A Bitter Harvest

by Peter Yeldham

  Hannah took the telegram inside and also opened it with some trepidation. It read: ELIZABETH DANGEROUSLY ILL. DELAYING MY RETURN UNTIL I CAN BRING HER BACK WITH ME. ALL MY LOVE, WILLLAM.

  He had never been so enraged and filled with fury in his life. When they led him awkwardly towards the house, then skirted it to enter one of the galvanised iron sheds at the side, he had been puzzled, but in his concern and urgent desire to see her it hardly registered. For Stefan had stumblingly told him the news of the premature birth, and that in the ten days since then she had not been well. It had been painful and difficult, he was told, so he was prepared for the shock of finding her ill, but not for everything else.

  When he felt the gust of heat from the iron walls and roof, saw the bleak interior, the dirt floor, the makeshift bed with Elizabeth dozing in it, he had one moment of incredulity, of disbelief, then he experienced such a surge of ungovernable anger that he wanted to kill someone. He wanted to strike out and hit Stefan and his uncle, and go on hitting them until his rage was quenched. Though it never would or could be.

  Stefan recognised the turmoil in his face. Beside him, Johann Ritrer began to speak, pausing for Stefan to translate. Before he could do so, William snapped at him to shut up, and go away. He ignored them and knelt beside his daughter. He didn’t trust himself to look at either of them. To think that for more than a year she had lived in this barn, like some bonded farm servant. Why hadn’t she told him? How could they have allowed it? This pigsty. How dare they?

  He gently stroked the sleeping Elizabeth’s brow, and felt it clammy and far too hot. He tried to calm himself. There were decisions to be made, things to be done. He got to his feet, pushed past them and went out to the landau. The driver was waiting there, the same cluster of children gathered around, staring at the vehicle.

  ‘Inquisitive mob,’ he said. ‘Everything all right, sir?’

  ‘No,’ William Patterson said. ‘Drive into Hahndorf. Fetch a doctor, and we’ll need an ambulance.’ He gave him money, watched the carriage speed off, then he returned to the shed.

  Elizabeth was still asleep. Ritter and Stefan had not moved.

  The farmer was again speaking, a low urgent guttural stream, and seeing William he directed it towards him, and waited for Stefan to interpret. Stefan shook his head, reluctant to do so. Ritter gestured, insisting.

  ‘My uncle,’ Stefan said, plainly loath to translate, ‘is sorry. He asks if you will please accept a glass of schnapps, while he tries to explain.’

  William simply gazed at them as if they were both insane. Stefan shrugged. ‘I said you would not agree. He wishes to try to make you understand why we live in here. His house is tiny, and there is no room. His own children sleep in sheds like this.’

  ‘You tell the fucking bastard,’ William spaced his words like stab wounds, ‘I don’t care what conditions his children live in.

  How dare he allow my daughter to live like this? How dare you? Tell him to take his filthy bloody schnapps and go to hell. Now get the bastard out of here, and you go with him.’

  He turned away, as if the sight of them was an offence he could no longer tolerate, and saw Elizabeth stirring. He knelt and took her hand. Her eyes opened, and she blinked at him in wonder. ‘Papa? When did you come? How long have you been here?’ She tried to sit up.

  ‘Rest, darling,’ he said gently. ‘I’m getting a doctor.’

  ‘But the doctor’s been. He came a week ago. Stefan insisted, and he walked into town to bring him. I’m really much better.’

  ‘We’ll see about that. I’m going to bring a proper doctor from Adelaide.’ He was shocked by how thin and pale she looked. He did not want her to sense it, but he was afraid. She seemed so fragile.

  ‘Have you seen the baby?’ she asked.

  He had almost forgotten there was a baby. She indicated an improvised crib on the far side of the bed. It looked like a fruit box, with blankets inside. He realised, with a fresh rush of anger, that it was a fruit box. He gazed down at the tiny crinkled face of the sleeping child, less than two weeks old.

  ‘Boy or girl?’ he asked.

  ‘Another boy,’ she said, and he remembered from her letter she had wanted a girl.

