7
‘Your father is such an inspiration to me, Miss McBride, and I’m sure to you too.’
‘Of course,’ lied Kitty as she sipped the Earl Grey tea from a delicate china cup. They were sitting in the large overheated drawing room of a grand house in St Andrew Square, one of the most sought-after addresses in Edinburgh. The room was stuffed with more elegant objects than she’d seen in Miss Anderson’s fancy goods emporium. A display cabinet lined one wall, cluttered with statuettes of cherubs, Chinese vases and decorative plates. A chandelier dripping with crystals bathed everything in a soft light which gleamed off the polished mahogany furniture. Mrs McCrombie was obviously not one to hide her wealth.
‘So devoted to his flock and denying both himself and his family all the advantages that your mother’s birthright could have given him.’
‘Yes,’ Kitty replied automatically. Then, looking at the glazed eyes of her soon-to-be employer, she decided that the older woman looked like a young girl in love. She also noticed the large amounts of face powder Mrs McCrombie had caked on her skin and thought about how much it must cost to cover the many lines that wriggled their way across her face. The high colour of her cheeks and her nose spoke of too many drams of whisky.
‘Miss McBride?’ Kitty realised Mrs McCrombie was still speaking to her.
‘I do beg your forgiveness. I was just looking at that rather marvellous painting,’ Kitty improvised, pointing out a drab and miserable depiction of Jesus carrying the cross on his shoulders to Calvary.
‘That was painted by Rupert, my beloved son, God rest his soul. Just before he went off to the Boer War and ended up in Jesus’s arms. Almost as if he knew . . .’ Then she beamed warmly at Kitty. ‘You obviously have an eye for art.’
‘I certainly enjoy things of beauty,’ Kitty responded, only relieved she’d managed to say the right thing.
‘Then that is to your credit, my dear, given there have been so few of them around you during your childhood, due to your dear father’s sacrifice. At least it will have prepared you for what we may find in Adelaide. Even though my sister assures me they have every modern convenience I myself enjoy here in Edinburgh, I can hardly believe that such a new country can compete with a culture of centuries.’
‘I will indeed be interested to see Adelaide.’
‘And I will not,’ Mrs McCrombie said firmly. ‘However, I feel it is my duty to visit my sister and my young nephews at least once before I die. And as they seem disinclined to come here, I must journey there.’ Mrs McCrombie gave a mournful sigh as Kitty sipped her tea. ‘The journey will take at least a month aboard the Orient, a ship which my sister Edith assures me provides every comfort. However . . .’
‘Yes, Mrs McCrombie?’
‘If you accompany me, there will be no fraternising with young men aboard ship. No carousing, or attending any of the dances in the lower-class lounges. You will share a berth with one other young lady and you will be available to me at all times. Is that understood?’
‘Completely.’
‘My sister has also warned me that even though it is winter here, it will be summer there. I have a seamstress sewing me a number of muslin and cotton gowns and I suggest you source similar attire for yourself. In essence, the weather will be hot.’
‘Yes, Mrs McCrombie.’
‘I am sure you know that you are awfully pretty, my dear. I hope you won’t be one of those gels who swoons at the mere glance of a man.’
‘I have never thought of myself as such,’ said Kitty, seeing her freckled complexion in her mind’s eye, ‘but I assure you that I will not. After all, my father is a minister in the Church and I have been taught modesty.’
‘Your father tells me that you can sew and mend? And know how to pin up hair?’
‘I fashion my mother’s and my sisters’,’ Kitty lied, thinking she might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. She was going to Australia, and that was that.
‘Do you get sick often?’ Mrs McCrombie raised her eyeglass to study Kitty more closely.
‘My mother tells me I survived diphtheria and measles, and I rarely get a cold.’
‘I hardly think that that will be our greatest concern in Australia, although of course I will pack some camphor oil for my chest. Well now, there is little more to discuss. We shall meet again on the thirteenth of November.’ Mrs McCrombie rose and offered her hand. ‘Good day to you, Miss McBride. We shall cross the oceans together with a sense of adventure.’
‘We will. Goodbye, Mrs McCrombie.’
* * *
Kitty spent the following two weeks preparing the small trunk that had been bought for her by her father. The fact she was following in Darwin’s footsteps so soon after reading his books seemed positively surreal. Perhaps she should be frightened: after all, she had read enough in his books to know that the natives in Australia were extremely hostile towards the white man and cannibalism had even been rumoured. She doubted Mrs McCrombie would venture anywhere near where that kind of thing would happen, especially as any native who cooked her in his pot would have a decent meal for his extended family.
