“What did you do then?”
“I got me a lady friend. She hadn’t got the touch though. Pretty as paint but a fiery temper, and she couldn’t make the shapes and the cake wasn’t right either. Business fell off and she left me. I was seventeen years old then, and I took a job in a gentleman’s home looking after the horses. One day they went visiting friends in the country. It was my job to ride there at the back of the carriage, and when we stopped I’d jump out and open the door and see the ladies didn’t muddy their skirts. Oh, I was very handsome in those days. You should have seen my livery. Dark blue with silver braid. All the girls would look twice at me, I can tell you. Well, one day we went out visiting in the country, and where do you think we came to—the little village of Hartingmond. And the house we called on was named Oakland Hall.”
“You were calling on the Claverings!”
“Quite right, but calling in a humble capacity, you might say. I’d never seen a house like that. I thought it was just about the most beautiful place I’d ever seen. I went round to the stables with the coachman, and we looked after the horses and then got ourselves refreshed while we talked to the stable men of Oakland Hall, and they were very superior, I can tell you.”
“How interesting!” I cried. “That must have been years ago.”
“Long before you were born, Miss Jessie. When I was seventeen or eighteen, and that’s a good many years ago. How old do you think I am?”
“Older than Xavier…lots older, but somehow you seem younger.”
The answer seemed to please him. “You’re just as old as you feel. That’s the answer. It’s not how many years you’ve lived, it’s how they’ve left you. Now I reckon I’ve lived mine pretty well. It was more than forty years ago that I first set eyes on this place, and do you know, I never forgot it. I remember standing there in those stables and feeling the age of it. That’s what I liked—all those stone walls and the feeling that people had been living there hundreds of years, and I said to myself: One of these days I’m going to have a house like Oakland Hall and no one’s going to stop me. In six months’ time I was on my way to Australia.”
“To look for opals,” I cried.
“No. I hadn’t thought of opals then. I was after what everyone else was after—gold. I said to myself: I’ll find gold and I won’t rest until I’ve made my little pile and when I’ve got it I’ll come home and buy myself such a house. And that’s why I went to Australia. What a journey! I worked my passage. I’ll never forget that trip. I thought it would be the end of me. Such storms we had, and the ship—she nearly turned turtle, she did, and I thought it would be all hands to the pump and save the women and children first. I couldn’t believe it when I stepped ashore. That sun! Those flies! Never seen neither like it before. But something told me it was the place for me, and I swore there and then that I wouldn’t come home till I was ready to buy me a house like Oakland Hall.”
“And you did, Mr. Henniker.”
“Call me Ben,” he said. “Mr. Henniker makes me sound like someone else.”
“Ought I to? You’re very old.”
“Not when I’m with you, Miss Jessie. I feel young and gay. I feel seventeen again.”
“Just as you did when you stepped ashore at Sydney.”
“Just like that. Well, I was certain I was going to be rich. So I worked my way across New South Wales to Ballarat and there I panned for gold.”
“And you found it and made your fortune.”
He turned his hands over and stared down at them. “Look at them,” he said. “A bit gnarled, eh? Not the hands of a gentleman of leisure, you’d say. Those hands don’t fit Oakland Hall. Nor does anything else, as far as you can see. But something inside me fits.” He tapped his chest. “There’s something in here that loves the old place as it couldn’t have been loved more by all the grand ladies and gentlemen who lived here. They took it for granted. I won it, and I love it because of that. Never take anything for granted, Miss Jessie. If you do you might lose it. If it’s worth cherishing, cherish it. Think how I snapped up Oakland Hall.”
“I am thinking,” I said. “So you made your fortune.”
“It wasn’t done in a night. Years it took. Disappointments, frustrations…that was my lot. Shifting from place to place…living in the fields, staking my claim…I remember the trek out of Melbourne. There they were—a ragged army, you might say—a crowd of us all marching off to the promised land. We knew that some of us were going to strike it rich and others were going to die disappointed men, but which of us? Hope marched with us on that journey, and we all thought we’d be the chosen ones. Some of us had wheelbarrows carrying our load, some took what they had on their backs…across the Keilor Plains, through forests where the fires had blazed, making you shiver, for the first time realizing something of what these fires meant, never being sure whether some bushranger was going to spring out on us and murder us for our bit of tucker. We’d camp at night. Oh, it was something—singing round the campfires…all the old songs from Home we used to sing and I’m not going to say that there weren’t some of us glad of the darkness so no one could see the tears in our eyes. And then on to Bendigo then…living in a little calico tent. I sweltered there one summer and longed for the cool weather, but when it came with the driving rain and the mud I was longing for the sun again. Hard days—and there was no luck for me at Bendigo. It was Castlemaine where I had my first big find—not enough to make me rich but an encouragement. I banked it in Melbourne right away. I wasn’t spending it on drink and women like so many did and then be surprised at the short time it lasted. I knew all about that. It wasn’t bought women for me. It had to be love, not money. That’s a wise way and you don’t squander your hard-earned gold. But I’m talking out of turn. You can see why the Claverings didn’t want to know me.”
