by Barbara Wood
Joanna looked at Fanny's bruised face. Mike had used his fists on her this time, something he had never done before. "Fanny," she said, "you don't have to put up with this."
"Where am I going to go? Me, with eight kids." The young woman tried to smile. "It'll be all right from now on," she said. "He's promised to stay away from drink."
Joanna rose from the bed and tied the handles of her medical kit. She no longer used the small box that had belonged to her mother. She carried so much with her now that when she made house calls she used a stringybark basket that had been made by one of the women at the Aboriginal Mission.
"I'm afraid I can't pay you," Fanny said.
Joanna looked around the cabin, at the mattress on the floor for the children, the table that hadn't seen soap and water in weeks, the half loaf of bread, the opened tin of tea, nearly empty. "It's all right. I know you'll pay me when you can," she said, knowing that payment would never come.
Joanna and Sarah stepped out into the sharp dawn light, ducking their heads through the sagging doorway, while the children fell back, staring. Joanna saw the dusty yard, the wagon without wheels, tipped on its side, the tethered cow, its ribs so sharply defined that she wondered that it was still alive. She looked at the children. These would be among the ones, she knew, that missionaries and government workers had tried to rescue by requiring they attend the local outback school. But invariably they never went, because they had no shoes, or no inclination, or their father said he needed them to help on the farm. They would grow up to be like their parents, illiterate and uneducated, and the cycle would begin again.
Joanna reached into the deep pockets of her skirt and drew out a handful of hard candy. She held it out, and the children grabbed for it.
As Joanna climbed into the buggy after Sarah, Fanny Drummond appeared in the doorway, an anxious look on her face. "What is it?" Joanna said, going back to her.
"I was wondering, Missus," the young woman said, her eyes nervously avoiding Joanna's. She lowered her voice. "I was wondering if you could help me. It's about babies. I've got eight now, and I asked Poll Gramercy, but as Poll's Catholic, she wouldn't—"
"I understand," Joanna said quietly. It was a familiar request. "Do you have a sea sponge, Fanny? For washing?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Cut a piece off about the size of an egg. Tie a length of strong sewing thread around it—about this long." She gestured with her hands. "Make sure it's tied securely. Keep the sponge in vinegar. When you think your husband will want relations with you, put the sponge inside you first, making sure you can feel the string, so you can pull it out afterward. And be sure to remove it as soon as possible when he's finished."
Fanny regarded her with terrified eyes. "He'll know it's there! He'd kill me for sure if—"
"He won't be aware of it, Fanny," Joanna said. "Just don't let him see you putting it in or taking it out. It isn't completely effective, but it will help."
As Joanna and Sarah rode away from the Drummond homestead, Sarah said, "Next time it will be worse. Next time it'll be a broken arm or a leg. And there is nothing anyone can do about it."
"I'll tell Constable McManus. He'll drive over and take a look around, and give Mike Drummond a stern lecture. Sometimes it helps."
They rode through the morning sunshine, two young women wearing practical cotton blouses, long brown skirts and wide-brimmed hats on their upswept hair. A passerby might at first glance take them for sisters, as they both sat smartly upright in the buggy, shooing flies away, their voices soft. But the similarity ended with Sarah's dusky skin and exotic features. When Joanna had first started taking Sarah with her on calls, to deliver a baby or treat a wound, people had thought it odd. But over time, as Sarah's own skills had grown, she had gradually come to be accepted, even at the large houses such as Barrow Downs or Williams Grange, where Aboriginal servants were restricted to the kitchen, and by station hands who had overcome their resistance to being treated by a woman or an Aborigine. At twenty-one, Sarah King was regarded as another Westbrook, and only strangers raised an eyebrow now and then.
