Flight of the Eagle (4 page)

Hearing her call for help, the priest quickened the mandatory prayers of his office and closed his missal to hurry to the tiny kitchen where he was confronted by the sight of a giant of a young man leaning on his frail housekeeper as she hustled him onto a well-worn wooden chair at the table.

‘Father Eamon O'Brien,’ the young priest said, as he thrust out his hand to Patrick, who he sensed was someone of importance given his bearing and expensive suit. When Patrick introduced himself the priest detected the accent of an educated man.

Mary Casey made herself busy warming soup – a thin gruel of stale vegetables and barley with a thin trace of lamb for flavour – in an old fashioned pot blackened by fires that could be traced back a century or more.

Patrick felt the warmth of the kitchen flood his body like the sun rising over the deserts of the Nile in the early morning. It was the warm feeling and ambience about the priest's kitchen that brought fleeting memories of a hotel kitchen in Sydney's Irish quarter. A place he had spent the first half of his life with his Aunt Bridget, Uncle Francis and Daniel's family.

‘You are not from the village, Mister Duffy,’ Father O'Brien stated as a matter of fact. ‘You have an Irish name well known here, but an English accent?’

Patrick smiled at the observation by the young priest who also did not sound as Irish as he might have thought. In fact, he did not even look like a priest, but one who might have been at home in the hallowed halls of Oxford or Cambridge.

Eamon was thin and dark and wore spectacles. He had an intelligent and eager face that seemed to be questioning – even when his lips were still. ‘No, Father, I'm not from here,’ Patrick replied with a weak smile. ‘And I may have an English accent, as you say, but I'm an Australian.’

‘Australian! I did not know such a creature existed,’ the priest said with a wry grin. ‘But that might explain why an Irishman with an English accent would defend his identity in a land hostile to the occupation of these sainted shores.’

‘My family came from this village back in the fifties. Patrick and Elizabeth Duffy were my grandparents on my father's side,’ Patrick replied with some pride as he knew from the stories told in the Erin Hotel that his grandfather was a legend of sorts in his birthplace.

At the same time, as a soldier in Her Majesty's Army, he felt a little guilty at such pride. The rebellious Irish were a constant scourge of the Imperial forces. Their foolish thoughts of independence tied up valuable military resources.

‘Ah, but you're not Patrick Duffy himself,’ Mary Casey interjected with mumbled superstitious relief as she still harboured a slight fear that the man had come home to haunt the familiar places of his youth. ‘God be thanked for that!’

Both priest and soldier cast puzzled glances at her strange statement.

Father O'Brien noticed Patrick's mystified expression and stepped in to extricate him from his confusion. He had a better understanding of the peculiar ways of his parishioners. ‘So it would be a visit you would be making us, Mister Duffy,’ he said. ‘A pilgrimage, one could say.’

‘I suppose that is probably the best description of why I am here.’

‘I have heard of your grandfather,’ Eamon continued. ‘They say he fought the British army with Peter Lalor at the Eureka Stockade and was killed by the wild black people in Australia.’

Patrick wiped his face with his hand to rub away the sweat. The fever was not as bad as he feared it might be. ‘Yes, that's true,’ he replied. ‘He was one of the rebel miners who stood with the Yankee Californian Revolver Brigade at Ballarat.’

‘Then you will be welcomed in all the public houses here.’

‘I doubt that, Father,’ Patrick said somewhat sadly, shaking his head. ‘I hold the Queen's commission in her army as a captain.’

The priest stared at his guest.

So that would explain why the man had been so deeply tanned by the sun, he mused. Soldiering in some far-flung and godforsaken campaign. ‘The tradition of the Wild Geese is very strong in these parts,’ he replied sympathetically. ‘Many of the young men from the village have served, many under the Union Jack. I don't think it matters to an Irishman who he fights for, so long as he is promised a good donnybrook. But,’ he added with a note of caution, ‘it may not pay to announce to the world that you hold a commission. Your accent is enough to label you an Englishman.’

Patrick nodded. English, Irish, Scots … he had the blood of the Celts, Gaels, Angles and Saxons in his blood. Not to mention a touch of French from his paternal grandmother's side. That's what made an Australian, he mused to himself. He had held onto the identity of his birth and had even used his fists at Eton to defend the pride of his country although he had not seen it for many years. Maybe it was just his predominant Irish blood that made him so defiant of slurs about his colonial identity. But at the same time he was also fiercely proud of his Anglo-Scots ancestry.

