by Rosalie Ham
‘I know you’d do it for your children,’ he shot back.
He took her hand and she wondered if another proposal was coming, but instead he opened one of his books and read her a poem.
‘ “I loved her for that she was beautiful,
And that to me she seemed to be all nature,
And all varieties of things in one;
Would set at night in clouds of tears, and rise …”’
He closed the book carefully. ‘You know, Phoeba, I’d do anything for you.’
‘Please don’t write me any poetry.’
He sighed and Phoeba told herself to take him seriously.
‘Did you think I was going to die?’
‘Yes.’ He’d thought he was going to die too, facing those shearers, and guarding that shed. Phoeba didn’t know how brave he’d been.
‘I thought so too, Hadley. And you know, you paid me the furthest compliment, asking me to marry you, but—’
‘But you promised—’
‘I promised I’d think about it, and I have. I’ve decided to live life to the full, and as I want. I’m going to stay on the farm and grow grapes.’
‘But you must want to do all the things life is about.’
‘What is life about, Hadley?’
‘Well, you do the right thing, you belong to a community, you have children …’ He picked up the copy of Great Expectations and turned it over in his hands.
‘Had,’ said Phoeba, tenderly, ‘I don’t have to do what everyone expects to have a full life. Life is about being how you want to be, doing what you want and being happy. I want to be free and I can’t be free if I’m responsible for someone else’s happiness. It’s perfect the way it is. Out in the world I’d have to wear a corset to be a girl and do as I was expected.’
‘You’ve had a bump,’ said Hadley glumly, rubbing at his forehead. ‘You should see a phrenologist.’
She looked him straight in the eye, those soft, blue eyes in his soft oval face – sincere and hopeful, and loyal. She didn’t want to pity him, and she didn’t want him to beg. She moved her gaze to the knot of his tie. ‘Hadley, you need to marry someone who enriches you, who’ll give you a full life. I don’t love you like I’m supposed to—’
‘Romantic love, Phoeba, humbug. It’s only in books.’
‘Books are true, Hadley, embellished a little, perhaps, by authors, but they are true. And you and I want very different lives. So I’d give up all my instincts and you’d give up all that is natural to you. You’d have to make do with hope and it would ruin you. I want to work on the farm so I can live and contribute, achieve. I don’t want to compromise. And I think I deserve better.’
‘We all think we deserve better,’ he said. ‘I’d give you friendship, and independence. I would make you happy. We would build something fine together.’ He followed a twist in the turned brass column of the bedside lamp with his long finger. It was a beautiful banquet lamp with an engraved glass shade. ‘And who will look after you and your awful horse when you’re old?’
‘I just don’t want to look back and say, “Gosh, I compromised all the way,”’ said Phoeba adamantly. ‘Now, read me something else; I feel like a bit of satire.’
He put the poetry aside, crossed his arms and looked at the cockatoos on the bedspread. But she egged him on and drew him out of his sulk and he agreed to read her Great Expectations, until she yawned. When he was sure she was asleep he pressed the sheet around her chin and crept out, feeling his way through the great, silent house by soft gaslight.
Thursday, January 25, 1894
Dr Mueller, a short and yellowish man, arrived on the next Thursday to check on Phoeba. He tied the wall-eyed, skewbald hack that grudgingly towed his coffin carrier to the garden arch and left him to sniff the wisteria. Tottering into Phoeba’s room unannounced, he found her swinging her legs over the side of the bed. ‘Stop!’ she cried. ‘I’m better, truly I am.’
A vial of iron and quinine citrate dropped from between the shredded seams of the doctor’s leather case where a scalpel protruded. His jacket was burnished with stains and three flies hovered over his head. Sitting on the edge of Phoeba’s bed, he blew his nose into a stiff, crinkly handkerchief, then poked it into his top pocket – he’d been battling a cold since anyone could remember – and dragged a stethoscope from his trouser pocket. The small circles of cold from its metal cone pierced Phoeba’s nightdress, and she shivered.
‘Ah,’ said Dr Mueller, wrapping his similarly cold, flat hands around her ribs, ‘fever. Influenza?’
‘No,’ said Phoeba.
‘What day is it?’
