by Alison Booth
‘Yee’mm,’ the woman said, and laughed.
‘It’s getting cold.’ Sarah looked at the stranger at the moment that the moon cast aside its veil of cloud; there was now no disguising the fact that the woman’s costume looked more like a bag than a dress. ‘And your dress is so thin,’ she added, and at once regretted that her words sounded critical.
The woman took no offence. ‘I’d rather be in than out. I sometimes stay if I don’t leave enough time to get back to La Perouse.’
Sarah had heard of the reserve at La Perouse but had never met anyone from there; indeed had never before met an Aborigine either, in spite of the fact that she’d been in Sydney for five months. Although consumed with curiosity she didn’t want to ask any questions, nor did she want to be questioned either. They were both illegals in the gardens after dark, but Sarah had read enough reports in the Herald to know that, if they were apprehended, this woman would be treated with less courtesy than she would.
I’ll trust her with my bag, she thought. She had no other alternative.
The woman stood next to the smaller of the gates. She began to giggle as she linked her hands together to form a stirrup, into which Sarah stepped, resting her hands lightly on the woman’s shoulders. From here it was an easy stretch to the intermediate bar of the gate, and then a second to the top. At this point Sarah’s boot got caught in the hem of her skirt and she almost toppled back down again. The woman gave her a hard shove and Sarah regained her grip on the top of the gate, while the woman started laughing. Sarah teetered at the top, finally regaining her equilibrium.
Clutching the top of the gate with one hand, she looked down. The woman had gone and so too had her bag. She’d been such a fool; in the bag were her money, door keys and return tram ticket. She would have to walk home now.
‘Here!’ said a voice from the other direction. And there was the woman holding up her bag. With relief Sarah took it and tossed it on to the pavement of deserted Macquarie Street, where it landed with a resounding thump.
‘Scarf now,’ said the woman, reminding Sarah of what she had forgotten.
Afterwards Sarah swung both feet on to the street side of the gate and slid down, slightly tearing the fabric of her blouse in the process. When she was standing on the pavement, she peered through the bars of the gate for her helper, to whom she’d decided to offer her scarf for some warmth for the night.
But the woman had gone.
‘Thank you,’ Sarah called out. ‘Thank you!’
There was no one to be seen. At this moment Sarah remembered her jacket. The woman was welcome to it, she thought, and wished she’d offered it before it was taken. So deserted did the gardens now appear, she might almost have imagined the incident, although without her jacket she was beginning to feel cold. This worried her less than being alone in a deserted Sydney street on a Sunday evening. Shivering, she began to hurry up Macquarie Street towards the Edgecliff tramline. After a few hundred yards she started to hum as she skipped along the street and stopped only when she joined the crowd of people waiting at the tram stop.
Chapter 10
Before We Settle Down on Our Own Place
The wharf was damp and the humid air tasted salty on Sarah’s lips. While she waited, she imagined Henry bracing himself on the ship’s rail. He would be looking out for Darling Harbour wharf, just as she was looking out for the steamer, although with the rational part of her mind she knew that she shouldn’t bother yet, for there was still some time to go before it was due to arrive. She and Henry were like two distinct strands of rope that some unstoppable force was pulling together into an entwined and stronger whole. Like that cable coiled up on the wharf, thicker than her arm.
When at last she saw the steamer, her heart began to flail against her ribcage like a heavy cockatoo about to launch into flight. Struggling to calm herself with deep breathing, she couldn’t suppress her feet. As if worked on by a puppeteer, they began a little jig, her new boots tapping out a rhythm on the weathered planks of the wharf.
But the steamer was approaching so slowly and where was Henry? Eventually she spotted him leaning over the ship’s rail, waving a red handkerchief. Almost here, almost home; her feet continued to tap and she laughed out loud.
‘I’ve missed you so much, Sarah,’ Henry said when he was safely on shore and squeezing the air out of her lungs in a great bear-hug.
