The Black Dress (6 page)

‘Not just at this minute,’ I said. ‘Mamma needs me.’

Mr L’Estrange made a strange noise. Like a cow burping, I thought with a private giggle. ‘Humph. Well, you’re right about that. Are things going all right on the property?’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘Uncle Peter comes out every Sunday and gives the men their orders.’

‘Hmm. Well, if you ever need any help, you come to me, Mary.’

I shouldn’t need to. Papa should be here to help me if I need it ... But Papa is missing this,
I thought with satisfaction, and then forgot about him as Mr L’Estrange swung me into the Pride of Erin that was starting up. I danced like a gypsy all night. I loved to dance, loved the swirl of the music and the beat that came up through the soles of my feet. The whirling and the twirling and the breathlessness. That night was the best night I’d ever had.

Pretty clothes and dancing—well, I suppose I missed them a little when I became a nun. The dancing more than the clothes. I was too busy to even think about clothes. But sometimes, when I was invited to a wedding and the fiddler started up, my foot would tap under my habit and I would wish to be out on the floor. I knew my young postulants missed it. Sometimes, newly entered young girls would ask me, wistfully, ‘Why can’t we dance too, Mother Mary?’

They were always shocked when I explained, ‘Because dancing like this, man and woman together, is about courtship and the marriage bed, and we are married to God already.’ Their faces would go blank with surprise that I would talk so frankly, and I’d laugh. They thought that I wouldn’t know of such matters—as if a girl raised on a farm would not know!

Apart from that, there was always a deep passion between my parents. It was discreet, but ever-present. It crackled between them all through my childhood like sheet lightning presaging a summer storm. I suppose it explains a good deal about them: the quick marriage, the children in swift succession, my mother’s patience with Papa’s faults, the disintegration of their marriage when passion, as it can, waned in their later years. It makes me wonder now how Mamma felt about that long separation when Papa went Home. It must have been hard on her in many ways that I, as a child, could not imagine.

It was September in 1851, and the weather was turning warm, before we finally received a letter from Papa, posted from Rio de Janeiro. He sent his love and said that Mr McLaughlin was becoming very ill indeed. Mamma looked sad.

‘Mr McLaughlin is a man who values family, and he has none here in Australia,’ she said, when I asked her why she was sad. ‘I suppose it’s only natural he would want to die at Home.’

Die. Papa had taken Mr McLaughlin Home to die. I thought about that, on and off, for days. Dying was such a serious thing, it made it easier to understand why Papa had gone with him. I couldn’t feel quite so angry with Papa.

‘We shouldn’t judge people,’ I told John. ‘We don’t always know the truth of why they’re doing things.’

John nodded solemnly and then shrugged. ‘Can we go down to the creek, Mary? It’s warm today.’

So we went down to the little creek that fed into the larger Darebin Creek and busied ourselves making a dam.

I didn’t like going down to the creek, although the others loved it. I couldn’t help remembering Grandfather MacDonald. I kept a close watch on John and Annie. I couldn’t bear the thought of them laid dripping on a table. But that didn’t stop me from putting a tadpole down John’s back.

‘Eerk! Mary, you beast! Get it out!’

John yelped and wriggled trying to get it out and Annie and I laughed until we had to lie on the ground to get our breath back. He finally pulled it out of his shirt and chased us with it until it died. Then he put it in his pocket.

‘John!’

He grinned. ‘It’s a present for Maggie!’

We laughed some more.

On our way back to the house I thought again about Papa’s letter.

Mr McLaughlin was dying. Little Alick, my baby brother, dead only a few months after Grandfather. How lucky it was that all my family were in Australia. There’d be no need for any of them to travel back to Scotland to die. Not that any of us were going to die. Of course not. But there were shipwrecks. Pirates. Storms. There was the damp and cold of Scotland—perhaps Papa would catch an ague. There were the tropics through which the ship would pass. Malaria, dysentery, and yellow fever—I didn’t know what these things were but I knew that some of every ship’s company did not make it through the journey.

Mamma’s own brother had fallen overboard while suffering from a bout of typhoid fever on their journey out, and some other passengers had died. Mamma and Grandmother and Uncle Donald had been in quarantine for weeks after they arrived in Australia.

