Sylvia's Son

By Pamela Lamb

On a warm moonstruck night Elise stood at the bedroom window staring down at the shadowy garden below. The bright moonlight made the garden look like a stage: the flat green lawn and the black shrubs surrounding it like cardboard cut outs. A flicker of movement at the edge of the lawn drew her eye. A man, keeping in the shadows as well he might. Next, a flutter of white as Sylvia crossed the lawn, leaving a line of bare footprints on the dewy grass.
Elise wanted to stop looking but she stayed where she was at the window, her hand clutching the edge of the heavy curtain. She saw the man step out of the shadows and open his arms, enveloping Sylvia in his embrace. Elise sighed and let the curtain drop into place. She knew it would end badly. She’d known it all along. Not just for the girl wrapped in the arms of her lover. For both of them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pamela Lamb
• Release date: Apr 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311316745

Pamela Lamb

Must ... stop ... writing ... Sometimes I really wish I could. It gets in the way of real life. At the weekend I prefer sitting in front of the computer with my pretend friends instead of going out with my real ones. It destroys my sleep. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night knowing I need to change one word in the paragraph I wrote the evening before - and I have to get up and do it. And it makes me a dangerous driver. Get me on the road and my characters start having conversations in my head. And why are they so much more lucid and logical then than when I attempt to scribble them down at the next red light?I write because I love language. I love English with its collection of mongrel words. It's like an enormous button box where you can pick between half a dozen languages each one of which holds the history of Britain at its heart. I love the shape of words and the sound of them. I love what you can make them do on the page. And what you can make them do to your readers. Laugh, cry, stay up at night.What I like best is having a conversation with a reader about one of my characters. The reader talks about my character as if s/he is a real person. Discusses the character's motivation. Speculates about what the character did after the end of the novel. And I think, but it's all made up. Every bit of it. Out of my head.Then I know it is all worthwhile. Bringing characters alive to walk on the page. Creating a world for them to live in. Immersing myself in the shape and rhythm of a novel in the making. It's exciting stuff. And it's even more exciting when the book is finished and I hand it over to you, the reader. Enjoy!

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Sylvia’s Son

Pamela Lamb

Published by Agneau Press at Smashwords

Copyright 2015 Pamela Lamb

Discover other titles by Pamela Lamb at smashwords.com/profile/view/pamelalamb

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On a warm moonstruck night Elise stood at the bedroom window staring down at the shadowy garden below. The bright moonlight made the garden look like a stage: the flat green lawn and the black shrubs surrounding it like cardboard cut outs. A flicker of movement at the edge of the lawn drew her eye. A man, keeping in the shadows as well he might. Next, a flutter of white as Sylvia crossed the lawn, leaving a line of bare footprints on the dewy grass. Elise wanted to stop looking but she stayed where she was at the window, her hand clutching the edge of the heavy curtain. She saw the man step out of the shadows and open his arms, enveloping Sylvia in his embrace. Elise sighed and let the curtain drop into place. She knew it would end badly. She’d known it all along. Not just for the girl wrapped in the arms of her lover. For both of them.

Chapter 1

Ipswich, February 1872

Elise knew her father was dead as soon as she opened the front door. It was not just the silence inside the house - she had become used to that during the long weeks of his illness - but something about the quality of the silence that told her his spirit had finally departed. She held the door open for her sister Birgit then closed it softly behind her. The house was stuffy with the heat of the day and smelled of the scones their neighbour Mrs Matthews was baking in the kitchen. Without a word Birgit opened the parlour door and crept inside to sit with their mother while Elise pushed open the bedroom door on the opposite side of the narrow hall to see her papa. That was the way it had always been and now she knew she would suffer for it. She was Papa’s girl, always had been, and she knew quite well her mother didn’t like her.

The room was gloomy and stiflingly hot. A black blind had been drawn down over the window, as custom demanded, and it cut out both the light and the fitful afternoon breeze. Elise moved to the window and twitched a corner of the blind. She peered at the hot street through the branches of the frangipani growing in the front garden. Campbell was still there, standing at the corner of the street where she’d left him just a few moments before. He was leaning against the wooden post of the street sign, his hands in his pockets, his battered straw hat pushed to the back of his head. Elise reached up and touched her mouth with the tips of her fingers. His kiss had been fleeting, gentle, just the barest brush of lip against lip. What had made him kiss her like that out there in the afternoon street? Was it a good bye kiss? Is that what it had been?

