Jarulan by the River

by Lily Woodhouse

  ‘You’ll be taking the basin to Milly and Jess at the springs and coming straight back here to chop the wood,’ the wizened Scotswoman was telling this Maori version of Matthew, her head at right angles in order to myopically focus on his face. He was six foot four or five, grinning at his odd little stepmother, patting her gently on the shoulder as if to reassure her. ‘Aye, and you won’t be patting me like some poor wounded animal either.’ But she smiled at his attention, and shot her hand to the aching muscles of her jaw.

  A doctor was needed, if there was such a thing. In Rotorua, surely. But then she would end by having to pay for it, since the circumstances were so very much worse than anything she could have imagined. What a creature she was! A pantomime witch, now at the range taking up a damp rag to open the fire door and stirring the flames with a blackened poker. The little girl with the kitten leapt from her father’s knee to take her glorious brother’s hand, jumping and skipping beside him as they went away down a track cut through green undergrowth, thick ferns and tussocks head-high among tall trees. Eddie balanced on his nail box, looking after them too, puffing on his pipe.

  When they disappeared into the green Rufina said, ‘Irving. After Irving Berlin, I suppose.’

  Eddie seemed surprised that she knew about him. Of course she did. He was Matthew’s favourite too. He had a record for the gramophone.

  ‘“Bring Back My Lena To Me”. Do you know that song? That’s why your father called Helena Lena for short.’ My God! She wouldn’t talk about all that private business about which surely this far-flung outpost of the family had no idea.

  ‘We called him Irving Matthew. Roma wanted him named after his Australian grandfather.’

  There was such tenderness in his words. He missed that first wife, then, even though he had taken another. Not a love match — Mary must be here only to raise the children and to keep the house, primitive as it was. How interesting it would be to look inside and see how they lived, and Rufina stood to do so — she was a tourist, after all — but the old woman could take exception. Was she an old woman? She might only be forty. She could be sixty. Rufina sat down again.

  The range was set up away from the cottage, under a lopsided shelter of perforated iron, which would do little to protect the cook in inclement weather. If they had it inside and properly flued it would keep them warm in winter. Why did they not think of that themselves? Were they so cramped? Did they all sleep in there?

  ‘Mary, would it be possible to trouble you for a cup of tea?’ Eddie asked. ‘Mrs Fenchurch has walked all the way from town and she’s parched.’

  At the range Mary shrugged, as if the five miles or so from town were nothing. Flames leapt at a crack in the iron flank, a battered black kettle hung above on a chain. She didn’t move.

  ‘Would you be so kind, Mary?’ Eddie took his pipe and tobacco from his pocket.

  An unfathomable look passed between husband and wife. Both had cause for resentment, Rufina supposed. She looked at him as a wife might, as if her thin nostrils scented his long night on the drink and pipe. Jacket and trousers were smeary with ash and spilt liquor, his teeth and once-white shirt in competing shades of yellow.

  ‘Go on,’ said Eddie, in a harder tone, and Mary did as he said, clumping away in her too-large boots, carrying a billycan, towards a water butt at the hovel door.

  ‘Roma, now,’ he went on quietly, ‘shame you never met her. Roma was a beauty, body and spirit.’

  ‘Nance has her picture.’

  ‘Ah. That’s right. I’d forgotten I’d sent it.’ He puffed energetically on his pipe, reanimating. ‘Did the old man see it?’

  Rufina shrugged. ‘Nance might have shown him. We never talked about you.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘I tried a few times, but he wouldn’t have it.’ She took her cigarettes from her pocket again, offered him one. He put it behind his ear, shooting it through his lank, long hair — well, longer than most men wore it these days, falling wispy along the back of his neck.

  When he spoke, it was wonderingly. Almost bewildered. ‘I’m his only surviving son.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You tried, did you?’ He was sharper. ‘He never forgave anyone anything, big or small. The old beggar.’

  ‘Careful.’ She would not have any of that, running him down. Not till the day she died.

  Eddie drooped a little; for a second he was that sensitive, self-indulgent boy again, championed by his mother and scolded by his father. But the scoldings would have been deserved, and if the father ignored him at times it would only have been after many disappointments. Matthew was always scrupulously fair.

  Too fair with some people.

