Alley Urchin Read online

  ‘Noises?’ Quickly now, Emma got up from her bed and began dressing. ‘What sort of noises?’ she asked, suddenly wide awake.

  ‘Funny noises . . . like scraping and thumping . . . and’ – here Nelly hesitated, looking at Emma through the candlelight with big frightened eyes – ‘I could’a sworn I heard somebody scream.’

  Emma paused as she pulled on her boots, and glancing up towards Nelly, she said in a serious voice, ‘You stay here. I’ll take a look.’

  ‘You bloody won’t, y’know!’ came Nelly’s indignant retort. ‘Not without me, you won’t. I ain’t staying here on me own!’

  ‘All right then. But put out the candle. There’s no sense in broadcasting what we’re up to, is there? Besides . . . if you’ve been imagining these “noises” and such, and we’re caught creeping about in the dark, we’ll look a right pair of idiots and no mistake.’ A quick glance told her that Nelly was barefooted and wore only her dress over her nightgown.

  ‘I ain’t imagining it, Emma. I heard strange voices . . . I just know there’s some’at funny going on!’

  ‘All right, Nelly. We’ll take a look, if it’ll put your mind at rest. But mind you keep quiet. Promise? Or I will leave you here!’ Emma was under no illusions that, given just cause, Nelly could make herself heard from one end of Australia to the other. On securing Nelly’s firm assurance that she would creep behind ‘as quiet as a church-mouse’, Emma patted her gratefully on the shoulder. ‘Good girl,’ she told her, taking the brass candlestick from Nelly’s trembling hand, and after blowing out the light, she placed it down on the bedside cupboard. They didn’t need a light to show them the way, for they had trodden it often enough. In any case, there wasn’t much in this room to fall over, there being only one cumbersome wooden wardrobe, a tall chest of drawers, two narrow wooden beds, each with a little side-cupboard, and a small oblong rag-peg rug between the beds. Emma had thought it a grim little room when she had first seen it, with its one tiny window overlooking the dirt yard between the stables and the store. The Thomases lived in the four large rooms above the store, and the windows of the big bedroom looked down over the stables. Many a time, Emma had noticed Mrs Thomas seated by her bedroom window, gazing out at the skyline with a look in her eyes that was almost desperate, and her heart bled for the poor creature. She had often thought that if she were in Mrs Thomas’s position, nothing on earth would prevent her from going home! But then she was reminded of two things. Firstly, Mrs Thomas was in very poor health, and secondly, perhaps even more important, it was obvious that despite their deep differences on the matter of which country was now home, she loved her husband and would never contemplate leaving without him. It really was a sorry state of affairs, and one which seemed irreconcilable.

  Opening the door with some caution, Emma peered into the darkness. Surely Nelly must be wrong? She could hear no ‘noises’ of the kind described. Indeed, everything appeared perfectly normal for the early hours. The two grey work horses were quiet in the stable and the only sign of life in the sultry heat beneath the moonlight was a lone furry creature who scurried by their feet. ‘Jesus!’ Nelly cried in a loud whisper. ‘What the devil were that?’ When Emma told her to be quiet while she listened, Nelly murmured, ‘Sorry,’ at once taking up a better grip on Emma’s shawl and shuffling closer behind. ‘P’raps I never heard nothing after all,’ she loudly whispered in Emma’s ear, ‘p’raps I were imagining things . . . like yer said, Emma.’

  ‘Ssh!’ Emma had come to a stop against the end of the stable wall, pausing for a moment before crossing the open yard. ‘Look there, Nelly,’ she murmured softly, at the same time raising her arm to point upwards towards the Thomases’ bedroom, ‘see that?’

  ‘Cor, bugger me, gal!’ gasped Nelly. ‘The light’s on! They never leave the light burning . . . on account o’ Mrs Thomas can’t sleep when there’s a light burning. There! Y’see, Emma . . . I told yer there was some’at going on, didn’t I, eh? I told yer!’ She was silenced by Emma’s hand being pressed hard over her mouth, after which the two of them crept stealthily towards the back of the store. There was a loose wall board some three feet off the ground, which Emma had often stressed should be made more secure, but which was never on the list of Mr Thomas’s priorities. Emma was thankful for his neglect of it, as she now eased it aside then carefully clambered in, helping the reluctant Nelly in behind her. ‘Bleedin’ hell!’ Nelly whispered, regaining her balance and straightening her skirt to her bare ankles. ‘What the devil d’yer reckon we’re getting usselves into, Emma gal? I don’t mind a fight . . . not bad wi’ me fists, I can tell yer. But I like to see the enemy coming a mile away.’

