Annie listened to the clip clop of the hoofs down the street outside, the rattle of the cart.
A nice young man, she thought. And a strangely innocent one too, bringing her flowers, asking nothing but to talk to her, to drink his tea. There’d been men after her in plenty since she came to the colony, but she knew that most hadn’t had marriage in mind.
There’d been only two men who’d offered her a wedding ring. One had been rum-soaked. He’d kicked a dog once when he was drunk. He had a farm—a good one, with a stone house. But a man who would kick a dog would kick a wife.
The other was a feckless fool, son of a rich merchant, dealing in fleeces and whale oil. Annie hadn’t seen him since the banks went bust. She had a feeling he’d gone bust with them.
Annie shook her head as she opened the stove door, and poked at the fire with a poker. Old Millie would be here soon, to wash the sheets and towels, and she’d need a hot fire to heat the water. While the stove was hot Annie would make the week’s bread—save heating up the kitchen two days in a row. Put bread into a cold oven and you got a brick, instead of the lightest loaves in the colony.
She pulled out her basin, scooped flour out of the barrel, and poured in some of the yeast that always stood brewing on the windowsill. After drizzling in some warm water, she began to knead, pushing and pulling at the dough till it lost its powdery look, and went almost transparent if you pulled at the edges.
Annie’s loaves were always high and light, with black tops like her hair, and soft white insides. Sometimes she wished she had skin the colour of white bread. If she’d had skin like that she wouldn’t be working in Mrs Draper’s kitchen now.
Annie pushed at the dough with her strong hands, and shut her eyes and remembered.
Her first memory was a roof. It was held up with a framework of birch boughs, and covered with deer hide. She didn’t know how she knew the skins were deer, but she did, just like she knew they’d been rubbed with fat and deer brain so the rain didn’t come inside.
There were other memories too. Riding in a pouch on Mother’s back, holding onto her hair, long and dark like hers. Mother was picking berries, her fingers stained blue and red. Some berries went into the birch bark basket and some were passed back to Annie.
Annie frowned. Her name hadn’t been Annie then, and the woman with long black hair hadn’t been called Mother. Annie had tried and tried, but she could never remember what her name had been then, or what she had called her mother…
There were other houses by the icy river, long houses, covered with deerskin too. Fish hung to dry in the cold wind, and goose breasts, and strips of deer meat.
The trouble with the good memories was that the bad ones followed them. Mother coughing, spitting blood. Dead people; house after house of dead people. She called and called, crying for food, but no one came.
It was as though she was the only one left alive, toddling from house to house, her belly hurting with the hunger, hunger so bad it was more important than the bodies of the people she had loved.
And then the man in black arrived.
She never knew his name either; had never felt that she could ask. He’d been a Church of England missionary in the far north of the Americas, where he’d found her—she knew that much. One moment she was trying to swallow dried fish, a hard lump in her throat although she chewed and chewed with baby teeth, and the next the man in black was cradling her in his arms, holding her in front of him on his big horse.
He took her to a woman in a strange house, bigger than any she’d known. The woman washed her, and dressed her in clean clothes—strange cloth, harsher than deer skin. They gave her bread and milk and a hard cold bowl, and a spoon to eat with.
She didn’t know how to use a spoon. She took the bowl outside and lifted it like a cup instead.
They taught her new words. That’s how she understood the man in black when she stood under the drawing-room window. Later she knew he had been talking to the Lambs.
‘She was the only one alive in the whole village,’ said the man in black. ‘I can’t tell you what it was like, walking among the dead. The fever must have come quickly, to kill them all like that. Maybe some of her people left as soon as it appeared. But she survived—this tiny child, sitting by the icy river in her deerskins, trying to chew dried fish.’
‘Poor little thing,’ said Mrs Lamb.
‘What if she’s diseased too?’ asked Mr Lamb.
‘I’m sure she’s not,’ said the man in black. ‘She’s a good child. Obedient. Didn’t even cry when I brought her here. She’s picking up English quickly too. They do at that age.’
‘Sir, I’ll speak frankly,’ said Mr Lamb. ‘What do you expect us to do with her? It will be years before she’s of any use as a servant. Why should we saddle ourselves with a native child?’
‘Because she is alone,’ said the man in black softly. ‘The only one to survive of all her family. Because she is a child and deserves another chance.’
‘Then we will take her.’ Annie heard Mrs Lamb’s skirts swish as she stood up. ‘Cook can look after her. We will take her back with us to England.’
It’s funny, thought Annie, as she pushed the bread, that I can remember the words even though I didn’t know what they meant then. Or maybe she had just made up the scene, years later, to explain what she’d worked out must have happened.
