The Black Dress (4 page)

Later we found that it had been 117 °F—in the shade—on the day that Papa had sailed. The hottest day in the recorded history of Melbourne, and no rain in sight. Half-a-dozen of our friends were forced to leave their properties, having lost everything in the fires. We returned to Darebin Creek through black, smoking devastation, terrified of what we would find at home.

Luckily the fire had missed Darebin Creek by more than a mile. Only the outermost paddocks had been scorched, and the house was untouched.

But without Papa the farm seemed very strange. It was frightening that the birds were silent. It seemed like a bad omen.
It’s just because of the heat,
I told myself.

We had taken our boots off on the trip home, but we were still sweating all over our good clothes.

‘Come on, then,’ I said, ‘let’s get into our ordinary things.’

But before we could all get inside, a wagon lumbered through the gate, piled high.

I saw Mrs Seward first, sitting on top of a box in the front of the wagon, her face blotched from crying and the heat. Their farm just down the Darebin road, so close to ours, had been burnt out.

Mr Seward climbed down from the wagon like an old man.

‘We’ve lost everything, Flora,’ he said to Mamma. ‘We didn’t know where else to turn.’

‘Well, now, of course you came to us,’ Mamma said, and moved straight away to help Mrs Seward down from the wagon. ‘Come away in. Come away in. You’ll stay with us as long as need be.’

All the Sewards had left was a wagonload of things they had saved from the fire: a table and chairs, some cooking pots, Mrs Seward’s china that she had brought out from Scotland, their clothes. The big furniture—the beds, the beautiful mahogany sideboard, and the settee—had all been burnt, along with all their books.

Adeline Seward was my best friend. She was my age but she was much smaller than me, and fair as fair with blonde hair and pale blue eyes. She climbed down from the wagon and just stood there, staring.

‘She looks like a ghost,’ Maggie whispered at me.

‘A stupid, giggling ghost. Come on, John, let’s go to the stream.’ But John wanted to help the men unload the wagon, so Maggie sat on the side of the verandah and pretended not to watch me take Adeline inside to the bedroom. Adeline was going to share the girls’ bed. It was a tight fit with Maggie, Annie, Adeline and me, but I made sure Adeline was on the outside with me next to her, so Maggie couldn’t poke and prod her in the night.

We lay in the dark on that first night and tried to pretend we couldn’t hear Adeline crying. If it had been me crying, I would have preferred no-one say anything. But maybe Adeline felt lonely.

I patted her on the shoulder and she cried harder.

‘It will be all right,’ I said. ‘Your parents will build a new house.’

She sobbed. ‘My doll was in the fire,’ she said. ‘She was all burnt up. My Annabelle!’

For a moment I felt that same mixture of annoyance and sorrow I’d had with Papa. Adeline had loved that doll. It had looked like her, with real blonde hair. Her grandmother had sent it all the way from Scotland. I had envied her so much when it arrived that I’d had to tell Father Geoghegan in confession. But it was just a doll, after all.

Then Maggie sniffled and turned her face into my shoulder.

‘At least Papa wasn’t burnt up,’ she said. ‘He’ll come back. He will come back, won’t he, Mary?’

‘Of course he’ll come back,’ I said. I could feel my own tears burning my face. So the three of us lay crying in the hot dark, holding hands, until we fell asleep.

Were Maggie and I just like Adeline, crying over a doll? It’s hard to describe what I mean. Papa was real, alive—vividly alive—but he was not what we thought him. Not wise, not strong, not capable outside his own domain of letters and books. We were crying for something that didn’t exist, at least not on earth: the perfect Father, which we can only find in God.

I learnt to turn to Him, even more than I had, while Papa was away. Learnt to rely on that perfect strength, that absolute love.

Maggie had never liked it when Adeline visited. ‘You never play with me when she’s here!’ she accused me in the kitchen while Adeline was in the privy. ‘You only play with me anyway because Mamma makes you!’

I could see there were tears behind her anger. I was horrified she would think I preferred Adeline.

‘I love you, Maggie,’ I said. Her bottom lip came out as though she were about to cry. ‘Really, I do. I like playing with you.’

I hugged her.

