Cry of the Curlew: The Frontier Series 1

by Peter Watt

  Granville swallowed his glass of sherry which had lost its pleasant taste. ‘What would you have done to rid us of Michael Duffy, dear Aunt?’ he asked with a bitter edge of sarcasm. ‘Request him not to see Fiona. Tell him he was not of a suitable pedigree, although that does not seem to have entered his mind when he put Fiona with child. What would you have done?’

  ‘Probably what you did,’ she replied frankly. ‘I have no intention of allowing my daughter to marry outside her station in life. Let alone to some grubby Irishman. As for the child, it will be suitably disposed of by Molly.’

  She was so devilishly confident as she sat with her hands in her lap, Granville reflected. It was so strange that Fiona had not inherited her mother’s ruthless nature. Or had she?

  ‘Now I see why you chose November for the wedding,’ he said as he refilled his glass from the crystal decanter on a sideboard. ‘Fiona should be sufficiently recovered by then.’

  ‘That is part of the reason,’ Enid answered. ‘The other part is that November marks the death of Angus. And I think it is appropriate that his memory be celebrated with a new start in life for the family, with you and Fiona marrying. Mister Macintosh and I have decided that a passage to Europe is a fitting wedding present for you both and I am sure the tour will do Fiona good. An opportunity for you to have Christmas with your dear mother in England.’

  He was pleasantly surprised at her generous wedding present and he responded graciously. ‘Thank you, Aunt Enid. It will be an honour having you as my mother-in-law,’ he said with just a faint touch of sarcasm, and he raised his glass as a toast to their future relationship.

  ‘Oh, there is one other thing I should mention,’ Enid said, ignoring her future son-in-law’s sarcasm and toast. ‘When your children are born they will be christened under the name Macintosh-White.’

  Granville did not need to consider what his future mother-in-law had proposed, as he felt that the union of the two families in the next generation was a fitting gesture and besides, he would be controlling both sides of the family through his marriage to Fiona.

  ‘Oh, one more thing before you leave,’ she added, as if she had just thought of it, and he felt uneasy about the facetious edge that had crept into his aunt’s tone. ‘I want you to get rid of the gardener’s daughter from your house, as you will not need her services when you are married to my daughter. For that matter, get rid of the gardener. The stupid man does not know how to prune roses.’

  Granville’s bottom lip dropped. The damned woman knew everything!

  When Granville arrived at his home he was not surprised to see a strange carriage outside. It was not pretentious but bespoke moderate wealth. He was greeted by his old cook, whose talent was just as much for discretion and loyalty as it was for her culinary expertise.

  ‘Yer sister is entertainin’ a gen’leman friend,’ she said sarcastically as he shook off the outside cold. ‘I think she will be down from ’er room soon.’

  Granville frowned and thanked her for the information then went directly to the library, where he poured himself a single malt scotch. He stood staring down at the footman and carriage waiting in the driveway below. He soon saw a well-dressed young gentleman come out of the house and climb into the carriage to be whisked away.

  Granville swallowed the last remnants of the expensive scotch and left the library to go to his sister’s room. This time he knocked before daring to make his entrance. Penelope opened the door to him with a smile which quickly turned to a frown.

  ‘Your gentleman friend has left,’ Granville said as he appraised her wearing little else than a silk chemise. ‘As I suspect, your smile was for him and not me, dear sister.’

  ‘I did not expect you to return so soon from Aunt Enid’s,’ Penelope said as she turned and walked back into the bedroom. He felt the old lust as he watched the inviting sensual movement of her buttocks rising and falling under the short garment. ‘I expect that Enid has informed you of her plans for the wedding in November,’ she added as she sat down in a chair in front of a large mirror to brush her long golden tresses.

  ‘She has,’ he said as he plonked himself on her large bed, where the sheets were as dishevelled as her hair. ‘You have obviously satisfied your part of the bargain we agreed to.’

