The Black Dress

by Pamela Freeman

  ***

  After Papa had gone to Scotland, there was still Lexie and Maggie and Annie and John to look after. Still the cooking and the mending and the washing to help with. But the lessons were no longer fun.

  I worked from my books. I read. I tried to continue as though Papa were still there. I repeated what Mamma had told me. Four months’ sailing to Scotland. Perhaps two weeks there to see family and friends. Perhaps another month if there were no boat leaving. Then four months back. Nine months. Nine months before we could even begin to expect him.

  ‘Nine months is not so long, child,’ Mamma had said. But it seemed a very long time indeed. I counted off the days on the perpetual calendar at Uncle Peter’s house, when we visited.

  Aunt Julia made sharp comments to Mamma about Papa’s absence. ‘No word, yet, Flora? He could at least have sent a letter from the first port.’

  ‘There’s hardly been time for a letter to have reached us, Julia,’ Mamma said quietly. ‘No doubt one will come soon.’

  ‘No doubt, no doubt,’ said Uncle Peter heartily, with a sidelong glance at Aunt Julia. That glance held something I did not understand, some warning. Aunt Julia sniffed and shrugged.

  ‘Well, you’d better pray that he comes home quickly, Flora, with this lot on your hands.’

  ‘We pray that he comes home safe, every morning and evening, Julia.’

  Mamma’s voice was soft, as always, but Aunt Julia quietened after that. She was an odd one, Aunt Julia. I’ve met a few like her since, but when I was younger I didn’t understand her. She came, I now realise, from the Irish tradition of standing up for your rights, a tradition with no respect for authority (except that of the Church) because those in authority were the enemy English. She could be sharp-tongued and strident, and she demanded every scrap of what was due to her. But once she’d got it, she’d usually give it away again in warm-handed generosity. She caused a lot of trouble in my life, one way and another, but she was also very kind to me and I know she loved me.

  Well, if the good Lord made us all alike it would be a boring world, no doubt.

  ***

  For a couple of months after Papa left, I worked steadily away at my lessons. But without Papa to share the puzzle with, it was boring. By the time the drought broke, in April, I’d lost interest in everything but storybooks, and we had but few of those. It was another reason to be angry at Papa. He had taken all the fun out of learning, too. It’s so easy to blame others for our own faults—and much more enjoyable to snipe at them than to correct ourselves.

  Mamma tried to take Papa’s place. She was much better educated than most women, and she could work with me on arithmetic and English composition. She even knew some history. She could teach Maggie and John easily, but Latin and Greek were beyond her.

  ‘Think of it as a challenge from Our Lord,’ Mamma suggested. ‘How eager are you to read his words in their original form?’

  ‘I don’t understand, Mamma.’

  ‘The Gospels, Mary. The Gospels were first written in Greek, and then translated into Latin. Wouldn’t you like to read the words of the Gospels as they were first written?’

  Oh, yes, I would. I definitely would. There was something mysterious about the idea of the Gospels having been written in different words than the ones I was so familiar with. As though, if I read them in the original, I would be reading a different book. I knew how hard it was to translate even simple sentences. How hard would it have been to translate the word of God?

  ‘No doubt the Holy Spirit guided the translators,’ Mamma said reassuringly.

  Perhaps the Holy Spirit had. But for me, it was more important that the fun of the puzzle had come back. Word by word, line by line, I worked through St Luke’s Gospel: Greek at my left hand, Latin at my right, and English in the middle.

  But John wanted me to come out and play. Annie wanted me to dig up the vegetable patch to see if the radish seeds we had planted the day before had sprouted. Lexie—sitting up on her own, now—gurgled and reached for me. Mamma needed me to look after the little ones, and Bridget needed my help in the kitchen when Mamma was tired. And I could never forget that Papa had given them into my care.

  Sometimes, when I stood up after putting Lexie into her cot, I could feel the weight of that shawl of responsibility, still resting on my shoulders. There was so much to do, and it seemed that much of it should have been done by Papa.

