The Killing of Louisa

by Janet Lee

  It was a marshy beach, more of a swamp I suppose, and in some parts the water was quite foul and smelly from the Botany factories. But a little further down was a small creek and there the water had just a brown tinge, I think from the tree bark, or so I was told. The children enjoyed skipping through the shallow water. There were tiny fish to chase and the children would cover themselves with the mud from under the trees and scrub it into their skin, which I would allow provided they would get the sand from the swamp and scrub their legs and arms afterwards because there is nothing such as sand to get a body clean, sir, even better than soap. And sand is free to use.

  I did not romp in the water myself but on occasion, if the weather was particularly hot, I would lift the hem of my skirts and slip my bare feet into the water. It reminded me of my own childhood, and the happy times when I would swim in the dam with the other children and so it gave me great pleasure to see my own children having the same sort of fun. Although in some ways it made me sad too, sir, as at times I felt very old, thinking of being a child and now having so many children myself.

  And so we settled in and made our life here in Sydney.

  We had been living in Botany for nearly a year when my next baby, my David, was born. Even though he was my eighth child, he was a difficult birth. He seemed a weak baby from the first and had to be smacked several times before he would cry.

  David had something like the fits that my boy Ernest once had, although of course Ernest was older. Oh, it is a terrible thing for a mother to watch, sir.

  Cruel is what it is.

  My baby David died in my arms when he was but twelve days old.

  He had been fitting that morning, throwing his head back and making no noise. His body then stiffened and his eyes showed their whites and he held his breath. Then he went limp, and I waited for the gasp, but it did not come.

  I rolled him onto his belly and he flopped over my arm, his little head dangling forward, and I shook his body but he did not breathe.

  I called out for help and one of my neighbours, Mrs Malone, came in and saw David, and saw me swing him over and shake him.

  I rolled him onto his back, but he had not yet breathed again, and Mrs Malone put her mouth to his and tried to breathe life into him, for, she said later, she had heard this could be done. After a few minutes, she placed her hand on my arm and took the baby from me and wrapped him in his blanket.

  Then she sat me in the chair and gave me the tiny body.

  I allowed myself to cry, and I was very low, sir, as it is a terrible thing to lose a baby, and I was tired, for I had not slept much since his birth. I thought of my boy Ernest, who had died many years before when he was but a little older. And I thought of him lying in his grave, with no one to bring him roses.

  Someone went and fetched Charles from work, and he came home, took the baby from me and held him in his arms.

  David is buried at Rookwood cemetery, I believe, for Charles saw to those arrangements and I did not travel out on the train.

  I do not think the grave is marked.

  The chaplain asks if I would like to pray for David with him, and I say I do, and so he prays for all my children.

  27.

  The next time the chaplain and I speak, we are in my cell. He has come to visit me here and we sit upon the chairs. The warder stands in the corner.

  It is not as pleasant as in the vestry, as there is no table and the slop bucket is in the corner.

  But I do not need to wear my shackles, so there is that.

  We talk again of my baby David.

  Charles and I had been married some sixteen years when our David died. We had less money than when we first married, when my mother thought she was making such a good match for me. Two of our children had died, which puts a great strain on a marriage, sir, and we still owed money from our time in Muswellbrook. We had a large family with Herbert, Reuben, Arthur, Frederick, May and Edwin, and the older boys were eating the amount of grown men, though they were not yet earning a full wage. They would sometimes work alongside Charles if there was the opportunity, sorting and carting the green skins from the sheep – those which are stripped off the freshly slaughtered animal – but it was not regular work.

  We quarrelled more. And whenever we had words, I would visit the Amos’s Pier Hotel, as it was only a few doors up the road from where we lived.

  You will not have seen this hotel, I think, sir?

  Oh, it is nice, although not very grand, but there is an area for ladies to sit and the bar is made of one solid piece of timber with a looking glass running right along the back of the counter, so as to give more light and reflect the gaiety of the patrons. Of course, Botany also has the Sir Joseph Banks Hotel, but that is a bit further away and it is a sight to see, with a menagerie I believe, and I have heard there is even an elephant, but I never saw this animal myself.

  Well, Charles begrudged me the time I passed at the hotel, and the little money I spent there, although he himself would go every Saturday evening, regular. But he was not a big drinker and for that I am grateful, as some men will be violent with too much drink in them and he was never that, was Charles, although he did argue badly with Michael Collins on just one occasion, but that was not his normal character, you understand.

  I cannot rightly remember when it was, but it was after one of his Saturday night sessions that Charles took it upon himself to come back home with a gentleman in tow, who he had met that very night and who had arrived in Botany to seek work as a woolwasher. Charles walked into the house and settled this man in the back area near the kitchen. I was not pleased that Charles had brought a man I did not know into our home for the night and I told Charles so when we went into our bedroom. We argued quietly, in that hissing way that you do when you do not want others to hear, and I said to Charles the same things that I had said when we spoke on the subject previously – that I was not in favour of boarders because our cottage was not big enough and they would be extra work. He said we needed the money, and I said there would be more mouths to feed and more washing and that I would have to do all of the caring for the boarders and he said what was it that I thought he did all day while I was playing with the children.

