Wildflower Hill

by Kimberley Freeman

  “Nah, don’t worry about me. Keep it for yourself.”

  Then he was gone. Beattie pulled out a few more feet of the fabric and held it up to her face, her mind already drawing patterns. She had a grand idea.

  All through April and May she worked and never made a single thing for herself or Lucy. Instead, she designed two skirts and made ten of each in varying sizes. Then she embroidered twenty tags and sewed them into the seams: Blaxland Wool. The feeling of pride that seeing those tags in the skirts gave her was unutterable. She lovingly folded the skirts between tissue paper and stacked them on the sofa.

  Leo Sampson’s words came back to haunt her: like it or not, you are part of the community. He was right, she did need their goodwill. She especially needed the goodwill of Tilly Harrow, who ran the general store, if Beattie wanted her to stock these clothes for sale.

  One fine, clear Friday morning, she walked down to town to speak to Tilly directly.

  After Tilly had heard Margaret Day’s gossip, she had cooled considerably toward Beattie, so Beattie hadn’t tried to engage her again or even smile at her. Better to be rejected wearing a stony face rather than a grinning one. But today she applied a smile as she waited at the counter.

  “Morning,” Tilly said in a vague tone, not quite meeting her eye.

  “Tilly, I need to ask you a very big favor.”

  Tilly’s mouth twitched downward.

  Beattie stumbled on. “I’ve made these . . . They are fine work, made with local wool.” She pulled out one each of the skirts: the long slender one and the flared one. “I need somewhere to sell them and wondered if I could leave them here to sell on consignment.”

  This time Tilly’s mouth went in the other direction. It seemed she found Beattie’s request amusing. “You’re not serious?” she said. “There’s not a person in town who’d buy something you made.”

  Beattie folded the skirt back into its tissue paper, keeping her dignity. She realized hotly and clearly that she never should have come here. That she should have taken a bus down to Hobart and gone to a larger store, where women were more interested in fashion than in the designer’s shady past. She turned to leave, but then her annoyance got the better of her. “What have I ever done to you, or to anyone in this town,” she asked, “to be treated so poorly?”

  Tilly blinked back at her, perhaps considering this question for the first time: a pack animal suddenly asking itself why it did what the others did without question. Then her face hardened again. “There are plenty of people who are honest and work hard, who are justified to dislike people who don’t.”

  “I’m honest. I work hard.”

  “That’s not what I’ve heard.” Tilly sniffed.

  Beattie wanted to shout and stamp and knock over the neat jars of sweets and postcard racks on the counter. She took a deep breath, said, “You know nothing about me,” and left.

  Next wool clip, she was going to buy a car and go to Bligh for supplies, or up to Bothwell. In the meantime, Mikhail would have do the shopping, because Beattie was never going to speak to anyone in town again.

  In the end, it was Molly who helped Beattie sell her skirts. When she and Henry dropped Lucy off for the winter holidays, Molly found them piled up behind the sofa.

  “What are these?” she asked, unfolding one. “And why do you have so many?”

  Beattie explained that she had designed and made them—a fact that astonished Molly—and that she hadn’t had any luck placing them in the local shops.

  “I have a friend at church who works at FitzGerald’s in Hobart,” Molly said. “I can take them to her if you like.” She closed her mouth quickly after she spoke, as though she might have regretted offering to help.

  Beattie was desperate enough to overlook any of the unspoken discomfort between them. “Would you?”

  “I . . . Yes, of course.” Molly’s eyes flicked to Henry, who shook his head slightly with exasperation. “I’ll ask for you.”

  “Thank you. I don’t know what they’re worth. Ask your friend to do with them what she thinks is best. And to call me if she needs to.” Beattie loaded Molly’s arms up with the skirts. “Keep one for yourself.”

  She waved them off cheerfully, with her arm around Lucy’s shoulders.

  “Why are you smiling so much, Mummy?” Lucy asked.

  Beattie cuddled her tight. “Honest work, darling,” she said. “Always its own reward.”

