Clancy of the Overflow (The Matilda Saga, #9)

By Jackie French

From Australia's best-loved storyteller comes the final book in the bestselling Matilda Saga

This is a love song to our nation, told in a single sweeping story

Jed Kelly has finally persuaded her great aunt Nancy to tell the story of her grandparents. The tale that unfolds is one of Australia's greatest romances - that of Clancy of the Overflow, who gave up everything for Rose, the woman he adored, and yet still gained all he'd lost and more.

But Nancy's story is not the history that Jed expects. More tales lurk behind the folklore that surrounds Clancy - the stories of the women hidden in Australia's long history, who forged a nation and whose voices need to be heard.

It is also a story of many kinds of love. Clancy's growing passion for the bush, immortalised in Paterson's poem, which speaks to him in the ripple of the river and the song of the stars, and Nancy's need to pass on her deep understanding of her country.

But perhaps the most moving love story of all is the one that never happened, between Matilda O'Halloran and Clancy of the Overflow. And as Jed brings all of these stories to life in her book, Matilda and Clancy will once again waltz beside the river and the forgotten will be given a new voice.

PRAISE FOR THE MATILDA SAGA

'An engrossing mystery story, an ode to strong women, and a moving exploration of the private wounds we carry ... The Last Dingo Summer is a must for your summer reading list' -- Better Reading

'The perfect read for anyone who loves immersing themselves in Australian fiction. Gripping, emotional and moving, Facing the Flame is a great book to curl up with' -- New Idea

'Highly recommended ... this was a complete binge, read in one night because it was just too good and too gripping to put down ... a cracking story filled with rich characters both old and new and imbued with all that we hold dear about Australian love of country and mateship' -- ReadPlus

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Nov 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781460709160

Jackie French

Jackie French AM is an award-winning writer, wombat negotiator, the 2014–2015 Australian Children's Laureate and the 2015 Senior Australian of the Year. In 2016 Jackie became a Member of the Order of Australia for her contribution to children's literature and her advocacy for youth literacy. She is regarded as one of Australia's most popular children's authors and writes across all genres — from picture books, history, fantasy, ecology and sci-fi to her much loved historical fiction for a variety of age groups. ‘A book can change a child's life. A book can change the world' was the primary philosophy behind Jackie's two-year term as Laureate. jackiefrench.com facebook.com/authorjackiefrench

Book preview

Chapter 1

Bombe Imperiale

6½oz rice, 4oz fine white sugar, 2pt fresh cream, 7oz glacé apricots, cherries and pineapple (chopped fine), yolks of 4 eggs

Simmer rice in cream till soft. Beat in the yolks while rice is hot, stir in a low fire for two verses of the anthem. Add the fruit. Place in a copper bowl in a larger bowl of chipped ice mixed with rock salt. Stir till the mixture thickens then place in a bombe mould. Keep on ice before turning out. Decorate with sugared violets before serving with raspberry puree.

SYDNEY, NOVEMBER 1869

CLANCY

The harbour sang with sunlight. The seagulls danced. Even the smoke from the steamship’s funnels seemed to waltz as Horatio Clancy cuffed the urchin trying to pick his pocket on the crowded wharf, then stared at the young woman gazing anxiously at the faces of those who waited on the wharf as she stood among the other First Class passengers on deck.

It was love at first sight.

This was convenient. The marriage had been arranged a year earlier, across six thousand miles. The Honourable Flora McPherson, daughter of Lord Angus McPherson and Lady Angus, of Buccleuch Abbey, Northumberland, to wed Mr Horatio Clancy, only son of Mr Ezekiel Clancy, of Overflow, in the colony of New South Wales, and his wife Mary (deceased).

The notice did not mention that Ezekiel Clancy had been transported more than forty years before for stealing twelve bags of turnip seed, nor that his wife had been an Irish orphan, taught cookery and scrubbing by the nuns, then sent as a child to earn her keep in the colony of Australia, where men outnumbered women perhaps forty to one, and a talent for cookery or even scrubbing was rare.

Flora’s red hair flamed like a sunrise. Her dress and sunshade glowed immaculately white. Even though he had only seen a miniature of her, painted by her aunt, the Honourable Flora McPherson was unmistakable. She still looked so very young.

And she was his.

Clancy knew the moment when Flora saw him too. He lifted his top hat so she could see his face more clearly. She smiled, a look of total joy, and he knew that somehow, miraculously, at the first sight of him — tall, tanned, dressed in his frock coat and waistcoat — she felt the bond between them too. He felt a sudden deep gratitude to Maria, who had assiduously perused English magazines so his tailor could be given the exact patterns for the latest in gentlemen’s apparel.

