Eumeralla - Secrets, Tragedy and Love

by Joanna Stephen-Ward

  EUMERALLA

  Secrets, Tragedy and Love

  By

  JoannaStephen-Ward

  POPHAMGARDENS PUBLISHING

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  VISSI D’ARTE

  A Story Of Love And Music

  www.joannaauthor.co.uk

  Copyright © Joanna Stephen-Ward 2011

  The right of Joanna Stephen-Ward to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  The characters in this work are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

  Popham Gardens Publishing

  www.publishingforyou.com

  e-mail: enquiries@publishingforyou.com

  In loving memory of my father

  Carlyle Stephen

  For my husband

  Peter

  who encourages me to fulfil my dreams.

  Acknowledgements

  I am indebted to the members of the Richmond Writers’ Circle for their support and constructive criticism, especially,

  Gerry Ball, Rebecca Billings, Suzanne Bugler, Feola Choat,

  Jennie Christian, Peter Clark, Alan Franks, Harry Garlick, Michael Lee, Vera Lustig, Peter Main, Vesna Main, Annie Morris,

  Malcolm Peltu, Charles Pither, Richard Rickford, Mike Riley, Anna Sanders, Miranda L Taylor and Susan Wallbank.

  Special thanks to Nancy Godwin, Laurelei Moore and Jenny Webb for reading the manuscript and giving me valuable feedback.

  For their encouragement I thank my colleagues at

  The National Archives especially, Francois Belholm, Lucy Brain, Hannah Griffiths, Olive Hogan, Kelly Kimpton, Diana Nutley and Karen Perry.

  Sheena Klapper provided me with agricultural and social information about the Darling Downs, and pointed out where I had gone wrong. Any mistakes are mine.

  The poem Deserts is by Owen Wheatley who kindly

  gave me permission to use it.

  (First published in ROOM 14 AT 8 O’CLOCK, the anthology of

  the Richmond Writers’ Circle 2001. © Owen Wheatley).

  The Clarksons

  William – born 1885 died 1947. Married his first wife in 1912.

  She died in 1930.

  Their Children

  Laurence – born 1915 died 1965

  Jonathan – born 1916 died 1946

  Virginia – born 1918

  The Lancasters

  Margot – born 1900

  David – born 1908

  Alex – born 1911

  Francesca – born 1917 died 1945

  Ruth – born 1919

  Marriages between the Clarksons and Lancasters

  1933 William Clarkson and Margot Lancaster

  1935 Laurence Clarkson and Francesca Lancaster

  1938 Virginia Clarkson and Alex Lancaster

  Deserts

  How much of our lives we spend in deserts,

  Leaving the fertile uplands – shades

  Of green and the sensuous roll of raindrop

  Down the central vein of a leaf from root

  To tip, where, in slow motion it swells and

  drops,

  shattering glass-like on stone,

  Soaking leafmould with wet earth smells

  Of urgent growth you can almost see.

  But somehow we’re here. Bone dry and bone

  white

  The hiss of windblown sand and white light

  Like a fist in the face, and swollen tongues

  Scrape cracked lips in hopeless pain

  While hot grit sears burning lungs

  And we fall, despairing, but crawl on again,

  Empty, just this side of death.

  Owen Wheatley

  Part One

  THE SECRET

  1972

  January to April

  CHAPTER 1

  Queensland ~ Australia

  January 1972

  There was a snake on Jonathan’s grave. Deadly venomous, it basked on the white marble slab, its tan coils gleaming in the dawn sun. Shocked out of her daydream, Eleanor froze. She was about to back away, when a kookaburra laughed. The Tiapan woke and slithered into the brown grass.

  Expelling her breath, she looked up into the trees. “You beauty,” she whispered. Aware that kookaburras preyed on dangerous snakes, she paused in case there was a battle. When nothing happened, she placed a posy of wattle and gum leaves near the headstone.

  “I had the most shameful thought on my way here,” she said, pulling up the weeds that had grown since her last visit. “If I could go back twenty-five years and change things I’d wish away my children. Not have them killed, just never born. It’s because the hope that things would get better died this morning when I was driving past Acacia.”

  She traced his name with her finger: Jonathan Clarkson 1916 – 1946. Whenever she saw the brevity of the inscription, she regretted that she had been too devastated to take charge of his funeral arrangements. Not a day passed without her feeling responsible for his death. Wrenching her thoughts away from the image of his decayed body in the coffin, she made herself remember the day he had asked her to marry him. They had come to plant a eucalyptus tree in memory of his mother, and had wandered through the monuments and crosses, stopping every few moments to kiss.

  On their wedding day, she and Jonathan and his sister and brother had come straight from the church to the cemetery. At their mother’s grave Jonathan and Laurence had put the carnations from their buttonholes with Eleanor’s and Virginia’s bouquets. The solemnity of the moment lasted until they arrived at the gates of Acacia where the silence had been broken by the cheers of the wedding guests waiting to welcome them. Virginia had leapt out of the second bridal car and, hitching up the long skirts of her yellow silk dress, joined in the one- mile race to the homestead. Greg had picked up her discarded shoes. Years later he had told her that her wedding day had been torture for him. He had disguised it well. Eleanor remembered him laughing at Virginia’s exuberance and congratulating Jonathan.

