The Black Dress Read online

  ‘Why bother praying at all, then?’ Maggie said. ‘If it’s going to happen anyway?’

  ‘Because if it is not a trial sent from the Lord, if it is just the consequence of a mean and greedy heart, then the grace of Our Lord may soften that heart. Either way we won’t know until the prayer is answered.’

  Maggie did not look convinced, but she held her peace. I think that leaving Darebin Creek was harder for Maggie than the rest of us. Unlike me, she had never lived away from home. And unlike the younger ones, she remembered the upheaval when we moved from Lamington, our old property near Merri Creek. When we moved just after Alick had died, Maggie lost her treasured brother and home all at once. I did too, of course, but Maggie had doted on Alick, happy not to be the baby of the family any more. She had been three and she had cried for days after we arrived at Darebin Creek.

  I was less worried about leaving Darebin Creek than about where we would go afterwards.

  ‘Have you written to Grandfather?’ I asked Mamma.

  Mamma hesitated. ‘I don’t want to upset Grandma Ellen until it’s clear that Peter really will foreclose. She will be so ashamed of him.’

  Mamma doesn’t want Grandfather to be ashamed of Papa, either. He gets so angry with Papa when things go wrong.

  ‘Mamma, we can’t afford to wait. Uncle Peter said we have to leave next week.’

  Mamma looked resolved. ‘I’m not going anywhere until I have a safe home for you children.’

  ***

  Mamma was as good as her word. When Uncle Peter and Aunt Julia arrived with drays full of household goods, they found a house where nothing had been packed or shifted—except for Mamma. She had moved out of the main bedroom into the girls’ room, and was sleeping on a bed moved up from the men’s quarters.

  Mamma stood on the verandah with all of us around her, her hands resting on my shoulders, while Julia got down from the dray and stared at her in disbelief.

  ‘I’m not leaving this house until I have somewhere decent to take my children, Julia Keogh,’ Mamma said. ‘They are my concern. Of course, you wouldn’t understand that, not having any yourself.’

  All the high colour in Aunt Julia’s face drained down, like water from a copper when the tap is turned. She was white as a new-shorn sheep. I understood, somehow, that that was the worst thing Mamma could have said to her. That Mamma, for the first time ever, was being deliberately unkind. Perhaps she hoped Aunt Julia would just climb back in the dray and go.

  Julia bit her lip and walked up the stairs past Mamma, into the cool darkness of the house. She went to the main bedroom and closed the door behind her. Mamma took a long, shuddering breath and let it out slowly.

  ‘Well, Peter,’ Mamma said, ‘I hope you will be happy in your new home.’

  Peter winced. He looked helplessly at the furniture and chattels on the drays.

  ‘There’s no room for them in the house,’ said Mamma.

  Peter kicked the wooden wheel of the dray. ‘Then we’ll put them in the stables. Here, you two, give me a hand.’

  The station hands looked to Mamma for instructions and she nodded. I knew what she was thinking—the men would now have to work under Peter. Their livelihood depended on it and they shouldn’t suffer for a quarrel between MacKillops.

  We watched as Peter and the men unloaded and stowed everything into the stable.

  ‘Oh, they’re great men, these MacKillops,’ Bridget said from behind Mamma. ‘One of them leaves his family to fend for themselves, and the other throws them out onto the street.’

  ‘Bridget!’ Mamma snapped. ‘You will not speak of my husband in that way or you will leave my employ today.’

  ‘Sorry, Missus,’ Bridget said. But as she went back to the kitchen I heard her mutter, ‘But it’s true for all that.’

  ***

  I agreed with her. Do I still? These memories have raised a churning anxiety in me. The fear, anger, disappointment and astonishment I felt at the time has all come back. The bell is ringing for early Mass; I wish I could go. Plunge my mind into the great peace of the Blessed Sacrament. I open my heart to God ... that was a hard time, the hardest time of my life. I’ve been poorer, and hungrier, and beset by those who wished me ill (many times!) but I have never been so afraid of the future as I was that day. Never felt so betrayed.

