He beckoned for her to follow and she turned to see a ramshackle old cottage behind them. Climbers had attempted to claim it long ago, long fingers of tendrils, broad-leafed and tenacious, clinging to the weatherboards.
‘The windows are still intact,’ Matt explained, ‘which is a miracle really, for all the storms this cliff would have endured over time.’
‘Why wasn’t anyone aware this place was out here?’
‘I went through the archive room again. I pulled all the files for 1926 and 1927. In the 1927 records, I found plans to renovate it, then there was a bulldozing proposal. But the station changed management hands around that time and a lot of the old staff left. I guess it fell through the cracks.’
Emma stepped up to a window and placed her face against the glass. Through the thick grime, she could just make out a room beyond, the shape of two beds, a small round table and wardrobe, the remnants of a family that had once lived there. She had a profuse urge to see more.
‘Can we get inside?’ she asked.
‘I don’t have a key. I’d have to break open the door.’
‘Let’s do it,’ she said, pushing back from the window.
Matt joined her at the door. Brown paint was peeling and the once-shiny brass handle corroded. He gave the handle a firm jiggle and, when he seemed satisfied that the door wasn’t going to oblige, he followed through with two hard shoves with his shoulder.
There was a splitting sound, the lock snapped off and the door flung open. Dust motes spiralled through the air as splinters from the doorjamb flung across the room.
‘Watch your step,’ Matt said, rubbing his shoulder.
Emma stepped across the threshold. It was a completely different feel from the outside looking in. The air was cool, the smell pungent like rotting floorboards and animals droppings. She felt the room exhale as though it had been closed up and forgotten about for far too long.
She took a few more steps towards the middle and shrieked. A rat scurried from a corner, darting across the floor near her feet and under a bed. The cornices were caked thick with opaque spider webs and the furniture and floor were covered in a dense layer of dust.
Emma’s gaze was drawn to the beds first. There was a double bed with a nurse’s uniform and cap draped across the end of it and black shoes at the foot. On a single bed were the remnants of stuffed animals, long ago ripped apart and nibbled at by rats and bandicoots.
There was a dusty children’s book on the pillow. The corners of the pages had also been gnawed at. Emma picked it up and blew at the cover. Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. She turned it over in her hands and smiled, realising this must have been Gwendoline’s, given to her possibly by Rose. There was something decidedly English about it and all around her, despite the condition of the old cottage, with its age and decay, she felt the presence of her grandmother and great-grandmother.
She heard Matt move and looked up. He was inspecting a door at the back of the cottage. ‘It looks like a bathroom was added on back here. I can see extension work that wasn’t part of the original structure.’
‘Gwendoline’s father must have put the bathroom in when Rose and Gwendoline moved here.’
Matt fell silent and Emma moved to the kitchenette. In the sink were dishes, any crumbs or scraps long ago eaten by furry intruders. The kitchen table was a clutter of objects—a dusty abacus, the remains of an old school book and a dry bowl and ewer.
There was something pervasively silent about it all which made Emma open a narrow wardrobe as quietly as a thief, careful not to disturb the unspoken balance.
Gently flicking through the hangers, she saw clothes from another era—men’s collared shirts, women’s skirts and blouses, a child’s coat and dresses. All of them smelt strongly of mould and were moth-eaten.
She pushed the clothes along the railing and found a large leather trunk resting on the floor of the wardrobe.
She bent to take a closer look. It must have been a beautiful navy blue once with tan borders and leather handles. The initials RP and TVC were stamped into the leather.
‘Look what I found.’ She heaved the large trunk all the way across the floor, leaving a trail through the dust behind her. ‘It belongs to Rose and someone with the initials TVC.’
Matt came to her side and bent down to inspect it.
‘I wonder who TVC was,’ she mused.
He traced his fingers across the initials then straightened beside her. ‘Thomas Van Cleeve.’
‘Who?’
