Undercurrents Read online

  Undercurrents

  Tamara McKinley

  New York • London

  © 2004 by Tamara McKinley

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  e-ISBN 978-1-62365-562-4

  Distributed in the United States and Canada by

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  www.quercus.com

  Tamara McKinley is the author of more than eleven novels. She was born in Tasmania, but now lives in Sussex and Cornwall and writes full time. Her novels are both contemporary and historical, following the lives of Australian pioneers and those who came after them.

  Also by Tamara McKinley

  Jacaranda Vines

  Matilda’s Last Waltz

  Summer Lightning

  Windflowers

  Dreamscapes

  Ocean Child

  Author’s Note

  There is a small seaside town in the far north of Queensland called Trinity Beach. The residents may not recognise it as it is presented in Undercurrents for I have taken certain liberties with its geography and character and for that I apologise. The Trinity of Undercurrents is an amalgam of Bluff Beach in Devonport, Tasmania, Palm Cove and Trinity in Queensland – my idea of heaven on earth – for each represent a special time in my life.

  Tamara McKinley

  The cruellest lies are often told in silence.

  Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850–1894

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  Also Available

  PROLOGUE

  The SS Arcadia had left Liverpool six weeks earlier. Now it was the tenth of March in the year 1894, and the storm came off the western shores of Australia with little warning.

  The Captain fought to keep his ship bow on to the hurricane winds and titanic seas, but he was beginning to suspect it was a losing battle. He’d already watched, helplessly, as three of his crew were washed overboard as they attempted to repair a hatch cover, and now two of the three masts had been snapped off like matchsticks. The decks were leaking, the cargo scattered to kingdom come, but the funnels had held and the mighty engine still throbbed in the engine room. He knew his ship had seen other storms and survived them, just as he had done, and he refused to give in. There were 1,500 passengers in his care as well as his crew. It was his duty to bring them safely to land.

  He peered through the rain–lashed window into the black night. This storm could have tossed them miles off course, and with no moon, no stars, it was impossible to fix their position. Riding the shifting, rolling deck beneath his feet, he took a firmer grip on the great wheel and began to pray. This coastline was littered with submerged islands of coral and pinnacles of rock. Even Arcadia’s steel hull couldn’t survive being battered against them.

  In the first–class stateroom on the upper deck, Eva Hamilton clung to Frederick. It was dark. So black she couldn’t see his face or the gleam of her new wedding ring. Yet her fear was laced with excitement, a dreadful thrill that they were at the height of a great adventure. Nothing could have prepared her for this.

  The great ship plunged with stomach–churning ferocity, lifted her bow and tossed them both from the bed to the floor. ‘This can’t go on,’ shouted Frederick above the banshee wail of the wind and the thunder of the ocean. ‘Three days we’ve been riding this storm. The hull won’t take it.’

  ‘She’s lasted this long,’ Eva yelled back as they again found one another in the darkness. ‘We have to keep faith in the Captain.’

  He didn’t reply, merely tightened his grip around her waist.

  Eva sat on the floor, her face pressed to his chest, her back hard against the oak panelling. The storm had begun as a darkening of the skies to the east. The Captain had assured the passengers all would be well, and that this was merely a routine hazard off these western shores. Yet, as the wind picked up and began to howl and the waves towered so high they blotted out the horizon, the passengers had sought refuge in their cabins – no longer exhilarated but terrified.

  Her own fear was beginning to surface and she hastily turned her thoughts to more pleasant things as she attempted to remain rooted in one position. They were on their way to a new life in a new country. Frederick would take up his role as Her Majesty’s Land Surveyor and she would settle down to manage his home and take part in whatever society Melbourne had to offer.

  Their first home would be gracious once the furniture was unpacked from the hold, and she’d daydreamed all through the long engagement of the time when she could hold soirees and tea parties with the ladies of that region. Her trousseau was carefully packed away in trunks, the dresses and tea gowns folded in linen to protect them from the sea air. What a swathe she and her handsome husband would cut amongst the colonials, for no doubt they were hopelessly out of touch with London fashion.

  Her pleasant thoughts were interrupted by a fierce crash that seemed to shudder right through the ship. The Arcadia plunged, then lifted her bow, rising higher and higher until it seemed as if they were suspended from the sky itself.

  Eva screamed as they were sent slithering up the wall and thudded against what she guessed was the ceiling. Crockery smashed all around them in the darkness. Furniture crashed and splintered and the chandelier shattered in a million pieces as it hit something hard. All excitement for the adventure was swept away in a moment of pure terror.

  ‘Freddy,’ she screamed as she clutched his lapels. ‘We’re going to sink!’