  ‘Nelly, be quiet!’ Emma was afraid that if there were intruders in the store, like as not Nelly’s gabbling would put them on their guard, and the blighters would come at them in the dark like bats out of hell. ‘Not another word,’ she instructed, standing still as a statue and straining her ears for the slightest sound. There! There it was, muffled, yes . . . but unmistakably a man’s voice, and raised in anger. Emma felt Nelly stiffen behind her and for a moment she was afraid of her calling out. But Nelly remained silent as Emma concentrated in an effort to distinguish the voice. She couldn’t make out what was being said, but two things she was certain of: that voice did not belong either to old Mr Thomas or his son Foster, and, it was not a friendly voice! Strange, thought Emma, it couldn’t be a business caller, not at this unearthly hour. Why, it must be two in the morning! The doctor then? Was it possible that Mrs Thomas had been taken badly and the doctor had been called out to her? Yes, that was possible. Yes! That was it, Emma was certain. But then she reminded herself, if it had been the doctor, then they would surely have heard his pony and trap, for old Dr Shaw liked the folks to know when he went about his business, especially when he was brought from his bed. No! They would have heard him slapping at the reins and driving like a fiend. Emma had come through the back store, round by the office, and was now almost at the foot of the stairs that led up to the Thomases’ living quarters. If not either of the Thomas men, and not the doctor . . . who then? Her heart was beating against her ribs like a caged bird trying to get out. In the dark with Nelly pressed close behind and God only knew what was up in front, Emma felt suffocated. The heat was oppressive and the beads of sweat which stood out along her back began to break into tiny rivulets, which trickled irritatingly behind her shoulders. What should she do? Should she creep out again, and raise the alarm? No, she couldn’t risk it, because the minute he knew he’d been tumbled, the intruder would either be away like sheet lightning, or, even worse, in his desperation, he might harm the Thomases. Emma couldn’t risk such a thing.

  Her mind was working frantically. Emma felt her way towards the rack which held the shotguns. She knew every inch of this store like the back of her hand, but she never thought such knowledge would prove so very useful. In a matter of minutes, she had the shotgun and ammunition in her grasp. In another minute, she had the gun loaded and ready. When Nelly indicated that she also wanted a gun, Emma thought better of it. ‘No,’ she whispered, ‘one of us who can’t shoot straight is more than enough. You stay down here.’ When Nelly vigorously shook her head, Emma saw the futility of such a suggestion. ‘All right . . . but stay close, and keep a sharp eye out. We’ve no idea who it is up there . . . it could be a friendly visitor, but somehow I don’t think so.’ By the fearful look on her face neither did Nelly.

  As they inched their way up the stairs, Emma thought they would never reach the top, so long and painstaking was the journey. Only once did they pause, and that was when there came a small cry, followed by Mr Thomas’s voice. Again, because the bedroom was situated at the far end of the landing and the door was obviously closed, it was not easy to distinguish what was being said. But it was plain to Emma that the cry they had heard was that of a woman, and Mr Thomas’s voice had seemed to carry a tone of desperation. She was never more sure of anything, but that the Thomases were under threat with, no doubt, the
ir son lying in a drunken stupor somewhere. Emma also believed that there was no immediate help other than herself and Nelly. Clutching her small hands tightly about the shotgun, Emma went stealthily on, her heart in her throat, and a prayer on her lips that she wouldn’t have to shoot anybody! The thought of such a possibility made her tremble and her throat was as dry as a dirt-track road.

  With every step they took along the darkened landing, Emma was in dread that she or Nelly might bring their weight to bear on one of the loose creaky boards hereabouts. At last, they were at the door and, pressing her ear to it, Emma listened. The conversation coming through the chinks in the ill-fitting door was enough to confirm her suspicions. First came the stranger’s voice, which Emma felt sure she had heard somewhere before, and it was threatening.

  ‘My patience is fast running out, Thomas! You’ve had time enough, I reckon. There is money stashed away here . . . I’m sure of it! But you’ve hidden it well, I’ll grant yer that.’ Then there came the sound of a scuffle. ‘I mean it, Thomas . . . I’ll break her bloody neck!’

  ‘Leave her be, you bastard!’ Mr Thomas cried out brokenly. ‘Leave her be. I’ll show you where the takings are.’