The waves splashed and the wharf creaked under the waiting crowd, mostly ex-convicts in faded drab, watching for families they had not seen for the decades it had taken to save enough to bring them across the world. Of course the steerage passengers would not be allowed on deck until the First Class passengers had disembarked.

Clancy watched as Flora turned to give instructions to the black-clad woman who held the parasol over her head. That must be Sarah, her maid.

If the sky fell now, he thought, he would still be smiling, not just at the sight of Flora, but from knowing he had at last achieved his father’s ambition. The grandchildren of Ezekiel Clancy, ex-convict, would be aristocrats.

Ezekiel had endured a long journey to this marriage: saving enough for a mob of drought-thin sheep back in the dry 1840s, when you could buy a barren holding for the cost of a pair of trousers; herding the creatures across the mountains, half of them dying on the way; finally following the track of Cecil Drinkwater, who’d persuaded a native girl to show him where a river ran, despite the drought.

Drinkwater had politely suggested Ezekiel keep moving his mob downriver, beyond his own claim, to ‘the Overflow’ — a plain below the hills with a dozen channels where moisture seeped even in the dry times, and the river filled every time it flooded. In an uncharacteristic burst of imagination, Ezekiel named it ‘Overflow’.

Ezekiel grew rich when gold was found nearby, selling mutton to the miners of Gibber’s Creek. The rush soon ended, but Overflow grew wealthier with the British demand for wool to make uniforms for the Crimea. Finally the influence of squatters with far better connections than Ezekiel Clancy — but with similar vast fortunes from the high prices for wool and mutton — had ensured he and they legally owned the vast estates they’d claimed.

Ezekiel planned a dynasty. His son would be a gentleman. His granddaughters would be presented by their aristocratic relatives to the Queen.

The gangplank was secured. Clancy waited, top hat in hand, as the passengers slowly made their way down to the wharf, followed by maids and valets carrying portmanteaux. The heavy trunks would be delivered later.

His gaze was not able to move away from her, her delicacy, the vividness of hair and clothes. But what should he say? No one had ever taught him what to say to the aristocratic bride he had never met.

Ezekiel had not made the mistake of attempting to send his son to an English boarding school; none would have accepted the child of an ex-convict. Clancy’s mother had taught the boy his basic letters and, when Mary died at Maria’s birth, Ezekiel hired a tutor. ‘Gentleman Once’ held a degree from Oxford, though he all too often held a bottle of rum as well.

Even before he was sent to board at the King’s School at Parramatta, Clancy could read Latin, speak like a gentleman, and write with a gentleman’s hand. He even rode like a gentleman too, not with the relaxed slouch of a drover.

There had been no tutors for Maria, of course, just the widow of one of the stockmen to look after her, while Ezekiel mourned the loss of a wife who could milk a dozen cows before breakfast and grab a frying pan to smash the snake that had wandered into the kitchen. Such a waste, his Mary’s life in exchange for a scrawny girl child who would become a hideous monster by the time she turned four years old.

If Maria had grown normally, Ezekiel would eventually have hired a governess, had her taught the pianoforte, dancing and whatever other fripperies a girl needed for a marriage as equally socially useful as her brother’s.

But it had been obvious there’d be no marriage for Maria. The most they could hope for was to keep her out of sight at Overflow. Nor was it worth making the homestead into a squatter’s mansion, like Drinkwater, not when it contained a monster. The Clancy family’s grand home must be in Sydney, with Maria produced, disguised as far as possible, only on the most necessary occasions, to keep gossip about her at the minimum.

Clancy’s smile faded at the thought of his sister. Ezekiel hadn’t mentioned Maria in his negotiations with the McPhersons, except as the younger sister who kept house at Overflow, and who would continue to do so while Flora and Clancy lived their fashionable life in the new house in Sydney. Clancy’s letters too had only described how Maria loved collecting flowers and painting them.

Clancy’s hands clenched in his gloves. They should have prepared Flora, he realised. What if she fled as soon as she saw her new sister? Or worse — felt herself bound to the family of a monster?

The captain bowed to the Honourable Flora McPherson as she stepped onto the gangplank. Sailors held the other passengers back so she could walk down without being jostled.

The crowd about him muttered at the delay. Clancy ignored them. He moved forwards as Flora stepped onto the wharf, Sarah behind. Now she was closer, he could see that Flora’s skin actually had a blush like that of an early peach. No woman in the colony had skin like that. How could anyone be so fresh after a five-month voyage?

And he still couldn’t think of a word to say.

‘Horatio?’ she asked tentatively, the words spoken with the sharp clarity he recognised as truly English upper class.

‘They call me Clancy,’ he managed, taking care to articulate his vowels as Gentleman Once had taught him.

