Fire in Summer

by JH Fletcher

  She led the way into the bathroom, while Miss Blyth teetered nervously behind her. Sturdily Kath put the plug in the outlet and turned on the taps. ‘Plenty of water, that’s one good thing. Now get those clothes off while I dig out something for you to wear.’

  And was gone. When she came back, the woman had not moved but stood helplessly, a drenched scarecrow with chattering teeth, wreathed in steam. Kath turned off the water and turned to inspect her visitor in the shifting candle flame.

  ‘I’m not going to take them off for you.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  Miss Blyth seemed willing to apologise even for that, her cheerfulness in the car long since drowned by the brutal rain, the strange house, and the woman whose shadow now loomed menacingly over her. She began to wrestle with buttons, shedding one by one the remnants of what Kath saw had once been quality clothes.

  ‘What you doing out on a night like this?’ As one might address a stray cat. The quality material made her savage that this helpless thing should be able to have what Kath could not and still, it seemed, be incapable of looking after herself.

  ‘We were cut off by the floods …’

  Having asked the question, Kath found she was indifferent to the answer. The woman had brought an uneasy aura of wealth, of an outside world. That was disruption enough without knowing how or why.

  Brutally Kath waited while the woman dragged off her garments until she stood in her bra and panties, uncertain and beseeching in the guttering light. ‘And the rest,’ Kath ordered. She laughed, resenting the rich woman whose helplessness made her the more hateful. ‘You think I’ve never seen a naked woman before?’

  So both were shamed: Mary at having to strip before this merciless woman, Kath for withholding the charity she might have offered.

  A cringe of white flesh in the twitching light. Breasts as apologetic as their owner, who attempted to shield them with ineffectual hands. Shame made Kath even angrier. ‘Hop in, then.’ And was suddenly sick of it. She put the dry clothes on a chair. ‘I’ll be in the kitchen, when you’re ready.’

  She went out, leaving Mary Blyth to get on with things. She hung the strange garments in the laundry. Not much point; they wouldn’t be good for much, after this. There was satisfaction in the thought. She visualised the white flesh blooming softly in the hot water and could have punched the woman, who she supposed might be a year or two younger than herself. Punched her for everything, for nothing. She could not understand her own ferocity, which the poor thing had done nothing to deserve. So instead punished the pots, clattering them while she got the tea.

  Hedley came in. ‘Like bloody Niagara Falls, out there.’ And shook himself like a dog so that water flew everywhere.

  ‘Niagara Falls in here, too, you keep on like that.’ Crash went a pot. ‘Best get out of those wet things.’

  He grunted, heading for the door. ‘Might grab a bath, at that.’

  ‘You can’t. She’s in there.’ It gave Kath satisfaction to say it to her lunking husband. ‘Where’d you find her, anyway?’

  ‘Some swank limo got cut off by the floods.’

  ‘What’s wrong with the pub?’

  ‘No room.’

  ‘There are other places. Why drag her up here?’

  Hedley, unused to questions, ignored her and went into the darkness of the living room. She heard him groping, the candlelight gulping and golloping along the walls. He tripped and cursed; Kath smiled, thin-lipped. Serve him right.

  This woman, this stranger used to the best, and the house in a pigsty. Kath could have wrung his neck. She wasn’t even pretty. And Hedley was the last man for the chivalrous gesture. What was he thinking of?

  In the bedroom, rubbing his body ferociously with a towel, dragging on a clean shirt, Hedley was wondering the same. It was the old biddy, he thought. People like that made him sick. Laying down the law … His offer had been a slap in the face for a snooty tart he’d as soon see drowned in the creek. Not that this one need think she’s anything special, he warned the dark room. Soon fix her, she tries that.

  He went out to the kitchen, to the familiar room and familiar wife bending over the stove, the familiar smells of cooking. Just for a moment, he could have pulled the house down about their ears. Instead, rubbed his hands with what might have passed for joviality.

  ‘Could just about do with something, at that.’

  ‘Knock on the bathroom door,’ Kath said. ‘Tell your girl-friend I’m dishing up.’

  In seconds he was back. ‘Says she’ll be right out.’

