By command of whatever guardian angel watched over her, Isobel saw the omnibus that headed down William Street approaching the front gates. She climbed aboard and, in no mood to be with company, ascended to the upstairs seating where she could be alone. A breeze fanned her, cooling the blood-heat of her face. She felt her pulse begin to slow as she contemplated the soothing darkness and the measured pulse of starlight.
If God was at His peephole tonight, what did He see? A heartless and wicked woman who had deliberately terrified her sister? Or a long-suffering, scared woman who had finally struck back at her tormentor? Of course, Isobel preferred to think it was the latter. But she realised that the rightness or wrongness of her feelings was not what was important now. She had awakened ancient and overwhelming resentments in her sister Grace and had also insulted the integrity of her husband. She was banished from Rosemount for good.
Isobel was still in numbed denial that today she had put her dear father into the cold earth, and that she would never see his face or hear his voice again. death had taken away the keystone of her family, and within hours of his burial Grace, Joseph, Anna and Isobel were at war with each other. Both Isobel’s parents and two favourite brothers were dead. Alice was on the other side of the world and might as well be. Isobel was all alone.
Except for Charles. He was her refuge, her rock. She must go to him. She alighted from the coach and followed the dirt road through the valley to Woolloomooloo Bay. There were no street lamps so she walked along the verge, guided by the line of paler road against the darker edge. The night was warm with soft breezes off the bay and yet the amber firelight in windows and homely smell of smoke made the houses she passed seem cosy.
What a sight she must have made in her heavy crepe mourning dress, and her black bodice and veil, straight from her father’s funeral and wake! As she lifted her hem to step over a puddle, her black stockings and black silk petticoats were revealed. Fleeing from Grace and Augustus’s house without a second’s thought as to where she would go, she still had on her jet jewellery: a ring, and a pendant that held a lock of her father’s hair. And pinned to her bodice the opal dragonfly, its chain broken and discarded, glistening at her breast. In the darkness Isobel was a phantom, blackly invisible as she passed cottages and terraces. Without parents, Isobel was no longer a dutiful and loving daughter and she had yet to become a dutiful and loving wife. What was she now? A ghost slipping between worlds.
‘Evening, ma’am,’ came rough male voices in the gloom, their owners touching their caps. As she neared the Rose and Crown she could hear a rowdy chorus of men singing.
The Currency Lads may fill their glasses,
And drink the health of the Currency Lasses;
But the lass I adore, the lass for me,
Is a lass in the Female Factory.
A dog whined in a nearby backyard, a baby yowled at an upstairs window. Isobel was assailed by smells that she did not associate with her daylight visits here: the stink of cabbage cooking and meat frying, of coal smoke, tobacco, beer fumes. She turned her face away as she walked briskly past an alleyway where a man, presumably drunk, urinated against a wall.
Over the road she could see a light on in Charles’s studio. Was he home then from his appointment with his patron? It seemed too early but she did not want to stand for long too close to the smells and clamour of the pub. In the light that spilled from its windows, Isobel saw the figures of three women on the street opposite, dressed in such a manner as to suggest they were not simply enjoying the evening air. Not wishing to arouse their interest, Isobel walked away smartly, her heart in her mouth, towards the wharf overlooking the bay. She lingered a moment there, catching her breath and watching the black waters slop and slap against the piers. It comforted her, this harbour music with its familiar liquid lullaby.
She recrossed the street then and went in at the side door of the narrow terrace where Charles had his studio. The grocery shop was still open even at this late hour, its exhausted owner half-dozing at his counter. After all the drama of the day, she too was bone weary. She mounted the cramped stairs and knocked at the door. On the other side, she heard two voices, a conversation broken off. ‘Hold on a moment!’
The door was flung open and Charles stood there with his arms spread wide in greeting. His face drained white at the sight of his fiancé. ‘Isobel?’ Half-question, half-reproach. ‘What—what are you doing here?’
‘Can I come in?’ Isobel asked peevishly, wondering what delayed the invitation.
