Not the Same Sky (23 page)

‘I make hats,’ she said.

‘Oh.’

‘And I have children too. From my first husband as well.’

Charles tried to do subtractions but gave up.

‘I don’t say how many from each. They are children. People should mind children,’ she said.

Charles felt uncomfortable.

‘Oh no, it was too late for us,’ Anne said, reading his mind, ‘You did your best to get us here.’

And, now that he had been given it, Charles wondered if he had been in need of some pardon or at least the sound of it.

‘I don’t talk about the past,’ Anne said.

She pleated her dress over her knee and patted it down.

‘Other people are welcome to do that, but not me. I wouldn’t know what to say about it.’

She patted her dress some more.

‘My husband is going to take me to the races some day. He says maybe even to Melbourne, because my hats have been seen there. It’s not necessary to go, it’s better that my hats have been there. But I might go. I might go.’

Charles swallowed. He could not seem to find anything to say. Anne Sherry had been a quiet girl he thought he remembered.

‘I am very glad,’ he said, ‘about your hats—and your children of course,’ he added.

‘Would you like one?’ Anne asked, ‘A hat for your wife?’ as if she had suddenly thought of a good way to end this conversation. ‘Yes, I’ll get a hat for your wife.’

‘Thank you,’ Charles said. ‘My wife came from Ennis, in Ireland.’

‘Really?’ Anne said and paused. ‘But that’s the past too.’

She moved to the corner of the room and took a hat from what he could now see was a collection of feathered hats on a homemade tree. Charles stood up.

‘This is so kind of you,’ he said.

Anne bustled about, got paper, wrapped the hat. They moved to the door. She waited until Charles was out in the light before she said, ‘About the letter … I couldn’t write it.’ She looked past him to the tree outside. ‘I did not know for sure that my mother was alive, the priest here helped me find her. She could have been dead. Now Julia, if you knew where Julia was, she would understand. But there would be too much explaining to do for Honora. I couldn’t find a start to tell her. And without a start, well you never get anywhere. It’s a pity. I hope Honora got on all right. I hope she was lucky.’

Charles wished he had news of Honora to relate.

‘The people who took her seemed kind,’ he said.

‘Well, that would help,’ Anne replied. ‘As a beginning, that would help, the beginning can be frightening.’

‘Yes,’ Charles said, and coughed a little.

‘There were others who went there too, a lot of us?’

‘Yes,’ Charles said, ‘and maybe they will all still know each other.’

‘Or maybe not,’ Anne said. ‘Children and husbands can keep you busy,’ she smiled.

‘And hats,’ said Charles, and they laughed away the unease.

He walked to the gate, closed it, and turned to wave.

Anne had a frown on her face. She was tired from explaining her life. But she added with a tone of finality, to herself as much as to him, ‘I try to live an ordered life. I try not to let sudden things happen. That’s best, not to let sudden things happen.’

Charles lifted his hat to her and walked down the road. Anne put out her hand and touched the tree, then turned to go back in to her house. Charles would now find Honora Raftery.

The road to Yass was much improved. More and more miles had been reclaimed from the red earth and laid down as road. Charles had undertaken to do some business for Mr Winslow, it would add reason to his visit. Margaret would stay on the extra days in Sydney—Mrs Winslow was very pleased as she had lots for them to do. They waved him off and turned to their own business.

Other men heading in the direction of Yass accompanied Charles on the coach. One man took out his Certificate of Freedom several times, read it and smiled. At last he read it aloud—‘This is to certify that fourteen years have elapsed since Sentence of Transportation for that term was passed upon,’ and the man bowed, ‘Yours Truly here … and now restored to all the Rights of a Free Subject under said circumstances.’

The others clapped. ‘Under said circumstances indeed,’ the man chuckled. ‘Given at the Colonial Secretary’s Office, Sydney. Would you credit that.’ He stood up and bowed. The men clapped again. He was on his way to Ned Ryan’s of Galong, he said, to work there for a while, to find his feet and decide what his next free move would be. A girl had gone to Ned Ryan’s, Charles remembered.

‘I know of him,’ he told the man.

‘Do you now.’

Charles attended to Mr Winslow’s business at all the stops, including Goulburn, still a town he liked. When the horses finally stopped in Yass, he made his way to the new hotel and found a room for the night. As he did so, women looked at him and some shook their heads. He looked back but wasn’t sure, he could not remember every face and they would have changed by now, grown up, got sun, looked into the eyes of babies. Later he made his way to the Catholic church, met the priest and found out details. There it was in black and white, so many weddings, and so many baptisms.

‘And lots more in the other churches too,’ the priest said. ‘Yes, we are going well,’ he added.

‘Here is Honora Taffe’s address, out that road,’ he pointed. ‘Second on the left, long hill up, you’ll see the house, a tidy place, white.’

Yes, he would have thought it would be like that.

Charles had not told Honora he was coming. In the end it had worked out with Anne Sherry, he thought, different to what he might have expected, but as well as it could have done. Except of course for the letter, but that couldn’t be helped. But unknown to Charles, Honora had been told that a man looking like Mr Strutt was seen going into the hotel. She had dusted her house just in case.

He got down from the carriage he had taken from the hotel and told the man he could wait. He galvanised himself. Yes, there had been difficult moments with Anne Sherry.

Honora stood back from the window and watched him coming to the door. She felt entitled. There were a lot of her memories tied up with his face. She went to the door to let him in.

‘Hello, Mr Strutt,’ she said.

‘Hello, Honora,’ he replied, smiling tentatively. ‘I was on business nearby and thought I would call to see how you were.’

