The Vines of Yarrabee

Author’s Introduction

I AM A NEW Zealander by birth, an Antipodean, so that I am completely identified with the birth pains of those two countries, Australia and New Zealand.

In childhood we were fostered on stories of the brave pioneers, and brave they were, struggling to live in isolated places, the bush of New Zealand where hostile Maoris roamed, and on the infinitely vast grassless plains of Australia where the only shelter from the blazing summer sun was a one-roomed comfortless cabin. Medical help, such as it was, might have been a week’s journey by horseback away. Women had their babies and nursed them through childish and more sinister illness in the most primitive conditions. There were droughts, floods, snake bite, sunstroke, near starvation, and every kind of accident with which to contend.

They were gallant people, those pioneers, but this was not surprising considering their reasons for emigrating. They had already been toughened in their countries of birth by poverty, harsh laws, persecution, or war. And they must also have had a fearless adventurous spirit, and plenty of optimism.

My English grandfather was one of a family of ten children, his father a parish clerk in a small Cotswold village, where the picturesque cottages are now sought as desirable investments. In my grandfather’s day those same cottages would have had no electricity or sanitation, they would have been damp, dark and cold, and they would have slept four or five children, as well as their parents, in two rooms. Jobs would have been grossly underpaid, and hard to come by. There would have been no prospect in old age but the workhouse. So my grandfather, with his wife and three young children, set out on the great adventure of beginning life in a new country. All of his children died on the voyage to New Zealand, the last one, and the only daughter he was to have, as the ship sailed into the haven of Lyttelton harbour.

However, he had the stamina to survive. So did his wife. They had four more sons, one of whom was my father, also a resilient and undefeatable character.

My mother’s parents came from Schleswig-Holstein, in Denmark. This charming province was overrun by an invading German army in the 1860s. So my grandparents were displaced and homeless, and also sought a new life in New Zealand.

I was brought up on these stories of hardship and heartbreak. So, when on a visit to Australia, I decided an Australian book was not only a good idea but an inevitable one.

I felt I knew instinctively the terrors and homesickness of the young people who so gallantly determined to put down roots in an alien soil. The old cemeteries, mostly in sandy and thorny ground withered by the pitiless sun, fascinated me. I deciphered the tumbled headstones, so often of children, for the climate in Australia, without modern amenities, can be harsh, and the hazards for young lives in the nineteenth century were often too great.

Now Australia is a civilised country, but still only round the edges. There remains the vast interior, waterless, hostile, infinitely lonely. Indeed, so heartbreakingly lonely, as the sun sets and the crows call over the dusty empty land, that I knew my characters, especially the women, would hardly be able to bear it.

This was how The Vines of Yarrabee was born, and a healthy infant it turned out to be.

I think maybe we all hanker back to those days when the struggle to exist was purely basic and was built on so much real faith in the future.

Kensington, London

March, 1978

Dorothy Eden

Prologue

WHEN THE RAPIDLY SPREADING DISTRICT OF PARRAMATTA, IN THE AUSTRALIAN STATE OF NEW SOUTH WALES, HAD EXCEEDED TEN MILES FROM THE OLD CHURCH AND CEMETERY, IT THREATENED THE EXISTENCE OF THE BIG HOUSE CALLED YARRABEE, AN HISTORIC DWELLING BUILT IN THE LATE EIGHTEEN TWENTIES. THERE COULD BE NO QUESTION OF IT BEING PULLED DOWN TO MAKE WAY FOR THE NEW HOUSING ESTATE. IT WAS AN AUTHENTIC PIECE OF AUSTRALIAN HISTORY, AND AS SUCH MUST BE PRESERVED.

A notice was put on the rusted iron gates ‘YARRABEE, the former home of the early pioneers Gilbert and Eugenia Massingham, and the site of one of the first vineyards in Australia. Circa 1827–1864.’

The house itself was opened to the public. Lovers of architecture could admire the verandahed colonial style with the honeysuckle (cuttings from the original plants) twining round the verandah posts. The garden had been famous and was still a source of delight and wonder. The familiar jacaranda, oleander, waratah and wattle made a background for a most comprehensive selection of English flowers and shrubs, including a profusion of white climbing roses that cascaded over an ancient trellis, like snow in the blazing Australian sun. A lily pool held a few inches of dark green scummy water. It was still possible to decipher the words on the sun dial Every hour shortens life.

