Not the Same Sky (18 page)

And they fell to talking about the journey, which was good Honora thought, and wondered if maybe forgetting was not a daft idea.

When they heard Honora’s master come to the back door, their voices petered into one. They looked at him together, the relief that they had bathed in being the foremost expression on their faces.

‘We can arrange this again in a month,’ Honora’s master said, before their eyes had a chance to fall into sadness.

We are lucky, they thought together, and smiled and hugged.

On the way home, Honora was filled with gratitude. It strengthened her spine. She could almost feel the steel growing. This time she chatted back.

And the following week she said a little more in the kitchen too. Put words in the pauses, looked up level to Cook’s eyes once or twice.

‘Talking’s a tonic,’ Cook said, to whoever was listening.

She too brought news each morning, but up until now Honora had not listened because it had meant nothing to her. Now, she thought, perhaps she would listen. Let this news be hers. If you could change country, you could change what was news to you.

On Sunday morning Cook sent Honora to the clothesline. All days were much the same but Sunday had a bustle about it. Honora looked out over the yellow fields. They were more rounded than those at home and flowed far away into the distance, occasionally covered with a patch of trees, white trunks with a tuft of leaves at the top. The large blue sky shone down on them, a thin stripe of cloud struggling by occasionally. It looked lost, out of place. The brightness made the morning silver.

Honora sneezed, a thing she did in the mornings here. She liked doing it outside because the echo came back to her. Could anyone hear that noise over there beyond the trees? And if they could, what did they think it was? She could pick out a red roof in one of the dips, and wondered if a ship girl was there. They were dotted all over, Cook said. A white cockatoo with a yellow crest and yellow shining through its tail feathers, peered at her curiously, waiting to see if he would have to move. From faraway, cockatoos looked to have the face of mice—up close they had a startling headdress.

There were no ordinary birds here. Sometimes the lorikeets and parrots came into the yard in the evening, dazzling the place with their colour. Honora could not remember all the names, but wanted to, which was a start. To the right of the clothesline, far down in the valley, she could see the twisted patch of blue running out into the trees, the river where they had washed before their entrance into town. She could still feel every hour of that day. And then she saw it, a small sliver of familiar dew that had not dried up yet. She was mesmerised. Maybe if she could mix remembering with learning strange things, the two would even out into something new that didn’t make her heart beat too fast. One of the sheets on the line was damp, the others already bone dry. She put the damp one to her face and smelled it.

Honora was six months or so into her life in Yass when talk began of the dance. There was a notice in the hotel window, which gave all the particulars and clearly stated there would be a moon.

‘Why’s the moon mentioned?’ Honora asked.

‘You need a moon for robbin’ or dancin’, it lights the way home.’

‘Not for robbin’. You’d be seen if there was a moon, but dancin’ yes.’

There would be clothes to be made, clothes to be cleaned, shoes to be shone, ribbons to be spruced, cloaks to be brushed and bonnets to be made beautiful. And there would be food to make. Honora only gradually became aware that perhaps she might also be going. But she was still too unsure to become excited. In bed at night she wondered if she should ask Cook. She could say, ‘Cook, will I be going with you?’ or ‘Cook, how many people from here go?’ or ‘Cook, who will be minding the house when the dance is on?’

But then Cook said, ‘We’ll have to do your bonnet too. You had one when you came, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Honora, gratefully. And her heart gave a small bump.

‘Tomorrow we’ll have a look at your bonnet.’

In bed that night Honora wondered what might happen at the dance. Would it be like the ones in kitchens or barns at home? But she knew everyone there … What would happen if a stranger asked her to dance? What could she say to him? And he would be a stranger if he was not one of the men who had come into the kitchen. Would some of the other girls be at the dance? Would there be a place for them to talk?

The dance was held in the hotel. There was only one unpleasant moment, but it happened early in the night so it was possible to put it aside. The girl from the doctor’s house said that Eliza Horgan wasn’t coming because she had been hit.

‘Who hit her?’ the girl who hadn’t been nervous coming into Yass said. Honora knew her name now, Molly Hogan.

‘Her master,’ the girl from the doctor’s said.

‘Her master!’ Molly shrieked. ‘Don’t be silly. Why would a master hit you?’

They all became silent as they tried to add this piece of shocking possibility to the map of their futures.

‘Her master? Are you sure?’ Molly asked, resisting the intrusion of this troubling thought. And just then, they heard more noise outside and decided not to believe the girl from the doctor’s. You could hear things that weren’t true.

Horses and traps, men on bicycles, a few walkers, all heading towards the hotel. Voices lowered as they prepared themselves for stepping into the well of noise. Music, the sound of feet on floors, the talk. Although it was not the city, and there were not many here with refined tastes, it did itself proud in its dressing up. There was a gleam to the night because so many girls had come, those girls from Ireland. Young. Very young. Already this year there had been two weddings. There had only been one in the previous five years. You could never tell your luck. Honora had several dances, and in truth she could not particularly remember David as having been one of them. But she remembered the look of him on the way home, and stayed quiet in the carriage trying to hold on to the dance.

She did remember his name the next morning, the difference in it. David Taaffe. There was still some leftover noise from the night before hovering in the kitchen. Honora hid all her surprises in it and thought about some of the men she had danced with, and David. She had no picture of him, except that he had a moustache, black hair, grey eyes with a spot in one of them, freckles on the back of his hands. No picture at all.

When he called to ask Cook if Honora could come for a walk, Cook peered at her, as if sizing her up for the first time. She must also have been trying to read Honora’s response—although how could she have a response to what she did not know.

‘Yes,’ she said, still peering at Honora to see if she had done the right thing. Cook and David agreed a time.

