Sara Dane

by Catherine Gaskin

Then she stepped lightly out on to the veranda. Julia followed, smiling a little as she thought of Sara’s words. Of course she hadn’t loved a woman before ‒ and she was nervous and rather reluctant to admit it. Men had been her whole world, and very skilfully she had made use of them. So mature she had appeared as she stood beside Andrew during the service, but she was still like a child in learning some things. Perhaps the last months had taught her more than she knew.

  The watching group stayed together on the veranda until the little party disappeared from sight along the Parramatta Road. As she turned to go indoors again, Julia caught the tones of a familiar voice among Andrew’s guests.

  ‘… I didn’t believe he’d have the nerve to marry her in the end. Still it’s done now. An admirable gesture, I’m sure. Let us hope the fellow won’t find time to regret it.’

  II

  When the dusk came they were still seven miles from the Hawkesbury. Andrew ordered the men to make camp beside the rough track which was their only road. He dismounted himself, and turned to lift Sara down. She fell stiffly into his arms; the long hours in the saddle, to which she was still unused, had wearied her almost beyond speech. Jeremy Hogan had spread a blanket for her on the ground; she staggered to it and sat down without a word.

  The winter’s night dropped down quickly after a short dusk. In that latitude the light never lingered in the sky. A bitter little wind blew in the tops of the trees, and touched Sara’s cheeks sharply. The first stars came out, the big, over-bright stars of the southern hemisphere. She shivered, moving closer to the fire which Jeremy was banking up. She sat still, gazing eagerly into the flames, and listening to the muted sounds of the men’s voices.

  They ate a meal of cold pork and bread by the firelight. Andrew uncorked the wine which James Ryder had given him. It was a strange wedding feast, the wine slowly warming in their hands, and the cold silence of the bush all around them. The starlight grew stronger, and the tree-barks were white and ghostly. There was a mournful, eerie feeling about the bush at night, aged and remote. By night it had no passion; it was secretive and sly.

  Soon after the meal Trigg withdrew to his roll of blankets on the other side of the fire; it was arranged that Jeremy should wake him at two o’clock to take his turn at watching. When the overseer had moved off into the shadows of the spot where he had chosen to sleep, the other three drew into a new intimacy; it was the same sort of intimacy that Andrew and Jeremy had shared by the camp-fire on the Hawkesbury’s banks.

  Sara’s fatigue had lessened. The wine and the cold wind had sharpened her senses, so that when the two men fell into talk, she watched Jeremy closely, seeking in his manner a clue to what her own relationship to him might be in the future. Her mind was already half made up about what she might expect ‒ the smooth-tongued and barely disguised insolence of a gently-born man confronted with his master’s wife, who had received her pardon only yesterday. She felt that he had done his own summing-up where she was concerned. He was no fool, and, for the present anyway, seemed prepared to serve her willingly enough. In that first hour, as she sat listening to them talk, Sara sensed that his intelligence and strength had won a kind of ascendancy over Andrew; she had a feeling of being shut out of their comradeship. She was hurt and a little piqued, yet she knew already Jeremy’s worth to Andrew. She didn’t want their intimacy broken; rather she wanted desperately to share it.

  She looked at Jeremy, deciding that he must be made to serve her for her own sake ‒ not because it was an order from Andrew.

  And then as if he guessed her thoughts, he raised his eyes and addressed her directly.

  ‘Is it decided yet what you’ll call the property, Mrs. Maclay?’ He seemed amused as he gave her the title.

  ‘My husband,’ she said, slyly emphasizing the words, ‘wants to call it “Kintyre”. It’s a Scottish name.’

  ‘Kintyre …’ He rolled the two syllables softly on his tongue. ‘Not so lovely as the name the natives give it. Still …’ He shrugged and said lightly, ‘At least it can be spelled. These picturesque native names are impossible.’

  He stared at the fire. ‘Well … you’re the first on the Hawkesbury ‒ but they’ll follow you. Within a year … a few months even, they’ll be settling on your doorstep. A man is never left alone for very long when he farms land like you’ve got. I doubt, though, if ever any of them will make up the start you’ve had.’

  Suddenly he laughed. ‘Thanks to rum you’ve got it!’

