William gazed at them, until they put down their spoons. They watched as he bowed his head, and they followed suit. Across the table, Stefan began to understand what his father-in-law intended. ‘Merciful and bounteous God,’ William began, ‘we thank Thee for Thy food, which you have placed on this table to sustain us. We, your servants, thank you for all manner of things.’ William, who had not been inside a church for years, struggled to remember phrases to make it as interminable as the other had been, while beside him Elizabeth fought a desire to giggle. ‘So for what we are about to receive, may we be truly grateful to God the father, God the son, and to the Holy Ghost and the Holy Spirit. Amen.’
‘Amen,’ said Elizabeth. The Ritter family all chorused the familiar word and prepared to eat.
‘Wait,’ William Patterson added in his most authoritative voice, and was again the focus of all their eyes. ‘Stefan, I want you to translate to your uncle exactly what I am going to say. Do you understand me?’
‘Yes,’ Stefan said, realising it was the first time this man had ever addressed him by name.
William knew he had their attention; the meal was ignored. ‘Tell him that my daughter is leaving this house, and you and the children are going with her. Tell him any debt you owed for your passage has been repaid, with interest.’ Stefan hesitated. ‘Tell him.’
He translated. There was a frigid silence, then Johann Ritter began to speak sharply in German.
‘Tell him to shut up,’ William’s voice was like a whiplash, ‘tell him to keep quiet and not interrupt.’
He waited until Stefan had spoken, and knew his words had been accurately interpreted by the indignation in Ritter’s face. It was what he had planned, a calculated retaliation for their treatment of Elizabeth, to sit here and insult the man in his own house. Nor had he finished yet.
‘Yesterday I purchased a piece of land. Twenty acres, with a house, and I am having a firm of lawyers prepare title of ownership in my daughter’s name, with myself as trustee.’ He was aware of Stefan’s astonished gaze. ‘The farm is not in this district. It is in a place called the Barossa Valley, some fifty miles to the north, an area which, I am reliably informed, is far better suited to grape growing and winemaking than here. Here, the soil is fit only for turnips.’ Elizabeth smiled to herself. William looked around the table, relishing the effect he was creating. ‘I chose there, not only because the earth is more fertile and the climate more agreeable, but because it is far enough away for my daughter to have nothing more to do with any of you.’
He turned from Johann Ritter, to Aunt Anna and Grossmutter, and there was no mistaking the animosity in his gaze.
‘I want it understood that none of you, not one person in this family, will ever be welcome there.’
While Stefan was still translating this, William left the table and strode out, without having touched his meal.
Elizabeth rose from her seat. She saw their offended faces, the hostile stares that had always disconcerted her. They had disliked her from the start, for no reason. Well, now they had something to be resentful about. She felt free of them at last, felt a tremendous relief and great affection for her father.
‘Auf Wiedersehen,’ she said — to no one in particular — and walked out of the farmhouse for the last time.
‘There are several conditions,’ William said. At the German Arms Hotel an hour later they were discussing his plan. ‘First of all, the property always remains in Elizabeth’s name. Hers alone. If anything should ever happen to her, it reverts to me. Do you accept that?’
Stefan nodded. He knew he had no choice in the matter. ‘Second — that Elizabeth visit us with the children. Not yet,’ he anticipated her protest, ‘but as soon as you’re established and on your feet. I’ll send the fares, and arrange for a nurse to travel with you to mind the children. Let’s say — in a year. I don’t think that’s unreasonable. I’d like to go home able to tell your mother to expect you.’
‘That is fair,’ Stefan said, while Elizabeth was still hesitating.
‘Very well, Papa,’ she said eventually. ‘A brief visit as soon as we’re properly settled.’
‘Not too brief,’ he smiled, and she knew he had not given up hope of getting her back; he had just changed his tactics.
‘My third condition is that I want your son — my grandson — called Henry, not Heinrich.’
There was a silence.
