by Joy Dettman
‘We’re eloping, Heli.’
They should have walked down to the river and through the wood paddock. They’d planned to, but the wind was blowing a gale, making those trees howl and throw their branches around, so they cut diagonally across the orchard paddock, well clear of the Johnsons’ house.
The dogs must have heard them anyway, because the blue heeler, which Helen loathed, came running out of the dark at her heels. She screamed, threw her case at it, and ran for her life, back towards the house. Rachael ran towards the wood paddock, the three dogs after her. Of course, Mr Johnson and his boys chased her. They cut her off at the boundary fence and carried her home. Then Mr Johnson climbed that ladder and hammered long nails into the window frame so the window couldn’t be opened. They were locked in.
Helen shouldn’t have done what she did late the next day, and she knew at the time that she shouldn’t have done it, but Olivia had come to their room crying about how she’d failed and begging God to tell her why she’d failed. Nicholas, who loathed her hysterics, was hiss-whispering angry.
She’d probably done it because of chamber pots, too. She’d had diarrhoea since they started packing their cases, and she wasn’t even allowed to go to the bathroom. She knew they’d end up locked in their room for days and days, and she’d already used that chamber pot. She loathed and despised chamber pots with such a pure blind hatred that she wanted to smash every one she saw. Anyway, that’s probably why her mouth opened up and told her parents about Rachael’s baby, maybe imagining a grandchild would make Nicholas and Olivia happy.
It hadn’t. Nicholas’s face turned stone white and Olivia fainted, falling flat on the floor. It took Mr Johnson and two of his sons to get her up and out of that room, and while all that was going on, Rachael sat on her bed shaking her head and staring at Helen, asking with her eyes why she’d gone and done such a thing.
Helen screamed when she lost control. Nicholas lost control of his pitch. His well-modulated tones deserting him, his voice crept high, and to control this, he hiss-whispered. He whispered while stripping their room, tossing everything out the door and into the passage – clothes, books, hairbrushes, playing cards, the drawers from their dressing table – every single item, except the large jug of water, the washbasin, their Bibles and that chamber pot, which had been under Helen’s bed; it had always been their rule that if you used it, you slept with it until the other one had to use it.
After he locked the door, Helen tried to say sorry but Rachael just sat quietly, her eyes turned to the sealed window. For hours, every time Helen tried to say anything, Rachael shook her head, as though she was saying Shut up, Heli.
At nightfall Nicholas brought in two bowls of porridge and another jug of water, but no milk, no sugar and no light. They didn’t eat the porridge. Rachael was in bed, and Helen didn’t want to give her stomach any more ammunition.
The next morning she woke to the sound of smashing china – those porridge bowls shattering against the wall and door when Nicholas stuck his head in. It made an atrocious mess, they didn’t get whatever he’d been bringing in and they had to clean it all up, but at least Rachael forgave her. They even got the giggles, thinking about Nicholas’s oatmeal face mask. ‘Very good for the complexion, my dear,’ Rachael said in her best Aunt Bertha voice.
He starved them until midday, when he had to let Mrs Johnson in to empty the chamber pot and replace it with a big bucket, which at least had a lid. She brought in two slices of dry bread and filled their water jug. They ate the bread and put the bucket in the corner, beside the wardrobe. By leaving one wardrobe door open and moving a chest of drawers in beside it, they could squat in private.
After a day of that bucket and a diet of dry bread and water, Helen started praying that Nicholas would take them down to the Catholic Sisters’ home for wayward girls where the food might be a little better and they’d at least be allowed to use a bathroom. She’d been on her knees, saying Hail Marys, on the Sunday night when Nicholas opened the door and Rachael flung a washbasin of soapy water at him, not knowing that Father Ryan was with him. He got most of it. He stood there dripping, speechless for an instant, then he bawled at Rachael to take up her Bible and fall to her knees.
She hadn’t. She said she was very sorry about the water, which was meant for God Almighty Nicholas Squire, then she said she was also sorry, but she’d defiled her Bible by using a few of its pages for more personal matters than praying, and if God Almighty Nicholas Squire didn’t supply them with more appropriate paper then she’d have to defile more Bible pages – which, of course, convinced Father Ryan that Rachael was beyond redemption.
