Or a marauding herd of kangaroos might trample through the vineyard. Or the worst scourge of the summer, a bush fire, great tongues of flame flung from tree to tree, might blacken and desolate the countryside.
She was sure she could never be in love with this last month of tension before harvest in the way Gilbert was. She could hear his laugh, with its undercurrent of excitement, all over the house. He talked a great deal, he made jokes to the maids, he asked her to play to him on the piano after dinner, and then got up restlessly and left the room before she had played more than a few bars. He had a quick temper, as Eugenia discovered the day he lost it over a trifling episode with Mrs Jarvis.
Yella had disappeared. She had been absent a whole day, and when, the following morning, there was still no sign of her, Mrs Jarvis had sent for one of the convicts who had been seen, at times, in conversation with the black woman. He was a scrawny little Irishman from County Down, inclined to melancholy.
When he came to the kitchen door, he had looked such a poor wizened unhappy creature that Mrs Jarvis had spontaneously asked him in to the kitchen and offered him a glass of milk.
Unfortunately the master had walked in just as the wretched man was half through his glass of milk. He had gone up and dashed it out of the man’s hands on to the floor, and ordered him out of the house.
Then he had turned on Mrs Jarvis.
Eugenia, in the linen room which was just across the courtyard, could not help hearing the commotion.
‘And what, Mrs Jarvis, do you think you are doing, giving hospitality to a man like that in my house?’
‘I only wanted to ask him about Yella, sir.’ Mrs Jarvis was clearly distressed. ‘Mr Sloan said she used to talk to him—’
‘And the nourishment was to encourage him to talk more?’
‘Oh, no, sir, it’s only that he looked half starved.’
‘Are you suggesting I starve my servants?’
‘He only looked so miserable, sir. He reminded me of my poor husband, to tell the truth.’
‘He’s a felon.’
‘So was my husband. So was I, according to the law. But we’re still human beings.’
‘And haven’t I treated you like one? Reid—you see, I am actually human enough to remember his name—will be treated properly if he works properly. If it’s his nature to look sick and miserable, that I can’t help. But understand—’ there was a sharp rap on the table, ‘—I won’t have these men in the kitchen of my house. If I catch one of them here again he’ll be flogged, and you’ll be able to thank yourself for his punishment. Well?’
Poor Mrs Jarvis must by this time be in tears, Eugenia thought. But her answer came steadily, ‘If these are your orders, sir, they will be obeyed. I was only wanting to enquire about Yella, in the first place.’
‘Oh, damn that black woman and all her kind. Let her go to the devil.’
Yet when Gilbert came into the house half an hour later he was all sunny good temper.
‘You’re looking very well, my love. I like that dress. Have I seen it before?’
‘No, I think not. Jane and I are still unpacking boxes.’
‘And you have more pleasant surprises for me? Some elegant things to make all the other ladies jealous?’
‘What other ladies?’
‘Why, our guests from Sydney. Can we put up a dozen people, do you think? Some double rooms and two or three single for the bachelors. Now why are you looking so surprised? We have talked of this before.’
Eugenia couldn’t help clapping her hands with delight. ‘I hadn’t known you were serious. You didn’t seem to have any time to spare from your grapes. Oh, I would so dearly like to see some people, Bess and Marion, even Mrs Ashburton.’
‘Even Mrs Ashburton!’ he mocked, good-naturedly. ‘You make it sound as if you have been serving a solitary prison sentence. Come and kiss me.’
‘Now!’
‘I adore you when you pout like that. Your eyes are sparkling.’ He gave her a light kiss and laughed as she adroitly spun away from him. ‘We’ll send off invitations for the first weekend in March. If this weather holds vintage will be over and I’ll have a cellar full of casks of good wine. We must make this an annual celebration as they do in France and Spain.’
‘Twelve people!’ Eugenia exclaimed. ‘But we haven’t nearly enough help.’
‘Get some in from Parramatta. Ask Mrs Jarvis to arrange it. I don’t want you to exert yourself too much in this heat. Mrs Jarvis is a capable woman.’
