CHAPTER 29
‘WHY ARE YOU protecting her?’
The question arrested Tom, who eyed Ralph warily through the bars. ‘Plain as the nose on your bloody face, mate. As soon as I mention Isabel, you go all queer and make no sense.’
‘I should have protected her better. Protected her from me.’
‘Don’t talk bilge.’
‘You’ve been a good friend to me, Ralph. But – there’s a lot about me you don’t know.’
‘And there’s a lot about you I do, boy.’
Tom stood up. ‘Did the engine get sorted out? Bluey said you’d been having problems with it.’
Ralph looked at him carefully. ‘It’s not looking good.’
‘She’s served you well, over the years, that boat.’
‘Yep. I’ve always trusted her, and I didn’t think she’d ever let me down. Fremantle wants to decommission her.’ He looked Tom in the eye. ‘We’re all dead soon enough. Who are you to throw away the best years of your life?’
‘The best years of my life were over a long time ago, Ralph.’
‘That’s codswallop and you know it! It’s about time you got on your feet and did something! For Christ’s sake wake up to your bloody self!’
‘What are you suggesting I do, Ralph?’
‘I’m suggesting you tell the bloody truth, whatever it is. The only place lying leads is trouble.’
‘Sometimes that’s the only place telling the truth gets you, too … People can only take so much, Ralph. Christ – I know that better than anyone. Izzy was just an ordinary, happy girl until she got tangled up with me. None of this would have happened if she hadn’t come out to Janus. She thought it’d be paradise. She had no idea what she was in for. I should never have let her come out.’
‘She’s a grown woman, Tom.’
He looked at the skipper, weighing his next words. ‘Ralph, I’ve had this coming a long time. Sins catch up with you in the end.’ He sighed, and looked up at a spider web in the corner of his cell, where a few flies hung like forlorn Christmas decorations. ‘I should have been dead years ago. God knows I should have copped a bullet or a bayonet a hundred times over. I’ve been on borrowed time a long while.’ He swallowed hard. ‘It’s tough enough on Izz being without Lucy. She’d never survive time in— Ralph, this is one thing I can do for her. It’s as close to making it up to her as I’ll ever get.’
‘It’s not fair.’ The child repeats this phrase over and over, not in a whingeing tone, but in a desperate appeal to reason. Her expression is that of someone trying to explain an English phrase to a foreigner. ‘It’s not fair. I want to go home.’
Sometimes, Hannah manages to distract her for a few hours. Making cakes with her. Cutting out paper dolls. Putting crumbs out for the fairy wrens, so that the tiny creatures come right to the door and hop about on legs as fine as fuse wire, enthralling Grace while they peck daintily at the stale bread.
When she sees Grace’s expression of delight at the tabby cat they pass one day, she asks around town if anyone has any kittens, and a tiny black creature with white paws and face becomes part of the household.
Grace is interested, but suspicious. ‘Go on, he’s yours. All for you,’ says Hannah, putting the kitten gently into her hands. ‘So you have to help look after him. Now, what do you think his name should be?’
‘Lucy,’ says the child, without hesitation.
Hannah baulks. ‘I think Lucy’s a little girl’s name, not a cat’s name,’ she says. ‘What about a proper cat’s name?’
So Grace gives the only cat’s name she knows. ‘Tabatha Tabby.’
‘Tabatha Tabby it is,’ Hannah says, resisting the urge to tell her it’s not a tabby cat, and it’s not a girl. At least she’s got the child to speak.
The next day, when Hannah says, ‘Come on, shall we give Tabatha some mince?’ Grace responds, fiddling with a strand of hair, ‘She doesn’t like you. She only likes me.’ There’s no malice. Just explaining a fact.
‘Perhaps you should let her see Isabel Sherbourne,’ Gwen suggested after a particularly fierce round between mother and child over putting on a pair of shoes.
Hannah looked horrified. ‘Gwen!’
‘I know it’s the last thing you want to hear. But I’m just saying … maybe if Grace thought you were a friend of her mother’s, that might help somehow.’
