On the ground floor the dining-room, the drawing-room, the library (as yet empty of books), the sitting-room, each opening on to the verandah, a china room, a linen room, and across a paved courtyard the kitchen, the dairy, and the servants’ rooms. Upstairs six bedrooms, a nursery, a schoolroom, two bathrooms with enormous baths mounted on pedestals. It was all just as Gilbert had told her it would be, three years ago, in England. He had kept his word about everything.
In her mind, Eugenia was planning wallpapers, curtains, rugs. She would like a yellow bedroom and a blue bedroom, as there was at Lichfield Court. She could hardly wait to get at her boxes and crates and begin unpacking the smaller items she had brought with her. The French four-poster bed, already arranged in the largest bedroom, looked wonderful. The high ceiling and the long windows on to the balcony set it off perfectly. There was a turkey rug that she would put in the sitting-room which faced south, the direction that got the most shade in this upside-down country.
Gilbert enjoyed her exclamations of pleasure, but he hadn’t too much time to waste on the house. He was impatient to show her his prized possession, his vineyard.
Jane, still a greenish colour beneath her crumpled bonnet, but looking more cheerful, had crept into the downstairs hall. She had sat, a silent third, in the back of the buggy, more like a miserable little animal than a human being. But now her eyes had brightened a little, and she was timidly asking for instructions.
‘Take the smaller bags upstairs and begin unpacking,’ Eugenia said, enjoying giving her first order in her new home. ‘We will decide later where things are to be put. But I would like my white muslin aired and ironed. Gilbert, is there someone to prepare a midday meal for us?’
‘Yella will do that. To the best of her ability.’
‘Yella?’
‘A native woman. Now don’t look alarmed, my love. That’s the very reason that we have brought Mrs Jarvis. Because I didn’t think you would care for Yella’s very amateur skill. Besides, she hasn’t the most advanced ideas on hygiene. Well, come. I’ve waited long enough to show you the most important part of the estate.’
On the far side of the courtyard, beyond the kitchen buildings, there were stables, cowsheds, and a row of huts. Where the outside staff lived, Gilbert said briefly. The stable boys and the labourers who tended the vines.
‘Convicts?’ Eugenia asked, trying not to let her distaste show.
‘Ticket-of-leave men and two ex-convicts who have elected to stay at Yarrabee. They work well, for the most part. They get drunk at vintage, of course. One has to allow that. And one has to see they go to church on Sundays. That is a law.’
The sun was growing unbearably hot. Eugenia was glad to step into the cool winery with its immensely thick stone walls situated a little distance beyond the stables. It was full of casks, and had a pervading sour smell that she found nauseating. The odour strengthened as she followed Gilbert who carried a lighted lantern downstairs into a long cool dark cellar.
Here were more casks which Gilbert explained were filled with wine ready for bottling. In another room, bottles lying in neat rows on racks were labelled with vintage dates. The huge vats, empty now, would be scoured and made ready for pressing the new season’s grapes in just over a month, if this hot weather kept up.
Gilbert went on to describe the pressing, the great piles of grapes squeezed until the juice, or must, ran into the vat to await fermentation. He explained how the bloom of the grapes carried its own fermenting property, how the temperature of the cellar must be exactly right, and the hope that the fruit would have had the most beneficial amount of rain during its swelling on the vine. Too little affected the flavour, too much produced a woolly fungus.
After fermentation the bottling was a skill in itself. Sufficient space must be left between cork and wine to allow ullage, the bottle must lie on its side—
‘Are you following me, Eugenia?’
‘I am afraid some of the words you use are unfamiliar.’
‘They will soon be familiar to you. Is something the matter? You look a little pale.’
‘There’s a very strong odour down here.’
‘You’ll get used to that. You’ll grow to like it. Wait until vintage, when the baskets of grapes begin coming in. Murphy and Tom Sloan and I do the pressing. It’s hard work. We don’t use our feet as the Portuguese do, we use wooden presses, which are just as effective and more civilized to my way of thinking.’
