The Opal Dragonfly

by Julian Leatherdale

  Aunt was probably right. Mr Macleay had been forgiven most of his sins, his nepotistic relations with Governor Darling and bitter quarrels with Governor Bourke. He had been saved from humiliation and bankruptcy by his son. Only his zealousness and hard work as a public servant and his contributions to natural science would be remembered. His legacy was vouchsafed. The same could not be said for her own father whose reputation was still under siege. Mr Macleay had made sure of that. No doubt when the Major learned the news of Mr Macleay’s passing, his only regret would be that the man had not broken his neck much earlier.

  ‘I hope the commission report is not going to be too hard on father,’ said Isobel. It had taken a typhoon and a shipwreck to kill her brother William but it might take only four men in a room and some words on paper to fatally wound her father.

  ‘Why is everyone so worried? He’ll be fine,’ announced Anna confidently. ‘He managed to come through the official inquiry into that massacre all those years ago.’

  Isobel’s eyes widened. ‘What massacre?’ What on earth was Anna talking about?

  ‘Oh, Anna, for mercy’s sake!’ Aunt Louisa rolled her eyes in exasperation. Trust Anna to blurt out this buried business! It was ancient history that had taken place when Isobel was only four years old. Before Anna could utter another word, Louisa began to tell the story that had caused the family great disquiet at the time.

  ‘There was an unfortunate…incident…on your father’s third expedition,’ said Aunt Louisa, clearing her throat nervously.

  ‘You mean when he brought Ballandella home?’ asked Isobel.

  ‘Yes, yes. Some two hundred natives, armed with spears, had followed the Major’s party for days. Piper, the Major’s native guide, said these savages had made very clear their intention to kill some of the white men.’ Aunt Louisa wiped her face with her hands. She sighed. ‘So your father reluctantly sent a group of convicts back through the bush to provide protection against a surprise attack. They were given strict instructions not to shoot unless the main party came under attack first. But one of these convicts, a Mr King, fired a single shot and then the rest of the convicts opened fire with their rifles. Several natives were killed crossing the Murray River.’ Isobel shook her head in amazement. Not a word of this story had ever been spoken in her presence in all these years. And then a terrible thought struck her. What had her playmate Ballandella known of this? Even worse, what had she seen? What if these ‘natives’ were members of Ballandella’s own tribe? This completely changed Isobel’s view of Ballandella coming to live with them. Father had never said anything.

  ‘So why was there an official inquiry?’ Isobel asked.

  Louisa scratched her head irritably. The topic obviously upset her. ‘Well, you see, the Governor had issued strict instructions that forbade the use of firearms or force “unless the safety of the party should absolutely require it”. While your father reported the incident to the Governor before he returned, the Executive Council wasn’t satisfied. They formed a panel of inquiry with the Governor, Bishop Broughton and Mr Macleay, the Colonial Secretary.’

  Mr Macleay again. No wonder the Major hated this man. It seemed that he had sat in judgement on the Major many times. ‘And what did this panel say?’ Isobel insisted.

  ‘They took evidence from eyewitnesses, including Piper. It turned out that Piper had been spreading stories about a possible attack for days, getting all the men upset and jumpy. The Executive Council’s report regretted the incident and the fact the convicts had not followed the Major’s instructions.’

  Isobel nodded. This would have done nothing to improve her father’s opinion of convicts as brutish and unreliable. Then Anna jumped in before her aunt could stop her. ‘Yes, but then the Council also chastised Father for the tone of his report, saying it was not sufficiently regretful.’ Anna’s face left Isobel in no doubt what she thought about the Executive Council.

  Aunt Louisa coughed, anxious to bring the topic to an end. ‘Anyway, your father was not formally disciplined and the whole matter was dropped. No mention was made of the nasty incident in the Major’s public report in the Government Gazette. And the members of the Legislative Council felt so guilty about this shameful carry-on—and so grateful to the Major for his expedition—they published a glowing tribute to him in the Herald.’

