by Lena Dowling
Colleen’s head jerked back up in surprise. So that’s why Liza had been so uppity. She had been sizing up her husband.
Mr Biggs might not have been her husband in the real way of it, but she wasn’t having another woman, and especially not one as sly as Liza, making eyes at him.
Colleen folded her arms across her chest and leaned back in her chair balancing against the heels of her boots.
‘Well, Mr Biggs is my husband now. He’s spoken for so she can keep her hands off.’
‘Still, you can hardly blame her. Mr Biggs does have a certain way about him.’
‘He looks well enough, I suppose.’
Colleen had seen plenty of men in her time in all shapes and sizes: blubbery whales who were so revoltingly fat they barely fitted through the narrow corridor to the upstairs rooms, and just as bad, the skinflints that slithered around on top of you like a wet herring, but Mr Biggs was just right — broad and handsome in a way that was rough and raw like his maker had struck him out of one of the good moulds and then forgotten him, leaving him all rough around the edges.
Not that it mattered whether he was easy on the eye or hard on it, but kind and craggy handsome was better than mean and ugly.
The men in the colony were wrought hard, they had to be, and Mr Biggs had that in spades with his wide shoulders, bulging muscles; his sheer brawniness. He was one who would still be standing when weaker men were finished. Even someone like Liza, or perhaps especially someone like Liza, couldn’t miss that.
Thea flicked back her hand in a backwards wave. ‘I’m sure Liza values her ticket too much to misbehave, so you needn’t have any worries in that direction, but I’ll have a word with her if you like.’
Horrified, Colleen unfolded her arms to sit up and reach across the table, only just stopping short of grasping Thea by the arm. She looked the other woman dead in her deep blue eyes.
‘Oh no, you mustn’t. Promise me now, Thea,’ she said, hoping using the woman’s proper name again might help get it through.
Thea frowned, raising an eyebrow in Colleen’s direction. ‘Well, if you think it would only make things worse?’
‘It would. Much, much worse.’
To Colleen’s relief Thea didn’t argue; standing up, walking to the desk at the end of the room, returning with a piece of paper.
Colleen read it. She couldn’t understand all of the fancy words but the meaning was plain enough, it was an invitation to a tea party that afternoon.
‘Do you think I should go?’
Colleen finally relaxed, pleased to have someone else’s problem to worry about.
‘Of course you have to go. Wasn’t it only yesterday you were tellin’ me how lonesome you’ve been?’ she said, focussing her attention back on Thea who was looking at her expectantly, waiting for an answer.
‘Even if I wanted to go, I can’t. It’s Nanny’s half day,’ she said all exaggerated like she was up on the stage and Colleen was the audience.
Colleen tried not to laugh. If Thea wanted her to watch the children all she had to do was ask. She would only be too pleased to. As the oldest it had been her job to watch her own siblings and it had been years since she had the fun of some little ‘uns to entertain.
‘I’ll look after them for you. I used to watch me little brothers and sisters back home for me ma.’
‘Would you?’
Thea’s face brightened for a moment then fell again. She chewed her lip holding the note out at arms-length. It was already crumpled as if Thea’s first reaction to the short notice invitation had been to screw it up and throw it away. She pointed to a group of words at the top of the note as if it was something rank she couldn’t bear to have too close to her.
‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s rather galling to receive a last minute, second round invitation. Back home in London I was always among the first to be invited to things.’
If her ladyship was going to be making herself some new friends out of it, she would have to swallow her pride, although from the expression on her face it didn’t look as if that was going to come easy.
‘Forget about that now, don’t take it to heart,’ Colleen coaxed. ‘Go and let them see what they’ve been missin’ by snubbin’ you all this time.’
If she could only talk Thea into going to the tea party, she might leave off with the mad idea that they could be friends.
Thea’s shoulder’s dropped down, followed by a huge unladylike sigh.
‘I should rather like to attend, I suppose, but then there’s the question of what to wear. I was thinking maybe my burgundy dress. It’s the nicest thing I have. What do you think?’
