The Philosopher's Daughters

by Alison Booth

  ‘It’s you I’ve come to see, Harriet.’

  She folded up the pages of Sarah’s letter while waiting for Charles to begin. Although not displeased to see him, she wished he hadn’t arrived quite so early. Since he was still staring at the fire, she was moved to drawl, in an imitation of an affected mutual acquaintance, ‘I never talk about Father’s work until at least half an hour after breakfast. It does upset my digestion so.’

  Charles smiled. ‘I’ll remember that in future, but I haven’t come to talk about work.’

  She rang for fresh tea. Sarah’s letter had made her feel more reconciled to the prospect of crouching over a coal fire on a bleak London day. They talked about the weather until Rose brought in the teapot. As Harriet passed Charles a fresh cup, he said casually, ‘I do hope you might consider marrying me, Harriet.’

  She was too astonished to do any more than stare, and certainly too astonished to relinquish her hold of Charles’ saucer. For a long moment they each had hold of it, one on each side. A symbolic moment, Harriet thought, and at once let go, so suddenly that Charles almost spilt the tea although he managed to juggle the cup and saucer so that only a small amount of liquid collected in the saucer.

  Harriet took a deep breath. She glanced at Charles’ hand holding the teacup and then at his thin brown wrist emerging from the white cuff of his shirt. There was something vulnerable about the slenderness of his wrist, but she recoiled from the sight of the black hairs growing there. For an instant – for even less than an instant – she had been tempted to reach out and touch him. She must avoid hurting Charles; she must reply gently and at once.

  ‘Thank you for doing me the honour of making this proposal.’ Her words were too formal but she couldn’t think of how else to reply. She continued, faltering now, ‘You know I hold you in the greatest regard. You’ve been part of our lives for so many years and I feel you’re part of the family. But Charles, I’m so very sorry, I’m unable to accept.’ Despite her good intentions, she felt her words had emerged cold and sharp. They might be arrows so wounded did he look.

  ‘You could never love me?’

  It was a moment before Harriet realised this was a question rather than a statement and she struggled to find the words to express how she felt. She did love Charles in a fashion but she didn’t want any of the trappings of love or marriage on the voyage she was beginning. Quite what she would do with her life she still had little idea, but she wanted to travel through it alone.

  ‘Romantic love is responsible for much unhappiness,’ Charles said, almost as if he were changing the subject and starting one of his abstract discussions. ‘It’s a bit like religion, it clouds the judgement. I’d put money on rationality any day in a race between reason and romance.’

  Harriet couldn’t tell if he were right or wrong. She knew that when she painted she thought logically, rationally, beforehand about what she wanted to do; but once she started applying the paint, intellect vanished, and passion – or perhaps it was intuition – took over. Yet romance was neither of those things; it had more to do with fantasy.

  ‘Maybe you’re looking for romantic love and you don’t feel that way about me.’

  Charles was generous almost to a fault. He was offering her a way out but she wouldn’t take it. ‘That’s not the point,’ she said. ‘You know I regard you with the greatest affection.’ It would be misleading to tell him that the affection she felt for him was love. ‘I need freedom and marriage wouldn’t suit me. I’m going to remain single all my life.’ Only after speaking these words did she wonder if she were happy at this prospect. Wouldn’t it be better to share her journey with someone she loved? Sarah’s departure – her absence – had made her realise how daunting loneliness could be.

  The fire sputtered and a lump of coal fell to the front of the grate. Charles pushed it back with the poker while Harriet stared at the blue and orange flames. Eventually he said quietly, ‘There are other ways of preserving female independence. For example, we could sign a special marriage contract. Or we could even live together, with my assignment to you of additional rights.’

  His brown eyes were so dark that it was almost impossible to distinguish pupil from iris. He would make a good husband if she were looking for one, but she wasn’t. She said, ‘You’re so thoughtful, Charles. But I can’t do that. I want to make my own way through life.’ Yet this wasn’t right either. She didn’t want to give up working with Father, helping Father, and she’d always view this as privilege rather than a burden.