‘Heinrich was my father’s name,’ Stefan answered. ‘Our son has been christened to carry on that name.’
‘Your father lived in Bavaria. My grandson will grow up here. I want him called Henry — is that clear?’ Stefan did not reply.
‘Lizzie?’ He appealed to her.
‘It’s not something you can insist on, Father. I’ll discuss it with Stefan, and we’ll make a decision.’ She came to stand beside her husband, and for one of the rare times in his life, William Patterson felt ineffectual.
‘I promise we’ll consider your wishes in the matter,’ she added, and he understood he would have to be content with that.
‘Lastly,’ he said, ‘I’ll give you enough money to stock the land, to buy vines or cattle or whatever you decide. Not a lot of money, but enough. I want you to have someone to help look after the children. I’ve talked to this German girl who likes them, and would be prepared to move with you. If you agree, Elizabeth, I’ll offer her the job and make arrangements to pay her each month.’
Within a week it was settled. The girl, Sigrid, accompanied them. William hired an extra carriage, and they drove to Adelaide, where the legal documents were drawn up and witnessed, and the following day they headed north-west to Angaston and Tanunda, and the cluster of small towns enclosed by the hills that comprised the Barossa Valley.
People working in the vineyards looked up as the two vehicles passed. Elizabeth smiled and waved, and they waved back to her. Stefan saw spired churches and fertile fields with their orderly rows of vines. It was as if the old traditions of the Rhine Valley had been handed down from the first viticulturalists who had fled here half a century earlier. He felt a sense of excitement, and an affinity with this place he had never seen before.
When they crossed a wooden bridge over a creek, they saw the gently sloping land that led to the farmhouse. The pasture was pitted with weeds, and the vines unkempt. The house was small, needing paint. But to them it was a dream come true. While Elizabeth and Sigrid took the children inside to explore the house, Stefan tried to express his gratitude with stammered thanks, but was cut off abruptly.
‘I don’t want your thanks,’ William said bluntly, ‘because none of this was done for you. I want you to work this land, and make a living so you can give my daughter some kind of a decent life.’
‘You’ll be repaid for this — in time. Every penny.’
‘I don’t require that.’
‘But I do,’ Stefan said. ‘I require it, Mr Patterson. I insist on not accepting your charity.’
‘The hell with you,’ William looked at him angrily. ‘Since when was a gift to a man’s own daughter considered charity? You repay me by treating her properly, you hear — or by Christ you’ll answer to me.’
With this as his farewell to Stefan, he walked across the land to the small three-bedroom house, and listened to Elizabeth’s exclamations of pleasure as they inspected it. It was difficult to recognise as she enthused about the rather primitive and cramped farmhouse, that she had grown up in style and luxury, and then he thought of his austere house opposite the park, and how little he cared for it in comparison to the cottage he shared with Hannah. In that brief moment he almost understood his daughter.
The driver was waiting for him with the landau. The baby was asleep inside, with Sigrid minding him. Elizabeth held her first born, who smiled and reached out his arms towards William. ‘He’s fond of you, Papa. Kiss Heinrich.’
‘Damn silly name. Promise to think about changing it.’
‘Kiss him.’
William carefully kissed the chi
ld, who wanted to hug him. ‘I’m always scared they’ll break in half.’
‘Not this one. He’s tough. Takes after you.’
‘Hmph,’ he said, trying hard not to show his pleasure. ‘He even looks a bit like you, I think.’
‘Poor little bugger.’
Elizabeth laughed.
‘You write,’ William said, and blew his nose noisily. He kissed her and got into the landau, before he made a fool of himself. ‘Goodbye, Papa.’
‘Take care, Lizzie.’
He nodded abruptly to the driver, and the landau drove away.
As they crossed over the creek, he could see her there, still waving to him. He waved back, feeling an unbearable sense of loss, and saw her hand flutter a last time, then the trees hid her from his sight.