Charles froze, his hands limp by his sides, his shoulders hunched. ‘Is that—is that a good idea? I mean—people will talk…our engagement…’
‘I think it is a bit late to worry about that,’ said Isobel tartly. She was puzzled at her fiancé’s awkwardness and lack of warmth. Questions crowded her mind. Who was he expecting so eagerly? Why did he seem so embarrassed to see her? Who was the other voice in the room? He was behaving very oddly, hanging at the door, his face haggard.
And then she felt sickened with panic. She recalled Joseph’s odd reaction to meeting Charles at the wake: ‘I think I have met your fiancé before…How much do you know about him?’ What was he hiding? Was it possible that her fiancé was expecting a visit from a woman? Or, even worse, was there a woman in his studio right now? Was that why he looked so trapped? don’t be a fool! she counselled herself, but could not throw off her fear.
‘I want to come in, Charles! I have been thrown out of Rosemount. Anna, Grace, Augustus, they have all conspired against me.’
Without warning, another man’s face appeared at the door. He was younger than Charles, heavily bearded and decidedly drunk. ‘So is this the pretty young lady in question?’ he asked, surveying Isobel from head to toe.
‘Yes, Richard, this is my fiancé, Miss Isobel Macleod.’ Charles placed a steadying hand on his companion’s shoulder. ‘You know, I told you all about her.’
Richard nodded his head in an exaggerated manner to signify he understood.
‘Righty-o, then.’
‘And I am about to escort her home,’ announced Charles firmly. ‘You can explain everything that has happened on the way,’ he said to Isobel. ‘This is no place for a young lady to go wandering about at night. I am only glad you came to no harm.’
Isobel pouted. She hated being treated like a child. And she could tell something was not right. Charles seemed to be in great haste to get her away. ‘Let me get my coat.’
Charles hurried from the door to fetch his coat and hat. His inebriated friend smiled at her. ‘I’m sorry you can’t join us for a drink or two.’ He blinked and looked at her again more closely. ‘Someone died?’
‘My father.’
‘Oh, that is a pity. My sincerest cond— condolescences,’ he lisped drunkenly.
Charles returned. He seemed to have regained his composure. He kissed her on the cheek and wrapped his arm about her protectively. ‘Let’s get you home, poor lamb.’
Isobel looked her lover in the eye. ‘You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, Charles. The fact is I no longer have a home.’ And with that acknowledgement of the truth, Isobel collapsed into her lover’s arms and wept as if she would never stop.
In the cab on the way to Faulconstone, Isobel poured out her anger and grief. Charles listened with his usual patience but also seemed a little distant. Relieved as she was to be in his custody, she could not dismiss a nagging sense of unease. What had she interrupted at the studio? Charles told her Richard was an old friend and they were expecting a third gentleman to join them. Was that not explanation enough?
Not surprisingly, Aunt Louisa was in a state. Her swooning spirits had only been revived with the aid of salts upon hearing the news of Isobel’s outburst and then disappearance. With great reluctance, she had returned to Faulconstone, but not before insisting her coachman drive her about the streets of Darlinghurst Heights and Victoria Street in a haphazard search for both her nieces. When this hunt had proved fruitless, she had come home and sat
in a state of extreme nervous agitation, awaiting Isobel’s return. ‘I thought you were dead,’ she told her niece, mopping the tears from her cheeks.
‘I am sorry to have been the cause of so much distress, Aunt,’ apologised Isobel. Nearly two hours had passed since Anna had fled Rosemount and there was still no word of her whereabouts. Her aunt told her that Augustus and two servants had ridden out to look for her at the neighbours’ houses while a third was sent to the nearest police watch house to alert them. It was possible she had made for the Bradleys’ or Finches’ but the unpleasant truth was that there were few people Anna trusted or liked.
Aunt Louisa thanked Charles Probius for his honourable conduct in escorting Isobel home. She promised to let him know how matters were resolved as soon as they had an answer. Charles parted company with them, his departure marred by an uncharacteristic awkwardness. Much as she wished to feel her trust fully restored, Isobel could not ignore the lingering disquiet in her heart.