  But whenever I had ten minutes to spare outside my regular lesson times, I went into Papa’s office. I used his desk—after all, Papa wasn’t using it. It gave me a dark satisfaction to, in a way, usurp him. I perched on his chair and traced the Greek letters, so different from the Roman alphabet, so hard to recognise and pronounce without Papa there to guide me.

  Maggie would poke her head in from time to time, trying to get me outside.

  ‘You always stick your tongue out between your teeth when you’re doing that stupid Greek, Mary. You’ll get buck teeth like Mary Jane Dougherty.’ And she’d make a rabbit face to make me laugh.

  By the time Lexie was walking, I had worked my way through Luke and was on to Matthew. ‘Save John for last,’ Mamma said. ‘He’s the most beautiful.’

  Would I have worked so diligently if Papa had still been there? Would I have learnt the beautiful cadences of the Latin so thoroughly? I have lost my Greek now, but thanks to the Mass my Latin still sings in my head. Gloria in excelsis ... For many Catholics, the whole Mass is an exercise in faith, because the Latin words swirl over their heads in vague torrents of meaning: this pattern is the Gloria, this pattern the Confiteor, this one the consecration. For me, each word is meaningful and that meaning has been a source of joy my life long. If Papa had been home, would I have worked so hard to master it?

  ***

  In July, 1851, when I was nine years old, we travelled to Melbourne and stayed the night for a big party at the L’Estranges’ to celebrate Separation.

  ‘I know what Separation is,’ John said proudly to Mrs L’Estrange. ‘It means we’re not Welsh anymore!’

  He was rather upset when everyone laughed at him. The truth was that permission had come at last from London to make Melbourne a separate colony, no longer under the control of Sydney. John was right, we were not New South Welshmen any more. We were part of Port Phillip colony. The new colony would be christened ‘Victoria’ in honour of the queen.

  There was music and dancing and lots of delicious food. The men wore cutaway jackets and talked about how the colony would forge ahead now we had control of our own destiny. The women put on their best dresses with hoops under the skirts.

  I had wanted a new dress, too, but Mamma had said we could not afford it. ‘Not just at this minute, Mary,’ she said, and I knew it was because Papa had still not returned. But I got a new pink sash for my old dress, and Mamma did my hair in ringlets.

  Mr L’Estrange said I was the prettiest girl in the room.

  I grinned at him. ‘I’m not really,’ I said. ‘Look at Adeline Seward.’ Adeline was dressed all in pink and white frills. Like a doll. Mr L’Estrange hugged me. It felt good to lay my head against his shoulder. He was always easier to hug than Papa. ‘I prefer my redhead,’ he said. ‘When are you coming to stay with us again?’

  ‘Not just at this minute,’ I said. ‘Mamma needs me.’

  Mr L’Estrange made a strange noise. Like a cow burping, I thought with a private giggle. ‘Humph. Well, you’re right about that. Are things going all right on the property?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘Uncle Peter comes out every Sunday and gives the men their orders.’

  ‘Hmm. Well, if you ever need any help, you come to me, Mary.’

  I shouldn’t need to. Papa should be here to help me if I need it ... But Papa is missing this, I thought with satisfaction, and then forgot about him as Mr L’Estrange swung me into the Pride of Erin that was starting up. I danced like a gypsy all night. I loved to dance, loved the swirl of the music and the beat that came up through the soles of my fe
et. The whirling and the twirling and the breathlessness. That night was the best night I’d ever had.

  ***

  Pretty clothes and dancing—well, I suppose I missed them a little when I became a nun. The dancing more than the clothes. I was too busy to even think about clothes. But sometimes, when I was invited to a wedding and the fiddler started up, my foot would tap under my habit and I would wish to be out on the floor. I knew my young postulants missed it. Sometimes, newly entered young girls would ask me, wistfully, ‘Why can’t we dance too, Mother Mary?’

  They were always shocked when I explained, ‘Because dancing like this, man and woman together, is about courtship and the marriage bed, and we are married to God already.’ Their faces would go blank with surprise that I would talk so frankly, and I’d laugh. They thought that I wouldn’t know of such matters—as if a girl raised on a farm would not know!

