Free A Distant Dream by Vivienne Dockerty Page B

been destined for the captain’s table and would have lasted the diners until they had got to Adelaide, had been purloined by Lady Harriet and no one would argue with that. She became the steerage passengers’ hero, even if she did treat some of them as if she had a smell under her nose. Which she had, given that there were no washing facilities other than a few shared buckets and no baths to bathe in anyway and the stench could have got even worse if she hadn’t intervened when she had.
    â€œDo you know, Filbey?” Bessie said grimly, after she had washed Molly from top to toe then settled the child on a makeshift bed of blankets on their cabin floor that evening, Clarence having been concerned that the poor little mite might catch an infection if she stayed with the orphan girls. “Do you know, I think that Maggie’s sister cannot speak. I’ve only ever heard her say the words, “want Maggie.” How old is she? Three, four maybe? Sara’s children were gabbling away at this age.”
    â€œYou’re forgettin’ where she’s come from, Bessie” he replied, looking down fondly on the sleeping child, whom Bessie had stripped of her dirty clothes and given them to their cabin maid for washing, with the promise of an extra tip. “A cabin dweller, with parents trying to make a living from the land that they tenanted. Hardly a family who would worry about whether she could talk or not. She’ll be fine now she’s got the other girls to talk to. You’ll soon be telling little Molly to hold her tongue.”
    â€œHmm, well just as long as we haven’t taken on an imbecile. Our life will be difficult enough without that.”
    She was right, life in the future would get difficult, Clarence thought, as he rested on his bunk waiting for Monica to summon them to dinner. It appeared, after talking to Sir Rodney, that to own a substantial bit of land in the colony they were going to have to travel south. There were drover trails they could follow and stopping points along the way, but unless he bought a horse and cart to get them to this place called Willunga, which he had decided they were going to take a chance on, it was going to be a hell of journey with the two trunks and a child to carry along too.
    He sighed as he mentally counted the sovereigns that he had left in the leather pouch which he kept on his person, except for when he had a wash. It had seemed a fortune when he had pulled the money from its hiding place, especially with the thought of his money from Colooney too. But there had been the extra cost of their passage and now the horse and cart it would seem they would need, plus the price of a bit of furniture if they managed to find some sort of dwelling to move into and accommodation on the way. He thanked God he had taken a loan from his brother in law, or he’d have been reduced to working for a master, which he never, ever wanted to do again.
    Bessie, sitting on the other bunk, her hands busily crocheting a table runner for the table which she hoped to own when they got settled somewhere, was more concerned with keeping up socially with the other members of the cabin dwellers’ circle. Wherever this Willunga place was, it wasn’t going to be near enough to attend the soirees that Lady Harriet was planning, nor the six bedroomed house that Margaret Trowbridge would have as her residence, once her architect husband had chosen his piece of land overlooking the ocean, near the township of Glenelg. Alice Foley had been dismissed as a possible friend in the future as she would be travelling backwards and forwards across the oceans with her surgeon husband and Lily Dickinson, destined to live in whichever headquarters that her husband was assigned to. She would hardly be in a position to entertain.
    It had seemed to Bessie that they might have had the chance of coming up in the world, now that they were rubbing shoulders with the likes of