A Bitter Harvest

by Peter Yeldham

  ‘Don’t talk rubbish.’

  Edith Patterson was not going to admit it, but she did feel some sympathy for her daughter. She had little liking for the ship’s officers who clearly made a practice of pursuing any available young women on every voyage. Nor she did care particularly for the other first-class passengers, some of whom had patronised her. The young man had at least seemed pleasant looking and decent. But quite unsuitable, she thought with a sigh, and expressed the real source of her concern.

  ‘Your father will blame me.’

  ‘No,’ Elizabeth said, ‘Papa will understand.’

  ‘Oh, no he won’t.’ Edith’s voice was suddenly certain. ‘He may dote on you, but he won’t tolerate this. Better for you, and for me, if he never hears about it.’

  William found out almost as soon as they had docked. He came aboard, while Forbes waited on the quay with the new landau. William was fastidiously dressed, a tall and handsome man not yet forty years old, and many a feminine eye assessed him as he made his way up onto the boat deck, wondering who he might be meeting. Elizabeth saw him with grateful relief. She and her father had always shared secrets; it would make such a difference to be able to talk to someone understanding and sympathetic.

  ‘Papa!’

  She ran towards him, and his face lit with delight and pride as he enclosed her in a possessive hug. Neither of them saw Stefan in the background among the first-class passengers. No one else had time to notice a lone intruder from steerage. For most people the voyage was over. Time to collect their luggage, tip stewards, greet friends and relatives. No one noticed him but Edith.

  ‘Edith, dear.’ William kissed her on the cheek, and made a suitable comment about being glad to see her home.

  It was her mother’s glance backwards that made Elizabeth realise Stefan was there. She detached herself from her father’s arm, and moved towards him. Before Stefan could do more than take her hand, her father had joined them. Elizabeth, composed and determinedly matter-of-fact, introduced them.

  ‘Father, this is Stefan Muller.’

  Stefan gave a formal bow. William stared at him. ‘Muller? German?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Stefan said. ‘From Augsburg.’

  ‘It’s in Bavaria,’ Elizabeth said.

  For almost the first time in her life, her father ignored her. ‘Have you met this person, Edith? Is he travelling first class?’ he asked his wife, as if Stefan was not there, did not exist. ‘Are you acquainted? He and our daughter seem to know each other. Did you know about that?’

  ‘Not until last night.’ Edith shook her head, and then turned rather ineffectually to Elizabeth. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Elizabeth said nothing. Before either of them realised what she intended, she stepped forward and kissed Stefan.

  ‘Auf Wiedersehen,’ she said. And then she uttered a few whispered words that only he could hear, which ended abruptly when her father firmly took her arm.

  It should have been a cheerful drive home. Lots of excited talk about the trip, and Elizabeth’s impressions of London and Paris and Rome. William had been so looking forward to it, counting days, eager to see his beloved Lizzie and hear what she thought of the rest of the world. He had even bought the expensive new landau, specially imported, the latest and most fashionable horse-drawn conveyance in the city. There were few others; not many people could afford them.

  William Patterson had wanted to bring his daughter home in style. Instead the journey was endured in an unhappy silence. ‘It’s over and done with,’ he said, as they drove through the gates of the house. ‘Don’t let us spoil a happy day.’

  Nobody replied. Elizabeth seemed close to tears. Edith appeared not to hear him.

  ‘We’ll say no more about it. For everybody’s sake, let’s try to act as if it never happened.’

  But dinner was even worse. Pretence was impossible.

  ‘Now that you’re home,’ William kept trying his best, ‘you must come and see me perform in “the bearpit”. It’s what they call the House of Parliament — and with good reason.’

  After the first course, which she hardly touched, Elizabeth rose and asked to be excused. She did not wait for their response; she was already on her way out of the large, austere dining room. William shook his head with disappointment as he watched her go. Edith remained mute, but already seemed to sense that by tomorrow it would be considered her fault. As though in confirmation of this, he said, ‘You should have kept a closer watch.’

  She felt the unfairness of the comment. He realised he had offended her and tried to make amends.