When they had driven a few miles from the farm, Joanna brought the buggy to a halt, took out her diary, and wrote by the light of the morning sun, "March 12, 1880: Fanny Drummond battered again by her husband. This time required stitches." The rest she did not record. The dissemination of information on anti-conception was illegal and punishable under the law. Should the diary fall into the wrong hands, Joanna knew that both she and Fanny could be in serious trouble.
Joanna looked out over the vista. It was almost time for the autumn rains. But the sky was as clear as a new china plate, deep and cloudless. The air was uncommonly dry, even at this early hour, as if the country side were in the grip of a summer heat wave, and for as far as the eye could see, the grass was yellow. She could just make out, in the distance, a small flock of sheep moving slowly. Joanna added to the diary entry: "I fear the predicted drought will indeed soon be upon us, and then Fanny Drummond will have something far more serious to worry about. I judge Mike to be one of those types who will abandon his family when harder times hit."
The diary, handsomely bound in moroccan leather, was Joanna's own, a gift from Hugh the day after their first child, Beth, was born, six-and-a-half years ago. Joanna recorded everything in it—events, observations, reflections, every time she took care of someone. It contained the history of the Westbrook family, including the birth of their second child, Edward, in 1874, and his death the following summer; through two miscarriages and up to the birth of Joanna's last child, a boy who also had not survived, and who was now buried beneath a headstone that read, "SIMON WESTBROOK DIED 1878, AGED THREE MONTHS." The larger story of the Western District had also been carefully recorded, and included such entries as:
January 14, 1874—Diphtheria has claimed fourteen more children in Cameron Town; I spoke out in favor of creating an underground sewage system, and to divert the raw sewage that currently runs down the town's main street.
November 10, 1876—Bush fires swept over a hundred thousand acres. Gracemere and Strathfield suffered heavy damage.
May 30, 1877—Attended wedding of Verity Campbell to Constable McManus. It was a beautiful affair, with over two hundred people attending.
November 12, 1878—Jacko Jackson's run has finally failed and he has relinquished his 7,000 acres to Hugh, in repayment of the debt he owed. Jacko and his family have moved to Merinda, where he will be Hugh's station manager and Mrs. Jackson will be our cook.
The diary was also a chronicle of her search for her mother's past.
Joanna kept a meticulous record of whom she had contacted, when, and the results. When Bowman's Creek and Durrebar continued to elude her, she wrote again to Miss Tallhill in Melbourne, saying that she wondered if a mistake had been made. But Joanna had been informed that Miss Tallhill had been taken north for her health, and she was never heard from again. An entry dated July 25, 1877 read, "I have received another letter from Patrick Lathrop in San Francisco. He regrets that ill health is preventing him from devoting as much time to studying my grandfather's notes as he would like, but that he will persist." This was followed by: "My last letter to Patrick Lathrop has been returned, marked, 'Addressee Deceased.'" The diary contained copies of letters Joanna had written to missionary societies, shipping companies, and, as always, to Aunt Millicent in England who, although always responding to Joanna's letters, never spoke of her sister, Naomi, or Joanna's mother, whom she had raised, or the subject of Karra Karra and what had happened there.
Finally, the diary contained maps Joanna had drawn, using the information on the deed, trying to locate Durrebar and Bowman's Creek in relation to each other. She had shown the maps to Hugh and Frank Downs, hoping they might recognize something familiar in one of them, but all they had been able to determine was that it looked as if the deed were for a large piece of property, and that it could be quite valuable should she ever find it. Joanna had then made tracings of differe
nt points along Australia's twelve-thousand-mile coastline, and juxtaposed her maps next to them, hoping to stumble upon a match. But in the end, one vital key—her grandparents' place of disembarkation—was always needed.
She had also filled pages of the diary with her own attempts at deciphering John Makepeace's shorthand, all of which resulted in gibberish. And lastly there was a systematic categorizing of all the clues she had been able to glean from her mother's diary and other sources, but the list was scanty and so far had come to nothing.
When she put her diary back into the basket, she realized that Sarah was watching her. "What's the matter?" Joanna said.
