Morgan's Law (6 page)

The Morgans' property, Burrapine Station, had a large and imposing stone entrance. Turning into the driveway, Sarah drove carefully down a long, muddy, tree-lined road.

Several of the paddocks she passed were freshly ploughed, while others were in various stages of crop growth. She suddenly lamented her complete ignorance of all things rural, from crops to sheep and cattle to whatever else was involved in running a farm.

The driveway continued on for about two kilometres until a cluster of trees gave way to a homestead with a wide verandah. Sarah pulled up on the circular gravel driveway and stepped out of the car before walking up a neatly trimmed path to the front door of the homestead.

An attractive brunette somewhere in her early sixties appeared, smiling as she opened the door. ‘You must be Sarah,' she said. ‘I'm Carmel. Please come in.'

Inside, the house was quiet and cool, with high ceilings and lots of dark, formal antique furniture. Carmel led Sarah into a sitting room, where an elderly couple sat side by side, sipping tea.

‘This is my mother- and father-in-law, Ruth and Albert,' said Carmel.

The elderly couple stood to greet Sarah then gestured for her to make herself comfortable on a floral-patterned velvet armchair. The room was lined with heavy-framed portraits of what Sarah assumed were family ancestors.

‘Would you like a tea or coffee?' asked Carmel.

‘Coffee, thanks,' Sarah said gratefully.

While Carmel was in the kitchen, Sarah chatted to Albert and Ruth, who told her they'd been married for over sixty years.

‘So, what was it you wanted help with?' said Carmel, reappearing with a plate of delicious homemade biscuits and a pot of brewed coffee.

Nervously, Sarah rubbed her hands on her lap. ‘Well, my grandmother passed away recently and it seems that Negallan was an important part of her life when she was younger because in her will she requested that I bring her ashes up here. Unfortunately, though, I don't have a lot of information to go on and I'm trying to find someone who might have known her. Her name was Eliza Jones but no one seems to know of any Jones family around here, let alone an Eliza Jones.'

‘No Joneses in all the time I've lived here,' agreed Albert, and Ruth nodded.

‘I showed this photo of my grandmother as a young woman to Mick Howle and he immediately identified her as Rose Morgan,' said Sarah, moving over to the elderly couple to show them the photo.

‘Where did you get this?' gasped Albert, after putting on horn-rimmed glasses.

‘It was among the things my grandmother left me when she died.'

‘That's my sister, Rose,' said Albert, his eyes watering with emotion. ‘My God, I don't believe it.' His voice was barely a whisper. ‘I just don't believe it,' he repeated after a few moments. ‘I remember when this photo was taken like it was yesterday.' His voice seemed to drift away as he lost himself in a memory.

Sarah was unsure what to do. She felt terrible for springing the news on this poor old man the way she had. She glanced over at Carmel, and saw the woman was watching her father-in-law with a worried frown.

He spoke again. ‘For years, I've been dreaming of the day we finally got word on her . . . I always thought she'd come back . . .'

‘Dad, do you want to have a lie-down?' Carmel asked, touching his sleeve nervously.

‘No, I don't want to bloody well lie down. I'm old, not senile!' he snapped irritably, shaking off her hand. After a second he seemed to remember Sarah was still there. For a long moment he simply stared at her, his gaze seeming to search her face. ‘Now that I look at you, I see the similarity,' he said quietly.

Ruth reached over and took the photo from her husband, and Sarah caught a glimpse of emotion flash across the old woman's face as she peered at the photo intently. ‘Well, I don't see that much of a resemblance,' she said, handing it over to her daughter-in-law.

Sarah felt the shrewd gaze of the older woman settle upon her face and tried not to squirm in her seat. ‘You said yourself your grandmother's name was Jones. There's no proof this is a photo of her—it could have been mixed up in your grandmother's belongings.'

‘Well, that's a possibility, I suppose . . . although the photo looks very much like my gran.'

‘Wait here,' Albert said, struggling to his feet.

‘Oh, for goodness sake, Albert, where are you going?'

Ruth called out as they all watched the old man hurry from the room.

