Dorothy Eden

by Vines of Yarrabee

  As if she read his thoughts she stirred, and said that she would go upstairs. Would he be late in coming to bed?

  Was there eagerness in her voice ? He would like to have thought so. When she had talked about the garden she had sounded animated, though there had been a febrile edge to her voice that had made him think of someone whistling in the dark to keep his spirits up.

  It would be different when all those plants she talked of were growing and she could watch them every day. And perhaps a seed would be growing inside her. A child would be the thing to make her settle down happily.

  Yarrabee, his vineyard, this tremendous country he loved and with which he now absolutely identified himself. And this fragile elegant exciting woman. Would heaven strike because he had too much?

  When he went upstairs half an hour later Eugenia, in a white lawn nightgown with lace at the high neck and wrists, was sitting up in bed, her fine dark hair loose and shining. She had obviously made every effort to be as attractive for him as was possible. A light flowery scent hung in the air. A blue silk bedrobe hung over a chair. The curtains were drawn and the room looked dim and mysterious in the candlelight, with the big bed, and its quiet almost ghostly occupant.

  This was more like a wedding night, Gilbert thought with pleasure. This was different from that hot squalid room last night and the lumpy bed and the lovemaking he had not intended.

  The only thing wrong, he realized, as he came closer, was his bride’s face. It was tense with apprehension.

  He made himself delay a hasty undressing, and instead sat on the side of the bed and talked.

  ‘We must write and thank your grandmother for such a splendid wedding present. I shouldn’t think there’s a finer bed in Australia.’

  ‘It’s French.’

  ‘I know, you told me so, and I can see it for myself. That elaborate headboard. I remember nothing but solid mahogany beds and heavy curtains in England. Very sombre. This is delightfully foreign.’

  ‘My parents thought it a little frivolous. All those garlands and cupids. I hardly knew how you would like it.’

  ‘I like it immensely. It will be a feature of Yarrabee. Like the Venetian wine glasses, and the Chinese silk wallpaper.’

  ‘I haven’t heard anything of either of those.’

  ‘Neither had I until this minute. You have inspired me to these ideas. My wine will require the glasses, and my wife the setting of a beautiful room. I know a sea captain who goes regularly to the East. He will get the silk for the walls, and silk for dresses, too, if you want it. And I know how to get the wine glasses, through an importer in Sydney. You must have realized we weren’t living in the wilderness after seeing Vaucluse. There are other homes in New South Wales that are just as fine.’

  She was catching his mood.

  ‘I have brought family silver. It’s in the packing cases that haven’t yet been opened. And a lot of other things. Pictures, ornaments, rugs. A sampler I made when I was a child. A rocking horse.’ She laughed a little but her laughter trembled. ‘Mamma said I should bring that, although it seemed—well, how does one know?’

  Gilbert sprang up.

  ‘Venetian goblets or not, we still have glasses out of which to drink wine. Where’s your maid? No, I’ll get them myself.’

  ‘Get what? Why?’

  ‘Only a glass of madeira to make you sleep. It’s not even of my own brewing.’

  He thought this was an inspiration. Only Mrs Jarvis saw him return upstairs with the silver tray holding the bottle and glasses. She paused, then went quickly out into the courtyard as if she might have thought she was witnessing something private.

  It was private, too, the fact that he had to make his wife relax and look loving. But not unusual. Far from it. Though it would have been better if he had had this aphrodisiac last night.

  ‘This is Spanish wine,’ he explained, as he poured the ruby liquid into the long-stemmed glasses. ‘I brought over a supply to carry me through until my own wines were ready. I still have a couple of dozen bottles. Now savour it, and tell me what difference you can detect between this and the Yarrabee claret we had at dinner.’

  Eugenia sipped obediently, holding the glass in her narrow white hands. She was intent on trying to give an answer that would be intelligent enough to please him.

  ‘Does it taste more smoothly on one’s tongue?’

  ‘You’re perfectly right,’ he exclaimed triumphantly. ‘That’s because it has been bottled for several years. The flavour improves.