Mary served the steaming soup to Patrick in a chipped china bowl. He glanced up at her and disarmingly said in a deep Irish brogue, ‘Begorrah, Mrs Casey. ′Tis like me sainted old aunt herself would serve. God rest her soul!’ And winked with a wicked smile that glittered with mirth.

Mary hooted with delight. ‘Be away with ye, Paddy Duffy!’ she said with the voice of a young girl, and nudged the handsome grandson of the man himself. ‘You'd be takin’ advantage of a good woman like meself next!’ It was a familiarity that took the old woman back to another time when the young man's grandfather had swept her into his arms for a stolen kiss. Old memories in a new time.

‘Ah but that I would, Mary Casey, except Father O'Brien might not approve.’

Eamon blushed and ducked his head at both his housekeeper's brazen response and the irreverent way Patrick encouraged her. Before Patrick could take a sip of the soup Eamon mumbled a hurried thanksgiving prayer for the food about to be consumed. He suspected that Patrick was not a practising Catholic as he had noted that the young officer had not been awed by his position in the village as the local priest.

‘Where are you staying while you are visiting us, Captain Duffy?’ Eamon asked.

‘Down at the pub in the village. Bernard Riley's pub I believe it's called.’

‘A distant relative of yours then,’ Eamon commented. ‘You have a lot of relatives in the village. Even Protestant relatives, since your grandmother was Elizabeth Fitzgerald. As a matter of fact I often visit with your dear departed grandmother's brother, George Fitzgerald. He and I share an interest in archaeology which I do not think my fellow Irishmen appreciate, do they, Missus Casey?’

‘′Tis not a good thing to be disturbin’ the old places with picks and shovels, Father,’ Mary growled as she stirred the soup in the big pot. ‘The old ones should be left alone.’

‘But that's superstitious nonsense, Missus Casey,’ Eamon retorted, and Patrick detected a hint of teasing in his reply as the priest added facetiously, ‘After all, Saint Patrick broke the power of the old ones and brought Our Lord to Ireland.’

Mary Casey did not reply but continued to stir the soup. She was as good a Catholic as any in the village but some things would never go away. Things that lived in the still grey mists beyond the village and were witnessed and sworn to by many a devout Irishman.

‘You do not talk how I remember our Irish priests did when I was a boy growing up in Sydney, Father.’

Eamon smiled broadly although he was unsure whether it was a compliment or a rebuke. It depended on whether one was a devout follower of the True Faith. ‘I grew up in England amongst Anglican Catholics and have travelled much of Europe,’ he answered. ‘But alas, my education in the broader world did not really prepare me for life as a parish priest in an Irish village. However, here I am as a mark of my vow of obedience to the Church.’

‘Some would say English Catholics have no place in the Church of Rome,’ Patrick baited with his own touch of humour. ‘That English Catholics are as heretical as the Protestants.’

The priest beamed and took his glasses from his nose to wipe them.

‘Ahh, Captain Duffy, I think you and I could have many a philosophical debate on many subjects. Cambridge old chap?’

‘Oxford actually,’ Patrick replied in his best affectation of English and broke into Latin.
‘That we could, Father. Tacitus, the historian, was a particular interest of mine.’

The priest raised his eyebrows at the young captain's fluency in the language of his Church. ‘Do you also have an interest in Irish history?’ he replied in English.

Patrick frowned. ‘I'm afraid I know little of Irish history.’

‘That's not surprising,’ Eamon snorted. ‘You received a classical
English
education. But possibly I could alert you to the prehistory of the land of your forefathers, Captain Duffy. If you had an interest in Tacitus then I could possibly intrigue you with the history of Rome's most serious rivals – the Celts.’

Before he could reply Mary Casey ladled another stream of steaming soup into Patrick's almost empty bowl then excused herself to shuffle off to attend to other duties in the small annexe that served as a presbytery.

When they were alone – and Patrick had finished his second helping of hot soup – Eamon continued with the conversation. ‘I think if you are staying for a while I should take you to George Fitzgerald's place to meet him. He has a very good collection of artefacts we think date back to the age of the warrior heroes of Old Ireland. The Bronze Age, we amateur archaeologists call that time.’

