by Jean Plaidy
She threw aside her mosquito net, and got out of bed. This was her own room, right at the top of the house where the nurseries were. From her window she could see the dazzling sea, and cockatoos and parakeets, white and so brilliantly coloured that it was sheer pleasure to watch them. She stood there, watching them now, and forgot her dream in her desire to fly as they could. She spread out her arms and swooped about the room, uttering cries of delight, until the exertion made her so hot that she remembered the boys in the next room. In a moment she would have them running in, swooping about her room crying: “I’m a cockatoo! I can fly fastest!” They always imitated her; they were so very young. James was eight, Martin six and a half, and little Edward just four. She felt superior in wisdom; ten was so very much older than even James, and she had heard Margery say that girls grow up quicker than boys.
She sat down on her bed, swinging her legs to and fro, wondering what she would do today. It must be a special day because she had dreamed it was Christmas. No day of course could be like Christmas Day, but it could be made exciting. But how?
She was tall for her age, rather thin, with blue-green eyes and a little more red in her hair than Carolan had had at her age; she had a quiet introspective air, reminiscent of her father, and her mouth was like his too. She drove the entire household to distraction with her capacity for asking questions. Where? Why? What…? Almost every sentence she spoke began like that. She would sit quietly watching people, seeing behind them the background of all they had told her over a number of years, all skilfully fitted together by herself until it made a complete picture. At some time they had all felt a little uncomfortable before the candid scrutiny of those calm blue-green eyes. She would pull them up sharply over any small divergence from a previous story.
“Oh, but before, you said …” It was disconcerting. But they loved her; she was the favourite of all the children, although James was the eldest son, and Martin and Edward were boys, and people wanted boys. She knew though, by the way Mamma looked at her and Papa looked at her, and the way Margery said: “Now, what do you want in my kitchen?” that they loved her best of all.
It was good to be loved; it gave one such a sense of happy security. Papa took her out to the stations with him sometimes; she would ride beside him in her neat outfit, and when they met people, who always had something to say to her, Papa got quite pink as though he liked very much hearing them say what a fine girl she was becoming.
She had a less clear picture of Papa than of anyone. She supposed that was because he was so important.
“Your father is a very busy man!”
“Your father is a very clever man!” How often had she heard that. But she didn’t know things about him as she did about Margery and Miss Kelly and Poll and Wando. He was just Papa, a very clever man and a very busy man, who went pink when people stopped to talk to her. Conversation with him was not always satisfactory; he would not be lured into disclosures. Mamma could be lured more easily than he could.
“Papa, do you wish I were a boy?”
“No.”
“But don’t you want boys?”
“Why … yes.”
“The eldest is always supposed to be a boy. Why did you have me a girl?”
“You cannot choose these matters, Katharine.”
“Why not, Papa?”
“Because they are arranged for us.”
“Who arranges them?”
“Does not Miss Kelly teach you to read your Bible?”
“Yes, Papa, but there is nothing about arranging there. Do you have to pray hard if you want a first-born boy?”
“Yes.”
“Then didn’t you pray?”
Her questions were relentless, and Papa always, sooner or later, took the grownup way out.
“Little girls should not ask so many questions.”
“Oh… but Papa, didn’t you pray? I should have thought God ought to have answered your prayers. I think it mean of Him not to have made me a boy if you wanted a boy.”
“Hush, Katharine!”
“Why must I hush?”
“Because it is unsuitable for you to talk in this way.”
“Of first-borns and God?”
“Yes.”
“But in the Bible there is a lot about first-borns and God. God killed all the first-borns.
“Oh, Papa, suppose He killed all the first-borns in Sydney! That would be me … oh, but it wouldn’t, because it would be the first-born boys. That would be James.”
“Now look here, nobody is going to kill any first-borns in Sydney.”
“But how do you know, Papa?”
“Because I do.”
“He told you? Oh, but Papa, if He told you that, couldn’t you have asked Him why He didn’t make your first-born a boy?”
“We will drop this ridiculous subject.”
No. you could not talk to Papa. There were lots of things she wanted to say to him. She almost said on that occasion: “Papa, perhaps it is something to do with your First Wife.” But she dared not; there was something about Papa which could be very forbidding. But she knew there was a First Wife. She had heard Margery talking to Miss Kelly about it, talking in whispers in the way grownups do talk about a shocking subject, even when they do not know there is someone listening who should not hear.
Margery whispered: “It fair gives me the creeps to go up to that first floor.”
“That was where it happened, was it?” whispered back Miss Kelly.
“That was where it happened. And him and her …” The whispers were so low-pitched that it was impossible to hear from outside the kitchen door. Him and her? Who? Papa and Mamma, or Papa and the First Wife?
“Positive of it!” said Margery.
“You only have to work it out. Miss Katharine will tell you that.”
She herself tell them? How could she, when she did not know!
“Not,” said Margery, ‘that I blame them… him or her!”
Blame whom? Papa and Mamma? Of Papa and the First Wife?