  Apart from that, there was always a deep passion between my parents. It was discreet, but ever-present. It crackled between them all through my childhood like sheet lightning presaging a summer storm. I suppose it explains a good deal about them: the quick marriage, the children in swift succession, my mother’s patience with Papa’s faults, the disintegration of their marriage when passion, as it can, waned in their later years. It makes me wonder now how Mamma felt about that long separation when Papa went Home. It must have been hard on her in many ways that I, as a child, could not imagine.

  ***

  It was September in 1851, and the weather was turning warm, before we finally received a letter from Papa, posted from Rio de Janeiro. He sent his love and said that Mr McLaughlin was becoming very ill indeed. Mamma looked sad.

  ‘Mr McLaughlin is a man who values family, and he has none here in Australia,’ she said, when I asked her why she was sad. ‘I suppose it’s only natural he would want to die at Home.’

  Die. Papa had taken Mr McLaughlin Home to die. I thought about that, on and off, for days. Dying was such a serious thing, it made it easier to understand why Papa had gone with him. I couldn’t feel quite so angry with Papa.

  ‘We shouldn’t judge people,’ I told John. ‘We don’t always know the truth of why they’re doing things.’

  John nodded solemnly and then shrugged. ‘Can we go down to the creek, Mary? It’s warm today.’

  So we went down to the little creek that fed into the larger Darebin Creek and busied ourselves making a dam.

  I didn’t like going down to the creek, although the others loved it. I couldn’t help remembering Grandfather MacDonald. I kept a close watch on John and Annie. I couldn’t bear the thought of them laid dripping on a table. But that didn’t stop me from putting a tadpole down John’s back.

  ‘Eerk! Mary, you beast! Get it out!’

  John yelped and wriggled trying to get it out and Annie and I laughed until we had to lie on the ground to get our breath back. He finally pulled it out of his shirt and chased us with it until it died. Then he put it in his pocket.

  ‘John!’

  He grinned. ‘It’s a present for Maggie!’

  We laughed some more.

  On our way back to the house I thought again about Papa’s letter.

  Mr McLaughlin was dying. Little Alick, my baby brother, dead only a few months after Grandfather. How lucky it was that all my family were in Australia. There’d be no need for any of them to travel back to Scotland to die. Not that any of us were going to die. Of course not. But there were shipwrecks. Pirates. Storms. There was the damp and cold of Scotland—perhaps Papa would catch an ague. There were the tropics through which the ship would pass. Malaria, dysentery, and yellow fever—I didn’t know what these things were but I knew that some of every ship’s company did not make it through the journey.

  Mamma’s own brother had fallen overboard while suffering from a bout of typhoid fever on their journey out, and some other passengers had died. Mamma and Grandmother and Uncle Donald had been in quarantine for weeks after they arrived in Australia.

  Every morning and evening, at family prayers, we prayed for Papa’s health and that he would be returned to us safely. I prayed hard. At those moments, all I could think about was Grandfather’s face that day when Papa laid his body on the table, and Alick, all cold and pale in his best dress, laid in his shroud, with Mamma weeping silently as she placed the cloth over his face, the tears dampening the white cloth and turning it grey.

  Death is a grief to the living, but to the dying it can be a promise. I am growing impatient again, but I suppose God knows what he is doing, keeping me here so long. I must have more work to do.

  We were not a long-lived family. Maggie died when she was 29, John at only 22. Lexie was 33 and Peter, the youngest of us, was 23. Annie and Donald and I are the only ones left now. The others will seem so young to me when I see them again!

  Yet I’m thinking less about dying now, as it faces me, than I did in that long year that Papa was away. He had left in February. Nine months later, the summer heat was beginning again, though there were some cooler days with light showers and breezes. The land was gradually being cleared and stocked. There were lambs in the paddocks again. Baby kangaroos hopped after their mothers at the edges of the cleared fields.

  We hardly dared to leave home in case word came from the docks that a ship had been sighted. Often, a ship would arrive outside the harbour mouth too late in the evening to send for a pilot boat to guide it in. Then it would wait at anchor until the morning and a favourable tide. When that happened, the ship would exchange signals with the harbour master on shore, so he would know which ship it was and where it had come from.

