The Opal Dragonfly

by Julian Leatherdale

  Isobel rose from her bed and went to the wardrobe. From the bottom drawer, she pulled out her tin box of secrets and plucked out a tiny key. And there—just as she had seen it in her dream—lay the dragonfly. She spoke to the darkness. ‘What do the dreams mean, Mama? Such strange and terrible dreams.’ There had been the one of the drowning man, the night before her father fought a duel. And other dreams too, both frightening and wonderful. But she could only guess at their meanings, assuming they meant anything at all.

  Her room was so stifling she could barely breathe. A frisson of terror still lingered when she looked at her washstand and cheval glass, easily able to recall their destruction. She had to escape. To find fresh air, take a deep breath. She would steal away to her favourite hiding place as a child when the household slept. Isobel took the key and tiptoed across the mezzanine to the servants’ stairs. She half expected to see water sloshing about in the saloon below but all was normal and calm. Unlocking the same secret door as in her dream, she climbed the winding stairs and, at last, came out onto Rosemount’s rooftop.

  The night was still warm after such a hot day. Even the waist-high wall around the courtyard radiated a little heat. Isobel went over to the dome and lay sprawled, arms outstretched, on its warm slate-tiled mound, just as she loved to do as a child. It felt daring to let herself be suspended over this great drop, her feet lifted into the air and the dome bearing her full weight. Between her legs she could see to the marble floor of the saloon below. She knew it was safe but even so it challenged her mental defences.

  Now Isobel sat on the courtyard wall, looking out to the bay beyond. The cloudless sky was a luminous blue wash with the brilliance of the moonlight igniting the harbour in rills of white fire. Clark and Shark islands slept, mere shadows against the glossy water. Away on the horizon there was a thin ribbon of paler light—the glow of Sydney’s gaslights perhaps?—and, above it, a long, leaden cloud hanging over the city. She wondered why such a cloud always seemed to hang there at night. Perhaps it was a pall of smoke mixed with other fumes. And yet, strangely, she never saw it in daylight.

  A voice penetrated the dark. ‘Prawns, fresh prawns!’ a man cried out in a surly tone, as if angered that no one could be bothered to purchase his catch at this late hour. It was one of Sydney’s blacks walking along the beach. One of the last of his people.

  Isobel thought of Ballandella then, the girl she had sworn to never forget. When she first moved to Rosemount, Isobel had crept up here regularly to sit on this wall under the stars, trying to remember Ballandella’s night-time stories. Stories of the Goanna woman who used her yam stick to release the waters of the Murrumbidgee. Stories of Baiame, the Creator, hanging upside down with his shield and boomerang on the horizon, and Maliyan, the Wedge-tailed Eagle with a diamond-bright star for an eye. Ballandella had shown Isobel these starpatterns in the night sky, used by the storytellers to recall the story-songs. She may have only been four when she was taken from her mother but she had learned how the great wheel of stars helped you find your way at night, and to keep track of the season and the time of year. ‘The stars, Izzie. Up there, look. Stars, eh?’

  Ballandella, her playmate, her friend. Why had she not replied to any of Isobel’s letters when she was taken away? Isobel had written again and again care of Dr Nicholson, asking him to forward her letters to wherever Ballandella was living. Much later, Dr Nicholson wrote to Isobel to say he had heard that Ballandella had found a husband and started a family near Wisemans Ferry. Was she happy? Had she found a good life? did she ever think about Grangemouth and Isobel? These were questions that Isobel asked in her letters. But none of them were ever answered.

  It was only as she grew older that Isobel began to realise that, perhaps, Ballandella simply did not want to answer the letters. Maybe she had good reasons to resent (even to hate) Major Macleod and his family. did she blame them for taking her away from her mother, for turning her into a spectacle, a plaything for their amusement and curiosity? did her grief as a little girl darken all her memories of her days at Grangemouth?

  Now that she herself faced exile from Rosemount, Isobel found that easy to understand. She had the merest inkling of how helpless Ballandella must have felt, so far from home and her loved ones. Isobel had flattered herself that she was Ballandella’s loving companion. In her arrogance, she had never considered the black girl’s profound loneliness. Mrs Palmer was the only one who had taken that seriously. ‘Does she not get lonely at times, poor thing? Surely she must pine for her own kind?’ Winnie had been dismissive. ‘I don’t believe so. She is such a sunny soul.’ But it was Isobel who would never forget the plaintive sound of her friend singing to herself in her mother’s tongue and crying for her country.