  At the range, Mary was wrangling a huge billy, tea and sugar. There was no teapot then. Not even a teapot! For most English families the absence would be proof of utter poverty and dissolution. Why had Eddie decided to live like this? She supposed he deserved some respect for never coming knocking at Jarulan’s door, and Nance was adamant that he had never written for money. And his children — or at least the two she had so far seen — perhaps he had decided it was better for them to grow up here, among the people they most resembled.

  The plan would have to be changed. The tempered, potentially grateful man she had hoped for, living and working among the natives, did not seem to exist. She had thought there would still be some of the first Mrs Fenchurch’s money helping him along. She had imagined the Maori wife as gracious, kind, and helpful perhaps for speaking to the Aboriginal stockmen and their wives, since Rufina often found herself exasperated by them, at a loss and at a remove. A Maori wife could have been extremely useful.

  No, this was not what she had expected. Neither Eddie nor his new wife would be of any use to her whatsoever. And how terrible it would have been if she had made the offer, because it was likely they would have accepted it, and then what? Camp set up in the wing long unoccupied, a new piano delivered since she had thrown away the rotten one, liaisons formed with unsuitable people, hard-drinking guests in the house, Mary fitted with false teeth and a blonde wig, and she and Eddie frittering away the money that was left.

  It was too ludicrous. Rufina could be disappointed that she had wasted time and effort coming all this way to put the proposition, but thank God she had seen him before anything was arranged. If she had written to him unseen with the proposition and he had arrived, what then? A nightmare from which there would be no chance of awakening.

  Mary brought her husband a grimy tin mug and Rufina a small fluted cup with faded violets at the rim, cracked and crazed. Was it her best china? She could be looking on Rufina as their saviour. Never. Not possible. Not with the Depression the way it was, not with any hope in sight that things would get better, the swags of travellers camping by the river, the men coming begging to the door.

  The tea was hot and sweet and she sipped gratefully. Eddie sloshed some of the contents from his flask into his mug.

  ‘So,’ said Mary, who hadn’t moved since she handed her the tea, ‘you came all the way to tell us that the old man is dead?’ She wore men’s trousers underneath a coarse shift, a ragged knitted jacket, all filthy.

  Rufina nodded and the drunkard beside her made a peculiar noise in his throat, a snort or laugh, derisive.

  ‘Three years after the fact.’

  ‘Why didn’t you ever try to put it right?’ What a spineless fool he was. Matthew was right to cut him off.

  ‘Because I knew the old man would knock me back. Hated me.’

  ‘He was capable of great forgiveness. He was. You never knew him as an adult. Not really. You left when you were not much older than a boy. You didn’t see how it was for him. The farm, losing Min.’

  Matthew on the front verandah holding Evie’s baby. Matthew holding the child by the hand as she learned to totter. Matthew explaining the specimens in the glass cases in the front parlour. Matthew at the train station in Lismore waving her off on a holiday with Nance to Brisbane, a tear in his eye. Hadn’t h
e acknowledged the baby stolen from him by a servant girl and then abandoned in his house? If he could forgive that, weather the social disapprobation, the Coventry, then he should have forgiven his legitimate son his lesser crimes.

  I should have tried harder to unearth it all, she thought now, got him to talk about it, why it was he had put both his sons away in the darkest, least accessible part of his heart, and never looked for them again.

  And she had not given him another one. How much simpler life would have been if she had done. Her own son. Their son. Old sharp pain. The years of longing and guilt. The foolish prayer she had made while attending Louisa’s childbed had been heard, heeded by an intractable God. Or another mysterious, undiagnosed reason a baby wouldn’t come. It happens sometimes, was all the doctors would say.

  On the subject of his father’s virtues, Eddie gave a studied silence.

  ‘Have you heard from your sisters?’

  He sighed, dug again in his greasy pocket for the battered hipflask and shook the last drops into his mouth. Immediately he held out his hand and inspected it, as if he expected it to start trembling the moment his supply was cut off.

  Rufina had need of a lavatory. She had done for some time, she realised, but she’d suppressed it since the thought terrified her. Where would they have the facilities? Was there an outhouse behind the hovel?

  ‘Eddie, love? The lady asked you a question,’ prompted Mary.

  ‘Jean sometimes. Louisa never. I never write to them, see, so I suppose it is discouraging for them.’

  ‘I told him to, Missus, over and over. Write to your dear sisters, I’d say. You’re lucky to have them. Mine are all dead and gone, Missus, dead and gone. Write to your sisters. Who have you got, if you haven’t got your family?’

