Dorothy Eden

by Vines of Yarrabee

  The rest of the house could be adequately furnished with materials at hand. He had come across an ex-convict carpenter who was making pieces for the spare bedrooms and the kitchen. Bamboo and cane furniture was practical for the climate. In the summer a great deal of time would be spent on the verandah.

  Lastly, and most importantly, he wanted her to bring the selection of vine cuttings her Uncle Henri had promised him. She was to send someone to France to get them. If no one was available whom she could trust, she must go herself. And she must see that the cuttings were correctly dipped in the solution that would preserve life in them during the long voyage. He had arranged with Mr Charles Worthington at Kew Gardens to advise her in this respect. He would like at least a hundred cuttings, since some would undoubtedly die. He would then have a good number of varieties of grapes, for white and red wine, for sherries and for drying into raisins. His crop this year had unfortunately been badly affected by a long drought, but some grapes had survived. The vintage would be small.

  After reading and discussing this letter, more than half of which concerned Gilbert’s grapes, Sarah commented that she felt drunk from wine already.

  ‘Don’t, I beg you, become a drunkard,’ she entreated.

  Eugenia laughed merrily. ‘What a very unlikely prospect!’

  ‘Gilbert seems obsessed by the subject.’

  ‘Any man who is to succeed in life must be obsessed by his chosen career,’ Eugenia said a little pedantically.

  ‘Yes, I know, but this career requires so much tasting of the product, doesn’t it? You know the ritual that goes on at Uncle Henri’s at vintage time.’

  ‘Yes, and I have never noticed that Uncle Henri became the worse for wine,’ Eugenia retorted. ‘Anyway, I hear that rum is the drink in Australia. And I assure you I will not be tasting that.’

  It was exciting making the trip to London to look for the furniture Gilbert asked for. He had put five hundred pounds at Eugenia’s disposal. That seemed a fortune, although when she began choosing the quality furniture Gilbert wanted, it soon disappeared. Eventually her grandmother suggested giving her a four-poster bed as a wedding gift. It was in the French empire style, painted pale grey and decorated with gilded cupids and loveknots.

  Her treasured piano which had also been a gift from her grandmother on her eighteenth birthday could not be left behind. There were many more personal articles of furniture among her baggage, her writing desk, her favourite water-colours, rugs, quilted bedspreads, a Dresden dinner and tea service, silverware, household linen. All these things were intended to make her feel civilized in a rough wild country.

  But now, in this heart-shattering moment three months later, while Gilbert shouted anxious enquiries about his vines, she could only think that the lovely French bed was going to be too fragile for his big frame.

  Chapter II

  ‘THE SUN HAS CAUGHT your nose. It’s as red as a bottlebrush.’

  Gilbert roared with laughter. To tell the truth, he was a little shy of the young woman who stood in front of him. He had forgotten how aristocratic she looked. Women in this country, even the more gently bred who may have contrived to keep their peaches and cream complexion during the long voyage from England, soon acquired peeling sunburnt skins and freckles. It surprised him that he suddenly cared passionately that this should not happen to his wife.

  ‘What is a bottlebrush?’ she was asking in her soft well-bred voice.

  ‘It’s a shrub that grows here. It’s vivid scarlet. I’m uncommonly happy to see you, red nose and all.’ He wanted to take her in his arms and hug the breath out of her. But he had an instinct that she would not care for so public an embrace, and that he must restrain his ardour until they were alone. He satisfied himself with a chaste kiss on her cheek and a murmured, ‘Welcome, my love,’ and Mrs Ashburton, who had had the delicacy to move a little distance away to permit the lovers a moment of privacy, came forward, her plump hand held out, her expression unabashedly inquisitive.

  ‘Well, Mr Massingham, aren’t you going to thank me for delivering your bride safely to you?’

  Eugenia performed the necessary introduction.

  ‘Gilbert, this is Mrs Ashburton who has been in charge of me. Or I in charge of her, I don’t know which. But here we both are safely.’