  Almost at once she was. She was close to drowning in the borrowed clothes. Her dark hair was still damp, her waif’s eyes huge in the candlelight.

  ‘Sit there,’ Kath directed, and she did so at once, like an obedient child.

  Silence swirled with the smell of food, as Kath and Hedley joined her at the table. All had a plate piled high.

  ‘Hope you like mutton,’ Kath said, for something to say.

  ‘Out of luck if she doesn’t,’ Hedley said through a full mouth.

  Mary Blyth thought that mutton would be fine. And ate, peck, peck, like a bird.

  ‘What were you doing on the road in this?’ Hedley wondered.

  ‘We were on our way home. Perks, the driver, said we should stop in Clare, but Lady Falconer wanted to push on.’

  ‘That who it is?’ Even in these parts, people had heard of Lady Falconer, whose father had been a Great Man. Not that Hedley was about to make allowances. ‘Snooty old bird …’

  His dark eyes challenged the stranger in the flickering light.

  ‘She has been kind to me,’ Miss Blyth allowed, but in a neutral voice, as though the words paid token to what should have been rather than what was.

  Later, after she had come to accept that the Miss Blyths of the world were not ones to gobble their tea, Kath escorted her to the bedroom, where she remained for the night and, hopefully, slept.

  ‘Too damn bad if she doesn’t,’ Hedley said, mounting Kath with unaccustomed gusto.

  ‘Hush …’

  That angered him. ‘You telling me to keep quiet in my own house just because we got some snooty bird in the spare room?’

  ‘She’ll hear.’

  ‘Let her. Teach her what it’s all about.’ And made, if anything, more racket than before.

  In the morning Kath didn’t know where to look. It had stopped raining and the floods were down, but the police advised caution. Lady Falconer did not wish to repeat the fright she insisted she had never had, so decided to stay for one more day and night.

  ‘She has offered to pay,’ Kath told her husband.

  ‘Damn right.’ Hedley was not proud; a quid was a quid.

  Not knowing what else to do with her, Kath dug out spare gumboots and took Miss Blyth for a walk. ‘We’ll keep to the high ground. Shouldn’t be too bad up there.’

  She found her visitor more sprightly than she had expected, and full of unexpected ideas and fancies.

  Miss Blyth stood before a tree, hands clasped. ‘Look …’

  Kath obeyed, but it was only a tree.

  ‘See the bark.’

  ‘Kind of raggedy, isn’t it?’ Gum trees always were.

  ‘It reminds me of a roodscreen in a medieval church.’

  Miss Blyth’s inclination was to twitch, ecstatically, at fancies of this type. Kath was unsure about roodscreens, but wished to be agreeable to this stranger, whose intentions were clearly good.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. The two ladies resumed their walk.

  ‘Are you interested in art?’ Kath did not know what was expected, so said nothing.

  ‘Do you go to the Art Gallery at all?’

  Kath mumbled something about too far, not enough time, and felt inadequate and ashamed. But Miss Blyth, who had forgotten or at least forgiven the cruelties of the previous night, had intended only to be kind. ‘If you can get to Adelaide, I would be happy to take you, if you would like. As recompense for all the trouble I have caused yo
u.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about art.’

  ‘Surely that is a good reason to make a start?’

  It was a way of speaking that made Kath nervous. To go to the Art Gallery … Both temptation and threat: temptation, because it was proof that another, and larger, life existed; threat because, once she had opened the door to the larger life, she feared it might prove impossible to climb back into her box once more.

  She held her breath at the prospect. Her heartbeat high. Greatly daring, she said, ‘I’d like that.’

  They walked back while, beyond the trees through which they strolled, the great world beckoned.

  The floods went and Lady Falconer and her entourage with them. Kath denied to herself that she remembered the conversation with Miss Blyth but did, and hoped, with few expectations. Was astounded when, two weeks later, she phoned.

  ‘You remember our little chat?’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘Would you still like to go?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Because fear, too, had its place. Miss Blyth kept on and, eventually, Kath gave in.

  ‘I am going to Adelaide,’ she told her husband. ‘Next Tuesday.’

