The Black Dress (17 page)

‘Christ,’ Sarah whispered, as she blushed.

‘Do you think Christ would have begrudged Nancy some fruit?’

She shook her head.

‘So why don’t you go with Alex and pick out the nicest apple we have.’

She jumped up and ran out, Alex following her. I smiled at Nancy and beckoned her closer, but she would not come past the corner. I could still only see her face and one dark hand, clasping the edge of the building.

‘Is there anything else we can do for you, Nancy?’ She shook her head. A louse dropped off her hair and landed on the verandah. It was bigger than any I had ever seen, clearly visible against the grey wood.

‘Errk, ooh, disgusting!’ the two young ladies cried out.

I stared at them. ‘Even that is one of God’s creatures,’ I said, but I confess I said it dryly. It was rather disgusting, but it was clear that Nancy, whoever she was, was poor and uncared for.

Alex came back with a wooden plate piled with half a loaf and some rather hard cheese. Sarah trailed behind him, empty-handed.

‘Cook said I couldn’t have any fruit for one of the blacks, Miss Mary,’ she said defensively.

‘I see. Well, Nancy, here is your lunch. Won’t you come and get it?’ Nancy shook her head. I took the plate from Alex and walked over to her, holding it out at arm’s length. As soon as the plate was within reach, she grabbed the bread and cheese and ran, leaving me still holding the plate. I ran around the corner and saw a glimpse of her brown legs disappearing behind the men’s quarters. She was dressed only in a raggedy man’s shirt.

I had seen native women walk around unconcernedly naked and somehow this was acceptable—there was a dignity to their nakedness not unlike that I imagine was possessed by Adam and Eve before they ate of the fruit. But Nancy, half-clad in a man’s rags, was truly shocking to me. It was neither dignified nor modest, a half-state which hinted at degradation.

I hadn’t had much to do with Aboriginal people until then. Around Melbourne, they had mostly been wiped out in the early years of the colony by disease: smallpox, pneumonia, venereal diseases, God help them. I knew that Uncle Sandy had a good relationship with the tribe living around Penola. He employed them as stockmen, had ensured that they had access to their sacred places and to permanent water, and had negotiated with the elders of the tribe about spearing cattle. I’d heard terrible stories about settlers poisoning Aboriginal people with strychnine in the flour, or men going out on ‘hunts’, but there had been none of that in Penola.

When John complained about losing cattle to the blacks, Uncle Sandy said, ‘Why wouldn’t they spear a few cattle, when we’ve driven off the kangaroos and other wild game? They’re hunters, aren’t they? Which would you rather do, John, spend all day tracking down a stringy wallaby that will feed two people, or stroll up to a steer and have a feast for the whole tribe? Don’t you ever forget, lad, this was their land long before we came here. Don’t you forget that you’re only here in Australia because the English landlords came and cleared your forefathers off their own land in the Highlands. You think about that. You think on it long and hard.’

So the tribe lived unmolested and the men worked for Uncle Sandy when it suited them. But that didn’t explain Nancy. It was my aunt who gave me the explanation later.

‘She is the daughter of one of the men and a native woman. The tribe won’t have her in camp, and her father left here long ago. Her mother died when Nancy was about six, I suppose, and since then she’s lived on what scraps the tribe will throw her. When she’s very hungry she comes begging from us.’

‘Can’t she be fed regularly, and dressed?’ I asked.

‘Try, Mary, and see if she will agree. She never would come regularly for meals that we provided, not even when she was little and her father still lived here. She used to follow him around—he taught her to speak English. But she didn’t want anything to do with the homestead.’

Uncle Sandy told me not to worry my head about Nancy, but I couldn’t help it. She had looked so thin and hungry—and surely she was cold in the winters, with no decent covering. I wondered how I would have fared, with no family to love or take care of me. My own family was so large and generous. There had been many times in my life when, without family to care for me and mine, we would have been like Nancy, begging on the streets of Melbourne for our bread.

‘God will provide,’ Mamma always said.
And sometimes he provides through human action.

I walked down to the creek in the twilight after dinner. The mosquitoes were fierce, but I had rubbed my face and hands with citronella oil so did not fare too badly. I wondered how Nancy managed to escape them and realised that this was why she stank of old fat.
She greases her skin to stop them biting!

I found her sitting on a branch of the river red gum that stretched over the creek, swinging her legs and singing a native song. She had a lovely voice, but she sounded sad. I was touched once again by the thin, pinched face. She was as tall as me, yet only half my girth. Her long legs dangled over the creek.

‘I used to have a favourite tree I sat in when I lived at Darebin Creek,’ I said. ‘But it wasn’t as nice as this one.’

