Gilbert Massingham of Yarrabee was regarded as an eccentric in this respect. But he was an honest employer, he paid good wages and was well-liked. So even the most hardened rum drinkers, who winced at the sour taste of the wine, drank it for want of something better. The women watered it down to quench their thirst.
What they liked even better was that Mr Massingham shared their impromptu breakfast with them, striding about, laughing and talking, treating them as old friends—as indeed some of them were. One was an elderly woman, grey-haired and stoop-shouldered, who gave a merry toothless grin and lifted up her skirts and danced a jig when a tow-haired youth produced a fiddle and began to play.
Watching from the doorway, Eugenia clapped her hands, enjoying the light-hearted scene. The youth bowed with a deep flourish, and the old woman executed a sketchy curtsey. Vintage at Yarrabee had an added spice this year since there was a new mistress of whom to catch glimpses.
Not that they were to see much of her. Gilbert had ordered Eugenia to stay indoors out of the hot sun. Paying no attention to her indignant protest, he said that he didn’t want her doing anything so foolish or beneath her dignity as donning old clothes and joining the merry throng laden with their long baskets. When the sun went down she could come and observe from a distance, if she pleased.
So the day, which had begun in such a lively manner, resolved itself into just another long idle expanse of hours. Doing a little sewing, playing the piano, beginning a letter to Sarah, bitterly resenting being shut out of all the fun. She couldn’t even have her customary chat to Peabody digging up thistles and thorn bushes in what was already called the garden because he, too, had joined the pickers. After midday the house was further depleted. Mrs Jarvis had prepared a mammoth lunch of bread, cheese, and cold sausage. Phoebe had helped her to carry the baskets of food to the workers and, without a by-your-leave, both of them had remained on the terraces.
There was only Jane, with her pale plain face, left in the house. When Eugenia asked, with a slight edge to her voice, if she too did not want to join in the excitement, Jane replied emphatically that she did not.
‘I couldn’t stand the heat, ma’am. I don’t know how Molly does. She must have a skin like leather.’
‘Molly?’
‘Mrs Jarvis, ma’am. I beg your pardon. She said to call her Molly, it was more friendly. She’s only a year older than me, after all. Only twenty-six and all that’s happened to her. It would have killed me.’
‘I expect it would,’ Eugenia commented dryly. Jane’s milk and water nature was beginning to irritate her severely. But who was she to criticize? Mrs Jarvis’s harsh experiences would probably have killed her, too.
All the same, she found it intolerable remaining indoors like a prisoner when so much was going on, and after lunch, defying Gilbert’s instructions, she put on her wide-brimmed hat, opened her parasol, and picked her way up the dusty track to watch the animated scene from a suitable distance.
One man had a red handkerchief tied over his head, another a blue. Gilbert scorned a head covering. Eugenia saw his red head as he moved up and down the rows of vines, observing, admonishing. There was a great deal of merry chatter, sometimes snatches of a song. The sky was blue, the hillside brown and olive green, the grapes black with a dusty silver bloom. It would make an interesting water-colour which she could send home to Sarah. Tomorrow she would bring her easel and box of paints. Perhaps Gilbert would consider that a ladylike enough occupation for her. But her loneliness still rankled.
That evening at dinner she pushed away her plate, the food scarcely touched. She considered the slices of mutton uneatable.
Gilbert looked up. ‘What is it? Not hungry?’ He had cleaned his own plate, tough meat, gristle and all.
‘Not now.’ She rang the little silver bell at her right hand, and when Mrs Jarvis came she said in a cool reflective voice,
‘I don’t think you can do two tasks satisfactorily, Mrs Jarvis. You either do the cooking, or pick grapes, but not both.’
Mrs Jarvis, neat as always, in her white cap and apron, only the curve of her throat showing the hot red of sunburn, looked quickly at Gilbert, then back to Eugenia and lowered her eyes.
‘I’m sorry, ma’am. I thought I might be useful on the terraces, the grapes seem so ripe and need picking quickly.’
