by Alison Booth
‘No, missus. I learned at the mission.’
‘With squares of paint in a tin box? I’m going to give you my water colours, Mick.’ Now she wondered if there had been something patronising in her attitude to him, the way she’d found white men patronising her.
‘No, missus. We’ll go painting together until the boss comes back. You keep them.’
‘It’s a deal,’ she said, smiling. And perhaps later, after she had left this place, she would be able to work out her own way of representing the pink light flickering from quartz crystals in the rock face.
On the ride back to the homestead, Mick began to talk to her. He’s been liberated by this trip, she thought, as have I. He’d given to her the trip to the gorge and she’d lent him her paints, and together they’d created an experience that neither would ever forget. Yet the sharing was not to stop there, for now – his face more animated than she’d ever before seen – he was telling her about his earlier years. His time at the mission school, what he’d learned there and how much he missed his country when he first went to Adelaide for work.
She didn’t interrupt him but simply interspersed the occasional comment to encourage his unburdening, in the way he listened to her that evening when she had confided to him her feelings of being overwhelmed by the Territory and her realisation that she belonged nowhere. Then she’d felt comfortable with him. Now she realised that she was beginning to feel close to him.
Chapter 31
She Felt Like Giving Him a Good Shove
On her way back from the shower, Sarah saw Mick with Aidan, one of the white stockmen from a muster camp several days’ ride away. Aidan had arrived at the homestead that morning to exchange some horses and collect more stores. Standing on the far side of the stockmen’s quarters, neither man noticed her walking by.
‘How are you, you black bugger?’ Aidan was a short chunky man, with bandy legs and no neck. His egg-shaped head looked as if it might roll off his shoulders at any moment if you gave it a push.
‘Better than you, you skinny white feller,’ Mick said, grinning. ‘You look like you need a good feed.’
‘When are you coming back to work, you lazy bastard? Looks like you’re getting fat lounging round here.’
‘What do you think I’m doing here? It’s work, same as you’re doing when you’re not riding around admiring the anthills.’
‘Don’t look like work to me. Hanging around with a couple of sheilas, a Chinaman and a gammy-leg bastard. Regular tucker you don’t have to cook yourself. Don’t look like a hard life to me.’
Mick laughed. ‘Better get Ah Soy give you a feed. That might sweeten you up a bit.’
When Sarah returned from the shower, Mick was nowhere to be seen. As she passed the kitchen, she heard Aidan talking to Ah Soy inside. Looking through the doorway, she saw the cook at the range stirring the contents of a large pot. Aidan was sitting at the long table, eating as he talked.
When she heard what he was saying, she blushed and hurried on to the residence.
* * *
Once lunch was over and the plates cleared away, Sarah said, ‘Are you riding again this afternoon, Hattie?’
‘Yes.’ Harriet pulled on her riding boots and rapidly laced them up.
‘Where are you off to?’
‘Just to that spot below the rock pools.’ After plucking her hat from one of the pegs on the verandah, Harriet looped the tie around her wrist.
‘I’m too tired to go with you today, Hattie.’
‘That’s fine. You have a good rest.’ Harriet smiled as she twirled her hat. ‘Mick’s coming with me.’
‘Again?’
‘Yes, of course. Henry did say that Mick and Bob should keep an eye on us. Bob will stay here; Mick will come with me.’
‘You’ve been out with him every afternoon since the gorge,’ Sarah said. ‘That’s fourteen days in a row. And you haven’t read to the children for a while.’
‘No. There’ll be plenty of time to do that when Henry gets back.’
‘I see.’
‘Sarah, you’ve been with us every day until today.’
‘Yes, I know. But I need a rest from all that and I want Bella to stay with me.’
‘You mustn’t feel you have to accompany me everywhere. Why shouldn’t I go out, though? Is there anything wrong with that?’
‘Well, you wouldn’t do it in London.’
Harriet laughed. ‘I hardly ever rode in London. And anyway, who’s there to see me here?’
‘Sometimes people come through. Stockmen from other stations. Men looking for work. Ah Soy feeds them, they have a bit of a gossip, and carry on spreading the word after they’ve gone. And the Aborigines are coming and going all the time. It’s not like this place is an island.’
‘Why would anyone care about us?’
‘People talk,’ Sarah said, frowning.
‘So you said. But surely you’re not serious. Who cares what anyone says? I’m only sketching.’
‘Mick’s black, Harriet.’ Sarah saw Ah Soy appear at the doorway into the kitchen. He seemed puzzled. After a quick look he withdrew, and a second later she saw him hurrying towards the vegetable patch, well beyond earshot.
‘You think I haven’t noticed, Sarah?’
‘White women and black men don’t mix.’ Sarah felt her face flush and she began to drum her fingers on the tabletop.
‘But white men and black women are allowed to, is that what you’re pointing out?’
‘Think rationally, Hattie. We have to fit in here. We can’t go upsetting people.’
‘But we haven’t upset anyone.’
‘Aidan said something this morning. I overheard him talking to Ah Soy.’