She looked at me.

‘Sister Mary,’ she said, in a clear voice as pleasant as her singing voice. It gave me a queer thrill. This almost-stranger was the first to ever call me that. Perhaps one day it would be the name everyone knew me by.

‘Yes,’ I said and grinned at her, suddenly light-hearted. ‘That’s me.’

I sat down on the creek bed. ‘You know, Nancy, I have other sisters at home. Maggie and Lizzie and Annie. We share lots of things, especially clothes.’

She swung one leg over so that she could turn and look at me.

‘I have a dress you could have, if you wanted it,’ I said. ‘A present.’

‘Present?’ She looked at me with amusement, and I was ashamed. I had assumed she was stupid because she was dirty, but clearly she was intelligent—as I suppose she would need to be in order to survive. It was a good lesson, and one I never forgot when I confronted a new student covered in sores and dirt, barefoot and snotty-faced. Look beyond the dirt to the person. Nancy taught me that in one instant.

‘Well, all right, it’s not a present,’ I said. ‘It’s a trade. You come up to the homestead and let me get those lice out of your hair and have a decent meal, and you can have the dress.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t like to see my sister running around half-naked,’ I said.

‘Sister?’ This time the disbelief and mockery was clear to hear.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘My sister in Christ.’ I looked at her steadily. It was easy to understand why she didn’t believe me, but I wanted her to know I wasn’t lying or putting on a false face. She stood up on the branch and stared at me, then swung to the ground and walked off.

‘Maybe,’ she said. She grinned over her shoulder. ‘When I get hungry.’ She laughed and ran off.

But she came up to the homestead after breakfast the next day. It took us all morning and a full quart of kerosene to get rid of the lice. My aunt’s steel-toothed comb was never the same. The little girls joined in eventually, squashing the bugs as they fell from Nancy’s hair onto the ground. A holiday from lessons was all they cared about.

After the lice were gone, I brought out the bathtub and set it up behind the dairy. Cold water was no penance in that weather. I envied her the cool sluice as I emptied the buckets over her. Then we dressed her in my old blue dress.

To tell the truth, I could ill afford to give it to her. I only had three dresses, and one was for Sundays. Still, I had a black wool skirt and long-sleeved blouse. It would acclimatise me to wearing uncomfortable clothes. I’ve never seen a nun’s habit really suitable for Australia’s climate. I don’t suppose they can be.

But when she was dressed and eating a good meal of mutton stew on the verandah, I didn’t care if I had to wear black wool for the rest of my life.

‘It won’t last,’ my aunt said. ‘She’ll tear that dress to pieces until it’s no better than the old shirt.’

But she didn’t. Nancy came up every day and listened to the lessons on the verandah. I saw her practising her letters with a stick in the dirt and repeating her Catechism under her breath. I gave her some citronella oil and some soap, she and the dress were washed regularly down at the creek. She would sit in her old shirt on the branch while the dress dried. We often talked down there, about my life in Melbourne, about God, about the countryside roundabout. Finally, she said, ‘Sister Mary, you came from Melbourne. Could I go there?’

‘You’d have to get a job, Nancy.’

‘Mmm. I could be a maid.’

‘You’d have to learn how. There’s more to it than you think.’

‘I could learn,’ she said with certainty.

She learnt so well and so fast that Aunty Margaret tried hard to get her to stay, giving her one of the men’s huts to live in. But Nancy was set on going. I often wondered whether she would be happy in a city house when she had been used to roaming the bush.

When I questioned Nancy, she looked around her at the billabong, the trees, the grasses, and sighed.

‘This is my country,’ she said. ‘I’ll come back, maybe, one day. But I want to go somewhere no-one knows me. Where I’m not the half-caste girl no use to anyone.’

I hesitated, but felt I had to warn her. ‘You’ll be called a half-caste in Melbourne. And worse.’

She shrugged. ‘But it won’t be my mother’s people saying it.’

I prayed she would find it better than her life here.

I sent Nancy to Mr Kenny with a letter of introduction. My uncle paid her fare. The station hands took up a collection and bought her a new dress and a pair of shoes. That seemed the hardest thing of all for her, wearing shoes, although I think she hid a great deal of fear and anticipated great loneliness. Mr Kenny organised her a job in a boarding house and I heard later that she married one of the boarders. As to whether she was happy or not, I don’t know.

I learned a great deal from Nancy. Mostly I learned how little I knew about the original inhabitants of this land. I chastised myself that I had never questioned what had become of the natives who had originally lived on our properties at Merri Creek and Darebin. They were long gone by the time we settled there, killed by sickness, driven off by settlers, shot and poisoned and simply frightened away. I was ashamed that I hadn’t thought of these things before.

