CHAPTER 12

The world was rain. Standing on the back steps of the Royal Hotel, I faced into blackness, but pinpoints of light flickered all around me. The roaring was constant, but not loud enough to drown the intermittent cries, howls, bleats and bellows. Carrying my tray of empty mugs, I stepped down and, almost immediately, I was drenched. As I shuffled down the slope from the main hotel building to the kitchen and bakery outhouses, icy water claimed my skirts, rose to my knees. Even when I reached the warmth of the kitchen, where pots hissed and spat and Mrs Guild the landlady and the cook and their helpers chopped and peeled and washed, water still swirled around our ankles. Mrs Guild, lank hair drooping loose from its combs, wiped her nose on her sleeve, took my tray without a word and gave me another. Like the first, it was loaded with mugs, this time full of cabbage soup. For once, I found a use for Belly: I could prop up the tray and take some of the weight from my arms.

I made my way back up the hill towards the lighted windows of the hotel. Lately I’d been breathless when I scuttled about, so I had deliberately slowed my movements, and now I felt like a great barque gliding in the loose black-dyed teagown Mrs Bleeker had given me, for the striped dress was far too tight for me now. Although I heard and felt the water, I could not see the great sheet that covered the land, or the torrents that roared down from the hills. Were we all about to drown?

For a moment I wanted to scream, drop my tray and run. But I told myself yet again there was nowhere to run to and I was in the safest place I could be. The Royal Hotel, the best in Seymour town, stood on high ground; but so much ground seemed to have vanished.

I squared my shoulders, elbowed my way through the Royal back door, down the corridor and into the ballroom. A fug of hot cocoa, wet clothes, squelched carpet and steaming socks greeted me. Thirty-six refugee farm folk, mostly women and children, sat or lay slumped around the walls under the suite of pictures showing the principal rooms in Windsor Castle. Even the youngest were too dazed to show much wonder at the fairies and imps who were wrapping them in blankets and giving them mugs of cocoa. The local doctor, a fellow no more than twenty with spanking new boots, kneeled solicitously by each newcomer, feeling for scratches and broken bones, while Minnie handed him shiny objects from his black case.

Mr Bleeker was at the window peering through the curtains into the darkness, much as I had seen him peering through the curtains onstage at the Polytechnic Hall. From outside came a burst of screeching. He shivered and pulled the curtains across the window.

‘What a night, eh, Mr B,’ said Mr Guild the landlord, a bald fellow with an expansive apron. ‘Didn’t I tell you we’d get to use that boat?’

‘D’you always have such spring rains?’ said Mr Bleeker.

‘Can’t recall anything like it since ’63. Our natives predicted it: big man flood.’ With gloomy relish, Mr Guild cleared the mahogany table of empty cocoa mugs. As I set out my cargo of cabbage soup, now much diluted with rainwater, he delivered his bulletin. ‘Mr Cameron the Presbyterian minister is missing. They say he and his lad were rowing away from the old hotel when their little cockleshell capsized. And we’ve lost Bill Regan. Mind you, it was his own doing. Drunk as Chloe. Must have fallen into his own fireplace. Drowned in two feet of water and the bottles bobbing around his head.’

I blinked water from my eyelashes. Heartburn lurched under my breastbone, and a sudden surge of rebellion, far stronger than the flicker I had felt in the wash-house at Adelaide. What was I doing in this Godforsaken place, run off my feet, at everyone’s beck and call? Would anyone even notice if I gave in to my exhaustion and collapsed face down in the water? It was not right: no one should have to work so hard, especially one such as I. Perhaps I should just go off and find a rowboat and escape into the lake and the darkness and roaring, and never see the troupe again.

Then I remembered Belly, and why such an escape was impossible. And I thought that Franz and Rodnia, who had volunteered for rescue-boat duty and were somewhere out on the flooded plain, were probably in far greater danger than I was. I was ashamed of my anger and I wanted to pray for them, but I could not find the right prayer.

The rain had begun the morning before, after we had left Adelaide and crossed back into Victoria and had first arrived at Seymour. When we left the town, the rain, as if piqued, redoubled its efforts. We were aiming to cross a valley of seventy miles on our way to Sydney, which Mr Bleeker expected to reach in six days. Ned had already gone ahead, to spread news and playbills, and I found I could breathe much easier without any prospect of coming across his lounging figure or leering stare.

