Land of Golden Wattle

by J. H. Fletcher

  ‘You shouldn’t give it away, Rebecca. That would be foolish. As you say, the letter – if it exists – is of historical interest. And if it relates to my dear father then I think you will agree my family should have the first option to buy it. To have it on display in the Derwent library. What do you say?’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ Bec said. ‘But maybe we should put it up for auction? That might be the best way.’ Again the earnest look. ‘What do you think, Mrs Penrose?’

  Bessie’s lips were tight as tight. ‘I was thinking perhaps five pounds. If the letter is genuine.’

  ‘That’s a lot of money,’ Bec said.

  ‘It is indeed. Are we agreed, then?’

  ‘I think maybe I should discuss it first,’ Bec said. ‘With Jonathan? If you don’t mind?’

  She knew very well how Bessie Penrose would hate that.

  ‘I do not see how my grandson’s opinion can have any relevance.’

  ‘I discuss everything with Jonathan,’ Bec said. ‘Only right I should. I mean, seeing as how we’re going to get married?’

  After dropping the Hampton girl at the Painters’, Bennett drove Mrs Penrose home. Thunderclouds accompanied her all the way. At the house she struggled out of the motor – those joints again! – and, doing her best not to limp, made her way as briskly as she could into the house.

  One look at her face and the maids all made sure they were busy somewhere else. Bessie plonked herself down; even her favoured chair was careful not to squeak. Daddy’s portrait mocked her from its place on the wall.

  We’ d have known how to deal with that little trollop on the goldfields.

  Bessie shut her ears. If she never heard the word goldfields again it would be too soon. As for the woman who had birthed and then abandoned her…

  How could you love and hate someone at the same time?

  In the meantime she had to do something about the Hampton girl. Had Rebecca been anyone but Conan’s daughter she might have been able to come to terms with it, but the prospect of having Conan’s child as a member of the family was intolerable. As was Conan being Jonathan’s father-in-law.

  At all costs she had to prevent that. But how?

  She had threatened to disinherit Jonathan if he didn’t cut ties with Rebecca; it hadn’t worked. Perhaps he had not believed she would do it? Would she do it? It would be easy enough to arrange: as trustee and principal beneficiary all she had to do was to instruct the lawyers to remove Jonathan from the list of the trust’s beneficiaries. But could she afford to do that? Did Derwent not need him? There was a ragbag of cousins but all on Phelan’s side of the family, and a nephew of her pathetic daughter-in-law Rose somewhere up in Queensland. There was no one in the direct line and they were all gutless wonders in any case. It had to be Jonathan, but Jonathan without Rebecca Hampton.

  She would have offered Rebecca a bribe if she’d thought it would do any good but why would she be interested in a bribe when Derwent itself was there for the taking?

  She could tell the Painters to get rid of her, say there was something suspect about her character, but Rebecca was well known in the neighbourhood and to do anything like that would be a risky business.

  The homeless waif, treated so harshly by the wicked grandmother…

  Oh yes, she could see her playing that one for all she was worth.

  Bessie thought some more, her face sour with resentment. An idea came.

  How old had Bec said she was? Sixteen. Jonathan was of age and could do what he liked. Whereas Bec…

  Sixteen.

  The next morning Bessie had Bennett drive her into town. She had no appointment but was confident Mr Willis the bank manager would see her. She had sold the family’s interest in the bank years before, but her name still carried weight. Bessie Penrose of Derwent? He would jump at it! She was right.

  They went through the motions: coffee on a silver tray, small talk about the tragedy of Captain Scott’s death in the Antarctic. Then: ‘There is a confidential matter I wish to discuss with you, Mr Willis.’

  The banker inclined his head. ‘I am at your service.’

  ‘Of course. I understand that a Mr Conan Hampton is a customer of your bank and is indebted to you.’ She’d had the chauffeur make cautious enquiries and knew it was true. Now she raised her hand as the banker tried to interrupt her. ‘I quite understand you cannot discuss a customer’s affairs but if it happens I am correct – and I am not asking you to confirm that either, Mr Willis – I have a small favour to ask of you. If it is not too much trouble.’

