Golden Hope (2 page)

She was intrigued by one signpost they passed. Its weathered sign read ‘Hoffnung – 13 Miles'. Under it were the hand-printed words presumably written by some long past disgruntled gold digger as his farewell note of warning: ‘No Gold. No Railway. The Town that Time Forgot.'

The ironic words played in the back of Clytie's mind.
The Town that Time Forgot . . . What a pity we have to by-pass it . . . there must be children there . . . I wish we could open every kid's eyes to the magic of the circus . . .

Rom Delaney emerged from the creek, shaking himself dry in the manner of a dog. By the warmth of the small campfire he used his cut-throat razor to shave with care in the absence of a mirror. He checked the smooth line of his jaw and upper lip. Despite having slept rough in the bush for four nights since he had left Ballarat, as a matter of pride he was determined to look presentable – for prospective employment, and not least for the next woman he could charm into bed.

My luck could change on the flip of a coin.
It was a pattern that had followed him like a shadow since childhood. For better or worse.

Out of the blue Cobb and Co had axed him, assuring him it was ‘nothing personal, mate'. He was one of several coach drivers to get the chop due to the diminishing coach routes unable to compete with the railway's tentacles spreading across Victoria.

Seven abortive days in Ballarat and Rom had nothing to show for it but empty pockets – no prospect of work, no money, not even the price of a ticket to Wildebrand Circus. At every goldmine he fronted, the foreman added him to a waiting list he knew would never reach his name.

This damned cough doesn't help. People look at me like I'm in the last stages of consumption.

Now miles from anywhere, he boiled the billy for a final mug of tea, weighing his chances of thumbing another ride along the empty back road that led to Hoffnung.

Suddenly the hair on the back of his neck crinkled. He was not alone. He judged the distance to the Bowie knife concealed in his swag, should the need arise. He spun around, his fists flexed in self-defence, only to be startled by the sight of the intruder.

‘Well, who are you, my friend?'

The mare stood nervously eyeing him. No brand on her sleek golden-brown hide. No saddle or bridle. There had been no farms in sight for miles past.

Rom gave her time to suss him out. He remained sitting on his haunches, to allow her to sniff him, be sure of him. With luck he found an old carrot in the bottom of his bag and the token gift bonded them. He offered the mare water and she drank thirstily. It was then he saw the traces of dried blood from spur marks on her sides.

‘You did right to bolt, girl. Your master didn't treat you right. You deserve better. How about you try your luck with me?'

Before the morning had passed, she had a new name, Goldie, and with surprising ease she allowed Rom to ride her bareback, accepting him as her new master. Rom's spirits rose with the joy of feeling her body move beneath him at a steady pace. It gave him a satisfying sense of possession – but for how long? When they finally reached Hoffnung his ownership might be challenged by Sergeant Mangles who considered him a fly-by-night.

That trap's been suspicious of me since the day I lobbed into town. If push comes to shove I'll spin him a yarn about finding Goldie in a mob of brumbies.

‘Good girl, Goldie. That's the spirit! We're on the home stretch now.'

Encouraged by his soft words, the mare galloped across the single-lane wooden bridge, past the signpost marked Yankee Creek, her speed unslackened by the sharp rise in the main road that led to the town.

The quartz studded road ran like a crooked spine through the centre of the ragged little hamlet. Hoffnung was almost deserted except for trails of smoke rising from chimneys that pierced the early morning skyline, blue and unblemished by clouds. He passed the blacksmith's forge and the red glare of the fire that never slept.

Tribe's Mortgage Bank, the only local bank to survive the crash in the nineties, was just opening its doors for business.

From barely two miles away came the familiar sounds of the giant crusher at work in the early morning shift at the Golden Hope mine.

Rom gave a sigh of resignation. The town's last active mine was running thin on both gold and hope. They were laying men off, not taking them on.

No future for me here. Time to cut free from this backwater. Who cares? The world's out there waiting for me.

He slowed Goldie to a sedate pace as they passed through the ‘business end' of town. One by one lamps were being lit in windows as the town came to life: Mrs Midd's General Store which did double-duty as the Post Office; the open face of the forge where Black Jack the blacksmith was rhythmically ringing the anvil; the livery stables no longer needed by Cobb and Co; the one-man police station in front of Sergeant Mangles's residence; the second-hand charity stores struggling to survive, their prices marked down to attract whatever income they could.

