Lessons in Loving

Properly qualified in English, to
instruct male pupil in rural location.
Accommodation provided, together
with appropriate remuneration.

Please forward expressions of interest to:

Mr T. H. Fortescue,

Kenilworth Station,

Croydon Creek, via Armidale

New South Wales.

Kate Courtney stared at the notice on the board outside the Avonleigh Teachers College common room. Governess? Rural location? She hesitated. The day before, she’d received the college’s formal letter informing her that having passed her final exams, she was now qualified to accept teaching positions in New South Wales government schools.

That letter had turned a page in the story of her life. The scholarship she’d won, as a poor but studious girl born and bred in a down-at-heel corner of the city, had now served its purpose. Her years of study, the endless evenings spent writing essays by a flickering candle in the kitchen, were over. The book of her life must now begin a new chapter.

She turned to the notice and read it again, word by word. In a moment of reflection, she closed her eyes and saw herself standing on a mountain top, taking in the view of her future. That future extended as wide as her outstretched arms, as far as the distant horizon.

In all her eighteen years, Kate had never ventured far from Sydney. As she read the notice for the tenth time, she stood perplexed. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a fast-swelling thirst for adventure exploded deep inside her. If she scored the governess position, she’d travel to distant places and meet new people. But if she didn’t apply, she’d miss the chance to conquer her lifelong fear of the unknown.

Then, as she walked back to the college dormitory, juggling the pros and cons of the governess position, she suffered the jolt which catapulted her into a decision. Her eye caught a young couple, perhaps a hundred yards away, walking hand in hand towards the park. Timothy Fletcher! Walking out with Emily Sainsbury! She snapped an order to her heart to be still. A few months earlier Timothy, her classmate, had flicked his come-hither expression in her direction after a particularly boring lecture on marking students’ examination papers.

‘I say, Miss Courtney. I rather think this calls for a cup of tea,’ he’d said. ‘After that extremely tedious lecture, we must recover before our next class.’ Naive and trusting, Kate had smiled and accepted. Within a week they were walking out together. First, Timothy had murmured sweet nothings in her ear—praised her beautiful hair, her neat ankles. Then there’d been evening kisses in the park.

Innocent maid that she was, she’d believed the fickle classroom Romeo’s whispers. Soon afterwards came his excuses for not walking to the park after lessons, his arriving late for lectures with dark rings under his eyes, his throwaway requests for the loan of a shilling or two until Friday. Which he never paid back.

Now, as she walked home with the life-changing letter in her reticule, she saw that the stars had sent her a message—the perfect reason for taking the governess position in a place far away from Sydney and Timothy Fletcher. Back in her dormitory, she sat at her desk, dipped her pen in the inkwell with a flourish, and wrote:

Dear Mr Fortescue,

I wish to apply for your advertised position of governess. In support of my application, I advise that I have recently passed my final examinations at Avonleigh Teachers College, and shortly will be issued with my teaching certificate.

You may also be interested to know that throughout my studies I received high marks in all my English subjects, including grammar, essays, and literature.

I note your reference to a male pupil. During my studies, I was required to give lessons to some neighbourhood boys. All of them seemed to heartily enjoy my teaching.

I should indeed be delighted to take up residence in a rural area for a time. Though I was born and bred in Sydney, the country has always held a fascination for me.

I am aged eighteen, and in excellent health. I await your reply with interest.

Yours faithfully,

(Miss) Kate Courtney

Before second thoughts chilled her rage at Timothy’s sly infidelity, she sealed the letter, stuck stamp to envelope, and walked energetically to the pillar box. Then she kissed the envelope and slipped it through the slot.

‘I saw a notice at the college today, Mother. Offering employment as governess to a little boy. A place called Kenilworth. Somewhere in the country. And something inside told me to apply.’

