This Golden Land (22 page)

     Gladstone had putty-colored hair, a narrow face and small, feminine hands that Hannah thought would be an asset in his profession. In a thick Liverpool accent, he explained that he had transported barrels of Waterloo teeth to Australia.

     "
What
teeth?" Mr. Kirkland said.

     "Most dentures are made with the teeth of animals," Gladstone said, speaking rapidly in the manner of salesmen with a pitch, "although human teeth are preferable. But where can one obtain a sufficient supply, with so
many people requiring dentures? Other than, of course, those extracted from executed criminals and the destitute who willingly have their incisors and molars extracted in exchange for a few pence. But the Battle of Waterloo proved a boon to dentistry! Fifty thousand young and healthy soldiers perished on that battlefield, but their teeth live on! After being harvested, those teeth have found their way into the mouths of many Britons. And now, because of me, Australians will benefit as well."

     Mr. Kirkland studied the calling card and wrinkled his red nose. "A dentist is it? Then why are you calling yourself Doctor? You're a barber, aren't you?"

     "I am a doctor of dentistry, my good fellow. There is a city in America, a place called Baltimore, that recently opened an actual
college
of dentistry, the first dental school in the world. We dentists, like surgeons, are breaking away from our barber affiliations and becoming respectable like physicians. So great is my vision of the future in which dentists are addressed as 'doctor' that I embrace the designation myself in anticipation of that future."

     The proprietor sighed and gave Hannah a look as the ebullient "Dr." Gladstone moved on to introduce himself to others in the aisles. "Fancy a dentist calling himself Doctor," Mr. Kirkland said with a shake of his head. "That's what Australia does to people. Gives them ideas."

     As Kirkland walked away, Hannah returned her attention to the display of medicines and books, and she thought of the far-flung homesteads Kirkland had spoken of, the scattered settlers, the isolated families so far from the services of a doctor. And she found herself thinking of Bayfield, and the days her father went out in the buggy, to follow the country lanes and byways as he visited his patients. And an idea so new and perfect sprang into her mind that she found herself suddenly smiling.

     When she saw Alice coming up the aisle toward her, Hannah noticed that, by coincidence, her friend was also smiling. And she realized that venturing out into the storm had been worthwhile after all.

H
ANNAH WAS SO ENCHANTED BY THE SHIMMERING COUNTRY
-side, she thought it was as if, overnight, the world had been turned into gold by the unseen hand of a magical alchemist.

     She could not stop marveling over the miracle that had taken place. The golden wattle, a native Australian acacia, was in full springtime bloom, producing large fluffy yellow flower heads that were in fact clusters of many tinier flowers, casting green trees and brown bark in gold that shimmered blindingly in the sunlight.

     The whole world in fact, Hannah thought as she guided her one-horse buggy along the tree-lined lane, seemed bursting with new life and fresh color as the rust-red earth of South Australia gave forth an abundance of emerald-greens, deep sky-blues, and flowers ranging from blood-red to canary yellow. Fields of clover, acres of wheat and corn, and vineyards mantled in lush grape vines all swept away to rolling hills where sheep and cattle grazed, and the occasional red-roofed farmhouse stood beneath the sun.

     Riding along the road to the clip-clop of her mare's hooves, Hannah
heard the wind in the gum trees, many of which she was now able to identify—the spotted gum, the blue gum, the thin-leaved stringy bark, the red flowering gum, and the mountain ash—and they seemed to be whispering, "Come live with us."

     There was that strange enchantment again, redolent of her encounter with the outlaw Jamie O'Brien eight months ago. She had not heard news of him since, but his wanted posters were still up around the city, so she assumed he was still at large. This drive through the country, far from noisy Adelaide, reminded her of that enchanted night. In retrospect it seemed that when she had been in imminent danger of being attacked by a starving wild dog, out of the night a stranger had materialized to rescue her, a man with an exotic accent, weathered skin, tilted smile. Hannah had the oddest notion that it was almost as if Australia itself had come to her rescue in the form of a person, for just those few minutes. Where did Jamie O'Brien disappear to afterward?

     
He went back into the red earth and the ghost gums and the never-ending sky.

     Such a romantic notion no longer startled her. Hannah knew she was falling in love with her adopted land. Its uniqueness delighted her. The flocks of white cockatoos flying up from the tops of gum trees. The sudden appearance of an emu, tall and fat, trotting across the track. Kangaroos grazing alongside sheep brought over from England. And signs over gateways identified holdings as Wattle Run, Billabong Station, Fairview Farm.

     They were new signs, Hannah noticed, erected in just the past few years. In Bayfield, the roads themselves were hundreds of years old. One could not pass a farm that hadn't been in a family for generations. The very oaks and glens were steeped in tradition and customs. But here! Cottages with their original coat of paint, not yet re-painted. Fields that had just been planted for the first time. Newcomers arriving to stamp their identity on the land, to make something of this country and of themselves.

     The very newness of Australia captivated Hannah. There would be no gloomy libraries where snobbish physicians could pass unfair judgments on a man who had no title, no lineage. She thought of Neal, who did not know who he was or where he came from—this would be the place for him. A
place of new beginnings and fresh starts, where it did not matter what came before, what prior generations had done in this place, where all that mattered was what a man did today.

     She wished she could share this discovery with Neal. And perhaps she soon would. Hannah had finally received a letter from the colonial government in Perth. Neal's science vessel had not been affected by the recent native uprisings, had not in fact yet returned to port from its year-long voyage of survey and exploration, but was due in soon. Perhaps he was already there now, looking for a ship to bring him to Adelaide.

