The River Charm (25 page)

Mamma brushed a wisp of loose hair from Charlotte's forehead. ‘That was a hard decision, dearest.'

‘But I am to be your bridesmaid,' Louisa wailed. ‘And wear a long dress with pink roses in my hair.'

‘I'm sorry, poppet,' Charlotte apologised. ‘I'm sure I will get married one day when I'm a little older, and you and Emily can be my bridesmaids then.'

Emily exchanged glances with Charlotte and smiled.

‘I have missed you,' Emily confessed.

‘I've missed you all too.'

 

 

27

Return to Oldbury

 

April, 1846

The carriage drawn by two bay horses swept up the driveway, between the avenue of elm trees with their blazing golden foliage.

Mamma leant out of the carriage window, her black eyes dancing with excitement. ‘Thomas, would you mind stopping for a moment, please?' she asked.

The new coachman, Thomas McNeilly, obligingly pulled the horses up beside the overgrown hawthorn hedge.

Mamma climbed down out of the carriage, followed by Charlotte, Emily and Louisa. They were all rugged up against the autumn chill, with dark woollen travelling dresses, thick cloaks and straw bonnets. James jumped down last, followed by Samson.

‘There it is,' Mamma whispered.

Through a gap in the hedge they could see the honey-warm stone of Oldbury in the distance, nestled among the green-and-gold foliage.

‘We're home,' Emily murmured. James leant down and picked up a handful of dirt and pebbles from the roadway and squeezed it in his fist.

A sense of excitement bubbled up inside Charlotte. At last, they were finally here.

Charlotte glanced back at Thomas McNeilly. He was a handsome, dark-haired Irishman with a thick brogue. Mamma had employed him to help with the farm, drive the carriage and tend to the horses.

‘Must be grand to be home, miss?' Thomas asked with a grin.

‘Marvellous,' Charlotte agreed. ‘It has been a long, long time.'

‘Come on,' Louisa called, pulling at Charlotte's arm. ‘Stop talking. Let's get there.'

‘Good idea, poppet,' Mamma agreed.

They all clambered back into the carriage, which rumbled over the creek crossing, through the garden gateway and into the front carriage loop. Charlotte felt tears of exhilaration well up. She blinked rapidly and surreptitiously smudged them away with a gloved finger. Mamma blew her nose on her handkerchief and took a deep breath.

The grounds were overgrown and a cow was grazing in what had once been the rose garden. Up close, the house looked forlorn – the paint peeling and the front windows cracked. Thomas pulled the horses up and opened the carriage door.

Mamma led the way up the front steps and opened the double French doors with a large key. Silently, they wandered into the vestibule. The house had lain empty for years. All their remaining furniture was coming down slowly from Sydney by bullock dray. Inside, the wall­paper was peeling and stained by the damp. Large cracks ran through the plaster.

They wandered from room to room, checking the upstairs bedrooms, the empty cellars, the derelict dairy and kitchen. Charlotte felt a mixture of jubilation to finally be home, tinged with sadness that their once-graceful estate was in such disrepair.

Thomas carried in the carpetbags from the carriage. ‘Where would ye like me to put these, ma'am?' he asked.

‘Just here in the drawing room is fine,' Mamma replied. ‘I think we will camp in here together around the fire until the furniture arrives.'

‘Aye, ma'am,' replied Thomas. ‘To be sure.'

It had been a long, uncomfortable two-day drive from Sydney, with the anticipation mounting as they neared Berrima and then Oldbury itself.

James and Thomas collected wood and made a fire in the sitting room grate. Charlotte began preparations for a damper to bake over the coals, while Emily made tea in a quart pot.

Mamma sat down on the floor at her battered writing desk, pulled out a sheet of paper, a bottle of ink and a metal-nibbed pen, and she began to write.

‘What are you writing, Mamma?' Charlotte asked, mixing the flour and water in a tin pannikin.

Mamma smiled, her face softened and transformed, her eyes sparkling with energy. ‘I am writing a list. Tomorrow we will clean all the rooms on this level, then we can work on the upstairs bedrooms. There is no money to repair the building just yet, but we can make it quite comfortable.'

Charlotte and Emily exchanged a smile.

‘When the furniture is delivered, we can start on the garden.' Mamma slipped her hand in her pocket and unconsciously rolled the smooth, brown pebble between her fingers. ‘James, we will make a fine farmer out of you yet.'

Charlotte stood up and wiped a smear of dust from her dark-blue travelling skirt. ‘I'll go out into the garden and see how it looks,' she announced. ‘Come on, Samson – walk time.'