‘Good heavens, Kate! Rushing off to the wilderness the minute you’re qualified. Dear me. I expected you to stay here in the cottage with me until a nice young man proposed. Shouldn’t you rather take a teacher’s position somewhere close by? Then perhaps you can walk to your school each morning. Save the expense of riding the tram.’

‘But Mother, I should like to earn an income as quickly as I may.’ Kate chose not to mention that her afternoon sighting of Timothy had cemented her decision to dash off her application. In any case, she desperately needed money. Her mother, now living in a miserable little rented cottage, barely surviving on her paltry widow’s pension, had helped pay for Kate’s books, shoes and clothes over the past years. Quite likely, she’d sometimes gone hungry in order to slip the little bundle of cash into Kate’s purse every Sunday afternoon. Since her first weeks at the college, Kate had committed to a strong moral obligation to repay that debt the minute she began to earn a little money.

‘I should tell you, Mother. I’ve already written my application for the position. I posted it this afternoon.’ She watched her mother’s eyes roll.

‘But my dear! Moving to the backblocks? At a time like this. You’re a smart young woman now, Kate. Educated, knowledgeable in the ways of the world.’ Her mother smoothed her hands on her apron. ‘You’re eighteen. I’ve told you before, my dear. Now I must tell you again. You should be thinking of matrimony. You don’t want to be left on the shelf. Why, girls of sixteen, seventeen, are marrying nowadays. It’s the done thing, my dear.’

‘But Mother, you know that for the last hundred years or so, there haven’t been enough single women in New South Wales for all the single young men. Why, ever since the days of the convicts, when thousands and thousands of men were shipped over from Britain, there’s been a scarcity of eligible women.’

‘That shortage of women will be over soon, you know,’ her mother snapped back. ‘Lately, unattached girls have been arriving by the shipload from England, Ireland. Then all those thousands of poor young Australian men killed in the Boer War. I read all about it in the newspaper just a week or so ago. Why, I shouldn’t be surprised if in a year or two there aren’t enough young men to go around. So you really must—’

‘Mother. I’ve worked hard for three long years to earn my teaching certificate. So that I can support myself. Be an independent woman.’

‘Independent woman? Oh dear, Kate. Ever since you went to that evening, you’ve been so …’. She bent to take a wooden spoon from a drawer, turned to a pot of stew bubbling on the stove. ‘Vida Goldstein, wasn’t that her name? Mary Clark told me she’s the most uppity lady she’d ever seen.’

Kate stiffened. From the moment she heard the militant suffragette’s first words at a lecture in the Sydney Town Hall, she’d hungered for independence.

‘Women should be given the vote, Mother. Stand for parliament. Work in positions now reserved for men. Buy property for themselves. Borrow from banks to do so. Just like men. Ever since I heard Miss Goldstein say those words, every night as I wrote up my lessons, every day as I caught the tram to college, I knew I wanted to be independent.’

‘But, my dear! Goodness me. If you so much as breathe that horrible word, all the eligible young men will go running. It frightens me, Kate.’ She stared into her daughter’s eyes.

‘My dear, one of these days you’ll want a husband, children. All this talk of independence. It frightens me, Kate.’

‘That’s as may be, Mother. But for now, I have other things to think about. You supported me all through my time at college. You’ve gone without so I might have respectable clothes to wear to classes, pay for my books. Now that I can earn money, I’m going to pay you back. The very instant I can.’

‘Oh, very well, dear.’ Her mother sighed. ‘Young women these days … I don’t know what the world is coming to.’ She bent to a cupboard and pulled out a handful of plates. ‘I must set to work on our dinner.’

If Kate applied for teacher positions in Sydney, she might wait a month or two before being called for an interview. If she didn’t land a job by February, when the schools reopened after the summer holidays, it could be lean pickings for months. Á few days earlier, the college principal had ordered all students to vacate their dormitory places by the end of the week.