  That hurt me a great deal, sir, for it is a lot of work to care for children, and do all the washing, and cook the meals, and there is the drudgery of it – doing the same thing every day and knowing you will need to get up and do it again tomorrow.

  Then Charles said we should not quarrel as our new boarder would hear and he showed me the coin which the new boarder had brought with him and said that I may have that to spend as I pleased. So I softened a little to the idea of boarders, and as it turned out our first gentleman was an easy boarder to have – always paid his rent regular and normally only ever took a cup of tea from our table, although he did have a meal with us on occasion, but that was not a regularity. He was never any trouble, and he boarded with us for some years, coming and going whenever his work brought him into Botany.

  Charles said he would like to bring in other boarders, and there is no denying their coin was much needed, and so I agreed. Soon there were so many people living in the house that I felt there was always someone underfoot, if not a child then a man. The house was crowded and we were all jumbled in together. The younger boys and May slept in our room and the older boys slept on the stretchers in the front room, which was the sitting-room parlour. We would lay the stretchers out for the older children at night, and then fold them up against the wall when they were at school or at work, but it became such a chore to do this when they left for work at four in the morning that eventually we would just leave the stretchers out and the house was always untidy. But we did use one of these fold-outs for Charles when he was sick.

  The men who came as boarders would sleep in the back room, near the kitchen, and there were some who worked different shifts, so they would share a bed, as it were. We mad
e some accommodations for the number of people in the house and bought a larger table for the kitchen area and a second bath, so that on Saturdays the men might have a cold bath before they got into the warm tub, and that way they would wash off the worst of their dirt in the cold and still have some warm water left to share for the last man in. I left the organising of the men’s bathing to Charles. I did not stay in the house on a Saturday after heating the water and making the preparations. All the men would be in a state of undress during their bathing, and so Saturday afternoons became an opportunity to sit at the hotel.

  My own bathing arrangements would be undertaken on a Saturday morning, with Charles standing guard on the door to protect my modesty.

  I was strict about the men walking to the pump and washing before they came into the yard from the back of the house, as I said I was not carting water for that many men to wash off their filth from work, as the blood and pieces of wool which came home with them might as well be slops for all the mess and smell. Oh, there is nothing like it, that sheep smell, sir. And I said that I had to cart the water for the Monday clothes wash, and that was job enough.

  When we first took in boarders, there was all the gaiety of getting to know new people, and the house full of chatter and the door always opening and closing and so many stories from all the different people coming and going.

  Having so many extra people in the house made for a bit of a change, and they took a great interest in the children. And on occasion, we would send one of the children along to the hotel for a jug of beer, and then we would sit and share some laughs.

  But I would not like to give the impression it was easy having boarders. Some of them became like visitors who overwore their welcome and others expected me to act as their mother and pick up after them and cook all their meals even though that was not in the terms which were offered. The house was always crowded, with everyone talking, and eating, and there was always dirty washing and dirty dishes and people coming and going and heading out to work at different times. There was always someone wanting something, a child crying or wanting to be fed or with a snotty nose or filthy pants, or a man saying, Missus, if you don’t mind … and then they would be wanting a button sewed or a cup of tea or whatever their fancy was at the time, for some men who come as boarders seem to be unable to put one foot in front of the other without being told to.

  Nearly all of the boarders enjoyed the noise of the children when they first arrived and called them their little pets and darling treasures and then would change their tune and be annoyed by the children and all the racket. There was always someone in a state of undress and I began to not know which way to look, for there was always a man in front of me half covered up. And there seemed to be so many extra mouths to be fed, and so much more washing to be done, and with just me to do it all.

  It was about this time that I had a falling-out with one of the neighbours over some clothing which went missing. With so many people in the house, I would try to escape and take a walk with the children down to the edge of the swampy beach, and I would sit and look out over the water.

  I think I have described this area to you before, sir. Even though it was swampy and somewhat smelly, although not as smelly as it has become, for there are a great many more houses and privies and such, I would take the children to the water and I would take down some of the washing, for even if it was not Monday there would always be dirty washing to be done.

  The children would run and play and I would wash the clothes in the little creek, which ran out into the swamp area, as the water was slightly deeper there. It was not a real wash, mind, just a rinse to see us through, and so I could keep going with the work while the children had a play in the creek. I had a piece of rope strung up as a clothes line between two old paperbarks and I would hang the washing up. Never privates, you understand, just the outer garments and towels and the linens and the like. And I would sit and watch the children frolic as it dried. Sometimes I would leave the washing there overnight if it did not dry proper, for the neighbour, Mrs Malone, had said it was quite safe to do so. I would collect the washing when I went back the next day with the children.

