‘All this time my love for you was the fatal mistake that I had heard others talk of and had never believed in myself. You possessed me ‒ you never left me any rest. Lady Linton suspected something, though of course she never could reach anything near the truth. It was I who first suggested New South Wales to her ‒ and I made her believe it was her own idea. She talked to Alison about this, and convinced her that I should do well in the colony. I was to farm ‒ to work out my own salvation. Once the idea was planted, Lady Linton was adamant. She bought my commission in the Corps, settled my debts ‒ which were by no means trifling ‒ and packed us off with barely enough money to cover the expenses of the voyage. Obviously the cure was to be drastic. “Training for your inheritance”, as she called it. Poor soul, she didn’t in the least want us to go.’
Sara shivered, and involuntarily she leaned forward and pressed her face against his shoulder.
‘Oh, Richard, what could you hope to gain by coming here?’
‘The sight of you ‒ that was what I hoped for. I wanted to live where I could occasionally see you, where your name could be spoken aloud. Nothing has been right for me since you went,’ he said. ‘But I hoped to make something of my life if I could be where you would see my efforts. My achievements will be for you, Sara. I’ve taken the offer of money from your husband because I want the tie with you, and because it gives me the chance to do more than fret my life away on a captain’s pay.’
He put his hand to her hair, smoothing it back from her temple, touching the soft skin of her forehead. ‘You have all the witchery of the devil, Sara! I’ve fought you for ten years, but I won’t fight you any longer. I’ve tried to forget you in other women ‒ I’ve flirted with many, made love to some, and always with the image of you before me. When I took a mistress, I felt I was unfaithful to you. God, how people would laugh to know of it ‒ that is, if they could believe it!’
Slowly she raised her face to him. ‘They won’t believe it, Richard, because they’ll never hear it. I’m as dead to you, as lost, as ever I was.’
‘Not lost, my love,’ he murmured. ‘I can see you, and talk with you. I’ll find peace, perhaps, because I’ve stopped searching for you.’
‘But Andrew …’ she began.
‘Andrew! Do you think I care about Andrew?’ he said roughly. ‘I can adore the very ground you walk on, and he won’t know it. He’ll never find out. I promise you that.’
She shook her head wildly. ‘But I love Andrew!’
‘You loved me once.’
‘Once ‒ yes! But I was a child then. Surely even you, Richard, can see what Andrew and I have built up here for one another. We have knitted our lives so closely that nothing can separate us. We are necessary to each other.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But you only love Andrew because he is a copy of yourself. All your ambitions and dreams are his also. Only a man like Andrew Maclay could match your spirit and energy. Only he could have achieved for you what he has.’ He leaned towards her again. ‘I am not Andrew. I couldn’t build a world in the clouds for you. But I am the first man you ever loved. My claim on you is an old one, it’s strong. I need you!’
‘No, Richard!’ she breathed, afraid and tense. ‘You have no claim on me. I owe you nothing. I love Andrew, I tell you! He …’
‘I need you,’ he said again.
‘Andrew also needs me.’
‘You can love us both, Sara. It’s not as a mistress I want you, and there’s nothing Andrew has that I could possibly take from him. You can go on being all the things to him that you have been through these years ‒ but for myself, I want what you were at Bramfield. That’s the Sara he’s never seen or known.’
‘I can’t let you come here to destroy what I have built up,’ she whispered. ‘You will destroy my peace of mind ‒ my whole life. I love Andrew ‒ and he won’t be fooled.’
He caught her up in his arms, holding her close to him, talking wildly. ‘Sara … Oh, Sara! Can you deny that you love me also? Say that you do … just say it! If I could only be sure of that. I would leave you in peace if I knew.’
Her arms slipped upwards about his neck.
‘God forgive me …’ she whispered. ‘I still love you.’
He stood up and pulled her with him, drawing her into his arms, and bending over her upturned face. The last time he had kissed her was in the schoolroom at Bramfield. Now he kissed her in this silent, deserted bay with all the passion and longing of the years in between. Her lips, the warm, sweet lips of a woman, in the place of the child she had been then, moved under his. He was vaguely aware that she was mouthing some protest, and yet giving herself to him at the same time. As he kissed her, the sense of desolation and loneliness seemed to slip from him; the years did not count now, only the mad joy and exhilaration in his heart.
