Shadows in the Valley

by Elizabeth Haran

  “Good afternoon, Elias,” he said.

  “Afternoon, sir,” Elias replied, wiping crumbs of bread from his drooping moustache. “Afternoon, Mrs. Hawker,” he said to Sybil. He gave Abbey a speculative look from beneath the broad brim of his battered hat. He had a ruddy, darkly-tanned complexion, she noticed, a good indication that he spent most days outdoors. He also had a wiry frame and large, calloused hands, suggesting he worked hard.

  “Elias, this is Abigail Scottsdale. She’s to be Mother’s companion,” Jack said. He turned to Abbey. “Abbey, this is Elias Morton, my manager.”

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Morton,” Abbey said, trying to sound more cheerful than she felt.

  “Ma’am,” Elias said, tipping his hat without really looking at her again.

  Abbey decided that he was either a brooding kind of man, or he didn’t like her. She wasn’t yet quite sure which.

  “Have the fences been mended behind the shearing sheds?” Jack asked Elias.

  “The boys are doing them now,” Elias said. “I was just going up there to check on them.”

  “Good. Let me know how they’re going,” Jack said. “When they’re done, we’ll move the ewes from the bottom paddock into that paddock to lamb. I’ll be up at the house for around a half hour if you have news for me.”

  “Yes, sir,” Elias said, and walked towards his horse, which was tied to a rail under a shady tree.

  Jack turned to her. “Elias may appear to be a strange character, but you’ll get used to him,” he said, as if reading her mind. “He doesn’t give much away, but he doesn’t miss much, either, and that’s a very handy trait in a manager.”

  “I thought it was just me he didn’t like,” Abbey admitted softly. As a former resident of the Creek Street dugouts, she was used to being considered an inferior member of the community. The residents were often shamed and derided, so Abbey had always felt lesser. Now she had the added burden of being a suspect in Ebenezer Mason’s death. Although the Hawkers and Elias had no way of knowing her history, she felt as if her shame were written all over her.

  At her comment, Sybil glanced over her shoulder, giving Abbey a scornful look that made her feel even more unwelcome. If she hadn’t needed somewhere to live and a job so badly, she would have headed for the gate and walked back to Clare.

  They travelled further down the road and passed a blacksmith’s shop. A young man was working a pair of giant bellows, fanning the flames of a fire, while an older man was hammering a white-hot horseshoe. Jack waved to them.

  “That’s Ben Dobson and his son, Michael,” he said to Abbey.

  The smithy’s muscled arms glistened with perspiration, soaking his shirt, and sweat dripped from his face, sizzling as it hit the glowing horseshoe. Several horses were tied up outside, waiting to be shod. Behind the blacksmith’s shop were many stables.

  They then passed a store and headed through another gate with a slab wall on either side. A garden opened up to the right. Abbey was in awe of the sweeping lawns and the variety of exotic and native trees.

  “Oh, my goodness,” she whispered.

  Suddenly the carriage jerked to a standstill, and Abbey turned to look at the house and gasped. It wasn’t quite Martindale Hall, but that was a good thing, as the Hall looked like a mausoleum. Jack Hawker’s home was large and far more beautiful than she had imagined it might be. It was two stories, colonial in style, and built from sandstone quarried in the area. It had a shady veranda along three quarters of the front of the house and on one side, allowing for wonderful views of the gardens, orchard, and sloping valleys beyond. There were four bay windows, three on the lower floor, with two at the front, one on the side, and one on the second floor. Green ivy crept up around the front windows, softening the stone, while a white balustrade trimmed the upper floor. The roof was topped with red stringy-bark shingles, cut from trees on the hills south of Clare.

  Abbey was still admiring the house when Sybil climbed down from the carriage and headed for the front door, seemingly in a hurry. She went inside, leaving the door open and began calling someone, a servant presumably.

  Jack helped Abbey out of the carriage.

  “Your home is wonderful, Mr. Hawker,” Abbey said sincerely. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined living in such a home, as far removed from a dugout in a creek bed as she could possibly be. But she still felt herself to be a fraud, as if she didn’t belong there.

