‘Friday, dear,’ Elizabeth said. ‘What can I do for you?’ She glanced at the watch on the silver chatelaine she always wore around her plump waist. ‘Shouldn’t you be starting work?’
‘I’ve got a few minutes.’
‘I hope you don’t plan to wear those dreadful boots?’
Friday smiled. ‘No. Can I talk to you about Rowie?’
Sighing, Elizabeth closed the ledger in which she’d been writing, removed her gold-wire spectacles and sat back in her chair. ‘How is she?’
‘Bleeding all over her room,’ Friday said without a shred of guilt, despite her assurance to Rowie only minutes earlier. She had a plan.
‘My God, really? Should I send for Dr Chandler?’
‘No, I just mean she’s bleeding heavily.’
‘That’s unfortunate. It really is.’ Elizabeth looked grim. ‘I’ve thought hard about this and I’m sorry to say it but I’m going to have to let her go.’
Friday nodded.
‘I really don’t have much choice,’ Elizabeth went on. ‘I’ve had complaints from customers about availability, and mess and what have you, and it isn’t as though she’s only off a few days a month. We could have worked around that. She seems to be on the rag all the time. I am a bit cross she wasn’t honest with me when I took her on.’
‘She says she wasn’t having trouble when she started here.’
Elizabeth rolled her eyes.
‘What a shame,’ Friday said, staring at the scuffed toes of her boots. ‘The money she sends home to her mam and sisters will have to stop, I suppose. I hear they’re only little girls, her sisters.’
Elizabeth sighed again, but much louder this time.
‘Father’s long gone, of course.’
Silence.
‘Still, I suppose she can get work somewhere scrubbing floors. Christ,’ Friday said, alarmed, ‘I hope that doesn’t make her troubles even worse!’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Elizabeth exclaimed. ‘I’ll see what I can do! Can she cook? I can probably put her in the kitchen until she finds something else. Not permanently, mind! And I expect I can spare the money for a few doctor’s visits. What are you smirking at, young lady?’
Friday kissed Elizabeth’s powdered cheek. ‘Thank you, Mrs H. You’re such a good person.’ And she grabbed her things and hurried out, properly late now.
‘So are you, Friday Woolfe,’ Elizabeth said to the empty room. ‘If only you would stand still long enough to realise it.’
October 1830, Sydney Town
Harrie perched on an upturned bucket and sipped her tea. Adam and Esther Green’s backyard was really quite pleasant now that someone — Mr Green, probably, given that she apparently didn’t like gardening — had planted shrubs and rose bushes along the tall fence and a flowerbed in each corner. They would all shrivel up to sad little sticks in summer because there would be no water to spare for them, but a few might struggle back in the autumn. There was also a new gate, installed at the behest of Mr Green, who likely didn’t want Sarah’s friends climbing over the fence and landing in the new plantings.
‘Is your tea hot enough?’ Sarah asked.
‘Yes, thanks.’ Harrie raised her cup. ‘New tea service?’
‘For my visitors. For you and Friday. I got sick of her telling me I had to use the old cracked cups, so I bought my own.’
‘Very pretty.’ It was, too, the pattern on the china a complicated arrangement of flowers and birds in dark blue against a white background.
‘They’re not actually new; they’re from the pawnshop. I only got the cups and saucers and the teapot.’
‘Mr Skelton?’ Mr Skelton was the fence who bought everything Sarah stole from Adam Green.
Sarah nodded.
‘Good price?’
‘Reasonable. What’s she doing now?’
Harrie squinted past Sarah into the house. ‘Still looking through her magazine. Now she’s … no, now she’s coming out.’
They’d positioned their buckets as close as possible to the kitchen without making it obvious. Esther Green emerged from the house, shot stony-faced disapproval at them and disappeared into the kitchen.
She popped back out a moment later. ‘Sarah, I want you at work polishing the furniture in the parlour as soon as you’ve had your tea. Harriet, you’ll have to leave. And when I’ve finished baking, Sarah, come out here and clean up.’ With another pointed glare she vanished again.
‘Ready?’ Sarah whispered.
