by Judy Nunn
‘You are not indebted to my father, Jefferson,’ she’d said. ‘The name Powell must stand alone.’ He’d been about to disagree, but she’d continued firmly. ‘If you have any debt it must belong to the future not the past, my dear.’ Then she’d presented the irrefutable argument which she knew would clinch the matter. ‘Bear in mind that one day the company will be Powell and Son.’
Having poured the tea, Doris stood. The Irishman again made to rise to his feet, but again she stopped him.
‘Please, Mr O’Callaghan, please do not allow me to interrupt the conversation.’
By now the men had moved on to a broader theme, or rather Jefferson had, and it was clear he believed he was speaking to a fellow idealist.
‘In principal the debt one owes to an individual is not dissimilar to the debt one owes to one’s country,’ Jefferson was saying. ‘It’s a matter of principle and loyalty, Michael, as I’m sure you would agree.’
‘I most certainly would, Jefferson.’
A brief hiatus followed while Doris served the tea and then, as she returned to her seat, the men resumed their conversation. But Doris wasn’t listening.
It wasn’t that I hated Father, she thought as she poured herself a second cup. Far from it: she and Hamish had shared a strong bond. But she’d known him for what he was. Not a bad man, but a hard one who used people to his own advantage, including his daughter. He’d worked her as he would a son. Why in the early days of McLagan’s Road Transport Company she’d even driven one of the drays. And when her mother had died she’d continued to help with the business while also taking over the running of the household, though by then they could have afforded servants.
Doris remembered with vivid clarity the day Sid Tebbutt had approached her father regarding the employment of a young man called Jefferson Powell. She’d eavesdropped on the conversation, as she always did, and as her father instructed she always should. They would then confer on which tack to take, for by then they had become virtual business partners.
‘I know you’re not one to judge a man by his background, Hamish,’ Sid Tebbutt had said, ‘indeed I respect you as one who takes a stand against bigotry.’ Never having viewed her father as a man renowned for his principles, she’d found the approach a little mystifying at the time. ‘Well,’ the Yorkshireman had continued, ‘Jefferson is a strong and capable young chap unable to find employment because others are passing judgement upon him. And passing judgement upon what, I ask you? A blameless past, that’s what. The lad’s judged for the very fact he has no criminal conviction. There’s nowt fair about that, as I’m sure you’ll agree.’
It hadn’t taken her long to realise how very cleverly Sid Tebbutt was playing her father. The man knew Hamish McLagan as a canny Scot with an eye for a bargain. He knew, just as she did, that Hamish McLagan would hire the American not because of any principles on his part, but because Jefferson Powell was young and strong and desperate for work, which meant, above all, that he was cheap.
‘Aye, send the lad to me,’ her father had said magnanimously, ‘I’m sure we’ll be able to find a place for him at McLagan’s.’
That was the start of it all, Doris thought. How she’d blessed Sid Tebbutt for that day.
She re-directed her attention to the men, guiltily aware that in so ignoring them she was being remiss in her duty as hostess.
‘Why my very name is a statement of my own father’s ideals,’ Jefferson was saying. ‘I was named after Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States of America, who was so admired by my father and his father before him.’
‘Really?’ the Irishman said. ‘How very interesting.’
Doris smiled to herself. Jefferson was still speechifying. Her inattentiveness had gone entirely unnoticed.
‘Thomas Jefferson was a personal hero to my grandfather, who fought in the American War of Independence,’ Jefferson said.
‘The American War of Independence,’ Mick replied. ‘I find that fascinating, truly I do. Do you know, Jefferson, such a term is never bandied about in Britain. In Britain the reference is always to the Colonial Wars.’
‘As of course it would be,’ Jefferson drily remarked. ‘The British still have difficulty coming to terms with the fact they were defeated by a rag-tag army of colonists.’
Mick laughed. ‘Oh dear me, yes; it would have been a punch on the nose for King and Country all right.’