After two miles, one of the baggage coaches had become bogged, and we had all climbed out to lever boards under the wheels and dig it free, but it would not shift. Rodnia took a look and reported that the harness was damaged and the whippletree broken. Lavinia and Minnie observed with sorrow the wide chocolate rims around the hems of their skirts, and I thought of all that wasted washing in Adelaide. Mr Bleeker stood leaning on his spade, water bouncing from the brim of his hat. ‘Every drop of rain,’ he muttered to no one in particular, ‘is one less gold coin for Mr Barnum.’

Some two hundred yards off, a covered wagon and four muscular Percherons stood on rising ground. A head poked through the canvas, watching us, and Mr Bleeker beckoned. Slowly the teamster crawled out and sauntered towards us, hands in pockets.

‘You have some powerful animals. Will you help us pull out our coach?’

‘For what?’ The man seemed at his ease with rain. They haggled, and the man agreed on a sovereign. As he unhitched three of the horses, a bonnet popped out of the canvas on the wagon, followed by four tangle-haired little heads. There was talk, and suddenly the woman shouted: ‘You fool, go tell ’em you want five pounds. You’ve got ’em. If they won’t give it, let them stick there till they drown.’

‘Five pounds,’ screamed the little heads.

Mr Bleeker gestured with his spade as if he would pound the heads like rivets back into the wagon. It took twenty minutes, four horses, a long chain and five pounds to release the coach, and the downpour never let up. The mud was now brown water rushing past our feet. From under a hat brim that sagged to his nose, Mr Bleeker ordered us to return to Seymour.

Mr Guild, showing no surprise at our return, waved his arm at the rowboat, sitting high and dry under canvas in the Royal Hotel garden.

‘Give us a ride?’ said Minnie.

‘If this rain continues, little lady, you will see our Goulburn river become a mighty lake.’ The landlord swelled with prophecy. ‘And this boat will save many lives.’

I stood alone in the middle of the ballroom among the dozing bodies, trying to dry my hair with a sodden towel. Charlie lay with his eyes closed, head propped up against the wall, a thin little boy lying asleep beside him, his head in the Man in Miniature’s lap. Mr Bleeker and George, grasping a brandy bottle by the neck, had disappeared round the back of the hotel to erect a sandbag wall with Mr Guild: ‘It’s never reached the main building before, but can’t be too careful can we, gents.’ Of Minnie, there was no sign. Mrs Bleeker, for once with empty arms, sighed explosively, looked to the fire, and went to whisper with Lavinia, who was pegging out wet socks as if they were silk stockings. Then she turned to me: ‘Quickly, we must find them.’

Find who? But Mrs Bleeker raised her lamp and the three of us were off, through the ground-floor rooms. Nothing but slime under our feet. Then we made our way up to the shadowy bedrooms, lamp swinging, flashes from the distant torches catching us in the stairwell. Oh, the pain of stairs, of climbing. Lavinia climbed with two feet on each step, like a child, and travelled with great speed. As we burst into each room, faces surfaced, squinting at the lamp, from piles of clothes and rolled-up rugs on the beds. From outside came a repeated bleat — myrrh, myrrh — of stupid terror.

In the highest attic room, we found Minnie Warren sitting on a chair, and the young doctor bending over her. He sprang back as we entered, and Minnie’s fingers tugged together the gaping bodice of her dress. Mrs Bleeker set her lamp on the floor, gripped Minnie by one arm, pulled her up, thrust her behind her own skirts, and then advanced on the young doctor, striking him in the chest with a bony forefinger. How I longed to give her a hurrah.

‘Get out. Now.’

‘My dear madam —’

‘Don’t you madam me. Get out. If you dare breathe a word of this, my husband will cowhide you; and if you dare lay a finger on Miss Warren again, I’ll personally throw you to the flood.’

The doctor’s comely face twisted. He grabbed his black bag, dropping instruments, brushed past me, backed out of the room, and his boots helter-skeltered down the stairs. Mrs Bleeker slammed the door behind him and rested against the panelling.

Lavinia sat down on the seat Minnie had vacated, staring at the wall, and Minnie edged to her side, placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Vin. Dearest.’ Her sister did not move, and Minnie sat down beside her. The seat, designed for one, was just large enough to take the two of them.

