Clancy of the Overflow Read online

  Nancy sat back with her cake. ‘You were saying?’

  ‘Your grandfather married Rose! She was the love of his life. Not this Honourable what’s-her-name.’

  ‘The Honourable Flora.’ Nancy looked at Jed patiently. ‘People can fall in love more than once. Granddad was more than twenty years older than Gran. Did you think he waited till he was middle-aged to fall in love?’

  ‘But that’s not the story I want.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  Jed absently held Sam’s cold hand against her heart again and stared out the window. Dusty banksia bush planted by the Hospital Board Garden Committee (President A. Sampson) wilted under a sky unendingly blue with a red tinge of the outback slowly blowing away to the sea. Mattie shrieked with joy as Clancy used a foot to make the merry-go-round spin faster for her while he held her safely on the seat.

  ‘I want to tell the story of Australia,’ Jed said at last. ‘The real story. History books are mostly dead white men in towns and cities. I want to write books that tell the women’s history, the bush history, all the important parts that haven’t been told.’

  ‘Flora is part of that history too. If it hadn’t been for Flora, Gran might never have survived, much less married Granddad. Women like Flora are as much a part of our history as Gran.’

  Jed said nothing, her hand still in Sam’s. One day I will be sitting here and he’ll open his eyes, she thought. He’ll smile at me and . . .

  Suddenly she could pretend no longer. She let the tears come.

  ‘Jed . . .’ Nancy’s arms were comforting. ‘Jed, darling . . .’

  ‘Sam’s not going to wake up, is he?’

  ‘Possibly not. But you knew that . . .’

  ‘Not really. I told myself I did, but hearing you say now that it’s possible to love more than one person . . .’

  ‘You no longer feel you have to spend your life in a hospital room? One day you might even fall in love again?’

  Jed moved back slightly. ‘Okay, maybe it is possible to fall in love more than once. But if there is just the slightest chance Sam knows I’m here, I’m not leaving him alone.’

  ‘And we’re not leaving you alone to sit with him,’ said Nancy quietly, sitting down again. ‘Not me and Michael, or Blue and Joseph or any of your friends, or Sam’s. We’re here for you. Always.’

  ‘I know. Thank you.’

  ‘Now may I tell you the story of Clancy of the Overflow? Even if it’s not the one you expected?’

  Jed managed to smile. ‘Yes. I’m a fine one to talk, aren’t I, saying I want to write the truth then objecting when you try to tell it to me?’

  ‘All right then. It was love at first sight, just as I said . . .’

  Chapter 3

  To clean a corset

  If a fresh chemise is worn under the corset, a light sponging once a month is all that is necessary. Wipe the silk with a damp cloth, both inside and out, then leave in an upright position to dry. Never wash a corset, or it may stretch out of shape and the metal eyelets rust.

  SYDNEY, 1869

  FLORA

  Her heart sang as Horatio Clancy walked her to the carriage, then tipped the porter who would bring her trunks to the house later. She dismissed Sarah, ignoring her maid’s slight look of shock that her mistress would be alone in a carriage with a man, even if that man were her fiancé.

  But Flora spoke as firmly as any eighteen-year-old who knew that from now on she was the mistress of a grand household. ‘Wait here and come after us with the porter who is bringing our trunks. I don’t want any left behind.’

  Flora’s trousseau had been bought in Paris, thanks to Ezekiel Clancy’s largesse. The girl from Buccleuch Abbey loved every single ruffle, every silk petticoat and whalebone corset.

  Clancy helped her into the carriage as she expertly lifted her long draped skirts into the carriage, then sat facing the horses. The bustle was uncomfortable — she had never worn one till that visit to Paris — but she had grown used to it on the voyage out, as well as the sweat that trickled down her neck and dampened her silk stockings. Clancy climbed in and sat opposite her. Not just handsome, she thought gratefully, but a true gentleman, despite his birth.

  Yes, she could love this man. Astoundingly, wonderfully, already did love him, the strength of him, a body used for more than rugby at school or fox hunting, for the way he smiled at her, his delight shining as gold as the sunlight on the water of this unexpectedly lovely colony.