  Isobel knew this public letter of gratitude well, written and signed by men who had benefited handsomely from his explorations. Squatters mostly. Her father was so proud of this letter he had a copy of it framed in his study. It praised the Major for his skills, courage, leadership and resolve ‘though harassed by tribes of hostile savages and subjected to the greatest privations and perils’. This phrase took on a new meaning for Isobel now she knew its context. Aunt Louisa had a set of the Major’s published journals on her bookshelves in the morning room. Isobel decided that she must read Father’s account of his third expedition.

  ‘Let us just pray that this latest inquiry does not rake over these old coals again!’ said Louisa. ‘As far as I can see, it is all ancient history and best left alone. Enough said.’

  That night, as Isobel half-expected, Ballandella made an appearance in her dream. She beckoned Isobel to follow her through the abandoned gardens at Rosemount, finding a trail in the thick undergrowth and the wild profusion of native grasses and dense trees. As they walked, the forest around them changed from conifers and oaks to ironbark and scribbly gum, peppermint willows and casuarinas. They came out of the forest into bright sunshine, but where Isobel expected to see the green waters of the harbour she was confronted by a broad, brown stretch of water with banks of red dirt. A river.

  Now Ballandella began to stamp her feet and shake her fists at Isobel, picking up handfuls of the red dirt and throwing them. ‘What is it? What are you doing?’ implored Isobel, confused and scared. Ballandella’s face was distorted into a scowl of rage. She spat at her old friend and threw another handful of dust in her face. Isobel was crying. ‘What is it? What is it?’ And then she saw something in the river. Bodies, bodies of black men, circling on the current. It was possibly Isobel’s worst nightmare so far.

  Not that her daylight hours spared poor Isobel private anguish. She thought about her brother William every day and missed him terribly. Grief was a dark and unpredictable passage. Just when she thought she had readjusted her spiritual compass to navigate the calmer waters of acceptance, a new wave of anger and bitterness would swamp her, plunging her back into the blackest of moods.

  How could William have abandoned her like this?

  There was one unlooked for and potentially happy consequence of William’s passing: the three sisters were brought a little closer in their shared distress. They had all loved William, the great conciliator and umpire who had so often kept the peace when they were younger. Isobel and Anna wept together and Isobel relieved some of the painful burden of her heart in letters to Grace, a mixture of reminiscences and regrets. But this truce between Isobel and her two sisters was not as robust as Isobel would have liked.

  Anna’s troubled mind was stirred up again by her grief and her private fantasies were raised to a new pitch of suspicion. Isobel often discovered her lurking in the upstairs corridor in the mornings like a bloodhound on the scent. Isobel made a habit of locking her bedroom door and hiding her letters and journals, afraid of Anna’s prying eyes. Anna knew something. And if she didn’t, she was determined to find out.

  It was the second week of November and the sun was already hot and bright. The first flowers had appeared overnight on the frangipani tree, their shell-shaped petals flushed yellow and apricot. Summer had begun. Isobel came down for morning devotionals at half past six with Aunt Louisa, Anna and the household staff.

  As soon as she stepped into the room, she sensed that all was not well. Anna had opened the drapes so the room was awash in blinding light. She was arguing with the poor housemaid, Peg, who had been instructed to keep the drapes drawn. Aunt Louisa had spoken a few stern words to Anna—‘Ca
lm down, my dear’—but these had only served to incite her more, culminating in her stubborn refusal to play for this morning’s devotionals.

  ‘Blast your moaning Welsh hymns!’ swore Anna.

  Isobel recognised the wildness in Anna’s eyes, the snarl of her lips. She was the rabid dog again, cornered and beginning to bare her teeth. The servants had backed towards the door in terror and mortification at seeing their ‘betters’ behaving so badly. Aunt Louisa’s attempts to ‘talk sense’ into her would only make things worse; Anna hated being lectured to and would bite back with even greater fury.

  ‘Now, you mind your tongue, Miss Anna. This is no way for a lady to behave!’

  ‘damn the way a lady should behave. And damn you! Someone should cut your tongue out, stupid old woman!’ shouted Anna, pacing back and forth and clawing at invisible creatures that buzzed about her head. Her demons were well and truly in control today.

  ‘Call for Dr Finch, Aunt,’ advised Isobel. ‘He’s the only one to calm her.’

