Sarah Thornhill (19 page)

She stood with him the way she did at home, between his knees while he sat in the chair. Looked into every one of the faces of this place, and when she saw none of them was the one she wanted she didn't look again.

I was glad I'd given her Jack's stone. It was the one thing I'd done for her, little enough as it was. Would Daunt have her with us at Glenmire, I wondered. Could I
look out for her
that way?

Daunt came over, sat beside me.

Your niece, he said, quiet enough that Ma wouldn't hear. A shy little lass.

Should of been taken back where her home is, I said. Never stopped pining. There was a chance to send her back. But things went cockeyed.

When I said the word
cockeyed
I knew there was something not right with my voice.

I'm sorry to hear that, Daunt said. Things do go cockeyed in this world. But could it not be attempted again?

Pa won't hear of it, I said. He's got the rights in law. Made that very clear.

My voice was getting husky going over ground I didn't want to go over.

But I'd be glad if we could do something for her, I said. When a chance comes.

That would be a pleasure to do, Daunt said. She might visit her Aunt Sarah and her Uncle John. We might get her talking the leg off a chair.

Tried to picture the girl with me and Daunt, in that place, Glenmire, whatever it might turn out to be. Auntie and uncle being good to her. But it was a sad used-up sort of thought. My heart wasn't in it, the way it had been the first time around.

We were wed in the parlour, all flowers and sunlight through the French doors, the Reverend pleased to have a marriage done proper in a land where so many didn't bother.

Bub and Kathleen's second was due any day so they couldn't come, but Johnny and Judith travelled all the way up from Sydney, that was good of them. Johnny had on a new yellow waistcoat, the last word in smart. But alongside the gentlemen in their dark clothes, the waistcoat was a bit too much of a good thing.

Pa tucked my arm up against him for the walk across the room to where Daunt was waiting.

That's my girl, he whispered.

I had to smile, because smile was what brides did. But I thought, No, Pa, I'm not your girl. Not since that day.

Wanted it all to be over, Ma and Pa gone. Couldn't look at them without remembering, couldn't remember without aching. Wanted to be wed and gone.

Daunt said the words a bit rushed, and he stumbled at
for
richer, for poorer.
I'd thought it might be me stumbling, the words bringing up too many thoughts, but when it was my turn I was cool as glass.
Forsaking all others
, I said, firm as if there'd never been an other.
Till death us do part
, I said, and wondered at the woman I was listening to, who had no fear of forever.

When the ring went on, it felt big and cumbersome. I wanted to get it off.

Mary gave us the bedroom at the end of the verandah. A lovely room, and on the bed the counterpane I'd admired on her own, grey silk with a flamingo embroidered in scarlet. Daunt made himself scarce while I got into my nightdress, opened the bed, got in.

I'd feared Jack would be with me in the room. Feared I couldn't come at Daunt if Jack was there with us.

I'd feared Jack being there, but it was worse to know he wasn't. The only person in this bed was someone called Sarah Daunt, new to the world since that afternoon at half past two, and in a minute her husband would be there to love and cherish her.

Daunt come in and I did my best to smile.

The shock of me in the altogether not something I'll subject you to all at once, Sarah, he said. Work up to it in stages, I'd say, wouldn't you agree now.

While he was talking he blew out the lamp, for which I was grateful. I lay listening to the sounds of him getting out of his clothes and into his nightshirt. Had only one hope, that he'd come at me polite and do the deed quick and quiet and go to sleep.

I had a picture of all the nights of my life, every one of them with John Daunt in bed with me.

He got in. The mattress dipped in the middle and I held myself up to stop rolling against him. We lay for a time. I couldn't hear him breathing.

I thought he'd start by kissing me. That was the part I dreaded most. More private somehow than the other thing. And knowing I was no virgin he might be a bit rough with me, to show me what he thought of that. Whatever it was, I'd have to put up with it the best way I could.

Well, Sarah, he asked the ceiling. How will we go about this now?

I thought, Oh my Lord, this feller's not done it before! That put a different light on it. I was shaping a smile in the dark that I have to say was a little superior.

He moved over next to me and I felt the warmth and the weight of him against me. He made a small enquiring
Hmn?
and began to touch me, and it was clear straight away that he knew what he was doing. Not the least bit rough but very sure of himself. Sure of me too. Seemed he knew my body better than I did myself.

Didn't make to kiss me. Only his hands moving around my body, a kind of conversation.

