by Barbara Wood
"Beth is bright and eager to learn," Westbrook had said, "and she already knows a lot about animals and the running of a sheep station. She would be an asset to your school."
"But Tongarra is a residential school, Mr. Westbrook," Carpenter had explained. "The boys live here, in dormitories. Surely you see the tremendous difficulties in admitting a girl."
But Westbrook had confounded them by saying, "Merinda is only a few miles from here. Beth could be a day pupil, coming in the morning and leaving at night."
Carpenter had tried another tack: "Our course of study involves hard labor. We not only have classroom work, Mr. Westbrook, we also teach saddlery, horseshoeing, husbandry. Cattle branding, even. Labor most unsuitable for a young lady."
When Westbrook had said, "My daughter can learn any of those things," Mr. Carpenter and Mr. Mclntyre seemed at a loss for further argument. Seeing that their position was weakening, Judd had spoken up. "Mr. Westbrook is missing the most important point here," he had said. "The impropriety of what he is proposing. The girl would be a distraction to the boys. Her presence would be an impediment to learning. As a teacher, I would certainly find it difficult to have her in my classroom."
It was then that Westbrook had taken out his checkbook and said, "I'm prepared to make a generous gift to the school."
"It has nothing to do with money, Mr. Westbrook," Judd had said quickly, seeing the look that had passed between Carpenter and Mclntyre. "It is a question of honor. We have to think of the school's reputation. Tongarra is known for its excellence and high standards. We are one of the finest learning institutions in the colonies. If we were to admit a girl, our prestige would be damaged, not to mention how badly it would discredit our diploma."
But, in the end, Judd had lost. Hugh Westbrook had presented the school with a large endowment, and Beth, with certain restrictions, was to attend in the new term.
When Judd had continued to protest, Carpenter had said, "Mr. MacGregor, don't you think you are taking this rather personally? After all, the girl will be the school's responsibility. You won't be blamed if there is trouble as a result of her being here."
But Judd had to take it personally, because it was an issue that related directly to him. The girl's presence at the school was going to weaken the integrity of the very argument that had caused the final break between him and his father.
As he moved away from the bar and the talk of sheep and politics, tasting his champagne, nodding vaguely at Miss Minerva Hamilton, who smiled at him, Judd thought of a conversation that had taken place two months earlier. It had occurred in his father's study at Kilmarnock, and, although Judd hadn't known it at the time, it was to be the last time they would ever speak to each other.
He watched Louisa Hamilton, across the crowded room, suddenly collapse into a chair, with her daughters rushing to her side. Judd heard his own voice, back in September, saying, "You can't seriously mean you're leaving now, Father. Shearing is just two weeks away!"
But Colin had been packing his valise like a man obsessed. Judd had seen the tight set of his father's shoulders, the furious snap of his wrist as papers and documents went into the valise. And Judd had recognized the nature of those papers: original deeds to the old castle and its holdings in Scotland, some of which dated as far back as the reign of Henry VIII. There were also Colin's birth certificate, his passport and a steamship ticket. "This is what a man can count on, Judd," MacGregor had said. "Fortunes might come and go, land can be bought and lost, friends can turn into enemies, and sons into strangers, but one truth remains—the legacy of one's birthright. The bank might take my sheep station from me, and my creditors might strip me of all my possessions, but one thing they cannot take away from me is my bloodline. I am the laird of Kilmarnock."
That was when Judd had known that his father was going to run away and never come back. And so that was when, in a desperate bid to keep him there, Judd had said things he now regretted, angry things, meant to hurt, intended to spark the core of aggression he knew always lurked in his father, hoping that he could waken Colin's fury and make him want to stay and fight for Kilmarnock—this Kilmarnock, not the old, crumbled one that belonged to the ghosts, but this one that stood in the sunshine and that was new and held so much promise.
"You've never appreciated your heritage," Colin had said with much bitterness, and Judd had said, "I am Australian, Father. This is my bloodline, here, in this place."