Indoors, the furnishings were true to the period. Visitors might admire the faded Chinese wallpaper in the drawing-room, or more particularly the charming portrait hanging over the fireplace. It was of a slender long-necked young woman holding a rosy-cheeked little boy on her lap, a hat with green ribbons dangling from her wrist, and a white cockatoo in a cage at her side. The small brass plate read ‘Eugenia Massingham and her son Christopher with parrot. Painted by Colm O’Connor, Irish exile.’

There was a story that the house was haunted by a lady dressed in lavender carrying a parasol. No one knew whether this was true, but one of the dresses in the glass case was lavender in colour, and there was an ancient parasol, furled and faded.

A Sheraton writing desk with a not very craftsmanlike mend in one leg stood in the little room called ‘Eugenia Massingham’s sitting-room’. Across the hall, in the high-ceilinged dining-room, there was a long oak table set for dinner with old English silver and a sophisticated number of wine glasses, four at each place setting. It was well known that guests were invited to drink riesling, claret, champagne and port, all of Yarrabee vintage.

Upstairs in the main bedroom an elaborately carved bed bore an inscription stating that this bed in the French Empire style had been part of the dowry Eugenia Massingham had brought with her from England.

Another plaque claimed that Governor Sir Charles Fitzroy and Lady Mary Fitzroy had slept in one of the large bedrooms facing south.

In the grounds there was a winery with concrete walls eight feet thick. It contained an ancient press and vats that still held a faint sour odour. This was the only evidence that a flourishing vineyard had existed on the sunny slopes beyond the house. There was not even a gnarled vine left. They had all been destroyed long ago when the devastating disease phylloxera, that had mysteriously crossed fifteen thousand miles of ocean from the vineyards of Europe, had ravaged the vineyards of Australia.

If one wanted more evidence of the vanished family, one had to go to the old cemetery and find the large ornate headstone with the inscription ‘Gilbert Massingham formerly of Suffolk, England, late of Yarrabee, famous vigneron, and Eugenia, his dearly beloved wife.’ Nearby was a small sandstone angel, badly eroded, on which the lettering could just be deciphered. ‘Victoria, beloved infant daughter of Gilbert and Eugenia Massingham of Yarrabee.’

And a little farther off, for the cemetery must have been getting crowded by then, ‘Lucy Massingham, youngest daughter of the late Gilbert and Eugenia Massingham of Yarrabee.’

Not many people noticed the simple cross that said, ‘Molly Jarvis, former native of England’, but then no one was likely to connect her with the occupants of the big house on the edge of the town.

Chapter I

EUGENIA COULD SEE HIM at last. She had been gripping the side of the small rowing boat, straining her eyes shorewards, ever since she had clambered down the ladder of the Caroline, leaving that three-months-long home anchored in the blue waters of Sydney Cove. Mrs Ashburton was perched on the narrow plank beside her, taking up the room of two with her ample girth and billowing skirts. She was exclaiming petulantly as the wind tore at her bonnet. The brisk breeze had also nearly snatched Eugenia’s parasol from her hand. She had had to furl it and let the sun beat on her unprotected face.

Sun and wind and water, wooded slopes with rocky outcrops, glistening honey-coloured sand and patches of pale red earth, primitive rows of buildings clustering round the little jetty. The town of Sydney in Botany Bay, or New South Wales as this part of Australia was now being called.

When Eugenia at last caught sight of Gilbert she thought that he was the colour of Australia with his red hair and sideburns, his sunburnt skin, and strong blue eyes.

He was waving wildly.

‘Eugenia!’ She could hear his voice above the clatter and confusion of the boat being tied up at the jetty.

He cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed, ‘Welcome to Australia! Have you brought my vine cuttings?’

Mrs Ashburton gave Eugenia a nudge and began to laugh in her jolly fashion.

‘Well, that’s a fine welcome, miss! Which is more important to this young man, his intended wife or his vine cuttings?’

Mrs Ashburton, a family friend who had providentially been travelling to Australia to join her son, and who had agreed to chaperone Eugenia, had proved a great trial on the long voyage. She was garrulous, tetchy, unpredictable, and had an irritating habit of constantly losing her possessions. The voyage had been spent in a search for a mislaid fan, or lorgnette, or shawl, or smelling salts, or any of a dozen other objects. But she was kind. And at this moment Eugenia’s only friend.

