And when the mist rose, the land was nothing. Just trees and more trees, and sometimes ghosts of trees, mile after mile of them, dead and white and leafless, with thin tussocks below on soil that glinted with rock.
Ringbarked, said Clancy, removing the bark from all around a small strip of the tree to stop the roots feeding the higher branches, an easy way to kill the trees and clear the land. They’d stopped for the luncheon the hotel had packed for them: cold chicken, potatoes Russe, its mayonnaise slightly curdled, cherry cake, bread and apples, a strangely meagre meal for such an establishment. ‘Father’s had another hundred acres ringbarked at Overflow this year. He’s determined to make up his losses.’
They travelled on. More trees, or death of trees; houses made of mud and sticks. The last proper inn for their journey was the Horse and Jockey — small, but with properly plastered rooms for both of them, soft and clean feather beds, proper bell ropes to ring for servants, maids who cared for Clementine and knew the importance of a bath with repeated jugs of hot water to relax a jolted body, as well as a private dining room — or at least one that the proprietress, Mrs Marks, kept private for them that evening — set with silver cutlery.
Young maids who looked like Mrs Marks’s daughters served watercress soup, an unknown but delicious fish in hollandaise sauce, roast turkey with chestnut stuffing, devilled sardines on toast as a savoury — so few houses in the colony even knew the place of a savoury before dessert — then apple pie, possibly the best Flora had ever eaten, followed by coffee — real coffee, not from a bottle of essence — with small bowls of walnuts and hazelnuts, quince paste and perfectly crystallised cherries and slices of apricot.
She had slept deeply, and even happily, on the vast feather mattress, knowing the Marks daughters and daughters-in-law would attend to Clementine when she woke to be fed and burped. There, in sheets that smelled of lavender, with rose-scented potpourri on the dresser, a tray with tea and oatmeal biscuits brought to her as soon as she rang next morning, it was possible to feel that life was finally falling into place again.
She could survive two years on a country estate — of course she could. And if there was a little . . . social embarrassment . . .. when they returned to Sydney, her impeccable family background would soon make society forget and be as eager as ever for invitations to her dinners and parties.
The next two inns were squalid — she was glad long sleeves hid the flea bites. Tough greasy mutton roasted with the yellow vegetable called pumpkin that was cattle food back home and had never been served in Sydney; beds that were ropes across bush poles, with lumpy horsehair and bedbug mattresses on top. She had left off her corset the day before, but on the next morning insisted that Clancy pull it tight, and help with her hair too, dabbing it with lavender to clean the dust from it, and packing damp cloths for her face and hands too. They would stay at Drinkwater tonight, Overflow’s nearest neighbour. She must arrive as the Honourable Flora.