I wasn’t called by God to work with native people, as my brother Donald was when he became a priest. But knowing Nancy meant that wherever the Institute of St Joseph opened schools, Aboriginal children were welcomed on the same basis as everyone else. That caused a fair amount of trouble with parents. But having known Nancy, how could I believe all that nonsense about Aboriginal children being stupid, or savage, or untrustworthy? What silliness! As for the children coming only when it suited them, well, better that they come sometimes, and be welcomed with love.

Over the next few months I had many talks with Father Woods. Each time I came away surer than ever that he was right—it was God’s will for me to start a new order of nuns.

‘The Institute of St Joseph,’ Father said enthusiastically. He was a great admirer of St Joseph, who worked away quietly and steadfastly looking after his precious family, without any recognition in his lifetime. I agreed. I knew that Our Lady would be pleased to have her husband honoured in this way.

‘We must get permission from the bishop to start the Institute,’ said Father, but I hesitated. I was still the main breadwinner for the family. Maggie had intended to start work with Sands, Kenny & Co., but had become seriously ill with rheumatic fever and was still not strong enough to work. John’s money was helpful, but not enough on its own and Mamma could not seem to attract boarders who could actually pay the rent—she was too soft-hearted, I think, to evict them if they fell behind.

‘Not yet,’ I said.

‘You must write and tell them, Mary, so that they can make arrangements for the future.’

‘I can’t tell them in a letter, Father. When I see them next—’

‘Very well. Indeed, you are still very young to begin such a great enterprise. A year or so’s delay will not destroy our plans.’

Indeed, it was almost a year later that I returned to Melbourne and was able to speak to my parents.

My family were still living in Richmond. They had taken in two boarders—older men who worked at the abattoirs up on Sydney Road. Poor Mamma! Getting the blood out of their clothes was an impossible job.

I wanted to talk to my parents alone, but with the boarders and the children it was almost impossible. The kitchen and parlour always seemed to be full of people. Eventually I was forced to make my announcement in front of John, Maggie and Annie. Lexie, Peter and Donald were in bed, thank goodness.

I stood by the fireplace, where I could see everyone’s face. I had rehearsed what I was going to say, but it all went wrong.

‘I’ve been thinking about the future,’ I began.

‘So have I!’ my mother said triumphantly. ‘And this morning I received a letter from Eliza Lee Cameron. She wants you to be a governess for her daughters. Isn’t that wonderful!’

‘But—’ Aunt Eliza was Sandy Cameron’s aunt by marriage. She had married Sandy’s uncle Duncan, who had passed away a few years earlier. They had had two daughters, Sarah and Bella. If I had not been planning a very different future, I would have been delighted. The Camerons were lovely people, although I thought Bella might be a handful to teach.

My mother was happily reading out the letter from Aunt Eliza to the others. The salary offered was very generous. It would mean that Mamma and the girls would be sure to keep a roof over their heads.

For a moment I hesitated.
Perhaps I should take this job and then, after that, when I’m of age, tell my parents.
But that was cowardice.

‘I want to be a nun,’ I blurted out. Silence fell.

Papa looked closely at me, and opened his mouth as if to speak, but Mamma spoke first.

‘Oh,
no,
Mary!’ Her voice held real pain.

I was startled. I knew that financially it would be hard for Mamma without my help, but I didn’t expect her to be so anguished by the idea.

Papa spoke.

‘If Mary has a true vocation, Flora, we cannot—we
must not
—stand in her way.’

He came to me and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Are you sure, Mary? It is easy to be mistaken about these things—as I know.’

I nodded, my throat tight. He rarely spoke about his time in the seminary. Then he smiled sweetly at me.

‘If you are sure, daughter, then God bless you.’ He kissed my forehead. His eyes were full of pride. At that moment, I felt very close to him, connected at a deep level. I remembered, with a rush, the hours he had spent teaching me, when we had been united in exploration of our Faith and our world.

‘I don’t see
why,
Mary,’ Mamma said.

So I told them: about the poor bush children who never saw a school; about the schools that would not take Catholic students; about little ones growing up without being able to sign their own name and worse, not knowing the name of God. I told them all about Father Woods’ plans for an Institute of St Joseph, a new order of nuns who would work and live with the poor, with no more possessions than those they served. I talked about a network of small convents all over the country, each with its school and perhaps a house where the needy could come for help.

My father frowned. ‘That’s a very big job for a young girl. Are you sure you are capable, Maria Ellen?’

I hesitated.

On my own, no, I’m not sure at all, but with God and Father Woods helping me...