‘Do you understand viticulture?’
‘No, ma’am, but it’s easy enough to see when fruit is ripe.’
‘Well, I, at this moment, can only see that the dinner is uneatable. Clear the table, and bring some fruit—if you can find anything apart from grapes.’
‘That was unfair,’ Gilbert said, as Mrs Jarvis withdrew. ‘I found my portion perfectly edible.’
‘Because you didn’t taste it,’ said Eugenia. ‘You’re still in your vineyard. And I hope you won’t uphold Mrs Jarvis’s behaviour. I didn’t give her permission to stay on the terraces.’
‘Well, drop the matter, my love. She was interested, and wanted to share in the fun. She worked hard.’
‘It isn’t the kind of work a woman in her condition should be doing. Any more than you consider it the kind of work for your wife.’
Gilbert’s eyebrows went up exasperatedly.
‘So that’s what it is. Your nose is out of joint.’
Eugenia pouted. ‘It was such a long day, all alone except for Jane, and she’s poor company.’
‘Then keep Mrs Jarvis in the house and see that you get a good dinner tomorrow night. But accept the fact that I will never allow you to work outdoors. Having the skin peeling off your nose.’ He got up to drop a placatory kiss on it. ‘It’s much too pretty. Now will you excuse me? I have a lot of things to see to.’
Eugenia thought that Mrs Jarvis looked at her with pity as she sat alone at the table in the lamplight. But the woman didn’t say anything, just put the bowl of peaches and apples down, and went out. A moment later Eugenia heard her laughing in the courtyard. Or someone was laughing, and someone was singing. The scraping of the fiddle came distantly to her ears, and the sound of dancing feet on cobblestones.
Were none of those people tired from their long day?
Even the white cockatoo stirred his feathers and squawked softly in his cage, as if he had caught the prevailing excitement. Eugenia could have sworn she could smell the raw sour smell of new wine on the warm air.
But that was impossible. It would be at least twenty-four hours before fermentation of the must in the scoured dark vats began.
There would be three or four more days like this one before the vines had been stripped, the grapes pressed, the wine casks filled, and vintage over.
Next year Eugenia resolved that she would not feel such an outsider. She would not need to vent petty irritation on Mrs Jarvis to disguise her loneliness.
Although Gilbert would not permit her on the terraces in the hot sun, he did, at the end of the second day, ask her to come into the cool winery. He was excited. He came hurrying into the house, calling for her, and when she came, he took her arm and said she positively must see what was happening.
It was always, to him, a miracle. Fermentation had begun. The juice of the pressed grapes was moving. It seethed and hissed and bubbled like some sort of black porridge, the mat of grapeskins twisting constantly as the gas bubbles broke through.
The winery reeked with the tingling sour smell of fermentation. Eugenia longed to hold her handkerchief to her face. But this, she sensed, would have offended Gilbert, and all the red-faced sweating men who were operating the press over another vat.
‘It seems to be alive,’ she exclaimed.
Gilbert laughed aloud. He was intoxicated without having touched a drop of his half-brewed wine.
‘The bloom on the grape makes a kind of yeast, and this begins fermentation. The secret is to know when to run the wine off into casks. For a sauterne, to keep the sugar content, fermentation has to be brief. For the dry reds it’s a much longer process. This vat will produce the best Yarrabee claret—fro
m your uncle’s vine cuttings, gathered the day we first met.’ He took her hand, and she caught his excitement, smiling up at him warmly, in spite of the fact that the sour smell of the cellar was again making her feel nauseated. She didn’t think she would ever get used to it. She secretly didn’t consider that seething witches’ cauldron a very romantic thing to come out of their first meeting in France.
‘Is it being a good vintage?’ she asked. She was glad that Gilbert was giving her this chance to make amends for her childishness the previous evening.
‘Excellent. You have brought me luck.’
