Sara Dane

by Catherine Gaskin

  As the months passed, her carriage was seen more and more frequently on the roads between the three farms; in all weathers she rode, a sober figure in her black, well-cut habit, on horseback through the fields. She turned constantly to Jeremy at her side, commenting, sometimes praising ‒ but ever more sparing of her praise than Andrew would have been. She was afraid to praise, he told himself ‒ and always afraid that what she had taken on would, in the end, prove too much for her.

  V

  To Sara, the only real freedom from the sense of missing Andrew was complete absorption in her business affairs ‒ absorption to the point where she was tired enough to sleep at nights, and tired enough to shut out the growing doubts that, alone, she could carry out her plans. A faint uneasiness grew in her heart as, each day, the complications of her work increased. True, the colony was getting over its surprise at her determination to carry on with Andrew’s affairs, and she was becoming more adept at handling their diversity. The Thistle and Thrush had both put into the harbour lately, and their masters had received her instructions willingly enough; she might well have been pleased with her success, but she began to sense all about her a growing coolness, a hardening in the attitude of those people who had cultivated her for Andrew’s sake. In the weeks close to his death, she had shunned callers to Glenbarr, but, as the months passed without sign of the visitors that had once come to the house, she began to wonder if they would ever return. Where, she asked herself, were the women who had made her acquaintance, those who had followed the fashion set by Alison Barwell? Were they counting against her the fact that she was no longer the wife of a prominent free settler, but merely a prominent ex-convict? She met them only on Sunday mornings when she took the children to the service which the Reverend Samuel Marsden conducted in the temporary church beside the place where the new stone one was building. Each Sunday when they had been in Sydney, she and Andrew had always attended the services here, and their walk back to Glenbarr had been slowed by the number of people who had stopped to speak to them. Now Sara walked there with David and Duncan beside her, and her acquaintances, hurrying to be there on time, seemed to go by without noticing her. They sat on the hard, wooden benches to listen to Mr. Marsden’s haranguing; the convicts dutifully crowding in at the back; they sang hymns rather tunelessly without the help of an organ. Afterwards they filed out, spreading about the rough building as if this were the conventional English churchyard, except that their ears were always listening for the bell that didn’t ring. No one moved away until the Governor and Mrs. King had left; there were bows and curtsies, and often in the past, Andrew and Sara had been among those whom the Governor had elected to stop and speak to. Now Sara stood with the boys among the crowd to watch the Governor go ‒ watched also as Alison Barwell went by with scarcely more than a sketchy bow in her direction. She noticed that the bows and nods of the other women were growing more than a trifle perfunctory. They told her plainly enough what Sydney thought of a woman who didn’t spend the first year of her widowhood sitting quietly in her own drawing-room.

  As time went on, she knew almost without doubt that whenever she travelled to inspect the farms, or visited the store or the vessels in the harbour, her movements were marked and criticized. With a kind of helpless dismay she felt her position slipping back to what it had been when she had first returned to Sydney from the Hawkesbury.

  The one real satisfaction in that lonely, bewildering year was the change in Richard. As he and Sara had agreed, they did not see each other, except for chance encounters in Sydney’s streets, or at the store. But an undeniable intimacy grew up between them, established on the slender basis of his occasional letters to her, and the short interview they had when he came each quarter with an instalment to pay off against the debt he owed.

  The card games at the barracks saw Richard hardly at all these days; as often as he found time, he made the long trip to Hyde Farm; there were no more tales of his drinking. Alison no longer gave her evening parties, and, although she was as exquisitely turned out as ever, she wore last year’s gowns ‒ and it was noticeable that there was no more wistful talk of what Mrs. Barwell was expecting from London with the arrival of the next ship. Richard even made a hesitant attempt to engage in a little trading on his own account. He was not very successful ‒ he had no heart and less skill for the day-to-day struggle for the profits from the rum trade. In Richard, ambition had been fired too late; energy alone could not compensate for the shrewdness and cunning he had never learned. Sara, watching him closely, seeing him work as he had never done in his life before, knew that the rewards of his labour were slight. The sum of money which he paid her each three months represented the ruthless cutting of his personal expenditure, rather than his increased profits. But it would have wounded his pride to let him know, she realized this; if his dress these days was more modest, and she heard that he had sold his thoroughbred mare, she had more discretion than to mention it.

