The Black Dress (15 page)

‘Oh, let it go, Maggie,’ I said. ‘I was upset, but it’s over now. And everyone was so kind! He was the one with egg on his face at the end.’

She chuckled at that, with one of her swift mood changes.

‘Aye, wasn’t he? The long-faced piece of nothing. But that aide of his,’ Maggie grew thoughtful, ‘he liked you, Mary.’

I was startled. ‘Me? Never.’

‘Oh, yes, he was ogling you before you were introduced. And he smiled at you afterwards. You saw him!’

‘He was just trying to make up for the consul’s rudeness,’ I said, shaken. Maggie was rarely wrong about these things.

‘Perhaps he’ll call on you at the shop.’

‘Oh, no! I wouldn’t want that!’

‘But Mary, why ever not? He was lovely—nice, not just handsome.’

‘Yes, I’m sure he—But I don’t want him courting me!’

‘There’s no need to get upset about it! If you don’t like him, just let him know. You’ve done
that
before. But he
was
nice, Mary.’

I shook my head, really troubled. ‘It’s because he was nice that I don’t want him to like me,’ I said without thinking.

‘That’s ridiculous! Unless—’ Her eyes lit up. ‘Is there someone else?’

‘No, no, of course not. Just forget about it, Maggie.’

‘I will not. There’s no “of course not” about it. Adeline Seward has
three
beaus!’

‘Adeline Seward’s not going to be a nun!’ I blurted out.

Maggie sat down plop! on the bed in astonishment. ‘You’re not
really?
I know we joke about it, about you being so holy and everything, but you’re not
really
going to—’

I nodded.

She was appalled. ‘Wall yourself up in some convent? Oh, no, Mary! You like people too much.’

I sat down on the bed next to her, a little shaken by her response. It was the first time I had voiced my intentions aloud and I was disappointed with Maggie’s reaction.

‘No, not wall myself up. I want to ... I want to find a congregation that goes out and works with the poor.’

‘There aren’t any like that.’

‘There must be. I’ve heard of nursing and teaching orders in Europe.’

‘You’re not going to Europe?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know how, or when, or where. I just know this is what I have to do. It feels like I’ve always known it.’

Maggie sat quietly, absorbing what I had said. Then she put her arm around my shoulder, more carefully than she would have done before my announcement.

‘Well, I can see you helping the poor—and Lord knows you know what being poor is like! But Mary, what will we do without you? How will Mamma get by without your help?’

That was the question I asked myself often, but I had no answer.

It’s a difficult question for anyone with a vocation. I was not the first to have secular responsibilities that tied me to the world. Christ said to the rich young man, ‘Go sell everything you have, give the money to the poor, and come follow me.’ And he couldn’t do it. I’ve heard lots of sermons about how the love of money stopped him, but I’ve always wondered if there were other reasons: a father depending on him to continue the family business? A girl he’d been betrothed to since childhood? Work he’d undertaken that he wanted to see finished? It’s rarely as simple as money.

Christ also said that those who followed him had to leave father and mother and all relations. I knew I had to do that. The question was when? I was the chief breadwinner. I clung to the idea that the others would grow up and begin to contribute, as John already had. But we were hampered by the fact that the older children were mostly girls, and there were very few jobs available to girls.

We were hampered, too, by our respectable origins; Mamma had only been reconciled to my job in the shop because Mr Kenny was a friend and had promised to look after me. But she didn’t want any of us to work in manufactories or in sewing sweatshops, or domestic service. I don’t think the rest of the family would have stood for it, either. And not only that—I think our speech and education made us unfit for those jobs in the eyes of the employers. No mistress of a house wants a maid who speaks better than she does!

Class is an odd and tricky thing. One of the things I like about Australia is that class matters less than it does in Europe—witness the humiliation of the Belgian consul! But even though we talk blithely about egalitarianism and equality, class does matter. And education is the key. It is education that opens doors in this country, not only money. What money mostly does is buy education and put children in the company of others with education.

The child who cannot read or write will never achieve a ‘respectable’ job, no matter how brilliant their mind. Yet there are many brilliant minds among the poor.

