Girl of Shadows (28 page)

He retrieved the paper from where it had landed beneath the bench, and went to find her.

Friday and Harrie stood before Rachel’s grave at St John’s Cemetery in Parramatta. They’d just come from the Factory after visiting Janie and the girls, and Harrie had some flowers she wanted to lay. It was hot and still in the cemetery and Friday used her shawl to blot the sweat from her face and neck. A couple stood in silence
before a grave some distance away, and a pair of crows argued noisily in a tree by the O’Connell Street lych gate, but otherwise they were alone.

Making sure she didn’t step on Rachel’s actual grave, Harrie reverently placed the bunch of yellow roses at the base of the headstone. It was a nice piece of sandstone about three feet high with a plain curved top, though it had tilted slightly as the soil over the grave had settled. They should have waited the full year before having it erected. On the headstone was engraved:

SACRED

to the memory of

RACHEL FLORA WINTER

Who departed this Life

3rd March 1830 in the 17th Year of her age

REVIRESCO

‘What does that actually mean?’ Friday asked. ‘That word, “Reviresco”? Did we choose it?’

‘I did,’ Harrie said. She was on her knees now, pulling weeds from around the headstone. ‘The stonemason suggested it. It means “I will rise up”.’

‘Sarah? Let me in.’ Adam knocked on the bedroom door again. ‘Sarah?’

‘Go away!’ she shouted.

The knob turned, but she’d shot the bolt.

‘Sarah! Open this door!’

She could tell he was losing his temper. Bugger him. A rattling thump resounded as he rammed his shoulder against the door.

‘
Sarah!
’

She ignored him. If she waited long enough, hopefully he’d go away.

There was a moment’s hiatus, then an almighty crash and the door flew open as the bolt splintered away from the frame. Adam charged in, just managing to stay upright.

Sarah leapt off the bed and ran to the window. ‘Don’t you dare come near me!’ she warned, shoving up the sash. ‘I’ll scream. Everyone will hear.’

‘Sarah, please, just shut up and listen. I never married Esther. We weren’t married.’

She stared at him. ‘You were so.’

‘We weren’t.’ Adam brushed a shard of wood from his hair. ‘She already had a husband when she was transported. We couldn’t marry.’

‘But she was Mrs Green.’ Sarah felt as though the plug had been pulled on her innards and they were all falling out.

‘I know. She called herself Esther Green, but she was really only ever Esther Kopelmann. I’m not a bigamist, Sarah, and I couldn’t marry one.’

She let go of the window sash; the cord was loose and it came down with a bang. ‘Is that why she hated you?’

‘Not really. Though it didn’t improve matters.’

‘Why, then?’ Sarah moved away from the window. Adam stood on the other side of the bed and she was glad: for now she felt it was important to keep a distance between them.

He parked his hands on his hips and stared at his boots for several moments. Then he raised his head and held her gaze. ‘I had an affair. A short one. Lust, not love. She found out.’

Sarah wasn’t surprised. Esther Green would surely drive any man into the arms of another woman. ‘How do I know you wouldn’t do that to me?’

‘You’ll have to trust me. But you’re not very good at that, are you?’

That was true.

Adam took a step closer. ‘So now you’ve heard my confessions, will you tell me yours?’

‘I don’t have anything to confess.’

‘I think you do. That first night we had together when I noticed, well, the blood, you said to me, “Don’t spoil it.” You wouldn’t let me speak. Why not?’

‘I was embarrassed.’ And she had been.

‘Because it was your first time?’

‘Yes.’

‘But it wasn’t really, was it?’

‘It was!’

Adam shook his head and leant against the bed’s footboard. Softly, he said, ‘I don’t think it was, Sarah. And I thought that even before our first night together. Because of how you see the world. Because you’re so … aloof. And so stubbornly wilful.’

Sarah felt resentment and anger flood through her again. She didn’t want to be forced to tell him her miserable story. Not now. She wasn’t ready. ‘All right then, I lifted my leg for the entire crew of the
Isla
on the way here from England. Does that make you feel better?’

‘No, because I don’t believe that, either. That isn’t who you are.’

‘Well, I don’t give a shit what you believe, Adam Green!’

‘I think it’s something between the two, something that happened a long time ago,’ he went on, poking and prodding at her like a doctor looking for a rotten tooth. ‘Something that was pretty bloody awful for you.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Who have you been talking to?’

‘What? No one.’

‘Well, you’re wrong. Nothing happened.’ But her voice was shaking badly — she could hear it and she could feel it.

