The Whitest Flower

by Brendan Graham

  ‘Five hundred sovereigns then!’ his voice caught up with her.

  She never looked backwards, only turned the big brass handle.

  ‘Six hundred! That’s the best I can do, Mrs Coogan – the very best!’

  She yanked the door half open, then turned.

  ‘Eight hundred, Mr McKillop – that’s the best I can do!’

  The banker was frantic. He was sure he’d get a thousand sovereigns for it: the nugget was almost flawless, pure carat through and through. But this woman, this Irish woman – she was squeezing him, squeezing the life out of him. She knew what she had, and now here she was halfway out his door, headed for the enemy: the Port Phillip Savings Bank and that skinflint Smith. What was he to do?

  As the door of the Bank of Australasia swung behind Ellen, it cut off the perspiring banker in mid-sentence: ‘Seven hundred and—’

  But it was enough.

  Ellen let the door close all the way behind her and breathed a sigh of relief. She thought she had pushed him too hard. Now she would agree at whatever figure he’d offered, not push it to the eight – let him win a little. The fifty sovereigns could be her ‘luck penny’ to McKillop and the Bank of Australasia.

  She composed herself, waiting until the door would be pulled open behind her. It was.

  ‘Mrs Coogan, did you hear me? I said seven hundred and fifty sovereigns!’ The little banker was now panting as well as perspiring.

  ‘I said eight hundred guineas,’ she countered, without the hint of a smile. She saw the look on his face – maybe she miscalculated, so she added quickly: ‘But we won’t fall out over fifty sovereigns, Mr McKillop. I think you’ve made a fair offer. Don’t you agree, Mr Coogan?’

  She had difficulty suppressing a laugh at the white look of disbelief on Lavelle’s face. But he recovered quickly enough.

  ‘Yes, I think it’s a fair offer, Mrs Coogan,’ he replied, as if it was what they had expected all along.

  The banker’s face at last creased into a smile and he dabbed at his brow, his handkerchief already damp.

  ‘Do please sit down again, Mrs Coogan – and of course, Mr Coogan – and we will complete the formalities.’

  The ‘formalities’ having been completed – seven hundred and fifty sovereigns bright now being the property of Mr and Mrs Coogan, and one gold nugget being the property of the Bank of Australasia, McKillop locked his door, wiped the moisture from his pince-nez, and sat back in his leather-upholstered armchair.

  Oh, he hated bargaining with the Irish. Where did they get it from? Always pushing you to the edge, the Catholics. His father and King Billy were right about them: ‘Never trust a Taig.’

  But he had the nugget – at last.

  For a few moments he feasted his eyes on his golden prize. Sydney would be proud of him. He was the first, the very first – and yes, there would be a gold rush, of that he was sure. But he had almost lost it – she had pushed him hard. The thought of it sent a shiver through his body. He bent to unlock the bottom drawer of his desk, in the same movement wiping away with his sleeve some droplets of perspiration he had missed with the handkerchief.

  William Ferintosh McKillop, leading light of the Australia Felix Abstinence Society, carefully wrapped the gold nugget of the Ngarrindjeri in a soft chamois cloth and placed it into a corner of the drawer. Then he took out the bottle of single malt Scotch whisky he kept for times like this, and dispensed himself a ‘stiff wee dram’ of the pure gold liquid. ‘Fit for a laird,’ the banker named for a distillery, proclaimed with satisfaction.

  ‘I think we’ll have to travel further, Ellen. To Sydney, maybe.’ Lavelle looked up from the Melbourne Argus. ‘There are no sailings from here to America. Look—’

  She perched beside him on the chair as he pointed out a column headed ‘Cleared out’.

  Ellen ran her eye down the column:

  Flying Fish, schooner, 122 tons, Clinch, master, for Hobart town.

  Swan, brig, 149 tons, Carder, master, for Launceston.

  Diana, brig, 103 tons, Lawrence, master, for Sydney.

  She looked then at the ‘sailed’ section. It was more of the same – Hobart, Launceston, Sydney. There were no direct sailings from Melbourne to America.

