Going Home
For Amelia and her brothers and sisters, the grim past which their mother Emily has endured seems very far away. A striking and independent young woman studying to be a teacher in York, Amelia is looking for a purpose in life, and hopes especially to become acquainted with the two young gentlemen who have travelled all the way from Australia to meet her family. Ralph Hawkins, bringing with him his friend Jack – a handsome half-aboriginal Australian – has come to Yorkshire to look for his roots. He finds Amelia, whose tangled family history is inextricably bound up with his.
Ralph Hawkins’s whole world was turned upside down when he learned that he had been adopted by the couple he had always called his parents. In his quest to find his real mother, he uncovers some cruel and unpleasant truths, before at last realizing where his true destiny lies.
Going Home
Val Wood
For my family with love
With thanks to Harry Buck for the loan of old farm books and sayings.
To Catherine for reading the manuscript.
General reading sources:
A Secret Country
by John Pilger (Jonathan Cape, London, 1989).
Archaeology of the Dreamtime
by Josephine Flood (William Collins, Sydney-London, 1983).
‘
MY FATHER SAYS
your mother was a whore!’
Ralph Hawkins hesitated for only a second, then crunched up his fist and directed it towards the conveyor of the insulting remark. It found its mark on Edwin Boyle’s chubby chin and knocked him to the ground.
‘Don’t ever say that again or it’ll be the worse for you.’ Ralph rubbed his knuckles with his other hand. The blow had hurt him too but he didn’t mind that, he’d been wanting to hit the little toad for some time and even though he wasn’t completely sure what his adversary had meant by his statement, it had been made with such gleeful venom that it was obviously not complimentary.
Edwin started to blubber and their teacher, Miss Henderson, came hurrying towards them, her movements restricted by her old-fashioned, overlong black gown. The ribbons on her bonnet swung around her neck and her slippered feet pitter-pattered on the school yard. She
was followed in less haste by Edwin’s sister Phoebe.
‘No fighting boys,’ the teacher twittered. ‘It is not gentlemanly! Now get up Edwin, and Ralph, say you are sorry to Edwin for hitting him.’
‘But I’m not sorry!’ Ralph glared down at Edwin and was gratified to see that a hole had been torn in Edwin’s striped stockings just below the knee of his knickerbockers. ‘He insulted my mother.’
Miss Henderson’s face turned pink but she stammered, ‘I’m sure he didn’t mean to. Now come along and make up, there’s good fellows.’
‘They’re not good fellows,’ Phoebe interrupted. ‘Not either of them. They’re both horrible and Edwin’s just a cry-baby.’
‘And you’re horrible too, Phoebe Boyle. You’ll never be a lady,’ her brother retaliated as he scrambled to his feet. ‘Father says you won’t.’
Ralph turned his back on them and walked towards the gate where he knew his mother would be waiting in the trap if she hadn’t sent one of the Aboriginal boys to meet him, as sometimes she did if she was busy. But today she was there already with his young sister Peggy. Next to their trap was another, with Mrs Boyle sitting in it waiting for Edwin and Phoebe.
Both women had their backs to him and appeared to be talking together, though they were not close friends. His mother and father didn’t have many friends, only people like Ralph’s godfather Ralph Clavell and Benne and
Daisy Mungo, the parents of Jack, his best friend. Few people from Sydney visited their farm socially. It was set high up in the hills overlooking Sydney Cove. The best view in all the area, his father boasted, he could sell it for a fortune if he wanted to, but he wouldn’t.
His mother, Meg, turned to greet him, but her smile faded and she raised her dark eyebrows as she saw the sullen expression on his face. ‘In trouble again, Ralph? What have you been up to this time?’
‘Ralph and Edwin have been fighting, Mrs Hawkins,’ Phoebe broke in from behind him before Ralph could offer an explanation, and he gave her a withering look. ‘Edwin was rude.’
‘Edwin!’ Lucinda Boyle turned to her son. The difference between her and Meg Hawkins was immediately apparent. Her demeanour was ladylike, her manner gentle and cultivated. She had the fair translucent skin and soft blond hair of an Englishwoman, and was dressed too in the manner of the ladies of the mother country in her sprigged sheath dress with its ruched bodice and draped skirt, though today, because she was driving her trap, she wore no bustle. Meg was weather-browned, her hair dark and unruly beneath her wide hat, and she wore a plain, though good-quality bleached cotton gown. Nevertheless she was a handsome woman with a proud, strong and defiant look about her.
Ralph caught his mother’s glance and intuitively she didn’t question further but told him
to get into the trap. ‘Boys will fight, Mrs Boyle,’ she said, and shook the reins. ‘Don’t worry about it. They’ll be friends again by ’morning.’
Mrs Boyle smiled in agreement and wishing each other goodbye they moved off in different directions, with the two boys glaring at each other and Phoebe looking smug and twirling a blond ringlet around her finger.
‘Want to tell me about it?’ Ralph’s mother asked as they pulled up the steep dusty road towards home.
He glanced at his sister sitting next to him and shook his head. ‘No,’ he muttered. ‘It was nothing. Edwin Boyle is a dirty toad that’s all.’
‘Toads are not dirty.’ Peggy, with all the assurance of a ten-year-old, defied her brother’s wisdom. ‘It’s only because they live in mud that people think they are.’
‘Oh, shut up Peggy,’ he said irritably. ‘I’m trying to think.’