Isobel slept fitfully that night. Her nightmare returned, beginning with the scene of her climb to Rosemount’s rooftop as the floodwaters rose to submerge the house. As if her dream could be any more disturbing or uncanny, tonight she dreamed that the waters closed over the rooftop dome completely. For a last few desperate minutes, Isobel clung like a shipwreck survivor holding on to the upturned hull of her stricken ship. In the waters all about her floated the splendid wreckage of the house. Out on the horizon, she could still see Charles hunched over the oars of his rowboat, which, no matter how strenuously he worked at the oars, appeared to move neither away from nor towards her. And then close by she saw the oddest thing, a tiny rowboat, no bigger than a basket, floating. She reached out to grab it but with no real hope that it would save her. Rosemount’s dome was swallowed up by the dark waters and she was left, flailing and screaming, convinced that she would drown.
Isobel woke, bolt upright, gasping.
She pulled the opal dragonfly from beneath her pillow and held it in her hands. She ached for Winnie’s loving arms, the reassurance of her words, the balm of her voice. Winnie would see Charles Probius’s character clearly. She would know what to do.
She stared at the cold fire of the opal stones. Some days she was still tempted to walk to the nearest beach and hurl the blasted thing into the sea. When her spirits were low, she would half-convince herself the dragonfly was more than a spinner of dreams, a window on the future. She believed then it was a cursed thing that exerted a malicious and destructive influence over her life. She knew that this was blasphemous and absurd but still she struggled against the impulse to get rid of it. ‘Forgive me, Mama,’ she whispered in the dark, making her confession to the insect in her hand, her precious link to Winnie. ‘Forgive me.’
She thought of her outburst at Anna and recalled the spasm of murderous rage she had felt then, easily able to imagine with no compunction Anna lying dead in a ditch. Was this the new Isobel, transformed by suffering and despair, who had shed the husk of her old self? A violent, vengeful creature she did not recognise?
She slipped the dragonfly beneath her pillow and lapsed back into a dreamless sleep.
The following morning, with the sun still low on the horizon, a coach pulled up outside Faulconstone. A cloaked figure approached the front door and pulled the bell cord to announce her arrival. It was Grace. There was little doubt that she had not slept a wink, but her face betrayed more than sleeplessness. The blank-eyed stare of horror, the pallor of her skin, the furrows of pain in her brow, and the grim set of her lips were all too reminiscent of the day she had arrived, unannounced, to deliver the news of William’s death. Both Aunt Louisa and Isobel felt heartsick at the sight of her. Had something happened to Anna?
‘The police have found a woman. At The Gap,’ said Grace. She almost choked on the words. ‘I have been asked to go down to the morgue on George Street to identify the body.’
‘At The Gap?’ gasped Isobel. How could she forget the awful majesty of that place? On that memorable day at Watsons Bay, Isobel had stood near the cliff edge, looking down on the restless waters crashing over the ruin of fallen rocks. Isobel knew that The Gap’s gloomy reputation as a spot favoured by suicides was beginning to grow.
‘Yes,’ replied Grace, staring into Isobel’s face with a look of unwavering malice. They both understood the unspoken accusation levelled at Isobel. ‘She is our sister. I insist you accompany me.’
Tears streaked Aunt Louisa’s face but she said nothing to contradict Grace’s demand. Isobel knew she had no choice. If Anna had indeed killed herself, then the blame, rightly or wrongly, would lie on Isobel’s shoulders.
‘Very well. Let me get dressed,’ she said and hurried to her room to fetch her coat and bonnet. Her mind reeled as she imagined her sister’s broken body being tossed in the black waters below The Gap.
Grace and Isobel did not exchange a single word during the coach trip to the Coroner’s Court and the ‘dead House’ at the end of George Street, next door to the Water Police Court in The Rocks. Augustus sat up front with the coachman; he believed Anna’s death, if that is what they were about to confront, was a private matter between sisters.
When the coach arrived and they alighted, Isobel could not help recalling the sad news of Mrs Pittman, the victim of her aunt’s uncharitable suspicions. Had her body been brought here, fished out of the harbour near Pyrmont Bridge? death made no nice distinctions when it came to social position, thought Isobel, as they entered the ugly building. With its bare stuccoed walls and cold draughts, the dead House was unprepossessingly functional. A lugubrious clerk with soft, long-fingered hands greeted the party and took them into a small room to sign some paperwork. ‘There were no personal items to help with identification. So we appreciate you coming here,’ said the clerk in a well-practised speech.
