Dorothy Eden (7 page)

Gilbert did not respond to her teasing manner, but said seriously, ‘Everyone likes you. You are doing very well.’

‘I am not as pretty as they expected.’ She had noticed the other women looking at her assessingly.

‘You have a good colour tonight. It becomes you.’ He smiled, patted her hand, led her across the room to speak to someone else.

A good colour, she thought. Like one of his wines. If he could, he would hold her up to the light and study her for possible flaws. But he was pleased with her tonight. She remembered again that look in his eye at dinner… She was sorry the evening was over so quickly.

‘Miss Lichfield, do tell us what you are to wear at your wedding. Or is it a deep secret?’

In the privacy of the bedroom upstairs, the ladies gathered round her again. With the journey home and every day life to face, they forgot their party manners and began to speak more plainly. Eugenia found herself abruptly back in a strange country where servants could not be trusted, where children got unaccountable illnesses that carried them off with savage suddenness, where decent clothes, water, even sometimes food, was scarce. Where an escaped convict or a party of roaming blacks with spears could terrorize lonely country farms, where a bushfire might rage over thousands of acres in a day or the terrible summer heat turn the small cottages into ovens.

Above all, there was the violence of the criminal classes. That case last night, for instance. Everyone was talking about it. The woman whose husband had been shot protested innocence, but of course no one believed her. She was obviously a street woman, otherwise why had she lured the two men on? The truth was that she hadn’t expected her husband, elderly and sick, to put up any opposition. Probably she had hoped to creep into the house with her followers, without waking him. Who knew how often she had done such a thing before?

When Eugenia was engaging servants she must be especially careful. Mind you, it was difficult to get a woman who hadn’t a criminal record, but some were anxious to redeem themselves, and could be kept honest, if constantly watched. The younger the girl, the better. Once in her twenties the creature had become hardened.

There was nothing for it but to tell them. They would hear soon enough. She had known all the time that she had had no real intention of opposing Gilbert on this first issue between them, neither had she the slightest intention of making excuses for him, or being put in the position of having to defend him. She said calmly,

‘Mr Massingham and I have already engaged the two servants we will take with us. One is the young woman who accompanied my chaperone and myself on the voyage, and the other is the very woman you are talking about, Mrs Jarvis. Isn’t that a coincidence!’

She laughed merrily, looking at the circle of bonneted and shawled ladies.

Very ordinary faces, she thought. Bess Kelly’s was endearing, but too fat and not well-bred. Doctor Noakes’ wife, Marion, had all the marks of breeding, but hers was a pale sour face, discontent in her sharp eyes and the downward turn of her lips. The rest were flushed from the gaiety of the evening. Some were pleasant, some plain. All had one look in common, astonishment.

‘You must have heard the part Mr Massingham played in the affair,’ she went on serenely. ‘He almost witnessed the crime.’

A flash in Marion Noakes’ eye and a quick lowering of her eyelids gave Eugenia the smallest pause. Mrs Noakes suspected Gilbert of being more than a passer-by! Had he that kind of reputation? And did they know already that Mrs Jarvis was expecting a child? She lifted her chin a little higher.

‘Mr Massingham and I were both impressed by Mrs Jarvis’s honesty and her truly unfortunate circumstances.’ (But she hadn’t set eyes on the woman, as no doubt her audience very well knew.) ‘I expect this kind of thing happens all too often out here,’ she rattled on.

‘Not precisely that kind of thing,’ Mrs Noakes said repressively, and kind Bess Kelly came quickly to Eugenia’s aid.

‘I think it’s a very fine and Christian thing to do. Eugenia is setting an example to us already.’

‘Christian perhaps, but let us hope wise,’ someone murmured.

‘Miss Lichfield is very new here. We all make mistakes when we first arrive,’ said Mrs Wentworth, surely meaning to be tactful.

‘But husbands make edicts that wives must follow.’ Marion Noakes had the last acid word as she briskly gathered up her wraps and prepared to depart.

Bess Kelly tucked her arm in Eugenia’s, hanging back as the other ladies made their way downstairs. ‘Did you really like Molly Jarvis?’ she whispered.