‘And I you. I’m not going to ever let you go away again for so long.’ She was about to tell him more when a discreet cough distracted her attention. An elderly man and woman, who seemed to know Henry, stood next to them.
‘You dropped these.’ The kindly faced woman handed Henry a packet of letters tied up with a blue ribbon. ‘A steward found them and asked us to give them to you.’
Sarah recognised them at once: her letters and her hair ribbon.
‘I was reading them on deck.’ Henry’s golden skin was slightly flushed and Sarah realised he was blushing.
She took his free hand and squeezed it. ‘I have your letters too, Henry. In my bag.’
From Henry’s introduction, she learned that the elderly man was a grazier from central Queensland. ‘I always get lost in Sydney,’ he said, squinting at the city from under his broad-brimmed felt hat. ‘It looks so easy from the water but once on dry land I’m bushed.’
‘It’s very simple when you know,’ said his wife.
‘It helps that you grew up in Sydney,’ the grazier said. ‘Visitors like me find it confusing.’
Sarah sympathised with him; at first she too had got bushed in Sydney. If Henry and the grazier hadn’t embarked on a lengthy discussion, she might have explained that the geography of Sydney could be understood by a knowledge of the waterways, the fingers of rivers cutting through the surrounding land, the inflow of streams and creeks that determined the configuration of the town and the serried ranks of houses creeping ever outwards through the surrounding bush-land.
Several words in the conversation now caught her attention: cattle drives and the Barkly Tablelands. Henry exclaimed, ‘I’d love to travel to the Barkly Tablelands!’
She watched him carefully as he hung, almost open-mouthed, on every word the grazier uttered. He was talking of a trip he’d been on many years earlier, as a young man, driving cattle from Cloncurry through the Barkly Tablelands and eventually to a new cattle station on the Roper River. What an adventure that had been. He could see why some men never wanted to leave. The country was beautiful though you wouldn’t want to be there in a drought. ‘The isolation gets to you,’ the grazier concluded. ‘You either hate it or love it; you never feel indifferent. I love it, though it’s a bloody lawless country.’ Here the grazier apologised to Sarah and his wife.
His wife nodded pleasantly, if slightly absently. Although she was probably used to this little exchange, her husband waited for her absolution before continuing. ‘A lawless country,’ he repeated, ‘With hardly any police and some of them crooked, and the black feller and the white feller not always getting on. You can see why the black fellers get upset. The stock affects their tucker and drives out the wallabies, so who can blame the Abos if they kill a steer or two? But some white blokes don’t understand this and shoot the blacks. I’ve heard some terrible tales, and the murderers never brought to justice either. Talk about one law for the rich and one for the poor in the cities! Out west there’s almost no law. What governs men is just what’s in their heads.’
‘Good or evil,’ his wife said.
‘That’s about the long and the short of it,’ the grazier added, nodding sagely.
‘Before we settle down on our own place,’ Henry said, ‘I wouldn’t mind seeing a bit more of the country.’
Although Sarah kept her expression tranquil, she vented her irritation with a quick tap-tap-tap on the jetty with her left foot. Before we settle down on our own place; she wondered what
this could mean. Surely Henry wasn’t thinking of staying in Australia. And if he were, why hadn’t he broached it with her first rather than confiding it to someone he barely knew? Or perhaps he simply meant settling down on our own place in Suffolk.
At that moment a porter arrived with their luggage and they made their farewells.
‘What did you mean about settling down on our own place?’ Sarah said once the grazier and his wife were out of earshot.
‘Only that at some point we’ll want to buy somewhere.’
‘And do you have a somewhere in mind?’ she said coldly.
‘No, not yet. Well, I thought perhaps somewhere near Braidwood or even Eden. You loved Eden when we took the steamer down south.’ His face was acquiring that determined expression that she’d seen a couple of times before, when he’d wanted something very badly. The first time was when he’d asked her to marry him. The second time was when he’d pushed her into travelling to New South Wales for their honeymoon, and what a long honeymoon this was proving to be.