Kate must pray that she would win the governess position very soon. Over a celebration dinner a week after their last exam, Kate and her friends Susan and Marcia had toyed with the notion that the three of them might rent a cheap flat handy to the city centre. Together, they daydreamed about the shops, the theatres, the nightlife, that were part and parcel of city living.

Then Kate had backed away. Now that her scholarship was finished, she would struggle to pay her first week’s rent, in even a lowly boarding house. As well, she must buy a suitable outfit to wear to interviews—shoes, gloves, skirt, blouse, jacket and hat. For the moment, though, despite the pain that pierced her heart every time she saw her mother make do, she must be realistic. She must stay in the cottage until she found a position.

The fateful Friday arrived. The students packed their bags, waved their goodbyes, and left the college forever. Kate moved into to her mother’s cramped cottage, commandeered the sofa as her makeshift bed. A week later as she heard the postman’s cheery whistle, she saw a battered envelope, smudged with dusty fingerprints, plop through the slot in the cottage’s front door. Could it be from Mr Fortescue? Bubbling with hope, she ripped it open as she walked back down the hall, and read:

I shood like to Meet youse to Talk about the xxx governess job. If youse xxxwish to Come to Kenilworth, youse shood take the train to Armidale. If youse tell me What Day youse plan to arrive in Armidale, I will xxxxbook a room for you at the Railway Hotel. Next morning I shall call at the xxhotel and take youse to Kenilworth in my wagon. Youse shood bring clothes and such. Sometimes the xxxxroad to Kenilworth can be fludded for a week or two.

The writing was scratchy, difficult to read. Oddly shaped blots, some the size of a threepenny bit, defaced the crumpled page. And those crossings-out, that word ‘youse’ …

Mr Fortescue was, quite evidently, a somewhat illiterate farmer who had been forced to answer her letter without help from someone with proper schooling. Still, that wasn’t so unusual in places where schools were few and far between. It was to be hoped that the ‘male pupil’ mentioned in the notice, likely Mr Fortescue’s son, would be receptive to her teaching.

After a visit to Sydney’s Central Station to study the timetable, Kate found that if she caught an early morning train she would arrive at Armidale at a respectable time of the evening, assuming the train ran on time. To be sure that her letter arrived well before her visit, she selected a date a few days hence, then wrote to Mr Fortescue. She would arrive on the 6.11 pm train on Thursday, November 8^th, and she very much looked forward to meeting him next morning after her night at the Railway Hotel. A day after posting her letter to Mr Fortescue, Kate met for goodbyes with her friends Susan and Marcia.

‘Armidale? Isn’t that somewhere in those wild New England ranges?’ Susan exclaimed, hand to her wide-open mouth. ‘Is it safe for an innocent young maid like you to go there alone, Kate?’

Marcia chimed in. ‘I say, wasn’t Armidale the haunt of the wicked bushranger, Captain Thunderbolt?’ she said, hands twitching. ‘Not to mention the Rocky River gold rushes. You know that all kinds of riffraff flock to gold rushes—jailbirds, fortune hunters, men down on their luck. Providence help any poor woman who chances to be in the neighbourhood of a miners’ village!’

‘And riding alone in a wagon with a man, along a lonely road, for goodness knows how many miles.’ Susan’s voice projected her concern.

‘I trust the man,’ Kate lied. ‘His letter was so innocent. Why, I shouldn’t think he’d hurt a fly, judging by his writing.’

‘Oh, so you can show us the letter, then. Let us give our informed opinions?’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t bring the letter with me. But I’m perfectly happy with the situation.’ For the first time since they’d met in their early days at college, Kate saw her friends as conservative, not interested in keeping up with the times. As she walked back to her mother’s cottage, Kate swallowed hard. She must be brave about her forthcoming journey to the wilds of New England. To show the least sign of weakness would be to ask for trouble.

