A Crooked Rib by Judy Corbalis Page B

will never do. Sleep now, and tomorrow we will see what we can manage.’

AUCKLAND, 1846
    I stared out of the window. ‘How long will this rain continue?’
    ‘It’s impossible to say. Sometimes it lasts for an hour and at other times for days.’
    ‘I much prefer to be indoors until it clears.’
    ‘So do I.’ Lucy put her arm through mine and squeezed it. ‘I’ll ring for tea and then let’s sit cosily in here and talk about Albany again. Do you remember when we arrived there?’
    ‘Very well.’
    ‘I thought it would be exactly like Lyme but there was no town—’
    ‘Not even a village—’
    ‘—no streets, no carriages—’
    ‘—no carts or horses, no trippers—’
    ‘—no Assembly Rooms and—’
    ‘—no Cobb!’ we cried together, laughing.
    Lucy looked serious for a moment. ‘I often think of poor Mama, you know. All of us and so few servants and that horrid little cottage, and she was only two months away from her last confinement.’
    ‘And yet I can’t recall having once heard her complain.’
    ‘Nor I.’
    We sat in silence before the fire.
    ‘Mama wrote to me, you know,’ said Lucy suddenly.
    I looked at her, puzzled.
    ‘After … after my little Georgie …’
    I said nothing.
    ‘She said, she wrote, that she knew … she could understand how I felt. Because she had lost her own first-born. In Malta. He was ten months old, she said, and when Papa was posted from Valetta she could scarcely bring herself to go and leave her infant behind, alone, in foreign soil.’
    She was weeping now. I sat still, uncertain of what best to do.
    ‘Oh, Fanny, you can’t believe what a beautiful child he was. I so much wish you could have seen him. He had the prettiest black curls and dark eyes, just like my own. And the most excellent disposition. He smiled and cooed at everything. His papa was much admiring of him and had plans for his fine boy to become a soldier in the family tradition. And I loved him to distraction. When he … when I lost him … I thought I should die myself of grief.’
    I moved to her and placed my arm about her shoulders. ‘I know nothing can replace a lost child, but, Lucy, there will be others. Look at your dear mama.’
    She hid her face in her hands. ‘I think not. Ever since we were in Adelaide, my husband has become so … distant. He scorns me, Fanny. And now he never … comes to my bed. It is as if … as if … he despises me. He speaks to me in such an unkind manner. You have heard him yourself.’
    I sought for the best way to comfort her. ‘If he is so heavily occupied with pressing matters, it’s no wonder he’s sometimes a little curt. I’ve noticed that the old wound in his hip seems to be troubling him.’
    ‘That’s the climate here, the damp. But you’ve seen how he alternates between dark moods and over-violent exertion.’
    ‘I daresay he has a great deal of official business to attend to and it weighs heavily on him.’
    She laughed harshly. ‘At this very moment he’s away again, cruising about I know not where. I begin to think he is growing very fond of going around as a bachelor. When we first arrived here, he passed ten weeks out of the first nineteen away from home and I had not a notion of where he might be.’
    She had ceased weeping.
    ‘I think it is simply the cares of state,’ I ventured. ‘I’ve noticed he seems absorbed in his duties here,’
    ‘Oh no, Fanny. That is not it at all.’ Her tears began to flow again.
    ‘Then what is it?’
    ‘I must tell someone,’ she sobbed, ‘and I dare not say a word even to Sarah or Lady Martin.’
    ‘You may trust me. I am your sister.’
    She struggled to compose herself again. ‘I can hardly bring myself to utter it, but the truth is that … that … my husband blames me for my infant’s death. There! I’ve said it.’
    ‘Surely not!’
    ‘He has charged me with it repeatedly since my poor darling was buried. He’s told me countless times that I was a neglectful