Exciting! Fascinating! Not that she thought much about it, for you cannot go on being excited about something that consistently remains a mystery. It was only when some overheard word came to her ears, or she was oppressed by the silence of the first floor where the guest rooms were, that she thought that the discovery of the secret would be the most exciting thing that could happen. At other times the thought of the Blue Mountains excited her far more.
Wando had told her about the Blue Mountains. Wando was very, very dark, with a wrinkled face and black eyes and hair and a chocolate brown body. He had fascinating feet with stubbed and broken toes; and he worked for Papa and went out with him and the men when they were going to make a journey. He called Katherine “Missy Kat’, which made her laugh so much every time she heard it, that she enjoyed going to the little hut where he lived, almost more than anything else. She liked Wando, and he liked Missy Kat. He wore a pair of trousers that were too shoe for him, and a coloured shirt because he was a Christian;” when he was alone in the hut he discarded the shirt and trousers and wore a bit of dirty rag round his middle. Katharine agreed with him that it was a good idea to discard the discomforts of Christianity when there was no one to see you. He fascinated her; he was very, very old, and, she believed, sad because he was remembering the days before the white men came to his country. Papa had told her about that, about Governor Phillip’s sailing into Botany Bay with a transport of convicts. Papa thought it an exciting story; he often tried to tell her about it. and she would pretend that she thought it exciting too. because it was pleasant to see clever Papa looking rather like Martin telling Edward the story of Dick Whittington. He talked of pioneers and the responsibility of being a daughter of a new and growing country.
“But I thought I was your daughter. Papa.”
“You are. but you are also a daughter of this great country.” Papa used to tell of the arrival of the first fleet, and the black men shouting “Warawara!” at them as they approached. Sh
e always meant to ask Wando if he were there, but she never remembered to; she was always more interested in the things he had to tell in his funny English. He had been a mighty hunter in his youth, and it was only now that he was an old man and the white men had come to his country, disturbing its ways, that he was content to live in a hut and accompany parties on expeditions into the hitherto unexplored bush. They were wonderful stories he had to tell of the days before the white men came. Katharine could catch at the excitement of the hunt. Wando had hunted with a spear, stalking the kangaroo, pitting his man’s cunning against the timidity of the creature and its keen sense of smell. Wando, in sentences of one or two words, called up the thrill of the hunt. Katharine could feel his creeping closer to his prey, his body smeared with clay to hold in the thrill of it. She could rejoice when the kangaroo was slung across Wando’s shoulder. You cooked kangaroo in his skin, Wando told her, because it kept in all the juices of the meat.
“Good! Missy Kat. Good!” he would say. smacking his lips; and his eyes would look back and back to those days before the white men came. She asked him, every time she saw him, how he had lost the two toes of his right foot. He could not remember, but when she asked he would look back and back and remember other things. Katharine liked to hear how one of his wives had fallen from a tree which she had climbed after wild honey, and had died. He had had four wives, and this matter of wives was baffling. Wando talked easily of them as though a man could have as many of them as he could get, and yet because Papa had had a First Wife, Margery and Miss Kelly whispered together, and there was mystery on the first floor.
It was Wando who told her about the Blue Mountains. Papa had pointed them out to her when she was quite a little girl.
“Why do you call them blue? They are not blue!” Papa did not know. Papa was so clever that he only knew things which it was important for him to know. There was nothing exciting for Papa about the Blue Mountains; they were just mountains which hemmed him in. Beyond them there might be China. That was how Papa saw them; but to Katharine the most important thing about them was that they were blue. She discovered why they were blue; it was that curtain of mist hanging over them. It got bluer the more you looked. The Blue Mountains! The blue, blue mountains.
“Mamma, do you not want to ride over the Blue Mountains?”
“No one can. They are impassable.”
“Will no one ever know what is on the other side of the Blue Mountains?”
“Very likely not.”
“I would like to ride over the top of the Blue Mountains. Mamma, couldn’t I try? I am sure I could ride over the Blue Mountains; I’d ride and ride until I got to the blue part, and then I’d be over the top__’ Mamma wasn’t listening. Mamma’s maid was dressing her for the evening. Mamma was big and glorious; shimmering and shining, with a green pendant hanging round her neck. Mamma was very important, but Papa was not quite so important, because of Mamma. She had heard that whispered once at a party. Whispering again! There are some questions it is better not to ask, because if you ask them, people are put on their guard, and then you cannot ask questions which they will answer unthinkingly.
Wando knew a lot about the Blue Mountains. When she talked of them to him, his face wrinkled up and his eyes grew smaller and smaller; he didn’t like to talk about the Blue Mountains. But she danced round him. Mamma and Papa could not be asked certain questions. Not so Wando. Wando should answer.
Beyond the Blue Mountains was a world none dare enter.
“I would dare, Wando! I would dare!”
“No, no, Missy Kat! No!”
His mouth worked; his flat nose wriggled; they did that when he was frightened.
“Wando, what is beyond the Blue Mountains?”
He told her, whispering as Margery whispered to Miss Kelly when she talked of the First Wife. A vast lake was on the other side of the blue curtains, and there lived fair people, people like gods.
“I will go, Wando. I will go and see them.”
