Page 81 of The Pearl Sister
‘Really, darling, sometimes you do have the most ridiculous notions! Our child, swimming with the blacks?’
‘Please don’t call them that! You know both their names very well. And given our child lives by the sea as both you and I did, surely he should be taught to swim? I’m sure you did at Glenelg.’
‘That was . . . different,’ Andrew had said, although Kitty had no idea why it was. ‘I’m sorry, Kitty, but on this one, I’m putting my foot down.’
As Charlie slumbered against her shoulder, worn out from the heat and excitement, Kitty gave a small smile.
While the husband’s away, the ‘Kat’ can play . . .
* * *
The following day, Kitty asked Camira if there was perhaps a hidden cove where Charlie could splash in the water. Camira’s eyebrows rose at her mistress’s request, but she nodded.
‘I knowa good place with no stingers.’
That afternoon, Fred drove the pony and cart to the other side of the peninsula. For the first time since she’d arrived in Australia, Kitty felt the sheer bliss of dipping her feet into the gloriously cool waters of the Indian Ocean. Riddell Beach was not the vast sandy stretch that Cable Beach boasted, but it was infinitely more interesting, with its large red rock formations and tiny pools full of fish. With gentle encouragement from Camira, who had removed her blouse and skirt as innocently as a child, Charlie was soon screeching and splashing happily in the water with Cat. As Kitty paddled in the shallows, holding up her petticoats, she was sorely tempted to do the same.
Then Camira pointed up to the heavens and sniffed the air. ‘Storm a-coming. Time to go home.’
Even though the sky looked perfectly clear to Kitty, she had learnt to trust Camira’s instincts. And sure enough, just as Fred steered the pony and cart into their drive, a rumble of thunder was heard, and the first raindrops of the approaching Big Wet began to fall. Kitty sighed as she took Charlie into the house, for as much as she’d longed for the blissful coolness of the air that would arrive with the storm, in less than a few minutes’ time, the garden would be a river of red sludge.
The rain lasted all night and well into the next day, and Kitty did her best to amuse Charlie inside the house with books, paper and colouring pencils.
‘Play with Cat, Mama?’ He looked up at her mournfully.
‘Cat is with her own mama, Charlie. You can go and see her later.’
Charlie pouted and his eyes filled with tears. ‘Wanna go now.’
‘Later!’ she snapped at him.
Recently, Kitty had noticed how, no matter what exciting things she suggested the two of them do together, all Charlie wanted was to be with Cat. Certainly, Camira’s daughter was an extraordinarily lovely little girl, with a gentle nature that calmed Kitty’s more hyperactive son. There was no doubt that she was already a beauty, with her gorgeously soft skin the colour of gleaming mahogany and her mesmeric amber eyes. She’d also realised in the past few months that Charlie was not just bilingual, but trilingual. Sometimes, she would hear the children playing together in the garden and talking in Cat’s native Yawuru.
Kitty had said nothing about this to Andrew; but the fact that Charlie was clever enough to understand and speak three languages, when she herself sometimes struggled to find the right word in one, made her proud. Yet, as she watched Charlie peering out of the kitchen window, looking desperately for Cat, she wondered if she’d allowed Charlie to spend more time in her company than he should.
The rain finally stopped, although the red sludge had overwhelmed her precious roses, and, with Fred’s help, she spent the next morning clearing the beds as best she could. That afternoon, knowing it was low tide and feeling it important to spend some time alone with her son, she drove Charlie on the cart to Gantheaume Point to show him the dinosaur footprint.
‘Monsters!’ said Charlie, as Kitty tried to explain that the enormous gouges in the rocks far beneath them were made by a giant foot. ‘Did God make ’em?’
‘Did God makethem,Charlie,’ she reprimanded him, realising Cat and Camira’s pidgin English was having an effect. ‘Yes, he did.’
‘When he makum the baby Jesus.’
‘Before hemadethe baby Jesus,’ said Kitty, knowing Charlie was far too young to try to grapple with such philosophical questions. As they headed back home, she mused that life only became more confusing when one viewed it through the eyes of an innocent child.
That evening, Kitty put Charlie to bed and read him a story, then, as Andrew wasn’t there, she took her supper on a tray in the drawing room. Picking up a book from the shelf, she heard another rumble of thunder outside and knew further rain was on its way and the Big Wet had begun in earnest. Settling down to readBleak House,which served on all levels to cool her senses, she heard the rain begin to pour onto the tin roof. Andrew had promised that next year he would have it tiled, which would lessen the almighty clatter above them.
‘Good evening, Mrs Mercer.’
Kitty almost jumped out of her skin. She turned around and saw Andrew, or at least, a half-drowned and red-sludge-spattered version of him, standing at the drawing room door.
‘Darling!’ she said as she rose and hurried towards him. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
‘I was desperate to see you, of course.’ He embraced her and she felt his soggy clothes dampening her own.
‘But what about the voyage to Singapore? The trip to Europe? When did you decide to turn back?’
‘Kitty, how good it feels to hold you in my arms once more. How I have missed you, my love.’
