CHAPTER 16

Two days after the ball, and one day after I had eavesdropped on Ned and George’s Yarra Yarra show, Lavinia came to me at breakfast time, sneezing and sobbing. From the window of her room, she had just seen Minnie, dressed in her Red Riding Hood cloak, board a grand black carriage drawn by two black horses with white plumes. Now they were on their way to the house of the gentleman who, according to the hotel clerk, owned the carriage.

‘I must get Minnie back,’ Lavinia cried. ‘And I can’t find Mrs B, so you will have to do. Get the clerk to fetch us a cab, Mary Ann, and tell the cabbie to make haste.’

I wondered what the hurry was, but Lavinia was too agitated to explain, and she grew more and more so as we had an interminable wait for our cab.

Even when we were on our way, it was impossible to make any speed in the Sydney traffic. Again and again our cab lurched forward a few feet, then shuddered to a halt. I peered through the window, hands over my nose against the whiffs of animal dung, and could see nothing but carriages and horse flanks. Overhead, our cabbie damned and blasted each time we stopped, and Lavinia and I, sitting side by side on the cracked leather, jerked forward and back, Lavinia convulsing in sneezes.

‘Must you really be out and about, Mrs Stratton?’ I asked.

‘Someone must collect my sister, and as usual it falls to me.’ Lavinia fanned her face with her gloves and wiped her streaming eyes.

‘Would you like some of my medicine?’ I opened my reticule and handed Mrs Bleeker’s bottle of elixir to her. She took the cork out, sniffed dubiously.

‘It smells just like Minnie’s medicine. I wonder if it works on colds? It does not seem to work on Minnie anymore.’ She took a long unladylike swig, grimaced, wiped her mouth. ‘It tastes so horrid it must be good for one. Does it do you good, Mary Ann? It certainly makes you grow.’ She raised her eyebrows in the direction of Belly.

Perhaps it was the medicine, but as we lumbered on in our slow progress, Lavinia seemed to grow calmer. Another jerk of the cab, and this time she fell sideways onto me. She laughed, apologised, and then continued to lean against me.

‘May I …?’ She reclined across Belly, ear against my navel, and patted the great curve with her hand. I felt a sudden rush of tenderness, as if it were Lavinia who was my child. ‘I can hear a heartbeat,’ Lavinia said dreamily. ‘Goodness, he must be strong. Does he wake you at night?’

‘All the time.’

‘It must be very close now. How long?’

I had tried so hard to keep up my calculations, but the days had passed in such a whirl. ‘A week, I think.’

‘I will get Mr B to find the best doctor in Sydney.’ Lavinia closed her eyes, and I held my breath.

I was not the General’s moll. Those rascals by the dammed pond had it all wrong. So what was I then? A mother, a Madonna carrying the General’s child. Or so Lavinia believed, and that was all that mattered, was it not?

‘What a brave one you are, Mary Ann,’ Lavinia murmured. I gave an inward shrug: that was what people said to those who were giving birth or dying, because they could not help it. But I would ask a brave question.

‘Mrs Stratton …’

‘Hmmm?’

‘How big do you think the child will be?’

I had not forgotten my instructions to reserve all questions concerning the adoption for Mrs Bleeker. Would Lavinia be angry? But she merely blinked.

‘Who knows? My dear, I don’t care two hoots if he is a pygmy or a giant. Just as long as he is bonny and healthy.’ She delivered a few more pats, as if she could measure the inside of the womb.

‘Were the others bonny?’

‘Others? What do you mean?’

‘I have been given to understand that you have had other infants in your care.’ I spoke slowly, weighing each word. ‘I have seen a photograph.’

‘Oh, that old thing,’ said Lavinia carelessly. ‘I thought we had got rid of those cartes de visite. We used to borrow babies for shows and presentations and photographs, and pretend they were ours. It was Mr Barnum’s idea. We did not mistreat them; they always went back to their loving mamas, I can assure you. That has nothing to do with this little one,’ and she resumed her patting.

