Out of the Silence

by Wendy James

  By twelve we have everything done and can start to get ready, which is not only something of a miracle, but fortunate, for in the end it is quite an ordeal. Poor Doll has got so fat in the last few months that all her dresses are too tight across the arms and shoulders, and her best print dress splits all down the back when she tries to squeeze into it, which means a half hour of Doll bawling, and then another hour letting out an old one so that she has something decent to wear. I manage to get her hair into a tidy enough style, but there is nothing to be done about her face, which is even more puffy and her eyes all red. I can only hope that her colour will be put down to the journey.

  My own dress is nothing special – a pale pink muslin that I have worn the last two seasons – but I know it shows up my colour well and, being what you might call a good-looking girl, I never have to try so hard as poor Doll, who is dismal now about the whole thing, and moans that she is sure to be a wallflower. I am so out of sympathy with her that I agree, though I have no doubt really that she will get plenty of dances – she is bright enough company and a good partner in a jig, and there are always plenty of girls happy enough to dance together if the boys are being shy, it not being what anyone would call a bang-up affair, but friendly and good fun. The nobs pretty much keep to themselves and there are only ever one or two fights – a couple of young fellas who’ve had too much beer or lost their savings might have a bit of a scrap at the end of the evening, but that is always well away from the main dance and there’s never much in it, just some red-faced handshakes the next day.

  We are at Tom all the way to go carefully, and for once he acts considerate and does his best to set a respectable pace, so by the time we arrive at the shed we are not too dusty, though Doll complains that the jolting has made her sick in her stomach, which I tell her can only be a good thing seeing how it has taken all the red out of her face. ‘Pale and interesting,’ I say, and this cheers her so that she doesn’t carry on too much when I suggest that we walk over to the racetrack, which is half a mile from the woolsheds, to see what there is to be seen.

  I have managed to stay fairly cool about the day’s activities. Not even Doll could guess at the way I’m really feeling, which is worked up in the extreme, having not seen Jack for two weeks now. I’m not sure what will be said this evening and am in a bit of a state, wondering whether he will make himself known to Ma and Dad. At any rate, whatever happens, there is the prospect of dancing with him and of us being seen together in public, which is almost the same as telling everybody that we are a courting couple, which around here means practically engaged. Last year when Susanna Macintosh and Andrew Carter danced more than four dances together the marriage licence was all but issued on the day.

  I am in such a fever to see Jack that the half-mile walk means nothing: I couldn’t care less that the track across the paddock is barely that; am hardly conscious of the dust and the burrs and thistles that catch at my dress, and even Doll’s huffing and puffing and grizzling that her shoes are too tight doesn’t bother me. Eventually, I am so far ahead of her that I cannot hear her moaning anyway. I am in such a state that I don’t notice the buggy heading across the paddock towards us, and it is not until it is right beside me that I realise it is Ma and Dad.

  ‘Where are you off to, Maggie?’ Ma’s tone is pleasant enough and she is even smiling a real smile, one that goes to her eyes. This is a rare enough occurrence, a twice-yearly event if we are lucky. It’s easy to see she has had a good day of it mixing with the MacDonalds and the Goldsworthys and the rest of them she thinks she should be friendly with, having once been a Miss Ivers of Beechworth and knowing what names are useful to drop when the occasion allows – and not just a Missus Heffernan of Hillview, via Gundowring. So, I am friendly enough back, which seems the most sensible course to take. I don’t wish to aggravate her in any way, for I can see Dad is looking pleased as punch up there beside her. There is no doubt that they make a handsome couple when Ma takes the time and manages to arrange her face in a pleasant way, and I think that if Jack were to say a few words to Dad tonight it could only be a good thing.

