by Rosalie Ham
A crowd was gathering. The emaciated guard, the decrepit mailman, and some passengers who held parasols to shade her.
‘She can’t die here, not now,’ hissed Maude, indignantly. Phoeba and Henrietta stood holding hands, speechless, looking down at the injured woman among their hems.
‘Perhaps we will have to stay,’ thought Phoeba.
‘At least get her to the Hampden,’ urged Maude. The guard and some passengers helped Hadley and Mr Titterton take the wounded woman, like a shot sparrow, to the Hampden.
‘It’s only a wound,’ said Mr Titterton. ‘It’ll mend.’
‘Something snapped,’ said Hadley.
‘A corset stay,’ said Henrietta, hastily, and Phoeba felt Henrietta start to tremble. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt her.’
‘Of course not,’ said Hadley.
Mr Titterton grabbed Henrietta by the arm, ‘You’ll have to stay and nurse her.’
The guard dragged his watch from his waistcoat and checked the time. The passengers started to climb back into the carriages.
‘I won’t stay,’ said Henrietta, and crossed her arms.
‘We’ll all stay with you, won’t we Hadley?’ said Phoeba, her voice a little too shrill.
Hadley looked directly at Phoeba. ‘Henrietta will have to nurse her.’
It took a full heartbeat for her to understand. She put her bag down. ‘We’ll wait until she’s better.’
‘We have to go—’
‘Henrietta must come —’
‘Later, yes.’
Phoeba and Henrietta stood frozen, but Phoeba’s mind was racing. If she stayed she would break Hadley’s heart, and she would have to wait on a mother, a sister, a brother-in-law and, in very short time, a baby. If she went she would be without Henrietta. There was a pain – she might have inhaled a handful of barber’s razors for its sharpness. Her heart was labouring and her breath coming in short gasps. Hadley stood up and took her bag. ‘The contract for my job is signed, Phoeba. We have to go.’
‘Why can’t Mr Titterton look after your mother?’
‘I’d have to sell the farm to pay for a nursing home,’ said Mr Titterton. ‘It isn’t necessary. The girl pulled her mother too hard.’
‘She was falling in front of the train,’ said Henrietta, bunching her skirt in agony.
Hadley put his hand around her shoulder. ‘You saved her, Henri, you saved her.’
There was just one moment while the train huffed and a carriage window slammed shut, that Hadley, Phoeba and Henrietta looked at each other and thought, how everything would have been different if she hadn’t.
‘I’ll send a telegraph to Doctor Mueller,’ said Mr Titterton heading for the shop.
‘Good,’ said Maude, smoothing her gloves, ‘he can see to Marius’s foot.’
Phoeba looked at her father. He stared back at her, silent, and she thought she heard Lilith say, ‘You have made your bed.’
‘Phoeba, please, the train—’ said Hadley, and the guard blew his whistle.
‘Wait,’ said her mother, and Phoeba’s heart quickened. Her mother was going to forbid her from going to the wilderness; she would send Lilith away instead. ‘You must take the Collector. If Hadley is away with his sheep you must have some protection.’
Phoeba crossed her arms and looked over at Spot, his head high, his ears sharp and forward as he stared at her from the churchyard. ‘I won’t go without Spot.’ It didn’t make sense, but it was all she could think of.
Hadley said, gently, ‘There’s no time just now,’ and held his hand out to her.
It was all wrong. Henrietta was supposed to come.
‘I’ll send Spot,’ said Robert, trying to be helpful. ‘I’ll go and see Mrs Flynn later and book his passage.’
Her father took her hands in his again, held them tight, and made her look into his rheumy eyes. ‘Almost everything you will ever be was taught to you from this place and it will always be here for you.’
She looked at them evenly; her father the betrayer, her fat mother in a tight brown dress and a hat the size of a pillow. At home her pretty sister would be pouting over her costumed husband, like an actor in a rural play. She never wanted to see them ever again.
She reached for Henrietta and as they held each other fast Henrietta’s voice came into her ear above the rumbling of the engine and the spurting steam. ‘We will see each other when one of us is free. And I will always love you both, no matter what.’
Then, as she turned to the train, Phoeba vowed that she would make a satisfying life. She would create a worthwhile future – a good life, and when she was old she would look back and say, I did my best.
Phoeba whispered to her teary friend, ‘You’ll be free one day,’ then let her go and turned to the train. She reached out to Hadley and left Henrietta standing on the small wooden platform, her skirt still screwed in her hands.
Henrietta watched until the train was a black smear in the distance and then drove carefully towards Elm Grove. Mr Titterton cradled her whimpering mother in the back seat. At the intersection she reined in the horse. The thistles scratched together in the breeze and two eagles circled above the dam.
Maude and Robert were sitting in the sulky, up to its axle in muddy water. In front of them knelt Spot, brown muddy water lapping his shoulders, his eyes closed and his nose high, like the monster in Loch Ness.
Epilogue
The young woman pulled her motor vehicle up at the railway crossing and looked about her. She wore dark glasses and a large straw hat secured with a wide scarf and her passenger, a young man with spectacles, clung to the dashboard. The vehicle was dark blue with a golden ‘O’ painted on the small door.
‘Why have you stopped, Roberta?’ said the young man. ‘There’s nothing here.’
‘As my dear departed Grandmaudie would say; nonsense.’ She stood up behind the wheel and cried, ‘Just look about you!’
Beyond the beach, which was actually just a salty slice of seaside mud, the bay glittered and the smokestacks on ships sliding out through the heads left plumes of smoke across the clear sky. It was low tide and the jetty pylons jutted from the mudflats, like thin legs without trousers.
Roberta gestured inland to a gathering of boulders on top of a big, bushy ridge. ‘Up there, above the vines, is Mount Hope,’ she said, and the young man turned to inspect the neat weatherboard nestled at the base of the outcrop. Around it, acres of grapevines covered every slope, like a green chenille blanket.
‘The vines are Mother’s,’ said Roberta, ‘but my Aunt Lilith and my Uncle Marius live in the house and their children, all six of my cousins, were born there. You’ll meet everyone this afternoon. We all gather at the homestead for the ploughing match.’
Roberta tooted the horn and waved to a tall, broad woman on the railway station reading a newspaper. The headline screamed, WAR LOOMS. The woman looked up and saluted, then flung a long, thick grey plait over her shoulder.
‘That’s Aunt Henri,’ said Roberta. ‘She runs the railway station and the shop. Dad bought it for her when he made all his money on the ram emasculator. He bought himself Overton, and over that outcrop, there are thousands of first-class sheep.’
‘I hate sheep,’ said the young man.
‘As far as I’m concerned there’s nothing more pleasing than a mob of first-class merinos with fine bright fleeces, closely crimped and three inches deep,’ declared Roberta, and leaned down to kiss the young man’s cheek. ‘And my brother runs the winery so you needn’t go anywhere near a sheep. You can just stay in the office with your sums and balances and your adding machine. As soon they can, my parents will retire to the manager’s house with Aunt Henri. They’ll rattle around together until they all join my grandparents in the family plot at the outcrop.’
Roberta threw her arms open wide. ‘There is everything here for me. What about you?’
