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  The burger shrugged, losing interest in someone else’s distant war. ‘Then go home, digger. You don’t belong here. It’s our war.’

  Rom watched him walk to the head of the line. The enemy – face to face. Despite the worn clothing and the bandolier studded with ammunition strapped diagonally across his chest, the young Boer could have passed as a farmer in any Australian town.

  At the thought of home Rom reminded himself. One year I signed up for. Only a few more months to go – survival, that’s all that counts. He was jolted back to the present when another heavily bearded burger prodded him with the butt of a rifle for stepping out of line and stood towering over him. His accent and his order almost caused Rom to laugh in disbelief.

  ‘Vat size?’ the man asked, pointing his Martini-Henry at Rom’s feet.

  Anxious to retain all his toes, Rom decided it was wise to be helpful.

  ‘Five! Want to try them for size? You’re welcome, but I can’t guarantee they won’t smell.’

  ‘Five? Not good. Six I vont!’

  The heavily built lad moved down the line and finally found a bloke with bigger feet who, drunk on his unexpected escape from death, tried to argue the toss.

  ‘Fair go. You don’t expect me to walk twelve miles back to camp barefoot? What’s this flaming war coming to? It’s supposed to be a gentleman’s war.’

  The digger beside him gave him a sharp nudge. ‘Shut your trap, ye eedjit! Ye’ll give the man your boots if ye know what’s good for ye!’

  The tap of the Boer gun on his boots speeded up their transfer.

  • • •

  A few hours later, his own boots commandeered by another burger but otherwise relatively intact, Rom was turned loose with the rest of the prisoners. They headed in the direction of what was hopefully Beatson’s column at Vandyke’s Drift.

  Rom cast a look behind him at the totally wrecked camp at Wilmansrust. In the distance a number of the enemy carried lanterns as they searched for their dead and wounded in the trenches where an hour earlier they had lain in wait, ready to strike.

  What about our wounded? Dr Palmer was killed instantly. There’s no one to tend our wounded.

  ‘Come on, you slackers,’ Rom called out wearily. ‘The sooner we make Beatson’s camp, the sooner we get an ambulance to our blokes.’

  Stripped of their uniforms, and marching barefoot, their horses dead or captured, they had little thought for their own lives. Their sole aim was to get medical help for their mates. They had no choice but to allow the veldt to lead them towards the dawn.

  Rom urged on the prisoners around him – reminding them that every minute counted. They reached Beatson’s camp around midnight. Despite suffering from fatigue, bloody, blistered feet and certain signs of the enteric fever that had become an epidemic, to a man they were eager to return immediately to Wilmansrust to rescue their wounded and resume the fight.

  Instead they were stunned by Beatson’s orders that no start would be made until after daybreak.

  Rom jotted down the facts in his diary. Beatson’s orders meant that his flying column did not arrive at Wilmansrust until ten next morning. The ambulance wagon arrived even later.

  Rom had commandeered a mule that was on its last legs. Among the first to arrive at the scene, he stood stock still, shocked by the extent of the carnage revealed in the light of day. The bodies of slaughtered men and horses lay entangled in all directions.

  He tried to turn off the part of his mind that felt waves of anger and shame. Three hundred and fifty of us – up against a Commando of maybe a hundred and fifty. Yet we were slaughtered.

  Like an automaton Rom and another lad followed orders. In silence they laid out side by side the bodies of the eighteen who had been killed instantly. Rom was unable to recognise their faces and ceased trying to identify them. Several others died later from their wounds. It was some comfort to Rom to know that they had not died alone.

  An Australian officer, Major McKnight, explained that half an hour after the firing ceased abruptly, he had been taken prisoner. On learning he was a doctor, the Boers had allowed him to return to the scene to tend the wounded.

  Stripped of everything but their socks, trousers and hats, McKnight and a veterinary officer, Captain Samuel Sherlock, had lit fires around the wounded and tended them throughout the night.

  Rom counted forty-five wounded. Devoid of emotion, like a machine attached to a shovel, he helped dig a mass grave. Eighteen V.M.R. soldiers and Captain Watson of the Royal Artillery were buried together, along with a young Kaffir and an unknown Boer.

