‘Miss Johnson.’ Grandpa put down the papers he was reading. ‘What a lovely surprise.’
‘I was wondering about my ma’s mother. My grandma.’ Fan stretched her mouth around the words. They felt like a foreign language.
Grandpa beckoned for Fan to come in. She sat down on the other chair.
‘What would you like to know?’
‘I dunno. Everything, I suppose,’ Fan said. ‘What was her name, what did she look like?’
‘Ah, well, Miss Johnson.’ Grandpa stuffed his pipe with tobacco. ‘Her name was Cath. She looked an awful lot like you. Her hair was dark – even darker than yours. Skin pale as cream. Cath was from Ireland.’
‘I look like my grandma?’
‘Yes, Miss Johnson. There is a strong resemblance.’ He puffed on his pipe and the room filled with sweet smoke.
‘Some of the kids at school have got Irish mums and dads,’ Fan said. That faraway look on his face made her think he liked talking about Cath. ‘What was she like? Was she like Ma?’
‘You mean, was she bad-tempered and a poor cook?’ His eyes twinkled.
‘Grandpa, shhh!’ Fan giggled. ‘Ma’s got eyes in the back of her head, she’s probably got another set of ears somewhere, too.’
‘Cath had a good heart. Her temper sometimes got her into trouble.’ He stared at the window even though there was nothing to see. ‘She had the sweetest singing voice you ever heard.’
Fan had never heard Ma sing. Maybe singing wasn’t the kind of thing that got handed down, like good hearts and bad tempers. ‘I never think of Ma as having her own ma.’
‘Has Agnes never told you about her mother?’
‘Sorry.’ Fan shrugged. ‘Ma’s not big on family. She never told us about you neither and you’re not even dead.’
‘Not yet. Not today, at least.’
‘We’ve got Uncle Ernest and Aunty Florence and Sarah, Uncle Ernest’s mum. They’re back home in Adelaide. Ma reckons they’re all the family we need.’
‘Perhaps she’s right, Miss Johnson.’
‘Maybe. But we’ve moved our whole lives thousands of miles to look after you, so now you can’t be completely useless – isn’t that right, Grandpa?’ she grinned.
‘Cath would’ve liked you,’ he said. ‘A mind of your own.’
‘I bet I’d like her, too.’ Fan paused. ‘Grandpa, when Ma was a girl, did she answer back to Cath like I do – I mean, like Ma reckons I do with her?’
‘Miss Johnson, your grandmother died when your mother and your Uncle Walter were very young.’ His voice was suddenly quiet. ‘Much younger than you are now. It was a very long time ago.’
Fan felt herself get teary, as if she had gained and lost a grandma in the space of one evening. ‘How did she die?’
‘She was working in the yard.’ Edwin spoke with effort. ‘She was outside too long in the heat, and she died from it.’
‘Poor Ma,’ Fan said. ‘Poor Uncle Walter.’ For all Ma drove her mad sometimes with her fussing and telling off, Fan couldn’t imagine never seeing her mother again. Never hearing her voice or seeing her smile. Imagine having to dress Ma for the grave and shut her away in a coffin. Fan felt tight in the throat just thinking about it.
‘Did you love her more than your other wife?’ Fan asked.
‘I beg your pardon? My other wife?’ Grandpa’s face seemed to freeze.
‘Sorry, Grandpa. I mean Annie. Did you love Cath more than Annie?’ Fan’s cheeks burned scarlet. ‘I mean, oh goodness, I should be less imper … imper …’
‘Impertinent, I believe, Miss Johnson.’ Grandpa had stopped smiling.
‘Yes, like Ma says. I didn’t mean to upset you.’ Fan jumped up. ‘Let’s talk about something else.’ She pointed to the brown leather bag at his feet. There were a lot of papers spilling out. ‘What you got in there?’
‘My possessions are none of your concern, Miss Johnson.’ For the first time, his voice had an edge. It pushed Fan towards the door. ‘I am tired. Thank you for your company. Perhaps you might leave me to myself for the rest of the evening.’
Later in her room, Fan made a page in her notebook for Grandma. She drew a square house with a triangle roof and trees and a fierce, blazing sun in the sky. She gave the sun an angry frown. Fan wasn’t great with words, but she wrote as best she could of what she remembered: My grandma Cath. My ma’s mother. Died from the heat. Irish. Hair and eyes like mine and a temper that got her in strife.
Poor Ma, to lose her own ma so young. Fan had known girls whose mothers had died. Sometimes their fathers got new wives, but you could tell by the shadows under those girls’ eyes, their lives were never the same. She drew a little stick-figure girl next to a grave with a single flower growing from it.
With a belly full of food washed down with grog, Grandpa became expansive and theatrical, leaning back in his chair, his voice booming as if he had an audience of a dozen. Fan always egged him on, even if she wasn’t sure what he was talking about. Sometimes he got sleepy from the talking and the grog and he mixed names up. He called Fan Cath, and sometimes he called her Agnes, and a few times he called Uncle Walter some other names she’d never heard before. If she asked too many questions he snapped or swore or just plain stopped talking, but Fan took to filling up his glass and, after a couple of swigs, he forgot he’d got mad and carried on talking. Fan listened very carefully because she needed to remember as much as possible to put in her notebook later.
‘Your mother took to the water like nobody ever did. All the children used to swim there. If you couldn’t find Agnes and the weather was even a little bit warm, you knew where to look first.’ He leaned back in the chair, hands behind his head, holding court.
‘I thought, well, if I had to go back to tailoring work, I might as well set up a shop. Edwin Salt and Son. I was in demand! But Walter had other ideas. Walter was a bad sort. He went off the rails. Made friends with the wrong sort of people. Took to drink. I told him to smarten up. He disappeared one night, and I never saw him again. Good riddance, I say.’
Fan’s eyes widened. She couldn’t imagine Dad ever telling Tom or Ned good riddance. Dad was forever mucking about with the boys and ruffling their hair and calling them ‘my bonny lads’ and, even when he shouted at them, there was never any heat in it.
‘You told me Walter used to hang around with the Aborigines,’ Fan said. ‘Was that why he went off the rails?’
Grandpa’s neck twitched. ‘There was a group that came back every year. Their women would have children, and in a few years, you’d see them grown into lads. They seemed to think they had a right to it, the way they’d break the fence and set up camp for weeks on end. Walter took blankets and food out to them. Food meant for our mouths. He stole from his own flesh and blood and told the kind of lies a man should go to Hell for. Walter was a bad sort, a bad sort.’
Fan drew some squiggles for the river and a figure swimming: Ma in the river at the place everyone knew where to find her. On her page for Uncle Walter, she drew a pile of blankets and some squares and squiggles for food. She wrote carefully: Off the rails. Took to grog. Liar and a thief. Lies he should go to Hell for.
What kind of lies would someone go to Hell for? Ma always said all lies were bad, but Fan had seen Dad tell Ma she didn’t look tired when her eyes were so baggy she looked a hundred years old. Fan was pretty sure Dad wouldn’t go to Hell for that.
Tom wandered in, carrying a rusty can and a hammer.
‘What you doing with that rubbish?’ Fan said.
‘Nothin’ much.’ Tom shrugged. ‘Never mind me, what are you doing? World must be about to end. You with a pencil in your hand and you ain’t even in school.’
