One of Us Buried by Johanna Craven (year 2 reading books TXT) 📕

As the sun slipped away, the fire drew everyone towards it, making cheeks sweat and hair curl. It was no weather for a fire, of course, but this was all we knew. Fire was the centre of the Christmas celebration, no matter if snow was falling or the land was cracked and dry.

I thought of childhood Christmases spent behind ice-speckled windows, candles lighting our dinner table. Father and I working our way through roast meat and pudding, or gingerbread by the fire. For a moment, I missed him deeply.

I looked out towards the water. Patrick Owen had an arm slung around Lottie’s shoulder, as they sat close together on the ground beside the river. I watched her laugh at something I was sure wasn’t funny. I tried to catch her eye across the flames. I hated seeing them together. Lottie turned her back, avoiding my eyes.

I slipped away from the gathering. Stumbled down the road towards Blackwell’s hut. The shrieking cicadas began to take over, pushing the raucous sounds of the party to the background.

I peeked through the gap in the door. I could see the lieutenant at the table, a quill in hand.

Writing to his wife, perhaps? Good wishes for Christmas, dear Sophia, that she would receive some time next September. There was something about him sitting there alone on Christmas night, hunched over his ink pot while the rest of us drank and danced. Something that made my chest ache.

I pushed open the door, making it squeal noisily against the floor. He looked up from his letter in surprise.

I sidled up to the table with what, in my drunken state, I assumed was an alluring strut. I peered down at the letter, not even pretending to be discreet.

‘Dear Father,’ it read.

“What are you doing?” I asked stupidly.

“Writing to my father.” His sleeves were rolled up against the heat, his shirt open at the neck. I could see the sparse curls of hair at the top of his chest.

I leant over his shoulder to look at the letter.

‘Governor Bligh has earned himself no favour with his order to destroy the liquor stills. The colony is still so short of currency – can he truly be against trading liquor for a sack of grain? It galls me that a naval officer might stride into this place and interfere with military order.’

I said, “There’s a party going on.”

“Yes,” said Blackwell, his quill hovering above the page, “I can smell it on you.” Ink dripped from the edge of the nib and splattered onto his letter. Insects flickered around the lamp.

“You ought to come,” I told him. “It ain’t right to be alone at Christmas.” Sometimes the drink made me enunciate like a queen. Other times, I spoke as though I’d been hauled out of Whitechapel with a bottle of gin in my hand. “The other soldiers are there,” I said. “Ensign Cooper and that one with the nose hair.”

A smile played on the edge of Blackwell’s lips. He tilted his head, considering me. He leant back in his chair, his arm brushing against my hip. “Go back to the party, Eleanor,” he said after a moment. He dipped his quill back in the ink and continued writing, without looking at me again.

Dejectedly, I strode back towards the river.

“Where d’you go?” Lottie drawled when I returned. I was glad she had dislodged herself from Owen’s claws.

“Just a walk is all.” I slid my hand around her arm. “Let’s have another drink.”

“Fine idea,” she said, looking around for someone with a bottle for us to steal.

I needed it. Needed to forget my childhood Christmases and the sight of Owen with his arm around Lottie. Needed to drown the emptiness that had come when Blackwell had sent me away.

Dan Brady was strumming a fiddle like a lute. He spoke to Lottie in Irish, though his eyes were fixed on me. Lottie looped her arm through mine. “You leave her alone now, Dan,” she said in overenunciated English. “She’s all right. Aren’t you, Nell?”

Brady’s eyes cut into me.

“Watch yourself, Johnny,” Hannah hollered to some farmhand who was wading shirtless into the river. “Them eels will get you and pull you all the way to China.”

I looked past her at the towering figure of Blackwell striding towards the river. I felt a smile on my lips. He went to the cluster of soldiers on one side of the fire. If he was going to stay with his own kind all night, so be it. I was just glad he was out of the hut. Glad he’d finished that dizzyingly dull letter.

Lottie followed my gaze. She looked back at me with fire in her eyes. I ignored her. What place did she have being angry at my seeking out Blackwell when she was swanning around the place on Patrick Owen’s arm?

I sauntered over to the soldiers with a bottle in my hand. I recognised one of the men who had sent Owen on his way the day he had attacked Blackwell. Even out of their uniforms, the Rum Corps exuded authority. One of the officers, an older man with a thick grey moustache, looked me up and down. Disapproval on his face, but something else beneath. I had already watched several of the enlisted men disappear into the bushes with factory lags attached to them.

Blackwell was on his feet before the man with the moustache could get his pipe out of his mouth.

“I learned the Fairy Reel,” I announced. “I’m going to teach you.”

A faint smile passed over his face. “No you’re not.”

I held out the rum bottle. “This will change your mind.”

Blackwell laughed. His face lightened, giving him a sudden and unexpected beauty. If he was irritated at my storming his side of the party he didn’t show it.