  ‘Hold on to me!’ he yelled in her ear. ‘Whatever happens, don’t let go.’

  Eva didn’t need telling twice. Frederick was warm and solid and the only anchor she had. She wasn’t about to lose her hold on him.

  The bow crashed back into the heaving sea and came to a shuddering standstill. A thousand–ton wave towered over the Arcadia, now helplessly caught in the jaws of the reef.

  The captain looked up at it, knowing this was the end. His last thoughts were for the
poor souls in steerage and the men in the engine room as the wave released its full force and fell with a giant hammer blow on the helpless ship and broke its back.

  Eva screamed. Water was pouring in. The storm plucked at her with icy fingers, trying to rip her away from Frederick into the howling blackness beyond the cabin.

  ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’ Frederick yanked her to her feet. ‘We must stay together,’ he shouted above the wind. ‘Hold on tight and don’t let go.’

  Eva grasped his hand. She was soaked through and chilled to the very bone for she was still in her dinner gown. She couldn’t see, and didn’t know which way they were going. She had to have faith in Frederick’s sense of direction.

  The ship lurched and writhed, grinding ever further into the reef as they stumbled knee deep in water into the passageway. The wild night was full of terror. Passengers fought, clawing and trampling each other in the darkness to reach the boats. The screams mingled with those of the wind giving them a vision of hell.

  Eva grabbed Frederick’s belt and hung on as he pushed and shoved and fought his way through the chaotic stampede. Her long skirts were hampering her, but to survive was all. The instinctive urge to reach those boats, to get out before the sea claimed the ship and took her down made Eva strong.

  She heard children screaming for their mothers. Felt the fanatical clawing of another passenger as he was dashed from the deck by a monstrous wave. She clung on to Frederick, blind with panic, no longer caring who or what she was trampling.

  They reached the lifeboat station and Frederick managed to grab Eva and pin her against an iron stanchion just as another wave hit the deck. Eva gasped as the force of it took her breath. It had struck hard. Washing the length of the ship in a fury of spume, it had taken everyone who had reached here before them.

  ‘Come on. Make a run for it.’ Frederick tried to wrest her from her hold on the stanchion.

  All was blackness, all confusion. Eva had been numbed by the cold, the howling of the wind and the crash of the sea. Blinded by the sting of salt, she was frozen, incapable of moving. She knew only that she was clinging to something solid – something that had saved her from that terrible wave and the blackness that was all consuming.

  Frederick pressed his body over hers as another wave battered the dying ship. It tore over them, wresting fingers from their hold, snatching their breath and any courage she might still have had.

  ‘Now, Eva,’ he yelled. ‘Come on.’ He tore her fingers from the stanchion and swept her up into his arms just as another wave poured over the bows and smashed in a hatch. Water tumbled into the forward holds. Acting as ballast, the bow momentarily righted itself.

  Eva heard the faint sound of a creaking pulley as Frederick stumbled along the deck past the shattered remains of the funnel. A boat was being swung over the side. ‘They’re going without us,’ she yelled. ‘Stop them.’

  The davits swung. The boat inched away from the tilting deck. If they didn’t do something before the next wave hit then they would be lost.

  Frederick lunged as the Arcadia gave a vast, dying shudder and the lifeboat began to swing outwards – away from the ship.

  Eva found herself flung from his arms and flying into the maelstrom. She opened her mouth to scream, but her breath was viciously knocked from her as she landed with a thud in the bottom of the lifeboat. Hands reached for her, helping her up, jamming her between the others who’d made it in time.

  She looked up. They were dangling clear of the Arcadia. Frederick was still on deck. She could see the outline of him as he leaned against the railings. ‘Freddy,’ she screamed. ‘Jump, jump.’

  He couldn’t hear her. The words had been ripped away by the wind. Drowned in the angry sea.

  She fought off the restraining hands and grabbed the nearest sailor. ‘You’ve got to go back,’ she screamed. ‘My husband’s up there.’

  He shook her off as the little boat rocked dangerously on the davits. ‘If I don’t get this rope unjammed we’ll all die,’ he shouted into her face. ‘Sit down.’

  She had no time to berate him for she was sent crashing once more to the bottom of the little boat as it collided against the side of the ship. Hands no longer reached for her. The other survivors were too intent upon clinging to the sides of the boat. In despair she looked back at the Arcadia. She was breaking up fast, the rocks and coral ripping great gouges below the water–line as the sea lashed over her tilting decks.

  ‘Freddy,’ she moaned. ‘Oh my God, Freddy.’ Tears mingled with the rain and the sobs were dredged from deep within her as she watched a wall of water race from stem to stern. It swept the remaining passengers away into the night, their screams lost in the wind.