  Rufina’s bladder stung, her stomach ached.

  The son called Irving was returning now, tall, brown Hansel to the witch’s order. Fenchurch blood sang loudly in his veins, the height and long-legged gait. There was the grandfather in the smile he sent in her direction as he went into the hut, a smile to turn back the years. When he emerged a minute or so later he had combed his hair flat to his head, with a finger curl rising above his brow. How could he know his namesake wore his hair the same way if he was dressing for an evening in Sydney or Lismore? The wave in the pale hair duplicated in the black.

  Mary was talking.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘What’s the will say?’

  ‘Oh, it said …’ She would have to think of something.

  ‘You came here to see if Eddie would be any good on the farm, didn’t you?’

  Rufina said nothing.

  ‘He won’t be. You can see that for yourself.’

  Rufina turned to Eddie, who didn’t seem to mind his wife pointing out the obvious. He nodded gently as if to concur.

  At the woodpile at the far end of the hut, Matthew’s grandson was swinging the axe, laying heavy branches across the listing block, his muscles moving under his shirt. His concentration was absolute and the job more difficult than it should have been, since the handle was foreshortened and the blade, even at this distance, looked rusted and dull. Now and again the wood did not split and the impact jarred his arms and shoulders, the blue fabric of his shirt jumping and shimmering.

  If she did nothing else, Rufina would leave money to buy a new axe. And a dentist, if that’s what Mary needed, to have the paining tooth pulled. The old woman had one hawk eye on her still.

  ‘What’s in your brooch? The jewel.’

  ‘Only amber.’

  ‘Only amber, is it?’ Mary held out her hand. ‘Let’s have a look at it, pretty wee thing.’

  At her words Eddie took sharply to his feet, the nail box keeling over in his wake. A peg doll was disgorged into the mud, scrap of red rag tied around it for a dress and pencilled crooked smile. The little girl’s toy. Discomforted, Rufina leaned down and picked the peg doll up, turning it around in her hands. If Gracie only knew of the riches her Sydney cousins had, the toys, the books, the pretty dresses, the horses.

  There was no way she would give Mary the brooch.

  Eddie was bowing, walking backwards, waving his hat, Charlie Chaplin, a clown.

  ‘Well, Mrs Fenchurch, a pleasure to meet you after all this time. I am going to take my leave — band practice, you know. Can’t leave the chaps waiting.’

  ‘But don’t you go, lady, don’t you.’ A claw emerged from Mary’s ragged sleeve and caught hold of Rufina’s shoulder. ‘Not yet. Stay and have another cup. After all, we’re sisters-in-law, aren’t we?’

  She had got the relationship entirely wrong but there was no point in correcting her. She should never have come. She should leave as soon as possible.

  ‘Cooee — Irving — come here,’ called Mary.

  The young man obliged, throwing down the axe and crossing the uneven ground in boots as old and cracked as his stepmother’s. And Rufina had been wrong. His smile wasn’t his grandfather’s at all; it was wider, guileless, so engaging that her heart ached in fear for him. You can’t go safely through the world as open to it as that, she thought. You will be grievously hurt. His youth shone, the hand that took hers was wiped first on his trousers warm and dry.

  Impulse to depart subsided, Eddie had collected his nail box and resumed his seat, drooping again, as if he knew what Mary was about to suggest and it pained him.

  ‘This one would suit you. He’s young and strong and clean in his habits. He works around in the gangs. Shearing and that. Scrub cutting. He knows a thing or two about farming, eh, Irvie?’

  The young man’s eyes had not left Rufina’s and she could detect no avarice there. His stepmother had that priority. Eddie could have told her stories of Jarulan as he would remember it before the devastation of the Depression — the prime prize-winning cattle, the varied crops, the majestic house. Had he shared all that with her? It was difficult to picture them exchanging confidences tender and true.

  Mary’s gaze wandered hungrily from the brooch, to the bulge of Rufina’s pockets, to her good shoes.

  ‘Is it sheep?’ Irving asked.

  ‘We don’t go in for sheep,’ Rufina said. ‘They rot in the heat and damp.’

  ‘Ah. I can turn my hand to anything, Missus.’ His voice was light, even, respectful. ‘Australia!’ he said, wonderingly.

