‘You don’t often mention your father,’ Alexa observed.
‘I wrote to him every month while I was at the convent, but I suppose you could say I hardly know him. He only comes home on leave every two years or so, and then we stay in a hotel together, usually in London, so we can go to the theatre, but sometimes in Bath – he has relatives there. He sold the family home after my mother died, you see.’
‘D’you remember her at all?’
‘Just. I think I was three when she died. It was peritonitis, I believe. I don’t know if I really remember this, or whether I was told it, but on summer evenings my mother would wind up the gramophone, open the French doors and dance out into the garden with me in her arms. I can’t imagine how my father ever married her, he’s so stiff and . . . and military, and she was an actress. I wonder how they met?’
‘You have her picture, don’t you? Forgive me, but I have seen you looking at it at nights.’
‘She’ll never grow old, Alexa – in her photograph she’s always young and beautiful. Florence Almond, that was her name.’
The Suez Canal, Molly wrote in her diary, is chock-a-block with boats. The banks are swarming with traders, with laden donkeys – ribs all showing, poor things. They all scream at each other, and us, incessantly it seems. Elfie flatly refuses to show her face on deck until we are safely through!
So much perspiring makes us feel like expiring. I didn’t know it could be so hot – the sun is relentless. Have to make sure Fay drinks plenty. None of us feels like eating much, but at least we’ve stopped being sick . . .
Finally, Australia! They’d arrived in Melbourne – not journey’s end, it was true – for a few days’ break before rejoining the ship to sail on to Sydney.
‘Shades of dear old England!’ Molly exclaimed as they journeyed by cab to their modest hotel, warmly recommended by the purser. ‘All this could have been transported here and set in place.’ The streets of Victorian-style houses, with primly railed gardens, did indeed seem strangely familiar, resembling the outskirts of any town or city in Great Britain. And it was raining; not the dispiriting, lashing rain of winter at home, but a solid downpour that left the roads well and truly wet, and then abruptly ceased. Melbourne was a solid town, like that solid citizen of Great Britain it had been named for.
‘Look – the cathedral!’ Alexa said. They craned their necks to glimpse its grey bulk through the steamy cab windows. But they were not in the mood for sightseeing in such weather.
They were welcomed by their landlady, Mrs Serena Kelly, who asked eagerly, ‘And how is London? It’s thirty years since I sang and danced in the chorus at the Alhambra. I was born in Islington, y’know, not far from The Angel. My parents and grandparents trod the boards before us: my sisters, my brother and me. Music halls, end of the pier – that was us. We travelled around!
‘I married dear Paddy Kelly when I was twenty. He was one for travelling even further afield, so he brought me here. Six children we have, all doing well, but only one in the business, you could say. My youngest, Rory, is with the circus. Their father died four years ago, left me enough to invest in this place and, oh, I do love to have folk from the old country come to stay . . . ’
She led the way upstairs. ‘Two nice rooms I’ve made ready. Wally never fails to send me guests when his ship docks – folk he’s got to like while he’s been at sea.’ She was a heavy woman but walked lightly, elegantly, like the dancer she once was. She opened the doors and the gemstones in her many rings flashed. She saw Molly’s admiring gaze. ‘My Sam mines the gems in a small way. He sends me a ring every birthday – each one unique, he says. This is my favourite, this opal, see . . . In here for you, Miss Wills.’
Rings on her fingers, bells on her toes, Molly thought. I wonder if my mother was larger than life like Mrs Kelly? If so, however did my father unbend enough to marry her? Maybe I remind him too much of her; maybe that’s why he seems relieved when it’s time for us to part . . .
*
‘Thank goodness Elfie has her own room! I’ve had just about as much as I can stand, of watching her sniffing those salts until she has a paroxysm, or licking her finger to turn the pages of her nightly dose of scripture,’ Alexa remarked tartly as Molly laid a drowsy Fay in the centre of their double bed. ‘I didn’t reckon on us all sharing – don’t anticipate much sleep,’ she sighed.
The furniture was lighter than the heavy mahogany Molly was used to in England, of polished pine with brass handles. The chair seats were of woven cane, an Indian rug barely covered the stained floorboards, and the bedclothes were, naturally, lightweight for, despite the rain, it certainly wasn’t cold. Molly investigated the roll-up window blind. ‘This is nice, eh, Alexa?’
