon, Clem worried. He was hungry.

‘There’s no food in this house. What will we eat?’

Alice managed a smile. ‘Don’t fret. Pa bought a box of starting-up provisions from a vendor at the jetty. He’ll buy the rest tomorrow. There must be a shop round here somewhere.’

That night there was no grace, before or after their meal of bread and bacon, their father being in no mood to give thanks to anyone.

Clem slept fitfully, beset with cares, knowing that his father was not sleeping at all – he could hear him tossing and turning on his creaking wooden bunk. Screeching birds woke him in the morning but the others were already up. He smelled toast and that cheered him.

‘What’s for breakfast?’ he asked Alice, who was busy at the fireplace.

‘Fried eggs,’ she said shortly, and Clem jerked up, listening.

‘Who’s Pa talking to? Outside there?’

‘Shush! Hisself.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s angry.’

Clem thought that queer and deemed it wise to stay right where he was until summoned. Noah’s anger could be alarming.

When he did come in, the burly bearded man was still glowering. He ate his breakfast quickly, gulped his tea and stood.

‘I have to go to town. You’ll be all right here, but don’t wander. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

He grabbed his town hat and coat and stormed out of the door, only to turn back and stare at them, a new softness on his rugged face. ‘You be good.’

He was in a real hurry. Within minutes he was on the horse, galloping away across the uneven fields.

The children hoed into the eggs, adding some fried bacon and the last of the bread to the wide pan.

‘I’m the cook now,’ Alice said officiously. ‘I should have given Pa a list, he won’t know what kitchen provisions to buy.’

‘Sure he will,’ Clem said. ‘But why did he have to go right back to town to get supplies? Aren’t there any shops out here?’

‘I don’t know. You’d think there would be. If he finds one nearer, then he’ll be back sooner.’

They explored the empty barn and the smaller sheds, unimpressed by this dilapidated farm, as yet bare of stock, and finding the day very hot, repaired dismally to the shelter of their hut.

Noah was back and he had a man with him. At gunpoint!

The children watched, bewildered, as he ordered the man down from his horse and set off across the fields with him. They ran to keep up, as Noah hustled him more than a mile, first in one direction and then another, shocked that Noah didn’t care about the stranger’s city clothes when he stumbled and fell to the ground. Appalled when their own pa shouted his rage, and with his boot pushed the man’s face into the dirt.

‘Taste it, you bastard! Taste the land you sold me! Salty, isn’t it? And why? Because it’s mostly sand. And why? Because it’s too close to the ocean. I’ll bet this land was once covered by the sea, and I’ll bet you soon woke up to that too.’

The man was red-faced, spluttering. ‘You let me up, Price! I’ll have the law on you.’

‘No you won’t. I haven’t got time for that foolery. I’m not waiting years to get my money back from a land shark like you. I know all about those sort of tricks. I’ll shoot you right now if I have to.’

‘Pa! No!’ Alice screamed.

Noah squatted on his haunches and grinned, but the grin was loaded with menace.

‘This here gentleman,’ he said to his children, ‘is Mr Clive Garten. He got this land free, all fifteen hundred acres, because he’s a clerk in the gov’mint. Then he wakes up it’s crook country, useless for farming, so what does he do?’

The stranger, still on the ground, was edging away like a crab, but he stopped when Noah tilted the rifle at him with a click.

‘He can’t sell it locally because folks know, so he advertises it in a London paper as prime farmland, the best, handy to Perth and all that, with a cottage to boot.’

Noah looked back over his shoulder. ‘Now that there hut’s neither a cottage nor a farmhouse, but that I could overcome. I could build us a decent house, but I can’t do anything about the soil.’ He poked his victim with the rifle. ‘I can’t turn sand into good soil any more than I can turn water into wine. So there you have it, Alice. We’ve been done, good and proper, us new chums. We’ll starve out here. All because of him.’

‘Shoot him, Pa!’ Clem was all for shooting, and even Alice was wavering.

‘There’s another way out of this.’ Noah’s voice was soothing. ‘If I get my money back, every penny, then you, Mr Clive Garten, could survive this day.’

‘You’ll never get away with this.’

‘Yes I will. I’ve had time to think this out. You give me your IOU or you die out here. If you renege on that, I’ll come to town and shoot you dead in the main street. You can take that as my solemn oath, for I’m a man of my word.’

Back at the hut, Garten signed the IOU and, encouraged by Noah, left his gold watch for good measure.

As soon as Noah received his refund and returned the watch, they packed up the wagon and moved on, but this time Noah chose his own land.

They travelled a long, long way, over the ranges from the coast and on east in an interminable straight line for days and days, because Noah wanted land, plenty of land, at his price. There was no shortage out on these massive plains.

