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  ‘Where’s Stanton?’ I asked.

  ‘He should be back,’ Papa said. He hesitated and then went to Mama, holding her hands to his mouth. But she was beyond comprehension and plucked her hands from his, fretful, and he turned back to me. ‘Hester, we must do something.’ He stood and moved away, as far from Mama as could be while still being in the room. His mouth worked and he put three fingers against it, and still his lips moved beneath them. He shut his eyes and swayed and took his hand away from his mouth and clutched the door and began to swing it.

  ‘Papa,’ I said, rather sharp.

  ‘Eh?’ he said, startled. ‘Oh, the Lord bless us and keep us all.’

  ‘Please.’

  There was the sound of the back door slamming and heavy boots coming up the hall and I leapt up and pulled the door from Papa and flung it open. It was Stanton, his coat still on, his hat in his hands, wet from the rain, and the cold and life pouring from him. It would be winter soon. Water dripped from the bottom of his coat onto the floor.

  ‘We can’t get the dray through,’ he said. ‘A tree’s down across the track. Even if it weren’t it’s not safe. To take her in this is madness. She’s better here.’

  ‘It’s very bad, Stanton. Could someone come here?’ I said.

  ‘Who? How long would it take for them to come?’

  ‘Stanton, we must,’ I said. ‘Else she’ll—’

  ‘Down the lagoon then, to the Travellers Rest. Nellie Robinson will know what to do.’

  ‘What, row her? It’s too far.’

  ‘There is nothing else. Make haste now, Hett, do.’

  When I think badly of Stanton and Hugh, as I often did then, I remember that night and all they did. They were calm when Papa was not, and held Mama firm when we had to move her despite the pain it caused. I had seen Stanton be as calm with cows struggling to calve, and how they appeared to trust him. Papa stood aside with his face buried in his hands while Hugh and Stanton carried her out – an awkward thing since she was crying out and struggling to break free of them – and I gathered up quilts to line the bottom of the boat to make her as comfortable as might be possible. Papa stumbled behind us to the boat and sat away from Mama. I crouched next to her in the bottom of the boat to do what I could to ease the pain, which was very little. I would have stayed behind to be with Fred and Addie and Albert, but Mama had hold of my hand as if it were the only thing keeping her from plunging into darkness, and she wouldn’t let go, so Hugh stayed behind, watching on as we pulled away. The rain had cleared by then.

  Rowing away from the jetty across the slap of black water I could make out the shadowed back of the peninsula vast against the sky and then we were lost in the dark with the chirrup and groan of the oars in their locks as they gouged the water and flung it back, the wind fingering the reeds, the soft croon and rustle of a million life forms and inside the boat Mama rigid at our feet, crying out at my attempts to bring comfort. She was an animal in a trap and we could not set her free.

  Stanton rowed uncomplaining, but strong as he was he had to stop to rest. Papa spelled him twice and I did once. It was slow though and when Mama’s moans died down I think we all lost heart, but kept going because to stop would be to admit that hope was quite gone.

  Darkness began to thin on the horizon and pale gauze light drifted up the lagoon and flowed over and around its islands and in the distance we saw the place where the creek enters the lagoon and the short jetty a little way further in. We crept towards it and it began to loom. Finally, Stanton flung the boat rope over a stanchion and we drew alongside. He and Papa got out and went running along the jetty and up the slope towards the inn. Mama was quite still by then, her face clammy to the touch and cooler than I liked. Her hands when I held them and rubbed them were cool too, and unmoving.

  I heard their voices before I saw them and then they were coming down the slope through the ghostly light, as if they were appearing from another world than the one I was sharing with Mama, their breath huffing out, hanging in the cold air before disappearing. Mrs Robinson was in her nightgown still, and with a coat on top of that, and her thin plait snaked from beneath her bed cap. Her boots were unlaced and she stumbled once or twice in her haste before righting herself.

  They clattered up the jetty. ‘Oh, Mrs Robinson,’ I said when they reached me. ‘I’m afraid.’

