Lessons In Loving (2 page)

Then Kate had backed away. Now that her scholarship was finished, she would struggle to pay her first week's rent, in even a lowly boarding house. As well, she must buy a suitable outfit to wear to interviews—shoes, gloves, skirt, blouse, jacket and hat. For the moment, though, despite the pain that pierced her heart every time she saw her mother make do, she must be realistic. She must stay in the cottage until she found a position.

The fateful Friday arrived. The students packed their bags, waved their goodbyes, and left the college forever. Kate moved into to her mother's cramped cottage, commandeered the sofa as her makeshift bed. A week later as she heard the postman's cheery whistle, she saw a battered envelope, smudged with dusty fingerprints, plop through the slot in the cottage's front door. Could it be from Mr Fortescue? Bubbling with hope, she ripped it open as she walked back down the hall, and read:

Dear Miss Courtney,

xxxx
Yours,

Tom Fortescue

The writing was scratchy, difficult to read. Oddly shaped blots, some the size of a threepenny bit, defaced the crumpled page. And those crossings-out, that word ‘youse' …

Mr Fortescue was, quite evidently, a somewhat illiterate farmer who had been forced to answer her letter without help from someone with proper schooling. Still, that wasn't so unusual in places where schools were few and far between. It was to be hoped that the ‘male pupil' mentioned in the notice, likely Mr Fortescue's son, would be receptive to her teaching.

After a visit to Sydney's Central Station to study the timetable, Kate found that if she caught an early morning train she would arrive at Armidale at a respectable time of the evening, assuming the train ran on time. To be sure that her letter arrived well before her visit, she selected a date a few days hence, then wrote to Mr Fortescue. She would arrive on the 6.11 pm train on Thursday, November 8
^th
, and she very much looked forward to meeting him next morning after her night at the Railway Hotel. A day after posting her letter to Mr Fortescue, Kate met for goodbyes with her friends Susan and Marcia.

‘Armidale? Isn't that somewhere in those wild New England ranges?' Susan exclaimed, hand to her wide-open mouth. ‘Is it safe for an innocent young maid like you to go there alone, Kate?'

Marcia chimed in. ‘I say, wasn't Armidale the haunt of the wicked bushranger, Captain Thunderbolt?' she said, hands twitching. ‘Not to mention the Rocky River gold rushes. You know that all kinds of riffraff flock to gold rushes—jailbirds, fortune hunters, men down on their luck. Providence help any poor woman who chances to be in the neighbourhood of a miners' village!'

‘And riding alone in a wagon with a man, along a lonely road, for goodness knows how many miles.' Susan's voice projected her concern.

‘I trust the man,' Kate lied. ‘His letter was so innocent. Why, I shouldn't think he'd hurt a fly, judging by his writing.'

‘Oh, so you can show us the letter, then. Let us give our informed opinions?'

‘I'm sorry. I didn't bring the letter with me. But I'm perfectly happy with the situation.' For the first time since they'd met in their early days at college, Kate saw her friends as conservative, not interested in keeping up with the times. As she walked back to her mother's cottage, Kate swallowed hard. She must be brave about her forthcoming journey to the wilds of New England. To show the least sign of weakness would be to ask for trouble.

***

At 6.11 pm, a few days later, Kate stepped down from the train onto the windswept loneliness of Armidale Station's platform. She looked up and down, saw nothing except the railway line stretching to infinity in both directions. A man dressed in railway uniform walked out from a building, waved a green flag, and blew a whistle. The engine driver answered with a toot from his locomotive. Slowly, slowly, the train chuff-chuffed away, leaving Kate alone, cold, and a little frightened on the deserted platform. Clutching her bundle, she crossed the dusty road and stepped inside the ornately carved sandstone entrance of the Railway Hotel.

‘I'm Miss Kate Courtney,' she told the bespectacled clerk at the concierge's desk. ‘Mr Fortescue has—'

‘Ah, yes. Please be seated, ma'am.' Flexing the long white sleeves of his perfectly pressed shirt, he flicked through a large leather-bound book, looked up and smiled. ‘The Macquarie Suite. Our finest.' He rang a bell. A porter appeared, took up her bundle, and headed for the stairs. With a key attached to a bejewelled ring he opened the door, deposited Kate's bundle on a bench, stepped out into the passage and handed her the key.

