The Noon Lady of Towitta

by Patricia Sumerling

  Mother had aged and went about her chores in misery and silence, and brothers Willy and August crept around and whispered to each other. Father, ever tyrannical, put the fear of God into the two boys who leapt to their jobs at speeds never seen before, so afraid were they at what could happen next. Who could they trust now? Although the brothers slept away from the farmhouse in the barn, they were nevertheless anxious about whether the stranger might return to murder them one night. I could never reassure them on this matter; he was, after all, still at large, wasn’t he?

  Father lost all interest in finishing the new house, and he still had the problem of no spare money. There were only five of us now, and the boys didn’t like to come inside the house any more than was necessary. The new house was three feet high, but there it remained, unfinished. A testament to shattered dreams and a family destroyed.

  Mother was angry with Father, Father was angry with everyone, and I was angry with Gustave, my sweetheart, who I never saw again.

  About nine months after Bertha’s death my older brothers Frederick and Heinrich came for Willy and August and took them north to work on a cattle station with them and changed their name so as not to be tainted by the Schippan name. Father kicked up hell when Frederick and Heinrich came for the boys in a horse and wagon because it meant he had no one to labour on his farm and would have to sell up. But they came well armed and there was nothing Father could do to stop them. Needless to say, Mother wailed a lot. I tried to comfort her while I helped the boys gather their possessions and made a hamper of food for them to take on the long journey north. I knew it was their one chance to escape.

  A year or so after the boys left we moved from Towitta to Light’s Pass, just north of Angaston, and our farm was bought by a neighbouring farmer. The farmhouse soon fell into ruins after the thatch was blown away in a storm. Now there is only the chimney breast remaining; you could pass the site of our farm in the middle of a vast flat wheatfield and never know it was there.

  Mother always believed in my innocence, but it was a different matter with Father. We both thought we knew each other’s secrets. I remembered all that business with the suspicious deaths of the two hawkers; I knew how dangerous he was.

  25

  Sister Kathleen was most concerned that I had returned to Towitta to live with Father; that I had never made an effort to live elsewhere. ‘After all you’ve been through, I cannot understand why you went back.’

  ‘I did it for Mother. We lived at Towitta for two years after Bertha’s murder. It was hard to say whether we chose to become increasingly reclusive, or we were ostracised from the community.’

  ‘It must have been so difficult to share a house with a man like that. I couldn’t have endured what you did, Mary.’

  Well you have to remember I’ve had a lifetime of difficult situations, so it was not as hard as you would think. You just learn to withdraw into yourself – and I’ve always been good at that. But it was lonely and so quiet once there were just the three of us at home. It made for painfully strained evenings. Father read aloud from his Bible and we were his longsuffering audience. I blocked out his voice by concentrating on my tatting or sewing, and daydreaming. Mother and I were expected to pay full attention while he chanted from it or raved on about some grievance or other. Sometimes he made me read a passage and my reading was never good enough. When I stumbled over the pronunciation of words his impatience led him to complain, ‘Honestly, girl, I don’t know why we sent you to school.’

  I’d answer back, telling him, ‘It’s no surprise, is it? You just remember how often I was needed at home by Mother to help around the farm and look after the brothers and Bertha.’ And he’d smack my face for what he saw as an insult to Mother. By now I was past thirty, a spinster, sick and lonely, old enough to have children, yet he still treated me like an impudent child.

  Life suddenly changed in 1911, nine years after Bertha died, when Father had a heart attack. When we realised he was dying, Mother sent me to fetch Pastor Stolz. We knew the pastor would be called, Father had told us he had a lot to confess. Confession or not, we guessed he would take dark secrets to the grave. Apart from these secrets how could we forgive him for the brutal treatment he delved out to us throughout our lives?

  I sat with Father for an hour before he took his last breath. Earlier that night I had seen the pastor step outside our small cottage at Light’s Pass to draw in deep breaths of chill autumn air. Perhaps it was to recover from Father’s confession. While the pastor was contemplating Father’s last words, I was swooning with sheer joy. Father was dying and his hold on me had vanished forever. It felt like the moment the bolt had been drawn back in the dock when I was found not guilty.

  In a small farming community it is easy to believe you know everything about your neighbours, but who knows what goes on behind closed doors? The locals who thought they knew my family must have been divided in their opinions. Some believed that Father was a murderer, while others thought I was. Some thought we both were. Not everyone believed my claim that Bertha was slain by an intruder. Yet I had been found not guilty on the strength of my evidence.

  My older brothers told me that the pastor, police and some other local folk believed the answer to the riddle of the murder still lay within our family. With Father’s death it was possible that at last everyone would come to know the truth of what happened the night Bertha died. The pastor turned his attention to me. When my oldest brother, Frederick, returned to Adelaide for the trial he told me his friends believed Father had murdered Bertha and I had covered for him. If people believed this I should never have stood trial for murder. I did not care if some believed Father had killed Bertha.

