Wild Lands

by Nicole Alexander

  ‘Is it for a wedding dress?’ Kate asked.

  Her mother folded the lengths of material, a line forming between her eyes. ‘No. It’s for a day-dress.’

  ‘Oh.’ She wanted to say ‘good’, that she didn’t want the Reverend for a father, instead Kate brushed the front of her own cotton dress. It was smeared with dirt from tree-climbing, blood from the cut on her head and patched with marks from the greasy washing-up water that she tossed outside after the dishes were done.

  ‘It’s for church. And for other occasions. The Reverend is a particular friend of Reverend Lang, who built the Scots Church of St Andrew’s in Sydney. I imagine there will be various gatherings we’ll have to attend.’

  ‘He’s not really a Reverend, you know.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Everyone knows it,’ Kate replied, secretly pleased at the deepening scowl forming on her mother’s brow. ‘They say he left England with nothing but a bible. That he read it and then set himself up to be a Reverend.’

  ‘Busybodies and mischief-makers, that’s who told you.’ Her mother placed the material on the plain wooden dresser. ‘A person who ministers to his congregation is a Reverend. Come now, Kate, be a good daughter and sit by my side.’

  Kate couldn’t understand why her mother would pretend that everything was as it had always been. Ignoring the outstretched hand, she moved to the opposite side of the room to gaze out the window. Dusk made the trees shadowy, the sky a pinkish red. One of the women who worked on the Reverend’s farm waddled out of the hut she shared with the other female convicts and tossed a bucket of dirty water into the dirt.

  ‘Well, I suppose you’re a little old for brushing your mother’s hair.’

  Kate decided that once her head was mended that she would climb out the window every night if she wanted, blanket in hand, and sleep among the comforting roots of the fig tree. She would have to wait until it grew dark of course, and everyone slept, but if it got cold she could always lie down in front of the kitchen fire. A floorboard creaked. Her mother’s hands were light but insistent on her shoulders.

  ‘One day, Kate, you will know what it is to be a woman in a man’s world. You will understand that sometimes it is necessary to succumb to less than we deserve simply in order to survive. Your father and I had a good life, a wonderful life together. It was not filled with material things, a superior house, tasteful furnishings nor fine gowns for me or a tutor for you, my darling, but it was filled with love. Love, that most wondrous of qualities. Only love truly nurtures.’

  Kate wriggled her shoulders. Lesley released her grip, but remained close.

  ‘Do you love the Reverend?’ Kate concentrated on the convicts as the men and women sat outside the two huts, spending their free time grinding their grain ration into flour, smoking pipes and talking. The Reverend locked the men and women inside every night. And although everyone knew it was to stop them from running away, he said it was for their safety. And there were fights between women, between men, between men and women, Kate had seen them. One woman had been belted unconscious for sleeping with another man.

  ‘No, but he provides … things. Things for me, for us.’

  One of the male convicts began to play a wooden pipe. The homemade instrument produced a whistling sound. Sitting on a tree stump he tapped his foot in time to the music and soon a woman began to sing about a long voyage and lost love.

  ‘Those men and women are being made to do much needed work for the colony, for the Reverend. But things may get better for some of them. One day they may be pardoned, like your father was, and grow successful through hard work and thriftiness. Their lives may change as ours have changed. From good to bad, bad to liveable. Governors come and go, new roads are built, children are born and men die. We are beyond controlling every part of our lives, which means that we too must change. Do you understand?’

  ‘No.’ Kate folded her arms across her chest.

  ‘The Reverend is a good man, Kate. And one mustn’t deny the consolation that the Lord’s word gives to the humblest among us. I have received great solace from the Almighty these past months. He has helped me come to terms with your father’s death.’

  ‘So you’ve found religion too, like the Reverend?’ Kate pursed her lips and spat the words out like Madge would.