‘Vin, do not blame Dr Arnott.’ Minnie placed a hesitant arm around Lavinia’s waist.

At the door, Mrs Bleeker bristled. ‘That scoundrel …’

‘Hush, Mrs B.’ Lavinia’s voice was metallic, dead.

Mrs Bleeker whirled to face the door. ‘Come, Mary Ann. We have work to do.’

‘Please stay,’ said Minnie. ‘Both of you.’

Mrs Bleeker stood with her hands folded tight in front of her, and I copied her, immensely curious to discover how Minnie would explain herself. Had the doctor attacked her? But she had said he was not to blame.

‘I asked Dr Arnott to come with me.’ Minnie laid her head on Lavinia’s shoulder. ‘I told him I was troubled by palpitations, and we needed a private place for an examination, but we couldn’t go to his consulting rooms because of the flood.’

Lavinia sat forward, dislodging her sister from her shoulder, and put her head in her hands.

‘It’s true, Vin, I swear it. My poor heart was beating so fast.’

‘He took advantage,’ said Mrs Bleeker. ‘Oh, I have feared this for so long.’

‘No,’ said Minnie quietly. ‘He was a gentleman.’

Lavinia raised her head, looked her sister in the eyes, then gave a little groan, and looked down. Outside, water gurgled from the Royal’s eaves. A distant boom. The lamp sputtered, revived. I thought suddenly of Matilda’s papa, the chaise longue where he had invited me to lie so many times. He was a gentleman, but that had not saved me. Yet I could not imagine headstrong Minnie succumbing to any man.

‘Vin, try to understand. I was frightened of the flood. I think Dr Arnott was frightened too. When we were in the ballroom, two old women behind us were whispering, they said the end of the world had come, they talked of portents from the realm of the spirits —’

‘Portents from the realm of Mr Guild’s bar,’ said Mrs Bleeker.

‘Minnie, how could you listen to such nonsense?’ Lavinia flared with sudden anger. ‘Why did you not tell the old dames to hush? Talk of spirits — where is your Warren spirit? Have you forgotten?’

‘No, Vin.’

‘William, Earl of Warren, married the daughter of William the Conqueror. We ventured to America on the Mayflower —’

‘And General Joseph Warren laid down his life for his country at the battle of Bunker Hill. You see, Vin, we Warrens do not forget. We Warrens are not frightened.’ Minnie exhaled her Warrens with great gusts.

‘Don’t mock the family name.’

‘Then don’t you tell me what I felt. I was frightened, and yet … It was a question of my heart.’

‘Your heart was frightened? Then you are truly unwell.’

‘Not at all, I was only agitated. But Vin, we are …’ She took a deep breath, continued. ‘You are happily married. You are’ — she looked at me — ‘about to be blessed. I am twenty-one years old and I have no one. Where in the world would I find a man my size?’

‘You would not have the Commodore,’ said Lavinia.

‘No, and George would not have me, he would only have —’

‘Miss Minnie,’ said Mrs Bleeker sharply.

Minnie sighed. ‘There’s no spark between us.’

‘Spark?’ said Lavinia. ‘What is that?’

‘Sometimes it’s just a moment, a flare.’ Minnie’s eyes glistened. ‘Perhaps one day, it may be a steady glow. I can hope still.’

‘Of course you can hope.’ Lavinia took her hand, spoke softly. ‘You are young yet.’ She put a hand to Minnie’s straying tendrils of hair. ‘You must dress those pretty curls.’ Mrs Bleeker handed me a hair brush from her pocket, gestured towards the sisters. I kneeled at Minnie’s side and began to let down her hair. As the messy chignon loosened and the curls gathered around her face, Minnie raised one hand and wiped it across her nose like a child. But her voice, when she spoke, was unusually deep.

‘You’re right, as usual. I’m the little Queen of Beauty’s younger sister, I’ll always be younger. Even though we little people age so suddenly.’

‘You must not say you have no one, Minnie. You have me. And Charlie, and dear Mrs B, and Mary Ann. We will all be here for you as long as you want us.’

‘The Lord knows I’m grateful for it.’ Minnie nodded. ‘I’ve always looked up to you, Vin. Even when I was very young, I wanted to be like you, I didn’t want to grow taller.’

