Going Home

Chapter One

‘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.

After a supper of chicken soup and mutton pie, Clavell and Joe went outside to smoke and Ralph hung around, idly listening to their conversation about the price of sheep at market, then as his father went to make sure the outbuildings were secured for the night, he joined his godfather on the veranda.

‘Uncle Ralph?’ he said nervously. ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Fire away, young man. What do you want to know?’ Ralph Clavell was tall and thin with a laconic sense of humour, and he always seemed well disposed towards his youthful namesake.

‘I had a fight with Edwin Boyle today,’ Ralph began.

‘Did you, by Jove! Well, that doesn’t surprise me. If he’s anything like his father he’ll bring out the worst in anybody. I remember Captain Boyle very well and so do your parents.’

‘He said – that his father had said that my mother was a whore. So I hit him.’

Clavell pursed his lips, though he didn’t appear to be shocked. ‘Good for you! Never let a man, or boy, for that matter, insult a woman, no matter who or what she is.’

‘So is it true?’ His voice was low, he was aware of his mother and Peggy just beyond the veranda wall. ‘Was she, I mean? Is that why she was a convict and sent to Australia?’

‘Women were not transported because of making their living on the streets,’ Clavell responded with a frown. ‘That wasn’t a transportable offence, and I can tell you, young Ralph,’ he shook a finger at him, ‘that for some women that was the only way they could put food into their mouths.’ He took a deep breath. ‘But to your question. No, your mother was not a whore.’

He gazed out into the gathering darkness. Ralph, following his gaze, saw his father returning. Clavell’s voice dropped. ‘Meg was accused of slandering a magistrate and of theft, and transported for seven years. Both cases were subsequently proved to be untrue and she was pardoned. Your parents were not allowed to go back to England, but they wouldn’t have chosen to anyway. They knew that there was a better life here.’

Ralph nodded. That much he knew. His father was fond of saying that if he had stayed in England he would be either starving in the gutter or dead from hanging, instead of being one of the richest men in New South Wales.

When his father rejoined them Ralph went inside to his room and sat on the deep window sill and looked out over the land. Land which was covered with thousands of sheep. Land and sheep which would one day be his. Or at least, his and Peggy’s. His father insisted that everything they had would be shared equally. ‘We’ll have none of this English business where the son gets everything and ’daughter gets nowt but a dowry on her marriage,’ he said time and time again. ‘Peggy will get her fair share and she can choose what she wants to do with it.’

He could see the curls of smoke drifting up from his father’s pipe and Uncle Ralph’s cigar and hear the murmur of their voices, then unmistakably he heard his godfather say, ‘You’re going to have to tell the boy something soon, Joe. That unprincipled wretch Boyle’s been stirring up trouble again. Ralph’s just been asking questions about his mother.’

Chapter Two

‘IF I WERE a boy I could go to sea like Papa does,’ Amelia muttered, and tossed her thick brown hair out of her eyes as the wind caught it and flew it streaming flag-like about her head. She and her mother and father, brother Roger and younger sister May were picnicking on the sands at Spurn Point, the low-lying narrow finger of sand and shingle which ran between the mouth of the Humber and the German Ocean.

Amelia had run up the dunes for a better sight of a sailing ship leaving the pilot boat in the river and heading out on its own to greet the swirling waters of the sea. ‘It’s not fair. Girls have such boring lives.’

Her father, Philip Linton, coming up after her, heard her last remark and said jovially, ‘Not at all true. Just ask your mother.’

‘Oh no, Papa! Not like that. Not like poor Mama! But I would like to sail a ship.’

‘When you are older, in a couple of years or so, then you can come on a voyage with me. Your mother would like to do that too.’ He smiled at his nine-year-old tomboy daughter. She should have been the boy instead of Roger. Roger was happy with his farming studies and wandering over the land, observing the wildlife and poring over his books on birds and animals. Even now he had wandered off in the hope of finding some rarity. Amelia wanted adventure and only a year ago had cut off her hair and squeezed her plump little bottom into a pair of her brother’s trousers and announced that she was going to run away and join a fishing smack at the Hull docks.

Her father had volunteered to take her down to the docks to watch the fishermen bringing in their catch from the trawlers. She saw the ragged, barefoot, barechested apprentice lads hauling on the heavy fish baskets, and this and the stench of fish and the squirming slippery cod and haddock had so turned Amelia’s stomach that she had changed her mind, for the present, she’d said, and would take a merchant ship when she was older.

