by Barbara Wood
Sarah had known that the moment of his departure must come, but to hear him actually speak of it, to make it real and final, had distressed her. But she also knew that it was best that he was leaving, because what had somehow been born between them, but which both refused to acknowledge, should not have been given life in the first place. Sarah had taken care over the past five months not to allow herself to be alone with Philip. Her feelings for him were growing, intensifying; and she sensed the same feelings in him, which made things worse. It was a dangerous situation.
She had tried to analyze the love she felt for him, had asked herself many times, Why Philip? Sarah was not without admirers. There was Half-Caste Eddie, a lively, intelligent and good-looking station hand who was clearly infatuated with her. And then there was the young Aborigine who worked at Thompson's Store in Cameron Town, who always lingered around Sarah's buggy when she made purchases there. There was even a white man who was interested in her—Arnie Ross, one of the town solicitors, who had seen Sarah at a town picnic and had sent notes to Merinda asking if he could call on her.
But Sarah was interested only in Philip McNeal—more than interested. She was desperately in love. And she wanted to know why. He was attractive, but so was Arnie Ross. Philip was witty and smart and laughed a lot; so did Eddie. He was sensitive and kind; the young man at Thompson's was sensitive and kind. What was it about Philip, then, that made him so very special?
Perhaps it was the way he reminded her of her Aboriginal half. He would refer to it, he seemed to want to bring it out of her—seemed fascinated by it, in fact. If she let him bring that hidden part out of her, she wondered, what would happen to the white part? She couldn't be two people; she could only be one or the other. And yet, after seven years of living like a white woman, emulating Joanna, confining her body in corsets and shoes, and keeping the Aboriginal part of herself private and secret, now the white half seemed to be succumbing to that other, suppressed self. The sudden memories of her past were proof of it. And further proof was that when these remembrances did occur, Sarah welcomed them, they pleased her. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why she loved Philip.
And so now she wondered, as she rode through the morning sunshine, if she were to marry a man like Philip, to marry Philip himself, in fact, would she be allowed to be an Aborigine again?
She recalled how she had watched him a few nights ago, when he had been unaware of being watched. She had been down near the river where, hidden among trees, as she had once been hidden nearly eight years ago, she had watched him in the music room of the new house, running his hands over the carpentry, inspecting the paint, stooping to check the baseboards. Moonlight had slanted into the room, making Philip look as if he were composed of angles. He was tall and slim, with sharp shoulders and hips, and he moved with fluid grace.
She had wanted then to go to him and say good-by. She had wanted to say good-by to him in a passionate and permanent way, with her body and her breath. She had wanted to leave an imprint on him so that he would never forget her, as he had never forgotten Pollen on the Wind. But the wildness that lurked forever within her still alarmed her, she felt that she must always keep it in check. And so she had said good-by to him silently, with the few words she remembered of her own language: Winjee khwaba.
As she drove the wagon down the country road, she looked up to see a wedge-tailed eagle come skimming out of the sky toward her. It swooped low, then was up and off again in a bronze flash. She turned her face to the wind. In the distance she could make out the dark remains of a burned-out farmhouse surrounded by charred fields. And then she saw—
Philip, sitting in a meadow, drawing on a sketch pad, his horse tethered nearby.
She brought the buggy to a halt and observed him. She thought of how he had spent late nights poring over the house plans with Hugh and Joanna, proposing a change here, an addition there. Philip had overseen every beam going up, every nail driven in. When he had spotted a flaw no one else seemed able to see, he had ordered it torn out and done over again. He had walked over the construction site with the plans rolled under his arm, inspecting, measuring, checking and rechecking. And when an extra pair of hands had been needed—to raise a wall, to mix cement—Philip had joined the work crew.
The new house at Merinda was a unique house, Sarah thought; Philip had brought daring innovations to his creation. Although very large, it was built on one level, under one roof, the only grazier's house in the district like it. Philip had incorporated the kitchen into the plan instead of sticking it at the end of a long causeway, as was the usual custom. There was a bricked-in laundry copper on the back veranda, with taps for running water, a highly unusual feature. And the house was the first in the district to be lit by gaslight.