‘That’s not true, you said you wanted to reach the cookie jar all by yourself.’

‘I did not … I remember your wonderful wedding, Vin, all New York at your feet. Do you remember how many diamonds you were wearing?’

‘Lord, I …’ Lavinia patted her hair.

‘Two hundred and fifty-six. And I stood behind you at the altar and I prayed silently to God: Let me have just one diamond.’

‘Minnie, you may have as many diamonds as you like, I will give you my spare bracelets and earrings …’

‘That’s not what I mean. Oh, I don’t know what to call it. A spark, for my heart.’

I wielded the brush, and sparks crackled from Minnie’s curls. For my heart … I thought again of the thing I had resolved never to think of, the reclining on the chaise longue, and a hand undoing the buttons on my bodice, slipping over my heart. The hardest thing is to keep us weak women from the abyss. My nipples hardened, a throb began somewhere beneath Belly’s weight. But the hand on my breast was not the stubby hand of Matilda’s papa. It was broad, with long sensitive fingers, thumb loose in the socket, a good spread, a good piano hand.

‘You are too trusting, Minnie. We must keep you safe.’ Lavinia took both her sister’s hands, stared into her eyes. ‘This heart of yours, this chasing after sparks, it is dangerous, it must never, ever happen again.’ Minnie frowned, began to speak, but Lavinia interrupted her. ‘I don’t care about your Dr Arnott.’ Mrs Bleeker gave a convulsive sniff. ‘And I don’t expect you to understand what I’m warning you about,’ Lavinia went on. ‘You must just promise me two things. One: take your medicine. Two: don’t go looking for the spark.’

Lavinia glanced up at me, and I began to brush Minnie’s hair with long, rhythmic passes. The younger sister’s eyes slowly glazed over, like the eyes of a stroked cat. ‘Vin,’ she said drowsily. ‘Do you remember before Barnum, those identical red cloaks and hoods Mother made?’

‘The Little Red Riding Hoods.’ Lavinia gave a faint laugh.

‘I loved those cloaks,’ said Minnie. ‘Do you remember how we’d walk out together and people would call and we’d turn and they’d be so surprised?’

‘Yes, indeed.’

‘They expected to see little children, and they saw young ladies. Now I dream, Vin. I dream of the day to come, not so very far from now, when I walk down the street and some man calls out and I turn and I see —’ She paused, took a deep breath. ‘I see horror on his face.’

Lavinia sat in silence, holding her sister’s hand. My brush rasped across Minnie’s scalp. She began to sob. ‘Rock me, sister.’ Lavinia took her in her arms, rocked her gently back and forth, hummed The Cottage by the Sea. Five wicked pieces of metal, strewn on the floor where the doctor had abandoned them, gleamed in the lamplight. Brush poised, I looked over the sisters’ bowed heads to Mrs Bleeker, still standing with her back to the door, arms folded, mouth a grim slash.

‘Will you make me that promise, dear?’ Lavinia murmured into Minnie’s hair. She bit her lip, gave the faintest of nods.

For a moment, they seemed like children comforting each other. Then the sobbing Minnie gave a quick glance up at her sister when Lavinia’s face was turned away, and Minnie’s face reminded me of the way she had looked at me in the desert, made me think again of Mrs Bleeker’s sewing machine: the whirring wheel, the needle dipping in and out. And I saw Minnie’s hands, curled up in the folds of her skirt: her fingers were tightly crossed.

Yet the tears brimming in her eyes were real enough.

An aching petulant fury rose in me. Why did no one ever brush my hair?

I had never been so weary. I snatched a couple of hours’ sleep on the ballroom floor, sandwiched between a rolled-up rug and a snoring farmer’s wife, but then Mrs Bleeker, herself pale and hollow-eyed, shook me awake as daylight began to seep into the room.

‘Nooo,’ I groaned, burying my head in my arms. But she kept shaking my shoulder.

Somehow I rose, and somehow my legs carried me to and fro as we helped Mrs Guild and two kitchen maids serve a breakfast of tea, bread and hard-boiled eggs.