  ‘It was not easy,’ Penelope replied as the brush of sterling silver inlay swept the full length of her hair. ‘Fiona has a childish and romantic idea that Michael Duffy will return to her. I suspect that it has something to do with the condition she suffers,’ she added, as though pregnancy were a mind-altering disease.

  Granville felt the ghost of an old fear return. While the damned Irishman lived, his hold on Fiona would never be certain. If only Horton had been successful. What if Duffy returned and was cleared of his supposed crime of murder? ‘But she has agreed to marry me,’ he said as part statement, part question.

  ‘You have nothing to fear,’ his sister replied, staring at his worried reflection in the mirror. ‘Fiona has always done what I wanted her to do in the past. She will give up her baby, marry you and bear your heirs, dear brother. And in time I’m sure you will find ways to help her forget her Irishman. Wealth has that effect on women. All else is simply icing on a cake.’

  ‘You are obviously not a romantic,’ he said lightly.

  ‘You should know,’ she retorted bitterly as she turned to him. ‘You made me what I am, Granville. I might have been like Fiona had you not taught me well in the ways of men. Or is it that I am truly like you in every way? That I have inherited the darkness that has always been in our side of the family, an unnatural desire that our wealth is able to buy . . . as you do the girl, Jennifer, to satisfy your physical needs? I suppose I shall never know who I am because you took that opportunity from me a long time ago.’

  She wanted to pour out the venom of her feelings to the man she most loved – and hated – in the world, but she checked herself, knowing that any further outpouring of feelings might disclose her burning desire to hurt him as much as he had hurt her.

  Instead, she turned back to the mirror and continued brushing her hair with long strokes, even though her hands trembled.

  ‘Don’t expect an apology from me,’ Granville said coldly, rising from the bed. ‘I do not apologise for what I take for my needs.’

  She paused from brushing her hair. ‘No, we don’t apologise for what we take,’ she said with a bitter smile creasing her full lips. ‘We are Whites and destined to rule all that we see. But remember well, dear brother, no one knows you as I do. And in knowing you, I know the ghosts you live with. For that, I would feel great fear if I were you, because one day I might use them against you.’

  ‘I doubt that you would do that,’ he scoffed. ‘You might think you can frighten me but when it is all said and done you are still a mere woman at the mercy of your emotions. Like all other women, your pleasures are simple and your desires predictable. You need a strong man to provide you with the wealth to satisfy your mercenary needs, children to give you an identity and the never-ending social engagements to show off the pretty clothes you wear. No, there is nothing you could do to me, dear sister, that I could ever perceive as a threat, despite all that you might know about me.’ He shook his head and flashed her a smug smile as he left her alone in the bedroom to reflect on his self-assuredness.

  Her first instinct was to hurl the hairbrush at his departing back. Instead she smiled grimly and returned to brushing her hair. She would not give him the satisfaction of an emotional display and she realised that her hands no longer trembled. Dear brother, if you only knew . . .

  An icy flurry of sleet lashed the stone cottage at the end of the narrow gum tree lane. The cottage had a commanding view of the sweep of valleys below. Although it was small in comparison to the more grandiose Macintosh house overlooking the harbour in Sydney, it was large enough to accommodate four people plus three staff. For the moment, the isolated cottage high up in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney was being lashed with a late winter
cold snap.

  Fiona Macintosh sat in the cosy kitchen with a blanket over her knees and stared wistfully at the neatly written copperplate invitation in her lap. She sighed regretfully, and placed the invitation beside her other correspondence on the kitchen table.

  ‘Lady Manning is having a ball at Walleroy and I shan’t be able to attend,’ she said to Molly, who sat beside her knitting a woollen swaddling rug.

  ‘There will be other balls, Fiona,’ Molly replied maternally as she expertly manoeuvred the big needles. ‘It won’t be long before you will be the prettiest girl at all the spring balls.’

  Fiona sighed again and put her hand to her swollen belly. The pregnancy had come as a shock. Oh, if only she had spoken to Penelope about ways to avoid such occurrences. But the baby was a fact of her life now and because of the pregnancy she had had a reason to initially decline Granville’s proposal of marriage.

