by Anna Jacobs
8
Fremantle, Western Australia
Livia Southerham heard her maids talking in low voices, and since she had passed the newspapers on to them today, she could guess what they were discussing. The two of them had been trying to find her another husband for years. They’d given up for a while, but had started again lately.
Sometimes people advertised in the Perth Gazette for a wife or a husband. Less often, they did the same in Fremantle’s own weekly Herald. They didn’t give their names, usually, just a few personal details and a request that letters be sent to them care of the newspaper.
Every now and then, her maids would pounce on an advertisement for a man who might make her a good husband, an older one who was clearly a gentleman with money. She was over forty, too old for the younger men, because she was past the usual child-bearing age.
Livia sighed as the newspaper continued to rustle in the kitchen, punctuated by whispers. She wished Orla and Rhoda would believe she meant it when she told them she didn’t want to get married again. She did mean it. Most definitely.
Since her husband’s death, her life was happy enough, if rather quiet at times. Why should she risk changing that to marry a man she didn’t care about?
She’d cared deeply about Francis, but had been so naïve in those days. Her father hadn’t sought a marriage settlement for her because she was taking so little money into the marriage, but Francis had taken even that from her and wasted it.
The only quarrels they’d ever had concerned money. She smiled wryly. Francis had been hard to quarrel with for long, though, and they’d soon made up again. She missed the making up, missed the loving, was sorry the long sea voyage and warmer climate hadn’t cured his consumption.
Since she’d been widowed, Orla and Rhoda had become as much friends as maids. They stayed with her because they wanted to. She couldn’t afford to pay full wages to both of them.
Either could have got another job within the hour, a better-paying one too, because maids were in short supply in the colony. But they wouldn’t hear of leaving her. It was a strange kind of friendship, but she valued it highly and knew they did too. When you didn’t have any family in a country so far from home and family, friends became much more important.
Every month Livia visited the little bookshop in Perth whose owner sold second-hand books as well as bringing new ones into the colony from Britain. She not only treated herself to a new book each time, but took a cup of tea with the owner, Mr Deeping. He was getting old now and she prayed he wouldn’t die, or sell the building in which the shop was located, because she didn’t know where she’d be without her books.
She looked forward so much to that outing, going up to Perth on the small paddle steamer, strolling around the town.
Orla and Rhoda came in, looking very determined. Livia’s heart sank and she guessed what they were going to say before they even opened their mouths.
‘There’s a gentleman advertising for a wife this week,’ Rhoda announced.
Livia shrugged. ‘I hope he finds one, then.’
‘He sounds to be your sort of person. At least read the advertisement.’
She pushed the newspaper away. ‘No, thank you.’
‘He’s got a house in Guildford, he’s a few years older than you and he’s seeking the company of an intelligent lady with a view to marriage,’ Orla said. ‘This one sounds like the best prospect yet.’
Livia folded her arms. ‘I’m still not interested.’
‘Why won’t you even consider it?’
‘I’ve told you why. And I haven’t changed my mind. How many times do I have to repeat that?’
They gave each other looks that said they thought she was being foolish. Orla slapped the newspaper down on the small table in front of her and they went back to the kitchen, slamming the door behind them.
Not until they went out shopping did Livia steal a glance at the advertisement, unfolding the newspaper carefully, so that they’d not know she’d opened it. But they’d guess, she knew they would.
Gentleman, 50, new to the colony, would like to meet a lady of similar age with a view to matrimony. He is seeking intelligent companionship above all, and is comfortably circumstanced, able to offer a wife all the domestic comforts.
She sighed. If she met such a person socially, got to know and like him, she might consider him as a prospective husband. After a long courtship. With the precaution of a carefully drawn up marriage settlement. But to contact a stranger and offer yourself to his scrutiny – no! Definitely not. The mere thought of it made her blood run cold.
This time, however, the two maids weren’t the only ones to bring the advertisement to her attention. When she went into Deagan’s Bazaar to see if Bram had any more second-hand books for sale – since he sometimes bought job lots of household items – he too brought out the newspaper and tapped his finger on that page.
‘There’s an interesting advertisement here, Livia.’
She froze.
‘A gentleman is seeking an intelligent wife.’ He cocked one eyebrow at her. ‘I know you insist you’re not looking for a husband, but you should think about this fellow, you really should. Isabella and I worry about you being all alone like that.’
‘I’m not alone. I have Orla and Rhoda. And you and Isabella are still my friends, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, but that’s not the same. Don’t you think you should meet this fellow, at least?’
‘No. I do not wish to get married again, Bram.’ She tried to calm down, but the words still came out sharply. ‘Not all marriages are as happy as yours.’
His voice grew gentler. ‘Lots of people are happy together. Isabella and I aren’t the only ones. You’d not need to rush into anything. I have a gift for knowing when people should marry, you know I have, and I feel your time is coming. I’d check for you that this man was suitable before you met him.’
She opened her mouth to protest, but couldn’t. Bram did have a gift for matching people, or sometimes merely judging when the time was ripe for them to seek a spouse. Only last year, he’d pushed Dougal McBride and Mitchell Nash into looking for wives. And they’d found them too, ladies she herself was pleased to call friends.
