‘Which means to your nephew.’
‘With the law as it stands, that is true. But consider, sir, your daughter will be well off, a member of a highly esteemed family. She will be properly looked after and well regarded. In the mean time she will be off your hands, with no one needing to know about the unfortunate consequences of her accident.’
Was it an implied threat? Charles could not be sure.
‘I may outlive you,’ he said.
‘You may. But the agreement will stand,’ Barnsley said.
Barnsley kept his parting shot until he was about to leave, having shared a glass with his outmanoeuvred host. ‘To think I had a dozen of my ex-cons on stand-by to start a run on your bank…’ He chuckled whimsically. ‘Well, well, it seems they won’t be needed after all. Not for the moment, anyway.’
When Cynthia Styles was expecting her first child she had been grateful for all her blessings. She knew that apart from praying on her knees at the side of her bed every night she had done nothing to deserve her good fortune, being timid by nature and, as her father had told her more than once, not very bright.
She had never thought she was much of a catch and hadn’t been able to believe her luck when Archie Styles had proposed to her, especially when it appeared Papa had given his approval. Archie was everything she thought she wanted in a man. He claimed to have aristocratic connections: with the family of a duke, no less. He was also both handsome and dashing and he excited her when he drove their carriage as though he were one of the charioteers she had read about in the annals of ancient Rome.
When she found she was expecting a child she believed there was no woman on earth happier and more fortunate than she.
Then had come the accident.
She spent weeks wishing she could die, as her husband and baby had died. She did not pray for death since that would be a sin but would have welcomed it nonetheless.
She knew she had been foolish to expect the happiness she had not deserved so became more timid than before, as though that would compensate for her presumption. Nevertheless, when her tyrannical father came up with the name of the man whom he had nominated as her second husband she was distressed to learn that, wealthy or not, he was of no family to speak of. It was a bitter comedown after her previous marriage. Cynthia was prepared to resent her husband-to-be even before she had met him but her father made it clear that she had no choice in the matter.
‘The Tregellas family is one of the wealthiest on the island, with interests not only in land but in the Victorian goldfields,’ Mr Mason said. ‘You will be the mistress of a magnificent house and estate and will enjoy a status enjoyed by few other women. So we’ll have no more of your nonsense. You are marrying William Tregellas and there’s an end of it.’
The dictatorial reputations of her fiancé and his uncle were well known even in the closeted world of Cynthia Styles; she would be exchanging her father’s tyranny for her new husband’s but there was no help for it. She would be dutiful, as would be expected of a wife, and make the best of things.
From childhood she had been taught that a woman’s life was fulfilled and glorified by service to her husband.
Alice McIntyre married Richard Dark on 14 August 1851 in the lopsided church of St Madern, the Cornish saint name chosen by Emma in the days of the Dark prosperity but otherwise unknown. The church, erected by convict hands, stood in the high country on a piece of land allocated to it from the original Derwent grant.
It wasn’t Alice’s first choice – it was a long way to go and she’d have been happy marrying in the local pub had that been permitted – but Richard was determined.
‘It was my father’s originally,’ he said. ‘I was there while it was being built.’
Not that he remembered much about it but setting up another generation in the place where things had begun had a significance he would have found hard to put into words.
For once Uncle Barnsley came good, or reasonably so. He arranged the transport and the overnight accommodation (bride and bridegroom decorously apart on the journey north) with a reception of sorts at the big house that Barnsley was considering renaming Tregellas.
‘Your uncle is a great one for changing names,’ said Alice, thinking how William had been a Dark too until Barnsley had intervened.
Not that she cared about William’s name or his feeble fiancée, who combined a simpering expression with an arrogance that showed how little she cared for her soon-to-be new family.
‘Looks like a woman who’s lost a tanner and found a ha’penny,’ Alice’s mother said.
For the last twenty-five years Enid McIntyre had been cook at the Tregellas house outside Hobart Town, a position of some status given Barnsley Tregellas’s wealth. She had been born a Stott which was another way of spelling nobody and made a habit of large floral hats that she thought or hoped might make up for it. She also enjoyed a nice glass of port from time to time in nice company. As for Richard, she thought he was a nice lad, a poor motherless orphan badly treated by life, a feeling which, along with the hat, gave her the warmth of a shared experience. Alice’s dad wasn’t into company of any sort but his solitary disposition did not prevent his swigging a surreptitious beer in a corner of the vast living room and staring out at the view.
William was there too because his uncle had insisted; he shepherded the slow-witted fiancée who had been foisted on him by an uncle who in all his life had never taken no for an answer. He whiled away the time staring at Alice in her wedding gown while his fancy drew pictures of how she would have looked without it.
The one who got away, he thought. But maybe not forever, in the light of what his uncle had told him.
‘You’re telling me Cynthia can’t have kids?’ His outrage had been close to genuine. ‘What’s the point of marrying her if she can’t produce an heir? I don’t even like her, for God’s sake.’