He would ask Jack, he decided, he would surely know what it meant. Even though Jack was younger than Ralph, he knew the answers to so many things. He had had a different upbringing from Ralph. He knew the names of animals which roamed the bush, he could fish, he knew how to dig out lizards or frogs from the ground and could climb the highest trees without fear of falling. He could arm-wrestle better than anyone else Ralph knew, and he was allowed to wander over the hills alone; he went into Sydney by
himself, often walking all the way if he couldn’t get anyone to take him, and he had a private tutor who came to teach him four days a week at his home on land above Creek Farm where Ralph and his family lived.
Jack was sitting on the veranda steps waiting for him as they trotted up the steep drive. His chest was bare and he wore a pair of ragged trousers. His hair was a mass of tight dark curls, he had a huge grin on his face and his dark eyes gleamed with mischief.
Meg sighed when she saw Jack. ‘Get changed out of those clothes, Ralph, before you go anywhere and be back here for supper at six o’clock.’
Ralph jumped down from the trap and raced inside, tearing off his belted tunic. He reappeared a few minutes later wearing an old shirt and an even older pair of trousers. ‘And you’ll feed the pigs before either of you get any supper,’ she shouted after them as they ran towards the creek.
The water of the creek was cool and refreshing and after they had pushed and splashed each other, they ran down the hill to the pond which Joe, Ralph’s father, had dug many years ago when first arriving at Creek Farm. This water was warmer, being still, and they dived in simultaneously and swam the width of it before emerging on the other bank.
‘Race you to the other side,’ Jack shouted and whooped as he dived again, and Ralph
knew that he wouldn’t catch him. Jack was as fast-moving in water as he was on the land.
‘I want to ask you something,’ Ralph said, as they lay in the warm grass and felt the heat of the evening sun drying them; two young and slim bodies, one brown-skinned, one fair and bronzed by the sun. ‘Something you might know.’
‘Hmm?’ Jack said sleepily, his eyes closed. ‘Ask your teacher.’
‘Can’t,’ Ralph said shortly.
Jack turned towards him. ‘Why not?’
Ralph felt his cheeks burn and he turned over onto his stomach so that Jack wouldn’t see his face. ‘I think it’s something not very nice.’
Jack laughed. ‘Hey, I already told you about babies!’ He had a curious accent, English, but clipped and slightly nasal.
‘No, it’s not that, stupid! It’s – it’s – Do you know what a whore is?’
Jack whistled. ‘Hey! You don’t want to know about them. They’re
bad
women!’
Ralph turned to face him. ‘Why are they? How do you know?’
Jack shrugged. ‘My father says I can go anywhere in Sydney except to the Rocks, because that’s where the bad white women are. The whores.’
‘I’ll kill that Edwin Boyle – and his father.’ Ralph curled up his fists as he had done earlier when he had hit Edwin, but next time, he vowed, he would make him bleed.
Jack shook his head after Ralph told him what Edwin had said about his mother. ‘It don’t make it true, just because that’s what he said, and it won’t make it better if you hit him.’
For all his mischief, Jack had a peaceable merry nature, always turning away from aggravation and confrontation. In his short life he had been called all manner of names by white men who thought they were superior, but he had been taught by his parents to know that he was as good, if not better than these usurpers of his country, but that he needn’t necessarily tell them so; better by far, they advised, to let them remain in ignorance.
Jack was of mixed blood. His father, Benne, was an Aborigine, as was his mother’s mother. She had married a white farmer, and Jack’s mother had been the result of that union. She and Jack were lighter in skin colour than his father. Both had the same dark glossy hair, deep brown eyes and high cheekbones of the true Aborigine, but with the straight nose of their English ancestor.
Jack’s father, Benne, and Ralph’s father, Joe, had formed a lasting friendship twelve years ago, before the convict, Joe Hawkins, had obtained his pardon and freedom, and when Benne had led him towards the gold seam at the top of the creek. Benne hadn’t wanted gold – as an Aborigine he wouldn’t have been allowed to keep it. What he wanted was sheep and some land which he wouldn’t be turned off, and now
he had both, bought in Joe Hawkins’s name but belonging to Benne and his family.
‘Your mother’s calling, we’d better go.’ Jack jumped to his feet and pulled on his trousers. ‘And I’ve got to feed the dogs, so I won’t stay for supper. See you tomorrow.’
He loped up the hill towards his home and Ralph watched him before he too rose to his feet. He thought that Jack had a most enviable life. He didn’t have to go to school and be taught by a prissy schoolmarm, as he did. Jack had been taken away from the mission school by Ralph’s mother when she saw how bright he was. Through Mrs Boyle she had arranged for him to have a tutor, an Englishman, a former convict, with little money and no prejudices about teaching a native Australian boy. Jack already knew more about English history than Ralph; his reading ability wasn’t as good though his understanding of mathematics was better, and he knew more about wild creatures and the wonders of nature than Ralph could ever expect to know.
Ralph fed the pigs, his chore for the day, and reminded his sister to feed the hens, then went inside and greeted his godfather, Ralph Clavell, who had come to supper. Ralph Clavell and his father were somehow involved in the business of gold and sheep, but Ralph didn’t understand how or why. His godfather had formerly been a ship’s surgeon and had decided to stay in Australia after making several voyages with the
convict ships. It was on one of these that he had met Ralph’s parents.