  ‘How about you stay out of it! How about you shut up!’ Anna picked up a Book of Common Prayer on the bench where the staff normally sat. She hurled it across the room, narrowly missing her sister’s head. ‘You’ve caused enough trouble already, you have!’ Isobel heard the hissing of the volcano, felt its ominous rumble that presaged the torrent of hatred that would now gush forth from Anna’s lips.

  ‘do you think everyone has forgotten about your disgrace, Isobel? do you? The Finches and the Bradleys? They still talk about us behind our backs. “Those brazen, ridiculous Macleod women!” they say. “They have stooped so low that they now have an ex-convict’s son in the family tree.” And you and that artist, making eyes at each other! You carrying on like a whore right under your aunt’s nose! I see what goes on!’

  Aunt Louisa’s face had gone white with fear. Even Isobel was shocked. Anna’s face was contorted into a hideous, spitting gorgon’s. She advanced on Isobel, her mind consumed by madness. ‘And now your disgrace has destroyed our father’s wits and sent him racing off to England to escape us! It drove away Joseph and William too—you saw how quickly they fled, so full of shame! You are the reason William died! You are the reason Alice won’t come home! You are the reason Grace has left me here all alone! You are the root of all our shame, all our pain and misery!’

  Isobel knew better than to provoke Anna but this was too much. She stepped towards her and the crazed woman flinched as if Isobel was about to strike.

  ‘No, please, no!’ she whimpered.

  ‘Get to your room before I call the police and have you locked up!’ shouted Isobel, her hand raised. ‘Go!’

  Galvanised by these words, Anna ran from the room and up the stairs, wailing, ‘Please don’t hurt me!’ They heard the bedroom door slam.

  ‘Anna has these fits. Please pay no attention to the nonsense she spouts. You must send for Dr Finch. He has medications that will help.’ Isobel’s face was set in a determined frown, her cheeks flushed, head throbbing. ‘I am going out for a while. If I stay I shall only provoke her.’

  She pecked her poor aunt on the cheek and hastened to her room to change her clothes and collect her art satchel. In the bedroom nearby she could hear Anna sobbing inconsolably. Isobel did not go to comfort her for she knew that when the madness had her in its grip, she was beyond the help of words. The only whip that could bring her inner devils to heel was fear—at least until Dr Finch came with his sedatives. To be honest, Isobel did not feel much like comforting Anna or saving her from herself. She was sick of Anna’s cruelty. They may well be devils that possessed and spoke through her sister but Isobel feared that even so they spoke the truth of her sister’s most vile thoughts.

  Poor Aunt Louisa. She had been scared half to death. Isobel wondered how much longer such outbursts from Anna could be tolerated before they would be forced to have her committed. No doubt Anna was tormented by the same question.

  Isobel needed to get away from the closeted atmosphere of Faulconstone. She needed to feel the breeze on her skin, to inhale the spring flowers and the invigorating smack of salt air, to walk and walk and walk. With her parasol to shield her from the heat, she caught an omnibus back along Old South Head Road and down Darlinghurst Road to what people were now calling Darlinghurst Heights, the home of her long-missed Rosemount. From the top of William Street, she walked past the grand homes of her childhood and their iron gates, avenues of trees, high walls and hedges. She then climbed down the steep flight of sandstone stairs into the valley behind Woolloomooloo Bay.

  A fresh breeze whispered soothingly in the needled branches of the casuarinas and the silver-green canopies of the red gums that fringed the bay. Isobel loved the quiet and solitude of this place. Apart from a handful of wharf buildings and a timber yard and slipway for the construction of small ships, the foreshore was largely unspoilt. Isobel found a secluded spot on one of the crags overlooking the water. In the distance she could see the new Gothic Revival terraces being built along Victoria Street high up on the plateau of the Heights.

  The lovely farm in the valley that had once belonged to Mrs Palmer and her husband had been broken up for workers’ cottages and terrace houses, which sprouted all over the valley like mushrooms after rain. The elegant days of old Woolloomooloo were fading fast. Lining the dirt roads behind the waterfront there had sprung up several brick warehouses and sheds, a scattering of cottages and two pubs, precursors to the bay’s new identity as the haunt of shipbuilders, sailors, lumpers and publicans. Even so, it was still a lovely spot.