  The rawness disappears. And the colour—’ He held up his glass, fascinated as always by the rich colour of red wine. There was nothing in the world like it. ‘Drink it up, my love. After a couple of glasses of this the world looks as rosy as the wine.’

  ‘Isn’t that—d-dangerous?’

  Her tongue was already tripping delightfully over her words. The colour was coming into her cheeks.

  She frowned a little. ‘I can hear people singing.’

  ‘That’s the servants. They’ll have had their rum issue.’

  ‘Rum?’

  ‘Unfortunately their tastes have been corrupted. Rum has been the drink that has saved their reason. Or so they think. But I intend to educate them differently. Let me quote from another Australian who brought some of the first vine cuttings here. Mr James Busby said, “Now I think it is extremely likely that if each farmhouse possessed its vineyard and produced a sufficiency of wine to supply the wants of all the labourers employed on the farm, as well as the farmer’s own family, a deadly blow would be given the ruinous habit of the farmer himself indulging daily in the excessive use of spirits and his free labourer running every time he received his wages to the nearest public house.”’

  He paused. ‘How does that seem to you, as the farmer’s wife?’

  ‘I hadn’t heard of your ruinous habits, my love. But as an exercise in memory, you have done very well.’

  Her dry voice, and the gleam in her eyes, pleased him. Another glass, and he would begin to undress.

  ‘But I shall never like the taste,’ she said presently, putting her glass down.

  ‘What, not even in France, at your uncle’s chateau?’

  ‘I pretended,’ she admitted, showing a dimple in her cheek.

  Now he had to undress quickly, and blow the candles out. His self-discipline had come to an end. He wanted her nightgown over her head and that slight body in his arms. And gently… Gently, if he could…

  So gently that she gave only one small cry…

  From the beginning Eugenia had seen through Gilbert’s careful plan. She had had her own plans, the nightgown she and Sarah had made with such loving care, the brushing she had asked Jane to give her hair, a hundred strokes, and then ten more for good measure, the perfume, the welcoming picture she had made sitting up in bed when Gilbert had come in. She had even allowed her head to get dizzy with the wine, commending Gilbert’s good sense, for when he had pinched out the candles and she had lain down in the darkness, she had felt as if she were floating as lightly as a cloud.

  But it had all been of no use at all. For as soon as he lay beside her and touched her the walls began to close in. She was suffocating. She wanted to scream. The darkness was black and terrifying, and when she felt the weight of his body, and his now-familiar wine-smelling breath in her face, the nightmare of the previous night began all over again. Except that this time, instead of the melancholy howls of a man driven to lunacy, the sound she heard was a sick child crying. And the grave under the willows was open and black…

  She was over-tired, over-strained. The tremendous events in her life, the heat, the inevitable homesickness, that dreadful experience last night, followed too quickly by her initiation into marriage, had created a mental state that must surely pass. It was not essential that she should enjoy her husband’s caresses, but at least they did not need to induce this revulsion in her.

  She would get over it. She must.

  There was no one she could talk to. She could
only sit at her familiar writing desk, taken out of its packing case and placed at the window in the little sitting-room, and write to Sarah.

  But what could she tell Sarah, so far away and a spinster.

  ‘All my belongings are now unpacked, and seeing my familiar things about me has made me weep a little from homesickness. We have put the turkey rug in my sitting-room, together with my desk, and the low chair with the tapestry back that you worked. My piano is in the drawing-room, which is a large light handsome room.

  ‘I have hung your water-colour of Lichfield Court over the mantelpiece, and I spend a great deal of time looking at it, and thinking of you within those dear walls. Yarrabee is going to be a fine place, too, but I cannot be expected to love it yet! There is so much still to be done inside, and the windows open on to a veritable wilderness. I close my eyes and dream of smooth lawns and tinkling fountains, and open them to the acres of coarse brown grass and blinding sunlight.