  ‘How old are you?’ she asked.

  ‘Twenty-one,’ supplied Mary. ‘He’s twenty-one.’

  ‘All right. Come with me back to Jarulan, to the family farm.’

  The grandson grinned with delight, and Eddie groaned, and Mary clapped her hands like a child.

  ‘We can take the train to Wellington tomorrow or the day after,’ Rufina told him, ‘and a ship to Sydney just as soon as we can.’

  ‘More than a jackaroo. He’s the heir, not a jackaroo,’ muttered Eddie.

  ‘Australia?’ Irving said slowly and wonderingly. ‘To Australia!’

  He laughed then, delighted, excited. The other siblings — there were six of them, mostly girls — returned from wherever they’d been and entered immediately into the spirit of things, congratulating their brother and even shedding ready tears at the notion of his departure. Rufina stood and went among them, drawing one aside to enquire for the lavatory — if she did not go soon she’d burst.

  ‘You wouldn’t want to go there,’ the child told her. ‘Better to find a spot.’

  She pointed into the trees and Rufina headed in that direction — a nightmare! — and found a place quickly enough where the thick undergrowth would hide her. A thoroughly unpleasant place, as she discovered, that others had used before her and more prodigiously. There was movement in the branches above her head — a smallish grey-brown bird — it was an owl. Why was it awake during the day? It had its head bent towards her, watching. It was unnerving. She held her skirt clear.

  On the way back to the house she wiped her shoes on some clean grass and walked on, resolving to give this young man a life that fate would never
have intended. She would turn him into a gentleman wise to the ways of the world. She would see to it that he prospered. He would be the rightful heir, in place of Eddie. What a stir it would create! Imagine what they’d say in Lismore — a Maori Fenchurch! Worse than a German! It would be a scandal. She would enjoy every moment of it. There were some liberal-minded people who ignored bigotry when they saw it or heard it; they refused to give it the dignity of a response — Rufina had seen it again and again. But she was different. She liked to go into battle. She liked to engage.

  Eddie and his family were all waiting for her on her return and Mary was producing from the range, surprisingly, two high loaves of bread for their lunch, which she set to cool on the rack above. Rufina went to stand by Irving, and the questions that rose in her mind, such as ‘Can you read and write?’ ‘Can you drive a car?’ wouldn’t articulate. She would never want to embarrass him, to make him feel less than he was. She could barely bring herself to look directly at him, never so curious about any human being as she was now about him. Matthew’s grandson! What had he ever known but this life? He could offer her a future for Jarulan, while Jarulan would offer him a future.

  He had a question for her, asking her directly as if he was discussing his luggage.

  ‘There’s a girl here I want to marry and bring with me. If it’s all right with you I’ll come later, not tomorrow, after the wedding.’

  Rufina had to agree. Of course she did. She’d agreed before she even thought about it, nodding.

  There was a kind of wide sloping shelf built out from the wall. It was their table. The family were gathering around it.

  ‘We’ll bring you some kai. You stay where you were, Missus.’ Irving assisted her back to her chair as gently as if she was an old woman.

  Which she was not! She would have liked to have been able to tell him she wasn’t quite thirty — though that wasn’t true, she was a few years older, just a few, and besides, what was going on in her head that she would even consider impressing her youth upon this young man?

  But it was just his good manners, treating her like a lady.

  On his nail box beside her, Eddie appeared to have fallen into a grogged reverie. Two of the children brought them slices of heavy bread, still warm, spread with dripping that was so on-the-turn that Rufina could barely bring it to her mouth. Politely, she bit a little from the least affected part of the crust, but there was nowhere to put it aside, no plates to speak of, though some of the children were provided with torn squares of newspaper. Around the makeshift table the family laughed and joshed as if they were attending a sumptuous feast. An older girl shushed them and had them bow their heads for grace, and Rufina saw that she had been preemptory in eating even the tiny amount she had. The prayer was given in Maori and it was the first time she had heard a number of voices gathered together in the language, the soft, fluid vowels and gentle consonants, the lilting tones. The wash of sounds made her think for a moment of French or Italian, of one of the Romance languages of Europe. It didn’t for a moment remind her of the Blackfella languages she had heard at Jarulan. She had always supposed — the countries being the nearest neighbours possible in this part of the world — that the languages would be similar, the countries would be similar. But heard here, they couldn’t be more different.