The most imposing building and the oldest was a relic of the Gold Rush era. Where once Hoffnung had sported a score of pubs and shanties, the Diggers' Rest was now the sole public house in active service.

The hotel remained the hub of the town, the centre for miners, fossickers, outlying farmers, a swift source of news, gossip. For historical interest it contained a photographic gallery that bore witness to the legends of its glorious golden past.

Rom dismounted, ready to roll his last cigarette. Unencumbered by saddle or bridle, Goldie accepted the narrow belt he looped around her neck to the horse rail. Propping himself outside the General Store, he cast a cursory glance at the noticeboard advertising goods for sale, a faded notice seeking a missing relative, and the congregational notices of the three churches and the Salvation Army that competed for attendance at their services.

Central to the noticeboard, under the heading in black capital letters was ‘Hoffnung Progressive Society – Extraordinary General Meeting Today' and the signature of Councillor Ernest Twyman.

Nothing extraordinary had happened here since Captain Moonlite bailed up a gold coach.
Maybe it's about the threatened closure of the mine. Why should I give a damn? They didn't want a bar of me.

Rom's mood soared when he caught sight of the small print. A Reward was being offered by Tribe's Mortgage Bank to anyone with a plan to revitalise Hoffnung.

Twenty flaming guineas! That's a fortune. They must be desperate.

Rom tossed ideas around in his head as he smoked his last cigarette down to the butt. Feeling unduly hot and sweaty, he tried to control the nervous reflex of his fingers as he eyed both ends of the
road, awaiting the arrival of Doc Hundey, the one man Rom hoped he could count on to back his last-ditch stand.

Doc's the most widely respected man in town – but he's no push-over. No chance of using a silver tongue on him.

Dawn was breaking when Doc Hundey shifted in the chair where he had sat up all night beside the bedside of Mrs Q, knowing it was the closing hours in the life of their long, unspoken friendship.

Doc knew her story. She had come to Hoffnung as a diggeress, one of the earliest gold-seekers. Some forty years ago her husband had disappeared overnight. It was said he'd been caught illicitly working another man's claim – and met his end at the hands of ‘diggers' rough justice'.

Doc held the old woman's withered hand in his. He felt privileged to be by her side so that she would not die alone. She had refused to see any ‘man of the cloth'. She had chosen him.

He kept awake, refusing to relinquish her hand while it was warm with life, but in response to the flexing of his fingers, she stirred and opened one eye that fixed on him.

She carefully paced her breathing to deliver one by one the final ‘words of advice' for which she was well known.

‘Good man like you. Time you took a wife, Doc. You must be pushing forty.'

He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. ‘Thirty-seven. Thank you for the compliment, Mrs Q, but I'm happily married to my profession.'

‘So you say. I reckon that sister of yours is your real problem. Bet she doesn't want no other woman in the house, eh?'

‘Twins have a special bond,' he offered gently, hoping that would cover the matter.

‘You ain't joined at the hip. Time you both made a life of your own.'

‘You're right, Mrs Q.' He nodded to please her.
If only it was that simple.

Mrs Q looked across the room towards the shadows in the corner. Doc fancied he saw a glimmer of light in her eyes – like recognition. In all his years as a doctor he had never grown used to hearing the ‘death rattle' that he dreaded. As if to please him, Mrs Q gave a long gentle sigh to mark her final exit.

He glanced involuntarily at the point that she had been watching in the shadows, wondering if it might be true what some believers said. That at the moment of death, a loved one comes back to help the person cross over ‘into the light' or whatever people liked to define as heaven – or some after-life.

He could see nothing but the shadows. But he sensed a faint current of air passing across the room. He checked Mrs Q's pulse. There was no longer any heartbeat.

He felt his throat constrict. She was a woman who accepted people for what she saw in them – no matter what anyone else said.

‘Goodnight, Mrs Q,' he said gently. ‘No doubt God will accept you on the same basis.'

