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“You and me, me love, is as like as peas in a pod. You’ll be the spit of me when you grows up to be my age. And one word in your ear, lovely keep clear of pedlars!”
Carolan thought, Shall I be like her?
Her hands were rough with housework. She was an indifferent worker, and but for the fact that she was a favourite with Margery, the woman might have been tempted to get down the whip from above the mantel. Crockery seemed to slip out of Carolan’s hands.” Tis a mighty good thing that poor lady’s so sickly. Now if it was some ladies who took a pride in their homes, it would be the triangle for you, lovey, and the lash about your white skin.” Margery liked to pull the yellow dress off Carolan’s shoulder and stroke her.
“Lovely white skin it is, lovey. Dead spit of what mine was when I was twenty, and it ain’t so long ago neither.”
Carolan, restive in the basement, hating the dirty water into which it was necessary to plunge her hands, washing dishes, peeling potatoes, hating the smell of cooking, was bored. She longed for the fields and lanes round Haredon, and the feel of a horse beneath her. She asked a good many questions about what went on above stairs.
“There used to be a good deal of entertaining,” Margery told her, ‘but the mistress don’t often feel up to it nowadays. Her health’s bad, and getting worse. I can’t think that it’s what you might call a happy marriage. There she is, spending half of her time on the bed in her room with one of her headaches. Now if I had a nice upstanding man like Mr. Masterman for me husband …”
“Do you think she is really ill?” asked Carolan.
“Illness is a fu
They sat round the table, Esther, Jin, Polly. Margery, James and Carolan. eating supper of bread and cheese, which they washed down with ale. It was lax in Margery’s kitchen. It might have been a servants’ hall back in England. Where else in Sydney were convict servants treated like this! Margery was responsible of course. She sat at the head of the table with James on her right hand and Carolan on hex left. She was well pleased, for the presence of James meant that she was still attractive enough to bring him round to the basement every night, though he had his own quarters with the other men in some outbuildings near the house. And there was Carolan, with her smouldering eyes and her lovely budding body to remind Margery of what she was a mere twenty years ago.
There was a di
Carolan said: Tell us what the table looked like, Jin.”
“It looked all right,” said Jin.
Margery said: “The table looked beautiful. I done it meself. The linen! And the glasses! I took in the pudding meself, pretending it was to see all was well, but really to have a look at them. Now he was at the head of the table, and a handsome man he is, and mighty pleased with himself he was looking too, and do you wonder! Quite some of the best people in Sydney was at his di
“Lazy old woman!” said Jin.
“Why should we slave like we do ..:
Margery’s eyes flashed.
“Now that’s enough of that. I’ll tell you why. Because you’re nothing more nor less than a murderess, and she… she’s a lady of the land. Another word from you and I ask James to get down the whip for me … aye, and to lay it about you for me. It’s mutiny, that’s what it is!”
Jin lifted a lazy eyelid and surveyed James. It was the first time she had glanced in his direction. There was something fiery and passionate about the gipsy, stormy and fascinating. James stared at her; Margery flushed a dirty pink; her jowls quivered. She looked very old, thought Carolan.
Esther said: “I saw her; she was coming down the stairs and the kitchen door was open. I saw her pass along the upper floor. Her dress was shimmering blue. She looked…”
“I know.” said Margery curtly, ‘like one of them angels you’re always praying to!”
Esther blushed and cast down her head.
“Here, Poll, you go and get me that bottle out of me cupboard,” said Margery.
“Go on. Don’t gape. Look sharp.”
“Tell us about her dress,” said Carolan to Esther.
“It was blue, and there was some silver about it, and she had silver slippers. She looked like a fairy … she is so small.”
“A sickly fairy!” said Margery, still angry.
“And next to him at the table was that Miss Charters. A big, bold girl, she is, and looking for a husband, if you’ll be asking me. There she was, right next to him, and you could see how he would have been the one she would have chosen if it wasn’t for the fact that he had a wife already.”
“Perhaps they’ll get rid of her,” said Poll, dribbling in sudden excitement.
“Perhaps …”
She came to the table and laid the bottle of gin beside Margery’s plate.
Margery caught her by her ear.
“Look here, girl! Don’t you run away with the idea that because you commit murders, other people do. Decent folk don’t, I tell you. There’s something bad about people as takes life, and I always have said it.”
Poll’s lips began to quiver. Her mind was unhinged by the murder of her baby. Carolan had seen her in her bed, holding a roll of dirty towelling against her breast, crooning over it. She had seen her in the light of morning, holding the towelling against her, asleep, with a smile of content about her face; she was dreaming of course that it was her baby she held; she could not go to sleep at night until she had assured herself that her baby was not dead and that she held it in her arms. Poor Poll, she talked incessantly of murder; during the day she tried to pretend that it was a natural thing … people did it as easily as they laughed or sang. It was the only way she could console herself.
Carolan had deftly worked a piece of fla
Carolan longed for the comparative peace of the bedroom, with Jin lying on her back, her hair a black cloud on her pillow, and Poll cuddling her doll and thinking it was her baby; and Esther, having said her prayers of thanksgiving, lying sleeping in her bed, while Margery and James groaned and giggled, and sighed and chuckled together in Margery’s creaking bed.
Now here in the kitchen the atmosphere had become sultry with the rumble of coming storm. Margery’s big brown eyes, usually soft with reminiscence, were hard in her red face; she kept looking at the whip over the chimney-piece and she lifted her head proudly, flaunting her freedom.
“Here!” she said.
“Let’s have a drop of gin. There’s no kick in this grog. Now gin’s the stuff. Why, back home you can get rolling blind for twopence. Bring up your glasses.”
“Not for me,” said Esther.
“Oh, not for you, eh? Too good, are you! But not too good to thieve from the lady you works for. I’ll have to keep my eye on you, me lady. You takes from one, you takes from the other.”