  Now it was Isobel’s turn to feel lonely.

  Winnie and Richard were gone. William and Joseph were headed for India. Her brave sister Alice was on the other side of world. Grace and Anna were glad to be rid of her. She felt more estranged from her father than she would have thought possible. While Mrs Palmer was sweet and loyal, it felt wrong to burden her. Aunt Louisa was well meaning but her high principles did not invite confidentiality. And her childhood friends, the Bradleys and Finches, had shown they could not be trusted.

  It would soon be time for Isobel to leave Rosemount. Perhaps that was the portent of her terrifying dream: that Rosemount and everything it had meant to her and her family was now lost. Its time had passed. The Macleod family’s prestige was dissipated. If she stayed to help Father and her sisters try to reclaim the glory days, she too would be marooned.

  As she sat contemplating the night sky, Isobel felt something inside the pocket of her bed jacket. Had she placed it there in her dream or when she had awoken? She could not be sure. Her hand closed on the brooch. She held it up and the lovely fire of its stones was kindled by the moonlight. ‘Oh, Mama,’ she sighed. ‘What is it I am supposed to do?’

  Papa was right about one thing. She had been without proper guidance since her mother’s death. She felt more unsure about her future than at any other time in her short life. But wasn’t that story already written for her, the daughter of an exalted colonial official? To be wooed and wed by a gentleman of respectable station and means, to bear him children, raise his family and be the mistress of his house? Surely this was her destiny.

  Was that story changed now that she had stepped outside the boundaries of social decorum? Because she was perverse and fanatical as her sisters had insisted? Or was it because she wanted something else, something that she hardly dared put into words? She thought about the little girl whose father took her into his study to draw emu eggs and fossil bones. Who befriended Ballandella and listened to her stories. Who dared to impersonate Papa as an explorer on her ‘expedition’ to Rushcutters Bay. The young woman at work with her paint set and easel, enraptured by the harbour and forest through her window. The artist with a restless heart, yearning foolishly for the talents of Mr Martens or Mr Earle, marvelling at her own breathtaking conceit. The woman dressed as her brother who dashed into the middle of a duel to save her father’s life. The woman who crept out of her bedroom at night and sat on the roof to stare at the stars. Who had inherited her mother’s ambivalent gift and her dreams of sublime terror.

  Who was this woman? How did she fit into the story of Isobel Macleod? There came to her then the poem that Fanny told her that first day in Rosemount’s gardens:

  Today I saw the dragon-fly

  Come from the wells where she did lie.

  An inner impulse rent the veil

  Of her old husk: from head to tail.

  What had Fanny, that high-spirited ‘queer’ woman, said to her? ‘We must lose our old selves so we can discover our true natures.’ Isobel prayed she might still have the chance to do just that. It was time for her to change. To shed her past. To find a place where she would be cherished for who she truly was. She sensed that time and place were near.

  Chapter 18

  JUNIPER HALL


  The evergreen magnolias were hung with lamps that cast pools of honeyed light about them, illuminating their silver trunks, their stooping branches laden with greenery and blossom, and the perfect bright circles of emerald-green buffalo grass at their feet. In Isobel’s eyes these pools had the enchanted air of faery rings, enticing but also menacing, tempting her to leave the narrow pathway.

  The gardens at Juniper Hall were one of its chief splendours. This front garden, through which guests were arriving under a filigreed iron arch, was dominated by a colossal Moreton Bay fig. As Isobel made her way to the house, she saw that the paved pathway was flanked by beds of Nile lilies, foxgloves, pinks, daisies and field poppies, while along the perimeter walls, flowering shrubs of mock orange, jasmine and gardenia perfumed the evening air. It was a charming, modest garden compared with the encyclopaedic profusion of Rosemount but pleasing to the eye nonetheless.

