Jarulan by the River

by Lily Woodhouse

  ‘Can you hear the rain now?’ Jean asked him. It had grown heavier still, a silver fall from the verandah roof onto the overgrown flowerbeds.

  He nodded, watching the servant girl who had returned with coffeepot and cups and was passing behind the sisters. She set the coffeepot directly on the polished chiffonier behind them.

  ‘Use a trivet,’ said Louisa sharply, twisted in her chair, ‘or you’ll mark the varnish.’

  ‘No varnish where I’m from.’ The girl had her back to them.

  ‘We’re not in the slightest interested in where you’re from,’ Louisa said, shooting to her feet. ‘You’re here to do a job, not talk back.’

  The maid spun, coffeepot raised, and for a moment Jean thought she was going to throw it at Louisa. She was perhaps a little crazy, this girl, not right in the head. You heard stories about the Tyrells, how for generations they had intermarried, first cousin to first cousin, how they were mad and stupid.

  This one was eerily beautiful though. The eyes were perhaps too large for her thin face, the nose too small, her colour too high. The silver coffeepot in her hand steamed gently, a faint plume rising from its narrow spout.

  ‘Put it down, Evie, there’s a good girl,’ said Matthew mildly. There was a pause before she did as she was told, gently enough, putting everything back on the tray and setting it on the table at his elbow.

  ‘We’ll do it as usual, then. When it’s just you.’

  There was a loving tone in her voice. It chimed in the room like a bell, and Jean saw that Louisa had heard it too, slowly regaining her chair and staring at their father, who was lighting a cigarette.

  There was an ashtray set among the coffee things. He never used to smoke at the table. She would say something. Or not. They should be comforting one another.

  ‘Dad,’ she began, ‘have you heard anything more about how Llew — ’ but Louisa got in ahead of her.

  ‘I am so disgusted.’

  Their father pushed his chair back and stood. ‘I’ll leave you girls to enjoy the coffee. Then get an early night. You look dead beat, Jean. We’ll ride out to see the memorial tomorrow, first thing.’

  A clap of thunder sounded, not quite overhead, somewhere beyond the river, over the hills. In heavy rain like this when they were children, they would go up to the belvedere and pretend they were underwater, pretend they were Jules Verne a thousand leagues under the sea. It was Eddie’s favourite game. In storms the hurling rain became white-capped waves; to climb out of the windows onto the narrow ledge was to swim with the fish and risk certain death.

  ‘Sleep well,’ her father murmured, but absently, patting her shoulder and pointedly ignoring Louisa’s outstretched hand before he headed for the door.

  7.

  HE CAME TO HER THAT NIGHT IN THE SERVANTS’ QUARTERS just as she knew he would. Even with his daughters here he wouldn’t be able to stay away.

  Her room was at the end of the line, the farthest away from the house and closest to the dogs. Sometimes they set up a clamour when they sensed him coming, but tonight they were quiet, staying out of the rain, the same rain that muffled his tread on the broken step, that muffled the squeak of the rusted hasp as he pushed open her door and came to her narrow bed. He was ready for her the moment she got his trousers off and she knew that he must have been thinking of her for a while before he came out of the house.

  Early on what was to be their first night together she had slipped outside to watch him through the dining-room windows, Matthew Fenchurch alone at the long mahogany table, smoking his Capstans, the tin beside his unfinished meal. Nan had sent her to clear away but first she’d wanted to gauge his mood. It seemed you could tell a lot about him just by staring at him through a pane of glass. You could see how a thought came to him and then went away, how he shifted and sighed with their ebb and flow. She’d seen how vulnerable he was, how his eyes rested now and again on his wife’s portrait over the mantle, how mostly he gazed at nothing, blowing smoke, his bony elbows on the table.