Elise let the blind drop into place and turned back into the room. Her father was lying in the middle of the big feather bed. His beautiful long-fingered watchmaker’s hands lay on the white lace coverlet, his eyes were closed and his face was serene. Gone were the lines of worry and pain and illness that had marred his narrow fine-boned face ever since he’d taken to his bed just before Christmas. She leaned over and grasped one of his hands. It was cool to her touch but she didn’t care. By the time Mrs Matthews came upstairs to find her, death was stiffening her father’s body and his hand, clasped so tightly in her own, had hardened into a claw. Mrs Matthews tut-tutted at her for spoiling her handiwork and shooed her out of the room. Elise turned round in the doorway and saw her tugging roughly at her father’s fingers trying to straighten them out.

Two days after her father’s death, Elise followed her mother and sister out of their black-draped front door to drive to the Lutheran Church in Marburg where he was to be buried. She had spent the intervening time blinking away her tears so she could see the black fabric she was sewing into mourning dresses for herself and her sister. Her mother had not requested her services with the needle and now she could see why. Mama was wearing a black silk basque heavily ornamented with embroidery and jet beads. Her skirt, with a deep flounce at the hem, was looped over a bustle. Her hat, a black chip Bateau trimmed with feathers and velvet ribbons, sat atop her blond hair which was piled high on her head. Elise had no idea how her mother had managed to acquire so handsome an outfit in the short time that had elapsed since her Papa passed away. The thought crept unbidden into her head that Mama had been planning her wardrobe while Papa lay dying. It was not a kind thought, though most likely true, and unworthy of Papa’s daughter. She pushed it away, determined to behave as her father would have wished, at least for today.

Elise stood at the gate holding her sister’s hand while her mother heaved herself into the sulky and took the reins. She had hoped her older brother Pieter would be there to drive them to the church but he had left at dawn to accompany Papa’s coffin to the farm of Uncle Johannes and Aunty Min from where the funeral cortege would leave for the church. Elise had seen little of him over the past few days. He was apprenticed to their father and he had been busy in the shop since Papa took to his bed, trying to fulfil the list of orders that had come in over the Christmas period. Papa employed an assistant, Mr Fletcher, who had taken over the accommodation at the back of the shop when the family moved to Martin Street and Peter slept there when the two of them worked long into the night. Elise thought he probably preferred it to the hushed and stifling atmosphere at home.

By the time the horse and sulky arrived at the church Mama’s broad face was suffused with red either from the heat of the day or from the tight collar of her jacket that seemed to be strangling her soft neck. She dropped the reins and turned to Elise crammed next to her on the narrow seat.

‘Now listen young lady, I want none of this crying, do you understand?’ She reached out and tweaked her daughter’s bonnet sharply. ‘There will be plenty of nice young lads in church today and I want you to look your best. Although, heaven knows, even at your best you are an ugly little thing.’

Elise was slender like her father and she had inherited his brown eyes and dark hair. When Papa was alive she had gauged her looks by his and been content, despite her mother’s dismal assessment of her charms. By contrast her sister Birgit was plump, blond and rosy – everything the Marburg farm lads wanted in a girl, even though she was only thirteen years old.

They waited in the shade of a spreading Poinciana tree, still showing the bright red flowers of summer, until the funeral cortege became visible as a distant smudge of brown dust. Marburg folk prided themselves on their prudence and Papa’s coffin rode on a dray draped with black fabric and pulled by two sturdy farm horses who tossed their heads under the black plumes attached to their harnesses. Beside the wagon walked Pieter with his five cousins, Uncle Johannes and Aunty Min’s sons. Peter looked small next to his strongly-built cousins but Elise thought him handsome in his black jacket and narrow trousers, his head bare to the hot sun. He came over to the sulky and handed his mother out before taking his place with his cousins to carry the coffin into the church. Elise followed her mama into the dim building and sat in the front pew. The church felt cool and smelled of candles and mice.

Behind her she could hear the church filling up. She knew who they would be: local farming families, most of whom were related to her somehow through her mother. She knew they would enjoy squeezing out a tear for poor Heinrich before enjoying Aunty Min’s generous hospitality back at the farm. The organ wheezed into life and she turned her head to watch Pieter and the farm lads carry her father’s coffin down the aisle. Just before the door shut on the bright slab of daylight, a gentleman in a tall hat entered the church and slid into one of the pews at the back.

