Daughter of the Regiment Page 6

  But he didn’t say it aloud.

  chapter twelve

  Looking for Cissie

  The shadows lengthened.

  White Ice, the Light Sussex, peered into the chookhouse and saw Angie. She considered for a moment, her small pale head on one side, her black neck twisted, then hopped into the far right nesting box.

  Twenty minutes later Harry heard her call. Pruck pruck opruck pruck opruck pruck pruck …

  ‘Dopey birds,’ sighed Angie. ‘No, there’s nothing happening. I just wanted to stretch for a moment and get out of the chook dust. Why do they call like that anyway? Everyone knows they’ve laid an egg and can come and take it.’

  ‘It’s to signal to the rooster,’ said Harry. ‘When he hears them cluck he knows to look round and make sure it is safe for them to get back to him and the other chooks.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘What time do you have to be back?’

  ‘Soon,’ said Angie. ‘I haven’t finished my homework. I’ve still got all those maths problems. Surely something must have happened by now.’

  ‘Maybe we’ve missed it. While we were down at the creek … or before breakfast.’

  ‘Or they’ve sent her home. They can’t have sent her home. We’d never see her again. We’d never know …’ She stopped, as though embarrassed by her own vehemence. ‘I’d better get home myself. What about tomorrow?’

  ‘I’ll look before I go to school,’ said Harry. ‘Damn. I can’t after school though—I’ve got basketball practice and Mum’s picking me up. It’ll be five at the earliest before we get home.’

  ‘Would you like me to come down and check?’ asked Angie hesitantly.

  ‘Would you? That’d be great. I’ll tell Mum we’re doing a project together or something.’

  ‘Okay. Just so I know what I’m supposed to be doing here. When are Sunset’s eggs going to hatch?’

  ‘About a week,’ said Harry. ‘It’s been fourteen, no fifteen days so far.’

  ‘If anyone asks what I’m doing in the chookhouse I’ll say I’m checking the eggs,’ said Angie. ‘And waiting for you of course.’ She hesitated. ‘Maybe I’ll look just one more time,’ she said. She slipped inside the chookhouse and pressed her eyes to the hole.

  ‘Harry!’

  ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘She’s there! She’s back again!’ Angie’s face was glowing. ‘Oh Harry, they did let her stay!’

  chapter thirteen

  Cissie Returns

  Cissie was older. But not much taller, thought Harry, as he crouched under the perches with Angie.

  If they sort of sat opposite each other with their eyes at an angle, they could both get their eyes close enough to the hole to see inside at the same time.

  Cissie was still dressed much the same as before. But her face looked … different somehow, he decided. It was almost the face of the woman she would become.

  She was sitting on her rock. The same rock she had sat on the first time Harry saw her, and the last. She was reading aloud from a book in her lap, a solid sort of book, with a leather cover stained at one side.

  Sergeant Wilkes leant against a flat-trunked gum on the bank opposite. He held a fishing line. Or at least that’s what Harry supposed it was. It was just a stick and a piece of thread dropping into the water.

  ‘That was a nice one,’ said Sergeant Wilkes in his croaking voice.

  He looked older too, thought Harry, much older than Grandad now. The hair had shrunk from his head like grass in a drought. ‘A very nice one indeed. Not that I understood it, mind you. But it was nice the way you read it.’

  Cissie’s face was laughing, so different from the girl Harry had seen just a few days before.

  ‘You didn’t even listen,’ she accused. ‘Your eyes were shut.’

  ‘I can listen with me eyes shut,’ said Sergeant Wilkes amiably. ‘Read me another then.’

  Cissie looked down at her book again. ‘To Daffodils,’ she read. ‘It’s by Robert Herrick. Captain Piper says Herrick was a very famous poet.’

  ‘He’s dead then?’

  Cissie hesitated. ‘I think all poets are dead,’ she said. ‘All the good ones. All the ones in Captain Piper’s book are dead anyway.’ She cleared her throat.

  ‘Fair daffodils,

  we weep to see

  You haste away so soon:

  As yet the early rising Sun

  Has not attain’d his noon.

  Stay, Stay,

  Until the hasting day

  has run

  But to the evensong

  and, having pray’d together, we

  Will go along with you

  We have as short a time to stay as you;

  We have as short a spring;

  As quick a growth to meet decay

  as you, or anything.

