MY DEAR SON James has given me a task for my last years, or months, or whatever time I have left beyond the many years I have lived so far. It is to compile an account called The History of the Macarthurs of Elizabeth Farm. Meaning myself and my late husband, John Macarthur.
He was barely cold in his grave when they began lauding him as a hero, even the ones who loathed him in life. Surely it must be one of the choicest revenges of outliving an enemy: to look pious at his name, turn up your eyes, put your hands together like a parson, and mouth all the false words.
The History of the Macarthurs of Elizabeth Farm. It sends a chill through my marrow. Even the, that least regarded word in the language, strikes me as absurd. How can there be the history? Beyond one the, watertight and trim, lies another, just as watertight, just as trim.
But James has made the task hard to escape. He has trawled through all the desks and drawers and come out with every remnant of the past he could find, to jog my fading memory. I look at them with a feeling like disgust. At some time in the unimagi- nable future, a reader will pore over all these items, looking for the past to show itself. To that person, and to you, the reader of these words, I can only say: Do not believe too quickly!
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