Land of Golden Wattle

by J. H. Fletcher

  ‘I’d kill her first, if it came to it,’ she told the empty room.

  Or more probably arrange for someone to do it for her.

  She got out of her chair. It was a simple enough action yet every day it seemed harder to do. She hated the idea of being decrepit – fifty-eight was hardly old – but had discovered that arthritis could put years on the strongest, more was the pity. Willpower helped fight the pain but there wasn’t much it could do about stiffening joints.

  Well, she must manage the best she could. The most important thing was that no one should have an inkling of the problem; she was determined the rest of the world should go on seeing her as the warrior she had always been.

  She put on her hat and coat and went to look for the chauffeur.

  She checked the appearance of the motor. It shone like a mirror in the sunshine and she nodded approvingly before hauling herself painfully into the back seat.

  She gave Bennett his instructions and sat back, looking out of the window as the car negotiated the steep hill. She was smiling, determined to enjoy the ride. Besides, she was looking forward to what she was confident would be a satisfactory outcome to the coming confrontation.

  Ten minutes later the motor car pulled up in front of the cottage where Constable and Mrs Painter lived.

  Mrs Painter came skittering from the house like a storm of chooks.

  ‘Oh my, Mrs Penrose. What a pleasure…’

  Bessie gave her most gracious smile. ‘Good day, Mrs Painter. I hope you are well? And your husband too, of course?’

  ‘Fine, Mrs Penrose. We are both –’

  ‘I believe you have a young woman staying with you? A Rebecca Hampton?’

  ‘Yes, indeed, Mrs Penrose. She gives me a hand with the chores. I hope there’s nothing wrong –’

  ‘A small matter. Nothing to reproach yourself with, I assure you.’ Bessie’s smile had all the charm of Constable Painter’s manacles. ‘Might I have a word with her? If she’s free?’

  1982

  Bec was sitting in her favourite spot: the chair on the deck of Derwent House, protected by a collapsible awning from the worst of the fierce summer sun yet with views over the vastness of the land lying to the north.

  After so many years it still seemed miraculous that for all her adult life she, the blacksmith’s daughter, had been a member of the family that owned the fifty thousand acres that made Derwent the largest property in Tasmania’s high country: twenty thousand from the original grant, ten thousand more from Barnsley and finally twenty thousand acres of what had once been Penrose land.

  Bec had read an article in a farming magazine that had held up the Derwent operation as a shining example of an iconic property that unlike many, and thanks of course to Tamara, had not been afraid to embrace new techniques.

  And now there was the obvious danger that, despite her marriage, Tamara’s rightful place might still be usurped by an outsider.

  In the noonday shadows she saw them: Emma and Bessie who had made Derwent what it was, Grandma Jane who more than any other being had united her with what had proved to be her destiny. They were the forerunners and she was determined she would be worthy of them and of Tamara, who was the future.

  I hold past and future in my hands, Bec thought, and I will not fail.

  It was easy to say but not so easily done because Raine Armitage had a tight grip on Giles’s affections and it would need clear and incontrovertible evidence to dislodge her. Evidence that for the moment was lacking.

  Mr Gardiner of Elphinstone and Partners had been back to her the day before and given her the little information he had been able to obtain from his firm’s Zurich correspondents. It wasn’t much: certainly not what Bec had been hoping.

  Basically the Lardner family and its legal advisers had refused to give any information at all about what they called their private affairs.

  In their place Bec would have done the same yet she remained convinced that it was in Raine Armitage’s past that the solution to the problem would be found. She was determined on one thing: in no circumstances would she tolerate the prospect of Raine’s son Jaeger getting his hands on Derwent.

  For the first time she understood how Bessie Penrose must have felt sixty-nine years before when the blacksmith’s daughter had appeared on the horizon of her life.

  ‘I am planning something radical,’ she had told Tamara after Mr Gardiner had left. ‘I am going to Zurich.’