There was no tender melting of one person into another. Not the swooning bliss I'd had with Jack. This was a different animal entirely. Two animals, you might say. Taken over by such a hard force it made both of them cry out.

It was an education. Thank God it was dark. The look on my face could only of been astonishment.

We had a week at Garlogie under the scarlet flamingo. I'd get into the bed first but after the first night he didn't blow the lamp out straight off. He'd get into his nightshirt and out of the corner of my eye I'd have a glimpse of him. Not a bad-looking feller with his shirt off, though pale as milk in the lamplight where Jack had been that brown of a well-cooked loaf.

With the lamp out we got to know our way around each other. Daunt required no love-talk, I came to discover. Asked nothing of me by way of declarations and gave none either. We took our pleasure from each other so we sang out with the strength of it, but it was bodies coming together, not souls. The world of the bed in the dark was a solitary one for me. It seemed to be the same for him.

I wondered sometimes, who are the other women he's known, that he's so practised?

In daylight we spoke to each other of this and that, small remarks exchanged,
making ourselves pleasant
. That morning in the summer-house was the closest we'd ever got to saying what was in our hearts.

He asked me nothing about my life. Might of thought asking would open that door marked
Jack
. I asked him nothing about his, not wanting to make the distance between us any greater than it already was. I felt that distance. Feared as time went on it might matter more, not less, that Daunt was from one kind of world and I was from another. In the end my charms might not make up for being an unlettered girl with a father who had worn the stripes, and a heart that did not belong to her husband.

I
F A MAN
on a good horse rode hard he could get to Glenmire in a day, two at most. But there was me and Daunt, plus two of Campbell's men in case of bush-rangers, and we couldn't go any faster than the cart with all my things that Pa had brought up from the Point. It would be three days, Daunt said, and rough.

Straight after Garlogie's soft valley we went into high dark hills that the road wound up and down among. Now and then we'd come out to a high place. Ahead, nothing but ridges and valleys, a tangle of bulges, like a lamb's brain ready for the pan.

It was a poor road. More than a bridle track, but much worse than between Thornhill's and Garlogie. Clay gone to dust, corduroy on the creeks, the horses had to be walked over the logs. A crow flying might make short work of it but a human had to follow the track in and out of every wrinkle of the country.

All day I watched Daunt riding up ahead. John David Daunt. My husband. That would be it for the rest of my days, him on top of his horse, jogging on and not looking back at me. With every wild mile I was more alone.

Even in that rough country people had put down roots. Nine Mile Creek was a cattleyard and a muddy creek and the nastiest low hut I've ever been in. The man there, just the smell of him enough to knock you down. I was glad of his tea and mutton after the long day on the horse and he would of been happy to make a shakedown for us on the floor, but the fleas in that hut was so thick, Daunt thanked him kindly and said we'd sleep in the tent.

I lay in the dark smelling the oil in the canvas, hearing the frogs and the crickets close by. Weary, but couldn't sleep. Felt we'd fall off the edge of the earth if we went much further. I'd been to Windsor and to Sydney. Those places were a fair step if you took the road, but in the end you got there. Never thought you could travel so far as we had today without arriving somewhere. There wouldn't be a lot of going backwards and forwards to Mary's. I was starting to see that. Not a journey you'd take on lightly.

I thought Daunt was asleep but he spoke out of the dark.

That's the worst of it, he said. Tomorrow not so bad.

Frogs so loud they near drowned him out. Never heard such frogs.

Through the range by noon, he said. In the valley then, easier going I'm glad to be able to say.

The village you told me, I said, what was the name again?

Gammaroy, he said. Though village, to be honest with you, that would be gilding the lily. Be there by dark tomorrow, God and the horses willing.

And your place the day after, I said.

Our place, he said. Your place too, you know, Mrs Daunt.

For richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.
They'd thought of everything, those words. Locked you in, coming and going, backwards and forwards, up and down
. Sarah Daunt her mark.
I'd put my hand to them.

Didn't know if I could manage it, being the wife of John David Daunt. Coming into whatever kind of household he had, no other company, and no way to get on a horse and leave. By and by children would come along, and that was a fear and a mystery. I was frightened of having a child, what it might ask of me by way of medicines I didn't have, fits and fevers I wouldn't know what to do about. Not to mention the act of birth. Pain and the danger of death, that was all I knew.

I had another fear, too deep to look at. That I might not love a child not Jack's.