‘A friend of her mother’s! How could you even say such a thing! Besides, you know what Dr Sumpton said. The sooner she forgets about that woman, the better!’
But she could not escape the fact that her daughter had been irrevocably embossed with the stamp of those other parents, that other life. When they walked by the beach, Grace strained to get to the water. At night, whereas most children would be pleased to identify the moon, Grace could point to the brightest star of the evening and declare, ‘Sirius! And the Milky Way,’ in a voice so confident that it frightened Hannah, and made her hurry inside, saying, ‘Time for bed now. In we go.’
Hannah prayed to be freed from resentment, from bitterness. ‘Lord, I’m so blessed to have my daughter back. Show me the right thing to do.’ But straight away she would imagine Frank, thrown into an unmarked grave in a piece of canvas. She remembered the look on his face the first time he had held his daughter, as though she had presented him with the whole of heaven and earth in that pink blanket.
It was not up to her. It was only right that Tom Sherbourne should be dealt with according to the law. If a court decided he should go to gaol – well, an eye for an eye, the Bible said. She would let justice take its course.
But then she would remember the man who had stepped in to save her from God knew what, years ago on that boat. She remembered how safe she’d suddenly felt in his presence. The irony made her catch her breath even now. Who could tell what someone was like on the inside? She’d seen that air of authority he’d adopted with the drunk. Did he think he was above the rules? Or beyond them? But the two notes, that beautiful handwriting: ‘Pray for me.’ So she would return to her prayers, and pray for Tom Sherbourne too: that he be dealt with justly, even though some part of her wanted to see him suffer for what he had done.
The following afternoon, Gwen slipped her arm into her father’s, as they walked along the grass. ‘I miss this place, you know,’ she said, looking back towards the grand limestone homestead.
‘It misses you, Gwenny,’ her father replied. After a few more steps he said, ‘Now that Grace is home with Hannah, perhaps it’s time you came back to your old dad …’
She bit her lip. ‘I’d love to. I really would. But …’
‘But what?’
‘I don’t think Hannah can manage yet.’ She pulled away and faced her father. ‘I hate to be the one to say it, Dad, but I don’t know she’ll ever cope. And that poor little girl! I didn’t know a child could be that miserable.’
Septimus touched her cheek. ‘I know a little girl who used to be that miserable. Fair broke my heart, you did. Went on for months after your mother died.’ He stooped to smell one of the old red roses, just past its full, velvet bloom. He breathed the scent deep into his lungs, then put his hand on his back to straighten up.
‘But that’s the sad thing,’ insisted Gwen. ‘Her mother’s not dead. She’s here in Partageuse.’
‘Yes. Hannah is right here in Partageuse!’
She knew her father well enough not to press the point. They continued to walk in silence, Septimus inspecting the flowerbeds, Gwen trying not to hear the sound of her niece’s distress, so sharply etched in her mind.
That night, Septimus thought hard about what to do. He knew a thing or two about little girls who had lost their mother. And he knew a thing or two about persuasion. When he had settled on his plan, he nodded off to a dreamless sleep.
In the morning, he drove to Hannah’s, and announced, ‘Right. All ready? We’re going on a mystery outing. It’s about time Grace got to know Partageuse a bit better; learnt where she’s from.’
‘But I’m in the middle of mending the curtains. For the church hall. I promised Reverend Norkells …’
‘I’ll take her by myself. She’ll be right as rain.’
The ‘mystery outing’ began with a trip to Potts’s timber mills. Septimus had remembered how, as children, Hannah and Gwen had delighted in feeding apples and cube sugar to the Clydesdales there. The wood was moved by rail these days, but the mills still kept some of the old draft horses for emergencies, when rain washed away sections of rail track in the forest.
Patting one of the horses, he said, ‘This, young Grace, is Arabella. Can you say “Arabella”?
‘Rig her up to the cart, there’s a good lad,’ said Septimus to the stable hand, who jumped to. A short while later, he led Arabella into the yard, drawing a sulky.