  “Call me Jack, Abbey,” he replied. “And thank you. You wouldn’t know it now, but the house was originally a three-roomed mud slab hut with a detached kitchen.”

  Abbey couldn’t believe it, and her expression revealed her thoughts.

  “I’ve built onto it every year, but I think it’s big enough now, considering I’m a bachelor,” he laughed.

  Abbey hadn’t even contemplated that there could be a Mrs. Jack Hawker, but now she felt delighted that there wasn’t. His difficult mother was going to be enough to contend with, let alone a wife.

  Abbey turned to look over the garden again, admiring all the trees and shrubs. “I hadn’t expected anything like this,” she said, almost at a loss for words. “You have so many varieties of beautiful trees.”

  “Yes, there are Canary Island date palms, black wattle, pepper trees, jacaranda, cypress pines, and the blue gum, which is my personal favourite.” He pointed in the direction of a stately gum tree. It was tall and lofty—majestic, even. Beneath its wide, shady boughs was a bench.

  “Why is the blue gum your favourite?” Abbey asked curiously.

  “That particular tree was already here when we arrived, but I’ve since planted blue gums all over the property. Their wood is durable, strong, and useful as a building material. I won’t ever chop this one down, though. At the moment, it’s home to a family of possums and kookaburras. I think the flowers are quite spectacular, and they produce beautiful nectar that smells and tastes like honey and attracts beautiful birds, like honeyeaters.

  “Establishing Bungaree has been a lot of hard work,” Jack went on, “and I’ve still got lots to do in regard to the farming side, but I’m very pleased with how everything is coming along. Luckily, the climate here is excellent for growing almost anything, so the gardens have flourished.”

  Abbey noticed that Jack’s brown eyes became even warmer when he spoke of his property. Obviously, his heart belonged to the land. “I don’t know how you manage to keep your lawns and trees so healthy when it’s so hot and dry in this part of Australia,” she said seriously.

  “The main reason I wanted to settle on this particular spot was the good underground water supply, just eight feet below the surface,” Jack said. “Water is the key to surviving out here, and we use a bore to bring it up. Without it, a farm is doomed. We planted the gardens, orchard, wheat, barley, oats, and fields of potatoes when we first settled here about six years ago. At the time, I bought five thousand sheep, which were walked overland from New South Wales. Wool prices jumped dramatically in the first five years, and they’re still holding steady. The return on greasy wool is sixteen percent, but it’s twenty-five percent for washed wool. Again, you need plenty of water, but clean wool fetches the best prices. Those record prices for wool meant I was able to build up the original home, making it what it is today.” Jack thought of his brothers, who were still living in mud slab huts, like the one he had built the first year on the property. The price of beef had varied dramatically over the years, but the smaller number of sheep his brothers kept had compensated a little and kept their farms afloat. “I was also able to buy some of the land originally leased by my father, so I now own Bungaree outright. I just hope my brothers can do the same in the near future.”

  “Oh, you were a squatter.” Abbey couldn’t imagine how hard Jack must have worked to achieve what he had. She admired him for that. Squatters were new immigrants who were leased a parcel of land by the government. If they made a succ
ess of their farming, they were then in a position to buy the land. Those who could afford to buy the land outright tended to resent those they referred to as squatters, because they believed they were getting their land the easy way and without risk.

  “Yes, originally we were on fourteen-year leases and between my brothers and me, we had 267 miles of farm land. We leased it at ten shillings per square mile. We don’t have that much land now. I don’t know whether you are aware of the ill feeling towards squatters leasing large tracts of land, but a great deal of pressure has been put on the government to make changes. Buying as much of the land as I could was the only safe way to protect what I’ve invested here before the farm was reclaimed and split into much smaller lots.”

  Abbey was impressed with what Jack was telling her, but Bungaree was such a large undertaking. “You must employ many people,” she said. Everything looked well-cared for.