  She welcomed his rare visits alone to Glenbarr. She settled eagerly to hear of his improvements at Hyde Farm, and encouraged him in the idea of expansion, knowing that she did so as much for the pleasure of listening to him spin his web of dreams, as for the sake of the future prosperity of the farm. It was far too late, she knew, for him to achieve half the things she desired for him; but, in his altered spirit and outlook, she found the slow emergence of a personality less selfish, and less self-centred.

  When occasionally he wrote her ‒ in a strange mixture of business and personal matters ‒ she read and folded the letters many times over. And without letting herself consciously acknowledge her reason for doing so, she kept them all locked together in the drawer of the desk where she worked.

  The months wore on slowly, filled with a sameness that dismayed her a little when she paused to consider it. In her periods of leisure she found that her own thoughts were dull companions. Jeremy was far away ‒ at Toongabbie, Priest’s, or Kintyre. Richard was self-banished. Her children were too young, and Michael Sullivan too shy, to provide the sort of conversation she craved. Not all her multiple affairs gave sufficient outlet to her energies. And the arrival of each mail found her searching eagerly for a letter from Louis.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Will we soon be there, Mama?’

  Sara turned to look at Duncan, sitting across from her in the carriage. His mouth had a sticky rim round it from the cake he had just finished eating; he spoke cheerfully enough, but he looked tired, and his clothes were dusty and crumpled. On the seat beside Sara, Sebastian was asleep; she supported him with one arm, the other leaned along the ledge of the window, bracing her body against the jolts of the rutted road. Annie, sitting next to Duncan, was nodding drowsily. Of the five, David seemed the only one with enough energy to watch the road that wound its way by the river.

  ‘Yes, darling. It’s not far now ‒ not more than a mile.’

  David glanced across at her then. ‘This is the place we visited before, isn’t it, Mama? Before Papa died?’

  His tone suggested that the visit eighteen months ago was already lost in distant memory. Banon was a place he could only vaguely recall.

  ‘Yes,’ Sara said. ‘Don’t you remember, David ‒ and you Duncan ‒ the white house above the Nepean? And the aviary ‒ you remember the aviary, surely?’

  ‘Yes … I remember.’ Duncan spoke uncertainly. He did not much care for moving outside his familiar orbit. ‘But when are we going back to Kintyre, Mama? I like Kintyre best.’

  ‘Perhaps after a week at Banon, we’ll go to Kintyre.’

  ‘Why are we going to Banon? Monsieur de Bourget won’t be there ‒ he’s still in England.’ David swung his foot discontentedly. Like Duncan, he showed no great enthusiasm for the unfamiliar.

  Kintyre was their love, the place that, even more than Glenbarr, meant home to them. He seemed rather impatient with the thought that Banon was holding them back from the delights of the Hawkesbury farm.

  ‘Well …’ For a few seconds Sara was at a
loss for words. ‘Well, before Papa died, he promised Monsieur de Bourget that he would ride out to Banon from time to time, to see how it was being kept while he was away. Papa only managed to go once ‒ and now it’s more than a year since anyone visited the house or farm. As Papa was Monsieur de Bourget’s partner in a number of business matters, I thought I should go in his place.’

  David nodded, and seemed satisfied. He turned his head again to stare out of the carriage window.