  Her mother grasped her shoulder, turning Kate to face her. The action made her head throb terribly. ‘Listen to me. Not everything I do for us to survive in this world will be perfect and not everything that you do will be right either. Three days ago you chose between yourself and Mrs Lambeth. Mrs Lambeth knew that you had done her wrong and she has paid for your lie.’

  Kate kicked at the gappy boards underfoot. As she hadn’t been struck down three days ago, the Reverend and her mother could say what they liked about religion.

  ‘I’m sorry, Kate. I know things are difficult for you and that you’ve had to grow up too fast since your father died, but he’s been buried many months. It’s time to stop your wanderings. It’s time to behave for the good of both of us.’

  ‘I don’t like it here.’

  Her mother knelt at her feet and took her hands in hers. ‘We need a home, food, protection. The Reverend provides all this and more.’

  ‘You were just meant to be his housekeeper.’

  ‘He has agreed that you may sleep with me in this room. And I am to start a school in the building where we gather to worship God.’

  ‘I don’t like him.’

  Her mother lifted a finger to her lips. ‘Shush. I wasn’t sure of him either to begin with, but he has his ways, and I have mine. Together we have an agreement. One which benefits all of us. You see that, don’t you, Kate? For if there is another man you know of, a man of means who would take us in immediately, without hesitation, then certainly I would listen to your suggestion.’ She waited patiently for a response. ‘You see then, we must be happy with our lot.’

  Kate brushed away a tear. ‘If Father had not got sick …’

  ‘Come now. Let us pretend that everything is perfect. Your father wouldn’t want to see you sad.’ Her mother returned to sit on the bed and held out the hairbrush.

  Begrudgingly, Kate climbed up onto the bed and, sitting behind her mother, began to unpin her long hair.

  A few minutes later her mother gave a little cough. ‘Sometimes the Reverend might want to visit me at night.’

  Kate dropped the hairpins onto the bed. ‘What for?’

  ‘Oh, to talk, things like that. When he does I’ll let you know, and then you’ll have to go back to your old pallet for the night. But I know you won’t mind because the Reverend is being very kind letting you share this room with me.’ She began to hum.

  Kate brushed her mother’s hair with long, slow strokes and did her best to stop the tears from running down her cheeks. She wanted to tell her mother that she’d seen her and the Reverend together and that Madge had called her mother a whore, and Kate knew that was very bad but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, Kate thought of her father. She just knew he wouldn’t be happy either.

  ‘Everything will be fine, Kate. You’ll see. Things will get better. One hundred strokes,’ Lesley reminded her daughter. ‘Ouch, careful. You’ve grown careless.’

  Pressing her lips together, Kate untangled hand and hair and began to brush. The dark lengths soon grew soft and shiny beneath the bristles and as Kate worked she noticed her mother’s breathing begin to slow and her shoulders droop. Her father would be angry at her for pulling her mother’s hair. He would remind Kate that they were alone now, that they only had each other left in the world, as he had on his deathbed. ‘My two little women forced to fend for themselves.’

  Lesley reached out and stilled her daughter’s hand, squeezing it tightly. A single tear traced Kate’s cheek. Maybe everything would be all right. Maybe her mother was right.

  ‘I think it best that you sleep with Madge while you’re still healing. Besides, tonight I think I will want this room to mysel
f.’

  Kate’s grip tightened on the bone-handled brush.

  Chapter 3

  Ten years later

  1837 July – eight miles west of Sydney

  Kate looked up into the sheltering foliage of the fig tree and wished she were ten years old again. If she were ten she would change the way she had behaved, she would have been nicer to her mother. Kate would have forgiven her for staying with the Reverend Horsley, for living in sin, and she may have tried, just a little, to please the Reverend. She even would have excused Madge and the other convicts for their knowing looks and snide remarks. But she had done none of those things and in the not doing, she and her mother had slowly drifted apart.

