The front door led into a long corridor, with a short open passage at the far end that separated the kitchen from the main house, in case the coals from the wood stove dropped onto the floor and the kitchen caught alight. A staircase between the main house and the kitchen led down to a room underneath. Angus raced down the stairs to investigate.
‘It’s a bathroom!’ he yelled. ‘An enormous one. There’s a dunny in its own little room too! How can you have a dunny inside! It’s got water in it! There’s pipes everywhere and a bath big enough for a giant and two taps so we don’t have to carry buckets. Ow! One of the taps has hot water!’
‘There must be pipes from the kitchen stove to warm the water,’ said Papa, as Angus raced back up. ‘And one of the new sewage tanks. Most ingenious.’
‘A luxury,’ said Mama.
‘There’s a laundry too with a big boiler, and two Coolgardie safes on the back veranda. But I can’t see any snakes.’ Angus sounded disappointed.
Hannah looked into the first room off the main corridor. It was a large drawing room with striped yellow and blue velvet curtains, two big blue velvet sofas and matching armchairs, and two carved wooden whatnots. There was even a stuffed owl on one of them, and a clock on the mantelpiece.
‘Mrs Frogmore has thought of everything,’ said Mama dourly as she stared at the stuffed owl. Hannah thought it seemed to stare back at her.
The dining room next door had a table that sat eight people and a carved sideboard, both made from the same reddish wood as the floors. Then there was a large study for Papa, with leather armchairs, a leather sofa, a blackboard on one wall and bookcases on the others — mostly empty. The next room opposite was a morning room for Mama, flowered sofas and armchairs and even a treadle sewing machine, with a door onto the back veranda.
On the other side of the corridor was a big bedroom with a double bed swathed with mosquito netting. The bed was already made up with a Chinese silk coverlet.
Then came three smaller rooms with single beds . . .
‘I want this room!’ yelled Angus. ‘The rocking horse is here!’
‘It’s rude to shout,’ said Papa mildly. Hannah could see he was delighted with the house.
‘I’m sorry, Papa,’ said Angus, not sounding sorry at all. ‘May I have this room? You can see the river through the trees!’
‘You can see it from every room on this side,’ Hannah pointed out.
The room that was obviously meant for her had a ruffled pink quilt on the bed, with a doll sitting on it. It was kind, though a bit silly as Hannah was far too old for dolls. But there was a bookcase too, with Alice in Wonderland in it and a whole set of Girl’s Own annuals, a bit battered, as if they’d been well loved. It wouldn’t take her long to read them all.
She wondered if Mrs Frogmore had put them there, or if they’d belonged to whoever had been in this room before her and she’d no longer wanted them. These and the books in the study were the only books in the house. Mr Harris obviously didn’t realise books were more important than sheets and tea towels.
‘Papa, what was the last schoolmaster like?’ she asked.
‘Mr Andrews?’ replied Papa absently, looking regretfully at the empty shelves in his study. His own books were at the bottom of the sea. ‘I don’t know much about him, just that he wanted to retire and he and his wife moved back down to Newcastle. His school records seemed orderly.’
‘Did he have a daughter?’
‘I have no idea.’ He turned to Mama. ‘My dear, did you think to ask Mr Harris’s housekeeper for a luncheon basket for today?’
‘I doubt there is any need,’ said Mama dryly, as a plump figure in an apron hurried from the kitchen. ‘Mrs Murphy? I am Mrs—’
‘Mrs Gilbert, yes, I know, I know. And you must be the schoolmaster. Pleased to meet you, sir, and the poor children. The whole town is talking about the shipwreck, how you lost everything.’ Mrs Murphy must have been one of the first Irish orphans to come out here twenty years ago, thought Hannah. Grandpa would have said her accent was strong enough for a sheep to float on. ‘Now the larder is all packed just as it should be, and Mrs Frogmore has even sent down some of her marmalade that won first prize at the Sydney Show ten years ago now. I’ve made you a proper good lunch indeed, rolled neck of pork in white sauce, and it’ll be on the table in two flicks of a cat’s tail. The beds are all made up if you need a nap and—’
‘Thank you, Mrs Murphy,’ said Mama, trying not to smile at the torrent of words. ‘Lunch will be welcome. But when school starts, Mr Gilbert and the children and I will have our lunch over at the schoolhouse so we can supervise the pupils.’