  ‘I’m happy to meet you, ma’am. I understand you have a son in Sydney.’

  ‘Yes, my only child. But he doesn’t appear to have much feeling for his mother or he would be here to meet me.’ She continued to study Gilbert, and presently nodded approvingly, saying to Eugenia, ‘You are a fortunate young woman, I believe. I could wish I were forty years younger myself.’ She nudged Gilbert, laughing coyly. Then she exclaimed, ‘Why, there I see my son. Don’t let us bother with introductions at present. You two are anxious to be off. We will all meet again shortly.’

  ‘At our wedding, ma’am,’ said Gilbert, ‘if not before.’

  ‘Certainly at your wedding. I have no intention of missing that.’

  Mrs Ashburton took her departure, thrusting her way through the crowd to reach her son. Gilbert turned to Eugenia.

  ‘I have arranged for you to stay with good friends of mine, Edmund and Bess Kelly. Your Mrs Ashburton is quite a personality, isn’t she?’

  ‘A rather overpowering one at times,’ Eugenia admitted. ‘Who are Edmund and Bess Kelly?’

  ‘Edmund is a land agent. He was an officer in the navy, but abandoned it to settle here when he saw the money to be made with so much land for sale. He brought his wife out from England. They have a house in King Street. You may find it a bit cramped, but I promise you won’t be able to make that criticism about Yarrabee.’

  ‘Yarrabee?’

  ‘Yes. That’s the name I decided on. In the native language it means a gum forest, and that’s exactly what my land was when it was granted to me. I spent a year clearing enough acreage to get my vineyard started. I had to build terraces on the hillsides and put in brush fences for windbreaks on the flat. But now I have four hundred acres under cultivation and cattle wandering on the rest. I need the cattle for manure for the vines. Tell me, did you bring all the vine cuttings I asked for? How did they travel?’

  ‘I believe they were not affected by the motion of the ship, as all the rest of us were.’

  Gilbert had the grace to look a little abashed.

  ‘Forgive me. I should first have enquired how you fared on the journey. I do sometimes think of things beside my vines even if you find that difficult to believe. Come!’ He took her arm. ‘I’ll take you to the Kellys and attend to the baggage later.’

  At last Eugenia smiled, and the dimple Gilbert remembered appeared in her right cheek. He understood that she must feel strange and homesick at first. When he had arrived for the first time in Australia he had been overwhelmed by its size, its brawling vitality and primitiveness. It was only when he had recognized its challenge that he had begun to develop an obsessive love for its harsh heat-ridden lonely spaces. Now he felt cramped when he returned to Europe.

  For a woman, the initial shock would be even more startling. He must sympathize with that.

  But he could hardly control his exultation at the sight of her with her proud neck, her delicate features, her luxuriant dark hair. He thought that she was like the black swans that came to the lake on Yarrabee.

  As towns, or cities, went, for it was said that Sydney would be an important city one day, the place had an air of ramshackle impermanence. Governor Lachlan Macquarie had left his mark in well-planned streets and a number of fine simple sandstone buildings designed by a convict architect, but the general impression was one of roaring untidy life. Inns with creaking signs stood at far too frequent intervals and also too frequently spilled out their staggering customers. The streets were unpaved, so that a fine red dust hung permanently in the air. This was stirred into a cloud when a coach dashed by or a laborious bullock team toiled up the hill. Shops shaded by verandah fronts displayed many wares besides the necessities of
life, outlandish souvenirs brought back by sailors, beads, native clubs and spears, gaudy-coloured parrots in cages, fringed cashmere shawls, pottery and red-lacquered chests from the Orient.

  The houses, even the smallest, had verandahs to provide a little shade, and wooden fences to separate them from the street. There were many flowering shrubs and creepers of which Eugenia did not yet know the names. Above the unpleasant odour of garbage and manure and the prickling dust she caught the heavy sweet scent of some blossom.