Well, she could be determined too. She said, ‘Those places are in southern New South Wales.’
‘Yes.’
‘In Australia.’
‘Yes.’
‘In rural Australia.’
‘Yes.’
‘Before we left England, we agreed we’d spend at most two years here. This was to be our honeymoon trip and not our home.’
‘But you love it here. You’ve told me that a hundred times.’
‘I do love it here but that doesn’t mean I want to live here.’
‘You would get used to it.’
‘Is that all you can say, you would get used to it? Don’t you even want to discuss it, Henry?’
‘Of course I do, but not when you’re being so emotional.’
‘Me emotional? I can’t believe you wouldn’t understand. I’ve just spent nearly a month on my own while you’ve been swanning around Queensland. I know all about loneliness. Is it any wonder that I’m emotional?’
‘I missed you too, Sarah. More than you’re willing to believe. I thought I’d finish Arnott’s work in a couple of weeks. It wasn’t my fault it took longer than I expected.’
She looked him in the eyes. Though she saw the hurt, she wasn’t going to give in. ‘I don’t want to settle down yet, Henry. I haven’t seen anything much of this country apart from that trip to Braidwood and Eden. I want to see more before we discuss whether we’re coming or going. I want to travel with you when you go about your business.’
‘You stamped your foot just then, Sarah. I’ve never seen you do that before.’
‘You scowled at me, Henry. You looked quite anthropoid.’
‘What does that mean? Did you intend it to be terribly insulting?’
Henry was smiling and she began to see the ridiculous aspect of this argument. ‘Like an ape,’ she said.
‘I don’t think that’s quite right, Sarah. You’re forgetting I had to study Greek at my school. Anthropos means human being.’
‘A shame you didn’t study zoology as well. Anthropoid includes all of the higher primates such as apes, monkeys and human beings.’
‘Why can’t you simply be straight with me and say I was scowling like an ape?’
‘We’ve moved right away from the point, which is that I’m not yet ready to discuss where we will live. I want to travel about with you more first and see what this country is like. And then I want to go home.’
‘Sure. What are we arguing for then?’ Henry put his arm around Sarah’s shoulders.
‘And I’m not letting you go away without me again,’ she said, ‘wherever it may be.’ She suspected that her natural lightness of voice made even her firmest statements appear no more than a gentle expression of preference and wondered if she should stamp her foot again.
‘I don’t want to go away again without you either,’ Henry said. ‘There’s really no reason why you shouldn’t travel with me. The company won’t mind, so long as I pay for your travel. Oh, Sarah, I’ve missed you so much!’ He began to fumble in the outside pocket of his coat and eventually found what he was looking for, an oblong object wrapped in tissue paper. ‘A present,’ he said. ‘I bought it for you in Brisbane.’
She unwrapped it. It was a Hohner harmonica: small and light, she’d be able to make music anywhere with this. ‘I’ll take it with me when we travel,’ she said firmly. ‘It will be perfect for our return journey to England.’
Chapter 11
‘Thank God for Charles’
Perched on a stool in front of the dressing table, Harriet examined the three images of Rose in the triple glass. Biting her lower lip, Rose the trinity was bending forward to fasten the strand of pearls around Harriet’s throat. The clasp of the necklace was small and fiddly, and Rose kept repeating that her eyes weren’t what they used to be. Yet she looked hurt when Harriet suggested that she fasten the necklace herself.
‘I always do them up,’ Rose said.
Harriet kept very still while she continued to watch Rose, for whom fastening the pearls was fastening on to the past. To Harriet the pearls had no sentimental value, even though they’d been her mother’s, for she had no recollection of ever seeing her wear them. Before her mother, they’d belonged to Harriet’s maternal grandmother, whom Harriet had never known. She was merely a custodian of the necklace, she thought. She’d wear them until it was time to hand them on to the next generation, to the daughter she hoped that Sarah would one day produce.