A second chance. Yes, the Lambs had given her that. By the time she was eighteen she was cook herself, in charge of the Lambs’ kitchen, with kitchenmaids to peel the potatoes and beat the egg whites. The Lambs had given her their name. Mrs Lamb had even taught her how to read. She had white aprons and black dresses for every day, and a grey silk dress for church on Sundays, and a warm room of her own in the attics, with a carpet, just a little bit worn at the edges, no longer good enough for the drawing room downstairs.
She had everything she could want, said Mrs Lamb, tears in her eyes, when Annie told her she was leaving.
‘How can you leave us?’ cried Mrs Lamb. ‘After all we’ve done for you, Annie. We’ve treated you like a daughter all these years.’
If I was really your daughter I wouldn’t be making tea cakes in the kitchen, thought Annie. I wouldn’t live in the attics. But she didn’t say so. It was true; the Lambs had given her a lot. She needed a reference from them too, so others would employ her when she got to the new colony.
‘New South Wales.’ Mrs Lamb shook her head in wonder. ‘It’s half a world away, Annie! We’ll never see you again!’ There was real regret in her voice. But then, thought Annie, it was hard to find a servant you could trust, especially one who owed you her life and would look after you in your old age. A servant like that might be even more valuable than a daughter.
‘And full of thieves and cutthroats,’ wailed Mrs Lamb. ‘Only convicts go to New South Wales, Annie. How can you want to go to a horrid place like that?’
Annie pulled the piece of newspaper from the pocket of her apron. ‘No, madam. Not just convicts. See? They’ll give nine pounds to any woman—any respectable woman—to come out there, and pay her fare there too.’ She met Mrs Lamb’s eyes. She owed the old lady this much truth. ‘They want wives out there, madam. There’s rich men in the colony—convicts once maybe, but now they have land and money. I want to be a wife, Mrs Lamb. I want a kitchen of my own, not someone else’s. And I’ll never be a wife if I stay here.’
She wanted children too. Wanted them with a desperation that ate at her heart. She’d had no people for so long. This was a chance to really belong again. Her only chance.
Mrs Lamb’s eyes filled with tears.
She knows it’s true, thought Annie, as the older woman bent to hug her. Annie could make the best plum pudding in the county. She was beautiful too, tall and straight from the good feeding in the Lambs’ warm kitchen, her hair so thick and long she could sit on it when she unplaited it to wash it Sunday afternoons.
But none of the footmen from the grand houses all around, not even the butcher’s apprentice, had ever courted Annie, or asked her to walk out.
No man with a good future in England wanted to be married to a squaw.
The bread dough had risen twice. The tops billowed out of their tins. Millie was pegging the washing out on the line in the garden. Annie opened the oven and put the bread tins inside. There’d be fresh bread for her and Millie’s lunch, with a bit of cheese and cold lamb and the cucumber pickles in the larder, made just how she liked them with plenty of mustard, and the plum pie she’d made that morning.
That young man’s eyes had lit up at the sight of that pie. She could tell he thought she’d made it fresh for him. But it wasn’t; she’d just had a hankering for plum pie, and Millie liked things soft, because of her teeth, which had fallen out somewhere between London and Sydney Town.
William Marks. Not much to look at, short and red from the sun. He had gentle hands though, with the horse, and a good friend in the old man in the cart. You could tell a lot from a man by his hands and his friends.
But she hadn’t sailed across the world just to marry a boy with a shy smile and dreams in his heart. Times were tough in the colony. She could afford to wait for the right offer—she was young, and the Drapers knew they had a prize in her. She was a cook who could not only make a jam roll to make a man used to salt mutton and damper weep, but one who wasn’t drunk every Saturday night.
One day some man would visit the Drapers—not a young man maybe, but one with solid mutton-chop whiskers and a fine carriage and a house where she’d direct the servants. A man who was looking for a wife who knew the ways of a grand house, who could organise a ball, speak with the right accent. There was no shame in marrying from the kitchen here in the colony. What mattered was being able to turn from a cook into a lady.
She could do it. In spite of the colour of her skin—not so much darker than a white woman’s—she could be a lady. There were so many men here, and so few women—and even fewer who could read, or speak and dress well. When she married she would never have to step into a kitchen again, except to give the cook her orders. Or maybe just to make a delicacy like neat’s-foot jelly, or a perfect ginger cake. She’d miss the cooking if she had to give it up altogether. She’d wear silk dresses and grand hats, and if anyone noticed the colour of her skin they’d think she’d caught a touch of the sun when out for a ride. Her children would be paler than her too.
And as for Mr Marks…She smiled. It would do no harm to see him, once in a while. But marrying the likes of him? Never.