‘But Adeline is a guest. You know Mamma always says we have to be hos-hops-hos-’

‘Hospitable,’ Mamma finished for me. ‘And so you do, Maggie. But, Mary—not at your sister’s expense. Maggie can play with you both.’ She put her arms around us. ‘I want my girls to love each other as much as I love them.’

We turned our heads into her shoulder and snuggled in. I loved Mamma’s smell, of lavender and fresh ironing. Adeline came back from the privy and found us there. She stood uncertainly in the doorway, looking lost and alone. Mamma nudged Maggie.

‘Come on, Adeline,’ Maggie said. ‘Come and play hide-and-seek with Mary and me!’

Adeline shook her head. She didn’t want to leave the house or go out of earshot of her mamma.

‘A stupid, giggling ghost!’ Maggie had called her. Adeline giggled a lot normally, it was true. But on this visit she didn’t giggle at all. She shivered every time she went past the kitchen hearth and she would hardly let her mother out of her sight.

‘Then let’s play tea parties on the verandah where your mamma is sewing,’ I said. She smiled.

‘That would be nice, Mary.’

Maggie rolled her eyes, but she let Adeline use her good china teapot, the one with only one crack in it.

The Seward family left after two weeks to move in with Mrs L’Estrange, who was Mrs Seward’s sister. But they would rebuild, they said. All the settlers affected by the fires would rebuild.

It had not rained for weeks before my father left. It didn’t rain for weeks afterwards. Four months of drought, while the paddocks turned brown and then silver, and the sheep ate the dried grass until there was only bare earth.

Darebin Creek dried to a muddy rivulet. Three of the lambs got stuck and had to be hauled out bodily from the evil-smelling muck. Merri Creek dried up altogether. Our friends, the Camerons, had to dig in the beds of the waterholes to get enough water to feed the stock. It was only a matter of time before Darebin Creek was the same.

Mamma went about her daily tasks with a worried frown. The two men Papa had engaged the year before did their best, but without rain there was little anyone could do.

The earth itself began to smell strange; a hot, sharp smell that made me think of hell, where the fires burned forever. I had never smelt brimstone, but perhaps that was what it smelt like. Scorched earth, baking under the fire of the sun.

The vegetable garden was watered from our kitchen waste, but there was little enough of that. We had been reduced to one standing bath each a week. Mamma gave Maggie and John and me each a pitcher of water and a sponge and we had to wash ourselves down with that, and then pour the lukewarm water over the carrots and the potatoes. Lexie and Annie had to be washed more often, but Mamma was reduced to letting Lexie go without nappies for part of the day because there just wasn’t enough water to wash them all. It fretted her to see Lexie rolling around on a blanket half naked, but it was better than having the soiled cloths stink out the house.

The whole world had changed since Papa left.

The only thing that didn’t change was weekly Mass. Each Saturday night, a priest from St Francis’s arrived just before dusk. It was usually Papa’s friend, Father Geoghegan, a big enthusiastic Irishman who always ate a huge dinner before leading the family in the rosary.

Luckily we did have a lot of meat. We were killing the stock before they sickened and died of thirst. At least this way we could salt the meat for winter—although salt was becoming more expensive, Mamma said, and barrels for storing the corned meat were hard to get.

But on Saturday nights we could forget all that. We clustered around Father Geoghegan’s chair in the parlour after the rosary and plucked at his cassock.

‘Sing “Faith of Our Fathers”, Father,’ Maggie would beg.

‘No, no, sing “Ave Maria”
,
’ said Annie.

Even Lexie would hold out her arms to him and gurgle.

Father Geoghegan seemed to give off twice the warmth of other people. Just having him in the house made us all feel better.

‘All right, then,’ he would say, hoisting Lexie into his lap. ‘We’ll all sing.
Faith of our fathers, holy faith...’

We joined in loudly. Father Geoghegan had a lovely smooth voice, like treacle, strong and dark. I sang along happily. But the first Saturday after the Sewards left, Father Geoghegan started to sing ‘The Lord is My Shepherd’
,
and I remembered all the other times we had sung it. It was Papa’s favourite hymn. He had a light tenor voice that rode high above Father Geoghegan’s like a boat on a dark sea.

I looked across at Mamma and saw that she too was missing him. Her eyes were sad and she turned her head to look out the window, even though it was dark. Her voice trembled and suddenly she looked older. It was all Papa’s fault. For a moment I forgot the words, I was so angry with him, but Father Geoghegan touched my arm and smiled at me and I started singing again.