"As a teacher."
"Yes, as a teacher! I'm not a lord, I don't want to be a lord."
"Then go and live at your agricultural school. Throw away everything I've built for you, everything I've worked to give you. Go and be a common teacher teaching common boys in a common school. Christ, Judd, it's not as though you've been appointed to Oxford, is it? It's a bloody backwater farming school in a bloody backwater colony."
Father and son had regarded each other across the hated study, and the words that had been said on both sides could not be called back; they hung in the air like echoes, and the misery and bitterness and regret that each man felt caused him to hold his tongue and keep him from saying, "I'm sorry."
Judd's fingers curled tightly around his champagne glass as he watched the women cluster around Louisa Hamilton, who was fanning herself furiously. He saw Joanna Westbrook hold a bottle of smelling salts under Louisa's nose. He saw the Hamilton daughters, all spoiled young women, flutter around their mother helplessly. And then he saw how his stepmother stood out in the crowd.
Pauline was thirty-nine, but Judd thought that she was still beautiful. He knew there was pain inside that slender, graceful body; he knew what Colin's desertion was doing to her. And it occurred to him that perhaps he had been unfair to Pauline all these years, distancing himself from her, thinking that she was just like Colin, simply because she had married him. As Judd had watched her these past three months bear up under the strain of Colin's departure, he had found himself starting to admire her.
Judd drained his champagne and went back to the bar.
As Joanna sat with Louisa, she searched the room for Beth, and found her standing beneath a portrait of King George, a glass of lemonade seemingly forgotten in her hand. Joanna followed Beth's line of sight and saw that the object of her attention was Judd MacGregor. And the look on Beth's face brought Joanna's feelings of anxiousness and premonition to the surface again. She realized how her daughter felt about the handsome young man—Mr. MacGregor was all Beth could talk about. "I never knew he was so charming, Mother," Beth had said after the last Annual Graziers' Show, at which Judd had taken a prize for a stud ram. "I've seen him hundreds of times, but I only just now realized how wonderful he is. And just think—he's going to be my instructor at the new school!"
It had reminded Joanna that it wouldn't be very long before Beth was married; she would go away and live somewhere else. How would Joanna be able to protect her then?
"Oh dear," Louisa Hamilton said, the center of sudden female attention. "It's must be the hot night, but I really don't feel well."
As Pauline stood to the side and watched Joanna try to help, she saw Louisa flash her a fearful, familiar look. And that was when Pauline knew what Louisa's problem really was: She was expecting another baby. After thirteen years of managing not to get pregnant.
"Louisa," Joanna said, "you really don't look well. Let me find a place for you to lie down."
Joanna left the dining room and went to the front desk. She waited a moment while the clerk sorted through some receipts. When he looked up, she said, "Hello, I'm Mrs. Westbrook. I was wondering if there was a room where one of our guests can lie down for a few minutes. She's not well—"
"Mrs. Westbrook?" the clerk said. "Forgive me, but I wasn't told when I came on duty that the private party in the dining room was yours. There was a gentleman in here asking about you. I told him that you and your husband were out."
"A gentleman? Did he give his name?"
"He said you didn't know him, and that he didn't know you.
He was a sailor of some sort—a sea captain, I think."
"A sea captain! And he left no message?"
"He said he had a boat to catch and that where he was going you wouldn't be able to contact him."
When the clerk saw the distressed look on her face, he said, "I truly am sorry, Mrs. Westbrook. Had I known that you were just in the dining room ..."
"How long ago did he leave?"
"I'd say about ten minutes—"
She hurried across the lobby and through the doors. She went out onto the sidewalk and looked up and down the street. She saw two men standing on the corner beneath a lamp. One was a newspaper vendor, the other a sailor shouldering a duffel bag.
When she approached them, she saw that the sailor was an older man, in his seventies, she judged, with white hair and a white clipped beard, his face etched with hundreds of lines. "Pardon me," she said.