  Andrew joined him in the laughter, not in the least embarrassed. ‘Thanks to rum, as you say ‒ and the fact that his officers lead Grose round by the nose. Why shouldn’t I also have what they’re all getting? The man who doesn’t belong in that circle might as well not be alive as far as advancement in the colony is concerned. As friends their tempers aren’t always reliable ‒ but I’ve no notion to become their enemy.’

  Jeremy glanced sideways at him. ‘There speaks a canny Scot ‒ you’ll prosper in the land, my friend.’

  He held up his glass. ‘A toast!’ he announced. ‘A toast to the name of Maclay …’ Then quickly he added, as if he had just recalled Sara’s presence. ‘And to the mistress of Kintyre …’

  They drank it solemnly beneath the full, bright stars.

  Sara woke in the half-hour before dawn when the stars were fading. The tent-flap had been flung back, and she could see the sky, now more grey than black. The bush about the camp was very quiet; the wind seemed to have died. She stirred in Andrew’s arms. He felt her move, and, without opening his eyes, he turned on his side and drew her closer. They lay under rugs of wallaby skins, the warmth of their bodies and their sense of relaxation defying the cold day breaking outside.

  In the dim light she saw that his eyes had opened. His voice was drowsy.

  ‘Too early yet for you to wake.’

  She smiled at him. ‘But I wanted to wake ‒ do you understand that I just wanted to lie here, and be awake?’

  ‘Little fool!’ he murmured. ‘You’ll learn differently.’ Her head rested on his arm. He felt for her hand and drew it out from under the furs. He kissed each of her finger-tips in turn ‒ and then he began to bite gently at them.

  ‘Oh, woman …’ he said softly. ‘You’ve tormented me! You’ve driven me mad for a whole year! I don’t believe yet that I have you at last ‒ sharing my mia-mia.’

  ‘Mia-mia?’ The words belonged to the liquid native tongue. She repeated them again, half-afraid, because Andrew had spoken them with such spellbinding tenderness. ‘Mia-mia?’

  ‘It’s the name the natives have for their bark huts. They spread the earth floor of their mia-mia with kangaroo skins, and that is their marriage-bed ‒ no more or less than ours.’

  She sought his lips. ‘We have the most sumptuous marriage-bed in all the world, my love. We’ll keep it just like this.’

  They were quiet for a time, and then he said, ‘At the moment I possess all I ever dreamed of … I can see the stars dying, and I lie here on furs and listen for the wind … And in my arms I hold a woman like you ‒ not submissive, Sara, but acquiescent … sharing my love as if you had always known it would be like this.’

  ‘I have always known it, Andrew,’ she whispered, her mouth close to his. ‘Always.’

  For a moment she was silent, then, ‘I’ll be a trying wife for you. I’ll need so much of your mind and your heart.’ Her words were suddenly fierce. ‘I’ll make demands on you. You’ll have to be everything to me ‒ husband and lover, brother and father … everything!’

  He put his lips close to her ear. ‘I’ll be everything you want, Sara ‒ so long as this doesn’t alter. I want nothing more of you than to be able always to lie with you like this ‒ and hold you like this.’

  Then he kissed her, and his tones drifted towards passion. ‘Sara … Oh, Sara!’

  The camp-fire was dead, and the daylight had not properly broken when Jeremy woke. He opened his eyes and lay quietly beneath the soft warmth of his kangaroo skins. Sleep still dulled hi
s mind, and full consciousness came slowly. He remembered where he was, and the reason ‒ and remembering, he turned to gaze at the tent where Andrew and his wife lay. He saw the open flap, and wondered if they were awake, murmuring in the intimacy of lovers ‒ their words tender, for themselves alone. For the moment he knew completely the world they held within their arms, and he felt his flesh creep with longing to have a woman once more beside him, a woman whose lips would seek his willingly. Desperately he wanted again to bury his face in a woman’s scented hair, and to lie and listen to her gentle breathing as she slept.

  Without attempting to check his thoughts, Jeremy let them wander to scenes of the past … Irish skies, and mist, and lakes that spattered the country in silver and shadowed purple … Fine horses, beautiful women, and politics had been his playthings. He had used all of them dangerously; often merely for the delight of the danger. To this black-haired man, lying still and wakeful in the early-morning cold, the names of his beloved beauties came flowing back to him. Horses and women mixed in his thoughts like a lovely dream … Larry … Black Fern … Geraldine … Rosalie. He whispered them, moaning softly in his longing.