  The colony of New South Wales was indeed small, but her family’s debts had meant Flora had always lived in relative social isolation. A small colony would provide more company — or considerably more personal prestige — than the sixteen families, not counting the vicarage, their family dined with at home. Sydney was smelly certainly, so far, but Flora had experienced several dock areas on the voyage. All docks stank.

  She peered from the carriage window — the vehicle was entirely fashionable, from the polished imported English oak to the velvet cushions on the seats.

  Flora loved it all, the seagulls diving into blue water after ships’ rubbish, the neat houses, the gardens of fruit trees and vegetables, the tethered goats who gazed with malice at the carriage, as if to say, ‘Once we are free we’ll wreak revenge for this captivity.’ She glanced at a mob of natives, squatting half naked by a clump of trees, and then slid her gaze away. Her mother had taught her early to ignore what ladies were not supposed to see.

  ‘I suppose everything looks so small and plain to you after London,’ Clancy said apologetically.

  She laughed. ‘Horatio . . . Clancy . . . I’ve been living in a cold stone tower in Northumberland. The only time I saw London was when we passed through it to buy my trousseau. I hated it — dirty snow and yellow fog.’ She met his eyes. ‘I’m going to love Australia. I think I love it already.’

  She was also saying, ‘I love you.’ They both knew it. She loved Sydney’s freshly cobbled streets, not slippery with hundreds of years of chamber pots and decayed cabbage, like London’s, even if these had been built by convict labour, though Clancy informed her that the former common sight of chain gangs breaking rocks had vanished with the end of transportation. She loved the views as the horses laboured up the hill to the more fashionable part of Sydney, the sun sparkling like crushed diamonds on the harbour, the tree-clothed tongues of olive-green headlands poking out into the blue. She smiled tolerantly at the pretentious houses, with their imposing gates, their turrets and carriage houses.

  Clancy must have understood her expression. Such a sensitive man. ‘That’s the kind of house my father wanted, but with twice as many towers. Maria convinced him to hire an Italian architect to create something more . . . more like the homes in English magazines.’

  ‘I am going to adore Maria,’ said Flora.

  Did she imagine that he tensed at her words? ‘The house is . . . a bit different from the magazines,’ he said dubiously. ‘I hope you like it.’

  ‘I will love it.’ Her own house. Sunlight, instead of gloom. Paris fashions and a husband who wanted to give her anything she wished . . .

  A rabble of skinny, half-naked children suddenly ducked out from behind one of the fancy carriage houses. They ran after them with outstretched begging hands. Clancy reached into his pocket and threw a handful of sixpences out towards the little horde.

  Flora smiled at him again. ‘That was a lot of sixpences.’

  ‘I keep a pocketful to give to the children.’

  ‘I did not expect so many beggar children here. Are there no charities to help them?’

  ‘Yes. But not enough.’

  ‘Can you introduce me to those who run them?’

  Clancy stared at her in wonder. ‘Of course.’

  She smiled, almost apologetically. ‘Back home I was President of the Ladies Guild. It was supposed to be an honorary position, as the highest-ranking woman, but within a year we were genuinely helping the poor of the district, instead of simply arranging flowers and embroidering
the altar cloth. I like to be useful.’ She gazed out at the harbour again. ‘I will never tire of the light here. It was too bright at sea. But here it’s as if the land turns it silver.’

  ‘You speak like a painter.’

  She laughed. ‘I do paint a bit, but very poorly.’ All ladies painted, danced and played the piano, at least a bit. She lowered her voice as if telling him a secret. ‘I really do not care for painting.’

  ‘I hope you like the piano. Maria ordered it from England . . .’

  ‘She plays the piano? I am so looking forward to meeting her.’ Flora added, ‘I have never had a sister.’

  The tension appeared in Clancy’s face again. What was wrong? she wondered.

  ‘Maria doesn’t play,’ he said shortly. ‘She bought the piano for you.’

  ‘Oh dear! That was so kind! But I absolutely hate playing the piano too. I have no ear for music at all. My governess was in despair at my lack of proper talents. I do like to dance though.’

  She could see his relief as the visions of monthly concerts and evenings at the opera and afternoons at the art gallery vanished.

  ‘I enjoy dancing too. And this is the house.’ He watched her anxiously as the road turned a corner.