  Despite her refusal of Charles’ proposal, the exposed blue vein on the underside of his wrist moved her. She might have touched this as a penance for hurting him if she hadn’t been distracted by a sudden draught. Her father was standing in the dining-room doorway, silhouetted against the bright light from the hall.

  ‘Good morning, Father,’ she said, struggling to disguise her relief. ‘Charles and I have been discussing all manner of things. And look, we have letters from Sarah at last!’

  Her father’s face lit up and he seemed ten years younger. She poured tea for him. ‘More tea, Charles?’

  ‘Thank you, Harriet.’ Charles’ hand was steady as he held out his cup. Perhaps he had anticipated her refusal before making the proposal of marriage. Having known her opinions for years, he surely couldn’t have expected that she’d accept. Not only had his declaration surprised her, it also brought home to her that she really had little idea what lay behind his phlegmatic façade. For just a few moments the mask had slipped but now it was firmly back in place.

  Sipping her tea, she listened to her father engage Charles in a debate about the coupling of liberal reforms with Irish home rule. Unusually, she didn’t wish to participate in the ebb and flow of their conversation. She had too much to think of, but it was no longer Charles’ proposal that preoccupied her. Instead she thought of Sarah’s letter.

  A vision came to her of her own future and it didn’t include Charles. She saw it as iridescent, patterned with light and shade, and punctuated with form and colour. Converting drabness to colour and light: that would be her mission.

  PART III

  London and Sydney, 1892

  Chapter 9

  The Woman’s Costume Looked More Like a Bag than a Dress

  Sitting on a bench in Sydney’s Botanical Gardens, Sarah stared at the patch of scuffed lawn in front of her. Better to focus on the grass than on the harbour and all that water separating her from Henry. Ten long days since she’d seen him off on the steamer, and it might be weeks before she saw him again.

  Only when the creeping fingers of shadows touched her bench did she become aware of the passing of the afternoon. A westerly breeze had arisen and little waves of harbour water were arguing with the incoming tide. A ferry steamed towards Mosman, its plume of smoke tinted orange and lavender by the sinking sun.

  After walking to the water’s edge, she rested her elbows on the sandstone balustrade and listened to the slip-slap of waves on the wall, to the mournful cries of the seagulls wheeling around the rocks on the point, and to the distant hoot of a tug conducting a ship away from one of the wharves at Darling Harbour.

  Presently she pulled from the pocket of her jacket a wad of rather crumpled paper and began to reread Henry’s letter. ‘It could be anything from three to four weeks before I get back,’ he’d written; ‘you must appreciate that the purchase of millet for the Arnott stock and station business is more time-consuming than I’d imagined, for so much depends on connections of one sort or another.’

  Three weeks seemed like an eternity to Sarah, waiting in this city that was not her home for her life to begin again. Without Henry, she felt as if a part of her had been amputated. In his letter he upbraided her for not writing to him, making her misery even worse. For she’d written her first letter to him the day after he left and had walked all the way into town to the GPO to post it, to speed
the progress of the letter as well as the passage of that first lonely afternoon.

  Henry had caught a steamer up the coast to Brisbane and had travelled overland to Gympie. He’d waited there two extra days in the hope that he might receive some word from Sarah but none had come, so he was forced to travel on. He hadn’t actually put in writing that he was feeling lonely and unloved. Yet Sarah knew him well enough to read the hidden message. She gave the stone seawall a little kick with her boot, and wondered how Henry could be so obtuse as to think she wouldn’t have written, to think she was not missing him as much as he missed her. But by now he surely would have received her letter, her letters, for she’d written every second day since he left.