  We die,

  as your hours do, and dry

  Away

  Like to the summer’s rain,

  Or as the pearls of morning dew.

  Ne’er to be found again.’

  Her voice grew silent.

  ‘Ah, that’s a sad one,’ said Sergeant Wilkes at last. ‘Things growing, changing, passing. But flowers come again. Maybe that poet of the Captain’s forgot about that!’

  Sergeant Wilkes drew up the string, examined it, then reached beside him for a gobbet of meat. He tied it back onto the string and threw it in.

  ‘He must be trying to catch an eel,’ whispered Angie. ‘There’s no hook on his line for fish.’

  Harry nodded. There was no need to whisper, of course. Neither Cissie nor Sergeant Wilkes could hear them. But it seemed wrong to speak aloud just the same.

  ‘Sergeant Wilkes?’

  ‘Yes, lass?’

  ‘What are daffodils like?’

  Sergeant Wilkes looked nonplussed. ‘Well, they’re flowers, lass. Yellow flowers. Like any flowers I suppose.’

  ‘Like wattle?’

  ‘Well no. Not like that. They stick out of the ground on a straight stem, one at a time.’

  ‘They’d look silly!’

  ‘Well they don’t, lass, and that’s a fact. They look right beautiful. You ask Captain Piper about them. He’ll tell you right enough. He’s the one with all the learning.’

  Cissie nodded. She looked down at her book, then looked back at Sergeant Wilkes. ‘Has anyone ever written a poem about wattle?’

  Sergeant Wilkes looked startled. ‘Not that I know of, lass. You’d best ask Captain Piper about that as well. But I don’t suppose they have. Wattle doesn’t grow back home where the poets were. Too cold.’

  ‘I bet wattle’s prettier than any daffodils,’ said Cissie stubbornly.

  Wilkes chuckled. ‘Well, you might be right at that. But don’t let Captain Piper or Lieutenant Carstairs hear you say it. Lieutenant Carstairs has a whole wood of daffodils right by his home in Surrey. He talks about them every spring. You’ll see daffodils for yourself one day, lass. Then you’ll see why they write poems about them.’

  ‘I’ll still like wattle best,’ said Cissie obstinately. ‘Maybe I’ll write a poem about wattle, if no one else has. “Fair wattle branch that waves about the sky …” What rhymes with sky, Sergeant Wilkes?’

  ‘Ah, no, that’s not a question you should be asking me neither,’ said Sergeant Wilkes. He stretched. ‘I’ve been sitting in one place long enough. Me bones are aching. Come on. They’re not biting today, or maybe the meat’s too fresh for them to fancy.’

  Cissie nodded. ‘Fly,’ she said.

  ‘What’s that lass?’

  ‘Fly. It rhymes with sky. And high, and lie … “Fair wattle branch that waves about the sky, There against the blue you lie, Showing the … bees, maybe … the bees … or laughing jackasses… no, bees sounds better… Showing the bees then how to fly …”’

  ‘Then you’d better run back and write it down before you go forgetting it,’ said Sergeant Wilkes. ‘I bet it’ll be a grand poem. Don’t you go waiting for me, lass. I’ll come as fast as my bones can ca
rry me and no faster.’

  Cissie clasped her book and leapt across the rock. Suddenly she was gone. Her voice floated back, too indistinct to hear what she was saying, then Sergeant Wilkes was gone as well.

  There was silence in the chookhouse. Outside, Arnie Shwarzenfeather yodelled to his flock. Showing them a patch of grass seed, thought Harry, or just keeping them together. The dust wove and quivered in the sun streaks that came through the door.

  ‘It wasn’t very good,’ said Harry at last. He felt disloyal, but he had to say something.

  ‘What wasn’t?’

  ‘Cissie’s poem. It wasn’t very good.’

  ‘It was her first poem,’ said Angie defensively. ‘I bet she gets better at it later on.’

  Harry nodded. He didn’t want to argue. ‘You’ll check tomorrow after school?’

  ‘I said I would,’ said Angie. She seemed uncertain too, thought Harry, as though neither knew quite what to say. Nothing really seemed adequate.

