by JH Fletcher
‘It was very interesting,’ Sarah told her.
‘I think I would be frightened.’
The laugh was that of a woman who had never been frightened in her life. But Sarah was equal to the challenge.
‘There is nothing to be frightened of. Why, they travel all the way to Melbourne nowadays.’
Miss Hetherington had been a trifle unsure of this new pupil with such an unpromising background, who, at fourteen, was also well above the normal admission age. But she was a true educator, and when she saw the results of the test Alex had written, she had no further doubts.
‘Who instructed you before?’
‘Miss Tossall and my mother.’
‘They deserve to be congratulated.’
Alex too, of course, but this Miss Hetherington did not say; she did not believe in complimenting pupils. Modesty in young ladies was a prerequisite to acceptance by society.
‘The new term begins in just over a week.’ Miss Hetherington’s voice was as starched as her collar. She took a printed list from the drawer of her desk and handed it to Sarah. ‘Text books she will obtain from the college but this will tell you what personal effects Alexandra will be required to bring with her. School uniforms and other clothes. Items of personal grooming. Writing materials — a ruler, pens and pencils, that sort of thing. The personal possessions she will be permitted to bring with her. A list of prohibited items.’
She handed over a second list.
‘These are suppliers recommended by the college,’ Miss Hetherington said. ‘And this —’ yet another list ‘— gives details of the rules regarding visits, et cetera. In general we do not encourage visits; in our experience gels find them unsettling, especially in the first year. But the school calendar permits visits by parents on selected occasions, such as concerts, dramatic presentations and of course speech day.’ Miss Hetherington smiled graciously.
‘When’s this speech day, then?’ asked Sarah.
‘The second Friday in December. Each year.’
‘But that’s almost twelve months away!’
‘Quite.’
The principal privately thought that Alexandra Armstrong might have some difficulty fitting in. Some of the gels were, alas, appalling snobs. But there was little she could do about that.
* * *
A week had sounded plenty of time, but it was barely enough to get all the things the college required. Money, for accommodation as well as the seemingly endless list of items Alex needed, flowed out like the Murray in flood. Charlie thought gloomily of what it was all costing him, while Alex …
As the first day of term approached she grew more and more apprehensive. A dozen times she told herself she’d do a runner.
‘Why can’t I get a job like Luke?’ she protested. ‘Why have I gotta be locked up in that old school?’
But Sarah, grimly determined, took no notice of either her husband or her daughter, and to Regency College, on the first day of the new school year, Alex went.
Sarah hugged and kissed her daughter goodbye. Once again she was farewelling one of her precious children. Now the moment of parting had come she was terrified by what she’d done, but it was too late for second thoughts. She managed to hold back her tears until after they’d left the college. In the cab they came in floods while Charlie, hopeless like all men when it came to emotion, sat poker-stiff.
The journey back to Edward’s Crossing was a silent one, but at least this time Sarah was composed enough to see the scenery.
Brenda was like a desert.
Sarah stood in the doorway of the saloon and looked about her. There was the cat, asleep in her basket. There was the familiar, battered furniture. There were a thousand memories of her family’s life. Luke in his crib, throwing his toy paddle steamer across the saloon on the Christmas morning before Charlie fought Jake Cousins. Alex moored to the sewing machine and still coming close to falling into the river in spite of it. Alex tormenting Elsie. Elsie muttering, ‘That girl will be the death of me,’ as she searched for Alex, perched high above the whirling paddlewheels. Elsie’s bloomers on the funnel stay …
And now? Nothing. Emptiness.
Luke, Alex, Elsie … all gone.
The void filled her with longing.
Yet she’d done the right thing, she told herself. Alex would get a good education and the chance of a better life. What was loneliness, after all? She’d get used to it.
She said none of this to Charlie. Instead she did her best to be cheerful.
But Charlie saw how she felt. Or guessed. When they turned in that night he said nothing but held her close. And Sarah was comforted.