Colleen thought of the first time she had seen Thea, all done out like royalty in a deep blood red gown; the looks she got from the other prisoners, and how Maggie had sneered, calling her ‘Her Majesty.’
‘Honestly?’
‘Yes, give me your honest opinion.’
Thea gazed up at her all trusting as if she was relying on her advice.
Colleen groaned inwardly wishing she could shake the feeling that she had let Thea down somehow, and now she needed to make it up to her in some way. The least she could do was tell her.
‘It’s too good.’
‘How could it be too good?’
‘I know you’re wantin’ to impress the other ladies, but I doubt any of them will be wearin’ anything that’s a patch on that dress. You don’t want to be looking nicer than the hostess and outdo her at her own party now, do you?’
That was an understatement. If Thea swanned up to an afternoon tea in that red outfit she was going to make a real show of herself.
‘Oh, Colleen. Of course you are right. I should have thought. Do come and help me pick something out before you take the children.’
Colleen trailed Thea down the hallway into the front bedroom where Thea threw open one of two wardrobes that together took up most of one whole wall and began flipping through the gowns.
Thea pulled out a selection of dresses and laid them out on the bed. ‘And how are things coming along between you and Mr Biggs. Any change?’
Colleen walked along the edge of the bed, inspecting the dresses, pausing here and there to touch the fine material that slid easily under her finger without scratching. If she had half of the dresses Thea considered were good enough only for everyday, let alone the rainbow of colourful silk gowns stuffed into the wardrobe, Mr Biggs might actually give her a second glance.
But she had never been one for the green-eyed monster. Thea was just luckier than her, that was all, and her ladyship had been nothing but kind to her.
Thea looked back over her shoulder in the direction of the door and lowered her voice to a whisper, ‘You don’t think he’s one of those do you? That his reticence is perhaps…?
‘Perhaps what?’
‘Do you think he might be…?’
For a second Colleen was mortified but then she shook her head.
They’d had mollies come into O’Shane’s. Danny had paid boys of the same perversion or those down on their luck to service them. When there were no boys available Danny had ways and means of setting things up to meet the men’s requirements.
They were the punters the women fought each not to have to take. Them and the ones who liked it too rough. All the mollies had something about them. She couldn’t say what it was exactly, but the girls could pick them out at a hundred paces and Mr Biggs didn’t have whatever it was.
‘No, I don’t reckon.’
‘Maybe he’s grieving for his wife, then?’
‘He was married before?’
Mr Biggs hadn’t said. That put a different slant on things. Plenty of aggrieved men ended up at O’Shane’s looking for comfort, the sort of comfort she knew exactly how to give. She felt lighter, hopeful.
‘Oh dear, I’ve probably spoken out of turn. Samuel no doubt wanted to tell you that himself in his own time.’
If grief was the reason Samuel was so shy about their sharing a bed, she re
ckoned she could make him forget his pain, at least for a while. Although for that to work, she would have to get him to stop holding things so close to his chest and open up about it.
‘ I won’t let on you told me.’
‘Good,’ Thea breathed.
‘Now — this one,’ Colleen said, pointing to a grey dress; the least showys all the ones Thea had laid out.’
‘Really? This dreadfully plain old thing?’
There might have been nothing she could do about her past, and nothing she could do right away about Mr Biggs’ lack of interest in her, but she could stop Thea making a right eejit of herself and give her a shot at making some proper lady friends, which in the long run would be best for both of them.
‘Trust me. You definitely want to wear this.’
Chapter 8
By the time late afternoon came around, Biggs was exhausted after a day of fencing out in the fields. He dragged his weary bones up the steps to the cabin, sat on the bench at the top of the porch and pulled off his boots, grateful to rest after a day spent erecting a fence to stop the Hunter’s sheep straying onto the neighbour’s property. He couldn’t decide which was a harsher punishment — hauling ropes and unwieldy sails at sea, or digging posts into earth so dry it might have been transforming to granite before his eyes.