She was still complaining about Elfie. ‘I’m not sure if I’ll be able to tolerate her once we arrive at the farm. They say you never know a person until you live with them, don’t they? Perhaps we’ll move on quickly, maybe to Queensland. I have an old school friend there with whom I have always kept in touch. Let’s give it a month or so . . .
‘As you will have gathered by now, Molly, I’m not a woman given to over-sentimentality. I’m sure we will clash now and again over this next year because it’s obvious you are strong-willed, but then so am I.’ She paused, cleared her throat. ‘Nevertheless I’m glad you are with me just now. It’s been difficult, you see since . . . ’
She was touched by Molly’s swift rejoinder. ‘And I’m glad to be here, too, Alexa.’
As Molly tided her hair, Fay stirred, sat up and rubbed her eyes. ‘Boo!’ Molly cried, scooping her up and kissing her. ‘Are you wondering where on earth you are, darling? Let’s all go down for that cup of tea which our friendly Mrs Kelly is even now brewing, eh?’
*
Serena’s pastry was short and crumbly, the meat tender, the gravy rich and dark brown. They all ate well, even Elfie, who was obviously greatly relieved to be on terra firma once more. Fay bounced about on a little chair with curved wooden arms, piled high with cushions, and smiled at nice Mrs Kelly, who sat down to eat with them. ‘No objection, my dears? Just us ladies here tonight. What a lovely child, so good.’
‘Not always,’ Molly said ruefully, ‘but you seem to know the secret of sitting her down and expecting her to clean her plate!’
‘Practice, Molly – years of practice! You don’t get time for worrying who’ll eat this and who won’t when you’ve six of ‘em around the table, you see. You put good food before them and you expect it to vanish. Simple!’
‘Did you . . . did you ever hear of an actress named Florence Almond?’ Molly wondered, hoping that Alexa wouldn’t think she was being too familiar with their landlady.
Serena was dishing out ginger steamed pudding. ‘About my age, is she? Forty and a bit?’
‘I suppose she would be, if she’d lived. She was my mother. I don’t really know much about her. I don’t imagine she was famous or anything or you’d have recognised the name, wouldn’t you?’
‘Sorry, dear, but I can’t say I do. She probably moved in higher circles than us. I reckon you’re like her, though – just a feeling I got. Ever thought of going on stage yourself?’
Molly didn’t dare look at Alexa or Elfie as she said simply: ‘Oh, yes!’
TWO
Flocks of sea birds scolded and circled endlessly overhead as they travelled through cobalt blue water in the wake of the famous Captain Cook into Sydney harbour.
From Sydney they travelled by train: a jolting, thoroughly uncomfortable journey. A delay was caused at one point by a ‘scale a rattler’, a young man who had jumped on – and then off – the train, hotly pursued by the guard and some irate male passengers. As they crowded to the carriage window to watch the chase they were excited to glimpse another train lurching in the distance. ‘Take your thumb out and look!’ Molly, holding a sleepy Fay against her shoulder, turned her so that she was facing in the right direction. ‘A camel train!’
After a long, enervating day they finally de
scended on decidedly wobbly legs to wait at a station halt, which looked, as Molly remarked to her silent, dispirited companions, ‘like the end of the world’. They were dusty, crumpled, hungry, and above all thirsty. Only Fay, who had finally ceased whimpering barely half an hour since, was able to give way to the deep sleep of sheer exhaustion in her, by now, somewhat battered pushchair.
Just as they were giving up hope of ever being met, Elfie’s brother Frank arrived, greeted them laconically, and they were hoisted aboard his cart. Their luggage was roughly thrown onto a following cart driven by Frank’s stockman.
They drank great gulps of cold tea from the corked bottles he had brought: fell upon the uncouth sandwiches he had made from tough dry bread filled with thick slices of succulent lamb, lavishly spread with pickle. They were scarcely aware of the discomfort as they stretched their legs out at last and rested their backs against the unyielding sides of their conveyance.