In the morning there was a message waiting for them at the post office. It said there was a full load to pick up at Goolwa, so downstream to Goolwa they went.
While she was there Sarah thought of paying Petal a visit, but the thought of Alice Henderson put her off. Alex’s departure had brought enough stress into her life; she would leave socialising until another time.
Except that was not how things turned out. Charlie was arguing discounts in Tomkin’s store, Brenda was loaded, the firebox roaring and pressure building in the boiler, when Sarah came on deck to empty a bucket of dirty water over the side and found she had an unexpected visitor.
‘Good Heavens!’
It was fifteen years since they’d seen each other. Alice Henderson was still a striking-looking woman but had put on weight. Her face was unlined — more than I can say, Sarah thought — and she looked rosy and comfortable in a smartly tailored gown of grey silk.
The clothes shop had been open a year now. The last time they’d met — in the street — Petal had told Sarah things were going well. Sarah had promised she’d drop in to see the shop for herself but she never had. What do I want with smart clothes? she asked herself.
But that wasn’t the real reason. It was the idea of Alice Henderson that stuck in her throat. It was crazy, after all these years, but she couldn’t help it. She’d taken a dead set against the woman and that was the end of it.
Now here she was. And doing very well for herself too if her clothes were anything to go by, Sarah thought with no pleasure.
‘Fancy meetin’ you!’ she said.
‘Well, dear,’ said Alice, ‘I live here, after all.’
‘So you do.’
‘I thought you’d pop in to see us from time to time. When you was in town. But I suppose you bin too busy.’ Her smile would have curdled milk.
‘You know how it is,’ Sarah said.
‘I heard you was in port. So I told myself I’d stroll down to the wharf and see how my old friends were doin’. Seein’ they’re too busy to come an’ see us.’
Old friends … and some a few years older than others, too. How nice of Alice to remind her.
‘We’re doin’ fine.’ Sarah did her best to conjure an amiable expression. ‘Again an’ again I tole myself I should pay you a visit but somehow there’s never enough time. It’s the same today. The wind’s risin’ and we gotta get across the lake before the weather turns ugly. You know how it is.’
‘I remember very well,’ Alice laughed; no bird could have trilled more sweetly. ‘Up and down, up and down, never a moment’s peace, and danger around every bend … I dunno how you can bear the life, Sarah. But I s’pose if that’s what Charlie wants —’
‘It’s what I want too.’
Alice’s smile did not waver. ‘I never doubted it, dear. But I always think it’s such a hard life for a woman. Fair wears her out, don’t it?’ She glanced along the deck. ‘Is Charlie aboard?’
Sarah could have given her a good slap for saying such a thing. ‘He had to go into town.’
‘I might stroll that way, then. Give him my best wishes, if I see him.’
‘Why don’ you?’ Sarah said oh-so-sweetly.
‘You still got that stone I gave you?’
‘Yes. I always meant to ask you: where did you get it from?’
‘It was Henry’s. I ga
ve it to him shortly before he died. I thought his family should have it.’
How kind. A token of affection. Or of death.
‘Quite like old times, seein’ you again,’ Alice said. ‘You’re both well, I hope?’
‘We’re good.’
‘I’m so pleased.’
Sarah watched as Alice walked slowly along the wharf towards town. She had not asked after the children, but that was to be expected; she had never seen Alex or cared anything for Luke. She had been interested only in Sarah, and tormenting her, and in Charlie, because he was Charlie.
Perhaps she would like to renew the relationship, Sarah thought, her mind in spikes. Perhaps he would too. There couldn’t be much romance where there was no mystery, where the woman in your life spent most of her time covered in grime and sweat, humping three-foot gum logs in the stokehold, hands thick with grease from the engine. Nothing sexy about that, or about taking an axe to a tree growing on the bank, or killing a snake. Whereas an old friend, smartly dressed, plump and moist, delicately perfumed and all the more tasty for being forbidden fruit … No contest, right?
