‘Well, ’s not all mine, not really. Mostly it’s Sarah and Friday’s. They been saving it. For the Charlotte fund, you know. I think there’s ’bout four thousand pounds.’
‘How much!?’
‘Sounds funny, eh? Pooooounds.’ She frowned. ‘No, that’s not right. Four hundred. No, there was four hundred. Oooh look, is that James?’
Alarmed, Matthew turned to see. Harrie grabbed the bottle off him and, closing one eye, peered down its neck.
‘There’s no flies in here!’
It was James and he was heading straight for them. Christ, Matthew thought, could this possibly get any worse?
‘Harrie,’ he pleaded, ‘would you please give me that?’
‘No.’ She threw back her head and drank straight from the bottle.
‘Good afternoon, Matthew, Harrie.’
Matthew gazed up at James, who appeared to be extremely cross. But James wasn’t looking at him, he was glaring at Harrie’s shiny red face, her long chestnut hair that had come loose and was all over the place, and the bottle in her hand.
‘James —’ she began.
‘No!’ he said, cutting her off. ‘Matthew, what is going on here?’
Matthew found himself at a complete loss for words.
‘I suggest,’ James said to him icily, ‘that you get her home as quickly as possible. And I expect to see you for supper at the Australian tonight.’
Giving Harrie a last, extremely disapproving and unmistakably disappointed look, he turned on his boot heel and strode off.
Harrie’s face crumpled and she shrieked after him, ‘Beard-splitter!’
Astonished, Matthew gaped at her.
‘Selfish bloody quim-sticker!’
Matthew waited nervously for James to arrive. He’d had to have a bath when he’d finally reached home, exhausted and sweaty from half carrying Harrie and all the picnic paraphernalia all the way back to Gloucester Street. She’d also been sick, and not very tidily. As predicted, Mrs Barrett had torn a strip off him, and shut the door in his face when he’d tried to help Harrie inside.
He felt utterly deflated, and not just because he was responsible for Harrie’s downfall this afternoon. The child-like expression of excitement and expectation on her face when James had appeared in Hyde Park had awoken in him the unpleasant suspicion that she might be taking advantage of him just to get back at James and arouse his jealousy, and the more he thought about it the more he realised he was probably right. He wasn’t completely stupid. He sighed. Actually, he was, and what’s more he was stupid with a half-completed tattoo on his right arm.
He straightened his cutlery and took a sip of his drink — whisky tonight; he’d had enough of wine for one day. But perhaps not all was lost. Harrie was clearly still enamoured with James, but it was possible he might yet embark upon a friendship with her. True, friendship would not involve the level of intimacy that had so impassioned his dreams of late, resulting in embarrassing damp patches on his night attire and bed linen, but it would be better than no contact with her at all. She’d asked him to open a bank account for her and her friends, and he could certainly do that, though perhaps he might not share that little snippet with James.
Also, he really rather liked his lion tattoo, and would return to Leo to have it finished whether Harrie was ever going to see it or not. And she still might. She and James had been playing this silly game for nearly a year; surely soon they must either give in and admit they belonged together, or one or the other would bow out conclusively. If the latter occurred and Harrie was the one requiring consolation, naturally Matthew would step in. He could wait. He’d been waiting for ages.
‘Good evening, Matthew,’ James said. He dropped his hat and gloves onto a spare chair and sat down. Unsmiling, he waved for the waitress and asked for a whisky. ‘Have you ordered yet?’
‘I thought I’d wait for you.’
James studied the board. ‘I’ll have the mushroom soup and the beef, thank you,’ he told the girl. ‘Matthew?’
‘I think I might try the hotpot tonight, with the soup to start, please.’
‘Sirs,’ the girl said and hurried off.
James’s gaze settled rather coldly on Matthew. ‘Let’s get this over and done with, shall we? I take it you were responsible for Harrie’s condition this afternoon? Because as far as I’m aware she doesn’t drink. And what were the pair of you doing in the park, anyway?’
So, leaving out the bit about his tattoo, Matthew told him, recounting how first Harrie had invited him to tea, followed by, at his instigation, today’s outing to Hyde Park, during which he’d failed to take into account her inexperience with alcoholic beverages.