  On this particular occasion, the children and I went down to the swamp. I had done quite a large wash, for the weather had been poor and raining on the Monday previous and my washing had built up. I left several pieces of the wash hanging overnight and when the children and I went down the next day, it was gone. Now, I thought perhaps one of my neighbours had brought my washing in for me.

  I went back up the path and stopped at the first house along, which is the house of … no, I will not say whose house it was, sir, for we had words on that occasion.

  I looked along her yard and saw nothing upon the line, but just then the lady came out of the back of her house and so I asked her if she had brought my washing in from down at the bay. She said she had not, and that she knew for a fact none of the other women had either, for she had been with them that morning and they had not mentioned it.

  I asked had she been discussing my washing with them for her to know that and she said she had not, but …

  And there she stopped.

  I said, But what, for it was obvious to me that she had intended to say more. And she said that she just meant she was sure they would have mentioned it if they had brought in my washing for my washing had been a topic they had discussed previous.

  Why had they been talking of my washing? I asked her.

  She told me that some in the neighbourhood had talked of how I left my washing hanging down among the trees like a gypsy and that I did not take the time to boil the copper like a proper mother should and how the clothes would never get clean by just being washed in a creek.

  She said when I had asked Mrs Malone about the hanging of clothes down near the bay she was not given to understanding that I would be washing the clothes there too.

  And I said some harsh words and that the women of the neighbourhood might have taken the clothes themselves, for they were such … well, I will not repeat what was said, sir, on account of your religion, but it was not a kind name and one that is said about women of a certain type.

  Then she said that no other woman in the street would have touched my washing, except that a good housewife might take it in and wash it with hot water, and clean the clothes, and she folded her arms across her chest as she said this as though daring me to say more.

  I didn’t.

  I walked back down to the bay and sat on the ground and cried my heart out, there being no one to see me. I had had a fight with the neighbour and I had lost my washing and I never did find it, and one of the things I lost was the coloured dress. Of course, by then it was not brightly coloured and it had worn threadbare in places and been remade twice, but I did sorely miss it.

  It was one of the last things I had from that other life with the Missus.

  28.

  I did not hang my washing at the creek again, and with so many boarders the backyard became a maze of washing lines, and it made the house seem even smaller.

  On wet days, the washing would be strung around the house and it would seem that the men would be strung the same, lounging all about the parlour, with not a bit of privacy for a woman. Sometimes not even as much as a chair to sit on and call her own.

  If I was feeding a baby, I had to go into the bedroom and, as there was no chair, I would sit upon the bed.

  All of the boarders who were with us at this time were men that Charles had brought home, having met them at the Amos’s Pier Hotel when he went for his weekly drink or having worked with them at one of the factories. They were mostly older men who were either single or had not yet brought their families to Sydney and were trying to find their feet.

  They helped with the money side of things, sir, but it became very hard for us, for Charles and me, to continue on as a man and wife with me being the landlady to everyone. I found I needed to
stretch the money more. There were extra candles required and more tea and milk. We did not supply meals as a rule, but I did give a breakfast of bread and jam to the men, as most of them went off to work early and I would not see a man head off to a day’s work on an empty stomach. And there were occasions, when Charles had butchered a pig or such, that I would cook a roast and they would all partake, for an extra coin, of course.

  Still, we were managing to repay some of our creditors from our time in Muswellbrook, for Charles did not like to be in their debt.

  Charles permitted the boarders to have a few drinks, but he was most particular that they were moderate, and he would tell them when they first moved in that they would not be welcome if they took too much to the drink. He liked well enough to sit out the back, for we had a little area where we had a few stumps placed and a fireplace in the middle, not unlike the place we had made in Merriwa, and I would boil the copper on that fire to do the wash every Monday. He and the men would sit and send the children to the pub for a sixpence of beer.

  We would sit just at the back of the kitchen, quite a nice area, though you could still see the privy.

  I had some geraniums growing beside the privy, for my mother always liked to have a geranium growing there and would plant a cutting at each of the places we lived. She said it would make that place nicer to have a few flowers about and a geranium never took much water and of course there are those who say that a geranium will keep away the snakes.

  The yard was not a big yard, but there was a fence between it and the track to the pump, and the swamp of the bay. We had some tomatoes and pumpkins growing over the fence. Pumpkins are handy additions to have, sir, when you are trying to feed a lot of hungry mouths. And roast pumpkin with a leg of mutton is very tasty. I recall one of our boarders, Mr Peters, one of our early boarders, he said he had heard that some folk would not eat pumpkin themselves and would only grow them for lanterns and to feed to the cattle but he felt they were surely missing out for the way I cooked pumpkins was a real delicacy and make no mistake.