‘But this morning—I heard you—I couldn’t help overhearing—’
The sunny blue eyes looked down at her.
‘Giving Mrs Jarvis a lecture? Well, I suppose that’s not quite the way it’s done in England. I haven’t all the niceties. I sometimes lose my temper.’
‘Mrs Jarvis only wanted to know about Yella.’
‘She knows my rules. No convicts in the house.’
‘But Mrs Jarvis herself was a convict. Aren’t you being illogical?’
Although a deep frown suddenly cut down the centre of his forehead Gilbert spoke quite mildly. ‘I don’t understand your long words. I didn’t have your education. Will you ring for luncheon to be served. And please sit nearer to me. The end of the table is so far away. I like that lavender colour of your dress. It matches your eyes.’
Yella came back that afternoon carrying a tiny dark pink baby in her arms.
No one knew where or how she had contrived to give birth without assistance. But that she had done so without being too discommoded was obvious from her wide grin, and the proud gleam in her deep-set eyes. She wanted the white women to admire her baby. It was a girl and she was going to call it Ginny.
This was to be interpreted as a gesture of admiration and loyalty towards the mistress. Eugenia took it as such and was amused and delighted. She took the baby, wrapped in a scrap of greyish cloth that was obviously part of Yella’s skirt, and held the funny little snuffling black-haired creature in her arms. A great longing stirred in her. She, too, would like a baby.
Yella grinned from ear to ear. Mrs Jarvis stood quietly with her hands resting on her stomach, an acknowledgment of her own condition. Jane, with her skimmed milk face, registered disgust for the dark tinge of the baby’s skin, so different from a white child. She thought it exactly like a monkey. And Phoebe, the Australian, had a practised eye, although she was only sixteen. She had seen enough native babies to recognize that this one had a white father.
‘Have you any baby clothes, Yella?’ Eugenia asked.
Yella shook her head.
‘Then I will see that you get some,’ she said eagerly. ‘Jane, we must quickly make some long dresses and bonnets.’
‘Native babies don’t wear long dresses, mum—ma’am,’ Phoebe pointed out.
‘Then this one will be an exception.’
Eugenia thought that this was the most heart-warming thing that had happened to her since she had come to Yarrabee. She realized that she had been walking about like an automaton in her dainty immaculate clothes, with her absurd parasol, a slender ghost in a heat-scarred wilderness, always secretly afraid of the night. But now there was Yella’s baby, later there would be Mrs Jarvis’s and later still…
It wasn’t to be like that. It appeared that Gilbert had strong objections. Once he wouldn’t have turned a hair if a native woman had raised a brood of a dozen bastards on his property. But now the house had a fastidious and sensitive mistress, and it just wouldn’t do. Especially taking into consideration the fact that the child was a half-caste. Even more embarrassing, he was well aware who its father was, and he had no intention of losing a good overseer because he conducted a liaison with a native woman.
Yella must be moved to Parramatta, and Tom Sloan could visit her there if he found he wanted to continue the disreputable affair. He wouldn’t of course. Yella had merely been available, when there had been no other woman around. He would get himself a white wife now that more women were coming out from England, and Ye
lla would be well advised to find one of her own kind.
Perhaps if Gilbert had explained all this to Eugenia she would have been more sympathetic towards his point of view. But how did he tell a well-bred young woman that good reliable honest Tom Sloan, an indentured employee whom he had brought out from his native Gloucestershire, had this desire for a native woman who was as ugly as sin?
Unaware of the true facts, Eugenia was full of indignation.
‘Yella is to go because she has a baby! But how unkind! How callous! I won’t hear of it. I refuse to allow her to be turned out to starve.’
‘She is not being turned out to starve. I explained that I would see she found another place. There are plenty of small farmers or inn-keepers who want a cook and can’t afford to be too fussy. Anyway, natives don’t starve. They have all kinds of disgusting ways of feeding themselves. On grubs, for instance. They eat a kind of caterpillar called a witchetty grub.’
