Broken Threads

by Tessa Barclay

  ‘It’s the truth. If you like you can ask Ronald. He’ll tell you it’s why he and I began to drift apart.’

  ‘Who’s supposed to have taken her away, then?’

  ‘What difference does that make to you, Dinah? I’m only telling you so that you’ll understand that our marriage struck a very big rock. And I handled it badly. So when I come here to talk to you, I know I’ve no one but myself to blame. That’s what I meant when I said I hadn’t come to reproach you.’

  After a moment Dinah looked full at Jenny and said, ‘This is the truth? About the little girl?’

  ‘I swear it to you.’

  ‘I thought the trouble had to do with you being rich and only interested in making money.’

  Jenny coloured. ‘He couldn’t have said that!’

  ‘No,’ said the other girl, with unwilling honesty, ‘I reckon that’s what I wanted to believe. He said … he told me … you had the best cloth mill in Scotland and were famous, had met the Queen. So I reckoned you must be grand and high-hatted.’ She broke off, and sat looking at Jenny with her head on one side. ‘I never imagined you’d be the kind to come and corner me in the dairy!’

  There was a wry humour in the remark. Jenny let a little silence fall. Then she said, ‘Now that we’re face to face, we have to be honest, haven’t we? I want you to understand that I don’t hate you or despise you ‒ nothing like that. But you have to accept that it’s over between you and Ronald.’

  Dinah shook her head so that the chestnut hair gleamed in the narrow sunbeam from between the shutters. The harsh animosity was back in her voice. ‘Never! He’s mine! Ron and I were meant for each other!’

  ‘No, you must give up that idea ‒’

  ‘He loves me!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes he does, he does! A woman knows when a man really loves her ‒’

  ‘Dinah, you’re talking yourself into it, just as you did when you made yourself believe I was some kind of ogress. I’m Ronald’s wife. He has a six-year-old daughter who needs him ‒’

  ‘I need him ‒’

  ‘Not as much as we do.’

  ‘But you’ve got so much: a famous name, an important job to do, a whole world of your own! I only have Ron …’

  ‘You’re talking about someone who doesn’t exist!’ Jenny exclaimed. ‘ “Ron” ‒ that’s not his name. He’s Ronald Armstrong, my husband and the father of our child. He’s well-known for his ability with dye-stuffs ‒ his name is a byword for excellence all over Scotland. He doesn’t belong here where he can’t use his talents. He doesn’t belong with you ‒’

  ‘But I love him!’ Dinah sprung up, throwing up her head in proud protestation. ‘Don’t think you can take him away from me by using clever words! I know you’ve got education and all that, but he belongs to me and I won’t let you have him ‒’

  ‘Dinah, Dinah ‒’

  ‘I tell you I love him ‒’

  ‘Do you think I don’t?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter to me! All that matters is that since I met Ron everything’s been different for me. And I’m going to keep him ‒’

  ‘But you can’t. Don’t you understand that? He doesn’t “belong” to you in any sense that means you can keep him against his wish ‒’

  ‘His wish is to stay with me.’

  ‘No, Dinah, you’re wrong ‒’

  ‘You let him go, more fool you. Finder’s keepers, that’s what they say, don’t they ‒’

  ‘But you can’t keep him if he doesn’t want to stay. And he doesn’t, Dinah.’

  ‘Yes he does, I know he does. What can you know, suddenly arriving out of nowhere ‒’

  ‘I’ve talked to him. We talked for hours. I know what he feels, and you must face it.’

  ‘You talked him round! I’ll make him see that you’ve tricked him ‒ he’ll listen to me. And no matter what you say, I’ll never give him up!’

  ‘What will you do? Follow him around for the rest of his life telling him you love him? It’s just foolishness, my poor girl ‒’

  ‘Don’t you patronise me! Don’t you dare patronise me! Just because you’ve got prettier clothes and ‒’

  ‘And a daughter, and a wedding ring on my finger. Don’t forget those, Dinah.’ Jenny put firmness into her tone. ‘You’re coming between husband and wife. We made vows in church, before God ‒ and you can’t set it aside just because you think you want him for yourself.’

  ‘I do want him! I love him! I love him far more than you do.’