‘We’ll see about that,’ said Sarah to the stokehold, to the gleaming metal surfaces of the engine, to Brenda and the river and the shining day. ‘I still got somethin’ that bitch don’ have.’
And clang went the gate of the firebox and crash went the fresh supply of logs into the fuel bunkers. She checked the gauges; any more heat and the boiler would burst. Brenda was as ready as she would ever be.
Sarah climbed out of the stokehold and went on deck. Along the waterfront the breeze was clean and sweet. No sign of Charlie or Alice Henderson. Moving purposefully, Sarah climbed the flight of steps to the upper deck. She went into their cabin and closed the door behind her.
She looked at herself in the mirror that stood on the chest of drawers beside the bed. First response: Oh, Lord … Followed by defiance.
‘That’s what I got. I got me!’
So what if I got a sweaty face and rough, dirty hands, if I’m a rough, dirty woman — because that’s what I am, right, not just a wife but a woman, too, a woman first of all, and an arse like a mule to go with it, as tasty a morsel of womanhood as you’ll find in any tart’s boudoir of a dress shop.
She took off her clothes, very deliberately and defiantly, and dug out a bottle of scent and sloshed it all over herself. Then she hunted in a drawer and found the stone Alice had given her all those years ago. She examined it, and the devil’s face winked back at her.
‘I know what I’ll do with you,’ she said to it.
She lay back — reclined — on the bed and waited.
Five minutes … Ten … What’s keepin’ the bastard?
Then she felt the hull rock and the sound of boots on the lower deck.
‘Sarah?’
She stayed put, with her heart pounding a hole in her chest.
She sensed him going round the lower deck, checking the stokehold and the forward cabin, climbing the steps …
He opened the cabin door. Sunlight flooded in. He stood staring.
‘Blimey …’ He came closer, unable to credit what he was seeing. ‘What’s got into you?’
‘Nuthun yet.’ And she gave him her most seductive smile. ‘Got any suggestions?’
‘Blimey,’ Charlie said again.
He was tangle-toed as he looked at her, this woman he had known through hell and high water for close on twenty years, dammit, and in one instant of revelation wondered if he knew at all. So he was diffident, unsure, and Sarah caught the infection from him, the mule-arsed and sweaty woman became as shy and frightened as she had been in this cabin the first time, all those years ago. Yet she was defiant too …
All or nuthun, she told her pounding heart. She stretched out her hand and drew him to her, feeling him take fire as she caressed him, all shyness gone, all fear gone, her heart now pounding with something other than trepidation as Charlie too chucked off his boots and shirt and singlet and pants and …
Oh, God. Oh, dear God.
So quick and so glorious. She drew him to her, her husband, her love, her man. Never mind Alice Henderson; this was real — drawing him out of himself, drawing out the core of his being, draining him to the last drop.
Oh, God. Oh, God!
And this was the woman who had said they had to get across the lake before the storm caught them. But there were other storms than a southerly gale.
Those newfangled trains may be a problem, Sarah told herself. But Alice Henderson … I’ll eat her for my tea.
Afterwards Charlie was cautious of her, looking with uncertain eyes at this woman who had refashioned herself so gloriously. This explosion of being, of flesh and spirit, assailing him out of nowhere, for no reason, seemingly, except to reaffirm the unity that was neither he nor she but one being, greater than both of them, before all the world.
‘What’s that you got round your neck?’
‘This old thing?’ She fingered the stone and smiled as though she’d forgotten all about it. ‘Alice give it me that Christmas she spent with us. It’s a good luck token. I thought I’d like to wear it.’
I’ll exorcise the bitch, she thought. I’ll drive her out.
They got up, put on their clothes, and went up the river. Stinkin’ like a polecat, me, said Sarah to herself as she stoked the firebox. And that’s the way I like it.
