by Jean Plaidy
Katharine wanted to say: “Why do you hate people who other people think are cleverer than other people, Miss Kelly?” but Martin was chasing a new idea.
“Miss Kelly, tell us about London.”
“I’ll tell you something else.”
“What, Miss Kelly? Oh, what?”
“If you don’t get dressed, and quick about it, there’ll be no breakfast for you.”
“We’d rather hear about London than have breakfast,” said Katharine with dignity.
That made Miss Kelly angry.
“Oh, you would, would you! It’s a pity you can’t taste a bit of starving for a while, then you wouldn’t be so ready to say No to good food.”
“Miss Kelly, how do you taste starving?”
They all laughed, Martin and James throwing themselves on their beds in sudden amusement, lifting their legs high in the air and trying to touch the ceiling. Edward scrambled up and tried to do the same just as Miss Kelly put a stop to it.Poor Edward.he always wanted to imitate the others and was generally too late.
Only Katharine knew that Miss Kelly’s sudden flush of anger meant she was thinking of her brother, so she did not laugh but said sharply: “Come on, you three! Get washed.”
“Oh!” wailed James.
“We want Miss Kelly to tell us about London.”
Edward became so excited that he nearly choked. They all stared at him.
“Mamma…” he stammered.
“Mamma… went to London.” He looked up expectantly to see the result of his statement. Poor Edward! The things he said never meant anything.
Katharine walked out of the room; she was beginning to feel hungry.
The porringers from which they ate their bread and milk were blue. If you put your head right in, you could imagine you were in the heart of the Blue Mountains. The pieces of bread floating about in the milk, were pioneers trying to climb the Blue Mountains. The evil spirits had sent down a big milky lake to drown them. She must disperse the lake as quickly as possible.
“Katharine!” said Miss Kelly, turning the lake into a bowl of milk, and the mountains into a porringer.
“Don’t drink so fast!
Milk needs digesting.”
Miss Kelly gave them lessons after breakfast. Reading, writing, arithmetic, a little French and Latin. How dull were lessons as taught by Miss Kelly. The boys were difficult this morning; Katharine’s dream of Christmas had upset them. The heat was intense. Katharine almost dozed. Miss Kelly gave the two boys dictation; it was all about Christmas in the Old Country, the snow on the trees, and the stage coach rattling down the road. It was very dull. That was not the sort of thing she wanted to hear about the Old Country. Edward was scratching on a slate. Edward was very silly, he could not make his letters yet. Katharine was supposed to be reading Monsieur Moliere’s Le Misanthrope, in French; she could not understand a word of it. Through the window she saw Papa and Mamma. They came out into the yard, and Papa was dressed for a journey. Mamma was very beautiful in a dress of muslin with green ribbons. Mamma was one of the most beautiful women in Sydney, she had heard people say. People looked sly when they talked of Mamma. Why? Why? That was the sort of thing she wanted to know; not Latin, not Greek, not French.
A happy couple. They kissed. Katharine had seen them kiss often. Papa kissed Mamma as though he didn’t want to stop a make-it-last-as-long-as-I-can sort of kiss.
She wished she were going out with Papa. How pleasant to ride along on her own mare, a present from Papa who said she rode well enough to be done with ponies! Where was Papa going? Why hadn’t he taken her with him? A day which had begun with a dream of Christmas is not the day to be spent idling over a lesson book.
A smell of coffee came up from below, reminding her of Margery. She sidled off her chair.
“Miss Kelly, I cannot read here; the dictation disturbs me. Could I go to my own room?”
“Yes,” said Miss Kelly, ‘you may.”