‘Of course she’s capable,’ Maggie said dismissively. ‘Someone has to start these things—why not Mary?’

John nodded. ‘Oh, yes, Papa, if anyone can do it, Mary can.’

I had tears in my eyes, touched by their faith in me. ‘With God’s help, Papa, and the guidance of Our Lady.’

Papa nodded. ‘Well, it’s God’s work, daughter, there is no doubt about that.’ He patted my shoulder again.

All this time my mother had sat silent, listening.

Now she burst forth. ‘But, Mary, Mary, if you go who can I depend upon?’

My father stiffened and his hand dropped from my shoulder. Since that day I have sat with the sick and the dying and I have prayed with those condemned to die, but I have never seen a look on anyone’s face like the look on my father’s as he realised, finally, Mamma’s true opinion of him. His whole body curved inwards as if from a blow.

Then he straightened, as his pride stopped him from showing his hurt in front of us. I saw so clearly his pain, and his strength as he met that pain.

‘I may not be of much assistance, Flora, but I am sure the other children will do what they can.’ His voice was dead.

Mamma looked up at him, realising what she had said. ‘Alexander—’

The hard thing was, I saw, that Mamma’s voice was full of love. They looked at each other in despair. God save us from loving those we cannot respect.

‘Of course I’ll help,’ John said. ‘I’m in line for promotion soon. After all, I’m the same age Mary was when she went to Sands, Kenny & Co.—almost.’

‘I could get a job,’ Maggie said.

‘No!’ Mamma said. ‘Definitely not. You’re not strong enough.’ Maggie had never really recovered from her fever. We were constantly afraid that consumption would set in.

‘I could help,’ Annie offered. She was only 14. When I saw that Mamma was seriously considering her offer, I realised I had to delay my plans. But not forever.

That night in bed I prayed for guidance to Our Lady and St Joseph. I promised them—I vowed—that I would start the Institute as Father Woods and I had planned. It was the first time in my life I had ever made a solemn vow, except for repeating my baptismal promises each year at Easter. I think of that moment, in a way, as the true start of the Institute. A strange beginning, maybe. Certainly a humble one, with one young girl staring into the darkness while three others snored and sneezed and breathed in their sleep. But it was a true beginning.

I have to smile at that young girl. I made a solemn vow, and then spent the next 20 minutes lying in the dark, planning what I would wear when I became a nun! At least I was practical. I would wear a black dress, I thought, which was respectable, solemn and wouldn’t show the dirt!

But after I had planned my habit to my satisfaction, I thought about my father, and cried a little. I had learnt something about my father that night, from his dignity in meeting the worst blow he had ever suffered. He
was
a strong man, in many ways. But he had the wrong kind of strength for this world. I wonder, now, where he could have been happy or productive. Nowhere he had to take orders, for certain! I’m not sure any human organisation could have satisfied or contained him. No superior could ever have kept to the standards Papa expected of others. I feel sorry for his superiors at Blair’s College in Aberdeen, when he returned from Rome. They must have been astonished at this cuckoo in their nest!

I chuckle, lying here now, as an image rises in my mind of Papa as a wandering preacher, the kind Europe once had, like Savonarola, tramping from town to town denouncing corruption and sin and simony. He’d have been good at that, and enjoyed it too, I think.

As always, as soon as I make a sound the sister looking after me rises and offers me water. I manage to shake my head, although it is getting harder to move. Not long now, please God...

Instead of staying and dealing with his unemployment in Melbourne, Papa convinced John to risk his savings in a trip to New Zealand, to work the new gold diggings there. John didn’t need much persuading, but of course, like all Papa’s schemes, it came to nothing and they returned nine months later, after Mamma and the girls and I had moved to Portland. They were empty-handed, without ever having dug an ounce of gold. Papa came back first. John stayed over there looking for employment as a carpenter, and waited, as he said, ‘For some opportunity to present itself.’

Waiting is hard. Hard. I had to wait for the Institute. First I worked as a governess to the Cameron girls. They were wild, ungovernable and completely undisciplined by their mother! Then I taught at the Catholic Denominational School in Portland, while the rest of the family ran a small boarding house for three ‘parlour boarders’ as they were known.

The years in Portland were a mixture of hard and happy and terrible. Hard because the work I really wanted to do was in Penola, with Father Woods. Happy, because for the first time in years the family was together again. That was when John came back from New Zealand. We were financially beginning to get on our feet. Papa was abstaining from local politics. There was harmony and a great deal of music. Annie and I both had jobs at the school, while Maggie taught the boarders. Mamma ran the house. And Papa? Well, he stayed out of trouble, which by then was all we could hope for.