He shook his head violently. She must not go.
She did not believe anyone would not be glad to see her.
But in the mountains lived many evil spirits, and these evil spirits would never, never let anyone pass through their mountains.
“What would they do, Wando, if anyone tried to pass through their mountains?”
Wando’s deep black eyes were pools in which was hidden this unmentionable knowledge. His silence told more than any white man’s words could have done. She trembled with horror at the thought of what those evil spirits would do to anyone who tried to pass through their mountains.
What was it that fascinated her so much about the Blue Mountains? The horror and the beauty. Those wicked spirits had chosen a blue curtain for their mountains; not black nor. hideously purple, but lovely blue.
She had gone back to her window. The sea was blue. There was blue in the gorgeous colours of the parakeets.
Somehow the Blue Mountains were fixed to her idea of an exciting day that must be exciting because she had awakened and thought it was Christmas.
She went into the boys’ room and prodded them. They were all sleeping in different beds all three of them. Edward and James were very much alike one little and one big but Martin wasn’t like either of them. Martin was very quiet and dreamy; they said he would be clever. He was very pretty; people noticed him because he was pretty, and James because he was bright, and Edward because he was the baby.
She said: “I dreamed it was Christmas.” And they all sat up and looked at her and thought of Christmas.
“I’ve been up hours.” she said loftily.
“I’ve been flying.”
“Flying!”
“I’ve been a parakeet a lovely one … all blue and red, and particularly blue.” She pretended to fly about the room, flapping her arms for wings. Very soon they were all out of bed, doing the same, which brought Miss Kelly in.
Katharine stopped being a parakeet, to think of Miss Kelly and Miss Kelly’s brother who had been a convict. As a result of much questioning at opportune moments, Katharine had pieced together a good deal of Miss Kelly’s story. Back in England, four years ago. Miss Kelly’s brother had run amuck.
“Amuck! Amuck! Amuck!” whispered Katharine, who loved words for their sounds as well as for their meanings. If you broke into a confidence, to ask the meaning of words, a grownup was liable to remember you were an inquisitive child, and grownup people like to ask questions, not to answer them. Amuck? They said that Mr. Jennings ran the store where it was possible to buy any sort of goods you could think of. They said Governor Macquarie ran the country. Amuck must be something like a store or a country; only something bad, because running amuck resulted in Miss Kelly’s brother becoming a convict; and Miss Kelly loved him so much that she followed him out to Sydney to have a home for him when he stopped being a convict. It was a very sad story, because Miss Kelly’s brother had been sent to Van Diemen’s Land where he had died.
“Van Diemen’s Land!” murmured Katharine, when she wanted to frighten herself. In the dark she said it to herself, when she was alone in bed at night. It made her think of red devils with cloven hooves and pitchforks made entirely of fire. One of Papa’s servants had said: “Van Diemen’s Land, Missy that’s hell on earth!” Surely hell in hell could be no more terrible than hell on earth. She tried to talk to James about it, but James was never easy to talk to.
“It’s only convicts that go there,” said James.
“But it’s hell, James, hell on earth!” James thought that didn’t matter because they were only convicts. But Miss Kelly’s brother had gone there and he had died there. It made Miss Kelly terribly sad at times; it made her snappy. Mamma said: “You must be kind to Miss Kelly, because she has suffered a lot.”
So Miss Kelly came in and said: “What is all this noise?”
“We’re birds!” Katharine told her.
“You’re nothing of the sort,” said Miss Kelly.
“You’re a naughty girl and t
hree naughty boys!”
Miss Kelly spoke in short clipped sentences. She dispelled any make-believe merely by talking of it. You could never be anything but what people actually thought you were, with Miss Kelly looking on.
“Now come,” said Miss Kelly without a smile; she rarely smiled; she seemed to hate to see people laughing, and when they laughed it must remind her of her poor brother’s going to Van Diemen’s Land to be prodded with flaming pitchforks by the demons there, because naturally the demons would laugh while they prodded.
“Breakfast in half an hour. Do you want to wake your poor Papa and Mamma?”
“They are not poor, are they, Miss Kelly?” asked Martin anxiously.
“They’re rich!”
Katharine tried painstakingly to explain to him what Miss Kelly meant, because she thought others cared as deeply as she did about getting to the truth of even the smallest details.
“She does hot mean they are poor because they haven’t money. She means poor to get woken up too early in the morning.”
Martin irritated Katharine. His mind flew from one subject to chase one that momentarily appealed to him more.
“Is Papa very rich?”
“Of course he is very rich!” said Katharine grandly.
“The richest man in the world?”
“Is he, Miss Kelly?” asked Katharine, now very interested to know.
“Of course not,” said James, very superior.
“That would be Governor Macquarie.”
Katharine wished she had thought of that. Of course the richest man in the world must be Governor Macquarie.
“Is he the richest man in the world?” persisted Katharine.
“Is he, Miss Kelly?”
Miss Kelly said: “Rich indeed I And very free with other people’s money, if you’ll be asking me. We must have roads here, buildings there … He’ll be trying to make Sydney rival London. That’s what he’s after!”