He left the room and Nicholas locked the door, but on Monday morning the priest was back, this time armed with holy water and a chair, which he sat on for hours while bellowing about asylums for the insane, homes for wayward girls, demons, devils, hellfire, purgatory and anything else he could throw in, and all the while Helen had prayed while Rachael pretended to sleep.
That night he told Nicholas that Helen must be removed immediately from her sister’s presence, that she was an innocent child who had been coerced into wrongful behaviour by her sister, who had become a chalice of the devil. He said that Rachael must be kept in that room until the devil released his grasp on her.
They moved Helen across the passage into the gold room. Her door wasn’t locked so she heard a little of the priest’s fight for Rachael’s eternal soul.
‘Lord, I beseech thee, send down thy hand from above and smite that demon within who speaks this profanity.’
‘If you’re interested in profanity, it’s a pity you didn’t know Grandma Lorna during her last years. She could curse better than a bullocky.’
‘God, I beseech thee, reach into the heart of this harlot and cleanse it, that she might be returned to the loving arms of her family.’
‘The holy Squire family was founded by a harlot, Father Ryan. It’s not my fault if it runs in the family. She lived a life of ill repute, did pretty Moll, the prostitute. She loved young Wal, a bold young thief…’ Rachael had memorised that poem, and she recited it right through, and loud enough to be audible over Father Ryan’s exhortations.
During his days of valiantly battling the devil, Olivia remained in bed, as had Arthur’s companion, who shared a room with Arthur. He’d been ill with influenza. Between taking care of Arthur, seeing to Arthur’s companion, pacifying Olivia and sustaining Father Ryan, Nicholas was worn ragged. Every day Helen expected him to give up, put Rachael in the car and drive her down to the Catholic Sisters, and every day she wondered why he didn’t. Then she found out why. Rachael was right. Too many babies had been lost on this land. He wanted her baby, just didn’t want its German father.
Rachael might have got her way and married Chris if she hadn’t caught Arthur’s companion’s influenza. That illness killed her fight, and for the next three days she didn’t move from her pillow. A strange silence descended on the big house then, disturbed only by coughing, and Mrs Johnson bustling up and down the passage.
By Saturday, a week after their attempted escape, Rachael had shaken the devil out of her with her vomiting and coughing, though according to Father Ryan her illness had been caused by the devil coming out. He cleansed her with holy water, prayed over her, then Nicholas nullified any remaining demons with regular doses of Arthur’s calming medicine.
That was when the conversation in the room across the passage turned to Dave Kennedy. Jeanne Johnson heard most of it, because she spent two hours dusting the picture rail in the passage. She had a mouth that flapped like a clothesline full of sheets on a windy day, and as she also spent some time dusting the gold room door, she kept Helen informed.
The following morning, Sunday, Dave came in his old truck and was taken up the passage to the library, then on Monday morning Rachael agreed to marry him. Not that she meant to go through with it. She thought that once she agreed, Nicholas would let her out of that room and somehow she’d be able to escape. He didn�
��t let her out, and on the morning of the wedding, she spoke to Helen through the door.
‘Get the key out of Arthur’s door and let me out, Heli.’
‘It won’t work in our lock, and even if it will, he’ll know I did it, Rae.’
‘You have to. Please. For me and Chris, you have to do it. Promise me, Heli.’
‘Get back to your room, Missie.’
She hadn’t got that key, hadn’t opened that door and Rachael ended up married. But that night, with Olivia asleep and Dave and Nicholas in the library, she spoke again to Rachael, and passed a sheet of paper beneath the door so Rachael could write a note.
My darling Chris,
Something terrible has happened. He found out about our baby. I’ll be in Melbourne for a week from Saturday, staying at the Windsor Hotel. I’ll explain everything when you get there. Leave me a telephone message or a note at the desk, but sign it Bertha Collins. Please come by Thursday night or it will be too late. I love you, I love you, I love only you.