  Last night, after they had said prayers for Lesley Carter, when the finality of her mother’s illness had become apparent, Kate had eaten for the very first time with the Reverend at his round table. She’d had little appetite but there was leftover burnt parrot pie, fresh fruit and a cordial made from tart lemons and too much sugar. Madge’s skill had never quite matched Lambeth’s, and Kate’s life had never changed the way her mother hinted it might.

  The Reverend had been guarded in conversation. He spoke of the cost of funerals, of the simplicity required of God’s creatures in both life and death, of the good fortune granted to Kate since her arrival in his household and how compassion was not infinite, charity not to be considered a right. For her part, Kate said very little. Her relationship with the Reverend had been one of feigned politeness. The man, her provider these many years, had every right to throw her out. The thought made Kate ill with worry. Her mother was dying. Very soon she would be alone in the world.

  As their conversation waned the Reverend turned his attention to the windowsill and the single leech that lay motionless in the bottom of a water-filled bottle, a piece of rag over the opening. There will be a frost in the morning, he’d stated, tapping the base of the phial. The leech didn’t stir. The bloodsucker was the household’s indicator for all matters pertaining to the weather. The day before the creature had moved continuously in its watery confines, only to stop immediately just before a southerly wind began to blow. If only God had made man with such intuition, the Reverend had remarked.

  Kate had excused herself from the table and returned to her bed, the pallet next to Madge’s. Last night she’d dreamt that she was the leech, bottled-up for all eternity, with the Reverend tapping at the glass trying to get in.

  The smudge of grey light changed slowly to a frosty pink. Kate blew on the tips of her fingers as the first warming rays of a wintery sun struck her face. Frost layered the ground, it latticed the grass with ice and spun a cobweb stretched across the woodpile into a line of pure white.

  A group of Aboriginals walked across the far edge of the wheat field. Fear seizing her, Kate quickly hid behind the tree. The line of men draped in animal hides against the chill moved purposefully. Kate often saw men, women and children, the original inhabitants of this land. All knew to be wary of them and the continuing reports of attacks on outlying farms made everyone fearful.

  Everyone except the Reverend. It was said that he’d sat down with the warriors that walked across his farm and treated with them. His neighbours laughed, calling such attempts a folly, but they’d never had a person attacked, and although their crops were plundered regularly, they never wiped the farm’s stocks out. The Reverend had kept peace with the Aboriginals by allowing them to come and go as they pleased, and by giving them grain on a monthly basis. When he saw them the man bowed, often sinking to his knees in prayer, although his pistol was always at the ready. Other larger farms had not been so fortunate in their inter actions. Shepherds were occasionally speared and livestock stolen.

  Out of habit Kate now watched the warriors until they merged with the green-brown tangle of bushland, finally disappearing. Only then did her sense of unease depart.

  One of the convicts appeared to collect wood for the fire. He was an old man, with perpetually watery eyes who’d been pardoned some years prior, but with nowhere to go he’d stayed on at the Reverend’s small holding in exchange for food and a roof over his head. A piece of old leather made a strap for the musket he carried and he hefted the rifle across bony shoulders. On seeing Kate he lifted a hand to his cap in acknowledgment, pausing as if he wanted to say something to her. He couldn’t. Barely a word of English passed the Welshman’s lips. The moment was broken by the crunch of icy grass.

  ‘He wanted to say he was sorry for your mother.’ Madge hugged a blanket around her shoulders, her breath appearing as a puff of whiteness in the air. ‘Didn’t you?’

  His convict woman, who’d helped in the kitchen, had died a few years earlier. Both Kate and her mother had tried their best to nurse her back to health. It had been a messy business. The woman had been ill until there was nothing left to sick up. Then the runs had begun.

  The convict nodded, shifted the wood from one arm to the other, and then left the two women alone.

  ‘The natives just came through.’

  Madge shivered. ‘But they’re gone now?’ She relaxed a little when Kate informed her they’d moved on. ‘How is she then?’ Madge had grown skinny and coarse of skin with age. ‘None of us thought she would last the night.’

