The Black Dress (9 page)

I walked forward and reached up to kiss him on the cheek. ‘Welcome home, Papa.’

I stepped back as he tried to put his arm around me, but Maggie and John were crowding in now, ready for hugs and kisses. Annie hid her face in Mamma’s skirt and shook her head when Papa asked her for a kiss.

‘You’ve been gone a long time, Alex,’ Mamma said. ‘Almost half her little life. You’ll have to give her time to get used to you again.’

She picked Annie up and we all walked back to the house. Papa was smiling again, but he faltered as he saw Granny waiting for us.

‘Well, Alexander MacKillop, you’ve decided to come home then,’ Granny said. ‘It’s about time.’

My father never explained to us children why he stayed away for so long. We were expected to simply accept the decisions of our elders and do as we were told. Well, we did. But we were never the same family afterwards. Once, we had been a unit, all of us working together. Afterwards, from our point of view, it was Mamma and we children who were the
real
family, and then there was Papa.

I think he felt it too, right from his first days back, and he was astonished. He had truly expected to walk back into our lives as though nothing had happened. Not a man of great foresight, my father. He was hurt when we turned to Uncle Donald for help or instruction, but we knew we could rely on Uncle Donald.

That was the great loss, beyond the loss of Papa’s company while he was gone, beyond even the loss of the farm. We lost
him.
Instead of the strong, wise father we had known, we older children knew him to be unwise and, it seemed in some way we couldn’t quite explain,
untrustworthy.
He had not kept us from poverty or eviction or terrible anxiety, and we never again felt protected by him, never felt that everything would be all right as long as Papa was there. That is a deep loss to any child.

The younger ones took their attitude from us, once they left babyhood. Indeed, they had enough reasons in their own experience to do so. We still loved him. It would have been easier in some ways if we hadn’t. He was easy to love, Papa, so lively, so energetic, and so intensely involved in anything he was doing. Life often seemed more exciting when he was around. And he was afraid of nothing.

I laugh—people with no foresight often seem brave to others! I imagine him as a 12-year-old and I chuckle again. Or try to. No sound comes and it must seem to the sisters who are with me as though I am choking. They hurry forward to sit me up and I try to smile. The days move so slowly for them, immured here looking after me, yet they are so patient and kind. I wonder if they are tolling over their own memories while they wait, like beads on a rosary. Perhaps memories of me. Oh, I hope I have never disappointed them as Papa disappointed me!

We lived at The Plenty for months afterwards, until Papa could lease a property further down the river. Life went back more or less to the way it had been before, except that there was even less money. Then Papa decided to stand for election to the seat of Richmond.

‘I’d like to thank my friends in Richmond for their support during the campaign—though by the looks of things few actually voted for me!’ my father said.

The audience laughed. They liked a good loser who could turn a joke upon himself.

‘I am, it appears, not fortunate in electoral matters.’

More laughter. They knew he was referring to his earlier attempt to be pre-selected for another seat. I was proud of Papa, standing so straight and tall on the stage. The lamplight drew out the red glints in his hair. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t won the election. I waved at Adeline Seward, who was sitting with her parents across the aisle from us. She grinned back at me.

‘I don’t have a great deal in my purse.’ He raised an eyebrow.

The audience weren’t sure how to take that. Did he mean that votes had been bought? They shifted uneasily in their seats. Papa had such a reputation for starting political fights—was one about to erupt now? I took Mamma’s hand and she held mine hard.

‘I heard earlier in the week that there would be a row here in Richmond, so I withdrew my candidature.’

‘Balderdash!’ a man sang out.

Immediately the audience starting to chatter and shout.

‘Nonsense!’

‘There’s no truth in it!’

‘And a good thing too!’

‘Boo!’

The shouts came from all over the hall. I blushed and looked straight ahead so I didn’t catch Adeline’s eye. It was so embarrassing. Why did Papa always have to have the last word? He shouted down the audience.

‘I knew things were rotten in Richmond when I discovered there had been a plan to pull down John Stephenson’s house and drag him to the Yarra and dump him in, just because he didn’t agree with the candidate!’

‘That man’s drunk!’ a woman said behind me. ‘Disgraceful!’

I could see my mother’s face turn as red as mine. Papa wasn’t drunk—or if he was it was only on excitement and disappointment and anger. He hated to lose. Only 44 men out of 700 had voted for him. He so wanted to be liked; the rejection hurt him a great deal. I knew that was true—Mamma had whispered it to me—but still, why couldn’t he just have congratulated his opponents and gone home?

The hall was in an uproar. Papa couldn’t be heard over all the shouting and the talk. He held his hand up for silence and the crowd quietened.

‘Without deep pockets I couldn’t mount a major campaign—two pounds a go to publish my policies in the
Argus
was a bit too steep for me.’ His voice was droll. Reluctantly, the crowd quietened. All that debating in Rome had taught Papa how to handle an audience. ‘Maybe I should tell the
Argus
that next time I’ll put my policies on placards and parade them through the streets. Do you think they’d like the competition?’

There was some laughter, but also some shouts and hissing.

