To Chase the Storm: The Frontier Series 4 (6 page)

Patrick sat in stunned silence as the colonel outlined the picture of a fearless, if misguided, fighter for Irish freedom from Britain – a picture of a man so much the opposite of the one he remembered when his cousin and he were growing up together at the Erin Hotel in Redfern.

‘Why doesn’t the Church discipline him then?’

‘They would if they had proof. Your cousin is a Jesuit and it seems that they have trouble controlling the Soldiers of Christ,’ Hughes answered with a note of sarcasm. ‘The founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola, was once himself a mercenary soldier of some enviable repute and I suppose some traditions die hard. From what I have heard even the occasional excommunication of the Jesuits does not seem to deter them.’

‘I was taught by Jesuits when I was young,’ Patrick said quietly. ‘They are the brightest and toughest the Church has.’

The colonel nodded. He had a grudging respect for priests whose rigorous training and dedication were not unlike those of a good soldier. They had a reputation as fearless and learned warriors of God, and their crusades had taken them to some parts of the world long before the great imperial powers of Europe reached them officially. From India to Japan they had gone, at great risk to themselves, and now one of them had taken on a crusade against his own government in the name of justice for the Irish. A very dangerous undertaking!

‘I know there is little you can do,’ the colonel said gently, seeing the pain in his friend’s face, ‘but if Father Duffy ever returns to Sydney you might attempt to reason with him. Point out that his activities also put Australian lives at stake in a war with the Boers, that he has a greater loyalty to the land of his birth than to the land of his fathers.’

‘What makes you think he would listen to me, a man who has renounced the religion that Martin was ordained into? I am probably just as much an enemy to him now as the British government.’

‘You are right in all you say, Patrick, but at least it’s worth a try. There are others around me who would prefer to just quietly do away with him. Any violent act that might be exposed against him by those same people naturally cannot be entertained. Should it become public knowledge that a priest was summarily executed it would bring down international sympathy on his side. There are too many damned Irishmen in the United States with growing political power to allow that to occur. Not to mention the record of Irish rebellion in the Australian colonies over the years – Vinegar Hill, the Eureka Stockade . . . No, better that your cousin somehow be persuaded to give up his secular cause and concentrate on ministering to his congregations.’

Patrick felt stiff with tension. He stood and again walked to the window overlooking the parade ground outside the solidly built sandstone barracks. He gazed across the sacred ground of sergeant majors, deep in thought.

Finally Patrick turned to speak. ‘I know the Duffys.
Their blood runs within me. They have been fighting the British as far back as my grandfather and his war did not end in Ireland. He was one of the miners who stood at the Ballarat goldfields back in ’54. You may not have any other option than to do as you say – quietly remove him.’

Patrick’s cold-blooded statement surprised the colonel. He was a man used to making difficult decisions in battle but the colonial major’s quietly delivered words chilled his soul. Something must have died in Patrick, perhaps after his terrible experiences wandering in the Sudanese desert after the advance on Tamai village. How else could a man condone the possible killing of his own blood? There was only one question that remained and he was reluctant to ask it.

‘If the circumstances ever arose, Major Duffy, could you bring yourself to remove your cousin?’

There was a cold dead look in the eyes that stared into his. Patrick slowly nodded his head before replying. ‘If my cousin’s actions in any way put the life of even one of my men in peril, then he is a sworn enemy of mine.’

On the carriage journey back to his offices through the streets of Sydney, Patrick felt the air of gaiety in the crowds thronging in and around the shops. The news that the colonies would be sending troops to assist the British lion was welcomed as a chance to show the English that their colonial cousins were more than equal to the task as fighting men.

Those who had misgivings about the war against a small nation of farmers wisely elected to remain silent amongst the fiercely loyalist Sydneysiders. For now, the important conferences planning the uniting of the colonies as one nation under one Australian flag were forgotten. All that mattered was a patriotic outburst from the crowds to prove the worth of those transplanted sons to the Southern Hemisphere.