They came to a tiny village called York and went still further east from there until Noah was satisfied.

He bought his land, built a stone farmhouse, stocked his property with sheep and called it Lancoorie. He always referred to it as his farm, but as the children grew up they insisted it was a sheep station, not a farm. Their father was not much interested in what it was called; he went on acquiring land and more land, because there was no end to these wild acres.

It was shearing time. Noah had managed to scrape enough cash together to hire three shearers to help him and Clem to get through the job while the weather was clear and warm. They only had about five hundred sheep this season, thanks to a sudden cold spell that had killed off more than seventy newly shorn sheep in one night last year, so they were going at it hard, with Alice working too, mustering them into the runs and dashing inside to collect and pile the fleece.

Nineteen now, Clem loved shearing time. He was a good shearer himself. He loved the smell of sweat and dust, the noise, and the clip, clip of the shears, the heavy hunched backs of the men, and their talk, their cursing and swearing and the irreverent laughter that seemed to dance in the air with the shower of sun particles in the shaft of light from the high window. It was a good working day, running smoothly, when one of the men coming back from the outhouse noticed a new horse at the rail.

‘You got a visitor, Noah?’

‘Yeah. Vicar Petchley. Bloody hangers-on, those blokes.’

‘Trying to convert you, is he?’

‘Fat chance!’

Clem saw the men exchange winks, and grinned, feeling part of it, though he wasn’t sure of what. Shearers liked to gossip, and even more, they were great teasers, taking good-natured rises out of people.

‘You ought to listen to him sermonize, Noah. It’ll do you good.’

‘I got no time for sermonizing.’

‘You could get him to recite his latest while he’s here. A free sermon from him and no chance to pass the plate.’

‘Nothin’s free. I reckon he only turns up here for a feed.’

‘That’s not kind, Noah. The poor feller’s spreadin’ the word of God.’

Noah released his ram, nudged it out the door, stood up and stretched his back. ‘Well, he ain’t spreading it on me.’ He laughed his deep, throaty laugh. ‘He can spread it on Dora. She can do with it. What is he anyway? What bloody church?’

‘He’s of the Wesleyan denomination, they say.’

‘Never heard of it.’ Noah took a rolled smoke from behind his ear and stepped outside for a break.

The grins were passed about again, and Clem watched, feeling a nervousness in the pit of his stomach.

‘That vicar spreads himself round all right,’ one winked.

‘Has a hard time keeping it in his trousers, they say.’

‘Kind to the ladies, is he?’ A leer.

‘Ah, terrible kind. Skinny as a link but he must have somethin’ working for him, there’s a few don’t mind his style.’

‘He’s probably spreading it on Dora right now.’

Noah was in the doorway. Filling the doorway. Blocking the light. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. They could feel his rage engulfing the shed. Then he turned and ran.

Clem dropped his animal. ‘You stupid buggers! Now look what you’ve done!’ He sprinted after his father.

‘Don’t take no notice, Pa. You know how they go on. Half of what they say ain’t true, the other half you can’t believe.’

It was a farce. Like the silly stage play they’d seen in York, in the days when they could afford to take time off to go into the village.

All the way across the paddock Noah was roaring: ‘What’s going on up there? By Jesus, you little apology for a dingo! If you touch Dora I’ll make tripe of you!’

‘Pa! Shut up!’ Clem was running along beside him. He truly didn’t believe that talk. ‘He’s a vicar, for God’s sake. He wouldn’t be doing any wrong. He’s a man of the church! He wouldn’t!’

But as they ploughed up the back steps, the vicar was off out the front, his shirt tails hanging out of his pants. And there was Dora, her blouse askew, one large drooping bosom visible as she shot for their bedroom.

‘No you don’t,’ Noah shouted. ‘What have you got there?’

She was clutching a piece of clothing, but he tore it from her and Clem gaped as Noah held them up. Her bloomers! They really had been up to no good, the pair of them! Noah was enraged that the vicar had touched his wife, but that didn’t stop him. He clouted Dora across the face, sending her flying, then he upended her, displaying her big bare bum, pushing the bloomers into her face. ‘You bloody hussy! Where do these belong? Not on the bloody floor when we’ve got a vicar in the house, do they? You whore! By Christ, I’ll deal with you when I get back.’

Clem hung back, enjoying the show. Years he’d waited for the old man to wake up to Dora, and it had to be with a vicar of all people. He wished Alice could have witnessed Dora getting her come-uppance at last. And he was still laughing as he watched Noah take off after the vicar. He wouldn’t ever want to come back into this district again after Noah had finished with him!

‘Bad luck, eh?’ he said to the weeping Dora before he went off to find Alice, to tell her the good news.