I was beginning to hate the pasty faces of those farm people and their children as they grabbed their food and stuffed it into their mouths. Why was I waiting on them? Why would no one let me sleep? And most of all I hated the swaggering stride of Mr Guild around the room as the light grew and the roaring died down, his finger-wagging bulletins: ‘Mr Vickers and Mr Greenwood are lost. I warned them not to go. Their buggy and pair fell over in the flush culvert on the Melbourne road. All that has been found are the hooves of the drowned horses, just above the surface … Only three buildings in town not under water. The bank, Maxfield’s flour mill, and the Royal. The bank and the mill are at least as crowded as we are.’ I waited in dread for him to say the rescue boat was lost, but he was silent on that score. Every time I was near a window, I peered out, but could not see any boats. I did not go out the back door again — the kitchen and bakery outhouses were full of water and had been abandoned — but Mr Bleeker and George were outside, attending to their sandbag wall. Charlie had commandeered a bedroom. The number of refugees in the ballroom had doubled, tripled, no one was counting: children whimpered and hiccuped, and some of the farmers’ wives and older girls were folding up bedding as best they could with babies in the crook of an arm or toddlers clinging to skirts. They did not ask where their husbands and fathers were; they glanced out the windows at the virgin lake, calm and sparkling, and turned quickly back.

Mr Guild took a longer look out the window. From outside came a rattling and shouting. ‘Glory be, the minister is safe,’ he announced to the room. ‘And his lad beside.’ He hurried out the front. I was crossing the ballroom with a tray of mugs when Franz appeared at the door.

I turned towards him with a half-stifled cry of joy, came close and stopped. Had I fallen asleep on my feet, was I dreaming? His head and shoulders were sprinkled with white, and underneath he was smeared dark brown. He looked like an iced chocolate soldier, smelled of sweet almonds and foul drains. He held himself stiffly upright, his left hand held his side, blood trickled from his wrist, his hollow eyes were fixed on me as if I had rolled back the stone and called him forth.

It seemed to me then that time was frozen. No one was close to us, and everyone in the ballroom was so busy with breakfast and bedding, we could almost have been alone. He opened his mouth and I waited for a wild tale of fighting the deluge.

‘You have not told me what you thought of my poem.’ His voice was dry, cracked.

‘I have been wanting to tell you … It is very fine. You are as gifted a poet as you are a musician.’

‘Untutored scribble.’ He shook his head. ‘Any merit in it must have come from the inspiration of the subject.’

‘The mermaid?’

‘Exactly.’

‘But the narrator of the poem is not a mermaid. She dreams of being one. I would be a mermaid fair.’

‘Very perceptive of you, Madam Governess.’ He smiled. ‘Perhaps the writer of the poem dreams too. Would you like to know what he dreams?’

I could hardly believe we were talking so. I thought of Minnie, now asleep upstairs in the arms of her sister, and of the mermaid, who was sued and wooed and flattered by the bold mermen.

But the king of them all would carry me,

Woo me, and win me, and marry me,

In the branching jaspers under the sea;

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I would very much like to know what he dreams.’

There was just one mug on my tray that was still full of tea; the others were empty. I gestured to Franz to take it, and he reached out, a white smile flashing across his darkened face. It looked almost as if he were reaching to touch my breast.

At the same moment, Rodnia appeared before me like a miniature version of Franz’s chocolate soldier: all brown sprinkled with white, the same sweet and sour smells. His eyes blazed at me from his piebald face, he clutched a dirty bundle to his heart. Had he just burst through the door, or had he been standing behind Franz and overheard us talking? He said nothing, but lifted his bundle and placed it on my tray, and the wrappings fell open to reveal a trembling black rabbit.

‘Hail the heroes of the boat,’ came Mr Guild’s voice from behind the men in the doorway. ‘Come, my lads and lasses, get ’em victualled.’

‘I will get you tea directly,’ I said to Rodnia, but a fat farmer’s wife had moved in already, and Rodnia had his tea and a blanket around his shoulders, and the wife was drawing him to the fire with little clicks of her tongue. Another wife drew Franz in the same direction. The young doctor, who had been hunched over the fire, rose and made room and patted each man on the back, as if they could all share the glory.

‘Here’s the Reverend Cameron,’ boomed Mr Guild. ‘And Mr Carnie and the boy. Give the young ’un a glass of the Royal’s ginger beer.’

‘Give him whisky,’ growled an old settler, to laughter and cheers.