  It was harsh of Henry not to understand that it was as bad, if not worse to be left behind. She felt as if she were condemned to an inactivity that was exacerbated by the isolation of this place. The tyranny of distance was how Mrs Morgan had described it and that was what she was suffering now. Distance from Henry, distance from Harriet and her father, and from dear Rose and Aunt Charlotte too.

  She missed them so terribly, and that was why she’d made such a fool of herself at the Barracloughs’ dinner party the previous Saturday.

  * * *

  Determined that she shouldn’t be left alone while Henry was away, kind Mr and Mrs Arnott had conducted her to Potts Point. The Barracloughs’ garden was dense with exotic semi-tropical plants. The curtains hadn’t been drawn across the tall French windows facing on to the wide front verandah of the house. From each window a shaft of golden light lit up the lawn, which formed a narrow terrace before the garden rose steeply to the street.

  Sarah’s exposure that night – for that was how she thought of it now – didn’t occur until after dinner. Several young women had been induced to play the piano that occupied one corner of the opulent – if not quite tasteless – drawing room of this Potts Point mansion. The perfectly tuned piano had a resonance that wasn’t spoilt by the proficient, if rather mechanical, execution of the women induced to perform. Afterwards Mrs Arnott, almost as proud of Sarah’s accomplishments as she was of her own children’s, had insisted that Sarah play.

  Although Sarah had at first refused, the piano was so much better than the upright in their lodgings that she soon decided to seize the opportunity. Sitting on the stool, she spread her fingers across the piano keys, while she stared for a moment through the French doors. The garden was brightly illuminated by the marbled full moon and several shafts of light from the drawing-room chandeliers. The moonlight reminded her of Henry’s tales of the outback, and she elected to play the Consolation No. 3 by Liszt that she’d started to learn not long before Henry had set off on his trip to Queensland.

  She began to perform, quietly at first, as she experienced the sensation of the worn keys and the flow of sound around her; and then she was reminded so much of Henry that she poured into her interpretation all her commitment to him. The narrative of the music became tied up with her own story of passion, in which she was able to ignore her not infrequent mistakes because of the grander aspects of the tale. Then her interpretation changed, and she moved into a quieter passage of such gentle reflection that it might almost be mistaken for grief. Perhaps that was what it was, for she felt the tears coursing down her face: her grief at Henry’s absence, her longing to see her family and her home, her isolation and loneliness in this roomful of strangers who – she felt sure – were judging her for this want of self-control, which culminated at last in her sobbing aloud and being unable to finish the piece.

  Mrs Arnott was quick to take charge. She extricated, from somewhere about her person, a bottle of smelling salts and waved it under Sarah’s nose. ‘It’s the heat, dear,’ she said, apparently clutching at the first excuse that came into her head, inappropriate though it was on such a mild evening. Her kindliness made Sarah weep all the more. ‘Sniff, Sarah,’ Mrs Arnott exhorted and thrust the bottle closer to Sarah’s nostrils so that the ammoniacal fumes were impossible to avoid.

  The other middle-aged women began crowding around, competing with one another in their ministrations and in their hypotheses as to what could cause her lapse. Perhaps she wasn’t yet used to Sydney’s weather, or the stuffiness of the room, or conceivably she was getting a cold or – and at last one of them was brave enough to suggest it – maybe dear Sarah was in the family way. Sarah felt too tired to deny anything and, although she was sure that the last explanation wasn’t possible, she didn’t want to announce this to the company at large. Let them think what they wanted so long as she didn’t have to speak; she felt too tired, too drained.

  Not long afterwards, Mr Arnott ordered the carriage to take her home. As the party made their farewells, Sarah was aware of how much they loved her after her exposure. The suspicion – or even active dislike – that she’d felt at first had now dissipated. They loved her because she was weak, because she needed protection. However, she suspected that Maisie Cunningham would never forgive the success of her blue silk dress.

