A Waltz for Matilda

by Jackie French

  ‘I wish I was. Boarding school isn’t the same as town.’

  ‘Come and stay with us next holidays then.’ She wriggled her feet in the breeze from the swing. ‘Mama won’t come here next holidays. She says she had forgotten the dust and flies.’

  ‘I’ll have to ask Papa. I bet he says …’

  ‘Missee O’Halloran.’ A hiss, loud enough for her ears but not to reach into the secret garden.

  It was Mr Doo. She hadn’t even heard the wheels of the cart. She blushed, embarrassed she’d been caught eavesdropping. She followed as he trotted down the road, pulling the much lighter, though not empty, cart. Soon the house — the big comfortable house that wasn’t hers — was behind them.

  Chapter 8

  She stayed close to the cart as they trudged down the Drinkwater driveway toward the road. It was a long driveway, almost a mile, she thought, lined with thick-trunked gum trees, their shade welcome now the sun was climbing higher.

  It was hard to feel the house and its green garden vanish behind her. That house meant comfort and safety, even if not for her.

  The road soon veered down toward the river again, winding along a hill that must be out of flood reach. She wondered if Mr Doo always came this way or if he was making a special trip to take her to her father. Somehow it felt impossible to break his silence.

  They had been walking for an hour when she saw the hut. It was made of slabs of wood, like the cottages she’d seen earlier, but instead of shingles this was roofed with sheets of bark, curling at the edges. She wondered how the bark kept any rain off at all.

  But people lived there. A skinny cow, its hip bones as sharp as a coat hanger, nosed sadly about the dusty tussocks. Two ragged urchins sat in the shade of the dunny, staring at nothing. A boy of five or six, dressed in a pair of men’s pants cut off roughly at the knee, threw stones at three scrawny chickens clucking indignantly in the dust. He was the only one who looked up as they approached.

  ‘Hello,’ said Matilda.

  The boy’s face showed vague interest. ‘You goin’ ter work in the hotel?’

  ‘No. Why do you think that?’

  ‘Thought that was maybe where you was walkin’ to. Me big sister went to work at the hotel.’ The boy threw another stone at a tatty rooster. ‘Suppose she’s married by now.’

  ‘How old was she?’ asked Matilda curiously.

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Bobby! You watered them geraniums?’ The voice was tired; the face and body were even wearier. She was a slump of a woman in a rusty dress half covered with a tattered hessian apron. A naked baby sat on her hip. She hardly glanced at Mr Doo, but nodded vaguely at Matilda.

  ‘Er, good day,’ said Matilda. ‘I’m Matilda O’Halloran.’

  ‘Mrs Heenan.’ The voice was automatic, as though the answer came without the owner even having the energy to speak. ‘Bobby, you go and water them geraniums, now, do you hear?’

  Mrs Heenan looked tiredly back at Matilda. ‘That’s men for yer. We’re always waitin’, ain’t we? Waitin’ for ‘em to come home to yer, waitin’ for ‘em to do anythin’ to help.’ Her voice died away.

  The boy sighed. He crossed over to the door of the hut and picked up a wooden bucket of greasy washing water, then slung it on a spindly plant crowned with a single bright red flower. He brought the bucket back to Mr Doo, who began to fill it with potatoes and onions. The woman stared at it vaguely.

  ‘Er, is your husband away working somewhere?’ asked Matilda. Anything to crack this silence.

  ‘Down grubbin’ on the Mallee.’

  ‘He’s what?’ Images of chasing grubs ran through her mind.

  ‘Grubbin’ out tree roots. Older boys too. Ain’t had a penny from them in months.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m past carin’ what they do now. Just past carin’.’

  Matilda shivered. What had happened to these people? Was it drought? The strike? Or just this land that sucked the life away?

  Mrs Heenan absently flicked the flies away from the baby’s eyes. More clustered as soon as her fingers dropped. ‘How much do I owe ya?’ she said to Mr Doo.

  Mr Doo held up two fingers. Mrs Heenan reached inside the hut and found two pennies which she dropped in Mr Doo’s hand.

