The homecoming, p.1
The Homecoming, page 1
About Alison Stuart
Australian author ALISON STUART began her writing journey halfway up a tree in the school playground with a notebook and a dream. Her father’s passion for history and her husband’s love of adventure and the Australian bush led to a desire to tell stories of Australia’s past.
She has travelled extensively and lived in Africa and Singapore. Before turning to writing full time, she enjoyed a long and varied career as a lawyer, both in private practice and in a range of different organisations, including the military and the emergency services.
Alison lives in a historic town in Victoria.
Also by Alison Stuart
The Postmistress
The Goldminer’s Sister
Available in ebook from Escape Publishing
Lord Somerton’s Heir
A Christmas Love Redeemed
www.harpercollins.com.au/hq
This book was written in 2020/21, through the depths of the Covid pandemic and, as the subject matter I chose for the theme for this story was the medical profession, there can only be one dedication and that is to our amazing doctors, nurses and frontline carers who continue to stand beside us and steer us through this frightening and uncertain time.
Contents
About the Author
Also by Alison Stuart
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
Forty-Seven
Forty-Eight
Forty-Nine
Fifty
Fifty-One
Fifty-Two
Fifty-Three
Fifty-Four
Fifty-Five
Fifty-Six
Author Notes
Acknowledgements
One
Saturday 5 May 1883
Menzies Hotel, Melbourne, Victoria
Charlie O’Reilly stood, ignored, by the door of the most talked-about event in Melbourne, overwhelmed by the knowledge that despite her beautiful dress and her kindly patrons, she did not belong. What would her mother say? Something about silk purses and sow’s ears?
In her last term at the East Melbourne Academy for Young Ladies, Charlotte O’Reilly—Charlie to her closest friends and family—had no idea how her benefactress Eliza McLeod had secured her an invitation to the social event of the year, a party thrown by the prominent member of the Legislative Council, Caleb Hunt, and his wife Adelaide to celebrate both the safe return of their eldest son, Daniel, from his travels abroad, and his coming of age.
When the invitation arrived, Charlie had cracked the seal on the heavy cream envelope and withdrawn the stiff, gilt-edged card with Miss C. O’Reilly inscribed in copperplate at the top. Her school friends oohed and ahhed and told her how lucky she was, but she knew that behind her back they probably laughed and sneered.
Eliza McLeod had taken her to a dressmaker in Collins Street, as excited as any Mama would be about a daughter’s first proper ball. Madame tutted at Charlie’s height—‘Too tall!’—and lack of feminine proportions—‘Too thin!’—but the green silk evening dress she produced was the most beautiful thing Charlie had ever owned. Eliza smiled and said it brought out the green in Charlie’s eyes. Eliza’s nine-year-old daughter, Cecilia, who had accompanied her mother on the shopping expedition, clapped her hands and declared that Charlie looked like a princess.
On the night of the party, those of her schoolmates not invited helped her dress. They twisted and curled her hair into fashionable ringlets and gushed over the lustrous emerald earrings and necklace that Eliza McLeod had loaned her. For all her physical failings Charlie thought, as she turned to admire herself in the mirror, she had scrubbed up quite well. Her mother would not recognise her.
But nothing in her rough-and-tumble upbringing or even the years at the academy had really prepared her for such a high-society party. Several girls from the school were there, dancing attendance on the scion of the Hunt household, but even with Eliza and her husband Alec McLeod beside her, Charlie felt awkward, out of place and alone.
She peeked over her fan at the centre of attention. Although the McLeods and the Hunts were close friends, she’d not met Daniel before tonight. On the very few occasions she had been in the company of the Hunts, Daniel had been at school and, in more recent years, at Oxford.
He was not as tall as his father, Caleb, a handsome man with dark hair, greying at the temples, and a taste for colourful waistcoats. Daniel’s hair was a lighter brown. In fact, it struck her, he looked nothing like his father, more closely resembling his mother with her striking light grey eyes.
Eliza and Alec McLeod were distracted by people they knew and, overwhelmed by the crowd, Charlie accepted a glass of champagne and retreated into an alcove, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor behind a large potted palm where she could watch unobserved as her school friends simpered and cooed around Daniel Hunt and several of his male friends.
She had no way of knowing if he enjoyed the attention. He had been far too well brought up to give any sign of discomfort. In the room next door, the orchestra struck up, and Charlie strained to see if Eliza and Alec were taking to the floor.
Too late she looked up to see Daniel Hunt looking down at her, a bemused smile on his face. ‘What on earth are you doing?’ he asked.
A perfectly reasonable question in the circumstances but words failed her and the heat rose to her cheeks. ‘I … I …’ she stuttered.
‘Who are you?’ he said.
‘Char … Charlotte O’Reilly.’ She tried to smile but, conscious of how strange she must look sitting cross-legged behind a potted palm, clutching a glass of champagne, her smile faltered.
Daniel Hunt considered her for a long moment. ‘Mind if I join you?’
