Beyond the Blue Mountains

by Jean Plaidy

  Carolan stooped over and stroked the hair back from her forehead.

  “He would be angry if he found it?”

  “He never needs a sedative. He has no sympathy; he said once that if only I would stop thinking I was ill, I would cease to be ill. Oh… he can be coarse. Carolan… But what am I saying? He is your master, Carolan, and a very clever man.”

  “Yes,” soothed Carolan, ‘he is very clever. He has come very far, has he not?”

  “He will not talk of what his childhood was like. He shuts up tightly if I ask. He has a cold way of suggesting one has no right to ask questions. He does not want to think of the past. But he is so clever; he may well be governor one day.”

  “Yes,” agreed Carolan, ‘he will be a great man here in this country.”

  And she laughed to think of that appealing look, that helpless look in his eyes when they rested on her youthful beauty, her vitality. Was he comparing her with this faded, worn-out wife? She wanted to go on talking of him.

  “He does not want you to take… that which is in the bottle?”

  “He would be furious. He wants me to get well, to be strong … and why, do you think? So that I can give him a soul He lives for his ambition, Carolan. He wants to be one of the fathers of this new land, populating it with his children. That is one of his ambitions. He would say that … stuff was weakening. But I must sleep, Carolan. I cannot bear this perpetual wakefulness. It is so dreary here, and the heat and the mosquitoes and the brilliant sun … they are here all the time. How lovely it would be to wake up in England!

  “Is it raining?” you would say. You would never know whether it would rain or not. Rain is beautiful, soft and gentle. And the greenness of it all! It will soon be April… April in England … Springtime! I have been ten years in this country, Carolan … Ten years since I have seen an English spring.”

  “Do you wish me to hide the bottle, M’am?”

  “Oh, Carolan… yes. You must not let him see it; he would be angry, and his anger is so cold it frightens me. He would take it away and forbid me to get more.”

  “Where do you get it?” asked Carolan.

  “From the doctor I told you of. He is a free man now. He deals in medicine and so on; it is possible to get practically anything you want from him. I hear he is doing very well in Sydney. I think he must be, for his charges are exorbitant.”

  “You must try to sleep,” said Carolan.

  “Try to sleep off the effects of the drug. If Mr. Masterman came in he might guess. I will hide the bottle in the top drawer of your chest of drawers. We will lock it.”

  She took the bottle from the medicine chest and locked it in the drawer. When she returned and gently put the key under Lucille’s pillow, the metamorphosis had begun. Carolan was in command.

  In the kitchen her manner had changed. While she remained in this house, she need not fear the lash; she need fear nothing. That knowledge was a balm laid on her wounds. She softened a little, Marcus had taken an easy way to solve his difficulties; she and Marcus were very much alike. Should she blame him? The thought of reconciliation was sweet. She pondered on it often as she lay in her basement room. Marcus’s arms about her, Marcus loving her! She was going to him eventually.

  He came to the kitchen often. He would look through the window and he would flirt a little with Esther and Margery, and sometimes Jin. He was cool to Carolan, but in her newly found power she knew that she could dispel that coldness with a glance. She, in her turn, would flirt with Tom Blake, and he, poor man, was only too happy to be flirted with.

  She was acting for Marcus, he for her. That was how she saw it. She was angry, seeing him smile at Esther. She wanted him to stop this foolish game, to beg her to give him her favours. Imperious as a queen, she was, for every time she saw the master of the house she was more and more aware of the devastating effect of her charms. On such a man! she marvelled. How much stronger must be the desire of Marcus!

  And still he flirted and philandered, played that game he knew so well how to play; and there must be occasions when she was with the mistress and he came and flirted with Esther.

  Margery looked on and laughed, and rocked herself with laughter. Ha ha! Mistress Carolan. What airs you give yourself since the mistress took you up. Pride, even for a little beauty such as you are, goeth before a fall, so I’ve heard. And Margery chuckled and slapped herself and rocked herself, waiting for the : fall. For James’s visits were less and less frequent, and she suspected that gipsy Jin of trafficking with him in the yard. Stolen opportunities … she knew how sweet they could be, and a woman has to do something I The climax of Carolan’s triumph came with her possession of the green frock. It was an afternoon frock, sober enough, but becoming.

