Storyland

by Catherine McKinnon

  ‘He was in a right rage because he saw me laughing,’ she says.

  ‘So he’s against laughter now?’ I ask.

  ‘He’s against anything I do. Lola, can I live with you and Mary and Abe? Please please please say yes. Don’t make me go back to him.’

  ‘He’d only come fetch you,’ I say. ‘He’s your da and has final say.’

  ‘He’s a da don’t deserve a daughter,’ Jewell says.

  ‘I agree with that,’ I say. ‘But we get no choice about our family.’

  I try to get a rhythm going with my milking but Dan Dempster’s words hurt worse than a slap.

  Jewell gets out her drawing book, pencils and knife.

  ‘Don’t draw me,’ Abe says. ‘You know I don’t like it.’

  ‘That ain’t true,’ Jewell says, teasing him.

  She sharpens her pencil with the knife and begins to draw.

  ‘Don’t draw me like I am,’ Mary says. ‘Make me look better.’

  ‘I have to draw you like you is,’ Jewell says. ‘Mr Winter is my drawing teacher, remember. I got to draw the truth.’

  Bartholomew Winter teaches at the school. He’s won prizes at Kiama for his realistic portraits, most especially of farm workers. Jewell finished at school last year, but on account of her talent, Bartholomew Winter still gives her lessons at no charge.

  ‘If you’re going to draw realistic, I’m turning my back,’ says Mary. ‘I seen how Bartholomew Winter draws dairy maids. Prizes or no prizes, he always makes them look dirty.’

  She lifts up her milking stool and sets it on an angle with her back to Jewell.

  ‘I ain’t going to make you look dirty,’ Jewell says.

  ‘I’m taking no chances,’ Mary says.

  I pull too hard on Bess’s teats and she stamps her leg.

  ‘Sorry Bess,’ I whisper. ‘Blame Dan Dempster.’

  When we are through with milking, Jewell and me set to work in the dairy. It’s built of stringybark, felled and planed in those first weeks after we took over the farm lease. Shelves line the walls and on them are dishes of milk that have soured overnight. We take down the dishes and ladle the risen cream into the churner. Jewell starts off cranking. She has got stronger from making butter and she’s not frightened of work. That’s another way she’s like me. I pour the leftover milk into a bucket and scrub the empty dishes. We made our setting dishes from kerosene tins, cut in two, but Mary and me soaked and scoured those dishes for days before we let milk sit in them. We have always kept our dairy clean, you could lick the floor it is that clean. But somehow Dan Dempster’s words make me feel like it is dirty. After I have dried the dishes, I wash down the shelves and rub them until they shine, then sluice the floor.

  Jewell stops cranking. I help her pour the buttermilk into a bucket. We tip spring water into the barrel and it’s my turn to crank. Jewell, sweating now, pulls off her woolly top. She has a brooch with a blue-winged bird at its centre, pinned to her shirt.

  ‘I’ve not seen that before,’ I say.

  ‘It was my ma’s,’ Jewell says. ‘Da keeps it in his top drawer. I stole it, Lola. Stole it from him.’

  ‘Is that what he got angry about?’

  ‘No, he don’t know I stole it yet. When he finds out, my life won’t be worth living.’

  ‘Why did you take it then?’

  ‘He can’t keep her from me,’ she says, but there is more plead than anger in her voice.

  ‘No one can keep your ma from you,’ I say to Jewell, ‘unless she or God wishes it.’

  My own ma wished it. She left me on my da’s doorstep when I were born and then scarpered, never to be heard from again. My da took me on, bless him bless him. He married soon after so I would be cared for. He married for love but it were a union frowned upon by his family because his new wife’s ma were Aboriginal, and even though her father were Scots like my da’s family, and a cedar cutter who had done well for himself, it didn’t count for naught. My da’s parents vowed to never see him again if he went through with his marriage. When he did they kept their vow. They died before I ever saw their faces. All I know of them is that they were religious.

  My da were a free-thinking man. He took me and my second ma away from the mountain to live on the coast, and he went to work in the Bulli mine. My second ma loved me as her own and I loved her back and we were a contented family. Mary were born and then Abe, but my second ma died at his birth and nothing were the same after that.