Barnsley had smiled his iron-plated smile. ‘I am told that lots of men dislike their wives. And the material benefits, let me assure you, are huge. I am sure a man of your initiative will have no difficulty in finding a woman to give you a son.’
‘But –’
Barnsley’s smile became harder still. ‘The process of adopting a child is not difficult if you possess money. Why,’ he said jovially, ‘I could even adopt one myself. If my fortune is no longer of interest to you.’
In the nature of things they could not have expected many guests at the church or afterwards at the house. It was too far away from Hobart Town for those who might otherwise have had an interest but Barnsley had ensured the presence of some of the Derwent workers, suitably scrubbed, since it would have looked bad if only half a dozen had been present. The bride and groom could not expect much in the way of gifts from people who did not know them but most were happy to give Alice and Richard their good wishes, if little else.
Barnsley gave Richard twenty-five guineas in a genuine leather purse. This might have seemed mean to those who thought of Richard as more or less a member of the family but he was only an overseer, after all, and with the promise of an ongoing job too, which was worth a lot. So Barnsley thought his gift generous and Alice, who had dreamt the impossible dream of being presented with a small farm of their own, wisely kept her mouth shut.
Her bits and pieces were already loaded in the back of the cart that Richard had borrowed from the farm the previous day. Now Alice loaded herself aboard as well, smiling and waving as custom demanded but easing off the shoes that had been pinching her poor toes. Underneath the smiles she was calm but resolute. Before her was her life and her husband’s life and she was determined to make something of them, although what that might be she could not at that moment have said.
There were other rituals to be performed before she could consider their future but before she could even think of the unknown territory of the marriage bed she had to come to terms with this married woman who, surprisingly, was herself.
The married woman looked at the countryside through which t
he cart was slowly progressing. She had never before seen it as she saw it now – the greens and greys and browns of the verdant valley with the line of purple hills beyond – and identified this strangely unfamiliar land as the gateway through which she must travel in order to enter her new state.
She was content and even hummed a little, listening to the steady hooves of the old horse as it drew them forwards into the place where she would find herself anew with the man sitting at her side, his strong hands holding the leather reins.
She remembered things: her mother laughing and teasing her taciturn father; a game called pegotty top that she had played as a child with other girls; a cat called Ginger. Yet it seemed to Alice in the creaking cart that those memories had nothing to do with the woman she now was, even less with the woman she was about to become.
I am a married woman now, Alice thought.
She had wanted this with all her heart but the finality of the change bit deep as she sat in the rocking cart and looked ahead at the mild brown ribbon of track finding its way downhill into a massive green bowl with trees at the bottom and the sparkle and flash of water flowing over a stony bed.
‘Do you get devils in these parts?’ she said.
‘Some. You hear them sometimes screeching in the dark.’
Something else that was strange.
‘I heard of someone who had a devil as a pet but we never had none around us in Hobart Town, did we?’ said Alice.
‘We get eagles here,’ Richard said. ‘Got to watch out for the young lambs when eagles are about.’
Her husband eased the horse to a stand. That too was something new, the brown corded arms that she looked at in the motionless cart, the arms that she had seen ten thousand times over the years yet now had a different look about them. Husband. The word was strange in her mouth; the idea of it created a measure of apprehension in her heart. Husband.
‘We’d better walk here,’ he said. ‘It gets steep further on. We wouldn’t want this old cart to run away with us.’
Alice Dark, who felt she had been run away with once already that day, agreed. Alice Dark. That was strange too but she would not permit herself to doubt. She would love him, she thought, and the strangeness would disappear.
They walked beside the trundling cart as the patient horse drew it steadily down the hill. Which was indeed steep and rutted with gullies where past rains had eaten the brown soil.
‘Where is the house?’
‘Round the next bend,’ Richard said.
Soon it came into view: stone walls and a shingle roof.
‘That won’t blow away in a gale,’ Alice said.
It was bigger than she’d expected. She looked appreciatively around the green bowl of the valley, the slopes thick with sheep.
A good place for children. I shall be happy here.
Already she was making plans. The house was solid but plain. It needed prettying up.
I shall plant a rosebush by the door. A yellow one, if I can find a cutting. Maybe hollyhocks, if the winds aren’t too strong. And a vegetable patch at the back.
So she took possession of the house, which, for the moment, was the future.
They cooked in a shack separate from the main building, for fear of fire.
‘There’s some mutton,’ Richard said. ‘And flour.’
‘I shall make damper,’ Alice said. ‘To go with the mutton.’
They ate their evening meal. Now their eyes were bumping into each other, their movements more hurried. Alice felt her breath tremulous in her throat.
Their souls were intermingling now.
They rinsed their plates and looked at each other and the time had come. Together they went to the bed against the wall and later under the thin blanket found each other and themselves. The moon shone through the window and Alice lay awake thinking and feeling, sensing her changed flesh and the sleeping body of the man. For the moment she was content but her first urgency of possession had passed at some time during the night and now she compared what they had with what she knew would in time belong to her husband’s half-brother, the man who had tried to ruin her, and to the stupid woman he planned to marry, and thought how unfair it was and how it was up to Richard and herself to do whatever it took to improve their future. They were as good as William and his fiancée and in time would prove it. So between the time of their arrival at the house and the morning’s first grey light Alice’s plans had changed.
