The Night They Stormed Eureka Read online

  the night they stormed

  eureka

  Jackie French

  Dedication

  To Noël and Geoff, who embody

  all the good things in this story

  and to Lisa, Kate and Liz,

  who refused to let this book be less than

  it could be

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Author’s Note

  The Eureka Recipe Book and Instructory Almanac or Mrs Puddleham’s Compendium of Useful Recipes and Information for Young People

  Some of Jackie’s Awards

  About the Author

  Other titles by Jackie French

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  The waitress edged her way between the tables on the footpath and set down the plate in front of her customer. Sam stared. The scrambled eggs were sprinkled with parsley on a thick piece of toast. There was bacon too, all crisp, and a big glass of orange juice. Roast tomato, mushrooms …

  Sam swallowed too as the man took a bite of the eggs. She was hungry. Not just a ‘not had breakfast’ hunger, but an ache, as though her body knew it had been through too much, and needed food to keep on going.

  The man glanced up, his fork loaded with eggs and toast, as though he sensed Sam gazing at him. Sam forced herself to keep walking past the café with its smells of coffee and buttered raisin toast.

  Don’t get noticed. That was the important thing. Would the police be looking for her?

  No, Mum wouldn’t call the police. Not yet. Mum would be trying to pretend it all had never happened. Gavin might. How badly had Sam hurt him? She touched the bruise on her cheek. How swollen was it this morning?

  She couldn’t go to school with her cheek like this, anyway. People would ask questions. Liz and Nick knew that things were bad at home. But Sam had been careful not to let them know too much. If you kept pretending things were okay you could keep going.

  Sam had gone on a camping trip with Liz and Nick’s family once. Three days of no one yelling or getting drunk. Three days without being scared. How could she ever tell them how weird and wonderful that had been?

  Liz would notice the bruise. Mrs Quant might, too. She had started to ask questions. ‘I don’t want to pry, Sam,’ she’d said last week. ‘But is everything all right at home?’ She hesitated, her nice wrinkled face concerned. ‘There are people who can help, you know.’

  And Sam shook her head, and tried to smile. ‘No, everything is fine.’

  Mrs Quant had made her captain of the debating team. She’d paid for Sam on the excursion to the play, when Mum hadn’t sent the money. Mrs Quant lent her history books and novels. Sam had to hide them, in case Gavin sold them. She slid them out from under her mattress when he and Mum weren’t home. She read each word over and over, not just because she enjoyed the books but because someone had cared enough to lend them to her.

  School was an escape. But Sam couldn’t risk school today. Not with the bruise, in yesterday’s clothes, with no school bag and no money. Not if the police might find her there.

  The world spun for a moment, as though the footpath had shuddered beneath her feet. She needed rest. If shecould just sleep a while she might be able to work out what to do next. If she could just wipe the world away, just for a little time …

  Where then? And suddenly she knew.

  The graveyard was empty, filled with leaf dapples from the ancient trees.

  Sam had hidden there before. No one noticed a girl crying in a graveyard. It was a place that everyone could see, but no one really looked at. No one had been buried here for a hundred years.

  There was a big gravestone, down towards the back. She’d be out of sight behind it. Sam lowered herself onto the ground. The stone was warm against her cheek.

  She was safe here. No one to ask questions. No need to pretend. She could close her eyes here. She could sleep …

  ‘Lucy …’

  The name floated through the graveyard, the voice soft with yearning. Sam pushed herself upright.

  Who’d spoken? No one else came here. She stared around.

  ‘Lucy …’ It was a breath, not a cry.

  Sam stumbled to her feet. The nearest people were over at the shopping centre across the road. Why did shoppingcentres look like they’d been built to defend their occupants against invaders, with those tall eyeless walls? Maybe the shopping centre builders knew what most people didn’t; that danger could lie on suburban streets too.

  Sam shivered. It was a warm spring morning, yet suddenly there was a wind blowing … but nothing was moving in its wake.