Edwin woke, slumped in the chair, cold and unsure of where he was. The night outside was black and quiet, except for the distant rumble of sea. He stood up and the room seemed to lurch sideways. For a moment, he felt his legs wobble and he wondered if he would throw up overboard. He pressed himself to the deck until it steadied and then he reached up to try and find the rail. It was a wall. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he remembered where he was. He took off his jacket and clambered into the makeshift bed. He stretched out and his head touched one wall and his feet almost touched the other. At least there were three meals a day and he didn’t have to bathe with a dozen other stinking men.
He’d outlived all his fine, upstanding shipmates, only to find himself thrown out of his own house by his wife, serving a life sentence at the mercy of his daughter and suffocated by the ever-present stink of the sea in his nostrils.
The window was open. He struck the wall with his hand again, again, again. The force of it made the window rattle and it slid shut with a loud bang.
Edwin reached for the bottle, poured a glass of rum and lit his pipe. His evening ritual. In his old place at East Perth, he would do this at the bottom of the yard among the river gums. He liked the feeling of space when he walked from the house to the trees. He’d never tired of it. It wasn’t the same in Victoria Park, where even outside he’d felt strangled and fenced in, but he drank anyway, if only for the satisfaction of seeing how it got Annie riled up.
He unpacked the bundle of Eliza’s letters from his leather bag. Edwin wondered what Eliza would have made of Fan, the girl with a head full of questions and her cheeky wit. He suspected Eliza would have liked his granddaughter immediately, and that Fan would have admired her great-aunty in return. Edwin’s room still hummed. He felt warm in the heart but this time he knew it wasn’t the grog. Fan seemed to like him, and he had begun to look forward to her visits. He peered at his reflection in the small mirror Agnes had hung near the bed. What would you say, Eliza? he thought. Could the tailor ever make his threadbare self anew?
The point about bushrangers, Da said, was that you never saw them in Perth. Or Fremantle. You never saw one galloping down Barrack Street past the bootmakers or the tobacconists. The man looking through the window at Henry Wood’s shop might be a vagrant or a sailor or a black, but he would most certainly never be a bushranger. The point about bushrangers, Da continued, was that you only ever read about them in the newspaper, in far-off places like York or Toodyay – or even further, in the wilds along the Blackwood, or on the south coast near the Sound.
‘You talk some rubbish, Edwin.’ Annie didn’t look up from her knitting. ‘Everybody knows bushrangers are out there. You’ve got to be careful.’
‘That’s precisely what I mean.’ He downed his rum and slammed the glass on the table. He was settling in for the night. ‘Everybody thinks bushrangers are out there. Everybody knows somebody else who’s seen a bushranger. But nobody in his right mind has ever seen one. Not you. Not me. Not Agnes.’ He turned to Agnes and raised his glass. ‘And wherever your lazy lout of a brother is, I’m damned sure he’s never seen one, either.’
‘What’s it to you?’
The sound of Walter’s voice made them all turn around.
‘You’d better come quick, Da. It’s Mick McCarthy. He’s been shot and he’s asking for you.’
The wild look in Walter’s eye made Agnes follow Da and Annie out the door.
The narrow alley that ran down the back of Howick Street stank of rum and piss. Mick McCarthy lay on the ground. Rosie cradled his head on her lap. Someone had covered Mick’s legs with a blanket. The smell of blood was everywhere.
Walter sat down next to Mick.
‘How’s he doing, Rosie?’
Rosie shook her head. Mick’s face was grey.
Walter whispered something in Mick’s ear. Mick tried to lift his head but couldn’t. Rosie and Walter slid their hands underneath Mick’s head to help him sit up. Rosie beckoned to Da. He seemed to be the only man in the small crowd who didn’t understand what Rosie meant because he just stood there. Agnes pushed him forward.
Mick mumbled and coughed. The smell of blood made Agnes want to run but Annie had hold of her hand so tightly she couldn’t pull loose.
‘It was the policeman,’ Walter said. ‘Swore Mick broke in and took his rifle. Said if Mick didn’t have a rifle, he’d bloody well give him a rifle.’
‘He never did it, he didn’t steal any rifle,’ Rosie said, tears starting. ‘They said he probably done it and if he didn’t do it today he’d likely do it tomorrow.’
Da kneeled down. Mick struggled to raise his arm and groaned, as if it were heavy, but it was as thin as a stick.
‘I gave ’em a good run, Salt.’ Mick spat blood. ‘To the end of the earth, ain’t that what we used to call this godforsaken place?’
‘Damn right. Now we call it home,’ Da said. ‘Do you want me to take you back to your house?’
‘Not sure I’ll make it. I’m pretty banged up.’ Mick lifted the blanket.
Da winced. ‘Walter, go find a doctor. Or an apothecary. Now!’
‘Too late for me,’ Mick said.
‘McCarthy. Fight, man,’ Da said. ‘You’re our best fighter, remember?’
‘Looks like there’s a vacancy opening up, Salt.’ Mick smiled weakly. His mouth was dark with blood. He tried to turn his head. ‘Walter, make sure Rosie’s looked after, will you?’
‘Of course, Mick,’ Walter said.
‘Salt, your boy’s a saint.’ Mick coughed again. ‘Couldn’t have got through these past few weeks without him keeping us fed.’
Rosie stroked Mick’s forehead.
‘Your secret’s safe with Walter. No need to worry about him.’ Mick’s voice was faint.
An odd look crossed Da’s face. ‘Don’t talk, Mick. Save your words for Rosie.’
Mick mumbled something hard to understand through the coughing. Da stood up and herded everyone except Rosie away.
Freedom. That’s what Mick had said, Agnes would realise, weeks later. Freedom.
Walter was drunk and unprepared for the first blow, which landed smack in his gut. The second split his lip. The third. The fourth. Again. Losing count. He spat blood on his shirt.
‘Da, stop! You’re hurting him,’ Agnes screamed. Da ignored her and hit Walter again. Walter stumbled and fell.
‘What has Mick McCarthy been telling you?’
‘What do you think?’ Walter swung his fist and hit Da’s upper arm. Da was incendiary, wide awake, eyes cat-like, alert. He hit Walter again. Again. Again. Annie tried to stand between them, but Walter shoved her away.
‘Stop him!’ Agnes shouted to Annie.
‘God help you, Edwin.’ Annie’s voice was heavy. She shook her head and hurried back into the house.
‘McCarthy called you a saint,’ Da sneered. ‘This is what you get for listening to the confession of a lying drunkard.’
Walter crumpled to the ground.
‘Stop, for the love of God.’ Agnes crouched next to her brother and lifted his head. His eye was swollen and bleeding.
‘You’re a damned coward, Da.’ Agnes’s voice was oily with hate. ‘You touch Walter again and I swear I’ll get Mad Molloy’s gun and shoot you myself.’
‘Who the blazes do you think you are?’ Da was ruddy-faced, slurring. ‘Speaking to your father like that. I’ll take the strap to you.’
‘Do what you like,’ Agnes said, but her mouth was dry with fear. ‘Look at you, drunk, and turning on your own son. And for what? The likes of Mick McCarthy? Poor Mam would be turning in her grave.’
‘You leave her out of this.’ Da’s eyes looked small in his ruddy face.
‘You came to the colony to seek your fortune? Well you’ve pissed it away and your own children hate the sight of you. How fortunate are you feeling?’
‘Agnes, stop,’ Walter said.
