The Opal Dragonfly

by Julian Leatherdale

  The Finch girls were in excellent spirits. They complimented Isobel on her new ribbons and gloves, all ordered from Madame Ponder’s in honour of the first day of the new month. Isobel felt overjoyed to fall so easily back into the company of her old friends.

  ‘Is it true you are to come out at Mr Cooper’s fancy-dress ball next Tuesday?’ asked Beatrice.

  ‘Yes,’ said Isobel. ‘Mrs C. has kindly agreed to introduce me to her guests.’

  ‘Well, who has all the luck?’ exclaimed Florence. ‘Mr Cooper’s fancy balls are a highlight of the season. No expense spared. And you will meet such interesting people!’

  Isobel was sensitive to any note of mockery in Florence’s voice; it was more than likely that the Finches did not have a high opinion of the rich emancipist and his family. But Florence smiled sweetly with no hint of snobbery. ‘I must confess to being quite jealous.’

  Isobel felt a heady bout of joy as their carriage raced over the crest of the ridge. Laid out before her was the panorama of South Head, the lovely narrow peninsula that bent like a crooked finger to beckon ships into the world’s largest and most beautiful harbour. Looking across the low heathland and sparse forest of eucalypts, native oaks and myrtles, Isobel could see two golden arcs of sand: the long crescent of beach at Watsons Bay and the smaller scoop further south of Camp Cove. Across the mouth of the great harbour, the magnificent sandstone bluff of North Head floated in a blue haze.

  There was only a smattering of dwellings on the peninsula: cottages for the Portuguese pilots who boarded every vessel entering the port; the buildings and flagstaff of the signal station that sent news back to Observatory Hill; and a handful of stately marine villas that took advantage of the views. At the far end of Watsons Bay a long jetty jutted into the harbour, a drop-off and collection point for pleasure steamers. Close by stood the Marine Hotel where they were to have lunch. As their coach drew closer, Isobel could see a group of men dressed in white breeches and blue frock coats, milling about near the beach. Isobel felt her pulse quicken and smiled at her own habitual weakness for men in uniform.

  Lunch was a raucous affair consisting of a delicious collation of vegetable and fish curries with side dishes of chutney and sambol, all prepared by the black Ceylonese cook, Samuel. The meal was accompanied by much laughter, wine and good-natured flirting, which continued as the party of young men and women spilled out onto the beach. One of the officer’s stewards came out after them with a champagne bottle and several glasses. A round of toasts followed. Isobel did not conceal her pleasure at the attentiveness of the young naval men who demanded to be introduced properly.

  ‘Has Miss Macleod ever entertained the prospect of becoming a Royal Navy officer’s bride?’ asked Lieutenant Matthews, proffering a second glass of fizz. Isobel laughed but did not answer his question. Some of these men were only six years her senior and yet they were already commissioned officers who had seen service in India and China. Isobel was jealous.

  ‘Miss Macleod does not look favourably on the Royal Navy. Her father is a Major and a veteran of the Peninsular War,’ teased Beatrice Finch. ‘She is much more at home in a barracks than a barquentine.’

  ‘That is simply untrue,’ protested Isobel light-heartedly, anxious to steer clear of any discussion of her father; the shame of the duel hung like a shadow in her mind. ‘My brother William served on HMS Iris off West Africa. No one could be more proud than I.’

  ‘Is he still in Her Majesty’s navy?’ asked Lieutenant Matthews.

  ‘He grew tired of weevils and seasickness and cashed in his commission for the richer fields of commerce,’ intervened Emma Bradley. ‘He is in Madras, I’m told. Seeking his fortune. Is that right, Izzie?’

  Isobel nodded, a little alarmed how quickly news travelled in their small circle. Two more rounds of fizz were downed and the party broke up into smaller groups. Isobel joined Florence, Emma and Beatrice with Lieutenants Dunnock, Matthews and Brown. They strolled up an inviting green sward fringed by she-oaks and came out onto a plain strewn with native flowers and sweet-smelling clover. In the distance a freshwater lagoon sparkled between the branches of myrtle trees on its banks. The lagoon was busy with flocks of wild ducks alighting on its bright surface, wings outspread, or diving underwater for food.

