by Janet Lee
Canon Rich looks puzzled.
Bed legs dipped in kerosene, he says.
To stop the ants, I say.
He nods, but I do not think he understands; perhaps he has never lived in the bush.
My mother had a fear of snakes, I say, and we always kept a snarling dog for protection from them. The dog did not have to be very big, just able to grab the snake behind the neck and shake it dead, which was frightening to watch. She preferred a dog with yellow eyes, for she said they were the best with snakes. And, you know, I have never liked dogs because of those we had when I was growing up because as a child I saw our dogs kill things. And even when I had a home of my own and the butcher shops, and there would have been plenty of meat scraps, we never kept one, as my husband Charles Andrews understood my dislike.
I suppose our houses were what you would call shepherd’s huts – made of sturdy timber on the sides, and timber shingles on the roof. The floor was often dirt and there might be a piece of calico stretched across to make a bedroom for my parents. Of course, there were many huts when we were on different properties, but they were always of a similar type.
We children slept on the table in the kitchen when we were very little for, as I said, my mother had a fear of snakes and she felt the table was the safest place for us.
When we grew older, my father made us a bed of timber poles, and laced together empty wheat sacks for the swag, and we used to pull it apart and cart it about when we moved from farm to farm. But it was too soft for my liking, and with all of us in it, it would sag down until the sacks nearly touched the floor. Whoever was in the middle would be rolled in on by the others and there we would sleep, like rats in among the wool. Although our mother said we looked sweet, curled up together like kittens, I hated that bed, and missed the hardness of the table. And I used to think if a snake or rat got into the swag, there would be a terrible tumble of us all as we tried to get out. I still like a good hard bed now, sir, which is just as well for the beds in gaol have very little straw and would not suit someone used to a soft bed.
My father was a good worker and the big farms always hired him as a shepherd or a labourer. He would sometimes say that coming to Australia might have been a good thing, for he might have lost his work if he had stayed in England, on account of the machines they invented.
He said that in Australia a man could breathe clean air and eat meat every day.
And what was your father like, Mrs Collins? the chaplain asks.
He was a strong man, or so he always seemed to me, even though he was quite small. He liked to play cricket and he played even as he grew old. I suppose I would describe him as wiry. He had a scar on his forehead, although I never did ask him how he came to have it, sir. He still had a great many of his teeth, which is a blessing as one gets older. He had spent a good deal of time outdoors and so his skin was freckled and it was tough, like a piece of leather. He was not a learned man, sir, in that he had not much of his learning from books, but he knew a good deal about sheep and horses and the weather and the stars, as he spent so much time with these. He would say that there were many more stars to be seen from Australia than from England. He was able to turn his hand to most things, and so was valued on any farm. And once I heard a farm manager say that no one could raise a lamb like Henry Hall, for my father had a certain way with the sheep.
I do not tell Canon Rich that my father, God rest his soul, had no choice in coming to this country. As children, we were told never to speak of it, but it made no difference, for my father would speak of it soon enough himself when he was feeling low. That was how we heard in the first place, for he would say to my mother that he had been sent out for a crime that were not worth two bob and he had sat on the hulks and his leg had near rotted off and it were only maggots that saved him. Maggots, he would cry. And my mother would speak to him in her quietest voice. There, there, she would say and then he might weep for his mother, for they had argued when he last saw her and he had never a word from her since he came to Australia.
But I say no more to the chaplain, for I am thinking of my pa, and how he had quarrelled with his own mother and then been sent to the other side of the world and never spoken to her again and could not make amends.
Canon Rich waits for me to continue.
When I do not, he asks me a question, so as to prompt me.
You lived on a few different farms, Mrs Collins?
I rouse my thoughts.
The places we lived on were all big places, I say, such as often had their own school and might have a small station shop and even had their own church building on account of them being too far away from any town. We would go on Sundays to church and then on some Sunday afternoons there might be a cricket game in the paddock.
In the summer there would be tomatoes, as they grew wild under the shearing sheds, no matter which property you were at, and my sisters and I would go up under the shed and collect them by the bucket, for tomatoes love the sheep manure.
Often the house we lived in was wattle and daub. You would not know the house style perhaps, sir, as it is more common in the country areas, but it is built with poles of timber – young saplings which are easily cut – filled in between with pieces of mud and grass. Lovely and cool the houses were, and many are the times I have thought upon the terrace houses they like here in Sydney and how the bricks hold in the heat when the summer comes. Then, of course, wattle and daub are no help with the cold.
And I suppose life was hard for my parents, Pa with his sheep and farm duties and my mother with all the little ones, because when the children come along it is the mother who gets the most work what with all the washing and feeding. But they seemed happy.