‘No.’ Agnes stood up. She was shaking. ‘What could be so bad that you have to hurt Walter like this? What was so bad about letters and home and Walter not being cut out for tailoring? The only thing you’ve never got mad about was that you didn’t save our mam. Were you asleep and full of grog when she was out there on a stinking hot day burning to death? Look at you. No wonder they don’t talk about you in Lichfield.’
‘I warn you, Agnes.’ His hands twitched.
‘No, Da. I warn you.’ Agnes kneeled back down next to Walter, still shaking. She looked up at her father again. ‘Leave us alone.’
The door to the house slammed shut behind him.
Da’s rum bottle was empty. The front door was open, and the stench of blood and skin wafted in from the drying sheds at the slaughter yard. Normally, Agnes didn’t notice it, but this morning her senses were tuned to the smell of injury. Da’s boots were missing from the front step. He must have left early, perhaps to wait outside the Western until opening time.
The rags she’d held to Walter’s face were in a pile on the floor. He’d always seemed so brave and mouthy but underneath, Walter was fragile. Always those narrowed, darting eyes. Agnes picked up the empty bottle and threw it as far as she could. It shattered unseen and sent a bird screeching into the clouds.
In the sleep-out, Walter snored. The cut on his face had bled onto the blanket. Agnes shook him gently. He coughed and winced.
‘How’s that eye?’ Agnes asked.
‘I’ll live.’ Walter touched his cheek. ‘How’s the old man? Worse off than me, I hope.’
‘He and Annie are out,’ Agnes said. ‘Come on, Walter. We’re leaving.’
‘You running away, sis?’
‘I thought we’d go to Adelaide. Stay with Ernest and his mother.’
‘I can’t.’ Walter’s eyes were black in his sallow face. He suddenly looked a lot older than his sixteen years. ‘The old man owes me. There’s stuff you don’t know and it’s better you don’t, but trust me: he owes me.’
‘Jesus, Walter, what is it?’ Agnes picked up another rag and wiped his cheek. Walter flinched. ‘Is it money? You can get work in Adelaide, Ernest will help.’
‘I told you. It’s better that you don’t know.’
‘Please, Walter, do it for my sake. I don’t want to go on my own.’
‘Go.’ Walter put his arm around her. ‘He’s bad news. Get out while you can.’
Agnes burst into tears.
‘Don’t cry, you sook,’ Walter said. ‘How d’you expect to charm those Adelaide gents with your face all puffed up?’
Agnes went inside and threw a few things into Mam’s old button-up bag. A hairbrush, her good dress, Ernest’s letters. Even after all these years, the bag still smelled of Mam. Agnes’s heart swelled with aching. What would Mam say if she could see them all this morning?
She took Annie’s tin off the mantelpiece and emptied the contents. Something kept her staring at the shelf. It was one of Walter’s sketches that had been squashed behind the tin. Annie had declared that it was good enough for the newspapers. He’d drawn them all: Annie with a long nose and a hairy wart, and a face shaped like a lemon. Agnes, tall and bony, with her long brown hair like a nest on her head. Walter had taken the mickey out of himself as well, drawing his crooked front tooth protruding over his fat bottom lip. Da was in the background slouched in a chair, a bottle nearby, a pipe in his mouth. He looked like a madman – spots on his face and wisps of flyaway hair. Da the tailor who boasted he could make any man more than he was and Walter, his son, the expert in reducing everyone to an outline of their flaws.
Agnes put the drawing in the bag and went back to the sleep-out. Walter had gone back to sleep. She drew the blanket over his bony shoulders and kissed his forehead. He rolled over and pulled the blanket up over his head. She left the bag on the back step, because there was one more thing she needed to do.
Agnes ran until she reached the sheltered curve of riverbank. The sun was high in the sky and the wood-cutting noises had already begun. A magpie warbled in a tree. The water was clear and still.
Mam’s laughter like bells. Mam’s smile shining like glass beads on the surface of the water. Agnes scooped her hands in and drank greedy mouthfuls. The river behind her, the river in front of her and now the river, so obviously alive like Rosie always said, pouring Mam into her heart.
Annie stood on the back step holding Mam’s bag. ‘They’re saying Mick McCarthy died a hero.’
‘Mick McCarthy died because he was hungry and drunk and he was an easy target for a policeman with a gun,’ Agnes said.
‘Were you leaving without saying goodbye?’ Annie put Mam’s bag down between them. ‘I credited you with more guts.’
‘I thought you’d gone to work.’
‘I went to the apothecary to get ointment for Walter.’
‘Da’s really hurt him.’ Agnes’s eyes stung. ‘You should have done something.’
‘What do you think I could have done?’ Annie said. Her hair seemed greyer and thinner than usual and there were smudgy shadows under her eyes. ‘For the love of God, Agnes. What could I have done? You saw the mood he was in.’
‘I wish my father was dead instead of my mam.’ Agnes picked up the bag. ‘Tell Walter to come to Adelaide. His family will be waiting. I hope I never have to see you or my father, ever again.’
On board the steamer, the hold was crowded and sour with the smell of wet hessian and unwashed skin. Children snivelled. The sea moaned constantly. Agnes pushed her way up onto the deck until she was pressed against the rail and staring down at the water. Her clammy hands clung to the rail as the boat cut the water into an ever-widening V and she watched her old life disappear.
‘Brown eyes, brown hair. The nose.’ Sarah embraced Agnes as if she’d known her all her life, then they both sat down. ‘You have the Salt family colouring, my dear.’
Sarah had a wide, warm face like Ernest’s, and her hair was almost completely grey. She had pale brown eyes and smooth English skin. Agnes focused her attention on the curtains, the rug on the floor, the noise of chooks squawking outside. Anything to stop herself from crying. Ernest brought tea on a tray.
‘Have you survived my mother’s inquisition?’ He ruffled Agnes’s hair and the unexpected touch made her cheeks redden.
‘That’s enough, Ernest.’ Sarah poured three cups. ‘I was going to ask Agnes about home, about Walter.’ She exchanged a look with Ernest. ‘And her father.’
‘I haven’t come all this way to talk about home.’ Agnes sipped her tea. ‘I’ve travelled the high seas to seek my fortune in a new land, just like you all did.’
‘Then we’ll talk only of the future.’ Ernest raised his cup to Agnes. ‘To your brave new adventure.’
Ernest’s four-roomed cottage backed onto the railway line, a decent walk from the Port Adelaide rail yards where Ernest worked six days out of seven. He joked that the walk to the yards took him past two hotels in the morning, but four on the way home. Sarah worked on the women’s ward at the Adelaide Hospital, sometimes at night, and after her night shifts, she slept all day with a blanket hung at the window to keep out the light. Agnes cooked and cleaned and washed Ernest’s shirts and sometimes did nothing but listen to the distant sounds of shunting rail engines. Before dawn, the whistling trains scared the chooks and they screeched and flung themselves at the chook-house walls, thud-thud-thud, waking Agnes with a jolt. On these mornings, she lay in bed and listened to Ernest padding quietly about the house, then she inhaled the faint smell of laundry soap that drifted from his shirt as he closed the door.
Ernest had outgrown his boyishness. His hands were stained brown with the paint the carpenters used on the railway carriages and his walk had relaxed into a slouch. But Agnes too was older, and rounder where it counted for a girl. She knew how to pinch her cheeks pinker and bite her lips redder. She knew how to brush her hair out so it hung in gentle waves, its plain brownness glowing richer in yellow lamplight. Agnes did this on the evenings when Sarah had a night shift. She turned the lamps down from blazing to muted and waited for Ernest to come home.