Katherine wandered downstairs. Moliere under her arm. On the first floor she paused. First Wife. Did a first wife always have her room on the first floor? Silent it was on the first floor. Margery always hurried past it. If she came up, she liked someone to come with her; she would rather have Edward with her than no one. Katharine opened a door and peeped in. The toilet-room. The guests used that. Papa bad had another toilet-room put on the second floor. Hip-bath and mirror and cupboards and table, with dusting powder on the table. Old haunting perfume. She tiptoed in, and as she looked at herself in the long glass, tried to think of the house without Mamma, and if Mamma was not there neither she nor James, Martin and Edward could be either, for they were all Mamma’s children. Why did grownups try to keep so much from you? There were three doors leading out of the toilet-room. One she had just opened from the corridor; the other two merely led to two rooms, just ordinary bedrooms with big canopied beds. Nothing there to excite one. She went into one of the bedrooms.
A sudden sound startled her. A footstep in the toilet-room. A ghost? Yes, that was it: there were ghosts on the first floor. Not ghosts perhaps, but a ghost; the ghost of Papa’s first wife. She was terrified; she ran to the bed. She got into it and drew the curtains. She peeped through them. Her heart beat so loudly that it was like the strokes of the blacksmith’s hammer. The door was pushed open slowly, and Mamma came into the room-Mamma’s face was working queerly; she had never seen Mamma look like that; had never known Mamma could look frightened just like a child. One could not imagine Mamma like a child. Mamma looked all round the room. She was breathing queerly; her breath made gasping noises. Poor Mamma so frightened. Hastily she pulled back the bed curtains, but in that split second when the curtains began to move. Mamma’s face went white and she caught her breath, so that it whistled like the wind in the eucalyptus trees in the cove.
“Mamma!” cried Katharine; and then Mamma saw who it was behind the curtains, and the colour came back to her face, and she came nearer, and Katharine did not know whether she was very, very angry or not.
“Did you think I was a ghost?” said Katharine.
“What nonsense!” retorted Mamma.
“There are no ghosts.”
“You looked very frightened.”
“You were peeping out at me, you bad girl!” Mamma’s voice was soft and loving, not as though she thought Katharine was a bad girl at all; so Katharine stood on the bed and put her arms round Mamma’s neck, and Mamma hugged her suddenly and fiercely, and when Mamma did that Katharine loved her more than anyone in the world. It meant that Mamma loved her best too, even though she was not a boy and everybody wanted boys.
“Katharine, what are you doing here? Why aren’t you in the schoolroom?”
“Because the boys are doing dictation, and I am studying in my own room.”
Mamma raised her eyebrows, and when she did that she did it so funnily that it always made Katharine laugh.
“And I came downstairs and when I got to the first floor I thought I wanted to have a look at it.”
“Katharine, you are always prowling about the first floor.
What is prowling?” , “Well… just going there and peeping about. Why?
“I don’t know,” lied Katharine, because somehow it was impossible to talk of the ghost of the First Wife to Mamma.
“You shouldn’t do things without knowing why you do them.”
“Do grownups always know why they do things?”
Carolan, shaken more than she cared to admit to herself, smiled at this disconcerting daughter who had evidently heard some gossip about these rooms … possibly about Lucille. What? And how could one ask a child without making it seem very important? Was she to be haunted all her life?
“I do not think they do, always.”
Katharine brought her knees up to her chin, and rolled about on the bed that had been Lucille’s This was delightful. This was delicious. A tate-d-tate with the most exciting of all grownups. Mamma!
“Why do they do them if they do not know why?”
<
br /> “Because they are stupid.”
Stupid? So grownups were stupid as well as children. It was exciting; surely there was nothing you could not ask Mamma when she talked like that. Mamma was unlike herself today.
“Why is it so quiet here, Mamma … on this floor, I mean? Why doesn’t Margery like coming here … even in daylight?”
“What?” said Mamma sharply.
“Margery told you that!”
“She didn’t tell me. She just doesn’t. Why, she would even bring Edward … Edward … rather than come alone. Edward wouldn’t know what to do if he saw a ghost. I don’t suppose he even knows what a ghost is!”
Mamma stood up suddenly. The dignified Mamma, grownup now, no longer ready to share a confidence.
