by Kim Kane
‘They do. Nanny says Bea’s beauty is Mummy’s greatest source of pride. And look here . . . Third of August eighteen ninety-nine, Mr Bartlett to Mr Raymond: ‘She’s a lovely girl, that eldest Williamson. Lovely. When people say lovely they really mean beautiful, don’t they, Gert?’
‘Charlie. This is dull. You are the most boring child in the colony. And when I say boring, I mean as boring as sago pudding.’
‘It’s not dull, Gert. You’re just cross because nobody comments on you. Well, not favourably.’
‘I can see I’m going to have to be very careful around you!’ Madeleine exclaimed, feeling alarmed at the thought of what Charlie might read out about her. Fortunately, Charlie snapped the book shut. ‘Bea thinks it would be terrible to be plain.’
‘Molly McGolly by golly. You should stop spying and spend more time at the grotto like the lonely little cave-dweller you are.’ Gert looked down, her face still red. Even though she’d attacked her sister, to Madeleine she looked, well, sad.
Madeleine was so exhausted that evening she could barely eat. Gert led her downstairs to a small, windowless room off the kitchen. A round table was layered with a white cloth and then another white drip cloth on top, like in a fancy restaurant. Although the room had very high ceilings, there was a small fire in the grate, and the room smelt cosy, like buttered toast.
The table was set for the three youngest Williamson girls, plus Madeleine and Nanny. Bea was nowhere to be seen.
After a dinner – or, as Nanny called it, nursery tea – of googy eggs and little brown smoky fish, Nanny ushered them all upstairs again, and while the others grumbled, Madeleine was relieved.
Gert helped Madeleine out of the tangle of clothes and undergarments she’d squeezed her into earlier, taking care to hide the sports bra from Nanny.
Nanny handed Madeleine a very long white robe made of fabric that was stiff and smelt of lollies, with a high lacy neck. She passed it to Madeleine as one might pass a tin of peaches for labelling on a production line, brusque and humourless. Madeleine pulled on the robe, climbed into the little bed heaped with pillows as cool as clouds seemed from the window of an aeroplane, and closed her eyes.
‘Here is the chamber-pot, in case you require it,’ said Nanny as she left the room, ‘and do not forget your prayers.’
Madeleine opened her eyes. In the dim glow from the fire, she could see that Nanny had hoisted up the seat of a large, pale wooden chair about a metre from the bed. Inside was a blue-and-white china pot.
‘Oh man,’ said Madeleine. ‘It’s a toilet in a chair – a massive potty.’ She shuddered and vowed never to use it. It seemed unhygienic to sleep with wee in the room. ‘Isn’t there a toilet up here?’
‘There’s a bathroom on the first floor with a lav that we may use during the day, but we use chamber-pots at night. I’m sorry – I ought to have shown you the bathroom this afternoon.’
Directly opposite Madeleine’s bed was the tall doll’s house Gert had stuffed Madeleine’s clothes behind earlier. Set into an alcove in one corner of the room, just visible from where she lay, was a bulky cupboard.
Madeleine sat up. ‘I didn’t notice that before,’ she whispered.
Imogen was already making snuffling sleep-noises in her bed through the open double doorway.
‘The doll’s house? It was Bea’s. Imo plays with it now,’ Gert whispered back.
‘Not the doll’s house – although it is divine, especially that painted ivy on its walls. I was talking about the cupboard!’
Madeleine slipped out of bed and went to the cupboard, opening it with its little brass key. The wood was a lovely golden-brown, the colour of honey cake, and the clothing inside was hanging face-forward on hooks, rather than along a pole. Madeleine crouched down and slid her fingers along the bottom until she felt the lip of the secret compartment she’d found Bea’s shoes in and pulled it open. Charlie snored a deep old-man’s snore from the next room.
‘This is where I found Bea’s shoes.’ Madeleine looked over at Gert.
‘What? Are they in there now? Why would Bea keep them down there?’
‘I have no idea why,’ said Madeleine softly. ‘They’re not here now, but they will be – I promise you.’
Madeleine returned to her bed. ‘All I know is that I’ll be scrubbing this cupboard down in over a hundred years’ time. Where I’m from, it’s white; I’m about to give it a quick lick of paint.’
‘And they let you do that – paint?’