Samson jumped to his paws, his whole body wriggling with excitement. Charlotte ruffled his silky ears and grabbed her cloak. They wandered out through the back door into the courtyard, then further back towards the stables and outbuildings. The vegetable garden was overgrown with weeds. In the stable yard, Thomas was grooming the two bay horses, brushing them until their coats gleamed.

Charlotte came and leant against the stable wall, breathing in the comforting smell of horse sweat and old hay. Samson pushed his nose against Thomas's leg, begging for a pat.

‘He's not a shy creature,' said Thomas with a grin, rubbing Samson between the eyes.

‘Only to people he likes,' Charlotte agreed. ‘He usually takes longer to get to know people. He's decided you can be trusted.'

‘Well, tha' is a relief, at any rate,' Thomas replied. He jerked his thumb back towards the house. ‘It must ha' been a splendid place once.'

‘Yes,' Charlotte agreed. ‘And it will be again if my mother has her way.'

Thomas untied the horses and began to lead them away.

‘Oi'll let them loose in the ol' orchard,' he said. ‘'Tis full of grass.'

Charlotte wandered along beside Thomas, her eyes soaking up the sights – the tumbledown fences, the long grass choking the garden beds, the familiar paddocks and the abandoned outhouses. To the east, past Gingenbullen a single spiral of smoke curled lazily in the air. Charlotte wondered if Charley and the Gandangara clan might be camping there.

Thomas clicked his tongue softly as he let the horses go. The orchard was indeed lush with grass, and the gnarled apple trees were laden with rich, red fruit.

‘The apples are ripe,' Charlotte cried in delight. She stretched up to a branch and picked one. ‘It will be apple tart for supper tonight.'

Suddenly, Charlotte scrambled up the tree and onto a low-lying branch, just as she had done when she was a child, to pick some of the higher fruit. From her vantage point she could see back towards the golden house, the distant waterhole choked with white waterlilies and then behind her towards the forest-covered mountain of Gingenbullen. Her eyes filled with tears.

‘It is part of me,' whispered Charlotte to the tree trunk. ‘And I am part of Oldbury.'

She was overflowing with hope, joy and relief. No matter what happened now, no matter how much hard work it would take to restore Oldbury, this was the start of a wonderful new stage in her life.

‘Are ye all roight up there, miss?' Thomas asked, sounding concerned. ‘Can I help ye down?'

‘Catch,' Charlotte cried, raining a shower of fruit upon Thomas. He laughed and caught the apples deftly, one by one, stowing them in his hat. Samson barked with excitement, chasing an apple that Thomas missed.

Charlotte jumped to the ground, her skirts and petti­coats flying. ‘We're home!' she shouted, throwing her dark head back against the sky. ‘We're home at Oldbury, together.'

 

 

28

Afterwards

 

Present Day

Aunt Jessamine paused. ‘So the Atkinsons returned to Oldbury just before James's fourteenth birthday, when Charlotte was seventeen,' she explained.

Millie sighed, the spell broken. She pushed her hair back behind her ear, the gold charm bracelet jingling. ‘That was a wonderful story, Aunt Jessamine.'

‘I had heard parts of their history over the years,' Mum added. ‘But I had never heard the full tale.'

‘Well, lots of the history is documented, and lots of it has been passed down as family folklore, so who knows what the real story was?' Aunt Jessamine confessed.

‘But the story doesn't end there,' Millie reminded them. ‘What happened when they all grew up?'

Aunt Jessamine rubbed her hands together. ‘Well, Charlotte fell in love with the charming Irish coachman, Thomas McNeilly, and they eloped. She was married on her nineteenth birthday. They lived at Oldbury, then on their own farm near Berrima for many years. Charlotte and Thomas had six surviving children, but eventually they moved away to Orange, where Charlotte established a school. She lived to a ripe old age, a true matriarch, continuing to paint and write to newspapers and in journals until she was in her eighties.'

‘I hope she was happy,' Millie whispered.

‘I'm sure she had her fair share of happy and sad times,' Mum said, ruffling Millie's hair.

‘What about Emily?' Bella asked. ‘Did she marry too?'

Aunt Jessamine sighed. ‘Emily married a farmer called James Johnson when she was twenty-three. She died ten months later, after the birth of her first child. The baby survived only a few months.'

‘Oh, no!' Millie felt tears welling in her eyes and she tried to blink them away.

