by Peter Watt
He stood in the small, hot kitchen of Kate’s temporary home in Cooktown, watching Jenny bending over a big round tub going about the business of washing dishes. She was so absorbed in her duty that she was not aware of the young man standing behind her. Working for Kate was not considered a chore for Jenny compared to the past months of her traumatic life. No more the terror of rape and no more the fear for the life of her son. Under Kate’s roof she had discovered the gentle warmth of caring and sharing. Even her son Willie had left his world of nightmares to play in the sun with Kate’s adopted children.
He and young Tim had forged a strong friendship. They were both outsiders to the tight clique of Sarah, Peter and Gordon and found themselves happy in each other’s company, which pleased Jenny as much as it did Kate who had long been worried about Tim’s exclusion from the triangle.
‘Jenny,’ Ben said quietly. Startled, she swung around from her washing. ‘Could I talk to you?’
She wiped her hands on an apron. ‘Of course Ben,’ she replied with a pleasant but distant smile.
‘Kind of hoped we might go for a walk to the river and look at the boats,’ he said hopefully. ‘It’s pretty down there.’ Jenny untied the apron, which Ben interpreted as an acceptance of his invitation. She patted down her old but clean dress and followed him out of the kitchen.
They walked in an awkward silence down to the river. Between them was a tension as if they both knew why Ben had appeared in the kitchen this day. Neither seemed to be aware of the people they passed on their walk. It was as if a fuse was burning towards a powder keg located on the banks of the Endeavour River. When finally they came to the river, Ben sat down in a small clearing fronted by stands of mangrove trees with their gnarled roots reaching down into the sand and mud of the tropical waters. Through the trees they could see the big ships of every kind at anchor and the bustle of smaller boats moving between them.
Spreading her long dress Jenny sat down beside Ben and stared at the colourful flotillas. The fuse had burned to the edge of the powder keg, as they both knew.
‘I love you Jenny,’ Ben said setting off the explosion. ‘Always have from the moment I saw you on the Palmer.’
‘You cannot love me,’ she replied in a voice laced with pain. ‘I am not a woman fit for the love of a good man.’
Ben turned towards her and she saw in his expression a terrible pain not unlike her own. ‘Why can’t I love you Jenny? To me you are the most beautiful woman in the world. I have never seen any woman as beautiful as you.’
‘How could you love this?’ she said savagely, pulling away the long tresses of her hair to reveal the strawberry birthmark covering the side of her face. ‘How could any man love a woman with this?’ Ben’s eyes brimmed with a desperate need to be believed for what he was about to say. She could not bear to see his pain and glanced away. Her long golden hair fell back across her face as she sat with her head down.
Ben reached across and gently brushed her hair from her face. She did not resist his gesture. ‘I don’t care about the mark,’ he said softly. ‘All I know is that I always want to be with you, for as long as I live. I want to marry you.’
Tears welled in Jenny’s eyes and she covered her face with her hands. ‘I can never marry you,’ she sobbed. ‘I could never marry any man. I’m used goods.’
‘I don’t care,’ Ben said gently. ‘I don’t care anything about you except for what I see and know now.’
Jenny ceased crying and swung on him bitterly. ‘You don’t know what I’m talking about. If you knew you’d run a mile.’
He did not know what she alluded to, although Kate had hinted when they were on the track to Cooktown that things had happened to young Jenny that were best not spoken about. Now he wondered indeed if her past mattered. He took a deep breath. ‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘I don’t care about anything except you.’
‘And what about Willie? Would you say that if you knew how he was born?’
‘It don’t matter,’ Ben persisted stubbornly. ‘Nothing matters except how I feel about you, and Willie. And all the things you said to me back on the track when we fought the myalls. Didn’t any of that matter?’
Jenny wiped away her tears with the back of her hands. She was trembling and Ben placed his arm around her shoulders. A delicate little sunbird flashed black and gold as it hovered near a flowering tree on the river bank. She stared at the bird – only fractionally larger than a hummingbird – with its long beak inserted in the heart of the flower.