But Ernest didn’t seem to want to talk to her all that much. He was frequently at the Exeter until closing, and garrulous but sleepy when he got home. Or he was tired and quiet after a day cutting railway sleepers in the hot sun. Every Sunday morning Ernest took extra time in the washhouse and emerged freshly shaved. He put on a hat and his good jacket and kissed the top of Agnes’s head before he left. ‘Not church, Ag. You showed me something better. On Sundays I walk along the jetty at Semaphore right to the end. It feels like the middle of the ocean out there.’
He didn’t ask her to join him, but it was early days yet.
At the beach, there was a feeble warmth and the breeze was fierce. Agnes hurried them along the sand. Ned and Tom ran along the water’s edge. Fan sat on the sand and stared at the horizon.
‘Not going in, Fan? That’s not like you,’ Agnes said.
‘Are you mad, Mother? It’s too windy.’
Ma rummaged around in her bag and pulled out a sandwich.
‘Marmalade,’ she said.
‘No, thank you.’ Fan stared out to sea. ‘I don’t want a mouthful of sand. Where’s Uncle Ernest to build a windbreak when you need him?’
‘You’ll love a swim once you’re in.’
‘What about you? Why don’t you go in? That’s right. You don’t even own a costume. Grandpa told me you used to swim in the river. What was it he said?’ Fan pursed her lips, put her hands on her hips and stuck out her middle in the best imitation of the old man she could muster. ‘Your mother was born for water, not the earth!’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Born for water. You, Ma.’ Fan looked her mother up and down. ‘In fact, apparently you loved swimming so much that if people couldn’t find you, they always knew to look by the river.’
‘For goodness sake,’ Ma said. ‘I told you, his mind is going. If you’re going to repeat everything he says like it’s gospel truth, you can stop taking meals to him and he can come out of that room and damn well eat with the rest of the family.’
‘Language, Ma,’ Fan sighed. The water did look inviting. She stood up and stripped down to her costume. ‘Maybe I’ll give it a try.’
The sand under her feet was biscuit-coloured and grainy like sugar. She hated the way she sank into it as she ran. Fan dived in. The ocean began to pull on her arms and legs. She swam underwater and slithered along the seabed as far as she could before the water pressed too firmly on her lungs.
The salt on her lips, the stiff breeze making her shiver, the brown weed tangled in her sea-heavy hair. She should have felt right at home. She turned away from the sun, half-expecting to see Semaphore Jetty. Instead, she saw small wooden sailboats cutting across the waves. Fan waded out of the water and sat down with a thud next to her mother.
‘He told me about your ma.’ Fan wrung her hair out on the sand. ‘My grandma.’
Fan could have sworn she felt the temperature of the air change. Or was it just the look on Ma’s face?
‘What did he say?’ Ma asked.
‘He said I look like her. And she died.’
‘Yes, Fan, she did.’
‘It must have been horrible.’
‘It was.’
‘I couldn’t imagine not having you. I mean, apart from when you annoy me.’
‘Charming!’ She elbowed Fan in the ribs.
‘Grandpa told me about my Uncle Walter, too. What happened to him?’
‘It was all so long ago, Fan.’ Ma pointed out to sea, her mouth set firm. ‘Can you see Tom and Ned? It looks like they’re swimming out to those sailboats. Poor Ned’s little legs. Tom had better look after him or I’ll give him a good hiding.’
Fan liked it best when Grandpa talked about the place where he was born. Lichfield, it was called – as in ‘witch-field’, as she reminded herself, because she wasn’t sure what the word would look like. The stories tumbled out of him. His father – ‘Your great-grandfather, Samuel’ – and ‘my dear, dear mother.’ His brothers, and a school friend called William Neville. His sister Eliza, whose name he sighed out so quietly she almost didn’t hear it.
‘Eliza’s a lovely name,’ Fan said. ‘You must miss her. I’d miss Tom and Ned, even though they make me mad as a snake half the time.’
They sat in his room without talking for a while and Fan wondered if he was tired. She stood up to leave, but he waved her back.
‘Eliza was my greatest blessing,’ Grandpa said. ‘She saved my life.’
‘What do you mean?’ Fan said. ‘Did you have an accident?’
‘Eliza was the smartest person I knew.’ His voice was very low. ‘Much smarter than me.’ He took another drink. ‘And on no account tell her I said this, but she was without question the finest seamstress in the family.’
‘Don’t worry, Grandpa,’ Fan grinned. ‘Your secret’s safe with me.’
Grandpa leaned towards her and Fan hoped there was something scandalous he was about to whisper. But Grandpa clasped her hands in his.
‘Thank you.’ His eyes were cloudy. ‘Thank you with all my heart, Miss Johnson.’
Fan shrugged. ‘I’d better get a move on. Ma’ll be on the warpath if I don’t get back soon.’
Halfway down the hall she realised she’d left his empty plates behind. Ma would be furious. She knocked as she pushed his door open. Grandpa was staring out of the shut window again, his arms folded across his middle.
‘Sorry Grandpa, I forgot your plates.’
Fan picked up the crockery and saw it was that old leather bag he was holding onto, and there was a pile of letters on the table.
‘I’m surprised you find your grandfather so interesting,’ Ma said when she returned.
‘Nah. Not really. He mostly rambles a bunch of nonsense.’ Fan hoped her voice wasn’t shaking, because Ma always said she could spot a lie before Fan had even thought it up. ‘Like you said, his mind is going. I reckon he just likes the sound of his own voice.’
Edwin didn’t know how many letters his sister had written over the years, or how many letters he had written home. But the only two from Eliza he had managed to keep were wrapped safely in his leather bag. He felt grounded somehow, tethered to a place of certainty, knowing that the remembered rhythm of his sister’s voice was always there if he needed to hear it.
Talking to Fan about Eliza had stirred her to life again. He opened both her letters and put them on the table, lingering over his favourite lines, even though he knew them by heart.
My dear Edwin. Da says you are as good as dead to the family but, like progress, I choose to pass him by!
Even so many years later, her wit made him warm with pride.
Albert and Edwin Stewart are settling in with Da, although it is very cramped. They go to the church school and learn writing and arithmetic. Matthew is living with me. He is a sickly boy with a constant cough.
I took them to the cathedral last Sunday and showed them our childish old games. You will be glad to know that I outran them, and that Saint Chad is still dead.
There is some sad news. Our mother died soon after you left for the colony. She didn’t suffer. Da gets some help from young Amy Bullock next door.
I hope you are doing well. There are always stories of men out there making good, even men with your unfortunate start.
Next to Eliza’s letters were two others he couldn’t bring himself to throw away. He opened one of them now. Still, when he read the sentence that began I regret to inform you, his throat closed up with emotion and he felt Eliza’s death as keenly as if the news had been delivered ten minutes ago. The pompous tone of his father’s haughty young wife – Mrs Samuel Salt (Amy Bullock) – was enough to give any man heartburn decades after the event. But it always gave him comfort to bear witness to his sister’s passing.
I regret to inform you Eliza died in her confinement this July past. The child a girl died with her. My husband your father Samuel asked me to inform you of this sad news as a duty nothing more as she confessed she were writing to you.
It were a great turnout to see her laid to rest, Eliza were much loved even with her odd ways.
Amy had a lot more to say, but tonight he didn’t have the stomach for it. The fourth letter in the bundle was from New South Wales. He never read this one, but he liked to know it was there. Keeping it felt like he could keep that no-good swindler where he could see him.