  ‘Everything gets green in the spring, I am told, so that is when I will have the lawns laid down. Gilbert has allowed me to have one of his workmen as a gardener. Peabody, who is nearly sixty, and whose weather-beaten appearance makes him look more (he is like a crooked stick, with lizard eyes), says he has been a gardener all his life. He hints at grand employers in England, before he got washed up on these shores—and one hesitates to ask how he got washed up. But he is an admirable worker, if a little gloomy in temperament, and insists on calling me “my lady”. Already we have made great progress in planning the garden. The rosebeds have been dug, and left to lie fallow. The cuttings must be planted early in the winter, Peabody tells us.

  ‘Winter! It seems unimaginable in this oven-like heat. In a month it will be vintage, and after that Gilbert wants to begin entertaining, so I have simply a thousand things to do, including engaging satisfactory staff.

  ‘Jane King who came to me from Mrs Ashburton has too nervous a disposition, I have discovered. She admires the house, but is finding the country lonely. Mrs Jarvis, on the other hand, is proving excellent. She is a very good plain cook, and, more important, a good organiser. Already I find I turn to her for advice. She has what Nurse would have called an old head on young shoulders.

  ‘But she is a widow, and it would not surprise me, if she married again, even though she will be burdened with a fatherless child. Then I suppose Gilbert and I would lose her…’

  Eugenia laid down her pen, thinking how ironic it was that after her reluctance to engage Mrs Jarvis, she was now afraid of the day when she might leave Yarrabee,

  She read through the pages of neat upright writing, a little scrawled here and there when all the things she had to pour out to Sarah had run away with her.

  Yet the matters that weighed on her most—her new and entirely irrational fear of the dark, the long nights when she kept waking to find herself listening for any unfamiliar sound, her reluctance to retire to bed, and the way she kept Jane with her until the girl was dropping asleep on her feet then, although she dreaded to be alone, her catch of apprehension when she heard her husband’s footsteps on the stairs… These were things she could not put down in a letter, nor even tell Sarah, if she were here in the room with her.

  They were foolish nervous fancies of which she was thoroughly ashamed.

  Once during their love-making Gilbert had asked her if he hurt her, for she had seemed to wince from him.

  She had quickly buried her face in his shoulder, whispering no, she loved him, of course.

  She had added afterwards, when he was almost asleep, that the night was full of strange noises that alarmed her. If he were ever away she would keep the candle burning all night.

  ‘Good gracious, you are a strange creature!’ His voice was indulgent, although it held a tinge of impatience. She had roused him on the edge of sleep and he was tired.

  So she didn’t go on to confess that she still thought of that miserable convict. Sometimes a bearded desperate face came into her dreams.

  She had so much to do and yet so little. She could decide where to hang pictures, where to put furniture, give orders as to what food should be prepared, but she must not actually do these things herself. She had servants, Gilbert pointed out. Make them work, keep them out of mischief. He didn’t wish her to soil her hands with anything at all. She must occupy herself as she had done at Lichfield Court. With her music, her embroidery, her water-colours, a morning walk before the sun got too hot. He also encouraged her to drive the buggy. He wanted her to pay calls in Parramatta, though there were few enough people to constitute the kind of society she had been used to.

  However, the Governor and his wife spent the greater part of the year at Government House, a plain two-storeyed building, the first of its kind to be built in the colony in 1799. Apart from them there were other people whom it was desirable to meet, politicians, bankers, merchants, sheep station holders who called themselves the aristocracy and who came to town for ceremonial occasions.

  These were the potential customers for Gilbert’s wine. Cultivating them was a necessity, if not always a pleasure.

  It would be better, Eugenia thought, when vintage was over. As the days grew shorter and the nights chilly enough to light a fire, they could spend companionable evenings together, she stitching at her embroidery, and Gilbert doing his accounts which had to be neglected in the busy season. Then, she told herself, it would be like being at home in England.

  Now she scarcely saw her husband. He was up at daybreak and off outdoors, often not to make another appearance until dinner at night. He apologized for not always joining her for the midday meal. He was too hot and sweaty, he said, he would offend her. He preferred to eat a cold lunch with the men in the fields. This was how he had been used to living. He could not change his working schedule for a wife. But he could bath and change in the evening, and eat in the dining-room in a civilized manner. And there were always Sundays.

