by Lena Dowling
The main hut comprised of a hearth, a table and chairs, and a rough dresser made from re-used planks. His bed was in an alcove to one side, which he ignored, striding into the former scullery, a lean-to that adjoined the back of the cabin.
‘You’ll sleep here. You can put what you have in those,’ he said, pointing to the crates in the corner.’
With precious little space to move, Colleen pivoted around on the spot. To begin with he thought she was enchanted, but he was forced to revise his assessment as she released a small but definite sound of dismay.
She was disappointed? After being rescued from a stinking gaol she was turning her nose up at a clean bed and a home, which although rudimentary, she could come and go from as she pleased?
He wrinkled his brow, tilting his head to look at her, but the deliberately censorious expression failed to have any impact as she thrust her lips out even further, resulting in a plumpness, a certain bee-stung swelling that was as appealing as it was disapproving.
She pointed in the direction of the main room.
‘I thought I’d be bunkin’ down out there, layin’ me head down in the proper bed, with you.’
Just as he had feared, aided and abetted by Lady Hunter, Colleen had developed unrealistic expectations of what their marriage would involve.
‘I didn’t marry you to exploit your unfortunate background by turning you into my concubine. I needed a housekeeper, you required safe haven. That is all. While this may only be an arrangement, it is one that I hope will suit us both equally well.’
He had hoped that in laying out matters firmly and reasonably the woman would seize on the advantages of the situation, but despite making it clear that he had no intention of enforcing his rights as a husband, her crestfallen demeanour remained.
‘But I’ve never kipped on me own before. I don’t know how I’ll get any shut-eye by meself.’
She hardly seemed the sort of woman who would be afraid of the dark and yet, while subtler, the same note of desperation he had heard in her voice at The Factory undercut her words. He would like to have probed her on it further but she seemed so disenchanted to do so risked aggravating the situation further.
And in any case all new lodgings felt strange at first. He too had been disquieted by the dramatic difference in the landscape and the austerity of the accommodations of his new domicile, but after a few nights she would settle in just as he had done.
‘You’ll become accustomed, I’m sure, but rest assured your role here will be as my companion, and nothing more.’
‘Companion,’ she repeated slowly as if she was attempting to decipher the precise meaning of the word. Then she dropped her shoulders, and released her shawl, where it rested in the crook of her elbows.
Anxious not to be drawn into making any detailed assessment of the woman’s figure, Samuel averted his eyes. He pretended to survey the room as if cataloguing the contents, ensuring its readiness for its new occupant, while grasping for a topic of conversation — anything that would divert matters away from their immediate circumstances.
‘I’m sorry that there are no festivities to mark the wedding,’ he said, finally.
Reminding her of the wedding won favour, her obvious displeasure reducing some as she looked down at the wedding ring he had purchased with the last of his savings, twisting it on her finger. He had thought to buy a gold one, but in Parramatta there was nothing to be had. But for a desperate settler looking to part with a silver one, he might have been reduced to fashioning something from wire.
‘Oh that’s alright. It was hardly your usual sort of wedding was it?’
‘It was nothing like any other English wedding I’ve ever attended,’ he agreed with a rapid upwards glance that skirted her figure, bringing his eyes back to meet hers.
Although now that he had the opportunity to see them close up, he couldn’t help but be struck by their luscious melting dessert-like quality, a feature that could well have been the very genesis of the situation he now found himself in.
‘When her ladyship called the reverend the “Thrashing Vicar” he looked so shocked I thought the minister’s brains were going to burst out his earholes. I don’t think he can have known that was his nickname before, do you?’
Samuel tried to stifle a chuckle then gave up, letting a hearty guffaw escape from the depths of his belly. Colleen’s unique description had captured the po-faced parson’s expression exactly.
Colleen met his laugh with the sweet pealing notes of her own. He might have scarcely known the woman for a couple of hours, and yet the way Colleen had conducted herself pointed to possession of a spirited determination and an innate dignity in equal measure.
She was not afraid to speak her mind, or recalling the way she had grasped on to him outside The Factory, to seize a chance.
Yet even taking into account the colourful way she expressed herself, if he hadn’t known that Colleen had been ejected from a brothel, from the manner in which she carried herself, he would never have guessed her former occupation.
Instinctively, he saw in Colleen the same qualities that had seen him survive his own trials and led to his success as a man of business. He would be prepared to wager that she was an opportunist and a survivor, but most importantly she had a steady belief in herself, qualities that, assuming she was prepared to accept the strict limitations of their union, would make her a thoroughly agreeable wife and helpmeet.
Increasingly uncomfortable with the silence between them and how intently she had begun to regard him, he stopped laughing and looked away, struggling for something else to say, something that wouldn’t make her laugh again.
‘I should explain that I haven’t told the Hunters of the true nature of the arrangement between us, so they think we would welcome this time alone to, ah, get acquainted, as it were.’
For goodness sake, man.