My dear Sarah, [she wrote several days later]
For the first time I am alone, except for the servants. My dear husband has set out for Sydney with a consignment of wine bottled two years ago. This is to make room in the cellars for the present vintage, and also to bring in some money. The wine will be bought by hotels and clubs and private individuals in Sydney, and a small selection of it is, I believe, to be sent to London, with the aim of establishing the fame of Australia as a wine-growing country. We hear that the other vignerons in the Hunter River valley may have a preferable situation to us, as it is more sheltered from the burning summer winds and winter frosts.
But Gilbert has created Yarrabee with such pride and so much hard work, that I know he will never leave here. I am glad because we have the little town of Parramatta not too far away. In the Hunter valley the vineyards are much too isolated from civilization.
It is my first time without Gilbert and I got a great fright early this morning when there was a crashing noise, and three kangaroos came leaping past the house, over Peabody’s newly dug garden. They are such strange awkward creatures. They seem to have springs attached to their hind feet. It appeared that a herd had got into the vineyard and trampled the vines badly. We are so thankful it happened after and not before vintage. But this is one of the hazards an Australian vigneron faces.
My white cockatoo—I have called him Erasmus because he looks so wise—screeched with alarm, or it may have been approval, when this disturbance happened. He seemed very pleased with himself and after all his squawking he quite clearly enunciated one word which he must have learned from me. It was ‘Mercy!’ He said it with such a quaint inflection, all the time cocking a bright eye at me as if he knew he had amused me. And indeed he had. I laughed so much that Mrs Jarvis came in to see what was the matter.
We tried our best to persuade Erasmus to show off his cleverness again, but he refused to do so. He only hung upside down by one claw. He really is an endearing clown of a bird.
When Gilbert returns he will be bringing with him our first weekend guests, Bess and Edmund Kelly, dear fussy old Mrs Ashburton, whom I long to see again, Doctor and Mrs Noakes, the Wentworths and another wine grower, a Mr Blaxland, who is also an explorer, and reputed to be an interesting character.
Our guest rooms will be in use for the first time. So you can imagine how busy we women are…
The weather was cooler at last. It was possible to walk in the sun and actually enjoy it. And Eugenia, with her inescapable honesty, had to admit that she was enjoying having her husband absent for a little while. When he returned they would meet like old friends. That slight uneasiness between them, a reserve on her part that she had been unable to overcome, and a perplexity on his, would vanish. Or so she hoped.
There was little time to brood on problems, for the house was in the kind of upheaval that she had always enjoyed when it had happened at Lichfield Court. Rooms were scoured, beds made, stores of food checked, menus discussed with Mrs Jarvis, Peabody supervised in the garden.
There had been a series of heavy thunderstorms, which made the ground easy to work. A haze of green was spreading over it from the seeded summer grass. The rose cuttings, acquired by Peabody from various sources in Parramatta, were planted, also honeysuckle to climb up the verandah posts, various native shrubs, poinsettias, hibiscus, and wattle which Peabody promised would be a fluffy golden glory in the spring. At the point which divided the garden from the horse paddock Peabody planted a line of weeping willows. These, Eugenia was not so happy about. They reminded her of the child’s grave by the creek. She had never liked going back to that sad place, even when the black swans came. She had stood at a distance, thinking that the swans had looked like mourners.
But the willows would have to stay because Peabody was a stubborn creature whose eccentricity had to be humoured.
Once, when Eugenia had ventured to criticize his choice of a spot for planting a shrub, he had thrown down his spade and walked away. He had come back later, muttering to himself, and casting suspicious glances towards the house. The shrub had eventually been planted exactly one foot away from the original spot. No doubt that was the best Peabody could do in the way of an apology.
The bird-bath which Eugenia had found at the blacksmith’s in Parramatta—it had been discarded by immigrants whose dray was already overloaded—was just tolerated by Peabody.
‘For them blasted crows!’ he said.
‘No, when the garden has grown the small birds will come. I have seen them in the garden at Government House. Wrens and fantails, and finches with wonderful colours.’
‘You’ll get them big greedy wood pigeons, too,’ Peabody said gloomily. ‘And kookaburras and galahs deafening you.’