‘Who is it?’ hissed her mother into her ear.

‘A gentleman, Mama. I think it’s Mr Tooth.’

Campbell’s father, thought Elise with a skip of her heart.

A satisfied smile curled Mama’s lips.

After the service, Elise, Birgit and their mother followed the coffin out of the church and waited at the door to accept the condolences of the congregation. When the farm folk had finished, Mr Tooth came forward, touching the brim of his hat politely. He was a tall man, broad across the shoulders, with the habit of stooping his head that tall men have who spend their lives avoiding encounters with low doorways. Close to, Elise could see his hat’s brim had a bend in it, there was a shiny grease stain on the lapel of his coat and his boots carried their own little cargo of mud and straw. Still, he was the closest thing to gentry Ipswich possessed and Elise could see her mama was suitably gratified by his attention.

By two o’clock the heat was pressing down on the tin roof of the farmhouse baking the air inside until it was almost too hot to breathe. Most of the mourners had gone, heading back to the chores that awaited them on their own farms. Left behind were the remnants of a substantial lunch: a plate of dried-out bread and butter, the shiny white knob at the end of a ham bone stripped of its meat, the crumbs of a heavy fruit cake. Dirty plates and empty tea cups were scattered around Aunty Min’s best room on tables, on window sills, tucked behind the legs of chairs. Elise carried another tray of dirty dishes out to the kitchen where Aunty Min stood at the big stone sink with her sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Her round red face was slicked with sweat to which were sticking tendrils of her fine brown hair which had escaped from that morning’s tight bun. She lifted up her arm and rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand, leaving behind a soapy smear.

‘You look worn out,’ she said. ‘Go outside and get a breath of air.’

Elise dumped her tray on the wooden draining board. ‘I haven’t finished yet.’

‘You’ve done enough. Your mama’s lying down.’

Elise went through the kitchen door to the wide veranda with its splintery wooden floor. Here was a cream separator, a mangle in a wrought iron frame, a pile of old newspapers held in place with a rusted horse shoe. Birgit was sitting on the steps leading down to the back yard with her chin in her hands, staring out at the sun-struck landscape. She turned her head when Elise sat next to her.

‘Did you see him?’

‘See who?’

‘Jakob Willemns. He’s going to ask Mama if he can walk out with me.’

‘Birgit. Have you forgotten why you’re here?’

‘Papa’s funeral. Yes, I know. And now I have to wear this ...’ She clutched the skirt of her black dress with both hands. ‘... for months and months. But Jakob’s in no hurry.’

‘I should think not. You’re only thirteen.’

‘Nearly fourteen.’ Birgit looked down complacently at her well-formed figure. ‘I hope I won’t have to wait until after you’re married, Elise, even though you are my older sister. I don’t want to die an old maid.’

‘I think I will wait a decent time after Papa’s death before I start thinking about getting married.’

Elise’s words sounded prim even in her own ears. And they weren’t true. She would get married tomorrow, if Campbell asked her.

Elise hadn’t seen Campbell since the day her father died and, despite the plans they had made together, she wondered now if he had baulked at the problems they faced. She wouldn’t blame him if he had. It had been hard enough while Papa was alive to imagine a situation where Campbell Tooth could marry little Elise Braun the watchmaker’s daughter. It was worse now he was dead.

‘Wouldn’t it be nice to have a lot of money?’

Elise turned sharply and stared at her sister. It was as if she had been reading her mind. But Birgit’s attention had strayed back to the view.

‘I wonder what it would be like to have as many dresses as you like and be invited to parties and dances?’

Elise followed Birgit’s gaze. Halfway up the slope on the far side of the valley the red roof of a large mansion was visible through the trees. ‘You’re thinking of Sylvia Mount, aren’t you?’

The house had been built by George Mount some twenty years ago after he’d made his fortune cutting cedar to build the graziers’ fancy houses in town. His wife had died not long after his only child was born and his daughter had grown up in the big house, often alone except for the servants. Mr Mount was frequently away on business and the lack of a fatherly hand was evident in Sylvia’s wilful behaviour which had seen governesses come and go with dismal regularity.

‘She’s at a boarding school in Brisbane.’ The farmers’ wives had clacked their tongues happily while they ate Aunt Min’s ham sandwiches and this was a prime piece of gossip to pass on to the visitors from town. ‘I don’t think she’ll be allowed to go to parties and dances until she learns how to behave.’

