The Black Dress (14 page)

‘My Robert is back from the goldfields in New Zealand and with my savings we’ve got enough to buy ourselves the draper’s shop on Little Lonsdale Street.’ Sarah was smiling broadly for the first time.

Mr Kenny nudged me. ‘You next, eh, Mary? How about that young clerk from next door?’

I smiled, as one had to when people said those sorts of things. The clerk was named Matthew Polkinghorne. He worked for Mr Clay, a solicitor with rooms in the Imperial Chambers next door, and had gone from ignoring me to courting me after I had told him that we were unfortunately out of stock of
Roscoe’s Digest of the Law of Evidence at Nisi Prius
and pronounced the Latin correctly.

He asked if he might walk me home. The last thing I needed was a complication like a beau. Besides, Mr Polkinghorne had entirely too grand an opinion of himself, with his nose in the air ignoring the other girls like they were dirt. And he wasn’t even handsome.
Not that you should even be thinking about that, if you’re going to be a nun!

People have asked me, from time to time, if I regretted giving up marriage and a home and children of my own. When they do, I can’t help thinking about poor Matthew Polkinghorne. I laugh. What a life he would have had if I’d married him! Me, always yearning for a life I could never have as a wife and mother; him, knowing he was a second choice to my vocation. Even the consolation of children would, I think, have turned sour—assuming I would have been able to have children. The women’s troubles with which I was beset most of my life might have prevented it, and how empty would our lives have been then!

‘Thank you, but my brother walks me home,’ I said to Matthew Polkinghorne, and handed him his parcel of legal notepaper.

Mr Kenny had helped John find a job at the Swanston Street railway station. He was 15 and, like the boys in the packing department, had outgrown all his clothes. Maggie had made over a coat and trousers of Papa’s, and it was sometimes as though a young version of Papa was walking beside me up Collins and Spring streets, onto Wellington Parade and past the Police Barracks.

But John was far steadier than Papa, who still could not seem to find work.

‘It’s not right for a man to depend upon his children,’ he said over and over. But there did not seem to be any work for an educated man who held strong political opinions and held forth about them at every gathering. The Back Creek experience had marked him as ‘unreliable’.

Papa even tried for labouring work, but the foremen took one look at his soft hands and laughed. He spent a great deal of time at St Francis’s, helping the priests with their accounts and their sermons.

‘Shame they can’t pay you,’ Maggie said tartly. Mamma hushed her.

‘It’s your Papa’s privilege to help the work of God.’

I agreed, and yet ... Mamma had decided to take in boarders, to try to cover the rent, at least. It meant a great deal of work for her—not only looking after the children and Papa, but doing the men’s laundry and dinners as well. She had never been a strong woman, and the constant work took its toll.

Mrs Stuart had written only that week asking for the money we owed her, as she had had unexpected expenses.

I wrote back that evening, sending her three of the five pounds we owed (all we had in reserve) and apologising for not being able to send all.

‘My dear Mrs Stuart, On account of Mamma’s hand being stiff from hard washing she has had ...
and she won’t let the girls help her, as she ought ...
I now write instead of her ... I cannot tell you how poor Mamma felt at not being able to send you your own in due time. She was wretched, and last week went out to Grandfather’s to try and sell the heifer ...
Twelve miles and she walked the whole way
... but on arrival there, found that a most unjust advantage has been taken of her, the beast having been sold, and it was with the greatest difficulty that she managed to redeem her ...
And Grandfather gave her the beast to begin with! But at least we got two pounds ten for her and with my ten shillings savings
... will you now please receive the three pounds which we send you, and believe that, until the other two are paid, we can have no rest.’

I told Mrs Stuart our other news. John was to be promoted when the new railway line opened. With two wages coming in the family was safe, but until we could pay off our debts and have some savings behind us, I couldn’t rest easy. Life changed suddenly so often. I finished the letter but felt low at having to reveal our poverty yet again to Mrs Stuart.

If Papa had not written that letter to the newspaper, none of us would have had to be humiliated, and I could have gone back to Erindale, happy with the girls, blessedly studying in the library, instead of working until my feet swelled and my back ached and my head pounded with the thumping of the presses ...
Christ is the vine, we are the branches. God prunes us to make us bear better fruit.
It was hard to believe that sometimes. Christ hadn’t lost that job. Papa had.