  Emma chose this moment to throw open wide the door and to confront the intruder. ‘Let go of her!’ she yelled, thrusting herself into the room and quickly taking stock of the situation. She was right. The tall thin fellow with the scar, who now quickly took his hands from round Mrs Thomas’s throat, was the same bushman who had been with Foster Thomas down on the beach that day. As he raised his arms in the face of the shotgun, Emma was puzzled by the arrogant smile which seemed to turn the whole of his features downwards. It took only a split second to see that, though relatively unharmed, both Mr and Mrs Thomas were in a state of shock. Mrs Thomas was bound hand and foot in a chair to Emma’s right, and Mr Thomas the same, but nearer to the window. The astonishment at Emma’s sudden intrusion was evident on both their faces and, even as Emma opened her mouth to issue the instruction, ‘Untie them, Nelly,’ she saw the astonishment slip from Mr Thomas’s face, and in its place came another, more desperate expression.

  Emma saw his neck stiffen and his head reach forward. She saw his mouth open and, even as his first word of warning split the air, Emma understood. But it was too late! The very last thing Emma heard before it seemed like the world fell in on her, was Mr Thomas yelling, ‘Watch out!’ and Nelly’s broken scream as she came running towards her. Then the gun was snatched from Emma’s hands and a shot rang out. The last that Emma saw before her senses slipped from her was the tall bushman’s evil smile as he lowered his arms, and the sight of Mrs Thomas’s wide-open terrified eyes before they snapped shut, and her grey head fell sideways to loll against her shoulder like that of a rag doll.

  As Emma was sucked deep into the black yawning chasm which engulfed her, her mind began to play tricks, and she saw another limp and lifeless body. It was the body of a young man who had idolised her, but whose love she had not been able to return. It was the body of her husband on the day of his tragic death. The sight of it had made her cry out then. It made her cry out now. But it wasn’t his name that fell from her lips as she slipped, unconscious, to the floor. It was another name: the name of Marlow, the man she had lost forever. The man she could never forget.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Tell me she ain’t gonna die, Dr Shaw.’ Nelly’s brown eyes swam with bright tears as she leapt up to meet the grim-faced doctor. ‘Please . . . I couldn’t bear it if Emma were to die!’ Of a sudden she had her face bent to her hands and was sobbing. ‘She won’t die, will she?’ she kept saying over and over and even Mr Thomas, who had also been anxiously waiting for the doctor to return from Emma’s bedside, had to lift his hand surreptitiously to his face, where he quickly wiped away a tear. When he raised his dark eyes to study the doctor’s face, as though he might see the light of hope in it, his own suffering was plainly written in the folds of his aged features and in the weary stoop of his thickly set shoulders. It was there also in the anguish of his voice as he spoke to the doctor. ‘What of Emma?’ he asked, and he thought how cruel it would be if the Lord saw fit to take Emma’s life. The whole town was still buzzing with the story of how Emma had bravely confronted the robbers in an effort to save her employers, in spite of the obvious danger to herself. Why even the Governor had been so filled with admiration at her loyalty to the Thomases that he had passionately pursued an absolute pardon for her. Unfortunately the recommendation had been rejected on the grounds that, if Emma had not been carrying the shotgun, Mrs Thomas might still be alive.

  In the four days following the incident, neither hide nor hair had been seen of Foster Thomas. His distraught father had sent out messengers far and wide, seeking to inform his son of the fatal, if accidental, shooting of Violet Thomas, and that she would be laid to rest in the churchyard on the morrow. So far, the whereabouts of Foster Thomas remained a mystery. With the passing of the days old Mr Thomas had suffered a whole range of emotions. First, there was the grief for his departed wife, and the cutting knowledge that her body would be put to rest in a land which she considered to be alien to her. He had knelt beside her in the tiny chapel, asking her forgiveness time and time again. He had paced the floorboards till all hours of the morning and there were times when he had a mind to put an end to it all and join her. Then he was swamped with guilt and the awful knowledge that, because of his reluctance to hand over the takings, his wife had been put through an ordeal which resulted in not only the loss of her life but perhaps Emma’s as well. In the beginning he had felt a desperate need to have his only son by his side; he was anxious, for the sake of his wife’s memory in particular, to heal the rift between himself and Foster. In spite of his every instinct, Roland Thomas was prepared to give his son fresh opportunities to prove himself for, of a sudden, he felt the weight of every one of his fifty-nine years. He had thought it was time to relinquish some of the burden on to the only other person who carried the family name. Was it not true that Foster was his own flesh and blood, after all? And wouldn’t it have gladdened Violet’s weary heart to see father and son working together? Oh, it would! Dear Lord, how he yearned to be able to put the clock back! He could have been more compassionate, more sympathetic to his wife’s unhappiness. He might even have been more tolerant towards his son.

