Tyringham Park (13 page)

“So it’s lucky I can start a new life and be able to visit a friend of mine at the same time.”

“And lucky for me that you came along when you did. Where did your friend settle?”

“Putharra. It’s in the outback. Don’t know where exactly.”

“We’ll find out as soon as we get there.” Handing back the reference the steward had written on Tyringham Park stationery, Mrs Sinclair asked, “Was it the son of the Park
who was killed?”

Dixon nodded, looking too overcome to speak.

Two days into the voyage Mrs Sinclair asked Dixon to read to her, as she needed to give her eyes a rest from the glare reflecting off the sea. She took out a slender volume
from inside the pages of a thick book and handed it over with a grin, turning the thick book over on her lap with the title showing.

“It’s not that I’m ashamed of reading penny dreadfuls,” she whispered in a conspiratorial tone, “it’s just that I like people to think I’m reading
War and Peace
.”

“I can’t read to you,” said Dixon. “I can’t read at all.”

There, she’d said it. It was the first time she had admitted to anyone she couldn’t read before they had a chance to find out for themselves. She didn’t feel she had the energy
to make up two months of excuses as to why she couldn’t read at a particular moment.

“Oh. Well, never mind. We’ll have a game of cards to pass the time.”

She couldn’t play cards either.

Mrs Sinclair laughed and the volume of her laughter increased when Dixon confessed, on being questioned, that she couldn’t draw, sing, knit, sew, embroider, ride, swim, dance or play chess
or a musical instrument.

“Some companion you’ve turned out to be,” the old lady convulsed as the list lengthened. “You must be the most unaccomplished young woman I’ve ever met.”

Dixon looked as if she didn’t appreciate being the object of ridicule.

“Sorry about that,” Mrs Sinclair said at last, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “At least you’re easy on the eye and know how to dress. That’s much more
important.” She looked along the deck. “Especially to those men who have picked this spot to walk up and down all day. It can’t be me or
War and Peace
they’re
interested in.”

“They’re disgusting,” Dixon shuddered. “They’ve all got bits missing. I wish they’d go and drag themselves around somewhere else.”

Mrs Sinclair was taken aback at Dixon’s comments but reasoned that Dixon had every right to be bitter and didn’t chide her for her lack of sympathy. At least these men were going
home, whereas she, poor girl, would never see her beloved’s face again.

Oblivious to Mrs Sinclair’s reaction, Dixon surveyed the deck. There were other cases being wheeled around by nurses. Fortunately they had rugs covering up their mutilations. It was
whispered there were even worse cases, the sight of which would make women faint, too hideous to be seen in public, being cared for in the privacy of their cabins. Dixon was aware that if she had
wanted to travel to Australia under her own steam, and if she hadn’t had the good fortune to meet Mrs Sinclair, she would be reduced to changing dressings and spoon-feeding cripples such as
these to pay for her passage. My luck has definitely turned, she thought as she watched the shuffling soldiers trying not to look as if they were staring at her as they limped by. Even securing a
berth at all had been lucky. On the ship’s return trip there would be no room for civilians, she had heard. All the berths would be taken by a fresh batch of volunteers, newly turned
eighteen, and veterans patched up sufficiently to be judged fit enough to fight again.

Next morning Mrs Sinclair announced to the subdued Dixon that she would personally teach her to read, write, add, subtract, multiply and divide.

Dixon looked stunned. “Why would you do that for me?”

“To honour your brave fiancé who gave his life for our country. I consider it my patriotic duty.”

“You’re too kind,” said Dixon, using one of Lady Blackshaw’s phrases, but meaning it.

“Not a bit of it. If he had lived you wouldn’t be cast adrift as you are now, forced to earn your own living with so little preparation. You’d be living in the lap of luxury.
Besides, I’ll enjoy the challenge. It will shorten the journey. I just know you’ll catch on in no time. I’m going to do a Pygmalion on you, and for your first lesson I’ll
explain what that means.”

By the time the eight-week voyage was coming to an end, Dixon was devouring the romantic novels faster than the admiring Mrs Sinclair could supply them.

She thrilled to the story of the mousy heroine with the good heart and shabby furniture who thought the stern, hawk-eyed hero – tall, rich, masterful, pursued by a beautiful fair-haired
heiress with social connections – didn’t think much of her (as she confided to the friendly, adoring boy next door) only to discover he had seen her true worth right from the beginning,
noting the shabby furniture as a sign of integrity and sound values.