  Only Pastor Stolz knew the content of Father’s confession. Mother said he’d made his peace with God. The pastor was bound to secrecy and said nothing to me, but following his death shortly after Father’s, rumours were rife that the pastor had indeed told someone of Father’s confession. When damning rumours about Father’s supposed crimes began to circulate throughout the district, we had no idea what was fact and what was fiction.

  Father’s death freed me but it was all too late. I was melancholy and nervous and in a chronic state of ill health. I grew steadily weaker from the TB that had first been diagnosed nearly twenty years before. And I could hardly bear the agony of losing my sweetheart Gustave. My reputation had been ruined by his courtroom confession of our courtship. It destroyed my relationship with Gustave and any chance of marrying respectably.

  After Father died the old pastor often came to see Mother and me. His visits always followed a set pattern. First he would speak with Mother over cake and tea and she would tell him of her woes as she cried. Then having made poor Mother thoroughly miserable he would seek me out, even if I was doing my chores of milking the two cows or feeding the pigs, cleaning the hen house or working in the vegetable garden. He had a severe manner and cold piercing blue eyes. He was fond of preaching that the love of God was more important than the love of one’s kith and kin. This was hard to bear for this was what Father had practised – and look what befell our family. All I could think was that there was enough religion to foster hate but never enough to use for love.

  The pastor always made sure that what he had to say was away from Mother’s ears. I never cared for his attention. It was like he knew more about me than I knew myself. What had Father said in his deathbed confession that suddenly saw the pastor’s attention switch to me? In these little sermons – and that’s what they were like – he always asked me whether I needed to get any troubles off my chest. He was of the opinion that, like Father, I needed to confess some past dark deed. ‘If you tell me what really happened that night, child, the congregation would feel more able to sympathise with you. You probably know some of them are scared of you.’

  After his early attempts at trying to draw me out, I screamed at him, ‘Look, Pastor, I’ve told you how it was. What more can I say? I really don’t know what you all want from me. As it is now,
I’m damned for being innocent. Leave me alone. There’s nothing to tell.’ After that I ignored his pleas to talk through the ordeal of that night all those years ago. And all the while, the tuberculosis tightened its grip; it interfered with my daily chores. Each day I was a little weaker than the one before. I was dying by inches.

  It had been torturous living in Towitta with so many things to remind me of what I had lost: Gustave, my youth and dear Pauline. All four brothers had run away, although you couldn’t blame them for that. So we had moved up the hill to Light’s Pass. Compared to Towitta, it was hillier, greener and lightly wooded, a much more pleasant place to live. And I walked about the township without feeling an inquisition was constantly taking place behind my back.

  Although I no longer felt the centre of gossip, neither was I awash with friends. I mixed with a few women from church, but most women my age were married with broods of children and little time for a single woman with a past like mine. Occasionally I looked after their young children while fending off the straying husbands. The few extra shillings I earned from caring for others’ children and the vegetables I sold went into the household kitty.

  Though I had a few friends, I no longer had my loving sister to laugh with. I felt the loss of Pauline keenly for she had been my best friend. Our home became as quiet as the grave after Father’s death; there was nothing left to fight or talk about.

  We moved on but Towitta was not easily forgotten. We were no longer surrounded by vast unprotected windy spaces. In Towitta, our nearest neighbours, who were also our friends, lived half a mile away. At Light’s Pass we now had neighbours just yards from the back fence, but few we called friends. The township had its own problems; it was a town divided by affiliation to one of the two Lutheran churches. Families belonging to different congregations were driven apart. Their bitter feuds and squabbles made our situation almost insignificant.

  ‘Sister, I have told you the story of my family and of me. Life with Father was Hell. In the end he destroyed our family and I blame him for the events that befell it. It was only with his death that the remaining but scattered family could feel released from his clutches. By then I was too ill and weary to care and my brothers had left years before. We had to live through years of his cold silence and raging tempers. So now you know a little about our family background, what do you think happened? How do you think Bertha was killed? You must have a theory by now. I started telling you this story in early April and now it is the end of June. Three months of storytelling. And I can tell you I don’t feel I have many days left on this earth.’

  ‘Ridiculous, Mary. You’re just feeling sorry for yourself. You’ll be around for a long time yet.’ Puzzled, Sister Kathleen looked at me. ‘What a nightmare of a story, Mary. We never believed for one moment that you committed that dreadful crime. We – the non-German folk in the Valley – believed that your father did it. It was so gruesome. A woman wouldn’t do it, if you know what I mean. I’ve always wanted to know how it was that he was never questioned. I believe you’ve been covering up all along by insisting that an unknown intruder had murdered your sister, to protect your Father and out of fear. Surely you must know this is what we in the Valley all believe?’ After a pause she said, ‘Well, that’s what we were all led to believe.’

  I let her ramble on, not quite believing that after seventeen years of silence since Bertha’s death I was bold enough to allow these regular meetings to talk about my family, about the murder in my family. What was surprising me was that I now had a strong urge to tell the story and purge my secrets, so I said, ‘To tell you the truth, Sister, until the last few weeks I’ve never heard anyone else’s point of view. From the time I was acquitted, no one has dared ask me. We never discussed it at home. Don’t forget there was only Father, Mother and me and we hardly spoke to each other. The death of two sisters in a short time was too painful to talk about. There was never anyone who confronted me, so naturally I am interested in what you have to tell me. Only Pastor Stolz wanted to talk about it and I didn’t like his manner. Till now, no one but you dared to ask.’