‘And what did he say, this fine upstanding pillar of Territory society who has an Aboriginal mistress, did you know?’
‘No need to be sarcastic. He said you and Mick were becoming very friendly.’ His words had been cruder than that but Sarah wasn’t planning to repeat them.
‘And is there something wrong with that?’ Harriet shook her head so vigorously that her hairpins became dislodged and her hair cascaded over her shoulders. Irritably she twisted her hair around the fingers of one hand, swept it on to the top of her head and secured the knot firmly with hairpins.
‘No, there’s nothing wrong with that in principle. It was the way he said it. The innuendo.’
‘To Ah Soy? That man never gossips.’
‘That’s true. You can tell Ah Soy anything and he won’t repeat it. But the point is, if Aidan is talking about you to anyone he meets, there’ll be some who’ll listen.’
‘What was he saying?’
‘I don’t want to repeat it. Black velvet, that sort of thing.’
Harriet laughed in a sarcastic sort of way. ‘Have you become so conventional, Sarah, that you care what people say?’
‘I’m the wife of the acting manager and I have responsibilities while Henry’s away.’ Sarah wondered if she should mention what else Aidan had told Ah Soy, that Brady had become obsessed by Harriet and talked about her all the time. She looked just like Brady’s missus, Aidan had said, and his missus had walked out on him with a baby that wasn’t his.
‘I see,’ Harriet said. ‘You have responsibilities. Is this what Henry has done to you? Made you so hidebound?’
‘How dare you say that about my husband.’ Sarah’s voice shifted half an octave higher and her neck and face began to feel even hotter. ‘Henry’s liberated me not shackled me.’
‘Liberated you, is that what you call it? You traipsed off to the colonies because that’s what Henry wanted, but not where you wanted to go. Don’t think I didn’t notice that, Sarah. Then, as if New South Wales wasn’t far enough, he dragged you up here to this godforsaken place. Call that liberty? What
have you ever chosen for yourself?’
‘I chose my husband.’ Sarah coughed, and with a shaking hand poured some water from the jug on the table into her glass. She took a sip before continuing, ‘And I chose to come to Dimbulah Downs. Henry would never have taken this position if I hadn’t more or less insisted on it.’ She didn’t care that she was exaggerating; she had to protect herself somehow.
‘But is this really what you want? To be pregnant here, miles away from anywhere remotely civilised, and with Henry away? There’s not even a piano to bring you some comfort. You can do better than this, Sarah.’ Harriet unhooked her riding crop from the peg and impatiently tapped her leg with the handle.
‘But you’ve said to me several times that the Aborigines have their own civilisation. We’re learning from Bella, learning from Mick, that’s what you’ve said.’
‘I was thinking of doctors and midwives, Sarah. That’s what you’re missing.’
‘How do you think the Aboriginal women manage to have their babies? And are you really so blind to the beauty of this place? You of all people, the artist of the family. Or do you only want to paint tame little paintings of London streets?’
At this moment Sarah saw Mick leading horses from the stables. There were just two and they were already saddled.
Harriet said, ‘Did you tell Mick that you and Bella aren’t riding today?’
‘Yes.’
‘I see. So you knew I’d be going out anyway.’
‘I’d hoped to get you to change your mind.’
‘You know how stubborn I am.’ Harriet’s voice was sharp. ‘There’s no point trying to get me to do something merely because Aidan and his ilk might disapprove. I have to be true to myself and I’m choosing friendship with Mick.’ There was a moment’s silence before Harriet continued, her voice softer now. ‘Dear Sarah, I’m so sorry we quarrelled. But I have to be free to make up my own mind, don’t you see? I can’t live out my days constrained by silly customs.’
‘At least take your revolver. To please Henry and me.’
‘What on earth for?’ Harriet said. ‘Mick will have his.’ She bent to kiss Sarah before picking up her painting satchel.
* * *
Observing Harriet’s nonchalance as she walked across the home paddock, Sarah envied her independence. Her own heart was racing still, and she had yet to see Aidan before she could have a rest. After retrieving the store keys from the drawer at the back of Henry’s desk, she hurried past the kitchen block. Almost certainly Aidan would have seen Harriet riding off with Mick. Sarah braced her shoulders as she hurried to the storeroom.
Aidan had tethered his team of horses close by. She unlocked the door and he followed her in. Methodically they worked through Aidan’s list and she registered what was taken out in the accounts book. Flour, sugar, tins of jam, canned vegetables, Worcester sauce, tea, tobacco. While she was locking the door again, Aidan began loading the horses. With his back turned to her, he said, ‘Glad you’re stayin’ up here, missus.’
‘We’re not.’
‘No? Maybe it’s just the boss stayin’ then. You goin’ down south again then?’
She felt cornered; she needed to get some information without giving anything away. She said, her voice quavering slightly, ‘We’re still discussing our future.’
‘Is that so? Heard somethin’ different.’
‘Fancy that. From whom, may I ask?’
‘One of them new ringers.’