  Beattie kept the last of the wool for a special purpose: she was making Charlie a coat. The old gray coat that he wore when out mustering was falling apart where the sleeves met the shoulders; she had repaired it three or four times already. But she imagined him in a new coat, one handmade by her, with raglan sleeves and a fly fastening, lined with sheepskin to keep him warm through the long unforgiving winter. But it was to be a surprise, so she had been measuring him with her eyes the last few months. When he came into the kitchen at night, smelling faintly of horse and perspiration, she judged the distance across his shoulders, the line from the nape of his neck where his dark curls sat, the length of his strong arms.

  Watching him so closely for so long prodded the bruising ache of desire inside her. What did it matter? Everyone in town already thought badly of her. She had nobody left to offend. What did it matter if she wanted him? When he had gone to all the trouble of getting her the wool, he had been letting her know, surely, that she was special to him. As the weeks went by, she searched every word, every expression on his face, for evidence that she was right. And sometimes, for just a flash in an unguarded moment, it was there.

  So the coat became much more than a coat; it became a potent symbol of her desire for him. At night, after he had gone to bed, Beattie stayed up and worked on it, hand-stitching the lining and the pockets. As she sewed, Beattie allowed herself to imagine the moment that she gave it to him. Each stitch became alive with the knowledge that she was falling in love with him. She sewed that love into the coat.

  Finally, as midwinter closed in, making daylight a fleeting thing, it was ready. And she readied herself to give it to him.

  She caught him at the bottom of the stairs, his determined footsteps heading toward the kitchen, the laundry, the stables. Out to work with his threadbare gray coat on.

  “Charlie?” she said, surprised that her voice sounded so smooth.

  He turned, tilted his head slightly to the side, and gave her his customary gentle smile. “Good morning, Beattie.”

  She hurried to the bottom stair, holding the coat out in front of her.

  He took it from her hands; his eyes ran over it, and a look crossed his face—she couldn’t describe it. It might have been sadness. She didn’t know what she’d done to make him feel sad, though.

  “Don’t you like it?” she asked.

  His smile was back in place. “It’s brilliant, Beattie. Thanks.” He slipped out of the gray coat, hung it over the banister, and slid his lean body into the new coat.

  It fit him perfectly. She was impossibly proud of her handiwork; it hung on his tall frame as well as if she’d measured him with a tape instead of a hungry gaze.

  “Bloody brilliant,” he muttered, holding his arms out to admire the sleeves. “It’s the nicest thing I’ve ever owned.” He looked up at her, nodded. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” She wanted to touch him, smooth the material over his shoulder. Her hand itched. An enormous moment of choked silence. “Charlie, I—”

  “Beattie, don’t be worrying too much about me,” he said. “Don’t be making me nice things and fussing over me. I’m not . . . I’m not the man to make a fuss of.”

  In none of her fantasies about this moment had Charlie ever said that. She swallowed hard. Was he warning her off? She couldn’t bear to go on not knowing. Forcing herself to be brave, she said, “You are worth making a fuss of. You are one of the best men I have ever known.” The best. Not one of the best.

  Again the sad expression. Beattie’s fantasy was falling apart. The coat was mean
t to bring them together, not separate them awkwardly.

  “I’m just your farm manager. I’m your employee.”

  “Without you there would be no farm.”

  “I’m not that special.” He looked at her squarely. “I shouldn’t be that special.”

  Without doubt, he was warning her off. She felt such a fool. He had seen through her as though she were made of brittle glass, had seen the silly desire she nurtured for him, and was telling her to put it away before it embarrassed them both. Beattie blinked rapidly to keep tears at bay. She forced a little smile. “Well. I can’t stand here talking all day. I’d best get on with the bookwork.”

  He pulled on his hat and nodded, then turned and left. Gorgeous in his new coat, forever out of her reach.

  On the first day of August, Beattie took a call from the women’s-wear department at FitzGerald’s in Hobart. They had sold all her skirts and wanted to know if she had any more. And they had forty-eight pounds waiting for her to pick up.

  Taking on the extra business seemed a good way to try to get Charlie out of her mind.