My mother had mostly daughters, so that was a great help to her, but I have had mainly sons. My darling little May is my only daughter and I suppose has always been extra precious to me because of this, though a mother loves all her children the same, sir. Although, when my May was born I felt it was as though I was getting another chance at my own life, through her, which I think is what every mother might feel for her daughter.
I look back now and I think my childhood was too short, but I suppose it was the length of all childhoods.
Do you have any photographs of yourself as a child, Mrs Collins? he asks.
Oh no, sir, I say. I do not. The only one I have is the one which is in my head and I do not know how someone else would ever see that. Photographs were not much taken when I was a girl.
But you only need look to my May, for although her hair is fairer, she is the image of me as a child.
The very image.
12.
Whenever we moved to a new property, we would become friends with all the children at the new place, whether they were the children of the workers or the owners, as most children know no differences, sir; they only learn that as they get older. And we would play together in the afternoons, and go swimming in the dams when there was water, or riding horses, or hunting for birds’ eggs and cicadas. And on one station I was particular friends with Harry, for we were of a same age.
Whenever my father was working back on that station, which he did several times, I would look forward to seeing my friend.
We came back to that property one season when I was about fourteen. I had much of the housework to do for I was one of the older girls and there were many of us children by then. Harry was the son of the owner, and so he had less responsibility, but when I had finished my chores, we would go fishing or walk through the bush, or ride upon his horse, Blackie, who was not really a horse, but a large pony, with a sleek coat and a sweet nature.
Harry said that when he grew older, he would get himself a large chestnut stallion, for he thought he should look very well mounted on a fine big horse and that when he did so, I might have Blackie. He said I looked well upon Blackie, for the horse and my hair were the same colour.
In
the June holidays of that year, Harry and I spent a great deal of time together before Harry went back to boarding school in Parramatta, as was only right for a young man of his station.
The months dragged while Harry was away, for we had become particular friends. I seemed to be doing a great many chores to help my mother as, of course, with all the little ones there seemed to be always more chores to do. Harry had said I might ride Blackie while he was away at school, but I did not, although I used to go and pat him in the paddock.
When Harry arrived home at the beginning of the Christmas holidays, he found me down at the creek and he came and sat beside me. I had known he would be coming home and so I had brushed out my hair and tied a strip of linen into it, fancying this to be a piece of ribbon. I had taken the strip off a length of my younger sister’s dress, and my mother had scolded me for it later, but it was the only thing nearing finery that I had.
We talked for a while and then Harry said he had a present for me and pulled a package from the pocket of his trousers. It was wrapped in brown paper, tied with string and slightly flattened from being in his pocket, and when he gave it to me it was warm in my hands and I blushed. He leant over and said to me that it was a trifling gift, as I imagine he was thinking I was embarrassed at his gesture.
But I was blushing because in the short time he had been away at school, Harry had changed and his voice had become deep and he had hair upon his face, although it was just the fluffy sort that young men get before they begin to shave properly and they are hardly men at all, but I did not know that then. And I thought how handsome he was and I think it was the first time I had ever thought of anyone as handsome, well, in that way.
I was innocent enough as to the ways of men and women, if you understand my meaning, but something about sitting beside him and holding this present warm from his pocket made me uncomfortable and comfortable at the same time.
When I unwrapped the brown paper there was a piece of perfumed soap and a cream piece of tissue with something folded inside it.
I held the soap to my nose and breathed in the smell. It was like flowers, like jonquils. I have never forgotten the smell of that soap, and of course such things might not mean much to one who is accustomed to finery, but for me I felt I was holding the smell of Heaven in my hands.
Inside the cream tissue was a piece of hair ribbon which Harry had bought for me in Parramatta. It was blue, the colour of the sky on a summer’s day, with tiny bluebirds patterned along, and I thought it the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
He said he had bought it for me to wear in my hair.
These are the things a young lady uses, he said, and I looked at him and then it was his turn to blush.
Those few months had changed us both.
The Botany Murder Case
Life and History of Louisa Collins
With good looks, attractive presence, and winning ways, she was no sooner in her ‘teens’ than she developed all the qualities of a country coquette, and earned for herself the reputation of being a heartless flirt. She, consequently, had many suitors and youthful sweethearts. When of suitable age, she obtained employment at Merriwa as a domestic servant, and while in this occupation was courted by Charles Andrews, whom she subsequently married, against her own wish, but under pressure from her mother, who seemed to consider she had secured an excellent alliance for her daughter …
Evening News10
13.
When I first went to work in Merriwa I thought as I was moving to a very big place. Not that I would think that now, sir, not now that I have seen Sydney. Merriwa is not as grand as Sydney, for it has only a dozen streets and no trams or modern conveniences. But to a young girl who had grown up in various small shepherd’s huts, when I went to live in Merriwa, well, at the time, I thought it a big town.