  Sam sat down against the gravestone again. At least it was quiet here. Quieter than the bus station had been last night. It had been the only place open, with lights on so she didn’t have to worry about the men with sunken cheeks and sleeping bags, or the druggies who hung around the park. People with nowhere else to go.

  People like me, she thought.

  For a second the emptiness overcame her. She wanted to kick the gravestone, to hurt the world that had hurt her. But she’d seen what happened when you hit back. The memory of Gavin’s face rose before her, his nose all bloody where she’d bashed it with her mobile phone, and Mum screaming, ‘Get out! You’re trying to ruin what little happiness I have.’

  Don’t think about it! she told herself. Pretend it never happened. Think about the peace here, just for a little while, and the morning shadows. How long had the gravestone sat here, quietly weathering? Its words were almost hidden under lichen. She pulled out a tissue from the pocket of her jeans — a sodden lump now — and rubbed at it.

  Sacred to the memory of Percival Puddleham (1801–1884) and his dear wife Elsie (1814–1854) and to their most beloved children …

  The tissue came apart in her hand before she could clear away more.

  Elsie and Percival Puddleham and their children. Such lovely, silly names. They must have been rich to have a gravestone like this. They’d have lived in a big house with a verandah, with a cook in a white apron making apple pies and toast. Mrs Quant had told the class that oldendays people made toast by holding it on a fork by the fire. Crisp toast, with butter and honey …

  Her tummy rumbled. She fought down the dream of food. There’d be velvet chairs in the living room, and a fireplace and a shaggy dog, like Liz’s Bitsa …

  If only you could scrub away at time, too. Rub it till the barrier grew thin, rub so hard she could run back there, to that safe, happy family. Somewhere where nothing that had happened mattered, where she could start her life again.

  The wind stroked her cheek with chilly fingers. The world rippled.

  Tired. Not just from last night without much sleep. Tired of months of pretending. Even sleep was frightening when you couldn’t control you
r dreams.

  The past was safe. A place where children were ‘beloved'. A mother called Mrs Puddleham …

  The world shivered again, long slow quivering. Like falling into a mirror, she thought, and swimming to the other side. ‘Lucy …’

  Chapter 2

  ‘Lucy?’

  Sam opened her eyes.

  A couple stared down at her. A woman, fat as a barrel, with three chins and apple cheeks, wore a long skirt with a short jacket that strained over her melon-sized bosom, and a hat so tall it looked like you could keep pineapples in it. The man was older, and almost sparrow-like, with funny grey whiskers. He stood as straight as his top hat.

  Beyond them were trees. Not churchyard oaks but gum trees, the bark peeling like sunburned skin. Trees as far as she could see into the gently coloured world. Blue sky, the hush of the bush.

  ‘This can’t be Lucy, Mrs Puddleham.’ The man’s voice was dignified and sort of clipped, like an actor in an English TV show. It was patient-sounding too, as though he’d had to say these words before.

  ‘I knows that, Mr Puddleham.’ There was wistfulness in the red face peering down at Sam. ‘Just that hair, the same colour. An’ the eyes … Pay no notice, deary,’ she added to

  Sam. ‘Just an old woman being silly. Your name ain’t Lucy, is it?’

  ‘N—no.’ Sam sat up shakily. The sunbeams wavered as branches shifted in the breeze. The light was too bright and hurt her eyes, but the world no longer rippled.

  ‘You hungry, lovey?’ The fat woman’s accent was hard to make out.

  What had happened? She was good at pretending. But not like this.

  This was real.

  ‘Now, Mrs Puddleham,’ the sparrow man looked nervous. ‘We don’t know who this young person is. This could be a Demon for all we know —’

  ‘I’m not a demon!’ Sam struggled to her feet, and gazed around. Some of the tree-trunks were as wide as a small room. What place had trees as big as this?