‘Sunday?’ She had no idea.
‘Hmmm.’ He looked worried. ‘Your sister was up and about so quickly because she was wearing a corset. It kept her spine and internal organs in place.’
And because she landed on me, thought Phoeba. ‘When can I go home?’ she asked.
The doctor looked at her, puzzled. ‘You are at home, Miss Overton.’
‘My name is Phoeba Crupp.’
The doctor patted her hand. ‘I’m sure it is.’ He shook his head and walked forlornly to the door. ‘Please God,’ she said, though she still didn’t believe in Him, ‘may I not have caught hydatids.’
Later, sitting in the wicker chair at the small table by the window reading Rules for Vignerons on Grape Cultivation and Harvest, she heard noises come in waves. Horses coming and going, the grind and jangle of carts, maids struggling up and down the back steps. Someone played the piano and she listened, her head resting on the back of the chair and her eyes closed. Such a beautiful sound – she felt sad that she and Lilith hadn’t learned. If they’d stayed in Geelong they would have. Instead, she thought, she had Spot – and the vineyard.
Henrietta burst through the door.
‘Do you know who I am?’ she said.
‘You gave me a spider once called Betty and you can hit a tin can with a slingshot from fifty yards away.’
Henrietta flung her arms around Phoeba and pressed her cheek to her head, ‘Dr Mueller said you didn’t know what day it was.’
‘Dr Mueller knows less than his horse.’ She tried to move but Henrietta held her fast. ‘Henri, you’re squeezing me.’
‘Sorry.’ Henrietta dragged the dainty chair from the dressing table and cupped Phoeba’s hand in hers. ‘Did you think you were going to die, Phoeba?’
‘Yes, but the worst part was lying here waiting. I couldn’t even roll over.’ She felt tears welling.
‘I would have looked after you. I’d walk over broken bottles to make you all right, Phoeba.’
‘You’d cut your feet.’
‘I’d wear my boots.’ Phoeba laughed and Henrietta held her hand to her tear-stained cheek.
‘I’ve come to a decision, Henri.’
‘What about?’
‘My future. I will not marry your lovely brother, much as I like him. I will be a vigneron. I will be free and I won’t compromise. I am going to live this life the way I want.’
‘Oh, you’re awake?’ said a light, refined voice and Mrs Over-ton, soft and ethereal, floated in looking just like someone notable from Madame Weigel’s Journal of Fashion. The sleeves of her dress were slim, tight over her wrists and covering half her hand. She was fine-boned, her neck long enough for a stand-up collar and three bar brooches. The lace was cotton, finely ruched, and she smelled sweet.
‘Dr Mueller says you can go home,’ she said, looking at Henrietta.
Henrietta bobbed. ‘My name is Henrietta May Pearson. That’s Phoeba.’
Mrs Overton glanced at Phoeba but her raw face and blue, swollen eyes were too confronting, so she said instead to Henrietta, ‘You have a beautiful complexion, dear. I’ve always admired auburn hair and brown eyes.’
Henrietta patted the plait coiled on her head. ‘Thanks.’
‘I’m ready to go home, thank you Mrs Overton,’ said Phoeba.
She continued to stare at Henrietta, now perplexed. ‘But how will
she get there, dear?’
‘Your stock overseer, Mr Titterton, has arranged for us to have Angela, the cook’s horse,’ said Phoeba.
Mrs Overton’s fine brow creased, just a little, and she said, ‘That isn’t suitable at all. What will the cook do for a horse?’ and wafted out, the two girls quite forgotten and her mind on something else.
‘She’s been at the laudanum,’ said Henrietta.
‘What day is it, Henri?’
‘Thursday the 25th, but it’s 1904. You’ve been here ten years,’ she joked.
‘It feels like forever.’
‘It does,’ said Henrietta, ‘but you’re right now and we’ll look after each other much better in future.’
Friday, January 26, 1894
First thing Friday morning the lazy-eyed maid placed Phoeba’s skirt on the end of the bed, neatly folded undergarments on top. She headed for the bathroom, saying, ‘You don’t wear corsets or petticoats, I see.’ Emerging from the bathroom with the commode pot, a grey towel draped over it, she saw Phoeba reaching for her clothes. ‘What? Not having a bath?’