‘Well this is how I am,’ Honora said, and swept her hand in a circle. ‘Come in.’ They moved into a room in the front of the house and they sat.

‘We’ll have tea,’ she said and lifted the pot, already made.

‘My husband works in the mill,’ she said, by way of opening. ‘He came from Wales. Before me.’

Charles thought that perhaps he should mention what Wales might be like now. Or England even. He knew little of what Ireland was like now.

‘But we don’t go into the past,’ she said, reading his mind the way Anne Sherry had done. ‘I build new memories here,’ she said, ‘for my children. They’re all at school, all my children like school,’ she said. ‘Except the baby, of course. He’s asleep.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Charles said, and lifted his bag. He fumbled through it and brought out a book, which he handed to her. It was a dictionary.

‘Thank you, I have one but this is better,’ she said, feeling the cover. ‘The children will like it too. My husband gets me books from the neighbours. They have a lot of books. We have one on birds. Did you ever hear of Bridget?’

Charles had found out about her death only last week when he was searching for Anne Sherry. He hesitated.

‘I think she may have died, not long after we landed.’

Honora looked out. She listened for the birds, not a difficult thing to do, the sound was there all the time. If you stopped and paid attention you could pick up the most extraordinary sounds.

‘I see,’ she said, ‘that might have been for the best.’

Charles had no answer to that. He drank some more tea and wondered why he was here, wondered what he was hoping Honora would say.

David Taffe drew up at the house, having finished work for this day. But when he saw the heads of the two of them, nodding to each other, he watched for a moment and decided to leave them to it. It would be good for Honora to have this conversation to herself and she would tell him later what was said and what she thought of it.

‘We are fine you know,’ Honora said, ‘now that we’re here. We have to be fine. And …’ She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

There was the sound of a baby crying. Honora stood up.

‘And tonight we go to Ned Ryan’s. I am going too.’

‘Ah, Ned Ryan’s,’ Charles said. ‘I’ve heard of him.’

‘Oh yes, everyone has heard of him,’ Honora said, including Charles in the new history of the place just for a moment. They moved to the door.

‘That thing I said, about making new memories for my children, they wouldn’t like mine, the early ones yes, they might, but not what happened after.’

‘I understand,’ Charles said.

‘You know we don’t talk like that among ourselves. There’s no point. And anyway, no one would believe us.’

‘It’s all right,’ Charles said, as if he was saying that he would not tell anyone.

The man pulled the carriage around, the horse snorted. They stood at the door of the carriage.

‘My husband just made me a new clothesline,’ Honora said, pointing out to the side of the house, and with that statement she claimed some contentment out of the debacle of her history.

Charles doffed his hat. He had not mentioned Anne Sherry, he wasn’t sure whether he had forgotten or deliberately not done so.

Later, as a matter of courtesy, he called on the priest. Presumably he would not be going to Ned Ryan’s.

‘Come in, come in,’ the priest said.

They went into a proper front parlour and sat down. A woman came in with a tray, which she placed on the table.

‘Good evening, sir,’ she said.

Charles looked at her and wondered desperately if he should recognise her.

‘Good evening,’ he said, as she hurried out of the room.

‘One of yours, I think,’ the priest said.

They passed an enjoyable evening, swapping stories they knew of this place. As Charles prepared to leave, the priest said, ‘What is history anyway? The truth of history is a fable agreed upon, that’s what Napoleon said.’

Charles made his way around the corner, down the small incline to the hotel. As he left town the following morning he thought he would not see any more of them. He passed a school. A stream of children was coming through its door.

CHAPTER 28

On a morning in 1860, the sun once again began its high climb in the sky in Sydney and Brisbane, Yass, Gundagai and thereabouts, Melbourne, Ballarat, Castlemaine, Adelaide and lots of other places—many of them just named or given new names. Women and men rose out of sleep, at that moment all equal to each other, until the joy or sadness or the in-between came over them with the full opening of their eyes.

Cissy Weir stretched her legs in bed. Still behind closed eyes she knew, by the weight of her body, that no child had woken in the night. She turned into her husband’s back for another few minutes.

Celia McElroy, just down the road, decided to start a new list today. She did that regularly. It kept her life tripping along nicely.

Biddy Callaghan, in Gundagai, looked for the sixpence that she had put away. They gave it every year to Yarri, the man from the Wiradjuri people, who had rescued her and her baby from the Big Flood in 1852, as well as forty others. Her husband was thought to have drowned but she was never sure. She had a new husband now.

Rose Tighe, in Cootamundra, got things ready to sit her last baby outside for the first time. He had been the hardest to have, but smiled at her often as if to make up for it.

Teresa Furey thought she would clean her kitchen today as soon as she had it to herself. This need to clean came over her at this same time every year, she couldn’t tell why. She started by washing last night’s whiskey glasses.

Rose Larkin rolled herself out of bed. She felt that the baby might come today—there was a difference to the way it turned in her last night, maybe she should wash all the clothes in the bath outside. Maybe that would do it.

Ellen McGillicuddy cleared last night’s playing cards from the small table and patted the heads of her children as they went out to school. She always had to remind herself to do it to all of them, not just the first. When she had looked at him on the second day of his life, she had said, ‘Well that’s that then. I’m from here now.’

Anne Sherry in Sydney started another hat.

Charles Strutt started another journey by sea.

Honora Taffe opened her trunk to clean it and took her bonnet out to air. She thought of herself as Raftery when she did this.

Julia Cuffe got on another coach.

It was Honora Raftery who realised what date it was. This time she wrote it down so she would remember next year. And the year after …

CHAPTER 29