Eugenia looked, if anything, more offended.
‘You can’t prejudice me by telling me things like that. Yella has been of use to you, she has given birth to a baby on your property, and that baby has a white father. Phoebe told me. So your obligation towards her is even stronger.’
‘My obligation will be discharged by seeing the woman placed somewhere else. You must trust me to know what is best in these matters. You are very new to colonial ways, after all.’
‘Then what about Mrs Jarvis? Is she also to be treated in this summary way when her baby is born?’
Gilbert repressed his rising temper. He had already lost it once that day to his regret.
‘Mrs Jarvis is an entirely different matter. For one thing, she is widowed. For another, her child will be white. And for still another, we were both aware of her condition when we engaged her.
‘When you engaged her,’ Eugenia flashed back.
‘Very well, when I engaged her. But you have since admitted to me that you are entirely satisfied with her. So was my decision at fault?’
‘Not about that,’ Eugenia admitted reluctantly.
‘Then trust me in this matter. Yella is a slut. You will find you have a hideously ugly baby on your doorstep once a year, without fail, if she stays here. Now let us talk of something else.’
Eugenia bit her lip.
‘I thought the baby so sweet.’
‘Well, that’s natural enough. I like a woman to be sentimental over babies. But preferably her own.’
That made her flush and lower her eyes. He found himself remembering the flashing fire of Mrs Jarvis’s gaze that morning. He knew she would have liked to strike him. A shaft of intolerable excitement had run through him, and he had had to raise his voice and shout at her, simply to keep that fire in her face.
But Eugenia was a gentle creature who withdrew into herself. He thought regretfully that he could scarcely hope for any more warmth in her embrace tonight. It would have been a satisfying way to make up a quarrel.
A quarrel? Scarcely that, although he found his wife hastily trying to remove traces of tears when he joined her in their bedroom later.
‘My love! Surely you’re not wasting tears on that worthless slut!’
‘N-no.’
‘Then what is it?’
Forced to answer, because he had put his hand under her chin and lifted her face up to him, she said with her gentle dignity, ‘I confess I was thinking about Lichfield Court, and how green it always was in summer. My sisters and I used to feed the birds that came to the garden. There were so many, finches and wrens and robins and blackbirds. There was one robin that actually sat on my finger. It came year after year.’
‘Not always the same one?’ said Gilbert, humouring her.
‘Perhaps not. But it seemed to be. Gilbert, you have never asked me if I am happy here!’
The sudden outburst startled him.
‘But you are, surely?’
‘There, you see, you say it as if there could be no other answer. Why do you think that in a few weeks I can begin to love all this desolation.’
Desolation! What a word to describe his beloved Yarrabee. To him it was entirely beautiful. It astonished him that she did not find it so. His terraces of vines bending with their burden of ripening fruit, his fine house, the great free unconfining shadowless spaces—and she was fretting for the rains and mists of England!
Naturally she missed her parents, her old nurse, all those sisters to chatter with. If he hadn’t been so busy he would have realized this. He should have realized it, since it wasn’t to be expected that she could yet share his excitement about approaching vintage. By this time next year she would be as totally committed as he was himself, of that he was sure.
He took her in his arms very gently, kissed her flushed cheeks and forehead, and began to talk to her in a patient and loving voice, at the same time undoing the hundred and one tiny buttons of her bodice that exasperated his clumsy fingers.
And after all, it proved his point, that this was a satisfying way of making up a quarrel, for she clung to him crying urgently, ‘Let us have a baby, Gilbert! Give me a baby!’ He congratulated himself, as he turned sleepily into his pillow, on his patience and gentleness. At last things were going better, even if he didn’t delude himself that this display of emotion was passion for him. Eugenia had got sentimental after holding that ugly half-caste baby in her arms. That, he feared, was the answer. But it was a step in the right direction.