  Half an hour later, well satisfied by Mr Willis’s response to her suggestion, she instructed Bennett to drive her home.

  A week later Grandma Bessie Penrose appeared at the entrance to Conan Hampton’s forge.

  They had not spoken since Conan had left with Bessie’s son Daddo for the South African war. She had wondered how she would feel after all this time and was relieved to find she felt nothing. Certainly she had not come to dredge up the residue of past temptations. She was a mature lady now and mature ladies did not lust after the local blacksmith. Or admit it, especially to themselves, if they did.

  She looked at the man who had kindled fires in her eighteen years before and thought: how could I have wanted this man?

  Conan, in her memory so strong and hard and lean, had quite a belly under his leather apron and was losing his hair. His cheeks had more than their fair share of broken veins and his eyes were red. He stank of booze and fire, the hard tyranny of hot iron, and had about him an air of dissipation and barely controlled violence. Give him another eighteen years and he would be an old man and by the look of him a bad-tempered one at that.

  He stood in the doorway of the forge and she saw the firelight casting quivering red shadows across the walls and ceiling, heard the sigh and chink of a horse waiting to be shod.

  ‘You’ve put on a few pounds,’ Conan said.

  Bessie had no intention of permitting liberties.

  ‘Is there anywhere we can talk in private?’

  He gestured at the adjoining cottage. ‘The missus will give you a cup of tea while you’re waiting. I won’t be long.’

  She heard the violence of a hammer on hot iron as she went to the open cottage door.

  Ten minutes later he joined her. He was holding in his hairy fist a teacup big enough to swim in. He sat down and drank with a gusty sigh. ‘Blacksmith’s work is hot business.’

  Bessie smiled.

  Conan finished his tea. ‘What you want?’

  ‘I hear on the grapevine the bank is pressing you?’

  ‘None of your business if it is. And why should you care, anyway?’

  Bessie gave what some might have mistakenly thought was a coy smile. ‘The trouble with age is that you tend to remember things you’d sooner forget.’

  ‘You’re not that old.’

  ‘Was the grapevine right?’

  ‘How did you hear about it?’

  ‘Never mind that. Is it true?’

  ‘True enough, I reckon.’

  ‘How much do you owe them?’

  ‘More’n I can pay, that’s for sure.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Best part of three hundred quid.’

  ‘Do you have it?’

  In the open air Conan would have spat. ‘Nuthun like it.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Gawd knows.’

  Bessie’s handbag was just so in her lap. Now she moved it a fraction of an inch. ‘I have a suggestion that might interest you.’

  Conan checked the emptiness of his cup to give him time to think. ‘What you on about?’

  ‘I could lend you the money,’ she said. ‘Get the bank off your back.’

  ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘Because I need your help.’

  At least that was honest, he thought. ‘Got some ’orses you want shoeing?’

  Because a man had his pride.

  ‘Your daughter thinks she’s
in love with my grandson.’

  ‘That right?’

  ‘I’ve no objections in principle,’ Bessie said, ‘but it is important that young people should know their own minds. It is a lifetime commitment, after all.’

  ‘You don’ think my Bec’s good enough for your grandson. That what you’re saying?’

  ‘Nothing of the sort,’ Bessie said. ‘I simply believe she is too young to know her own mind. I think you would be doing her a favour if you refused permission for her to marry until she’s of age.’

  ‘Five years,’ Conan said.

  ‘No time at all if she truly loves him.’

  ‘And for that you’d get the bank off my back?’

  ‘I shall lend you three hundred pounds. Nothing formal, nothing in writing. No set date for repayment. I know very well,’ Mrs Penrose said, ‘how hard it is to make a living nowadays.’

  ‘You’d trust me with three hundred quid?’