‘But it has become obvious to me that I am not the object of her affections,’ he said. ‘That still seems to be you. I suspect her invitation to me was just a ploy to inflame your passions. Revenge, perhaps, for hiring Miss Harris?’ He swapped his soup spoon with his bread knife, then moved them back again, waiting for James’s response.
There was a short silence. Then James said, ‘Did you think you could be the object of her affections?’
Matthew decided there was little point in lying any longer. ‘I had hoped so.’
‘And how long have you … harboured this hope?’
‘Since, well, since the voyage out, really.’
‘I had no idea,’ James said quietly.
‘No,’ Matthew agreed.
James leant back as the waitress delivered his whisky. He waited until she’d gone again. ‘And I’ve sat in this dining room for the past six months wittering on to you about my unrequited love for her. I am sorry, old fellow.’
Matthew shrugged, embarrassed. Trust James to be so decent about it.
‘What a pickle,’ James said.
‘Not really.’
‘No?’
‘How I feel about her doesn’t change anything, does it?’ Matthew said.
‘I’m not sure I understand.’
‘Well, Harrie is still refusing to talk to you because of what you did after Rachel Winter died, yes?’
James nodded.
‘But today, in the park, you looked at her as though she were despicable, and you wouldn’t even allow her to speak. Do you not think a little, well, empathy might be in order? Forgive me for saying this, James, but at times you can be the tiniest bit superior.’ There; he’d finally said it.
‘Empathy?’ James exclaimed, apparently completely ignoring Matthew’s last sentence. ‘But you saw her. She was drunk! She was dishevelled and making a spectacle of herself and her language was atrocious! She was no better than the worst of the trollops out at the Factory!’
Really annoyed by this, Matthew gave the table top a single sharp rap with his soup spoon. ‘No, James, that’s unkind. She was just Harrie, with too much champagne inside her, and that was my fault. Don’t be so judgmental.’
James opened his mouth, then closed it again. Was he judgmental? But she’d looked so awful today, with her hair messy and her face all scarlet; everyone had been looking at her. And the names she’d called him! Emily would never, ever have uttered such words, even in her blackest moments. She’d never done anything questionable, or even particularly unexpected. Emily had been composed and dependable, predictable and completely reliable: she’d been the perfect wife for a doctor.
But was that really what he wanted now?
‘Different people value different things,’ Matthew said. ‘You think being drunk in the park is terrible. Harrie thought what you did to Rachel Winter’s body was so awful that she can’t forgive you.’
‘That’s very liberal and fair-minded of you,’ James said with quite a lot of sarcasm, for him. ‘Family trait, is it, that sort of thinking?’
‘Hardly. My mother’s the most dreadful snob and bigot.’
The conversation ceased as the waitress appeared with their first courses and set the plates before them.
‘If you’ve thrown your hat in the ring,’ James said, blowing
on a spoonful of soup, ‘I can’t see how things can remain unchanged.’
‘But I haven’t. That’s my point. She isn’t interested in me, so how I feel about her is irrelevant. I’m just suggesting that you might try seeing things from Harrie’s perspective. Have you, for example, ever apologised for what you did?’
‘Apologise? Why?’
‘You see? This is exactly what I mean.’ Matthew pointed at James with his spoon for emphasis. ‘You really can’t see why you should, can you? In your circles it might be perfectly acceptable to go about hacking up dead people, but in hers it isn’t. Where she comes from, back home in London, she probably stepped over drunks in the street every day of the week and had friends who quite regularly drank too much. It doesn’t mean they were bad people, any more than performing post-mortems makes you a bad person. But you’ve offended her and now she’s offended you.’
‘I doubt she’ll apologise to me, and you heard what she called me. It was disgusting.’
‘For God’s sake, James, she was drunk. It’s not as if she murdered someone. You cut up her best friend. Apologise to her.’
James stared into his soup, then picked something out of it and laid it on his bread plate. ‘I’ll think about it.’
December 1830, Sydney Town
‘Good morning, madam,’ Sarah said across the counter. ‘How may I help you?’