She had no idea who he meant and didn’t want to probe further. He was a troublemaker and she would tell him nothing. But his words had got into her head like bacteria into a wound that would soon begin to fester. ‘We’ll let you know when we’ve made a decision.’
When he turned to face her, she saw that he was grinning and wondered what he found so funny. Perhaps it was the deliberately remote way in which she’d spoken, or maybe he was pleased that she’d risen to his taunt. She felt like giving his egg-shaped head a good shove to see if it might roll off his shoulders but instead said, ‘Good day, Aidan. I do hope you have a pleasant ride back to your camp.’
She sat in one of the planter’s chairs on the verandah and watched the drifting plumes of dust thrown up by Aidan’s train of horses as he rode south. Surely Henry wouldn’t have tricked her, promising they’d come up north for only six months but planning to stay for ever. He knew she didn’t want to stay. He knew she was far from the people and things she loved, the music that she was missing. She had to have faith in him.
Yet maybe Aidan was right, and Henry had decided to stay here without telling her. She had little idea of what to do if that were the case. She’d have to get away but she didn’t really want to go back to England. With Father gone and Harriet out here, it wouldn’t be the same place that she’d left three years ago. And Harriet might not even go back to England. At present she felt she couldn’t predict what Harriet might do from one minute to the next.
She began to wish she’d told Henry about her pregnancy. The news would surely have made him see sense. Or maybe instead he’d have some hare-brained scheme about sending the baby off to be educated at a boarding school, just as he had been. Never was any child of hers going to be raised like that. Never, never, never.
Her thoughts in a turmoil, she went into her bedroom. The sun had moved off the roof and a light breeze had arisen, cooling the room. She stretched out on the bed and picked up a book. Usually Dickens enthralled her but today she couldn’t concentrate. She shut her eyes and in a few minutes was asleep.
Chapter 32
‘From the Land They Came,
and to It They Returned’
Harriet wondered if she had been too harsh on Sarah. Almost certainly she had been, but she’d been so shocked by her sister’s comments – her accusation – that she’d lashed out without thinking. Black velvet, that was how men like Aidan summarised sexual arrangements between white men and black women. Black velvet, said with a snicker and a wink or a nudge.
Anyway, she didn’t care what people thought. There were so few folk around that those who were here had to make up fantasies about one another, that was all. She would try to forget what had been said.
She walked towards the waiting horses and Mick. He removed his hat as she approached and smiled. Above him, the great dome of sky looked almost solid. She was lucky not just to be alive, but to be alive here and now, this very instant, under an enamelled blue sky.
Mick was changing the way she viewed the landscape, she thought later as they rode side by side alongside the river. Hot and inhospitable it might sometimes seem, but occasionally she felt a glimmering of understanding of how the Aborigines viewed their country.
Yesterday Mick had said it should be left as each generation found it. From the land they came, and to it they returned. They had a duty of care for the country.
She liked that philosophy. She had much more to learn from Mick.
* * *
‘I’d like to draw you, Mick,’ Harriet said late that afternoon when they were sitting by a waterfall. ‘Do you mind?’
Judging from his broad smile and the alacrity with which he removed his hat, she guessed he was delighted with this suggestion. Her desire to sketch him was merely an artistic impulse, she told herself, something she’d thought of doing many times. His head was noble, the black skin was luminous. But perhaps she was also looking for an excuse to stare at him. If she didn’t understand his character, even a little bit, she wouldn’t be able to do justice to that fine head. Did she need to stare at him to understand him? Probably not, she thought, and reddened.
‘Keep very still,’ she said quickly, not wanting her blushes to be noticed. ‘Don’t look my way, look at the river.’ He was more than a friend: the impossible was happening.
Quickly she began to sketch his head. He sat so still that he seemed almost a p
art of the landscape. She would need to make a number of studies, in smudged charcoal, of the way the light reflected from his dark skin. Later, if they were good, she would work these up into a painting.
When she’d finished, she showed him the sketches. He made no comment unless you counted that approving nod of the head.
Her regard for Mick was confusing her, she thought, turning away to pack her materials in the satchel. After drawing his face, she knew its every plane but that didn’t prevent her from wanting to look at him again and again. She wondered how long she had successfully repressed her true feelings. Perhaps not long. She guessed that was because Mick was not of her kind. She had let conformity dominate emotion. Although she’d accused Sarah of being conventional, she hadn’t applied the same standard to herself. Now she found it astonishing that the daughter of James Cameron could be so easily influenced by society’s opinions about the roles of white women and black men.
Aidan was the embodiment of those views. White men like Aidan had no trouble befriending black women: people simply looked the other way. The reverse was not the case. Now she better understood her own feelings, she could decide whether or not she cared what society thought.
And she cared nothing.
Yet she doubted if she would ever be able to make a choice beyond this, and she had no idea of what Mick’s feelings for her were. He had a duty of care for her because Henry was away, and perhaps that was all. Then she remembered their conversations in the evenings by the stock rail. He was fond of her, that was clear, but probably he too would be confused if he felt any more than that.