Flora laughed. This bright bird among the crowd’s drab actually laughed. ‘Too many jokes about the heroic Horatio holding the bridge against the Etruscans?’ she teased. ‘Or were you named for Admiral Lord Nelson?’

‘You’ve got the right of it there. I was named for both of them.’ And suddenly it was easy. He took her gloved hand, glad that his own were the hands of a gentleman, calloused only where he held the reins — there had been few days spent ringbarking, grubbing roots or shearing for Ezekiel’s son. He hesitated, then slowly, leaving her time to retreat, leaned forwards to kiss her.

She did not pull back. Her lips were soft and tasted of peppermint cachous. Her hair smelled of roses.

‘Welcome to Australia, Flora.’

‘It is beautiful,’ she said impulsively, her gloved hand warm in his. ‘This extraordinary harbour, the fine houses overlooking their own small beaches, so many flowers in the gardens. I had not expected . . .’

. . . it to be so civilised. Both knew the words were best not said.

He spoke the words closest to his heart. ‘I know it’s not London, or Paris. But anything you want — anything at all that will make you happy here — the ships can bring.’

‘I think I already have all I will ever need,’ she said quietly, gazing up to look into his eyes. This time it was she who stood on tiptoe to kiss him.

‘Look at the camera and count to sixty, Your Ladyship, Mr Clancy.’ The photographer from the Illustrated Sydney News arranged his tripod for the lithograph that would appear on the next day’s front page: Lady Flora McPherson Arrives to Wed Grazier’s Son.

The Honourable Flora would be Lady Flora forever now, in the minds of Sydney society.

Chapter 2

Raspberry Spiders

Place 1 dash raspberry syrup in a tall glass; add 2 scoops vanilla ice cream. Top with lemonade. Serve with a long spoon and a straw.

GIBBER’S CREEK, APRIL 1979

JED

The drought-stained air outside the hospital smelled of dust and snakes, coiled under hot rocks in sun-seared paddocks, lucky to have eaten enough spring frogs to keep the reptiles alive for a further year of drought before summer drank the pools. But Sam’s room was cool, the air sharp with disinfectant and the faint scent of tubing as he breathed in, then out, his eyes shut, his body as still as it had been since his accident seven months before.

Nancy sat in the room’s only armchair, while Jed perched on the bed, her warm hand holding her husband’s cold one. She shook her head. ‘Nancy, that’s balderdash. Love at first sight! Who believes in that rubbish?’

‘Me,’ said Nancy mildly. ‘I fell in love with Michael at first sight.’ She smiled reminiscently. ‘Nearly forty years ago now.’

‘But you’d known him all your life!’

‘And not seen him for three years. I fell in love with him the moment I saw him again.’

‘I’m not writing a book about you and Michael.’

‘You certainly are not,’ agreed Nancy. ‘I don’t mind telling you about Grandpa Clancy and Gran, but Michael and I are off limits.’

‘But this Flora woman wasn’t your grandmother. Tell me about Rose!’ Jed put Sam’s hand down carefully, then picked up her notebook again. And Sam breathed in, breathed out, the heart of her life forever, even if this was all he did until he died.

He was her Sam, whose last words from his broken body had been, ‘I know your name now. It’s Darling.’ And so part of her day, every day, and their daughter’s day too, was lived here.

Luckily her work could be done at a bedside, writing another book to equal Matilda’s Last Waltz, released only two months back, and on the bestseller list — only halfway up, to be sure — for three weeks.

She looked at Nancy, exasperated. ‘This is supposed to be one of Australia’s great love stories. Clancy of the Overflow and the Indigenous girl he gave up everything for.’

Nancy grinned and took another forkful of passionfruit sponge. It did not need the endowment of the new Ben Clancy Rehabilitation Wing to make sure that Nancy of the Overflow received tea and the best cake in the kitchen each time she visited the hospital. Sam McAlpine was loved, as Jed was too, to her slight astonishment, as well as the fourteen-month-old girl currently crawling under her father’s bed to investigate the levers that made it go up and down.

‘Mattie, come out of there.’ Jed hauled her daughter out.

‘Here, give her to me.’ Nancy fed Mattie two forkfuls of passionfruit sponge, wiped the cream off the small hands and mouth, then carried the toddler to the open window. ‘Clancy! Take Mattie to the seesaw for a while.’

The boy balanced on a gum-tree branch, holding his camera at a ridiculous angle. Clancy Thompson did not realise that cameras were to take proper photos of relatives lined up saying cheese for the camera, or portraits of people dressed in their best for birthday or weddings, not of twisted gum-tree limbs or sheep dogs grinning after they’d got every single sheep into the yard. ‘Mum, do I have to? I’m just . . .’