‘Thomas Van Cleeve. He was Rose’s lover and Gwendoline’s father.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because he went by another name as well. Jack Cleveland.’
She looked at him, unsure if he was joking. ‘Jack Cleveland? But that’s your…’
‘Can we sit and talk? There’s something important I need to tell you.’
Emma moved to the single bed and sat. Iron springs groaned as Matt sat beside her. Something like dread dropped into the pit of her stomach.
‘There’s been a lot going on the past three days and I haven’t known how to tell you any of it.’ He scratched his head and his jaw, closed his eyes, then opened them again. He looked unbearably tired. ‘I went to see my grandfather Henry, to ask him some questions. It was something that Gwendoline said the other day that got me thinking. Maybe I always wondered, just a little, if it were possible. But it seemed so far-fetched that I didn’t really give it too much thought.’
Emma watched him closely, feeling an awful truth coming.
‘She said that Rose had become a nurse. And not just one that helped out occasionally between housekeeping duties. She became a nurse in the Hospital Precinct. And it made me wonder.’
‘About?’
‘My great-grandmother, Edith. She was a nurse.’
‘So?’
‘She was a nurse here at the station. And she was a nurse until the day she died, just as Gwendoline put it.’
Emma felt the room spin like vertigo and she clutched the edge of the bed to anchor herself.
‘My grandfather filled in some of the blanks. He found a copy of his father’s birth certificate when he died. His real name was Thomas Van Cleeve. He met his wife, Edith, here at the station in 1918. They became lovers. According to him, Thomas often referred to Edith as “his rose”. Everyone thought it was just an affectionate pet name he had for her.
‘My grandfather told me of an older sister he had, one he’s never spoken of before. I certainly didn’t know she existed. I think it’s been a painful topic for him. She ran away from their North Queensland home when she was a teenager. He was only four but he remembers they never saw or heard from her again. He thinks her name was Gwendoline, but they always called her Ginny.
‘From what Henry knows of their time at the station, Thomas, Rose and Gwendoline left in 1926. They moved to a farm in Mount Sheridan in North Queensland and changed their surname from Van Cleeve to Cleveland. Rose also changed her name to Edith. They had three more children, my grandfather being one of them.’
‘Matt, stop please,’ Emma said, shaking her head.
‘Rose and Edith are the same person, Em. Rose’s lover was the station carpenter, Thomas Van Cleeve. She gave birth to Gwendoline and lived in this cottage until they left in 1926. Something made them run from here, something that frightened them enough to want to make them change their names and disappear.’
‘I said please stop.’
‘Your great-grandparents are my great-grandparents. Your grandmother is my grandfather’s sister. Your mother Catherine is my mum’s first cousin.’
‘Matt, stop!’
‘We’re related, Em.’ The anguish of it was all over his face. ‘We’re second cousins.’
Gwendoline’s words rang in her ears. He looks exactly like him... She had seen it. Matt looked like Thomas Van Cleeve. Emma choked back a sob and stood, hurrying for the door. The cottage was suddenly too small and too judgemental of what they’d done. Rose, T
homas, Gwendoline, Henry, Catherine.
Outside in the daylight, Emma thought she might heave. She forced it back, not wanting to stop, desperate to get away.
Matt was behind her, grabbing her arm. ‘Em, wait!’
She wheeled around. ‘You son of a bitch! You knew!’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘You said you knew!’ she said, flinging her fists at his chest. ‘You knew we were related and you let it happen. You let us have sex. You let me fall for you!’
‘I didn’t know,’ he said again. ‘I mean, I wondered, but I never thought it could be possible. Obviously I didn’t think it was possible or I wouldn’t have let it get this far.’
‘Oh God, what have we done?’ Emma said, clasping her hands over her mouth to stifle the shame. ‘We’re cousins.’
‘We weren’t to know.’
‘Leave me alone.’
‘At least let me walk you back.’
‘I said leave me alone.’
Emma stalked down the path, branches flying at her face and snagging her clothes.