  My mother was my mainstay. ‘God will provide,’ she kept saying. At first I was angry with her too. Wasn’t she an adult? Wasn’t she supposed to look after us? Why leave it all to God? But over the next few days I drew from her some confidence, some faith, of a different order than the childish belief that I had held previously. A faith that understood the possibilities and still trusted in our Lord.

  Although I was angry with Papa at the time, with a vast and diffuse anger, I understood that he had himself been betrayed by his brother. It was outside Papa’s ability to imagine that Peter would—could!—evict his own family and take over the farm. I see now that that was always Papa’s Achilles heel in business; so upright himself, he never anticipated greed or venality on the part of others, so he never protected himself against it. Still, he could have informed Mamma about the mortgage—or told Uncle Donald, Mamma’s brother, at least.

  The three days after Uncle Peter and Aunt Julia moved in were the strangest I had ever spent. They slept in Mamma’s bedroom and Aunt Julia stayed in there all day. She only came out of the bedroom to use the privy, and then she went straight back in.

  Peter took his meals with the men, but Aunt Julia’s had to be taken to her in the bedroom.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Bridget said with relish. ‘I’ll give her her dinner and a piece of my mind as well!’

  ‘No, Bridget,’ Mamma said. ‘This is a trial the Lord has sent us and we must accept it in humility.’ But she hesitated before she picked up the tray.

  ‘Give it to me, Mamma,’ I said.

  I couldn’t bear the strain and the barely-held-back tears in Mamma’s eyes. I took the tray from her hands. Outside the bedroom door, I paused. If Aunt Julia was a trial sent by God, then I had to accept it, as Mamma said, and ignore this churning hate in my stomach. It was wrong, I knew it was wrong to be so full of hate. But—

  ‘Christian Love,’ Father Geoghegan had said, ‘is shown in action. It does not matter how we feel about someone, it is how we act towards them which God notes. Our Lord didn’t reprove Peter for feeling anger, only for the action of cutting off the high priest’s servant’s ear.’

  So it didn’t matter that I felt sick with anger. As long as I showed Aunt Julia kindness and respect, that was all God asked of me. And forgiveness. I have to forgive her and Uncle Peter. But not just yet.

  I knocked lightly and opened the door.

  Aunt Julia was sitting on the chair by the window, watching Uncle Peter sit under the gum tree with the men. She turned as I came in, and got to her feet with a start, smoothing her skirt down over her stomach nervously.

  ‘Mary.’

  ‘I’ve brought your dinner, Aunt Julia.’

  I put the tray down on the bedside table, next to Aunt Julia’s sewing box.

  Julia reached out a hand and touched my cheek.

  ‘You’re a good child, Mary. Thank you.’

  Her voice was strained. Her face white. She looked like little Annie after she had been naughty. Fearing a scold, but defiant. Stubborn. Unable to say, ‘I’m sorry.’

  You’re not a baby, I thought. You shouldn’t have let yourself get into this mess.

  But my anger was waning. I even dropped a little curtsy.

  ‘I’ll be back to collect the dishes.’

  ***

  I’ve found many times since then that if one acts with Christian charity and love, one comes more easily to feel it. The more experience one has of this, the easier it is to move straight to the feeling. Oh, there’ve been many people I’ve wanted to shout at in my time! To complain of, or peck away at to others. But I’ve found it doesn’t take much imagination to see their side of things. To put mysel
f in their place and feel their fears and their anxieties. It takes an act of will to do it, but once one has made that decision it is easy to understand why they act as they do.

  Almost always. I say ‘almost’ because I have, once or twice, been beset by people who were, I think, not entirely sane, and no matter how I strove to put myself in their place, I could never quite manage it. But then, how much more did they need my pity and help! Just as Aunt Julia did.

  ***

  For three days I took Aunt Julia’s meals to her and cleared the dishes away. For three days Mamma tried to pretend that nothing was happening. But she was waiting for something, I could see.

  I hoped Mamma was waiting for Grandfather to arrive and send Uncle Peter and Aunt Julia home. During the day Mamma and Bridget surreptitiously packed things away: linen, crockery and clothes. Perhaps Grandfather MacKillop was coming to take us all to live at Somerton? But on Friday, Uncle Donald MacDonald, Mamma’s brother, arrived with a big dray pulled by bullocks and a wagon. He jumped down from the wagon and hugged Mamma. ‘Well, Flora, are you ready?’