Grace’s body began to shake. In an effort to hold back a fit of sobbing, her chest and limbs convulsed violently. Augustus clasped her in a clumsy attempt to offer comfort. She flung his arms away and composed herself with a deep breath. They entered the chilly brick room, where Isobel could hear water running into a trough. A swarm of black flies seemed to buzz around her head and she could feel her body grow light. She was close to the point of fainting. This torture was to be her punishment just as Grace intended. She was being forced to confront her own guilt and share in Grace’s pain.
A solemn man in a leather apron stood at the entrance. On a long table in the centre of the room a body lay under a white sheet. All that was visible was a woman’s foot, white and blue-veined like marble, protruding from the hem of this shroud. ‘Now, ladies, please take a deep breath,’ said the mortician apologetically. ‘I shall pull back the cover now.’
The sheet was peeled back and they both contemplated the face of the dead woman. It was the second corpse they had looked upon in the last two weeks. But where their father had slept in a peaceful repose, this was a vision of violent death. The head hung at an unnatural angle to the body, probably due to a broken neck, and the face was distorted by its time in the water, with bloated cheeks, a distended tongue and the skin beginning to turn violet-blue. The body and face had been washed clean but there was still evidence of yellow bruising and the jagged line of a fracture to the skull.
Both sisters uttered pitiable shrieks. Grace rushed to the trough to retch. Isobel staggered back and reached out for something to steady her. The mortician caught her in his arms as she began to faint. The buzzing blackness cloaked her for a moment and then lifted.
It was not Anna. Even with the horrific alterations of death, the hair, the shape of the face, the features in general did not resemble Anna’s. Isobel felt a spasm of angry resentment. Why had Grace brought her here? Was it pure revenge? She was overwhelmed with revulsion and terror on seeing this dead woman’s face but then flooded with relief. And yet another ghost hung over this scene. William, her brother, who had died at sea. To think that his beautiful face had undergone the same transformation. No, no, this could not be
borne.
‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Isobel as they exited the cold room. But Grace did not acknowledge this apology. Everything about Grace’s bearing and expression radiated unremitting hatred towards her younger sister. She refused to look at her, refused to hear her, refused to notice her presence in any way. They rode back to Faulconstone in silence, broken only by fits of Grace’s quiet weeping.
Isobel’s shame was all encompassing and her banishment was now complete.
Chapter 33
FATE
MARCH 1853
Two weeks passed with no news of Anna. Grace and Augustus sent out a circular to all the police watch houses, hospitals, the Benevolent Asylum, the Lunatic Asylum, the House of the Good Shepherd and the Sydney Female Refuge to see if any women matching their sister’s description had recently been admitted or sought shelter. The case had also been reported in several newspapers, appealing for help in locating her and even offering a reward. The fear was that Anna had become so unhinged that she might not even remember her own name. What now appeared equally possible was she was so afraid of Isobel’s threats and Grace’s intentions to be rid of her that she had gone into hiding and did not wish to be found. But where?
Isobel struggled with her feelings of responsibility in all of this. She refused to accept that Anna’s state of mind and her flight from the house were wholly of her making. Nor did she characterise her lashing out as calculated or malicious. Anna had wanted to harm her and had in fact succeeded in doing so. Isobel had only acted in self-defence. The discipline she normally exercised around her sister’s madness had been worn down to a nub by grief and exhaustion. Yes, in that moment of pure rage, she had wanted to frighten Anna out of her wits and to repay the hurt Anna had inflicted on her. Surely God would forgive that.
But not if Anna was dead.
Even with the crisis of Anna’s disappearance unresolved, Isobel’s focus shifted elsewhere. The excruciating first shock of her father’s death was beginning to numb a little, leaving her with an eternity of time to grow accustomed to his absence. Even so, just as it had with William’s death, grief would every now and then overwhelm her with the full force of the truth that he was gone, and with him the boon of his love and protection.
The Opal Dragonfly Page 37