‘We trust you enjoy your sojourn with us, ma'am.' He bowed and slipped away.

As Kate stepped inside, she gasped. The room was enormous. She walked to a large window at its far end. A view of forested mountains, silhouetted by the setting sun, greeted her. Open doors along one wall beckoned. She spotted a graciously large bedroom occupied by a vast double bed covered with an embroidered silk quilt. Then she spied a tiled bathroom, and a generous wardrobe. She had become a queen on a royal visit to her colonial subjects. To afford such regal lodgings for a visiting would-be governess, Mr Fortescue must indeed be comfortably off. And for whatever reason, he clearly wished to create a good impression for his son's possible governess.

***

Next morning Kate quelled her nervousness for long enough to take a short walk among the wakening shops in the nearby streets. Then, back in the hotel's dining room, she attacked the breakfast served by a smiling, immaculately dressed waiter. As she lingered over her second cup of tea, the waiter approached and bowed.

‘Visitor for you, Miss Courtney,' he murmured, then disappeared.

Kate rose and walked to the door. A humbly dressed Chinese man stood in the lobby.

‘My name Ah Foo.' He bowed. ‘Mr Fortescue, he send me meet you. He say sorry he can't come. So I take you to Kenilworth.'

‘Very well, Mr Foo,' she said. ‘Please excuse me, I'll fetch my luggage. I shouldn't be more than a moment.'

Mysteriously, the hotel porter arrived the second Kate finished her packing. She stepped from the door of her sumptuous chambers and followed him as he shouldered her bundle and walked to the staircase. After fulsome goodbyes from porter and concierge, she stepped into the street. Ah Foo smiled, retrieved the bundle, threw it onto the tray of a wagon waiting at the kerbside, and climbed aboard.

‘I help you?' Ah Foo leaned towards her, hand extended.

‘Thank you. I can manage perfectly well by myself.' She hauled herself onto the wagon's seat. Ah Foo flicked the reins. The journey to Kenilworth had begun.

Hours passed silently as Ah Foo held the reins while the horse ambled on. They reached a down-at-heel village with a handful of shops—a general store, a milliner, a public house, a saddler, a village hall.

‘This place, it called Croydon Creek,' he mumbled, then drove on.

In late afternoon, the wagon pulled off the road and turned onto a narrow lane. Soon it passed a huge barn, a row of stables. A grand old house loomed a hundred yards ahead. The house—a mansion rather than a farmhouse—stood commandingly on a rise. Most likely, it had once been the country seat of a wealthy English family. Kate knew that in the early nineteenth century, the fledgling New South Wales government had lured wealthy English aristocrats to settle the virgin region by giving them large tracts of land, even offering them convicts to work the land. Now the old house seemed to look down at Kate, a frowning dowager eyeing a servant girl come to clear the afternoon tea things.

‘What business have you here, peasant maid?' she imagined it asking her in its dated aristocratic accent.

Kate must put aside those feelings. In a few moments, she'd be taking part in an interview. She must appear confident, positive—a woman who could teach a little boy, make him want to learn, to behave himself when he might prefer to run away and play with his toys. ‘Women must fight for their independence.' For the hundredth time since Kate had farewelled Sydney, Vida Goldstein's words resounded in her head.

As they closed on the mansion, she stared up at its high sandstone walls, crowned with a roof of dark slate tiles streaked with lichen. Rows of tall multi-paned windows peered from under steep gables. Again, it seemed to speak to her in the rasping tone of an elderly duchess. The wagon entered a circular gravel drive and stopped at a flight of marble steps leading to the mansion's stately front door. Ah Foo took her bundle and laid it at the bottom of the steps.

‘Mr Fortescue, he take your bundle.' Ah Foo bowed, returned to the wagon, and headed for the stables.

Kate walked up the steps, slowly, contemplatively. At the top, she hesitated. The moment she had dreaded and hoped for in equal measure over past weeks had now come. She absolutely must calm herself before her interview. She looked towards the horizon, hoping to absorb its quiet serenity. Rolling hills stretched in every direction. On the greener patches, sheep grazed. The scene was as still and as quiet as an old sepia photograph. A kookaburra cackled, then stopped. Somewhere in the hills, a lost lamb bleated for its mother. The perfumed breath of eucalyptus trees wafted over her. She began to feel the peace gel around her.

