Sequel & Prequel

When I began writing the sequel to Eumeralla the idea of writing a prequel sprang into my mind. The ancestors of the Clarkson family in Eumeralla had stolen a lot of jewels from their employers and escaped to Australia, which is why the Carksons were so wealthy.

Writing about why they stole the jewels and how they got away with it appealed to me. Plots and characters always present themselves to me - I rarely invent a plot or a character. But whenever the storyline came into my mind it was always in the first person, which annoyed me because I wanted to write it in the third person.

Suddenly it came to me. Fiona, a character in Eumeralla, had told someone that her ancestors had written a journal. Then I had it. Write the prequel as part of the sequel.

Here is an extract from Eumeralla where the journals are mentioned.

Tom leant on his shovel. “How come your family were so much richer than ours? Were they squatters?”

    “No.” She grinned. “The first Australian Clarksons were crooks.”

“Convicts?  Really?”

She scooped up a pile of dung and put it in the barrow. “Crooks not convicts.”

“What’s the difference?”

“They were crooks, but didn’t get caught. He was a coach driver for a family who had country estates in Sussex and Scotland and a house in London. He was in cahoots with a maid. They planned it for ages, and practised their employer’s la-di-da accent till they got it right. When the family went out one night she stole lots of jewellery, money and clothes. She wore the clothes, pawned the jewellery and they came to Australia. When they got here they bought the land and built the house with the money.”

Tom looked shocked.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked. “They didn’t kill anyone. The Victorian aristocracy paid their servants paltry wages and made them work long hours, while they lazed around all day. If  the master of the house got a maid pregnant she was thrown out without a reference and became a prostitute or went to the workhouse. And they had the gall to preach morality. Pah! If my ancestors were thieves they earned every penny they stole.”

“Don’t get mad at me, Sis,” he said with a laugh. “None of my ancestors were toffs.”

She smiled. “Sorry.”

“Is that how they could afford servants?”

“I suppose so. I went to see the places they lived when I was in England. It gave me a weird feeling to stand in front of the London house. It was not far from Buckingham Palace.”

“How come you knew the address?”

“Family history. They wrote it all down.”

“Wasn’t it dangerous to brag about what they did?”

“They didn’t tell anyone. Our grandfather found their ... confession I guess you’d call it ... when he was sorting through some trunks when he was young. It was addressed to the descendants of Ellen and James Clarkson. They hid their tracks well – Clarkson wasn’t their real name.”

“What was it?”

“They didn’t say. But they wrote in graphic detail about their working conditions and their callous employers and why they did what they did.”