He seemed to take her silence as an encouragement to continue. ‘You’re drifting along, Livia. You’ve been looking rather sad lately, and I distinctly heard you telling my Isabella that you were rather bored with your life. So maybe it’s time you made some changes.’
Trust Bram to get to the heart of the matter, to sum it up so well. He had a gift for words as well, that man did. He could persuade a statue to buy something in his bazaar.
‘I can’t look for a husband that way, Bram. I just … can’t do it.’
‘Then we’ll say no more about it.’
She peeped sideways at him. Did he mean that? She hoped he did. She changed the subject firmly. ‘You’ve not been looking as cheerful as usual yourself, Bram.’
‘I’m doing fine.’
‘The Bazaar is doing fine, but I hear the ice works broke down again.’
That immediately distracted him from interfering in her life.
He hesitated, then admitted, ‘Isabella says I should abandon it, but I can’t seem to. It’s not a good business, though, and she wants to open a proper silk shop instead of pouring money down that icy drain. Only we daren’t risk the money on a shop, because she’d need extra stock to set it up properly. We can’t do anything until the ice works is … settled.’
He sighed. ‘It’s a new thing in these modern times, making ice, and I maybe got into it before the machinery was properly developed, but isn’t it grand to have ice in the hot weather or when someone has a fever?’
‘I enjoy the hot weather,’ she said defiantly.
As she was walking home, Livia felt desperate. So many of her friends were trying to marry her off and she couldn’t tell them the most important reason of all for refusing: she hadn’t met any gentleman she could take to in that way.
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She blushed to remember how happy she and Francis had been in bed. And then smiled fondly. It had been good and she missed it greatly.
No, she wouldn’t marry again without that special feeling, because their loving had been the saving grace through some rather bad times.
And if that was vulgar and unladylike, well, no one else knew what was really holding her back, did they?
No, she was not at all likely to remarry. You didn’t find that sort of relationship twice in a lifetime.
When Bram had finished talking to Livia, he walked slowly down to the harbour. He had another shipment due in from Singapore soon. The goods his trading partner, Mr Lee, sent were well chosen and most of them sold quickly. No problems there.
But as he walked back, he took a small detour and stopped for a moment to study the ice works from the outside. He couldn’t bear to go inside today, because there might be more bad news.
It wasn’t doing well but if he closed it down, everyone would know he couldn’t afford to keep it going and that it had failed as a business. Then they might look less favourably on the Bazaar as well.
He’d thought about it a lot and had come to the conclusion that prosperity and success were illusions, as well as achievements. It was an especially sensitive illusion when you were a man who had started off poor and then made a modest success of his trading business.
He wasn’t as important as the big merchant families in Fremantle, and never would be, because they had contacts or families in England to help them sell consignments of goods from the colony. That meant they could accept payment in kind as well as in cash.
He had to restrict himself to cash sales and keep his trading mainly to this colony and Singapore. Isabella’s connection to Mr Lee had made a big difference to him when he started up, because that was something others didn’t have. Thanks to her, he’d made his own niche, was selling some goods no one else had. He was proud of that.
Mr Lee’s sister Xiu Mei was Isabella’s business partner and friend, because they’d lived together as closely as sisters for two years. And selling silks to the ladies of the colony was a good business. His wife was a very clever woman.
At the thought of that, he decided to go home and share a pot of tea with Isabella. Things were quiet at the Bazaar at this time of day and his assistant was very capable, as was the lad also working for him.
He smiled as he went into the house. When he was with his wife, nothing ever seemed quite so bad. He might be a former groom married to a lady born and bred, but he loved her so much, he couldn’t even begin to imagine life without her. He would have loved her whatever her background. She was his dearest, darling Isabella.
When she saw him, her face lit up and he instantly felt happier.
‘Darling! I was just thinking about you.’ She studied him, head on one side. ‘You’ve been to the ice works again, from the expression on your face. Oh, Bram, is that horrible place worth it?’
‘I’ll give it another year, and if things don’t start working more efficiently, then I’ll sell it to someone who knows more about machinery than I do.’ There. He’d said it.
She came across to kiss him, her lips lingering on his for a few blissful moments, then she pulled away.
‘That sounds like an excellent plan to me.’ She waved a piece of paper at him. ‘I’ve been rereading the last letter from Xiu Mei and looking at the samples of silks she sent. I’m going to try a few of them next time.’
‘They’re all beautiful.’
‘Yes. She has such a good eye for colours and knows some excellent silk weavers. And her written English gets better all the time, so it was worth her finding another tutor. Only … do you think she’s right? Will her brother soon find himself a wife?’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised. Mr Lee’s well established now and will want an heir. But he won’t find a wife as good as mine.’
‘He won’t be looking for love, but for a woman from a good family, who will improve his status in the Chinese community. I hope that won’t affect his relationship with us.’
‘Why should it? Did his sister give any hints about who he might be considering?’
