by Joy Rhoades
Kate waved a hullo. The teacher was known as ‘Mrs P’ to the parents but as ‘Bomber’ to the children. Today she was holding the reins of a black pony, one boy already on it, while a second, a bay, was being saddled by a child behind her.
The school building seemed unchanged since Kate had left twelve years before to go to high school in Longhope. FRENCHMAN’S CREEK SCHOOL 1913 was painted in white across the narrow end of the rectangular building, itself a dull brown with windows along both sides. Even the two thunder boxes – the outhouses, Mrs P called them – were the same.
‘Hullo, dear.’ Mrs Pommer smiled. ‘Do come along, Mullinses. And Matthew, you know better. Bits and bridle all ready before the saddle goes on.’ She shook her head.
Kate knew them. They lived on the Longhope Road and their father worked on Tindervale for the Rileys. Matthew, Mark and Jean, from memory.
‘Jean – why don’t you get up with Mark? You’ll set a record in the Empire Games for the slowest mount.’
The boy on the pony laughed and the little girl started to cry.
‘You’re a big sook, Jeannie,’ Matthew said.
‘Manners, please, Matthew.’
‘C’mon, Jeannie,’ Matthew called again. From atop the mounting stump, Jean scrambled onto the pony’s back, at the front. Almost before she was onboard, the pony moved off, the boys each with his arms around the waist of the child in front; Jean, incongruously, with the reins.
‘See you tomorrow,’ called Mrs Pommer. ‘Now, Kate. How are you? Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘Mr Grimes is waiting, so I must be quick,’ Kate said, with a glance across at the truck.
‘It’s Mr Grimes’s boy, isn’t it? He’ll come here?’ The women walked towards the school building.
‘Sort of. He’s a relative of Mr Grimes, a great-nephew. And yes please. Dad would like him to come to Frenchman’s Creek.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Eleven.’
‘No other family? Siblings?’
Kate shook her head.
‘What sort of boy is he? First impressions?’ They’d reached the school gate. ‘An only child can be quite mature. Beyond their years.’
Kate smiled. ‘I don’t think that’s Harry. Not yet, anyway.’
Mrs Pommer smiled then. ‘All right. I’ll see for my —’ The older woman stopped mid-sentence and stared out into the bush on the far side of the horse paddock. She yelled suddenly. ‘Gorn! You get along!’ At her shout, a dog barked from the house on the other side of the school.
‘That’s our Rollo barking,’ Mrs Pommer said. ‘He knows when that darky kid’s about.’
‘Who is it? Why’s he not living on the Mission?’
‘It’s the boy the McGees adopted.’
‘Oh.’ Kate had heard the story. A childless couple, Scottish, not long in Australia, had managed to adopt a little half-caste boy. Presbyterian, they were apparently.
‘Soft in the head is that McGee,’ Mrs Pommer said. ‘And it’ll all end in tears, I tell you. You know, the boy hangs about the school after hours. I’ve caught him looking in the windows.’
‘Why does he do that?’
‘His mother, for some reason, tells him he can learn like white children. And they adopted him – they’ve got the papers and everything – so Sergeant Thompson can’t pick him up.’
‘Wingnut?’
Mrs Pommer frowned. ‘Yes.’
Kate smiled. The name was on account of the sergeant’s large ears, evident only when he removed his cap. ‘Where does the McGee boy go to school?’
‘Well, he’s not coming at the moment. Mrs McGee says the children here picked on him and she won’t send him. I think that’s why he sneaks over after school, to see where we’re up to. Easier with him not here, to be honest. Some families complained.’
‘What about the Mission school? Too far?’
‘Too far. So she – Mrs McGee – is teaching him herself, filling his head with nonsense.’ From across the street, the dog picked up with another round of barking.
‘But now. This young Harry. Eight-thirty sharp Monday morning? You’ll remember the timetable.’
‘He’ll be here.’ And he’d be quite chuffed too. That thought made her oddly happy; he’d wormed his way in, had young Harry. She walked back to the truck with one eye on the bush for the boy.
