by Rosalie Ham
A few rabbits were grazing on the fine grass at the dam’s edge and Spot stared at her, his bright eyes pleading in his long, black head. ‘It’s too hot for a ride,’ she called, shaking her own head to rid her mind of Hadley’s hurt face. Spot strolled back to the shady trees and gazed at the bay.
Phoeba focused the looking glass on the noon train, a line of square black boxes burning along the rail’s thin line, slowing at the siding. Two swaggies tumbled from the guard’s van, and scrambled off towards the bay. The mailman leaned out, flinging a mailbag onto the siding. As the train gathered speed again, he disappeared into his van then a square wad of newspapers flew out the door, knocking Freckle who fluttered off the siding into the scrub.
Good, thought Phoeba, papers to read.
While she waited for Freckle, she thought about marriage, as she had promised, but nothing came – apart from the dull brown shape of Freckle on his roan cob moving up Mount Hope Lane. Soon he rode through the gate past Spot and his ankle-height entourage – the ducks, the rooster – and eased up to the front step. Summer’s sun ripened Freckle’s freckles and they had massed together in one big smear that bridged his nose from cheek to cheek. He sat low in a huge saddle, his bare feet resting loosely in the stirrup irons. A damp cloth sack containing skinned and gutted rabbits hung from the saddle. Mrs Flynn’s only child, Freckle was famous for turning up to school with crayfish sandwiches for lunch, much to the envy of everyone. Not that he attended anymore – he said he’d learned the alphabet so knew what the telegraph machine was spelling out. He handed Phoeba the Geelong Advertiser and a large hatbox addressed to Robert.
‘Would you like a drink, Freckle?’
‘I’ll get tea and a biscuit at Overton,’ he boasted. His horse sniffed the wiry, blanched petunias at the base of the front steps, lifting its head abruptly when Maude came out onto the veranda.
‘Keep your animal away from my garden,’ said Maude.
‘Call that a garden?’
‘We won’t have a rabbit this week since we have lamb from Overton, but I was expecting a peach parer from Lassetters,’ she said, frowning at the hatbox.
‘If it had come I’d have brought it, wouldn’t I?’ said Freckle.
‘Thank you. You can go now.’
‘No, I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Your old man gives me a penny for bringing the newspapers from the siding.’
‘He’s not here.’
‘His newspapers are.’
‘Well I haven’t got any money. Now off you go.’
The mailboy regarded Maude levelly: ‘Your sister’s crook. I hope she dies. ’And he handed a post office telegraph to Phoeba and trotted away.
‘Thanks,’ called Phoeba.
Aunt Margaret, wisely, had written only three words for Freckle to interpret. ‘Unwell. Arriving tomorrow.’
‘Lovely,’ said Phoeba. She would have good company for a few days.
Aunt Margaret came to Mount Hope when she was broke, lonely or starving. She lived in Geelong in the dank, shadowy house she and Maude had been raised in. The weatherboards slanted and the front veranda undulated, but Aunt Margaret spent her days at her easel in the sunny conservatory, a cracked and rusty construction now held together by blackberry bushes. She survived on handouts from Robert and a very, very small allowance from a fund her parents had started – before their tragic and unexpected deaths – as dowries for their two daughters. Every once in a while she sold an oil painting and for a long time she had taken in lodgers, but no one suitable wanted the room anymore. Maude often suggested she seek a position as a companion to someone rich, but Margaret said snappily that she’d rather catch hydatids.
‘You could have at least buttoned your blouse,’ said Maude, taking a newspaper from Phoeba.
‘It’s only Freckle.’
They both settled with their pages: STREETON’S PAINTING, THE RAILWAY STATION, REDFERN, ENJOYS GREAT SUCCESS.
Robert arrived from the vineyard. ‘My new hat,’ he said, opening the box.
‘There’s nothing wrong with the one you’ve got on,’ said Maude.
‘I could have been blinded,’ said Robert, pointing to a red scar on top of his head where a swooping magpie had torn the skin in the spring.
‘If you had we would have moved straight back to Geelong and put you in a home,’ spat Maude.
‘I would have got you out, Dad,’ said Phoeba. Her mother was always saying cruel things to her father.
Robert settled his new hat onto his head. It was a pith hat and looked very silly.
‘Farmers don’t wear pith hats, Robert,’ said Maude.