  Then, with the advance of the daylight, the shrill, maddening laugh of the kookaburra rang out. Gourgourgahgah, the natives called it. It perched, its head and beak sharply outlined against the sky, on one of the highest branches of a tree above him. The mockery of its laugh scattered Jeremy’s dreams. He was not in Ireland, and he had twelve years of his sentence still to serve. He was an assigned servant, he reminded himself ‒ merely that, to the man who had been given charge over him, body and well-nigh soul. Dreams of beautiful women were not for him ‒ instead he must endure this sense of desolation here in the camp in the bush, with the strong scent of the gum-leaves, and the wood-fire that had burned all through the night. He must lie and endure the knowledge of complete intimacy within the tent, and the thought of the golden-haired girl who had yesterday married Andrew Maclay, lying now in his arms, warm under the wallaby skins ‒ the girl who only two days ago had been a convict like himself.

  III

  The house stood upon a gentle rise facing the river. Sara first saw it at noon, with the winter sun dazzling on its new whitewash, and its uncurtained windows turned blankly towards the mountains. A few trees had been left around it, and on the cleared ground of the slopes was the beginning of an orchard. It was a stark, raw-looking building, whose bricks had been carted up from the brick-fields at Sydney. There was no touch of vine or shrub to soften its outlines; its whiteness was harsh against the grey-green of the trees.

  The sight touched Sara’s heart strangely. She looked at it for a long time without speaking. It was no more or less than Andrew had led her to expect ‒ low, and one-storied, ugly and crude in its unfinished state, a wide veranda round it, with three or four unornamented steps. But this was the first house that had ever stood upon the Hawkesbury; only the frail bark of the natives’ mia-mia had stood here before. The simplicity of the house was in a sense not unworthy of its setting.

  She gazed up the slope with a mixed feeling of possession and pride. The first moment her eyes had fallen on this house, it had become her own ‒ something to be loved and defended with every ounce of her will and power.

  Without saying anything, and still without taking her eyes off the house, she gestured to Andrew beside her. He interpreted the vague movement swiftly, motioning to Jeremy behind.

  ‘Go on ahead, Hogan. Tell Annie we’ve arrived. Mrs. Maclay will want hot water to wash in immediately.’

  Jeremy nodded and urged his horse into a trot. Trigg followed closely. The sounds of the horses were sharp in the noon hush of the bush.

  Andrew dismounted and turned to lift Sara down. She stood stiffly on the uneven ground, letting her gaze move in wonder across the scene before her. It took in the great sweep of the cleared land, reaching down to the river; she saw the convicts’ huts at the back of the house, and the railed-in enclosures for the livestock. The scars upon the virgin woods were raw and fresh, great, jagged holes torn in the black man’s territory to make way for the usurper’s crops and cattle. She was keenly aware of the intrusion here in this wilderness; with not even a decent road to link it to the proper settlement, it was an undeniable fact. But she saw it as Andrew had seen it ‒ land waiting to be taken, fertile land lying idle, disturbed only by the natives’ hunting parties; wilful, hardy young men, moving soundlessly through the bush in the trail of the kangaroos. Every instinct bred in her tough childhood among the London lodging-houses revolted against the waste of good land. She had learned something of the thrift and hard-headedness of the Romney Marsh farmers when it came to assessing the value of land. She had seen their prosperity based on rich grazing for their sheep, and supplemented by smuggling. The sight of the broad river, and the wild acres still waiting beyond the clearings, touched off a fire of ambition in her. She clenched her hands in excitement, and under her gloves she could feel a prickle of sweat. The pulse in her throat leapt with a swift passion. In England, land had meant wealth. And here in this country land was given for the asking. There was wealth before her eyes in these miles of winter evergreens stretching as far as she could see ‒ providing the gods were kind … providing the rain came in the right season, not too little, not too much … providing the river did not rise to sweep the crops away, and the fires race through the bush to destroy them.

  The gamble for such colossal stakes exalted her. She turned and clutched at Andrew’s arm, demanding a reassurance in his eyes.

  She found it there, and pride and eagerness as well.

  ‘Don’t see it finally as it is now, Sara,’ he said tremulously. ‘In a few years I’ll build you a beautiful house. I’ve planned it all ‒ it’ll be large and white, with a terrace and columns facing the river. I can see it …’

  She cut him short.