‘Well, the electors of Richmond have shown who they prefer. I am sorry it was not Mr Kennedy, but I think very well of Mr Burnley in both his private and his public capacity. I wish him all the best.’ He paused, and then grinned. The crowd settled. Papa could really be very engaging when he chose. ‘Now, you may know I’ve put in a protest with the Electoral Returning Officer—but if I were him, I’d just tear it up!’

Most of the crowd laughed, but a few still hissed. He waved and walked off the stage. As he came down the side aisle towards us, he kept his head high, but as soon as we were outside his shoulders slumped.

Mamma slid her hand through his arm. ‘There’ll be other elections, Alexander.’

Papa shook his head. ‘Not for me, Flora. Not after such a slap in the face. Forty-four votes! And not even one from the Richmond district. I’ll never live it down. I’m sorry Mary had to be there to see it.’

I put my hand through his other arm. ‘Everyone loses sometimes, Papa,’ I said. I just wished Adeline hadn’t been there to see his humiliation.

I think that was the night the rumours that my father was a drunk began. He wasn’t. I wouldn’t say he never
was
drunk—that’s a hard thing to be sure of in a Scotsman who liked a dram, particularly on New Year’s Eve. As he grew older, I noticed, liquor affected him more easily and a couple of drinks would have him slurring his words. But a habitual drunk? No. His pugnacity and volatility were not so easily explained.

I, of all people, should know how easily that kind of rumour starts. I’ve been called a drunk often enough myself! Later in life I used to dread that spoon of brandy at bedtime, because of the rumours, no matter how much the doctor said I needed it. Of course, it was the cheapest cooking brandy and tasted vile. It might have been easier if it had been single malt Scotch. I’m enough my father’s daughter to like a sip of that.

My brother Donald was born not quite ten months after Papa returned. I suppose that speaks for itself.

Life was more crowded than ever. I helped Mamma and Granny with the other children, but she’d had such a hard birth that Papa brought out a month nurse from the city to help. Perhaps the 17 months my father was away were actually a blessing for my mother’s health. She might have had ten children instead of eight. I don’t think her constitution could have stood that, seeing the trouble she had birthing Donald and Peter. She was 37 when Donald was born, and was just beginning to feel the rheumatism that plagued her so in later years.

To have a nurse was a good idea (although I wonder now who paid for her), but the nurse herself was disgusting. Oh, that’s an uncharitable thought. She was addicted to rum, I discovered. Not an unusual fault, God knows, but she was hardly an ideal person to care for a newborn child.

The day she arrived, I heard Donald wailing, the high pitched cry of distress very young babies have when they are truly frightened or in pain. I ran into Mamma’s room where Donald was wrapped naked in a towel. The nurse had a square bottle in her hand.

‘What are you doing with my brother?’

‘Don’t you worry, lass,’ the nurse said, ‘it won’t hurt him.’

She tried again to tip the black bottle against Donald’s lips. I snatched it away and smelled it. Rum. The nurse smelt just as strongly. I was outraged. More outraged, I think, because I was worried about Mamma, who was still very weak and pale, even three days after Donald’s birth. Fear lends an edge to our anger—it’s as though we turn gratefully to anger so that we don’t have to think about our fear.

‘Give him to me,’ I said and took him from her arms. He kept crying, so I rocked and patted him until he quietened a little.

‘Now take your things and get out!’ I said.

‘Look here, missy,’ the nurse said, ‘when your mother hears about this—’

‘My mother’s not to be bothered. She’s still sick. You pack your bags and get out now! You’re not touching my brother again. You’re a drunken disgrace!’

I glared at her and held Donald tightly. I wasn’t sure if she would take orders from an 11-year-old, but I’d run out to the stable and hide with him rather than let her have him again. Then I thought I should get Granny. Maybe the nurse thought the same, because she sniffed and flounced out the door.

I sat on the bed and cried a little from relief. Then I dressed the baby, which took some time. In those days there were a lot of layers to a baby’s outfit.

‘Mary, sweetheart, what are you doing with Donald?’ Mamma came back from the privy leaning on Granny’s arm.

I finished buttoning Donald’s dress and picked him up from the bed. He was almost asleep, his dark blue eyes closing. I love babies. I love the way they smell, all milky and sweet, and their soft little hands with the tiny nails.

‘Dressing him,’ I said.

‘But where’s the nurse?’

My mother was very pale. She sat down on the side of the bed and held her arms out for him. I placed him carefully in the crook of her arm and he began to nuzzle his head against her breast.

‘The nurse is gone.’

‘Mary sent her away,’ Annie piped up. She had been playing on the floor with her doll, pretending it was a baby like Donald.

‘Mary?’ Mamma asked gently.

‘She was stinking drunk and trying to feed Donald rum,’ I said. ‘So I told her to get out.’

Granny laughed. ‘That’s my girl,’ she said. ‘You know how to look after your own!’

‘You should have called me, sweetheart,’ Mamma said. ‘I would have dealt with it.’

Granny and I traded looks.