‘I am not a farmer,’ said Robert. ‘I am a vigneron.’
Maude put her hand to her temple. ‘You are the cause of my headaches, Robert.’ She drifted inside taking the social pages with her.
‘I don’t know what I did to deserve my lot in life,’ he sighed, settling in his chair.
Yes, thought Phoeba, better keep Hadley as a friend. She didn’t want to end up like her mother. She put her boots on and liberated Spot so he could follow her around the vines. At the top of the first one she carefully pulled the thin, rubbery leaves aside and there, at the end of a spindly stem, were the tiny clusters of green pellets, like baby broccoli at the end of pale, green peduncles. Beautiful, evenly spaced and laddering all the way to the end of the stem.
‘Look, Spot, grapes!’
The pellets would be fat berries in a few weeks and then slowly they’d develop a bloom, a powdery coat to keep the water inside and transform them into sacks of dull juicy jelly. Every other farmer might look expectantly and eagerly to the skies to welcome the Autumn rain clouds, but the Crupps implored Pomona, Roman Goddess of fruit, to banish those fluffy pillows and summon them more warm, dry skies. No wonder the vineyard wasn’t popular.
Grapes were easier to think about than Hadley.
Tuesday, January 2, 1894
Hadley was Phoeba’s first thought on Tuesday morning when she woke. She nudged him gently from her mind and went out into the dry air, shooing birds from the vines just after sunrise. Later, eating breakfast with her father, they heard a floorboard groan under a heavy weight and Maude came down the passage holding her potty carefully in both hands. Robert smiled at his wife but she didn’t take her eyes off the pot. Her grey-streaked hair was tied in loose, messy twists that hung down over her bosoms, and her cheeks were flushed. ‘I still have a bit of a head,’ she said, on the way to the outhouse. It was the one place outside Maude had to go. As much as she could, she stayed indoors.
‘I’ll make some fresh tea,’ said Phoeba moving the kettle to the hotplate. The headaches had only started lately, but this one wasn’t going to stop Maude settling at the kitchen table with Lilith, a box of dressmaking patterns and a stack of fashion magazines.
‘I quite like a feathered aigrette on my bodice although they say the tailored effect is fashionable now in Europe,’ said Lilith.
‘And what’s new in hats and veils?’ asked her mother.
Phoeba headed to the orchard for some peace, but as she picked plums Hadley’s hurt face came back to her. There was nothing she could do about it, she decided. Time would have to heal.
Sitting in the grass stoning the plums, she made a list in her head of alternative occupations: nurse, teacher, factory seamstress, librarian or governess. The options didn’t seem too bad. But there was a depression, thousands of people were unemployed, she knew, and Bay View was a long way from anywhere.
After lunch she helped her father harness Rocket ready for the sulky.
‘I hope he doesn’t kill us. Why didn’t you borrow a horse from Overton?’
‘You’re starting to sound like your mother,’ said Robert looping the strap of his pith helmet under his chin.
‘And you look as if you’re about to go off shooting elephants.’
‘Bloody women,’ said Robert. ‘Thank God for Rocket.’
Phoeba was smoothing her w
orn riding gloves over her rough hands when Lilith appeared dressed in her best knife-pleated skirt and jacket. Maude’s finest bar brooch was pinned to her lapel and she wore her most sumptuous hat.
‘Aren’t you hot?’ asked Phoeba, while Robert stared at the feathers waving about on top of his daughter’s head: ‘Ostriches will be cold this winter,’ he mused.
‘You never know,’ said Lilith. ‘We might meet someone.’
‘Prince Edward is often at Mrs Flynn’s shop,’ muttered Phoeba.
As they approached the gate, Spot spread his front legs wide and dropped his big black head to the ground, sulkily. His nostrils were crusted with dust and his breath cleared two bare circles in the dirt. The rooster and duck stood supportively by his side.
‘It’s your own fault,’ called Phoeba, but she made a mental note to give him an apple when she got back. She looked down to Bay View.
Fortunately, there was only one other horse in sight and it was two miles away, tied up outside Flynn’s shop: it would have been impossible to stop Rocket at the intersection if there was converging traffic. Galloping pace was his only speed. Phoeba looped the reins between her fingers, squeezed the leather straps tightly and pulled back, restraining the white horse as he danced through the gate.