At first Honora was too shy to speak. Even though all other things here were new, this was a different kind of new. He talked. And in time her talk came too, matching the rhythm of their feet on the dry mud roads.

‘Dirt roads.’

‘They look like mud to me.’

Honora sneaked looks at him. This man looked like her father, she was almost sure. But she hadn’t seen her father for two years now, a little more, perhaps she was wrong. He didn’t smell like her father. He didn’t speak like her father.

Their walks became longer. Once he touched her hand. Honora froze. He withdrew. But she thought about the touch that night and grew used to the idea of it. The next time she touched his, as if by accident. His skin didn’t feel like her father’s, it was more papery. The next time he touched her hand she didn’t pull away.

The time between walks decreased, and Honora came quicker to the back door when she heard David’s footsteps.

The master thought it best to talk to Cook. They reassured each other.

It was on what was called a winter’s evening that David said he needed to speak to Honora about a serious matter. He prefaced this serious matter by saying that protocol might demand that he speak to her master first, but he himself felt that he would like to speak first to her. After all, it had more to do with her than her master. And perhaps because she was alone in the world he felt she deserved different standards. This augured well. It seemed wrong that she should be alone in the world. He knew that Cook was very good to her, but maybe he could be with her, and then she would not be alone. Honora simply said yes, of course.

David then went to her master who felt that something in this was right. That was when he asked David about the possibility of Honora continuing to work, for a little while at least.

Cook prepared for the wedding as if it was a deeply personal matter. She wanted to have a new bonnet made for the bride, but Honora said that if Cook didn’t mind, she would like to use her old one.

‘If I don’t mind? Of course I don’t mind. But I might have one made for myself.’

Cook found out who of the girls from the ship could come. Annie spread the news. This was now the eighth wedding. Luck could come to this place.

Honora thought of Anne Sherry and wondered where she was and how she was. She was afraid to think of Bridget Joyce. And then she smiled as she thought of Julia Cuffe.

Honora’s dress was white linen. Her bonnet was spruced yet again, and Cook had sewn a white ribbon around it. David looked serious in a black suit. Honora’s voice, when saying her vows, seemed faint, as if the effort to make it carry beyond this place was too much. But she said them and people heard.

And then they had a wedding dance.

David closed the door on their room afterwards, and it was then that Honora knocked him off his heart with her look.

CHAPTER 23

Anne Sherry had looked back when she was at the gates of the barracks. She knew she was lucky because there were two of them going to the same house. This gave her a confidence she had not anticipated, and the nerve to look back. She waved. She thought it was to Honora Raftery, but couldn’t be sure at this distance. When they arrived at the house there was another Irish woman there, the cook, who looked at the two of them for a long time, staring at them as if they might somehow have brought things with them on their faces. But they must have disappointed her, because after a moment or so she shrugged and said to Anne, ‘Right, I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping.’ And when Rose made to come too, she said, ‘No, not you. You’re going to Pitt Street now, to his business. He has changed his mind, he needs only one here. But it will be told that he took the two of you for his home.’

Neither Anne nor Rose replied to this. There seemed to be nothing to say. Anne could feel her confidence ebb.

‘But it’s close, Pitt Street,’ the woman said. ‘If you ever have time you could walk there. Now, come with me.’

Anne followed her to her room. To her surprise there was a garden outside, well kept, bursting with all sorts of daring colour. Anne’s mood changed again. She would like it here, she thought. She noticed the black boughs hanging from the branches.

‘Oh, bats,’ the woman said, as she saw the surprise on her face, ‘I don’t notice them now I’m so used to them. They hang here all the time, sleeping the day away. Lucky for them. And then they take off when the sun goes down, away for food. Wait till you see them taking off, it’s a sight to behold.’

Anne surveyed her room quickly, it seemed fine and clean to her—she would take a closer look when she had time tonight. She laid her bonnet on the bed. The man would bring her trunk later and then Anne would be able to see what clothes she had. The cook brought her back to the kitchen where she gave Anne an apron. Rose was gone, spirited away by someone to Pitt Street. It was a blow, but one that would have to be borne.

‘Now let me show you.’

The kitchen was bewildering. She would have to remember where things were, she would have to make this place her own, a place she could feel safe, stand in close and merge with the walls and hopefully not be seen. She had no choice. She rolled up her sleeves and got on with what was to be her life. If they left her here in the kitchen, she would be all right.

But they didn’t leave her in the kitchen, at least not all the time. On her third day, she was sent to get water from the pipe in the street. Already she had got some from the buckets kept at the side of the house to catch the flow from the roof—that was easy, she knew that.

‘We’re still going to the pipe,’ the cook said. ‘Some of them further down get a water cart, but we’re not on that. There’s talk though that we’re going to get water straight to the house soon. Out of the tap it will come, straight into the kitchen. Now what do you think of that?’ and the cook laughed and laughed. ‘Out of a tap and into the kitchen,’ and she laughed some more and wiped her eyes.

‘You know where the pipe is, just down there and to the left,’ she said, as she swung her arm in a general direction. Anne was afraid that she might not see it.

‘You’ll see others with cans.’

That should be manageable then. Anne walked past the men who were making the road. They made her nervous, but then she was always nervous these new days. Everything made her jump.

‘She will not be able to serve at the table, not yet anyway, she will have to be kept here in the kitchen. You couldn’t send her out to be jumping and dropping dishes,’ Cook said to no one in particular.

So far, Anne was getting along fine with the cook. She could be cross sometimes for reasons Anne could not fathom. If only she could fathom the reasons then maybe she could avoid doing whatever it was that made her cross. But mostly she was even. One day Anne dared to ask, ‘How did you get here?’