She thought of Teresa when she read about the city girl travelling to Africa where the square-jawed, rich farmer was contemptuous of her city ways until he saw her true worth when, cut off by
flood-waters, she had to nurse him after he broke a leg.

There was something unsettling in all the stories, but she couldn’t work out what it was. She kept reading.

It didn’t take Norma and Jim Rossiter long to persuade Elizabeth Dixon to stay on with them as Mrs Sinclair’s companion. Her reading was coming along at such a
thrilling pace she didn’t want to stop now. Meeting up with Teresa Kelly could wait a few months.

“You know Putharra’s at the back of Bourke,” said Jim. “The crows fly backwards out there.”

Norma didn’t wait for him to explain that tired expression. “More to the point,” she said, keen not to have her life’s routine interrupted by her mother, much as she
loved her, “you don’t look like the type who’d want to shrivel up in that heat. You’d be wasting your sweetness on the desert air, as the poem says. Besides, you’ll
never make it that far with no direct train line and the tough petrol restrictions, isn’t that right, Jim?”

Jim agreed that it was.

“Why don’t you write to her and tell her you are being well looked after and that you hope she can visit you. She’s probably dying for an excuse to make a trip to the city. Who
wouldn’t, living out there in the middle of nowhere with nothing but dust and flies? Does that sound like a good idea to you?”

It sounded perfect to Dixon.

“There’s only one problem. Jim and I work long hours and eat most of our meals out, either at the hotel or at social functions. We have to go to every dogfight in the city to make
contacts. Can you cook?”

“No, I never learnt,” said Dixon.

Mrs Sinclair erupted in laughter. “Forgot to ask you that one, Elizabeth!”

“What’s the joke?” asked Norma.

“Nothing important,” said Mrs Sinclair, giving Dixon the hint of a wink. “Let’s think about things for a bit. We’ll come up with something.”

She had the answer before the day was out. Along with some prime real estate on the north shore of Sydney, Jim had inherited two large city-centre hotels and had just acquired a third, the
Waratah. It was run down and further out of town than the other two, but near a train stop. Mrs Sinclair offered to work there, doing the accounts – she would die of boredom playing ladies in
an empty house – and training Dixon at the same time. All her married life she had done her husband’s books and knew she had a facility with numbers.

“I’m not ready to be put out to pasture yet. I might be sixty-two but I feel like a spring chicken.”

Jim and Norma liked the idea. They could continue their hectic lives exactly as before and Mrs Sinclair, rather than being the liability they expected, had turned herself into an asset.

“One small proviso,” said Jim. “I’d like Elizabeth to sit at the front desk and act as receptionist. A lot of commercial travellers use the place.”

Mrs Sinclair took Dixon with her to the bank. Funds sent from England had arrived, she was glad to discover. It gave her a feeling of independence to have her own money. When
the proceeds from the sale of her house came through she would consider herself comfortably off, so that if things didn’t work out with Norma and Jim, she would be able to look after herself.
While they were there she opened an account for Dixon.

“We’ll start with a guinea, just to impress the teller. My gift to you for giving me so many good laughs.”

Not intentionally, Dixon thought sourly, but smiled to pretend she didn’t mind.

She signed her new full name, Elizabeth Dixon, and felt a positive shift in the way she thought about herself.

“Every week, put some of your wages in that account,” Mrs Sinclair instructed. “It’s called a ‘running away from home’ fund, but seeing you’ve already
run away, you can call it a ‘running back home’ account.”

“Good idea,” said Dixon. “I’ll do that.” A ‘being reunited with Manus and getting my own back on my enemies’ account would be a more accurate name for
it, Dixon thought, tucking the bank slip into her bag.

Mrs Sinclair’s first impression of the Waratah Hotel was that the men’s bar with its tin chairs and tiled walls and floor was no proper place for a woman so, with
Jim’s approval, she had the large space beside the office fitted out with a carpet and comfortable armchairs.

Mrs Sinclair fussed over any woman who came to stay, especially those on their first trip, afraid of the pickpockets and confidence tricksters they had been told populated the city. She gave
them so much help and information they felt confident setting out to find their way around. Wives of businessmen, Royal Easter Show spectators, women on their own, and those who came to see medical
specialists, were all treated as if they were personal friends.