  ‘No, of course you ain’t a Demon, lovey.’ The fat woman glared at her companion. ‘How can you say such a thing, Mr Puddleham?’

  Demons? Puddleham? That was the name on the gravestone. What had happened? Sam stared at the couple’s clothes. You couldn’t fall into the past, no matter how much you wanted to.

  Or could you? What if you wanted to enough? If maybe … maybe there were spots like graveyards where time had worn thin.

  This place didn’t even smell like the world she’d left. No coffee smell from the café on the corner, no traffic fumes or even a road …

  No, there was a road, a sort of track, only a few metres away, curving through the trees, with narrow wheel-ruts faintly indented in the leaves. The couple must have been walking along it, for there was a wooden wheelbarrow — even its wheel was made of wood — with a few sacks in it.

  ‘You don’t get sent to Van Diemen’s Land when yer as young as this, or if you does you ain’t as young when you get back. Now, howsabout a bit of tucker, eh?’ The woman’s voice was soothing. Sam could smell her sweat. Her breath stank too. Sam could see black gaps at the back where her teeth had been. ‘An’ no charge neither, not for a little birdy like you.’ She looked at Sam consideringly. ‘No more meat on you than Mr Puddleham, an’ I’ve been trying to fatten him up this past year. An’ you’re hungry too, I’ll be bound.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sam honestly. Here, there, wherever she was, at least that remained true. Maybe if she had something to eat her spinning head would clear. ‘I’m hungry.’

  Mrs Puddleham beamed as though Sam had given her first prize on a game show. ‘I knew it! Well then, let’s get you fed. I got some nice treacle dumplings here — you wait till you taste my dumplings. Light as the clouds and sweet as Christmas morning. Now let’s set ourselves down and —’ Mrs Puddleham stopped, as another noise echoed through the trees.

  Hoofbeats.

  Mrs Puddleham grabbed the handles of the wheelbarrow. ‘Run,’ she yelled to Sam and her husband.

  But the horse was upon them, its rider pulling at thereins so the big animal reared and stamped its hooves. It was brown with one white sock, so close Sam could smell its grassy sweat. She could smell the rider, too, as he stared down at them. He smelled of old booze, like Mum when she’d forgotten to shower for days.

  He was young, she thought, or at least his eyes looked young — blue eyes above a spotted blue-and-white handkerchief tied over his mouth just like in the cowboy movies. He wore a bright shirt and a red sash about his waist. But the pistol in his hand looked different from the ones in any film she’d seen; the barrel was longer and thinner. She had seen something like it, she thought, in one of Mrs Quant’s books.

  A history book.

  ‘Your money or your life!’

  It was such a corny line she’d have giggled, if she hadn’t felt like she’d been dragged through the spin cycle of a washing machine.

  The big horse stamped and skittered sideways. Mrs Puddleham let go of the wheelbarrow and put a hand to her heart. She seemed to shrink suddenly. ‘Oh my,’ she whispered. ‘Oh deary, deary me.’

  Sam stared at the youth and the horse. Guns and fear and smelly people. This isn’t the past I wanted to go to, she thought. This is someone else’s story, not mine. The world swam again, like she was seeing it through the water in a swimming pool. Then it cleared again, leaving her stronger, as though courage seeped up from the leaves and soil through her sneakers.

  ‘What d’ye want with a poor ole couple like us?’ whimpered Mrs Puddleham next to her, in a voice quite unlike her previous tones. ‘Oh, my heart. Me poor ole heart.’

  Sam glanced at her. Mrs Puddleham’s whimper didn’t quite ring true.

  ‘You knows what I want. Come on. I ain’t got all day.’ The rider aimed the pistol at the couple. The horse jerked restlessly, then stopped still again.

  ‘You dastard, sir.’ Mr Puddleham pulled himself up to his full height, which still left him centimetres shorter than Sam. ‘How dare you scare a lady like this!’