She waited three months. Richard had been her friend nearly all her life but a husband was different from a friend and she needed time to adjust her thinking to her new state, and to sort out her plans for the future. In the interim she did what she had all along assumed she would do: she did the washing and cleaned the house and tended the cabbages behind the house and cooked the meals and made love to and with her husband in the narrow bed in the darkness. She had discovered that Richard was a shy man or perhaps one of those who found something shameful in the sexual act so that he wished to consummate their relationship only at night and with the lantern quenched.
Alice would have made love in the open, naked before the eyes of the indifferent sheep. She thought it might be exciting to do this provided no one else was about but she did not wish to frighten Richard so did not suggest it. It was also exciting to bathe naked in the creek flowing below the house so she did this instead. It left Richard at a loss and she knew she embarrassed him but he said nothing and her love for him grew stronger because he did not try to impose his disapproval on her.
When she was ready she told him her thoughts.
He sat on a felled log, face troubled, as he considered what she’d said. ‘Are you sorry about us? The marriage, I mean? All of it?’
She took his hand. ‘I’m that happy I can’t begin to tell you. Really happy. But I want more for us than we’ve got. It’s not right William should have everything and you nothing. It’s not fair but your uncle obviously doesn’t plan to do anything about it. So I reckon if we want to get ahead – for us and any kids we might have – it’s up to us to do something.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like Ballarat.’
His eyebrows vanished into his hair. ‘Go to the goldfields?’
‘Why not? There’s fortunes being made, from what the papers are saying.’
‘You think we could be that lucky?’
‘I think we can do whatever we want.’
‘What do we use for money to get there?’
‘I’ve got a bit put by. And you’re an overseer; you must have something.’
He had: that was true. He hesitated for a moment – did he really want to risk everything he had on what might prove to be a foolish venture? – but even as he did so he knew he would do it. For her sake and hopefully his own.
She was overflowing with love and purpose and laughter because she saw that he would do it, now she had put the idea into his head.
‘I’ve got too much on at this time of year,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t be right to walk away from it. When do you want to go?’
‘Soon as you can get away,’ she said.
At their next meeting Jonathan spoke to Murphy about getting someone to take his place as overseer.
‘Might take a while,’ Murphy said. ‘Good blokes don’t grow on trees, you know.’
‘When?’ Richard said.
‘Maybe in the new year? I’ll have to clear it with Mr Tregellas but I doubt he’ll stand in your way. He’s got interests over there himself, I understand.’
‘In the gold?’ Richard was surprised; it didn’t seem Barnsley’s style.
‘In the land. William’s over there now, keeping sweet with the people running the show.’
‘He’s just got married,’ Richard said.
‘So he has,’ said Murphy. ‘Seems like he couldn’t wait to get away from that new wife of his. In his shoes I’d do the same.’
Murphy was from Cork via the convict ships and was willing to speak his mind, so long as his employer could n
ot hear him.
‘I doubt we’ll be meeting up with him,’ Richard said. ‘He’ll be staying at some posh hotel.’
‘And you?’
‘We’ll be in with the mob.’
1913
It was the last week of April and autumn was well on the way. The welcome swallows were long gone and now the goldfinches had followed. Along the creeks the poplars burnt like yellow candles in the sunlight and when the wind blew the air was a torrent of falling leaves.
Now, unexpectedly, there was mystery in the air as well as leaves. Everyone at Derwent knew something was on the go but what it might be was the question.
Two days before the old lady had received a letter that had given her enormous satisfaction. Gladys, one of the maids, had reported meeting Mrs Penrose in the long gallery and hearing her humming a tune. Nobody had heard of such a thing before.
Now, suitcases and hatbox packed, Grandma had taken off in her carriage, saying only that she would be back the following day.
‘Or possibly the day after,’ she told Mrs Harris, the housekeeper.
Bec and Jonathan were up by Blackman’s Head. They hadn’t made love yet because today was a special occasion: Jonathan had decreed they would have a picnic.
‘I’ll get Mrs Gadd to knock us up something,’ he had said.
Now they unpacked the picnic basket. Mrs Gadd’s something consisted of potted meats, slices of ham and beef, a cold fillet of salmon, a loaf of crusty fresh-baked bread with farm butter and what Bec thought of as a righteous pork pie.
She said as much to Jonathan, who laughed.
‘Delectable, I’ll give you. Even ambrosial. But righteous? What’s righteous about a pie?’
‘Don’t you go teasing me with your smart words,’ she said. ‘All food’s righteous, when it’s like this.’
That was a measure of the gulf between them, she thought, that he should take such things for granted while she didn’t.
Land of Golden Wattle Page 24