All the same her ribald remark gave Eugenia a flutter of uncertainty. She knew Gilbert’s dedication to his vineyard, but she had not imagined it would take precedence to her in this first moment of encounter.

She had met Gilbert three years ago at her uncle’s chateau in Burgundy. Her mother was of French descent, and her Uncle Henri was a noted viticulturist with a chateau and vineyard. It happened that the young Englishman, Gilbert Massingham, who had already spent five years in Australia and had seen its possibilities as a wine-growing country, was visiting France at the same time as Eugenia, for the purpose of collecting vine cuttings. He had been travelling in Malaga, Portugal and the wine-growing areas of the Rhine for the same purpose.

On her first evening Eugenia had seen the way he had looked at her Uncle Henri’s wife, who was a very beautiful woman, still young and graceful, and a gifted hostess. Indeed, she had been convinced that he had been interested in no one but Aunt Honoria, until she realized that he saw her aunt as an essential complement to the dinner table, the silver and fine crystal, the epergne full of roses, the good food. And the wine. A chilled white burgundy in long-stemmed shallow glasses with the fish, and later with the pheasant, a full-bodied claret. Eugenia watched the young man raise his glass and silently toast Aunt Honoria. Then, with a speculative look in his eyes, he had turned to Eugenia and raised his glass with a curious deliberation.

It would of course have been rude to ignore her, the only other woman at the table. But his subsequent attention to her, in the drawing-room, and afterwards strolling on the terrace, had nothing to do with wine.

Or had it?

It certainly hadn’t seemed to when he had followed her to England, and asked permission to call on her parents.

They were in London for the end of the season. Jessica, the eldest daughter, had been presented. Eugenia must wait until the following year, since she was scarcely eighteen, and money was a little short. There were three younger sisters also, so it was important that Jessica and Eugenia find husbands before too long. A certain younger son of an earl had been particularly attentive to Jessica, and now, it seemed, Eugenia had her Australian.

But he was not an Australian, Eugenia emphasized. He had merely spent five years in the Colony, and being of an adventurous and ambitious nature had decided that it was the country of the future. Orphaned at an early age, he had been brought up by a maiden aunt, whose modest fortune he had eventually inherited. With no family and a comfortable amount of money, he could afford to indulge in the adventure of sailing across the world and discovering the country for which he was to develop such a passion. He had already acquired a thousand acres of land near Parramatta, a settlement some distance from the already over-crowded town of Sydney. On this land he proposed erecting a house suitable to which to bring a wife.

But more important than the house was the frail beginning of his future profession as a viticulturist.

His whole visage changed when he spoke of his infant vineyard. Some men saw Australia in terms of sheep or cattle, some in trading, some were already prospecting for gold. But soon after his arrival Gilbert had visited a small thriving vineyard at vintage time and his imagination had been instantly fired. The challenge of such a life exactly appealed to him. Not for him the dusty sheep or the cattle dying in a drought. He much preferred the luscious grapes, the satisfying red wine and the hazards and uncertainties and triumphs attendant on the beginning of an industry that could become world famous. This was something worthy of dedicating his life to.

After Australia, Gilbert went on, England was small, confined, limited. The skies were too diffused a blue, the weather too cold, the cities too crowded. There was too much poverty, squalor, crime. When Eugenia’s father pointed out that on the contrary Australia was little more than an outdoor prison, a miserable dumping ground for the dishonest trash and riff-raff of the British Isles, Gilbert vigorously denied such a thing.

That state of affairs had existed only in the time of the first Fleet and the second Fleet, nearly half a century ago. Now, explorers were making exciting discoveries, the country was large beyond imagining, and could hold unbelievable riches. Responsible settlers were wanted, hard-working healthy adventurous young men. And women to marry them. The convicts, only a fraction of the population, were an asset in their own way since they represented a constant supply of cheap labour.

Gilbert himself could never hope to build the house he planned without the use of convict labour.

He would begin it on his return. When it was finished, could he anticipate the arrival of his bride?

Yes, yes, Eugenia wanted to cry, because she was in love with Gilbert Massingham’s vitality and persuasiveness. But afterwards, because she had a strong streak of caution and commonsense, she was glad her father had stipulated that she should wait until she was of age. Three years would give both of them time to be sure of their feelings. Gilbert would return to Australia and build his house and establish his vineyard (if such a thing were possible), and Eugenia would remain at Lichfield Court, the old red brick manor house in Wiltshire which had belonged to her father’s family for two hundred years.