"I was going to ask you that. You've been rubbing your forehead."
"Have I? I wasn't aware of it."
"You're having headaches, aren't you?" Sarah said. "And you haven't been sleeping well lately. I've heard you out on the veranda in the middle of the night. What is it, Joanna? What's keeping you from sleeping?"
Joanna looked at the sky, which was turning from yellow to robin's-egg blue over the eastern mountains, and she thought of the joy she had known for the past few years—her life with Hugh and Beth; seeing Adam grow up to be a normal boy. In those years, Joanna had not forgotten the legacy she had inherited—the poisonsong, the fear that disaster could strike at any time—but her nightmares had gradually abated, and some of the urgency had gone out of her search for Karra Karra. But now the dreams were back, and with them, the old fears.
"The nightmares have started again, Sarah," she said. "Just like before—the wild dogs, the Rainbow Serpent, the cave in the red mountain. When I wake up I'm not only frightened, but I feel a strong compulsion to go there, wherever those things are taking place, and face something—I don't know what. It's the same compulsion that gripped my mother at the end of her life."
"When did the nightmares start?" Sarah asked.
Joanna thought for a moment. "It was just before shearing, I think. Yes, about six months ago."
"Can you think what could be causing them now?"
"I don't know. I think I recorded the first time it happened—" She drew out her diary and flipped through the pages. "Yes, here it is. Oh, it was the night of Beth's birthday party." She frowned. "That's strange ..."
"What is it?"
"I seem to recall something ..." She looked at Sarah. "My mother's nightmares began when I turned six. Well, clearly, my unconscious mind must have picked up the suggestion. I read about my mother's dreams and perhaps now my mind is recreating them."
They sat in silence for a moment, as the countryside around them began to stir, and a kookaburra flew by overhead, laughing at the dawn. "Sarah," Joanna said, "how can I dream of things that never happened to me? Have I somehow inherited my mother's memories? Or are my dreams the remembrances of things my mother told me long ago?"
"Whether they are real or not," Sarah said, "whether the poison-song exists or not, doesn't matter. It seems to me that the effects are the same. If your mind is convinced something bad is going to happen, then it is more likely to happen."
Joanna stared at her friend. "And is history going to be repeated? Is Beth going to have to go through what I went through with my mother? I am beginning to see a pattern forming, Sarah. I never used to be afraid of dogs, but now I am. I never used to have nightmares, but now I do. What comes next? And what can I do to stop it? I won't let my daughter become a victim of this madness."
"What are the nightmares about, Joanna? What are they telling you?"
"They're telling me that I have to be afraid," she said. "I keep thinking that the opal is an important part of it, that it might in fact be a key to all of this. But I don't know in what way."
"What are you going to do?"
An event was taking place in Melbourne called the International Exhibition, which Joanna had been planning on taking Beth and Adam to see. All the Australian colonies were represented there, as well as most of the nations of the world—all in one place, under one roof, at the same time—colonial officials, newspaper people, explorers, scientists, missionaries and various assortments of experts in all fields. "I'm going to take the opal to Melbourne with me," Joanna said. "Surely someone, among such a population, will be able to tell me where it came from."
Joanna guided the buggy past the main homestead and down the newly graded drive that led toward the river, where the building of the new house, begun nearly seven years ago but halted for various reasons, was once again under way, and she was struck as she always was by how the countryside had changed. She remembered how it had been when she had first come here, nearly nine years ago. There had been fewer homesteads then, and more trees; the roads had been little more than dirt tracks. But the railway now reached Cameron Town from Melbourne, and with it people had come. The main road was paved; and telegraph lines followed it. More homesteads dotted the landscape. There were more wells, more windmills, more fences.
And Merinda was growing, too. Despite threats of a coming drought, the Westbrook station was doing well, due to Hugh's vigilant management and some good financial investments, plus the rising price of lanolin.
