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  I will say in Louisa’s defence, however, that in one area she did contribute to the household, and that was in the matter of dressmaking. After the particularly prosperous whaling season of 1899, in which twelve whales had been captured (five of them right whales), my father had purchased as a gift for my mother a Singer sewing machine from Mr Crowther, the travelling agent. I recall clearly the great day of its arrival on the back of Mr Crowther’s sulky, for it was the first time we realised how much afternoon tea Mr Crowther was capable of ingesting, and in fact he went on to stay for dinner and a hearty breakfast the following morning. Still, if the larder was depleted, it was worth it, for never had we seen anything so beautiful as the machine he unveiled to us in the front room.

  It was an especially fine example of the Singer, with a handsome timber cabinet and an ornately detailed Egyptian Sphinx emblazoned in gold upon the black lacquer of its chassis. I can remember feeling even then, at the age of ten, a sense of shame, as its startling glamour seemed only to throw into stark relief the shabbiness of our dwelling and furniture. The haughty demeanour of the golden Sphinx did nothing to ameliorate this feeling.

  In between slices of Madeira cake and long anecdotes about unpleasant cows he had had run-ins with in his travels, Mr Crowther took some trouble to demonstrate to my mother the various features of this wonderful machine. By the time he had departed the next day (with corned beef and mustard pickle sandwiches to be going on with), my mother had sewn all by herself a flannelette chemise and an apron made from a fifty-pound calico flour bag. Her next task was to sew together hessian wheat bags, which she then painted with calcimine to form dividing partitions between rooms. She sewed singlets and underpants, petticoats and bloomers; shirts and trousers for the boys and pinafores for the girls. Her work was plain and straightforward; she rarely bothered with anything so fanciful as lace trimmings or ruffled hems; there were no crocheted necklines or blue embroidered forget-me-nots about our collars. I suppose this was the Presbyterian in her nature, or perhaps she just simply could not be bothered. It was not like there wasn’t already enough to do about the place.

  Much of my memory of my mother, I realise, is of her leaning over her Singer in the evening, murmuring quietly to herself as she strained to thread the needle, and the gentle comforting whirr of her treadling as we drifted off to sleep. Although she attempted to teach me how to sew on it, she did not meet with much success. A dull child, I was always slow to acquire any new skills, and the footwork involved in controlling the machine was beyond me. Further, the hand wheel seemed to wish to deliberately defy me, revolving in the opposite direction to that which it was bid, thereby causing the thread to snap. Even when I finally got it going, the furious action of the plunging needle frightened me, causing me to leap back and the needle to veer wildly from its path. For these crimes, the Sphinx regarded me scornfully.

  Louisa was always too flighty a child to be bothered with such a tedious task as sewing; on the one occasion in which my mother coerced her into sewing a pillow case, she registered her protest by sewing the wispy curls at the end of her own plait to the linen. The half an hour spent unpicking the stitches in order to release the furious child was enough to discourage my mother from further attempts in this direction.

  Thus, when my mother died, the sewing machine sat silent and still, the Sphinx glowering at us accusingly from across the room. My father must have been very sorry about this, not only for the memory it held of my mother, but also because he was still paying it off on Mr Crowther’s hire-purchase plan (he would continue to do so till November 1912). I attempted a few simple garments for the little ones, but the Singer did not choose to cooperate with me; its bobbin jammed and its stitches looped and finally I gave up in frustration. I put the cover over it, ostensibly to keep the dust off, but truthfully to stop the Sphinx from judging me. And then one day, around her thirteenth birthday, Louisa removed the cover and began to sew.

  A Cinderella ball was approaching. Admiring an illustration of a pretty girl on a biscuit tin, Louisa decided she would attempt to copy the girl’s dress for the occasion. Right from the beginning, she demonstrated an uncanny ability. Pulling apart a blue percale skirt of my mother’s, she fashioned for herself a very reasonable approximation of the biscuit-tin dress, though deeming it too plain (‘too Presbyterian’ were her actual words), she embellished it with a ruffled hemline, and made the sailor collar and sleeve cuffs of a contrasting white cotton, trimmed with a fine pink ribbon she had had my father purchase in Eden.

  I would like to report that she sat quietly at the Singer, constructing her garment with a minimum of fuss. This was not the case. She spent most of the week in a vile temper, snapping at anyone who dared approach her, and hurling at the Singer all manner of briny epithets she had picked up from the whalers. By the end of the week, however, she had gained the upper hand; the Singer had cowered into submission. The contest had been hard fought, with casualties on both sides, but now the Sphinx seemed to have lost some of his hauteur. The dress turned out very nicely, and Louisa was singled out in the Eden Observer and South Coast Advocate as a ‘budding beauty in cornflower blue’.

