Dorothy Eden (4 page)

‘Miss Lichfield! Eugenia!’

That was Mrs Kelly’s voice calling up the stairs. Eugenia laid down her pen and went to the door.

‘You will allow me to be friendly and call you Eugenia, won’t you, love? The children are in bed and we’re about to sit down to supper. Are you ready? Edmund is waiting to meet you, and you have an impatient bridegroom here.’

The burbling voice faded away. Eugenia hastily smoothed her hair, looking in the little dressing-table mirror. The swift antipodean dusk had begun not ten minutes ago, but now it was almost dark. She could scarcely see herself in the mirror, enough only to confirm what she had just written to Sarah about her appearance.

At least it was a little cooler now, and some colour had come back to her cheeks. She had tried to look her best, putting on the muslin gown that Mrs Kelly had whisked away to iron with a flat-iron in the kitchen. She said she could not trust the maid to do it, she was only a child who had come straight from the Fleet prison. The important thing with a convict maid, Mrs Kelly had added, was to take the woman immediately on her arrival. If she were allowed to go and live in the female prisoners’ barracks she would become debauched and depraved in no time at all.

A light shone in the little front parlour. It was from there that the sound of voices came.

A sixth sense told Eugenia that she was being discussed. The voices were deliberately lowered. She heard only part of Mrs. Kelly’s remark. ‘… looks delicate…’ And Gilbert’s denial. Or it seemed to be a denial since it was made in a quick low murmur at some length. Then there was a burst of laughter, and Gilbert said in a normal voice, ‘This is a time-honoured custom in wine-growing countries. The wine laid down at the birth of a son is drunk at his wedding.’

A strange voice said, ‘That may be so, but this is Australia, and you haven’t proved yet that you can keep wine in a bottle for twenty or thirty years. The cork may blow out and hit the ceiling.’

‘I’ll keep it,’ said Gilbert. ‘And it will be as good a vintage as any in France or Portugal. In the meantime we’re going to drink one of the bottles I brought with me today. It’s a very young wine, I admit. Only bottled two years. But I’ll guarantee it will make a decent drink.’

‘That sour stuff,’ complained Bess. ‘The last you brought tasted like vinegar and no mistake.’

‘I agree. The grapes got too much rain at the wrong time. There wasn’t enough sugar in them. That’s a hazard I have to contend with.’

So they were not talking about her after all, but grapes, wine, vintages. She made her mouth lift at the corners, in a pleasant expression, and went into the room.

Gilbert sprang up to greet her. He introduced her to Edmund Kelly, a plain man with leathery-brown skin, whom she immediately liked. Gilbert said that all her baggage was now ashore, but the furniture stored in the hold would not be unloaded until the next day. He proposed having it loaded on to waggons and taken to Yarrabee, a distance of about thirty miles. They would follow it in a week or so, when she had become his wife.

He intended to arrange for a simple ceremony in the new church in Macquarie Street on Wednesday next, if that suited her convenience.

He took her hand to press it to his lips. All she could do was nod silently. She was thinking of the wine to be laid down on the birth of their first son. Her heart was beating uncomfortably. Things were too direct in this country.

Next Wednesday. It was too soon to marry a man who had become such a stranger.

‘No point in keeping him waiting,’ said Mr Kelly.

She flushed, knowing that one person at least had read her thoughts.

Gilbert took her arm.

‘Come, my love. Bess wants us to sit down to dinner.’

His voice was gentle. She believed that he might be feeling strange and ill-at-ease, too. She must think of that, and stop being so intense about her own sensations.

The table was lit by candles that quickly became uncomfortably hot in the small room. Bess explained that she had had to prepare roast beef because this was what Gilbert had asked for. His red wine must be drunk with meat. Now if he had simply had a mug of beer with his meal they could have had a cut off a cold joint and remained much cooler.

But Eugenia had to admit that the wine Gilbert so lovingly poured into the glass tumblers had a very good colour. It compared favourably with Uncle Henri’s. When she held it up to the light it had a beautiful rich glow. She saw Gilbert watching her, and was pleased that his eyes were tender. Though this may have been for the merits of his wine rather than for her action.