Molly Jarvis, walking outdoors because she couldn’t sleep, saw the light in the upstairs bedroom go out. She gathered her wrap more closely about her and told herself she had no right to be out here where she could watch the master’s bedroom. She hadn’t meant to watch it. It was unavoidable simply because this was the only window showing a light. When it went out it was like the moon going behind a cloud, leaving the night very dark.
She, too, had been upset about Yella’s dismissal, although she had lived in this country long enough to understand Mr Massingham’s reason. He wanted to set the highest standards of living for his wife. She was to be protected as much as possible from the rawness of life in a convict colony. She was to remain an English lady. And she was up there now in his loving arms. And what would that be like, Molly wondered, beginning to shiver violently. She would never forget Mr Massingham’s splendour that morning when he had stood in the kitchen, legs apart, eyes blazing, bawling at her for having that poor harmless convict in the house.
She knew that his temper had been half pretence. He had shouted at her to make her look at him.
If only he knew how she had to use every bit of her will power to keep her eyes off him. She would watch him as he walked across the courtyard, admiring his broad shoulders, his narrow hips, his confident swagger. One day she was afraid he would read her feelings in her eyes.
She had repressed all her natural loving instincts for so long. When the baby came it would be better. She could pour out all her emotion on it.
Because she must never behave in a way that would make her have to leave Yarrabee. It was the nearest thing to paradise here. She loved the great sky and the distances. The wind crackling in the gum trees, the lonely voices of the crows and peewits, the dazzling light over a drought-stricken landscape, all meant freedom to her. She did not intend to lose it. But she wished it was not so difficult to sleep on these hot nights.
In the morning Gilbert himself took Yella and her baby to Parramatta. He drove off in the buggy at a spanking pace, Yella crouched fearfully in the back clutching the baby as if they were both riding on one of those sudden spirals of dust and whirling leaves that the natives called a willy willy.
When Gilbert returned at midday he called loudly for Eugenia.
‘Where are you, my love?’ His voice could be heard all over the house.
Eugenia came to the top of the stairs, wondering what new problem had occurred.
‘I’ve brought you a present,’ he said, holding up a large birdcage. ‘Fellow in Parramatta catches them and sells them. They mak
e fine pets. Talk, too. So be careful of what you say if you don’t want it repeated.’
The bird in the cage was a white cockatoo with a yellow crest. It edged along its perch and regarded its surroundings with a bright appraising eye.
‘You said you were missing the birds you used to feed at home. So I brought you this one.’
Eugenia came flying down the stairs, laughing with pleasure. ‘Oh, he’s beautiful, Gilbert! Look at his knowing expression. Oh, how delightful of you!’
Spontaneously she flung her arms round him, lifting her lips to be kissed.
‘But if you imagine I am going to play with this instead of Yella’s baby—’
‘You are, of course. Anyway, I got Yella settled with George Harris at the local hotel. He wanted a domesticated black to fetch and carry. Didn’t mind the baby. So all’s well.’
A new home for Yella, a plaything for her. Eugenia lifted a thoughtful eyebrow. Gilbert was exceedingly pleased with himself, thinking he was so astute and clever at arranging their lives happily without giving way on any point himself.
But it was true that she was delighted with the white cockatoo, and it was ungrateful of her to be critical. In marriage the man was the master. What woman would want any other arrangement? She had complained last night that Gilbert had never enquired if she were happy, and now here was evidence of his thought for her.
This was an occasion in her marriage she would always remember, for it was the moment when she became firmly determined to be happy.
Chapter X
VINTAGE… THE PICKERS HAD been arriving since dawn. Two dozen or so men and women of varying ages had walked, or ridden in ramshackle conveyances from Parramatta. They gathered in the courtyard for cups of hot strong tea and the plates of freshly made bread and scones that Mrs Jarvis had been up at four o’clock to bake.
It was a tradition at Yarrabee that the grape pickers were well fed and well cared for. Enormous baskets of cold provisions would be carried up to the terraces at midday, and in the evening another meal would be provided, with plenty of vin ordinaire from last year’s brewing. For those who couldn’t stand the taste of wine there would be more of the strong sweet tea. But no beer or rum.
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