Dorothy Eden (23 page)

He stood in front of his easel in his working clothes, paint-spattered trousers and a cravat tucked loosely inside the neck of his shirt. The sun struck sparks off his crow-black hair. His face was serious and absorbed as he worked. If the baby clapped his hands and crowed, or Eugenia made a witty remark, he would look up and laugh. There was an intimacy about their shared laughter.

‘We see things in the same way,’ Eugenia said. ‘I suppose it’s because we have lived the same kind of life. My husband laughs at different things from me.’

It was the first faint criticism she had made of Gilbert. She was ashamed of it, and bent her head to kiss the baby’s plump neck, adding, ‘Gilbert had a lonely hard childhood. It has made him very strong but practical and logical. He doesn’t have time to talk nonsense.’

‘And you like to talk nonsense?’

‘Yes, I do. One’s imagination should be exercised. I like to be fanciful. But this is a country for logic and hard facts.’

‘You don’t belong in it, you know. Any more than I do.’

‘Where do we belong?’ Eugenia asked, her heart beating fast.

‘In England, if you like. But more in Ireland. You could have all the whimsy you wanted there. We live on fairy tales.’ He looked at her consideringly, his brush poised in his hand. ‘I can see you there, walking in the ragged garden under the great oaks. Your dress trailing in the long grass. Your eyes the colour of the mist. That’s where you belong, alannah.’

This was not whimsy. This was dangerous fact. Eugenia pressed the baby against her breast until he wriggled in angry protest. She listened with compulsive fascination.

‘Who could think you could belong here? It’s subtlety you need. Atmosphere. Rain the colour of moss against the trees. Old grey houses like ghosts. Not savage sun and dust and birds that cackle like horrible old hags. And snakes as ugly and beautiful as sin.’ He was painting with swift sweeping strokes. Eugenia knew that he was talking about his own private nightmare. So he had one, too. Her lips trembled with emotion.

‘It’s the convicts whom I dream about. The men who have been in chains.’ She had thought she would never be able to say this to anyone. ‘One night I watched Gilbert beat one of them. It was necessary punishment, I know, and Gilbert says I must accept this fact. But I never will. I never will.’

‘He built you a grand house,’ said Colm O’Connor.

‘I know. But that was for his own satisfaction, too. His vanity, I suppose.’

‘And you in the house. He has good taste.’

‘For the rest of my life,’ Eugenia whispered. She hadn’t realized that fact so clearly before.

Colm O’Connor gave her his long considering look.

‘Well, now, aren’t we getting too fanciful? It’s those poor fellows in the huts down the hillside who are the prisoners, not the beautiful Mrs Massingham. And aren’t we a little too hard on this country? The sunsets are straight out of heaven—or flaming hell, if you like—and the colours of the birds make me feel as if I’m drunk or crazy. And the Blue Mountains have all the mists you could want. Isn’t it possible this will grow on us so that we’ll even forget the British Isles?’

Us, he had said.

‘You haven’t seen the black swans on the lake yet,’ Eugenia said irrelevantly. ‘I’m never sure whether I think them beautiful, or like mourners at a funeral. We must ride over to see them one day. How much longer will the portrait take, Colm?’

The name had slipped out unconsciously. Colour ran into her cheeks.

‘One week. Two weeks. Alannah.’

She couldn’t look at him. The caress in his voice had been too obvious.

‘It’s time I took the baby in. Will you bring Erasmus?’

The parrot suddenly fluttered its wings, screeching. Then it said in a low intimate voice, ‘Alannah.’

Their looks met in dismay. Colm gave the cage a shake. ‘Holy heaven, you’re too clever!’ Then he began to laugh, his face so crinkled in merriment that Eugenia had to join in, though less certainly.

One small Irish word that means nothing,’ he said.

‘Does it not?’

‘Well—perhaps a little more than nothing. But let me guard my tongue in front of that feathered witch.’

It seemed to be an accidental gesture that he held her arm to cross the garden.

Looking out of the window Molly Jarvis saw them approach the house. They made a handsome trio, she thought, the baby laughing as his mother swung him in the air, the Irishman all attention.

The mistress didn’t get that pink in her cheeks for the master. It was a pity that she didn’t seem to recognize the honeyed tongue of the Irish. She appeared to be taking the artist gentleman seriously.