‘Yep.’
‘Charlie would love the future.’ Gert giggled.
A groggy murmur came from Charlie’s bed in the next room. ‘What would I love?’
‘Charlie! Don’t meddle – go back to sleep,’ said Gert.
‘But what would I love?’ Charlie asked again. Madeleine could see through the doorway between the rooms that she was sitting up at the end of her bed, her eyes wide now.
‘The place I’m from,’ said Madeleine, reckless. ‘Because you’d get to do things boys do, like scrub down cupboards and shoot people with paint guns. And fight with the army.’
‘As a soldier? Victoria has its own army, of course, and our troops are fighting the Boers, but ladies don’t fight, they nurse.’
Madeleine sat up. ‘Of course I’m joking, but I think women should be able to fight, I really do. Wars run better that way, because female soldiers can do things like speak to civilian women, and women are meant to be good at strategising. Anyway, I’m stronger than most of the boys in my class.’
Gert was making choking sounds from her bed. ‘That’s just . . . silly, Madeleine. Our sex may not be as feeble as Mummy thinks, but war is—’
The door to the nursery flew open.
‘Girls, silence!’ Nanny was silhouetted in the doorway, square and furious. ‘One more word from any of you and I’ll send Miss Madeleine straight back to New South Wales.’
‘Yes, Nanny,’ said Gert and Charlie quickly.
‘Sorry,’ mumbled Madeleine.
Nanny shut the door.
‘Nanny No Nonsense,’ whispered Charlie.
Madeleine sank back into her pillows and gazed at the cupboard in the shadows – the very same cupboard she would be staring at from her other bed a century from now. Or at least she hoped she would be; she really, really hoped.
When Madeleine woke, she could see nothing but white: a bright, clean, pitiless white. She opened her eyes wide. Then there was a rustle of movement to her left, the linen sheet was whipped from her head, and Madeleine found herself looking into Gert’s freckled face.
‘I thought I’d gone blind for a moment there. That really would be the last straw.’
‘Well, I’m not sure about blind, but I’ve seen more life in a rice pudding.’ Gert smiled. ‘We’d better get dressed for breakfast.’
Gert poured some warm water into a bowl at the washstand and wiped a face washer across her face. Then she helped Madeleine do the same and shepherded her through the tedious task of getting into her outfit. Anna plumped pillows, emptied the water bowl, refilled the jug, folded nightgowns and ran around with the bellows, puffing all the fires in the upstairs rooms. A similar degree of industry was apparent when the girls went downstairs; the household was buzzing.
Gert led Madeleine back to the small room in which they had eaten supper the night before. It was gloomy in the half light of morning. Charlie, Imo and Nanny already sat at the table, bowls of porridge before them.
Madeleine sat down and took a scoop of porridge, only to nearly spit it out again. The oatmeal was creamy but as salty as the sea. At home, Madeleine made her own porridge from a sachet that came in flavours like creamy vanilla and only took ninety seconds in the microwave. Luckily, in her new tight underwear, she had very little appetite anyway.
‘Why is everyone so busy?’ whispered Madeleine to Gert as Anna shot by in the corridor again, this time with a tin bucket of soapy water in hand. It wasn’t very relaxing sitting down while everyone flapped around them.
‘Mummy’s cousin is arriving today, and so Daddy and Mummy are returning – Daddy’s been working in his chambers, trying to finalise something on the new Constitution with England, so they’ve been at Park Street.
‘Park Street?’
‘We still have a town house, as Daddy is frequently required there.’ Gert turned to Nanny. ‘Excuse me, Nanny, may I have please have a little cream?’
‘No, Miss Gertrude. You know to wait until you are offered something, and there is no cream. Children do best with sensible, plain foods – I dislike the way Cook indulges you. Her tastes are far too decadent, but that’s what one gets when one engages an RC.’
‘RC?’ asked Madeleine.
‘Roman Catholic, Miss Madeleine, and do not interrupt. Regardless of what they might teach you at college, forthrightness is terribly unappealing in the female sex and intolerable in a child.’
Madeleine was so angry she felt her whole face and neck turning pink.
Nanny took a deep breath. ‘No, plain and wholesome food is best for children; that’s what my mother used to say. There are, however, stewed prunes if you would care for them, Miss Gertrude – stewed prunes are very good for digestion.’