Every morning and evening, at family prayers, we prayed for Papa’s health and that he would be returned to us safely. I prayed hard. At those moments, all I could think about was Grandfather’s face that day when Papa laid his body on the table, and Alick, all cold and pale in his best dress, laid in his shroud, with Mamma weeping silently as she placed the cloth over his face, the tears dampening the white cloth and turning it grey.

Death is a grief to the living, but to the dying it can be a promise. I am growing impatient again, but I suppose God knows what he is doing, keeping me here so long. I must have more work to do.

We were not a long-lived family. Maggie died when she was 29, John at only 22. Lexie was 33 and Peter, the youngest of us, was 23. Annie and Donald and I are the only ones left now. The others will seem so young to me when I see them again!

Yet I’m thinking less about dying now, as it faces me, than I did in that long year that Papa was away. He had left in February. Nine months later, the summer heat was beginning again, though there were some cooler days with light showers and breezes. The land was gradually being cleared and stocked. There were lambs in the paddocks again. Baby kangaroos hopped after their mothers at the edges of the cleared fields.

We hardly dared to leave home in case word came from the docks that a ship had been sighted. Often, a ship would arrive outside the harbour mouth too late in the evening to send for a pilot boat to guide it in. Then it would wait at anchor until the morning and a favourable tide. When that happened, the ship would exchange signals with the harbour master on shore, so he would know which ship it was and where it had come from.

Uncle Donald had made arrangements to ensure that if a ship arrived from Scotland, the harbour master would send Mamma a message so we could be on the dock to greet Papa.

But no message came.

By December, Lexie was walking. Not just walking, but climbing. Climbing steps, climbing up on chairs and tables. Even, once, managing to climb right up onto Mamma and Papa’s big clothes press. Bridget almost had a turn when she went in to change the sheets and found Lexie sitting happily on the top of the press, waving. ‘Bridge,’ she said, ‘Bridge. Look.’

Christmas. It was ten-and-a-half months since Papa had left. More than enough time to get to Scotland and come home again. Definitely enough time, in fact, because we had received a letter from Papa. He had decided to convey Mr McLaughlin right to his family home in Rosshire. It was a long trip, he said, and he was afraid that he would not be back with his family by Christmas.

I send you all my love and know that the good Lord is looking after you in my absence. You are in my prayers daily and in my thoughts always.

Why didn’t he come straight home? Was it homesickness? A longing to travel once more in his homeland? Compassion for Mr McLaughlin? Was he so sick that Papa
could
not leave him? Did Australia and his family seem increasingly like a dream to him as the days went past? I can understand that now. When I was in Europe on my trip to see the Holy Father, in the soft rains of Ireland or the mists of England, Australian sunshine seemed like a dream to me, too. My friends here were so far away it was almost as though they existed only in my mind. Perhaps Papa felt that as well. Or was it just that insouciance of Papa’s—the belief that his life would work out fine, no matter what he did, as long as he did what he believed to be right?

We showed his letter to Lexie—‘From Papa, Lexie’—but she had no idea what we were talking about.

Mamma bit her lip. She had tears in her eyes.

‘She’s growing up without a father,’ she said helplessly to Granny. ‘She doesn’t even know what a father is!’

‘Och, she’s fine, sweetheart,’ Granny said, hugging her. ‘She’s too young to know what she’s missing.’

But Mamma shook her head and showed the daguerreotype of her and Papa to Lexie. ‘Look, Lexie. Mamma and Papa!’

Lexie refused to point to Papa and smile as she did to Mamma. Why should she? I thought, but I took the daguerreotype from Mamma and showed Lexie again. ‘See, Lexie, that’s Papa.’

It took us a week before Lexie would point and say ‘Papa’ and a week later, when we tried again, she had forgotten.

‘Ah, leave her, Mary,’ Mamma sighed when I started the game again. ‘She’ll learn fast enough when he comes home.’ She looked at the daguerreotype for a long time before she returned it to its cover and her bedside drawer.

We joined Grandfather and Grandma Ellen for Christmas, with all the rest of the clan: Uncle Peter and Aunt Julia, Aunt Ann. Even Uncle John was down on a visit from New South Wales.

We went as a group to St Francis’s Church in Melbourne to hear Bishop Goold say Mass on Christmas morning.