Birgit turned her head. ‘How old is she?’

‘Nearly eighteen. Her father will have to find her a husband soon enough. Maybe he’s hoping she’ll make some friends at school.’

‘Friends with brothers, you mean? There isn’t anyone around here for her to marry.’

‘Ah, well, it’s none of our business who she marries.’ Elise stood up wearily and reached down to pull her sister to her feet. ‘Come on, let’s go and wake Mama. It’s time we went home.’

Chapter 2

That night Elise lay on her back in bed, staring at the ceiling. Next to her Birgit was curled on her side, sleeping soundly. Behind her head Elise could hear her mother’s snores through the wall that separated the two bedrooms. On the other side of the room, golden lamplight outlined the blinds at the window. Beyond the window was the enclosed veranda where Pieter slept. Like his sister, Pieter was awake. Elise could hear the hiss of tobacco as he drew on his pipe. The sigh of his breath as he blew the blue smoke out of his mouth. She imagined him stretched out on the wooden bed that lay under the window. Was he reading one of his dog-eared adventure books? Or just staring at the ceiling, as she was doing, listening to the distant mutter of thunder. There would be a storm later, she could feel it. The air was stifling, as if the town was covered by a heavy blanket.

Elise turned her head towards Birgit. She was like a child with her plump, pink face and her pin-tucked nightdress and her hair in curling rags. And yet Jakob Willemns wanted to marry her. Elise knew Jakob - a raw-boned, red-faced fifteen year old farmer’s son who would have his own rich acres when the time came for him to take a wife. It was no wonder Birgit slept so well, Elise thought. She had her future mapped out for her, as it had been mapped out since the day she was born.

Elise remembered the story Aunt Min had told her a few years ago when they were sitting side by side on one of the hard wooden pews at the back of the Lutheran Church in Marburg watching some young farm lad marry a blond-haired lass who looked about as wide as she was tall. According to Aunt Min, who was shaped much the same way herself, that was the way the boys liked them.

‘Our families came to Australia from Hanover on the coast of the North Sea,’ she whispered loudly into Elise’s ear. ‘When the icy winds blew off the sea, the farmers wanted a stout woman to act as a wind break when they were bending their backs in the potato fields.’ Aunt Min’s round face split into a smile as Elise put her hand to her mouth to stop her laughter from bursting out. ‘It’s true, I swear it. Would I tell a lie? Of course, we don’t have icy winds here in Marburg but the preference still remains.’ She reached out and pinched Elise’s arm. ‘You will have to start eating more of my apple strudel if you want to find a husband in these parts.’

Now Elise sighed. She didn’t want a Marburg farm lad for a husband and she didn’t care that the farm lads had never shown an interest in her. What she wanted was a lanky scholar at the grammar school with kind eyes and a shock of brown hair that stood up on top of his head no matter how hard he tried to stick it down.

She humped herself over in the bed and lay with her back to her sister. On the wall her owl-shaped clock ticked loudly, its eyes flicking from side to side in time with the movement of the pendulum. She had helped her father make that clock one Easter when Birgit had scarlet fever and her mother wanted her out of the way. It had been a time of supreme joy for Elise, to spend time in her father’s workshop away from her mother’s relentless disapproval. She didn’t care that she had inserted one of the owl’s eyes crookedly so it looked like it had a permanent squint. Papa hadn’t cared either. When the clock was finished, he’d wrapped it up in brown paper and given it to her, as if that was what he’d intended to do all along.

Tick, tick went the clock and Elise dragged her mind away from thinking about her father which she knew would make her cry. After three days, she was sick of tears. Instead she thought back to the afternoon when she and Campbell had first run across each other in town.

It had been a hot November afternoon the previous year. Outside the house, the breeze was doing its best to break through the steamy atmosphere that had settled over the town like a damp cloth. Despite the heat, Elise stepped out briskly on her daily walk to fetch her sister from the small private academy where she was wasting her time between school and marriage trying to get her empty little head around the kind of skills that would be of no possible use to a farmer’s wife. The academy was in Nicholas Street close to her father’s shop and Papa had expressed the opinion that Birgit should wait in the shop until he was ready to go home if she didn’t want to walk through town by herself but Elise liked escaping the house for half an hour each afternoon to walk into town and fetch her sister. Mama liked it too because it gave her an opportunity to put her feet up on the chaise in the parlour while Elise was out of the house. Mama was an indolent woman who made a pretence of being busy and she didn’t like others to see her doing nothing, although the two small dents her heels had rubbed in the worn velvet of the chaise were a testament to the number of times she had indulged in her favourite occupation over the years of her marriage.