  Shaking herself out of her reverie, Eleanor looked at the carefully tended grave next to Jonathan’s. Interspersed with the names of Laurence’s wife and children were words she wished had been engraved on Jonathan’s headstone. ‘Beloved’, ‘devoted’, ‘husband’ and ‘father’.

  As she walked down the path to the section where her parents were buried, she hoped Greg did not suspect that visiting Jonathan’s grave was the real reason she came to the cemetery. Not wanting to upset him, she never came on any of the dates associated with Jonathan. Instead she came on her parents’ birthdays, wedding anniversary and the dates of their death, even though the memories of her mother, who had died when Eleanor was four, were hazy. Today would have been her father’s eightieth birthday.

  Her unhappiness was not Greg’s fault. He had given her the opportunity to break their engagement, when Jonathan had returned. “He’s your husband, Eleanor. I’ll understand.” But she had seen his sadness. She didn’t want to cause him the same anguish Jonathan had inflicted on her.

  ‘I was conceited,’ she thought, as she hurried back to the car. ‘Greg would have found another girl and Johnny – ’ She reached the car and yanked the door open. “Stop it,” she told herself. But the knowledge that she had delayed telling Greg she couldn’t marry him tortured her soul. She had worked out the kindest way to tell him. But
when he arrived to take her to the country fair, he was so loving and excited about their future, her resolve failed. A week later Jonathan was dead.

  The car started on the third attempt. Before it could cut out she thrust it into gear and stuck her foot on the accelerator. The roar of the engine frightened a flock of birds and they flew out of a nearby tree. She drove down the dusty track onto the smooth surface of the road. As she passed the prosperous farms of the Darling Downs with their fields of wheat and cotton, she thought with distaste of the chores that lay ahead. “Every day’s the same. We all work from sunrise to sunset,” she muttered. “And what have we got to show for it? Nothing. The car’s falling to bits and we can’t afford the spare parts. There are too many vet bills, leaking water tanks and tractor repairs.”

  When their children had left school and started working full-time on Eumeralla, she had thought they would be able to buy a few luxuries. What she most wanted was an inside flushing toilet instead of the stinking one that was eighty yards away from the house, but Greg insisted that the money was saved in case of floods or bush fires, a failed wheat crop or a drastic fall in the price of wool. Only once had he let them break into their savings and that was to buy paint for the peeling exterior of the house.

  Of all their children, only Hazel was like Eleanor. She wanted something more than Eumeralla and had gone to live in Brisbane as soon as she left school. Greg had been disappointed, but Eleanor understood her desire to live in a comfortable flat that had electricity and modern facilities. Tom, Neil and June were like Greg. To them the land was all that mattered. The house was nothing more than a place to eat and sleep.

  Five years ago when she had been in the middle of a difficult menopause, Eleanor decided to sell some of the land. Tom, Neil and June had shared Greg’s horror.

  She tried to explain about the toilet. “It’s disgusting.”

  “Eleanor, it’ll cost a fortune,” Greg said. “Miles of pipes have to be laid.”

  “And we don’t spend much time in it, do we?” said Neil.

  “It’s not just that,” she said, frustrated by their refusal to consider her feelings. “We look like tramps. How long is it since any of us had new clothes? Look at Juju’s trousers – if they had any more holes they’d fall off.”

  June shrugged. “Who cares?”

  “How much do you want to sell?” asked Tom.

  “Two thousand acres.”

  “Almost half?” said June. “You’re joking.”

  “My God, you can’t,” said Greg. “The scummy lot on Acacia will buy it. They’ll chop down all the trees we’ve planted. Is that what you want? Do you want them to ruin Eumeralla like they’ve ruined Acacia? Your dad left Eumeralla to you. How would he feel about you selling his grandchildren’s inheritance.”

  Tom looked stupefied. “Hang on, Dad – Eumeralla’s yours too, isn’t it?”

  “Your mother’s name is the only one on the deeds.”

  “So she could sell without your agreement?” asked Neil.

  “Yes.”

  “Stop talking as if I wasn’t here,” snapped Eleanor. “I won’t sell anything without your agreement. For goodness sake, I only want to sell a bit of land.”

  “Half. That’s not just a bit, Mum,” said Neil furiously. “What about me? I might as well go and get another job now. By the time you’ve finished hacking it up it’ll be too small for Tom and me to share. Do you want me to go to Brisbane and get a boring clerical job like Hazel?”

  “It’s a fair question, Eleanor,” said Greg.

  She felt herself losing. “We’ll have less land, but we won’t have to slave all day. We can get electricity, a television – ”

  Tom looked baffled. “Why do we want a television?”

  “To keep us in touch with what’s going on in the world.”