  ‘What? What now, my duck?’ she said. ‘Let Nellie have a look and we’ll see what we might do.’ She stepped out of her boots and let herself down nimble and swift as a spider and held her weight with her arms at the jetty’s edge to keep the boat steady while I shifted to give her room. She moved then, crouching by Mama’s head, and stroked her hair from her face where it had stuck with the water flicking from the oars. She put the backs of her fingers and then her palm against Mama’s cheek, and frowned. ‘Come now, Mrs Finch,’ she said. ‘We’ll have you out and see if we can ease your suffering.’ And she put an arm behind Mama’s head, at her neck, and tried to raise her. Mama’s head fell back. ‘Wake up now, Mrs Finch, if you please,’ she said, and when she still didn’t move Mrs Robinson picked up her hand again and rubbed it hard and pinched and twisted the small fold of skin she’d raised on its back, concealing it from us as best she could in the curve of her lap, but Mama still did nothing and, looking over her shoulder past Papa who stared dumb and listless to my brother, Mrs Robinson said, ‘Stanton Finch, come help me now, my sweet, and we’ll lift your mammie out and then we might see what’s to be done.’ Her voice, become a trifle hearty, set me shaking.

  I clambered upright and the boat rocked again and Stanton took hold of my hand and heaved me onto the jetty and took my place in the boat. With the greatest delicacy they raised Mama until she was sitting, and looking down – suddenly as if from a great distance – I was able to see what they had not yet: Mama’s white nightgown all dark with blood behind. I could not help crying out.

  Mrs Robinson put her hand to Mama’s neck and I knew what she had discovered from the way she took her hand away and touched her fingers to Mama’s eyes, and told Stanton to let her lie back.

  She was quiet before she spoke again: ‘She’s gone now and I am sorry for it, my dears. That’s the way of it sometimes. The Lord taketh away, that he does, and there’s no knowing when that time may be, as I know too well with my poor dear Willie.’ She wiped a quick hand over her cheeks and pulled the quilts over Mama again, tucking her in – for all our sakes, if not Mama’s any longer – and almost as an afterthought, with the utmost gracefulness (for which I will always remember her fondly, no matter what people said of her later) drew a loose fold across her face, hiding us from its uncanny stillness. ‘Come now, my dears, and have a bite and a nice cup of good sweet tea. I’m so sorry for it. There’s nothing to be done here, and a long journey back.’

  It was the strangest thing that we did stop at the inn. At first I thought I could not leave Mama alone like that and sat on the jetty with my legs curled up inside my skirts and my skirts doubled and wrapped around me like a shroud and the rest of me hunched deep within my coat. But watching Stanton and Mrs Robinson walking away rather close (Mrs Robinson tripping on her bootlaces again, still untied, and Stanton’s hand at her elbow) and Papa drifting after them childlike, and looking at Mama below – a thing now – I didn’t like to stay and leapt up and ran after them. I never loved my body as well as I did that morning: all the life of me coursing through me, which I felt almost as an animal pleasure, and for the first time sensed an affinity with Stanton, what it might be like to live in his skin, but all these things were only flickers on the edge of my thinking. A small despicable corner of me was glad that it was Mama who had died and not I, even though she was the greater loss and I missed her already. I was alive, alive, alive, and did not want to stay with someone who was dead.

  I was fast and with my skirts held high I caught Papa and Stanton and Mrs Robinson easily and didn’t stop but went running along the rutted track leaving them and their shouts of surprise behind u
ntil finally, finally I could run no more and stopped, panting and sobbing, and I swore to myself right there that I would not allow myself to become like Mama, that I would never die in such circumstances because someone had decided my life for me. No one would make me live where I did not wish to. Becoming anything was so far into the future though, and there was this time to be lived through, and no seeing where it might end. Just, now, that there was the long walk back to the inn. I was hot even after taking my coat off.

  Perhaps I went into the inn in a rush. Everyone looked up startled when I opened the door onto the crowded kitchen, where the maid, Jane, moved about tending the fire and pouring tea and bringing toasted bread and eggs to the table, which smelled more delicious than anything else I had ever smelled in my life. Stanton was eating with the greatest efficiency. Papa’s eggs had been punctured and the yolks had spread. He poked at them and took a bite of toast.