And Zeus's first experimental lambs had been a success. When the new lambs had grown to maturity, Hugh had crossbred them with large-framed Saxony ewes, and the resulting offspring had proved to be big-boned and strong-wooled—sheep that everyone declared ought to do well in the drier areas. The new sheep did not produce the superfine wool that the Western District was so proud of, but a sturdy, practical wool that went into the making of blankets and carpets. At a time when the demand for expensive superfine wool was beginning to decline around the world, the market for coarser wool was rising. Frank Downs was the first to put the new Merinda strain to a test on his fifty thousand acres in New South Wales, and everyone watched to see how they would do. Seeing that they might thrive on those arid plains, other graziers, willing to take a risk, purchased Westbrook's new stock until, by this spring of 1880, six-and-a-half years after the birth of the first lamb, the new Merinda breed was being run experimentally on several stations in Victoria and New South Wales.
Merinda's prosperity was evident in the homeyard. Buildings had been added, and pens and livestock. The yard was busier and noisier than ever, with new lambs bleating, stud rams running with ewes in the breeding paddock, and station hands working at their myriad tasks. The original cabin was still there, but it was larger now. Rooms had been added over the years; the walls were freshly painted, a new veranda had been constructed all the way around it, with giant sunflowers and brilliant oleanders nodding against the railings, and a patch of lawn lay on either side of a stone walkway. And now that the new house was once again under construction, Joanna realized she would miss living in the old homestead.
When she reached the clearing, she brought the buggy to a halt under the shade of some trees—her trees, grown tall and strong from baby saplings that she had planted with her own hands nine years ago. She paused to watch Beth, as brown as bark, paddle in the billabong with poor old half-blind Button, one of the sheepdogs, splashing after her. Joanna and Hugh had christened the child Elizabeth, for Hugh's mother. But Joanna and Sarah called her Beth; to Hugh and Adam, she was Lizzie. She was a sturdy child, as tough and resilient, Joanna sometimes thought, as the Australian eucalypts that grew around Merinda. And she was never seen without Button. Two years ago, Beth had spared the dog from the customary sheepdog's fate—a single bullet to the head—once he was past usefulness by pleading for his life. Hugh had relented, and now Button was Beth's constant companion.
Adam, who had just turned thirteen, was sitting in the shade of a tree, painting a watercolor. He was growing into a handsome boy, Joanna thought, with the Westbrook eyes and that serious, attractive furrow between his brows. He hadn't the Westbrook robustness, but rather, Joanna often thought, the gentle mien of a scholar. Everything in nature fascinated Adam—fossils and insects, rocks and plants. When he had read Darwin's Origin of Species, he had declared that he wanted to be a naturali
st. And so he was enrolled in a special science program at the Cameron Town Secondary School, which he would begin next month.
Not a day went by in which Joanna did not marvel at these two children. And the love, the overpowering love! When Joanna had been pregnant with Beth, she had expected to feel a mother's love for her child. But when she had taken the baby in her arms for the first time, Joanna had been thunderstruck by the intensity and swiftness of that love. And how could it grow? she often wondered when she would watch Beth asleep, or frowning over a book. How could a human heart possibly hold such a volume of growing love? And yet it did. And now Joanna understood the other side of the mother-daughter bond. Now she knew the love Lady Emily must have felt for her.
But something threatened that happiness. Watching Beth splash and play in the billabong, with Button splashing blindly after her, Joanna was rocked by another strong emotion: the determination to protect her daughter from the legacy of fear and death she had inherited from Lady Emily. No Rainbow Serpent or poison-song was going to harm this beautiful child.
Joanna saw Hugh coming through the trees, in conversation with another man.
Hugh did not look as if he were a year away from forty. He looked in fact, Joanna could not help thinking, in his dusty trousers and flannel shirt and wide-brimmed cattleman's hat, like the handsome hero of his most recent ballad, "One Tree Plain."