‘Well, what do you make of him, Molly?’

Molly spun round, her breath hissing with shock.

‘I didn’t know you had come in, sir. I was waiting for the mistress to bring in the baby to feed.’

‘I’m hungry, too. Can you put something out early? I want to take the buggy in to Parramatta this afternoon to pick up stores.’

‘Certainly, sir. There’s cold mutton, or cold pork pie.’

‘Some of each, Molly. I’ll eat in the kitchen.’

He had begun to call her Molly soon after that terrible night of the frost when she had nearly lost her baby. He had given her no more than casual thanks for her help that night, but this calling her by her name had been his recognition.

She had been deeply pleased. She noticed, however, that she was always Mrs Jarvis, correctly, when the mistress was present. She hadn’t let herself wonder if that meant anything in particular. Her self-discipline had been practised too long for it to betray her now. She went about her work as usual, delighting in her baby, and finding it inevitable that the other baby, by tugging at her breast, also crept into her heart. It was hardly surprising. He was Gilbert Massingham’s son.

‘You didn’t answer my question, Molly.’ The deep line down his forehead that came in moments of stress or anger was very pronounced. He had glanced out of the window again, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘What do you think of our Irish friend?’

‘I’ve seen his kind before,’ Molly said.

‘You mean all charm, and no responsibilities?’

‘And the drink, sir.’

‘Ah! But he hasn’t touched a drop here except a glass of wine at dinner.’

‘The need will come over him all at once.’

Molly looked at the master with her direct gaze and saw him begin to smile in appreciation of her perceptiveness. She knew very well that he admired her for what she was, capable, observant, discreet. She wondered what he would have thought if he had known how often she remembered lovingly, a drunken kiss in the dark.

He had always been astonished at her adamant refusal to marry that dull little man, Tom Sloan.

In a moment, however, his attention had left her and the frown was cutting down his forehead again.

‘Well, Molly, my wife hasn’t had the experience of the world that you have. It’s a pity experience has to be painful, isn’t it?’

Since it was such a beautiful early winter day, as warm as an English summer, Eugenia had the impulsive idea, after luncheon, to ride over to the lake, to show Mr O’Connor the black swans of which she had been telling him. Gilbert had gone to Parramatta, Mrs Ashburton was dozing in the basket chair on the verandah, and Ellen would pick Christopher up after his nap. There was no reason why she and her sketching master should not broaden their horizons.

They rode at a leisurely pace down the dusty track and up the hillside until the house and vineyard were out of sight and there were only the low dipping hills, the lonely gum trees and thorn bushes, the thin sharp cries of peewits, and, in a far hollow, the lake ringed with rushes and water weeds.

From a distance it was like a jewel, sapphire blue, but Eugenia knew that the water was stagnant and scum-covered, and that in a drought it evaporated under the blazing sun, leaving only a cracked crater.

Today, fortunately, it was splendidly full, with small waves blown by the wind. And the black swans were there, a dozen or more, sailing in their funereal splendour across the fretted water. Other smaller water birds fussed about the rushes, filling the air with their cries.

Excited by the sight, Colm kicked his horse into a gallop and was off down the hillside to the water’s edge. He was a fine horseman, as was to be expected of a man who had ridden with the Galway Blazers. Eugenia had anticipated this, but not that his beautifully upright figure with the high-held black head would make such an impact on her senses.

She began to laugh aloud elatedly as she rode after him.

‘This is wonderful,’ he called, dismounting at the lake’s edge. He made a sweep of his arm. ‘The lake may never be exactly like this again.’

Eugenia pulled up her horse at his side. She was still laughing.

‘It often is.’

‘Never. Patterns change. Will the sun be exactly at this brilliance, or the wind make just the right amount of movement on the water, or the swans make such a formal design? Or you’—he looked up at her with his extraordinarily eloquent black eyes—‘be sliding off your horse’—he opened his arms—‘to lay your head against my heart?’

‘Colm! No!’

‘But you can’t stay up there forever.’ His voice was gently teasing. It was her own wild imagination that had read too much into it.

‘You are very poetical all at once, Mr Colm O’Connor.’

‘Wouldn’t I need to be dumb and blind if I were not? The place and the company. Now your look is reminding me that we came here to work.’