Lilith held her hat, Phoeba said gee-up and Rocket sprang, pacing all the way down Mount Hope Lane. Grazing rabbits scattered as they sped by and the intersection and the dam went by in a blur as they raced towards Bay View. Phoeba saw a man stride out of Flynn’s to the tethered horse. She’d seen neither the horse nor the rider before.
‘Oh no,’ she said under her breath. ‘Please let him stay put.’
The man got on his horse and saw Rocket racing towards the siding and, just as Phoeba feared, spurred his horse and rode to meet them. He was broad-shouldered and dark-haired and he turned his horse to ride alongside Rocket as he met up with them.
‘I’ve got him,’ he called to Phoeba and reached for Rocket’s cheek piece.
‘He’ll stop at the line,’ called Phoeba, but the stranger ignored her, tugging at Rocket’s bridle.
Rocket charged on, the finish line in his sights, and they raced together, the wind on their faces, the harnesses creaking and tinkling and the horses panting.
Phoeba’s grip on the reins was firm; she was in control although her arms were stretched. The rim of her straw hat was pushed back by the wind and the stranger noticed a confident, fearless glint in her eye and a firmly set jaw. Beside her, a fancily dressed lass held tightly to her hat and looked worried.
Rocket stopped dead, his way blocked by the siding, and the rider let him go. He circled on his horse, which was unusually thickset and stocky. ‘Does he always race like that?’
‘Yes,’ said Lilith, looking vulnerable and helpless.
The stranger was good-looking, Phoeba noticed, in an unusual way. Not so much handsome as strong. It went through her mind that she should have worn her blue dress, or perhaps thought to borrow Maude’s bar brooch before Lilith did.
‘Our horse used to be a pacer,’ she said.
‘A very fast one.’
The man smiled and all Phoeba could do was smile back; she could think of nothing to say. His eyes were brown, his moustache shiny and the wax at its ends clean, not dulled like old string or clogged with bits of food. He got off his horse, took the reins from Phoeba and looped them through the wheel. Then he helped them down from the sulky.
‘We’re getting a new horse,’ said Lilith, ‘from Overton.’
‘Indeed?’ said the stranger.
‘But thank you,’ Phoeba stammered, and the man tipped his hat and rode away.
‘Do you think that’s the new manager, Phoeba?’ asked Lilith.
‘Possibly. Hadley says the new manager’s name is Mr Steel,’ she replied, a little breathless.
‘I wonder if he’s married,’ said Lilith.
The two girls stood in Flynn’s shop, their full skirts filling the room and their hems skimming the worn, flour-dusted floor. The shop smelled of dead mice and rancid butter and Lilith stood uncomfortably in the middle with her elbows pressed to her side, staying small to stop any part of her clothing from touching anything. She tried to summon her pleasant expression but she just looked as if she had a headache.
‘Is there a parcel for us?’ she asked, sweetly.
‘Nup,’ said Mrs Flynn, and smiled. Mrs Flynn was Irish and cheerful, and she controlled the mail, dry goods and the newspapers with a vengeful hold.
‘It’s a peach parer,’ said Lilith, ‘but Mother’s hoping it’ll do apples as well.’ She lifted her hem clear of the chalky floor.
Mrs Flynn dumped Robert’s papers on the counter: COLONIES GRIPPED BY DEPRESSION AS LONDON BANKS COLLAPSE, CRISIS PLUNGES PASTORALISTS INTO RUIN.
‘Was that the new manager at Overton?’ asked Lilith and Phoeba stepped closer to the counter to listen.
‘That’s him,’ said Mrs Flynn, primping the curls at the back of her hair. ‘Handsome chap for a foreigner, if you arst me.’
Mrs Flynn leaned on the counter so her breasts rested on her sun-dried forearms. She had two teeth – the front two – and they were straight and brilliant white. And although she pinned her hair up, fat, red springs always fell and rolled together over her bosom. Behind her the dusty shelves held very few items – a tin of Cadbury’s Chocolate, boxes of dried fruits and nuts, dusty tins of biscuits, a few packets of tobacco, some nails, boot polish, a roll of wire, a lampshade, wicks, candles and a good stock of Rawleighs’ Liniments. The walls were covered with paintings – Aunt Margaret always left a few when she visited, mainly vases of flowers, seascapes or faded landscapes. Mrs Flynn had hung For Sail tags from them that turned slowly in the musty air.