On the Sunday morning, we set up the altar.

It was fine weather, of course, the drought still continuing, so the men carried the table from the kitchen to the shade of the big river red gum next to the stables. Then Mamma and Bridget brought out the crisp white tablecloth we kept for the altar, starched and spotless. The good brass candlesticks from the mantelpiece in the parlour. New white wax candles. They were expensive, and the families in the congregation took it in turns to pay for them. On our first Sunday without Papa, Mamma let me carry the candlesticks and place them on the altar for the first time.

I felt butterflies crowding in under my ribs just before I set the candlesticks down on the cloth, and my heart beat faster. It was like being holy myself, to help lay the altar. And that is a feeling that has never gone away.

The butterflies were strong because my stomach was so empty. Those who were taking Communion couldn’t eat anything until afterwards. From midnight through to the end of Mass, no food a Catholic’s lips can pass, my grandmother used to say. It rhymed better in her soft Scottish accent. Mamma made the younger children eat but allowed Maggie and me to fast so that by the time we came to make our First Communion we would be used to it. It was hard. But when I was helping to set the altar table, I forgot I was hungry.

If the weather was inclement, we used the small table in the parlour and the congregation crowded in as close as it could. There were always some who spilled out the door onto the verandah, and some looking in the parlour window.

Ours wasn’t a big house, not like the L’Estranges’—that was one reason that it was such an honour to have the Mass there. Everyone knew that Bishop Goold had chosen our house because of Papa’s faith and hard work for the Church in Melbourne, right from when he first arrived. Perhaps it was also because Papa had studied to be a priest, in Rome, before he came out to Australia. The bishop knew that everything would be done correctly and I was proud of that. Proud of my father’s contribution to the Church. As I grew older, I wondered how much of the energy he spent on Church matters should have been given to his own work on the farm. He wasn’t a farmer by nature; I suspect now that he hated it and escaped whenever he could to the more congenial atmosphere of the bishop’s office. That might explain why our farms failed so often and why we were always in debt to Grandfather John. It was like setting a racehorse to draw a dray—no wonder Papa kicked over the traces.

I smile, and the sister sitting with me gets up to give me a sip of water. She can see real amusement in my face, and it puzzles her, but I can’t explain that I am laughing inside, thinking that we were lucky Papa’s idea of escape and indulgence was going to do the bishop’s paperwork! When I think of the excesses of drink and drugs and licentiousness I have seen since then, and the effects on the families involved, I think we had a lucky escape.

Poor Papa. At least he got his reward when the bishop chose his house for our Masses.

Neighbours came from miles around. The Andersons, the Gardiners, George Langhorne’s Irish foreman and his family, Thomas Walker and John Brown. Farm hands, shearers, men passing through who’d heard about it from the locals. Some of them had ridden for two hours to reach Darebin Creek.

‘It’s a balancing act,’ Father Geoghegan had said the night before. ‘Can’t have Mass too early or the farthest flung parishioners won’t get here in time; can’t have it too late or you’ll all be fainting with hunger in the heat.’

At nine o’clock precisely, Mass began with Father Geoghegan leading us in a hymn. It was my favourite time of the week. As soon as the first hymn started, I felt myself grow warm and happy and relaxed.

No matter where I lived—in Melbourne, at the L’Estranges’, with Grandfather John and Grandma Ellen, or home—the Mass was always the same. Always. It flowed on from the first
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti,
to the last
Amen.
Confiteor, Introit, Collect, Epistle, Gradual, Tract, Alleluia, Gospel, Credo, Offertory, Consecration, Communion, the Sending Forth. It formed a pattern I knew—had known since I was a baby. As long as the Mass held its shape, there was order and meaning in everything. That is still true. The thing I miss most due to my illness is going to Mass. Ah, well. I am luckier than most. While I could still swallow, I received the Holy Eucharist every day.

After Mass, everyone stayed for breakfast. They all brought their own food: hard-boiled eggs, bread and cheese, mostly. Food that would travel. Or sometimes there was bacon, cooked over a small fire, and Mamma and Bridget made tea for everyone, and scones. The children raced around with an egg in one hand and a buttered scone in the other, playing chasey and hide-and-seek and skipping.