‘I shall need the evening gown by next Wednesday,’ Catherine warned.
The dinner party was not until Friday but she would need two days to get used to wearing it. You needed almost as much time to get used to a new gown as a new house, she thought. Not that she’d had experience of either.
‘Of course, ma’am,’ said Miss Atkins. ‘I shall see to it.’
She was more deferential than on the previous visit and Catherine saw that her sharp words had had the desired effect. Stand up for yourself and the world takes notice, she thought. Although it had landed her in strife aplenty back in Somerset.
Mrs Hargreaves was summoned to give last-minute instructions in the duties and behaviour of a hostess. The dress was delivered and tried on. To begin with Catherine found the enormous skirt hard to handle but she soon got the hang of it. Even so, the dress seemed to her to border on the indecent; décolleté was a fancy word for going half naked.
‘How will it stay up?’ she asked Miss Atkins.
‘The bust will support it,’ Miss Atkins said.
‘It had better,’ Catherine said. ‘I’ll look a right fool if it falls down in the middle of dinner.’
Miss Atkins gave an invisible smile. ‘Very unlikely, ma’am.’
‘You won’t be the one making a show of yourself, will you?’
Later Catherine tried it out, jumping up and down and wiggling from side to side, but Miss Atkins had been right. Everything stayed where it should.
‘Although there’s still a lot to see,’ Catherine said, casting a dubious eye on her reflection in the mirror.
The truth was she was scared rigid. Mrs Amos seemed to have got over her earlier resentment of Catherine’s changed status and when Catherine confided in her the cook told her not to distress herself.
‘Get the men to talk about themselves, you’ll be fine.’
‘And the ladies?’
They agreed the ladies might present the greater challenge.
‘Say as little as possible and smile a lot,’ Mrs Amos said.
Catherine hoped she was right. ‘But what about this Gladys? Who’s going to teach her her duties?’
‘You leave Gladys to me. You got better things to do with your time now. You’re moving up, girl. Make the best of your chances while you can, that’s my advice to you.’
Dr Morgan wanted to see her wearing the dress but she wouldn’t let him. ‘I’ll show you before the guests arrive,’ she said. ‘Who is coming anyway?’
There would be three married couples, he told her. Old acquaintances. Plus two younger men, both unattached.
‘One has a large estate south of the city. Calls it Jackson’s Landing. Mungo Jackson is his name. They say he has the best beef cattle in the colony. Breeds horses, too, I believe. Rides cross-country like a madman, people tell me. Some say he’s in league with the devil, others that he is the devil. I thought he might be just the man to bring a bit of life to what I fear might otherwise prove a boringly staid evening.’
Mungo Jackson certainly sounded interesting. Not that it would make any difference what he was like. You may be dressed like the top tart in the palace, Catherine told herself, but you’re still a convict. Don’t you forget it.
‘And the other man?’
‘Recent arrival. I know nothing about him excerpt that I hear he was a big man in your part of the world. I understand he has already been to the Governor’s House but I thought it would be a courtesy if we lesser folk also welcomed him to the colony.’
‘If he was big at home what’s he doing out here?’
‘You’ll have to ask him,’ Dr Morgan said.
TWENTY-SIX
Aberystwyth was a wonderland of lights.
Before his wife’s illness Dr Morgan had been a convivial man, with dinner parties a regular feature of his life. Having decided to resume his social activities, he was determined to do so in style. The driveway was illuminated by storm lanterns that swayed in the breeze and cast shadows across the foliage of the gums. Inside the house every candlestick had been put to use so that each window shone with their welcoming radiance.
Dressed in her smart new gown Catherine had shown off for the doctor’s benefit, pirouetting in front of him and luxuriating in the praise that he heaped upon her.
‘Magnificent! You really look the part, isn’t it?’
Of course the real test was still to come; looking the part and carrying it off successfully were entirely different things but for the moment at least Dr Morgan was clearly delighted with this lady whom his endeavours had created from nothing, whatever form their relationship might later take.