The following morning he left Adelaide to begin the long train journey home. For almost a month, his days had been spent with her, and he felt overwhelmed by loneliness. He was disappointed to be returning without her, but still nursed a secret hope that it would not be for long.
TWELVE
Elizabeth could see Stefan down near the creek, his arms’ rising and falling, the sunlight glinting on the blade of the pick-axe as he tilled the new piece of land. Above him, in neat rows, their older vines were already heavy with grapes. In less than a month they would have their first precious harvest. She watched him for a time. He had removed his shirt, and his muscular, tanned body moved rhythmically, and even from this distance she felt a pleasant stirring at the sight.
He was almost unrecognisable from the boy on the ship whom she had pursued, initially out of boredom with other passengers and the advances of the preening officers — she could admit that to herself now. There was not only a physical difference; he had developed that on the Ritters’ farm during their time at Hahndorf. It was a new and different Stefan, confident and assured, who felt at home here, was popular and friendly with their neighbours, and loved this vineyard with a possessive pride and a fierce determination to succeed.
In the first months, he had dug and cleared six of the weed-infested acres and planted new vines. He constructed a chicken coop, and they now had eggs, the manure as fertiliser, and a flourishing vegetable garden. He began work at daylight, and she usually took him a sandwich in the fields at lunchtime, and sat a while with him, knowing Heinrich and the new baby, whom they had christened Carl, were being well looked after by Sigrid. He worked all afternoon, rarely finishing until after twilight, and then they ate together by lantern light at the kitchen table.
These were the best hours of the day, when the children were in bed and Sigrid had gone to her own quarters, when they sat and talked and sometimes calculated their flimsy finances, and he helped her dry the dishes — a most unusual thing for a local husband to do. Then they washed at the tank stand behind the house and went eagerly to bed, their glowing flesh hungry for each other, their lovemaking once again uninhibited and delirious.
Elizabeth had never been so content. It seemed that her life now had a purpose. She had been indulged as the only child of a wealthy and fond father, pampered and waited on by servants in their large home, sent to Sydney’s leading college for young ladies, and then on her Grand Tour. She had spent her seventeenth birthday at the Antico Martini in Venice. Her eighteenth would have been the occasion for a lavish ball at the new Hotel Australia, where her father planned to launch her socially by hiring the Wintergarden with its Palm Court orchestra, but by then she had fled and was living with Stefan over the shoemaker’s shop, in the crowded and unpalatable end of town. Such a short time ago, yet it was part of another life.
She sometimes found it hard to believe she was barely twenty years old, the mother of two growing children whose piping voices could be heard as they played near the chicken enclosure. She walked to the corner of the verandah that Stefan had built on to the house, and watched them at play. Heinrich was now two years old, while Carl had recently had his first birthday. He was a plump and contented child, who, since his birth, had never given her a moment’s trouble.
He spent most of his time idolising and trying to follow his older brother. The children saw her, and ran to her, Heinrich scampering ahead, Carl tottering behind, managing not to fall over, as he reached her and clung to her skirt with his happy smile. She scooped them both up, and felt a great wave of love as she hugged them.
They had chosen not to comply with her father’s request to change Heinrich’s name. Stefan refused to contemplate calling him Henry, and she now felt indifferent about it. In the harsh Ritter household, where she rarely heard an English word, the constant use of a foreign name for her son had depressed and disturbed her. Here it no longer had that effect. She did not mind the times when Sigrid lapsed into German, or when friends from Bethany or their close neighbours Gerhardt and Eva-Maria Lippert came to visit and occasionally conversed in their native tongue. Stefan discouraged it; he always replied in English, making it clear Elizabeth must not be excluded.
She felt, in addition to her happiness, very secure. It seemed as if nothing could disturb the serenity of their life together.