The rough road soon gave way to an iron-hard track along which they bowled in hair-raising fashion, seemingly just missing the gum trees but inhaling their overpowering smell. They were showered with muddy water as the horses blundered through a shallow creek.
Molly was dozing uneasily when they arrived at the homestead paddock, startling a brumby or wild horse that skittered away with flaring nostrils and a flash of the whites of its eyes in the gathering gloom.
They passed flocks of sheep. ‘If you hear the howling of a dingo, you’ll know the devils are busy slashing the lambs’ bellies,’ Frank informed them gloomily. ‘Don’t start yelling if you hear shooting, that’ll be the lookout doing his job.’
Molly was perking up. ‘Dingoes are nocturnal like foxes at home, aren’t they, Frank?’ she asked curiously.
‘That’s right, Moll. Nights can be noisy hereabouts,’ he said.
Elfie sniffed at her salts until the tears rolled down her cheeks. Life out here had definitely coarsened her brother.
The welcoming lights of the homestead heartened them all, and the interior was not nearly as bad as they had imagined. There were reasonably comfortable beds, serviceable pieces of furniture, even a bath-house, Molly was pleased to see, thinking of the grubby little girl they had brought so far from home – and blessed hot water boiled for their use by a sweetly smiling Aboriginal girl with unexpected tow-coloured hair.
Cleansed, but aching all over, Molly crawled thankfully at last into the single iron bedstead she was to share with Fay, past caring about the coarse linen and lumpy pillows. Alexa had a similar bed to herself, at a distance across the spacious room. Elfie had been shown to her own permanent quarters on the other side of the house. Maybe they wouldn’t have to see as much of her, Molly hoped – then felt guilty.
She didn’t always say her prayers but she did that night, hoping the Almighty would excuse her not going down on her knees. She gave the pillow a thump and lay down. ‘Thank you, dear God, for bringing us safely to our journey’s end’ she murmured drowsily. ‘Amen.’
Then she, Alexa and Fay slept for many hours.
*
Molly and Alexa took the new life in their stride, literally. Molly had ridden an old donkey and occasionally driven it, too, while she was at school; Alexa had not been in the saddle since she was in her teens. When Molly said: ‘I always rode astride – usually bareback when the Sisters weren’t looking – what else can you do on a donkey?’ Alexa replied: ‘I’ve never ridden side-saddle either . . . ’
Molly was surprised to learn that her employer had been brought up in the country. ‘We were poor but honest, as they say, but I always wanted more from life. My father and his brother, Elfie and Frank’s father, took over the family farm from our grandfather. Gradually, they sold off the land and Frank came out here to make a fresh start. I had the same idea when I left my husband – all I wanted for Lucy was for her to be an independent young woman.’ She looked very stern as she said that.
They were waiting by the stables for the stockman to saddle a horse, at Alexa’s behest. Behind them was the timber-built homestead, raised on piles, with a long veranda all round, where Molly hoped to sleep out in the heat to come, and windows blank with blinds. The single-storey house was flanked by outbuildings; one of which was used by the resident workers as a bunkhouse. All the buildings had corrugated iron roofs, and the timber used in their construction was of varying widths, like the original trees.
The young girl who had seen to their bath tubs that first evening pegged Fay’s nappies on a line strung between two trees, and smiled widely as she caught Molly’s friendly glance. She wore what looked like a faded school dress, once checked in blue and white, with a ragged sailor collar, and nothing on her feet. Toby was her name, and somehow it didn’t sound incongruous. She presumably went home each night, but so far they had not seen her come or go. ‘She’s here right now, but if the fancy takes her she might not be tomorrow,’ Frank grunted laconically at breakfast time when Elfie said how helpful and willing the girl was, though it was going to take time to understand her pidgin English.
Now, Alexa sat on a bony, knobby-kneed mare and announced her intention of circling the boundary with the stockman, as soon as he said the word. Molly grinned because the horse hardly looked capable of circling the paddock, but she admired Alexa’s spirit. Elfie, coming out to shake her mop because she had been horrified at all the cobwebs festooning the rafters, overheard this and looked shocked. ‘Oh, Alexa, at your age, do you think you ought to?’