  As Rom finished helping erect a rough fence around the grave he looked across at the insignificant farmhouse – Wilmansrust. Anger almost choked him.

  What the hell was that all about? One bloody little farm?

  The wounded were transported by ambulance train to the military hospital in Johannesburg. It was only when Rom saw the train depart that he remembered what he had lost. It was some consolation to have Clytie’s letter safely tucked inside his underpants. The loss of his boots was a temporary matter. What mattered was his lost jacket. On instinct he retraced his steps. Somehow the Boers had overlooked it. He found it trampled on, under the carcass of a horse. The pocket held Clytie’s photograph – miraculously intact. He gave a jackaroo’s holler and punched his fist at the sky in triumph.

  • • •

  For the next few days Rom was one of the survivors without horses. Kitted out with an assortment of ill-fitting uniforms to replace those commandeered by their captors, they were ordered to march on foot across open, treeless terrain that brought them in frequent contact with the enemy.

  During one day’s march Major-General Beatson was overheard sharing his considered opinion with the Australian officers under his command.

  ‘I tell you what I think. The Australians are a damned fat, round-shouldered, useless crowd of wasters.’

  Shocked by the vehemence of his comments, several Australian officers immediately protested.

  Beatson was not a man to retract his words. ‘Australians are all alike,’ he proclaimed. ‘In my opinion they are a lot of white-livered curs.’

  Aware that an Australian officer was writing down his comments, Beatson pointed his finger at him. ‘You can add dogs too!’

  Beatson’s insults were quick to filter down through the ranks.

  Rom heard them second-hand, but was himself a witness to an event on the fourth day after the Wilmansrust debackle. The column was camped near a large farm where they had been given permission to slaughter some pigs for food.

  Rom looked up as Beatson passed by, pausing long enough to observe them bayoneting the pigs. Beatson’s voice was loud enough to be clearly intended for every Australian present.

  ‘Yes, that’s about what you are good for. When the Dutchmen came the other night you didn’t fix bayonets and charge them, but you go for something that can’t hit back!’

  Rom and the other Australians froze, bayonets in hand. Beatson departed, swinging his swagger stick. Rom’s mind was flooded by images of the bloody carcasses of men and horses at Wilmansrust, the pile of rifles neatly stacked together by order of Major Morris.

  Rom seethed at the injustice, knowing Beatson was safely shielded by the privilege of his rank, his impressive Imperial record in India, and his firm advocacy of Major Morris’s orders ‘by the book’.

  Beatson’s vitriolic condemnation of an event he had not witnessed except second-hand through the eyes of Morris soon became common knowledge. There wasn’t a V.M.R. volunteer who did not hold Beatson in utter contempt.

  The seeds of mutiny had been born. Soon after he recorded Beatson’s comments in his diary, Rom was relieved to be ordered by an Australian officer to continue patrolling the veldt.

  • • •

  On his second day out scouting, the heat was no greater than usual but Rom was sweating profusely. He began to wonder about his chances of staying free from the enteric fever that was not only decimating the
ranks of the V.M.R. but all the Colonial units and the Tommies in the Imperial Forces.

  The sky was clear, the colour of the blue found on religious Christmas cards. No tree in sight for miles around, so naturally not a skerrick of timber. To light a fire to boil a billy of tea Rom had to forage for dead balls of vegetation blowing across the veldt. It was important to boil water in the hope of avoiding the dreaded fever.

  He was suddenly alerted by the sound of a bird dramatically close at hand. He shook his head in bewilderment. No mistaking that deep-throated, loud cry – the same cry he had heard from the illusive bitternbirds who nested somewhere in the marshes behind Hoffnung.

  What the hell is a bitternbird doing here? I must be off my rocker.

  There wasn’t a bird in sight but the infuriating cry continued to reverberate in his head.