‘I had a bath yesterday.’
‘I’ll tell Polly not to bother with the bucket of hot water then.’ At the door she paused. ‘Mrs Overton has a bath in warm water every day, all over, completely in it.’
‘We’d all have one if we had a maid to bring us hot water and soap our toes,’ Phoeba said.
The upstairs hall at Overton was as wide as Phoeba’s bedroom at Mount Hope. Making her way cautiously to the stairs, she ran into Mr Overton holding a looking glass almost the same as her father’s. When he saw her he stopped.
‘Christ,’ he bellowed, ‘you’ve got a nasty rash on your face.’ His suit was made of something fine with a soft furry sheen, like velvet. With a lurch Phoeba realised it was platypus. She knew she should have said, Thank you for looking after me, but instead she said, ‘It’s better than being dead.’
‘Here,’ said Mr Overton, ‘come and see this.’
Phoeba paused. She could say, ‘Don’t tell me what to do you cruel rude old drunk’ – but that would be cruel and rude. She sighed. It wasn’t going to be easy to live your life exactly as you felt.
She followed him into a room, a rich man’s study with dark green walls and deep red rugs. There were mounted guns over the mantelpiece, crystal decanters and Huon pine pipe-holders on the lowboy, and papers scrawled with figures almost covered the polished mahogany desk. In one corner stood a solid, carved four-poster bed with a red silk counterpane.
‘Come on,’ he said, standing against the wide, white-blue sky.
Mr Guston Overton had a shiny red face and whisky seemed to soak through the deep pores of his ruddy complexion. No wonder Mrs Overton kept a separate bed, thought Phoeba.
She negotiated the slight decline of the floorboards towards the balcony rail, feeling a little unsteady. Beyond the large, neat garden and its ornate gates the dirt road led across the plain to the narrow pass in the outcrop. ‘I never get tired of looking at it, knowing it’s all mine,’ said Mr Overton. ‘It’s a world-class view. Bet you’ve never seen one like it?’
‘I have. I’ve seen it from the other side and it’s better. The plains stretch on and on and you can feel your insignificance, your place in the great world.’ He didn’t appear to have heard her.
‘I only own half the outcrop now,’ he said, regretfully. He’d sold the land he once owned on the other side of the outcrop, thinking it was useless. Hadley’s father ruined his section, but Phoeba’s father made excellent use of his sloping terrain. ‘I sometimes see people up on the cliff, sometimes horses,’ said Mr Overton, grinning and exposing his tobacco-stained teeth to her. ‘I have a telescope for bank managers and blacks,’ he continued, ‘although the boundary rider says he’s run them all off or shot the ones who wouldn’t behave.’
‘Shot them?’ said Phoeba.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There are hundreds of them out there in the wilds.’ He handed her the looking glass. ‘Have a look.’
‘But that’s so … surely the blacks are just people living as best they can, as we all should be able to.’
‘You know nothing of life, girl; you don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘But I do,’ she said. ‘I know the value of life. I know what’s important. Looking after the land is important. Friends and family, freedom, and being fair to those less fortunate.’
He must be deaf, she thought as he ignored her words and walked slowly back into his office, leaning to open the door.
‘Please thank Mrs Overton and the maids for taking care of me,’ Phoeba called, but he waved his hand about his ear as though moving a moth away.
Wondering where she should go, she trained the looking glass on a wool truck rolling down from the shearing shed to the sheep wash. She picked out Hadley’s long thin frame and focused on him.
He was standing on a narrow wooden bridge that bordered a steaming pond, poking at clumps of wool floating like scum on a steaming soup in the hot pond. There were Chinamen in the water up to their chests and wearing tar-lined barrels as they moved and stirred the grease and dirt from the wool. Smoke from a fire heating a great water tub clouded the air and Hadley smacked at the cinders wafting onto his clothes.
‘Gracious,’ said Phoeba, ‘what a job.’ She imagined standing over that hot pond, the steam pumping the stench of sheep dirt and ammonia up her nose. He was struggling to lever the sodden wool onto the floor to drain; it kept slipping from the long stick back into the hot, acrid pond. The Chinamen chattered and the carts of wool kept rumbling down from the shed on small, metal tracks, slamming up against each other.