  It had been Penelope who had finally convinced her that under no circumstances could the raising of the illegitimate child of a man wanted for murder be a practicable option. And Molly had promised her that her baby would go to a good Christian family. Although Fiona did not fully trust Penelope, she knew she could trust Molly completely. If she promised that her child would be given to good people then she was to be believed, and so she had relented to Granville’s proposal.

  Reconciled to her forthcoming marriage to her cousin, Fiona often thought about what life with him might be like. He was rather handsome and there was something deep and dark about him that fascinated her. It was as if he was Heathcliff from Miss Bronte’s novel that she had read in the garden, rugged against the biting winds that swept up from the valleys.

  She had chosen to read the novel with the mountains, valleys and mists as her companions because they gave greater pleasure to the atmosphere of the haunting and dark tale of love and passion.

  Fiona had often cried alone in the garden when she placed the leather-bound book in her lap and she remembered Michael’s strong arms around her. But she was also practical enough to know she would probably never see him again.

  She had read in the Sydney papers of his being wanted for questioning in regard to the murder of a man only days after their wonderful time together at Manly. Despite the newspaper reports, she knew Michael could not be a killer as they described him. He was far too gentle and loving to cold-bloodedly kill another human.

  Fiona had confided her feelings to Molly, who was a sympathetic listener.

  ‘’Tis a terrible thing, my darlin’ girl. But life must go on,’ she would always say, as she held the young woman to her breast, as she had when Fiona had been a child suffering nightmares after reading the terrifying novel Frankenstein. Fiona had found the book, which belonged to David, and she had avidly consumed the ideas of a creature made from the parts of dead men. She was only ten then, and reality and fantasy had been difficult to differentiate for an impressionable young girl. Molly had provided her ample bosom then for Fiona to lie against as protection from the nightmares. Molly was always there for her.

  Molly paused in her knitting as the wind reached a howling violence outside and a tree limb cracked in the night like a rifle shot. The foul weather brought back memories of her own childhood in Ireland before they had sent her as a young girl to the far-off convict colony of New South Wales.

  Raped repeatedly by the soldiers and sailors of the convict transport ship, she had become pregnant at fourteen and her own child had died in the workhouse at Parramatta before Molly was Fiona’s present age.

  Enid and Donald Macintosh had secured her release from the terrible place to work for them as a domestic servant under a government scheme to use the services of convicts. She had proved a reliable servant and she had been appointed nanny to all three of the Macintosh children. But it was Fiona she felt closest to.

  Fiona had been rejected by her natural mother from birth. Enid preferred to lavish her attention on Angus and David. It was as if she despised the fact that Fiona had been born a girl instead of a boy. And now Molly was going to hold the baby of the young woman whom she had once held squalling in her arms seventeen years earlier.

  She glanced across at the pretty face of her little girl and felt a loving maternal ache for her. She was so young and the pregnancy had taken her childish innocence from her forever. The ache of nostalgia for things past turned to a terrible guilt and she looked away lest she see the pain in her face. God forgive me for what I am going to do, she prayed silently. Fiona, me darlin’, if you only knew the pact I have made with your mother, you would kill me without hesitation.

  But the pact was sealed with Enid Macintosh and Molly knew what she most wanted. So strong was her desire for her final dream to become a reality that she was prepared to betray the one person who most loved and trusted her in the world.

  The wind rose even higher in its wailing cry and to Molly it was like the shriek of the banshee. She shuddered superstitiously. Had this been the answer from God to her prayer for forgiveness? Could there be forgiveness for what she was to do when Fiona’s baby was born? She well knew the reputation of the infamous baby farms of Sydney. Baby farms was a strange way to describe places that committed systematic infanticide on unwanted babies. And the unwanted fruit of the Duffy and Macintosh bloodlines was destined for such a place.