Patrick had not found the festive mood contagious. He brooded about all that had occurred in his meeting with Colonel Hughes and struggled with his deep-seated sense of guilt at deserting his regiment on the eve of war. But something else had influenced his decision, something he could never tell Colonel Hughes or anyone else: the sense that had he gone he might return to a life without Catherine. Her many mysterious absences ate at him – he could not bear the thought that she might be having an affair, but if she was he hoped that it would simply burn itself out and she would return to him. To date he had not questioned her activities away from the house. A matter of trust, he told himself. But the trust was growing thin.

Patrick returned to the harbourside mansion late that evening. The two-horse carriage trundled up the gravel driveway, through the impressive established garden, to deliver him at the front door. He was met by Betsy, the domestic who had been with his grandmother for many years. She greeted him politely and informed him that the children were
already in bed and that Lady Enid had taken supper with them. It seemed that his grandmother had stepped in once more to fill the children’s need for a mother. He thanked Betsy for the news and requested that the cook bring his supper to the verandah, a place where he could be alone and take in the salty smells and lulling sounds of the broad expanse of water below.

It was a pleasant, balmy evening and under other circumstances he might have shared it with Catherine. In the past they had often sat here, enjoying the peace and the wonderful climate of Sydney. But tonight Patrick would pick at his supper alone and probably get very drunk on a couple of bottles of excellent colonial wine.

As he seated himself in one of the cane chairs, the cook brought his supper. Cold mutton, pickles and bread on a silver salver were placed beside him on a small table. He requested two bottles of sauterne and his cigars from the library and when the cook returned with them he settled back to reflect on his life. The cigar glowed in the dark, its thick grey smoke curling lazily away on a gentle evening breeze. The wine was superb but Patrick ignored the supper and stared across the dark harbour at the tiny lights that marked fishing boats and houses on its lower reaches. The night air carried the rough voices of fishermen to him as soft whispers.

‘I thought you might be out here,’ Lady Enid Macintosh said, jolting him out of his thoughts as she took a chair beside him. ‘Betsy told me you were home. Has it been a bad day?’

‘A different day, Grandmother,’ he replied distantly, trying to keep his feelings to himself.

But Enid knew her grandson well and understood from his reply that he was troubled. ‘Is it Catherine?’ she asked bluntly. ‘It has been apparent to me that you have been rather melancholy lately.’

‘Catherine, my decision not to remain with the regiment – a lot of questions I have no answers to.’

He did not see the expression of relief on his grandmother’s face at his mention of leaving the regiment. She had almost lost Patrick to another war and he had since become the most precious being in her life – possibly even more precious than her desire to retain the Macintosh name.

‘The children also wonder about their mother,’ Enid said. ‘She is never at home lately. She leaves the house without saying where she is going. Or who she is meeting.’

‘She has always been very independent,’ Patrick said defensively. ‘I suspect that her absences from the house will cease soon.’

He took a long swig of the wine as if to drown his own doubts. He had taken little notice of Catherine’s restlessness until it had been too late; he knew that now. And although he would not admit his fears, Lady Enid suspected. Had not she lost a daughter to a young Irishman almost forty years earlier? Was her grandson now a victim of that terrible unspoken curse that seemed to haunt the family?

‘I pray that you are right, Patrick, but I fear that you need her in your life more than she needs you.’

Enid’s blunt statement caused Patrick to glance
sharply at her. His grandmother had a perceptiveness that had proven itself in her business dealings over the years, but he was surprised to see that same perceptiveness displayed in matters of the heart.

‘I can see you would prefer to be alone,’ she continued gently, ‘so I will bid you a goodnight.’

Patrick rose to offer his arm as she got to her feet, even though she did not require it. She was still a strong woman. He kissed her on the forehead as she waved off his offer to help her to her room, and when she was gone Patrick sank again into his chair and his troubled thoughts. He knew that he was lost and he knew why. And there was nothing he could do about it.