‘Sara! Sara! I’ve found you again!’
II
In an upstairs room of the store ‒ a room once used as a sitting-room when the Maclays had lived there ‒ Sara squatted on her knees before a low shelf packed with rolls of cloth. She murmured to herself as she worked, writing swiftly in a notebook balanced on her knees.
‘Calico ‒ dark blue ‒ eight rolls. Calico ‒ flowered ‒ five rolls.’ And then she frowned, adding to the last item, ‘‒ slightly water-stained Broadcloth …’
As she wrote, she listened absently to footsteps coming up the stairs, pausing when she realized that they did not belong to any of the light-footed clerks who attended the store. List in hand, she looked expectantly towards the door.
It was Jeremy Hogan who tapped and opened it. He did not smile his usual greeting. He came in, and she saw immediately that he was wet. The shoulders of his greatcoat were sodden; raindrops dripped off the brim of the hat he held in his hand. His boots were splattered with mud.
‘Jeremy!’
Sara jumped to her feet, smiling, warmed with the pleasure of this unexpected visit. ‘I’m glad to see you, Jeremy! Have you just come from Kintyre? What brings you?’
‘I had a note from Andrew,’ he explained briefly. ‘Stock sales at Parramatta. For some reason or other, he’s going to flatter my vanity by deferring to my judgement ‒ though in the end he’ll buy what he himself fancies, as he always does.’
She put out her hand and touched his shoulder. ‘You’re wet right through ‒ and hungry, I imagine. Did you call at the house?’
‘I did, of course,’ he said, shrugging. ‘But I was told the master was from home ‒ doubtless drinking the afternoon away and pretending to do business ‒ and the mistress was stocktaking at the store. Annie Stokes’s tone rather suggested that it was permissible for you to be here in the mornings, but any real lady would be sitting pretty in her own drawing-room at this time of the day.’
Sara laughed. ‘I still haven’t learned to be the real lady that Annie longs to wait upon. Perhaps if I live long enough I’ll succeed …’
Jeremy cut in, throwing his hat on a packing-case, and turning to look at her with eyes that she suddenly realized were angry.
‘You’ll live long enough, Sara … if gossip doesn’t soon have your blood.’
She took a step backwards, frowning. ‘Jeremy! What do you mean? What are you talking about?’
He thrust his hands into his pockets, awkwardly. ‘I sometimes encourage gossip, Sara. It’s a habit of the Irish. Besides, I’ve been on the Hawkesbury for months now, and news is stale there. So as soon as I got to town …’
‘Oh, Jeremy, go on!’ she snapped.
‘I made two calls after leaving Glenbarr. One to leave my horse at Joe Maguire’s stable, and then to Costello’s for a bite of cheese and some ale. It was the same story at each place.’
‘What story? For pity’s sake, tell me!’
He was looking at her fully. ‘Oh, it was couched in casual enough terms, but the meaning was unmistakable. Had I heard that great friends of Andrew Maclay’s wife had arrived with the new Governor in the Speedy? And wasn’t it fine, now, for Mrs. Maclay
to be having her friends with her again, especially as they were the quality, no less?’ Jeremy’s accent was a good imitation of Pat Costello’s, as he concentrated on the drawing of a tankard, and the spinning of a story. ‘And here, my dear Sara, was a digression while the histories of Sir Geoffrey Watson and his countess sister were related to me. Captain Barwell’s history, it seems, is rather more obscure. But the story-tellers returned at last to the original theme. Wasn’t it grand, now, they said, that Mrs. Maclay had such good friends from the old days to be spending her time with? And wouldn’t you all be having fine old yarns about them together? Though, to be sure, Mrs. Barwell had only once been to dinner at Glenbarr. But the Captain, now … Well, he’s a different matter entirely. Hasn’t he a track worn to the front door, with the number of times he’s called? Now, let me see … was it four times last week, and twice so far this week? Of course, they quite understand that Mrs. Barwell isn’t very strong and couldn’t so often make the tiring journey to Glenbarr.’
