Dorothy Eden

by Vines of Yarrabee

  The apprentice would have been a convict, of course. She owed her first real piece of jewellery, just as she owed her house, to convicts.

  Oh, for goodness’ sake, you silly creature, stop being so imprisoned in that old obsession, she told herself, and in the desire to overcome her scruples she flung her arms round Gilbert in an extravagant gesture.

  His face went soft with delight. ‘You like it, then? I meant to have it for you when Christopher was born, but to be honest I hadn’t enough cash and I knew you would want to know whether Mrs Ashburton had been at the bottom of it.’

  She laughed, although with faint wryness.

  ‘Do I have such bad manners?’

  ‘You! My little paragon!’ He kissed her, though gently—he was getting intuitive, she thought—then pinned the brooch to the ruffles of lace at her neck.

  ‘Now you have something to wear besides your pearls,’ he said with satisfaction.

  As inevitably as night followed day, Gilbert turned to her in bed that night.

  She had been so long in recovering from the birth of the baby that he had exercised a patience for which she knew she should be grateful. She also knew that she should have gone gladly into his arms. If she could not do that she could at least perform her wifely duty acquiescently.

  But surely there was more to marriage than this—shouldn’t there be love talk, longing satisfied, an intimacy so close that even this act was a pleasure?

  Was she just being a romantic?

  Or was she one of those cold pure women unable to feel desire?

  She slipped out of bed, put on a wrap, and went out to the balcony. These summer nights were beautiful, the air warm, the moon shining over the quiet landscape. The cicadas kept up their eternal song, but she had grown so used to it now that she scarcely heard it. She would have liked to hear the soft ‘who-who-oo’ of an English owl, but failing that she did have the scent of roses.

  She looked back into the dark room, to the long shape in the bed, and her eyes filled with tears. How ungrateful she was not to be happy, to expect something more, something she couldn’t define. An intense inexpressible longing.

  But she had her baby. Whatever was the matter with her?

  Chapter XVI

  IT WAS VINTAGE AGAIN, but lacking completely the gaiety and effervescence of the previous year. The harvest was poor. It was gathered in two days. Fortunately there were sufficient black grapes for Gilbert to lay down five dozen bottles of claret for Christopher’s coming of age. He labelled the bottles Yarrabee Christopher 1831 and then had to turn his attention to the sweet sauterne that bored him and which he marketed as quickly as possible.

  Next year would be a bumper one.

  Vignerons, Eugenia had discovered, lived on optimism.

  But thanks to Mrs Ashburton’s generosity no pinch was felt at Yarrabee.

  Soon after the new year the tragic news had come that Godfrey Ashburton, dying of starvation, had staggered into the little town of Adelaide on the south coast of Australia twelve hundred miles away. But the time his poor skeleton had been identified and the news had reached his mother, he had been buried for several weeks.

  Mrs Ashburton had shut herself in her room for two days, then had emerged suffering, she said vigorously, not so much from grief as boredom.

  She had scarcely known Godfrey since he had run away to sea at the age of sixteen. He had been an incorrigible adventurer, a stranger, and what she had known of him during the last year in Sydney she hadn’t cared for.

  Eugenia and Gilbert and the darling baby were her family now. That was what God had decided and she was happy to accept the direction of a higher will than her own.

  She would observe custom by wearing partial mourning, black touched with a little lilac, but she saw no reason for not accompanying Gilbert and Eugenia to the soirée at Government House next week. It did no one any good to sit at home brooding.

  The soirée was a surprisingly fashionable affair. There were two ladies recently arrived from England, and Eugenia found it ironic to realize that now she was one of the colonials, listening eagerly to news of the latest fashions. To her satisfaction, she found that her own gown of white silk with green velvet ribbons was quite passable. She cared for clothes, and did not intend to grow dull and dowdy simply because London and Paris were so far away. Also, she hardly thought the two new arrivals had the best taste. Surely the Bond Street shops were not selling quite such a plethora of ribbons and bows nor those exaggeratedly full leg-of-mutton sleeves.

  She caught the humorous gleam in Mrs Bourke’s eye, and found that that lady was having precisely similar thoughts.

