AO*
Oscar and Lucinda
blowers and their families, all of whom she persuaded, by dint of personal visits, gifts, bribes, bonuses, to make the dangerous sea journey north.
She did not love Boat Harbour at all. She loathed it. But now she was rich and she began a lifetime of paying back those who she felt had slighted her. And she would, in the careful, almost feudal structure she built to hold the hierarchy of offences, place this clergyman near the top of the triangle, the apex of which was occupied by Mrs Trevis.
There was no room in the little study. You sat crammed on a straightbacked chair and looked across the vicar's shoulder to the open-sided veranda where the crates of books his present circumstances made it impossible to unpack stood greying and gathering new watermarks each time the wind came from the south. Or you could, if you cricked your neck a little, look down the long thin block of land, past the vicar's Jersey cow picking what it could from the low winter grass, to where the black bones of the glass church stood, its panes mostly cracked or crazed, with long dried strands of dead water clinging to its roof.
This church belonged to Miriam, or so it had been determined in the court at Sydney. Dennis Hasset had imagined it was his, for it had been intended as a gift and he had taken it upon himself to have it transported on to his back paddock.
Miriam sat on the chair and smoothed her skirts. She placed her hands in her lap, quite so, not attempting to hide — Dennis Hasset thought her intention to be the opposite-the tell-tale roundness of her stomach. She crossed her leg, showed a little petticoat, and looked at him in such a way he could not hold her gaze.
"I have been speaking to Mr Field from Gleniffer," Miriam said, removing a black glove to reveal than an extra wedding ring had found its way on to her pretty hand in Sydney. "He says there are now fifteen Anglican families who would be pleased to fill a plate each Sunday." Dennis Hasset thought: Fill a plate. She says it so grandly, but she has not seen the coppers and threepences looking so lonely on the green felt base. When Mr Field says he will "fill a plate" he is being a grand man with his thumbs stuck in his braces, but the reality is different. They will have me, Dennis Hasset thought, riding out to Gleniffer twice on a Sunday and expect me to do it for the love of God and twopence ha'penny.
"And that is when it came to me," said Miriam, smiling sweetly, "that we might make a present of my dear little church to them. Mr Field says he has no shortage of corrugated iron, and as for the walls, he explained to me how he would fix weatherboards to it."
"How clever of him," said Dennis Hasset sourly.
"Well," said Miriam, "indeed it is. You cannot just nail a
A Cheque amidst Her Petticoat
board on to a cast-iron frame." — ;
"I never thought of it," said Dennis Hasset. This was play-acting. A weatherboard could be secured, just as glass could, on the wooden mullions.
"Spare me your wit then, Mr Vicar, and if you are so wise in these worldly things, tell me how you would fix a weatherboard to the walls of the church."
Dennis Hasset smiled at her in a way which, in any other context, would be taken to be friendly.
"With fencing wire," Miriam said. "Like a stockyard fence. But if you are wise in these country matters, you will know how to do it. But, then again, you will not need to. The Gleniffer Anglicans will be here tomorrow. There has been so much trouble with white ant they are pleased to have a cast-iron frame. But, Mr Hasset, you look disappointed."
"As you know," he said, "I had rather hoped I would at last have a church here."
"Then we must get up a fête, and raise some money," Miriam said. "But you cannot ask me to worship in my husband's tomb."
"Still, I am disappointed."
"Your Sundays will certainly be very busy."
"I do not complain about God's work, but rather that the church was intended for me. But, but," he held his hand up as if to hold off her fury, "the courts said otherwise."
"Miss Leplastrier must have been most fond of you."
"We were friends, yes." i — '
"As she was obviously fond of my husband."
Husband? How is he husband? '
"She has been in correspondence with me again. I must say I admire
• her frankness." ' "v: :•:>; ••<'-.
"Oh?" '••••\^Ji'<.-,A-,
"You are not aware of our correspondence? She does not keep you informed? And yet I understood from her when we met outside the court in Sydney that you had a detailed correspondence. Indeed, she knew so much about our little town."
"Come, Miriam, what has she said." He held out his hand to the letter that Miriam was unfolding.
"It is not gentlemanly to pry into the private correspondence of young ladies. But I will read you little pieces. She writes: 'I made a bet in order that I keep my beloved safe.' I take that ill, Dennis, that she call him Ijeloved.' I think that poor taste. What say you?"
"She was fond of him?":s<,,
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Oscar and Lucinda
"She seems fond of almost everyone. But let me read some more: 'I beg you, please, as one woman to another, to not do this to me. I am astounded to see these words come off the tip of my own pen, but still they come. Let us not have our fears make us greedy.' Our fears, "said Miriam,
"make us greedy. Really, I can't think what she means. 'When I walk the streets of Sydney I realize I cannot bear to be an impoverished woman here. Please, Mrs Chad wick, if you have any Christian charity at all, you will allow me to keep some small percentage of my fortune.' " Miriam then folded the letter and placed it in her bag.
"So," she said.
Dennis Hasset's lips parted and his eyes narrowed a fraction.
"So," he said, "and what do you reply?"
"I replied sympathetically, of course. How could I not be sympathetic, I who have spent half her life in mourning rags, as I am again. I have an intimate knowledge of the poor woman's situation. It is I, after all, who was brought to this town through ill-fortune, was shipwrecked, and although a governess have had to suffer the indignity of a life better suited to an Irish servant. I know, better than she knows, what her situation must mean to her."
"And your response?"
"I worked as a servant," Miriam repeated. "I set fires. I milked cows when I should be teaching them their Shakespeare and their Milton."
"And you would have her do the same.",-^ , t
: "Dennis, you think me hard." — .
; "Mrs Chadwick," he said. -,
"Hopkins," she corrected.
"Mrs Hopkins," he said, "let us not be enemies."
"Mr Hasset, you are in such a rush to be friends you are stamping on my feet. Have I not said I will donate my little church to your Gleniffer Anglicans?"
"Indeed you have."
"Why then, I am dispatching today my cheque to Miss Leplastrier. It is not a fortune, but certainly should be some assistance to her in her present needç." It was this cheque which occasioned the short letter from Lucinda to Miriam which was unearthed nearly half a century later amongst Miriam's darned and fretted-over petticoats. By the time it was found, her letter was as fragile as the body of a long-dead dragon-fly. Its juice was dry. It was history. Lucinda was known for more important things than her passion for a nervous clergyman. She was famous, or famous at least amongst students of the Australian labour movement. One could look at
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