He writhed, cursed himself for the millionth time. All his children would be born bastards; Lizzie Lock was not going to oblige him by dying in a hurry. Of course he could not murder her, but there was no one save God to say that he was not allowed to wish her dead.
Why can we never seem to keep the threads which weave into the pattern of our lives untangled? I did not think when I went into marriage with Lizzie Lock. Or rather, I did not think of myself or the future. I pitied her, I fancied I owed her a debt—I thought like a head man and I still think like a head man. Stephen warned me, I seem to remember that, but I did not listen. The people I have harmed are my own children—the dear soul who is my heart’s wife is dismissed as my “woman.” They never even say “mistress.” The term is “woman.” A word which suggests that she has no identity, absolutely no status of any kind. A simple convenience. I can, as some men are already doing, throw her to one side without any kind of compensation to her. Sentences are up, those who have hoarded enough gold are buying their passages to England, or Cathay, or anywhere else that takes their fancy. Old faces like Joe Robinson’s are disappearing. But so many of them are leaving their women here to fend for themselves. As well that, like Major Ross, Commander King is as willing to grant a lone woman land as a lone man. These sad abandoned creatures do not need to hawk their favors around the barracks of the New South Wales Corps soldiers. What we do to women is unforgivable. They are not whores by nature. We force them to it.
Kate gurgled, smiled, revealed that she was cutting teeth. My firstborn, my daughter. My bastard. Hugging her, Richard put his lips to the unbelievable sleekness of her skin, inhaled the fresh clean smell of it, aware that Kate adored to be adored.
“Kate,” he said to her, turning her within his hands so that she faced him and could give him seductive glances—in that she took after her mother—and he could talk to her as if she understood what he was saying. “My Kate, what is to become of you? How can I ensure that ye’re never reduced to the sort of life God inflicted upon your mother? How can I turn ye from the bastard child of two convict parents into a well-schooled young lady with her pick of every young man in this part of the world?” He kissed her tiny hand, felt its fingers curl strongly around one of his. Then he snuggled her into the crook of his arm, tucked her head beneath his chin and looked into the distance, his mind filled with the dilemma of her fate.
* * *
Kitty took a long time to fetch one bucket of unneeded water. First she sat beside the spring and smoldered for a while, then held the bucket beneath the main fall to fill it, after which she set it on the ground and sat down again. Her outburst had caught her unaware, she had not realized that these resentments simmered so near the surface; her days were too busy to permit the luxury of self-examinations. The reason why her feelings had come tumbling out today was manifest: Richard did not want a second child so soon—if he wanted one at all. But these were not things in his province! God had made her to procreate and she loved procreating. The words of workhouse days and workhouse sermons rattled off as fingers were busy embroidering held meaning now. Adam may have been the first person on earth, but until Eve appeared he was an—an—an exhibit! Eve was more important than Adam. Eve made the children and a house a home.
Richard could not have it entirely for himself because he won their bread. She baked their bread! And in future, she vowed, jumping up and lifting the twenty-pound bucket with ease, he was going to have to take notice of her wishes. I am not a mouse and I am not a boot-scraper. I am a person of consequence.
The picture he presented as she walked up the path through the vegetables from the spring was, she admitted, softening, truly heart-warming. Her heart warmed. Unnoticed, she stood still to watch him with the baby, turn her to face him, talk solemn words to her, kiss her hand and gaze down on it with a face filled by love and wonder. The way he cuddled her then. The way he stared over her head into nothing.
Move, Richard, move! Kitty stood willing him to move, but he would not. The sun always set behind the house and its front lay in shadows, yet the light was absolutely clear, fell on father and child as if they had been petrified, stilled to stone. A very old memory came surging up from the depths, of the Master at the workhouse presiding over the Sunday service, sitting in his chair of state looking into nothing while the chaplain preached the sins of a flesh none of his listeners comprehended. The Master continued to stare vacantly; the chaplain ended, the orphan audience remained without stirring, the stiff and bitter spinster mistresses let their eyes patrol the ranks to make sure no girl wore an unchurchlike expression; and the Master sat gazing into the distance as if he saw a vision neither pleasant nor unpleasant. It was only when the chaplain took him timidly by the shoulder that he moved. Moved to fall forward out of the chair onto the chapel flags and lie there as shapeless as the stockings half-full of sand with which the inmates were beaten so that the marks did not show.
Move, Richard, move! But he did not, while time flowed on and the child in his arm slept obliviously. Suddenly she knew that he was dead. It broke on her in an instant and drove her to her knees, the bucket falling, water cascading, the world a thing of utter silence. Even then he did not move. He was dead! He was dead!
“Richard!” she screamed, scrambling up, running.
Her cry dragged him out of his abstraction, but not in time to catch her. She was upon him in the same moment, weeping and keening, her hands plucking at his shoulders, his chest.
“Kitty! What is it, my love? What is the matter?”
She wailed and howled, tears streaming down her face, lost to all reason. When Kate joined her mother to bawl in her own key, Richard got to his feet with two demented female creatures clinging to him as to a lifeline, his head spinning. Kate he dumped in her cradle unceremoniously, where she yelled in outrage at being so cavalierly discarded; Kitty he sat in the armchair by the stove, where she sobbed as if her heart were broken. Out came the rum; fussing and clucking, he forced Kitty to drink.
“Oh, Richard, I thought you were dead!” she moaned, choking, looking up at him with eyes and nose running. “I thought you dead! I thought you dead!” She flung her arms about his hips and pushed her face against him, weeping afresh.
“Kitty, I am not dead.” He disengaged her hands, picked her out of the chair and sat down in it with her on his lap. The hem of her calico dress was the only available rag, so he took it and wiped her eyes, her nose, her cheeks, her chin, her throat—the spate of tears had even soaked into the yoke of her dress. “My dearest love, I am not dead. See?” he asked, smiling tenderly. “Corpses cannot deal with fits of the vapors. Though it is nice,” he added, heart full, “to know that I am so desperately mourned. Here, have another sip of rum.”
Kate’s tantrum in the bedroom was increasing in volume, but she would get over it faster than Kitty would get over her shock, so he turned his head and shouted sternly, “Kate, hush your roars! Go to sleep!” Much to his surprise, his daughter’s howls subsided into blessed silence.
“Oh, Richard, I thought you were dead like the Master, and I could not bear it! You were dead—and you had loved me so much—and I had never understood—and I had hurt you and spurned you—and then it was too late to tell you that I love you. I love you the way you love me, more than life itself. I thought you were dead, and I did not know how to live in a world without you! I love you, Richard, I love you!”
