The River Charm (13 page)

The dog, tail wagging, looked so pleased with his clever­ness that Charlotte and James laughed for joy.

‘Who's a clever boy?' called Charlotte.

‘James, you should have waited to find out how deep the river was,' Mamma mock-scolded, but her twinkling black eyes showed she was not really cross. ‘You too, Charlotte – you might both have been swept away to the sea.'

‘Mamma, I could see it wasn't dangerous,' James retorted. ‘We're not frightened of a little water.'

‘This is a wonderful adventure,' decided Charlotte. ‘I wish we could keep riding forever.'

Mamma laughed, tipping her dark head back towards the sky. Charlotte thought her mother looked younger and less careworn than she had in a long time. She remembered back to the days when her mother was always laughing and joking. That was a long time ago.

‘Come on,' James cried, waving his siblings on. ‘Enough talking. Let's get there.'

The horses sensed the journey's end and picked up their pace, alternatively cantering and trotting up the trail.

The forest opened into a wide clearing. At the base of another mountain were two bark-and-slab huts, bleached grey by the sun. To the left was a series of timber stockyards, and to the right a narrow mountain creek tumbled over grey boulders and mossy rocks on its way to join the river. In front was a wide, green clearing, nibbled into a lawn by the resident wombats.

‘Budgong,' announced Mamma. ‘Our sanctuary.'

 

13

Swanton

 

Present Day

Aunt Jessamine stopped talking and pulled her coat closer about her body.

Millie shivered. The shadows of the trees had grown long as the sun had moved to the west.

‘Don't stop, please, Aunt Jessamine,' Millie begged. ‘What happened next? Were they safe at Budgong? Did Mr Barton follow them? Did they ever go back to Oldbury?'

Aunt Jessamine laughed. ‘I'm so glad you are enjoying my story,' she replied. ‘But my poor old voice is getting tired and it's cold. Let's go back home for a very late lunch!'

‘Ooh, yes please, I'm starving,' Bella agreed.

‘Oh, Aunt Jessamine, I'm so sorry,' apologised Mum. ‘We shouldn't have kept you out here so long.'

Millie felt so disappointed. She hated the spell to be broken. She didn't want to leave Oldbury.

‘Could we come back again, please, Aunt Jessamine?' asked Millie. ‘We haven't had a chance to explore the gardens or the back of the house. It's so beautiful here.'

Mum smiled at Millie's enthusiasm. Aunt Jessamine nodded seriously.

‘Perhaps tomorrow morning,' she replied. ‘I had thought we could go for a drive to some of the local historic villages, like Moss Vale and Berrima, or drive into Bowral for lunch?'

‘I'd much rather come back here,' insisted Millie. ‘We saw Berrima on the drive down. Please, please could we come back?'

Aunt Jessamine's face softened. She rose and pulled Millie up by the hand. The charm bracelet jingled. Millie saw Aunt Jessamine take in her short, rough fingernails and the red, torn quicks.

‘Of course, Millie,' said Aunt Jessamine. ‘Let's go and make sure everything is locked up securely.'

Millie remembered she was still wearing Aunt Jessamine's charm bracelet. Reluctantly she began to take it off. ‘Here is your bracelet – thanks for letting me wear it. It's so beautiful and precious.'

Aunt Jessamine gazed at Millie for a moment. ‘Why don't you wear it, just for the weekend,' she suggested. ‘I know you will take good care of it.'

Millie beamed with pleasure. ‘Thanks, I would love to.'

Mum and Aunt Jessamine walked behind while Bella and Millie ran ahead. Bella chatted excitedly, but Millie was lost in the stories of Oldbury long ago.

The afternoon was spent lazing around, reading books and exploring. Millie borrowed Aunt Jessamine's books, which included copies of sketches and paintings by the Atkinsons, particularly Louisa. She found a delightful sketch of two chubby possums and began to copy it, trying to reproduce its sense of mischievous playfulness.

As Millie was coming back from the bathroom, she overheard Mum and Aunt Jessamine chatting in the kitchen, preparing dinner. Millie could smell the mouth-watering aroma of garlic and onions sizzling in the pot.

‘Millie seems to be quite a shy girl,' Aunt Jessamine commented as she chopped carrots. Millie froze. She hated it when people called her shy.