  Evie resolved to tell her sister Bridgie the whole story just as soon as she could. She would tell her how she had come inside, how she had gone down the hall to the dining room and closed the door after her, how she had sat on his knee and how he’d wired into her like she was a lamb chop put in front of a starving man. She would tell them how, close up, you could see that Mr Fenchurch’s strange, pale gold skin was made up of freckles all joined up, how the wrinkles were not so deep as to worry you, how even though he was old he was up to doing what you expect any man to do. Her sisters would know what she meant, although until that day all three were virgins and two still were. They’d learned from watching their own father, who had always been after giving Ma a poke — thirteen children took some bally effort and you couldn’t always be private about it. How many times must he have looked up to see the sisters standing there, but his eyes were always so weirdly blank as he banged away, it was as if he was blind.

  She would tell her sisters about Matthew Fenchurch as soon as she saw them, but she hadn’t yet, and she’d had him every night since.

  He thrust the side of his hand between her legs and she could smell the cigarettes and whisky on him before he kissed her, before he came up open-mouthed at her like one of her brothers coming up for air at the waterhole on the river. After the kiss he let her look into his pale marble eyes in the candlelight and it was her time to dive then, a high dive off the top rock to the river in flood. There were submerged trees, whole acres of long-lost pasture waving green blades three feet below the surface. Her brothers knew their branch of the river; they ruled it better than she ever could this one.

  But this was their eighth time — she was keeping a tally — and she was getting to know him.

  She could make him love her, if he didn’t already. She knew enough about life to understand what she gave to him. It wasn’t nothing. It was what men wanted. And it was a way of getting on — such a way! It was more than what her old goat of a father had made of it; it was surely sparkling and precious. It was elating, mysterious, more sacred than church, which she saw now as existing only to stop people having more of this other thing. Poor Father O’Donnell for never having a woman. Why didn’t people talk about it more? Polite society was so against human nature that it was a miracle dreary, pursy old Proddy dogs like Miss Louisa could get pregnant. Maybe she liked it as much as her father did.

  Yes, she would give Mr Fenchurch not only poke but tenderness, such tenderness as he’d never known. When she was with him, this kindly, sad, rich man, his gentleness made her think of feather beds and rich food, even though the bunk they lay on was rough-hewn planks and a lumpy pallet, covered over with a tartan blanket. It made her picture him with his men, the way he sat his horse, the way he ate, the way he talked, the memorial he was building for the district, his house, his money. She loved his complete absorption in the sensations she gave him.

  And it seemed he felt it then, felt her open up, because she hadn’t before, not really. One moment he was poking her for all he was worth, the next he was washed away from her, and it felt like she’d done it, by wanting him too much. It was too dark to see his face, but she reached for him to kiss him, to bring him back, but he was fading, so she brought him on with her hand as she’d seen her brothers do — or one brother, Jerky, the others called him, the dingbat always with his hands in his pants unless her mother tied them together behind his back.

  It didn’t work. She wanted to ask him, ‘What’s wrong?’ but she knew he wouldn’t like it. One night while they were doing it he’d clamped his hand over her mouth. She made room for him now on the bed, lying on the point of her hip while he lay against her.

  Evie lay as still as she could, listening to him breathing. She listened as his breath grew more even and quietened, until she could have sworn she heard a gentle snore. Would he stay the whole night? Nan had wanted her up by five to help in the kitchen in case the children were early risers, or if either of the daughters needed something.


  Not that Louisa or Jean liked her much, Evie could tell. They seemed almost frightened of her, which made her giggle, though she shouldn’t have, because it woke him up.

  *

  He wasn’t asleep now, though perhaps he’d dropped off for a minute or two. The girl had her arms around him and she was murmuring endearments, calling him her dotie, her sweetie dotie, stroking his flank with her rough little hands. Should he reprimand her now for her behaviour in the dining room, ask her to treat his daughters with respect, to keep their secret? The words formed on his tongue and died away, and in their place he felt his need for her rise again. In the uncomfortable bed he turned, held her close, gave her what she wanted until she cried out loudly at the finish, rather overstating her case, he thought, remembering how quiet Min was despite her otherwise excitable nature. What was she trying to prove? Not his skills as a lover, since he had none.