  TWENTY-TWO

  1938

  Christmas wouldn’t be the same without Mikhail.

  The room swirled with laughter and music. Peter and his brother, Matt, the stockmen, were singing a drunken goodbye song; Lucy was jumping up and down near the Christmas tree, demanding to know what “the big green present” was. And Mikhail stood by the empty fireplace with his arm around his fiancée, grinning as widely as he had for the entire six months since he’d met her. Mikhail was marrying Catherine—a widow with two grown children—and they were moving to Launceston to be near her elderly parents. Beattie would have to learn to manage without him.

  “Come on,” Beattie said, flipping up the lid of the piano. “Rosella, will you play us a song to stop those men from singing so terribly out of tune?”

  Rosella was her new neighbor. She and her husband had leased Jimmy Farquhar’s farm at the start of the year and become good friends to Beattie. Their daughter, Lizzie, was the same age as Lucy, and they spent every moment of the holidays together, racing around in the paddocks, building cubbies and making mud pies.

  As Rosella sat and started playing Jingle Bells and everyone joined in, Beattie curled her arm around Lucy, and her eyes moved from face to face as she counted her Christmas blessings. Two fabulous wool clips and a growing side business in designing women’s work wear had brought her the financial security she had long dreamed of—the piano, the little utility truck, the glass Christmas decorations. It had even bought Henry’s grudging respect and, with that, his permission to allow Lucy to spend a full term that year with Beattie, learning with a governess. Though Lucy was so distracted by what was going on in the paddocks that she’d learned hardly a thing, and Molly had noticed.

  “She must start regular school again come January,” Molly had said, her pale hands fluttering near her throat. Molly knew she was losing Lucy; Beattie had no sympathy. It would be a wrench to send Lucy back after so long, but Beattie knew that—slowly and irrevocably—she was winning.

  What her financial success hadn’t bought was a calm heart. Charlie still worked for her, and he had moved back to the shearers’ cottage. Yes, he had let her buy him a proper bed, a little desk, a cupboard for his things. But he kept her very much at arm’s length. Indeed, there was little need for them to see each other. He ran his side of the business, and she ran hers. There had been no other gestures of affection since he’d brought her the bolt of cloth. He was just across the paddock but may as well have been a million miles away. She tried not to mind. She usually managed to keep those warm imaginings of him at bay. But she still hadn’t met a man who could compare to him.

  Charlie saw her eyes roaming the room and smiled at her. Just a friendly smile with no hidden meaning. But that small offering of affection—guarded as it may have been—imbued the Christmas music with an air of melancholy, as though somewhere in hearing range, another, sadder tune played against it.

  The song came to a close, and Beattie asked everyone to be quiet so she could say a few words. “Mikhail,” she said, “when I had nothing, you were here for me. You stood by me in the worst times of my life, and for that I am forever in your debt.”

  Mikhail waved her away with embarrassment. Catherine stood on tiptoe to kiss his weathered cheek. Everyone applauded, somebody called for more brandy, and Beattie realized that Lucy was up far too late.

  “Good night, little red-haired girl,” Charlie said affectionately as Lucy called out her good nights from the threshold.

  Beattie took Lucy upstairs and tucked her in. “It’s nearly eleven.” Beattie laughed. “Don’t tell Molly.”

  Lucy giggled. “Naughty Mummy.”

  Beattie sat on the bed, enjoying the cool dark of Lucy’s bedroom after the bright warmth of the sitting room. “Do you miss Molly?”

  Lucy nodded. “I miss Daddy the most. But then I miss you when I’m with Daddy. It’s not fair. No matter where I am, I miss somebody.”

  Beattie smoothed the girl’s red-gold hair away from her forehead. “I’m sorry, darling.”

  “You know, sometimes I make up this story in my head. And in it, Molly dies and you and Daddy realize you still love each other. Then we’re all in one place.”

  Beattie had to stifle a laugh. “You shouldn’t wish Molly to be dead.”

  “I don’t wish it, not at all!” Lucy cried. “I just think of it sometimes. And I know it would be sad and I’d miss Molly, but if you and Daddy and I were all together, maybe I wouldn’t mind so very much.”