At 6.11 pm, a few days later, Kate stepped down from the train onto the windswept loneliness of Armidale Station’s platform. She looked up and down, saw nothing except the railway line stretching to infinity in both directions. A man dressed in railway uniform walked out from a building, waved a green flag, and blew a whistle. The engine driver answered with a toot from his locomotive. Slowly, slowly, the train chuff-chuffed away, leaving Kate alone, cold, and a little frightened on the deserted platform. Clutching her bundle, she crossed the dusty road and stepped inside the ornately carved sandstone entrance of the Railway Hotel.

‘I’m Miss Kate Courtney,’ she told the bespectacled clerk at the concierge’s desk. ‘Mr Fortescue has—’

‘Ah, yes. Please be seated, ma’am.’ Flexing the long white sleeves of his perfectly pressed shirt, he flicked through a large leather-bound book, looked up and smiled. ‘The Macquarie Suite. Our finest.’ He rang a bell. A porter appeared, took up her bundle, and headed for the stairs. With a key attached to a bejewelled ring he opened the door, deposited Kate’s bundle on a bench, stepped out into the passage and handed her the key.

‘We trust you enjoy your sojourn with us, ma’am.’ He bowed and slipped away.

As Kate stepped inside, she gasped. The room was enormous. She walked to a large window at its far end. A view of forested mountains, silhouetted by the setting sun, greeted her. Open doors along one wall beckoned. She spotted a graciously large bedroom occupied by a vast double bed covered with an embroidered silk quilt. Then she spied a tiled bathroom, and a generous wardrobe. She had become a queen on a royal visit to her colonial subjects. To afford such regal lodgings for a visiting would-be governess, Mr Fortescue must indeed be comfortably off. And for whatever reason, he clearly wished to create a good impression for his son’s possible governess.

Next morning Kate quelled her nervousness for long enough to take a short walk among the wakening shops in the nearby streets. Then, back in the hotel’s dining room, she attacked the breakfast served by a smiling, immaculately dressed waiter. As she lingered over her second cup of tea, the waiter approached and bowed.

Kate rose and walked to the door. A humbly dressed Chinese man stood in the lobby.

‘My name Ah Foo.’ He bowed. ‘Mr Fortescue, he send me meet you. He say sorry he can’t come. So I take you to Kenilworth.’

‘Very well, Mr Foo,’ she said. ‘Please excuse me, I’ll fetch my luggage. I shouldn’t be more than a moment.’

Mysteriously, the hotel porter arrived the second Kate finished her packing. She stepped from the door of her sumptuous chambers and followed him as he shouldered her bundle and walked to the staircase. After fulsome goodbyes from porter and concierge, she stepped into the street. Ah Foo smiled, retrieved the bundle, threw it onto the tray of a wagon waiting at the kerbside, and climbed aboard.

‘Thank you. I can manage perfectly well by myself.’ She hauled herself onto the wagon’s seat. Ah Foo flicked the reins. The journey to Kenilworth had begun.

Hours passed silently as Ah Foo held the reins while the horse ambled on. They reached a down-at-heel village with a handful of shops—a general store, a milliner, a public house, a saddler, a village hall.

In late afternoon, the wagon pulled off the road and turned onto a narrow lane. Soon it passed a huge barn, a row of stables. A grand old house loomed a hundred yards ahead. The house—a mansion rather than a farmhouse—stood commandingly on a rise. Most likely, it had once been the country seat of a wealthy English family. Kate knew that in the early nineteenth century, the fledgling New South Wales government had lured wealthy English aristocrats to settle the virgin region by giving them large tracts of land, even offering them convicts to work the land. Now the old house seemed to look down at Kate, a frowning dowager eyeing a servant girl come to clear the afternoon tea things.

‘What business have you here, peasant maid?’ she imagined it asking her in its dated aristocratic accent.

Kate must put aside those feelings. In a few moments, she’d be taking part in an interview. She must appear confident, positive—a woman who could teach a little boy, make him want to learn, to behave himself when he might prefer to run away and play with his toys. ‘Women must fight for their independence.’ For the hundredth time since Kate had farewelled Sydney, Vida Goldstein’s words resounded in her head.