FIVE

M
ore than a thousand miles north of where Patrick Duffy sat on the verandah overlooking the beautiful harbour of Sydney, three people also sat on a verandah overlooking another harbour. The boy – though more a young man now – sat beside his mother, an attractive woman in her early fifties. Matthew Tracy was a strapping lad of fourteen years and could have passed for eighteen. He had inherited the broad-shouldered build of the Duffy men rather than the lankiness of his American father, gold prospector Luke Tracy, known only to Matthew through legend, having disappeared between Townsville and Burketown on the arid plains outside Julia Creek at the time of Matthew’s birth.

The tall young man with the long, dark beard opposite them wore the clothes of a bushman and his floppy hat lay on the wooden plank floor of the
verandah beside his chair. In his lap he balanced a delicate china saucer as he sipped at a cup of India tea. The house was large and cool, designed to capture the occasional breezes of the tropics. But for the moment Townsville harbour was perfectly still and all three sweated even in the cooling darkness of the evening.

Kate Tracy, nee Duffy, who had also once been known by her married name of Kate O’Keefe, fanned herself with an ornately splayed Chinese fan. It had been a gift from her old friend John Wong who she regularly did business with importing and exporting to the Far East. Little was said amongst the three as Kate was still taking in the tragic news that the young bushman had brought of the death of his father, Ben Rosenblum.

Saul had ridden into Townsville that afternoon to deliver the news to the woman who had once been not only his father’s boss but also a lifelong friend and to comply with a wish his father had expressed during his living years. He returned a small, battered case that had once been polished mahogany. Inside it snuggled a huge Colt cap and ball revolver. ‘He always said you were to have this back on his passing, Mrs Tracy,’ Saul had mumbled, awkward in the presence of the legendary woman of the frontier. ‘Said something about not needing insurance when he was gone.’

The tears welled in Kate’s grey eyes as she stared down at the battered case. A distant memory of a boy hardly older than her own son came to her. A boy who stood as awkwardly beside the giant bullock
wagon as the young man now before her. She had given the new pistol to Ben when he had first set off with old Joe Hanrahan to take supplies to the far-flung, isolated properties west of Rockhampton. But then she had not been very old herself in those days. So much had happened in her fifty-five years; a deserted seventeen-year-old girl perilously ill with fever and losing her first baby had become the ruler of a financial empire that spread its influence across the oceans as far as America. With some persuasion she convinced the tough young bushman to stay on at her Townsville house for as long as he needed to. He accepted self-consciously but with some gratitude, as he had no lodgings arranged before his journey south to Brisbane.

Over dinner Kate had marvelled at the similarities of the young bullocky that Ben once was and this young man sitting at her table.

‘Will you visit your sister in Brisbane, Saul?’ Kate asked after a long silence. ‘I have heard she will be married.’

‘I suppose I will,’ he answered. ‘If I have time.’ Kate’s questioning look caused him to continue, ‘Goin’ south to join up with the Queensland Mounted Infantry, Mrs Tracy. Hope to get down there before I hear they might be sailin’.’

Glancing across at Matthew, Saul noticed a sudden attention to their discussion that had gone unnoticed by the boy’s mother.

‘You wouldn’t consider a job on my Balaclava property?’ Kate asked, hoping to detour the young man from the path to war.

He shook his head. ‘Have a need to get away for a while. Joining up now seems the best way to do that.’

‘I was very sorry to hear about the foreclosure on Jerusalem. Just damned bad luck with all that has happened in the last few years,’ she said angrily.

Saul was surprised to hear this woman, who he considered to be a true lady, swear. He would have been even more surprised to learn that her time walking beside the big bullock wagons in far north Queensland had given her an even more colourful vocabulary of words rarely used in public.

‘We did our best,’ he replied and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Just wasn’t good enough it seems.’

Kate gave Saul a closer look. There was a tough fatalism in the young man’s statement that she feared might get him killed in a war. The trait was shared by her brother Michael who had lived life not caring whether he saw the sun rise. Perhaps it was the way of men who did not have families. ‘The offer of work will stand when you return from South Africa,’ she reiterated gently. ‘I have a feeling you are very much like your father, and that alone is enough to recommend you.’