  ‘I’m sorry — we mustn’t quarrel. I’ve missed you.’ She looked at him, her disbelief clearly showing. ‘Anyway, this damned German is on his way to Adelaide. She’ll soon be over it.’

  ‘She’s in love with him.’

  ‘Rubbish. She’s not old enough to know what love is. He’s gone, Edith. He’s out of her life. He no longer exists.’

  On the other side of the open door, Elizabeth was halted by these words. She had returned to apologise, to try to salvage what remained of their homecoming dinner. Instead, she heard the finality of her father’s words.

  He’s gone. He’s out of her life. He no longer exists.

  This was the man she had grown up adoring. He was glad, relishing the thought Stefan had sailed with the ship, relieved she would never see him again. She went slowly upstairs to her room, the large bedroom that overlooked the tennis court, filled with so much of her life; a once-loved teddy bear, school photographs, a Certificate of Merit from Miss Arthur’s Academy for Young Ladies, her desk where she had done her homework, the bed she had slept in since she was nine years old. She sat by the window and wept, and went on weeping as if she would never stop.

  FOUR

  A rat scuttled along an open drain where unsewered effluent ran down Ferry Lane to the terrace houses of Windmill Street. Below them lay the imposing wool storage buildings of Pitt, Son and Badgery. Nearby, two women in ankle-length dresses gossiped and watched a thin, pale child skipping.

  The houses huddled against each other. At intersections it was possible to glimpse the ships at anchor in Floods Wharf, and the company dockyards in Darling Harbour, but the view was spoiled by the stench from the backyard privies, the tiny brick and iron ‘dunnies’ that stood like primitive sentry boxes all the way down the hill. It was an ugly land-sweated area — haphazard and sub-standard. No building regulations had ever been enforced here; there were rooms without windows, and entire streets had no water or conveniences of any kind.

  A billy-cart clattered down the lane, and Stefan had to hastily step back or the shrieking small boys in it would have collided with him. He walked past the Lord Nelson Hotel in Argyle Place, shook his head at the hopeful prostitute outside the Miller’s Point Post Office, and made his way into Clyde Street. The squalid locality appalled him. Washing was strung across narrow streets. The tiny backyards were littered with hovels. They were made of rusty iron and hessian, and were let as ‘rooms’. The lack of sanitation and disinterest of the authorities had contributed to the wretchedness of the area as much as the venal landlords. Bounded on three sides by water, what might have been a desirable neighbourhood had deteriorated into a sordid slum.

  The house in Clyde Street was no worse than any other. The door hung open. A half-naked child played in the passageway. There was the smell of offal and cabbage being cooked in one of the rooms, and a client of the girl on the first floor passed him on the narrow stairs. He made his way to the top-floor back room, little more than a cramped attic, which he shared with an elderly man who had been a dock labourer. The room, tiny as it was, had been divided into two by an improvised partition. Grain bags, sewn together, hung on a length of wire: the old man lived on one side, and Stefan on the other. His share of the windowless space measured two paces in width and three in length. The sloping iron roof, descending steeply at one end of the attic, made it difficult to stand upright. For this Stefan paid a shilling a week, and ha
d been told to think himself fortunate.

  He sat on the sagging, makeshift bed, which occupied most of his section of the room, and counted his money. He had almost three pounds remaining, and calculated he could manage for a few months.

  He realised he had been insanely rash. After they had danced, after her mother’s intervention and Elizabeth had kissed him and left, Stefan had stayed on deck all night, his mind in a turmoil. He had seen the sun rise across the sea, and illuminate a series of beaches and coves. Sometime in those predawn hours, he had made his decision. He would disembark when the ship docked, remain in Sydney, and write to his uncle. He would stay in the city where Elizabeth lived. Anything else, now he knew how she felt, was unthinkable.