  Looking through the hole wasn’t like watching TV or a video. It was real life. They were the watchers who could offer neither sympathy nor help. Or even a rhyme for sky, thought Harry.

  Try, cry, goodbye …

  ‘See you tomorrow,’ said Harry finally.

  Angie nodded without speaking. Harry watched her cross the flat and go down the path to home.

  chapter fourteen

  Next Week

  The school bus wound down the spaghetti road, clattering over the bridge at Three Sheep Creek, bouncing over the ruts the Council grader flattened once a year and that came back as soon as it rained and the water washed across the road.

  ‘Coming swimming?’ asked Spike.

  Harry shook his head. ‘I’m going down to the chookhouse,’ he said.

  Spike blinked at him. ‘You’re always down the chookhouse these days. Doesn’t it get sort of boring?’ he demanded.

  Harry shrugged. It wasn’t boring. It was compelling, more and more each day, as though he had to know what happened next, as though there was something that made him look.

  ‘Anything new happened this week?’ asked Spike.

  Harry glanced behind, but no one was listening. Trudi and Alice were whispering secrets and Sam was just staring out the window. ‘Didn’t Angie tell you?’ asked Harry.

  Spike shrugged. ‘Didn’t ask,’ he said. ‘She’d just say, Why don’t you come down and see for yourself?, in a silly sort of voice … You know what sisters are like.’

  Harry nodded, though he didn’t, not having a sister. ‘We’ve only seen her twice this week,’ he said slowly. ‘The first time Angie got there just as Cissie was leaving. And the second time Cissie was reading by herself.’

  ‘Like I said. Boring,’ said Spike. ‘Just sitting in a chookhouse watching a kid sit on a rock. Maybe something will happen soon. Hey, wouldn’t it be great if you saw bushrangers? You could see where they put their treasure then we could go and dig it up.’

  ‘I don’t think there were bushrangers around much then,’ said Harry. ‘Bushrangers were later.’

  ‘Well, something interesting,’ said Spike. ‘Hey, have you decided about next year yet?’

  ‘No,’ said Harry shortly.

  ‘I’d go like a shot,’ said Spike. ‘Anything to get away from Bradley’s Bluff. I mean at least things happen down in Sydney. You know Angie’s applied for a scholarship at St Helen’s?’

  ‘No,’ said Harry startled. ‘She didn’t say anything about it.’

  ‘I reckon she’ll get it,’ said Spike. ‘She’s pretty bright. But then she’s interested … hey, that means if you decide to go down to Sydney she’ll be able to tell you all the news. I won’t have to write two letters. The schools are pretty close, aren’t they?’

  ‘Dunno,’ said Harry.

  ‘I reckon it’d be great to go,’ said Spike.

  The bus lumbered round a bend. Below, the river bed gleamed like it had soaked up all the sun. The last of summer’s water trickled through deep ruts carved in the sand.

  Harry was silent.

  chapter fifteen

  Daniel

  ‘Harry! Is that you?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s me.’ Harry dumped his school bag on the verandah.

  ‘Take your boots off before you come inside,’ said Mum automatically.

  ‘Mum, they’re school shoes. Not boots. They haven’t been anywhere dirty.’

  ‘They’re dirty enough,’ said Mum. ‘No shoes inside. There’s frozen fruit salad in the freezer if you want some.’

  ‘Great. I’ll take some down with me.’

  ‘Down to the chookshed again?’

  Harry nodded.

  ‘You’re down there every afternoon and the new run is hardly started.’ Mum grinned at him. ‘I bet I know what you’re really doing down there.’

  Harry froze. ‘What?’

  ‘Just watching your chooks. My dad was the same. When he was appointed someplace new the first thing he’d unpack would be his hens. It used to drive my mother demented sometimes. She’d be unpacking all the kid’s things and he’d be down checking out the back shed or whatever was there to put his chooks in … And every Sunday when he came back from the service they’d be waiting for him, all lined up. He always gave them a special lot of wheat at Sunday lunchtime. He swore they could count to seven and knew just when Sunday was.’

  ‘Probably just heard the music in Church and thought “wheat”,’ said Harry.

  ‘Probably,’ said Mum. ‘You know, it’s funny. We moved six times when I was a kid. And here I am married to a man whose family has lived in the one spot for six generations.’