  Matilda eyed the pennies as Mr Doo slipped them into his pocket. Tuppence seemed very little for a bucket of potatoes and onions. But if it was charity, Mrs Heenan seemed neither aware nor grateful.

  They began to walk again, faster now, as though both wanted to leave the hopelessness behind them. Matilda was sweltering in her petticoats. She wished she’d taken them off before they left.

  Was Moura like that hut back there? No, it couldn’t be! Her father was a golden man, a good man who had sent enough money back for her to go to school, for them to share the house on the cliff with Aunt Ann.

  And if the men in the wagon had been right — and Mr Doo — he wasn’t away grubbing either.

  The next hut was about a mile from the first. There were no children to be seen, though by the washing on the line several lived there. But otherwise it was much like the hut they had left. The empty-eyed woman, her grey hair tied back in a rough bun, the tuppence for the bucket of vegetables, no smile or thanks, or even an offer of a cup of water.

  How would these people live without Mr Doo? she wondered.

  The third hut was better, as Matilda saw, peering past its mistress: a young woman with only one baby; a driveway marked out by stones; and gingham curtains hanging limply at the hut’s only window. The floor might be of dirt — or stamped down anthill, she remembered — but it had been swept till it was hard and dust free, and there was a plaited rag rug by the scrubbed stone hearth. There was even a cradle for the baby, roughly carved out of a tree trunk, with uneven rockers made of curved branches.

  But this woman didn’t make conversation either, or look straight at Matilda or Mr Doo. Maybe she assumes I’m Chinese too, thought Matilda. She doesn’t look, and so she doesn’t see.

  Once again the cart trundled down the road. She glanced at the sky. The sun was just past noon.

  ‘Moura soon?’ she asked.

  Mr Doo nodded. She hoped he really understood.

  Well, if they ended back at his market garden she would just sleep in the cart again. At least the men would — probably — give her dinner. Then tomorrow she could try to make her way back to town, and ask about her father there.

  Or she could go to the Drinkwaters’, perhaps — not to the main house (she felt too dirty and ragged to be seen there). But one of the men working there must know her father, know where Moura was.

  How much English did Mr Doo understand? ‘Those people back there,’ she began. ‘Why do they live there? I mean, how do they live?’

  Mr Doo didn’t look at her as he answered. ‘Small farm. Hundred acres. Father work, brothers work, send money. Sometimes.’

  A hundred acres was a small farm? She supposed it was, out here in the dust and nothingness.

  How big was Moura?

  The road veered away from the river now. The sheep became fewer away from the water, till there were none at all. There were more trees here, some with dead white trunks, like tree-ghosts who hadn’t realised they were supposed to fall and rot, others with bark almost as white, but splashed with grey and red and olive green. They looked different somehow from yesterday’s trees by the railway line, taller and longer limbed, though they had the same sickle-shaped gum-tree leaves.

  The land began to rise to the blue hills she had seen in the distance before. They were taller than she had realised. The road twisted and suddenly there were cliffs in front of her, high and streaked like massive organ pipes.

  Then she saw the sign. It was like the one at the railway siding, though the poker-work letters there had been straight and clear — Drinkwater, as if the family and the land they owned were one.

  This sign was on a log roughly chopped in half, the letters sloping and unsteady. Moura.

  She looked over at Mr Doo. He nodded. H
e swung the cart off the road onto a rutted track, up toward the cliffs. She peered between the tree trunks, trying to see what was ahead.

  The cliffs grew closer. For a moment she thought they were going to come to a dead end, blocked by the rock, and then she saw an opening between two hills. They passed between them.

  Matilda stared. It was as though they had entered a roofless room enclosed by cliffs — a massive one, as big as a whole suburb in the city. The air was cool and shadowed.

  Once, perhaps there had been trees. Now most of the land was cleared. Here, at last, there was green grass, dappled with tussocks up to the tumbles of rock below the cliffs. A trickle of creek ran between grey boulders, then vanished into the ground, though Matilda could see a creek bed where it must flow in wetter times.