Meanwhile, she watched the triptych of Rose achieving grace of a kind as she struggled with her sacrament. Perhaps she looked a little Flemish; a little like a Rembrandt. She was homely but the years had been kind to her – or she to the years – for her features revealed, from all angles, the goodness that was her nature.
Squinting at her own reflection, Harriet wondered if it was the rather harsh electric lighting or the glow from the pearls that made her features look less sallow. The shape of her face could be represented by geometrical shapes in black, grey and white. Or perhaps just black and white. A sharp triangle for the dark shadow cast by her nose. Two white ovals where the light fell on her cheekbones. A black elliptical shape under her jaw line, and a small dark oval in the middle of her chin. Rose’s face, all soft curves with no strong contrasts, would be harder to represent in only two or three shades. As Harriet regarded Rose’s features in the glass, in such close proximity to her own, she repressed a desire to find a piece of charcoal and start sketching. It would be a challenge to capture this composition, this juxtaposition of soft curves with angularity; this representation of love.
‘Done,’ said Rose, when she had finished fastening the pearls. ‘That dark red silk suits you.’
Harriet glanced at her dress, the one she had worn to Sarah’s wedding. It was cut too low in the bodice and was too tight in the waist and lower sleeves. The dress had more to do with Aunt Charlotte than Harriet, but she felt pleased by Rose’s compliment. When she smiled at Rose in the glass, she beamed back. Then Harriet caught herself unaware. She saw, as she might a stranger, her own reflection in one of the side mirrors; the tiny triangles of shadow forming under her cheekbones as she smiled made her cheeks look almost rounded. Almost pretty, she thought for a moment, before laughing at her folly.
The grandfather clock in the drawing room chimed seven. Father would be growing impatient. They were to dine with Violet and her husband in Islington and had yet to order a hansom cab. She collected her coat and ran down the stairs, two at a time. The drawing-room door was ajar; she peered around it, expecting to see her father pacing up and down. But he was seated in his usual armchair by the fire, with his eyes shut and his head lolling slightly to one side. An open book lay upside down on his lap. He must have picked it up when she hadn’t appeared as agreed at ten minutes to the hour, and dozed off. He appeared so
tranquil that for a moment Harriet was reluctant to disturb him, but they were already running late.
‘Father,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t ready in time.’
He didn’t stir. He must be very tired indeed. He’d eaten nothing at teatime, despite having a metabolism that required four meals a day.
‘Father,’ she said more loudly. ‘We must go or we’ll be very late.’
She crossed the room to his chair and gently placed her hand on his.
His skin was as cool as marble. She rubbed it lightly. Poor Father had got cold while he was dozing by the hearth and hadn’t had the energy to get up to stoke the fire. Tenderly she chafed at the cool dry skin. She had to warm him; he couldn’t be allowed to catch a cold.
He didn’t move. His eyes remained shut.
It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible. He’d been well at teatime, although he hadn’t eaten. He’d been well before she’d gone upstairs to change.
Her hand shook as she rang the bell on the wall. ‘Rose! Rose!’ she shouted. ‘Come quickly!’ Kneeling on the floor in front of her father, she began to massage his hands.
‘My father’s sleeping,’ she explained, when Rose rushed into the room a moment later. ‘I expect he’ll wake up soon. But I think he’s too tired to go out tonight.’ She coughed to clear her throat before adding, ‘We must telephone Violet to let her know we’re not coming.’
‘I’ll contact Mr Barclay too,’ Rose said, her voice shaking. ‘I think he’ll know what do.’
Harriet continued to rub her father’s hands. She couldn’t bring herself to look at his face again; instead she examined his gnarled fingers, cold but still flexible. The index and middle fingers of his right hand were marked with ink; she’d never known him not to have these stains.
Of course, he wasn’t sleeping. He would never wake again. She would never talk to him again. She observed his dead hands but felt nothing. It was the shock, that was all. A brief respite. And then who could know what might happen.