He closed her eyes, prepared her body for the undertaker, and wrote up the time and details for her death certificate. At the tank outside he refilled the china jug to wash himself in the wash basin. Changing into the spare clean shirt he always carried in the likelihood of long nights such as this, he buttoned his vest over it, checked his fob watch chain was in place and added the old tweed jacket that had become his accepted uniform.

Long ago he had learned to live through nights without sleep by taking a few deep gulps of cold air to revive himself. He was now prepared for the day ahead.

He drove his horse and cart at a brisk trot around the potholes, sharp bends and overhanging branches of the bush track and passed the scattered cottages and miner's right cabins half hidden in the folds of the valleys. Lights blinked like eyes opening to dispel the darkness.

He knew almost everyone in town was somehow related by blood ties, whether marital, illegitimate or in rare cases he suspected, due to incest. To differentiate townsfolk with similar names, many had earned a moniker based on some physical characteristic or trait. Doc had not been one to escape the custom.

He exchanged a wave and greeting of ‘G'day' with Joey ‘Kanga' Smith, a raw lad who on Doc's arrival ten years ago had named him Doc Hundey, aping the American Wild West's gunslinger of the eighties, Wyatt Earp's offsider Doc Holliday. In Joey's eyes it was a glamorous epithet. Doc had no choice but to grin and bear it.
Hoffnung – my refuge at the ends of the earth. I know you all – good, bad, human or evil. It might surprise Sergeant Mangles to know how many deathbed confessions I've heard – where ‘the bodies are buried'.

He shrugged off the irony of his fate.
If only I had some soul I could trust to share
mine.
That must go to the grave with me.

Pausing outside the Diggers' Rest he noted with surprise the fine golden-brown mare tied to the rail. He immediately linked the horse to the figure of Rom Delaney, who had already built up a dubious reputation.

Ask no questions and I'll be told no lies.

Doc drew from his vest pocket the key to the side entrance that publican Tom Yeoman had given him for his Friday mornings' use of the grace-and-favour room to see his patients.

In a time-honoured ritual Doc rubbed the sleeve of his tweed jacket across the small brass plate that bore his name, Dr Robert A. Hundey, Physician and Surgeon.

Any quack can give himself a highfaluting degree that he never earned. I'm happy to stand or fall by the reputation I've built here.

As usual he doffed his hat to the kitchen maid who from dawn was engaged in blacking the kitchen fuel stove. Mary Mac greeted him with her cheery, gap-tooth smile. Built like a steam-roller, she looked capable of flattening anything in her path.

‘Morning, Doc. If you need help holding a bloke down to cut off his leg, I'll sit on top of him for ya.'

The same teasing offer greeted him every Friday morning, and he always responded in kind. ‘Thank you, Mary Mac. I'll take up your kind offer if push comes to shove.'

Her infectious giggle only faded when he closed the door to his surgery.

In rapid sequence he placed paper, ink stand, pens and pencils as carefully as if laying a place at a dinner table. He dispensed his own medicines from the small range of basic ingredients he carried at all times, not only because the nearest apothecary lay miles away. The main reason was poverty. Many old-timer patients were gold-seekers, old fossickers. After the alluvial gold panned out, they had worked in the mines until their lungs had turned to rotten sponges. They were
now reduced to buying spoiled hessian bags of tea, sugar and flour from the General Store.

From his medical bag he removed the embossed leather diary he unlocked with the gold key he kept on the chain of his fob watch. More than a medical diary, it noted historical events of peculiar interest to him that had occurred in the six Australian Colonies now finally Federated in one nation. Macabre murders, unsolved crimes, statistics of poisoning and curious cases of people who had vanished without trace – they all fascinated him. This diary was, in a sense, his sole trusted confidant.

He hurriedly checked his appearance in the mirror over the mantelpiece.

His wavy crop of sandy hair was as thick as ever; his eyes that far-sighted pale grey often found in seamen who spent years scanning the horizon – as had his father, Captain Hundey. His English complexion was virtually unlined, despite years under the hot Colonial sun – the last ten spent happily in Hoffnung.
God granted me the right to be a physician. May this town never lose its good opinion of me. If only Adelaide would leave me in peace . . . a rod I've made for my own back.