She moved over and he squeezed in beside her, drawing up his knees. They sat in silence for several long minutes, drinking their now warm glasses of champagne.
‘It’s your party,’ Charlie said.
‘I know but I hate large crowds of people and I don’t know half of the people here. Do you know anyone?’
Charlie shook her head. ‘No one. Apart from Mr and Mrs McLeod, and a couple of girls from school.’
‘Duck,’ Daniel said. ‘Mother is looking for me.’
They pulled in tighter to the shadows of their hiding place as Adelaide Hunt came sallying forth.
‘It’s time for the speeches. Has anyone seen Daniel?’ Charlie heard her ask one of the other guests.
Beside her Daniel groaned and rose to his feet. ‘I’d better get back to it. Nice to meet you, Charlotte.’
‘And you.’
He smiled down at her. ‘May I claim a dance later?’
She nodded and handed him her empty card. He pencilled his name beside a waltz and left her sitting in a crumpled heap on the parquet floor in her lovely green silk dress, with an empty glass in her hand.
Two
Tuesday 12 July 1892
Maiden’s Creek, Victoria
They say you can never go back.
Charlotte O’Reilly, Sister O’Reilly to her colleagues, and Charlie to everyone who knew her, couldn’t recall where she had heard that aphorism but now every clack of the train seemed to echo those words. Don’t go back. Don’t go back.
And yet that was exactly what she was doing … returning to Maiden’s Creek, back to the memories of a miserable childhood, back to … somewhere safe and familiar. She needed the safety of the familiar mountains, the perfect place to hide … to forget … to escape from the ill-judged relationship on which she had once built so much hope. She had foolishly thought a few years of exile in London long enough to mend her broken heart but while her heart had mended, she had not counted on the man’s arrogant belief that she had returned to him.
She leaned an elbow on the sill and stared out at the passing scenery—a blur of tree ferns and steep gullies, little creeks and tall mountain ash. The scent of the eucalypts on the cold winter air mingled with the smoke drifting back from the train engine. She breathed it in and knew, whatever her reasons, that she needed to return, to lay other, older memories and ghosts to rest and, maybe, to prove, if only to herself, that the child that everyone dismissed as lost had been found.
The train whistle screeched, echoing around the valley, and she smiled. She would never have imagined a train would come to Maiden’s Creek. The only way out of the little town that nestled in the steep, impenetrable valley had been a treacherous road plied by Amos Burrell’s stagecoa ch from Shady Creek. The journey from Melbourne to Maiden’s Creek would take two to three days if the weather was good, longer in winter. Now it barely took a day.
Too fast to travel back in time. She needed those long, slow days to reflect and adjust to what waited for her. Without the adjustment she felt she had been uprooted from her position at the Women’s Hospital in Melbourne, to be replanted into a town she no longer knew and would probably not even recognise.
Around her the other passengers, more familiar with the train line, straightened in their seats and began reaching for bags and parcels as the train rounded a bend and a neat station painted in cream and burgundy came into view.
‘It’s made such a difference, having the train,’ the large woman who had been sitting opposite Charlie said. ‘We get daytrippers now! Who’d have thought it. You ever been to Maiden’s Creek?’
‘A long time ago,’ Charlie replied.
‘What brings you back?’
Memories, Charlie thought.
The woman stared at her expectantly, so she smiled and said, ‘I’ve taken a position at the hospital.’
The woman’s eyes widened. ‘The hospital? Plenty to keep you busy, dear. Are you a nurse?’
Charlie nodded and added, ‘It’s only for a couple of months while Matron Birch takes leave.’
The woman gave her a knowing look. ‘It’s that kind of town, isn’t it? No one stays.’
That much was true. Charlie’s mother had left to marry a farmer down near Korumburra, her uncle had gone … who knew where? Her benefactors, Eliza and Alec McLeod, had long since moved to Melbourne.
But some people remained, and she alighted from the train into the warm embrace of a small, elderly woman.
‘Welcome home, Charlie,’ Netty Burrell said.
Shaming tears sprang to Charlie’s eyes. Home … what a strange, alien concept, and yet Maiden’s Creek was as close to a home as anywhere she had lived.
‘That your box, love?’
The burly man standing behind Netty pulled off his hat, a broad grin on his face. The red hair had faded to white but Amos Burrell, along with his beloved horses, was an institution in Maiden’s Creek, and instantly recognisable.
Before she could reply, he had hoisted her travelling box onto his shoulders as if it weighed nothing.
‘You’re coming with us.’ Netty tucked her hand into Charlie’s elbow before Charlie had a chance to say that she had a room booked at the Empress Hotel.
Amos strode ahead with Netty and Charlie following. Charlie looked around, searching for familiar landmarks. Was it possible for a town to change so much? The buildings on Main Street, although still predominantly wooden, had an air of prosperity about them, and there was even a brightly painted bandstand built high above the ground, occupying a prominent position in a small park in the bend of the creek.
But some things remained the same: the ceaseless beat of the mines’ batteries of stampers, the wood smoke smell from the many boiler fires and the unrelenting stench from the heavily polluted creek. Charlie put a hand to her mouth and nose and coughed.