‘No. Knowing him, he won’t tell anyone until he’s arranged it. That’s how he does things.’ Isabella considered this, head on one side. ‘Perhaps his mother might have some idea about possible brides, though. Bo Jun is as shrewd as he is.’
‘And what about Xiu Mei? Isn’t it about time she married? She must be what, twenty-five now?’
‘Yes. But she won’t marry till her brother’s settled, then I suppose Mr Lee will turn his attention to her. He won’t find her easy to please, though. She and I are very much alike. We have good brains and we like to use them. She won’t want a domineering husband.’
After they’d drunk their tea and played with their children, they left the youngsters with the nursemaid and walked back to the Bazaar together.
On the way they passed a man they both hated: Rory Flynn, who had grown up in the same village as the Deagans in Ireland. They couldn’t do anything about their feelings because Fremantle was too small a place to keep a feud burning fiercely, so they passed him without even a nod and he did the same to them.
‘I wish he’d gone over to live in Sydney, like his cousin did,’ Bram muttered.
‘Or that his business was doing badly and he had to leave the colony,’ Isabella added, as she often did. ‘Who’d have thought there was so much money in keeping cows and providing milk and cream?’
‘He does it well, you have to give him that. Even we buy his milk.’
‘I’d buy elsewhere if I could find someone who keeps things as clean as his wife does.’
‘Ah, we don’t have anything to do with him socially. I don’t know why we let the sight of him annoy us.’
‘Yes, you do. Because of how badly he treated your sister.’
‘Mmm.’ They walked for a few paces in silence, remembering, then Bram said, ‘Well, Ismay’s safe with her husband now on his ship. Fancy a sister of mine liking the sea so much.’
‘Loving Adam so much, you mean. If you were a ship’s captain, I’d not let you go off on your own for months on end. I’d sail with my husband, like she does, even if people do call such ships “hen frigates”.’ She chuckled suddenly. ‘Not that it’s likely that you would take to the sea.’
He smiled at her. ‘I’m a poor sailor, aren’t I? Once the weather gets even slightly rough, I start to feel seasick.’
‘My poor darling.’
‘I even spoilt our honeymoon voyage.’
‘You didn’t. I wasn’t ready to be your wife, didn’t know you well enough then, so it was good to wait a while and get to know one another better.’
‘I didn’t need to wait. I fell in love with you the first time I saw you in Singapore, even before I spoke to you.’ He never tired of telling her that.
She gave him a misty-eyed smile. She never tired of hearing it.
They arrived at the bazaar at the same time as one of Isabella’s favourite customers, and separated without a word as she went to chat to her client.
Bram went to check that everything in the building was going smoothly, not only in the front part, where they sold their new goods, which were mainly imported, but in the middle part where they rented out stalls to other sellers.
He ended up in the rear part from where they sold good quality second-hand goods, mostly furniture and linens. He chatted to the woman in charge of that area, a widow, who was a better worker than her husband had ever been. People had been surprised to see him appoint a woman to be in charge, but he didn’t care. He’d wanted someone he could trust implicitly.
There was also clothing for sale here, the sort more affluent people wore, often the complete wardrobe of someone who’d died. Shabbier clothing was sold on to other sellers. The good clothes nearly always sold quickly to people working hard to better themselves.
He looked down the long wooden building. Every time he saw his bazaar
looking clean and in perfect order, with customers buying, his spirits lifted.
His younger brother Ryan came in just then and grinned cheerfully at him.
That was another blessing, to have a family around you, not only your own children but as many other members of the family as possible. He hoped they’d never move away from Fremantle, always stay nearby.
It was too much to ask, of course, but he did ask it sometimes in his prayers.
‘Well, young Ryan, how was school today?’
His brother shrugged. ‘Not as interesting as selling things.’
‘Nonetheless, you’ll oblige me by working hard and making friends with the right sort of people at that fine school.’
Ryan rolled his eyes. ‘You always say that.’
‘Do I now? Maybe because it’s important.’ He paused, then added, ‘Do you want to help me unpack that new crate of china and work out how best to display it?’
As if he needed to ask.
9
When Fergus and his family went into the steerage class hostel, they were examined in a cursory manner by a doctor, then taken into a large room lined with bunk beds to await boarding the following morning.
Pa sat on the lower bunk and looked round, solemn and silent now.
Ma sat next to him and gave him a nudge. ‘Are you all right?’
He shrugged. ‘We’ve done well in England, when you think how we were both brought up. I feel ungrateful to be abandoning this country now. Am I being foolish?’
‘No. Just grateful for what we’ve had here. But it’s a British colony we’re going to and you’re not abandoning your family, are you? We may only have had one child, but we have three grandchildren now.’
‘We’re getting older, though, and I don’t want to be a burden to Fergus.’
She put one arm round his shoulders. ‘Ah, we’re not too old to make a new life for ourselves in Australia. Time enough to talk of being a burden when we can’t earn our daily bread.’
‘I know that here.’ He touched his head, then put his hand on his chest and left it lying there. ‘But here, in my heart, I can’t help feeling sad at leaving England.’
