‘Of course it isn’t,’ said Eunice without hesitation. ‘I always knew she admired him, but it was just girlish hero worship.’
‘Oh, it was far more than that, wasn’t it, Clarice? You pursued Daddy relentlessly until he didn’t know which way to turn.’
‘I did not.’
‘Of course she didn’t,’ said Eunice firmly. ‘My sister would never betray me in such a way – and neither would your father.’
‘Really? Then how do you explain what I saw in the rose garden at Government House on New Year’s Eve?’ Her malicious pleasure was clear as she paused for effect. ‘You finally got what you wanted, didn’t you, Clarice? I saw you and Daddy doing those disgusting things, and you were so wrapped up in each other you wouldn’t have noticed if half of Sydney had been watching.’
Clarice felt as if she’d been turned to stone as she gazed into those triumphant brown eyes. And yet this was no child, despite the immature body and girlish ribbons – for she was already a consummate mischief-maker with a venomous tongue well versed in spite.
Eunice was unsteady on her feet as she rose from the chair. Her face was ashen as she faced her daughter. ‘This can’t be true,’ she whispered. ‘Please, Gwen, tell me you’re lying.’
‘You’ve only got to look at her face to know I’m telling the truth.’
Eunice turned to regard Clarice, the disbelief and bewilderment slowly dawning into wide-eyed horror.
‘It wasn’t how it looked,’ Clarice stammered, as she got to her feet. ‘I’d had too much champagne and went out to clear my head. I fell asleep, and he took advantage of me.’
Eunice’s lip curled in disgust. ‘You don’t really expect me to believe that, do you?’
‘But it’s the truth,’ she protested. ‘I am not in love with Lionel, and we have not been conducting an affair. I never pursued him, Eunice. You have to believe me.’
‘I’ll never believe anything you say again,’ she snapped.
‘But, Eunice, she’s got it all wrong. I didn’t—’
‘Did you have sex with my husband?’ Her face was ugly with loathing, the eyes like flint.
Clarice stared at her in dumb dismay – how could she deny it? She gasped as Eunice struck her. Her head snapped back and she could taste blood on her lips.
Eunice gathered up the wrap and reticule from the chair and thrust them at her. ‘Get out of my house, you lying, treacherous trollop. I never want to see you again.’
‘But, Eunice, it wasn’t my fault. I never encouraged him.’ She glanced at the smirking Gwen, who was clearly enjoying the outcome of her meddling. ‘Can’t you see she’s just making trouble? Please, Eunice, you’ve got to listen to my side of this and believe that I never wanted it to happen.’
‘If you don’t go, I shall call a manservant to throw you out.’
Clarice clutched her possessions to her chest. Her sister’s coldness struck a chill in her heart. The family ties had been irrevocably broken by Gwen’s vicious tongue and she could see no way of repairing them. With her tears mingling with the blood from her cut lip, she stumbled out of the house and into the rain.
*
Clarice blinked and returned to the present. The rain had stopped, but the skies still lowered and the light was fading from the room. She sat there in the twilight and stared into the flickering flames of the fire.
Gwen had got her revenge that day, but at a terrible cost to all involved. Lionel returned to Sydney and Eunice had little choice but to take him back. His downfall finally came a year later in a series of revelations that rocked Sydney society. He was first caught in flagrante with another man’s wife, then the army discovered he’d ‘borrowed’ money from their funds and couldn’t pay it back. The first scandal was swiftly covered up, but when he was cashiered and charged with theft, the wave of gossip could not be silenced.
Algernon’s rage had been terrible to see, and she’d feared his heart would not stand the strain. He became convinced his knighthood was in jeopardy, and that his career was teetering on the edge of extinction because of the link between the families. He’d blamed her, of course, and she’d had little chance to defend herself against his ranting. But the effect of his rages paled in the light of her concern for Eunice, and although every one of her letters had been returned unopened, she continued to write to beg her forgiveness and offer love and support.
