Rosetta by Alexandra Joel Read Free Book Online Page A

she makes a soft, mewing sound. Rosetta turns her head away. Fanny, anxious, is with child herself and birth is only weeks away. There is little she can do to help her daughter now.
    â€˜Rosie, what will you call her?’ she asks.
    â€˜Frances. After you.’
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    The baby’s second name, Catherine, is decided upon later. Louis insists; it is his mother’s name. It is all the same to Rosetta. Ever since the birth a listlessness has come upon her. The future looks grey and formless, and though she knows she has what most women crave – a home, a husband with property and a good income, a child – it doesn’t seem enough. In the long hours of the night, when the baby cries to be suckled, Rosetta feels as if a thick sack has been pulled over her head, a sack that invisible hands are tightening so she can neither see nor breathe nor think. She merely feels the suffocation as the thought ‘This is forever’ whirrs about her mind and is repeated, again and again.
    â€˜It’s strange,’ Ivy says to her mother one night after she has returned home to their tiny Collingwood terrace, ‘but Mrs Raphael doesn’t seem quite right with Frances.’ The girl looks up from the stockings she is mending. ‘She isn’t sharp with her, I don’t mean that.’
    â€˜Well, she rounds on you quickly enough,’ Ivy’s mother says.
    â€˜That’s what makes it so hard to understand,’ Ivy replies. ‘I like Mrs Raphael, even though she’s the type to give you a piece of her mind.’ She shakes her head. ‘But I don’t know, with Frances, well, she just doesn’t seem herself.’
    The baby wants Rosetta, always. She reminds her of Louis; his insistent demands upon her flesh are now shared by his infant daughter. Rosetta suffers. She finds she cannot love the child.
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    Another blow is struck. The Argus announces that the following month the Governor, Lord Brassey, will return to England. There is no choice; Lilian and her husband must depart with them. One final meeting between the two friends takes place in Rosetta’s garden. ‘Dearest, I will miss you so,’ Lilian says. ‘Look, I have brought you these.’ At that time there exists a singular language, consisting not of words but blooms; careful nuances lie behind each variety and type. The golden pansies that she holds have a special meaning: ‘Think of me as I will think of you’. In the sunlit garden the two women, one fair, one dark, shed tears as they embrace.
    Lilian leaves Melbourne just a few days afterwards. The door that has been briefly opened has shut abruptly on Rosetta’s dreams and hopes.
    Months later a parcel arrives for her. Ivy calls out, ‘Mrs Raphael, come and look! You’ll never guess – something’s been sent from London.’
    The box is on the hall table next to a vase of lavender, not large but sturdy, tied securely with string and bearing several stamps. The address is written in a sloping hand which, with a rare wave of excitement, Rosetta recognises. Eagerly, she begins to untie knots, to tear at the wrapping so that shreds of paper fly through the air like parchment wings.
    Inside the box, carefully enclosed in a soft, lemon-coloured cloth, she finds a gift. Rosetta takes it out. She runs her fingers overits length, first the slender, plaited leather shaft, then the carved bone of its ridged handle. Next she sees the initials L.P. , the words From R.P.N. and Melbourne, June 1899 engraved on two circles of polished brass. And then she smiles. It is Lilian’s riding crop, the whip that she took with her when she hunted.
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    Now that gift belongs to me. I see it on my desk and, just like Rosetta, I too touch the bone, the leather and the brass. I pick it up and hold it in my hand, this conjurer’s talisman.

ELEVEN
    Carlton is very smart these days. Its renovated Victorian architecture has been painted