  And I’m the seventh, thought Harry. But he didn’t say it aloud. Mum and Dad never pressured him about taking over the farm. Never even said ‘When you do ag science at high school …’ If he wanted to be an accountant or a computer scientist they wouldn’t argue. But he knew they hoped he’d find some way to keep the farm no matter what else he decided to do.

  The chookshed shimmered in the heat, even under its blanket of passionfruit. He’d scraped out all the muck and put down fresh hay on Tuesday (he’d seen Angie wrinkle her nose on Monday). The chooks kept scratching it over, looking for seeds, and so kept covering their droppings with the hay, too. The shed still smelt more like dried grass than chook.

  Harry stepped inside. All the eggs were in the left-hand box today, as though the chooks had had a conference that morning and decided, It’s the left one today, girls.

  The hole was a bright white light in the darkness. It must be summer there too, thought Harry. When it was winter on the other side the hole was softer, dimmer. He crouched down and pressed his eyes to it.

  Someone was there! Someone new! Not Cissie, not Sergeant Wilkes, not any of the people he’d seen before.

  This was a boy, about his age or a few years older. He wore a shirt and trousers, sort of baggy, but not so different from what you’d wear today, and heavy boots.

  The boy knelt by the creek scooping its water into his mouth. A stained sack drooped behind him. A horse whinnied softly in the background, but it was too far to the side to see.

  ‘Who are you?’

  Harry started. It was Cissie’s voice. The hole showed so little of its world, he hadn’t seen her approach and still couldn’t see where she was. She must be standing just downstream.

  The boy jumped. He gulped water the wrong way, so he choked, and stood up coughing. ‘What the … what are you doing creeping up on me like that? I might have drowned meself in fright.’

  Cissie’s voice was unsympathetic. ‘Only if you’d been fool enough to stick your head in the pool. Who are you?’ she repeated.

  ‘Who wants to know?’

  ‘I do.’

  The boy shrugged. ‘Daniel then.’

  ‘Daniel what?’

  ‘Who gave you the right to ask the questions?’

  ‘You can ask too if you like.’ Cissie stepped forward, closer to the boy. Harry could see her clearly now.
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br />   ‘I don’t need to ask questions,’ said the boy smugly. ‘I know who you are and all anyway.’

  ‘Who am I then?’

  ‘You’re the girl who lives at the garrison with the soldiers. Captain Piper told my Da all about you.’

  ‘Oh!’ Cissie sat on the bank and hugged her knees. ‘That’s who you are then! The new people who’ve settled down the river. Captain Piper said you’d all come up to join your father.’

  ‘Who did you think I was then?’

  Cissie wrinkled her nose. ‘How was I to know? An escaped convict maybe.’

  ‘Do I look like an escaped convict?’

  Cissie looked him up and down. ‘You might be.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t be wearing my best clothes to go honeying, would I?’ demanded the boy, exasperated.

  ‘Is that what you’ve been doing? Getting honey?’

  The boy nodded. ‘One of the black women down the river told my ma about a hive along the creek up this way. The dray overturned when we crossed a river—only a week out from Sydney, too—and all the sugar got wet and dissolved away, and then the ants got in the treacle. It’s been weeks since Ma had any sweetening and when she heard about the honey …’

  ‘Weren’t you afraid they’d sting you?’ asked Cissie admiringly.

  ‘Nah, these is native bees. Native bees don’t sting.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘The black women said. They know everything, the black women do. The bees didn’t sting me, so it must be true. Besides, it’d’ve been worth it for the honey.’ The boy grinned again. ‘And I got something a touch better than honey.’

  ‘What?’ demanded Cissie.

  ‘A swarm! A swarm of bees! They just dropped into my sack, easy as you please.’ The boy gestured to the sack on the ground.

  ‘They’re in there? Can I see them? Please!’

  ‘Course not. They might fly away. Or, maybe if they get angry they sting.’

  ‘Could I just see the honey then?’ Cissie hesitated. ‘I’ve never seen honey.’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘Not that I remember. Maybe I did back in Sydney or back in England—but I was too young then to remember anything … or not much anyway. Not honey. I’ve read about it though. I’ve read a lot. Captain Piper’s got two whole chests of books, and Mama and Papa had some as well … Can I see it? Please?’