In his concern to lay out the ground rules for their relationship and keep the topic of conversation away from sensitive matters he had nevertheless somehow managed to bring the discussion directly back to the fraught subject of the consummation of their marriage.
He should retreat from this damnably small room before he dug himself in any deeper.
He wasted no time in turning and striding towards the door, then perceiving it would be rude to rush away without taking some sort of leave, he paused to call back over his shoulder, ‘I really should go and change. There’s plenty of work to do and staying in these clothes will only see them ruined.’
‘I should too,’ she replied.
‘Yes, yes, do. That would certainly be best.’
Colleen took off her gown, petticoat and corset and put on the prison dress, straightening the apron over the top before lastly pulling her mob-cap down to her ears.
She ran her finger over her wedding ring, holding it up to the light. Mr Biggs hadn’t had to do that, give her a real ring. That was real thoughtful.
But when it came down to it, it was only a tiddling thing, an ornament for her finger. Even without a mirror she knew how dowdy she must have looked. The fabric of the dress was a thick dull grey, her cap was yellowed, her apron permanently stained with prison filth. It would have been better, much better, to be looking at her best, especially now Mr Biggs had insisted on separate rooms.
She hadn’t been expecting that. Hadn’t known a man in years who wasn’t interested in one thing: getting himself up under her skirts.
It might have been as much as a month since she had fallen pregnant already — not that she was afraid to tell Mr Biggs about the baby, exactly. From what little she had seen of him so far, she didn’t reckon that he would treat her rough because of it, but even the most upstanding man would baulk at sacrificing his own coin to feed another man’s child. The Malone’s looked after their own, and no child of hers was going to grow up feeling like it wasn’t wanted.
And it’s not like it would be lying, not straight out lying, that was a sin; more just not letting on the whole truth.
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br /> If there was even a chance of Mr Biggs believing the baby was his, she reckoned it would be best to take it. But if that were to happen, she couldn’t be sleeping out here in the scullery for long. She needed to be in his bed.
Most men wouldn’t have needed any encouragement to take advantage. Trouble was, Mr Biggs seemed very different from other men.
What if he meant what he said about her just being a companion?
If that were true, her baby would never know what it was like to be part of a happy family, one with a proper father, like she’d had.
She sat down on the pallet and clasped her hands around her thighs, pulling her knees up to her chest.
If only Nellie were here.
She would know what to do.
More than any other woman in Sydney Town, Nellie knew how to make a man want her. She was pretty for sure, but there was more to it than that, otherwise why had she become more popular the older she got, instead of the other way around? Men got all caught up in her seductive tawny eyes, her pouty mouth and her magical laugh until she charmed the breeches off them.
She and Nellie hadn’t been apart since they had gone into service together at the Mellwood Estate. Now, without her, it felt as if a whole piece of her heart had been cut out and while it was still beating, it was somewhere else far away, somewhere she couldn’t reach to put it back together.
She turned her head to rest it on her knees and whispered, ‘Hush now little babe, your ma will find a way. We’ll make Mr Biggs your da and everything will be alright, just like I promised your Aunty Nell.’
Chapter 6
The day after the wedding, Samuel stepped back from the stone wall he had spent all morning building around the base of the henhouse and into the shade of a nearby tree. He pulled a fistful of dry leaves from a branch, crushed them in his palm, and held them to his nose. They smelled warm and medicinal like a tincture for a cough. He stuffed a handful in his pocket. He would ask Tom what kind of tree the leaves were from later, but not now. Right now he was far too busy finishing what he had thought would be a simple job, but he was rapidly coming to appreciate that nothing was ever easy in the wretched heat of an Australian summer.
With the fabric of his shirt clinging uncomfortably to his body, he tugged it out of his trousers and pulled up the front to rub the coarse fabric over his face, mopping at the perspiration running off his forehead and into his eyes.
He’d had a poor night’s sleep and not solely because it was one of those overly warm nights when even the weight of a single sheet is too oppressive.
At first, it had been a relief when, after the wedding, Colleen had changed out of the dress she had worn for the marriage ceremony and back into her unbecoming convict outfit and filthy apron. But as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t quite entirely erase the memory of having seen her in something more fetching, which kept sliding back into his mind like a stealthy hand slipped between the bed sheets.
Tucking his shirt back in he fished in his pocket for a kerchief to tie over his head. Once he had it secured tying the ends around the back of his head, he strode over to the rock pile to heave another stone up onto the wall.
Work was the thing, the best thing for easing a troubled mind and fortunately there was plenty of it to do. He had hoped that he would have the wall done in a day, but if he didn’t increase his rate of progress it was going to be more like a day and half and there was a lot more that needed seeing to around the farm besides. Even to his inexperienced eye, it appeared Hunter Downs had been let go, and much was competing for his urgent attention.
‘Take it easy, man. I don’t expect you to do Tom’s work for him. I took you on as an overseer not a navvy,’ James said, as he swiftly circuited the henhouse, returning to where Samuel was at work, nodding approvingly in the direction of the wall. ‘But I have to say you’re making a fine job of it.’