  ‘Why, Ma, Dad.’ I think quickly. ‘Doll and I was just coming across to look for you.’ Ma actually looks like she believes me, and even offers me a hand up into the buggy. ‘Why,’ she says, looking at me close as we head off again, ‘you’re looking reasonably neat and tidy, Margaret. For once.’ Which is as near as you’ll ever get to a compliment from Ma. Then, peering ahead, she asks, ‘Is that Doll? My word, she has got fat. I don’t know how I haven’t noticed. I’ll have to have words with that girl—’

  ‘Have you had a good day then?’ I ask, hoping to distract her, for I have had enough of Doll and her snivelling for one day. Ma’s face brightens and she starts up with a story about how she has a met a delightful woman up from Bendigo, a Mrs Wren, who knows Ma’s Aunt and Uncle Phillips. ‘Such respectable people she said they were, absolutely admired by all the townsfolk and quite prominent in the community. Why, only last week Uncle George was quoted in the local newspaper …’

  By the time the buggy pulls up beside poor old Doll, Ma’s only comment is, ‘Why Dorothy, you are very red in the face,’ and she goes on with her story, which I pretend to find quite fascinating, nodding and sighing and tutting from time to time, a performance that earns me a wink from Dad and a scowl from Doll, who will no doubt accuse me of being a toady when I am in fact doing my best to save her from a shredding.

  It is not until the dance is right underway that I get even a glimpse of Jack. I have already danced two reels and a polka and been forced to plead fatigue twice, when Arthur Crotty, who is not one to take a hint, asks for the pleasure. I would rather not dance at all than with such a bumpkin but, luckily for Arthur, Doll is not so fussy about who she lets tread on her feet.

  Anyway, it is far easier to watch for Jack if I am free to wander about the hall at will, and keep a sharp lookout I must, as there is such a crush tonight that it would be easy for us to miss one another altogether. I stay close to the food table – not, as Ma suggests as she passes, because I am making a pig of myself – but because this is the one place he will be sure to visit after a hard day’s racing, the beer being close by. As it turns out my first glimpse of him is from some distance. He is on the dance floor, where he is partnering some girl whose face I cannot make out, but who I can tell, owing to the cut of her dress and the quality of the silk, is not likely to be anyone I am on good terms with, nor Jack for that matter.

  I watch them for a bit and, though I tell myself that he has a right to dance with whoever he pleases, and though I admire his pluck – trust Jack Hardy to ask a girl like that for a dance! – and though I can content myself that even in her showy dress for which she has probably paid as much as I earned in all my months of service, it is clear that her looks and figure are not at all to be envied; even despite all that I cannot help a pang when I see the way Jack is whispering and smiling down at her. And from the way she looks back up at him, half shy, half confident, I can see that he has made her feel – pale, plain-looking creature that she is – as if she is the only girl in the room worth talking to.

  It is three dances – and all with the same partner, during which time I am forced to be more or less continuously eating in order to avoid invitations from several boys who I would as soon cut off my legs as dance with – before Jack is free and heads over to the refreshment tables. I am careful to make my way towards him and meet up with him in what could only seem an accidental way, were anyone to be watching, though I do not know why they would be.

  ‘Why, Mr Hardy,’ I greet him in my breeziest manner for the benefit of those who might happen to be listening, ‘It is good to see you here.’

  ‘Good evening to you, Miss Heffernan,’ he replies with a smile. ‘It is a pleasure, as always, to see you, and especially on such a fine night as this.’

  ‘I had thought we had lost you to Albury,’ I say. ‘Are you back for good then?’

  ‘No. Just for t
he race. I head back tomorrow.’

  ‘Aaah,’ I nod and smile, ‘such a short visit.’ Then, under my breath: ‘Aren’t you going to ask me to dance, Jack. What are you waiting for? Do you prefer this little pale miss and her schoolgirl chat to your old Mags?’ I try hard to keep my face pleasant, though there is nothing much I can do about my manner, which can no longer be described as breezy.

  ‘Maggie,’ he says quietly. ‘Don’t be cross, love. I just got tied up a little and as I couldn’t see you anywhere there didn’t seem any harm. You can’t expect me to sit around like a wallflower waiting for you, can you? And I promised this girl I’d dance with her. It’s her first dance y’see and she’s dreadfully anxious about it, and certain that there’d be no one to ask her, so I took pity on the poor little thing.’

  ‘Took pity,’ I hiss. ‘Well, what about me? I’ve been standing around for almost an hour by myself like some old maid, waiting for you. Why not take pity on me?’