Edwin took the lock of hair out of its resting place and held it to his face. He wished he could remember Mary Ann alive and beautiful, but there were traces of her other self everywhere. She was in the smell of whisky, in the fraying threads of his waistcoats, in the restless dreams that left a gloom clinging to him.
He looked at the letters again. So many versions of himself contained in a few faded lines. If he squinted at them all together, could he make some parts disappear? He stared at the names. Eliza. Albert. Your father Samuel. Saint bloody Chad. Mary Ann. Mary Ann. Mary Ann. He stared unblinking until the pages blurred. A few pages of handwriting were his only proof that these people had existed, that he himself had existed before this barely lived life.
He drank more rum.
Dear Walter, there’s loads of work at the port. You’d soon be swimming in money. Loads of work at the rail yards for hardworking men.
Agnes was a slow and clumsy writer, but every week she sent her brother a piece of Adelaide: the noise of the engines that made the windows rattle; the faint smell of sea in the air; the paint peeling off the Jetty Hotel’s sagging veranda. Sometimes she drew a little sketch and made fun of herself:
You’d draw this so much better than I could, Walter. Adelaide needs you to draw it. There is a newspaper that prints sketches, just like in Perth. I know you’re not much for writing, so I don’t mind that you don’t reply.
She always sealed the letters up tightly and put a cross on the seal so Walter would know if Da had tampered with it. She wrote Walter’s name very clearly so there could be no mistaking. Agnes printed her new address in neat, readable capitals. Months went by, but no word came from Walter. Agnes’s heart grew heavier with every letter she posted, and every week of silence.
Ernest wasn’t usually home on a week day, and nor had she ever seen him dab a handkerchief to his mother’s eyes because Sarah never, ever cried. In the time it had taken Agnes to walk to the port and back, something cold and sad had come among them.
‘It’s the anniversary of my father’s death,’ Ernest whispered. ‘She feels it even worse now she’s so far away.’
‘Poor Sarah. I can make myself scarce,’ Agnes said.
‘No need to scurry off, Agnes,’ Sarah said. This wasn’t the Sarah that Agnes had come to know, the woman with the steel spine who tended to newborns and the dying and many of the living people in between. She looked so frail.
‘My Sam would’ve liked you, Agnes.’
‘She nursed him for months, didn’t you, Mother?’ Ernest held Sarah’s hand.
‘I couldn’t make him well,’ Sarah said.
‘Not for want of trying. Personally, I can’t believe he had the gall to disobey your orders by dying.’
‘My Sam always had a mind of his own,’ Sarah said.
Agnes sat down. The table was covered in papers, pictures, newspaper clippings and a couple of notebooks. Sarah showed Agnes an old photograph. A man in a well-tailored suit stood in front of a backdrop of classical pillars. His foot rested on a stool and he leaned towards the camera thoughtfully. He had carefully tended whiskers and a round nose. Familiar eyes.
‘Isn’t he handsome?’ Sarah said. ‘Always the handsomest man in the room.’
Sam had all the same features as Da, but he was a much finer-looking man. He was slimmer and his face more relaxed.
‘Sam Junior the small, no tailor at all,’ Agnes murmured.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Sarah said.
‘It’s nothing. Just a little rhyme Ernest used to tell me.’
‘I wonder if it was the right thing to do. Leaving him in England.’ Sarah’s eyes misted over.
‘Why would you stay in England to tend to a grave?’ Ernest sifted through the papers on the table. ‘You’ll always have your memories and your lovely keepsakes.’
Sarah picked up a notebook. The faint smell of lavender escaped. Something familiar about one of the pictures, half-buried underneath a book of flower pressings, caught Agnes’s eye. She picked it up. It was a sketch on paper, faded and yellow with age.
For a moment she thought it was one of Walter’s drawings: some of the flourishes could so easily have been his. But this picture was beautiful, not drawn to poke fun. Two people stood in an arched doorway. The man looked like her father, only younger, cleaned up. A big, wide smile. The woman’s dress had a long train that swept gently upwards. It tangled with her long hair and framed the couple. The man had his arm around her and he wore a smart suit. It was only a sketch, but still Agnes recognised the formality, the church setting. She turned the drawing over.
Edwin and Mary Ann. Love from Eliza.
‘What’s this?’ Agnes showed the drawing to Ernest.
‘Goodness!’ He leaned closer. ‘I haven’t a clue.’
‘Sarah, is that my father? Who’s Mary Ann?’ Agnes traced her finger over the woman’s face. The picture had faded but there was no denying the wide-eyed stare, the stubborn curve of this woman’s chin.
‘Can this wait until another day, Agnes dear?’
‘Not really, if you don’t mind.’
‘Ag, how about you go and make Mother a cup of tea?’ Ernest said.
‘I believe Mary Ann was your father’s wife in England.’ Sarah was her brisk self again.
‘What happened to her?’
‘I’m not sure. I think she died.’
‘Did you know about her, Ernest?’ Agnes asked. ‘Have you seen this picture before?’
‘Agnes, today is a difficult day,’ Sarah said. She began packing everything up into the hatbox. ‘You know how it is with family keepsakes. People end up with all kinds of things. Ask me anything you like tomorrow, the day after or even next month, but please, not today.’
‘No, Sarah, I don’t know how it is with family keepsakes.’ Agnes fled to the washhouse.
Agnes looked at Eliza’s drawing and then at Walter’s – the one she’d taken from their mantelpiece. She traced her finger around the outlines of Annie, herself, Walter, Da, following the trail of spots down Da’s cheeks.
She wondered why she’d never noticed it before. They weren’t spots. They were tears. Da was slouched over the bottle, collapsed, crying. Walter had seen something about Da and drawn it here, plain as day for everyone to see.
It was Mary Ann’s face that Agnes saw when she closed her eyes.
The next afternoon, Agnes was outside throwing scraps to the chooks when Sarah appeared at her side.
‘My dear Agnes.’ She touched Agnes’s arm gently. ‘You’ve brought such joy to our home. Ernest and I wouldn’t be without you.’
‘I hardly see Ernest anymore.’
‘He’s been grieving for Hannah,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s helped him to be here. Sometimes people travel great distances because it helps them forget.’ Sarah put her arm around Agnes’s waist. ‘They leave their old life behind and start afresh somewhere new. I did that after my Sam died. Perhaps your father did that. And now you, is that right?’
‘I suppose.’ Agnes’s voice trembled.
‘Does it really matter anymore, who that woman in the picture was? Keep the silly drawing. But for all our sakes, let the dead rest in peace.’
My dear Walter, Agnes began. I found something out about Da. She crossed it out.
Dear Walter. Did you know that Da had a wife?
She crossed this out too.
Dear Walter. What do you think of this news? Da had a wife who died.
Cross out. Throw away. Start again.
Dear Walter. Nothing new to tell you this week. There are so many hotels in Port Adelaide I swear when the wind blows it smells of grog. There’s so much work at the port. Get on the next steamer and in a month you’ll be rich.
Agnes had hoped it was only a matter of time before he asked her, but when the invitation came it still took her by surprise. Something special, he’d said. She brushed her hair into a smooth coil and dabbed rosewater behind her ears. Ernest wore his hat and a smart jacket. They walked arm in arm down the wide road that led to Semaphore Beach. Agnes turned her face up to the sun and allowed Ernest to steer her through a group of shrieking children.
