The Black Dress Read online

  When we studied our English now it was with the aim of reading aloud to Granny in the evenings. She loved to have the Bible read to her, as her eyes were growing dim, even though Catholics were not supposed to study the Bible without a priest’s guidance. ‘How can the Word of God hurt us?’ Granny would say at the end of a long, rainy day. ‘Read me that story about Noah again, Maggie.’ Uncle Donald liked the newspapers read, or the Waverley novels of Sir Walter Scott.

  So after Lexie and Annie had been put to bed we sat around the kitchen table in the lamplight, the open windows swathed with mosquito netting. We took turns to read while Mamma corrected our pronunciation. The day usually ended with John falling asleep in Uncle Donald’s lap and Granny saying, ‘Bedtime, the lot of you,’ nodding at Mamma to show she was included. Then I crawled into bed with Annie and Maggie. Maggie and I would say our evening prayers, whispering and giggling quietly, while Mamma settled Lexie in her cot and John lay curled up tight in his little iron bedstead. He always slept with his knees drawn right up to his chest, his head thrown back and his mouth open. Mamma would kiss us and say, ‘God bless’ and we would drift off to sleep hearing the wind in the apple trees.

  The only drawback was that it was too far for any priest to make the trip up to The Plenty. Once a month we went into the nearby village where a priest from St Francis’s said Mass in the pub. Bridget met a station hand from the next property there and they were married in the summer. We used to ride over to visit her, singing all the way. I missed Father Geoghegan. But that was all I missed.

  ***

  Summer became autumn. Before Papa came home, winter was full-blown, with the rain barrel iced over every morning and our breath a cloud even at midday.

  We had received letters advising us that Papa was setting out. He had written a month before his ship was due to leave, saying that he hoped to be home before the end of June on the Mariner. Mamma read that part of the letter out loud, but she kept the rest private.

  ‘We’ll be needing another room then, Missus. Better get Mr MacDonald busy building,’ said Bridget, slapping the flatiron down on Mamma’s Sunday blouse. She still came over to help Mamma on washing day.

  ‘Why would we need another room? Mr MacKillop will share my room, of course,’ Mamma said.

  Granny looked up, her bright eyes searching Mamma’s face.

  Maggie and I kept quiet as we damped down the ironing for Bridget.

  ‘Gone for 17 months and you let him just waltz back in here like nothing’s happened?’

  ‘Mr MacKillop is my husband, Bridget.’

  ‘He hasn’t acted much like a husband lately.’

  Granny smoothed down Mamma’s hair.

  ‘Gnothach miadhail, no-one would blame you if you wanted a space to get to know each other again.’

  ‘Mother! Alex is my husband. There’s nothing else to be said. When he comes, he will be welcome.’

  Mamma picked up the second flatiron and placed it on the hearth. Then she tucked the letter away in her breast pocket, and patted it flat. Next to her heart, I thought. I wonder what Papa said to her?

  ***

  The end of June came with no word.

  ‘Och, ships are delayed. It’s bad sailing weather, this time of year,’ Granny said.

  ‘We must pray for his safe return,’ Mamma said.

  Maggie and John and I took the buckets to the well and worked together to bring them up full to the brim, as we did every morning.

  ‘I don’t think he’s ever coming home,’ said Maggie. ‘And I don’t care!’ She stared defiantly at me.

  I shrugged. I felt pretty much the same as Maggie. We were happy here. When Papa came back—

  ‘Will we have to leave, Mary, when he comes home?’ John asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t see how we can. We don’t have any money. He’ll need to take a job somewhere, or work The Plenty with Uncle Donald. If he got a job we might have to leave.’

  ‘I don’t want to leave. I won’t leave!’ Maggie shouted.

  I stared at her. ‘You’ll do whatever Mamma tells you to do,’ I said firmly. ‘Because none of us is going to do anything to hurt Mamma. Are we?’

  No. We were not going to hurt Mamma. That was unthinkable. Even if it meant leaving The Plenty. I gave Maggie a hug.

  ‘But probably Papa won’t get a job for ages. We might be here for years.’