  Sarah would be interested in their Sundays.

  ‘We go to church in Parramatta for the morning service,’ Eugenia wrote. ‘Gilbert and I drive in the buggy, the house servants, Mrs Jarvis, Jane, and a young girl Phoebe, whose parents have a bakers’ shop in Paramatta, follow in the dray, driven by Tom Sloan, Gilbert’s overseer. Murphy and Peabody also ride in this vehicle.

  ‘The rest have to travel the distance on foot. Gilbert says this keeps them out of mischief since the Sabbath is regarded as far as possible as a holiday. And, of course, as I have told you previously, all these men are convicts on ticket-of-leave and it is an obligation on our part to see that they attend divine service.

  ‘They put on their Sunday best, such as it is, and some of them actually seem to enjoy the service. If their lusty singing is anything although to be truthful not all are sad, some are low and cunning, to go by. But I confess I can never get used to their poor sad faces, and one at least has a look of boyish innocence. But all of them are too thin, and show signs of their past ordeal. Gilbert does not care for me to show curiosity about them, and indeed has asked me not to go near their living quarters. So all I see of them is this weekly attendance at church, and only God knows whether the minister’s words make any impression on them.

  ‘We come home from church to a cold collation set out by Yella, who really is the most ill-favoured human being I have ever seen, and how my poor Gilbert survived when she did the cooking is beyond me. I, or Mrs Jarvis, have always to hastily inspect the table, and set knives and forks to rights. I imagine Yella wonders what barbarian instruments they are.

  ‘After our meal Gilbert dozes in his chair on the verandah, and I read or stroll in what will one day, with hard work and faith, be my garden. I have one great hardship, and that is that there is so little to read. Would you send me a set of Miss Austen’s novels, as these will always bear re-reading, and anything else that you think I would enjoy re-reading a dozen times. Otherwise, I have only a treatise by a Mr James Busby on the cultivation of vines and the making of wine, and the Bible. I have long ago exhausted a
ll I brought with me…’

  Eugenia found the new maid, Phoebe, willing but quite ignorant of such refinements as polishing furniture and silver, brushing carpets, and making beds correctly. She was a clumsy girl, and made a constant clatter. At Lichfield Court, she would not have lasted a week. But this was Australia where one had to be less critical or one would find oneself servantless. Besides, poor child, she was almost as ignorant as Yella. Eugenia had found her one day tracing the scrolled flowers and garlands on the French bed with the tip of a none-too-clean finger.

  ‘Have you never seen anything like that, Phoebe?’

  ‘Oh, no, mum, where would I have the chance?’

  ‘Ma’am, Phoebe, not mum.’

  ‘Yes, mum, you’ve told me that. I can’t get me tongue round ma’am, that’s the truth.’

  ‘You must try. It isn’t very difficult. And don’t waste time in here. You haven’t begun on the stairs yet.’

  There was so much dust. Windows had to be open to allow a current of air to circulate, and with the air came the red dust that lifted off the dry earth in small whirlwinds and deposited itself on floors, furniture, windowsills. It even settled on one’s tongue, with a gritty taste, and irritated one’s eyes. Indoors, Eugenia kept her hair covered with a light muslin cap, and outdoors she wore her large floppy garden hat tied beneath her chin with ribbons. This kept the dust out of her hair, but Gilbert, who was less careful, came in at night with his own hair powdered with the clinging stuff. He washed it when he washed the grime and perspiration off himself before coming down to dinner, and then it clung to his head in a neat dark red cap that made him, Eugenia said amusedly, look villainous.

  This irritation of dust would go with the first autumn rains, he told Eugenia. But he was privately enjoying it, because it was part of the excitement of the ripening grapes and the approach of vintage. His blue eyes had a clear compelling sparkle, he could scarcely sit down for five minutes to rest, he had to be watching over his vines. Even at night he would go outdoors to see that the stars were shining, and that the fine weather would last. Nothing, Eugenia was convinced, was more permanent than the iron band of heat round the earth. But Gilbert had stories about hailstorms, and great gusts of wind that could strip the fruit from the vines in one destructive hour.