Eugenia ignored his pessimism, saying dreamily, ‘I can hardly imagine when all this will be a bower of flowers and trees and birds.’
Then the immense lonely distances would be hidden, she thought privately. But all Peabody could say was that it would take too long for everything to grow the way she imagined it.
‘You’re like the master,’ Peabody grumbled. ‘Always talking of his wines maturing. He’s going to live to drink his fifty-year-old brandy, he says. Laid down his first year at Yarrabee. That’s a long time to wait. And you waiting for your garden to look like an English one.’
The shut-in look came over the leathery face.
‘Blasted country,’ he said, shuffling away.
That was when the foolish surly fellow distressed Eugenia. He constantly struck that sad lonely chord in her own self. But she would overcome her homesickness. She was determined to.
Chapter XI
MRS ASHBURTON HAD LOST a shawl, and a small tapestry bag containing various necessities such as rice powder, gloves, handkerchiefs, and smelling salts, and two fans.
She couldn’t imagine where she had mislaid these articles, but Eugenia was not to allow this misfortune to upset the weekend. The only problem was that Mrs Ashburton could not possibly go down to dinner without carrying a fan, or venture outdoors without gloves. She was also inclined to grow faint if she knew there were no smelling salts available. And if one could only see her complexion without the aid of a little clever disguise in the way of a touch of rouge and powder!
It was the history of the journey from England to Australia all over again. But now Eugenia found it endearing rather than irritating. She was so happy to have the house full of people. It was immensely exciting, her first house party. She said eagerly, ‘I am sure your bag will be recovered. In the meantime, I can provide you with all the missing articles. Do tell me if you like your room. I don’t believe you have looked at a thing.’
‘Oh, yes, I’ve seen that you have a grand house. And this room is very nice. Very nice.’ The lady’s agitated gaze was turned perfunctorily on the room. She didn’t appear to notice Eugenia’s prettiest patchwork quilt on the bed, or the meticulous equipment of the dressing table from silver-backed mirror to pincushion. ‘Which way does the window face? I can’t endure to be woken by the early morning sun.’ Then she realized her rudeness, and gave one of her wide warm smiles. ‘Come and give me a kiss, Eugenia, bless your heart. I think you have a lovely home, and you’re looking quite bonny. You have a good colour.’
Folded to Mrs Ashburton’s ample crackling bosom, Eugenia protested. ‘That’s only because I’m so excited. I usually go pale in the heat. I look like a pee
led potato. But now it’s cooler, and I’m in excellent health. And so happy to have you here.’
‘I’m happy to see you, too, my dear. I’ve missed you. What’s more, my son is finding his old mother a trouble and a bore. I declare it’s too bad. All he can say is that he wants to go exploring into the interior. And this may be for a matter of months, or even years. I have no patience with him. Bringing me on this long journey to live all by myself in Sydney. I could have done that in Cheltenham, and much more happily, I tell him. Well, that’s the thoughtlessness of youth. And I must say it’s a pity no one told us of the prevalence of flies in this country. A very persistent insect.’
‘Mrs Ashburton, I must go and look after my other guests. Will you rest for an hour? I’ll tell Mrs Jarvis to bring your tea upstairs. We don’t dine until eight.’
‘Mrs Jarvis? Is that woman still here?’
‘Indeed she is. She is an excellent servant. I couldn’t do without her. Are you prejudiced because she was a convict?’
‘I declare, Eugenia Massingham! That might have been your husband talking. No, I am not prejudiced because she was a convict. I merely thought she might find country life too tedious.’
‘If you are implying she is pining for the life of the streets you are very much mistaken. She is an agreeable and refined woman.’
Mrs Ashburton pouted and puffed, and patted at her wadded grey hair.
‘Well, well, I daresay. You are so young and innocent, Eugenia. I expect you are going to be one of these good women who helps fallen women. For my part, I find them simply tiresome and would happily leave them lying in the gutter.’
Eugenia laughed merrily. ‘Dear Mrs Ashburton! I really have missed you so much.’
Dorothy Eden Page 12