Dancing for the Marquis, page 17
Over the ensuing weeks and months, Rosa was taught how to be a maid of all work, and how to undertake the multitude of tasks associated with keeping the MacDonalds’ house running smoothly. She was up before six o’clock every morning, and rarely retired before nine at night. Her first task of the day was to prepare early morning breakfast trays – to boil water, to grind beans for coffee, and to grill toast with a fork held against the grate of the kitchen’s wood burning iron stove (which she had to stoke). Mrs Rundle, who arrived each morning at eight o’clock, did all the other cooking. On Mondays and Tuesdays Mrs Rundle also did the household’s washing and ironing. At first, Rosa was intimidated by this gruff but helpful woman, but she learnt more from her than from Mrs MacDonald. The two servants ate together in the kitchen, and over time developed an amicable if not particularly close relationship. Mrs Rundle’s hearty and cheerful husband came several days each week to manage the garden. He would arrive in the kitchen at about 10.30 and announce himself by saying, ‘Is the kettle boiled? I thinks it’s time for a cuppa.’ Rosa liked best those days when he mowed the lawn, and the smell of newly scythed grass clung to his clothes. It was the smell of reaping and haymaking on the farm, and it made her recall how she and Matteo had often lain down together on freshly cut straw while it still held the warmth of the sun.
In both the morning and the afternoon Rosa had to draw several buckets of water from the well outside the back door; empty chamber pots, remove wax stubs from candlesticks; clear soot and ashes from fireplaces, paint the iron grates with black-lead, and buff them; lay new fires with kindling and logs; set the dining table for meals with linen and silverware (something so novel it was always confusing); wash dishes; shake up mattresses and pillows; change bed linen, and run short errands to a nearby shop. Over the course of the week, she also had to dust and sweep all the rooms in the house; beat carpets and rugs; scrub the front steps and mop the verandahs; clean all sorts of metal objects and brass lamps, and polish mirrors and glassware. She had to familiarise herself with an array of special brushes and cloths and soft chamois leathers and cleaning concoctions, all of which were new to her. There was also a profusion of bottles containing camphor, ammonia, turpentine and methylated spirits, and different sorts of soaps and powders such as hartshorn and rottenstone. As she couldn’t read the directions on the labels of the tins and bottles, she was terrified of getting them mixed up. Nevertheless, as she began to get to grips with her new tasks and responsibilities, she slowly rediscovered her innate capability, and little by little her self-confidence began to return.
The daily routine and the repetitive nature of her duties allowed Rosa to pick up words and phrases. She knew she had to ‘do the dusting’ and ‘make the beds’ and she understood what Mrs MacDonald meant when she asked, ‘Have you waxed the floor?’ or ‘Could you wash up the breakfast plates?’ Thus, with some hesitation, Rosa began to learn enough English for communication, though it would take her much longer before she dared to try speaking in sentences. Mrs MacDonald told her that once she was sufficiently confident in her understanding, she would be asked to wait at table when guests were present.
One morning Rosa was polishing the piano in the drawing room, on whose rack was a book of sheet music – ‘Popular Opera Tunes’. This happened to be open at the chorus from Verdi’s Nabucco – ‘O, mia patria, sì bella e perduta. O, membranza, sì cara e fatal.’ (Oh, my country, so beautiful and lost. Oh, remembrance, so dear and so fatal.) As Rosa read the words, she thought to herself, ‘Yes, my beautiful country is forever lost to me.’ Her mistress, who was also in the drawing room, noticed Rosa’s bleak look of sadness as she stared at the music. Her instinct was to offer words of comfort, but she held back. She hoped Rosa would confide in her once she had more English, and was willing to divulge the reasons for the haunting melancholy that enveloped her like a shroud.
Margaret MacDonald was a conscientious and practising Christian – she had employed Rosa in part because her religion required her to show generosity to homeless strangers. She and her husband were active members of a Presbyterian Church in North Sydney, but they were free of the sectarian suspicion of Catholics frequently displayed by Protestants. Mrs MacDonald assumed that because Rosa was Italian, she must be Catholic, and should be allowed to practise her faith without restrictions. She thus gave Rosa permission to attend Mass on Sunday mornings.