  The outline of a farmhouse seemed to materialise out of thin air. Is it a mirage? He pushed the sluggish Argentinean mule to the limit, but within close range of the farm he dismounted and carefully circled the place for any signs of enemy occupants. Entering the abandoned farmhouse he was disappointed to realise the truth. He was too late. Others had already looted anything of value. There was no food, except for a row of dead cabbages in a garden bed, the soil cracked for lack of water.

  Cautiously he made his way towards the barn, rifle in hand. The door hung from one hinge and creaked as he drew it open. A shaft of light flooded the interior.

  In the act of gathering some decent forage for his horse, he caught a slight movement in a pile of hay. There was a groan. His rifle at the ready he moved stealthily towards the sound and saw, protruding from a pyramid of hay, the khaki sleeve torn from a V.M.R. uniform. He tugged at it carefully and it came away – no jacket, just the sleeve. Prodding further, he was startled to see the bloodied face of a young man’s naked body buried in the hay.

  The wounded soldier’s eyes widened in alarm at the sight of Rom’s rifle inches from his head. His cracked lips tried to form words but only succeeded in producing indistinct sounds.

  Rom recognised the insignia on the sleeve – the printed word Australia recently added to the uniforms of some units. Was it from New South Wales?

  He retrieved his water bottle and held it to the lad’s lips.

  ‘It’s all right, mate. You’re safe now. I’m one of your mob, the V.M.R.’

  The young man spluttered in haste as he drained it thirstily then handed back the empty flask. ‘Thank you, Eternal Father,’ he said then passed out cold.

  Rom sat eyeing him, weighing the odds for and against his decision. Barely enough water remained for himself and his horse – let alone to share three ways.

  What the hell. I can’t leave the poor bastard here to die alone.

  Rom hoisted up the long-limbed body and slung it over the saddle. The ragged mule looked as exhausted as he was. He brought it some of the remaining water from the well, then urged it onwards.

  He eyed the lad’s tow-coloured head matted with blood, and the limp arms that swung in time with the mule’s plodding rhythm. He slung his jacket over the lad’s back to protect him from the burning sun.

  This bloke was either like me, on the run after Wilmansrust. Or else he’s a deserter. Who cares? He’s barely alive. With luck I’ll dodge Boer snipers and get him to a field hospital. He’d have been a goner – if I hadn’t tried to loot that farmhouse.

  ‘If you ask me, bloody Beatson should give me a medal.’

  Waves of heat dazzled before Rom’s eyes like a mirage. He needed to hold on to the bridle to stay upright as he staggered beside his human cargo.

  He delivered his verdict to the unconscious soldier.

  ‘You’d laugh if you could see us, mate – a prime example of the blind leading the blind.’

  Rom heard the sounds of sniper’s fire and knew what was coming before he saw the red flash of blood staining the khaki.

  Chapter 18

  Clytie closed the door of the priest’s house behind her and turned the lock, choosing to ignore the town’s proud boast that no locks were needed in Hoffnung because there were no thieves. She knew that to be a lie. Long Sam’s shack had been robbed. And although she hated to face the thought, she suspected there had been no sale involved in Rom’s acquisition of Goldie or the few good clothes he possessed.

  At the thought of Goldie, the first loss to strike home to her the reality of the distant war, she felt an echo of the pain that remained trapped in the lines of Rom’s letter.

  She filled a basket with flowers and a bundle of the herbs that had flourished in her garden under Long Sam’s clever hands. Shadow stood ready to accompany her to the Post Office. Today she must mail that all-important letter to Rom containing the casual postscript that broke the news of their coming babe.

  The dog cocked his ears at sight of her and led her down the path.

  ‘I’m beginning to think Rom was right. You’ve a real talent for reading people’s minds. You’d be a headline act in any circus.’

  The dramatic chain of events had almost overwhelmed her during the months since Tribe’s Mortgage Bank crashed and the circus had been run out of town. She clung to every postcard Tiche sent her and hungered for news of her circus family, who had sent a flood of sympathy notes following Dolores’s death. Strangely she did not feel her mother had completely deserted her, but rather that she was simply out of sight. Several times she had come to her in dreams – foretelling good news or bad.

