by Lucy Walker
‘Yes, please.’
‘It was in the war. I was a prisoner for four years.’
‘A long time.’
‘A hell of a long time. I was in Silesia a good deal of it.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Worked on the farms by day. Talked about women; planned escapes; planned how to score a miserable point or two over the guards ‒ by night.’
‘Did you ever escape?’
‘Twice. The first time I was pursued, wounded and finally caught. Two years behind wire for that. Then I went to Silesia. Three of us got away from there. We travelled by night for weeks. We ended up with a group of Czech underground workers. We went up into the mountains and conducted our own private war against the German convoys.’
‘Were you there long?’
‘Long enough to want to go back to the Germans.’
‘To the Germans?’
‘Yes. I went back to them in the end.’
‘Can I know why?’
‘Those Czechs were brave. They had a kind of desperation people have when they’ve lost everything … and when they’ve got to live on loot. They had their women up there with them in the mountains. It was like living in another world. They lived from day to day. They lived on hate, and loot. I couldn’t tell you, Kate, what those women were like, or what they did to wounded Germans left over from the shooting. You wouldn’t believe it. It turned my stomach. It was the women who settled me. Specially one.’
‘One!’
‘She was no different than the others except that she was beautiful. Wild, savage, cruel and unmoral. She was as beautiful and rugged as the mountains themselves.’
They smoked in silence.
‘She belonged to one of the men, of course. I knew that sooner or later she would start something. Or I would. That I’d have to face the whole gang, or go mad. Or get out. So I went back to the Germans.’
‘How did you do it?’
‘The Germans were racing back from the east to give themselves up to the Americans. They were frightened of the Russian bear. I got down on the route and stopped a small convoy. The chances were they’d shoot me … but they just didn’t. They took me along because they thought I’d help with the Americans. After that was the worst ten days of my life. We were fighting the world … Americans on one side, Russians on the other. And all around, the Czechs. We had to fight our way through. There wasn’t any war then … only escape from death. The Czechs were the worst. I knew what they’d do if they got us. I’d been doing it.’
They sat for a long time in silence. Rick rolled them both another cigarette.
‘That business of the numb heart, Rick? Was it hate, love or fear that did that to you?’
He looked at her.
‘I don’t know the answer to that, Kate. I guess it was a combination of all three. Sometimes the head can’t battle its way out of the maze. That’s when the heart goes numb. Otherwise it must have its own way. When that way must end in death there is only one thing to do …’
‘Yes?’
‘Run hard.’
She looked away from him quickly.
Run away? Is that what she must do?
Rick’s voice drawled softly.
‘What are you thinking, Peaches?’
‘That love to you is a danger signal. To me it’s just something that hurts. Like a hollow stomach. Have you got any food down there at Allandale?’
He laughed as he jumped off the fence.
‘Give me your hand, lady. We shall to horse. A stomach filled is a heart contented.’
PART TWO
Chapter One
Rick and Mrs. Benallen fed Kate on girdle scones in the Allandale kitchen. They also drank four cups of tea each. Kate was getting the habit too.
‘Do you suppose it lines one’s stomach with tannin? And does it affect the complexion?’ She smiled mischievously at Rick. ‘I’m worried about the “peaches and cream”!’
Mrs. Benallen, who had the kind of smile so full of human kindness everyone felt comfortable and happy in her presence, now looked at Kate quizzically.
‘Rick told me about those “peaches and cream”.’
‘Then you weren’t just flattering me?’ Kate asked him.
‘Good heavens! Why should I?’
Why indeed?
They had rung up Appleton to say where Kate was and that she would be a little late. Rick would ride over with her.
‘I suppose they were a bit worried,’ said Kate.
Rick looked at her, but Mrs. Benallen laughed outright.
‘Not the Westons, my dear. They never worry about anybody. Mind you, it wouldn’t occur to them that anyone would get lost … they’re so fearless on horses and in the bush themselves. They just take it for granted that everyone else is the same. Or if not, that they ought to be.’