  The storm raged through the night but the morning came as a brilliant burst of sunshine in the mountains. Butterflies appeared as if conjured by the spirit of spring to fill the garden with their fluttering colour. Birds warbled their welcome to the blue sky and the tall and majestic gum trees stood as salutes to the sun.

  Fiona harried Molly to assist her to dress for a day in the garden, where she could luxuriate in the warmth of the wonderful spring day under the shade of a spreading eucalypt. Being with nature this day had a strong call for the young woman expecting her first child. It was as if the beauty of the mountains could be absorbed by her body to give strength to the unborn child.

  Molly fussed around her with blankets and slippers to keep her warm. She only agreed to leave Fiona alone so long as the blanket remained across her lap and she promised that she would call on her if she required anything.

  Before midday, Fiona complied with the promise to call for her nanny. It was not so much a call as a cry of distress, as the pains came in crippling waves.

  Molly came running and, with the help of the brawny coachman, she helped the pain-racked young woman inside the cottage. Urgent orders were snapped at the various members of the staff to fetch hot water, clean cloths and the doctor from the nearby settlement of Katoomba.

  But before the doctor had time to arrive, Molly held the red and slippery baby boy in her arms. The coachman paced up and down the stone verandah outside the cottage like an expectant father while the cook made cooing sounds of wonder between cleaning mother and child.

  Fiona lay exhausted against the sheets in a lather of sweat and she was hardly aware that her labour had lasted into the early evening while she had held Molly’s hand and cried out in her agony. It had been a difficult birth but the Irish nanny’s skills as a midwife had helped ease her pain.

  The doctor had arrived by buggy, examined his patient, and declared that she required nothing more than rest and time to recover. He’d dispensed a draught of laudanum and left with a fat envelope swelled by pound notes to buy his silence. Enid’s meticulous planning left nothing to chance and now it was up to Molly to dispose of the baby as they had agreed in their unholy pact.

  In the early hours of the following morning, Fiona awoke from her deep opiate-induced sleep to call for Molly. Molly did not come to her. But the milk in Fiona’s swollen breasts did come without having her baby to suckle.

  All she could remember as she lay in the darkness of her bedroom, of the life that had lived in her body, was that it was a wet, slippery and squirming thing that had bawled when exposed to the world for the first time. A boy, Molly had told her, before he was taken from the room and from her life.


  Fiona sobbed as she had never sobbed before. For now she knew what it meant to experience the greatest sorrow of a woman and somewhere in the depths of the night, in the dark corners of the room, she thought she heard echoes of a frightening whisper. A spirit whisper, swept off the harsh brigalow plains, and carried on the wind from a place where children lay dead in the arms of their mothers.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  For two days and two nights Fiona called for Molly. But still she did not come.

  The staff assigned to her confinement whispered outside the young woman’s bedroom and shook their heads sadly.

  On the third day her mother arrived and, after a short conference with the staff, Enid went to her daughter’s bedroom where Fiona lay against the pillows gaunt and hollow-eyed. She turned her face slowly to her mother, who sat in a chair, watching her with maternal concern clearly etched on her face.

  ‘I was informed by Missus Weekes that your labour was difficult,’ Enid said formally as though addressing a stranger rather than her daughter. ‘Although Doctor Champion informed me at Katoomba that you would recover fully with a few days’ rest.’

  Fiona stared at her mother. ‘Where is Molly?’ she asked in a hollow voice.

  ‘No one seems to know.’ Enid frowned. ‘The damned woman was supposed to report to me in Sydney but she has not. I fear she has broken her service without notice and cannot expect any reference if she comes begging to me at a future time. Disloyalty is an unforgivable sin.’

  ‘Where did she take my baby?’ Enid was aware that her daughter was fixing her with feverish eyes as if a revelation had come upon her in her recovery period. Without waiting for her mother to reply, she answered her own question. ‘She took my baby to one of those terrible baby farms I have heard Molly speak of. She has taken my baby to be murdered. Hasn’t she, Mother?’