O’Callaghan is a little too eager to please, Doris thought critically. He seemed likeable enough, and the contact he’d shared with her daughter had been refreshing – Martha was not a child to be easily won – but the young Irishman was ambitious. There’s nothing wrong with ambition so long as it goes hand-in-hand with loyalty, she thought. But she would not allow her husband to be taken advantage of. She would keep her eye on Michael O’Callaghan. It would not be difficult to observe him without his knowledge, for he had clearly dismissed her, considering her of little importance. She was not in the least offended. Such a response was quite common.
She looked at the men, Jefferson in eager communication, the young Irishman hanging on his every word, lending agreement wherever possible. I need have no worry about my duties as hostess, she thought wryly, I might as well be invisible. She turned back to gaze out the window, allowing her attention to wander.
Doris Powell was fully aware of Mick O’Callaghan’s assessment of both her and her marriage. She had registered his reaction the moment they had met. She had seen such a reaction many times in the past. Why would a man like Jefferson Powell wed a woman like Doris McLagan if it were not for money? That’s what they all thought.
Her mind drifted as she gazed out at the garden. If they only knew, she thought.
CHAPTER SIX
Doris McLagan was twenty-two years old when Jefferson Brindsley Powell had come to work for her father.
She’d found the American instantly attractive, as any young woman would, but she’d never admitted the fact, even to herself. Doris did not view men as other women did. She was not seeking a husband and doubted she would ever marry, though not because she was plain. Her plainness, of which she was fully aware, would have presented little obstacle had she wished to marry, for there was a severe shortage of women in the colony, and beauty, although preferable, was not considered mandatory by men seeking healthy wives to bear them strong children. Doris McLagan, had she made herself available, would no doubt have received many offers, and not just from those out to reap the benefits of her father’s hard-earned success. But Doris had long since accepted destiny’s dictate that her life was to follow a different path.
After the family’s arrival in the colony, Doris had worked by her father’s side for four long years, serving as the son Hamish McLagan had been denied. When she was twenty, her mother had died unexpectedly and she had come to serve as her father’s secretary, companion, cook and housekeeper. It was a position she expected she would continue to fill until the end of Hamish McLagan’s days, when she would become his carer and nurse. Such was her unquestionable duty.
A practical young woman, Doris had accepted her lot with equanimity. Indeed, so resigned was she to her future that it was a whole eight months before she finally recognised the first fatal symptoms.
‘How about hollyhocks along here?’ With his hand, Jefferson traced an imaginary path beside the verandah. ‘Such bold and colourful plants, do you not agree?’
The two of them were redesigning the front garden of the house in Napoleon Street, which Hamish McLagan had bought just prior to his wife’s death.
For some time now, Jefferson Powell had been ensconced in the rooms at the rear of the house. Designed by the original owner as servants’ quarters, the rooms had remained unused by Hamish, who had no wish to squander money on domestic help when the household could manage perfectly well without. Upon Jefferson’s arrival, however, Hamish had quickly realised that, in exchange for a rent-free agreement, his new waterman could also serve as gardener and handyman. The arrangement h
ad turned out to be most satisfactory, for the young American had proved not only a hard worker, but highly capable. In fact there seemed little he couldn’t do, Hamish had noted with delight. Why, the man was even educated. And furthermore, he was honest. Jefferson could be trusted to collect the other watermen’s takings and tally up the books at the end of the work day. Hamish McLagan revelled in the bargain that had come his way. All of these talents were at his beck and call, and for a mere pittance.
It was the garden that was to be Doris’s eventual undoing, for it brought her into close contact with the American and forged a bond between them.
On wintry Sundays, after Reverend MacDougall’s service at the Presbyterian Church, which Jefferson regularly attended with the McLagans, the two of them would change into their dungarees and work side by side. They hoed and they weeded and they dug flower beds and, as they did, they talked. Or for the most part, Jefferson did. Doris was more than happy to listen. She had never heard anyone talk as freely as Jefferson Brindsley Powell.