That’s a hard thing for the ‘upper classes’ to admit. The class system, after all, is tacitly based on the idea that the cream rises. The poor
deserve
to be poor, is the implication; they are stupid, venal, dirty, brutal. Oh, I’ve heard it so many times! ‘I don’t want my little Susannah (or Jacob or William) to sit next to that
charity
girl,’ say the Christian parents. ‘One never knows
what
she might catch.’ And one felt that it was the disease of poverty that was most feared, not nits or fever.

Perhaps if I’d been raised in affluence I would have felt the same. I’d been poor too often myself to believe that poor equalled dirty, or poor equalled lazy. Whatever else Papa was, he wasn’t lazy.

I remember that one father offered to pay good fees to the school (which we badly needed) if his son could sit in a separate, screened-off area, away from the ‘free education’ children. The bishop wanted me to agree, but how could I? How could I teach the children that we are all members of God’s family if I treated one child differently from the rest? How could I say that they are all equal, and equally loved, in God’s sight if they weren’t in mine? I’m afraid the bishop wasn’t pleased, but it wasn’t the first time and it certainly wasn’t the last!

I start to laugh, again, which really isn’t fair on the sister looking after me. I’m sure she thinks my mind is wandering. I suppose it is. Wandering in time. The procession of young sisters continues. My goodness! I’m amazed at how many there are! It’s a long way from when Sister Blanche and I started it all in Penola.

Decisions are sometimes taken out of our hands. I could have stayed at Sands, Kenny & Co. for years, until all my brothers and sisters had grown up and could support Mamma and Papa. But God had other plans. It was while I was working there that my female troubles really started.

To the family, and to others who asked, I always said that it was the constant pounding of the printing presses that gave me headaches and was bad for my health. Well, that was true. The presses did give me headaches. On normal days I could bear it. But on the days when my courses ran it was intolerable. I would vomit, my sight would darken, and I would shake. The headaches and the cramps that followed were very painful.

Mr Kenny was very kind. First of all, he pretended not to know what was wrong with me—it would have been unthinkable to have discussed it with him! Then he tried to give me time away from the shop, to sit down in his office and recover after one of my vomiting fits. But it wasn’t fair to him. I was taking his wages and not giving him a full return. Some days I couldn’t rise from my bed to go to work. That wasn’t fair to Mr Kenny or to the other girls in the shop.

Yet my family needed the money. It was an anxious time for me. I wanted to do the right thing, but to leave without having another job in sight was unthinkable. Mr and Mrs L’Estrange had employed another governess for the girls, so that avenue was closed to me.

But God provides, as Mamma would say. My uncle, Sandy Cameron, visited from Penola around that time and, hearing that I wished to leave Sands, Kenny & Co., immediately invited me to come to Penola to be governess to his children. To live with him and Aunty Margaret, and at a good wage!

I am sure the hand of God was at work, making me so sick at that time, for although I suffered for many years afterwards with the same troubles, they were never so bad again. God pushed me out of Sands, Kenny & Co. and out to the bush, to Penola, where I would find my life’s work. God is very good.

I smile at the very tall and gangly novice who is touching my hand and she smiles back, with a hint of mischief, as though we share a secret. She’ll make a good teacher, that one. I sigh. There are so many of them to carry on the work, I can die without any anxiety.

Not all changes are so easy. Even though I was thankful for Uncle Sandy’s offer, the thought of ‘going bush’ was daunting. Penola was really the back of beyond in 1861.

What can I remember? Heat and dust and more heat. The smell of onions and beer and perspiration wafting from my fellow passengers. Three days of it, stuck in the Cobb & Co. coach. Air filtered through the small windows but it was thick with dust from the horses’ hooves.

My bones ached from the jolting, my hips were on fire from the rattling, my neck had cricks up one side and down the other and my shoulders ached from hanging onto the strap. Yet I was one of the lucky ones. The other travellers—Mr Carter, who was a magistrate, and his clerk Mr Polson—had insisted that I take a corner seat. I was thankful for it. At least I could lean against the side of the coach. The poor men who sat in the middle—they never offered their names and I did not like to ask—were shaken about unmercifully.