  ‘Come now,’ Mrs Robinson said. ‘Sit down here’ – she patted the rough bench at her side – ‘Jane will bring you what you would like.’ She sipped her tea and regarded me. Her eyes were sharp without being hard. She was used to making judgements about people I think. I hadn’t noticed that about her when we last visited. Perhaps she had concealed it. ‘Hard for girls like you.’ Her voice was quite soft, too low for Papa and Stanton to hear – and they were sunk deep in their own thoughts.

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘You’re not the eldest are you?’ And then, ‘No, there’s your brothers, isn’t that so?’

  ‘The eldest girl.’

  ‘The same thing. I know, my dear, I know. It’s the expectations that hold you back. They’ll kill you in the end, if you’re not careful, suck the life right out of you. Run, I say. Run whenever you should have the chance, don’t spare a glance back or you’ll turn to salt or stone. When the agent came to the workhouse looking for girls to travel to Australia I put myself forward, made the most of that chance. I had no idea what might become of me; it was only that it might be something better but I took it and so should you when the time comes. There’s more than one way to die, with all respect to your dear mama.’

  ‘My mother said something like it to me just before she died.’

  ‘A sensible woman then. Wise. Don’t forget.’

  ‘I must stay. There are my younger brothers and sisters.’

  ‘Even so,’ Mrs Robinson said. ‘When the time comes, and it will, don’t miss it.’

  It was a long row back despite the current being with us this time. Papa sat away from Mama’s little body and drank from a bottle that Mrs Robinson had thrust into his hand. I took the oars twice and the boat was heavy with all the bodies it carried.

  There was nothing but sadness to meet us at the other end. Hugh and Fred dug a grave halfway up a slope a short distance from the house. Addie and Tull drifted around after Mary who kept looking for Mama, like a lost calf. The dismal sound of Papa hammering as he made the coffin in the shed rang out for the rest of the afternoon. That night he sat on his own in the parlour and when I went in to light the fire he watched while I arranged sticks over cones of she-oak. I took some coals from the stove in the dining room and the heat of them spread through the metal pan and up its handle and made me shiver. I felt I would never be warm again. When I returned with it to the parlour, Papa’s glass was full again.

  ‘Have you ever considered this room, Hester?’ he said. ‘What would you say it resembles?’

  ‘I don’t know, nothing but what it is.’ I couldn’t say that it had once reminded me of a byre.

  ‘A ship’s cabin, I would say,’ he said. ‘A weighted line will hang true, and yet see this lamp?’

  ‘Yes, Papa.’ It swayed a very little in some draught.

  ‘It reveals to me that the house is not true, was not built true, that I am no builder nor ever will be. It is I and not the line that has failed. The walls and the floor and the roof conform in their wrongness – see? – while the lamp, which is true, appears the liar.’

  He was right in what he said. The lines of walls and door and windows were not parallel with the lamp line, the same as in Mama’s room. ‘Papa,’ I said.

  He watched while I put the coals around the kindling and bent and blew, sending sparks and then flames crackling. A pleasant smoke pulsed into the room and sucked back up the chimney. It was a smell of life to me. We needed to be warm because we lived still.

  The light of the flames that Papa now stared into threw shifting gleams and shadows across the lines of his brow and cheeks. It was getting dark. I picked a long twig from the wood basket and lit its end and went to light the lamp.

  ‘Please don’t, Hester. Leave me here like this. I prefer not to see the lamp line. On a night like this it makes me feel at sea. At any moment I expect a wave to roll beneath the house and rush the gap at the door and smash a window.’ His voice moved like the sea itself, slow and regular and inevitable. He lifted his head. ‘Smell the salt?’