Clarice held her hands out to the flames, but their heat was not enough to take away the chill of those memories. Lionel had managed to secure a lowly office post in Brisbane – it would have been impossible for the family to return to England, for news of his disgrace would only follow them – but Eunice had not accompanied her husband. She had finally accepted the marriage was intolerable and had taken Gwen to Hobart in Tasmania. Clarice could only surmise that she had escaped to the island to find anonymity away from the claustrophobic atmosphere in Sydney.
Tasmania was sparsely populated in those days, but even so, the gossip had been rife and had soon travelled across the Bass Strait to the mainland, where Clarice had been disturbed and distressed by it.
Gwen’s hatred for her mother had been stoked by the continued and hurtful silence from Lionel and her unseemly behaviour had become all too public. Eunice had shut herself away in a small house overlooking the River Derwent, and was rarely seen. But news of her frailty had Clarice at her wits’ end, and she’d written daily. There had been no reply.
News of Lionel had drifted down from Brisbane to Sydney, and Clarice had not been surprised to learn that he was living openly with the daughter of an ex-convict, and had begun to gain the reputation of a reckless drunk who liked to race his horse and buggy at the country fairs. It hadn’t been long before he’d been dismissed from his office post.
Algernon had been forced to retire two years later than planned, but before he was due to leave Australia he’d been awarded his knighthood. Yet he was never to fully enjoy the honour, for the tensions of the previous two years had taken their toll, and within weeks he was dead.
Clarice closed her eyes and returned to that spring of 1891. She had never loved Algernon, but his death had come as a terrible shock, and his funeral was an ordeal. She had returned to the silent, shrouded house and sat among the packing cases and dust sheets, contemplating her future. They had planned to return to England to her family home in Sussex, but the animosity between her and Eunice had not been resolved, and she’d been torn between her desire to leave Australia and her need to gain Eunice’s forgiveness. With Algernon dead, she’d had important decisions to make.
The answer to what she should do next had come from Brisbane in the late summer of that year. Lionel had been killed shortly after Algernon’s funeral. He’d been racing his horse and buggy whilst inebriated and the buggy had overturned. Clarice had again written to Eunice. She couldn’t leave now – Eunice would need her help to get them all back to England.
But there was no reply, and as the rumours of Gwen’s escalating wildness filtered through to Clarice over the following year, she began to fret for her sister’s well-being. It was said the nineteen-year-old Gwen was too much like her father – that she had his appetites, and seemed determined to destroy herself and her mother in her grief at Lionel’s passing.
Clarice rose slowly from the chair and took the silver-framed photograph off the piano. The sepia image was grainy and faded by the years, but as she looked at her sister’s smiling face, she felt the prick of tears.
She had waited in Sydney a further two years in the hope her sister would write, and had reached the sad conclusion that Eunice would never forgive her. The arrangements had been made to sell the house and return to England, and she was doing the last of her packing when the letter she had so longed for was delivered.
Eunice’s note had been brief and stilted – more of a summons than an attempt at reconciliation. But Clarice had thanked God for the chance to make amends and had swiftly changed her plans and booked passage to Tasmania.
Cla
rice set the photograph back on the piano and sighed. She’d had no idea then of the trouble and heartache she would experience over the coming years – for fate had yet to deal its final, devastating blow.
Chapter 9
Dolly slammed the bucket down and stamped her foot. ‘I refuse to carry any more water in. Look at my hands, Lulu – and I’ve broken a nail,’ she wailed.
‘If you want a bath, then you’ll have to keep on carting water,’ Lulu replied, out of breath after the many treks from the outside boiler.
‘I will not live like this,’ Dolly stormed.
‘It will only be for a couple of days at the most,’ Lulu cajoled. ‘Come on, Dolly, try to see the funny side.’
The green eyes narrowed. ‘You might be used to such privations, but I’m not.’
Lulu’s voice was dangerously calm. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘You were born here, and no doubt consider living like this normal. Whereas I am used to the finer things and—’
‘There’s no call for you to be nasty,’ she retorted. ‘We’re both in this, and I’m finding it just as hard, so stop behaving like a spoilt brat and look on the bright side. They could have put us in a tent.’ She snatched up her sketchbook and a sweater as well as an apple from a bowl. ‘I’m going for a walk. Hopefully by the time I get back you’ll be in a more pleasant frame of mind.’