Semaphore Jetty seemed to stretch from the shore to the horizon. It cut the sea in half down the middle. Families sat in colourful chairs along the sands. Children paddled about in the shallows, and at the end of the jetty, far enough away to look like dots, people squealed and swam in the fenced-off sea baths.
Ernest took her arm. ‘Come on, let’s walk.’
‘All the way to Brazil?’
‘Something like that.’
The water was so clear Agnes could see the ridged seabed. Men slouched on the rail and tipped their hats at her. The rail wobbled and rattled in the strengthening breeze and Agnes lost her footing.
‘You’re safe with me.’ Ernest tightened his grip on her arm. ‘I won’t let you fall.’
At the end of the jetty the breeze was fierce and cold. Young men slid their arms around the waists of their sweethearts, and the sweethearts held onto their hats and leaned closer to their young men. The swimmers were a squealing mass of arms and legs and colourful costumes. Agnes hoped Ernest might take her hand or something, but he let go of her arm and turned to face the horizon.
‘The day we found out about Hannah felt like the day my life ended,’ he said into the air. ‘Before then, I used to go to bed every night and plan what we’d do. Children. A house.’
Agnes touched his arm.
‘When I first came to Adelaide I didn’t care much about anything. I didn’t know how to live, I suppose.’ Ernest faced her. He blotted his eye with his sleeve. ‘I’m not crying. It’s the wind.’
She suppressed a smile. ‘All right, I believe you.’
‘I started coming to the jetty to talk to Hannah. It’s odd, but with her being’ – he pointed to the horizon – ‘out there somewhere, when I stand here, it’s like she’s not gone. I feel close to her.’ He rubbed between his eyes. ‘You showed me the river and told me about your mother, so I started coming here in case it helped. And it did.’
Now it was Agnes’s turn to wipe her eyes, but it wasn’t the wind.
‘Hannah told me it’s time to start living again.’ He took both her hands and spoke more slowly. ‘Whatever else happens, always remember, you saved me.’ He nodded to emphasise the point. ‘You, Ag. My antipodean cousin. I owe you everything and I’ll never be able to thank you enough.’
‘No. You saved me.’ His confession had made her feel bold. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Anything.’ Ernest let go of her hands and stared back up the jetty to the seafront.
‘The song you sang about our Lichfield family, was it really true? I mean, since my Da and that woman – Mary Ann –’ the wind whipped her words away.
Ernest didn’t seem to have heard her.
Agnes took another deep lungful of air.
‘Grandfather Samuel, the tailor from Lichfield,
He was the old-fashioned kind.
Used needle and thread, ’til he dropped down half-dead,
And his eyes were all yellow and blind.
Sons, three in all: large, medium, small.
And daughters, useless, but fair.
Sam Junior the small, no tailor at all,
Ten thumbs and he just didn’t care.
James was the medium, found tailoring tedium,
He spent all the profits on gin.
Eliza, Eliza, oh pretty Eliza,
To love her, some said, was a sin.
Poor Mary, so sad, lost her son, and his dad
And died broken-hearted one day.’
Ernest applauded. ‘That’s priceless. I’d forgotten all about that silly rhyme.’
His words stung. ‘It wasn’t silly to me. I wrote it down so I wouldn’t forget where I fit in.’ She stood up straighter.
‘Agnes and Walter live near the Swan River,
As far as an ocean away.’
‘My dear Ag,’ Ernest said. ‘You fit in here with Sarah and me. We’ll always be your family. You were so sad back then, I wanted to cheer you up.’
‘Was it a lie?’ The wind bit her face.
‘I didn’t get back to Lichfield very often.’ Ernest checked his pocket watch. ‘Even my mother only visited our family for funerals. Some things you really know, some things you hear and other things, well, you just fill in.’ He turned away and began walking back along the jetty.
It took a moment for Agnes to realise that Ernest wasn’t walking away from her. He was walking towards someone: a woman. A smiling woman running down the jetty towards him. She was taller and more filled out than Agnes and she wore a coral-coloured dress and large hat. The woman kissed Ernest’s cheek.
Ernest’s face was flushed, his eyes sparkling. ‘Agnes, may I present Miss Florence Turner.’
‘So pleased to meet you, Agnes. I’ve heard all about you.’ The woman offered her hand. ‘We got chatting one Sunday afternoon and now I’m afraid he’s stuck with me.’
‘That’s right. Poor me.’ Ernest slid his hand around Florence’s waist.
Agnes had never seen Ernest smile like this. It was as if some exotic flower had burst open inside him and here it was on his face. Is this what he meant – ‘whatever else happens’? She shook Florence’s hand and let go just as soon as was polite.
Ernest married Florence at the parson’s house in Port Adelaide. The bride wore a pale dress and carried a spray of daisies, and her honey-coloured hair wisped around her face. The way they held hands and hurried through their vows, it was obvious their attention was on what would come later. Agnes tied a blue ribbon around her hat and made herself smile.
Florence moved in and the house began to smell of Florence’s rose perfume. Ernest no longer stayed out late at the Exeter. He came home on time every day, and they all ate together, but as soon as they’d finished, Ernest and Florence disappeared into their room and shut the door until morning.
Agnes began to go to the jetty in the afternoons and watched the fishermen, the lovers, the vagrants, the children, the men smoking pipes. She watched the vast ocean that divided one side of her life from the other. Perhaps Walter hadn’t written because he had no money for stamps. Perhaps, if she sent him some money, he’d at least send her a thank you letter, and she’d know he was all right.
Perhaps she’d held onto Ernest’s rhyme, and the idea of him as a fairytale prince, far too long. It was as hopeless as trying to keep a hat on in a breeze.
One particularly windy day, she walked back up to the road to the row of pretty houses on the beachfront. She knocked on the first door, then the second door. She knocked on every single door and thanked them politely when they shook their heads. Until she knocked on the door of a tall mansion that cast a shadow on the smaller houses next to it. Mrs Jensen asked her in and showed her into a small, sunny room. Agnes took off her gloves and the woman inspected her hands, looked her up and down.
‘Where is your family from?’ Mrs Jensen asked.
‘My father is long gone,’ Agnes said. ‘And my mother is long dead. I live with my family up the road. My aunt is a ward matron at the Adelaide Hospital.’
‘That’s good enough for me.’ Mrs Jensen gave Agnes an apron. ‘I shall call you Agnes. I don’t much care for formality, except of course if I have guests, in which case I shall call you Miss Salt.’ Mrs Jensen chuckled. ‘Miss Salt of the Sea.’
Juniper Green was one of several villages knotted along the thin thread of river known as the Water of Leith, a few miles from the middle of Edinburgh. It was a village of paper mills, snuff mills, windowless cottages and gin shops, home to farmers, fleshers, mill workers and excise men. Day and night the air stank of cotton rags being boiled for paper pulp.
Soon after their arrival, Mary Ann had another baby, this one eased out of her by a doctor, a man with pale hands and a college diploma. Edwin was comforted by Dr Michael’s book knowledge, his sleek black case of glass bottles, his suit. Mary Ann said it was her gentlest confinement of all, but weeks later she insisted there was still something wrong. Dr Michael applied mustard poultices to coax out the illness she claimed was inside her and for which the doctor had no explanation.
‘Drink will not make her better.’ Dr Michael stared at a chair by the fireplace. Its leg was broken. ‘You must insist your wife develops sober habits.’