Forever, Rachael. XXX
‘I’ll put it in the postbox tree, I promise you, Rae.’
The next Sunday, she took the note with her to church, hoping to sneak away and give it to Willie Johnson to give to Kurt, but Nicholas watched her like a hawk. It wasn’t until Monday morning, while he was making phone calls to his friends, that she managed to slip away, pretending to pick wild flowers – until she was hidden by the orchard, then she’d raced across the paddock to the boundary fence and tucked the note safely into the old hollow tree.
And it was still there on Wednesday, when she picked more wild flowers, so she ran with it over the bridge and gave it to Willie, to give to Kurt, to give to Chris – and it would be too late.
Her fault. All her fault. She was unreliable. She should have given that note to Willie straight away, and she shouldn’t have told about the baby in the first place. Should have got Arthur’s key, opened that door. Should have put the note in an envelope and asked Jeanne to post it when she went in to clean Mr Thompson’s house on the Monday. She was an obedient, unreliable, untrustworthy, weak, scared, stupid rabbit. Rachael was dead and it was all her fault.
Fingernails raking deep into her scalp, she cringed there, accusing, berating herself, that congealed scream eating up her mind again, until her eyes, staring at the page of print, began to recognise words. Institutional care is desirable for all forms of insanity. She read and reread that line, until she could take it in, decipher the meaning and gain control. Once she lost control of her brain, it wouldn’t matter how robust and healthy she was, she’d be dead.
She licked her lips, looked up through the leaves to the tiny segments of sky, and maybe heaven, and knew she was totally insane because she heard Rachael say to her: Imagine what would happen, Heli, if you opened your mouth and screamed, and Father Ryan came crawling in, brandishing his Bible, and he found you with your skirt hitched up, your bloomers showing, reading a forbidden book.
‘Percy wouldn’t marry me then. Institutional care is desirable for all forms of insanity, Rae,’ she whispered.
God Almighty, Nicholas Squire wouldn’t agree to that, Heli. He’d put another advertisement in The Argus. Gentlewoman’s companion wanted, Rachael seemed to say.
He doesn’t pay his minions enough. Dave had said that.
Her stomach growled, and it sounded like one of the Johnson dogs, warning her to stay away from its bone.
Father Ryan would be here for dinner tonight. She wouldn’t have to look at Arthur sitting across the dinner table, wouldn’t have to hear his spoon scraping that bowl. He always ate in his room when the priest was here.
She wouldn’t be able to smuggle the book back to the library either, not tonight. It would have to go in the kerosene tin bucket with Frankenstein and all the other bits of paper and forbidden newspaper items. Freddy’s letter would have to go in there too. She placed her father’s book down, eased Frankenstein from the kerosene tin and placed Freddy’s letter safe between its pages, then returned it to the kerosene tin. And she must have made a noise.
‘Miss Helen?’
She froze.
‘Are you in here, Miss Helen?’
Servants with their sneaky shoes. She hadn’t heard Mrs Johnson walk into the washhouse.
‘Miss Helen, it’s no use hiding now. Your father is looking for you.’
‘Go away,’ she whispered, taking up her father’s book once more: Appetites of the flesh and the development of good character are like two buckets, tied to both ends of a rope hung over a well. When one goes up, the other must go down.
She heard movement in the quince tree. If Mrs Johnson had let the dogs off their chains, that rotten blue heeler would track her down fast. Expecting a dog, ready to belt it with her father’s weighty tome, she almost whacked the small carrot-red head that came though her tunnel – should have. He caught her with her skirt hitched up.
‘Ma wants you. Her has to wash your hair a’fore her gets supper.’
Helen got to her knees fast, hitched her skirt down. ‘Go away,’ she hissed.
‘Ma said we’re to git you.’
‘I’ll give you threepence if you say you can’t find me.’
‘The uvvers will git ya. Ma said we all got to look for ya, ’cause your farver said that her has got to clean you up ’spectable for the Judge.’
‘Judge Cochran is coming?’
‘Yair.’