She gestured towards a bowl of shiny black prunes in syrup at the centre of the table.
‘Straight back, please – and Miss Imogen, do not whistle that incessant tune at the table – or any tune, for that matter. Excuse me.’
Nanny got up from the table and walked through the door into the hall.
‘Well, you get cream,’ whispered Gert to Nanny’s retreating back. She leant over to Madeleine. ‘When Mummy and Daddy are here, everyone gets to eat breakfast in the morning room together. It’s a much merrier affair. Mummy finds it too glum in here, and she’s very keen we learn dining etiquette.’
‘This can be merry too.’ Charlie winked. ‘Master Charles Williamson has a plan.’ She disappeared beneath the lip of the tablecloth momentarily, and re-emerged brandishing a long wooden peg.
‘Yes, yes, yes! Oh, please, Charlie – musical porridge!’ Imo clapped.
‘Shhh, Imo.’ Gert looked at the door.
Charlie and Gert each put both hands on the tablecloth, and together they slowly spun the table. Madeleine held her spoon and watched the bowls of porridge spin around twice, like they were sitting before a giant lazy Susan at a Chinese restaurant.
Imo giggled.
They heard the clod of Nanny’s heels on the lino. Charlie stopped the table expertly and slipped the peg back in to hold it in place. ‘You required cream, Miss Gertrude?’ She stood and bowed like a butler.
‘Yes!’ Gert tucked into Nanny’s porridge.
Nanny returned, none the wiser. ‘I’d like you all outside to play in the garden after breakfast. There is nothing quite like fresh air and exercise. Percy will set out the bicyclettes.’
‘All right,’ said Gert, pushing out her chair, which screeched on the lino.
‘All right? Is that what they’re teaching you at school, Miss Gertrude?’
‘Yes, Nanny.’
Nanny looked at Gert sharply. ‘Just because your mother always says you’re the clever, difficult one does not mean you can be rude. Not while I’m on guard.’
Gert blushed a deep red. ‘Sorry, Nanny. I meant to say that there shan’t be any nonsense.’
Madeleine felt sorry for Gert. She found Nanny too gruff – gruff but weirdly formal, with her Miss Madeleines and her Miss Gerts. Madeleine’s only experience of babysitters had been Year Eleven girls from school, who’d let her spoon Nutella into her mouth straight from the jar and stay up really late watching too much TV while they sent texts to their boyfriends from the couch – things her mother would never have allowed.
‘Don’t worry, Gert, I say all right all the time at home,’ said Madeleine quietly. ‘I didn’t even know it was rude.’
Nanny took a bottomless breath. ‘Miss Madeleine,’ she said in a whisper more biting than any shout, ‘in this household, I answer to Mrs Williamson, and the children answer to me. As our guest, I expect you to show me the same respect. It appears there is very little to be said for the manners of children from a penal colony. I can’t say that I wasn’t warned.’
Nanny beat her bare palm on the edge of the table, then put down her napkin. Madeleine and the other girls jumped.
‘I’m sorry, Nanny,’ said Madeleine, not entirely sure what she was being accused of. ‘That came out all wrong.’
Nanny spooned porridge into her mouth. If she noticed her own serving of porridge was uncreamed, she was too angry to comment.
After breakfast, Madeleine, Gert and Charlie spent hours playing outside. Gert and Madeleine rode a set of old bikes without any gears across the lawn and tennis court and down the hill towards the lake. The bikes were as wobbly as front teeth. Imo watched and cheered, her little legs too short to reach the pedals. The sun was bright, but the morning was cold, and there was a layer of white frost across the grass, crisscrossed with dark trails left by the bike tyres. It crunched as Madeleine rode over it, and the cold air bit her lungs.
She and Gert finally tired and returned to the house, sitting together on the stone steps that led up to the front door. Madeleine tried to pry the bodice away from her stomach. Her sweat had pooled and dried inside it, and the salt on her skin was itchy. She also stank. If there was deodorant here, it had not been offered.
‘Those bikes are great fun,’ said Madeleine. ‘Much more fun than the bikes we have. Ours are so stable you don’t need hands to ride them. I was freaked out!’
Gert smiled. ‘Freaked out?’