The design was beautiful, with a handsome hipped roof and a deep veranda that encircled the house, and tasteful iron lacework on the veranda posts. Visitors had come from all over the district to take a look at this house that Sarah often thought of as having been shaped by spiritual forces. Frank Downs had written about it in the Times, with an accompanying illustration drawn by his new wife, showing the Merinda homestead sitting grandly but harmoniously in its setting of eucalypts and native shrubs and grasses.
And Sarah thought now: Only Philip could have done that.
He looked up suddenly. A hot wind blew across the plain, causing the pages of his sketch pad to flutter. He was a hundred feet away from her, and yet Sarah felt something come from him; it rode the hot currents and swirled around her like an embrace—Philip's desire for her. And she wondered, as she waved to him, if he felt the same thing from her, reaching out for him.
He walked up, rather slowly, she thought, as if uncertain perhaps, or giving himself time to think of the right thing to say, because she suddenly realized what it was they both wanted to say, yet knew they could not, had no right, to say it.
"Hello, Sarah. I've been sketching the big house at Tillarrara," he said, holding the pad up to her. "It's a perfect example of Australian architecture. See the concave galvanized roof and the buttressed posts, the rusticated stone dressing. Judging by the use of bluestone and weatherboard, the Georgian influence and the carved bargeboards, I would place the time it was built at around 1840."
"It was built in 1841," Sarah said, handing the sketch pad back to him.
"I didn't expect to see you here," he said.
"I went into town," she said, "for the mail." Sarah recalled how, that morning, she had almost insisted that Joanna stay home and take care of Daniel, who had a bad cold, saying that she didn't mind driving into town for the mail, telling herself at the same time that since she knew Philip had said he was going to be taking a look at Tillarrara, she would avoid going that way, and take the main road instead. And then she thought of how, when she had left Cameron Town and approached the crossroads, she had convinced herself that this way was better because it was shorter, and that she most likely wouldn't run into Philip anyway. But she saw now the deliberateness of her actions, that she had very much intended for this encounter to take place.
"I'm glad you're here," he said. "I was hoping we could have a chance to talk before I leave."
And then Sarah realized, as she looked back over the past months, that Philip must have been avoiding her, just as she had been avoiding him.
He helped her down and they walked for a while.
They walked in silence, feeling their mutual love and desire weave an invisible shell around them, separating them from the rest of the world.
Philip marveled at how calm Sarah always made him feel; how his restless spirit seemed to grow tranquil when she was near him. He thought about the house he had just finished building—the crowning achievement, he thought, of his career as an architect, inspired in part, he suspected, by his feelings for Sarah.
The Westbrook house by the river, in its woodland setting, looked exactly as he had intended—as if it had grown there, naturally, among the eucalyptus trees and kangaroo grass. The sheer s
implicity of its hipped roof and deep veranda demonstrated perfection in style. Philip thought of what a joy it had been to design a house that was harmonious with its environment, to work with local timber and native stone, to create lines and angles that complemented nature rather than usurped it, to embody in its design the very spirit of the land it shared. It was almost as if, Philip realized, he had built the house the way the Aborigines would have done, if they had built houses—as an extension of the world around them, not at odds with it. Philip had felt restricted in the many cities in which he had designed and erected houses; his creative instincts had always been suppressed. Which was one of the reasons, he supposed, why he was always on the move, always searching. And he wondered now if he had in fact found what he was looking for after all, here in this remote corner of the world, in Westbrook's house, in the inspiration that the silent girl walking at his side had brought him. Never before had his work brought him such deep satisfaction.
Suddenly a gust of wind came up, and Sarah's bonnet flew off. She cried out, Philip made a grab for it, but the wind carried it away.
"I'll get it!" he said.