‘Widow Pearson’s got a package,’ said Mrs Flynn. ‘It could be a new corset. You know them corsets are killing her, slowly. Lack of blood to the head. That’s why her hair falls out and she has to wear postiches.’
Lilith handed over a list and Mrs Flynn shovelled dried currants and sultanas, mixed peel, glacé cherries and almonds onto the same scales she used for nails, birdseed and butter. ‘Bit late for Christmas, isn’t it?’
‘It’s for the ploughing match,’ said Lilith, quickly.
Phoeba looked up from her paper. ‘Good grief. A plum cake.’ Her mother was making a wedding cake. She would have to put a stop to this.
Freckle pushed aside the curtain that separated the gloomy residence from the shop and dragged a heavy mailbag through. At the front step he stopped, lowered it gently to the ground and then struggled with it towards the siding.
‘I’ll take that bag if you like, Freckle,’ said Phoeba.
‘I can manage.’ But his brow creased with effort and he waited with them, a small boy with a big bag between two triangular girls, wide shoulders with bulging leg-of-mutton arms and tent skirts.
‘We could do with a shelter on this siding,’ said Lilith, holding her hat, like an island on her head.
‘Wear a bigger hat.’ Freckle rubbed his nose on his sleeve.
‘She’d fold under the weight of it,’ laughed Phoeba as the train rolled closer, like a burning house coming at them. It chuffed and thudded, the coaches rolling by in a cloud of smoke and steam. Passengers – workers, men in suits, mothers and children – peered out at the bay.
The mail van squealed to a stop in front of them and an old emaciated man with a crooked back leaned out and took the bag from Freckle, wincing as he swung its weight inside. Gleefully then, he raised the replacement mailbag and as Freckle reached for it he tossed it high into the air. It caught in the frame of the windmill above the stockyard and stayed there, draped over the crossbeam like a decaying possum. Then he slammed his door while Freckle pounded with his fist and yelled, ‘You just wait, you dried up old cowpat.’
‘Really!’ huffed Lilith.
‘He started it,’ said Freckle. ‘Chucking mailbags into the scrub and knocking me for a six with newspapers.’
&nbs
p; A door in the middle of the nearest passenger carriage flew open, a carpetbag landed on the siding and out popped Aunt Margaret. Reed thin, she had facial hair on her upper lip and chin, which was why Robert had named his goat Maggie. As usual, Aunt Margaret was covered carefully by gloves and the dustcoat that her mother had purchased in 1824: she used this outfit to hide her paint-spotted clothes and hands.
‘Yoo-hoo,’ she said as if they mightn’t have noticed her. A passenger handed her a newspaper-wrapped painting through the window.
‘Good of you to dress up for me, Lilith,’ she said, and gave her a paint box to carry.
‘So good to see you,’ said Phoeba and kissed her aunt’s thin cheek. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘General malaise,’ she said happily. ‘But I’m better now.’
In the sulky, the passengers plunged one hand deep into their hats’ decorations and with their other held fast to the armrests. Phoeba clicked her tongue, Rocket sprang from a standing start and they shot towards home.
A mile down the railway track the thin, bent mailman stood in front of his wall of boxes, feet apart, rolling with the rocking carriage. He up-ended the Bay View Siding mailbag over his sorting desk and a great chunk of wood fell out. It was a huntsman’s nest that Freckle had found, and a hundred brown furry spiders trickled all over the desk and floor like spilled beads.
Maude’s tea and scones drew the women to the kitchen table, where Aunt Margaret presented Phoeba with a package. ‘Happy birthday for last week.’
‘I remember the day you were born, Phoeba, as if it was yesterday,’ her aunt went on ignoring Lilith. Phoeba unwrapped the parcel, untying the string and unfolding the paper.
‘Did you sell a painting?’ asked Maude, wondering where she got the money.
‘I have been saving,’ said Aunt Margaret.
‘I’ll be nineteen in June,’ said Lilith, hopefully.
‘It’s perfect,’ said Phoeba, holding the new blouse against her cheek. It was white lawn with a bishop’s collar and a pretty muslin insert down the front that matched the cuffs on its full-length sleeves. It smelled like the hosiery and lace department of a city shop. ‘I’ll wear it to the harvest dance,’ said Phoeba – it was too fancy for the ploughing match. She folded it very neatly and carefully rewrapped it.