‘I’d like to go to Australia to meet my cousins,’ she pouted. ‘I’m sure they have more fun than we do here. England is so stuffy!’ and she kicked out at the spiky marram grass with her neatly laced boots.

‘You’ve been spoilt, Amelia.’ Her father’s tone was impatient and she looked up at him anxiously. He didn’t often get cross. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are to live the life you do. To have plenty to eat, a warm bed to sleep in, everything you could possibly want!’

She hung her head. ‘I’m sorry, Papa. I do know really and I’m not unhappy, it’s just that I want to do something. Something exciting.’

Roger called to them. He was crouching over something on the shingle. ‘Here! Come and look. I’ve found a yellow horned poppy!’

Amelia raised her eyebrows and sighed, and was relieved to hear her mother and Ginny, their housekeeper, who had prepared the food and accompanied them, call to them to come and eat.

Later in the day they tramped back along the rough track of the peninsula with their wicker baskets, hampers and blankets towards the carriage which was waiting for them at Kilnsea. Amelia walked at her mother’s side whilst her father carried five-year-old May on his back and Roger still searched along the banks for rare plants or looked into the hedges for birds’ nests.

‘It’s been a nice day, Mama, I’m sorry I was such a crosspatch this morning.’

Her mother looked down at her and then stopped to take a breath and Ginny tutted and took a basket from her, muttering that Mrs Linton shouldn’t be exerting herself or walking so far in her condition. A baby was due in three months’ time, but Emily Linton was strong physically and mentally. Not for her a proper ladylike kind of life; she had been through too much to let a natural event deter her from being with her family.

Emily Linton looked after the management of the estate with her relative Samuel, who supervised the physical side, but she also drove out in her trap every week to visit the farms and smallholdings and talk over any problems with the tenant farmers. She had built up a respect from the workers on her land and from the neighbouring landowners, though not always from their wives, who tittle-tattled amongst themselves about her past life. But she cared not for their regard, she had the love of her husband Philip and her children and the devotion of her house staff in whose eyes she could do no wrong.

‘You must try to learn patience, Amelia,’ she said gently. ‘We are so lucky with what we have. People are starving all over the country, they have no work and nowhere to live. Think of them next time you are feeling grumpy.’

‘I do try, Mama,’ Amelia sighed. ‘I think perhaps I’m not a very nice person.’

‘You’re a very nice person.’ Her mother took her hand. ‘You’re just growing up, that’s all, and it’s difficult, no matter who you are.’

‘Papa says we can go with him on a voyage when I’m older. Could we go to Australia to see Ralph and Peggy and Uncle Joe and Aunt Meg?’

Her mother laughed. ‘Australia is much too far away. You’ve forgotten about the new baby! I wouldn’t want to take a young baby on such a long voyage.’ She grew thoughtful, and then added softly, ‘Though there were many who did, and survived.’

‘If I went to Australia I should look for rare plants like Sir Joseph Banks did when he went with Captain Cook.’ Roger cradled a pale blue egg in his hand and showed it to his mother. ‘I only took one,’ he said, ‘there were others.’

‘Sam says you shouldn’t take any,’ his mother admonished him. ‘You know how cross he gets when you steal birds’ eggs.’

‘I shall go on an adventure into the bush when I’m there,’ Amelia broke in, ‘or else go digging for gold. I’ll bring you a nugget back if you like, Ginny,’ she added. ‘Then you’ll have a piece of your own to polish.’

Emily Linton and Ginny exchanged glances and smiled. Only Ginny of all the servants knew the worth of the small rough chunk of brown and yellow mud-like substance which lay on the mantelpiece in the drawing room and which she wiped reverently every morning with a soft cloth.

‘Shall we go soon?’ May piped up from her father’s back, ‘and will it be a big ship like you sail in, Papa?’

‘It would have to be a big ship, May,’ her father said, ‘and no, it won’t be soon. It will be years and years and years, if in fact at all.’

He glanced across at his wife. She badly wanted to see her brother again and his wife, Meg, and their children. But whether she would dare to make the voyage to the other side of the world, remembering, as she was bound to, the first time she had sailed to Australia, was another matter altogether. But she would have to, if family ties ran strong within her. For her brother could never visit her. In spite of his wealth, Joe was banished from England for ever.

Chapter Three

‘I CAN’T TELL him about his mother,’ Joe Hawkins had said to Ralph Clavell all those years before, as they’d smoked on the veranda. ‘Meg will have to.’