Netty chuckled. ‘You’d forgotten, hadn’t you?’
Charlie nodded. ‘Was it always this bad?’
‘This is better than it used to be,’ Netty said. ‘Depends which way the wind’s blowing.’
‘Where’s the hospital?’ Charlie asked.
Netty pointed up the hill to their right where a long, low, white-painted building perched above them.
‘The town can thank the Hunts for that,’ Amos said. ‘Pretty much their money what built it.’
Charlie had met Caleb and Adelaide Hunt on a few occasions, through her own benefactors, Eliza and Alec McLeod. Caleb had been the doctor in the town for a short time, and Adelaide its postmistress, but that was many years ago and all four were shareholders in a successful mine, the Shenandoah, and lived very different lives now.
But in their own ways, the Hunts and the McLeods had never forgotten what they owed this little town and had given back wherever and whenever they could, such as the Hunts’ support of the hospital or the MacLeods’ provision of scholarships for the more gifted schoolchildren to go on to education in Melbourne.
Only a few others had benefitted from the success of the Shenandoah, including Netty and Amos Burrell, but despite the generous returns on their shares, they still lived in a cottage at the back of a shop on Main Street.
The comforting smell of recent baking greeted Charlie inside Netty’s warm, familiar kitchen. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast and her stomach growled in response to the cornucopia of food laid out on the kitchen table beneath an embroidered lace cloth.
Netty bustled around, tying on an apron and ordering Amos to take the box through to the spare bedroom while she took Charlie’s hat and coat, hanging them on the pegs beside the door.
‘Let me look at you,’ she said, holding Charlie at arm’s length. She nodded approval at what she saw. ‘Always told your mother that you’d turn into a beauty.’
Charlie, unused to compliments, coloured, but before she could respond, Netty continued, ‘When your ma wrote and told us you were coming up here, I said to Amos that we’d be sure to be the first to greet you. Not that you’d know many people now.’
That’s probably a good thing, Charlie thought, grateful there wouldn’t be many people who would remember her as a child.
‘Sit down, sit down …’ Netty waved at a chair and hoisted the kettle onto the stove to boil. She whipped off the cloth covering the food. ‘Help yourself. You must be starving, and by the look of you, you need a good feed.’
Charlie removed the jacket of the neat dusky pink suit that she had purchased at great expense in London.
An indignant and very pregnant cat voiced her disapproval as Charlie lifted her from the chair.
‘Don’t mind Flossie,’ Netty said. ‘She thinks she owns the place.’
Charlie gave Flossie a cuddle before setting her on the floor. ‘Cats do,’ she said.
A lengthy stay with Netty Burrell and she would need a whole new wardrobe, Charlie thought as she piled a pretty floral plate with sandwiches, biscuits and cakes.
Amos sat down with a grunt as Netty placed the brown teapot, which Charlie remembered from her childhood, in the centre of the table with a woollen tea cosy over it.
‘Good to see you, lass,’ Amos said. ‘And you a nurse and all. Who’d have thought?’
Charlie smiled. Who, indeed, would have thought that the child everyone dismissed as a lost cause would be sitting here today, a qualified nurse and midwife.
‘So, you’re taking Matron Birch’s position?’ Netty said.
‘Only until she returns from England,’ Charlie said.
‘Why would you want to give up your post in the city to come all the way back out ’ere?’ Amos asked the question to which Charlie could not give an honest answer.
Running away, she thought.
Instead, she smiled and said, ‘April Birch is a friend, and I thought the responsibility of matron, even of such a small hospital, would be good experience.’
‘I think you’ll find it quiet after the city,’ Netty said.
Charlie smiled. ‘I don’t mind quiet.’
Netty pushed back her chair and stood up. ‘Any more tea?’
Three
Wednesday 13 July
Charlie slept badly in the unfamiliar bed, the ceaseless beat of the stamper batteries driving her to distraction as her mind and stomach churned in anticipation of her first meeting at the hospital the following morning. When she eventually drifted off, it was to nightmare images from her childhood. She woke heavy-eyed and feeling far from her professional best for the interview that morning with the hospital committee.
After washing away the dregs of her troubled sleep, she did up her hair in the severe style expected of those in the nursing profession and dressed in the formal navy blue walking-out uniform of the Women’s Hospital. To complete the ensemble, she fastened on the dark blue cape and matching hat with its long trailing veil. The uniform served two purposes; it gave her power and anonymity. No one saw the woman beneath the hideous hat, just the authority of the sister’s uniform.
Netty stared at her. ‘Don’t you look the part,’ she said.
‘That is my intention,’ Charlie said.
She turned down Netty’s offer of breakfast and stepped out onto the busy main street of Maiden’s Creek. A few passers-by cast her curious glances, but she tightened her grip on her leather handbag, which contained her references and professional qualifications, and set out with purposeful stride for Church Street, the winding lane that led up past St Thomas on the Hill to the new hospital.