He moved around to her side of the bed. ‘What happened, Sarah?’

She sat on the mattress and covered her mouth with her hand, then took a deep, ragged breath.

‘My father. It was my father.’

She felt the gentle weight of Adam’s hand settle on her shoulder.

‘Ah, Sarah. Christ.’

Nothing was said for the longest time. She was too afraid to look at him.

‘Do you despise me?’ she whispered at last.

‘Oh God, Sarah, I could never despise you. I love you.’

‘Sometimes … sometimes I despise myself.’

‘Don’t say that, please. It’s wrong.’ Adam tilted her chin so she had to look at him. ‘Will you marry me?’

‘No, Adam. I won’t.’

The visitors’ room at the Factory was occupied, so Sarah, Janie and the children were outside in the yard, sheltering in a sliver of shade thrown by a wall. Pearl sat on the ground not far away, knitting. Fat, lazy flies buzzed everywhere and Janie repeatedly swatted them away from the babies, who sat in the dust in their clouts, with a cabbage-tree-leaf fan.

She asked, ‘What do Harrie and Friday think?’

‘I haven’t talked to them yet. Not about him proposing.’

Janie’s eyebrows went up.

‘Well, I can’t talk to Friday about it, she’s jealous enough as it is.’ Sarah recounted what Friday had said to Adam, which Adam had told Sarah the following day. ‘And I don’t want to worry Harrie with my woes. She’s got enough of her own.’

‘She were a bit odd when they come out last Sunday.’ Janie took an almighty swipe at a glistening bluebottle crawling along Rosie’s leg. Rosie started to cry. ‘Got ya, ya bastard. Sorry, Rosie, love.’

‘We’re worried she’s losing her mind.’

‘Yeah, Friday were saying. I doubt it, though.’ Janie flicked the splattered fly off the fan and wiped her finger on her skirt. ‘She’s just havin’ a bad patch. She worries too much. It’ll pass.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘’Spect so. But I think
you’re
mad if you don’t marry your Mr Green.’

‘I’ve just
told
you why I can’t.’

‘You’ve told me why you won’t,’ Janie said.

‘Well, would you, if some cove forged your signature on a marriage application and didn’t even ask you?’

‘If he owned a jeweller’s shop and were as nice as Friday and Harrie reckon your Mr Green is, I would, yeah. And as for all this bollocks about giving up your independence!’ Janie snorted. ‘Wake up, girl! You’re a bonded convict. What’ve you got to give up? You’re just being a stubborn bloody baggage, that’s all.’

‘I am not.’

Charlotte tipped over backwards, hit her head on the hard ground and started to cry. To cover her annoyance at Janie, Sarah picked her up and cuddled her, patting her bare back. ‘Her nappy’s wet.’

‘Pearl!’ Janie called. ‘Clouts!’

Pearl produced a fresh nappy from her knitting bag. Janie took Charlotte from Sarah and, working quickly and efficiently, laid her down and changed her.

‘Bum,’ Rosie said, pointing at Charlotte’s little white bottom. ‘Lotta’s bum.’

‘That’s right, sweetie, it is, too.’ Janie lifted Charlotte and swung her high. Charlotte giggled and made a grab for the brim of Janie’s bonnet. Janie handed her back to Sarah.

‘You’re the most stubborn bloody person I know,’ she said.

‘They should have their smocks on,’ Sarah observed. ‘They’ll be getting burnt from the sun.’

‘Don’t change the subject. If you won’t marry him ’cos you don’t love him — though you do; it’s all over your sour bloody mug — then marry him for other reasons. Use your smarts.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Marry him so he won’t send you back here. Marry him so he’ll never dob you in for all the swag you’ve robbed off him. Marry him for his money.’

‘God, you’re a mercenary cow, Janie Braine.’

‘That’s good, coming from you.’ Janie nodded at Charlotte. ‘Marry him for her. You vowed you’d do everything you could to take care of her, didn’t you?’

And Sarah nodded.

Because she had.

February 1831, Sydney Town

Sarah and Adam were married at the Sydney Town registry office on the morning of the 24th of February. It was a Thursday but Nora and George Barrett had given Harrie the whole day off, and Friday was still stood down from her duties at the brothel — much to Elizabeth Hislop’s ire — while recovering from her bout of gonorrhoea.

