Sarah Thornhill Read Online Free PDF

did she know all the secrets, I wondered.
    Langlands come often, Ma and Mrs Langland out of the same mould, very genteel in their view of themselves. She was a stout woman bursting out of her clothes but dainty in her ways like a doll. Had a shawl, paisley pattern, soft and light as duck down. She’d leave it on the back of a chair and then ask you to give it to her. Be waiting for you to say, goodness that’s soft, and so light! because then she could tell you it was Indian kashmir, a bit unusual, which was her way of saying it was better than anyone else’s.
    No secrets stood behind Mrs Langland. From a good family back Home, if you believed what she said. Not too high up to marry an emancipist, mind. Long as he’d made good. My people were in a comfortable situation, she’d say, and settle the shawl on her shoulders. My people . After she said it, I noticed Ma started saying it too, about her people in Brixton Rise.
    She liked to lord it over everyone, Mrs Langland. Very pleased with herself, and thought it was all her own cleverness.
    Old Mr Langland, he’d worked for a silk-weaver in Spitalfields, Ma told me. Caught running off with twenty-seven silk handkerchiefs under his coat. He was in the first lot sent out forty years before, when the Colony was just a few tents in among the bush and not too many rules about anything. Him and Pa would rather of been out in the yard with their pipes going, spitting on the stones. But they was trying to latch on to being respectable now, so they sat with the teacups and the scones and listened while Mrs Langland went on about her joints.
    Langlands had a string of children. Took after Mrs Langland, pale and soft like cakes not given a hot enough oven. Charlie was a chubby fellow the apple of his mother’s eye. Next down was Sophia, not much older than me so everyone thought we’d be friends, but I couldn’t be bothered with her. All she could think about was what her dress was like, and if the ribbons on her bonnet matched her gloves, and how a girl should fix her hair to make the most of herself . Her lacy handkerchief peeked up out her bosom so it drew the eye , and she was forever dropping it to put some colour in her cheeks .
    Knew all those tricks. Told me and Mary, only to make us feel like fools that we didn’t know.
    Sophia was taller than she thought a girl should be so she never wore anything but flat slippers. Sat down when she could. If she had to stand, she’d kink one hip sideways. Mary said Ma had her eye on Sophia Langland for Will, but I pooh-poohed her. Why would he fancy a dull girl like Sophia Langland, when my handsome favourite brother could have his pick?
    Then there was Jack. The oldest of the Langland children by six or seven years, and as different from the others as night from day. Jack’s mother was not Mrs Langland. She was a darkie, long dead. Ma told me, but it was no secret. Everyone knew that Jack was half darkie.
    When Mr Langland went with Jack’s ma, New South Wales by all accounts was a rough place. Not much between a man and starvation and not too many women other than the native ones. A man did what was natural. As for the children that come along, the old hands like Pa and Mr Langland thought it nothing so very terrible. What counted was not if you were half darkie, so much as if you could handle an oar or split a log.
    But things had changed. The ones that come later, and come free, drew the lines strict. Sent out and come free , white and black. Mr Langland was a churchy sort of feller now and had got himself a respectable wife. Wouldn’t like to be reminded he’d been happy enough once upon a time to bed a native woman.
    Everyone knew about Jack’s mother, but no one said. It was like stealing a sheep or knocking a man down for the coins in his pocket. You didn’t mortify anyone by saying it.
    Easy in Jack’s case because you wouldn’t pick him straight away. Dark in