‘Into bed with you,’ Granny said to Mamma. ‘You’re not fit to scare off a starling, let alone a brazen hussy like yon. Feed the bairn and look after yourself and Mary and I will see to the rest. Right, Mary?’

We did, too, especially after Granny came to live with us for good, the next year, after Uncle Donald married Eliza MacDonald. That was a happy day, and an even happier one the next year when they had a little girl, Catherine.

Times were good. Papa bought a property on Darebin Creek, near where we used to live, and we were all relieved.

Where did he get the money? I wonder now, but I will never know. Papa insisted on inviting Uncle Peter and Aunt Julia to the house-warming. Maggie thought we should never speak to them again, and said so.

‘Christian love is about forgiveness and tolerance,’ Papa said.

‘Easy for him to say,’ Maggie said later. ‘He was safe in Scotland. How will Mamma feel, seeing them in her house?’

I didn’t know either. I watched Mamma carefully as Aunt Julia arrived, saying hesitantly, ‘Blessings on this house.’ I was afraid, I suppose, that Mamma would be unkind or cold or that Aunt Julia would say something hurtful.

But Mamma smiled and said, ‘Welcome to my home, Julia,’ and it was as though those terrible tense days on the old farm had never happened.

Bridget had come from The Plenty to help us with the party. It was lovely to see her, but she glared and scowled at Aunt Julia and Uncle Peter as they came through the door.

‘I don’t know how you can forgive her,’ she whispered to Mamma as she poured the welcoming drams. Mamma slid her arm around my shoulder.

‘She did what she thought she had to do,’ she said. ‘I can’t hold hatred and anger in my heart, Bridget. It would do me much more harm than it would her.’

‘She would have tossed you and the children out on the street,’ Bridget hissed.

‘But God provided for us, as he always will,’ Mamma said tranquilly, and took the tray from Bridget to offer Uncle Peter and Aunt Julia a drink. My father smiled at her, and she smiled back. He would never allow any of us to harbour resentment, despite his own vicious battles of words in the newspapers with people like Dunmore Lang—although he said himself once, that if Dunmore Lang ever showed any spirit of repentance or tolerance he’d forgive him gladly.

Papa was strict about turning the other cheek and extending Christian charity—he even named the next baby after Uncle Peter! On the other hand, he would defend us to the death if he thought we were acting out of conscience.

Maggie, John and I were attending Miss Stewart’s school. We were all in the same class (with 40 others), as Miss Stewart was the only teacher, with an assistant to help with the very young children. Miss Stewart was an Englishwoman, of some education, but with a poor opinion of those not English. She worked hard to stamp out the Scottish and Irish accents of her students. We complied in class, but in the yard at recess we made sure she could hear us use as much Gaelic as we knew.

It wasn’t a bad school. But one day we were studying history and I was given a text book about Queen Elizabeth I, that great persecutor of Catholics, and of Mary, Queen of Scots. It was a monstrous collection of lies, full of anti-Scottish sentiment.

I had to write a book report on it. I sat reading and becoming increasingly angry. What should I do?

What would Mamma do? I wondered. Perhaps she would just talk about the good aspects of the book and make sure that we understood the facts were incorrect. I wasn’t sure. What would Papa do? That was easy.

I wrote the book report as honestly as I could and handed it in that afternoon. The next day Miss Stewart stopped in front of my desk and threw the report in front of me.

‘Explain yourself, Mary MacKillop,’ she said.

‘The book is incorrect, Miss Stewart,’ I said.

‘Is that so?’ she said grimly.

‘The things the author says about Mary, Queen of Scots are not true, Miss Stewart. I do not think the author likes Catholics very much.’

‘And why do you think that,
Miss
MacKillop?’ It was always a bad sign when Miss Stewart called us
Miss. She’s going to lose her temper,
I thought.

‘He only puts the Protestant point of view.’

‘And you only see the Catholic point of view, you little bigot!’

I flushed, but here at least I knew what my parents would expect.
I have to stand up for my faith.
‘I am sorry you think that of me, Miss Stewart. But the book is incorrect and I cannot study from it.’

She didn’t punish me, although I had expected it. I think she even respected me a little for standing up to her—certainly she never gave me any more anti-Catholic material to study. But she had very strict rules about obedience and respect, so she wrote to my parents.

When Papa heard the full story from me, he saddled up his horse and rode to town to confront her. I didn’t want him to. I asked him to let it go. But Papa could no more turn away from a fight when he thought he had right on his side than I can turn away from a child in need. Perhaps we both had our blind spots—perhaps both our compulsions have made life difficult for other people at times.

‘I’m proud of you, Maria,’ he said. ‘That’s what all people of faith must do, stand up for their beliefs.’

Of course she and my father had a full-blown argument. When he came home he said that he would teach us himself. I never went back to Miss Stewart’s, nor did Maggie or John.

Papa was a much better teacher than a farmer. He couldn’t make the farm pay, despite the high prices for produce now that gold had been discovered in Victoria. We had to find work for our maid Peggy, Bridget’s replacement, with friends in the city because Papa couldn’t pay her. It was difficult even to find the men’s wages. I knew we were faced with losing the farm. But at least I studied Latin again.