‘Now,’ ordered Nancy. She waited till the boy held up his arms for Mattie before adding, ‘And I’ll buy you another three rolls of film on Saturday.’

‘And pay for their developing?’ bargained Clancy. He was tall as a sapling now, all legs and freckles, his camera strung almost permanently around his neck, taken off only to shower, swim or sleep.

‘And pay for the developing,’ agreed Nancy.

‘Cool bananas!’ Clancy settled Mattie on his hip, his camera carefully out of her reach. He headed towards the playground that had been added when the children’s rehab wing was opened.

Nancy sat back with her cake. ‘You were saying?’

‘Your grandfather married Rose! She was the love of his life. Not this Honourable what’s-her-name.’

‘The Honourable Flora.’ Nancy looked at Jed patiently. ‘People can fall in love more than once. Granddad was more than twenty years older than Gran. Did you think he waited till he was middle-aged to fall in love?’

‘But that’s not the story I want.’

‘What do you want?’

Jed absently held Sam’s cold hand against her heart again and stared out the window. Dusty banksia bush planted by the Hospital Board Garden Committee (President A. Sampson) wilted under a sky unendingly blue with a red tinge of the outback slowly blowing away to the sea. Mattie shrieked with joy as Clancy used a foot to make the merry-go-round spin faster for her while he held her safely on the seat.

‘I want to tell the story of Australia,’ Jed said at last. ‘The real story. History books are mostly dead white men in towns and cities. I want to write books that tell the women’s history, the bush history, all the important parts that haven’t been told.’

‘Flora is part of that history too. If it hadn’t been for Flora, Gran might never have survived, much less married Granddad. Women like Flora are as much a part of our history as Gran.’

Jed said nothing, her hand still in Sam’s. One day I will be sitting here and he’ll open his eyes, she thought. He’ll smile at me and . . .

Suddenly she could pretend no longer. She let the tears come.

‘Jed . . .’ Nancy’s arms were comforting. ‘Jed, darling . . .’

‘Sam’s not going to wake up, is he?’

‘Possibly not. But you knew that . . .’

‘Not really. I told myself I did, but hearing you say now that it’s possible to love more than one person . . .’

‘You no longer feel you have to spend your life in a hospital room? One day you might even fall in love again?’

Jed moved back slightly. ‘Okay, maybe it is possible to fall in love more than once. But if there is just the slightest chance Sam knows I’m here, I’m not leaving him alone.’

‘And we’re not leaving you alone to sit with him,’ said Nancy quietly, sitting down again. ‘Not me and Michael, or Blue and Joseph or any of your friends, or Sam’s. We’re here for you. Always.’

‘I know. Thank you.’

‘Now may I tell you the story of Clancy of the Overflow? Even if it’s not the one you expected?’

Jed managed to smile. ‘Yes. I’m a fine one to talk, aren’t I, saying I want to write the truth then objecting when you try to tell it to me?’

‘All right then. It was love at first sight, just as I said . . .’

Chapter 3

To clean a corset

If a fresh chemise is worn under the corset, a light sponging once a month is all that is necessary. Wipe the silk with a damp cloth, both inside and out, then leave in an upright position to dry. Never wash a corset, or it may stretch out of shape and the metal eyelets rust.

SYDNEY, 1869

FLORA

Her heart sang as Horatio Clancy walked her to the carriage, then tipped the porter who would bring her trunks to the house later. She dismissed Sarah, ignoring her maid’s slight look of shock that her mistress would be alone in a carriage with a man, even if that man were her fiancé.

But Flora spoke as firmly as any eighteen-year-old who knew that from now on she was the mistress of a grand household. ‘Wait here and come after us with the porter who is bringing our trunks. I don’t want any left behind.’

Flora’s trousseau had been bought in Paris, thanks to Ezekiel Clancy’s largesse. The girl from Buccleuch Abbey loved every single ruffle, every silk petticoat and whalebone corset.

Clancy helped her into the carriage as she expertly lifted her long draped skirts into the carriage, then sat facing the horses. The bustle was uncomfortable — she had never worn one till that visit to Paris — but she had grown used to it on the voyage out, as well as the sweat that trickled down her neck and dampened her silk stockings. Clancy climbed in and sat opposite her. Not just handsome, she thought gratefully, but a true gentleman, despite his birth.

Yes, she could love this man. Astoundingly, wonderfully, already did love him, the strength of him, a body used for more than rugby at school or fox hunting, for the way he smiled at her, his delight shining as gold as the sunlight on the water of this unexpectedly lovely colony.

The colony of New South Wales was indeed small, but her family’s debts had meant Flora had always lived in relative social isolation. A small colony would provide more company — or considerably more personal prestige — than the sixteen families, not counting the vicarage, their family dined with at home. Sydney was smelly certainly, so far, but Flora had experienced several dock areas on the voyage. All docks stank.