As they closed on the mansion, she stared up at its high sandstone walls, crowned with a roof of dark slate tiles streaked with lichen. Rows of tall multi-paned windows peered from under steep gables. Again, it seemed to speak to her in the rasping tone of an elderly duchess. The wagon entered a circular gravel drive and stopped at a flight of marble steps leading to the mansion’s stately front door. Ah Foo took her bundle and laid it at the bottom of the steps.

‘Mr Fortescue, he take your bundle.’ Ah Foo bowed, returned to the wagon, and headed for the stables.

Kate walked up the steps, slowly, contemplatively. At the top, she hesitated. The moment she had dreaded and hoped for in equal measure over past weeks had now come. She absolutely must calm herself before her interview. She looked towards the horizon, hoping to absorb its quiet serenity. Rolling hills stretched in every direction. On the greener patches, sheep grazed. The scene was as still and as quiet as an old sepia photograph. A kookaburra cackled, then stopped. Somewhere in the hills, a lost lamb bleated for its mother. The perfumed breath of eucalyptus trees wafted over her. She began to feel the peace gel around her.

A horseman rode into view. Could it be Mr Fortescue? He pulled up at a hitching rail, slid off his horse, flung a rein round the rail, and headed for the mansion. Through his loose-fitting dusty clothes she registered broad shoulders, narrow waist, neat hips. At the bottom of the steps, he smiled and waved. She stood, expectant, ordering her heart to be still.

‘G’day to youse, ma’am. Youse must be Miss Courtney. I’m Tom Fortescue.’

Fighting not to wince at his use of the ‘youse’ word which had peppered his letter, she smiled down at the man. The least hint of a curtsy seemed wrong for a woman who might soon become independent. She must learn to block those out-of-date womanly reactions.

As Mr Fortescue reached the verandah, he held out a hand. She rose, shook it, feeling its warmth, its sandpaper roughness. Surprisingly, his fingers were long, slim, complementing the gentlemanly profile of his deeply tanned face. After an embarrassingly long moment, he released her hand. She must become used to the slow, easy way he moved, spoke. And also his grammatical clangers.

The skips in her heart slowed. She took a restorative breath, smiled back at the lanky man, likely no older than his mid-twenties. His smile signalled a friendly, easygoing nature. His aristocratic nose, sculptured jaw, hinted again that he might be descended from the ‘English establishment’ family which, she’d conjectured, had acquired the land back in the district’s pioneering days.

Her eyes flicked to his body again. He stood over six feet tall, easy, relaxed, the width of his shoulders accentuated by his trim waist. A swathe of straight, light brown hair spilled over the back of his neck.

‘Hope youse had a pleasant trip, ma’am. Decent kip at the hotel last night?’

‘Yes, thank you.’ Kate struggled to hide her shock at his language. Every time he mouthed a blue-collar word, it blotted the image created by his patrician looks. If she won the governess job, and her pupil was his son, then Mr Fortescue would be her employer. Perhaps they’d spend time together after the interview. It would be interesting to ask him about his family history.

‘We’ll sit here, miss.’ He pointed towards a table and a cluster of cane chairs at the end of the wide verandah. ‘Take a seat. Take in the view. People reckon they like to sit here. Folks hereabouts call this place the Big House.’ He hesitated for a second, then faced her. ‘Like a drink, then?’

Did he mean tea? He didn’t seem the kind of man who drank tea, with his little finger cocked above the dainty cup’s handle. She tried to picture him making tea in a tidy kitchen, then serving it in the ornate floral tea service you’d expect in a stately mansion. The picture wouldn’t take shape. There must be a maid inside, working in the kitchen. Perhaps he’d ring a bell and she’d appear. Would she wear a long white apron and a cotton bonnet?