  ‘There’s no need for that, Mag,’ he says, filling a glass from a pitcher of lemonade. ‘You enjoy yerself, love. I’ve got no hold on you. You’re a free woman.’

  ‘What do you mean you’ve got no hold on me, Jack?’ I say, ‘What about—’

  ‘Ssshh, Mag,’ he says, ‘calm yourself down. You don’t want to make a scene. Listen,’ he looks around him, avoids meeting my eyes, ‘I promised Sarah I’d take her back some lemonade, she’s parched poor thing and didn’t think she’d have the energy to push through the mob here, so I’ll just take it over and then I’m going to go outside for a bit of a spell, and then I’ll be back and we’ll dance, I promise.’

  ‘What about Ma and Dad?’ I say. ‘I thought you were going to meet them, let them know that we’re courting.’

  ‘When I get back,’ he says with a wink and a smile, then he turns away and heads back into the crowd with his glass of lemonade.

  But I don’t wait for him to get back. It is more than I can stomach, speaking as one who has never been labelled patient, to stand around on my own for an age, or worse, to be forced to dance with some bumbling boy or other. So I take myself off to the ladies’ parlour, which has been tricked up at the back of the shed. While I am resting and glancing through some old Home Companions that have been thoughtfully provided, who should walk in but Jack’s pale dance partner and another well-heeled lady, slightly older, with a hard, pinched face. They settle themselves in front of the mirror without so much as acknowledging me, though I am sitting close enough to touch them and the last time I looked I was still quite visible.

  The younger one speaks first. ‘He is very handsome, I think, and so charming. Don’t you think Lizzie?’ She has a little-girl voice this one, and wide, oh-so-innocent eyes to match.

  ‘I suppose,’ says the older one, and it is obvious even to me that her voice has a sharp edge to it, ‘that he is nice enough looking.’

  She has unpinned her long dark hair and is pulling it this way and that – for what purpose I cannot guess.

  ‘And he is certainly charming,’ she continues. ‘But then so is Jack Chinaman, our gardener, in his own way, and I don’t think I would dance four times with him. However charming he might appear.’

  ‘Oh Lizzie, you can’t compare him to a Chinaman, he’s hardly—’

  ‘He’s hardly the sort of person you should be mixing with, Sarah, and to dance four dances is foolish in the extreme. You’ll have all the matrons of the district’s tongues wagging. And for what? For some charming nobody.’

  ‘It is just a country dance, Lizzie.’ Jack’s partner is pale no longer, but pink and pouting, her eyes shining as if she is about to burst into tears. ‘And he was kind to me and brought me lemonade, and I shall dance with whoever I like and it will harm no one, and I do not care what you or any other person thinks.’

  ‘My dear,’ says her friend seriously, ‘it will harm no one, at least no one other than you. You’re not even out properly and already you’re setting yourself up as a target for gossip. If you want to marry well, you’ll have to behave with the utmost discretion and propriety. Believe me, your price will not be raised if it gets out that you make yourself available to every country bumpkin, notwithstanding he has a handsome face or is ever-so charming.’

  She is still fussing with her hair and I, for one, would be glad to give her a hand with her pulling and tweaking and do not know why little Sarah doesn’t take hold of a curl or two. Instead she gets all huffy.

  ‘My price? What do you mean, my price? I’m not a horse or a cow, Lizzie. I’m not being sent to market.’

  Lizzie raises her eyebrows, ‘No,’ she says, ‘I suppose that is a little crude, but there are parallels, and you should be aware of them. Given your education and the connections you’ve made, you have every opportunity to better yourself. You surely don’t think your parents sent you away to school so that you could come back here and take up with the first handsome face that catches your eye? My dear, they want you to move up and away – and that is possible. You are pretty and accomplished and your father will be able to settle enough money on you to make you an attractive catch for someone – not in the first circles, perhaps, but certainly some struggling grazier’s son. My dear, you could make a very fine arrangement.’

  ‘But I don’t want to make an arrangement. When I marry I want it to be for love.’ There is something in the way she says this, all soft and sweet and butter-wouldn’t-melt, that is very familiar. Suddenly I realise with a shock that this soppy Miss Sarah is not any grazier’s daughter at all but plain old Sally Bateman, whose parents had the grain and seed in Dederang and, before that, a selection even smaller than ours at Upper Gundowring. We sat next to one another at Gundy school and it is not so long ago that she was barefoot and as ragged as the rest of us.