He broke off, and his voice lost the half-whine of Pat Costello. ‘I tell you, Sara, it made me sick in my guts to hear it.’
With huge, angry steps he paced the length of the room, and back again, coming to a halt in front of her.
‘And it made me more sick still to realize that the tall, handsome officer I passed almost on your doorstep was the same Captain Barwell!’
Sara was deadly white, her eyes like hard green stones, brightened by the rage that suddenly filled her. She was standing close enough to him to raise her hand and strike him fully across the face. He did not move, but stared back at her with a slight look of disbelief. The mark of her hand stood out plainly on his cheek.
‘Lies!’ she said. ‘Gossip! Stable talk that you’re not above listening to, Jeremy Hogan!’
‘One can hardly help it,’ he answered testily. ‘All Sydney is listening to it.’
‘It isn’t true!’ she said, backing away from him. ‘You know they gossip about me. They’d pin anything they could on me.’
‘Yes, I know it ‒ only too well, Sara. And this is the first time you’ve given them anything real to pin on you.’
‘There isn’t a word of truth in this!’ she said hotly. ‘All these gossipers are making a fool out of me!’
His mouth twisted a little. ‘No, Sara, not the gossipers. It’s Richard Barwell who’s making the fool out of you.’
‘Jeremy!’ She swung away from him, turning her back.
For a long time she didn’t speak. He watched her shoulders rise and fall in time to her hard breathing, and then he said, very quietly, ‘I’m telling you straight, my dear Mrs. Maclay, that I wouldn’t have the slightest hesitation in wringing your mercenary little neck if you let this nonsense go on. For it is nonsense, isn’t it?’ His straight black brows lifted in question. ‘It’s just gossip? There’s no truth at all in it?’
At the soft insinuation in his tone, she turned to him again.
For a few moments she stood looking at him. Finally she said, ‘Richard Barwell comes to the house because he wants advice about what he’s going to do in the colony.’ Her voice rose a little. ‘It’s advice I have in plenty, Jeremy! There’s nothing else to his visits. Nothing, I tell you! If the gossips want to make something else out of them what can I do?’
‘Do!’ he rapped. ‘Tell him to go to hell! Or if you won’t, I’ll do it for you!’
She looked as shocked then as if she too had been struck across the face. She ran a hand distractedly over her forehead.
‘Am I asking you to do the impossible?’ he said.
She shook her head slowly.
‘Then what are you waiting for? He’s up at the house now.’
She didn’t move. Her expression was half-defiant, half-afraid.
‘Sara, listen to me.’ Jeremy’s voice had dropped, and softened, but his eyes, looking into hers, were flinty. They commanded what his words merely suggested. ‘Everyone is talking about these visits of Barwell’s. Andrew can’t remain deaf, or blind, much longer.’
Her lips trembled, and she pressed her hands together to still their agitation.
‘Jeremy,’ she said, ‘will you come back to the house with me? I’ll go now and get my cloak.’
‘What are you going to do, Sara?’
‘Do? Why …’ she paused, and ran her tongue over her lips. ‘If he has waited, then I’ll say to him … I’ll say exactly what you told me to say.’
Sara entered her drawing-room to find Richard standing before the fire, one foot, in an elegant riding-boot, resting casually on a low stool. He turned to her, and straightened.
She closed the door, and stood with her back pressed against it. Outside the rain poured down steadily. It made a hollowed, drumming noise against the roof of the veranda; the unfinished lawn beyond the windows was a dark sea of mud, with the raindrops cutting the surface. At the end of the planned garden, where it began to slope towards the trees, dozens of little rivulets had forged their own channels. Under the heavy sky the eucalyptus had lost their colour, and were a drab, blackish green.