But Meg couldn’t either. She couldn’t bring herself to discuss the matter with her much loved son. So it was never mentioned again, though it hung silently as a shadow between them all. Not until over ten years later, when Ralph had quarrelled with his father about staying out carousing all the night and, as his father said, not doing his fair share of work on the estate.

‘We could afford to get more paid help,’ Ralph grumbled defiantly. His head ached and he would have liked to go back to bed. ‘We don’t have to work all the hours of the day and night! We’re supposed to be rich but what good does it do us?’

Joe grabbed him by his shirt. Meg had said something similar when she’d complained of him never being at home except for meal times and bed. ‘We’re not born wealthy like those Exclusives,’ he said. ‘We’re from working stock! It’s how I was brought up by my da and he by his. It’s in my blood. Where I come from if tha doesn’t work, starvation stares thee in ’face.’

Sometimes, when he was angry, his Yorkshire dialect came to the fore. Ralph could see and hear that he was angry now and he backed off. ‘I’m sorry, Da. I know that’s how it was in the old country. But it’s not like that here. You can afford to take time off. You could take Ma out sometimes. You could visit other places. See something of the country. She’d like that. And I could take over, if only you’d let me.’

Joe stared at him. ‘I couldn’t ever explain to you how it is. There’s a compulsion inside of me that says I have to work.’ His voice dropped. ‘You could never know, never having experienced it, but I have this terrible fear, deep inside of me, that if I don’t work I might lose everything and finish up back in ’gutter.’

‘But you won’t,’ Ralph insisted. ‘You can’t possibly spend all the money you’ve got.’

His father shook his head. ‘I’ve just said! You’d never understand. You’ve never been without. You ask your ma. She’ll tell you ’same.’

‘Your father won’t change,’ his mother said when he spoke to her later. ‘I keep trying to persuade him to take some time off. It was hard in the old days, Ralph. No-one who hasn’t experienced those times could possibly understand. There were those of us who were so low we were trailing our chins in ‘gutter.’

‘Ma,’ he said in a low voice as the memory of an old insult returned. ‘What did you do to survive? Before you were sent to Australia, I mean?’

He wished he hadn’t asked. He saw the misery and shame on her face before she turned her head away and answered. ‘I never thought I’d have to tell you. I allus hoped that it would stay hidden.’

‘Then don’t!’ He faltered and reached for her hand. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry!’

‘No!’ She lifted her head and there was a proud, defiant look in her eyes. ‘I’ll tell you. You’re a grown man, it’s time you knew. I wanted to survive and there was onny one way for women like me who had come from nothing. I never knew my father and I went ’same way as my mother. I worked ’streets of Hull, my home town. I was a street woman!’

He felt cold all over and he swallowed hard. So it was true. Edwin Boyle and his father hadn’t been lying all that time ago, but Uncle Ralph had. ‘And – and so, is Da my real father?’ He could hardly bring himself to ask the question. He suddenly felt dirty and vulnerable. ‘Or don’t you know who he was?’ He didn’t mean to sneer but it seemed to him that that was how it must have sounded.

Meg answered slowly. ‘I never wanted you to know, though your father – Joe, he always said we should tell you. But there never seemed to be a right time.’

‘So he isn’t my father!’ He felt as if he had been punched. I’m a bastard! And I thought I was so grand.

‘No, he isn’t your father.’ She took a deep breath and her eyes filled with tears. ‘And neither am I your mother.’

He was more shocked by the revelation that Meg wasn’t his mother than he was over anything else. This was something quite unexpected and he ran from the room like a child and was physically sick. Meg came after him and cradled his head in her lap and told him that she couldn’t have loved him more even if she had given birth to him. ‘But Peggy is yours,’ he said jealously. ‘I can remember her being born.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘She is, but we’ve never treated you any different. You were my son, mine from ’very beginning.’

‘But my – real mother! Who was she?’

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘There was so much confusion on the ship. There was a violent storm one day and we were put below deck. It was dark and we were packed inside ’lower decks so tight there was no air – and she was very sick, your mother, I mean. She had no milk to feed you and she asked me to hold you to try and pacify you. You sucked on my finger.’ She smiled and wiped away a tear. ‘I knew then how it felt to love somebody and I’d never felt it afore. Then – ’ She hesitated. ‘Later we were let out and brought up on deck. I was still holding you and I couldn’t see her. There were so many women. Then there was a cry of man overboard.’

She put her hand across her mouth and closed her eyes and for a moment she