Sarah shifted uncomfortably as the two women looked back at her in the silence that followed the old man's departure.

‘Look, I didn't mean to cause any trouble. It's just that Mick Howle was the first person who'd recognised her; it was the only lead I had. I'm still not sure what it all means. It doesn't really make any sense.'

‘Well, of course not. How can it possibly make any sense when it's obvious that we're talking about two completely different people?' Ruth snapped.

The sound of feet shuffling up the hallway drew their eyes back towards the door. Albert, puffing heavily, waved a dark brown book triumphantly in the air.

Sending an exasperated glance at her husband as he settled back on the lounge beside her, Ruth asked irritably, ‘What on earth are you doing?'

Albert leaned forward and placed the book on the coffee table in front of them. Sarah could see that it was actually an old photo album and watched curiously as the old man flipped through its pages seeming to search for something. Within a few moments he let out a grunt of satisfaction, turning the book around to face Sarah and excitedly tapping the page with a stubby finger. ‘Take a look at that.'

Sarah leaned forward to look at the picture Albert was pointing at and her breath caught. A photo taken on the front steps of the same house they were inside showed a young man standing with his arm across the shoulders of a dark-haired young girl . . . the same young girl in her grandmother's photograph.

‘See, I told you. That's Rose.'

Sarah let her gaze fall upon the other photos on the page and a small buzz of excitement went though her. A photo of what she presumed was Rose as a toddler was almost identical to a photo Gran had on her lounge room wall of Sarah at the same age. There was far too much of a family resemblance for it to be just some weird coincidence. Could Gran really be this Rose Morgan woman? But why had she changed her name? The question burned on her lips, but she could tell Albert was still very much in shock at having been confronted by his sister's photograph. He seemed such a fragile old thing, she wasn't sure she should bombard him with her questions straightaway.

‘I can't believe it,' he murmured over and over again, his eyes moving between Sarah's face and the photo she'd brought along. To her dismay, she saw tears forming in the man's eyes.

Taking out a neatly pressed hanky from his pocket, Albert dabbed at his eyes and blew his nose, his gaze fixed on Sarah as though she might somehow disappear from his sight at any moment.

‘After all this time . . . I'd given up hope of ever finding out what happened to her. You said this was left to you when she died . . .'

‘Yes, she passed away just over six months ago now,' said Sarah gently.

‘Six months . . .'

It was horrible to watch the pain cross the old man's face as he realised he'd missed seeing his long-lost sister by only six months.

‘Tell me about her life. What was it like?' asked Albert shakily.

Sarah had to swallow hard over the tightening of her own throat. ‘Well, she lived in the same house in Roseville, on the north shore of Sydney, for well over sixty years. She worked really hard most of her life. She took in people's washing and ironing for a long time and she loved to sew. She was always in demand to make wedding and formal gowns. She was still sewing for clients right up until a few years ago—she loved it.' As a child, Sarah had devotedly watched the beautiful brides coming in for their dress fittings. She loved the shiny materials her gran deftly cut, pinned and sewed together. Reams of silk, satin, chiffon, taffeta and lace were stacked on shelves in Gran's sewing room.

‘She married?' Albert asked.

Sarah hesitated—it was a touchy subject. Gran had never spoken about him, so for the sake of keeping up appearances it was generally accepted that Jocelyn's father died before he'd ever been a part of her life, and therefore was never discussed.

However, airing her family's dirty laundry in front of these people so soon after meeting them seemed somewhat crass, so Sarah decided to stick with the assumed truth she'd been brought up on—choosing to avoid the direct question altogether. ‘Apparently, my grandfather died before my mother was born. She did it pretty tough being a single mum back then, but she made sure my mother never went without. She was a very strong woman.' And she had been. During the last years of the Second World War life must have been terribly hard, and Gran wouldn't have been the only widow doing her best to bring up a child. There would have been many husbands who hadn't returned from the war.

For the next few minutes Albert proceeded to ask question after question and Sarah did her best to answer them. She saw the desperate need for reassurance in his gaze and knew her desire to find out the reasons why her gran had kept this part of her life a secret for so long would have to wait.