It was a warm night and after the doctor had gone to get ready for his guests Catherine stepped on to the veranda and stared at the lights lining the drive. Many would say how lucky she was to have risen to her present position yet in her heart she knew that she had only exchanged one prison for another. A comfortable one, to be sure, as far from the Cascades as the moon was from the earth, but she was Dr Morgan’s possession as surely as she was the property of the queen. Displease him and he could send her back tomorrow: that, and not the silk gown and groomed hair, was the true reality.
The lights had a charm of their own yet to Catherine they meant little. Looking out at the moon-silvered river she liked to think that somewhere out there was a place where it might be possible to be truly herself, neither fisher girl nor convict nor make-believe lady in her proud silk dress, but Cat Haggard, answerable to no one but God and the spirits of the universe. Reading had not quenched that longing but rather exacerbated it. It was a lack that made the fine house and gowns no more than a façade to conceal her emptiness.
The first guests arrived. She watched their carriage coming up the drive and went indoors to act out the part that fate and Dr Morgan had decreed she should play.
She stood at the doctor’s side to welcome the Hon Mr Walter Arbuckle, Secretary for Something Important in the government, and his wife. They were both generously bellied, their expressions avid with curiosity. It was the talk of the colony that Dr Morgan had lost his wits as well as his wife and grown besotted with a young harlot from the hulks who now hoped to preen herself in the company of her betters. They were looking forward to a diverting evening in the company of a woman who no doubt would drop faux pas like bricks, prove incapable of speaking the Queen’s English and lack even the most basic notion of how to conduct herself in respectable company.
They walked up the steps and through the open doorway into the house. And stopped. Confronting them was not the slut of their imagination, black-toothed and reeking of gin, but a young woman immaculately groomed and wearing an evening gown of impeccable taste and in what Mrs Arbuckle was well enough informed to know was the latest London fashion.
Catherine came forward, gloved hand outstretched. ‘Welcome to Aberystwyth. It is a great pleasure to meet you.’
Even the voice was wrong. Or rather right. The hint of a West Country accent, perhaps, but Lady Doherty’s accent was much more pronounced and she was married to a peer of the realm.
Mrs Arbuckle could only think they had been misinformed. For here was certainly no harlot from the hulks but a young woman who, whatever her background, knew how to behave like a lady and an exceptionally good-looking one at that. Her husband clearly thought so too, but fortunately other guests were arriving and she was able to move him on with no more than an impatient look.
Charles and Ruth Talbot arrived in a tempest of laughter and slapped backs. Gareth Morgan had informed Catherine that Charles, a man in his late thirties, was a doctor like himself but stationed at the military barracks on the other side of town. He was a powerful, sprawly bear who seemed to take up more than his fair share of whatever space was available. It was at once apparent that he had been visiting the brandy bottle before his arrival and the laughter had been occasioned by his unsuccessful attempts to climb the veranda steps on his hands. Now he was cursing and laughing and trying to extract splinters from his right
hand where it had slipped on one of the wooden steps.
‘Damn it all!’ he said, trying to suck blood from his lacerated palm. ‘Damn it all!’
Gareth Morgan carried brandy to the wounded hero.
‘A case of physician heal thyself,’ he said.
Charles took the proffered glass and quaffed half its contents in one gulp. ‘I warn you, Morgan, I shall be reporting those steps as a danger to life and limb. Have ’em cut up for firewood before you can blink.’
Catherine didn’t know what to think. The Arbuckles had so obviously been hoping for the worst that it had been almost a pleasure to put them out of countenance but horseplay was not something she associated with the upper classes and she was unsure how to handle it. For a moment she hesitated then came forward, smiling pleasantly at both Charles and his wife. She took his injured hand and examined it, much to his obvious embarrassment.
‘Pray, ma’am, do not inconvenience yourself. It is a trifle, I assure you. It will soon heal.’
