by Barbara Wood
A ship's porter came up, bearing a trolley. "Shall I put your trunk ashore for you, miss?" he asked.
"What was that all about?" she said, gesturing to the Aborigine.
"Don't take it personal, miss. He probably decided the trunk was too heavy. They don't like hard work. Here, I'll just cart this down to the dock."
She followed the steward down the gangway, glancing back to see if she could see the Aborigine. But he seemed to have vanished.
"Here we are, miss," the porter said when they were on the pier. "Is anyone meeting you?"
She looked at the crowd amassed on the dock, people who were waving excitedly to arriving passengers, and she thought of the entry in her mother's diary: "Sometimes I wonder, is there any chance that members of my family are still alive somewhere in Australia? My parents?"
Joanna handed the porter a few coins and said, "No. No one will be meeting me."
As the crowd jostled around her, she forced herself to think what she should do next. First she would have to find a place to stay, and a way to manage on her allowance; it would be two-and-a-half years before she would come into her inheritance. And she would need to find someone to help her locate the property her family owned, someone knowledgeable about the Australia of thirty-seven years ago.
Suddenly, Joanna was aware of a commotion behind her, a voice shouting, "Stop! Stop that boy!"
As she turned, she saw a small boy darting through the crowd on the deck of the ship. He looked to be four or five years old, and he was flinging himself first in one direction, then another, a steward in pursuit.
"Stop him!" the steward shouted, and as people grabbed at the child, he twisted around and ran down the gangway, flying past Joanna.
She watched him run blindly, his skinny legs in short pants frantically pumping up and down. As the steward reached him, the boy threw himself flat and began to bang his head on the pier.
"Here, here!" the man said, grabbing the child by the collar and shaking him. "Stop that!"
"Wait!" Joanna said. "You're hurting him."
She knelt next to the squirming boy and saw that he had cut his forehead. "Don't be afraid," she said. "No one is going to hurt you." She opened her bag, took out a handkerchief and patted his head gently. "There now," she said, "this won't hurt."
She looked up at the steward. "What happened?" she asked. "He's terrified."
"I'm sorry, miss, but I ain't no nursemaid. He was put aboard back at Adelaide, and someone had to keep watch. He's been belowdecks for the past few days, and he's been nothing but trouble. Won't eat, won't talk ..."
"Where are his parents?"
"Don't know, miss. All I know is, he's been a lot of trouble and he's getting off here. Someone is supposed to be coming for him."
Joanna noticed that there was a one-pound note pinned to the boy's shirt, and a piece of paper that read adam westbrook. "Is your name Adam?" she asked. "Adam?"
He stared at her but did not speak.
The steward started to unpin the pound note. "I reckon this is due to me considering all the trouble he's been."
"But it belongs to him," Joanna said. "Don't take it."
The steward looked at her for a moment, taking in the pretty face and the voice that sounded as if she were used to giving orders. Recognizing the expensive cut of her clothes and the first-class sticker on her trunk, he decided she must belong to someone important. "I reckon you're right," he said. "I don't dislike kids, mind you. It's just that he was such a handful. Cried the whole time, threw fits like this. And he wouldn't talk, wouldn't say a single word. Well, I have to get back to the ship." And before Joanna could say anything more, the steward disappeared into the crowd.
Joanna looked carefully at the boy, at his pale, fragile face. It occurred to her that if she were to hold him up to the light, she would be able to see right through him. She wondered why he had been all alone on the ship, and what terrible pain or unhappiness had driven him to injure himself.
Then Joanna heard a man say, "Pardon me, miss, but is this Adam?"
She looked up to find herself staring at an attractive man with a square jaw, a straight nose, sun-creases around smoky-gray eyes.
"I'm Hugh Westbrook," he said, removing his hat. "I've come for Adam." He smiled at her and then dropped down to one knee and said, "Hello, there, Adam. Well, well. I've come to take you home."
Without his hat, Joanna thought she could see a resemblance between the man and the boy—the same mouth, with a thin upper lip and a full lower one. And when the man gave the child a serious look, the same vertical furrow appeared between his eyebrows that was etched between the boy's.