  To their right loomed the intimidating cliffs of The Gap. Isobel had heard of this place but this was the first time she had seen it for herself. She was awed by its dramatic sandstone, banded honey-brown and caramel, that had been hammered for millennia by the sea into giant shards and boulders. From the cliff top she looked down onto turquoise waters crashing over slabs of tessellated basalt. She breathed in the salt spray and ozone from each monstrous wave that heaved itself against this raw, serrated edge of the continent. One could easily imagine God (or perhaps one of Ballandella’s spirit warriors) wielding a giant axe to crack this peninsula open and allow the sea to tear away at its innards. As far as the eye could see, the ceaseless ocean stretched to the horizon, changing colour from foam-flecked aquamarine to its bleak and lovely grey-green depths.

  The party clambered over rocks and headed towards Camp Cove. Some local fishermen had drawn their boats up on the beach and were cooking freshly caught fish over a fire. The aroma made Isobel hungry again even after their substantial lunch. Lieutenant Matthews larked about on the sand, offering to pay the men for a piece of fish for ‘the famished young lady’ despite Isobel’s protestations.

  As she attempted to cross one of the rock platforms near a tidal pool, Isobel slipped and her horrid muslin petticoat snagged in a crack, anchoring her tight. She would have to tear it to come free. Her ‘distress’ elicited swift gallantry from all three officers, who ran to her aid with penknives drawn. Lieutenant Brown was the swiftest. ‘Command and I shall obey!’ He knelt before Isobel to perform the surgery and then gallantly withdrew.

  Poor Isobel. As soon as she began to walk across the sand, her petticoat, already badly torn, came apart and fell to her ankles. She almost toppled over as she caught her heel in the crumpled hemline. The shrieks of seagulls overhead sounded like mocking laughter. Mercifully, Emma snatched up the damaged petticoat and she and Isobel dug a quick hole in the sand and buried it.

  Lieutenants Brown and Matthews were preoccupied, running races along the beach to compete for Isobel’s favour. Meanwhile Isobel and the other young women took turns to spy on North Head through Lieutenant Dunnock’s spy-glass. Dunnock brandished a small flask of rum and offered it to Beatrice, entreating her to sit beside him. While Isobel had enjoyed the lunch and was flattered by male attention, she was starting to tire of all this banter and horseplay. Perhaps she had drunk too much fizz. Her head ached.

  And then behind her there erupted a chorus of laughter. Not seagulls this time. She turned to see Lieutenant Brown sashaying up the beach with her ruined petticoat draped around his waist; he must have spied them burying it. If the truth be told she was amused at this charade, but she blushed even so. They were all fine fellows, these naval officers, with their gallantry and silly antics, but she suspected this was all no more than a game. Should she be annoyed or upset? She tried not to be either. What harm was there in a little teasing?

  As Lieutenant Brown trotted up, he stepped clumsily out of the petticoat and handed it over. ‘I hope you are not offended, dear lady!’

  Lieutenant Matthews, rather flushed in the face from drink, was close behind and cried out so that everyone within earshot could hear. ‘do not fear. Miss Macleod is quite the devotee of swapping sex!’

  There was another raucous explosion of laughter from the whole party. Isobel’s soul withered. How did Lieutenant Matthews, a visiting naval officer whose ship had been in port for only a week, know of her disgrace? Either the Finches or Bradleys—or both—had gossiped about Isobel in front of these men. Once fallen, forever socially dead. That was the common wisdom.

  Thank God neither Grace nor Anna were present. Isobel lowered her face to hide her shame. She refused to give anyone th
e satisfaction of seeing how hurt she felt. When she looked up again she saw a conspiratorial trio of Finch and Bradley girls, barely able to conceal their mocking grins, studying her. Isobel met their curious scrutiny with a cold stare. She felt deeply betrayed and utterly alone. Even her so-called friends would not spare her the lash of public humiliation.