‘Louisa lived with her mother up in Kurrajong and at the cottage at Swanton,' Aunt Jessamine explained. ‘Louisa scandalised Kurrajong society by riding out through the mountains on her botany excursions wearing men's trousers! Absolutely shocking behaviour for the times!'

Millie giggled and rolled her eyes.

‘When her mother died, she finally married James Calvert,' Aunt Jessamine continued. ‘Her mother was always against Louisa marrying because she had such delicate health. Her mother was proved right. Louisa only had three short years of marriage. She died at Oldbury eighteen days after the birth of her daughter from a heart attack caused by seeing her husband's horse returning without a rider.'

‘Tell me James didn't die young as well!' Mum begged.

Aunt Jessamine laughed. ‘No, James inherited Oldbury when he was twenty-one and later married and had lots of children. It was after his death that his widow auctioned off Oldbury and had a huge bonfire, burning most of the family's paintings, sketchbooks, drawings and scientific specimens. Louisa's daughter, as a teenager, could only take what she could carry away on foot.'

‘Those poor girls,' Bella said. ‘Can you imagine how different their lives would have been if Charlotte Atkinson hadn't married George Barton?'

‘It seems to me, Bella,' said Mum, ‘that lots of good things came from that misfortune too.'

‘Really?' asked Bella, screwing up her nose.

‘Well, for one, Charlotte Waring Atkinson would never have written her children's book if she had not been destitute. Louisa would never have become a journalist or author if she had not had to earn her own living, and she may not have become such an outstanding botanist.'

‘The girls would probably not have been brought up to be so independent if they had grown up with a father,' added Aunt Jessamine. ‘By the way, did I tell you that George Barton was eventually charged with murder? During a drunken argument, he shot one of his workers in the stomach. He was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to two years hard labour at Parramatta Gaol. He survived that and outlived most of the Atkinson family.'

Aunt Jessamine shook her head then stood up, turning to Millie. ‘Millie, don't be frightened of life. Be brave. Be adventurous. And be true to yourself.'

Millie thought for a moment, then smiled. ‘Just like Charlotte?' she asked.

‘Just like Charlotte,' Aunt Jessamine agreed. ‘Let's go back home.'

Images from Aunt Jessamine's stories played through Millie's mind like scenes from a movie. She stood by the water's edge and stared out over the waterhole, then at the ancient elms towering overhead.

Aunt Jessamine and Mum started walking back to the house, with Bella skipping along between them.

Millie picked up a pebble and threw it at the waterhole. It skimmed perfectly across the surface –
skip, skip, skip
. She picked up another pebble and it, too, skimmed perfectly across the water.

‘Did you see that?' called Millie. The others had already gone.

Millie laughed with exhilaration. She turned to follow them back to the house, the bracelet she wore jingling against her wrist. At the rose garden, a slight noise made her pause. It was the sound of laughter.

She turned and looked back to the creek.

Under the elm tree were four children dressed in old-fashioned clothes. The boy, James, was fishing in the waterhole, the cap on his head covering his shock of unruly hair. He gave a shout as he reeled in a wriggling eel.

Two girls sat on the bench under the tree, playing a game of chess, both with curly brown ringlets and long, pale gowns. A third girl in a white dress stood up, her dark hair waving about her face. She knelt down under the tree and picked a bunch of creamy, star-shaped flowers. The girl was humming to herself.

She turned and walked towards Millie, a dreamy smile on her face. She stopped and handed Millie the bunch of flowers.

‘Thank you, Charlotte,' Millie whispered, reaching out to take the gift.

Millie blinked. The girl and her siblings disappeared. She glanced at her hand. It was empty, but Millie felt a sensation of warmth spread through her body. Was it love? Was it courage?

She turned and ran towards the house, following her family.

 

Two weeks later, back in Sydney, it was the night of the Young Artist Awards at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in the city. Mum had surprised Millie with a brand-new floral sundress and a pair of rose-pink ballet flats. For once she wore her hair out of its tight plait, and it flowed down her neck, wavy and brown. Mum, Dad, Bella and Millie arrived and took their name tags. Next, they saw Mrs Boardman and two of the young teachers from the art department. Mrs Boardman waved madly.

Millie nibbled her nails then stopped – she had promised herself she wouldn't bite her nails anymore.

The room was packed with people all dressed in suits and cocktail dresses, sipping on champagne and discussing the artwork. Waiters dipped and flitted among the crowd. A television crew set up their equipment; the camera scanned the crowd. An impeccably dressed woman interviewed a handsome boy about Millie's age, a student from another local school.

