Page 3

‘Come on, Bonny, not much further now,’ he lied, because he had no idea how close – or far – they were. He’d lost track and so it was with surprise and trembling relief that he spotted the outskirts of the town and its activity. He could see people, like ants moving around, and across the distance left to cover he could make out the iron sounds of a forge, while the odd voice pierced the distance in a shout or burst of laughter.

He glanced over his shoulder where his mother lay, death still. ‘Mum . . . Mum!’

She groaned in answer.

‘We’re here. We’ll be in Farina in minutes. At the hospital.’

All she did was nod. Her eyes remained closed.

‘Hospital’ was a loose term even in the mind of a ten-year-old. The rather grandly titled Transcontinental Hotel had been converted into a hospice of sorts and depended on bush nursing and a series of travelling doctors who arrived by train from Quorn. Tom knew from the adult conversations he’d overheard that finding a permanent doctor had proved impossible and it was hard enough to get nurses to stay. He’d heard one of the townsfolk admit that any serious injury likely meant death. Out of need, most of the locals knew how to set and mend bones themselves, his mother included.

He began yelling from the fringe of the town, drowning his mother’s cries and attracting a host of people who soon pushed him out of the way. Within minutes he was watching the person he loved more than any other be carried away from him towards the long stone building with its cheerful, striped tin verandah. Two women in starched nurse’s outfits were taking control of proceedings.

In the activity, Tom was barely noticed, but he was used to that and he remembered his father’s rules. Horse first. His mother was now in the best hands – the only hands – that could help her. He led Bonny slowly back down to the stables behind the Exchange Hotel before unharnessing her from the wagon, tying her up and seeing to her care.

The voices of men drifted through to the stable from the busy hotel; someone was playing a mouth organ on its verandah, which lent a melancholy note to an otherwise raucous-sounding gathering of workers after a long day. The evening was closing in and the smell of old beer wafted through to where Tom was stroking Bonny’s neck.

‘There’s fresh water and food. I don’t know how long we’ll be here, but I’ll be back soon. All right?’

Bonny snorted and bent her head to her pail of hay that he’d already paid the stablemaster for; luckily he’d had the foresight to bring his mother’s purse. He tucked the tiny leather sack back beneath his shirt on the thong she wore around her neck for safekeeping.

He tapped Bonny’s rump affectionately. Moving into the darkness away from the lights, laughter and even the mournful music, he rounded the back of the hotel to go in search of his mother. The strains of the sad melody were cut short by a loud voice.

‘Hey, Knackers! Play something decent, will you, mate? Making us all cry in here.’

As Tom picked up the pace heading back into town, he could hear the tune of the jolly lumberjack that his father sometimes played and it made him smile.

But Tom’s smile was short-lived.

2

PORT ADELAIDE

April 1914

Fleur knew the rain of the last two days had slowed the decomposition of the corpse. She had listened and memorised what she’d heard – the deceased was a woman named Mary Oaten and she was a shopkeeper – but she had learned in her eight short years as an undertaker’s daughter that, for the dead, what one had done in life no longer mattered.

‘Dying makes everyone the same, doesn’t it, Dad?’ she’d offered not so long ago, lifting her father’s eyebrows in surprise at the sophisticated notion from such a young person.

‘That’s true. The dead begin a new passage, my love,’ her father had replied.

‘How can you be sure they’re going anywhere if they can’t tell us?’

He filled his cheeks with air and blew it out gently at yet another complex thought from Fleur. ‘I can’t be sure, but we’re all taught there is a different sort of life after death. Not one that the living are privy to, obviously.’

Henry Appleby had learned long ago to answer his intelligent daughter honestly and as if he were conversing with an adult. To placate, or worse, talk down to her, rarely worked. At least this way she would know he’d respected her question and done his utmost to respond fully.

‘But it’s up to us, the living,’ he continued, ‘to make sure we guide them gently on their way and make it as easy as possible for the family. As funeral directors, we undertake the care of their loved ones.’

Fleur had appreciated him pausing to discuss her thoughts. She peeped around the doorway to watch her father speaking gently to Mary’s kin in the hallway; she heard him explaining that they might like to pick out a gown for their mother to be buried in.

One of them glanced her way. ‘Mr Appleby, should your daughter . . .?’

‘Don’t mind her,’ her father reassured them. ‘She’s been around those at peace since she was old enough to walk.’

Fleur smiled at his careful wording. At eight, she already knew her father was avoiding using the word ‘dead’, which might feel blunt on this day. ‘At peace’ was a kinder expression, he’d explained to her, when the grief was fresh. Even so, she could see the alarm passing across the faces of the adults that a stranger’s child was near the corpse, but Fleur also knew that heartache would press in and her presence would be ignored, if not forgotten.

Her father had not lied; since being adopted as a newborn by Henry and Mae Appleby, she’d known nothing but the world of funerals, and her father was one of the best – no, he was the best.