Dixon watched, listened and learned.

In the Ladies’ Parlour, women put up their aching feet, drank tea or sherry, discussed the specialists’ diagnoses, showed off their purchases, read, exchanged addresses, forged
friendships, and wondered about the private lives of the friendly Englishwoman and her good-looking assistant who wore a diamond engagement ring. They returned to their homes full of praise for the
Waratah and the city where they hadn’t met one pickpocket or confidence trickster.

“One more thing,” said Mrs Sinclair, guiding Dixon into a bookshop. In the classics section she took out
Middlemarch
and
Great Expectations
and measured them for size.
“This one will do nicely,” she said, choosing
Middlemarch
and taking it and a dozen penny dreadfuls to the cashier and paying for them.

Outside the door she tore the middle 200 pages out of
Middlemarch
and inserted one of the romances into the space. It fitted exactly.

“No one will ever know,” she grinned. “And it will do your image a power of good, not that it really needs it. Now we should have time to read one of these each . . .”
She looked at
Devil Lover
and
Turbulent Heart
before choosing one and handing Dixon the other, “before we have to face those boring old numbers again. And don’t show me up
by finishing before I do.” She smiled fondly at Dixon. “Are you sure you weren’t able to read all along?”

Dixon’s writing hadn’t kept pace with her reading, so after two months Mrs Sinclair helped her write a letter to Teresa Kelly at the remembered address. There was no mention of
Tyringham Park – she would stay quiet about what had happened there to give herself time to censor the parts she didn’t want Teresa to hear about, especially Miss East’s dismissal
of her and Manus’s rejection of her marriage proposal. After a week she watched for the mail each morning, curious to know how surprised Teresa had been to hear from her, how she was coping
with her old husband and older mother-in-law, and if there was a baby on the way.

The reply, when it came, was not what Dixon expected. Written across the top of the envelope was ‘
Return to sender. Never at this address.
’ The word ‘
Never
’
was underlined three times with strokes of the pen so firm that they had torn the paper. The place where the word ‘Mrs’ had been was scratched out, leaving a hole and messy blots.

“There’s a story there,” said Mrs Sinclair when she saw it, “and I don’t think it has a happy ending for your friend. This was done by a very angry hand. Was your
friend especially ugly?”

“Not at all. What gave you that idea? She was attractive for her age with fine skin that made her look ten years younger. Any old farmer would be lucky to get her.”

“Well, this one wasn’t, for whatever reason,” Mrs Sinclair said, examining the envelope in more detail as if it would yield an explanation.

How would one set about tracing someone with no known address in a country as vast as Australia? Dixon berated herself for not thinking to memorise the address of Teresa’s friend here as a
back-up, but at the time they didn’t think there would be any need of one, so keen were both parties on the original plan.

“Perhaps she changed her mind after she left you, and stayed in Ireland,” Mrs Sinclair said. “Sometimes the simplest explanations are the correct ones.”

Tyringham Park
1918

When their youngest boy was twelve, Sid’s wife Kate died at the age of forty-four giving birth to their seventh child and first daughter. There had been a lot of joking
about the lengths people would go to have a seventh son, especially as Sid was a seventh son, and how they wouldn’t be able to control the crowds finding their way to the Park when the time
came for the young one to practise his gifts of healing and prophecy.

Kate had been alone when the baby arrived four weeks early. Sid was in the workshop, realigning a coach wheel that had hit a rock and buckled. The older boys no longer lived at home: two had
emigrated to America, one was away at the war and two in Dublin worked as apprentices, leaving only Keith, the youngest, who was in the back fields shooting rabbits at the time.

Sid arrived home to find his Kate without any signs of life, lying on the kitchen floor. In her arms was the longed-for daughter, wrapped in a blanket, crying but warm and unharmed. Typical of
her to attend to the baby even though she must have been in a dreadful state. Kate had left it too late to look for help. A dinted copper pot and bent ladle were found beside the open back door. No
one had responded to the banging. Sid tormented himself remembering how he thought he’d heard a faint echo when he was straightening out the wheel with a sledgehammer and how he’d
dismissed the idea as fanciful. It broke his heart to think he could have been alerted to the significance of that sound if he’d stopped to listen for even a minute.