  ‘Not quite, Donald, not quite. I wasn’t sure when you would arrive.’

  ‘But you knew I would, eh?’ He grinned at her, and cast a look at the house.

  ‘Is she ben?’

  ‘Aye, in the bedroom. Peter’s out on the 20-acre, burning off.’

  ‘That’s good, Flora. We can get you away without any unpleasantness then.’

  We all stood waiting. We were always pleased to see Uncle Donald. He was our youngest uncle, still a bachelor. Granny had kept house for him since Grandfather MacDonald died and Uncle Donald had inherited his property in the hills surrounding the Plenty River.

  ‘Well, my bairns,’ he said. ‘How would you like to come and live with me and your granny?’

  ***

  That should have been the end of it. Instead, the end of it is now. God required me to forgive them and I said to myself, Not yet. But not yet is Now because I will have no other chance.

  That’s why I’ve been having all these memories. It is the Holy Spirit guiding me. Childhood becomes clearer as we age. The wounds of childhood are the deepest and the hardest to heal. And those memories of anger, of hurt, of impatience—they show my lack of compassion, lack of charity.

  Do I forgive them? Uncle Peter and Aunt Julia? She died and he remarried and was a much happier man afterwards, more generous, good-tempered, and more joyful. Yes, I forgive Peter for not being strong enough to stand up against Julia. Julia herself—och, she must have been an unhappy woman.

  Bridget’s curse took and they never had a child. Aunt Julia’s sister, Mrs L’Estrange, adopted two little girls, but Aunt Julia didn’t love children for themselves; she wanted her own. She told me so, once. Perhaps if she’d had her own she’d have envied others less, been more content.

  I’ve felt that yearning for my own myself—what nun hasn’t, teaching other people’s children? But for me it was a free choice, gladly made. For Julia it was failure and barrenness and despair, and her dissatisfaction poisoned all her life. She never saw it was the will of God, never accepted it as her Cross to bear. How can I not forgive someone who made herself so unhappy?

  So, Uncle Peter and Aunt Julia, yes. I can forgive them. And Papa? Can I forgive Papa? Oh, I must, I must, but how? I still feel the hurt of those days of abandonment, and the anger that went with it.

  The road to God never ends while we are alive. I still have work to do, it seems, but how best to do it? I suppose in remembering my life I can ask for God’s grace to forgive each person to whom I offered anything less than charity, and to forgive myself for my own pride and quick temper and stubbornness.

  I am very tired, but if there is one thing I have learnt to recognise in this life, it is the work God wants me to do! And I have to remember the good memories as well as the bad, because it is in the good that I will find the love and faith that will help me overcome any old resentments.

  It’s light outside and the August winds are blowing up from the harbour. It’s a cold howling day. A good day to be indoors. The procession of sisters who come to stay a few minutes each with me has started. If they only knew how far I still have to go before I can reach the peace Our Lord promised!

  1852—MACDONALD HOMESTEAD IN THE PLENTY DISTRICT

  Life on The Plenty tasted different to anywhere else. It had the tang of eucalypt mixed with horse sweat and saddle soap. It was a cattle property, mainly, with some sheep, on land full of gullies and ridges.

  The house was long and low. Soon after we arrived, it grew even larger. Uncle Donald added two new rooms for us and lengthened the verandah. Lilly pilly bushes and quince trees grew around it, with an apple orchard out the back and one big cherry tree.

  The rhythm of life here was based around the men going out on the horses every morning. Up at dawn, porridge and salt in the early sharp light, and back in the evening tired and sweaty and smelling of bush.

  Maggie, John and I could all ride after a fashion, but on The Plenty ‘after a fashion’ wasn’t good enough. So Uncle Donald gave us all our own horses, tough little Welsh cobs, and took us out on long rides, mustering cattle or moving sheep from one paddock to the next according to the feed available. My riding lessons with Mrs L’Estrange put me ahead for a little while, but the others soon caught me up.

  My horse was called Mudlark, a bay, and I loved him with all the passion a girl can have for her first horse. He was a lovely little thing, happy and eager to work, with a good soft mouth and almost no bad habits—although he liked to play around when I was trying to bridle him, ducking his head and biting at the tack.