‘Em, for God’s sake wait!’
‘Don’t touch me,’ she said when he reached for her again.
She ran from him, leaving him alone on the path looking as ashamed and bewildered as she felt.
Rose
1918
On a warm spring day that had buds bursting into bloom, Miss Dalton came racing down the main road of first class and into the kitchen, startling everyone inside as they cleaned up after the lunch service. ‘It has ended!’
Mrs March gave her a wary glance. ‘What’s ended?’
‘The war!’
Mrs March gasped. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s over. I just got confirmation on the telephone from the superintendent. The Germans agreed to an armistice. The Allies have won.’
There was a cheer from within the kitchen, the parlourmaids throwing dishtowels into the air and hugging each other. It spelt victory, peace, an end to human folly and torment, a return of husbands and sons, alive or otherwise.
‘We need champagne,’ Miss Dalton yelled above the cheering. ‘And lots of it. Fill the glasses. We’ll pass them around first class.’
‘It’s only two o’clock,’ Mrs March said.
‘Oh, Mrs March, let your hair down a little. The war has ended.’
Mrs March harrumphed. ‘Don’t fill the glasses all the way. Champagnes not cheap!’
Rose and the other parlourmaids began to pop corks off the bottles as Mrs March begrudgingly slid out crates of it from her larder. The mood in the kitchen had become one of joy, but Rose was finding it difficult to concentrate.
For weeks she had existed as if moving through molasses. She had become unrelentingly sick, heaving and gagging on the slightest smells. Her breasts were swollen, her mind muddled and the once bright future she’d gleaned with Thomas was now as sludgy as the trenches of the Western Front.
By her own calculations, her pregnancy was at approximately eleven weeks. Her body was changing at a pace that frightened her. She hadn’t yet told Thomas. She hadn’t been able to conjure up the words to explain. The station was not a place to raise babies. It would result in instant dismissal as was the case with poor Agnes.
And Thomas had made it clear he wasn’t ready to leave yet.
News of the war’s end spread like wildfire. The station laid down its own troubles like guns on the battlefield to celebrate. All the classes were jubilant; isolation and the hospital too. Their cheers could be heard on the breeze and up the funicular railway from the wharf. Champagne corks popped, people cried, opinions and debates waged. The men’s smoking room was abuzz with political discussion.
Rose was so ill with morning sickness, she could barely climb out of bed. Having fabricated countless excuses already for her nausea, she decided to seek advice.
After breakfast service with the duke, she followed the path down past the morgue and laboratory to the Hospital Precinct. It had been months since she’d visited, noticing the new barbed wire fence that had been erected to separate the unhealthy ground from the healthy. Spanish Flu had shown no signs of slowing; on the contrary, cases were rising with every new boatload that docked. The end of the war had sparked a chain of outbreaks as thousands of soldiers carried it home with them.
She spoke to a guard by the gate, who, after some convincing, allowed her to pass, and she stepped around the tents and moaning bodies to find the steps to the first-class hospital.
Dolly was surprised to see her, but indicated that Matron was in her office when Rose enquired.
Rose knocked on the door and heard the matron’s voice inside. ‘Come in.’
She opened the door and the matron stood with a smile. ‘Rose Porter, how nice to see you.’
‘Good day, Matron.’
‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’
Rose took a deep breath. ‘I’ve been having stomach issues. Is there something you can prescribe for me?’
‘What kind of stomach issues?’
She knew the matron was no fool. ‘Nausea,’ she said weakly.
Matron Cromwell looked down her nose at her.
‘I’m with child,’ she blurted, then burst into a flood of tears.
The matron pursed her lips and moved around the desk to close her office door. She returned to Rose, gesturing her to take a seat while she leant against her desk.
‘Please don’t tell Miss Dalton,’ Rose said, between gulps of air.
The matron was quiet for a long time.
‘You’re going to tell Miss Dalton, aren’t you?’
‘I’m not going to tell anyone. But goodness, how on earth did you get yourself into this?’
