hands clutched tightly. Eyes locking over tables, tools, behind backs.
Jack’s younger brother, Frank, took a job at Clennett’s Mill up the mountain beyond the farm. Sometimes she accompanied Jack up there to deliver special luxuries: cakes and biscuits, fresh bread, newly picked fruit. They rode on horses, winding up the track into tall wet forest till they came to the camp where aromatic curls of smoke wafted among the tree trunks, men shouted, metal clanked and saws rasped at dense wood. They would leave the horses near the huts and she would follow Jack’s straight back over fallen logs and mounds of stripped bark. Frank would be either in the noisy clattery mill, hacking at chunks of wood to toss into the furnace, or he’d be off somewhere across the steep slope, on the end of a saw felling a massive tree. In quiet pockets of forest, she and Jack would linger, pressing tight to each other, breathing into urgency, kissing, discovering one another.
The island had defined them then. They were the cool green grace of the farm. They were the eclipsing grandeur of the tall forests. They were the rhythmic slump of waves on the beach at Cloudy Bay. Their love was entangled in the place. Looking back, she was unsure whether it was Jack she had fallen in love with, or Bruny Island and the exhilarating freedom it offered. Or perhaps, a typical young girl, she’d been in love with the idea of being in love. The heady romance of it.
The truth was she hadn’t expected to meet her future husband on Bruny. And it wasn’t the outcome her parents had planned. It was, however, a consequence of the exile they had arranged for her. The island had slung her together with Jack; their relationship was an inevitable conclusion born out of isolation and awakening sexuality.
For a year, they navigated a secret liaison, built on stolen touch. Then they grew bolder. By that time, Mary had been on Bruny Island almost four years, and at twenty, she felt she was old enough to make her own decisions. Her upbringing insisted on propriety, and Jack, too, wanted to do things the right way. She knew that integrity and commitment were important to him. They discussed the next step, and after dinner one night, Jack told her of his conversation with his parents.
‘I’m very fond of Mary,’ he had said. ‘She likes me too, and I want to marry her.’
His father had initially gaped, but once he’d recovered from his surprise, he nodded his approval. But Jack’s mother’s face had immediately expanded with a warm smile. ‘She’s a lovely choice, Jack,’ she had said. ‘A lovely steady girl. She’ll make a good wife.’
A good wife, Mary had thought. What a challenge!
Encouraged by his parents’ support, Jack visited Max and Faye to gauge their opinion. They were privately pleased but also concerned; Mary had been entrusted to them for safekeeping and this development might not be so welcome back in Hobart. Predictably, her parents weren’t pleased that she planned to marry a farmer. They had higher aspirations for her than that. But Mary was determined to have Jack. Her mother and father had intervened in her life once already, and they knew they had less hold over her on Bruny. After a series of discussions, they gave permission reluctantly. She was in charge of her own life now.
In the wake of the announcement, Jack and Mary felt released. Discretion was still necessary, but secrecy wasn’t required. Now they could hold hands in public and no longer shield glances. Chaperoning was insisted upon, but they stole away for private moments to kiss, to touch, to explore. A path to increased intimacy opened before them, and they tried new things—kissing with tongues, caressing beneath clothes. Mary would have gone further, but Jack was restrained. Everything must wait, he said, until the ring was on her finger.
They were married in a Hobart church, but returned to Bruny to work on the Masons’ farm. Jack’s father was becoming increasingly crippled with arthritis, and with Frank still away in the hills cutting wood, Jack was needed to help Sam, his older brother. The farmhouse was crowded, but it functioned in harmony. It was the happiest of times.
Whenever there was a break in the work schedule, Jack and Mary visited Cloudy Bay, taking each other in privacy. It was the place where they first made love and they regarded it as their haven—the sea, the salt, their