‘There is dirt in the cut,’ she said. ‘You see? Dirt there and there. And a large splinter, I believe. You must remove it or it will fester.’ She had responded instinctively to Charles’s trifling injury; now instinct made her turn to Charles’s wife. ‘Physician heal thyself, I heard Dr Morgan say just now. But I am sure you will agree, Mrs Talbot, that when it comes to taking care of themselves doctors are the worst of men. I am Catherine Haggard,’ she said, ‘and it is a great pleasure to meet you.’
She walked away to rejoin the doctor who was in the process of welcoming his next guest. She was still smiling as she turned to greet the newcomer. And stopped as though she had walked into an invisible wall.
From a great distance she heard Gareth say: ‘This is Mr Mungo Jackson, the gentleman I mentioned to you.’
‘I remember,’ she said.
Rides cross-country like a madman, people tell me. Some say he’s in league with the devil, others that he is the devil.
Mungo Jackson was tall and black-haired with pale olive skin. He was clean-shaven, which made a change from the beards worn by most men. His eyes, as dark as night, were fixed on hers. They did not move or change in any way yet somehow they consumed her. She thought it would be a simple thing to vanish into those eyes and their hints not of the devil but of laughter and the joy of living and a sense of something else that bridged the gap between them and made them one.
She took refuge in the formalities.
How do you do? Welcome to Aberystwyth. Yes, the days have been unusually warm for the time of year, have they not?
With heart thundering, body sweat-slick beneath the silk gown.
A dozen words and a passing smile could affect her like this? It could not be. It was. The earth had moved and the sensation scared her. If the earth was off-balance where was it safe to set her feet? Her life had only recently attained a degree of equilibrium. If she fell, where would she land? She smiled, lips stiff, thinking how foolish she was, and took Dr Morgan’s arm the better to anchor her against the unexpected wind.
Mungo Jackson moved away and began to talk to Mrs Arbuckle. Catherine was most scrupulous in denying her eyes their wish to watch him. Instead, still holding the doctor’s arm, she turned to welcome the final group of guests, four in number, who had arrived not together but at the same time.
Sixty-year-old Helmut Switzer was rich but quiet about it. His English wife, eighteen years younger than he, had lost caste by marrying a German, even a rich one, but was still an Endicott, a family with links to the Howards, and it showed. Mrs Berenice Switzer, fierce bust and fiercer manner, made sure it showed. She had been heard to say she would not have deferred to Queen Victoria, three years younger than herself and with German connections of her own.
Unlike Mr and Mrs Arbuckle, she had no interest in Dr Morgan’s mistress, and would certainly not have accepted his dinner invitation had she not had an ulterior motive in the form of her niece Alicia, who for reasons attributed to her health was paying an extended visit to the colony. Like her aunt, nineteen-year-old Alicia had a ferocious belief in her own importance as well as an insatiable appetite for male approval that had, alas, led her into the arms of an impecunious guards officer who had not only seduced her but boasted about it afterwards. Hence her present banishment and an urgent request from her mother that Mrs Switzer find Alicia a husband as expeditiously as possible. Berenice Switzer did not want her foolish niece hanging about her neck a moment longer than necessary and had agreed with her husband that they would accept tonight’s invitation after hearing that one of the guests would be none other than Mr Mungo Jackson, younger son of the Earl of Merton and a charismatic bachelor with a substantial estate. It was true he had a mixed reputation – charming, yes, but with a ferocious appetite for life and love that was reputed to have left many lovelorn ladies weeping in his wake – and in other circumstances Mrs Switzer would not have considered him, but marriage to Mungo Jackson was better than no marriage at all and Alicia was hardly in a position to complain. If the marriage later ran into heavy seas that would not be her aunt’s concern. Therefore the normally formidable Mrs Switzer was graciousness itself both to her host and the young woman at his side.