  She was sitting astride him now, dreamily stroking his cheek; he could feel her gazing at him in the dark while the candle guttered. The sky must be clearing — moonlight filmed the single smeary window, but not enough to be able to see her face. From the stable on the other side of the wall one of the horses stamped and whinnied — Flora. It sounded like her. He thought he’d heard her on some of the other nights. She sensed him nearby.

  ‘I want to do it in your bed,’ Evie was saying, ‘tomorrow night. I’ll come upstairs. No one will hear me.’

  ‘None of that.’

  ‘Who’s to say?’

  When he didn’t answer immediately, she slapped him once, hard, on the chest. It stung enough to have him grab her by the waist, shove her away so that she fell backwards against his legs. He pulled away from her, stood up, and for a second couldn’t make her out in the gloom, among the tangled bedclothes. He stood staring at the bed until a tap on his shoulder from behind startled him out of his wits. When she laughed he heard how she knew she’d frightened him and how she found it amusing.

  He felt old again, old and defeated, and wanted nothing more than to get his clothes on and get away from her. Wooden crates of old china and crocks and jars were stacked against one wall and he stumbled against them, searching for his clothes. There was the smell of the stables rising off the floor from the other side of the partition, as strong as the smell that rose from Evie herself, of fucking and washing soda and grated soap, slopwater and sweat. She had her arms woven tight around him from behind and she was singing softly. He supposed she imagined it was soothing to him. It wasn’t, it was irksome, high and tuneless, and it occurred to him suddenly that she was dangerous. She could do anything, say anything. He pulled her arms away, groped again for his trousers and shirt. Evie’s shadow retreated against the wall and he heard a tinkle as she brushed against the china and half-thought, just for a second, that she might lift a jar or cracked plate and smash it on the ground, or over his head.

  But she was there again when he sat to pull on his boots in the gloom, sliding singsong onto his knee, her arms around his neck.

  ‘Do you care for me at all, Mr Fenchurch? Would you cry if I died and left you all alone?’

  She was a child, just a child, light on his knee, the smell of their sex stronger now, her paw weaving between the buttons of his shirt.

  ‘Give me a kiss, why don’t you?’ She offered her cheek and waited for him to oblige. When he didn’t, she climbed off his knee and went to stand before the door.

  Fenchurch got his boots on.

  ‘Come on, girlie, this is silly. Let me by.’

  ‘Stay the night here with me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Let me come up to your bed, then. I’ll be gone before the dawn comes.’

  ‘Not far from that now. Get out of the way, Evie.’

  ‘No, I won’t.’

  He let it go on in this vein for a moment or two, but in the end he had to push her and she fell against a crate of china, which made a hellish noise behind him, halfway across the yard. He heard her call out, a curse word, one he’d never before heard from a woman’s lips and he heard something whistle past him and smash into the flagstones around the tank-stand. From the shelter of the back porch he risked a backward glance — Evie stood naked at the door of her room, her little white body gleaming with anger and defiance through the dark rain.

  The door to the room next to Evie’s opened and a tall blonde woman emerged, a knitted jacket pulled on over her nightgown. Tucked out of her view, Evie stood there in the doorway, as God made her. He would not wait to see the outcome, even though he had no idea who the other woman was and why she was in the servants’ quarters. If he hadn’t been so intent on escape it would have alarmed him, a strange woman emerging from the long-disused accommodation, long-jawed as a white horse gorping over the stable door. A ghost.

  To bed, to bed, to bed. Too old for this lark.

  ‘By your age your father was dead,’ Min had remarked on the day he outlived the old man. He remembered how they’d laughed at her turn of phrase. They were in the library in the days when there were still books — all Min’s. After she died they’d shouted at him from the walls, gloating over the time she’d wasted with them and their maddening fancies, time that could have been spent with him instead of losing her senses, envious, unsatisfied, longing for change.