The shearers found his body. ‘His neck’s broke,’ one of them told Clem. Then, with a shuffle and a shift of sad eyes, ‘He wouldna suffered, Clem. He’d a hit the ground. Bang! Gone! Movin’ that fast, you see. Cuttin’ across country. The horse took a tumble. Broke a fetlock. We had to shoot him. We’re real sorry, mate. Real sorry. You come on back with me, the boys’ll bring your pa in.’

‘No. I’ll get him. I’ll bring him in.’

‘I reckon we’d better get on back to the homestead. Break the news to the missus and Alice. Young Alice, she’d be best off hearing it from you than any of us.’

‘The missus can go to hell, and there’s no kind way to tell Alice. Whichever way, it’ll be a shock. He’s my pa, I have to be with him.’

He wished he hadn’t insisted. He fought against a faint when he saw the men loading the slumped bulk of his father, Noah Wolverton Price, on to a horse, heaving him across the beast’s bare back like a large, ungainly sack. But the horse, spooked, would have none of it. As they tried to strap him on she shied, bucked, snapped angrily at them, and when the body slid to the ground for the second time they kept their curses to a mutter in deference to the bereaved son standing by; the indignity of the scene a terrible embarrassment. In the end, with Clem’s help his father’s body was firmly aboard, covered in a saddle blanket, and they set off on the long ride back to the homestead, a good nineteen miles by Clem’s reckoning.

Noah would have known that his old horse was no match for the vicar’s fine mount, so he’d left the track to try to cut him off on the west road into York. Obviously he hadn’t caught the bastard, Clem thought grimly. But I will one day. Not for the likes of Dora, but for the life of my father. Reduced to this.

As he rode behind the small procession, two of the men doubling on one horse, he looked out over the wide, flat sweep of country. ‘Flat as a tack,’ Noah used to say, with wonder in his voice. ‘Flat all the way to the horizons, no matter which way you look. Bloody uninteresting I call it, but great pasture land.’

Clem had never thought about it one way or another, because he knew no different. He was a plainsman, and he took the vast country for granted. As much as a farmer could here, with one eye on the water supply. But now he looked at the huge overhang of pale-blue sky and wondered what was to be done about all this land, most of it still virgin bush. He supposed it was dull country. Sometimes you could be riding along for ten miles or so, dreaming, thinking of things, and when you looked up you’d swear you hadn’t moved, it was that much of a sameness.

Other farmers had put in wheat, they had huge wheat fields, and Noah had considered it, talked about it to Clem, but then he’d claim he was a sheep farmer, his family had been sheep farmers for generations, and he might as well stay one.

‘You clear this land,’ he told Clem, ‘and the bloody trees keep coming back at you. Try burning them out and they grow even better.’

‘Not if it’s properly cleared. Get all the roots out.’

‘And that takes money. We’d need an army of men to clear Lancoorie.’

‘Not if they did it acres at a time.’

‘We’ll see when we get some spare cash.’ He never did have enough spare cash, and then Dora and the house took what little he did have.

Alice came running down the track, hair flying, skirts bobbing, calling, ‘Did you find Pa?’ Then stopping so suddenly she tripped over herself.

Clem was down in an instant to help her up. ‘Come away, love, Pa’s had an accident.’ But she wrestled free and ran on, to stand staring, speechless, at Noah’s lolling head brushing the horse’s flank, white hair, scraggy with sweat and grime, set loose at that angle, to resemble another beard on the wrong end of his head, eyes open in a grotesque gaze.

‘He’s dead!’ she screamed as Clem took hold of her. ‘What did that terrible man do to him?’

‘Nothing. I don’t reckon he caught him. Now let’s you and me go and have a cuppa tea. They’ll take Pa over to the shed.’

‘They’ll do no such thing. Bring him to the house.’

‘Is that the right thing to do?’ Clem asked uncertainly.

She nodded, needing his support as they stumbled past the three big oak trees that Noah had planted with acorns he’d had sent from England. He’d planned a row of them as a windbreak against the hot, dry winds that swept across the plains in the summer, but only three had survived. And only then by Alice’s constant watering and nurturing.

‘We’ll come back tomorrer,’ the shearers said, clutching their hats, their sad duty done, addressing the missus, who was prostrate on the couch, loudly bewailing her loss.

‘No you won’t.’ Clem interrupted her performance. ‘We’ll get back to the sheds. We have to get the shearing finished.’

‘Oh, you cruel boy!’ Dora screamed at him. ‘Have you no respect for the dead? Let them go!’

‘The sheds,’ Clem said, and the shearers, practical men, nodded, knowing he was right.

Women came swiftly to lay out the body, to sit with Alice in long, mysterious con