  But when the days passed and there was no word from his son, Roland Thomas began to realise that he would be the only family to grieve at Violet Thomas’s grave. They had a son, yes . . . but he neither knew his parents, nor cared for them. The need to be reconciled with such a son became less and less in Roland Thomas’s grieving heart. Instead, he began to believe that he would not care if he never saw him again. Turning from those who were past all hope, he brought his attention to Emma. Dear, loyal, hard-working Emma, who gave everything and asked for little in return, and he prayed to the Lord that she should live, both for her own sake and for his sake, because a plan had begun to take root in Roland Thomas’s mind. A plan to preserve all that he held dear. A plan which he intended putting to Emma as soon as she was fully recovered. And she must recover, she must, for everything depended on it.

  Now, both he and Nelly anxiously awaited the doctor’s verdict. When it came, there was a sigh of relief, for what Dr Shaw told them was this: ‘She’s mending . . . at long last Emma has turned the corner.’ He went on to warn them of her poorly state all the same. ‘She isn’t fully recovered by a long chalk, and she’ll sleep twenty out of twenty-four hours . . . sleep that she badly needs.’ He stressed that, even though Emma’s condition had shown significant improvement, ‘The blow on her head very nearly fractured her skull. There’ll be times when she appears lucid . . . and times when she’ll be delirious. You, Nelly, must tend her as constantly and carefully as you have been doing. See that she takes the broth, and keep her comfortable.’ With that, and the curt issuing of a few more instructions, he was gone.

  ‘See to her, child,’ Mr Thomas urged the anxious Nelly. He h
ad accompanied Dr Shaw to the top of the stairs and now he had come into the bedroom where Emma lay; the very same bed from which he and his wife had been viciously dragged so few nights ago, but what now seemed the span of a lifetime. Nelly had already taken up position in the cane rocking-chair which was pulled up close to the bed. Her brown eyes, that normally were alive with mischief, were sore and red from the tears she had shed for Emma, her one and only real friend in the whole wide world. Many were the times these past years when Nelly had thanked God for Emma’s stalwart love and friendship, and she never tired of telling Emma how, if she could choose a sister, it would be no one else but Emma. These last few days had been a nightmare, because every minute that passed, night and day, it seemed that Emma would breathe her last and be taken from them. The thought was so terrible to poor Nelly that she had gone without food or sleep, and she had found herself praying to the very same God who, for so long, she had cursed for her ill fortune. The strain of it all showed on Nelly’s homely face, in her unkempt brown hair and in the way she rarely took her anxious gaze from Emma’s pale, still features. It showed in the manner of her constant fidgeting, and it betrayed itself in the small bony fingers which were, even now, wrapped about Emma’s seemingly lifeless hand as it lay frail and unmoving on the chequered quilt cover. ‘Oh, Mr Thomas, sir,’ she murmured now, raising her sorry eyes to look on his face, ‘I know the doctor said she was mending but . . . well, she looks so ill and she ain’t opened her eyes, not once.’

  Nelly’s brown eyes followed Roland Thomas as he strode further into the room. When he came to rest just an arm’s reach from Emma, he stood with one hand across the back of Nelly’s chair, his large coarse fingers tightly clasping the top. He gave no answer to Nelly, nor did he betray the slightest inclination of his thoughts as, for what seemed an age, he stared down on Emma’s prostrate figure. His serious gaze roved over the finely structured lines of her lovely face and, every now and then, a small shuddering sigh formed deep within his chest, before softly escaping through partly opened lips. Then, with his head bowed and a dark, grim expression on his face such as Nelly had not seen before, he turned away. At the door he stopped, and in soft, halting tones, he told the watching Nelly, ‘I’ll never forget how Emma put her own life at risk to help me and mine. Never! Nor your part in it, child.’ His heartfelt words caused Nelly to look away. Not for the first time, she was plagued with a sense of guilt. Should she tell him that, on the night his wife died and the culprits were making good their getaway, there were three figures fleeing across the yard? She had kept quiet about it until now because, when she went to the window to shout for help, the moon had gone behind the clouds and there were dark moving shadows. But, in that fleeting moment before the three scoundrels scurried away, Nelly thought she recognised the third man. She wasn’t sure and she would never swear to it. That was why she had kept it to herself when the officers questioned her. Besides which, how could she say in Mr Thomas’s hearing, and with the body of his poor wife not yet cold, that the man she saw running away was to her mind Foster Thomas, his own son! It was a terrible thing, and one which Nelly wanted no part in. It had been a shock and she hoped with all her heart that she was wrong. Not least of all because, in spite of Emma’s warning, or maybe because of it, she had fallen hopelessly in love with Mr Thomas’s handsome, wayward son, and somehow, Nelly knew that Emma was right in all she said . . . Foster Thomas was a bad lot. He was capable of all manner of grief. But then hearts are unpredictable things, and love even more so.