Destiny's Path (8 page)

Ronan was silent as this information sank in.

His companion added softly, ‘And at least she spent her final days enjoying your company instead of being alone. She was a lively woman, was she not? Everyone liked her.’

Ronan nodded, his throat too clogged with emotion to speak. He continued to stare blindly out across the ocean and when he glanced sideways, he was alone.

Further along the rail he saw Kathleen, also on her own. The other women were sitting in a group, chatting and doing embroidery or other handwork. After the first few days, she’d had little to do with them and he’d seen them whispering and staring at her. His mother had told him sadly when he asked, that she’d let slip that her husband was a convict and they’d immediately ostracised her.

Was Conn so determinedly shunned in Australia? How did a gregarious man like him cope with that?

Ronan pushed himself away from the rail and began a slow circuit of the deck, waving to Bram, who was in earnest conversation with an older man.

Life went on, however sad a blow it had dealt you.

5

T
wo days later they reached the port of Alexandria. Those days had passed in a blur for Ronan, who still couldn’t accept that his mother had died in such a terrible way. Was it really only three weeks since they’d left England?

Some of the passengers were staying in the city for a few days, wanting to explore its ancient wonders, and chatted about that excitedly. He wasn’t in the least interested in going sightseeing. He couldn’t even settle to reading at the moment.

The small travelling bag containing his mother’s jewellery and a few other trifles lay in a corner of his cabin, seeming to accuse him of being a bad son. In the end, he locked it in one of his trunks, but he couldn’t bear to open it, just couldn’t bear to see the things she’d loved and know she’d never touch the jewels and trinkets again.

Before they took the train, most of the passengers went to inspect the great earthworks where the French were constructing a canal to link the Mediterranean with Suez. Bram went with them and came back full of wonder about the huge numbers of men employed to dig the canal, not to mention the size of the earthworks, far larger than that needed for a railway.

Ronan couldn’t rouse himself to do more than listen half-heartedly and nod occasionally.

The train was hot and vendors crowded at the carriage windows whenever they stopped. Covered in sweat, Ronan soon came to the conclusion that there was little pleasure to be had in climates this warm. He’d thought Greece in the springtime warm, but this was like living in an oven.

He began to wonder whether Australia would be as bad. He wanted to see it once, but if it was as searingly hot as this, he’d not stay for long. One of the other passengers laughed when he said this, reminding him that the seasons were in reverse and it’d be early spring there, not the hot season.

The captain and officers of the P&O Line had been mildly scornful of this canal, saying their company didn’t consider it at all necessary because it had set up a perfectly adequate system for transporting passengers and mail, which included the railway Ronan had just travelled on. The canal was a folly and would probably silt up quite quickly.

After the uncomfortable train journey, Ronan decided that he disagreed with them. It’d have been far easier to stay on the ship and let it move him in comfort from one sea to the next.

At Suez they took a ship to Galle in Ceylon and during the two-week journey Ronan gradually began to recover from the worst of his grief, though the first time he laughed he felt horribly guilty all over again. But nothing he could do would bring his mother back, and she’d be the first to tell him to get on with his life, he knew.

He wasn’t sure how long they’d have to stay in Galle because he’d already been warned that he might have to wait there for the mail ship to Western Australia. It seemed there wasn’t nearly as much shipping traffic to such a small place, population-wise, as there was to India and the Far East. People joked about ‘the ends of the earth’. He seemed to be heading there.

Each time he gathered more information from the crew or other passengers, Ronan reported his findings to Kathleen, who listened to what he had to say then inclined her head. She was still avoiding speaking directly to him if she possibly could, and she was still spending most of her time on her own, her expression stoic.

He wished he could travel ahead of her and warn Conn of her impending arrival, but he knew he couldn’t leave a woman to find her own way in a strange land. Perhaps he could send Bram ahead, though he wasn’t sure there would be any chance of that. From what other passengers said, travel in Western Australia was very primitive, with no railways to take passengers from one town to the next. And anyway, Bram would be as much a stranger to the place as he was, as likely to go astray.

Ronan found Galle and its people charming and wouldn’t have objected to lingering there a while, but Kathleen turned up her nose at it.

‘You aren’t trying to find a way to get us to the Swan River Colony, Ronan Maguire. It’s bad enough for me to be travelling with a man, but to linger here is absolutely wrong.’

‘Do you think I can magically produce a ship?’

‘There are ships in the harbour here. Why not hire one of them?’

‘Because I’m not made of money, that’s why. Nor are you.’

The next day Bram, who had the rare ability to talk to anyone and everyone, came back from a walk looking smug.

‘I’ve found a ship we could take passage on, Ronan.’

‘You have?’

‘Yes. It’s a smaller trading vessel, that’s been blown off course and has sought shelter and minor repairs in Galle. It’s going to the port of Fremantle, which is what we want, isn’t it?

‘No, it isn’t. We have to go to Perth,’ Kathleen said, nose in the air.

‘Fremantle is the port for Perth, which is a few miles inland,’ Ronan told her for the third time.

‘But we were going to a port called Albany.’

‘That’s where the mail ships go. This ship isn’t a mail ship. And anyway, Fremantle is nearer to Perth.’

‘Should I ask them if they could carry us all?’ Bram asked.

Ronan nodded. ‘I’ll come with you.’ As they walked down the street he said through gritted teeth, ‘The sooner we finish this journey and I get rid of
her
the better.’

‘But you won’t be getting rid of her, will you? You’ll both be staying with Mr Conn.’

‘If she stays there for long, I’ll be moving on after a few days. I thought it strange that he married her. Now I’ve spent time with her, I can only think he went temporarily mad. Or that she’s losing her mind.’