The last guest had arrived coincidentally at the same time as the Switzers. A man with a dissipated face and cruel mouth, he appeared to be in his early thirties but was already running to flesh. He too had a reputation: a man of good family who had fallen on bad times and had come to the colony in the hope of restoring his fortune.
Now he bowed over Catherine’s hand. ‘Your servant, ma’am.’
She found herself staring with disbelief into the drink-blurred but still unmistakeable features of Arthur Dunstable. The blood rushed to her face and then retreated, leaving her body a-tremble. She was so shocked she almost dropped his hand but somehow regained control of herself. She could not trust herself to speak but smiled stiff-lipped. He had given her a sharp look when Dr Morgan had mentioned her name and her heart had jumped but there had been no hint of recognition in his eyes. He had clearly not identified his elegantly dressed hostess as the scruffy country girl who had maimed him nine years before. The moment passed but Dr Morgan had felt her shaking and gave her a questioning look.
She shook her head. ‘Later,’ she said.
She was desolated. The idea of the party had scared her but excited her too. If she could gain the approval of these guests it would be a giant step towards being accepted by society as a whole, something she had set her heart on obtaining; now all was ashes. So far she thought Arthur Dunstable had not recognised her but people would talk and then he would remember. He would spread the word and in no time people would know all about the convict woman who had stolen a gold watch and chain and been sentenced to death for it. She would be marked not only as a thief but dangerous and any hope of acceptance by society would be gone. There would be pressure on Dr Morgan to get rid of her; how could she know how he would respond to that? Neither book learning nor fine manners would help her then. She would be numbered, inevitably and forever, among the fallen.
And yet…
They took their places about the dining table, decorated for the evening with flowers and candles. She looked at the faces of her guests – yes, her guests, for had not the doctor asked her to be his hostess? She saw Mungo Jackson talking with Mrs Switzer’s niece, whose name she had forgotten. He looked up and again she felt the shock as their eyes met, as though for an instant no one else existed. It seemed he looked at her for a full second longer than decorum required before returning his attention to the pallid-skinned niece.
Mr Arbuckle, sitting at her right hand, said something to her and she replied mechanically, not having heard what he had said.
Her heart was pounding yet Mr Jackson’s glance had given her strength. Darkness pressed against the windows yet here was light and laughter, good food and wine. She told herself she was not a criminal, whatever the law might say. She had been falsely convicted on the basis of lying evide
nce given by the vile man swilling wine halfway down the table, his voice over loud for the company. She was not the culprit but the victim. And would deserve to be, she told herself defiantly, if she gave up because of an unworthy face from the past. No, she had done nothing to be ashamed of. She would accept the challenge of Arthur Dunstable’s reappearance. She would look back on the party not as a catastrophe but a great success, because she would make it so.
She turned to smile at Mr Arbuckle. ‘I am sure you are right.’
The meal passed. Catherine saw that Mungo Jackson was observing the other guests but contributing little to the conversation. Arthur Dunstable and Charles Talbot were drinking more than the rest but with little apparent effect on either. The food appeared on time and so far as Catherine could tell was adequate for guests accustomed to the colony’s best: a fish with a name she did not know, two capons simply dressed, a joint of beef and another of mutton roasted with turnips and field garlic.
‘Before long I believe Tasmania will be exporting vegetables to the other colonies,’ Mr Arbuckle said. ‘And livestock too, I should not wonder.’
‘I am sure you are right,’ Catherine said.
Dessert was a dish of fresh figs and an apple pie the size of a cartwheel, served with a pitcher of cream.
‘There has been a great deal of success in establishing fruit orchards along the Huon River,’ Mr Arbuckle said.
‘I am sure you are right,’ Catherine said.
She had taken one glass of wine to give her courage, a second because she had liked the taste of the first and a third because she felt like it. However, she was careful to have no more and when the time came for the ladies to withdraw – a manoeuvre that would not have occurred to her had Mrs Hargreaves not schooled her in the manners of polite society – she negotiated the passage to the drawing room without mishap.
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