Harrie swallowed. Was she? She’d thought hard about this and still wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do. It was mean, but then Esther Green was mean herself, and really shouldn’t be so unkind to Sarah. But it was more than that. Given what had been happening lately, she had an uneasy feeling that something may well be started that might not so readily be stopped again. Her friend needed help, though; Esther Green was wearing her down, that was plain. But it was all right for Sarah — she didn’t believe ghosts were real.
Against her better judgment, she nodded.
Something clattered onto the table in the kitchen.
Sarah smiled and touched her hand. ‘Good girl.’ In a louder than normal voice she said, ‘Are you still having those terrible dreams?’
‘About Rachel?’ Harrie replied squeakily. She cleared her throat.
‘Yes. Have they gone away?’
The clattering next door ceased.
‘No,’ Harrie said. ‘They haven’t.’
‘Mine haven’t either,’ Sarah admitted heartily. ‘It’s worrying, isn’t it? What does she do in your dreams?’
For an awful second Harrie forgot what Sarah had coached her to say. ‘She, um … well. Oh! She appears and tells me she’s all alone out at St John’s Cemetery.’
‘Yes!’ Sarah exclaimed. ‘That’s what she does in my dreams. Except she seems quite angry in mine.’
‘She’s angry in mine, too.’ Harrie agreed. ‘Really angry.’ From the corner of her eye she saw Esther appear at the kitchen window and peer out at them.
Sarah raised her eyebrows, silently asking Harrie if Esther had taken the bait. Harrie gave a barely perceptible nod.
‘She stands at the foot of my bed, all pale but at the same time faintly glowing, like a lamp turned all the way down,’ Sarah went on. ‘At least, I think I’m dreaming when I see her. I was wondering if we should talk to a priest. What do you think, Harrie?’
‘I don’t know, Sarah. I am feeling quite frightened by it all.’
‘So am I.’ Sarah finished her tea and stood. ‘I have to get back to work now. Do you mind if I come to church with you this Sunday? I don’t really know any priests I can talk to.’
Harrie rose as well. ‘I’m sure that will be fine. Father Davenport is a nice man.’ She handed Sarah her cup and saucer. ‘Thank you for the tea.’ As she turned to go, she said through the kitchen window, ‘Good day, Mrs Green.’
But Esther, eyes wide, only stared at her.
Harrie felt vaguely guilty on the way home to Gloucester Street, as if she’d let someone down, though certainly not Esther Green.
Rachel.
As she negotiated carriage traffic, potholes and piles of animal droppings on her way across George Street, she thought about how for her, in the end, it almost always came down to guilt.
She still felt guilty — every day, in fact — for the theft of the silk and embroidery thread for which she’d been arrested in London two years earlier. Not because she was now a convict — she’d actually made her peace with that — but because in those few seconds of terrible, misguided thinking she’d deprived her mother and her younger brother and sisters of both her presence and the regular wage she had earnt. Robbie was ten now and, according to the letters she received from home, working for pennies as a barrow boy at Covent Garden, and Sophie at almost nine was bringing home piece work, much against her mother’s wishes. And Harrie’s: her sister would be blinded and hunchbacked by the age of twenty-five if she kept that up. Anna, the
youngest, was still at home, but for how much longer?
She felt guilty, too, for not doing more to ensure that Gabriel Keegan had never gone near Rachel on the Isla. But she’d not done more because she’d assumed he was decent — just because he’d appeared to have good manners and could afford to pay for a cabin and wore a silk top hat. Oh, she’d been so naive, and look what had happened! It had been the same with Bella Jackson, whom she had initially considered so generous — kind, even — in spite of everyone saying what a nasty piece of work she was. And now they were at the horrible woman’s mercy, waiting and waiting to see what she would do to them. The worry of it was dreadful and some days it built and built until Harrie felt like screaming so her throat bled.
And she hadn’t done enough when the time had come for Rachel’s lying-in, and their poor little sweetheart had slipped away. The damage Keegan had inflicted on her had killed her, of course, but surely she could have done something more to help her? And she hadn’t even gone to Rachel’s funeral — thank God Friday had.