"I reckon you must be kind of scared, Adam," Westbrook said. "It's all right. Your father was my cousin, so that makes us kin. You're my cousin, too." He reached out, but Adam shrank back against Joanna.
Westbrook was holding a packet wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. He began to open it, saying, "Here, I've brought these for you. I thought you might like to have some new clothes, the kind we wear at Merinda. Did your mother ever tell you about my sheep station, Merinda?"
When the boy didn't speak, Hugh Westbrook stood up and said to Joanna, "I bought these in Melbourne." He unfolded a jacket, which had been wrapped around boots and a hat. "The letter wasn't specific about what he might need, but these will do for now, and I can get more later. Here you go," he said, and he held the jacket out to Adam. But the boy let out a strange cry and covered his head with his arms.
"Please," Joanna said, "let me help." She took the jacket and guided the boy into it, but it was too large, and Adam seemed to disappear.
"How about this, then?" Westbrook said, but when he put the bush hat on the boy's head, it covered Adam's eyes and ears and settled on his nose.
"Oh dear," Joanna said.
Westbrook turned to her. "I hadn't thought he would be this small. He'll be five in January; I'm not used to children, and I guess I overestimated things." He gave Adam a thoughtful look, then said to Joanna,
"I envisioned a boy who could take care of himself. I haven't a notion of the needs of a boy this small, and at the sheep station we're out working all day. I can see that Adam is going to need a lot of attention."
Joanna looked down at the child and inspected the cut on his forehead. "He's in such pain," she said. "What happened to him?"
"I don't know exactly. His father died several years ago, when Adam was a baby. And then his mother died recently. The South Australia authorities wrote me saying that Adam had been suddenly orphaned, and asked if I would take him, since I was his nearest relative."
"The poor boy," Joanna murmured, resting her hand on Adam's shoulder. "How did his mother die?"
"I don't know."
"I hope he didn't witness it. He's so young. But something seems to have left a terrible mark on him. What happened to you, Adam?" Joanna said to him. "Tell us, please do. It will help if you talk about it."
But the boy's attention seemed to be focused on a towering crane that was lifting cargo onto a ship.
Joanna said to Westbrook, "My mother was hurt when she was very young. She witnessed something terrible, and it haunted her all her life. There was no one to heal her, no one to help her understand the pain and give her the love and kindness she needed. She was raised by an aunt who lacked affection, and so I believe the wound never healed. I believe the memory of that childhood event actually killed her."
Joanna placed her hand beneath Adam's chin and lifted his face. She saw pain in his eyes, and terror. It's as if he's living a nightmare, she thought. As if we are all part of a bad dream.
She bent down and said to the boy, "You're not dreaming, Adam, you're awake. Everything is all right, really it is. You are going to be taken care of. No one is going to hurt you. I have bad dreams, too. I have them all the time. But I know that they are only dreams and that they can't hurt me."
Westbrook watched Joanna speak soothingly to the boy, noticing how her slender body arched gen
tly toward Adam—like the eucalyptus that grew in the outback, he thought—and when he saw the calming effect she was having on the boy, he said, "Thank you for doing what you did, it was kind of you to help. You must be anxious to be going. If there is someone here to meet you, they'll be looking for you, Miss ..."
"Drury," she said. "Joanna Drury."
"Are you here on holiday, Miss Drury?"
"No, not on holiday. My mother and I planned to come to Australia together. We were going to look into some things about our family, and also for some land she inherited. But she died before we left India. So I have come on alone." She smiled. "I've never been to Australia before. It is a bit overwhelming!"
Westbrook looked at her for a moment and was surprised to see something spark suddenly in her eyes, and then vanish. And there had been something behind the smile, and he recognized it as fear. When he heard the restraint in her voice, as if she were saying something quite ordinary while holding back a secret, he realized he was very intrigued.
"Where is this land you're looking for?" he asked. "I know Australia pretty well."
"I don't know. I believe it is near a place called Karra Karra. Do you know it?"
"Karra Karra. Sounds Aboriginal. Is it here in Victoria?"
"I'm sorry, I just don't know."