  Tamara had looked at her.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking. You think it’s madness at my age and so it is but I see no alternative. This is something I have to do.’

  Now the arrangements had been made, the tickets and hotel booked, her passport updated. At six o’clock the next morning she would be aboard the early flight from Launceston to Melbourne where she would connect with the Swissair flight to Zurich.

  What happened after that would be in the lap of the gods. All she knew was that if determination was the criterion she would win.

  Bessie must have felt as I do, she thought. Certainly she did everything she could to stop me.

  What a battle that had been.

  1913

  Bec kept Bessie Penrose waiting for several minutes before she came sauntering down the path between the lavender bushes.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Penrose?’

  Not much give in her expression, Bessie thought. Well, we’ll soon change that.

  ‘Good morning, Rebecca. It is Rebecca, is it not?’

  ‘That’s right, Mrs Penrose. People call me Bec but Rebecca is the name on my birth certificate.’

  ‘I thought we could go for a drive and have a little chat. Would you like that, Rebecca?’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘You disappoint me, Rebecca. I thought you’d be excited. Have you been in a motor before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then get in for the ride of your life. Something you can tell your friends about.’

  Bec delayed responding just long enough to send Bessie a message, then got into the motor car and closed the door behind her. She sat with her hands in her lap. She looked through the windscreen and did not speak.

  Clouded in dust from the car wheels, the road unwound steadily behind them.

  ‘I believe you know my grandson,’ Bessie said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  Bessie waited – for a confession, perhaps? – but Bec said no more. For a few minutes neither spoke. Then Bessie said:

  ‘Poor Jonathan… I fear he will have many heavy responsibilities in his life.’

  ‘Running Derwent, you mean?’

  ‘That is very important, certainly,’ Bessie said. ‘And of course all the family’s other interests. For most people it would be all they could handle.’ She permitted herself a light laugh. ‘I daresay for many it would be a lot more than they could handle. But members of my family have always known that more is expected from them than from most. Jonathan is no exception, I’m afraid.’

  The motor car rounded a bend and found itself face to face with a mob of sheep being driven down the road. The dust, noise and smell of the sheep were all around them. Dogs ran and nipped, red tongues lolling. One in its excitement leapt on the back of a panicked ewe.

  The back of Bennett’s neck showed indignation that the motor car he was driving should be blocked by a mob of sheep but his employer, who liked to get her own way in everything, seemed unconcerned.

  ‘The pleasures and perils of country life,’ said Bessie Penrose. She opened the window as the drover came by. ‘Good day, Thomas.’

  He touched his cap. ‘Day, Mrs Penrose.’

  Bec saw him take note of her presence in the car. That’ll make for even more gossip, she thought.

  The road clear, the motor drove on.

  ‘That is an example of what I mean,’ Bessie said. ‘The owners of Derwent have social responsibilities also. People know who we are. They have an image of how people in our position should behave and it is our responsibility to en
sure we live up to it. In all things.’

  Silence but for the noise of the engine.

  They reached the top of a rise; Bessie leant forwards and spoke to Bennett; the motor drew to a halt. In front of them the land sloped gently into the valley. In the distance were the hills.

  ‘I love the view from here,’ Bessie said.

  ‘All Derwent land,’ Bec said.

  ‘As you say. It has been in our family for almost a century. Legally we are its owners but in reality it owns us. It is our responsibility to nurture it, expand it, devote our lives to it and eventually pass it on to future generations. There are times when that can be a burden, Rebecca. Times when it requires us to make sacrifices that perhaps we would rather not make,’ said Bessie Penrose.

  ‘A big job,’ Bec said.

  Since it was plain that something had to be said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Bessie said. ‘So big a job that quite frankly I do not believe any of us could manage it without support. Support from a loving husband. Or a wife capable of accepting the social responsibilities of her position. Of being accepted by the community.’

  Which you will never be. The words remained unstated yet were as loud as trumpets in the motor’s enclosed space.