Elise walked down the hill and crossed the railway line on the wooden bridge. As she approached Brisbane Street she quickened her pace. There was a public house on the corner, one of many that catered to the needs of what seemed to be an excessively thirsty town. This one, the Queen’s Arms, seemed to be favoured by the bullock drivers who hauled huge sawn logs from the hills rimming the town to the wharfs by the river. She often had to step off the footpath into the road to avoid them. There was a narrow dirty lane that ran along the back of the pub. It stank of stale beer and horse droppings and it was another place to hurry past, though Elise liked it when the brewery drays were delivering beer and she could pat the noses of the drayman’s horses.

As Elise lifted her skirts to negotiate the scummy puddle at the entrance to the lane, she almost collided with an Aboriginal woman who emerged abruptly from the lane. The woman was tall and skinny, her body wrapped in a filthy government blanket. A small child clung to her neck and a native dog slunk at her heel. Elise had been taught by her father to pity the native people and treat them kindly but this woman’s sudden appearance startled her and she took a step backwards. Taking her opportunity, the woman moved towards her and held out her hand. ‘Gibbet tickspence, missus.’ she said in a high raspy voice.

Elise held out both hands, palms uppermost. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t have any money.’

The woman made no reply. She lifted her clawed hand until it was under Elise’s nose. ‘Tickspence, missus.’

The dog leaned forward and sniffed speculatively at the hem of her skirt.

Elise felt her heart begin to pound. She tried to peer around the woman to see up the dark lane. Maybe there were more of them there. She looked from side to side. The street was empty in the afternoon sunlight. Even the pub seemed quiet. No shouting voices, no clink of glasses, no drunken men staggering along the footpath in her direction. Today she would have been glad of them.

‘Hi!’

The sound of running footsteps behind her. Elise turned her head and saw a young man in a grammar school blazer and a disreputable straw hat coming over the rail bridge at a fast trot. When he reached her, he put one hand on her shoulder and lifted his other hand to fend off the woman.

The woman’s outstretched hand moved from Elise to the young man. ‘Tickspence, mister?’

The young man laughed and shook his head. ‘I’ll not give you sixpence, Mary. Here ...’ He plunged his hand into his blazer pocket. ‘... here’s a penny. Now be off with you and think yourself lucky I haven’t turned you in to the police.’

The penny disappeared into the woman’s grimy claw and she hurried around the corner and out of sight.

When she had gone, the young man took his hand off Elise’s shoulder and held it out. ‘Campbell Tooth, Miss Braun. At your service.’ He peered down into her ashen face. ‘Are you all right? Would you like me to fetch you a lemonade?’

‘No, I’m fine, Mr Tooth. Just a little shaken.’ Elise reached out her hand to meet his. ‘Thank you for coming to my rescue.’

‘She wouldn’t have harmed you, you know. They hang around the back of the pubs hoping for a feed. You just came along at the wrong time, that’s all.’

‘You called her Mary. Do you know her?’

Campbell shook his head. ‘I don’t think I do. I call all the women Mary and the men John. They seem to understand me well enough.’ He crooked his arm and held it out to Elise. ‘Now, tell me where you’re going because I’m coming with you. You’re in no fit state to be walking around town on your own.’

‘But surely ...’ Elise looked up at Campbell. ‘Aren’t you on your way somewhere?’

Campbell grinned. ‘To tell you the truth, Miss Braun, I’m skipping Latin. And I’m very glad I did, because it meant I could be of service to you.’

He lifted his bent arm again. Elise slipped her hand underneath and rested it on the warm cloth of his blazer.

‘In that case I’d be glad of your company. I’m going to Nicholas Street to pick up my sister from school.’

Campbell squeezed Elise’s hand between his arm and his body. ‘Then let’s be on our way.’

As they began walking down Brisbane Street, Elise looked up at the young man by her side. ‘You called me by name. Have we met before?’

‘You don’t remember me?’ Campbell stopped abruptly. He put his spare hand against his chest. ‘My dear Miss Braun, I’m devastated. We were