  Hedley did not approve of gadding about but had more important things on his mind, and said nothing. So long as it did not interfere with him, she could do what she liked.

  The Gallery and its contents were an eye-opener. Some of the older paintings Kath thought she understood, and in some cases liked.

  ‘I like that one …’

  ‘Marie Desmoulins,’ Miss Blyth said. ‘One of Australia’s greatest artists.’

  ‘Funny name for an Aussie.’

  ‘She was born in France in 1871. The time of the Commune.’

  Once again Miss Blyth had lost Kath along the road.

  ‘That right?’

  As for some of the other paintings … She couldn’t make head or tail of them.

  ‘The eye has to be trained,’ Miss Blyth told her. ‘Like the ear in music.’

  ‘I heard some music once,’ Kath said. ‘By some Russian. I didn’t understand it, but I liked it. It was like coming up with something new, something you didn’t know was there.’

  The comparison pleased Miss Blyth. ‘That’s it, exactly.’

  Afterwards they had tea and scones together. ‘Isn’t this fun?’ exclaimed Miss Blyth. ‘We must do it again, one of these days.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ Kath admitted.

  Walking to the station, Kath saw a man crossing King William Street with a woman beside him. He was wearing a topcoat and hat, with a tie and white shirt; she a yellow frock with a pleated skirt. They were remarkable only in being different from the people she knew, yet Kath looked at them as at a vision. They represented a life distinct from her own. Like the paintings, like Miss Blyth herself, they offered an insight into what might be possible.

  She went home to the farm. The next morning, very early, she walked out into the paddocks. The rain had brought green blades to the harvested slopes. Stealthy trees marked the creek bed — empty, now — or stood, as tall as sentries, and silent, upon the dreaming face of the land.

  She remembered how, the previous week, she had seen two fox cubs playing with each other outside their den. They would have to be killed, for the sake of the chooks and young lambs and the damage they caused, yet she grieved for their beauty and the pleasure it had given her to see them gambolling head over heels upon the grass.

  The need to kill beauty … I would change it if I could, she thought. Change had become a bell tolling sonorously within her head. Kath sighed and went back into the house.

  Miss Blyth never contacted her again, but the memory of the fox cubs, the paintings, the man and woman in the Adelaide street, lingered in her mind, ripening slowly to fruition.

  The world had changed.

  20

  KATH

  1954

  In March 1954, Wilf and Dulcie, married now with a mob of kids as frowsty as any sheep, returned to the district, telling everyone they were through with wandering. Perhaps that was so, but the rift in the family remained. Wilf never showed his face at the farm and blokes who drank with him said the old resentments were as hot as ever.

  He took a job share-farming for Mrs Runcible, down the Undalya Road, living on the property in a ramshackle cottage bursting with kids and unwashed nappies.

  Six months later, a stroke smashed Benjamin down, leaving him wreckage: contorted face, tongue frozen in his mouth. He lingered for a week, tended by Emily, slipped away one spring day in a burbling of early-morning magpies.

  Dulcie was never one for spick-and-span, but she knew what was right. She forced Wilf into a collar and tie and sent him off to the funeral. Wilf was that far out of his depth he was close to drowning. He would have sat at the back of the church, but Emily spotted him and dragged him up to sit with the rest of the family in the front. Where Hedley, stiff as any fence post, nodded unsmiling.

  After the service, everyone adjourned to the church hall for tea and cake and sandwiches, orange squash for the kids. Mal Thomas and Juniper Harris had their hands and mouths full before the rest were through the door. Nobody minded. Mal, so mean he’d have drowned himself in the dipping tank rather than waste a drop, was always the first at any free feed, while Juniper, spike-thin, had an appetite like a sow. Seeing them vacuuming down the cakes gave people a comfortable sense of the continuity of things. In the background Patty Clark’s laugh rang like a bell.

  Farmers, faces red above waistcoats littered with crumbs, talked to each other about the weather, the price of grain. Those with a reputation as thinkers said their piece about the Petrov business, the Queen’s visit, the recent federal election. Nothing controversial; this was safe Menzies country.

