The River Charm

by Belinda Murrell

  ‘We are nearly there,’ Mamma encouraged them. Despite her weariness, Charlotte felt a surge of excitement as they clopped along the track.

  The scattered gum trees gave way, opening up to lush, green fields of neatly tilled market gardens, with several farmers hoeing and weeding in fields. In the distance stood a small fishing village of modest red brick and timber homes.

  On their left was a white, crescent-shaped beach. Fishing nets were hanging up to dry in the sun on timber racks, beside a pile of tattered wicker baskets. Two boats were laying hull-side-up on the sand, awaiting repairs. A group of Aborigines – men, women and children dressed in crimson or blue shirts – sat cross-legged underneath a gum tree, around a small campfire.

  A timber plank bridge crossed over a small, sparkling stream leading into the main square. Mamma pulled the horse up outside a brick cottage – a front door in the middle, a shuttered window on either side and a stone flagged verandah.

  ‘This is the village of Double Bay,’ Mamma announced. ‘And this is our new home.’

  Mamma had written to her lawyers, requesting that they find her a modest house to rent cheaply. Sydney Town itself was beyond their means, so the lawyer had suggested this small fishing village on the harbour just over two miles from the centre of town. It was mostly inhabited by fishermen, market gardeners and a handful of Aborigines.

  The carriers had already moved in their heavy furniture from Oldbury, which had been in storage all this time.

  Mamma opened the front door and the children raced in to explore, followed by Samson, his tail wagging with excitement.

  On either side of the front door were two small bedrooms, each with a fireplace. One had Mamma’s big four-poster bed and dressing table, while the other held three narrow beds – one for each of the girls – and a big chest of drawers. There was barely room to squeeze between the beds.

  Charlotte flung open the shutters to let sunlight flood into the room. Through the window she could see the glinting blue harbour, the white sand and the fishing boats.

  ‘My bed is the one near the window,’ said Charlotte, throwing her bonnet and gloves on the quilt to claim it.

  ‘I’m in the middle,’ said Louisa, bouncing up and down on the side of the bed to test the springiness of the mattress.

  ‘So this must be mine,’ replied Emily, setting her carpet­bag down next to the bed beside the fireplace.

  Down the hall was a small parlour that held the round breakfast table and four armchairs grouped around the fireplace. James’s tiny bedroom was next to this.

  At the back of the house was a stone flagged kitchen with a large wood stove and the familiar scrubbed-pine table. This led to the overgrown garden with its broken-down hen coop, weed-infested vegetable beds and sagging washing lines.

  At the very back of the block was the washhouse with its copper and burner, the water closet, the stable and carriage house, shaded by a tall gum tree. Compared to Oldbury, it was modest, but compared to the stockmen’s slab hut at Budgong, it was luxurious.

  It was strange to see the well-loved furniture from Oldbury in these unfamiliar, poky rooms.

  ‘Where’s the rest of the furniture?’ asked Emily, looking around the crowded parlour. ‘Will we keep it in storage until we need it?’

  ‘No, my love,’ Mamma replied, taking off her straw bonnet. ‘I had to sell much of the furniture to pay for the first quarter’s rent on this house. It is lucky the house is small, so we do not need quite so much.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Emily. ‘But not the piano?’

  Mamma stroked Emily’s cheek. ‘I am sorry . . . Unfor­tunately the piano had to go as well. There is no room in the sitting room. Perhaps we can buy a small spinet if we move to a larger house.’

  Emily looked down at the floor, struggling to hide her distress.

  ‘So no more piano practice?’ asked Louisa with approval.

  Mamma stooped and kissed the top of her curls. ‘Not for a little while, poppet, just until we get some money.’

  Mamma stood up and frowned. ‘James, perhaps you would be so kind as to help me unharness the horse and stow the buckboard in the carriage house? Girls, you need to help carry in the bags and trunks.’

  A dreadful thought suddenly crossed Charlotte’s mind. ‘There’s only one stable here, Mamma?’ she asked. ‘Where are we going to keep Ophelia and Clarie? Is there a paddock out the back?’