This regular outing allowed Rosa autonomy – at least for a couple of hours – and she got used to crossing the harbour by ferry to Circular Quay and walking up to St Patrick’s on Church Hill, navigating several streets on the way. The sandstone, Gothic-revival building was different from any church Rosa had known at home, and she liked sitting in a side pew, appreciating the flower-laden altar, a wooden statue of the Virgin, and three tall stained-glass windows in the northern apse. At the morning service these glowed like jewels, backlit by the northern sun. They depicted the Irish saints, St Patrick and St Brigid, about whom Rosa knew nothing, and Jesus with St Peter and St Paul. On the lower side of the church was a small chapel, whose comparative simplicity was inviting. On its plastered and stencilled walls, she could read the painted inscription ‘Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth’ and the crowned insignia ‘I.H.S’. (Ieusus Hominem Salvator). The Latin words were reassuringly familiar.
In time Rosa would learn that St Patrick’s was built on land donated to the Church by a person named William Davis, a devout and generous Irishman, who had been transported to Australia after being convicted for political subversion. Upon gaining his freedom, he’d made a fortune as a publican. Although Rosa could accept that Davis was a good and worthy man, the origins of St Patrick’s were prosaic compared with the wondrous beginnings of churches at home. Some of these were on sites chosen by San Magno di Oderzo (St Magnus) after receiving divine instructions from Christ himself, or the Virgin Mary, or the apostles, or from other saints and archangels. He was directed to build where he saw flocks of birds, or sheep and oxen grazing together, or a dozen storks, or fruit-bearing vines, or hovering red clouds. On one occasion the Virgin revealed herself to Magnus as a voluptuous woman, and told him to erect a church where a white cloud descended to the ground and rested. Magnus built Santa Maria Formosa at Castello in Venice, where a cloud seemed to sink into the vapour of a sea mist rising from the lagoon. Rosa and Matteo had visited the church that now stood there during their wedding trip. Such shimmering legends had a transcendence that allowed a belief in miracles.
St Patrick’s was under the care of the Marist Fathers who were French, but most of the parishioners were working-class Irish people, to whom Rosa found it hard to relate. Whenever she went into the confessional and recited in her Trevisan dialect, ‘Forgive me Father for I have sinned. It’s been one week since my last confession. I accuse myself of the following sins . . .’ she was self-conscious, and aware that her language would eliminate her anonymity. Her confession was always the same, her unassuaged anger at God for taking her child, her inability to extend forgiveness to Matteo for insisting they leave Italy, the rancour that burned in her heart. She did not know whether the priest knew to which sins she was confessing, and she did not understand his prescribed penance. But when he pronounced the words, ‘Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti,’ it was calming. She would resolve again to try and put the past behind her, and to quell her rage and her lack of generosity and humility.
At a Sunday service early in August, Rosa was kneeling on a hassock to pray when, out of the corner of her eye, she become aware of a well-dressed young man eyeing her intently from across the aisle. She was self-conscious under his ogling and turned her head away, but as she was filing out of the church he came up to her and introduced himself.
‘Signorina, my name is Remo Cortegiano. I think you are new to this parish and that you’re also from Italy.’
Rosa responded to him politely, ‘Buongiorno, signor.’ She prepared to leave but the young man was eager for conversation.
‘Until recently I was a sailor, but I’m finished with seafaring. I work for an importer of Italian wine and foodstuffs.’ He chattered on.
Rosa found it agreeable to hear Italian spoken for the first time in months, even though his dialect was very different from hers. She rashly let her new acquaintance walk with her back to Circular Quay and to wait with her until her ferry arrived. At home in Conegliano it was the practice for friends and neighbours to gather when Mass was over to mingle and exchange village gossip. Rosa missed that warm communality, but was aware that until she was fluent in English, making friends with her fellow worshippers or taking part in parish activities would be difficult. In the first instance, Remo’s company provided that missed sociability.
