In Lonnie's Shadow (4 page)

PEARL BUTTON

Item No. 2856

Decorative pearl bead used for buttoning gloves. One of six matching found.

Over in the Leitrim Hotel, Daisy Cameron threw open her eyes. She was feeling clammy, the way she always did when she sewed late into the night. But tonight her exhaustion was like the fever, all hot and cold. Her gaze fixed on the hearth then moved across to the side table, studying her open, precious button box with its silk threads and wooden bobbins. She knew she was here in her room all right, but the nightmare she had just lived through, the same murderous dream she had been having more and more frequently of late, made her wake up fearful.

The nightmare always went the same. First a sharp, hot pain. Then the swishing sound of a hard strap. A feeling like she was leaping out of her skin. Hands tossing her into the air. Reeling off in the direction of the sky. In front of her very eyes the skull-faced clouds rearranging into a high, stone staircase. And there she was in her own skin again, sliding across the floor, falling, tumbling downwards, down those bone-crunching steps. A crumpled body lying motionless. Not her body, but a man’s, his head smashed against the bull-nosed bottom step, glassy- eyed, staring into nothingness, blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth. Then the scene vanished and all Daisy was left with was a sensation of being carried away, shaking all over and a mind numb with dread.

The noises outside – the creak-creak of the nightman’s cart and the clapping of the horse’s hooves on the stone roadway behind the Leitrim – informed Daisy it was nearly sunrise. She breathed in and out, calming herself with the knowledge she would soon rise, put on her high-necked dress, gather her fine-looking, light brown hair into a tight knot of a bun, push this spiteful dream into the back of her mind and go off to work. The same as she did every day.

She was determined not to falter. Virtue and respectability came from working at the factory twelve hours a weekday and seven on the Saturday. The hours were tiring but they were honest, a characteristic on which Daisy prided herself and which gave her the will to carry on. If the Lord meant her to sit in an airless room, along with fifty other girls, and sew shirts with six studs and day dresses with twelve buttons down the bodice – not to mention the private trade in attire for the Big House she did of a night – well, she had no choice but to do her duty. Nightmare or not.

With a sigh she yanked the cover over her shoulders up to her neck, awaiting the knock of the window tapper who would soon sound his wake-up call and herald in the comforting light of the day.

LEATHER STRAP

Item No. 130

Fragment of a bridle strap used for securing the bit.

Thomas Wylie Crick cursed the morning for its winter wet and bungles. That blazing jockey who was down to ride the pacemaker hadn’t shown. He yanked hard on the reins, forcing the metal bit into the soft flesh of Lightning’s mouth. The horse under him half reared, trying to throw back its head, only to be checked by the martingale, before turning back obediently in the direction of the stables.

‘McGuinness, what’re you doing?’

The short-tempered question startled Lonnie, whose mind was with the two-year-old horse he was about to mount and exercise. Even though a few days had passed, he still sported a lump on the back of his skull the size of a marble, his cuts were still sore and he was in no mood to be polite, even to the boss’s son. ‘I’m doing what yourself asked me to do only yesterday, walking and exercising the horse.’

Lonnie’s gruff swipe went by seemingly ignored.

After all, Thomas Crick was not one to pay much heed to a stable hand, even one following his own orders. ‘Have you ever galloped a horse at full speed, boy?’

At the word ‘boy’ Lonnie clamped his own whippet tongue tight, forcing himself to stop saying what he would really like to, which was, ‘Of course, I have, you thick-brained mushroom.’ Because he had, many of them – Crick’s precious horses, here in the dark at breakneck speed. Not that Crick or his cantankerous father would ever know. Lonnie was too clever by half. But he checked his temper, for riding without permission meant he could very well be given his marching orders. He measured his words carefully. ‘Why’s that?’

‘Well, you’re going to today. Saddle up Trident. Be back here in ten minutes sharp.’

With no further word Crick turned his horse in the direction of the office, leaving Lonnie with little choice but to lead the bay over to the stables, where he unsaddled. He stroked the horse affectionately.

‘I’ll see you a bit later.’

The nervous chestnut stallion he brought over as pacemaker was sixteen hands high and a beauty. All around said that if only Trident could race as well as he looked he would be unbeatable, but the horse was already marked as a bit of a loafer, shy and stubborn. Lonnie spent several minutes whispering encouragement and stroking his mane. ‘Go easy, you beaut, remember I always ride you well. There’s no need to fear me, no need at all.’

Meanwhile Crick had hitched up Lightning outside the Golden Acres office. He threw open the door and bawled across to the head foreman who was warming himself by the potbelly stove, which, stoked with red gum, spat and spluttered its heat through the building. ‘That bloody jockey of yours hasn’t turned up again. I’m getting McGuinness to ride this morning.’

‘That’s a bit impulsive, Mr Thomas,’ the foreman replied.

Crick brushed off the hint of rebuke. ‘Every stableboy wants to do track work, try his hand at being a jockey. McGuinness is no different.’

‘What if he falls? He’s only ever exercised horses, never ridden one at full pace. Don’t you go forgetting that death we had. You’ll put out your father’s temper if anything goes amiss again.’