She sipped, and restrained a grimace. Little as she knew about wines, she could tell that this was too raw, too young.

‘It’s very pleasant, Gilbert,’ she said loyally.

Gilbert rolled it round his mouth, swallowed and shook his head disappointedly.

‘No. It’s not good enough. But it’s better than last year. Isn’t it, Edmund?’

‘That was vinegar. Yes, this is an improvement. But you won’t convert the rum-drinkers on it.’

‘This is made from the vines I brought from the Douro. I believe I’ll have better luck with my new ones. They looked in good shape, I’m glad to say. I’ll begin planting immediately after the next good rain.’ He raised his glass across the table to Eugenia. ‘I’m sure you will have brought me luck, my dear.’

‘The man’s got no conversation about anything but his vineyard,’ Bess said. ‘Tell Eugenia something about the colony. When are you going to present her to society?’

‘Society?’ Eugenia enquired.

‘Such as it is,’ said Mr Kelly with a touch of irony. ‘To be a socially presentable person here ‘you must be a successful lawyer or a rich land owner or an important civil servant, or the Governor himself. We have plenty of colonial magnates who think they own the country. No ticket of leave men need apply.’

‘I should think not,’ said Bess. ‘Imagine it!’

‘Ticket of leave?’ Eugenia asked.

‘Convicts who have been rewarded for good behaviour. Before their sentence expires, they may have the privilege of choosing their master. Or even of pursuing their own trade. Later they will be free men. And I swear you can’t tell the difference between them and me.’

‘Edmund,’ Bess chided.

Gilbert laughed, enjoying what should have been a joke. Catching Edmund’s eye, Eugenia realized that it was not one. But only she and he seemed aware of that.

‘I have several ticket of leave men on Yarrabee,’ Gilbert said. ‘Most of them are Irish rebels. I’ve still to be convinced that it’s a crime to fight for one’s country. Though I admit not every Englishman has sympathy for a wild Irishman.’

‘Begorra!’ said Edmund. ‘You don’t mean to tell me you have Irishmen tending your vines! Surely they’d think it was poison you were brewing.’

Gilbert roared with laughter.

‘At that they’re not beyond having a sup. I caught one fellow spitting it out. I very nearly ordered him a dozen lashes. Edmund, let me fill your glass. I’ve sent a dozen bottles of this vintage to Government House. Do you think Darling will enjoy it?’

‘He’ll commend you for it, but I doubt that it’ll convert him from his imported port.’

‘And are these men ever repatriated?’ Eugenia asked.

Bess looked at her, her plump face flushed in the candlelight. Gilbert said politely, ‘What men are you speaking of, my love?’

‘These Irishmen who are not guilty of a crime.’

She saw the quick frown that drew Gilbert’s brows together.

‘When they get their freedom, they may do as they please. This is not a subject that must trouble you, my love.’

‘If it is under my nose…’ Eugenia began, saw the frown deepen, and desisted.

Bess broke in. ‘My dear Miss Lichfield, you’ll be too busy with babies and household affairs. You’ll be like all of us, complaining about your latest maid who is lazy or dishonest or dirty or drunken. You have lived a protected life, I can see. You had better be good to her, Gilbert.’

‘Good to her!’ said Gilbert. ‘Why, she’s going to be the most pampered woman in the whole of Australia.’

T
HE STARS WERE LOW
in a perfectly black sky when Gilbert left the Kellys’ house and set off to walk back to his own lodgings. He had a room at the Castle Inn, an hotel near the Botanical Gardens, where he meant to make an enquiry about the safe arrival of his vine cuttings. He had said his goodnights early because Eugenia had looked tired and more than a little dazed.

But she had not disappointed him. The look of elegance and poise was more pronounced than he remembered it. She was not a beauty of the china blue eyes, and well-rounded bosom type. Some men would not have considered her beautiful at all. But Gilbert found the unevenness of her features fascinating and utterly charming. Every movement she made was graceful. He could have sat until midnight watching the thoughtful deliberate way she turned her head on her long neck. In spite of her weariness she had made a fastidious toilette. He had imported a rare creature, he thought.