  ***

  It was one of those cold, changeable days that Victorian winters always brought. The frost was hard on the ground in the morning and it looked set to be a sharp, sunny day. But by lunchtime the clouds had blown up from the south and were scudding grey across the sky.

  The men were out making sure none of the cattle had fallen on the slippery grey rocks of the gorges—in hard frost the steep cattle tracks were deadly.

  Mamma and Granny had washed all morning and were talking over whether it was worth putting the clothes out when there was the possibility of rain. I turned the handle of the mangle as the last squashed triangle of sheet slid through it, and the water squeezed right out.

  John and Maggie were inside doing lessons. Annie was playing at being Mamma, washing dolls clothes in a basin, singing songs under her breath. Lexie was asleep.

  The sound of the horses’ hooves up the track was loud. We all looked up.

  For a moment I thought it was Uncle Peter and was surprised—he hadn’t ever visited us at The Plenty. Then Mamma dropped the clean wet shirt she was holding into the dirt and began to run. The horse quickened into a canter.

  Papa.

  ‘Annie,’ I said, ‘go and get Maggie and John will you, please?’

  Annie realised something exciting was happening and ran towards the house, shouting, ‘Maggie! Maggie!’

  Maggie and John tumbled out the front door in time to see the horseman leap off and throw his arms around Mamma.

  Papa.

  We waited for a moment, wondering if Mamma would push him away. Was she angry? Would she berate him? If she was angry, what should we say? Should we be angry as well? Granny was holding her breath too.

  But Mamma clung to Papa and they kissed.

  Granny let her breath out in a long hiss between her teeth. ‘Maybe it’s just as well,’ she muttered under her breath, and then more loudly. ‘Well, go on then, aren’t you going to say hello to your father?’

  The others waited until I walked forward, then fell in behind me. We walked slowly, but Mamma and Papa were still kissing when we got to them. The horse shook its head at our approach and sidled away.

  Gradually, Mamma became aware of the watching eyes.

  ‘Och, Alex,’ she said. ‘The bairns!’

  He turned, beaming, as though he’d been gone only a few days. He thinks he can just turn up and everything will be the same as ever. As if we haven’t worried and been thrown out of our home and had to live on charity ... But if Mamma accepted what he’d done, it wasn’t up to me to say anything. That didn’t mean I had to welcome him, though.

  ‘Hello, Papa,’ I said.

  ‘Children!’ he said in his beautiful voice and held out his arms, beaming.

  Annie hid behind me and peered out from behind my skirts. John stood with his legs planted squarely, trying to look grown up. Maggie looked at the ground but shuffled a little closer to him.

  His arms fell. His face collapsed into itself.

  Mamma paled. I could see fear in her eyes. He was still hurting her, even now—or maybe it was us. I couldn’t bear to see Mamma upset. There was a part of me that wanted to fling myself into Papa’s arms, but my anger stopped me. It was all I could do to stop myself shouting at him, ‘Where have you been? Why were you away so long?’ I wanted to beat my fists against him, kick him in the ankle, and stamp on his boots. I wanted to be a baby again and throw myself in the dirt and scream. But if I did that, what would the younger ones do and think? And Mamma? Christian love is shown in action, not feeling, I thought. I repeated it to myself because it was the only way I could stop m
yself bursting into tears. It was my only map in a new landscape where the wrong words, the wrong actions, could cause a landslide from which our family might never recover. Action, not feeling.

  I walked forward and reached up to kiss him on the cheek. ‘Welcome home, Papa.’

  I stepped back as he tried to put his arm around me, but Maggie and John were crowding in now, ready for hugs and kisses. Annie hid her face in Mamma’s skirt and shook her head when Papa asked her for a kiss.

  ‘You’ve been gone a long time, Alex,’ Mamma said. ‘Almost half her little life. You’ll have to give her time to get used to you again.’

  She picked Annie up and we all walked back to the house. Papa was smiling again, but he faltered as he saw Granny waiting for us.

  ‘Well, Alexander MacKillop, you’ve decided to come home then,’ Granny said. ‘It’s about time.’