She was wearing one of several new dresses Adam had paid for with money borrowed from Bernard Cole. Harrie and Nora Barrett had whipped them up in a matter of days and Sarah was very pleased with them, which surprised her as usually she didn’t give tuppence about what she wore. Both dresses were of good-quality summer-weight calamanco with bright floral patterns against pale backgrounds. Esther had bought Sarah the dreary sage-coloured item she had, until now, worn every day, which was now too tight as she’d put on a little weight due to her former mistress’s cooking. Harrie said that in comparison to that, the warmer colours ‘lifted’ her complexion, whatever that meant; but Sarah agreed they suited her, and so did the fitted style, which accentuated her bosom.
‘Yes,’ the woman said, as though Sarah had asked a completely different question. ‘I have some items of jewellery — extremely valuable, I might add — and I would like you to clean and value them.’ She produced a newspaper cutting from her basket and flapped it at Sarah. ‘This is an advertisement from the Sydney Gazette stating that this jeweller will perform such services free of charge. Is that correct?’
‘Yes, madam.’
The woman wore a bonnet with an enormous brim trimmed with pale pink knife-pleated satin and a posy of artificial blossoms and cherries, the high crown sporting a sprig of apple blossom about a foot long. Sarah was amazed she could hold up her head. Her dress, fastened over a clearly very tightly laced pair of stays, featured pink and burgundy flowers and dark green leaves on a light grey background, and she wore a lace pelerine, white lace gloves, and a burgundy paisley shawl with pink silk tassels. A charming ensemble on a twenty-year-old; unfortunately this woman was easily fifty.
All the pink in her outfit accentuated the broken veins on her face. Heavy bags sagged beneath her eyes and her jowls were heading south, giving her the appearance of a disappointed bloodhound. Her dentures — Waterloo teeth, Sarah suspected, so she’d paid a lot for them — didn’t fit at all well (but then whose did?), and her wig of real but dyed hair peeked from beneath her bonnet, a row of startling persimmon-coloured curls aligned across her forehead and a big one beside each ear. But instead of appearing silly, the woman just looked … sad, as though she’d been led to believe that something wonderful would happen to her when she grew up, and it never had.
‘I expect you to clean everything thoroughly, mind,’ the woman said. ‘Just because the service is free don’t think you can cut corners. And I expect the valuation to be written out in triplicate.’
‘Of course, Mrs …?’
‘Tregoweth. Mrs Phillip Tregoweth. Where’s the jeweller? I thought I’d be dealing with a proper jeweller.’
‘Would you like to speak with Mr Green, Mrs Tregoweth?’
‘Yes, I would.’
‘One moment please.’ This often happened, especially with older women; they didn’t think a girl could possibly know the first thing about jewellery, not even how to clean it.
Sarah went through to the workshop and fetched Adam.
‘Mrs Tregoweth, is it?’ he greeted the woman. ‘Good morning, I’m Mr Adam Green, the jeweller. Delighted to meet you.’
‘Good morning. Your advertisement says you’ll clean and value jewellery at no expense to the customer?’
‘That is correct. Do you have your jewels with you?’
Mrs Tregoweth took a large velvet bag from her basket and set it on the counter.
‘May I?’ Adam asked.
She nodded.
Adam opened the bag and took out several smaller pouches and two flat cases, one of leather, one covered with velvet. The leather case, lined with cream silk, contained an emerald and gold meshwork parure consisting of two bracelets, a ring, earrings, a necklace, and a brooch that could be attached to the necklace as a pendant.
‘Have you had the parure valued previously?’ Adam asked as he studied the emeralds in the necklace through his loupe.
‘No, but my husband obtained a certificate of authenticity from the jeweller from whom he purchased the set. It was very costly.’ Mrs Tregoweth simpered slightly. ‘He said only the best will do for me.’
‘Indeed. And it was purchased here, in Sydney?’
‘Oh no, in London, a year or so before we emigrated.’
Adam opened the two smaller bags. The first contained an articulated cannetille bracelet in yellow, red and green gold set with amethyst, jade and topaz.
‘This is very nice,’ he said.
‘My mother’s,’ Mrs Tregoweth replied. ‘A family heirloom.’
The second bag revealed a ring — a spectacularly large, oval, cushion-cut diamond set inside a thin border of midnight blue enamel and surrounded by smaller diamonds.
