Read Online Golden Hope by Johanna Nicholls - Free Book Online Page A

Rom Delaney, that handsome lad with the silver tongue? Don’t ask me how but he managed to convince Wildebrand Circus to change their route and perform here in Hoffnung.’
    â€˜A real live circus?’
    â€˜What’s more, the manager gave me two free passes for tonight’s performance. I have a patient to visit. My sister may well attend in my place. That leaves one ticket going begging. Pity to waste it. Could you use it, Sam?’
    He held out the ticket in the palm of his hand. Sam looked stunned.
    Doc pressed on. ‘Chinese acrobats are the cleverest in the world, I’m told. I don’t know how good this circus is, but we’re never likely to have another one visit Hoffnung, are we?’
    Long Sam accepted the ticket with a trembling hand. ‘Thank you, Doctor, I can’t believe my change in fortune. This morning while I was drawing water from the creek two schoolboys broke into my house. They stole a box of precious things. Now the day has ended with these gifts.’
    Sam held the glasses and the circus pass as if he had discovered two golden nuggets. He bowed low. ‘Thanks to you, Doctor.’
    â€˜My pleasure, Sam. Thanks for the tea. I must be off home now – it’s been a long day.’
    Long Sam was still waving as Doc steered the cart around the corner, cutting him off from sight.
    Doc’s thoughts returned to the problem of his difficult sister. He had not allowed Adelaide to appear in public since she collected her last remittance cheque from the Post Office, sent by registered mail from England to prevent anyone steaming the envelope open.
    He remembered the times as children when Father took them both to the circus.
    Me in my sailor suit. Adelaide in her long dress, her wild red hair streaming down her back . . . how delighted we were when Father explained that in circus life all are of value – stars, clowns, dwarves, bearded ladies. There are no outcasts in a circus.
    At the thought of the orthopaedic boot that had isolated Adelaide as a child, the target of the cruel taunts of village children, Doc patted the ticket in his vest pocket and encouraged the horse to increase its speed.
    Adelaide will need time to ready herself for a rare public appearance.

Chapter 8
    Rom Delaney prided himself he was never one to turn down a windfall. Despite his triumph earlier in the day, and the heady promise of an account for twenty guineas at Tribe’s Mortgage Bank, he was pleased by the note delivered by Pius James’s messenger boy, offering him a few hours’ work shovelling coal that afternoon.
    What’s his hurry? Mine not to reason why – it’s cash in hand.
    Rom was confident he could finish in time to attend the circus.
    Humming a racy music hall song under his breath he worked to its rhythm, shovelling the final stage of the pyramid of coal into the cellar at the rear of Pius’s Farm Produce Store and the Blacksmith’s Forge. Pausing to free the tail of his damp shirt from his trousers, he mopped the sweat running down his face.
    Never having possessed a timepiece, Rom had learned to record time in his head. Anxious not to miss the opening act of the circus in case it involved Little Clytie, he kept an ear out for the whistle blast from the mine head that signalled the end of the miners’ day shift. Boss Jantzen had closed the mine for the next day to enable the miners to attend the circus with their families – and save him paying their wages.
    He wasn’t the only tightwad in town. Pius James was said to have grown a beard to save the wear and tear on a cut-throat razor. A pillar of his church, he never put a foot wrong in terms of the law.
    But I’ll bet there’s a bunch of convicts in his family tree . It takes one to know one.
    Rom enjoyed the ironic memory of his father’s claim that he had been a rebel at the Eureka Stockade, knowing that Paddy Delaney had been an escaped Vandemonian