  ‘Maybe you should go back to Ireland now, Ellen – take a ship to England and go over from there,’ Lavelle put to her, mirroring her own thoughts.

  She grimaced at the idea of going anywhere near England.

  ‘Oh, I dearly want to go home, Lavelle – the first moment I can, I want to,’ she answered. ‘But what if word gets out about …’ she didn’t want to say McGrath’s name ‘… that man, and Coombes hears of it? He’ll send word to Pakenham, thinking I’ve gone back there. I might be arrested, sent back out to Australia. I could lose the children altogether,’ she said, clearly worried at the thought.

  ‘But Coombes probably won’t hear about it – the Overlanders will want to keep it quiet this time because whites were involved. Our story might be believed in court, whereas normally the Aborigines wouldn’t.’

  She wasn’t convinced. Better to let things rest, settle down. If Coombes did hear and contacted Pakenham, now would be the wrong time to go. Next year some time would be better. It would all have blown over by then. No, she couldn’t go back yet. Besides, she wanted to have something for them to come out of Ireland to – a new life in America. That would need time to build.

  She resisted dwelling any further on the notion. She would stick to her plan – maybe not the full three years of Edith Pakenham’s bond, but until next year, anyway.

  Still, they shouldn’t remain too long in Melbourne either, just in case word did get out about the Coorong business. Best out of Australia, but not back in Ireland yet.

  Lavelle scoured the papers, particularly the columns headed ‘Domestic intelligence’, for any sign of ‘intelligence’ from Adelaide of their flight, or the Coorong affair. His heart missed a beat when he spotted the headline: ‘Daring case of horse-stealing’. But it was a false alarm. The ‘strayed stock’ listing, while giving a description of six horses found straying, did not list the horses he had cut loose.

  For Ellen, it was another insufferable delay. She felt that once she set sail from Australia she would be homeward bound – even if she was taking the least direct route. Once in Boston, she and Lavelle – purely on a business footing – would establish a base there. Then she could return to Ireland and collect the children, knowing she had somewhere to take them, and the means to feed them. Like the ones who left America Beag, she would establish herself in Boston and tow her children after her, like links in a chain.

  She never considered the possibility of bringing her children to Australia. And certainly not to Melbourne. She didn’t like the bustling, brawling town, spreading out by the minute, topsy-turvy-like. It was full of squatters and Vandiemonians – convicts on ticket-of-leave, brought in from Van Diemen’s Land as cheap labour for the squatters. And then there were the Pentonvillains, from the Pentonville Gaol in what the newspapers referred to as ‘the mother country’. It was clear from the papers that some in Melbourne were opposed to convict labour, fearing that the quality of society would suffer. But others didn’t care, as long as there was a profit to be made.

  And, she could see, it was all run from London, as Ireland was, the only difference being that here there was plenty for everybody. Why couldn’t they ship more people out from starving Ireland, if they needed labour so badly?

  Her eye caught two items in the newspapers Lavelle had been reading for word of ships. The first appeared under the heading ‘Irish Relief Fund’. She read it aloud:

  … but little interest appears to be taken in the Fund; indeed, it must be admitted that the pockets of the Port Phillipians have already been pretty considerably drained for charitable purposes. On Wednesday last, the day appointed for the weekly meeting of the Committee, there were only four members in attendance, consequently no business was transacted.

  ‘Can you believ
e it?’ she said to him. ‘Thousand upon thousands, dying in Ireland, and here every type of wealth and growth, and only four people try to do something.’ She read Lavelle the second piece – a letter:

  We have surely a right to some voice in the selection of the people to be sent out to us … swamping us with a purely Irish population. I do not object to such a population … only let them come in due proportion; let us not have them exclusively, so as to have our noble colony transformed into another Tipperary.

  ‘Another Tipperary?’ Lavelle said. ‘More like another Van Diemen’s Land … that’s what they should be worried about.’ ‘It’s like we’re lepers,’ she said, dismayed, ‘everywhere we go.’