She peered from the carriage window — the vehicle was entirely fashionable, from the polished imported English oak to the velvet cushions on the seats.

Flora loved it all, the seagulls diving into blue water after ships’ rubbish, the neat houses, the gardens of fruit trees and vegetables, the tethered goats who gazed with malice at the carriage, as if to say, ‘Once we are free we’ll wreak revenge for this captivity.’ She glanced at a mob of natives, squatting half naked by a clump of trees, and then slid her gaze away. Her mother had taught her early to ignore what ladies were not supposed to see.

‘I suppose everything looks so small and plain to you after London,’ Clancy said apologetically.

She laughed. ‘Horatio . . . Clancy . . . I’ve been living in a cold stone tower in Northumberland. The only time I saw London was when we passed through it to buy my trousseau. I hated it — dirty snow and yellow fog.’ She met his eyes. ‘I’m going to love Australia. I think I love it already.’

She was also saying, ‘I love you.’ They both knew it. She loved Sydney’s freshly cobbled streets, not slippery with hundreds of years of chamber pots and decayed cabbage, like London’s, even if these had been built by convict labour, though Clancy informed her that the former common sight of chain gangs breaking rocks had vanished with the end of transportation. She loved the views as the horses laboured up the hill to the more fashionable part of Sydney, the sun sparkling like crushed diamonds on the harbour, the tree-clothed tongues of olive-green headlands poking out into the blue. She smiled tolerantly at the pretentious houses, with their imposing gates, their turrets and carriage houses.

Clancy must have understood her expression. Such a sensitive man. ‘That’s the kind of house my father wanted, but with twice as many towers. Maria convinced him to hire an Italian architect to create something more . . . more like the homes in English magazines.’

‘I am going to adore Maria,’ said Flora.

Did she imagine that he tensed at her words? ‘The house is . . . a bit different from the magazines,’ he said dubiously. ‘I hope you like it.’

‘I will love it.’ Her own house. Sunlight, instead of gloom. Paris fashions and a husband who wanted to give her anything she wished . . .

A rabble of skinny, half-naked children suddenly ducked out from behind one of the fancy carriage houses. They ran after them with outstretched begging hands. Clancy reached into his pocket and threw a handful of sixpences out towards the little horde.

Flora smiled at him again. ‘That was a lot of sixpences.’

‘I keep a pocketful to give to the children.’

‘I did not expect so many beggar children here. Are there no charities to help them?’

‘Yes. But not enough.’

‘Can you introduce me to those who run them?’

Clancy stared at her in wonder. ‘Of course.’

She smiled, almost apologetically. ‘Back home I was President of the Ladies Guild. It was supposed to be an honorary position, as the highest-ranking woman, but within a year we were genuinely helping the poor of the district, instead of simply arranging flowers and embroidering the altar cloth. I like to be useful.’ She gazed out at the harbour again. ‘I will never tire of the light here. It was too bright at sea. But here it’s as if the land turns it silver.’

‘You speak like a painter.’

She laughed. ‘I do paint a bit, but very poorly.’ All ladies painted, danced and played the piano, at least a bit. She lowered her voice as if telling him a secret. ‘I really do not care for painting.’

‘I hope you like the piano. Maria ordered it from England . . .’

‘She plays the piano? I am so looking forward to meeting her.’ Flora added, ‘I have never had a sister.’

The tension appeared in Clancy’s face again. What was wrong? she wondered.

‘Maria doesn’t play,’ he said shortly. ‘She bought the piano for you.’

‘Oh dear! That was so kind! But I absolutely hate playing the piano too. I have no ear for music at all. My governess was in despair at my lack of proper talents. I do like to dance though.’

She could see his relief as the visions of monthly concerts and evenings at the opera and afternoons at the art gallery vanished.

‘I enjoy dancing too. And this is the house.’ He watched her anxiously as the road turned a corner.

She stared, astonished. ‘It’s beautiful!’

The house was so new that not even grass had grown around it yet. It stood in serene simplicity, three tiers of cream stone work, its flagged terraces and rounded balustrades and wide doors inviting residents outdoors. This house opened its heart to the land and sea, instead of shutting them out with narrow windows and three layers of curtain.

She had never seen a house as lovely, never imagined one could be so. And it was hers.

Flora shut her eyes for a moment, imagining what its setting might become. Something stunning, but simple, to match the elegant clean lines of the house. ‘Roses,’ she whispered. ‘It needs a million roses under every terrace, each line of them a single colour that almost but not quite matches the one above, moving from dark reds by the stonework through pinks to white to match the cobbles of the drive.’ She opened her eyes. ‘Can one buy rose bushes here?’