Sarah joined him in the chase, and they ran through the brittle grass, darting at the hat as it caught on a bush, only to have it snatched away by the wind again. Soon the loss of the hat ceased to matter; they reveled in the freedom of the wind and the sun and the open plains.
The hat finally came to rest on a low shrub, and Philip stopped suddenly to catch it, causing Sarah to run into him. They stumbled and caught each other, laughing, and then they were standing still, Philip holding Sarah against him, the hat forgotten.
His arms tightened around her. "Sarah," he said.
She buried her face in his neck. They felt the sweet sun on their bodies. He kissed her hair, her cheek. He held her so tightly she could hardly breathe. And then his mouth was on hers.
Sarah held onto him for another moment, then she drew away. He was beautiful, and he was what she wanted, but Sarah knew that Philip must travel on; and that he was married.
"Sarah," he said. "I want to talk to you, I want to explain. There is so much I want to say to you."
"Please don't," she said, tears shimmering in her eyes. "It isn't fair to Alice." "We can't help what has happened between us, Sarah. Do you deny that it's there? That we love each other?"
"No," she said. "I won't deny it. But we haven't the right."
"Doesn't our love for each other give us some rights?"
"But it isn't just us, Philip. There are other people involved. Your wife—" "I don't want to talk about Alice. This has nothing to do with her. It isn't her fault. I loved her when I married her, and I still love her, but in a way far different from the way I love you. I was attracted to her quietness, to the way she was rooted to home and family. I thought she would help me to settle down and put an end to my restlessness and wandering. Instead, she has become a victim of it. You were right, I build homes for other people, but none for myself. That isn't fair to her and Daniel. And that's why I'm taking her back to where she belongs, where she'll be happy.
"Walk with me a little while, Sarah. I don't want to leave like this; I want to tell you about myself, and I want to know everything there is to know about you. There is such a wonderful secretiveness in you that I want to explore. When I go away, you'll go with me, in here," he touched his chest. "Let's just talk, Sarah. Just for a little while, and then we'll each do what we have to do."
"Will you come back, Philip?" she said. "Will I ever see you again?"
He wanted to take her into his arms once more, but he let the space between them remain. "To someone else, Sarah, I would say: If it's in my stars, I'll come back. But to you, Sarah, I would say: If my songline brings me back here, then we will see each other again."
Joanna quickly opened the letter from the Karra Karra Mission. It contained a smaller envelope bearing English stamps, and a note from Robertson explaining that he had heard from his friend in London, the expert on Tironian shorthand, and that "enclosed herewith is the code which he sent to me. He has offered, Mrs. Westbrook, that, should you have any difficulty in translating your grandfather's notes, he would be glad to undertake the task for you."
She opened the envelope and withdrew the contents—a letter from Giles Stafford explaining the Tironian code, with a small notebook filled with symbols and their alphabetical, phonetic and whole-word equivalents.
Joanna stared in wonder. This was it. The key at last. Now she would be able to find out if the answers she had been seeking were indeed contained in her grandfather's writings.
But, eager as she was to get started on the translation, Joanna first opened the other letter, from a Mrs. Elsie Dobson, who lived, according to the return address on the envelope, in the same village as Aunt Millicent.
Joanna unfolded pale-blue stationery that still gave off a faintly lavender scent despite the many miles it had traveled, and read the small, precise handwriting. Mrs. Elsie Dobson introduced herself as a widow who lived across the village green from Millicent Barnes, whom she had known for nearly sixty years. She went on to say that it was her sad duty to report that Millicent had died, at the age of seventy, peacefully and in her sleep.
"As I was her closest friend," Mrs. Dobson had written, "and had taken care of her in her final days, when she was bedridden with stroke, she left everything to me, which was very little. When I was finally able to bring myself to go through her things, I came across your letters, Mrs. Westbrook. Millicent had saved them all.