Though they’d avenged her, the guilt over what they’d done to Gabriel Keegan was burning a hole in her. At first she hadn’t really felt much at all and she’d stupidly thought she might have got away without any repercussions to her conscience. But that had changed and every day now she battled with herself: sometimes she was sure she would go to hell for the sin of taking a human life; at other times she believed they’d been right to kill Keegan. It was exhausting. She prayed for serenity and a sign she wasn’t losing her mind, and at times it came. And sometimes it didn’t.
And then of course she was responsible for the most awful betrayal of all.
She could have stopped James Downey, if only she’d known what he was going to do. She could have run after him and stood in front of the mortuary door and barred him from entering; she could have flung herself across poor Rachel’s cold, still body and not let him near; she could have slapped the scalpels and drills and saws from his hands — anything so he couldn’t have done what he did. But he had done it; he’d cut into her, horribly violating her even after death. And he’d done it without Harrie’s permission.
She would never forgive him for that, no matter how much she had come to care for him; no matter what silly ideas had dared to blossom in her head about the two of them since his wife died. Rachel had been hers, she had belonged to her and Friday and Sarah, and James Downey hadn’t asked. He had walked all over them in his shiny toff boots and his smart black mourning coat that she had repaired the button on, and he hadn’t asked her permission.
And she was confused because she couldn’t decide whether she felt guilty or angry about what he’d done. She was so accustomed to feeling guilt that whenever anger popped up it muddied everything. But she did know she wasn’t ever going to speak to James Downey again.
Harrie entered the welcome shade of the new George Street market sheds and bought enough fruit to feed the Barretts for the next few days, then headed north down the sloping street towards the Rocks. On the way she stopped and peered into a shop window displaying lace and paper fans, gloves, embroidered and lace-trimmed pelerine collars, horn and tortoiseshell hair combs, fur muffs — as if anyone would need a muff during an Australian summer! — silk parasols, and fancy beaded and embroidered reticules.
Tapping her finger against her bottom lip she wondered: her own embroidery was, frankly, superior in both design and execution to that displayed here, even if it was imported from England. Could she make something that might compete? Handkerchiefs? Embroidered collars, perhaps? Not reticules — the beads were too expensive to buy. Would she have the time? Not really, especially if she was going to sew Friday some new dresses. But after that, perhaps? And if she actually made a profit she could make a genuine financial contribution to the Charlotte fund and stop feeling so useless. And perhaps even send a bit extra home to her mother.
She turned away from the window, full of ideas, and that’s when she felt it: someone was watching her. But she walked on, eyes straight ahead. It could be anyone; it could even be a feral dog. She would be all right; there were dozens of people on the street.
She hurried along until she came to the plaza in front of St Philip’s Church and turned into Charlotte Place. The being-watched feeling stayed with her. She went straight past the turning into Gloucester Street and at Cumberland turned right and walked quickly, her boots crunching in the powdered limestone gravel, until she came to Overton’s grocery store. Risking a glance over her shoulder she glimpsed the shadow of someone ducking out of sight. So, not a dog, then.
Her heart knocking she entered the shop. Eleven-year-old Merry Overton stood behind the counter.
Her pretty face broke into a smile. ‘Hello, Harrie!’
‘Hello, Merry. How are you today?’
‘Dandy, thank you. Can I help you?’
God, Harrie thought, was there anything Nora Barrett needed? ‘Two pounds of crystallised white sugar, please.’ Nora was always making jam.
While Merry measured out the sugar Harrie went to the door. There were half a dozen people abroad but no one sinister-looking. ‘Merry, may I speak to your father, please?’
Merry nodded, twisted the package of sugar closed and disappeared into the back of the shop.
Harrie had been assigned to the Overtons for a few months but, after doing her deliberate best to behave incompetently, had been returned to the Factory, where she had cared for Rachel during the later months of her pregnancy. Harrie had liked the Overtons, except for the unpleasant older son Toby, and they seemed to have forgiven her for her earlier bumbling transgressions.
Merry reappeared. ‘He’ll just be a minute.’