Clancy smiled. His skin was just a little too brown, but in every other aspect such a gentleman. ‘Yes, of course. There are flower nurseries that breed them too, but rose bushes survive the journey from England. I believe the Macarthurs have even established a Rose Growing Society.’

‘I must join it. Oh, Clancy, can you imagine the fragrance? Does the house have a name?’ She peered out the window at it as the carriage entered the driveway.

His smile was such a sweet one, for a man. ‘Not yet.’

‘We will call it Rosemere.’ She turned to him with joy as the groom reined in the horses exactly opposite the front door, where the staff were lined up by the front steps. The butler had obviously sent an underling to spy out the carriage’s return. ‘There is so much here. So much beauty. So much good to be done among the poor.’

A wizened man, almost monkey-like but strong with it, stepped forwards as the groom opened the front door. Not grand or erect enough to be Grange, the butler, she thought. He must be her new father-in-law, his face pink from an unaccustomed shave, his coat expensive but ill fitting, his trousers slightly wrinkled. He looked to be the kind of man whose clothes seemed to change size and shape as soon as they were worn, no matter how carefully a tailor measured him.

Ezekiel Clancy held out his hand to help Flora from the carriage, awkwardly as she was a head taller. ‘Welcome to Sydney, your ladyship,’ said Ezekiel, not quite achieving a gentleman’s accent. The last of Flora’s uncertainty vanished. Ezekiel Clancy was nowhere near as uncouth as she had expected.

Flora smiled at him. ‘I’m not a ladyship. Only an honourable, I’m afraid.’

Ezekiel’s expression seemed to say that England and its aristocratic conventions were far away and if he wanted to turn an honourable into a ladyship to add to his family’s grandeur, there was no one in the colony who’d stop him. She felt him inspect her, this new daughter-in-law for whom he’d paid so much, as Clancy led her between the two lines of servants.

‘Mrs Hanger, the housekeeper, madam,’ said Mrs Hanger, rising from a deep curtsey that made her corsets creak.

‘Grange,’ said Grange, bowing. Clancy had already told her that her new butler had been an under-footman in a viscount’s establishment for more than ten years in England before joining his uncle in the unsuccessful counterfeiting venture that led to his joining the colony. But the man seemed presentable. And wasn’t this colony meant to be a place of new beginnings?

‘It is good to meet you Mrs Hanger, Grange.’ Flora’s smile took in all the assembled servants, even Emily the third parlourmaid. ‘But where is dear Maria?’

‘Inside,’ said Ezekiel shortly.

Clancy’s hand tensed on Flora’s arm. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered. ‘We should have warned you about Maria.’

Flora looked at him, puzzled. ‘Why?’

‘You needn’t worry, your ladyship,’ said Ezekiel sharply. ‘Maria’ll be back at Overflow as soon as you’re married and there’s no need for a chaperone.’

‘But what is wrong with her?’

‘Nothing for you to worry about. The doctor said it could happen to anyone. Never been anything like it in the family before.’ Ezekiel’s eyes inspected Flora again, as if he were assessing her breeding potential. ‘No reason for it to happen again.’

‘But what?’ she repeated, her anxiety growing again. This was obviously something secret, so bad they had waited till she was across the world from her family before she was allowed to know it. Was Maria mad, like the poor woman in Jane Eyre? Or wild and untameable, like Cathy in the scandalous Wuthering Heights?

Ezekiel’s lips narrowed. Clancy flushed, obviously trying to change the subject. ‘Maria ordered furnishings for the small parlour, a few bedrooms and the dining room. Oh, and the servants’ quarters of course. She thought you would prefer to arrange the rest of the house yourself.’

‘Maria sounds so thoughtful,’ said Flora carefully. Not mad then, nor untameable. One could not imagine anyone in Wuthering Heights ordering new furnishings, except possibly poor Isabella.

‘She is,’ said Clancy hurriedly. ‘Everyone at Overflow loves Maria.’

‘They’re used to her there,’ muttered Ezekiel.

‘But, of course, change anything about the house, any furnishings that you don’t like,’ Clancy added quickly as they climbed the steps into the hall. ‘The dining table was made in the colony, but the workmanship is good . . .’

He cared nothing for the dining table, she knew. Nor did she, just then. He hesitated at the door to the small parlour, then stood back for Grange to open the door.

The parlour was small in name only. The room was as large as a farm labourer’s cottage — polished wooden floors, a strange but attractive deep red, the wood presumably also chosen by Maria. The floors went well with the red and blue Indian carpets, the blue stripes in the curtains, the deep blue velvet sofas, the chaise longue, and the armless chairs that allowed for the spread of skirts.