‘How could I admit I haven’t seen her yet?’ Eugenia whispered back in mortification, and Bess began to giggle.

‘Oh, that’s too amusing. And you were behaving like a duchess. All the same…’

‘All the same, what?’

Bess seemed to regret what she had been about to say. She said instead, ‘I did admire the way you stood up to them. You must know that everyone has speculated for months what Gilbert Massingham’s bride would be like.’ She giggled again. ‘Now they know.’

‘What do they know?’

‘Why, that you’re a lady,’ said Bess comfortably.

The nagging doubt that perhaps a lady was not truly what Gilbert wanted, if he were to be honest about it, was reasonably allayed by Gilbert’s affection on the drive home.

He told her that she had done very well and he was proud of her. She had made all the other women look like colonials.

‘Wentworth was bowled over by you. So were the others. You’re very ornamental, my dear. And you sing charmingly. What did you think of your first colonial dinner party?’

‘It was very pleasant. I was particularly interested in Mr Wentworth’s explorations. Is there really so much still to be discovered?’

‘There is, indeed. But we’ll be content with Yarrabee and our vineyards. Our sons can do the exploring. I make a guess that it will take the rest of the century to entirely discover Australia.’

Bumping over the rough road, Eugenia was thrown from her seat in the buggy against Gilbert. He instantly put his arm round her.

Our eldest son must learn viticulture, but the next can be an explorer, if he wishes. Will that please you?’

‘It seems that husbands make all the decisions,’ Eugenia murmured into the silk of his cravat. ‘Do you mean, in our marriage, ever to ask my opinion?’

‘Oh ho, I believe you are thinking of Mrs Jarvis again.’

‘The subject came up this evening while we were upstairs. I informed the ladies of our decision.’

Gilbert gave a little snort of laughter, a pleased sound. Then he let her waist go to take the reins in both hands and whip up the horse, so that they were flying down the bumpy road.

‘Wentworth wanted to drink his French wines this evening, but I persuaded him to try Yarrabee White Burgundy with the fish. I don’t think it was from mere politeness that everyone pronounced on it favourably, do you? I noticed that Phil Noakes had his glass refilled. After vintage this year we’ll give a party. So don’t wear out all your pretty London gowns. And keep up your singing practice.’

The wind, no longer bearing the savage heat of midday, was pleasant and refreshing. It carried a faint smell of smoke and gum leaves and dried grass. The road that led back to the centre of the already sprawling town wound round the bay, giving glimpses of moon-washed sea. Far out the riding-light of the
Caroline
swayed gently, a friendly star. The stars in the velvety darkness of the sky seemed not too unfamiliar. The horse clip-clopped briskly along, and Gilbert’s arm came back round her waist.

Tomorrow she would continue her letter to Sarah, saying that she already had discovered that marriage necessitated an outward show of unity even though privately one might be in disagreement. But to please her dear Gilbert with loyalty would make her own sacrifice worth while. She would try to abide by that always.

But would she? Already she was realizing the impossibility of such a resolution, as her head came up.

‘Gilbert.’

‘Yes, my love.’

‘Can you swear to me that the child Mrs Jarvis is expecting is not—’ her tongue stumbled as she realized the enormity of her words, ‘—is not yours?’

There was a long moment of silence. She peered at Gilbert nervously. Was he furious with her? Was he wondering how to admit his guilt?

He was not angry. He was amused. If the shout of laughter he suddenly gave was amusement.

‘What have those confounded gossiping women been saying to you? I declare women should never be allowed to retire upstairs together. There must be more time spent talking scandal in bedrooms than there ever was in sleeping.’

‘Oh, no, Gilbert, nothing like that was said.’

‘Only by innuendo? Well, perhaps I am a fair target. I have led a free enough bachelor life. But I assure you that I had never set eyes on Mrs Jarvis until last night. Do you believe me?’

She did, of course. She was quite certain he would not lie to her about so important a matter.

But he still did not say that he would find a more suitable servant. In his eyes, Mrs Jarvis obviously was a suitable servant. If he had only met her so recently as last night, she had clearly made a very strong impression on him.