‘Another heirloom?’ Adam asked.
‘Yes. Very favoured by the royal family in my mother’s time, that particular style with the blue enamel.’
The velvet case contained a necklace of perfectly graduated, foil-backed sapphires.
‘It’s a rivière. That means “river of light”, you know,’ Mrs Tregoweth explained redundantly. ‘Again, it’s a rather expensive piece.’
‘Charming.’ Adam closed the case. ‘When would you like to collect your jewels?’
‘By the end of the week. We’re attending the governor’s Christmas Eve reception on Friday evening and I shall need them. In fact, I’d prefer to collect them on Thursday if possible.’
‘Of course. My assistant Miss Morgan will need to make a note of your particulars, for the valuation. Thank you for your custom, Mrs Tregoweth. Good day.’
‘Good day, Mr Green.’
Mrs Tregoweth gave Sarah her address, one of the very substantial residences at the Bunker’s Hill end of Cumberland Street.
‘May I ask, do you keep your jewellery at the bank?’ Sarah enquired.
‘Why?’ Mrs Tregoweth said suspiciously.
‘You have some very nice pieces, and you’d be surprised by how many of our customers don’t. You can’t be too careful, in a town like this.’
‘Oh, but one can buy such sturdy little iron chests nowadays,’ Mrs Tregoweth said. ‘And the bank does charge such a lot just for the use of a safety deposit box.’
Thank you, Sarah thought. ‘It must be lovely to wear such nice jewellery.’
‘It does reflect one’s place in society, doesn’t it? I do wear mine as often as possible, but, sadly, Sydney is not London.’
‘Here you are.’ Sarah handed Mrs Tregoweth her receipt.
‘Very good. I’ll drop by on Thursday at around midday. If you and Mr Green have finished by then, there’ll be a shilling in it for you.’
‘Tha
t’s very generous. Thank you.’
When Mrs Tregoweth and her awful pink bonnet had gone, Sarah went through to the workshop. Adam was at his workbench, looking over the woman’s jewellery.
‘The parure is paste, isn’t it?’ she said.
Adam nodded. ‘Good paste, but someone’s taken her husband for a ride. Or perhaps he’s taken her for one.’
‘Will we tell her?’
‘We’ll have to. She’s expecting a professional valuation. The ring, the sapphires and the cannetille bracelet are genuine, though, and of exceptional quality, especially the ring.’ He swivelled on his stool to face her. ‘What do you think?’
Sarah sat down. ‘She keeps it all at home, on Cumberland Street. The Bunker’s Hill end, of course. That bloody awful hat she had on is, according to Harrie, the latest mode, which says to me she likes to keep up with everyone else. The fashion for hiding your jewels when I left London was in a safe in the wall, usually behind a painting, so I’m betting that’s where she has hers. She said she often wears her jewellery, so plenty of people will have seen what she owns. If it goes missing after it’s been here she won’t necessarily assume it’s us. Also, she’ll be piling it on when she and her husband go to this thing of the governor’s on Friday night; if we pinch it, with a bit of luck she’ll associate the theft with that outing.’
Adam frowned. ‘But why steal it? Why not just take the diamond out of the ring? That’s worked so far.’
Sarah draped the bracelet over her wrist and closed the delicate clasp. It was too large, and slid off over her hand. ‘Because I want this as well, and the beauty of this is in the whole piece, not just the stones.’
‘We can’t fence that here, it’s too distinctive.’
‘It’ll just have to go back to England, where I’ve no doubt it will fetch a very tidy profit. And can Bernard get us a really high-quality paste diamond in the next few days? I doubt it; it would have to be cut to order.’ She indicated the ring. ‘See here? The stone’s not perfectly symmetrical.’
Adam had neither the specific skills nor the equipment to manufacture or cut the leaded glass that formed paste, or ‘strass’, stones, which were so attractive they were admired and worn even by those who could afford genuine gems. Bernard, however, imported quite a range of both clear and coloured paste, and silver and gold-plated jewellery already set with paste for his own retail business. The loose stones he sold on to various other Sydney jewellers, and several in Van Diemen’s Land.
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