‘Please, call me Andrew. And yes, it is all indeed fascinating. And perhaps, during their time here,’ Andrew said, raising his voice and directing his question to Mrs McCrombie, ‘Aunt Florence and Miss McBride would enjoy a cruise up the northwest coast? After the wet season has ended in March, of course.’
‘Florence dear, don’t even consider it,’ Edith interjected suddenly. ‘The last time I made the journey to Broome, there was a cyclone and the ship ran aground just beyond Albany. My eldest son lives in a completely uncivilised town full of blacks, yellows and the Lord only knows what other nationalities – thieves and vagabonds the lot! I have sworn that I shall never set foot in the place again.’
‘Now, now, my dear.’ Stefan Mercer laid a hand on his wife’s forearm. ‘We must not be un-Christian, especially at this time of year. Broome is certainly unusual, Miss McBride, a melting pot of all creeds and colours. I personally find it fascinating, and lived there for ten years when I was setting up my pearling business.’
‘It is a godforsaken morally corrupt town, dominated by the pursuit of wealth and full of greedy men wishing to pursue their lust for it!’ Edith interrupted again.
‘Yet is that not what Australia is all about, Mother?’ Drummond drawled loudly. ‘And’ – he indicated the enormous dining room and the contents of the table – ‘we too?’
‘At least we behave in a civilised manner and have good Christian values,’ Edith countered. ‘Go there if you must, sister dear, but I shall not accompany you. Now, shall we ladies retire to the drawing room and leave the men to their smokes and talk of the unsavoury side of life in Australia?’
‘If you would forgive me,’ Kitty said a few seconds later as she stood with Edith and Florence in the entrance hall, ‘I am still not feeling quite myself, and I wish to be well for Christmas Eve tomorrow.’
‘Of course. Goodnight, Miss McBride,’ said Edith curtly, looking somewhat relieved.
‘Sleep well, dear Kitty,’ called Mrs McCrombie, following her sister across the hall to the drawing room.
Upstairs, Kitty walked out onto the terrace, looked up to the stars and searched for the special Star of Bethlehem that she and her sisters had always watched for in the skies on Christmas Eve. She couldn’t see it here in the night sky, perhaps because they were so far ahead of the British clock in Adelaide.
Walking back inside, she left the doors leading to the terrace ajar, as the bedroom still smelt of her earlier illness. Daringly, as the night was so very hot, Kitty ignored her nightgown and crept beneath the sheets in her chemise.
*
A glaring sun woke her the following morning. Sitting up and realising that today was Christmas Eve, she was about to step out of bed when something enormous and brown dropped from the ceiling onto the bed sheet covering her thighs. The thing immediately started crawling at pace towards her stomach, and Kitty let out a piercing shriek as she realised it was a giant hairy spider. Rooted to the spot as it made its way towards her breasts, she screamed again, not caring who heard her.
‘What the hell is it?!’ said Drummond as he appeared in the room, looked at her, then immediately saw the problem. With a practised swipe of his hand, the offending spider was lifted from her by one of its many legs, wriggling as Drummond walked outside with it onto the terrace. She watched as he tossed the creature over the balustrade, then returned inside, shutting the doors firmly behind him.
‘That’s what comes of leaving them open,’ he admonished her with a wag of his finger, which had so recently held a predator between it and his thumb.
‘It was you who told me to open them!’ Kitty retaliated, her voice coming out as a high-pitched squeak.
‘I meant for a short while, not the entire night. Well, that’s rich.’ He glared at her. ‘I’m roused from my slumber at the crack of dawn on Christmas Eve to aid a lady in distress, and rather than a thank you, I get an earful for my troubles.’
‘Was it . . . poisonous?’
‘The huntsman spider? No. They occasionally give you the odd nip, but mostly they’re as friendly as you like. Just great, ugly things who do a good job of keeping the insect population under control. Those are nothing compared to what you come across in the Northern Territory where I live. The outside “dunny” – a privy, as you would know it – teems with them, and some of them are dangerous. I’ve had to suck the poison out of a couple of my drovers before now. Nasty creatures, those redbacks.’
Kitty, her heart still pounding, but her senses returning to her at last, decided that Drummond took great pleasure in shocking her.
‘It’s a different life out there,’ he said, as if he were reading her thoughts. ‘A matter of survival. It toughens you up.’
‘I’m sure it does.’
‘Well, I’ll leave you to get some further rest, given it’s only five thirty in the morning.’ He nodded to her and walked towards the door. ‘And by the way, Miss McBride, may I ask if you always sleep in your chemise? Mother would be horrified.’ With a grin, Drummond left the bedroom.
*
Three hours later, over a breakfast of freshly baked bread and delicious strawberry jam, Mrs McCrombie produced a large package and passed it to Kitty.
‘For you, my dear,’ she said with a smile. ‘Your mother asked me to keep this until Christmas. I know how homesick you have been, and I hope this may ease your longing for Scotland.’
‘Oh . . .’ Kitty held the heavy package in her hands. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes, but she blinked them back.
‘Go on, open it child! I have been travelling with it for weeks now, wondering what is in it!’
‘Shouldn’t I wait until tomorrow?’ Kitty asked.
‘The German tradition is to open our gifts on Christmas Eve,’ replied Edith. ‘Even though we save ours for eventide. Please, my dear, go ahead.’
Kitty tore open the brown paper and pulled out various items, delight bubbling inside her. There was a tin of her mother’s famous homemade shortbread, ribbons from her sisters along with drawings and cards. Her father had sent a leather-bound prayer book, which Kitty returned to the box without even reading the inscription inside.
She spent the rest of the morning offering her domestic services, showing the black kitchen maid how to roll pastry then dole out the mincemeat that Mrs McCrombie had brought with her into the small pastry shells. Goose was on the menu tonight apparently, and a turkey sat in the cool room for tomorrow’s Christmas Day feast. In the burning heat of the afternoon, Kitty sent up messages of love to her family waking on the eve of Christmas, and thought of her sisters, who would be so excited for the events of the next two days. As her body was still exhausted from its alcoholic battering yesterday, she took an afternoon nap and woke to a knocking on the door.
‘Come,’ she said drowsily, and watched as Agnes entered the room, bringing folds of turquoise silk hung carefully over her arms.