She nodded, allowing him to assist her to dismount. If her heightened senses had anything to do with it, she would paint a masterpiece.

But how could she have been so stupid as to come here alone with him? She should have brought Phoebe and Ellen and the babies, and had a picnic.

And denied the wild life fluttering in her pulses?

Colm was unpacking the satchel of sketching materials. He found a whitened log and told her to sit on it and begin work. He himself intended to move quietly nearer to the water’s edge, and attempt to get some close-up sketches of the plump black terns which were skittering about so busily among the reeds.

‘This is wonderful material for my book.’

The danger removed a few paces, she pouted. She had thought he would sit near to her and observe her work.

And that, she told herself sternly, was silly coquettish behaviour. She must calm herself and work seriously.

This was less difficult than she had expected. Presently she became absorbed. It was quite an hour later that Colm came to observe her progress, and comment on what she had done.

‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘That is your best work yet. I believe you have a gift for painting birds. This one in flight—’

‘I felt inspired,’ Eugenia said, without meaning to, and abruptly he dropped down beside her and said with repressed intensity, ‘I am dying of love for you.’

‘Oh! My darling! No.’

‘My darling, yes. And you are no more blind than I am.’

Eugenia sat still.

‘We shouldn’t have come here.’

‘Here is just another place. I love you as much in your garden, watching you walk down the stairs, listening to you at the piano, playing with your baby.’ He laid his hand over hers. ‘Keep on looking at me like that. Your eyes are full of love.’

‘No,’ she whispered.

‘There’s a lake at Lirrisfall in Ireland, too. No black swans, but a white heron. And old trees covered in moss. You could walk there in your white dress.’

‘Colm, this is all a dream.’

‘So it is, and I’m a dreamer.’

‘You can’t imagine me there in reality.’

That was a mistake. The quick pain in his eyes was a pain in her heart.

‘It’s only because I don’t dare to.’

‘No, you mustn’t. We’re both a little mad. I have a husband and a child. As if I need to tell you.’

‘And you were only half alive until I came.’

She put her fingers over his lips. ‘Don’t say any more. If things aren’t said—perhaps they aren’t facts.’

‘I want you, alannah.’

She stood up in a flurry. The purpose in his eyes was so clear that she could not sustain his gaze. ‘I told you not to speak—not to put things in words. We must go. It’s late. Gilbert will be home. Baby will be crying for me. He knows I always put him to bed. There. Those are facts.’

‘Sure, and they are, too. And the light goes out of your eyes as you tell them to me.’ He reached up and seized her arms. She laughed, not believing his intention. But when she went to move away she found she could not break his grip. It was so strong that she lost her balance and tumbled forward, and was completely in his arms. As he had meant her to be. Perhaps as she also had meant to be, for, mysteriously, her resistance died and she could not have struggled if she had wished. When he kissed her such a soft limp pleasurable swooning feeling came over her that she had to cling to him for fear she would fall. She only wanted to be laid on the warm grass, as he was doing, and her clothing loosened, as he was also doing in an instinctive way.

When he lifted his lips from hers she gasped, ‘Don’t go away!’

‘Just for a moment, alannah.’ He was loosening his own clothes, flinging off his jacket, untying his cravat, undoing buttons.

Eugenia closed her eyes, feeling the sun golden on her eyelids. It darkened to shadow as it was obscured by the down-bending head above hers. She opened her eyes momentarily. Her voice, deepened beyond recognition, said, ‘It would be better if you were to take my skirt right off. Otherwise I might be smothered by my petticoats.’ A small burst of laughter shook her, then died in the golden dizziness and the warmth and the sun exploding inside her…

The day had vanished all at once. The sudden antipodean dusk had never seemed so treacherously rapid. The last mile of the journey home was ridden in a blanketing moonless dark.

‘Don’t be in such a hurry,’ Colm said.

‘We’re late. It was foolish of me not to notice the time.’

‘Foolish if you had,’ Colm corrected.

Eugenia’s body felt warm and glowing, as if she were soaked in sunlight. She was languorous and dreamy, yet one sharp rational part of her brain kept hurrying her on. Baby would be over-tired and screaming. Gilbert would be striding up and down impatiently as he always did when she was late to dinner. He liked her to be dressed and waiting for him. Mrs Ashburton would have had an extra glass of wine which would have made her flushed and talkative.