Gilbert was anxious that she should spend the three years continuing her study of music, painting and other ladylike pursuits, none of which, he assured her, would be wasted in the new colony. He took the greatest pleasure in listening to her fluent French, although it was a language he spoke very little of himself. His own education had been practical rather than classical. He seemed to think that possessing a wife who spoke French was somehow an asset to be compared with an appreciation of good wine. Everything, Eugenia reflected, came back to wine.

But her devotion to her lessons was not to exclude time for writing letters. Eugenia was a dedicated letter writer. She assured Mr Massingham that addressing a correspondence to him would give her the greatest pleasure.

That was when the reality of her rather perplexing courtship by the red-headed young man from the colonies turned into the dream.

He lived for her on paper. She had almost forgotten what he looked like. He was the black-scrawled handwriting that began ‘My dearest Eugenia’ and ended ‘With devoted thoughts’, and if the matter in between was largely concerned with plain facts about house building, and the problems of establishing healthy grapevines in alien soil, she scarcely noticed. She loved to be called dearest and to have someone dreaming devoted thoughts of her.

In the flurried weeks preceding her departure, Sarah, the sister who was only eleven months younger than her, and who had always been like her twin, had constantly burst into tears, and begged Eugenia to assure her that she was happy. It was such a tremendous thing to do, to travel by sailing ship fifteen thousand miles to marry a man whose features she could scarcely remember.

By that time the matter had gone too far, and Eugenia was too proud to admit her own misgivings. In any case, what else was there for her? Jessica had married her Honourable, and little Elizabeth, younger than both Eugenia and Sarah, was engaged to marry a curate with very moderate means. That left only Sarah and Milly. Milly was still a schoolgirl, and Sarah herself said that she would never marry. She meant to stay at Lichfield Court with Mamma and Papa, to comfort them in their old age. She was a born spinster.

But Eugenia was not. And her excitement was real enough. It was the greatest fun gathering together a very complete trousseau, because it was unlikely that she would be able to buy wearable gowns or decent bonnets or good materials in Australia. The formal dozen of everything must be two dozen, and in addition she must take out a great many household goods. Gilbert had written asking her to bring various pieces of good furniture, a massive oak dining table, chairs and sideboard, a bed and bedroom furniture which she was to please choose for herself, since he trusted her good taste entirely. She was also to find some good drawing-room pieces, but not a carpet, as he had already ordered fine carpets from China. And pictures and knick-knacks, of course. A Waterford crystal chandelier, for instance, would look well, and some good wall mirrors in the Chippendale style.

The rest of the house could be adequately furnished with materials at hand. He had come across an ex-convict carpenter who was making pieces for the spare bedrooms and the kitchen. Bamboo and cane furniture was practical for the climate. In the summer a great deal of time would be spent on the verandah.

Lastly, and most importantly, he wanted her to bring the selection of vine cuttings her Uncle Henri had promised him. She was to send someone to France to get them. If no one was available whom she could trust, she must go herself. And she must see that the cuttings were correctly dipped in the solution that would preserve life in them during the long voyage. He had arranged with Mr Charles Worthington at Kew Gardens to advise her in this respect. He would like at least a hundred cuttings, since some would undoubtedly die. He would then have a good number of varieties of grapes, for white and red wine, for sherries and for drying into raisins. His crop this year had unfortunately been badly affected by a long drought, but some grapes had survived. The vintage would be small.

After reading and discussing this letter, more than half of which concerned Gilbert’s grapes, Sarah commented that she felt drunk from wine already.

‘Don’t, I beg you, become a drunkard,’ she entreated.

Eugenia laughed merrily. ‘What a very unlikely prospect!’

‘Gilbert seems obsessed by the subject.’

‘Any man who is to succeed in life must be obsessed by his chosen career,’ Eugenia said a little pedantically.

‘Yes, I know, but this career requires so much tasting of the product, doesn’t it? You know the ritual that goes on at Uncle Henri’s at vintage time.’

‘Yes, and I have never noticed that Uncle Henri became the worse for wine,’ Eugenia retorted. ‘Anyway, I hear that rum is the drink in Australia. And I assure you I will not be tasting that.’