  He could feel his desire for Evie slipping away. He wouldn’t go to her again; the girl was trouble, like all the Tyrells. There was a servant girl from Jarulan, years ago, who had married into the Tyrell family. Matthew remembered his mother sending a wedding gift, the bride a girl who had let his old man have the best of her, just like Evie was now with him.

  He’d cut it out. Too much whisky, too many cigarettes, and now the Irish doxie. He needed to rein himself in.

  *

  Nance hadn’t had a chance to get up to his room. His bed was unmade, chamberpot unemptied, dirty linen on the floor and a scatter of shit by the wardrobe, bat or mouse, too small for a possum. Besides, there were bugger all of them left, too-easy targets for three generations of Fenchurch boys. And the Tyrells, who weren’t above eating them.

  A red wasp was trapped against the window, so he went and flung it up; it could take its chances in the rain, which was falling again in earnest. The insect lumbered out, stunned from its afternoon spent head-butting the pane, and flew jaggedly down into the dark yard. He risked a glance at the servants’ quarters. As far as he could see all five doors were shut fast.

  No more. Too old, too past it, not that enchanted. It was a relief. He drew the curtains over his open window and felt himself take a step away from the last few days, as if they’d happened not to him but to a brother or mate, and that it had fallen to Matthew to chastise him.

  Bloody idiot for banging the girl in the first place, then for letting her yabber on and get ideas she was lifting your burden of grief and loneliness, that she was reminding you of love. Have Nan send her away tomorrow.

  Here’s the pillow. Boots off.

  8.

  RUFINA WENT BACK TO HER BED. WHEN FIRST SHE HEARD THE rutting in the next room, the man and woman crying out, she had put her hands over her ears. An icy heat had burned at the back of her throat, her heart had leapt and pounded, and she’d asked herself sternly did she have any idea what went on on Australian farms, on any farm for that matter? Even in Europe she had never spent a single night among beasts and peasants. She supposed her English boarding school had been in the countryside, but she had never heard anything like the noise in the room next door, the banging of bed against the wall, the awful zoo noises.

  If only the authorities had taken her away with Herr Schneider and locked her up with the other Germans then she wouldn’t have had to put up with all this — but so far the authorities had taken only the men. She prayed they would come for her too, save her from this and let her be among her own kind. Anything would be better.

  Before sunset she had worked to make the horse-smelling room habitable, sweeping out the corpses of strange alarming creatures — bugs
, beetles, a cricket longer than her hand, a horny lizard, a tiny bat with flies crawling around its eyes. She had bribed young Tommy with a penny to check under the bed for snakes, which any eight-year-old boy in this country always seemed game to do. She couldn’t have borne it if there’d been a snake. She would have gone down on her knees in front of Louisa and begged her to let her sleep in the house.

  Against one wall was a stack of some half dozen trunks, and on top of them several roughly made crates, full of books thrown in any old how, some open and bent, some of them perhaps valuable with gold-tooled leather covers. There were names she recognised from the Schneiders’ new English library — Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson. Tommy had wildly thrust a stick into the gaps, and they had unpacked a few from the top, but there were so many that to check properly would have taken hours.

  ‘Hoy there, snakie,’ Tommy had shouted, ‘get away!’ and assured her snakes were as scared of people as people are of them. They’d had plenty of chance to escape.

  After he’d gone, Rufina extracted a book by a woman, Edith Wharton, an American who lived in France, and set it by the abominable bed. Possibly the mattress was stuffed with stones or gumnuts, but prettier for the white quilt spread on it, a farewell present from her mother. Together the drawn-thread quilt and finely knitted bedjacket had resembled a spartan trousseau, as if Rufina had been going to Australia to be married, which she was not. Never. She was to be paid companion, as briefly as possible, then adventuress. So far the plan had not successfully played out. She could write to her mother — and tell her what? That she longed to come home? She hadn’t heard from her for so long, she thought perhaps the mails weren’t getting through. It was such a very long way from wherever Rufina was to Berlin.