  I would also like to report that from that point on, she took upon her slender shoulders the entire burden of clothing her family, but in this regard Louisa again thwarted hope. She would not condescend to sew such workaday items as shirts and trousers and under-garments – these items my father was forced to purchase at Howard the Price-Cutter. However, if a ball or a concert or the Presbyterian picnic was approaching, and my father could spare the money, she and I would hasten into Eden and choose ourselves a floral cretonne of some description (there were prettier fabrics, but they were too expensive), and Louisa would apply herself to the task of making our dresses. As long as I made no suggestions as to what I would prefer by way of trimmings or style, they always turned out very well indeed. She would study the pictures in catalogues and newspapers, and without aid of any pattern, produce something very similar; I say ‘similar’ because invariably Louisa improved upon the original. She had mastered the Singer’s many fancy feet, and she pintucked and ruffled, smocked and shirred and puffed. And although squalls of foul temper continued to pass through the front room whenever a dress was in progress, for the most part the activity greatly improved her moods and certainly improved our wardrobes. She had bent the Singer to her will; but then Louisa’s will was always formidable.

  The Bandages

  When my father and his men returned from South Head after their first day of lookout, I had boiled a flap of mutton for their dinner, and served it with white sauce, cabbage, carrots and potatoes. We had a reasonable supply of stores since my father’s trip into Eden, so I also fixed a tapioca pudding with marmalade sauce. The men were pleased to have meat and pudding, and spoke in a complimentary way of my cooking.

  ‘You keep this up, we’ll have to change our name for you,’ said Salty.

  ‘Oh, and what is your name for me?’ I enquired.

  Here, the men grew fidgety and feigned great interest in whatever small activity they were engaged in at the time.

  ‘That’s all right, I have names for you also,’ I said, and they took this in good part, chuckling humorously. The truth is, I was pleased that the men had enjoyed their meal, for I was keen to make a good impression on John Beck.

  I had espied him when Dan and I carried down the food; he was sitting on a log outside the sleeping hut, ruefully examining the palms of his hands. Like any new chum, he had incurred blisters from rowing. Further, he sported a fresh bruise upon his chin, for at one point the oar had apparently slipped from his grasp and smacked him soundly in the jaw. It seemed he was somewhat less experienced at rowing than he had claimed to be.

  ‘You’ll want to bandage those blisters,’ offered Dan. ‘Mary has some rags up at the house if need be.’

  ‘No,’ said John Beck. ‘I don’t need bandages.’

  ‘They’ll b
e a damned sight worse after tomorrow,’ said Dan, who often lapsed into language around the whale men. ‘And what if a whale hoves to? You can’t chase a whale with girl’s hands.’

  John Beck’s face darkened, and he stood abruptly and walked away. He did not return, so I left his portion in a tin dish and covered it with a saucepan lid.

  Later that night, as Louisa and I washed the dishes, I came across this same dish scraped clean, and took it as a sign that my culinary efforts had met with his approval. I immediately set about planning what meal I might prepare for the following evening. It would have to involve mutton, but perhaps there was some new way I might enliven it. As I was reflecting on the limited possibilities available to me, I heard the shrill cries of Mr Maudry in full attack: several moments later, a small knock sounded on the kitchen door. There outside in the darkness stood John Beck, looking somewhat harassed.

  ‘I have just been set upon by an unpleasant bird,’ he said, as if to account for the state in which he presented.

  ‘Yes,’ I said simply. ‘That is Mr Maudry.’

  ‘I see,’ said John Beck, regarding me strangely. ‘Well.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I was wondering if you might have some rags to spare.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I replied. ‘Is it for your blisters?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘May I see?’ I asked.

  He gave me his hands, palms facing upwards, and I took them by the wrists and examined them closely. (I had to examine them closely, as for some reason I was not wearing my spectacles.) They were good hands, well-shaped and strong – perhaps stronger than one would reasonably expect of a Methodist minister – the pads of each palm sporting a set of fresh blisters.

  ‘You should wash them in salt water,’ I instructed.

  ‘I did, in the sea,’ he replied.

  ‘And rub in some sand.’

  ‘You mean rub sand into the actual blisters?’ asked John Beck.

  ‘Yes, several times daily.’

  ‘Did you just make that up?’

  ‘Yes. I mean, no. No, it’s actual advice that I have read somewhere. In a medical text of some kind. I believe the coarse granules, ah, slough away the damaged skin.’

  ‘Won’t that hurt?’ he asked.

  ‘It may.’

  ‘Can you recommend something less painful?’

  I glanced up at him; he was smiling at me.

  Many times in the ensuing years, I have run this moment through again in my mind; taken it out of my small box of precious things and turned it over, examining its every facet minutely. There was something about his smile that was unlike that of any minister, Methodist or otherwise, that I had ever encountered. It was a gentle smile, amused but not mocking, the subtle, curving movement dispersing small creases around his eyes and mouth; even the purple bruise upon his jaw did not detract from the effect. How fortunate had been his congregation, I marvelled, to have had that kind, handsome face beam down upon them from the pulpit, intoning a psalm perhaps or leading them in a Wesleyan hymn.

  A small movement of his hands alerted me to the realisation that I had been holding on to them for a longer period of time than was appropriate; I dropped them at once.

  ‘Well, of course, you could simply bandage them,’ I said. ‘Let me fetch some rags at once.’

  I hurried back inside and rummaged about, and in fact it was several minutes before I was able to put my hands on anything suitable. Upon returning to find him waiting patiently, I held them out to him. He hesitated.