  The lifeboat was also in trouble. With ever–increasing force it was being rammed against the side of the Arcadia. Soon the bow would be smashed to pieces. It was imperative the umbilical cord was cut from the mother ship.

  While the seamen struggled to clear the wreckage that had become entangled in the davits, Eva strained to pierce the darkness for sight of Frederick. She could hear the screams of those in the churning water below, and feel the sickening lurch as once again the lifeboat crashed against the Arcadia.

  But it was too dark. She could see nothing.

  With no warning, the stern of the lifeboat plunged several feet towards the water. Eva’s screams mingled with the others, but they were cut short when the bow did the same. Like the other survivors, she clung to the side, eyes tightly shut, breath shallow as they swung level.

  The boat hovered there for an instant, then plunged with breathtaking suddenness towards the maelstrom below. They landed with a bone–jarring crash and were immediately flung away from the dying ship by a gigantic wave. But the seams of that little boat held and the surviving men pulled hard on the oars to get as much space as possible between them and the stricken Arcadia.

  Eva moaned in fear and grief. Out there, in the blackest of nights and in the vast, angry seas of this foreign ocean a ship had died, and along with it had gone her husband and every dream they had shared.

  1

  Australia 1947

  Home. It was an emotive word, conjuring up warmth and love and security. Yet, here she was, at thirty-two, back in a place that had remained only a provocative memory. A memory of eternal sunshine, of childish pleasures – a memory of something dark behind the brightness of the sun – something that only now, after twenty-two years, she was beginning to understand.

  Olivia shivered, touched by something far colder than the light breeze coming off the sea. Those long-lost days of childhood had returned full force now she was here, and as she watched the children playing on the beach, she was drawn to one in particular.

  The little girl was absorbed in making sandcastles, her fair curls glinting in the sun, her mouth pursed in concentration. It was as if time had stood still in the intervening years and she’d been granted a glimpse of how she had once been. As if she was the child, innocent, unaware of the tangle of secrets and lies that bound her to the people she trusted. And yet Olivia knew that innocence was priceless, for the truth, when it was finally revealed, could shatter everything she had believed in.

  What kind of future did that little girl have, she wondered, as the child emptied the small metal pail and resumed digging. What secrets will overshadow her life? She hoped there were none. Hoped she was loved.

  Olivia blinked away the tears that threatened and made a concerted effort to remain calm. The years of war had taught her it was pointless to feel sorry for herself. A waste of energy to let the rage surface and take over. She had learned there was little profit in letting the fear of the unknown waver her resolve. Better to use these still moments to garner strength and courage for what lay ahead. For the truth was here in Trinity, and she was determined to find it.

  She tucked the handkerchief into her belt and brushed sand from the
narrow shantung suit that had been considered the height of fashion in post-war London, but made her feel overdressed amongst the cotton frocks and swimwear of the others on the beach. Her white gloves, handbag and peep-toed high heels were all wrong too, and her smile was wry as she continued to watch the child at play. She hadn’t waited to book into the hotel. Had been too impatient to change first before coming here. For this beach, this tiny corner of northern Queensland encompassed all the memories.

  Despite the bewildering and painful reason behind this trip, she had gleaned some fun from choosing a new wardrobe. It had almost been a relief to hang up her uniform for a while, to forget the horrors of what she’d seen and all the other responsibilities she’d shouldered as a nursing sister and become a woman again. Even though it meant using all the clothing coupons she’d saved.

  With a deep sigh she leaned back on the wooden bench and took in her surroundings. She’d forgotten how much space there was. Forgotten how extraordinary the light after the darkness and chaos of London in the Blitz. Time, for once, seemed to have no meaning, each day following another at a leisurely pace, without the hustle and bustle she’d become so used to in England. It was as if the years of war had never been. As if this corner of the world had merely woken from a long sleep, the nightmares forgotten in the healing warmth of the sunlight the Australians almost took for granted.

  As she looked around her, she saw that warmth reflected in the easy way of the people and in their cheerful attitude to life and welcoming smiles. She closed her eyes for a moment and breathed in the scent of pine and eucalyptus that was tinged with sea spray. The magic of this special place had begun to work on her. How quickly she’d forgotten its force.

  Olivia’s gaze swept over the familiar scenery. It was familiar because her dreams were of this place. Familiar because the memory of it had lived with her, deep in the yearning part of her being ever since she’d had to leave. Now the wonder of this homecoming filled her with such deep emotion she could barely catch her breath. Nothing had changed, she realised. It was as if this special corner of the world had been waiting for just this moment – like a precious gift, it seemed freshly unwrapped and sparkling - and she drank in the sights and sounds and scents she had once thought were forever lost to her.