  “I never liked it,” said Mrs. Masterman.

  “I am too ill for green. Your hair looks really red beside it. My poor hair is falling out; that is a sign of great weakness.”

  “How I should love to wear it!” Carolan’s eyes went to the chest of drawers, and Mrs. Masterman’s followed her gaze. Caro-Ian saw the thoughts come into her eyes. Carolan was more than a servant, a confidante, a friend. They shared secrets; she owed Carolan something surely. But what would he say? He hated his rules to be broken. A convict in an expensive green dress! But she was too tired to think of him.

  “You must have it, Carolan. After all, I never wear it.”

  “Oh, thank you, M’am. How kind you are.” Carolan hugged the dress and skipped over to the workbasket in a corner of the room.

  “What animal spirits!” said Mrs. Masterman.

  “How I wish I could feel so pleased with life, and all for a cast-off dress!”

  “Shall I give you your pills now?”

  “No, I think I will have a draught of the tonic.”

  Carolan poured it out, her fingers itching to get to work on the dress. She smoothed the pillows. She picked up the dress and set to work. She let it out a little; she lengthened it. And all the time she talked soothingly to Mrs. Masterman of her grandmother’s illnesses. For an hour she worked on the dress; she slipped out of her own and tried it on. The change was effective. Never again, thought Carolan, shall I wear that hideous convict’s yellow.

  Mrs. Masterman began to be nervous.

  “What will the master say?”

  “Do you think he will notice?” asked Carolan, slyly.

  “Perhaps he will not,” said Mrs. Masterman.

  “Read to me a little, Carolan.”

  She read, but she did not know what she was reading; she was longing to get down to the kitchen, to flaunt her new dress. Margery’s face! Jin’s, Poll’s, Esther’s! She hoped Marcus would look in at the window. She laughed inwardly. Life was turning out to be quite amusing after all. What other woman, arriving on the convict ship, had found such an easy way of life as she had! What others would be wearing a green afternoon frock such as this! Some of those in the brothels perhaps. What a life! She did not need to use her body; she could use her brains.

  Mr. Masterman came in while she was reading. He often came in while she was there. He saw her in the green dress, her red hair falling about her face. She smiled at him demurely, yet with a challenge daring him to suggest it was not in order for her to wear it. He said to his wife in his clear, pseudo-cultured voice: “How are you today?”

  “Much the same I’m afraid, thank you.”

  “The Jenkinsons want us to dine there tomorrow if you are well enough.”

  “I rather doubt that I shall be.”

  “I thought so.”

  He stood by the bed. Carolan busied herself with her sewing, but she was aware of his attention focused on her, and she knew that the words were spoken automatically; he was not thinking of the woman on the bed, because he could not tear his thoughts and eyes away from her.

  He went out.

  Mrs. Masterman said: “He did not say anything. I do not believe he would notice anything outside business. He is a most unobservant man!” Carolan was silent.
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br />   “Although,” went on her mistress, “I did think I saw him looking in your direction rather curiously.” Carolan laughed. That was the supreme moment of. triumph.

  She was the real mistress of the house; mistress of them both if she cared to be.

  The girl, Margery told herself, was intolerable. What airs! Who ever heard the like? A convict, not three months in the house, and riding rough-shod over all! She had come to giving orders in the kitchen!

  “Mrs. Masterman will not like the table laid this way. Mrs. Masterman hates dirty glasses!” Mrs. Masterman this and Mrs. Masterman that! Then Mr. Masterman … “Mr. Masterman is asking some friends tonight. This is the menu.”

  Who was in charge of this kitchen? That was the question Margery wanted to ask.

  Once it was not Mrs. Masterman nor yet Mr. Masterman, but II “I cannot have these flowers any longer in Mrs. Masterman’s room. The water positively stinks!”

  The airs! The graces! Wearing the mistress’s cast-off clothes. Oh, she had bewitched the mistress completely. But what was wrong with the master? Why didn’t he put down the foot of authority?

  If you ask me, said Margery into her glass of grog-for whom else had she to talk to, with Jin, the slut, for ever creeping out to the backyard for a word or something more with James, and Poll with her slavering mouth and her doll, little more than an idiot, and Esther walking on air because she was in love? -if you ask me, he’s only too glad to quieten the mistress; he’d put up with anything, even a convict servant, flaunting all over the house.