     She saw a turn-off up ahead, a dirt track disappearing among gum trees. A sign by the road said, Seven Oaks Station, with an arrow pointing right.

     Once she had heard that Neal was all right, Hannah had given up the notion of going to Perth to search for him, and had come out to the countryside where she hoped to start a midwifery practice. The idea had come to her at Kirkland's Emporium, when the proprietor had said the settlers were so far from medical help. Hannah had decided that getting away from the city and its established midwives who so jealously guarded their territories would be just the start she needed.

     She and Alice were staying at the Australia Hotel, a bustling establishment farther along the Kapunda road than where Lulu had lived. It was owned and run by a cheerful widow named Mrs. Guinness who had no qualms about unmarried ladies renting a room. The hotel had been built a couple of years prior, after copper was found in Kapunda and the great ore drays came and went along the country road, filled with men in need of food and rest. A few other buildings had sprung up around the hotel—a dry goods store, feed and farm supplies, a blacksmith. Mrs. Guinness handled the mail that came up from Adelaide for the region, and so farmers and cattlemen frequently tramped up the steps of her hotel for their letters from home.

     Hannah had been out here in the open spaces for five weeks now, trying to get herself known. Each morning she would set out in the rented buggy and, equipped with her blue carpetbag, a map of the district, and a lunch of cold chicken or beef, bread and cheese, and a bottle of sweetened tea, she would cover as much of the countryside as she could, visiting farms and
homesteads, introducing herself, leaving her calling card:
Hannah Conroy, Licensed Midwife, Trained in London.

     Alice did not go with her. Because Mrs. Guinness had by good fortune needed help in the kitchen, Alice had a job at the Australia Hotel. But in the evenings she rehearsed in Mrs. Guinness's drawing room, to the piano accompaniment of Mrs. Guinness's daughter, because she had her heart set on the auditions at the new music hall. Alice tried out various selections on whoever occupied the room at the time, gauging their reactions to see which song she should choose for her audition. The drawing room audience changed every night, as drovers, cattlemen, and shearers came and went. But all sat spellbound while Alice sang, and all agreed that her voice sounded like spun gold (although one tactless fellow had said within Alice's hearing, "She's beautiful if you don't look at her.").

     As Hannah guided the buggy off the main road, through a wide gate and beneath a sign that said, "Seven Oaks Station," she looked for oak trees. Adelaide's wide avenues had been planted with the oaks and elms of England. Even Lulu Forchette's house had been landscaped with flora imported from Europe. Other homesteads in the gently rolling countryside had been cleared of much of its original brush to make room for the willows and poplars of home. But apparently Seven Oaks had kept its native gums and acacias, as Hannah could not spot a single oak.

     It was lambing season and she rode past a paddock occupied by hundreds of ewes with little ones at their sides. Beyond, Hannah saw another fenced area where Angus cows grazed as they suckled new calves. She saw farm dogs at work among the stock, racing this way and that, while men on horseback oversaw order in a noisy cattle yard. It was a busy, prosperous station, with stables, shearing sheds, woodchip yards, milking sheds, and even a chicken house. And the morning air was filled with the cacophony of bleating sheep, mooing cows, barking dogs, shouting men, and even great flocks of crows screeching overhead.

     When the main house itself came into view, Hannah slowed the buggy to a halt and stared in wonder.

     The house at Seven Oaks was large and rectangular, comprised of a single story with a gabled roof. A deep verandah went all the way around and
was enclosed in an intricate railing, its roof supported by decorative iron posts. Although the wood siding of the house was the natural color of the timber, the window trim, door jambs, railing and posts had been painted white. It was a simple house, yet stately and elegant. Around the homestead a beautiful landscaped garden sloped down to a pond where black swans mingled with ducks and other bird life.

     Hannah remained perfectly still in the buggy, the reins forgotten in her hands. There was something about the house at Seven Oaks that struck a chord deep within her. She could not say why. How to explain why some places called to a person, and others did not? She looked at the way Australian gums sheltered the house, shedding silver bark and dollops of golden sunlight onto its roof. She heard the buzz of insects in the air, felt the warmth of the sun penetrate the top of the carriage and enfold her in timeless suspension.

     For here it was, nestled in green rolling hills covered in flocks of white sheep, beneath a blue sky that went on forever, amid the silence and the noise of the Australian countryside—the house of her dreams.

     She resumed her drive and brought the buggy to a halt next to a hitching post. As she mounted the steps of the front verandah, toward a solid front door with a glass pane set at eye-level, Hannah knew exactly what she would find inside: a tidy entry with a polished floor, the hallway stretching to the back of the house where kitchen and laundry would be, doorways leading off either side into rooms that would be perfectly furnished with sofas and chairs, tables covered in lace cloths, braided rugs in bright hues. She would smell lemon polish, her eye would catch the gleam of brass and glass. There would be one of the fashionable new lamps that had little crystals dangling from the glass chimney, and they would make a charming tinkling sound.

     She knocked.

     A harried maid answered with a frown, barely listened to what Hannah had to say, bade her come inside, then rushed off down the hall to disappear at the rear. Hannah looked around. The interior of Seven Oaks was exactly as she had imagined. To the right, an open doorway revealed a tastefully appointed parlor. To the left, a dining room with a polished table and six
chairs, an armoire displaying china. Hannah surmised that the bedrooms were at the back of the house.

     From the far end of the hall a woman appeared, coming toward Hannah with long, purposeful strides. Stripping off a work glove, she extended her hand and introduced herself as Mary McKeeghan, mistress of the station.

     Hannah handed her a calling card, and explained that she was going around the district to let people know of her services.