Dolly scowled and turned away, stubbing her toe on the iron bedstead Joe had brought down for her. With a howl of rage she grabbed the nearest thing, which happened to be the bucket, and threw it as hard as she could against the wall.
Lulu closed the door and left her to it. The stresses and strains of the long journey and the events that had marred her homecoming were beginning to tell on both of them. It was clear they couldn’t put up with such conditions for long – not if their friendship was to survive.
She went down the steps and stood in the sunshine as she pondered which way to go for her walk. She needed the exercise after that sea-crossing, and a respite from Dolly’s constant fault-finding, and as she didn’t fancy getting lost in the bush on her first day, she set off along the riverbank, and headed back to the stables. Having the real Ocean Child to sketch was simply too tempting.
It was peaceful among the trees, with only birdsong and the chatter of the river for company. Her boots trampled pine needles and eucalyptus leaves, snapping twigs and brushing against ferns which evoked the more pleasant memories of childhood. She had been raised to the sounds of the kookaburras and bellbirds, and to the scents of wattle, pine and horses, and here, in this quiet corner of Joe’s property, she could almost believe she’d returned.
The little house by the sea had been gloomy inside, she remembered, and cool even on the hottest of days. Almost surrounded by outbuildings and stables, it had sat squarely on a generous acreage which consisted of bush and paddocks. Tiny streams that had travelled from the distant mountains to reach the nearby shores of the Bass Strait laced the paddocks and kept them watered, and in the nights the hiss and crash of the sea beyond the bush acted as a lullaby.
Lulu breathed in the evocative aromas of warmed earth and freshly cut grass as she paused for a moment and looked around her. There had been no hills surrounding that childhood home, just blue smudges far into the distance – but here they reared up from the valley in undulating waves, their peaks shimmering in the afternoon heat. It was utterly beguiling to stand in this majestic place, to feel a part of it all even though she had never been here before.
With a sigh of pleasure, she gazed from the hills to the racing river. Was it heading for the sea to the very beach where she’d found sanctuary all those years ago? She loosely tied the sweater around her waist and continued walking, her thoughts leading her unwillingly into darker memories. With two bedrooms, a kitchen and sitting room, the house had been too small to escape the tensions within it, and she shivered as she recalled the scenes she’d witnessed there.
With a determined shake of her head, she dismissed them. This was not the time or the place to remember such unhappiness – to dwell on Gwen’s simmering hatred. It was a time to rejoice in her homecoming – and yet she couldn’t quite dismiss the suspicion that the mysterious gift of the colt was somehow linked to those darker days.
As she left the shelter of the bush she began to wish she’d worn a hat. The sun was quite strong, the extraordinary light so clear it almost dazzled her as she tramped purposefully across the clearing. But the long, upward slope had her heart thudding and the perspiration running down her back, and she had to stop to regain her breath. Sinking into the grass, she fanned her face with her sketchbook and regarded the view.
She was almost at the top, where a broad, flat stretch of land encompassed the homestead and stable-yard. Beyond the yard, and next to the home paddock, were a schooling ring and another paddock laid out with a series of jumps. No doubt that was where Ocean Child did most of his training. She leant back on her elbows and closed her eyes, revelling in the warmth of the sun on her face as a soft breeze ruffled her hair.
As her heartbeat slowed her restlessness returned. She was wasting time. Clutching her sketchbook, she slowly gained the hilltop and set off for the spelling paddock. There was no one around, so she clambered over the railings and headed for the stand of trees in the middle of the field.
Ocean Child was cropping the long grass on the far side of the paddock and looked at her inquisitively as she settled her back against a tree and opened her sketchbook. She smiled as she studied him. He was older and larger than her sculpture in England, his muscles more pronounced, but the sense of harnessed power was the same, as was the intelligence in his eyes. Her pencil poised over the clean page, the need to capture him irresistible.