  It was unfair. Grossly unfair. What have I done that was so terrible? she argued with herself. Why did she deserve to be treated with such contempt? It seemed to Isobel that her crime of impersonating a man had become more scandalous than the fact of two gentlemen shooting at each other in a swamp. Her father had once described to Isobel the breathtaking sight of a giant swarm of wild budgerigars in their tens of thousands, a bright green whirlwind of flashing wings, swooping above the spinifex near the darling River. ‘This cloud of birds moved as if with the will of a single creature,’ the Major told her, ‘a vast multitude acting as one.’ Isobel was beginning to think human society showed the same flocking instincts when it came to gossip, swooping in mindless unison on whatever juicy morsels of scandal came its way.

  Whatever their motivation, her friends had betrayed her. In exchange for Isobel’s desperate act of love intended to save her father’s life, she had traded away what she held most dear: her reputation, her closest friends and her faith in the essential goodness of others.

  Chapter 17

  SINKING

  That night Isobel had a bad dream.

  In the wee hours, she was woken by a slight tremor. She felt it at first as no more than a jiggling of her bed so that the four posts swayed a little and creaked. The jiggling grew more insistent accompanied by a tinkling as the jug and basin on her washstand jostled against each other. She sat up upright in bed then and looked out the window to see if a storm was coming. But there was no sign of rain or lightning.

  Without warning, the house gave a shudder from roof to basement and emitted a loud groan. What in the name of God was happening? The groan kept growing louder and deeper. Isobel felt the house lurch and her bedroom pitched sideways—slowly at first, like the deck of a ship in a high sea. Her stomach lurched too as she watched the ceiling roll over her head, its plaster rose tilting off-centre and its lamp swinging askew.

  Isobel uttered a sob and clung to the bedpost. Against the windows she heard the patter of raindrops and saw silver shadows coursing down the wall opposite. Outside, a storm had now arrived in full force. The darkness all about her was transformed with each lightning burst to blinding whiteness, and she could hear the other furniture in her bedroom begin to move.

  The majolica jug and basin hurtled from the washstand and exploded against the wall close by Isobel’s head. The stand itself then tipped over with a crash and the cheval glass followed suit. The wardrobe took off next, squealing as it juddered down the tilted floor, caroming off her chest of drawers and slamming into the corner of the room, doors flung open in total surrender. Last of all, Isobel’s four-poster bed lost its footing and began to slither across the floorboards, rucking the rug up under its castors as it slid. With a deafening crack it careered into the mantel, its canopy collapsing on Isobel like a broken mast.

  The room continued to roll drunkenly. The house protested this absurdity with its own screams of splintering wood and rending brick, underscored by explosive volleys of heavy objects falling and smashing. ‘Save me!’ Isobel shouted, her voice puny against the storm. At her windows, the gale hurled all the windblown litter it could gather up in fistfuls of debris. Panes shattered and the wind came rushing in, screeching and clawing at Isobel’s hair and face as she cowered on her bed.

  The whole house was wallowing dangerously now, accompanied by calamitous noises in every room. downstairs, the piano and hall clock tumbled to their deaths with a chaotic jangle. The dining table lumbered towards the doorway, crushing chairs in its path, and dragging the Chinese carpet, the chiffonier and the china cabinet in its wake. In the study, the Major’s desk charged bull-like at the fireplace. The cabinets and bookshelves disgorged their contents. So many beautiful, rare and delicate things obliterated in the blink of an eye.

  Like a ship keeled over for careening, the house leaned at such an angle that the light in her room was splayed against the ceiling and the wrack of the room’s contents piled up against the walls. Isobel’s thoughts mirrored the chaos around her. Was this the End of days? Or was it a singular punishment for Isobel and her family alone, Rosemount razed by an earthquake or some other cataclysm?

  And then the house’s subsidence suddenly stopped and the racket of the gale died away. In this merciful silence, Isobel could hear her own breathing, short and ragged, like the panting of a terrified animal. She had never known terror like this before in all her life, except perhaps the sense of self-annihilation when her mother had died and all meaning had vanished from the world. Or when she had watched her papa face death on a duelling ground.

  The lull was only brief, a quiet reprieve before the even more unimaginable horror to come. As the storm resumed its fury overhead, Isobel felt the ground begin to shake beneath her feet, joggling the house and all its trinkets like dice in a box. Then there came a deep rumbling, a tremendous sound, drowning out even the cacophony of the storm. Isobel struggled up from the wreckage of her bed and raised her head above the windowsill.

  She saw a wall of water advancing on the house. A giant grey-green wave.