  ‘You have probably observed, Mrs Massingham, that this is going to be a wonderful country for the flamboyant. What do you think the reason for it? A compensation for being so far from civilization?’

  ‘Or that it attracts people who prefer to be big frogs in little puddles?’ Eugenia murmured.

  ‘That is a wicked remark,’ Mrs Bourke said enjoyably. ‘It is probably true. But I think, too, that one feels very small in such vast spaces. So, like all those gaudy parakeets, we have to put on brighter colours to be noticed.’

  Mrs Bourke herself wore the most modest of grey silk gowns. She looked tired and pale, and Eugenia noticed that she frequently sat down to rest a few minutes before moving among her guests again. Her husband, who was tall and lean and looked handsome in evening dress, was engaged in talking to the men. He was interested, to the exclusion of everything else, in the welfare of the country, and thought time spent in paying compliments to women was wasted if he could be furthering the colony’s affairs.

  Eugenia caught snatches of conversation, about grants of land, increased grain production, the growing importance of the wool industry, the necessity for a steady flow of a good hard-working type of immigrant, with the essential leavening, of course, of upper-class settlers. One didn’t want the country to be run by a hotchpotch collection of freed convicts and squatters. Major Bourke, more liberal than some of his predecessors, did not have an arrogant contempt for the small man or the freed convict. He might have occasionally remembered that his friend William Wentworth’s mother had been a convict, although that, in face of Wentworth’s growing affluence, seemed more like myth than reality.

  Mrs Bourke tapped her husband on the arm with her fan, and murmured that this was a time for pleasure, not business. He should mingle more with his guests. And look, there were some late arrivals who must be welcomed. Did Eugenia know them? They were a young couple who had obtained a grant of land some miles distant. Nice people, but the wife hadn’t a lot of poise. Look at her now, in a great state because of the lateness of their arrival.

  But it appeared that Mr and Mrs Newman had an excellent reason for their lateness.

  Wasn’t it a ghastly thing, young Robert Wardell, a close friend of William Wentworth, had been murdered by three convicts? His body had been found concealed under bushes, and later the convicts had been found hiding in the scrubby uncleared land that formed part of young Mr Newman’s grant. Dingoes barking constantly had drawn the troopers to the spot.

  Young Mrs Newman was blonde with baby-blue eyes. She clung first to Mrs Bourke, then to Eugenia, saying wasn’t this a dreadful country for women. What with convicts and snakes and those great repulsive lizards she never took an easy breath.

  ‘How can you look so calm, Mrs Massingham? Aren’t you ever afraid?’

  The murdered body flung into the bush, the ragged shadows with the eerily hopeless eyes creeping silently away, the barking dogs… The eternal nightmare…

  ‘One gets used to it,’ Eugenia said. ‘One has to. It really isn’t that bad, Mrs Newman, although I admit I felt as you did a year ago. What a pretty gown you are wearing. Is it part of your trousseau?’

  The girl smiled ruefully. ‘It was the latest style when I left England, but now I suppose it is old-fashioned. Isn’t it exasperating that we are always to be behindhand in everything?’

  It was w
iser to embark on trivial talk about fashions in gowns and bonnets than to dwell on the loneliness of beginning life in a small farmhouse miles from civilization.

  ‘You must come and visit us at Yarrabee,’ Eugenia said. She was suddenly ashamed of her own comfort compared with this young woman’s isolation, but when Mrs Newman said, ‘It’s no matter, I can endure it for my husband’s sake. I could endure anything for him,’ Eugenia lost her sympathy and felt nothing but envy. The two young things must be very much in love.

  Mrs Newman, a pretty new face, was swept away. Eugenia, fanning herself at the open window—the chandeliers with their myriad lighted candles were very decorative but made the room far too hot—heard someone saying,

  ‘The beautiful Mrs Massingham. I have heard so much about you. May I introduce myself?’

  The tall young man bowing before her was slim and dark-haired, with black eyes in a serious brooding face. He introduced himself as Colm O’Connor. Marion Noakes, the doctor’s wife, in Sydney, had told him about Eugenia.