  There was a square fenced area, made from logs, to hold a horse perhaps or even a garden. A shed, made of slabs of wood, with big wide doors. A pile of firewood, neatly stacked. And then the thing she had tried not to look at.

  The house.

  It was a house, at least, and not a hut. The walls were slabs of wood, their joins packed with what looked like mud. The roof was made of wooden shingles, neatly overlapped, not flimsy sheets of bark. There was even a verandah, with a proper wooden floor, and a rocking chair — made of rough branches and split wood it was true, but still a rocking chair. A table, a slab of wood, with four smaller slabs of wood for chairs; a bench for sitting — another slab of wood, carefully smoothed — beside it.

  ‘Moura,’ said Mr Doo.

  She tried to keep the disappointment from her face. It was much better than she had feared after the dust this morning, but so much less than she had hoped after the beauty of Drinkwater. Yet this house was as big as Aunt Ann’s cottage; it even had a stone chimney.

  Why should I ever have thought my father was rich? she wondered. If he had been rich the postal orders would have been bigger. If he had been rich we’d have been living here, not with Aunt Ann.

  A bird sang from somewhere along the cliff, a rich, warbling, almost liquid sound. It made her realise how silent this valley was; there were no human voices, not even the sound of chopping wood.

  ‘Hello?’ she called nervously.

  The sound echoed from the cliffs. Hello … hello … hello.

  Mr Doo looked at her hesitantly. ‘You stay?’

  Stay in this emptiness? But if there was no one to greet her, at least there was no one to threaten her either. And there was the house, solid and real, and water from the spring.

  ‘When will my father be back?’

  ‘Not know. Soon. I come back, three days’ time?’

  She understood. ‘Yes. Thank you. Thank you for everything. I’ll … I’ll be all right till then.’

  He turned busily to the cart. She saw he was gathering up the last of the vegetables, the sack of potatoes, only a tenth full now, carrots and a cabbage, one of the round green fruits. If there were a saucepan and matches inside she could cook food. If there were no matches she supposed she could walk the hour or so back to the last cottage, and ask for some hot coals in a tin can.

  ‘Thank you.’ And then she remembered. She bowed. ‘Duo xie.’

  He bowed back to her, and spoke more words, so fast she couldn’t tell one from another. She shook her head to show she didn’t understand.

  He smiled — the first time she had seen him smile — then took the handles of his cart. She watched him trot back the way they’d come, moving faster now that the cart was empty and going downhill.

  He was a stranger, but a kind one. And at least he was another person. Suddenly she was aware that she was the only human left among these shadowed cliffs.

  She turned toward the house.

  Chapter 9

  Matilda’s footsteps sounded hollow on the floorboards as she trod up onto the verandah. She pushed at the door — a proper door, even if it was swung from loops of leather, instead of hinges.

  The room inside was half kitchen, half sitting room. A horsehair sofa — the room’s only ‘real’ furniture — sat to one side of a hearth made of slabs of rocks carefully fitted together. A large metal pot with a hooped handle sat on the other side. A slab table and three rough-hewn chairs … three, she thought. For Dad, Mum and me. The only light came from the door, but there were two windows, covered with wooden shutters instead of glass. She opened them. Suddenly the room seemed less gloomy, almost welcoming.

  Two smaller rooms opened from the main one. The first had a double bed, leather plaited between stumps of legs to make a base, and covered with what looked like the hide of a cow. The other room had a single bed. The only other furniture was two big wooden chests, one in each room, and a chest of drawers made from old kerosene tins. She pulled out the drawers one by one. Folded sheepskins, soft and woolly, almost as white as the sheep in her picture book, stitched together to make a sort of mattress; two blankets, tattered at the edges.

  She shut the drawers, staring around at the carefully smoothed walls, the wooden planks so carefully fitted together for the floor. It was like the story, but totally unlike it too. Here was the house he had been building, with a bedroom for her. Here was the farm. But there were no woolly sheep, and no cow or pink pig, like the farm book at Aunt Ann’s. Most importantly, no father.

  She put her bundle down in the room she supposed had been meant for her, and opened its shutters too, fastening them against the wall with a leather thong to stop them banging in the wind.