  On her shaded boulder overlooking the bay, Isobel sat, absorbed in her sketching. She had seen a charming pen-and-wash drawing by Mr George French Angas of this same view printed in the newspaper only a few weeks ago. She was interested to see how her own impression would compare and looked forward to showing it to Charles.

  Isobel had been in love with this harbour since she was a little girl. She knew all its moods: serene, limpid jade on a spring morning; mirror-smooth and dazzling on a summer’s day; leaden and stygian under rain clouds; grey and white flecked in a gale; bombazineblack and silvered under a full moon. The surge and suck of its waters were as vital to her sense of self as the ebb and flow of her own pulse. Isobel was possessed by this harbour.

  On Boxing day this year, Sydney had put on an impressive aquatic show on her beloved harbour. Isobel had come down with her father, aunt and two sisters to join Captain Clark and two hundred other guests for luncheon on the flagship Young England, anchored in Woolloomooloo Bay. The occasion was the inaugural Boxing day Regatta, watched by a crowd of over two thousand that thronged the foreshore from the domain all the way round to Lady Macquarie’s Chair. The course of each race started from the bay, looped round Fort Denison and the Sow and Pigs Reef, came back around the flagship, looped Fort Denison a second time and the buoys off Shark Island, before returning finally in triumph to the flagship. The holiday crowd cheered and waved handkerchiefs and hats as the skiffs, gigs and dinghies went gliding over the bright waters. On board the flagship, gold medallions were awarded to the winners, loyal toasts proposed and dances enjoyed late into the afternoon thanks to the Volunteer Band. Such a successful pageant, showing off Sydney’s harbour in all its majesty, promised to be an annual event.

  Today, only a handful of dinghies were tied up near the wharf and five small sail craft zigzagged lazily across the bay. Isobel counted four men down at the wharf sheds, two couples walking along the waterfront and a young man in a boater, lounging on the crags to her left. The jaunty notes of a squeezebox and a chorus of male voices floated out of the Rose and Crown on the corner to her right. A horse meditated on its chaff bag, harnessed between the shafts of a coach in front of the pub. Three dogs formed an irregular triangle in the dusty road. It was a picturesque scene, worthy of her pen and brush.

  This furious concentration on her work was how she tried to purge the sadness and anger, pooled like poison in her heart, because of everything about her family: its shamefu
l secrets, its overweening pride, its ancient grudges and new despairs. She wished she could be rid of it all! She would marry her Charles, change her name, maybe even go to Melbourne or Hobart (why not Paris?) with him and begin her life all over again in peace and happiness.

  The breeze dropped and the air began to pulse with the heat. droplets of perspiration beaded on Isobel’s brow and the sun cut out her shadow, sharp and perfect, on the rock. It was going to be a hot summer if spring was this warm. But the blazing sunlight did not bother her; instead, it made every colour sing and every shape dance with greater intensity.

  Isobel was so lost in her work that she failed to notice the wind gusting across the bay, apart from the odd finger-flick at the edges of her paper. Overhead the sky began to take on a bilious tinge and the waters of the bay to darken. Then she heard a voice on the road below her shouting, ‘Brickfielder! Brickfielder! Get inside!’

  She looked up and saw that the light over the city had grown acid and rust-coloured. Winds were racing across Sydney from the south, loaded with their freight of red dust and rising into a giant wave as thick as a pea souper. She had to move fast. She began to gather up her journal, parasol and satchel and look about, with some urgency, for shelter.

  She did not feel comfortable about approaching any of the workers’ cottages nearby. The wharf sheds were probably too far away for her to get there in time. And the pub was out of the question. She knew Charles had a studio above a store in a side street here but she had never visited him there, of course, for fear of scandal. But in an emergency, surely she would be justified in seeking shelter. If only she could remember the address.

  The wind was fierce now, bending the trees before it and shredding their leaves to confetti. Isobel ran as fast she could, though the wind kept punching her, causing her to stumble from her course. All the people on the waterfront had scattered, as had the three dogs. Only the horse, blinkered and chewing in its nosebag, stood stock-still against the blast. Isobel looked over her shoulder.