‘Gilbert, I’m sorry, a little fresh air…’
She managed not to vomit. She rested on an empty cask in the storeroom above, and saw Gilbert’s cool disdainful gaze. Was it disdainful? Or just disappointed? Was he going to be sorry that he had married a woman who couldn’t stand the smell of sour wine? She was furious with herself.
‘I will get used to it,’ she said determinedly.
‘Of course. I expect you’re still suffering from the shock of last night. I should have realized that. Shall we return to the house? I can take you up to the terraces later.’
She would have preferred the terraces, where the sun shone on rows and rows of ripening grapes, to the dark winery cellar. She was sure she would have been able to express enthusiasm there, and have felt her sense of adventure returning.
But Gilbert, leading her back to the house, seemed to have overlooked the fact that she had not expressed enthusiasm. He was explaining that he had laid out his entire capital on the house and its contents, and the vineyards. It was important that this year’s harvest be a good one. The portents were excellent. The vines were bearing well, there hadn’t been late spring frosts, the little blight he had noticed on the Malaga vines hadn’t reached the red Bordeaux or the Epernay. If only it would rain a little in the next few days he would begin planting out the new clippings. It was best to put them in after a heavy shower. He had had men preparing new terraces all the winter and spring.
‘We’ll give a house warming after vintage. You can dress the house up by then, can’t you? I have enough money left to make the place civilized.’
‘The garden?’ Eugenia asked. For there had been none, only dusty dried grass and a few recently planted shrubs, struggling to survive.
‘That’s your province, too. I’ll let you have Peabody. He says he was a gardener at a royal palace, though I doubt if he’s telling the truth. He lives in a realm of fantasy. But it was he who planted the shrubs. He said coming straight from England, you would be homesick for a bit of green. You can buy plants from a nursery in Parramatta, rose bushes, geraniums, plenty of English flowers to stop you feeling homesick.’
Eugenia evaded his searching look, and asked how such plants could grow in the parched soil. The shrubs didn’t appear to be very happy.
‘They need to be kept watered. You can even have a lawn if you water it. Luckily water is one commodity we aren’t short of. I’ve sunk a very good well. And when it rains that little creek down the slope overflows its banks. There’s a lake five miles away where the black swans nest. You’ll find it charming. Well, my dear? Are you satisfied with your new home?’
As convincingly as he could wish, Eugenia replied that she found it quite astonishing, out here in the wilderness.
His look of gratification made her smile. She was touched that he had wanted so much to please her.
‘We’ll make it famous. We’re the aristocracy in this country, because we’ve come of our own free will. That makes us the true inheritors. Do you see what I mean?’
She could hardly tell him that at this particular moment she was reluctant to accept her inheritance. The dusty dry land—would it ever grow roses? Would she ever be able to walk bare-headed in the blazing sun, or get used to the wild melancholy uncanny bird calls or the enormous sky? Or the captive men who sometimes howled like dogs. She gave a little shudder that Gilbert took for physical discomfort.
‘You haven’t brought your parasol. It’s my fault, I should have insisted. I never want to see you out without it when the sun’s as hot as this. Yo
u have an English skin. I want it preserved. I don’t want a burnt-up sallow wife.’
‘Very well, Gilbert,’ she answered meekly. If carrying a parasol pleased him, it was a simple enough thing to do.
She held the parasol over her head when she took a walk down to the creek later in the afternoon. Still suffering from that miserable inertia, the aftermath of last night’s unnerving experience, she had felt too languid to do anything but consent when Gilbert had suggested that the arrangements in the house be left until the arrival of the bullock dray with Mrs Jarvis, and the remainder of the baggage. It had become too hot even in the shade of the verandah where a rocking chair had been set out. Gilbert had said the creek was dry, but she thought she could see the shine of water. It looked cool.
Strolling down the half-mile slope was a small diversion in the boredom of the afternoon. For immediately after the midday meal Gilbert had gone off to his vineyard leaving her alone. He hadn’t bothered to conceal his impatience to get there.