‘Thank you.’ Harrie counted out the money for the sugar. ‘How’s Toby?’
Merry made a face. ‘Same as usual.’
‘Oh well. And baby Johanna?’
‘Toddling all over the place and getting into everything.’
Harrie laughed.
Henry Overton came through from the back wiping his hands on his apron, his face even redder than usual from hefting bags of flour. ‘Harrie Clarke, hello, girl!’
‘Hello, Mr Overton. It’s nice to see you.’
‘You look well.’
‘Thank you.’
‘What can I do for you?’
Harrie felt her face grow warm. She put her packet of sugar in her basket. ‘I’m on my way home and I was wondering … actually, I think someone might be following me.’
Mr Overton’s expression darkened. ‘Some man, you think? Can you point him out?’
‘Well, I’m not sure. I might have seen someone. I’d be very grateful if you could just watch from your door until I turn into Surrey Lane.’
Henry Overton came out from behind the counter. ‘I can certainly do that. Better to be safe than sorry.’
‘Thank you very much, Mr Overton.’
He waved away her thanks and planted himself in the shop doorway, a bastion of respectability and decency.
As Harrie scurried off down the street, he nodded to a couple strolling past, then to a pair of girls going the other way, then a smartly dressed gentleman who raised his hat and said, ‘Good afternoon.’
There was no sinister man following her. She was a sweet girl, Harrie Clarke, marvellous with the children, but hopeless at everything else. Highly strung, too. Henry went back into his shop.
Harrie had almost reached home on Gloucester Street when, suddenly, she knew. She ducked down the side of the house, praying she reached the back door in time. Digging frantically around among the apples and pears in her basket for her key, her heart racing, she started violently when a hand settled on her arm.
‘Dr Downey!’ she burst out. ‘Will you stop following me!’
‘I wouldn’t have to if you would just concede to speak to me!’ James said equally passionately. ‘And don’t call me Dr Downey. Surely you can proceed to my Christian name after all the tribulations we’ve experienced?’
‘We
haven’t experienced anything,’ Harrie replied, yanking her arm away and spilling several pears.
‘We have, Harrie. If you would only —’
The back door opened and Nora Barrett peered out, a swaddled Lewis clamped against her chest. ‘Harrie, are you all right? Good afternoon, Dr Downey.’
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Barrett. How are you?’
‘Well, thank you.’
Harrie snatched up the pears and ran inside.
Nora Barrett and James Downey looked at each other.
‘Well, good day then, Dr Downey,’ Nora said.
‘Good day, Mrs Barrett.’
Nora shut the door.
Chapter Three
The dining room of the Australian Hotel was quite grand, for Sydney Town. Swathes of velvet draped the windows, the carpets on the polished wooden floor were of above average quality, and the tables were set with silver and decent plate. One ordered á la carte, which was very modern, rather than dining table d’hôte, and the food was reasonably good. James liked it because it reminded him a little of his club in London, though of course sadly absent here were the extensive library of scientific tomes, the demandingly intellectual conversation, and the camaraderie and sense of purpose he’d so relished as a member of the Royal Society. Not that he’d attended a great many Royal Society dinners, as he’d been at sea so constantly. Perhaps someone would found a similar establishment here in Sydney. If so, he would seriously consider becoming a member.
He rearranged the napkin over his lap while he waited for Matthew to return. He’d ordered the cream of onion soup and roast beef with roast vegetables, and Matthew the soup and roast mutton, and James was looking forward to his meal.
He lived alone in a cottage in York Street, ten minutes’ walk from his Pitt Street medical practice, and did his own cleaning and very mediocre cooking, so it was a treat to dine out. He’d declined to employ a live-in housemaid, or even a woman to come in during the day, as he didn’t want gossip, something with which he’d not had to contend in the navy overseeing the welfare of tattooed, hairy-bottomed, foul-mouthed sailors, and a curse he’d more or less managed to avoid while superintending aboard emigrant and convict ships. Now that he worked among a land-bound civilian population he suspected he was much more likely to fall victim to wagging tongues.
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