Kate reflected on that.
‘Annabel and Beatrix have been very kind to me.’
‘The girls are all right,’ said Mrs. Benallen. ‘They’re just frustrated. I do hope Beatrix escapes before she becomes one of them.’
‘Why does everyone speak so bitterly of the Westons?’ Kate asked.
Mrs. Benallen put down her cup of tea.
‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ she said. ‘It was wrong of us. It’s a kind of habit we all have round here. We disparage one another, particularly those who are the most powerful in the district. I expect it’s just human nature.’
Rick remained silent and thoughtful.
Mrs. Benallen had made the amende honorable, but Kate knew there was substance to her accusations about the Westons. She just couldn’t put her own finger on it. Hal’s treatment of herself, the incident of the turquoise and diamond ring … were part of the pattern.
‘They’re just “knockers”,’ Kate thought to herself. ‘People who like to give a little knock every now and again to remind one of one’s position. And nobody in this country has any position, by their standards, unless he owns several thousand acres of pastoral country, and many thousands of cattle and sheep.’
Mrs. Benallen was looking at her, her kind, friendly smile faltering a little.
Rick got up and propelled the kitchen chair into place with the toe of his boot. He hitched his pants and looked down from an incredible height on Kate.
‘Coming, Peaches?’
The faintest of colours stole up Kate’s cheek. Mrs. Benallen was looking at her. Somehow she had to put on an air … an extra surface; a shell of self-protection.
‘I’m with you, mate,’ she said. She too hitched her riding breeches. They all laughed.
‘Kate, will you come over one night and stay with us?’ This was Mrs. Benallen.
‘I’d love to. Shall I ask Hal to bring me over?’
Mrs. Benallen gave the faintest of sighs.
‘Yes, my dear. Do that.’
Kate knew she hadn’t meant that at all.
They rode down the orchard and along the track on the opposite side of the valley from the ring-barked forest. Kate watched Rick. She loved the way he rode. It was like Bellew. His back was very straight and his legs hung long in the stirrup. His hands held the reins near his chest. There was an elegant surety about the way Rick sat in the saddle. More so than Hal. Hal’s way of riding was jaunty and challenging. With Rick there was an air of one biding his time. Kate thought there was something of that in Rick’s personality altogether.
That night as they stood around the piano in the billiard-room at Appleton while Hal played classic tunes Kate could not get this thought of Rick out of her head. She was conscious of him all the time.
Then she decided he was not biding his time at all. His easy-going smile, his patience and kindness with everyone, did not stem from a wish to please but from the simplicity of one who is only partly present. There was something withheld about him.
Kate wondered if it belonged to that other mysterious life he had had in the mountains with the Czechs.
Mrs. Weston was sitting at the end of t
he long room. She was playing patience with a tiny pack of ivory cards on a low card table in front of her. Presently Kate went down the room and sat in the other armchair on the opposite side of the fireplace. Mrs. Weston did not look up from her game.
Kate leaned back and watched the others around the piano. Beatrix and Annabel stood on either side of Hal. An Englishman called Johnson, who was working a block of apple orchard on his own, stood beside Beatrix. When he was lonely enough in his one-man shack he came over to Appleton for a meal and a yarn. To-night he was singing lustily.
Rick stood draped over the piano, watching Hal’s fingers on the keyboard. Kate could not help her glance wandering back to his face. She found something tantalising and rather thrilling about someone who so calmly went about the everyday work of managing a large property in the farthermost corner of the world, who, in another life, had consorted with his Polish guards in a Silesian concentration camp, who had lived in the mountains with a gang of outlaws every one of whom, including himself, had a price on his head; who had shot up convoys of soldiers in and out of war; who had casually rolled himself cigarettes while heads had rolled; whose calm tired eyes had once been given to straying towards some wild mountain beauty who had belonged to someone else.
‘How little …’ she thought. ‘How very little do we know about one another.’