I allowed myself to breathe again. It all sounded so simple and harmless. Why had I not dared to ask Lavinia about it before? Why had I worked myself up into such a frenzy of worry?

‘You know,’ Lavinia said, ‘on the eve of my wedding, my mother warned me that I must not have children. Giving birth would kill me, she said.’

‘But I thought … you and the General …’

‘That we were barren?’ She made a sad little noise, between a laugh and a huff. ‘I don’t know, because we have never … I had a talk with my husband before our wedding day, and we came to an arrangement. He is an admirable man, has always respected my wishes. As for his wishes …’ She gave me a quick upward glance, then continued to lie sleepily across my lap, lashes drooping over her violet eyes. ‘Forgive my indelicacy, but you are — were — a married woman, so I can speak to you of things that I could never discuss with my sister. He taught me how to give him oral satisfaction. It is not hard, and he never seems to tire of it.’

I stopped my gasp just in time. Charlie was indeed admirable: I could not imagine how such a virile soul would ever be content with kissing.

‘Before you joined us, I had been wondering,’ said Lavinia. ‘We are always taught to listen to our mothers. But was I right to listen to my mother?’ She patted my stomach again. ‘At least now there is no need for me to wonder anymore.’ She sighed, sat up, straightened her coiffure, sniffed and sneezed. ‘Indeed, now I worry that Minnie does not listen to her sister. I keep thinking of that dreadful doctor in Seymour. I fear she is chasing the spark again. We must catch her before it is too late.’

I thought of Minnie being caught, a red butterfly in a net. Was that what happened, when you chased sparks?

The cab turned onto the shush of a gravel drive and pulled up. I opened the cab door, blinking in the brightness of a day of high cloud, and saw a handsome frontage of pillars and sandstone, hidden from the road behind high walls. I beckoned to the cabbie, paid the fare and helped Lavinia down. He drove away as we climbed a wide flight of steps to the front door. It was a steep ascent for Lavinia, and she could not reach the doorbell. As I stretched over her shoulder, the door swung open, and a thin fussy-looking fellow in black peered down at us.

‘I am Mrs Charles Stratton and I have come to fetch my sister.’

Lavinia stood straight-backed, chin high. If the young man was surprised, he gave no sign, but bade us come in. The hall stretched for acre after acre; our footsteps echoed. If all was so vast to me, how must it seem to Lavinia? I fought the urge to take my employer’s hand.

We were shown into a handsome parlour. Lavinia declared the brocaded chairs would fold up and swallow her but, with my help, she climbed onto one nonetheless. In the tones of a cathedral bell, a mantelpiece clock tolled twelve. How long it had taken us to cover a few miles, and now we must wait again.

‘Where has that young man gone?’ said Lavinia. ‘I would like some refreshment.’

I looked in vain for a bell pull. ‘I will go and find someone’.

‘Must you leave me here alone?’ Lavinia’s voice was low and trembled a little.

‘I won’t be long.’ I propped up the cushions behind her back, gave her a clean handkerchief from her reticule and stepped into the hall. No one was about. I might as well have been in a mausoleum. Marble urns topped pedestals that could uphold the Parthenon. Ancestral ogres in ruffs and farthingales glared from the walls. I began to walk briskly one way, then turned and walked the other. Where did one go for a cup of tea?

Very faintly, a voice wafted towards me. Thin, high, sweet.

When other lips and other hearts

Their tales of love shall tell …

At first I thought it Lavinia’s voice, but the timbre was wrong, and it came from much further away, higher up.

In such a moment I but ask

That you’ll remember me.

I followed the sound up a flight of stairs to a door, knocked. The voice stopped. An unexpected sound: a swirl of water. All at once I was overwhelmed with the sense that on the other side of the door lay Seymour, the glistening lake, the roaring torrents from the hills, the animal bleats of terror. There was only one way to tackle such a flood. I opened the door wide.