Mary Ann swathed herself in the dark-blue fabric. It was heavy enough to fall in gentle folds. The faintest chain of silver flowers trailed diagonally from her breast to her hip.
‘Silver daisies to match your eyes,’ Edwin said. ‘But first I want you to do something.’
‘Anything, my master, for this.’
He whispered in her ear. ‘Give up the gin. Doctor’s orders.’
‘I told you, I’m not right after the infant. It’s the only thing that helps.’
‘The doctor says it’s all in your head.’ His voice was harsh. ‘Please, Mary Ann. For the children.’
‘All right. I’ll try.’
Edwin took her drink from her and gulped it down. Mary Ann trembled ever so gently, like a feather falling against him.
Later, she stood as still as she could manage, arms outstretched. Edwin pulled the tape around her back, under her arms and pulled it snugly over her breasts. Mary Ann wriggled.
‘Hold still.’ He adjusted the tape and his fingers brushed the side of her breast.
Mary Ann stifled a giggle. ‘Careful. My husband might get jealous.’
‘Madam, your husband is an extremely fortunate man.’
Mary Ann’s cheeks flushed.
Edwin finished scribbling measurements. They didn’t make sense. He looked at the numbers again, then at his wife. Her shoulders were rounded, her head sagged forward, her breasts were flat, her waist thin.
‘Again,’ he ordered, and she stretched her arms out. He poked his finger into her armpit and she laughed, loud and hearty and generous. He let the tape drop to the floor and she pulled his face to her breasts. He grabbed the gin bottle and swigged. She reached for the bottle but he held it away from her and reminded her how beautiful she would look in the new dress, just like the doctor had said. She nodded, and kissed him hungrily, and afterwards in their bed when it was still daylight he wondered, was it the taste of the gin on his tongue she had wanted?
He hadn’t meant to stay so late at Wallace’s gin shop, but the Edinburgh excise brothers had welcomed him warmly and he didn’t like to leave until he’d drunk more than every last one of them. Now it was dark and his head was foggy. Mary Ann would have to wait one more day for him to finish the dress. He tripped over a sack of potatoes near the door, cursed Mary Ann for leaving it there, cursed the potatoes and cursed God himself.
Inside, Mary Ann sat at the table with a woman he didn’t know. A bottle, two mugs.
‘Edwin, this is Jane McKenzie. She’s going to help me with the bairns.’
Jane ignored him. ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right, love?’
Mary Ann nodded.
‘I’ll come by in the morning,’ Jane said. She glanced at Edwin, then rested her hand over Mary Ann’s. ‘If you need me, you know where I am. Don’t wait a minute longer than you have to.’
The almost-made dress lay crumpled on a chair. After Jane had gone, Edwin pointed to the bottle, the mugs.
‘What’s this?’
‘Not as much as you’ve had, I’ll wager.’ Mary Ann stood, lifted her arms and opened her palms. ‘See? I’m fine.’
‘You promised.’ His head throbbed.
In the doorway, Edwin Stewart appeared, half-undressed and rubbing his eyes.
‘Get back to bed!’ Edwin shouted, and the boy fled.
‘Leave him alone,’ Mary Ann said through gritted teeth. ‘The bairns have done nothing to you except be born.’
‘And what a price I’ve paid for that.’ Edwin swigged from the gin bottle. The sweet liquid warmed his throat. ‘Four sons and no wife to speak of.’
‘Five sons.’
‘Four sons living and no wife or mother to speak of.’ The back of Edwin’s hand caught Mary Ann’s face.
She shouted in pain, and rubbed her cheek. ‘Bastard.’
He hit her again, and she fell, coughing. ‘Bitch.’ And again. ‘Drunkard. Madwoman.’ Again. Again. Again. ‘What kind of mother.’
Edwin took the almost-finished dress and pulled hard at the arms. One arm dislocated from the dress and this burned in his chest worse than gin. When he was a boy, he could stitch things up so they never came apart. Now his hands were stiff and he couldn’t stare at small stitches without getting spots before his eyes. He ripped off the other arm, then the dainty collar, then tore the bodice from the skirt. In the firelight he saw his father mocking the slackness of his work. ‘It isn’t nearly good enough. Not nearly good enough, Edwin.’
That cotton had cost almost a week’s wages. He threw the ragged pieces onto the fire, where they burned acrid, worthless.
Edwin drank every lunchtime at Wallace’s gin shop until he couldn’t read the columns in the ledgers in the afternoons. He drank every night at Wallace’s gin shop until his voice grew too loud and Wallace refused him any more credit. Tracks of broken red veins spread across his nose, his cheeks. He woke in the mornings with his forehead tight and his mouth dry and his guts ready to heave. When he left home most mornings, Mary Ann was still asleep on the bed she’d made on the floor. Two, three, four kicks to wake her up. The same if she was still there when he got home. A clip around the ear for snivelling little Edwin Stewart if he tried to push in between his father’s boot and his whimpering mother.
Come November, it was dark when he left the house and dark when he returned. The walk along the steep edge of the Water of Leith took him past a dozen mills and the relentless creaking of water on wood, the rush and screech of water and air tumbling down the rocky embankment. The vicious wind hurt his face on the way to Edinburgh and slapped the back of his head on the way home to Juniper Green. The flask kept him company on both journeys. The gin fired him up. The gin calmed him down. The gin fed that other man, the man with the fighting fists, who now walked and slept in Edwin’s house.
The work at the Jensens’ house was hard. There were so many rooms that by the time she’d cleaned the whole house, the room she’d started with was dusty and grubby all over again. After she’d finished for the day, Miss Salt of the Sea watched the water. Before sunset, the tide was always up high and the breeze whipped in from the south, tearing the sea into thin white strips and making women grab their hats. If it was too windy, she stood underneath the jetty, where seagulls made arrows in the sand with their feet, and children splashed fearlessly in ankle-deep water. If she felt like it, she took off her boots and paddled in the sand at the edge or walked in up to her knees. She was Miss Salt of the Sea, who lived with an aunt in Exeter, with a mother long dead and a father long gone. Perhaps Ernest could put that in his stupid little rhyme. It was all Mrs Jensen had needed.
After a few months, Mrs Jensen had given her a small wage rise and asked her to stay longer a couple of days a week to help in the kitchen. Agnes had used up ten more stamps on ten more letters to Walter. She had stopped asking Sarah if any letters had come. The walk to Semaphore became windy and cold. The stench of whisky on the men outside the Jetty Hotel smelled sour and she’d stopped feeling sorry for them and their haunted faces.
On the day of Mrs Jensen’s annual afternoon tea party, Miss Salt of the Sea made a decision about what to keep and what to let go. At Mrs Jensen’s she put on a special apron, served delicious sandwiches and earned high praise from all Mrs Jensen’s friends. The sky began to turn black over the sea and Mrs Jensen sent her home at five to avoid the rain.
The wind blew like it must be coming straight off the South Pole and the sea bubbled up high on the sand. She knew she’d have to run the last hundred yards home if it began to pelt. People hurried back along the jetty and pointed at the sky and mouthed, You’re going the wrong way. A fisherman packed up his line and shook his head at her. The jetty swayed and creaked and down below the water lapped at the pylons.
Agnes took Eliza’s sketch out of her pocket, tore it into pieces and threw them over the rail. Every one of Ernest’s old letters, envelopes and all. Her badly written copy of Ernest’s rhyme was the last thing she let go of. She screwed it into a ball and hurled it as hard and as far as she could. Bits of paper darkened and sank. Gulls screeched and dived.