“You are very silly, Katharine. If Edward knows nothing of ghosts he is wiser than you, for there are no ghosts, and let me hear no more of this foolishness. It is time you went back to your lessons. It is cold in here.”
“But Mamma, I am boiling… It is hot!”
“It is cool after the rest of the house,” said Mamma, and Katharine noticed that her hands were very cold.
“Come along,” said Mamma, and pulled her off the bed quite roughly. And then Mamma’s mood changed. Mamma did change quickly all the time.
“What about a pick-a-back?” Katharine leaped onto the bed, and Mamma presented her back, and she put her arms round Mamma’s neck and Mamma ran with her out of the room. Katharine was shrieking with laughter.
“Now, back to your room at once! And see that you learn your lessons.” Mamma started up the stairs with her.
“Miss Kelly is in a bad mood today,” said Katherine.
“It is because I dreamed it was Christmas, and that made her remember about her brother in Van Diemen’s Land, because he will never, never spend Christmas with her again!”
“Be kind to Miss Kelly, because she has been unhappy.”
“You told me that before. I am kind to her. I see that the boys are too.”
Mamma picked her up suddenly and they ran up the rest of the stairs just as though, thought Katharine, Mamma was afraid someone would catch them if they did not hurry.
It was a queer morning.
Mamma had dinner with them because Papa was not at home, and Edward spilled the contents of his plate into his lap.
Then Miss Kelly said that Edward deserved to be whipped, or at least to go without his dinner, which set Edward crying. But Mamma comforted him: she said it was not Edward’s fault, and people should never be blamed unless the wrong things they did were their own faults.
Mamma took Edward onto her lap and fed him with a spoon so that it was as though he had done something clever instead of naughty.
Then followed the drowsy afternoon. Mamma slept; so did Edward. Martin and James went off together. That left Katharine to herself.
She went down to the kitchen. She liked the kitchen in the afternoon. Margery usually dozed in her chair, and it was while dozing that Margery could be relied on to be even more indiscreet than usual. Poll always washed the kitchen floor in the afternoon. Katharine liked to watch her mop swamping the stones.
“Hello, young mischief!” said Margery, She was sitting there, her knees apart, a fat hand on each knee. Amy washed the dishes; Poll was getting ready to start on the floor.
“I dreamed it was Christmas,” said Katharine.
“Glad I’ll be when that’s all over! There was never anything for making work like Christmas. I’d rather have twenty men about the house than Christmas.”
“Twenty is rather a lot.” said Katharine, pulling a chair close to Margery’s.
“I’d manage ‘em,” said Margery with a wink.
“And keen ‘em in order every man jack of ‘em!”
That was where Margery differed from Miss Kelly. Miss Kelly dispelled illusion; Margery developed it.
“Would you make them do all the work, Margery?”
“That I would!”
“Mop the floor and peel potatoes?”
“You bet I would.”
“Then what would Amy and Poll do?”
“They’d run round after the men give “em half a chance! Not that I’d say they was the sort to attract men neither of ‘em!”
“Wouldn’t you, Margery?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
Katharine knew about Poll’s baby; she had got that out of Margery.
“And don’t you let on to your Ma or your Papa that I’ve told you,” she had said.
“Why not, Margery?”
“Because it ain’t right you should know such things.”
“Why Margery?”
“You being only a child.”
“How long will it be before I can know things like that?”
“Well, that I can’t say. There’s some as picks it up sharp, and there’s some as don’t. You … being your mother’s daughter… There! Me tongue’s running away with me.”
At the time Katharine had been so intrigued by the thought of Margery’s tongue running away with her, that she had forgotten the real issue. That was like Margery; you had to watch her or she would draw a red herring across the path, which afterwards you would discover was not worth pursuit. But in spite of this trick of Margery’s she had many unguarded moments. Poll had murdered her baby because it wasn’t right that she should have a baby. Amy had been sent out for hiding a highwayman. Amy was middle-aged and cheerful. She didn’t talk very much about herself, but Margery liked to talk about her. Katharine heard quite a lot about Amy; how she had loved the highwayman, but how he was a rollicking, roistering type of fellow who had just made use of her. and when he was hanged by the neck, poor Amy had been sent for transportation for seven years for letting him use her house to hide himself and his plunder.