  Oh, but she was lovely! So lovely it did something to your inside to watch her. Made you think of years and years back, and wish you were young again. And what was the -good of getting angry, wouldn’t most women have been the same?

  Funny it was to see what love did to people. Herself and James, Jin and James, Poll and her doll, Esther with that Marcus, and Tom Blake with Carolan.

  People do funny things when their emotions are aroused -didn’t she know it! She hadn’t known life and known men for nothing. And when you have been young and full of adventure, it comes hard to take a back seat. Fun too to try your hands at working things… not necessarily the way you want them to go, but just poking about here and there … a jerk at this one, a push at that… It gives a feeling of being something more important than just an old woman taking a back seat by the chimney corner, grumbling into her grog.

  Pride goeth before a fall, Miss Carolan, and you’re mighty proud; the proudest piece I’ve ever clapped eyes on. Oh, but so lovely to the eyes, soft skin and budding beauty, and eyes of green behind whose haughtiness passion could burn and tenderness glow. It wasn’t surprising that Marcus loved her, and Tom Blake loved her, and the mistress had got interested in her. But she was walking with her head in the clouds, the silly puss, who thought herself so sly, she didn’t watch her steps. You had to watch your step all the time in life. When you were eighteen and so beautiful your head got tilted too high so that you couldn’t see the ground, you didn’t know so much, you weren’t so very wise and the trouble lay in the fact, that you thought yourself the wisest soul on earth. Now Marcus, he wanted her sure enough, for all his goings on with the other, but he was a man who could love halt a dozen women at once, and that sort has to be watched. And Tom Blake, he might be the faithful sort, but he wasn’t her sort; she’d tire of him in a month, that’s if she ever liked him enough at the start. And the graces of a mistress are like a house built on shifting sands … there right enough one minute, and gone the next.

  Margery laughed so much that tears fell into her puddings. Her eyes were beady, black and sharp as needles. There were things she had suspected for a long time. She bided her time, waiting; it was good fun waiting. Is it? No, it ain’t. By God, it is! By God, I’m sure it is!

  This is funny. It ain’t the things that happen; it’s the people they happen to. It’s people that make the drama and the comedy, not just events. It’s her and him, and her again. Oh, this is funny; this is side-splitting! Serve her right, the proud hussy. Esther the mealy-mouthed, the prayer-maker looked strange these days, peaked and frightened, exalted, queer. Her face beneath that cloud of glorious hair was drawn. She was frightened.

  Is it? No, it ain’t. But it is Of course it is!

  Oh. Mistress Carolan, Mistress Carolan! Here is a shock for you!

  Tell her today No, wait a little. Store your secret. Have fun with it, play with it. How to begin? Not an expression of her face must be lost, not an inflexion of her voice.

  She came into the kitchen one late afternoon; she was wearing the green dress the mistress had given her and allowed her to alter. It was tight across her breasts and it made her skin glow and her hair, glossy from the brush, hung about her face. She walked like a lady… and her a convict, a thief I But Margery always softened when she was there, liked to watch her eyelashes sweep up and down, liked to stroke the soft skin of her arms: her hands were whitening, growing soft, and she, unbelievable insolent, used the mistress’s polish on her nails. When she was there, Margery put off telling; there were times when she felt she could not bear to hurt her, when she liked to listen to her all but giving orders, liked to watch the proud tilt of her head.

  She said now: “Well ducky, have a cup of tea, will you. love? I’ll tell Poll to make it.”

  “I cannot stay,” said Mistress Carolan.

  “I have to be upstairs.”

  The airs! The graces! Too good to drink a cup of tea at Margery’s table, Margery who had been good to her when she had come from the ship a poor, lousy, shivering creature!

  “A word in your ear,” said Margery, a dull flush rising to her cheeks.

  “I have not very much time to spare,” she said.

  You’ll have time to spare for this, me lady! Margery looked through the window to where Esther and Poll were pumping water in the yard:

  “It’s what the master will say that worries me. I always thought Jin would be the one. I didn’t think it would be her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What ain’t you noticed?”

  “Noticed what?”

  “What’s happened to her!” She nodded through the window at the two girls at the pump.