  “The amount of staff I employ fluctuates. In the past it has varied due to the gold strikes in Victoria and New South Wales. At times, I’ve employed as many as a hundred people and as few as a dozen. At the moment, though, I’m down to about a dozen or so because there’s been another major gold strike, this time at Cape River in northern Queensland. Everyone wants to strike it rich on the goldfields, so they flock there in the thousands, leaving the labour force down here severely depleted. That means a lot of extra work for me, and that’s why I need you to keep my mother occupied. I’m rarely at the house.”

  “I noticed that you have your own store and church?”

  “Yes, the store is convenient for my workers, and so is the church. It was too far to travel to Clare every Sunday to St. Barnabas, so I had St. Michael’s built. Father John Quinlan holds the services. He lives in a cottage behind the church and sometimes does odd jobs when we’re busy, so you’ll be sure to run into him.” Jack didn’t add that Father Quinlan was usually “counselling” one of his workers, which was just an excuse to get drunk with them, something he was especially fond of. “My workers and their families are housed on the property in homes built by my hut builder. We stock all the staples at the store, including flour, sugar and tea, also rice and oatmeal, and of course there’s always meat. We also stock stone fruits in season, cheeses, vegetables, soap, slop clothing, and tobacco. When I built Bungaree, I wanted to create a village atmosphere and although the ‘village’ is quite deserted at the moment, I think I’ve succeeded. Everything purchased at the store is credited against an individual worker’s salary account. We also note their accounts for doctor’s visits, tradespeople, or hawkers. The workers’ wives can purchase children’s boots, clothing, or materials for dressmaking and tailoring. So, if you need anything, you can get it at the store and it will be deducted from your salary. Doris Hubert runs the store and does all of Bungaree’s bookwork. Her husband also works on the property. Thankfully, they’re too loyal to desert me.”

  “Oh, thank you.” Abbey was relieved because she had absolutely nothing.

  “Our vegetable garden feeds the staff and itinerant workers like shearers, but our surplus is taken to nearby settlements and even the mining town of Kooringa, at Burra. At times, I’m called upon to judge produce at agricultural and horticultural shows, so I have access to the best seeds for our gardens here. Our peaches, nectarines, and other fruit are some of the best you’ll ever see,” he said proudly.

  Abbey was amazed and not only with the gardens. “Looking after your gardens must be a lot of hard work,” she said. She could see a man digging in a plant bed in the distance.

  “I have only one gardener at the moment, Frank Fox. He does a great job, though. Let’s move inside and out of this heat, shall we?”

  Abbey was feeling the full force of the sun now beating down upon her, so she readily agreed, and they walked towards the shady veranda. After climbing the three steps, she stopped by the front door.

  “I really need this job, Jack, so I shouldn’t be saying this, but I don’t know anything about the theatre. I’ve never even seen a play. I don’t know what I should discuss with Mrs. Hawker.” Just the thought of trying to make conversation with the woman was frightening.

  “I sense you are a bright girl, Abbey; you’ll find something to talk to my mother about. If you are not interested in the theatre and plays, you could pretend to be. I need my mother occupied so I can concentrate on the farm. I’d appreciate anything you can do to please her.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Abbey said. She knew he had gone against his mother’s wishes in hiring her, so she didn’t want to let him down.

  “Good girl. Now let’s go inside and I’ll introduce you to Elsa and Marie.”

  As soon as she stepped into the entrance hall of the large stone house, Abbey felt the temperature drop. Jack was right behind her, but they stopped abruptly when they heard Sybil shouting hysterically at someone.

  Alarmed, Abbey turned to Jack. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “That’s only Mother arguing with Sabu,” he said casually. “You’ll get used to it.”

  “Sabu?”

  “Our Hindustani cook. I don’t know why we put up with him. Well, actually, I do. My mother won’t let me fire him, and as she hasn’t been very happy here, I don’t want to make the situation even worse. He does have some very peculiar habits, though, and I’m losing patience. Refusing to cook when he’s fasting is one of them.”