Ocean Child approached slowly, his nose lifting to sniff the air at this unusual intrusion on his solitude.
Lulu kept an eye on him as her pencil flew over the page, delineating the prick of his ears, the carriage of his head and the curiosity in his eyes. She giggled in delight as the patrician nose explored her face. His whiskers were tickling, his grassy breath stirring her hair. ‘Hello, boy,’ she murmured. ‘Do you like what you see? Are we to be friends?’
Ocean Child nudged the sketchbook and tried to take a bite out of it.
Lulu hid it behind her back and reached for the apple she’d put in her pocket. ‘Don’t you dare tell anyone about this,’ she warned softly, ‘or we’ll both be in trouble.’
The colt snaffled the apple from her palm and chewed it with drooling alacrity before searching her trouser pocket for another.
‘Get off.’ She laughed, giving him a gentle push. ‘There aren’t any more.’
Ocean Child shook his head and snorted as if in disgust, then turned and resumed his grass-cropping.
Lulu watched him with interest. She had been around horses all her life, and although she’d never owned one before, she knew good breeding when she saw it. There was no doubt about it, she surmised, her gift was generous.
The colt continued to ignore her, his withers twitching as the worrisome flies buzzed and settled. Lulu retrieved her sketch pad and tried to capture his stance, the bend of his neck as he ripped at the grass and the silken ripple of his chestnut coat as it flexed over the beautifully formed muscles.
Her pencil stilled as Ocean Child raised his head, snorted and trotted towards the fence. Joe was coming through the gate, and he didn’t look at all pleased to see Lulu. She closed the sketchbook with a sigh and got to her feet.
‘You shouldn’t be in here,’ he drawled before she could say anything. ‘I don’t allow owners in the paddocks.’
His back was to the light, his features in shadow. Lulu shielded her eyes from the sun’s glare and looked up at him. ‘Perhaps you should give me a list of your rules. There seem to be a lot of them.’
He rammed his hands into his pockets and dipped his chin so she couldn’t see his expression. ‘There aren’t that many,’ he muttered, ‘but this is a racing yard, a
nd I can’t have owners wandering about the place. It upsets the horses.’
‘Ocean Child doesn’t look the least upset,’ she countered.
Joe glanced across at the colt, which had wandered off to doze in the shade. ‘Maybe not,’ he admitted, ‘but it’s a rule I won’t have broken.’
‘Oh dear.’ She sighed. ‘Are you really going to be so tiresome? I was only getting acquainted with him, you know.’
‘Give in to one owner and I’ll have all the rest getting in the flaming way,’ he said defensively. ‘If you want to get to know him, then do it on the other side of the fence, or in the yard.’
‘Yes, sir.’ She gave a mock salute.
He had the grace to grin shamefacedly as he scuffed the grass with the toe of his boot. ‘Fair go, Lulu. A racing yard is not the place for inexperienced owners – it can be dangerous when a thoroughbred gets it into its head to throw a tantrum.’
‘I know,’ she said calmly, ‘I’ve seen some nasty accidents in my time.’
He frowned. ‘You’re used to horses?’
‘I’ve been around them since I could walk,’ she replied, unwilling to go into further detail.
He glanced at her thoughtfully as they walked back to the gate. ‘I suppose you must have,’ he murmured. ‘With your mother’s showjumping and your uncle’s horse racing.’
She turned to him as he fastened the gate, her spirits plunging. ‘So, you know my mother then?’
Joe shrugged and refused to meet her gaze. ‘Only by sight.’
He was clearly reluctant to discuss Gwen, which wasn’t really surprising considering what had happened that morning. ‘But this is a small island and everyone knows each other. Your paths must have crossed at some point.’
He was looking distinctly uncomfortable again. ‘Never met her, but I’ve heard about her reputation for causing trouble,’ he drawled.
Lulu digested this, accepting that after the incident with the truck there would be no longed-for reconciliation – and that Gwen’s lack of popularity was only to be expected. Her thoughts made the natural progression and she decided to question him more closely. ‘Is it usual for you to accommodate your owners down in the valley?’
Ocean Child Page 17