Business was booming. Mr Kenny beamed as he came through the shop each morning. The company took on another girl, Katie Sinclair, and suddenly I found myself explaining the shop to Katie as though I were an expert.
Three months,
I realised.
I’ve been here three months.

The printery was becoming known all over Australia. The
Sands and Kenny Melbourne Directory,
which listed all the streets by suburb, who lived in them and what their trade was, were becoming a byword in the city. Every post office had a copy, every office messenger used them. Mr Sands smiled smugly when another order came in for multiple copies. The directories had been his idea. ‘The whole life of the city, in one book,’ he said.

But when the 1860 edition came out, I realised that not all of the life of the city was included. Papa’s name was absent from Brighton Street, Richmond. I almost went to Mr Sands to ask why, and then realised. It was company policy not to list the unemployed on the grounds that they moved so often that the directory would be inaccurate even before it was printed. My father was unemployed. The Sands, Kenny & Co. collector of names and trades would have interviewed him and straightaway struck him off the list.

I didn’t take the directory home, even though Mr Sands said all the staff could have their own free copy.

The directories had another effect, besides making Mr Sands and Mr Kenny rich. Whenever important people visited Melbourne, some politician or government functionary would bring them to visit the printery. It was my job to show them around and explain what the various machines were for and how the presses worked.

So it came as no surprise when Mr Kenny called me to escort the Belgian consul, Monsieur Gustave Beckx, around the factory. Monsieur Beckx, Mr Kenny said, had been Honorary Consul since 1853, but had only lately expressed an interest in trading anything other than gold with the colony. He had previously mixed only with the few aristocratic families but was now showing that he was prepared to be entertained by the mercantile class.

M. Beckx was dark-haired and pale-skinned, around 50, with a smooth, pleasant voice and pale blue eyes.

‘So be polite, Mary. He could be the start of our exporting back to Europe. Imagine, a Melbourne company exporting to Belgium!’

I duly curtsied and very politely showed M. Beckx and his aide around the printery. He nodded, listened intently and nodded again, while his aide took notes.

‘Cartes,’
he murmured to his aide, a tall, pink-faced young Belgian with much better English than his consul.

‘Cartes,’
meant maps, I knew, so I showed them the large map printing press and some of the engravings as well: Port Phillip Bay, St Francis’s church, the wharf at Sandridge. They were of the highest quality and he nodded approvingly.

‘Excellente,’
he said.

That was all he wanted to see. Then the pair left immediately.

‘Oh, didn’t he have an air about him!’ Eileen sighed.

‘M. Beckx?’ I asked in surprise.

‘No, the young man. What was his name?’

I bit my lip as I realised that M. Beckx had not introduced him, had not, in fact, spoken directly to me at all during the entire visit.

I shrugged. ‘The Honorary Consul did not deign to introduce us,’ I said flippantly.

‘Maybe you’ll get to meet him at the Keogh’s party on Saturday,’ Eileen suggested enviously. ‘What are you wearing, Mary?’

I wore one of Aunt Julia’s cast-offs, of course. It was a plain gown, but a beautiful dark green.

‘Och, it brings out the lights in your hair,’ Mamma said, ‘and makes your eyes sparkle. You’ve grown into such a bonnie lass, Mary.’

Whenever Mamma became sentimental her accent grew stronger. I smiled at her.
Maybe I did look a little nice.
Maggie and I were going to stay with the Keoghs overnight, so we could stay right until the end of the party, and keep dancing. Oh, I loved to dance—almost as much as I loved to ride. I pushed the thought down.
Girls who work in shops and have unemployed fathers don’t get to go riding whenever they like.
The days on The Plenty when I had my own pony were long gone. I wondered how Mudlark was—he would be getting old for a horse. I remembered the last gallop we’d had...

‘Come back, come back, Maria Ellen,’ Mamma said, laughing. ‘You’re a thousand miles away!’

‘Not so far,’ I said, but she was right. I had to live in the present—and the present was good enough, with a party about to start!