Mum sighed. ‘I never think of her as shy at home,' she confessed, worry in her voice. ‘But her teachers tell me she's quite withdrawn at school and doesn't like to join in class discussions. I think there's a lot of loud and very self-assured girls in her class, which shakes her confidence.'

Millie thought of the noisy girls at school as being like a flock of parrots – with their perfect plumage, raucous chatter, eye-rolling and sharp claws. They seemed to enjoy pecking and cawing at the other girls, fighting over who would be queen of the parrots.

‘They do say that an empty vessel makes the most noise,' quipped Aunt Jessamine. ‘Your Millie is obviously sensitive and thoughtful, and a talented artist. I think she will blossom into a very special and delightful young lady, who will leave the outspoken girls far behind. You should be proud of her.'

‘I am,' Mum replied, sounding as though she had a lump in her throat. ‘Very proud.'

Millie felt a sense of warmth and happiness flood through her. She turned away and went back to her drawing with renewed determination.

In the evening, after a simple meal of lasagne and salad, the girls cleared the table and washed up. When everything was dried and put away, they joined Mum and Aunt Jessamine in the sitting room in front of a cheery log fire. Bella curled up on the sofa while Millie sat on the rug with the two golden labradors.

‘Could you tell us some more of the story, Aunt Jessamine?' asked Millie. ‘Please? I'm dying to know what happened next.'

Aunt Jessamine nodded and took a sip of her herbal tea. ‘Where were we?' she asked.

‘They had just arrived at Budgong,' Millie reminded her. ‘After fleeing Mr Barton and Oldbury.'

‘Ahhh, yes,' said Aunt Jessamine. ‘Their sanctuary . . .'

 

14

Sanctuary

 

Budgong, Summer 1839

Two grizzled stockmen wandered out from one of the huts, smoking short, black pipes, their faces covered in thick, long beards. They were accompanied by a group of several dogs – a mixture of cattle dogs and kangaroo-hunting dogs – who barked and growled at Samson until one of the stockmen ordered them back onto the verandah.

‘Good morning, Jim,' called Mamma. ‘Good morning, David.'

‘G'day, ma'am,' they said, eyeing the large group of children and pets with some trepidation.

‘We didn't expect you for another few weeks . . .' said David, who was usually called Bluey by the men. He removed his pipe from between his brown, chipped teeth.

‘No,' Mamma admitted, ‘but unfortunately circumstances changed and we have come here to live. I apologise that I did not have time to send you word.'

The men looked shocked. They were used to living in this remote clearing with little interference from the main estate. Someone would ride out regularly and bring back supplies by bullock, and Mamma would come once every three months to check on the cattle and the men, but other­wise they were left to their own devices – principally smoking pipes, hunting kangaroos and checking on the cattle. The mistress and her children living here was not what they had in mind.

‘Well, look lively, lads,' called Mr Ash. ‘Come and help unload.'

The men reluctantly started forward to help.

Mamma gave directions, one hand on her hip. The stockmen moved their own belongings out of the larger hut to make room for them. Jim scuttled to and fro. Bluey swaggered slowly, as though to prove he was no one's subordinate, especially not a woman's with four children in tow.

Charlotte pushed open the heavy plank door to their new home, and her heart sank to her boots. It was one large room, roughly built of sawn log slabs with a bark roof. The floor was packed dirt. The windows had no glass, merely timber shutters that could be opened to let in light and air. At one end was an open fireplace for cooking and warmth, with a mantle decorated with spurs, hobble chains, horseshoes and a coiled stockwhip.

All the furniture was rough-hewn bush carpentry, built from felled gum trees – a slab table and three timber platforms that doubled as beds and seats. The room smelled of pipe smoke, ash and rum.

‘Oh,' said Emily, carrying a basket of provisions into the room. ‘It is . . .' Words failed her.

‘Dismal?' Charlotte dropped her load on the table.

Mamma followed behind with an armful of bedding, along with Louisa.

‘Rough,' Mamma corrected her with a smile. ‘However, we can make it a cozy little home.'

Mamma flung open all the shutters to let fresh air and sunlight into the room.

‘Today we will make up some beds and rest a little after such a long journey,' suggested Mamma. ‘Tomorrow, with lots of soap and elbow grease, you will not believe the transformation.'