  ‘I don’t want a Greek temple in the woods, Andrew. Whatever money there is must go into the land. The house can stay as it is. I’m well content.’

  He gave a soft laugh, reaching to her and taking her shoulders between his two hands. His lean, roughened face reflected her own excitement and passion, as if her emotions had spilled over and affected him as strongly. In that moment they both knew that they were one in mind; the union of their marriage was complete. His expression hardened, and his grip tightened.

  ‘You’re as greedy as I am ‒ you damned woman!’ he said, his lips dry, the skin stretched. ‘You ought to have been a man, Sara. It excites you too, doesn’t it, all this? You see, as well as I do, what’s waiting for a man with the brain and the heart to work?’ His hands were feeling their way slowly down her arms. ‘But it’s just as well you’re not a man ‒ you couldn’t restrain yourself as I do. You couldn’t hold yourself off the rum traffic, could you? Or keep yourself out of every shady transaction this corrupt hole hatches out? You’d be the biggest rum-peddler of them all, my sweet.’

  ‘Probably,’ she admitted. ‘But I’ll find plenty of ways of helping you, all the same, Andrew. As soon as I can mount this wretched horse without fear of falling off, you’ll find me as good as three overseers. I’ll know every inch of your land ‒ and every ear of corn that grows on it.’

  ‘Be as you are now ‒ I don’t ask for any more, Sara,’ he said thickly.

  Jeremy and Trigg rode into the yard at the back of the house. A mongrel dog, which Andrew had brought home from his last visit to Sydney, started up his barking at the sounds of their approach; he raced round them in a frenzy of welcome. The ceaseless clucking of fowls reached them from the pens in the shade of the big mimosa tree.

  As Jeremy dismounted a woman came out of the lean-to kitchen, which was joined to the main building by a short covered passage. She was small and wrinkled, and wearing the graceless garments of a convict. Her face was red from the heat of the kitchen fire.

  She approached the two men, wiping her hands in a cloth. This wiping of her hands was a habitual gesture; Jeremy was used to it. She did i
t now with greater emphasis than usual. As he began to unstrap the saddle-bags, Jeremy glanced back over his shoulder at Annie Stokes’s round, bright eyes and button nose, at the low brow furrowed in an expression of acute anxiety.

  ‘They’re coming,’ he announced briefly. ‘Is everything ready?’

  The small eyes flashed with a touch of spirit. ‘O’ course it is. Haven’t I slaved myself half to death these past weeks putting things to rights? There’s duck for dinner, and if they don’t look sharp, it’ll be on the table before they’re ready!’

  Jeremy nodded. ‘And see you don’t shake the wine more than you can help.’

  Annie’s thin little frame stiffened. ‘Me!’ The word was an indignant gasp. ‘Me, what’s served in taverns all me life! What’s dished dinners to the gentry! Worked for Lord Delham, I did! ’Tisn’t likely I wouldn’t know what to do with a bottle of wine!’

  Trigg gave a low laugh. ‘Y’know what to do with it all right! Dead drunk, I’ve seen you, Annie ‒ and you praying to the Lord, what you’ve never prayed to before, to deliver you from this cursed country.’

  Annie gave a toss to her head. She took a hesitant step towards Jeremy, beginning again to wipe her hands in the cloth.

  ‘What’s she like?’ she said.

  ‘She?’

  ‘The mistress.’

  Jeremy straightened and looked at her. Under his direct stare she wilted and retreated a little. He snapped a reply. ‘You’re here to see that Mrs. Maclay is served in every way possible ‒ not to ask questions!’

  Annie turned on her heel and slipped away towards the kitchen like a scuttling, grey rabbit. Jeremy watched her go, but wasn’t in time to check Trigg’s coarse shout.

  ‘She’s a rare beauty, is the mistress! And looks as if she has a mind of her own! I’ll lay she won’t stand no nonsense. You’ll have to mind yourself now, Annie!’

  Trigg’s loud, deep laughter boomed across the yard.

  Listening to it, Jeremy felt slightly sick. And later, locking the storehouse, where they had laid the provisions brought up from Parramatta, Trigg touched back on the subject of Andrew’s wife. He stood with his hands on his hips, surveying the row of eucalyptus that marked the line of the cleared land.