“This Clavering does,” I assured him.
“Well, I’m beginning to discover she’s a most unusual young lady. Now where was I?”
“Your women…for love not money.”
“We’ll skip them. It was Heathcote and after that to Ballarat I wasn’t a poor man any more—nor yet a rich one. I had time to look about and ask myself which way now. It’s a funny thing—there’s something about mining—finding something the earth has to offer. It gets in your blood. You’ve got to know what’s under that hard crust of earth. It’s not only for the money. When men talked of money out there they thought of gold. Gold! It’s another name for money, you might say. But there’s other things besides gold, as I was to find.”
“Opals!” I said.
“Yes, opals. At first it was just a bit of fossicking. There I was with a nice little bit in the Melbourne bank and I thought I’d go on a trek into New South Wales…just to take a look at the country, you might say. I was in the Bush…camping at nights…when I fell in with a party who were looking for opal. Oh, not like proper gougers, oh no. Just a bit of fun. Weekend fossickers, you’d call them, just going out to see what beginner’s luck would bring them. ‘What you looking for, mates?’ I asked and they answered ‘Opal.’ ‘Opal,’ I said, and I thought: Not for me! I was always a man to look for my market whether it was saveloys and pigs’ trotters or gold and sapphires. Well, to cut a long story short, as they say, I went along with them for a bit of fossicking. All I had was a couple of picks—one was a driving pick, the other a sinking pick. Then I had my shovel and a rope and what we call a spider, which is a sort of candlestick—for you may have to work in the dark. You want a snip too…that’s a sort of pincers for snipping off the potch. Oh, I can see I’m getting a bit too technical for you, but with a name like yours you’ll want to know.”
“And you found opals?”
“Nothing to speak of…fossicking. That just gave me the taste for it. But I knew I had to go on, and within a month I was a proper gouger. Then I started to get my first real finds. I just knew as soon as I held it in my hands and it wink
ed and twinkled at me that it was opals I was going after. Funny, you know. They say there’s a story in each stone…Nature’s pictures. I could show you something…” He looked at me and laughed. “I’m going to show you. You’re going to come and see my collection. We’re not going to go on meeting out here, are we?”
“It seems the best way,” I said, visualizing what would happen if I introduced him to my parents or Miriam and Xavier.
He winked. “We’ll find a way. Leave it to me.” He was laughing again. “I do talk, don’t I? And all about myself. What do you think of me, eh?”
“I think you’re the most exciting person I ever met.”
“Here!” he cried. “It’s time I went in. Next time you come to the house, eh? I’ll show you some of my most precious opals. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, I would, but if they knew…”
“Who’s to know?”
“Servants talk.”
“You can be sure they do. Well, let ’em, I say.”
“I should be forbidden.”
He winked again. “What do people like us care for a bit of forbidding eh? We’re not going to let them stop us, are we?”
“They could forbid me to see you.”
“Leave it to me,” he said.
“When shall I see you again?”
“Tomorrow I have visitors, so it won’t be then. Business, you see—and they’ll be with me for a while. Say next Wednesday. You come and walk boldly up the drive to the front porch. They’ll be expecting you, and they’ll bring you straight to me and I’ll entertain you in a fashion worthy of one of the Claverings.”
I was so excited I could scarcely thank him.
Later I thought it would be the end, for we couldn’t possibly keep my visits a secret. But I had a whole week to anticipate it.
Oakland Hall
That week seemed a long time in passing, for I was eager to hear more of Ben Henniker, who had shown me in our two meetings a different kind of world and made my own life seem colorless in comparison. I was not sure whether it was what he had to tell me or his manner of telling which made it so vivid to me, but I could picture myself in a calico tent fighting off the flies in the heat of the sun, wading through the mud and panning in the creeks. I could feel all the frustration of failure and the wonderful exhilaration of success. But that was gold. It was opal that I should look for. I could picture myself holding my candle, peering into crevices, gouging out the opal—the beautiful iridescent stone, the lucky stone which gave the gift of prophecy and which told a story, nature’s story.
I never stopped congratulating myself on being at the stream that day when the chair came hurtling along and I had been able to save Ben Henniker from an accident which I had already convinced myself would have been certain death. I could have liked him for that alone and he would have liked me for saving his life, but there was more to it than that. There was something in our natures that matched each other. That was why it was so irksome to wait.
I would sit by the stream and hope he could come in his chair. “I know it was next Wednesday we were to meet,” he would say, “but to tell the truth I thought it was too long to wait.”
Then we would look at each other and laugh.