  Kate thought of her own sleepless night as she looked through the row of stout orange and lemon trees to where children began to arrive and play near the little church-cum-schoolhouse. ‘Neither did I,’ she finally replied. The timber walls of the building had been well-sealed with mud, but it would be cold inside without the sun’s warmth.

  ‘Will you be moving then? Into the room, you know, after your mother –’

  ‘No. I would never,’ Kate replied quickly.

  ‘No need to get crotchety,’ Madge answered, equally blunt.

  ‘I hadn’t thought about it,’ Kate admitted, then frowned. ‘I hadn’t thought about what would happen next.’ She lifted a finger to her lips and nibbled on a fingernail.

  Madge grabbed her arm and studied the nail-bitten hand before freeing her. ‘Sure you have. No point pretending otherwise, Kate. I know you as well as the next person here, probably better than your own mother. It’s me that’s been snoring next to you these many years.’

  ‘Don’t I know it.’ A brief smile touched Kate’s lips.

  Madge laughed. ‘So take a bit of advice from this old maid then, Kate Carter. I know you’ve had it hard compared to your mother. Don’t give me one of your uppity stares, your mother got the best of the arrangement, everyone knows it and that’s fair. The woman kept you housed and fed these many years in the best way she could, but now it’s your turn.’ Madge had never been a considerate person, but she touched Kate’s arm briefly. ‘This is your opportunity. You have to look after yourself, do what’s best for you, that’s what your mother did and there are worse places than here. Think on it. There’s no need for hand-wringing and nailbiting.’

  ‘We’ve never got on, he and I. You know that, Madge.’

  ‘But you ate with him last night. It’s a beginning.’

  ‘Yes, and he told me that a person couldn’t expect charity.’

  The cook’s expression barely changed. ‘But who will run the school, his house?’

  ‘Maybe he’s found someone else already?’

  A screech broke their conversation. Madge pointed to the group of children. Three of the boys were arguing and a fight quickly followed. ‘You best settle them before the Reverend gives ’em all a belting,’ she suggested, as one of the boys was pushed to the ground. ‘As for me, I’ve got a bag of wheat as big as old Lambeth to grind, and a sheep’s tongue to boil and toast for the master’s midday feed.’ She sniffed, walking back through the wet grass towards the kitchen.

  Kate lifted her skirts and moved quickly towards her charges. The fight had ended with a punch and a bawling child. At her approach the children formed a half-circle around the fallen boy, who was now sitting upright in the wet grass, tentatively probing his face. They were a mixed l
ot. The convict children were bedraggled and bare-footed; while the sons and daughters of free settlers and emancipated convicts-made-good were neatly dressed with leather shoes.

  ‘Get inside, the lot of you,’ Kate chastised, ‘before the Reverend takes to all of you with the stick.’ A baker’s dozen of girls and boys ran towards the building as Kate dusted off the injured seven-year-old Thomas, pressing the underside of her skirt to his bleeding lip. ‘There, no harm done,’ she said gently, brushing his clothes free of grass and leaves. His short pants were soaked through from the wet ground. She turned to a young girl who was weeping beside them. ‘What are you crying for, Lizzy? Were you in the fight too?’

  The girl twisted her skirt between her hands. ‘I’m hungry.’

  Kate had tried in the past to entice the Reverend to give the children a piece of bread and water mid-morning but he’d countered her arguments with the cost of such an endeavour and the impossibility of getting coin from convict parents. ‘Well, then, the sooner we start our lessons, the sooner you will be able to go home and eat.’ Lizzy wiped her runny nose and opened her mouth to protest. ‘Go with Thomas now. I’ll be in directly.’

  The boy dawdled. He was bow-legged with a large boil capped with pus on his neck. ‘Don’t you want to know what we was fighting about, miss?’

  ‘No, Thomas, not this morning, I don’t.’