  The vegetables were still on the verandah. She carried them in, then looked on the work bench. Yes, a box of matches.

  There was no newspaper to make a fire, but at one end of the verandah she found a box of dried leaves and kindling. She brought in an armful, then went outside again to fetch wood from the heap. The bird had stopped calling now. The valley breathed silence.

  She reached for the top bit of wood, neatly sawn from a tree trunk. Something black slithered from under the heap into the rocks behind.

  Snake! She felt her heart leap. If it had bitten her there was no one here to suck out the poison. She’d have to be careful where she trod and put her hands. At least that had looked like a red-belly, not as vicious, or as deadly, as the occasional brown that had hidden in the gardens at Aunt Ann’s.

  It took two matches before the leaves caught, and then the twigs. For a moment she thought the fireplace wouldn’t draw, as smoke puffed into the room. And then the fire flared properly and the air cleared.

  She peered into the pot. It had been scoured clean and there was no dust in it either. Which meant that someone (she hoped her father) had been here lately. She carried the pot out to the stream — or pool rather, for the water ran no more than a few feet before it vanished into the stones. She bent and drank, scooping the water with her hands. It was surprisingly cold, with a tang like tin.

  A shadow swung above her. She looked up. A cage hung from a branch wedged into the rocks. It looked like the fly-proof cool safe at Aunt Ann’s, but bigger, and made of canvas instead of tin. She opened the door.

  Food — proper food. A hunk of cheese, a bit dry around the edges. A can of golden syrup, safe from the ants. She took a deep breath of relief. Someone had left these recently. Was there more food inside the house?

  There was. The bench was a hollow chest. When she lifted the seat she found a sack of flour, a smaller bag of salt, a tin of tea and four cans filled with old dripping, a candle wick in each. There was a sealed tin of fresh dripping too. She sniffed it. It smelled fresh, rich and fatty, and just faintly of sheep.

  She hesitated to use the stores — her father would expect them to be as he’d left them when he returned. But if he did come back, perhaps he’d like to find food waiting for him. She could show him she would be useful.

  Her mind shut down on the question of why she needed to prove anything to the man who had brought her into the world.

  In the end she decided to make soup, the vegetables that Mr Doo had given her browned in the dripping, with wa
ter added. If she cooked it long enough the potatoes would thicken it.

  She made another trip down to the pool, washing the vegetables in the pot so she didn’t dirty the water, then washing the soil out of the pot again. For a moment she wished she had a geranium like the woman in the last hut, to pour the dirty water onto: just one bright flower, in this world of gum-tree green and rock.

  There was a knife and a toasting fork by the hearth. It was strangely comforting, chopping, heating the dripping in the pot next to the fire, browning the potatoes, the carrots and the cabbage, just as she had under Aunt Ann’s eagle eye or back in Mrs Dawkins’s kitchen, holding the now hot handle with her skirt when she took the pot out for a fourth time, to cover the vegetables with water.

  The fire needed more wood. She made several trips this time, choosing the thickest pieces — hard-knotted hunks of tree that should keep burning all night if she piled the ashes over them — so she wouldn’t have to waste another match.

  She felt even hotter and dirtier by the time she’d finished. There was soap in her bundle. She should have washed before she put the vegetables in the pot, she realised. Then she could have washed inside.

  She glanced at the tiny pool of water. It would be so good to be clean. Maybe if she wet herself and her hair, she could soap herself, then scoop out water to wash it off, without filling the waterhole with scum.

  But to be naked, out in the open! She glanced up at the cliffs, tall and silent. There was no one to see her, except the eagle, hovering above. And she needn’t take all her clothes off at once.

  In the end she washed her hair first, then under her skirt, undoing the buttons and pushing the top of the dress down to her waist just for a few minutes.

  She’d have liked to wash her dress too, and her petticoats. They weren’t just dirty — they smelled of old cabbage leaves, and perspiration, and coal smuts from the train. I’ll wash them tomorrow, she thought. Tonight she’d put on Mum’s second dress — it was her good one, but she wouldn’t get it dirty.