‘I would like that,’ Patrick said. ‘I think we can dispense with my rank. The name is Patrick.’

‘I doubt that you are a religious man, Patrick, so call me Eamon,’ the priest said with a warm smile. ‘I gather that your lack of respect for titles is part of your colonial upbringing.’

Patrick laughed. ‘Some things stay with a man. Yes, I suppose you are right. Australians all think they are as good as their masters no matter what their occupation or standing in society.’

‘I see that the well-travelled Englishman Mister Trollope also noted the same thing in his travels in the colonies,’ Eamon said with a smile. ‘He was rather taken aback by the coachman addressing him as an equal.’

Into the late afternoon priest and soldier carried on a lively conversation on subjects of politics and history. Each of the two very different men, bound by education, warmed to the other's informal attitude. The priest produced a bottle of whisky and before the sun set in a grey sky both men had consumed three-quarters of the contents.

Mary Casey hobbled as fast as she could down to Riley's pub where she would spread the word on Patrick's arrival in the place of the birth of the great man, Patrick's grandfather himself. The news earned her an endless supply of whisky as she spun out the story to a spellbound audience of Riley's patrons.

Old men with pipes nodded sagely as they remembered the giant Patrick Duffy of the old days. They had been young men then but they vividly remembered the night the British troops came to arrest the big man and it was recalled that a sympathetic clerk in the magistrate's office had forewarned the Duffy family. They had only been short hours ahead of the arrest warrant and had taken the first ship out of port – which happened to be sailing for Australia, and not America, as Patrick Duffy had initially hoped.

When the grandson of the great man himself arrived back at the hotel somewhat the worse for wear after drinking with Father O'Brien, the patrons stared with a mixture of awe and pity at the young officer. Awe for the blood in his veins, pity for the fact that his blood had been diluted by that of the English.

In the confines of the smoke-filled bar Patrick politely nodded his greeting to the wall of silent faces that stared curiously at him before going to his room to snatch some badly needed sleep. And in his troubled dreams he would find himself back on the battlefield. But his moans and whimpers were lost in the Irish night as he tossed from side to side in a lather of sweat.

THREE

A
day's ride east of the Kalkadoon ambush on the mounted police patrol Ben Rosenblum grunted as he raised a timber rail into position to complete his stockyards.

Ben was close to his thirtieth year and had finally realised a dream to own his own cattle property. It was not a grand place, just a single-room bark hut, stockyards and a corrugated iron lean-to that acted as a shed for saddles, tools and a few bales of hay. But he intended to carve out an empire one day for his young family and knew this with the optimism of his Jewish ancestors and their tradition of fighting the odds stacked against them.

Ben had once worked for the astute businesswoman Kate O'Keefe and had shared the early years of Kate's rise to her considerable wealth. As a young teamster he had trekked the dangerous tracks to the Palmer River goldfields with her and together they had faced hostile tribesmen, floods and privation. Part of her unrelenting spirit to win had rubbed off on the young man who had spent the first part of his life in Sydney's tough waterfront suburbs. With Kate as his inspiration and guiding light, Ben had saved his money and the fruition of his thriftiness was the purchase of the property he had sentimentally named Jerusalem.

The name was a belated acknowledgement of his Jewish ancestry although he no longer practised as an orthodox Jew. Nor did he observe the dietary rules of his religion as the practicalities of survival on the frontier made this seem unimportant to him.

He had stepped further from his beliefs when he had been married by an Anglican priest to Jennifer Harris who had not been accepted as a suitable wife by his more conservative aunt and uncle, Judith and Solomon Cohen. It was bad enough that Jennifer was a Gentile but she also had a child outside of wedlock and, to confirm their worst fears, she refused to have her children taught the ways of Ben's religion.

Ben had first met Jenny on the Palmer River. She had been a grimy and malnourished young girl with a dirty and surly child in tow, the product of a terrible wrong. Jenny had been Ben's first love – and only love.

Jennifer had returned Ben's love with a spiritual more than a physical passion. Despite her reluctance to indulge in unrestrained passion he knew Jenny's love for him was as deep as a woman could have for a man and he was always patient. Kate had once hinted at terrible wrongs that had occurred to Jennifer when she was merely a child in Sydney but Jennifer never spoke of this – and Ben never asked.