Cobb & Co. had a reputation for speed. Until you have been in one of their coaches you do not realise it is at the expense of the passengers’ comfort. But perhaps it was a blessing. The discomfort kept my mind from apprehension. Uncle Donald had said accusingly, ‘You’re sending the gel to the back of beyond.’ My papa had remained silent. What could he say, since it was his failure to support us that made it necessary for me to travel so far and work so hard.

I ignored Uncle Donald then because I was thoroughly glad to be going to South Australia. At least in Penola I would be spared the constant thumping of the presses and the head-aching smell of ink.
I can sit down to teach my cousins—no more aching legs at the end of the day. I’ll be back in the country. Perhaps I can even ride again.

In the coach, almost there, I wasn’t so sanguine. I looked out and sometimes saw cattle, but more often the road passed featureless bush. I wasn’t expecting much of Penola, a little back-country village. I knew there was a hotel where the coach passengers stayed—my Uncle Sandy owned it. They called him ‘the King of Penola’, as he had started the settlement 11 years ago, when he had received his freehold title over the land he had settled.

‘The King of Penola’ had sounded like a joke in Melbourne, but as I craned my neck out of the coach window when we came into the town, the title lost its humour. This was no sleepy village. There were stone buildings as well as wooden, two hotels, a courthouse, police station and stores. I was astounded.

‘Cobb & Co.,’ the coachman yelled to the ostlers as they drew up with a lurch and rattle. ‘Look busy!’

The offsider leapt from the perch and opened the coach door. ‘Royal Oak, Penola. Good tucker here and a damn good beer. Beg your pardon, miss. Ten minutes, you others. We’ll pick you up at the Cobb & Co. office down the street.’

I ignored the profanity and climbed eagerly down the carriage steps. The other passengers, men from the goldfields, rushed past me into the tap room. They had just enough time to have a drink and grab a pie or damper and cheese before the coach left. The Cobb & Co. coaches waited for no-one.

Uncle Sandy was waiting. He was beaming, that wide smile I knew so well from childhood, and I blinked back tears.

‘Whist, Mary, lass,’ he said and hugged me, a great bear hug, careless of who might be watching. ‘You’re as pale and peaked as a dying swan! Never mind, we’ll soon get roses back in your cheeks.’

In all my imagining, I had never dreamed of the great relief that swept over me as Uncle Sandy hugged me. Here, he was the responsible one. He would look after everything and everyone, including me. All I had to do was teach. At Sands, Kenny & Co. I had felt quite old, 30 at least. But as soon as Uncle Sandy called me ‘lass’ I felt even younger than I really was. I laughed.

‘Oh, it’s good to see you,’ I said. ‘And what a town you’ve made!’

He grinned. ‘Aye, it’s a good one. Better than you expected, isn’t it?’

‘Much!’

‘Ha. Those old women in Melbourne. What do they know about my kingdom? Come away and we’ll get out to the homestead. Your Aunty Margaret can’t wait to see you.’

Aunty Margaret came out as she heard the sound of the buggy. Children surrounded her. Margaret, my eldest cousin and the only one I really remembered, was away at boarding school with the Sisters of Mercy in Geelong, but there were plenty more.

I climbed down a little shyly, feeling very travel-stained and untidy in my old green dress, but Aunty Margaret threw her arms around me and hugged me hard.

‘Och, welcome, lassie! Come away inside.’

‘Can’t I meet my cousins first?’

There was Ellen, at 12 (‘Almost 13, Mum’) already as tall as I was, with her father’s bushy black hair tucked willy-nilly under a hair net. Then there was John, a skinny ten-year-old, and Sarah, a red-haired Scot if ever there was one, who was nine.

They were my pupils. They eyed me with interest as I met the next one in line, young Mary.

‘We’re twins!’ she said delightedly. ‘We have the same name!’

Alexandrina, a year younger, said, ‘You can’t be twins. You’re only five and cousin Mary’s
old.
’

I smiled at them both. ‘Well, we can be pretend twins.’