  ‘She is always singing your praises. I have been looking forward to meeting you. It isn’t often one of your sex speaks so admiringly of another.’

  Since this last remark seemed to be a question, Eugenia made an automatic answer, ‘A deplorable failing we have, Mr O’Connor,’ while trying to remember where she had heard of this young man.

  ‘Mrs Noakes told me that if ever I had the good fortune to meet you I would certainly want to paint your portrait.’

  ‘Now of course I know who you are. Mr Colm O’Connor, the artist. Yes, I do remember someone talking of you. I think it was Mrs Wentworth. You had painted her children.’

  ‘That is correct. And if you are about to ask me what I am doing in Parramatta I will speak the truth. It is not primarily to meet you, although I hoped this would occur, but to make a sketch of Government House.’ He smiled with a sparkle in his dark eyes. ‘You see, I am coming up in the world. I am, temporarily anyway, official artist to the Government.’

  Eugenia raised an eyebrow. ‘Coming up in the world, Mr O’Connor. Are you not up already?’

  The sparkle remained in his eyes. Eugenia found it very attractive. He had the manners of a gentleman, combined with a pleasant informality and originality that was refreshing.

  ‘Well, I can assure you that I am not a ticket-of-leave man, nor do I have a prison sentence behind me.’

  ‘Mr O’Connor! What an extraordinary statement to make.’

  ‘Not at all, in this country. One meets a miscellaneous variety of people, even at Government House. Do you see that person engaged in conversation with your husband? Twenty years ago he was transported for forgery. Now he is a rich landowner, and would like to have a part in running the country.’

  ‘And my husband, I have no doubt at all, is attempting to sell him Yarrabee wine,’ Eugenia murmured, her own eyes twinkling. ‘But how did you know that was my husband?’

  ‘I made a point of finding out.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I was interested. I wondered who in this room a woman like you would have married.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what, Mrs Massingham?’

  ‘If you make a statement like that, you must complete it. Does my husband have your approval?’

  ‘How can I answer that until I have met him? Not that I will be anything but prejudiced since he owns you.’

  ‘Owns?’ Eugenia laughed merrily. This was the kind of light flirtatious conversation she enjoyed, and was accustomed to. For more than a year, she reflected, she had had nothing but tedious Australian comments on the drought, the state of the natives or the sheep or the convicts, or, more particularly, the vines. She suddenly felt at home, her wits sharpened, her eyes pleased by the graceful appearance of Mr Colm O’Connor. ‘Because one is married is one owned? But that has another aspect. Perhaps I also own my husband.’

  ‘Fortunate fellow.’

  ‘Mr O’Connor, you are a flatterer.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, no. I speak the strictest truth.’ He smiled, but Eugenia thought that she detected melancholy or loneliness in his eyes. When he went on to say that it was very hot indoors, couldn’t they step out on the verandah, she acquiesced at once.

  ‘What has brought you to this country, Mr O’Connor? Are you a wanderer?’

  ‘Yes. A confirmed one. But not idle. I am preparing a book on the flora and fauna of the antipodes. Later I intend going to New Zealand, though I hear that is much more primitive than Australia. The natives are inclined to be warlike.’

  ‘But at least they don’t have dangerous convicts at large,’ Eugenia said. ‘Perhaps I am foolish to allow this hazard of Australian life to prey on me so much. I had an alarming experience shortly after I arrived here.’

  ‘What was that? Do you care to tell me?’

  ‘Oh, a brush with an escaped prisoner. Ever since then I have felt responsible for his death. A well-deserved death, everyone assured me.’

  ‘I can see that you are too sensitive. Are you often homesick?’

  In the warm darkness, responding to the sympathetic voice, Eugenia cried, ‘Oh, yes, yes, sometimes I could die of it,’ before she could stop herself. ‘There is so much I miss,’ she added defensively. ‘Especially one favourite sister, and my parents, and my old home. I have a very handsome home now, but it’s new. It takes a long time to grow accustomed to new things, to belong in them. My husband says we are making our own history, but I still prefer a place that already has a past.’

  ‘You don’t need to apologize for those feelings, Mrs Massingham. I sympathize entirely. I come from an old house, too. In Ireland. Galway. It has been in my family for six generations.’

