Free The Denniston Rose by Jenny Pattrick Page B

goodbye to your father,’ says her mother. ‘We will go home and cook something nice for his tea.’ Rose climbs the rock that her father is leaning on and shouts to show how tall she is, then jumps off onto the rug.
    ‘Will I have a birthday cake for my tea, like Michael?’ she asks.
    ‘For pity’s sake, isn’t pikelets enough?’ But her mother is smiling. ‘We’ll see what those hens have been up to.’
    ‘See you later, girlie,’ says Jimmy. ‘Have you got that treasure safe now?’
    He stays to smoke a pipe in the sun before going down to the mine and they walk away. When Rose looks back he is still there with a thin white line of smoke above his head and when she looks back again she can’t see him.
    ‘That gold is worth something,’ says her mother, after they have been walking some time. ‘Give it to me and I’ll keep it safe.’
    But Rose shows her mother how the string is around her wrist and the bag snug in her hand.
    ‘Well, don’t let your father see where you keep it,’ says her mother, and Rose says she won’t.
    They walk along over the flat bony land, past bare rock and low bushes lying flat so the wind won’t blow them out of the thin soil, and all the time the rope-road is rumbling just below them with the wagons, empty or full, going back and forth, a little faster than they are walking but not much.
    Then the rope-road stops. Rose knows it only stops when terrible things happen in the mine. She tells her mother some of the terrible things.
    ‘What a chatter!’ says her mother. ‘Wherever do you hear these things?’
    Rose laughs and tells her mother about all the houses in Denniston and who lives where and other things and her mother, who is walking slowly now and limping a little, says nothing. Rose puts the hand that is not holding the gold into her mother’s rough, dry hand.
    ‘This is my best birthday so far,’ she says.
    Her mother lets Rose’s hand rest where it is. Her snort is half laugh, half cry. ‘The choice is not overwhelming,’ she says.
    Rose’s best day so far. Jimmy Cork’s worst. Evangeline Strauss, alias Eva Storm, alias Angel, considers all days to have rich potential, which is perhaps just as well.

Con the Brake Tells Rose a Story
    ‘LISTEN, THEN,’ SAYS Con the Brake. ‘What happened with Jimmy from County Cork was this.
    ‘He was there almost from the start. Just turned up one day when we were cutting scrub for the Incline. I myself had arrived only a week. There was quite a gang of us, mostly Maoris from the pa, you know? Big fellas who could swing an axe almost as good as me. You’d think they’d make good miners, eh? But no, underground on a cold plateau is not their idea of a sensible life.’
    ‘You are telling Rose about her father,’ says Bella, ‘not the entire history of the Incline.’
    ‘I’m giving the flavour, woman. Every good story must have the taste in the mouth, you know? Well, here we are swinging our axes in the sun when this scarecrow walks down-river out of the bush. God knows how long he been up there, you know? Prospecting, ofcourse, like most of us. Out of luck and hungry, nothing in his swag but a blanket and a billy. Shouts to the Maoris in their own tongue, rolling it out, and they answering and laughing and slapping young Jimmy on the shoulder like they was best mates. That was your daddy, Rose, in those days. A true adventurer.
    ‘Well, he sits with us at smoko. Draws on a pipe as if it were a drowning man’s first breath of air. Says he ran out of everything a week ago. Been living on black tea with no sugar. But there he was, lively as a flea on a sunny morning. Whistles some cheerful ditty that has us all grinning. Who knows where he really come from — he’s no more Irish than me by his voice, but he says County Cork and God help the man asks questions up here.
    ‘So the boss give him a job and he sets to, ready enough when there is food in his belly, you know? And cheerful. Had a girl further south,