Margery could give her pictures of the Old Country, that were far more real than anything Miss Kelly taught. Miss Kelly taught words; Margery taught life. Margery could be coaxed into telling of journeys with one of her husbands, a pedlar. Could there be anything more desirable than to be the wife of a pedlar?
“What did you sell, Margery?”
“Everything you can lay your tongue to. lovey.”
“Lay your tongue to! What a lovely way to express yourself.
“Margery, I wish Papa would let you teach us, instead of Miss Kelly.”
“Lor’ love me! I ain’t the scollard she is.”
“Her brother went to Van Diemen’s Land, Margery.”
“So I hear, poor soul.”
“Do you know what it’s like there, Margery?”
“It’s the most terrible thing that could befall a man, I’ve heard.”
What joy there was in talking to her. She suggested a hundred and one forbidden things. When she talked of men, her lips quivered and she pressed them together as though she was afraid something would slip out that you shouldn’t hear because you were a child. She gave away so much that was exciting; how much more exciting must be those things which she suppressed. There was always the hope that she would tell more. Sometimes when she drank and drank she would say something, then clap her hand over her mouth or look over her shoulder and say: “Don’t you get saying a word I tell you, to your Papa or Ma!”
Poll was slopping water all over the kitchen floor. Soon Katharine and Margery, perched on their chairs, would be marooned on islands.
The sea’s getting higher every minute, Margery.”
There now, is it? And then what’ll we do?”
“We’ll be drowned or we may be rescued. Margery, have you ever been marooned?”
“No. But I’ve known plenty of sailors!”
“Sailors! Oh, Margery! Do tell.”
“Sailors is much the same as other men, in a manner of speaking. They go off to sea though, and they comes home again and that makes a bit of difference.”
“Did you ever have a sailor husband, Margery?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Did he go off to sea and come
home again?”
“He did. And a bit too soon sometimes. A sailor ought always to let a woman know when he’s coming home.”
“Was he your first, Margery?”
“Oh, no, ducky! Not by a long chalk.”
“Margery, my Papa had a First Wife, didn’t he?” Margery looked over her shoulder. Katharine took the glass from the table and handed it to Margery.
“Here. Margery, have a drink. I know Papa had a First Wife.”
Margery drank and smacked her lips.
“Old-fashioned little thing, you are no bones about it!” Katharine knelt on her chair and leaned towards Margery; she put her face so close that Margery could see the fine texture of child’s skin; like milk it was for whiteness, and she’d got a powdering of freckles across her nose, which made her skin look all the more fair. Dead spit of what her mother must have been at her age. And she’d be such another, with her wheedling ways. Little monkey! Still, Margery looked forward to her visits. It was pleasant to know the child came down so often to see her, to talk to her. She’d had a fondness for the child ever since she was born; had never taken to the boys one half so much. She put out a hand and touched the tender young cheek.
“It is a smut?” said Katharine.
“No, not a smut.” It made you feel funny, thought Margery. Here she was. a lovely bit of flesh and blood. Golly, it did something to you to see her; bright eyes, and what a tongue, eh! What a one for questions! There was no stopping her. What’s this? What’s that? It made you feel sort of powerful to know that you had had a hand in the making of her. But for you, things might have been very different. She might not have been sitting there now. Her mother might have gone off with that Marcus, and the mistress might still have been… Margery shut off from that. Mustn’t think like that … not with the child there, staring at you so close she’d see any flicker of your eyelids. It would be “Margery, what are you thinking of?” in a minute, if she knew anything! Besides, no one could say… All that was done with, had been done with eleven years back.
And now what had the little girl on her mind? She was a regular one for getting things on her mind.