Dorothy Eden (22 page)

Mrs Newman, a pretty new face, was swept away. Eugenia, fanning herself at the open window—the chandeliers with their myriad lighted candles were very decorative but made the room far too hot—heard someone saying,

‘The beautiful Mrs Massingham. I have heard so much about you. May I introduce myself?’

The tall young man bowing before her was slim and dark-haired, with black eyes in a serious brooding face. He introduced himself as Colm O’Connor. Marion Noakes, the doctor’s wife, in Sydney, had told him about Eugenia.

‘She is always singing your praises. I have been looking forward to meeting you. It isn’t often one of your sex speaks so admiringly of another.’

Since this last remark seemed to be a question, Eugenia made an automatic answer, ‘A deplorable failing we have, Mr O’Connor,’ while trying to remember where she had heard of this young man.

‘Mrs Noakes told me that if ever I had the good fortune to meet you I would certainly want to paint your portrait.’

‘Now of course I know who you are. Mr Colm O’Connor, the artist. Yes, I do remember someone talking of you. I think it was Mrs Wentworth. You had painted her children.’

‘That is correct. And if you are about to ask me what I am doing in Parramatta I will speak the truth. It is not primarily to meet you, although I hoped this would occur, but to make a sketch of Government House.’ He smiled with a sparkle in his dark eyes. ‘You see, I am coming up in the world. I am, temporarily anyway, official artist to the Government.’

Eugenia raised an eyebrow. ‘Coming up in the world, Mr O’Connor. Are you not up already?’

The sparkle remained in his eyes. Eugenia found it very attractive. He had the manners of a gentleman, combined with a pleasant informality and originality that was refreshing.

‘Well, I can assure you that I am not a ticket-of-leave man, nor do I have a prison sentence behind me.’

‘Mr O’Connor! What an extraordinary statement to make.’

‘Not at all, in this country. One meets a miscellaneous variety of people, even at Government House. Do you see that person engaged in conversation with your husband? Twenty years ago he was transported for forgery. Now he is a rich landowner, and would like to have a part in running the country.’

‘And my husband, I have no doubt at all, is attempting to sell him Yarrabee wine,’ Eugenia murmured, her own eyes twinkling. ‘But how did you know that was my husband?’

‘I made a point of finding out.’

‘Why?’

‘I was interested. I wondered who in this room a woman like you would have married.’

‘And?’

‘And what, Mrs Massingham?’

‘If you make a statement like that, you must complete it. Does my husband have your approval?’

‘How can I answer that until I have met him? Not that I will be anything but prejudiced since he owns you.’

‘Owns?’ Eugenia laughed merrily. This was the kind of light flirtatious conversation she enjoyed, and was accustomed to. For more than a year, she reflected, she had had nothing but tedious Australian comments on the drought, the state of the natives or the sheep or the convicts, or, more particularly, the vines. She suddenly felt at home, her wits sharpened, her eyes pleased by the graceful appearance of Mr Colm O’Connor. ‘Because one is married is one owned? But that has another aspect. Perhaps I also own my husband.’

‘Fortunate fellow.’

‘Mr O’Connor, you are a flatterer.’

He shook his head. ‘No, no. I speak the strictest truth.’ He smiled, but Eugenia thought that she detected melancholy or loneliness in his eyes. When he went on to say that it was very hot indoors, couldn’t they step out on the verandah, she acquiesced at once.

‘What has brought you to this country, Mr O’Connor? Are you a wanderer?’

‘Yes. A confirmed one. But not idle. I am preparing a book on the flora and fauna of the antipodes. Later I intend going to New Zealand, though I hear that is much more primitive than Australia. The natives are inclined to be warlike.’

‘But at least they don’t have dangerous convicts at large,’ Eugenia said. ‘Perhaps I am foolish to allow this hazard of Australian life to prey on me so much. I had an alarming experience shortly after I arrived here.’

‘What was that? Do you care to tell me?’

‘Oh, a brush with an escaped prisoner. Ever since then I have felt responsible for his death. A well-deserved death, everyone assured me.’

‘I can see that you are too sensitive. Are you often homesick?’

In the warm darkness, responding to the sympathetic voice, Eugenia cried, ‘Oh, yes, yes, sometimes I could die of it,’ before she could stop herself. ‘There is so much I miss,’ she added defensively. ‘Especially one favourite sister, and my parents, and my old home. I have a very handsome home now, but it’s new. It takes a long time to grow accustomed to new things, to belong in them. My husband says we are making our own history, but I still prefer a place that already has a past.’