  She stared, astonished. ‘It’s beautiful!’

  The house was so new that not even grass had grown around it yet. It stood in serene simplicity, three tiers of cream stone work, its flagged terraces and rounded balustrades and wide doors inviting residents outdoors. This house opened its heart to the land and sea, instead of shutting them out with narrow windows and three layers of curtain.

  She had never seen a house as lovely, never imagined one could be so. And it was hers.

  Flora shut her eyes for a moment, imagining what its setting might become. Something stunning, but simple, to match the elegant clean lines of the house. ‘Roses,’ she whispered. ‘It needs a million roses under every terrace, each line of them a single colour that almost but not quite matches the one above, moving from dark reds by the stonework through pinks to white to match the cobbles of the drive.’ She opened her eyes. ‘Can one buy rose bushes here?’

  Clancy smiled. His skin was just a little too brown, but in every other aspect such a gentleman. ‘Yes, of course. There are flower nurseries that breed them too, but rose bushes survive the journey from England. I believe the Macarthurs have even established a Rose Growing Society.’

  ‘I must join it. Oh, Clancy, can you imagine the fragrance? Does the house have a name?’ She peered out the window at it as the carriage entered the driveway.

  His smile was such a sweet one, for a man. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘We will call it “Rosemere”.’ She turned to him with joy as the groom reined in the horses exactly opposite the front door, where the staff were lined up by the front steps. The butler had obviously sent an underling to spy out the carriage’s return. ‘There is so much here. So much beauty. So much good to be done among the poor.’

  A wizened man, almost monkey-like but strong with it, stepped forwards as the groom opened the front door. Not grand or erect enough to be Grange, the butler, she thought. He must be her new father-in-law, his face pink from an unaccustomed shave, his coat expensive but ill fitting, his trousers slightly wrinkled. He looked to be the kind of man whose clothes seemed to change size and shape as soon as they were worn, no matter how carefully a tailor measured him.

  Ezekiel Clancy held out his hand to help Flora from the carriage, awkwardly as she was a head taller. ‘Welcome to Sydney, your ladyship,’ said Ezekiel, not quite achieving a gentleman’s accent. The last of Flora’s uncertainty vanished. Ezekiel Clancy was nowhere near as uncouth as she had expected.

  Flora smiled at him. ‘I’m not a ladyship. Only an honourable, I’m afraid.’

  Ezekiel’s expression seemed to say that England and its aristocratic conventions were far away and if he wanted to turn an honourable into a ladyship to add to his family’s grandeur, there was no one in the colony who’d stop him. She felt him inspect her, this new daughter-in-law for whom he’d paid so much, as Clancy led her between the two lines of servants.

  ‘Mrs Hanger, the housekeeper, madam,’ said Mrs Hanger, rising from a deep curtsey that made her corsets creak.

  ‘Grange,’ said Grange, bowing. Clancy had already told her that her new butler had been an under-footman in a viscount’s establishment for more than ten years in England before joining his uncle in the unsuccessful counterfeiting venture that led to his joining the colony. But the man seemed presentable. And wasn’t this colony meant to be a place of new beginnings?

  ‘It is good to meet you Mrs Hanger, Grange.’ Flora’s smile took in all the assembled servants, even Emily the third parlourmaid. ‘But where is dear Maria?’

  ‘Inside,’ said Ezekiel shortly.

  Clancy’s hand tensed on Flora’s arm. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered. ‘We should have warned you about Maria.’

  Flora looked at him, puzzled. ‘Why?’

  ‘You needn’t worry, your ladyship,’ said Ezekiel sharply. ‘Maria’ll be back at Overflow as soon as you’re married and there’s no need for a chaperone.’

  ‘But what is wrong with her?’

  ‘Nothing for you to worry about. The doctor said it could happen to anyone. Never been anything like it in the family before.’ Ezekiel’s eyes inspected Flora again, as if he were assessing her breeding potential. ‘No reason for it to happen again.’

  ‘But what?’ she repeated, her anxiety growing again. This was obviously something secret, so bad they had waited till she was across the world from her family before she was allowed to know it. Was Maria mad, like the poor woman in Jane Eyre? Or wild and untameable, like Cathy in the scandalous Wuthering Heights?