‘Adestes fideles,’
we sang as the bishop precessed down the aisle, with the altar boy carrying the great golden cross behind him.

It reminded me of Papa, his bright blue eyes sparkling as he introduced me to the puzzle and mystery of Latin. I could understand a good deal more of what Bishop Goold said this Christmas.

‘Introibo as altare Dei,’
said Bishop Goold.

I will go in to the altar of God.

‘Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam,’
the congregation replied. To God, the joy of my youth.

The joy of my youth, I thought, that is true. God and the family are the joy of my youth.

At dinner, at Grandma Ellen’s big table, with family all around, I bowed my head for grace.

‘Bless us O Lord and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive by Thy bounty, Amen,’ everyone said, and went to make the Sign of the Cross. But Grandfather kept speaking, ‘Lord, we thank you for bringing us all here to be together. We ask your blessing on those of our children who cannot be here: Archibald and Alexander, in Scotland, Duncan in New South Wales, Margaret and her family in Penola. Keep them under your wing and bring Alexander home again safely. Amen.’

‘Amen,’ murmured everyone.

I knew who Margaret was—that was Aunty Margaret Cameron, who had married Sandy Cameron and gone out to the back of beyond, according to Aunt Julia. I remembered the party when they left for Penola, in South Australia. I had several Cameron cousins there. Uncle Duncan had only gone to New South Wales last year. And Alexander was Papa.

But—

‘Grandfather, who is Archibald?’

‘He’s your papa’s brother, Mary, the next oldest after Alexander. He stayed in Scotland when the rest of us came out here.’

‘He stayed because of Margaret McGregor’s blue eyes!’ said Aunty Anne.

‘And right bonnie eyes they were, too, and bonnie bairns the two of them have had, so Archibald says,’ said Grandma Ellen. ‘But I wish Margaret McGregor had not had her heart set against Australia as she did. It would be better to have the whole family here together.’

But we were not together. Even if Archibald and his Margaret McGregor walked in this very minute, we would not be properly together until Papa came home.

After dinner we opened presents. But I couldn’t help remembering the previous Christmas, when Papa had sung ‘Silent Night’
,
standing by the empty fireplace with his head thrown back and his eyes half shut, concentrating on reaching the high notes.

Almost 11 months and no sign of his return.

It left an ache under my heart that new ribbons and a new hat could not take away. I tried to summon up the old anger against him but it wouldn’t come. Not at Christmas.

Father Geoghegan came out for Saturday dinner, as usual, but afterwards he took Mamma onto the verandah instead of joining us for hymns around the piano. When she came inside her eyes were shining. I hadn’t seen her look so happy since Papa had left.

‘Mary,’ she said, ‘Father Geoghegan has told me he thinks you are ready to receive the Blessed Eucharist.’

It was a complete surprise to me. I was only nine—usually children did not receive their First Communion until they were 11 or 12. I looked dumbly at Father Geoghegan.

‘She’s too little,’ Maggie said.

‘It’s true you are young, Mary,’ he said, ‘but I think you are ready. Do
you
think you are ready?’

My heart felt like it was about to burst. I shook my head. ‘I don’t see how
anyone
can
ever
be ready,’ I said. It was true. How could anyone be holy enough to actually take the Body of Our Lord into their own?

He laughed. ‘Well, Flora, you see what I mean. She’s got the feeling for the Blessed Sacrament already. And I can guess where she learned it.’

I could see he meant Mamma, but she smiled proudly and said, ‘Yes, she learned it from her father, didn’t you, Mary?’

I hesitated. Papa had given me the explanation of the Blessed Sacrament, but Mamma—I think Mamma had shown me it was something to love.

‘Oh, Flora, she learned it from both of you!’ Father Geoghegan squatted down next to me and put his big, warm hand on my shoulder. ‘Mary, you’re right. No-one is worthy to receive Our Lord in the Eucharist. But he gives himself to us so that we can be
made
worthy. So that we can take his grace into our hearts. Do you understand?’

I nodded. He got up and dusted off his cassock.

‘Well, Flora, I think she’ll need a little more instruction before she’s ready. Why not send her to Miss Kane’s?’

Miss Kane ran a boarding school in the city. I don’t know where my Mamma found the money to send me as a boarder—perhaps Grandfather MacKillop was generous as he often was. I was excited to be going there, but a little wary.