That he scarcely knew her did not worry him. He had chosen her for her background, her upbringing, and her appearance. He had been overjoyed when consent had been given to his suit. Of course he had known the family was not overstuffed with money, a fact in his favour. He also knew that he was a personable young man, even though he had chosen to live in such a far-off colony, inhabited by convicts and snakes. He had relied on his powers of persuasion and on his intuition that Eugenia would have a sufficiently adventurous spirit.

He didn’t deny that he had had occasional misgivings during the three years that he had waited for her. Her letters, for instance, arriving with monotonous regularity on each sailing ship from Tilbury or Southampton had bored him. He had never practised the art of letter writing, and the fact that his affianced bride possessed it to such a devastating degree was slightly alarming.

All that information about life at Lichfield Court! The visiting aunts and bishops and local gentry. It was impossible to reply in the same vein. He could hardly report that the cook, a blowsy cockney, had stolen all the money out of his wallet while he was sleeping and had run off with one of his carpenters for a night in town, and that both of them were convicts on tickets of leave. Nor could he say that her replacement was an aboriginal woman, hideously ugly, and the mistress of his foreman. He had caught them together after vintage one hot night. They were both tipsy from raw wine. He had prodded them to their feet with the toe of his boot, and told them to be more discreet in future. He had never had a fancy for the dark-skinned lubras himself.

Of course that aspect of life was to be kept hidden from Eugenia. When he had engaged a suitable staff he intended that she should live the life of a lady, busying herself with her music, her painting, her sewing, in short all the occupations which young ladies of her station pursued. He planned to have house parties, such as was the custom in England, the company riding or driving from Sydney on Friday afternoon and staying over Sunday and Monday. It was important to invite the right people so that the name of his wines, Yarrabee Burgundy, Yarrabee Claret and Yarrabee Sauterne would become known and eventually famous, not only in Australia but in London and the English great houses.

He had taken some early bottles on his last visit to England. The opinion pronounced on it by discriminating men and professional wine tasters had been favourable on the whole. It was a plucky beginning, they had said. At present his product was as raw as the new colony, but it might have a future providing it could be transported such an overwhelmingly long distance. If it could not be, and this was likely, since travelling upset good wine, Mr Massingham would be well advised to turn his attention to converting his fellow-countrymen to the delights of a more civilized drink than rum or beer.

Gilbert strode along, preoccupied with his thoughts. His way lay through the infamous Rocks district where people lived in the small shacks put up by the first settlers, wattle and daub erections that had never been intended to stand for more than a few years. The walls caved in, the roofs caught fire from faulty chimneys, the tiny windows let in little light let alone fresh air.

It was a reeking sordid area occupied by prostitutes, female convicts who had been granted their freedom but whose will and ambition had been broken by the long misery of their imprisonment, and by a few honest people whom fate or laziness or lack of ability kept perpetually poor.

An occasional oil lamp cast a circle of light for a circumference of a few yards, making the darkness between these oases all the more impenetrable.

Not that such darkness was unwelcome to the pick-pocket or the drunkard lurching home in happy anonymity. It was far from welcome to the servant girl running a last errand for a demanding mistress, or to anyone going about innocent business. It was a curious fact of human nature, Gilbert reflected, that even in a city as new as this one was, vice could be so well established. He had no intention of allowing Eugenia to observe this aspect of antipodean life, any more than he intended her to witness the necessary punishment of his more incorrigible servants. The innocent gaze of her grey-blue eyes—what did they resemble? English bluebells or the smoky blue of the unfolding passion flower?

A passion flower? Eugenia?

His lips quirked doubtfully. His musing was abruptly shattered by a disturbance. Running footsteps came behind him, there was the sound of distressed panting breathing. He stopped, and a shape, petticoats flying, fled past him. He saw the woman briefly beneath the lamp on the corner, fair hair tumbling down and skirts held up. Then she disappeared round the corner, and presently two men, walking with long strides, passed him.

They turned the same corner. If they were pursuing the woman they were not in any great haste. They probably knew where she lived. She must be a prostitute or a ticket of leave woman if she had lodgings in this area, Gilbert reflected. It was none of his business that she had seemed scared out of her wits. He had no wish to get involved in an unsavoury incident virtually on his wedding eve.