  ***

  My father never explained to us children why he stayed away for so long. We were expected to simply accept the decisions of our elders and do as we were told. Well, we did. But we were never the same family afterwards. Once, we had been a unit, all of us working together. Afterwards, from our point of view, it was Mamma and we children who were the real family, and then there was Papa.

  I think he felt it too, right from his first days back, and he was astonished. He had truly expected to walk back into our lives as though nothing had happened. Not a man of great foresight, my father. He was hurt when we turned to Uncle Donald for help or instruction, but we knew we could rely on Uncle Donald.

  That was the great loss, beyond the loss of Papa’s company while he was gone, beyond even the loss of the farm. We lost him. Instead of the strong, wise father we had known, we older children knew him to be unwise and, it seemed in some way we couldn’t quite explain, untrustworthy. He had not kept us from poverty or eviction or terrible anxiety, and we never again felt protected by him, never felt that everything would be all right as long as Papa was there. That is a deep loss to any child.

  The younger ones took their attitude from us, once they left babyhood. Indeed, they had enough reasons in their own experience to do so. We still loved him. It would have been easier in some ways if we hadn’t. He was easy to love, Papa, so lively, so energetic, and so intensely involved in anything he was doing. Life often seemed more exciting when he was around. And he was afraid of nothing.

  I laugh—people with no foresight often seem brave to others! I imagine him as a 12-year-old and I chuckle again. Or try to. No sound comes and it must seem to the sisters who are with me as though I am choking. They hurry forward to sit me up and I try to smile. The days move so slowly for them, immured here looking after me, yet they are so patient and kind. I wonder if they are tolling over their own memories while they wait, like beads on a rosary. Perhaps memories of me. Oh, I hope I have never disappointed them as Papa disappointed me!

  We lived at The Plenty for months afterwards, until Papa could lease a property further down the river. Life went back more or less to the way it had been before, except that there was even less money. Then Papa decided to stand for election to the seat of Richmond.

  JUNE 1853—RICHMOND, MELBOURNE

  ‘I’d like to thank my friends in Richmond for their support during the campaign—though by the looks of things few actually voted for me!’ my father said.

  The audience laughed. They liked a good loser who could turn a joke upon himself.

  ‘I am, it appears, not fortunate in electoral matters.’

  More laughter. They knew he was referring to his earlier attempt to be pre-selected for another seat. I was proud of Papa, standing so straight and tall on the stage. The lamplight drew out the red glints in his hair. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t won the election. I waved at Adeline Seward, who was sitting with her parents across the aisle from us. She grinned back at me.

  ‘I don’t have a great deal in my purse.’ He raised an eyebrow.

  The audience weren’t sure how to take that. Did he mean that votes had been bought? They shifted uneasily in their seats. Papa had such a reputation for starting political fights—was one about to erupt now? I took Mamma’s hand and she held mine hard.

  ‘I heard earlier in the week that there would be a row here in Richmond, so I withdrew my candidature.’

  ‘Balderdash!’ a man sang out.

  Immediately the audience starting to chatter and shout.

  ‘Nonsense!’

  ‘There’s no truth in it!’

  ‘And a good thing too!’

  ‘Boo!’

  The shouts came from all over the hall. I blushed and looked straight ahead so I didn’t catch Adeline’s eye. It was so embarrassing. Why did Papa always have to have the last word? He shouted down the audience.

  ‘I knew things were rotten in Richmond when I discovered there had been a plan to pull down John Stephenson’s house and drag him to the Yarra and dump him in, just because he didn’t agree with the candidate!’

  ‘That man’s drunk!’ a woman said behind me. ‘Disgraceful!’

  I could see my mother’s face turn as red as mine. Papa wasn’t drunk—or if he was it was only on excitement and disappointment and anger. He hated to lose. Only 44 men out of 700 had voted for him. He so wanted to be liked; the rejection hurt him a great deal. I knew that was true—Mamma had whispered it to me—but still, why couldn’t he just have congratulated his opponents and gone home?

  The hall was in an uproar. Papa couldn’t be heard over all the shouting and the talk. He held his hand up for silence and the crowd quietened.

