Three days later, Ella and William stepped down from the train at Bendigo. It was a hot day and Ella was indeed tired but already full of enthusiasm for the city. Small by English standards, it had been proclaimed a city in 1871 and already boasted some fine buildings thanks to the gold beneath and around it. Ella noticed there were plenty of shops; trams serviced the town and its immediate environs so it was easy to get about. William, ever the gambler, expressed his delight to find there was a long established racecourse. All in all, as they told each other, it seemed a very civilized place.
They had been in Bendigo just over a week and Ella was on her own. William had gone to look at a property north of the city, but Ella had opted to stay in bed. Having woken with a headache and nausea, she felt unequal to the trip in the summer heat which she was finding far more fierce than anything she had experienced before. Perhaps if she stayed in her bed for a while, the nausea that had assailed her would abate as the day wore on.
She was hurrying to the bathroom still in her nightclothes, a handkerchief pressed to her mouth, when she met the landlady who flattened herself against the wall as if afraid that Ella might throw up on her before she reached her destination. She was in their room looking severely at the disarray when Ella returned, whey-faced and thinking only of returning to her bed.
‘I have come to inform you, Mrs Weston, that there is a person downstairs, a female person, asking to see you. I told her I must check with you first as she did not look the sort of young woman I would expect you to know.’
‘Did she give her name?’ Ella asked, suppressing a moan.
‘She said it was Rosie Malone,’ the woman answered with a sniff that suggested this to be an unlikely name, and if it was correct then it was certainly Irish and she, a staunch Calvinist, had no use for the Irish, their religion or their blarney.
Ella sat up only to subside again instantly with her damp handkerchief pressed to her head. ‘Send her up to me – at once, please.’
Martha Thompson turned to the door where she paused, one hand on the knob, and gave another derogatory sniff. ‘As you please. I must say she is not quite – well, not quite the sort of person I like to admit.’ She paused long enough to let this sink in then added, ‘I hope you find somewhere suitable soon, Mrs Weston. I am sure you understand that I do not usually accept ladies in your condition, but as you obviously have some time to go, I will say no more at the moment.’ With a final sniff she was gone, leaving Ella wondering what on earth the woman was talking about.
‘Rosie, how good to see you.’ Ella’s voice trailed off as she took in the girl’s bedraggled appearance. ‘Oh, Rosie, it is so good to see you,’ she repeated, realizing how much she had missed her, ‘but whatever has happened to you?’
‘Oh ma’am, I am glad I’ve found you. When the gentleman you told me to go to if I didn’t find my dad told me you had left Melbourne and come up here and were looking for a property to settle here I was that upset. But he was real good to me when I explained how I helped you on the ship and that you told me to go to him. He told me where to find you and gave me the money for the train, so that’s how I got here.’
Her words fell over one another so fast that Ella had to ask her to repeat it all. ‘Much slower this time, please, Rosie,’ she begged, dropping back on her pillow and wiping her forehead with her damp hanky.
Rosie was all contrition. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, miss, ma’am, I shouldn’t have thrown it all at you like that. I can see you aren’t feeling up to much. It’s your condition, I expect.’
Ella was so startled to have her condition referred to twice in this oblique manner in so short a space of time that she sat up and demanded: ‘What do you mean, my condition? I admit I am not feeling too well this morning. Just a slight indisposition, something I ate maybe – or just this appalling heat. I shall feel better directly. I usually do later in the day.’ It did not cross her mind that if it really was the heat causing her malaise then it would not improve as the day got warmer.
Rosie found it hard to believe that young Mrs Weston was really so ignorant of her own condition. But then she had already discovered that her knowledge of such matters was woefully thin compared with what she, several years younger, knew. Maybe she just didn’t want anybody to know, though goodness knows why not; she was married, after all.
Feeling that the best way to ensure she was not put back on the train to Melbourne was to make herself useful, Rosie offered, ‘Shall I help you dress, ma’am?’ When she received no answer, she added, ‘That is, of course, if you feel up to it.’
Ella opened her eyes and looked round the untidy room, suddenly hating it. She sat up carefully and was relieved to find that it didn’t spin around her. ‘Yes please, Rosie. I would be very grateful.’ Cautiously she moved sideways and let her feet touch the floor. When she still felt fine, she stood up.
Rosie was sorting out the clothes Ella had flung over the only chair in the room the night before. ‘I think it is going to be hot today.’ She looked doubtfully at the rather heavy fabric of the dress and even more so at the fearsome looking corset. For once in her life, she was truly thankful for her status; women of her class were not expected to have an hourglass figure. ‘Have you a cooler dress, and do you think you need your stays?’
‘Of course I do. Whoever heard of a lady going out without her corset? Come along, help me into it. What are you doing fiddling with those laces?’
‘I was just letting them out a wee bit,’ Rosie admitted.
‘Well, don’t – just do them up for me.’ Ella took a tight hold on the bedrail and breathed in. It had suddenly seemed vitally important that she did not give in to this absurd physical weakness that had taken hold of her.
Rosie took one look at the white knuckles gripping the bed and even whiter hue to her face and threw the corset back on the chair. ‘No, I won’t do it. Not in your condition and in this heat, and what’s more, I’m finding you something more sensible to wear.’ She turned to the cupboard and rummaged through Ella’s gowns, finally selecting a light muslin. ‘This will do.’
Ella was about to say it would not, remembering that William had said she looked like a servant in it. But he was not here to see her. ‘It will do fine,’ she told Rosie, holding up her arms for it to be slipped over her head. Emerging from the soft folds, she asked, ‘What do you mean, “my condition”?’
Rosie looked at her in surprise; surely she must know that she was pregnant? Even allowing for the extraordinary way in which well-brought-up young ladies were kept in total ignorance of such matters.
‘That disagreeable landlady said much the same thing. I told her I had a slight stomach upset and I have felt very tired, quite exhausted in fact since we left the ship. I thought I would feel better when we were on dry land again …’ she babbled on as if trying to reassure herself. ‘It is not my monthlies because I haven’t had one for a while.…’ Her voice trailed away and she stared at Rosie, momentary delight flitting across her features quickly followed by stark terror. ‘Oh, no! You don’t think … do you?’
Rosie nodded. ‘Yes, ma’am, I do. You are expecting.’
Ella dropped down on the bed. She stared at the younger girl. ‘But I can’t. Not here, on my own.’ She covered her face with her hands and burst into tears. ‘Oh, Rosie, I don’t want it – not yet, I’m not ready. I’m too young and this is a strange country, and it’s so hot. Oh … I wish I had never left England.’
In that moment when she accepted the truth she had been fighting, she longed more than anything for cool air, soft English rain, her family round her, especially her mother. She didn’t want this … thing that had taken over her body, and she knew with a dreadful clarity that marrying William was the most foolish thing she had ever done. The dream of a new life in a new country was rapidly turning into a nightmare. Here she was, alone in a strange city on the other side of the world, married to a man she felt she barely knew and who wasn’t even here with her. God only knew what sort of place he would make her live in.
She looked up through her tears and saw Rosie staring at her with anxious sympathy. She reached out a hand to her. ‘Will you stay with me, Rosie?’ she pleaded.
‘Course I will, ma’am. That’s why I came looking for you, to see if you would have me.’