But it didn’t happen like that. I just sat at the stream and nothing happened. I could see him so vividly, for his conversation had conjured up one image after another; I thought of the sun’s beating down on him and what would have happened if the rock which had fallen on him had been a little heavier and had killed him.
Then I should never have known him.
That started me thinking of death, and I was remembering the graves in the churchyard and they reminded me of the raised earth in the Waste Land where the archangel grew. Was it really a grave? And if so, whose?
It was no use sitting and staring across the stream. He wouldn’t come. He had visitors who would perhaps be people who had come to buy or sell opals. I pictured them with a decanter of wine or whiskey between them, filling their glasses as soon as they were empty (for I was sure Ben Henniker drank heartily). He was the sort of man who would do everything with a special gusto. They would talk together and laugh a great deal and perhaps discuss the opals they had found or bought or sold. I wished I were with them. But I had to wait until next Wednesday and it was a long way off.
Sadly I stood up and wandered, aimless, along the stream and so I found myself in the Waste Land kneeling by the grave.
Oh yes, it was a grave. There was no doubt of that. I started to pull up the weeds which grew there and after I had worked for a while it was clearly revealed. It was not a dog’s grave. It was too big for that. Then I made a startling discovery. A stake protruded slightly from the earth, and when I seized it and pulled it up, I saw that it was a small plaque and on it was a name. I knocked off the earth and what was revealed made me feel as though icy water were trickling down my spine, for on that plaque was my own name—Jessica—simply Jessica Clavering.
I sat back on my knees studying the plaque. I had seen such used before on the graves in the churchyard. They were put there by those who could not afford the crosses and angels holding books on which were engraved the virtues of those who lay beneath them.
In that grave lay a Jessica Clavering.
I turned the plaque over and there I could just make out some figures: “1880” and above it “Ju…” the other two letters were obliterated.
This was even more disturbing. I had been born on the third of June, 1880, and whoever lay in that grave not only bore my name but had died at the time of my birth.
Momentarily I had forgotten Ben Henniker. I could think of nothing but my discovery and wonder what it meant.
***
I found it impossible to keep this to myself and as Maddy was the obvious one to approach, I waylaid her as she was going into the kitchen garden to cut curly kale for dinner.
“Maddy,” I said, deciding to come straight to the point, “who was Jessica Clavering?”
She smirked. “You haven’t far to look for that one. She’s her who asks too many questions and was never known to be content with the answer.”
“That one,” I said with dignity, “is Opal Jessica. Who is just Jessica?”
“What are you talking about?” I began to notice the signs of agitation.
“I mean the one who is buried in the Waste Land.”
“Now look here, Miss, I’ve got work to do. Mrs. Cobb’s waiting for her curly kale.”
“You can talk while you’re cutting it.”
“And am I supposed to take orders from you?”
“You forget, Maddy, I’m seventeen years old. That’s not an age to be treated like a child.”
“Them that acts like children gets treated as such.”
“It’s not childish to take an interest in one’s surroundings. I found a plaque on the grave. It says ‘Jessica Clavering’ and when she died.”
“Well, now get from under my feet.”
“I’m nowhere near them and I can only presume that since you behave like this you have something to hide.”
It was no use talking to her. I went to my room and wondered who else would know about the mysterious Jessica, and I was still thinking of it when I went down to dinner.
Meals were dreary occasions at the Dower House. There was conversation, but it never sparkled. It usually centered around local affairs, what was happening at the church and to people of the village. We had very little social life and that was entirely our own fault, for when invitations came they were declined. “How could we possibly return such hospitality?” Mama would cry. “How different it used to be! The Hall was always full of guests.” At times like that I would find myself watching my father, who would pick up The Times and cower behind it as though it were some sort of shield, and often he would find an excuse to get away. I once po
inted out that if people invited guests they didn’t necessarily ask for anything in return. “You are socially ignorant,” said Mama; then with resignation: “How could we expect anything else after the manner in which we have had to bring you up.” And I would be sorry I had given her the opportunity for reproaching my father.
On this occasion we were seated round the table in the really rather charming dining room. The Dower House had been built at a later period than Oakland Hall, for it had been added in 1696, and there was a plaque over the porch to confirm this. I had always thought it a beautiful house and it was only when compared with the Hall that it could be considered small. It was built of brick with stone dressings, and the roof sprang from a carved cornice which, with the mullioned windows, gave great charm. The dining room was lofty, although not large, and from its long windows we had a view of the lawn, which was Poor Jarman’s pride.
We sat at the mahogany table with its cabriole legs, which had once been at Oakland Hall. “We were able to salvage some pieces,” Mama had said, “but to bring all the furniture from the Hall to the Dower House was impossible, so we had to let some of it go.” She spoke as though they had all been sacrificed, but I reckoned Mr. Henniker had paid a high price for them.