  Mamma sighed and took Charlotte’s hand. ‘Dearest, I am sorry but we simply cannot afford to keep the horses. I do not know how I am going to feed my children as it is. They are to be sold next week.’

  Charlotte turned away, her face wooden. Ophelia was her horse. She had ridden her, groomed her, fed her and loved her for years. She could not bear to lose her.

  Mamma took Charlotte’s face in her gloved hand and turned it towards her. ‘I know this is difficult for all of us, Charlotte,’ she said. ‘But I need you to be strong. I have not received one penny from the executors for nearly a year. I have debts owing to storekeepers, doctors, lawyers and carriers. I have been consulting my lawyers so I can fight the executors through the courts and get the allowance from the estate to which we are entitled.’

  Charlotte shook her head, her throat thick with unshed tears.

  ‘Mamma, where is your locket?’ asked Emily suddenly. Everyone turned to look. The locket was gone.

  ‘I had to sell that too,’ said Mamma, turning away abruptly.

  ‘But you never took it off,’ said James.

  ‘I had no money for food,’ replied Mamma sternly. ‘Now that buckboard will not unpack itself, so let us get busy, if you please.’

  ‘At least we have each other,’ murmured Emily.

  Mamma paused and nodded, then gathered all her children together in a hug. ‘Everything will be all right,’ she swore fervently. ‘I promise you.’

  After the remoteness of Budgong, everything in Double Bay was exciting and new. There were walks to take along the beach, through the fields and to the surrounding bays and peninsulas. Mamma decided to keep the harness horse and buckboard, as she needed to travel frequently to visit her lawyers’ offices in Sydney to prepare for the legal case.

  She loaned the horse out to the neighbouring fishermen and farmers on occasion, in return for fish and vegetables. The family worked to make a comfortable home, as they had in Budgong – weeding and tilling the garden to grow vegetables and planting flowers around the front steps to make it pretty. James ran errands for some of the local men in return for fish or a bag of potatoes.

  Mamma took them on excursions to Bondi Beach to walk, sketch and collect specimens. The most exciting excursions, though, were into town. The streets were crowded with people, hackney cabs and carriages. There was no money for shopping, but it was fun to look inside the shop windows.

  Their days fell into a regular pattern of chores and schoolwork done at the kitchen table in the morning, then in the afternoon walks or excursions in the buckboard to sketch, collect oysters or mussels from the rocks, or dig for pipis in the sand. Every evening they gathered around the fire in the parlour to draw and talk, and Mamma would tell them stories while she did the mending.

  Mamma seemed to have lost her appetite and ate less and less, becoming thinner and thinner.

  A few weeks after their arrival in Sydney, the children were sitting around the kitchen table. On a tray were numerous pink, cream, light brown and white shells that they had collected from a trip to Bondi the day before. Mamma was helping them to identify the different shells they had found.

  ‘This one is a small conch shell,’ said Mamma, showing them a brown-and-white shell on the palm of her hand. ‘Conch shells can grow up to a foot long. On some Pacific islands, they blow on the conch shell like a horn, especially in times of war. It makes a harsh, powerful noise that is also reputed to frighten away evil spirits.’

&nb
sp; James picked up the conch shell and tried to blow it, but only succeeded in making a rather rude noise. James laughed out loud and repeated the noise even louder. Charlotte tossed her head with impatience and took the shell away.

  ‘These ones are pretty,’ said Louisa, fingering some delicate spotted shells.

  ‘Yes – that one is an Arab cowry shell, while this one is called a milk-spotted cowry,’ Mamma explained. ‘The spots are designed to help camouflage the creature in its habitat.’

  Samson barked to warn them that the postman was delivering the mail.

  ‘James, could you run and fetch the post for me, please?’ Mamma asked with a smile.

  James returned with a number of letters.

  ‘Bills, bills and more bills,’ said Mamma, trying to crack a joke as she flipped through the pile. ‘And more correspondence from the lawyers . . .’