‘Your turn will come, Molly. Soon, I hope,’ Alexa said, ‘when we find that competent nursemaid for Fay. But meanwhile –’
‘Meanwhile,’ Molly supplied, ‘I don’t mind a bit carrying on as before.’ But secretly she wished that she could be the first one to ride out with Henning Rasmussen, the Danish stockman. ‘Call me Henny,’ he’d offered shyly when they’d introduced themselves earlier. He was lean and tanned with a shock of sun-bleached hair and a shy smile that revealed uneven but good, white teeth – unlike Frank, who had a mouthful of gaps and whose breath was offensively sour. Henny’s eyes, narrowed against the bright light as he gazed into the distance, were surprisingly blue. Sydney blue, Molly fancied. He didn’t speak unless he was directly addressed, but she liked his accent and deep voice. She didn’t know anything about him, of course, and no doubt, she thought wryly, he wouldn’t be the slightest bit interested in her, but . . . Molly was growing up fast.
That evening, while they were waiting for supper to be served up, Alexa repeated to Frank her intention of riding regularly. ‘You’ll want some breeches then, you can’t ride in that silly skirt,’ he stated baldly. He was obviously wondering just what he had taken on. Elfie was already proving tiresome with her ‘vapours’ and was not the competent housekeeper he remembered: he didn’t realise that she had been content with things as they had always been, back at home, and the differences here were difficult for her to grasp. The visiting relatives, too, wished to be involved in areas where he would much rather not have been bothered. He was certainly not going to offer the use of his own powerful rangy horse to Alexa or Molly. He rummaged in a cupboard and extracted a dog-eared catalogue, minus its cover.
‘Here, you can order from this. You won’t find a lot in the local stores, though the men get their stuff there.’
Molly and Alexa pored over the pages of Lassetter’s, The Universal Providers. The clothes, on the whole, were simpler, but less modern, than the fashions back home. They were cheaper too.
‘Two shillings!’ Molly exclaimed, pointing out an illustration. The model wore a wide-brimmed chip hat, trimmed with full-blown roses. ‘Imagine wearing that here! Just right for a garden party in England. No, it’s topees for us from now on, eh?’
‘Ah, this is what I want. Look, Molly, “riding breeches to order”,’ Alexa said, pleased.
‘Um, Alexa – they’re for men!’
She ignored this. ‘How ridiculous! They actually charge extra for knee strappings, and buckskin ones are, wait for it, ten-and-six more!’ Havin
g worked hard for her money, she was careful with it, though she could be surprisingly generous as Molly already knew. She had a trunkful of pretty dresses bought for her in London by Alexa: an older woman’s choice, it was true, but in light, airy materials suitable for a warmer clime. Molly had no intention of ever wearing the bust bodices and firm corsets also provided. What was the point, she asked herself, when she was so lacking in voluptuous curves? And anyway, garters held up her stockings perfectly well.
‘I do like the striped shirt and the bush hat, though,’ Molly said. ‘And what about these boots – though I imagine they’d be the very devil to get on!’
‘Got a self-measurement form if you’re set on them,’ Frank observed, easing his feet out of his own cracked boots and revealing great potatoes in the toes of his felted socks. He added, rubbing his feet, which made his guests turn their faces away, ‘You can send orders post-free.’
‘I’m sure Elfie’s got a tape measure in that bag of hers. We’ll measure each other tonight in the bedroom.’ Alexa had noted Frank’s sly glances at young Molly. ‘Anything else you fancy?’ she asked the girl. ‘A camera, perhaps, to record life in this – place?’
‘Would I? Please, Alexa!’ Molly agreed enthusiastically.
It would soon be suppertime. She didn’t feel so enthusiastic about the prospect of eating the first meal cooked by Elfie on the help’s evening off, she thought.
‘You’ve come at a good time,’ Frank informed them. ‘The old-timers say there was a plague of darned rabbits in the eighties. Then there was a drought round about seven years ago, which was disastrous for the sheep – Australia is only now recovering from that. Still, the wool market revived last season,’ he added. ‘Over a million bales were recorded in the auction sheds.’ He didn’t enlarge on this, not wanting them to know that he had doubled his initial investment already. He was a cautious chap, Frank, always on the lookout for trouble or setbacks. Molly had already guessed that he and Elfie were alike in that respect.
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