They gave her a startled look.
"Were you in the hotel just now, asking after Mrs. Westbrook?"
"I was."
"I'm Joanna Westbrook."
"Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Westbrook!" he said. "I am Captain Harry Fielding."
Joanna shook a hand that felt as hard as wood. "What was it you wanted to speak to me about, Captain Fielding?"
"I've been away," he said. "In Asia, mostly, and I've only just recently gotten back. I usually spend a week catching up on the news I've missed, so it was some time before I saw your notice in the paper. Well, the paper was so old, I didn't really think anything about it. And then I saw an item in today's Times about you and your husband being in town for a show, and that you were staying at this hotel. I'm glad we didn't miss each other."
He smiled expectantly.
"Captain Fielding," she said, "please go on."
He reached into his pocket and drew out a newspaper clipping. "You are Mrs. Joanna Westbrook, are you not? The lady who placed this notice in the paper?"
Joanna looked at the ad which she had put in Frank's paper ages ago. "Yes," she said.
"It says you are looking for information concerning the ship Beowulf. I served on her when I was a young man, as bosun's mate. I can try to tell you anything you want to know about her."
"I had just about given up hope!" Joanna said. "Captain Fielding, I'm trying to trace two passengers who sailed on the Beowulf in 1830. Were you with the ship at that time?"
"Indeed I was. I was twenty years old and setting off to discover the world."
"Would you remember," she said, trying to contain her excitement, "the passengers who were on board? I know it was a long time ago."
"You'll find, Mrs. Westbrook, that when you reach my age, which is considerable, you can't recall what happened last week, but you can remember in exact detail events that occurred years ago. That was my first real commission. I can even tell you what color the captain's eyes were."
"Do you remember a young couple by the name of Makepeace among the passengers? John and Naomi?"
"Makepeace," he said. "Oh yes, the religious chap. The fellow who said he was searching for the Garden of Eden or something. I do remember him and his pretty wife. I remember thinking their name was rather odd." Fielding's eyebrows came together. "Another odd thing, too, now that I think of it. When I stopped there again, a few years later, I heard the strangest tale about them."
"Where was this, Captain Fielding? Do you remember where they got off the ship?"
She held her breath.
"Indeed I do," he said, "because we all thought it an unlikely place for a pair of newlyweds to start their married life together. I can tell you the exact spot, Mrs. Westbrook. Is it very important?"
TWENTY-FIVE
B
Y THE TIME JUDD MACGREGOR HAD READ THE FIRST FEW paragraphs of the homework assignment, he knew he was going to write "Excellent" at the top of the page. But when he turned the paper over to see which of his pupils had written it and saw the signature of Beth Westbrook, he hesitated. She must be receiving help at home, he thought. No girl could be this good in biology.
"Girls simply do not have the capacity for learning that boys have," Judd had said to Miles Carpenter back in December, when he had been told that Beth Westbrook had been admitted into the school. "I assure you, Mr. Carpenter, that I will not devote a single extra minute to teaching the girl. She will be given the same assignments, the same amount of teaching time as I give to the boys. She will get no special consideration from me. And when she falls behind in her studies, as I'm sure she will, I will recommend her dismissal from the school. That, Mr. Carpenter, I predict will be one week after the school term begins."
But the term had begun four weeks ago, in January, and the Westbrook girl had so far kept up with the boys. In fact, Judd realized, she was doing better than many of them. Which led him to believe that someone must be helping her with her schoolwork at home.
Hearing laughter beyond his window, Judd looked out and saw some boys down on the lawn in front of the Academics Building. They were calling after Beth Westbrook, who had just been left at the school gates by her Aborigine governess, Sarah King. Judd watched how stiffly the girl walked as she tried to ignore the taunts. He knew the boys made things difficult for Beth, but he was not going to interfere. If they were picking on another boy, he wouldn't intervene. The instructors at Tongarra rarely involved themselves with the personal problems of their pupils. The student body had formed its own special code of conduct; they enforced it themselves. And one of the rules was that a student fought his—or, in this case, her—own battles, and didn't go running to a teacher.