  * * *

  Sarah shrugged away memories of that evening as she leaned on the harbour wall and watched the setting sun cast a ladder of reflections on the darkening water. After pulling on her gloves, she smoothed down the soft leather and smiled to herself. Something good would come out of Henry’s absence, for this afternoon she’d come to a decision. Never again would she allow Henry to go away for such a long time. In the future she would accompany him. They had money enough and she wouldn’t have to sit around Sydney waiting for his return.

  At this moment she realised the Botanical Gardens were empty. The sun set so quickly here and it would soon be dark. The last thing she wanted was to be anywhere near the Domain at night. It was dangerous, Mr Arnott had said, full of desperate and homeless people. Only yesterday she’d read of someone being murdered there. She should hurry away, to the Exhibition Gates on the Macquarie Street side of the gardens.

  Her route took her under some dense, spreading trees, whose foliage was made darker by the fruit bats. There was not quite enough light to allow her to make out the colour of their fur, although she knew from previous sightings that they were almost gingery. The colony was starting to break up to begin their nocturnal activities; several creatures swooped down towards her. She had no idea if they were dangerous and wouldn’t wait to find out. Propelled by fear, she flew up the path, at last arriving breathless at the gates.

  They were locked. The large bolt was fastened by a padlock the size of her hand. With sweating hands, she shook the heavy bars of the gate. The bolt rattled against the uprights. Her heart quickened as panic gripped her. The gates were cast iron and at least ten feet high at their lowest point. The fence around the gardens was much lower; it couldn’t be any higher than five or six feet but it would be impossible to climb over. It was constructed from vertical, cast iron railings, with no intermediate bar that might form a foothold, and each upright was crowned with a sharp point, like a palisade.

  Yet if she couldn’t escape the gardens, others couldn’t enter them either. She mustn’t lose her nerve. The worst that could possibly happen was that she might have to spend the night here. But the gardens could be full of desperate people who wanted to be locked in, who wanted a secure place to spend the night, who wanted the contents of her bag. And who might get hold of it by banging her on the head or sticking a knife between her ribs.

  She had to try to get out.

  Quickly she ran her hand over the solid sandstone wall that curved up, from the top of the iron fence, to the massive gateposts. Although it was impossible to see clearly in the dark, she could feel narrow joints in the ashlar. They might support her but climbing up would be a precarious operation since she couldn’t see where the joints were. The gates were a possibility: she’d have to climb over them. There were many toeholds in their intricate pattern that she might be able to use. First, she’d have to remove her tightly fitting jacket or else s
he’d split it with the exertion of climbing the gate, or even just with lifting up her arms. She experimented with raising her arms and felt the constriction of the fabric around her shoulders and back, and the seam in one armpit creaked slightly. There was her handbag too, of almost carpet-bag construction. She couldn’t throw this over the fence ahead of her; the fence was too high, the bag too heavy. Nor could she clamber up the gate holding it; it was too bulky. She put the bag down on the pavement and took off her jacket while considering the remaining option – removing her bootlaces and using these to tie her bag to her shoulders, knapsack fashion.

  As she began to unfasten a boot, she heard a sound behind her. Too frightened to move, she waited for the blow.

  ‘Want a hand with them things?’ said a soft voice.

  Sarah turned, startled. A sliver of moon, veiled in a shred of cloud, cast little light, and at first she couldn’t make out the source of the voice. Then she saw a gleam from dark skin and distinguished the features of an Aboriginal woman standing perhaps two paces behind her. ‘We’re locked in,’ she said, her words sounding strangled as she stepped back a pace.

  ‘I’ll give yer a leg up. You climb them rungs and I’ll hand yer bag up.’ The stranger’s voice was friendly.

  Sarah wondered if she could trust her to relinquish the bag once she was on the top of the gate. The woman could easily run off with it then. To delay making a decision, she said, ‘How will I get it down the other side?’

  The woman laughed. ‘Toss it down when yer get to the top.’

  ‘How will you get over?’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘You’ll stay here all night?’