  ‘Love?’ Her companion’s smile is just about as friendly as a snake’s. ‘How long do you think your love would last stuck out on some selection, miles from civilisation, with six children and more coming and no help, no money and your only company some disgruntled oaf who has lost his looks and whatever pretensions he ever had to gentility – which is all they are my dear, make no mistake. Pretensions. That boy hasn’t a penny to his name. And no education, no breeding, no prospects. At least if you are to look for love and poverty, you could choose someone with a little breeding. Why – and I tell you this from experience, my dear Sarah – that fellow is nothing more than a flash Jack on the lookout for a rich wife to make his fortune for him.’

  I have managed so far to keep out of their conversation, but this last is more than I can take. I stand up and walk towards the mirror. ‘Why, it’s never Sally Bateman,’ I say brightly. ‘Surely you haven’t forgotten me, Sal? It’s Maggie Heffernan. Surely I haven’t changed so much!’ It really is a wonder that she hasn’t recognised me as we once engaged in a terrible war over an inkwell, which I for one remember all too clearly, it ending with the both of us covered in ink and me in terrible strife, Sally always being able to wheedle her way out of trouble.

  ‘Oh. Hello, Maggie,’ she says, and her face goes red as I knew it would when she realised that someone who knew her – and not just some goose-egg – had overheard all that’s just been said. But how much redder it will be in a moment when I let out that I am pretty well acquainted with the young man – the ‘flash Jack’ they have been discussing. I move over to the mirror and start tidying my hair, which can only be a matter of doing and undoing clips, as I haven’t a brush, and the two ladies make room for me. ‘How are you Maggie?’ Sally asks. ‘You are looking very well,’ she says, as uncomfortable as can be, and I tell her that I am well, and that she too is looking in fine fettle, the country air must be agreeing with her. ‘Oh yes,’ she says with a sigh, ‘it is wonderful to be home – I had forgotten all the sights and the sounds – and to see all the dear old places and faces again.’

  ‘And some new ones?’ I ask in a way that she cannot ignore. ‘Yes,’ she says, and she sounds a little like she is choking. ‘Yes, I suppose
that there are some new faces.’ Her sharp-mouthed friend, who has not asked to be introduced or bothered to introduce herself, has moved away and is waiting by the door. ‘Sarah,’ she says loudly, her foot tap, tap, tapping, ‘we really should be getting back.’

  I ignore her and jump right in. ‘I hope you’ll excuse me, Sal,’ I say quickly, ‘but I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation just now.’

  ‘Oh. No. I mean, yes.’ I can hear the quake in her voice, ‘We were just talking about—’

  ‘About Jack Hardy,’ I say his name straight out and her friend gives me a stare, and looks as if she wants to say something, but Sally waves her away. ‘Why don’t you go, Lizzie? I’ll follow you in a moment.’ Her friend’s eyebrows lift and her mouth tightens, but she doesn’t move.

  From the moment I realised who it was they were talking about I’ve been debating what it is I’m going to say. There are two courses I can take. I can tell Sally Bateman that busybody Lizzie here is right and that I have heard that Jack Hardy is a bad egg to be avoided at all costs. This is an out-and-out lie, a real whopper, and would blacken my Jack’s good name, but would have an effect I would relish: silly Sally Bateman would have nothing more to do with him.

  But I take the other course in the end – the one that will be far and away the more satisfying to the heat I am feeling myself. ‘I couldn’t help but overhear what you were saying just now,’ I repeat. ‘I hope you’ll excuse me, as I didn’t mean to listen,’ I hear her friend snort quite distinctly, but take no notice and keep on, ‘but when you started to talk about Jack Hardy, my ears pricked up. He’s quite a close friend of my brother Tom – they play cricket together – and though I don’t know him well myself,’ this falsehood comes quickly and easily as they so often do these days, ‘I have it on best authority that Jack is the son of an English gentleman, and is quite well set-up.’