  Jewell and me tip out the buttermilk and pour in more spring water. Jewell takes the crank again. I pick up the milk cloths and bucket and walk across the yard and down to the creek. Abe is shovelling out the milking shed but when he spies me, he drops his spade and catches me up.

  ‘Did you know Jewell’s da whips her?’ Abe whispers.

  ‘Dempster whips Jewell?’

  ‘She bad mouths her da but she won’t talk about that.’

  ‘How come you know then?’ I ask, as I squat to draw water.

  ‘She showed me. There are scars all across her back.’

  ‘Lots of das whip their daughters, don’t they?’ I say, and begin to rinse the milk cloths in the bucket.

  ‘Did our da?’ Abe asks.

  ‘Maybe he would’ve once me and Mary had grown.’

  We lost our da in a mine accident. This were two years after we lost our ma.

  ‘He wouldn’t have whipped us ever,’ Abe says, stubbornly.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Probably not. He were a good da, the best.’

  When my teacher told me Da were dead I didn’t cry but I stopped talking. We went to live with Aunty then, up on Mount Kembla. I didn’t talk for a whole year. Aunty were really my second ma’s aunty, so Mary and Abe’s great-aunt, which meant she weren’t a young woman when she took us on. But she never complained and treated us all, me included, like we were her own.

  ‘We got to find a way to help Jewell,’ Abe says.

  ‘I know it,’ I say.

  I hang the milk cloths on the line. Mary crosses the yard from the fowl house and sets the empty scraps bucket on the ground with a thump. I know what she’s thinking without her telling me.

  ‘Dan Dempster is a bitter old sod,’ I say. ‘Don’t worry it.’

  ‘What if everyone thinks like him?’ Mary plonks herself down on the steps of the washhouse.

  After Da’s funeral, when we were leaving Bulli to go live with Aunty, everyone from the school came to wave us goodbye. Not only our friends but parents and teachers too. Everyone helped everyone in that place. On the first day at the mountain school we found out life would be different. One boy called me a dirty little bastard. I punched him in the nose and broke it. I were small for my age, and I weren’t speaking, but I sure had a temper. At the mountain school it were me took on the battles for our family, but Mary were the most wounded. She’s always been more sensitive and kids pick that up. When Mary came home from school one day, her thin arms bruised, Aunty sat us down and told us we’d have to look out for each other.

  ‘What happens in the playground, happens outside it too,’ she said.

  From that day on she began to teach us how to shoot and ride and trap. That way, she said, if anything ever happened to her, we’d be able to at least eat and protect each other.

  Nothing happened to her but Mary and me did learn some hard lessons about life outside the playground. Now it seems like there will be more to come.

  I sit beside my sister. There’s a quiet between us. Dan Dempster’s slurs have seeped inside our bones, making them feel brittle and weak.

  ‘We don’t got to care what Dan Dempster says,’ I say.

  ‘No, we don’t,’ Mary agrees. ‘But why does he have to say it? Say it, like we are something to be trodden on. What makes him so high and mighty? He can’t even spell, gets Jewell to write his letters.’

  ‘Like Jewell says, he is an old toad. And old toads are bitter.’

  Tommy Lin and me load our milk cans onto the cart, lifting together and sett
ling them in place. Tommy’s cart has tall steel sides and a canvas cover. The wheels are wooden, two big, two small, and need a good strong pull from three horses to roll along the road. Tommy carts the milk cans to the creamery twice a day and returns with the skimmed milk that we feed our pigs. Last week, no matter it were pouring down three days straight, he got my milk to the creamery. The third rainy day, when he came to pick up our cans, he were covered in mud. Tommy’s uncle owns a dairy at Dapto, but his uncle’s seven sons are there to help and Tommy’s cart business is his way of adding to the family coffers.

  I fetch a bucket of water for Tommy to give the horses. Then I scoop out two cups of milk from our home can, one for Tommy and one for me. We stand in the yard to drink.

  ‘Dark Dragon Ridge,’ he says, pointing to the escarpment.

  I look up at the rock face. The clouds above, smoky; the forest-green is like a long shadowy tail.

  ‘Firebreathing, is that it, Tommy?’

  Tommy Lin gets a stick and squats to draw the name in the dirt. His long black plait falls down the back of his calico shirt.

