Beneath the Southern Cross by Judy Nunn Page A

grandfather to give away a valuable possession!
    Mary felt sick with the anger which churned in the very pit of her stomach. The old man had treated her like a ranting, foolish woman that day, all the while knowing that her rage had been entirely justified. Dear God in heaven, what good Christian mother would not lose control under such circumstances? And now, with the natives living at her very doorstep, Thomas’s reprehensible act had resulted in a friendship between her only son and one of the heathen children.
    The following day Mary’s rage had so deepened that she nearlybroke her vow of silence. She paced the floor of the drawing room, on the verge of demanding that Richard take her to town that very morning so that she could tell Thomas Kendall that he could keep his inheritance and she would keep his grandchildren. She would tell him …
    â€˜There is a black woman at the front door, ma’am.’ It was Peg, a basket of washing under her arm, tapping at the side windows of the drawing room. ‘She has a boy with her. I told her to begone but she wants to see the mistress of the house. She speaks very proper for a native.’
    â€˜Very well, Peg. Tell her to go around to the back.’
    A woman whom Mary judged to be in her thirties stood at the back door, the boy with the felt hat by her side.
    â€˜I am Murrumuru, missus,’ she said.
    Mary nodded and silently looked her up and down. The woman’s skin was jet black and her ebony hair coarse and wiry, but Mary could not help observing that she was handsome in her own way, there was a bearing about her. Furthermore, she seemed respectable for a native; her skirt and blouse were clean and she wore slippers, which although worn and thin had once been fine.
    â€˜He say sorry,’ she said, nudging the boy who twisted the hat self-consciously in his hands. ‘We catch him come big house. Elders angry.’ She nudged Turumbah again. ‘Say sorry.’
    Turumbah had cursed his indiscretion time and again during the night. He had been so excited at the return of his hat and the kindness in the missus’s voice when she had simply told him to go home that he had forgotten to sneak back into the camp through the mangroves. He had not been clever. Now his mother insisted that he say sorry to the missus. His mother was always telling him to say ‘sorry’, or ‘thank you’, or ‘please’. She was very proud of the English she had been taught by the military man’s wife whom she had served in Sydney Town.
    â€˜Sorry, missus,’ the boy mumbled.
    Aware that Peg had come around to the back of the house, put down the washing basket and was watching the proceedings, possibly awaiting orders to shoo the intruders away, Mary decided to be gracious.
    â€˜Turumbah,’ she leaned down to the boy, ‘do you go to school?’The boy looked up, first at Mary, then at his mother. ‘Do you go to the mission school?’ Mary repeated.
    â€˜I take him, missus,’ Murrumuru said, proud that the missus knew her son’s name. She didn’t add that she had taken Turumbah to the mission school on only one occasion, that he’d refused to stay, and that she had given up on the exercise. Murrumuru had her reasons for wanting to impress the missus. ‘Learn quick. Boy clever.’
    â€˜That is good,’ Mary replied, not believing the woman.
    â€˜You need servant?’ Murrumuru took the plunge. It was the reason she had dragged Turumbah to the big house in the first place. She had been wishing to make contact for quite sometime, despite Wolawara’s objections. To be a slave to the white people was not the plan, her father had insisted. It was not the reason Thomas Kendall had given them the land beside his clanspeople.
    But during her two years in service, despite the hard toil involved, Murrumuru had adapted to household life. She missed the English food and the regular presents