This Golden Land (12 page)

     She looked toward the mainland and saw a young colony—a few warehouses near the pier, military barracks, wooden buildings, scattered homesteads, shacks near the beach. Not the thriving community where she could build a practice and at the same time explore her new interest in healing and disease. And anyway, Neal was embarking on the science vessel and would not be back for a year.

     "I pray you find the answers you seek," she said. Hannah suspected that, although Neal claimed that because he was unfettered and without roots he was free to roam the world and explore mysteries, she did not believe he was free at all, but rather a prisoner of deeply buried hurts. He was not roaming the world to explore mysteries but rather to solve the mystery of himself, to find his place on earth. Until he uncovered the truths about his mother, Hannah suspected, and the circumstances of his birth, Neal Scott would never truly be free.

     She wanted to give him a token of remembrance, something personal from herself that he could carry as a memento of their time together on board the
Caprica
and perhaps, she hoped, as a reminder of her affection for him. But she was unsure of the rules. Society dictated decorum and the proper etiquette regarding behavior between unmarried ladies and gentlemen. But weren't shipboard friendships different?

     Caught in a moment of not wanting to leave and unable to speak, Neal memorized every detail of Hannah as she stood there in the golden sunlight, to carry with him like a mental photograph: the reed-straight posture, the pearl-gray gown that made her eyes luminesce, the proud tilt of her head, the dark hair swept up into a chignon, the little hat with the dainty black veil that covered her high forehead.

     And as he held her with his eyes, oblivious of the activity on the ship around them, it struck Neal that he and Hannah shared a special bond, other than their life and death experience at sea, and that one desperate kiss. They both didn't quite fit into society. For Neal, it was his illegitimacy, a fact that he must keep secret because otherwise polite society would have nothing to do with him. For Hannah, she did not fit into society's model of a normal
young lady, because she read medical books, asked probing questions, and voluntarily placed herself in situations that a proper lady would not.

     A very unconventional young lady indeed. And one with whom, despite a promise to himself that he would never again fall in love, he was in fact falling in love.

     "Miss Conroy," he said at last. "I would like to give you a token of remembrance, if you do not think it too forward of me." He reached inside his tweed jacket and brought out a handkerchief, freshly laundered and folded into a square. As she accepted it, Hannah saw the initials N.S. embroidered on one corner.

     "Thank you, Mr. Scott," she said, tucking the linen into her bag. Then, removing one of her gloves made of soft kid and dyed gray, she offered it to him, saying, "And I hope you will accept this in return."

     When he took the glove, it was as if she had slipped her hand into his, and Neal knew he was never going to let go.

     He wanted to take Hannah into his arms then and press his mouth to hers, right there in front of God, the ship's crew, the
Caprica
's immigrants and the seagulls overhead. "Although we say good-bye for now, my dear Hannah," he said quietly, "it will not be for long. In a year, when my contract is up, I shall travel on to Adelaide, and there we shall meet again."

     They looked at each other beneath the bright October sunlight, while Perth's harbor bustled about them and the salty scent of the sea filled their nostrils.

     "In a year then," Hannah said quietly, in love, excited and thinking of her father's last words, that she—with Neal Scott—stood on the threshold of a glorious new world.

Y
OU'RE VERY YOUNG
, M
ISS
C
ONROY
," D
R
. D
AVENPORT SAID AS HE
examined Hannah's certificate and references from the Lying-In Hospital in London.

     "I have recently turned twenty," she said, wishing she could fan herself. It was warm in the doctor's office, and the open window did little to help. Instead of a breeze, all that came in from the street was more heat, dust, flies, and the smell of horse droppings. But Hannah, like the rest of Adelaide's predominantly British female citizenry, would not dream of doing without a tight corset and a heavy crinoline under her skirt. Mr. Simms, the cabin steward on the
Caprica
, had been right when he said February was a hot month in Australia.

     It made her think of Neal Scott, and wonder how he was doing in Western Australia, where she had heard it was even hotter than South Australia. Four months had passed since they had said farewell at Perth, and in that time Hannah had thought of him every single day. She prayed he was well and that he would be coming to Adelaide, as he had promised, in eight months' time.

     "And you said you are
not
married?" Dr. Davenport said, peering at her over his spectacles.

     Unfortunately, Mrs. Merriwether's prophecy had come true: no one would hire a young, inexperienced and, most especially, unmarried midwife. "You should lie and say you're a widow," had been the advice of Molly Baker, one of the young ladies with whom Hannah shared Mrs. Throckmorton's boarding house. "No one can disprove it and it will admit you into the sisterhood of wives. Unmarried girls aren't supposed to know what goes on behind bedroom doors. So how can you deliver babies if you don't know how they got there in the first place?"

     Molly had a point, but Hannah could not begin her new life with a lie. "I am unmarried," she said to Dr. Davenport.

     Hannah's marital status wasn't the only obstacle to getting a midwifery practice started. She had discovered that the established midwives in town jealously guarded their territories, making it impossible for a newcomer to attract patients. She had advertised in local newspapers, posted notices on public bulletin boards, and had introduced herself to the town chemists—she had even chatted up nannies who congregated in the city park, asking them to pass her name along. But the few calls she had received, coming by messenger to the boarding house, had resulted in disaster.
"You're
the new midwife? You're barely out of girlhood. And unmarried, with no children of your own?"