He spoke of his family with great love and pride. He had two brothers and two sisters, he told her. ‘Free-thinkers, all five of us,’ he said. ‘We were brought up to develop our own beliefs and to follow our convictions. It’s what got me into trouble of course – running off to join the French Canadian rebels in their fight for independence. But Pa didn’t try and stop me. “You must do what you think is morally right, son: you must be ruled by your conscience”, that’s what Pa said. It is the way he believes men should lead their lives.’
He told her he’d been named after Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States of America. ‘A man of great conviction,’ he said with a wry smile, ‘so as you can see my parents were making a statement right from the start. Why even my middle name was intended as a statement.’ Brindsley, it turned out, was his mother’s maiden name.
‘Martha Brindsley made her own declaration of independence when she married,’ he said. ‘My mother was proud of her family heritage. She believes that women should not be forced to sacrifice their identity upon marriage, so she adopted the surname Brindsley-Powell for both herself and her children.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘She was rather annoyed when at sixteen I dropped the hyphen and kept Brindsley as a middle name only, but by then I was following her example and making my own statement. I found Brindsley-Powell just a little too grand.’
‘Your father allowed his wife such licence?’ Doris was astounded. She could just imagine Hamish McLagan’s reaction should his own wife have suggested so outrageous a notion.
‘Oh yes, I’m sure Pa would have expected no less of my mother when they married. He knew her and loved her for exactly what she was. And no doubt still is,’ Jefferson added fondly, ‘for I cannot see her ever changing. Martha Brindsley-Powell is more than a free-thinker, she’s an outright radical. She believes there will come a day when women will be given the democratic right to vote, and she intends to fight for that right. All citizens must have a voice, she says, and until such a day comes we do not have a true democracy.’
‘She sounds like a very strong woman, your mother.’
‘Oh, yes indeed.’
How I would like to meet such a woman, Doris thought. She had loved and respected her own mother, but she knew well that words such as those could never have passed Barbara McLagan’s lips. For as long as Doris could remember, everything she had heard from her parents had related to duty. Freedom of choice and personal views of any nature had rarely come up for discussion in the McLagan household. In fact the more Doris listened to Jefferson the more she realised that very little had come up for discussion in the McLagan household.
‘You must miss your family,’ she said, recognising as she did how inadequate such a comment must sound.
‘I do,’ he replied. He didn’t appear to find her comment inadequate at all. ‘I miss them very much. But I have only a year or so to serve on my ticket-of-leave, and I’m saving every penny. I’ll get home one day. I’ll see them again.’
He seemed supremely confident, which Doris found rather surprising. Convicts who were granted ticket-of-leave rights were not permitted to return to their homeland upon the completion of their sentence, the reasoning no doubt being they were essential to populate the colony. Besides, she thought, no matter how hard Jefferson saved, the pittance he received from her father was hardly likely to purchase his passage home.
She was determined to assist in whatever way she could, however, and she approached her father that very night regarding a raise in the American’s salary. She made no personal plea on Jefferson’s behalf – like Sid Tebbutt, Doris knew exactly how to manipulate Hamish McLagan. She merely suggested that, as Jefferson Powell was carrying the workload of two men he should receive, if not double his wages, at least a substantial increase upon his current meagre stipend, or else they might risk losing his services to an employer who recognised his full worth.
‘But the man has free board and lodgings, Doris,’ Hamish had said, bewildered by his daughter’s request, ‘why should the company reimburse him any further?’
‘I do not intend for the company to reimburse him, father. As most of his extra duties revolve around the house and the garden, he shall be paid from my housekeeping allowance. It will mean some necessary cutbacks in expenditure of course, but I’m sure we can forgo several of our little luxuries, for if we do not I genuinely believe we will lose him to a higher bidder.’