  ‘I don’t suppose . . . would you?’ he asked. ‘It’s just that it’s awkward to do it oneself.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I would be happy to,’ I responded, and set about bandaging his hands in as businesslike a fashion as I could muster, given my own hands seemed to be trembling violently.

  ‘Do all the whalers get such pretty bandages?’ he asked softly. (I had torn a strip of broderie anglaise from the bottom of my clean petticoat, as there were no other suitable rags available.)

  ‘Not all of them,’ I responded, not daring to look up at him.

  ‘May I ask, is it from a petticoat?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Then when I am chasing whales tomorrow I shall think of that poor petticoat’s sacrifice, and it shall spur me onwards.’

  So overcome was I at the unexpected turn that the conversation had taken (albeit somewhat at odds with my image of him leading the congregation in a Wesleyan hymn), I was unable to think of any response, and simply tied the bandages as securely as I could. When I had done so, he thanked me and moved off into the darkness; several moments later the piercing shrieks of Mr Maudry resounded through the night.

  I stepped back inside the kitchen and closed the door. I would have valued a moment of quiet to reflect upon this exchange; however, Louisa was keen to pass judgement on our newcomer. Initially, she expressed surprise that he had incurred blisters from simply rowing the short distance to South Head and back. When I reminded her that new chums often suffered blisters, she responded that this might well be the case if they had rowed eight or nine times across the bay in pursuit of a whale. I was then compelled to remind her that since John Beck was formerly a Methodist minister, it was small wonder his hands were more delicate than those of our regular whale men. Louisa twisted her mouth into a scornful expression, and said nothing; I then informed her that this was most unbecoming and made her look like she had recently ingested something disagreeable, to which she responded, ‘Yes, dinner.’

  ‘What kind of bandages do you call them?’ asked Salty the following morning, as they pushed the boats into the water.

  ‘Why, I’m not sure,’ said John Beck. ‘I think it’s broderie anglaise.’

  ‘Looks like a lady’s undergarment is what it looks like!’ cried Salty. ‘Oi!’ he called out to the occupants of the other boat. ‘You should see the Reverend’s bandages!’

  ‘What’s that?’ called Arthur Ashby, unable to hear him properly across the water.

  ‘Reverend’s got some girl’s bloomers as bandages! Show them, Father!’ Here, he raised one of John Beck’s hands so they could see it more clearly. ‘All frilly and lacy! Some lady’s pantaloons, I’ll wager!’

  John Beck pulled his hand away in annoyance, and bent to the oars. He did not look to be enjoying Salty’s ribaldry. Nor did it appear from his expression that my father much liked the sound of what he heard. It was fortunate that he was preoccupied in guiding his boat across the bar, otherwise John Beck would have felt the full force of Fearless Davidson’s whale-killing gaze.

  The Old Grey Kangaroo

  The oldest children – that is, Harry and Louisa and I – had been taught to read and write by our mother, who had herself been a governess before she met our father. She had come out from England at the age of twenty-five on a loan from the Female Middle-Class Emigration Society (I know this because they continued to write for many years after her death, demanding that the loan be repaid). There was no one to meet her when she arrived, and she was forced to impose on the goodwill of strangers; not wishing to be a burden, she proceeded to endure a series of situations, each worse than the last, until finally she arrived at the Walcotts’ near Pambula. Soon after her arrival, she took ill with the measles and very nearly died; in a bid to reduce her fever, they cut off all her hair. Considering her too sickly to work, the Walcotts subsequently discharged her. As luck would have it, my father was called upon to convey her back to Eden (he had been cutting railway sleepers in the area at the time, a job he often took out of whaling season). He did not think much of her immediately, as she was thin and pasty and her hair was cut short like a boy; also, any attempts at conversation were thwarted by her continual crying and blowing her nose. However, my father, always a kindly man, felt sorry for her and he took her back to stay at his mother’s house (this house in which we still live) as she had no place else to g
o, and barely a shilling in her pocket. Over ensuing weeks, they developed sufficient feeling for each other that they became engaged. He was thirty years of age at the time and she was twenty-nine; each of them had given up hope of ever marrying, and yet they shared thirteen happy years together and produced six children. I was the firstborn and named Mary, after my late maternal grandmother.

  It was January when they met and March when they married, and although my mother knew my father was a whaler, she little realised what that meant until the first whale of the season was captured and tried out in July. My mother suffered frequently from sick headaches, and the stench and the blood and the ramps awash with whale oil greatly exacerbated her condition; however, she did her best to keep the extent of her suffering from my father. I well remember the sight of her returning from the try-works after delivering the men their meal; scrambling up the hill with her hand clasped tightly over her mouth, veering suddenly into the shrubs to retch violently. Once inside, she would bid me squeeze a lemon and add a teaspoon of baking soda, and this she would force herself to drink down to quell her biliousness. I don’t think that she was ever a woman of strong constitution. Even on her good days, I can only recall her eating small portions of dry toast, dipped in a little Worcestershire sauce. ‘It’s my nerves,’ she would tell me. ‘They get raggedy sometimes.’