She was glad to see him go, yet when he had done so she felt unbearably lonely. Jane, who had cheered up considerably now she saw that she had not come to a hovel, was busy washing and ironing the clothes they had worn on the journey. Yella, the native woman who looked at least a hundred years old but who must have been reasonably young since she was undoubtedly pregnant, had served an almost uneatable meal of tough cold, mutton, pickles and stale home-made bread. Eugenia had had to take herself sternly to task for feeling queasy at the thought of those brown hands touching the food. But she had eaten only a mouthful or two of the mutton. Poor Gilbert, if this had been his daily fare. Tomorrow she would take the servant problem in hand. There must be young white girls in the town of Parramatta who would come out here to learn to be housemaids.
Yella could remain, of course. Eugenia had no intention of being unkind, but in future the woman must have nothing to do with the actual cooking. She could prepare vegetables, under Mrs Jarvis’s instructions, wash dishes, sweep the floor. She would no doubt be happy enough. She looked a lazy creature. How unattractive the Australian natives were, with their low brows and deep-set animal eyes. But they were friendly and harmless if they were treated kindly. One didn’t need to fear a spear in one’s back. They had a musical language, too. Yarrabee. That was one of their words.
This property had been part of their hunting grounds. They were disturbed that white settlers were destroying the game, kangaroos and wallabies, emus, wombats and the giant lizards called goannas. Or so Gilbert had told her. In the past raiding parties of blacks had sometimes attacked small farms. But that time was over. All was peaceful now in these parts.
And if there had once been a gum forest here, there were still plenty of the tall graceful eucalyptus trees, some with white trunks, some mottled, some a pale pearly pink, like human flesh. There was also boxwood, tea tree, wattles and the fascinating blue-grey smoke trees. And down at the creek the willows drooping in the heat.
If there were no water, how did the willows survive?
Actually, there was the tiniest trickle of water surrounded by cracked yellow clay. And on the opposite side of this miserable stream in the shadow of one of the tired willows, a small cross. Two sticks nailed together and tilting sideways.
Surely it wasn’t a grave!
Catching her breath, Eugenia stepped across the tiny rivulet of water.
Unmistakably the mound, covered in dusty weeds and thistles, was a grave. A very small one which must belong to a child. What innocent little creature had breathed her last in this lonely unhallowed spot?
Bending down, Eugenia could decipher letters scratched with a burnt stick on the home-made cross. PRUDENCE.
In the distance white cockatoos, like overblown peonies, screeched in the gum trees. A little wind stirred the heat. A trickle of perspiration ran down Eugenia’s forehead. She caught the long-ago grief that had hung round the lonely little grave, and was filled with a sense of desolation.
What a strange haunted country this was, and how utterly alien she felt.
Chapter IX
IT HAD BEEN A good satisfying day, Gilbert reflected. At eight o’clock the swift dusk had come down. Now they sat dining by candlelight.
It was exactly as he had imagined it would be when he had returned from England and begun to plan his home. The pleasant civilized evenings spent with his wife after the toil of the day, the occasional conversation, though not too much of that because he didn’t care for chitter-chatter all the time. Nevertheless, this evening Eugenia had been a little too quiet.
She had asked some questions about a child’s grave down at the creek. He had had to make an effort to remember the circumstances. Mrs Jarvis was waiting on the table. Eugenia would have to make other arrangements about that. He had hired the woman to cook, not to wait on table. He found her quiet movements curiously distracting. She must have been well-trained in her youth. Her downcast eyes and expressionless face were faultless. But her neat dress accentuated rather than concealed a certain voluptuousness of figure, which perhaps accounted for his distraction.