‘I meant what I said then,’ she replied quietly. ‘But that was then and this is now. You and I could never be together in towns where people would talk about how you married a woman like me.’
‘I don’t intend to stay in towns,’ Ben said close to her ear. ‘I’m saving to take up a lease down south on the Flinders River. Run cattle to supply meat for the goldfields. Kate is going to help finance me next year. She said it was worth the risk for me coming back to work for her instead of panning for gold on the Palmer.’
Jenny felt his gentle and confident words against her cheek. For the first time since they had walked away from Kate’s house she flashed him a wan smile. ‘You really do love me!’ she said. ‘You would take me as your lawful wife to work with you.’
‘I’ve even got a name for our new place, when we get it,’ he said, with a broad smile across his sun-tanned face. ‘I’m going to call it Jerusalem.’
‘Why a name from the Bible?’ she asked. ‘Isn’t that where the Jews live?’
Ben bowed his head and stared bleakly at the river before answering. ‘I’m a Jew. At least my mother says I am. But she never told me much about being a Jew except to say people called Gentiles don’t like us. They reckon we killed their Saviour.’
‘I don’t care if you are a Jew,’ Jenny said, taking his hand in hers. ‘I don’t think you would have killed Our Lord if you had been around then, not that I know much about being a Christian anyway.’ They looked at each other and burst into laughter. The fragments had settled around them and they both remained unhurt by the explosion. Jenny leaned across to Ben and kissed him on the lips. ‘I always loved you too, Ben,’ she said. ‘From the first time I saw you by the fire looking at me the way you did. You had a kind look, not like the other men in my life who hurt me. I felt safe when you looked at me.’
‘You don’t have to tell me about what happened before we met,’ Ben said. ‘That was the past and all I know is that this is now. I think we should get married and take up a lease on the Flinders.’
Jenny flung her arms around the young man and crushed him to her. ‘We will,’ she said and, for the first time since she could remember, felt true love. That unknown feeling she had always suspected existed – but was afraid to find, lest it hurt her.
That evening Jenny sought out Kate and told her of the love she and Ben felt for each other. Her news was met with a long hug from Kate and the conferring of her blessing on the future for them both.
When Kate was alone she reflected on the happy news. It was a good union. She had always sensed in the young girl a wonderful, if partially hidden, strength very few possessed. Jenny would make a fine wife for Ben and stand by him through good and bad times. She wondered miserably why it could not be so between herself and Luke. A tiny voice told her that she had to trust her heart more than her head. But for now her head ruled and her heart took a secondary role in her busy life.
SIXTEEN
Miss Gertrude Pitcher did not like Mister Granville White. A stern woman with a permanently pinched face and silver-grey hair, she had strong ideas on the raising of young ladies. For some time now she had sensed something in the girls’ father that was not quite right, an intangible evilness about the man when he was around his daughters. But she dared not express her misgivings to Missus White for fear of reprisal, although she would do everything in her power to protect the girls from harm.
The nanny felt disturbed as she stood in the drawing room of her employer’s house,
suspiciously eyeing Mister White and the young girl who stood brazenly beside him in her cheap dress staring defiantly back at her.
‘Mary is a little friend I have brought to meet Dorothy,’ he said, almost too casually for her liking. The girl did not have the look of a young lady but more of one of those trollops from the working class suburbs of Sydney. She had long dark hair that flowed loosely around her shoulders and her cherubic expression seemed to mask a worldly wisdom. ‘She and my daughter Dorothy,’ he continued, ‘will spend some time together this afternoon in the library with me. I would like you to fetch Dorothy to join us there Miss Pitcher.’