  There was a sound that made him turn. In the dark corner of the shed there was an actual cot, and in it a child sitting up, sleepily rubbing his eyes.

  ‘That’s Heinrich,’ his daughter’s voice said, and William saw a tiny replica of himself, who gazed at him and began to cry.

  It was a busy twenty-four hours, but by the following day Elizabeth was installed in an upstairs bedroom of the German Arms Hotel, with a trained nurse brought from Adelaide in attendance. The children were in cots in the adjoining room, with an English-speaking village girl engaged to care for them. William himself occupied a room at the end of the hall, after having been driven back to Adelaide, where he engaged the services of a leading physician. He kept the hired landau and its driver, and billeted him at one of the smaller Hahndorf inns. It was costing him a considerable amount, and he sent a telegram to his bank for more money.

  The Adelaide doctor had charged an exorbitant fee, and after a long and careful examination had diagnosed anaemia and fatigue, but found no evidence of septicaemia.

  ‘She’s simply exhausted,’ he told William. ‘She had her second child far too soon after the first. No rest at all, and as for working picking grapes … ’ He shook his head at the thought. ‘It’s all very well for these peasant women. They could drop one, and go on chopping wood,’ he said, although there were no peasant women and little wood chopping in his exclusive Goodwood practice. He prescribed a tonic and complete rest, recommending the local practitioner, Doctor Boettcher, as perfectly capable of handling the case.

  With some reluctance, William accepted this, and the mild, middle-aged German doctor visited daily. As he explained to William, he should have been called to see Elizabeth in the weeks prior to her birth, but many of the farming community were so poor, that the doctor was only called as a last resort.

  ‘Are the Ritters very poor?’ William enquired, for while their farm appeared almost destitute, he had no way of measuring their means by local standards. He meant to find out, and this medico appeared well informed and obliging.

  ‘They’re careful, frugal people,’ Boettcher said. ‘But this year they’re poor. His grapes were too stressed to make wine, and his vintage last year was also disappointing.’

  ‘I thought this was not a good wine-growing area,’ William said. Boettcher gave him a speculative glance, and nodded. He realised he was being used by this wealthy visitor from the east to gather some information he required.

  ‘It’s not. He’s a stubborn man — Johann. He’d be better pulling out the vines and planting turnips and cabbage.’ He did not add that he had not been paid for delivering the child, or for his subsequent visit, and felt unable to ask for payment from Stefan, who had nothing, or from Ritter who was, as an Australian friend had once expressed, as tight as a fish’s arsehole. As if suspecting this, William took out his wallet and extracted three five-pound notes, which was more money than the doctor had seen all month.

  ‘How soon can my daughter travel?’ He asked it while still holding the notes in his hand.

  ‘To where?’

  William hesitated. He had discussed his plan with no one, least of all Elizabeth herself. He needed more time to formulate the proposal.

  ‘To Adelaide,’ he said. ‘I thought the change may be good for her. Or even perhaps a trip to Sydney, to visit her mother.’

  ‘I would not recommend the longer trip just at present.’

  ‘When? She’d have a sleeping compartment, and there’d be a nurse for the children.’

  The doctor could sense his eagerness.

  ‘In that case, within a month,’ he said, expressing his thanks as he was handed the fifteen pounds.

  ‘You’ll give me your full account in due course,’ William said, after arranging for him to continue to call.
‘And I’d be obliged if you’d keep the matter of any travel to yourself. I’ve not yet raised the matter with my daughter — or her husband,’ he remembered to add.

  The doctor took his leave. He wondered if he was being paid so liberally for his medical opinion or his silence, and contemplated the cheering thought of several more weeks of daily visits. He could soon afford to think about that new buggy he needed.

  Stefan came late each afternoon. On the first occasion, William had been in her room, talking with her. By chance he moved to shut the window, and saw him approaching along the street. He told Elizabeth it was time he left her to rest, and went downstairs. There was a guarded moment, as they met at the hotel entrance.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Sleeping,’ William told him.

  ‘I’ll sit with her until she wakes up.’