  She smiled. ‘We have always been friends, you and I.’

  Which was untrue, as they both knew, but three hundred pounds was not to be sneezed at.

  ‘All right, then. You lend me what I need to fix up the bank, I’ll tell Bec she can’t marry until she’s twenty-one.’

  ‘I was sure we’d think of a way to help you out of your troubles,’ said Mrs Penrose.

  ‘Yours too, sounds like.’ He lifted his bath-sized cup. ‘More tea?’

  But Bessie was already standing up. A polite but formal smile, now she had got what she came for. ‘I only wish I had the time.’

  Driving home in the back of the motor Bessie was gratified by the outcome of her chat with Rebecca’s father. His appearance had come as quite a shock, all the same, so different from her memory of him in his youth.

  It was not often she indulged herself by journeying back into the past but she did so now.

  1875

  In 1875, when Richard and Alice were coming forty-seven and Jane nineteen, Richard had a nasty accident with a scythe. Afterwards he couldn’t have said how it happened, knew only that the blade had gone down to the bone and his leg wouldn’t be healing any time soon.

  ‘Gunna be a cripple, that’s what,’ Richard said. ‘A right bugger.’

  Enough to make a bloke mad. The trouble was, he was right, which meant they would have to get help.

  There was a man called Jake Hampton, not young but strong, who knew his way around a farm. He turned a tough face to the world but Alice suspected that underneath he was a lot softer than he made out. They took him on and things worked out well.

  Time passed and Alice began to notice that Jake’s eyes lingered more and more frequently on her daughter. She had the idea Jane fancied him too: not that Jane, powerfully inclined to secrecy, would ever say anything about it. Alice said nothing, either; in that department things would work out or they wouldn’t. In the meantime Jake was a good worker, which was just as well, because as the months went by Richard’s leg didn’t mend.

  ‘Feels like it’s on fire,’ he told Alice.

  Alice could feel it when she put her hand on the leg, which was swollen and throbbing and a red colour she didn’t like.

  They got the doctor in and he looked grave and talked about deep-seated infection and in the end did no good at all.

  ‘I’ll bet he charged, though,’ Richard said.

  ‘He’s got to live too,’ Alice said.

  ‘You got to wonder why,’ Richard said.

  He was sinking. They both knew it, with the deep-seated infection, as the doctor had called it, spreading. The swelling was up into his groin now, and he was feverish and in constant pain.

  Alice did what she could which was more or less nothing.

  ‘Face it, girl,’ Richard said. ‘I’m a goner.’

  A week after his forty-seventh birthday he proved himself right.

  Alice’s world was a desert, a desolate place of screaming birds, swirling in black flocks against a lurid sun.

  What happens now? she thought. She had never expected she would be the one left behind; she had planned things differently, even to the point of asking herself how he would manage afterwards. But there it was.

  She thought to appeal to God, Jane, the empty and merciless hills, but what was the use? Richard was dead.

  She sat alone. If she wept she was unaware of it. Jane came and sat with her. She looked at her daughter. Jane too was lost. Jane too needed to find her road into the future. Alice drew a deep breath. She remembered fighting the terrors of the mineshaft as she forced herself to climb up from the blackness. She remembered the hours in the loft at the John o’ Groats, barely daring to breathe while the soldiers searched the room below. She had been strong then. She would be strong now. She knew that from this day loneliness would be her destiny but she would not let it get the better of her, or her daughter.

  She would survive; Jane would survive; the farm, such as it was, would survive. She considered what she must do. Two weeks after the funeral she spoke to her daughter.

  ‘Jake Hampton,’ she said.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘You fancy him.’ It was not a question.

  Rose-pink Jane would not look at her mother. ‘He’s all right,’ she said.

  ‘How does he feel about you?’

  Rose pink had turned to crimson. ‘He’s never said.’

  ‘But you must have an idea.’

  ‘I think maybe he likes me.’

  ‘Does he know how you feel?’