Doris had left no grounds for negotiation. She was willing to forgo the new drawing room curtains and the fine bone china tea service she’d intended to order, she said, and there were other sundry items they could well do without, like the regular deliveries of shortbread and the crate of fine Scotch whisky that arrived twice a year.
Hamish capitulated immediately. They dared not risk the loss of such a valuable employee, he agreed, and he made the magnanimous decision, much as he respected Doris’s offer, not to create further hardship for her. The cutbacks in expenditure she had suggested would not be necessary as the raise in the man’s salary would be met directly by the company.
Doris congratulated herself on her accomplishment.
Six months later, however, she found herself undone by her own cleverness. She realised, upon reflection, how extraordinarily ignorant she’d been. Of course she should have expected such an outcome. But she had been taken completely by surprise.
‘I have an announcement to make,’ Jefferson said.
It was a Sunday in November. They were in the front garden, but they were not wearing their dungarees. They were dressed in their best having just returned from church, and they were seated on the wooden garden seat (which Jefferson himself had made) admiring the fruits of their labour. The landscaping had long been completed and an abundance of late spring blossom surrounded them.
‘I’ve been longing to tell you, but I wanted to pick the right time and place, and this is certainly it.’ He gazed about with a smile that was positively joyful. ‘What a triumph your garden has proved to be, Doris. What an absolute triumph. And when the saplings are grown, they’ll complete the picture perfectly. Silver birches are such elegant trees.’
‘Longing to tell me what?’ she urged with her customary bluntness. She was intrigued by his apparent state of elation and exasperated that he wasn’t getting to the point. It was typical of Jefferson.
He turned to face her. ‘You will shortly be looking at a time-expired man,’ he proudly declared, which left her none the wiser.
‘And what exactly does that mean?’
‘It means that I visited the offices of the Superintendent of Prisons on Friday,’ he announced. ‘It means that the Superintendent’s Secretary himself has confirmed the fact that my sentence will officially expire in six months’ time and that I will once again be a free man.’
‘Oh, Jefferson, that’s wonderful. That’s truly wonderful.’ Doris’s face lit up with one of her rare smiles, which to Jefferson always seemed like a personal gift, for Doris did n
ot know how to smile falsely. ‘I’m happy for you,’ she said. ‘I’m so very, very happy for you.’ She was. At that moment, before her mind absorbed the ramifications of his news, Doris was overjoyed that Jefferson Powell was to be granted the freedom he so rightfully deserved.
‘I’ll be able to go home, Doris,’ he said. ‘As a citizen of the United States of America, I will be free to return to my native land.’
It took a moment to sink in. Then she realised. Of course. Jefferson was not shackled by the ticket-of-leave chains that forced British ex-convicts to remain in the colony. He was an American citizen. He was free to leave the moment he had served his sentence.
It was only then that the ramifications hit, and they hit with brutal force. He’s leaving, she thought. He’s actually leaving! She was happy for him, of course she was. He was to be reunited with his family, why would she not be happy for him? But she could not rid herself of an unexpected and devastating sense of loss.
‘And it’s all because of you,’ Jefferson continued, completely unaware of the impact his news had had upon her. ‘I know that you persuaded your father to increase my wages, and I’m deeply grateful. I would never have earned enough to buy my passage to America had it not been for you, Doris.’
‘Rubbish,’ she said briskly. ‘You would eventually have come to your senses and found an employer who would pay you your full worth, rather than slaving for the pittance my father gave you.’
He was shocked by her ruthlessness. ‘I could never have left your father’s employ,’ he protested, ‘not for as long as I remained in Van Diemen’s Land. Why I shall be forever in his debt. Hamish McLagan was the only man prepared to give me a chance.’
‘Of course he was: you’re quite right.’ She stood, calling a halt to the conversation. She could not bring herself to disillusion him, realising as she now did that, for all his liberal upbringing, Jefferson Brindsley Powell was a true innocent at heart. She was two years younger and far less educated than he, but she suddenly felt so much older and wiser.