  ‘Oh, Mary, I don’t know whether I should be telling you something about what your own poor family has had to endure all these years.’

  ‘Sister, I have no idea what anyone else thinks, that’s why I’m asking you for your version. Please tell me, I won’t be insulted in any way. I’ve given you my life story in instalments, but I still don’t know what you think or what the general gossip was in the Valley. So now it’s your turn to tell me some stories – you can do that on your next visit. It will give you time to think about it.’

  26

  I was keen to hear Sister Kathleen’s version of events. When she finally came, we dragged two chairs out under the spreading pepper tree for it was one of those clear sunny winter’s days when, if you were well sheltered, the sun could warm. I waited for her to compose herself and begin.

  ‘We agreed that it was my turn to tell you what I know about your family. Please remember I was only a small child then, so this is only what I’ve been told. The first thing my parents heard from people in Eden Valley was that on the morning following the murder your father’s horse was found sweating in the barn. It was said he had ridden the twenty miles to Towitta and back to Eden Valley in the dark. He had intentions to murder the pair of you because you had witnessed him battering one of the hawkers to death years before. And Bertha had asked your father for her own pony or something, and when he wouldn’t give her one she threatened to tell the local policeman of his part in the murder.

  ‘The rumour was that Bertha was openly flirting and getting out of control and your father feared she would soon bring shame on the family. He seemed to have some notion that Bertha had been seen with a local youth in a creek bed by a farmer out shooting rabbits.

  ‘I am telling you this, Mary, in the way it was told me, all right? I don’t know what’s true or what’s not.’

  I sat there unbelieving, for folk knew more about our family than I knew. It was a good story to hear so long after the event, but it sounded as though she was talking about strangers and not our family at all. I encouraged Sister Kathleen to continue. I was curious to know what else was lingering in people’s memory.

  ‘What we heard was that your father rode back from Eden Valley to your farm that night to do you both in, except you struggled free and managed to raise the alarm.’

  ‘And that’s what everyone believes, Sister?’

  ‘Oh, Mary, yes, didn’t you know? And then for all these years, out of fear for your own life, you have protected your brutal father. Why you never revealed this ghastly secret, I really can’t understand. After all, if you had spoken out he would have been convicted and most likely hanged.’

  ‘I don’t mind if that’s what people believe, Sister. After all, Father ruled us with an iron fist. But I think you should know, Sister, that it is not possible for anyone to ride over those hills and back to Eden Valley through the night. And further, if Father had done it, I for one would never have protected him. I would gladly have let him hang.’

  ‘Really, Mary? Then what are you saying? If it wasn’t your father, are you saying that it was the intruder after all, as you have always insisted?’

  ‘Not at all. There was no intruder other than the ones in my nightmares. I’ll tell you the real story for I really do need to get this matter off my chest once and for all. I feel I have so little time left.’

  Sister Kathleen didn’t answer but looked to me to tell her what really happened. But I was now too tired to continue.

  ‘I am near the end of my story, Sister, but the next part is long and needs to be told in one sitting, if you know what I mean. Perhaps the next time you come, you might be able to stop for longer than usual. I promise it will be the last instalment. It has to be, Sister, for I can feel my days are few.’

  ‘I will come in three days’ time then. I am on an early shift that ends about lunchtime. I don’t have to dash home but could spend s
ome of the afternoon with you to finish this.’

  27

  3 July 1919

  It was early afternoon three days later, as she had promised, when Sister Kathleen returned with a basket full of tasty things to eat and drink. ‘It’s sunny but cold,’ she said, ‘so let’s go and make ourselves comfortable on the enclosed verandah.’ She helped me along the corridor toward the long verandah enclosed at one end and settled me comfortably among rugs and cushions brought from my bedroom.

  ‘Are you ready for this, Mary? You really don’t have to continue, you know, as I know the story now.’

  ‘I don’t think you do, Sister,’ I said, and she looked at me puzzled. And so began the last part of my story.

  I was a daydreamer. But at night I had nightmares, or as I called them, night terrors, that were so frightening I dreaded going to bed. After Bertha was killed my nightmares became worse. But Father’s death brought release, the nightmares ceased altogether. It brought peace but also new problems for me. After his death I was able to think more clearly about what had happened the night Bertha died because I didn’t have the nightmares to upset my thoughts. The nightmares I had endured were so horrific that they interfered with what I thought was true and what was not. I know you can’t imagine how life can be so warped by nightmares if you’ve never had them, but it was only when they ceased that I could sort out what actually happened to me on that night all those years ago. And the more I was able to think of the events on that night, the more shocked I became. I felt the need to talk about it but there was no one I could share my fears with. Then I met you, Sister. So long after the event I don’t think many other people would care about what I have to say.