  She closed her eyes. ‘Forgive me my sins,’ she prayed and awaited certain death.

  The wave wiped away all the splendours of the estate in an instant: the forest, the gardens, the orchards and ponds. It broke on Rosemount Hall with such force that her ceilings buckled and floorboards sprang from their beams. Already listed over, the house now began to sink in earnest as seawater gushed in at every window and doorway, cascading into the cellars and filling up the ground floor.

  Finding that by some miracle she had not been killed in the first onslaught, Isobel decided to save her own life. She could hear seawater rising rapidly, grinding up the broken treasures of Rosemount like gravel in a slurry. Where could she go?

  There was only one choice.

  Clambering down the floor of her bedroom in the near-darkness, Isobel found her way to the wardrobe lying on its back. Thankfully, none of the drawers had spilled open. She slid out the bottom drawer and, from beneath layers of old fabric, extracted a small tin box. Groping desperately through its contents, at last she found what she was looking for.

  A key. A tiny brass key that promised her salvation.

  And then it caught her eye, half-buried in this miscellany of coins, bracelets, necklaces and curios: the opal dragonfly. It glinted at her, challenging her to save it, her mother’s gift. She scooped it up and put it in the pocket of her bedjacket as she turned to go.

  With her bedroom door torn off its hinges, it was easy for Isobel to climb out onto the mezzanine where she heard the furious rush and gurgle of water as the saloon filled up like a giant bathtub. When she looked down, she could see the spiral staircase was more than half submerged. Holding fast to the cedar railing, Isobel pulled herself to the far side of the mezzanine and found the entrance to the servants’ backstairs. She ducked her head, passing through this low portal, and mounted a short flight of stairs to her left. Here, she found a locked door that led to Rosemount’s dome and rooftop, access for the servants tasked with keeping the dome and skylights cleaned. Isobel had discovered this secret passage as a child and made it her mission to ‘borrow’ one of the housekeeper’s keys; it had been tricky (it involved bribing a maidservant with one of her jade hair combs) but it had been worth it.

  The house lurched again and threw Isobel against the wall of the stairwell; it was only luck that saved her from dropping the key. She peered over her shoulder and saw dark green water lapping at the bottom of the stairs. She heard flotsam banging against the saloon walls and there were more loud pops and crashes as water poured into the upstairs rooms.

  ‘Go, go, go,’ Isobel exhorted herself
as she unlocked the door and began to climb. The narrow stairwell curved steeply, winding upwards to the topmost floor of the house under the roofline. Isobel shouldered open the rusted door at the head of the stairs and tumbled out onto the rooftop courtyard surrounding the dome. As far as the eye could see there stretched water, black-green and fathomless, and, above her, an unbroken fogbound sky suffused with the melancholy glow of the moon.

  Isobel was alive—for now. But she was utterly alone.

  Isobel woke from the nightmare, bathed in sweat. Her room was stiflingly hot and close. Outside her window, a waxing gibbous moon hung in a clear sky. There was no sound of wind or rain. Her dream had been so vivid and terrifying, blood still fizzed in her ears and she felt fear pounding at the cage of her chest.

  The house was silent.

  There was no doubt in Isobel’s mind that this was one of the dreams her mother had spoken of before she died. ‘I have such strange dreams. Terrible dreams, some of them. Unimaginable…They show me…I do not understand what they show me.’

  Since Winnie’s death, Isobel had done just as she had promised: kept the opal dragonfly, her secret inheritance, hidden away. This had been the cause of bitter arguments and heartache when the brooch—Father’s love token to his wife—could not be found among her belongings. Grace was distraught and remained convinced that it had been stolen. ‘Why would Mother lose such a beautiful thing? I simply don’t believe it!’ she shouted when her sisters tried to calm her. She had made no secret of her fond hopes for inheriting the brooch (jewellery, after all, was Grace’s great passion) and felt betrayed that somehow this gorgeous object had slipped through her fingers. When Grace directly accused Isobel of being a thief, she had flatly denied any knowledge of the dragonfly’s whereabouts. But she knew Grace did not believe her. In the habit of blaming Isobel for most of the disappointments in her life, Grace added the missing brooch as another betrayal to this list.