‘Think I’m gonna have a beer,’ he said, apparently reading her mind. ‘Like one, miss?’ She thought of asking for a glass of water, then changed her mind. What would Vida Goldstein have said?

‘Yes indeed,’ she answered, hoping she could pretend to enjoy a glass of beer. ‘Thank you.’ The one time she’d tried the Australian males’ ritual drink, during an end-of-term celebration, she’d been repulsed by its frothy bitterness.

‘Back soon.’ He walked the length of the verandah and disappeared round the corner. The clomp-clomp of his dusty boots died. Silence flowed over the landscape again. Kate would make use of the chance to draw breath. She pondered the looming interview yet again. If she won the governess position, perhaps the boy she would teach might sport the same accent, use the same ungrammatical words as his father. He’d need dedicated coaching to polish him into the young country gentleman who might one day inherit this stately mansion and the sweeping hillsides.

‘Brought a glass for youse,’ he said, placing it beside her. ‘They reckon ladies likes their beer in a glass.’ Perhaps Vida would approve of that. He applied a corkscrew to the bottle, popped the cork, and filled her glass until the creamy head overflowed. Then he took a healthy swallow from the bottle. Kate sipped carefully, hoping she’d manage to appear a seasoned beer drinker.

‘So youse come about the job,’ he said after another swig from the bottle. ‘Governess.’

‘Yes.’ Kate smiled. The silence lengthened. She stole another look at him, saw that his eyes rested on the darkening hills. He wasn’t about to launch into a long conversation. She must take the initiative. ‘I brought some documents.’ She reached for her reticule. ‘You may wish to study them.’ She groped the bag’s depths. ‘My academic record. A report on my practical teaching experience.’ She was proud of the compliments written into her reports, lines like: ‘Miss Courtney demonstrated helpful and friendly rapport with her pupils, particularly the more scholarly inclined.’

Mr Fortescue looked bored. He took another sip of beer and stared out over the landscape again.

‘Last year I completed a month’s practical teaching at St Stephen’s School for Young Men,’ Kate continued brightly. ‘Then a special course in English for children newly arrived from Europe.’

‘Later perhaps, miss.’ He flicked a dismissive hand, turned to look at her, began a frank, unhurried appraisal of her body. She watched as his calm blue eyes scanned her from top to—dare she admit to that word—bottom. It was as if his hands brushed over her dark wavy hair, her thick-rimmed glasses, her neat face with its turned up nose and pointy chin. Then his eyes slipped to her hands, her breasts, her hips—slow, approving. She was glad she’d worn a demure white long-sleeved blouse, a ladylike black skirt reaching to her ankles, flat-heeled black boots—appropriate for an interview for a country governess position. A schoolma’am outfit, her friend Susan had called it.

‘Oh, that? My manager wrote the notice. Sent it to the Teachers College. He talks like that. Even has one of them new-fangled typewriter things in his office.’ He glanced at Kate’s still-full glass, then put the bottle to his lips again. ‘We got more pressing things to deal with,’ he said. ‘First, reckon youse could survive here? We’re a long way from town. And I reckon you’d be a Sydney girl. Youse ain’t had too much time living in the bush, then?’

‘I’d be perfectly happy.’ Kate must sound positive. After those few quiet minutes on the verandah, she’d sensed a mystical connection with the place. It was as if a pleasantly perfumed vine had begun to slowly wreathe itself round her, body and soul. Indeed, to be truthful, she’d already come to like the man, his accent notwithstanding. As she took in the view now tinged with the gold of the setting sun, that feeling revisited her.

‘I’ve always rather liked the country,’ she said. ‘I suppose I inherited it from my mother. She was raised in a little town in the Hunter Valley.’

‘Bankers, eh? S’pose we gotta have ’em.’ He reached for his bottle, held it for a second, then pushed it away. ‘Let’s take a look at the cottage we’ve set aside for the governess.’