  It was a day late in March, 1805 ‒ a year since Andrew’s death. Autumn was creeping gently upon the landscape; Sydney had yet hardly noticed it, but here in the higher country the nights would be sharp with frost. There had been no rain for a week, and the dust rose from under the horses’ feet. All around them the afternoon was silent and hushed. Sara was surprised at the change in the countryside since she had last travelled the road to Banon. There was now much more evidence of settlement. Rough tracks led left and right to farmhouses hidden in the trees; whole blocks of ground were cleared for agriculture, and cattle grazed within enclosed paddocks. They were close now to the Cowpastures district ‒ the rich land on the other side of the river, where the wild Government herds had bred from a few strays since Phillip’s time. No one was allowed to enter the area without official permission, but there was no real order enforced, and settlers who wanted fresh meat apparently hunted here at will. This was still a part of the country to which the hand of authority reached only uncertainly.

  To Sara, the remoteness of Banon was, for the time being, a relief and a blessing. She had looked to it as a refuge, the farthest part of the settled areas to which she could go. In panic, almost, she had fled from Sydney, bundling children and boxes into the carriage, clinging desperately to Andrew’s promise to Louis as a pretext for this escape to the quiet of the Nepean. She craved the silence and peace, the unfamiliarity of Louis’s house. There, alone and undisturbed, she could think around the situation, grown now so much in magnitude that she could no longer ignore it. It had reached a new height in Sydney three days before, sending her, with undignified haste, to seek the solitude of Banon. She knew that, within the next week or so, she must make some sort of decision regarding her own future and her children’s; she wanted to be free to make it away from associations with Andrew, away from any memories of the past which might influence her. The thought of Banon brought a feeling of great calm.

  At the window, David had suddenly stiffened. He craned forward, and then knelt up on the seat to get a better view. Annie put out a restraining hand, but he shook it off.

  ‘There’s the house, Mama! I remember it now! Look, Duncan!’

  Sara also leaned forward, glad of the sight of the white columns and the terraces. She eased Sebastian’s weight a little on her arm. Earlier in the day a messenger had ridden ahead to announce their coming to Madam Balvet; she had evidently set one of the servants to watch the road, for, as the carriage began climbing the slope to the house, the housekeeper’s black-clad figure appeared on the portico. With her one free hand, Sara straightened her bonnet and tried to brush the dust from her gown. As the carriage halted, Louis’s housekeeper came down the steps; despite the servant standing by in attendance, it was she herself who flung open the door.

  ‘Welcome to Banon, Madame!’

  She spoke warmly, reaching forward to lift the sleeping Sebastian from Sara’s arms.

  II

  For the next two days Sara worked constantly, leaving the children to Annie’s supervision, and immersing herself in the affairs of Banon. Her activity gave her no time to think on the problem which had sent her fleeing from Sydney; she was concentrated fully upon the business in hand. First, mounted on one of Louis’s horses she inspected every section of his farm, noting the condition of the crops, the livestock ‒ and saying little. She listened to the slightly nervous talk and explanations of the two overseers ‒ she listened, and treated it all with the same degree of reserve that would have been Andrew’s, or Jeremy’s. Then she closeted herself with them for a full day while the account books were gone through. These had been as honest as might be expected from two men left to their own devices for over a year. Her experienced eye on the figures told her that no questionably large sum of money had been spent on any one item. She knew quite well that the pair had not run the farm in Louis’s absence without a thought for the lining of their own pockets, but that was to be expected. Louis had known before he left that he would have to pay in extra, unspecified ways for the services of men as experienced in farming as these two. Sara realized that she must accept the accounts without undue investigation. At the end of their long day together the men went off, touching their caps, relief stamped plainly on both their faces.

  On the third morning of Sara’s stay Madame Balvet came to her and insisted that she should inspect the house. Rather unwillingly Sara accompanied her; it had never been her intention to question the Frenchwoman’s housekeeping; and she found it embarrassing to stand silently by while the linen was counted out, and checked off against a list. The storeroom accounts were in meticulous order ‒ every pound of flour, every side of bacon recorded and accounted for.