  Mamma used a knife to slit open the letter and began to read. ‘Oh my goodness,’ she cried, her hand to her mouth. Mamma had gone as pale as milk. She swayed on her chair as though she were going to faint.

  ‘What is it, Mamma?’ Charlotte said with alarm.

  ‘It cannot be possible . . .’ Mamma stammered. ‘They cannot really mean it.’

  Emily jumped up and rubbed Mamma’s thin shoulders.

  A terrible feeling of foreboding overcame Charlotte. ‘Mamma, what is it?’

  ‘It is the executors,’ Mamma said, struggling for breath. ‘They have made a claim that I am “not a fit and proper person to be the guardian” of my own children. They recommend that you children be taken away from me.’

  Charlotte exchanged a glance of horror with Emily and James. ‘Why would they say that?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t they know that you are the best, most loving mother in the world?’ demanded Emily.

  Mamma waved the letter in the air. ‘They claim that my conduct is imprudent because I am living separately from my husband, George Bruce Barton,’ she stated in disbelief. ‘They claim that you are not being properly educated, and that I am not providing properly for you.’

  ‘But how could they possibly know how we are being educated?’ demanded Charlotte.

  ‘The executors dare to recommend that you would be much better educated if they were to send you away to a boarding school run by a Mrs Harvey at Liverpool,’ Mamma fumed. ‘She is probably some milksop school mistress who will teach you nothing but a smidgen of piano and how to simper and flirt.’

  ‘Go away to boarding school?’ repeated Emily, stunned.

  ‘They want to appoint a “responsible” guardian who will look to “the benefit and advantages of the children”,’ said Mamma scathingly. ‘Tell me, who on earth would look after the benefits of my children more than I would!’

  Mamma stormed up and down in the kitchen, her skirts swishing. ‘I swear I would scratch someone’s eyes out before I would let them take away my children.’

  Mamma sat down suddenly and lay her head on the table, her eyes closed.

  ‘Mamma, it will be all right,’ Emily soothed. She rose and took off her mother’s lace cap, loosening her tightly pinned hair. The long, black hair, with a thin streak of grey at the temple, tumbled down Mamma’s back. Emily took up a hairbrush from the dresser and began to run it through her mother’s hair.

  When did Mamma get that streak of grey? Charlotte wondered. I don’t remember seeing her with grey hair before. Boarding school? How can they possibly think it would be better for us to be apart from our family and sent to boarding school?

  Charlotte went to the sink and filled the kettle with water. She added some timber kindling to the fire to stoke up the heat and placed the kettle on the hob. ‘Who would like a cup of tea?’ she asked brightly. No one really felt like it, but somehow it made them all feel a little better.

  They sat sipping on their tea around the kitchen table in silence, everyone thinking over the contents of the letter. Eventually Mamma began to speak, her voice taking on the tone she used when she told them stories.

  ‘My mother, Elizabeth, died when I was twenty months old,’ said Mamma. ‘She was only twenty-eight and she died giving birth to my younger sister Jane. According to my father, she was a tiny woman of exquisite beauty. I inherited her height but sadly not her exquis-ite beauty!’

  Mamma laughed and pulled a face of self-mockery. The show of merriment softened the lines and angles, making her eyes bright. She looked youthful again, especially with her hair falling around her face instead of bound in its usual severe bun.

  ‘Mamma, of course you are beautiful,’ Emily cried. ‘You are the most beautiful Mamma in the world!’

  Charlotte thought how sad it would be to lose your mother as a baby. Mamma clasped Emily’s hand.

  ‘My father, Albert Waring, came from a wealthy, landowning family in Kent,’ Mamma continued. ‘The Warings were descended from a Norman knight called William de Warenne, who came to England from France with William the Conqueror in 1066, and he was rewarded for his valour by becoming the first Earl of Surrey.’

  ‘He must have been very brave,’ decided James. ‘I wish I could have seen him fight.’ He jumped up and began swishing an imaginary battle sword over their heads.

  ‘James, let Mamma tell the story,’ Charlotte admonished.