     With her money running low and the rent due, Hannah had gotten down on her knees and prayed as she never had before, this time speaking to her father, asking him to guide her. That night she dreamed again of the cold, gloomy library at Falconbridge Manor, as she had many times, in which he pressed the iodine bottle into her hand, saying, "This is the key," or "Thee must know the truth about thy mother's death." Mysteries that plagued Hannah's sleep and puzzled her in waking hours. But in this last dream her father had said something new: "Thee helped
me
, Hannah, thee can help other doctors."

     Collecting newspapers and visiting the post office and other public places where notices were posted, Hannah searched for employment advertisements and answered those placed by physicians. But that, too,
had proven fruitless as they either wanted a male assistant or a domestic maid. Hannah fell into a category that did not seem to exist.

     Finally she had decided she must take matters into her own hands. With a list of physicians in Adelaide, she had set out to present herself before them, offer her services, and somehow persuade them that they needed her help. Three had already turned her down. "Stop this folderol, young lady, and get married." "I already have a maid." "You should be ashamed."

     Now she sat demurely in Dr. Gonville Davenport's stifling office opposite Light Square, praying that he was more open-minded than the others. She had even used some of her precious dwindling money to invest in a new wardrobe. On this hot February morning she wore the latest fashion: a drop-shouldered, narrow-waisted gown of lavender silk with purple velvet piping and buttons, the sleeves wide and split to reveal white ruffles. Matching gloves and a dainty bonnet finished the ensemble.

     But she did not purchase one of the new handbags which she thought rather frivolous as they were too small to carry anything larger than a handkerchief. Hannah cradled in her lap a carpetbag of luxuriant blue velvet shot through with shimmering silk and gold threads woven into an exotic design. Her mother had purchased it in Morocco and had used it for her stage cosmetics. Now it contained Hannah's most precious possessions: the instruments and medicines from her father's medical bag; the bottle of Experimental Formula #23, three-quarters filled with the iodine preparation; her mother's prized book of poetry, given to her by John on their wedding day with an inscription that read: "To my Beloved, who is Pure Poetry herself." And finally, from her father's small laboratory, the leather portfolio that held his research notes, the sum of his life's work.

     As Hannah politely waited while Dr. Davenport read her reference letters, she thought of Mrs. Merriwether's warning: "Hide your light under a bushel." The last three doctors had not only been uninterested in Hannah's education, they had seemed, for some reason, to find it offensive and not at all proper. Hannah wondered if this time she should stay quiet.

     Tucked inside her bodice was Neal's monogrammed handkerchief. She felt it there now, a gentle pressure on her bosom, as if Neal himself were touching her, urging her to spread her wings in this land where not even
the sky was the limit. But how to do both—reach for her dream and yet hide her light?

     She tried not to let her desperation show, but she was growing anxious about her living situation. Hannah wasn't used to a noisy, bustling town, or sharing a house with six women. She had had trouble sleeping during her first days at Mrs. Throckmorton's: the traffic outside seemed never to cease, especially in November and December when great mobs of sheep were driven straight through town to the harbor six miles away. There was the constant clip-clop of horses' hooves beyond her window, the crack of a whip, the driver of a dray shouting at his bullocks. Hannah had been born on the outskirts of sleepy Bayfield in a small whitewashed cottage with four rooms and a patch out front for growing flowers. She had grown up there. It was the life she was used to, the one she aspired to recreating here in South Australia. Hannah hoped that when her practice built up, she could move to a small place of her own farther out of the center of town.

     She tried to take the measure of the physician behind the desk. Dr. Davenport was an attractive man in his late thirties with a head of thick black hair that fell over his forehead in a boyish curl. His large nose and arched brows gave him a severe look, yet his tone was kind and his manner polite.

     "I'm afraid I don't need a midwife," he finally said in a genuinely apologetic voice, "as I prefer to attend to childbirth myself."

     "I can help in other ways. I assisted my father in his office and I accompanied him to see patients in the countryside." Would it sound too pretentious if she added that they had even been called to the bedside of a baroness?

     Davenport set the letters down and made a frank study of the young lady. She certainly presented herself well. Attractively dressed, well spoken. A spark of intelligence in her lively eyes. She had said her father was a Quaker, which meant she had been taught honesty. And the letters of recommendation from her teachers at the Lying-In Hospital spoke highly of her (although one professor of obstetrics noted that Miss Conroy was prone to asking too many questions). She was demure without being shy, ladylike but with enough assertiveness to present herself at his office asking for employment.

     His practice
was
growing, and he had in fact been considering taking on an assistant. But not a young woman who was not even married!

     Uncomfortable beneath the doctor's scrutiny, and worried that she was going to blurt something that would ruin her chances with him, Hannah looked around the tidy office lined with books, anatomical charts, ferns in brass pots, a human skeleton hanging from a stand, the doctor's desk cluttered with papers, books and journals, and a glass-doored cabinet stocked with medicines, bandages, instruments, sutures, basins and towels. Dr. Davenport's impressive library would be a bonus if he hired her.

     Her eye came to a small ivory statue on the doctor's desk. "How lovely," she said.

     Dr. Davenport glanced at the statue that stood eight inches tall and glowed ivory-white in the sunshine. He reached for it and smiled in fond memory. "Antiquities is a passion of mine, Miss Conroy. I purchased this statue in a small shop in Athens. The proprietor assured me it is at least two thousand years old."

     "May I?"

     "Please." He handed it to her.

     "She's exquisite. Who is she supposed to be?"

     "The goddess Hygeia."

     "Oh yes, the daughter of Aesculapius," Hannah said. "An apt addition to a doctor's office."