  ‘How could he?’

  ‘There are ways. He’s not a bad bloke. You could do a lot worse.’

  ‘What can I do? I can’t say anything. It wouldn’t be proper.’

  Jane had had a bit of schooling from Mrs Worsley, down the lane, and Mrs Worsley had been hot for what was proper in a young lady and what was not. Alice had never had time for that: being proper wouldn’t have got her far in Ballarat.

  ‘Let him see how you feel. You don’ have to say anything. A smile would be a start.’

  Jane looked doubtful. ‘It seems so cold-blooded, somehow.’

  ‘You like each other. That’s a good beginning. If you’re lucky and work at it, love may come. No reason it shouldn’t. But in the meantime you need someone to help you run the farm; I won’t be here for ever.’

  Alice gave it another week, then spoke to Jake. It was hot summer, the air hay-scented and heavy with flies.

  ‘You got any plans?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About staying? Going?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of going anywhere,’ he said. ‘If that’s all right with you.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. Jane will be glad too. She’s very fond of you, you know.’

  He looked startled. ‘You reckon?’

  ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘A bit old for her,’ he said.

  ‘Shouldn’t she be the one to decide that?’ Alice said. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.’

  ‘It would be my dearest wish,’ Jake said.

  ‘Then speak to her, Jake. Why don’t you? You may find she’s more willing than you think.’

  It would be the best thing for her, Alice thought. She misses her dad. Jake is fond of her, young enough to work the farm and keep her safe, but also able to be the father figure she needs. I think it’s the right thing. For her; for all of us.

  1876–1900

  Jane Hampton had her baby on her twentieth birthday, 20 June 1876, which was nice, making a special occasion out of what would otherwise have been only a birthday.

  They called him Conan because it was an Irish name. Years before Jake’s dad had told him they were descended from someone who’d been a king in Ireland in the old days. Jake didn’t care one way or the other but giving the baby an Irish name did no harm.

  Jane knew how lucky she’d been in her marriage. Back-breaking work and a perennial lack of money were the realities of her life, but Jake treasured her and that, and Conan, compensated for most things. Not for
everything; she felt like spitting every time she saw Bessie Penrose drive past in her gilded carriage. By rights she should have inherited a fortune from her father too, just as Bessie had, and it made her mad things hadn’t worked out like that: not just for herself but for Conan as well.

  In Jane’s world Bessie was the daughter of a murderess who had no right to her place in society or her wealth. But resentment was one thing; doing anything about it was something else.

  She told herself Conan would sort things out, make something of the name of Hampton. Her love for her son became edged with flame, hard and shining, an ambition for him that would thrust him through dangers and difficulties into certain triumph.

  ‘You will be our honourable knight,’ she told him after she had read a library book about King Arthur and his Round Table. ‘You will restore the grail that we somehow lost.’

  It became an article of faith in Jane’s hard-scrabble world.

  As soon as Conan was old enough Jake got after him to give a hand around the farm. Jake’s health was bad so Conan didn’t argue but his real interest was not in farming but in horses. They became his obsession.

  ‘He might have been a horse, the way he is with them,’ Jane told her friend Mrs Agnew.

  She was right; Conan would happily have spent every minute of every day with them, had it been possible. What he really wanted was to work at Derwent where there were plenty of horses and jobs for stable hands, but with Jake’s health the way it was and the farm to run he could do nothing about it. In 1895, when Conan was nineteen, that changed.

  It was mid-winter when Jake got caught in a storm. Soaked to the skin he did nothing to dry himself off or change his clothes. The wind was cold enough to cut and in no time he came down with pneumonia. A week later he was dead.

  Jane told Conan to get a job at Derwent since that was where his heart was.

  ‘What about the farm?’

  ‘Forget the farm,’ Jane said. ‘I plan to sell it anyway. I know a cottage I can rent for more or less nothing. I’ll move in there and live off whatever I get from the sale of the farm. I’ll be fine.’