  She noticed, as she walked along on Gilbert’s arm, that people turned to stare. Perhaps she walked a little unsteadily, for the wide street had an uncanny tendency to tilt, as if it were the deck of the Caroline. Horses, noses in feeding bags, tails switching at flies, were tethered outside public houses. Tangle-haired bare-footed urchins gaped at Eugenia fastidiously holding her neat brown travelling skirt out of the dust. A thin mongrel dog sniffed at their heels.

  Suddenly Eugenia stepped aside in dismay from what seemed to be a bundle of rags lying in the dust of the gutter.

  ‘Rum,’ Gilbert said contemptuously. ‘It’s a scourge here. They drink it good, bad or indifferent. Convicts make it illicitly. Heaven knows what they put in it. I shall educate them to drink wine.’

  Eugenia thought it wiser not to comment that that human relic in the gutter scarcely looked educable as far as wine was concerned. One could hardly imagine that dirty hand lovingly holding the stem of a wine glass. But it would be pleasant if it could be done, of course. She agreed with Gilbert on the principle of his argument.

  A moment later she was diverted from that sordid spectacle by an infinitely more distressing one, a line of men shuffling along the street with chains clanking. They were dressed in shabby grey clothes liberally daubed with arrows. Most of them kept their eyes on the ground, but one looked straight at Eugenia. No, not at her, through her, for the strange melancholy light eyes were seeing nothing but some unrealizable dream.

  In spite of the heat, a violent shiver went over her. Her fingers tightened on Gilbert’s arm.

  ‘A chain gang,’ Gilbert said briefly, answering her unspoken question. ‘They’re on their way to the stone quarries.’

  ‘How perfectly dreadful!’

  ‘It’s a sight you will have to get used to, my dear. You must remember that these men have all committed some crime.’

  ‘But surely not one to merit that treatment!’ She had turned to look back at the shuffling line, the drooping heads, the unkempt hair, the general air of degradation. Her dismay was intense. She had never been able to bear witnessing the humiliation of a human being, but this was much worse than humiliation, it was barbarism.

  ‘There are cases of injustice, I agree,’ Gilbert said judicially. ‘But usually in those the man’s natural honesty allows him to rehabilitate himself when he gets his freedom. There are plenty of ex-convicts in the colony leading honest lives. Come, my love, don’t look so shocked. If one is ill one takes a dose of medicine and recovers. That’s what those fellows are doing.’

  ‘Medicine doesn’t always cure.’

  ‘No, I admit some cases are irreclaimable. They become permanently degraded.’

  ‘And what about their keepers?’

  Gilbert looked at her with suddenly sharp eyes.

  ‘You think administering punishment is debasing?’

  ‘I am sure it could be.’

  ‘Do I looked debased? I have several convicts in my employ. I often have to administer punishment. But I think I remain a decent enough fellow.’

  ‘What sort of punishment?’ Eugenia asked apprehensively.

  ‘The lash. A couple of dozen strokes. That’s light punishment compared to what the courts mete out. I don’t care for it, but order must be kept. I narrowly avoided a mutiny last summer. You get one bad element among these fellows and then there’s trouble.’

  ‘You—do this—yourself?’

  ‘My love, it’s nothing you must worry your head about. Of course it must be a shock to you at first. You’ve lived a sheltered life. I hope to go on keeping it sheltered and protected. But this is a phase of colonial existence which you will have to accept.’

  ‘You would expect me to accept seeing a man whipped!’ Eugenia said incredulously.

  ‘You don’t have to witness it. Heaven forbid! But you must accept it as a necessary part of our society at present. When England stops treating us as a dumping ground for human rubbish, then we will have other laws.’

  ‘But you said in England that you found the convicts a blessing,’ Eugenia said stubbornly. ‘Or words to that effect.’

  ‘For cheap labour. Yarrabee could not have been built without them.’

  Yarrabee. The walls rising as the men in the arrow-daubed clothes built stone on stone. The men with the hate-filled minds, the despairing eyes, the scarred backs.