  At last it was over. Mal and Juniper siphoned up the last crumbs and took off. The family, with Herb Jones the solicitor, drove to the house. The reading of the will: always a tricky moment. They all sat around the dining room table while Herb, as dusty as a brief, shuffled papers. Finally, importantly, he cleared his throat.

  Kath saw Hedley’s knuckles white through the sun-reddened skin; beyond him Wilf sat as though nailed to the chair — both waiting to hear what Benjamin had done with his farm. Emily was still, also, but without the tension of her sons. Finally there was Kath herself, who wanted only one thing: that Benjamin’s decision would cause no more trouble between the brothers.

  Herb Jones began to read in a thin, reedy voice. At first it seemed there would be no surprises. The homestead during her lifetime and its contents absolutely: To my wife Emily, nee Harcourt. Emily rubbed a hand across her face. A handful of off-farm investments, a few thousand pounds in cash deposits: To my wife Emily, absolutely.

  A pause. Everyone held their breath; now they were coming to it. The farm and all its equipment, livestock and other effects: To my firstborn son, Hedley Lee Warren.

  A sigh, clearly audible. At her side Kath sensed her husband relax, triumphant at last. Beyond him Wilf stared, expressionless.

  Again Herb Jones cleared his throat, the reading not over yet. There followed a list of the land titles comprising the farm. ‘In its entirety,’ Herb read, ‘an area of one thousand four hundred and sixty-six acres.’

  Wilf, who had kept the farm going through the war, had got nothing. But Hedley jerked as though someone had stuck him with a cattle probe. ‘How much?’

  Meticulously, Herb re-examined the will. ‘One thousand, four hundred and sixty-six —’

  ‘Where’s the rest?’

  ‘The rest?’ Herb Jones looked alarmed; there were so often disputes over wills, especially among farmers. He had hoped this would be an exception, now feared he was to be disappointed.

  ‘There’s two thousand and seventy acres, all up. Who’s got the rest?’ And stared furiously at his brother, as though suspecting he had somehow stolen it.

  Herb was at a loss. ‘I really can’t help you —’

  Emily interrupted him. ‘The re
st of the land is mine.’

  ‘What?’ Hedley’s voice was hot, affronted by the idea that he had still not got his hands on the whole farm. ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since before I married your father.’

  ‘I never knew that.’

  ‘Now you do.’

  Watching her mother-in-law, listening to her voice, Kath realised how deeply Emily resented her elder son for having divided the family. Hedley, oblivious and enraged, was handling the situation in exactly the wrong way. ‘Why wasn’t I told?’

  ‘It was none of your business.’

  ‘None of my —? Whose farm is it, for God’s sake?’

  ‘The farm is yours. As you just heard. With all the livestock, implements —’

  ‘And the land you say is yours?’

  You say. Kath winced but could say nothing. Emily’s lips were white. ‘The land I say is mine will be disposed of in my will.’

  ‘Who gets it?’

  ‘Wait and see.’

  ‘No!’ Hedley hammered the table with his fist. ‘I’m working it! I have the right to know!’

  ‘You have no right,’ Emily said. ‘We have just come from burying your father. What he had to leave, he has left to you —’

  ‘He hasn’t left me the house —’

  Emily swayed as though he had struck her but would not give way. ‘You grudge me even that?’

  In his fury Hedley had put himself utterly in the wrong; the house had never been the issue. He made a great effort to regain control. ‘Of course I don’t —’

  Too late; now Emily, too, was overtaken by fury. ‘You really want to know what I intend to do with it—’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Very well. I am leaving it to Wilf.’

  ‘Over my dead body —’

  Kath could bear it no longer. She turned on her husband, snake-quick. ‘Be quiet, for Heaven’s sake!’

  He was willing to include her, too, in his fury. ‘Who asked you?’

  But Kath talked through him. ‘Behaving in such a way, with your Dad not two hours in his grave —’

  Emily, whose decision had sparked the row, now finished it off. She said, ‘I have no intention of seeing a member of this family disinherited, especially after he has done so much.’ She stretched out and took Wilf’s hand in her own. ‘I feel ashamed that I haven’t done more to welcome Dulcie into the family. Would it be all right if I called round to see her?’