Westbrook looked at her for a moment, then said, "I know a lot of people in Australia. I would be glad to help you find your land."
"Oh," she said. "That would be very kind of you, Mr. Westbrook. But you must be in a hurry to take Adam home."
As he watched her brush a stray hair from her face, he was struck by the delicacy of the gesture. He looked over at the men gathered around the gangway, ogling the female passengers. Some of the men held signs that said, Wife Wanted. Must Cook and Need Healthy Woman, Matrimony in Mind. A few of the bolder ones called out to the disembarking women. Westbrook suddenly pictured Joanna all alone in Melbourne, a rough frontier city where men outnumbered women four to one, and where she would be defenseless against the more ruthless types.
"Miss Drury," he said, "may I ask where you will be staying in Melbourne?"
"I suppose I shall go to a hotel first, and then look for a boarding house or an apartment."
"It occurs to me, Miss Drury, that perhaps we could help each other. You need help in getting acquainted with Australia, and I need help with Adam. Might we make a bargain? You help me with Adam for a time, help us get him settled in, and I'll get you going on looking for this Karra Karra. It wouldn't be for long, I'm getting married in six months," he said. "My station, Merinda, isn't fancy, I imagine you're used to far finer places. The house is mostly a veranda and a wish. But you and Adam can have it to yourselves, and I'll see that you have everything you need. I want the boy to get off to the right start with me, and he seems calmer with you."
When she seemed uncertain, he added, "I can understand your hesitation, but what do you have to lose? The bargain will be, come and take care of Adam for six months, and I'll help you look for whatever it is you're looking for. Australia covers three million square miles, most as yet unexplored, but I know a certain amount of it. You can't do it on your own, you'll need help. One of my friends is a lawyer, and perhaps I could ask him to look into the property you inherited. Please think about it, Miss Drury. Even come for a month, get us going, and I'll help you get started on the matters you mentioned. I promise you, nothing improper will occur. Think about it while I go and get the wagon."
She watched him disappear into the crowd, then she felt a small hand slip into hers. When she found Adam's large gray eyes studying her, Joanna considered this unexpected turn of events. She thought of everything she had sacrificed to come here, everything she had left behind: her friends in India, the cities she knew so well, the culture she had grown up with, and finally the handsome young officer who had stood with her at the funeral and who had asked her to marry him. And she felt suddenly homesick. Now, as she watched the crowd on the pier disperse to waiting carriages, wagons and horses, saw the heavy traffic on the street that led into Melbourne, as she thought of being alone for the first time in her life, among strangers in a strange country, she thought of how easy it might have been to stay in India, but for her mother's request.
Then she found herself thinking of the young Aborigine who had come aboard the ship a few minutes earlier, and the strange look he had given her when he had taken hold of her trunk. And she remembered that she really had had no choice but to come to Australia.
She thought of Hugh Westbrook, and was surprised to realize that what she mostly thought was how attractive he was. He was good looking, and he was young—around thirty, she judged. But it was more than that. Joanna was used to spit-and-polish uniforms and a rigid correctness in manner. Even the marriage proposal from the young officer had come stiffly and politely, as if he had been following protocol. That young man, Joanna knew, would never have dreamed of addressing a lady he had not been formally introduced to. But Westbrook had seemed relaxed and comfortable, as if following his own rules, and Joanna found that she liked it.
He had said he would help her find Karra Karra. She knew she was going to need someone's help, and he did say he was familiar with Australia. Should she tell him, she wondered, the other part of it—about the dreams, how bad things seemed to follow them? No, she decided, not now, not yet. Because not even she understood the dreams, was not even sure they existed, except in her imagination.
When the memory of the young Aborigine on the ship came back again—how he had looked at her and then abruptly turned away—she pushed it out of her mind. Also her dream, subsequently fulfilled, of a big ship becalmed. And she focused on what Hugh Westbrook's sheep station might be like. Did it sit upon rolling green pastures like the sheep farms she had once seen in England? Was it shaded by oaks, did sparrows chatter in a garden behind the kitchen? Or was Hugh Westbrook's home different from any farm in England? Joanna had read as much as she could about this curious continent of Australia, where there were no native hoofed animals, no large predatory cats, where the trees did not shed their leaves in autumn, but their bark instead, and where the Aborigines were said to be the oldest race on earth. And she was suddenly curious to see it all.