‘What were you saying, my love? A child’s grave? Yes, I do remember the circumstances. A family on their way west by bullock waggon had camped down at the creek. It was vintage time, my first vintage. We were pretty busy. A man came up for help. He said his little girl was sick with a fever. He wanted to borrow a horse to go to Parramatta for a doctor. But the child died in the night, before the doctor arrived. So they asked permission to dig a grave by the creek and buried her there. Someone said prayers. Then they packed up and went on.’
‘Leaving her?’ Eugenia said distressfully.
‘What else could they do? This kind of thing happens out here.’
‘Was the mother very upset?’
‘I never saw her. I gave the father a glass of wine. But it was pretty raw and sour and he was in a distressed state. It only made him vomit.’
Eugenia winced.
‘How old was the little girl?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t believe I asked. She was the eldest of four. I suppose she was six or seven.’
Eugenia’s face in the candlelight looked very pale. Her eyes were intense. She might have been the bereaved mother herself.
‘I told you to keep out of the sun. You shouldn’t have walked down to the creek in the afternoon heat.’
‘I thought I could see water. It looked cool. But the leaves of the willows were dropping off.’
‘I’m afraid we’re in for a drought. My vines are ripening too fast. The grapes haven’t enough flavour. At this rate we’ll have to start picking in two or three weeks.’
Eugenia stirred her food with her fork. She exerted herself to make polite conversation.
‘Was everything well since you had been away?’
‘Comparatively. I have a good overseer, Tom Sloan. There have been no fights, which is saying something. One man was caught stealing. He had a bottle of wine under his coat. Meaning to drink it secretly, I expect. Have you given any thought to the garden, my dear?’
‘Did he have to be punished?’
That too intense look in her eyes again. But he liked her sensitivity.
‘The fellow stealing the wine? I let him off with a reprimand. Since I had just brought my bride home. He can count himself lucky. He owes his reprieve to you.’
‘Otherwise what would his punishment have been?’
‘A dozen lashes. Now why do you look at me like that? I don’t enjoy administering punishment any more than the poor wretch who gets it. But you must understand that these men are felons. Look at what happened last night.’
Eugenia pushed damp hair off her brow.
‘I would rather not talk about that. I have been trying to forget it. Could we have our coffee on the verandah?’
‘Of course. Splendid idea.’
They rocked gently in their rocking chairs in the warm darkness. Gilbert pointed out the southern cross, and other constellations, then, when Eugenia was silent,
fell silent himself. He could see the pale blur of her face, her quiet figure. He wanted to move nearer and take her hand in his, but desisted. Tonight she was too remote, wrapped in private thoughts. He intended to be very gentle later. He had had an occasional fleeting feeling of anxiety that he had allowed his desire to get out of hand last night. He had been so excited and stimulated by the sight of his bride trapping a felon that he had been unable to control himself. He had hoped Eugenia had understood his passion.
She had been so quiet all day that he had been forced to have those vague feelings of remorse. But tonight, in their own home in that elegant French bed which had made him laugh with a distinctly sensual pleasure when he had seen it, he would make amends. If amends were required.
‘I will plant honeysuckle to climb up the verandah posts,’ Eugenia said at last, dreamily. ‘Do you remember the honeysuckle over the summerhouse at Lichfield? It used to scent the mornings and evenings.’
‘It will remind you of home,’ Gilbert said.
‘Yes. Do you object to that?’
‘By no means. Plant all the things that make you happy. Rose-beds, perennial borders, yew trees, whatever you can persuade to grow.’
‘I will make a beautiful garden. A lily pool, a sundial, a yew walk, climbing roses for shade.’ She sighed. ‘But it will take a lifetime.’
‘Growth is quick here. Anyway, we have a lifetime.’
Now he did reach over and take her hand. She didn’t resist. Her own, small and warm and dry, lay within his. His heart began to beat faster. He tried to check his rising excitement, remembering, as he hadn’t done last night, that this delicately bred woman would have to be taught, patiently and gently, to return passion. But on the whole he liked that. He wouldn’t have it any other way. Even if she never did… But she would, of course. At least she would always welcome him into her arms.
Dorothy Eden Page 9