The next few days were a hive of activity – scrubbing, removing rubbish, decorating, unpacking and arranging. Mamma had brought lengths of cream calico, which they tacked over the bare timber slab walls. Charlotte picked a big bunch of flannel flowers growing in the nearby bushland and set them in a jam jar of water on the kitchen table.

Emily set up all the books and sketchbooks on a shelf made by Mr Ash. Mamma arranged her portable writing desk in the corner. James helped Mr Ash and Charley build a henhouse and yard for the chickens to protect them from the dingoes and quolls.

On the bullock packs, Mamma had carefully packed some cuttings of scarlet geranium wrapped in wet newspaper to grow around the door of the hut. These had miraculously survived the chaos caused by Maugie and were tenderly planted and watered.

Mamma had even brought seeds and cuttings to plant a small, quick-growing vegetable patch of lettuce, spinach, radishes and herbs to add some green variety to their new diet of salt beef, bacon and damper.

On the third morning, the girls were given the job of planting the seeds in a patch of earth that had been dug over by the stockmen. The summer sun was already hot.

‘I'm so tired, Emily,' complained Louisa grumpily, her ringlets damp with sweat. ‘And it's hot. Can't we stop now?'

Emily straightened her aching back and smiled at her younger sister. ‘Come on, poppet,' she encouraged her. ‘Let's plant the seeds now and they can start growing while we rest.'

Charlotte smiled at her sister. Emily was always so gentle and kind. She never seemed to lose her patience or get cross.

‘I'll fetch the water from the creek,' Charlotte offered, picking up the iron pail. ‘Mamma says we will have green leaves to pick in less than a week if we water them every day.'

Louisa sighed but set to work with a will, dropping the seeds into the furrows and covering them with earth.

That night, after supper, the family sat around the fire. Mamma was sewing by lamplight, mending some clothes that had been torn on the journey through the underbrush. Emily read a book while James and Louisa played knuckles on the rug. Samson lay sprawled by the fire, and Maugie chewed on a pile of fresh eucalyptus shoots, his tiny eyes blinking. Charlotte was sketching a portrait of Ophelia with a pencil, although it was very difficult to get her head and body in proportion without a model.

‘Mamma, can you tell us another story about Papa?' asked Louisa, looking up with her cheerful, gap-toothed smile.

Charlotte froze, her pencil suspended over the page. In recent years, since she had married Mr Barton, Mamma had rarely spoken about Papa. It was as though the memories were too painful, or the contrast between her first and second marriage was too stark to dwell on.

Mamma also paused, staring intently at her mending.

‘Why don't I read you a story, poppet?' Emily suggested quickly. ‘You can choose one of your favourites.'

‘No – Mamma tells the best stories in the world,' complained James. ‘They're much better than most of the ones in books.'

Mamma snipped the cotton thread with her scissors. She pulled out her golden locket and fiddled with it. She looked up and smiled. ‘Very well then, poppet. Let me see . . .' Mamma picked up the mending again and kept sewing.

‘It was September of the year 1826,' Mamma began. ‘I had been working as a governess for a large, wealthy family on a beautiful country estate up in the far north of England when I became ill and had to resign. I went to stay for some months with my younger sister, Jane, and her husband in London to recuperate. When I had recovered, I saw a newspaper advertisement for a governess position that sounded simply too good to be true.

‘I went to the interview at a fine, large house in London to find twenty-four other governesses had all applied for the job. But when they learned that the highly paid position would be on the other side of the world, in the faraway colony of New South Wales, they all withdrew their applications immediately in great horror.'

Charlotte laughed. She could imagine the twenty-four prim governesses with their high-necked gowns and button-up boots, all pursing their lips in distaste at the thought of living in the primitive wilds of the colony.

‘The position, I learned, was to be governess for the three daughters of Mr Hannibal Macarthur, one of the leading families of the colony,' Mamma continued. ‘I was interviewed by Mrs Harriet King, who was married to Mr Philip King, son of the former Governor and brother to Mrs Macarthur.

‘My three sisters were appalled when I told them I planned to accept the position and begged me to stay with one or other of them. However, I was adamant that I must live an independent life. I had heard many fascinating stories of the colony and thought it would be a great adventure to travel so far.'

Charlotte smiled.
Of course Mamma was the only gover­ness brave enough to tackle such an adventure. I wish I could have an adventure like that one day
.