  Mamma took up her work basket and began to sew. ‘My father was the sixth son, but had enough fortune to possess a large house in London, and to live in style,’ she explained. ‘My father amused himself drawing and rearing many pet birds and animals.’

  ‘Just like us,’ said Louisa with a gap-toothed smile.

  ‘Exactly,’ Mamma agreed. ‘When my mother died, she left behind four daughters under the age of nine. Soon afterwards, my father met with an accident, and he found it too much to care for us, so I was reared by an aunt, Mrs Fisher. Eventually my father remarried, so when I was ten I was sent away to a “superior school” in Kent, where I stayed until I was fifteen. My father thought it was important that girls should also have a thorough education, which is quite an unusual notion, even now.’

  Charlotte and Emily nodded. They had heard Mamma’s views on the importance of education for girls many times.

  ‘My father had another two children, a daughter and a son, Thomas Albert – and of course all my father’s property and fortune were to be inherited by my half-brother.’

  Mamma snipped the cotton with her silver scissors.

  ‘The school in Kent had an excellent reputation and I received lessons from the finest masters, including the celebrated landscape artist John Glover.’ Mamma gestured over to the wall, where two of her own landscape paintings were hanging. ‘However, I arrived there at the age of ten, leaving behind my family. I was terribly homesick.

  ‘The discipline, as in most schools, was harsh. Children were regularly beaten, starved and made to stand on stools for hours for the slightest infraction. My dearest friend Eliza died at the age of eleven from consumption caused by poor food and cold dormitories.

  ‘While I believe it is absolutely vital for girls to have an outstanding education, I know what it is like to be torn away from your family and sent away to boarding school, and I would never allow that to happen to you.’

  Mamma gazed at them all in turn. ‘I will do everything it takes to convince the Master-in-Equity that you must stay here with me.’

  Emily, James and Louisa looked up at Mamma, their faces reflecting the trust they had in her power to protect them. Charlotte wished she could have their confidence – she could only feel sick with fear.

  ‘You tell the best stories in the world,’ said Louisa.

  ‘Especially the ones about shipwrecks and cannibals and castaways,’ James added.

  ‘You should write them down, Mamma,’ said Emily. ‘You could make a book of the stories you tell us. That way, other children could enjoy them too.’

  ‘You
could sell the book and make a fortune,’ James said.

  Charlotte felt impatient with her brother and sisters. ‘When would Mamma have time to write a book, James?’ Charlotte asked. ‘Mamma is working day and night as it is to look after us, writing petitions to the court and visiting the lawyers. She hardly has a moment to herself except when we’re asleep.’

  ‘You are right, Charlotte,’ Mamma said, smiling at their enthusiasm. ‘I could write at night-time while you are sleeping. I rarely sleep well at the moment, and it would give me something to do other than rewriting petitions for the lawyers. I will write some stories and see how it progresses.’

  ‘Be sure to put in some stories about the Aborigines near Oldbury,’ Louisa said, clutching her mother’s sleeve. ‘And some about beetles,’ she added.

  ‘Beetles?’ demanded James in disgust. ‘Who would want to read a story about beetles?’

  ‘I would,’ said Louisa, crossing her arms and pouting.

  Everyone laughed.

  ‘Poppet, I will be sure to write a story about beetles, just for you.’

  20

  Unwelcome Visitor

  Outside, the rain drummed down relentlessly, as it had all day. It had been too miserable to go for a walk. The sky was so dark that Charlotte had lit the lamps early, and James had started a fire in the grate. They were all sitting around the cedar breakfast table, working on various pursuits.

  Mamma was writing one of her stories about the shipwreck of the Stirling Castle and the experiences of one of the survivors, Eliza Fraser, living with the Aborigines. There was a growing pile of paper at her left elbow, written in her precise calligraphy. Emily was testing Louisa on her French verbs, while James was building a model of the Stirling Castle from scraps of wood and glue. Charlotte was sketching a bouquet of white daisies and scarlet geraniums from the garden, arranged in a crystal vase.