An expansion of pride in Samuel’s chest saw him release the stone he had been about to pick up back onto the pile to stand up straight.
James had taken a gamble in hiring him. The last time they met, it was as much as he could manage to carry his own satchel filled with nothing more than a few sheaves of paper, let alone heave rocks about. He aimed to repay James’ generosity, showing him from the outset that he had not made a mistake in hiring him.
‘Where did you learn to do that?’
Samuel bristled.
‘It’s a skill I picked up.’
‘But where would a man of business pick up a trade?’
‘Here and there.’
‘But you must have had training to make such a precise job of it, surely?’
Samuel brushed the dirt off opposite gloved hands as if the action might scrape away the memories James had stirred up.
He would rather not recollect that aspect of his past. In his experience many things in life were best forgotten, and not least of all his stint in the poorhouse.
‘Yes, if you must know, I received instruction in the workhouse.’
‘Good Lord, I had no idea. How did you end up there?’
‘As a child, after my father died.’
James folded his arms, leaning in slightly, obviously interested in this piece of information, which Samuel almost never revealed and certainly never with any of his former clients.
‘What brought you out of it? It can be damnably difficult to escape those places once you’re admitted.’
‘It was a stroke of luck really,’ Samuel said, pleased to move on to the happier recollection of the relationship his mother had formed with the workhouse vicar. ‘The minister who gave Sunday service arranged for my education. If not for that, I believe that I might have ended up a stonemason. That’s about the only skill I acquired while I was there.’
‘Well, you’re making such a fine job of that wall, on this occasion I won’t stop you, but it’s not what I would have expected of my overseer and certainly not of a newlywed.’ Samuel had expected James to walk off then and leave him to it, but instead he paused, folding his arms and shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other. ‘Which, therefore leads me to enquire…is everything alright with your new wife? I trust there are no problems in that direction?’
‘I should say as well as can be expected considering I only met Colleen for the first time a couple of days ago,’ Samuel said evenly, reining in his impatience with James’ continued prying into his personal affairs.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘No reason, no reason at all,’ James responded awkwardly. ‘I just like to see my employees happy and settled that’s all.’
Samuel eyed his employer thoughtfully. If he hadn’t known better he would have said James had some particular interest in his marital happiness, but why that should be the case he couldn’t think.
But then, knowing James as he did, perhaps it was simply the mark of the man. The James Hunter he recalled from London had been a decent fellow who most certainly loved his own wife, having once been prepared to carry the stigma of a false conviction rather than humiliate his wife and her family.
‘Well, I should say Cook will be pleased not to lose her chickens again, but don’t forget about Mrs Biggs will you?’ James continued, ‘I don’t expect you to put in your full hours for a few more days until you get your new wife properly settled.’
At that his employer turned and walked away in the direction of the main house while Samuel kicked at the dirt with his boot.
Forget about Colleen? If only he could.
Dash it, if he hadn’t thought of little else since he brought her home from The Factory.
Worse, every time he thought of Colleen all he saw were her treacly brown eyes, all he heard was her musical laugh and all he could remember was the endearing way she thrust out her bottom lip when she was displeased. It was a most unexpected and unwanted distraction, when he had so much else requiring his attention on the farm.
When Colleen woke for the first time in her new home Mr Biggs was already up and gone, his was bed
empty, the covers thrown back. Without him in the hut, it was like the warm beating heart of it was missing.
At O’Shane’s there had been company, with the girls sitting around telling stories and playing cards before the working day started.
And there were always stories from the night before; gruesome stories of men so poxed the girl had to scream out for Danny to drag him away, or clients who liked it strange — wanted to be peed on or to be put on a leash and beaten like a dog.
And although it seemed mad, she was bereft that for once no one was standing over her barking out orders ready with a cuff if she didn’t hop to it and do what she was told.
Confused by the idea that for the first time in years she might decide for herself how she would spend her day, she circled the room.
In the end she made the beds first then swept out the cabin with a broom she found in the corner, doing the best she could considering the bristles were all worn down on one side. After that, she dusted the few things in the cabin that stuck out enough to be collecting dust: the gnarled old mantle, the table and the dresser with a piece of rag she had found in one of the drawers.
Finished with the dusting she folded her arms and looked around with a scowl. She couldn’t say it looked much better. She wanted Mr Biggs to be pleased with what he came home to — to see her as a real wife and not just because she wanted to be moving in out of the scullery and into his bed. Mr Biggs did things proper like getting her a real ring and he talked like he’d had good schooling, not learning at classes held in barns in winter, or in the shade of a hedge in summer, like her and Nell. Even without the babe to think of, she would have wanted to do him proud and not show him up.
But everything in the hut was rough-sawn and unpainted with nothing to polish or shine. There wasn’t a decent thing in the cabin except maybe Mr Biggs’ bed, the one, laughing at her from the alcove.
With the housework finished she wandered out onto the porch. Once outside — free as the cockatoos squawking in the trees behind the barn, it sank in that she was free.