‘Of course, Mrs Gilbert; I’ll cut sandwiches fresh for you each morning as soon as the baker brings the bread. You just tell me what you like, cheese or corned beef and pickle — Mrs Frogmore makes a lovely pickle — though I always say you can’t go wrong with a nice hard-boiled egg and lettuce sandwich and a slice of boiled fruit cake. I use tea to make my fruit cake, my Murphy being a teetotaller and myself as well . . .’
Hannah wondered what she was supposed to do now. You always unpacked when you arrived somewhere for a visit, but this wasn’t a visit, it was their new home, and she had nothing to unpack — not till the dressmaker delivered her new dresses and underwear and nightclothes.
She slipped into her new room — or someone’s old room — opened the wardrobe and gazed at the undoubtedly excellent clothes Mr Harris’s housekeeper had placed there for her, then chose one of the Girl’s Own annuals and lay on her bed to read.
***
Lunch was all right, though the rolled neck of pork was fatty and the sauce a bit like glue. The baked potatoes weren’t crisp like Mama made them and the strange boiled vegetable called a choko didn’t taste of anything. They were followed by a treacle pudding that looked like a large ball someone had poured a very yellow custard over, but it didn’t taste of anything either, which was probably a good thing. The food was all hot and heavy, just like the air was hot and heavy. Hannah thought of the men working out in the heat. Impossible to imagine slashing back the undergrowth with the sun pouring heat down on them like Mrs Murphy’s custard.
‘I need to leave at three o’clock each day to get Murphy’s supper,’ said Mrs Murphy, gathering up the half-empty pudding plates and trying not to stare at Mama’s scar now she had removed her hat and veil. ‘But I’ll leave a cold supper every afternoon in the Coolgardie for you, Mrs Gilbert, that’ll be no trouble at all for you to put on the table. Or a stew that you can heat up in two shakes of a lamb’s tail in winter, some leftover pork and sliced tomato tonight maybe, and there’s some lovely cucumbers and pickled beetroot. And I’ll do your shopping at the Saturday market tomorrow afore I come in, so if there’s anything you’d fancy—’
‘Thank you, Mrs Murphy,’ said Mama firmly. ‘But Mr Gilbert likes a hot dinner at night. I will cook tonight and every other evening. Hannah and I will do the marketing tomorrow too.’
‘But I always did dinner for Mrs Andrews!’ Mrs Murphy looked appalled at the change in her routine. ‘I make a lovely cold pressed tongue or calves’ head cheese. Add some hot boiled cabbage and potatoes to a few slices of my calves’ head cheese and you’ve a meal fit for a king. I did all Mrs Andrews’ marketing too. She wasn’t well, poor dear — it was her bronchials, which was why they came north for the warmth, but it did her no good at all, coughing like a steam engine she was and—’
‘Hannah and I will enjoy the market,’ Mama interrupted, smiling to take the edge off her words. ‘It will give us a chance to understand something of the district.’
‘Well, if you’re sure. It’s no trouble at all to me if you change your mind. The milkman delivers every morning, of course. Mrs Andrews always had a pint of milk and a quarter of cream, though you might be wanting more with your young’uns. Don’t you be buying his butter though, there’s so much salt in it your tongue’ll be hanging out. There’s better and cheaper at the market. And then there’s the baker,
he calls just before six but he’ll leave the order on the top step so as not to wake you. Mrs Andrews had a high-top white each morning and six currant buns as well on Thursdays — the baker only does buns on Thursdays. And the butcher’s boy delivers Tuesdays and Fridays. If you send the butcher a note on Thursday—’
‘Thank you, Mrs Murphy. We’ll have a high-top white and a cottage brown loaf each morning, please, and Thursday’s buns, and, yes, two pints of milk. And I’ll send a note to the butcher.’
