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way I came to know her here where she once lived as I had not in South Australia. Grandmama and Grandpapa had furnished me with sealed letters for a lawyer in Chichester and the housekeeper, Mrs Wickens, at Beecham, which was the name of their estate, to assure my welcome.
    Mrs Wickens was between amazement and dismay at my arrival, as might be expected, but seeing my condition and learning my sad story turned motherly. ‘To be widowed so young. Now, now, it will be lovely to have a babe about. Come sit, Mrs Crane, and I’ll bring you tea and then we shall see what to do. I’ve made up a room – your dear Mama’s it was – but you must choose as you see fit, and how long did you say you’d be staying? Some time, Mrs Back’s letter said.’
    â€˜Yes,’ I said. ‘Tea would be lovely. You are kind.’ And I remembered tea made on a clanking old stove in a house of drowned wood and the lagoon filling the window. I cried for that and other things, which Mrs Wickens believed was because of my poor widowed state. It was a fortunate disguise for the feelings I was then suffering from, including homesickness.
    At first Beecham was overwhelming even though I knew of it from Mama’s descriptions. The drawing room would have contained our whole house on the Coorong. In South Australia, after the sun had set and it was time for dinner, Mama would creep down the hall and, as if bracing for the effort, pause at the doorway to look in at us milling about the dining table. She came in and if she spoke, it was of England and her home and her childhood, and her voice being so soft made us unsure if she was reminiscing to herself or wished for an audience.
    â€˜The house was large and fine, with a circular drive for the ease of the carriages, you know. The breakfast parlour faced the east so it was pleasant at that time of day, and to the west was the parlour with a fine oak tree outside and parkland. There were three maids – imagine! – and a cook, housekeeper, footman and butler. My sisters and I had a governess but I’m afraid that we teased her more than we should and hid and did not pay attention. Oh, Papa – my papa, that is – used to lecture us.’ And on she went. Her sisters had died, one of fever after having a baby, the other of convulsions before. I am the namesake of one – Mary the other – and although I do not resemble her, yet I feel her with me as if her hand is hovering at my back.
    It had made us sad. With every word Mama told us she would rather she were not there in the Coorong with us, but in that lost green world where we had never been, not even in memory. It was strange to be wished out of existence. She had not often spoken of England when we were in Adelaide, but at Salt Creek she drew her childhood around her as if it were a cloak that might comfort and protect. The thought of Adelaide and our life there was not far enough from the Coorong to console. Perhaps it is inevitable to miss what is gone. If Papa had been less proud everything might have been different.
    When riding the lanes in my trap I felt Mama’s gentle presence by me and heard her voice in my ear: ‘See the fields, how wide they are and how green? Just as I said.’ And the interlacing of hedgerows and meanders through unblemished fields – all those bulrushes and reeds and no one making use of them – and castles and churches emerging like thrilling geographical formations and the blush of late winter woods and shadows as soft as blossom and sheep like clotted cream. The flint buildings, though, put me in mind of Papa’s face towards the end, as if the skin of him barely stretched to cover bone and gaunt muscle and terrible feeling. If my mind drifted to the scrawny and nervous creatures and the salt bone bleached world of the Coorong I am sure that will not surprise.
    These are the moments I wait for. Sometimes when half-asleep at night and