‘If anything happens I’ll just replace him. My father wouldn’t recognise one ginger-haired nut from another.’

The foreman, who’d been employed there before Thomas had even been born, and was known to be a hard man himself, looked shocked at the callous indifference of the comment.

‘You know what I mean,’ Crick said dismissively.

‘And as for the horse, no harm will come to it either. Even if it did we both know it wouldn’t be such a great loss. It’s not as if Trident is set for future glory. And I don’t expect my father to hear anything about this. Understand?’ At eighteen, Thomas wasn’t quite man enough to face his father. And he certainly wasn’t going to risk being disinherited. He grabbed a brace of whips from the rack and strode out.

Lonnie mounted Trident and arrived at the practice track only seconds before Crick came riding hard towards him. He thrust a whip at Lonnie who looked back at him with a slap-down question written all over his face.

Crick eyed him like he was a moron. ‘Take the whip. You do know what it’s for?’

‘We don’t need ’em in work out.’

‘Says who? I don’t want any slacking. I want Lightning to see you on his tail. He won’t race properly unless he’s pressured. Use the whip. Follow my lead. Do as I do. Canter most of the way around the track. On my signal, gallop hard for the last quarter. Try to keep up. Don’t fall off ! And whip the horse hard if you have to, do you hear?’

As Crick rode off ahead, Lonnie muttered under his breath, ‘I hear you well and good, you oafish mullock.’

HORSESHOE PIN

Item No. 6248

Gold pin fashioned in the shape of a horseshoe. Elaborately decorated with jewels
set in flecks of gold from the diggings.

After the track work, still fuming over Crick’s constant talking down, Lonnie dropped by number four, set on picking up the watch and pin he had left with Pearl for safekeeping.

As she handed them over, he told her all his woes; how he had been hit on the back of the head and then been saved by a ghost from Uncle Dick’s cesspit, who turned out to be the nightcart man. But she was far less sympathetic about his bumps and bruises than he’d hoped for, brushing off his injuries. ‘Yer soft chump, you’ll live.’

She seemed much more interested in his grumbles about Thomas Crick. ‘Funny you should mention the right honourable. Wait till you hear what I found out.’ The tittle-tattle started pouring out of her mouth by the barrow load. ‘While I was at the Big House the other night, I came across him. And wasn’t he all hot and bothered about an upcoming horse race through the streets of Melbourne, blathering on no end about some gents who are wagering a lot of money on the outcome. He let slip that Lightning is running, but he ain’t going to win.’

‘Everyone knows Lightning’s never been beaten,’ Lonnie said, as he took in what Pearl was telling him. An illegal race through the streets held after the hotels closed was not so unusual. They’d even been known to race pigs once or twice. But Lightning set to lose meant someone was up to mischief. A race fix. So who was going to win? He quizzed Pearl further.

‘Know any more?’

She shrugged. ‘Only that it’s late one Saturday night. Starts at the Exhibition Building, past Parliament, down Bourke Street and up Swanston, turning and ending back at the fountain. That’s all I know. You should be able to find out more, considering you work for the Cricks. It would be good if you discover who’s going to win, then I could have a bet myself.’

Lonnie knew Pearl needed a break. Finding some money quick smart would see her free of her debt. And she had given him something to think about, what with Lightning being involved, although he hadn’t heard a breath about this at Golden Acres.

‘I’ll keep an ear open.’ He brushed off any more conversation, agreeing to meet Pearl later that evening on the promise of hot, battered oysters.

For the time being he had some unfinished business. First up the horseshoe pin, which thanks to his good sense was back safe and sound in his pocket.

Auntie Tilly lived within cooee in a nearby laneway called Cumberland Place. Her house had wooden shutters the colour of dark chocolate on each side of the front window, and would have been a canopy of gloom without the glass shone daily to a mirror and a central window box spilling out peppermint daisies and the promise of lilac remembrance.

Her welcoming door always stood open. Like all the unruly doors of Little Lon, over the years its scarred timber had twisted so the door never properly closed. It took a kind-hearted woman like Tilly Palmer to turn this weakness into a neighbourly welcome.

Fresh cooking smells of hot jam and buttered dough greeted Lonnie as he came in. He was one of many in the neighbourhood who had spent their childhood wandering in and out of Tilly’s home. No matter what time of day, there was always a bite to eat laid out on the snowy tablecloth. Piping hot plates of currant pastries. Freshly baked oatmeal rounds made with a teaspoon of honey and a dollop of laughter. It gave Tilly great joy to feed the children of Little Lon. Not that she didn’t expect good manners.

‘What do you say?’ she would ask if Lonnie forgot his, stretching out her hand and clipping him across the earhole with a sting that made him hear bells ring.

He took the few short paces into the simple kitchen of gully trap, table and netted cupboard strung up high to deter the rats. With her back to him, Tilly was not aware of his arrival, or so she made out. Trying not to let on, he crept up and tied her apron strings to the leg of the table. Sometimes unknowingly she had walked off dragging a piece of furniture behind her. It usually put a smile on her face. This time she must have felt the slightest tug. She raised her head in surprise. ‘Lonnie duck, I’m not in the mood. Untie me now.’