  When the vessel turned through the twin heads to the harbour, his spirits soared. The shore was no longer so distant and forbidding. The arms of land that enclosed the massive harbour were sprinkled with houses. There were waterfront jetties, small vessels plying their way between them, and crowded ferry boats with people on board them waving to the ship. Stefan waved back. He saw a series of bays and tiny sandy beaches all the way down the harbour until they reached the warehouses and the maritime wharves. It was a city, the like of which he had never imagined. Already he could make out people crowding onto the quay, and see cable trams on the curved and hilly streets. There was a sense of excitement as he gazed about him, seeing settlements on both shores of the harbour, the grand homes that seemed to straddle the best promontories; feeling the light breeze, the gentle rock of the ship, the crystal water, the bustle in the streets as they slowly came into view.

  It made Stefan light-headed. Here, in such a place, with a girl like Elizabeth in love with him, anything was possible. He had pushed his way towards the upper deck, ignoring the notices and disregarding an objection from the Assistant Purser. By the time he managed to locate her, the hawsers had been secured and the stampede to disembark had begun. He saw her father, a well-dressed man, make his way assertively through the crowd. And then, her mother’s glimpse of him, her father’s anger, and Elizabeth’s sudden movement that took them all by surprise. Her warm lips against his.

  Only he heard what she whispered then.

  Auf Wiedersehen. I wish it could be different. How I wish we could see each other again.

  Her father was speaking sharply to them. Stefan could sense his anger, and then they were gone. The last thing he heard was William Patterson rebuking his wife for not being a proper chaperone, and failing to keep the riff-raff and foreign fortune-hunters at bay.

  The house was absurdly grand. This was his first dismayed reaction, as he crossed the road from the park and stood outside the ornamental gates. There were two gardeners at work in the spacious grounds, clipping shrubs and edging the lawns. They gave him a curious glance as he stood there in his shabby suit, hot and tired after the long walk across the city from Clyde Street. He looked again at the scrap of paper in his hand, the address she had written down for him on board the ship. He thought perhaps he had come to the wrong place.

  ‘Want somethin’?’

  The younger of the two gardeners had strolled across, watchful and suspicious. His eyes had already assessed Stefan, and decided he belonged at the back gate, not here at the visitors’ entrance.

  ‘Miss Elizabeth,’ Stefan said haltingly.

  ‘What about ‘er?’

  ‘Is she home, please?’

  ‘Dunno.’ The gardener, not yet nineteen, was enjoying a rare moment of authority over this stranger. ‘Have ter see, won’t I? Give us yer name.’ The words, strung together in a nasal monotone, confused Stefan. He looked blank and shook his head.

  ‘Your name, matey — ‘ave you got a name?’ the gardener said, now slowly and rather loudly, as if dealing with a half-wit.

  Stefan told him. ‘Wait there.’

  He strolled unhurriedly towards the house. Stefan felt the curious gaze of the other gardener watching him. In the distance was the sound of a piano being played. He felt sure it was Elizabeth. Perhaps he was only moments away from seeing her. Then he saw the gardener return, motioning to the other, so that they both moved off as William Patterson emerged from the house and crossed the immaculate lawn towards him. Finally only the iron gates stood between them.

  ‘Jumped ship, eh?’ Her father’s voice was quiet, but his eyes were like flint.

  ‘Yes, sir. I wrote to my uncle that I remain in Sydney.’

  ‘Did you now?’ There was no heat in his voice, no hint of the torrent of rage to follow. ‘Well, if you don’t get out of here and stop pestering my daughter, I’m going to call the police and have you chucked in a cell. Do you understand that, you fucking German bastard?’

  If he did not know the words, there was no mistaking the tone. Or the anger with which Parterson stared at him. ‘Please,’ Stefan said, ‘I wish nobody harm. May I see her?’

  ‘No, you can’t see her.’

  ‘Can you please tell me why?’

  ‘Because I say so. And because she thinks you’re a thousand miles away in Adelaide, where you should be.’

  ‘But I wrote to her. I told her I was here.’

  ‘She didn’t get the letter,’ William said, as Stefan realised with a shock what he meant. ‘And if you try to write again, I’ll rip that letter up, too. I didn’t send her to the best schools, give her all the advantages, to have some dirty fortune-hunting bloody foreigner get his lousy hands on her.’

