her steered carefully through the difficult shoals of Parramatta society.
But when the orphan materialized wearing bloomers, Mrs Cousins was overcome with an urge-it was visceral, self-protective, a thing of muscle and blood, nothing as rarified as an idea-to put her hands on the girl's shoulders and push her back down the steps.
26 Bloomers
Amelia Bloomer had come to London in 1851 with her famous 'rational costume.' It was, as everybody knows, a pair of baggy trousers surmounted by a short skirt. It was worn in Melbourne quite early, but it did not seem to catch Elizabeth Leplastrier's attention until she actually saw a woman wearing the new rational dress in Church Street, Parramatta, in 1858. 80
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Here, at last, was an antidote to the 'obscene bustle' and the 'crippling crinoline.' From this time on both mother and daughter dressed in nothing else, and if this occasionally caused offence to street urchins in Parramatta, what else could you expect?
Now Mrs Cousins knew nothing of Amelia Bloomer. She knew only what respectability required and this was not it. She took the girl up to her room and was dismayed to discover, in the suitcase the labourers had so gracelessly packed for her, another seven outfits of the same design in different colours. On the pretext of taking them for laundering, she removed the lot of them. She did not understand Miss Leplastrier's commitment to the fashion any more than she understood her hair (she assumed the short cut was the result of sickness). She called a dressmaker. Miss Leplastrier did not want a dressmaker. She was small, but wiry and determined. There were tears, locked doors, much upset in the house. Mrs Cousins was beside herself. The girl tried to rip the flouncing off her dress as an ignorant animal will tear the bandage from its leg. She would not go to her mother's funeral in a bustle. Mrs Cousins
From that time Lucinda ate in her room. This had never happened in Mrs Cousins's house before. It had been requested but never agreed to. Now she acquiesced and did not want the situation changed. When Miss Leplastrier emerged from her room at last, she was wearing bloomers. She had stolen them from the laundry and then, back in her room, locked them in her suitcase. It was impossible to introduce her anywhere. Mrs Cousins told Mr Ahearn all this. She went to his offices and spoke with him. She had not intended to weep, but weep she did. She feared for that more precious and fragile asset: her reputation. She wanted the young woman to be accommodated elsewhere. But Mr Ahearn spoke about the Good Samaritan. He recited all eight verses to her, ending thus: 'Then said Jesus unto him Go
But Lucinda did not know what to do in Parramatta. She tried to behave well, but as long as she would not wear the bustle it seemed no one would behave well towards her. She sat by her mother's grave until it was judged morbid and she was taken away. She then decided 81
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that she would go back and live on the farm. She announced this to Mrs Cousins who was so relieved that she did not, as she should have, prevent her departure. She mentioned the dangers of larrikins and footpads and blacks, but without ever believing it would change the stubborn young woman's mind.
It was only three miles. She was there within the hour. There were no footpads and the only people who troubled her were shearers who called rough things to her from high on their farting horses.
She found surveyors with mattocks and axes clearing a sightline through her dew-bright orchard. Sweet white broken wood glistened in the sunlight. The axes stopped. They stared at her-a girl in emeraldgreen bloomers carrying a suitcase through the wet winter-grey grass. They smiled, having no idea how her heart raced, or what anger she felt-all the curdled love, the rage at death, look at the thistles in our pasture! — all focused on them in their blue shirts and bright white moleskin trousers.
She hated them. It is the hate you reserve for a thing that can hurt you. There was a long-handled pitchfork standing in a pile of rotting mulch inside the orchard fence. She walked towards it. God knows what she might have done if Chas Ahearn, finally alerted to his client's escape by a guilty Mrs Cousins, had not come galloping up the road from Parramatta in a jinker too unstable for such a high-speed chase. She turned to watch him work his way from one paddock to the next, straining and stretching at each gate, and, when he was at last beside her, at the top of the dam above the orchard, he was so out of breath that he could not speak but only lower himself from the jinker and press a sheaf of papers into her red-fingered, brown-mittened hands. And that is how Lucinda learned of her mother's betrayal, in a wheezing rush. Her suitcase, which she had held firmly by her side, she now stood carefully in the long wet grass. She took the plan of subdivision and tried to understand it. Mr Ahearn's breath whistled in her ear. The men were watching her. One whistled 'The Wearing of the Green.'
'This is not my mama's signature,' she said.
Mr Ahearn did not answer. He smiled at her. It was inadequate. It was his way of showing pity. The dark man chopped a branch from the pear tree. He did it lazily, holding the axe in one hand. In the other hand he held a long white j stick.
'In six months' time, I could order you,' she said. Her voice was; small, her shoulders rounded, and her eyes could not even hold his,
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but slid off and down to the scarred red earth her papa had found for her.
'I could
'You will thank me, one day when you are older.'
'Who has the cow?'
Mr Ahearn blinked. 'You will be wealthy,' he said, 'at least you have that consolation.' She heard him. It made no sense. 'The cow is stolen,' she said, crying.
'Dear little girl,' he said.
Her feet were wet and cold. The light was clear and sunny, but with no heat in it. It had the sharpness of a dream. The butcher-birds lined up and sang on the fence posts. The axe rang out again. The poultry had been stolen too, and all Mr Ahearn would say was that she was wealthy. She walked to the hut, carrying her own case. He followed her, wheezing, getting further and further behind. She remembered all this vividly, all her life, but what she did not recall were the circumstances which meant she could not have done otherwise. She imagined she had been too weak, had given up her farm too easily, had let herself be bullied into exile. There was a square of sunshine on the wooden step. She narrowed her eyes against it. Inside she saw (although she tried not to see anything but what she had come for) that someone had folded the blankets on her mother's bed.
The jam jars were still rucked in their hiding places. She would have counted them, but she did not wish to be seen, so she opened her case and rolled up each jar in a different garment, stuffing a sleeve down a glass throat to stop spillage and noise. Then she walked back out into the sunshine and allowed herself to be persuaded into the jinker.
On 7 May 1859, the five farms at Mitchell's Creek were sold at auction. On 10 May Lucinda Leplastrier turned eighteen.
On Ascension Day she travelled on Mr Sol Myer's steamer down to Sydney. She would also blame herself for this 'flight.' She often imagined her life would have been happier had she stayed, perhaps bought part of Mitchell's Creek herself, but the older Lucinda forgot that the younger one had an itchy impatience to grasp what her mother
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that he misunderstood him.