A woman rose from one of them. She wore a dress of plain grey silk, with no bustle. Although slim, her waist had obviously not been cinched in to fashionable thinness by a corset. The grey lace veil pinned to her hair covered her face and neck.

Clancy seemed to be trying to hide anguish. Ezekiel looked belligerent, as if waiting to argue that a bargain was a bargain, and Flora must stick to it. What was this, who was this, to provoke such depth of emotion?

‘Flora, may I present my sister, Maria? Maria, this is Flora McPherson.’

‘Welcome, Miss McPherson,’ said Maria softly. She didn’t move towards them. Her accent was good, only slightly colonial. The mystery must be under that veil.

‘Call me Flora. We shall be sisters soon.’ Flora stepped towards her, slightly unsure of the correct way to approach a lady behind a veil worn indoors, and by one evidently not of a religious order. She tentatively lifted one edge, a breach of manners, but she could resist the mystery no longer.

Maria stepped back, swallowing a small cry. Flora could almost feel Ezekiel’s determination behind her: Flora McPherson’s father’s debts were paid. No matter what horror was hidden here, Ezekiel Clancy was not going to let the bride he’d spent good money on escape now.

Flora lifted the veil. Her hand froze, then slowly she draped the cloth back over Maria’s head, exposing her face.

Or what was left of it. One half of Maria’s nose was gone, collapsed to a stub of blood-red nostril. Her left cheek bulged, with the slit of a goat’s eye above it. The other side of her face was normal, even pretty. Her right eye shone, clear and brown and scared.

Those foolish men, thought Flora. Those poor, silly men.

‘I have always wanted a sister,’ she said quietly. She placed her hand on Maria’s shoulder and carefully kissed the bulging cheek.

Beside her Clancy smiled, then wept.

Chapter 4

Blue McAlpine’s Zucchini Fruit Slice

185g butter, 200g brown sugar, 3 eggs, 1 tsp vanilla, 250g plain flour, 1 tsp mixed spice, 175g chopped dates, 85g chopped sultanas, 85g chopped walnuts, 45g coconut, 300g grated raw zucchini

Cream butter and sugar; add eggs; mix in other ingredients. Spread into greased and floured tray; bake at 200°C for 30–40 minutes. Test with a skewer. Cool a little before turning out of the tray. Cut into slices with a sharp knife while still warm, but out of the container, to help prevent crumbling.

GIBBER’S CREEK, 1979

JED

‘She’s got a dirty nappy, Auntie Jed.’ The boy in the doorway held out a child who seemed to have accumulated half the dust of the drought-worn playground.

Jed — who was genetically no one’s aunt but an honorary one to many — took her whiffy daughter. ‘Thanks for looking after her. So what was the matter with Maria?’ she added to Nancy.

Nancy shrugged. ‘No idea. All I know are the stories Gran told me. Maybe no one knew — there were a lot more deformities about back then, and even when I was kiddy.’ Nancy glanced at her watch, then stood up. ‘I’d better pick Tom up from cricket practice and put dinner on. Or call in at the Blue Belle and pick something up. Same time tomorrow? Clancy! Stop that!’

The boy paused, camera in hand. ‘Why?’ he demanded.

‘You can’t take pictures of people in —’ Nancy stopped, as if uncertain how to phrase the rebuke.

‘It’s okay,’ said Jed tiredly. ’Sam wouldn’t mind if you took photos of him.’

Maybe, one day, Mattie will even like to have them, she thought. They might evoke the only memories she’d have of her father, this still figure in the bed. Sam, who’d swum with her through moonlight as the platypus ducked and fed unafraid of either human on the other side of the river, whose warm embrace had made this miracle, a child. Who had left them . . .

But he hadn’t gone. Sam was still there. She gazed at him, suddenly stricken. Was Sam McAlpine refusing to let himself die until his wife released him?

‘Book!’ said Mattie hopefully. Adults often responded to that word by giving her cake or ice cream, a toy giraffe or in this case food when she wanted it. ‘I want book book now.’

Jed reached into her bag and handed her daughter a banana, pulling down the peel. ‘Okay, small one. Nappy change, then home.’

‘Hey, Mum, could we have pizza for dinner? They’ve got frozen ones at the supermarket now. With pineapple!’

‘We had pizza two nights ago.’

Clancy looked at her: that was clearly no conceivable reason not to have pizza again.

Jed grinned at Nancy. ‘Give in. And please, I’d love to hear more tomorrow.’

‘Even about the Honourable Flora?’

‘Especially about Flora. I never thought about Honourables in Australia.’

‘Oh, I could tell you some stories. I probably will . . .’ Nancy pressed a kiss onto Jed’s forehead, another to Mattie’s cheek, then followed Clancy from the room.