  Again he did not have time to translate all the words, but they remained in his mind, so unmistakable was their venom.

  ‘So clear out or I’ll send for the police. You don’t want that.

  Neither of us want that.’

  Stefan looked at him helplessly. He heard and registered the word ‘police’, and knew that he was being threatened.

  ‘Look, son,’ her father’s tone became ashade more conciliatory, ‘you see the way she lives. You know you don’t belong here. She’s not for you. She’s a romantic and inexperienced girl who’s got some stupid idea she’s fond of you.’

  Fond? We love each other, Stefan wanted to tell him, but knew it would be useless.

  ‘Come on, be sensible. In a few weeks she’ll have forgotten all this, and so will you.’ He brought out his wallet and selected a five pound note. ‘Here. Bet you can use this. Get yourself on a train to South Australia. Don’t come here and bother us again.’

  ‘I don’t want your money,’ Stefan said. ‘I must see her.’

  ‘You try and you’ll end up in gaol. Now go to buggery,’ her father said, and walked away.

  That had been three weeks ago. Since then he had tried to find work, but the recent series of bank collapses were cutting deep, and most employers were paying men off.

  ‘You got Buckley’s,’ a foreman at the shipyard alongside Mort’s Dock told him, and although Stefan did not know who Buckley was, he understood the message. A newcomer with a limited knowledge of the language and an accent that advertised his recent arrival had little hope of finding a job with the economic recession worsening daily. It was clear that the colony was in deep financial trouble. Starving families were scavenging in the streets for food. People were begging. Factory owners took advantage, exploiting the labour surplus to make profits. A rope manufacturer, so the story circulated, dismissed most of his adult employees and hired children as apprentices. As they were aged only ten, he was not required to pay them wages for three months, and after that their earnings were a prescribed two pence an hour for a twelve-hour day. The growing trade union movement condemned him, while the local business community seemed to admire him for his acumen.

  Stefan spent every day in his vain pursuit of employment, and began to despair of his prospects. He had made several more attempts to see Elizabeth, all of which ended in failure. Once he had glimpsed her in the distance, walking beside the tennis court with her mother, but by the time he had made up his mind to climb the ornamental railings, they had gone inside. Stefan wondered if her mother had seen him. He
felt the younger of the two gardeners had. That seemed confirmed the next time, when he had stood in the park and watched a policeman patrol past the house and back again. William Patterson was making good his threat. Each night Stefan wrote, and spent a precious penny on the stamp, but knew with bleak certainty the letters never reached her. He began to admit to himself that his decision to leave the ship here had been a terrible mistake.

  Elizabeth finished the letter and addressed the envelope in her neat handwriting. Mr Stefan Muller, c/o Johann Ritter Esq, Kavel Farm, Hahndorf South Australia.

  Edith came into the room as she was doing this.

  ‘Do you want to read it, Mama?’ she asked, her mother’s appearance creating an instant hostility.

  Edith shook her head and sat to resume crocheting. She felt sad. She was fond of her daughter — love was not a word she used easily — and she felt it a terrible injustice she was being blamed for what had happened on the voyage home.

  ‘I’ll go and post it. You will trust me as far as the post box?’

  ‘Please, Elizabeth,’ Edith said. ‘Don’t do this to me.’

  ‘Do what, Mother?’

  ‘You’re angry. You feel life’s unfair.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘I never meant to harm you, or make you unhappy. I was upset that you deceived me, but I never wanted it to be like this. I wish you’d believe that.’

  Elizabeth didn’t answer. She took her coat and hat. There was a storm threatening and as she looked out the window towards the park, she frowned as she saw a distant figure on his steady patrol.

  ‘Why is there a policeman out there?’

  ‘Out where?’

  ‘In front of our house. He was there yesterday.’ Edith joined her and looked out the window.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said truthfully. ‘Perhaps it’s something to do with your father.’

  ‘A few ratbags,’ was William’s explanation when Edith asked him. It was later in the day, and he was leaving for a late sitting of the Parliament. A couple of loonies made threats. As a public figure I’m entitled to protection.’ He smiled for both their benefit.