All this Sara saw as she stood with her back to the door, and she realized that in some inexplicable way it all matched: the loose, indifferent fashion of Richard’s stance, the look of unusual gravity in his face. He came towards her, holding out his hand. She accepted it, and allowed herself to be led forward. With gentle fingers he undid the clasp of her cloak, drawing it from her shoulders, and throwing it across a chair. He was still clasping her fingers loosely, and then he reached for her other hand and held them both pressed between his own.
‘You’re cold, Sara. And your hair is wet. You look like a young girl. Do you remember how …?’
She shook her head. ‘Hush, Richard ‒ no more! This isn’t the time for remembering what we used to do, or how we did it.’
Firmly she withdrew her hands from his. ‘Or for holding my hands, and dreaming of a time when it was possible to do it. All that is long over.’
‘Sara …’ He frowned uncertainly. ‘Just for the little time we’re together we could pretend …’
‘Pretend? What’s the good, when we both know the pretending must come to an end?’
‘Must it?’ he asked quietly.
Without hesitation, she said, ‘It has come to an end, Richard. Pretence never lasts. I ought to have remembered that ‒ only this time they have taken it away almost before it began.’
‘They?’
She nodded. ‘The sharp eyes, the busy tongues. I warned you that Sydney was no more than a village. One is watched … daily … ceaselessly. It’s so easy to count the number of times you visit here ‒ and to exaggerate the number. There’s gossip about us already. Soon Andrew will hear ‒ and Alison.’
His eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘To whom have you been talking, Sara? Who has put this into your head?’
It was not easy for her to follow Jeremy’s advice ‒ to tell Richard he must go, and why. She shrugged her shoulders, as if all this was simple to explain. ‘Does it matter? The gossip is something I would have noticed myself, if I had not been blinded temporarily.’
‘Sara, tell me!’ he said sharply. ‘Who was it?’
‘It was Jeremy Hogan, if you must know,’ she said. ‘I have just seen him.’
‘Jeremy Hogan? And who is Jeremy Hogan, that he is privileged to say such things to you?’
She raised her hand to caution him. ‘Quietly, Richard! You must be quiet! I am not Alison, to be shouted at ‒ or to be affected when you choose to sulk.’
He folded his lips. ‘I want to know about this Jeremy Hogan. Who is he?’
‘Well,’ she said patiently, ‘Jeremy Hogan is a political prisoner …’
‘A convict!’
‘You might call him a convict. To Andrew and myself he is brother, friend ‒ and our overseer at Kintyre. Before now, I have trusted him with my life. When he comes to me and says there is talk about us, Richard, then I trust him in that also.’
He looked at her, scowl
ing like an angry child. ‘What fools you and Andrew are at times. This Hogan is some damned convict that you both pamper and flatter until he fancies himself a little god. And it’s his advice that you listen to, is it? You tell me everything must end between us because an impudent upstart like that bids you.’
Sara ached to smooth away his scowl then, to kiss him and tell him that she had not meant a word of what she said. But she thought of Jeremy, and she knew that she was afraid of the scene Jeremy might make with Richard if she had to tell him she had not done as he ordered.
She drew away a little. ‘Everything must end between us?’ she repeated coldly. ‘Nothing has happened to make an ending of. I kissed you once ‒ that was madness, and I freely admit it. And in the last three weeks you have visited me more times than was prudent. Nothing exists between us that can’t be stopped just like that!’ She snapped her fingers decisively. ‘Nothing, Richard!’
His brows drew together in an expression of disbelief and disappointment. ‘Sara, you said you loved me! That day on the beach ‒ you said it!’
Her face flamed. ‘I said I loved Andrew also.’
‘But you loved me first!’
‘But I loved Andrew when I was old enough to know what love meant!’
He said triumphantly, ‘But I was first! And you can’t deny that you love me still!’
She gazed long at him, at the handsome dark face enflamed with self-will and passion. Suddenly she was angry with Richard as she had never been before. He had changed so little, she thought, crossly, in all these years ‒ never really learning that there were some things in life that a display of rage and temperament would not give him. Alison and Lady Linton had between them ruined whatever chance he might have had to change this. Together, they had spoiled and indulged him, and he stood here now, anger distorting his features because she dared oppose him.
Sara Dane Page 26