Maggie was particularly happy to have us all together again. She had Mamma’s great love of family. Her illness had brought her close to us all and afterwards she seemed to relish good things so much more. She loved to have Lexie studying with her, enjoyed guiding her as she always had. But more than that, she was happy because the whole family was at peace.

At first, I enjoyed my time at Portland. I became sacristan for the church and what joy I had attending to the altar and the Blessed Sacrament. I loved to smell the beeswax and brass polish on my hands after I had cleaned the altar. It was as though I could carry the church around with me—and it made a nice change from the smell of chalk that always surrounds a teacher!

To be able to worship when I chose, as long as I chose, that was a great blessing. I fretted over the delay in starting the school in Penola, and found quiet solace in contemplating the Holy Eucharist and praying for guidance—I was even locked in one night because I was praying so hard I didn’t hear the doors being closed!

I loved teaching. I had to pass an examination to get the position, and it was the hand of God over me, I know, that allowed me to pass, because I had no time to study! I was given a middling class and soon after Annie took on the babies. The headmaster was a Mr Cusack. Poor man! He came to a sorry end, destitute and crippled.

All went well in the beginning. We had to borrow money to rent Bay View House and that was a worry to Mamma, but with Annie and me in employment we were able to live moderately well and still pay off the debt. Annie and I worked hard to teach our charges and they made great progress.

We made many friends in the town through the Church—too many, I thought, as whenever I talked about my ambition to start a school in Penola where all could come, our friends competed to talk me out of it. They tried to convince me that the work I was doing at Portland was too important to leave.

Well. It’s nice to be loved and appreciated. But Portland taught me the illusory nature of popularity, that popular opinion is fickle and must not be considered when deciding on one’s duty. Taught me in a way I could never forget.

We were in worse debt than ever. Again Papa. I do not mean to blame him for this, for truly I do not know the rights of it. I had written to Grandfather MacKillop, asking him to pay something towards the cost of a piano for the parlour, as we could charge, not only our boarders, but other children, too, for Annie to teach them piano. In any case, Grandfather MacKillop, generous soul, had sent the whole price of the piano to Papa who, misunderstanding, thought it was a present for himself and spent it on new clothes. His best suit was very shabby at the time. I tried to remember that. But it was hard to take, as our debt rose considerably as a consequence.

There it is, the old resentment and exasperation rising against him. I can feel it speeding my heart and rasping my lungs. It was such a
stupid
thing to do! And yet he wasn’t a stupid man. He knew we were in debt; even if he hadn’t realised about the piano he could have used his ‘present’ to largely reduce our obligation. He could at least have discussed it with Mamma. But, no. His old impulsiveness overtook him.

He was so proud of his new finery! He came into the parlour for dinner that night pleased as punch, showing his new suit and shoes. Mamma stared at him, a wondering look on her face.

‘Alexander?’

‘Father sent me the money for them,’ he said, smiling. ‘It’s been a long time since I had a decent suit.’

I realised what had happened immediately and put my head in my hands, trying to control my anger.

‘Maria Ellen?’ Papa said realising that something was wrong. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘That was the money for the piano,’ I said.

He stared at me, nonplussed.

‘The piano?’

‘The piano,’ I said quietly, ‘that we borrowed money to pay for. Grandfather MacKillop was helping us to pay for it.’

‘Oh, Alexander!’ Mamma said. ‘How could you?’

I don’t know what Papa’s explanation was. I know, absolutely
know,
that if he had realised what the money was intended for he would never have spent it.
He made a mistake,
I said to myself, over and over.
I should not be angry with Papa over a mistake.
Yet I was. Oh, I was toweringly angry, and the only thing I could do was to go to the church and pray for the strength to forgive him.

I prayed myself into calmness and I think I convinced myself that I had forgiven him—certainly I tried to calm the others when they expostulated to me about it. But I don’t think I did forgive him. Can I now? It was a small thing compared to what came afterwards, yet it seemed worse in some ways. Perhaps because, while the coming storm was clearly over a matter of principle, this spending of money showed an essential selfishness about Papa. Or, rather, since he was a generous man, a self-centredness, a lack of concern about the needs of others. As long as his conscience was clear he didn’t really consider what effect his actions had.

I also have spent my life trying to follow my conscience. But there are ways of remaining true to God while caring for others—perhaps the only way one
can
be true to God
is
by caring for others...

I know that if I had had a novice like Papa in my convent she would have received a great deal of advice about concern for other people, considering consequences, looking for alternative ways of following the True Path that did not involve hurting others. Yes, and then, like Papa, she would have stormed out convinced that she was doing right! Oh, what can one do but laugh?