  ‘Oh, Dinah … That’s childish, childish.’ She sighed. ‘I’m not entering into a competition to prove who loves him the most. That’s not the question. The question is whether Ronald loves you. If I truly believed that he did, I’d not stand in the way of your being happy together. He could have a divorce if he asked me. But he hasn’t asked me, and he never will.’

  ‘You’re not saying he loves you!’ Dinah cried with incredulity.

  ‘I think he does.’

  ‘That’s nonsense. Just because you came back all sad and pathetic and asked him ‒ what else would he say?’

  ‘I’m not talking about words, Dinah!’

  Dinah’s face went pale under the golden skin. ‘What do you mean? Not words? You mean you and he … that you’ve been …’ Her harsh voice faltered into silence. She walked to the window, pulled the shutters wide, and turned to stare at Jenny in the full sunlight.

  ‘You’ve slept with him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t be unfaithful to me!’

  Jenny stilled a little gesture of irritation. ‘Why won’t you think of someone other than yourself? Unfaithful to you? He’s my husband ‒’

  ‘But that’s all over ‒’

  ‘Yesterday we were husband and wife together, just like when we were first married. I know with every fibre of my being that Ronald loves me, no matter what’s happened between the two of you. I can’t be mistaken in this. The old tie between us was still as strong as ever.’

  ‘That’s easy to say ‒’

  Jenny shook her head. ‘I don’t find it easy to say. I don’t talk about things that are important, intimate ‒ it’s distasteful, it somehow reduces them. But it seems nothing else will convince you. Don’t you understand, Dinah? Ronald and I are husband and wife ‒ in law, in our need of each other, in the happiness we find when we’re together. You can make claims on him until the heavens fall but it won’t change anything ‒ my husband loves me and I love him.’

  Dinah stood in the shaft of cruel sunlight. Her lovely face looked pinched and weary. She fought against what Jenny had said. But as they faced each other the unassailable truth could be read in Jenny’s gaze.

  ‘But what about me?’ Dinah wailed, childlike.

  For a moment Jenny was tempted to offer her money. Enough to let her make a new start somewhere else, find an easier life. But instinct warned her that it would be a cardinal error.

  ‘You’re young,’ she said. ‘And independent. You’ll survive.’

  ‘What would be the point, without Ron?’ Tears gathered in the great violet-blue eyes. ‘You don’t understand,’ she faltered. ‘I’ve put all my hopes in him. It was going to change my life, being Mrs Ron Armstrong. He would have taught me all he knows, told me about the places he’d been ‒ in Europe and everywhere. I’d have been something better than just a girl from the orphan school.’

  ‘But you could learn all about that ‒ better yourself ‒ without depending on anyone else.’

  ‘But I don’t want to!’ It was a wail of misery. ‘Besides, you don’t know what it’s like here on the stations. If you want to better yourself they say you’re an upstart, and a woman in any case ain’t got a chance; you have to settle for a husband and kids or being a servant all your life, an old maid that they’ll just sneer at ‒’

  ‘I understand, Dinah. I do. I had to struggle for what I’ve got ‒’

  ‘But it’s different back Home. There’s gr
eat ladies there who’ve done something themselves ‒ Ron told me ‒ there was one travelled all over foreign places, Turkey and everything ‒’

  ‘Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu.’

  ‘That’s the one, and Miss Nightingale ‒ I forget the others. But you’ve never heard of a woman out here who’s been let do anything.’

  ‘But Dinah, the colony’s so new ‒’

  ‘And it’s not even as if I want to do anything clever or anything, I just wanted to be somebody ‒ and now you’re taking all that away from me.’

  Jenny didn’t know how to answer the reproach. It was useless to try reasoning, to say that to ‘be someone’ simply because of your husband wasn’t Jenny’s idea of achievement. After a long hesitation during which Dinah’s stifled sobs were the only sound, she said, ‘Is there anything you’d let me do for you? Could I send you books? Pictures?’

  ‘What good’d that be, with no one to help me understand them?’ Dinah said in bitter rejection. ‘There’s nobody out here ‒’

  ‘The school-teacher?’