She hurried back, but the rain was too strong. The wind howled in her ears and soon her shoes were soaked through. Agnes began to cry.
‘Let’s get you out of this weather.’ A hand gripped her arm. ‘We can shelter underneath.’
He hurried her under the jetty and the wind died away. It was almost warm, and still. A couple of gulls rested on barnacled beams. She felt hot with the sudden absence of wind.
‘It’ll pass right over, miss. You’ll be safe here.’
Agnes had trouble deciphering the man’s accent. It lilted and dragged, it had currents of its own. He said something about sailors and ships, was she warm enough, and that he reckoned it would last no longer than twenty minutes.
An eerie wail of wind. Agnes clung to the man’s sleeve.
‘You all right, miss?’ he said.
‘I am fine.’ Agnes’s cheeks reddened. ‘It’s your jacket that got my attention. I’m the daughter of a tailor.’
‘An’ there I was thinking I’d rescued a maid and she were going to thank me properly.’ He raised an eyebrow.
‘Best grey serge in its day,’ Agnes said. ‘Which must have been some years ago.’
‘Aye, it was that,’ he grinned.
‘I’m Agnes Salt.’ She held out her hand and smiled. ‘Some call me Miss Salt of the Sea.’
Like his father and his grandad before him, George Johnson wasn’t so much born as hammered together with nails and rivets in the Sunderland shipyards. The teacher at the church school had said he was missing ‘aptitude’, mostly because of his grubby face and the holes in his trousers, but in truth George was sharp as flint. In summer, or what passed for summer in England’s north-east, George and the other lads paddled about on the coarse sands at South Shields and talked about stowing away to the Indies. Or joining the navy. Or crewing a boat to the colonies and taking their chances on the wharves. On his last day at the church school, George had cut his leg with a worn-away stone and asked the teacher if the sea really did run in his veins like his father said.
‘I’ll show you my scar, if you like,’ George said to Agnes over dinner, and bent down to roll up his trouser leg. Agnes blushed.
George had never intended to work on the wharves, but after the work fell away in Sunderland, he crewed a boat to South Australia in return for his passage and found himself washed up in Port Adelaide with idle days, a strong back and a good pair of hands.
The way he said ‘a good pair of hands’ made Agnes blush again.
At the end of the table, Ernest whispered to Florence, who nudged him to be quiet. Sarah spooned another potato onto George’s plate. After dinner Agnes went with George to the door. It was chillier out here away from the fire and with only one small lamp lit.
‘Thank you, Miss Salt of the Sea. So kind of you to feed a weary sailor.’ George clasped both her hands between both of his. He held on so tight. More like a rescue than a handshake.
Agnes polished the Jensens’ big upstairs window until the sea seemed so vast and close and blue you’d swear you could jump right in. Mrs Jensen’s floors had never been so clean. Agnes put her hands in and out of cold water and warm water and soapy water a dozen times a day but it could never wash away the warm feeling of George’s hands around hers. It sneaked up on her without warning, made her look forward to the next time she saw him.
‘Agnes, you are the hardest working girl I have ever employed.’ Mrs Jensen gave Agnes her wages and a small jar. ‘For your hands, my dear. It has lavender. Very soothing.’
Agnes showed the cream to Florence.
‘Lucky girl,’ Florence said. ‘I’ve seen this in the shops in Adelaide. They say it’s miracle cream.’
It may as well have been called Miracle Cream. By the time Agnes finished the jar, two things appeared: a pale, soft layer of skin on her hands, and George Johnson on the front veranda with a bunch of daisies and a declaration of love.
Agnes wore one of Florence’s dresses. It was the old-fashioned style but still lovely, a luminous pale silver with pearly beads stitched around the neck. Florence brushed Agnes’s hair and pinned it up with a rose-shaped clip. Sarah held up a small mirror and Agnes saw herself: her pretty face, slim waist, shining brown hair.
‘I can’t believe that’s me,’ Agnes said.
‘You look beautiful,’ Florence said. ‘He’s lucky to have you.’
‘George is a decent man. He treats you well.’ Sarah pulled Agnes close and whispered in her ear. ‘If that ever changes, if he ever treats you … disrespectfully or ill-uses you – you come home to us immediately, never mind what people say.’
‘You don’t have to worry. George is a good man, I know he is.’
Florence arched an eyebrow. ‘How much of George Johnson’s “goodness” have you become acquainted with, young lady?’
‘Don’t tease. He’s a real gentleman.’
‘Nothing but decorum from our George. Where’s the fun in that?’ Florence fished a pair of gloves out of a box. ‘Here. To complete the bride’s ensemble.’
Agnes slid them on. They were cream-coloured with tiny beads stitched around the wrists.
‘Now, twirl,’ Florence commanded, and Agnes stretched out her gloved hand as she imagined a ballerina might. She spun on her heels until light winked and sparkled around her neck, her hands, her hair.
‘I have something else for you, Agnes.’ Florence beckoned her to move closer. ‘Decorum is all very well, but tonight you will be a man’s wife. There are some things you need to know.’ To Agnes’s surprise, Florence began whispering in her ear. The more Florence talked, the more Agnes blushed.
‘Oh, darling Ag. You look beautiful.’ It was Ernest by the door, offering his arm. ‘Let’s get you married off, little bird.’
Ernest walked her from the hall to the front room and whistled ‘Here Comes the Bride’. George had slicked his hair down with oil and put on a shirt that rustled and smelled strongly of starch.
Man and wife. George brushed his lips to hers. A scratch of stubble, a faint trace of whisky. Florence and Sarah and Mrs Jensen clapped. Ernest and Mr Jensen pushed the furniture back ready for dancing.
Ernest was a competent dancer and Agnes let herself be led. He nodded to where George stood talking to Sarah. ‘He hasn’t taken his eyes off you all afternoon.’
Agnes twirled with Florence’s husband in Florence’s dress that still smelled of Florence’s perfume.
‘You should write to Walter and your father. Tell them you’re married now,’ he said.
‘Don’t spoil it. Just let me have today. I told George I don’t talk to my father and he doesn’t care. He left his own family years ago. You, Florence and Sarah are all the family we need.’
‘I think they’d approve of George in Lichfield.’ Ernest spun her around. ‘I can imagine Eliza, with her ample charms, giving him the glad eye. James drinking all the punch. To relieve the tedium. What d’you think, Ag?’
‘That old story? I forgot it ages ago, Ernest.’ Agnes closed her eyes and twirled.
Dear Walter.
George found us a little house of our own near the port. It’s further away from the rail line but closer to the Exeter Hotel. George has so much work at the wharf, he knows all the foremen. It’s hard work and you have to know somebody no matter how long you’ve been there, but George gets shifts every day. He says he could be your somebody.
Dear Walter.
Semaphore in winter is lovelier than summer. At sunset, the sky goes all sorts of colours. Blue and pink and yellow don’t do them justice. The Chinese fishermen haul fish out of the sea when everybody else goes home empty-handed. There’s so much work at the port, you could be earning the day you got here.
Dear Da.
I’m sorry I haven’t written. I hope you are in good health. I wanted to tell you I am very happy in Adelaide. I am married now and I have a baby on the way. You are going to be a grandfather. Is Annie still working at the asylum? Is Walter still living with you? I would like to know how you are all getting along. I know things were bad when I left. Please tell me where Walter is and what he’s doing. That is all I ask.
Your daughter, Agnes.