  Gradually Sara began to see that, far from being reluctant to display the storeroom, the linen cupboards, the servants’ pantry, Madame Balvet was actually eager to do so. This was an indirect form of boasting, a desire to show off a perfect piece of work. The inspection went from drawing-room, with its delicate china ornaments, and the furniture that had been dust-sheeted until Sara’s arrival, to the bare cleanliness of the scullery-maid’s bedroom ‒ Madame Balvet pausing always to draw aside curtains, open drawers and point out the fierce polish of the floors. She turned expectantly to hear Sara’s praise. It was given in a rather astonished fashion, but without stint. The Frenchwoman appeared satisfied; a look of pride and pleasure came to her face.

  When it was over, in a kind of ceremonial fashion, they drank tea together in the housekeeper’s room at the back of the house. Sara watched the other woman’s deft hands at work with the silver teapot and the spirit-lamp. They performed the ritual with care and ease.

  She accepted the tea, and stirred it thoughtfully.

  ‘You don’t find it too lonely here, Madame Balvet? The distance from Sydney is so great …’

  The Frenchwoman shrugged. ‘I am busy, you know. There is not time to be lonely. There is always much to be done. Monsieur de Bourget will find I have not been idle during his absence.’

  Watching her face as she busied herself with the cups, Sara was startled to see the expression there. It was an unguarded look, telling her how completely, even from the distance that separated them, Louis still dominated this woman.

  III

  Wearing a loose, silk wrapper, Sara sat before the fire in her bedroom at Banon, holding in her hands a sheet of paper, and reading over the half-dozen lines she had written.

  ‘Cher Louis …’

  She tapped quietly on the edge of the escritoire. She had meant to write him a full account of everything she had seen and heard at Banon in the past three days, while it all was still fresh with her; but even these few lines already had a tired air about them, an air of half-interest. Once more she dipped the quill in the ink, wrote a few more words, and then laid it down again.

  It wasn’t about Banon she wanted to write.

  For the past week a single thought had turned itself over and over in her mind. Thrust into the background while she had worked over the farm accounts, it now reasserted itself, and demanded her attention. It had first come into her head at the same time that she had had positive proof of the weakening of her position in the colony since Andrew’s death. The leading families had given what sympathy they thought her due, and were now prepared to forget her. And along with her, her children also.

  David and Duncan, now eleven and nine years old, could no longer be entirely sheltered from the knowledge of the struggle every ex-convict fought against the stigma of his conviction. Even political offenders, like Jeremy Hog
an, did not escape it. The prominent free settlers, and the officers of the Corps, had banded themselves into a tight little circle which no one who had sailed into Botany Bay for his crimes could hope to break. Through her marriage to Andrew, and her friendship with Alison Barwell, Sara had been accepted there. But with Andrew’s death, his power ended, and now she was being pushed surely and quite definitely into the other camp ‒ the emancipists, who stoutly claimed their own place in the colony’s society, but who were steadfastly ignored by the ruling clique.

  She had had this fact brought home sharply a week ago. Invitations had been issued for a birthday party for the eldest son of Captain Taylor of the Corps. Andrew had done a fair amount of business in London on Captain Taylor’s behalf, and David and Duncan had always been prominent guests at young John Taylor’s earlier parties. This year no invitation arrived at Glenbarr ‒ and Sara knew none would be forthcoming. David knew it also. He had made only one mention of the fact, briefly, with an elaborate shrug of his shoulders. But before he turned away, Sara glimpsed the bright tears standing out in his eyes, and tears he refused to shed in front of her. Her heart ached for him ‒ so young, and yet already understanding that his mother’s past would not be forgiven her, that it would be laid on him and on his brothers.

  ‘It doesn’t really matter,’ he said. ‘In any case, I’ve always hated John Taylor. And I love you, Mama.’

  Duncan would be the next, she thought, as she slipped her arm about her eldest son’s shoulders ‒ if indeed he hadn’t already realized vaguely that there was something about his mother that was unlike other women. She recalled the day when they had returned together from the township, dirty, with torn jackets, and David trying to wipe away congealing blood from a cut on his forehead. Both had refused to give any explanation of the fight ‒ though Duncan had seemed bewildered, and looked frequently to his brother for guidance. David had hustled him out of the room before he could say very much. Sara had watched them go with disquieting thoughts.