“I was going more often to Oakland and getting really reckless. Mr. Henniker always welcomed me. Once when we were in the gallery I told him how I used to play the spinet and frighten the servants. He was very amused and thereafter asked me to play for him. He loved to sit there listening while I went through most of the Chopin waltzes. I used to think it would go on like this always, that Mr. Henniker would always be there and interesting people would come to the house. Then I learned that this was not so and Mr. Henniker’s stays at the house were brief. He had what he called ” a property” in New South Wales. Oakland Hall was just a fancy, ” a bit of folly if you like”, he said. He’d seen it when he was a boy and had vowed to have it, and he was a man who believed in sticking to his vows. I wish I could tell you how he interested me. I had never known anyone like him.”
She didn’t have to try to make me understand that. I knew well enough having experienced the same thing myself.
“As I was older than Miriam there had been a lot of talk about my coming out before we left Oakland. We had had little Minnie jobber making dresses for me and I had some lovely garments made. In particular there were two pretty ball dresses. I remember Mama’s looking at them when we knew we were going to leave Oakland and saying: ” You’ll never need them now. ” One was more beautiful than the other; it was in cherry-coloured silk trimmed with Honiton lace; it fell off the shoulders, and I had a pretty neck and shoulders. It had been cut in that style for the sole purpose of showing them.
“Poor neck, poor shoulders,” I used to say, “you will never be shown off now.”
“One could talk to Mr. Henniker about anything so I told him about the dress. It was strange that he-a miner really and I suppose a rough one-could understand how I felt about almost anything I mentioned. He said: ” You shall wear the cherry dress. After all, why should the world be deprived of a glimpse of your divine neck and shoulders just because your father was a gambler? We’ll have a ball and you shall bring cherry red to it. ” I said I would never dare and he answered:
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Never be afraid to dare.” Then he laughed and said he was a wicked man who was leading his neighbour’s daughter from the strait and narrow path. He laughed a good deal over that.
“Strait and narrow paths are so restricting. Miss Jessica,” he said.
“The wide open spaces are much more stimulating.”
“Well, I digress again. I didn’t intend to. At first I meant this to be a brief letter, but as soon as I took up my pen I felt impelled to write like this. I had to make you see it all. I didn’t want you to think I was just a wanton. It wasn’t like that at all.
There was a house party at Oakland. Ben Henniker often had them. His guests were mostly people who were in his business. They used to come bringing special stones to him. He bought them and sometimes sold them; there was a lot of talk about opals. I began to learn something of how they were mined and marketed and found it fascinating.
“He told me there was to be a ball and that I must come to it and be one of his guests. It was thrilling, but I knew I couldn’t put on my cherry red dress and walk out of the house in it, so Ben suggested that I smuggle cherry red (as he called it) into Oakland and then on the night of the ball slip over and change into it there. He would get one of the maids to help me dress. So this was arranged.
“What a night that was, for during it I met Desmond for the first time. I must make you see Desmond. Everyone was wrong about what happened afterwards. That is what I want you to understand more than anything. It couldn’t have been the way it seemed. It just wasn’t possible.
The gallery at Oakland looked beautiful with the musicians at one end and decorated with flowers from the greenhouses. It made a beautiful ballroom with the candles flickering in their sconces. It was like my coming out ball and that was what Mr. Henniker intended it to be. He once said: “I didn’t mind taking Oakland from your father-he took a gamble and lost. I’m glad I took it from your mother because she deserves to lose it. I sometimes feel a twinge when I see your brother looking so mournful, but he’s a young man and he should be seeing what he can do about getting it back, or some place like it. But for you.
Miss Jessica, I’m right down sorry. So now we’re going to have a ball. ” It was an enchanted evening. There had never been such an evening in the whole of my life and never will be again, for it was at the ball that night that I met Desmond.
“He was young … not much older than I, but twenty-one seemed a responsible age to me. It was not a crowded ballroom because Mr. Henniker had asked none of the people from the neighbourhood. He told me that he couldn’t ask them because they would know me and that might cause trouble.
This was to be my ball-the ball of the cherry red gown and the divine neck and shoulders, he told me. So there were the house guests only and Oakland must have been rather full at that time, for there were so many rooms which could be used for guests. Right from the first Desmond found me. He asked me to dance and we did. I wish you could see the gallery as it was that night. It was so beautiful . so romantic. I expect over the centuries there have been many balls there, but I was sure there was never one like that one. He was tall and fair-though his hair was considerably bleached by the sun. He had what I call Australian eyes, which meant that they were half closed and had thick lashes.
“Ifs the sun,” he told me.
“It’s brighter and hotter than here. You half shut your eyes against it and I expect nature provides the lashes as a protection.” He talked rather like Ben Henniker about opals. He was fanatical about them. He told me what he had found so far and what he intended to find. “There never has been anything so fine as the Green Flash at Sunset,” he told me.
“Ben’s got it. You ought to ask him to show it to you some time.” I wasn’t interested in the Green Flash at Sunset. I wasn’t interested in anything that night but Desmond. Most of the other guests were older than we were. We danced together and talked and talked.
“He told me he intended to go back to Australia in about two or three weeks’ time. He had been longing to get back because he had discovered land which he was sure was opal country, and he wanted to go out and prospect it. Ben and some others were interested in the project; it was going to need a good deal of money to develop it. He had a feeling about it. Some of the old miners laughed at him. They called it Desmond’s Fancy. But he believed in it. He was going to make his fortune out of Desmond’s Fancy.
“I can feel it, Jessie,” he said. (He always called me Jessie. ) “It’s Opal Country. Dry bush land … flat … lots of saltbush and not much timber except the mulga-that’s a sort of acacia-and mulga grass too. It's lowlying, scorched, eroded, with dry watercourses. I said to myself. That land speaks for itself. There’s something there-gold or tin perhaps, wolfram or copper, but something tells me it’s opal … precious opal.” He talked in an excited way . rather like Ben Henniker and I couldn’t help being excited too.
“We talked … how we talked, and I only realized how the time was flying when I heard the clock in the courtyard chime midnight. When the ball was over, Hannah helped me to change into my day dress. She was one of the servants who had stayed on at Oakland when we left. She hadn’t been there very long and was about my age, which I suppose made her understanding. Maddy helped too. She crept down the Dower House stairs and let me in. Without those two it would have been very difficult for me. The next day Hannah was to bring my ball dress across the stream and I would be able to choose my moment to take it into the house unobserved. So there was only Miriam to placate. That was easy. All she wanted was to hear about the ball so I told her. She was completely on my side then and thought with me that it was a wonderful adventure.