  I am not going to be able to bear to live in it, Eugenia thought. It is going to be a house haunted by these ragged unhappy ghosts…

  Gilbert pressed her arm against his side. He said tolerantly, ‘At your age I also was shocked. One learns to accept. The present system is deplorable, but until it is altered we must make it as workable as possible. I promise you I am a fair employer. I keep on every man who wants to stay when he becomes free. Except for the utterly depraved, of course. And that reminds me, you will want a good maid. Was there anyone on the ship who took your fancy?’

  ‘I shared Mrs Ashburton’s maid, Jane King. She wasn’t getting on very well with Mrs Ashburton, she could never seem to please her. I think she would like to come to me. Of course, this would have to be with Mrs Ashburton’s consent. Jane is a rather forlorn creature. She’s an orphan and needs someone to be kind to her.’

  ‘And that person is you? So it seems as if both Jane and I need you. I am an orphan, too.’

  ‘I know,’ Eugenia murmured, but looking at him sideways, she thought that he was an altogether different case from Jane with her timid eyes and skimmed milk complexion. She, poor thing, was ready to fly to anyone who would give her affection. But not this man with the sure lift of his chin, with his keen blue eyes and crest of flaming hair. He had learned to hide or disclaim his hurts. Privately she believed that he was a man to whom ambition came first and a woman second. But even believing this, she had decided to marry him. She was so certain that beneath his strength there would be great tenderness. To tell the truth, she found the situation challenging and exciting. But also a little alarming, for now she kept seeing a tiny figure in her mind, a black shape no bigger than a fly, with its arm rising and falling as the lash was administered on tortured skin.

  Chapter III

  ‘AND WHAT DID YOUR mother say, love, when you told her you were coming all this way to be married?’

  Bess Kelly was a homely woman with a big bosom and light fluffy hair that escaped its pins and hung in damp tendrils on her brow and about her plump neck. Eugenia had perceived at once that she would not have been society in England. But standards out here were different. Obviously, if a woman were honest and respectable, she would be accepted in most houses in this country.

  Eugenia found the attic bedroom to which Bess had shown her very small and dreadfully hot. The sun struck through the iron roof so that one seemed to have been put inside a stove, preparatory to being cooked.

  All the same the room was to be hers alone, for there was only one bed. This was bliss, after enduring three months of Mrs Ashburton’s talkative company in a none too comfortable ship’s cabin. There were sprigged muslin curtains at the slanting windows, the bed and dressing-table had pretty chintz covers. Mrs Kelly pointed to a bowl of cream-coloured flowers floating in water, and said the children had put them there. They were called frangipani and smelled nice. You needed sweet smells because the drains in the summer, and the slops thrown out by the public houses and sluttish housewives, brought less pleasant odours, not to mention flies.

  ‘Didn’t it break your mother’s heart, my dear, you coming so far? Of course she’d
be wheedled by Gilbert Massingham. If ever there was a man who knew how to get his own way, it’s Gilbert. You’re going to have all the unmarried young ladies envying you, I can tell you that. Ever since Gilbert came back three years ago and announced he was bringing a bride out, there have been tears and pouts. But we all knew there was no one good enough for Gilbert in this ragbag of a colony. He intended to have the best. The same as his wines. He’s going to make the best wine in Australia, and what’s more, make people drink it. Well, I’ve been here ten years, and I say it will be something near a miracle if the rum and beer drinkers can be turned to wine. But if there’s a man who can use his persuasions, it’s Gilbert Massingham.’

  Eugenia found there was no need to say anything at all. She thought that Mrs Kelly could have few people to talk to, for she was behaving like someone who had been denied conversation for a long time.

  She could hear rustles and whispers on the stairs. It must be the Kelly children wanting to have a peep at the new arrival. The children who had thoughtfully put the frangipani on her dressing-table.

  But the sweet smell and the heat were making her feel a little suffocated. The day had already held too much. She had a scarcely formed thought that if the first sight of Gilbert had filled her with unmitigated joy she would not have been so aware of the other things. The sickening glare of the sun, the dust, the rawness of the town, the ragged children, that shattering glimpse of a chain gang.