Septimus hoisted Grace on to the seat, before climbing up beside her. ‘Let’s have an explore, shall we?’ he said, and gave a giddy-up to the old horse’s reins.
Grace had never seen such a big horse. She had never been in a real forest – the closest she had got was her ill-starred adventure in the scrubland behind the Graysmarks’ house. For most of her life, she had only ever seen two trees – the Norfolk pines on Janus. Septimus followed the old milling tracks through the towering karri, pointing out kangaroos and goannas here and there: the child was engrossed in the fairy-tale world. From time to time she picked out a bird or a wallaby. ‘What’s that?’ And her grandfather would name the creature.
‘Look, a baby kangaroo,’ she said, pointing to a marsupial hopping slowly near the track.
‘That’s not a baby ’roo. That little chap’s a quokka. Like a kangaroo but tiny. That’s as big as he’ll ever get.’ He patted her head. ‘It’s good to see you smile, girlie. I know you’ve been sad … You miss your old life.’ Septimus considered for a moment. ‘I know what that’s like because – well, that’s what happened to me.’
The girl gave a puzzled look, and he continued, ‘I had to say goodbye to my mum, and go across the sea, all the way to Fremantle on a sailing ship. When I was just a little bit older than you. Hard to imagine, I know. But I came here, and I got a new mum and dad, called Walt and Sarah. They looked after me from then on. And they loved me just like my Hannah loves you. So sometimes, you don’t just have one family in your life.’
Grace’s face gave no clue as to what she had made of this conversation, so he changed tack. As the horse walked on gently, the sun came dappling through the high branches here and there. ‘Do you like the trees?’
Grace nodded.
Septimus pointed to some saplings. ‘See – little trees, growing back. We chop down the big old ones, and new ones take their places. Everything grows back, if you give it time. By the time you’re my age, that tree’ll be a giant. It’ll come good.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘This forest will belong to you one day. It’ll be your forest.’
‘My forest?’
‘Well, it belongs to me, and one day it’ll belong to your mummy and your Auntie Gwen, and then it’ll be yours. What do you think of that?’
‘Can I giddy up the horse?’ she asked.
Septimus laughed. ‘Give me your hands and we’ll hold the reins together.’
‘Here she is, safe and sound,’ said Septimus as he delivered Grace to Hannah.
‘Thanks, Dad.’ She bobbed down to her daughter’s level. ‘Did you have a lovely day?’
Grace nodded.
‘And did you pat the horses?’
‘Yes,’ she said softly, rubbing her eyes.
‘It’s been a long day, sweetie. It’s time for a bath, and then we’ll get you to bed.’
‘He gived me the forest,’ said Grace, with the trace of a smile, and Hannah’s heart skipped.
After Grace’s bath that evening, Hannah sat on the little girl’s bed. ‘I’m so glad you had a good day. Tell me all about the things you saw, sweetheart.’
‘A quotta.’
‘Pardon?’
‘A quotta that’s little and hops.’
‘Ah! A quokka! Sweet little things, aren’t they? And what else?’
‘A big horse. I drove it.’
‘Do you remember its name?
The girl thought. ‘Araballa.’
‘Arabella, that’s right. She’s lovely. She’s got friends there too – Samson, and Hercules, and Diana. Arabella’s quite old now, you know. But she’s still very strong. Did Granddad show you the timber whims she can pull?’ The girl looked confused, and Hannah said, ‘The great big carts, with just two huge wheels. That’s how they used to pull the big trees out of the forest once they cut them down.’ The child shook her head, and Hannah said, ‘Oh, my darling. There’s so much I want to show you. You’ll love the forest, I promise.’
As Grace drifted off to sleep, Hannah stayed beside her, planning. She would show her the wildflowers when spring came. She would get a little pony for her – a Shetland, perhaps, so they could ride through the narrow forest trails together. A vista of decades suddenly opened out in her imagination, and she dared to explore them. ‘Welcome home,’ she whispered to her sleeping daughter. ‘Welcome home at last, my darling,’ and she went about her duties that evening humming under her breath.