It was exciting making the trip to London to look for the furniture Gilbert asked for. He had put five hundred pounds at Eugenia’s disposal. That seemed a fortune, although when she began choosing the quality furniture Gilbert wanted, it soon disappeared. Eventually her grandmother suggested giving her a four-poster bed as a wedding gift. It was in the French empire style, painted pale grey and decorated with gilded cupids and loveknots.

Her treasured piano which had also been a gift from her grandmother on her eighteenth birthday could not be left behind. There were many more personal articles of furniture among her baggage, her writing desk, her favourite water-colours, rugs, quilted bedspreads, a Dresden dinner and tea service, silverware, household linen. All these things were intended to make her feel civilized in a rough wild country.

But now, in this heart-shattering moment three months later, while Gilbert shouted anxious enquiries about his vines, she could only think that the lovely French bed was going to be too fragile for his big frame.

Chapter II

‘THE SUN HAS CAUGHT your nose. It’s as red as a bottlebrush.’

Gilbert roared with laughter. To tell the truth, he was a little shy of the young woman who stood in front of him. He had forgotten how aristocratic she looked. Women in this country, even the more gently bred who may have contrived to keep their peaches and cream complexion during the long voyage from England, soon acquired peeling sunburnt skins and freckles. It surprised him that he suddenly cared passionately that this should not happen to his wife.

‘What is a bottlebrush?’ she was asking in her soft well-bred voice.

‘It’s a shrub that grows here. It’s vivid scarlet. I’m uncommonly happy to see you, red nose and all.’ He wanted to take her in his arms and hug the breath out of her. But he had an instinct that she would not care for so public an embrace, and that he must restrain his ardour until they were alone. He satisfied himself with a chaste kiss on her cheek and a murmured, ‘Welcome, my love,’ and Mrs Ashburton, who had had the delicacy to move a little distance away to permit the lovers a moment of privacy, came forward, her plump hand held out, her expression unabashedly inquisitive.

‘Well, Mr Massingham, aren’t you going to thank me for delivering your bride safely to you?’

Eugenia performed the necessary introduction.

‘Gilbert, this is Mrs Ashburton who has been in charge of me. Or I in charge of her, I don’t know which. But here we both are safely.’

‘I’m happy to meet you, ma’am. I understand you have a son in Sydney.’

‘Yes, my only child. But he doesn’t appear to have much feeling for his mother or he would be here to meet me.’ She continued to study Gilbert, and presently nodded approvingly, saying to Eugenia, ‘You are a fortunate young woman, I believe. I could wish I were forty years younger myself.’ She nudged Gilbert, laughing coyly. Then she exclaimed, ‘Why, there I see my son. Don’t let us bother with introductions at present. You two are anxious to be off. We will all meet again shortly.’

‘At our wedding, ma’am,’ said Gilbert, ‘if not before.’

‘Certainly at your wedding. I have no intention of missing that.’

Mrs Ashburton took her departure, thrusting her way through the crowd to reach her son. Gilbert turned to Eugenia.

‘I have arranged for you to stay with good friends of mine, Edmund and Bess Kelly. Your Mrs Ashburton is quite a personality, isn’t she?’

‘A rather overpowering one at times,’ Eugenia admitted. ‘Who are Edmund and Bess Kelly?’

‘Edmund is a land agent. He was an officer in the navy, but abandoned it to settle here when he saw the money to be made with so much land for sale. He brought his wife out from England. They have a house in King Street. You may find it a bit cramped, but I promise you won’t be able to make that criticism about Yarrabee.’

‘Yarrabee?’

‘Yes. That’s the name I decided on. In the native language it means a gum forest, and that’s exactly what my land was when it was granted to me. I spent a year clearing enough acreage to get my vineyard started. I had to build terraces on the hillsides and put in brush fences for windbreaks on the flat. But now I have four hundred acres under cultivation and cattle wandering on the rest. I need the cattle for manure for the vines. Tell me, did you bring all the vine cuttings I asked for? How did they travel?’

‘I believe they were not affected by the motion of the ship, as all the rest of us were.’

Gilbert had the grace to look a little abashed.

‘Forgive me. I should first have enquired how you fared on the journey. I do sometimes think of things beside my vines even if you find that difficult to believe. Come!’ He took her arm. ‘I’ll take you to the Kellys and attend to the baggage later.’