Hal? What had been his life during those years when he’d been in the Air Force? And how had he acquitted himself?
As she looked at them, just a couple of Australian graziers playing with a piano, their other life shed and in the past, she knew it was all true. She remembered her own countrymen straggling back from the prison camps of Europe. She remembered the quiet little undersized bank clerk who had attended to her mother’s affairs … and remembered looking at a picture of the Wellington bomber he had piloted over Germany.
‘Yes,’ she thought. ‘I know these things are true.’
The bank clerk’s lack of size, like Rick’s easy-going smile, masked a discipline and a tenacity inherent in all of Anglo-Saxon descent.
Kate sat quietly and silently and after a little while was conscious of Mrs. Weston’s sharp, curious eyes watching her.
‘I’m not even going to try to care about Mrs. Weston,’ she thought. ‘It’s going to take all my mental energies to keep my dignity and pride with people who really do matter. People like the Benallens and Mrs. de Berhans, and Beatrix … if possible. When I go to bed I must think what to do next. I don’t want to go home … yet.’
She glanced at the group round the piano.
‘And I must do something about Peg Castillon … and Rick.’
By the time she fell asleep Kate had come to the sad conclusion that she should make some reasonable excuse and cut short her visit. It was the only honest thing to do.
In the morning Mrs. Weston, sitting alone at breakfast, made more pleasant advances to Kate than she had yet shown any inclination to do. It was almost as if she knew what was in Kate’s mind and had decided, for undisclosed reasons of her own, to frustrate Kate’s decision.
‘I see you can hold your own with Rick and Hal on the horses,’ she said. ‘No good living on the land if you can’t handle horses.’
‘I’m more nervous than you think …’
‘Nervous? Nonsense! When I was a young girl there was no room for nerves on the land. We had to get off that top rail out there and rope our own bundles. I did that when I was twelve years old.’
Kate looked at Mrs. Weston curiously.
‘Yes, I did that,’ said Mrs. Weston. ‘And the men sat along the top-rail and barracked me. And my father wouldn’t allow a man jack of them to come off that rail.’
‘Did you live at Appleton before you were married? Was this your home, Mrs. Weston?’
‘It’s always been my home. I brought Mr. Weston here when I married him up the north-west. Managing Curran Downs Station, he was. Mostly cattle. I had cousins up there and that’s where I met Mr. Weston. My father was dying of cancer and I brought Mr. Weston down here to manage Appleton.’
‘And Uncle Harry? Where did he come from?’
‘I took him on with Mr. Weston. He was always deaf and no good with men without someone to hear for him.’
Kate felt a faint chill at this man-management. Somehow she felt sorry for the dead Mr. Weston and the living Uncle Harry. This woman had always ruled Appleton. She would go on ruling, no matter whom Hal married.
‘Why does everything begin with an “A”?’ Kate asked.
‘The whole district was first pioneered by Mrs. de Berhans’ father. She was an Allan and a connection of the great Arundel family. The Allans formerly lived here at Appleton and they were the first to grow apple orchards. They built this homestead as a hunting lodge on the English pattern. Old Richard Benallen came out from England and took up the slice of land running down into the Valley and the original name Allandale. My father bought this property from the Allans and called it Appleton because of the orchards. This is actually the oldest orchard in Western Australia. Bertha Allan married their family connections.’
For the first time Kate found Mrs. Weston interesting. She rather hoped she would go on and tell her about all the people in the district.
‘Did you see all that silver plate in Mrs. de Berhans’ dining-room? That belonged to various members of the Allan family. All presentation plates to the Honourable this and the Honourable that. Connections of the aristocracy, they are. Allan originally came out to Australia at the time of the gold rushes. Then he built this hunting lodge as a holiday place from the arid goldfields. They’re very rich. And mean, of course.’
Kate was sure this was untrue. She had never been at so lavish a party as the Friday night wool-shed dance. And Mrs. de Berhans’ face was kindness itself. It was the old business of one family disparaging another.