  I rode every day. For the first week or so I could scarcely sit down afterwards. I felt like my legs were being pushed out of shape at the hips, and my skin was roughened and sore all along my thighs. But when Bridget said, ‘Surely you’ll not be going out again today?’ all of us shouted, ‘Of course we are!’

  After the tight silence of the house at Darebin Creek, the days in the saddle with Uncle Donald were like a holiday. There was nothing to worry about except the possibility that your horse would put its foot in a wombat hole and throw you head over turkey. We talked and laughed together as we rode, and all we had to do was follow Uncle Donald’s orders.

  ‘Cut that one off!’ he’d shout as a bullock made a break for freedom.

  The sturdy Welsh cobs knew their job and would whisk around to head the bullock back to the pack.

  Or, ‘Ride along the ridge and see what the feed is like in that gully,’ and we’d go in a pack, pointing out patches of green or long, silver-grey hillsides where the feed was mostly gone.

  And after the long, hot end-of-summer day, there was the return to the homestead, where Mamma and Bridget and Granny waited with hot food and smiles.

  My legs and thighs grew tougher every day. After two weeks it was as though we’d lived there all our lives. Even Maggie didn’t miss Darebin Creek.

  Mamma looked younger every day. Maybe that was because Granny treated her as though she were only ten years old.

  ‘Flora, have you combed your hair yet, child?’

  ‘Flora, come here and let me do up that button for you.’

  ‘Here you are, gnothach miadhail, have some nice hot tea.’

  The Gaelic words brought back memories of Grandfather MacDonald. He had always called me gnothach miadhail—precious thing.

  Memories of Grandfather always both hurt and comforted me—I didn’t want to ever forget him. Living in his old house, working on his land, was like being close to him again. I couldn’t tell anyone, but it was as though Grandfather watched over me like a guardian angel. For the first time since Papa left, I stopped being angry.

  Perhaps Papa would come back soon. Perhaps not. It didn’t seem to matter any more. The Plenty was home. Uncle Donald loved us. Granny loved us. I didn’t forgive Uncle Peter and Aunt Julia but I stopped thinking about them. I have since noticed this many times with children. They will griev
e with great passion for the loss of a parent, but if they are surrounded by love they will with time recover. The orphans we have raised are testament to that. One of them said to me once, ‘I’ll never forget Ma, Mother Mary, but at least here I know I’m wanted.’ Oh, how hard I hugged him! He’d come to us from the streets, almost starving, earning what he could as a crossing-sweeper, keeping the shoes of the well-off clear of horse dung. A few pennies a day, if he was lucky, if the bigger boys didn’t chase him off his corner, or steal his earnings at the end of the day. One of our friendly priests sent him to the Kincumber Orphanage, St Joseph’s, at a time when I was there.

  Poor little soul! Sister Aloysius sent him to me that first week. I was standing in the playground, looking down to the mangroves and the bay, relishing the fresh salt air. Mick, his name was, came sidling up to me reluctantly, eyes down, terror in every movement.

  ‘Sister says I have to tell you,’ he said in a quavering voice. He gulped. ‘I stole a bun from the kitchen.’

  God love him! I almost laughed. But I put my arm around him. ‘Were you hungry?’

  He nodded. He was twisting his hands together in a combination of misery and fright. That movement alone told of long months of abuse and fear.

  ‘Well, you go back to Sister and tell her I said to give you another bun.’

  His head came up, astonished, and he met my eyes for the first time. I smiled. He grinned and hugged me hard and raced off to Sister Aloysius, leaping as he went. Then I did laugh. That was our job, it seemed to me—to turn fear and misery into joy.

  But that’s another story, and I have more difficult memories to consider.

  ***

  On The Plenty, we returned to our lessons, but I gave up Latin and Greek. They didn’t seem to belong here in the uplands. Instead, I pored over the atlas with Uncle Donald, who had sailed past so many of these strangely shaped countries on his journey to Australia. Both Uncle Donald and Granny, and increasingly Mamma, spoke to us as much in Gaelic as they did in English, and we picked it up easily. Lexie learned Gaelic at the same time as she began speaking whole sentences.