Eugenia began to be curious to meet the woman herself.

T
HE PAST WAS THE
past. Molly had told herself a thousand times to accept it and forget it. Even what had happened yesterday was now in the past. The grave dug in the dusty earth and the poor rough box that contained Harry Jarvis was only a memory. She doubted if she would ever visit it. The crackling gum leaves would lie on it, and the wind would stir the mounded dust until it was flattened and all trace of the grave gone. Not that she hadn’t had an affection for Harry. She would remember him every time she looked at his child. She was grateful to him for having given her a refuge, poor as it had been, and she was still bitterly angry about his unnecessary death. He had only just begun to be happy, poor wretch. He had called Molly his dear wife and his bonny girl. His terrible experiences had left him unbrutalized. There were permanent scars from irons round his thin wrists and ankles, but he had not forgotten how to have tenderness.

And now he lay in the bone-dry earth, and she, feeling slightly queasy from her pregnancy—or was it nervousness?—sat in Mrs Kelly’s little parlour opposite the young woman who was to be her mistress.

She had thought she had long got past feeling nervous about any situation. In ten years of humiliation and misery she had never failed to hold her head up. Her mother had taught her that, from childhood. She was the eldest of a large family. That had lived in a picturesque but damp and insanitary cottage in Buckinghamshire, her father working as a farm labourer. His wages were a pittance, but there had always been eggs and milk from the farm, and fresh vegetables grown in their little plot of land, and plenty of home-baked bread.

Molly’s mother, who had been a housemaid in the squire’s house before her marriage, had, if anything, been over-ambitious for her children. In the manor, she had had a glimpse of a fine style of living, and if her young ones could not hope to achieve that, they could, at least, better their lot. So they were all taught to read and write, to have pride in their persons, to be honest and obedient, but not servile. Molly went to her first position as a lively rosy-cheeked country girl, with what she thought was the whole world before her.

Her world had been before her, certainly. Fifteen thousand miles of it, across endless seas, in squalid misery. She had heard, years later, that her mother had died soon after hearing of her daughter’s sentence of transportation. She had cried in desperate sorrow, but she still refused to be entirely cynical or entirely crushed. How could she allow herself to be, with Mam in heaven watching and telling her to mind her manners, and keep her pride. There was nothing she didn’t know about men, beginning with the master in London, and continuing with that terrible four-month-long sea journey. After the first attempted rape in the night, in a foetid corner of the hold, when she had fought like an animal and finally overcome the skinny odorous creature, who had eventually wept at her feet, she had learned, in a strange way, to accept even that. These wretched men were as miserable as herself. As long as she had sufficient strength she wouldn’t be taken in that way, but neither would she hate too much. She had seen the women who hated and who grew into sharp tongued evil-eyed viragos.

She became bitterly hated herself for being different. She was called vain, stuck-up, ambitious. She was looking to catch the eye of one of the officers, that was it. Why did she think she was so much better than the rest of them?

At Botany Bay, when at last they arrived, she was in further trouble for resisting the advances of one of those officers. Dressed in her gown of harsh Parramatta cloth, issued only to convicts (for what poorest free person would wear it?), she made an attempt to be neat and modest and inconspicuous. The difficulties of her position, it seemed, were insuperable. Her ticket-of-leave was postponed for three years because of the trouble with that persistent lieutenant. She lost the position she had in a house with a decent but narrow-minded mistress, and almost starved rather than go on the streets as so many of her fellow convicts did. Inevitably, the day came when she encountered a man too strong to fight. She remembered that there had been a thorn bush on the ground where she was flung. Afterwards she hadn’t been able to tell which had hurt the most, the thorns, or that brutal animal attack on her. So this was the act of love, she had thought incredulously.

And at the same time a cool part of her mind, that had somehow contrived to let this storm pass over it, remembered the peacefulness of her childhood home, and the quiet devotion with which her parents had looked at each other.

So love could not always be bad. There must be two kinds, this nightmare of pain and humiliation from her unknown assailant (who had swaggered off, leaving her to try to arrange her torn clothing), and the other kind, the gentle familiar loving of her parents that put a new baby in the cradle each year.