  Isobel’s white silk evening gown matched the simple loveliness of this setting. The dress was cut to flatter the slope of her pretty neck and shoulders, unadorned but for her necklet. Father had called Isobel into the study the night before and presented this lovely gift, made in India and taken from Winnie’s private collection, in honour of Isobel’s debut. ‘Your mother would have wanted you to wear this,’ he said. Isobel kissed him tenderly on the cheek. Little did he know that she had an even lovelier gift from her mother but one she could never wear proudly in public.

  The Major’s ill temper had not abated completely since the receipt of Alice’s bad news. But he reassured his daughters that his solicitor had written a long letter to the Baron’s family and another to Alice, instructing her to prepare for her return to Australia with her baby son. Uncle Fergus would go to London to make the arrangements. In the meantime, the Governor had informed the Major that the Executive Council was appointing a commission of inquiry to investigate his conduct of his department and would submit a report by early next year. The commission would consist of four gentlemen including his old nemesis, Mr Macleay, the former Colonial Secretary. Naturally, Isobel fretted over her father’s state of mind.

  It had been only three days since her ambush at Watsons Bay. Isobel had wept for the loss of both her innocence and the childhood love she had once borne her friends, the Misses Finch and Bradley. But she deliberately put aside all these worries as best she could, determined to make the most of this happy occasion.

  As she neared the house, Isobel pulled on her new cream gloves and her silk hat trimmed with three ostrich feathers, a concession to the whimsy of a fancy-dress ball. Isobel hoped that her debutante’s dress would not disappoint. The costumes she had seen so far were exceptionally sumptuous including three Greek goddesses, a maudlin Hamlet, two Cavaliers, a Highland warrior, a Roman centurion and a haughty Catherine the Great.

  At her side there walked Aunt Louisa in a simple brown dress and knitted shawl. She was a short, plain, sensible woman and a devout Methodist who did not approve of frivolities such as balls or beverages stronger than tea. But she had decided to turn a blind eye as tonight’s festivities were to raise funds for the establishment of a Society for the Relief of destitute Children.

  As they approached, Aunt Louisa pointed out Mrs Jane Cooper, their hostess, in the doorway, dressed in a medieval gown of sky-blue silk with long, trumpet-shaped sleeves and a linen wimple that left visible only the lovely white oval of her face. ‘So you must be Isobel,’ she smiled, taking her guest’s hand. ‘You look charming, my dear.’

  ‘Why, thank you. I love your costume. Who are you, if I may ask?’

  ‘I am Queen Adeliza of Louvaine, wife to King Henry I of England. A great patroness of writers.’ Mrs Cooper laughed self-mockingly as she was a well-known dilettante, famous for hiring a posse of art, literature and music tutors to work on her own education and that of her huge brood. ‘And my warmest welcome to you, Mrs Blunt.’

  Aunt Louisa nodded gravely, discombobulated by all the finery, the champagne and the loud merriment within. ‘Very good, very good,’ was all she managed to say, fumbling with her fan. Recognising Louisa’s discomfiture, Jane called over a woman of comparable vintage and dedication to charity work. ‘Mrs Meredith, Mrs Blunt.’ The two women fell to talking about the fancy bazaar to be held in the Botanic Gardens on New Year’s day.

  ‘Come, stand next to me and I shall introduce you to my guests,’ said Jane.

  She and Isobel were joined by Catherine, the family’s thirteenth daughter and the other debutante of the evening. dressed in a heavily embroidered red brocade gown with an extravagant lace ruff and trimmings of cloth of gold and pearls, Catherine’s outfit was a startling impersonation of Elizabeth I. Isobel complimented her costume but privately thought that the Virgin Queen was an odd choice for a young woman’s ‘coming out’ into society.

  The ball was quite different from those her parents held at Rosemount. For a start, the guests were altogether louder and more boisterous than her parents’ guests. Juniper Hall was different too. Not as theatrically grand as Mr Verge’s Rosemount, it was a fine Georgian mansion, nonetheless, with strong, clean lines, pleasingly proportioned rooms, an air of rationality and restrained good taste, and polished cedar floors that shone like amber.