It started as a lovely party. All our friends were there: the Sewards, the Camerons, the Kennys, and the Plunketts. Adeline and I danced together in the reels; she was so lightfooted and delicate it made me feel like a clumsy oaf, but I didn’t care. I so loved to dance.

The Belgian consul arrived late (‘Fashionably late,’ Adeline whispered. ‘Isn’t his aide handsome!’) and proceeded to make a tour of the room. The women all curtsied and the men bowed. It was hard to tell what his reaction was, his face changed so little.

‘You’re so lucky to have met him already,’ Adeline said. ‘I wish I had.’

She fidgeted with excitement. Adeline was a great reader of novels and loved stories about nobles and society. Meeting the consul was like a scene from one of her stories.

As young girls, we were the last to be introduced to the consul, so everyone was looking at us.

‘Allow me to present Miss Adeline Seward, your excellency,’ said Mr Keogh. Adeline curtsied and M. Beckx nodded.

‘Enchanté,’
he said, obviously bored.

‘This is Miss Margaret MacKillop.’ Maggie curtsied, but I could tell she wasn’t impressed. She had her sniffy look on.

‘Enchanté.’

‘And you’ll remember Miss MacKillop,’ Mr Keogh said with something like relief. ‘You met her earlier in the week at Sands, Kenny.’

M. Beckx froze. Every muscle was rigid. Then he turned his back on me and said with disbelief, ‘You expect me to consort with
factory girls?
’ He walked away, his aide following.

A blush burned right up my chest and face—I could feel it rise in a red wave—but I felt cold. Everyone was pretending they hadn’t heard, but the buzz of indignation grew.

‘Poor Mary!’ I heard Mrs Keogh say, and that was the last straw. I couldn’t stay. Luckily, I was right by the door.

Adeline reached for my hand, but I slipped past her quietly into the hall, then ran up the stairs to our room.
Thank God I’m staying here! At least I have somewhere private to go.

I threw myself on the bed and cried. He was right. That’s what I was—a factory girl. Just like Sarah and Eileen and Katie. I realised I had been thinking of myself as better than them, because I knew Mr Kenny, because my grandparents and uncles had properties. But I was Alexander MacKillop’s daughter, not theirs, and I was a factory girl. I’d probably
always
be a factory girl. Now that he’d said it, everyone who’d heard, and everyone they told, would always think of me that way.

It was a hard way to learn humility.

There was a knock on the door and Mr Keogh poked his head around it.

‘Mary, we’re missing you downstairs,’ he said, kindly ignoring my red face and streaming eyes.

I shook my head.

‘You won’t let that jumped-up son of a—You won’t let an ignorant Belgian ruin a good party, will you? Noone’s having a good time, knowing you’re up here.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Course you can. You’re Alexander MacKillop’s daughter. You’ll face anything rather than have people say you were afraid.’

Perhaps he was right. Perhaps I should face everyone. After all, I had to do it sometime.

‘That’s my girl,’ Mr Kenny said.

I got up and splashed cold water from the washbasin on my face, then dried it and my tears together. Going downstairs was hard, but walking into the drawing room was the hardest thing I had ever done.

Blessed Virgin, I know a party isn’t something I should be praying about—but don’t let it be too bad.

When I went through the door there was a hush, then people gathered all around me—not just my friends, but the other guests as well. People I didn’t even know turned their backs on M. Beckx to talk to me. I went from group to group like—like a princess—with Mr Keogh introducing me to the few people I didn’t know.

My cheeks were hot and my eyes were shining with tears. There is so much kindness in the world, so much love in unexpected places.
Thank you, Blessed Virgin.

A sudden bustle in the doorway drew my attention. M. Beckx, his nose in the air, was leaving. He glared at me across the room, but his aide smiled. One might almost think he was pleased to see the consul discomfited.

‘Did you see that?’ Adeline hissed. ‘He
smiled
at you. Oh, you are so lucky, Mary MacKillop.’

I thought so too, though not for the same reason. Then the pipers started a reel. We danced the night away and I doubt anyone gave any thought to Belgian consuls.

Except for Maggie. When we got back to our room in the early hours of the morning she was still fuming.

‘The hide of him!’ she ranted as she brushed her hair with short, hard strokes. ‘The arrogance!’