Free Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville Page A

Bub’s trousers.
    Dolly! she said. Won’t you be mortified?
    You go for your life, Mary, I said. But damned if I’m going to act the lady.
    Daunt led the way out along the track, his back swaying with the horse but his head as still as if he was balancing a glass of water. Had a riding master grander than Jingles the darkie, you could see that.
    Some devil got into me and I touched my heels to Queenie so she took off. Past Daunt, along under the trees. Going at it like a feller, the wind in my hair. Only stopped when I got to the rocks where our place ended. Hadn’t been past there, not since that day riding with Pa, but I could see the stain of smoke still hanging over the trees.
    Daunt pulled up alongside, smiling, easy on the horse.
    My word Miss Sarah, he said. You do have a good seat on that mare. And more sense than the majority of the ladies, if I might say so. The sidesaddle I’ve never thought had much to recommend it from the point of safety or sense.
    His words were all right, though who needed so many to get a thing said? But I thought his smile had a flavour of mockery, was sorry I’d showed off.
    Did you ride a great deal back in Ireland? I said. Or are you from the town?
    No, a farm, he said. Though the tenants did the working of it. My father is a surgeon and it was thought I might follow in his path. But I was in earshot of an amputation at one time and it quite spoiled me for the scheme.
    Might of been for the best, I said. I have heard say, New South Wales is so healthy a place it would starve a doctor.
    Ah! he said. Now if I’d but known that, I’d have saved my father some heavy labour trying to talk me round!
    I looked back along the track for Mary and Campbell. Wished I’d made Jack come with us, pride or no pride. We could of ridden along behind Daunt and had a high old time of it laughing at the way he rode so lovely with the glass of water on his head.
    Daunt looked back too and met my eye for a glance.
    And whereabouts would your place be, Mr Daunt? I said. Maitland way, did I hear you say?
    In that general direction, he said. Gammaroy, that’s the village not so far from my place.
    Gammaroy, I said. Not heard of any place by that name.
    A small place, he said. You’d not know it.
    Still no sign of my sister and Campbell.
    Gammaroy, he said. You know it’s some distant cousin of the word the black natives have for the place. The closest that our English can get. As we’ve done in Ireland, you know.
    Well, I didn’t know, had not an idea in the wide world what he was talking about.
    Take the Irish name for a place, he said. Mangle it into English. Glenmire you see as an example. We call it Glenmire but in the Irish it’s—and then he said a word that did sound a little like Glenmire , but with more on the end, and a sort of hawk-and-cough thing in the middle.
    Easier for us English, you see, he said. Make it something we know. As we did with Gammaroy.
    He glanced to see if I was interested.
    Now that I’d caught on to what he meant, I was. In all my fifteen years I’d never wondered where the name of a place might come from, nor ever met the kind of person who thought about such things. Made me ashamed, as Bub’s old trousers didn’t. The narrow ignorant life I’d led. Never been further than Sydney, never done anything grander than go to the Caledonian Hotel for dinner and catch a glimpse of the governor in a crowd, never learnt to read or write, not as much as my own name, or given a thought to why the things around me were the way they were.
    My old friend the What Bird spoke from somewhere near and out of habit I pursed up my lips. Dit dit dit dit dit? Felt Daunt watching me. Think what you please, Mr Daunt! It was of a piece with the trousers and the galloping. A way of saying, this is who I am, an ignorant hobbledehoy colonial, like it or lump it. The bird asked the question again and Daunt cocked his bent