The house grew quiet as she worked into the night on her sewing machine, fashioning simple gowns which she hoped would be suitable in the heat. And at least the activity gave her a focus that blunted the gnawing in her stomach every time she thought about Annie and her father. She knew she had one last thing to do before she left.
* * *
The morning of her departure, Kitty woke before dawn and hurried out of the house before anyone saw her. Walking down the alley that led towards the docks, she tried to calm herself by taking in the sights and sounds of Leith for the last time. It was the only home she had ever known in all of her eighteen years and it would be what seemed like a lifetime before she saw it again.
She arrived at Annie’s door, drew in a deep breath and knocked cautiously. Eventually, the door was opened and Annie appeared, dressed in a threadbare smock and apron. Her eyes travelled briefly over Kitty’s face, before she silently stood aside to let her pass.
The small room within was sparsely furnished and bitterly cold. The stained horsehair mattress on the floor looked uninviting, but at least the floor was swept and the rough wooden table in the centre of the room looked well scrubbed.
‘I . . . came to see how you were,’ Kitty began tentatively.
Annie nodded. ‘Aye, I’m well. And so’s the bairn.’
Kitty forced her eyes down to look at the neat bump that contained what was soon to be her half-brother or sister.
‘I promise you, I’m nae a sinner,’ Annie said hoarsely. Kitty looked up to see tears in her eyes. ‘I only . . . I was only with the reverend twice. I trusted in God’s love, in your father’s love, that he . . . Ralph would guide me. I . . .’ She broke her gaze from Kitty’s and went to a dresser in the corner, searching for something in a drawer.
She returned with a pair of reading glasses, which Kitty recognised immediately. They were identical to those her father wore to write his sermons.
‘Ralph left them here last time he came tae see me. I promised him I’d keep what happened tae m’self. And I made a promise tae God an’ all. Ye give him these back. I want nothing of his under my roof any longer.’
Kitty took the glasses from Annie, wondering if she might be sick all over the floor. Then she reached into her skirts and drew out a small drawstring pouch.
‘I have something for you too.’ Kitty handed the pouch to Annie.
Annie opened it, looked inside and gasped. ‘Miss, I cannae take this from you, I cannae.’
‘You can,’ Kitty insisted. For the past two weeks, she had secreted away coins from the parish donations, and last night had taken a bundle of notes from the tin her father kept locked in a drawer. It was an amount large enough to provide future sustenance for Annie and the baby, at least until she could work again. By the time Ralph discovered it was missing, Kitty would be on her way to the other side of the world.
‘Then thank you.’ Annie pulled out the other item in the bag – a small silver cross on a chain. She ran her fingers over it uncertainly.
‘It was given to me at my christening by my grandparents,’ Kitty explained. ‘I want you to keep it for the . . . the child.’
‘It’s kind of ye, Miss McBride. Very kind. Thank you.’ Annie’s eyes glistened with unshed tears.
‘I’m leaving for Australia today . . . I’ll be gone for some months, but when I return, may I come again to see how you’re getting on?’
‘Of course, miss.’
‘In the meantime, I’d like you to have the address of where I’ll be staying. In case of an emergency,’ Kitty added, holding out an envelope and then feeling foolish – she had no idea if the woman could even read or write, let alone whether she would know how to post a letter to another country. But Annie merely nodded and took it.
‘We’ll never forget your kindness,’ she said as Kitty moved towards the door. ‘G’bye miss. And may the Lord keep ye safe on your travels.’
Kitty left the dwelling, then walked towards the docks and stood on the edge beside the sea wall, watching the seagulls hover over the mast of a ship chugging into port. She took the reading glasses from her skirt pocket, then threw them as far as she could into the grey water below her.
‘Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light,’ she muttered. ‘God help my father, and my poor, deluded mother.’
* * *
‘All ready?’ Adele appeared at Kitty’s bedroom door.
‘Yes, Mother,’ she replied as she snapped the locks down on her trunk and reached for her bonnet.
‘I will miss you desperately, dearest Kitty.’ Adele came towards her and enveloped her in a hug.
‘And I you, Mother, especially as the baby will be born without its big sister being present. Please take care of yourself while I am not here to make sure you do.’
‘You mustn’t worry, Kitty. I have your father, Aylsa and your sisters with me. I will send you a telegram as soon as he or she has made their appearance in the world. Kitty, please don’t cry.’ Adele brushed a tear from her daughter’s cheek. ‘Just think of the stories you’ll have to tell us when you arrive home. It’s only nine months, the same time it takes for a little one to be born.’
‘Forgive me, it is simply that I will miss you so very much,’ Kitty sobbed onto her mother’s comforting shoulder.