  ‘Then you’re Irish?’

  ‘On my father’s side. My mother was English. She died when I was born. Now I have a stepmother, and two half-brothers and a sister who is the toast of Galway.’

  Eugenia turned on him passionately. ‘But don’t you miss it all! How can you be happy in this great crude country?’

  ‘At this moment I am very happy.’

  ‘That is just being gallant. You have evaded my question.’ Eugenia leaned over the verandah rail, sniffing at the still unfamiliar odours of strange shrubs. ‘At Yarrabee I have planted honeysuckle to climb up the verandah posts. It flowered this summer, and the scent takes me back to England. I sit outside in the dusk and grow nostalgic. My roses have bloomed, too. And I have sweet peas and stock and marguerite daisies and cherry pie.’

  ‘So you are bringing a bit of England to this great crude country, as you call it?’

  ‘Don’t we all try to do that? What is your bit of Ireland in Australia, Mr O’Connor?’

  ‘Meetings like this.’

  ‘Do you have—many of these?’

  ‘None at all until this evening.’

  Eugenia opened and closed her fan. She couldn’t stay out here. Gilbert would be looking for her. He expected her to shine at functions like this. She should be talking to the emancipists and cattle breeders, the politicians and get-rich-quick landowners. And to their wives who were shopkeepers’ or farmers’ daughters and none the worse for it, except that it made them desperately dull in topics of conversation.

  She was twenty-three years old, a married woman and a mother. She wore the badge of her husband’s approval, the too-large diamond brooch, in the lace at her bosom. Her days of youthful flirtation were over.

  ‘Would you consider it impertinent of me, Mrs Massingham, if I asked permission to paint your portrait?’

  Eugenia’s eyes sparkled with delight.

  ‘I was hoping you would ask me that. I would be immensely flattered. But it would mean sittings?’

  ‘Would that be so tedious? Or don’t you have time?’

  ‘Oh, I have plenty of time. Plenty,’ she repeated, thinking that this would mean Mr O’Connor’s coming to Yarrabee, walking in her garden, beginning to make the history of her house. If, that was, his tall graceful slightly melancholy figur
e made any impact on it.

  ‘I would have to ask my husband,’ she said.

  ‘Would he have any objections? Surely not. He would be proud to have your picture hanging on the wall. Anyway, I am sure he refuses you nothing.’

  ‘With my baby, perhaps. I believe he would like that. Yes, you are perfectly right. He does refuse me very little.’ Eugenia put her hand impulsively on his arm. ‘Come and ask him now. If you have been commissioned to paint Government House, I am sure that he will be impressed. And another thing, I might persuade you to give me some lessons in water-colours. I am reasonably proficient, but not nearly so much so as my sister Sarah.’

  Gilbert had been looking for her. She caught his look of enquiry when he saw her companion.

  She began to laugh leaning her hand on Mr O’Connor’s arm as she said eagerly, ‘Gilbert, this is Mr Colm O’Connor who is an artist. He has asked if he can paint a portrait of me and Baby. Please let him. I think it would be the greatest fun.’

  Gilbert’s eyes were on her flushed cheeks. Why did she have to glow like a schoolgirl when she was excited? Because she was excited and she supposed there was no deceiving Gilbert about that.

  ‘What are your qualifications, Mr O’Connor?’ he asked.

  ‘Various commissions I can tell you about. A book I am preparing. But this is hardly the place to talk business. Perhaps I might bring some of my sketches to Yarrabee, where you will have time to study them, and decide on their merits.’

  ‘I know nothing about painting. The only artistic knowledge I have is in assessing the merits of a good wine. Are you a wine lover, Mr O’Connor?’

  ‘I scarcely touch it,’ Mr O’Connor replied easily. ‘But I could do a panoramic scene of your vineyards, also, if you wish. It could be a small record of the history of Australia.’

  ‘It could indeed,’ Gilbert said thoughtfully. ‘I believe I like the idea.’

  ‘But I must insist that portraits are my principal forte.’

  ‘Very well, you may do my wife and my son. If I approve of your ability. I won’t have a hash made of them.’