  “We’ve got a radio and we get the newspapers,” said Tom.

  “I’ve lived here all my life and nothing’s changed,” Eleanor said despondently. “We’ve never improved anything – ”

  Neil looked exasperated. “Look at what we have got and stop whining about what we haven’t.”

  “Don’t speak to your mum like that,” said Greg. “Eleanor, I know some things need doing, but we can’t afford anything just now.”

  “That’s why I want to sell some of the land. Everything’s primitive!” she shouted. “They had more luxuries on Acacia forty years ago than we’ve got now.”

  “How do you know?” asked Tom.

  Too late, Eleanor remembered that she and Greg had told them that the previous owners were reclusive. “I – they once – ”

  Greg looked at her warningly. “She had to ask them for help when her dad was ill.”

  Eleanor had an impulse to tell the truth. She imagined their incredulous expressions if she did. ‘They’d think I was insane,’ she thought. ‘Maybe I should tell them now and if they ever find out I can say that I’d told them, but they didn’t believe me.’

  “Eleanor, we’ll get electricity and a new toilet soon,” Greg promised.

  But five years had passed and they were still using oil lamps, a wood burning stove and the toilet was the same. She could defy them all and sell. Hazel would understand. Greg would eventually forgive her, but Tom, Neil and June would never understand or forgive.

  As she drove past Acacia, Eleanor saw a Rolls Royce driving down the driveway. The sun glinting on its shining chrome dazzled her. Greg and Eleanor, like other long-established families in the district, still referred to the present owners of Acacia as the new owners even though they had lived there for twenty-five years. Brash and avaricious, they had never fitted in. Everyone had been outraged as the trees, which generations of Clarksons had planted, were felled to make room for extensive wheat fields and luxuries more fitting to a mansion in the city.

  She stopped the car at the entrance to Eumeralla. In stark contrast to Acacia’s smart gates, Eumeralla’s was rusty and squeaked when she opened it. She tried to blot out her discontent. But as she drove up the winding, tree-lined track towards the house, she envied the family in the property over the creek who had recently had electricity installed. She looked at the mixture of evergreen and deciduous trees they had planted over the years. All over Eumeralla were small areas of woodland, teaming with wildlife and providing shade for the sheep. They had sacrificed wheat fields to plant the trees and as a result Eumeralla was one of the most beautiful properties in the Darling Downs. It was also the poorest.

  As she rounded the bend she saw a new car parked in the shade of the enormous white magnolia tree. “Blast!” she muttered as she parked next to it. “The reporter. I didn’t realize how late it was.” When she opened the gate their border collie ran to greet her. “Hi, Toddles,” she said, giving her a quick pat. Red, their new kelpie, whined and strained at the long rope tethering him to the tree. As he was not yet properly trained, they tied him up when visitors came. He would not bite, but his growls and barks frightened people who did not know him.

  After checking to make sure his water bowl was full, she ran up the steps leading to the back verandah. The family and the reporter, who was from Queensland’s top agricultural magazine, were sitting round the table.

  “Sorry, I’m late,” said Eleanor. She noticed that June, her sons and Greg were wearing their newest jeans and shirts. Compared to the fawn linen trousers and crisp white shirt worn by the reporter, they looked scruffy. Not even his visit had made any of them abandon the habit of going barefoot in the house.

  He stood up and pulled out a chair for her. “You’re not late, Mrs Mitchell. I’m early. I had an appointment at Acacia, but they didn’t like my questions about greed and told me to scoot. I’d heard they were loathed around here, but I wanted to see for myself.” He looked at June, who was scowling. “But I’ve annoyed your beautiful daughter by suggesting she’s the cook.”

  “We all do our share in the kitchen,” said Eleanor. “My sons make better bread than I do.”

  June smirke
d. “Neil’s the best cook.”

  Neil glared at her. “Shut up, Juju.”

  Eleanor kept her expression serious. “We have a rota system – two weeks in the house doing the cooking, housework, gardening and laundry, two weeks on the animal rota – going round on horseback checking the sheep, making sure the horses and chickens are okay. And two weeks on – ”

  “Sure, that’s all very interesting, Mrs Mitchell, but I want to know how you rotate the crops, not how you rotate your family.” He laughed.

  Eleanor smiled rigidly. June looked at him in disgust.

  Undaunted, he winked at her and turned to Greg. “Right, you were telling me about the water tanks.”

  “Yes,” said Greg. “It’s vital the livestock have water all year round even if there’s a drought, so we erected water tanks all over the property.” He drew a sketch. “Groups of tanks are set together and joined by a hose that’s buried in a shallow trench. If it hasn’t rained for a few weeks we ride to all the tanks and turn on a valve so the water seeps out through the holes in the hose. It’s left on for an hour and then turned off.”

  “It sure works,” said the reporter. “The first thing that struck me about Eumeralla was all the patches of green. You’re respected round here. The people over the creek said that you do things the right way, but it takes courage and comes at a cost.”