  Beattie smiled at her in the dark. “I’m sorry, Lucy, but it’s just a story. Daddy and I will never be together like that again.”

  Lucy nodded sadly. “I know.” She thought for a moment before adding. “But you loved him once, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, of course,” Beattie said, trying to remember what that had felt like.

  “Because I asked him the same, and he said he’d loved you very much, too. Once. And that my smile is the same as your smile.”

  For some reason, this thought made Beattie feel melancholy. Yes, they had loved each other. Foolish love. And they’d made this gorgeous child, then done nothing but fight over her since.

  “But Molly heard,” Lucy continued. “And she got so angry. I’ve never seen her so angry.”

  Beattie wasn’t sure how to explain the situation to her daughter, so she said nothing. The girl was only nine. Perhaps when she was twelve, Beattie would tell her the whole story. And hope that Lucy didn’t judge her too harshly.

  “Time to sleep now,” Beattie said.

  “One more thing, Mummy. Daddy has Molly now, but you don’t have anyone.”

  “I don’t need anyone. I manage fine by myself.”

  “That’s good,” Lucy said, turning on her side, “because I don’t want another daddy.”

  Beattie patted her shoulder and rose, drew the curtains tight to block out the patient starlight, and returned downstairs.

  Matt, Peter, and Charlie had headed back to the cottage, and Rosella and her family were packing up to go. They were going to put Mikhail and Catherine up for the night, as the bus to Launceston ran close by their back fence. The sight of Mikhail’s bags by the front door made Beattie’s eyes prick with tears. In among the whirl of movement and voices, she found him.

  “Goodbye, old friend,” she said, grasping his hand firmly. “I will miss you.”

  “Ah, you will forget me in no time.”

  “Never. Never.” She squeezed his hand hard.

  He bent his head and kissed her knuckles softly. “You are best boss I ever have,” he said.

  “Come on, Mikhail,” Catherine was calling. “Our lift is leaving.”

  “I come, I come!” he said gruffly. Then leaned in close to Beattie so nobody else could hear and said, “Is greatest happiest to be in love.”

  “I’m very pleased for you.”

  “I hope for you such happiness, too.�
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  Beattie smiled unevenly. “Well, I . . .”

  “I am not supposed to say anything. He says this to me one, maybe two years ago now, that I am not allowed to mention it. But I always hope that Charlie and you would be in love.”

  Beattie’s face felt warm. “Charlie told you not to say that to me?”

  Mikhail nodded gravely. “Charlie is very concerned for your reputation.” He snorted a laugh. “I say that Beattie doesn’t care much for reputation. You don’t need it. You have brains and money. And you are always very beautiful.” He stood back, smiled over at Catherine. “Though not quite as beautiful as my wife-to-be.”

  Catherine gestured to him urgently. Rosella’s daughter, Lizzie, was grizzling with tiredness. “Time to go, time to go,” Catherine said.

  “Goodbye,” said Mikhail.

  “Not forever,” said Beattie.

  The noise withdrew, the door closed.

  Beattie returned to the sitting room, collected glasses and plates, and dusted cigarette ash off the table. Slowly, carefully, tidying the room, patting the cushions. She switched on the wireless. Christmas carols. Such a lovely change from the daily talk about Hitler and Churchill.

  What had Charlie said to Mikhail, and why? Did he have feelings for her after all, and had he hidden them in some misguided attempt to protect her from the town’s opinion? Now she was confused. She had spent so long convincing herself that her feelings of love were nothing of the sort, that they were just the folly of a lonely woman. What was she supposed to do now?

  But Charlie was estranged from her. At one stage, that night when Mikhail had been sick, they had been close. Just a half inch of air between them. That long night of stories and secrets was years ago now; since then their roles on the farm had crystallized, and they’d moved away from each other. He was over at the cottage with the boys; she was at the house with her books and her sewing machine. There was surely no way to bridge that gap. She cursed him for taking that decision away from her, for deciding that the opinions of a handful of fusspots in Lewinford were more important than her feelings for him.