They passed under the bridge that had been built seventeen years before at Edward’s Crossing, and five miles further on drew into the bank for the night. As soon as the lines were secured they were both in the river, their white skin glimmering in the fading light, the water cool and weed-scented and silky, while the bone-bare cliff on the opposite bank was clamorous with roosting birds. Wood ducks sought shelter in the reeds and from the darkening sky the plaintive whistle of kites ushered in the night.
Only as they got ready for bed did Sarah inquire, very casually, whether Charlie had seen anyone while he’d been in town.
‘No-one,’ he said, equally casually.
She couldn’t tell whether it was the truth or not. What did it matter? He was here, wasn’t he? And had certainly not rejected her. Quite the opposite, in fact.
All in all, it had been an interesting day.
CHAPTER 59
On Alex’s first day at Regency College, Miss Hetherington had handed her over to another teacher with instructions to show her around the school.
It was an imposing building, but most of it, forty-year-old Miss Dorcas told her, was out of bounds. The imposing entrance, at the head of a curving flight of stone steps, was out of bounds. The mysteries that lay within the entrance were out of bounds. The grounds themselves and the front two-thirds of the building were out of bounds.
What remained was a small section at the rear, overlooking the kitchen garden, where the pale shadow of glasshouses mirrored the sky. There were six classrooms, a confusion of dark corridors with attic bedrooms above. There were three bathrooms, armoured with red-eyed and grumbling geysers.
‘This is the girls’ section,’ said Miss Dorcas.
‘And the rest?’
‘For the boys.’
That’d be right.
The doors that connected the two sections of the school were kept locked at all times. If Martin Grenville was indeed somewhere in the school, Alex’s only chance of seeing him would be in church; the school had its own chapel to which all pupils were escorted each morning and twice on Sundays.
‘Do you sing?’ asked Miss Dorcas eagerly. As pale as lilies, this was the first animation she had shown. She thrust nervous hands through her hair. ‘The choir is always looking for recruits.’
Where it seemed that even the girl pupils might be permitted a place. Under guard, of course.
Yes, Alex assured her. She sang. And she was marched double time to a large room with a piano where Miss Dorcas struck a succession of encouraging keys, looking at Alex with eyebrows raised. ‘Sing, then. Let me hear you.’
Alex oblig
ed, melodious as a wattle bird.
‘Oh, dear.’
The tour went on. The classrooms, dark and dingy. The kitchens, with their cracked stone sinks and wooden tables scarred by knives, where domestic secrets would be revealed.
‘For those who care about their stomachs,’ laughed Miss Dorcas disparagingly. Music should be food enough, she implied, for those with souls and the ability to sing a note.
In the old days, when the building had been a private house, the bedrooms had been occupied by the battalions of junior maids needed to service those rich enough to own such a mansion. Now each room provided beds for three girls, Miss Dorcas said.
‘A bit of a squeeze, I’m afraid.’
It certainly was. There was nowhere to hang any clothes and Alex thought she would need a shoehorn just to get into bed.
‘I hear your father owns a fleet of paddle steamers,’ said Miss Dorcas, whose impoverished family had given her a keen appreciation of wealth.
‘He’s got an interest,’ Alex said.
‘The Murray is the lifeblood of the nation,’ said Miss Dorcas.
Yeah, right.
‘You will meet your roommates later.’
Now, with the bell clamouring along the corridors to indicate a break between classes, it was assembly time, when Miss Hetherington would honour the new pupil by introducing her to her fellow victims.
The assembly hall was grey and echoing, with Gothic windows and cobwebs in shadowed corners. Miss Hetherington stood on a raised dais and faced the assembled girls, with Alex at her side.
‘A new gel has joined us today. Alexandra Armstrong has had a most interesting life. I am sure, Alexandra, you would like to tell us about it.’
Shades of Miss Tossall.
Alex remembered how she had refused to speak on that occasion, using her promise to Luke as an excuse but really because the old bitch had got up her nose. Now it was a different situation, bad enough — who wanted to talk to a bunch of strangers about her life? — but bearable. Particularly — remembering Miss Dorcas’s words — if she tailored the facts a little.