As they dawdled towards the ferry, Rosa told Remo of the Port Breton catastrophe, of how the Italians had escaped and sought refuge in Australia. Remo, who knew all about the disaster because it had been a source of much controversy and discussion in the Italian community, listened attentively. He also managed to insert into their conversation the occasional flattering remark that made her blush. As she went to board the ferry he said, ‘I hope I’ll see you next Sunday.’ She smiled shyly. ‘You will. I come to Mass every week.’ She did not mention she was married and had not seen her husband for more than a year.
The encounter was unsettling for Rosa. She had much enjoyed it, though she was a trifle abashed at having been responsive to a man who was not her husband. Since leaving her relatively sheltered life in Conegliano, she had seen enough to suspect an ulterior motive might lie behind Remo’s approach. However, she was cheered that he had sought her out and apparently found her attractive. She wasn’t canny enough to perceive that Remo was a self-centred philanderer, excited by the prospect Rosa offered for a tantalising game of seduction.
Rosa had never been romanced by anybody, and she started thinking about what might happen if she never heard from Matteo again, and whether she would have to spend her life in an limbo of ambiguity. She began anticipating Sundays for reasons that had little to do with piety, but everything to do with the prospect of seeing Remo.
Over time, Remo softly insinuated to Rosa that she might accept him as her ‘special companion’. When she consented hesitantly to his request that they walk arm-in-arm, her permission was charged with a furtive awareness of wrongdoing. Several weeks later they exchanged a long deep kiss in one of the empty Sunday alleys of The Rocks. She was tantalised by Remo’s bodily closeness, the smell of his skin and his physicality. His attentions were addictive, and she responded with something new for her – coquetry. Remo awakened an erotic desire so long denied expression by Matteo’s absence.
‘I’m still young. I have nothing. Am I not entitled to a little happiness?’ she would say to herself trying to justify her behaviour against her disapproving conscience. On one occasion Remo stood behind her, caressed her and cupped his hands around her clothed breasts lightly squeezing them. He then rubbed against her, aroused. Every fibre of her being suddenly came alive. She let slip a slight mew of pleasure as she experienced an urgent, reckless hunger for sexual intimacy, a desire to be possessed, even if it were on the hard surface of the laneway.
She was panting and about to whisper, ‘Yes, yes, now – take me now,’ when the clatter of approaching footsteps killed the moment dead. Rosa drew away with a horrified shudder and ran off as fast as she could. She heard Remo shouting after her, ‘Rosa, come back, come back!’ but she did not stop running until she reached the wharf and the safety of being with other people. The risk had passed, but the enormity of the betrayal she had just contemplated sat like a dead weight on her shoulders. Out of breath with her exertion, she was crushed by self-disgust and dismay. ‘I have lost nearly everything and now I’m losing my sense of right and wrong as well. What am I becoming?’
That evening when Rosa recited the rosary, she was truly repentant. How she longed to be at home in Conegliano, where, although her behaviour would earn disapproval and censure, she would be able to rely ultimately on the loving comfort of human forgiveness.
A few weeks later Mrs MacDonald mentioned to Rosa that a recent newspaper article had reported the July arrival in Port Breton of the Nouvelle-Bretagne carrying Belgian, French, Spanish and Italian immigrants. Rosa digested this information, and then told Mrs MacDonald that she was a married woman and her husband might be one of those in Port Breton. The older woman pondered whether Rosa might have other secrets.
Rosa had no idea as to how she might contact Matteo or how he might leave Port Breton and travel to Sydney. Nevertheless, there were no more adulterous daydreams, and she avoided any further contact with Remo. She became greatly fond of the MacDonalds’ cat, who took to sleeping on her bed.
* * *
Albert Fröhlich also attended services at St Patrick’s. He went to Mass as a matter of conscience and conviction, but he also regarded churchgoing as a means of staying connected to his parents, even though they would never know whether he went or not. Most of all he found the church an oasis of tranquillity, a balm for his battered self.
Not long after Rosa started attending services, Albert learnt she was one of the Italians from the India. Had the two been able to communicate they might have gained some solace from sharing their similar experiences, but the lack of a common language precluded this possibility. Rosa noticed Albert in the pews, but never discovered that the lame young man was one of the marquis’ victims.