‘What’s up, Auntie?’

She smoothed down her apron with indignant strokes.

Lonnie held out a closed hand. ‘This’ll cheer you up.’

‘You better not have another one of those spiders or cockroaches in there,’ Tilly warned, ‘or I’ll tan your hide, as big as you are.’

‘I haven’t, I promise.’ He opened his hand, revealing the horseshoe pin. ‘Reckon this is yours,’ he said brightly.

‘Ducky, for the life of me, what you gone’n’ done?’ His mind flicked back to the house in Carlton with

its booty of other people’s belongings. Instinctively, a hand moved to the watch still hidden in his pocket.

‘Better you don’t ask.’

She shook her head. ‘Time you stopped your tomfoolery.’

‘Serves Payne right,’ he said, in his own defence.

‘It’s not as if he’s been fair.’

‘Fairness has nothing to do with it. If you don’t pay your rent, a landlord has the right to chuck you out. People like Henry Payne may be criminals in our eyes, but the law is on their side and that’s all that counts.’

‘You can’t let people walk all over you,’ Lonnie said. ‘Payne should let you be, not threaten to come in with the bailiffs and take all your belongings.’

‘What’s done is done,’ Tilly said sadly, ‘it’s too late to change anything.’

‘What d’ya mean?’

Lonnie soon realised. She was to be evicted from Cumberland Place. Payne had flatly refused to let her stay, sending word he didn’t run a charity. Wouldn’t even face her in person. The sum of her possessions collected over twenty years – the plump well-worn armchair and twist-legged table, the brass bed, the side dresser dusted down with loving care and waxed to a shine, plates and spoons and English teacups, the copper her dearly departed had installed in the rear yard with firewood stacked ready to boil enough water for a weekly sponge all over – were to disappear with the bailiffs. By the end of the week Auntie Tilly would have nothing left to call her own.

‘But you know ducky, life knocks unexpectedly at your front door. Alfred, my widower cousin down in Blackburn, the one with the parcel of land and a well-fitted house close by the lake – I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye – but I’ve agreed to help out with domestic duties in exchange for a bed.’

‘You’re not serious? You can’t go maryanning.’ In Lonnie’s view, poor Auntie Tilly was far too long in the tooth to scrub floors and do the laundry for an ungrateful relative. She deserved better than scouring until she became bedridden, or even worse, dropped dead.

It was a crying shame that all the women Lonnie knew would be well worn out before their time. Why, even at sixteen, Daisy was already squinting something shocking from too many hours doing close needle and point work. Pearl, with her hard- handled body and she only sixteen as well. His own mam, scrubbing for the toffs for a living. All these hard workers had something in common. They didn’t know an easy life, but they wouldn’t settle for charity, either.

‘I’ve lived here far too long to ever think of leaving willingly,’ continued Tilly. ‘Over the years everyone around here has been so kind. No one ever made me afraid before. But it’s a cruel world when a man can blacken us good folks’ character by saying we’re all bludgers who waste money and won’t pay our rent. What does he know about hardship?’

Lonnie had never seen Tilly in such a sorrowful state before. She was plumb true when she spoke about Little Lon, no matter what outsiders believed. He knew how he would feel being forced out. Why, he was even named after the place, dropped there by his mam and proud of it, too, although in true Irish spirit his grandad always reckoned it was in honour of Londonderry and wouldn’t hear any different. If Payne thought Lonnie was going to stand by and let this happen, the man had better think twice.

Already with an inkling of a plan, he patted Tilly’s shoulder consolingly. ‘You can’t keep your house, but we’ll make sure we pack away your belongings before those scoundrels have a chance to steal them. What d’ya reckon about this? By midnight tonight we get your stuff out of here. I know a good bloke who’ll take you safely on to Blackburn.’

Tilly greeted this moonlight flit idea with some serious doubt, never in her life having done anything dishonest. Lonnie saw she would need some coaxing.

‘Don’t you worry, this mate owes me one. Start packing now. Then take a night bag straight to my mam’s and wait there. If anyone turns up in the meantime tell them you’ve called in the rat catchers. I guarantee you’ll never have to set eyes on Payne again. Consider what we’re doing the spirit of the law,’ he urged, ‘not the letter. The laws were never made to evict people in hard times like these.’

After lengthy consideration, Tilly clasped his hand and agreed to the offer. ‘I suppose it has come to this,’ she said sadly. ‘You’re a thoughtful boy. But watch out, ducky, your good heart will cause you big trouble one day, especially if you cross men like Henry Payne too often.’

Lonnie grinned. ‘Don’t go worrying about me. I can take good care of myself.’

The only thing left to do was for Lonnie to tee up the move. Heartened by his own good intentions, in fact warmed down to the very toenail poking through his work boot, he stepped lightly over the doorstep into the Cumberland lane. For not only was the horseshoe pin an unexpected gift returned to its rightful owner, at last he could finally repay Tilly for her kindness to him over the years.