  ‘There are to be no visitors,’ William said. ‘Doctor’s orders.’ Stefan gazed at him. He is different, William realised. He was nothing like the apprehensive boy he remembered from Sydney. ‘You have every right to be angry,’ Stefan said, ‘but no right to keep me from seeing my wife.’ He did not even wait for a reply, but moved past William, into the hotel and up the stairs.

  William had no choice but to tolerate it. He dared not run the risk of alienating her, nor yet put her into a position where she would have to make a choice.

  The days passed slowly for him. While he felt hopeful that what he planned would come to fruition, he had to curb his impatience. Meanwhile he took several journeys in the landau, with the informative driver, and talked to land agents and vignerons. It was a way of passing the time, and natural for him to show an interest in property values. He soon had a thorough knowledge of the prices and the worth of land in the Mount Lofty area and the valleys beyond. He composed a careful letter to Edith giving details of Elizabeth’s progress, and wrote to Hannah every day.

  He saw little of his two grandchildren. The baby slept a lot.

  Heinrich showed some signs of affection, and would smile and take tottering steps towards him whenever William was near, and once or twice he picked him up and felt a stir of fondness. But it was difficult for him to accept a grandchild of his own blood with the name of Heinrich Muller, so he kept his reserve, bided his time, and waited for his daughter to recover. Then they could discuss the future.

  Elizabeth was improving daily, and Boettcher was well pleased.

  She began to take her meals downstairs. The small hotel dining room was immaculate, but it smelt of Sauerkraut and furniture polish, and he became heartily sick of the limited menu, the main items of which were Wurst and Schnitzel. One day he suggested they take the landau to the nearby town of Balhannah, where he bought her a pair of new shoes and a shawl, and they strolled together then enjoyed a lunch of salad and cheese in the garden of a local inn.

  It was a picturesque spot, their table shaded by flowering vines, with a view across a valley to distant windmills. William knew the time had come to broach the subject.

  ‘I’ll have to go home at the end of next week, Lizzie,’ he said almost casually, ‘although I could wait a little longer if you’d like to come east with me.’

  Elizabeth had suspected for some time that such an offer would be made. She had had many hours, recuperating in the hotel bedroom, to contemplate her father’s course of action. That there would be one, she had no doubt. She had understood the angry disbelief with which he had seen their living quarters. She knew herself that she could not go back to that awful shed, or to the surly insensibility of the Ritter family.

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’ He looked at her. ‘I’d like you to come home with me. You and the children.’

  ‘For a visit?’ she asked, although she knew the answer.

  ‘For good,’ William said.

  ‘And my husband?’ There was a distinct pause. Elizabeth would not allow it to continue. ‘What about Stefan?’

  ‘Any man who lets his wife live like that doesn’t deserve her,’ William answered. ‘Why in the name of God didn’t you write and tell me how bad things were?’

  ‘Papa, does your offer include Stefan?’ she persisted.

  ‘No,’ he said firmly, ‘it doesn’t.’

  ‘Then let’s not discuss it any further,’ she answered, and although he had intended to remain calm, her attitude so infuriated him that he lost his temper.

  ‘He’s not worth bloody tuppence,’ William snapped. ‘He can’t provide for you and the children. He’s a useless no-hoper, and the sooner you’re rid of him, the better.’

  It was not how he had planned to discuss this, but he was too incensed to stop now.

  ‘What has he ever done for you? He persuaded you to run away, dragged you halfway across the country to slave on a farm and live in a tin humpy. As well as giving you two kids in double quick time, and not having the sense or decency to know you were sick.’

  They were the only people in the garden, but a maid from the kitchen heard his raised voice and looked out.

  ‘Don’t shout, Papa,’ she said. There were so many half truths, so much distortion in the tirade, that she hardly knew how to begin to answer him. She knew she must remain composed.

  ‘He didn’t persuade me to run away,’ she continued quietly. ‘And he had no way of knowing his uncle was poor and mean. He did know I was sick; he was desperately worried and brought the doctor. I was the one who said we had no money to pay for more visits.’

  ‘All you had to do was write to me. You’d have had money.’

  ‘And a reply saying I told you so.’