Dribble sat on its brown bare acres above the river between Drinkwater and Overflow. Cicadas yelled. Gum leaves hung limp. Even the tussocks were brown now, in this second year of drought. But it was hers. Matilda had given her both house and land. (‘If possible, every girl should have her own house,’ said Matilda firmly, Matilda who had lived in her own log hut at twelve, with no running water, no power and no security — but her own.) Sam had planted the orchard, dug the vegetable garden that Broccoli Bill now tended for her, and built her new study at the end of the old house.

Sam. Everywhere Jed looked she could see Sam. But the scent of him was gone. That fresh sweat and essential Samness . . .

Jed parked in the carport and hauled Mattie out.

‘Batbat! yelled Mattie happily, pointing at the fat brown creature that had ripped up the doormat yet again. ‘Carrots for Batbat?’

‘Huffhuffhuff,’ said the wombat, only slightly threateningly, its eyes on Jed’s vulnerable ankles.

Jed sighed as she hefted Mattie up onto her hip. She had accepted the orphaned wombat from Sam’s veterinary cousin. ‘He’ll be company for you,’ Felicity had assured her. ‘It’s impossible not to grin when you see a wombat.’

Felicity however had not warned her that Batbat would demand carrots every afternoon, and make his displeasure known if he didn’t get them.

‘Yes, carrots for Batbat.’ Jed lugged both nappy bag and daughter into the kitchen.

‘Woof!’ Maxi leaped up from her dog bed, embarrassed that she hadn’t heard the car. The old dog was half deaf these days. She obviously hoped that a loud woof would make Jed assume the Doberperson had been alert and on guard all day.

‘Good dog,’ said Jed, putting down the nappy bag and stroking Maxi’s greying ears. She put Mattie in her high chair, then threw two carrots to Batbat. She was just opening the fridge to the sound of carrot crunching, Maxi looking up hopefully at the cold chicken, when the phone rang.

‘For crying out loud . . .’ Jed grabbed a halved avocado and handed it to her daughter, then ran to the phone in the front hall. ‘Hello?’

‘It’s me, my sweet, your patient publisher and friend.’

Jed sat on the telephone stood. ‘Julieanne, darling, please don’t nag. Not today. I’m bushed. And I really am working on another book. Nancy’s been telling me all about her grandmother. Well, we haven’t got to her Gran yet, but . . .’

‘It’s okay, my love. I know you’ll get it done when you can. There’s no point hurrying a good book. No, I’m calling about the Sydney Writers’ Festival. Guess what?’ Julieanne paused dramatically.

‘What?’ asked Jed cautiously.

‘One of the authors has appendicitis! They’d like to put you on a panel with Thomas Keneally!’

Thomas Keneally! She’d actually meet Thomas Keneally! And a whole festival talking about books, and people wanting to talk about HER book too. But . . .

‘I’m sorry. I’d have loved to, but I can’t.’

‘I’ll babysit Mattie.’

‘It’s not that,’ said Jed shortly.

‘Honey, Sam’s not going to wake up suddenly and not find you there. If there’s any change, the hospital will call you.’

‘I know.’

‘Then why won’t you come?’ Julieanne sounded carefully not exasperated at all.

‘Because he’d be there if it was me. Always. And because I want to be there. What if he’s locked away in a motionless body and the voices around him are all he has?’

‘Blue and Joseph will take over for you,’ said Julieanne softly.

‘They already do their own times. So do Sam’s mates from the firetruck and the factory. Julieanne, Matilda’s Last Waltz is selling okay, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, extremely well. But it would sell even better if its author pitched in to publicise it.’

‘I . . . I’m sorry.’

Julieanne sighed on the other end of the phone. ‘That’s okay. I just thought, maybe . . .’

‘That being on a panel with Thomas Keneally would tempt me away from Gibber’s Creek for a few days?’

‘Yes,’ admitted Julieanne.

‘Book!’ yelled Mattie impatiently. ‘Mummy! Want book! Book now!’

Maxi peered out of the kitchen as if to say, ‘I have saved our house from burglars, nefarious cats and possums all day. Where is my dinner?’ A scratch at the door indicated that Batbat had eaten the carrots and wanted more.

‘I think I’ve got all the life I can cope with just now,’ said Jed hurriedly. ‘Sorry, I’ve got to go.’

‘Okay. I’ll be down next weekend. That still all right?’

‘Of course, if you don’t mind a sofa bed in a study crammed with books. Scarlett will be here too.’

‘My ideal house will be built out of books, all properly catalogued, silverfish proofed and sealed against the weather. Take care, Jed, my love.

Reviews for Clancy of the Overflow (The Matilda Saga, #9)

[siri51 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Is this the final book of the series? Seems to wrap up both the beginning in the late 1880’s and ending in about 1988 - great storytelling!