Sarah wore a royal blue silk dress, paid for by Adam and made by Harrie, who’d nearly exhausted herself staying up several nights in a row to finish it in time. It was neither ostentatious nor adorned with fripperies, but was beautifully cut and sewn and suited Sarah perfectly. It was, she told Harrie, the loveliest dress she had ever owned. In her hair she wore freesias to complement those in her bouquet, and Adam presented her with a pair of drop earrings containing perfectly matched sapphires. Adam himself wore a new black cutaway coat and white breeches. Bernard Cole gave Sarah away, and afterwards everyone gathered for a small wedding breakfast at Adam’s house, after Adam had carried Sarah, embarrassed and giggling, across the threshold of the front door.

Matthew Cutler came by, and was delighted when Sally Minto also appeared for an hour; the Barretts arrived with their children; Elizabeth dropped in with a gorgeous batiste nightgown for Sarah and a bottle of best whisky for Adam; James turned up with a
dozen very fine lead-glass wine goblets; and the neighbours drifted in and out with gifts of food. Jared Gellar also sidled in bearing a present — a beautifully carved piece of greenstone from New Zealand — declared hearty congratulations and spent much of his visit eyeing up Friday; and from the Factory Janie sent a pair of pillowcases she’d embroidered, and a misspelt note wishing Sarah and Adam all the luck in the world and featuring Charlotte’s and Rosie’s hand prints. During the breakfast Sarah threw her bouquet and hit Harrie in the face with it.

It was a lovely day, Sarah thought at the end of it. She only hoped she’d done the right thing.

The following Sunday, Harrie, Sarah and Friday took a whole day off to spend together, travelling out to the Factory to take Janie and the girls a piece of Sarah’s wedding cake. Elizabeth had offered Friday her landau, and Jack to drive it, after extracting a firm promise from both that they would not stop off at every public house on the way. Initially Harrie had worried she might not be able to go, as George Barrett had insisted Nora couldn’t spare her, especially as she had just had Thursday off. But after Nora pointed out that Harrie had worked through many of her Sunday afternoons off helping her fill dress orders and was owed far more than two days’ leave, George reluctantly agreed.

So now they sat in the landau with the hoods raised against the sun, fanning themselves and watching the countryside shimmer in the summer heat through the windows, the gauze shades up to let in the warm breeze. Friday had her boots and stockings off and her skirts hoisted past her knees. Poor Jack, sitting outside in his shirtsleeves, was cooking. The seats, which had seemed luxurious hours earlier when they’d set out, now felt like unforgiving planks against backsides stuck to shifts damp with sweat.

‘This is the first time we’ve all been back to the Factory together,’ Harrie observed unnecessarily.

‘Well, I couldn’t get away, could I?’ Sarah said. ‘Not while Esther was being such a cow.’

‘That’s the worst thing about being assigned,’ Friday said, ‘not being able to please yourself when you do things. We’ve got hardly any freedom at all.’

Sarah laughed. ‘We’re not supposed to. We’re convicts.’

‘I think we’re a lot freer than some girls,’ Harrie said. ‘And you
can
please yourself now, Sarah. You’ve just married your master.’

‘Not really. I still have to work. Not that I’m complaining.’

Harrie gazed out the window. After a minute she said, ‘Do you know what else you could do?’ She turned to look at Sarah. ‘Not now, but perhaps in a year or so? Now that you’re married?’

‘What?’

‘You could raise a child.’

Sarah slapped at a fly. ‘I don’t want a child.’

‘I don’t mean your child.’

Friday frowned. ‘What
are
you talking about?’

‘Charlotte,’ Harrie said. ‘Sarah could adopt Charlotte.’

Sarah and Friday stared at her, their heads gently wobbling in time with the motion of the carriage.

Eventually Sarah said, ‘But I’m an assigned convict. I wouldn’t be allowed.’

‘But Adam isn’t. He has a conditional pardon. He could adopt her.’

‘But what about Janie?’ Friday asked. ‘We can’t just take Charlotte off her.’

‘She’ll be taken away when she turns four and put in the orphanage, anyway,’ Harrie said. ‘And so will Rosie.’

‘Oh, well, I might as well adopt Rosie, too, then,’ Sarah said.

‘No. Rosie has a mother,’ Harrie replied with unexpected vehemence.

Friday and Sarah exchanged worried glances: that didn’t sound like Harrie at all.

Sarah leant back against the seat and blew out a long breath. ‘And what if Adam doesn’t want to adopt someone else’s child? Why would he? He didn’t even know Rachel.’

The knuckles of Harrie’s clasped hands were white. ‘Would you at least talk to him about it? And you wouldn’t have to raise her by yourself. Friday and I would help as much as we could, wouldn’t we?’