Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

“No, no, you miss the point! Jesus, Richard, where Kitty is concerned ye’re an ass! To her, I am the transition between child and woman-I am her first girlish passion, unrequited because they always are. She is a plum ripe for the picking, man! I saw her walking down the vale to Stores the other day, dangling an empty basket. The wind was blowing straight in her face and plastered her shapeless slops against her-were I a man for women, I would have snatched her away that instant. And do not think that other men did not notice! Apart from her eyes, her face does not have much to recommend it, but in the body she is Venus. Long shapely legs, swelling hips, tiny waist and superb breasts- Venus! If ye do not lay claim to her, Richard, someone else will in spite of his fear that ye’ll tear him in half.”

Stephen got to his feet. “Now I am going home to Tobias before she returns from her errand. Tell her that I remembered some urgent business.” He went to the door. “Ye’re too patient, Richard. ’Tis an admirable virtue, but while the cat crouches for an hour watching the mouse, a hawk may swoop down from the sky and steal it.”

Kitty shrankinto the shadows beneath the unshuttered window, but Stephen Donovan looked neither to left nor to right; he strode off down the path between the vegetables and disappeared into the darkness. The moment he vanished, she crept back to the stream. Why was it not deep enough to drown in? Stephen’s calling Richard an absolute looby had stilled her footsteps, aroused her curiosity; forgetting adages about eavesdroppers, she placed herself beneath the window and listened.

How was that possible? How could Stephen say he was in love with Richard? Mind reeling, she could not get beyond that. Stephen, a man, was in love with-desired-another man. Richard. And he had called her love a girlish passion. He had called her a child. Spoken of her with tender sympathy but no love whatsoever. Could recount the details of her figure with the same sort of remote admiration she felt for Richard. Who, Stephen had said, was in love with her. But Richard was her father’s age! He had said it! She fell to her knees and rocked back and forth, tearless. I want to die, I want to die…

Richard crouched beside her. “You heard.”

“Yes.”

“Well, better to hear it that way than from my wife,” he said, put an arm about her shoulders and hauled her upright with himself. “You were bound to find out sooner or later. Come, off to bed. ’Tis cold out here.”

She suffered herself to be led inside, then looked at him out of a wan white face and William Henry’s eyes.

“Go to bed,” he said firmly, face impassive.

Without a word she turned and went to her room. He was right, it was cold; shivering, she got into her night shift and climbed into that warm soft feather bed, there to lie sleepless, going over and over what she remembered of their-no, not conversation. Nor argument. What she had heard was an exchange of feelings and impressions between two very old friends, friends who could not truly offend each other no matter what had to be said. From the little her life had shown her, a rare occurrence. The word “maturity” came from somewhere, and it suited them. Why were they what they were? Why did Stephen choose to love a man? And why was that man Richard? Why had he called Richard “God the Father”? Oh, she thought, squeezing her hands together in pain and bewilderment, I know nothing about either of them! Nothing!

The wish to die faded, died. Nor, she discovered, was she shattered beyond hope of mending. That Stephen did not love her was a grief, but she had never thought he loved her; that was an old disappointment. The shape of her sorrow melted, burned away by yet more questions. Perhaps, she thought, I do have the brain to learn, though what the lesson is I do not know. Only that I have spent my life hiding, and I cannot go on hiding. Those who hide are never seen. With that enlightenment, she fell asleep.

When she woke in the morning, Richard had gone. The dishes were washed, the stove top tidy, the kettle steamed, the fire lay in embers, and a plate of cold chicken and rice lay on the table.

She made herself tea in the sturdy baked clay pot warming on the hearth and sat to pick at the food, looking back on last night as if from a great distance. The memories were all firmly embedded, but the intensity of feeling had gone. Feeling… Surely there was a better word than that?

Richard walked in with his usual easy smile. As if nothing had happened. “You look very thoughtful,” he said.

The comment was a signal, she divined that: he did not wish to discuss last night. So she said, rather feebly, “No work?”

“Today is Saturday.”

“Oh, of course. Some tea?”

“That would be nice.”

She poured him a mug and cooled it down with cold sugar syrup, then sat down again to go on toying with her food. Finally she put the spoon down on the pewter plate with a clang and glared at him. “If I cannot talk to you,” she burst out, “who is there?”

“Try Stephen,” he said, sipping appreciatively. “Now that is one could talk the leg off an iron pot.”

“I do not understand you!”

“You do, Kitty, you do. ’Tis yourself you do not understand, and where is the wonder in that? Ye’ve not had much of a life,” he said gently.

She stared across the table straight into his eyes, something she had never had the courage to do before. Wide, the color of the sea beyond the lagoon on a squally day, and deep enough to drown in. Without, it seemed, the slightest effort, he took her inside himself and swept her away on a tide of-of-Gasping, she leaped to her feet, both hands clutching at her chest. “Where is Stephen?”

“Fishing at Point Hunter, I imagine.”

She fled through the door and into the vale as if Satan’s hounds bayed at her heels, slowing down only when she realized that he was not following her. How had he done that? How?

By the time she negotiated the perils of walking unescorted through Sydney Town-a matter of running from one group of women to the next-Kitty had regained a little composure and was able to smile and wave at Stephen, who rolled in his line, strolled to meet her, then shepherded her away from the vicinity of half a dozen other men also fishing. He seemed ignorant of what had happened; that eventuality had not occurred to her, she had automatically assumed that Richard would have gone to tell him. Did Richard discuss nothing with anyone?

“They are not biting,” he said breezily. “What brings ye here? No Richard in your wake?”

“I overheard what passed between you last night,” she said, and gulped audibly. “I know I ought not to have listened, but I did. I am sorry!”

“Bad child. Here, we can sit on this rock and look at the wonder of yon isles in the midst of such a smother, and the wind will blow our words away.”

“I am indeed a child,” she said miserably.

“Aye, and that I find the strangest part of it,” he said. “Ye’ve been through the London Newgate, Lady Juliana and Surprize as if none of it touched you. But it must have, Kitty.”

“Yes, of course it did. But there were others like me, you know. If we did not die of shame-one poor girl did-we managed not to be seen. Among so many, that is not as difficult as you might think. The crowds-the fighting, spitting, snarling, prowling-stepped over us as if we did not exist. Everybody was so drunk, or else after someone-to rob or fuck or beat upon. We were thin, poor, plain. Not worth going after for any reason.”

“So ye became a hedgehog curled into a ball.” His profile against the pines of Nepean Island was pure and serene. “And the only word ye know for the act of love is ‘fuck.’ That is the saddest thing of all. Did ye see people fucking?”