"Well, Miss Drury? What do you say?"
She turned and looked at Hugh Westbrook. He had not replaced his hat, and she saw the rough way his hair lay on his head. She had grown up among pomaded men, officers who kept their hair slicked down; Westbrook's fell this way and that, longish and wavy, as if he had given up on a comb and let the hair go the way nature meant it to.
She felt Adam's small hand in hers, and thought of how desperately this child had banged his head on the ground, as if to drive out unspeakable memories. So she said, "All right, Mr. Westbrook. I'll come for a little while."
His smile was one of relief. "Do you want to stop in the city for anything? You might want to send a letter to your family, tell them where you will be?"
"No," she said. "I have no family."
As Westbrook loaded Joanna's trunk into the wagon, she went through a smaller bag, took out a bottle and a clean bandage, and patted some lotion onto Adam's wound.
"What is that you're putting on Adam's head?" Westbrook asked.
"It's eucalyptus oil," Joanna said. "It's an antiseptic and it hastens healing."
"I didn't know there were eucalyptus trees outside Australia."
"A few have been imported to India, where I lived. My mother obtained the oil through a local chemist's shop. She used it in many of her remedies. One of her talents was medicine, healing."
"I didn't think anyone but Australians knew about the healing powers of eucalyptus oil, although credit has to be given to the Aborigines. They were using eucalyptus in their medicines centuries before the white men came here."
As the wagon pulled away from the pier, away from the crowds and the Estella, Joanna thought of what she might find somewhere in these three million square miles. She thought of the mysterious you
ng black woman who had haunted her mother's dreams, and of the grandparents who had come to this continent over forty years ago. She thought of dreams and nightmares and what meanings they might hold, and she thought of returning to the place where it had all begun, where her mother's fragmented memories abided. Something had been started there that must be ended.
Finally she thought of the man at her side and the hurt little boy, people who had suddenly come into her life. And she was filled with a sense of wonder and fear.
TWO
P
AULINE DOWNS COULDN'T WAIT FOR HER WEDDING NIGHT. While the seamstress put the last few pins into the elegant peignoir, Pauline turned this way and that, admiring herself in the full-length mirror. She could barely contain her excitement.
Just wait until Hugh sees me in this!
It was the very latest style—only as old as the weeks it had taken for the pattern and fabric to make the voyage from Paris to Melbourne. The material was a creamy champagne-peach satin, trimmed with Valenciennes lace and the kind of tiny buttons only the House of Worth could produce. The peignoir seemed to spill over Pauline's slender body, outlining the full breasts and smooth hips, and the way it pooled at her feet made Pauline, who was tall, look even taller. It had taken her weeks to arrive at just the right design for what she would wear on her first night alone with Hugh Westbrook.
The peignoir was only part of the enormous trousseau she was preparing for her honeymoon. Her bedroom suite at Lismore, her home in the Western District, was cluttered with bolts of fabric, fashion magazines, patterns and gowns in various stages of completion. And they were no ordinary gowns; Pauline did not consider herself an ordinary woman. She made certain that, despite being on the other side of the world in a colony whose fashions were usually a few years behind those of Europe, her bridal wardrobe was going to be in the latest style.
How delicious, Pauline thought, as she looked around at the dresses she would be wearing when she was Mrs. Hugh Westbrook. The tedious old crinolines were finally being done away with and a whole new style was emerging. She was dying to show off this radical new invention called the bustle, and the daring tied-back skirts that lifted the hems inches off the floor. And the fabrics! Blue silks and cinnamon satins, waiting to be seamed and bowed in black or gold velvet, with white lace to set off the throat and wrists. How perfectly they complemented her platinum hair and blue eyes. Dress was one of Pauline's passions. Being in the forefront of fashion helped her to forget that she wasn't in London, but in a colonial backwater named Victoria in honor of the Queen.