"I am sorry that Millicent caused you and your mother such unhappiness by not answering your queries. She was not a spiteful woman, but she had never quite gotten over 'losing' her sister, as she used to put it, to John Makepeace. And then later, when Emily married Petronius Drury and left England with him to live in India, Millicent felt once again abandoned. But now that she has passed on, I don't think it would do any harm if I were to try to answer your questions.
"Millicent and her sister, though twins, were very unalike. Naomi, your grandmother, was so bright, so optimistic, and she was the stronger of the two. Millicent always seemed to me to be like the other side of the plate, dark, gloomy, and frankly, rather weak. The two were inseparable as girls, but when Naomi fell in love with John Makepeace and sailed off with him, Millicent said she would never forgive her."
Joanna realized that the room was growing dark. The sun had set, and beyond the closed door of her bedroom, she could hear Mrs. Jackson giving orders to Peony to set the table. The French doors to the veranda stood open, and Joanna could catch, on the warm evening wind, sounds from the yard as the shearers packed up their gear for the day.
Lighting a lamp, Joanna resumed reading Mrs. Dobson's letter. "I remember the day your mother was brought here, Mrs. Westbrook," she had written. "I was paying a call on Millicent that day. It would have been forty-five years ago, because I remember that I had brought little Raymond, my first child, to show Millicent. We were having tea, as I recall, and we were interrupted by a knock at the door, and we saw a most extraordinary man standing there. A sea captain, and he had a child with him, and he told us the most fantastic tale."
As she read Mrs. Dobson's words, Joanna pictured the odyssey her mother must have taken—from Australia to Singapore, and from there to Southampton, spending months on the open seas in the company of seamen. The child who had appeared on Millicent's doorstep had been nearly five years old, her skin burnt brown, her hair hanging past her waist, and wearing a pea jacket over her dress, and a sailor's hat. The only thing she had with her, aside from the presents sailors had bought for her, was a leather satchel containing some papers, and a curious toy made of fur, which she had named Rupert.
"The captain couldn't tell us how Emily had gotten to the Australian coast, where the first ship picked her up," Mrs. Dobson wrote. "The letter that came with her didn't explain much. It had been hastily written, we could see that."
Mrs. Dobson described the note as saying merely, "This is E
mily Makepeace, the daughter of John and Naomi Makepeace, and niece of Millicent Barnes. Please deliver her to Crofter's Cottage, Bury St. Edmund's, England. You will be rewarded."
Joanna tried to imagine the circumstances that had surrounded that desperate flight from Australia. Who had taken the little girl to the coast and delivered her to the authorities? Was it someone called Reena? Why hadn't she accompanied Emily to England herself, or had she been unable to do so? And what, then, had happened to John and Naomi?
She returned to the letter: "Millicent was beside herself. After all, this was Naomi's child, and Millicent adored Naomi. But what became of Naomi herself we never did find out. I suspect she died a long time ago, somewhere in Australia.
"As your mother was growing up," Mrs. Dobson continued, "she sometimes wondered why she had no memory of her parents. Whenever she asked Millicent about it, Millicent told her that she had had a fever when she was six, which of course was untrue. What had been the true cause of your mother's memory loss neither Millicent nor I could deduce, but it must have been something terrible, because I remember poor little Emily suffering from nightmares. She had an almost paralyzing fear of dogs and snakes. She had seen something unspeakable, I always thought, when she was in Australia. Millicent would not pursue it. I think she was too afraid of what she might find out.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Westbrook," Elsie Dobson concluded, "but that is all I can tell you. I have either forgotten the rest, for my memory is not what it used to be, or there simply isn't anything else. Your mother eventually grew into a lovely young lady, and we were all sorry when she went off to India, for we feared we would never see her again. I must tell you this, Mrs. Westbrook: When I heard of her death, I was on the one hand shocked, and yet, strangely, on the other hand I was not. There seemed to me always to have been something about your mother that made me think she was fated for tragedy. I don't know why I should have thought this, but I can only credit it to something I must have heard once, long ago, but have now forgotten."