  Uncle Donald had made arrangements to ensure that if a ship arrived from Scotland, the harbour master would send Mamma a message so we could be on the dock to greet Papa.

  But no message came.

  By December, Lexie was walking. Not just walking, but climbing. Climbing steps, climbing up on chairs and tables. Even, once, managing to climb right up onto Mamma and Papa’s big clothes press. Bridget almost had a turn when she went in to change the sheets and found Lexie sitting happily on the top of the press, waving. ‘Bridge,’ she said, ‘Bridge. Look.’

  ***

  Christmas. It was ten-and-a-half months since Papa had left. More than enough time to get to Scotland and come home again. Definitely enough time, in fact, because we had received a letter from Papa. He had decided to convey Mr McLaughlin right to his family home in Rosshire. It was a long trip, he said, and he was afraid that he would not be back with his family by Christmas.

  I send you all my love and know that the good Lord is looking after you in my absence. You are in my prayers daily and in my thoughts always.

  Why didn’t he come straight home? Was it homesickness? A longing to travel once more in his homeland? Compassion for Mr McLaughlin? Was he so sick that Papa could not leave him? Did Australia and his family seem increasingly like a dream to him as the days went past? I can understand that now. When I was in Europe on my trip to see the Holy Father, in the soft rains of Ireland or the mists of England, Australian sunshine seemed like a dream to me, too. My friends here were so far away it was almost as though they existed only in my mind. Perhaps Papa felt that as well. Or was it just that insouciance of Papa’s—the belief that his life would work out fine, no matter what he did, as long as he did what he believed to be right?

  We showed his letter to Lexie—‘From Papa, Lexie’—but she had no idea what we were talking about.

  Mamma bit her lip. She had tears in her eyes.

  ‘She’s growing up without a father,’ she said helplessly to Granny. ‘She doesn’t even know what a father is!’

  ‘Och, she’s fine, sweetheart,’ Granny said, hugging her. ‘She’s too young to know what she’s missing.’

  But Mamma shook her head and showed the daguerreotype of her and Papa to Lexie. ‘Look, Lexie. Mamma and Papa!’

  Lexie refused to point to Papa and smile as she did to Mamma. Why should she? I thought, but I took the dagu
erreotype from Mamma and showed Lexie again. ‘See, Lexie, that’s Papa.’

  It took us a week before Lexie would point and say ‘Papa’ and a week later, when we tried again, she had forgotten.

  ‘Ah, leave her, Mary,’ Mamma sighed when I started the game again. ‘She’ll learn fast enough when he comes home.’ She looked at the daguerreotype for a long time before she returned it to its cover and her bedside drawer.

  We joined Grandfather and Grandma Ellen for Christmas, with all the rest of the clan: Uncle Peter and Aunt Julia, Aunt Ann. Even Uncle John was down on a visit from New South Wales.

  We went as a group to St Francis’s Church in Melbourne to hear Bishop Goold say Mass on Christmas morning.

  ‘Adestes fideles,’ we sang as the bishop precessed down the aisle, with the altar boy carrying the great golden cross behind him.

  It reminded me of Papa, his bright blue eyes sparkling as he introduced me to the puzzle and mystery of Latin. I could understand a good deal more of what Bishop Goold said this Christmas.

  ‘Introibo as altare Dei,’ said Bishop Goold.

  I will go in to the altar of God.

  ‘Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam,’ the congregation replied. To God, the joy of my youth.

  The joy of my youth, I thought, that is true. God and the family are the joy of my youth.

  At dinner, at Grandma Ellen’s big table, with family all around, I bowed my head for grace.

  ‘Bless us O Lord and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive by Thy bounty, Amen,’ everyone said, and went to make the Sign of the Cross. But Grandfather kept speaking, ‘Lord, we thank you for bringing us all here to be together. We ask your blessing on those of our children who cannot be here: Archibald and Alexander, in Scotland, Duncan in New South Wales, Margaret and her family in Penola. Keep them under your wing and bring Alexander home again safely. Amen.’