‘Can you tell us about your artwork, Zach?' the tele­vision host asked, flicking back a tress of platinum blonde hair and unleashing a dazzling smile.

‘I was inspired by the themes of grief, love and loss,' said Zach. ‘I wanted to paint the alienation that immigrants feel when they have left their homelands and settled here, in a strange land.'

A photographer flashed a picture.

Millie took a second look at Zach's painting. To be honest, she hadn't felt any of those emotions when she observed his painting. However, it was very good.

All the finalists' paintings were displayed on easels on the stage – each one uniquely different, but all outstanding. To the side was her own painting,
The Dream Girl
.

The television presenter checked the tag. ‘Has anyone seen Millie Mitchell? We haven't interviewed her yet.'

Millie ducked out of sight.

The mayor in her gown and ceremonial regalia stood on the stage beside the master of ceremonies and the director of the art gallery. They were all smiling and chatting.

The master of ceremonies began to speak. Millie felt ill, wondering if anyone would notice if she went home to bed. She was just creeping away through the crowd towards the bathroom to hide when a loud voice hailed her.

‘Millie,' Aunt Jessamine cried. ‘I'm so sorry I'm late. There was terrible traffic on the freeway.'

‘Hi, Aunt Jessamine,' said Millie. She hung her head and scuffed her ballet slipper on the floor.

‘What a night,' said Aunt Jessamine. ‘I had no idea there would be so many important people here.'

‘I know,' Millie whispered, her voice croaky with fear.

‘As promised, I brought you the charm bracelet,' Aunt Jessamine confessed.

Millie smiled. Memories crowded in of the wonderful scenes that she had witnessed while wearing the bracelet.

‘I thought you might like to wear it to give you courage tonight?'

‘Yes, please,' said Millie.

Aunt Jessamine slipped the bracelet off her own arm and clasped it around Millie's narrow wrist.

‘To remind you where you came from, and where you are going . . .' Aunt Jessamine murmured.

Millie took a deep breath and shook her wrist. The bracelet gave a reassuring jingle. ‘I'm ready . . .'

Aunt Jessamine held out a bouquet wrapped in dusky-green tissue paper. ‘I brought you some flannel flowers . . . to match the painting.'

Millie took the flowers and stroked their velvety petals. She smiled, her eyes brilliant with emotion.

‘Thank you, Aunt Jessamine,' Millie said, kissing her on the cheek. ‘Thank you for everything.'

The director of the art gallery stood up to begin his speech. Aunt Jessamine and Millie went and stood beside Mum, Dad and Bella. Mum squeezed Millie's hand.

‘I acknowledge and pay my respects to the Gadigal people, the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, and pay my respects to the elders, both past and present . . .' the director began. He went on to discuss the importance of art in Australian culture and to praise the outstanding talent of the young generation.

Then the mayor stood up and added her own words of encouragement.

‘Now,' said the mayor. ‘It is time for a drum roll . . .'

In the crowd, Millie could see the other hopeful young artists clutch each other and thrum with anticipation.

Mum leant over and whispered, ‘Good luck, sweetie. No matter who wins, you'll always be our favourite artist.'

Millie smiled weakly. The charm bracelet seemed to tingle.

‘I am thrilled to announce the winner of the inaugural Margaret Forsyth Young Artist Award is . . .' The mayor paused dramatically. ‘Millie Mitchell!'

Millie stood there stunned, feeling arms pushing her forward. In a dream, she climbed onto the stage, a broad smile across her face. She felt the bracelet tingle on her arm, and its warmth spread right through her body – a sensation of hope, joy and relief. Cameras flashed. People cheered and clapped.

Down below in the crowd, Millie could see Mum crying and Bella cheering. She could see Mrs Boardman with tears in her eyes, hugging the teacher beside her. She could see Aunt Jessamine beaming and congratulating Dad. The mayor and the director of the art gallery shook her hand.

The blonde television presenter pushed forward with the microphone, the cameraman looming behind her.

‘Millie, tell us about your painting?' asked the presenter.

Millie looked at
The Dream Girl
and paused. She turned to the presenter and smiled.

‘This painting was inspired by my great-great-great-great grandmother, Charlotte Elizabeth Atkinson,' Millie began in a clear voice. ‘Like so many girls and women in the early nineteenth century, she and her family faced almost impossible difficulties. Yet she faced these obstacles with courage, strength and dignity, and fought for what she believed in.

‘Charlotte reminds me that I, too, have a secret strength within me,' Millie continued, beaming down at Aunt Jessamine. ‘Charlotte reminds me of where I came from, and where I am going . . .'