‘See?’
Mary said with satisfaction, and took my hand. ‘That’s Ann. She’s only two. She’s scared of strangers.’

Ann was a tiny thing with black curls and her father’s dark eyes. She was hiding behind her mother’s skirts.

‘Come out of there and say hello to your cousin,’ Aunty Margaret urged. Ann shook her head, her thumb in her mouth.

I knelt down and smiled at her. ‘
You’re
very beautiful,’ I said, ‘aren’t you?’ She nodded. Her mother laughed.

‘She’s her father’s daughter, all right, and knows her worth.’

‘Maybe you could show me where I’m going to sleep?’ I asked Ann. ‘Do you know where?’ She nodded.

‘
I’m
going to show you!’ Mary announced.

‘I’ll show her,’ said Ellen. ‘I’m the oldest.’

Sarah stamped her foot. ‘You always say that, and it’s only ’cause Margaret’s not here. It’s not fair!’

‘Sarah! Mind your manners,’ Aunty Margaret said and made an expressive face at me. I had the impression it was Sarah I was really here to teach. A handful.

‘Can I show her,
please?
’ Sarah said.

I winked at her. ‘But I’ve already asked Ann.’

I looked at Ann and held out my hand. She put her own into it and looked up triumphantly at her sisters.

‘Me show.’ Then she dragged me away down the verandah, the others trailing behind.

‘But she never goes to anyone!’ Aunty Margaret protested. ‘You’ve cast a spell on the bairn, Mary.’

The homestead was a long, low building, made of stringy-bark boards with a zinc roof. It was huge—15 rooms—with French doors opening onto a verandah all the way around. The kitchen was separate, as it so often is in the bush, to reduce the heat and the risk of fire. Ann was a little confused about which room was mine, so Aunty Margaret led me to a room on the end of the building and chased away the children. The room was large by Richmond standards, with a lovely view of Torilla Lagoon. I could see black swans sailing past the pair of huge red gums that stood on the edge of the lagoon.

‘It’s so pretty, Aunty!’ I said. ‘There’s so much water.’

‘Did you think you were coming to the desert?’ she teased.

‘Well, I had thought the rainfall here was much lower than around Melbourne.’

‘There’s not that much difference. And Sandy picked a good spot for the homestead, that’s the truth. Now get yourself freshened up and come to the parlour for a cup of tea.’

As I washed my face and tidied my hair I wondered how long I would stay. My life seemed to be one long round of moving—from house to house, from farm to city, even from state to state. I yearned for a settled, quiet period in a place I could really call home. But Penola wasn’t likely to be that place.

Although Sarah acted like a much younger girl, she was already nine, almost ten. Ellen was due to go to the Sisters of Mercy next year, and Sarah the year after. So what need would they have of a governess then? There was Mary, Alexandrina and Ann, but Sandy Cameron believed, like many Highlanders, that a child should not be schooled formally until they were at least seven. They were unlikely to keep me just for Mary. And where would I go? Back to Sands, Kenny & Co.? I didn’t think I could bear that. So I put it from my mind. Here I was, living in what seemed like luxury after our cramped, poor house in Richmond. Lots of food, fresh air, pleasant company. I sang as I unpacked my things after tea.

Ellen bounced on the bed and laughed. ‘I thought you would be all prim and proper. Everybody said how
good
you were.’

I laughed too. ‘Nowhere near as good as I’d like to be,’

I said gaily. I put the last of my underthings away. ‘Come, show me the stables. I’d like to meet your pony.’

The next day we started lessons. It was no use teaching the young ladies, as they liked to be known, Latin or ancient history. They were no scholars. So I concentrated on the things they would need to know when they, as they undoubtedly would, married some upstanding young son of a settler and had to run their own homestead—accounts, ordering, letters of recommendation, agreements with tradesmen, all the practical skills of reading and writing.

As well, we read novels together—Sir Walter Scott, of course, but also other uplifting stories. Ellen was particularly taken with
Emma
by Miss Jane Austen. Although written a half century before, the position of Emma in her town of Highfield was so much like Ellen’s as daughter of the King of Penola that she was captivated—and, I hope, warned of the dangers of such a position.