‘By himself?’
‘Ma and the girls been fixin’ two rooms. Will you gi’me two fruppences?’
‘All right. Now go away!’
‘When?’
‘When I get some money. Now get away from here.’
There are many people outside of asylums today who are defective, we are now threatened by this immense army of the insane. Three hundred thousand imbeciles, and feeble minded, are confined in American institutions. In England and Wales 140,000 feeble-minded children are in institutions, 90,000 of whom are crippled physically as well as mentally.
the better man
Yesterday . . . was it only yesterday? He’d worked late, one eye on his pickers and one watching the house. Could it have been only yesterday?
‘Yesterday,’ he said, nodding, verifying an indisputable fact.
They’d picked until there was no more light to pick in, and no meal waiting when he went up to the house. He hadn’t expected any. The Squires hadn’t been around and she hadn’t been out. He’d bring her to heel. That’s what he’d told himself yesterday.
He’d stoked the fire and made a tomato sandwich while she sat at the table, neither looking at him nor flinching from him when he pulled his chair up and sat opposite, watching her clasped hands, the thumbs rotating, backwards and forwards – waiting for something. He found out what she was waiting for as soon as he walked into the bedroom. The wardrobe doors hung wide and the space where her few clothes had hung was empty, apart from a ball gown, the wedding dress and a jacket.
He stepped on his lieutenant’s uniform. She’d left it on the floor and he knew his money was gone before he picked it up. He slapped its pockets, slapped the breast pocket, looked inside it. Hard saved each note, hidden in that breast pocket, safe behind his medals. That thieving little bitch!
‘Where is it, Rae?’ She didn’t move from her chair when he threw the jacket at her. ‘Where is my money?
‘You spent it, Dave. We high class prostitutes don’t come cheap.’
Her handbag always hung behind the kitchen door. He snatched it, emptied it onto the table, went through the pockets. No money, other than a flattened ha’penny. He returned his uniform to the bedroom, stripped the bed, tossed the mattress onto the floor, then noticed her small case was missing. It had been on top of the wardrobe with his rifle.
‘Where’s your case?’
‘Packed. I’m going to Melbourne.’
‘You’re my bloody wife and you’re not going anywhere.’
‘When a father gives his child in marriage, he gives up co
ntrol of her to her husband. Heli read that in one of Percy’s law books. He doesn’t own me anymore. I was afraid of my father, but I’m not afraid of you.’
‘I’ll make you afraid if you don’t give me my money, you thieving little whore.’
‘Do I look as if I’m shivering with fright yet?’ she said.
He grasped her wrist, dragged her behind him while he searched for her case. He looked in the old hut, beneath the house. She didn’t fight him, just followed where he led her.
‘This is like playing hide the slipper at an outdoor party,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we have a look down in the orchard? It might be there.’
He slapped her for that. No one mocked him.
Her free hand wiping at her mouth, she looked him in the eye. ‘You honestly believe that you’ve got some God-given right to hit me, don’t you? You actually believe that you can do what you like to me and I’ll stay here, just because some sanctimonious old fool pronounced us man and wife. I’ve stayed, only to save you embarrassment and because I felt guilty about getting you caught up in this mess. I felt so sorry for you too. I can remember who you were before that war crippled you, remember the way you were with Freddy. You were his hero. You’re no hero, and I don’t pity you anymore because that war didn’t only cripple your leg. It crippled your heart.’
He had to shut her up. He slapped her, and when she tried to get away from him, he ripped the dress off her back.
‘Sad old Gimpy Kennedy with his sad old crippled heart. You’re worse off than Arthur will ever be. He mightn’t have a face but he’s still a man.’
He had to make her cower. He dragged her into the bedroom, threw her onto the bed.
‘When you’re done with me, you still won’t be a man, and I’ll still leave.’
He felt along the top of the wardrobe for the key. No key there.
‘It’s in my case, and the front door key doesn’t fit this lock. I tried it. Anyway, the windows are too close to the ground. I could be out that one in seconds. You should have got Mr Johnson to hammer some nails into the frame.’