  ‘Well, I did tell you so.’ He felt resentment again affecting his judgement. ‘You could have married any bloke in Sydney. Anyone at all. But you had to go and choose this foreigner.’

  It was true, he thought. She could have married into one of the leading local families, given herself status and position and provided him with a son-in-law to respect, and grandchildren of whom to be proud, instead of tying him to a bunch of peasants who could not even speak the language. He knew he was being unwise, but he could not help himself

  ‘You ran away,’ he said bitterly, ‘after all I did for you. How could you have done that, Lizzie? Hurt your mother and me, and run off like some lovesick kid?’

  ‘How could you have lied to me, Father? Torn up his letters, hired a policeman to keep him away, as if he were a delinquent? Deceived me and let me be unhappy, because you decided he wasn’t suitable.’

  ‘Well, by Christ he wasn’t.’ His voice rose again, and he paused to regain control. ‘He couldn’t provide. But you were too damn proud to write and ask for help. And now I want you to come home and start again. I want to give you and your children a decent life, and you still want to hang on to this bludger.’

  Elizabeth put down her knife and fork, and stood up from the table. She looked down at her father.

  ‘Stop calling him a bludger,’ she said, her voice still quiet but sharper than he had ever heard it. ‘I won’t have it. I’m not going to leave him, no matter what you say.’

  ‘You’d go back and live in that shed?’ he asked.

  ‘If I have to.’ But her heart sank at the thought of it.

  ‘Rather that, than come back to Sydney without him?’

  She forced herself to nod. He shook his head in bewilderment.

  ‘What in God’s name do you see in him?’

  I can’t tell you, she thought. How do I explain the way my blood runs hot and my body craves him when we’re naked together. The joy I feel with his body inside mine, and the way we can make each other so happy. Perhaps that’s just lust, but it’s something I’ve never felt for anyone else, and they’ve been lots who’ve tried, Father, many more than you know. All those spoiled, rich young men — the ones you invited to my birthday parties, to tennis and dinners. But it’s not only lust. We can talk without having to speak, just by looking at each other. In a room full of people, we can tell what the other is thinking. You wouldn’t understand how he is sometimes discour
aged and needs me, and I can feel despair and unhappiness and need him, and how we’ve never really had much of a chance to do more than struggle, and the one thing in my life I want is for us to have some sort of hope. No silver spoons, Father. No big gestures. No rich handouts. That would make us your hostages.

  Just a chance to make our own way — to find out if we can survive. I care about him, and I don’t want to see him hurt, and that’s not lust. That’s love, but I can’t tell you that, because you and Mama have never known love — I’ve realised it for a long time. I could use the word, but I don’t think you know what it means.

  She suddenly felt a great sadness for him. She put her hand on his, and said instead, ‘Finish your lunch, Papa. I’ll go for a walk. I’m sorry we had to quarrel.’ She forced a smile. ‘It was such a nice day.’

  He watched her walk away, a slim, fair-haired girl in a rather shabby dress, and he knew that he’d lost her. He would have to make the alternate offer. She would not be coming home to enliven the gaunt Centennial Park house. If they went on living on the Ritter farm in that primitive shed, virtually as bonded servants, the marriage might ultimately collapse out of sheer misery.

  On the other hand, he knew he could never allow it. In all conscience there was only one thing he could do for her now. But he fully intended to do it in his own way.

  ELEVEN

  ‘Segne, was Du uns bescheret hast.’ Uncle Johann’s voice solemnly carried across the dinner table and his wife and children dutifully chorused, ‘Amen.’ William sat midway along the scrubbed table, listening to the guttural grace, observing them all, the bare kitchen, the sparse helpings of dumplings on plates in front of them, the sudden movement to pick up spoons as soon as the blessing finished.

  ‘Just a moment,’ he said with quiet authority, and though they did not understand his words, the command in his voice demanded their attention. They had hardly recovered from their astonishment at his arrival a short time earlier, with a recuperated and radiant Elizabeth, who was wearing a new dress. Or the fact that he seemed to have recovered from his anger, and was sitting among them at the table, although he had refused the offer of a glass of schnapps.