I worked as a domestic for the Merriwa solicitor and his wife, and I was very happy there.
At the time it came about I thought myself most fortunate to have been recommended, for it was Harry’s mother who obtained me the position in Merriwa, and this was not long after Harry came home from boarding school and brought me the pretty ribbon and the soap. I do not count it quite as lucky now that I am a grown woman, for I can see that perhaps Harry’s mother did not want her son to become too familiar with me, as I was not suitable, if you take my meaning.
I was at the wash tub with my mother, and I had just placed my Sunday dress into the water and was scrubbing, when the boss’s wife came up the drive in the property’s buggy and stopped outside our hut.
My mother went over to the buggy and spoke with her and she told my mother that she had just come from Merriwa, where she had been visiting overnight. My mother said she must be tired from her long drive, and could she offer the boss’s wife a cup of tea, and the boss’s wife said no, but thank you kindly, she was not stopping on a social visit. And I remember thinking this was just as well, for we only had tin cups and I was sure the boss’s wife would not want to drink tea from those.
The boss’s wife said again that she had just come from Merriwa, where she had learnt that the local solicitor was looking for a maid and she had recommended me for my skills and abilities.
I was surprised because I did not know that the boss’s wife was so familiar with me. She said how she seen me helping my mother on many occasions and that I was just the sort of worker the solicitor required. I could hear my mother saying, Thank you, ma’am, and, Yes, ma’am, although I held myself back near the wash tub.
Then the boss’s wife called me over to the carriage and told me what she and my mother had decided.
She said I was to come up to the main house the next morning and she would furnish me with a letter of recommendation and I may go on the back of the dray into Merriwa with Mr Waldock, who was one of the workers at the property, as he would be going to Merriwa the next day. She said the dray would be ready to go promptly at 10 am.
My mother seemed to hesitate then, and said did it have to be so soon, what with my father away and Christmas nearly upon us, and the boss’s wife said it was an excellent position and I should be sure to take it before another girl snapped it up, and that she herself had given her word that I would be suitable.
Then the boss’s wife put her nose up, in a manner that I have now seen some people do, sir, when there is a smell in the air, or someone is saying something they shouldn’t. I have seen this look directed at myself more than once and particularly of late.
My mother said then that she did not mean to appear ungrateful and that I should thank the boss’s wife very particularly and so I curtseyed and said, Thank you, ma’am. And she looked me up and down as though deciding something and then she nodded and drove off.
Ma and I went back to the washing, and we were quiet at first and then my ma said it were just as well that it were washing day as I would need clean clothes for tomorrow. And I looked down at the tub, and thought how all this had happened while my Sunday dress was soaking in the wash. How quickly my life had changed, and all the while my dress had lain there among the suds, just the same.
But then I have learnt since, sir, that life has many turns, and sometimes the turns are made quickly.
That night there was much preparation and my ma fussing over starching my collar and polishing her boots, as I was to be wearing them the next day. My pa was away overnight with the flock up in the top paddock, which was some eight miles away, and so he knew nothing of my new position, and I would not get a chance to see him before I left. I had imaginings of going to the stable and asking if I might take Blackie so I could ride out to say goodbye, but I did not.
The next day, I wrapped my belongings in a bundle. I had the soap and my ribbon and a nightdress, a spare dress and not much else, so it was just a small bundle. There was not much which was mine alone, as is often the way in a big family. I carried my coat, to put on over my dress when I sat on the dray, for e
ven though it was a warm day I wanted to keep the dust from my dress as best I could. I wore my mother’s boots and it pained me to take these from her, for she had only the one proper pair, but she told me that she would wear the old pair of Pa’s which she wore when around the house, and that she would let her hem down so no one would see her feet. I said I would send her money from my wages for new boots. I said goodbye to the little ones, and kissed my mother, for she would not walk me up to the house on account of her not having let down her hem yet. We shed some tears at our parting, although she said we should not, as it was an adventure I was going on, and a wonderful opportunity, and she would be sure to see me soon. I might have shed a great deal more tears if I had known it would be so long before we would see each other again.
I was anxious about not seeing my pa, as he would come back from the sheep and I would not be there and I would have liked to say goodbye to him and have him wish me well.
My mother held me close and said that she would miss me, and we both cried some more. And I wanted to think of some special words to say in return, but I could not and so I simply said that I would miss her too. Then I wiped my face and walked up to the main house.
I have often thought upon this moment and how I would have liked to have said more, as I was leaving home, and I have thought since what my words might have been. But that is often the way, isn’t it, sir, that you do not know what to say just when you want to and it is only later that the right words come.
Have you said these words to her since, Mrs Collins? the chaplain asks.
No, I have not, sir, I say. It might be a foolishness after all this time.