  Isobel stood at the door for two hours or more with her hostess, being introduced to a multitude of ladies and gentlemen. The guests were wealthy businessmen and women: proprietors of hotels, taverns, warehouses, tanneries, shipyards, brickworks, timber and textile mills, as well as lawyers, doctors, engineers, architects and bureaucrats. Most of them were probably emancipists, thought Isobel, though she also recognised a few familiar faces from families she was surprised had condescended to enjoy the hospitality of the wealthy Mr Cooper. There were also the officers of the 11th Regiment, who had swapped their redcoats and shakos for mail and plumage as Richard the Lion Heart, Sir Lancelot and King Arthur.

  At one point, ‘Robert the Large’ himself came into the reception hall to speak with his wife. He was a big man in every sense, tall and exceedingly round. He had capitalised on his rotundity by transforming himself into Holbein’s portrait of Henry VIII. When he spoke, Isobel could hear the squashed East End vowels of this son of Stepney. ‘Well, well, so this is the remarkable young woman I’ve heard so much about. Quite the freethinker and firebrand, I’m told. I only wish my own daughters had half your spunk.’

  Isobel’s face reddened. She did not know whether to be appalled or delighted.

  Among the later arrivals were her sisters, Anna and Grace, no doubt delayed by one of Anna’s tantrums. Isobel smiled sweetly at them both. despite their snobbish disdain, they seemed impressed by Juniper Hall’s simple grandeur and even excited to be out in public again. Mrs C. introduced them both to her eldest son, Augustus, who escorted them to the ballroom.

  At ten o’clock, His Excellency, Governor Sir Charles FitzRoy arrived by coach. He was a handsome man but tonight looked careworn and exhausted. The last few years had taken a toll on the once-popular governor. There had been the widely mourned death of his wife, Lady Mary, in a carriage accident in the grounds of Government House, with Sir Charles at the reins of the runaway vehicle. There had also been a furious public row over the Colonial Office’s orders to restart convict transportation. And now there was the challenge of keeping law and order on the goldfields where tens of thousands arrived each week.

  Isobel curtsied as she received His Excellency’s congratulations. She felt as if her ‘coming out’ was now formally sealed, not quite the customary presentation in the Queen’s drawing room at St James’s Palace but the best equivalent available in the colony, short of a ball at Government House. ‘Pass on my compliments to your father,’ the Governor added, before turning away to join the festivities. Isobel was flummoxed by this condescension from the very man who was about to authorise the destruction of her father’s career.

  ‘You have performed your duties with exemplary manners, my dears,’ said Mrs Cooper to Catherine and Isobel. ‘Now let all three of us go and
enjoy ourselves.’

  Dance music, courtesy of the regimental band, flowed mellifluously from room to room, animating the spirits of everyone present as did the contents of Mr and Mrs Cooper’s large Chinese punchbowls with their panoramas of old Sydney Town. Aunt Louisa had found refuge in the company of three other eminent charity women and was able to relax her moral guardianship over Isobel for a short while, confident in Mrs Cooper’s vigilance.

  At one point, Isobel spied Anna at the supper table in conversation with a young lady who seemed to be enjoying her company. Miracles were possible. Even more intriguing was the sight of her sister Grace talking to Mr Augustus Cooper, a tolerably good-looking gentleman with a rumoured fortune to his name that did much to improve his attractiveness. It was obvious Grace was enjoying herself. For her part, Isobel’s confidence waxed as the evening progressed. To her delight, she was soon engaged for four dances with four different gentlemen. All her cares melted away in the arms of these charming and considerate men on the dance floor and in witty conversation on the veranda.

  It was outside that Isobel encountered the last person she ever hoped to see again. With a start, she heard his voice before she laid eyes on him. The only report she had had of his whereabouts, a year or so ago, was with the 65th Regiment of Foot in New Zealand. Out in the garden, she saw him, a fair-haired gent dressed in Greek helmet and bronzed breastplate to resemble the all-conquering Macedonian.

  Captain Ralph Tranter.

  Isobel felt her cheeks burn and her heart begin to race. Oh, good heavens, no! The last thing she wanted was to revisit that awkward episode. At that very moment the captain turned and looked in her direction. He took a second or two to recognise her, then struggled to hide his shock.

  ‘Why, Miss Macleod—it is you! How well you look!’ he said.

  ‘Thank you. You are well too, I trust?’ she said, anxious to avoid any remarks that would lead down paths she dare not tread.