Shortly afterwards, standing at the front door with her trunk being loaded onto Mrs McCrombie’s carriage, Kitty proceeded to hug her sisters. Miriam in particular was crying inconsolably.
‘My dearest Katherine, how I will miss you.’
Then Ralph took her into his arms. She stood, tense and taut, inside them. ‘Remember to say your prayers every day, and may the Lord be with you.’
‘Goodbye, Father,’ she managed. Then, pulling herself free of him and with one last wave at her beloved family, she climbed into the carriage, and the driver shut the door behind her.
* * *
As the RMS Orient hooted and began to make her way out to sea, Kitty stood on the deck watching her fellow shipmates screaming goodbyes to their relatives below them. The quay was packed with well-wishers waving Union Jacks and the occasional Australian flag. There was no one to wave her off, but at least, unlike many of the people around her, she knew she would be returning to England’s shores.
As the well-wishers became indistinguishable figures and the ship steamed down the Thames Estuary, a silence fell on those around her as each of the passengers realised the enormity of the decision they had made. As they dispersed, she heard the odd sob – and knew they were wondering if they would ever see their loved ones again.
Although she had seen the big vessels that docked in Leith harbour many times, it now seemed a daunting task for this steamship to carry them across the seas safely to the other side of the world, despite the impressive height of the two funnels and the masts that held swathes of sails.
Walking down the narrow stairs to the second-class corridor that contained her berth, Kitty felt rather like this entire experience was happening to someone else. Opening the door and wondering how she would ever sleep with the rumble of the huge engines below her, she made a forty-five-degree turn in order to close the door behind her. The room – if one could call it that, its dimensions being akin to a short, thin corridor – contained two coffin-like bunks and a small storage cupboard in which to put clothes. A washbasin sat in the corner and Kitty noticed that it and all the other fittings were bolted to the floor.
‘’Ello. You me new roommate?’
A pair of bright hazel eyes framed by a shock of dark curly hair appeared over the wooden rail of the top bunk.
‘Yes.’
‘My name’s Clara Dugan. ’Ow d’you do?’
‘Very well, thank you. I’m Kitty McBride.’
‘From Scotland, eh?’
‘Yes.’
‘Me, I’m from the good ol’ East End o’ London. Where you ’eaded?’
‘To Adelaide.’
‘Never ’eard of it. I’m going to Sydney meself. You’re dressed smart. You a lady’s maid?’
‘No. I mean . . . I’m a companion.’
‘Ooo! Get you,’ said Clara, but not unkindly. ‘Well, if I knows anything about the gentry, unless your lady ’as brought a maid as well, it’s you who’ll do all the fetching and carrying on board. And who’ll mop up ’er puke when we’re on rough seas. Me brother Alfie told me the ’ole ship stank for days when there was a storm. ’E’s there already, making a right good life for ’imself, ’e says. ’E told me to save up me money so I wouldn’t have to go steerage. Five souls died on ’is crossing,’ Clara added for good measure. ‘I worked night and day for two years in a factory to pay for me berth. It’ll be worth it, though, if we get there.’
‘Goodness! Then let’s hope our journey goes more smoothly.’
‘I can be anyone I want to be when I get there. I’ll be free! Ain’t that just the best?’ Clara’s bright eyes danced with happiness.
There was a sudden rap on the door and Kitty went to open it. A young steward was grinning at her.
‘Are you Miss McBride?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mrs McCrombie has requested you go to her cabin. She needs help unpacking her trunk.’
‘Of course.’
As Kitty followed the steward out of the cabin, Clara lay back with a wry smile.
‘Well, at least some of us are free,’ she shouted after Kitty.
* * *
After an initial night tossing and turning in her bunk, enduring feverish half-dreams of storms, shipwrecks and being eaten alive by natives, all punctuated by loud snores from the bunk above her, Kitty’s days soon fell into a routine and passed quickly. While Clara slept on, Kitty was up at seven to wash, dress and tidy her hair. Then she’d walk along the gently rolling corridor and take the stairs to the first-class section on the deck above her.
She’d found her sea legs almost immediately, and even though both Clara and Mrs McCrombie had taken to their beds as they’d encountered what the crew had called a ‘gentle swell’, Kitty was surprised to find herself feeling very well indeed. This had earned her much praise from the crew, especially from George, Mrs McCrombie’s personal steward, who Clara said had the ‘eye’ for her.
Compared to the sparse decor of the second-class berths, the first-class accommodation was positively sumptuous. Underfoot were plush carpets with intricate William Morris designs, the brass furnishings were polished to a high shine and exquisitely carved wooden panelling adorned the walls. Mrs McCrombie was in her element, dressing every evening for dinner in an array of extravagant gowns.