  I squat down to look at the symbols.

  ‘Dark Dragon Ridge,’ he says. ‘Name for town too.’

  ‘Why not call Wollongong, Wollongong?’ I ask.

  Tommy Lin looks to the ground where he has written Dark Dragon Ridge. ‘This one better,’ he says.

  ‘Thanks for getting me through that wet weather last week,’ I say to Tommy as we stand.

  ‘Always for Lola,’ he says.

  Tommy has never missed a day and is reliable, but the Farrells say he is not the kind of reliable they like, so have stopped using his cart, and have collected together with some neighbours to buy their own. Tommy has never said a word of complaint, about them or anyone else. He is different, I agree with the Farrells on that score, but not on how he is different.

  Tommy bows and hands me his cup, and I bow in return.

  ‘Lola McBride,’ he says.

  ‘Tommy Lin,’ I say.

  This is how we say goodbye to each other every day, something taught to me by Tommy. Respectful is Tommy. That’s how he is different. Tommy climbs up into the front of the milk cart, adjusts his braces, and jigs the reins. The horses take off and the cart rolls away, trampling over the words Tommy has drawn in the dirt. As the cart rumbles through the gateway there is a gust of wind and brown leaves rain down on the road.

  I haul our can of home milk across to the kitchen. Our farmhouse is two small buildings and a washhouse. The washhouse, store and kitchen were all built facing the creek. Alongside the kitchen is the vegetable garden and orchard which has apple, pear, quince, plum, lemon and orange trees. Set back from the kitchen is the cottage. It has two small bedrooms and a sitting room with a fireplace. One bedroom were meant for Otto and Mary, the other for me and my baby. Now Mary and I share a bed, and Abe has a room to himself. We eat at the table set on the kitchen verandah or, if it is cold, in front of the fire. Mrs Farrell next door got herself ruffled once when she saw me lay the table in the open air.

  ‘Don’t you have a dining room?’ she asked.

  When I told her no she sighed like it were another trouble to consider.

  I place the milk can in the cool corner. Mary slides dough onto the hot hearth and covers it with coals.

  ‘I’ll take Jewell back to Dempster, have a word,’ I say.

  Mary stares at me. When I told her about Jewell being whipped, she got teary, but now her face opens up and she begins to laugh. ‘Only if I ride with you,’ she says. ‘Need someone to keep things calm.’

  ‘You worried about Dempster losing his temper or me?’ I ask.

  ‘Both,’ Mary says. ‘Only Dempster is bigger than you.’

  ‘I’ve got my rifle,’ I joke. ‘If he steps out of line, I’ll shoot the old bastard.’

  ‘That’s if he don’t shoot you first.’

  Jewell and me carry buckets of skimmed milk, bran, middlings and maize out to the pig pen. We’ve got two troughs. In the big trough we mix everything together. The smaller trough is for our newly weaned piglets, and in that one we mix in all but the maize. The boar and sow come running when they first hear us stirring. It takes longer for the piglets to catch on that it’s feeding time, but soon they too come squealing out from their shelter. They try to get at the big trough but it’s too high for them. Only when I bang a bucket on the side of the smaller trough do they come in that direction.

  Jewell elbows me.

  I turn and see Connor Farrell striding across the low paddock.

  ‘Here he comes, the man himself,’ Jewell says. ‘You know why he comes here so often don’t you?’

  ‘To get information on our herd.’

  ‘He’s after you, Lola McBride.’

  ‘Not interested.’

  ‘Plenty say you are interested.’

  ‘Don’t listen to the plenty, how many times I told you that?’

  ‘Look at how he struts,’ she says. ‘He’s a horny goat.’

  Connor is tall and thick-bodied like his elder brother Niall, but they are chalk and cheese in temperament. Niall explodes. Connor is like an arrow narrowed for its target. The younger brothers are all followers. It’s the elder two who lead the way. Both Niall and Connor are in the rifle shooting club. Niall wins the round most weeks but it’s Connor who is the best hunter. No women are allowed in their poxy club otherwise I could show them up at rifle practice any day of the week. Mary and me might not have the flash, we might not spin and twirl our rifles like they is batons, but we have the aim.

