Read Online Flight of the Eagle by Peter Watt - Free Book Online

sleep for as long as the tree existed in life.
    ‘I'll dig the hole and you can make the coffin,’ Ben added gruffly. ‘We've got some timber in the shed that will do.’
    He was having trouble keeping his grief in check but knew he had responsibilities. Jenny would not have wanted him to allow his feelings to cause him to neglect their family.
    ‘Now?’ Willie asked softly. He was reluctant to commit the body of his mother to the ground where he knew she would be permanently taken from his sight.
    ‘Now!’ Ben snapped. He was in no mood to be questioned. ‘Sorry, Willie,’ he checked gently, placing his hand on the young man's shoulder. ‘I …’ He faltered. With Jenny gone he had no words to fill the emptiness that existed between them. ‘We'd better get going before it gets too hot,’ he concluded gruffly.
    Before die sun rose high above the flat scrub Jenny was laid gently in her grave. Rebecca knelt and placed a posy of dry wildflowers on the fresh earth mound and then stood back to shelter in her father's shadow.
    Jonathan and Saul also stood beside their father while Willie stood alone a short distance away, staring at the dark red earth.
    No words were said over the grave, just silence for the memory of a living, laughing, crying, scolding, loving woman who had been mother and wife to her family. No tears, just dry red eyes exhausted of salty moisture. No feeling, except numbed shock and inconsolable grief. No sound but the lazy buzz of flies and the distant lonely cawing of a crow.
    Stones would be placed on the earth to provide a shield against the dingos but that was a task to be done when the sun lost its bite in the late afternoon.
    Jennifer Rosenblum, aged thirty, mother of four and wife of Ben Rosenblum for ten years, would forever sleep in the shade of the pepper tree she had nurtured against the perils of frontier life. In time the tree would grow, and its roots fold loving fingers around the remains of the woman whose body now provided its nurture.
    That night Ben sat by the grave of his wife and spoke to her. He idled through the night in a conversation that was conducted as if she were sitting at the table in their hut darning a sock or sewing a new dress for Becky. He talked of inconsequential things that were the grist of love between a man and a woman.
    And there were silences in his monologue as he paused to listen to the familiar sweetness of her voice that existed only in his mind. He remembered her desire to see her children get an education, something she had never had herself. She especially wanted Becky to find a life away from the loneliness of the frontier.
    Ben talked on softly and the tears rolled down his whiskered cheeks to soak his thick, bushy beard until he finally fell into a deep sleep of exhaustion.

SIX
    T he dinner served at George Fitzgerald's table was a sumptuous affair. But Patrick had lost his taste for roast venison. Nor was he attentive to Professor Ernest Clark's colourful and rather risqué anecdotes on the savage Celtic practices of old Ireland. He was also reluctant to allow himself to be drawn by Sir Alfred Garnett into an account of his experiences at Tel-el-Kibir and he only exchanged a few words of polite conversation with the magistrate James Balmer, who sat on his left, and with the Norrises, who sat opposite him.
    Captain Patrick Duffy was preoccupied with brooding thoughts and his retreat into self-imposed silence could almost be described as churlish. From what he could glean from the conversation that flowed with the wine, Henry Norris had considerable holdings in Welsh coal, English railways and Birmingham steel. Although it was obvious Norris was a man of great wealth he did not have the acquired manners of old wealth. His roots in the back streets of Newcastle still appeared in his mannerisms and speech.
    Further down the table Sir Alfred Garnett and his wife Lady Jane tended to dominate the conversation. At least Sir Alfred did with his talk of