It made Judd think of his own early days at the school. He had been small for his age, and the other boys had been merciless with him. His father had said to Carpenter, "Don't give Judd any special consideration because of his size. Treat him like the other boys. It'll make a man of him." Judd had withstood the tests and initiations with the stoicism that the unspoken rules of conduct demanded, and he had emerged strong and self-reliant. He had also won the admiration of his tormentors and ended up becoming one of the most popular boys at the school.
A voice carried on the morning breeze: "We don't want girls here!" one of the boys called after Beth. And Judd remembered his father, years ago, saying, "You have to try harder, son. You don't want everyone to think you're a girl, do you?"
Judd looked up at the February sky. It looked as if the autumn rains were going to come early this year. Judd thought about his father, who had been gone for five months now. Judd imagined Colin sitting in his drafty castle among his Celtic relics, and wondered if he was happy, or troubled by even the slightest regret or feeling of shame.
"What's the matter?" one of the boys called after Beth. "Can't you go anywhere without your wog nanny?"
When Judd saw Beth turn around to reply, he closed his window. The only drawback to living on campus, he decided, were distractions such as these.
He missed the peace and quiet of Kilmarnock, but he had found that he couldn't live there. The constant reminders were too painful. Judd's father was still there, in every brick and board of Kilmarnock, in every suit of armor and teacup and dust mote. Judd thought of the letter of apology he had started, asking his father to come home. He would never finish it; it would never be sent.
As Judd returned to reading Beth's paper, he pictured the girl who had appeared in his classroom early one morning in January, not shy and hesitant, but just standing there, as if waiting for something to happen. She had been wearing a long white dress, her hair shining, and Judd had been reminded of times in the past when he had seen Beth Westbrook, at the Annual Graziers' Show or in Cameron Town. She had been a tomboyish girl in braids and a pinafore, running in and out of the exhibits with a group of boys. But the girl who had presented herself at his classroom, before the rest of the pupils had arrived, was not a tomboy. Judd knew from Beth's records that she had turned twelve last September. And he could already see the signs that, over the months, were going to make Beth more and more of a distraction in hi
s class. Perhaps for now the boys might treat her as one of themselves—they certainly picked on her the way another group of boys had once picked on a puny Judd MacGregor—but soon, Judd knew, the boys were going to start looking at her in a different way, and she was going to make it increasingly difficult for them to concentrate on their studies.
As he watched the boys taunt her, Judd decided that she might not be at Tongarra for long. The students were making it very hard for her at the school. They resented her presence, which was understandable, especially since she was doing so well. And Judd knew of one instructor who refused to call on Beth if she raised her hand. One teacher had even talked of resigning out of protest. And some of the parents were protesting. Four boys had been removed from the school when their fathers had learned that a girl was attending. When Judd had confronted Miles Carpenter on the issue, and he had reminded the superintendent of the damage the girl's presence was going to do to the school, Carpenter's reply had come in the form of pounds and shillings. "Westbrook's endowment more than makes up for those lost tuitions, Mr. MacGregor. And we have his promise that the endowment will be renewed each year that his daughter attends this school."
But Judd maintained that it was more a matter of honor than money. Just look, he had pointed out, at the troubles being caused by new legislation in the colonies permitting females to attend institutions of higher learning. Massive protests at the University of Melbourne, because of the recent admission of female students, had caused a cessation of classes that lasted for days. And the teachers who had walked out refused to return. Judd was proud of Tongarra. He hated to think what effect this new lowering of standards was eventually going to have on the school's reputation.
With luck, he decided, the girl would leave on her own accord. And certainly if she ever came running to him to complain about the way the boys were treating her, Judd would ask for her dismissal from the school.