  “It sounds as if your mother and the cook don’t get along,” Abbey commented, confused as to why his mother wouldn’t let Jack fire him.

  “You’d think that was the case, but it’s not. She’d deny it vehemently if you asked her, but I believe they are actually quite fond of each other.”

  Abbey could hear pots banging and the cook shouting from the back of the house, but Jack’s mother was giving just as good as she got. If that was how she behaved when she liked someone, Abbey suddenly became very afraid of what she had in store.

  Jack ushered Abbey into the hallway, where she could see through a doorway into a large drawing-room and library. Beautiful rugs adorned the floors, and the furniture was polished and sumptuous. The perfume of freshly cut flowers hung in the air. Unlike Martindale Hall, this house was welcoming, and Abbey couldn’t wait to explore.

  A young girl suddenly appeared with a duster in her hand. She looked no older than fifteen and rather nervous.

  “Mr. Hawker,” she said, startled to see Jack. “The Missus and Sabu are fightin’ again.”

  “I can hear them, Elsa, but don’t be alarmed. This is Abbey Scottsdale. She’s to be Mrs. Hawker’s new companion.”

  The girl looked Abbey over with what appeared to be a mixture of awe and sympathy.

  “Elsa is one of the servant girls,” Jack said to Abbey.

  “Good day,” Abbey said, wondering how many servants there were.

  “Good day,” Elsa replied cautiously.

  “Where’s Marie, Elsa? I’d like her to meet Abbey and show her around,” Jack said.

  “She’s fetchin’ the washin’ in, Mr. Hawker,” Elsa supplied. “She wants to get it done before the dogs come home for the day.”

  “Oh, that’s a good idea,” Jack said, looking at the duster in her hand. “I can see you are cleaning, but will you show Abbey to her room, Elsa? The rose room should be comfortable for her. She hasn’t any luggage.”

  Elsa couldn’t hide her surprise, and Abbey didn’t elabourate on why she didn’t have any personal belongings.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Hawker,” the servant girl said. “Come this way, Miss Scottsdale.” Elsa headed towards the stairs, so Abbey followed.

  “I’ll see you at dinner tonight, Abbey, but it might be sandwiches again,” Jack called after them. He rolled his eyes as he headed for the backdoor.

  As they climbed the stairs, Abbey asked why it was important that Marie bring in the washing before the working dogs returned for the evening.

 
“Because of Max,” Elsa said. “He’s Mr. Hawker’s best working dog, but he always pulls the washing off the line. If there’s a breeze movin’ the washin’, he won’t stop until it’s all on the ground.”

  “Why not chain him up?” Abbey suggested.

  Elsa’s eyes widened. “Mr. Hawker doesn’t believe in it. He says the dogs work hard, and they deserve the run of the yard and a good meal at the end of the day. He’s very kind that way.”

  At the top of the stairs, Elsa led Abbey to a room at the end of a hall in the back corner of the house. “The rose room is nice,” she said, with what Abbey thought was a hint of envy. “I’m sure you’ll like it, Miss Scottsdale.”

  “You can call me Abbey.” As she hadn’t ever had a room of her own in her whole life, she was excited at the prospect.

  Elsa pushed open a door that led into a good-sized room. A beautiful quilt, embroidered with roses, covered an iron-framed bed. Two of the walls were covered in rose-printed wallpaper, and a large wardrobe was set in the corner. A washstand stood near French doors that led out onto the veranda. The doors were draped in white curtains with small roses stitched around the edges. On the washstand sat a rose-printed jug and a white bowl. As her gaze wandered around the room, Abbey thought she had never seen anything so pretty, and her eyes suddenly welled with tears.

  “What’s wrong, Abbey?” Elsa asked.

  “The room is so lovely,” Abbey said, overwhelmed.

  “It is nice,” Elsa said. “Me and Marie have rooms at the back of the stables, but we go home on the weekends.” Their rooms weren’t nearly as nice, but they were large and comfortable.

  “Home? Are you sisters?”

  “No,” Elsa giggled. “But we live near each other.”