‘You don’t need to apologize for those feelings, Mrs Massingham. I sympathize entirely. I come from an old house, too. In Ireland. Galway. It has been in my family for six generations.’

‘Then you’re Irish?’

‘On my father’s side. My mother was English. She died when I was born. Now I have a stepmother, and two half-brothers and a sister who is the toast of Galway.’

Eugenia turned on him passionately. ‘But don’t you miss it all! How can you be happy in this great crude country?’

‘At this moment I am very happy.’

‘That is just being gallant. You have evaded my question.’ Eugenia leaned over the verandah rail, sniffing at the still unfamiliar odours of strange shrubs. ‘At Yarrabee I have planted honeysuckle to climb up the verandah posts. It flowered this summer, and the scent takes me back to England. I sit outside in the dusk and grow nostalgic. My roses have bloomed, too. And I have sweet peas and stock and marguerite daisies and cherry pie.’

‘So you are bringing a bit of England to this great crude country, as you call it?’

‘Don’t we all try to do that? What is your bit of Ireland in Australia, Mr O’Connor?’

‘Meetings like this.’

‘Do you have—many of these?’

‘None at all until this evening.’

Eugenia opened and closed her fan. She couldn’t stay out here. Gilbert would be looking for her. He expected her to shine at functions like this. She should be talking to the emancipists and cattle breeders, the politicians and get-rich-quick landowners. And to their wives who were shopkeepers’ or farmers’ daughters and none the worse for it, except that it made them desperately dull in topics of conversation.

She was twenty-three years old, a married woman and a mother. She wore the badge of her husband’s approval, the too-large diamond brooch, in the lace at her bosom. Her days of youthful flirtation were over.

‘Would you consider it impertinent of me, Mrs Massingham, if I asked permission to paint your portrait?’

Eugenia’s eyes sparkled with delight.

‘I was hoping you would ask me that. I would be immensely flattered. But it would mean sittings?’

‘Would that be so tedious? Or don’t you have time?’

‘Oh, I have plenty of time. Plenty,’ she repeated, thinking that this would mean Mr O’Connor’s coming to Yarrabee, walking in her garden, beginning to make the history of her house. If, that was, his tall graceful slightly melancholy figure made any impact on it.

‘I would have to ask my husband,’ she said.

‘Would he have any objections? Surely not. He would be proud to have your picture hanging on the wall. Anyway, I am sure he refuses you nothing.’

‘With my baby, perhaps. I believe he would like that. Yes, you are perfectly right. He does refuse me very little.’ Eugenia put her hand impulsively on his arm. ‘Come and ask him now. If you have been commissioned to paint Government House, I am sure that he will be impressed. And another thing, I might persuade you to give me some lessons in water-colours. I am reasonably proficient, but not nearly so much so as my sister Sarah.’

Gilbert had been looking for her. She caught his look of enquiry when he saw her companion.

She began to laugh leaning her hand on Mr O’Connor’s arm as she said eagerly, ‘Gilbert, this is Mr Colm O’Connor who is an artist. He has asked if he can paint a portrait of me and Baby. Please let him. I think it would be the greatest fun.’

Gilbert’s eyes were on her flushed cheeks. Why did she have to glow like a schoolgirl when she was excited? Because she was excited and she supposed there was no deceiving Gilbert about that.

‘What are your qualifications, Mr O’Connor?’ he asked.

‘Various commissions I can tell you about. A book I am preparing. But this is hardly the place to talk business. Perhaps I might bring some of my sketches to Yarrabee, where you will have time to study them, and decide on their merits.’

‘I know nothing about painting. The only artistic knowledge I have is in assessing the merits of a good wine. Are you a wine lover, Mr O’Connor?’

‘I scarcely touch it,’ Mr O’Connor replied easily. ‘But I could do a panoramic scene of your vineyards, also, if you wish. It could be a small record of the history of Australia.’

‘It could indeed,’ Gilbert said thoughtfully. ‘I believe I like the idea.’

‘But I must insist that portraits are my principal forte.’

‘Very well, you may do my wife and my son. If I approve of your ability. I won’t have a hash made of them.’

‘Gilbert, Mr O’Connor has painted the Wentworth children, among others.’

‘That is still not to say I will approve of what he makes of you.’ Gilbert tucked his arm in Eugenia’s possessively. ‘My wife has the kind of looks that will not be easily captured on canvas, I fancy.’