One afternoon, Gerhardt and Eva-Maria delivered a crate of young hens for their new chicken yard, and stayed to supper afterwards. They ate on the verandah, by lantern light. It was a typical meal of the kind they often shared; soup, then Wurstcheese, their own home-grown tomatoes, and wine. They had brought a copy of the German language newspaper, the Australische Zeitung, and Stefan was frowning over it.
‘What does it say?’ she asked.
‘The war in South Africa.’ It was Gerhardt who answered. ‘The British fare badly. Their troops are surrounded by the Boers at a place called Ladysmith.’
‘It’s far away,’ Eva-Maria said. ‘Nothing to do with us.’
‘Nothing? The stupid German government has declared they support the Boers.’
‘So?’ Their friends enjoyed nothing more than a lively spat. ‘We belong here. We’re not ruled by the German government.’
‘I agree with Eva-Maria.’ Stefan put the paper aside. ‘It’s all on the other side of the world, Gerhardt. Stop worrying.’
‘He likes to worry,’ his wife chided. ‘If there is nothing to worry about, and everything is fine, he worries it might not last.’ They all laughed, even Gerhardt. A companionable laughter. ‘So … I am wrong,’ he said. ‘It is a little war, a long way off.’
‘Good. Now drink your wine.’
‘But remember one thing — the newspaper says German shops in Adelaide had their windows smashed last week. Australia has sent troops to South Africa, and some people think we Germans secretly want the Boers to win. They don’t like it.’
Eva-Maria picked up his glass and handed it to him. ‘How long have you been in this country?’
‘You know how long. When we were first married.’
‘How long is that? Or have you forgotten?’
‘How can I forget, when you always remind me of the anniversary day? Twelve years.’
‘And what nationality are we?’
‘Australian now. Naturalised.’
‘Goodo,’ she said, producing a broad Australian accent that made Elizabeth giggle, ‘in that case, mate, drink up. And shut up.’
Elizabeth liked Eva-Maria better than anyone in the district. Though she was older, at thirty-five a full fifteen years Elizabeth’s senior, they had formed an immediate friendship from the day twelve months ago when Gerhardt and Eva-Maria had walked across from their farm bringing a basket of food to share with their new neighbours.
Twelve months. Carl’s recent first birthday had been an uneasy reminder of her promise to take the children on a visit to Sydney. Within a year, her father had said, and she had agreed. She had written to her mother and confirmed the promise, without arranging an exact date. There had been one of her mother’s rapid replies, suggesting Christmas would be perfect, or if not, then early in the New Year. Elizabeth had written back to explain this was the worst time for them, their busiest period.
The vines were harvested in February, and afterwards there would be a great deal of work to be done, crushing and bottling. She promised the visit would be soon, but she could not say exactly when.
The truth was, she did not want to leave this place and Stefan, even for a brief time. Life was so good here. So simple and satisfying. Though she had missed her father deeply when he left, and was grateful for all he had done for them, the animosity between him and Stefan remained a divisive factor that troubled her. If she went home to visit, however briefly, this would be rekindled; she knew that. It would always be there, an undercurrent between them. Which was why she had delayed until now, reluctant to set a date that would commit her.
Now she knew she would have to write and tell them it was no longer possible. Certainly not in the foreseeable future.
‘Another child.’ Edith handed him the letter, and he read it in silence. ‘You wouldn’t think after the last trouble that she’d want another.’
William shared her dismay. If she had only just discovered she was pregnant, as the letter suggested, it would be late in the year before the baby was born. Then a time to recover, and after that the blasted harvest again. Another year or more before she could make the journey to Sydney.
‘I had her room redecorated,’ Edith said, and he looked at her with sudden compassion. He did not know this. ‘And the large one at the end of the hall picked out as a nursery.’
‘I’m sorry. Perhaps she’ll be able to come, once this child’s born. After a brief convalescence.’ It was a shock to have this rare insight into the extent of her loneliness, and he did not want to mention the harvest. But he did not need to.
‘No,’ Edith shook her head. Then there’ll be the harvest.’
A Bitter Harvest Page 11