Then, because he was Hadley, he lost his footing. Phoeba watching in horror as his legs circled in the air like a ragdoll’s and he slapped onto the wet bridge. He lowered his forehead onto the filthy slime-iced boards.
Phoeba put her hand to her heart for her clumsy friend and smiled, but her face felt like it was coated in hot tar too.
‘You’ve no idea how happy I am to see you in one piece.’
She jumped. It was Rudolph Steel, in a suit of pale linen with tufts of wool caught in his shirt buttons. He stepped very close to her and took her hands in his, turned them over. His touch was firm but delicate.
‘Hadley said you’d mend,’ he said. She could see each of his lashes and remembered his eyes, close to hers, when she was ill.
‘Hadley and I have been friends since childhood,’ she blurted. It seemed urgent that Rudolph Steel know she wasn’t Hadley’s paramour.
Steel inspected her scabbed cheek, running his fingers lightly over its tight, red flesh. It was like being sprinkled with falling wattle dust.
‘I don’t think your face will disfigure.’
‘I don’t care if it does, really,’ she shrugged. ‘Anyway, it’s not as if I’m looking for a husband, Mr Steel.’
‘Call me Rudolph.’ He smiled and led her down the staircase and out onto the front veranda where her father’s sulky waited, mended and oiled. The coach-painters had decorated the dashboard and body with gold swirls and loops and there were even fine lines tapering to the end of the shafts. Steel’s dark Holstein was tethered to its back and Angela, a shiny, slim mare with terrific forelegs – short, strong cannons and straight rear quarters – waited in a harness that shone dark and lustrous. Phoeba felt suddenly apprehensive. She stopped, flooded by images of the road racing beneath her, of the gravel rising to slap her. It would take courage to drive again. She wished she had Spot to take her home.
‘You drive,’ said Rudolph, ‘get your nerve up again. Your sister was back behind the reins in no time.’ And he took her hands and tugged her gently towards the sulky.
She heard steel wheel rims whirring and the sound of splintering wood.
‘I’ll be next to you.’
He pointed to the small iron step, but her feet wouldn’t move. Then she was airborne, scooped up and placed on the seat, as if she were a child. He climbed in ne
xt to her, untied the reins and she found them in her hands. The horse seemed a massive beast, all muscle at the end of two flimsy strips of leather. But Rudolph Steel wrapped his hands around hers, pressed them firmly to the reins and then let go, holding the backrest behind her and pretending to be absorbed by the shorn rams that shuffled across the plains. He smelled hot – smelled of saddle wax and freshly shorn wool.
‘Off we go,’ he said and pressed his elbow to the small of her back.
She flipped the reins lightly and Angela walked easily along the road. The sulky felt sloppy beneath her, as if it wasn’t attached to anything, but the further they went, the more she relaxed.
‘They say you’re a bank man but I think you’re very kind.’
‘ “They” say I’m a bank man, do “they?”’
‘ “They” do.’
‘Let them say it but I’ll tell you the truth. I’m part owner of Overton. I don’t throw people off their land. I try to manage it so that they can be saved.’
‘But you’d still be part owner if you were from the bank.’
‘I invest. I try to help people in strife through a bad time. Droughts end. Shearers behave if they’re paid correctly. There’ll be plenty of money to be made from sheep in the future.’
‘You invest in other people’s misfortune and turn that into a fortune for yourself.’ She didn’t mean to sound so confronting but she couldn’t think of anything else to say. The last thing she wanted him to think was that she was silly, like Lilith. But in his presence, she did feel silly – and girlish.
‘You could see it like that,’ he said, ‘but I prefer to see it as an investment in the future of the rural industry. The drought has done a lot of damage in places. And there is mismanagement.’ He looked sideways at the thistles, the Salvation Jane spreading through the Crupps’ feed crop. ‘Some are worse than others.’
‘I know,’ she apologised, ‘the thistles …’
‘And,’ said Rudolph, ‘some people prefer a partner to the bank.’
‘How many pastoralists and farmers have you saved?’
‘None of your business,’ said Rudolph, grinning at her.