  ‘The nearest one’s about a hundred miles away. And besides, what kind of a mug d’you think I’d look, asking old Mr Percher to help me? It was different with Ron ‒ he didn’t laugh when I asked questions, and he’d talk about all different things ‒ not just about livestock or the station but about plays, and the shops in Melbourne …’

  ‘Why don’t you move into the city, then? Get a job in Melbourne or Sydney? You don’t have to stay out-country if you don’t like it.’

  ‘Nah,’ the girl said, shaking her shining head. ‘When Mrs Daniell said I had to leave their place, Ma Fowler made me promise I’d stay here at least a year or until I got married. That was the condition for the job. Reckon I got to stay here.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jenny said, meaning it. ‘It’s a hard life here, I can see that. I wish I could ‒’

  ‘Well, I don’t want your pity, so don’t put yourself out, Mrs Big-Hearted. There was only one thing in the world I wanted and you’re taking that away from me so the less we have to do with each other the better.’ Dinah was taking refuge in pride and anger. It was understandable, and it made her more beautiful as her dark blue eyes glowed and her chin came up. ‘Just take yourself off, Lady Jane, back to your kid and your husband and all the fine friends that are waiting for you. Don’t you bother your head about me, ’cos I’ll forget about you the minute you’ve walked through that door!’

  Jenny knew better than to protest. She smiled helplessly, half-shook her head, and went out. As she closed the shed door she heard the outburst of wild sobbing that followed on Dinah’s defiant farewell.

  Mrs Fowler was waiting for her in the shady verandah of the house. ‘How did it go?’

  ‘Not well, I’m afraid. I feel … Mrs Fowler, I feel so sorry for her!’

  The older woman shrugged and folded meaty arms across her satin-clad bosom. ‘She’s not the first to get in a pickle like this. Don’t you worry about it, Mrs Armstrong. I’ll stand as her friend until she’s over it. Of course, she’ll come in for a lot of teasing ‒ folk were all saying they were surprised a man like Ron Armstrong would take up with a girl from the orphan school and now they’ll say she had ideas above herself ‒’

  ‘It would be better if she could get away.’

  ‘I can’t spare her, Mrs Armstrong, and that’s the fact. ’Sides, what good would it do for her to run away? No, no, she threw her cap over the windmill without asking first if the miller was free to catch it. She’s got to face the consequences of her own rashness.’

  ‘But it’s so unfair, Mrs Fowler! The man gets off scot free!’

  Mrs Fowler pursed her lips. ‘Reckon so? I think Ron’ll have his hard times for a while.’ She glanced at Jenny. ‘You thinking of going home soon?’

  ‘Well, pretty soon, I imagine, though there’s some business to be attended to.’

  ‘Seems to me it’d be easier all round if you and your husband cleared out. The whole thing will die down all the sooner, and it’d certainly be easier on Dinah if Ron were out of the district.’

  Jenny nodded agreement, and held out her hand. ‘Thank you, Mrs Fowler. You’ve been very understanding.’

  ‘Oh, lor’, I haven’t done much.’

  ‘You’ve been kind to Dinah.’

  ‘I’ll go on being kind so long as she keeps her temper with me,’ Mrs Fowler said with a grin, ‘but she can be a tartar when she’s roused up. But I’ll do the best I can for her.’

  ‘Goodbye, then.’

  ‘Goodbye, all the best.’

  The boy had brought the trap to the garden gate. Jenny mounted and drove away, her thoughts busy with what had happened.

  She wasn’t exactly proud of herself. She had used weapons that she would rather not, against an enemy for whom she felt nothing but pity. What a victory …

  She reached Daniell’s farm in good time for tea. Ronald had gone riding out to look for the Aborigines with whom he’d been talking when she first saw him. Heather was being bathed and made ready for bed after a long day outdoors, learning to ride in the morning and doing lessons in the shade of an ironbark for part of the afternoon.

  To Mrs Daniell’s half-expressed queries Jenny merely replied that everything was now cleared up. ‘Is Gunder around? I hope to be heading back to Sydney tomorrow or the next day.’

  ‘Will Ron be going with you?’

  ‘I hope so. We’ll discuss it when he comes back. When do you expect him back, Mrs Daniell?’

  The other woman looked uncertain. ‘Who can tell? Depends how far he follows the Abos. They wander a long way, you know ‒ seems to us, without rhyme or reason though I guess they know why they do it.’