‘He doesn’t deal in fancy stuff like chicken nor duck,’ warned Mrs Murphy. ‘And I wouldn’t be trying his sausages nor them rissoles of his either. Word is you might find a bit of cat or kangaroo in them. And any time you want me to put on a roast before I go home you just say the word. Mr Harris has some lovely fat turkeys left over from Christmas, I’m sure he’d be happy for you to have one. It’s no trouble at all to send a boy up to Mrs Frogmore to ask—’
‘I’m sure we shall be fine,’ said Mama, a little wearily, as Papa slipped out into the corridor. Hannah heard the study door close behind him. ‘If you wouldn’t mind removing the dishes?’
‘Of course, Mrs Gilbert. And isn’t it lovely china too, all new it is, Mrs Frogmore showed me the patterns when she was choosing it for you. I liked the one with all the fruit on it, but Mrs Frogmore said you’d like it plain . . .’
‘May I be excused?’ asked Hannah, as Angus thundered out without asking and clattered down the stairs to explore the glories of the indoor dunny.
***
It was odd to sleep in yet another strange bedroom. The breeze from the open window tickled Hannah’s face, the mosquitoes beyond the net buzzed their high-pitched song, the palm trees’ giant fronds made the wrong kind of hushing sound, so different from the leaves and branches back at home.
But this was home now, thought Hannah, looking out at the star-glittered darkness. This bed with its ruffles, and Mrs Murphy and the kitchen, and the market tomorrow . . .
Here I am, in sugar town
Dressed in someone’s cast-off gown
Listening to mosquitoes sing
Wondering what this year will bring.
She was pretty sure it was terrible poetry, even though it rhymed, but she didn’t know how to make it better. Sometimes she thought she would never be able to write good poetry. Maybe good poems could only be written in places like England, and by men.
She hoped that one day, maybe, she would find ‘the best words’, or they would find her.
CHAPTER 8
AT THE MARKET
The Port Harris market was . . . odd. Too much food all in one place, too many kinds of food, and all right in front where anyone could touch it! There were far too many people as well — too much noise, yelling and laughter — and children running in and out of the crowd. Everyone from Port Harris must come here, Hannah thought. There were sailors with leathery skins and gummy lips, their teeth lost to scurvy; men in wide straw hats; women in long cotton dresses, bright colours mostly — or they had been before they faded — instead of the white that most women wore in summer down south.
Back at Lyrebird Creek food was bought from proper shops — the butcher, the baker, the ham and cheese shop, and the general store that sold everything from rice to tins of biscuits. The shops had doors with a bell that rang when anyone came in or out, and you waited at a neat counter to be served. Here the produce was laid out on trestle tables on a wide stretch of grass along the river; grass that was too green and looked like it might grow as tall as your waist if you turned your back on it.
The river was bigger than any river had a right to be too, brown and slow-moving, and so wide that two big ships could easily pass each other, with steep banks and a pontoon that jutted out into the water. Down towards the sea Hannah could just see the first of the wharves of the port. A big barge sat alongside the wharf, with men wheeling sacks of what she supposed was sugar onto it. The air smelled strangely sweet as well as salty, and felt clammy, as if all the district’s sugar had dissolved in the humid air.
The market area was lined with palm trees that stood like sentinels, each exactly three yards from the next. Hannah discreetly measured the distances the way Papa had shown her: four of her feet in buttoned boots to every yard.
She also noticed that no one else here wore buttoned boots. Everyone her age or younger had bare feet, and most of the young and older men too, even the ones who wore suits. The women wore straw shoes, a bit like Mama’s Indian slippers but plain, though Hannah glimpsed some bare feet under the long cotton skirts too. No women in Port Harris seemed to wear stays. But then Mama had left hers off too this morning, saying she could not shop in stays in this heat.
Black and white hens squawked in a bamboo run, where a barefoot woman with her skirts tied up almost to her knees grabbed each bird expertly by the neck and tied its legs for customers to take home, to eat for dinner or keep to lay eggs. A man sharpened knives on a pedal-powered grindstone; and a nearby trestle sold wooden beds and woven baskets. They passed fish lying on a bed of seaweed with gaping mouths and staring eyes, and crabs still alive but tied with string, vainly trying to escape, and pet penny turtles swimming in a tank.
‘No!’ said Mama to a hopeful Angus.