  Someone socially acceptable, Bec thought. Someone, importantly, who was not Conan Hampton’s daughter.

  Bessie had exposed her hand. Now it was Bec’s turn.

  Go for it.

  ‘Where does love fit into all this?’

  She thrust the word like a mailed fist into what until now had been more or less a monologue. A dull flush spread across Bessie’s throat: she was unused to what had sounded dangerously like a challenge.

  ‘Love is essential, of course.’

  But might have been the plague, the way she spoke.

  ‘I love him, Mrs Penrose.’ There: she had said it – and to the enemy too. ‘And he loves me.’

  ‘You think you love him,’ Bessie corrected her. ‘I suspect you are a little young to know the true meaning of that word. What are you now? Fifteen?’

  ‘Sixteen, Mrs Penrose.’

  As you know very well.

  ‘You look younger,’ Bessie said. ‘Less mature.’

  ‘And you feel that only someone from your own social level could be right for Jonathan.’

  Bessie thrust out pugnacious lips. ‘I do not intend to get into a discussion of the whys and wherefores, Rebecca. I am sure you are a delightful girl in many ways but my grandson is not for you.’

  ‘Why?’

  Now the challenge was clear. Bessie’s eyes grew mean and small; there were limits to how much impertinence she was prepared to tolerate. ‘I have told you –’

  But Bec, inexcusably, cut in. ‘Are you saying that only people with the right background are suitable to marry into your family?’

  ‘I do not intend to discuss it with you.’

  Bec felt something stir in her: the courage to confront this formidable woman who stood between her and happiness. ‘Because if that is what you’re saying, Mrs Penrose, then I have to wonder about that. Given your own background, I mean.’

  Bec had heard of people blowing up like toads but had never seen it before.

  Bessie, swollen face and body, spoke in little more than a whisper. ‘You dare say such a thing to me?’

  Bec said: ‘Does the name Maria Hack mean anything to you?’

  ‘I have never heard of anyone of that name.’

  But Bessie had slumped back in her seat, face suddenly white, and Bec saw that her breath was coming fast in response to a question she had no doubt never expected to hear.

  She is lying, Bec thought. So Grandma Jane’s story is true.

  ‘Seems strange,’ she said. ‘Seeing the convict Maria Hack was your mother.’

  It was indeed a strange business, because Bec had discovered another person inside her, a being whose existence she had never suspected until now. She would never have believed that she, Bec Hampton, was capable of saying what she had.

  By her port-wine complexion it was clear Bessie would never have believed it either. Yet her voice, when she spoke, was so quiet Bec could barely hear her.

  ‘You have been talking to your grandmother. She has been saying these things for years. You must know they’re nonsense.’

  ‘I told her that was what you’d say,’ Bec said.

  ‘Then what are you talking about?’ said Bessie.

  ‘There is a letter,’ Bec said.

  ‘There is a letter,’ Jane said. ‘My mum wrote it. Your great-grandma Alice. She was there, you know, at the goldfields. She was in the Eureka Stockade.’

  Bec had heard the story a dozen times but had never known whether to believe it or not. She’d heard lots of tales of Eureka and the way the soldiers had gunned down the miners, but she suspected that those with the most to say had never been near the place.

  A letter, if one existed, was a different matter.

  ‘Have you seen it?’

  ‘I got it, girl. Got it safe. Always thought it might come in handy some day. Now I think maybe it has.’

  ‘You never talked about it?’

  ‘Uncle Will Tregellas wasn’t the sort to mess with. An’ after he died there didn’t seem much point. Not until now, anyway. I’ll tell you somen else. Maria Hack was supposed to have murdered someone back in London. But they wanted breeding stock for the colonies so they sent her out instead of topping her.’

  ‘You’re saying Bessie’s mother was a murderess?’