  We buried Mama the next morning. Papa spoke the words of the service. I could not help noticing the horror on Tull’s face when we lowered her rough coffin into the ground and threw handfuls and then spadesful of earth over it and tamped it down.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Coorong, June 1858

  PAPA SAID, ‘WE COULD HAVE CLEARED THE PATH if we’d discovered the branch sooner.’ The smoke from his pipe was thick around him and he stared into it as if answers might be found somewhere within. ‘It wasn’t there two days before she— I should have thought. I should have looked.’

  ‘Why would you? It’s never happened before. That part at least is not your fault.’ Oh, I should not have said that.

  He swung around. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I meant only that it was night, Papa. It would not have changed anything.’

  His gaze was fixed on me. ‘It would have given us a chance.’

  ‘No, Papa,’ I said. ‘I think it would not, a branch that size.’ I was almost out of patience with him. His brooding could not restore Mama to us.

  Tull had been gone for some days already. He had been mystified by us – not by our sadness, rather by our actions. He had watched us carefully after we buried Mama, as if expecting something more to happen or to discern more in our quiet. It was such a settled muffling thing. We were finished so quickly with disposing of her.

  Papa wrote to Grandmama and Grandpapa to let them know the terrible news. That winter we dwelled in quiet, even Addie. It was a study to watch us all, as I sometimes did, but not an amusement. We never mentioned Mama except by mistake, and did not use favourite things of hers: a spoon, a tea-cup, a serving dish. Perhaps the others did as I did – found somewhere private when sadness struck. Except for Mary. She was like a small boat adrift and there was nothing we could do to settle her. Sometimes Addie had red eyes. She collected posies of winter flowers and laid them on Mama’s grave – a solitary task.

  Papa sat at the table or on the veranda if the weather was not too cold after the day’s work was done, staring at nothing at all. When Mary put her hand to his knee and commanded, ‘Up, up,’ he looked at her, sometimes hauling her up absently. She clambered about his lap, patting his cheeks and teasing his whiskers and exploring his pockets until finally she had his attention. But she couldn’t hold it. She wandered about looking behind doors. I found her part way up the track once on my way out to the washing lines, and she just a pale shape, a spent rose with its petals lolling in a breeze. When I called to her she ran faster and I had to chase her. And when I caught her and was holding her hot little body to me and smoothing her wispy hair from her face and asked what she was about, she said, ‘Looking for Mama.’

  ‘But she is gone, Mary. Quite gone. She won’t come back, not ever.’

  ‘I want her.’

  ‘She can’t be here, sweetheart. She’s in heaven.’

  ‘I want to go.’

  ‘You can’t. You’re not dead.’

  Meals were solemn occasions. Skipper was plush with the g
ood fortune of our misery. Papa began to drink a little in the evening. He rode to the Travellers Rest for supplies and on his return reported that Mrs Robinson had married a Mr Martin, who was helping to run the inn now. We clung to Papa’s presence; he was the only parent we had left. We avoided the parlour. It reminded us too much of Mama, with her sewing put by on a side table where she might pick it up when she had a moment to spare and her shawl tossed over the arm of her chair where she had dropped it during her first pains of birth. No one had moved them. The dining room was warm, and if it was overfull with people and furniture, the light within and the company let us forget the darkness closing outside.

  A letter arrived from Grandpapa. We watched as Papa read it.

  ‘What does it say?’ Addie asked.

  ‘He asked if we would care to live with them in Adelaide.’

  ‘May we?’ I said. My mind moved so swiftly. In less than a second I was in town.

  ‘Naturally not. We cannot live on their charity.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘They wondered if they could visit us here. But I think not.’ He nodded his head. ‘I think not. The journey is too rough and we have nowhere to accommodate them. So, I will write to let them know.’ He threw the letter in the fire.

  Papa placed his knife and fork down one evening and drew himself up and cleared his throat. He had our attention. ‘We will fell the tree. We should have done it before. We will do it now so it cannot happen again.’

  There was a moment of silence. I wondered if there were more, but from his expectant look around the table it seemed that was all.

  Papa said, ‘We cannot have the path blocked. In another emergency we could not get through.’

  ‘But you cleared that branch.’

  ‘It might happen again.’

  ‘We could move the path around the tree,’ Stanton said. ‘Easier by far.’