Miss Pitcher did not know why she should feel uneasy except that Missus White was away for the next two days with her younger daughter Helen visiting friends at Camden. Dorothy had been left in her care because she had been running a slight fever and was not up to the coach trip to the country with her mother. But why the concern, she wondered with a frown, her female intuition telling her something did not bid well. ‘Do you not think that Miss Mary is possibly a little old to be a friend to Miss Dorothy?’ she asked coldly. ‘Miss Mary appears to be . . . ’
‘Miss Mary is eleven years old and my daughter is nine, Miss Pitcher,’ Granville cut across icily, asserting his dominance as her employer. ‘And I think it is my position as Dorothy’s father to decide who my daughter should befriend. Don’t you think so Miss Pitcher?’
‘Very well Mister White,’ Gertrude conceded reluctantly. ‘I shall fetch Miss Dorothy.’ She turned her back and swished from the room with the imperious air of her position as nanny to a budding young lady of good breeding.
Granville scowled at the back of the departing nanny. He would have to think of some way of having her dismissed if she maintained her insolence. The woman did not know her place.
Dorothy stood uncertainly in the library. It was not a place where she was normally permitted and the invitation to the sacrosanct room made her feel uneasy. Granville smiled at his daughter as Miss Pitcher closed the door behind her. He rose from behind his desk to cross the room and thought how much his daughter was like Penelope at the same age. He took his daughter’s hand and led her to the big leather couch. Dorothy had the same golden ringlets of his sister and the same exquisite beauty.
‘Have I done something wrong Papa?’ the little girl asked in a tremulous voice, as her father sat her down on the couch.
‘No Dorothy,’ her father answered in a tight voice, giving his daughter a gentle hug of reassurance. ‘You are here because you are a good girl my little darling.’
Dorothy felt like crying with relief. She loved the man who had always been so distant in her life and yet always there to protect her world. The soothing words and gentle embrace flooded her with a sense of well-being. ‘I am a good girl Papa,’ she answered, with a slight tremor of relief that the call to the darkly mysterious and forbidden room was not to chastise her for unknown transgressions. ‘I love you Papa.’
‘I know my little darling. And I know you will never tell anyone about the games we will play together in this room. No matter what happens. Because if you do I will have to punish you and send you away forever. You will never see your mother or sister ever again. Do you understand what I am saying?’
Confused, Dorothy listened to the soft words of threat with a terrifying realisation that in fact she had done something terribly wrong to cause her father so much anguish, although what she did not know. She did know however that her father knew everything, and if he said he would send her away, then he would.
She stared at him standing over her and her tremor became a trembling. She wanted to burst into tears but she knew she must not. She had been taught that a young lady should not display her emotions. Ashen-faced, she watched in stunned disbelief as the strange girl in the room took off her clothes. She stood naked displaying herself with a leering smile. Dorothy wanted to run from the room and run forever. Horrified she sat and stared imploringly, hoping her father would make what was happening go away. But when she stared into her father’s eyes she saw only the strange, glazed expression of someone she did not know. It was as if a devil had come to take her father away. The creature leering at her, with the sweat glistening on his forehead, was as totally alien as the strange girl who came to her. Mary knelt and ran her hands up Dorothy’s legs inside her dress.
‘You will like what Mary is going to do to you my little darling,’ her father crooned, as his lust rose at the sight of Mary kneeling before his daughter. Mary’s naked buttocks spread enticingly before him. ‘Mary will do things to you that will feel nice. And Papa will do things to you that you will like.’
With mounting, helpless terror, Dorothy felt the older girl’s hands force her legs apart and her fingers touch that place forbidden to all. She wanted to scream out. How could it be that the man she most trusted in the world could be taken away and the devil come to his body?
Granville groaned as he watched Mary smiling her pleasure for him. It was so easy, he thought, as Mary caressed his daughter with lewd words of encouragement. It was as easy as the first time with his sister all those years before in England. And now he had another Penelope to pleasure him. It was so easy. With casual and brutal indifference to his daughter’s terror he began to unbutton the fly of his trousers.
Miss Gertrude Pitcher had always prided herself on her absolute self-control. But now she felt her steel-like resolve dissolve. What she had seen in Dorothy’s bedroom a short time after she had returned from the library was beyond all control.