  ‘Without deep pockets I couldn’t mount a major campaign—two pounds a go to publish my policies in the Argus was a bit too steep for me.’ His voice was droll. Reluctantly, the crowd quietened. All that debating in Rome had taught Papa how to handle an audience. ‘Maybe I should tell the Argus that next time I’ll put my policies on placards and parade them through the streets. Do you think they’d like the competition?’

  There was some laughter, but also some shouts and hissing.

  ‘Well, the electors of Richmond have shown who they prefer. I am sorry it was not Mr Kennedy, but I think very well of Mr Burnley in both his private and his public capacity. I wish him all the best.’ He paused, and then grinned. The crowd settled. Papa could really be very engaging when he chose. ‘Now, you may know I’ve put in a protest with the Electoral Returning Officer—but if I were him, I’d just tear it up!’

  Most of the crowd laughed, but a few still hissed. He waved and walked off the stage. As he came down the side aisle towards us, he kept his head high, but as soon as we were outside his shoulders slumped.

  Mamma slid her hand through his arm. ‘There’ll be other elections, Alexander.’

  Papa shook his head. ‘Not for me, Flora. Not after such a slap in the face. Forty-four votes! And not even one from the Richmond district. I’ll never live it down. I’m sorry Mary had to be there to see it.’

  I put my hand through his other arm. ‘Everyone loses sometimes, Papa,’ I said. I just wished Adeline hadn’t been there to see his humiliation.

  I think that was the night the rumours that my father was a drunk began. He wasn’t. I wouldn’t say he never was drunk—that’s a hard thing to be sure of in a Scotsman who liked a dram, particularly on New Year’s Eve. As he grew older, I noticed, liquor affected him more easily and a couple of drinks would have him slurring his words. But a habitual drunk? No. His pugnacity and volatility were not so easily explained.

  I, of all people, should know how easily that kind of rumour starts. I’ve been called a drunk often enough myself! Later in life I used to dread that spoon of brandy at bedtime, because of the rumours, no matter how much the doctor said I needed it. Of course, it was the cheapest cooking brandy and tasted vile. It might have been easier if it had been single malt Scotch. I’m enough my father’s daughter to like a sip of that.

  1853—MACKILLOP HOMESTEAD, IN THE PLENTY DISTRICT

  My brother Donald was born not
quite ten months after Papa returned. I suppose that speaks for itself.

  Life was more crowded than ever. I helped Mamma and Granny with the other children, but she’d had such a hard birth that Papa brought out a month nurse from the city to help. Perhaps the 17 months my father was away were actually a blessing for my mother’s health. She might have had ten children instead of eight. I don’t think her constitution could have stood that, seeing the trouble she had birthing Donald and Peter. She was 37 when Donald was born, and was just beginning to feel the rheumatism that plagued her so in later years.

  To have a nurse was a good idea (although I wonder now who paid for her), but the nurse herself was disgusting. Oh, that’s an uncharitable thought. She was addicted to rum, I discovered. Not an unusual fault, God knows, but she was hardly an ideal person to care for a newborn child.

  The day she arrived, I heard Donald wailing, the high pitched cry of distress very young babies have when they are truly frightened or in pain. I ran into Mamma’s room where Donald was wrapped naked in a towel. The nurse had a square bottle in her hand.

  ‘What are you doing with my brother?’

  ‘Don’t you worry, lass,’ the nurse said, ‘it won’t hurt him.’

  She tried again to tip the black bottle against Donald’s lips. I snatched it away and smelled it. Rum. The nurse smelt just as strongly. I was outraged. More outraged, I think, because I was worried about Mamma, who was still very weak and pale, even three days after Donald’s birth. Fear lends an edge to our anger—it’s as though we turn gratefully to anger so that we don’t have to think about our fear.

  ‘Give him to me,’ I said and took him from her arms. He kept crying, so I rocked and patted him until he quietened a little.

  ‘Now take your things and get out!’ I said.

  ‘Look here, missy,’ the nurse said, ‘when your mother hears about this—’

  ‘My mother’s not to be bothered. She’s still sick. You pack your bags and get out now! You’re not touching my brother again. You’re a drunken disgrace!’