‘He is a wonder,’ Mr Cameron said to the fellows around the fire, in his light, eager voice, waving his hand towards Franz. ‘We were up the top of the cherry tree, me and the boy here, and I was preparing us both to meet our maker. Then there he was, in the tree too, all muddy and petalled, and the lad screaming. And he got us down into the boat. And that wasn’t all he did, was it, Mr Carnie?’

The man beside him grunted. ‘Nearly put a hole in my boat.’

‘But the rescuing, Mr Carnie, the rescuing!’

Mr Carnie looked gloomily at Franz and Rodnia. He sighed. ‘I’ll give him this much, he was keen as mustard. Every time we backed up my boat, he was out of it, up onto the roofs and chimney pots quick as winking. Mrs Vincent and her five grandchildren, they were sitting on the roof of their barn and they wouldn’t come down for nobody. But he climbed up, got her down, took the children one by one in his arms, tossed them into the boat to their grandmother, and they laughed as if it were a game.’

I smiled towards Franz, but his face was buried in a towel. In front of me the rabbit crouched, its paws neatly together, as if my tray were a raft on the flood. Where did it come from? Should I give it back to Rodnia? He sat next to Franz by the fire, but they did not even glance at each other.

After a while Rodnia rose, the blanket still around him, holding his half-empty mug, and walked to the back door. Under the cherry petals and mud smears, his face held no expression at all. I followed him with my tray. He was sitting on the step and staring out at the roof of the kitchen, all that was left above water, while the rain fell on his knees and ran down into his boots. His silence and his back accused me of something I could not grasp. If he was sulking because Franz was the hero, it did him little credit, but I would try to be friendly.

‘I’m sorry I did not have a cup of tea for you. Can I get you anything else?’

‘That’s all right.’ He went on glaring at the rain. ‘You made your choice.’

Why was he making me frown? ‘I didn’t choose anything. I offered the mug to the man who was nearest.’ His neck hunched further into his blanket. ‘At least move back from the rain, won’t you? Where’s the sense in getting half drenched?’

Still he made no effort to escape the deluge, but turned back and looked at me over his shoulder. ‘He’s been writing you poetry, then?’

‘Are you referring to Mr Richardson? He has been showing me his literary work, he respects my judgement … Please come inside, Rodnia. You can sit by the fire, and we will hear all about your adventures in the flood.’

‘He can tell you well enough without me.’

‘Why don’t you like him?’

Rodnia shrugged. ‘Who says I don’t? He’s a fine musician.’

‘Yes, and a fine man. Did you know he has been wronged? I would do all in my power, small as it is, to help him.’

‘We’re all wronged, sooner or later.’ He was frowning, fishing for something under the blanket. ‘Your wish to help him shows you have a good heart. Just don’t let it lead you —’

‘My heart doesn’t lead me,’ I broke in, trying not to raise my voice. Why was he fidgeting? Why would he not look at me? ‘It is my observation and judgement that leads to my esteem for Mr Richardson. Rodnia, you know very well what kind of man he is. You have just been out in the rescue boat with him.’

Rodnia twisted under his blanket, pulled out his clay pipe and tapped it on the step: a sodden plug of leaves fell out. He held it up, peered into the stem.

‘Your Mr Richardson plays well,’ he said, eyes on his pipe. ‘He looks well. He speaks well. He rows well.’

‘Well, well, well,’ I echoed. It was too much: a day and a night of running backwards and forwards, dropping with weariness, in and out of cold, deep water, and rescuing Minnie from her amative fancies, while he squatted at his ease in a rowboat, observed a rescuing hero and then squeezed out his grudging praise. And how dare he sit there wrapped in self-righteousness, as if he were the wronged man? Suddenly I wanted to fetch another mug of tea and throw it in his face.

‘Of all the stupid, petty, things to say … I did not think you were capable of this …’ I was shouting above the pounding of the rain. ‘Rodnia Nutt, you are such a …’ I opened and closed my fists, trying to grasp the right words. ‘You are such a little man.’ Before he could say anything, I turned and went back into the hotel. Only when I felt the empty tray dangling from one hand did I realise that the rabbit must have hopped off. I slumped against the wall, closed my eyes. It could fend for itself. I was too tired to care for any living creature but myself and Belly.