Granville sat smugly, watching her across the library with the eyes of a predatory animal as Gertrude’s rage boiled into words. ‘Miss Dorothy has been . . . been . . . ’ she faltered in her attempt to dredge up words to fit what she had witnessed in the little girl’s bedroom: a face turned to her with eyes that had seen a horror only the devil himself could conjure from hell. She’d had an experience so unspeakable that Miss Pitcher wondered if the little girl lying huddled on her bed would ever speak again.
‘My daughter has not been harmed Miss Pitcher,’ Granville replied self-assuredly. ‘She has had a little fright when I had to chastise her. That is all. And I would hope for your prospects of continuing employment in my house that you remember that well.’
Gertrude stared disbelievingly at the monster before her. How could he lie so blatantly when the signs were obvious that the man had interfered with his own daughter? This man that she had once admired, not only as her employer, but also as a leading gentleman of colonial society feted for a future knighthood – how could he destroy the innocence of a child as gentle and trusting as little Dorothy?
Granville calmly opened a drawer of his desk and produced a box of fine Cuban cigars. Casually, as if indifferent to the presence of the enraged nanny in the library, he lit one. ‘You have nothing else to say, Miss Pitcher,’ he said, softly blowing smoke into the air and turning his attention back to Gertrude who stood stiff-backed and lost for words. ‘If not, I would take this opportunity to give you some advice that I would hope you would consider wisely. And my advice is that you keep to yourself any unfounded suspicions you may have in your filthy mind.’ He leaned forward with his arms on the desk and his tone changed. His words came as a snarl. ‘You see, Dorothy will tell you nothing, as there is nothing to tell. And you will definitely not make any reference of this day to my wife. If Dorothy should behave in unusual ways in the future, I would expect that you will be able to provide my wife with a satisfactory explanation.’
Gertrude Pitcher gaped at the almost unbelievable arrogance of the man. His presumption that she would condone the unspeakable acts which had caused the little girl to lapse into a catatonic state. ‘I will be telling Missus White of my suspicions as soon as she returns,’ she said firmly. ‘I am sure she will know what to do.’
‘I can assure you that no such thing will happen Miss Pitcher,’ Granville said, as he watched a halo of blue smoke rise slowly in the still air of the room. ‘For if you speak
of unfounded allegations I will use my considerable power to ruin you. Or worse still, you may have an unfortunate accident, as it seems many people around me do from time to time.’
‘You dare threaten me Mister White?’
‘I do not threaten Miss Pitcher,’ he snarled. ‘I do.’
Gertrude felt the heat of his malevolence scorch her soul with real fear. It was true that people around Mister White suffered unsavoury fates. She shuddered. Her personal fear for her life was now greater than her rage.
Granville smiled as he watched the expression of sanctimonious indignation dissolve on the stern nanny’s face. The extraordinary wealth at his disposal, thanks to his growing influence in the Macintosh companies, gave him unlimited power over the likes of the nanny and others of her penniless ilk. But he also knew he must guarantee her silence – and by means other than fear alone.
He reached into the drawer of his desk and removed a wad of bank notes. It amounted to a year’s wages for the nanny. Fear and greed were worthy allies to a man like Granville, who lived by both. He placed the wad on the desk and tapped it with the stub of his cigar. ‘All this is yours Miss Pitcher,’ he said. ‘It is yours to keep and use in any way you may wish. But I must point out that there are conditions attached.’
Gertrude opened her mouth to speak. Granville raised his hand to silence her. ‘I will finish speaking Miss Pitcher. The first condition is that you remain in my employ for as long as I desire. And by remaining in my employ you will – how do I put it? – protect my interests in the matter of my love for Dorothy, no matter how much you may find the way I express that love distasteful. I can assure you, that she will learn in time to appreciate what we do together and view it as a genuine expression of my affection. Needless to say, I hope that I can come to rely on your support immediately. That is all I have to say. I will leave you alone now to think about all that I have proposed.’