When Albert’s ulcerated legs had healed sufficiently to allow him to walk in his new boot without crutches, he obtained employment as a mill hand with a large manufacturer of woollen fabrics in Sussex Street. Messrs J. Vicars & Co. prided itself on its high quality tweeds woven from undyed fleeces, and advertised that its mill had ‘the most modern and best manufacturing appliances’. Albert was assigned various tasks associated with the production of fabric for men’s suits, for riding clothes and for ladies’ costumes. He was fully aware that this work was not dissimilar to that which his father had urged him to take in Eupen before he had fatefully seen the advertisement placed by Stéphane Auxcousteaux.
Albert would stand all day attending to looms and other machines, and by the end of the afternoon, his legs ached so badly that he quailed at the prospect of walking back to his rooming house in The Rocks, even though this was not more than a kilometre away.
Peter Le Rennetel, one of the priests at St Patrick’s, was troubled by Albert’s unhappiness, and viewed the German youth as a bit of a lost soul. He tried some gentle coaxing.
‘Why don’t you come along to some of our parish activities Albert? I’m sure you’d enjoy them and you’d make some agreeable friends.’ But Albert was acutely self-conscious and had lost faith in himself. He was especially shy in the presence of young women, and concluded sadly that he would never have a wife.
Albert was glad that none of the girls he once knew would be seeing him any time soon. He assumed all women would be repulsed by his legs and might ridicule his boot. Rejection was not something he was prepared to endure. The kindly Father urged him to set aside such ideas. ‘You both overestimate your disfigurement and underestimate women’s understanding.’ But Albert was not open to consolation, let alone to love, and thus he continued to suffer. He became ever more depressed and began to find solace in drinking lager every evening at the Whalers’ Arms, a pub near his lodgings.
SEVENTEEN
In March 1881 Charles’s fourth expedition had departed Barcelona on the Nouvelle-Bretagne under the command of Captain Jules Henry, an experienced sailor familiar with the East Indies. The ship was carrying approximately 150 emigrants, of whom more than half were dependants or children. A doctor, a priest and a notary as well as various other officials with grand titles were also aboard.
Everything about this expedition gave hope to the marquis’ diehard supporters that the colony might be on its way to success. The ship’s capacious hold was packed with forty cubic metres of timber, a pulping-mill for sugar, a five-horsepower steam engine, thousands of bricks, a cement mixer, and a boiler. There were also twenty sheep, twelve oxen and about the same number of pigs. There were crates of clothing, including one containing dozens of pairs of satin dancing slippers. When Charles placed the order for these he may have been thinking of courtly balls, or perhaps he wished to correct the advice of Dr de Groote who had cautioned that ballet dancers were lacking at Port Breton.
For many weeks before the ship sailed, intending emigrants had flocked into Barcelona. Some, such as the Janssens and Matteo, were hoping for a better life than that they’d had in Europe. Others had larger motivations. Some had been excited by the idea of joining the colony’s militia, and paraded in their magnificent uniforms about the streets of Barceloneta, attracting much attention. Bruno regularly involved himself in fights with neighbourhood boys who despised this vainglorious strutting, and the obvious French incursion into their territory. Although Bruno conceded the locals had a point, he wasn’t going to grant any legitimacy to their challenges.
On the day of departure, Captain Henry honoured Charles with an excellent luncheon in the ship’s Grand Saloon. Also present were Conde Senmarti, several of the ship’s officers, and an old general who had fought against progressivism in Spain’s ‘Carlist’ civil wars. As the meal came to an end the general stood up rather unsteadily. Flushed with emotion and French wine, he raised successive toasts, ‘To the company’. ‘To a safe journey’. ‘To the fortunes that all will achieve’. Charles acknowledged the toasts with a slight nod of the head, but he didn’t say anything and made no speech. He then left the table and went up on deck. At the sight of their supposed benefactor, the passengers and militiamen cheered and cried out repeatedly, ‘Vive le Marquis de Rays! Vive la Nouvelle France!’