‘So I accepted and negotiated a one-year contract for the princely sum of one hundred pounds per year, plus first-class travel,' Mamma explained. ‘Mrs King had chartered a ship, called the
Cumberland
, to bring out various members of her extended family – Kings, Macarthurs and Lethbridges – as well as some friends and various servants travelling in steerage.'

Emily nodded. All of the children had heard of these leading members of Sydney society.

‘Most of the party was to come aboard at Plymouth, but I joined the ship earlier at Gravesend.' Mamma smiled at the recollection. ‘I boarded to find everything in chaos. The ship's deck was crowded with pens containing one-and-forty Saxon sheep, as well as hutches of twenty-three dozen turkeys, geese, fowls and ducks. A magnificent thorough­bred stallion was being loaded on board, as well as a massive bull.

‘The stallion pranced and reared in fear at being loaded onto the unfamiliar vessel. Five black-and-white sheepdogs were running about on deck, yapping and barking. Crates of plants were stacked on the quayside – dozens of fruit trees of every kind, cuttings of hops, wallflowers and even glass-topped boxes of delicate white lilies.

‘I soon discovered the owner of all these beasts and flowers was a handsome young man called Mr James Atkinson.'

‘Papa,' cried Charlotte, her heart swelling with pride.

Emily and Charlotte exchanged quick glances of delight. Louisa giggled. James sat up straighter, his game of knuckles forgotten.

‘This dashing gentleman smiled at me and lifted his hat, and I felt my heart flutter,' Mamma confessed. ‘We chatted on deck and later down in the cuddy, which is the small cabin where the first-class passengers would gather. James told me much about the colony, but especially about his beautiful estate that he called Oldbury and that the Aborigines called Gingenbullen. I could listen to his stories about this new land for hours.'

Papa told stories too
, thought Charlotte.
I wish I could remember some
.

‘James had come back to Europe to investigate the best breeds of merino and Saxon sheep with his friend Charles Macarthur. It was during his time in England that James wrote his first book about the colony, because he said he became tired of answering the same questions over and over again.'

Their father had published several books and journal articles giving advice to settlers about farming practices in the colony. Mamma had kept them all neatly stacked together on the bookshelves in the study, and she had brought them to Budgong on the bullock packs.

‘He was the most fascinating gentleman I had ever met.' Mamma's eyes lit up with memories. ‘I wrote pages about him in my journal that night. Later, the captain's wife told me that James Atkinson was one of the most successful settlers in the colony and teased me about the attention he was giving me.'

Charlotte stroked Samson's black fur and felt a wave of sadness well through her.

‘The ship was detained for a few days in Gravesend due to some damage caused during an accident, so those of us on board – James, Miss Throsby and myself – entertained ourselves as best we could, going for walks, joking, laughing and reading.

‘When we finally set sail, a terrible gale blew up. Miss Throsby was dreadfully seasick and kept to her bed. The only passengers on board who were not overcome with nausea were James and me. The captain's wife, Mrs Carns, had given me some excellent advice before we sailed, suggesting that I stay up in the fresh air on deck as much as possible, as it is harder to be ill there than down in the stuffy confines of the cabins.

‘I grew to love walking up on deck in the bracing wind, sitting on the poop deck gazing across the stormy seas or reading on my makeshift garden bench on top of the poultry hutches. One evening, James discovered me sitting up on the poop and insisted that I be wrapped in his warm, plaid cloak. James had a way of making me laugh.'

How romantic
, thought Charlotte.
I hope one day a gentle­man cares enough to wrap me in a cloak to keep me warm
.

‘At Plymouth, the rest of the party came aboard and we said goodbye to England. All of us knew we might never see our homeland again.' Mamma looked wistful for a moment and then continued. ‘Sailing into the Bay of Biscay, off the coast of France, the weather became increasingly wild and stormy. On Michaelmas Day we were sitting down to a festive dinner of roast goose when a huge wave washed into the cuddy, sweeping away our entire meal. I was thrown across the cabin by the full force of the wave and struggled to get up, held down underwater by the weight of my wet skirt and petticoats.'

Emily clutched Charlotte's hand, breathing in sharply. Charlotte could almost hear the wild wind howling and the waves smashing against the hull of the beleaguered ship.

‘I thought I would drown. I could not get my head above the seawater, but James dragged me up,' Mamma exclaimed. ‘I was saturated and shivering with shock, so once the waters receded, James wrapped me in his warm plaid cloak and made sure I was comforted.