A horseman rode into view. Could it be Mr Fortescue? He pulled up at a hitching rail, slid off his horse, flung a rein round the rail, and headed for the mansion. Through his loose-fitting dusty clothes she registered broad shoulders, narrow waist, neat hips. At the bottom of the steps, he smiled and waved. She stood, expectant, ordering her heart to be still.

‘G'day to youse, ma'am. Youse must be Miss Courtney. I'm Tom Fortescue.'

Fighting not to wince at his use of the ‘youse' word which had peppered his letter, she smiled down at the man. The least hint of a curtsy seemed wrong for a woman who might soon become independent. She must learn to block those out-of-date womanly reactions.

As Mr Fortescue reached the verandah, he held out a hand. She rose, shook it, feeling its warmth, its sandpaper roughness. Surprisingly, his fingers were long, slim, complementing the gentlemanly profile of his deeply tanned face. After an embarrassingly long moment, he released her hand. She must become used to the slow, easy way he moved, spoke. And also his grammatical clangers.

The skips in her heart slowed. She took a restorative breath, smiled back at the lanky man, likely no older than his mid-twenties. His smile signalled a friendly, easygoing nature. His aristocratic nose, sculptured jaw, hinted again that he might be descended from the ‘English establishment' family which, she'd conjectured, had acquired the land back in the district's pioneering days.

Her eyes flicked to his body again. He stood over six feet tall, easy, relaxed, the width of his shoulders accentuated by his trim waist. A swathe of straight, light brown hair spilled over the back of his neck.

‘Hope youse had a pleasant trip, ma'am. Decent kip at the hotel last night?'

‘Yes, thank you.' Kate struggled to hide her shock at his language. Every time he mouthed a blue-collar word, it blotted the image created by his patrician looks. If she won the governess job, and her pupil was his son, then Mr Fortescue would be her employer. Perhaps they'd spend time together after the interview. It would be interesting to ask him about his family history.

‘A busy day on the farm, perhaps?' she asked.

‘Nothin' a beer or two won't fix.' His smile was pure country.

‘We'll sit here, miss.' He pointed towards a table and a cluster of cane chairs at the end of the wide verandah. ‘Take a seat. Take in the view. People reckon they like to sit here. Folks hereabouts call this place the Big House.' He hesitated for a second, then faced her. ‘Like a drink, then?'

Did he mean tea? He didn't seem the kind of man who drank tea, with his little finger cocked above the dainty cup's handle. She tried to picture him making tea in a tidy kitchen, then serving it in the ornate floral tea service you'd expect in a stately mansion. The picture wouldn't take shape. There must be a maid inside, working in the kitchen. Perhaps he'd ring a bell and she'd appear. Would she wear a long white apron and a cotton bonnet?

‘Think I'm gonna have a beer,' he said, apparently reading her mind. ‘Like one, miss?' She thought of asking for a glass of water, then changed her mind. What would Vida Goldstein have said?

‘Yes indeed,' she answered, hoping she could pretend to enjoy a glass of beer. ‘Thank you.' The one time she'd tried the Australian males' ritual drink, during an end-of-term celebration, she'd been repulsed by its frothy bitterness.

‘Back soon.' He walked the length of the verandah and disappeared round the corner. The clomp-clomp of his dusty boots died. Silence flowed over the landscape again. Kate would make use of the chance to draw breath. She pondered the looming interview yet again. If she won the governess position, perhaps the boy she would teach might sport the same accent, use the same ungrammatical words as his father. He'd need dedicated coaching to polish him into the young country gentleman who might one day inherit this stately mansion and the sweeping hillsides.

‘Brought a glass for youse,' he said, placing it beside her. ‘They reckon ladies likes their beer in a glass.' Perhaps Vida would approve of that. He applied a corkscrew to the bottle, popped the cork, and filled her glass until the creamy head overflowed. Then he took a healthy swallow from the bottle. Kate sipped carefully, hoping she'd manage to appear a seasoned beer drinker.