Kitty spent most of her mornings attending to Mrs McCrombie’s personal needs, which included an awful lot of mending. She sighed at the torn seams of corsets and bodices, eventually surmising that Mrs McCrombie must have refused to reveal her true size to her seamstress out of vanity. At lunchtime Kitty would go to the second-class dining room and eat with Clara. She was amazed at how fresh the food was and by the dexterity of the waiters as they carried trays of drinks and plates across the sometimes heaving floors. In the afternoons, she would take a bracing walk on the promenade deck, then retire with Mrs McCrombie to the first-class saloon to play bezique or cribbage.
As the steamer progressed south through the Mediterranean, stopping briefly in Naples before continuing to Port Said and then easing through the Suez Canal, the weather became warmer. Even though Mrs McCrombie refused to leave the ship when it docked, citing how they might pick up some ‘deadly plague from one of the natives’, looking out onto these impossibly exotic foreign shores, Kitty began to feel the feverish grip of adventure.
For the first time in her life, she flouted the rules and danced at rousing ceilidhs, held in the smoky, gas-lit third-class saloon. Clara had practically dragged her to the first one and Kitty had sat primly on the sidelines as she watched her friend enjoy dance after dance to the lively Celtic band. She was soon persuaded to join in, and found herself whirled from one young man to another, all of whom behaved like perfect gentlemen.
She’d also warmed towards Mrs McCrombie, who, after a whisky or three at cocktail hour, displayed a wicked sense of humour as she told raucous jokes that would surely have given her father a heart attack. It was during one of these evenings that Mrs McCrombie confided her nerves at seeing her younger sister again.
‘I haven’t seen Edith since she was eighteen, not much older than you, my dear, when she left for Australia to marry dear Stefan. She’s almost fifteen years younger than me – her arrival was rather a shock to Papa.’ Mrs McCrombie gave a smirk and then burped discreetly. ‘She looks nothing at all like me either,’ Mrs McCrombie added as she gestured for a waiter to top up her glass. ‘And I suppose you know that your father was quite the ladies’ man when my family knew him in those days.’
‘Really? Goodness,’ Kitty replied neutrally, hoping Mrs McCrombie would elaborate, but her patron’s attention had already been claimed by the ship’s band starting up and the conversation was not pursued.
As they approached Port Colombo in Ceylon, the good ship Orient was tossed about in heavy seas. Kitty remained upright, tending to both Mrs McCrombie and Clara, as they turned green and took to their beds. She mused that seasickness was indeed the greatest social leveller as no amount of wealth could prevent it. Passengers of all classes were at the mercy of the choppy waves, and the ship’s stewards were kept busy handing out ginger infusions, which supposedly settled the stomach. Kitty could not stop Mrs McCrombie pouring generous measures of whisky into her medicinal drinks, claiming that ‘Nothing will stop the awful spinning, so I might as well run with it, my dear.’
As they crossed the vast Indian Ocean, the continent of Australia like a promised land before them, Kitty experienced a heat stronger than she could ever have imagined. She sat with Mrs McCrombie on the promenade deck – the best place to catch a breeze – with a book from the ship’s library and pondered how she had acquired an identity all of her own. No longer was she just the Reverend McBride’s daughter, but a capable woman who had the best sea legs George the steward had ever known on a woman, and was quite able to stand on them without the protection of her mother and father.
As she looked up at the cloudless skies, the horror of what she had discovered before she had left was thankfully receding further into the distance along with Scotland. When Mrs McCrombie announced they were only a week away from their destination, Kitty experienced a stomach roll that had nothing to do with the movement of the ship. This was Darwin’s land – the land of a man who did not hide behind God to explain his own motives or beliefs, but celebrated the power and creativity of nature. The best and worst of it in all its beauty, rawness and cruelty, laid bare for all to see. Nature was honest, without bigotry or hypocrisy.
If she could find an accurate metaphor for how she currently felt, Kitty decided it would be akin to Mrs McCrombie shrugging off her too-tight corsets and deciding to breathe again.
* * *
Most of the passengers were on deck the morning that the Orient was close to a first sighting of Australia’s coastline. Excitement and trepidation were palpable as everyone craned their necks to see what, for so many on board, would be their home and the start of a new life.
As the coastline came into view, a strange hush descended on deck. Sandwiched between the blue of the sea and the shimmering sky lay a thin, red-coloured strip of earth.
‘Quite flat, ain’t it?’ Clara said with a shrug. ‘No ’ills I can see.’