He squinted past his own reflection and picked Colleen out sitting at the head of the table with little Stephen on her lap, his head nestled into her bosom, rising and falling with her breath. The child held her mob-cap clenched in his fist as if he had wrenched it free before he fell asleep. With her wild mop of hair spread across her shoulders, draped like a fringe across her magnificent bosom, and her unlined fine porcelain features, serene and composed, he was forced to take in a breath he hadn’t been meaning to.
He scrubbed a hand over his face lest she looked up and caught his expression but he needn’t have worried. Colleen’s attention had been captured by Betsy who stood on a chair at the table surrounded by various pieces of paper and a collection of coloured crayons. His crayons, he noted, carefully packed and brought out from England, only to be lying about broken to bits and rubbed down to stubs on the kitchen table.
He should have been irritated with Colleen for being so cavalier with his possessions but he was transfixed by her interactions with the child. Intermittently she smiled and pointed, engaging Betsy in conversation. Colleen and the little girl chattered back and forth, presumably about what Betsy was drawing, as the child remained intently focussed on the task. Eventually the little girl looked up, saw him through the window, grinned at him, clapped her hands together and pointed.
The child was still standing precariously on the chair hopping up and down after he had hauled himself up off the bench and gone inside.
‘Biggsie, Biggsie. Look what I drew!’
Betsy’s shriek woke Betsy’s brother who immediately bested his sister’s volume with some fierce yelping of his own. Even so, the pitch of the cry gave the distinct impression that it was only the harbinger of something far worse. Colleen rubbed his back and kissed the top of his head. She managed to silence him in mid bawl, persuading him to snuggle deeper into the soft pillow of her breasts. With Stephen settled, Colleen’s attention turned back to his sister. ‘Hush now Betsy. Remember what we said about quiet voices. Samuel has been workin’ hard. When he gets home he wants children about who know how to shush.’
The child gave a solemn nod and Colleen’s easy confidence mothering the two children wafted up over the babe in her arms, filling the room like a peaceful, comforting cloud.
‘Biggsie, look what I drew,’ Betsy repeated, this time in an impressively loud whisper. Just how so much sound could come from such tiny vessels was unfathomable.
‘Well now. What an interesting picture it is too,’ he said, raising questioning eyebrows towards Colleen. There was nothing on the page of multicoloured swatches of colour, interspersed with mysterious stick-like figures, that he could risk interpreting.
She gave her shoulders a shrug, and tilted her chin upwards towards him, her usually softly muted brown eyes ablaze, twinkling wickedly, challenging him to hazard a guess, then just as he broke into a new sweat from the pressure of correctly deciphering the child’s scrawl, Colleen’s cheeky pinkish brown lips curved upwards into a grin. ‘We’ve been drawing pirate pictures, Mr Biggs, You’ll have noticed the pirate ship and all the pirates in it,’ she said deliberately.
‘Of course it is. I can see that as clear as day now. Someone here is a budding artistic talent,’ Samuel carried the picture over to the light of the window, feigning intense interest. ‘Now, Betsy, where should we put it? Somewhere where everyone who visits is sure to see it.’
‘What about up on that wall there?’ Colleen offered.
Samuel strolled around the cabin pretending consideration of all flat surface possibilities, while surreptitiously regarding his wife, her eyes enlivened with joy, her sweet satisfied smile heightening the flush in her cheeks.
Finally he strode over to the mantle where he had intended to place the picture all along, resting it on the sash of timber that formed the mantelpiece, pretending to position it so that it was just perfect.
Betsy thumped up and down on her chair. ‘Yes, yes!’ she yelled, and then clapping both hands to her mouth turned to Colleen before removing them again to repeat the words in a whisper.
Amelia would have made an excellent mother, but as kindly as her nurturing would have been he couldn’t imagine her stopping to play – to be a part of the children’s games.
Samuel slapped a hand to his chest.
What was he doing? He had no right to compare.