At last Eugenia smiled, and the dimple Gilbert remembered appeared in her right cheek. He understood that she must feel strange and homesick at first. When he had arrived for the first time in Australia he had been overwhelmed by its size, its brawling vitality and primitiveness. It was only when he had recognized its challenge that he had begun to develop an obsessive love for its harsh heat-ridden lonely spaces. Now he felt cramped when he returned to Europe.

For a woman, the initial shock would be even more startling. He must sympathize with that.

But he could hardly control his exultation at the sight of her with her proud neck, her delicate features, her luxuriant dark hair. He thought that she was like the black swans that came to the lake on Yarrabee.

As towns, or cities, went, for it was said that Sydney would be an important city one day, the place had an air of ramshackle impermanence. Governor Lachlan Macquarie had left his mark in well-planned streets and a number of fine simple sandstone buildings designed by a convict architect, but the general impression was one of roaring untidy life. Inns with creaking signs stood at far too frequent intervals and also too frequently spilled out their staggering customers. The streets were unpaved, so that a fine red dust hung permanently in the air. This was stirred into a cloud when a coach dashed by or a laborious bullock team toiled up the hill. Shops shaded by verandah fronts displayed many wares besides the necessities of life, outlandish souvenirs brought back by sailors, beads, native clubs and spears, gaudy-coloured parrots in cages, fringed cashmere shawls, pottery and red-lacquered chests from the Orient.

The houses, even the smallest, had verandahs to provide a little shade, and wooden fences to separate them from the street. There were many flowering shrubs and creepers of which Eugenia did not yet know the names. Above the unpleasant odour of garbage and manure and the prickling dust she caught the heavy sweet scent of some blossom.

She noticed, as she walked along on Gilbert’s arm, that people turned to stare. Perhaps she walked a little unsteadily, for the wide street had an uncanny tendency to tilt, as if it were the deck of the Caroline. Horses, noses in feeding bags, tails switching at flies, were tethered outside public houses. Tangle-haired bare-footed urchins gaped at Eugenia fastidiously holding her neat brown travelling skirt out of the dust. A thin mongrel dog sniffed at their heels.

Suddenly Eugenia stepped aside in dismay from what seemed to be a bundle of rags lying in the dust of the gutter.

‘Rum,’ Gilbert said contemptuously. ‘It’s a scourge here. They drink it good, bad or indifferent. Convicts make it illicitly. Heaven knows what they put in it. I shall educate them to drink wine.’

Eugenia thought it wiser not to comment that that human relic in the gutter scarcely looked educable as far as wine was concerned. One could hardly imagine that dirty hand lovingly holding the stem of a wine glass. But it would be pleasant if it could be done, of course. She agreed with Gilbert on the principle of his argument.

A moment later she was diverted from that sordid spectacle by an infinitely more distressing one, a line of men shuffling along the street with chains clanking. They were dressed in shabby grey clothes liberally daubed with arrows. Most of them kept their eyes on the ground, but one looked straight at Eugenia. No, not at her, through her, for the strange melancholy light eyes were seeing nothing but some unrealizable dream.

In spite of the heat, a violent shiver went over her. Her fingers tightened on Gilbert’s arm.

‘A chain gang,’ Gilbert said briefly, answering her unspoken question. ‘They’re on their way to the stone quarries.’

‘How perfectly dreadful!’

‘It’s a sight you will have to get used to, my dear. You must remember that these men have all committed some crime.’

‘But surely not one to merit that treatment!’ She had turned to look back at the shuffling line, the drooping heads, the unkempt hair, the general air of degradation. Her dismay was intense. She had never been able to bear witnessing the humiliation of a human being, but this was much worse than humiliation, it was barbarism.

‘There are cases of injustice, I agree,’ Gilbert said judicially. ‘But usually in those the man’s natural honesty allows him to rehabilitate himself when he gets his freedom. There are plenty of ex-convicts in the colony leading honest lives. Come, my love, don’t look so shocked. If one is ill one takes a dose of medicine and recovers. That’s what those fellows are doing.’

‘Medicine doesn’t always cure.’

‘No, I admit some cases are irreclaimable. They become permanently degraded.’

‘And what about their keepers?’

Gilbert looked at her with suddenly sharp eyes.

‘You think administering punishment is debasing?’

‘I am sure it could be.’

‘Do I looked debased? I have several convicts in my employ. I often have to administer punishment. But I think I remain a decent enough fellow.’

