by Téa Cooper
Chewing her lip, she studied the empty page.
Hands laced, thumbs circling, Pa waited while she drew the outline and shaded it with a crosshatch of fine lines, to bring the mallangong to life, just as he’d shown her.
‘I think you’ve been dreaming. Here’s my picture.’
The riverbank, the tree and there the little hole, the door to the burrow and the mallangong swimming through the water fast, so fast it left arrows on the surface. And then another diving deep.
‘I didn’t see two. Were there two?’
‘No, my heart, just one. I wanted to show Sir Joseph one diving down. Why do you think they dive so deep?’
She knew the answer and Pa knew it too but he liked to ask her questions just to make sure. ‘They push their bills along the sand at the bottom of the river sucking up the fishes and …’ she moved her lips and tongue into place ‘… crustaceans.’
‘Crustaceans, very good. And what are they?’
‘Maybe prawns and other shellfish. If they’re very hungry mallangongs can eat half of themselves.’
‘I don’t think they eat themselves.’ Pa’s big, deep, rumbling laugh made her laugh, too. But then it flew away and she frowned. He was teasing. She scowled back at him. ‘He eats half as much as he is heavy. There.’
‘That’s right. You’re such a clever girl. One day you will know all there is to know about these special creatures and I will take you to meet Sir Joseph. You can tell him and his fine friends all about Ornithorhynchus paradoxus. Would you like that?’
She mouthed the words, her lips fighting the slippery rhythmical sounds. ‘Ornithorhynchus paradoxus. What’s paradoxus?’
‘It’s an old word, from the Latin. Something that is contradictory, against common belief, differing from what people believe is true.’
‘But the mallangong is true. He’s here, we see him almost every day.’
‘Indeed we do, indeed we do.’ Pa stared out across the water and tapped his charcoal stick against his teeth, the way he always did when he was thinking.
‘Where does Sir Joseph live?’
‘In London, in a very fine house.’
London! That meant a ship, a ship with big white sails, not like the lighters that travelled up and down the river with their flapping square of ragged canvas. A voyage across the ocean. As long as Pa was there she might like that. ‘Can Mam come too?’
‘No, Mam must stay here.’
‘Why? That’s not fair. She’ll be lonely if we leave her.’
‘Such a wise head on these young shoulders.’ He hugged her close, making his sketchbook fall to the ground. ‘You’re right. She would be lonely. I was only dreaming.’
‘Mam says we mustn’t be home too late or tea will spoil.’ She bent over and picked up his open sketchbook keeping her fingers right on the edge the way he’d told her, then blew across the paper so the charcoal wouldn’t smudge.
He took it from her and gazed out across the river. The sun was setting and the mallangongs had gone home. ‘You’re a good girl and I love you and your mother very, very much. I will never leave her. Not after all she’s lost.’
What had Mam lost? Perhaps she could help find it. Then maybe Mam would smile. Everyone felt miserable when they lost something.
Two
Sydney, Australia 1908
Dust, ink and old paper, binding leather and hushed tones cocooned Tamsin Alleyn in a familiar tranquillity. Beneath the muted hum of the incandescent lights she took a deep breath, her heart hammering and her fingers itching to unwrap the package from London.
‘I thought I might find you in here. Why don’t you come and have a cup of tea?’
‘I just want to open this. I think it’s more of the correspondence from London that I requested.’ She snipped the string securing the brown paper, rolled it into a ball and deposited it in the desk drawer with a flick. Funding was tight at the Public Library of New South Wales now they were working on the Mitchell bequest and every little bit helped.
‘Come along, hurry up.’
She’d spent months writing letters, sending requests to the Royal Society asking for the return of the letters sent to Sir Joseph Banks from the early Australian naturalists. Dear God let her hard work be rewarded.
‘Bring your lunch. I’ve got something I want to talk to you about.’ Edna Williams left with a spring in her seventy-year-old step Tamsin envied.
Not game to ask what it was Mrs Williams wanted to talk about she reluctantly left the unopened package and made her way down the corridor and up the stairs. She’d been so pushy about the correspondence, determined the letters should be returned to Australia where they belonged. Besides it had gone some way in dragging her out of the morass she’d waded through ever since she’d sold Mother and Father’s house. Not because of the memories, more because there weren’t any and try as she might she couldn’t feel any connection with the past.
She shouldered open the door to the tearoom.
‘I’ve made you my favourite, a Grey’s tea with some lemon.’ Mrs Williams patted the chair next to her, her dark beady eyes darting like fireflies around the room and her buttoned boots tapping. ‘Do hurry up.’ The no-nonsense woman rarely showed a glimmer of impatience yet today her feet were jiggling around like a young girl promised a strawberry ice. She was up to something.
What had she forgotten? The two librarians from the cataloguing department threw closed-mouthed smiles at her, a cloud of bemused expectancy almost visible above their heads. Whatever was afoot wasn’t a secret.
‘Right. I’m ready.’ Tamsin picked up her cup and inhaled the aroma of bergamot. Quite what Mrs Williams could have to complain about she had no idea. Ever since Tamsin had managed to wheedle her way into the job she’d given it her all. Coming at the lowest point in her life, and facing the daunting prospect of having inherited a bundle of worthless shares and a house she couldn’t maintain, a salary of ninety-six pounds a year was not to be sneezed at.
ISBN: 9781489270696
TITLE: THE WOMAN IN THE GREEN DRESS
First Australian Publication 2019
Copyright © 2019 Tea Cooper
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