‘What a handsome little chap,’ Mrs Jefford commented as Charlie sucked away heartily on his bottle. ‘Did you say that the name of your nursemaid was Camira?’
‘I did, and I feel very fortunate to have her. She was educated at Beagle Bay mission where she cared for the babies in the nursery.’
‘Do you know,’ said Mrs Jefford after a pause, ‘I am almost certain that Camira was the given name of the pregnant maid I had to let go. We called her “Alice”, of course.’
‘Of course,’ Kitty had said. ‘I am still learning the way of these things.’
‘You say she is married?’
‘Why, yes, to Fred, who has worked for both my father-in-law and my husband for years. He drives the trap, tends the ponies and keeps the grounds under control. And oh, he is so very proud of his new baby daughter. Alkina arrived into the world just two weeks before Charlie. They are a devoted family, and study the Bible regularly,’ Kitty had thrown in for good measure.
‘Well, well, I had no idea Alice had a husband.’
‘Then perhaps you would like to meet the happy family?’
‘Yes, of course I would be . . . pleased to see Alice and her new child.’
‘Then come with me.’ Kitty had led Mrs Jefford to the backyard.
‘Fred? Camira?’ Kitty’s heart had pounded in her chest as she rapped on the door of the hut, having no idea whether Camira would have understood her instructions. To her utter relief, the ‘happy family’ – Fred, Camira and the baby, swaddled in her mother’s arms – had appeared at the door of the hut.
‘My dear friend Mrs Jefford wanted to meet your husband and see your new baby,’ Kitty enunciated, trying to calm the fear in Camira’s eyes. ‘Isn’t the baby beautiful? I think she looks just like her father.’
Camira nudged Fred and whispered something to him. To his credit, Fred folded his arms and nodded, just like a proud daddy.
‘Now,’ Kitty had said, noticing the blacking smears on the baby’s face were starting to smudge in the heat, ‘Fred, why don’t you take Alkina while I pass Charlie to Camira to feed? I confess, I am quite exhausted!’
‘Yessum, missus,’ Camira had squeaked. The exchange of babies ensued and Fred disappeared back inside the hut.
‘Bless my soul!’ Mrs Jefford had said, fanning herself violently in the heat as they’d followed Camira back towards the house. ‘I had no idea that Alice was wed. They usually aren’t, you see, and . . .’
‘I understand completely, Mrs Jefford.’ Kitty had placed a comforting arm upon hers, enjoying every moment of the woman’s discomfort. ‘And it’s so very thoughtful of you to take the trouble to visit me and Charlie.’
‘It was nothing, my dear. Now, I am afraid I must leave immediately as I have a game of bridge with Mrs Donaldson. We must have you and Andrew to dine very soon. Goodbye.’ Kitty had watched Mrs Jefford hurrying along the front path towards her carriage. Then she’d walked into the kitchen where Camira was sitting, visibly shaking, while she fed Charlie the rest of his bottle.
‘She believed it! I . . .’ Kitty had started to giggle, and then as Fred’s desperate face had appeared at the kitchen door, holding out baby Cat like a ritual sacrifice, Kitty had let him in and taken the blackened baby from him.
‘Missus Jefford thinkum Fred my husband?’ The look of disgust on Camira’s face made Kitty laugh even harder. ‘I notta marry a man who smellum bad like him.’
Fred had beaten his chest. ‘I-a husband!’
And the three of them had laughed until their sides ached.
From that moment on, Fred had taken his fictitious duties seriously. When Camira was working inside the house looking after Charlie, Fred stood guard over Cat, as though the day Mrs Jefford had visited had joined the three of them as a real family. He had started to wash and had smartened up considerably, and nowadays he and Camira bickered like an old married couple. It was obvious that Fred adored her, but Camira would have none of it.
‘Notta right skins for each other, Missus Kitty.’ It had taken months of persuasion for Camira to call her mistress by her Christian name, rather than ‘boss’.
Kitty had no idea what that meant or where Camira’s religious allegiance actually lay: one moment she would be whispering to her ‘ancestors’ up in the skies, and singing strange songs in her high, sweet voice if one of the children caught a fever. The next, she was sitting with Fred in the stable, reading him the Bible.
Since Mrs Jefford’s visit, there had been no threats from the local Protectorate. Camira was free to walk wherever she wished to in Broome, with Cat and Charlie nestled together in the perambulator. To the whites, she was now a married woman, under the protective banner of her ‘husband’.
*
Kitty sat down to write a letter to her mother, and included a recent picture of herself with Andrew and Charlie that had been taken by the photographer in town. So far from her family, she found Christmas the most difficult time of year, especially as it came at the start of the ‘Big Wet’, as Camira called it. She pondered the thought of Andrew going to Europe in January, and only wished she and Charlie could travel with him to visit her mother and sisters in Edinburgh, but she knew from experience that it was pointless to beg him again.
In the past four years, her husband had become further wedded to his business. Kitty read the tension on his face when a haul was coming in on a lugger, and the stress of disappointment later the same day when it revealed no treasure. Yet the business was doing well, he said, and his father was pleased with the way things were going. Only last month another lugger and crew had been added to their fleet. Kitty was just glad that she had Charlie to occupy her, for her husband’s attention was constantly elsewhere. There was one thing he craved above all – the discovery of a perfect pearl.
‘He is so driven,’ she said to herself as she sealed the envelope and put it on a pile for Camira to post later. ‘I only wish he could be content with what he has.’
*
‘I have written to Drummond,’ Andrew said over dinner that night, ‘and explained to him that you have insisted on staying in Broome while I am in Europe. He’s usually in Darwin in January, supervising the shipment of his cattle to the overseas markets. I suggested that if that’s the case, he might look in on you once his business is completed.’
Kitty’s stomach did an immediate somersault at the mention of Drummond’s name. ‘As I have assured you, we will be fine. There’s no need to trouble your brother.’
‘It would do him good. He is yet to meet his nephew and living on that godforsaken cattle station of his, I worry he is turning native, so lacking is he for any civilised company.’
‘He is still unmarried?’
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ Andrew snorted. ‘He’s far too smitten with his heads of cattle to find a wife.’