‘What sort of punishment?’ Eugenia asked apprehensively.

‘The lash. A couple of dozen strokes. That’s light punishment compared to what the courts mete out. I don’t care for it, but order must be kept. I narrowly avoided a mutiny last summer. You get one bad element among these fellows and then there’s trouble.’

‘You—do this—yourself?’

‘My love, it’s nothing you must worry your head about. Of course it must be a shock to you at first. You’ve lived a sheltered life. I hope to go on keeping it sheltered and protected. But this is a phase of colonial existence which you will have to accept.’

‘You would expect me to accept seeing a man whipped!’ Eugenia said incredulously.

‘You don’t have to witness it. Heaven forbid! But you must accept it as a necessary part of our society at present. When England stops treating us as a dumping ground for human rubbish, then we will have other laws.’

‘But you said in England that you found the convicts a blessing,’ Eugenia said stubbornly. ‘Or words to that effect.’

‘For cheap labour. Yarrabee could not have been built without them.’

Yarrabee. The walls rising as the men in the arrow-daubed clothes built stone on stone. The men with the hate-filled minds, the despairing eyes, the scarred backs.

I am not going to be able to bear to live in it, Eugenia thought. It is going to be a house haunted by these ragged unhappy ghosts…

Gilbert pressed her arm against his side. He said tolerantly, ‘At your age I also was shocked. One learns to accept. The present system is deplorable, but until it is altered we must make it as workable as possible. I promise you I am a fair employer. I keep on every man who wants to stay when he becomes free. Except for the utterly depraved, of course. And that reminds me, you will want a good maid. Was there anyone on the ship who took your fancy?’

‘I shared Mrs Ashburton’s maid, Jane King. She wasn’t getting on very well with Mrs Ashburton, she could never seem to please her. I think she would like to come to me. Of course, this would have to be with Mrs Ashburton’s consent. Jane is a rather forlorn creature. She’s an orphan and needs someone to be kind to her.’

‘And that person is you? So it seems as if both Jane and I need you. I am an orphan, too.’

‘I know,’ Eugenia murmured, but looking at him sideways, she thought that he was an altogether different case from Jane with her timid eyes and skimmed milk complexion. She, poor thing, was ready to fly to anyone who would give her affection. But not this man with the sure lift of his chin, with his keen blue eyes and crest of flaming hair. He had learned to hide or disclaim his hurts. Privately she believed that he was a man to whom ambition came first and a woman second. But even believing this, she had decided to marry him. She was so certain that beneath his strength there would be great tenderness. To tell the truth, she found the situation challenging and exciting. But also a little alarming, for now she kept seeing a tiny figure in her mind, a black shape no bigger than a fly, with its arm rising and falling as the lash was administered on tortured skin.

Chapter III

‘AND WHAT DID YOUR mother say, love, when you told her you were coming all this way to be married?’

Bess Kelly was a homely woman with a big bosom and light fluffy hair that escaped its pins and hung in damp tendrils on her brow and about her plump neck. Eugenia had perceived at once that she would not have been society in England. But standards out here were different. Obviously, if a woman were honest and respectable, she would be accepted in most houses in this country.

Eugenia found the attic bedroom to which Bess had shown her very small and dreadfully hot. The sun struck through the iron roof so that one seemed to have been put inside a stove, preparatory to being cooked.

All the same the room was to be hers alone, for there was only one bed. This was bliss, after enduring three months of Mrs Ashburton’s talkative company in a none too comfortable ship’s cabin. There were sprigged muslin curtains at the slanting windows, the bed and dressing-table had pretty chintz covers. Mrs Kelly pointed to a bowl of cream-coloured flowers floating in water, and said the children had put them there. They were called frangipani and smelled nice. You needed sweet smells because the drains in the summer, and the slops thrown out by the public houses and sluttish housewives, brought less pleasant odours, not to mention flies.

‘Didn’t it break your mother’s heart, my dear, you coming so far? Of course she’d be wheedled by Gilbert Massingham. If ever there was a man who knew how to get his own way, it’s Gilbert. You’re going to have all the unmarried young ladies envying you, I can tell you that. Ever since Gilbert came back three years ago and announced he was bringing a bride out, there have been tears and pouts. But we all knew there was no one good enough for Gilbert in this ragbag of a colony. He intended to have the best. The same as his