Rose cried harder.
The matron fell quiet again, passing Rose a handkerchief, and once she had gained control, the matron spoke. ‘Who’s the father?’
‘The carpenter, Mr Van Cleeve,’ Rose said. ‘We’re in love.’
‘Does Mr Van Cleeve know about the child?’
Rose shook her head shamefully.
‘Why haven’t you told him?’
‘Because I’m worried how he will take it.’
‘Mr Van Cleeve seems like a reasonable man. Have you discussed marriage?’
‘Yes, but he may not wish to marry me now. Even if he did, the rules are clear. We cannot raise a child on the station. We’d both be kicked out.’
‘I think it best you tell him what’s happening.’
Rose shook her head adamantly.
Matron Cromwell sighed. ‘Very well. Explain your symptoms.’
‘Nausea, vomiting, exhaustion, tenderness in my breasts. I feel a strange tugging in my lower stomach, like stretching.’
‘When did you last bleed?’
‘Eleven weeks ago.’
The matron nodded. ‘It does sound like the first trimester of pregnancy.’
‘Is there a test I can take to be sure?’
‘You can submit a urine sample to the laboratory and they will try to analyse for abnormalities, but it’s a guessing game. Women usually listen to their own bodies to know for certain.’
Rose welled up again, planting her face into the handkerchief.
‘Do you know anything about contraception, Rose? About the female body and reproduction? Has anyone taught you?’
‘My mother spoke of it on occasion.’
‘Pregnancy can be a surprise occurrence if you’re not careful.’
‘I’ve been a fool.’
‘And Mr Van Cleeve too. You mustn’t bear all the blame.’
Rose sniffed. ‘The nausea is horrendous. The slightest smells make me vomit.’
‘It’s to be expected.’
‘Will I feel this way the whole time?’
‘It should subside in a few weeks and you’ll feel better. If you’re unlucky, it will remain for the entire pregnancy.’
‘I’m worried about drawing attention. I’m constantly ill.’
‘Try boiling ginger in
tea. It will settle your stomach. Mask with a dash of honey to get it down. It has an awful taste.’
Rose mustered a small smile.
The matron pushed off from the desk and walked to the cupboard. She opened the door, rummaged inside and withdrew a corset. She walked back to Rose and handed it to her.
‘It’s a maternity corset,’ she explained, holding it up to demonstrate. ‘It has no boning and laces at the front instead of the back. As you swell, release the lacing, like so. Refrain from wearing it too tight.’
Rose took the odd-shaped corset and examined it. Without the boning, the material was fashioned courser and stiffer to provide shape, the laces longer to allow more release, the bodice cut high for swelling breasts, all in an attempt to hide one’s terrible secret.
‘Thank you, Matron.’
‘I’d like you to come back to see me in two weeks so I can give you an examination in your second trimester.’
Rose sighed heavily. ‘Then what am I to do?’
‘Hide this pregnancy for as long as you can. And I urge you to speak with Mr Van Cleeve.’
‘And then?’
‘Make preparations for the inevitable. Once you give birth to your child, you will not be allowed to remain on the station.’
Later that evening, Thomas came to fetch her and they walked back to his cottage. The night air was warm, a reluctant breeze lifting her hair and dropping it again. The moon was spectacularly bright, balancing in a clear, black sky. For the entire way, Rose thought of the maternity corset hidden beneath her bed with her suitcase pushed up against it. She hadn’t had the nerve to pluck it out, put it on and lace it up.
Make preparations for the inevitable. Matron’s words had sounded in her head all afternoon.
‘Rose?’
She started, realising they were already at his door.
‘Is everything all right? You were quiet the whole way.’
‘I’m sorry. Just tired, I guess.’
‘Let’s get you into bed.’
Thomas opened the cottage door and let them in. While he lit the candles in the lantern, Rose went to the bed and dropped her pillowcase of belongings onto the coverlet.
The Quarantine Station Page 26