  ‘Some of our own are the worst. There’s enough Irish here to make that Relief Fund work. On Elizabeth Street today, I saw a couple of priests – Irish they were too. They should be leading the Relief Fund for their own country.’ ‘If we were staying in Melbourne, I’d help,’ Ellen said, thinking out loud. But what she was thinking about most of all she did not say aloud.

  She would have to seek out one of those Catholic priests and confess the grievous mortal sin she had committed against the Fifth Commandment – ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’.

  Ellen was nervous as she walked towards St Francis Catholic Church on the corner of Elizabeth and Lonsdale Streets. What if the priest refused her absolution? Then her soul would remain blackened by mortal sin. The only thing that would be between her and everlasting damnation would be life itself.

  The street was wide, brimming with life – men on horseback, carriages, bullocks hefting heavy drays, people everywhere. She passed the corner of Collins Street. On her left was Harris and Marks, with their London Mart and Liverpool Mart. Victoria House was on her right. Everywhere it seemed as if the colonists were trying to recreate their own little England, out here in this land as different from her own as it must be from England.

  When Ellen knocked on the presbytery door it was opened by Father Patrick Ignatius Boylan, previously of Adam and Eve’s Church, Dublin, and the first Catholic priest of Melbourne.

  Ellen took in the round-framed glasses, high balding forehead and the bushy hair that curled over his ears. He didn’t look too severe, she thought. He smiled at her, easing the knot in her stomach.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asked genially.

  ‘Father, I need to confess …’

  ‘Confessions are this evening, my child.’

  ‘I am in grievous sin, Father.’

  Five minutes later, Ellen knelt in the small dark cubicle of the confessional, her eyes fixed on the side of the priest’s face as he listened expressionless.

  ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned … failed to observe mourning period … guilty of stealing horses … guilty of travelling alone with a man … neglect of my children … inflicted damage on my body, the temple of the Holy Ghost … engaged in pagan dancing and immodestly exhibited my body … she drew a deep breath. ‘And, Father, I killed a man in a savage rage. For these and all my sins, I am heartily sorry,’ she rushed on, wanting to get it all out, finished with.

  The priest turned and looked at her, his face only a few inches away.

  ‘The man you killed – was it in defence of your person?’

  ‘No, Father. He was an Irishman. He caused six of the Aboriginal children to be murdered, and some of their parents too. I don’t know what came over me … I realize it is a terrible sin.’

  ‘And the pagan dancing – you disported your body in front of the natives?’

  ‘It was the death of my child!’ she whispered in the dark.

  ‘And you engaged in heathen burial practices?’

  ‘It wasn’t …’ she hesitated. ‘There was no Catholic priest.’

  ‘Is there anything else?’ he asked.

  ‘What, Father?’ Ellen was on tenterhooks, wondering what the priest was getting at.

  ‘Anything else, my child?’

  Could he sense she was holding something back, hadn’t told him it all? It was the taking of human life that she had to get rid of, get forgiveness for. Not all this other business that the priest seemed to be more interested in. She hadn’t wanted to tell him about Wiwirremalde, but it was as if he knew there was more.

  ‘Well …’ she began hesitantly.

  ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘It was when my baby was dying … I … I asked Wiwirremalde – the medicine man of the Ngarrindjeri people …’

  ‘What did you ask him?’ the priest pressed, his breath pushing through the aperture between them.

  ‘The Slám?

  There, she’d said it.

  ‘The Slám?’ he repeated, nonplussed. In his eight years in Melbourne, Father Boylan had heard of most every sin on God’s earth. But not this one.

  Ellen had thought that the priest, being Irish, would know what she meant, that she would be spared having to explain it further. But it was not to be. When she had finished, the priest sat in silence. Even in the dim light of the confessional, she could tell that the colour had drained from his face. She waited – was he going to refuse absolution to her? Was she going to have to leave the confessional, still in a state of mortal sin?

  She was conscious of her knees starting to hurt her; of how cramped the cubicle seemed, the priest’s face so close to hers. After what seemed an eternity he said, ‘How long have you been in this fair land, my child?’

  ‘Not a year yet, Father,’ she replied.