In town, while Grimes went into the bank to cash the wages cheque, Kate popped into Nettiford’s, the haberdashery, for some tea towels. The bell jangled, loud in the cool silence of the shop. Kate’s eyes took a moment to adjust to the dark.
‘Mrs Dowd.’ Mrs Nettiford’s voice was as cool as the shop and Kate wondered about that unpaid bill in the post. Surely that was a mistake.
‘Kate, dear!’ Elizabeth Fleming appeared from the other side of the shop.
The ‘dear’ part was a bit much. They were hardly more than a couple of years apart in age. And Elizabeth had always been too snooty to chat to Kate’s mother. ‘How are things on Avondale?’ Kate asked.
‘Not bad. Dry, though. Busy. In the yards.’ Elizabeth held a bright tablecloth, running her fingers over the bumpy surface.
‘You’re working in the yards?’ Kate asked.
‘Not really. The POWs help our men with the heavy work now, and anything else, we do.’
‘Is it hard?’
‘Only wrestling the rams!’ Elizabeth laughed. ‘Seriously. To get the upper hand with the young rams, I tip them over and sit on them.’
‘You sit astride?’ Kate couldn’t picture the prim and proper Elizabeth on a ram.
‘No, no. If they have a go at you – you know, charge you – then you twist them on their back and sit on them. They’ll leave you alone for a bit. Only works while they’re quite small, mind.’
‘Did you want anything today, Mrs Dowd?’ Mrs Nettiford was almost moving her on.
‘Here,’ Elizabeth interrupted, ‘you should take a few of these tablecloths. They’re new. It’s called seersucker. You don’t iron them, you see.’
‘Daisy – our domestic – spends hours starching tablecloths.’
‘She from the Home?’
‘Yes,’ Kate said. ‘Been with us a couple of months. Got her in November.’
‘Cheap as chips, aren’t they?’ Elizabeth said. ‘We have a new one too, so there are tears every morning. I remind her that this is her only chance to better herself, away from the black part of her family. She should be grateful, if anything. What’s yours like?’
‘Daisy? She’s a sweetie. A half-caste, too. Her dad is a drover, apparently. She was going to the Mission school at Broken Hill before the Board shifted her here.’
‘The Board gets them far away from their own district,’ Elizabeth explained. ‘Away from the bad influence of their parents and so on.’
‘So, you takin anythin, Mrs Dowd?’ Mrs Nettiford asked.
‘No. Thanks. I must be on my way,’ Kate said. ‘Best wishes to John, Elizabeth.’
Outside in the sunlight, Kate was annoyed with Mrs Nettiford. Well, more fool her. Kate could always order by post up from Sydney.
‘Mrs Dowd!’
Kate turned towards the voice, a man’s voice, from along the street. It was Mr Addison from the bank. Kate had always found him a bit snake-like, with heavy-lidded eyes behind thick glasses.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, glancing to see who was about. ‘I wanted to catch you. To speak to you without your father. I’m sorry, I tell you.’
‘Sorry? What for?’
‘About Amiens. It’s a great shame.’
Kate stared at him. Beyond, Grimes waved at her from the Amiens truck. Time to go.
Addison followed her gaze. ‘I could give you a lift home, Mrs Dowd. I have a meeting in Wingadee this afternoon, anyway, and we could talk. Tell you how sorry I am.’
‘Mrs D.’ Grimes’s tone was impatient. But Kate needed to know what Addison was rabbiting on about. When she told Grimes she’d accept Mr Addison’s lift, he left
for home.
As Kate pulled her door shut, Addison reversed out, his cigarette smoke swirling about the car. She wound her window all the way down.
On the Wingadee road, Addison soon overtook the Amiens truck. Grimes did not wave.
As a blur of eucalyptus streamed by, Kate inhaled to ask Addison what he meant. ‘You’re sorry about Amiens, Mr Addison?’
‘The Amiens debts. The overdue interest.’
‘Overdue? You’re mistaken,’ Kate said evenly. ‘My father always pays his bills.’
‘Incorrect. You’re overdue in the most serious way.’ He drew on the cigarette and blew the smoke over his shoulder out the window.
‘Dad will not be happy you’re saying these things.’