  ‘But he’ll be back tonight?’

  ‘Did he say he would?’

  ‘No,’ confessed Jenny, ‘I just took it for granted …’

  But when she thought about it she understood that Ronald was probably feeling embarrassed and shamefaced about the whole business with Dinah Bowerby. She couldn’t blame him for absenting himself until the first gossiping interest had died down.

  He made no appearance that evening. When she went down to his camp by the stream after the meal, there was no sign of him. Next day the same. Jenny spent the morning watching Heather trot carefully round the paddock on Goodie, the tough little pony which had come to be regarded as hers. In the afternoon she wrote a letter to her factory manager in Galashiels, which was to be sent with a packet of designs left in her hotel room in Sydney. She had expected to be setting out for Sydney by now, but she couldn’t think of leaving without first speaking to Ronald and if possible taking him with her.

  Because she knew Henry Chalmers would be getting worried, she sent Gunder back to Sydney next day with a request to send on her letter to Scotland. She enclosed a note to the hotel manager asking him to give to Chalmers the packet of designs he would find on the bureau in her room. These were to be despatched with the letter. Gunder was to return as soon as these tasks were accomplished.

  She had fallen into the habit of going to Ronald’s campsite each morning and nightfall. When she had been a week at the Daniells’ farm, an elderly black woman met her on the path. She held up a hand to stop Jenny, then addressed her rapidly.

  The language had a vague resemblance to English, but it was too difficult to follow. Jenny invited the old woman to accompany her, took her back to the farm, and there got Mrs Daniell to interpret what was clearly a message.

  ‘She says your husband is with a group of distillers up at Langa ‒’

  ‘Distillers?’

  ‘Eucalyptus distillers ‒’

  ‘But how did she know the message was for me? She’s never seen me before.’

  ‘Don’t ask me, dear. They’re a mystery. Ron says he’s found his friend who has the information about colours for cloth and he hopes to be back in a day or two.’

  ‘But where is he?’

  Mrs Daniell made the inquiry. The black woman turned to face the nor
thwest, made a vague outward movement of her arm, and turned back.

  ‘My God!’ Jenny said. ‘This place is like a hall of mirrors ‒ people appear and disappear in a moment.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a great place for getting lost in,’ Mrs Daniell agreed with faint irony.

  ‘Tell the lady thank you from me.’

  Mrs Daniell translated and paid her for her services with a sugared almond. To Jenny she said, ‘You don’t mind having to wait a bit longer?’

  Jenny didn’t say, I waited a lot longer than this already. Instead she asked, ‘Is it convenient to have us here so long?’

  ‘Good heavens, only too pleased! I love having Heather here. Reminds me of when my own young ’uns were still around.’

  ‘She loves the pony. You’re so kind to lend it to her ‒’

  ‘Nonsense, always plenty of ponies and brumbies around. And she seems to be doing well on it.’ She looked at Jenny. ‘Doesn’t she ever speak?’

  ‘Almost never.’

  ‘Something wrong? Vocal cords damaged?’

  ‘No, we don’t know exactly why it is. She had a bad time when she was little.’

  ‘Sick, you mean?’

  ‘In a way.’

  Mrs Daniell’s curiosity was kindly, but Jenny didn’t want to go into long details about past sorrows. She wanted to think about tomorrow or the next day, when Ronald might be back and she could talk to him about the future.

  She found him at his campsite the following evening. His borrowed horse was cropping the grass by the streamside, its saddle and harness over a bough. He had clearly come in only a short time ago, for he was stripped to the waist and shaving himself preparatory to coming to the farmhouse.

  At the sound of her footsteps he put his head round the canvas which formed the door of the lean-to for the moment. ‘Jenny! You got my message?’

  ‘Ronald, you’ve been gone five days!’

  She cast herself upon him, heedless of the shaving soap on his chin. He threw his razor into the bowl and wrapped his arms around her. ‘Well, this is what I call a welcome,’ he laughed.

  ‘I wanted you here, Ronald. I needed you.’

  ‘Yes, lassie, I know.’ He kissed the top of her head. ‘You wanted to tell me about Dinah.’