‘Appleton’s mine,’ Mrs. Weston went on. ‘Of course they say I’m rich enough too. It’s all a tissue of lies. I’m up to my neck in debt. Everyone sponges on Appleton. Nobody does a good day’s work. The place is cluttered up with visitors. The servants just live to eat. It’s pay-out and give-out all the time. Nothing coming in. The government takes every penny in taxes. Taxes cripple the country.’
Kate didn’t believe a word of this. The evidences of her eyes were to the contrary.
‘Appleton’s mine. It stays mine till I’m dead.’
She looked at Kate sharply.
‘Of course …’ Kate said, not knowing what else to say.
‘Any girl Hal marries will have to pull her weight. She’ll be coming as my guest … not Hal’s.’
Kate leaned forward and helped herself to some satsuma plums and cream. She smiled seraphically at Mrs. Weston.
‘And quite right too …’ she said. ‘I’m sure Hal will consult you first.’
Mrs. Weston was part mollified, part puzzled.
‘I’m not saying I haven’t taken a liking to you, Kate. You’re a nice girl. And for an English girl you look as if you could stand up to the climate, and hard work. Hal takes a lot of handling, however. Worse than a fidgety horse, he is. I don’t want Appleton to be landed with another brood of children, and have to keep them all …’
Kate held her breath.
Then she stood up, carefully folding her napkin.
‘I think Hal would definitely see you were spared that,’ she said.
‘Mind you, Kate, you’re a nice girl. That’s the first time I’ve ever conceded that about one of Hal’s girls. Now that ring … you know, the turquoise and diamond one …’
‘Oh yes! Annabel’s ring …’ Kate said lightly. ‘It is perfectly charming. Oh look! I’ve spilled some plum juice on my dress! … Please excuse me. I’ll wash it off before the stain sets.’
Chapter Two
Sunday was so quiet it was unreal. Mrs. Weston and Annabel drove over to the West Blackwood School Hall for the monthly visit of the Presbyterian minister. Mrs. Weston played the organ for the service.
T
o Kate there was something incongruous about Mrs. Weston playing the organ at a church service. Mrs. Weston also brought the minister back to Appleton for Sunday lunch. This lunch was exactly like every other lunch. Plums and cream, cold lamb with salads and pickles. Scones and tea. So simple, yet in its own way lavish and delicious.
The minister was on his best behaviour and impressed and flattered by the invitation to Appleton. Kate felt he was a good man … so good he also believed that Mrs. Weston and everyone else associated with Appleton was good.
Around the kitchen veranda and outside the lean-to porch the servants laughed, chatted and pottered the hours away. Between them all they did the work of the homestead but it took a long time and a lot of them to do it. The routine for the children went on relentlessly, with Annabel in attendance.
Kate felt a potterer too.
Annabel would not let her take over the children.
‘No, it’s your holiday, Kate. Besides, we’re too fussy here. You could never stand the strain of it.’
Kate reluctantly agreed. She was not strong-minded enough to simply whisk the children away in the teeth of opposition from both Annabel and Mrs. Weston.
The day was sunny without being too hot. In the homestead garden the roses on the one hand and the petunias and phlox on the other kept the air filled with a faint pungent odour. Kate sat on the veranda, a book on her lap, and gazed drowsily out on the lovely garden. In the distance the orchard was cool and inviting. In the clearing on the other side of the house a blue haze hung over the smouldering logs where the men had begun burning-off the day before.
All the time the soft laughter of the servants was like a lullaby in the air. The men had gone over to the school hall to play tennis. It seemed that the minister’s visit implied that the women must stay around the homestead to entertain him and assist his conversations with the servants and the farm hands. It also followed that the men would disappear in the fastest possible time. Several of the farm hands went to play tennis too.
‘Next Sunday you’ll go …’ Beatrix promised Kate.
Kate lay back in her chair and drowsed and thought.