Addison brought the car to such a sudden stop off the bitumen, the wheels skidded in the dirt and Kate put a hand up against the wooden dashboard. ‘You don’t know,’ he said.
‘Know?’ She fought to stay calm. She would wonder later if it was at this moment that her old life ended.
Dust floated past the vehicle, sliced by the black myalls that lined the road. Addison flicked ash through his open window, let the clutch out and steered the car back onto the road.
‘You should know.’ He looked straight ahead and spoke slowly. ‘Your father hasn’t paid any interest since December ’42. The annual payment was made that year. But not in ’43, nor in ’44.’
‘Nothing would be overdue.’ Kate repeated what she knew, what she used to hear over and over from her father when she was growing up.
Addison shook his head. ‘Your father mortgaged Amiens – mortgaged it heavily – to buy Binchey’s, in ’39.’
‘I know he had to mortgage then. Even so, he always pays on time.’
‘He did pay the annual interest that first year, in December ’39 – after the wool cheque, you know – and on time again for three years, in December ’40, ’41 and ’42. Then he stopped. Nothing since.’
‘That can’t be right.’
He went on as if he had not heard her. ‘You might have survived that, but there’s worse. Even with the mortgage, he still had an overdraft – a big one – available. My predecessor at the bank made the mistake of leaving the overdraft available for him. Until ’43 it was largely undrawn, so your father was all right, you know, still able to make a go of it, and paying the interest on the mortgage each year. But in early ’43 – before I arrived in the district, coincidentally – he drew down most of the overdraft in one go.’
‘Drew down? What does that mean?’
‘He borrowed. He withdrew almost all he was entitled to borrow under the overdraft.’
‘What for?’
‘I hoped you might know. He won’t discuss it with me. But an overdraft is a temporary accommodation. Not two years.’
‘This was early ’43?’ Kate’s voice was soft.
‘Yes. March, from memory. Did he buy anything? A ram? Anything?’
Kate shook her head. But she remembered the time. She’d nursed her mother through much of ’42. ‘My mother passed away that January. January ’43.’ Her father had grieved so deeply, she’d worried for his mind.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Dowd. But he’s missed two annual interest payments. He owes a great deal of money. Our head office in Sydney is insisting that if a payment is not made shortly, we must begin proceedings to enforce the mortgage.’
‘Enforce?’
‘If there is no payment very soon, Amiens will be sold.’
‘But Amiens is not for sale. We’re not selling it.’
He shook his head. ‘The bank will sell it.’
‘But we don’t owe any money.’
‘On the contrary! It’s a great deal of money. And if a borrower doesn’t pay his debts, the bank can sell the property mortgaged against that debt. You understand that, don’t you? You should, you’re a director of the Amiens Pastoral Company. And a signatory on the cheque account.’
She didn’t tell him but her mother hadn’t believed in ladies working in the paddocks or ‘doing the books’. So Kate knew less than most about the business side of things, just what she’d heard and picked up on the sly. But she knew people who’d gone bust, like the Bincheys and the Drummonds. Then again they were poor graziers or they borrowed too much, on places that ran short of water in a drought.
Addison turned off the main road into Amiens. ‘I’m telling you this —’ he stopped mid-sentence as his voice shook over the grid ‘— so you can arrange for somewhere to go, when the place is sold.’
‘Go?’ she said, incredulous.
‘I’m telling you, we will serve notice to take possession. You should make arrangements to get off the place before the 31st of March.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘If nothing is paid this quarter, then we’ll enforce at the first opportunity, or early the next quarter. So you need to be long gone by the 31st of March.’
‘Oh.’ Kate’s mouth shaped the word but no sound came.
‘At the very most you have eight weeks, Mrs Dowd. That’s not a lot of time given the packing and the shift you need to do. Take your personal possessions only, no farm equipment, of course. That belongs to the bank. No feathering your nest.’
‘How much do we owe?’
Addison inhaled. ‘Mrs Dowd! I couldn’t possibly disclose that to you.’
‘But you’re telling me everything else? Please. I must know.’
