Read Skylarking for Free Online Page B

witnessed in Harriet: a blossoming, luminous quality, a gentle swell under her skin that made her seem infinitely older than me.
    My mother surprised me in the laundry as I was trying to rinse out my undergarments. She must have known at once why I was there.
    â€˜Has it come, then?’ she said.
    I nodded but did not look up, relieved that she would now take me with a sure hand and tell me what to do.
    â€˜That’s good and healthy. When you’re finished up here, come into my room and we’ll get you sorted out.’
    â€˜Thank you,’ I said, meeting her eyes.
    â€˜You know what it means, don’t you, Kate?’
    I did and I didn’t. I knew it was a line I was crossing, from childhood to adulthood, and I wanted to stay and I wanted to go, and I wanted to be able to be in both places forever more.
    â€˜You’re getting ready to make babies.’
    My jaw dropped.
    â€˜Not right away, of course! It’s the body’s way of saying that everything is working and that you’ll be a mother one day, is all.’
    Harriet had not said. Of all the secret, whispered things I thought might be revealed by this event, this was not one of them. The knowledge of it stole something from me. Stole the careless way in which I had considered my body until now. And my blood became linked in my mind with the blood of Mrs Jackson, talk of babies with dead babies; and every time I felt that cursed cramp and heaviness, anxiety pressed in on me.
    I realised then what a burden I carried as a girl, as a woman, and could not believe Harriet had not prepared me better.

EIGHT
    I T WAS A FEW WEEKS LATER THAT I FIRST HEARD THE name McPhail. I was at home, no longer eligible for school because I would turn fifteen that year. My days were now filled up with fetching and mending and washing and baking and hanging out the laundry. Harriet was thrilled that I had finally left the schoolhouse and joined her.
    Sometimes we would plead with our mothers to relieve us of our chores and, if they agreed, we would whoop and yahoo as we raced down the hill away from the station to hide ourselves on one of our favourite beaches. Every so often, I would long for my brain to be tried and tested as it had been by Mr Jamieson’s lessons, and I would sneak away from both Mother and Harriet, to be with one of my books.
    But this particular day was not one for books. Mother and I were serving tea and scones to Dot Appleton, who had brought eggs and fresh gossip. She had it from Mr Jamieson who heard from Mr Prucherp from Bennett’s River that a man, not young but not old, was moving to the area.
    Daniel McPhail was his name. He’d come from somewhere out bush in New South Wales and was looking to take up the abandoned hut down at the cove. Apparently he’d been left it in a will, but no one could remember who’d last lived there or why on earth someone would journey out all this way to claim it. No wife. No children. Just him and a swag and a want for someone to buy the fish he planned to catch.
    Mother made interested noises and asked me to fill the kettle again. By the time I returned and placed the full kettle back on the stove, the women had moved on to another tale.
    â€˜Met him just today on the road back from the junction. Nice enough,’ my father said that evening. ‘Tall – good hands – he’ll do well enough for himself with the fishing if he’s as good as he makes out. Been a long while, but he said the sea had never left him, that he was itching to get back out.’
    I had finished washing my face and was heading for bed, but I stopped in the hall. I could hear Mother at the dishes.
    â€˜He’s already talked to the men from Bennett’s River,’ Father continued. ‘They reckon there’s a small boat going from when Tommy McGregor got sick and gave it up. This McPhail thinks he’s got the coin to buy it straight out. Reckons he can keep us in fish.