  ‘That’s why I’m telling you. You’re heading for trouble with that one, I’m any judge, but Bessie wouldn’t want people knowing about Maria Hack, would she? And there was another matter too.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Hobart was a small place in them days. Everyone knew everyone else’s business. My mum told me a lot of people had heard that William’s wife, her that had been Cynthia Mason, couldn’t have children after the accident she had. She always reckoned that was how Maria Hack got in on the act.’

  ‘To have William’s baby?’

  ‘So he could pass it off as Cynthia’s. You got it.’

  ‘And the baby was Bessie?’

  Grandma Jane smiled. ‘Bessie Tregellas till she married Phelan Penrose. One more thing. Mum’s letter says how the people in Hobart who knew about the accident was that surprised when Cynthia come back from Sydney with a baby that looked older than they would have expected but of course no one questioned it. They just thought they must have got it wrong.’

  ‘Why did my great-grandma write the letter in the first place?’

  ‘To get her own back.’

  ‘No doubt it would help if I knew what you were talking about,’ Bessie Penrose said.

  ‘I’m talking about a letter written by your Aunt Alice. She knew your mother in Ballarat.’

  Bessie laughed merrily. ‘I was born in Sydney. I have never been to Ballarat in my life.’

  ‘You were born in Sydney after your dad took Maria Hack there to give birth to you.’

  ‘Supposition,’ Bessie said. ‘Conjecture. You have no proof.’

  ‘Other than the letter,’ Bec said.

  She saw that the skin around Bessie’s lips was white. With every instant Bec was becoming more confident her fortune had changed and was now carrying her forwards on a cresting wave. For the first time she truly believed she had a real chance of realising her dreams.

  ‘This letter you say exists,’ Bessie said. ‘Of course the contents of a letter like that prove nothing but, as a matter of interest, have you seen it?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  What was a lie in a good cause?

  ‘And where is it?’

  ‘Safe,’ Bec said.

  ‘And you are saying this letter claims your great-grandmother met my father in Ballarat?’

  ‘Him and Maria Hack. People said Maria was a murderess,’ she said casually.

  ‘I know nothing about Maria Hack. Maybe she was a murderess, as you say,
but that has nothing to do with me,’ Bessie said. ‘Maybe my father had a child by her, maybe he didn’t. There is no way to know the truth of it now. But what I do know is that I was born in Sydney in 1856 and that before her marriage my mother was Cynthia Mason, daughter of one of the richest bankers in the colony.’

  ‘1856? That what it says on your birth certificate, is it? Not 1855?’

  ‘I shall listen to no more of this nonsense,’ Bessie Penrose said with a return to her iron-hard voice. She rapped the handle of her stick on the glass partition separating the passengers from the driver.

  ‘Back to the house, Bennett. If you please.’ She turned to Bec. ‘I shall drop you at the Painters’.’

  The car began to return the way it had come. Bessie Penrose, a model of outrage, sat motionless at Bec’s side. She said nothing nor would, perhaps, for the rest of the journey but Bec could hear the whistle and sigh of her still-agitated breath.

  By contrast Bec was feeling detached from everything that had passed between them. Of the letter’s existence she had no doubt. Of the reality of Bessie’s birth she had no doubt. Proof was unimportant; this was not a legal business but a question of reputation. Bec need do nothing now but sit and wait for the truth to work its poison in the veins of the woman sitting beside her.

  The cresting wave carried her on.

  She smiled at the woman at her side.

  ‘You were saying, Mrs Penrose, that my great-grandmother’s letter has nothing to do with you?’

  ‘That is exactly what I am saying, Rebecca.’

  Silence again, the paddocks flowing back.

  ‘Then you won’t mind if we give it to the newspapers?’

  Turning to observe Mrs Penrose’s face, she was in time to see the shock strike home.

  ‘It could be of great historical importance,’ she explained earnestly. ‘A letter from the goldfields… It is part of our heritage, isn’t it? And to think your father was there! How wonderful! You must be very proud of him.’

  Bessie’s eyes were shut. Slowly they reopened. Something not entirely human peered out. Something that saw the abyss and did not believe what it contained. But would exact vengeance.