  I turn away from Connor and tip the last of the sour milk mix into the little trough.

  ‘He flirts with you. I’ve seen him,’ Jewell teases.

  ‘He can flirt all he likes but it won’t do no good, and if you hear anyone say anything different about it, instead of gossiping with them, you tell them that from me!’

  Jewell goes quiet. I spoke too harshly but I don’t mend it.

  Connor reaches the fence that separates the low paddock from the yard, he puts his hand on the top rail and hurdles over.

  Jewell repins her brooch, which has become loose. She picks up her buckets and as she leaves she says, ‘Connor Farrell, you is a show pony!’

  Connor looks at her sore, which would only please Jewell all the more. He comes up to the sty and leans on the rail.

  ‘How many milk cans this week?’ he asks.

  See, I want to say to Jewell, whenever Connor comes over it’s straight into farm talk. That’s not flirting talk. And I saw something flicker in his eyes when he looked at Jewell. He were hurt by her teasing.

  ‘This week we’re getting five of those ten-gallon cans each day,’ I say. ‘I’m sending most of it to the creamery except for what I keep back for ourselves.’

  ‘Ours give us fourteen cans each day.’

  ‘Fourteen from your fifty cows and five from our twenty-one, not much difference is there? Looks like the Illawarra stock are holding their own.’

  ‘Da says we need a district herd book.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘It’s how you can buy and sell, prove lineage and whatnot,’ Connor says.

  ‘He going to get one up and running?’

  ‘You know Da, maybe he will and maybe he won’t.’

  The piglets are squealing again. The sow has come to the small trough and is edging them out of their feed. I give her a tap on the nose with the bucket.

  ‘Maybe you should do the herd book,’ I say. ‘You’re the one that’s talking to all us farmers, finding out what we’re producing.’

  ‘Maybe I will,’ Connor says.

  We watch the pigs.

  ‘There’s that eisteddfod coming up next week,’ Connor says. ‘At the town hall.’

  ‘So I’ve heard.’

  ‘It interest you?’

  ‘It interests me.’ I give Connor a sideways glance. Is he asking me to step out with him or making small talk? Thing is, I don’t like not being sure of what’
s going on. ‘Only my week is full enough without going to eisteddfods,’ I say. ‘We got to make a start on felling the forest beyond our long paddock. Not to mention digging over this low paddock here and then the middle paddock. Two of our cows have sore udders and they take twice as long to milk. And we need to go to Aunty’s place Saturday to chop wood for her.’

  Connor’s expression don’t change.

  ‘Think about it,’ he says. ‘We could go together. Maybe even take young Jewell along. She needs some culture got into her.’

  Connor says goodbye. He climbs over the fence this time, don’t leap it, and strides back across the paddock leaving me no wiser to his real intentions.

  One true and good thing about Mary’s Otto were his clear intentions to her right from the word go. They met when he were hired to build a cottage down the road from Aunty’s place. The first day he walked past our gate and saw Mary in the yard, he came right up to her. In a thick Russian accent, and in front of us all, he said, ‘Marry me?’ It set Mary laughing and Mary laughing set him laughing.

  ‘If say no I chop off head from grief,’ Otto said.

  Mary told him to chop off his head because she had no intention of ever getting married.

  He kept asking and Mary kept saying he were a man who didn’t keep his word, because his head were still on top of his neck. They fooled about like that for weeks. When he were done with building the cottage he began stopping by Aunty’s house, doing jobs for her. She fed him in exchange. By talking and eating at Aunty’s table we all got to know him. Otto were a big man. He took up space. That first year, he already had grey hair and he were not yet thirty. He liked to talk about the world and we would sit at Aunty’s table, all five of us, and philosophise about the past and the future. We gave him a run for his money, that’s for sure, especially Aunty. He had a temper of sorts, but mostly at things; not people, not animals. The saw that wouldn’t cut right, or the axe that were blunt. He and Mary’s courtship is the only one I’ve witnessed close up. Otto’s heart were open, there for all to see. There were never any doubt.

  Connor has a different way. He is polite enough yet in all this time he has been stopping by, I haven’t ever been able to find his heart. Maybe it is wrapped deep in some hurt he can’t show. Given his brothers and the way they like to scoff, he probably has good reason for that.