‘Do you have any brothers and sisters?' asked Albert.

‘No. I'm an only child, like my mother.' She felt as though she owed it to Albert to talk about Gran some more, but he was clearly finding it distressing. Thankfully Carmel quickly stepped in and guided the conversation back to general chitchat, and after a little while Albert composed himself and encouraged her to talk some more about her memories of growing up with Gran.

‘My father died when I was young and Mum . . . travelled a lot, so I spent quite a lot of time with Gran.' Sarah had never quite mastered the skill of explaining her mother's lifestyle to others. Growing up it had just been an understanding of sorts. As an in-demand party planner to the rich and famous, Jocelyn was a natural. What better way to combine a person's love of a good party and hobnobbing with the wealthy. Her mother hadn't needed to work after Sarah's father died—he'd left her comfortably well off—but Jocelyn was never going to be a stay-at-home kind of mum. Although Sarah often longed for a mother like most other kids at school had, Gran had always been there to fill the gap. Sarah didn't feel as though she was in the way around Gran.

Children had never been in Jocelyn's plans, and she'd turned forty without ever succumbing to the maternal urge. She'd always been a party girl, enjoying her life and all the social events and travel that being married to a rich husband provided. But Sarah's father had been almost twenty years her mother's senior and desperate for a child.

He'd convinced Jocelyn to have a baby, but then died of a heart attack within months of Sarah's birth, leaving her mother widowed, with a child she'd never really wanted to have in the first place. For the early years of her life, Sarah could barely recall her mother being around. For the most part, Sarah had accepted this as normal—it wasn't until she got older and went to school that she noticed her friends had a very different normal to hers.

She could see her mother's seemingly cold rejection of her as a baby a bit more clearly once she was an adult—her mother had been grieving. Jocelyn had loved her husband very much and had felt betrayed, hurt and abandoned. Sarah realised now she'd probably also had more than a touch of post-natal depression. However, it still hurt.

‘Albert, for goodness sake, give the poor girl a rest,' his wife cut in after a while, with a smile that only barely covered her exasperation.

‘Oh no,' Sarah protested quickly. ‘I don't mind, really.'

‘No, Ruth is quite right. I'm sorry that I've been interrogating you all afternoon,' Albert said.

‘Are you staying in town?' Carmel asked.

‘Yes, at the Royal.'

‘You can't stay in the pub. We've got plenty of room out here,' Albert said.

Sarah saw her own surprise mirrored in the faces of the other two women. ‘Oh no, I couldn't,' she said. ‘The pub's fine.'

‘We can't let family stay in town, it's not right,' Albert protested.

‘Albert!' Ruth cut in.

‘No, really, I'm fine in town. I don't plan on staying very long. I'm already unpacked and everything,' Sarah added with a bright smile. The last thing she'd expected when she'd popped over for afternoon tea was to be asked to move in with these people!

An awkward silence followed and she noticed that Albert was still not happy that his offer had been so effectively dismissed by everyone else in the room.

‘Tash from the pub was telling me this district used to be a big cotton-growing area,' Sarah said, trying to ease the awkwardness. ‘Did you grow cotton here on Burrapine?'

‘We did,' Albert nodded. ‘We've diversified into other crops now though.' The old man seemed to lose his spark a little as he leaned forward and refilled his cup from the pot on the table in front of him.

‘Would you like another coffee, dear?' Carmel asked.

‘No, thank you,' said Sarah. ‘Afternoon tea was lovely, and I've already taken up too much of your time.'

‘You must come back again. There's so much more I want to know about Rose and what she was doing for all those years,' said Albert, reaching out to put a hand on Sarah's arm.

‘I'd like that,' said Sarah, smiling warmly.

Driving back down the long driveway, Sarah found herself snatching a glance in her rear-view mirror at the homestead as it grew smaller behind her. It was the strangest feeling, knowing her gran had once lived there. Had she looked back the day she'd left, never to return? Had she left with a heavy heart? Or had she been running towards something brighter?