‘Terrified. You know what I mean.’ Madeleine tried to get a finger up under the end of her bodice to scratch her ribs. Her finger wasn’t long enough, though, and it was impossible to scratch effectively through all the material. ‘Is there any chance we can sneak me one of Hen’s chastity vests now? I’m so uncomfortable in this tight one. It is the worst thing ever.’
‘Liberty bodice! And I’m afraid Aunt Hen hasn’t left for the day yet, so no. She’s always off somewhere, though, so it’s only a matter of time. I’m not sure it’s the worst thing ever. Your turn of phrase is terribly amusing.’
‘So’s yours.’ Madeleine wriggled again. ‘Even in this thing, I’m starving. What time’s lunch?’
‘Dinner should be in about an hour. We children still have dinner. Only Bea is allowed to join the adults for luncheon.’ Gert looked put out.
‘You call your lunch dinner?’
‘Of course,’ said Gert, ‘Although we call the adults’ evening meal dinner too. Children have nursery tea.’
Madeleine shook her head and looked up at the sky. An English flag – the Union Jack – snapped in the breeze from one of the two white flagpoles by the front gate, flying at full mast. Next to it, on the second pole, flew a white flag with a Union Jack in the corner, boxed in by a blue cross with stars.
‘What flag is that?’ asked Madeleine. ‘I’ve never seen it before.’
‘It’s the flag for federation! One people, one destiny, one flag! Daddy doesn’t usually fly it, as it’s a little too close to the Eureka flag, but it’s become so popular lately I think he’s decided it would be churlish not to raise it occasionally.’
Gert smiled. ‘And if that flag is flying, that means . . . they’re home!’ And she leapt up and flew into the house, Madeleine behind her.
The girls burst through the front door. A clump of men stood in the drawing room just off the entrance hall, a murmuring circle: backs straight, tipped towards the centre, bent slightly at the waist. It was a colosseum of white collars and whispers, hmph, hmph, hmphs. Their very presence demanded space be left around them, like a glob of oil in vinegar.
‘It has to go through. There is no other practicable means by which the united Australian voice of the six colonies may be heard or made effective,’ said one of the men.
He was taller, leaner and less hairy than the others. He had a flop of blond hair th
at fell down in front of his face, and he was golden. Yes, thought Madeleine, everything about him was golden – his skin, hair, eyes, all as golden as the crested ring on his pinky finger. Without the moustache, he’d have looked like a Bondi lifesaver – and yet he seemed to be the sort of person who spent most of his time buttoned-up in the study. He checked his fob watch and shook his head.
Gert grabbed Madeleine’s elbow and pulled her sharply to the right to ensure that the girls kept a sizeable distance between them and the men as they passed them by.
‘Sorry, Daddy,’ she whispered to the golden man, removing her hat and avoiding eye contact.
A plump man with a large red nose and bushy beard said something Madeleine didn’t catch, and the circle laughed.
‘That’s the Premier, Mr McLean,’ whispered Gert. ‘He has quite the parish pickaxe, doesn’t he?’
‘Quite the what?’
‘A prominent nose!’
Madeleine laughed, quite loudly. Gert elbowed her in the side.
Gert’s father gestured and the men exited the drawing room and crossed the hall, retreating into the musky warmth of a study lined with leather-bound books.
‘Don’t you want to go in and say a proper hello?’ asked Madeleine, but Gert just frowned.
Charlie and Imo tumbled in through the front door with Nanny.
‘Come on, let’s follow Nanny and find Mummy,’ said Gert, heading towards the stairs that led back up to the nursery.
The girls took the stairs two at a time. Madeleine’s breaths were short and stiff within the liberty bodice as she strove to keep up with Charlie, but she still panted a lot less than Gert. As she climbed, Madeleine held up her itchy, slippery tights with one hand to prevent them from sliding down her legs, dragging the drawers with them.
Charlie was about to reach the top when a voice floated down the stairs from above them.
‘Nanny,’ called the voice, ‘we’re expecting Elfriede this afternoon. You will need to find something suitable for Gertrude’s guest to wear if her trunks still haven’t arrived.’ Madeleine looked up and was met by the sight of a solid woman ascending the staircase. Although her limbs were heavy, her skirts seemed to glide above the boards, her little shoes kicking out from beneath them.