There were brown eggs, white eggs, blue duck eggs — ‘Duck eggs make the best sponge cake, lady’; pineapples sitting shoulder to shoulder, bigger than any Hannah had ever seen; strange pale yellow fruit that Mama called paw-paws; purple passionfruit, and an odd curved fruit that looked hard but dripped juice onto Hannah’s white dress when the young woman who owned the stall stripped back the skin to let Hannah try one.
The young woman laughed and handed Hannah a wet towel to wash the juice off. ‘The best place to eat a mango is in the bath.’
Papa would have been shocked at a woman mentioning a bath in public. But Mama laughed too and said, ‘They are delicious. How much are they? Can you turn them into a pie?’
‘Six for sixpence and they’ll make the best pie you ever ate.’
Mama handed over a shilling piece. The young woman placed twelve mangos in Hannah’s basket.
‘Mama, can we have some hens?’ Angus asked. ‘Please? Monkey likes hens.’
‘Mrs Frogmore will send us down all the eggs we want.’
Angus pointed to another stall. ‘Can we have a goose then?’
‘No,’ said Mama firmly, but she let him buy a carved rabbit whose legs moved when you pulled it along on a string.
Lettuces, carrots, potatoes, onions and beetroot all went into their baskets — ‘Monkey hates beetroot,’ said Angus rebelliously — along with puffy-skinned oranges that looked green but were brightly coloured when cut open, a pineapple, a big piece of a giant melon that was red and sweet inside, not white like the jam melons back home, a cabbage — there seemed to be no peas or beans — cucumbers, and a slab of pale cheese wrapped in greased paper. Mama shook her head at the tomatoes — Papa said they weren’t in the Bible and so must not be healthy — but added cobs of corn to make a chowder, though Hannah planned to sneak a few cobs for her and Angus to munch in the laundry where no one would see them eating with their fingers.
‘I thought there might be books for sale,’ said Hannah, looking along the remaining trestle tables, disappointed.
‘People don’t grow books,’ said Angus scornfully.
‘They don’t grow wooden rabbits either.’
‘Wood comes from trees and trees grow,’ said Angus.
Which was true so Hannah didn’t answer.
Angus ran ahead to look at another coop of chickens — bantams this time, with small plucked chickens up on the trestle table under flywire.
Mama waited till he was out of earshot, then said quietly, ‘Hannah, if I let you do something will you promise not to tell Papa?’
Hannah nodded. ‘What kind of something?’
‘You know I wired Grandma to send us some catalogues?’
Hannah nodded again. Most of their clothes at Lyrebi
rd Creek had been bought from catalogues, except their best ones which were made by a dressmaker, or a tailor for Papa. Things like books of music, or good-quality linen, pillows and blankets and kitchenware, were usually mail-ordered as well.
‘Your grandmother is sending me a bookshop catalogue too,’ said Mama.
‘I didn’t know there were catalogues for books,’ said Hannah excitedly. Why hadn’t Mama ever shown one to her before? They had always bought their books from the shop in Goulburn on their annual holiday at Ferndale.
‘Shh. Not so loud. Sometimes . . . well, Papa does not approve of some of the books I want to read. It is . . . easier if those books come by mail, so I can say that your grandmother sent them to me. But I think maybe you are old enough now to choose your own books too.’
Hannah wondered what kind of books Papa might not approve of. Maybe he just didn’t like Mama buying more books than they could afford on his salary. Mama and Papa rarely mentioned that Mama had money of her own, left in trust by her own grandfather, and that the trust was administered by Mama’s father not her husband. Hannah’s grandparents were rich too, but it was vulgar to talk of money. Money was something you knew about but didn’t mention, like underwear.
‘Of course Papa needs to order books too, to replace the ones we lost,’ Mama said. ‘He’ll mark the ones he wants first, but after that you can choose whichever ones you like.’
‘Anything?’
Mama laughed. ‘As long as they’ll fit in the bookcase in your room, though maybe you could choose some you think would be good for the school too. I suspect Mr Harris has supplied only “suitable” textbooks.’
‘Suitable’ textbooks were usually boring and, Papa said, often out of date. Like the history books that stopped at the Crimean War, and didn’t even mention anything about Australia except how it was discovered by Captain Cook and the colony was founded by Governor Phillip.
‘What if Papa doesn’t approve of the books I order?’
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