  ‘Please,’ Mrs Puddleham’s voice quavered. ‘Don’t hurt us. Mister. Please. We’re just a poor ole couple who …’

  The rider snickered under his handkerchief. ‘Poor old couple my ar—’

  ‘Leave them alone!’ Sam hadn’t even known she was going to yell till her mouth opened. What was she doing? She’d just shouted at a man with a gun.

  And suddenly she knew why. Because wherever she was, whenever she’d come to, she was no longer Sam-who-had-to-be-quiet, Sam-who-no-one-should-notice. Here she was … I’m whoever I want to be, she realised.

  The world cleared again, like someone had washed a window. This was her story. A new story. She could do anything in it. Anything at all.

  And someone here had to do something. Fast.

  She took a deep breath, and tried to keep her voice steady. ‘Are you a bushranger?’

  It sounded so dumb she blushed. But it was the first thing that came into her head.

  The rider’s eyes wrinkled as he grinned under his mask. ‘Bushranger? You win the apple, you do!’ He waved the hand that didn’t hold the pistol. ‘This here’s the bush, ain’t it? An’ here’s me horse. What do you think I am? Flaming Lord Mayor o’ Melbourne?’

  Fear made a lump in her throat. But I can’t let it show, she thought. He likes me because I don’t seem scared.

  The bushranger turned back to the Puddlehams. ‘An’ if you two don’t hand over yer gold I’ll splatter yer insides from here to Melbourne.’

  ‘Gold? We ain’t got gold …’ stammered Mrs Puddleham, wringing her hands. They were large and red, with short cracked nails.

  ‘Look at them!’ Sam gestured at the tiny man and the big, gasping woman, standing close together as though to shield each other. ‘They don’t have any gold!’

  ‘That’s what they all say.’

  ‘If they had gold, they’d be riding a horse like you. Or they’d be in a … a carriage or something. All they’ve got is a wheelbarrow. You coul
d steal their wheelbarrow,’ she added. ‘That’d be really useful on your horse.’

  She sensed rather than saw the grin widen again under the handkerchief. It gave her confidence. The horse lowered its nose and snorted at her.

  ‘Feisty brat, ain’t ye?’ The bushranger sounded a bit like Nick now he wasn’t yelling. She almost wanted to ask him if he had a twin sister called Liz. But Nick’s voice never hadthis rasp of bitterness. The bushranger jerked his pistol. ‘Strip,’ he told the couple.

  Mrs Puddleham put her hand to her bosom again. It was so big you could rest a glass of water on it, thought Sam. ‘I never could —’

  ‘There’s plenty as keeps their gold down their petticoats or in their stockings. Come on now! Off with your clothes! You too, brat,’ he added to Sam. ‘Hurry up, old lady.’ He turned back to the woman. ‘Get yer garters off. I ain’t got all day.’

  Mrs Puddleham shook her head so hard her chins wobbled, a prickly flush rising from her neck and over her already red cheeks. Mr Puddleham stepped forwards, an indignant sparrow now.

  ‘No gentleman would speak so to a lady! What would Her Majesty say if she could hear you, eh?’

  The bushranger laughed. ‘I’d give a right good one to have the queen in front of me, I would an’ all. An’ all her jewels. It’d be the making of me. Now, off with that skirt, lady. An‘ yer stockings.’ He gestured again with his pistol.

  Sam thrust herself in front of the shrinking woman. ‘If you want to shoot her then you’ll have to shoot me first.’

  A sudden memory from something Mrs Quant had said struck her. If this was the olden days and if this man was a bushranger …

  ‘You can only fire that pistol once, can’t you? So you can only shoot one of us. And if you shoot me then this man —’ she gestured to little Mr Puddleham ‘— can pullyou off your horse and call the police. And if I duck and you miss me,’ she added, ‘then we’ll all drag you off your horse and sit on you till the police come.’

  The gasp behind her made her wonder if either of the Puddlehams could help carry out her threat. She didn’t know whether she could do it either. But maybe the bluff would work.