He stood. ‘Not much point in more talk if youse don’t like it. Follow me.’

Kate twitched. In an hour it would be dark. There seemed to be no-one else about but the two of them. And this red-blooded country man had just offered to show her to a bedroom. What should she do? What would her friends say? Kate hesitated. She’d come this far. And for no sensible reason, she trusted the man. Again, she’d run with her instincts.

Mr Fortescue led the way down the steps. As she followed, she wondered whether he might sport the bow-legged look that came with spending years on horseback. Thankfully, he didn’t. He walked effortlessly, casually—a man comfortable on his home turf.

He led the way through a once-formal garden, ringed with espaliered arches now buried under a mass of rampant climbing roses. Soon he stopped at the door of a neat sandstone cottage. Kate looked up at its walls, at the gables with their freshly painted red roofs. The lawn had just been cut. Someone had planned on making the new governess welcome.

‘This was the manager’s cottage once,’ he said. ‘Fifty or more years ago, when Kenilworth was run by hired servants. The owners, my great-grandpapa and his wife, spent most of their time in England.’ He opened the door and beckoned her inside. ‘I had the place cleaned up a bit. For the governess.’ He turned to her. ‘Youse should take a look. I’ll wait outside.’

Kate relaxed a fraction. The man had the manners to bestow a woman some privacy when she needed it. As she stepped through the ornate door, she watched him flop into a cane chair on the verandah.

She headed down the hall to a living room with a huge fireplace, its stone arch streaked with the smoke of years. A kitchen adjoined the living room. She stared at it from the doorway. A new stove, its oven door still shiny, gleamed back at her. A freshly sandpapered wooden bench stretched along one wall, under a rack from which dangled saucepans, sieves, egg slices, a funnel. She moved into the sitting room. The furniture—sofa, armchairs, a coffee table—told her the place had been given a no-expense-spared tidying. A vase of freshly picked lavender filled the room with perfume. A fussy maid had recently given the cottage a last minute going-over. Yes, she could be comfortable here—happy even. Then, at last, the bedroom; from the embroidered silk quilt on the four-poster bed to the wide windows overlooking the hills, it was welcoming. And yes, there was a secure bolt on the door. She could sleep in peace whenever she slid that bolt home.

‘Well?’ As she stepped back outside, Mr Fortescue looked up at her from his chair. She pictured herself sitting in that very chair on quiet evenings, perhaps with a cup of tea, taking in the darkening hills as the sun set. It might be a pleasant spot to look over her lessons for the next day before she cooked her dinner.

‘Good. Now we’ll go to the place I’ve set aside for the lessons. They reckon I should call it the study.’ He led the way to a basement room in the Big House. The room was adequate for the purpose, but missing the furniture needed to convert it to a practical classroom. If she won the job, she’d make a list of things to order—a child-sized desk for her pupil, a large blackboard. When she finished her evaluation, he escorted her back to the verandah.

‘Now we can talk about the nuts and bolts,’ he said. He watched as she took her seat. ‘Hey. Your drink. Youse don’t like beer?’

‘No. It’s perfectly satisfactory. I’m simply …’ To please him, she took a sip. She could hardly admit that she didn’t fancy beer, despite her best efforts to like it.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Several.’ How could she tactfully unravel the tangle of queries buzzing round her head? How old was her prospective pupil? Why had his parents decided he needed a governess? Was he bright, diligent, well behaved? Would he be interested in the things she’d teach him? What stage had he reached in his schooling? What experience of real schools had he had? Who was Mr Fortescue in the scheme of things—the boy’s father?—uncle?—guardian? Was the boy’s mother lurking somewhere in the background? Did Mr Fortescue have a wife?

‘Perhaps if I could meet my pupil?’ she said. ‘The boy I’ll be teaching. Discover how old he is, plan what teaching approaches will work best for him. Then I’ll be able to prepare my lessons to suit.’