‘Yes, it is,’ said Kitty dreamily, hardly able to believe she was actually seeing with her own eyes what had previously appeared as an unreachable blob in an atlas.
As the ship drew into the port of Fremantle and berthed in the harbour, cheering broke out. It appeared to Kitty even larger than the Port of London, where they had originally embarked, and she marvelled at the impossibly tall passenger and cargo ships that lobbied for space at the quayside, and the crowds of all creeds and colours going about their business beneath her.
‘Golly-gosh!’ Clara threw her arms around Kitty. ‘We’ve actually gone and made it to Australia! ’Ow’s that then?’
Kitty watched the disembarking passengers walk down the gangplank clutching their worldly goods and their children to them. A few were met by friends or relatives, but most stood on the dock looking dazed and confused in the bright sunshine, until they were rounded up and led off by an official. Kitty admired each and every one of them for their courage to leave a life in the country of their birth to make a new and better one here.
‘A rough old crowd, from what I could see,’ said Mrs McCrombie over a luncheon of lamb chops in the dining room. ‘But then, Australia was initially populated by the dregs of society, shipped from England. Convicts and criminals, the lot of them. Except for Adelaide, of course, which was built to a plan to encourage the more . . . genteel amongst us to make a life there. Edith tells me it’s a good, God-fearing town.’ She cocked her ear nervously as the unfamiliar twang of Australian voices floated up through the open windows, fanning herself violently as beads of perspiration appeared on her forehead. ‘One can only hope that the temperature in Adelaide will be cooler than it is here,’ she continued. ‘Good Lord, no wonder the natives run about with no clothes on. The heat is quite unbearable.’
After lunch, Mrs McCrombie went to her cabin for a nap and Kitty wandered back onto the deck, fascinated by the cattle still being led off the boat. Most of them looked emaciated and bewildered as they stumbled down the gangplank. ‘So far from the fresh green fields of home,’ she whispered to herself.
The following morning, the ship set off again, with Adelaide as its next stop. The two days before their arrival were spent packing Mrs McCrombie’s extensive wardrobe back into her trunks.
‘Perhaps you can come and visit me in Sydney when I’m settled in? It can’t be that far between the towns, can it? It looked close on the map,’ Clara commented over their last lunch together on board.
Kitty asked George the steward later that night whether this might be possible, and he chuckled at her ignorance.
‘I’d reckon that in a straight line, it’s over seven hundred miles between Adelaide and Sydney. And even then, you’d have to see off tribes of blacks carrying spears, let alone the ’roos, and snakes and spiders that can kill you with one bite. Did you look on the map, Miss McBride, and wonder why there’s no towns in the interior of Australia? No white human can survive for long in the Outback.’
When Kitty settled down to sleep for her last night on board, she sent up a prayer.
‘Please, Lord, I don’t mind snakes or kangaroos, or even savages, but please don’t have me cooked alive in a pot!’
* * *
As the Orient sailed into Adelaide port, Kitty bade farewell to a tearful Clara.
‘So, this is goodbye then. Been nice knowin’ ya, Kitty. Promise to write to me?’
The two girls hugged each other tightly.
‘Of course I will. Keep safe, Clara, and I hope all your dreams come true.’
As Kitty helped Mrs McCrombie down the gangplank, she felt on the verge of tears herself. Only now, at the point of disembarkation, did she realise how she would miss her shipboard friends.
‘Florence!’ Kitty watched as a slim, elegant woman with a head of rich mahogany hair waved and walked towards them.
‘Edith!’ The two sisters gave each other a restrained peck on both cheeks.
Kitty walked behind them as a liveried driver led them to a carriage. She glanced at Edith’s attire – a brocade dress buttoned up to her neck, not to mention the corset and bloomers that would lie beneath it – and wondered how she stood the heat. Kitty longed to plunge stark naked into the cool waters lapping at the dock.
When they reached the carriage, a young boy with the blackest skin Kitty had ever seen was heaving the trunks onto the rack at the back of it.
‘Goodness!’ Mrs McCrombie turned to her suddenly. ‘In my excitement at seeing you, dear sister, I have forgotten to introduce you to Miss Kitty McBride, the eldest daughter of one of our dear family friends, the Reverend McBride. She has been my helpmeet and saviour during the voyage,’ Mrs McCrombie added fondly, with a glance at Kitty.
‘Then I am pleased to make your acquaintance,’ replied Edith, sweeping a cool gaze over Kitty. ‘Welcome to Australia and I hope you will enjoy your stay with us here in Adelaide.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Mercer.’
As Kitty waited for the two sisters to climb into the carriage, she had the strongest feeling that Edith’s welcome was as hollow as it had sounded.