I found Sarah to be shockingly ignorant of mathematics and with a very shoddy hand. John already knew a great deal about sheep, but next to nothing of the world outside Penola. Much of the young ladies’ curriculum was useful to him, also.

In the late afternoons, the young ladies learnt the manual skills of a householder—dairying, cooking and sewing—with their mother, while John went out on the run with his father.

‘You’ll be glad to have some time to yourself, I imagine,’ Aunt Margaret said, smiling kindly. But really, I would have been just as glad to keep teaching.

The girls and I went riding together. I used Aunt Margaret’s mare, Gussie, a lovely little chestnut with a white blaze over half her face. The countryside was very different to Darebin Creek, but it was lovely to canter over the limestone hills and see the sheep grazing quietly, the trees shivering in the breeze and the snaking green lines of the creeks.

Bringing the horses back to the stable I often saw a couple of children, a boy and a girl, who would hide around a corner of the building and giggle as they peeked out at us. I said hello, but they ran away.

‘Oh, that’s the Dawson twins,’ Aunt Margaret said. ‘Dawson is our overseer.’

I was startled.

‘There are other children on the station?’

‘Half-a-dozen or so. We have three married couples living in the outlying houses, you know.’

I had known, but hadn’t thought about it.

‘Who teaches those children?’

‘Nobody, I’m afraid. There aren’t enough of them to form a school on the station, and it’s too far for them to travel into the township to Mr O’Grady’s school. Besides, they’re Catholic and he doesn’t take Catholics. I suppose their mothers teach them what they can.’

Of course, I was employed only to teach my cousins. But there was nothing to stop me teaching the station children in my own time. Poor little things. If they grew up ignorant they would be forced into the hardest types of labour.

My aunt shook her head. ‘Mary, Mary, why do you always take the world on your shoulders? Those children are their parents’ responsibility, not yours.’

But she spoke to the parents and soon enough I had a second school on the verandah in the afternoons. Just as well. Not only did I find the children abysmally ignorant of letters and numbers, but also none of them knew their Catechism properly. Catherine Dawson thought the Holy Spirit was really a dove, and her brother thought that ‘born of the Virgin Mary’ was ‘born on the verge in Merry’ and that Christ had in fact been born on the roadside in a town called Merry! He had been quite puzzled last Christmas to hear the story of Bethlehem. I tried hard not to laugh, but I’m afraid that time I didn’t succeed.

Those children were my first exposure to the widespread ignorance of country children. It’s hard to believe today, but there were no free schools, no compulsory education, no-one to care if most of a generation grew up unlettered, and pagan to boot. The parents’ lives were so filled with work that they had no time to teach their children. For the first time I wondered how much Papa’s failure as a farmer was due to his insistence on teaching his children and the time he took from his work to do it. Mamma, too, taught us our Catechism and prayers as a normal part of our daily ritual. But, in the early years, she had help around the house, which gave her some time to spend with us. We were doubly fortunate and, like most fortunate people, we took it for granted.

At Penola I learnt how fortunate we had been. Most children who lived in the bush were pitifully ignorant about everything except their immediate physical world—though granted, they knew this in intimate and profound detail. There were half-a-dozen unschooled children on Uncle Sandy’s run—and a similar number on each of the runs around the town! It added up to scores of children, in this one town alone. Across Australia there were thousands. There was no one to worry about them; certainly no-one was making an effort to educate them.

It wasn’t until 1875 that compulsory education was introduced in South Australia and later than that in the other states. Even then, the country children fared badly. After 1875 the number of schools and teachers increased dramatically, but not fast enough to reach most country children.

What difference did an Act of Parliament make if there were no school? In country towns of the 1870s, if there was a school, it was usually one of ours. Now, there are St Joseph’s schools all over Australia, as well as the government schools that followed us.

In 1861, there was just me.

I worried over it, but I thought at the time there was nothing I could do but teach those children who were near me. It took Father Woods to make me realise I was wrong.