The captain of the trading vessel had two cabins and sometimes took passengers. Ronan inspected them and decided they’d do, since the journey would only take two weeks or so. He could share one cabin with Bram, and Kathleen would have to lower her standards to share with the maid. He didn’t envy Orla that!

They were the only passengers. Bram watched the crew and the others in their party because there was little else to do on a trading vessel where no activities were provided for passengers. It didn’t have the smooth service offered on the larger passenger ships, either, and the food was plain and often downright unappetising.

He didn’t mind that. It filled his belly, which was what mattered.

As the days passed, Bram spent a lot of time with the captain, with whom he was soon on first-name terms. He was fascinated by the way Dougal made his living, and quite a good living too.

They discussed the merits of various trading goods and he began to wonder if fate wasn’t showing him an opportunity.

‘Do you – carry goods for other people?’ he asked Dougal one day.

‘I carry anything that will pay.’

‘Small consignments, even?’

Dougal grinned. ‘Thinking of going into trade?’

‘Wondering.’ For the first time he said it aloud. ‘I want to do more than work as a groom for someone else.’

The discussions continued, each day teaching him something new. He was especially interested in finding out which items had sold well in the past in the Swan River Colony. Dougal was still paying off his ship, the first he’d ever owned, old but sound. He was expecting to pick up a cargo of sandalwood in Western Australia, as that fragrant wood sold well in the Orient and grew wild in the colony.

Towards the end of the voyage Dougal said casually, ‘If you
are
thinking of setting up for yourself and you did happen to open a shop, I could sell my own stuff there and perhaps you’d take less commission than others do.’

‘Perhaps I would.’

Kathleen coped with sharing a cabin by excluding her maid from it in the daytime. When she wasn’t attending her mistress, poor Orla sat on deck under an awning for hours on end, staring at the horizon. Kathleen sat under another awning, ignoring her.

‘She’s not an easy mistress,’ Ronan said one day as the two of them leaned on the rail.

By now, Orla was comfortable enough with him to speak the truth. ‘She’s a terrible woman. You don’t know the half of it. If I can find another mistress, I’ll be leaving her.’ She clapped one hand to her mouth. ‘You won’t tell her I said that, will you, Mr Maguire?’

‘Not me. I heard nothing. Anyway, I don’t blame you. Why did you come here, then?’

‘I wasn’t given a choice. My family are tenants of the Largans. Mrs Kathleen said they’d be thrown out if I didn’t.’

‘What did Kieran Largan say?’

She looked at him in puzzlement. ‘I never spoke to him.’

‘I doubt he’d have supported that threat.’

Tears filled her eyes. ‘You mean . . . I didn’t need to leave my family?’ The tears overflowed and she bent her head, trying to hide her weeping.

How dreadful! he thought. Kathleen takes no heed of other people’s needs. She’s like one of those automatons, doing what she’s been taught, not going beyond that. He’d noticed before that she was at a loss in new situations and grew flustered and upset when she didn’t know what to do.

As the pilot guided the ship from Rottnest Island towards Fremantle, Ronan said quietly, ‘Not even three months, and yet this voyage seems to have been going on for ever.’

No one answered him. All four of them stared at the flat shoreline in dismay. It looked untamed and not at all attractive, low-lying with scrubby vegetation.

‘Is this really the main port of the colony?’ Ronan asked.

Dougal, who was leaving the pilot to his work, grinned. ‘Not much to look at, is it? Albany is about the same size. That’s where the mail ships call. It’s a coaling station, mainly, even less trade going on from there.’

Bram nodded. ‘Someone told me on board the other ship that there are only about thirty thousand people in the whole of Western Australia – and yet it’s far bigger than England. He said there’d be even fewer if they hadn’t brought in the convicts and they’ve been a godsend to the colony, making roads and bridges. Their crimes have certainly benefited the locals, eh?’

Kathleen breathed deeply and moved away from him, as if even to hear talk of convicts annoyed her.

‘I heard that too,’ Ronan said. ‘A few people on the first steamer were returning to the Swan River Colony and I made it my business to talk to them.’

The ship came to a halt and with much yelling the anchor was dropped. The pilot returned to shore and a boat came for the passengers, who were invited to climb down into it by a rope mesh which formed a sort of ladder.

Orla clutched Bram’s arm. ‘I can’t do it. I just can’t climb down there. It makes me dizzy even to look at it.’

‘You can do it, lass. Just remember how you used to climb trees when you were a child.’

‘I never did any tree climbing. I was too busy looking after my little sisters and brothers.’

With a scornful sniff, Kathleen moved forward to let the sailors help her over the side. ‘If you don’t follow me, Orla, you can stay here and rot,’ she said by way of encouragement.

Bram took the maid’s arm. ‘Come on, lass. Let’s get it over with.’

She muttered a quick prayer, crossing herself.

Ronan stepped forward. ‘I’ll go down first and help you into the boat, Orla.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ With an audible gulp, she let the men guide her down the rope netting hanging over the side of the ship, desperately trying to keep her skirts from flying up in the light breeze.

Ronan steadied her and with a groan of relief she sank down next to her mistress on one of the planks that served as seating in the boat.

Kathleen didn’t even look at her, but sat stiffly upright studying Fremantle, which looked more like a village than a town, with buildings scattered here and there up a slope, not always set out in streets, but looking as if they’d been dropped higgledy-piggledy.

After being rowed to shore, they waited on the dock for their luggage, then Dougal came over to join them.

Knowing what he wanted, Ronan turned to his companions. ‘Will you check that all your pieces of luggage are there?’

When they’d counted and nodded, he paid the final amount agreed on for safe delivery of themselves and their possessions to Fremantle, shook the captain’s hand and turned to seek conveyance to a hotel, since it was now late afternoon.