‘When I grow up I’m going to be a pirate. Mama said I can be anything I want.’
‘Did she now, Betsy?’ Samuel said, grateful for the child’s interjection in refocussing his thoughts.
If he hadn’t known more about Betsy’s mother he would have chided the girl for telling fibs, but it sounded exactly like the sort of fanciful rubbish Lady Hunter might come out with. The influence she might have on his wife was a constant worry. He would like to have forbidden any more than the most cursory social contact between the two women, but that wasn’t practical and it certainly wouldn’t endear him to his employer who, for reasons impenetrable, had always loved her ladyship almost beyond reason.
‘Come on darlin’, time to take you home.’ Colleen hoisted Stephen around on her hip then stood up and reached out with her other hand to guide Betsy down. The child hopped to the floor.
Samuel sat down in the chair where Betsy had been standing only moments before and proceeded to gather up the remains of his drawing supplies, matching like coloured stubs with like, but he was barely concentrating, succeeding only in mixing the yellows with the oranges and the reds with the purples.
Colleen beamed at him.
‘Isn’t she adorable.’
‘Oh yes, most adorable indeed.’ Biggs agreed, barely aware that his gaze remained locked on his wife, never leaving Colleen as she ferried the two Lilliputians out of the cabin until the trio disappeared down the steps of the porch.
Betsy skipped ahead while Colleen hurried to keep the girl within sight. Weighed down by Stephen, and with Betsy a ball of energy, it was no contest. The little girl flew on ahead, stopping only when she ran headlong into Nanny.
‘As usual we heard you before we saw you, Miss Betsy,’ the nursemaid said, patting the child on the head. Betsy raced in behind the woman’s skirts as Nanny reached out to Colleen to take Stephen. The little boy woke up partway through, rubbing his eyes with his fists, looking about bewildered.
‘I’d take me cap back, but I reckon if I do he’ll squawk,’ Colleen said. ‘You keep it till he lets go of it.’
‘Thank you, I will and before I forget, Lady Hunter asked me to say that there is an extra special bit of cake set aside for you in the cookhouse. A bit the worse for wear for having been ferried home by her ladyship in a reticule by the looks, but no doubt
it won’t taste any different.’
Colleen didn’t raise so much as an eyebrow. The more she got to know her, the more it sounded like her ladyship all over to be fencing treats from the afternoon tea.
‘Thank you, Nanny. Please tell Thea…I mean Lady Hunter, that I said thank you very much.’
‘I hope these two didn’t get up to mischief.’
‘No trouble. I enjoyed having them. We had a lovely time didn’t we, Betsy?’ The little girl peeked out from the folds of Nanny’s dress nodding, not wanting to take the thumb out of her mouth to speak.
‘If I’d known it only took a thumb to keep her that quiet I’d have encouraged it earlier and saved me ears from bleedin.’
Nanny chuckled.
‘She’s got quite a set of pipes on her, but it’s good practice for when you and Mr Biggs have your own.’
Colleen mumbled her agreement then said her goodbyes, trying to ignore the words that she knew were only meant for idle chatter, and yet had just knifed right through her.
Something deep down had told her that she was doing right by her baby, and that Mr Biggs would make a good da, but seeing him with little Betsy just now sealed it.
He was plainly exhausted, heaving his big braw body and his smell she’d come to recognise as a mix of hard work and gum leaves into the cabin. He was barely able to find the strength to put one more foot in front of the other and yet moments later he was striding around the cabin making out like he was finding a place for her picture, making the little girl feel good about it, like it was the finest piece of art ever put to paper.
Turning towards the cookhouse to pick up their evening meal, she paused to count on her fingers the days that already passed since she had left O’Shane’s.
Six.
Had it really been that many?
Nearly a whole week. She clasped her hands over her middle, grasping at her sides until despite the fabric between, her nails grazed her skin.
She had to do something to make Mr Biggs want her.
Time was slipping through fingers like a fistful of sand.