  ‘Not a year yet,’ he repeated, and then paused. ‘And in that period of time you have broken almost all of God’s Commandments, and in a most grievous manner?’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘And have you not considered the scandal you give to others, as an Irish Catholic woman, by this … behaviour? To others of your gender, to your own race and creed, and to even the pagans with whom you consorted?’

  ‘But—’ she began, attempting to explain to him the spirituality of the Ngarrindjeri, the circumstances.

  ‘There are no “huts” at the Last Judgement,’ he cut across her chillingly. ‘You are not contrite in heart!’

  ‘But I am, Father,’ she protested. ‘I am heartily sorry for the life I took.’

  ‘But not for these other transgressions. Without true contrition, I cannot dispense absolution. Return in a month when you are in a more contrite state.’

  And with that he withdrew his face from the aperture and tugged the purple curtain across, cutting her off from him, darkening her to the Church and its sacraments. Stunned, she knelt in the darkness hearing the flap of his vestments pass outside her door. She listened as his footsteps hurried along the aisle – away from her – until they, and he, passed out of the church and out of her hearing.

  Trembling all over she placed her hands down on either side of the space where, but a few moments previously, her confessor’s face had been. Her face dropped on to the small lip of the aperture, disconsolate that her God had disowned her.

  After a little while, she lifted her head to the cross in the corner of the confessional. Then turning to the crucified Saviour she prayed: ‘Oh, Jesus, even if your priest has not, I ask You to forgive me, as You forgave the thief on the Cross next to You.’

  Then she made an Act of Perfect Contrition: ‘Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest my sins … because they displease Thee … I firmly resolve never more to offend Thee and to amend my life. Amen.’

  She crossed herself and then left the church of St Francis.

  ‘Listen to this,’ Lavelle said to her, and he began reading aloud from the Port Phillip Herald:

  The Irish horse Matthew, in a field of twenty-six starters, emerged victorious in the first ever Grand National Handicap Steeplechase at Aintree, Liverpool.

  In the greatest test of mount and man yet designed, Matthew, a nine-year-old gelding, confounded critics of the opinion that the Irish are incapable of racing horses, by finishing ahead of England’s pride, St Leger, to lift the purse of
twenty-three gold sovereigns.

  The attendance was put at over fifty thousand and so many had sailed from the Emerald Isle, and such was the amount in wagers riding on Matthew, that should he have lost ’tis said half the population would have had to flee that country.

  ‘I’ll wager the English didn’t like that result,’ Lavelle said. ‘Maybe things are getting better back home.’

  Ellen doubted that things could have improved that much – it didn’t make sense. Lavelle continued reading from the ‘Liverpool News’ section:

  Riots in City

  The citizens of the mother country’s second city, having suffered in three months alone the arrival of fifteen thousand paupers from Ireland, have said enough is enough. They have revolted and attacked the wretched hordes who swarm their streets and clog up their hospitals. Now the Guardians of Liverpool have invoked the provisions of the Settlement Act, and a sum of four thousand pounds has been collected – not to feed the hungry masses, but to send them home again …

  Lavelle stopped reading. ‘Nothing has changed, nothing at all,’ he said, aghast at the news.

  ‘Two Irelands,’ was all she said.

  The following morning, she and Lavelle decided they could delay in Melbourne no longer. With each passing day, they expected word to come from Adelaide, and awaited the constabulary’s knock on the door.

  Since the newspapers had not proved fruitful, they decided to go directly to the docks and enquire there.

  They were in luck. At first it was the same old story – plenty of ships for Hobart, Launceston or Sydney, but for Boston they would first have to sail to Sydney.

  He came to them, and Ellen liked him immediately. Captain Nathaniel West, master of the Enterprise, was middle-aged and of impressive height and build. A shock of white wavy hair, brushed back off the forehead, was linked to a short white beard which ran round the rim of the man’s genial features. All of this set off by a pair of bright blue eyes.

  He introduced himself and smiled. ‘Mr and Mrs Coogan, I presume? I hear you are looking for a ship.’