  “Poll?”

  “The other one.”

  “Why,” said Carolan, ‘what has happened?”

  “Can’t you see? You’ve got eyes in your head, ain’t you? Oh, I know what it is, them eyes is too busy upstairs to notice what’s going on down here among us humble folk.”

  “Esther…”

  “She fainted clean away yesterday. Where’s your eyes, girl? But, deary me, I reckon a lady wouldn’t be noticing such things.”

  “Esther…” said Carolan again. ‘… has been up to what ain’t respectable. That’s about the long and the short of it.”

  Carolan turned on her.

  “You’re a coarse old woman! Esther fainted then she is ill. How can anyone endure this sort of life …?”

  “Well, there is them that gets themselves a place upstairs, but it ain’t so good for us ordinary folks, that I will admit. But if ever I see a girl in trouble, I see one now.”

  “But Esther… Esther… it isn’t possible! She…”

  “Ah! It’s the quiet ones what go wrong: I’ve seen it before. One little slip and down they go, sliding down to perdition. Whereas our kind … you and me …” She nudged Carolan, winking one eye.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “It’s true as I stand here. I got her round all right. I had a good look at her. I wasn’t born yesterday. I know a pregnant girl when I see one, and I saw one yesterday. I sent the others out, then I made her tell me. All she could say was that she loved him and there didn’t seem nothing wrong in it at the time. That’s what they all say”?

  “Marcus!” whispered Carolan.

  That’s about the ticket. Been hanging round here a lot, he has. He’s artful as a monkey, he is. It wouldn’t be easy for a girl like her to say no to him. You se
e, he knows just how to get round her, him … going all religious-like just to make her feel everything’s all right, and talking about love being beautiful and sacred. I reckon; and then she gives way… that’s how trouble starts.”

  Margery watched her. She had to admire her. Her face was blank and white, so that you wouldn’t know what was going on behind her eyes. They were hard and bright like precious stones. And how they glittered.

  That’s got you, my fine lady! That’s pricked your pride. Thought he was all for you, didn’t you? Thought he couldn’t look at anyone else. You’ve got a lot to learn, my pretty. Men is men all the world over.

  Carolan went past Margery right out into the yard. She went to Esther, and the way she dragged her from the pump showed what she was feeling. She could have murdered the girl, it was clear. She was wishing she had never met her.

  That would teach her to give herself airs. Oh, but so lovely she was, lovelier in her rage than she was when she was soft. And just because she held her head so high, it made you want to cry for her, made your inside go all funny. It seemed there was some evil blight on her lovemaking. First that parson who didn’t move a hand’s turn to save her. Then Marcus, who was mad for her, and yet couldn’t keep himself straight for her. There’s men for you! Not worth a penny piece, the whole boiling of them. Ruining a girl’s life like that. Oh, she was wild! Oh, she was angry! She was sad too. She was flaying the girl with her tongue. pouring contempt on her. Sly thing, all that praying, and then to go behind her dear friend’s back… Margery wiped a tear away from her eyes. It was something that couldn’t be helped. Margery had seen it coming. The girl’s blossoming, washing her hair under the pump till it was all shining and made little curls all round her forehead; watching the window for a sight of him, listening for his step. A woman can’t have such goings on in her kitchen and not get a bit of a kick out of it herself.

  That evening, that was the beginning. Her ladyship flouncing down for something or other and seeing Marcus there at the table drinking a glass of ale, and her looking at him like he was a bit of dirt beneath her feet, when all the time she was jealous because he was sitting so close to Esther. She didn’t stay in the kitchen; she went upstairs again. And the way his eyes followed her, started making your own water. She was just a child really. Seventeen. It ain’t so easy to remember what you was at seventeen. Pretty silly… making a fool of yourself. Well, that was what Mistress Carolan had done … made a fool of herself and Esther and Marcus too for that matter. Him and her! What a pair! They rushed at life; there wasn’t any sense in rushing at life; you came a cropper sure as you were born. There was her ladyship wanting him, and there was him wanting her. But no, she has to be all pride and dignity just because he let a woman keep him to get started on his way of life; and he has to show his anger with her by pretending to be interested in someone else. If you’ve been young and in love yourself, you know. Silly children! Want a good smacking, both of them.