I was afraid the whole time, all of those months, more afraid than I had been of anything. I could not explain it to Clementina. There were no words I could find to say what it was, all that it was, this huge nameless fear, and I never wanted to go back there to the place it came from.

But when Steven was born, in the first week of a new year, 1920, I knew I’d to make a choice between fear and love. And I chose love. I chose him.

Your uncle, lambsie. You never knew you had an uncle, did you.

~

We brought our baby home on the tram from the hospital and walked from the Mandurah road to Martha Street. Then Magnus took off on his bicycle for the late shift at Castlemaine.

Jessie and Hal made such a fuss of the baby, offered him little wooden toys of their own. But Clementina had the two of them tucked into bed by nightfall.

We sat in the hot kitchen, she and I, Clementina mashing vegetables for soup.

It’s a sign, quinie, she told me. A new life for a new decade!

I don’t want any talk of signs. Ye sound like the old ones at home an’ there’s no place for the dark things here.

But somethin’ good has come, for a change. I’ve wanted to be Unty Clementina for more than a wee while.

I examined Steven’s tiny nails, the perfect fingers.

So. Are ye goin’ to call him … She stopped.

I didn’t catch her meaning.

Steven. Are ye goin’ to call him Stivvy?

No!

I’d not meant to sound harsh, and Clementina looked down while I rushed to explain, gentling my words.

He is named to honour Stivvy, aye, but he has a name of his own. I don’t think it’s right to saddle a new wee life with another’s before it’s even begun. D’ye not think so?

Mmmm. And then Clementina grinned. So it’s Fremantle Steven?

I flicked a tea towel in her direction.

Seagull Steven? Milk Arrowroot Steven?

Steven Tulloch is good enough, Unty Clementina.

I thought we might be calling him Gingernut Steven, but will ye look at that. She reached over to tousle the baby’s silken head. Not a ginger hair on him!

I inhaled the sweet smell of baby curls, dark like Magnus’s, like Ma’s and Kitta’s.

Clementina picked up the masher again, though surely the neeps and tatties could scarcely need more. So, quinie. D’ye want us to move now, ye an’ Magnus? Give ye some space with your wee bairn without a pair of nine-year-olds an’ an old herrin’ girl?

No! I clutched at her arm. What would I do without Clementina?