  Ezekiel’s lips narrowed. Clancy flushed, obviously trying to change the subject. ‘Maria ordered furnishings for the small parlour, a few bedrooms and the dining room. Oh, and the servants’ quarters of course. She thought you would prefer to arrange the rest of the house yourself.’

  ‘Maria sounds so thoughtful,’ said Flora carefully. Not mad then, nor untameable. One could not imagine anyone in Wuthering Heights ordering new furnishings, except possibly poor Isabella.

  ‘She is,’ said Clancy hurriedly. ‘Everyone at Overflow loves Maria.’

  ‘They’re used to her there,’ muttered Ezekiel.

  ‘But, of course, change anything about the house, any furnishings that you don’t like,’ Clancy added quickly as they climbed the steps into the hall. ‘The dining table was made in the colony, but the workmanship is good . . .’

  He cared nothing for the dining table, she knew. Nor did she, just then. He hesitated at the door to the small parlour, then stood back for Grange to open the door.

  The parlour was small in name only. The room was as large as a farm labourer’s cottage — polished wooden floors, a strange but attractive deep red, the wood presumably also chosen by Maria. The floors went well with the red and blue Indian carpets, the blue stripes in the curtains, the deep blue velvet sofas, the chaise longue, and the armless chairs that allowed for the spread of skirts.

  A woman rose from one of them. She wore a dress of plain grey silk, with no bustle. Although slim, her waist had obviously not been cinched in to fashionable thinness by a corset. The grey lace veil pinned to her hair covered her face and neck.

  Clancy seemed to be trying to hide anguish. Ezekiel looked belligerent, as if waiting to argue that a bargain was a bargain, and Flora must stick to it. What was this, who was this, to provoke such depth of emotion?

  ‘Flora, may I present my sister, Maria? Maria, this is Flora McPherson.’

  ‘Welcome, Miss McPherson,’ said Maria softly. She didn’t move towards them. Her accent was good, only slightly colonial. The mystery must be under that veil.

  ‘Call me Flora. We shall be sisters soon.’ Flora stepped towards her, slightly unsure of the correct way to approach a lady behind a veil worn indoors, and by one evidently not of a religious o
rder. She tentatively lifted one edge, a breach of manners, but she could resist the mystery no longer.

  Maria stepped back, swallowing a small cry. Flora could almost feel Ezekiel’s determination behind her: Flora McPherson’s father’s debts were paid. No matter what horror was hidden here, Ezekiel Clancy was not going to let the bride he’d spent good money on escape now.

  Flora lifted the veil. Her hand froze, then slowly she draped the cloth back over Maria’s head, exposing her face.

  Or what was left of it. One half of Maria’s nose was gone, collapsed to a stub of blood-red nostril. Her left cheek bulged, with the slit of a goat’s eye above it. The other side of her face was normal, even pretty. Her right eye shone, clear and brown and scared.

  Those foolish men, thought Flora. Those poor, silly men.

  ‘I have always wanted a sister,’ she said quietly. She placed her hand on Maria’s shoulder and carefully kissed the bulging cheek.

  Beside her Clancy smiled, then wept.

  Chapter 4

  Blue McAlpine’s Zucchini Fruit Slice

  185g butter, 200g brown sugar, 3 eggs, 1 tsp vanilla, 250g plain flour, 1 tsp mixed spice, 175g chopped dates, 85g chopped sultanas, 85g chopped walnuts, 45g coconut, 300g grated raw zucchini

  Cream butter and sugar; add eggs; mix in other ingredients. Spread into greased and floured tray; bake at 200°C for 30–40 minutes. Test with a skewer. Cool a little before turning out of the tray. Cut into slices with a sharp knife while still warm, but out of the container, to help prevent crumbling.

  GIBBER’S CREEK, 1979

  JED

  ‘She’s got a dirty nappy, Auntie Jed.’ The boy in the doorway held out a child who seemed to have accumulated half the dust of the drought-worn playground.

  Jed — who was genetically no one’s aunt but an honorary one to many — took her whiffy daughter. ‘Thanks for looking after her. So what was the matter with Maria?’ she added to Nancy.