‘Thanks.’ As I sat down, I saw the view in front of me immediately made up for any lack of facilities inside. Uninterrupted red desert in the foreground rolled down to a creek. On the other side of it, a small line of silver-green shrubs that depended on sucking out the limited water supply to stay alive grew along the edges. And beyond that . . . well, there was nothing until the red land met the blue horizon.
‘I lived along that creek for a while. Many of us did. In, but out, if you understand what I mean.’
I didn’t, but I nodded anyway. It dawned on me then that I stood at the junction of two cultures which were still struggling to come to terms with each other two hundred years on. Australia – and I – were only young and trying to work ourselves out. We were making progress, but then making mistakes, because we didn’t have centuries of wisdom and the experience of age to guide us.
I felt instinctively that the man sitting opposite me had more wisdom than most. I raised my eyes to meet his again.
‘Ah, Celaeno, where should we begin?’ He steepled his fingers and looked at that distant horizon.
‘You tell me.’
‘Y’know,’ he said, turning his gaze back to me, ‘I never imagined this day would come. So many moments that one wishes for don’t.’
‘I know,’ I agreed, wishing I could place his strange accent, because it was a mixture of so many different intonations that every time I thought I’d cracked it, I knew I was wrong. There was Australian, English and I even thought I recognised a hint of German.
‘So, you received the letter and the photograph from the solicitor in Adelaide?’ he prompted.
‘I did, yes.’
‘And the amount that went with it?’
‘Yes. Thank you, it was really kind of you, if it was you that sent it.’
‘I arranged for it to be sent, yes, but I didn’t use these hands to earn it. Nevertheless, it is yours by rights. Through my . . . our family.’ His eyes crinkled into a warm smile. ‘You look like your great-grandmother. Just like her . . .’
‘Was that the daughter of Camira? The baby with the amber eyes?’ I hazarded a guess from what I had listened to so far on the CD.
‘Yes. Alkina was my mother. I . . . well.’ He looked as if he might cry.
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘So.’ Francis visibly pulled himself together. ‘Tell me what you have discovered so far about your kin?’
I told him what I knew, feeling shy and uncertain because this man had such presence, an aura of calm and charisma, that made me feel even more tongue-tied than I usually did.
‘I only got up to where the Koombana had sunk. And the dad and both brothers had been lost at sea. The person who wrote the book seemed to be saying that there’d been a really close relationship between Kitty’s husband’s brother – Drummond, was it? – and her.’
‘I have read it. It suggests that they had an affair,’ he agreed.
‘I know how people just write stuff to sell books, so I didn’t necessarily believe it or anything,’ I babbled, feeling terrible that I might be slandering a close member of his – our family.
‘Celaeno, are you telling me you feel this biographer may have sensationalised Kitty Mercer’s life?’
‘Perhaps, yes,’ I hedged nervously.
‘Celaeno.’
‘Yes?’
‘When you hear what I have to tell you, you will know that she didn’t sensationalise it enough!’
I watched in amazement as Francis put his head back and laughed. When his eyes turned back to me, they were full of amusement. ‘Now, I will tell you the real story. A truth that was only told to me on my grandmother’s deathbed. And we are not laughing about that, because she was one of the most dear, precious human beings I ever knew.’
‘I understand and, please, don’t tell me if you don’t want to. Maybe we should get to know each other better, so you know you can trust me?’
‘I have felt you since you were a seed in my daughter’s womb. It is you I worry for, Celaeno. To never know your roots, where you came from . . .’ Francis gave a deep sigh. ‘And you must know the story of your relatives. You are kin. Blood of their – and my – blood.’
‘How did you find me?’ I asked. ‘After all these years?’
‘It was my late wife – your grandmother’s – last wish that I look once more for our daughter. I didn’t find her, but instead I found you. To help you understand more, I must take you back. You know the story up until the Koombana sank, taking all the Mercer men with it?’
‘Yes. But how do I fit in?’
‘I understand your impatience, but first you must listen carefully to understand. So, I shall tell you what happened to Kitty after that . . .’
Kitty
Broome, Western Australia
April 1912
22
Kitty had often wondered how humans made it through the darkest moments of loss. In Leith she had visited families in the tenements, only to discover that they had been decimated by an influenza or measles epidemic. They had put their faith in the Lord, simply because there was nowhere else to put it.
And I’m surely on my way to hell, she thought constantly.
In the week that followed, though outwardly her daily routine didn’t alter, Kitty walked through it like a wraith, as though she too had departed this world. The windows of the stores along Dampier Terrace were hung with black cloth and there was barely a family in town that had not been touched by the disaster. To add to their shock, news reached them that the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic had also been swallowed by the ocean, with few survivors.
No one had any idea how the Koombana had gone down, taking her precious cargo to the bottom of the sea. A cabin door, a Moroccan-leather settee cushion . . . these were the scant remains that had drifted to the surface. No bodies had yet been found, and Kitty knew they never would be. Hungry sharks would have feasted on their flesh within hours.
For once, Kitty was glad of her small community and its shared grief. The usual social rules were ignored as people met in the street and held each other, allowing tears to fall unchecked. Kitty was humbled by the kindness she received, and by the condolence cards pushed through the letter box so as not to disturb her.
Charlie, whose initial reaction had been so calm, had cried on his mother’s knee a few days after she’d told him.
‘I know they’ve gone to heaven, Mama, but I miss ’em. I want to see Papa and Uncle Drum . . .’
Her son’s suffering at least gave Kitty something to focus on and she spent as much time as she could with him. With the loss of his father, grandfather and uncle, the male Mercer line had been wiped out in one fell swoop and Charlie was now the sole heir. Kitty feared what a burden it might prove to be for him in the future.
After she had tucked Charlie into his bed for the night, gently stroking his hair to send him to sleep, Kitty fingered the growing stack of unopened letters and telegrams on her writing bureau. She could not bear to open them, accept the writers’ sympathies, for she knew she deserved none of it. Despite trying to rein in her duplicitous heart and focus her sorrow on Andrew, she continued to mourn incessantly for Drummond.
She went out onto the veranda and looked up at the vast expanse of stars, searching for an answer.
As always, there was none.