  Last night’s ‘visit’ had left Clytie confused, unable to sense her mother’s message. Dolores was standing alone in a windswept, barren landscape where the rocks were shrouded with yellow as if they had been painted by the wind. Her mother pointed to a distant farmhouse that seemed empty, abandoned. Her lips moved in speech but the words had no sound. Then the dream turned to black like one of the silent scenes she had seen in the Biograph in Melbourne – but the dream had no written caption of explanation.

  As Clytie climbed the hill to the cemetery she almost lost her footing, staggering under the weight of her belly and the sudden movements that were a forcible reminder that she was never alone.

  ‘I don’t know who you are, but you’ve got the kick of a mule, kid.’

  As she did every week, she placed little bouquets of flowers on the graves of Dolores and Lionello, and on Missy’s unacknowledged plot beside him. On her way to the far corner she passed the most elaborate monument in the cemetery which dominated the whole scene. On top of a tall column stood a stone-winged angel with eyes mournfully raised to heaven, her hands folded across her breast. The gilt inscription on the raised tomb read, ‘Margaret Twyman, Beloved wife of Councillor Ernest Twyman, now left alone to Shoulder the Loss that is Heaven’s Gain’. The date of death was ten years earlier.

  Clytie frowned, noting that the husband’s name and title were written in markedly larger script than that of his wife. ‘This must have cost him a small fortune, Shadow. It’s an awful thing to say but it suggests a man who loved his wife more after she was dead.’

  Out of respect for Long Sam she paused at the foot of the squat tombstones of the four Celestial friends who had left him the last surviving Chinaman in Hoffnung. He had previously mentioned some religious custom of theirs, the placing of food on the graves of the dead, but Clytie didn’t feel she could go that far. Food and money were scarce.

  ‘I hope this compromise doesn’t offend you Celestial Gentlemen.’

  She placed a little nosegay of parsley, rosemary and thyme in front of each of the stones that Sam had carved with Chinese letters and the English dates of their death.

  ‘I reckon I have more friends in the cemetery than I do in Hoffnung. But you did warn me, Mama, it would take us time to be accepted. Let’s hope the babe isn’t blamed for the “sins” of his parents. They make me feel like a mongrel dog who’s suspected of carrying rabies.’

  Shadow stopped short with an expression she could not fail to interpret as disapproval.

  ‘Forgive me, Shadow,�
� she said contritely, ‘I have no call to wallow in self-pity. You are a most faithful friend. We also have Doc Hundey, Long Sam and the reclusive Miss Adelaide on our side. And Rom will soon be coming home to us.’

  At the sound of his master’s name Shadow charged happily ahead.

  On the crest of the hill Clytie turned to catch her breath and admire her garden. With Long Sam’s ingenuity they had already transformed it into a fertile blaze of colour, a dramatic contrast to the olive green shades of eucalypts. Her first garden was a little oasis. With patience she had tamed a pair of kookaburras to feed off slices of apple on the railing outside the kitchen door. Clytie told herself she would never be so poor she could not spare food for birds and animals.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Mintner.’

  She gritted her teeth as the old woman was clearly intent on passing her without breaking her stride.

  ‘I seen you the other day. You circus folk know nothing. You don’t feed jackasses – it makes them dependent on hand-outs.’

  ‘Thank you for the advice, Mrs Mintner. But I need all the friends I can get.’

  Clytie instantly regretted her rash words. That sounded pathetic. Who needs people who snub you?

  She continued on to the Post Office, smiling at the thought that the babe’s instant kick was a reminder that he was on her side.

  It looks like Hoffnung is having a population explosion at all levels.

  Although her own pregnancy was hidden under one of Dolores’s floral gowns, Clytie noticed the growing number of outsized bellies sported by local women of all ages. She knew Mrs O’Grady was expecting her tenth. The shape of the Methodist minister’s wife, Mrs Binstead, had blossomed from thin to rotund. She now wore a permanent smile, having almost given up hope of ever bearing a child.

  When Clytie called in to the hotel kitchen to present to Mary Mac the fresh herbs for the hotel’s giant soup pot, the girl was eager to share the rumour about Noni Jantzen.