‘My plain face,’ Eugenia protested.

Mr O’Connor gave a half-smile.

‘I am inclined to agree with your husband’s assessment, rather than your own, Mrs Massingham. Then I take it I may present myself when I have finished my present commission?’

As O’Connor gave his slight graceful bow and walked away, Gilbert said, ‘Don’t be taken in by him. He may be a good artist, but it’s easy enough to see what else he is.’

‘What?’

‘A remittance man, of course.’

Eugenia withdrew her arm from her husband’s. The glow was fading from her cheeks. ‘I have never known exactly what a remittance man is.’

‘Oh, come, my love. You’ve been in this country long enough. You must have heard the term. It means a man who represents such an embarrassment to his family that they pay him to live in a foreign country, the farther off the better. The trouble usually lies with the bottle.’

‘But Mr O’Connor said he hardly ever touched wine.’

‘Perhaps not wine. More likely rum or brandy. He’d be all the better to take a glass of wine now and then. It doesn’t intoxicate in the same way.’

‘I won’t have you defaming him before you know him,’ Eugenia said indignantly. ‘This can’t be true. He is so presentable, so pleasant.’

‘Then perhaps he has reformed. Let’s hope so. And I must say it’s a capital idea to have a panoramic view made of the vineyard, as well as your portrait.’

‘W
E ARE ALL MUCH
enlivened,’ Eugenia wrote to Sarah, ‘by the visit of a young Irishman called Colm O’Connor. He is painting a portrait of Baby and me sitting in the garden with the house in the background.

‘At Mr O’Connor’s request I am wearing my white silk dress with the green velvet sash. I have my hair done in one thick curl over my left shoulder. Baby sits on my lap, and, as an original touch, Erasmus perches in his cage at my side.

‘For the first time since I came to Australia I feel I am leading the kind of life I enjoy. Dressing and playing with Baby, giving orders about meals, supervising Phoebe and Ellen who are still lacking in almost every virtue but willingness, walking round the garden with Peabody, since he would be extremely hurt if I neglected this important feature of the day, sitting for an hour or more, if Baby is good, to Mr O’Connor, doing my own sketching, and my needlework when I sit with Mrs Ashburton, who also would have hurt feelings if I failed to give her some of my time. The day simply flies. Then it is time to dress for dinner. This is a pleasant meal now that the days are shorter and the lamps are lit and the curtains drawn. Mr O’Connor is an excellent conversationalist. He even persuades Gilbert to be quite lyrical on various subjects. Gilbert is not an easy talker except about the subject he knows best, viticulture. But Mr O’Connor has that peculiarly Irish gift of making everyone seem witty, even Mrs Ashburton. I have not laughed so much since I came to Australia…’

It could not last, of course. The portrait would be finished and Colm O’Connor would go on his way.

It was a very good thing that it could not last. For Eugenia was perfectly aware of the fact that she was forming too close an attachment to him. She believed that she had known this would happen from the first moment of their meeting. Her heart had beaten more quickly then, and now it beat faster every time she heard his footsteps or his voice. She found herself taking exaggerated pains with her appearance, scolding Phoebe if her lace caps or her muslin gowns were not immaculately laundered and ironed, her petticoats starched, her shoes shining. She went down to breakfast instead of having it brought on a tray to her room, took a much more active interest in household matters, and even talked animatedly to Gilbert on vineyard affairs.

When Gilbert wanted to know why she was suddenly converted to the fascination of viticulture she had a moment of guilt and remorse. She was not converted, she still thought the smell of the cellars nauseating, and the hazards of the industry too agonizing. But how could she confess that she merely wanted their guest to see her in nothing but a favourable light, that she was indulging in vanity and hypocrisy? She looked in the mirror and saw that for the first time in her life she was nearly beautiful. She hid her face in her hands in shame, then looked again, telling herself that it was maternity, the natural fulfilment of a woman, that was making her glow like this.

And congenial companionship. She hadn’t talked so much since she had left Lichfield Court. She realized how starved she had been for good conversation. Now words flowed out of her compulsively. She sat half in the sun, half in the shade, with the baby playing on her lap, the parrot at her side, her stiff white silk skirts spread gracefully, her wide-brimmed leghorn hat with the green ribbons cast negligently on the grass, and talked and laughed until Mr O’Connor had to tell her to be still a moment, there was an expression he wanted to catch.