‘Certainly not. Client confidentiality must be respected.’ Tell her some things but not the most important bit? He was a drongo. Her father was right about that. Kate kept her eyes straight ahead. ‘If. If we do owe all this money, what can I do?’
‘You’d need money, Mrs Dowd. A great deal. If you have a pot of gold in your garden, I suggest you sell it quickly.’ He laughed. ‘Frankly, it’s too late to do anything. The land is falling in value every month the drought goes on, so the bank’s position worsens. You simply need to make plans about where you’ll go. There’s a tiny bit left on your overdraft for food and wages for a short time. What’s left should cover some frugal moving expenses too but we will foreclose, so you must plan now.’
She wanted to reject everything he had said but she was very worried. The car jolted to a stop, and Kate was surprised to find they’d arrived at the homestead gates. She got out slowly, the Amiens dogs barking and jumping around her.
‘You must make your plans fast,’ Addison said again and she swung the heavy car door closed. She could not imagine living away from Amiens, from the gully and the dam and house. She watched the car go, a trail of dust behind it. He took the gully too fast and Kate got a small amount of pleasure as his car bottomed out with a bang.
‘Gotcha!’ Harry came running along the verandah from the direction of the kitchen and jumped off onto the lawn next to Kate. ‘Aw. I thought y’was Daisy. I’m it, see.’
‘What?’ Kate asked. She rubbed her sunburned forearm, thinking of what Addison had said about selling Amiens.
‘I thought you was Daisy. Hidey-go-seek,’ Harry said. ‘I never bloody hear her, but.’
‘Harry,’ Kate said automatically. ‘No swearing.’ She liked Harry and Daisy to play together now and then. There were no other children on Amiens.
‘She won’t be inside. That’s fer sure,’ Harry said.
Her father appeared in the office door. ‘Cuppa tea, Kate?’
‘All right.’ But what she really wanted was to ask him about the money. ‘Daisy, can you come out? Wherever you are?’
Victorious, Daisy appeared from the wisteria arbour and, with a big grin, took herself off to the kitchen. Even through the fog of her worry, it struck Kate that Daisy was pretty, prettier all the time. Her mother used to say of Aboriginal women, ‘They’re attractive only to a certain sort of man.’ But it seemed to Kate that men were men. Daisy would be beautiful one day.
Harry came up onto the verandah and spun the wicker chair with one hand, and it fell over with a loud bang.
‘Harry! Ya
bloody drongo,’ her father shouted, startled by the noise. ‘A dolt could of guessed the arbour. Hide in plain bloody sight. That’s the trick.’
Kate shook her head. Her father was unpredictable. Harry stomped off, offended, towards the manager’s cottage. She followed her father inside in case he was difficult with Daisy. She’d try him after dinner and hope he was approachable by then. He had to tell her what he’d done with the money.
CHAPTER 7
In an excellent season, as the fleece grows long and full upon his flock, a woolgrower might well revise his ambitions (and indebtedness) upwards. However, he should postpone grand plans. ‘Spend not before the clip is in,’ might fairly be said to be the woolgrower’s equivalent of not counting one’s chickens.
THE WOOLGROWER’S COMPANION, 1906
A few hours later, after their meal, Kate followed her father onto the cool of the verandah. She usually enjoyed this time of day, the noise of the cicadas and the galahs and the bats in the air. Not tonight. Her father sat, socked but bootless, with a book in his hands, at what had become a permanent draughts table, the pieces set out in front of him. Kate sat opposite him, her hands clenched in her lap, and tried to get up some gumption to talk about the debt.
She waited until the washing-up noise from the kitchen had finished, to be sure Daisy had gone to her room, the sleep-out off the back verandah. Her father was reading Gunfight at the Corral, a penny dreadful he’d got from somewhere.
‘Dad. I need to talk to you.’
‘Righto.’ He didn’t look up.
She leaned forward over the pieces on the board. ‘I spoke to Mr Addison.’
‘Man’s a drongo. Never trust a bank johnny.’
‘He says —’ she started.
Her father cut her off when he held up a hand. ‘Listen!’ Alert, he dropped the book to his lap, and sat very still.